Codename Prague by D. Harlan Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

looked almost exactly alike except for discrepancies in fashion. Prague liked to be able to tell the difference between things. Additionally, the Scorsese Boys all wanted to be Travis Bickle and resented the fact that they weren’t. Every non-Bickle android tried to talk and act like the taxi driver, despite being inhibited by its own pre-programmed accent and mannerisms. Prague had a low tolerance for that sort of flâneury. Even from a robot.
    “Who let this rat motherfucker in my town?” said the Costello. “Somebody says you gotta Jones wit da Man.”
    “Jones?” said Prague. “You mean I wanna smoke the Man?”
    “You talkin’ to me?” the Bickle responded, glancing over its shoulders. The rest of the Scorsese Boys mimicked the dialogue and gesture.
    “That’s original,” Prague huffed. “Look, can we just pretend you robosapiens got the shit kicked outta you and get on with our lives? You know that’s how it’s gonna go down.”
    The Butcher said, “You ain’t got the dash, you goddamned monkey.”
    The Cady said something in Pentecostal tongues.
    The DeVito said, “You only exist in this city becuza ME!”
    The Santoro said, “That’s my line,” and kicked dirt on the DeVito’s pants.
    Prague saw that his shoelace had come loose and told his shoe to tie it. The laces threaded together into a perfect bow. He gave the Scorsese Boys a once over and hung his head. “Fine. Bring it.”
    The Butcher’s hands metamorphosed into two giant hams. “When I close my hands,” it seethed, “they become fists.”
    The Bickle ran its fingers along the ridge of a Mohawk and threw out its arm. A glinting .25 caliber sprung into its grip from inside the sleeve of its army jacket. The Santoro, DeVito and Costello followed suit. The Cady, in contrast, pulled a .44 magnum from the crotch of its chino deck pants and said, “I’m gonna make you learn about loss,” in an overclocked southern drawl.
    They fired.
    Prague lunged into the street and somersaulted behind a parked Model T+. He clicked together the titanium rings on his thumbs and middle fingers and two Videodrome flesh-cannons burrowed out of his palms and engulfed his hands. Pushing himself off the car, he darted forward across the sidewalk, ran two steps up a brick wall, and flipped backwards…In mid-air he dodged bullets and returned the Scorsese Boys’ fire, shooting them full of holes in a dizzying fit of hyperstylized Gun Kata maneuvers.
    He landed on one knee with a loud boom, cracking the asphalt beneath him.
    He stood.
    He flexed his wrists and the Videodrome guns disappeared into his skin. Smoke hissed and oozed into the gutters.
    The Scorsese Boys were badly damaged. The Costello’s head had been blown in half. It lay prostrate on the hood of a Model T+, blood erupting from the wound in a seemingly endless cascade. Like all android blood, it was real…
    The Bickle’s coat was on fire. It tried to put it out, but the flames got larger the more it slapped them. It staggered down the street moaning and signaling taxis that weren’t there. The Cady, DeVito and Santoro were veritable archery targets, their aerated bodies spurting blood. None of them expired, though, and they sized up the Anvil-in-Chief with renewed determination. So did the Butcher, who went unscathed. Prague saw to it. You don’t gotta gun, you don’t get the gun.
    Small teams of wannabe indie filmmakers clambered out of the shadows and started jostling for footage.
    Prague checked his watch. Nightly reruns of The A-Team began in fifteen minutes and he needed to have a shit first. Best wrap this shindig up.
    The Butcher’s ham-fists glistened with toxic juices that dripped onto the street in corrosive, smoking pools. Its stovepipe hat was a Leaning Tower of Pisa that seemed on the edge of collapse. The handles of its mustache quivered. “End a the line for you, you unholy sack a shit. No sprat fucks with the Butchah. I’m an Amerikan.”
    “Them’s fightin’ words,