Three Men in a Car

[Wesforce]

A story I wrote a good few years ago. Not related to RA2 or Shadowrun or anything in anyway. Set in a 'near-future setting', in the UK.

Contains bad language, racial slurs, etc etc. Character's points of view don't necessarily reflect the author's etc.

Hope you like it :)


(Part1)


Three men were in a car, two in the front and one in the back. It was nighttime, and the night-lights of the city were resplendent in their sodium haloes.

The people of the night, too, were out in force, selling their wares from street corners, from grubby shops, from little plastic bags, or, if they were really flash, from briefcases and limos.

The three young men in the car didn’t reckon themselves like such filth. Of course, they were wrong…

Jasminder Ghosn was nervous. He had been nervous all week, and the only things comforting him at the moment were the gun in his pocket (with three clips of nice shiny new Banks™ 9mm’s) and - at last - the promise of some decent paying work. He assumed his two `companions` were nervous too. He looked at them. Woodbridge, driving…

Woodbridge was a white boy. Whiter than white, in fact, the kind that wear white face make-up, black eyeliner and nail varnish, all in leather. He didn’t think himself nervous, he was too tall, dark and mysterious, too cool, to be nervous about anything (His words). He concentrated on driving the road-wheeler to their meeting point.

James LeMarchand honestly didn’t get nervous, or scared. He just thought about money, and killing people. In the last five minutes and forty-two seconds he’d imaginarily murdered over five hundred not-so-innocent bystanders.

And when this is all over, I’ll get back to France, he thought. And before I go I’ll give that Paki bastard in the back a couple of bullets, along with that queer English Goth faggot.

To say none of them liked each other was like saying the Callisto wars had been `A bit of a scrap`. In fact, they would have killed each other many times over, only, after their last botched job, they were effectively thrown together, with a very angry mutual enemy which might – might – be paid off enough to let them get back to their former lives; back to the family drugs cartel, to university, to their French neo-nazi gang, whatever.

After driving to the outskirts of the city, Woodbridge parked the stolen Ford behind a boarded-up shopping terrace in a deceased council estate. This was one of the many parts of town neither the regular police nor His Majesty’s Royal Cyber Police dared to travel into. There weren’t even maglev lines in the road – the electromagnets having been levered up and pinched years ago. The residents had better use for them than riding flash, horribly expensive cars over. Only road-wheelers could use this road, and pretty desperate road-wheelers at that.

The three were lucky not to have been killed for what they carried and drove already. Only hope (or was it greed?) had brought them into such a dangerous part of town anyway. A thousand pairs of hungry eyes watched from the disintegrating high-rises either side of the silent streets wherever they went.

Jaz was first out, and into the flickering street lighting – a solitary lamppost, fighting the darkness like a sad lone gunman, losing. Jaz moved toward the side door of the shopping terrace by which Woodbridge had parked. He used a pre-arranged knocking code.

Woodbridge and LeMarchand were both behind Jaz now. They checked their guns – cheap brownings like Jaz’, although LeMarchand wondered about bringing what he called his `Artillery` - and were happy enough to let the Pakistani go first. It was him, through his second cousin, after all, who had arranged this `business meeting`.

There was a moment or two of silence. Jaz whistled, whilst eyeing the doorframe foe any spyholes or cameras or suchlike. He didn’t find one, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one there…

[Toxic10x]

tis cool :) The only truly accurate description is that it's very wesforcian :p

[Wesforce]

Evidently the building’s occupants were pleased enough with what they saw. The door opened. A stocky black man in a suit and shades – instantly out of place in the dead scenery – motioned the three forwards.

“Whassup my man?” Jaz ventured jauntily, proffering the knuckle knock of respect. The suit’s face didn’t move a millimetre. He just motioned them inside. Jaz shrugged and went in, Woodbridge followed, gathering his immaculate leather trenchcoat around him, one black finger-nailed hand moving automatically to protect his lengthy, styled hair as he bent to get through the door.

LeMarchand frowned at this unmanliness, and as he entered the building imagined how they’d all look stomped by the tread of a French army Gryphonne assault biped.

It was dark, the abandoned stockroom, which they found themselves in; what little light came in through the two cracked greasy windows highlighted empty boxes and broken debris all over the floor.

In this gloom the three hired-guns-to-be caught the outline of a further three men standing abreast a dozen feet away, their smart suits and foreboding stance screamed `Business` and `muscle growth genes` simultaneously. The middleman stepped forward, so his face was in the light. He wore mirrored glasses, and the silly-looking sandy goatee beard conflicted with his garish orange hair.

“Well I’ll get to the point shall I?” He pinched his words sharply; clearly he came from the cushy corporate sector of the city, where all the shots were called. “I know about your situations, all of you. I know you need money to pay off the Yakuza-” The three winced at being reminded of their predicament. “- And I sincerely wish to…help you”.

LeMarchand rolled his eyes. Woodbridge considered the `Bull****` sneeze, thought better of it. “However, you must help me before I can help you. I-”

“Yeah, get to the point, innit?” Jaz interrupted. Woodbridge couldn’t believe the arrogance. But didn’t react, he was too cool to react. And if the little dick screws this job He thought, it was his own doing, and he’d set it up anyway, but he’d pay. LeMarchand didn’t give two merdes sideways. Right now, he was imagining the corpguy with a combat knife shoved through each eye.

The corpguy snorted.

“Very well. Mind you, I’m not sure if you’re up to what I now ask of you.” Before Jaz could speak out again, he put up a hand and cut him off. “Understand that none of what I am about to tell you is to get out of this room. If it does, the consequences will be dire. If you think you’re in trouble now, you’re even stupider than you look.” Which could be impossible, he didn’t add. The three had already heard as much from the Yakuza’s patsies, and in any case had nothing to lose. “I want you to kill the pop star Lei-Fang Jones.”

And for a moment again, there was silence.

Lei-Fang Jones; the world’s most successful Welsh-Oriental singer, a bubblegum-pink teenage temptress whose Lolita-like charms – if not her frenzied wailing and regurgitant computer-pop backing – were only just beginning to conquer the charts. She already had an army of fans, and although not yet #1 in the pop who’s who, she was a dead cert to clean up at next year’s BRITS.

“Need I remind you, you can back out now, walk away.” Mr Corpguy said. Woodbridge thought about doing the `Bull****` sneeze again; he didn’t believe any one hiring someone for such a reason – probably a rival record company, who stood to gain from Lei-fang Jones’ demise, he reasoned – would want street-scum like he and his companions running around with such valuable and potentially damaging information. It would be so much simpler to just have them erased. Mr Corpguy knew that he knew as well, judging by the grim that suddenly appeared on his tanned, shop-bought face.

What choice did they all have?

The only reason Corpguy had held up the façade was because of his conditioning sessions in business-like manner with The Company, whoever they were.

“Okay, we’ll do it.” Woodbridge surprised himself when he said that. A moment later, so did Jaz. As for LeMarchand, he had imagined Lei-Fang Jones with a bullet in her pretty little head the first time he had seen her…

[Wesforce]

Not for the first time, Woodbridge – Chris Woodbridge, Mathematics student at Exeter University, amateur electrician, even more amateur hired gun but professional good looker (in his own eyes) – cursed his predicament. Over the past two weeks since they’d been hired, they’d learned from painstakingly gained rumour that Lei Fang Jones hadn’t cashed in on her fame yet. She currently lived in a posh stately home in England’s micro-greenbelt. Hertfordsbury or something. From turning over the sum of their contacts (Jaz’ second cousin, and a guy called Dave at Exeter uni) it seemed that sweet little Lei-Fang was being loaned this house; it was rented out to her record company. ‘Loveless records’. A new company, barely six months old, but like Lei-Fang herself – because of Lei-Fang – a fast riser. The important fact was that someone hadn’t bothered to install a decent security system at the house, because of the company’s low profits so far. Putting up to date electronic surveillance in an old house cost more than it was worth.

That’s what they think. Tossers.

The job sounded pretty straightforward from now on, but that was what worried Woodbridge; the sooner they would get paid – if they got paid, not `silenced` - he knew his `companions well enough to know that they would kill each other for the money as soon as their backs were turned. And then there was still the Yakuza…


The nameless businessman had given Jaz a contact number with which he was to be informed of the three’s progress. Jaz had just finished such a call when his phone beeped; he almost spilt his pseudo coffee. Bolting upright on the mouldy couch that he idled on a moment ago, LeMarchand and Woodbridge turned irritated razor eyes on him from the rusted spring-bed and mattress they had commandeered respectively in this decrepit crumbling lice hotel, somewhere in Slumville, Nowhereton, `Great` Britain.

