Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman

by Duncan Eagleson

  The alley was empty. I ran to the other end. Another alley led crosswise there, the length of the block. There was no one in sight. No wait, there to my left… a movement vanishing between two buildings. I raced to follow. Another empty alley. This one took me to Kurzweil Boulevard, a wider street, more trafficked than Hale. There were a number of pedestrians, but there was no sign of the harlot. I heard soft laughter behind me. It wasn’t a girl’s, but a man’s. I turned and looked. The man watching me from the other end of the alley was Arnold Hawthorne. He wore the same jeans and sweatshirt Suzi had, though they fitted him much better. Not a spirit, then. A shapeshifter. A crow cawed above me, and the man glanced up. I charged down the alley, and he fled.

  By the time I turned the corner he was gone again. I ran until I hit the next cross alley, and glanced down it. No figure, but I heard the laugh again. I stopped, looked around.

  “Give it up, brother Railwalker,” a gravelly voice called. It echoed through the alleyways, impossible to trace the source. “You cannot win. And I’d rather not kill you.”

  “Why not?” I called back. “What makes me different? I’m working for Roth, too.”

  Laughter. He was above me somewhere. I scanned the building tops, saw nothing. As the laughter faded, it seemed to be coming from the roof to my left. I leapt up, caught the edge of the lowest fire escape, and scrambled up. It was impossible to climb the fire escape quietly and quickly both, so I settled for doing it fast as I could.

  “I will kill you if I have to,” called the Beast as I climbed. “And I will eat your brains.”

  I reached the roof, a flat expanse broken up by Tesla receivers and air vents, which otherwise appeared empty. I made a circuit of it anyway. No one was hiding behind the receivers or the vents. There was a flash of black in the air and something thumped down by my feet.

  “Take heed,” the voice called, this time seeming to come from a greater distance. The broken clump of black feathers at my feet had once been a crow. Its neck was broken.

  I walked to the edge of the roof where a thigh-high wall bordered it. I looked down, searching the alleys, and up, scanning the roofs. No sign of the Beast.

  I heard cawing. A crow alit on the wall beside me. Then another. I turned back to the roof, and the air was filled with black feathers and raucous calls. A moment later they had all settled, maybe forty of them, black shapes in the twilight with gleaming black eyes, eerily silent now except for the occasional rustle of feathers. All of them facing me, and the motionless black body before me. I knelt down, gently straightened the broken wings and neck. Then I began the Chant for the Dead.

  It might never be entered in the files of the Bay City Guard, but I considered the Beast had just committed another murder. He had issued a challenge, killed one of my crow brothers. He knew what he was doing, I thought. I was always going to hunt him down, take care of business, do what a Railwalker does. But now the Beast had made it personal.

  I finished the chant, bowed to my crow brothers, and climbed down the fire escape again, leaving them to take care of their fallen comrade.

  27. HALLARD STREET, BAY CITY

  Elvis wept, thought Remming, what a fucking mess. The mutie’s street was filled, one end of the block to the other, with angry bodies. He had no idea where Turrin had got to, but if not Turrin, someone had called it in. He could see the colored lights of the guard runabouts flashing off the buildings, and at the opposite end of the block the big dish antennas of two newsfeed vans.

  He was able to walk barely twenty feet down the street before the press of bodies slowed his progress. This was as bad as City Plaza on New Year’s Eve, he thought as he began forcing his way to the front of the crowd. Worse, actually. New Year’s Eve revelers didn’t carry baseball bats, broken bottles, and the occasional firearm. It was like swimming through mud. He applied his elbows and fists, throwing his weight into the task of shoving bodies aside and moving forward between them. He was cursed and yelled at, but fortunately no one actually attacked him. He reflected he was lucky to be out of uniform. For all these idiots knew he was one of them, or it might have gone differently. The bullhorn blared again, a familiar voice—Roberts maybe, or Washington; the bullhorn distorted the voice too much to be certain—telling the crowd to disperse and go home.

