by Leo Romero
“Making them weaker,” added Kozu. “And easier to defeat. And I assure you, if you assist us in dismantling the Dragon Order, we will go forward together in unity in resurrecting your grandfather. We can usher in the new world for your grandfather side-by-side.” He paused for emphasis. Then, “Do we have a deal?” he asked.
Ram rubbed his chin. The Fang Order agent was correct. The Dragons were strong. So were the Fangs. If they joined the Fangs, they’d need to be wary of being stabbed in the back. If what he believed of the prophecy was correct, only one order would reign alongside Granddaddy. The Fangs would eventually turn against them. He met his sister’s stare. Ram could read the lack of trust for this Fang agent glittering in Annit’s eyes. They both knew the agent was speaking with a forked tongue. The intention was to use the Claw Order as a shield against the advancing Western armies in the hope of defeating them. If not, at least the Claws would be sacrificed as pawns, hopefully inflicting damage upon the Dragons, making them weaker. The Fangs could then wade in and take up the reins.
However, the double bluff was on the cards. The house of Rah was wily if anything and could play dirty. They had one or two tricks up their sleeve. They could use the Fangs for collateral. Weapons, finance. Use it all to their advantage, and then when the time was right...
Ram faced Kozu once more. “The House of Rah accepts the Sen Fang Syndicate’s offer. You have a deal.”
Kozu gave them a small bow. “Be warned, the Dragons are planning an attack. They are already on their way. Your guard is right. Our intelligence has ascertained the two American agents have come to slay you. A boy and girl.”
“A boy and a girl?” Annit echoed with a chortle. “Is that the best they’ve got?”
“They shouldn’t be underestimated,” Kozu warned. “They killed Leviah and your Aunt Magdalena.”
“Who are they?” Ram asked.
Kozu retrieved his smartphone. He swiped a few times before stepping forward and handing it to Ram. Ram snatched it and stared intently at the screen. On it was a picture of a slim girl with green eyes. “Pretty.”
“She’s the daughter of an eccentric billionaire called Beauchamp,” Kozu told Ram as he handed the phone to his sister. “According to our intelligence, they were working for the Blood Order and something made them turn against Leviah and Beauchamp sent them both to kill him. Now they’re agents for the Dragons.”
Annit sneered at the image on the smartphone. “Leave them to us,” she said through clenched teeth. “We’ll take care of them and then we’ll show the Dragons what we’re made of.”
Kozu dabbed his forehead once more. “As you wish,” he said with a sly grin.
PART TWO
CHAPTER TEN
Troy staggered out of the abandoned basement he’d managed to dive into after Trixie and Dom dropped him off, wondering what the hell was going on. Chicago wasn’t the same. Things had changed. Fast. The place was even more run-down than usual, and the rainy streets were littered with people, which although wasn’t unusual for Chicago, it was like no one was indoors. Chicago had suddenly become a city of the night.
Troy went looking for answers. He waded through the bodies congregating on the streets, most of them in some kind of zombified stupor. Almost all of the stores had been broken into and looted. Trash lined the streets like no one had been down there for days to clean up. People of all ages and backgrounds staggered around in a daze, some talking to themselves, others desperately looking for something. The word that kept cropping up was the same over and over like a stuck record: Ambrosia. It filled the night sky like some kind of rain dance chant. “Ambrosia. Ambrosia. Ambrosia.”
Troy dodged the clusters of people and jumped into a smashed-in clothing store. He wanted to get out of the funky Hawaiian shirt and dirty white chinos. They’d got him into enough trouble, and besides, they smelled real bad. He went and sifted through the stuff the looters had left behind; the best thing he found was a crappy pair of khaki combat pants. They’d have to do. He threw off his dirty chinos and pulled on the new pair. They fit nice. As for a top, the only thing available was a padded sleeveless waist jacket. Again, it had to do. He pulled off the Hawaiian shirt and gave it a final look. In a weird way, it had saved his life, but then after that, it had almost lost it for him. Whatever, it was bad news. He went and draped it over the mannequin standing to attention next to the beat-up payment counter. Somehow, it seemed to brighten the mannequin up.
