Close up the old world trade center looked even more like the modern
equivalent of a medieval citadel than it had done from a far safer distance. Lincoln
gazed with muted wonder into the pristine courtyard in which the two domineering
gray towers stood like a starry eyed tourist. In reality that was what she was. This was
like a different world; untouched. A victory of nurture over nature. Even the spiced up
consumer sector of Central Manhattan had crumbled when faced with the herculean
test of time, but this was an exception. Silent- pure; a lone virginal figure in the midst
of a promiscuous society.
But with the silence; with the gleam of a besotted cleanliness; with the mind
cooling flow and shimmer of a smooth stone fountain which sent a relieving wash into
the breeze, came a certain uncertainty; if such words could be clumped together so. A
certain incorrectness; a niggle; a doubt. There was something not quite right here;
unreal. More than that; an evil hid behind the veil of purity; an underlying sin; a guilt.
The place was indeed pleasing to look at; glorious to behold. But essentially it was
empty. It was a war criminal feigning innocence to a doubting jury. It was a naturally
beautiful woman wearing too much makeup. It tried too hard to be something it was
not, and with the clear eyes Lincoln had developed through her strife and regeneration,
it was virtually transparent. The obelisks of dead metal told a tale of human sterility; the
halting of evolutionary development at the whim of a bloody history. Weeds poked
through cracks in the concrete. This was no garden of Eden.
Around a corner just out of sight, two scruffy stray dogs growled incessantly as
if adding a purposeful psychological element to the battle in hand. Each held in its teeth
the corner of an old dollar bill; engaged in a territorial tug of war like a pair of polite
but in reality resentful relatives struggling to score civil blows on each other over a
resistant Christmas cracker. But inevitability decreed the outcome; the taught slither of
leaf green paper ripping in two right down the middle, which left the mangy mutts to
topple backward into bedraggled heaps; leaving their torn and worthless prize to flitter
a while in the dusk wind before dispersing the scene entirely like the fluffy remnants of
a crushed dandelion in a Texan tornado. The weary creatures offered each other
snarling and yet conciliatory glances as they haphazardly picked themselves up, then
turned tired but quietly satisfied and tramped off into whichever haggard hole or
pungent alleyway from which they came.
Both Iron and Lincoln watched longingly as the dissipating spine of a crusading
firework climbed like an enthusiastic martyr up into the fearful unknown of space. At
heart, Lincoln wished the past would creep up behind like some stalking monster and
swallow her up in a single painless chomp. But unless the silver screen venture of which
she was a part edged towards a particularly fortean climax, that was unlikely to happen.
She hoped that in that terrifying netherworld; that uncognisable hole she felt herself
hurtling toward like a well struck football in a penalty shoot-out; just like that hapless
rocket; she would maintain the peace; the solace she had gained recently. But right now
all there was was the hurtling; and it was a difficult sensation to either contemplate or
to bear. The glittering man made shooting star fared no better than she had been
expected to in life; executed in recognition of a modern pagan ceremony which had
become more and more trivial to her with age.
It was perplexing that anyone entrenched in this tangling bog of poverty,
insecurity or plain tyranny could summon enough season's cheer to launch such a
joyous statement; a public sentiment; into the darkening sky. Only a stingy handful of
new years ago, Times Square would have been a buzzing ocean of noise and color; a
carnival of music and laughter attended by a weird and wonderful collection of
characters who would ordinarily have been feeding off each other’s dignity and self
esteem like scared, starving animals with a taste for homeosapien blood. Such a shame,
she thought, that these lustful practices had grown; out of circumstance; to encompass
the whole three hundred and sixty five or six nights of the year.
But both this observation and the fact that here they were headed for almost
certain extermination seemed to allude Iron, who had an endearing tendency to offload
any negative contemplations automatically as if his conscience busily drove a mental
refuse truck around in his head. To be fair, he would insist on looking on the bright side
of life even if he had just had his head chopped off like a battery chicken. "Come on
Saz; it's New Years eve." Johnson was no more festive than Lincoln; maybe they had
something in common afterall. "What we got t' celebrate?" he tightened a massive hand
around the opposite fist as if it were a mold and the fist a mound of clay; always hungry
for the fast approaching fight.
