Chapter 3

"Here I marked the locations of the... er, security cameras, and the possible exits..." says the boy - while his ears turn almost glowing red.
"Good" I reply, while Yoko scans the drawing intently: she's memorizing it.
Bondi is almost seething. He can stuff it; if he's a moron it's not my problem.
Bahir goes on:
"I think we have twenty-five zombies, and all of them pretty... er, fresh", and he takes the look of someone who just told bullshit.
"Fresh" I echo him grinning, and then "I don't really wanna know what shit turned them into zombies - but is there something else we should know? Will they go down for good if we pump two bullets in their fucking heads?"
Murphy speaks up:
"To the best of our knowledge, there should be no bad surprises."
"If there is any, we'll pull out the thermo-fucking-baric grenades, and go Mongol on their asses, understood?". Ok, I admit I'm a bit overplaying the part of the hard-as-nails merc here. But can't I have a bit of fun?
The lad in the shadow looks imperceptibly amused.

"Mr Bondi, can oyu patch us into the surveillance system?" asks Yoko, very neutral.
"We use a standard VT-3 broadcast ring for our security men; I suppose you have that in your gear" he replies sharply.
"Sure we do. Encrypted?"
"Yes"
"I gather we need the decryption key, then"
Bondi shots a glance first at the mystery chap, who does nothing; then to Murphy who nods instead. So Bondi opens a small safe with a fingerprint lock, and hands Yoko two H-BUS sticks.
"Here you are, the keys. Our voice comms are on channel 17, band Y."
"Thanks, sir" ends Yoko fully earnest. She's a good girl her after all - just stay out of her target list.
"So we have the battle plan: we go in and blast the motherfuckers. You keep your eyes well open and smoke any zombie that may eventually make it out. Got it?"
Murphy mutters a "Yes"; Bahir just nods and Bondi replies with a clear "Affirmative".
The Man in Black barely moves a muscle.

So I and Yoko head out in the heavy sleet to take the guns: I have an M8 with 25mm grenade launcher, plenty of magazines and grenades - and the sidearm to fucking impress: a replica of Desert Eagle .500, black with gold parts. Yoko says that's the tackiest gun she's ever seen. She'll use the MG-12, her katana and a discretely efficient .40 semiauto.

I load the water and nutrient an medical packs in my suit, then don the helmet and switch all the systems online; Yoko dons her too but she's got integrated comms and sensors in her own body. Our deeply encripted low-intensity communication channel comes online too, and she comments:
"Nice bunch of folks we have. The man in the black suit had dealings with the Space Navy"
"Ah, fuck me. He knows about you then?"
"Definitely. But I don't think it is a problem"
"If you say so. Now let's go to work!"
I had my contacts with the Space Navy - the whole Freezer Raid affair, and Yoko's dark past - that she decide not to know, and I think it's much friggin' better like this. Anyway, the Spacers are the sort of force you want to cover your ass. But while we Mountain Hunters can be nasty bastards, the Spacers are downright scary. I mean, for them the fun begins with megaton-fucking-class nukes, bloody hell.

We pass in front of our merry hosts, and finally the Darkman speaks:
"Our miss here is pretty damn strong for a lady..."
"Fuck off" I think.
"Not funny at all" Yoko informs me on out private channel. We trudge on without even caring to wave.
We stop in front of the armored main door, and hook into the surveillance feed. Some cameras and sensors have been disabled, but we have good coverage: we can see a few zombies loitering. I notice there's a friggin' bunch of them just behind the main door, so I think we should enter with a bang.
"I'll shoot a grenade in as soon as the door opens" I inform Yoko.
"Copy that"
I take position a few meters back, with Yoko at the side of the door, ready to spring into action. I set the fuzing for the granade launcher on Proximity, and then on the open channel:
"Bondi, open the door and let's rock!"
The door slids rapidly open; the zombies barely have the time to turn around that I pull the trigger. And the grenade detonates smack in the middle of the bunch. When we walk in, we find that most of the fuckers now is sticking to the walls as mince meat. It'd be a most repellent experience, if we weren't seasoned badasses.

A Quick Job, Chapter 2

We get back home and carry the crate inside - and inspect the MG-12. It's one hell of a beauty; clean and oiled; the fuel cell for the barrel spinning motor is filled up, and the starter battery fully charged. Yoko can carry the gun and all the ammo without any effort... I should get a friggin' cyborg body for myself too. If I can save that half a million quid, and Yoko can contact the right folks, that's it. One day, one friggin' day.

