Читать книгу The Alien's Secret Volume 3 - Robert M. Doroghazi - Страница 5

Hoken turned left onto a street that looked more like a wide alley. No sidewalks. No curbs. No grass. It may have been a street thirty or forty years ago, but now was just a lot of broken, cracked pavement: some very old concrete with too much tar between each section, poorly patched with asphalt that needed patching, with chuck holes guaranteed large enough to break an axle. The sides of the pavement just blended in with loose chat. The exact kind of street where a kid could throw all the rocks he wanted to at a trash can, or a stray feral cat, or a starling on the telephone wire, and no one would care.

There were a few old homes with garages that opened up right onto the pavement. You couldn’t tell if you were looking at the back or the front of the house. Though there were scrubby trees next to a few of the homes, most of the homes were just there, plain as could be. There were one or two other buildings and a few vacant lots, some nicely trimmed, some pretty overgrown, one surrounded by a chain-link fence. There was an old Ford pickup truck about half way down on the right that very well could have been built by Henry himself. Hoken could see and hear a dog chained in one of the lots at the very far end of the block.

Hoken had gone about thirty meters down the street, rehearsing what he would say when he met #1. A young man suddenly came out from behind some trash cans on his right. He appeared to be walking across the street, but then stopped in front of Hoken and immediately turned toward him. He flicked his right hand to open the switchblade.

In an instant, seemingly from nowhere, there was a man on Hoken’s right, a man on his left, and two men behind him—including a huge man, easily weighing 160 or 170 kilos. Hoken was surrounded.

“Hey, man,” said the thug with an arrogant, and purposefully threatening swagger, as he waved the knife in the air, “this is a stick-up.”

Hoken said nothing. He stood motionless and quickly looked around. Unless one of the punks had a gun that wasn’t showing, thought Hoken, it was smack-down time.

Hoken was an amazingly conditioned man, trained in the toughest of hand-to-hand combat. On Oria, he could take five other good soldiers in a situation like this. On Earth, his strength was magnified by a third. But he had other, more important things to do. He needed to demolish these dumb punks and get on with his business. He was going to totally pound these jokers. He liked a good workout before breakfast.

The head punk, the man with the knife, came a few steps closer to Hoken. He stopped barely a meter away, just out of reach. He used the switchblade to point out the objects he was most interested in.

“Well, let’s see,” he said, acting like a big shot that had control of everything. “That backpack looks pretty cool—you know. I’ve never, you know, seen anything like that, man. That’s mine,” he said with authority. “That’s mine, and everything in it.”

Hoken thought, I’m going to wipe the smile off that idiot’s face real fast.

The punk paused for a second as he continued to look Hoken over. “Nice watch,” he said.

In a voice so deep that it seemed beyond the range of human hearing—that almost made Hoken’s insides, his kidneys and liver, vibrate—the huge man standing behind Hoken, said, “I want that watch.”

There were no objections from the other thugs.

The apparent boss-punk went on about everything that he thought would soon belong to him and his hoodlum friends.

Hoken knew he had to take out the man with the knife first.

“Hey, man. A wedding ring,” he said with a smile, pointing the knife toward Hoken’s left hand. “I like wedding rings, you know. They’re easy to pawn. Let’s see the ring, man.”

This was Hoken’s chance to act. He pointed his clenched left hand straight at the man’s face. “You mean this ring—Activate!”

A sonic boom rang out. The man with the knife was blown several meters into the air backwards, and was out cold before he hit the ground.

The sonic boom made the dog at the far end of the block start to bark. His howling caused several other farther away, unseen mutts, to start to yell and howl in a doggerel cacophony. For a brief moment; the sonic boom, the sudden yelling and barking of the dogs and the demolition of their friend stunned the other attackers.

A moment was all Hoken needed.

He leaned slightly to his right. His left leg went up, kicking the man on his left on the side of the chin. There was a pop almost as loud as the sonic boom as the man’s head jerked around. He went straight down. Hoken was sure he had broken his jaw.

The instant Hoken’s left foot touched the ground he turned to his right. The punk was ready for a fight, but before he could even throw a punch, Hoken grabbed his bare, tattooed left forearm with his right hand and squeezed. The Ponchielli stun device was activated and delivered its only stun. The man just closed his eyes and crumpled, like putting water on toilet paper.

