Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  That is not this story. Not yet. This story is about what happened after I screwed up. This story takes place five years after that screw up, when I’m so embarrassingly bad at my job that I can barely scrape together enough money to pay rent.

  At the time, I didn’t know that the Case of the Illegal Importation of Cigarettes would lead to the Showdown of All Showdowns, the Battle for …

  Wait, what? You honestly think I’m going to tell you the end before you get to witness my rebirth? Much like the (not so) legendary Phoenix (there are sixteen of them and for some damn reason they live in Alberta, Canada and won’t go anywhere else) being reborn from it’s own ashes, so too am I going to eventually do something pretty goddamn impressive.

  Before you get to see the cool, you’ve gotta see the uncool.

  So. The Case of the Illegal Importation of Cigarettes. That’s where it all really began...

  “Ok, so you know how I’m investigating the Writ System for my new book, right, and I’ve got permission to look through the lists of Deliverances, right? Freedom of Information Act, right? I know. So cool. Anyhow, I come across this name, this … James007 guy, and, like, 90% of all his Deliverances are encrypted! Every other Writman, and I’m even talking Apollo King here, has names of the Delivered. Date, location, crime, method of Deliverance. But not this James007 guy. Nothing but blank spaces and, and, and he’s got something like ten times the blacked out documentation of any other Writman! I’m gonna contact someone at the GOC, find out what’s going on with this character. Freedom of Information means just that and there’s something deeper going on here for sure! I’ll call you back.” –Brad Meltzer, leaving a message to his editor, missing, presumed dead.

  Chapter 1

  “Patient Jamess007 is suffering from severe PTSD. Following the events in question, he has become withdrawn, insular, angry. He has lost the ability to form meaningful relationships and connections to the people in his life. He has adopted a rigorous set of routines that is extremely detrimental to his health so ‘he can get back to the top’. Virtually all memory of his previous assignments have been deconstructed into a name, a date and a few inappropriate anecdotes. The same carries through with his personal life. I suspect someone at the agency taught him the Memory Box Method, and if I find out who, I will be pressing charges for criminal negligence. Memory Boxing has been found…” -Patricia Harkness, psychological evaluator for James Mallory Murphy, Post Incident

  We both lay there, rapt in post-coital bliss. Or, at least I was blissed out; the woman whose bed I shared (Delores Tooms) was leaning over on her side, muttering under her breath about how difficult it was to find a cigarette while sifting through a mountainous pile of clothes.

  I saw no reason to point out that the remainder of the floor not covered by dirty clothes, empty potato chip bags, empty soda bottles and three years worth of local magazines seemed to be the final resting place for several million cigarette butts of every major brand available on the open market, and quite a few illegal ones that weren’t. I grinned at her naked backside.

  It was those illegal, cross-border cigs that’d led me to Delores, and, more specifically, her dad.

  I sighed, happy as a fat kid eating smores. It’s not too often that I get to get, er, physical, before having to get … physical. Most of the time, the rules of the Writ actually and explicitly said ‘No Sex Allowed’. Not this time, though, which was just fine by me.

  Outside, a car door slammed loud enough to startle a neighbor-dog into barking his fool head off, which in turn set a few other dogs off, and they started up a chorus of yelping and howling. Delores stopped hunting for her cigarette, her back stiffening.

  Damn.” Delores said, leaping out of bed. Miraculously, though she couldn’t apparently find a cigarette to save her life, she had my pants in her hands almost before her feet hit the ground.

  “Damn?” I asked mildly.

  Delores, a pretty-but-fading-fast blond somewhere in her late twenties, grimaced. That she was naked didn’t help at all; it was a full-on frown, filled with subtext about coming storms and troubles of specific sorts looming on the horizon. Naked didn’t help. “My dad’s home.”

  “Oh?” I accepted my pants from Delores, and was quickly handed my shirt and cell phone in rapid succession. “I’d like to meet the guy.” (True story; Dolores was a squeeze ‘em and leave ‘em kinda gal and I’d had to pull off Don Juan levels of awesomeness to keep her from booting me after an hour just so my path would cross her father’s.) The things I do…

  “Trust me.” Delores scrambled into a pair of baggy sweat pants and a U of C t-shirt. She looked in a mirror, did some quick and dirty adjustments to her hair and nodded at the window just as the door to the house boomed open and slammed shut.

