Bats Ablaze 2 of 2

“I’m not done with you yet,” come a voice from above. I look up and there’s Bats on top of the entrance.

He gracefully leaps down, an eerie silence as his feet touch ground. We walk back to where we were and Bats watches the alley again. “So I learn that you’re not only a student, but a good one,” he continues as if he had never left. “I guess you could say I made you my little hobby for the last couple of weeks, Hugo. I disguised myself as a guidance councellor and got a hold of your files at school, some of your exams and essays…” We hear sirens in the distance and Bats checks a watch hidden in those big crazy gloves of his. He looks up at me. “I really enjoyed one of your political-science papers. What was it? ‘Nationalism Equals War: Toward a New Global Revolution?’”

“'Global Renaissance', but yeah,” I chuckle, remembering that paper. “I took a chance on that one. Some teacher’s won’t let you write like that.” Bats doesn’t say anything and I remember where I am. A couple of cop-cars pull up to the alley way and they get out and look at the tied-up thugs. Like a total suicidal madman, Bats just leaps off the roof, from right beside me. I get all woozy and dizzy just watching him, and have to grab the ledge for support. But he just glides down there, his cape acting like a glider and a parachute at the same time. He says a couple words to the cops before launching another tether-line and peeling off like he did the last time. At least this time I know he’s coming back, I just don’t know from what direction. Dude isn’t going to surprise me again, I think, looking towards the entrance that he appeared from last time.

“So,” he says, from behind me, creeping me out again, “I go to your house and sure enough, you have a huge crop growing in your basement. I looked at how you set it up. Complex system, unlike any I’ve seen. Your design, yes?”

I nod my head and try not to beam with pride. This system is of my own design and the crops are absolutely huge, and rich with big fat buds. If marijuana were legal I would patent this system and retire from even this casual form of work.

“I investigate some of your things. You read the newspaper every day-”

“So I like to be informed about what’s going on, so what?”

“I look at your bookshelf, in your files, your journal…” he continues as if he doesn’t even hear me and for a few reckless seconds I feel like hitting him again. Who is this guy to invade my life, the sanctity of my home, read my stuff? Fortunately, that feeling passes as a dull throb in my wrist reminds me of what happened the last time.

Instead I ask him a question. “So, what’s the point Bats, huh?”

“My point,” he says looking up at me, “is that you are well-read, an independent and articulate thinker and writer and…”

“And…” I’m dumbfounded. What the hell does this guy want from me? Is he going to beat me up, pull some kind of Clockwork Orange bullshit on me or not?

“And in spite of myself I started to like the person that you are,” his shoulders hunched. “I started thinking, well, no wonder you’re friends with a guy like Jacob Hannah. But you’re a CRIMINAL!” his eyes narrow and his fists clench, “just another filthy criminal puke living off the suffering of-”

“Stop,” I urge, gently considering the circumstances. “Just stop.”

“But you sell drugs! ”

"I sell herb. Not heroin, not coke. The stuff I grow in my house is the same stuff that grows naturally all over the world, you get that? Naturally, as in: grows whether we're here to smoke it or pass judgement on it or not.”

"It's illegal!" he shouts at me, exasperated.

"'It is the just man who disobeys the unjust law,'" I respond. Not my own words, of course..

"Thomas Aquinas," Bats names the author miserably, revealing himself to me as an educated man.

"Besides," I press, "how illegal is it? I mean do you hop into your Bat-jet to apprehend jay-walkers and people who rip the little tags off their mattresses? Goddamned stuff was just legalized in Canada, you know?" I'm laughing in spite of the situation. "And here in Gotham, I don't know if you know but the cops are sort of turning a blind eye on it these days. Not worth the hassle, too many cases getting thrown out of court by too many judges who just can’t be bothered with it…"

"Yeah," Bats sighs resignedly, his broad shoulders slump as he leans against a roof-top gargoyle. "I know. I read the papers too, get all the scientific data on it…"

"And it's not too bad, right? I mean, it's smoke in your lungs, so that's never that good for you, but beyond that…" was I really having this conversation? With Bats?

"What about the gateway stuff, you know, joints lead to lines, then needles and you’re an addict! You ever see a hardcore heroin junky before, Jueroux? What about a crack-baby?" he paces to the edge of the rooftop. I’m pretty sure that if he jumps off again I'm gonna ralph.

