# 4
by Brian Campo (bcampo@hotmail.com)
This is a work of fan fiction. The Savage Dragon and all related characters are owned by Erik Larsen, and I do not contest that ownership. This story is in no way official and it should not be taken as such. All characters in this story not owned by Mr. Larsen are owned by me, though I would gladly loan them out if asked nicely.
Warning: This story may contain graphic violence, sexual situations and harsh language. If you shouldn't be reading it, don't.
11:45 am- In the middle of North Queseda street, Dan Williams knelt over Maxine Chalmers' still form. His fingertips pressed against her throat, searching for a pulse. As he took his hand away from her throat, it was clear that he was not happy with what he had found.
"Shit!" he said as he got to his feet and pulled his radio from his belt. "Dispatch, this is 23, can I get a twenty on that ambulance?"
"They're about three minutes away." squawked a woman's voice over the radio.
"Shit." Dan said again. He looked up and down the street, seeing if there was anyone coming. He really didn't want to do what he was about to do.. But what choice did he have? "Aw, the hell with it." he said, making up his mind. He pulled his gun out of his gun belt, aimed it at Maxine's chest, and pulled the trigger. He fired once, twice, three times...
10:30 am- The front door to the Police Station was thrown open and Maxine stomped in with a short, fat, bald man in tow. She had a disgusted look on her face, and was holding the man by his collar at arm's length. Dan came in after them swearing as he watched where he stepped.
"Jesus Christ, buddy, you're dripping that shit all over the damn floor!"
The short man was indeed leaving a trail across the floor. A thick, mucus like material was dripping from beneath his white knee length lab coat. While avoiding one pool of the stuff, Dan accidentally stepped in another. His swearing escalated as he lifted his foot out of the slime and a long strand came with it. The other officers in the room were stopping what they were doing to turn and see the spectacle.
Maxine drug the little man up to the front desk by his collar and told the desk sergeant to book him. The sergeant wrinkled his nose in disgust and asked for the man's name.
"He says it's Doctor Orifice." said Maxine. "Something tells me that it's not the name his momma gave him."
Some of the other cops were gathering around Dan, who was trying to shake some of the slime off of his foot.
"What's up with the Freak, Williams?"
"Him? He's just plain nasty." Dan said without looking up. "You guys gotta get a look under his jacket. It's the nastiest frickin' thing I've ever seen."
The cops looked at each other with eyebrows raised and said, "What is it?"
"I don't know. Some kinda mystery orifice. Mouth, butt hole, hell I don't know what it is. All I know is that's not the easiest thing to look away from. We busted him down by Kubert High School for selling Pop Tarts (23rd century cocaine) to the kids down there. Max and I are walking up to him when he suddenly spins around and throws his jacket open. We were so shocked by this massive... thing" Dan spread his hands out, indicating that this "Thing" was about two feet wide. " in the middle of his stomach that we didn't notice the two .44 magnums he was pulling out from behind him. If Max hadn't pulled her shit together in time and stepped in front of me before the guy opened fire I would have been toast. I was like a damn deer in a headlight. She threw her baton at him and beaned him in the head pretty good. She had the cuffs on him before I could even figure out what had just happened."
He turned to look at the little man standing next to Maxine up by the sergeant's desk and sighed. "I'm not even sure if we should try to bust him for public indecency, too. I mean, is it a sex organ of some kind? One thing I am sure of, I'm not doing the cavity search."
One of the cops just shook his head and watched Dan scrape the bottom of his shoe on the welcome mat by the Police Station door. "What's with the slime?"
"It's coming out of his, uh, thingy. He got it all over the back seat of the car, too. I think I'm just going to have to hose that out."
"I just don't get it, Williams. Why do you get all of the nasty ones?"
"It's not me." said Dan. He pointed over at Maxine. "I think it's her. I think they're drawn to her or something."
"I heard that." Max said, as she came back across the room towards them. The desk sergeant was handing Dr. Orifice off to a couple of other officers, telling them to take him in back and book him. No doubt they were trying to think of someone that they could pass him off to.
