by David Coy
“It’s traditional,” Kelly said with a grin.
“Well, I don’t have copper wire. Never even seen a spool of it.”
“Then give me twenty meters of twelve gauge silver wire.”
Davis disappeared into the back and reappeared carrying a spool of wire on his forefinger.
“Thirty meter spool’s all I got.”
“That’ll do.”
He walked back along the same route, hoping to get a glimpse of the prey again, but she was nowhere to be seen. He thought about knocking on the door to see if she’d answer the knock, just to get another look at her, but changed his mind. It wouldn’t do to get too friendly right off; she might get spooked. Besides, being friendly wasn’t his strong suit.
When he sat down at the table to eat, he took one look at Hewlett’s empty tray across from him and the smeared food all around it and got right back up.
Messy bastard.
He took his tray into his room. The less contact with Hewlett, or anybody, the better. He locked the bedroom door. The last thing he wanted was that asshole coming in on him unexpectedly.
He went to the closet and pulled the long bag out and hefted it up on the bed. He loved the feel of the bag’s smooth leather and the weight of it. He untied the straps holding it shut and pulled the smooth lips of the bag open gently as if spreading a flower.
He stripped naked, stepped in front of the mirror and stretched and twisted his arms, legs and torso. His entire body was tattooed in black and green swirls. He’d had them done years ago, but time hadn’t dulled their magnificence. When he twisted, the shapes seemed to come alive and writhed with an obscene life of their own. It made him smile.
The wire was next. He made neat wraps of it around his wrists and ankles, tying the soft wire off after exactly the same number of loops around each time.
That done, he lifted the weapon out of the bag and cradled it with both hands. It appeared to be just a tube about a meter long and as thick as his forearm. The device was covered with ghostly, ornate and alien swirls in the same pattern as those on his own body. Had the device been on quiet, motionless display in a museum, it could have been admired for its alien beauty.
If a thing’s beauty could be judged by its function, however, this one would be one of the most hideous.
Kelly had no idea where it came from, nor did the trader who sold it to him. No human who had ever come in contact with it knew what its original purpose was, if any. Most insisted it was a weapon of some kind used in the most barbaric contests or maybe warfare. Some thought it to be a religious icon used in some alien rite of passage or sacrificial ceremony.
There was a smooth, beveled hole on the side of the device. When the tool was held at the ready, the hole would nest the user’s thumb perfectly. The switch at the bottom of the hole, however, was too deep to reach with the length of a normal human thumb. A former owner had fashioned an extension of leather and bone which, when strapped to the user’s own digit, produced the required length. Kelly held the cool, thick rod under his arm and strapped on the extension.
Holding the device out and pointed slightly down, he slipped his artificially lengthened thumb into the hole until the end of it came in contact with the switch.
He pressed down.
There was no sound of a motor, only the snick and click of hard metal against metal as the end of the device opened up as if alive, seams appearing in the perfect construction where there were no seams. The tendrils came first. Segmented like a string of polished black pearls and ending with sharp red tips, they snaked out into a pattern like a grasping hand. Next came the blades, three double-edged rapiers that snapped out to form a wicked triad in the center of the tendrils. He pushed down a little harder, and the blades began to machinate in and out and back and forth at random, chewing the air with the sound of heavy shears. The tendrils grabbed, pierced and held tight; the blades cut and gnawed at the victim with unstoppable savagery, turning flesh and bone to puree.
Kelly had no idea what its original use was. But he knew what he liked, and what he liked was to kill people with it.
He turned it off, and the blades and tendrils vanished back inside, leaving no outward clue to their existence.
Then he squatted down, extended his arms out on his knees and waited for darkness.
He replayed the times he’d used his toy in the past, going over each detail, listening to the screams and grunts and begging as the blades worked in and out and back and forth, sawing and cutting. Fifteen years of faces from a dozen planets, each different, yet each the same in their moment of horror.
He planned out each move he’d make from here to Joan Thomas’ bedside. He’d have to kill the Habershaw guy, too, but that was no problem. He’d club him, then do Joan. When he was finished with her, he’d work the tool over Habershaw. He could see them now and feel the grinding, slashing power of the wand as it worked. No human killer could do what the tool was capable of. They’d be looking for an alien monster if they looked for anything at all, not a human killer—just like always.
Off-world law enforcement was its own worst enemy. Kelly had taken advantage of that and the lack of inter-company communications for fifteen years. Contract cops were barely able to guard themselves, let alone track a serial killer from planet to planet. Besides, no one gave a shit what happened to off-world contractors.
Hank Kelly was good at what he did. Blood splashed on his naked skin was easily showered off, and a carefully shaved body and head left no hair or skin as evidence. The key was stealth; not being seen or heard. The tattoos helped to camouflage him and quiet night was the time to stalk and kill. In the off-chance they searched his room, they’d find nothing. Just an odd and ornate alien rod, perfectly clean—a somewhat strange souvenir from a distant world.
He closed his eyes and a sigh of pleasure deep in his guts rose up his throat and out like a porcine grunt.
He waited until well after dark before he moved.
