Demolition Man Read online

Phoenix was right below him, staring up and watching with excitement as Spartan began to freeze to death before his very eyes. "This is better than shooting!" he screamed. "A lot more entertaining!"

  Spartan had no intention of amusing anyone with his death. He reached for the freezing pipe and bent it downward, showering Phoenix with a blast of the supercold vapor. Now it was his turn. He was frozen in place, the ice forming on his clothes like cold armor.

  "No way!" Phoenix screamed. He writhed violently, shattering his suit of ice. He roared and broke free, retreating from the gust of supercooled mist.

  Spartan let go of the pipe and squirmed out of the claw, dropping to the cold floor. He slid and stumbled on the slick surface and slammed straight into an empty cryo-pod, hitting it hard.

  The giant disc shot across the smooth floor, a five-hundred-pound hockey puck-aimed straight at Phoenix. The master bad guy dove to avoid the projectile, throwing himself clear a second before the pod slammed into the steel wall of the room.

  "No point in fighting the elements," said Spartan. He lunged forward, sliding along in the path of the pod. It took him three-quarters of a second to skate across the floor, and he ended his little ride with a vicious right hook into Phoenix's surprised face. After all Spartan had been through in the last twenty-four hours, connecting with the punch felt good, deeply satisfying, in fact.

  Phoenix slipped backward from the force of the blow and cracked his head on a jungle of pipe. But he was up in a second and laughing. "Hey! Good shot, Spartan!"

  Neither man had cracked under the strain yet, but the fabric of the prison itself was not bearing up too well. Lights popped in the cold, pipes burst all over the place, and the machinery screamed and groaned as the intense cold twisted and shattered the metal.

  Spartan dove onto Phoenix and landed a horrific blow in his face, all but driving his nose and eye sockets through the back of his skull. Spartan cut himself on exposed bone; the blood spurted from the wound, but almost instantly the gore froze, sealing the wound.

  The two men fell onto a tool cart, sending utensils scattering across the slick floor. Spartan grabbed for the most vicious weapon he could find, a fifty-pound lug wrench, a great hunk of old-fashioned heavy iron.

  Phoenix went for a more high-tech approach, grabbing a sleek black steel MTL cutting laser. He fired it up and pumped the power up to high, and a thirty-foot spray of bright magnesium thermite light, white hot, swept through the intense cold. Steam formed in the air, and the supercooled metal buckled and snapped.

  Suddenly, all of the ice in the room began to melt, boiling away in hot clouds of condensation.

  Spartan had nowhere to run, and he was armed with nothing more than his big iron club. Caveman meets the technology of the twenty-first century ...

  All he could do was duck down behind an empty cryo-pod and try to avoid the deadly laser beam long enough to try and turn this horrible situation around.

  Spartan peered over the edge of the cryo-pod and watched as the MTL beam swept across the room like a lethal searchlight, melting and burning everything in its path.

  Then he looked down into the pod itself. Lying under the bell jar was the white cryo-chip contained in the vacuum urn, the heart of the cryo-freezing system. Spartan grabbed the vial and heaved himself up into the support grid above the pod.

  "Coming to get you, Spartan," screamed Phoenix. "Come out, come out, wherever you are .. ."

  Spartan hurled the vial at Phoenix's feet, the glass shattering and the white freezing chip rolling free. He hurled himself after the chip, flying over Phoenix's head and dodging the death ray. Spartan landed behind Phoenix and came back at him with a murderous elbow in the kidney. Phoenix doubled over and dropped the MTL laser.

  Phoenix whipped around and smacked Spartan hard, mashing a nerve center in the side of Spartan's neck. Suddenly, everything went numb, but he fought back, punching left, right, and left again. Phoenix coughed blood and spat, staggering back a few steps.

  The water gathering around the freeze chip was beginning to solidify, and as Phoenix put his boot in the puddle, it froze, seizing his foot.

  "Hey!" He looked down and saw that he was rooted fast to the spot, the ice gathering around him. Then the cold started traveling up his legs. He felt his legs freeze rock solid, then his chest and shoulders. The ice raced up his neck and into his head and hair.

  He worked his mouth, trying to scream his way out of his frozen veneer, desperately trying to pull his hardened arms away from his body. But he was stuck, frozen stiff and standing straight up. His eyes grew wide as he watched Spartan-his punch seemed to start at the floor, racing up toward Phoenix's chin, his big fist traveling like a bullet.

  Spartan hit Phoenix with everything he had, his full body weight behind the blow. His fist smacked into Phoenix's chin. The impact of the blow meeting the frozen face of the maniac snapped Phoenix's head right off his neck-like a flower whipped off its stalk.

  Phoenix's head hit the polished steel floor and bounced with a clang, rolling away into a corner like a loose ball bearing.

