Fantasmagoria (8 page)

She had been pretty once, adored by every man Vernal knew. But she’d lived a hard life and it showed.

“Good to see you too.” Vernal’s grated voice gargled each syllable.

Velma pushed back her greasy blond hair and patted her swollen eye. She grimaced. “Why do you always have to be such a turd?” She sat up carefully.

“Expensive habit.” Vernal lifted the empty plastic bag.

“What do you want?”

Derk stormed in on bare feet. His sweat pants hung loose around his thighs. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. “I’m gonna fucking kill you. No one does that to--”

Vernal sprayed him a second time, right in his open mouth. Derk gagged and doubled over, spitting and coughing. It shook the piercings clustered around his left ear. He stumbled against the wall.

Vernal scowled at his sister. “I thought you cleaned up.” She had promised him months ago and every week since. It was a condition for her to get the apartment, not that Vernal needed it now anyway, not when the world was about to end.

“What, are you Dad now?” Velma coughed and reached for a cigarette.

“It’s at least a few months I’m guessing, from the burns on your arms.”

Cigarette and flame swayed back and forth in opposite directions as Velma tried to bring them together.

Derk reappeared from the kitchen holding a knife. He held it up, wide-eyed. His shirt was soaking wet and his eyes were bloodshot and running tears. He held up a finger. “Don’t you fucking do that to me again, you little fucking choad.”

“That’s a butter knife, asshole.”

“And I know how to use it.”

Vernal ran a finger over the base of his palm. He liked having the stirge larva. He was a small man, and it gave him confidence. And no one would suspect. He sneered at Derk. “I’m tired of you selling drugs to my sister.”

Derk snorted. “Me? You’re tired of me? I’m not the one getting her face beat in.” He pointed at Velma with the knife. “They were looking for you, asshole.”

Vernal looked at Velma’s bruises and the cut in her lip.

Derk kept his distance. “If not for me they would have done a lot worse, too. You should thank me for looking after her.” He shifted his weight back and forth. “You’re in so much shit. The only reason there’s not an army of Murderlings breaking down that door right now is because the Butcher’s dead and everybody’s out cleaning up.”

Vernal had heard.

“You’re so fucking dead, Vernal.” Velma chuckled and wagged the lit cigarette at him. Her eyelids opened and closed and opened. She slurred her words. “If you’re lucky, they’ll just lube up a saurus and let it rape you to death. If you’re lucky.” She took a drag.

Vernal raised his eyebrows. “I was never all that lucky.”

Velma sneered. “This isn’t like grifting the greasers out in the hills, or whatever the hell it is you do out there.”

“Corpse disposal. Mostly.”

Derk snorted. He kept the blunt knife raised. “Pimpernel’s people are gonna do vile shit to you. Vile.”

“What did you do this time?” Velma asked.

“It’s not important.”

“You’re too much of a big shot to tell me?”

“No. I want to protect you.”

“
Protect
?” Velma stumbled to her feet. She lost her balance and gripped the couch for support. Her eyelids drooped. “Fat lot of good your protection is. Where was your protection when your nieces disappeared? Huh? You said you would help me.” She glowered at him.

“Have the police found anything?”

“Fuck . . . Why do you have to be so stoopid?” Velma fell back onto the cushions.

Derk spit again and wiped his wet mouth. “Imperials don’t care about the island and you know it. All they care about is collecting taxes and keeping the aminals out.”

Vernal turned to Derk. “How much am I worth?”

“You know,” Velma blubbered from under her down-turned face, “Cecil and me was gonna get cleaned up. We were gonna get back together. We were gonna be a family. Not like our family. Like a real one. He had it all figured.” She lay down on the sofa.

“What is she talking about?”

Derk had started to sidestep toward the phone on the wall. He stopped. “Cecil was gonna get a job at Grody’s. You know, the swine merchant?”

