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Irving fuckin’ Pentler, Pornographer to the Stars

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Sleazebag = Someone who you think is dishonest or immoral. Pessoa considerada desonesta ou imoral. Picareta.

Victoria Atomblast. Damon goddam Ross. Fuckin Anthrax fuckin Ripple. The Bogart bitch. Not to mention, the Feds®, the Mob®, Disney®, and every easily offended religious group in the flippin’ freakin’ fuckin’ world.  He had nowhere left to go, no country could, would, hide his sorry ass, not even if he offered to pay off their national debt, and there were not a few hot spots his fortunes couldn’t aid considerably.

So here he was, halfway to heat stroke in Sedona, Arizona, waiting for a MONOlimo to haul his ass to Reno, when he really wanted Canaveral, one shot, off-world, hitch a ride with the boys from Global Armed Service, lay low on the moon until things cooled off, or catch a McD® shuttle, assume a whole new ident and buy into a franchise outlet on the Galleria Cluster.

Absurd, what it was. Irving Pentler, wanted for no greater crime than entertainment, a felony count of giving the people what they want.  Consumercide. The devil out of context, convenient fall-guy for overzealous neo-Victorians and the self-righteous ultra-Right. But even the Farther Left refused to embrace or endorse him as the last bastion of free speech, and so he remained its bastard. Lonely token of absolute truth in marketing; one man’s sin was another man’s religion. He dealt straight dope to the masses. 

Sedona was supposed to be some kind of “power spot,” this according to one of the girls who worked his psychic sex line, 1-900-MINDFUK, something about a High Magnetic Resonance, which she’d probably read in one of those TIME/LIFE® books, Mystic Drivel, or somesuch. Meant nothing to him, Irving being a fast and firm pragmatist, believer in the here and now, that which could be seen and touched, bought and sold. Commodity dogma, the only $piritual rhetoric he understood. Televangelist of the flesh. The guru of bodily fluids. Metaphysician of earthly prurience. The High Priest of Porn, one journalist had called him, and he liked that. 

He’d been waiting three hours in a window booth at Ronnie’s Super Pumper just off 89A, still no sign of his scheduled pick-up, the thought of which gnawed at the greasy edges of his still-digesting Western Omelette, butterfly anxiety sloshing about forlornly in a pot and a half of truck-stop coffee; the fellas at MONOLITH were notorious sticklers for punctuality.  Couldn’t help wondering if he’d somehow slid from their favor, if they were just fucking with his head or maybe they were out to whack him, too. 

6am, almost, no one else in the place but the short-order, the hash slinger, a couple of road-bleary long-haulers trembling on the verge of amphetamine psychosis, apple pie a la mode for breakfast and they just sat there watching the ice cream melt.

A Meat City wagon pulled off the highway and rumbled across the lot, belching smoke and pissing radiator fluid, obviously fresh from a Safety Belt run, punctured from grill to mudflaps with bulletholes and crossbolts, armored side panels scorched and rent by various explosive projectiles. Shuddered to a stop in the space right out front of Irving’s booth, blocking his view of the road.

“Bastard,” he muttered, rising from his table to go confront the thoughtless trucker. Stopped short when he saw the Caddo Indian lower his burly frame from the cab, bare-chested except for a denim vest emblazoned on the back with the famous tongue-and-lips logo of the Rolling Stones. Sputtering expletives, Irving fumbled for his wallet, cursing further when he noted the lack of cash within; he didn’t want to use plastic, too traceable.

The Indian eyed him darkly, and Irving shivered involuntarily; the trucker passed the wait station, indicating his desire for coffee with the slightest flip of his twin ponytails, came straight for Irving’s table, motioning for him to sit back down, which Irving did, much to the chagrin of his own whim.

“Mr. Pentler,” the Indian said, no question of doubt in his rumbling voice. Seated himself without invitation.

“Can I help you?” Irving asked, a taste of venom in his tone, tapping his MONOVisa debit card against the linoleum tabletop.

