Zephyr III

by Warren Hately

  “You know how to play me and you know I’d practically kill for another crack at that deranged sonofabitch,” I say.

  “I don’t think there’s any ‘practically’ about it, is there, Zephyr?”

  I eye the crying girl a moment. When she catches my eye, I make a waving motion. She gets up slowly, collects her machete, and backs away until she’s far enough that she can just run. I turn back to the hulking figure before me.

  “Get on with it.”

  “The F-f-freakasaurus is sheltering him,” Mentor says.

  “Those fuckers in the park?”

  I sigh with frustration. These are not good people.

  “The very same.”

  The gaping wooden mouth seems to chew the air for a second, make a random noise, and then I can all but visibly see Mentor’s command clamp back down on the big guy.

  “I thought your, you know, ‘children’ where a bit better behaved,” I remark.

  “Oh, this isn’t one of mine,” Mentor says dismissively.

  “Really?”

  If I can read a block of wood – and I am not telling you I can – then I would swear the possessed mutie gives an expression suggesting he wants to change the topic pretty bad. So bad that I am not sure why I let him.

  “Tell me about the Tank.”

  “I believe Freakasaurus and his ‘Peeps’ are harboring him, scavenging parts, enabling him to regrow,” Mentor says. “You know I have eyes everywhere, or wherever I want them.”

  “So why haven’t you just waltzed one of your people into the Sideshow and waxed him? That would be about your style.”

  “Oh do come on, Zephyr,” the wooden man replies, perturbed. “These are mutants we are talking about. Homo secondus. Inferior. F-f-few are . . . like me.”

  “What? Strapping examples of mutant goodliness?”

  “Empowered, Zephyr. And you know damned well what I mean.”

  “So you called me?”

  “So I called you,” Mentor agrees.

  “Well,” I say, and look at him until the eye contact catches. “F-f-f-f-f-fuck.”

  “Juvenile.”

  I give a tiny wry laugh.

  *

  IT IS NEWS to me that there’s some of Manhattan’s mutant populace that Mr Pudding-head doesn’t control, but then there have always been the Sideshow Peeps. Mutants and holocaust survivors who took to Central Park and never came out again. First they ate the Zoo dry. Ever since then, they’ve come forth to hunt in the night. Or worse, luring the unfortunate into their killing fields, the whole south side of the park laid with traps and disorienting barrows to confuse and ultimately kill the unwary. Not my problem, since their main diet seems to be fellow Manhattanites, which means mutants. All part of the natural order of things out this way, or at least that’s what I always figured. In Queens, growing up, we had rats the size of house cats. In Manhattan, they’ve got murderous mutant clown killers. Darwin never said nature was fair. I’m pretty sure he would’ve used the word motherfucker if it’d been invented yet, and it wouldn’t have turned his blue blood colleagues red.

  In 2001, just weeks after the Pentagon and the rebuilt World Trade Centre attacks, I had to rescue a famous writer’s grand-daughter from the Freakasaurus and his crew. They’re a hard bunch to explain and the way this story is unfolding, it looks like I’ll be getting the opportunity to do so first hand soon enough.

  The one advantage I have over the Sideshow Peeps and most their prey is that I can fly. I aim to use it. However, I am just a few seconds over the dark Jurassic glades of Central Park when ground zero opens up with a smoke plume and another fucking stinger missile hurtles up towards me.

  Stinger missile mystery solved, by the way.

  As explained, going from hover to get-me-the-fuck-outta-here in time to avoid state-of-the-art war technology isn’t as easy as it should be. In fact, it’s about as hard as it sounds. The thing looms up at me like a horny Rottweiler or something and I just have time to curse that I somehow didn’t ask fucking Mentor a thing about the missiles, and then I have to protect myself with a defensive flash blast.

  The missile explodes, much shorter than the last, but it still knocks me out of the air and I’m kissing dirt, great big fucking mouthfuls of it, in fact, before I can right myself the way I need to be to avoid sinking any further into this morass. And as I lever myself up from the rich turf, already in the distance I can hear the weird musical cries of the Peeps going about their business.

