by Kim Newman
Her shocked patient was surrounded by cooing vampires. Police girls offered support and succour, but might also want a crafty lick of his stump. That might even help. Vampire saliva contained a numbing agent and an anti-coagulant. Some nosferatu really could ‘kiss it better’. Then, all at once, the yo-yos tumbled that cosying up to the victim of a bio-terror attack was risky and abandoned Kamikura. Nezumi had a pang. She wanted to like them but the callous streak disappointed her. Were the badges just costume jewellery?
Kamikura sat on the pavement, stump elevated and seeping only a little. Nezumi had done a proper job with the tourniquet. Worth a gold star from Nurse Wretched. At Drearcliff Grange, practice dummies bled rhubarb purée – used in first-aid lessons because the canteen ordered vats of the gunk only to find no girl would eat it. That purple splurge didn’t prickle Nezumi’s fangs. Spilled blood did. She kept her mouth closed. A smile of encouragement might be taken the wrong way.
A departing yo-yo dabbed her finger in the splash on the carpet and touched her long tongue with it. One of her comrades made a ‘yeurgh’ face. The bloodlicker showed no shame.
‘That better have come from the leg not the foot,’ said Mr Jeperson.
Horrorstruck, the girl cop spat into the gutter.
If Nezumi hadn’t acted swiftly, the taint would be in Kamikura’s blood. She’d saved his life.
She preferred to think of him than the man she’d killed.
Him, she’d diagnosed as a decapitation case and acted accordingly.
It ought to be a comfort that the dead man woke up this morning fully committed to being a suicide bomber.
His friend, she’d just immobilised.
Now she’d done what she could for Kamikura, she was obliged to look at the man she’d stuck with her sword. He was handcuffed to the front bumper of the stretch hearse. Since she’d put him out of the fight, he’d sustained extra injuries. Detective Azuma had given him an unsportsmanlike kicking.
The Bad Penny peered hungrily through the front passenger window, snub nose pressed to glass. Her unusual eyes burned electric blue as her brain buzzed with red thirst. Her mouth stretched like the cat’s in Alice. Extra teeth crowded out of her gums.
Her chauffeur – a big-chinned plug-ugly – stood over the prisoner.
He wore polished boots with steel toecaps. Azuma wasn’t the only rib-kicker at the scene of this crime.
The Aum Draht looney was in a sorry state. She didn’t feel very sorry for him.
If he’d had his way, everyone in sight – which was a lot of people – would be fungus heaps. The Plaza would be a sprouting pool of noxious man-mushrooms.
The prisoner’s brainwhorl-patterned hood was stained with leakage. His cyclops-eye visor was stoved in.
She gave him a once-over. Cracked ribs. Broken arm. Not her doing. That collar-wound. Bingo.
One of the yo-yos had a medical kit. Nezumi asked for a big plaster, which was reluctantly handed over. Unpeeling it was a fiddle, but she managed. She slapped the plaster on the neat slit she’d made under the prisoner’s collarbone. A carton of Blue Label Sprünt fitted into his shirt-front pocket with an attached straw. Gamers practically lived off the brew, she knew.
His head moved. He was awake and trying to look at her.
The cloth over his mouth was torn. He gave a snarly smile.
‘What were you thinking?’ she asked, fitting the straw into his mouth.
He sucked, ungratefully.
He couldn’t be more than eighteen. A boy.
With great effort, he raised his hand and made a finger-gun then flicked up his thumb as if shooting her in the heart, and collapsed in pained exhaustion.
The chauffeur stuck a boot-cap into his side again.
‘No call for that,’ said Nezumi.
The chauffeur smiled. His false choppers were rusty, staining his gums.
The terrorist groaned.
DR AKIBA
Early arrivals dawdled in the lobby of the Uchoten Hotel. Zenbu, the enka star, gestured to a thin crowd, re-enacting his moderately well-known attempt to throttle himself with a scarf. He was politely ignored by a group of middle-aged men who wore matching furry balaclavas topped with deer ears and antlers.
Akiba pushed through a set of double doors into a bank of cold air. He’d not retrieved his topcoat from the cloakroom. Staff were aghast as a blue-grey armoured personnel carrier rolled into a prime drop-off spot. A commissionaire tried to shoo away the urban tank. An amplified voice ordered him not to approach.
