The Good Death Box Set: A Hard SciFi Science Fiction Series

by Doug McGovern

  Jane crept closer, hand extended.

  “It’s alright. Here, let me help you…Just let me help you, Lucien.” She held her breath. He fell into her arms. Never before her and never again had he had such a friend. He might even say that she had been his best friend and that was saying a lot as they hadn’t gotten along at all before.

  “It’s alright now. Not gonna leave you here…” Jane caught him as he was collapsing into the lawn. Irony abounded in that moment. Here he was supposed to be using his new skills set to rescue her and she was having to salvage him from the lustful circles of this damned house.

  Jane leaned back and took Kingsley’s face. He sobbed and nodded, wanting to talk, but it was proving impossible. She smiled, understanding.

  “I take it that it wasn’t as fun as you hoped it would be, huh? I’m sorry, Lu. Love hurts. I guess now you understand. Hopefully, you saw something in there that we can use to trap her. That seems pretty hopeless, I know. Let’s get you cleaned off and patched up now, okay?” She pulled him to the bench and eased him down into Bleach’s lap.

  His angel gathered his head with a shaky smile.

  “Hi.”

  “You were right…” His whole body twisted in pain as Jane pulled the robe away from his raw skin.

  “I know. I’m so sorry…” Bleach caressed his face. He smiled.

  “She’s out for now. I think I have a plan. If we stole it… Took it to my father to explain what it is and then we could start researching an antidote… Just an idea. Probably a stupid one.” He coughed. Jane looked up, wan-faced.

  “We aren’t stealing anything. You both are pretty messed up, yeah? So, I’ll do it. I’m Andromeda after all. If somebody has to face off with the Kraken, then it’s gonna be me.” She smiled. Kingsley tried to sit up.

  “Jane, it was so wrong for me… All the things I’ve done to you… All the mess I’ve gotten you into…”

  “Shh! Stop that. It really isn’t your fault I got involved. I got me involved. Just like everyone will think after this that the government talked me into accepting the act they passed. I talked them into it. No, I don’t understand it entirely, no one really does. I just had to convince them that what they were doing was for a good cause despite morally ambiguous. So that I could take the fall for my friends because I knew she would never rest until everyone I ever loved or knew paid for it as dearly as you’ve paid for your mistakes.” Jane swallowed and leaned over him, silver eyes filling with tears.

  “No one else is dying for what I’ve done, Lu. Nobody. It was all conscious. I knew what I was doing and I did it because I could. Which is why I will provoke her wrath again, even though I’ll probably end up like the guys upstairs.” She bit down on her lip until blood came up. He knew that she was terrified. That she would die by the same sword she swung in justice’s name. That her death would be record-breaking history.

  “Jane, I can’t let you do this. It’s just wrong.” Kingsley felt like he might start crying all over again. Jane cupped his neck in tender hands.

  “I know we’ve had our differences and that we used to fight and everything. If I’m gonna die, then can we call that all square? Can we be friends in the end?”

  He coughed and nodded. She laughed and smoothed his hair.

  “Lucien, I will go in there and steal the serum because I’m the only one that has the physical capacity at the moment. Then you and Kiara will smuggle it out of here and take it to Joseph. That’s the only plan we’ve got and we’ve got to stick to it.” She smiled, bent and kissed his forehead.

  “For the moment, we’ve got to stop this bleeding. You’ve suffered severe genital trauma. I hate to tell you this, but you may have even experienced genital amputation caused by the trauma. Whatever else she’s done to you has caused hypovolemia and hypoventilation. We’ve got to stop this bleeding. Which means we’re going to have to light a fire so I can cauterize all of this. I guess you’ve had to pass through the fire to be made whole. I wish it didn’t have to be that way, man. Yeah? Maybe you’ll be a better man now.”

  Maybe? He knew he would. He looked up into the eyes of the person who could lead his way.

  “Kiara…That’s your real name. Beautiful.” In Kiara’s gentle arms, he passed out cold.