“My name is Benedict Red Eagle,” the Indian replied, sliding one of Irving’s First Strike’s from the pack on the table. “Gotta light?”

Snarling inwardly, Irving flipped his Zippo open and thumbed the spark wheel, butane reek tingling his inflamed nostrils as he proffered the flame. “So, whattaya want? Free meal? A job? I ain’t a freakin’ flippin’ fuckin’ charity, red.”

Ben Red Eagle laughed, hearty, borderline maniacal, took a long drag and lapsed into a deep, phlegmy fit of coughing. “I got a job, Mr. Pentler.”

“Yeah, uh-huh, lemme guess, delivering meat, right?” Irving snorted derisively, jerking a thumb at the battered wagon just outside the window.

Red Eagle smiled, smoked. “You could say that.”

“Look, Geronimo, it’s a little early in my mornin’ for Native American crypticisms, aright?”

“Sure, sure,” Red Eagle replied, watching his smoke ring spread, then exhaling a series of smaller ones, each passing neatly through the center of its predecessor. “You’re, uh, waiting for someone, right? A ride, I think.”

“I dunno, yeah, maybe. Who the fuck are you, know so much?”

“I’m him.”

“You’re who? Goddam Crazy Horse?”

“I’m your…ha…chauffeur.”

Irving wanted nothing more than to wipe the insipid grin off this redskin’s hatchet face, feared losing his fingers to a sudden tomahawk.  “This some numbfuck’s idea a funny?”

            Ben Red Eagle shook his head, a shadow of solemnity passing over his features. “I don’t think so.”

Irving eyed the truck, turned back to the driver.  “Uh-uh.  I don’t know what those MONOLITH sonsabitches is tryna pull, but I ain’t goin nowhere in that rollin’ target.”

“You don’t really have much of a choice.”

“I suppose yer gonna tell me it’s for my own safety.”

“Safety?”  Red Eagle smirked. “Sure, sure, it’s all about Safety.”

Irving rubbed his itching eyes, his pounding temples, his burning nostrils, contemplating his options, which amounted to little more than nervous breakdown, psychotic episode, toxic personal apocalypse. “So, yer, like, takin me to Reno, is that it?”

“Somewhere,” Ben Coyote answered, shoveling a mouthful of home fries from the plate the waitress had just wordlessly set in front of him.

Irving blinked, confused and jonesing. “Reno.”

“Whatever,” Coyote said, ketchup staining his heavy lips, grease dribbling down his hairless chin. “You da boss,” the red man doing an absurd and awkward Stepin Fetchit parody.

“I’m dead,” Irving muttered.

“Not yet, chemo-sabe.”

“Can we get outta here?”

“I’m eating.”

“Fuckit, I’m usin’ the toilet, an when I’m done, we go. Kapeach?”

“Sure, sure.”

No stall door in the john—”fuckin christ”—but Irving drew out his stash anyhow, used his Beamer key to scoop up a hefty clump of white powder and raised it to his nose, hand suddenly possessed by a violent paroxysm, watching in frustration and horror as the coke tumbled into the backed-up toilet bowl like soft snow falling on wet mud. Attempted again and again to administer his quarterly dosage, each time losing it just as the fine flakes tickled his nose hair. Emptied the bag that way, finally licking his finger in desperation and sticking it in the crystalline residue, but another convulsion shook him and the baggie followed its contents into the vat of fecal stew. He knelt on the sticky floor, wanting to scream, to sob, to mourn this worst of all possible losses. Furious, stricken, he scanned the toilet seat for a hint of the dust, but whatever might have landed there was now dissipated in droplets of urine. He slammed out of the bathroom, sweaty and fuming, stormed over to the table and gestured wildly at the masticating Indian. 

“Okay, Sitting Bull, let’s go.”

“No luck, huh?”

“What the fuck’re you talkin’ about?”

Red Eagle pointed at the men’s room. “You were in there a long time,” he explained, mopping at his mouth with a napkin. “And you still look like you need to take a shit.”

