The Easytown Box Set

by Brian Parker

  “You tell that pencil-pushing asshole that he needs to send me a drone. Drake and I are pinned down.”

  There was a pause from Andi, my AI assistant, as she did what I’d directed her to do. Down the road, I could hear the perp taunting us, although I couldn’t make out his words.

  “What’s he saying?” I asked Drake.

  “You know, the same thing they always say, ‘You’ll never take me alive, copper.’ That sort of stuff.”

  I glared at the former football player. “Are you kidding me right now? Our bodies are about to gain a few extra holes and you’ve got jokes?”

  Drake shrugged and then jutted his chin back toward Jubilee Lane. “Looks like your request was approved.”

  Flying directly toward us was a police drone. It banked sharply and set down on the road. “Detective Zachary Forrest. Do you require assistance?” the drone asked.

  “Yes, goddamn it! Kill that fucking ’borg!”

  “Affirmative.” The drone issued a warning to the perp and the twin miniguns mounted underneath its body began spinning.

  A bellow of incoherent rage answered the drone’s warning and something massive slammed into the spindly legs supporting it. I watched in shock as the remains of a metal park bench skittered down the alleyway, carrying the drone’s legs with it.

  Its turbofans engaged, lifting the damaged drone skyward as several small metallic discs impacted against its body. The same jagged streaks that marred the building above our head appeared across the drone as the cyborg’s weaponry did some major damage, turning the drone’s exterior armor into an overpriced pasta strainer.

  I’d seen those types of rounds at a murder scene a few months ago. They’d gone through walls, flesh, even bone.

  “Fuck this,” I said, drawing my Smith & Wesson Aegis pistol.

  The drone listed badly to one side as the damaged turbofans struggled to keep it aloft. It returned fire with the miniguns, but the rounds flew wild as the weapons’ recoil further destabilized it.

  Chink! Chink! Chink!

  Chink! Chink! Chink!

  The cyborg shouted something about cocksuckers and power as the bullets from his gun tore into the drone. I took the only opportunity we were probably going to get and stepped out of the alley.

  The thing stood twenty yards away. I’d seen the ganger before, when he was human, and I was pretty sure it was the same guy who shot at me a few months ago when the mayor put a price on my head. The ’borg was as big as a tree, in fact, that’s why they called him Branch. He was six-eight, easily two hundred and eighty pounds when he was wholly human. Now, there was no telling how much he weighed. He wore some type of exoskeleton around his legs that increased his height by a good two feet. One of his arms had been removed at the shoulder and a massive weapon of some type was surgically attached in its place—or maybe it was mechanically attached, I’m not sure how the back alley chop shop that made him did things. In his opposite hand, he held a smaller machine gun that would have been too heavy for me to hold one-handed.

  The cyborg also had dreadlocks, which reminded me of the tweaker a few months ago who’d thought his synthaine house had been attacked by some type of octopus demon-something-or-other. Coupled with the miniature saw blades the guy was shooting, I was willing to bet he was the attacker from that case. He’d gotten away without a trace, but I had him now.

  The ’borg was clearly deranged, his features twisted into what could best be described as savage glee as he fired both guns at the police drone. He was concentrating on the drone and didn’t see me step out of the alley.

  As I fired a shot from the Aegis, the drone crashed. My shot severed the cyborg’s weapon arm, sending the larger of the two guns clattering to the rough pavement. “Goddamn it,” I groaned, diving back into the alley.

  “What now?” Drake asked aiming his pistol blindly down the street and firing two rounds. The service revolver looked like a child’s toy in his large hands.

  The edge of the building behind us disintegrated as Branch went full auto with his remaining machine gun. If he wasn’t pissed off before, he sure as hell was now that I’d blown one of his arms off.

  “I missed my shot,” I admitted. “I’d been aiming for his chest and I took off an arm instead.”

  “That ain’t such a bad thing, Detective.”

  The drone flickered to life and punched upward about three feet in the air. It fired another volley at the cyborg and then went down again. The metal shuddered as Branch pumped more rounds into it, putting an end to the drone once and for all.

