Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel

by Richard Kadrey

  I reach for Traven, but before I can get to him, his eyes flutter closed and he slumps to the floor, his head cracking on the pavement. Brigitte starts for him but I grab her and push her behind me.

  I take a couple of steps toward Hattie. I want to rip her apart. Traven is bleeding where his skull hit the floor. I want to see her bleed too. She steps back, but not because she’s afraid.

  “Who are you?”

  “Don’t you recognize me?” she says, her voice coolly amused. “You destroyed my home. You humiliated me. You’re an Abomination and your presence in this city has brought it and me nothing but misery.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Her face shifts. Her skin crawls. The old woman becomes a young one, then cycles back to a crone, like the phases of the moon.

  “Medea Bava,” I say. “I heard you were Deumos’s sorority sister. Shouldn’t you be in Hell?”

  “And leave the world to your tender mercies?” she says.

  “You killed Hattie and took her place. Why?”

  “For just this minute. To see the look on your face when you knew.”

  “Why didn’t you just take the 8 Ball and go?”

  “I didn’t know where it was in here any more than you did. Besides . . . letting you find it for me was a chance to watch you and your friends suffer, and that alone was reason enough to watch and wait.”

  I pull the SIG from my pocket and aim for her head.

  She holds up the 8 Ball.

  “You say it works when you’re angry or threatened? How do you think you make me feel?”

  I lower the SIG and put it back in my pocket.

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Why, return it to its rightful owner.”

  She pulls out a pendant from under her robes. I recognize the shape. It’s Aelita’s angelic sigil. Hattie kisses it three times.

  “Come to me, sister. Come and receive what’s yours.”

  “Medea.”

  It happens instantly. The voice comes from behind us. Aelita, in a Maggie Thatcher power suit, shoulders her way past Vidocq and Candy. Bumps my shoulder as she goes past.

  “You have the Qomrama, I see.”

  Medea uses it to point in my direction.

  “The Abomination almost had it. I took it from him and now I want to do what’s right.”

  “Thank you, sister,” says Aelita, and reaches for the 8 Ball.

  Medea’s lips go from a smile to a hard straight line. The 8 Ball shoots from her hand like a cannonball, slamming into Aelita over the heart, driving her across the lobby and into the wall. Spinning blades sprout from the ball, whirring like rotary saws burrowing into her chest. An angel’s scream is a terrible thing to hear. It’s the death wail of something that was never supposed to die but has lived long enough to see the universe turned upside down as it now stares down death’s gullet. Holy angel blood splatters the floor and our feet as the Qomrama punches through Aelita’s chest and out her back. She slumps to the ground, and for a few seconds she twitches, trying to breathe, trying to focus on something besides the pain, her blood, and fractured bones. Medea hasn’t moved. The 8 Ball flies from Aelita’s chest and back into her hand. Aelita gasps one more time and fades away. An angel’s death. Leaving nothing behind but one more hole in the universe.

  Medea looks at me.

  “Her war with God was a child’s thing,” she says. “It got in the way of the true work.”

  “Coming after me? I’m flattered all to hell,” I say.

  Medea makes a face. Behind her, Traven’s eyes flutter open. He looks around for a second, unsure what’s happening. With his sleeve he wipes blood from his eyes.

  “You’d like to think that all this is for you, wouldn’t you, Abomination?”

  “You sure talk like it is.”

  “I call you by your true name because it’s the one thing Aelita was right about. You’re the filth of the universe.”

  “So you’re not going to be in our Secret Santa pool?”

  Traven gets up unsteadily behind her. I keep hold of Brigitte.

  “This . . .” Medea holds up the 8 Ball. “This will do the real work now. I’ll return to Deumos and my true sisters in Hell and we’ll finally bring the Angra Om Ya back home.”

  I take a step and she steps back. Right into Traven.

  “No you won’t,” he says. He picks up a fist-size piece of concrete and slams it into the back of her head. Medea drops the 8 Ball and lunges after it. Before she can get her hand on the thing, Traven has his hands around her throat and pulls her upright.

  He says, “You want to go to Hell? I can send you there forever.”

