Then, the sound of galloping hooves!
Horses? In Rrods & Phortnum? Keira, almost catatonic, could barely process what was happening. All she knew was that she was hurting and in terrible danger.
A dozen albino pit ponies, their eyes covered by pink-tinted blinders, burst into Bustiers, Blousons and Breeches, each ridden by an imposing warrior woman armed with a ReForTin crossbow. Up front was the imposing figure of Paulina Ellamova, brandishing a still-smoking Ximan. Paulina took in the two women on the point of rape and instantly chose Petrina, leaning down from her pony to slam her Ximan into the back of the rapist’s head. The rapist turned at the last moment and so took the blow in the face. It smashed his nose and caved in his upper jaw, but worse was to come. Paulina’s cavalry sprang from their short-legged ponies and, needing no commands from their leader, grabbed the man and slammed him back against a pillar – so hard that he fell to his knees, an agonised scream gurgling in his blood-filled throat.
Paulina, meanwhile, turned her attention to Keira’s assailant. He was a big man, now on his feet, turning to his friends for support but wide-eyed in shock and fear as he saw that each of them had been transfixed by short polished metal crossbow bolts protruding from their crotches. A couple stared at their ruined manhood in disbelief, others howled in despair and pain.
“No, no, no!” the big man yelled as Paulina advanced on him, staggering backwards, breeches round his ankles, his now flaccid cock flapping ridiculously. Paulina’s Ximan, a custom sawn-off, hung loosely from one hand and in the other she carried a stubby sjambok, a leather whip studded with tiny steel barbs. Paulina had seen O.M. put this weapon to effective close-quarter use, and the gender-neutral mercenary had taught her how to wield it with precision. Now, Paulina flicked the sjambok at the rapist and it snaked out, wrapping itself around his genitals. He screamed a surprisingly girlish scream, reached for it, tried to uncoil it, but that only amplified the pain of the embedded barbs. Seeing the look in the advancing Paulina’s eyes, the man tried to rip the sjambok free, but only succeeded in tearing flesh from his scrotum. He screamed even more loudly, but his cries were cut short when Paulina slammed the Ximan into his skull.
He fell to his knees, unconscious.
Paulina turned to Keira, now on her feet and pathetically holding the tattered remains of her dress together.
“Who… who are you?” Keira croaked.
“No, really, it was nothing,” Paulina replied with heavy irony, but it was lost on the girl. She started to blubber. “How could they do this to me?” she wailed, “don’t they know who I am?”
“They didn’t do it to you,” said Paulina, “and, no, they don’t know who you are.” Keira could hardly believe that. She featured several times a day in The Smoke’s celebrity rags. “But I do,” Paulina continued and Keira, despite her pain and shock, smiled. There was nothing more gratifying than being recognized. “You’re that spoiled, useless slut that Franklyn Pfarrer spawned.”
Keira gasped, recoiled as if slapped.
Paulina spun away from her contemptuously and turned her attention to her cavalry, now exacting revenge on the rest of the would-be rapists, ignoring the women looters who had scurried away with everything they could carry.
“String them up,” Paulina ordered her troops. “Maybe it will be a deterrent.”
“Not likely,” replied one of her riders. “Nothing stops those fuckers when the blood’s in their dicks.”
“One can only hope,” said Paulina, but knew the woman was right.
She turned to the sales assistant, Petrina, who had had the wit to clothe herself in the nearest garments to hand, a thousand-korona blouson and breeches ensemble by Jonn Hardy, The Smoke’s most fashionable couturier.
“Come with us,” she said as her cavalry re-mounted the albino ponies and thundered out of the devastated department. Petrina thought quickly. She’d escaped death or humiliation here, but she still had to get home to her family. Well, she’d got to work in the first place… somehow she’d get back again. She shook her head at Paulina, who nodded, acknowledging her resolve
Paulina pulled her pony round, ready to follow her warriors, only to hear a plaintive cry from behind her.
“What about me?” wailed Keira. “You can’t leave me here!”
“I can,” said Paulina, but Petrina cut in. “No… no… you can’t,” she said to Paulina urgently. “They’ll be back.” Paulina glanced at the array of pinned, bleeding looters and smiled darkly. “No, they won’t,” she said.
“Not them – but others. There are plenty of others out there.”
“And you care? About this pimple on the face of society? This oxygen thief?”
“No… I mean, yes… well, I can look after myself, but she's useless. She won’t last five minutes on the streets.” Keira flinched. “But she’s still human.” Paulina made a show of peering at the tattered heiress. “I suppose,” she conceded.
“A woman,” the assistant continued, and that clinched the decision. In one movement Paulina pulled the still snivelling Keira up on the saddle behind her, and gee’d her pony to follow the others.
As the animal galloped towards the front of the store, Keira had to throw her arms around Paulina’s waist to avoid being thrown off. Normally she felt very little, but now her body flooded with a terrible charge of shock, fear and humiliation.
At last, she was beginning to comprehend the reality of her predicament.
oOo
‘The Fear’ will be published in July 2014
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Peter Lawrence and Chris Trengove have been friends since their teens and have collaborated on many books, screenplays and TV shows.
For more information:
www.christrengove.com
www.gpeterlawrence.com
ALSO BY THESE AUTHORS
Frankenstein Vigilante Book One: The Incorruptibles
It’s Your Money In My Pocket, Dear, Not Mine In Yours
(Book One of The London Chronicles)
Up The Pictures
(AKA Engulfed In A Tide Of Filth. Book Two of The London Chronicles)
The Mao Tse Tung Workers Revolutionary Striptease Emporium
(Book Three of The London Chronicles)
Blood Ranch
(Book One of The Horror Series)
Loom
(Book Two of The Horror Series)
Full Moon
(The amazing rock ‘n roll life of Keith Moon. Written with Peter Butler)
COMING IN THE AUTUMN OF 2014
The Reckoning
(Book Three of Frankenstein Vigilante)
Night Of The Dogs
(Book Three of The Horror Series)
The Incorruptibles (Book One, Frankenstein Vigilante): Frankenstein Vigilante: The Steampunk Series (Frankenstein Vigilante. The Steampunk Series.) Page 23
