King Bullet

by Richard Kadrey

  Carlos looks up from Fuck Hollywood and lurches back from the bed.

  I say, “Calm down, man. It’s me.”

  “Goddammit. Tell me when you’re going to do that shit. I hate that fucking Steve McQueen face you always use.”

  “Sorry.”

  A little bit more hoodoo adds scars and burns to my glamour face so I’ll fit in with the other Shoggots.

  I check the time. It’s well after two in the morning. Billy didn’t say what time the party was starting at city hall. I hope I’m not too late.

  I go to the bathroom, find my little first-aid kit, and give it to Carlos.

  “There’s not much left, but there’s some gauze and hydrogen peroxide to clean her wounds. But try not to do anything until Allegra gets here.”

  “Ray is on his way over.”

  “Great. Listen, I’m sorry I drag you into this shit all the time.”

  Carlos gives me a look.

  “What?”

  “Just shut the fuck up, motherfucker. This is family stuff. We take care of our own. Right?”

  “Right.”

  I’m just about ready to leave when my phone rings. It’s Janet.

  “Hi,” they say. “I hope it’s not too late.”

  “No. It’s fine. I was up.”

  “Listen. I thought that maybe you could come over so we can just, you know, talk.”

  “That sounds great, but I’m just walking out the door to a thing.”

  “What kind of thing? Oh god. Are you going out to get hurt again?”

  “I hope not.”

  “You never tell me what these things are until afterward.”

  I check the time again.

  “I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  “Please stay safe,” they say. “And please don’t come over here all bloody again.”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Then go and get over here when you can.”

  “I promise.”

  Janet hangs up and I just stare at the phone for a moment.

  What the hell am I doing? Being dead was awful, but it was simple. I miss it sometimes. Which reminds me.

  I grab my PTSD pills off the bedside table and pop two. I’m only supposed to take one, but I’m not sure of the last time I took one.

  “How is this my life?” I say.

  Carlos looks at me. “What? I missed that.”

  “Nothing. I’ve got to go. Thank Ray when he gets here.”

  “What did I just tell you, motherfucker?”

  I nod to him and shadow walk across town.

  And come out a block from city hall. The lower four floors of the building are burning, and from the look of it, the flames aren’t going to stop there. Stragglers like me, late for the festivities, run or jog down North Main Street to catch the show’s finale. We have to work our way through a jungle of abandoned vehicles on the street and sidewalk. Cars, both civilian and cop. Taxis. City buses. Ambulances. A couple of eighteen-wheelers. Even an ice cream truck.

  The small park in front of city hall is an inferno. Burning leaves swirl upward while flaming palm fronds drift by on the breeze like snakes made of fire.

  I finally reach the mob outside city hall. Almost everyone is masked. Some with simple surgical types over their ears. Other have tied bandanas around their faces. A lot of the crowd—men and women, young and old—have decorated their masks with blades, feathers, bones, and animal skin. There are costumes too. Horrible clowns. Wild-eyed cowboys. Nurses grimy with blood and dirt, like they’d been sleeping in the street. Soldiers and priests too, though I’m not sure if these last two were costumes at all.

  It’s part Halloween, part metal show, and part pagan rite to some forgotten blood god. I remember Abbot told me that the virus can get into your brain and turn you strange. I just never imagined how many would be hit with it or how strange they would get. And he was right about something else too. Not all of the Shoggots are scarred. A fair number are as fresh-faced and normal looking as Mr. Rogers in his sweater.

  After all the shit I’ve put up with, I’m not staying in the cheap seats with the other losers. I lean into the crowd and muscle my way up close to the front.

  And there he is—King Bullet himself. He must have been talking for a while because the crowd is pretty wound up.

  “—we, born of plague, of demons and angels, the scum of the universe, possess a beauty they will never comprehend. Who among the unmarked can understand perfection? You, my children, my children, will dance on the burning grave of this world.”

