Demolition Man Read online

  "Good one, boss," said Adam.

  "No . . . really. That's who he reminds me of. Well, reminded me of." He turned to leave the room, then noticed Associate Bob cowering in a corner. "Oooh, who do we have here?"

  Associate Bob looked very frightened, but it was plain that he didn't give a damn about the sudden demise of Mayor-Gov Raymond Cocteau. He was worried about his own skin.

  "So," said Simon Phoenix. "What shall I do with you, Associate Bob?"

  Associate Bob smiled diffidently. "I am an excellent associate, sir. I could work for you."

  "Me? I got people who work for me." He pointed at his four remaining murderous goons. "Why the hell would I need you?"

  "Well," said Associate Bob, "Dr. Cocteau had me endocrinologically altered to never wish to be anything but an associate."

  "Really?" Simon Phoenix looked over his crew. They were so stupid-and violent-that one or more of them would probably, at some time, get it into his head to challenge Simon Phoenix for leadership of the new San Angeles. He could deal with it if it happened-but it would be a bore to always be watching your ass like that.

  "Tell me, Bob," he said. "Just how is it that you never want to be anything more than number two."

  "Simple," said Bob. "I believe the slang that would best express it across our chronological gap, sir, would be that he cut my balls off."

  "Literally?" asked Phoenix.

  Bob nodded. Phoenix laughed and clapped Associate Bob on the shoulder. "Bob," he said, "it's a sign of weakness to cut the balls off the people who work for you. I'm gonna get you a new set."

  "Why thank you, sir," said Associate Bob.

  "In fact, I'm gonna get a couple extra myself," he said. "Not that I need them. But just for spares, you know?"

  Associate Bob nodded, seamlessly transferring his loyalties from one master to another. He was now completely Simon Phoenix's man-and he had to admit that things would probably be a lot more exciting with the new regime than they had been with the old.

  "Sir, if I could interrupt..."

  "Interrupt?" said Phoenix angrily. "Associates don't interrupt, Bob."

  "I agree, sir," said Bob. "But I thought you might want to know that the police are here." He pointed through the tall glass windows. The Oldsmobile with Spartan at the wheel and Lenina Huxley riding shotgun pulled up in front of the building.

  Phoenix nodded and then turned back to Associate Bob. It looked as though he would need the services of the little guy immediately. "I'm gonna need to defrost more guys, Bob. Lots more guys. Can you do that?"

  Associate Bob nodded. "Indubitably. But the computer codes will have to emanate from this office. So we will need a few moments here before fleeing." He sat down at Cocteau's desk and began typing fast on the computer keyboard. As he worked, he leaned over and whispered in Phoenix's ear.

  "I might suggest," he said sotto voce, "that you send some of your gentlemen downstairs ..." He coughed discreetly. "They may be disposable, after all, considering the supply I am ordering for you. Perhaps they could be sent to welcome Mr. Spartan. If they succeed, so much the better. If not, at least they will hinder his progress."

  Phoenix nodded and smiled. "I like you, Bob. You have no heart." He turned to his thugs. "Guys, John Spartan is on his way. Go downstairs. Kill him."

  The collection of killers nodded. "Kill him over and over," said Adam.

  "That's my boy," said Phoenix.

  The instant his troops had departed, Phoenix leaned over the computer terminal watching as Associate Bob typed in the cryo-thaw instructions.

  "Now, Bob, I want really evil violent multilifers. I want guys who understand that crimes come in bunches. Not just a sporadic bit of violence or law breaking here and there. I want you to find me some very mean, very stupid lawbreakers, Bob. Got it? Understand?"

  "Oh, yes sir, absolutely." said Bob, typing to the specifications of his new boss.

  "I want guys who have been on killing sprees before. Men who have crossed state lines with impunity. Do you understand me, Bob?"

  Associate Bob didn't even look up from his task. "Perfectly, sir."

  Phoenix dropped into a butter smooth leather chair and planted his feet on the desk and watched as Bob continued to order up his homicidal maniac cocktail.

  "I'm gonna like running this place," he said happily. "I always wanted a job in administration.

  Now ... all he had to do was get rid of John Spartan. But that would be the fun part.