"What about the Yeast Lady?" asked Max. "As I recall, she was all over you, Danny-boy."
Dan shuddered in remembrance of the woman they had booked for assault on an officer two weeks back. Looking like a female version of the Pillsbury Doughboy, she was the victim of a sentient, mind controlling, yeast infection that had assimilated her entire body. She had jumped on Dan, engulfing him in her body and screaming, "I got an itch!" over and over again. When the Captain had heard the story, he had insisted that Dan start taking sessions with a police psychiatrist, fearing he might have long term psychological damage because of the incident. Other than an intense fear of baked goods, there didn't seem to be any lasting side effects.
"I thought we agreed that we weren't going to talk about that anymore." said Dan.
Maxine smiled her sweetest and said, "Do you want to do the report on Dr. Orifice, or do you want to clean out the car?"
Dan weighed his options and decided on the car. A janitor was coming in with a bucket and mop when Dan went out the front doors of the station. The janitor took one look at the floor and began to swear.
Half an hour later, Dan came upstairs to where Maxine was working at her desk. The legs of his pants were wet from the hose he had used to clean out the back of the car and his wet shoes were leaving tracks on the floor when he walked.. He was smiling, but the smile quickly vanished when he noticed the vase of brightly colored flowers that was sitting on the edge of her desk.
"He sent you some more?" he asked her as he lifted up the edges of the glowers and searched for the card that Maxine had already removed earlier.
"Yep. They came in while were out on patrol this morning. Aren't they pretty?" She buried her face in them and inhaled deeply.
"I guess. I'm just glad that you're smart enough to fall for these pathetic advances."
Maxine chuckled at his expense. "I've got a lunch date with him at noon."
"What? With this bozo?" He shoved over her "Out box" and sat down on the corner of her desk.
"Chris is a nice guy." said Maxine. "And he can get through lunch without saying something that pisses me off." The police photographer who had done the crime scene photos at the bank robbery three weeks earlier had started calling on Maxine a few days after the incident. The first couple of times it was just to sign the reports for the incident, but he had kept coming back after that just to talk to her. Dan was his usual irritating self when Chris came around, so Maxine had started arranging for them to meet at places where Dan wasn't there. Yesterday, Chris had finally gotten the courage to ask her out for a date. It was only a lunch date, but it was a start. She had actually put off telling Dan, giving him less time to irritate her.
"I've made it through lunch without making you mad." Dan protested.
"Since I've met you, you haven't had a five minute stretch where you didn't say something that irritated me."
"Really?" He had a "Can't be!" look on his face.
She nodded in reply. "It's ok, I know it's not your fault. You can't help yourself. You should just get used to the idea that I might have lunch with somebody else on some days."
"Wow." said Dan. "I didn't realize I was irritating. Do other people think the same thing?"
"I'm afraid so. Your mom does, too."
Dan stared at her for a few seconds, trying to read her face and see if she was lying. "Yeah, right!" he said finally with a laugh.
Maxine knew that the conversation had gone a little too easily. He proved her right when twenty minutes had passed and they were once again crossing town in their patrol car.
"He's probably a psycho." he told her.
"Who?"
"You boyfriend. The photographer. He looks like a loony to me."
"He's not my boyfriend. We're just going to lunch. And what's so loony looking about him?" She knew he was just trying to get her goat, but was willing to play his game for a little while.
"Oh, please, like that nice guy role isn't the oldest trick in the book. With his little reading glasses and dress jackets and neatly combed hair. I'm telling you he's got mystery packages in his freezer."
"Ok, you lost me there." she told him. "What mystery packages?"
"Little ziplock baggies of his neighborhood kids, that's what I'm saying. He looks like Geoffrey Dahmer."
Maxine threw back her head and laughed. "Jesus, he's a psycho because he dresses nice?"
"No, because he dresses a little too nice."
"Well, with the way you eat, I'd vote for you to be most likely to have mystery packages in the fridge."
