Issue 99 – Two-Fisted Tales

exotic locales
treasure hunts, a world to save
Nazis to clobber

By DS Davidson

Hard-Hitting Horace
By K. J. Watson

I’m a comic-strip action hero
Who’s saved many good folk’s lives;
I conclusively floor bad people
With a solid bunch of fives.

My legendary fists are weapons
Of justice, honour and might,
But oblivion now lies before me,
This surely cannot be right?

My writer prefers to pen novels
In the hope of gaining fame,
And my artist sprays paint across walls,
Seemingly to great acclaim.

Therefore I, Hard-Hitting Horace, seek
Your well-written, well-inked tale;
My fists will batter all your villains:
I guarantee I’ll prevail.

Kung Fu Sue and the Monster from Hull
By Harris Coverley

That the Yorkshire Institute for Experimental Biochemistry had discovered a nanotechnological means of exponentially increasing the healing factor, subsequently massively improving strength and durability, was supposed to be a great service to all humanity. Unfortunately, their test subject had been Jorvik Sult, Norwegian serial killer and habitual cannibal, so him tearing from his restraints, bashing the heads of the two leading scientists into the cement floor until they were fully pulped, and then spearing the elderly security guard onto the fountain in the entrance hall was all fairly foreseeable.

Sult stalked through the streets of downtown Hull. He had already killed five more innocents before a police officer and PCSO tased him four times. Regrettably, it did not stop him from breaking their necks and tipping their car over onto a woman with a twin pram.

Suzanne Bowers had been away from England for too long and had decided to visit the only relative of hers she had ever liked, a great-aunt living in the Hessle area. Dozens of people running past her screaming as she was making her way into the city centre did not worry her much—people did get overexcited over things—but the young man being thrown clean over her head did give her cause for concern.

A moment later Suzanne found Sult holding a middle-aged woman down, slowly crushing her against the edge of the pavement on Paragon Street while biting out her trachea. He looked up, his chin dripping with flesh, his blue eyes scorching beneath a shock of ginger-yellow hair. He saw the little short woman, barely an adult, looking at him not with fear but with a pure curiosity, dressed as ever in her white robe and trousers tied with a rope belt, wooden sandals, her fluffy blonde hair held back in a big juvenile ponytail.

Sult grinned venomously.

He dropped the dying woman into the gutter and lunged towards Suzanne.

How dare she not show fright!

Sult was a lofty man, but Suzanne was able to bring a fast karate chop across his throat, splitting it open, her fingers primed with the power of kei from which all of her fantastic strength drew.

Blood sprayed out onto the road and Suzanne thought it the end of the matter. That was until, before her eyes, Sult pulled the wound back together with both hands and within a few seconds it was sealed shut.

“Oh that isn’t good,” Suzanne surrendered, and Sult grimaced as mercilessly as before. He punched her in the face and she was thrown to the floor. Briefly dazed, Suzanne pulled her legs away in time to avoid the cutting edge of a door Sult had ripped from the back of an ambulance.

Suzanne punched back through the door’s window into Sult’s chest, bloodily breaking his sternum and several ribs. This gave her a moment while they healed for her to stand up and take a fresh stance, but Sult brought the ambulance door lengthways, swinging it back and forth across Suzanne’s front, forcing her to hop back. She was eventually able to kick the door and buckle it, Sult throwing the twisted mess to his side. He then ripped an ancient iron litter bin from its moorings and with it landed a direct hit. Suzanne rolled along the road, the bin spinning after her.

She got back on her feet as Sult again raced at her. She managed to trip him, but he grabbed her thigh and brought her down with him.

On the ground, she brought her fist on Sult’s right forearm, breaking it in two places. His response was to grab her by the ponytail with his undamaged arm and lift her up as he stood. Kei could numb, even eliminate pain, but there was something about hair follicles that prevented succour.

Suzanne could not help but scream as Sult swung her around and around, in too much stinging agony to resist, until he let go, flinging her through the window of the local Idaho Fried Chicken ‘n’ Ribs.

