Liquid Cool

by Austin Dragon

  The Animal Farm Crime Syndicate was a real criminal organization, born out of pop culture, and evolved from hooliganism. Back in the day, packs of deranged juvenile delinquents congregated around rugby, American football, international football, and especially—known for their ultra-violence—hoverhockey stadium games, to cause all kinds of mayhem. These hooligans evolved, all right. These delinquent punks roamed their part of the neon jungle in complete control of its criminal life—drugs, prostitution, gun-running, contract killing, and illegal gambling were their main scores. Gangs always needed something to mark themselves. For some, it was tattoos or chopping off a particular finger, but for the new animal gangs, it became wearing their animal masks.

  The animal gang I had to find was the Rabbits. They’d have some kind of adjective before their name, but since I wasn’t wise to gang life at all, avoiding it like the plague all my life, I wouldn’t know much about their habits and turf. The Animal Farm Crime Syndicate wasn’t the most powerful or smartest of criminal cartels; there were just so damn many of them, which is what made them formidable.

  Back to what I was saying before—I was scared. Under no circumstances was I going to drive my Ford Pony into that place. A hovertaxi was also not an option. I needed to hire a guide and bodyguard all in one. What I was quickly realizing is that I didn’t know people who knew people who knew criminals. Phishy and Punch Judy didn’t count; he was a slider, and she was an ex-posh gang member from another country. I couldn’t hire someone to go into Mad Heights to protect me. I had to hire someone who already lived in Mad Heights to protect me.

  “I’d like to start this month’s evening meeting of the Metropolis Soldier of Fortune Meet-Up Club by everyone going around the room and giving us your name and a little something about yourself. It’s customary that first-time visitors go first. Any volunteers?” he asked. The man looked like his skin had been cooked over an open flame. Survivor of a war? Or victim of a bad plastic skin job?

  I raised my hand.

  “Thank you, young man. Tell us about yourself.”

  I stood from my chair. “My name is Cruz, and I’m a detective, new to the biz, in fact. I didn’t know where else to go, so I came here. I’m going into Mad Heights, and as many of you know, it’s not the nicest part of the city. But I have a real case that forces me to go there and track down members of a particular, and particularly deranged animal gang. But you don’t go into Mad Heights without bodyguard protection. I bet with all the law enforcement, military, and mercenary experience in this room, there’s got to be at least one person who could help a young guy, like me, starting out. I’m so inexperienced at this that I don’t even know people who know criminals or anything about that world.”

  “Then you’re in the wrong business, sonny,” one man said and the room erupted in laughter.

  “Probably true, but it’s too late now. I already have my business cards.” My quip got additional laughter.

  “You can hire them you know,” a man said in the back on the other side of the room.

  “Hire who?” I asked.

  “You can hire animal gang members as bodyguards. Anybody can.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Call ‘em.”

  “Where?”

  “They advertise in the Club’s cybernet magazine, along with every other criminal in the city. Between body armor and bombs—bodyguards,” the man said.

  Once I started this, there was no turning back. It was like boarding a lunar flight and then panicking and wanting off the spaceship. Tough! You were sealed into the craft and were along for the ride, and there was nothing you could do about it.

  That’s how I felt when my hovervehicle of bodyguards arrived. Again, I was burning though money like I was made of it, and it was worrying me, but I put it out of mind. It was a hovervan plus, and the door opened, and the first one jumped out. The man was huge! On his head was a hippo mask. I had hired four members of the Hypernova Hippos as my bodyguards for the night. Back in the day, the Horses and Pigs ran the show, but not for a long time. The man was a cyborg, but the technology interface was just plain awful. Oversized arms, fat pot belly, fat legs with cables and wires half sticking out from their clothes. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t back out now. I walked past him and jumped into the van’s second seat.

  The man got back into the passenger seat and slid the door closed. The only illumination inside the hovervehicle was from the front window. There were two Hippos in the front, and there two sitting behind me in the rear seats. They all just sat there quiet.

  “What’s the job?”

  “Before I answer that question, since you refused to talk to me on the video-phone, what’s the Hippos relationship with the Rabbits?”

  “Relationship?” the Hippo in the passenger seat responded. “The Hypernova Hippos think the Riot Gear Rabbits are the dirt between our toes.”

  “That’s a very nice image. The job is I need to find one, question him, and get the hell out of there when I’m done. That’s it. You are here for insurance. If someone tries to mess with me, you come in and stop them.”

  “Why do you want to talk to a Rabbit?”

  “I told you all I’m telling you about the job. Do you want it or not?”

  The Hippo chuckled. “Why? Are you going to find someone else? We don’t take the job; you’re up the creek without a boat.”

  “You’re right. I have no back-up plan.”

  “Let’s up the price then, since we have no competitors.”

  “Let’s not, because I’m paying what we agreed, but if the Hypernova Hippos are dishonest, like the Jackals…”

  “Hey! We’re not the Jupiter Jackals. Price as agreed but you pay before we lift off.”

  “Half now, half when we return.”

  “All now.”