  He plants his mouth over hers, like a terrible kiss. The Via Dolorosa. He spits millions of the sins he’s eaten over the years into her, burning her insides, turning her soul blacker than any normal human’s could ever be. Guaranteeing her the lowest depths of damnation.

  But something is wrong. I’ve never seen the Dolorosa take this long before. Bava spasms and tries to push him away. Digs her nails into his face. Then goes slack. Traven’s skin is white. He lets go of Bava, tenses, and falls onto his back in some kind of seizure. I let go of Brigitte and we run over. I hold down his shoulders and Brigitte grabs his legs until it passes. When Traven opens his eyes, they’re dull and the whites are red with blood. He’s blind. His face and hands are covered in deep red hemorrhages. His heartbeat is an unsteady staccato. Each of his slow, shallow breaths is harder for him to take than the one before. When he can talk, it’s just a whisper.

  “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I gave it to her.”

  “It’s okay. You couldn’t help it. Everyone knows.”

  “Does she have it?”

  “No. You stopped her.”

  “Liam,” says Brigitte. She’s crying, touching his bloody face. “Don’t move. We’ll get you to Allegra.”

  Traven laughs when he hears her voice. She leans down and kisses him. He goes slack in her arms. She looks at me.

  “Take us through a shadow. Now.”

  Traven draws a deep painful breath and grabs my arm.

  “Put the Qomrama in the Room. Keep it from anyone who can use it.”

  I look for a dark shadow, one big enough to take all of us. I spot one by a pillar. Candy grabs the 8 Ball, but when I try to pick up Traven, he stiffens in a new round of convulsions, coughing blood.

  Vidocq pushes me away. Pours something down Traven’s throat. He goes still. Brigitte is trying not to scream. When the shaking starts again, Vidocq pulls out another potion. Brigitte grabs my arm.

  “Do something. Some magic.”

  I try to remember any healing spells I used to know. I was never very good with them. I put my hand on Traven’s chest and say the words. I don’t feel anything. There’s nothing left inside me. I’m too weak and too fucked up. My hoodoo won’t work.

  Brigitte shoves Vidocq aside and leans over Traven, doing CPR. She counts in Czech each time she pumps the father’s chest. She pinches his nose and blows into his lungs, her mouth smearing with his blood. Traven doesn’t move. I can’t hear his heart or his breathing anymore. Sweat drips from Brigitte’s face onto Traven’s chest. No one moves. No one stops her. Let her do what she has to do even if there’s nothing left of Traven to bring back. Finally, she collapses on top of him, crying. Candy puts a hand on her shoulder and pulls her up. When Brigitte sees me, she slaps me as hard as she can across the face.

  “Great magician. Why can’t you do anything when it matters?”

  “I’m sorry. I . . . I’m sorry.”

  Brigitte puts her hands on Traven’s bloody, red cheek and leans her forehead on his, whispering good-byes to his corpse.

  I’m not even mad. I’m numb. Of course, they used the possession key on Traven. He’s hardly had a glimpse of this kind of apocalyptic insanity. He’s the closest thing to an innocent any of us knows. And I brought him into this shit asylum and got him tangled up in my old battles
. I look at Medea’s dead body. She was powerful. It must have taken every ounce of strength, every sin Traven had ever swallowed, to bring her down. Which is the real joke in all this, because for any other sin eater, it would mean they were empty of sin and they’d get a first-class ticket to Heaven. But not Traven. He was already booked on a coal cart to Hell before any of this. Candy asked if either of us has souls. Right now I hope I don’t because I can’t imagine a bigger, more damning sin on my record than bringing a guy like Father Traven into Kill City.

  The building rumbles from below. It builds until it feels and sounds like a freight train under our feet. The whole mall slides sickly to the left. The Christmas tree sways. The trunk cracks. I pull Brigitte from Traven’s body and everyone runs to the wall as the tree crashes to the floor. For a minute we’re blind from the dust and fungus spores. I can hear sections of the ceiling coming down around us. The floor stops shaking, but the rumble remains, a steady background hum.

  The rumbling rises and Kill City starts shimmying again. The glass around the elevator shafts shatters to the ground. I see faint light across the lobby.

