by Brian Parker
But he didn’t feel like raping anyone right now. To be honest, he didn’t feel like getting his ass beat either.
Theo had hidden the beast he’d become from the Banshees, knowing this day would come soon enough. They wanted him for his intimidation factor, but they didn’t know the things he was capable of; their intel on him was crappy. They had no clue that he’d been going to karate lessons for the better part of a year, paying for his instruction by cleaning the facility every evening. They didn’t know that he’d been practicing different ‘techniques’ on stray animals for months, perfecting his moves and plotting for this day. They didn’t know that he’d replaced most of his youthful flab with anabolic-fueled muscle.
“How many’s it gonna be, then?” Theo asked aloud.
Brad smiled. “Oh, you know the crew, Two-Ton. We been beatin’ your ass for years. This time, the cuffs is off though. You gonna remember the day you became a Banshee.”
Two familiar gangers stepped into the circle. Beast was the bigger of the three, the most dangerous in Theo’s eyes. He’d go first. Then there was Blade. He was deadly with a vibrablade, but the rules stated that no one could bring weapons into the fight. It was bare knuckles street brawling, a tradition as old as time.
Theo would take out Blade next, and then go after their leader. Brad ‘Bruiser’ Railton was the best brawler in the Banshees. He’d been tested time and again, but he’d never seen Theo when he wasn’t pretending to be a pussy.
The Welcoming Committee didn’t wait for a bell or even for permission from the Banshee’s leader, Baseline. They spread out in a line and rushed him.
Theo stepped back with his right foot into a fighting stance. It felt good to finally stand up to them. All those years of groveling as they beat him came rushing into his mind and the anger inside of him surged.
Blade was the first to reach him and the rage inside made him abandon his plan to take out Beast first. Theo absorbed a punch to his side, catching Blade’s arm and driving his knee into the skinny teen’s stomach. Blade doubled over and the assembled Banshees roared in approval.
Their merriment quickly faded as Theo grasped Blade’s chin and the back of his head, his momentum carrying him forward. He twisted viciously, rewarded with a sickening popping sound.
Dropping the body, he turned to face Beast, whose face was twisted in a snarl of agony at the loss of his friend. Beast was every bit of Theo’s size, a few years older than him, and just as mean. But he didn’t have years of repressed anger and hatred filling him to the breaking point.
Beast was clumsy, where Theo was graceful after many long hours of study under Master Chris. He blocked Beast’s slow, devastating punch, and stepped toward the ganger. They pressed close to one another as Beast wrapped him in a bear hug, intent on crushing the life from him.
That’s where Theo wanted him. He threw an elbow into Beast’s stomach as Bruiser hit him fast, three times into each kidney, harder than he’d ever hit Theo before.
Theo knew he couldn’t take too many more punches like that to his kidney, so he lifted his leg, slamming his foot down into the outside of Beast’s knee. The bigger man released his hold on Theo, falling.
He stomped forward, slamming his foot into Beast’s head, rocking it off the pavement twice before Bruiser darted back in to punch him in the jaw.
Another punch came flying at him from the skinny ganger and he dodged it, slamming a hammer fist down onto Bruiser’s forearm. The ganger retreated a few steps, cradling his arm to his chest.
Theo turned back to Beast and stomped on his face several more times until first, blood, and then a thin, watery fluid began to ooze from the big man’s ears.
Once again, Bruiser closed the distance, trying to kick Theo’s knee the same way he’d taken out Beast. Theo checked the front kick with his shin and grasped Bruiser’s shirt, pulling him into a bear hug of his own. He squeezed, felt ribs snap under his biceps, and was rewarded with Bruiser’s screams of agony and pleas for help from the other Banshees.
Somewhere, nearer than Theo liked, sirens wailed, announcing the arrival of Easytown’s Finest. He head-butted Bruiser across the bridge of his nose and the thin man’s eyes began to roll back in his head.
Theo leaned in and grasped Bruiser’s lower lip in his teeth, yanking his head back and to the side. Warm, copper filled his mouth as his chewed the lip, and then spat it back at Bruiser.
