Paul cursed under his breath. He waved his pistols to the left. Again he cursed. He moved them right. Curse.

“Goddamned sunny days.”

Three figures stood in the middle of Fisherman’s Wharf, motionless except for their heads, which moved left to right, watching another figure waving a pair of pistols around, speaking dirty to them.

The first figure, a short black-haired man with glasses in a yellow raincoat was sweating profusely, eyes wide at the fourth figure. The second figure to his left was a Spanish woman dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, and seemed quite exasperated, shaking her head back and forth at the figure. The third figure stood seven feet tall, wore a large black and red robe accented with streaks of blood, and was topped off with a rather dashing cow’s head used as a hat.

The third figure, was so aghast that he had forgotten he was clenching a nasty looking silver dagger in one of his purple tentacles, and the fifth, as of yet unmentioned figure below him. Which in fact turned out to be a corpse, and if it wasn’t a corpse, it would probably look pretty damn confused too. But it could only look dead right now. But you would bet your milk money it was sighing rather loudly in the afterlife.

“Second.”

“Damnit.”

“Second.”

“What?” Paul looked up at the bright yellow blur speaking to him.

“Just put on your sunglasses.”

“Wha?”

“On top of your head.”

Paul stopped waving his guns, and with the barrel of one of them, pulled the black shades down from the top of his head. They slid down over his eyes, and the yellow blur coalesced into a guy named Daniel. Another, exasperated figure turned out to be a rather exasperated woman who he knew. And the last figure was a big bloody monster with a weapon.

“Much better.” Drive-By Chronicles: Sidewayz hd

Second turned, pointed his guns at the big nasty bastard and then holstered them in the old leather gunbelt hanging on his hips. He turned again to Daniel.

“Thanks Split.”

The third figure uttered an “urp” as black blood shot out his back in numerous areas, and then unceremoniously slapped dead to the wooden dock.

Juana, still exasperated heaved out a woman’s sigh and shook her head.

She muttered “Idiot,” just loud enough for Second to hear.

Paul looked at her.

“What? I hate glinties.”

Anthology Two Presents…
Inzen Kettaku:
“Second Coming”
by Chad S. Roberts

Jakob Harkes scanned the vast field of what was once corn; now a blanket of ash and stubborn remnants of stalks lying on a plain of black charcoal. Smoke hung on smoldering ground, dispersing with each of his steps; a fact which Sebastian was exploiting to his delight as he hopped from spot to spot.

Harkes swore he could see the mad grin behind the black rubber gas mask that encompassed Sebastian’s head.

Without subtlety a loud and wet explosion erupted from his boot, as it sunk into a large pile of excrement.

Abbigail and Sebastian’s heads snapped in unison to look at Jakob’s predicament.

“Horse shit.”

Harkes looked up from his foot at Sebastian with a sneer. “Thanks.”

He began to draw his leg from the stomach cavity of a barely recognizable dead horse, a horrid sucking noise surrounding it.

At the appropriate moment, Sebastian spoke, “Watch your step.”

Jakob raised his hand and displayed the longest finger on it. “Swivel on it, asshole.”

He was sure this time that Sebastian smiled, as his eyes scrunched up between his cheeks and eyebrows as he resumed his hopping, Harkes sighed and shook his head, shaking his boot off and then looking up after Sebastian.

Abbigail’s voice had none of the amazement it should. “That must be it.”

Arcs of white electricity splayed across Harkes’ eyes and on the round plastic discs which allowed him sight through the mask.

No more than twenty yards in front of him hovered a large ball of electricity, in the heart of the ruins of a farm house.  In its outer rings hung five burnt carcasses,  their limbs outstretched, and their mouths gaping wide, as if they still screamed and writhed in pain after death.  Beyond this barrier of death, deep within the orb sat a small five year old child, cross-legged, his hands reaching out for his dead family, tears streaking down his face.

The energy emanated from the boy, cresting from his shoulders, like the beginnings of angel’s wings gone terribly wrong.

Sebastian spoke again, for comedic effect, which seemed to be the only times he spoke.

