by John Zakour
The intruder was moving quickly toward Sexy now. I saw him clearly through the infrared lens in my eye as I ran full tilt across the stage, dodging the racks of meat and red satin throw pillows that so elegantly decorated the stage.
“Sexy, get down!”
Sexy couldn’t hear me over the music and the roar of the crowd. Even if she had, I’m not sure she would have taken it as a warning. But Carol picked up my thoughts and turned away from her dance partner.
“Tio?”
She turned to my fast approaching head and immediately saw the situation.
“Sexy, look out!”
Carol leaped at Sexy and pulled her down just before the attacker reached her. I hit the attacker a nano later, slamming him broadside with my shoulder and rolling him onto the stage floor. He went over more easily than I expected. His body was softer than I expected as well, more flab than muscle. That may sound like a good thing but it wasn’t because my hit took us down to the floor harder and in a different place than I expected. We ended up falling into one of Sexy’s meat-cleaver dancers, knocking him to the ground and landing hard and awkwardly on his leg. I heard the wet snap of the dancer’s femur even over the music and the guy started screaming.
Two nearby dancers saw all this and (logically) pegged me as the villain. They jumped on me, grabbed me by the shoulders and tried to pull me away as the attacker tried to get to his feet and stumble off the stage.
Even if there’d been time to explain things to the dancers, they wouldn’t have been able to hear me over the music so, regrettably, I had to go the rough route because there was no way I was letting the attacker get away. I head butted one dancer on the bridge of the nose (breaking and bloodying it), then pivoted and threw the second dancer over my shoulder as I spun and aimed my gun toward the fleeing/stumbling attacker.
Unfortunately, my judo throw sent the dancer headlong into Tony, who was just now arriving on the stage with a handful of his men. His men, after seeing their captain felled by a thrown dancer and now faced with a mostly invisible man holding a gun, opened fire with their blasters (set to stun).
I managed to dive to the floor and avoid the blasts. The drummer, lead guitarist, and bassoon player weren’t so lucky. Worse still, the blasts hit the base of the huge guillotine set piece and toppled it. It smashed into another set piece filled with slabs of hanging meat, all of which came crashing down on the keyboardist and the control board for the stage lights and effects, shorting it out completely and sending the entire stage into what the next day’s newsite reviews would describe as “a déclassé avalanche of abstract tackiness and white-trash opulence.”
Dozens of lights exploded, a hundred pyrotechnics fired at once, and chunks of various meat products shot into the air and showered the audience. The backing tracks were still playing over the sound system but the computer had jammed so the same two bars of Sexy’s song were playing over and over, echoing throughout the arena like an audiophonic hip-hop water torture.
I spotted the attacker in the wings as I knelt on the stage floor. He had gotten caught up in the rush of police and security people that were storming the stage and was trying to push through them like a fat salmon swimming upstream. The horde of peacekeepers was heading straight for me so I knew that I only had one chance to bring the guy down.
“Hog tie,” I said.
The indicator light on my gun flashed and I fired. A polymer cable shot from my gun and sped toward the fleeing attacker. It hit him in the small of the back and wrapped itself around his legs and arms a dozen times before the guy even knew he’d been hit. He lost his grip on the device he was carrying and I saw it hit the ground and skitter across the backstage floor. But it activated on impact. I saw it clearly because HARA took control of the interface in my eye and zoomed in on the device. It was a palm-sized module with two button controls and an activator light, which was now blinking frantically.
“Oh DOS,” I whispered, expecting an explosion at any nano.
None came.
Instead, a bouquet of holographic flowers projected from the module, a cascade of three dozen bright pink orchids.
“Flowers?”
“Congratulations,” HARA said as the angry horde of police and security personnel piled on top of me. “You just saved Sexy Sprockets from a floral display.”
16
Once Tony extricated himself from the dancers, he took control of his men and the security personnel. They quelled the chaos onstage and managed to keep the crowd (which had become seriously perturbed and panicked by now) from rushing the stage long enough for me to pull Sexy and her girls back to the safety of the wings. Two nanos later, we were running through the backstage hallways, headed for the hoverport.
“He had flowers, Zach,” Sexy said (for the third time, I think). “Orchids.”
“He was rushing straight for you, Sexy,” I said. “What did you want me to do?”
“Something short of trashing the stage would have been nice.”
“I’ll remember that next time,” I grumbled. “HARA, bring up the limo and meet us at the hoverport. Sexy has to leave the building now!”
“Gotcha, big guy,” HARA replied in my head.
“Johnson!”
I turned just enough to see Smiles running down the hallway in his two-tone black and red shoes. He was sweaty and flushed, partially from the running, but mostly from rage.
“What in Gates’ name was that?” he shouted, putting a hand on my shoulder in an attempt to slow me.
I shrugged off the hand and kept moving, leading Sexy by the hand.
“Talk to me about it in the limo, Sammy,” I said. “Now’s not the time.”
“We’ll talk about it now,” he said.
“Right now, Sexy is in danger,” I replied without turning around. “I am not prepared to waste my time and put her in more danger just to listen to you rant. So save it and rant in the limo when you have a captive audience.”
