by Pen
Battery grabs me by the good arm. “You crazy, man? That shit is outdoors only.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I reply, trying to hide my disappointment.
“How ‘bout this?” he says, pulling another prosthetic from my quiver. I gotta hand it to him, it’s definitely the right tool for the job.
* * *
You ever used a jackhammer? Maybe had a summer job working construction for your old man? Or hell, maybe you do that kinda work full time. Either way, you know it’s Armageddon in your ears, gets your vision swimmin’ like your eyes were jellyfish, and if you do it long enough, it feels like its rattling your insides to goo and your bones into shards. Now imagine that, only the jackhammer’s attached to your arm at the elbow. That’s how my workday’s goin’.
“You sure this is faster than lookin’ for the basement stairs?” I shout above the cacophony, only because my taskmaster won’t let me pause for even a second in drilling through the stone floor of the cathedral.
Battery just points at his ear to indicate that he can’t hear me. Whatever. He damn well gets the gist.
I don’t have any idea how thick the floor is but it feels like I’m boring down to the core of the Earth and I halfway believe it until my drill-arm finally punches through, stone yields to nothingness and I pitch forward into the crumbling hole I’ve just made. All that keeps me from going down and in are Battery’s quick reflexes, his hand snapping out to get a strap-hold on the leather harness of my weaponry pack. I can’t speak for him, but I’m temporarily flash-blinded by the technicolor sunburst of shimmering Industrial Light & Magic erupting from the hole.
“They must have a shit-ton of candlepower going on down there,” Battery says, waving his hand in front of my blinking eyes until his waggling fingers swim into something like focus. “Shall we?”
“Oh, let’s do,” I say, more than ready to move on to whatever will get this day behind us ASAP.
Battery goes first, showing me how to hook up and rappel with a grappler. It seems like a strange time to pause for a lesson, but what do I know? I’m just a trainee. Still well-charged from the power lines outside, he hits the floor below crackling with energy, ready for whatever comes at him. I spend a few seconds too long getting my mini-gun back in place before I follow him down.
The basement chamber is bathed in a glow that I’m tempted to describe as green but is really more an iridescent combo of every color of the spectrum, and the intense vibro-hum that hit us earlier is more pronounced, but steady now, a pulse in my chest that puts me in mind of the techno music at the Mexico City rave I got tricked into attending by a couple of Australian college girls on holiday last year. In case you’re dying to know, I gave up on getting laid that night in favor of slipping away to somewhere quiet where I could drink alone. An alley, I think.
“See anything?” Battery asks, and I put my cyberoptic eye to use, scanning our surroundings for signs of life.
What I see are long metal tables laid out with these plexiglass boxes connected by long tubes of the same material, like the whole room’s a giant Habitrail. Except instead of hamsters or gerbils or whatever pet vermin kids are into these days, the tubes that run along the walls and ceiling are flowing with some kind of viscous liquid that’s feeding into the boxes on the tables, where it’s drip-sorted into different containers. Each of the boxes has a set of heavy duty rubber gloves attached, the kind where you put your arms through the rings so you can reach in and work with dangerous chemicals or radioactive material or whatnot. I notice these because while most of this drug lab or whatever it is has been recently and hastily abandoned, there’s still one sad sap—small, wiry and naked except for a dirty white apron—trying to wriggle his arms out of his pair. I get to him before he can scamper.
“Donde es Escalante?” I growl through gritted teeth, pressing all six barrels against his sunken chest.
He grins back at me like an insane person, which he probably is, either from before he ever got here, or from whatever he’s seen/experienced/been physiologically exposed to down here. “Si, Señor Escalante . . . El Jefe . . . he plenty bad man . . .” His hands spasm around inside the gloves inside the box and I realize he’s trying to point the way. “Me go now?”
“Sure, sure.” We leave him there, still struggling to free himself from his poor life choices.
As we move along a corridor, deeper into the bowels of Escalante’s empire, my scanner-eye is occasionally drawn to the tubes running along the walls, where the stuff that burbles inside doesn’t flow like water so much as it slithers like a serpent, drips and drops of it sloshing up the curved sides of the translucent tubing, then eagerly rejoining the continuum.