  The dogs took this as the second sign of the Apocalypse and started off with that special, right-in-the-ear yowling that can drive people mad. When I didn’t move, she turned and gave me a dirty look. “You wouldn’t.”

  Daniel ‘Daddy’ Tooms was a big bear of a man, easily seven feet tall and built, to be none-too-delicate, like a brick shithouse. He’d done more time than his daughter had years, and was something of a legend; so few people managed to remain career criminals without getting paper on them, Tooms was practically a national treasure. In the grand scheme of things, I really didn’t want to meet him, but meet him in person I needed to do. (I’d seen Daddy Tooms exactly twice; once in a high-resolution digital photo taken from more than a mile away, and earlier that morning from my vantage point across the street, very high in a tree and safe from the monster.)

  By the time she’d finished moving, I’d completed assembling a two-shot pistol from a converted cell phone, fit the ‘not-really-lip-balm’ silencer on and shot lovely Delores (who had given me a pretty decent run for my money in the sack) right in the middle of her furrowed forehead.

  Fortunately the rounds were low caliber so there was no real mess (the bullets were homemade too and just sort of bounced off the inside of things, don’t judge). I hate brains getting all over everywhere. The stink is pretty exceptionally awful and the crud sticks to clothes.

  Delores urked and dropped over dead, the mountain of soiled clothing doing double duty as a dampener. There was barely a muffle as she was laid to rest.

  Daddy Tooms clomped and stomped his way around the ratty two bedroom house like Frankenstein’s Monster, making enough noise to raise his daughter from the dead. From the sounds he was making, I could only speculate at what sort of barroom gladiatorial arena-type mayhem he’d been up to.

  Maybe I should’ve brought a homemade grenade launcher. My zip gun wasn’t filling me with the confidence I’d felt whilst making it.

  Why Delores (who wasn’t stupid or ugly) had gotten involved in the family business, which involved but wasn’t limited to extortion, kidnapping, drug smuggling, gun running, ballot fixing, murder, mayhem and general acts of vileness, was and probably always would be something of a confusing issue for me. But I wasn’t there to muse philosophically on family matters (besides which, her involvement had reached terminal velocity thanks to yours truly so there was no point in trying to figure it out now).

  I was there because of smuggled cigarettes and Daddy Tooms’ involvement with said cargo. I’d shot Delores for the same reason.

  Why?

  I’m a delivery man. I deliver death, though I prefer to be as euphemistic as possible. The company I work for, Writ Off, bid on Daddy Tooms’ paper the day before yesterday. Then they handed the work off to me. This is why I was in the bedroom of a dead girl when I could (at least theoretically) be out drinking and having fun with people my own goddamn age. The life of a Writman isn’t conducive to those kinds of activities, though, but I chose my life and there it is. I console myself with the knowledge that what I do makes a difference, even though it affects my social skills in a considerable way.

  Before I go any further, I feel the need to point out that my life is not like it is in the comics (I wish
it was because that’d be much cooler and I’d probably be happier). I used to be an amazing Writman, but that was so damn long ago I can barely remember. I live in my parent’s basement, make my own deliverance tools more often than I like, and get in trouble so often it’s easier to count the number of times in the last five years I’ve performed at a minimum level of competency. There’s a ‘once upon a time I used to be something’ component there … but I digress.

  Daddy Tooms stopped murdering the carpet in the living room and settled in to watch some television; Golly Gee! erupted through the silent house with enough force to disturb local weather patterns. I’d seen the couch on my way in to the bedroom.

  It was more properly called a chesterfield and the hideous thing was cast in colors hinting at a designer with a serious dislike of sanity. There was a Daddy Tooms-shaped divot right smack dab down the center, a fact that screamed long periods of inactivity. I’d seen it on my way in and it was going to be the scene of the man’s death. The big man would have a rough time getting out of that cavernous pit in time to save his life. All I had to do was give him a couple minutes to settle in and then pop!

