Cookie Cutter Man (15 page)

Daniel dug in Simon’s pockets and got Jared’s keys, spared
his fallen brother a final glance and reached out, closing Simon’s one
remaining eye. The hot fury and slick revulsion drained out of him, leaving
that cold feeling he loved and loathed. He realized Simon must have felt that
way all the time.

Look what it got him.

Daniel joined Ebin at the door.

It’ll get you too.

“You ready?” Ebin asked with a crazy gleam in his eyes.

“No,” Daniel said. “But let’s do it.” They went out into
the street, firing shots. A black S.U.V. roared around the corner and came
skidding to a stop. The driver got out and Ebin squeezed one off; the round
entered the driver’s throat and blew part of his spine out the back of his
neck. The meaty
putch
of the exit wound resonated as greasy splatters of
plasma and flesh threaded with the silver gleam of microfilament wire hit the
rear window of the oversized vehicle. The driver dropped to the ground.

Another David Bailey dive-rolled out of the back seat and
came up in a crouch, gun drawn and about to fire. Daniel put a bullet in each
of his eyes. Ebin gave him a nudge and they headed toward the station wagon.
Daniel looked over his shoulder in time to see Lawrence Wills3 climb into the
very same Mazda he had been driving the night Daniel first saw him at the
burger joint.

“C’mon,
c’mon
!” Ebin yelled, providing cover fire.
Daniel got in and unlocked the other door, starting the wagon and pulling away
from the curb as Ebin climbed in.

“He’s following us!” Daniel yelled as the Mazda bolted into
traffic behind them.

“No
shit
he’s following us! He’ll be
shooting
us if you don’t get this fucking thing rolling!
Go
!” Ebin leaned out and
fired twice, spider-webbing the windshield. Daniel stomped the pedal to the
floor and hoped there would be no one coming through the intersection as he ran
the stop sign, still accelerating. Ebin pulled the trigger again. Instead of
flinging hot lead into the face of their enemy, he only now noticed the weight
of his gun was off, and that the slide was locked back; he was out of ammo. He
cursed under his breath, ducking back into the car and digging though his
pockets for another clip.

“Fuck!” Daniel jumped the massive car to the left, straddling
both lanes. The right side whipped around a tired old man of at least 150 that
had the right of way in the crosswalk.

Ebin looked up from loading his gun and out his window as
the old man narrowly escaped becoming a Technicolor yawn on the side of their
car. The wood-paneled wagon came close enough for Ebin to see himself flashing
by in the ridiculously oversized wraparound sunglasses only the blind or really
old people wear. He swallowed hard, eyes wide, and went back to loading his
gun.

“Where is he?” Daniel yelled.

“He hit the old guy!” Ebin watched in what was either horror
or the height of amusement as the Mazda struck the old man they had so narrowly
missed. The geezer was thrown up and forward, doing one complete somersault in
the air and belly-flopping on the hood of a car, his white cane clattering into
the gutter. Daniel checked his rearview in time to see the wraparounds fly off
the lifeless old mummy’s face as his crippled body bounced off the hood and
landed on the sidewalk. The Mazda sped up.

Daniel went to the right-hand lane around a slower car,
bursting through a yellow light. The Mazda sped through the intersection. A
Buick slammed on its brakes and almost t-boned it as Wills swerved into the
oncoming lane to avoid a taxicab. The Mazda easily closed the distance between
them.

Ebin turned in his seat to take aim as the Mazda kissed
their rear bumper.

“Fuck!” Daniel pulled back to the left and missed a parked
car by inches. The station wagon jolted wildly as the Mazda sideswiped the rear
panel again. This time Daniel couldn’t stop from slamming into a shiny red
Beemer. The
leepleepleep
of the car alarm faded as he went with the
collision and steadied the car again. Ebin fired two shots, one blowing in the
passenger window of the Mazda and the other clipping off Wills’ earlobe,
vaporizing it in a fine mist of crimson blood and brown vat-grown flesh.

Daniel saw his chance to mount an offensive and slammed the
brakes, dropping back so the two cars were even. Wills3 raised his gun and took
aim.

