Invasion from Uranus (4 page)

Taking cover behind a marble pillar near the doorway, I leveled my gun and squirted the new can of butane fuel all over the tiles and carpeting around the marble tub. A flick of the match, a toss and flames rose on every side, the natural fiber carpeting adding nicely to the growing bonfire. Getting no response yet, I went to the bar and added some Napoleon brandy and vodka. Whoosh! Pretty.

If there was anybody submerged inside the tub, the heat would soon start to make them cook. And since I had turned off the main water feed in the basement before coming up here, the sprinklers were out of action. How much toasting could a 'demon lord' take?

Without warning, the tiles around the tub exploded as hidden charges of C4 detonated in unison, the hellstorm of busted tiles ripping every article of furniture into splinters. The entire bar shattered, and the heavy oak doors were removed from the cracked walls, and some of the ceramic shards ricocheted off the twisted ruin of the hinges and caught me behind the pillar right in the leg. Shit! They hurt like blazes, but nothing was squirting so none of my arteries were hit. Just pain. No problem that could be controlled and ignored.

As I struggled to rise, there rose a geyser of blood from the tub and out of the roiling smoke walked a beautiful, naked woman, with the face of an angel, long flowing black hair, and covered with tattoos.

"Time to die, hunter!" she screamed as horns sprouted from her forehead. Then the thing lunged for me with hands that changed into animal talons.

A real demon. Cool. My twin .44 Magnums blew thunder at the she-beast slamming her back into the tub and removing large chunks of her chest and head. As I dropped the spent clip into a pocket and reloaded, she dove forward and took two more rounds before tackling me against the wall and putting a backhand across my face. I barely had time to turn with the blow and it still felt like my head was coming off. Bitch was strong! I went airborne for a moment, then became reacquainted with the floor in a hard crash.

Struggling to regain my bearings, the gaping crater in her skull closed and she started towards me once more. This time I blew off both her kneecaps. But as she fell, her body turned into a huge spider and leapt faster than I could track with my booming gun.

The demon slammed me into the wall, her mandibles raking across my chest only to find the dozen rosaries and crucifixes hanging around my neck. Hissing at the sight, she tried to get free, but now I drove the wooden stake hidden behind my back into her chest. Instantly, the spider melted into a beautiful woman again and she writhed as I dug around inside her chest with the piece of wood searching for her heart. She was in pain, but not dying a whole lot. Then it wrapped a tail around my legs pulling me down and butted with her horns catching me in the chest.

Shitfire, that hurt! Firing one magnum non-stop, I awkwardly pulled out a bottle of Holy Water and smashed it into her face. Brackish fumes steaming off her melting features, she shrieked as I pulled out a mini-Uzi to spray her all over with the old man's silver bullets.

Fire sprang from each impact, and she staggered away

trying to escape, offering me millions in cash, but I maintained the gunfire until she dropped, sprawling. It was a nice ass, but no time for that now. Pumping more lead and silver into her body, I pulled out the silver stake and rammed it into her. Black leather wings sprouted from her back and slammed hard into me, but I clung on tight and put my weight behind the metal stake, forcing it in deeper and deeper until there was a terrible noise and smeared with green blood the tip came out of her mouth and stabbed the burning carpet.

There was a muffled curse, the whole building seemed to rock, some dark shadow filled the room...and then she was gone, only dry ash remaining in my sticky hands.

Trusting nobody, I sprinkled more of that Holy Water and communion wafers onto the dust, then went to her kitchen to wash as best I could. The water faucets were still turned off, but there was some bottled water in the fridge - yuppie assholes - and I got most of the gore off my hands. Everything else, I left as filthy as possible.

By now the flames were spreading across the penthouse, the grand piano was musically snapping it strings and the curtains flaring to reveal the iron bars closing off the windows. Softly, police sirens were sounding from the streets below and this time I knew they were for me.

But something she said before dying had caught my interest and I did a quick check behind the pictures hanging on the walls until I found a small safe. Bingo. Surrounded by the growing inferno, I cracked the tumblers and took all of the cash inside; trying to ignore the fact that armed cops were on their way up here, along with a shitload of seriously pissed off Pinkerton guards who must have figured out by now that the hookers were just a diversion.

