Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved.
Gnostic Dementia Press,
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
https://www.facebook.com/GnosticDementiaPress
Cover & Book Design: Indie Designz
The greatest perhaps and most awful scene in the history of mankind.
—Edward Gibbon. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Table of Contents
Part 1–For What It’s Worth
Chapter 1-Flash Mob @ the Squat &Gobble
Chapter 2-Grist for the Mill
Chapter 3-Entfremdung
Chapter4-Cody
Chapter 5-You Don’t Get There From Here Alone
Chapter 6-Homo Ethicus
Chapter 7-Hey, I’ve been to this Party Before
Chapter 8-Northwest Interlude
Chapter 9-Pandora’s Passing
Part 2-Think of All the Hate
Chapter 10-Not Going to Plan and the Other Minutiae of Failure
Chapter 11-Sure You Want to Join the Party?
Chapter 12-Reunions and Betrayals
Chapter 13-Breaking Bread with Memento Mori
Chapter 14-Old Friends & the Axis of Convenience
Chapter 15-And They’re Off
Chapter 16-A Hard Man
Chapter 17-Surprise Guests @ Germantown Café
Chapter 18-The Sheraton Cotillion & Rampage
Part 3-End Times Dialectic
Chapter 19-Veiling Truth
Chapter 20-To Lawrence’s Dark Heart
Chapter 21-Re-imagining the Edenic Narrative
Chapter 22-The Zoology of Eden & Other Annoying Observations from a Karma Punk
Chapter 23-Townies
Chapter 24-Pater Familias
Chapter 25-What Ziggy Never Knew
Chapter 26-Ni!
Chapter 27-Cañón de la Huasteca
Thanks for Reading
Further Reading
About the Author
Also By the Author
Contact Information
Squat & Gobble.
Sure, someone had to come up with that for a coffee shop—and be ballsy enough to hang it—but Milwaukee? Even in the years since vacating Dilmun and their trips down the Americas, as far south as Córdoba before Halton and Matt had turned Roberto back north, Feargal was having difficulties with the eccentricities of the US, by far the oddest and most compelling of the countries they’d drifted, run, or squabbled through. Leaning back in the chair he looked back out the window he sat alone next to and stared at the one storey, freckled redbrick with its early Twentieth Century limestone portico. There was something about the place which did not speak to its function, but this was the address—Matt had checked Google maps three times; then matched this against Salt’s text message, as well as the confirmation texts he’d sent.
So, he was in the right place.
Craning his neck down the street, Matt smiled. He liked Wisconsin—reminded him of home; not that he missed the place all that much. Not at all, but maybe the life he was supposed to have had after China had taken possession of him. He smiled, in doing so Feargal turned back to the warehouse. At that moment, a mâché bumbled out the door. These things unnerved with their bulbous heads and reedy bodies; not to mention their beady eyes, squat slatternly noses—always running with a substance which haunted of white glue; then there were those small, tight mouths with sharp, irregular, and predatory teeth. It was unclear what they ate, but rumours took their cues from these apertures.
As another followed out the same door Matt glanced at his watch. paper mâché r here...what u want 2 do? Then waited for Salt’s reply. “More coffee?” Feargal started at the voice. “Sorry.” The woman, looking a little tired for someone in their early 20s, smiled and glanced across the street. The first of the Paperheads was walking back toward the portico. “Oh, yeah—never do get used to those things, do you?” A familiar complaint and one that had been growing with the seemingly exponential progress of the transformations.
“Not really—do they come in?”
“Here?” Matt nodded. “No, nor anywhere else I know of.” Looking back out the window he smiled and tapped his phone on the table, producing a light clicking sound.
“Do you have tea?”
“Herbal, Indian, and Green.”
“Green, please.” She smiled, thinly, and clomped off in her cork soled platforms.
Continuing to wait his phone vibrated twice—a text. wait there...don’t try anything until we’re there with the equip. Frowning a squint of amber brown out the window he wasn’t certain how much time remained them—the mâché seemed to be getting ready for something. That bothered him; not knowing had ended badly too many times to let the lot go—sighing he texted back—hurry.
Halfway through the green tea the van pulled up and Jonah Salt hopped out. Matt pushed his dark brown hair back—it was getting shaggier than he liked, but since China’s abduction he’d been less concerned with personal grooming than was useful—and smiled at the Meta. The seam in Jonah’s face reified during the intervening years, becoming a dramatic ochre whenever Salt became agitated; the face itself had become almost albino white and the almond of his eyes was more pronounced—the shifting colours (hazel, amber brown—same as his, and green) were more pronounced and disturbing for the Archaics. Still, Matt had come to find them comforting. The elder smiled and loped, with his gangly legs, in to the coffee shop; Matt could almost feel the waitress tense; luckily he was the only customer. “All set?” Salt asked cheerfully—as though they were helping someone move house.
“Yep.” As the waitress approached Matt saw her anxiety. This wasn’t, in itself, unusual—many Archaics were confused and anxious about what the world was becoming. Jonah with a cautious, friendly smiled waved the woman off.