"Laugh if you will," said Dan. "But it's always the guy that you least suspect."
"Then I guess I don't have to worry about you, huh?"
Dan "harumph"ed at that and went tight lipped. Maxine knew that he would only be able to maintain that kind of silence for a few minutes.
"Look at this asshole." Dan said a few minutes later. He pointed out the passenger side window at a delivery truck that was streaking east across town. "What's he got that muffler held on with? Speaker wire?"
Maxine turned on the siren and turned the car to follow the truck. The truck was white and had a paint companies name on the side of it's cargo hold. The muffler that Dan had seen was hanging at a dangerous angle from the bottom of the truck, and was swaying back and forth like there wasn't much holding it on. She maneuvered their car in and around the other cars until she was right behind the truck. She gave the driver plenty of time to see her, but if he had, he was ignoring her. He continued flying the way he was heading without paying her lights or sirens any mind.
Dan flicked the radio on to loud speaker and said, "Ok, buddy. Chicago PD. Take the truck down to ground level and park it."
The truck continued for another hundred feet, and then it started signaling that it was going down. Dan switched back to radio and called in the plates to central. They came back as clear and Dan hung up the mike. The truck dropped to the street below and shut off it's hover engines. Maxine parked their car right behind the truck and they threw open their doors. Dan walked up the side of the truck to talk to the driver while Maxine hung back and covered his back.
Dan asked the man for his license and registration and the driver asked what the problem was. The man kept looking in the rear view mirror at Maxine, and when he saw her looking back at him he looked away nervously. Was it because of her green skin and fin or was he hiding something? Something was definitely making him nervous, though she couldn't tell what.. Maybe he was just cop shy. Dan told the man about his muffler when he handed over his license and paperwork.
"I had no idea, sir." said the man.
"I don't doubt it, Mr. Heston." Dan told him. "But, you can't be flying around town with it hanging like that. If it comes loose it's likely to kill somebody."
"Are you going to ticket me?" The man glanced back at Maxine once again. Shifty eyes, she thought. Was this that cop instinct they always talked about? Or was she making a big deal out of nothing?
"I'm going to give you a warning, which will disappear as soon as you get the muffler fixed. I am grounding you for now. I'm calling in your plates, so if you leave the ground, you're going to have about five cop cars all over you, and you will get a fine. understand?"
"Yes, sir." the driver said. He didn't look happy about the grounding, but he was behaving himself. Maxine had seen people come out of their cars swinging when an officer grounded them.
Dan used stepped back a couple of feet from the truck and called in the license and registration over his hand held radio. Like the plates, they came back clear. Dan gave the man his things back and told him to get the muffler fixed. The man told him he would, and started up the truck. Maxine started back toward the car and as she passed the back of the car, she heard something strange. A sound like a small child crying was coming from the back of the truck. She stopped and leaned in close to hear better. It was a child crying, or rather, children crying. She could hear multiple voices in the truck's cargo hold. She quickly stepped back out to the side of the truck and yelled to Dan, "Stop him!"
The driver dropped the truck into drive and it started to lurch forward. Dan held out his hand and told him to hold it right there. The driver ignored him, and pressed down on the gas. Dan jumped forward and stepped up onto the trucks running boards, drawing his gun at the same time. He shoved the gun in the man's face and said, 'I said STOP!"
The driver took one look down the Faustin's inch and a quarter wide barrel, and he dropped the truck into park.
"Out of the truck!" Dan told him as he stepped back down onto the road and backed up. His gun never wavered from the driver's head. "What do you got, Max?"
"Kids." she replied. "I can hear kids in the back of his truck."
"What have you got in the back?" Dan asked the driver.
"Paint." the man said. The man threw open his door and stepped out onto the street. He held his hands out to the side, and Dan indicated with a wave of his gun that he should raise them higher in the air.
"How about you open it up so we can have a look see?"
"You got a warrant?" the man said. All the friendliness he had shown earlier was gone now.
