by Kim Newman
As for what he did under Golgotha’s command – he didn’t care what it was, just that it was done properly. He followed orders.
His fogged brain could manage that.
Tsunako Shiki reminded him of Lady Asaji. They might have been cousins-in-darkness, recipients of a tainted Portuguese-Carpathian bloodline. Different in manner – the Lady distant where Shiki was forward, Shiki frivolous where the Lady was grave – but alike in attitude. Their worlds were toy theatres. They were stars. Everyone else was a marionette. Or a boy with a mop and a bucket.
Shiki was around the corner, flirting with her victim.
Lords and ladies did that. Minions crept up and struck.
Shiki said Mizuno and Caterpillar were poor playmates. They had no imagination. If she had her first picks, Cottonmouth and the Butler would be with her. Golgotha wanted to hold them back, for his own purposes. Officers often squabbled like that, childish but stuffy. Still, Mizuno knew no one wasted a stiletto or a knight on a blocked toilet. That was a job for the Astro-Man.
Caterpillar was on the other side of the building. He was surprisingly stealthy. When he lost his arms and legs, he learned to creep, undulating forward on belly muscles and with his chin. Now he was a Human Swiss Army Knife, he didn’t clank.
He listened, waiting for Shiki’s signal.
When she whistled, Mizuno and Caterpillar were to pounce on Jun Zero and hold him down. Then, she would play with him. Only when she was bored would she let them finish him off.
Golgotha wouldn’t approve, but he also took orders. Chain of command did that to the highest-ranking. There was always someone senior. The Colonel answered to Gokemidoro, or at least to the voice which came from his upper mouth when he nodded off. The General had a puppet master inside his head. He wasn’t the vampire. The sponge that wound tendrils around his brain was. When Gokemidoro died, the red jelly would ooze out of its fissure and seek a new host.
Shiki was privileged. Her master’s favourite. A pet to be indulged.
Caterpillar must be in place now.
Lady Asaji would not have cared for Shiki. Similarity bred rivalry.
He heard a commotion. The pincer plan was scotched.
Without waiting for the whistle, he stepped round the corner. Caterpillar had the same instinct.
Jun Zero, as was the way of cornered dogs, had done something unexpected. Opened a door and let loose a mad vampire.
Shiki was delighted. Mizuno less so.
Jun Zero was dressed as a salaryman but stood like a karate master.
The mad vampire was dressed as a security guard.
‘Hello, friends,’ said Shiki. ‘This is Jun Zero. He’s a hoot and a half.’
Mizuno tried to keep flesh solid on his bones.
He knew what was wrong with the vampire. The chiropterid had got to him. It ought to have wiped Jun Zero too.
The vampire was acting on instinct. Mizuno had been like that for long stretches of his service, unleashed rather than deployed, coralled between missions, fed like an animal.
He looked at the unflushable Jun Zero. The hacker held a fighting stance, eyes on Shiki. His strange hand was raised, lit from inside like a pachinko machine. That would have to come off and be broken to bits.
The mad vampire was in the way. Mizuno saw how he could be useful.
He dashed at the vampire. It turned and scratched Mizuno’s chest. Horny, new-grown talons dented and stretched plasticised fabric, then punctured it. Puzzled by the lack of blood-gush, the mindless viper tore rents in Mizuno’s HazMat suit.
Mizuno heard a hiss of escaping gas.
That was him. He was free.
He filled the corridor, then concentrated. No point in tackling the vampire, who didn’t need to breathe.
He aimed himself at Jun Zero’s head and made himself into a thick cloud.
HAROLD TAKAHAMA
Ishikawa attacked the decontamination suit with claws and fangs, a dog savaging a plastic scarecrow. Something intangible and invisible flew at Hal – fast.
Lethality Points – Bonus Ultra! Threat Level – fucking off the charts!
A ghost constellation embraced him.
Too late, Hal held his breath. His eyes watered.
Weights pressed on his chest. Tiny hooks scraped his skin.
‘Red and orange and pink and green,’ sang Tsunako Shiki, in accented English, ‘yellow and violet and blue…’
Hal wanted to cough but couldn’t.
