Demolition Man Page 13

  The inhabitants of the Wasteland had learned to make the most of their meager natural resources. Using odd pieces of scrap metal filched from the upper world or harvested from the underground landfill refuse mine, along with discarded engine parts powered by electricity filched from the San Angeles generator nets, they had created an engine workshop deep in the interior of the caverns.

  Surrounding the improvised workshop were the cadavers of a score of wrecked automobiles, and a number of Scraps were working on them, cannibalizing the machines that were beyond saving to make jerry-rigged vehicles that were rusty and dented- but they looked liked they worked. And Spartan saw, to his delight, that they were real cars, good old-fashioned, fossil-fuel-burning, polluting gas guzzlers.

  But nothing was thrown away in the Wasteland. The few hulks that had been stripped to their bare frames had been patched and converted into tiny dwelling places, single unit residences which could accommodate one or possibly two people.

  The one car in the cavern that had not been touched by the industrious mechanics was a bright red, pristine muscle car from the 1970s. In the nineteen nineties it had been considered a thoroughbred. Now it was a classic.

  Spartan walked over to it and touched the butter soft red paint. "Well," he said nostalgically, "would you look at this baby."

  Huxley nodded. "A 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442 with a 455-cubic-inch engine, radial tires, and bucket seats. Four-four-two stands for four barrel carbs, four on the floor, two bucket seats. And this model is seriously beyond the standard package."

  Spartan looked at her approvingly. "Huxley, I'm very impressed."

  "I studied the past."

  The cold snout of a large caliber handgun poked into Spartan's back.

  "That's funny. I studied the past, too," said a voice behind him. It was Edgar Friendly and his collection of Scrap fighters. Spartan looked around. They all had guns.

  "You got balls, cop," said Friendly. "Coming down here after the show you put on last night."

  Lenina Huxley did her best to assert control. After all, she was a sworn officer of the law. "We're looking for a murder-death-killer," she said, trying to sound as tough as possible. "Can you help? Or just bully us with those primitive weapons?"

  Friendly took the gun off Spartan just long enough to fire the weapon once, blowing a hole in the side of one of the abandoned cars. The noise was deafening, and the heat and smoke of the explosion made the dank air acrid and choking. Alfredo Garcia almost dropped to the floor in fright.

  Lenina did her best not to flinch, to keep up her tough cop act. "Well, maybe they're not so primitive."

  Edgar Friendly was not taken in by the performance. "Not funny, not smart," he snarled at her. Then he whipped around and stuffed the heavy revolver right into Spartan's face, as if the Scraps leader intended to blast a slug into the cop's left nostril.

  "So?" he asked. "I guess you came down here to take me in. I don't think so."

  "You will submit to the law," said Huxley.

  Friendly shook his head. "Guess what? Not happening. You can tell Cocteau to kiss my ass."

  Alfredo Garcia inhaled sharply. He had never heard obscenity and the Mayor-Gov's name mentioned in the same breath.

  Edgar Friendly was delighted with the shock effect of his words. "Yeah, that's right. His rules don't apply down here. Fuck him! Tell him it's going to take an army of assholes to get rid of me."

  "Why do you say these things?" demanded Huxley. "Why do you want to live like this?"

  '"Cause I don't give a shit," he said. "Lady, I got nothing to lose. And you can also tell your precious master-"

  Spartan had long ago had his fill of tough talk. He pushed the gun out of his face. It was obvious to him that the Scraps leader had no intention of using it-if he had, why would he have spent the last five minutes giving them obscene and defiant messages to carry back to Dr. Cocteau.

  "Look pal," said Spartan. "I don't want to piss on your parade, but I don't even know who the hell you are. Let alone want to take you anywhere. Stay here. Eat rat. Be well. And for the record, Cocteau is an asshole." Spartan started stalking away, back down the main street of the Wasteland.

  Friendly looked puzzled. He never imagined that he would hear a man dressed in the uniform of the San Angeles Police Department talk with such disrespect of the exalted leader of the city above.

  "Wait. Wait. Wait. Whoa!"

  Spartan stopped. "Yeah?"

  Friendly peered at him. "Just what is it you want, anyway? What did you come down here for if it wasn't for me? Last night, at the Taco Bell, you were ready to kill everybody."