"There." Johnson was a man of few words, but this was ridiculous, even if he
had brought about the desired result in altering the direction of the conversation. The
mace like hand on Lincoln's shoulder was enough to shake away the mental cobwebs of
that tourist mentality in which she had inadvertently indulged. In a brief absence of
tactical awareness, her gaze had drooled right past a scampering military officer who
jogged noisily towards the grand entrance of the opposite tower with the giveaway
combination of brash army boots and a solid stone plateau of a floor which may well
have been crafted out of either marble or concrete, since Lincoln had never been
privileged enough to have walked; or should that be skated; on the former.
She screwed up her eyes like a dozey mole unwittingly exposed to sunlight;
brawling internally to activate her atavistic ability to make out a target as minuscule as
the head on a rolling nickel at twenty paces and blast the dead president to an oblivion
which assasination or plain peaceful passing had probably swept him into alredy as if
shooting a can off a wall with a spud gun at two yards. Appreciating in a fleeting
instant some necessarily inexplicable Zen realization, she automatically abandoned any
surviving drive to deliberate and launched herself into that much maligned leap of faith
you used to hear about on the bible channel; or whatever they called it; when you
flicked the wrong switch when searching for your favorite adolescent comedy; although
the presiding anxiety she had felt about embarking on such a trip was probably, for the
wise, a deliberation too many. This was the crowning moment; the kickstaring of the
Keuoracian motorcycle on which past American delinquents would roam their lives
away. Up until now the curious trio of resistance fighters had come across wonder
rather than warfare; as if any potential invaders were supposed to skirt around the bay
as convention had dictated them to, see the sights, take a few pictures, wander the
scenic route through Battery park and the old financial district around Wall Street
gawping at the landmarks and taking more snaps for the family album then turn around
when the iron was suitably warm and rush back to London, Tokyo or wherever they
resided the eleven months of the year when they weren’t vacationing, get the photos
developed in an anticipating rush at a rip off price at a while you wait kiosk, brag to
your friends about the things they'd seen in the new world and only then recall; 'didn't I
forget something? Oh yeah; I meant to go to South Manhattan to start a revolution'.
No better counter measures appeared to be in place. This was the first soldier they had
come across in a fabled 'heavily guarded area' which was supposed to basically drip
with crack snipers like an ice lolly atop the Grand Canyon in the height of summer.
Then again, if the snipers were doing their jobs properly they wouldn't have seen them
but in that case Lincoln wished they'd just hurry up and shoot.
Iron, pressed up like a sardine in a tin against the plush wall of the first tower,
offered Lincoln the supportive nod which at the very lest reminded her she was not
taking that leap alone. It was time to make their presence felt, which demanded that she
basically drop herself; leave behind both doubt and expectation like shedding a fake
skin and just go with the flow. Thus allowing herself; reluctantly at first; to stumble into
the palm of the gods, she took an arbitrary skip to the side, steadied her weapon and
casually raped a bullet into a willoeing restaurant canopy with a precision which could
only have been guided by divinity or purposelessness itself, which abruptly concluded
the escaping adjutant's dash for cover as the collapsing canvas bucked and ballooned in
the hollow wind and wrapped itself around his petrified person like a veil of morning
frost over a protruding snowdrop reaching out into the winter world for the first time.
Absolving herself of the emerging paradox of a benevolent divine aiding the
appliance of violence with a lackluster shrug, she criticized herself for deliberating
again and tagged on behind as Iron and Johnson strolled; irrespective of the possible
watching hit men or guncams which Lincoln had already illadvisedly called out of
hiding; past the spurting art deco fountain which spat a charming gust of water so thin
it could almost be air; towards the gratifying glass doors which welcomed them with
cannibalistic glee into the headquarters of the generally ungracious government; the
former of the unlikely pair offering her an affectionate knuckle to the arm in respect of
a marksman like ability which her oft bypassed pacifism wished she did not posses.
Here she realized there really was no turning back; assuming there had been
from the start of the entire odyssey of her life; which made her shudder like a
revolution time French royal facing the chop in more ways than one. Surely some
surveillance system had registered their presence by now. Logic and strategy would
have assured her that they were walking headlong into a trap like a pesky rabbit going
for a tasty bunch of carrots never knowing the speciesist gardener whose flower beds it
had dug its burrow in was standing on the other side of the sumptuous vegetable patch
with a sawn off. But then again, the jingoish junta had bungled everything else so far.
