I couldn’t tell you how things worked on a submarine most days, and one without a fucking engine, even less so.
Something about the smell, though. I’d been wrong again. This wasn’t oil. It was blood. Hot, strong, thick blood.
The odor made me gag and I scuttled away from the puddle. Another drip. Another shiver. I stared at the spot on the ceiling where the drip was coming from. I was afraid of what I might find up there, but I had to know. Had to.
I climbed up through the hatch into the maneuvering room, and there they were—the missing section, floor to ceiling, a pile of them, dead or dying.
Rattling breath, catching, fading. Some tremors as the muscles used up their last impulses. And, yes, blood.
Oozing oozing oozing. And so many of these bodies were soaking wet. We all were, but it seemed as if they’d been pulled out of the water only seconds earlier.
Several were still moving their mouths, trying to speak, but all that came out was blood and water.
I slid back into the engine room and fell off the ladder, landed right smack on my ass. I looked up to see what I had missed earlier—the missing body of Horsecock, hanging from wires.
Naked, missing both arms and a leg, but I knew it was him because his pride-and-joy, that giant cock of his, it was intact and on full display. And…growing. While I watched, that thing grew and grew until it was rigid, curving upward, ready for business.
I got out of there, crawled on my hands and knees. There was no sense to be made of any of it anymore. I didn’t know what to expect in the next room. I didn’t know who I’d find or in what condition I would them.
I just wanted to close my eyes and open them to find myself back in my bunk. Not the Captain’s bunk, but the smelly, uncomfortable slab they’d assigned before we left port. I would’ve given anything for that, boy. Are you listening? Are you still awake?
I’m getting to it soon, trust me, I am. I’ll tell you why your grandpop is here in the middle of the night telling you this story, but just stay with me, kid.
XII
On the way back to the control room, I was unsteady on my feet. I kept hearing dull throoms outside the hull, followed by violent shaking.
Like depth charges. Someone had found us and was trying to flush us out, force us to surface so they could blast us with torpedoes. And from the feel of things, it was working.
The noises were louder and the shaking getting worse. I got my legs to work together and made it back to find even fewer men than before, all of them bloodied, pale, tired, some slumped over, others staring into space and completely ignoring their duties.
I slapped some heads on the way over to the periscope, where Ballad was peering through, his eyes worse-for-wear now—blood trickling from each down his cheeks, with him constantly wiping it away with his sleeve.
“Why the hell are we at periscope depth, son?”
He waved his arm at the others in the room. “I think we’ve lost control of the ship, sir. the men, they’re not too swift at the moment.”
“Goddamn, we can’t let those charges hit us, can we? We’ve got to go deeper. If we can’t outrun the bastards, we need to get beneath those depth charges!”
Ballad grinned. “Sir, what depth charges? There are no depth charges.”
He offered the periscope. I wondered what kind of trick he and Revel were playing on me now. I wiped Ballad’s blood off the lens and took a look. I didn’t believe what I saw, but the boy was right. Those weren’t depth charges.
There were hundreds of Japanese fighter planes, all of them on fire, diving into the ocean around us. An unlimited supply. They hit the surface non-stop, each one a little faster than the last, sending them deeper and deeper where they could explode right outside our hull.
“Jesus, fuck, Christ, fuck, God fucking damn.”
Ballad spoke up. “Sir? If you want me to dive, I’ll give it a go. But I’ve never done it before. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been on a submarine before.”
I scrunched my eyebrows at him. “Of course you have. This whole mission. You’ve been on a submarine for weeks now, son.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I…don’t think…I shouldn’t be here.”
Another peek through the periscope. More and more, a rain of kamikazes, and this time I could even hear them shouting as they impacted.
When I pulled away this time, Ballad was limp on the floor, mouth agape, eyes glazed over with blood. Dead. And the other men, gone. Just me, alone in the control room.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” I shouted. “Dive! Dive! Dive! Dive!”
