Anno Dracula 1999

by Kim Newman

  Syrie walked from one side of the lift to the other. She took off her shades, which unplugged from her turban. An LED in her third eye jewel went out.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Peak. ‘Bellissima.’

  She shot the thief an electric shut-up glance and undid the strings of her brain-pattern turban. The ugly hat popped off her head and she shook out her hair. She’d gone back to blonde when she turned vampire. The eye gadget was stuck to her forehead like a caste mark, the centrepiece of a platinum mesh tiara that matched her gadget glasses.

  ‘Something is wrong with the screens,’ she said.

  Incandescence throbbed. Devotees tuned into the Light Channel for soothing vibes. Richard acknowledged that alpha waves and world music turned down low might well have therapeutic properties. He personally preferred to nod off of an afternoon with the racing on Channel 4. The glow was flecked with sparks.

  Syrie felt around the edge of the screen.

  ‘No off-switch?’ Richard ventured.

  She bared her fangs for presuming to know what she was doing. And being right.

  ‘Can we prise one of the panels loose?’ Richard asked.

  Peak slid out of his tailcoat and laid it on a divan. Little custom-sewn pockets in the lining held an arsenal of implements. The tails accommodated flexible strips of metal useful for popping locks. Nezumi, mistress of the Girl Guide knife, disapproved but was interested.

  ‘That’s a very complete set of burglar tools,’ she commented.

  Peak took the dig with good humour.

  ‘It’s as well to be prepared for eventualities. Like this one, for instance.’

  He selected a jeweller’s loop with an inbuilt light and something that looked like a dental pick. He fit the loop into one eye and began probing around the screen with the pick.

  ‘No accessible wires,’ he said. ‘A challenge!’

  Syrie looked into another screen, haloed by a static fringe. She was reaching out but not touching the light.

  This seemed less and less like an accident.

  Peak gave up and put his gadgets back in his cracksman coat, then pulled it on again and wriggled until it settled properly. The well-tailored garment could not be comfortable. The rogue was wasp-waisted, with oddly cut clothes – tight above the belt, floppy below. The coat was for tools. The trousers were for swag.

  So, a gentleman bandit. Knows the right order to steal the silverware. Knocks out guards but leaves a tip. Not who you expected to find at this end of the century, but archetypes were stubborn. The Diogenes Club often had a larcenous toff or two on the rolls. British specimens of the breed were mostly non-violent. French exemplars tended to the casually murderous.

  ‘You’ll think I’m pulling your leg,’ said Peak, ‘but have you done a headcount?’

  The screens glowed brighter, but the lift was dimmer overall. The overhead lighting strips fizzed out.

  One, two, three, four, he counted.

  ‘Remember yourself,’ said Peak.

  Richard caught on.

  He counted again, starting with himself… one.

  Two, Nezumi. Three, Syrie. Four, Peak.

  Five… ah, indistinct.

  A column of black smoke rose at one end of the sealed lift. Roughly the shape of a person. It extended arms with trailing sleeves or batwings.

  Nezumi demonstrated perfectly how to draw a long sword in the confined space. Without cutting herself or anyone else. She pointed at the dark shape.

  It was womanly. Gathered at the waist, with a dress-like flare below. Long unbound hair or a veil. The smoke tried to come together. Shoulders appeared – bare, elegant, sparkly. Delicate disembodied hands. Eyes like far-off stars. One white, one red.

  The spirit of the Daikaiju Building.

  A muffled, indistinct voice sounded, impossible to make out.

  ‘Trust me to hop into a haunted lift,’ said Peak.

  HAROLD TAKAHAMA

  Hal was grateful to Jun Zero – his unknown self – for doing the crunches, sit-ups and reps. The chubbins from 1992 wouldn’t have fit into this ventilation duct. He was less grateful, now, for Lefty. The smart prosthesis was awkward in a confined space.

  With killer vampires at the door, he’d had to prise the grille off a duct and escape the Processor Room. Lefty issued calm instructions, telling him which turns to take and how far to crawl ahead. The robot hand switched on a light behind its palm-speaker that showed him the cramped tunnel’s aluminium sides. He wriggled on elbows and knees, scraping sparks with Lefty’s claw-thumb appendage.

  In or out of shape, he got a pain in his back after twenty minutes or so.