The view from inside the primary of the twin skyscapers would offer the small
condolence that Lincoln was right. She sighed like a hollidaying neighbor returning
home to find that those entrusted with the minimal task had neglected to water her
potplants as she surveyed the decidedly daunting spectacle. Standing on a plush silvery
carpet embezzled with the eolithic establishment's military logo, she looked around with
diphtheritic despondence. A convex balcony swooped around the gargantuan entrance
hall like a napping wyvern around its trinketry treasure trove; the girth of the gazebo
gangway a gravity garbling gamepark to the gathering of a gesticulating geostationary
garrison of gerrymandering gentiles all in obtrusive army attire and armed to the teeth
with an awry avalanche of aystere armaments. A confluent cache of cornucophic
carpets led up a fantastic marble stairway similarly policed by a crackpot conflagration
of honcho hitmen and bane bitten bodyguards. She shook her head clear. Such
exuberant observation only pushed her deeper into the quirky quicksand of insanity.
Another chunk of the gun totting rabble stood behind a girthy reception desk on
ground floor level displaying the plangent wealth of plenipotential personal assigned to
the WTC home guard. Even Iron and Johnson, who seldom took odds seriously,
appeared baffled at exactly how they would scramble out of this one with their lives in
tow. It was like a spaghetti western whose screenplay was penned by a twisted director
who had neglected to take into consideration that the movie going public don't
appreciate lead characters meeting untimely grisly demises and thus both prolonging
the dismal theme of hopelessness and banishing the money spinning possibility of a
sequel. A bridge too far, perhaps.
In honesty, as a gun was placed into her back like the stethoscope of a doctor
who had confused back and front, she found herself surprised at the authorities'
apparent display of coordinated strategy. They had lured them here with the express
purpose of capturing them and, presumably; in cheesy science fiction tradition; bringing
them to their leader. Even more surprising, they had actually succeeded. Perhaps there
was some hint of intelligence within the military ranks afterall. Zoltan Viola and Soren
Borachio; the fortunate lieutenants picked out of an incorporeal hat to march these
irritating infiltrators to their deathly date with destiny, pushed them into kneeling
positions in the center of the lavish lobby as if preparing to partake of a vivisectionary
Vietcong execution while Yakov Escalus; passed up for the job of South Street
defense chief a week or so ago; took great pleasure in readying the man who had been
granted that prestigious post for a similar fate, knowing only too well that if the
position was opened again of necessity in the near future his own head hunting
expertise would guarantee him the status of primary candidate.
Iron felt the flesh around his eyebrow tweak and flinch; squashed with the
merciless application of frosty metal to his forehead. Viola panted like a panicking
private carrying a fatal stomach wound; one of the many regretful side effects of
indulging his animalistic drug addiction to an extent which his health and conscience
should never have allowed. Iron had had more than enough of this manhandling; he
really didn't know why he'd let this motley crew get close enough to put a piece to his
head in the first place, and if he had been a less restraintful character, Viola's puppy like
sniveling would have been silenced long ago.
Following a less than tantalizing tirade concerning the whys and wherefores of
state security, which to preserve the reader's sanity any compassionate narrator would
decline to relay, Escalus issued the overdue order for the troublesome trio to be
escorted upstairs like sacrificial mammals to meet their maker; at which point the
rustling rabble unmindfully dispersed; their job done and the invective infidels
effectively apprehended. They scuttled into ground floor doors like mice into holes and
backed away from the breccia balcony as if jilted Juliets fed up of waiting for their
renunciative Romeos, leaving just a deplorable dozen to deal with should the
miraculous occur.
Esculus held Johnson back like a disobedient child at detention and wrenched
the departmental badge off his lapel as if opening a tub of butter; "Boss ain't gonna be
pleased, Jay." The shamed boxer would be forgiven for not caring less if the triumphant
suppresser was about to be awarded the job as the new DC, but Esculus had always
tested his far from legendary tolerance back in the academy days, and if assaulting an
officer of the law had been as legal as certain other erstwhile misdemeanors, he would
have indulged in that former felony years ago.