Victoria Atomblast

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I am sprawled, languid and insouciant, on Irving’s king-and-a-half-size bed, the gelatin mattress molded around my edges; the industrial-strength muscle relaxants have just started doing their thing and I can barely focus on the wall monitor, incessantly flashing life-size high-res images of burning Los Angeles and its blood-crazy citizens, like a riot right here in the penthouse being staged for my benefit. I fumble for last night’s half-finished champagne, unable to remember who I shared it with, or when they left me by my lonesome. Flat and warm, of course, but it’s Dom ’53 so I drink it anyhoo, straight from the bottle like the cheap piece of street trash I really am inside. Gargle it like mouthwash, almost choking on it when I hear the elevator gate crash open, spitting up a fine spray of the stuff at a noise like ten thousand jackboots goose-stepping my way across the vast living room.

“Irving! Where are you, you son-of-a-bitch! You better not be here cause I am fully prepared to disembowel your skinny little cokefiend ass, pull your guts right out through your deviated septum!” A screeching harpy drawing ever nearer, pounding on the bedroom door with a fist apparently gloved in iron. I slip a hand under one of the pillows, searching for Irving’s Magnum; it isn’t there.

The door splits its hinges with a thunderclap, wood splinters and plaster particles exploding inward, and framed in the ruined doorway stands a sneering Amazon warrior goddess, a living mythic entity, fire flashing from ice-blue eyes, robust and muscular body apparently tensed to pounce, ethereal, evil, delicious. I want her instantly, wet and hard all at once.

“What the fuck are you?” she snarls, glaring darts and daggers.

I could very well ask you the same, I want to say, but my vocal chords are suddenly rendered dysfunctional, as if by some wicked magick being perpetrated from her unfathomable power source.

“Where’s Irving?”

“Ow–ow–outta town,” I stammer, embarrassed and awed.

“Bullshit. I can smell him,” she declares, cruising the bedroom, tearing open closets, wardrobes, chests, disappearing into the master bath.  “Son-of-a-bitch!” she shrieks, fuming at the absence of her prey.

“Wh-what is it, hon?” I manage with uncharacteristic timidity. “Maybe I can help?”

“I doubt it, sister,” she states, matter-of-fact now, her narrowed eyes taking me in with a hint of interest.

“I’m—my name’s—Tom-boy,” I inform her, trying to smile.

“Victoria,” she replies, clasping, nearly crushing my hand in her vinyl-gloved grip.

“Oh my God,” I gulp, overwhelmed by this unexpected brush with greatness.  “Not the—”

“Victoria Atomblast,” she says curtly, apparently unimpressed by the attentions of yet another adoring fan.

“So,” she continues, giving me a frank and slightly contemptuous appraisal. “You must be Irving’s new…plaything.”

“You…could…say that…” I mutter humbly, blushing at the fragility of my own ego, crumpled now to the proportions of a spitball.

“Well, tell that despicable prick I stopped by,” Victoria says, kicking the broken door aside with her heavy-duty paratrooper boots. “I’ll be back to kill him later.”

“Waitwaitwait!” I cry, attempting to stay her determined departure with tremulous outstretched fingers.

“Whattayawant?” she spits over one shoulder, pausing in the threshold.

“You,” I respond, shy and docile.

She hesitates, eyes narrowed to frightening slits, then whirls around and comes straight at me…

“So, if you’re such a big fuckin fan, how come you didn’t recognize me when I kicked in Irving’s door?”  Victoria asks me later, her enhanced pneumatic frame bunched up against me. For a moment, I’m at a loss.  But only for a moment.

“Maybe ‘cause you look so much like you do on the tube, I thought you had to be an impersonator,” I say, opting not to tell her that it’s really because she’s so much more…diminutive, ahem, than I anticipated. She isn’t a dwarf, by any means, nor disproportionately endowed, just kind of small and stocky, a full-figured gal, Rubenesque, all that, except in miniature. She is sort of cuddly, subtly passive, exuding an unexpectedly sisterly eroticism, which only vaguely dampens my initial desire.  Not at all the insatiable ball-busting freak-fucking dynamatrix whose flagrant sexual caprice has made her not only a household name, but in This Thing’s not insubstantial estimation, the greatest star who ever shone her light on this unworthy little ball of dung.