“Yeah.  There’s a good chance that’s It.”

***

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Anya gripped the edge of the desk tightly, and then threw herself left, releasing from the desk.  The room circled around her, as she pulled her knees to her chest as the last bit of momentum slipped away.  Her bright pigtails lowered on to the sides of her head and the computer screen crept slowly past her.

A small round emblem sat rather irritatedly in the center of her monitor.  Her eyes rolled past it and she scrambled to grab the desk a second too late.

She stopped, facing the complete opposite way she needed to be.  Anya dropped her feet to the floor.  She scuttled her feet against it, the thermal socks slipping almost frictionless off of it.  After a few sections she decided this mode of travel to be fruitless and jumped up, the chair shooting off towards the wall.

Anya, despite the short distance she had to go, ran to the computer, and her bottom half slipped out from under her.  She, in the second or so it took her to get up to her knees, reminded herself to get a good pair of slippers.

Resting on her pajama covered knees, Anya dragged the mouse over to the small angry warning sign, and double-clicked it.

***

Kansas

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“See. This is why I’m never having children.”

“I really don’t think it’s up to you, Sebastian.”

“Now what’s that supposed to mean, Harkes?”

“That you look like the spawn of a man named Butch and a pit bull.”

“Hey!”

“Abbigail?”

She pondered, holding her chin in her fingers. “Well…in the right lighting and pose, Sebby-boy is rather striking.”

“Hoogah! Thank you and good night.”

Harkes harrumphed.

“And I’ll be available in the Presidential Suite at the Sands from midnight to noon, for all my loving fans.”

Abbigail and Jakob looked over at Sebastian. 

“Did you say something?” they both said, if somewhat non-unified.

“Yeah, I was just informing all the lovel…”

“No, not that. After that,” questioned Harkes.

“Umm…lemme think,” which he did. “Nope.”

“Huh. It sounded like you said ‘whop’.”

“What?”

A thick tendril of white energy licked out and smacked Sebastian squarely in the back, and it stood there, writhing about, as Sebastian fell forward onto the hot earth.

***

Vermont

The last few drops seared his tongue and heated his throat, sinking into his belly and making him feel uncomfortably perky.  Tom looked across his desk, clenching the white porcelain of his coffee cup in a caffeine death grip.  He looked into it and swabbed his finger into its stained crevices, searching out the last drops of liquid.

He sucked his finger, and turned to look at the coffee machine.  Tom watched Lisa from accounting pour the last cup from it and after a short moment of pride at getting the last cup, she walked off.  He started to get up from his chair, as he came to the brutal realization that the number-crunching bitch hadn’t made another pot.

Tom was gripped with the need to choke the life out of Lisa from accounting while violently raping her in front of her immediate family.  But alas, Tom did not know where she lived, nor the address of her parents’ home.

And so Tom from programming stood, and walked to the coffee maker.  He searched for the coffee, and found it too, was empty.  So much of his life was the same.  But this isn’t really about Tom, it’s about coffee.  So he thought for a moment, and holding his coffee mug in an unforgiving grip walked to the elevator.

Tom stepped inside, and looked briefly at the other two people that he did not know the names of.  They stared gawkingly at him, and then looked straight ahead, as did he, which is accepted elevator procedure.  Tom punched the B button quickly and forcefully.  It, being the bastard piece of machinery it was, didn’t light up.  So he punched it again. And again. And again.  The other passengers did nothing.

Tom stopped for a second, and reached into his pocket, pulling out a keyring.  He singled out a small key, and slid it into the keyhole below the panel of buttons. It turned, and he pressed the B button once more.  It lit up, and joined the other lit up button (a 3, in fact) and the elevator began to move downward.

6
5
4
3

The elevator halted, the doors opened, and to his delight his two elevator-mates departed.  And to his even greater delight, none replaced them.