I ran along, giving every dial a spin, every crank a turn, every last one, up and down the control room, not even concerned with what I was doing.
If I wanted the boat to dive, then it would dive if I willed it hard enough.
More dials!
Dive! Dive! Dive!
More wheels!
Dive! Dive! Dive!
This time it felt like there were more. I turned and saw that the room was longer than it had been. It went on and on for miles, it seemed.
The shuddering around me, the impacts above, all louder and harder and knocking me off my feet, but still I ran along and spun the wheels and cranked the dials and shouted to my cowardly, disappeared crewmates, “Dive! Dive! Dive! Dive! Dive, you fuckers, dive, you pussies, dive, you faggots, dive you sons of whores! Dive!”
Until there were no more wheels to spin and I was back in the engine room, still empty except for the puddle of blood.
And Ravel, sitting in the middle of it, the drip falling on his head.
“You! We were your rescuers! Why would you do this to us? Why?”
He shook his head. Smiled. The blood smeared his teeth. “I really thought you would figure it out by now. I think you have, actually. You just don’t want to admit it.”
“You, you’re, you’re a…sin-crazed psycho killer, that’s what you are!”
He shrugged. “If that’s what you needed me to be. But I wasn’t. Not really.”
I marched over and grabbed him by the front of his shirt and dragged him out of the blood. “I saw what you did to those boys up there, and now you’re bathing in their blood?”
“I didn’t do anything to those boys. You know who did this.”
I clenched him tighter. “Don’t. Don’t say it. I know what you’re going to say.”
Another smile. “What am I going to say?”
“You’re going to blame this all on me! I’m the one who killed them, you’ll say. I used you as an excuse to get on board so I could unleash the killer inside me, right? And I sliced and diced my way into command. That’s what you’ll say!”
I let him go, let him fall to the floor. There were voices in my head now. Screams. I looked up. Horsecock’s torso, still there, the dick flaccid now.
Then all around us, those ghosts, popping up, screaming, exploding. Popping up, screaming, exploding. Waves of them. And the closer I looked, the more of them I recognized.
I pointed. “Those…those aren’t ghosts. Or, they are. But…these are boys from this ship.”
Revel got to his feet, stepped over and laid a soft hand on my shoulder.
“I think you’re getting it now. Yeah. You just assumed the ghosts were people you didn’t know. But that’s not true. You watched them die. Every last one. And then, when it came your turn, you grabbed as many memories of those brave sailors as you could and locked them in here with you.”
By now the voices were coming in more clearly. So clearly that I had a hard time hearing my own voice. “No. I didn’t grab…we were all assigned to Victor. To come get you.”
“I was nothing but a cartoon on the cover of a pulp rag. You were looking at me when the attack began. It wasn’t about Nips on an island. I was an assassin dressed in black, hiding in a jungle. You weren’t assigned to do anything other than put out fires. You were too new, too young. You’ve never been on a submarine. Right? Think about it. That�
�s why you barely know how the boat works. You wouldn’t know what a submarine engine looks like. You wouldn’t know what the dials actually said.”
“Then…why was I there? How did I get there?”
Revel turned me around, grabbed me by both of my arms, and made me look in his eyes. “You joined the Navy to make sure the Army didn’t get you first. No way you were going to die in Europe shooting at Krauts. Your father told you, remember? Join the Navy, son.
Sail the other side of the world while the Europeans blast themselves to pieces. A bit like your commanding officer at Pearl Harbor, right? He didn’t expect this. He just wanted you boys to stay safe.
And he was right there in the middle, helping sailors escape until that plane hit not ten inches away from him, and…”
I closed my eyes. I saw it happen again. The Captain, such a kind soul, anguished as he begged the boys to run. Begged the rest of us to get as far away as possible. But we were transfixed.
And then I watched the man explode into pieces like a badly-butchered hog. And right behind him, as his guts and head flew right at me, all the debris. Flaming, sharp, heavy debris.