  The King is wearing a scorched and tattered Armani suit. I wonder what happened to the poor slob he stole it from. Like most of the others, he wears a mask. It looks like the front half of a human skull. The lower jaw is missing, but the upper teeth are all gold to match the twin gold narco gang .45s he has in holsters strapped around his waist. There’s a single neat bullet hole in the skull’s forehead. Circling the top is a sort of crown made of bullets held in place with barbed wire. In his hand he holds something impressive enough to be a Hellion weapon. But it’s not. It’s a kpinga, a large throwing weapon from central Africa. Three curved metal blades curl out from a central shaft with a grip wrapped in copper. It’s a wicked-looking weapon in anyone’s hands, but King Bullet holds it easily. He gestures with it. Points into the crowd like an orchestra conductor and uses it to pull the crowd along as he yammers.

  He points away from the crowd, into the city, and says, “None of them are worthy. None of them will embrace the bedlam of the stars and madness of worlds beyond this. None but you. The chosen.”

  The King is flanked by two flunkies with AR-15s. The guy in the pig mask I recognize as Sawney Bean. The woman might be the fake cop who came into Bamboo House, but I can’t be sure.

  The mob looks wild, but King Bullet isn’t through with them yet.

  He says, “Existence is an open maw. Its teeth are white and sharp and once inside, nothing escapes. Existence is hungry. It must eat. It must drink. Will you let it devour you?”

  “No!” they scream back.

  “Will it drink you like wine?”

  “No!”

  He throws up his arms.

  “I am the bang.”

  The mob chants, “We are the bullet that blasts a hole in the world.”

  King Bullet’s mask leaves his mouth exposed. He smiles down at us in our bones and blades and leather getups, a benevolent father handing out gifts on Christmas morning. He smiles to himself as his speech gets fancy.

  “We few, we happy few, we band of horrors. For they today who shed their blood with me shall be my brothers, my sisters, my blessed beasts. Now. Go forth and make creation weep.”

  As the mob fans out to rip downtown apart, a handful of police vans and BearCat armored personnel carriers rolls up on the scene. It’s the frazzled remains of LAPD and the county sheriff’s department coming in with their usual brilliant timing. Hit the crowd when it’s already in a frenzy and out for blood. Good plan.

  To give them some credit, the first volley of rubber bullets and tear gas drives back the Shoggots in regular surgical and industrial masks. But it doesn’t slow down the ones in gas masks. They surge the overeager John Wayne cops who came in riding on the BearCat running boards. But before they can drag all of the cops away, the ones on their feet open up with shotguns and rifles, easily cutting down the front line of Shoggots and driving back the others.

  For a few seconds it looks like a successful massacre and like the Shoggots are falling apart before they really got started. However, the cops’ gunfire at street level doesn’t stop the crazies who climb up the backs of the vans and personnel carriers and jump down on them. The cops fall fighting, but they fall. The BearCats pour on the tear gas as more armored cops come in from the sides of the plaza, firing their rifles. King Bullet is in the middle of the fight, killing cops with his kpinga, using it like an ax to crack open heads.

  I can punch hard and I heal fast, but that doesn’t do
a damn thing against the choking fumes in the street. My eyes burn, my nose runs, and I can’t stop coughing. But I have to keep going. I claw my way through the madness, trying to get close enough to King Bullet to snap his neck.

  Cops and sheriff’s deputies pour on gunfire and rubber bullets from two sides of the plaza. But there are too many Shoggots, and when enough crazies get behind them, they start going down too. And while the Shoggots are psycho, they aren’t dumb. They grab the rifles lying by the dead bodies and turn them back on the cops. City hall sounds like goddamn World War III.

  I’m just a few yards behind King Bullet when a couple of moron sheriff’s deputies jump on me, knocking me to the ground. They must have run out of bullets, but decided to go down fighting. It’s admirable in a brain-dead sort of way. One of them works me over with a truncheon while the other pounds me with heavy leather SAP gloves.

  I could take out both of these clowns with my hands, the na’at, or the Colt, but I kind of feel sorry for the idiots and don’t want to kill them. If I can turn off their lights long enough, maybe they’ll stop fucking hitting me and lie still long enough that the King and his attack dogs will think they’re dead and leave them alone.