  2 3

  The doors of the private elevator belonging to the late Dr. Raymond Cocteau slid open and three Phoenix thugs, Danzig, Elvin, and Francis were lying in ambush. All three opened fire at once, raking the cab with a hundred powerful rounds. Only after they had reduced the elevator to a smoking ruin did the three bother to look inside. It was empty.

  None of the three noticed Spartan and Huxley entering the lobby from the stairwell and sneaking away down the long, thickly carpeted corridor.

  Spartan couldn't believe that they had managed to get onto the floor so easily. "Old trick," he said, shaking his head.

  "Old criminals," said Huxley with a broad grin.

  "Don't get cocky," Spartan warned her soberly. "Cocky gets you killed."

  "Right."

  Suddenly, Spartan tensed like a bird dog, listening for the sounds of heavy footsteps padding down the carpeted hallway, a giant shadow preceding the man.

  "Elvin!" shouted Spartan.

  Elvin stepped into view. "Yeah?"

  "Thought it was you." Spartan fired once, a perfectly aimed shot to the heart. The big goon toppled over, dead in a matter of seconds.

  Despite John Spartan's warning, Lenina Huxley was feeling invincible. "Let's go get Phoenix," she said eagerly. "Let's end this now!"

  Spartan nodded and ran forward, darting across the lobby and heading for Cocteau's suite of offices. Leninawas right behind him.

  Danzig was waiting for them, perched like a gargoyle on the railing of the interior balcony that overlooked the entrance to Associate Bob's work station. The instant Spartan was in range, the big man dropped from his roost like a bird of prey.

  Spartan never saw him coming-but he felt him. Danzig slammed down onto Spartan's back, knocking him to the ground and pounding the breath out of him. The bad guy grabbed a handful of hair and slammed Spartan forehead first into the floor, but it was too cushioned to do him much damage.

  Spartan flipped and kicked, spearing Danzig in the chest and then falling on him. The two men grappled, fighting in close, rabbit chops and kidney punches flying.

  Lenina yanked the stun baton from her belt, activated it, and moved in, trying to assist her partner. But as Spartan and Danzig twisted and tumbled, she stood uncertainly, afraid to act-she was just as likely to paralyze Spartan as Danzig. She never saw the last killer, Francis, moving in on her.

  He slapped away the stun baton, and then one huge dirty hand closed around her neck, lifting her off the floor, choking her as if the big man had converted his entire body into a human gallows. Lenina kicked and clawed, but her puny blows seemed to have no effect whatsoever. Francis smiled evilly as he throttled the life from her body.

  Lenina could feel her throat fuse and the dark clouds of unconsciousness beginning to close around her brain. With a jolt she realized that she was just moments away from death. In desperation she reached out and found her hand closing around the handle of Francis's gun. She wrenched it from the holster and before the killer could react, cocked the old revolver and fired.

  The bullet slammed straight into Francis's gut, knocking him back against the wall. Lenina picked herself up and holding the gun in both hands, let him have it three more times-one shot to the heart, two to the head just to make sure.

  Spartan was just finishing up with Danzig. He elbowed him hard in the ribs, flipped him around, and buried his knee in his back. Vertebrae popped like firecrackers, and he fell to the floor, twitching in his death throes.

  Lenina was in a state of shock. She
had never fought before; she had certainly never killed. She had hardly even been touched by another human being, never mind by one who was trying to murder her.

  "This man has died at my hands," she said shakily. "I have taken all his future from him."

  "It was either him or you, Huxley," said Spartan.

  Lenina felt the bruises on her neck and remembered with a shudder the sensation of having her throat squeezed shut. "You may have a point there."

  "C'mon," said Spartan, racing for the Mayor-Gov's office.

  The room was empty-except for the lifeless body of Raymond Cocteau.

  Huxley couldn't quite believe that the leader and visionary was dead. "Sic transit Raymond Cocteau," she said. "Oh, John Spartan, civilization as we know it will come to an end. What do we do now?"

  "I don't know," Spartan replied. "Put up a statue? Have a parade?"

  Spartan was far less affected by the sudden, violent end of the Mayor-Gov. He was peering at the man's computer screen, trying to make sense of the data. "What's this?"