2
1
B

Again, the elevator stopped, and the doors opened to the dark concrete of the basement.  Tom stepped out, and made his way into the semi-dark.  A chain dangled above him, and he grasped it, yanking it downward.  A circle of light soon surrounded him, and lit the door to the supplies room somewhat less than adequately.  He walked to it, and pulled out the keyring again, finding a normal sized key and unlocked the door.

Inside, the decadently protected staplers hid within a locked steel box.  Office products of all races and creeds surrounded him in awesome supplyness.  And in a white, beaten up cardboard box, lay what he desired, which the black El Marko so divinely displayed.  Coffee stuff.  So simple, yet conveying so many wonderful things.  His mouth salivated at the prospect of a non-empty mug.

Tom pulled the box from the shelf, and looked inside it.  And although it held an ample amount of powdered non-dairy creamer in little foil packets, it held no coffee.  The box nearly slipped from his sweaty grip.  He looked at its vacant space on the shelf, and though there was no more coffee grounds, there was indeed a panel of photocopied oak which stood shyly behind the shelf, surrounded by cold cement.

Tom looked at it, dumbfounded.  He grabbed the shelf, and pulled it from the wall.  And sure enough, there was a door.  In the place of a label was a small rectangular patch of dirty, used adhesive.

Had it not been that Tom was in the bowels of a caffeine jones, he would have not been foolish enough to do what he did.

What he did was he opened the door.

Stupid, stupid Tom.

***

Antarctica

Laid out on her monitor was a patchwork quilt of windows, the largest of which was displaying the depths of an east coast office building.  A mere man who had made nothing of his life, stood on the edge of it, and stepped unblinkingly into the gap.

“No, stupid!” Anya shouted, and nobody was there to hear it.

The little man in Vermont stood looking at the machinery surrounding him, and finally the frost covered plastic pod which was the center of the machines, indeed, their only purpose.  The man stared at it for a moment, found a can of coffee grounds in the corner, and left.

Any other person would have sighed in relief.  But Anya’s heart, beneath her large gray Go Cougars! t-shirt, still beat frantically.

She knew this was not the end, even now one of the smaller windows, which she clicked, grew and showed what she feared.  A small, placid alert sign flashed somewhere in Taiwan, and unfortunately, on a computer which someone was paying attention to.

Anya picked up her headset slowly, and put it on.  She clicked a few things, and hit a few keys.

In bewildered calmness, she spoke. 

“Chance.  They’ve found Second.”

And somewhere near Knightsbridge, in a dark pub, Livingston Chance heard those words in his empty pint glass.

***

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The toddler’s piercing cries filled Jakob and Abbigail’s ears, as the crackling thunder of the electricity had calmed.  One tendril stood angrily over Sebastian’s still, and toasty brown body, as if it were the physical representation of the child’s emotions. 

Harkes turned to the orb and the child, and his left arm hissed.  He opened his clenched fist, and in it sat one steaming bullet.  He drew his pistol, and opened the chamber.  Jakob plucked the bullet from his palm, blew on it, and loaded it into the gun.  He holstered his gun again, and looked at Abbigail from the corner of his eye.  She looked at him calmly, and quietly mumbled, “Don’t miss.”

He flexed his fingers, and in one smooth motion whipped out his gun and brought it up to aim. 

“I don’t.”

The hammer cocked back and with a boom the sphere of energy sputtered.  A small corpse fell to the ground without so much as a twitch.

Abbigail kneeled down, and proceeded to hit Sebastian squarely in the chest.  He coughed violently, and began to curse in the same manner, in-between coughs.

Jakob glanced at him.  “That’s why we leave you home with the little girls.”

Abbigail looked back at Jakob.  “You left Sebastain alone with a girl?”

The younger man began to lift himself up, glaring at Jakob and then just narrowing his eyes at Abbigail.

Abbigail kissed him on the nose and walked up to Harkes, Sebastian following after.

The three stood around in a circle, and at the tips of their toes the charred field was burning anew, a red corona surrounding a black little dead thing.

The flames died down, and the dark lump now only smoldered.

“What is it, Sebastian?”

“It’s a dead baby, Harkes.”

“You know what I mean.”

“But I don’t want to look at it.”