  I swing one of my legs out and knock the truncheon cop off his feet. The problem is that he falls on top of me instead of the other way. Once he’s there, he joins in with Mr. SAP gloves, punching me in the back of the neck and kidneys as hard as he can.

  A minute or so of this and I start getting annoyed. I need to get these fucks off me. I need to get up. I need to get rid of them and get to King Bullet.

  Fuck this nice-guy shit. I swing an elbow back and catch the cop who fell on me on the side of his head. I spin and manage to grab the prick’s gloved hands long enough to punch him in the fucking throat. All of a sudden, I’m not the only one gasping for air. But before I can get up and knock them silly so they don’t get shot, they get shot. Once each in the back of the head. I look up and see Sawney Bean above me, one of King Bullet’s narco .45s in his hand. He gives me a “you’re welcome” wink and heads straight back into the fight.

  That was too goddamn much. There’s no way in this world or the next that I can owe that crazy little shit monkey anything. I’m tempted to run after him and pull out his spine just on general principle, but I need to get to King Bullet first. Lucky me, when Sawney’s done being my hero, he makes a beeline back for the King. I follow, playing the grateful dog, knocking cops and crazies out of my way as I go.

  In the distance, the cop vans are all on fire. The crowd has pushed burning cars around the remaining BearCat on all sides, penning it in. It’s going to get hot in there soon. Eventually, the cops inside will have to run for it or boil like lobsters.

  Overhead, helicopters swoop down over the plaza, lobbing flash-bang grenades and rifle fire down at us.

  And I’ve lost King Bullet in the crowd. I’m running around like a chicken trying to find its head, when I spot him standing on the cab of an eighteen-wheeler. He’s holstered the .45 and slung the kpinga from his belt. As one of the choppers makes a low pass over him—as if it wants to blow him off the truck—he raises both arms in front of him. Something like a boiling black mist pours from his hands and into the air, enveloping the helicopter.

  That’s not good news. Maybe the rest of the Shoggot crazies are just brain-fried civilians, but King Bullet is definitely Sub Rosa. How does Abbot not know that?

  It’s only a few seconds before the chopper is literally ripped apart in the air like an immense brat tearing apart a giant child’s toy. Twisted pieces of plastic and metal veer off in every direction as the helicopter rains down on the cops and crazies.

  While groups of Shoggots drag cops away to toss them into the burning park, others steal their weapons and shoot at a low-flying chopper trying to drive the crazies back with prop wash. The Shoggots stand their ground and get a couple of hits on the helicopter. It spins into the sky at a crazy angle before the propellers give out and it crashes down on the Triforium sculpture a block away. Fuck it. One less piece of eyesore municipal art.

  I pull the Colt and take out a couple of crazies as they crash into me. Toss their bodies back at some cops looking as wild and out for blood as the Shoggots themselves. I guess I can’t blame them at this point, but I can’t let them get in my way. I have to coldcock a couple of the grabby ones. I’m too close to King Bullet now to let anyone get in my way.

  He’s got his back to me as he shoots with his left hand and swings the kpinga with the right. Killing with both hands like that, he’s an impressive fucker, but even Sub Rosa don’t have bulletproof skulls, so looks aren’t going to get him anywhere.

  A smell hits me when I’m just a few yards away. It cuts right through the stink of the tear gas. A bitter vinegar smell that gets stuck in the back of my throat. King Bullet might look like Elvis on a killing spree, but I don’t think he bathes too often.

  Sawney Bean is still at King Bullet’s side. He smiles at me like an old friend when he sees me with the Colt, but his expression goes dark when he realizes who I’m aiming at. The little Porky Pig creep throws himself at me just as I pull the trigger. My shot goes wild and takes down a crazy in a bloody Easter Bunny costume who’s swinging an ax around like a furry berserker.

  King Bullet turns when he realizes Sawney isn’t there anymore and his eyes lock on me. Just as I pull the Colt’s trigger, he hits me with the same black whatever the hell it is he used to take down the chopper.

  I learn two things real fucking fast.

