Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5)

by Dean C. Moore

  “It was all the store had.”

  “Sure, it was. Or did you just want my dick to glow in the dark when you went down on it, for extra titillation?”

  Cliff smirked. “I appreciate you trying to get a rise out of me. Shows someone cares.”

  A shot rang out and clipped Cliff in the arm. It had come from a long way off. That meant one thing—a sniper had them in their sights.

  “Finally, a little lovin’.” Cliff looked positively overjoyed to be bleeding from his arm.

  “I’m happy for you, I truly am. What game are we playing now? Sitting Ducks?”

  “Hardly. Come on, let’s get out of here.” Cliff took the lead and Piper tried to keep up. He reminded himself his partner was the one with the bleeding arm, so it oughtn’t to be that hard to keep up. But as usual, it was.

  ***

  Carson took aim at Piper with the sniper rifle, express mailed a bullet through the center of his right hand. He was playing cat and mouse with these two, which was unlike him. But it didn’t seem enough to kill them without giving them some time to atone for their sins. The next bullet went through Piper’s left palm, dead center.

  A London cop by the name of Alexis had put him on to these two, and to settling Berkeley, California’s karmic debt for unleashing them onto the world. He certainly couldn’t argue their lethality or the need for someone of his skills to get involved.

  ***

  Piper held up his hands in disbelief, surprised to see a pair of eyes staring back at him through the holes in his palms. When he took the curtain of fingers away from his face, the woman made the sign of the cross, dropped to her knees, and proclaimed, “The stigmata of Christ!”

  “This is one hell of a path to holiness,” Piper said.

  Cliff grabbed him with his one good arm and pulled him towards cover. “We need to keep moving.”

  “Why? It doesn’t seem to have done us any good so far.” Piper held his hand up to the sun as a visor to get the glare out of his eyes, only to find the light focused by the pinhole-effect of the lens in the center of his hand. “Shit! I bet he realized we were running into the sun, and he did that deliberately. What a devious, calculating, ingenious, sadistic prick.”

  “I know.” Cliff sounded overjoyed.

  “This isn’t cops, SWAT, or Interpol. This guy is strictly a private practitioner.” Piper stuck his head up as if squinting his eyes from this distance was enough to confirm the truth of his suspicions. Cliff yanked his head back down.

  “I’m getting that vibe, too.” Cliff’s pensive expression suggested he was trying to think quickly enough to steer them to a path to safety. His eyes bounced off landmarks better than a pinball bounced off belts in a pinball machine, looking for anything that offered opportunity.

  They ducked behind a hot dog vender’s cart. Piper thought, Since I’m already here… And fixed himself a hotdog. Cliff glared at him. “What? I get hungry when I get excited?” He ate half, shoved the other half in Cliff’s mouth, wiped his lips from the mustard.

  Cliff barely had time swallow before a shot tore through the stainless steel vender’s cart. The bullet lodged in Cliff’s midsection. He pressed his stomach to the back of his spine to get a better look, only to extrude the wolfed down hotdog from the hole in his belly.

  “This is what you get for preferring sick fucks with a sadistic sense of humor.”

  Cliff grimaced and felt around with his hands and squeezed some more until he expectorated the bullet out the hole in his stomach.

  He stuck the bullet in his mouth, sucked on it like a candy, as he assembled his marksman’s rifle from the pieces stored in the various pockets of his military-inspired pants and vest. He then stuck the bullet in the barrel of the rifle like a “return to sender” love letter, and tapped it down by hammering the base of the gun against the sidewalk.

  “You’re going to try and take the guy out from here? Using his own bullet?” As a sense of vengeance overcame a sense of surprise, Piper switched gears into a more practical mindset. “It’s just going to make the trajectory of both bullets impossible to calculate.”

  “Guess being a sick fuck comes in handy for times like this.”

  Piper took that to mean he’d tried this ungodly stunt before.

  Cliff sighted the gun up against the hole the bullet had torn through the vender’s stand.