Then we just go to sleep: tomorrow it's going to be hard work. I hold her hand while we fall asleep. So fucking sue me. The alarm clock rings at 06:00, and I wake up ready to kick ass. An energetic breakfast, a visit to the loo, then I'm ready to don my semi-armored combat suite, more than enough to stop teeth and claws of the bloody zombies. It's not like that crap in the B-movies that being bitten by a zombie turns you into another friggin' one, but zombies carry a lot of godawful diseases. Yoko does not have these problems, so she dons a skin-tight fatigue. Very cyberpunk, and clad in that outfit she almost gives me a boner. And she straps her katana at her waist: a scary black blade with a core of titanium alloy covered in nanostructured silicon carbide, she told me. Whatever it is, it can cut right through fucking steel.

I may be a hitman, but I don't like living in filth: I've got a nice detached house in the eastern outskirts of the city: No punks bothering me and crap like that. Quickly, I and Yoko load our stuff into the replica Land Cruiser, and this time she drives. The weather is even more miserable, if fucking possible: a steady wind is blowing specks of heavy, damp sleet against our windscreen, while dark clouds race low overhead.
"How many suckers do we have to dispatch?" I ask.
"They couldn't tell exactly; between twenty and thirty"
"It's not that bad then"
The research facility is a few kilometrs inland - at least they got this straight. We're following a secondary road climbing up the hills, and from here I can see the sea: like a goddamn wrinkled sheet of lead.
"Winter up here is absolute crap" I state.
"So let's go somewhere nicer. What keeps us here?"
Yeah, what the fuck? I can't really tell.
I look into Yoko's beautiful slanted eyes and what I see is... well, you know, she isn't a stupid chick talking about feelings and crap like that all the time. But neither a ice-cold, almost scary character like my old time business partner Sara. What I see in Yoko's eyes is a deep, sincere affection. I stroke lightly her cheek with my hand, and that's all I can do to answer her. She smiles, and speeds up a bit.

We get at the lab a few minutes before eight, and avery nervous, uneasy guy wearing a smart winter coat lets us through a solid gate and in front of sort of guard post near the high fence. The rest of the compound is less than one hundred meter away, surrounded by security guards wielding riot control rifles. Well, it's up to us dogs of war to clean up the mess another time. Now and the fucking centuries of motherfucking centuries, we do the dirty work and nobody even says "Thanks". Amen. The guy in the coat introduces himself as Professor Murphy - he is the one who talked to Yoko yesterday. And boy, I've seen people in front of the firing squad less nervous than him.

He leads us into the guard post and introduces the others, two of them sitting around a table in front of coffee cups: Mr Bondi, a fat-ass chap in the security uniform, and a totally fucking clueless look on his face. Dr Bahir, a young bloke with long hair and a scraggy beard, wearing faded jeans and with an intent look in his eyes. And in the shadows at the back of the room, an unnamed man with broad shoulders and a straight spine, black suit, crew cut hair and a shaved face as expressive as a block of granite. I can tell he's military special projects from a mile away. Fucking great, this is really the company of the special occasions. Anyway, I and Yoko have been in far tighter spots than this.
"Can we see the money first?"
"Sure... here..." Murphy takes a bag from a cupboard, and with almost shaking hands shows us the wads of banknotes. We're traditionalists and work with cash as much as possible.
I take five thousand Sovereign, and put them in my pocket.
"Now, let's debrief this goddamn mission."
Bahir pulls out a big sheet of paper, and eagerly unfolds it on the table.
Bondi begins:
"My men are securing the perimeter, and no zombie can get out", and he points vaguely at the area around the central compound. There isn't a marker, a sign on the blueprint indicating where the perimeter is, the access and exit routes, the number and position of men. Fucking amateur.
"But we did not try to go inside... anyway this blueprint is very detailed; it should be really helpful"
I am close to snap, really. This Bondi is even more an asshole than I suspected. I shot a glance to Yoko, and she shakes her head.
"This is helpful my ass. We need to know a lot more before we fucking go in!" I almost yell.
Bondi looks at me with a panicked, pitiful expression. Murphy turns white, dispaired. The shady chap does not move a muscle... and finally Bahir speaks out, looking at me with an unwavering gaze:
"I think I can help"
"Go on then" I encourage him.
He takes another sheet out of a bag on the floor, and unfolds it covering the previous one. It's the same blueprint, but with red and green marks and annotations. Maybe this guy understands something about the job.

A Quick Job, Chapter 1

Ok, here's the first chapter of my first short story in English. It's unpretentious, maybe even silly - just warming up for a longer story I hope I will eventually write someday. Enjoy!