The others trudged up the princely placid stairs like human shields to an
munitions plant as their burley companion's tether finally snapped. A concise hook on
the turn decked the unsuspecting Esculus like a pinpoint picking quarterback at a
coconut shy; an insurgent action which prompted the remnants of the tactically
underprivileged platoon to spin on their heels like football hooligans at the sight of
police tear gas, relieving their prisoners of the ceremonious gun to the head routine,
which Iron exploited by cramming a jaw wrenching uppercut between Viola's body,
arm and weapon despite the impending savagery threatening to spill forth at the whim
of his giddy trigger finger should he punctually anticipate the maneuver, and happily
found the fist faster than the gun. He bore a marginally falsified pained look as his
former jailer dragged spongy legs across a concrete jungle to the sickly uproar of a
prolonged digestive splutter. 'Drugs can really crack you up.' Sounding like a school
anti dope campaign, Iron wouldn't have lived long enough to have shared his message
with the next generation if Lincoln hadn't been insightful enough to have discarded her
own personal executioner into another knife wielding savage who would otherwise
have been busy making shredded sausages out of Iron's spleen.
As Johnson brawled indiscriminately with the oncoming horde around the
reception area, the original adherents of the revolutionary cause leapt over the rim of
the lofty balcony into a painting pockled exhibition gallery which was soon to be
deprived of the many masterpieces of murdered masters which masked the mudgey
walls at the request of follyful volleys of frolicking gunfire as it covered the carefully
cosmeticised concourse with a sleet like flurry of chipped marble and mothball mounds
of carved carpet which inadvertently created adequate cover for their genial getaway.
"At this point I think it's my duty to remind you this was your idea." Lincoln lay flat
like a careless commuter having tumbled onto a subway line to pursue a dropped wallet
and having then been forced to throw herself underneath the approaching train in order
to save herself as precarious cables and jutting clamps and fans passed over her back;
ensuring she remained just far enough out of range of cavorting clusters of projectile
fire to maintain her earthly existence. "You'll be thanking me when the gamble pays
off." This was perhaps not the best time for considered conversation; "and anyway, it
was God's idea, not mine."
"You sure it was god who gave you that vision; or whatever it was; or just a nasty
knock on the head?" She motioned to repeat the dose.
"Mysterious ways, Saz; mysterious ways." With that he had the presence of mind to
push his companion's head down to the floor in avoidance of a cawing cannon strewn
sparkle of shrapnel which pinged against the far wall as if it was part of a squash court.
Meanwhile below in the lobby, Johnson scuffled delightedly with a bunch of
inexperienced extras who he decked left, right and center as if wielding a ginormous
ball and chain; never really contemplating the disastrous implications of their decision
to engage him hand to hand rather than just stand on the outskirts of the hall and shoot
him down from all angles, thus negating a clear tactical advantage. "You think we
should go down and help?" Iron would have joined the charge of the light brigade if he
had had the chance, despite hindsight, and even if they could move for all the fire and
brimstone around them, the unblemished banger would probably lay them out too if
they got too close. "I think he can handle himself, Mart." The comment was more
accurate that she would have thought.
Charging Esculus through a collapsible service door which could only have
been constructed out of a cheap studio set cardboard, Johnson trampled his political
come physical opponent into a lively lift room with a pair of hoof like feet and sent him
stumbling like a speeder from a car wreak into the arms of some other prehistoric
monster who thankfully this time was on his side. The bedeviling boxer straightened a
gold tooth as if cramming a female plug into a male socket and looked up with sweat
drenched, hungry eyes to be greeted by a horrible sight; himself.
Vladimir Volscenzi tapped a gold tipped aristocratic cane against the
beefy shoulder of a mackled mirror image; a disturbing form on which Johnson's
formerly gamboling glare had become fixed as if on a grisly ghost. The figure
grinned irrespective of the apparently contradictory catalogue of cast members
present; displaying a full row of silver tipped fangs perhaps intended for some
underworld feast in which freshly slaughtered werewolf flesh was to be served
and observed his new prey with an absent stare through ice white eyes with blood
red pupils. Johnson stepped back in both awe and trepidation; an action he had
never contemplated in the squared circle, to which Volscenzi poked his chest
with that pike like stick and marveled at his own ingenious creation. "Allow me to
introduce yourself to; yourself." The alternative Johnson cracked together a pair
of black nailed fists as if a steroid stuffed maid ringing the laundry as an ivory
earring in the shape of a sleeping bat lounged lackadaisically off a lanthanum
lobe.