  *****

  Chapter 10

  “Okay, so do you any of you have a plan that doesn’t get us killed?” Dexter held his breath, clutching the Sig P226 Harrison had given him. Out of the massive loads of smuggled contraband that the citizens of Shreveport had recovered, there was a high percentage of weaponry. Harrison himself knelt now on the shoreline in a foxhole he’d dug in the sand with a CZ P-07 pressed to his chest, lips twisting backward in a grimace, eyes watching the shoreline. Joseph had stuck with his old Model 29 and sat rolling the barrel with his forefinger, holding the bullets in his upturned palm.

  “Yeah, I’m working on that. I’ve got nothing. Harrison?” Joseph’s eyes crossed.

  The shoreline was swarmed with pirates. Some were dressed as tactical ops specialists and others were in theatrical costumes. There were ballerinas and even mimes. They all had one thing in common.

  They were all female.

  “I haven’t seen this many ladies on the beach since I was a wealthy young college freshman.” Harrison grinned.

  “You gentlemen have surely heard the phrase ‘know your enemy’. The plan is reconnaissance. We go in and figure out as much as we can about the way my crazy broad ex operates. Whatever special intel we can get, we can use to form an educated plan for how to tear her down via domino effect. I see it this way. The bigger they come the farther they fall. We start chopping at the massive tree and give it enough momentum she’ll end up calling timber on herself. We maliciously seed and misinform. We corrupt her perfect little sorority.” Harrison nodded, listening to his own words, weighing them. Dexter and Joseph studied his face, nodding. It was an excellent theory. How to put it to their use?

  “Well, we know one thing. Her organization is pivoted in some kind of feminist protocol. All of her hired guns are female. Something else, every one of these ladies are speaking Italian.” Dexter nodded over his shoulder at the closest guards they could overhear. Harrison grinned. Joseph nudged the boy’s shoulder.

  “Impressive. How’d you know that?”

  “I took Italian as an elective to impress Jane. She’s extremely fond of Alpha Romeo sport’s engines…” Dexter smiled sheepishly. Harrison laughed and clapped him on the back.

  “You’ve got it bad for her, buddy. I can totally see it too. She’s one in a million.” Harrison bowed his head as he remembered the kind nurse’s face.

  “To be technical, she is Andromeda.” Dexter held his breath. For all he knew, Jane was already dead in the most brutal fashion that had ever taken place under the sky. He clutched his pistol. This intelligence mission might give him the key to saving her. Even if not, he had to do this, because this is what she would have done. She would have wanted him to stay her course. To be strong and sure and see it through to the end. He could do that much for her.

  “Okay, guys, we’ll have to time our moves carefully. If we can get straight to the water we might even be able to search the ships.” Harrison closed his eyes and counted his heartbeats. This was it. The moment that he repaid his mistakes in kind.

  He nodded and dove out across the sand. Perhaps it was effectual to run in plain sight and hide in every shadow. To become part of the landscape and disappear.

  He rolled through the many plastic crates hanging open along the path. As he scurried, head over heels and then belly to the dust, he could see that these crates were filled with styrofoam molds that each cushioned countless vials of serums.

  Harrison crawled behind a large package of plastic wrapped oil drums. He felt Dexter land on his one hand and Joseph on the other.

  “That’s back stock from Kelley enterprises for the last 20+ years. I should know. I saw my original signature on at least 6 bottles.” Joseph looked back over hi
s shoulder, having leaned almost onto their chests so that they could hear his words without their risking being heard by the pirates.

  “Looks like she’s gearing up for some mythological Apocalypse. Didn’t you say she mentioned the end of the world when she made off with the Andromeda extract?” Harrison studied Joseph’s face.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s she gonna do with the Andromeda extract? I mean, like, what does it do?” Dexter leaned closer.

  Joseph swallowed and bowed closer.