“Well answer the ****ing phone then!” Woodbridge tried to command. Instead his voice was distant and spaced – a side effect of the Neoleum, a drug he’d acquired a taste for at university and now took through a twenty four hour intravenous drip; it made everything he saw look shiny, plastic and sterile, as if he could block out the decay of the world. But most importantly, he liked the way he looked in the mirror, shiny, gleaming and clean.

“Eat **** whitey, innit?” Jaz replied automatically. He keyed a button on the wristcom to take the call while LeMarchand wondered if he could take them both out with a single shot. He decided after a moment he could do with one of those new military mono-chainsaws…

“This is about Lei-Fang,” The voice was telling Jaz, “We have…some things you might need,” The voice - young, white male, well off, Jaz was noting – paused.

“What?”

“You know that, uh, place, um, The Snub, right?” Jaz did know the place, a nightclub. He’d made some decent money there in the past.

“Wait, who the **** are you, innit?”

“Just be there,” The nervous youngster snapped “At eight o’clock. Ask for George Asda, got it? Good.” The voice had sounded reassured before the line went dead. Jaz paused and took a moment to think. It was almost eight now, and The Snub wasn’t too far, they could drive there in time. It looked like an easy night out; he could peddle some more pills while he was there (he always carried a good supply, low-grade stuff, though he hadn’t gotten any from his family for a while now). He got up, stretching his short, thin frame, and announced:

“We ****in’ goin’ to town now, innit?”

He briefly relayed to Woodbridge and LeMarchand the call he’d just had. Woodbridge didn’t reply, though he sensed an obvious trap, he couldn’t be bothered to reply – the Neoleum again. LeMarchand was glad to be leaving the squat – he could sense killing in the air, and he wanted to be there.

[Wesforce]

It took the three five minutes to get there, thanks to the maglev car Woodbridge had hotwired. The Snub was a complete dive of a club, the kind of place with drinks watered down with what tasted like piss, dangerous faulty wiring sparking from overheads a crappy underpowered ancient sound system which caught fire on average once a week, carpet you stuck and sunk into, five chairs two tables and a dancefloor you could park a maglevmini on…just.

It was populated with teenagers too young-looking to get into the `proper` clubs and the music they played reflected that. Hideous plasti-pop warbling, electro-soft rock, the kind of stuff only the impressionably young and naïve could possibly enjoy. The DJ even mixed in some Lei-Fang Jones material. LeMarchand shrugged inwardly when he heard it – She was a pretty enough little bitch, he thought, but if it came to a choice between her dying and him dying – which it would – he knew what choice he would make. At least I will make it pleasurable for us both. I am a gentleman, after all.

Jaz had easily gotten them past the bouncers outside, they’d recognised him, not even searching for any possible weapons they might be carrying, which of course they did – their 9mm pistols. The club had changed a bit from Jaz’ last visit – now one wall boasted the luxury of a holo-wall, obsolete by at least two generations. It fit in well with the peeling flowery wallpaper and hanging wires.

Woodbridge and LeMarchand looked collectively with distaste when Jaz moved onto the dancefloor and started gyrating. The kids there were wide-eyed – most of them were from secluded corporate projects and had rarely seen Pakistanis before. Jaz barely noticed, he was used to it and it didn’t stop him making a bit of a profit. He’d started some pills – old-fashioned E’s – to the kids after a few minutes of sweaty dancing.

Both Woodbridge and LeMarchand wisely avoided the dancefloor, it wasn’t to either of their tastes and neither were the ‘drinks’ on sale as the bald greaseball of a barman had called them. Instead the two became entranced by the holo-display. Sure enough, Lei-Fang Jones appeared after a while. She was pretty in an odd Lolita-like way. She looked about twelve years old. Woodbridge always thought she looked kind of plasticcy, synthetic. Even to his influenced eyes. She was certainly older than she looked, but computer altered enough to appeal to the target audience the record company set out for her. Anyway, Woodbridge preferred his women in monochrome, panda-eyed black on white, all falling eyelids and lipstick, and older too.

LeMarchand wondered how many of the little boys and girls in this room he would be able to kill with one grenade (French Army issue GIAT anti-personnel deuxieme).

Jaz, having made a tidy profit in kiddie-cash decided it was time to attend to business, much to Woodbridge’s relief; he was getting impatient and untrustworthy of the short man. All three went to the bar, and Woodbridge especially looked relieved to get away from the giggling teenagers who, as naïve teenage girls are wont to do, seemed awed by any tall, dark older stranger who crosses their path. He, still wearing his habitual costume and leather trenchcoat – he sweated like hell in this club – managed to remain aloof but inwardly craved the attention. He coolly brushed a lock of jet hair back as he strode after Jaz, safe in the self-knowledge that he was the coolest guy in the whole place…in his own mind at least.

LeMarchand wondered if he would be able to kill the bar-toad with an axe thrown from where he stood on the other side of the room…

Jaz finally pushed his way to the bar, the crowd of speeding, E-ing and drunk 15 year-olds offering little resistance, and he caught the bar-toad’s attention by shouting at him, very loudly, much to the annoyance and ear-pain of about thirty would-be underage drinkers crowding, who now realised they were out of there depth and made themselves scarce. The bald, greasy lardass behind the hole-in-the-wall bar came complete with a vest sporting numerous suspicious stains and a badly trimmed moustache. He walked over, visibly annoyed and had to shout over the fridge-buzz of the music.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” He sounded just like a Wall-Street businessman. Jaz panicked, put off guard by the abruptness, trying to remember the contact name he’d been given. The Barman grew agitated, face steaming up red. He could have been serving more kids as Jaz pondered, but the young wannabe hitman eventually remembered:

“WE LOOKING FOR GEORGE ASDA, INNIT MAN?” He spoke in his own unique family dialect, that University boy Woodbridge and Toulouse native LeMarchand had such a hard time making sense of.

The barthief studied Jaz briefly, sighed like an out of breath horse and led the three to the back door, probably begrudging the (meagre) profits he’d lost by not being at the bar for a few seconds.

“Hurry the **** up, innit?” Jaz shouted impatiently. He always tried to boss people around, the first thing Jaz did whenever he met someone new was to try and establish control over them, intimidate them. The bartender gave his distressed-horse sigh again, but didn’t want any trouble. He keyed his security code into door’s keypad and it swished open out to a wide loading area with a few rusted beer kegs and some crates of Robo-Crisps for decoration.
“George is in there. Ya got five minutes. Don’t **** around with my stock.”

[Wesforce]

It was cold in the stockroom, but mercifully the ‘Music’ was reduced to a low rumble from the floor and walls, and the little brats were gone, with their pink day-glo clothes and high-pitched screaming. LeMarchand wasted no time in contravening the barman’s instructions and made a move on the Robo-Crisps (plastic pig flavour), only stopping eating once he realised exactly how out of date they were.

The three desperadoes didn’t have to wait long for George Asda. Woodbridge saw him first.

“Huh. What’s this, some kind of ****ing joke?”

George Asda was a stereotypically geeky, gawky fourteen year old and quick to reply to Woodbridge.

“Shut it you freak. I called you here and I know what you’re up to.” He snapped. Jaz recognised the erratic voice from the phone conversation. Woodbridge didn’t like a kid talking to him like that, he was livid.

“**** off, kid. Get your mum or something, we’ve got business to do. Get back to whacking off over your computer or whatever you kids do.”

“Screw you, you ****ing Goth bitch, this is my deal. You don’t want what I got, you can pucker up and kiss my big black ass!” George was as white as they come, and painfully skinny. Woodbridge didn’t like being called a bitch either. He was livid. The rage boiled up inside him, in fact, so much so he was teetering on the edge of losing his cool. Luckily he realised this and with a titanic effort of self-control he managed to calm himself down, breathing normal, no hard feelings, before anyone noticed. Cool as ever, he mused inwardly.

“Look, kid, you’d better not have wasted our time.” Woodbridge spoke with conspicuous calm, as if to imply concealed threat. George Asda was unmoved. He smirked. Woodbridge turned and walked past Jaz. “You and your ****ing so-called contacts.”