  “Follow me. Keep your heads down.”

  I grab Candy’s hand and feel the weight of her grabbing someone else’s. Crouching, running, feeling stitches popping in my belly wound, I head us down the stairs we just came up. Then down the dead escalator.

  The windows over the Roman baths have collapsed into the main pool, flooding the whole floor in pale dawn light. I look around for a hole in the wall.

  “This way. Through the chapel.”

  The building shifts in one direction and then the other. It’s worse now. Before it felt like a solid movement from side to side. Now the motion feels soft and liquid, like we’re off the foundation and floating free.

  Inside, there isn’t much left. A chasm has opened in the floor in front of the altar, swallowing the pews and part of the wall, destroying the regular chapel and revealing the secret Angra altar. Those fuckers are everywhere. Whatever the plan is to bring them back, it was set in motion a long time ago.

  Something is crawling out of the wall. Not a crack in the wall. The wall itself, like the plaster and stone is trying to pull itself free. Its long beaklike mouth comes through first. That’s all I need to see. Concentric circles of cutting fangs and grinding molars. It’s a demon. An eater. We can’t make it to the hole that leads to the ocean before it gets loose in the room. I shout at Candy.

  “Give me your knife.”

  She tosses me her black blade and I rush the thing. Get a foot on some rubble and launch myself over the demon so I land right on its snout. It roars when it feels my weight and forces itself out of the wall faster. Its five spiderlike eyes emerge next and then the rest of its head. I bring the blade down as hard as I can at the base of its skull, where it meets the body, slicing through nerves connecting it to the head. The eater screams and bucks like a bronco, finally throwing me off. Halfway out of the wall, its buzz-saw mouth whirs and grinds at me, but its body won’t move. It’s stuck where it is. I toss Candy her knife and we head for the wall.

  Vidocq and Candy jump into the water first. Brigitte comes to me slowly, looking back over her shoulder every few steps.

  “What about Liam’s body?”

  Before I can say anything, the building drops like it’s heading for the center of the earth. Back in the chapel something pushes the eater out of the wall and starts climbing out. What looks like a human hand clad in gold emerges. I grab Brigitte, toss her through the hole, and jump through after her.

  The Pacific water is icy. The salt burns my gut and the burn Ferox left on my chest. The rumble grows. Around us, whole sections of the beach slip into the ocean, leaving a deep chasm below, like all of Santa Monica might be pulled down on top of us.

  I don’t know how deep we are underwater. I kick toward the surface, trying to keep an eye on Brigitte. As Kill City sinks the suction pulls us down with it, like the damned place is magnetic. I look back and something swims up from the churning murk below. A woman, completely covered in gold. Patterns on her skin like snake scales and circuit boards. She wears an elaborate golden headdress with swept-back wings. Half of her face is missing. An empty eye socket above a nonexistent cheek and a raw, ragged jaw are all that’s left on her right side. She reaches for me. I kick harder but it doesn’t feel like I’m putting any distance between us. She gets hold of one of my boots, but seems to lose strength. Her body drifts down a few feet. She comes to for a minute, but it’s too late. The suction is too strong that far down and she’s sucked into the swirling wreckage below.

  When Brigitte and I hit the surface, we swim away from shore, out into the deeper ocean, as Kill City comes around behind us. I don’t know how long we swim. Maybe minutes. Maybe just one. When the noise and rumbling stop, I grab Brigitte’s arm and turn her around. She looks at me wild-eyed. She doesn’t want to go back. She isn’t swimming away from the wreck but from Traven’s body. I point her back toward shore and give her a shove. Soon she starts swimming.

  We walk out of the water and collapse, exhausted and hurting. Brigitte is crying. Then it hits me.

  “The 8 Ball. Where’s the 8 Ball?”

  “I dropped it during the quake,” says Candy.

  She goes to Brigitte and puts her arms around her.

  Vidocq, drenched and looking every one of his hundred and fifty years, comes down to the water’s edge and pulls me onto dry sand.

  “All that for nothing.”

  “Not quite,” he says. And pulls the wooden vessel Traven made for the 8 Ball from his coat pocket.

  “I’m a thief, remember? Once a thing is stolen, it doesn’t get away from me unless I want it to.”

