Joe Fury and the Hard Death

by Paul Anthony Long

  ‘Everything!’ says Nixon. ‘He’s the man who can bring our dreams to triumph. He can destroy this world and rule over the other!’

  ‘The other?’ This case is getting more convoluted by the second.

  ‘The other world!’ yells Nixon, frothing at the mouth. ‘The dark world!’

  And suddenly we’re sucked out of the shark and into a courtroom.

  EIGHTY FIVE

  It’s wide and spacious and the public gallery is stuffed to the gills with men, women and those in between, of all creeds and colours.

  At the front of the room, in the judge’s chair, sits a chimp in an English barrister’s wig, holding a gavel and staring down at us with malign intent. I blow smoke in his direction.

  We’re seated—all of us—in front of the judge. Nixon is wringing his hands, Reagan has a finger up his nose, and Kennedy’s trying to chat up a female juror by unzipping his pants.

  ‘You stand accused of crimes against being groovy!’ booms the chimp judge. ‘And for speaking out of the bounds of your contract with your lord and master. How do you plead?’

  ‘I only did it for the good of the country!’ cries Nixon, falling to his knees. ‘Don’t condemn me for my legitimate actions on the world stage.’

  ‘You have condemned yourself,’ booms the judge, hammering the gavel a few times for emphasis. ‘Now you hold yourself open to trial by chimp. Kennedy, get your hands off of those.’

  Kennedy smiles sheepishly and returns to his seat.

  ‘Kennedy, I know you think you’re the golden boy!’ The chimp judge points the gavel at him. ‘But the public forget what kind of person you really are. They forget the war you started and the people’s blood on your hands. A nice smile and a charming personality are not enough to wipe away your dreams of Armageddon.’

  The chimp judge turns on Nixon. ‘You, on the other hand, have a soul as black as midnight. You hang a veil of compromise, negotiation and peace over your deeds, and yet you still manage to escalate what Kennedy started. You are filled with dreams of genocide and mass extermination, and blame everyone else but yourself.’

  ‘And you are a moron!’ Reagan doesn’t even notice the chimp judge screaming at him. He goes on picking his nose. ‘You were led by the nose with dreams of duplicity in Hollywood and dreams of extermination in your White House years, and normally you would suffer for your crimes. But I have a bargain in store for all three of you.’

  The chimp judge hops down from behind the bench and waddles over. ‘How would you turkeys like a third strike at the end of existence? I could use some people like you.’

  Nixon nods like an excited dog, while Kennedy winks at the female jurors and nods towards his crotch.

  The chimp judge turns on Sue. ‘And as for you, Suzanne Bloch, it’s time to meet the end of your life.’

  The wall explodes and a brace of nuns run in.

  EIGHTY SIX

  I pull out the popgun and take the first one down. Sue grabs the chimp and holds him up by the throat, the Uzi aimed for his head.

  It doesn’t stop the nuns.

  ‘You can’t harm me!’ screeches the chimp judge. ‘I’m not even here.’ And he pops out of existence.

  The dead presidents head for the hole in the wall.

  ‘Sayonara, baby,’ laughs Nixon with a salute. ‘See you on the flipside, flatfoot.’ And he’s through, with Kennedy and Reagan in tow. The bigger problem of more armed nuns heads in our direction.

  ‘Back of the room!’ I shout, but Sue’s already there, laying down a stream of bullets to cover our tracks.

  We burst out of the court and we’re back in the desert, by the road, the shark idling nearby. Sue slams the door shut behind us and the whole building wobbles uncertainly and then crashes down, burying the nuns, who curse and swear and pray behind us.

  ‘What a stroke of luck,’ says Sue, then she turns and stops, staring over my shoulder. Her look says everything. We’re in at the deep end without a paddle.

  I turn to see a thousand ninjas lined up before us, all with weapons in their hands, all tense and ready to pounce.

  ‘Brace yourself, sugar,’ I say, getting between her and the ninjas. ‘This could be the end of the road.’

  The head ninja walks slowly forward and reaches into his tunic. I level the gun at him. So far there’s no sign of attack, but the first one that makes any dangerous moves gets aerated.