  I fired another blast from the laser pistol and ducked behind the cover of the building before I saw whether I hit him or not. He roared in anger.

  “Did you get him?” Drake asked.

  “Yeah, of course,” I replied, not knowing if I did.

  The ominous sound of stomping metallic feet bounced off the walls of the buildings around us. “I thought I got him,” I amended.

  Drake and I ran further into the alley where a dumpster gave us a small bit of cover. It’ll protect us from the first couple of those giant bullets, I thought. After that, we were through.

  Plink!

  A round impacted against the far side of the dumpster and I ducked instinctively as a hole appeared near my head.

  “Goh dummit!” Branch shouted at the head of the alley.

  I popped my head up. He was out of bullets and without his other arm, he couldn’t reload unless he set the weapon down. “Guess I did good,” I quipped, stepping into the center of the alley.

  The giant charged, running straight at me. I squared my chest to him and pushed the Aegis out, bringing the sight posts to eye level.

  A baseball-sized hole appeared just above Branch’s sternum. I fancied that I could see The Lane completely through him before he toppled over, his body hitting the dumpster and sending it skittering noisily down the alley.

  “Great shootin’, Detective,” Drake praised, slapping me on the back.

  I holstered the laser pistol and wiped the sweat away from my palms. Now that the ordeal was over, I was able to admit to myself that I’d been scared as hell.

  “Andi, we need to get a biological contamination cleanup crew down here… Probably a crane too.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Drake muttered, pointing at the cyborg.

  “What—Shit.” Branch was still alive. He struggled to move, missing an arm and with a giant hole in his chest, but the bastard was still alive. “Cover me.”

  “Heh. Better you than me,” Drake replied, aiming his pistol at the cyborg’s head.

  I walked over and planted my foot firmly into the suspect’s crotch, eliciting a groan from him. “Ah, you have the right to remain silent,” I began as I surveyed the giant, trying to figure out how I’d handcuff a one-armed man who possessed enough strength to pick up a three hundred pound park bench and throw it across an alley.

  I finished the perp’s Miranda Rights and then asked Andi to eject the spool of high-tension wire from the drone. It took her several seconds longer than normal and she apologized.

  “Drone Unit Two One Six is effectively destroyed, Zach. It took a little more work to navigate the back door.”

  “No worries, Andi,” I said, picking up the wire and carrying it back to where Branch lay prone. I kicked him in the balls again for good measure—the fucker tried to kill me and my partner, what’d he expect?

  Using the spool of tension wire, I secured his remaining human arm to his side and then wrapped it around six or seven times before tying a square knot with the two running ends of the wire. Then the uniformed cops decided to show up with several more patrol drones and an ambulance.

  All in a day’s work.

  “You’ve got a call waiting from Chief Brubaker, Zach.”

  “Uh, sure. Patch him through.” It was after midnight; usually the chief was cuddled up in bed at this hour. I paused until the line switched over. “Howdy, Chief,” I answered, feeling pretty good about taking down the cy
borg.

  “What in the hell are you doing down there, Forrest? I’m getting reports of houses that’ll need to be condemned, civilian casualties inside apartment buildings, and dispatch is reporting the destruction of a ten million dollar police drone. You better start talking.”

  “We were jumped by a cyborg in the middle of an investigation, Chief,” I replied. “Check the surveillance video of the perp opening fire on us. Then when you’re done with that, have the guys analyze the drone’s gun camera footage and you’ll see that the ’borg was the aggressor here. We didn’t start this fight.”

  “I get it, Forrest, but I’ve got pressure on me to rein you in.”

  I’d had a target on my back in one form or another since the day I joined the force. These days, the pressure came from a lot higher up in the department and the city’s government—namely, one City Councilman Todd Jefferson. He hated me because I’d detained him in a whorehouse for several hours, prompting his wife to begin asking some hard questions that he couldn’t answer. They’d divorced soon afterward and he’d been gunning for me ever since.