"You ever see a neighborhood pub?" I respond quickly, "alcohol's a drug." I've had this argument before with my Dad, so I'm ready for it. "What about a 'Starbucks'? Caffeine is a drug. I bet every crack-head, heroin cokehead junky you've ever met has also drank a coffee or a beer. Probably smoked more than a couple cigarettes too."

"It's not the same thing!" Bats vehemently complains.

"Why not? Look, I thought about all that gateway stuff going into this, you know, growing and selling?" Bats nods his head, listening while surveying his city. Our city. "Thing is, some people are going to drink, smoke and fuck whatever they can get their hands on. Some people are just waiting to become addicts, because their lives are totally empty even before they ever sniff their glue, drop their acid or snort their cocaine. Or else their just total lemming types that do whatever somebody else tells them to do. Either way, they’re going to find the hard stuff whether there's any herb around or not."

“And the proof is in the pudding, Bats! Look at me, look at Jacob!” I urged him. “You think Jacob has time for a little crack habit? You think I’m going to wind up in that alley down there with a needle in my arm because I dig the herbage? Not bloody likely!” Believe it or not, Bats starts nodding his head in agreement. Maybe I’ve talked my way out of a beating after all. Nobody will believe this story, nobody.

“You’ve given me something to think about,” says Bats over his shoulder as he fires off another tetherline to god-knows-where. He starts running to the edge of the building as I realize he’s taking off again.

“Hey Bats!” I shout at him, “wait, man!” His feet start shuffling through the gravel, the first time I’ve heard him make a noise on this rooftop as he lurches to a stop. He doesn’t ask what I want, he just turns and tilts his head slightly to the left, a master at non-verbal communication when necessary. He waits as I consider the sagacity, nay, the sheer insanity of what I’m about to offer him.

“Look,” I begin uncertainly, “we can debate the positives and negatives all night up here and you can go home and research all this as long as you want, but you still won’t really know what it is we’re dealing with. You won’t know why intelligent people like Jacob Hannah and I smoke this stuff, right? I mean obviously there has to be some merit to it…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bats shrugs me off. “Are you actually suggesting…”

I press at my peril. “Bats,” I begin, “you exhaustively investigated me and you brought me up here to talk about this stuff. So here we are, and if you want me to ask the question, I’ll ask it.”

Here goes. Many instances of your life you have to either roll the dice and let ‘er buck or pack it up and go home. I go into my left pocket and pull out the P.R.Js, selecting a particularly fat one and putting the rest back in my pocket. I pull out my lighter and light this bad-boy, taking a great, deep inhale, all the while noting his eyes widen as if the fucker just can’t believe I’m doing this right in front of him, which makes two of us.

“So, Batty …” I say amidst a voluminous cloud of smoke, “smoke a fatty?” I hold my breath and brace myself.

Fin

Bats Ablaze, 1 of 2

Bats Ablaze

Who woulda thunk it? I mean, you see 'the Bat' come swoopin' down on you and you think, ‘that's it, I'm done, plain and simple. Just cuz Gotham's cops are startin' to slack on the marijuana crimes doesn't mean old Bats doesn't give a fuck anymore. No way, he's a hard-ass, right?

So he lands noiselessly, cape floating about as if it has a mind of its own. Serious shit.

"Hugo Jueroux," he says my name in this gritty voice like twenty-six miles of dirt-road, his hand lightly but firmly on my shoulder. If he knows my name, he's got some twisted shit in mind for me, I know this. I can't say anything. "You sell marijuana…" he leads. What can I say? I have a bag of primo grass in a bag in my pocket right now and some 'pre-rolled joints' – P.R.J’s if you’re in the know- for Gotham's 'high' rollers, not to mention eight almost full-grown plants in my basement. "You sell marijuana and you grow marijuana in your home," he continues as if reading my mind. His hand tightens on my shoulder. I can't deny any of this, it's my occupation and I do damned well.

"Well, Hugo" he continues with that grim voice of his, "what do you have to say for yourself?"

You know that if you sell herb or do anything illegal in Gotham, and you do it as long as I have (three years now) eventually your bound to get your ass kicked by the Bat right? All my friends like to tease me when we get high, ask me about what I'm going to say when this dude busts down my door. 'Cross that bridge when I come to it', was my response, and now here I am, except it looks like it's more like 'get tossed off that bridge when he throws me off it' as Bats picks me up by the back of my belt and we fire off into the night sky.

