by Wol-vriey
Even in dragon form, Posh had a female grace about her motions. Watching her move, Malone felt an ache in his heart.
Posh-dragon bent over the roasted man. She stabbed his chest with a talon and stirred his lungs awhile. Then she shook her head in dissatisfaction and played a burst of flame over him. He screamed inaudibly.
Malone clamped the gas mask over his face.
Fire extinguisher held before him like a shield, he burst into the room.
He waited till Posh turned to look at him before depressing the plunger.
Posh roared as the first burst of anesthetic foam hit her. She blew a huge jet of fire at Malone, but he was already past its focus. The flame was swallowed by the foam wave he left in his wake.
Circling her warily, keeping well out of range of her tail, Malone kept the extinguisher plunger depressed.
Their bedroom slowly filled up with foam.
Several more gouts of fire were eclipsed in extinguisher foam, while Posh sputtered her rage.
The space in the room reduced as Malone avoided being himself caught in the foam, lest it blur his vision. He was now forced to move closer to Posh than he’d have liked.
“Grrrrrrooaaarrrr!!” she roared.
Incensed at being thwarted in her meat lust, Posh lashed her tail out at Malone. Flexible as a whip, it cut the air towards him.
Malone was ready—he ducked. The ceramic tentacle blew out the glass of the window behind him.
His face set in a scowl, as, totally obscured in foam, Posh slowly sank to the floor, spitting black puffs of smoke.
A thunk—the sound of a heavy plate hitting a tabletop—and she was out cold.
Malone waited till the foam had all evaporated before going near her. He also ensured her tail wasn’t flicking.
Posh-dragon lay on her side. She looked innocent; an oversized wall decoration fallen from its perch.
Printed on the underside of her tail, just where it became the smoothness of her groinital area, was the large red inscription: ‘Porcelain Dragon, Genuine Chinese Chinaware. Made in China.’ Below this was a spiral red and gold barcode.
***
As he always did, Malone got out the hammer. As he always did, he stood over Posh’s body a long time, considering ending it now and here.
“Love’s a fragile thing,” his mother had always told him. “Relationships even more so. Once broken, they’re almost impossible to repair.” Looking down at his girlfriend—her body already turning back to its human form—Malone realized that in his case this was literal truth—all he had to do was smash Posh two or three times with the hammer while she was transformed and out cold, and she’d fragment into a million pieces.
Love . . . Posh . . . really was that fragile.
This nightmare would be over—for good.
He watched her ceramic snout shorten back into her human face; the transition from fired clay to twitching flesh; her painted-on roses dissolving into blush, smeared lipstick and the faintest marbling of veins; her reddish-brown hair reappear, her neck . . .
Hammer raised for the killer blow, Malone stood defeated. He couldn’t do it—knew he’d never be able to, regardless of whatever protestations he might make to Jade Cure.
Posh was Malone’s addiction—the one habit he couldn’t shake. Like she couldn’t shake her addiction to dragonreich.
***
Disgusted with himself, Malone turned to look at the young man Posh had been about eating.
Miraculously, considering the extent to which he’d been cooked, her victim was still alive. And awake—somehow transcending the anesthetic that had knocked Posh out. His blue eyes told a tale of utter disbelief. They stared out into space beyond Malone, seeing something outside the room. Maybe Heaven, maybe Hell.
Malone bent over him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I truly am.”
The young man finally noticed Malone. “I know I’m dying,” he gasped in a voice that sounded ripped from his shredded lungs, “but that’s okay. I’m no longer in any pain—I feel like a head without a body now.”
He grimaced; Malone realized he was smiling. “It’ll be fine dying, but what is that thing? That’s no normal dragon.”
Malone winced under his fevered gaze. He shook his head. “No, it’s some sort of mutant beast.” You’ve no fucking idea, he thought. He felt helpless—what could he say? Dude, that’s my fucking girlfriend?
The young man coughed, broth mixed with foam bubbled from the piercings Posh had made in his chest.
His blue eyes focused hard on Malone. “Man, I thought bad shit like this only happened in the movies.”
“Life’s a horror movie now,” Malone said with feeling. This conversation was freaking him out horribly. “Today it’s you, tomorrow it’ll likely be me. Soon everyone in Boston will be dead.”
“Yeah, man, I guess you’re right,” the young man said.
He coughed again and was dead.
***
Posh was now half-transformed back to herself. With her human top half and ceramic bottom parts, she looked like the white dinosaur version of a mermaid.
Malone left the room to conceal the hammer. He’d had it two months now. Posh had no idea how close to death she was each time Malone caught her strung-out on reich.
He returned with a plastic sheet and wrapped up the young man’s corpse. Once done, he carried it downstairs to the funeral parlor and stuffed it into the crematorium furnace.
So far, he’d used the furnace four times. His familiarity with its perfection in disposing of the traces of murder disgusted him.
He watched through the furnace’s glass windows, sighing deeply as the flames digested the body, finishing the job Posh had begun.
Malone felt like shit as he watched the corpse burn. He felt this young man’s death was his fault.
He steeled his resolve to make love to Yang Yang the next day.