Rolling Vehicle One was an EarthGuard transport, nicknamed ‘the Armourdillo’ for its thick shell of overlapping plates and out thrusting ram-raider snout. The logo on its steel flank was supposed to confer instant authority. It was assumed panic and puzzlement would be problems. The EarthGuard symbol was a burning pyramid with a human female smile. Akiba wondered whether the design team read the brief backwards, and devised an image to foment panic and puzzlement.
The front passenger window rolled down. A lean, crop-haired man looked out. He had hawk eyes and sharp cheekbones.
‘Gourmet,’ said Akiba.
‘Golgotha,’ responded the man.
His black jump-suit had a Colonel’s bars and stars on the sleeve. An EarthGuard insignia badge was pinned to his beret. Tinted spectacles shielded glinting eyes. He was in obvious command.
An intense young guy sat in the driver’s seat, gloved hands on the wheel. All haircut and attitude. Hashiriya – a street racer. Not military.
Golgotha thumbed towards the rear compartment. A hatch opened with a purr of motors.
Akiba walked round and looked in.
Two rows of EarthGuard personnel in off-white HazMat suits sat opposite each other, helmets on laps. Nine spots were occupied. Akiba was tenth man on the team. This crew looked more like combat-ready troops than the multi-disciplinary kooks he’d met on war games. Not the sorts to pick a silly song as an official ringtone.
‘Make your jokes in training,’ General Gokemidoro said. ‘Sense of humour will not survive deployment.’
Two and a half minutes after the phone that never rings rang, Akiba was starting to be terrified. He’d thought anything would be better than Tokiko’s party. Now he had his wish and wanted to take it back.
The sky was red but not on fire. Crowds weren’t streaming past, shrieking and pointing behind them. Decapitated corpses did not litter the streets. No giant mother-ship hovered over the Diet Building. Akiba ruled out any of the scenarios EarthGuard had role-played.
If he was on the first response team, it must be infectious or contagious.
Tokyo was the Titanic after the iceberg hit but before the passengers realised what that bump, scrape and rip meant.
Only a handful of people knew the ship was sinking.
He climbed into the ’dillo and found a space ready for him.
Neighbours helped him into his HazMat. The loose suit went over his clothes and sealed with a press-shut Y seam in the configuration of autopsy sutures. Condom-thin, rip-resistant plasticised fabric would shield him from contaminants – but not, he now realised, the cold. He banged his unhelmeted head on the roof as the Armourdillo moved out, and sat down, bumping his coccyx. A floppy-haired youth who looked to be high-school age showed him how to strap up and buckle in.
An intercom screen came on and Golgotha reported to the team.
‘Less than ten minutes ago, a terrorist affiliated to the Aum Draht sect let loose a fungal agent in Casamassima Bay.’
Akiba knew the bio-capabilities of Aum Draht. They were beyond sarin in the subway. The cult appealed to D&D obsessives, cybernet hackers, manga otaku and garage band Frankensteins. Adepts had tech-savvy, disposable income, laboratory access, and the free time that comes with not having girlfriends. Who knew what they’d cooked up?
Weaponised athlete’s foot? Murdering mushrooms?
A culinary countermeasure might be garlic – which, joking aside, had proven immunosupportive properties. Garlic would be scar
ce in a vampire district.
‘Does EarthGuard have authority in the Bund?’ asked a woman.
‘The Bund is on Earth,’ said the Colonel. ‘We are EarthGuard. Our remit is to guard the planet.’
‘And the moon,’ chipped in a bearded New Zealander. ‘Hi, I’m Derek. Code-Name, uh, Derek… didn’t have time to think of a better one. I’m a xenobiologist. Bugs and such.’
‘Gourmet,’ said Akiba, ‘infectious diseases and contagions. Smaller bugs. We met at the Mu symposium.’
‘Oh yeah, rayguns and sea-horse chariots. And sharks with legs. Good times.’
EarthGuard had gamed an attack on Japan from a hitherto-isolated, technologically superior civilisation. In a huddle with an attractive archaeologist and a bosozoku gang leader, Akiba and Derek brainstormed guerrilla resistance to an advance of barnacle-encrusted hover-tanks.
The New Zealander was one of only two persons here Akiba recognised.
Akiba looked at the others, expecting self-introductions.
‘Cottonmouth,’ said the woman, who was Asian but had freckles, ‘expedited solutions.’
