A Taste for Pie
"Think I'll be getting me a piece of pie," Horace Billson declared. "I have a taste for a nice slice a peach, mebbe apple, but I'd sure go for a hunk of Mable Meple's homemade peach pie."
"Oh, honey, please stay home. The last time you got some pie you almost started a war."
"Can't, baby. Have a hankerin' for pie. You know how that is, least ways with me. Besides, last time it was worth it all, ya know? I got me a nice ole big slice a cherry pie just drippin' with sweetness, and warm as all get out, and redder than ganger's blood. Man that was good." He shook his head, smiling with the memory.
"I got some pie here. You don't have to go out."
"And what kinda pie you got, Dorothy?" He glanced down at her skeptically.
She smoothed her apron and tried to smile up at her husband. The smile didn't quite reach her worried eyes. "I've got a nice rhubarb pie. It's in the freezer. I can heat you up a big slice. Would you like a scoop of vanilla ice cream with it?" She made to go to the freezer.
"Hell no! Hold on little lady. I hate rhubarb. It's stringy and bitter and they say it's poison too. That crap from the food mart, it don't cut it. The crust tastes like cardboard and the fillin's like bad preserves, enough to give a man a bellyache. I need a slice a real pie like the kind Mable Meple's got."
As he argued with his wife he slipped on the thick vest that protected him from shotgun blasts and small caliber firearms. He tugged the lightweight titanium helmet on and then strapped on his heavy munitions belt. It held three different calibers of bullets and sported two fast draw holsters. His favorite snap shot Beretta and Glock 18C were snugly tucked into them like babes in a cradle.
"Hand me my Mengler auto shotgun, honey. It's the new one with the stainless steel drum holding thirty rounds. I may be a-needin' that little darlin'."
She passed the deadly weapon over to him saying, "This is crazy, Horace. I heard on the news the gangers are out in force tonight. That stupid pie can get you killed."
Horace made a face. He snapped, "A man can't let his life be run by a bunch a punks, now can he? I've got to protect what little freedom's left, don't you see? Now, you want me to bring you back a piece a Mable's pie?"
"No. I'll cut me a piece of rhubarb."
He shrugged, which wasn't easy with all the hardware slung about his large frame. "Suit yourself, babe. I'll be back in awhile, happy as a lark with Mable's pie in my belly."
"As long as it's pie filling up your belly and not bullets, Horace."
"Don't you worry yourself none. Them punks ain't gonna take me down!" He grabbed her roughly and kissed her on the lips. "Now I best be going before she Mable runs out. Wouldn't that take the cake?"
"No, the pie," Dorothy replied smiling weakly at her feeble joke.
Horace laughed much louder than necessary. "That's good, baby. That's alright. Keep your spirits up, we ain't down and out just yet."
Unbolting the steel security door, he called back over his shoulder. "Make sure you lock it up good 'n tight. Could be the cats are roamin' tonight."
"If cats are roamin' then you gotta be crazy to go out there, big man."
He chuckled.
"Here, you better take this too." She thrust a short, flat black tube at him.
"The re-loadable LAW? What am I gonna be doin' with this?"
"Killin' cats before they can kill you."
Grinning, Horace took it. "Mebbe you better give me some of the rockets to go with this little mother, huh?"
Wordlessly she handed him two of the extremely lethal HE mini-rockets.
"You sure two will be enough?"
"I'm a-prayin' it is," she replied earnestly.
"Okay, honey. I be gone. See ya soon."
"Shoot fast; aim straight."
"I surely will." He cracked another smile and jauntily stepped through the doorway making his way through the barbed wire strung along the perimeter of his front yard.
Mable Merple's Homemade Pie House lay five blocks to the east. It wasn't worth the time and trouble - or the fuel expense - to drive his armored vehicle such a short distance. Besides, the odds were fifty-fifty that he'd even run across a ganger or a cat.
Horace had covered two blocks when five gangers appeared. They sprung up at him from behind the remains of a crumbling brick wall - all that was left of another condemned suburban house.
"Whatcha got, old man?" one of them screamed. "Whatcha got for us today?" The kid's eyes were rheumy, bloodshot and bulging. Half the crooked teeth in his mouth had rotted away. Tribal tattoos ringed his pasty white, hairless body. Another kid resembled a mutant carrot. His long, dour face topped with a thick thatch of orange-red hair. The rest just looked dirty, pimply and belligerent.