At this point my throat finally unlocks as my disbelieving eyes look down at the streets now so far below us. "Hey man," I whimper, "look, it’s not like I sell coke to school-kids…" Jesus, this dude can move! We're booking it across town way faster than I could make it in a car, way faster. Dude swings around like he's Spiderman or something. "It's not like it's heroin or anything," I sputter, "Christ's sake, it's just weed Bats, it comes from the Earth!"

"You don't want to distract me Hugo," he advises me coldly, "if I get distracted I might drop you." He’s right. I don’t want to disturb him.

You know, the unconfirmed lowdown on the Bat is that he doesn't kill anybody, it's part of some code of his or something. But let me tell you, if you heard him say those words to you, you heard the even, icy tone of his voice, man, it's like you’re already dead.

When you find yourself hoisted like a rag-doll around town by a costumed crime-fighter, it really forces you to evaluate your existence. Thing is, even then I really felt like what I was doing wasn't such a bloody awful thing! It's just herbage, it's like a billion times less evil than cigarettes, and far less addictive than coffee! Produces happy-fun feelings instead of the murderous rage that alcohol can put people in! Goddamn.

We swoop really low and I have time for two thoughts, one: how is his arm not getting tired? And two: does he see this upcoming light post? I'm sure we're going to hit it but it's at that point that we've reached the lowest point it the arc and are now careening upward, towards who knows what. Guy is a goddamned lunatic! Just like that, the Bat lets go of the tether-line and we both somersault through the air, nothing holding us to anything. We're dead, this guy…

All of a sudden we're grounded. I'm skidding face down on a gravel-topped roof, and of course old Bats landed with perfect athletic grace. I finally open my eyes and all I can see are those big kick-ass dark-blue boots he wears.

He picks me up, and before I know what I'm doing I take a swing at him. It's all this adrenaline shit coursing through my veins after that little swing session, I mean I thought I was going to die! I instantly regret this, as Bats so effortlessly blocks me with one hand, and all of a sudden I'm on my knees and my wrist is in agony. He has me in some crazy hold, and he's only using two fingers. What the hell was I thinking?!?

"You don't want to try that again," he informs me through gritted teeth. "Do you know how many of you guys try to take a poke at me? Do you?" For a second he tightens his hold on my wrist and I'm sure he's gonna break it. I'm ashamed of the girly squeal I make, a sound I would never have imagined could come from me. He relaxes the hold a little, but not much.

"Before you try that again, you understand something: it's my job to be able to handle punks like you. It's what I do!" He sighs exasperatedly and drops my arm, which limply flops to the gravel beside me. "How many fights you been in," he asks me, "in your life?"

"Uh, three…four maybe?" I'm not much of a fighter, really.

"Three or four?" he responds incredulously, "I get in three or four fights every night of my life!

What makes you think you can just take a swing at me? You know, I would say four out of every ten criminals I get ahold of try to take a swing at me and every one of them as weak as your little attempt!"

"Is that so?" I respond from my prone position.

"I barely break a sweat these days," he reflects, sounding almost human for the first time. " Not like the old days, the early days, let me tell you. Used to be about seven out of ten. I guess you get a reputation…street creds, you know," its almost like he’s talking to himself. "Anyway, get up Hugo, we're going to have a little talk, and I warn you, a second swing at me and I put you in the hospital. Do you understand that?" All cold again.

"Sure," I respond, getting up slowly. "I only took a swing at you because I was in shock from that cross-town swing we just did." He sighed just then, as if he hadn’t thought of that. I looked him in the face, or tried to. He saw me looking and tilted his head downwards, masking his face in darkness.

"I've been watching you, Hugo Jueroux." Great. Special attention from the Bat. "First time I saw you, you were selling this 'weed' to a lawyer. Do you know his name?”

"No," I lied uneasily.

"I don't believe you," he responds and his head dips lower as he steps towards me. "I can tell when people are lying to me, you know. In a million different little ways…"

"Okay fine," I respond, not anxious to be involved with another one of his wrist-locks, "I lied because he's a good friend of mine, and the bottom line is, if you’re going after him you’re going to have to beat his name out of me, because I don’t want my friend going through the same kind of shit I just went through!" Am I shouting at this guy? Aren’t I vastly smarter than that?

