Robert Walker - Cutting edge

STEUBENVILLEJ CALIFORNIA NOVEMBER 11, 1986

Helsinger tugged back on the taut wire, his face pinched and perspiring as he strained to place the bow in its locked position with the safety catch on, intent on using the high-powered, scoped, crossbow-styled weapon carefully and efficiently. From the tree line where he'd been in what now seemed an unceasingly long vigil for his prey, he stared across the expanse of ground between himself and his objective.

In his head, the steady tap-tap-tap of his orders persisted like an anthem, when suddenly the moment he lived for arrived at last-a slight movement at the big bay window, as the less than respectably attired Daniel O. E. Mercer himself stepped into the light from the dark of a master bedroom where he'd left the she-bitch, Marlena Nolan. Mercer had seduced her from the secretarial pool at OE's most recently opened-for-business Mercer Continental Bank of America. By now, the demonic, supernatural infusion of his blood into her veins had turned her, too, into the spawn of Satan. Mercer liked to make beautiful young women into the ugly thing that he was. Her body was now tainted, corrupted beyond redemption; her body was Mercer's to do with as he liked for as long as he walked the earth.

Tap-tap-tap… tap-tap-tap… No doubt, no fear now. Mercer wouldn't be walking long, and his undead, unclean spirit would be cast into the bowels of Helsinger's Pit. As for the woman, she'd already become a sacrificial lamb. Nothing Helsinger might do could save her body from the evil of Mercer's touch; far worse than this, there was nothing he could do to save her lost soul from Mercer's power, or the depths of depravity into which she had sunk. She would by now be completely turned over to the corruption and malfeasance of her new master.

Yet another soul taken from the sight of God, Helsinger 2051 thought now. Mercer would now withhold her soul, as he did his own, from God's eye as long as he wished, or as long as he existed on this plane, within this realm of reality that gave to him more power than the angels, for as long as his reanimated body mocked holy life, which meant forever unless someone like Helsinger-with the staunch support of the tap-tap-tap commands from beyond-stopped the diabolical bastard…

Now the tall, even regal man's silhouette formed a solid wall, missing only the concentric circles of a perfectly ordered black paper target here against the soft glow of candles illuminating the entire dining room alcove. A perfect target. But Helsinger feared the distance might be too much against him: too close and the animal thing he'd hunted nearly a year now might easily detect Helsinger 2051 's movement, his odor, the sound of death coming on a silver shaft-fee, fie, foe, fum, and all that, for the creature's senses were beyond those of mortal men-too great the distance and the arrow misses its mark. Either way, a slip could be fatal for Helsinger, and Helsinger's master must begin the quest all over again.

Tap (softly now)… tap (cautiously now)… tap (confidently now)…

A miss and Mercer would flee like a witch, spiraling up a chimney, or worse yet, he might turn into a rabid hellhound to counterattack Helsinger-a god-awful result, disastrous for both Helsinger and so many others, for with Helsinger dead and Mercer alive, the monster's feeding frenzy, its appetite for the kill and for blood, would go undetected and unchecked. So many others would become carrion for Mercer's disgusting and filthy habits, while the work of the Helsingers the world over might be snuffed out before it'd begun, gone the way of Doom. Helsinger raised his crossbow-

“Supper's on now, Randy Oglesby! And now means NOW!”

“Goddamn supper,” young Randy cursed, his eyes held by the scenario created for him by his 286X IBM-compatible Pionex and the Super VGA screen. He had to know if Helsinger 2051 would succeed or die in the effort of tracking the monster vampire disguised as a multimillionaire banking tycoon. “Five minutes! Be right there, Ma! Give me five minutes!”

There would be no one left to stop Mercer if Randy's carefully constructed Helsinger, armored with the coolest character traits Randy could compile, happened to fail.

Still, for Anatole Francis Helsinger, whose steady recruitment of followers meant he must put his life on the line, the moment of truth had come: Followers only follow those who are successful. He'd learn one way or another if God was on his side or the side of the smoking demon in red silk pajama bottoms just the other side of the bay window.

Got to do it now or Mercer's shadow'll disappear, he silently fretted, his finger inching along the bow for the safety catch.

But what if that's all there is on the other side of the glass-just his shadow, an image, a decoy? a voice inside him continued to worry.

“Fire, damn you, Helsinger; the likes of Satan don't have shadows. It's him!” screamed Randy at his end, now sending the message over his modem to the player who'd initiated the game an hour before, a guy with the interesting handle of Razor Oreo Teeth. Randy was known in the cyberspace world as Mr. Squeegee, a moniker he'd once felt was proudly imaginative; but now he knew he'd have to work on being far more imaginative to keep up with this guy. The game was coming to a head. “Do it. Do it now,” Randy called for blood, his anticipation overwhelming.

He pulled the safety catch, and in a sudden gasp of crisp black computer Net night air, Helsinger settled his shaking hands over the weapon. A silent word of prayer for the strength and straight flight of his slim, hungry stake, and it shot away with the speed of light, splintering the window so neatly that it left only a small incision in the glass, a deadly little computer whump striking Randy's ear from the three-inch speakers, the deadly arrow tip, dripping with poison, striking not Mercer but the woman-one of his minions-as she stepped from nowhere.

“Damn!” groaned Randy. “Damn, damn, damn!”

Razor Oreo Teeth fired a snide, laughing message over the modem. “Dumb ass! You waited too long.”

The force sent the now-dead secretary against a wall, where she slumped but did not fall, the arrow going clean through and pinning her like an insect. The instant the barbed arrow sliced through the bastard thing, blood splattered over the windowpane, the chandelier and the dining room table, setting off a musical shower of alarms and demon blood.

Randy and Helsinger simultaneously cursed their show of stupidity. Why hadn't he fired one second before? Was it Randy's fault? His mother's interruption from downstairs? And why hadn't he and Helsinger thought of the alarm?

Helsinger was in grave danger now. He raced away in a panic, crossing a black, moonless landscape that pressed in on his back, fearing some unholy, giant monster breathing fire at his neck. But he made it into the trees, his bow and additional arrows now a cumbersome problem that he dare not relieve himself of. Mercer was yet alive and no doubt prowling the Internet night for him at this very moment.

Mercer must not find him. No one must find him. The game of seek and destroy was now a game of cut and run, survive to fight another day.

Everything had gone wrong. The best-laid plans… gone astray. But they were not at all the best. Razor Oreo Teeth might mock Mr. Squeegee now, but he was foolish to think that he could do this alone as his next message suggested. ROT, as he signed off, told Randy that he'd acted incompetently, as if Randy didn't know. Next time… if there was a next time… he'd be smarter; he had to be smarter than Mercer, or the thing Mercer had become.

Exactly what Mercer, the son of Cain, was defied explanation, logic, nature, or science; Mercer was death itself… a creature of the night… a kind of living death stalking the holy, the good and pure, defiling all that was positive in life. Foolish, easily misled and misbegotten people, like those at Mercer's many banks, would mourn Mercer's passing; idiots that they were, they'd have no clue as to the satanic filth upon which they wasted their tears. None of them knew Mercer as Helsinger knew him.