The smoke was thick enough to make breathing difficult, so I held a handkerchief to my mouth as I rumpled my Pinkerton guard uniform some more, then smeared some of my own blood from the shoulder wounds onto my face to blur my features. Nobody really wants to look at a bad wound. Works every time.

Dashing for the elevator, I jacked the slide on my .44 Magnum until the clip was out of ammunition and the slide kicked back to show it was empty. Slumping to my knees with the empty gun on display, I waited until the stairwell door slammed open and out charged a mob of cops and guards. Weakly, I swung my empty gun at them and pulled the trigger several times blinking wildly.

"Pinkerton! Stop you're under arrest," I sobbed, my chest heaving. "Get...away from her..."

As big people charged into the roaring penthouse, somebody knelt along side me and checked the pulse in my throat. A medic of some kind. I held my breath making the pulse slow to appear even weaker than I felt. My adrenaline was still pumping, and I was fine at the moment, but that would fade soon. Had to move or die. This was the fun part.

"It's okay, buddy, we're the cops," somebody said, gently pushing my gun away. "What happened?"

"Six guys, military..." I paused to cough and slump further down. "The windows, some kind rope..."

"They're rappelling down from the roof!" a cop snarled.

"Christ, look at the flames!"

"Nobody is left alive in there."

"We'll take the stairs!"

"Go-go-go!" a cop added into a mike, the wire leading to a small radio clipped to his gunbelt.

As the group separated and charged in different directions, I took the stairs to the basement where my car was hidden. I paused to turn the water back on, which would only make things more confusing upstairs for a while. Then I rode away into the night holding a military battlefield compress to my wounds.

Stopping at an all night diner, I stitched the holes in me shut while sitting in a stall of the men's room, then got into my normal clothes taped behind the toilet marked 'broken'. Going to the counter, I flirted with the waitress as I ordered a sandwich and some much needed black coffee, then went to a pay phone and placed a call.

"Who the heck is this?" my cousin demanded.

"Me," I answered. "I've thought about that video store deal you want me in on, and I got a better idea. Dry cleaners."

"What?" he demanded, the sleep still thick in his voice, and he wasn't the most articulate person to begin with.

"Dry cleaners," I repeated slowly, leaning against the wall to conserve my flagging strength. Man, did I need that joe. Where was the damn waitress? "We'll open a chain of dry cleaners across the city, and I'll pay for everything." I patted the sack of cash hanging at my side. Must be close to a million there, maybe two. "A chain of dry cleaners across the state. Ten stores instead of one measly video store. You in?"

"Sure sure, whatever ya want. Sounds great."

"Good. I'll meet you for breakfast tomorrow. Night."

I hung up on his gushing thanks and went to ravage my ham on rye and that precious, wonderful coffee. This was the smartest move I had ever done. Dry cleaners, it was brilliant. We'd specialize in removing blood stains from silk, with low-low prices, and I would track down every demon in the city, hell in the state! Blow their brains out with silver bullets and steal their horde of cash. A sweet deal.

Then the universe seemed to constrict around me as a great and terrible thought occurred and I felt cold in the pit of my stomach. If there were actual demons, then there must be a Hell that they came from. Which logically meant Satan must be real, and that dictated the existence of God. Holy crap! Suddenly, every pissant misdemeanor and capital crime I had ever committed paraded through my mind and the weight of my sins was truly staggering. I'd never made a tally before, and even I was impressed. No doubt about it, if there was a God in heaven, then I was going straight to Hell. Unacceptable. From everything I had ever read, seen or heard about The Abyss, the evil were chained in lakes of fire.

There was the magic word, chained. Shackled, trapped, wearing a collar like an animal. This time my body shuddered so hard that I dropped my fork. In this life I had vowed to die rather than go to jail, so I sure as shit wasn't going to do it in the afterlife. Because that's all Hell was, the biggest, baddest jail in the infinite cosmos.

Adding more sugar to my coffee, I started to take a sip, paused, then quickly muttered grace first. Or as close to the words as I could get. Sunday school was a million years ago, in another lifetime.