Overseeing the enforced deadlock from the background stood the
maladous monarch's eternal protégé Abreru and two other unknown players in
this sinister scene; an enormous tank like character splashed with intricate
moari facial tattoos which Johnson would not have recognized as such if he had
been able to tear away from the sight of what stood before him, and a far more
petite but no less unnerving specimen in speckled black and white camouflage
who tucked back gorgonic reams of braided hair and focused her intense hypnotic
attention on the intended victim of a bizarre homicide.
Volscenzi inched the cane further into Jonhson's flesh as if he was
intending to make him snap and explained the aberratious appearance of this
hellish brute like a comic book mad scientist peddling his misgotten wares to a
sickened hero who was unlikely to be buying. "It is said that we all have another
side, Mr. Johnson; another face. My associates and I are thorough when it comes
to security; cautious. We have everything on file; employment records, medical
conditions, blood types, allergies; DNA. This is a wonder of modern technology,
Mr.Johnson; the appliance of science." He pointed idly to the half hearted
revolutionary's newfound 'brother' and displayed a megalomaniac smile which,
true to form, suited him. "This is your copy; your clone. I must say I am pleased
with him; he is not as disappointing as the original."
With that Johnson's one track mind came to the timely conclusion that the
only way to obliterate this unreal showdown; to dismiss it into the forgotten
archives of movie outakes thrown out because they failed to 'fit' the script
despite having already been filmed; was to rip the thing apart with his fists; a
policy he initiated on that impertinent cane, which became an untidy collection of
splinters even before the colossal clone had taken who was for all intents and
purposes himself down with a stiff right.
With guards pressed up behind and around him like candidates looking to
be picked on the shooter's side of a filicidical firing line, there was little chance
of getting out of this foreboding fist fight. Travel too far and you meet yourself.
Be too nasty to those you pass on your journey and you might not like yourself.
But the callous copy's apparently paradoxical assault was only the hors
d'oeuvre. Another powerhouse hook put paid to Johnson's initial attempt to gather
himself into a viable fighting stance, and made him crawl indignantly on the by
now blood stained marble floor like a duck on ice or a marathon runner intent on
making the last few yards despite his legs having just given way.
"Thus the first begotten of the dead." Sashanna Acrasia ushered her
larrikin leader towards a euphonic elevator along with the rest of the
exasperating entourage and spoke in a pithy, biblical tone which failed to suit
her demeanor, leaving the usurping Johnson to batter the outdated model to a
pusillanimous pulp on his own. The gigantic Japingka followed suit; retreating
into the lift as the original Johnson twacked the dominating upstart with a neat
left and an inside uppercut which spilled an off blue tinged line of blood across
his clefted chin and prompted the back tracking ogre to toss the injured party a
portly pistol which he scrambled for as if a stew of school kids diving to obtain
the scattered lunch money of the bullied class runt who had been forced to drop
it with the application of a gastric thump.
"By persuasion of the fist or that of the gun," Japingka's speech was also
worryingly unorthodox; perhaps a side effect of another ballistic bout of genetic
engineering by his boffinous boss; "Man must face himself if crimes against his
nature are to be undone." With that a squeaky pair of perversely polished
elevator doors shifted together in front of his face like conspiring diplomats
gathering together to Chinese whisper their plans to assassinate the captious
king as the absent eyed, silver toothed beast again took the upper hand by
battering Johnson onto his knees as if he were a bedraggled hostage being
prepped for torture. With an evil breath which seemed to draw Johnson's own life
force out of him like a legato liposuction, the clone pressed the pit like barrel of
his newly aquired weapon up to the genuine article's temple and shook as if some
chaotic withdrawal symptom of an incessantly administered steroid had just
kicked in as he tensed to do the impossible.
Life; Johnson concluded as philosophically as he was able; was a
twisting, winding, blinding path. He had been a warrior all his life; a battler. Now
at last he could rest.
There was some comfort in knowing that in the end he had been beaten by
himself, and perhaps this would force into being some strange paradigm shift. He
had murdered himself, in effect, which perhaps necessarily deleted both he and
his killer from the unwritten annuls of human history. He smiled in the end; two
deaths in one bullet. This was probably nothing more than the convenient erasing
of a character of less than intrinsic value by the divine which would allow some
greater, predetermined destiny to manifest itself for other members of the cast.
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