9 HENTY'S FIST 1: GAUNTLET RUN by Andre Jute, Dakota Franklin, Andrew McCoy

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HENTY'S FIST 1: GAUNTLET RUN: birth of a superhero by Andre Jute, Dakota Franklin and Andrew McCoy. 60,000 words in 76 chapters. 

CHAPTER 9

That night, as she lay on the floor of her cell, doing her exercises — “Pull till it burns. Baby!” — she watched Gauntlet Runner on vidi. The week’s Runner had not lasted past Tuesday morning and all three channels were using the public service law and order hour from nine to ten to give her a big build-up. She saw herself being visited by the publisher, the man from the Syndicate and the man from the Chaser Bank but someone had decided to call the man from the Syndicate her “financial adviser” and their words were edited to support the lie. Henty snorted. One of the commercials for the Chaser exhorted women to follow Henty’s example.

“To rob banks?” Henty asked the vidi. She exercised until she couldn’t move another muscle. It was the only way she could sleep.

She didn’t want to die.

But she kept refusing all the offers from religious promoters to be a sponsored symbol of their particular — and some very peculiar — brands of salvation. One spot on Gauntlet Runner showed a Runner who stuck his Fist aloft like the statue of Liberty and declaimed, “We who are about to die, salute the True Cross.” A rerun of his exploits showed him smashing an old lady in the face in Chicago. He'd also hijacked a plane in Denver but on the way to SF a private pilot had shot the airliner down, killing everybody in it, including the Runner. The indestructible Fist survived, though someone else took it from the intrepid red baron not too long afterwards.

Henty knew little more about Imperial Rome than can be gleaned from old movies, but “We who are about to die” rang a bell with her: the only time the judge who sentenced her had ever come to life was while inveighing against the gladiatorial practices of the new age. And it wasn’t that she was letting pride come before Petey’s life. The reverends weren’t offering hard cash; instead they promised free tickets to their various mutually exclusive heavens. All of them had been inordinately shocked at her suggestion that they pay her for advertising their message.

MORE SOON! A NEW CHAPTER ALMOST EVERY DAY!  Add GAUNTLET RUN to your Reading List (click “Manage” in the right hand column, then tick “Reading List” and “Done”). 

 • MORE ABOUT THE AUTHORS AT: 

Andre Jute http://coolmainpress.com/andrejute.html  Andre’s latest book is DREAMS Book 1 of COLD WAR, HOT PASSIONS http://www.amazon.com/DREAMS-COLD-WAR-PASSIONS-ebook/dp/B00A3BSJM2  Dakota Franklin http://coolmainpress.com/Dakota%20Franklin.html  Dakota’s latest book is NASCAR FIRST http://www.amazon.com/NASCAR-FIRST-RUTHLESS-WIN-ebook/dp/B00A72A556  Andrew McCoy http://coolmainpress.com/andrewmccoy.html  Andrew’s latest book is STIEG LARSSON Man, Myth & Mistress http://www.amazon.com/STIEG-LARSSON-Myth-Mistress-ebook/dp/B004GXAZAM 

Copyright © 2012 André Jute, Dakota Franklin, Andrew McCoy. The authors have asserted their moral right. Published by CoolMain Press 2012 www.coolmainpress.com. Editor: Lisa Penington. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or performed by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

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