But once I had been an altar boy, so okay, it was time to reform. I'd keep the dry cleaner idea, but after killing a demon, I wouldn't steal the cash. No, I would, but I wouldn't keep any, every penny would go to charity, the homeless, and starving kids, blind orphans, jazz like that. God loved good deeds. Praisedbehe. I would keep on blowing away hellspawn and helping folks until finally balancing the scales for all the innocent people I had aced. Damn, er, darn, that would take a lot of demons. Best to hedge my bet and stop cursing, lying, cheating, gambling, hookers, hmm, best to avoid sex entirely, just in case. Maybe I should become a priest? Accept one collar to avoid another. Fair enough. I like to kill, but it was easy to combine the two. Father Michael Xavier Donaher, Demon Hunter. Actually, that had a nice ring to it. Praise the Lord and pass the silver ammunition.

Feeling reborn, I bowed my head and thanked my heavenly Father for his wisdom and mercy, and all the saintly pious stuff. Then paying the check, and leaving a tremendous tip, I stuffed the briarwood pipe into my mouth and strode from the dinner into the foggy night. It would be smart to move fast on this deal. If I got hit tonight by a bus while crossing the street, my ass was grass. Now where the hell was I going to find a goddamn Catholic Church at this shitty hour of the night to get fucking ordained?

Halle-freaking-lujah. I've been saved.

"A few years ago, my buddy, Prof. Charles Sheffield, decided to do an anthology about saving the world," Nick spoke softly into the microphone, really getting into the swing of things. "Well, that sounded fun, but much too straight forward, so I offered to save the world...by fixing two problems at the same time!"

Missing the cue for a sound effect, the man in the booth raised a homemade sign reading, "Look down, you fool!"

Adjusting the gain slightly to remove a faint squeal, Nick ignored the fellow. "Well, three hours, and a gallon of iced tea later, the story was finished. I emailed it to Charles; he was delighted and bought it on the spot. All in all a very pleasant way to spend a sunny summer afternoon...."

"Ladies and gentlemen, we're almost there!" Erik Kay cried into his hand held mike, while hanging out the open window of the antique style train engine.

The cool Titan wind whipped his curly gray hair into a wild frenzy, totally unlike the usual neat perfection his billions of TriD viewers were familiar with, and for the first time in his life, Kaye didn't give a good goddamn. They were going to make it! This was the story of the year! Hell, the decade! If only he knew what it was.

Alongside him in the cabin was Dr. Alice Bentley, a pretty brunette in a lab jumpsuit typing madly on her wrist secretary with one hand, a computer stylus clamped tight between clenched teeth. Behind the scientist was Sergeant Vladimir Zane, a stout United Planets police officer nervously fondling his service laser, rigidly formal in his stark white uniform, the red and blue emblem of this independent colony emblazoned on a shoulder. Filling the fore of the open cabin was a rocky gray bipedal mountain, whose nimble alien hands frantically were working the controls of the rumbling steam engine. Birth name: (assorted grunts, snorts and a rude flatulent noise), social name: Rocky. Which was the equivalent of calling an Irishman 'Red' or an African pygmy 'Shorty'. Not quite exactly an insult, but hardly original thinking for the alien Choron.

Adjusting the gain on his transceiver, Erik sighed internally. These four were the only ones to brave this final leg of their perilous, historic journey. A mere four out of the trillions filling the Sol system. That didn't say much for courage and dedication of the average UP citizen. Then again, it was sweeps week on the TriD, and saving the world was hardly a match for Nude Celebrity Mud Wrestling. Art will always triumph.

Rat-a-clack, rat-a-clack
, the iron wheels of the environmentally correct locomotive clattered over every rail joint of the Earth sized moon of Saturn as the convoy steadily built speed, bio-degradable black smoke pouring from the tall fluted chimney. Filling the horizon overhead was the ringed glory of their gas giant mother world. On either side of the rattling train were the ragged cliffs of a low ravine, an arroyo actually, although few folk knew the word these days. But then, the shame of modern education was next week's story. The terraforming of Titan had started 100 years ago, and today was its ultimate culmination. If only they could crash this train into a toxin polluted lake before they were all killed by accidents or terrorists.
Saturn, your vacation wonderland. Whee
.

"Dr. Bentley, how's it going?" Kaye asked, holding a hand before the floating HoverCam before him to signal a break in the story flow.