  “I was born at night, but not last night. I pay all now; you throw me out of the van. And just so you know, I shot my first man dead when I was five years old. I prefer talk only, but I’m capable of a lot more. I may not be a Mad Heights man, and you’re here as my reinforcements, but I’m not some Chicken Little scared of his own shadow. More than your protection, I need your expertise. You are Mad Heights men. Half now, half when we get back. We can even go to the bank and do an escrow account if you like.”

  “Give over the half then. And forget the bank. We don’t do banks.”

  “We get back, I’ll make the call and have one of my sidewalk johnny friends bring up the bag with the other half of the money.”

  “Mr. Cruz, you know what it feels like to have your ribcage crushed in by a Hippo death hug?”

  “Is that what Hippo cyborgs do? No, I don’t know and don’t expect to know what that feels like, ever. Do the job I’m hiring you for, or I have a few threats up my sleeve, too.”

  “You have nothing you can threaten us with.”

  “Do you want to exchange threats or do you want to do a job and get paid for it.”

  The Hippo in the passenger seat turned to look back at me.

  “Money.”

  I gave him the bag I had inside my jacket pocket. He didn’t even count it, but threw it to his feet. The driver started up the hovervan, and within moments, we were flying into the sky traffic.

  As I sat there, sandwiched between the two animal gang members, I realized there was another hole in my new career as a detective—I would need muscle. I hated strangers, but I had no choice with this Hippo crew. That didn’t mean that, after this excursion into Mad Heights, I wouldn’t start putting together a list of people I could trust to back me up when needed.

  When we flew into Mad Heights airspace, I felt my chest tighten. I had seen it from the air from this angle before on television. There was a legitimate reason it was called Mad Heights, besides it now being a madhouse of crime. The neighborhood was old and existed before the building codes were formalized in the city. It looked like a mad group of builders had put the town together. There were skinny towers
next to monolith towers, twenty foot towers next to two hundred foot ones. It all looked…mad. If a construction crew was high on drugs and could do whatever popped into their minds, Mad Heights was what they would have come up with. Adding to the madness were the neon signs of all sizes and shapes—no standard like other towns.

  Our hovervan departed from the sky-lane and every second that went by the neon signs got fewer and fewer.

  “We’re going to set down in a back-alley,” the Hippo in the passenger seat said, turning his head back. “You’re not afraid to walk in the rain?”

  “I do it all the time,” I answered. “That why I wear my hat.”

  It was not just a back-alley. They chose an alley so secluded I wondered if it was even part of the city. The only light was from a street lamp yards away. The Hippos piled out of their hovervan, and I jumped out too, immediately being splashed by muddy water and realizing I had jumped right into a puddle. The Hippos chuckled.

  I wondered when they would do so. Two Hippos stood and took off their ridiculous hippo masks. When I saw their ugly faces, I almost said out loud for them to pull the masks back on. The fat, pudgy faces stared at me with beady little eyes. They’d airbrushed their face from their foreheads to their noses to give that better effect with their masks on. Their hair was a crew cut, except for the edges, which were tied and cut in a style to, I guess, look like hippo ears. The hairdo looked stupid, but when you’re a criminal, who can effortlessly pound someone to death, you can look stupid.

  As we walked away, I realized two Hippos were not following, but waited with the hovervan. I was about to protest as I thought I had hired four bodyguards, but stopped myself. Would I leave my vehicle unattended in this place? Why would I expect them to? And Let It Ride Enterprises wasn’t sending any of their mobile car security guards anywhere near this armpit of the city.

  It was probably part of their gang code, too. With masks off guarding me, it meant it wasn’t a gang op, but masks on, guarding their vehicle meant, if you messed with it, you were messing with the entire Hypernova Hippo gang. The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t like what it suggested in terms of their protection of me. I had only 50% of the crew I hired.

  The street was dark and flooded. Most of the time, I wore clear overboots up to my knees. They were virtually invisible, and I was glad I had them on this time, because the water in the street came up to my calves. The Hippos seemed to enjoy sloshing through the muddy water.

  “Turn up there,” one of the Hippos said.

  When we turned up the street, it was like someone opened a door, and we had passed right through a vortex into another world. For the first time in my life, I was walking down the streets of Mad Heights. It was as noisy and flashy as I had expected. Here, they didn’t have sidewalk johnnies; they had sidewalk hustlers, who stood with their backs against the wall in their neon suits and outfits, watching everyone who passed by. I knew what they were looking for—someone like me. Newbies, visitor virgins, people clearly not from here. I could pretend to be as tough as I wanted to be, but they could smell a mark from miles away.

  I tried to envision what were the real differences, from a street viewpoint, between here and working class neighborhoods, like my Rabbit City or Woodstock Falls, and upscale ones, like Peacock Hills or Silicon Dunes. Bad neighborhoods just had more of everything in a gratuitous and venal way. The smell of perfume or cologne in the air was too much and sickly, the clothes worn under their dark slickers were too bright, the tech was too gaudy along with their jewelry, their haircuts were too over-the-top, and the muscle on the men and cleavage on the woman was just too much. Rich neighborhoods were perfect in their presentation. Working neighborhoods were decent in theirs. Mad Heights and every mean street neighborhood like it, were just outrageous. It was as if this was what crime felt it had to do to stand out in a noisy, 50-million supercity like Metropolis.