I felt the pain explode in my head, and I staggered across the engine room floor, fell. “I got hit.”
Revel nodded. “Yes, you did. Badly.”
I looked around. The red lights had been replaced by something else. Something silvery. Colder. “Am I dead? Is that what this is? Heaven?” But then I thought it out a bit more, lost my breath a little. “No…Hell?”
Revel knelt beside me. “Not yet. Neither one. You’re not quite dead. You’re fighting it hard, I’ve got to give you that. And all this—” He spread his arms wide. “This is one remarkable dream that has allowed you to keep fighting. Think about it, the boys you knew from the barracks, guys you were just getting to know. Guys who died all around you. Except for one.”
It came to me, very clearly. “Villeponteaux.”
“Yes indeed. He was a lucky one. There were others, of course, but you didn’t know them. Villeponteaux, he got to safety just in time. That’s why he didn’t die in your dream. Because you didn’t see him die out there.”
Revel helped me to my feet again. I looked over at the puddle of blood. Another drip landed and another shiver went through me, head to toe.
“Are they…are they giving me blood?”
“Looks that way. But it won’t help.”
“I thought you said I was still fighting.” I took a deep breath. “Now that I know what’s going on, I can fight harder! Let’s go! Fuck diving. Let’s surface and wake the fuck up!”
He started laughing, and I joined in, and we laughed like we’d never laughed before. Laughed until I cried, I did.
I could feel my strength growing. I had survived fucking Pearl Harbor! I was a hero without having done one goddamned thing! And it was going to be a beautiful recovery! Those young men who went forth to the killing fields of Europe and died there, or those sailors sunk to the bottom of the Pacific, or left rotting on some tropical island, they all did it because of me! People like me, people like the boys I resurrected on the Victor.
People like the Captain.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We’ve got some living to do.”
I started towards the door when Revel called out, “Not so fast.”
I stopped. Time for the bad news, I guessed. But this was my dream. Revel was my creation. “I’m going to live, you know. You can’t talk me out of it.”
He had already sneaked up on my, whispering in my ear. “Oh no, that’s not the case at all. You’ve already talked yourself out of it.”
I turned my head, but he was still out of sight. “That’s impossible.”
“You might have given me my look, but I can assure you that I’m no dream. It should’ve been a lot quicker than this, but that mutiny of yours gave you more strength than I realized.”
I heard another drip of blood hit the puddle. The shiver this time hurt badly. It chilled me.
Revel’s whisper: “Remember what you said right before that plane blew half your face off? It took your legs, too, most of them. Do you remember? That fateful promise you made to me?”
I squeezed my eyes close as tight as I could and held my breath. No. No. No.
Revel said, “You said…”
And I heard my own voice speaking into my ear.
I’d sell my soul to see my mommy one more time!
With that, I took in a big gasping breath and sat up straight in the hospital bed where I’d been fighting for life all those weeks after the attack. And standing by my beside—“Daddy! Mommy! And…”
She was so beautiful, your grandmother. Even more so than I had remembered. But something was different.
It took me a second to realize…she was pregnant with your father. Already showing. That one disgusting night of passion in the barn, and look what had happened.
But my eyes were beginning to lose focus. They were calling out to me, Jimmy! Baby! Jimmy! I took one last look at my mother and said it again. “Mommy!”
That was my last breath. I feel back onto the bed and died and went straight to fucking hell.
XIII
So there you have it. That’s the story your old grandpa rose from the grave to tell you all about. I figured you deserved it, seeing as what I’m about to do with you.
See, I fought that son of a bitch Satan in my head on that submarine, and then I fought him hard in Hell, too. All these years, whatever he’s been putting my undying soul through, I would keep laughing to his face and tell him the deal was worth it.
Oh, my, he hates hearing that. But that’s how I endure. Not one goddamned soul down there had fought like I have fought. And he appreciated that. So he gave me a second chance.