  “You’ve always got pressure on you to keep me from doing my job,” I retorted. “The bottom line is that there wasn’t any other way it could have gone down without Drake or me ending up dead.”

  Robert Brubaker was one of the good guys, and he went to bat for me all the time. Without him, I’d have been fired years ago. I was the best detective in the entire New Orleans PD and he knew it, so he was willing to take some of the heat.

  “I want a full report in two hours.”

  “Two hours?” I repeated. “We haven’t had time to start our investigation at the Henderson murder scene.”

  “He’s a nobody. Seal the room and finish it tomorrow,” Brubaker grumbled. “Two hours.”

  The line went dead and I told Drake about the chief’s order.

  “That should be easy, Detective” he muttered. “It was only four minutes’ worth of police work, the rest was like a vidshow shootout.”

  I hated having to justify everything I did, defending my actions to people who were removed from the streets by position and age, but it was just part of being a cop these days.

  “Four minutes’ worth of work, a goddamned lifetime’s worth of headache.”

  My apartment’s toilet computer beeped a different note than normal above me, catching my interest like it hadn’t in months. I’d become accustomed to hearing the chime that indicated a negative report. “Urine test complete. Zachary Forrest. Your urine sample is within acceptable ranges for screenings performed at this location. Congratulations, your profile has been removed from the Louisiana Health Department’s watch list of potential stroke and kidney failure victims.”

  “Hmpf,” I grunted, more than a little surprised. I walked back to the sink and wiped away the fog from the mirror. In the reflection behind me, I saw Teagan’s firm, caramel-colored rear end press up against the glass of the shower as she bent over to shave her legs.

  Damn, that girl’s doing me a lot of good, I thought.

  It was true. In the three months since she’d temporarily moved in, I’d lost three inches off my waist, could run at a maintained pace of a seven-minute mile for a full 10K race, and now I was off the Louisiana Health Department’s naughty list for the first time in years—maybe even a decade.

  “Hey, creeper,” Teagan teased. “I see you staring at me.”

  “Just admiring the view, sweetheart,” I said in a voice that a street perv would use.

  “Mmm. I wish you’d do more than just watch,” she replied, wiping away the steam from the shower glass.

  I took that as my cue and stripped down, opening the door to the shower. “Whoa! What are you doing?” Teagan asked.

  “Uh… Didn’t you just invite me in?”

  She laughed. “I was playing along, Zach. I’ve got to be at school in twenty-five minutes for my last final.”

  Teagan pulled the shower door closed. “Get home earlier next time,” her voice lilted out of the steam.

  I stood there naked for a moment and then muttered, “This is bullshit,” before putting my underwear and undershirt back on, and walking to the kitchen.

  “Andi, ice,” I grumbled. By the time I made it to the refrigerator, a highball glass with three pieces of ice was ready for me. I took the glass and set it down with a loud thunk on the counter.

  Then I poured four fingers of bourbon.

  “Wow, rough night?” Teagan asked as she hugged me from behind, vigorously scrubbing her hair with a towel.

  The smell of her shampoo filled my nose and I breathed deeply. It was some floral scent or another, I didn’t know what, but I liked it.

  “Eh, you know, an impossible gunfight, death, destruction, and problems with the pencil-pushers. Normal Tuesday night.”

  “It’s Wednesday morning,” she reminded me.

  “I had to finish my report before I could leave for the night. Then I got stuck running down a few leads that—”

  “Yeah, okay,” Teagan interrupted. “Too long. I’ve gotta go.” She deposited the towel she’d been using over my forearm, threatening to splash some of my bourbon over the lip.

  “Hmpf. Any luck with the job yet?” I asked, removing the towel and tossing it into the bedroom.

  She grabbed a bagel from the toaster that she must have had Andi prepare while I was getting my drink. “Not yet. That citywide hiring freeze is still in effect until the mayor gets his new budget established.”

  “Shitty.”

  She pushed me playfully. “It’s your fault. The old guy had everything running smoothly.”

