King Bullet

by Richard Kadrey

  I take a quick pass through Hollywood, but without tourists and the theaters closed, it’s Death Valley with neon. On a hunch I head for some of the more, let’s say, livelier parts of the city. Places with junkies looking for a fix, pickpockets looking to get lucky, and thieves in the act or after it, looking to spend some of their filthy lucre. And, yes, even tourists. Midwest dummies who booked their trips before the shit tsunami hit, and who would rather face the wrath of God than lose the deposit on their hotel rooms.

  I hit downtown first. Then Chinatown. Then Hyde Park and, finally, I go all the way out to Venice Beach, but don’t see a single untoward act. Not even a goddamn jaywalker.

  Please, Mr. Muninn, if you’re up there and still in business, send me a carjacking or a Shoggot necromancer playing three-card monte for people’s souls. After all these miles I’ll even take drunks shoplifting beer at a corner bodega. Just don’t send me home revved up and looking for trouble with nothing to show for it but funny looks from solid citizens because I’m wearing She-Ra.

  But no. Muninn doesn’t come through with even a single tagger. After a couple of hours, I’m so frustrated I’m tempted to beat myself up and call it a night. I mean, if King Bullet has been cherry-picking the best and brightest from gangs all over town, where are they? They must have a hangout somewhere in L.A., but fuck me if I have a clue where.

  I’m pretty much ready to give up and head back to Janet’s when I decide to make one final stop—Skid Row. It’s a sad place. Over the years, and depending on the mood of whatever mayor or police chief was in power, the city has ignored the place, tried to clean it up, or, more recently, just used it as a dumping ground for the homeless and mental patients no one wants to deal with. I suppose it’s like any other skid row in any other big city, but this one has been almost cleaned out by the virus. It seems to me that a fucked-up neighborhood like that might be just the kind of real estate brain-dead Shoggots would enjoy.

  I make a circuit around the perimeter of Skid Row, turn inside on South Central Avenue, and roll up and down the maze of largely empty streets. Even the cars are gone. Stolen or hauled away by the city for unpaid fines by owners who are probably long dead. People have been dumping trash and other junk there, so the whole neighborhood is like a landfill and I have to dodge piles of plastic bags and broken furniture overflowing from the sidewalk into the street. A small homeless encampment is spread out along San Pedro Street, but there’s a body sprawled halfway out of one tent, so I don’t think anyone is home.

  But near the corner of Fifth Street and Crocker, I get lucky. On one side of the street is an old clothing warehouse and on the other is an appliance repair shop that hasn’t seen the light of day since zoot suits. Between them, some poor slob is getting worked over by two guys with what look like a baseball bat and a chain. That’s heavy firepower for a mugging, but not for a couple of Shoggots out for a night on the town. The guy on the ground is definitely hurt. He isn’t even moving anymore.

  I kill the engine and park the Hog around the corner on Towne Avenue. Creep back to Fifth and Crocker behind mile-high piles of garbage, dodging rats and the occasional half-eaten corpse they haven’t finished with.

  I stick to the shadow of the warehouse, and when I get near enough to the beating, I take out the na’at, extend it seven or eight feet, and use it like a sword, stabbing it into Chain Guy’s back hard enough that it comes out his belly. Bat Boy doesn’t notice until his pal falls on his face, trying to hold his guts in. He looks around, but by then I’m back in the shadow of the warehouse. I twist the na’at’s grip, and it loosens from a rigid sword and turns into a whip. I swing it over my head a couple times, advancing on Bat Boy. The whip wraps around the head of the bat, so I’m able to snatch it out of his hand. Another couple of steps and I get the whip around his throat. With one good pull, I jerk Bat Boy off his feet so he falls and cracks his head on the dirty street. Retracting the na’at, I run to the victim on the ground and flip him over.

  It’s a mannequin. I look back at the clothing warehouse and spot at least ten more mannequins in the street, all smashed to pieces. What the hell are these two idiots doing out here murdering dressing dummies?