That’s where you come in, boy.
See, since I’m a hard motherfucker who will never break, no matter how many eternities that split-tongued fairy fills with terror for me, he wants to give me a chance to soften up.
He decided I should go live life all over again, and maybe try to live even longer this time. Stay out of wars. Stay away from the Navy. Stay away from Hawaii, even.
But to do that, I need a young body and the Devil needs a soft soul. And, wouldn’t you know it, we’ve got the same blood.
I won’t tell you I’m sorry. No, it doesn’t matter how much of an angel I am this time around, the only reason I’m coming back is to give Satan the satisfaction of watching me finally break. And the things he’s going to do to you… all I can say is you ashould hold on to hating me every second of every torture.
You should see my face when it hurts worse than you thought things could hurt, and laugh at the red-caped faggot, tell him ain’t no grandson of mine going to give him the pleasure of making it easy.
But, trust me, it won’t be easy.
Just close your eyes, young man, and the moment you fall asleep, you’ll wake up in hell. While your old grandpa will wake up in your body, take the best piss I’ve ever taken, and chomp down on those Fruity Pebbles you love so much.
And you’re right. It’s not fair. It’s not fair at all.
Well, I don’t care. Shut up and burn you little prick.
THE END
THE TAKING OF THE STAMP
by Hal Duncan
PART ONE
1
Alright, me nippy little scamps and scrags, me gangle-limbed scallywags, scofflaws too. All of yer, shusht! Shut yer gobs and park yer arses, pin yer ears back and hark at me fabble.
Don't gimme yer heard it. Don't gimme yer lived it. We gots us two strays set to take the Stamp, so yer knows the score, knows how it goes.
As sure as me name's Gobfabbler Halyard-Dunkling, Esquire - and a bugger-yer-mother to any what says it ain't - it's time to tattle the fabble we tells all newbs, the fabble of The Taking of the Stamp.
Now, yer has to imagine the clock rolled back, yer city with its skyscrapers scrubbed, no pickly Gerkin, no pointy Shard, no Eye whirling groanhuffs up to the s
ky.
Nope, this were the old days of rookery slums, steam trains and sewer stink, pea-souper smogs, of horseflap splattering cobbled streets what nippers in tackety boots run clomping on with hoop and stick.
This were the bad old days, when Ripper Vicky still stalked Whitechapel, just a harmless old hag them tarts would think, till slash! slice! and their livers was food, and off she'd slink back to Buck House!
And this were the bad old days when Ripper Vicky weren't even the worst, for sure as yer Empress of India were guilty of all's her arselicking bootboys fingered them Hindoo Thugs for in the foreign lands she'd her eye on, why, here in the Heart of Empire, she'd her Waiftaker General and his stickmen to rip us too, to rip yer from yer mam's arms in some raid, fibbing as she'd stole yer - not a fine fib fabbled for the fun, no, a fucker's lie painting Jews as Christ-killers, babysnatchers, like, to paint their own sins as salvation.
Back in them bad old days, twas the groanhuffs had the Stamp, see? Weren't a workhouse waif as was safe from being sold to the scrufftraders, nor a street Arab as didn't live in fear of being scrobbled, chucked in the back of a Grey Mary.
Off to the Institute ye'd go then, where they'd put the Stamp on yer, and oh, how ye'd scream as they Fixed yer forever, sob as they sold yer for a Scruffian, to sweep the chimneys or clean the mills.
This here's a fabble of them bad old days.
How we brung em down.
2
Look at that door behind yer, eh? Yeah, you too, Joey. Quit yer scofflaw scoffing. I knows you were there, and it ain't like it's told, but bollocks to yer historical accuracy. I likes the airship, so shut it. For once.
All of yer, listen. You most of all, you strays as has made yer choice. If yer wants to join us, yer has to know what it means to be a Scruffian. So picture a crib like this, all the liberated Scruffians in it gathered round their fabbler, yeah, just like us here.
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