  Instead the ninja takes out a scroll and bows low, holding it towards me. Keeping the popgun on him, I take the scroll and unroll it.

  ‘You are cordially invited to take tea and whisky in the presence of Her Mother Superior at the Church of the Immaculate Immolation’ it reads.

  ‘Fancy a shot of the good stuff?’ I offer Sue. ‘Because we don’t have a choice.’

  EIGHTY SEVEN

  The Mother Superior is built like a brick outhouse. She’s got stubble on her chin, a face like a punch bag, and the robes that shroud her body can’t hide a bulk the size of a small orbiting planet.

  ‘Tea?’ she grunts, and offers a tiny cup in her ape-like fist.

  Sue shakes her head. ‘Hit me with the hard stuff.’ She nods to the whisky, and in no time we’re knocking back the bourbon and eyeing up the exits.

  ‘To what do we owe this pleasure?’ I ask, trying to be cordial. The butt of the cannon pokes out of my jacket, and in a fair fight I could whip this penguin into shape. But when have nuns ever been fair?

  The chief penguin turns her gaze on Sue. She’s trying to look sympathetic but it’s like watching a Republican trying to shake hands with a gay rights campaigner.

  ‘Suzanne, my dear.’ The Mother Superior smiles and a mirror across the room shatters. ‘Such a disappointment. We only wanted you to enter the fold and embrace the harmony of our ways.’

  ‘Kieran didn’t give me up for that,’ snaps Sue, and she gets out of the chair and approaches the nun. The Mother Superior recoils into her chair. ‘He gave me up because of what I know and what I wouldn’t do. You know that.’

  ‘All I know is a world of peace and harmony and serving our dear Lod—er, Lord.’ The Mother Superior smiles sheepishly. ‘You had the option of leaving once your time here had been served.’

  Sue points a finger at a clock on the wall. The hands don’t move. ‘You know very well we’re trapped in time, so don’t feed me that line. Time in this dump means time in eternity.’

  ‘You’re back now,’ says the penguin. ‘Back into the fold. If you would just join us we can learn to live in harmony with one another.’

  ‘Is that why you got the ninjas?’ I say. The Mother Superior shifts her gaze to me. ‘Nuns with guns not got the shakes to bring in one detective and a woman?’

  ‘The ninjas were a necessary evil,’ says the nun, trying to be graceful. ‘Our field operatives have proven to be less than effective.’

  The Mother Superior gets up and the building shifts under her weight.

  ‘You’re free to go, Mr Fury. You were never part of the bargain. All we wanted was the girl. All we wanted was to return her to the bosom of Grod—er, God. Surely you can understand that?’

  ‘What’s in it for me?’

  ‘The road to Kieran.’ The Mother Superior points out of the window. In the distance stands a tall tower. ‘That is where he lies. That is where he lives. The girl has been returned to us. I have an express car waiting outside for you right now.’

  ‘And what if I don’t?’

  ‘We have the ninjas to help us.’

  ‘And all I’ve got to do is hand over the moll?’

  The Mother Superior smiles at me. ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Why’s she so precious to you?’

  ‘She has certain assets we need to take advantage of.’

  I glance at Sue and she drops her eyes. ‘I can tell what kind of assets she’s got, sister.’ I turn to the Mother Superior. ‘As far as I can tell the moll’s used up all her favours with me. You can take her, do what you want. I’ve got a case to get on wi
th and I can’t spare the time for negotiating with penguins. Expect a bill from me.’

  It takes a second for the pun to sink in, but when it does the nun chuckles like crunching gravel.

  ‘Very clever, Mr Fury. Now if you’ll go downstairs, my driver will take you directly to Kieran.’

  I nod and walk towards the door. Then pause.

  ‘Just one thing?’ I turn to face the nun. She waits expectantly. ‘What happens when an unstoppable action meets an unmoveable force?’

  The nun looks confused for a second. ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Joe Fury kicks both their asses.’ And I sock the Mother Superior in the jaw and send her flying. That’s when all hell breaks loose.

  EIGHTY EIGHT

  The door pops open and two ninjas leap through, but their cold steel is no match for my popgun, which plugs them both square in the forehead.