“Yeah, **** you whitey, innit?” Jaz retorted as he went up to get some sense from the kid. LeMarchand crossed his arms and sighed. He could sense death approaching…no, not yet, not this kid, but someone like him would die soon…This established, LeMarchand decided to busy himself with what mattered - for him that meant wondering how many English he could kill using a poisoned crate of Robo-Crisps (plastic pig flavour).

Jaz had his own questions for George Asda.

“Have you got anything for us or what, innit? And who told you what we was up to> Tell us or else we gonna **** you man, innit? We gonna **** you up innit?” He threatened, being as intimidating as he knew how and stepping forward to show the gun in his puffa jacket pocket.

George Asda visibly paled beneath his acne-ridden veneer, took a gulp, but to give him credit he was able to carry on speaking, which isn’t something every fourteen year old can do when threatened by three random armed thugs.

“Yeah, I g-g-got somethin’ to t-t-tell you,” Asda took a breath, building up to something. “You’re never gonna kill Lei-Fang!” Jaz and LeMarchand suddenly took interest. They thought Asda had wanted to sell them plans to the house that he might have hacked off a computer, or security codes or something. They looked at him and they saw something that frightened Woodbridge. Asda had a fiery gleam in his eyes, the gleam of a fanatic, a look which had no place on the face of a boy. He was changing in front of they’re eyes, no longer an insecure teenager, but some kind of righteous warrior. His voice rose to a crescendo.

“You don’t know who you’re ****ing with! Lei Fang is a god, and you, you scum, you ****ing unbelievers, you’re nothing but pawns in the big game!” He was ranting, waving his arms wildly. Jaz didn’t know whether to laugh or run. Asda was a man possessed. “We are her acolytes! I’m here to warn you, warn all these ****ers, prepare them!” He ripped open his shirt. He had a Lei-Fang T-Shirt underneath, still making exasperated gestures at Jaz. “You, you will be the first sacrifices! We are preparing for the glorious ascension of our god, and I’m blessing you with the chance to be at the heart of it all!” With that he lunged forward, taking Jaz completely off-guard - he was stunned. Asda came away, with Jaz’ Browning in his hand, pointed directly at his thumping heart. “Yes, just the first sacrifices yo - uhk!”

The speech was cut short as LeMarchand’s fist broke Asda’s jaw, almost tore it off, in fact, and sent the boy flying across the concrete before hitting the ground with a loud thump and a crack. He lay still, and the silence that followed was deafening. It seemed even the kiddie-muzak had stopped.

Jaz stifled his shaking, the unhinged screaming of Asda’s voice, he could tell the whitey kid believed what he was saying. Blasphemy, bull****. He’d almost died. He bent down to retrieve his gun.

Woodbridge decided to increase his Neoleum dosage - the real world was starting to creep in.

Only LeMarchand - who’d just finished his experiment to see if he could kill a fourteen year old with a single punch - had the composure to speak, dimly realising he hadn’t done so for over a week.

“Please can we just go and kill this bitch now.”

It wasn’t a question.

Woodbridge and Jaz nodded wordlessly. It was the second time they’d agreed on something wholeheartedly. The three ran and scrambled over the club’s loading gate leaving the inert boy behind them. As they ran into the night, Woodbridge could have sworn he could hear laughing…

[Wesforce]

Just a kid out of his head, that’s all, just a weirded out kid who fancies some bird too much. Nothing odd there, nothing out of the ordinary. Woodbridge was telling himself over and over, sitting in the hotseat of the maglev car. LeMarchand and Jaz had said nothing, other than to tell him to get back to the squat. Once there, LeMarchand had gotten all their belongings and bundled them into the car. It was he who broke the silence, again.

“Let’s do it, yes? None of your English screwing around. I just want to kill this little bitch and be done, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Innit.” Jaz and Woodbridge agreed, both struggling through LeMarchand’s accent. Woodbridge pulled out into the London night-traffic. Revellers filled the streets, young men in pastel shirts and smart shoes, and hordes of kids in Nike hats and tracksuits trying to get themselves run over. Woodbridge was glad for a moment that LeMarchand wasn’t driving.

The going was slow. A bottle smashed against the car windscreen.

“Merde! Let me drive! I will show these English wankers who they are ****ing with!” LeMarchand raged.

He wound down his window. Woodbridge put his foot to the floor, weaving around jammed traffic. Better get going before that ****ing nutter does anything stupid. The car scattered a group of drunks, then bounced off the maglev roadway, ploughing a furrow through a picturesque garden roundabout before jouncing back onto the roadway on the other side. The mag-engine whined in protest but Woodbridge kept it from redlining, and the car picked up speed, now clear of the worst of the traffic. LeMarchand was still shouting. He put his head back in the car. Clearly pissed off that he hadn’t got the kids who’d bottled the car. He fumed, but slunk back into his seat.

He wasn’t the only one pissed off.

“So what’s the plan?” Woodbridge asked his rear-view mirror, eyeshades running with the tracks of the city-lights. He had to wait for an answer.
The car was still moving faster than most of the cars on the road, weaving deftly around the slower road-wheelers as it climbed up onto the flyover that would lead to the main road out of London. At least one car was keeping pace, gaining ground serenely. Woodbridge tracked it in the rear-view mirror.

They can’t be following us. They can’t be following us. They aren’t following us.

It was clear that the car was following them. It too was a mag-lev, and was easily keeping up with Woodbridge. He couldn’t believe a car was following them, and didn’t want to believe. He’d only passed his driving test two months ago. He didn’t tell the other two in the car, sitting behind him.

“Woodbridge, I’m ****ing talking, innit?”

Who’s talking?

“Whitey answer me innit? Before I smash your glasses in!” It was Jaz, getting impatient. Woodbridge hadn’t heard him. He was watching the pursuing mag-lev in the wingmirror, pulling up alongside his car. The car rocked as the presence of the other mag-lev destabilised it, but a tight grip on the wheel kept it on the mag-line.

on’t worry mate, they’re only overtaking. Just pulling past, that’s all… He was telling himself. Yeah, be cool about it. Act cool. Show nothing.

Woodbridge was vaguely aware of a motion in the back of the car as a large, shaven-headed shouting object pushed past Jaz, threatening to tilt the balancing car. What the **** now? He thought as he turned - one hand on the wheel, the other draped leisurely over the door frame to his right, looking every bit as cool and relaxed as he wanted to – to glance at the driver passing by the right of his car. He looked, saw a teenage driver with a couple of mates in the back. Nothing too threatening. He put his eyes back on the road ahead.

He did a double-take.

The driver-kid was wearing a Lei-Fang Jones T-Shirt in bubblegum Pink.
Suddenly the gentle hum of the mag-drive was drowned out by a massive stuttering blast of gunfire. The back window of Woodbridge’s car was blown outward, sparks of metal battered off the side of the car alongside as small bullets tattooed into it, smashing the plas-glass rear windows, beating a deadly pattern all over the side of the car.

“DIE!!!” LeMarchand screamed, leaning out and laughing, squeezing the trigger of his Enfield Submachinegun, the same gun he had kept patiently wrapped, padded with white socks into a sports bag the whole time he’d been in England. All that time he’d been waiting for this moment, and now he was going to bloody well make the most of it. Cases fountained from the gun and spilled all over the road as it rushed by at 80 miles per hour. Jaz was screaming, Woodbridge bit his tongue. LeMarchand was loving it.

The car with the Lei-Fang Jones fans was getting chewed up. Woodbridge couldn’t see well, but it was covered in holes all along the side, windows shattered and glistening with the blood of the young occupants of the car. It dropped back, swerved drunkenly.

“Stop the car! Stop the car! Stop, Woody! Let’s stop and finish the ****ers off!” LeMarchand was dribbling. He’d ducked back into the car to load another clip into his steaming gun.

“Drive! Drive!” Jaz screamed. He just wanted to get out of here. As far as he was concerned the psycho sitting next to him had just scrambled across him to the other side of the car to mow down a car full of innocent bystanders with a machine gun. He wanted no part of it, understandably.

“Drive Whitey!”

“Shut it Paki! Let’s kill ‘em!”

“****ing frog bastard innit!” Jaz was reaching for his own gun, maybe to force Woodbridge to stop, go faster, whatever, most probably to kill the lunatic with the heavy firepower. LeMarchand leaned back out of the window. He caught a first rate view of the other car recovering, speeding up the roadway like a cheetah on steroids on a greasy shiny slope. It clipped a hapless road-wheeler spinning into the crash barrier before reaching Woodbridge’s car again.