“Later, asshole.” Daniel yanked the car to the left as hard
as he could. The agonized squeal of metal on metal rang through the night and
was followed by a loud but somehow hollow crunch as the Mazda collided with the
rear of a parked Plymouth Volaré. The Volaré hardly moved, but the Mazda
stopped cold. Wills flew forward in his seat, his head cracking the windshield.
Daniel kept the station wagon as steady as he could and began to brake.

“Let’s kill this sci-fi fuck for good,” Ebin said as the car
slowed to a stop. They were about half a block from the smoking wreck of the
Volvo. The only light in the blackness was their taillights; the damp, empty
street was turned a burning red, transforming the lower-class neighborhood into
something right next to hell. Daniel felt his jaw drop open as a figure came
staggering out into the street and steadied itself. Wills3 shook his head as if
to clear it. In the red light he looked like a demon from the blackest pits of
lowest perdition, and in his hand he held a .45. Even from here Daniel could
see part of Wills’ forehead had been caved in by his collision with the
windshield.

Without a word Ebin cocked his gun as Daniel dropped the
wagon into reverse and floored the accelerator. The figure in the rearview
lowered his dented head and ran toward the car.

Ebin turned around in his seat, up on his knees, and opened
fire, squeezing off shots at a rhythmic pace. The first three stitched high
across the cyborg’s chest and would have shattered his collarbone had it not
been reinforced with steel. The bullet twisted the techno-bone out of shape and
panged off into the night. Part of the reconstructed skeleton now jutted out of
Lawrence Wills’ shoulder as if it were trying to escape, and he never even
broke stride. The battered mothership of the station wagon bore down on its
target and the cyborg dove forward, bloody legs powered by implanted pistons.
His form was perfect, that of an Olympic medalist in some nightmare version of
the games. The man-machine came through the rear window of the station wagon,
tinted glass splashing around his body and tinkling onto the pavement.

He was in the car.

Daniel panicked and the car fish-tailed, crashing into the
Volaré that had so efficiently stopped the Mazda. The station wagon had been
going almost 40 and Ebin was slammed into his seat, dropping his gun and
dislocating his shoulder, shattering his nose on the headrest.

There was a moment of silence, and then they heard the
click
of a gun being cocked.

Daniel screamed as the weapon crashed from the rear of the
car, ducking down an instant before his headrest exploded in a shower of foam
and upholstery. “Get out of the car!”

Ebin was already in motion, pushing open the door with his
good arm and bailing out into the cold wet street. Daniel did the same,
scraping a six-inch patch of skin off his arm and shoulder when he landed. He
rolled onto his back in time to see the cab of the car filled with gunfire and
new holes. A bullet struck the steering wheel and it exploded, the horn braying
out among the sounds of madness before fading. The windshield blew out in a
million fragments, and the left blinker went on.

Daniel scrambled on his knees through a puddle of broken
glass, feeling a deep and sudden pain in one of them followed by a hot rush of
blood. He reached the cover provided by another car, this one a burgundy Honda
CRX with dice on the mirror. Daniel pulled the gun from his holster and peered
over the low nose of the car.

Wills was on his knees in the rear end of the wagon,
screaming gibberish and firing everywhere, blowing deadly kisses with his .45.
Blood streamed down his face and from his chest and shoulder. Daniel steadied
his arms on the CRX and fired. The bullet caught the gaping jaw of Wills3 and
blew it clean off. Across the street Ebin rose like an injured ghost, his face
pale and bloody, his left arm hanging a little lower than it should have been.
He’d drawn his back-up piece.

Through the distant police sirens and the swelling symphony
of cautious, questioning voices from the local residents, they were somehow
able to hear the muted dry fire clicking every time Wills3 pulled the trigger
of his empty gun. He was a brain-damaged robot, with its switch stuck on KILL.
The two operatives converged on the car as one, throwing thunder back into the
rear of the station wagon, perforating the body of a dead man’s clone.

The man-machine in the car was finally quiet. It wept blood
and mechanical fluids from a dozen new sets of eyes.

“You all right?” Daniel called to Ebin, who had stowed his back-up
and retrieved his other gun from the car. He now leaned on the front end for
support.

“Yeah, let’s just get the fuck outta here, huh?” Ebin wiped
a handful of blood off his face and pressed his fingers against his crooked
nose. Daniel spared one last glance into the car. The basically OK interior of
10 minutes ago had been replaced with blood, glass, a corpse, and shredded
upholstery punched with holes.