            She is mine for an hour, maybe two, and then she splits, off to run some other tedious errand of vengeance, apparently her second occupation, though she claims she just does it to unwind.  I am left with her smell all over me and the small depression she’s made in the sheets.

Didn’t even get to ask why she wants to kill Irving. I consider warning him, figure he doesn’t wanna be bothered on his vacation, blow it off. Besides, it’s just so much…effort.

Houston, We’ve Got A Problem (2001 Flushes)

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“Mulliver, the most important thing to remember about this mis—zzt—the whole she—pop—is—squawk. You got that? That’s it. Without you, folks are pretty much—fzzh. Keep that in mind. Brainthrust out.” Zzzk.
            “Sir!” Mully banged futilely on the monitor, as if the solar interference was nothing more than bad reception during a Bowl game.  “Sir, what…?” But it was no use. Outside the atmosphere, there wasn’t much you could do about wavejam.
            “Fuck it,” Mully muttered, tapping a Camel straight on the console and punching in the jerry-rigged dash lighter. As commander of the Globeshuttle IRON LUNG, he didn’t give a good goddamn about Co. directives. Just another charter where he was concerned, a slow and easy way to pay the bills. And in space, there were no bills. And no place to spend the dough. Anyway, let the dinks who’d converted his rec room into a floating speed lab worry about terrestrial needs. He’d relocated the wet bar to the front cabin, okay by him, but the Ping-Pong table was stored in a corridor adjacent to the airlock, where it rattled and rolled calamitously whenever the boosters fired, which seemed at times to occur at the shuttle’s own whim, a glitch Mully would find time to fix one of these days.
As long as he was at the helm, he decided to kick back with a Jack rocks and watch the Earth loom ever nearer in the forward viewscreen. No pressing need to pass on the Co. static to the dinks. They had their orders, what they didn’t know already they’d savvy soon enough upon their unceremonious deposit in the thick of the LA fray. This was it, the ultimate proving ground for the Pan-Utopian Gestapo. It tickled him to think of it, this bunch of pseudo-military slacker trainees being called in non sub rosa to quell an Earth-bound uprising after six muscle-atrophying months monitoring the stars for the barest hint of an unlikely intergalactic threat.
            His thought balloon was heedlessly punctured by a thundercrack, something striking, sizzling against the hull. The shuttle keeled sideways in space, shuddered, engines whining, righted itself and resumed course.  Reminiscent of old-school attack simulations, he thought. Of course, that was out of the question; more likely some stray NASA debris that the fritzed-out sensors didn’t pick up. Gulped the last of his Jack and prepared to run an external scan. Interrupted by sudden red-light buzz from the dashcom, he tapped a button, grunted a brusque monosyllable and received the stricken, quavering voice of the usually laconic Pinback down in maintenance.
            “Capt., we got a situation down here?”
            “Pinback, what are you doing on this frequency?”
            “This is definitely Priority Level 1, sir. Whatever just hit us pierced the sewage tanks.”
            “Oh, for Shephard’s sake. Just jettison the damn things.”
            “Too late for that, sir. It’s flooded engineering already.”
 
            A Global Armed Services inquest would later reveal that the cause of the minimized catastrophe was a Coca-Cola ad/sat, its scanners having apparently misread the Stars-n-Stripes decals on the shuttle hull as the similarly red-white-&-blue Pepsico logo entering its airspace, activating its weapons array, which fired a warning beam at the supposed intruder. As a result, Mulliver and the crew of the disemboweled IRON LUNG were left with no choice but to break contract and return immediately to the lunar surface, prematurely aborting the much-anticipated first employment of the Global Armed Service forces. Subsequently, all ships of US origin were compelled to drop their colors in deference to corporate stratagem.