"We're gonna take everything you got, mother," crooked teeth screamed again. His friends snickered and giggled. They always did that just before a kill.
"Take a hike, bastards!" Horace roared. And then the big, ugly Mengler roared. The auto shotgun's report was deafening and the sound waves rolled up and down the blocks reverberating like deep throated cannon fire.
Crooked teeth took a round in the right shoulder. He went spinning off in one direction while his right arm chose a different path. Carrot top lost his head. It landed and rolled back somewhere behind the wall. The last three took off screaming and cursing - a few rounds of shot peppered their sniveling asses and yellow-streaked backs as they fled.
Horace laughed. The barrel of his auto shotgun smoked and threw off comforting heat. He felt good. It always felt good to wipe gangers. It felt like some sort of small victory for the universe. Plus, he was closer to that pie. He could almost taste the buttery crust melting in his mouth.
Two blocks out he ran into another gangly group. They got a couple shots off but he hammered them down into a mass of writhing flesh and splintered bone with his trusty Glock 18C machine pistol.
The distance between him and the pie had shrunk to only a block - he could see the light from her place up ahead - when a tall, hulking shadow interceded between him and his destination.
"Citizen, you are putting yourself at risk." A cyber cop stood barring his way. Horace almost reached out to push the officer to the side, but it was never wise to touch a cyber cop.
"That's true, officer, but I just had to get me a slice of Mable Meple's pie. "
"Pie? That actually sounds like a good idea."
"It is, friend. Tell you what. Come with me and I'll buy you whatever pie you'd like. You just pick up the tab for the coffee."
"Okay. Let's do it, Citizen."
They reached Mable's place a minute later with no more incidents.
As they sat side by side hunched over the counter enjoying their pies, Horace stole a glance at the cyber cop. He'd never seen one up close before. Half-man, half machine, that's what people said they were. Not a machine and not quite human. It should have made Horace uneasy; instead he felt an almost instantaneous bond between the law enforcement metal man and himself - a strange sort of affinity.
"Coffee's great," the cyber cop grunted.
"Yup, it surely is that. Thanks again for buyin' me a mug."
"My thanks to you for the pie, Citizen, it's really good. I don't get much of a chance to eat very often."
Horace could believe that. He'd heard that cyber cops mostly ran on small nuclear pellets embedded in their chests next to the pump that replaced their heart.
"You come hear often?" the cyber cop asked.
"Only when I got a goodly supply of high explosives and bullets."
Both chuckled at that.
Horace took another swig of the steaming, black coffee. "Officer, I'd like your opinion."
"Opinion? About what, Citizen?"
"Well," Horace cast his eyes down at his empty pie plate, a bit embarrassed by what he felt compelled to ask. "Well, do you think things will ever get back to the way they was? I mean, like they was before the gangers took control of everything?"
"They're not in control of everything!" the cyber cop responded angrily. "Look, we're working twenty-four seven to bring them down. The problem is the lawyers and the courts. Soon as we round up the gangers, they're back on the street again twice as vicious as they were before."
"Well, it sure would be nice to get our city back from them creeps. "
"I hear you, Citizen. Short of evacuating everyone and firebombing the city, it isn't going to be easy."
Horace stared glumly into his coffee mug.
"Say," the cyber cop leaned over and lowered his voice although there weren't many people in the restaurant to hear what he said anyway, "I hear that cats are roaming tonight. I'm not supposed to do it - against the precinct's policy and all that - but I might just find it necessary to patrol the area where you live."
"You mean you'd provide an escort home for me?"
"Shush!" the cyber cop glanced around surreptitiously. "I'm not supposed to do that. But yeah, I think maybe if I happen to be going your way anyway well what's the harm, huh?"
"I'd sure appreciate it, Officer, especially if there are cats a-roamin' out there tonight."
"Ok, Citizen. Finish your coffee and let's get rolling. Thanks again for the pie."
Horace gulped down the last few swallows of his third mug full. As he pushed away from the counter the cyber cop's radio squawked. Headquarters instructed him to assist with an incident occurring a mile west of Mabel's.
"Sorry, Citizen, didn't work out. Good luck on your way back home. Shoot fast; aim straight!"
