Day of the Dogs Read online

  STRONTIUM DOG

  DAY OF THE DOGS

  Mutated by nuclear fallout, the Strontium Dogs are second-class citizens, only trusted with the worst jobs: hunting down criminals and claiming bounties in the most hostile parts of the galaxy. Among these misfit bounty hunters, Johnny Alpha is the best of the best and no one can hide from his psychic "stare".

  When tearful tycoon Asdoel Zo enlists the help of Johnny and his fellow Strontium Dogs to track down the man who killed his family, it looks like easy credits in the bank. However, Asdoel Zo has something far more sinister in mind. Zo is a big-game hunter, and he wants to hunt the most dangerous prey there is: Strontium Dogs!

  Ultra-violent, spaghetti western-style action mixed with dark humour and SF thrills, Day of the Dogs is frontier gunslinging and edge-of-your-seat action!

  STRONTIUM DOG

  #1: BAD TIMING - Rebecca Levene

  #2: PROPHET MARGIN - Simon Spurrier

  #3: RUTHLESS - Jonathan Clements

  #4: DAY OF THE DOGS - Andrew Cartmel

  #5: A FISTFUL OF STRONTIUM - Jaspre Bark and Steve Lyons

  DURHAM RED

  -Peter J Evans-

  #1: THE UNQUIET GRAVE

  #2: THE OMEGA SOLUTION

  #3: THE ENCODED HEART

  #4: MANTICORE REBORN

  #5: BLACK DAWN

  MORE 2000 AD ACTION

  THE ABC WARRIORS

  #1: THE MEDUSA WAR - Pat Mills & Alan Mitchell

  #2: RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINES - Mike Wild

  ROGUE TROOPER

  #1: CRUCIBLE - Gordon Rennie

  JUDGE DREDD FROM 2000 AD BOOKS

  #1: DREDD VS DEATH

  Gordon Rennie

  #2: BAD MOON RISING

  David Bishop

  #3: BLACK ATLANTIC

  Simon Jowett & Peter J Evans

  #4: ECLIPSE

  James Swallow

  #5: KINGDOM OF THE BLIND

  David Bishop

  #6: THE FINAL CUT

  Matthew Smith

  #7: SWINE FEVER

  Andrew Cartmel

  #8: WHITEOUT

  James Swallow

  #9: PSYKOGEDDON

  Dave Stone

  JUDGE ANDERSON

  #1: FEAR THE DARKNESS - Mitchel Scanlon

  #2: RED SHADOWS - Mitchel Scanlon

  #3: SINS OF THE FATHER - Mitchel Scanlon

  CABALLISTICS, INC

  -Mike Wild-

  #1: HELL ON EARTH

  #2: BETTER THE DEVIL

  FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT - David Bishop

  #1: OPERATION VAMPYR

  #2: THE BLOOD RED ARMY

  #3: TWILIGHT OF THE DEAD

  For Peter O'Donnell, master storyteller.

  Strontium Dog and Middenface McNulty created by Alan Grant, John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.

  A 2000 AD Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  www.2000adonline.com

  1098 7 65 4321

  Cover illustration by Karl Richardson.

  Copyright © 2005 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved.

  All 2000 AD characters and logos © and TM Rebellion A/S."Strontium Dog" is a trademark in the United States and other jurisdictions."2000 AD" is a registered trademark in certain jurisdictions. All rights reserved. Used under licence.

  ISBN(.epub): 978-1-84997-082-2

  ISBN(.mobi): 978-1-84997-123-2

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  STRONTIUM DOG

  DAY OF THE DOGS

  ANDREW CARTMEL

  CHAPTER ONE

  RANCHERO ZO

  As the man trudged across the desert the last light of evening glared down on him. The sun was low in the sky, a glaring ball of burning hydrogen a hundred million kilometres away. It cast sharp, ink-black shadows on the glaring expanse of desert sand: the shadow of a cactus and, standing slouched beside it, the shadow of the man, who had paused as if he could walk no further.

