Franco remembered happy times: playing with friends, joyous meals around the small timber-plank table; slumped, watching TV or playing games on his Smash System.
All gone, he realised, cold and dead, and gone.
You want me to come back to work? he thought savagely.
OK, I’ll fucking come back to work.
The door slammed, and Franco strode out into the cold.
The following night was as clear as black liquor and filled to the brim with glittering stars. Ice crackled across streams and lakes, layered roads with a crust of sugar, and sent frosty crystals sparkling into a starlit sky.
The night was cut by the harsh drone of a truck. Headlights the size of dinner plates segregated the darkness as a mammoth vehicle laboured up a steep incline and paused for a moment, gears crunching, before lurching onwards with a flurry of slippery ice-rimed tyres.
This was no ordinary truck. This was a FukTruk, military spec, and able to carry a tank across the moon. It was currently being abused beyond the call of duty. Oil dripped from a desecrated engine, leaving a tiny trail from inception to completion.
The gates were locked. Metal security dogs—Jawz
—
patrolled inside, diamond eyes glittering as the FukTruk rolled to a halt with a crunch outside the razewire laser-fence; lights illuminated a sign which read, on a bent and rusted platter: REINHART & SECKBERG QUARRIES LTD. Occasionally, the sign would fizzle and flutter, something wrong with the electronics.
Franco jumped down and smiled grimly. Only a lunatic would make a highly technological sign appear so rusted and beaten, as if preserving a heritage.
“Ha.”
Franco stomped up to the gates; beyond, the six metal beasts padded over to him, curious. They were each as high as Franco’s shoulder, their jaws easily able to bite—and squash—a man’s head. They were bullet proof, bomb proof, hell, probably even nuke proof, thought Franco as he fiddled with the door locks, which were digital, effective, good. Franco nodded, attached something to the lock, and took a step back.
“Go on, shoo.”
One of the metal Jawz growled at Franco. He tutted, reached through the fence and patted its head. “What, you don’t remember little happy Franco? You don’t remember me rubbing your belly in the kennel and giving you bowls of used engine oil to lap when you were a liccle off-duty puppy?”
The beast whined. Franco nodded, smiling in understanding. There was a connection.
“Good boy. Now go on, get out of the way.”
He jogged back to the FukTruk, climbed into the cab and initiated the cold charge. There was a
whump
, and the lock on the gates blew. Franco revved the engine and ploughed forward, smashing through the barriers and growling up the sweeping road towards...
The Stores, and—more importantly—their contents.
It took him an hour to load the FukTruk, and a further hour in the dark cramped tunnels beyond the Stores. Then, grinding gears, he left the quarry behind, and rattled and bumped his way through this small town in the middle of nowhere, the arse-end of beyond, only recognised on a map of the area because of the damned quarry and its precious cargo. Franco grinned grimly. Well, he’d show them a precious cargo all right.
The town lay decadent in semi-darkness, scattered with a witch-light of the small hours. Franco passed a parked-up police car, but the officers inside were too busy snoring through sugar-peppered beards to notice the wagon full of explosives cruising the dark mean town streets.
Franco followed little used roads, emerging from the town like a bullet from a gun. Darkness swept down over him. The FukTruk’s headlights cut swathes from the night pie. Grumbling up narrow roads, twisting and winding between gulleys and huge formations of rock, Franco finally emerged, the engine smoking and honking, onto a plateau that overlooked the town. CB’s white-walled mansion stood before him; huge steel towers reared into the night, and a light rain began to fall, making fine white stone glisten.
“Honey, I’m home.”
Franco grinned, and put down his foot. The gates parted like butter beneath the grille of the FukTruk, and ploughing up the gravel drive, he saw activity within. Lights flickered; several came on, tiny yellow squares in the mammoth façade of white and steel bleakness.
Franco jumped down and lit a cigarette while he waited. Not normally a smoker, he coughed heavily, but inhaled the alien jaja tobacco, and felt his head spin and colours start to reverse. It also stopped his hands from shaking, and took away his desire to kill. Very important that. He didn’t want to go losing his temper too early, oh no.
CB appeared at the door. She was frowning. Behind her stood... a priest? He was dressed in old-Earth garb, white collar, magenta silk shirt. Over this, he wore CB’s silk effluvia-stained dressing gown, which kind of ruined the effect of believableHoly Man.
She came down three of the sweeping steps that led to her mansion and squinted, blinded by the FukTruk’s lights. She shielded her eyes. “Who’s there? Show yourself! I have already called the police.” Her night-dress was frighteningly short, riding up to allow glimpses of her straggly grey pubic hair.
“Nice house,” said Franco, stepping forward and taking another blast on his cigarette. Smoke plumed around his head, accentuated by the FukTruk’s beams.
“What do you want?” She showed teeth in an ugly smile.
Franco opened his long coat and pulled free a sawn-off shotgun. The metal gleamed, evil and dull. Franco held the weapon nonchalantly, pointing at the ground, but implying his threat. He smiled at CB.
“I want you to watch something.”
“The police will be here any moment!”
“Yes, but unfortunately, not quickly enough.”
“Do you want a pay rise?”
Franco snorted a laugh. “What?
What?
You see me here, with a gun, and a FukTruk loaded with enough HighJ and OptionX, not just to blow up your mansion, but to remove the fucking hillside; and you ask if I want a pay rise? Lady, you’ve got your head screwed on inside-out.”
“What d-do you want?” CB was sweating. It glistened on her moustache.
“Follow me.”
“Where we going?”
“Over here.”
The rain increased, and CB’s slippers crunched on gravel. Her priest lover bravely stood his ground in the arched doorway of the mansion; Franco ignored him with unspoken contempt.