“What’s this guy cutting his shit with . . . mercury?” I ask, half-kidding.
“I dunno,” Battery replies. “But whatever it is, it’s got Libertad in a hot funk. Boy’s been messin’ with the primal laws a’ nature, and whatever’s comin’ outta this place is seriously cuttin’ into our action.” It’s the first time he’s even hinted that he knows what this operation’s all about.
“You sayin’ this goop’s givin’ coke and smack a run for their money? Must be some good shit, huh?”
“You saw what it can do, right?” He means the guy we tussled with upstairs.
“Maybe he got a bad batch.”
“Maybe there’s no other kind.”
I shiver a little when he says it. That and because the temperature seems to be dropping by five or so degrees with every step we take toward the source of the light and the hum. I’m about to comment on it when something comes barreling down the corridor too fast to see and slams our heads together like a high school jock fucking with a couple of helpless nerds in the hall between classes. I’ve got the steel-plated skull so Battery gets the worst of having his bell rung. I can hear the guy behind me, breathing hard and snickering, but before I can turn around he’s on me again. I can tell by the way he’s punching me that he’s faster than he is strong, but that doesn’t really matter when you’re getting viciously smacked about a hundred times per second. I grab for him and he’s gone again, and I get a moment’s glimpse of him standing back by the entryway he first came through, sweat-drenched and fever-eyed, that viscous stuff running from his nose. He snickers again, and when he does I open fire because I figure that’s his tell. He’s moving so fast that he’s almost to me before he realizes he’s just been shredded by giant bullets, wicked idiot grin twisting into a look of utter shock. Not even sure if whatever the hell he’s ingested lets him feel the pain, more like he’s just embarrassed and disappointed that his fun got cut so unbelievably short. Then he just collapses at my feet, dead as he’ll ever be.
My first confirmed kill as a civilian. I stare into his empty eyes for way too long, trying to reconcile the exhilaration of victory and survival with the waves of nausea and overwhelming regret. I assume he meant to do the same to me and wouldn’t have thought twice about it when it was over, but then we’re obviously on very different drugs.
I’m only vaguely aware of anything going on around me; the hum, the light, the sound of a growling beast, none of it penetrates my numb fog of shock, like all my senses have been turned down to half-power so I can focus totally on the guy I just made dead. Not young, not old, not small like the guy in the lab but no hulking monster. Hell, if I’d passed him on the street and he wasn’t wild on mercurial narcotics I wouldn’t have even seen him, much less considered him a threat. Then again, we didn’t come down here to negotiate with these guys, and he knew that as well as me. The only difference is I’m standing here and he’s lying there. I’m alive and . . .
“Duke,” Battery rasps, lifting himself into a sitting position and shaking his head to clear it. “Heads up . . .”
It looks like a pit bull, or maybe a Rottweiler, except it’s wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and dirty work boots. It’s hunkered down on all fours and padding down the hall stealthy as a hunting lion poised to strike. It’s feral eyes go from Battery to
me and back again, like it’s selecting a menu option. Then it leaps at my downed mentor and I see that in addition to its snarling snoutful of canine chompers, it’s carrying a long knife in each of its front paws. This dog’s ready to shred. I take aim and give a mental trigger squeeze and nothing happens. Big problem with mini-gun ammo; you just can’t carry a lot of it around. Instead I swing the barrel at its mid-section and connect with an upswing that cracks ribs and possibly the sternum as well. The dog-man flies up and smacks against the low stone ceiling, then lands in a whimpering pile between Battery’s legs. Before it can do anything that it probably can’t do anyway, Battery raises a boot and stomps its skull, which gives with a sickening crunch.
Battery lets out a long sigh and then glances my way. “You’re learning, Big D.”
* * *
The hum increases in intensity as we get closer to the source, and the weird foggy light seems to hover at the edge of the entryway, half-beckoning, half-taunting, daring us to come and see. There’s something beneath the hum, too, a higher-pitched dog-whistle kind of sound digging into my ear canal.
