Escalante

by Andrew Vaillencourt

  Then that killer’s face was directly in front of his, snarling and furious. One hand was pressed to his neck, stemming the flow of blood from the gunshot, and the other was cocked back to pulp the dying man’s face.

  Walter was ready to die. He had done what he could, and given his all to the job that he loved, even though it obviously hated him. The only thing he had left now was the five beads still in the magazine of his beloved pistol. He decided Roger should have those as a souvenir of this day, so he pressed the barrel of his gun against Roger’s side and pumped the trigger as fast as he could.

  Roger screamed.

  Walter screamed.

  The hitman fell awkwardly, blood leaking from his side where at point-blank range a bead had penetrated the protective weave of his suit. Walter rolled to his side and began lurching toward his waiting car. He dimly heard Dawkins coughing and vomiting behind him as he crawled.

  Gut shots are the worst. Hope that stings, motherfucker!

  Then Walter succumbed to his own coughing fit and hacked far too much foamy blood into his hand. He did not have a lot of time, he realized, and there was still work to do. The dying man pulled and scraped harder, rage-fuelled purpose driving him beyond pain to escape this trap.

  His ribs shifted again and his left arm hung limp and useless at his side, yet he hauled his bulky body to the car and dragged himself screaming into the seat. His mind was fuzzy, but he knew he could not go to the hospital with Combine hitmen looking for him. But without medical help he was going to be dead very soon. Not knowing where else to go, he dialed in Roland’s address and told the car to leave. Roland was ex-military. Roland knew people high up the chain. High enough to protect everyone who needed it, probably.

  Don’t die yet, you fat piece of shit! He willed himself to stay awake for the ride, but his eyelids sunk like lead curtains and every breath drove the frozen agony daggers deeper in to his chest. He knew he was going into shock and he had to garner his strength, so he decided to allow himself just a few minutes’ dozing to take the edge off the pain. He set his comm to chime when he got to Roland’s apartment and let his eyes close for just a moment.

  Then the last good cop in Dockside died.

  11

  Roland took one step towards the door at the back of the bar and Two-Guns drew down on him.

  “First one’s free, Cowboy,” Roland reminded him with a smile that was not at all friendly. Two-Guns looked nervous, like he wasn’t sure if shooting Roland was a good idea. The entirety of the crowd stood stock-still, half fascinated and half terrified by what was transpiring. Nothing was making sense to the watchers. No quantity of juiced up muscles was going to make a man impervious to gunfire, and Two-Guns had the big man dead to rights.

  Roland took another step forward and the gunslinger made his choice. Both pistols cracked and spat fire directly into the chest of the giant man. Dual blossoms of orange sparks bloomed from Roland’s chest and the wail of a ricochet moaned overhead until the shattering of a light fixture silenced it.

  In the chaos of that moment there was a black blur and a flurry of motion. A scream broke through the maelstrom and Hideaway erupted into a storm of shrieking patrons fleeing for the exits and the savage wordless cries of mortal combat between remorseless killers.

  In the heart of that horrible melee, Roland Tankowicz was as alive as he had ever been. He had eight enemies that were clearly enemies. He had a battlefield that was contained. He had his fists and his wits and the rage of his heart in a place where he could indulge them all without fear of consequence or conscience.

  The Army had enslaved him, stolen his body, and forced him to horrible things to innocent people. They had subverted more than just his will in that act, they had subverted the man he had always wanted to be. Roland dreamed of being a hero, and they had made him a monster.

  It would be easy to blame the Army for Roland's bloodlust at The Hideaway. The Army was guilty of many crimes against Roland, after all. But the Army had not made Roland a killer. He was born to be a soldier and was a relentless fighter long before he ever enlisted. They made him a machine, and they turned him into a monster. They stole his humanity and unleashed the horror of his weaponized body on those who did not deserve it.

  But Roland had always been a killer. He couldn’t blame the Army for that.

  The young man raised on old comic books and war holos had at last found himself in a situation with no gray areas. There were no situational ethics, no moral quandaries here. He had a squad of bad guys trying to kill him in protection of a crime lord.