“Whooptie-shit. What is it?”

Sebastian turned slowly, and unclenched his eyelids.

*** ??? ????? ?????????

From the moment they arrived, he had been watching the three figures.  Even from this distance, he could hear them perfectly.  He could understand what they were saying, and everything was coming along nicely.

Then, somewhere deep in the back of his mind, back in the brain leftover from his evolutionary predecessors, something became very nervous.  And despite all his learning and culture, the owner of the brain he inhabited was getting scared.  When his instincts started to flare up, he knew all bets were off.  Something wasn’t right…and it was in the voices and actions of the three figures that he found what was wrong.

The apparent leader asked the comic relief (although such comedy was far lost on this hidden observer) what the accursed child was.  How could he not see it was a child?  Unless the bald man saw beneath the surface.  Deduction led him to believe that the bald one had some sort of ability to identify biological makeup, or something of that ilk.

This whole deduction took about five seconds, as his genius intelligence was on par with the greatest human minds.  Even though he was not human.

The ruse was soon up, the bald one would find out the child was merely human, and that would lead them to him.  So he listened to his instincts, no matter how much he despised them, and did what they told him.  He ran.  He ran very, very fast.

***

From what was later identified to be a doghouse, a blur shot out at breakneck speeds.

“SHIT!”

The field team desperately tried to chase after the blur, burnt cornstalks beating at their knees.  When it was evident they were not going to catch it, they slowed to a stop.

“It’s Harkes, get a containment field in a five mile radius around our immediate area and then send in the weasels.”

The three stared off after the blur, and watched as a crackling yellow dome surrounded them for miles around.

***

He ran, and ran.  And as he neared the sound barrier something caught his eye.  Something round, and rubber…and red!

It was a ball! A BALL! It was a red ball!

He stopped in front of the ball, and began to jump around ecstatically, from side to side, following the ball, yapping loudly.  The ball stopped in the middle, and he jumped up and down, wagging his tail enthusiastically.

And one thought pushed aside all others.  Any thoughts of world domination, personal gain, milk-bones.  All fell to this one thought.

He must have that ball.

***

The three walked up, and could now make out what the blur had been.

It was tan and white, and had a big pink tongue.  It was a border collie, just like Lassie.  Except it differed in a few major ways from Lassie.  For one, it possessed a genius intelligence.  Second, it had powers to rival a superhero.  Third, it was immortal.  And finally, it was indomitably evil.  These things led up to it being quite different from Lassie.

While Lassie saved Timmy from the well every time, this chap would have gone off and screwed some bitch at the least.  Or if he was feeling particularly nasty, perhaps if they hadn’t given him wet food that day, he would have chewed Timmy’s eyes out and left him to die.

To put it bluntly, he was a bad dog.

Harkes had been explaining this to the others on the walk up, after Sebastian had identified it, and that the baby was just human.

The dog also came with a history, which Harkes knew in unfaltering detail.

***

Antarctica

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“In 1949, the Commies were still a threat, and it was America’s time to shine.  There was all sorts of weird shit going on in the military, just like always. But what we see here is one of the most ill-thought projects.”

Livingston stood over Anya, watching the computer screen show the field team in Kansas, and the other monitoring a hidden supplies room in Vermont.  Her heart beat fast, as Chance’s ale-rich breath explained one of the two situations.

“It is what the records call a SPBC.  A super-powered border collie.”

Anya snickered.  Chance smirked.

“Anyways.  The reasoning was, Dog is Man’s best friend, so why not make Dog smart and powerful enough to protect Man from the Red’s übermänner?  But what they didn’t put into the equation is that Dog is subservient to Man because Man gets Dog food.  They’re not protecting the man, they’re protecting the Food-Getter.  So if a dog could start fires with its mind, telekinetically lift a house, and had a genius intelligence, why wouldn’t it just get its own food?  And by nature, Man would try to subvert this new Dog.”

Chance took a sip of beer from the pint glass in his hand.  He looked at it, said, “Warm,” and set it down on the ground.

