RoboCop 2 Read online

  “This is bullshit!” exclaimed Kuzak, at top volume. He faced the Old Man. “And you’re senile!”

  Within an instant, Kuzak was on his feet, heading for the Old Man. The Old Man watched him impassively. Poulos grabbed the mayor and led him toward the door. “Settle down,” he cautioned. “Let’s just get out of here, huh?”

  Kuzak allowed himself to be led away. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

  He flashed his campaign-winning smile at the OCP trio. “Gentlemen? One last thing . . .” Kuzak lunged toward the Old Man again. “Fuck you! We’ll sue your asses!”

  Poulos yanked the mayor out of the room, leaving the Old Man chuckling from his throne. “Give it your best shot, Your Honor. Give it your best shot.”

  Johnson walked up to the Old Man as Holzgang gathered up the contract. “If I may say so, sir, you are making history here. This is a very bold move.”

  The Old Man turned his attention back to the city outside. “It’s evolution, Johnson. Nothing more. It is the future. Bumbling elected officials have brought this country to its knees. Responsible private enterprise must raise it up again. This is my dream, Johnson. It shall be my legacy.”

  “Congratulations, sir,” Johnson said, backing out of the room with Holzgang in tow. “It was a stroke of master planning, the work of a true visionary.”

  The Old Man nodded. “That goes without saying, Johnson.”

  The Old Man didn’t notice the two men easing the door shut behind them. He continued to gaze out upon the city. It had been a great city once. And it would be great once again. He had always considered Detroit to be his city. And now, in reality, it would be just that.

  His city . . . and his alone.

  [ 3 ]

  Far below the Old Man’s OCP tower office, in the area of the city known as Old Detroit, all hell, on schedule, was breaking loose. It was a nightly occurrence, with the city’s poorest and most hopeless preying upon each other in spasmodic fits of random violence and bloodlust.

  With the sound of burglar alarms echoing down the streets behind her, an old bag lady wheeled a shopping cart down her block. The cart, with only three wheels fully working, housed the sum of her life: three dozen crushed cans, good for redemption at her neighborhood market on the morrow—if she made it through the night in one piece.

  The woman clutched her well-worn handbag to her right side. It was all she had left to remind her of another time, another life. A time when she had been considered a person. A life when she had loved and been loved.

  Now she was sinking in a quagmire of despair. She did all she could to keep herself afloat. Maggie her name had been, once. Names didn’t enter her world any more.

  The old woman stiffened as the sound of screeching car brakes sliced through her memories, cleaving them neatly. The car, filled with laughing, drunk teenagers, slammed into her grocery cart, sending the cart, the cans, and the old woman tumbling onto the hard, cold sidewalk. The car sped off, the teenagers howling with glee.

  The old woman surveyed the scene from the sidewalk. She was in pain, yes; but it was the kind of pain she was used to. She slowly got to her feet. “Bastards,” she muttered.

  She glanced around helplessly, her treasured tin cans still twirling in the street. She made a furtive move to gather them. A blow from nowhere slammed into her stomach. The old woman doubled over, and a young thug in a long dirty trenchcoat wrenched the handbag from her side, breaking her shoulder in the process.

  The woman collapsed, sobbing on the pavement, half hoping that the chill of this particular night would invade her heart and her bones and end her misery once and for all.

  The thief—handbag tucked, football style, under his left arm—sprinted down a street, passing a row of laughing hookers—mini-skirted girls, barely out of their teens, wearing more paint than most Monets. The last hooker extended a fishnet-covered leg, sending the young thief tumbling.

  The asshole cartwheeled into a stack of cardboard boxes. “Bitches!” he screamed, as his head slammed into the pavement, knocking him senseless.

  The whores descended upon him like ghouls, rifling through his pockets and the stolen handbag.

  “Bitches,” he moaned.

  “Go call a cop,” one ten-year-old hooker sneered.

  The girl let out an excited cry as she pulled out a NUKE ampule from the clumsy thief’s pocket. She pressed it to her neck. Pfffftttt. In a matter of seconds, she was the envy of her peer group.

  The gang of hookers marched down the street, leaving the moaning punk lying in his own spit on the cold Old Detroit macadam.