  Following Lefty’s advice got him this far. Next, he should try to get out of this hole, this building, and this country. If Jun Zero proved as unpopular as Hal now suspected, he’d have Lefty explore options for leaving the planet. They must have space zones with no extradition treaties by now. On asteroids or the moons of Jupiter. He’d have enough credits stashed in off-world accounts to live like a rock god on a luxury outpost. If Winona Ryder was unavailable, Catherine Mary Stewart – Number Two on his Fantasy Movie Girlfriends List – would make a substitute space pilot. Or Ally Sheedy from WarGames, Number Three. Or—

  But he had to live through the night first.

  He figured the Gaseous Ghoul was a goner, though there was an offchance he could get his act back together and be mightily pissed. A vengeful viper vapour on his ass he didn’t need. Tsunako Shiki was bad enough, plus her flame-projecting hench-borg.

  Who knew who else wanted Jun Zero dead? Hal certainly didn’t.

  He decided against asking Lefty for a ranked list of arch-nemeses. He was close enough to wetting himself as it was.

  His internal monologue sounded like a hysterical squeak in his head, and he knew he had to calm down, to talk to himself in the deep, confident voice of Jun Zero, not Hal, who got called ‘Short Round’ even by other Asian kids. Where were they now? Stacking shelves or donating blood for a living… while he was crawling through a ventilation shaft, pursued by monsters.

  His own blood pounded in his ears. The slick tin under him squeaked as he crawled. He’d sweated through his salaryman shirt. It was getting hot in the tube.

  To calm down, he recited his old list:

  1: Winona Ryder, Edward Scissorteeth.

  2: Catherine Mary Stewart, The Last Starfighter.

  3: Ally Sheedy, WarGames.

  4: Kelly LeBrock, Weird Sorcery. Man, Kelly LeBrock…

  5: Karen Allen, Raiders… but fuck Temple of Doom – though Capshaw was hot – because of fucking Short Round. He hoped Jun Zero had tracked down that kid – who also ruined The Goonies – and siphoned his trust fund. Oh, and fuck Karate Kid too – and fuck Karate Kid II ! – because kids only stopped calling him ‘Short Round’ so they could call him ‘Mr Miyagi’ and wave their arms in joke karate moves that never stopped short of his head.

  6: Brigitte Nielsen, Beverly Hills Corpuscle II. He’d totally avoid tapping that… not!

  7: Lea Thompson, Howard the Bat…

  He heard a skittering – like rats’ claws on corrugated iron, but with a giggle mixed in – and a few CC of pee squirted into his boxers. A scent of lavender wafted along the duct.

  He should have known.

  If he could squeeze into this maze, then so could Tsunako Shiki.

  RICHARD JEPERSON

  The smokeshape wasn’t a ghost. Its effect was more thing than person. Looking at the Light Channel made him uncomfortable. Looking at this apparition piqued his interest. He wanted to solve the ‘what’s wrong with this picture?’ puzzle. Not the obvious wrong thing – the scary ghost! The littler wrong thing – the nagging thing. The clue to spark the grey cells. The loose thread.

  ‘Why put a “no smoking” sign on an ashtray?’ he asked.

  ‘Insurance,’ said Syrie, who owned airlines and ocean liners. ‘If you tell passengers not to do things you damn well know they’ll do, you’re indemnified against lawsuits if th
ey do themselves injuries they deserve.’

  ‘Close, but no Cuban,’ said Richard.

  ‘Pawky surrealist humour,’ suggested Peak.

  ‘Does that sound like Christina Light? The woman had her funny bones surgically removed.’

  Nezumi thought about it longest, then sheathed her sword with a click.

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘That’s not an ashtray.’

  ‘A stuffed elephant or a dying goldfish for you, Miss Mouse,’ said Richard. ‘Madame Montgolfier, any chance of a lend of your surplus hat?’

  Too annoyed to respond to the dig, she passed it over.

  Her hand brushed his. Her skin was cool, but she was a vampire.

  In his memory palace, champagne fizzed, loins stirred. Wind whistled through his hair as he plummeted towards a mill-pond. His ears had popped. Tinnitus troubled him whenever he was in Cheshire.

  Back to the present and the impossible ashtray.

  He picked up the fag ends and dropped them into the upturned hat.

  ‘That’s an original by Tetch,’ she said.

  ‘Seven hundred and fifty quid well spent and you’d never wear it twice. At least it’s being useful.’

