Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling

by Meredith, Peter

  “I could do fifteen,” Cole said, pulling back his coat, showing off the 10mm Crown on his belt. The aluminum alloy winked silver in the low light. The gun was literally worth any three of the Red Dogs, and they stared as if they were looking at a diamond of the same size. They blinked back into the moment when Cole dropped his big hand down on the grip.

  The leader started to draw in a long breath, which would end with him going for his gun. Judging by the bulge beneath his brown corduroy jacket, Cole figured it was one of the ludicrous .44 caliber Eagle knock-offs that were all the rage. Because of its size, it wasn’t a weapon designed for a quick draw.

  “Maybe you should rethink this,” Cole advised. “I’d hate to waste a bullet killing you.”

  “There’s six of us,” the Dog answered, losing his accent in his attempt to sound tough.

  They were teens who probably hadn’t ever fired more than five rounds with their over-sized guns. The damned things were made of composite plastic and had a habit of cracking after a few shots. After thirty they could explode. To make matters worse, their eight-inch barrels were overly-light and with the rounds in the grip, the guns were completely unbalanced.

  Cole wondered if any of them could hit the broadside of a barn. “I’m not too worried,” he said. And he wasn’t. The kid’s right hand was frozen about a foot away from his body. When he tried to reach for his gun, it would be mechanically stiff and slow. His friend had been so cock-sure that he had walked up with his hands behind his back. He might as well be handcuffed.

  “You and your little puppy friend are the only ones I need to kill. Once you’re stretched out, the others’ll run inside crying for daddy.”

  “Maybe,” the Dog said, trying to sound tough. “Or maybe there are a whole mess of us and one of us will get you.”

  Cole glanced up at the building. Like so much of New York, its windows were bricked over in an attempt to keep out the acid fog, the fallout, and what the previous governor had called “heavy particulate airflows.” It was the PC way of saying industrial contamination that made the southern wind smell like metaled rot. When it came in thick, it turned the sky the color of an old bruise and had been known to asphyxiate infants in their cribs.

  “But you’ll still be dead,” Cole said, flicking his eyes back at the Dog. He was about to go on when they heard a sharp whistle from up the street. Two stoops up, a gaggle of money-honeys pulled their skirts lower as they scurried inside.

  “Taxmen,” one of the Red Dogs warned in a hissing whisper.

  The lead Dog pulled his coat tight around his meager chest, doing little to hide his gun as a patrol of four police officers came strolling up the block. Like all taxmen they were tall and strapping to begin with, but looked even bigger decked out in their body armor. Beneath the plates of grey metal, they wore urban camo, and in their hands, they carried the scaled-down Forino version of the old Colt M4. They looked more like soldiers than policemen.

  “We already paid our taxes, officer,” the lead Dog said, raising his hands. “We pay Manua every month, rain or shine.”

  “That’s Lieutenant Manua to you,” one of the officers shot back. “And those taxes only cover everyday activities. This doesn’t seem all that conventional. It looks to me like you boys were about to throw down right in the middle of the street. You know the governor frowns on a dozen people getting gunned down in broad daylight. And when he frowns on it, I frown…holy shit.”

  Cole grimaced at being recognized. He knew this officer all too well. “Bruce, it’s good to see you,” he lied.

  Sergeant Bruce Hamilton laughed. “Look fellas, it’s the White Knight himself, Cole Younger. How’s the back? Not bothering you too much, I hope.” Four years earlier, they had been on the same squad right up until Hamilton had “accidentally” shot him in the back.

  “Better than new. Look, I’d love to reminisce about old times…”

  Hamilton spoke over him, “You turning slag on me?” He pointed with his rifle at Cole’s tattoos. They were a cheap blue-green. The four on the left were stylized hammers; on the right were six skulls suggesting he was part of the “Sledge” gang. “If so, I can put you out of your misery. That last bullet was just a warning. We both know I could’ve killed you.”

