by Tara Basi
She needed water. Speeding up, Zip desperately scanned both sides of the street for the saloon. The barely standing buildings were windowless constructions of random junk. Zip recognised some car-bot parts, bits of domestic appliances, metal sheets from old lifts. The only element the buildings had in common was a heavy airlock door. Her Headgear was minimally working. A crude, black and white map showed two dots: one was her, the other had to be the Quartermaster. He was just ahead, somewhere on the right.
The tower of assorted junk coming up was on a grander scale than she’d so far encountered. There was some twisted lettering on the misshapen roof: Saloon. Zip shrugged. It had to be the place. Headgear could only suggest the Quartermaster was within a twenty-metre radius. Sediment Town was more of a dump than she’d imagined. Zip just wanted to collect what she’d come for and get out of this place.
Approaching the door, she was relieved when it swung open of its own accord, revealing a small inner chamber with a second door. After the outer door closed, there was a delicious blast of cool air before the inner door opened. The thrum had gone, along with the vibrations, and the air was cool, so cool that all Zip wanted to do, for a moment at least, was breathe it in and let its invisible, cold fingers caress her seared body.
The saloon was dimly lit and smoky. She recognised the smells from her days spent in grubby barracks: stale sweat, cheap cigars and cheaper whisky. The aromas didn’t arouse any nostalgia. They were just sickly reminders of brutal wars and an ugly existence. It made her pause; was gearing up and going back to her old ways the best idea?
A grimy looking man in a tattered tank top was standing behind a long bar made of boards laid across stacked tyres. He called out, “You want a drink or you leaving?”
Zip walked over and placed her elbows on the bar. “Water … please.”
“A credit buys you a glass of the warm cloudy stuff. Ten gets you the ice-cold filtered.”
Peter was paying. “Filtered, and keep it coming.” After downing a pitcher of the best-tasting, crystal-clear, icy-cold water she’d ever had, Zip turned to survey the bar. It looked like she and the barman were the saloon’s only occupants, until she spotted a bright glowing point and a tell-tale wisp of white smoke in the gloomy shadows. Grabbing her second pitcher of water and a half-filled glass, she headed towards the little orange star bobbing in the twilight. She immediately recognised the brawny figure sitting on an old car seat at a crate doubling as a table, hosting a half-full bottle of whisky. Wiry grey hairs sprouted out of his barrel chest, like a battered horse-hair mattress. The man didn’t greet or acknowledge his old commander. His mouth was locked in a compressed sourness that radiated deeply ploughed furrows.
The Quartermaster stared at Zip with cold, green eyes set in gouged sockets of scarred skin.
After some moments of hard staring, the old lips parted with a dry crack. “Colonel?”
Zip remembered that this was the first time he’d seen her in Pip’s body. She nodded.
Q looked her over. “Give us a twirl then.”
Zip shrugged and slowly spun around, making sure he saw her dancing tail. A part of her wanted him to want her again.
Q grunted and made a face. “Nice enough, if you like that sort of thing. Tail’s just stupid. I’d cut that off.”
Zip was too tired to start an argument that would only pick at old scabs. “Nice to see you too, Q. Peter’s paid, so give me the gear and I’ll be gone.”
The old man studied Zip for a while longer before speaking. “See why you need the gear, unless you’re planning on fucking your enemies to death? Your body’s shit for combat. Damn, even I could take you.”
For a moment, Zip thought about protesting. He was right. Even if she wasn’t dog tired, the old guy could kill her before she knew what was happening.
The Quartermaster indicated an ancient car seat with his half-filled glass. “You’ll get your gear, shit face, after the words you don’t want to hear and the questions you don’t want asking.”
It wasn’t just Peter paying after all. Zip shrugged and slumped onto a torn leather seat ripped out of some car wreck and steeled herself for what was coming.
The old man wasn’t in a rush. He leaned back, sipped his whisky and ran tobacco-stained fingers slowly through his long white hair. He took a deep draught from his cigar and artfully blew out the smoke before he spoke.
“First, have to ask, why you looking like a boil-in-the-bag dinner?”
Zip could not contain her fury. “You could have bloody told me to bring a thermal suit, you miserable old git.”
Her anger rolled off the Quartermaster like waves on a rock. “Thought you’d learned your lesson last time you visited.”
Zip studied the old man’s face. Was he taking the piss? “Last time? I’ve never been to this shithole before.”
The impassive Quartermaster’s eyes challenged her to call him a liar.
The thoughts of what he might mean buggered with her mind. “Was this two years ago? Before …?” Zip asked, indicating Pip’s body.