  Lenina Huxley checked out the information and paled. "Ooh, this is bad. Very bad."

  "What did he do?"

  "The cryo-prison has been accessed," said Lenina. "He's about to defrost the entire multilifer wing . . . Most of these people don't like you."

  If she expected Spartan's feelings to be hurt, he didn't show it. "Most of them didn't like their mothers." He scanned the names. "How many in total?"

  "Eighty."

  Spartan winced. "We have to try and stop that," he said, leading the way out of the office. He paused long enough to strip the dead killers of their weaponry, loading himself down with ammunition. Huxley could not take her eyes off the man she had killed.

  "Okay," she said, "I wasn't at all pleased to have caused the fatality of that deranged cryo-con, but I understand now that sometimes under particular circumstances that violence is necessary."

  Spartan nodded. "That's good, because then you'll understand why I have to do this." He whipped the stun baton from her belt and nailed her with it, zapping her right in the sternum. She was taken completely by surprise.

  Lenina Huxley's eyes turned up in her head, and she started to sag. Spartan caught her before she hit the ground and laid her gently in a chair.

  The Oldsmobile raced up to the perimeter fence of the Cryo-Penitentiary and screeched to a halt. Spartan checked his weapons, then sat for a moment, watching the forbidding building. There was activity inside. He could hear shouts and the whine of machinery and somewhere within the shrill squeal of an alarm. Simon Phoenix was very busy-and Spartan knew he must have secured some help. Not even he was capable of thawing out eighty cryo-cons without some kind of technical assistance.

  Spartan revved the engine. "Send a maniac to catch a maniac." he said, then floored the gas pedal, the big, battered car roaring toward the building.

  * * *

  The control room of the prison was bustling, Phoenix watching as Associate Bob ordered the technicians to hurry along with the defrosting process. It was dangerous, of course, to do it too fast, but neither Phoenix nor Associate Bob really cared if they lost a cryo-con or two in the process-there were plenty in the ice box.

  Twelve ice pods had been removed from the cryogenic floor, and med-techs were scrambling to deice the first three, cutting through them with blue flamed cutting lasers.

  Associate Bob looked worried as the perimeter alarm sounded. "There's been a breach of our outer gate," he told Phoenix quickly. "An intruder has entered the cryo-facility, and I feel it's safe to assume it is John Spartan."

  "No problem," said Phoenix. The first three cryo-cons, Gunther, Howie, and Jed, were emerging from their ice cells, and they looked a little dopey and unsteady on their feet. Phoenix turned to one of the medical technicians.

  "Hey buddy, you got some really wild uppers? Speed, crank, amphetamines? Anything like that?"

  "We have pure mega-adrenaline, sir."

  "That sounds good," said Phoenix. "Shoot 'em up."

  "Yes, sir." The medical technician quickly plunged needles into the dazed killers, and suddenly they became completely awake. Their eyes widened, and they jerked spastically, their brains frying as the drug kicked in.

  Phoenix kept it simple. "Hey! Wake up."

  "Huh?" said Jed. "What the fuck-"

  "Shuttup," ordered Phoenix. "Listen to me. You've just been defrosted. It's the future. John

  Spartan is around here someplace."

  "Spartan!" screeched Howie.

  "Right," said Phoenix. "You guys, go kill him."

  Guntherlet out a blood-curdling scream and ran, charging out of the wide double doors in search of John Spartan, his two fellow cryo-cons right behind him.

  Spartan was in the lobby of the prison, cautiously making his way into the interior of the building. The entrance hall was deserted and suspiciously quiet, no guard waiting at the reception desk. Hunched and low, Spartan stole forward, his weapon at the ready. If Phoenix had thawed any of his deadly assistants, Spartan's most useful weapon would be surprise.

  He didn't think he had been detected, but he failed to notice a tiny sensor that immediately locked onto him. Suddenly, the big vid screen behind the reception desk burst into life, a smiling hologram of Dr. Cocteau appearing on the screen.

  "Greetings," he said, beaming. "And be well." Spartan raised his weapon and blasted the screen into a thousand tiny pieces of plastic. "I hate reruns," he growled.