  Cole didn’t have time for Hamilton and his hooked nose and thin greasy blond hair. With every minute Santino was plodding further out of reach. And yet this was the first time Cole had seen Hamilton in those four years. “You act like shooting a friend in the back is some kind of accomplishment. If you had taken me on, face to face, I could understand that cocky smile of yours, taxman.”

  At the word, Hamilton sneered. “Keep telling yourself that, Cole. I warned you. I told you it was going to happen if you didn’t play ball. It’s something I never understood about you. All you needed to do was take a little here and a little there, and maybe turn a blind eye every once in a while. If you had, you probably would’ve made lieutenant by now. Instead, you’re one of the little people.”

  He laughed aloud, but then something caught his eye. Stepping closer, he used his rifle to push back Cole’s trench coat. “And what’s this? I thought you knew that packing heat out on the street is illegal. Got a license?”

  There was no need to answer. One of the other police officers snatched the Crown while a third took his wallet. “Says here he’s a bounty hunter. His license is up to date.” The officer sounded disappointed. Bounty hunters held an odd position within society: not quite cop, not quite one of the little people that made up the masses. They couldn’t be “taxed” while on the job.

  “Ain’t no bounty going to cover this,” the other officer said, sighting down the length of the Crown, carelessly pointing it at a young woman who was hurrying by holding her child’s hand in a crushing grip.

  No normal bounty would ever cover the cost of the gun. So far, Cole’s highest bounty had been fifty dollars for bringing in a serial rapist. The Dead-eyes were another story altogether, one that he couldn’t ever mention.

  The fact that they were in the city at all was deemed classified. If he mentioned them even in a drunken ramble, he would be liquidated. His body would be dissolved in a vat of acid and his name expunged from every record in the city. Each new recruit was given the same speech, the same warning, and had to watch the same video of some idiot who had talked. He had been lowered into the vat slowly, toes first. The grainy video ran for twenty-nine excruciating minutes.

  “Some bounties pay better than others,” Cole said, holding his hand out for the gun. “I doubt I’ll get rich, but it’s honest work, unlike what I used to do.” The officer had been about to hand over the pistol, but stopped at the jab.

  Hamilton laughed and slapped Cole on the back with stinging force. “As always, Cole, you’re a damn hoot. That mouth of yours is going to get you killed some day, and hell, that day might just be today.” He nodded to the other officers to give him back his belongings. As Cole holstered the Crown, Hamilton pointed up at the tenement. “Is your bounty up there? If so, have at it. You know I’d love to help you out but whoa, look at the time. Me and the boys are on our mandated break.”

  The gang of Red Dogs backed up a few steps suddenly looking uncomfortable and confused, not knowing whether they were about to be attacked or they were expected to attack a man with an entire squad of policemen watching.

  Cole solved the problem for them. “Boys,” he said with a nod to them, and then took off at a loping run. Behind him, Hamilton and his men shouted a few insults. Cole didn’t care what they said. They were criminals themselves. It’s what happened when no one policed the police.

  Snagging Dead-eyes was far more important and far more honest—just as long as he didn’t kill a human in the process.

  After two blocks, the rain began to come down harder than before. It was a cold rain and tasted like dirty pennies. That was usually a bad sign. It meant it was coming in from the west. Cole slid his hood from the back of his coat and pulled it down in what was
almost a useless gesture. A hood wasn’t going to do jack if he was showering in radioactive water. “The sirens aren’t going off,” he told himself, and kept going, slowing down at every side street and alley he came to. If Santino took any one of them, he could disappear forever.

  It was only after another couple of blocks that Cole realized where Santino was going. He was going home. For the last week, Santino had been hiding out in a flophouse in the village, but like so many criminals before him, he was drawn to the scene of his crime.

  Santino’s apartment was seven blocks away and Cole figured he could be there in minutes, only just then the klaxons started to sound.

