My name’s Mathis; I’m with the Coca-Cola Enforcement Squad. That’s Detective Sergeant Mathis to you. It’s my job to keep the Company safe from the scum of the earth who might damage its bottom line. The way this case started out, it made me sick.
Also, I started a Ko-Fi! If you want to, you could use it to send me a tip to ease the sting of my inevitable mental degradation over the course of this project: Ko-fi.com/charlieplumb
His flesh scorched and blackened in the flames of the cruiser, and Hugh screamed. She had left him to die – her own husband! He kicked and kicked until the melting windshield bent and broke, and climbed out onto the grass, his black uniform burning off him as he fell to the ground.
After a minute, he decided he wasn’t dead and got to his feet.
Rita smiled thinly when she saw her husband coming up the driveway. She hadn’t got much chance to see her mother, but the visit would do her good anyway.
He didn’t get out of the car, just sat there idling at the end of the path through the little tree-lined front garden of the Shady Rest retirement home. She would go to him. That was how he wanted it. She looked over her shoulder at the nurse who showed her out, now retreating to attend to some complaint from another resident…
Hugh Blake wasn’t a big man, but the space he took up in a room was huge. He seemed to give off some kind of energy that made standing too close to him impossible: like a radioactive core you got too hot and had a tendency to get hurt in the process.
He had followed her into the bar that was so empty even the roaches hadn’t woken up yet and sat down. While she was cleaning the overnight spiderwebs off the bar and glasses she looked sideways at him, trying to get the measure of what he was here for.
The street was quiet of an afternoon, as it usually was. Maybe more so, with the whisperings of the war in the air. Only a few folk were out at all, much less on the main street.
It was less of a disturbance than might have been expected, then, when the town doctor staggered out into the street, staggered under the weight of a man from whom maroon-red blood poured.
How many of these guys are there going to be? thought Deputy Springfield, looking at the two men in their opposite cells thoughtfully. They didn’t seem to hold any animosity towards each other, except when one spoke the other always contradicted him, with the condescending tone of a schoolteacher who has just been given a wholly wrong answer to a simple equation.
Someone was limping up the street, apparently barely able to stand at all. Eight feet tall if he was an inch, he staggered as the doctor ran up beside him, and she caught him moments before he collapsed entirely…
The hoofbeats were like thunder behind him as he rode clutching the reins for dear life, not daring to look back again…
They pulled him off his horse before he could react, and, his head spinning, he could barely fend off the first vicious knife strike at his heart, deflecting it into his left shoulder where it left a shallow cut that stung and sharpened his mind into the instant. He formed a rune with his left hand and cast it with a flick of his wrist, sending a coruscating ring of power out that made the nearest bandit execute a flawless backflip back into the bushes belly-first.
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