Atomic Underworld: Part One

by Conner, Jack

  He decided he would wait to see if there was a delivery. Perhaps he would be able to sneak up then. At least he might be able to see what was being delivered.

  Impatiently, he bided his time. The sounds coming from above grew louder, and he became convinced that the factory was busier than usual, perhaps quite a bit busier. Was there something major going on? It would make sense, if the Octunggen had committed at least two sets of murders last night, had stolen at least two jewels, where no one had heard of any such thing happening over the last few months. Presumably they had stolen other jewels and committed other murders, as well, last night or at least recently, but no one Tavlin had talked to seemed to know about them, and people went missing with alarming frequency in Muscud, so such a disappearance might not be remarked upon. At any rate, whatever activity the Octunggen were about, it was heating up. Might tonight be a climax of some sort?

  A dark shape drifted in out of the dark. Tavlin tensed. Fog curled around the bow of a boat, a somewhat heavier, larger boat than the one Tavlin had rented for the evening. Like his, it had a motor, but, unlike his, this boat’s motor was revved and purring loudly. The fog had muted it, but as it drew close Tavlin found the motor’s grumble and chug disorienting after so much silence.

  The boat aimed for the trapdoor, and when it was close the engine shut off and the dark figures aboard rowed it right up under the trap. Tavlin squinted, made out perhaps half a dozen figures aboard, two carrying flashlights, which they played over the ancient, stained wood of the door. Someone rapped it with an oar, three knocks, then two, then three more knocks. A heavy metallic sound issued from above, the door buckled, then was drawn up, revealing a rectangle of amber light that shone full upon the occupants of the boat: mutants in ragged clothes. Various scars and tattoos marked them as the rough sort that often worked shady jobs along the docks.

  The largest one, a hulking man whose wide shoulders sloped down to thick, fish-scaled arms, visible because his shirtsleeves were rolled up past his elbow, called to the people above, and the factory people called back. Tavlin was too far away to hear exactly what was said.

  Those inside threw a ladder down, and a tall man descended into the boat. He was not obviously infected and wore a dark, waxed overcoat that sort of glistened in a sick, insectile manner. He wore a gas mask around his neck but had not placed it over his mouth. The mutants seemed to defer to him. Once settled, he raised his face to the opening and stretched out his hands as if to receive something. People above, seen by Tavlin as only hands and arms, passed down a suitcase. The tall man accepted it carefully, inspected it, then turned to the mutant leader and nodded. The leader barked an order and the boat set off into the fog, motor purring once more. The tall man stood in the center, suitcase at his side, staring off into the mist.

  Tavlin rowed toward the trapdoor. The unseen people above slammed the door down before he came close, though, and the sound of a bolt sliding across rusty metal signaled the end of that plan.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  Suddenly, he felt very alone out here. To reassure himself, he patted the revolver snugged in its shoulder holster, a gift of Boss Vassas. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

  The commotion in the factory above him continued, but it shifted into a new phase—it started to lessen. As if whatever the activity’s purpose was had been accomplished. Had it been to prepare whatever was in the briefcase? If so, then now that the briefcase was en route to its destination, wherever that was, the factory workers need only close up shop. Tavlin frowned into the darkness where the boat was disappearing, a dark mark surrounded by yellow-white vapor.

  With deep misgivings, he grabbed the oars and began rowing after it.

  He followed the ever-changing hole in the mist caused by the boat’s passage, and as the mist surrounded him he couldn’t resist a shudder. Nothing but cloying, foul, roiling fog, the gaseous secretions of the water. He spat out the bitter taste, reminding himself to take double the amount of pollution pills later on. He hated to be out on the open water. These channels linked to the Atomic Sea; one fall overboard could infect him. He would die of a lingering disease or else become mutated like so many others, forever relegated to the fringes of society. And that was if something didn’t eat him.

  He rowed carefully.

  The sound of the motor began to fade ahead, and he realized he would have to use his own engine—dangerous, but he saw no choice. He revved the outboard with a jerk of his arm, grabbed the steering rod and aimed the boat after his quarry. The other boat’s motor was larger and more powerful. He could hear it, just faintly, over the roar of his own. Hopefully that meant they couldn’t hear him.