Another second in that car and I’d have been dead, Daniel
thought. They turned and another black S.U.V. stopped in the street, blocking
both lanes. A blue bubble on the dash revolved slowly, majestically,
conflicting with the terrible red glow of the station wagon’s one remaining
taillight.

The driver stepped out of the S.U.V., still wearing his
mirror shades and scanning them with his night vision eyes.

The automatic man spoke into a cell and drew his gun when
Ebin fired. There was a steely bang and the G-man’s head rocked back. A perfect
black circle just above his right eyebrow appeared before a crackle of
electricity sparked from within the hole, followed by a gush of other fluids
that spurted out, mixing and streaming dark orange down his face. But still he
stood, phone in one hand, gun in the other, and began convulsing on his feet.

The broken amalgamation of technology and flesh started
pulling the trigger on his service revolver, which was fortunately pointed at
the ground. Daniel watched as a bullet ricocheted off the pavement and popped
through the agent’s leg. Thin tendrils of smoke were coming from his nose and
ears; the man in shiny black shoes crying smoke out the corners of his eyes.
His metal skull grew hotter, the result of some terrible internal malfunction,
and like a marshmallow his face began to run.

Daniel watched in horror as the flesh began to slide off,
feeling that if he started puking now he would never be able to stop. “Oh
Jesus, Ebin. Shoot him again.”

But Ebin didn’t fire, he grinned, watching the cyborg flap,
listening to its choked and gargling last words.

The G-man finally dropped to the ground, his gun falling
from his hand at impact and his legs kicking, drumming rhythmically on the
pavement like a wind-up toy.

“There’s gotta be more of them coming,” Ebin said.

Daniel nodded, his throat too dry for speech. The two of
them ran a few blocks as best they could, ducked into an alley, and disappeared
into the blackness.

They stayed in the shadows as a cadre of police cruisers
passed, following a group of four or five unmarked cars, all black or dark blue
and hurling through the streets. They ran another six blocks before stopping.

Daniel leaned forward to catch his breath, planting his
hands on his upper thighs. Then he straightened up.

“Mother
fucker
!” He took two instinctive steps back
the way they’d come.

Ebin grabbed him by the arm. “What? Where you goin?” His
nose had finally stopped bleeding but his shoulder was a perversion of what it
was supposed to be; two swelling lumps and stretching flesh.

“I left Jared’s keys in the car!” Daniel said and slapped
his hand against the cool brick. “
Goddammit
!”

“We can’t go back there! Didn’t you see all those cops just
now? Where do you think they’re going? Midnight
fucking
mass? Forget
it!” Ebin leaned against the wall in just the wrong way and sucked in a sharp
breath of pain. “Hey, you gotta pop this back in for me, man.” Ebin was
sweating profusely and his face was an odd grayish color.

Daniel turned, looking at the disfigured lump hiding beneath
Ebin’s t-shirt.

“No, no, I can’t ...” Daniel ran his hand through his hair
and looked back in the direction of the keys.

What car keys? You’re dreaming Daniel. Wake up!

“
Shut up
, goddammit!” he yelled, in his head and
aloud.

Ebin flinched away from the outburst. “Whoa, c’mon man. You
gotta pull—”

Ebin’s eyes rolled wildly for an instant before coming back
to bearing. He gritted his teeth.

Daniel turned back to Ebin and scratched his head again,
feeling a little ill at the prospect of even touching that hanging arm, let
alone pulling on it. “We really fucked this up,” he said to no one in particular,
wondering what Jared would say when he found out Simon wasn’t coming back. He
took a firm hold on Ebin’s wrist and lifted his arm.

Ebin held his breath and steeled himself for the pain that
was about to come. Daniel pulled.

Ebin stifled his scream against his forearm, biting into it
and drawing tiny beads of blood. There was a wet, sick pop of the arm going
back into place. Daniel let go. Ebin slid down the wall and sat, regaining his
focus on the world. He took a small orange bottle from his pocket and popped
the cap off one-handed, dry swallowing two or three of the pills inside. Daniel
wondered if they were the same as he’d been given.