“Jacob Hannah,” is all he says, which is my buddy’s name, by the way. That shuts me up. “I know his name because…” Bats turns away and looks at the moon, “he’s my friend too. One of the brightest and most decent men I’ve ever met and a hell of a lawyer, hell of a future.” Bats turns and surveys the city as I strive to understand what he has just said. “So, you know what I did? I followed you. I followed you home and the next day I followed you to school.”

“Holy shit!” is my unscholarly response, “when?”

“Doesn’t matter and don’t interrupt me.” I nod immediately. “I followed you all the way to Gotham University, thinking you were going out there to hook a bunch of innocent students the same way you hooked Jacob…” I open my mouth to protest but decide against it, suspecting it might cost me a couple teeth. “I couldn’t have been more surprised to see you actually enter a class, sit down and start taking notes.”

Bats peers down into an alleyway below us as a couple of shifty looking dudes enter it and start hangin around. He wheeled around at looked at me, his cape whirling protectively around him.

“I watched you for that whole hour, Hugo. You were not only attending class but you were taking part, asking and answering questions, the whole she-bang.” He turns around again and looks at the thugs in the alley.

“Can I speak?” I ask somewhat timidly, looking down at my feet. He doesn’t respond, so I risk it. “I do my homework and I pay attention and participate in class because its too boring to be in there and not get involved, not know what’s going on. It’s a waste of time…”

I look up at him only to discover that he’s nowhere to be seen. Where the hell did he go?

I step cautiously towards the edge of the building, every step making a crunchy sound on the gravel roof-top and peer down. One thug is out cold, spread-eagle on the pavement and Bats has the other guy off his feet and up against a brick wall, telling him some kind of dark shit, no doubt. Fleeing the scene is an old-lady with her purse in a death-grip. When Bats is done saying whatever he was saying he head-butts this guy into the brick-wall behind him, knocks this dude out too, who quickly crumbles like a sack of dirt. Bats quickly and efficiently cuffs both thugs together then launches his tether-line somewhere and rockets off. Did he forget me? How the fuck do I get off this roof?

I start trudging towards a little structure with a door on the far side of the roof-top. I try the handle and the door’s locked. Great, I think to myself, fucking guy’s abandoned me.

To be concluded....

No Juice

“No Juice.”

Black holes die. Considered -here on good ol’ Terra Firma- to be the final phase of a star’s “Life,” all those protons and electrons and things get pushed up so close together, dense beyond dense, the whole shootin’ match has all it can takes then blows itself to smithereens, homogeneously in all directions, not at all too dissimilar in appearance and cyclical nature to one of those Big Bangs that we’re always talking about, just smaller on the old cosmic scale. When a black hole goes supernova, the appearance on the night sky to any intelligent but insignificant creatures eking out an existence on the very outer crust of a nearby tiny spinning planet is that of a brand new star, and a pretty damn big one. Like all other things, it only lasts for so long before becoming something entirely different.

Chapter One: On Meeting T-Rex

12:01, A.M. 2K22. Ten years Past Peak.

“Nonsense! Good stealin’ is good soldierin’!” she winked and snapped her fingers encouragingly, rifling through my bag as I stood powerless to stop her. She pulled apart my kitbag like it was hers to take and at this point, well, it pretty much was. “The T-Rex’ll drill that into you in no time, soldier!” she smiled at me, a withered toothpick dangling from her lip.

“I’m not Military,” I explained to her. I wasn’t.

“You are now, sugar-bumps.” She turned from me and began walking towards the top of the hill, where an impromptu committee meeting was going on, backlit by nothing less than a perfect Alsace midnight, full moon and everything.

I had thought my quest was over with the meeting of the man who stood at the top of that hill, silent amidst the conversation but in many ways the center of the dialogue. It was his style. He’d just stand there and listen to his subordinates ruminate and postulate, his eyes everywhere but on the speaker. It was not all that unusual for him to mumble somewhat while they parleyed as if he weren’t listening at all. The soldier who’d taken all my earthly possessions as her own walked along ahead me and the two soldiers that had me trussed up like a Christmas turkey. We looked like some otherworldly multi-limbed shuffling life-form, monstrous in appearance yet quite functional.

They dragged me up the hill and placed me before this group, resting me on my knees and I looked at the faces that were around me. The lieutenant was Carmelita Delgato, the T-rex’s second in command.