  The larger boat, containing the man with the briefcase—could he be Octunggen, as Boss Vassas had surmised?—set off over the open water between Muscud and the walls of the cistern chamber, then vanished into a high passage, with flails sucking on the walls.

  Tavlin followed. The sound of the larger boat’s motor echoed loudly off the tight stone walls. The boat wound through the dark, empty passageways, traveling down one canal, then another, and Tavlin pursued. Soon he wasn’t sure in which direction he had come from, or how to find his way back. They seemed far from Muscud now, and he remembered how large the network of sewer tunnels really was. Occasionally he stopped his motor and pricked his ears to decipher where to go next.

  Where could the man with the briefcase be journeying to, anyway? Was he simply a courier, delivering the contents of the case?

  Tavlin came across them sooner than he had expected.

  The boat with the Octunggen man (if that’s what he was) had rounded a bend and slowed to a stop, its motor cut off. Tavlin, lagging behind, just saw it vanish around the corner, and as soon as he heard the chug of the motor winding down he quickly shut off his own engine.

  The engine rattled to silence several seconds after his quarry’s. His whole body tensed, and he felt his skin prickle along his arms. His scrotum contracted. If the occupants of the boat had heard his engine ...

  He waited. Teeth clenched, he waited. Slowly, he removed his gun and held it before him, aiming at the passage the boat had vanished into. Mist, fainter here in the small canals, drifted slowly over the water.

  The boat did not emerge. Sounds did, however. He heard the swish of oars in water, the voices of mutants speaking softly to each other, as if in fear or respect.

  Tavlin placed his pistol on the bench before him, took hold of the oars and eased the boat forward. Carefully, he moved beyond the lip of the corner and stared down the passageway. He readied himself to lunge for the gun, but the occupants of the boat were not lying in wait for him but rowing ahead, down the canal, as mist swirled about their hull, and dark, mound-like shapes protruded from the surface of the water all around them.

  Tavlin blinked, then swore silently. The mounds broke the surface of the water like disgusting, over-large human brains, gray and slick with slime, and he knew that thick, rubbery tentacles tangled below them, filled with venom. These were slugmines, the slug equivalent of jellyfish, and they made boat passage through the sewers more dangerous than it was already. When startled, they could emit a black cloud of poisonous gas that could make a person suffocate until he died, and then they would jet off into the labyrinth, squid-like. Suddenly Tavlin realized why the man with the briefcase had brought a gas-mask.

  Indeed, Tavlin thought the man had donned it, though it was hard to tell with the fellow twenty yards ahead and facing the other way. Tavlin thought he saw straps around the back of his head.

  With great care, the mutants rowed the boat through the water between slugmines, not even speaking unless they needed to for fear of rousing the creatures.

  Gathering his courage, Tavlin rowed into the passageway. He neared the first of the slugmines, saw the great eye in its side, filmy and covered by a mucus-y membrane, and veered wide around it. The membrane did not open, the eye did not see him. Tavlin breathed shallow.

  Forward, slowly now, a
round the next slugmine, then the next. Oh, shit, there was one coming up on his left, its tip just breaching the surface. He had almost missed seeing it. No, he told himself, don’t use the oar to shove it away, just brake with the flat of the blade, turn with the other ... yes, like that ... now forward ... slowly, very slowly ... hope the bastards in the boat ahead don’t look back ...

  The mist was thin here, though it still clung to the corners and edges of the canal and swirled gently over the waters, helping mask the dangerous mounds, and it would be quite easy for the occupants of the boat to see Tavlin if they were to glance back. Surely they would, he thought. Any second ...

  The boat ahead, wider than his own, made its way through the minefield more slowly than his. Thus, without quite realizing it until it happened, so focused was he on evading the slugmines, he approached his quarry sooner than he had prepared for.

  One of his oars must have made too loud a gurgle, for suddenly the tall man in his waxy, glistening overcoat spun around.

  Saw him.