“One of his buddies set it up.” Velma sniffed and rubbed her nose. “They had a line on Old Man Grody.”

“Fuck.” Vernal rubbed his eyes. “Cecil was blackmailing a grocer?”

“Just to get a job!” Velma objected from the couch. “You know, on account of he can’t fight anymore. But it’d be okay. He’d do good work. ’Cuz if there’s one thing Cecil knew how to do, it was handle meat.”

Vernal made a face.

“We were gonna save some money, get a little house outside the city.” Velma closed her eyes.

Vernal wondered if the blackmail scheme hadn’t backfired somehow. He could see poor, dumb Cecil not knowing how to tell his junkie wife that their great plan for happiness was falling apart, that he’d fucked it up somehow. Vernal could see Cecil reaching for some liquid courage. He could see, after being dry for so long, the dam bursting.

Fucker.

Vernal lifted the extinguisher and sprayed Derk in one long stream. The scrawny dealer had been reaching for the phone and turned to swat at the foam. He tried to block it with his palms as best he could.

Vernal dropped the empty canister and cocked his wrist. Derk, dripping white suds, looked at the stinger.

“You know what this is?” Vernal asked.

Derk nodded. It jingled the metal in his ear.

“I want you to give your people a message. Understand?”

Derk nodded again.

“Tell them I’ll make an even trade for the key. They’ll hear from me tomorrow. Got it?”

Derk nodded a third time and Vernal walked to the door.

He stopped and took a deep breath through his chipped teeth. “I’m going away, Velma.”

“Okay,” she nodded, her eyes drifting open and closed.

“For good, I mean.”

Velma nodded again. It shook her hair and revealed the thinning spot on the top of her scalp. Hair loss was a side effect of Neverod abuse, along with weight gain and creeping, permanent illiteracy. And of course the burns. The drug was heat-activated but degraded fast. The best highs came by injecting the inactive form under the skin and then burning it with an electric lancet, sending the activated chemical into the blood stream. Lancets left only pinprick burns, which were easily hidden, and so they were popular with the well-to-do. Poor people defaced themselves with power tools, or stole the soldering iron from their missing daughters’ arts and crafts set.

“I’m not coming back,” Vernal clarified.

Velma didn’t say anything.

Some little gnat of a feeling, a maggot that had burrowed under the cockles of his heart, lifted its head and wanted Vernal to tell his sister what he knew, not about her family, but why he was leaving, where he was going, what was happening to her, the city, the planet, everything. Leaving her here was a death sentence. That was certain.

But how do you convince a nearly illiterate junkie of the end of the world?

Vernal knew she’d never leave, not as long as she had any hope for her daughters. But the truth wouldn’t be the last thing he left her with. Truth had never done anything but cause him trouble anyway.

Vernal swallowed the little gnat and sneered at Derk. The dealer would call his handlers the moment Vernal was out the door, and they would call Pimpernel. Vernal looked at his sister, half asleep and holding the cigarette with a two-inch ash ready to fall. At least it would be over soon. If the Traveler was right, everyone and everything had less than forty-eight hours.

And then it would all be gone.

Vernal walked into the hall and left his sister forever. As he trundled down the stairs, he could hear the clicks of the phone.

(NINE) A Fate Worse Than Death

There is a fate worse than death.

It starts simply enough with headaches, nausea, and vomiting, but soon the skin reddens and starts to itch before erupting into open lesions. Then come hair loss, dizziness, and cognitive impairment. Cancers erupt in every major organ, and a long, painful agony ensues as the body dissolves like a carcass soaked in acid. Depending on the level of radiation exposure, this could happen over a period of weeks, or mere days.

Early in his illness, Gilbert could manage brief periods of physical contact with others without making them irreversibly sick. But now, anyone in the same room with him for more than a few minutes died in less than a week. His latest tests showed that he killed rodents and house plants in a mere twelve hours.