  Roland roared from the bottom of his soul and tore into The Dwarf’s crew like a freight train. He laughed at gunshots, he scoffed at blades. The fists, feet, and clubs of powerful men broke over his body like a gentle fog.

  And Roland fought. He killed. He destroyed his foes without hesitation. He did it because they were evil and he was not. He did it because they deserved it. He gave the lead to his rage and let these stupid, ruthless, gutless mice have all of it. These were the people who came to his neighborhood to extort his landlord for the honest money he had earned. These were the men who hooked young kids on drugs and then sold them like cattle to the pimps and slavers. These were the men who broke windows, poisoned children, and robbed honest people. Roland was a monster because evil men had made him one. These were monsters because they wanted to be.

  Rodney’s men never had a chance. Two-Guns died first, the victim of a straight right punch that very nearly decapitated the gunslinger. A big man with a bionic arm was next when Roland felt the metal limb club him across the back. He tore the arm from its bearer and crushed the man’s skull with his own appendage. A hyperkinetic woman wielding twin vibro-blades tried her luck at carving a piece of Roland’s flank but she found to her dismay that her giant target’s reflexes and speed were superior to her own. Both knives sliced empty air and a backhand left collapsed her thoracic cavity to half its normal volume. She held on for eleven seconds after that and died unable to scream due to collapsed lungs.

  And that is how it continued for another seventy-five seconds. Roland mowed through the gang like tall grass and killed every one of them with wordless snarling fury. It wasn’t a fight. It was a slaughter. Roland had come here to make a statement. He was here to send the kind of message that would not soon be forgotten, and he intended to ensure it was memorable.

  All too soon Roland was out of targets. The bar fell eerily quiet, save for the gurgling death spasms of mortally wounded thugs. Roland let his eyes refocus and lowered his heart rate. He assessed the opposition and found all his hostiles were neutralized. If he had a clean-up crew, he’d be sending the all-clear right now. But he didn’t and so he continued toward his objective, moving to the door at the back of the bar while wiping his gory hands on his black pants.

  The door was nothing. It might have kept out a few hardened Dockside mooks, but Roland Tankowicz smashed it from the frame like it was made of balsa wood. The new opening revealed nothing of interest save a short hallway that led to another door, and Roland figured that was where he would find The Dwarf. He grinned a terrifying grin and stalked down the hallway.

  Rodney had seen it all from the monitors and he now watched the giant killer coming down the hallway to his office. The Dwarf did not believe in false courage and he’d have told anyone who bothered to ask that he was pretty damn scared. He had never witnessed anything like what had just happened in his bar, and he had lived the first half of his life on a frontier mining colony.

  What the hell am I looking at here? He wondered. He looked at his shotgun and shook his head. He quickly put it back in the drawer and unlocked the door to his office. There would be no fighting his way out of this one. That much was obvious.

  When he saw the giant chamber his fist to smash the office door, Rodney keyed it open from his desk to let Roland in.

  Have to play this cool. This is not a man you want getting too hot.

  The huge killer stepped into the office
and for an instant his bulk blocked all light coming in form the hallway.

  “Tank! Me boy! C’mon in, then!” Rodney faked the cordiality. He was fooling no one, but he wanted the man off balance.

  “You must be The Dwarf,” the giant said rudely.

  “Some call me that, yeah. Ye’ can call me Rodney if ye’ like, boyo.”

  “I think I may want to kill you.”

  “Not much of a talker, are ye?” Rodney forced a chuckle, “But killin’ me is jest goin’ ta be a fook-ton of headache for ye’, Tank, me boy. Better to talk it out, if ye ken me meanin’.”

  “I’ve heard that. I’m new at this.” Roland took another step inside the office, looming over the tiny man at his desk, “I guess I’m the new fixer. The Southeast residential block is to be left alone. Any crew I see there I’m going to kill.”

  Roland just stopped talking at that point and stared at Rodney.

  “Ye know a fixer is supposed to actually negotiate shit, right? Threats are more of a gangster thing. You runnin’ a gang, boyo?”