The Bengali staff fled in terror through the back as she smashed through the windowpane and into the wooden counter, shattering it.

She got up uneasily, grumbling, “And I came for a holiday…”

Sult smashed through the lower part of the shop front with a bollard ripped from outside a neighbouring bank.

He was unsteady on the wreckage however, and Suzanne redirected him in his haste into the back of the shop into a stove. With the bollard’s weight the stove snapped from its fittings as its gas line broke.

Quickly recovered, Sult grabbed Suzanne by the back of the neck and forced her against the nearest machine: a gigantic deep fat fryer, boiling with fat three foot deep.

Bringing her down towards the bubbling brown ooze, Sult declared in decent English, “I’m going to fry you up you little bitch!”

Suzanne looked down to the floor: behind Sult was a thick patch of grease.

She said, “You know this stuff is really bad for your health.”

She brought her right foot into his shin, splintering it. He fell forward and she twisted away. Both of his feet slid on the grease patch as she elbowed him on his upper back, breaking his shoulder and sending him headfirst into the fryer.

Her right knee in his back and her left foot underneath a ridge on the machine, Suzanne held Sult’s head under the fatline as he writhed about. When she could not keep even she leapt to her right as he rose up bellowing, his face covered in a hundred burning sores. As the fryer was not fixed to the floor she was able to tip it onto Sult, knocking him over and crushing his legs while covering almost his entire body in hot fat, his outer flesh cooking alive.

Suzanne could smell the gas from the broken line as the auburn liquid flowed into an outlet, causing it to spark.

She but a second, but she was just able to dash from her position on the ruins of the countertop and vault out of the shopfront, a wave of flames after her, landing with a roll. Her robe and ponytail were singed, and some cold cream on the back of her neck and hands would not go amiss, but otherwise Suzanne was fine.

Suzanne stood in the middle of the street, watching the fire consume the chicken shop, and breathed deeply. She was tempted to carry on her original journey to her aunt’s house when suddenly a roar came from within and a blazing figure broke through the wall of hell.

“Oh come on man,” she griped.

On the pavement the flames died about Sult, leaving him blackened, as crusty as the chicken dippers (IFC’s most popular item) had been, but his raging eyes burned brighter than any inferno.

Both arms out, he made a final howling charge.

Suzanne knew this had to end now or never.

She drew on all the kei about her and flattened her right hand.

A split-second before he reached her she jumped high and brought her arm across.

Her thumb connected with the side of Sult’s neck and carved straight through. His head bounced to the tarmac, the blood spewing from his neck up into the purple Humber night. His body, still running, collapsed a few metres away.

Suzanne landed at the same time the head did. She turned to check the body: it lay prostrate, flinching, the left foot kicking. She went to stand over it, but within a moment or two it was still.

There was a squeaking from the gutter.

Suzanne searched and saw: Sult’s head was moving.

She rushed over.

Leaning against the edge of the pavement, it was trying to use its right cheek muscle to get horizontal.

“Oh piss off,” Suzanne groaned, shaking her own head.

Seeing who was above it, the sable head scowled and hissed, drawing on its hatred to finally get upright onto its perfectly sliced neck. The little muscles at its base began to work, dragging it onwards: half-an-inch, an inch…

Suzanne kicked off her left sandal and lifted her bare foot up.

“I’ve heard of ‘giving head’, but this is ridiculous,” she said, and brought her foot down with full force. Its ball smashed through Sult’s crown and the whole skull exploded in an offal firework, chips of bone embedding into walls and paving stones.

Suzanne was sure she heard Sult’s body kick once more, but she confirmed that it was lifeless.

“FREEZE!”

She looked behind her.

The Humberside Armed Constabulary had at last arrived and decided to train ten semi-automatics on her.

Suzanne held up her hands: “Do you treat all out-of-towners this way?”

Ends

Read the first Kung Fu Sue story here.