  2 4

  The three cryo-cons came barreling through the doors, straight at Spartan. The first one, Gunther, didn't get very far. Spartan shot him dead, a single shot to the forehead. But before he could fire again, the other two were on him.

  Jed pummeled Spartan, smashing him in the ribs and chest while Howie tried to wrest the gun from his hand. Spartan raised his arm, as if signaling keep away, and swung on Jed who was beginning to annoy him. His fist thumped into the man's jaw, and Jed's mouth appeared to collapse as his teeth crunched into dozens of tiny particles. Jed sagged to the floor.

  Now it was Howie's turn. The cryo-con hadn't stopped tussling for the gun, and Spartan had had just about enough. He held the weapon out.

  "Fine. Here. Take it."

  Howie snatched the gun and still in shock and cranked up on mega-adrenaline, fumbled with the unfamiliar hardware for a moment, trying to get his befuddled brain to figure out what to do next.

  He never got a chance to solve the simple equation: gun + shoot = death. Spartan reached out with both hands and broke the man's neck.

  Now Jed was back. He jumped from behind, his forearms locking around Spartan's neck. Spartan squat-pressed down with the three-hundred-pound thug on his back, grabbed the gun out of Howie's stiffening fingers, and angled the weapon over his shoulder.

  "Get off my back," said Spartan. He fired three times, and Jed slid to the floor.

  Spartan didn't hang around. He burst through the double doors and ran into the heart of the building. The multilifer wing was unoccupied, but empty cryo-pods were strewn everywhere. Spartan didn't bother to count them, but the news was bad. Phoenix had managed to spring a lot of very bad guys, and they had probably fanned throughout the entire building.

  Then Phoenix's voice echoed in the twilit chamber. "Don't you understand the meaning of give up?"

  Spartan dove and rolled, looking for the source of the voice. It was coming from above him, somewhere in the shadow-wrapped rafters of the room.

  "You're too late, Spartan," Phoenix yelled. "I've got three more batches in the oven."

  Then he saw him, standing on a cryo-pod fifteen or twenty feet up. Associate Bob was at his new master's side. Spartan fired, but the bullet went wide, howling off into the darkness.

  Phoenix unslung a machine pistol and ripped off an entire clip of nine-millimeter slugs. Suddenly the entire room seemed to be alive with bullets. Freezer pipes burst like grenades, spewing subzero Freon gas. The temperature began dropping rapidly.

  Associate Bob figure
d he had seen enough, and he started to slink away.

  "Where the fuck are you going?" Phoenix demanded.

  "I wish you good luck, sir," Bob said, his voice aching with sincerity. "But this is an activity that really does require a set of testicles."

  Phoenix could see the reason in that. "True enough, Bob. See you after the show. Be well." Phoenix dropped from his perch, slipping down to the cryo-pod floor. Ice was forming on every surface.

  Spartan rolled out of the cloud of freezing gas and threw himself into a thicket of machinery. Everything was coated with supercooled ice, and footing was becoming treacherous.

  Phoenix saw Spartan first, drawing a bead on him with the machine pistol and strafing the entire area. The hail of bullets should have cut Spartan down, but Phoenix couldn't hold his weapon steady. The powerful kick from the gun just pushed him back, slipping and sliding on the ice.

  Spartan whipped around and fired in the direction of the stream of bullets, but he, too, was driven back by the recoil of his heavy handgun. He braced himself against a steel bulkhead and fired again, only to be answered with another blast of withering fire from Phoenix's machine pistol.

  Slipping and sliding, Spartan did his best to lunge for cover, skidding down a flight of iron steps and hitting the lower level of the main cryo-floor. Phoenix probably had a clear shot at him, but he didn't fire.

  Cautiously, Spartan got to his feet-only to be body-slammed as a mechanical claw dropped from the ceiling. Both of his guns clattered off, and he leaped for them, but they slithered out of his grasp.

  The claw closed around his body, and Spartan could hear Phoenix's insane cackle as the crane hoisted him into the air, dragging him upward toward a cloud of freezing gas.

  In an instant ice particles formed on Spartan's clothing, and his skin burned from the intense cold. He struggled in the steel grip, the ice on his body crackling like glass-and reforming in a matter of seconds.