Q cracked a smile and nodded. “You were desperate crazy, going on about a new Armageddon. Didn’t make any sense. Just hid something in the graveyard and disappeared.”
Zip couldn’t help shivering. “This place, this place, has a graveyard?”
The slight against the town must have hurt the old Quartermaster’s feelings; he wasn’t smiling anymore. “Enough! Time to pay up. You’ll answer my questions this time. What did you hide? What got you so scared?”
Zip winced inside. She didn’t like where this was going. “Like I said, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
The Quartermaster’s dry, lake-bottom face registered no emotion. “So it’s true: them Orb Industries bastards wiped your mind?”
A piece of the missing week had fallen into place. What had she been doing that had got her so scared? Zip could only shrug in answer.
The Quartermaster sighed and shook his head. “Remembering how you were that night, I’d say you’re better off not knowing. Still, you owe me answers about the stuff you can remember. Right?”
She looked into his eyes and knew she still owed him. “Maybe. What do you want to know?”
“We had a reason once. We were the Freedom and Justice Army. Aligned to no country. No religion. We were everywhere. We had a simple goal: tolerance. And we’d kill anybody who wasn’t … tolerant.”
Zip wondered if the old man was making a macabre joke. There was no accompanying smile to decorate the humour – if that’s what it was. She didn’t comment.
“It was all we had. You sold us out, to the damn Pilgrims. You made us … intolerant.”
The silence lingered long enough for Zip to think that this time the Quartermaster was looking for an answer. “We’d lost the war. Half the world was dead. The godly were on the rampage. An alliance with the Pilgrims was all that was left. They were the only ones willing to fight with us. They needed the Ungodly to run their crazy Church. You know all this.”
The old man sipped his whisky and was thoughtful for a moment, “So, tolerance for all became tolerance only for the Ungodly and the Pilgrim. And, years later, we had peace and everybody else we wiped from the face of the earth. For what? To survive?”
Zip raged inside with burning memories of the past he was painting and the explanations the Quartermaster would never understand. All she’d ever believed in was her family, the mission, a few of her fellow Specials, like Q, herself and her survival. She could care less about the ideas. All that got burned up in the first Orb War, the Money War, along with her parents. She answered as best she could. “Yes … to survive.”
The old man smiled. A handsome smile on a handsome old face. The face of the most beautiful man Zip had ever known.
“A little honesty. I didn’t expect it. But we didn’t survive. There’s only a few million Ungodly left, trapped on this little London island, surrounded by a sea of radiation and Pilgrims and constantly nibbled at by the Pilgrim
ists. Ironic, isn’t it? Orb Industries and the Tramp’s ministry keep the last few Ungodly safe. And after the war, you betrayed us for a second time.”
Zip wanted to leap across the table and throttle her old lover. He’d never understood. The old Justice and Freedom vets like Q were crazy. She wasn’t going to argue.
He ploughed on, digging up the worst of her past. “Think about it. First year that bastard Orb arrives, London property values go from hero to zero. The banks implode, currencies collapse, hyper-inflation, mass-unemployment, big countries scrabbling for resources and someone to blame. Cue ten years of the Money War. Who benefits? Fucking Pilgrims of the Orb. Then that damn Tramp gets himself killed and the God War kicks off. Another decade of slaughter. When it finally finished, we begged you to do the right thing. The Orb’s wiped out the old worshipers, it’s picking off the last of the Ungodly and brainwashing the Pilgrims. You were at the heart of Orb Industries. All you had to do was set off the Cuboid bombs and blast that fucking blue ball back to hell.”
After the Orb arrived, the military had planted massive bombs under it, ready to detonate if it did anything, but it never did. They were still there, under the Cuboid. The Quartermaster and his deranged followers wanted her to set them off. She’d given her old comrades twenty-four hours warning before she turned them in to Orb security. Only the Quartermaster escaped.
“You crazy bastard! Those bombs would have taken out millions, and from what we know, the Orb wouldn’t even have noticed.”
“It was worth a try. Outside London, it’s the Dark Ages. It’s like Sediment Town everywhere. That’s the Church’s doing. And then you betrayed us for the third time, you fucking Pilgrim shit face. Why did you convert? Tell me, and you can have your gear.”
“You’ll never get it, old man. The Revelation helped me when I needed help. I don’t know what’ll help you, and I don’t care. Give me my gear.”
The old man laughed heartedly, his shoulders danced with mirth and his grey-haired head rocked and rolled like a kid’s toy. Eventually, the mirth subsided and the Quartermaster was able to speak.
