Posted by Veronika Kill-O-Matic on October 20, 2000 at 08:50:36:

MEN ARE HISTORY. WOMEN SURVIVE. THE Y-VIRUS KILLED ALL MALES AND IN THEIR LAST BATTLE THEY DESTROYED THE SPERM BANKS.

TEN YEARS LATER, WOMEN ARE NUTS. THE CRUEL ONES RULE OVER THE REST IN A REGIME OF VIOLENCE, DRUGS AND SEX.

CRUELEST OF ALL IS VERONIKA KILL-O-MATIC, THE TERROR OF THE COLOGNE GANGSTER SCENE. TONIGHT SHE ALONE MUST STRIKE AT HER OWN COMRADES AND LOVERS -- A DOZEN VICIOUS-BABE KILLERS WHO BETRAYED HER AND BROKE HER POISONED HEART.

SHE'S ANGRY, SHE'S ON A POWERFUL PSYCHIC DRUG, SHE PACKS A MAC MG AND A TWO-SHOT CROSSBOW, AND SHE WEARS THE RED LEATHER JACKET GIVEN TO HER ON OLYMPUS BY THE GODDESS ATHENA.

THEY ARE AN ARMY. SHE IS ALONE. THEY HAVE AN ARSENAL. BUT WHEN SHE GETS OUT OF THIS CAR, ALL HELL WILL BREAK LOOSE. WHEN SHE GETS OUT OF THIS CAR, SHE WILL MAKE HER ENEMIES CRY:

CAN ANYTHING STOP VERONIKA KILL-O-MATIC?

When she gets out of this car, she needs to fucking piss. My bladder is killing me!

Luckily there's a parking lot just a few yards back. I crouch in a shitty corner and let loose a river, during which I relive my life a second time in Thread-induced technicolor. This time I go a bit gentler on my mistakes and add some satori at the end. I straighten up my belt and go through a couple of pockets for the tobacco and a lighter. Even on Thread, you always misplace those. I pull a pouch of Three. Now that some production has been restored, tobacco comes in One, Two, and Three, in ascending level of nicotine content. They don't bother with brands. I wish they would put out a pack of filter cigs, though. What I really need is a Marlboro.

Finally it's lit and I take a nice long drag and feel fit. Just about ready. I got an hour and ten minutes left for the job, plenty of time, and I got unlimited lives. Yes. So I merely watch Eva silently round the corner and walk up to stand about five feet in front of me. I take this about as well as I can. The last thing I imagined was that they would have Eva on guard duty. On a party night - inconceivable! In fact, I seem to have almost blocked out Eva altogether. I try never to think of her. Maybe because when she's around all anyone can do is think of her. If things go well, I've got very particular deaths in mind for Lisa, for Tong, for that funny skank Saskia, for Katya and Verona and the two Dagmars. And for Anya. I can't wait to do them. But suddenly I don't seem to recall. Was I going to kill Eva, too?

She asks me. "Were you going to kill me, too?"

No, I guess I wasn't. You're going to kiss me goodbye and then I'll kill the rest.

"Kiss you?" she says. "Goodbye? Yes. We have no future."

I forget that on Thread, everyone near you can read your thoughts. In fact, everything you think is projected out to them, as though it were on loudspeakers. This is the best part of the drug, although on first hearing it, the professional killer dismisses it as suicidal. The smart ones learn how to put it to their use. Right now, I am not being smart.

What was my name again? I forget.

"You're avoiding the subject." Just a bit off her hip an automatic rests in her right palm, her fingers looking loose but firm on the handle, the barrel aimed to enter my face from below. Finger in the ring. "Head shot. You are the open book. You know you're not the only one who ever, how you say, cranked those dots?" She pronounces it doubts, she's Hungarian. "You were pushing it up my nose, remember?" Yes, it was great doing Thread with you, Eva. Everything is great with you.