  The man wore scuffed cowboy boots that had seen many years of hard wear. Spurs jangled musically on the boots as the man stirred his feet restlessly, scuffing them in the sand. A small green and yellow lizard appeared from the ground, stared with great concentration at the boots that had disturbed its slumber, then blinked in disgust and darted angrily away.

  "Hello," said the man. He ran a finger inside his collar and brought it out again, slick with sweat. "Hot, isn't it?" He was a florid, amiable-looking fellow with thin, liver-coloured lips and a raptorial jut of freckled pink nose. Set close to this nose were piercing, stony grey eyes that bespoke cold depths of intelligence that seemed at odds with a man stranded in the middle of a desert, blazing sun-harrowed leagues from the nearest sip of cool water or the sweet solace of shade.

  Despite his considerable paunch, the man was tall and powerfully built, his broad shoulders curved with age and the twin burdens they bore. On his right shoulder he carried a saddle, a magnificent broad black curve of leather set with Mexican silver.

  The man sighed. "Heavy burden," he said. "And I've carried it a long way. How far? Couldn't rightly say. But I've been lugging this load ever since my fool horse lay down and died on me." He turned his head and squinted back into the endless distance behind him. "It was back that way. In an alkali gulch. I was counting on that horse to get me through this long, flat, baking chunk of hell that calls itself a desert. But now it looks like I'm going to have to walk out under my own steam."

  The man dropped the saddle at his feet. It thudded to the ground, dust and sand rising around it. The dust settled on the leather and silver, and the gleaming, oiled length of the Sharps that was sheathed in the saddle. On the man's other shoulder was what looked at first glance like a rifle. He swung down the object and cradled it in his hands. It gleamed in the fading rays of late sunlight. He caressed the strings that were stretched across it. The thing was a banjo.

  "My name is Charlie Yuletide," said the man, clearing his throat and spitting. His voice was low and croaky, clotted with dust. As before, he seemed to be addressing someone, but there was no one to be seen in the vast baking plain of the desert. Even the lizard had disappeared. There was just the man called Charlie Yuletide, the tall cactus standing beside him, and the saddle and rifle at his feet.

  Charlie Yuletide glanced up at the blazing sun as he strummed a plaintive chord on his banjo. Long purple shadows were gathering in the distant canyons as the sun moved past its zenith. From far off in the distance came the unearthly, echoing howl of what might have been a coyote. The desert afternoon had begun its swift slide towards twilight.

  "I'm Charlie Yuletide," the man repeated, but this time instead of speaking the words he sang them, in a quavering, plangent voice that suggested hillbillies, malnutrition, heartbroken cowpokes and unduly protracted sing-alongs beside guttering campfires. The lonesome howl of the coyote joined in, just a harmonic or two away. "That's my name," sang the man, "and this here's my story...

  "I've come here to sing of daring deeds. And men with needs. Needs like the unholy hunger for gold. That leaves many a man lying so cold. Out in the desert, out like a light. Lying so lonesome in the desolate night."

  Charlie Yuletide strummed his banjo and lifted his yodelling, plaintive voice into the darkening desert. In the distance the coyote howled again, as if in pain.

  "I'll sing of the hunters and
the hunted and killers of men. And of lost souls loved and hated and loved yet again. Killers who'll shoot down a fellow and leave him to feed the hogs. The killers who are converging on the Day of the Dogs.

  "I'm singing of Johnny Alpha and the man at his side. As up to the ranch of the rich man did they ride..."

  Johnny and Middenface McNulty stared out the window of the bus. The bus was a stubby, box-shaped vehicle which glided over the ground, using a silent hover mechanism that enabled them to flit, ghost-like, along the corridor of trees. Green and silver light flashed through the window of the bus, conjuring eerie reflections in the pale eyes of Johnny Alpha.

  "The man must be cracked," said Middenface, a note of petulance creeping into in his voice.

  "Maybe," said Johnny. "Most rich people are, one way or another. Their money makes them crazy."