  They strode down the avenue, passing an old-fashioned, broken-bottle donnybrook involving two drunken couples and a five-dollar bill.

  They sauntered by a station wagon parked on a deserted street. The hookers let out a communal seductive moan at the young man behind the wheel, a punky-looking guy named Buzz. “Awww, fuggoff,” he ordered. “I’m busy here.”

  “Pocket pool?” one girl catcalled, as they continued to undulate their way across Old Detroit.

  “Hoooors,” Buzz howled back. He glanced nervously across the street at a deserted gun store. As he watched, the building blew up.

  Buzz flinched in the front seat as shards of glass and metal rained down upon his car. He revved up the engine. “About fuggin’ time,” he muttered. “You’re absolute shit with a timer.”

  Buzz pulled the station wagon directly in front of the half-demolished store. He deftly made his way inside, avoiding the larger chunks of burning debris. “Fuggin’ A!” he chuckled.

  Inside the shattered shop, his three punk friends—Brad, Flint, and Chet—tumbled down the aisles toward him, their arms laden with pistols, shotguns, machine guns, ammo, and grenades. Chet, a hood who resembled a hard-core Beaver Cleaver, wielded his own particular favorite—a cache of Stinger missiles.

  “Look at this!” he chortled. “I’ve joined the army!”

  Buzz whirled around as a haunting moan filled the store. “What the hell . . .”

  Behind the blasted-away counter, the bleeding form of the elderly store owner was sprawled. Buzz grinned evilly at the owner. “Well, whadda we got here?”

  The owner raised a bloodied hand, in a sign of surrender. Buzz picked up an Auto-9 pistol and slapped in a cartridge. He gazed from the gun to the bleeding man. “Nasty-looking bullets,” he said. “What are these, man?”

  “Armor-piercing,” the bleeding man offered meekly. Then he recognized the look on Buzz’s face. “Oh, God . . .”

  “I really like this gun,” Buzz stated.

  “Please. Take it and get out.”

  Buzz grinned at the moaning man. “Thanks, pop. I’ll do just that.”

  He raised the pistol and fired a round into the man’s face, reducing it to nothing more than crimson pudding and skull fragments.

  “Great bullets,” Buzz concluded. “Very effective.”

  He heard a noise behind him. He spun around, grinning, as a small army of street people began tumbling through the ruptured storefront, eager to snatch whatever they could.

  “We’ve got company,” Buzz said.

  “Fuggin’ thieves,” Chet muttered sarcastically.

  The four punks opened fire on the marauding street people, slicing half a dozen of them in two and sending the rest scattering.

  “There’s never a cop around when you really need one,” said Buzz with a sigh. “Come on, let’s go.”

  The four punks leaped out of the store and headed for their station wagon. The silence of the empty street was shattered by the wail of a siren.

  “Huh?” uttered Buzz.

  “Shit!” Chet hissed. “I don’t believe this.”

  “It’s the cops, man,” Flint added.

  “Cops are on strike, stupid,” Chet pointed out.

  “Can’t you hear it?” asked Flint.

  “It’s an ambulance,” Chet suggested. “Got to be . . .”

  The four thugs froze, bathed in the angry glare of approaching h
eadlights. They stood gaping, like possums caught in a bright light, at the police TurboCruiser speeding down the street toward them.

  “Shit!” Chet swore, training a Stinger missile on the approaching auto. “This should slow the sucker down.”

  The other three boys cackled as Chet squeezed off a round from the shoulder-held, bazookalike weapon. The Stinger screamed down the street, smashing into the front of the cruiser. The car was promptly enveloped in a ball of flame, the impact from the missile sending it high into the air.

  “Bull’s-eye!” Buzz roared.

  The cruiser bounced to the ground and continued, end over end, down the street. Bits of flaming metal fragments cascaded into the air. The cruiser finally smashed to a stop, and the scene was quiet.

  “Let’s have fun,” Buzz suggested.

  The four punks opened up on the remains of the auto, sending slug after slug of every type of weapon imaginable slicing into the sizzling wreckage.

  From within the inferno, something stirred.