  I was very glad that one of the things I did right on a consistent basis was to shoot things at people with unerring accuracy. Else, this Writ would have me worried down to my toes. Hell, my legendary skill with shooty things is probably the only reason why I was still a Writman. Although I could have tap-danced out into the living room with Danny Kaye and no one would have been the wiser, I nevertheless crept slowly and quietly out of Delores’ room. As I made my way down the hallway, I eventually caught sight of Daddy Tooms’ massive cranium resting on the edge of the couch. I’d be able to sneak up and put the bullet in his brain while he enjoyed the highly colorful, morally dubious antics of G. Whizz, the host of Golly Gee! I liked to think that if there was a Hell, it’d be something like this.

  I sneakily put the cell-gun up to Daddy’s head and pulled the trigger.

  White stuff sprayed out of the hole blown through the skull and floated gently to the ground.

  Odd. I don’t remember people’s heads being full of cotton, nor skulls being made out of paper Mache.

  And then I remembered that for all Daddy Tooms’ brutish size and hulkish demeanor, he wasn’t by any accounts dull, stupid, or slow on the uptake. He had, after all, managed to avoid paper for most of his life.

  Damn dead Delores and her damn no shoes in the house rule.

  Damn me for wearing bright red running shoes and not taking more care in hiding them beneath the pile of other shoes near the front door.

  “Damn you!” Daddy Tooms shouted, sounding exactly like a particularly vocal T. Rex. He had a longer reach than a dinosaur, though, making him immensely more dangerous to James-type lifeforms.

  I saw from the reflection of the TV that dear old dad was in the process of hoisting a sawed-off shotgun at my head and promptly dropped to the ground, a tricky maneuver aided immensely by stockinged feet and a slippery floor (I really don’t advise trying this without first practicing in front of a mirror because you can seriously hurt yourself).

  The first shot from the shotgun obliterated the Daddy doll’s head and took out most of the television too, which was an unexpected and much appreciated boon; even as a hyper-active child wired on sugar and caffeine in nearly crippling amounts, I’d never been able to decipher a third of what was supposed to be happening in your average Golly Gee! episode. Sadly, the show, listed in the TV guide as a variety show, tried to be part Benny Hill, part Seinfeld, part The Merkans, part telethon and part sitcom failed as hard as I was right that very second.

  Daddy Tooms let loose with another rafter-shaking howl and swiveled downward with the shotgun, pulling the trigger at the same time. I pushed against the chesterfield with my feet and was rewarded with a quick scoot down the hallway. A great gout of flame belched out of the shotgun and Daddy Tooms, who, though very smart, hadn’t taken the time to think things through all the way; the shotgun was propelled upwards, cracking him firmly on the chin.

  I’m sure they heard the crack in China. Tooms dropped the gun, grabbed his jaw, and started dancing around the room, in seven shades of agony. I got up, walked over to the giant and started moving in time to the man’s dance of pain. When the time was right, I kicked him square in the balls, and then stepped on Daddy Tooms’ jewels when he was down just to make sure there would be no sneaky movements while I was otherwise occupied. I am all about common sense.

  I pulled The Writ out of my pocket. Ordinarily I read The Writ after the deed is done because there are no rules that say otherwise and because most of the time the person I was trying to deliver kept interrupting with a million times with stupid questions or they tried to argue their way out.

  If you’ve had a Writman set on you, you can’t argue and you can’t trick. We are the last face you will ever see, the final voice you will ever hear.

  I cleared my throat and started off in the most authoritative voice I could muster. “Daniel ‘Daddy’ Tooms, you have been found guilty of acting against the better wishes of the Zongo Tobacco Company. Your crimes include but are not limited to illegal importation of the entire product line of ‘ShizHaus’ cigarettes and the ‘Wacky Tongue’ Jamaican cigarillos. For the purposes of this deliverance, I am a legally authorized representative of Zongo Corporation, and you, sir, are delivered!”

