The Last Smile in Sunder City

by Luke Arnold

  “This is going to hurt,” said Simms. I looked at her twisted boot, wrenched to an impossible angle.

  “Doesn’t it already?”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean…” She bit her bottom lip with her pyramid fangs and eventually found the strength to say it. “Phillips, can you carry me?”

  22

  We didn’t bother with the medical center. It would be bloated and busy with cases more severe than Simms’s snapped ankle.

  I needed a drink and Simms wanted a place to wait for someone with a healing kit. Since she was down a leg, and on my back, I got to choose the spot.

  Of course, I picked The Ditch, but not just because it was home. There weren’t many other joints that would welcome the rank odor of sweat and sludge we dragged with us.

  The sun waltzed back into the sky, sparkling like it was trying to make it up to us. I left the grumbling detective outside and returned with three wooden chairs.

  “Expecting a guest?” she asked.

  I dropped two of the chairs against the wall and one out towards the street.

  “For your busted foot. Take a perch and I’ll get the drinks.”

  She lowered herself on to the chair and I didn’t offend her by trying to help.

  “What’s your poison, Detective?”

  She let the pain seep out of her voice before responding.

  “A pint of whatever’s cold, dark and clouds my judgment.”

  Damn it. Simms actually made me smile.

  Sunder wasn’t usually the kind of place where you drank outside. The coastal towns out East loved their out-the-back beer gardens and sea-view rooftops. In Sunder, you stayed inside with your back to the wall and your wits about you. There was something kind of cheeky about a reptilian cop and a Man for Hire splayed on the sidewalk sinking jars in the sun. I lost count of the glasses but I could tell the time by how hard the mud was on my clothes. When I bent my knees, I thought my trousers might shatter into pieces.

  Simms had a cold bucket of water beside her. Every few minutes, she would dip in a hand-towel and spread it over her head. The sun was welcome but it wasn’t great for that cracked and damaged dome.

  We passed jibes and dry jokes and the occasional veiled compliment over the climbing pile of empty pint glasses, but mostly we sat in silence. For soldiers, it’s a familiar ritual. You have to be there for each other in those terrible times, after the adrenaline drains away and hard questions slide in to fill the space. Nobody should be alone when those questions come calling. Did I do the right thing? Did I give enough of myself? Would somebody else still be alive if I’d done things differently? When you’re stuck asking yourself those kinds of things, company is key.

  But don’t be fooled into thinking those questions can be talked away. Try to cover them with conversation and they’ll just come back later when you’re alone and vulnerable to the voices. The only solution is to sit in silence for a while and chew on the thoughts till they’re soft enough to swallow. Then make sure you have something mean to wash them down with.

  Keep watch on your partner. If you see them start to struggle, be ready. Sometimes the questions dig a little too deep. It’s not hard to notice. The brow gets too furrowed or they pick at their coaster. If that happens, just say whatever dumb thing comes into your head to save them. A sick joke. Quick chat. Then back to tackle the questions again.

  A police-issue healer came by to see Simms, dragging a wooden case on wheels. She was a sweet-looking Banshee who knew basic medicine. I couldn’t imagine what a nightmare it was to be a good-looking girl in the Sunder City cop-shop. Let alone a voiceless one. Simms took a hit of whiskey while the nurse cracked her ankle back in place and strapped it up with bandages.

  “Will you please look over this lug, Meredith? He almost had his face scratched off by someone he tried to help.”

  Did I help? Could we have brought the old guy back?

  The questions were pushed away by tender fingers that wiped the dirt from my forehead and sewed my skin together. When she was done, she opened up her case to clean her hands with alcohol and I couldn’t help but peek inside.

  “How about something for the pain?” I asked.

  She looked from me to the drink in my hand to the mountain of glasses on the ground. She thought she’d made her point until I took a bronze bill from my jacket. “I’ll take a couple of Clayfields.”