  Sue’s beside me as we crash through the door, taking out a handful of nuns who are cleaning a heavy machine gun that’s aimed straight at the threshold.

  ‘Lot of firepower,’ I mutter, as I take down a screaming ninja who’s flying through the air towards us. ‘You must carry some heavy baggage.’

  ‘You can’t imagine,’ says Sue, kicking the teeth out of a ninja who’s trying to sneak up behind her.

  ‘Care to tell me the story?’ I smack a nun in the jaw, then ventilate a couple of fat comedy ninjas who are trying to attack us with strings of sausages.

  ‘It’s like I told you before,’ says Sue, elbowing a nun in the ribs and then slapping her a few times around the face, before drop kicking her through the window. ‘I was Kieran’s piece, his moll, his floozy. He used me and when I couldn’t offer him any more loving he tried to put me away, so my knowledge about his compound could never get out.’

  ‘You didn’t say that before.’ I grab a nun around the head and run her straight into a wall. ‘Your story keeps changing, sister. Now speak up.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Fury,’ says Sue, straight arming a ninja in the nuts and then finishing him off with a roundhouse kick. ‘There’s never a single strand with Kieran. Every story has a thousand variations depending on what he feeds into your mind. He really is the king of reality.’

  ‘Reality, my grandmother’s balls,’ I snap, popping several caps into a group of nuns who are raging towards us with blazing machine guns. ‘This is just more veiled stories. There has to be a truth somewhere.’

  ‘That’s exactly the point.’ Sue bashes the heads of two nuns together and they fall down, slapstick-style. ‘What is the very nature of truth?’

  ‘The dictionary defines truth as the conformity to fact or reality.’ I take out the kneecaps of a nun who’s brandishing a pump action shotgun.

  ‘That’s exactly the point,’ says Sue, kicking another nun square in the crotch. She goes down with a smile on her face. ‘Kieran knows no boundaries to truth or reality. He can literally stretch the reality around us.’

  ‘Trust me, sister,’ I say, as I take out a ninja who’s crawling across the ceiling. He falls onto four other ninjas, knocking them out. ‘This is a normal working day for me.’

  ‘The truth is, I have every connection with Kieran you could possibly think of,’ says Sue, blasting a ninja who’s dressed as a pantomime cow. ‘He stretches the infinite realities around him and weaves whatever spell he wants from them, and I’ve seen all my past existences.’

  ‘You’re not making sense, doll,’ I say, cold cocking a nun disguised as a wall.

  ‘You need to bone up on your theoretical quantum mechanics concerning a multiverse reality,’ shouts Sue, shooting a squad of ninjas a mean looking stare that sends them running away like girls.

  ‘I need to bone up on some one-on-one interaction with these jokers and my fists.’ I demonstrate this theory by knocking down several rabid nuns with a few good right hooks. ‘If you’ve seen every one of your past realities with Kieran, then isn’t this just another one?’ I spot an exit. ‘Through there!’

  We crash through into the next room—a vast overgrown docking bay with two huge water tanks, both housing state of the art submarines.

  And this one’s full of nuns and ninjas too.

  ‘That’s why Kieran wants me taken out of the picture,’ says Sue, flipping a ninja over the guard-rail and sending him screaming into the water below. ‘I found out he jumps between all those eternal realities and uses them to get my good looking ass out of his grasp.’

  ‘Then how come he landed you with the penguins?’ I emphasise my question by taking out a few nuns.

  ‘He’s stronger than me,’ says Sue, looking lost, but only after she’s bitch-slapped some ninjas. ‘He found out what I was doing and put a lock on my ability to leapfrog around the different existences. I’ve still got some talent left, but it’s finite. I’ve spent most of it getting you out of trouble.’

  ‘I make my own trouble, sister,’ I mutter, and just then the wall behind us explodes and the Mother Superior comes raging out into the docking bay, five times her normal size and screaming blue murder.

  EIGHTY NINE

  She’s on the rampage. Tossing her minions to left and right, the fire of the Lord in her eyes and a big chunk of steel in her hand.