The Orange Blossom Special

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“Look a-yonder comin’
Comin’ down that railroad track
Hey, look a-yonder comin’
Comin’ down that railroad track
It’s the Orange Blossom Special
Bringin’ my baby back…”

The Orange Blossom Special by Ervin Thomas Rouse

Russia 2077: Look Into The Close Cyber Future By Evgeny Zubkov
Anthrax Ripple sat in the infamous Money$hot Lounge, dark end of the downstairs bar, waiting for nightfall.  The right moment. His special purpose. A neglected cig smoldered between his fingers, yet he didn’t sense the burn as flesh turned yellow then brown then black.  Synthskin, complex biopolymers that could be made to resemble the human epidermis down to the whorled grooves of the fingerprints—Anthrax personally had no use for such identifying marks—but contained only the most rudimentary approximation of nerve endings. The left side of Anthrax’s ravaged shell was a mass of prostheses, servomotors, semi-organic plastics, metal plating, steel rods, nuts-&-bolts, wires and dials, a clicking, buzzing humming synthesis of hi-tech cybernetics and jerry-rigged life support.  The unnatural extremities and artificial addendums were the result of a lifetime’s struggle with his dear ol’ Dad, pitting the innumerable agents of his father’s relentless vendetta against his own inexhaustible and nearly superhuman will to live, if only out of spite. 
            Well-armed, well-paid assassins tracked and attacked him wherever he went; he evaded, thwarted, and disposed of them in nearly every region, province, state or nation on the North American continent, various locations throughout the Western Hemisphere, and one particularly hi-profile incident aboard the Monolith InterSystems Orbital Waylay. If he hadn’t been under contract, and subject to the constraints of a closely scrutinized expense account, Anthrax would seriously have considered fleeing to a far corner of the planet, even off-world, though he thoroughly, and not unrealistically, anticipated that the death merchants in his father’s employ would find him out, no matter how far or wide he might travel.
            Ironic, in some respects, that an evolutionary dead end like Anthrax could so casually dispatch such a tremendous number of the world’s most highly-trained, if not highly motivated, killing machines. Anthrax acknowledged that his grafted enhancements, despicable and hideous though they were, gave him an edge which most mere mortals did not possess; he was painfully aware that he would be dead several times over without them. ‘We can rebuild you,’ They’d told him once, the first time he submitted to Their wretched scheme. ‘Make you better/stronger/faster/a real/Ubermensch/andallathat/blah/blah/blah.’ Despite the maniacal laughter, They weren’t kidding. Of course, nothing was ever said about making him happier. Once a said-and-done deal, contract signed, permission granted, it was out of his hand. They didn’t own him outright, just the parts, and if he reneged in any way, They’d send the repo men to take back what was Theirs, far more than an arm and a leg. He was Their boy, all he owned were his thoughts, and he was pretty sure those were at least monitored, if not outright controlled. They were as good as Their word, he had to admit; whenever he took damage, on the clock or off, They were on hand with the requisite compensation: replaceable parts, digit, limb, or organ, running the gamut from state-of-the-art to total wonk-sci.  He’d had so much work done, he wasn’t entirely certain where he ended and They began. Whether he oughta thank Them or go kamikaze and kill Them all. In truth, he didn’t even know exactly who They were, or where to find Them. Some unholy coalition of Nazis, Mafia, and extradimensional intelligence, more than likely, headquartered in the churning bowels of Hollow Earth. No matter, so long as They kept him running long enough for one last father/son chat.
 