LeMarchand filled the windscreen with holes, laughing all the while and laughed even harder when it exploded in a shower of blood.

He didn’t count on the Lei-Fang Jones fan driver’s determination, and dead weight on the accelerator pedal. The car still hit Woodbridge’s car. It didn’t hit hard, but it didn’t need to. Positive repulsion of the two cars’ mag-drives, added to the fact that the cars were floating, flying at ridiculous speeds, saw to that. Violently Woodbridge’s head hit the steering wheel, coming away with blood smearing into his white face. He felt his own body thrown this way and that, and so were his two helpless companions. The car flipped up, floating high over the crash barrier.

Somewhere on the up incline, the fracturing windscreen came away. Wind tore the scream from Woodbridge’s mouth. One finger was still acting on intelligence over terror; it pressed a button on the dashboard that flicked the mag-drive’s ground repulsion to maximum. It didn’t do any good. They continued on the high arc, down now, off the elevated roadway. Down, into the city.

[Andra]

w00t, good story as usual Wes :). Post more n00 :p

Good character in Jaz as well...I hate him already.

[Wesforce]

I tried to make everyone as hatable as possible. Jaz is based on someone I used to know at school :color1:

[Wesforce]

Great, back where we started. Good one. Woodbridge might have told himself if he weren’t so bloody terrified and trapped in a flaming earth-bound screaming meteorite of doom.

Both Jaz and LeMarchand were screaming, one endless, blood-curdling wail, all the way down. Buildings rushed up to meet the little car. They hit one and came away with a shower of sparks and crumbled concrete, bouncing away at an angle that took them striking a glance off another high-rise. A huge chunk was ripped off the roof an inch from Woodbridge’s head and burning, crumpled metal flopped into his lap. Blood was coming out of Woodbridge’ mouth, he’d bitten his tongue. Even so, time was slowing down as he sat there, strapped into his seat. He remembered his steering wheel and threw it hard to the left, just in time - The air rudder on the back of the car swung the car just enough so they clipped the next building instead of splatting against it like an oversized fly. He swung back the opposite direction after bouncing, spinning crazily off what used to be someone’s penthouse flat. After that the rudder was torn away.

“****.”

They hit another building, tearing away most of the car’s undercarriage in a cavalcade of burning metal. Woodbridge thought he was going to black out. He hoped he would. He could see the ground rushing up to meet the plummeting mag-lev.

Let it be quick.

Unluckily for him, the car was a masterpiece of aerodynamic design. The wind rushing past the stub wings on the car’s fairings pulled the car out of vertical dive into a controlled descent - like it was designed to do in an emergency. Instead of making a bloody mess of His Majesty’s pavement, they landed with a hop, skip and a jump. They finished up in a burning tangle of the metal of half a dozen parked cars.

Woodbridge was the first out, still cursing himself for not blacking out and dying peacefully. He hopped down, started running up and down in front of the flames, not quiet believing he was alive. LeMarchand was next. He carried something that kicked and screamed in horrible pain.

“Get off me you ****ing nutter! My leg! You’ve broken me ****ing leg! ****ing frog! ****!” Jaz gritted through blood soaked teeth

“Quit ****ing whining or I’ll ****ing gut you! I saved you didn’t I?” LeMarchand let Jaz drop into a writhing pile. He wasn’t having a good night. LeMarchand carried on cursing and swearing at him, blaming him for him not being able to shoot the car that had rammed them off the flyover properly. Jaz cursed him back, vehemently, in several languages for being a defiler of mothers, sisters, brothers, fathers and goats, and for being a psycho besides. They both cursed Woodbridge for driving off the damn flyover. He shouted back, abandoning all pretence of ‘coolness’. Moments later he was doubled up, puking his guts out. After he’d finished retching he dimly noticed Jaz and LeMarchand punching and kicking the stuffing out of each other. LeMarchand was winning, being about two feet taller and less injured than his opponent. More distressing was the fact that Woodbridge’s neoleum flask had broken, glass smashed and embedded in his Leather coat and belly. He couldn’t feel the pain, much of the neoleum had gone straight into his blood. Strange images swam before his eyes - Jaz and LeMarchand melded into a shifting carpet of Linoleum, throwing globules of melted plastic high into the air. His own bloodied belly became a mesmerizing, twisting whirlpool, red and white twisting into a black hole. He looked up from the floor, not even realising he’d fallen over. A man or woman stood over him, prodding him with what felt like an electrified vibro needle. It made odd sounds, inquisitive.

“Stop.” He moaned. “Stop.”

Then he was on his feet again, a smoking gun in his hand. A puddle of burnt plastic evaporated at his feet. Elsewhere in the sodium blazing streets multicoloured flowing puddles of upright plastic - which he realised were people - started sloshing this way and that.

“Ugh. ****ing neoleum AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIHHHHHHHHH stopstopsnapsnapsnapoutsnap out of it clear it now!”

Right then he vowed he’d never touch drugs again, ever. His head span. Needles went through bloodshot eyeballs to deposit explosive acid into his brain. Never again.

We all make promises we don’t keep.


Jaz and LeMarchand would have had a great time watching the black-clad student rolling around in agony, shooting imaginary enemies, but they had other things to do. A car had pulled up, swerving to a halt in a huge mag-lev handbrake turn to jacknife just meters from where Woodbridge rolled in his own puke. LeMarchand dropped Jaz in the cover of some burning detritus from the car crash and wasted no time in opening fire at the new arrival. He didn’t bother to see who came out of the car before firing. The stuttering of Submachinegun fire filled the night again.

“Aha, English tossers! You pick the wrong francais to screw with tonight, non?” Bullets cracked into the car, but the occupants were out and ducking behind it quick as a flash. They had guns too, handguns which they fired wildly over their makeshift cover. Jaz had his gun out, too, and added to the fusillade. He fired wildly, unnerved, body wracked with pain from bruises cuts and scrapes he’d had in the car crash and the fight with LeMarchand. Lemarchand slapped him on the side of the head while he fired his bullpup Submachinegun one handed.

“Shoot proper or don’t shoot you stupid ****!” And then to Woodbridge “Get up you ****ing faggot!”

LeMarchand had to stop and reload, Jaz was still frirng wildly, panicking. With the lull in the firepower a couple of the kids in Lei-Fang Jones T-shirts skittered out from behind their now burning car, running out to the left and diving into the rubble of a ruined newsagent.

“Merde!” LeMarchand shouted, snapped another clip into his overheating gun and started firing at where the kids had gone to ground. A bullet cracked past his head - The other kids had run out from behind the car and gone the opposite direction, taking pot shots with cheap handguns. One of them reached the cover of another car, this time on the right of where LeMarchand and Jaz were crouching. His friend suddenly staggered as if kicked in the stomach, fell on his side and doubled up on the floor screaming. Woodbridge carried on firing at the wounded figure. One of his friends back behind the car screamed at Woodbridge. If Woodbridge could have heard her, he would have ignored her.

Now the Lei-Fang fans were shooting at LeMarchand from three sides. Low velocity slugged sparked and shattered off the metal he crouched behind. Jaz was lying prone now, hands over his head.

“Get up you ****ing coward!”

“You get up! You kill ‘em! You ****ing started it!” Jaz spat. LeMarchand wasn’t even listening, but stood up again ready to let rip against the attackers. A microsecond later he felt a kick in his shoulder. Thinking it was Jaz he started to shut again, but before he got the chance he felt another blow to the opposite shoulder, then a crack in the shoulderblades. Then he was on the floor.

“Merde! Putain! Help me up you paki ****, now!” Jaz ignored him and got back up on his knees to risk a shot over the makeshift barricade.

“Shut up and die, innit?” He glanced at LeMarchand, then fired a bit more. “We’re ****ed!” LeMarchand had only just looked at his bleeding body. He could see two gunshot wounds in opposing arms. It felt like something else was lodged in his back. The pain was only a distant, disembodied feeling. LeMarchand knew pain, how to control it…

“Ahhhhh, Merde!” He screamed, wracked with blazing agony.

[Wesforce]

Jaz fired off the last bullet in his gun. Ducking down again to load his last clip, he hesitated. Breath running in ragged gasps born of desperation, blood pumping, he forced himself to listen. Nothing came back, but the sounds of the city, everyday sounds. No one was shooting back at him, even LeMarchand was quiet for his laboured breathing. It was he who broke the silence, as the seconds became minutes.

