Krokodil Tears Read online

  The Sandrat darted back in time to avoid the spear of flame from the torch, and flung a handful of sand at Miss Liberty. The Daughter dropped the still-burning torch and a pool of fire spread around her. Her robes went up. That put her out of the fight for the moment.

  There were only twenty-five or thirty more of them. Not easy, but she could do it. After all, she had been given a brain to think with while these patriots were being force-fed The Thoughts of Spiro Agnew, The World According to William F. Buckley and Killing Commies for God and Country.

  “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” she recited.

  Uncle Sam came at her, long arms outstretched. She kicked him in the face with her boot-heel, and he got a grip on her knee.

  “… indivisible under God, with Liberty…”

  Other hands grabbed her, and she was dragged towards the crucifix.

  Miss Liberty was shrieking as she burned. The Daughters wouldn’t have enough water with them to waste on her, but the children were shovelling sand at the woman, trying to smother the flames.

  The Sandrat bit into the wrist of one of the Minutemen, chewing until she severed the artery. He fell away, blood gushing into her face, trying to stanch the flow with his fingers.

  “… and Justice for all!” She spat a bloody froth at Uncle Sam.

  She got one foot in the sand, and dragged it. The patriots were having trouble holding her fast. She scratched down a face with her desert-hardened claws, and broke some ribs with an elbow.

  “I’m just exercising my right to Freedom of Expression.”

  It was just her and Uncle Sam now. She slipped behind him, pulling his arms back until his shoulders popped, and pushed him into the dirt. He had a gun in his waistband, a long-barreled Buntline special. She relieved him of it, and made five bullets count, dropping Minutemen and Daughters where they stood.

  “Who wants the last one?” she asked.

  The remaining gangtypes looked at each other. A tall, well-built girl in a star-spangled bathing suit knelt by Miss Liberty, and picked up the coronet.

  “No volunteers, huh?”

  The Betsy Ross Bimbo settled the coronet on her Annette Funicello hairdo.

  “So you’ve just elected yourself Boss of the Beach, huh?”

  The new leaderene tottered forwards on five-inch spike heels—not the ideal sandwear—rolling her hips. She had a pair of batons with wickedly barbed ends. She twirled them like a majorette, and did a few ninja moves.

  “Back off, prom queen!”

  Damn, she needed her last bullet. She would have to fight. She slid the gun into her holster, and spread her hands in a sign of peace.

  “Can’t we settle this constitutionally, with a debate and a referendum?”

  The Beach Bunny swung her batons in a deadly arc.

  “Just you and me, commie,” the Daughter said. “Miss Liberty was my den mother.”

  “It’s always somebody’s den mother, or sister, or brother, or pet rattlesnake, huh? Why can’t people just be dead and forgotten?”

  A baton shot out, piercing the air where the Sandrat’s shoulder had just been. The Daughter dodged an elbow thrust, and brought the majorette rod down on the Sandrat’s back. It was a good hit, and she had to use all of her concentration not to go down.

  The Daughter was a Champion Twirl Tootsie. To get around that, she would have to get in close, and go for some serious cat-fighting. The Sandrat hugged the girl, and pulled her close. The Daughter’s face crinkled up in disgust. The Sandrat knew she had an edge. She licked the girl’s mouth, tasting strawberry lipstick, and flicked her lightly freckled cheerleader’s nose with the pointed end of her tongue.

  The Daughter looked as if she were ready to give out with the old Technicolor Yawn. “What’s the matter, saph? Worried that you’d like it too much?”

  The Daughter wriggled, trying to get a knee up into the Sandrat’s stomach. Her rock-hard hair was shaking.

  “Maybe you don’t kiss on a first fight, huh?”

  The Daughter grabbed a handful of hair, and yanked hard. It hurt, but the Sandrat could handle it.

  “Hey, no fair! Tammy’s cheating!”

  The Sandrat lifted the majorette up, and tossed her away. She landed badly, and crawled away.

  “Nobody loves a sore loser, Gidget.”

  The other Daughters were in a semi-circle around the Sandrat. She drew her gun. “Remember the last bullet, everyone? Good, there’ll be a pop quiz after recess.”

