King Bullet

by Richard Kadrey

  “Oh, I can do that,” says Samael. “There’s nothing to it.”

  “Really? How?”

  “This isn’t really the right time for thaumaturgy lessons, don’t you think?”

  “You’re right. But you have to show me sometime.”

  “Certainly.”

  We sit there for a minute.

  I say, “When are you going to do it?”

  “It’s already done. Stop dawdling and get us inside.”

  I take Samael’s arm and shadow walk us into the hangar.

  It’s dark inside. Blacker-than-black dark. I get the feeling no one has been inside here for a long time. I whisper some hoodoo and a pool of pale light forms around us.

  Samael looks around and says, “A lovely glow. And you didn’t even blow anything up.”

  “I can do the subtle stuff. Sometimes.”

  “True, but why don’t you leave that to me for the rest of the evening? I don’t fancy ending up on fire when you mess it up.”

  “Fine. Be like that.”

  “I will and I am.”

  The hangar is monstrously large. Nearby are groups of armored vehicles, some with weapons mounted on them and some without. We’re standing in long rows of enormous crates that could hold anything from smaller vehicles to a sleeping brontosaurus. In the distance are dozens of shelving units piled to the ceiling with smaller boxes.

  We head out and I start checking serial numbers on the nearby crates. Right away it’s bad news.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “I was hoping everything would be in some kind of alphanumeric order. But it looks like they just piled boxes wherever they would fit and stuck bar codes on them. There’s probably some kind of manifest that shows how they’re grouped, but we don’t have it and this place is full of crap. We could look for a week and not find the right box.”

  “All right. Settle down,” Samael says. “Let’s use our heads, shall we? We’re looking for a weapon, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And presumably the Golden Vigil wouldn’t send someone into one-on-one combat with a tank.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “So, what we’re looking for is probably small enough to be carried by a single person.”

  “Keep going.”

  “With luck, what we’re looking for is anything from the size of a pistol to a bazooka, which means it wouldn’t be on the floor with all of these vehicles and large crates. It would be on those shelves with the smaller items.”

  I look around at the hundreds of gigantic crates around us and decide that Samael is right simply because the alternative is too damn depressing.

  “I have no idea if your logic is military logic, but we can’t stay in here until New Year’s. Let’s do it your way.”

  We head to the shelves. Unfortunately, the numbering system here is just as random as it was on the floor. This whole thing is starting to give me a headache and I want a cigarette, but I’m sure that would set off some kind of asshole alarm, so I just grind my teeth.

  “Fuck me.”

  Samael says, “Calm down. Let’s think this through.”

  I look over the shelves for a minute and say, “You’re right. I know the crate number. Maybe I can just do location hoodoo on that.”

  “No. I’ll do it. We just discussed this. You stand looking dapper and I’ll handle the real spellcasting. Now, what’s the crate number?”

  I tell him and he draws a circle in the dust on the floor with his finger. He fills it with a triangle and a square inside that. Around the edges, he draws numbers, runes, and a series of arcane symbols, some of which I don’t recognize. I hate to admit that Samael knows this stuff better than me, but he really does.

  A moment later a mote of light appears in the air. It hovers there silently at eye level before moving off down the rows of shelves. We follow it as it floats through the dark, a firefly I hope is going to save me from having to go hand-to-hand with King Bullet ever again.

  We wander the rows for ten minutes or more. Long enough that I start to wonder if Samael’s Tinkerbell knows anything more than we do or if he’s just putting on a show to impress me. But finally, after a few more minutes of wandering, it stops and rises into the air to a point two shelves above our heads. When it reaches that point, it simply hovers there like a dog who did a trick and expects a treat.

  I grab a nearby ladder and drag it to where the mote is hanging in the air. Sure as hell, the little fucker found the crate. And it’s no bigger than a rifle case, though it feels a lot heavier when I try to move it. The moment I touch the crate, the little mote winks out and I feel bad for ever doubting the little bastard. If I had its address I’d send it a fruit bouquet.

