Toxicity by Andy Remic Read Free Book Online

hand
with a machine gun. Maybe not a man to have in your bed, but certainly a man to
have behind you in a firefight.
     
    “Thanks.”
     
    Randy winked at her. “Don’t let
Jones worry you. He likes a bit of rough and tumble, but then don’t we all?”
     
    “I know I do,” said Jenny.
     
    “Ooh, saucy.”
     
    “Why don’t you shut your hole,”
growled Bull. Bull was a short stocky man with angry eyes, an angry face and so
many facial tattoos they often squirmed together to form new ones, depending on
the expression he pulled.
     
    “You can fill one, if you like,”
winked Randy.
     
    Bull went red. Well, the few
remaining bits of untattooed skin went red. “What have I told you, eh? What did
I say about making suggestive comments? Bull doesn’t like it. Bull likes his
women quiet and chunky. Bull doesn’t want an amorous relationship with a fop.”
     
    “Oh, fop now, is it?”
     
    “Guys,” said Zanzibar, ever the
voice of reason, and Jenny realised she was actually enjoying herself.
Yes, her knuckles hurt like a bitch, but Flizz, the glamorous assassin, tall
and slender and beautiful, and as deadly as a striking cobra, had been down to
the kitchens and brought her back two bags of frozen haranga. Flizz was quiet,
shy, and with her glossy long hair and perfect make-up made Jenny feel quite
dull, in her stained combat clothing and facial bruising. Still, she’d met
Flizz a few years back; they’d been on the same squad for a short period.
     
    Jenny sighed. Anyway. She’d not
made a brilliant first impression on this new squad, by any stretch of the
imagination.
     
    “Right,” said Zanz. “I’m upping
the stakes. Twenty.”
     
    “Shit, I’m out,” crooned Randy,
and tossed down his cards.
     
    With a grin, Jenny laid out her
own cards. “I’m out as well.” She rolled her neck, feeling tendons like steel
threatening to strangle her. Randy stood and came round the table.
     
    “Here, girlfriend, let me help
you with that.” He started a slow massage, and Bull scowled at him.
     
    “Leave her alone, you big girl.”
     
    “You wish I was a big
girl,” said Randy with a wink.
     
    Bull snorted. “The only day I’d
shag you is on the day you died,” snapped Bull.
     
    “Ooh, Bull, don’t tempt me.” Then
down to Jenny, “Ignore him. He’s a bullish brute. I, and the rest of my
colleagues, are far more sophisticated. Just look around you - you never could
hope for such a group of efficient military effluvia to back you up in bringing
down the Bad Guys.”
     
    Jenny usually hated to be touched
by people she did not know, but the fight, and her realisation that her gung-ho
approach had perhaps not been the best of early introductions, had left her
wired tighter than a junkie on peppered koona jock-strap. She let Randy ease
her tension. And realised, suddenly, that she missed the basics of human touch.
It had been a long time. Far, far too long.
     
    “Just don’t get any ideas,” she
growled, long and low.
     
    “All my ideas are my own,” Randy
whispered in her ear.
     
    Jenny relaxed more thanks to
Randy’s questing, nudging, teasing fingers, and she found herself smoking, and
drinking whiskey, and looking around the table at the other squad members. They
were all at ease with each other, and seemed unconcerned that Jones had been
removed from the action. Unconcerned, in fact, that Jones had not just had his
head kicked in, but a knife put through his shoulder blade.
     
    Mentally, Jenny re-scanned the
metal leaves for each of her squad members. Their cell, Impurity5, was part of
what the government liked to call “an illegal and violent radical terrorist cell,”
“under the enfolding embrace of the greater umbrella, The Impurity Movement”.
Yes, sure, Impurity had an official, legal, political and positive face to
their actions; the face that went on TV and cubes and ggg, smiled for the
cameras, condemned The Company for its constant illegal and repressive
underhand