“So in the field tests, Dog blew up Man’s grey matter from the inside, and eviscerated all the annoying children.  And we end up with the realization that border collies are total bastards in real life.  So the U.S. quickly eliminated all the dogs, the families and covered it all up.”

Livingston grabbed his pint glass again, and took another swig.  Anya looked at him.

“You said it was-”

“I know what I said; I don’t care, it’s still beer.”

Anya barely shrugged.

Chance continued.

“But obviously,” he pointed to the monitor, “one or more escaped, and have been breeding.”

She looked up at him.

“So this means?”

***

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Kansas

“It means we’re in the shitter.  These buggers could have spread out everywhere over the world in the last two and a half centuries.  But no doubt their blood has been diluted, this is just one of the purer ones.  He obviously has a normal dog side to him.”

Sebastian looked up at Harkes.

“I’d hate to see the original ones.  Kujo with a special effects budget.”

Abbigail smiled.  She turned her eyes to Jakob.

“What now, Harkes?”

Jakob watched the containment crew chief keep the dog occupied rather easily with the ball.  He would throw it, and the dog would go bounding after it.  Jakob imagined it would go on like this for a while longer.  He looked at the chief.

“Hold the ball.”

The Chief grabbed the ball and held it aloft, the dog sat on its haunches, watching it.

Harkes turned to the dog.

“Speak.”

And it did so, in a rather British accent.

“I want the ball, I want the ball, I want the ball, I want the ball-”

Jakob grabbed the ball from the Chief, and hunkered down, holding it in front of the dog’s face.

“Stop saying that.  If you talk to me, you get the ball. Got it?”

The dog nodded vigorously.

“What’s your name?”

It looked up at Jakob.

“My now deceased comrades called me Bingo, rather unimaginative blokes.  I call myself Rex Prime.”

Abbigail and Sebastian watched Harkes intently.

“Well now Rex.  You set us up to believe that the kid was the one who did all that damage, didn’t you, boy?”

Harkes waved the ball around, and Rex followed it frantically.

“I rather suppose I did, didn’t I?  Clever ones, you.  Took you a while, didn’t it?  Do I get the ball yet?”

“Not yet.  Why’d you kill them?”

“Oh, I guess because they never could make a proper cup of tea.  Never had quality biscuits.  Used up all the bloody fresh lemon for fragging lemonade.  They can shove that lemonade up their cold, charred arses, can’t they now?”

“I see,” he paused and gestured at Sebastian, “you hit my friend here.” 

“I did, I did.  That I did.  But you three looked like you would sit there forever.  I had to get something done.  And he is still alive isn’t he? Rather gracious of me, if I say so myself.  Don’t you think?”

Sebastian snarled at Rex.  Rex did not oblige him back.

Harkes snapped a look at Sebastian, and then looked back at Rex.

“You know who we are?”

“Of course, you’re from Inzen Kettaku.  We über-collies have racial memory, that.  You’re here to catalog and investigate me, and then to take me back to headquarters to keep me away from the general populace.  Right?”

Jakob looked at him, and stood up, hucking the ball out into the field, Rex soon following after.  Harkes drew his pistol and aimed.  He sent an explosive cartridge into the back of Rex’s skull which then promptly exploded in a mess of skull shrapnel and grey matter.  Harkes slowly lowered his gun.

“Yeah,”  Harkes holstered his pistol, “something like that.”

Sebastian looked down the horizon at the corpse, and began walking towards it, the containment team following him.  He stood over it as they bagged it up.  He walked back with them to the van, and stepped between Harkes and Abbigail, who were staring out at the disintegrating force field.  Sebastian took a look at them both, and then looked out at it along with them.

“Well.  He got the ball.”

***

Antarctica

“That he did.  But it’s too late now, Anya.  It’s already rolling.  And you know we can’t stop it once it starts.”

She looked up at Chance sadly.

“You’ll be next.  You know that Chance.  Sooner or later, after you’ve served your purpose, they’ll come after you.”

Livingston nodded, and a big hyena grin stretched across his mouth.