  The mean streets had its eye on me. I could see one street hustler smile at his partner next to him, and their eyes locked on me, like a laser-guided missile, even though I had turned my head and was watching them peripherally. One of the Hippos grabbed my shoulder, and the three of us stopped. The two Hippos stared at the approaching sidewalk hustlers, who did an immediate about-face and went back the way they came. As I stared at the Hippos’ backs, I could see these cyborgs had massive pile-driver arms. Punch Judy with her cybernetic arms could throw a 300-pound guy through a reinforced window. The arm of one of these Hippos was like six PJ arms—they could throw an entire truck with two 300-pound guys through a reinforced window. The Hippo let go of my shoulder—and I was glad he did, because his hand alone felt like it weighed 500 pounds. We continued walking.

  The only equivalent I could think of was models walking the runway with fans, media, and industry people gawking at them. If I hadn’t had a Hippo bodyguard on either side of me, I wouldn’t have made it. I knew that now. Everyone was watching me. Did I smell funny? How could they know I wasn’t a Mad Heights guy? Phishy told me that street people had a sixth sense and could pick out people who didn’t belong on the street, and in the bad neighborhoods, it was even sharper. I guessed it had to be if your life was about preying on marks for your livelihood, and spotting police and rival gangs meant the difference between prison or death.

  I also didn’t trust the Hippos. It was good I had bodyguards, but what was the point if I was scared they’d mug me and leave me in some alleyway, just for the fun of it, despite being paid. Well, something was better than nothing, but I definitely needed my own personal bodyguard service. But again, this was better than nothing.

  This was also not the place for an inherent germophobe. I controlled it, most of the time, and hid it from most people, but certain situations made it flare up. I never went near public bathrooms. I’d rather die. I stayed in my own ordered world. However, this wasn’t my world. I stood there, staring at the general clinic in front of me, but my foot wouldn’t move. There were more dope roaches—drug addicts—around the place than a free drug giveaway in Tijuana. All of them looked like aged zombies, morbidly skinny, scales and sores, bad hair, and bad teeth. The clinic building looked like it had been hit by multiple bomb blasts. Then there were the neon signs: “General Clinic,” “Free Needles” “Free Exams” “All Medical Accepted” “Cash Only.” When I read “One Finger Body Exams” I was about to run right out of there, but a Hippo grabbed me.

  “Are you going in?”

  They could see my expression and chuckled.

  “Do you have an extra hippo mask?”

  They laughed louder.

  “Seventh floor,” the Hippo said when he returned. “I’d take the stairs if I were you.”

  Inside the clinic was nasty! The waiting room was overflowing with zombie-looking walk-in patients. People were leaning against the walls and sprawled out on the dirty floor. My skin was crawling. Then I noticed water flies buzzing around. I had to stand there for a moment to compose myself and fight my feet from running out of there. It was nasty!

  As with everything in the city, there was no such thing as small. The clinic was on the bottom of a tower, but it was still at least seventeen stories. The bottom levels were the intake waiting rooms and clinics. I was going nowhere near the elevators in this place, so I approached the stairs, and a door opened and a doctor or nurse, whichever, popped out with one bloody white glove on one hand and one dripping brown white glove on the other. I shut my eyes so tightly there was a chance they would never open again. I could not cope with this nastiness. I realized quickly that no good would come from prolonged exposure to this facility. Find my person, question him, and get out.

  The Hippos also educated me on the state of Rabbit gangs. There was a coup within the Riot Gear Rabbit gang. The leader, White Rabbit, was killed, and his number two in command, Blue Pill Rabbit, was sent here—barely alive. There were now two separate Rabbit gangs, and they were at full-scale war with each other.

  This was sup
posed to be a clinic, but I had seen only one medic—unlikely for a facility of this huge size. I felt there was something I was missing, and as the outsider, the joke was on me. As I neared the top of the stairs to the seventh floor, there were four watching me, skinny punks with rabbit masks on their heads. Two were barefoot, and that made me want to vomit. Barefoot on this nasty floor?

  “Where’s Blue Pill?” I asked with authority.

  “You part of the Hippo crew?” one asked.

  Criminals always had lookouts, even if you never saw them.

  “No, I hired them as muscle. I’m not part of any gang. I’m a detective on the outside.”

  “Why you want Blue Pill then, square?”

  “Take me to Blue Pill, so I can ask him my questions directly. Tell him I need to know everything there is to know about Red, so I can take him down. Blue Pill can take him down here. I can take him down on the outside. Blue Pill and I are going to be temporary friends, because we have a mutual enemy.”

  “Red Rabbit is dead!” one of them said.

  The four rabbit gang members were riling themselves up, repeating the same thing, but even I could tell, without seeing their faces, they were scared to death of him.

  The entire seventh floor was filled with rabbit-masked gang members, armed with guns, knives, swords, and rifles. If I got into trouble here, my body would be cold and in pieces long before either of my Hippo bodyguards got to me. They both conveniently told me they’d wait at the door for me—I had no say in the matter.