“You hear that?” Battery asks.
“Tryin’ not to,” I say, shaking my head side to side like that’ll get rid of it somehow.
“You think . . .” he starts to say.
“Libertad!”
We plunge ahead into the next chamber and the first thing about the decor that really strikes me is the Mayan shaman hovering cross-legged five feet off the floor in the middle of it. I can tell he’s Mayan by his small size and strong features; the shaman thing’s more of a guess because he’s wearing a ceremonial loincloth and beaded onyx necklace, plus the whole hovering thing. His eyes are closed, palms turned upwards, in deep concentration, and his is the only spot in the room that’s relatively clear of the murky haze of swirling colored light. The eye of the storm. At first I think he’s the source of the low hum, but then Battery and me both notice the big green door and Escalante standing right in front of it.
“Senores, bienvenidos!” he bellows, and I can already tell by the look of him that he’s probably been sampling the product (a real no-no for guys at his level, but who’d that ever stop?). “Vamos a empezar esta fiesta!”
I’m sure I don’t need to mention that he’s carrying an AK-47 with banana clip, the favored weapon of cartel kingpins since at least the ‘70s. His appears to be platinum-plated with a pearled grip; not as tacky as gold but still an ostentatious display of wealth that does nothing to improve the weapon’s firepower. I could mow him down before he was through admiring his reflection in the metal. If I had any ammo left.
In his other hand he’s clutching what I first mistake for a beverage, but is actually a glass jar he keeps waving around for emphasis.
“You know, I’ve captured many of my enemies over the years,” he says, switching to fairly decent English now. And by that I mean better than mine. “But never before have I had the pleasure of snatching one from the air with a butterfly net.”
He taps the glass with the barrel of his rifle, playful and threatening all at once. I squint with my good eye and scan with my better one, and sure enough the content of the jar turns out to be Size Zero, pounding her tiny fists against the glass and letting out that nearly sub-audible scream we’ve been hearing.
“Now it would seem only fitting to pitch the lovely Libertad like a grenade into el portal . . .” He nods his head at the burbling greenness behind him. “ . . . so she can experience the thrill of my product in its purest form. And perhaps you good little lackeys would be just dumb enough to chase after her in a futile attempt at rescue. But rest assured . . . no one who’s passed through has yet returned from the other side.”
“What is that shit?” Battery asks, distractedly letting the energy crackle between his palms as he tries to decide the best play here.
“The stuff dreams are made of,” Escalante says, and I get my first genuine dose of supervillain cliche-speak. And this dude barely even qualifies.
I notice the plexi tubes all converge at some kind of pump system that sits just this side of the glowing green doorway, drawing that goo from the swirling miasma beyond.
“You’re bringing in drugs from another dimension?” Battery asks.
“Ding-ding-ding!” Escalante shouts ecstatically. “Give el hombre negro a prize!”
“Who you calling a negro, motherfucker?” Battery snarls, looking ready to put the zap on Escalante, unable to because of the hostage in a jar.
“What’s it do?” I ask, trying to change the tune in the room.
“What doesn’t it do? Even my top chemists aren’t sure one way or the other. It gets you high as fuck, that’s for sure. And as a kind of bonus, it also seems to change the very structure of your DNA at the microcellular level. It allows you to manifest exactly who you want and need to be at any given moment. At least temporarily. So in that respect, I believe you could say it’s going to change the world.”
“That’s heavy,” I say, earning a withering side glance from Battery.
“Well, whatever fuck it does, it’s cutting into our business up north, and that we can’t have. So we’re here to shut your ass down.”
“And how exactly do you propose to do that?” Escalante asks, waggling the jar for emphasis.
“Easy,” Battery says, throwing me another look, this one saying Get ready to move! “I’m gonna do this.”
Battery rubs his hands together and without taking his eyes off Escalante, sticks the right one out to the side and emits a megawatt blast of localized lightning that causes the shaman to open his eyes for the first time. It also causes his white hair to stand on end for a few wild seconds until he falls to the stone floor in a bony mound of beads and lightly smoldering flesh.
