Dead Streets

by Waggoner, Tim

  "Is that–"

  "One of them," Keket said. "We have three and all of them say they're the real thing. That one's the least dangerous, which is why he's in minimum security."

  We passed several more cells when I felt something wrap around my ankle, nearly tripping me. I looked down and saw that a tentacle had emerged from a cell and grabbed hold of me. Its surface was a spongy mottled green and was covered with large bloodshot eyes. The interior of the cell was cloaked in darkness, so I couldn't quite make out what the owner of the tentacle looked like. Not that it really mattered.

  Without missing a beat, I stomped on the tentacle as hard as I could, making sure I hit a couple of the eyes. The beast within the cell howled in pain, released its hold on me, and swiftly withdrew its wounded appendage back inside the cage. The creature than began making soft sobbing sounds.

  "Stop whining," I said as I scuffed my shoes on the floor to get the viscous goo off them. "You've got plenty of spares."

  One of the guards waved me on with his lightspear, and we started walking again.

  "Starting fights on your first day?" Keket said.

  "Look, anything that has eyes all over its body should know better than to attack someone. It's like wearing armor made out of your own testicles."

  Keket grunted, but otherwise didn't comment.

  We passed a number of other cells without incident, but then we came to one that had a water puddle in front of its door. Standing behind the bone bars was a young woman with long straight black hair hanging down in front of her face, concealing her features. She wore a white dress that was soaking wet and the flesh of her hands – the only parts of her body that were visible – were moist, blue-white and slightly puffy, like the flesh of a snail.

  As we drew close the woman hissed Keket's name and her long back hair suddenly began to move. Ebony strands reached through the bars, rapidly extending in length as they streaked toward Keket.

  The warden of Tenebrus didn't bother to acknowledge the threat. She merely continued walking as one of the guards pointed his glowing speartip at the thrashing mass of hair. Energy blasted forth from the spear, engulfing the hair which, despite being drenched, burst into flame. The young woman shrieked in a mixture of pain and fury, withdrew the smoldering remains of her hair back through the bars, and retreated farther into her cell, hissing angrily.

  "Whoever that is, she doesn't have any love for you," I said to Keket.

  "It's a long and not especially interesting story. But one thing I'll say: the woman can certainly hold a grudge."

  We continued on and I was beginning to think Tenebrus wasn't half as bad as it was reputed to be. I mean, I wasn't thrilled at the idea of spending the rest of my existence here, but if what I'd seen so far was any indication, then I could handle this place, no problem.

  As we walked we left the cell block behind and I began to become aware of a low level roar, almost like the constant rushing of a large waterfall. The corridor ended at a railing constructed from bone and Keket gestured for me to step forward and join her. I did so and found myself looking down upon a vast canyon formed from the same fleshy gray bone threaded substance as the rest of Tenebrus. The canyon floor was lit by large light spheres set atop pillars spread throughout the area, illuminating what I first took to be a writhing mass of crawling insects. But as I took a longer look I realized that I was seeing hundreds of people – inmates – circulating, talking, shouting, and in many cases, fighting. And when someone went down, huge scarab-like beetles scuttled forth from recessed spaces in the walls and floor, grabbed hold of the bodies, and pulled them back to their lairs, and judging from the screams, not everyone the scarabs collected was dead. Dozens of silvery round objects glided through the air above the prisoners, slowly criss-crossing the length of the canyon. I had no idea what they were or what purpose they served, but I guessed they were some manner of security or surveillance device. Jackalheads patrolled among the inmates, providing on the ground security. The canine headed guards were easy to spot because of their size and the glowing speartips of the weapons they carried.

  With a sinking feeling I knew I was looking down at Tenebrus's general population and I no longer felt quite so confident about my ability to handle this place.

  Keket turned to me and this time I could definitely hear the smile in her voice when she spoke.

  "Quillion thought he was doing you a good turn by recommending you for the general population, but I know the truth. Down there are a number of criminals that you helped put away over the years, Matthew Richter. You can imagine how thrilled they'll be to learn that they will soon get a chance to become reacquainted with an old friend. Be sure to give them my regards."

  Before I could react, Keket extended a cloth wrapped hand toward me and the bandages around her fingers uncurled and began moving toward me, lengthening as they came. Five strips of ancient Egyptian cerements took hold of me, encircling my neck, wrists and ankles, and then they lifted me off the floor as if I weighed nothing. Keket gestured and her cloth tentacles lifted me over the railing and held me out in the open air.

  She gestured again and I began falling, still held tight by Keket's bandages. I plunged downward, feeling absurdly like a zombie yoyo, unable to do anything but watch as the canyon floor came rushing toward me. While most of the inmates below continued to go about their business without noticing my rapid approach, more than a few looked up, and the feral grins on their faces communicated their delight upon seeing that Keket was delivering fresh meat to them.