“Looks better on you than it did on me,” Troy said as he put on the waist jacket. He zipped it up and looked down at himself. He looked like a dork. He knew it, the broken mirror told him so as well. But, right then, it didn’t matter. A fresh pair of garments was the most important thing.
He left the Hawaiian shirt behind and stepped back out onto the crazed Chicago streets. People were bustling, running around, frenzied, panicked. There were no cars on the roads, and any that had made it this far had met their demise. Burned-out shells sat on the streets like charred turtles. From the look of the carnage, Troy guessed there must have been a riot here at some point. When that was, who knew?
All around him, the buzz continued to go around. “Ambrosia. Ambrosia.” Like a mantra.
The harsh roar of an engine splintered the chanting. From nowhere, an armored tank bolted along the street like an enraged bull. A siren began wailing out of it, causing people to scatter.
“Out of the street!” a mechanical voice sounded out. “Or you will be vaporized!”
Troy stood and watched in bemusement, wiping rain from his face. Vaporized?
The tank was accompanied by several similar black vehicles, all with blue and red flashing lights and sirens. The sound was so intense, Troy had to cover his ears.
“Repeat! Disperse from the street or you will be vaporized.”
The people ran in terror from the tanks, screaming, their feet splashing through water, their arms waving. One zonked-out space cadet loitered around for too long and the cannon on the front of the tank turned his way. The guy didn’t even know what hit him. A buzz crackled through the air. A split second later and the guy’s back straightened. He juddered under the effects of whatever the cannon was firing at him for a couple of seconds like he was being microwaved. Troy winced. The guy threw his arms out to the sides before he literally exploded into a pulpy mass of flesh and splintered bones.
“Woah!” Troy blurted, flinching back against the splatter of gore. He didn’t wanna hang around. He whirled and ran as fast as he could, terror bombarding his mind and body. These assholes weren’t kidding.
He went and hid behind a burned-out car. All around him, the others were hiding behind and around stuff. They were waiting in anticipation, their eyes wide. Troy watched on, his breathing ragged.
Everything went silent. The sirens stopped, the mechanical voice ceased speaking. The street was clear and, when it finally was, a door of one of the tanks swung open. Out stepped what had to be a cop, but looked more like Robocop; he was decked out in more body armor than an ant and with more weapons than Batman. In his hands was a cardboard box. With the slow, steady march of a robot, he went and placed it down on the street and cut it open. He tipped the contents all over the street. He went back and retrieved a similar box and repeated the procedure. And then a third time, till there was a pile of green stuff on the street.
From all around him, Troy could sense anticipation rising like hungry wolves spotting a flock of vulnerable chickens, but a lion was guarding them. Tongues were smacking lips, legs were trembling, people were rocking on heels. They were raring to go, barely able to contain themselves. Only the threat of that crazy microwave cannon keeping them in their hiding places.
Robocop marched back to the tank and got in. A couple of seconds later, and they began pulling away, trundling off back into the night.
They vanished from view. And the frenzy began.
From out of the dark recesses and corners, bodies piled onto the street and raced over to the stuff the ar
mored guy left on the ground, their mouths salivating. It was a mad rush like cattle pounding over one another. They punched and kicked their way there, tripping over each other in their haste to get to that green pile. The word ‘Ambrosia’ was now deafening in the air. They screamed and screeched it as if it was mandatory.
Troy remained where he was, watching them with a morbid curiosity as they virtually trampled each other to death like a stampeding herd of wildebeest. A skinny guy, his clothes hanging off him, got there first. He plucked up a bunch of stuff and hid it beneath his tee before scampering away faster than an Olympic sprinter. Some gave chase after him, but he was up and over a high wall before they could blink.
The rest virtually tore each other limb from limb to get to the things on the ground. Already, over to the side of the horde, people were throwing up their sleeves and jabbing themselves with what Troy now realized were syringes. Once injected with the stuff, their eyes rolled up into their heads, the cravings satiated. They rocked back and forth, their teeth grinding as the pleasure took control.