  “You’re going to use the trajectory the bullet took through the vender’s stand to give you your shot. Fine, I doubt it’ll work, but I appreciate the poetic justice.”

  Cliff fired.

  “Just one shot?” Piper waited for return fire. None came. “You sure it took?”

  Cliff ignored him, handed the rifle to the hot dog vender. “For the next time the wife starts in on you.”

  The vendor nodded appreciatively in between shivering nervously from shock and panic.

  The sirens blaring, the streets filling with cops, Piper figured it was their cue to get the hell out of there.

  Cliff, apparently, wasn’t much on picking up on cues. “Help me get the other bullet out of me.”

  “Why?”

  “So we can dash to the hospital and get cleaned up. Even if they figure what’s up, they won’t have any evidence to hold us on.”

  “What about the viral video, the street cams, hot dog vender guy?”

  “Let’s hope they’re too busy in the ER to watch the news. Besides, by the time they sort through the chaos to find out what went on here, we’ll be gone.”

  “Fine.” Piper retrieved his triage-kit from one of the spare pockets that were also part of his new gear. As Cliff had trained him to do, he dug the bullet out with the aid of the tools.

  The hot dog vender, watching everything going on, the two of them playing assassin games, the cops filling the streets, entered a hotdog eating contest with himself.

  ***

  The doctor pulled back the ER curtains with a raking sound that communicated how he felt well enough. “What’s with the bullet holes?” His exalted tone befitted only kings and condescending prigs. He might well be both, considering the pedigree required to practice medicine at this hospital, Piper thought.

  Cliff, quicker to think his way out from under his anger, said, “We’re brothers. We got a little carried away. When we were done arguing and pulling bullets out of one another, we figured it might behoove us to check in here, being as you’re so renowned for your bedside manner.”

  The doctor checked his attitude slightly as he gazed at the two of them, lying in adjoining gurneys, looking like brothers, and like class-A rednecks. He cursorily examined the finishing patchwork the nurses had put to his handiwork. “Well, there’s nothing else I can do for you. The only way to cure assholes is to remove them.”

  Cliff smirked. “You sound just like us, doc. Ever consider becoming a redneck?”

  The doctor stepped away from them to address the nurse flying a straight course for him, not bothering to notice that Cliff’s mouth was perhaps a little too fast for a genuine redneck.

  “You wanted to know about the guy with the gunshot to the head?” the nurse said. Cliff and Piper exchanged looks about as incognito as a figure-skating pig, but in the busy ER, indelicate glances were still pretty covert. “He’s in a coma,” the nurse explained. “The neurosurgeon said you did good work pinch-hitting for him. It’s not your fault.”

  “You’re damn right it’s not my fault. It’s his for not getting his ass off the golf course fast enough.” He handed her back the clipboard and returned to doing his rounds.

  “Sympathetic guy,” Piper said, putting the moves on the nurse.

  The pretty blond nurse in green coveralls eyed Cliff and him over. “You two idiots are taking up valuable space best left to people worth saving. Go on, get to hell out of here.”

  “Easy, girl. You talk like you know us,” Cliff said, winking at her.

  As she turned her back on them, Cliff mumbled, “What happened to our good looks and charm?”

  �
��I guess being an asshole trumps all that.”

  “Doesn’t seem fair.”

  Piper tried to sit up by unthinkingly pressing against his palms. He flinched from his wounds.

  “Speaking of fair, what’s say we go check in on coma guy?”

  “Right behind you.” Piper held up his hands. “He’ll need a holy man to pray over him.”

  Cliff smiled impishly.

  ***

  Alexis sat statue-still in her plastic chair at Carson’s bedside, watched over him the way the sphinx in Egypt guarded the pyramids. She may have been there nearly as long, considering she’d lost all track of time, and about the only indication she had that she wasn’t in a coma herself was her body kept screaming for attention. Her heart was tired from pumping blood past all the resistance and the circulation-proof pose she’d struck.