“Sorry, we’re just here to collect our friend.” With a shadow of embarrassment she smiled—and Matt paid at the cash. Slipping on his jacket, back at the table, Feargal zipped this against the Wisconsin spring. “We’re around back now.” Glancing at the phone nestled in the long, angular digits Jonah spoke, as if too himself.
They stood at the back of the van, out front of the Squat & Gobble. Salt was smiling up at this, shaking his head. “Can’t see this being a big draw—and no one’s filed on it?” Matt shrugged and glanced back at the shop; then across the street.
“We’re going to have to be fast about this—once we load up.”
“Uh-huh.” Jonah was still shaking his head at the sign and throwing a last dazzle at the waitress as she cleared the table. Finished, she turned away and Salt, again, took out his phone.
“What now?” Matt asked leaning over and watched the Meta’s unreasonable fingers fly over the virtual keys. fun @ west center squat & gobble #flashmob #bbq #Metahuman #Milwaukee. “Are you fucked?”
“Have to let Zakara know what’s up—Shea, Roberto, and Halton too.” Matt frowned at the last, but let it slide—neither would change their minds on that account.
“That’s all well and good, I suppose, but you’re sending a flare up for all the locals—maybe State too.”
“You worry too much. Besides, public opinion is swinging against these people.” He was referring to the militant Transhumanists. Shaking his head Matt opened the back of the van and hopped in. In a moment he was hefting out the packs and the smell of accelerant filled the cool air of the early afternoon. Jonah’s people, all three humans, strapped the packs on—but no one, excepting Jonah, was smiling.
***
Adjusting the straps, Matt looked over the side of the van and smiled. “You think they’ll believe this?” Nodding toward
the advertisement.
“Pest control was the best we could come up with for why we’d be heading across the street with pressurised tanks strapped to our backs.” Seemed about as reasonable as anything else they’d been involved with since beating it out of Dilmun—which was not at all. With that said, Salt had always managed to get them out before the grift collapsed. So Matt was prepared to let this play out until the locals began throwing rounds in their direction. At that point, he was intending to toss the tank—and beat it back to Córdoba.
Feargal glanced across the street.
“Think we are beginning to attract attention.” Matt nodded across the street where two Paperheads were watching. As long as he’d been running into these, three years and more, there was something about them that put Feargal on edge. The beady eyes, snub noses, and ballooned craniums made, literally, of paper mâché; then there was that time they’d caught one in the rain down in Louisville. They attempted to make a run for the gas station but Roberto had held it down in the street. As the skull gave beneath the loosening stream of water the organic innards oozed and tumbled into the road. He’d looked at neither of them quite the same way again.
“Yes, I see them.”
“Okay,” one of the new guys Matt had not met before, “let’s fire them up.” And he pressurised his tank. Matt hoped, but did not ask, that Jonah had checked the seals.
As they crossed the road, turning on the flame, the Paperheads ducked in the warehouse. “Believe they are pretty much on to us.” Another of the three accompanying them observed. Him, at least, Matt had seen about a few times, but this was the first time they’d been on a job together. There’d been a lot of firsts over the last months—he’d been meaning to get on to Salt about that but never found the time.
“How far,” Matt asked, “do the streams go?”
“We’re working inside so I’ve kept them to about four metres—we don’t want to turn each other into pillars o’ flame.”
“Then we best get over there before they return.” As they hit the curb the first was back with a shotgun.
The driver, still with the van, took it with a shot to the head. This exploded as an over-pressurised bag of blood.
Inside the warehouse the place was quiet, the other paper mâché had disappeared—but Matt was certain they’d be close and waiting for a clean shot. “Okay,” Salt spoke into the spare silence with a vague echo, “hit the corners first, then start turning the crates over. There should be entrances to the nest around here somewhere...don’t start any fires if you can help it. We have to be fast though, that business outside will bring the locals sooner rather than later.”
After a few minutes of this they’d still not found the entrance to the nest. Salt, adjusting his pack, wondered if they’d come to the right place. Matt shrugged genuinely baffled, but he spent most of his time being so. Still with no sirens Jonah checked the map app. “Isn’t it strange that there are no sirens?”
“You mean the waitress?” Matt nodded. “Meta on Meta crime—Archaics tend not to see that.” It was true, but after committing murder Feargal wasn’t keen on being so fast and loose with his life. There was a murmur of sound, as though gas escaping an imperfect seal.
“You sure the seals on these are secure?” One of the crew asked from the far end of the room, his head just poking above an island of cardboard boxes.
“Quiet!” Jonah hissed. “Kenny, get back here.” The man’s face, normally a mocha brown, whitened visibly. Kenny took but a single step and the afternoon went as moments like this tended to go for Feargal—slowly and all at once. There was firstly, the creak of a loose floor board and nail; then a rushing sound of hard, pointed toes jabbing the desiccated hardwood. Accompanying this was the nattering, high-pitch squeak of hundreds of raging voices, squealing at cross purposes. Then the empty spaces filled with puppy sized cockroaches with wavering antennae and sharp pink faces with gnarled, pointed teeth. These were carnivores—but since they were Metas it might be better to say cannibals. The multitude was everywhere and all at once.
