Water gushed through my nose and mouth and flooded inside of me. The world went dark. I knew my short, real life had ended.
*
Okay. Sorry for the cliff-hanger. But that’s how it was. I was doomed.
Except I wasn’t.
I sat up. I don’t know how long I had been out, but there was light and it was hot and sticky. Above me there were clouds, odd looking, bluish, sparked with pink. Through gaps in the clouds I could see a sky, rippled with fire.
There was a vast inland lake before me. I was on its shore, bedded down in deep mud. To my right I could see Quatermain. Down a piece from him I could see Bill. He was standing. The rushing water had torn all our clothes off. We were naked as the day we were born, or in my case, made in a vat.
I leaned to my side and coughed up water and tried to get to my feet. That was no harder than dragging a bus up a high hill with a rope, so I lay back down in the mud for a while. In time, Bill was looking down at me.
“Home,” he said.
I sat up, not wishing to lie there with his penis swinging above me.
He grabbed me under the arms and backed up, pulling me out of the mud. Quatermain was already out. He was sitting with his back against a tree.
“This is my world,” Bill said. “The volcano collapsed in on itself, opened a path, and we all came down it. Slanted easy and came down under, sliding down the sloping bowl that leads here. Had it been a straight drop we would have been drowned. Might have been drowned anyway. But we weren’t. We’re lucky to be alive.”
“You can say that again,” I said.
“We are lucky to be alive,” Bill said.
“Not up for the humor,” I said.
“By the way, there didn’t use to be a lake here,” Bill said. “Come walk with me, come see.”
I was able to get my feet under me this time. Quatermain got up too. We went along after Bill. We came to a bend in the shoreline. To our left were great and primordial trees, and to our right, that vast lake, or perhaps a better name for it would be inland sea.
Scattered about it, close to shore, were fragments from the copters and our boat. There were bodies as well. I saw the great dark-haired man wrapped up in a propeller. His head dangled down and that was the only thing about him truly recognizable. His features were perfect, serene even, as if he always expected it to end this way. The rest of him looked like dirty taffy wrapped around those blades.
“Irony,” Quatermain said. “They wanted to live forever. Now they’re dead and we’re alive.”
“You haven’t noticed,” Bill said.
“Noticed what?” Quatermain said.
“Me,” Bill said.
“So you’ve done something with your hair?” Quatermain said.
“Damn, you’re dumb,” Bill said, extended his arms and turned around and around a few times.
“Your scars,” I said. “They’re gone.”
“The air,” Bill said. “This place. My home. It’s healed me. Well, there are some little white scars, but the serious stuff, it’s healed up.”
“So the question is solved. It’s the DNA mixed with the air that keeps people here young,” Quatermain said. “Look there.”
It was the two plesiosaurs. They were swimming amongst the wreckage, around remaining fragments of melting ice bergs, pausing to eat an available snack of mutilated and burnt corpses. The one that had been harpooned looked healthy enough, as if it had received a nasty pin prick.
“We don’t need to fish them now,” I said.
“Or kill them,” Quatermain said. “Of course, now we have a new problem. This world.”
“My world,” Bill said.
“No one owns a place like this,” Quatermain said.
“We can live a life of our choosing,” I said. “I’m only a few months old, and I’m ready to have some real experiences.”
“I bet that will be possible,” Quatermain said. “But as for the Secret Rulers, they aren’t all gone. We may see them again.”
“Then we will,” I said. “But for now, we have this and we are free of obligation, our indentured servitude is over.”
“I can show you how to survive, how to live here,” Bill said. “I remember all that shit. Making fires, weapons, finding things to eat. It’s right here in my head and in my heart. I have sort of lost the taste for grubs, though.”
“That sounds all right,” Quatermain said, “but what I wouldn’t give for a pair of Bermuda shorts, some flip-flops, right now. This is no way to go about.”
We stood there looking out at the wreckage in the water, at bodies both of our revolutionaries, and those from the choppers. That was done and couldn’t be undone. We looked out at the beautiful and foreboding forest, touched by shadows, dappled by sunlight. It was full of fleeting figures, the sounds of birds and growling animals.
After a while Bill located a trail and we took fallen limbs to serve as clubs and went along together into the dark of the trees.
Second Interlude: No Good Deed…
The words fell away like rain on a window pane, dissolving again into the same jumble of text as before. Sometime during the story, the room had gone as silent as a placid sea at midnight. The wind had died away, and the fire was nothing but embers that glowed quietly in the hearth.
Conrad shivered. He could not say why, though he told himself that it was from the cold. He stood up and walked to the bin where the firewood sat in the open. He picked out two split logs, both dry and sinuous, and threw them into the fireplace. Smoke rose for only an instant before the wood sputtered and hissed into flame. He rubbed his hands together, suddenly painfully aware that he was not cold at all. He was, however, thirsty. The flagon of ale was long empty, and perhaps on any other night, he would have considered whether perhaps he had already consumed more than he should. But not tonight. Tonight he had too much on his mind.
He walked into the darkened kitchen of the inn and jerked open the refrigerator door. He’d been there so long that this sort of familiarity was fully condoned. He grabbed a Budvar and threw a dollar—more than enough—on the counter. He popped the top and took a deep, long pull. And his thoughts were deep and long as well.