  This is your fault, Alexis, she thought. This is all on you. You sent him into harm’s way to face your demons, when you should have damn well had the guts to face them on your own.

  She’d been chastising herself, over and over again, perhaps hoping to earn some redemption in the process, as a kind of penance, but no such self-forgiveness for herself, or forgiveness from above, came.

  She gazed down at the box of chocolates being shoved into her hands.

  “Enjoy them, because we’re coming to rob your life of all its sweetness.”

  She peered up at the two men towering over her. The one doing the talking wiped her eyes with his handkerchief. Now that she could see them in bold relief, she realized it was Cliff and Piper, her would-be mass murderers extraordinaire. Piper doing the talking. It was probably his button-pushing idea to buy the chocolates, too. Possibly the profiler of the two of them. She flinched, betraying her desire to show no reaction at all.

  She reached for her gun. Cliff was faster. He jabbed his finger into a pressure point, all but paralyzing her long enough for the two of them to disappear out the room before she was mobile again.

  By the time she rose and drew her gun, Doctor Hard Ass was the one standing at the other end of the barrel. He gulped. “I assure you, I did all I could.”

  Feeling like a fool, she holstered her weapon. Alexis brushed past him without explanation, her mind already reeling with thoughts of what should come next.

  She jumped on her cell phone. “Atam, take the kids and get to hell out of Dodge. Don’t want to know where, just move faster than light to get there.”

  “They’re coming into our happy little home, aren’t they?” she heard Atam say.

  “They’re about to find out what cornering a mama cat does for their complexion.” She snapped the phone shut.

  ***

  Alexis sped home, driving through a veil of tears. She heard blaring horns, squealing tires, scraping metal, all presumably caused by her half-blind drive uptown at roller coaster speeds, as if simply being strapped into her seat was all that was needed to get her through her own private amusement park.

  Just when she could use more presence of mind, the past kept cutting in. Her life fell apart around her like a house of cards as she mourned the loss of her family in advance.

  ***

  “Hey, look at her go.” Atam’s statement drew Alexis’s attention to their toddler taking her first steps, determined to join the boogie-woogie dance of the elders alongside her brother and sister. Ellie’s faltering steps coincided laughably with the music. She really did look like she was dancing a jig along with the rest of them.

  ***

  Damian surfed the brass railing meant to be used as a handhold down the cement canyon of a walkway, past several hundred steps that plateaued periodically in plazas where folks were eating lunch outside. The arches of his feet readily flexed over the brass railing thanks to the socks which alone covered his soles. He could have been no more than eleven.

  The band of urban acrobats hot on his tail might have been looking to recruit him or kill him; it was hard to tell. They sailed from plateau to plateau down the canyon of steps, skipping the steps entirely, electing instead to drift airborne with the aid of their skateboards and their nylon outfits, like parachuters used when they wanted to increase their hang time and delay deploying their parachutes. The bodysuits made them look like flying squirrels.

  Some of the thugs chose to crash across tabletops where meals were being eaten rather than land on the hardened concrete on which the round tables were perched.

  Others rotated in midair like shuriken, to land on in-line skates. However they chose to come down, they were fast closing on Damian.

  Alexis watched as her son, reaching the bottom of the cement canyon, had nowhere to go but up. So he climbed the sheer walls of the skyscraper with handholds not fit for a tree-climbing monkey. He laughed as he looked back at the disheartened thugs. He should have held his attitude in check; they were about to let him off with some jeers, but the laughter coaxed them to resume the chase. They ascended the building after him.

  ***

  The latest blaring horns brought Alexis back into the moment. Shocked her enough to realize she wasn’t lamenting lives lost, she was reaffirming the power of good parenting to empower her kids to resist all adversity. Her tears cleared, replaced by a smile. Her kids were going to have a good life, and these two psychos weren’t about to touch her or anyone else.

  Alexis swerved the steering wheel of the car in time to avoid a head-on collision with the car in the other lane.