  “Shit!” he hissed. The klaxons were far worse than the sirens. It meant a Cat-2 radioactive cloud was coming in. “Or it’s already here.” The sensors set up on the Jersey side of the Hudson were always breaking down; the smart thing to do was to get inside as fast as he could. “But when am I ever smart,” he muttered, pulling out a small emergency mask. He slapped it on and kept running straight down the street, which had gone from annoyingly crowded to deserted in seconds. Even the few taxi cabs that sometimes still prowled the streets were nowhere in sight.

  It was like he was the last person left in the city. It was unnerving, but at least the empty streets made sprinting easier, and he ran like his life depended on it. By the time he made it to the building he was reeling from the run and from trying to suck air in through the mask.

  Yanking it off, he laid it over the rail of the stairs, and then stood half-bent, gasping and staring around. The interior of the building was cleaner than most and as dim as all of them. Only the vamps could afford to properly light a stairwell or to run an elevator.

  Santino lived on the seventh floor; a long climb after the run. Cole sucked in a deep breath and started up. His eyes had yet to get used to the dark and he kicked something after only the fourth step; and at eye level was another small lump. Although his mind immediately thought: trash, he hesitated. Trash was usually kicked to the side and these two objects were in the center of the staircase.

  The first was a single high-heeled shoe, a spray of white plastic beads gleamed dully up at him from the toe. The other item was a purse. It hadn’t been discarded, it had been dropped. He was just fishing the wallet from it, when he heard a thud, a scraping noise and a muffled shout. All of this came from below him.

  Like practically every building, its foundation extended deep into the earth. There would be basements and subbasements. Sometimes there were proper tunnels that led to the subways. Other times there were hand-dug warrens and dens where squatting slags lived and died like roaches. They were dangerous places and frequently slumlords chose to brick off a shaft rather than trying to evict the poor creatures. It was efficient, but the smell of their rotting bodies would linger for months.

  Cole did not relish the idea of going down to look and tried to tell himself that the thud and the dropped purse weren’t necessarily connected. Only he knew better. Dead-eyes were vermin. They liked the dark, and they especially liked to feed in the dark.

  Santino had probably surprised the woman who owned the purse. Caught alone, she would have been easy prey and maybe the temptation had been too much for him.

  “Son of a bitch,” Cole whispered, easing the Crown from its holster, and slipping down the stairwell, hurrying as fast as he dared. Syn-ope wasn’t the only thing Santino might have picked up at the Mandarin Joint. Mandarins would sell a person anything as long as the price was right. Santino might be armed to the teeth.

  The level below the street was made up of more apartments. Sub-gardens they were called, and Cole couldn’t stand them. It was like living in a prison. The air in them never moved.

  The next level down was where the darkness took on a physical quality. It sucked in around him. Cole carried a slide-light for the Crown and clicked it in place beneath the barrel. It gave off a timid light which the darkness greedily ate up after only a few yards. Still, it was enough to show him that the level had been designed for storage and at one time it had been filled with metal cages. The metal had been sold for scrap decades before and all that remained were rectangular rust outlines on the dusty floor.

  Within the dust was a confusion of tracks. The shoeless prints stood out to Cole. They seemed so small, as if a child had been taken and not a woman.

  Because the darkness was so thick, the subbasement had an endless quality to it and Cole suddenly felt the need to run to catch up with Santino and his victim. He raced along in their tracks and came up on them in a back corner, where they grappled together on a low mound just in front of a hand-dug tunnel that sloped away into an even deeper darkness.

  “Let her go!” Cole bellowed.

  Santino was a big man, almost as big as Cole, which made it a wonder that the woman hadn’t already been dragged down into the hole. It was hard to describe her since all Cole saw of her was a wild mane of blonde hair whipping about as she fought like mad, clinging desperately to a gun they were both holding.

  “I said drop it! I’ll shoot if…”

  Suddenly, Santino was flying at Cole with outstretched arms, his hands going for Cole’s throat. With no idea where the woman was, Cole couldn’t risk shooting. Instead, he threw himself backward, twisting his torso at the same time, so Santino passed over him, his nails scraping over Cole’s poly-leather coat. They both fell and then got to their knees at the same time.

  “Wait!” Santino hissed, holding out a hand that was dripping with black blood.