“Nooooo!!!” Escalante screams, tossing the jar aside so he can get both hands on his AK before he starts spraying the room.
I dive for the floor, both to get under the bullets and to try and catch the jar before it smashes against the stone and my boss ends up shredded into rat food by a million tiny shards of shattering glass. I don’t know how many men Escalante’s killed in his day, but I suspect he’s had other people do it more than he’s done it himself; point being, I’m not the only professional bad guy who’s been firing high today.
My robotic fingers—the ones that still don’t feel like mine, nevermind the phantom sense of touch—close around the container and I think Size Zero actually throws me an appreciative kiss through the glass. Then all hell, as it tends to do, breaks the fuck loose.
Escalante’s bullets punch the walls and ceiling, puncturing his elaborate jerry-rigged tube system in a bunch of places, and the thick goop inside sprays out. Only it congeals as fast it spews, and pretty soon thick strands of the stuff are criss-crossing the chamber, seemingly making a beeline for the green doorway.
Whatever this stuff is, it’s trying to go home.
Escalante keeps throwing nervous glances back at the door even as he’s strafing. He bumps the pump system with one shuffling ostrich-skin boot and it’s promptly sucked backward into the . . . what’d he call it? A portal? I figure I’ve seen some weird shit since hooking up with Size Zero’s crew, but drugs from other dimensions? That’s some hokey pokey I just ain’t ready to swallow.
The Goo from Beyond Wherever surges forward, tentacle-ish ropes probing into the room like long searching fingers. The ooze from the tubes meets it in the middle and the chamber—maybe even the world—fills with a sound that’s like a Muslim’s mourning wail pumped out through a sound barrier-breaking stack of Marshall amps. A strand of it from the doorway wraps around Escalante’s wrist, wrenching his hand free of the front rifle grip. He spins around firing one-handed into the doorway, but more of the stuff shoots out at him and yanks the gun into its gurgling green maw. As high-viscosity filaments snare his extremities from the “portal,” more of it slaps into his back as it pours from the tubes, pushing him inexorably forward.
“Chingate!” Escalante
screams into the literal abyss, just before he’s tugged all the way into it. I can’t say one-hundred percent, but I’m pretty sure he’s being pulled apart at the same time. But that could just be a trick of the weird smoggy light.
“Son of a bitch!” Battery shouts, and at first I think it’s a Wow, can you believe that shit just happened? kind of exclamation. But I catch on pretty quick that some of that goo’s got its sticky mitts on him, and is trying to drag him to hell along with that piece of shit Escalante.
He zaps the tendrils a couple of times and they recoil, but I can tell he’s running on low power and more of them just keep grabbing at him.
“Duke! Ayudame!”
It’s such a tinny little sound in my ear I think it must be someone trying to reach me over the janky radio the Doc installed in my head. But I feel something tugging on the jar in my hand and I get what’s going on right quick. I look down to see dozens of gooey strings slithering over the glass like snakes and I know if I tighten my mechanical grip I’ll just bust the thing and kill Size Zero in a second. So I reach up with my good hand—I’d call it my free hand, but it’s fighting some goo-serpents of its own already—and unscrew the cap, one straining twist at a time, the cold slime intertwining with my fingers and crawling up my arm. As soon as I get it open, the stuff starts poking and slithering and dribbling its way in.
“Run!” I scream, but Zero’s way ahead of me. After all, why run when you can fly?
She zips out of the jar and into the air, then makes a swan dive for one of the pockets on my weaponry pack. The one where I stashed the last of my precious carne asada tacos. I can hear her in there chowing down, bits of corn tortilla and gristle flying into the air as she makes short work of the only food available to her. Meanwhile, Battery and me slide across the rough stone floor, slimed like Venkmann and heading toward the light like that little Poltergeist girl.
“Well shit, kid,” Battery says, struggling against the glop to jam a final-request cigar between his lips. “Didn’t exactly plan for your rookie field trip to end up being your swan song. If I wasn’t a borderline sociopath, I’d feel goddamn guilty ’bout ropin’ you into this life from the jump.”