  I go to Bat Boy and turn him over. From the tattoos on his hands and chest it looks like he’s in one of a handful of Eastern Bloc gangs. Hit men and human traffickers mostly. Chain Guy has similar ink. Fuck them both. They weren’t killing anybody tonight, but I won’t shed any tears for either of them. But what the hell were they doing all the way out here?

  Maybe this is all they have left. They both stink of booze and their eyes are all pupil from the ton of meth they’ve been smoking. Did King Bullet and his crazies chase them out of their old territory so that they had to hide in No Man’s Land and take out their frustration on some innocent prom dress dummies? Chain Guy is extremely dead, so I leave him in the street, but Bat Boy has some life in him. I’m going to want some answers, so I drag his carcass farther down the block into the light. I bark some healing hoodoo at him to try to close the gash in his scalp. I don’t need him dying on me until I get to question him.

  Soon, his eyes flutter open. He stares at the sky for a few seconds, trying to get his brain moving again. So I start with the easy stuff first.

  “Who are you?” I say.

  Before he can answer, we both look over at the clothing warehouse. There’s a flickering light behind the windows on the ground floor. A fire. And it’s spreading fast. I pull Bat Boy to his feet so I can walk him back to the Hog and away from the flames.

  That’s when the explosion hits us.

  Bat Boy goes flying through the front window of the appliance repair shop and I’m blown the other way onto a three-legged sofa that stinks of mildew and rat piss. Flaming debris covers the street. Piles of burning clothes and mannequin heads and arms. But the explosions keep going, high over our heads. Red. Green. Silver. Purple. Fuck me. It’s a fireworks display.

  Roman candles and bottle rockets bounce off my arms and head as I dive for cover. The clothes were just a front. The warehouse was really an illegal fireworks factory. And about a million dollars’ worth of inventory is going off all at once. Buildings are burning all around me and Bat Boy. Did one of these shitheads drop a match or a lighter in the warehouse when they were stealing mannequins? Looking back at the place one more time, I realize that it’s unlikely either of these two did anything. On one intact wall of the warehouse someone has painted a skull with a crown over its head. This was one of King Bullet’s parties. Before I can figure out why he’d want to set off a Skid Row Fourth of July I hear a siren and spot an ambulance heading this way. I still want some answers from Bat Boy, so I flag it down. Let them take him away and I’ll question him in the hospital.

  A couple of masked EMTs jump out of the back of the ambulance and I yell, “In there,” pointing to the appliance repair shop. They haul a gurney inside and in no time at all, they wheel Bat Boy into the street. The gurney folds up as they shove it into the ambulance. I go over to find out which emergency room they’re taking him to, but realize he’s not going anywhere. Inside, Shoggot EMTs are having a grand old time working over Bat Boy with hammers and knives while singing their creepy little “Rum-tiddley-um-tum-tay” song.

  I start to pull them off when I hear something roar from behind me. I turn and there’s another Shoggot with a chainsaw. He’s round and, along with the scars, has a big walrus mustache like the rich guy from the Monopoly game. I back away from the ambulance. Sorry, Bat Boy. I have my own skin to worry about.

  Wannabe Leatherface thrusts the rotating blade at me. Swings it over his head while singing the Shoggot ditty, then charges me. I don’t like chainsaws. I don’t like rotating blades of any kind. They remind me too much of the House of Knives Downtown. So I start for the na’at, which should be enough to take on Leatherface, but then say fuck it and manifest my Gladius. The burning blade slices through the chainsaw like it isn’t even there. As the motor sputters out, I kick Leatherface i
n the gut, doubling him over. Bent and wheezing for air, he’s easy to drag into a shadow.

  We come out by Johnny Ramone’s gravesite in Hollywood Forever cemetery. A four-foot bronze statue of Johnny in full rock-star guitar-playing position sits on a stone pedestal. It’s a weird sight in daylight, but at night there’s something slightly malevolent about the thing. As if Johnny, who was a stone-cold prick when he was alive, might decide to haul off and lobotomize you with his bronze Mosrite guitar.