  After what seemed like hours he saw the front lines, the guard runabouts, and, jeez, they’d brought out one of the full-size cars—parked on the sidewalk, the guards ranged along them between the crowd and the building. He hoped they’d thought to put someone on the back entrance. He shouldered past Carter Evans and John Macchio. Macchio gave him a look, but he glared back, and the man backed down. Remming stopped directly behind Dobbs, as Dobbs shouted at Roberts, carrying on about bringing justice to our streets, and the monster the guard were protecting, yadda, yadda... Beyond Dobbs and Roberts, he saw Auden approaching from behind the vehicles.

  Dobbs stopped shouting when he saw Auden step up behind Roberts. This was not good, he thought. Just when he’d been thinking they might bully their way past the guards to get to the mutie, here comes Investigator Trouble Auden. Well, the guards were still outnumbered, if it came to that. Maybe it was time to cry havoc and let loose the dogs of lynching. He was taking a breath to shout for the mob to charge when he felt the barrel of a gun pressed against his spine.

  “Back down,” Remming’s voice said in his ear. He turned his head slightly, caught Remming’s eye out of the corner of his own. “Back down right now,” Remming repeated, “or I swear I’ll blow your guts all over this street and take my chances with your mob.”

  Dobbs knew Remming well enough to know the guard was not bluffing. The burly bastard was just crazy enough to kill him there in the street, and then take as many of the mob with him as he could before they brought him down.

  Dobbs didn’t hesitate. “We know that mutie in there is the Beast!” he shouted at Auden. “Why aren’t you arresting him? Why isn’t he in custody?”

  Auden looked at Dobbs with a deadpan expression. “He is in custody,” he said. He didn’t add that it was protective custody. The guard would look into the possibility that the mutant Cordoba could be the Beast, but they weren’t expecting to find much evidence to support Dobbs’s contention.

  Dobbs nodded slowly, a big pantomime gesture, as if he was thinking about Auden’s answer. Then he stepped closer to the guards, Remming moving with him. He turned toward the crowd and threw his arms wide. “Friends!” he shouted. “Fellow citizens!” Only the few people in his immediate area appeared to be listening. He stretched out a hand to Auden. “Bullhorn,” he demanded.

  “No fucking way.”

  “You want them dispersed or not?”

  Auden looked at Dobbs, and then at Remming, who was pressed up closely against the barkeep. Remming nodded. Auden took the bullhorn from Washington and held it up before Dobbs. He placed his hand over the mic end, and said, “Send ’em home. Fuck with me on this, you will regret it.”

  Dobbs leaned toward the bullhorn and tried again. His amplified voice rang out over the street. “Friends! Fellow Citizens! This is Hanover Dobbs, chairman of the Safety Committee.” The crowd quieted somewhat. “You have succeeded. We have forced the guards to do their duty and arrest the Beast. Investigator Auden assures me that the Beast is in custody even as we speak. He will now be brought to trial for his heinous crimes.” There were a couple of ragged cheers, and a lot of grumbling murmurs. “Thank you all for your help. Thanks to you, the city is now free of this criminal’s reign of terror. This calls for a celebration. Everyone back to the Bar of Gold. First round is on the house!”

  The cheering this time was a little more widespread and heartfelt. Dobbs backed off from the bullhorn, glared at Remming. “I won’t forget this,” he said quietly.

  Remming’s grin was nasty. “Make sure you don’t.”

  Dobbs moved off, slapping backs and pressing flesh, hurrying people along toward his bar.

  Auden had seen Remming step up behind Dobb
s; he knew Remming had to be responsible for the troublemaking barkeep’s abrupt change of heart, and had a good idea how the suspended guard had probably accomplished it. A bulge in Remming’s jacket told Auden the man was armed. Technically guards weren’t supposed to carry firearms when they were suspended, but Auden couldn’t blame the guy. Not the way things were just now in the city.

  The two men eyed each other as the mob slowly dispersed; the guards remaining started to relax. Auden stepped closer to Remming. “You want to earn back the respect of the guard?” he asked quietly. “Got an assignment for you. Could easily get you killed, but it’s yours if you want it.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Playing bait for the Beast.”

  Remming thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  Auden was heading back to his own runabout and his now cold gyro when the Railwalker arrived.