  The tray was a glass indentation. Richard rubbed ash off it with his cuff.

  The indentation was a lens. The column was a hologram projector.

  ‘… lcome to Daikaiju Plaza, guests.’

  The smoke ghost lightened and came into focus. Now, it was a three-quarter size woman in a Victorian ballgown. She wore her hair like Veronica Lake in Casamassima, a wing artfully over her red eye. Her arms waved as if providing simultaneous translation in sign language. Lattices of light made up her form.

  ‘Our hostess,’ said Richard.

  ‘Ahhh, principesa,’ said Peak, going down on one knee and trying to take hold of an insubstantial hand.

  ‘It’s not the real her,’ said Richard. ‘Though Christina can turn herself into light. It’s a recorded message.’

  ‘We’ve missed what she had to say,’ said Syrie.

  ‘I doubt it was much more than welcome waffle,’ said Richard. ‘This is what happens when you give a fortune to a design company. They make something wonderful which looks so much like an ugly ashtray they have to clap a notice on it. Then they underestimate the exhilaration of rule-breaking. We’re in the Bund now. An exciting interzone. We didn’t expect to be told to mind our Ps and Qs and not light up when we feel like it. The vibe is “go on, do as thou wilt”. Nagging messages from nanny only add to the spice. Look at the divans. This isn’t a lift, it’s a whoopee wagon. It’s a wonder it hasn’t got “Défense de Hanky-Panky” signs.’

  Peak’s eyebrows went up and down and wobbled his hat. Syrie looked as if she wanted to hide behind her shades again.

  Mini-Christina gave a little bow. The lift started moving again.

  DETECTIVE AZUMA

  The circus-tent flap lifted and Colonel Golgotha strode into the holding area. Two Dick Boys followed. Hunter and Killer. Their safety suits baggy. Machine guns slung over their shoulders. They carried plastic lock-boxes – high-security picnic coolers. Azuma did not expect EarthGuard to bring beer and snacks.

  ‘Let the American drop,’ ordered Golgotha.

  The Sakis recognised authority. When the strings slacked, Thomason flopped to his knees. A puppet taking a bow.

  The perp looked up, irritated. He’d expected to be dead by now and ascended to the next level.

  Azuma would have been happy to kick him to where he wanted to go.

  The yo-yo girls unwound the cat’s cradle. Thomason pitched forward.

  The Dick Boys swept aside paperwork and set their crates on a trestle table. Hunter – another American who shouldn’t be here – punched a code into a digital lockpad, finger-stabbing in slow motion to compensate for bunch-of-bananas gloves. After two tries, his box opened. He lifted one of the confiscated suicide vests. The detonator was disabled but phials of lethal matter were still attached.

  With a butterfly knife, Hunter carefully cut a jar free of the webbing and passed it on. Most boyish of the Dick Boys, Killer looked like an A student who dealt drugs at break. Mustard-yellow death-goo sloshed in the stoppered container, more swamp-mud than fungus. Killer tossed the deadly phial in the air – to shocked hisses from the yo-yo girls – and deftly caught it. No risk to the idiot in his safety suit. Possible peril to everyone else, including his bare-faced boss.

  Thomason looked at Killer, spark of puzzlement in his eyes.

  ‘If you know so much,’ said Azuma, ‘what’s he going to do?’

  ‘I… have… no… idea,’ Thomason said.

  Blood trickled down the perp’s face. Azuma looked at his own knuckles. They were clean. Sores around his fangs sucked like little mouths. He had Thomason’s blood in him. It was as if he’d swallowed a hallucinogenic glowworm. Ghost images glitched. The Sakis were big-eyed poster girls. Golgotha was carved granite, with a yard-across mushroom for a beret. Hunter had porcupine quills and a goat beard.

  A tall, wide phantom stood behind Killer, grinning like a cartoon bulldog. It bent to whisper into his ear. Go on, open the bottle, let the kill-genie loose. The oni was a God of Bad Influences.

  Azuma did a thing he thought of as swallowing. Normal service resumed. He saw the world as it was, hard-edged and clear. Thomason’s blood was saturated with something perception-altering. Blue Label space dust.

  The veins in his arm tingled.

  Killer squatted by Thomason and unstoppered the phial.

  Saki-K squealed. The other Sakis would make fun of her.