"You better believe I will, Officer, and the same to you. By the way, what's your name?"
The cyber cop smiled. "Officer Steel." Then he turned and left.
Horace nodded, it made sense.
As Horace paid the check, Mabel warned, "I heard from several customers that the cats are roaming tonight. Did you come here in your armored vehicle?"
"No, Mabel. I walked."
She shook her head and said, "Well, Horace, be careful on the way back home, you hear? It'd be a damn shame to lose one of my best customers."
"I will, Mabel. Those cats don't scare me though, I got this," he patted the LAW slung over his left shoulder.
Mabel shook her head again. "Those Light Anti-Armor Weapons aren't always effective against cats. If you don't hit the tread just so," she made a motion in the air with her hand, "they'll get you for sure. I think you need some insurance."
"What kind of insurance?"
"These." She stooped behind the counter and came up holding an olive-green sphere in each hand. "Thermite bombs. If you can't stop them you can roast them. Get a couple of these underneath their cat and they'll be like cats on a hot tin roof." She chuckled. " Then you can pop them as they come pouring out."
"Good idea. I'll take them. What do you want for them?"
"Well, I'd tell you, but you're married," she laughed. "Seriously, I don't want anything, at least not right now. You can pay me if you have to use them, then they'll have been worth something to you."
"Alright Mabel, thanks. I'll be seeing you soon."
She nodded. "Shoot fast; aim straight, Horace Billson."
Halfway home Horace heard the grinding growl and tortured gears of a roaming cat. The night air played loose with the acoustics for he was certain it was blocks away from him when it suddenly swung onto the street immediately ahead.
The cat's big radar guided searchlights swiveled towards around and locked onto him. Servos screeched: the sound of doom. The long barrel of a fifty caliber machine gun zeroed in on him.
Horace ran, dipped, and then threw himself into a bruising shoulder roll behind a low cement retainer wall. The machine gun let loose a withering stream of death missing him by inches.
He already had the LAW extended and a rocket up the tube. He pointed and fired. The HE missile missed the right tread of the modified Caterpillar bulldozer and exploded harmlessly against a steel mesh cage protecting some hydraulic system.
One rocket left.
The growling cat turned and laboriously clawed its way across curbs and bushes, the gangers inside intent on destroying their prey.
Behind and to the left of the cat -movement!
A gaggle of gangers crept behind the cat; some held what appeared to be hand grenades. Horace strained to see against the blinding searchlights. Not hand grenades, Thermite bombs like his! They were going to burn him out. Well, not in this lifetime!
He feinted to his right then ducked and ran like hell to his left. As soon as the gangers made a good target, back lit by the ambient light of the million candlepower searchlights, Horace opened fire with the auto shotgun. Nine rounds turned the gang into a mountain of quivering meat.
The fifty-caliber opened up again. Horace ducked, rolled and tossed two Thermite bombs under the roaming cat. They exploded with white heat lighting up the darkness. Seconds later four gangers ran screaming from the cat. Two gangers were engulfed in flame. Horace shot them down with single bursts from the Beretta.
The third turned and let go with a furious fusillade of firepower from an M-16. Two of the bullets struck Horace in the chest knocking him onto the ground. As the ganger with the assault rifle moved in for the kill, Horace's fingers found the smooth surface of the LAW. Despite the throbbing pain in his chest, he scooped up the launcher, aimed it in the general direction of the advancing punk and pulled the trigger.
The rocket exploded on impact vaporizing the ganger and sending the remains of the M-16 into orbit.
One goon left.
Despite the fact that all his cohorts lay dead or dying around him, the last ganger advanced on Horace with a combat knife. Horace grabbed his Beretta and drilled three neat holes into the thug's heart.
His chest felt like hell, but it was a bad bruise, nothing more. The vest had done its job.
Back home his wife stared at him as if he were the Second Coming. "One of these times you won't make it back," she sighed. Then she noticed the bullet holes in his vest. "Ran into trouble, I see."
Horace smirked. He felt sweaty, dirty. He needed a bath - a good long soak. Maybe he'd treat himself to a cigar. "Not much trouble. Nothing I couldn't handle."
He stripped off the weapons placing them onto the kitchen table. Then he went to run the water for his bath.
Life wasn't so bad after all.