  "That was last night. You can bust up every Taco Bell in the whole goddamn city for all I care." Spartan turned and walked back toward Friendly a step or two. "I got a few questions. What I really came down here for was a few answers."

  Suddenly, all of the Scraps cocked their weapons and aimed them at the three cops.

  "But if it's a bad time for questions," said Alfredo Garcia, "we could always come back later."

  "It's always a bad time for questions down here," said Friendly.

  Spartan noticed something he hadn't seen before. There was graffiti spray painted on the cavern walls. I hate san angeles ! screamed one piece of wall writing, suck my Cocteau proclaimed another.

  Spartan smiled wryly. "Yeah," he said, as if suddenly everything made sense. "I guess you weren't really part of Cocteau's plan."

  Friendly's face darkened, and cold anger shone in his eyes. "I don't know what planet you're from, mister. But if you ask me, greed is no plan. Lying is no plan. Neither is abuse of power."

  "What is his plan then?" asked Spartan.

  Friendly's laugh was hollow. "That's simple. The plan is everyone who doesn't agree with him has got to leave. Get with the Cocteau program or get the hell out."

  "And that's why you're down here?"

  Friendly nodded vehemently. "You got that right. See-according to Cocteau's plan, I'm the enemy. The good doctor thinks I'm dangerous."

  Out of the corner of his eye Friendly saw Huxley staring at him, or rather, at the gun he held. The Scraps leader turned on her.

  "Dangerous-that's right. But not because of this." He waved the gun under her nose. "No, dangerous for another more deadly reason."

  "What's that?" asked Lenina Huxley.

  "I like to think. I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice."

  "Noble of you," said Spartan.

  "Fuck noble," Friendly shot back. "The hell with it. I'm the kind of guy who wants to walk into a titty bar at three in the morning and order a double shot of Jack Daniel's on the rocks with a cold Heineken chaser."

  Spartan nodded. "Who said that wasn't noble?"

  Friendly was on a roll and ignored him, consumed with his vision of how the world should be. "I wanna sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, gee, should I have the T-bone steak or should I have the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with a side order of gravy fries. I want high cholesterol!" His voice echoed off the steel of the cars and stone walls.

  Lenina Huxley and Alfredo Garcia listened, amazement showing on their faces.

  But Friendly was far from done. The pent-up frustration flowed out him, hot, like molten lava. "I want to eat bacon and butter and cheese. I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati. I want to spit and fart and fuck all night. I've seen the future, pal, and I know what it is."

  "Tell me," said Spartan.

  "It ain't pretty," Friendly snarled. "It's a forty-seven-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana broccoli shake and singing 'I wish I was an Oscar Meyer wiener.' That's what it is."

  "Ugly," agreed Spartan.

  "Damn right. You live up top, you live the way Cocteau wants you to. What he wants, when he wants, how he wants . . . Your only choice is to come down here, maybe to starve to death ..." Friendly's voice was calmer now, like distant thunder after a storm.

  "Brave new world, huh, cop?" he said quietly
. Then he stuffed his weapon in his pocket. Following their leader's example, the rest of his band did the same thing.

  "Maybe the time has come for you to lead these people out of here," said Spartan.

  Friendly shook his head. "I'm no leader," he said. "I do what I have to do. Sometimes people come along with me." He shrugged. "I'm not the only one who thinks this way."

  Spartan refused to let it go at that. Revolutions had grown from smaller, weaker seeds. "Look around you," he said. "You got something worth doing, people who want to do it with you, and you're willing to risk your own ass. That's what makes you a leader. You have a vision."

  Friendly laughed and shook his head. "Oh yeah, I got vision. I got a vision all right. I got a vision of closing down this anal little world, burying Cocteau up to his neck in sewage, and let him think his happy, happy thoughts forever."

  "Yeah," said one of the Scraps. "Get him!"

  Alfredo Garcia looked as if he was about to faint. He wondered, not for the first time, if he was going to get out of this hellhole alive.

  "Well," said Spartan, "like I said. You've got the noble ideas. The problem is, I got the bad news ..."

  "Which is?" said Friendly.

  "Cocteau wants to kill you."