“Wh-what do you want with me?”
Franco led a soaked CB to the edge of the hill. The town spread out below like a map. Beyond, glittering, they could make out the weave of lights like a distant runway, scattering and flowing, and eventually leading to the quarry, and the circle of floodlights cut into the wall of the mountain.
“You see the quarry?”
“Yes.”
“You see a disease, burrowing into the mountain, taking from the mountain, eating away at the land like a parasite. You feed, people like you, feed from the little people. Well, I’m a little person. Nothing wrong with that, I like being a little person, never right interested in politicking or running the country or such-forth. I’ve got no interest in education or law. I’ve got my happy little life, my family, and that’s what matters to me. I am a cog, in the machine, and happy to be a cog. That’s all I ever wanted.”
“What are you gibbering about, man?” snapped CB, her natural hateful arrogance returning in force.
Franco pushed the shotgun under her chin. The rough hacksaw-edged twin barrels forced her head to lift and she met his gaze. Then she realised she was staring into the eyes of a maniac.
“All I needed was some free time to spend with my mother,” said Franco.
“But I—”
“All I needed was time with her before she died.”
“Please don’t—”
“And you couldn’t even give me that.”
Franco removed the gun, spat on the ground and stared out at the quarry. Then he produced a small grey box from his pocket. CB’s eyes fixed on the box. It was a standard Grade F detonation control. She glanced back at the FukTruk, gleaming under its slick shroud of rain and sleet.
“You’re going to kill us all!” she wailed.
“Be serious,” growled Franco...
And threw the switch.
Distantly, fire blossomed, huge orange and purple petals unfolding against the distant mountainside. A rumbling concussion slammed through the ground, and even at this distance they felt the
crack crack crack
beneath their feet. The ground shook. Flames rolled up into a mushroom cloud, filled with a dense grey of pulped stone and dust, which eventually expanded and blocked out the fire. A terrible darkness filled the night sky, rolling up into the rain-filled heavens and spreading out, covering the town, blocking out all lights.
Franco held up his hand. He laughed.
Dust fell from the sky like ash, and settled in their hair.
“What have you done?” hissed CB.
“I’ve blown the quarry. All your access tunnels have gone: all your carefully cut research tunnels, your detonation tracks, everything. I’ve returned the mountain to itself. I’ve closed you down for good, fucker.”
CB paled beneath the mountain fallout. Realisation hit her like a sledgehammer, and she swooned. Franco had blown all her excavations, her jewel extraction mines, her structural survey tunnels. That meant the mountain had become nothing more than a mountain. To continue quarrying and mining, she would have to...
Begin again.
Sirens wailed, coming up the hillside road.
Franco put his shotgun under CB’s chin again.
“You’ve destroyed me,” she whispered.
“It’s funny that,” said Franco.
“What?”
“The way, you know, you help destroy my life, and then I return the favour, and you have this fucking hangdog look on your face, like, how could I be so cruel? Well, I always believe you should treat people how you would have them treat you. You, CB, have proved your worth, and you’ve been found wanting. Now it’s time to die.”
CB pissed herself. Urine ran down her legs and tickled the toes of Franco’s boots. It dripped yellow from her unruly mass of deviant pubes.
“Drop the weapon, motherfucker!” screamed a policeman, squatting unceremoniously behind his squad car, gun over the bonnet, fat face contorted in the rage of the moment.
Franco looked over at him. He lifted the shotgun and threw it to the ground. “Whatever you say, Big Man.”
“Get down on the ground”
Franco lay on the ground. It stank of piss.
More cars arrived, tyres crunching gravel, brakes squealing. Stroboscopic lights lit an eerie blue scene through rain and falling dust.
Franco was cuffed, beaten, and bundled into a car.
They drove him away, back down to the town and the cells.
On the hill, CB was earnestly, and with many self-pitying tears, explaining to the twelve attending officers just how brutally she had been treated. Sirens wailed through the darkness. She pointed to her filthy piss-slippers. Her lips flapped about shotguns. Four officers wrote in notebooks, continually brushing at falling dust, which smeared as it mingled with sleet.
“A disgrace,” CB was expounding. “And as for you useless fuckers, arriving so late and giving this, this, this filth the opportunity to destroy my quarry and mining concerns, well I shall be complaining to the Commissioner over your comedy lack of response times.”
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“How did this...” he checked his notebook, “this Franco Haggis arrive on your private premises?”
“In that.” A quivering finger isolated the offending FukTruk.
“Hey Bob, check the back of the wagon.”
Bob checked the back of the wagon.
“It’s full of explosives,” he shouted back, peering under the damp tarpaulin.
“What kind of explosives?”
“How the hell should I know? I’m not an explosives expert.”
“Why the hell would he come in a truck full of explosives?”
Realisation dawned like a new sun rising.
They heard the tiniest of ignition
clicks.
And night turned to day.
“I’m not proud of it,” whispered Franco, staring into Emerald’s eyes and wishing like hell he had one of his rare purple pills. The one that, y’know, kept him sane
.
“I am not here to judge you.”
“What then?”
“Just to understand.”
“And you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Shit. Well, can you explain it to me then?”
Smiling, Emerald turned and looked down at Pippa. Pippa seemed to shrink away, retreating into her deep leather seat. “It won’t hurt,” Emerald said, with an honest, open, pleasant smile, a smile on an alien face.
“Nothing hurts any more,” said Pippa bleakly, yet she still reached out, and their hands touched. Pippa’s eyes narrowed, and she felt Emerald invade her, enter her veins and flow slowly with the beat of her soul. For long minutes Pippa fought her, fought without wanting to fight, fought because... well, that’s just the way Pippa was.