  Those eyes sure could dance. Meredith stared at the bill long enough to know it was real then back to her boss with a look somewhere between pleading and fear. Simms nodded. The Banshee looked at Simms long enough to make sure that she was real, then she snatched the bronze note from my mud-caked fingers.

  She handed over the whole pack. I’d still overpaid for them but it was worth it for not having to leave my seat or wait another second.

  I popped a twig into my lips and almost fucking cried. I’d been so long without one, I could taste the sweetness. There was a chill between my teeth as it took my nervous system for a spin. I held the packet out to Simms and she curved her scaled brow.

  “They look pretty serious, Fetch.”

  “You got a broken bone, don’t you? That sounds pretty serious to me.”

  She selected one of the deep-green sticks and smelled it cautiously. Then she slid it on to the tip of her forked tongue. After a moment, she laughed.

  “Shit!”

  “Right?”

  “You do this all the time?”

  “I’ve got my reasons.”

  She took another hit, chuckled, and relaxed right back into her chair.

  “No wonder you come across like such a tough guy. You’re snowed up to your eyeballs. During your next interrogation, I’ll tell the boys they have to work a little harder.”

  We laughed, and I waited till the Clayfield took effect before I dared to ask the question that had been in the front of my mind the whole time.

  “Hey, I’m still working on that case at the teahouse. Doesn’t look like either of the victims were the guy I’m after, but it could be connected. Mind if I have a look at the bodies?”

  For a second, I thought she’d passed out. But then she rolled her head to the side with a knowing smile on her cracked lips.

  “You wanna see the puddle, right?” I nodded. She shook her head, slowly, like it might slip off her neck if she moved it too fast. “You’re pushing your luck, Fetch.”

  “Please. I’m worried someone might get hurt if I don’t work this out.”

  The cop in her woke up enough to push past the painkillers.

  “Then tell us what’s going on.”

  “I will. In two more days. Sooner, hopefully. I just need to check the bodies.”

  It took her a long time to think it over, but eventually she agreed. I didn’t give her time to take it back. I got a pen and paper from inside so she could write me out a letter.

  While she was writing, I snuck inside, paid the bill and left Simms with another pint. Would she still bust my balls when she saw me again? Probably. Maybe that was part of the fun. Friends serve a purpose but every man needs a few good enemies to remind him who he is.

  I walked around the corner past muddy crowds and crying kids. There was more work to be done and maybe tomorrow I’d help them do it.

  But that would have to wait. Because Edmund Rye was tied to the teahouse now. The League of Vampires had something to hide. And I had a date with a melted body in a bucket.

  23

  I wouldn’t say I was friends with Portemus, but we’d always had an arrangement: I’d fill him in on the stiffs I sent his way and he’d fill me in on the ones I didn’t.

  I doubt anyone else would fight so hard to spend time with him. They all thought he was creepy. They were right.

  There was no denying that it was bad taste for him to become a mortician after the Coda, but where else does a Necromancer go when the dead stop rising to his call? Sometimes it’s just too hard to say goodbye to old friends.

  After the Coda, space in Sund
er City wasn’t a problem. Dead citizens and decommissioned factories freed up buildings on all sides of the city. Portemus had created a truly spacious halfway house for the recently deceased. If you were dead and you were in Sunder, this was where you wanted to be. Stainless-steel panels for a quarter of a mile right beneath the old town square. No natural light. No leaks. No breeze. Those little meat bags were preserved like Grandma’s pickles. No messy candles either. Only the cleanest oils fueled the many lamps that lined the shining rows of bodies; all tucked up in little beds sleeping the big, comfortable sleep we’d all enjoy eventually.

  Portemus dressed every day like the eyes of the world would be on him. In truth, I might have been the only face he saw that ever met him with a smile. There were deliveries, of course, and he filed his reports, but he was rarely greeted with a warm reception. The words were all of business and the expressions all of disgust.