            Nick Ripple returned from his tour in ‘Nam with a bum left leg, a bleeding ulcer, a morphine habit, and a not-altogether irrational fear of his own seed. His platoon was just one of many whose collective service to God and country entailed a generous—if accidental?—dousing with the military pest repellent known as Agent Orange. Though he now existed, lingering, on the outermost periphery of the US Marine-World, he was privy to rumors, dark, absurd, inconceivable. Reproductive malfunctions, in the tactful words of a combat acquaintance. Monsters, a more emphatic warpal declared. Abominations, exclaimed another former trenchmate in impassioned vehemence.
            Mutants, freaks, evolutionary mishaps, whatever they be named, they were defective, and Nick toed a hard line when it came to the differently abled, especially where the Fruit of his own Looms were concerned. Considered them weak, pathetic, offensive to behold. Don’t piss in the gene pool, that was Nick’s stance. And though he desired heirs, he wasn’t about to let any so-called abominations swim past him.
            Nick’s double-edged fatal flaw would be his own undoing, however; weak links in his chain of resolve regarding potential progeny. Nick had an eye for the ladies, too much so to remain faithful to his predictably long-suffering wife. Worse, he found himself quite consistently drawn to strong-willed, self-preserving women, the sort who preferred to make their own decisions as to whether or not they were ready to endure the dubious bliss of motherhood; those who chose inevitably proved rather obstinate and uncooperative when it came to the subject of their precious treasures being treated as abortions after the fact. Even the previously unquestioned influence he wielded over wife Travalia was put to the test and found wanting when, the night of her return from the hospital, she discovered Nick in the kitchen preparing to suffocate and dismember their firstborn, Anthony. Though the child had exhibited no signs of abnormality, its presence in the house made Nick acutely uncomfortable, and he regretted allowing it to come to term. Val took the child and fled to her parents’ home in Connecticut. Nick found them a week later; indifferent to reconciliation, Nick came only to kill the child. In the struggle that ensued, Val’s father was killed, and Nick went to prison. He was out in five, and a month later, little Tony disappeared from the playground at his preschool; no body, or any other trace, was ever found.
            In all the years before and after his internment, Nick took no special precautions to ensure that his family tree not flower on far-flung, hard-to-reach limbs. Nor did it occur to him that a simple vasectomy would nip any such unwanted offshoots in the proverbial bud. His exposure to Agent Orange had indeed wrought havoc upon his chromosomal makeup, yet was anything but detrimental to his potency. Of the twelve children Nick would sire over the two decades following the war, eight of them would come to term, though only two would survive him. One of these was little Anthony.
 
Anthrax didn’t like it, not in any way, shape or form. Going after Pentler was one thing, a personal vendetta fully sanctioned by the corporate overlords whose bidding he did with such vicious aplomb. But this one, the intended target for which he’d received his brainfaxed orders not an hour before, was his friend, as much as he allowed himself to have any. A man he respected, whose body of work spoke for itself; a man who never judged him, never treated him with the kind of thinly veiled disgust, contempt, and fear to which he was accustomed from his other employers.  Those members of the Consortium who consistently attempted to distance themselves from the copious gore which puddled at their own feet, stained their clothes and soiled their fingers to the subdermal layers. Bob Buck was cut from a rougher cloth, reserved his considerable disdain for the pretentious elitists with whom he was forced to consort by virtue of his own ill‑gotten fortunes. The kind of man Anthrax could drink with, not just a casual cocktail in some glass-walled Babylonian tower, but an honest‑to‑God street‑level bender, dangerous inebriation, wasted mayhem, all night and all day and again until the weekend when the real partying would begin. And now he had to kill him. No question in his mind as to whether he’d do it; orders was orders. Just seemed a damn shame, that’s all. He wanted to ask why. But that wasn’t his biz. He did what They told him, and They covered his ass. Hard bargain.
 