Gilbert watched from behind tinted glass as the scar-faced man in the back of the limo opened the door and stepped onto the busy, neon-lined sidewalk. The street was bustling, and he was greeted by a small crowd of lingerie-clad mechanoids on the front steps of Kosi Nova’s Social Club. For the entire drive from the airport, where he had arrived in his own zeppelin, the scarred man had sat in the back being exposed to Gilbert through the thin glass. He greeted the women with open arms as music thumped from inside the club. Spotlights waved over the city. Cars cruised up and down the go-go quarter, their drivers hunting for the best good time. Neon blinked everywhere.

The limo pulled away under sun-bright lights and Gilbert smiled at the mechanoid driver, who ignored him. The metal man was immune to radiation and spoke not a word to the silent assassin next to him. The car stopped in a crowded underground garage, and Gilbert got his suit out of the trunk.

Marcelline appeared as he finished dressing. “How did it go?” Her voice echoed off the heavy concrete.

“That man is going to be dead in a few days.” Gilbert put his hood over his head.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Most of the time, you won’t know, and frankly it’s best not to ask, but since this is your first time, I’ll show you.” Marcelline walked toward a set of double doors. “He’s a pony boy.”

“A what?”

She didn’t stop, and Gilbert looked at the suited driver, who clicked with a mechanical tic as he shrugged. Gilbert scurried after her.

“Where are we going?”

Gilbert walked through the doors and up a vinyl-surfaced staircase. Marcelline punched a code into a keypad next to an imposing set of double doors. As they clicked open, Gilbert stared at the dressing room of Kosi’s backstage. It was filled with mirrors and racks of lingerie, sex toys, some birds and caged reptiles, a great deal of leather, drugs, alcohol, and carnival-like stage props of all kinds, some that reached to the high ceiling. Mechanoid women scurried about dressing, injecting their breasts with gel—or removing some to make them smaller—repairing imperfections in their pseudoflesh with a plasterlike paste, or changing it outright. Gilbert watched as one robotic woman stepped out of her skin like a dress and draped on another. She pulled the scalp taut over her blinking brain and became someone different. Gilbert had heard enough about skin jobs to know that each was custom made and very, very expensive. It fit perfectly. She was beautiful. Flawless.

Marcelline kept moving, and Gilbert had to scurry again. She led him up another dark staircase to an observation room. Three large parlors were visible through two-way mirrors on the right, left, and opposite walls. A circular, red velvet couch and a well-stocked valet were the only furniture. The carpet was so thick you could sleep on it. The walls were so thick that the bustle from the club abated as soon as the door closed. It was quiet.

“Have a seat, Mr. Tubers. No one can hear us in here.”

Gilbert looked to his right. A pink-hued palomino unicorn stood majestically in one of the lavish rooms. A glittering silk scarf hung from its ivory and lace ruffles around its hooves covered the manacles that chained it to the wall. A finely-embroidered flower-print robe was draped over its back.

Marcelline motioned to the beast. “What do you think?”

“It’s a beautiful animal. You don’t usually get to see them this close.” The unicorn was large and powerful. Its coat had a rainbow-tinted sheen. Gilbert looked at the robe. “Is that animal lingerie?”

“The man you rode with is a pony boy, a brony. He’s here to have sex with this unicorn.”

Gilbert made a face through his round visor.

Marcelline raised her eyebrow. “That’s ironic coming from a man of your habits. They’re graceful, majestic animals.”

“I don’t have sex with my collection.”

“Neither of them?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the point?”

Gilbert crossed his hands. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“You’re right.”

Gilbert sat down and looked at the stunning animal. “It doesn’t bother you at all?”

“Mr. Tubers,” Marcelline stepped forward. “I know someone who has killed more people than Kraxus, and who looks like a god himself doing it, and if I thought it would do any good, I’d throw myself naked at his feet in the hopes he’d take me. Nothing you say or do is going to shock me.” She looked at him with her one good eye.