Fearless Genre Warriors

by Steve Lockley

  ‘Then like my dreams, they fade and die…’

  The gramophone was on the chart table, beside a speaking tube, which was in the hand of Second Lieutenant Ballard. He was lying face down across the table, his head was a ruin, haloed by a diffuse cloud of blood that had obliterated the carefully plotted courses through the tropospheric currents.

  Another tendril of aether scourged the hull, Persephone lurched. The gramophone needle bounced on the disc. Helen stuttered, drawing Anders attention. When his gaze fell upon me, he smiled.

  ‘Fade and die, and die, and die, and die…’

  ‘I was expecting a god, not a hull monkey.’ He flourished the gun. ‘I should have known one of you lot would survive. Tenacious breed, what?’ His tone was light, conversational. Like Helen, he seemed unmoved by the carnage he had wrought. A scream of tearing metal paused the conversation as an aileron was torn loose from the mast array and sent spinning towards the Hades. I watched the blade fall towards the Hades, wreathed in the ghost fire of aether. It was beautiful, mesmerizing. Persephone groaned.

  ‘Fortune’s always hiding, I’ve looked everywhere…’ I pointed the riveter at Anders it was not a precision weapon, but with over fifty bolts still in the cartridge I was sure I could bring him to account. Shimmering threads of aether crawled over my boots. The way they twitched and flickered made them seem as though they were alive and seeking a way inside my suit, but for some reason, they did not trouble Anders.

  ‘What have you done, sir?’ I asked. My voice was distorted by the helmet’s vocophone. It sounded metallic and alien to my ears.

  ‘None of your damn business, rating—What’s your name?’

  ‘Cho, sir. Rating First Class Cho.’

  He sneered. ‘First Class, eh? How proud you must be.’ His smile slackened, fell into the deep creases of his face. ‘What does it matter now? She’s not here.’ He gestured at Herse with the revolver. ‘I thought that after such worthy sacrifices, they would return her to me— cold and dead, perhaps, but at least give her back.’

  While we stood there, the madman and me, more strands of aether unspooled from the web and attached themselves to the ship.

  ‘Melissa. My beautiful Melissa.’ Anders voice was thick with emotion; his eyes lit by tears. ‘I lost her in the storm of ’22. I thought, I thought, that if the offerings were great enough, Hades might give her back.’

  It was common knowledge that First Lieutenant Perry Anders was a widower, and that his wife had been lost in the flow, but that was all. Ratings didn’t mix with officers, particularly those like Anders who had a reputation for being overly fond of harsh punishment for minor infractions. If only someone had the wit to spot that he was unhinged before this calamity. I watched him closely, fearful of what he might do next and unsure if I could kill him to save my skin. I wondered briefly if he could see my fear and indecision through the ruby sheen of my goggles.

  ‘You must change our course, sir.’ I tried to sound determined, but fear turned a command into a request. Whatever the impression I gave, Anders face remained a mask of indifference. I tried again. ‘No need to lose the ship, no need to send us both to Hades.’ I edged around the map table, trying to turn his back to the bulkhead instead of the fragile window. I was almost certain that the rivets wouldn’t be able to penetrate the many layers of glass, but not sure enough to risk a shot.

  ‘Change course, and miss all this?’ Anders flung his arms wide. ‘D’you have any idea how much time I wasted, until the dreams finally made sense? Or how long it took me to get us here?’ He frowned. ‘You have no idea how hard it was to work out the pattern. How long it took to cut and to stretch; to perfectly model the Hades Web with McAllister’s skin?’

  I thrust aside the image of Mac’s grinning face and skirted around another corner of the table. ‘I cannot say that I do, no, sir.’ I tightened my grip on the riveter. ‘Why Mac?’

  He gave me a knowing smile. ‘In my dreams, my visions, if you like, the gods demanded the heart of a lion if I was to have a chance of winning back my Melissa. Who better then, than McAllister? A Man who served with distinction in the 1st Sirius Lancers.’ Anders straightened up, ran a bloodstained hand through his thinning hair. ‘I’m sure if he’d understood the reason for his sacrifice he would have been proud to have been chosen, nay— honoured.’

