Dream Thing

“Are you a fool?”

“You don’t know how often I get that.” Remo, smiled. “You sure you’re Martin Copa? The Martin Copa? The guy who murders innocent children?”

“I am Martin Copa and I slay the fascists who exert their will over the Basque people!”

“Those kiddies in the day-care wing at the Arab church were really being tyrannical, huh? If you’re Copa the Coward, then where’s the rest of your rank ranks?”

“Are you truly with a newspaper in New York?” Copa asked.

“No,” Remo sighed, finally tiring of this humorless bunch. The least they could do was provide a little amusement before being decimated. The Sicilian don, for instance, had been good for a song and dance.

Well, now he had Copa and he could wrap up the job. “This has to be a good cross section of your Basque Bastards or whatever the hell you fools call yourselves. I guess this will have to do.”

“Do what?” Copa demanded, also coming to the end of his patience. “What are you here to do, American? Surely you have some purpose.”

“I’ll show you my purpose,” Remo said, and he began moving.

Gliding steps carried him across the room to nudge one of his gun-toting escorts. The man’s head flew back, into a bolt in the wooden support girder for the house above. The bolt was so long it emerged between the gunman’s eyes.

The others were too stunned to react. Remo used the silence to push two more heads together. The crack was tremendous and the result was a fusion of brain and bone that didn’t separate as the bodies collapsed together on the long wooden table.

Then came the shouting and the firing and the mayhem—and the whistling. Remo was giving them his rendition of “As Time Goes By” as he slaughtered them.

They should have been able to locate him from the whistling after a gunshot shattered the lightbulb. Remo slithered among them, leading some of the tracking gunners to shoot their companions. Remo’s senses warned him when any bullets were homing in on him and he sidestepped them.

Bullets might sometimes travel faster than the sound of their shot, but they always tended to compact the atmosphere ahead of them and around them. These pressure waves were so subtle as to be undetectable to the vast majority of human beings. Remo didn’t fall into the category of “vast majority.” His superior senses felt those waves, although if asked he couldn’t have described accurately what he was feeling. His agile instincts caused him to analyze and react to the pressure waves. His magnificent capabilities of movement were more than up to the task of dodging bullets.

But, just for variety, he slithered under the table and jabbed his stiffened hand into assorted kneecaps, not so much cracking the bones as liquefying the entire joint. Bone and cartilage, tendon and muscle ligaments were pulped, and bodies fell face first on the tabletop and then rolled to the floor screaming in pain. Remo got to his feet again to take care of the lucky few who had sensed somehow that being near the table was a dangerous thing.

Remo ran his one extralong fingernail around the neck of a gunner, who lost his head, literally. A few more died when Remo’s fingers inserted themselves into their heads via the temple and whisked their brain matter into a kind of puree. The fallen screaming ones were silenced with quick kicks.

The battle was over a minute after it began.

Martin Copa, the Basque Burner, was the one left alive. He was trying to see into the blackness and figure out why the noise had stopped.

“That was something, huh?” Remo said.

Martin Copa triggered his handgun.

“You know what’s so funny, Marty? Half your guys shot each other.”

Martin Copa tried to find Remo by the sound of his voice and blasted into the blackness until the magazine was empty.

“Missed,” Remo said, inches from the man’s shoulder. Copa spun and brought the handgun butt down hard, but never hit anything. The gun was lifted from his fingers, and when it was replaced in his hand he could feel the extended barrel was curling like a pig’s tail.

“Who are you?” Copa demanded.

“I read some of your poetry on the wall at the café in Duero. You were an awful poet.”

“It translates into English not well,” he retorted, for want of something better to say.

“As bad as it was, you should have stuck with it. You’re a way better poet than child-murdering thug.” The voice seemed to be coming from all points in the blackness. Copa was twisting and turning to find it. “Listen for a second. What do you hear?”

“I hear nothing,” Copa said, voice shaking.

“Exactly. It’s the sound of your future,” Remo said. “You’re going to join your friends now.”

“No! Wait!”

Remo didn’t wait.

Chapter 7

England’s power had faded. It was no longer the great British Empire, although it still pretended it was. It was hardly even a United Kingdom anymore, just a few dank North Sea islands under centralized control and a smattering of minuscule colonial remnants.