Koko the Mighty Read Free Page A

making their way across the broad boards of the front porch, Koko fully expects to hear the hooting blares of SI Security sirens at any moment. Lightning flashes and after a deafening thunder crack, the savage downpour that had been threatening all afternoon cuts loose, and the straight-nailed monsoon rain sounds just like a round of applause.

COCHON DE LAIT: HORACE BRITCH
    Horace Britch is about to sink his teeth into a kebab of suckling boar meat when his shoulder’s epaulette mic warbles.
    “Britch-3493? SI Security priority message. Please respond, over.”
    Britch neglected to pick up napkins at the end of the buffet line, and grease drips down his arm in a warm rivulet.
    “Britch-3493? Repeat, SI Security priority message. Please respond, over.”
    Britch aims the kebab away from his body like a fencer’s foil. Sweating, he flattens his chin on his epaulette and keys the mic.
    “This better be good,” Britch answers crustily. “I’ll have you know, I’m on dinner break.”
    Dispatch is unsympathetic to his concerns.
    “BOP event, Island Thirteen. Confirmed report involving unidentified female and a male resort manager, over.”
    Britch flattens his chin on his epaulette again. “Oh, for the love of—a breach of peace call? What, somebody got punched in the snot-locker again?”
    A long fizz of static and then, “Uh, that’s a negative.”
    Britch kicks an empty bamboo
masu
box at his feet. With both hands he then lifts the kebab and quickly chomps down the meat lanced in between. Hand-seasoned with turmeric and basted with coconut water, the fatty pigskin snaps in his mouth with each bite and is so delicious Britch’s head actually starts to swoon.
    As luck would have it, Britch is supervising officer for SI Security response that evening, and nearly everyone on The Sixty is throwing down big time on Island One. It’s The Sixty Islands’ weekly luau—an open-invitation, all-out bash publicized heavily by the CPB’s promotional and marketing departments. Counting the stuck-up vacationing patrons, the full-time SI employees, and the high-priced pyrotechnic entertainment (DJ Rajini Superwong and the Slavectors doing percussion duels, don’t you know), an eyeball estimate puts the luau crowd at nearly fourteen hundred and change. Most are scantily clad and nearly all are blitzed out of their minds on fortified rice liquor and God knows what-all. Between flame-spouting, caterpillar-tracked kulkul watchtowers, blade-juggling trapeze artists soar from catch bars as a tethered aerostat drifts overhead like a massive, gas-swollen dong. In the aerostat’s gondola, go-go dancers use hoses to disperse hallucinogenic rainbow-colored dyes over the crowds. The wilding masses below hail their approval and extend their tongues upward to catch a taste of the sweet narcotic mists.
    All in all, The Sixty’s luau is an apotheosis of hedonism multiplied to the tenth power. If anything were to go wrong on the archipelago tonight, the sands of Island One are the odds-on favorite for ground zero. As Britch chews and swallows bite after bite, his beady eyes mirthlessly dart in their sockets. Eastward, past the flickering torches and garish massage tents, he can make out the smaller humps of The Sixty’s teen-numbered islands. More than a dozen kilometers away, the crepuscular contours look like the backs of dozing animals, and the storm front forecasted for that afternoon looks to have finally cut loose in their vicinity. It’s not raining just yet on Island One, but Britch can smell a charged fried-ion scent as a crimped vein of lightning marbles the darkening sky. The luau crowds cheer. Thunder rolls.
    With almost two years’ tenure on the resort, Britch appreciates his position well enough and knows, given his morbidly obese liabilities, he’s damn fortunate to have it. Unlike most of his peers in SI Security, Britch didn’t come from a hardcore battle-tested soldiering or policing background. Initially, yes, he’d