  His suit was always black but today his tie was red. His skin was as tight as the gloves stretched over his pale fingers. His hair was cut short but his nails were long and he moved around the room as if to music. He was the cat that got the cream and, lo and behold, it was full of little fish.

  The smile on his face was cut by an expensive razor and the flourish that preceded his handshake was even sharper.

  “Mr Phillips. I am happy to see you but you know that Detective Simms is…”

  I handed him the letter. He looked impressed and then suspicious.

  “How did you get her to write this?”

  “Broke her leg, got her drunk and drugged her.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Portemus shrugged. “Come this way. Quickly. With the events of today, I imagine my business will be booming very soon.”

  I followed his long stride down the shining halls, past row upon row of pale sleepers. Sunder was poor in leaders but rich in corpses and I tried not to consider my contribution to its wealth. We left the beds behind and entered a small room that contained a long metal tray. I held my breath and looked inside at a few pink gallons of curdled milkshake.

  Suspended on metal hooks over the trough were pieces of the mutilated body: a toe here, a muscle there. It was a clothing line for corpses with skin hung out to dry.

  “Now,” his grin looked like it would rip his cheeks, “are you sure you are ready for what I am about to tell you?”

  “I don’t know. What are you about to tell me?”

  I had never seen the freak so happy.

  “I did not think that there was a species in this world I had not commanded. A type of monster I had not defeated in battle and then brought back to life under my control. Now, you have impressed and disappointed me in a most unexpected way. You have brought me a monster I did not even know existed. Mr Phillips, I dare say this is something entirely new.”

  He stretched out the word entirely till it contained the full three-act structure of a classical play. He was electric. To be honest, after his remarks, I was quite excited myself.

  When I’d first arrived in Sunder, I was the most eager student of magical species imaginable. Every strange appendage or power was, to me, a miracle. I was young and full of energy and everything I witnessed was a revelation. Now, the world was old and broken and I knew in my heart it was my fault. But this… This was new? I thought I was too old for new.

  “It’s humanoid,” he continued. “That is evident in the skeletal construction of the feet and hands. No Lycum either. This is a stable form. But there is elongation in the bones.”

  “A Giant?”

  “I thought so too, but no. Gigantism creates a widening in the supporting skeleton. These bones were elongated only, like they were stretched. But that is only part of the discovery. The true revelation is here.”

  He pointed a covered nail to one of the hanging pieces of meat.

  “This is a muscle. Judging by its size, I first believed it to be a thigh or bicep. Even so, it would have been abnormally large, as though the owner had trained to be a wrestler. But no. This is an infraspinatus, a much smaller muscle in the scheme of things. At least, it is supposed to be. The creature this came from must have been a powerhouse. Pure strength. Something I have not seen in quite some time.”

  I looked at the purple lump of fat and flesh and tried to stop my stomach acids from dancing. Portemus looked like he could kiss it.

  “For some time?” I asked. “What are you saying?”

  His white eyes glistened with excitement.

  “If I did not know better, Mr Phillips, I would say that these muscles grew with magic.”

  I stepped back out into the main room to catch my breath. I couldn’t yet tell what it was that was bubbling up inside me, but something had snapped. I didn’t actually believe it yet. The hope was too dangerous. But just the idea…

  What if we could fix it? What if, somehow, I could undo all those terrible things I’d done?

  Emotion swelled in my chest. It was something unfamiliar.

  Hope.

  Just a bit of hope. That’s all. I’d forgotten what it felt like.

  I was standing in the aisle between the beds of dead-eyed dreamers and I tried not to let my gaze wander into theirs. I failed, and a mottled white body with black hair caught my eye. Even in life, his skin had been sickly pale. Now, it outshone every sad corpse around him. It was the tough boy with the broken fingers from the crypt. His matted hair was splayed out in a fan around an empty, open, jawless face. His busted knuckles lay over the sheet, circled with a marker for further examination.