  The Wasteland was big enough to hide in, but you didn't have to hide if you didn't want to, particularly if you looked like Simon Phoenix and his company of recently thawed killers. They swaggered through the dirty side streets of the Wasteland and straight into the first broken-down bar they found.

  There were six in Phoenix's merry band of killers, with cute killer-type names: Beppo, Kodo, Danzig, and Elvin. And some perfectly normal ones: Adam and Francis.

  They settled at a table in the deepest, darkest recesses of the bar and ordered a pitcher of the deadly home-brewed white lightning. Too much of the rotgut and you could go blind. But a couple of shots and you could feel pretty mellow.

  Phoenix called his board of assassins to order. "Gentlemen, let's review. It's the year 2032. That's two oh three two, as in the twenty-first century."

  "No shit," said Beppo. "What's it like?"

  Phoenix cackled. "That's the beauty part, Beppo. The world upstairs is a pussy-whipped Brady Bunch version of itself, and all we gotta do to run the whole place is kill this guy named Raymond, who put it all together."

  "Piece of cake," said Kodo.

  "Right," agreed Phoenix. "And the extra added bonus, you get to kill the man who put most of us in the freezer, your pal and mine, John Spartan."

  "That asshole," said Francis.

  "The same," said Phoenix. "This is the plan. Adam, you can crush him. Kodo, you can slash him. And the rest of you can rape, pillage, loot, and all the fun things you can remember."

  "Great!" said Elvin and Danzig simultaneously.

  "This place is going to be like a theme park," said Phoenix. "But with our kind of themes. So let's drink up and get busy with the plan."

  Adam, however, remained fixed on one point. "You sure we get to kill John Spartan?"

  "Over and over and over, if that's your pleasure."

  "It is."

  "Good." He raised his beaker of rotgut. "Salud!"

  1 9

  News of the San Angeles Police interlopers in the Wasteland had spread through the Scraps in the underground city, and a crowd of onlookers had gathered to hear what they had to say. On the edge of the throng stood a middle-aged woman, thin and tall, a sadness in her dark eyes that detracted slightly from her still fresh good looks. As Friendly talked to Spartan, she began edging through the crowd, gradually working her way closer to the intruders.

  The information that Cocteau wanted him dead didn't seem to faze Edgar Friendly all that much. He merely shrugged his shoulders and looked unconcerned.

  "And you're the guy, right? Cocteau got you from somewhere to come down here and ice me. Now I got the feeling that you aren't going to do that. So, why should I be worried?"

  Spartan nodded. "That's right. It's not me you have to worry about. I got out of the freezer by accident. The guy you should be having nightmares about got out on purpose. His name is Simon Phoenix."

  Lenina Huxley and Alfredo Garcia jumped at the mention of the name.

  "John Spartan," said Alfredo Garcia. "I must protest! It has been reported that Simon Phoenix affected his own unauthorized release from X23-1. It resulted in no less than four murder-death-kills and-"

  "You can believe that if you want, but your pal Cocteau programmed Phoenix to be a fucking walking slaughterhouse and then turned him loose to go after our pal here."

  "Impossible," said Garcia flatly.

  But Lenina was not so sure. "It is a curious conclusion you have deduced here, John Spartan, but I can find no fault in your logic."

  "No fault?" said Alfredo Garcia. "I cannot believe that you would say such a thing."

  "Simon Phoenix would be the perfect weapon," explained Lenina Huxley. "A murder-death-killer admirably suited to the savage nether regions in which we stand."

  "The Mayor-Gov has no need of weapons," grumbled Alfredo Garcia. "It is one of the governing tenets of our society."

  "You need 'em down here," said Spartan.

  Friendly shook his head. "You mean they thawed this guy out to kill me? I'm flattered."

  "Don't be flattered," Spartan growled. "Be frightened. This guy's a fucking nightmare . .. What did you do to piss Cocteau off this much anyhow."

  "We've tapped into the water and power supply," Friendly responded. "We've stolen food and disrupted communications, fermented discontent. Oh, yeah. I forgot. And we've put up malicious slogans wherever we can. That's kind of what we're best at." Spartan could tell that Friendly didn't rate his own chances against Phoenix all that high.

  He tried to reassure the leader of the Scraps. "It sounds like you're off to a good start."