‘They’re the colours your face will go when he strangles you!’
She laughed, taking pleasure in his upcoming death.
Tsunako was worse than Cousin Hellish.
Ishikawa held the tattered suit. The bull-necked, shaven-headed warm man Hal took for a back-up goon extended concertina arms with a mechanical rasp. Barbs clicked out of the knuckles of his mace-fist. He began hitting Ishikawa’s head as if it were a punching ball. A nozzle appendage squirted fire into the vampire’s face.
‘Evasive action is advised,’ repeated Lefty.
Maybe Lefty was dumb. Not a mindless tool but stupid. Ill-programmed. Glitchy. Inconsistent. No help. Evil Stretch Armstrong’s robot arms were at least weapons. Hal could have done with a blowtorch hand just now, though he’d most likely set fire to his own head to free himself from the Intangible Asphyxiator.
He felt pressure in his ears and against his eyes.
His head was wrapped in invisible wet leather.
He saw spots. Angry glitter.
Mouth firmly shut, he couldn’t ask Lefty to elaborate.
As if he needed more grief, the hand agonised his arm, lighting up pain circuits to the shoulder. Was he betrayed by his own add-on? He’d never trusted the wonky widget.
Lefty struck an oddly-cricked forefinger – with an extruded rind of flint like a bitten-down nail – against a metal pad set in its thumb. It made sparks. Usually vampires were afraid of fire. Not this time.
How long could Hal stay conscious? Or alive?
His arm spasmed and convulsed like an electro-stimulated dead frog’s leg.
Lefty punched in the direction of the open door of the Processor Room. Hal was yanked after it.
The Moppet of Menace clapped, head turning like a tennis spectator’s. Which was the most delicious? Ishikawa being turbopummelled and skull-barbequed or Hal struggling with a rebel limb and an unseen smotherer?
She didn’t want to miss a hilarious second of either treat.
Hal slammed against the door-jamb and couldn’t hold his breath any longer. He gulped air and was invaded. The thing enveloping him could wreak damage inside and out. A horribly intimate violation.
He blundered into the Processor Room, still fighting something he couldn’t touch. The door shut and sealed behind them. A disappointment for the Little Horror. She’d have to make do with just one entertaining death.
Did Lefty have a plan? That door-closing flail couldn’t be an accident.
Come on, Mr Hand. Save the day!
As much as was possible, Hal went limp. He tried not to resist Lefty and not to inhale more viper vapour. He was worried the Gas Man could force past his sphincter and solidify inside his rectum as a venom-barbed porcupine. His mind junkfiled eight years of valuable life experience that turned him into an outlaw cyberwarrior but retained the process that could imagine ass-infiltrating metamorphs with poison spines. That was a concern.
Databanks thrummed. Screens beamed the arctic luminescence of the Light Channel. Fans whirred.
He’d noticed the dustlessness of the room. The odd, distilled water taste of the air.
The fans weren’t only for cooling. They maintained atmospheric purity. Tech wonks called dust ‘the slow EMP’. Using a mini-vacuum on the guts of a computer was the fix-it’s second resort after turning it off and on again. Mr Clean and Bill Gates agreed on one thing – dust was an enemy of progress.
The thing killing him was intangible (except to hurt you), invisible (except with the Light Channel behind it), and
non-flammable (as Lefty’s tinderbox proved) – but not truly insubstantial. The shapeshifter transformed from solid to vapour by redistributing molecules or whatever. It still had a body, though its matter was thinned. It couldn’t be knocked out by, say, landing a roundhouse right on its chin. It had no coherent heart to drive a stake through.
But it was particulate matter – even if measured in microns. Now, thanks to Lefty, the Gas Man was locked in a room set up to rid itself of grit, grime, droplets and ash.
Lefty used minor pains – not even stings, just jabs – to direct Hal to a panel labelled ‘Atmospheric Control’ in English and Japanese. A big red button begged to be thumped, like a prop on a kids’ TV show.
The pressure in his ears grew. He felt a warm liquid gush.
Blood. That made the vampire cloud simple-minded. It withdrew from his body, tearing through his nostrils, to gather around his ears, molecules absorbing leakage. Jun Zero’s blood was an intoxicant.