  I’m feeling really good right now and even Samael is smiling. It’s a little smug. Like he’s pleased with himself for showing me how much better he is at the subtle stuff than me. But right now, I’m in no position or mood to argue the point. I haven’t felt this relieved in a long time.

  Naturally, that’s when everything goes to shit.

  All I can figure is that while Samael’s hoodoo kept us hidden from the hangar’s alarm system, it didn’t extend to anything we touched. Maybe we pushed a secret button or broke an infrared beam, but it didn’t occur to either of us that the individual crates themselves might be hooked to the alarm system. Whatever we did wrong, the response is immediate—and I see the smugness fade from his face.

  An alarm that screeches like a freight train giving birth to a banshee echoes off the walls as every light in the hangar comes on. A second later, the front of the building opens and armed soldiers pour in, heading in our direction. Me and Samael grab the crate and run toward the hangar’s far wall. I look around as we go. Each light overhead seems as bright as the noon sun, and the illumination intersects so that there aren’t any dark areas, which means no shadows for us to jump through. I already know what Samael is thinking. He’s a rebel and a warrior and he’d be just as happy turning around and fighting our way out of here. I, on the other hand, am tired of getting shot. And the grunts rushing in our direction are just some slobs doing their jobs. I’d feel bad about killing them. So we keep running while there isn’t a damn shadow in sight.

  Finally, we reach the back wall.

  “Now might be a good time to get us out of here,” Samael says.

  “The shadows are no good. I need something darker. Maybe if we knock over one of these big shelving units.”

  “Or just move some damn crates. We don’t need a shadow the size of the Colosseum. I’ll hold off the guards.”

  “No killing!” I yell.

  “You have one minute before I manifest a Gladius.”

  While Samael runs at the soldiers, I try to muscle some crates over to create a dark patch. The problem is that everything this far back in the hangar is the size of an Escalade or bigger. I can barely move any of them and I’m sure as hell not going to be ready for Samael’s sixty-second warning. Instead of knocking over the crates, I manifest my Gladius and cut them into big sections, which fall onto the floor at all kinds of crazy angles. When there are six or eight big pieces of machinery piled up around me, I’ve created enough darkness that we can get out. It turns out that Samael had a similar idea. He used his Gladius to cut through the supports on several shelving units, toppling them like redwoods in the path of the soldiers. When I call his name, it only takes him a second to run back to me.

  But a group of guards is right behind him and they open fire when they see the abstract art I’ve made out of their crates. As the shots tear into the walls and crates around us, Samael turns toward the guards and does the biggest showboat move I’ve ever seen any angel or devil make.

  He turns into a fucking dragon.

  It’s twenty or thirty feet tall. I mean, he doesn’t really turn into an actual dragon, but he shifts his glamour to look like something out of a Sam Peckinpah version of an R-rated King Arthur movie. The shooting stops when the dr
agon appears, and the guards scatter in all directions when Samael belches a tsunami of white-hot fire at them. Before the guards start shooting again, I grab him and pull him into the shadow and back outside to the panel van. Wiping sweat off my forehead, I give him a look.

  “Really? A dragon?”

  “You didn’t want anyone getting hurt. I was thinking outside the box.”

  “But a fucking dragon?”

  He picks some lint off one of his lapels.

  “Yes. Let them put that in their official reports.”

  “I guess we didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Didn’t even muss their hair.”

  I kick the crate at our feet.

  “Let’s get this home and see what this is.”

  “If we got the wrong box, I’m going back and burning the place down for real.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  I’m hot, I almost got shot, and I’m not looking forward to another ninety-minute drive in a van with shocks like concrete. So we ditch the van where it is and go home through a shadow. In a few minutes I’ll know if Abbot gave me the right crate number or if I’m going to have to kick his ass to Neptune.