  ‘No I wouldn’t, you Sassenach bastard,’ Mac whispered in my ear. I did not flinch.

  There was another scream of tortured metal as the main mast was torn from Persephone and dragged into the Hades. Vaporous flames of aether licked along the deck, as though hunting for any last crumb of life and warmth that might yet linger. Ander’s slumped, his smile vanished. He turned towards the window which was now filled with the light of the Hades. The pale fire of the Web danced in his eyes. ‘Truly, those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. Goodbye, Rating Cho, and good luck.’

  Before I could so much as wish him well, Anders put the barrel of the gun in his mouth and blew his brains out. The gramophone needle jumped.

  ‘I’m forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air, the air, the air…’

  Captain Herse fell against me as I reached for the loose wheel and tried to bring the ship hard to starboard. The engines hammered their reluctance through the decks as I fought to wrench Persephone free of the Hades’ grasp.

  ‘Don’t forget the emergency flare,’ Mac said.

  I reached across the wheel, smashed the protective glass covering the emergency flare release, and pulled the lever. I didn’t see the rocket itself, just a scimitar of light, blaze across the curve of the window. The wheel tore itself from my grasp and began to spin. I wedged the rivet gun between the spokes. It slammed against the deck, locking the wheel. Persephone slewed to starboard. The engines screamed, I screamed. The lights on my oxygen tank winkled out.

  My muscles burned from the effort of turning the wheel. I collapsed exhausted beside Captain Herse. Aether had cooled, and collected in her eyes, as the ship rolled, her head fell forward. The aether spilled down her cheeks leaving tracks of molten silver. I closed my eyes and tried to find the place between waking and sleeping as the hull began to buckle under the strain of fighting the Web.

  The ship juddered, the hull shook, followed by three loud bangs. Though I doubted my sanity, I knew the sound of grapples locking onto the hull. Persephone’s descent into hell began to slow. The prow lifted, stars blurred to streaks as we were swung about. I clung onto the wheel as the Hades Web rolled beneath the window, and almost wept as the prowling tendrils of aether vanished from the bridge.

  Hungry for breath, I unlocked the clasp on my helmet and tore it from my head. The world turned from scarlet to blue, the air tasted of blood and smelled of burned wiring. I drank deeply as I pulled myself up and scanned the sky. I couldn’t see my saviour because it was towing us, but I did see a Fury Class warship roar out of the Acheron Flow under full sail.

  It could be nothing more than a coincidence, but when the warship sailed across our bow I saw the brass nameplate, I thanked god and all her angels that HMS Medusa had chosen today to gather aether from the Hades. I cheered as the huge vessel unfurled its nets and severed the writhing tendrils spanning the void, cutting the ties that bound Persephone. As the nets closed, I saw the Hades swell, as though gathering itself to strike, but the warship was already bringing its guns to bear. For a second, I found myself staring into the deep fovea of one of the Medusa’s ionic cannons as it swivelled towards the nebula.

  ‘By the time you see the light, it’s too late,’ Mac whispered.

  ‘Pretty bubbles in the air—’

  The air sang as Medusa charged her cannon. I heeded Mac’s warning and turned my face away from the window. The unseen ship that had locked grapples onto Persephone began to tow us back, away from danger. Already tested beyond their limits, Persephone’s engines finally ground to a shuddering st
op. I closed my eyes, felt tears burn my cheeks. Medusa’s cannons flared, scouring darkness from the void.

  Train Tracks

  W. P. Johnson

  From: Weird Noir

  The thing that I always ask guys is if they can get me glow. Scribbled in my father’s notebook:

  glow, aka, snot, rubber, soul, bright light. Knock offs include deadlights and slag (ecstasy cut with meth emulsified with gelatin and made into a hard jelly).

  I’m not saying I won’t go home with someone if all they got is slag. But if they can get glow, I’ll do anything.