  The quick trip across town seems to have had an effect on Leatherface. He falls onto the manicured green lawn and looks around. My first impulse was to beat him to death and leave him up there on Johnny as a warning to the other Shoggots to back off. But seeing him scrabbling around in the dark, I get a better idea.

  From flat on his back, he looks up at me and says, “We’ll cut you into giblets and eat you for dinner.” When he tries to get to his feet, I tear off his surgical mask and slap him hard enough that he falls back on his ass. Stick a finger in his face and say, “Play nice.”

  He looks puzzled. I don’t think anyone has tried to talk to him in a long time, because he seems genuinely confused by the concept.

  Finally, he says, “Who are you?”

  I say, “No one important. Who are you?”

  He has to think about it for a few seconds. Sort through a lot of mental detritus before he comes up with something. No, this guy hasn’t chatted in a long time.

  “Billy?” he says. “Billy Boop.”

  I look at him trying to figure out what the name means. The only Billy Boop I ever heard of was a cartoon character from the thirties.

  “Are you Betty’s little brother?” I say.

  He sits up when I say it.

  “You know her?”

  Yeah. This guy thinks he’s celluloid and nothing more.

  “I’ve seen all her movies.”

  “Me too,” he says. “Why did you kidnap me?”

  “I wanted to talk and you didn’t seem interested with that chainsaw in your hand.”

  “I guess not. But you hurt me.”

  He whines like a child. I’m going to have to take it slow with little Billy here.

  “I’m sorry. But I was just anxious to talk to a Shoggot in the flesh.”

  “The flesh,” he says and laughs an idiot’s laugh.

  I kneel down next to him.

  “Do you know King Bullet?”

  Billy shakes his head. Points between my eyes and says, “King Bullet knows you.”

  Damn, I hate these crazies.

  “Who is he?”

  That’s another puzzler. Billy stares at the blank sky. Finally, “Father. Brother. The Devil. He is the bang and we are the bullet that blasts a hole in the world.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Everything,” he says and giggles. “The city is nearly ours. The children of the Devil and one true Eve. The plague will cleanse the streets. Then the world.”

  More Shoggot delusions. This guy swallowed all the Kool-Aid.

  “How did the father call you? Why?”

  Billy makes a sour face.

  “I was a Mad Motherfucker. Outfit from Santa Ana. Then worked for the Russians. My whole crew. We had power, but we were nothing. Dealt drugs. Hits for pocket change. Endless war with the Bloods, Norteños, the Angels. King Bullet changed all that. He holds out his hand, offers family and enlightenment.”

  Billy holds out his hand like Jesus himself offering me a cookie.

  I say, “What happens to the people who don’t want Nirvana?”

  Billy puts a finger gun to his temple and makes like he’s pulled the trigger.

  “Bang.”

  I grin at him. I want whatever this loon has in his head.

  “When the King pulls the gangs together, what does he give you?”

  “Purpose. Vision,” he says firmly.

  “What if I want to join up?”

  He turns his head slightly and eyes me with suspicion.

  “Who are you with?”

  I shrug.

  “No one. I’m on my own. But it’s getting me nowhere. I thought I was all I needed. But now that I’ve seen what you can do, I want to be part of something bigger.”

  “Yes,” he says and puts a hand on my arm. “You’re never alone with the King.”

  “Do you think he’d take someone like me?”

  Billy stares at me, finally getting a look at the scars on my face.

  “Maybe. You almost look like one of us already. How did you get those scars?”

  “Fights. Hits. I won plenty, but I lost plenty too.”

  “The King never loses.”

  “Would he have someone like me?”

  “Maybe,” Billy says, removing his hand from my arm. He’s more relaxed now, like he doesn’t even remember that I dragged him here.

  “Your face is good,” he says. “We can help you finish the transformation.”

  “Yes. Good. Where would I find someone who can help me?”

  Billy scoots back a couple of feet. Looks at me suspiciously again.

  “How do I know you’re not lying?”

