All Against All

  With such a vast supply now at his disposal, other people suddenly needed him. For the first time in his life, he had something they wanted.

  Ingesting Xylox pills may have given Christopher a rush, but it was nothing compared to the rush his newfound power delivered.

  This small-time scam netted him a tidy profit, but Christopher harbored even greater ambitions.

  His next move was to recruit a trio of pharmacy students who had recently been expelled for making and distributing LSD on campus. After bailing them out of prison and covering their legal costs, he employed them to reverse-engineer the Xylox and synthesize their own version. Christopher had the means, the students had the knowledge, and within a few months they had created a form of counterfeit Xylox.

  Known on the streets as lemon drops, they may have been an inferior facsimile of variable quality (a bad batch could result in unpredictable side-effects, ranging from mild nausea to schizophrenic episodes), but addicts craving an immediate hit were in no position to be fussy. Christopher preyed on their desperation and flooded the streets with these cheap, mass-produced pills. In a matter of months, he was enjoying a wildly successful business venture.

  Like any good entrepreneur he had identified a gap in the market, then sought to fill the demand.

  In less than a year, Christopher was rolling in more cash than he knew what to do with. He enjoyed the kinds of profit margins the pharmaceutical giants could only dream of. He also amassed an army of xombies along the way; psychotic tweakers who would do anything he asked of them in exchange for a constant drug supply. And if that meant he wanted someone taken out – be it a rival gang member, meddling politicians, nosy journalists, or regular civilians who were participants in a strange contest with $100 million up for grabs – they were only too happy to oblige.

  The more people became hooked on Xylox, the more Christopher became hooked on power. It was the kind of power that had a tendency to corrupt.

  Throughout it all, no one suspected a thing. Christopher’s outward appearance, previously his biggest liability and the source of much of the misery throughout his life, was now his greatest asset. His weight and disability meant that people constantly underestimated him. Anyone who encountered this pathetic wheelchair-bound creature would never in a million years suspect him of being the city’s most ruthless crime lord. The police force devoted countless man hours and many millions of dollars on tracking down the monster behind this incessant wave of carnage, and he didn’t even have to hide. He was hiding in plain sight.

  And so for the next six years Christopher Gibson, self-christened with the indomitable moniker “Goliath”, wreaked his revenge on the world. He sought revenge on all those who had bullied and tormented him throughout his life. On a society that chose to point and laugh at a helpless sideshow freak rather than offer sympathy. Most of all, he took his revenge on god for creating this colossal mistake of a human being in the first place.

  He was god now.

  Goliath’s lair, a disused slaughterhouse in the city’s industrial area that had undergone extensive renovations, was truly a sight to behold. From the faux-stone columns and archways, to the marble fountain, to the intricate wall design that gave the illusion of a crumbling colosseum, no expense had been spared. There was even a large portrait of Christopher seated on his throne, draped in regal robes and gold chains, a full-grown tiger resting by his side.

  But this all paled in insignificance to the room’s centerpiece and most striking feature. It was the one thing that commanded everyone’s attention from the moment they set foot inside.

  It was the cylindrical glass display case, filled to the brim with counterfeit Xylox pills.

  It was insanely huge, almost fifteen feet in diameter, and made from glass two inches thick. The top of the case connected to the floor above via an opening in the ceiling. The pills were manufactured on the second level, and trickled down from a conveyer belt in a continuous stream.

  The case was filled with what must have been tens of millions of little yellow pills, like it was the world’s largest gumball dispenser.

  Even though no practical reason existed for Christopher to store all his pills in this way, the purpose of the display case was obvious. It served as an ever-present reminder to all the xombies just what they were working for. It was their psychological motivator, should they ever need one. They craved pills, Christopher produced an endless supply, and there was nothing they wouldn’t do to get their hands on their drug of choice.

  “Good work, men,” Christopher said to his xombie footsoldiers once Alice had been delivered to his feet. “Enjoy your reward.”

  He pressed a button on a small remote control dangling from a chain around his neck. The sound of a handful of pills dropping into the receptacle below followed.

  This triggered an immediate Pavlovian reaction from the three xombies. They scurried across to collect their payment, greedily fighting one another for their share of the spoils.

  Just as quickly, they scampered out of the room with immediate plans of smoking themselves into oblivion.

  Christopher turned his attention back to Alice. He grinned as he rose from his seat.

  “I have to admit Alice, I’m surprised to find you still alive,” he said. “You’re a tenacious one, I’ll say that about you.”

  He moved slowly toward her, the smile widening on his face.

  “I was positive you would have gotten yourself killed by now.”

  Alice was so bewildered by everything she had seen so far that her brain had failed to pick up on the most astounding part of all – Christopher Gibson, a man with no legs, had risen from his seat and was walking towards her.

  It wasn’t until he came to within a few feet that she lowered her eyes and glimpsed him from below the waist.

  Christopher had sprouted new legs.

  But these weren’t human legs. They were robotic appendages, the very latest in anatomical emulation technology, assembled from steel and plastic and fiberglass.