“Who are you,” she asked me, “what are you doing here?”

“I’m Media,” I responded, trying to get up off the ground. A hand rested on my shoulder, lightly buy firmly.

“I wouldn’t,” a mild French-accented voice drifted over me, “the T-Rex, he don’ like you to move yet, probly,” a dark-skinned French-Canadian fellow informed me with a wink like we were old friends. He saw a cigarette pack in my shirt-pocket and his eyes lit up like the Fifth of July. No, it was the Fourth of July right? Whatever.

“Ho shit! Marlboros! Hey, you don’ mind if I take your cigarettes, right man?” he smiled, and you almost believed he cared, even as he took them. He frowned when he saw that it was a collection of nine library styled shortened pencils with no erasers that I’d picked up during the battle for the Parthenon. And they thought that place was full of ruins before!

“Tabernac d’ estit!” he cursed, “d’as a dirty trick eh?” he said disapprovingly to the man beside him whom I knew to be the number three in command. What can I say? As a child I learned to write with a pencil and paper. As a young man I did my writing on my home computer and as a professional with a laptop and videocamera. As a Great Oil War correspondent I had to learn how to write with a pencil and paper again.

“He must be Norwegian!” he declared, “I had a friend who tol’ me once dey smoke all sorts of shit, the Norwegians.”

“Fsst!” Carmelita chastised him and glanced at the silent commander, whose body was turned edge-like into the night-sky. Thompsen kneeled down to face me, read my eyes or mind.

“Haven’t seen any media around these parts for years,” Thompsen informed me of what I knew all too well. “I thought they’d all crashed.” They had, breaking down near the end to be little more than a recruitment device for an ever-thirsty war machine, shuddering to a heaving, gasping halt from the same affliction that had hit every other facet of PostPeak life: No juice.

I’d taken the assignment to cover the Rogues after their amazing victory against our former allies, the Russians, and had followed them doggedly through battles, skirmishes and drive-by lootings throughout battlescarred Eurasia and the still smoking Middle East. I’d fired off my journals of their adventures with the military mail system until that too came to a shuddering halt. Now I kept it all myself. What else could I do?

Lieutenant Freddie Thompsen had been an all-pro golfer in his Pre-Peak days and is said to keep a full golf-bag attached to the back of his truck like it was some giant armoured and heavily weaponized golf-cart and this was just some vast and ridiculous golf-course in which we all played for the amusement of the gods. Who’s to say we aren’t at this late phase in the game, at the end of the beginning?

“They have,” I nodded, “but I’m kind of on special assignment.”

“Well, why don’t you tell us about your special assignment, Media?” Carmelita advised me in her cool and easy manner. I remember feeling right then that under pre-Peak circumstances I would very much like to have run into her under some sort of social circumstances. She was a statuesque latina, from what was once known as San Salvador, as legend had it. “What story are you covering then?” she asked me, “the Dirty Rogues trek across Eurasia?”

“I’m covering him,” I put it as simply as I could, nodding at the inscrutable commander, “Commander Tycho Rexington the Last. Known to his troops and enemies alike as the T-Rex.”

For the first time his eyes lit upon me for the briefest of seconds, then to a spot on Thompsen’s elbow. The T-Rex was cagey as all hell, and the three lieutenants around me jumped somewhat as I said his name. Though perhaps none of his crew had any way of knowing, T-rex was the most famous of military commanders to arise from the Great Oil Wars of the 2Ks, and if there was anything left worth returning to when the whole thing finished, his deeds and the acts of his Dirty Rogues would be in the history books. Assuming, of course, that we start making books again.

“I know all of you,” I continued, enjoying the full spot-light for the first time. And I did know them all. Had I not trod through the same muck and danger, simply a year, month or day behind until the very moment? “Missed you guys by about a week in Islamabad,” I reflected on that land and it’s remaining people, and the difficulty of a single white journalist following a troop of like-skinned pirates like these. “Lost my camera-man in India in almost the same place where you guys defeated the Russian tiger, Amur Vladikoff…” I glanced at the commander to see for posterity how the name of his now long-dead arch-enemy would affect him. The effect? He yawned and stretched, then scratched his face.

“That was a real stroke of genius, that one,” I admitted. It was. Rumor had it T-Rex had scavenged a good sized collection of Russian outfits from one of the countless marooned vehicles that now littered the land like huge rusting beetle droppings and fit up his Dirty Rogues in them. They came at them from behind their own battle lines and the Russians thought they were getting some relief, but it was a slaughter. Between T-Rex and the other Commander, they’d crushed the Russian line like a pimple.