  Hell. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to anything like this. But I take out the black blade and hand it to him.

  I say, “Help me. Start the change.”

  He weighs the knife in his hand. Looks at me.

  “Really?”

  “Do it.”

  He’s a little tentative as he jams the blade into the skin of my forehead. The pain is immediate and sharp, but I’ve been through worse. I can’t see what Billy is doing, but he’s smiling as he goes, so I guess he’s turning me into a real beauty queen. He cuts for a minute or so. Blood flows down into my eyes. I have to wipe it away with the back of my hand. Finally he’s done.

  Wistfully he says, “You’re beautiful. On your way to being one of us.”

  “How do I go the rest of the way?”

  “Only the King can do that.”

  “King Bullet himself?”

  “Yes. Only he can bless you and bring you into the family.”

  “How do I meet him?”

  I wipe more blood from my eyes.

  “That’s a secret,” whispers Billy.

  Now it’s my turn to look hurt.

  “You said I’m almost changed. How can I become one of the family if I don’t know where to go?”

  He puts his hands over mine.

  “A child of the bang and the bullet?”

  “Yes. That. How can I become worthy of the bullet?”

  Billy looks away, the rusty gears in his head slowly grinding together. He reaches up and wipes some of my blood onto his fingers. Puts out his tongue and tastes it.

  “Tomorrow night,” he says. “At city hall. The King, all radiant death, will be there. New converts will pledge their lives, take the bullet into them, and become part of the flock.”

  I don’t like the sound of that.

  “What does ‘take the bullet into them’ mean?”

  Billy grins his mindless grin again. Touches his heart and bruised gut.

  “That you’ll have to wait for or you won’t understand.”

  I wipe more blood onto my hand and hold it out for Billy to shake. He does. Gleefully.

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Brother.”

  “Brother.”

  He thinks for a minute.

  “You never told me your name.”

  I stand up and say, “Sandman Slim.”

  Billy’s face changes. All the beatific goofiness of the last few minutes transforms into animal anger.

  Through gritted teeth he says, “He said you were here.”

  “Yeah? What else did he say about me?”

  “That you are nothing and that he will obliterate you.”

  I look out over the cool black water of Sylvan Lake.

  “I doubt that.”

  “I am the bullet that does his will!”

  Billy lunges at me with the black blade, but I kne
w it was coming, so I knock the knife out of his hand easily. Billy scrabbles after it, but I pull him back over to Johnny.

  He sits at the base of the grave marker with his knees pulled up to his chest and mumbles, “What have I done? What have I done?” He pulls out handfuls of his hair and chews his lower lip until he’s bitten off a good-size piece—which the sick fuck swallows.

  I get in close, hoping that I can squeeze a little more information out of him.

  “What will King Bullet do to you when he finds out what you’ve done? I don’t think he’s the forgiving kind.”

  Billy shakes his head.

  “The Devil doesn’t forgive. The bullet doesn’t heal.”

  I’m down on my haunches next to him. With a scream he launches himself at me again and knocks me onto my back. I’m ready for him to attack or run away, but he doesn’t do either. Instead, he turns around and bashes his head into the corner of Johnny Ramone’s gravestone two or three times, until there’s a dent deep enough that he can pull away a part of his skull, exposing his brain.

  I know I should do something, but this is fucked up even by my standards.

  Yelling “The bullet does not heal!” he digs his fingers into his head, pulling out bits of brain matter. And like he did with my blood, he shoves it all into his mouth and swallows. Still crying, he bangs his head against the stone a couple of more times before I can grab him and pin his arms to his sides.

  “Stop it,” I shout. “Stop it!”

  “I am the son of the Devil. A child of the bullet.”

  He bites down on my hand hard enough that I loosen my grip. Free now, he runs headlong into the stone pedestal and I swear I can hear his head crack like a pterodactyl egg. He slumps to the ground, but his lips are still moving.

  I lean in close to listen. It takes a few second before I understand that he’s trying to sing.

  “Rum-t . . . rum-tid . . . rum-t . . .”