Free Slaughtermatic by Steve Aylett

phone.
     
    In a hideout off a subway inspection tunnel, Brute Parker was systematically fieldstripping his mind. A spartan psychology made it a quick task. He began again. A buzz alarm alerted him to someone’s approach and he put aside a big-word issue of Throatknife which included details of the sniper AGM. Straddling a wooden chair and swiveling an XL73E2 Light Support Weapon toward the door, Parker thought of the changes time had wrought on the bloody mayhem industry. The old three-day cool-off period had enabled customers to plan ahead - it was a boon to those who knew themselves well enough to predict their next rage. Nowadays nobody ordered in advance. Shithead protocol had given way to bastard fatigue and stupid, arty guns. Drug guns, fax guns, fossil guns, wetware guns, anabolics, guns which fired calories, guns which charmed the birds out of the trees, static-electricity guns you rubbed on your sweater, microsoft guns which fired an hour after the trigger was pulled, glark guns which did something surprisingly different each time, deconstruction guns which turned everything to shit.
    Parker was in demand as a hitman because he had principles. When he heard people scream during an attack he said they were speaking with their ‘true voice’. He knew he was making an impression on someone when they started coughing up blood. The higher the calibre the higher the contrast between the target’s health before being shot and after. Never wear beige. He lived by these rules because he had made them. They made him elite in a scene flooded with amateurs.
    ‘ Conventions,’ he rumbled.
    Dante Cubit appeared on the security screen, and knocked the special knock. Parker released the door.
     
    Dante Two had always based his choice of pants on whether they made good tourniquet material. So when he entered the bargain-surgery dive on Scanner he was pretty tidy. In fact despite everything he was feeling better than he had in years. So what if he was superfluous? He didn’t feel superfluous. And wasn’t everyone, under a certain wage level?
    He was thinking of Rosa, his cock ticking like a bomb. An aching, intravenous beauty, all crucifix earrings and cracked tarmac leather. He saw her spread upon a bed of liquid codeine, grinning from head to toe. She was wired so differently it hurt.
    These considerations kept him strong under the knife, holding little pains like trophies. He intended to live until death forced him to abandon it.
    His coat and guzzlers had been boosted by those who took him for cod-eyed. Now at Parker’s door, numb with painstunners, he anticipated with relish the thrumming energy which coursed in a fine gun or blade. Parker’s armoury was the full rip.
    The door opened on to the barrel of a bullpup machine gun.
    ‘ This is what I live to see,’ Dante Two laughed. ‘A guy who is generous and liberal in matters which are inevitable.’
    Dante Two’s statement peppered the wall over Parker’s head but, seeing that Dante was alone and unarmed, Parker stepped from behind the XL Light. ‘You wanna guzzler, Danny Cubit?’ And he stood utterly still so that the alloy gleam of the rifle racks drew Dante’s eye.
    All of fundamentalist Christian life was here. Armalites, Remingtons, Weatherbys, Webleys, Ingram subs, Uzi barkers, Hocklers, Redhawks, Bulldogs, Streetsweepers, Mossbergs, Bloopers, Caliburns, Macs and Mitsubishis. No roids or metabolics. There was what appeared to be a blowpipe missile in the corner. Dante Two waded through flechettes and shok lock rounds.
    Beautiful antiques. A stainless Smith & Wesson 659, packing fourteen 9mm rounds into a staggered-line box magazine. A Steyr 5.56mm AUG with a cycle rate of 650 rpm and grenade capability. A Remington 870 riot gun. Dante Two was in such a good mood he cracked a joke about Parker’s ‘antipersonnel ears’. The only flicker of response in Parker’s expression was that of the striplights reflected in his mirror shades. Dante Two cleared his