  “Well, Kelley Enterprises had been contacted by the USMC to create performance enhancers from the natural fluids of animals. With the Andromeda extract, we had a medical breakthrough like never before. For the first time via pharmaceuticals, we began to see something stronger than any theories of evolution. We saw a drug that could actually produce an increase and startling anomalies in the behavior of transposons or ‘jumping genes’ that could make the DNA amend itself. The double helix of lab rat test subjects actually “reinterpreted” their own codes and adapted to any introduced chemicals transforming the subjects’ bodies into electro-generators that could adapt to a massive number of things that followed the same mathematical dimensions and tissue nature as its rodent body. A hyper evolution that caused each rat to develop from an all-fours-walking creature to an upright walking creature with genotypes much like the marsupial family and the strength of an adult male gorilla.

  You can imagine how amazing and alarming all at once this was for the research team. Thus, Andromeda extract got its name from how much of a controversial liability it was. We nominally ‘scrapped’ the prototypes to get the press of our backs and even disparaged it to our uttermost capability. We made it a scapegoat sacrifice to the wrath of the academic community, our proverbial Kraken. I can only imagine that Leona wants to use it to make a public statement about herself. Use it to adapt the race of people she would require for her Empire from the surviving human test subjects.” Joseph looked over his shoulder, brows furrowed with guilt. He thought he’d been doing humanity a service with his life’s work. Now he began to feel like the destroyer of the beautiful world he would be soon to leave by nature. What kind of impact would his research have on the next generation? Would they even have the chance to be human, or would she mass convert them into monsters?

  “Well, we have one priority for our to-do list, then. If there’s a poison then there’s got to be an antidote. She’ll have it on her person until she can syndicate it, but we have to get the Andromeda extract itself away from her so we can start coming up with a cure. That’s our best foot forward, but you have to crawl before you can walk. My guess is that she’s smuggling in all these raw products as some kind of bad pharma expo for her respective drug traders.” Harrison’s face was pinched.

  “Drug traders linked back to Europe. Probably Italy. Hence the Italian-speaking pirate delivery girls.” Dexter fingered his pistol nervously. The older men exchanged a glance. The kid was clever and probably right.

  Harrison swung out to see what he had to. There was one ship with its railway down. He held his breath. The pirates had their backs turned arguing over a package.

  “Okay, Dex, you took Italian. What are they saying?” Harrison gnashed his teeth. He was going to have to make his break for it sooner than later if he wanted into that ship.

  “Apparently, some of the cargo is missing. Like the delivery has been tampered with. There are rumors about insurgents in Leona’s ranks.” Dexter’s blood suddenly went cold. They could see the sprit leave his skin, making his complexion one of rain-drenched newspaper.

  “They’re talking about an impending execution. The thief that caused the Boss-Lady so much hardship in her exploits and let the insurgents escape with her prize. They’re going to execute her on live TV.” Dexter turned to face Harrison eyes quivering with fear. That could have only been Jane. Because only Jane Lewis would have the guts to defy Leona Kelley in that massive of a way with her neck already on the chopping block.

  “If we want to cancel the execution, we’re gonna have to make a big scene. Not just a reconnaissance mission, after all, gentlemen. If these ships are part of a package deal, I say we damage some of the goods.” Joseph looked back over his shoulder at the ship with the dropped ramp.

  “Wait, you wanna… Destroy the ship? Like, blow it up maybe?” Dexter was shaking visibly.

  “In and out, an old-world smoke signal. I like the way you think, Doc.” Harrison laughed to hide his fear. Come to think of it, he’d never blown a ship to hell before. As the wise men say, there was always a first time for everything.

  *****

  Chapter 11

  A few hours before their would-be rescuers arrived, Leona’s rebellious prisoners were hard at work on a plan of their own. They’d found several loose gravestones to tilt on their side and build a step ladder up the outside of the mansion directly to Leona’s window. It was Kiara’s belief that the serum would be between Leona’s breasts now that she had her fill of carousing for the evening and had turned in for the night to enjoy her favorite high.