Kenny made about half a dozen strides, toward the main group, when the first of the nattering swarm had him by the ankle and the others were scrabbling up his legs. Brought down, he disappeared, screaming, beneath an undulating blanket of vermin. “Kick it up—and watch out for each other.” Jonah screamed and flames spilt from the homemade flamethrowers; the heavy stench of gas filling the air. As the mob scattered from Kenny there was little more than gnawed, raw, and rosy bones left; this in a matter of seconds. With the first flames the undulate’s voice rose to a jeremiad of longing and despair.
At first the exoskeletons appeared impervious to the flames, but the faces quickly ignited and the radiant tongues burrowed into the soft tissue and popped the creatures open with the sickening shuck of rending shells. Still they came, there had to have been hundreds—thousands. So many that Feargal wondered how many more were left beneath their feet and what they were waiting for. A wave of defeatism washed over the man. How could they win against something like this; how could they hope to even compete? With the warehouse in flames, something which had happened once the group panicked at the sight of the enormous insects, they were being pressed back to the exits. Jonah was screaming something, but all Matt heard above the flames were the first sirens. Not needing to be told, the group moved toward the rear exit.
***
The stench of accelerant, flame, and a toxic mash-up of Meta-flesh and post-industrial manufacture clung to the group as they spilt from the loading dock. Windows, from the heat, were now blowing out with narrow, stringy tongues of orange-yellow flame lapping at the brick—searching out a new energy source. There a van, very much like the one they left out front, was waiting for them. Another team member was holding the back doors open and yelling for them to hurry. The scanner had picked up a lot of chatter. Not needing the encouragement the remaining members swung round the door and slid to a halt. Jonah turned and looked at Asher, a man in his late 30s, holding the door. “What’s this?”
“Picked it up running out back—suppose it wasn’t expecting anyone to be out here.” Inside was the other Paperhead trussed up with a rag stuffed in its mouth—the heads being too bulbous and irregularly spherical to wrap a gag about it.
“Well, we have to get out of here.” Matt encouraged, looking to the end of the building.
“All in.” Jonah pushed the group, gently, from behind. With reluctance the men gave way and slipped into the van, well away from the bound Meta. All in, Asher slammed the doors closed and climbed in beside the driver. The van pulled away, slowly, and turned on to Fond Du Lac—heading in the opposite direction from the sirens and prurient citizenry. Their rally point was 15 minutes away.
***
The mâché’s screech echoed hard and hollow through the abandoned service station in what Matt took to be the southwest of the city. If this hadn’t been a job he might actually have enjoyed spending more time getting to know the place, but as it was the Metahumans had ruined the opportunity. Jonah had not been helping the PTSD of the group with his cliché, but effective, interrogation technique—moistening the cranium, and then inserting a knitting needle probe between the soggy folds of paper until it met a cluster of nerves near and behind the ear.
“What,” Asher asked, “are we going to find out we do not already know?” Releasing his ears after the last shriek. Salt looked at him down a long, aggressively aquiline, nose—needle dripping a dark grey viscous substance onto the concrete floor stained by generations of oil changes.
“I’m interested in what they were doing there and for whom were they working.” Turning back the screaming began again as the probe re-entered the artificial aperture and wound in a circular motion back to the nerve cluster. Questions followed when the instrument stopped. No answer but a glare, and the operation began once again. Matt, unable to bear more of the screeching, stepped out of the bay and wandered toward the cracked island where the pumps had been. There he lit a
blunt.
The noise from the bay continued but the ganja muffled the impact as he stared out over the empty lots across the worn tarmac of the much patched road. After finishing the shit, he returned to the bay, hoping Jonah was about done. Stepping in there was a fulsome silence, and the others were gathered around the mâché. “What’s up?” Asher waved him over. A reedy voice was gravelling out a few difficult words and followed this with a clause; then a sentence. First thing he heard approaching the group was Salt’s voice repeating a question.
“What was that name, again?”
“Thin Man.”
“That’s their name?”
“It’s all we call him—he’s responsible for the cockroach experiment.” Breath ragged, eyes wide with fear.
Matt supposed the Transhumanist knew this was where the road veered off for him, and all he could hope for was a quick terminus. “Experiment? Have there been others?” One of the new guys Feargal had not yet broken more than a dozen words with. Jonah turned from the question and back to the Paperhead with raised, pencil thin eyebrows.
“Yes, he’s been at this for a long time.”
“How long?” Matt asked, intrigued.
“I’m new—but I was told a long time.” Jonah presented the needle again. “I,” they quickly followed, “don’t know—I’m new.”
“Was Thin Man,” Jonah asked, “involved in making your kind?”
“There’ve been rumours, but he’s not verified them—no one’s been fool enough to ask.”
“Why is he doing this?” Jonah again.
“Curiosity, I think. Maybe he just wants to see what is possible with the Cinn micro-organisms.”
End Times, Inc. (A Great & Continuous Malignity) Page 1