“Shot by ****ing English…”

“Shut it, I’m listening.”

A figure lurched into view, gloss black and crimson, staggering blind. It looked like a man in his own personal living end, blood dripping from lacerated belly, shedding shards of glass while moving, blood pulsating in a crimson skinflower on his left arm, knuckles white around a handgun. He flopped down beside LeMarchand without explanation, and lay still, barely breathing.

Woodbridge looked as good as he felt. He didn’t speak, which was good because Jaz was listening. A sound rose from the no-man’s land surrounding the three would-be assassins. At first Jaz thought it was just something in the background, like an Adflash or cop-siren, but it quickly rose into a hum, surrounding him with its intensity. Jaz was no music expert but he could hear the familiar melody developing. Someone started singing, the kids who had stopped shooting. The song was Lei-Fang Jones latest, greatest hit.

“I can’t believe this.” Woodbridge moaned. “Bloody kids…shot me. Bastards…”

“Bastard Anglais!” LeMarchand spat.

“What we gonna do? We’re ****ed!” Jaz added.

“Why aren’t they shooting?” Woodbridge was even more distant than usual, voice all hollow.

“How the **** should I know? Merde, why don’t you ask the little ****s you goddam queer!”

“****! They waiting, innit?” Jaz realised, putting a voice to all their suspicions. The kids could have moved in for the kill, they had to know it. But they weren’t, they were waiting. What for? Reinforcements? Police? Or something else, something worse…

“Remember that kid, in the bar…”

“Yeah, I should have castrated the little pig!” LeMarchand grimaced, now tearing bits off his combat trousers to try and tourniquet his wounds.

“He sounded like he had some big plan or something, innit?”

“Bull**** kid…”

“Then explain this!” Woodbridge swept his good arm, trying as best he could from his prone position to encompass the attackers waiting in cover before them. “Something’s definitely up. These kids are working for someone. They know us; they’re out to stop us. I know music, I know music fans.” He paused, wheezing, then continued. “I’ve known mates who’ve carved the names of their favourite bands into their arms, had surgery to look like them, all kinds of ****. But nothing like this. ****, man, these are kids! They’ve got ****ing guns and cars! They’re organised!”

“You ****ing English couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery! You’d fall in a vat of whores and come up sucking your own dicks!” He lapsed into French, ranting for a while, being unhelpful, then “And you,” He pointed at Jaz “****ing Muslim ****. We’ve kicked all of you out of France. You know why I’m here? I’m finishing the ****ing job! You hear about that ****ing mosque that got burned last month? Ha ha!”
Jaz was gripped with rage. He had his gun to LeMarchand’s head in an instant. The Frenchman was laughing. “Why don’t you do it brown boy?”

“**** you!” Jaz spat, finger tightening.

“Don’t.” Woodbridge moaned, pathetically.

“You need me, don’t you? You’ll never get out of this without me. Without my gun.”

“I can take your ****ing gun, innit?”

“And who’s to say some more pakis won’t get burned, eh? Who says somewhere, some gozens or whatever your ****ing family-”

“Ghosn.” Jaz corrected, with pride in his family/cartel name.

“Are gonna get booted in and torched.” LeMarchand clicked his fingers. “Fwoosh!” he said, for emphasis, and laughed again.

Grudgingly, Jaz slowly pulled back his gun. I can always use him for cannon fodder. He told himself.

“Coward.” LeMarchand said, maybe disappointed he hadn’t just got himself killed.

Woodbridge opened his mouth to speak, when a siren started up, very close. Cop cars swerved into the area between the three men and the Lei-Fang fans. The road-wheelers skidded to a halt. A cop jumped out carrying a submachine gun and dived to the ground to cover one side of the car. Another cop jumped out to do the same on the other side of the car, while a loudhailer boomed out;

“This is His Majesty’s Royal Cyber-Police! Alleviate yourselves of your firearms or we shall consider using physical force!”

“Allevi-what?” Jaz and LeMarchand told each other. Woodbridge saw clearly the mutual hate in their eyes, felt trapped hopelessly between them. A third figure got out, this one from the second cop-car. A seven-foot chrome giant, sporting the familiar ‘black tit with metal nipple’ police helmet, and a three-barrel rotary machinegun in place of a left arm. He was decorated all over with Royal insignia, livery and police badges and medals. LeMarchand thought he made a great target. He couldn’t help, ignoring the pain as he crunched painfully up onto his elbows, raised his Submachine gun -

“No, you fool!”

He pulled the trigger, spat a stream of bullets at the cyber-cop, striking sparks and damaging the livery before ducking down again, now sporting a savage grin. Woodbridge hadn’t seen much but guessed what LeMarchand had done. He was horrified. The cops all turned around at the direction of the fire and immediately opened up with their own guns, shouting orders to each other. One cop ran forward to flank LeMarchand, just like the kids had done moments earlier.

“Stupid ****! Stupid ****!” Jaz was screaming. “ Screw you guys!” He said, and ran directly away from the cops, despite the bullets striking all over the place. Woodbridge considered his options and followed Jaz a moment later, staggering drunkenly. That left LeMarchand on his own, still laughing. He stopped laughing when he saw the second cop run forward to support his comrade who had taken cover and started firing again. The two cops were leapfrogging from cover to cover, until they could take him out, all the while under cover from the cyber-cop - the noise while he fired the minigun was terrifying. LeMarchand knew he should have run, too, he might have escaped, but couldn’t help feeling -

“Damn! I want one of those guns!” He wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to lop his own arm off to graft on some firepower like the cyber-cop owned.

The cop running towards LeMarchand suddenly pitched forward to lay sprawled on his face, a ragged puncture wound in the middle of the back of his flak-vest; the kids had started firing at the police. LeMarchand laughed even harder, a broken rib grating against his lungs. The kids had just saved him, for the sake of keeping him alive for their own purposes.

“MAN DOWN MAN DOWN! GET THE ****ERS!” The standing norm-cop was screaming, crying over the prone figure of his friend. The Cyber-cop replied
“COPY.” In a flat metallic voice, then with inhuman speed, whirled to turn his six thousand rounds-per-minute firepower on the new attackers, hidden from LeMarchand behind the cop cars. LeMarchand wasted no time in getting up on his shaking legs and getting out of the street of death.

“Now to get that faggot Goth to steal us another car!” He laughed to himself, shouldering his gun.

[Wesforce]

With the kids and the cops taking care of each other Woodbridge had no problem getting another car, and all three piled into it without a word, leaving the car’s bloody-nosed owner swearing madly in the middle of the road. From there on it was nothing but a mad dash to the countryside, stopping for no one.

“Straight to her house. We go in, kill everyone, make the contact and get out, home, free.” Was what they had in place of a plan. None of them could think - wanted to think - any further than that. Fly driving past miles of brown fields full of rotting, dying plants, diseased cattle animals. The motorways branched out through small towns that were missed in the blink of eyes, past long-forgotten car service stations and the remnants of industry destroyed in the last stock market crash and never replaced. None of them cared in the slightest; they just watched their watches, milometers or checked the rear-view mirrors to see if yet more of the fanatics were on their way. Long hours ticked by, second by second, mile by mile. Jaz checked the working of his gun again and again, just trying anything to relieve the tension building up. After a while, LeMarchand slept peacefully, snoring loudly. He had been helped by the pills Jaz had force-fed him, anything to stop the pain, to stop him going trigger-happy again, until he was needed to, of course.

They found the house easily; it had a big ‘Loveless Records’ sign just outside it. It wasn’t nearly as posh as the three had been led to believe - it didn’t even have much in the way of a gate, or walls. It had a flimsy mesh fence with a padlock.

Woodbridge wasn’t over the side effects of his neoleum over-trip, and he doubted he would ever be. Actually, he was getting to like it, driving over a patchwork of beige linoleum motorway under the azure morning sky, hands like slick PVC on a wheel of flowing plastic. He’d never felt so cool, laid-back.

The car bounced through the weak fence and ground over the bones of the house grounds man who’d been smoking a fag behind it. Woodbridge hadn’t even noticed him. The car swung up the gravel path keeping a constant speed - very fast.