  “And he was as dirty as my shoes after a night on The Lane.”

  Teagan shrugged. “The news said the budget proposal should pass the city council by mid-week, and then all the backlogged personnel actions will be processed.”

  “You’ll get hired on. I put in a good word for you with a few people over at the superintendent’s office.”

  “Oh geez, Zach,” she sighed. “You think you’re helping, but you’re really not. I can do this on my own.”

  “I just—”

  Teagan ducked under my arm, gave me a kiss on the cheek and wrinkled her nose. “Take a shower before you go to bed,” she ordered. “You smell.”

  She walked over and grabbed her backpack from the floor by the pantry door. Then she turned back to me and said, “Don’t forget: Tomorrow night, 6 p.m. Graduation dinner with my parents at Chez Suzettes.”

  “I’ll see you tonight,” I replied.

  “I doubt it, unless you come into the Pharaoh. Pulling a double shift after my test.” She turned around and rushed toward the apartment door. “See you later,” she called over her shoulder.

  “Hallway clear, Teagan.”

  “Thanks, Andi,” she said without looking back, and left the apartment.

  I downed the bourbon in three large gulps and dumped the ice, placing the glass back on the refrigerator ledge for a refill. My finger hovered over the manual release button for the ice, but I stopped when I saw my shadowy reflection in the readout. I was filthy.

  Chunks of concrete from the apartment building were in my hair and a fine layer of grime—probably concrete dust—filled the creases in my neck. Thin, brown arcs of filth coated the undersides of my fingernails and along the cuticles. Even my bare legs, pale from the lack of sunlight like everything else except my face and hands, were dirty. Streaks of dried, salty sweat crusted in the hair along the front of my legs and behind my knees.

  No wonder Teagan wanted nothing to do with me this morning.

  “Goddammit. Fine,” I groaned to myself and went to the bathroom for a cold shower.

  TWO: THURSDAY

  I dug my finger under the chinstrap to pull it away from my jaw. The damn thing was cutting into my skin, irritating it. I’d worn the helmet at the direct order of Chief Brubaker, even though I felt like a complete jackass. The beat cops were the ones who wore all this riot gear shit, that wasn’t my jo
b anymore.

  Echoes of chanting bounced off the sides of buildings up and down The Lane as the crowd got closer. In front of me, the uniformed officers made last-minute adjustments to their body armor and the visaluminum shields. Those poor suckers would take the brunt of the protestors’ anger if things turned violent.

  The city’s workers were protesting the loss of jobs to the droids. Reportedly, the organizers had mobilized a collection of vastly different service and labor occupations for the march—all of which were being slowly and inevitably edged out of work by robotic replacements. Food service workers, janitorial workers, prostitutes, farmhands, dockworkers, teachers, bartenders and the like all marched for regulations to slow the spread of the robotics industry.

  I understood where the workers came from, but they were about sixty years too late to stem the tide. Several other industries that used to employ humans were almost exclusively robotic now.

  It’s just the way it is, I grumbled internally as the first of the protestors appeared at the far south end of The Lane.

  The police wall was situated about halfway down Jubilee Lane, which was the main public avenue that ran through Easytown, the city’s sanctioned red-light district. The mayor had conceded that the protestors had a right to peacefully assemble to have their voices heard, but he wasn’t about to let them get on the highway and block the city’s commerce routes.

  The bulbous helmet of an officer turned toward me and I groaned internally. The kid was a rookie cop and he’d taken it upon himself to become the president of my nonexistent fan club.

  “Hey, Detective!” Jake Hannity called. Through the reflection of neon lighting off his visaluminum face shield, I could see the kid’s big, goofy grin.

  I ducked my chin, grimacing as the helmet’s strap dug further into my skin. “Officer Hannity,” I groaned.

  “Isn’t this exciting? This is my first protest.”

  I shrugged, thankful to only have a thick ballistic vest instead of the full anti-riot kit. The kid was so wet behind the ears I’m surprised his helmet didn’t slip off.