“I love you, Brad,” Theo whispered. “I am who I am because of you. You made me.”
“Theo! Theo, you’re in, man,” someone shouted, pulling at his shoulder. “The cops are almost here, we gotta go.”
I’m in? he wondered absentmindedly, continuing to squeeze Bruiser. He hadn’t thought the Banshees would let him live after he killed three of their members. Apparently, they operated by a different set of laws than most.
Theo liked that.
He twisted Bruiser’s limp body around until the unconscious ganger’s back faced him. Then, he lifted the boy high over his head and dropped him as he knelt on one knee.
Brad’s spine folded around Theo’s leg, snapping in half a few inches above his rear end.
He stood, letting the body slide off of him and surveyed the scene. The Banshees had vanished into the night. Two of their number were dead and the third would never walk again. Theo had accomplished what he wanted to do.
The anger subsided slightly as he kicked Brad’s head with a massive boot. His ear slapped wetly against his shoulder and the head stayed there, at an odd angle.
Make that three dead Banshees, he thought as he jogged into the night.
THREE
Easytown 2082
“Branch, there’s a cop here snoopin’ around. Says he needs to talk to a Theo Corrigan. You know who that is?”
“Hmm,” Branch rumbled, eyeing his lieutenant warily. He was Theo Corrigan, although nobody’d called him Theo since his mom died three years ago when a john strangled her.
“Yeah, I know who that is,” Branch replied. “What’s this cop want with Corrigan?”
“I don’t know, Branch. He just wants to talk to him.”
“Watch your tone, Bronco. Or else I’ll end you. You got me?”
“Yeah… Yeah, Branch. I get you.” Bronco hesitated for a moment. Then, in a quivering voice, he said, “Sorry.”
Branch reached out quickly, wrapping an arm around the younger man’s neck. The other voice in his head told him to squeeze. To keep squeezing until Bronco’s stupid fucking head popped off his weak, pathetic body. He’d be easy enough to replace. There were twenty more Banshees, all hungry for the promotion that meant second choice in women—or boys, depending on what was on the menu that night—second place in the food line, the second-best weapons in the gang, and the second-largest bedroom in the gang’s home turf. Being second in command of the Banshees had a lot of perks, and any number of his people would be honored to do the job.
Instead, Branch relaxed and brought up his opposite hand. He slapped Bronco lightly on the cheek with an open palm.
“No need to apologize, buddy ol’ pal,” Branch stated. “You had a momentary lapse of judgement. I understand.” He jabbed a finger through his dreadlocks, banging roughly on his scalp. “This guy… This guy understands forgetting yourself for a moment, and letting the inner beast run wild. It loves to get loose.”
“I, uh… Okay, Branch,” Bronco replied, ducking slightly to get out from the lunatic’s grasp. “What do you want me to tell the cop?”
“Is he alone?”
“Yeah—well, no. He has one of those drone things with him.”
Branch’s eyes lit up. “He has a drone? I haven’t gotten to see one of them up close yet.”
“Well, it’s standing out there on the front lawn, guns ready to do some damage.”
He waived Bronco off. “Don’t do anything stupid and it won’t do anything to hurt you.”
“I don’t know…”
Branch stomped off toward the front door where the cop
waited. He had to turn sideways to allow his massive shoulders to pass through the narrow doorway. “Can I help you, mister?” he asked, glancing at the cop, while he studied the drone.
The NOPD drones had been approved for public patrol a few months prior and they’d only made their debut in Easytown two weeks ago, so Branch was curious. It looked like a very large motorcycle gas tank with camera lenses, three sets of thin tripod legs, and two miniguns of unknown caliber with six barrels each. The drone looked like it could really fuck up somebody’s day if they were dumb enough to get caught by it.
Branch suspected that he may be going crazy, but he knew for sure that he wasn’t stupid. The idea of a drone army may have shifted the momentum in the cops’ favor.
“I’m looking for a man named Theo Corrigan.”