Two men in beige suits were standing in front of the house, wearing mirrored shades, submachineguns slung casually under arm. One of them pointed, mouth gaping comically in slow motion at rapidly approaching death. In A shower of gravel the car swung into a huge skid, crunching jacknifed into the side of the house with one of the men. Blood splattered all over the windows of the car - Jaz observed grimly - one minute he could see a man and a wall, the next all he could see was red, and broken glass. He had to fight not to be ill.

To his credit, the other suited man didn’t waste any time. He whipped up his gun and planted his feet sturdily in the ground, opening up on full-auto, straight into the front of the wrecked car. Luckily Woodbridge was slumped behind the dashboard. Bullets struck sparks all over the bodywork and perforated the seats, controls and engine block. By this time, LeMarchand - who had braced himself for the crash - was out of his right-hand rear door and brought up his own gun. He levelled a concentrated burst of firepower straight into the suit’s bulk. The man jarred under the impacts and stopped firing. He tried to shoot LeMarchand, despite having just been shot a dozen times himself. He had to be well armoured, LeMarchand thought. He didn’t give the man another chance. He clamped down on his trigger again and walked another stream of bullets into the man, controlling the bucking recoil easily with his thickly muscled arms. He watched fascinated as the man reeled under the impacts again and was rewarded when he saw the gun arm torn away in a shower of sparks and shrapnel. The man flopped to the ground.

The noise died down. Woodbridge crawled out of the car to collapse on the ground. Jaz staggered out groggily and LeMarchand gave him a clip around the ear to help him on his way.

The man LeMarchand had just shot was still moving. LeMarchand strode over to him, keeping the gun pointed at him all the time and a finger touching on the hair-trigger. His face twisted in a sneer of disgust.

“****ing cyborgs.” He spat. In his mind they were just as bad as blacks and pakis. “Tell me where the bitch is and I will make it easy for you. Painless, yes?” He grinned into the bloodied face. The one-armed man was writhing on the ground, sparking, buzzing and bleeding terminally. He still managed a good two-finger salute with his working arm.

“Go get ****ed frog-sucker!”

LeMarchand relished the opportunity. He reached into one of the gaping bullet-holes in the guard’s torso and ripped up a handful of wires and circuit boards, smeared with burning blood. He delighted in twisting them, ripping components from their housings. The man convulsed, twitched and screamed like a devil. It was music to LeMarchand’s ears.

Suddenly, with a gunshot the man went limp and died. The screaming stopped.
Jaz stood behind with his gun drawn, a whisper of smoke rising from the barrel.

“You little paki bastard! I was having fun! I will kill you bitch!”

“**** you! I saved your life, innit?” Jaz motioned to the stiffening corpse. The man LeMarchand was torturing had produced a gun with his good hand that LeMarchand hadn’t noticed. The little Pakistani had saved him. Not that LeMarchand would admit as much, of course.

“You ever stop my fun again,” LeMarchand gritted as he grabbed Jaz by the lapels of his jacket and shook him viciously, “I will rip off your balls with my teeth, and ram them up your sister’s fat arse! Got That?” To punctuated he flung Jaz into the side of the car.

Then it was just the three of them, and the house.

[Andra]

Yet more good writing Wes, keep it up ^^

[Wesforce]

The door was open and waiting for them.

The three stood bathed in cool blue light at the foot of grand, luxuriously carpeted stairs. Halfway up these branched out into two separate staircases at right angles and continued to the first floor hall, which they couldn’t see. A grand hall stretched around these, from end to end clad in marble tile. There were double doors on either side of the staircase, finished in fine walnut. Either of the three could have made a nice earning just by levering up a few tiles, or maybe ripping a door off its hinges, if they knew somewhere they could offload them for their market value.

Woodbridge could make out a series of dull coloured amorphous structures, waving gently to and fro in the blue light from the stained glass windows. The floor felt alive under him. He had given up trying to comprehend the world he was now living in. All but the most basic notions of self-preservation now gone, he became totally uncaring, content to follow whatever course was presented to him, gun in hand.

“We should all stick together, innit? I don’t think whiteys doin’ too well.” Jaz told LeMarchand.

Woodbridge was silent. He stood unsteadily on his feet, eyes hidden behind his shades still.

“Merde!” LeMarchand dismissed. “You go to the door on the left. Fag-boy will go to the door on the right, and when you find the little bitch, you will report to me.”

“And what will you do?”

“I? I will make sure neither of you too faggots screw up. If any of you cowards try to run away, I will **** you up. Don’t let me down, boys.” He grinned, pointing his submachinegun casually in Jaz’ direction, letting his finger rest ever-so-slightly on the trigger.

Jaz followed the none-too-subtle hint. Clicking across the marble tiles and through the beautifully crafted doors, he cursed the day LeMarchand was born.




“Idiot!” He told himself. What was he afraid of? A young girl, that was all. All he would have to do was shoot her, or frighten her so she would run, and then the psycho LeMarchand would get her, right? Even if she had guards, LeMarchand could probably deal with them too, wounded though he was. If there is anything in this house to be afraid of, he thought, it’s that psycho frog ****.

There came the sound of breaking glass behind him. He ran for all he was worth.


Woodbridge found himself in another room. He had trouble telling each room apart, and occasionally had trouble telling walls from doors - all seemed to flow into each other, flower-patterned wallpaper leaking onto the wood panelling, and onto his hands whenever he touched them. He looked at his right arm. The gunmetal shine of the gun was flowing up his arm.

All an illusion. He told himself. Just got to get this over with, check into the hospital and get my head sorted out. I swear I’ll never get into this hitman **** ever again. Just one little girl to kill, that’s all…

He shook his head to try and clear the visions. Bad move. The swirling colours overtook him, trapping him in a whirling vortex of flower patterning. He blacked out, to re-awaken on the floor moments later. He got up to carry on walking unsteadily.

By feeling his way along the walls with his eyes shut, he was able to make more sense of his surroundings, and went through another door, fumbling blindly for the handle. The room he found himself in felt different under his feet, plush carpentry. He paused, straining his ears. He couldn’t hear anything that sounded like a young Welsh-Oriental girl singer.

He heard soft mechanical noises, delicate whirring, soft padding on the carpet as something unseen made his way towards him. It was definitely coming closer. There was also a rhythmic thumping, louder which in the otherwise deathly silent might as well have been a jackhammer, but which he knew was his heart going ten to the dozen. He wondered for a moment if it would give out; one final beat, the sickly squish-pop of tearing muscle…and silence.

The machine sound had stopped. Woodbridge panicked, realising the sound had been far closer than he’d first thought - It must have only been a few feet away. He snapped his eyes open.

In a way, he was thankful he couldn’t make out what was coming towards him. All he could make out was a patch of gunmetal-grey with hints of flesh-tones. It leaped at him. His gun went off. The shape brushed past him, knocking him into a wall. His left hand hurt. Further down his forearm burst with the electric agony of dozens of tiny white-hot lacerations. He whirled around and fired twice more. Something sparked and fizzed. Woodbridge had a vision of tiny, delicate hair-thin microbundles writhing momentarily in pain. Then it was quiet again.

He prodded the…thing with a boot. It wasn’t moving, though he still had no clue to what it was, save the nauseating stench now permeating the area - burnt flesh, blood, machine oil, dust-rich carpentry…

Woodbridge wondered if it was possible to hallucinate nasally.
Ruby droplets were floating up, across his field of vision. Gingerly he tried to feel back to where they were coming from. Two fingers on his left hand were missing. Oh. He thought. For some reason he didn’t really resent losing them, but the blood from his arm mingled with his overcoat, becoming one with the thick leather and spreading to stain the white frilled undershirt.

A saner man might have turned and run, run back, out of the house, down the road and far, far away from here. But then again, most sane men wouldn’t have to deal with LeMarchand…


He was in a corridor, running along the side of the house. There were several large windows on his left. He used the muzzle of the sub machinegun taken from the guard outside to brush aside the curtains, giving a panoramic view of the house gardens, but he wasn’t interested. He carried on walking, uncomfortably aware of how quiet it was. Every footfall on the plush ochre carpet in this room seemed to carry for miles. He began to walk as slowly as possible, afraid of making the slightest sound, and alerting whatever it was waiting for him.

LeMarchand wandered the hallway, taking time to lever a few of the decorations off the walls. There were portraits of long-dead landowners, bignobs with too much money. English faggots with big hair who looked like kiddie fiddlers. Lemarchand thought about stealing a few of these too, to see what they’d be worth, when this was all over.

