Theme Planet (3 page)

“I’ll just pull on something dry.”

Dex was back in less than a
minute, and sat opposite Kat, who had a simple plate of cardboard diet toast
before her. She picked up the flake and nibbled the corner.

“Why the full fry breks, love?”

Kat shrugged. “Celebrating. Last
day at work, and all that. We’re going to have
such
a great holiday,
hun.”

“Is that why you’re eating...
that.”

“What?”

“That plastic shit.”

“It’s good for the waistline,
hun.”

“You should come running with me,”
said Dex, sucking up an eggy egg like a long cylinder of phlegm. He winked. “You’ll
soon drop that puppy blubber.”

“Why, you cheeky...”

“Hi Dad!”

“Hi...”

“Dad, Toff says if you use
mouthwash it’s full of alcohol and you’ll be drunk all day at school, but I
said she’s talking rubbish like the Trashmen of Trashworld because
you’re
a
PUF policeman and you use mouthwash and you’re not drunk all day at the station
are you, and you’ve got a gun, and that wouldn’t work if you were a drunk
policeman, would it? You’d be shooting everybody all day, wouldn’t you, and
that’s not right for a PUF because killing people is bad no matter what they
say in computer games, our teacher told us so.”

“Dad, Dad, that’s not what I
said, what
I said was
if you swallow the mouthwash then it’ll rot your
guts and...”

Their whirlwind tornadoed out of
the opposite door and Dex and Kat stared at one another, then burst out laughing.

“Well, shit,” said Dex. “I didn’t
get time to even
answer,
let alone comment on the conversation.”

“I think that was the point.”

“Oh, yeah? The old man’s
viewpoint not count now, does it?”

“I suppose it does,” said Kat,
her eyes twinkling. She ran a hand through her short, black, spiked hair and
continued to nibble card toast. “You okay with this, hun?”

“The holiday?”

“Yeah. The
Theme Planet!”

“Sure, sure. I mean, we’ll have
to remortgage the damned apartment...”

“Oh come on, it isn’t
that
expensive.”

Dex clutched his side. “I know.
Argh! I still had to sell that kidney, though...”

Kat laughed, a tinkling of
crystal. “You really are a miserly old bastard,” she said, standing and moving
around the table to him. The table shuffled sideways on little furry feet to
accommodate her. She draped her arms over his shoulders from behind, and
dropped until her lips touched his ear. “But you’re
my
miserly old
bastard. And I still love you.” She kissed his neck.

“Even after three eggy eggs?” he
said.

“Even after three eggy eggs,” she
said, and nibbled his ear.

“What time are the kids going to
school?”

She caught the tone of his voice
and laughed. “Hey, you haven’t got
that much time,
mister. You’d be late
for work...”

“So? It
is
my last day.”

“Yes. But you know I’m not a
morning kinda girl. We’ll save it for tonight.” Kat kissed his cheek, and
returned to her card toast. “Just think. Four whole weeks! Four weeks of you,
me and the kids. Enjoying the sun, the wild theme rides, the rolling beaches,
the alien menageries, the crazy funky nightlife...”

Dex pulled a face. “Shit. Now you
put it like that... the horror! Do I
really
want to go? I’d rather stay
in London shooting bad guys in the face.”

Kat threw toast at him, and he
ducked, laughing.

“You know what I mean. It’ll be a
great break. We haven’t had a holiday together for...”

“Four years. Toffee was one. She
threw up over that snotty businesstyke on the plane; ruined his suit. He tried
to invoice us for it. I told him to shove it up his bottom.”

Kat barked a laugh. “Oh God, I
forgot about that! And
then
you threatened to shoot him!”

“Hmm. So I did. Well, they
shouldn’t have split up our bloody seating, should they? It was my vomit to
endure.”

They giggled together for a few
moments, remembering the sun and surf, the hot beaches and hotter nightlife.
Then Kat gave a small frown, and pursed her lips, eyes looking worried for a
moment. “Listen. Dex. Talking of splitting up, I said you’d have a chat with
Pegg tonight. Let him bend your ear. Give him some much needed advice.”

Dex muffled a groan behind
powerful hands, then rubbed wearily at his eyes. “Oh, come on, please tell me
you’re joking, Katrina. Tonight? Shit. Why
tonight
of all nights? I’ve...
got packing to do.”

Kat reached over and punched him
in the chest. “Dex, he needs some brother-in-law advice. Come on. You’re his
friend. Act like a bloody friend! Don’t be hiding under the bed covers when the
going gets tough.”

“Yeah. Well. The problem with
Pegg, friend or no friend, is you spend months giving him good solid honest
advice; then he ignores it anyway.”

“The point is, you gave it to
him. It’s his to act on. That’s what advice is for.”

Dex sighed. “Go on. What happened
in our private little soap opera?”

“He caught her.”

“No shit? Well he’d been
following her for long enough. Do we know who the lucky back-stabbing bastard
of a whoremonger is?”

“Smark E. Smith.”

“Pegg’s best mate?” Dex
shuddered, then looked hard at Kat. Through gritted teeth, he said, “This is my
last day at work. I just want a nice easy day, and a relaxing evening to pack.
But that’s not going to happen, is it?”