  ***

  Pulling the car into the garage, Alexis killed the engine, and jumped out. She looked down the sloping driveway at the sun setting in the distance. The symbolism didn’t escape her. Her earlier confidence melted before the realization that there was no time to booby-trap the house against her unwanted guests. Nor was there time to do anything cleverer than hide in a closet with her gun aimed at the first joker stupid enough to open the door.

  She rushed into the house, just to keep moving. Doing something, doing anything, would make it that much easier to push out self-defeating thoughts which would only continue to cripple her.

  ***

  Two hours later, she checked the view from every window that might be used as an egress point, her nerves frayed. She felt as if she’d just finished running a marathon. She had depleted her reserves ahead of anything actually happening. Smooth move, Alexis.

  She beheld the box of spent Kevlar vests, discarded because prior policemen had worn them, only to find they didn’t stop armor-piercing bullets particularly well. She kept them the way a serial killer kept mementos, to remind her of fallen friends, to trigger a good cry on command. That’s your plan, Alexis. Tell me you can come up with something better than that.

  She heard what sounded like someone stepping on a branch outside the window. Keeping her profile to the wall to minimize her exposure, she peered outside. Guess you don’t have time to come up with anything better.

  ***

  Thinking it was time to kill the lights, Alexis made her way toward the fuse box, only to find out someone had beat her to it. She found that out when she unwittingly bumped a light switch. Great. That means your opponents think working in the dark is more of a detriment to you than to them. Meaning, they’re likely wearing night-vision goggles. Shit!

  She made it to the kitchen in time to grab a meat cleaver and a carving knife. They would be her swords for the night. No firing of guns to give away her position. Pure stealth and pure silence were going to be her best friends. She found a shadow to hide within and practiced making herself invisible.

  Now, when was the last time she’d sharpened these blades?

  ***

  Alexis heard a floorboard squeak. Another. She wondered why they were so atypically quiet. The boys, with their love for banter, had suddenly found an even more darkly comedic way to torture her, letting the house speak for them.

  One of them shattered a lamp. It had the effect of tossing a flash-bang grenade into the room, even to her trained senses. She fought to get her breathing under control to no
t give away her position.

  A clicking sound broke the silence, like a trap springing.

  One of them cried out. “The bitch booby-trapped the place!” That was Piper. Had to be.

  She jumped out of the shadows, found him hanging upside down. She took one clean sweep with the meat cleaver, and another with the carving knife, then disappeared back into the shadows. When she looked back, one of his hands lay on the ground, and he was bleeding out the gash in his ribcage as well.

  “Fuck! My hand.” He laughed madly. “God, it’s still moving. It’s like that horror film from the 60s, what was it?”

  “The Crawling Hand.” There was something ominous about the way Cliff uttered those words: cold, deadpan, teasing, and sadistically playful, all at the same time. Maybe it was on account of how contradictory all of those emotions actually were. It made him seem wildly unpredictable.

  Piper clamped down on his wrist to stem the blood loss. Cliff effortlessly cut him down with one swiping motion. Piper thudded to the ground. “Fuck!” he exclaimed. “Thanks. The back pain really helps with the hand pain.”

  Cliff stood briefly illuminated by the refrigerator light as he yanked open the freezer, and pulled the tray of ice cubes. He slammed the door shut, evidently no keener to reveal his position, and found his way alongside Piper, shoved his severed hand into the ice tray.

  Alexis was impressed by how poorly her eyes were adjusting to the darkness even now. They must have picked a moonless night to do their handiwork, or knocked out the streetlamps before entering. Maybe they were lucky and efficient. Might explain why they had lasted so long.

  The good news was, neither of them appeared to be wearing any night-vision goggles.

  “What’s with the Home Alone makeover?” Piper said. He allowed Cliff to pull him to a standing position, and cinch off his wrist with a plastic Ziploc tie some cops were fond of using in lieu of traditional handcuffs.