He thought of the stories, of the impossibly long block of text on his computer screen. Of the riddles, the post that no one else seemed to have seen or opened, of the prehistoric men in the story he had just read, so eerily similar to the man he had seen in the snows earlier in the night.
It’s all for me, he thought. He coughed out a laugh. “Absurd,” he said to himself. It was just a game, a clever scam. Like so many others he had seen—and occasionally fostered—over the years. It was, after all, the way of the deep net. Layers of bullshit obscuring the truth.
And yet, it all seemed so familiar to him as well. Especially Limbus. He could have sworn he’d seen it before, or heard of it at least.
“Maybe I should Google it.”
He walked back into the other room, intending to do just that. But then he saw her, and he forgot all about Limbus.
She was standing in front of the fire, shadows dancing across her face. Normally, when he saw her, she was dressed in the modesty her parents demanded. Not tonight.
Her dark hair hung long and loose, spilling over her breasts. And it was a good thing, too, as nothing much else did. Her blouse hung from her shoulders threatening to slip off at the slightest movement. The two cloth ties meant to keep it closed swung limply from the neckline, leaving her bare chest all but exposed. The simple skirt she wore was modest enough, but Conrad suspected there was nothing underneath.
“Hi, Veronica,” he muttered, immediately feeling foolish.
She smiled sweetly. “Hi, Conrad.”
There was probably a time in his life when he would have given into his basest desires in a situation like this, without a second thought. It was, in fact, the easy thing to do. Much easier than saying no. But he had matured. Or at least, that’s what he told himself. In the moment, he wasn’t so sure.
She stepped toward him, and as she did, Conrad was critically aware of just how young she was. A child who wanted to be a woman. And in that instant, the not insignificant temptation Conrad felt to take this girl and take her then and there melted away.
But she didn’t know she’d already lost. Not yet. And as she took one graceless step after another toward him, as she tossed her hair in a comical imitation of a Hollywood starlet from twenty or thirty years before, Conrad realized how painful this was about to get.
“You have been with us for a long time,” she said. “Will you stay much longer?” She rested one hand on the table, her other she placed, very deliberately, on her hip. Conrad stifled a laugh at this clumsy attempt at small talk, mixed with an even more clumsy attempt at sensuality.
“Veronica… darling…” He started to explain, but then he fell silent. He searched for the words to justify this rejection to her, to tell her that it was not her fault, that she would live a beautiful life without him.
But the words didn’t come, and in the end, they didn’t have to. She saw them in his eyes. Her own began to quiver. She reached up and pulled the top of her shirt closed. Shame and embarrassment spread from the top of her face, down her neck, and, Conrad was sure, all the way to her toes. She murmured something under her breath—not in English—spun on her heals, and veritably ran out of the room.
“Veronica, wait!” Conrad said, somewhat half-heartedly. But she did not wait. She disappeared into the back and into darkness.
Conrad felt like shit. That would pass, though. If he had given her what she had wanted? Now that was the kind of regret that didn’t go away. He was painfully aware of that fact from past experience.
“Well,” he mumbled, “I guess I’ll be getting my own beer from now on.” He chuckled joylessly to himself, and it echoed off the barren walls with such force that it scared him. The quiet of the place was immense.
Conrad took himself and his beer back to the table where sat his computer. He plunked down in front of it, having forgotten altogether what he had intended to do before. What he saw on the screen chilled him to his core.
He spun in his chair, expecting to see someone standing behind him. But there was no one, and so he leapt up, running to the window and peering out into the snowy night. The streets were empty. Chills coursed through his body so intense that his arms could have doubled for sandpaper. He turned and leaned his back against the wall, the cold from outside seeping into his bones. He stared at the electronic demon sitting on the wooden table across from him. The curser blinked furiously, demanding an answer. Even from here, he could still make out the words.
Every good deed deserves a reward. No riddle this time. Just hit enter.
His rational mind rebelled. How could they know? Were they watching him? Was this some kind of trick? He appealed to Ockham’s Razor, but for once, conspiracy was the logical option.
Conrad shook his head. Really, he had no choice. Curiosity, after all, was his drug. And he needed a hit. He walked over to the table. He pressed “enter.” Once again, the mass of symbols reformed, this time into the image of a grotesque figure—a man, but one with the face of a pig. Then it dissolved into words that Conrad could not help but read.
Lost and Found
By
Joe McKinney
I woke to a cop tapping his flashlight on my window. Red and blue lights filled the rearview mirror, so bright I had to shield my eyes. The traffic light in front of me turned from green to yellow.
Groaning, I sat up. I was nowhere near sober, and I felt like my head had been stuffed inside a bag. It took me a moment to get my bearings. The clock on my dashboard read 4:06 a.m. Great, I thought. I had to be back at work in less than three hours.
The cop tapped on the glass, a little harder this time.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, groping for the button that rolled down the window.
I didn’t recognize the cop, which wasn’t surprising. The young ones are all just faces to me these days. His nametag said ROBINSON, but that didn’t ring any bells, either. He looked about six foot even, a hundred seventy pounds, probably ex-military. He had that look about him. Probably liked to fight too. His nose was crooked from an old break that hadn’t set quite right.