  Everyone crowds around us when we get back. Even Kasabian hauls himself up from the sofa to have a look. Janet puts the pizza boxes on the floor so I can set the crate on the coffee table. We don’t have a crowbar and I don’t want to chance using hoodoo to open the weapon, so I use the black blade to pry up the edges and tear the top off with my hands. Imagine everyone’s surprise when what we find nestled in custom-shaped high-impact foam is what looks like plumbing supplies.

  There’re four sections. Two hollow pipes, each the length of my forearm. A metal cap that goes over something. And a smaller hollow pipe about the size of my hand.

  “The plan is that you’re going to fix King Bullet’s toilet?” says Kasabian. “I feel safer already.”

  I look at Samael.

  He shrugs and says, “It is a bit of a letdown, as far as doomsday weapons go. Don’t you think?”

  I pick up the long pipes and see notches at the ends where they probably fit together. Beyond that, none of what’s in the crate makes any sense.

  Allegra hands me a couple sheets of paper.

  “Look at these. They fell out when you opened it.”

  The papers are covered in numbers and diagrams—assembly instructions for the doomsday plumbing. At the bottom of the crate I find a strap I missed earlier. Following the diagrams, we put the thing together quickly. Once it’s done it looks sort of like a robot arm in a big-budget fifties science fiction movie. It would look perfect in Forbidden Planet or This Island Earth, just like most Vigil tech. I just have to hope that it works better than some I’ve seen in the past.

  “How does it work?” says Janet.

  I turn the instructions over. The last page is covered in long streams of numbers and letters.

  “Great. It’s in some kind of code.”

  “At least try it on,” says Samael. “Get the feel of it. Maybe that will tell you something.”

  I slip the idiotic thing on. The smaller piece fits well over my hand, while the two longer pieces enclose most of my right arm. The rounded piece is an end cap that fits snug over my shoulder. The strap I missed earlier goes over my shoulder, securing everything in place.

  When I stand up Fuck Hollywood sniggers.

  “You look like Inspector Gadget.”

  I look around the room. “What do you think I should do from here?”

  Kasabian points to a small ring attached to the hand that seems designed to slip over one finger.

  “Try that maybe?”

  I put my middle finger into the ring and a sudden jolt of static electricity shoots right through me. Hidden lights and strobing sensors hidden along the length of the doomsday plumbing come on and I can feel the damn thing vibrating with power. The ring stiffens against my hand.

  “It’s the trigger, I think.”

  “Turn it off,” shouts Allegra.

  Janet adds, “Yes, please.”

  I slip my finger out of the ring and the whole arm goes quiet. I’m quickly surrounded by half-smiles and nervous laughter.

  “Go-go gadget, what the hell?” says Fuck Hollywood.

  Samael claps a hand on my shoulder.

  “Well done, old son. You didn’t cock things up after all. I’m proud of you. A little nervous with that blunderbuss so close, but proud too.”

  I look at him.

  “Want to take it out for a test drive? Kill some Shoggots?”

  “That sounds delightful.”

  Janet comes over.

  “Wait. You just got back. Do you have to go out again already?”

  “King Bullet isn’t taking the night off,” I say. “The sooner we get him, the sooner this will be over.”

  “I understand that, but still—”

  I steal a glance at Candy. She looks nervous too.

  “Listen, I’ll have Samael with me for backup. We’ve done this kind of thing before.”

  Janet doesn’t seem convinced.

  “Please just be careful and come back in one piece.”

  “I promise.”

  She nods, pressing her balled-up hands to her mouth.

  I throw my coat over my shoulder to hide the pipes and look at Samael.

  “Let’s go fuck up some monsters.”

  “Let’s.”

  We go through a shadow and come out across the street from the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel, ready to bum-rush the place and kill everyone. But we’re too late. The place has collapsed into ruins, engulfed in a huge fire. The whole neighborhood is burning. To the north, wildfires cover the foothills and the hollywood sign has just burst into flames.

  This is a big-boy tantrum. This is lashing out. This is someone not wanting to eat his vegetables and go to bed. This is someone cutting off his favorite hand so he’s taking his ball and going home. The sheer petulance would make me laugh if Samael didn’t point out that a huge section of Hollywood Boulevard is also on fire.