  She knew her sister better than anyone. Jane climbed from stone to stone and managed to hook her hands over the ancient marble incline. She swung herself up and reached and grabbed the curtains, tumbling loudly and knocking a few crystal angels full of human blood down from the bedside table. Her heart had nearly exploded. After all the astronomical odds she had survived, it would end this way. In Leona’s bed chamber, with the She-Devil probably injecting her with the humanity-decimating serum she wore on a dog tag chain at her tits. Jane had cringed and beat her fist in the carpet scattering the rancid human blood that had been mingled with blackberry liqueur for one of the Boss-Lady’s bizarre nightcaps.

  Leona snorted, too high to do anything. Jane pounced to her feet, staring down at the woman.

  “Mmm, I won another one. Hook, line and sinker. They think it’s all male violence do they? I suppose I’ve committed enough acts of serial rape to balance the statistics single-handedly.” She wrapped her hands in the sheets, spreading out like a spider in the nest.

  Jane clenched her hand into a fist. The Andromeda vial was within a cat-scratch grasp. How to be sure that Leona was stoned enough?

  “Oh, you should have been there, Janey. You would have probably gotten a kick out of watching him squirm. I had him watched for weeks before he finally came to my side. You know they tell me he used to take swings at you…” She cackled and sat up. Jane held her breath.

  “What’s the matter? Oh, that’s right, I’m in the nude. Well, don’t be shy, girl. There’s a lot of things you’ll have to get comfortable with around these parts. Mi casa es su casa!” Leona snorted as she sat up.

  “Come closer. Let me tell you a secret…” Leona beckoned with her blood-slick hands. Jane gulped as she realized that the blood had to have come from Kingsley. Knowing she would have to take her chance, Jane crept closer, arms stretched wide. She reached the loose back of the chain and held it up, ready to tug it over Leona’s head as they talked.

  “I’ve only ever been in love once. The man I loved was asexual. He never would allow me to have him. So, I’ve raped hundreds of men to make up for the need my lover never met. You wanted to know about it, and you were right. I could gain his interests, but never entice his lust.” Leona giggled. Jane nodded and carefully pulled the chain high in the air and over her own neck.

  “Are you sure your lover is happy with you doing that?”

  “I don’t know, why don’t you ask him?” Leona turned around sluggishly. Jane shoved the end of the vial into the front of her blood greased shirt.

  “I can’t really move, dear. I had to have stitches in my womanly regions. Guess I got a little too carried away tonight…” Leona cackled and Jane held her breath. She would have to continue this disturbing conversation if she was going to get away with the serum successfully.

  “Go over there in the corner. See that thing that looks like an umbrella? I covered his face so he wo
uldn’t have to watch my lewd behaviors when I have evening guests in my bed.” Leona pointed a shaky finger. Jane swallowed.

  The girl’s undying courage was tested now. After all she had been through and all that she had yet to face at this woman’s hands for the sin she was committing literally right under her nose, did she have the strength to see what had become of her only lover? People who were prized by her always met with creative ends. Why else would Kiara have been subjected to such a brutal dental apparatus? Knowing what she had done to Captain Matheson and Sergeant Manson, who were nobodies on her radar, only made this harder.

  An image of Dexter flashed through her mind. His little sister weeping and clinging to Lindsey while he began to burn from the inside out under Andromeda’s effects. Jane held her breath and wiped her hands on her guts and earth greased jeans.

  “That was good of you.”

  “Oh, you’ll love it. He’s so charming.” Leona clapped with girlish fervor. Jane tip-toed to the umbrella and slowly drew it away.

  It took more than her strength to catch her breath as startled as she was by the sight under the umbrella. The man’s body had been crystalized in a weird hybrid combination of basic, botched taxidermy and fruit preserves.

  “You like it? I couldn’t resist. He’s my literal man candy. My high-school friends and I, we worked for months on this project. It took the poor Caesar milquetoast months to die. See, I borrowed a little from Persian scaphism. First, I chained him to the inside of a roll of tires, where he couldn’t move and where his excrement would get trapped under him. Then I force fed him so much honey and chocolate bars that he had severe diarrhea. You should have seen the look on his face! He’d always called me sugar before…” Leona pinched the human sculptures face. Jane swallowed the urge to vomit.