Lefty thumb-flicked a side-switch and an airline emergency mask fell from a ceiling hatch and dangled at the end of a clear tube. Contra-intuitively Hal forced as much air as he could out of his lungs, then clamped the mask over his mouth and nose. He willed his inner ears shut and clenched his butt-cheeks as if cracking a walnut at a frat party. Fuck off, Mr Poisonpine!
Lefty extended all five digits, producing extra knuckles from inside its works, and jammed them into ports.
‘Extreme Atmosphere Flush Imminent,’ it announced.
Now, Hal breathed bottled air.
Vent grilles clicked to open. Extractor fans revved like jet engines. A reverse tornado whipped through the room.
It was like a spaceship being breached.
Lefty anchored Hal to the control panel, but his feet were off the floor. The pull of air being drawn out of the room was enormous. Maximum suckage, but in a good way.
Items of flair – stowed when this process was executed routinely – flew off desks and slammed against vents, clattering through to gum up works or be lost forever. Maintenance would find ground-up fidget toys in the filtration system for years. Taguchi’s drained corpse was dragged along a path, then hauled upright to stick over a vent. His head lolled.
How well had Jun Zero known his dead comrades?
It would be a bummer if those were his best friends.
Bits and pieces of chiropterid were vacuumed, mixed with the struggling invisible monster. Truly dead, Karl had no bodily integrity. All that was left was friable crystal.
Breathing through the mask, Hal looked up at the shape trying to form. The gaseous vampire was straining to shift back to solidity, but too much matter whirled through its body. Regular grime, leaves of scribble-pad, chiropterid smuts, paperclips, staples, items of flair.
Hal saw that face again. Metres across and transparent.
Angry fangs. Violent eyes.
Sayonara, Super Gas Giant!
The vampire had coherence for an instant.
The big black rubber sphere – that fucking waste of space pseudo-chair – bounced between cabinets. It cannoned smack into that shimmering face, which came apart, spiralled and was funnelled through the largest vent towards the whirling blades of the deadliest fans.
There’s always a bigger sucker to get you.
The extraction burst lasted only ten seconds. Then the fans shut and the grilles closed.
The chairball careened off again. Taguchi slid to the floor.
Hal, choking and coughing, landed on his feet. Lefty detached from the control panel.
Beyond the frosted door the vampire girl pressed her face to the glass.
Hal wasn’t foolish enough to think he’d won. But he’d beaten this level.
He couldn’t remember being Jun Zero – becoming Jun Zero – but the hacker outlaw was burned into his DNA. He had skills. He had instincts. His survival so far wasn’t just down to Lefty’s smarts – which the mechamitt only had because Jun Zero coded them into its core.
Jun Zero was an individual who got away with crimes, then walked into the sunset with Rac Loring on one arm and Winona Ryder on the other.
Tsunako Shiki knuckle-rapped the door.
‘Come out and play, Mr Zero,’ she said. ‘Come out and play.’
RICHARD JEPERSON
He scratched his sleeve as if his tattoo were an itch.
GEIST 97
In the last fifty-five years, whole days must have passed when he hadn’t consciously noticed it. But not many.
Whenever he took his shirt off in company, he had to explain. Not that he could say much. It was his unsolved mystery.
After the War, Captain Jeperson found him in Aussenlager Richard, a displaced persons camp on the outskirts of Litoměřice in what was now the Czech Republic. His age was presumed to be five or six. Seemingly mute, he learned English as if it were his first language. Speakers of Czech, Romany, Hebrew and other tongues couldn’t unlock his mind. Shouted or purred at in German, he didn’t flinch – unusual in the circumstances. Hypnotism didn’t work on him. Later, he tried many forms of meditation and past regression techniques with no useful results.
As a teenager, he sometimes told people he wasn’t sure whether his distinguishing feature was a tattoo or a birthmark. His adoptive father said tests had been done. It was ink not melanin. Nazis had written on his arm.