He realized now that he’d been immensely foolish to ever consider not doing so.
CHAPTER 41
Malone
Next morning.
There were dragons in the morning sky, but they were far off, embroiled in a territorial scrap out over Charles River.
Malone watched their distant fiberglass bodies glitter, transparent silhouettes against the pale sun. He heaved a heavy sigh of relief—getting to work would be easier today.
All I have to keep an eye out for now are the damned dinos. Driving this far every day is close to suicidal—I’ve really got to move my office under The Grid. Home too, once Posh is off the damn reich.
He smiled. That’ll be later today. The prospect of the final fix for Posh’s addiction had him feeling upbeat. First a quick drop-by the office to see if anyone wants me, then off to Chinatown Park to go find out what goddess pussy tastes like. . .
(Posh had been asleep when he’d left home, she always slept like the dead after her transformations. Malone was grateful—it prevented another awkward confrontation between them.)
He turned onto Revere Street, out of view of the dragons.
It began raining, a cornflake drizzle occasionally interspersed with nuts and fruit. He put a hand out the car window, caught a few, and ate them.
***
Malone drove fast through the morning.
He surveyed each approaching block of ruins carefully before navigating them. His eyes flickered perpetually left and right, anticipating danger.
There was so much weird shit happening now, Malone no longer trusted even himself. He’d heard of people accidentally driving into ODs that suddenly appeared in the middle of the street.
He caught a sudden movement above and ahead to his left. His right hand instinctively left the wheel and rested on his gun, lying ready in the passenger seat.
He swerved the Mustang up over cracked sidewalk and through the display window of a trashed department store.
Once inside, he looked around quickly, checking to ensure he was alone, wouldn’t get jumped from behind by hungry lizards. He wi
nced on sighting the claw rips in the tattered masonry, the telltale slashes in the long-abandoned displays and cashier counters. This was the problem with living this far out from The Grid. Out here, the dinos were practically a law to themselves.
The store seemed empty. Malone turned the car around in the cramped space, then switched off the engine.
From concealment, he watched the road.
Up ahead, smoke billowed from a huge hole in the side of a condo.
Malone listened hard. He heard screaming. He waited till the screaming stopped.
A huge quetzalcoatlus emerged from the hole in the building’s side. Its shark-long head was coated in blood. Two headless human forms dangled between its jaws.
The dino-bird flapped its massive wings and took to the sky.
Malone waited till the quetzalcoatlus was a distant colored dot before setting the car in motion again.
He spat out the window into the raining cereal. Boston was becoming more and more dangerous by the day. No, he corrected himself, by the fucking hour.
***
Malone drove by a herd of skyscrapers. Most that he passed were half-transformed into beetles.
Their altering began at their penthouses, with their lightning rods and television antenna becoming insect antennae. Once those were fully developed, the changes proceeded downwards through the building, the concrete-to-flesh/chitin conversions occurring at a rate of about six stories a week.
The beetle became aware of its surroundings at about the time it was half-formed, by which time the upper-level portions of its elevators had split off from its body into its fore- and mid-legs. It was still however as helpless as a human infant, though its ability to squirt quick-setting cement projectiles from its mouth and thoracic spiracles kept away hungry dragons.
Malone passed a group of skyscraper residents loading their possessions into vans. They were either relocating to a more recently laid skyscraper or a condominium.
(Condos were unreliable dwellings, however. Firstly, one never knew when they’d develop wanderlust, uproot their foundation-feet and tramp off.
And, like Malone had witnessed shortly before, their not having any natural defenses made both they and their occupants easy prey for dinos.
Some pterodactyls even used Condos as nests. Heaven help anyone who moved into such a seemingly unoccupied building.)
All the working men had heavy-duty guns hung at their hips. Groups of children nervously watched the skies for dragons and pterodactyls. Others watched for terra-bound dinos.
Nearby several women raked fallen cornflakes into plastic boxes.
The residents hailed Malone as he drove by. He waved back.
He saw they’d shaved their relocation extremely close, the beetle’s wings were already fully formed—the building’s transformation near-complete.
Dangerous, Malone thought, wondering why they’d waited so long.
Some beetles prematurely attempted flight. Most toppled into nearby buildings. Others made it up into the air, but crashed; or their cement and steel underbodies broke off when they were airborne.
All three options meant certain death for any adamant inhabitants.
***
Malone stopped again at the intersection near his office. There were two sets of severed legs and a ripped-up torso scattered across the opposite sidewalk. Blood-filled dino footprints were crunched into the broken tarmac beside them. Tyrannosaurs from the size of them. The blood glittered wet—the predators would still be nearby.
Also, the dino footprints led in the direction of Malone’s office.
Damn. He backed the car into the alley by the corner convenience store and settled to wait again.
A moving shadow on the alley’s right wall caught his attention. Malone grabbed his gun off the seat and spun around, ready to shoot. He relaxed—a diplodocus was cropping tree leaves in the yard behind the alley.
Despite the dino’s harmlessness, Malone kept a firm grip on the gun.
The rain had now changed from cornflakes to popping corn—a white, brown, and yellow snowfall almost totally hampering visibility.
Malone considered his options.