"Hell with that." said Maxine. "Paint cans don't cry like children. I call it probable cause."
"Fuckin' A, Max. Walk to the back, buddy."
The man walked to the back of the truck while Dan followed him with his gun between them. Max grabbed the padlock on the trucks back door and gave it a gentle squeeze. It cracked into pieces in her grasp, which she let fall to the ground. She threw the doors open, revealing twenty or so four and five year old kids sitting on benches. They were dirty and unkempt, wearing filthy rags for clothing. Chains ran back and forth across the truck's bed, connecting the shackles that were around the kid's feet. They were blinking at the bright light coming in the back of the truck as if they were unaccustomed to it.
"Turn around." Dan told the driver. "Spread your legs. Put your hands flat on the hood of my car."
"Look, man. This isn't even my truck. I was just asked to drive this truck today."
"You have the right to remain silent." Maxine said. She turned and grabbed the driver by the arm. She spun him back toward the police cruiser and slammed him face down onto the hood. Her jaw was set and her scowl said that she was very angry. So angry that Dan cringed when she handled the perp, afraid that she might break his arm or something. How much control did she have over her strength when she was angry? he wondered. "Any thing you say can and will be held against you in a court of law." She kicked both of his feet, separating them. "You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be provided for you." She grabbed one of his hands, jerked it back behind his back and slid a cuff on him. "Do you understand these rights as I have told them to you?" She grabbed his other hand and pulled it back to meet the other one.
The engine of the cop car, which had been left running, suddenly sputtered and died. The flashing lights on top dimmed and went out.
"What the hell?" Dan started to say. He got halfway through the word "the" when Maxine suddenly stood up straight as a board and gasped. A second later, she flew backwards away from the suspect and smashed into one corner of the truck. The truck shuddered with the impact and jumped forward a couple of feet. The children in the truck began shrieking and jumping up and down. When Dan looked back toward the perp a second later, he was disappearing around the far side of the truck. Dan raced up his side of the truck with his gun ready. When he reached the driver's side window, he could see through to the other side, and saw the man running into an alley. Dan moved forward another couple of feet and began firing over the hood and down the alley. The man was already going behind some dumpsters and Dan knew he had no chance of hitting him.
"Max!" he yelled back to the front of the truck. "Call for some backup! He's headed over toward Janson Avenue."
There was no reply. He ran back to the back of the truck where he found Maxine still laying where she had fallen. Her eyes were open and staring blankly forward.
"Aw, shit." was all he could think to say. Not another one. He dropped down to one knee and pressed his fingers against her throat, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. He grabbed her under the arms and drug her out into middle of the street. She was heavy, heavier than he would have expected with her size. Probably her dense muscle structure, he figured. He stretched her out flat on the road and tilted her head back, preparing for CPR. Wait, he told himself. Call for help first. He grabbed his radio and began shouting, "Officer down!" into it repeatedly. Dispatch acknowledged and asked him where he was. He gave them the address and told them he had to put down the radio to start CPR. He hung up the radio and put his mouth over Maxine's and breathed hard. He found that it was like trying to inflate a ceramic jug. None of the air went in. He blew harder, but only came up with the same results. He checked her airway, made sure he had her head tilted right, and tried again. No good. It's her muscles, he realized. They were so strong that he couldn't force her lungs to expand to let air in. Giving up on Artificial Respiration, he moved to her chest and crossed his fingers over her sternum. He dropped weight on her, but it did nothing. He might as well have been doing compressions on the pavement below her. It was the same deal, rock hard muscles, and now an impervious ribcage that refused to move under his meager weight. He dropped back onto his heels and pounded Maxine's chest with the bottom of his fist.
"Come on, Goddamnit! Don't do this to me, Max!" He was hitting her with everything he had and it wasn't doing anything to her. On the other hand, he thought he might be breaking his hand. He was running out of options. He reached up and pressed his fingertips against her throat, searching for a pulse. As he took his hand away from her throat, it was clear that he was not happy with what he had found.
