David Golemon: Ripper

Suddenly and frighteningly hands were on him lifting him up, and for the life of him he couldn’t help it — he screamed. It was a high-pitched sound that he couldn’t believe had emanated from his own mouth.

“Oh, hang on you sissy!”

Niles realized that the tall and lanky Pete Golding, who hadn’t lifted anything heavier than a stapler in the past ten years, had actually picked him up and placed him over his slight shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He was running down the carpeted hallway to the sanctuary he called home. Before Compton realized what was happening they were through the double six-inch glass doors and he was roughly thrown onto a large desk as Pete swung around and manually locked the doors. As Golding backed away he saw how close they had come to a bad end. In his efforts, through his grunting and his yelling, he hadn’t realized how close Niles’s pursuer had been to catching them from behind.

“Oh, shit!” Pete yelled as he backed away from the glass so fast that he crashed into the desk where Compton was fighting to rise. The desk tilted and Niles went flying off onto the risers above the computer center floor.

The beast hit the glass wall just to the left of the double doors. The impact into the bulletproof glass sent a wide, streaking crack snaking through the reinforced wall. The beast rebounded and then fell to the floor, surprised that it hadn’t crashed through this glass like any other in the complex. Pete watched in stunned silence as the former mercenary shook its head and jumped back to its feet. Instead of backing away and gaining momentum for another charge, it took two steps to the left and started to examine the wall. Its head tilted right and then left as it studied the problem before it. The two men saw the wide swath of blood as it coursed down from the left ear of the giant.

“Jesus, Niles, it’s using problem-solving skills,” Pete said as he backed farther away from the glass. “It’s that advanced even though the massive dose it ingested is at this moment killing its brain cells, the very ones the drug just activated. If these men had taken a normal dose, a dose intended in actual combat, they would have just been unafraid to die; still thinking, just a want of killing slicing through their expanding brains.”

Niles looked up at Pete as if he were crazy.

“Perhaps it would be better if you filed your report on Perdition’s Fire later, when we have more time?”

Pete knew he had started running on because he was so frightened at what was happening. Explaining something to Niles allowed Pete to slow his mind and get a better grasp of the situation. He cleared his throat and moved his weight away from the director.

The creature stopped examining the crack in the window for a moment as Pete’s movement caught its glowing eyes. It watched the thin computer director for a moment and then like the others before it, it smiled. It slowly placed a hand near the spiderweb crack and ran one of its elongated, trunklike fingers over it.

Pete turned to look at the computer center’s main viewing screen and saw the ticking down of Europa’s power system. She had forty-four seconds of life left to her.

“Europa,” Pete called out loudly, hoping her internal systems could pick up his voice, “are you still with me baby?”

After examining the glass and probing the crack, the beast closed its hand into a ham-sized fist and hit the broken glass precisely where the riverlike crack formed, sending small pieces of clear material onto the carpeted floor inside the computer center. The smile widened as it caught sight of Pete once more. Then its eyes moved to Compton as the director finally managed to stand on one leg and use the desks to hop away from where he thought the mercenary was going to crash through the wall.

“Yes, Dr. Golding,” Europa finally answered.

“Tell me you came up with something while I was out?” Pete said as he reached out and helped Niles down the steps leading to the center’s floor.

“If you are referencing our earlier discussion on power replacement, yes, I have a solution, but it involves a major shutdown of all civil systems.”

“What in the hell does that mean?”

“Europa, commence implementing your plan immediately!” Niles called out loudly.

“Yes, Dr. Compton.”

“For God’s sake, hurry before you’re dead in the water!” Pete added as the beast hit the wall again, this time with both hands, fingers entwined. A plate-sized hole appeared in the wall as glass cascaded into the center.

“Well, we gave it a hell of a shot, Peter,” Niles said as he hopped in time with Pete’s movement to the floor.

“Yeah, we did boss,” Golding said as he watched a third blow shatter ten feet of wall.

The creature smiled broadly as it stepped through the hole it had just created, its bare feet crunching through the thick glass as it did so.

Niles Compton and Pete Golding watched as their fate stepped toward the large aisle leading down to their location on the center’s floor.

It was over.

The fifty-five-year-old man who had worked all of his life in his family’s dry cleaning business in Wheeling, West Virginia, one who had saved for this vacation for he and his wife for two years, watched as the smiling but sorrowful blackjack dealer pulled the last of his chips away. His last card was a queen of hearts, breaking him at twenty-two. His wife placed her arm around him as the last of their savings had disappeared in less than twenty-four hours. The man hung his head as a stranger patted him on the shoulder.

“Tough luck, buddy,” he said with a less than genuine smile. “Think I can have that seat now that you’re done?”

The dry cleaner could only nod as he finally looked over at his wife. He expected her to be angry, but instead she smiled and leaned into him placing her arm on his waist and making the man waiting for an empty seat roll his eyes at the sentiment being displayed.

Suddenly the lights in not only New York, New York but every building inside the Las Vegas city limits went out. The power was taken from lines all the way to the outskirts of Los Angeles as Europa had done the only thing she could do — she had hacked directly into the power grid streaming outward from Hoover Dam.

Women screamed and men jumped in the seconds just prior to the emergency lighting coming on. The dry cleaner was knocked to the swirling red carpet as he lost his wife of thirty-two years in the confusion. The blackjack table was knocked over on to him and was literally broken in two as men scrambled for the thousand chips that were loosed on the floor.

What everyone thought was mass panic was actually the largest robbery in the history of the United States, as every casino in Las Vegas attempted to fend off every man, woman, winner, and loser inside of their darkened establishments. The revenge for sixty years of casinos in Las Vegas separating people from their money had started.

The dry cleaner tried desperately to gain his feet as men and women rushed around him in the dim lights of the battery-powered system. The backup generators for New York, New York kicked in at thirty-one seconds, but not before mass chaos struck the strip.

Suddenly the dry cleaner felt hands on him and was helped to his feet. He was bleeding badly from a scalp wound as he realized it was his wife who had helped him escape the stampede. As they tried to traverse the gaming floor and make it to the front doors, security men came running in every direction. Then the backup generators kicked in. The bright lights illuminated a historic mess as men and women fought hand to hand for the spoils on the tables and floor. Security was doing its best to get the situation under control, making people drop their chips and warning them that all chips on the floor that night were accounted for and their surveillance systems knew exactly which players were winners and which ones were losers. The frenzied crowd didn’t really care. They looted anyway.