  She took aim, and shot the arvee in the gastank. Uncle Sam was loaded with ScumStoppers. The bullet punched through armour plate, the tank exploded, and the arvee rose up into the air in a whirl of flame. The DAR must keep all their ammo in the bus, the Sandrat thought. There was quite a fireworks display. A flying wheel knocked the crucifix over, and chunks of wreckage rained down on a fifty-foot circle. Two or three of the cykes blew up in sympathy. Miss Liberty wasn’t the only one on fire now. Patriots were running all over the place, periwigs ablaze, screaming for help, burrowing into the sand and rolling.

  “See, whoever has the biggest gun gets to kick the crap out of everybody else. It’s the American Way.”

  The Sandrat was untouched in the eye of the hurricane. She knew the fire wouldn’t hurt her. It was destiny.

  She picked up a few more guns from corpses, and didn’t feel naked any more. One or two still felt like fighting, and she shot them.

  She left the children alone. They would make good sandrat material. Along with the majorette, whom she saw being helped away from the fire by the kids.

  “You’ll be able to work on your tan tomorrow, surf sweetie,” she shouted after the Daughter, “but don’t hold your breath waiting for the tide to come in.”

  She found an unburned six-by-three stars and stripes in the sand. She picked it up and draped it over Miss Liberty’s still-smoking remains. She shot a salute at the cooked corpse.

  “Like I said, the American Way, sister.”

  She found a cyke parked out of range of the explosion, and straddled it. It was strange having a sickle between her legs after all these months, but the reactions came back. You never forget. She took a helmet from the handlebars. It was starred and striped, but it would do. She kick-started the machine, and drove away from the fires. Someone took a shot at her, but missed. She searched through the pannier for a musichip to put into the helmet’s sound system, but only found Selections from John Phillip Sousa, The Best of Kate Smith, and John Wayne’s America. She threw the chips into the sand for the predators, and upped the speed. In the panniers, she did find a supply of Good Ole Home Cooking—Oreos, Hershey Bars, Babe Ruths, Wrigley’s Gum, Pork Popsicles. She was back in civilization, at last.

  Her hair flew out behind her, and the clean air struck her face. She would have to do something about her face now. Once she got her bearings, she could head for Dead Rat and get Doc Threadneedle to sort out her skullplates. Maybe she should invest in a few more elaborate bio-amendments. Her credit should be good.

  Her wilderness years were over.

  She wasn’t hallucinating any more, she knew. The voices were under control. She wouldn’t be seeing any dead women getting out of their rocking chairs. Things were clear again.

  She smiled, and her heart beat away the seconds, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

  Part Three: Jessamyn

  I

  It had taken Duroc at least three quarters of an hour to get through the Holderness-Manolo security system. They had X-Rayed, palm-printed and eyeball-photographed him, then handed him over to a pair of clean-cut young men, name-tagged Lawrence and Skipper, for a friendly cross-interrogation. While waiting for his stats to be confirmed, he was offered the services of a barbie doll “recreational secretary.” He politely turned the girl down and waited to be admitted to Bronson Manolo’s office. They had never met before, but as soon as Duroc was inside the Agency’s inner sanctum, the Chief Op looked up from his blondwood desk, flashed a monied piranha grin, and acted as if his
visitor were an old college buddy who had happened to have walked in off the street.

  “Rog-babe, hi, can I have Kandi fix you some coffee?” The Op produced a Mickey Mouse snuffbox full of white powder. “You want some toot-sweet?”

  Duroc was dressed in the black conservative suit and pilgrim hat of a Josephite Elder.

  “No thank you, Mr Manolo. I have abjured stimulants.”

  Manolo showed the even, white teeth again.

  “Take me out and shoot me down like a dog, old buddy, I was forgetting. Grab some chairleather. I hope you don’t mind us weaker souls indulging the vices?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Cosmic.” He pressed a button on his desk-console, absent-mindedly dipping his pinkie in the cocaine and running it across his gums. “Kandi-cutie, decant me some Nicaraguan and pump it through. Oh, I’ll be brainstorming with Rog for a couple of tick-tocks, so hold all calls up to and including state government. And have a nice day.”