As she speaks her left hand gestures out what she says. Her right rests, smoothly adjusting to variations in the position of my head. "I have marched a cannon up yours," she says. This tough-guy talk she's picked up since we met. Her idiom has gotten pretty good, since we met. I love saying those words. Since we met.

"You gonna kill me?" she asks. Keel her. Theoretically I still could. Several have made the mistake of talking to me, instead of shooting. I would love to be in this situation with Lisa. She would know herself she didn't have a chance. But with Eva my palms are sweating, I feel my blood rushing around my head and down to my twat. I can't describe this girl, she's some kind of mutant, a prodigy. It's not the exterior, though god she's pretty, not a play of symmetries like Anya but rounded angulars, disjointed, with hidden wings and spirals. She always wears these over-one-shoulder tops, showing all that tough meat on one side. The hair is bushy, the eyes are coals, the breasts are big and thick, of course. She's got a long smile with the points going sideways instead of up and if you kiss her, your lips start sinking through her little mustache hairs about three hours before touching hers. They didn't cheat on her lips. What matters most is, she walks around in a thick cloud of sex-smell. Everyone leans closer to her, their noses moist to inhale of her breath. Their brains turn off. She was 13, when the Virus hit. Since then she's been the eye of the orgy.

Eva, you know I can't say a word with you. I... I... I... All anyone wants to do is love you. You are the smell of love.

I close my eyes. Let the battle end here, if it must. The red jacket falls to the ground behind me. I am breathing in through the mouth, steady like a ventilator vent with a sigh. I can feel her closer, closer. I cannot speak. I just manage to think: Are you going to work with me?

"Why am I out here, on a night like this? I volunteered."

Why am I alive? That's what I was thinking.

"You were dreaming. But you forget something." The radar announces tension in her right hand. I swallow out loud and croak a weakly note that sounds like: What?

"It's nobody's army."

It's nobody's army.

"Don't think it. Say it."

"It's nobody's army." Croak.

This isn't happening. In my blindness I sense her face moving up towards mine. The nose of the gun is pressing at the flesh just above my belt. My head is rotating slowly on its base, spiraling in towards hers. I want the first kiss to be thirty. My hands move up to her face, flutter slowly on to her neck, trace her jaw. Her head in my hands. Now we know, we could both die, right here. Our lips touch, recede, touch, recede. All these angles of approach. We embrace and press our breasts to each other and the breath takes us both. Our mouths open up to trade souls. This goes on for six or seven years, then my hands start to sculpt her body, fingernail to the nipple, palm to the shoulder, thumb up deep into her armpit bush, followed by my nose and tongue, while she eats out my ear. My hand is working at her belt, teasing it. Several weeks later I am inside her pants, exploring her diamond forest, and finally thrusting down to her secret. I wrap my fingers around her octopoidal stalk and she jolts. We blast into rawness, pushing, bouncing, biting, thrusting, tearing at clothes but leaving them on. Eva really is a freak. Her clitoris is distended, and her labia hang down like meat-eating plants. If you carefully gather her treasure together, you can hold it in your fist like a penis. (Yes, I've held a couple of those, and it wasn't bad. Big deal.) If you pull her detonator, firmly but gently, she goes off like a nuke. She goes off, her back arches and she throws her head back, her throat moans. She staggers to her knees and I follow her down. She has tucked the gun into my belt to stroke hard at my sex through my leather pants. It doesn't take much. We both come. Her baggie pants and my hand are as damp as if she pissed. Why does she wear pants, I always ask. We settle alongside each other, on a forest floor that soon turns back into a parking lot.

I look into her face. I think about all the daughters she might have, in a couple of years. She was perfect. If all of us always killed as one, since we discovered her, six months ago, then most of all to keep her alive. This was the last time. I remove my hands suddenly and roll away, once, twice, and up to a stand, the red jacket back in my hands. As I slip it on she dizzily gets on her knees and tries to assume a cat stance. Sloppy. I will myself not to pull the piece. She gave it to me, and I don't like betrayals. I feel rotten enough at the disappointment and hurt in the way she looks up at me.