The DP camp which gave him his name was successor to underground forced labour factories code-named Richard I and Richard II. The state of his hands indicated he hadn’t worked in them. The neo-gothic Villa Pfaffenhof, in the nearby woods, had been used during the War by the Ariosophist Institute. At her trial, Dr Heike Ziss, director of the Nazi Occult Sciences division, presented documentation establishing she had not been within two hundred miles of Litoměřice in her life. Which was suspicious. Richard had never been to Arbroath, but couldn’t have proved that in court.
Richard was uncircumcised, so almost certainly not Jewish. A best guess was that his biological parents were Roma. Probably from far to the southeast of where he was found. At school, his Young Heathcliff looks got him nicknamed ‘Gypo’. For all his dandyism, he’d never had his ears pierced. Seven years of ‘cross my palm with silver’ jokes were enough for him.
The obvious inference of GEIST 97 was that he was marked for death – scheduled to become the 97th ghost. It wasn’t as if Nazis even needed a reason to kill him. The tattoo was a puzzle. At Auschwitz, only prisoners fit for work were numbered. Time and ink weren’t wasted on those to be exterminated. ‘Geist’ hinted he wasn’t to be murdered, but forgotten – rendered invisible and unknown. A ghost.
If so, the project was successful.
In 1978, Richard sat across a table from Heike Ziss in an East German ‘high-security retirement home’. He read only boredom and weariness from her. The plain, elderly hausfrau had a number of her own, stitched on her blouse. He was supposed to believe she’d been in prison since 1947, but knew she’d worked for the GDR satellite of the Night Watch. When he showed her his arm, she remarked the tattoo was off centre. It seemed to mean nothing to her, though she was interested. She recognised it as unusual. His inbuilt lie detector didn’t register a flicker.
Silently, he was relieved.
In his worst imaginings, the Dreadful Dr Ziss would turn out to be his mother.
He celebrated not finding out anything useful by sleeping with Charlotte, the friendly guide who was (of course) spying on him for the Stasi. She offered to chew off the tattoo to help him forget and did sink her fangs into it. He learned more about her than she did about him – or any long-range plans the Diogenes Club might have to undermine the Warsaw Pact. When the scab came off, the tattoo was still there.
After Reunification, Charlotte spent a few months as a resident of the cosy prison they’d visited. Two-thirds of the country were suddenly terrified records of spying on their neighbours would be made public. Examples were made of the relatively few Stasi officers who did real intelligence work – keeping tabs on foreigners. Charlotte
was let out after Richard recommended clemency. She transferred to Berlin and was now an Inspector in the Lohmann Branch. She made a better detective than she had a spy.
Dr Ziss died peacefully in her bath a few years later. Her secrets gurgled down the drain.
Unable to let it go, Richard visited the ruins of the Villa Pfaffenhof. At the time, a film company was using the abandoned estate as a location for a horror movie. The empty house triggered no suppressed memories. Well before the Nazis set up shop, the villa had ghost stories. But he sensed no presences, auras or ethereal miasmas – as if the stone tape were erased by blood ritual around the time paper files went into the fire. For Richard, another dead-end.
To make up for the disappointment, he slept with Callie, the leading lady’s stand-in. Despite his extra sensitivities, he wasn’t a hundred percent certain Callie wasn’t Jennifer Jolie, the star of The Hobbs End Horror, de-squeaking her voice and brushing her hair a different way. That experience with a warm woman or women was more draining than his bloody nights with the vampire Charlotte.
He swore off the habit of ending any investigation by sleeping with the nearest attractive eccentric. But he’d said that before.
The vampires of the Diogenes Club made fun of him.
Nezumi – over a thousand years old! – clicked an ‘at your age, too’ tchah in his direction whenever he so much as nodded politely to a woman.
He looked at his own face, reflected darkly in a puddle.
He couldn’t see the child, whoever he had been – whatever his birth name or ethnicity or culture.
He saw an Englishman named Richard Jeperson. An old Englishman.
He felt for people, which meant he felt for the person he had once been, the person he might have grown up to be.
When lines of inquiry stalled, he let it rest. He had many mysteries to solve. There were many attractive eccentrics in the world.
Still, when he rolled up his sleeves to wash his hands, there it was.