  The four hoods lowered their guns and cocked their heads inquisitively. Nearly obscured by the smoke and fire, the driver’s door of the cruiser swung open.

  “I’m not seeing this,” muttered Buzz.

  “Me neither,” said Chet.

  A large metal-encased foot slammed down onto the fire-stained street. A large shadowshape emerged from the car. The four punks gaped at the helmeted figure emerging. It was a cop, but more than a cop. It was a being that resembled a cross between a knight of old and a high-tech football player. A sinewy, shining warrior of the new age.

  “Oh, shit!” wailed Flint. “It’s HIM, man! The Robodude!”

  “Kill the fucker!” Buzz ordered.

  The four punks raised their weapons and fired a fusillade of bullets at the advancing cyborg, their eyes wild with terror.

  RoboCop continued his advance, slowly and surely. He lowered his right hand, his Auto-9 pistol slamming into his fist from a thigh holster, as bullets richocheted harmlessly off his metallic chest.

  Robo scanned the area, activating his target grid. The four punks stood immobile before him. He quickly calculated the best trajectory and raised his pistol, squeezing off three quick shots. It wasn’t a particularly challenging encounter.

  Chet was the first to fall, spinning dizzily as his midsection tumbled down onto his knees.

  Buzz found himself airborne, a gaping hole where his heart had been. Buzz’s body slammed into the hood of the station wagon, sliding over it and down onto the sidewalk on the opposite side. His heart, however, landed where his feet had been seconds before, hitting the pavement with a resounding squoosh.

  Brad stopped shooting abruptly as one of Robo’s bullets entered the front of his forehead and his brains exited through a gaping hole in the rear of his head. Brad’s body hit the ground like a sack of dung.

  Robo faced the remaining thug, the shaking slimeball named Flint. “Peace officer,” said Robo simply.

  Flint dropped his weapon. “This is too much to handle, man!”

  He reached into his pocket for a NUKE ampule. “I can’t cope with this, man.”

  He began to raise the ampule to his neck. In a move of incredible grace and speed, Robo sprinted forward, grabbing the boy’s wrist. Quickly holstering his gun, he snatched the ampule from the punk and crushed it in his hand.

  He gazed at the crushed vial, analyzing it. Drug. Illegal. Chemically made. Neurotoxin.

  He lifted the squirming thug named Flint high into the air. “Who makes this toxin?”

  “I dunno!” the punk wailed.

  Robo repeated the question, his voice nearly as steely as his presence. “Who . . . makes . . . this?”

  “I don’t know, man! All I know is where I get it.”

  RoboCop slowly lowered the trembling punk. “That is an excellent start,” he said stiffly. “Now, you have the right to remain silent . . .”

  [ 4 ]

  RoboCop’s massive feet crunched through a small ocean of discarded NUKE ampules. With each step, he sent shards of the hard plastic vials shattering. He scanned the street, using his RoboVision. All seemed normal, if you could call a street such as this normal.

  “NUKE Me!” and “NUKE Reigns!” slogans were spray-painted on walls with a fluorescent hue. Street people lay curled in the corner of every alleyway, shivering while sleeping, trying to evade the long tendrils of the dank, night air. The streets were filled with garbage and discarded, burnt-out cars. The storefronts were boarded up.

  The place resembled an urban graveyard.

  And that, Robo concluded, was exactly what it was.

  Far behind him, beyond his sensory systems, a large Harley-Davidson was heading for the same neighborhood. The rider wore a helmet. Skulls and swastikas were painted all along the chopper. The rider calmly sent the hog off a freeway offramp.

  It rumbled to a stop, its metallic kickstand sending up a small shower of sparks.

  The helmeted figure removed a CompuMap from a jacket pocket and gazed at it. The rider knew where the chopper was. The rider knew where the chopper had to go.

  In the streets ahead of the chopper, Robo still marched through the deserted streets and alleyways. He stopped before the remnants of an Italian restaurant, a small, humble, family affair, long closed down. Boarded up. Graffiti-laden. Robo swiveled his visored head this way and that, activating his thermograph. There was heat nearby.

  He focused on the chimney of the “abandoned” building.