"Shit!" he said as he got to his feet and pulled his radio from his belt. "Dispatch, this is 23, can I get a twenty on that ambulance?"
"They're about three minutes away." squawked a woman's voice over the radio.
"Shit." Dan said again. He looked up and down the street, seeing if there was anyone coming, anyone who could help him. Except for him and the truckload of kids, the street was empty. He really didn't want to do what he was about to do.. But what choice did he have? "Aw, the hell with it." he said, making up his mind. He pulled his gun out of his gun belt, aimed it at Maxine's chest, and pulled the trigger. He fired once, twice, three times. Her body convulsed under the impact of the bullets, and he thought he might actually be making her chest compress. He counted off the seconds, one alligator, BANG! Two Alligator, BANG!. He emptied the clip on her and quickly loaded another. On the fourth shot from his second clip, she gasped and arched her back. She inhaled deeply and opened her eyes. A look of terror crossed her face, and he realized he was standing over her with a gun pointed at her. He holstered the gun and dropped to the ground beside her.
"Are you ok, Max?" he asked as he helped her sit up. He could hear an ambulance coming, and he was never so glad in all his life to hear a siren. "You're going to be fine." he told her. "Help is coming."
"What happened?" she wheezed out between breaths.
"The guy we were arresting did something to you. Whatever it was, it stopped your heart. Jesus, girl, you scared the shit out of me."
"Did you get him?" she asked.
"No. I chased him a little ways, but came back when you didn't answer me. Man, am I glad, you're ok. I thought I was going to have to explain to the Captain how I lost another partner."
"Help me up." she told him.
"I don't think that's such a good idea. Let's just sit here until the ambulance gets here."
"No." she said. "We have to go get him. Can't let him get away." Her head rolled to the side and came to rest against Dan's chest. She had passed out.
"We'll get him another day." he whispered to her, and laid a kiss on her forehead, right in front of her fin. The weeping of scared children drifted from out of the back of the truck.
Across the street, atop a six story building, a figure mounted on horse back surveyed the scene below with hollow eyes. It's hand stroked the handle of a civil war era military saber absent-mindedly. It watched a moment more, and then pressed it's knee into the horse's right shoulder. The horse turned in that direction, and they crossed the roof and disappeared.
1:35 pm She was sitting up in her hospital bed and awake when Chris Anderson walked into her room. His face lit up as soon as he saw her.
"You know," he said. "if you didn't want to go on a date with me, you could have said you had to wash your hair or something."
She smiled and said, "I don't have any hair. I was running out of time to think up an excuse and couldn't come up with anything else."
Dan got up from the chair had been sitting in the corner and excused himself. He claimed he had seen cinnamon rolls in the cafeteria earlier and was going to go get himself a dozen. Apparently his phobia of baked goods was on the way to being conquered.
Chris sat down on the edge of the bed and laid his jacket across his lap. "So, you're really ok?"
"Yes." said Maxine." They just want to hold me for a couple of hours for observation. There was no nerve or tissue damage, and Dan's bullets didn't do me any real harm. The doctors say I should be fine."
"That's great. When Dan called me earlier, he said you didn't look so hot."
"I heal quick. I'm feeling fine now."
"Can I ask you a personal question?"
Maxine hesitated but said, "Shoot."
"I'm sorry, but I have to know. What's with your feet?"
She looked down the length of the bed at what he was pointing at and laughed. Her strange two-toed feet were clearly outlined under the thin sheet. "You haven't seen my toes yet, have you?" She pulled the sheet up far enough so that he could get a good look at them.
"Wow." he said. "Those are something."
"Those are my Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtle feet. Just one more thing I have in common with the Dragon. I think that they're kind of cute."
"They are." said Chris. "They're just going to take some getting used to. Any other strangely shaped body parts I should know about?"
"Other than the inconspicuous fin on top of my otherwise bald head? You will just have to wait and find out for yourself."