  Spartan looked around him. The building had gone from supercold to superhot and back again. It was more than the structure could stand. Beams were crashing down from the ceiling, and static and sparks were crackling and flashing all over the chamber. Spartan stooped and picked up the MTL laser.

  "I think it's time to go .. ."

  2 5

  Using the laser like a high-tech machete, John Spartan sliced and diced his way out of the Cryo-Penitentiary, chopping his way through the falling, burning debris. Everywhere the laser touched, metal sparked and buckled-the building literally collapsing around him.

  He stalked through the burning reception area and out of the front door, the cold night air hitting him in the face like a punch. Spartan turned and looked at the burning building. If any cryo-cons remained alive within, they wouldn't be for long. Just to help the fire along, he upped the power on the MTL laser and reached back, throwing the weapon deep into the inferno. A second later the night was split by a massive explosion, and the Cryo-Penitentiary started collapsing in on itself, exploding, contracting, a fiery ruin, tumbling down like a house of cards.

  A great crowd had gathered at the main gate of the prison-policemen, Scraps, and even ordinary citizens who had dared to break curfew to see what on earth could possibly be happening at the Cryo-Penitentiary.

  The Scraps looked delighted as the prison imploded, but Chief Earle and his police force-except for Garcia and Huxley-looked horrified.

  Earle stumbled forward as Spartan walked toward the throng. The Chief was in shock, but he did manage to find his tongue and stammer out a question. "You have apprehended the villain who led to the murder of our beloved Mayor-Gov Dr. Raymond Cocteau?"

  Spartan looked over his shoulder at the burning, exploding prison. "I don't think 'apprehended' is the word." He jerked a thumb at the inferno. "He's in there with what's left of the cryo-cons and the prison. Cocteau is dead and so are his bastard creations."

  "Good riddance to both," said Edgar Friendly.

  Earle looked as if he was about to break down and sob. He clutched his cheeks and shook his head. "What will we do?" he wailed. "How will we live?"

  "That's easy," said Spartan. "You'll think for yourselves. You'll make decisions. Some will be right and some will be wrong. And you'll live with it. 'Cause that's what life is really like."

  He smiled at Chief Earle. "You'll get a little dirty ..." Then he clapped Friendly on the shoulder, grabbing a handful of grimy shirt. "And you'll get a little clean. You'll figure it out."

  Associate Bob was the San Angeleno most used to adapting to change. After all, he had changed sides twice in the last two hours. He looked over the crowd and realized that Chief Earle was a spent force, definitely out of business. Edgar Friendly was plainly the new force in town.

  "Greetings and salutations, Edgar Friendly," he said, stepping forward. "I am Associate Bob. May I say that your underground revolution
ary movement was one of passion and poetry. I look forward to assisting you in the creation of a more human, less anal San Angeles."

  "Los Angeles," Edgar Friendly corrected him. "That's Los Angeles, you dickless wonder."

  But Associate Bob refused to be put off. "Almost right," he said with a smile.

  Katherine was as deadpan as her father. "You okay?" she asked.

  Spartan was broken and bruised, his knuckles skinned and his clothes in tatters. But he was alive.

  He hugged his daughter. "I'm okay, very okay. I was serious about hearing everything about you. Everything I missed."

  "That's forty years' worth of material."

  Spartan grinned. "We'll start with kindergarten."

  Katherine kissed him on the cheek. "All right, come by for dinner." She looked at the burning

  prison. "And I think I better do the cooking."

  Lenina Huxley studied the father and daughter closely, paying careful attention to their affectionate actions. She kind of liked what she saw.

  "So that's it? That's the whole kissing thing. What was Cocteau so worried about?"

  "Not quite," said Spartan. He grabbed her and pulled her in, laying a real kiss on her, a genuine, long, hard, tongue twister. Lenina pulled back and came up gasping for air, her eyes bright and shiny.

  "Oh, my." she said breathlessly. "Is the rest of fluid transfer activities like this?"

  "Better," said Spartan dryly.

  "Better! Oh, my!" She dove in for another kiss. This time she was the aggressor, locking her lips on his and kissing him for all she was worth.

  This time Spartan pulled back. "How am I going to live in this place?"

  Lenina Huxley laughed. "How is this place going to live with you? John Spartan, you're going to have to take things one detail at a time."

  "One detail at a time?" he said. "Okay. Detail number one: How does that damn three seashells thing work. You know, in the bathrooms ..."

  "Oh, that." Lenina stood on tiptoe and whispered something in his ear.

  Spartan's face brightened and his jaw dropped. "No kidding!" he said. "That's amazing! Much better than toilet paper!"

  "See," she said, taking his arm. "The future works."