  I stand and dust myself off and there’s just a black shape that appears from nowhere and caroms into me and we both go tumbling across the yards of black earth I have exposed in my crash landing. Although it must only be midafternoon, there’s something dark and arboreal about the overgrown park hidden from the natural light by the hour of the day and the conspiracy of overhead derelict skyscrapers. I cannot get either a bead or an eye on my attacker, so I fling him, her or it free, and stand and blast the damn thing until it lays down and quits moaning.

  “Who the fuck was that?” I ask rhetorically.

  Something thumps into my back and I turn in disbelief as some stupid fuck with his face masked like a turban tries to Taser me. I wrap up the wires with my arm and pull the weapon and my attacker close enough to slam a fist without a great deal of restraint, I have to tell you, into this goddamn guy’s head. There’s a snapping noise and he goes down like a felled tree.

  Small arms fire is a bitch, I am reminded, as a burst of tracers rake across my back and shoulder. I throw myself flat to the ground, on my back rather than my front, and lance lightning intuitively back towards where the attack emanates. I don’t know if it is with the help of my vague, undefined quasi-senses or the power of the unconscious, but I hear a satisfying yelp and the chatter of the machinegun STFUs.

  I stand again in the strange ensuing silence, the trees devoid of life, not a squirrel hopping anywhere. The only noise for a moment is something creaking up in one of the trees and when I slowly lift my gaze heavenwards, I spy a length of chain decorated with human hands, or mostly human hands, and most of them intact, high up in the branches of the elm.

  “OK you sick fucks,” I growl, wondering for the first time why Mentor didn’t make more of my tattered duds.

  I have a bad feeling about all this – it stinks like a set-up.

  “Come out now, or I swear to Christ, I’m gonna deep fry each and every one of you.”

  Behind me comes the sound of a gentlemanly harrumph. I turn, surprised and yet not surprised as Freakasaurus steps clear of the undergrowth, a long and rusty length of chain between his enormous hands.

  “Well, if it isn’t the sweet transvestite himself,” I say to the inevitable effect.

  He closes in and tries to go me.

  Zephyr 11.6 (Flashback) “Lion’s Den”

  THE QUIP ABOUT transvestitism isn’t just my usual distasteful, off-color politically insensitive horse-shit. Me personally, I don’t know what scares the crap out of me more, the fact this guy who preaches operatically to a bunch of mutant serial killers also gets about in fishnet stockings, Gene Simmons boots and a black leather corset, or the fact he’s just a tad under eight foot, covered in murky green scales and built like some badass from Classical mythology. I get no more than a flash of Mr Stiffy’s dinosaur visage before the inevitable collision and we go backwards through the trees, fists swinging and knees going for all they’ve got.

  Freakasaurus has one up on me because he also has a four-foot tail he uses to surprisingly good effect in hand-to-hand combat. It’s thick, strong enough to support his whole weight, which really shouldn’t be surprising despite his size because the rest of him is nothing but layer on freaky layer of muscle, the whole thing covered in squamous green alligator hide, because that’s his deal – a rare, bodywide mutation that at least gives something for all it takes away, the chance of a normal life, erectile dysfunction, the usual deal.

  The big guy leans back on his tail and one-twos me with his big heavy-me
tal boots. I block the worst of it on my forearms and slam my fist into his chiseled gut as he rights himself, but then he brings his hard jaw down on the top of my skull and I hit the deck faster than an Italian backpacker’s knickers. Another of the Freaky One’s adaptations is an enormous mug, the whole elongated misery ending in a horn-crusted snout as big and hard as a small boulder.

  Freakasaurus soliloquizes into my black-out and I fade back in to consciousness with the big gay dinosaur lifting my face by the chin and grinning toothily down at me as he pulls aside his black codpiece to reveal his perpetually, and I imagine, painfully erect member.

  “Is that about right, my little Zephyr?” he croons in a voice mixing the worst parts of Dennis Rodman and Ethel Merman.

  “I’m, er, sorry. What?”

  I move a moment, and just as Freakasaurus is about to reply, I add, “Hang on a minute. Are we talking? I thought I was pounding your ass!”