“Why you …” Smiles began, turning redder by the nano.
“He’s sort of right, Sammy,” Sexy said as we neared the hoverport.
Smiles sighed and shook his head as though he were the only sane person left on Earth (but he kept running toward the hoverport with us).
It wasn’t long before I was loading Sexy and the girls into the limo. Smiles looked as though he wanted to slam the door in my face when he climbed in but he held back and took a seat next to Carol.
“Strap in, everyone,” I said, as I took my seat by the door. “Let’s go, HARA!”
HARA, clearly happy to be free of my usual speed constraints, put the proverbial pedal to the metal and the limo shot free of the hoverport like a rocket.
“That was really fast, Mr. Johnson,” Shreek said from the front seat. “Did everything go okay?”
“You’re shotgun, Shreek,” I said, sliding the soundproof barrier into place. “No talking unless there’s trouble.”
“Oh there’s trouble, all right,” Smiles said, happy for the opening. “Your incompetence turned Sexy’s show into a complete disaster.”
“I was doing my job.”
“I’m sorry, did I miss the part about your job being to trash the set and cause a full-scale riot?” Smiles screamed. “We hired you as a bodyguard, not a demolitions crew.”
“Sexy hired me.”
“Fine,” he said, “and in the one day that you’ve been in her employ you’ve completely ruined the tour. How do you think this is going to look tomorrow? Do you think the focus is going to be on Sexy’s dignified retirement from music while at the top of her game? No! Every iota of coverage tomorrow will be about how this show turned into a circus. And how long before news of the PATA threats hit the press now? This entire tour has just become a joke! And it’s because of you!”
The sound barrier to the front seat slid open a crack and Shreek stuck his face through.
“Mr. Johnson?”
“Not now, Shreek,” I said, sliding it back into place. “Listen, Smiles,
I’m not the one who let an intruder get close to Sexy!”
“Fans rush the stage all the time,” Smiles snapped.
“Mr. Johnson?” Shreek said again, sliding the barrier (a little less) open again.
“This guy came from backstage,” I said, slamming the barrier shut. “He had credentials. I saw them when I tackled him.”
“And broke poor Jermaine’s leg. Do you know how hard it is to find dancers who can handle meat cleavers and work for scale?”
“Mr. Johnson!” Shreek said again.
“What is it, Shreek?” I said, opening the barrier.
“You said that the job of the shotgun is to keep an eye out for trouble, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“Does that qualify?” Shreek asked, cocking his thumb at the limo’s right side.
I peered out the tinted window and saw the nose cone and fins of a missile, vapor trail blazing in the Frisco night, heading straight for us.
“Yeah,” I said over the taste of bile in my mouth, “that counts.”
17
“Tell everyone to hang on back there,” HARA shouted. “We’re taking evasive maneuvers.”
“Zach, what’s going on?” Sexy asked, retightening her seatbelt.
“Heat-seeking missile,” I said. “This will not be fun. Trust me. I’ve done this before.”
HARA pulled the hover up and put us into a steep climb as the missile approached. It changed its intercept course to match us, though at twice our airspeed, but as it neared, HARA rolled the hover over and put us into a nosedive, which left our stomachs several hundred meters behind.
“Everything okay up there HARA?” I asked.
“Nothing but a Sunday drive, big guy,” HARA teased. “And by the way, I think I know now how our shotgun rider got the nickname Shreek. He’s screaming like a debutante in a mutant rat colony up here.”
“I think I’m about to join him,” I said, turning my head from one swiftly approaching danger (the missile) to another (the ground).
“Oh ye of little faith,” HARA said.
Scant meters from the ground, HARA rolled the hover over again and pulled us out of the dive. I heard the roof of the hover actually scrape the street as we looped around the missile and sped back into the air.
At its intense speed, the missile couldn’t turn quickly enough and smashed into the deserted streets before exploding and turning the intersection of Shake and Rattle streets into a supersized smoking pothole. HARA leveled the craft off and we all exhaled for the first time in a while.
“All clear for the nano,” HARA said. “But Shreek is still living up to his name.”
I pulled back the privacy barrier and, sure enough, Shreek was keening louder than a possessed fishwife.
“Wow, that’s annoying,” I said. “Carol, can you help here?”
“Shreek,” Carol said, leaning forward in her seat and touching him on the shoulder, “take a nap.”
Shreek’s screaming ceased, a sly smile crossed his face and his head leaned to one side as he fell happily asleep. I noticed that Smiles watched it all intently.
“What was that out there?” Sexy asked.
“You don’t want to know,” I mumbled.
As if on cue, Rupert Roundtree’s smiling face appeared on the limo’s com-screen.
“Poetistosity,” he said. “Pure poetistosity. That was awesome Zach Shack.”
“Roundtree, you nearly killed us!” I said.
“I’m making entertainment history, Zachman. I’m entitled to a few liberties here and there for posterity’s sake.”
“I’m going to kick your posterity the next time I see you, Roundtree.”
