Dead Easy

by Mark William Simmons

  I swept my arm around again and droplets of blood machine-gunned out like a hail of black bullets in the moonlight, fanning across the circle of wolves who pressed in behind their fallen comrades. A dozen went down or staggered back, squealing and yelping and twisting about as the burning solvent from my veins burned through their hides and began to liquefy any tissue, soft or hard, that it encountered underneath.

  "Yeah," I murmured as the rest of the pack began to back up, "who's the bigger monster, now?"

  "Cséjthe," Zotz called, "they're leaving."

  "No they're not. They're just regrouping."

  "I mean the boat," he said, tugging on my uninjured arm. "They're casting off!"

  The wolf closest to me looked up from its private misery and growled. I raised my right arm threateningly . . . and noticed that the four deep lacerations in my flesh had already closed! Damned nanites!

  "All aboard," I said as I turned and ran for the dock.

  Zotz was right behind me. The wolves were behind him, though not as close and limping more than running. The mooring lines had been pulled and hurriedly cast aside and Setanta was wrestling with the gangplank as we pounded onto the dock. The New Moon was already six feet away from the pier and moving.

  "I don't! Know if! I can! Make it!" I grunted. As running broad jumps go, the odds were, at best, fifty-fifty. In the dark, on a wet planked surface, and a half ton of bat-demon turning the whole dock into a wooden trampoline with every bounding step, I could hardly keep from falling on my face, never mind getting up the velocity and balance to clear the railing on my departing houseboat.

  "Don't stop!" Zotz demanded, practically breathing down my neck.

  Then he grabbed me. One hand on my collar, the other on the back of my belt: I was lifted off my feet and flung back behind him. Thrown to the wolves! Except he didn't let go: I was swung forward again before I was released, to go hurtling over the last ten feet of dock and another ten of black water. I smashed into Setanta who had just set the gangplank out of the way, staggering him back against the salon door with me in a mad embrace.

  He stared at me as if unable to fathom what he was holding in his arms. "What . . . ?"

  "Hey, Gargantua," I croaked, "haven't you ever heard of 'don't ask, don't tell'?"

  His response was lost in Camazotz Chamalcan's arrival—who slammed into the both of us, breaking down the door and tumbling us across the salon and halfway through the window on the far side of the cabin. Fortunately it was closed. That way the glass could slow us down before we went overboard on the other side. Whoever was walking along the starboard gangway outside wasn't so lucky: she went ass over teakettle and into the river. Good news for us: we had reduced the enemy compliment by a full third.

  The New Moon was angling out away from the shore, presumably to discourage any furry boarders. But were we any safer in deep water? The mysterious beam of light beneath the waves swept around to illuminate the houseboat, reminding us that we had bigger fish to fry than a mere platoon of lycanthropes.

  Zotz hauled the Mullet off of me and I began the process of extricating myself from the shattered window. Some of the shards had gone in pretty deep but there was surprisingly little blood. And the wounds closed almost immediately as I pulled the glass out. But it wasn't painless. Whatever the nanites were doing to regenerate the damaged tissue, the wounds and the healing process still hurt like a sonuvabitch!

  Which was okay, in some twisted fashion: at least I was feeling something beyond the numbed and weary state I generally found myself in these days.

  "Let me go!" the Mullet was bellowing. He couldn't do much else. When a Mesoamerican bat-demon has you in a full nelson, you ain't going anywhere—even if you are big enough to make Dolph Lundgrein look like Danny DeVito.

  "Please!" he finally pleaded, trying to strain a little less against the furry vise that held him fast.

  Now my mother taught me that, in certain times and at certain places, "please" is a magic word. But not this time and not this place. Zotz shifted his grip and put Setanta into a sleeper hold.

  As fate would have it, however, just before his air was cut off, Setanta managed to say the right magic words for this time and place.

  Chapter Eleven

  "She can't swim!" he gasped before slumping in the demon's furry grasp.