Fuck you. "Tonight I shall disband my army. I am retiring. You will go to the back and kill the door guard," I tell her. All business now. "Who is it?"

"And what if I don't?" she sighs. "Always you must kill. You are like a man, Veronika."

"Are you kidding me? I wanted to stop! And where were you yesterday, when Lisa killed half the bitches in the company?"

She moves her head in a dismissive gesture. "I was asleep. After the night before, they couldn't get me up." She sits on the side of her butt and starts to look bored. Disarming. I really don't get this girl. Sometimes it's like she isn't aware of a thing, especially not the effect she has on everyone. "They think you are dead, you know. They have been talking about you all day."

I have to laugh. "I got bored with the speeches and left just before you blew up the hotel."

"I didn't blow up the hotel."

"The survivors all think I did it. I had to duck out on a few of them before. They'll come around here, too, but right now they're all too scared and busy wailing over their dead. Anyone else who slept through the show?"

"Verena," she sighs.

"And who's watching the back of the club?"

"Verena," she sighs.

Great. Verena we call Spidergirl. I once saw her flip herself over a bitch who had a garotte around her neck, and pop her with two guns from behind. How much easier this would have been for me, if Verena had been at the front.

I don't think Eva is going to survive this. "Yes, I will," she says, and for a glance I believe her.

"Well, fuck Verena. You're going to kill her anyway for being such a cunt. I can't believe how stupid you all are. Partying right after, exactly where everyone will expect you. The only guards, if you're not lying, are the only ones who weren't in on the job."

"Lisa wants to die. She loves death. You know that."

"She's going to get it tonight. I shall enter from the front and kill everyone. Anyone who runs and makes it to the back door, you have to handle." There's no need for complicated plans.

She swallows her fear, and all the kiss I left in her mouth, and nods submissively. She is crying. I can't read her mind like she can read mine, but I can see she wants to say we should forget this. We could just leave.

"Never," I say. "It's been a long time already, we're lucky if no one came to the door and saw you gone yet. You have four minutes to get to the back before I go in. Go."

Soon I watch her wobbling off the lot and across the street, a mess. I put my hand to my face and smear her come on my nose and mouth. I almost follow her. I go to the car, still running, parked there for 20 minutes already. I reach in to kill the engine and take hold of my tools. I stand, crossbow in the left, Mac in the right. My battle prayer: I cast my shadow on the land. I march up the middle of the deserted street, toward Grauzone.

Full the Eastwood, I, Veronika Kill-O-Matic, step into the swinging doors, upright proud. The machine pistol sits level on my right, the bow bounces playfully on my left. The door is a few steps above the floor, affording an excellent view. Loud, smoky, dark and sticky. Thread or not, there is a lot of input to take in.

All right! I can't believe this! The song is the Ace of Spades!

You know I'm going to lose
and gam-buh-ling's for fools
but that's the way I like it baby
I don't want to live forever!

Many targets in view. My first coherent thought is, why didn't I bring my grenades, my canisters of sarin? But I know why.

Luckiest of all, chubby Tong, the moon-faced Korean-German girl, whom the others call Little Veronika because they think she and I are sadists, is leaning sullenly over her beer. She's alone at the tall table to the left, in an oversize red leather jacket, loose around the shoulders. Hers will be a quick execution.

Petra, the creamy white butch beanstalk with the cropped brown hair, and Dagmar White, the flowing blonde with freckles who likes to laugh and wear white dresses - a beanstalk with tits exploding out of it - are crowding at the bar around Anya, my bounteous maiden, who is dressed in her usual multiple layers of Raggedy Ann cast-offs, a few loose corners tucked in for strategic effect. She seems quite intent on her drink. Dagmar Black, as we call her because of her hair and facial scars, is behind the bar, working the turntable. Heike and Katya, the German bulldogs, are behind the arched entry to the next half of the long room, where Lisa is dancing with Monika and Saskia. I put a snarl on my face and project my only thought, a mental singsong at loudest volume:

Hel-lo, girls! Clint - is - heeere! Paar - tee time!