“Excellent banter skills, Zackture. Middle America loves a good punster. And that’s our target audience for this episode. Middle DOSing America.”
“Heads up back there, people,” HARA shouted from the driver’s seat. “We have three more hot ones on our tail and approaching fast.”
“Missiles?” I asked.
HARA shook her head, grimly. “Stock cars.”
“What?”
I looked out the rear window and sure enough, three stock car hovers were zeroing in on us, their oversized hover motors roaring like giant angry lions. Their bodies were sleek, multihued, and covered by a plethora of decals advertising energy products, snack foods, alcoholic beverages, and hair restoration services. They also had heavy ordnance.
“Oh DOS,” Sexy mumbled, “it’s the Woolly Boys.”
“The who?” I asked.
“The Woolly Boys,” Sexy continued. “Three brothers, Willy, Wendell, and Wilson. They used to be NASCAR drivers. Really good ones actually. They won all kinds of championships. But NASCAR banned them from racing a few years ago.”
“How come?”
“They played a little rough. You know, bumping cars on the turns, nudging them from behind, taking them out with missiles and blasters.”
“Yeah, I can see where that would be frowned upon,” I said.
“Oddly though, up until then there was nothing in the official rule book forbidding drivers from using explosive weapons. The Woollys made them close that loophole. Since they left the circuit they’ve become kind of cult figures.”
“Do you have any idea how big these guys are in the South?” Roundtree shouted. “They’re folk heroes! Can you imagine the infamous Woolly Boys in a race to the death against Zach Johnson on national HV! I smell a pop-cult event!”
“Roundtree, there are innocent people on board this vehicle!”
“It’s okay, Zachrophobe, I went over that with my legal team. They say that simply being in your company can be considered tacit understanding of your lifestyle and the dangers that it entails. Riding in a limo with you is akin to signing a release. They might as well be wearing targets on their butts. We’re confident that it will hold up in court.”
“Rupert!” Sexy shouted.
“Our original deal holds, Sexy. You’ll have a CGI fill-in.”
“DOS lot of good that will do me if I’m dead!”
“Nobody’s dying tonight,” I said, popping my gun into my hand.
“That’s the spirit, Zachules! Let’s see that …”
I blew a hole the size of a softball in the com-screen. And despite the impending danger, I think everyone was a little relieved to be rid of Roundtree’s ranting.
“Gates, what have you gotten us into, Johnson?”
“Shut up, Smiles,” I said. “Sexy, how do you know so much about these guys?”
“They grew up in my hometown in New Alabama. We sort of used to date.”
“Which one?”
“All of them,” she said. “It ended sort of badly when they found out. They might have an ax to grind.”
“Just what we need,” I said, “more motivation for the killers. HARA, any chance we can outrun these guys?”
“Chances are slim and none, boss man,” HARA replied. “And Slim just swallowed a grenade and leaped into a vat of acid. They have more horsepower and more firepower.”
“Then we’ll beat them with brainpower,” I said unfastening my seat belt.
“Gates help us, we’re doomed.”
“HARA, you’re killing the moment,” I said, opening the sunroof. “Everybody hang on tight and keep your heads down. Everything’s going to be fine. This is all just a game …”
I stuck my head out the sunroof.
“… an insanely dangerous, stupid game.”
The hot night air at two hundred kilometers per hour hit my face like a mask of needles. The sheer force of the limo’s speed nearly sucked me right out of the sunroof. I steadied myself on the rollbar, ducked back inside, and gripped my gun a little tighter.
“Tarzan.”
My gun responded to the voice command with a tone and a red flash. I fired a round at the limo’s wet bar and a length of polymer cable shot from the barrel and wrapped itself several times around the heavy faux wood surface. I detached the other end of the cable from
the gun and wrapped it around my waist then clipped it to my armor. I gave the cable a couple of good tugs to make sure it would properly anchor me, then climbed back through the sunroof.
The three hovers were flying in formation—a lead and two wingmen—but they took turns approaching us, shooting forward, engine roaring to run alongside us for a nano before slipping back into the pack formation. They were toying with us, like hyenas playing with a wounded gazelle.
HARA was doing her best to keep them at bay, pushing the hover to its limit, keeping the chase close to the ground, and using the narrower skyways to keep them from hemming us in.
I steadied my gun hand as best I could and fired off a quick couple of rounds at the nearest hover. The blasts bounced harmlessly off the hood and all three pursuers responded with a round of blaster fire of their own. The blasts exploded in the air around us and the limo shook like an old jet in heavy turbulence.
“How armored are these cars?” I asked HARA.
“More armored than us,” she responded inside my head. “They look to be most blaster-resistant in front and rear.”
“What about the bot-buster rounds?”
“They’d do the trick,” HARA responded. “They’ll blow the hovers to bits, drivers included, though I don’t think anyone would fault you on that since they’re firing on us.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but let’s save the deadly force as a last resort.”
“Are there any other resorts currently available?”
“That depends. Is there anything else special currently loaded in the gun that would be appropriate?”
“There’s the electromagnetic pulse. That would shut down all electrical power within a twenty-five meter radius from impact.”