  If I hadn’t recognized him, I might not have stopped to see the others. Each bed contained a kid that was too similar and too damn familiar. There were too many Humans in this house of death and they’d all crossed my path a few nights before. All young men and all busted around the head with cuts and bruises.

  The inflictions were as familiar to me as the faces of the victims. Canine claws had carved their way into the brains and eyeballs of these young boys and Pete had done away with burying their bodies in far-off swamps.

  Dammit, Pete. Not now.

  I needed to find out what the melted creature was. I needed to know if it was connected to The League of Vampires or Rye or January Gladesmith.

  But I’d told Pete about those kids. I was responsible for putting him on their trail. In a better world, after the flood, other dark deeds would keep quiet for a while. But I knew better. Misery loves company and murder never takes a break. Neither, judging by how many kids had been turned into corpses, had Pete.

  I went back to my office, grabbed brass knuckles and rope, and went back out west.

  24

  From the rooftop of The Mare Hotel you can see most of Swestum Square, including the ever-swinging cowboy doors of that damn saloon. I leaned against a stone statue that had once been the figurehead to the fanciest place in town: a life-size Unicorn rearing back on its hind legs and kicking out at the air. A pre-Coda sculpture, of course, so the animal was still majestic and grand. Not one of the deranged creatures that wandered the wilds afterwards.

  I watched shapes slide in and out of the saloon door; a range of ages and intoxication but all with the hunched posture of boys pretending to be men and men pretending to be tougher than they were.

  If Pete had got the inspiration for his attack from the information I gave him, then this must have been where he started. A few more kids that I recognized from the meeting came out of the bar and I watched them till they rounded distant corners or dropped out of sight. Every alley around Swestum was too dark to make out proper detail, but I scanned them for any sign that someone might be waiting.

  It was hours after midnight when I saw old Baldy stumble out of the saloon with the dregs of a drink in his fist. He dumped the last sip into his mouth, threw the glass on to the footpath and walked up Titan Way, leaving the light of the bar behind.

  The darkness made its move. Hunched in the alley on the north side of the tavern was
a shadow wearing a cap and a second-hand leather jacket. When it stepped forward to follow the fat man, there was no mistaking the tail that dragged behind. As soon as I saw which back road the thug was heading to, I picked up my coil of rope and hammered my feet down the fire escape.

  I left my coat with the Unicorn in case anonymity became an issue. People might forget faces but the cliché silhouette of a hired man in a military jacket will be remembered. Trying not to let my footsteps slap too loudly, I sprinted between the old apartment blocks. At the second intersection, lit only by the spill of lamplight from the next street, Pete was straddling the bald brute. His canine hand pushed the pudgy face into the pavement while his human fingers gripped a long blade. I knew the knife already. The pale kid had brandished it when we were in the crypt.

  “Bite down, big boy,” said Pete’s lopsided lips, as he reached over the bald head from behind and hooked his claws into the man’s nostrils.

  The pig squealed in fear, but before Pete could administer the final blow, I launched myself into the Dog-man’s back.

  We tumbled into the side of the dumpsters together. The surprise gave me the advantage I needed to snag the rope inside his hanging mouth and pull it tight. He hit me with his elbows but there wasn’t enough flexibility or strength in his body to do any real harm. The shaking lump of a man beside us scrambled to his feet. He threw a brief, panicked look in our direction and I was happy to have Pete’s slobbering face covering my own. It took him a moment to realize that he wasn’t going to die, then he ran away as fast as his limbs would carry him.

  When Baldy was gone, I put my boots into Pete’s back and kicked him away. I wanted to create enough distance for him to see who I was before he tried to snap my jaw off. It wasn’t a foolproof plan. When he spun around and recognized me, the white-hot anger in his eyes only intensified.

  “What the hell, Fetch?” Spit flew from his hanging lips. “These bastards were hunting me. I’m not doing anything they wouldn’t have done.”