  It was a peculiar, almost comical sight; these wiry mechanical limbs propping up Christopher’s morbidly obese body. He looked like the result of an explosion in a cybernetics factory, or a mad scientist’s experiment gone horribly wrong. A kind of a human/emu/robot hybrid.

  What surprised her even more was the ease in which he moved. The legs boasted an impressive amount of balance and control, allowing him to glide around the room with the kind of grace and dexterity one would never expect from someone carrying close to four hundred pounds.

  “I understand if this has all come as a bit of a shock to you,” he said. “But I am impressed that you’ve made it this far. I guess I misjudged you.”

  Alice swallowed hard. “It seems we all clearly misjudged you, too.”

  Christopher let out a tiny laugh. The gap in his front teeth produced a kind of whistling sound.

  “You know, I think there’s a lesson to be learned in all this. People have underestimated me my entire life. But I refused to let it hold me back. In fact, I used it to my advantage. Everyone would look at me and see one of god’s greatest mistakes. No one ever saw the devil himself.”

  A million different thoughts raced through Alice’s mind as she lay there helpless on the floor.

  She wondered if she could now legitimately claim to have scored the all-time ultimate exclusive with Goliath. Not only was she the first journalist to uncover his true identity, she’d even spent an afternoon alone with him a while back.

  She wondered about the cosmic significance of lying on the floor in agony, lightning rods of pain drilling into her every nerve as withdrawal mercilessly ravaged her body, while just a few feet away was enough counterfeit Xylox to last until the end of time.

  More than anything, she wondered how dirty this floor was, and what kind of infectious diseases she was exposing herself to.

  “And I want you to know, Alice, I really don’t want to kill you,” Christopher continued. “To be completely honest, I’m a litt
le sad that it’s come to this. I didn’t think I would have to kill you. I figured someone else would have done it for me a long time ago.”

  He paused for a moment to catch his breath. Even with his mechanical legs doing all the heavy lifting, Christopher still fatigued easily. The sound of his labored breathing filled the room for half a minute.

  “But it’s not up to me, unfortunately. The rule-makers were quite clear about that. I can’t get the money until every other contestants is dead.”

  Christopher returned to his desk. He pressed his respiratory mask to his face and inhaled deeply.

  Alice’s eyes darted around the room. There has to be another way out of here. But she only saw dead ends. There were windows, but they all had bars across them. There was the door they had brought her in through, but this was inaccessible – for two reasons.

  The first reason was that it was on the opposite side of the room, more than fifty feet away.

  The second reason was that about thirty xombies occupied the space in between.

  The xombies watched Alice similar to the way vultures watched their prey as they waited for it to die. All were slaves to their addictions, and every single one of them was ready to tear Alice apart with their bare hands the moment their slave master gave the order.

  Christopher pulled the mask away. His glazed eyes and dopey grin informed Alice that it was nitrous oxide rather than oxygen inside his tank.

  He snapped his fingers. One of his xombie minions, a young man with dirty blond dreadlocks, rushed to his side.

  “I think it’s time we brought this contest to its conclusion,” he said to the manservant, his voice now a lazy drawl. “Why don’t you go fetch our guest of honor.”

  Alice was still unable to comprehend how she could have ended up in the position she was in. As much as she tried to figure it all out, she couldn’t make head nor tail of any of it. Much of her confusion was due being kidnapped, bound and threatened, coupled with an inhumane case of Xylox deprivation. It all combined to create this incredible stress on her brain. The kind of pressure that could produce diamonds out of coal.

  But irrespective of the circumstances, she would never fully understand the precise sequence of events leading up to the situation she presently found herself in.

  She would never know that Christopher Gibson, aka Goliath, had been employing his vast army of xombies to bump off the lottery participants one by one. His first victim was Vicki Malseed; he paid a couple of xombies to throw her from the balcony of her twenty-first floor apartment and make it look like an accident. His most recent victims were Harrison Ester and Melissa Siebel, both of whom had been poisoned within the last few hours.

  She hadn’t yet caught onto the fact that Christopher was behind the whole “Needlemouse” persona. He slowly reeled her in, drip-feeding her information about Goliath in order to gain her trust and keep tabs on her movements. He thought she might catch on sooner or later, and wonder why these major scoops were being leaked to a lowly copywriter rather than a serious journalist. But she never questioned it. Alice was just grateful for the opportunity, and the lucrative perks that came along with it.

  And she would never know that the one time they went to the café, after “accidentally” bumping into each other in the street, Christopher was moments away from slipping a small vial of arsenic into her tea. The only reason he didn’t go through with it was because of how Alice had treated him that day – not as a freak, but as a human being. Christopher may have been a sadistic power-hungry drug lord with an insatiable lust for money, but a tiny sliver of humanity still lurked somewhere inside him. He couldn’t bring himself to kill the one person who had treated him with dignity and respect, and who didn’t immediately judge him by the way he looked.

  But he wasn’t quite prepared to let her get away that easily. So he dropped a small amount of powdered Xylox into her drink when she wasn’t looking. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to tip her over the edge. Christopher knew Alice was a recovering addict – he had used his contacts within the medical profession to bribe staff and obtain all the contestants’ records – and he knew a single hit of Xylox would be enough to reawaken her long-dormant addiction. It was only a matter of time before the drug consumed Alice’s life once more, and she would be so much easier to control.