  I’m so relieved I laugh. Then I hear Brigitte crying. A crowd of early-morning swimmers and surfers gathers behind us. The remains of Kill City slip into Santa Monica Bay, pulling a million tons of prime beachfront real estate with it. Sections of it continue to settle and collapse. Hattie’s rooftop kingdom comes crashing down. Walls crush inward, revealing the food court and the dead interior amusement park. I look for bodies to bob up in the waves. Where are the rest of the Shoggots and the other tribes we saw inside? Where are the Grays? They’re fighters. They’ll survive. Crawl out of the water and crouch among the pier pilings until the crowds go home. Then move into Santa Monica and find another abandoned space to take over and call their own.

  People pull out phones and cameras and snap photos. That’s my cue to move. I look around and find a beautiful shadow by one of the broken boardwalk supports. I get everyone on their feet. While the crowd is busy watching Kill City breathe its last, I pull us through the Room and into the Chateau. I want to say it’s a relief being home, but it’s not.

  Kasabian looks up from his work. I don’t know what we look like, but even he doesn’t have anything smart to say. I curl up on the floor, waiting for the salt ache to ease up on my wounds. The others fall onto couches and chairs. No one talks. Candy brings Brigitte some whiskey. Brigitte cries like she might never stop.

  I FIND A bottle of Aqua Regia and drink enough that I’m more wasted than I’ve been in a long time. Maybe since Alice died. Drunk enough that for a while I blot out Traven, the Qomrama, the end of the world, and every other ugly thing boring into my brain.

  Things swim in and out of my consciousness. Candy. Vidocq. Kasabian tries to talk to me and I push him away. It seems like maybe Allegra is there at some point, working on me. It doesn’t matter. This stupid dream is a joke. God is a joke. We’re a joke. Bugs on God’s windshield. If the Angra want to bite down on this shit sandwich, I say let them. What’s left to lose but a world that never made any sense in a universe that’s so out of control it takes a bastard like me to roust a little bit of God from his beach home and get him back in the game? Or at least to Hell, which is probably where he belonged in the first place.

  I reach for the bottle but my eyes won’t focus, and anyway, it looks miles away. Maybe I’ll take a nap and
try again later. Put on my walking shoes and make the long trek from this sofa to the coffee table.

  How did any of us make it back in one piece? Mysteries within mysteries.

  Man, I really wish I could reach that bottle.

  SOMETIME BETWEEN KILL City and now, someone moved me onto the couch. Then someone set off Mount St. Helens in my head. Even my nose hairs ache. This isn’t a hangover. It’s cranial genocide. Candy is somewhere nearby. She hands me a glass full of something that smells like boiled crab ass.

  “Drink it all,” she says. “Vidocq left it for you. He said it would clear your head. Personally, I’d like to see you suffer for diving into the bottle like that.”

  “Sorry. I just.”

  “You feel guilty. I know. We all do. Shut up and drink.”

  She waves the glass in front of me. I sit up and immediately regret it. I hold my breath and swallow the potion as fast as I can. Halfway through, I hope the stuff kills me. That way I won’t have to finish it. When I’m done, Candy hands me a glass of water. I gulp it down, but I can still taste the crab muck in my mouth.

  “Thanks.”

  She takes the glass and says, “Brigitte’s asleep in the bedroom. I’m going to go and check on her.”

  When she’s gone, Kasabian limps over on his twisted leg.

  “So you lost the preacher.”

  “You noticed.”

  “Too bad. He seemed like an okay guy.”

  “He was.”

  “I saw them take him away.”

  “Who?”

  “The soul-sorting crew. I’ve been spending a lot of time looking around Downtown. You know, business research. Remember how I said souls go off the radar for a while when they’re being processed into Hell?”

  “I remember.”

  The ache behind my eyes feels less like monkeys trying to hammer their way out of my head and more like guppies with rubber mallets.

  “Turns out it’s not the same for everyone. Murderers and rapists and your run-of-the-mill baby-eating dictators are white bread and mayo Downtown. They can take a while to get inside. But sinners against God? They’re filet mignon and get priority sorting.”