  John Hamblin stowed the flask away in his pocket, confident that the waitress had not seen him tip a measure of hooch into his coffee. In this Hamblin was mistaken. Hamblin’s habit of drinking while on duty was an open secret amongst the employees of the various diners and restaurants he frequented on his rounds.

  Hamblin was glad to have dodged the bullet. He’d been on an accident when the general call to all units came for a possible riot. By the time the ambulances had left, and he’d finished his report notes and pointed his runabout toward Hallard Street, the all-clear had been called. Now it was almost nine, Hamblin reflected as he took a sip of the fortified coffee, so he’d be off duty soon and could get down to some serious drinking. Technically he was on call tonight, so he should probably stick to vodka, just in case he got called in. There’d be hell to pay if Robles, or gods forbid Gage, smelled liquor on his breath. He scowl-ed down at the brew in his cup, wishing the Ten O’Clock Diner would get themselves some decent Java. This crap couldn’t be more than ten percent; it was mostly chicory. The hooch helped a little, though. Eileen placed his fried chicken before him as his radio squawked.

  “Two-five-niner, this is Central, over.” Guard Central Dispatch, calling his badge number. He frowned. Five minutes before quitting time. This could not be good.

  “Hamblin here. Go, Central.”

  “Your on-call has been called on, Two-five-nine.” It was Miriam on dispatch tonight. “Ten-nineteen for an eleven-eighty-six.”

  Ten nineteen meant return to headquarters, but Hamblin always had trouble remembering the eleven codes. “Ah, hell Miriam,” he said, “speak English. What’s up?”

  “Special detail, that’s all I know. Robles wants you back here ASAP.”

  “Dammit,” he grumbled. “I ain’t had a night off in a month.” Which wasn’t strictly true, but they’d all been pulling extra duty since the Beast started his killings. “Ain’t Richardson on call tonight? Get him.”

  “Already got him, Hamblin. All the on-calls are being pulled in. Just get your lazy butt down here.”

  He acknowledged and signed off. He knew better than to pump Miriam for more information when something big was going down. The night dispatcher was generally friendly and agreeable, especially since Hamblin often plied her with her favorite chocolate rolls, but when things started hopping she got all rigid and by-the-book. He sighed and signaled for the waitress. “Can you wrap this for me, honey? I gotta run. Duty calls.”

  Hamblin took a shot of breath spray, just in case the smell of the hooch might be detectable over the chicory coffee. Moments later, the grease of his extra-crispy chicken and fries already beginning to stain the bottom of the bag, he marched out the door of the Ten O’Clock Diner to find his runabout missing.

  “What the blazin’ hells?” He looked up and down the street and noticed the tail of the runabout just visible in the mouth of the alley a few yards to his right. He wondered who would have the balls to mess with a guard runabout. He scanned the street again, but there were no obvious suspects. “Fuck,” he muttered to himself as he clumped down the sidewalk toward the alley.

  INTERLUDE: W.S. JACKSON

  The Railwalkers were not, of course, the only heroes who answered the call to battle the strange creatures and bizarre phenomena that appeared in the wake of the Crash. Other warrior-shamans arose from the ranks of the Namericans, the Neopagans, Santerians and Mayacans, heroes who are often referred to as Railwalkers, despite their having no connection to the formal Order of the Railwalkers founded by Brick. The most famous among these, however, is from a somewhat later period.

  In the twenty-seventh year after the Crash, a woman in the village of Corteone, on the outskirts of Bay City, saw a five-year-old child walking out of the desert zones. The child could not speak, and there was no evidence to give indication of where he had come from.

  The woman, one Agnes Jackson, adopted the child as her own and named him William Stuart Jackson. The boy had an unpromising early life. He seemed a slow learner, last in his classes at school, but he grew large and strong, and Agnes Jackson had hopes for a future for her son as a guard, and when he turned eighteen she took him to Bay City.