  First, even though the black beam looks like mist, it’s just a kind of pulsing black light.

  Second, there are things in the light.

  They had hand teeth and claws and they’re hungry and cold. They rip at my coat and face. I blast away with the Colt, but it doesn’t do any good. Hands grab my arms and pull in opposite directions. I scream at the strain as they try to tear me apart. I bark some Hellion hoodoo and ignite a blast overhead that sets the surrounding air on fire. The claws loosen just long enough for me to throw myself free of the black light.

  King Bullet is just a few feet away and his stink fills the air. His cool-as-hell Elvis demeanor falters for just a second when he sees me. I don’t think anyone has ever crawled out of the black light before. The Colt is empty, so I put it away and pull the black blade. The King smiles when he sees it.

  “It’s you, isn’t it? The monster who kills monsters. I’ve wanted to meet you for so long.”

  I’m bleeding and way beyond chatting right now, so I throw the blade at him. The fucker doesn’t budge, but catches it midair and throws it back at me. I reach out to grab it, but I’m shaky from the black light fight, so my aim is a little off. Instead of catching the blade, it goes right through the palm of my right hand. The King laughs like it’s the funniest goddamn thing he’s ever seen.

  He says, “Come on, monster. You can do better than that.”

  So I do.

  I bark more hoodoo and the plaza rumbles like a 6-point quake. The ground opens up all around King Bullet and in each filthy fissure, spinning steel blades—like the guts of a woodchipper—wait for him to fall. But he’s fast and strong. He drops to his knees, but keeps his balance well enough so that he doesn’t slip into the grinding blades. Instead, he blasts me with the black light again. This time I don’t hesitate. The moment I feel the hands, I hoodoo up a swarm of Hellion hornets. Big fuckers, with pincers like little bear traps. I don’t know if they’ll stop whatever lives in the light, but they’ll sure distract them.

  I’m feeling pretty good as I roll out of the black light. If this is the best King Bullet has to offer, I’ll take him down fast.

  But it’s not all he has, and I’m too dumb to realize that the bastard is behind me, swinging down the kpinga. He buries one of the blades deep in my back, tearing muscle and cracking a rib or two. I can’t help screaming, but when he pulls the blade out to pig stick me again I roll out of the way and manifest my Gladius.

  Wit
h a hole in my back, I’m not at my best. I swing the blade in his direction, but I’m a little hunched over from the pain. He sees that I’m hurt and shoots the narco .45. I catch two of the shots with the Gladius, but a third gets through and hits me square in the chest. I slam down onto my back and the Gladius goes out. I just lie there like an upside-down turtle trying to right itself. King Bullet comes over like he just won the lottery and stands by my shoulder. I manifest the Gladius again and swing it at his legs. He dodges it easily and does the one thing I hadn’t counted on—the prick walks away. Before he disappears into the chaos of bodies, he spins on his heels and sings to me.

  “Rum-tiddley-um-tum-tay.”

  If he says anything else, I don’t hear it because what feels like fifty Shoggot crazies lands on me and start dragging my carcass to one of the burning police cars. But before they can stuff me inside, I bark more hoodoo.

  Spiders, big and fat and with red glittering eyes, pour from inside my coat, from the cuffs of my sleeves and pants. A whole vicious army of ugly, poisonous fuckers.

  The Shoggots drop me and I land flat on my back on the street, which does wonders for the kpinga wound in my back. My vision goes black from pain for a second. When I can see again, I roll into a shadow under one of the burning cars . . .

  . . . and come out in my apartment. Technically, I roll into it, try to get up, stumble, and go down flat on my face. Candy is there with Alessa. She gets up and starts over to me, but I hold up a hand.

  “Don’t get near me. I was with King Bullet and his crazies. I don’t know what kind of germs I have all over me.”

  Allegra is also there. She puts a hand up to her face.

  “What’s that smell?”

  “Tear gas.” I start to get up, but lie back down again. “There was a little bit of a riot. Voices were raised. You know the drill.”

  “No. I don’t know the drill. Your clothes look like shit and— Are you bleeding again?”