  ‘Mmm-mmm-mmm,’ said Killer, pretending to sniff the open container held close to the visor of his sealed helmet. ‘Mushroom milk. Auntie’s tonic.’

  Thomason’s smugness drained away.

  Azuma didn’t feel as happy about that as he should.

  The Dick Boy lifted the phial to Thomason’s lips, a caring nephew helping an elderly relation take medicine.

  Thomason blanked now. All programming gone.

  Killer emptied goo into Thomason’s mouth.

  The perp glugged. Yellow poison dribbled on his chin.

  Thomason’s eyes swelled to the size of tangerines. Spongy ochre matter erupted from the scrapes on his cheeks.

  Golgotha drew his side-arm.

  Azuma stepped back, assuming he’d breathed airborne spores and would be dead inside a minute. The bio-bomb must be formulated to be lethal to him. It was supposed to be set off in a crowd of vampires.

  He didn’t choke.

  Thomason expanded inside his clothes. Buttons popped and seams split. Blood-threaded pulp welled up through tears. The perp grew tubby. Sausage limbs stuck out like starfish arms. His throat closed and he couldn’t speak.

  Golgotha withdrew to the canvas flap-door. Hunter and Killer stepped back with him. Hunter aimed his machine gun at the swollen Thomason. Killer tossed the near-empty phial to Saki-G, who instinctively caught it – then shrieked and flung it away. A yellow smear dribbled on her bare wrist. Saki-A and Saki-K backed off from her.

  Saki-G cut her scream short.

  ‘It’s not working,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘The fungus is Part One of a compound weapon,’ said Golgotha. ‘It needs Part Two to be activated. Part Two is a human fuse, saturated with special accelerant. It’s not easy to prepare. You have to persuade the fuse to drink seven or eight measures of accelerant a day for months.’

  Azuma looked at Thomason’s cast-aside coat. Blue cartons spilled from it.

  Kamikura had been splashed with fungus but also the blood of the dead terrorist. That was why he – and no one else – had been affected in the Plaza. Thomason was full of the bloody secret ingredient of Sprünt when the fungus was poured down his gullet. What was happening to him is what would have happened to the crowd he’d planned to spatter with the toxin and his own shredded flesh.

  The perp became a giant maggot-dumpling, face stretched, eyes a foot apart, starfish
arms absorbed back into a doughy mass.

  Human hands stuck out of the puffball, clenching and unclenching.

  The Colonel gave a sign.

  The Dick Boys opened up with their machine guns. Under the tarp, the juddering reports assaulted eardrums. Outside, they’d be taken for firecrackers. Witnesses always said they heard firecrackers. On New Year’s Eve that was even more believable.

  Bullet-rips appeared in Thomason’s leathery hide.

  Geysers of bright blood squirted at the yo-yo girls.

  A splash on Saki-G’s arm sizzled like acid. Now, she was infected.

  Saki-A, legs soaked with deadly stuff, flicked her yo-yo and tore off Golgotha’s beret. She’d been aiming for his dark glasses. The Colonel shot her in the thigh. The yo-yo shuriken clattered on the ground, fully unreeled.

  Golgotha was a perp!

  All three girls were drenched. Mushrooms sprouted on their faces. Fungus swelled in their mouths and around their eyes.

  Saki-K opened like a giant flower, bursting through her armour.

  Azuma looked down at himself. No splatter.

  Killer advanced on the sprouting heap that had been Andrew A. Thomason. He dipped a gauntlet into the biggest gaping wound and pulled out a fistful of squirming animal-vegetable froth.

  Even without blood-buzz, Azuma saw the Dick Boy’s personal demon, draped over his shoulders like a cloak, mouth attached to the side of his head.

  Killkillkillkill…

  The Dick Boy grinned through his faceplate at Azuma.

  He was going to chuck the poison like a deadly snowball.

  The Sakis weren’t down by accident. This was a pre-planned backstabbing.

  Azuma reached into his jacket for his own gun. EarthGuard gear wasn’t hardened against bullets. Hunter, Killer and Golgotha were warm. They could be shot.

  Killer assumed a baseball pitcher stance, ridiculous in the clumsy suit.

  Golgotha trained his pistol on Azuma.

  Another bullet wouldn’t kill him – unless it were sterling silver – but the fungoo would.

  The Sakis were down. Melted off their bones.

  With a final burst of strength, Saki-G flicked her yo-yo, which made Killer duck and hold off his throw for a second or two.