  Someone once told me that a pretty girl is never homeless. In the city of Philadelphia, the same goes for a pretty boy. Guys take me back to their place, tell me I can stay the night but I have to leave before morning. When I’m taking a shower they rummage through my bag and start asking questions about my father’s notebooks and the worm drawings. They want to know why I still carry around a cassette player when an IPod can hold ten thousand songs.

  Then they find the .38 and they just want to know when I’m leaving.

  Normal sex isn’t as good after you’ve had it on glow, even if it’s a shitty batch and it’s with someone you don’t want to have sex with. A good batch makes me feel young, like I’m fifteen and having my first orgasm. It makes me so high I don’t care who got hurt making the stuff.

  Waking up, sober, I know it’s not what I’m looking for. It’s not nearly as strong as the glow I smoked when I was fifteen.

  I keep looking. My father’s notebook tells me where the warehouses are in South Philadelphia, the names of dealers and feeders, the descriptions of vehicles and cook rooms. I just need a key, someone lower on the food chain that can get me inside.

  In Philadelphia, some guy with expensive tattoos and a Rolling Stones shirt picks me up at a bar after last call and says he knows someone that can get anything, so I tell him that I want glow and that I want it to be the strongest glow he can get, the kind of stuff that I can feel from my head down to my toes.

  We smoke it at his place and it’s average at best. The guy gets off and asks if I want to get some pizza from Lorenzo’s on South Street cause he’s still wired and can’t sleep. He brings back an eight ball of coke instead and we snort the whole thing in an hour. He asks me if I remember what my first time doing glow was like and I’m so cranked that I tell him everything, tell him who my father is, what the worm drawings are, what happened to Derrick, why I’m in Philadelphia. I talk until we’re both sober and tired and my jaw is too sore and my mouth is too dry to kiss.

  When the sun rises, I put my clothes on and don’t worry about him following me.

  Then it’s just another day in the city.

  Derrick was the first boy I ever got stoned with. He was a dealer, just dime bags, joints, sometimes acid when it was around. On the first day of school this fourteen year old girl got kidnapped right outside the bus stop so everyone had to pair up and we were put together at random. We started walking home together on the train tracks. There were no trespassing signs everywhere but the locals hunted when it was nice out. The air was still thick with the last wave of mosquitos and the thunderclap of a shotgun going off would toss a bucket of birds into the open sky. We’d always stop in our tracks, thinking somehow the path of buckshot was rushing past us like a kid on his dirt bike.

  ‘Your dad ever let you shoot his gun?’

  ‘We shoot clay pigeons sometimes,’ I said. ‘Scared me at first, but now I’m really good at it.’

  ‘Cool,’ he said. We stopped at a clearing between Logan Road and Kimble Drive and he left the tracks. Behind some trees was a patch of marijuana he had been growing.

  ‘Ever smoke,’ he asked.

  ‘No. I mean… cigarettes, but not pot.’

  ‘Wanna try it?’ He was already picking some leaves off. ‘It’s better dry but I already sold all my stuff to Josh.’

  ‘Okay.’ A butterfly banged around in my stomach and I skipped off the tracks.

  ‘I think Josh might be cutting my weed with catnip and selling it again, but whatever.’ He ground up the leaves between his thumb and forefinger and packed it in a small glass pipe. Whispers of smoke crawled out from the edges as he ran a lighter over it. After taking a hit, he passed the pipe to me.

  ‘Suck it… but not too hard,’ he said, already giggling.

  ‘You’re good at sucking, right?’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said, grinning. I puckered my lips like I was going to whistle and slurped the stringy noodles of smoke.

  ‘Hold your breath,’ he wheezed.

  I nodded, tonguing the back of my burned throat. He took the pipe and sucked in more smoke, making the embers glow. After a minute, I let the smoke go out in one giant exhale, raking my burnt throat with cindering nails. A fit of coughing choked me and I almost puked.

  He nodded, patted me on the back as I spit up. The smoke slowly left his lips and he gave a couple of small coughs.

  ‘Gotta cough if you want to get off,’ he said, clearing his throat.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, choking on air. We sat down and I felt nothing at first. Then time seemed to stop for a moment and random ideas fluttered by, brushing my thoughts for a moment only to leave just as quick.