  Daddy Tooms tried to sit up, so I kicked him very hard in the jewels. While he gasped around a broken jaw, I retrieved his shotgun and permanently removed (along with most of his head) any further concerns over a broken jaw. I wiped the shotgun clean of my prints though it wasn’t necessary, hunted around for my expended cell-gun and then dropped The Writ on Daddy’s chest.

  I was going to have to work on my delivery of the Final Deliverance. I felt like I was that guy who said Bond, James Bond way too fast in the movies. I headed for the front door to put on my illegal sneakers when my other cell phone (which is, for expedience’s sake, implanted right in my skull) started ringing right about the same time as I heard sirens in the distance.

  Damn.

  There was no way I was leaving without my shoes. I’d had to special order them from a shoe factory in Prague because it’s illegal to wear ‘prowess enhancing’ shoes if you’re not actually an athlete. They look like boring bright red sneakers, but are crammed full of shock absorbing gels and bubble-jump enhancers and who knew what else. They were effing cool, even if they did practically glow in the dark.

  “A shotgun, James?” I’ve long since passed the point of trying to figure out how Spink knew stuff like that; I’d decided that I’m under constant scrutiny by Writ Off investigators and that’s that. After what brought me low, I wouldn’t blame ‘em.

  “You’re not supposed to force the call through.” I said through gritted teeth as I laced up the last cross-trainer. “That’s a violation of my privacy. I could legally kill you.” I ran back towards Delores’ bedroom and slammed the door shut.

  “Yes, well,” Spink continued, “one could argue killing someone with a shotgun when it was supposed to be a modified .22 bullet could also be called a violation.”

  “Yes,” I admitted as I crawled through the window, wondering if maybe wearing the tight pants to show off my … to show off hadn’t been something of a bad idea. “I could agree with you there, but still, me using the ‘wrong’ weapon isn’t an issue of privacy.” I hit the ground running. Well, more like a weird wobbling stagger that eventually worked its way up to a run and made a beeline for the fence.

  “Zongo could have done without the press on this one James.” Spink cleared his throat. “After their children’s brand tobacco chew did poorly on the market and Baby Kimmi finally got her new tongue, they were angling for a low-key incident here. Behind the scene and under the covers, as it were.”

  “Again, Spink,” I heaved myself over the fence with the assistance of my Prague-reworked hypersneakers and landed right in front of a Doberman pinscher bigger than my c
ar. “Not arguing the point of what I did, but what you did.” Before the dog could do more than growl and bark ferociously, I walloped man’s best friend on the beak and started running before it remembered it’d been genetically bred for thousands of years to eat people. “Sure, Baby Kimmi getting cancer of the tongue was bad publicity, and yes, the applesauce flavored chew probably wasn’t the wisest thing in the known universe, and I will even grant you that blowing Daddy Tooms’ head off was definitely not what Zongo hoped for in a deliverance,” I kicked the owner of the semi-Hellhound in the shins as he came bursting out of his back door and fled into the kitchen, “but what I’m taking issue with here is you dialing into my head without me picking up. Which brings me to the question of how … dammit.”

  Somewhere behind me, the mutant dog decided it’d play with its owner before eating me alive, which was nice. The screams resonated nicely with the encroaching sirens.

  Spink sniffed dismissively. “You’re not going to get paid very much now, you realize?”

  Oh. I got it. I screwed up, which affects everyone involved in the op right where it hurts the most; the pocketbook. Luckily, it was just me and Spink, but since he was very much more senior than I, he suffered more than I did. “Well, will I be able to pay my rent or what?” I nodded cordially to the housewife, who was drinking what looked like day-glo paint and smoking a Wacky Tongue cigarillo and let myself out the front door.

  “I can’t believe your parents charge you rent.” Spink admitted scathingly. “How does it feel, being a Writman and having to pay rent to your parents?”

  “How does it feel,” I demanded as I started strolling casually down the street towards the Zoomie Mart where I’d parked my car, “being the on-site advisor for the Writman who blew the head off a guy Written Off by Zongo? ‘Cuz you know it isn’t gonna be me explaining to their lawyers and the GOC what happened.”