As the pile diminished, the desperation grew more intense. The dregs at the back were clawing at each other’s faces. Fights broke out. Punches were thrown left and right; blood flew. It was chaos, carnage in the rainy city of Chicago. Troy had never bared witness to behavior like it. It was the zombie apocalypse in full effect. And it was here, now.
The whole thing lasted barely a minute. Like hungry pigs let loose on a full trough, the pile of syringes vanished. The throng of maniacs dispersed and they got back to loitering on the streets, either drugged out of their minds or scavenging for scraps. Empty syringes littered the streets like it was a giant heroin den.
Troy stared at it all with sullen eyes. “Ah, Chicago,” he said to himself. “What the hell happened to you?”
A guy in a long trench coat and fedora hat approached him from the side like a shadow. “Psst!”
Troy’s head whipped around to face him. The guy’s eyes glimmered under the streetlights, his face gaunt like he was desperate for a meal. He was the sorta guy you only ever saw in old gangster flicks with Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney.
“Hey, buddy, you wanna score some Ambrosia?” the guy asked out of the side of his mouth, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat. His eyes darted left and right, keeping watch on everything.
“Ambrosia, huh?” Troy echoed, looking the guy up and down. “Sure, buddy, why not?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Troy was guided through the troubled streets to a quieter area. The rain continued to fall. Water gushed down the streets toward overworked storm drains.
“Man, the floods really did mess this town up, huh?” the guy in the fedora said over his shoulder as he stepped through the water with a rapid stride. All around them were abandoned and burned-out cars, people loitering in doorways. The place smelled of fear
“Hey, what’s your name?” Troy asked, struggling to keep up with the guy he was walking so fast.
“The name’s Jules. How about you?”
“Troy.”
“You been around long?”
“Long enough.”
“Ha ha, I feel you, man. Yeah, this town’s gone to hell. We had a flood of snakes, people got bit. Turned em into some bloodthirsty suckers.”
Troy’s brow furrowed. “Really?”
“For real. I saw one guy, had them snakes all up in his pockets, biting him all day. Then he started going around biting people himself. Right in the neck.”
Troy gulped. “That right?”
Jules nodded. “For real. He was like sucking on their jugular, ya know what I mean? There was a whole loada people like that. They started calling em the Snake People. They told us the answer to that phenomenon was Ambrosia. Yeah: ‘Ambrosia, Ambrosia, Ambrosia,’ just like the ad on TV says. Ambrosia, Ambrosia, Ambrosia.” Jules lifted his index fingers in the air and swayed from side-to-side as he walked and repeated the word ‘ambrosia’ in a musical lilt.
Troy thought back to the people on the streets. They were chanting the same thing: Ambrosia, Ambrosia, Ambrosia. He shivered.
Jules slipped into a thin alleyway between two apartment blocks and vanished from view. Troy sped up, his feet splashing through the puddles.
He edged his way through the dark alleyway, Jules just about visible ahead of him. He stopped at a door, looking both ways before he knocked. Troy caught up, just as a slider in the door flew open and a pair of mean eyes shot into view. “Yeah?” came a gruff voice accompanying them.
“Open up, Tommy. It’s me. Got us a newbie.”
The slider slid back across and a series of locks were unlatched. Finally, the door cranked open. The muzzle of a sawed-off shotgun stormed out of the gap and got up in Troy’s face. Troy’s hands flew in the air in an instant.
“Woah, woah, easy,” he said, backing up.
“What you want?” that gruff voice asked from behind the barrel of the gun.
“My man Troy here wants some Ambrosia,” Jules answered in a calm voice.
Tommy’s suspicious eyes flicked form Jules to Troy. After a brief moment, his snarl melted and he lowered the gun. “Come in,” he barked and spun away.
Troy gave Jules an uneasy look.
Jules held out his hand toward the open door. “Go on, man. Go in, it’s okay.”
Troy stared at the doorway in trepidation. Last time he was taken to an open doorway, he was shoved into a stone temple full of snakes.