  ‘Nun smash!’ she roars and starts lumbering over towards us, scattering everyone in her path.

  ‘The subs!’ I yell. Sue spins out a blaze of fire behind her, trying to take out the kneecaps, but it doesn’t do any good. I kick a nun off the ladder leading down to the nearer sub and we scramble down.

  ‘Return to your Mother Superior!’ screams the penguin, enraged, and grabs the ladder, wrenching it backwards and forwards. I sling an arm around a rung and catch hold of Sue as she loses her grip and starts to fall.

  ‘Time to take the big dive,’ I shout, and we jump the last twenty feet and scramble towards the sub’s hatch.

  As I spin the hatch wheel, Sue goes straight for the sub’s main cannon, an ugly piece of steel holding six inch shells. She spins it around and aims straight for the Mother Superior’s head.

  ‘Genuflect in front of this!’ she snarls, and blasts off a shot. The head nun ducks and the shell knocks a hole in the roof.

  ‘Get in!’ I’ve got the hatch open and we scramble inside.

  Driving a sub’s just like driving a car—just a lot harder to pick up chicks with.

  I jam the sub into gear and it groans and screeches and backs off out of the bay. Sue’s at the periscope and she doesn’t look happy. ‘She’s gaining on us!’

  ‘Better load up a torpedo,’ I mutter as we sail back towards the closed doors.

  ‘The sub won’t make it!’ Sue looks panicked, but this isn’t the first time I’ve been in this kind of situation.

  ‘Get me some grens,’ I tell her, and she searches around the hold until she uncovers a sack of pineapples just waiting for the pins to be pulled. ‘Better get out of here, sister. This could get messy.’

  She scoots up the ladder as I race down to the torpedo deck and pull the pins on the grenades. I make it back onto the sub’s deck as it drifts gently towards the end of the docking bay.

  The Mother Superior’s still raging against the machine, picking up a generator and tossing it against the wall.

  We dive into the water and head for the nearest piece of dry metal. Sue’s up and out, popping off nuns like it’s her birthday.

  The sub crashes against the doors of the docking bay and the whole thing goes up in a blinding explosion that knocks everyone off their feet, except the Mother Superior.

  ‘Nun Kill!’ she shouts, and heads towards us stomping everyone in her path, nuns and ninjas alike begging for mercy as her huge feet come crashing down on them.

  The sub explosion has blown a hole in the wall. I grab Sue and we hightail it out of there and into the desert, water from the docking bay sloshing around us, the head nun still raging after us.

  ‘She’s impossible to stop!’ screams Sue. ‘She’s like a force of nature! She’s o
ne of Kieran’s most successful experiments.’

  ‘And she’s wearing the building.’ I aim for the pivotal nail in the structure and pop off a shot. It spins out, and the whole building starts to shake.

  The Mother Superior starts to flail at the debris as it falls down around her. With a grinding heave the whole building gives up the ghost and collapses on top of her.

  ‘That won’t stop her,’ says Sue.

  ‘It’s not meant to,’ I say. ‘But it should keep her down long enough that we can get on with the case.’

  ‘What case, Mr Fury?’ says a voice behind me, and I turn to see a suave businessman in a suit, smoking the finest Havana known to man. ‘The only case you’ll be looking at if you go for that popgun will be a casket.’

  NINETY

  ‘What the hell are you babbling about, Mac?’ I yell, taking a bead on his crotch. ‘Speak now or forever hold your nuts.’

  The businessman laughs in a self-satisfied way and swaggers over towards us. ‘You mistake my rather individual sense of humour, you moronic rectal breach.’

  I’m lining up to take his jawbone down when he slaps an arm around my shoulders. ‘Money is an interesting object, isn’t it, Mr Fury?’

  ‘Depends who’s holding the clip,’ I say. ‘Now scotch me a cigar and let’s talk business.’

  ‘Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly.’ The businessman snorts laughter through his nose.

  ‘You have my permission to kick his nads into outer space when this is over,’ I mutter to Sue as we’re led away.

  NINETY ONE

  A short trip later and we’re whisked into the offices of OmniShyte Corp, a huge, black towering skyscraper on the edge of the road.