A Quick Job

I just had a good day: a quick job in the morning – busting the kneecaps of a couple of fucking chavs who bullied the wrong kid at school. They were all gangsta-tough at the beginning, but with two .40 bullets in each knee, they squealed like pigs at the slaughter, the wimps. Half a grand and a lot of personal satisfaction in a couple of hours.
Then I spent the afternoon at the bar, hanging with the lads. There’s a hell of a lot of people coming and going from the planet, with this resumption of space exploration. And many of them need someone to protect them, or to keep an eye on their rivals. Or to smoke them, as well. So I began discussing a bodyguard assignement with some chap from a spaceship servicing company. Loads of green with little hassle attached, it seems.
It’s just seven in the afternoon, but it’s already night, up here. I leave the bar just to find myself in the fucking cold, damp winter weather. At least my place isn’t far, and today Yoko had nothing to do, so she promised to cook me a dinner. Yoko, what a woman: beutiful and sweet, but she kicks ass like no one else. Well, that’s not too difficult when you’re a Mk4 combat cyborg. And she even does the good housewife, when she’s not out for a job.
I look into the lens of the eye scanner on my door: the lock cliks open and I walk into the warmth, and the smell of… seems like beef teriaki. Good. Yoko is in the living room, sitting in the Japanese style on the floor, cleaning a semiauto shotgun.
“Hello, the smell is delicious!” I say.
She looks at me with her reprimand expression:
“This shotgun was rusty, you know?”
I don’t really know.
“I can’t friggin’ remember that shotgun. Where did you find it?”
“It was at the bottom of the closet”Now I recall: someone gave it to me as part of the payment for a job I did. But I don’t really like semiautos, so I just put it aside and forgot about it. I explain Yoko, and she replies:
“Fair enough, now works smooth like silk”, and puts the rifle aside.
She stands up and kisses me, hot as usual. Maybe it’s because she moved in with me only a month ago, but just a kiss is enough to arouse me. A lot.
“I’ll serve dinner in a minute” she says, and walks to the kitchen. I can’t help but stare at her nearly perfect rump clad in tight shorts. Just time to take off my coat and boots and wash my hands, and I’m back to find a plate of beef teriaky, rice and a bottle of white wine on the table. Life as a couple is fucking good, I think. Yoko as a cyborg eats almost only sugars and carbohydrates; proteins are of little use for her incredible nanomachines metabolism. But she drinks wine. We do some small talk while I eat that delicious beef, and she munches on a potato starch tortilla. Then she says:
“I fixed a job for us tomorrow”
“Yeah? What job?”
“You aren’t gonna to believe it: another research laboratory had an outbreak of a virus that turned the people there into flesh-eating zombies.”
“Don’t tell me. Another fucking time… what the hell are those assholes doing?”
She raises an eyebrow to my profanity, then goes on:
“They need someone to clean up the mess, and will pay ten thousand”
“Ten grand… fucking hell!” I reply grinning.
“And they said they can accept serious damage to the facilities; they want to get rid of the zombies at any cost”.
That’s good, because the last time we had a situation like this, our clients raised a fucking fuss about collateral damage. We could not use grenade launchers, for god’s sake… that’s the best weapon against fucking zombies.
Then I remember that I already have a commitment for tomorrow:
“Oh shit, I didn’t tell you… tomorrow night at nine Massacre are playing at the Seaside Arena”
Massacre are the fiercest thrash metal band on the continent, and I ain’t gonna miss them, no fucking way. We aren’t, because Yoko likes a good mosh session too – I bought the tickets one month ago, dammit. She thinks about it for a fraction of a second then:
“I told them we’ll be there at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow… if things go smoothly, there should be enough time. I sure don’t want to spend twelve hours in there”.
Neither do I, especially considering that a cyborg does not have all the needs of a mere human.
“We’ll need some kick-ass firepower then. I’ll call the Tennant and have a MG-12 ready in a couple of hours”.
“That’s a sensible thing.”
So I call the Tennant, and make the deal; it’s four hundred Crowns to rent the machinegun, plus a 1000 rounds belt. Good chap, the Tennant, he always does discounts to friends.
There's still a couple of hours to go before it's time to go ank pick up the artillery, so we prepare the guns and gear for tomorrow. But temptation is strong... so when we finish the preparations we shag, on the sofa in the living room. And her artificial body is absolutely perfect for that, as well. Or maybe it's just because I think I love her, but it's never been like this with any other woman.
Our little couple gymnastics have kept us busy for quite a while, so I have a quick shower, and Yoko just after me.
Then, I and Yoko jump into my offroad and driving defensively like the most friggin’ honest citizens reach an anonimous warehouse in an industrial district way to the south of the city. Fucking grim place, but we’re not here for fun. The Tennant is already there; he lets us into the building and he and a young bloke take a crate with the machinegun. We inspect it: it’s a five-barrel, 6mm beauty. Money changes hands, we load the crate and leave with the Tennant grinning “Have fun!”. No questions asked, because that’s how it works in our business.