Who would have thought, ten years after the demise of the men, that the most popular flicks would still star Eastwood and Schwarzenegger? I watch fear slowly paralyze the room. Seven pairs of killer red-eyes start to focus on me. Dagmar Black proves to be the only professional. Leaning down and reaching for something to her left, with a sweep of her right she scratches the needle off the record and hits a knob to turn up the lights. In my head I continue the song from the note where she stopped it, and turn up the volume. The Ace of Spades! The Ace of Spades! Damned if anyone's going to take my video away from me! Mentally I congratulate Dagmar for her courage, and myself for recruiting her. Nice effort, Dagmar. But your courage has made you foolhardy. You should have killed the lights, instead of raising them.

I have been focusing on Tong's hands. They leave the table. Bad move. A burst from the Mac, two dullish pops. Two pills take Tong an inch beneath the collarbone. She stretches her neck and pushes out her chest with a loud throaty: huh! Her hands come up as baby fists in the air, she scrunches her eyes and steps back, wobbly. The squib looks to have come out the back, a bit over the belt. The jacket keeps it clean and hidden, but her insides are surely pulped. Her shoulders back into the wall. She is still all live flesh and wide-eyed, mouth round, fists loose and trembling like branches. The leather sticks to the wall and her boots, just two feet off the wall, resist against the floor, allowing her to slow her descent with the tension of her body and her hidden, raging will. But her heart has stopped cold. Tong is fresh death, following gravity to the nearest rest, but each fraction of it as though she were calmly leaning further back into a graceful tai-chi arch of the back, sticking out her abdomen, fleshy hints now rounding out over the belt. She's never tucked in either, this girl, two red nickels on her shirt, a touch of moisture around the crotch, her head upright and sinking down along the wall. Then one of the soles jumps off the floor and the other leg buckles at the knee, her head lolls to the left and her shoulders slide straight down the rest of the way. She lands in the corner with straight black strands over her face and her belly arched, one leg bent against the wall and the other stretched into a long upturned boot. Beautiful Tong.

Of course, just as Tong in her quiet spasm can no longer focus on her killer, I, Veronika, rejoicing and fairly terrified, do not just watch her go down. She's just the sideshow. By the time Tong is at rest, a clay doll in death about six seconds after she is shot, I, Veronika, have killed five more of our friends.

Black Dagmar is levelling a shotgun at me over the bar, swinging her hair out of her face for the shot. In admiration of her grace I almost forget to release the first trigger of my home-made crossbow, which fires metal arrows two feet long. It enters her ribs below the left breast and she flies back, smacking hard into the beer barrel behind the bar. She's pinned to it by the arrow. Fountains of beer crack out around her and for three seconds she flops in front of the barrel like a fish. Anya, White Dagmar and Petra have come off the bar but cling to each other like little girls. In the back half-room Heike and Katya have dived out of view, behind the arch on either side, and I know they're getting weapons. Saskia, Lisa and Monika, all high as kites, are just about figuring out that the music has stopped. Black Dagmar leans with her back over the beer barrel, still now, face reaching down to her perfect little breasts, arms scraping the floor on the other side.

"Freeze!" I announce, and project an image of the 900-foot Jesus. For a moment they freeze, praying that the sheep will be separated from the goats. I sweep the crossbow to the right, aim down at Anya's face. Her eyes blaze blue hatred at me. She has finally reached my level.

Always blamed me, secretly, for the end of the men. The second day down from the mountain village we started running into women. Bonfires smoldered, bodies were still being found and when we got into settled areas everything smelled of rot. And still, she blamed me for the men. They killed themselves, you slut, like they were always going to. Who among them would you have married, you slut? Her eyes are steel. Finally, after all the years, the moment has arrived when she would stab me in my sleep, if she could. Finally, too, I can admit it to myself: I was the monster. If mine was love, then never truly of her. She was my object, but not a living lover. I used her, and blamed her for everyone who never loved me, from my mother on up. If I had the time, I'd like to tell her that. A shame that my therapeutic insight has come at the cost of her life.