  “I’m stating a fact. You come to that street. I kill you. I can kill you now, but I’m trying new things these days.”

  Rodney snorted, “Whatever the fook they did to yer oversized arse in the Army sure as shite fooked up yer people skills, mate. But I’ll play ball. I got no skin in that stretch o’ asphalt anyway. Tell Granovich he’s off the hook wit’ me.”

  Roland cocked his head to the side, “That easy?”

  “If ye’ call wiping out me best boys ‘easy’ then yeah. That easy.” Rodney made a show of squinting at his monitors, “Any of ‘em alive?”

  “Just the doorman. He didn’t pull a weapon so I didn’t kill him.”

  Rodney nodded, “So ye’ got rules, boyo? Good. Fixer’s get hired because they stick to rules when others won’t. It’s why we trust ‘em.”

  Roland hadn’t thought about that. He’d only been on the job for a few days at this point, “Rule one: I never bluff. Rule two: anyone who tries to kill me dies. Your boys pulled killing tools and tried to use them. So they died.”

  “Have ye’ a rule three, boyo?”

  “Not yet. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Ok, then.” Rodney changed the subject, “I’ll stay off yer doorstep sure and all, but the rest of the crews won’t. We have a we bit o’ gang war brewin’ and a bunch of fookin’ hitters from uptown are tryin’ to bring us all to heel. Ye’ picked a fookin’ shite time to try an’ play hero for the common folk, ye know.”

  “Let them come,” Roland shrugged, “I’ve seen worse.”

  Rodney thought about that, “I bet ye have. But all the same I think you and I are going to need to have an understandin’ if we’re to be sharin’ this little slice of loveliness. If this gang shite doesn’t settle soon, the lads at Gateways are gonna tighten the docks so much that no one will be able to make a thin dime off ‘em. Contraband markets will fall, and I know ye don’t care fook-all about my profits. But tariffs on goods will rise, too. The folk just crawlin’ out of poverty will be smacked right back into it when their money don’t buy shite no more.”

  “I’m not an economist, Rodney.”

  “I’m sayin’ that the fookin’ difference between a fixer and muscle is that the fixer fixes problems. Neat and discreet-like. Creates winning plays for everyone so no one fights about it later, ye get me?”

  “So if I figure out how to end the gang war and push out the Uptown rackets, Gateways will leave the docks alone and people can all keep making money and getting less poor.”

  Rodney was beginning to realize how young Roland must be. It was hard to tell from looking. Something about the face made him appear ageless. But he encouraged the man, nonetheless, “And ye said ye weren’t no economist!”

  “What do you get out of it?”

  “There ain’t no one making more from the Docks than me, boyo. I aim to keep it that way. Ye just took out me best boys though. In Dockside ye only own as much shite as you can defend. Other crews will be after me now, sensin’ weakness. So I’m going to head that off and hire me a fixer to keep those other gangs from gettin’ underfoot and make the Uptown slags less interested in this turf.”

  The Dwarf looked Roland right in the eyes, “Cuz if ye don’t help me, ye great big dipshite, everyone in yer wee little neighborhood, and every other fookin’ neighborhood, is going to be livin’ in a god-damned war zone.”

  This place is all about balance, the big man finally understood it. It’s why even the big corporations and crime families are treading softly. If the markets drop, profits suffer. If there is a war, then the markets will shut down. Legal and illegal markets both.

  It’s all just another goddamn game of escalante!

  Roland realized what he had just done, and instantly regretted his unsophisticated tactics, “Alright Rodney. Let’s deal.”

  12

  Roland left Hideaway either very late that evening or very early the next morning, depending on how one chose to measure such things. The big cyborg and the little cyborg had spent hours managing the logistics of how Roland would stabilize the region. It would be a bit of a grind but Roland figured he was up to it. Rodney had wanted Roland to crush the other gangs the way he had decimated Rodney’s, but Roland had figured out that that would just help The Dwarf rise to the top of the food chain faster. Instead, Roland would systematically degrade gang assets in a judicious manner. He would push them all back until everyone was ready to meet and talk out an agreement that not only kept Gateways from locking everything down, but made the Uptown rackets go bother some other area as well. The gangs would never all get along, and conflict would continue to be the norm, but some guidelines for keeping the scale and breadth of the skirmishes under control would be necessary.