His face turned red and he quickly changed the subject. "Do you think we can set up another lunch date? Unless you're going to try to kill yourself again, that is."
"Well," She said. "I'm always really hungry after a near death experience, Maybe we could go get some pizza after the doctors release me this afternoon."
"I would like that." said Chris.
"You have to promise not to laugh if I make a pig of myself. Invulnerable muscle has a price, and that price is a big appetite. I've been known to put away a whole pizza all on my own."
"I understand. I promise I won't laugh." he said with a smile. After a moment, his smile faded and his expression got very serious. He was trying to find the best way to say something, and Maxine thought she knew what he was trying to say. "Maxine, You scared me." he said finally. " I just wanted to tell you that...I was very scared when I heard what happened to you. I care for you, and I don't know what I would do if..."
She grabbed his hand and shushed him with her other. "Chris. Thank you. I am ok, all right? I'm ok."
He nodded and continued to hold her hand while they sat in silence. He was a good man, she told herself, no matter what that dumbass Dan Williams said.
Elsewhere-Up in the highest levels of the atmosphere a satellite orbited the earth. The satellite was not of earth origin, and was not used by any entity on earth. The governments of earth were unaware of it's existence, or the fact that it was listening to every radio, television, and communication signal bounced off of their satellites. The satellite monitored any and all electronic broadcasts sent into the air on the planet earth. It was programmed to scan the broadcasts, searching for certain words in every language used on the planet. One of the keywords it scanned for in the english broadcasts was "Dragon'. There had been a lot of use of this word over the last few weeks in the vicinity of the city of Chicago. So much so that the satellite was compelled to send a high speed transmission into deep space to another satellite, which then relayed the message deeper into space to another satellite. Eventually, this message was relayed all the way to a horseshoe shaped craft cruising through space 14 billion miles from earth. The signal started a computer system that alerted the craft's pilot that there was activity involving 'dragons" on the planet Earth.
The Angelican was not pleased. It had ridden that planet of it's dragon problems before, but apparently the creatures had somehow made a reappearance. It turned it's craft toward earth, and engaged it's warp drives.
~Fin-Fan-Fic-Fanatics~Letters and comments from readers. Do I rock or do I suck? Write me and tell me what you think. If you don't want your comments put in this letters column, or if you want them taken out, please let me know.
Not a lot of response to last issue. Hilton Lee said that I was doing good and Draycor over at fanfiction.net said that the series was, "Not Bad" which I take to be good since he gave me eight out of ten on the rating. Since I don't have any letters you will just have to listen to my list of stuff I'm digging this time around.
Fight Club- I read this book earlier this month. It was a good read, and has a very weird twist ending on it. Can't say that you really like it, it's a little too strange to be likable. Well worth reading. Can't wait to see the movie
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler- Good old fashioned detective story by one of the masters. The story looses it's punch a little because all of the elements have been redone to death in other books and movies. If you liked L.A. Confidential, you'll like this.
Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp- This is the book that the movie "Die Hard" was based on. It's different in ways, and in some ways it's better. Funny bit of trivia. This book is actually a sequel to another book called "The Detective" "The Detective" was also made into a movie starring Frank Sinatra as the main character. So, "Die Hard" is actually a sequel to an old Sinatra movie. Can you imagine Sinatra saying, "Yippeekiyay-@!$#%-$%!@$"?
Some cool fan fiction which you might enjoy:
Angela's Story
( http://www.angelfire.com/or/icffa/angela.html )
It's high adventure as ex-angel, and free-lance monster hunter, Angela, is lured into a deadly trap. 90k
Batman: DCFS
( http://slayerfanfic.com/dcfs/ )
Great series that just started by Alex Peyton. It reminds me a lot of the early days of Shadowhawk, when you didn't know who the hero was.
Spiderman:MFS
( http://slayerfanfic.com/mfs/ )
Superman: DCF
( http://www.practicaltech.net/clients/schuyler/superman.html )
Superman Beyond
( http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Courtyard/7175/beyond.html )