  ‘This is weird,’ I said, still coughing.

  ‘Just go with it.’

  We sat there and laughed at nothing for an hour. More gunshots rang through the dense forest and we joked that they were God’s farts. Another gunshot, another thunderous fart. My stomach hurt from laughing. We walked the rest of the way home, his arm slung over my shoulder at some point. When we reached Elkview Road, he let me go without a word and crossed the trestle to get to Walnut where his neighbourhood was.

  I had never crossed the trestle before. I kept thinking of Stand by Me and would get scared at the thought of having to jump off the side. The day after Derrick disappeared, I smoked his pot alone and walked the full distance of the tracks, not wanting to go home. I found his body at the foot of the hill where the river slid under the trestle. The back of his head looked collapsed, this flesh scoop of melted ice cream with wisps of hair. Several feet beside him was what looked like the molted skin of a gigantic snake, speckled with glowing slime.

  No matter how many drugs I do, I can’t forget his body.

  At a swingers club in Philadelphia, this couple wants to take me home. A girl with black dyed hair, giant tits. A guy with a neatly trimmed beard and a cowboy hat. They remind me of this couple I knew back home and I start to think that when I get to their place, they’ll ask me to put a dog collar on and play all sorts of head games, leave me tied up on their bed with a ball gag.

  For once I’m just hungry and tired, not into scoring. Still, when we get there and I ask him if he has anything to eat he takes out a bag of coke and has his girl do a line off his cock, then asks me to do the same. I tell him no and he starts to get angry, asks me why I even came home with them in the first place if I didn’t want to party. I get on all fours and blow the stuff off his hard on like a bunch of birthday candles. Minutes later I’m shoved outside and the door is locked behind me. My stomach rumbles.

  ‘Whatever asshole,’ I yell. I take out a bottle of wine that I managed to slip into my bag, drinking it as I wander around the neighborhood. There’s a missing persons poster on every telephone poll on their block, some fourteen year old girl. She’s been missing for five years but the poster looks fresh.

  Around the corner there’s an alley that isn’t filthy and I sit down and drink the wine. A few cars pass me by without stopping, then one slows down, a red Toyota Camry, and a couple of guys stare at me for a long time, talking to each other. The alley light casts another decade on my face and after a few minutes they speed off, disinterested. I squint to read the license plate.

  My father’s notes: 2001 red Toyota Camry.

  Pennsylvania plates, DW62L.


  It’s a match. I’m getting closer.

  The rest of the wine goes quickly and I fall asleep on a bag of dirty clothes, dreaming of walking the train tracks home. Every time I reach the trestle in my dreams I stop, knowing that my friend is down there, knowing that I will never be able to forget the things that wait for me.

  The next day at school, Derrick brought me a mix tape. It was all over the place with songs by Fugazi, Bad Brains, Deftones. It started with Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Bedazzled’ and ended with a Tool song. The tape was labeled with the words Train Tracks.

  ‘Doing anything Friday?’ he asked.

  Looking over the tape, I couldn’t help but grin.

  ‘No. What’s going on?’

  The party was at Mike Bruno’s house. Mike sold coke so people were always coming and going. He had a bunch of weird pets, like rats, snakes and tarantulas. He always joked that he fed all his victims to the rats and the snakes. It made me laugh until I saw the bullet holes in his living room. There were two guys from Philly that wouldn’t stop watching me and Derrick. Every time they looked over at us I took another drink.

  This Sophomore Tracy Sampson was fucking Mike and everyone at school started calling her Tracy Trampson. One night Mike and his wife were at a bar in town with Tracy on a dog leash and she couldn’t say or do anything without their permission. She was at the party and she kept going up to the bedroom and coming back wide eyed, smelling like burnt rubber. At one point she walked up to me and said, ‘You want to fuck me don’t you?’

  I said nothing and blushed, taking another drink of cheap wine. Tracy was wearing a wife beater and short shorts. She unzipped and showed Derrick and I that she wasn’t wearing any panties.