“Does the BearPope shit in the
ChurchWoods?”

He gave a tight little smile. “You
have such a wonderful way with words, my darling.”

They ate in silence for a while,
whilst upstairs the children thumped around - as children do.

Eventually, Kat sighed, and
tossed her card toast onto her steel plate, where it rattled. “Damn this diet.
It’s not working, you know? I think you reach a certain age...”

“When your muscles give up and
suddenly you’re a fat bastard?”

“No!”
Sharply. “I was going to say,
from a woman’s perspective, when you’ve had two kids and the old undercarriage
has stretched a little bit.”

“That’s such a romantic way you
have with words, hun,” said Dexter, finishing his synbacon and laying his knife
and spork down. “Thinking of your saggy old stretched undercarriage makes me
all goosebumpy with desire.”

Kat threw another piece of toast.
Dex ducked - again.

“Will you stop ducking? I can’t
hit you straight.”

“Stop firing bloody bread
projectiles then,” he grinned.

“Hey, can I help it if you’re
such a bad target?”

“Must be this slim, agile
physique,” smiled Dex, good humour returning a little.
One day of crap at
the office. One evening of cuckolded moaning. Then... sit back and relax.
Ahhhh.
He stood, and his stool shuffled out of the way on little furry
feet. “Listen. I gotta shower and go. You know what it’s like on your last day;
gotta make sure all that paperwork’s tied up nice and tight. Make sure the
steel docks are clean of bad people. I can do without Jones calling me on the
beach to nag about unsigned cases and whoring perps.”

“He’d better not.” Kat scowled,
and the scowl had nothing to do with banter. “Nothing’s going to ruin this
holiday on Theme Planet,” she said, and moved to him again, pressing her small,
lithe body in close. He leant down into her kiss, and hugged her tight, and
they stayed like that for several minutes until the door burst open...

“Dad, Molly says I’m not allowed
to have a Jelly Coat for my birthday because in bright sunlight they turn into
sloppy slop, say it’s not true, say it’s...”

Dex and Kat burst out laughing.

~ * ~

Dex kicked the
locker
at work, and it squeaked open. He changed, slowly, into his PUF uniform. PUF.
Police Urban Force. Ten years in, fifteen to go in order to earn that coveted
pension, baby, the pension! Along with “a free family trip round the Solar
System!!” With double exclamation marks!!

“You okay, man?” growled Jones,
slapping him on the shoulder.

Dex glanced back at the stocky
black man, who wore an afro which doubled the size of his head. He grinned. “Jones,
you big fairy. Of course I’m all right. Last day, then I...
whoosh!
Soar
off to the Theme Planet.” His right hand imitated a Shuttle taking off for
orbit - and beyond.

“Yeah, well, be careful over
there, man. You know what they say about those provax aliens.”

Dex frowned. “Go on. What
do
they say about those provax aliens?”

“They steal your dreams, man.” He
saw Dex’s cynical scepticism slip into place like a mask. “No, serious Dex. I
saw a documentary. On the Twisted Discovery Channel. Straight up.”

“Jones, do you realise you’re the
sort of killdick dickjoy who ruins every good party? You know that? You’re the
sort of policeman nobody wants to invite.”

“I have a disability,” said
Jones, dark eyes narrowing a little. “I have the urge to tell the truth, no
matter in what form I find it.”

“Yeah. Well tell it to someone
else, mate. I
need
this holiday.” Dex stood, and stretched his back. He
rolled his head and his neck gave a pistol crack. “Man, I’m getting
old. “

“Yeah,” said Jones, grinning. “And
I just fucking don’t fucking believe I’m older than you, man. I look ten years
younger!”

“That’s the mileage, mate,” said
Dex, grinning again. “Come on. Bad guys won’t lock themselves up.”

“I wish the shitbags would. It’d
make our jobs a whole lot easier.” Jones strapped a D4 shotgun to his back and
holstered twin Kekra quad-barrel machine pistols. “With it being your last day
an’ all, Dexter, I thought we’d do the Pussy Patrol. Don’t want you getting
shot up before your holidays, now, do we?”

“Very kind of you, Jones. In that
case, the donuts are on me.”

~ * ~

The
BMW
PUF Battlecar hissed across wet concretesteel, huge tyres carving grooves
through toxrain, speed low, Dex and Jones looking for trouble. It wasn’t that
there was a
lot
of trouble in London these days - no more than there’d
ever been, anyway. There’d been the Five Great Food Riots back in ‘68, and
Anti-Alien Marches which turned nasty in ‘72. Serial Killers, and indeed the
organised organisation Serial Killers Inc., had been a problem for a while,
where it became fashionable and fucking
chic
to kill your neighbour -
for anything, even trivial stuff like a yakking dog or catshit on the back black
plastilawn. But men like Dex and Jones with their trusty shotguns soon put an
end to that fad. As Jones used to say,
there’s nothing as much fun as
shooting a serial killer in the face. You want to be remembered, Mr Nobody?
Well, be remembered like this.

The rain came down hard from a
hard slate sky, and the hover-wipers flitted about like angry moths, clearing
water from the car’s airscreen-windscreen.