He crept to the rear door and went outside. The distant sound of muffled laughter reached him before he closed the door. The twin moons were high, almost straight up and bathed the ground in pale white light. He’d never seen such bright moonlight, and he needed to get out of it fast.
Insects flew into him as he ran. He began to think some clothing would have been a good idea, but the sense of complete nakedness had always heightened his pleasure when he had his little freelance outings.
It took less than a minute to cover the distance from his shelter to the perimeter. He jumped up on a fallen log at the jungle’s edge then leapt like an ape into the thick foliage, feeling his blood heat in anticipation. The cool green branches and rough vines felt good against his bare skin.
He rubbed the cool metal tube between his legs and grinned. Then he twisted and cranked his head around and around on his neck and let the magic wire transform him.
His naked body and the tool were all that mattered in the universe. With the magic wire on his wrists and the rod in his hand, he was invisible and invulnerable. Only his naked camouflaged skin stood between the inner hunter and the prey he sought. He would have liked a wet and dark spot to crouch in, to watch and jump from, and this was as good as it came.
He tromped in about ten meters, batting the leaves and vines out of the way. Then he turned ninety degrees to the left and paralleling the shelters, headed toward the far corner of the cluster. He’d have to guess at the distance but figured he could do that well enough. He stomped on, slapping at the bugs that landed on him and bending and breaking the soft branches and vines away as he worked his way though the tangle.
A din of screeching, chirping and hissing filled the air, and the tactile sensation of wet leaves and branches and tickling insects soon gave way to prickling and poking and stinging irritation.
Maybe I should have worn some clothes this time.
He felt himself going suddenly downhill and had to hang onto the soft branches to keep from falling. His feet slid some on the next
step, and the one after that had him flailing and grabbing, then tumbling, rolling and sliding down the incline head over heels, clutching at the tool to keep from losing it.
He rolled to a stop at the bottom and stood up, brushing the leaves and bugs off his naked body. He stung in a hundred places from scrapes and cuts. He felt bugs all over him.
“Goddamn . . . ” he muttered in frustration.
It took him less than two seconds to realize he had no idea what direction to go in.
He turned around to try to get his bearings.
The jungle answered back with a monotony of leaves and branches, giving no hint of the right direction. The din around him made the idea hopeless of homing in on some shelter borne beacon of sound.
He slapped at an especially big and ugly bug and felt its mass as his hand hit it. It smacked with a noise into a broad leaf some distance away.
He took his best guess and started to walk. A few meters farther, and he was going uphill again: a good sign. Encouraged, he picked up the pace. That was it. He’d fallen into the ravine and started back up exactly in the direction he’d intended in the first place. Using the vines and branches to pull himself up, he was up out of the ravine and on level ground in no time.
He walked a few meters farther and, when he judged the distance to be just right, turned ninety degrees again and headed for what was surely the clearing.
When he reached the point where he should have broken out but didn’t, the sense of dread built with each step. He continued on until he was absolutely sure he had gone wrong.
He stopped, and fear welled up and made him choke.
Kelly wasn’t stupid. There was a way to do this. He just had to keep his wits. That’s all, he reassured himself. The way to do it was to walk in sets of four straight lines of progressively longer distances turning ninety degrees to the left at the end of each leg. That would do it. He wasn’t that far from the clearing, he just didn’t know where it was.
He started off. The first leg would be one hundred meters and he paced it off as accurately as he could. He slapped and whacked at the foliage as he struggled through.
A hundred paces later, he stopped.
No clearing.
He turned left and started counting.
He stopped at one hundred paces to slap at the insects on his sweating face and chest. They were getting thicker by the minute, and he thought they must be attracted to his sweat or body odor. He had intended to stay in the jungle a couple of minutes, no longer. He felt a flush of panic at the prospect of staying out in the crawling mass of foliage all night. He felt a sharp sting on his abdomen and smashed the hard little crawler that caused it. Another on his neck got the same treatment. He wiped at a dark spot on his leg and felt the place mash wetly under his fingers. He had the sudden animal impulse to run.
He turned left again.
One hundred paces farther, he stopped and had to put the tool down to swipe and whack at the bugs, large and small on his sweat-slickened skin. He could feel some of the smaller ones stuck in the heavy sweat, squirming for freedom. He brushed them off as best he could and dove ahead through the foliage, using the tool to move the vines and branches. Visions of maggots and flies with sharp probes filled his head.
He turned and walked, stopping occasionally to swipe the crawlers off his legs and butt. His feet and ankles were especially vulnerable and felt as if they were covered with crawlers. They were.
Flustered and nearing panic, he lost count of the steps about halfway through the last leg and guessed at the remainder.
He slapped hard at a sting on his back. Another bite farther down and out of reach made him use the tool as a scraper to get it off. Something crawled in his groin, and he caught it in his fingers and felt it squirm. He mashed it against a thick branch.
He was dripping sweat now, and the panic was rising in him like bile. He had to get out.
He’d completed the first circuit, and the need to double the distance on each of the next circuits legs filled him with horror. He brushed bugs off and started out, faster this time, swatting and whacking at the branches as he went.
“Christ!”