  Young Will was enrolled in the City Guard Academy, barely passing his entrance exam. Then the revenants struck Bay City. Arcidemus, popularly known as the Revenant King, was a sorcerer who began his career as a Ravager in the zones. He gathered to himself an army of the living dead, and in 145 A.C. he moved on Bay City. The city guard was totally unprepared, and the city very nearly fell in the first day. Many guard officers, as well as the city boss, were killed.

  It was William Stuart Jackson who rallied the remaining guards and, along with students from the academy and a ragtag assembly of citizens, staged a counterattack. Rising literally overnight from obscure lower-than-average cadet to city hero, Jackson led his impromptu army to victory over the revenants, killing the sorcerer Arcidemus himself. In the wake of the victory he became City Boss.

  By all accounts, Bay City flourished under Jackson’s administration. Some years later, Jackson traveled to the City of Two Suns to do battle with a Glaeken, which had arisen from the Chiricahua Mountains to plague the desert city. The tale of Jackson’s struggle with the Glaeken would later become a staple of DVs and comanga.

  Jackson’s war with the Mayacans, however, was an ill-considered step. The Mayacan leader, Juan Zorr, was crafty as well as powerful. Just before the decisive battle of Nogales Jackson was betrayed, ambushed and killed. His quixotic quest and ignoble death left Bay City leaderless, and the city-state fell into chaos and disorder until the rise of the House of Crichton some years later.

  Randall Cottone

  Creatures of Chaos:

  Heroes and Monsters of the Post-Crash Years

  Historica Books, Gatesville, 0326

  28. WOLF

  I arrived late to the party. When I reached Hallard Street, there was little sign of any impending lynching. There were still a couple of guard vehicles pulled up on the sidewalk blocking access to the City Arms apartments, and uniformed guards stood behind them. In the street, however, only a handful of people milled about, reluctantly deserting the scene. In front of the guard vehicles I saw Auden, bullhorn at his side, talking quietly to another guy in plain clothes. As I approached them I recognized Cort Remming, the purported ringleader of the guards who’d jumped me the other night. We eyed each other for a moment, then he turned and walked away.

  “You missed all the fun,” said Auden.

  “Was Remming involved in this?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said. “In fact, he may have saved our bacon. I’m pretty sure he had a gun on Dobbs, forced him to back down.”

  “Really?”

  “No shit. You should probably know, I offered him a piece of the action at tomorrow night’s shindig. He’s a dead ringer for Jim Shaw.” We’d be substituting guards for Roth’s friends Shaw, Carter, Weldt, Armstrong, and Tyburn. I’d seen a photo of Shaw in his file. Auden was right. Remming had the same bullet head and wide, sloping shoulders. We still needed to find an appropriate
ringer for Weldt. There weren’t many female guards anywhere near the policy advisor’s size, and we were contemplating putting a male guardsman in drag.

  “Well,” I said, “that would be Gage’s call. As long as Remming can contain his dislike of us and not let it interfere with the job, I won’t object if Gage doesn’t.”

  “Appreciate that,” Auden said, his face expressionless. I wondered if not for his severe sense of duty, would he have been tempted to join Remming and his cronies in trying to teach the outsider a lesson. If so, I’d have to get past that resentment somehow. As the Wolf Spirit had reminded me, this was a hunt, and on a hunt you have to utilize the skills of the whole pack. “The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack,” as the old saying tells. Whether I liked it or not, Auden was part of our pack for this particular hunt.

  Two guardsmen came down the front steps with a tall man between them. He had dark, curly hair and glasses, and didn’t look much like a mutant of any sort. The heavyset guardsman said to Auden, “It’s his daytime disguise. We thought he’d be safer if he wore it.” I looked a question at Auden.

  He almost smiled. “Dobbs thought Dr. Cordoba here was the Beast because he goes around disguised as a normal.”

  “I’m no murderer,” the doctor said sullenly. “And dressing as a normal isn’t illegal.”

  “You’re not under arrest, Doc,” said Auden. “Not yet, anyway. At the moment you’re in protective custody. Consider yourself lucky. You could be strung up by the neck about now.” He nodded to the guards, who escorted Cordoba to the car. “We’ll check out his alibis,” Auden said to me, “but I don’t expect he’s gonna look very good for it.”