“Woulda captured their troop transport if it weren’t for da earth-quake,” Frenchie whistled, “a cryin’ shame, dat.”

“It wasn’t an earth-quake,” I informed them, hoping to use the information I’d learned in my travels to impress them, get them to like me even, if the truth be told. “Not a natural earthquake, any way. Word is it was a ground penetrating super-nuke that got shot right into a crack into the Somali sub-plate. An unnatural tectonic shift that still fucks with the whole system, that’s what’s with all the earthquakes lately, supposedly.”

“No shit?” asked Frenchie. “Tabernac estit! Who was stupid enough to shoot a ground penetrating nuke into a tectonic plate? Us or them? Or da udder guys?”

“Never know, I guess.” That one wasn’t something anybody seemed too anxious to take credit for, understandably. All sides lost pretty much the same amount of troops and more importantly, juice. But gone was the capability to blame or to ever truly know.

“We lost a good lieutenant and a lot of troops in that earthquake,” Carmelita mused. She was a bit of a mystery woman to me, all I knew of her was her record on the battlefield, that of the Dirty Rogues. The look on her face when she thought of her lost troops spoke the volumes I hadn’t learned. She was their heart and soul, and they were hers.

Aurora passed my bag over to Carmelita who pulled out one of those old-school, hand-held video-camera, popular in the nineties and early 2ks, now museum fodder, if we still had museums. “What’s this then,” she enquired with a raised eyebrow, holding the camera up for me, “you gonna tell me this thing still actually works?”

“Found that in Belgium,” I informed them. “It’s got about enough juice left for one hour long interview with the man over there,” I nodded at T-Rex. He looked at the one, over-large star in the heavens that brightened the so unnaturally, given the hour. That star hadn’t been there last night, nor any night previous, as far as I know. A brand new star? Is that what they looked like?
“How’s the battery on it?” she asked me, eyebrows raised.

“It works. I’ve protected it like it was the ark of the covenant.” I’d found the camera in a loot-cache I’d discovered while hiding from the locals in, well, I don’t quite frankly know where that was. Europe somewhere, not to far away from where Ireland used to be is my best guess.

In the PostPeak days, any and all money was completely useless, for what is it but a symbol of the finite energy we’d sloshed all over ourselves until it was gone. No juice means no more Yankee dollar, no more Chinese yen, no more Canadian monopoly money. PostPeak, things like food and burnables were the new currency, but people still loved all these gadgets and goo-gaws from those mad, mad, mindless Pre-Peak days. People would show you something like a laptop (no workie workie though, no juice, so sorry) or a lifeless clock-radio and explain what it was and used to do, and we’d all imagine what a world it must have been.

To a Media man lost in the wars, a working video camera was like finding the holy grail to an archaelogist. Remember archaelogists? “Found it maybe six months after you guys had burned through the middle of the third largest battlefield in the War. Without firing a single shot, as rumour had it.”

“We fired a few shots,” Thompsen piped up, “believe me.”

“But you never joined the battle. Just cut through it. Didn’t even say hello to General Esposo, much to his consternation.” That was part of the enigma of the Dirty Rogues commander. The battles he decided to fight were won swiftly and decisively in a manner that hinted at strategic genius and yet there were many other battles they had just skipped right by. The enigma arose in that rhyme or reason behind which fights he’d joined or skipped were indiscernible, no pattern at all, from strategic significance of the battle to the troop sizes of the enemy forces, there simply was no pattern. At least, to an observer.

The only pattern I had seen emerge came about in the last six months that I’d followed their path. They’d begun a straight-line that they were still on, and knowing what I knew about the status of the command structure and what little remained of any form of communication lines left, that straight line indicated to me that the commander has an agenda of some sort. I didn’t know what it was, but if he was leading his Dirty Rogues to something it was guaranteed to be big.

“I tol’ you he’d be pissed,” muttered Frenchie at Carmelita. Frenchie then brightened when he reflected on the battle. “You know Thompsen played through that whole battle with a driver, a nine iron, and a one iron.” Frenchie laughed and gave me an elbow like we were old buddies, “an’ a sniper rifle, eh?”