“They can try.”

Anya smiled weakly and Chance planted a peck on her cheek.

“I have to go, love.  Things to do, you know the drill.”

“Yeah. I do.”

He patted her on the shoulder and picked up his glass, walking towards the door.

Anya watched him go out into the cold.

***

Vermont

He became aware.  Then he became aware that it was freezing-nuts cold.  He rotated his eyes around in their sockets, and saw only frost, and blue metal.  With minimal effort, he removed wrists from the shackles of stasis.  He raised his hands to his face.  He was still in his clothes.

Things slowly started to come back to him, and eventually he remembered where he was and why.  And then he saw why he had woken up.

On the outside of the glass, a rectangle of frost had been wiped off.  And through it three people stared at him.  Behind them were other people in jumpsuits.  He recognized the curling logo on their suits.

Maybe they had finally come with his paycheck.

*** ???? ?????

Sebastian pressed his face against the glass, checking the contents and no doubt scaring whoever was inside.  He pulled himself back.

“Yeah, that’s him.”

Abbigail looked over a packet of information.

“Paul Thayer.  Codenamed Second.  Inzen Kettaku operative in the early 21st century, confirmed SPB.  Specifics on his powers are hazy, but mainly speed oriented, temporal manipulation suspected.  Discovered to of the Sporophyte Generation, a potentially disastrous one if he were to be fully activated.  Put simply, he would eventually become a demigod of time.”

She flipped over some pages.

“Seems he went under the freeze voluntarily.  A true believer in the cause, it says.  Charming.  Officially he’s just laid-off.”

Sebastian smiled.  He then looked back at Harkes.

“Open it?”

Jakob nodded.

Sebastian took a step forward, and located the latches.

“Warning, contents may have shifted.”

He grinned at his own joke.

***

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He felt funny as the seals began to hiss open and the stasis field properly dissipated.  It felt good to hold his guns again.  Paul could feel their handles cold against his palms.  The door to the pod rolled open.

Second looked at them all, and smiled smoothly.

“Did they send a Hickory Farms basket too?”

The field team watched him as he stepped out onto the concrete.

“What, not big talkers?”

***

“Obviously not.”

Harkes smirked at the comment, and in a flash drew his gun and fired.  The bullet whizzed by Paul’s head and sunk into the metal behind.

“Whoa whoa WHOA!”  Second ducked to the side,  “What the hell are you doing?”

Jakob turned and fired again, and it met more machinery.

“Hey, aren’t you listening?” Second kept weaving around as he spoke.

Harkes fired.

Second dodged to the side and Jakob’s wrist twisted angrily as his pistol dropped to the ground.

“Can’t we work something out here?”

Harkes bent down, reaching for his gun.  Second kicked it away from his grasp.

“What the fuck is the matter with this century?  Have all you kids fucking lost it?”

Sebastian looked at him.  “No, sir.  We’re here to kill you.”

“I guessed that much,”  Second kicked the gun again,  “but for god’s sake, why?”

Harkes looked up at him, fixing his wrist. 

“God is dead, Mr. Thayer.  And killing people like you is what we do.” 

He lashed out with a lightning fast punch at Paul’s nose.  His fist stopped in midair and cranked to the left along with the rest of his arm, dislocating it from the shoulder.

“Okay. I get it now,”  Second nodded.

***

The three operatives, and the two containment crew woke up a while later, blood streaming from their noses, caked on their face, with rather nasty headaches.

Harkes got up, and felt his face.  His upper lip was busted.

“Shit.”

Abbigail woke up, looking at her chest, and removing Sebastian’s hand from it.  She looked down at him,  “I know you’re not unconscious.”

Sebastian opened his eyes, groggily,  “What?  That’s how I fell, I swear.”

She narrowed her eyes and got up.

“Now what, fearless leader?”

Harkes looked around.  Second was long gone.  He looked at his watch, and saw that it was broken.

“He can’t run forever,”  Harkes wiped blood off his lip.  More blood replaced it.  He looked at his hand.

“Fuck.”