  We turned back and looked. The underwater ghost light was pointed right where one of the elves had gone over the side.

  A frantic hand broke the surface of the water for a moment and then slipped back beneath the waves.

  It was perfect: one less foe to fight. One less threat to my unborn son. A psychological, as well as numerical, blow to our pointy-eared enemies. So there's only one explanation as to what happened next.

  I just didn't care.

  Looking back later I had to reconcile my response to the logical default any other sane and sensible man would have taken.

  It wasn't heroic.

  I mean, I'm not that kind of guy. Not any more and maybe I never was. Once upon a time I was a decent guy, a nice guy, with a wife and a daughter and a life in the suburbs. I had already learned a number of lessons about life being unfair and how shit happens and such. It took an encounter with Vlad Drakul Bassarab V and half of the necrophagic virus that transforms the living into the undead to learn that death is just as unfair as life. And that if you think shit just happens while you're breathing then you don't know shit at all.

  The problem with heroes is they approach problems as if they are puzzles that can be solved, tasks that can be completed, or foes that can be vanquished. I knew better, now. Dr. Henry Kissinger once said: "All of the world's great problems are not problems, at all. They are dilemmas, and dilemmas cannot be solved. They can only be survived."

  So, not into heroics these days, and not seeing a lot of potential in the survival column, either. Let's just chalk up my impulsive "rescue" attempt as "depressed, angry guy with a growing death wish sees another opportunity to play chicken with Mr. Death." Gives the cylinder on God's revolver another roulette spin and leaps into the black waters. Don't give me that look—the one that murmurs "rationalization." Metaphysically it's more selfish than selfless, calculated even. Assuming there are such things as the Pearly Gates, they can't turn me away. What? Suicide? C'mon, Pete, let's watch the replay again: I jumped in to perform a good deed. How was I to know the giant sea monster with the glowy eye was going to chew me into Purina Shark Chum and feed me to her litter of fish fiends? Not my fault I ruined God's little game of Let's Torment Cséjthe Some More . . .

  Hitting the water was like flopping into a cold concrete wall: it knocked what little breath I had left out of me. Fortunately, the nanobots were already at work reconstructing the artificial gill at the back of my throat. The only reason I swallowed so much water this time was I continued to cuss the whole way in.

  I immediately started sinking like a rock. Vampires will do anything to avoid crossing running water for this very reason and, while I was still technically alive, I was no longer humanly buoyant. My last escape from the watery Ouachita had been a fluke. No pun intended.

  Then the cramping started.

  Bad enough to drown but to go out with a bad case of gas?

  My descent slowed as odd sensations began to spread throughout my body. The cramping eased into an uncomfortable bloating sensation.

  Oh.

  My.

  God.

  The 'bots were effecting further biological modifications, creating some kind of half-assed sub-marine buoyancy system! Worrisome enough, but what if they elected to excise body parts when it was time to "drop ballast"?

  I had no further opportunity to dwell on the unpleasant side effects of cybernetic modifications as company was arriving.

  Fand was maybe twenty feet below me and being dragged along the river's bed by the current. The underwater beam of light caught the white corona of her hair in its icy gaze, dispelling any doubts as to her identity. Nor was there any question as to who
the new arrivals were: a quartet of Black Lagoon wannabes had arrived to see if they could make things any more unpleasant than they already were.

  I reached toward them and kicked down. And farted. I shot downward like a torpedo on target. Not "jet-propelled," you understand; just less buoyant.

  So quit smirking.

  There were other forms at the periphery of the light. Moving. Humanoid. How many of these things were there? I felt a prickling sensation erupt all over my body and considered the possibility that I might not make it back to the boat even if I elected to turn back now.

  But Screw 'em, I decided.