  I stun gun the big freak at point blank range and he gives a twitching shiver, steam erupting from his vast nostrils pointed heavenwards, and that’s enough leeway for me to roll back over my shoulder and avoid his fist as he punches down into the space I formerly occupied. Again the tail thing works in his favor though, as he hardly hesitates, springing after me so that we go down in this unfortunate missionary position on the ground, him athwart me, a big leer on his dinkus.

  “Did you say, ‘pounding your ass,’ Zephyr? How apropos.”

  “Not likely, bird brain.”

  I dig my fingers into his shoulders and channel enough volts to keep him twitching for two or three seconds after the time it takes me to wriggle free. He’s resilient though, and strong. Me, I’m plenty strong too, but he’s got leverage. And that fucking chain. He pulls it towards him again now, and grinning evilly, swings it over his head so I have to dive again, stashing myself behind the bole of a tree and within sight of a wrought iron fence, the elaborate spikes displaying several not-so-fresh heads.

  Just as I’m about to make a dash for it, one of the boss’s little freaks throws himself in my path. I swear he’s no bigger than a chimpanzee and has a face like my wife’s accountant, complete with the little glasses, so perhaps it’s understandable I delay flight to stomp him into the earth and that’s when Freakasaurus roars his incomprehensible challenge and I block the rusty chain with a forearm that just as quickly becomes entrapped.

  My serpentine foe slams a fist into the plate just below my throat and as I’m retching, he twists my arm behind my back and the next thing I know I have the chain around my neck as well, my free arm reaching randomly backwards, my eyes bulging, boots digging up the ground as I yield slowly towards the dangerous-looking fence. Just when I think I can’t hold my breath any longer, Freakasaurus turns me around, trussed like a kinky little black leather Christmas package, and lifts me up into the air above his head.

  *

  I AM SEMI-conscious from oxygen loss and yet fully aware this is about as bad as it gets. In a second I am to be hurled onto a row of metal stakes and I really only have myself to blame. I start kicking my legs and swinging my arms like crazy, throwing myself off balance above my foe. Freaky gives a growl, rasping the true description as a noise like meat being stripped from bones slithers from between his gargantuan teeth – and then he hauls me down and slams me onto the damp earth in front of him, reptilian penis now thankfully reholstered, and he gives me his best bug eye, hands now on his hips.

  “You wanna explain to me what the hell this is about, white boy?”

  I crick my neck and pull the chain from about my chest.

  “You’re harboring Think-Tank,” I say with a lot less metal in my voice than I wish.

  I woozily stand and Freakasaurus clearly doesn’t consider me sufficient threat to change from his hips-outthrust posture of defiance.

  “Think-Tank,” he says simply. “This is about Think-Tank? Well fuck my little green ass.”

  Little doesn’t really seem to be the word to use. Not with that crocodile tail swinging around like it’s got a mind of its own. I wipe my jaw and hum nervously.

  “So, like, where is he?”

  Freakasaurus laughs. “Oh, he’s here.”

  “So Mentor was right.”

  “Mentor?”

  Again he speaks with the undignified pitch, the four-hundred pound drag queen voice not becoming – but who am I to judge?

  “Tell me what that moldy sack of fucking potatoes said to you.”

  “Mentor? That you’ve got the Tank holed up over here. You’re helping him out. Setting him up and shit.”

  The gender-confused lizardman gives a deep ironic laugh and shakes his head. He eyes me a moment more than really feels necessary and laughs again.

  “Girlfriend, you’ve got to be more careful who you listen to. Think about it, bitch. We nearly had words!”

  “If that’s what you call it.”

  Although it’s the top of my head that feels like I have a meat skewer through it, I also find it hard to resist testing my jaw with my fingertips as I watch the big green mutant warily. While hostilities have inexplicably died down – and I am more than cool with acting cool to give myself at least the chance to catch my breath – we are still talking about probably one of the world’s most fucked up and prolific murderers, not to mention his Merry Men. The reality of my situation is gently fed back to me as more and more of the predatory Sideshow Peeps fade in through the trees all around, only half of them in clown gear, the rest of them, with their various mutations, scary enough in their own rights they don’t need it.