“What you lookin’ for him for?” Branch asked, curious what the cop with an out of style handlebar mustache could possibly want with him. Sure, he’d killed a few people since joining the Banshees, including a few of them as he solidified his power base within the gang, but the cops didn’t know that. They were fucking clueless.
“I’ve been talking to his aunt. Seems her ex-boyfriend was a drug dealer and he ended up dead last night. She thinks Corrigan may have something to do with it.”
“Yeah, there ain’t nobody named Theo here,” Branch said, closing the door.
A solid hunk of composite plastic stopped the door from closing. The cop had used a nightstick to keep the door from slamming in his face. “I think Theo may be here,” the cop grunted. “In fact, old Miss Selma Corrigan gave me a printed picture of young Theo Corrigan. He looks a lot like you, young man.”
Voices, more than one, screamed in Branch’s head. The cop knows! a voice shouted. Another one said, Kill him! Still a third voice told him to, Run out to the swamps and hide before you get the chair.
Branch willed the voices to be quiet, internally berating them for interfering at a critical time. He needed to be in charge, without any distractions, if he was gonna pull this off.
“Okay, you got me,” Branch said. “My name used to be Theo.”
The cop stuck out his hand. “I’m Detective Brubaker from the NOPD, Theo. Do you have a moment to talk?”
Branch stared at the cop, but didn’t take his hand. “My name ain’t Theo. It’s Branch. What do you want to talk about?”
“Can I come in?”
“You got a warrant?”
“No. But—”
“Then you ain’t comin’ in,” the gang leader stated, closing the door firmly behind himself. If there were anything visible inside, the cop wouldn’t need a warrant.
“You’re a Banshee?” Brubaker asked, pointing at the tattoo of a wailing banshee across his bare chest.
“Yeah. So?” Kill him. He knows! one of the voices urged.
“The Banshees have gotten worse over the last few years. Used to be just a bunch of street thugs and two-bit hustlers. Now they’ve been implicated in armed robbery, kidnapping, and murder. How long have you been a Banshee?”
“A few years,” he replied guardedly. What was the cop after?
“A few years, huh? So you’ve been here for the worst of it.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Do him, Branch! Do him before he has time to put things together.
“What caused the gang to change like that?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Branch sneered.
“Come on. It’s happened while you’ve been in the gang.”
“Few bad apples I guess,” he stated. “Is that all? Am I free to go?”
“When was the last time you saw your aunt’s fiancé, Thomas ‘Hoot’ White?”
I told you! He knows. Kill him!
“Hoot?” Branch repeated. “I don’t know. A few days, maybe a week. He works on The Lane so I see him all the time.”
“Mr. White was found dead yesterday,” Brubaker said. “He was a known drug dealer. Word is, he was your drug dealer. His head was crushed, like someone had put it in a vice, except he was nowhere near a mechanic’s shop. Whoever did it didn’t even take the money or drugs that he had on him at the time. That makes it seem like a personal vendetta instead of some deal gone wrong.”
“That’s too bad, I liked Hoot,” Branch replied honestly. Hoot had been like a father to him. Provided the anabolics for him that allowed him to get bigger. He didn’t regret what he’d done, but he would miss the guy.
The detective’s eyes sized up Branch, appraising him. “You’re a pretty big guy, Theo.”
“My name’s Branch,” he rumbled. Disrespect!
“Not legally. Why don’t you come with me down to the precinct, Theo?” he repeated, purposefully using Branch’s given name. “I want to talk to you about your whereabouts at the time of White’s death.”
“You ain’t taking me anywhere.”
The cop stepped back off the porch, distancing himself from the lumbering behemoth that almost a decade of heavy anabolic use had created. Gone was big youth with catlike reflexes; Branch had become so musclebound that he couldn’t even scratch his own back anymore. He took a step forward menacingly, intent on intimidating the cop.
“Drone Thirty-Seven,” the cop said, now standing off to the side, out of the line of fire. “The suspect is refusing to comply.”
The drone responded instantly. Its miniguns spun up noisily as it said, “Citizen, your advancement toward Detective Brubaker is unauthorized. Cease movement now or you will be fired upon.”