  "And he's got more money than most. So that makes him more crazy than most." Middenface studied his reflection in the window, the ugly ridged profile of his mutant head flickering incongruously over a velvety green backdrop of exquisite trees and lush shrubs. Nature at its finest juxtaposed with nature at its most aberrant.

  A garland of fat, star-shaped, white and purple flowers fluttered past, curving around the mossy bole of a vast tree. Those flowers had blossomed in this place just as Middenface McNulty had blossomed in the radioactive rubble of Shytehill, the mutant ghetto where he'd led his brief but eventful childhood. He'd come a long way. Now here he was on a small private planet called SG977, travelling in a bus through paradise. Or at least a garden fashioned to look like paradise.

  The garden stretched away from Middenface and Johnny for endless hectares in every direction. It was a lush tropical forest, a tame and neatly trimmed jungle. The bus was gliding through it along a narrow track that cut through the lush growth, a track paved with a smooth grey plastic surface that ran all the way from the space port to the mansion of Asdoel Zo, forming a direct if winding road.

  Middenface supposed that all the roads on this planet led to the same place. After all, Asdoel Zo owned the planet.

  "Why do you suppose he never made this track straight?" said Middenface.

  "It's designed for enjoying the scenery, not for getting anywhere in a hurry." Johnny kept staring out the window.

  "I'd be enjoying the scenery more if we were on the way back to the space port," said Middenface. "Why does he want to see us in person, anyway? He could have arranged this all with a call."

  "Wants to look at the men he's hiring for the job," said Johnny. He turned to Middenface, the cold silver light of his strange eyes burning in the shadows of the bus. "Wants to look us in the eye."

  The bus deposited them at the bottom of a slope that led up to Asdoel Zo's titanic mansion, or at least the first instalment of that mansion. The green expanse of gardens ended abruptly, the jungle theme terminating as a new look took over. The narrow track debouched into a grey plastic-surfaced circle where the bus floated to a halt, its entire front wall hissing open. Johnny and Middenface stepped out onto the circle. Several other buses were parked near their vehicle, all empty, all floating silently over their shadows. The sun was high overhead and Middenface felt the warmth of its one point two Sol-type radiation on the back of his neck, comforting on the old scars there.

  Beyond the circle where the buses floated, a desert theme took over. The slope rising up to the house was terraced into banks of sand and pebble with ornamental cactuses planted on them. Each bank ended in a low wall of rough-hewn tree stumps that rose up to form the lip of the next bank above. The terraced banks rose like steps on a giant staircase up towards the house at the top. The house was a low, wide structure formed panels from mirror-like glass, gleaming steel and red wood.

  Through the centre of the terraced slope a winding footpath of crushed, chocolate-coloured shell led up to the house. "What, no welcoming party?" said Middenface.

  "Doesn't look like it," said Johnny. They started up the slope, their boots crunching on the shells. Middenface reflected that billions of tiny sea creatures, who'd once lived in the ocean of some distant planet, had given their lives to make this attractive footpath for the rich man who lived high on the hill above them.

  "I've not met the man and I don't like him already," said Middenface.

  "What got your goat?" said Johnny.

  "What do you mean?"

  Johnny Alpha smiled. "You've been spoiling for a fight ever since we arrived."

  "Well, it bothered me. Didn't it bother you? The way they treated us back at the space port."

  "They told you, the man has allergies."

  "That's no reason for him to make us wear this ridiculous garb." Middenface lifted his arms to emphasise the ridiculous, and humiliating, cut of the white paper garment he'd been made to wear. It was a narrow bathrobe affair with a white belt at the front that Middenface had knotted tight in fury.

  "It's undignified," he said. "I look like some wee geisha girlie or a patient in a hospital or something." He inspected his footwear with disgust. Like Johnny, he was naked under the paper robe, bare legs jutting out, bare feet shod in disposable blue and white plastic sandals. Together they trudged up the chocolate brown pathway on their sandals, crushing the shells underfoot.