  “OK,” their leader says, snapping his big fingers as he resolves some internal dilemma. “Come this way.”

  He grabs me by the shoulder and I shrug off the hand. Rather than retaliate, Freakasaurus slows and turns, hands on his hips again and fangs bared. I do believe he is wearing black lipstick. His breath at this distance smells like a lion’s den.

  “What?” he growls. “You wanted Think-Tank? Let’s go see him.”

  The big guy then turns tail and stomps on ahead while his henchmen form a discreet convoy around me.

  Zephyr 11.6 (Flashback) “A Fearsome Thing”

  THE DEVESTATED ARCHITECTURE of the park looms in the sinking light like some deserted, war-torn fairground. The moist air is rank and gloomy, coalescing in a visible haze that catches the late afternoon sunlight like a stain. We move through scenes shrouded by silhouettes and dirty sheets, every now and then more Peeps popping up to open improvised barricades or unbolt hidden doorways, allowing us to descend – and for them to lead me – further into their dark and diseased domain. It smells like an abattoir long abandoned, though I think this indicates nothing about the recentness of any killings.

  Beyond a log wall there is the faded and curtailed wreckage of a summer pavilion. Charcoalized skeletons have been strung up like party decorations on barbed wire around it. A single big mutant with a .50 Barrett sniper rifle and a head like a sack of rotting eggs steps down from the terraced steps and almost negligently flicks back a scarf. The malice in the air is palpable, downright visible as we move into the old Zoo precinct, through battered, twisted gates and down a concrete slope lined with kitchen litter and ancient bones. The skull of what I perceive to be an elephant, tusks intact, has been positioned above the door of a low flat structure, most of the letters missing from the sign for the nocturnal house.

  Someone provides Freakasaurus with an enormous Edwardian cloak. He still grips the rusty chain, perhaps a hundred pounds of it, his weapon of choice and fashion statement par excellence. He stops and turns at the door and eyes me, and while the light hasn’t been fantastic up until now, everything drained and shadowy like a conspiracy of the eyes urged on by morbid psychic dread, now in the sepulcher of the long-dead animal house I see the leader of the mad mutants in startling clarity, the absurd details of his scaled proboscis and the chipped curve of the horn protruding from the end of his nose, the deranged glimmer of his deep reptilian eyes, his baited mouth, th
e teeth ajar, stained, dangerous, immersed in mysteries I don’t even want to know about.

  I find my bluster strangely challenged.

  “Yes?” I ask.

  The dinosaur just stares at me for five or more seconds, grinning, I think, and then gives a low bow and flourish from his great height.

  “After you.”

  I look at the utterly black entrance with trepidation, pausing fortunately just long enough to realize the complete absence of light is nothing to do with the darkness. A thick black theatrical curtain hangs across the door and I sweep it aside with something bordering on annoyance. It gives me fuel, though I daren’t emit much more than a crackle as I push forward and breach the entrance.

  The light is poor inside, but far less than the total darkness expected. The first section sees walls lined with glass booths, the resident snakes and Australian marsupials and rare frogs and bats and frog-eating bats long since turned into curries. Freakasaurus follows, but it is just he and I now as we tread with vague reverence up a hollow wooden slope, taking the tour of abandoned exhibits until the air turns greenish and we round a bend and I see what the damned dinosaur has led me here to see and I understand finally where this game is at.

  *

  THERE IS A withered human torso immersed in an enormous tank of putrid water. Algae and slime in the water turns the light from two submerged globes green. The torso has two arms that are held aloft, though the waist ends in a confusion of machine parts and biological-looking abstractions that dangle in the water, one of the tubes emitting bubbles. There are metal devices of some sort around his wrists that hold him suspended. The head is down, face invisible to me. Long tangled hair like grey kelp masks the face and sticks to the weirdly-muscled chest and shoulders of the man who, on and off, has been one of my greatest foes.

  “Not what I expected,” I say eventually.

  “I figured not,” the Freak replies.