  Rodney wanted a leadership role, but Roland knew a power play when he saw one and nixed it. There would be no Bosses in Dockside. It would remain an open marketplace where anyone could stake a claim and the cash would always flow in the direction of least resistance. If one person or group got too big and started to push the others around, someone would hire Roland to fix it. The brilliance of the plan was that it did not rely on gang leaders trusting each other to play fair. Quite the opposite: the plan relied on them distrusting each other to the extent that Roland’s services would always be in demand. As soon as one person looked like they might be winning the crown, a rival would have Roland pluck it from his head. It was a good system, and it meant that Dockside would remain the same dirty and lawless area everyone needed and wanted it to be. Roland smirked as he walked. This worked very well for him as well because it also meant that Dockside got to stay a quiet dark place for Roland to hide in.

  The sky was still a deep indigo when he got back to his apartment. Unsurprisingly, the streets were quiet. Roland had made sure of that after all. There was a car parked in front of his steps, and Roland scowled when he saw it.

  Who the hell can that be?

  Considering the nature of the previous evening’s adventure, Roland approached the vehicle with extreme caution. It was a small brown featureless thing. Ugly and utilitarian in design. It bore the logo of a local cab company, and Roland could see that it was a driverless model. He moved close enough to look inside and saw something lumpy and black inside. It was too dark to make out details but Roland thought it may have been a sleeping man. He knocked on the darkly tinted window and the amorphous form did not move. He tapped even harder. A sharp, startling crack split the silence of the predawn darkness. The thing inside remained still and unmoving.

  Roland made a decision and tried the door latch. It was locked, and the form inside, which Roland was now certain was a man, stubbornly refused to budge. Roland swore under his breath and tore the car door from the frame like he was peeling the wrapper from a piece of hard candy. He stooped low and stuck his head inside to find Walter Bixby’s body in the back seat of the cab. The sight of it came as quite a shock to the big man. Not because he was dead, of course. Roland h
ad seen so many dead bodies he wasn’t sure the part of him that could be shocked even acknowledged them anymore.

  He was shocked by how the sight of it made him feel. Walter Bixby was not this friend. He barely knew the man, strictly speaking. But Roland was suddenly filled with a strange emptiness. This sense of deep loss had nothing to do with affection for the deceased, or any lingering anxiety over his own mortality either.

  But it seemed to Roland that something much bigger than Detective Sergeant Walter Bixby had died in the back of that little car. Roland realized what it was. It was the idealistic, wide-eyed promise of Dockside. As long as Bixby walked the streets, there had been a spark of that old-world optimism left.

  Dockside had a gestalt, a zeitgeist of opportunism and hedonism that the easy money of the Docks had encouraged. Roland had perceived it after just a few minutes of being here. Walter had lived on these streets for over a decade, and by the grace of whatever gods he worshiped and with the help of the sweet demon liquor, the old cop had never let it turn him sour. Dockside could get very ugly, but if you called Detective Bixby you could always count on him to look into your problem. When Dockside needed justice, Bixby was the only place to get it. He was a fat middle-aged drunk tilting clumsily against windmills made of endemic greed and selfishness.

  Roland wasn't sure he could be that strong. So much of who he thought he was had died at the hands of the Golem, and he had already flirted with the easy relief nihilism would bring. Roland could rule this town if he wanted to. He was strong enough, tough enough, and ruthless enough. The thought of it frightened him, though. He had always wanted to be a hero. It was the only thing he had ever wanted. It’s why he joined the UEDF, and it’s why he volunteered to be rebuilt by the program when his too-soft flesh wasn’t up to the task. Nobody had cared enough about Roland’s desires to let that happen. His creators had wanted him to be a murderer, and then a monster. Now Dockside wanted very badly for Roland to become the villain it knew he could be.