The bite on his calf made him stop and grab at it. He touched the tough body of the thing that had attached itself and felt an acid when he squeezed it.
But, the goddamned thing was not going to stay on him.
He brushed his fingers over his sweaty face one way then another to clear the bugs off, then gritted his teeth and tore the thing off his leg with a single yank.
The searing pain as the tough little bastard came off made him howl. The thick foliage and hissing, clicking din swallowed the scream.
He crushed the thing into the soft dirt under his feet, then pounded the spot with his hand. While he was bent over, something else fluttered into the crack of his ass. It was hard-shelled like a beetle; he crushed it with his fingers.
“You mother fucker!”
Panting from the pain in his leg, he stomped blindly on. He tried to run but found it impossible; each step sent a jolt of pain up his leg.
A vine snagged his foot, and he crashed through the tangle to the ground. He struggled to his feet and felt a mass of crawling and squirming on his torso and brushed and swiped at the spot frantically with both hands.
He stumbled on, moving as fast as he could, sweating, praying now to burst out into the clearing with the next step.
He stopped and swiped at his chest and shoulders and arms and legs at random.
“Gotta . . . get . . . out . . . ”
He ran through the thick tangle of vines and branches, crashing through them, beating them out of the way with the tool, stumbling and falling. He tried to count and prayed he was right.
He viciously swatted the huge bugs and crawlers, smashing them flat and leaving raised welts on his skin. He stopped and wiped his hands over his body top to bottom, trying in vain to achieve just a brief moment of bugless existence. He felt a sharp stinging on his butt and slapped at it madly, turning in a tight circle, a dog chasing its own tail.
His heart pounding, he began to swing the tool back and forth like a bat, hacking at the infinite mass of vines and thick leaves. He staggered forward, swinging and hacking at the jungle, trying to kill it with the tool.
When he could swing it no longer, he let the tool hang at his side as he stumbled blindly on, oblivious to the bugs that bit and sucked at him and stung him.
Walking zombie-like, he pushed a large leaf out of the way and came out, to his shock, in the clearing.
The utter absence of leaves and vines in front of his face caused him to laugh out loud.
“Fuck me!”
He looked at the cluster of shelters to his left. He’d missed them by two hundred meters at least. He shook his head in disbelief, not at the measure of his miscalculation, but at the fact that he made it out at all.
Half smiling at the insects, he took a few swipes at the large ones crawling up his legs and arms.
“Get the fuck off me.”
With little concern about being seen, he trotted along the perimeter and back toward the cluster of shelters. He grinned nearly all the way back.
Showered, bandaged and dressed, he stood behind the screen of the rear door and looked out at the patch of jungle visible between the shelters. He’d been foolish and lucky. A few more minutes in there, and he would have been dead. He would have stumbled around and collapsed, and the bugs would have eaten him alive.
He decided not to do any more freelancing. It was risky, and Smith probably wouldn’t like it.
He itched all over and hoped the clinic was open. He planned on going there first thing in the morning.
7
Donna wondered which gene bastards like this one were missing that allowed them to do work like this. It was one of life’s great mysteries. She’d read about people who could do anything to anyone provided they did it as an order from someone higher in rank than themselves. The prick sitting in front of her was on
e of those types. Natzers or natzys, she thought they called them—something like that.
“That’s the deal, Applegate,” the facilitator said to her. “Take it or leave it.”
Anyone could get down on his or her luck; it was part of life. But why was it so many predators had to charge in, ripping and tearing as soon as your knees hit the ground?
“You’ll be more than a nurse. That must appeal to you, am I right?” the bastard asked.
“Sure. That’s not the problem. The problem is the paydown. I’m a grade five. I should be paid down as a grade five.” She watched him scowl and fiddle with the numbers a little. She knew what would be next—an itsy, bitsy increase in the paydown, maybe enough for a sandwich each week, if that.
“I can go ninety-two fifty per annum, Applegate, but I’m afraid that’s just about it.”
Two sandwiches.
“When would I leave for Verde whatever?”
“Verde’s Revenge. Verde for short. You’d leave tomorrow. They say it’s the richest planet Richthaus-Alvarez Mining has
ever discovered.”
“Oh, really?”
“That’s right.”
“Any profit sharing?”
“Nope. I’m afraid not.”
“There never is any profit sharing, is there?”
“Rarely.”
“Then why would you bring it up?”
“I didn’t know I had.”
“You did, and you didn’t, didn’t you?”
It had to be one of those sadistic little things these rotten bastards did just for fun. It had to be.
“I just thought you might find it interesting.”
“I see. I’ll take the deal. I think you knew I would. I’m sure Richthaus-Alvarez appreciates your negotiating skills. You’re one smooth bastard. Pardon me.”
“It pays down,” he said.
“Right. It pays down . . . ” she scoffed.
She shook her head right at him. He stared at her and finally pursed his thick lips. Donna thought she could detect just the hint of a sick little smile in those worm-like structures. Her Irish temper was flaring. She could feel her ears beginning to turn red and wished for a perverse second she could be this prick’s personal nurse for just a couple of days the next time he got good and sick.