  "As lawbreakers we're kinda amateurs."

  "Listen," said Spartan, "when the laws are wrong, men have to take it upon themselves to change them."

  Lenina Huxley still had reflexes that would not die. "John Spartan, you must uphold the law."

  "Depends on what they are," he said simply. "And who makes them."

  "Now it's your turn to be noble," said Friendly.

  "I don't know about that," Spartan answered. "But I do know the next time you want to go shopping and trash a Taco Bell, I'm not going to get in your way."

  "That's good to know."

  Just then, the middle-aged woman stepped out of the crowd and looked at John Spartan closely.

  "You are John Spartan?" she asked.

  "That's right."

  But she had to be sure. "The Demolition Man, John Spartan," she asked urgently. "That John Spartan?"

  Spartan looked at the woman quizzically, as if trying to look beyond the wrinkles and the graying hair. "Do I know you?"

  The woman smiled and blinked back the tears in her eyes. "You did. A long time ago." She took a step closer. "You made me a promise once."

  Spartan felt a wave of raw, unsorted, inchoate emotion. "Yeah," he said. "That's right." He gazed at the woman and suddenly felt light-headed and shaken.

  "You're Katie?" he asked.

  Katie Spartan's voice was low, heavy with emotion. "Yeah. I'm Katie."

  "You're my daughter," he said, exhaling heavily.

  Katherine laughed nervously, unsure of what to do next. "Yeah, I'm your daughter . . . And I'm older than you are ... I don't know what to say." Suddenly, her face fell. "Mom . . . she's not. . ." She struggled for words, trying to pull together her unraveling emotions. "I'm afraid Mom is . .."

  "I know," said Spartan. "I know what happened to her."

  Spartan stumbled forward, unsteady on his feet, and pulled his daughter to him, holding her in a tentative hug. Katherine Spartan closed her eyes, as if she could not quite believe -what was happening.

  Edgar Friendly, too, was having a certain amount of trouble accepting what was going on. "Is this for fucking real?" he asked, looking arou
nd.

  "Yes," said Garcia adamantly. "Actually it is for fu-fu-u ... it is for real!"

  "Will you two shut up," said Lenina, watching father and daughter, tears in her eyes.

  Katie Spartan pulled back from her father and gazed at him. He was transfixed by her.

  "I missed ... I missed everything. Your whole life. I missed your whole life!"

  Katherine smiled crookedly. "I know . . . it's okay. You're lucky. I was a real bitch as a teenager. I was always getting into trouble. I had a little problem with authority. Sound familiar?"

  John Spartan grinned and stroked his daughter's hair. "That sounds great. I'm proud of you."

  "Proud of me?" Katherine exclaimed. "How can you be proud of me? You barely knew me."

  "You're down here, aren't you," said Spartan. "You're down here fighting and not groveling butt up there."

  "It's in the genes."

  "Whatever the reason, that's more than enough to make your old dad proud."

  "Old? I'm the one who's old."

  "Forget that. Tell me everything. I want to know everything about you."

  "Everything?" Katherine laughed happily. "Everything, all at once?"

  It seemed impossible to Lenina Huxley, but the big grin on John Spartan's face grew wider and happier. He kissed his daughter on the forehead and then held her out at arms' length, just staring at her with that big, bright smile on his face.

  "Yes!" he shouted. "Everything. Absolutely everything. Start where I left off. You were six ..."

  "Six? I can't believe I was ever six. Lot of miles on my tires now."

  "Hey, I don't want to hear that kind of talk."

  Alfredo Garcia was less than enthralled with the touching scene of a father reunited with his daughter. He tapped Spartan on the shoulder. "Spartan?"

  "I'm busy," said Spartan.

  But Garcia persisted. "Spartan. I really think-"

  Spartan managed to tear himself away from his daughter for a second. "What!"

  But Garcia could only point. Spartan followed the line of Garcia's gaze and saw, standing in the middle of the crowd, about forty feet away, Simon Phoenix and his murderous colleagues. The AcMag was in his hand. Spartan's smile faded fast.

  A wild look lit Phoenix's eyes, and a grin split his face. It was as if the criminal had picked up Spartan's smile and put it on.