            Buck wasn’t at the ranch house.  That would have been too obvious.  He knew they were onto him, a man who’d put out and personally pulled that many contracts had rear‑end heat sensors to pick up that shit a million miles off. Then again, Buck wasn’t one to run, more than likely to find an open field and take em all on at once, boots on in a blaze of glory.  The only way.
            Anthrax tracked him easy enough, hating it every minute as he waded through a slew of Buck’s hired guns, rendering each of them eternally inert. They died in silence, for the most part, true pros, not candy‑ass salaried security chumps and suckers, guys he knew, old Joes and dogs‑o‑war who’d pulled his out of the fire more times than once, boys he owed his life and so what, they all saw him coming and treated it like any other ugly deal, didn’t pull their punches or hold their fire, for all the good it did them, steely precision and a lifetime wasted wallowing in the mire of sponsored violence earned them no mercy in the end. Corporate casualties, every one, causeless deaths in the meaningless name of a biz they didn’t understand. And Ripple was no different, just better at it, souped‑up skills engineered to serve no other purpose but this insensate brutality. A master of death. And so what.
            Buck was waiting, sure enough. The blasted remnants of his private army smoldering in his assassin’s wake, and Buck just sat there, laughing behind his desk in DalTex Buckwagon/BEEFCO headquarters, North end of nowhere, a rusty bastion of corrugated steel and old‑fashioned barbwire.  Like he didn’t even care, neither surprised nor pissed by this betrayal.  Buck ensconced in three‑piece grey flannel, 10‑gallon Stetson, alligator shitkickers, surrounded by a miniscule sampling of his personal armory, Colt revolvers, Smith and Wesson’s, Browning automatics, Walther, Luger, Mauser, Berreta, Glock, Uzi, Russian, Arab, Israeli, Chinese, Japanese, German and good ol US cobalt, titanium, matte black and metallic grey, nickel‑plated, silvery‑blue, the full ultraviolent spectrum.  Launchers for rocket and grenade, c4, tNt, plastique, nitro, round after round after round.  In his lap, Bob cradled his beloved Winchester, the one that had hung unused above the mantle of his manse these many long years since it had served to scatter the thoughts maintained within a Democratic cranium, as unlikely a sniper’s rifle as any agent‑sinister might have devised.  Over his vested chest, crisscrossing bandoliers filled with Cuban cigars, some final irony which Anthrax could sense but not quite get. Buck rose slowly from his leather-backed chair.
            “Well, son,” was all he said, completely unwilling to plead, no sign of weakness to make this any easier.
            Anthrax felt his trigger finger jump, brain afraid that another word might be enough to make him reconsider.
 
            Bob Buck stood his ground; he always had before, and he saw no reason to stop now. The first shot took him in the stomach, left a hole like a rouge‑lipped mouth hanging open in shock. He staggered back a step, from the force if not the pain, and his cigar popped out of his mouth. He shook his head, admonishing Anthrax with a cluck of the tongue, somewhat disappointed that he wasn’t dead already. The head, Anthony, c’mon, my brains on the wall, Zapruder jumpcut, I’m not some gook in black pj’s like yer daddy usedta deepfry in the rice paddies, ya kill me once so’s I stay dead, doncha know. But the poor kid had lost his nerve, useless now to the company, might as well a sold ‘em out and pledged allegiance to BEEFCO if this was how he meant to play it. BANG. Like an m80 in a tin can when Buck was a kid wranglin’ punk fun out in the boonies. Groin shot. HA. Hurt like fuck, no lie, more’n likely lethal but his skullcap was intact as he sat down hard on the cold cement floor, found his smoldering stub between his legs before his seeping blood could extinguish it, plenty of time to roll it between his fingers, even take another puff as Anthrax stood there lookin’ like he wasn’t quite sure what he’d just done or if he even wanted any part of it anymore. Buck reachin’ up to touch the lit end to the tip of a fuse that wound its way through the powderkeg backroom and yeah boy ol’ Tony Ripple’s jaw did most certainly drop  at the sight of that, suddenly  shit-scared at the prospect that Unca Bob Buck had done him just as sure as he’d just double‑plugged the ol man sittin’ gutshot on the stone cold in a puddle of his own blood. BANGBANG two aimless rounds as he backed out the door and the fuse followed him fast like some hissing sidewinder faster than he could run almost and goddam Bob Buck wasn’t even dead yet was he had to go back but no way Jose and holy shit if that sulfurous snakefinger wasn’t ahead of him three steps already gimme three steps mister which had to mean that whatever was supposed to blow was somewhere up in front gimme three steps toward the door so maybe doublin back was the way to go but WHOOSH some force aflame propelled him just enough and gimme three steps he almost caught up with the taunting fuse and BOOM you’ll never see me no more…