  Middenface paused to watch the busy gardening team on the terrace above. They seemed to know what they were doing and they were an uncommonly good-looking lot, all girls and all skimpily dressed in abbreviated olive green shorts and tank tops, with pert military-style green caps on their heads and sturdy combat boots on their little feet. They were busy planting a bed of ornamental cacti, ranging in size from huge monstrosities to tiny specimens that wouldn't have come up to Johnny's knee. The cacti came in various shapes and in a dramatic variety of colours, ranging from green to bruised purple and dusty pink.

  One of the girls suddenly looked over at Middenface, then looked away again. She said something in a low voice and the others all giggled. Middenface turned bright red.

  He turned away and hurried off up the path, moving hastily, his sandals slapping on the crushed shells. Johnny was moving ahead of him at a leisurely pace.

  "It's us they're bloody laughing at, you know," said Middenface as he caught up with his friend. "And it's no wonder, the way we look in these bloody stupid outfits." Johnny just grunted. The men continued their ascent in silence, making their laborious way up towards the distant, gleaming house, paper robes rustling in the fresh breeze that blew from the moist green depths of jungle garden behind them.

  They could see the details of the front of the house, tall windows gleaming behind a wide wooden-floored balcony, which was open at the front, facing the terraced slope. "I don't care how bloody rich and powerful he is," said Middenface, wiping sweat from his brow. "He's got no call to treat us like this. He could have sent a gravity pad for us, or let us use an elevator. There must be an elevator around the place. But not for the tradesmen, oh no. We're not good enough for the grav pad or the elevator. Instead we can just slog our guts out, walking up and down this bloody hill."

  "Only up it so far," said Johnny.

  "Well, it's going to be back down it any minute now," snarled Middenface.

  "Don't go into meltdown," murmured Johnny. They had now reached the top of the shell footpath and they were confronted with a short flight of broad wooden steps. They started climbing the steps together. The steps creaked underfoot. From the direction of the house came an answering screech. It sounded to Johnny like some kind of tropical bird.

  "It's Mr Zo who's going to go into meltdown when he hears just what I've got to say to him," said Middenface. "You just can't treat people like this. I don't care if he is a multi-billionaire or trillionaire or whatever he is. Who does he think he is? Insisting we take off our shoes at the space port like that, ordering us to strip and shower."

  "They're concerned about off-world contamination," said Johnny in a reasonable voice.

  They stepped onto the balcony. It was a cool, wide and pleasantly shadowy
structure that spanned the entire width of the front of the house, a long wall of floor-to-ceiling windows reflecting blue sky and slants of sunlight and distant cloud. Their sandals slapped loudly on the wooden floor.

  "And giving us these ridiculous wee things to wear." The paper robe rustled around Middenface's lanky frame as he stirred his shoulders pugnaciously, like a fighter warming up. "And that thing they did to us with the vacuum cleaner," he said. "I swear it ripped half my pubes out."

  "Welcome, gentlemen," said a deep, lazy voice.

  "I heard your remark, Mr McNulty," said Asdoel Zo.

  "Remark?" said Middenface cravenly. "You must be mistaken, Mr Zo, sir. I didn't make no remark. I didn't say anything at all."

  Asdoel Zo smiled. He was a sun-tanned man of medium height, wearing a blue and white Hawaiian shirt and black silk shorts. His bare legs and his stubby muscular arms were covered with thick coppery hair. His feet were bare. He had a shaved head and bushy red eyebrows, and a red moustache that looked like a third eyebrow that had escaped down his face and taken refuge under his nose. When he smiled you could see his teeth, which were bright and white and even, and Middenface noticed the tiny twin gleams of small diamonds, one set in each upper canine. The man had diamonds in his teeth, and Middenface was willing to wager that they weren't synthetics, either. He was awe struck. Imagine having the money to do that. And to keep all those wee girls on tap... He looked up from the shining dental gems to the man's eyes. They were alert and intelligent, the greyish-green colour of wet pebbles, and they seemed to be sizing Middenface up with amusement and possibly a little contempt. Middenface immediately dropped his gaze.