  In his business, Manolo was the coolest of the snazz. He hadn’t said “real coffee,” but he made damn sure you got the message. This office was expensive in a subtly ostentatious way, minimalist but designed to impress the discerning. The undiscerning probably never got further than Lawrence and Skipper. One wall was a picture window affording a pastoral view of Lower Los Angeles right down to the beach. On the wall behind Manolo was a David Hockney original. Mounted above the painting was a six-foot narwhal horn. On the desk was an incomprehensible executive toy that buzzed and flashed occasionally, displaying chrome tubes, jewels and crystal lumps. In the corner there was a discreet datalink terminal got up to look like a ’30s radiogram.

  Manolo leaned back in his chair, and patted his thousand-dollar blow-waved haircut. His hairstyle consultant must throw in a Tom Selleck moustache twirl for free. He was wearing a silvery Italian suit over a T-shirt which read HONK IF YOU LIKE HUNKS.

  Duroc remembered why he tried, wherever possible, to avoid Californians.

  A bust-enhanced beauty queen in a goldthread string bikini wandered in with Manolo’s Nicaraguan, which steamed in an authentic 1919 World Series Commemorative Mug, and wandered out again. Manolo’s eyes followed her jiggle from the door to the desk and back. Kandi took the time to flash a smile at Duroc; he supposed the company must have a charge account with the same high-flying Beverly Hills dentist. Or maybe it was all the fluoride in the water.

  “Great ass, huh?” said Manolo, licking his moustache. “Oh, I’m sorry, reverend, I was forgetting.”

  “Elder. My title is Elder.”

  “Cheezus, what a maroon I am. Elder. I’ll get it. Say, are you French?”

  “Originally, yes. I have been with the church for ten years now.”

  “Heyy, cosmic, man, cosmic. I’m very spiritual myself. I attend the Pyramid down at the Surfside Mall. Gari—that’s my Guru—says it’s important to get in touch with your inner being. I always take the time to meditate between my squishball practice and the tanning parlour.”

  Sunshine three hundred and fifty days a year, and Californians fry themselves under microwaves. There was a sign up at the airport—John Wayne Airport, naturally—that read CALIFORNIA: WE’VE HAD THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY HERE FOR TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. Duroc had had to smile at that. As a succession of paycops, stewardesses, diplomatics, immigration officials, armourcabbies, narcotics relay expeditors, hotel functionaries, arms dealers and hookers told him to “have a snazz day” and shoved his credit card through their machines, he wondered whether they would like the real 21st century when Nguyen Seth rained it down on them.

  “Your agency comes highly recommended,” he said.

  “Yeah. Me and Bob Holderness are the most on the coast. At least, Bob was until the Surf Nazis got him. You don’t see that gangcult much these days, because we genocided them. It got personal. Nasty work, but the karma was right for it. City cops looked the other way, and the Cal State Angels loaned us hardware. Bob was a great buddy, and a great guy… He had a lot of friends, no matter what you read in the trades.”

  There was a framed picture on the desk. Duroc had assumed it was a father and son shot. There was the younger Manolo, plus an older man with the same teeth, hair and moustache. They were standing either side of a surfboard, and there were some Kandi clones in the picture.

  “Back in the ’70s, he worked with all the topster Ops—Matt Houston, Cannon, Banacek, Mannix, Lance White. Those were the great days of the business in La-La Land, before we closed the state borders and tossed the immigrant filthos back into the desert.”

  “An impressive record, indeed.”

  “And could he surf! We’re talking radical in a tubular way!”

  Manolo took a couple of hits of coffee, and picked up a wrist-exerciser that probably doubled as some kind of sex aid.

  Squeezing away so that his biceps shifted in his sleeve, he asked “so, Rog, what’s going down the chute?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What’s the beef? The case?”

  “Ah yes, the case.”

  He put his briefcase on the desk.

  “Not that kind of case, pilgrim.”

  “I know what you mean. I have some documentation for you.”

  “Zero-degree cool.”

  Duroc took out the file on Jessamyn Bonney, and slipped off the electronic seal.

  “We want this woman.”

  Manolo showed his dazzling choppers again, and took the file. He flipped it to the photographs, and werewolf-whistled.