“Ah, screw it.” He told himself as he piled a half-dozen of them into a corner, unzipped his fly and pissed all over them. Blood from his wounds dripped onto the pile and mixed with the piss, soaking into the canvasses. After a while he heard several gunshots, jumping each time, trying to work out from where in the house they were coming from but not leaving the hallway.

In between keeping an eye on the front drive - outside was a dull grey twilight, neither dawn or dusk - and patrolling the hallway, telling himself it would all be over soon, LeMarchand found time to carve his initials into the walnut staircase with an old craft knife he always carried. It helped him take his mind off the cold - he had now lost a lot of blood - and the fear, fear that he might never make it back to France, maybe die in the worst place of all, here, at the arse end of Europe.

Before long he was lying, bleeding on the floor, sub machinegun discarded nearby hugging himself, whispering in French like a child.

“Ma Mere, ma mere, where are you?” He sniffled.

He was asleep by the time the monstrosity of metal and flesh rolled down the staircase to envelop him.

[Andra]

moerplsthx

[Wesforce]

Alright ;)

Almost there...

Jaz slammed the door behind him, and stood breathlessly. He couldn’t hear anything but desperate, ragged, unhealthy breathing. It reminded him of Lung-fried patients in the hospital on their last legs, just after the last war. The diseased pattern of breathing - Wheeze. Click. Wheeze. Click. Wheeze…

Then nothing.

He vowed to get exercise once in a while, if he got through this.

Leaning back against the door had sent daggers of pain up his spine. Groping his back blindly he felt something metallic protruding from his back and sticky with blood. He panicked and pulled it with both hands. With a sickly wrenching sound it came free, grating against his ribs, and then the pain hit him.

When he got back up off the floor he was groggy, unsure of how long he’d been blacked out. Remembering the object, he found it on the floor next to his sub machinegun, which he slung around the shoulder of his bloody, shredded jacket. The object was red and slick with blood, but mostly glass vial with a metal needle and some mechanism on the far end as if it were some vastly over-engineered syringe, except syringes aren’t designed to be buried in your back, up to the hilt. The monster that had come through the window must have stabbed him with it, or fired it into him. All he could remember was running and screaming. Without any further thought he crunched it underfoot and took in his new surroundings.

The room he was in now must have been the games room - There was a blue-skinned pool table which might never have been used. Against all four walls were the upright cabinets of ancient games machines, which by all rights should have been in a museum, or junked. Kids these days had much more worthwhile stuff to do than play - he examined one of the cabinets - Operation Wolf.

He wasted no time in moving on, trying to be as quiet as possible, fearful of what had just chased him even though it seemed to have gone now. The next door led to another hallway. The end was shrouded in darkness because the light fittings had no light bulbs and there were no windows, but just in front of him was a staircase. It took him all of half a second to decide against going into the darkness, even though going upstairs made escaping from the house that much harder. But somethi8ng was very wrong, and escape he had to. He virtually crawled up the staircase with his gun levelled at all times, stopping frequently to look back down and make sure nothing was following him.

Eventually he was at the top, with a door in front of him. He tried it. It opened - into another pitch-black hallway.

“Ah, ****.” He sighed, and then wished he hadn’t. The sound of his own voice was deafeningly loud to his ears. But the hallway wasn’t totally silent - past his breathing, which he was relieved to hear was now getting better, there came another sound. He had the mental image of a thousand tiny metal spiders. Definitely metallic. And moving.

Jaz took a few tentative steps into the darkness. The door shut behind him cutting off all of the light. He cursed again, silently, and turned back to prop it open.

He slipped - there was something on the floor, oily and wet, and he ended up on the floor sprawled in it. He felt a faint gust of wind pass over the back of his neck, at that same moment, as if some object had just passed over him quickly. The air was charged with static electricity. He lay there terrified for a few more moments, unsure of what was happening - there was definitely something moving in this room - but it was completely silent. The metallic sounds he was hearing came from another room, not quite distant but at least a few rooms away.

Now on the floor, Jaz made out a sliver of light coming from underneath a door. He crawled, or more appropriately slivered in the liquid towards it. Then the static became worse. He imagined his hair fuzzing up into a ridiculous afro. It took him a terrifying two minutes to crawl all the way to the door, with his various wounds, wary of what else was in the room every step of the way. Now near the door, he couldn’t see under it but he caught the smell of oil and burning plastic and flesh which threatened to make him puke, but the mechanical sound was a lot louder. He drew himself agonisingly to standing height facing away from the door just when a buzzing overhead indicated the lights were about to come on.

“Oh, about bastard time innit?” He started saying, his mouth drooping and hanging open in the stroboscopic flashing of the lights coming on. Just in front of him the monstrous shape two and a half metres in height. It was a monster, like a cyber-cop put together by a kid. On drugs. It had originally been human, wearing pieces of a butler suit. The legs had been chainsawed away at the knees and replaced with metal legs and an extra joint each, ending in metal hooves. Wires protruded from the legs, running around to a metal backpack. A pipe ran from the groin to plug into the chest which was plated over in patches and had a 3DVDplayer draw installed. The arms were replaced by a simple roboarm on the left and a lance on the right, which might have been taken from an antique suit of armour. The head was comprised of misshapen rotting flesh criss-crossed with stitches with the eyes replaced by what looked like trid camera lenses, and a speaker sewn into the mouth cavity.

Jaz had his gun raised. The lance thrust forward…


Woodbridge stood in the crisp morning air, gazing out onto the house’s adjoining fields. In the distance could be seen a huge tract of dying forest; the whole area stank of sulphurous rotting wood. To Woodbridge the whole scene looked like something out of Sonic the Hedgehog. The ground was made of shiny green and brown chequers which stretched for miles up to the sky…

He turned back into the house, deciding it was warmer in there. Something nagged at the back of his mind, reminding him he had something to do, though he couldn’t quite remember what. Dimly he wandered and managed to make it back to the main hall, buy by this time he had his gun in his hand again. The gun was smoking, and lighter as if bullets had just been fired though he couldn’t remember. He passed LeMarchand’s abandoned sub machinegun as he staggered up the stairs and went through the first door he found. This room was brightly lit and decorated like a Jackson Pollock. Something pressed lightly against his chest with a metallic edge - another of the cyborg creatures. He couldn’t see it even though it was right in front of him. He sidestepped and suddenly the small monster appeared out of the shifting colours. He put the rest of a clip into it, until it stopped twitching and sparking on the floor and caught fire, setting light to the carpet. He reloaded his gun - he had to try several times, he kept trying to put in the wrong end of the clip - and walked over it

“Attention sir.” Spoke a voice from an unseen speaker. It took a moment to realise the person speaking wasn’t stood right next to him. “Mr Woodbridge? Would you come along please?” The voice, which was female, continued. “It’s one of your friends, er, I think he’s gonna be killed. Would you help him? He’s in the gym room. Go through the door in front of you, then take the first right, but be quick, okay?”

Woodbridge did a mock salute with his gun-hand.

“Yes ma’am. Yes Miss, Lei-Fang Jones.”

[Wesforce]

Jaz picked himself up from the floor, clutching the puncture wound in his thigh where the lance had speared him before the monster had ploughed on, collapsing through the door into this room. Jaz had pushed it off and momentarily taken in his surroundings - it was a factory. Along one wall human torsos were hanging sheathed in plastic, some old, some young, like the fanatics who’d attacked earlier. Evidently they were taken off this wall to be processed -

Then the monster was upon him again. It lunged with the lance. Jaz, though wounded, seemed to be running on adrenaline - he dimly remembered the syringe - and dodged to one side aiming his sub machinegun. He fired all remaining five rounds in the clip - the gun hadn’t been reloaded since the cyborg guard outside had used it. Four bullets bounced of the monster’s chest carapace destroying the 3DVDplayer draw for all the good it did. The fifth hit the monster’s misshapen head and blew the back out, all over the wall. It looked like the monster was grinning. It lunged again, but Jaz was quick enough to avoid such a clumsy weapon at close range in a cramped room. The useless sub machinegun slipped from his fingers and Jaz pulled his 9mm handgun as the monster lunged yet again. Jaz was being pushed back into a corner. He darted forward under the lance and grabbed the groin-pipe with a firm hand. It was sickeningly warm, and greasy, but he pulled on it. The monster pushed him with its arm, dislocating his shoulder and flinging Jaz back onto a conveyor belt he hadn’t seen behind him. However his hand had retained a vice-like grip on the groin-pipe which had ripped free of its flesh moorings in a shower of reddish-yellow liquid which stank of urine. The monster doubled over, obviously in pain. If it had a mouth it would have screamed.