Troy straightened his waist jacket and took wary steps toward the doorway, making sure to keep his eyes on everything. Once inside the red-lit corridor beyond, more guns were pointing his way. Troy showed them his palms; he didn’t want any trouble, he’d had enough over the last week.
The guys pointing the guns kept them aimed at him. In the background, electronic beats were playing.
Jules entered and stepped up next to Troy. “Easy fellas,” he said to the guys with the guns. “Troy here’s a customer. We cool.”
The guys lowered their arms, much to Troy’s relief. A loud bang made him spin. Tommy slammed the door shut and was already latching the multitude of locks. When he was done, he turned to face them both. “Go ahead,” he grunted, pointing the way with his shotgun. “No funny business!”
Troy gave him a small grin before turning and heading down the corridor, the music growing louder. Jules stepped ahead of him and listened at a door on the right. He knocked and entered, ushering Troy to follow. Troy stepped inside the room to be faced with stacks of cardboard boxes standing against the far wall. A desk was set up ahead of the boxes. On its surface were vials and syringes filled with a toxic-green substance. Ambrosia. Sitting next to the vials were guns. Pistols, submachine guns. These guys were armed to the teeth. And after what he just saw on the street, and with that amount of Ambrosia in those boxes, Troy didn’t blame them.
The two guys sitting at the desk had bandanas covering the bottom half of their faces and shades obscuring their eyes. They sat there like cartoons, waiting for business.
Jules stepped up to them. “Get my man Troy here a syringe,” he said, cocking his thumb over his shoulder at Troy.
Without saying a word, one of the bandana guys plucked up a syringe from the desk and handed it to Jules, crossing his arms back over his chest afterward. Jules put on a huge salesman’s grin and held out the syringe for Troy.
Troy looked down at it. “How much?”
“This one’s on the house.”
Troy nodded. “Thanks,” he said, snatching up the freebie. “Anywhere I can jab this?”
“There’s a chill out room at the end of the hall.”
“Nice.”
“And when you’re done with that and you want more, just come and see us anytime, we got a plentiful supply.”
Troy’s brow furrowed. “You guys rob a 7-Eleven?”
“Better than that, man. We managed to jack a Kronos truck. Don’t know where they were headed with the gear, but it was full to the brim with vials of A
mbrosia. Good catch for us. This stuff is green gold, my man, green gold.”
Troy held up the syringe to the fluorescent light and stared at it. The stuff looked like slime from some sci-fi B-movie. Man, people are actually jacking up with this? Well, once upon a time he was getting jacked with vampire venom, so who was he to talk?
He shrugged to himself and sighed. “All right, Jules,” he said, giving him a firm handshake. “If I like it, I’ll be back for more.”
Jules gave him a pleasant grin. “You do that, Troy. You do that.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The chill out room was a den of Ambrosia junkies, either slumped on sofas, or on the floor, their eyes whirling, their jaws gnawing. The music was way too loud and obnoxious; it bounced off the walls of the small room and back again, banging against Troy’s brain in an incessant bombardment of splattering beats.
Troy ignored everyone and everything and found a nice corner to himself. He sat his butt down on the floorboards beneath a giant graffiti of a snarling wolf with cunning eyes and huge fangs. He pressed his back up against the wall and stared at the syringe in his hand. What the hell is this stuff? he mused. Ambrosia? Something new that was for sure. And that alone made it worth trying.
He straightened his bare arm and looked for a suitable vein. One was popping up nice. He pressed the needle up against his skin. And stopped. A shiver crawled up his spine. Something didn’t feel right. He gazed at all the junkies around him. He couldn’t help getting this strange sensation that he was staring at fangheads high on venom. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Something about the way their eyes were rolling, their jaws gnawing. Others had that stupid grin of pleasure plastered across their mugs, their eyes distant, glazed, glittering with joy. But, there was something slightly different. With no vamp to jab the venom into them, they had no sense of duty to protect anything. Their ecstasy was self-inflicted and self-serving. When the stuff wore off, they wouldn’t be urged to protect and guard their vamp father. No, they’d be back to the bandana guys at the desk for another hit until their cash ran dry.