  The man’s face was covered in the black gas mask with its jutting air purifier, making him look even more like some alien, insectile thing, but Tavlin still saw his eyes, dark and glaring, through the plastic sheen of the mask.

  The man called out, a short, sharp bark.

  The mutants wheeled. The fish-scaled leader’s eyes grew round, and he reached for a gun on the floor of the boat. He rose clutching a bulbous submachine gun. Others reached for their own weapons.

  Tavlin had snatched up his gun as soon as the tall man turned. He fired at the fish-scaled leader, missed, fired again, hitting the leader square in the chest. The man pitched backward, knocking into two others. Another loosed a burst at Tavlin, but the shooter had been bumped aside and the bullets skittered off the wall not far from Tavlin’s boat. Shards of stone flew out. Something nicked his ear.

  Tavlin aimed at a black mass next to the mutants’ boat. Holding his breath, he fired.

  A strange shriek filled the air. Black gas jetted from an orifice in the mound’s side. The dark cloud engulfed the boat and its occupants, and mutants screamed in horror. Out of control, the boat plowed forward, striking another slugmine, and another. More smoke billowed up.

  Tavlin, far away enough to escape the direct blast of the poison, still tasted the bitterness on the air, and something felt like it was biting his tongue, his nostrils, the insides of his mouth. His eyes watered.

  All the while, he fired his gun into the black cloud, unable to see the mutants and their passenger but hoping to get lucky. When his gun clicked empty, he reloaded with bullets he had bought that afternoon, fired again until he was out, then once more. By then the cloud was dispersing, and the boat had come to rest against the canal wall.

  Warily, Tavlin rowed forward. His heart thumped. Sweat stung his eyes. Blackness, though thinner, still hid much of the boat. He held his breath as he drew close, then let the boat drift forward while he reached for his gun.

  His vessel struck the hull of the other. Rocked.

  A shape lurched out of the darkness. It spilled over the gunwale into his boat. A long, glistening insectile form reached for him. A knife glittered in one fist. The blade flashed at Tavlin’s gut.

  Tavlin fired into the Octunggen man’s outstretched hand, then shoulder, then twice through the chest.

  Gasping, bleeding—he had already been shot, Tavlin saw—the man collapsed against the gunwale, still shuddering. Tavlin wrenched the knife away, shoved it in a pocket, then ripped off the man’s gas mask and strapped it about his own head. He sucked in a deep inhalation, frustrated at how the filter slowed his breaths when his lungs were demanding rapid action to remove the spots from his vision.

  Chest heaving, he clambered over the side into the other boat and rooted around amongst the bodies, some of which still moved.

  There! He beat away grasping hands, heaved a body aside, kicked the face of a certain moribund mutant reaching for a gun, then grabbed the briefcase by its handle and returned to his boat, where the tall man had crawled to the engine and was trying to rev it, to strand Tavlin there.

  Tavlin struck him over the head and pulled him away.

  “No,” the man said, “no ...”

  “What’s in this?” Tavlin asked, indicating the briefcase. “Money?” Even as he said it, he knew that was wrong.

  “Du,” the man said, an Octunggen word, Tavlin thought. Probably No, maybe Idiot. “They will come for you. They were ... to meet us ... close by ...”

  “Who?” Tavlin shook him. “Who’s coming for me?”

  The man glared up at him, an arrogant expression stamped on his pale, weary features. Then the light faded from his eyes, and he sagged. Tavlin watched him for a long moment, then studied the boat laden with mutants that he himself had killed. Abruptly he felt nauseous. He’d never killed anyone before, not in his entire life. He’d been around violence, yes, he’d seen people die, he’d even helped Boss Vassas fight off attackers before. And of course, there were gamblers who had lost everything and resented him that would take a swing at him or worse, and there were people he’d had to stick in duels, people who had lived, but nothing like this ...

  I was gone, he thought. I was out. Now I’m back a day and I’ve committed mass murder, plus prompted the death of a Suulmite. Damn you, Vassas ...

  Tavlin wanted to throw up but didn’t dare in his mask, and he didn’t trust that the air had cleared enough to remove it. He held the sick in.