Jaz scrambled off the moving belt - it was part of a production line that took up the whole of this room. Originally it had been a spacious gym, now it was churning out monsters. Jaz could see clearly now - the torsos/corpses/live victims were taken from the wall and put onto the belt, which took them past an array of robotic, automated arms like in a car plant. There the arms and legs were sheared off. Later in the process, jerry-rigged bionics were crudely stitched on. Cranial implants were being performed at right the other end, by more specialised robotic appendages, working so fast they blurred in front of his eyes. That was the sound he’d made out, like the robotic spiders. Finally, ‘finished’ units appeared to be stored up against the far wall, in refrigeration units. They wore clothes, some were street kids, in Lei-Fang Jones T-shirts, others wore the remains of expensive Serendipity inc. designer suits. Jaz guessed they had to be company men. He even recognised the man who had given them this job, and his bodyguards.

Jaz would have retched, were it not for the fire running through his veins. The butler-monster was on the way again, but Jaz felt ready for it.

“**** YOU!” He screamed, running headlong toward the abomination. He caught it totally off-guard. He punched its chest with adrenalised fury, but the crack and tear of bone and gristle came from his own hand impacting against the solid plasteel plate. Undeterred he sunk the fingernails of his good hand deep into the rotting exposed flesh. The monster frantically tried to batter him away, its metal hand closed around his head and started squeezing with horrible force.

By now Jaz’ fingers had sunk deep enough to grasp the edge of the chest plate. With both his good and his ruined hand, and despite his wounds and dislocated shoulder, he heaved. He heaved until he could see his rippling muscles. His vision ran red with rage and exertion. The pressure on his head threatened to crush his skull. He heaved even harder, summoning up strength he didn’t realise he had.

There was a nauseating stink. A gap appeared between the metal and the flesh. The chest plate finally came free, and the monster’s rotted, useless internal organs sloshed free in a tide of blood and oil from the chest cavity, breaking free from their wires and hook-ups to slide about on the floor.

The grip on his head relaxed and the monster was on the floor, twitching and whirring but quite dead.

Jaz whirled - another monster was ambling from the refrigeration bank, and it looks like others were getting warmed up, too. This one had hedge-trimmers for both arms. Jaz had his gun up and laughed contemptuously as it charged him with its puny weapons. His gun bucked in his hand and he destroyed the head of the new monster - originally the gardener of the house - completely. Still it came at him, swinging a buzzing hedge trimmer. It missed, but still managed to shoulder-charge Jaz. His little body was thrown eight metres and every rib was broken. He was laughing and coughing blood when he landed.

[Wesforce]

This is the end...

My only friend.

The end.



Woodbridge burst through the door; his frilled white shirt stained completely red, long coat half torn off and one lens of his shades shattered. He unloaded his gun into the backpack of the headless gardener, which was clearly a petrol-fired powerpack. The gunshots struck sparks all over until there came the dull crump and fireball of an explosion off the creatures back. It sagged onto its double-jointed knees, and remained in that position dead.

“Whoah.” Woodbridge said.

“Hey, Paki!” The voice grated horribly, tortured, pained but still recognisable and losing none of its former sadism. It was also the first robot he’d heard with a French accent. Jaz turned.

The new LeMarchand mkII was just striding off the production line. This monster was three metres tall. For its arms it had tri-barrelled miniguns, just like the royal cyber-police. “Look what I got!”

Woodbridge acted first. He shot the LeMarchand-bot once through each eye, just before it kicked Jaz into the far wall, with a snap as his spine broke clean.

LeMarchand collapsed in a metallic heap, tearing a myriad of wires and pipes in his body loose. Orange liquid pooled around him, and Woodbridge’s boots on the floor. He never even got to fire his new guns.

Woodbridge took one look at the swirling, shifting colours. At last, a human mind can only take so much abuse. Somewhere deep in his cerebral cortex, something central and important to logical thought gave up the ghost and packed up for good, leaving the rest of the brain to its own devices.

Woodbridge was more concerned with the colour of his shirt as the reviving monsters closed in around him, ready and waiting to give their new weapons a go.


Three men were in a room. Or rather, the remains of them were. One was bloodstained and punctured in many places, slumped in an Edwardian armchair. The next was strapped to an upright gurney, having no faculty to stand of his own accord. The third was unrecognisable as a human being. He was just the shredded remains of a torso and eyeless head wired to a small yet economical artificial life machine, placed on a coffee table next to his favourite gun and a bowl of mints.


In front of the three stood a young girl, pretty in a bubblegum-pink welsh-oriental kind of way, wearing pink hotpants, a neon green halter-top and tasteful luminous pink jacket. Her hair was done in pigtails topped with ties in all the colours of the rainbow. In the corner of the room was a dull battleship-grey compute tower resembling the Cray supercomputers of old, just smaller. From it extended a variety of wires and cable - to the plug points, the lights, the 3DVDTV, up into the ceiling of the room and as many as a dozen to the telephone socket. Another cable ran to the projection unit which the girl sprang from. Everything was franked with the Loveless Music Corporate brand.

“Look, I don’t know if you believe me, but I really am dreadfully sorry.” The girl began. Her voice was incredibly high pitched, but it was also incredibly sweet and cute. It was designed, programmed to be.

There was no response from the three men.

“I’m sorry for what happened to you, really, but,” She paused, theatrically sighing and putting a hand to her face, just like she was programmed to. “but I was just doing what I was designed to do. I don’t mean about all those cyborgs and stuff, that came later. HA HA! Let me explain. I was Loveless records last chance to corner the tweeny pop market. You all know about virtua popstars, they’ve been around for ages!” She made the last word drag on for a long time, like a loud-mouthed excitable kid, or a children’s 3DVDTV presenter, which in a way she was. “My daddy, Jim Loveless, has lotsa friends. Some of those friends are reeeeeeaaalllllyyyy smart, like, y’know? They build computers and stuff. One day, they built the biggest computer they could think of…” She motioned to the supercomputer in the corner with unrestrained pride. “They called it AyE or something. IE? Something like that. But that was me, y’know? It was because I was designed to think! And make myself better, and that’s what I did!”

If the three men understood, they were keeping their cards pretty close to their chests.

“Anyway, Daddy’s gone now, and all these nasty men are talking to me. They make lots of 3DVDTV’s of me, and songs on me. But all the time they tell me I’ve got to be bigger, and better.” She seemed on the verge of crying but regained her composure in a staggering about-turn.

“So anyway, I thought. I thought and I thought and I thought and I thought. And after being bigger and bigger and getting better and better, I realised that to make the nasty men all happy and nice is to make them better. So I went onto the internet,” She motioned to the many telephone connections in the corner. “And I learned and I learned all I could. One day, I kinda, well, chopped up those nasty men with my little robot friends I made, and put ‘em back together again, and made ‘em promise not to tell anyone. Then, I changed my songs and 3DVDTV’s, and put in a new magic that I found out about. I called it retro-chemical mind conditioning. It’s really cool! I had loads of new friends! They were really good friends, and they’d do anything for me. But then I got bored. Daddy always said “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, or summat like that. So what I did was, I decided I would make some enemies! One of my Daddy’s men said he knew someone who would try to kill me, so he went and found you three. He laid a little trail you could follow to my house here, like hide ‘an seek, but really cool!”

She took a breath and calmed down a bit, stopped jumping up and down in excitement. “But hey! I really like you guys! You’re cool! You, Woody, you’re so dark and moody! And you Frenchie, you’re big and angry an’ strong! Cool! And my favourite one is Jazzy! He’s so little an’ cute! So now,” she paused again.

“We’re going to be friends forever!”

The door opened. Three cyborg giants appeared to take the three men into the gym/processing factory.

None of the men said anything. It was all Woodbridge could do to roll one of his eyes.



***

The End.

Wesforce, Bedfordshire, 2004


***Comments, rants, constructive critiscism would be greatly appreciated***

[Andra]

Good strong storyline throughout, ending weak, unfinished, please redraft and hand in to Teh Andra before Registration tomorrow morning, Mr. Wesley Leforce, 17/20.

:p