Outgunned
– But, Never Outpunched
By DJ Tyrer

Flint Hardcastle grunted in pain. He was going to have to speak to Dr Kohen later. A jacket with resistant threads woven through it that was impermeable to penetration by bullets was a wondrous thing, but even if the fabric did dissipate and diffuse some of the kinetic energy of the shot, what was left was still a bruising smack. Some sort of rigid material would be an improvement, if not as concealable…

Not that he had time to daydream as more bullets slapped into him.

He returned fire with his pair of Webley revolvers, but though he took down a couple of the black-shirted thugs, his firepower was nothing compared to the Schmeisser MP18s that were chattering in his direction.

Not fancying more bruised ribs, Flint ducked behind some rusty kegs and hunkered down to reload, but the flaky metal wasn’t much protection against the flying lead and after his hair received a new parting, he launched himself into a roll that took him behind some slightly-sturdier crates.

He glanced round them and shot down one of the blackshirts. Another one had a German potato-masher grenade in his hand, ready to toss. Now, that really was unfair.

He fired again as the man threw it and he went down and the grenade went awry, detonating in a far corner of the warehouse.

Flint ducked down to avoid the flying splinters.

And, now, the others were resuming their hail of gunfire.

Okay, he was outgunned. But, revolvers were never his weapon of his choice, preferring as he did to rely on his ham-like fists and his wits.

He needed to even things out…

Another glance around the rapidly-disintegrating crates led him to take aim at a barrel marked ‘inflammable’ off to the side of the blackshirts. He fired and the bullet punched a hole in the metal, allowing a thick liquid to begin dribbling out onto the floor.

Next, he took aim at a nearby kerosene lamp and shot it from the wall.

The lamp smashed to the floor and the spilled kerosene ignited and touched the liquid spilling from the barrel, which ignited with a loud whoosh! The flame raced up into the barrel and it exploded, showering burning liquid and shards of metal across the area, cutting down some of the blackshirts and bowling others over with the force of its blast.

Now, Flint emerged from cover and raced towards his stunned and scattered enemies.

As the first one rose back to his feet, Flint gave a mighty swing of his right fist and smacked him in the jaw, sending him crashing back down to the floor.

The next one up suffered the same fate.

The others were regaining their feet, now, if only a modicum of their composure, and with Flint in their midst, leapt at him, fists and feet flailing.

For each blow that caught him, Flint served up a mightier one in retaliation.

A sock to the jaw, another to the gut, a roundhouse kick here, a low sweep there. He even caught hold of one and heaved him up in his arms and tossed him into two others, sending all three of them sprawling.

The fight continued as they sought to overpower him, but Flint shrugged off their blows and continued to deliver those of his own, each one taking down one of the thugs, sending them senseless to the floor, until just one man remained, a rather weaselly-looking fellow in a sinisterly-suave black suit

“You fool, Hardcastle,” spat the man in a soft voice that carried the merest hint of a German accent. “You, a fine example of the Aryan Master Race, should be standing with us, not against us. Help us destroy the Jewish cancer that has infected your nation.”

Flint gave a derisive laugh at the words.

“Don’t let the blond hair fool you, Fritz, my father was as dark as my mother was pale, and my best friend’s a Jew.”

“Ach, traitor mongrel! Then, you shall die!”

The German raised his small Mauser pistol, but had allowed Flint to close the distance between them as they talked and, before he could squeeze the trigger, his jaw received a blow from Flint’s meaty fist.

With a surprised look on his face and a pained yelp, he toppled to the floor, unconscious, the pistol slipping uselessly from his fingers.

Flint kicked it away from him and shook his head at the pathetic figure laying unconscious at his feet.

Satisfied with a job well done, Flint found some rope and set about tying up the survivors, ready to be handed over to the police, along with their stockpile of weapons and evidence of their plot to carry out a campaign of murder and sabotage across London.

The city would sleep soundly a little while longer, but worse, he was certain, was coming.

Ends