  According to Mama Samm, these were bad guys on a cosmic scale (heh, again no pun intended). These were the Deep Dudes who were supposed to have a hand in waking up Octogod, Lord of Slumber and Sodomizer of Worlds. I had glimpsed their kind scavenging a storm-battered New Orleans in my eye-blink vision, utilizing human skulls and viscera as bricks and mortar for the New Order. More than self-defense, more than rescuing Fand, I owed these guys a round of deaths on higher principles. If I had just a few minutes left before the nanites rehabbed my insides into tuna casserole, I was going to spend them violating the parish fish-and-game codes in unusual and spectacular ways.

  I rammed into the first amphibioid and pulled Fand's arm from its grasp. Other silhouettes closed in, blocking segments of the spotlight and the closest fish folk swarmed me.

  I lost my grip on her arm. Then I lost my bearings.

  It was a different fight this time. I wasn't struggling for air, feeling the erosion of thought and coordination as my lungs caught fire. I thrust my hands, arms, even legs, understanding that they were deadly weapons if I so willed it. The biggest problem was finding Fand again and getting her to the surface before she drowned. And not mistaking the elf for a finny foe in the meantime. I was stabbing and slashing whatever was within reach and reaching back. In moments I was enveloped in a confused tangle of mutant bodies and a cloud of blackish blood. And the fluids from eviscerated bodies were negating any advantage the ghost light had offered just moments before.

  These things had to be cold-blooded so I tried shifting my vision over into the infrared spectrum, figuring to pick Fand out of the underwater lineup. I had never tried doing this underwater and either it wasn't working or Fand was as cold-blooded biologically as her personality suggested.

  Or already out of range as the temperature of the water was probably acting like a diffusion medium.

  Either way, she would be drowning while I was playing patty-cake with the Cousteau Twins, here. At least it felt like I was down to two . . .

  Make that one.

  And as I jerked him close enough to deliver the coup de grâce, a rising red tide behind my eyeballs rolled like a tsunami throughout my body. I felt like I hadn't eaten in days, maybe weeks! And, except for a cup of O-Neg the other night, I probably hadn't. And, since waking back up in my own carcass, I had been burning through my meager reserves like a refinery fire. I wasn't just hungry, I was starved!

  The fact that the gill in my throat was filtering oxygen out of a fluid medium that was more blood soup than river water was only making it worse. If aquaman, here, had been any more human—and I had fangs—I would have gone for snackage right then and there.

  And then I felt the prickling disturbances in my gums.

  The nanites were reprogramming to adapt to my perceived survival needs. I was growing fangs! Silver-laced ferrocarbon fangs, as like!

  Not that I was about to use them, of course. No way I was going to bite one of these fish people on their slimy necks and suck—

  My opponent shoved his hand in my face, digging his claws into my temples and bending my head back until I felt like the headliner at a contortionists' convention. Even as I grabbed at his unyielding arm, instinct took over and I bit the heel of his palm as it pushed between my jaws.

  Another explosion of blackish blood and the gill structure somehow revalved to allow me to swallow. Strange, amphibious fluids trickled down my throat to refuel the arcane biological mechanisms that kept me alive and functional. As fuels go, it was a very odd octane.

  As food goes . . . it tasted like sushi. Bad sushi.

  Sea Haunt removed his hand quickly. Then turned and fled, running into some sort of obstacle just beyond the range of the ghost light. I let him go for the moment. There had to be others and one more or one less right now wasn't going to make the difference that eclipsed the other matters immediately at hand. A major fishing expedition, however, had just moved way up on my to-do list. For now, however, I turned to follow the current. The Hunger was still there, still strong, but momentarily bearable. Fand took priority for the moment.

  Twenty, thirty, forty yards was enough to give me the bad news: if the bottom current had gotten her, she could already be a mile or more downriver. I turned and kicked back to the surface to get my bearings. More gas cramps and the overall tingling sensation turned itself inside out. As my head broke the surface I saw dozens of spiny protrusions on my hand slide back down beneath the skin.

  For a few moments, at least, my prickly disposition had found a means of outward expression.

