Chapter 7

"TWO MORE COPS MURDERED" The headline blasted out at him as Joseph picked up the newspaper. There followed a grisly description of the two policewomen who had been killed by the trio the previous night. Normally, the newspaper would have already been printed before this story was ready for publication, but the newspaper must have torn up its front page to get out this edition. There were actually photos of the bodies showing the bloody mess they were in when they were found.

The newspaper went on and on about how this had to be serial killings by an insane murderer. The tacit assumption was that the killer had to be female. This was simply because all males were slaves and did not have the freedom to do this sort of thing. QED, the killer was female and dubbed Jackie the Ripper after the famous London killer of centuries ago. Part of the confusion was because no one could figure out the reason for all of the cut marks on the bodies nor for the removal of the nipples and clit. Joseph speculated that when they figured that out, they would be even more confused.

The men were on another hunt. At the rate they were killing cops, the National Guard would soon be called in. Again, this was something lost on the three men. They had heard of the National Guard, but really didn't know what it was. George was unstoppable in his hatred of the ruling class and slave holders, and the other men saw no reason to argue with him, so all three were anxious to kill as many cops as they could find.

It was early in the evening, so a lot of civilians were out, but their slaves were locked up at home, so there were only women on the streets, at least that's what everybody thought. The cops were patrolling now only in the populated areas, afraid to be out in the relatively quiet sections where the previous cops had been killed. The men were being drawn into the denser populated areas in their search for cops to kill, so it was just a matter of time before they were discovered.

However, they got lucky with their first kills. As was usual, now, the targets were a pair of cops patrolling on their Segway-type vehicles. In this section of town, normal vehicular traffic was blocked at sundown and pedestrians were allowed to use the street just like a sidewalk. Therefore, in a mistaken belief in the added safety of the middle of the street, the two cops were rolling down the middle directly toward Otto on one side and George and Joseph on the other side.

This was going to be their first effort at a moving target, so all three were going to shoot. As it happened, both Otto and Joseph selected the cop on the left and George took the one on the right. In this case, Otto and Joseph were better shots than George. The cop on the left was cut down before she knew what was going on, but the one on the right was only wounded in the hip by the tainted bolt fired by George. She began to scream from the combined pain of the bolt and the pain of the pepper extract. The three men rushed out to silence her, but they did not get there before a passerby looked in their direction as she crossed the street at the intersection.

The noise was silenced by a quick stroke of George's knife but the woman civilian was frozen in place at the sight of the carnage. Otto reacted quickly enough to send a bolt in her direction. His shot was one of amazing precision. It caught the woman in the chest and penetrated her heart, killing her immediately. Otto and Joseph ran to fetch her body and pull her back into the shadows before anyone else came along.

George cut the bolts from all three bodies and did the other things, including removing the nipples and clits. This time, the three bodies were arrayed on the sidewalk so that they would be found at daybreak.

Meanwhile, for some unexplained reason, one of the Segways was standing upright and waiting to be driven away. The ever-adventurous Joseph climbed aboard and found that he could get it to move at his command. He drove around a while on it, then gave it to Otto to play with while he tried to get the other one to work. Now that he had been exposed to an operating Segway, Joseph was able to figure out the controls. He rode around long enough to make sure that it operated just as had the previous machine before he surrendered it to George. They moved off the street and to an alley where they practiced with it until they were confident that they could make it go where they wanted.

The men now decided that this was something that they needed, so they went hunting for a third cop with just such a vehicle. It was about 45 minutes later that they found a very nervous cop riding alone down a shadowy street. Otto shot her, and they now each had a Segway. George did the honors on her body and they went home, riding their new toys. These machines were great! The could get up to 25 KPH (Kilometers Per Hour) for as long as necessary, instead of the limitation to walking and running speeds. Ah, yes, traveling around the city was now going to be much more convenient!

They knew nothing of fuel requirements for a motor, so they did not understand the eventual need for recharging the battery. A lot of engineering had gone into development of a long-life battery for the automotive trade, and the same things worked on a Segway battery. Therefore, the batteries in their new machines were good for 200 hours of continuous operation because they had just come off the charger at the police station. That was good for at least a month at the rate the men would be using the machines. Joseph planned to research the machines as soon as he could get to a computer.

The men had made several trips to the library to swap books, and they were already reading more advanced books. Their biggest problem at this stage was that they did not understand the difference between fiction and fact. They assumed that everything they read was factual, and they operated on that premise. That occasionally resulted in some very funny mistakes if you were standing to one side and not directly involved, but they were lucky in not running into some really big difficulties.

One bit of fact they tripped across came from Otto continuing his search of the weapons section of the library stacks. Eventually, he came to a book that was, in fact, a catalog for a gun manufacturer. By now, he was able to read and understand about killing range and accuracy. Not only did this book have pictures and descriptions of a lot of guns, but it had the same thing for ammunition.

He showed the book to George and Joseph, and they decided to take it home with them. Possibly, they could get what they needed from the sporting goods stores after they'd had a chance to study the book. This book proved to be a gold mine of useful information!

After a lot of studying and cogitating, they decided to try to pick up a .22 caliber semiautomatic rifle and some hollow-point LR (Long Rifle) ammunition. They had decided that they wanted a clip-fed weapon because of the speed of swapping to a full magazine with a clip versus a tubular magazine. They decided that they would hit a store that they had not visited in some time so that there would be less likelihood of being caught by burglar alarms.

The next night, they set out with the specific purpose of picking up rifles and ammunition. They had found a way to fasten their wagon to a Segway, so they had a trailer for bulky or heavy loads. The first place they went to didn't have a .22 rifle that fit all of their specifications, but they did pick up two cases of hollow-point .22 caliber ammunition.

They had to visit three stores before they found the kind of rifle they were looking for, and, while they were about it, they also picked up three .22 automatic pistols. They were not worried about meeting any cops on this trip, because cops had gotten to be hard to find. They had their krosbos with them, so they were confident that they could defend themselves if they had too.

The reason for wanting hollow-point ammunition was so that the bullet could carry some of the pepper extract with it. They'd had so much success with the bolts treated with the extract, that they figured bullets treated that way would be even better.