  In Robo’s eyes, the chimney glowed with a steady stream of pulsating heat.

  Robo strode to the side of the restaurant, warily scanning the neighborhood. A silver stretch limo was parked in the shadow of the restaurant. Odd, Robo thought. Out of place. Expensive car, dead area.

  Robo approached a side door to the restaurant. He carefully pried the boards free of the door, making sure that the creaking noises supplied by the rusted nails did not make too much of a racket.

  He slowly swung the old door open. He tilted his head. From deep within the building, he could hear the sound of muffled music. RoboCop gently placed a heavy foot down upon the splintered floorboards of the place and, heightening his hearing senses, slowly followed the music to its source.

  It was coming from what was once the kitchen of the restaurant.

  Robo strained his hearing.

  Inside the kitchen, there was something cooking. The odors and noises made from the equipment therein were clearly not the product of ordinary culinary utensils and pans.

  Robo paused outside a large metal door that separated himself from the kitchen.

  He knocked softly.

  A small rectangular hatch opened, and a startled face filled three-quarters of the resulting hole. Robo quickly scanned the kitchen. Inside was a chemical-factory operation. Latin and Oriental women were feeding drops of the drug called NUKE from large canisters bearing the NUKE logo into small ampules. Others were placing the filled ampules into NUKE dispensers. One woman in the far corner tended to two babies. The atmosphere, as well as Robo could ascertain, was cheerful and relaxed, almost as if the kitchen were still being run as a family operation.

  “Oh, shit!” the guard on the other side of the door moaned. “Not tonight.”

  Robo snapped to, sending his hand crashing through the door. He grabbed the guard by the throat and pulled him forward into the punctured portal. The guard’s head slammed into the fractured door, and, dropping his weapon, the man collapsed onto the ground.

  Remembering the countless OD’ed teenagers he had managed to scrape off the streets of Detroit, Robo put his shoulder into the door and sent it tumbling inside.

  The women workers panicked, screeching as they fled in every direction.

  Half a dozen other guards began firing their AK-47s wildly. The women continued to scream, scrambling for cover.

  Robo stood confused amid the pandemonium. Gaping at the terrified women, the first directive flashed across his field of vision: SERVE THE PUBLIC TRUST.<
br />
  He must protect the women.

  He marched forward. A guard across the room opened fire, sending metal shards cascading down Robo’s metallic side. Robo quickly pulled his pistol, shifted to target mode, and dropped the guard with a single shot. The guard flew through the air, smashing into the beakers and vials percolating in the room.

  Robo whirled at the sound of movement. Switching to RoboVision, he gazed across the kitchen to a small window separating the sweatshop from an office in back. Robo focused. Beyond the small window, a small, sallow-faced boy picked up a tiny portable computer and slid it neatly into his slightly oversized jacket. The boy glanced across the office.

  A spandex-clad, raven-haired woman snarled and quickly slammed a suitcase closed. Robo slipped his being into record mode, watching the diminutive boy and the Amazon head for a rear door. There they encountered a fierce-looking scarecrow of a man. The man looked like a well-dressed skeleton, a grizzled beard topping his pointed chin, a rakishly tilted top hat perched upon his head. He wore what appeared to be a custom-made yet ragtag tuxedo. This must be the leader, RoboCop concluded.

  Robo examined the clothing of the threesome carefully. Very expensive. Terminally hip in a haphazard way. Out of place for a factory. Robo was still pondering the incongruity of it all when the trio disappeared from his view and the room around him erupted.

  Two guards burst into the kitchen, firing Pancor assault shotguns.

  Robo twirled his pistol, nailing one between the eyes.

  A sudden roar.

  Car engine, Robo concluded. No: too fierce. Motorcycle engine.

  As Robo reached that conclusion, the chopper’s driver leaped into the maelstrom, still wearing a dark helmet. Robo instinctively pulled back as the driver pulled the trigger of the gun. The bullet sent a second marauding guard sailing into a wall, leaving a scattershot trail of blood in his wake.

  Another guard aimed a machine gun at the rider. The rider tumbled back out of the room, just a step ahead of a percolating wave of molten lead.

  Robo spun around and downed the guard with a single bullet to the neck.