  When I was within twenty feet of the canyon floor, the bandages jerked me to a stop and then lowered me the rest of the way more slowly. When I was within a couple yards of the ground, the bandages released me and streaked back up to return to their mistress, leaving me to fall the rest of the way. Luckily the inmates in the immediate vicinity had seen me coming and moved out of the way in time to prevent me landing on them. Unfortunately, that meant there was no one there to break my fall. I heard something snap when I hit – a rib or two, I guessed – but whatever it was that had broken, it didn't prevent me from quickly rising to my feet, so I decided not to worry about it.

  I looked around at the faces staring at me. They belonged to different species and both genders – evidently Tenebrus was a co-ed facility – but they all had one thing in common. They all looked mean as hell. No one wore uniforms. Everyone had on street clothes, presumably whatever they'd been wearing when they'd been sentenced. And judging from the ragged, threadbare outfits of many of the inmates, they'd clearly been here for quite some time.

  Keket's voice boomed from above, filling the canyon with sound.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our latest arrival: Matthew Richter, knight errant and savior of the city who has, it should go without saying, suffered a recent reversal in fortune and is now joining us here at our happy little home. Won't you make him welcome, my children?"

  Her last word echoed several times before finally dying away. I looked up at the railing where she'd been standing but Keket and her guards had already gone. Evidently I'd used up whatever amusement value I'd had and the demilord had left to attend to more important matters. That was good. I didn't feel like having an audience as I was torn apart by an angry mob of prisoners.

  I brought my gaze back down to eye level and gave my best new-kid-on-the-block smile to my fellow prisoners.

  "Anybody heard any good jokes lately?" I asked.

  "I got one."

  The voice sounded like two boulders grinding together and it was one I thought I recognized. A moment later my guess was confirmed as a tall man dressed in a black suit pushed his way through the crowd of prisoners gathered around me. His features were grotesquely distorted – pronounced brow, bulbous nose, overlarge ears, thick wormy lips and huge powerful hands that constantly clenched and unclenched as if he couldn't wait to wrap them around a neck and start squeezing.

  "What do you call a zombie in jail?"

  "I don't know, Rondo. Wh
at?"

  Thick lips pulled back from large yellowed teeth as he smiled.

  "My bitch."

  He raised those giant hands of his and started toward me.

  NINE

  I'd encountered Rondo – known on the street as the Creeper – not long after I'd first come to Nekropolis. He'd begun his criminal career working as muscle for a veinburn manufacturer, but he didn't get enough opportunities to kill people working for drug pushers, so eventually he struck out on his own as a freelance assassin. Being a sociopath with a pair of insanely powerful hands designed to cause severe bodily damage, he excelled at the work and before long he was commanding quite a price for his services. One day he was hired by a vampire named Varney who'd had his blood bonded human lover, called a Shadow in Bloodborn parlance, stolen by another vampire. Rondo was hired to kill the Shadow and he succeeded in strangling the woman. But the woman's new lover, a Bloodborn named Camilla, was inconsolable at the Shadow's loss and she hired me to find the woman's killer. I eventually did, though Rondo had nearly managed to rip me apart with those hands of his before I turned him over to a Sentinel. Both Varney and Camilla were minor nobility among the Bloodborn, so Varney got away scot free. Rondo wasn't so fortunate. Camilla used her influence to make sure the Adjudicators sentenced Rondo to Tenebrus and that was the last I'd heard of him – until now.

  Despite his ungainly appearance, Rondo could move swift and silent when he wished – hence his nickname Creeper – and he was nearly on me before I could react. But after everything I'd been through since saving Scream Queen's voice, I wasn't exactly in the mood to dance with the ugly sonofabitch.

  While I keep most of my weapons in my suit jacket, I'm not dumb enough to keep all of them there. I was grateful for Keket's sloppy security. Perhaps she'd assumed that Quillion's people had searched me thoroughly and had removed any weapons I might be carrying before sending me to her. If Devona had been here she'd had given the undead sorceress a stern lecture on basic security protocols. I reached into my pants pocket and removed a small yellow sphere no larger than a pill, but this medicine wasn't supposed to be taken internally.

  As Rondo came at me I threw the sphere to the ground and it burst upon impact. A cloud of yellow gas billowed upward, catching Rondo in the face. He stumbled to a stop and clapped those huge hands of his over his mouth and nose to keep from breathing any of the gas in, but it was too late. His already bulging eyes bugged out even further as they began to water. He took in two hitching breaths and then released a truly impressive sneeze that, if I hadn't braced myself, might've knocked me off my feet.

  "As you've undoubtedly guessed by now, you've just inhaled a couple of lungfuls of the strongest sneezing powder in the city. There aren't many benefits to being dead, Rondo, but no longer having to breathe is one of them."

  I'd picked up the powder at the same place where I get a lot of my toys – at Hop Frog's Delight, the best joke shop in Nekropolis. The dwarf who owns the place is an absolute genius when it comes to creating practical jokes and he handcrafts each one personally. But you have to be careful. As a joke on his customers, Hop Frog designed his jokes to randomly burst into flame upon activation – for some reason the jester has a thing about fire. Maybe they'll go off the first time you use them, maybe not until the seventh time. You never know, and for that reason, at Hop Frog's it's very much caveat emptor.