“Ran out of Spaldings on that one,” Thompsen mused sullenly, “had to use range-balls ever since. Piss-poor. Aerodynamics are all fucked on range-balls.”

“But hey,” Frenchie put a hand on Carmelita’s shoulder, “dis guy is legit or what?” he asked her, pointing to me.

“What do you think, Frenchie?” she asked him, but studied me.

“He knows our shit,” he shrugged, “and it explains dose little pencils, estit, even if it is a bit of a dirty trick. I say we keep him on. We’ll be famous!”

“Could be a spy,” offered Thompsen, “I say we kill the bastard where he stands. Fuck him. Another mouth to feed.” My blood ran cold to hear the man say it, though I believe in my heart of hearts he was kidding.

“A spy!” Frenchie laughed, “who has spies anymore?”

“And I say we draft him,” decided Carmelita. “We need a body for Resources and Acquisitions squad. Lost a few on the last run there, when Frenchie couldn’t supervise cuz he had the shits.” Frenchie wrinkled up his forehead and looked pained.

“Oh don’ remind me,” he moaned, “it was that rotten meat from da stew da night before…” His voice trailed off and the trio grew silent. I was about to speak but Frenchie threw me a look, indicating I was to wait. There we all stood, waiting. T-Rex turned his back on us and stood overlooking the town of Alsace. I’d always kind of associated him with Conrad’s Kurtz on my quest to find him, but I began to realize right there that I had been operating under the wrong literary allusion the whole time. He turned and stalked back to the circle.

“We mount up,” T-Rex ordered Carmelita, a voice low and gruff, “tonight.”

“They’ve humped it pretty hard for the last three days, commander,” Carmelita informed him with a degree of delicacy I hadn’t yet heard from her. “I’d like to give the Rogues a chance to rest up, get their strength back.”

“We mount up, tonight,” he added, as if she’d said nothing, “give ‘em another two hours sleep then get ‘em ready. I want to have travelled two hundred miles by this time tomorrow.” His battle-scarred face came into the moonlight for the first time and I noticed his left eye was milky white, probably blind, while the other was the darkest of blacks. He had a grey-stubbled and battle-scarred face and shocks of grey hair at war with his natural brown.

“May I ask where we’re headed sir?” asked Carmelita.

“That way,” T-Rex pointed in the direction of the over-bright star. All the stars seemed brighter these days. Less visual pollution coming from our blackened cities, but this thing was something else. “Ha!” he laughed a forced and vicious laugh, “where else!” We all looked at it as the commander started stalking away. Each of us had our own private thoughts as to what the thing was, what it meant appearing at this moment in time. Maybe nothing, maybe everything. Maybe T-Rex knew and maybe he didn’t.

“And the Media geek?” Thompsen called after him, turning sideways and pulling a bag off his shoulder. It was the famous golf-bag. He pushed the sniper-rifle aside and pulled out his One wood. I confess I feared he was going to brain me with it.

“Media-geek comes to my rover,” the commander called over his shoulder, “and under his own power.” He’d just christened and liberated me. ‘Media-geek’, huh? Beats ‘Another Dead Asshole’ by a country mile, I figured. Thompsen placed a tee and ball on the soft sand on the rim of the mountain-top, stood and addressed the ball as he’d done perhaps a million times in his life, then singled out a target.

“The stained glass window of that church over there,” he called out his shot, ostensibly to his compadres but mainly to himself, then fired a shot. It flew far and high, but missed the mark and Thompsen grumbled. “A bit of a hook at the last second there, where’d that come from?”

Chapter One ends

Infernal Dick

Chapter One

I sat at my battered desk with a celebratory fifth of scotch and contemplated the rest of my days. Having acquired the Jade Seal and having returned it to it’s rightful owner (for an outrageous sum, I won’t hesitate to add, even by my standards) and not to mention having solved the murder of Sandra Dempsey and having wreaked no small manner of vengeance against her aggressor, I didn’t really know what do with myself. The fifth of scotch seemed a good start.

The phone buzzed on my desk and against my better judgement I picked it up.

“Not now, Margie,” I told my always earnest secretary, who’d hated me ever since I slept with her at the building’s Christmas party two years ago, but had maintained a stoic professionalism ever since that I deeply admired.

It wasn’t Margie.

“Durante?” a bone-chilling voice inquired into the phone.