  Seeing the blood was all the proof Cole needed. He fired twice from a distance of three feet, sending Santino’s head back with such force that his neck broke. One shot struck just off the center line of his forehead and the next took out one of his dark eyes.

  Cole wasn’t taking any chances. In his line of work, he could never afford to take chances. He got to his feet and came to stand over the man and pumped two more into his head.

  “That’ll be ten-thousand dollars, please,” he said, grinning. With a happy sigh, he spun his flashlight around at the darkened subbasement. “Ma’am? Are you okay? Hello?” She wasn’t just gone. She was infected and gone. “Sad,” Cole muttered.

  He wasn’t really sad. It was hard to be sad when he had just bagged a Dead-eye and had another on the hook. He’d let her stew in her juices for a day or two and then swing by and break the bad news. No, that ain’t the flu you got, girly. Sorry, but I got to pop you.

  Chapter 3

  The free coffee wasn’t worth the wait. The coffee beans were synthetic, meaning they weren’t really beans at all, and the brew only tasted vaguely like coffee. Overall, there was more of a tinny, bleach flavor and Cole made a face every time he took a sip.

  The brown fluid kept him awake and that’s all that mattered. He needed to babysit his bounties because things had a way of happening when the government was involved. Bodies got misplaced, paperwork was lost, and checks could come back missing a zero or two. He had spent his entire adult life working for the city government and there was always a mistake and never one in his favor.

  For the tenth time that night, he glanced over his report, making sure the wording was correct. It was important that the woman had: “…entered the building because of the alarm warning.”

  Hunters were supposed to keep to their own territories, however the big bosses cared little for nuance as long as the job got done. If word got out that the woman in his report lived in the building, Cole would have his hands full keeping the others away. That’s why he added: “Dropped purse appeared fancy, with steel or silver clasp.”

  In the dark, he hadn’t noticed any clasp and guessed that it had been a button job. This area had been a middle-class neighborhood and the women couldn’t afford metal clasps or even faux leather. He paused, trying to remember the feel of the purse when he’d picked it up. It had been heavier than expected and maybe a bit larger than average. But was it faux leather?

  “Don’t matter,” he muttered, as he wrote i
n: “Dropped faux-leather purse appeared fancy…”

  He was just thinking about embellishing the shoes when his boss came in looking more haggard than usual. This was saying something since he always looked haggard. Cole wondered, and not for the first time, if he had slipped out of his mom’s puss tired and scraggy with little baby jowls and a pinched angry look. Right away, Cole noticed that he wasn’t carrying one of the green envelopes that always held his check.

  “What gives?”

  “You fucked up, Cole. Get in here.”

  Lieutenant Joshua Lloyd’s office was in a constant state of dishevelment. His desk creaked under a mound of reports, while along the wall, the drawers of his four filing cabinets were so stuffed with files that none of them could close. Even the lone couch across from his desk was upholstered in paper a foot deep. When Lloyd slipped behind his desk, he seemed to meld into the mess.

  The only chair in the room, besides the one under Lloyd’s wide rump, held another stack of papers, that were topped by an ancient Air-o-lux box fan that was older than Cole and Lloyd put together. It was held together by tape and wire.

  Cole didn’t want to sit. “I didn’t fuck nothin’ up. It’s not my fault the skirt took off. And I don’t blame her either. And yes, I went after her, but she went out in a Cat-2 for fuck’s sake. You don’t pay me enough to run out in the middle of a Cat-2.”

  “The girl isn’t the problem. It’s Santino.” Out of habit, he glanced toward his door to make sure it was shut. “He wasn’t a Dead-eye.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Of course, he was. I saw the black blood, Lloyd.”

  “It was dark. You said so yourself. Blood looks black in the dark.”

  “It wasn’t dark when the recovery team got there.” Though it had been a two-hour wait and congealed blood did darken over time… “No, it was black. I saw it. Damn it, Lloyd! What kind of shit is this? I want to talk to the recovery team. I want to see their damned notes.”