  We shadow walk and come out on North La Brea Avenue. Everything from the Roosevelt Hotel to the Chinese Theatre to the Hollywood Wax Museum and the Egyptian Theatre blazes away. And the fires are moving east as a rolling riot of torch-wielding Shoggots runs wild on the street, setting ablaze everything in sight. At the front of the mob is King Bullet. He holds his kpinga in the air, where it sprouts flames like some kind of holy relic. What’s worse is that he’s holding it in his right hand. The hand I cut off. Either he got himself a nice, fast prosthetic or the fucker is a starfish and can grow back limbs. One more goddamn thing to worry about.

  I don’t know where the National Guard, the sheriffs, or the cops are, but it’s sure as hell nowhere near here. King Bullet is going to murder all of Hollywood—my home—because he lost a brawl. I need to kill him right now. Maybe that will at least slow his Shoggots, and the Guard and whoever is left can take them down.

  Me and Samael go through a shadow into the recessed doorway of a vape shop near the Musso & Frank Grill. I wish this doomsday plumbing was a sniper rifle. I don’t like being on street level with the crazies, but I don’t know the range of the weapon, so I’m going to have to get as close as possible to the King. As the mob reaches us, me and Samael put on glamours and join them.

  There’s no time to fuck around. We shove our way to the middle of the pack and start moving forward, closer and closer to the King. The crazies’ screams are deafening and the stink of the burning buildings and cars gets caught in my throat so that I have to cough. It feels like the wildest parts of Downtown have finally come north to the streets of L.A. Welcome to my world, kids. The tension I felt when I realized what the King was doing fades as the procession begins to feel familiar. A Hellion fever dream. The instincts that got me through a thousand bouts in the arena kick in and I can’t wait for the killing to start. I move up through the crowd, elbowing Shoggots this way and that. I don’t even know where Samael is anymore. I don’t
care. My entire focus is on one man, one freak of nature, that I’m going to skin alive in front of his followers.

  Then the slightest flicker of doubt pops into my head and I look at the weapon, hoping to hell it works.

  Time to find out.

  Finally, King Bullet is just ahead of me. He’s put Junji’s bullet-ridden chef’s apron on over the hotel clerk’s uniform. I’m so close now that I can almost touch him.

  I shout, “Next time I’ll take both hands.”

  He whirls around, slashing the burning kpinga down in a defensive arc. But I’m out of range. The King recognizes me through the glamour and the part of his face not covered by the mask twists in anger. He’s about to call on his Shoggots to kill me, but he never gets the chance.

  Samael utters some Hellion hoodoo and I feel a concussion all around me as he explodes the center of the mob, sending Shoggots, cars, and everything else nearby flying back onto the street. Then it’s just me and King Bullet.

  He puts out his hand to use his black light, but I get my finger through the weapon’s trigger. Electricity bristles through me as it heats up and a ragged yellow light explodes from the weapon’s handpiece straight into King Bullet’s chest. It knocks him onto the ground and pushes him back several feet. I move with him to pour on the force. It takes only a second to turn the King into a flailing pyre. He rolls and crawls on the street, trying to get away from the light emitting from the weapon. His clothes burn away, leaving only his body and that goddamn bone mask. Soon, his skin begins to bubble and slowly roll off him like candle wax. In just a few seconds, he’s utterly unrecognizable.

  Still, the bastard is strong.

  A burning, bony scarecrow now, he manages to get to his knees and raise his hands to hit me with the black light. Only Samael is already there and rips off King Bullet’s bone mask. Then, to my surprise, he does something really stupid.

  He just stands there for a few seconds and says, “Stark. Look!”

  I don’t know what I’m supposed to see other than burned bacon with an attitude, but the moment of hesitation gives the King just enough time to shove the kpinga into Samael’s side. As he falls, King Bullet opens up with the black light at Samael at point-blank range.