That made Branch pause. He didn’t know if that thing had real bullets or if they were some type of non-lethal alternative like rubber bullshit. Whatever it held, the result wouldn’t be a love tap.
“Are you going to come down to the precinct?” the cop asked.
Branch tore his eyes away from the spinning barrels. “What for?”
“I think you killed Thomas White,” he replied coldly. “Did you kill your aunt’s fiancé, Theo?”
The voices won out and he bellowed in rage, leaping forward with his arms outstretched. He’d kill the cop, and deal with the consequences later.
A ragged line of bullet holes blossomed across his chest as the drone began firing.
Branch woke up disoriented and in pain. He peeled open his eyes. He was in a hospital room of some type, handcuffed to the bed’s railing. There were bandages across his chest, and he couldn’t feel his left arm. It was there, it just felt…dead.
“Nurse!” he screamed. His mind was a muddled mess of memories, but he knew if this were a real hospital, nurses would be nearby. They could tell him what was wrong with his arm.
A guard walked in instead of a nurse. “What do you want, inmate?”
“I want a goddamned nurse or a doctor,” Branch retorted.
“Charts say you’re doing fine. There are other patients they’re taking care of. What do you need?”
“I can’t feel my arm.”
“That’s because you took forty-three 7.62 rounds, most of them in your arm as you got your stupid ass flung backwards.”
“Seems excessive.”
“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
Branch examined the mass of bandages surrounding his arm. It looked like it was all there. “They were able to save it?”
“For now. They’re trying a new, experimental treatment on you called regenerative genetic stimulation. Doctors say it’ll regrow all those tendons, veins, and the rest of the shit in there if it works.”
“Experimental?” He didn’t like the sound of that.
“Works on monkeys,” the guard grunted. “They need human guinea pigs, so inmates are an easy choice.” He sniffed and then wiped his nose with the back of a hand. “Your other option is to be an amputee.”
“Better than being a fucking science experiment.”
“You think so?” the guard asked, advancing on Branch.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t say anything; instead, he began ripping the bandages from the big man’s arm. Branch screa
med for him to stop, admitting that the movement hurt. He yelled for help. He asked for more pain meds. He asked for his anabolics, they always made him feel better.
The asshole ignored it all, tearing away the dressing until Branch’s mass of flesh and bone was exposed. It looked pretty fucking bad. The arm had been amputated—basically. A thin, finger-width strip of muscle near his shoulder was all that connected the remains of his arm to his body. Pieces of bone fell from the wound onto the bed as if they’d been arranged inside the bandages, but were now worthless.
As the initial shock of the sight of his arm wore off, Branch realized that he must have been on some extremely strong pain-killers. His brain was fuzzy and things were starting to fade.
The guard finally spoke, gesturing angrily at Branch’s arm while he spat, “Is that what you want to look at every day for the rest of your life?”
“Wouldn’t owe the government anything then,” he laughed. Was that me or one of the voices? he wondered.
“Really? You’re going to give up the opportunity to have your arm back. Whole?”
“Fuck you. I ain’t your guinea pig,” Branch replied, emphasizing the words the guard had used earlier.
“I’ll let the scientists know.”
The guard turned and walked through the door. Branch stared down at the mangled mess that used to be his big, beautiful, muscled arm. What the fuck was he supposed to do now?
Kill that fucking guard, the voices replied.
FOUR
Easytown 2093
Branch folded the only other pair of pants he’d purchased with his prison earnings and placed them in his duffle bag. They were plain, much less flashy than the pair he wore. The second pair was a metallic, neon green, mock denim that was popular when he was arrested eleven years prior. Several of the newer inmates told him that it was back in style and so he’d bought them with a big smile.
Shows what those old codgers, the Lifers, knew, he mused as he moved to the shirts, folding them along the seams to avoid wrinkling the material. They’d told him the world outside would be totally different after so long in the can. Hell, half of ’em had purposely committed crimes inside to extend their sentences.