  With shocking speed, the air changed. Lights filled it. Tavlin’s eardrums shook. Light strobed the walls, making the water seem to dance. Energy flickered out, arcs of blue-white fire from wall to wall, from water to ceiling, like a great electric spider web. The buzzing sound increased, and Tavlin felt the shaking in his bones. What the hell was going on?

  That was when it happened.

  She appeared. The girl in white.

  She popped up out of nowhere. One moment there was nothing, then he blinked, and when he opened his eyes she was right there, coming straight at him, that otherworldly ghost-witch or whatever she was, beautiful, ethereal, all of white save for shifting gray shadows, her eyes lances of illumination out of the most perfect face he had ever seen, her lips full and parted, her body ripe and slender.

  She flew toward him shrieking, “You took it! You bastard, why did you take it!”

  He leapt to the outboard, fired up the motor with trembling fingers and shot off down the corridor. He rammed against one slugmine, then another, and black poison squirted into the air behind him, but, gas-mask firmly in place, he didn’t care. He rocketed off into the sewers, hairs lifted in the base of his neck, too frightened even to look back.

  *

  Tavlin began to hear sounds. He had been wandering around the sewer system for some time, long enough to have admitted to himself that he was lost. Still shaking, he rowed and rowed, sometimes using his motor, sometimes not. He didn’t think he had much gasoline left. He had long ago torn off the gas mask, and he took great gulping breaths of air. It was metallic and rancid, but delicious. He was alive. The woman-thing did not seem to be chasing him, but he could still hear the echo of her scream in his mind. What was she?

  It was in one of the periods of rowing, when the motor was silent, that he heard them.

  At first it was just a dull, muted throbbing, but then it grew louder—and louder. He realized with a sense of alarm that it was the sound of engines. Boats were out. He wondered if he was close to Muscud or some other Under-town but knew that even if he were it was still too early for there to be much traffic about. Even mutants needed sleep.

  They will be coming for you. Shivering, Tavlin fired up his engine. It might alert the boats to his presence, but he had to risk it. He aimed his outboard in the direction he had been headed—he could only hope it was the right one—and motored off.

  The engines throbbed louder behind him.

  “Shit.”

  If he could still hear them over his own, that me
ant their engines were the more powerful. They might not be able to hear him, but if they found him they could catch him, kill him and take back whatever was in the briefcase. He itched to open it, but that would have to wait.

  The tunnel opened up ahead. He found himself in a large corridor, traveling toward a likewise large opening. And beyond the opening ... far beyond ... lights. They were few and far, concealed in mist and darkness that seemed almost opaque, as if the air was as grimy as the walls, but there were lights. He couldn’t tell if it was Muscud, but it seemed to be another massive cistern chamber, and in it there was definitely civilization or some likeness thereof. Heart soaring, he raced toward it.

  Gunshots snapped behind him.

  He jerked his head back to see a boat zooming around a corner. A lumpy figure stood on the bow, arm raised, something metallic clutched in its fist. Fire flashed from the muzzle, and a hole punched through Tavlin’s hull right near the motor. Splinters flew.

  The gun flashed again, its roar hardly noticeable above the sounds of the engines.

  Tavlin hunkered down before his motor, using it as a shield. He glanced back to the front. Off course. His hull scraped against the wall of the tunnel. The boat shook. He felt the rattling in his bones. Cursing, he aimed for the lights.

  When he looked back, he saw that the boat in pursuit had closed half the gap between them. Shitshitshit.

  Tavlin wanted to reach for his gun, but it was empty. I should’ve looted the dead for their weapons, damnit. The old Tavlin wouldn’t have hesitated.

  The opening grew large ahead. Another gunshot snapped, then another. The bullets whizzed overhead.

  Tavlin breasted the tunnel mouth and ventured out onto the open water, speeding toward the illumination. It spread before him, a few pinpricks of radiance here and there, as if he headed into an underdeveloped galaxy. Mist oozed up from the waters, thick and foul. He plowed into the fog, hoping it would hide him from his pursuers. Another gunshot rang out, but he didn’t know where the round went. The sound of the other boat’s engine grew even louder, a beehive screaming in his ears.