As she spoke, Akiba saw fangs. A vampire.
Other code-names were volunteered. Hunter (an American), Killer (the high-schooler), Furīman, Panty-Mask (!), the Butler, Caterpillar, Astro-Man (‘infiltration’). Akiba and Derek were the only whitecoats. The rest seemed olive-drab: military or security. The Butler and Astro-Man were vampires. The cat-eared Butler wore dress gloves over his HazMat, with saimin sigils sewn in red thread into the palms. That made him the squad’s spiritual advisor. Caterpillar was encased in armour – his plastic overalls were stretched thin over rivets and plate – and had mechanical limbs wired to a control helmet. One arm ended in what looked like the spout of a flamethrower. The other had a grapple-claw attachment.
Astro-Man was vague in outline, as if permanently on the point of shapeshifting – or dissipating – into mist. He was the other person Akiba had met before. It was the only time an active EarthGuard mission had intruded on his civilian life. Astro-Man was brought to TCM in semi-vapour form, in need of multiple transfusions of warm and vampire blood to achieve solidity. He had been injured during a bank raid Akiba was assured served the cause of defending the planet. Something other than money was kept in the vault. Team leader Hanjuro, ‘the Black Ninja’, had scores across his face, as if he’d been clawed by a tiger with the handspan of Rachmaninov. Even for kyuketsuki, Astro-Man’s physiology was unusual. Akiba trusted he was fully recovered and fit for the field.
Golgotha stayed on the intercom, face grim. Other screens showed the streets, busy with festival crowds, people on their way to parties.
Akiba took it as read that he was no longer in a relationship.
A map image showed a blip. RV-1 was nearing the Yōkai Town Gate.
Panty-Mask, a muscular fellow, bulked out his HazMat suit so much that he looked like the Michelin Mascot. It was easy to see how he came by his code-name. A filter over his nose and mouth looked like women’s underwear. He didn’t see anything funny in that and gave the impression no one else should either.
In charge of equipment, Panty-Mask handed out small arms. Everyone but Akiba, Derek and Caterpillar got Minebea 9mm pistols and oily PM-9s. Against JSDF regulations (and Japan’s Post-War Constitution), the submachine guns were modified for combat use with folding stocks, detachable suppressors and mounted reflex sights. Weapons-proficient personnel set about clicking, sliding, sighting and generally fiddling with their new toys.
As party favours, Furīman and Cottonmouth got blades that slipped into pouches on their thighs. Cottonmouth smiled and patted the handle as she pocketed her extra fangs. She was a sparkle-eyed flirt.
Caterpillar, armed already, received only a thumbs-up from the weapons master.
Derek and Akiba lacked lethal ordnance.
‘Oi, mate, do I get a shooter?’ asked Derek.
Panty-Mask gave him a briefcase, which he opened. He drew a pistol-grip syringe and pointed it around, going ‘pow pow pow’ like a kid playing war.
Hunter and Killer pointed their real guns back at him.
‘I surrender,’ said Derek, smiling. ‘It’s not even loaded.’
The briefcase contained vials with different labels.
Akiba was issued with a large medical bag and checked inside. Standard stuff – even a stethoscope – with a few extras. Serums, blood-packs, vaccines and anti-venoms. Black phials of fast-acting poison. A firebreak protocol was in effect.
‘I hope you’ve all had your shots,’ he said.
‘We’re all dead,’ said Furīman, who had colourful tendrils of tattoo curling around his neck. ‘We were dead as soon as we signed up.’
‘I was dead once,’ said Cottonmouth. ‘I got better.’
Furīman, a gloomy soul, shrugged. The tats suggested he was yakuza. Organised crime had a stake in the survival of civilisation the way vampires needed the warm. Parasites don’t want a host to die just yet.
On the map screen, the RV-1 blip passed through the Gate and into the Bund without stopping for anything like a security inspection. Calls had been made and channels opened. General Gokemidoro must have cancelled holiday plans to be at post in the command centre, which was disguised as a film studio.
Cottonmouth smiled sharply. She, at least, was home.
NEZUMI
A siren sounded. Crowds shifted in the Plaza. People went on to the party. The Senator led the way with tales of an open bar and specialty dancers. Most guests had no idea what the disturbance was. It was over quickly. Her special talent was ending things quickly.