I flick my wrist up and release the second arrow. Anya shuts her eyes as it flies above her head on its way to the next room, where it takes the sequined half-naked doll Monika in the forehead, as planned. Another perfumed beauty, and a shame. She heaves three feet in the air and almost manages a back flip before crashing to the floor in spasms and a single long scream. (NOTE to Director and Casting: dies like the Darryl Hannah replicant in Blade Runner, except she looks like Jennifer Tilly with curly red hair.) Lisa, her older sister, screams without a sound. You hadn't expected that, had you, when you brought your worshipped sister in as the extra cunt? Saskia, ever the fox, has started inching back toward the wall.

In situations like these I've found that killing the most harmless one multiplies the terror, and gets the brave to do stupid things. To wit:

As I drop the crossbow and cradle the Mac in both arms, Heike and Katya bellow and burst out of either side of the arch, their Macs (our standard issue) already blazing. Perfect. I crouch to sit on the stairs and open fire, thinking: RIGHT! LEFT! I stay exactly where I am. My bulldogs take the bait. Petra, Anya and Dagmar White float and spin a lovely bullet rumba while Heike, Katya and I busily miss each other and pump the poor innocents full of entry wounds. I take turns popping off two at at time at each of the Crossfire Girls, I want to get in my shots before they go down, keep their little ballet going all night. One shot would drop you, 38 shots have you flying and squealing with delight. Anya is at the center of my triangulation, as I feverishly hoped, and her performance outdoes my imagination. She falls back, forward, left, right, with each shot that comes in, her hateful gaze magically on me the whole time. Then I feel a line of slugs crack across my chest and deep into the two thin layers of mylar I sewed into the red leather jacket seven years ago. First time I've ever been hit. It hurts. Petra's face explodes into a bloody exit wound and I know it's time to end this. On the left I pop Heike first, she falls back from her crouch and lands on her back, knees up, then I strafe a last time across Anya and Dagmar White, and land some slugs into the fat belly of Katya - who was standing the whole time, the idiot. She backs behind the arch again and I hear her screaming: fuck fuck fuck FUCK! Germans love that word.

Crashglass tinkling, then silence. Tong has obediently stayed in the corner, where I dropped her. Smoke rises from Petra, her head towards me but face down, luckily, and from Anya, in the middle as always, laid flat out with her head towards the back, and from Dagmar White, her dress now painted red, who lies on her side with her head at Anya's upturned bare feet. She wore clogs, she always thought shoes were so uncomfortable. I can hear Katya groaning out heavily, behind the right side of the arch. Heike lies still under the arch to the left. Past Monika's body, lying in the center of the back room, I see no one. The door to the bathrooms and the kitchen at the back, where Lisa ran, is still swinging.

I get up and stagger to the bar, stepping over Petra. One drink still stands intact, Anya's. Whiskey on ice. Another taste she finally picked up from me, in her later years. Where are Fei, Corinne and Sheena? Never mind. Eva must be dead by now. I slide over a stool and knock back Anya's whiskey. There are a few rolled cigarettes on the counter. I light one up and give a long look down at Anya's face, miraculously intact, her blue eyes staring at the sky, mouth round and moist, hair spread out like a halo. Her middle is pulped and the blood is streaming to join Petra's and Dagmar's on either side of her. I gave you such a spectacular death, do you not appreciate it, my love? There is a flutter in the curtains covering the back wall of the back room, and I know it's Saskia. That's okay, behind there she can't see me and she'll wait forever before she makes her move. I take another drag and prop my elbow on my knee, holding the Mac in the general direction from where Katya will be storming out in a few seconds. I breathe in the blood, a smell opposite to sex. I'm cured, Anya, I'm free of you, or my image of you, or whatever it was. I'm different now. We could meet in hell, for coffee and a friendly talk.