“I’m Alan Becker,” I said, trying to sound sober and not doing a very good job of it. “I work in Homicide.” I gestured up at the traffic light and paused. It was still yellow. I stared at it for a long moment, but it held at yellow. I looked back at the cop and said, “Uh, I’m sorry about that, I…”
I trailed off. Drunk as I was, it was hard to concentrate. I kept looking back to the traffic light, frozen on yellow.
“How much have you had to drink tonight?” Robinson asked.
The light changed to red.
I grunted in surprise. I pointed at the light. “Did you…?”
“Sir, how much did you have to drink tonight?”
I thought about it, but I honestly couldn’t remember. After work I’d hit a sports bar called Callaghan’s, the closest bar to my house. I remember watching basketball and drinking vodka and Diet Cokes, but I couldn’t remember much else. I didn’t even remember leaving the bar.
“Put it in park.”
“Huh?”
Robinson pointed to my gear shifter. “Put your car in park.”
I looked down, surprised and a little scared that I’d passed out with my foot on the brake. I’d passed out like that once before, but it’d been in my driveway where there was no danger of me crashing into anything except my own house. I took a deep breath and tried to pull myself together. This was bad. I put the car in park and tried again.
“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry about—”
“Step out of the car, please.”
“Wait,” I said. “It’s cool. I’m a cop. I can call somebody. My phone’s around here someplace.”
He took a step away from the door and gave me a come on gesture with his left hand. “Out of the car, please.”
I tried again to reach him. If a cop gets pulled over by another cop he doesn’t know, he’s supposed to show a little professional courtesy. Most of us are recorded by dash cam these days and you can’t make it obvious you’re about to get a pass. I put my hands where he could see them and gave him the usual line.
“No problem. I’m stepping out. But I just want you to know I’ve got my service weapon on my right hip. Next to my badge. My credentials are in my back left pocket.”
“We’ll get to that,” he said. “Now step on out, please.”
I did like he told me, but he kept having to point me in the right direction.
“Turn around,” he said. “Stand there, with you back to your car. Face me.”
He had my weapon out of the holster before I knew what he was doing.
“Hey!” I said.
“Just while we’re talking,” he said.
He stripped the magazine from the receiver, ejected the round from the chamber, and set the empty weapon on the hood of his car. The magazine and the round he slid into the cargo pocket of his pants.
Then he put me in position to start the standardized field sobriety tests.
I realized what he was doing when he took the stylus out of his shirt pocket.
“Hey, come on, man, what the hell?”
He assumed the officer’s introductory stance for the SFSTs. “Stand with your feet together, hands down at your sides. Like this.” He tapped the blue-lit tip of his stylus with his index finger. “Do you see the blue light here? I want you to follow it with your eyes; don’t move your head. Do you understand the instructions?”
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Come on, let me just call somebody. I can get somebody to drive me home. There’s a Park and Ride lot right over there. We can just park my car and I’ll get it later.”
“Sir,” he said, “I need you to acknowledge the instructions I’ve given you. Follow the blue light with your eyes; don’t move your head.”
“Sir, are you refusing to comply with my instructions?”
“This isn’t necessary,” I said, though I’m sure I was slurring at that point and it probably came out as one long syllable. “Just let me call somebody.”
“Sir, failure to comply with my instructions will be taken as a refusal on your part.”
“I’m not refusing anything.” I was yelling at him now, talking with my hands like a man whose head is swarming with bees. “All I want to do—”
He grabbed for my wrist.
I yanked it away and backed up. “What the hell, man?”
He tried to grab my wrist a second time and I shoved him back. “Back off,” I yelled. “I’m a fucking cop! What’s wrong with you?”
It was a mistake to push him. He was younger than me, stronger than me, faster than me. He knocked my hands aside, spun me around, swept my feet out from under me, and slammed me face down into the trunk of my Honda Accord so fast my vision was still a smeared swirl by the time the handcuffs bit into my wrists.
He was good, I had to give him that, even as I cussed him.
After he finished frisking me, he pulled me back up to my feet and led me, wobbly and off-balanced, toward the backseat of his patrol car. On the way there, still stunned by having my face slammed into my trunk, I glanced at the lightbar on top of his car. You can set a police car’s lightbar to about twenty different configurations. There are flashers and alley lights and rear-only flashers and a whole host of other patters. Robinson had turned on his flashers and his takedown lights. The takedowns are a pair of intensely bright white lights designed to turn the area directly in front of a police car into broad daylight. Cops who work at night use them as much for the light they provide as for their power to blind a potentially belligerent subject. His takedowns were on, but that was the weird part, because they weren’t all that bright. They should have hurt my eyes. Instead, they were at a dull glow, like a light bulb on its last leg. And inside the lightbar, where the bulbs should have been, was what looked like a slowly rotating globe. There was a belt of stars surrounding the globe, and little pinpricks of light on the globe itself, like you sometimes see on those company logos when they want to impress you with all their worldwide locations.
Limbus, Inc. Book II Page 13