His office was two hundred yards away. He could drive on, chancing he wouldn’t bust a tire or get his wheels stuck in a pothole. Or, he could park the car and walk, chancing he wouldn’t run into the dinos, or that he’d be able to shoot his way out if he did.
He chose to walk. He knew this street like his face in the mirror, all its safe places. He’d make it.
Malone locked the car, then padded to the intersection.
He grimaced at the human remains strewn across the sidewalk.
Two people—likely potential clients of mine—just got fucked-up by dinos.
Gun in hand, he set off down Joy Street, picking a careful way through the dropping, popping corn.
He walked slowly to avoid triggering the dino’s sensitivity to vibrations. He kept close to the curb, ready to leap through a doorway at the slightest hint of motion.
Malone felt queasy: the butchered torso he’d left upstreet had triggered unpleasant memories.
His attention shifted from navigating the falling popcorn. He relived his incarceration by Frank and Rachel Fischer. The intervening months hadn’t made his memory of being eaten any less harrowing.
Each time Malone undressed, he saw the scar and remembered the cannibal pair. Beautiful sexless Rachel, obsessed with conquering the USA, and Frank, equally obsessed with loving her.
He wondered how Sara Fischer was doing now. True to her word, she’d brought him payment for his services the week after he’d returned Rachel’s head to her.
She’d also tried to seduce him again. But for the fact that Malone was by then in love with Posh, she’d have succeeded.
Malone had decided fucking was how Sara grieved.
Which brought his mind back to later today. Will I actually be able to sex up the Snake Lady? It’ll be a major disaster if I can’t get it on with her. I’ll have to ask Jade for some ginseng, or Ying-Yang potion…Chinese Viagra or whatever, just in case. But still…
CHAPTER 42
Malone
A snuffling sound jerked Malone back to the here and now.
He looked up. A T-Rex was peering down hungrily at him from a yawning gap in the second-story wall of the building he was passing.
Shit, he thought, reminiscing has just killed me.
The tyrannosaur launched itself at him. Malone ducked out of its way. It missed him by a hairsbreadth. The ground shook as the dino landed, its feet making sixteen-inch prints in the eroded tarmac.
Popcorn rained on them both.
The tyrannosaur spun round. Its yellow eyes glinted death at Malone. It was HUGE. It towered over him, an alligator-skinned juggernaut of destruction, the visible incarnation of the killing impulse.
Malone found himself rooted to the spot, as unable to flee as a headlight-entranced rabbit. He’d never been this close to a T-Rex before—the mere reek of the thing was overpowering.
A warped collage of scenes from his anticipated funeral zipped though his head.
What seemed to Malone an eternity lived in slow motion was in actuality two seconds.
The T-Rex roared; chunks of regurgitated meat splattered Malone. It retracted its head and looked sideways as if to locate his position.
Then, four-foot jaws yawning like the Grand Canyon, its head darted towards Malone with the unerring accuracy of a shark homing in on a blood drop two miles distant.
Adrenalin poured through Malone. Acting on pure instinct, he raised his gun and stuck it in the dino’s mouth. He pulled the trigger at the exact instant that its teeth clamped down on his right shoulder, separating arm from body.
In a muffled explosion, the rear of the tyrannosaur’s head blew outwards in a shower of white gore.
Malone staggered backward. Moments later, the dino crashed to the ground mere inches from him. Its exploded brains made it look like it was wearing a white crown.
Fuck the dino reign, Malone thought.
The popcorn rain slowly plugged the yawning hole in the dino’s cranium as though it were itself a pothole.
Malone staggered back some more as the tyrannosaur’s forelimb claws raked the earth towards him in its death spasms, excavating deep furrows.
Squeezing his right shoulder to staunch the flow of blood, with popcorn showering down on him like he was the floor of a movie theatre, Malone ran the remaining fifty yards to his office.
CHAPTER 43
Malone / Sara
Reeling dizzy with pain, Malone reached the bungalow. He staggered up his front steps. He somehow got the door open, then rushed across to the cabinet containing his first-aid kit.
***
A shot of ‘Insta-Clot’ into his shoulder stopped the bleeding; Supercetamol took care of the pain. Once certain he was no longer in danger of dying, Malone passed out.
Odd ominous voices awoke him.
“He’s much tougher than I even imagined,” one said.
Surfacing slowly from sopor, Malone fought to slot the voice into its socket of familiarity.
“I must admit to being impressed,” another voice said. “Though he did lose an arm, I’ve never seen a human hold his ground so well against a dinosaur.”
The metallic tones of this voice jerked Malone to full alertness. It was a Fork voice, which meant he was still in danger. Shit.
He warily opened his eyes, found himself staring into a familiar face.
“Mrs. Fischer . . . Sara? What are you doing here?”
The slutty sexagenarian visage leered down at him. The intervening three months had if anything only made Sara Fischer look more debauched.
She wore skintight raptor-skin pants and a low-cut silk top that left nothing to the imagination—her incongruously shapely large breasts adorned her chest like pawpaws, their brown nipples pricked the fabric like hypo-needles. Their rose-colored aureole were dual testaments to the pleasures of geriatric sex.