  “Okay if you like the type. I’m a 3-B man myself, blonde bimbos with boobs. Kid must want to be a Disney cartoon villainess when she grows up. Look at that black eye make-up and the suspenders. Is that hair for real?”

  “She’s killed perhaps forty or fifty people.”

  “Ouch. Antisocial lady.”

  “Among them, several Elders of the Josephite Church. She attacked a wagon train two years ago. We have been compiling this dossier ever since.”

  “The church don’t forget, huh?” A beady glint appeared in Manolo’s clear blue eyes as he got his first scent of blood money and began to turn into a shark.

  “Something like that. We are prepared to meet your regular fee. On top of that, you will note that there are seventeen outstanding warrants filed by various state and federal authorities against her. Should you be successful, you will be able to pick up a bounty on each of them.”

  “How much is this kid worth?” He licked his moustache again. Duroc wondered whether it was an implant.

  “It’s in the file.”

  Manolo flipped the pages until he came to the accounts. He ran his eyes down the column of figures as if he were taking a good look at Voluptua Whoopee in a no-piece swimsuit and whistled “Dixie.”

  “A prize package. You have us on the case, padrone. And we never give up. We’ll have this… uh… Jessamyn Bonney… behind electro-bars at Tehachapi just as soon as the schedule allows.”

  He continued to page through the file absent-mindedly, fiddling as he did so with the snuffbox, making sure that the gold inlay buttons on Mickey’s rompers caught the light.

  “No, you misunderstand.”

  “Run that round the block again, Rog, and see if you can sneak it by under the limbo-line this time.”

  “We in the church are not interested in the apprehension of Ms Bonney. In Deseret, we adhere to a Biblical code rather than to the laws and statutes of the United States.”

  “Heyy, the Bible, man. Heavy book. I keep it right here in my desk with the I Ching, llluminatus and my Castenadas.”

  “Then you are familiar with the saying ‘an eye for an eye.’”

  “Absolutamente, Rog.”

  “Then, you will work it out. Jessamyn Bonney has killed members of the Church. In turn, we would like you…”

  A real smile crept onto Manolo’s face. It didn’t show off his teeth, but it told Duroc a lot more about the Op’s character.

  “… to shut down the ratskag’s terminal with ma
ssive overinvestment?”

  Duroc nodded. He knew Manolo would be taping this meeting, and he didn’t want to say it out loud in words.

  “So, it’s liquidation not incarceration that’s your bag. Fine. We can handle that consignment. Mucho extra dinero, of course, but if that’s what you want…”

  “The Tabernacle of Joseph is not poor.”

  “I can tell where you’re coming from, Rog.”

  “You accept the commission.”

  Manolo stuck out a hairy hand, and Duroc shook it. Gold bracelets rattled.

  “She’s somewhere in Arizona, we believe. You might try to look up a Dr Simon Threadneedle in a township called Dead Rat.”

  “Dead Rat? Downer of a handle. Those vibes are negatory, Rog.”

  “I’m sure you can get on top of it.”

  “That’s a charlie A-One breeze-from-the-freeze affirmative-to-the-max topside positive situation in the black column roger, Roger,” Manolo chirruped.

  “You mean yes?”

  Manolo looked hurt. “Yes.”

  II

  This is ZeeBeeCee, the Station That’s Got It All, and here with The Bathroom Break Bulletin is luscious Lola Stechkin…

  “Hi, America. It’s November the 9th, 1996, only 47 shopping days to Christmas, and this is Lola, inviting you to share a shower. Here it is, folks, all the news you can handle…

  “Sunnydales, Iowa. Dr Ottokar Proctor, ‘The Tasmanian Devil,’ today took up residence in the high-security wing of this semi-private mental hospital. Experts remain divided on the question of Dr Proctor’s state of mind during the period when he is confirmed to have been responsible for seven hundred and fifty-three homicides, but the Supreme Court has ruled him insane and irresponsible. It has been suggested that President North intervened in the judicial progress with a plea for clemency on the grounds that Dr Proctor is too essential to the shaky economy of the United States to be executed. Dr Proctor, already a wealthy man, has received an eight figure sum for the movie rights to his forthcoming autobiography What’s Cookin’, Doc?, and director Kim Newman has already announced his intention to cast either Jeremy Irons or Steve Martin in the leading role.