“Maybe,” I responded, sitting bolt upright in my chair, “who wants to know?”

“Just wanted to see if you were around…Sheldon.” Just like that the creepy bastard hangs up on me. How did he know my first name? Nobody knows my first name, I’d nearly forgotten it myself. The ridiculous name Sheldon was the first of many cruel gifts from the orphanage that raised me and once I figured out that no sane woman could ever scream “Oh Sheldon” in a peak of ecstasy I dropped it like a bad habit. My hands went quickly to my desk. I pulled out my revolver, ‘Ol’ Faithful,’ and checked her status. Loaded for bear and clean as a whistle, just as I was becoming with that fine Glenfiddich. I pounced on the phone again and called up Margie.

“Margie,” I said, “lock the front doors. We’re not taking any more visitors today.”

Now, I don’t scare easy, which is to say, not at all, but there was something about that voice that made me feel like closing up shop and driving to Winnipeg, drunk as a skunk, never to return.

“Certainly, Mr. Durante,” she responded cool as ever. She always called me Mr. Durante, ever since I nailed her. It was just Durante before. “Oh, wait a second, somebody’s coming in right now.”

“Do NOT, I repeat NOT let them in, Margie.” I just knew it would be the owner of that voice and wanted more than anything ever in my life not to meet him. Part of my mind said I was being irrational, that I’d lost my nerve on that last case, but the more significant part of my mind had to call bullshit. I never lost my nerve, especially on the last case. I was confident that the case of the Jade Seal was my crowning achievement, perhaps the best a private dick could ever hope to accomplish in a lifetime of wives cheating on husbands, lost children and work-place theft.

I heard voices, Margie’s scream andd the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. Something heavy like a body. I leapt to my feet with Ol’ Faithful in hand, the Glenfiddich in the other, up-ended and ready as a secondary weapon in the event that there was more than one attacker, ignoring the booze as it splashed down my shirt. The scream had been Margie’s, that much I was sure of, and though it was impossible that my last caller could have made it from a payphone on the street to my office in the amount of time that had elapsed since the call, I knew all the same that it was he who had invaded my outer sanctum. I just hoped she was okay, and I realized that in spite of all the broads I’d met and railed in my time, none of them had ever registered in my heart of hearts like Margie did. I always came back to her and she was always there, even if she did hate my guts. If she could just be okay this once I promised myself I’d make things better with her.

Regardless, whoever this asshole was, I meant to make him pay in full.

“Shelllllllldon,” the voice from the phone tittered, “are you there, Sheldon?”

I peered through a crack in the door and my heart went colder than the Hudson in January. Margie’s wrist and hand splayed out against the floor, her cherry red nail polish that she always wore providing a nice contrast with her dark chocolate ebony skin. I was filled with rage and prepared for a mad dash into the room, confident that ‘Ol’ Faithful’ would cut a path through whoever had laid out my secretary.

The move was perfect in its execution. I pushed the door open with my foot, and rolled in low, jumped and fired ‘Ol Faithful’ at the last second, in precisely the same manner I had laid out Old man Weatherington during the Seal case and by all rights Margie’s murderer should’ve been deader than Mozart. But the impossible had happened and ‘Ol Faithful’ had gone unreliable when I needed her most. She blew up in my face.

I laid there in shock, shrapnel embedded in my face and shoulder, watching as my intruder came towards me. He was not my typical visitor, not even when you take into consideration Santorelli’s goons who came by to teach me a trick or two and ended up leaving in a couple ‘a body-bags. This was no goon. He was a demon, a real devil-type demon, we’re talking horns, red skin, cloven hooves, the whole she-bang. This was too much. I was still trying to get over ‘Ol Faithful’s betrayal as this demon walked towards me and grabbed my chin in his hand.

“Ah Sheldon,” the demon purred, my chin burning against his touch, “a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Don’t call me Sheldon,” I responded through a thick gurgle in my throat, “asshole.” Was I dying?

“Now I want you to relax,” cooed the demon as if he cared, “this won’t hurt but a second.” With that he closed his hands upon my neck, and violently slashed a nail across my jugular. If I wasn’t dead before, I would be really soon.

“I want you to remember,” the demon said to me as he let me go and walked back towards the front door of my office, “office number 333. And I’ll see you soon.” With that he burst into flame and smoke and was gone, leaving me to gurgle, spurt and expire at my leisure.

Chapter One Ends