  This was his way of killing her slowly. Her addiction would weaken her defenses and leave her vulnerable to attack by one of the other contestants. Christopher wasn’t the only killer in the lottery; of the twenty-three deaths so far, only twelve had been at his behest. The rest were paranoid people wiping one another out, although sometimes Christopher was the one to tip them over the edge – as Carson Dowling would ultimately discover.

  The many thousands of hours he’d spent in the high school chess club paid off as Christopher manipulated the other contestants like pieces on a board, shifting them into position and planning ten moves ahead.

  After Christopher, Bourke Nation was the lottery’s second-most prolific killer. He had personally taken care of four contestants, and he had gotten away with it each time. Christopher thought Bourke was such an effective killer that he allowed him to live a little while longer so he could carry on doing his work for him.

  But Bourke’s work rate had slipped in recent months. He was taking too long to finish the job, and Christopher was growing impatient.

  Chapter 30

  The dreadlocked xombie hauled the heavy brown sack through the door and dragged it over towards Christopher.

  The xombie grasped the sack by the bottom and lifted it upwards. A squirming body came tumbling out the other end.

  Alice didn’t immediately recognize the body sprawled out on the floor. This was because most of the head and upper chest area was enveloped in a cocoon of duct tape. It wasn’t until she noticed that it was clothed in a stylish gray suit that everything clicked into place.

  This was Bourke Nation.

  Bourke looked up at Alice, then around the room. Only one of his eyes was visible through the tape, but that was more than enough to convey his abject terror. That one eye belonged to a man trapped inside a waking nightmare.

  Christopher stepped in front of him. Bourke’s gaze slowly moved upwards, towards the freakish monstrosity standing above him.

  “My employees tell me that you were lurking around my home earlier tonight,” Christopher said. “Is this correct?”

  Bourke attempted a response, but his mummified head could only produce a garbled string of gibberish.

  The dreadlocked xombie tossed a six-inch hunting knife across to Christopher.

  “They also tell me you were carrying this weapon with you at the time.”

  Christopher removed the knife from its sheath, inches away from Bourke’s face. He ran his index finger along the razor-sharp edge of the gleaming blade, then shook his head like a disappointed school teacher.

  “I have to tell you, Mr. Nation. This does not look good for you. It appears that you traveled to my place of residence with sinister intentions.”

  Christopher suddenly lunged forward and grabbed Bourke by his collar. He pressed the knife against his face, then slowly ran the blade across.

  Bourke let out a wail of terror, until he realized that Christopher had only sliced open the tape covering his mouth.

  Christopher laughed and let go, and Bourke fell back to the floor. He sucked in desperate gasps of air through the new opening in his mask of tape.

  He coughed, and a mouthful of bile spilled out.

  Alice didn’t need to see the rest of Bourke’s face to know how close he was to losing it. Unlike her, Bourke had absolutely no idea where he was or what was going on. Somehow, the contestant he mistook for a helpless cripple, by far the easiest target in the lottery, was in fact a deranged half-human/half-robot, straight out of an HR Giger fever dream.

  “Relax, I’m not going to waste my energy using that on you,” Christopher said as he tossed the knife aside. “Too much work. Besides, I have somethin
g special planned for the two of you.”

  Christopher pressed on the remote around his neck. More pills were spat out from the display case into the receptacle. The dreadlocked xombie hurried across to collect his payment.

  Christopher then returned to his desk. He unlocked a drawer and retrieved a small black case.

  He placed it on his desk and clicked open the locks. He lifted out the contents.

  Inside was a gun.

  But it wasn’t just any gun. Not like the gun Alice had illegally purchased, one of those twentieth century bullet and gunpowder models cobbled together from spare parts.

  This was the real deal. Shiny, black and sleek. Exclusive to the police and military.

  This was an OBL-IV.

  The type of weapon that could tear a person in half with a single shot.

  Just like the one the police used on Carson Dowling inside Alice’s apartment.

  Christopher handled the weapon delicately, like it was made of eggshell. He held it out in front of Alice and Bourke for their approval.

  “What do you think of my new toy?” he said, a childlike grin smeared across his rotund face. “I only just got this. I haven’t had the chance to play with it yet.”

  Alice was rendered speechless. How on earth did Christopher manage to get his hands on a restricted weapon like that? It was obvious that he had means and influence, but surely there were limits to what money could buy. The police guarded the OBL-IV guns the way the French guarded the masterpieces at the Louvre. They were all but impossible for civilians to gain access to.

  “Of course, you two don’t have anything to worry about, do you?” Christopher said. “I can’t fire an OBL-IV. This is useless to everyone, bar the one person whose palm print has been calibrated to it. Right?”

  Christopher then flicked a switch. He wrapped the sweaty palm of his right hand around the gun’s biometric grip.

  The weapon emitted a soft humming noise, then lit up neon green. A ping indicated that it was ready for use.

  Christopher beamed. He was exceptionally proud of himself.