Yes, the formatting is rather awkward, but Blogger did it.

Lemon Sole Rolls With Asparagus

Yes, this is a recipe. If you want to eat something nice and unusual, or even impress a partner, why don't try it?


Ingredients (2 people, main course):

- 4 skinless lemon sole fillets
- 20-24 thin asparagus heads
- White wine
- Olive oil (extra virgin recommended)
- Lemon or lemon juice
- 1-2 garlic cloves, chopped
- Salt, pepper, parsley

In a pan, bring a little water to the boil, add the asparagus heads, boil for 2-3 minutes, drain and set aside. Pre-heat the oven to 180 C.

Place the lemon sole fillets on a chopboard, sprinkle with salt, pepper, olive oil, white wine and lemon juice. Put 5-6 asparagus heads on each fillet, add 1/4 of the garlic and a little parsley then roll the fillet up around the vegetables. In a deep-sided baking tray, pour around 4 tbsp of wine and 4 of oil, then whip with a fork: a creamy emulsion should form.
Place the rolls in the tray, turn them around to cover them with the emulsion, and bake for 20-25 minutes in the middle of the oven.

Allow to stand for a few minutes, then serve covered with the wine sauce that will have formed in the tray. A crispy white wine (eventually the same used for cooking) is suggested with this dish.

Italian Food #1

Wild mushrooms have an important part in the Italian food culture and roaming the woods in search of mushrooms to pick is a favourite hobby of many Italians. Some also do it for the money, because there is also a thriving trade of mushrooms - that is a physically tiring but mind-cleansing job. The ones in the picture* are Boletus Edulis, better known as Porcino (plural: Porcini). These mushrooms can sprout from July to November if humidity and temperature are right, but the best months are September and October, when woods are (usually) damp but not cold. During the autumn a competent folk can find several different varieties of edible fungi, in the woods and grassy fields. Other mushrooms sprout in other times and habitats: April is the time for the exceedingly pregiate Prugnoli, which sprout in the thick of undergrowth and have an almost inebriating smell (the infamous Phallus Impudicus can be found in the same places and times, tho). In November, it is easy to spot those known as Trombetta dei Morti. One day I found a giant specimen of Meadow Mushroom - Prataiolo Gigante - (actually, a slightly different species) which weighed 1.2 kg and was some 30 cm broad...

When the conditions are right, fungi can sprout in huge numbers. I personally found quite a few kilos of them in a day, and this year my mate picked 140 kg (!) of them during September and October. Mushrooms, especially certain varieties, tend to sprout in precise spots that can last for many years, and the knowledge of those spots (called fungaie) is a jealously held secret. Some folks died before revealing them to anyone, while others set out to follow the most reknown fungi hunters to steal their secrets. And sometimes it's a pre-dawn race to the most productive woods; or, my mate found his own eclusive place: it takes half a hour by offroad (from the nearest hamlet) and another half by feet to get there, at the head of a remote valley where there isn't even cellphone signal. Not to mention the never-ending struggle between fungi hunters and Rangers (a police force devoted to harassing hunters, fishermen and mushrooms hunters, basically) and guards of all sorts.

These hard-earned mushrooms can be consumed in many ways. Young Porcini and Prataioli can be sliced thinly and eaten raw after seasoning them with oil, salt, pepper and Parmigiano cheese shavings. However, mushrooms are most often sauteed in a pan with oil and a touch of garlic and parsley. Especially with Prugnoli, you can add them to freshly cooked pasta for a heavenly dish. Mushrooms can also be pickled or preserved in oil. Porcini and other Boletus often are sliced and air-dried for conservation.

But the most honourable end for them is sauce. Making a good mushrooms sauce is a reason of pride for anyone with cooking ambitions. It starts with chopped onion or scallion slowly browned in olive oil, and then it can be made with chopped tomatoes and mushrooms, or pure Porcini for the real connoisseurs. Some add double cream, but I recommend against. Then the sauce must simmer for at least one hour for best results - and possibly used to season a dish of hand-made egg tagliatelle.

Fungi can also be battered and fried, or grilled. If you find some Mazze di Tamburo, which often have a cap as broad as a table dish, you can spread oil, sieved tomatoes and mozzarella on the inverted caps, and bake the whole thing like it's a pizza.

Americans may want to check out this cool website about fungi.

*Foto © Marco Floriani - Passo Campo Carlo Magno (Dimaro, TN), VIII.1994