  No wonder I was starving: the energy requirements for microbiological replication and construction had to be tremendous. First you had untold millions of microscopic fabrication and construction machines requiring fuel just to operate. Then there were the additional energy costs for manipulating and reproducing materials at the cellular level. Factor in my body's accelerated demands for healing and repair every time flesh or bone had to be breached for a projecting claw, spine, or blade, sundered and reknit for internal reconfigurations—you were looking at a growing energy demand that couldn't be met by a plate full of cheeseburgers or crawfish étouffée!

  Daddy's little helpers were ticking time bombs, noshing through my veins like teeny-tiny Pac-men, gobbling up every nutrient in sight. If I didn't feed them soon, they would start cannibalizing me in ways that would make piranhas look like butterflies. If my own body didn't starve to death on the cellular level, first.

  A quick three-sixty of the river's surface yielded no further evidence of Fand but there were extra forms at the New Moon's railing. A second look and I was treated to a zoom-in close-up view like Steve Austin's bionic eye. Stop that! Bad nanos, bad! The last thing I needed was to amp up their energy consumption when I was already dangerously low on my own reserves.

  I turned and began a weary breast stroke for the houseboat, trying not to look again.

  If it was Fand I saw being helped aboard, I didn't need to waste any more energy, much less optical reconfigurations, on another look-see. And, if it wasn't, she was as good as dead by now, and swept downriver to points unknown.

  Besides, the real temptation was to look at the second figure standing next to her.

  And there was no sense risking further disorientation until I was back on solid footing and could make arrangements to cross the river to the blood bank.

  * * *

  I was too weak to climb the ladder when I finally reached the New Moon's side. Zotz had to jump back in and assist me, as I would later learn he had done with Fand and her other rescuer. Once aboard, a blanket was thrown over me and I was taken into the salon.

  Fand sat, huddled on the sofa, her blanket already soaking through. Stefan Pagelovitch's AWOL enforcer stood beside her, dripping and dribbling water like a broken fountain. A blanket was puddled on the floor behind her as if it had just slipped from her shoulders.

  "Suki?" I whispered, weary beyond comprehension. Her head turned to track me but her eyes were dark and lifeless. Dead. "Where have you been?" I murmured.

  Her mouth opened slowly, as if she were hesitant to speak. But no words came out. Just a freshet of river water, dark with silt and sediment. And then a tiny crawfish tumbled over her lower lip and rode the waterslide down the front of her rotting blouse.

  There's a reason why vampires, as a rule, won't cross running water. Or any other kind that's deepe
r than they are tall. The undead don't swim. Don't float. Once in and under, they don't come back out. They drown. You might think drowning is no big deal to something that's already dead. But it is. Don't ask me how or why—I've personally dodged that particular bullet and I hope to God I never find out, firsthand.

  But Suki . . .

  I tried to walk to her but my legs gave out from under me. Zotz swept me up before I could hit the floor and carried me back into my cabin.

  * * *

  I didn't "pass out."

  And "swoon" is such a girly turn of phrase.

  I had just hit the last of my reserves and my body went into energy-conservation mode. Which pretty much meant I could only lie there and try to tell Bats why my arms and legs no longer worked. Slurring my words like a drunken stroke victim didn't help and the demon seemed to lose interest, leaving the room while I was still explaining that I'd be perfectly happy to skip the reheating process and eat the crunchy, frozen blood packs like snow cones. Anything to hurry the process along!

  I closed my eyes for a moment. Maybe if I rested a few minutes . . . ten . . . twenty . . . I could gather enough strength to get back up and . . . do what?

  All Zotz had to do was get to the other side of the river, drive my other car to the blood bank, use my keys and pass code to get in and bypass the alarms, grab some blood (preferably from the excess stocks but I wouldn't nag in this particular instance), remember to reset the security tapes and alarms and relock the doors on the way out—all without being seen by local law enforcement or passersby, and avoiding run-ins with furry or faerie foes.