In an instant, Hoken spun around to face the last two men behind him. The smaller man tried to grab Hoken around the throat. With an upward thrust of both arms, Hoken knocked the man’s hands from his neck and punched him hard with a left to the jaw, followed in an instant by a right to the solar plexis, which lifted the man—George Foreman vs. Joe Frazier style—completely off the ground. When the man came back to Earth he doubled over. Hoken grabbed his head with both hands. A right knee to the forehead knocked him backwards, banging his head on the asphalt. He lost bowel and bladder control. Another punk out cold.

Hoken was ready for the last would-be robber, the giant-like man.

But in typical bully fashion, now that the odds were even, the man mountain—actually just a big fat slob who thought he was tough, a Sergeant Wiggans type that had fallen on the wrong side of the law—had seen enough and started to run.

There could be no witnesses, no loose ends. Hoken couldn’t let anyone summon help, especially the authorities. It was unlikely that a punk hood would go to the police to report a botched robbery, but stranger things have happened. People have reported robberies to the police—of material they had stolen. How many times have you heard of a guy pulling a robbery, then getting picked up in a hot red sports car because he was going seventy in a twenty-five mph speed zone? Guys like this aren’t exactly rocket scientists. They couldn’t even get into the missile base with a pass.

Hoken was even more worried that he might round up some friends and look to get even. Although Hoken would be changing appearances very soon when he assumed the body of #1, he still didn’t want anyone to be able to recognize him. It was essential that no one get away unscathed.

Hoken caught up with the big lumbering oaf in just a few steps. The man looked over his shoulder at Hoken as he ran away, but made no attempt to turn and face him.

Hoken grabbed the man’s arm and with one yank both stopped the man in his tracks and spun him around to face him. The hunk of human Crisco was already dripping in sweat.

The look on his face clearly said it all—he was scared to death.

Too damn bad, thought Hoken. No mercy now. I’m on a mission beyond this idiot’s comprehension.

Hoken clamped his left hand on the man’s collar and around his neck, his thumb directly over the windpipe, and just started to squeeze with all of his strength. The man’s face instantly turned red. He reached up with both hands to try to break Hoken’s death grip, but that just wasn’t going to happen. Hoken put his right hand in the man’s groin and proceeded to military press him over his head until his arms were locked.

There was no straining, no grunting. Hoken was totally in control, the punk at his complete mercy. Hoken was such a stud!

With the man held above his head, Hoken took several short steps, turning slightly to his left to stabilize the mountain of blubber. Hoken then let the man’s head start to drop to his left so that for an instant the man was perpendicular to the ground, legs straight up in the air. He then slammed the man to the pavement on his back, slamming his own body onto the man’s chest. Hulk Hogan’s body slam of Andre the Giant was little league in comparison to this. The man was out cold, just a quivering mass of fat, like a flesh-colored Jello that hadn’t yet set, lying on the pavement.

In seconds Hoken had pulverized five thugs. Three were seriously injured, the other two out cold. But the dogs were still barking. Anybody, even a person just on their morning walk, could just happen to come by at any time. Someone could have seen things and maybe even already summoned the police.

Hoken needed to get away from the litter of carnage in the alley as quickly as possible, but first he needed to make sure he hadn’t dropped or lost anything during the melee. Ring still on his finger. Watch—okay. He checked his pockets—money and wallet—okay.

He took off the backpack, knelt on one knee, and put the pack on the ground. All seams were intact. He didn’t need to inspect the contents; clearly they hadn’t been disturbed.

Hoken grabbed the switchblade and took off running down the alley, toward the dog that had started all the other dogs barking. It was a surly mutt with a ragged, matted coat, with fleas and ticks as big as your thumb. The cur would make Cujo look like a Toy French Poodle, the ones with those ridiculous sissy hair cuts. The dog was tethered by a strong two-meter chain attached to a stake driven deeply into the ground.

At first the dog strained at the chain, standing, jumping on its hind legs, front legs clawing at the air, barking and howling for all of its Alpo worth. But Hoken quickly noted that the closer he got, the less the dog strained at the chain, the less it barked. Finally, as Hoken sped by, the critter was just standing quietly, panting, as cuddly as the best-behaved little puppy dog, meeker than Lamb Chops and Hush Puppy on the Shari Lewis Show. The old cur, literally a junk yard dog, knew something no man on the face of the Earth would hopefully ever know. He knew the Alien’s Secret.