An armoured car the length of a London bus drove up. Its wraparound windshield was tinted so even vampire eyes couldn’t see inside. The vehicle parked without running anyone over. It didn’t even dent the fancy hearse with the big prod that stuck out of its cow-catcher.
A door unsealed. Steps unfolded like landing gear. A tall, dark-haired man emerged, pistol in hand. Nezumi couldn’t identify his beret insignia but could tell he thought a lot of himself and expected people to agree with him. This was a big cheese. His stance was supposed to make her feel like saluting.
The rear doors opened. Operatives filed out like a pop group deplaning in front of a fan club crowd. One or two stumbled. They wore baggy white coveralls and space helmets. Someone with an approximate Australian accent apologised. He made her feel better. People who said sorry for things they couldn’t help were usually sound.
The Big Cheese looked down from his step. He spotted the goo shoe and gestured with his gun.
A spaceman clanked over to the puddle. He had machine arms and legs. One of his arms terminated in a nozzle. He hitched his shoulder, ratcheting an internal mechanism, and poured flame onto the foot. The burning shoe and its contents ponged worse than the fungus. The mess blazed for seconds and was consumed, leaving only a smear of sulphurous soot. The cyborg gave another squirt for luck.
‘We should have taken a sample,’ said one of the crew.
The Big Cheese didn’t bother to answer.
Nezumi had seen through him.
The commander had been wrong about something that was his fault and hadn’t apologised. She’d not rely on him in a crisis.
Which this was.
‘Everyone, stay where you are,’ said the Big Cheese. ‘Surrender yourselves to be examined for signs of contamination.’
‘No need to panic,’ said the quasi-Aussie, which, of course, was not reassuring.
DON SIM˜N DE MOLINAR Y VAZQUEZ
As Head of Security for Light Industries, Molinar commanded a small army from an office suite on Floor 88 of the Daikaiju Building. He benefited from a healthy bonus package, a near-unlimited supply of donor blood, and stock options. It said ‘Executive Vice-President’ on his business cards.
The Fairy Princess graciously included him in decision-making – partially because, as he could admit when she wasn’t there, disagreeing with her gave him a grinding pain behind the eyes. Christ
ina Light ensorcelled him in 1895 and he’d been in her thrall ever since. She was practical enough to know an echo chamber of yes-men overfed her vanity and made an effort to dampen her glamour. Zombie minions couldn’t run a megacorp. There was enough play in the line for him to do his job, but the hook was in him. All the Princess had to do was lift the veil and he’d tear out his own heart and give it to her on a gold tray.
Molinar still thought of himself as Captain of the Guard. Armour and weaponry changed but the duties were the same. His breastplate: a $17,000 Leonard Logsdail three-piece, tailored to accommodate shoulder holster. His sword: a Beretta M9 semi-automatic pistol, modified for silver rounds. His helm: Walker and Blinde mirrorshades. He didn’t need a page to run messages to men-at-arms. A Brilliant-Smith Digital Solutions two-way radio looped him into the corporation’s dedicated communications network. Designed to look like an expensive wristwatch, it even told the time – which reminded him he was too busy to see Dr Pretorius.
Not tonight. When the Princess was due to Ascend.
Nevertheless, he headed down to the alchemist’s lair. Ignoring a summons was impossible. Sending a Junior Vice-President or a Senior Secretary wouldn’t do. Only Molinar’s personal presence satisfied the quack.
He had a key, card or code for every lock in the Daikaiju Building. Including the sectors LI left out of brochures. The Donor Pens. The Suicide Gardens. The Crypt of Correction.
The sole exception was the domain of Septimus Pretorius.
Molinar stepped from the elevator into the fusty foyer. A door dead ahead was ornamented with a cluster-rut of cherubs, gargoyles, nymphs and stags. No card-reader to swipe. No lock to pick. Not even a handle. It only opened from the other side. Pretorius had been known to issue summonses then leave people waiting for days.
Molinar considered dynamite.
The Mad Gnome, as he rather liked to be called, adored finding excuses to remind the Executive Vice-President of this one limit to his omnipotence. Pretorius always twisted the screw when a hundred and one other things had to be done. The Genius Without Portfolio hid under the Princess’s skirts like a jester sheltering behind royal patronage. Nose-tweaked courtiers must laugh or be thought to have too high an opinion of their own dignity.