  The cloud of itching powder was spreading and those inmates who were standing too close to Rondo and me quickly drew back to keep from inhaling any of the stuff. As for Rondo he was doubled over and sneezing so hard he could barely catch a breath. Hop Frog's jokes are extremely powerful and I wondered if Rondo was in danger of sneezing himself to death. Given the number of people who'd met their demises at the overlarge hands of the Creeper, the prospect of the man's death didn't exactly fill me with sorrow.

  Rondo's super sized sneezing fit attracted the guards' attention and several of the jackalheaded musclemen were making their way toward us, plowing through the crowd of inmates, shouldering them aside and – if they didn't move fast enough – giving them a short blast of energy from their golden speartips. The guards weren't the only ones coming. Several of the silvery floating devices I'd seen from the overhead railing were heading in my direction, gliding soundlessly through the air. Now that I was closer I could see that the objects were levitating silver skulls about three times the size of a human skull. They reminded me of the skull sentry I'd encountered at the Foundry's main gate. These were more of Victor Baron's creations, I assumed, this type designed to provide additional security in Tenebrus. There were probably living brains housed within those metallic craniums that were even now sizing up the situation and deciding what to do about this disturbance in the general population. An instant later I got an inkling of what the flying skulls' response was going to be when their hollow eye sockets began to glow with ruby colored light.

  I felt a tug on my elbow and a voice whispered urgently in my ear.

  "Quick! Come with me if you want to live!"

  I decided now wasn't the time to point out the irony in my newfound benefactor's statement and I allowed him to pull me away from Rondo, who was still sneezing so loud I figured it was even money that he would cough up at least one lung before any of the guards could reach him.

  As I was led through the crowd of inmates I took a good look at the being who was pulling me along. It was a verman, although he was larger than usual, almost my height, and he was a true albino with white fur and red eyes. He wore a green frock coat with white ruffles at the sleeves and brass buttons down the front. I was surprised to see one of his species in Tenebrus. As mild and servile as vermen usually are they almost never cause any trouble, let alone commit crimes. I'd never seen a white furred verman before, nor had I ever seen one dressed so fancy. Something strange was going on here, but that didn't surprise me: something strange is always going on in Nekropolis. Weird is our stock in trade, after all.

  The verman led me on a winding path across the canyon floor and while the inmates we passed glared at me none of them made a move to stop us. What's more none of them looked at the verman at all. They deliberately ignored him as if he were beneath their notice. At least that's what I thought at first, but as he continued to lead me, I saw that they made a point of getting out of his way. Most of them tried to appear casual about it, but it was obvious to me that they were showing deference to the verman, which was unheard of.

  After a while we reached one of the canyon walls and the verman finally stopped. We stood close to a large semicircular opening which I recognized as a lair for one of the giant scarabs I'd seen earlier. I started to tell the verman that I didn't think this was the safest place to stand, but he put a finger to his mouth to shush me while he reached into a pocket with his other hand. He removed a large white cube and tossed it into the mouth of the entrance. Quick as a flash, a giant scarab darted forward, snatched up the cube in its mandibles, and scuttled backward into its lair. When the mammoth insect was gone, the albino verman visibly relaxed.

  "It's safe to talk now. It won't bother us for a while." He gave a soft, snuffling laugh. "Those things are crazy for sugar."

  This verman's manner was different from any of his kind I had ever encountered before. He stood up straight and looked me in the eye when he spoke and his tone contained no trace of servility. He talked to me as if we were equals and I knew this was no ordinary verman I was dealing with.

  "My name is Gnasher," he said. "And you're Matthew Richter."

  He held out his slender rodent hand for me to shake and I did so. When I let go he used his claws to rapidly scratch the fur under his chin and I saw several fleas fall to the ground.

  "It's no wonder you know my name," I said, doing my best not to think about how many fleas Gnasher had remaining. "Keket made sure to announce my arrival loudly enough."

  "True. The warden loves to stir up trouble down here. She gets off on watching the various little dramas that take place among the g
eneral population. Brawls, assassinations, gang wars… The bloodier the spectacle, the more she likes it." Gnasher pointed to one of the flying skulls floating off in the distance. "That's an Overwatcher. They're Keket's eyes and ears. Whatever they see and hear, she does too."

  "I'm surprised we gave them the slip so easily, then," I said.

  "There might not be many places to hide down here, but there are a lot of people. That helps. But I've got something that helps even more."

  "What's that?"

  Gnasher grinned, displaying a mouthful of long, narrow, flat-edged rat teeth. "A subcutaneous implant that renders me invisible to the Overwatchers' sensors. As long as you stay close to me, they won't be able to detect you either." He gave another of his snuffling laughs.

  I frowned. "That kind of tech doesn't sound like standard issue for prisoners."

  Gnasher's grin widened. "It's not, but then, I'm not a prisoner. And I knew who you were and that you were coming long before Keket made her announcement. In fact, I was waiting for you."