“Here,” he said, lifting an aluminium suitcase onto the crate and sliding it towards Zip. “One Special’s combat kit. When I heard about the state you were in when you arrived, I threw in a thermal suit for the trip back. Happy hunting.”
Zip knew she should grab the case and leave but couldn’t resist. “What’s so funny?”
The Quartermaster smiled. “Finally, you’re getting angry again. So you’ll do what needs doing. Maybe even remember what you hid in the graveyard.” He took another long puff and sipped his whisky.
Zip grabbed the suitcase and got up to leave.
“Listen, Colonel, it’s not just your body that’s out of shape. You’re rusty up here as well,” Q said, tapping his forehead. “I can see it in your eyes. I still got it. You know where to find me.”
Zip nodded. He was right. Maybe she would need his help, but not yet. It was time to get back. Peter would be going crazy. Something had happened between Quattro and Mathew. Was he really Gunner Mathew? And she still had to find out how Quattro had known about her lost week. That meant trying to find out what she’d been up to that had made her try and kill herself; and what on earth had she hidden in the Sediment Town graveyard?
Chapter Ten – Club Trash and Hotel Kasbah
Zip felt like Eurydice escaping hell, without the idiot Orpheus around to screw things up. She had emerged from a musty service elevator into the lowest officially habitable levels of London. Back in the light, even if it was coldly artificial and the corridors were lifeless, it was at least cool. Every breath didn’t burn and her shins were relaxed.
Her Headgear was lighting up like a Christmas tree as Net services flipped back on. One of which, surprisingly, informed her that Peter had moved into the Cuboid Kasbah Hotel, fifty-odd levels above her head. From the full content messages she could now access, he looked drunk and distraught. All traces of the snooty professor she’d first met only days ago had evaporated.
Sandwiched between Peter’s ever more desperate calls was a video from a furtive-looking Senior Administrator Bremer, suggesting Zip meet him at Club Trash: an odd choice for a senior administrator.
What Zip wanted to do most of all was call her granddaughter Jane and try and explain that Zip was still Zara, her grandmother, who loved her, and loved her sister and her mother. The futility of making such a call only became clearer as she climbed out of the thermal suit the Quartermaster had donated. In any conversation she imagined with Jane, her elder granddaughter would always ask her the same question:
“You murdered granddad because he converted, now you’re a Pilgrim?”
It would hurt. What could she say? He was forced, she chose? Jane, her sister Heather and Alice would have to wait until there were better answers.
Zip decided to head to her office, stow the Quartermaster’s weapons case and meet Bremer at the club before seeing Peter. After days of rolling in misery, Zip felt like dressing up and having some fun. Back at her tiny little office, she called up a VR dominatrix look and Headgeared into Club Trash.
More real than real was the club’s motto, which was why VR could never be mistaken for real – that and the going-under ozone smell. The technology could do perfect or obviously fake. It couldn’t do real life, which seemed to exist somewhere in-between those two states, haphazardly blended. Club Trash was, at least, consistent. It was ferociously perfect. Any avatar that didn’t meet the owner’s exacting requirements was barred. Vogue faultless, however depraved and artfully ugly, was the only look that would do.
Zip’s avatar was spray-dressed in black leather from head to toe. The entire second skin was studded with short, blood-red spikes. To cap the nasty look, her corded whiptail was topped with barbs. Pip’s body was already perfect. Entry into the club’s foyer wasn’t a problem.
Club Trash enforced the laws of physics and consequences for its clubbers. Inside, you couldn’t defy gravity or dash around at supersonic speeds, and if you tried you felt the pain. Only the management, their staff and their infrastructure were exempt. Club Trash had an infinite Escher space for an infinite number of guests.
She arrived in the club’s vast crystal and onyx foyer. It thronged with eager arrivals: singles, couples, parties and mobs. Under the club’s giant chandeliers, the multitude swirled around like rainbow-coloured smoke drifting in the breeze.
This was the other London: a nest of gloriously turned-out creatures, a blasphemous Holi festival of colour where every sight in every direction is only vibrant, where there are only blue skies or dramatic storms and lightning. No grey clouds and no drizzle.
The noise was deafening. A strange mixture of euphoria and desperation; they all knew the war was coming and the privileges of citizenship couldn’t last. The foyer smelled of rosewater, clean skin, shiny hair and all the sweet moans imaginable: testosterone, hormones, pheromones. Despite the thousands of milling clubbers crammed into the foyer, there was no bitter background odour. Club Trash had an absolute prohibition on perspiration.
Zip was being jovially jostled by the hordes milling around her. Sometimes, the touches lingered, which made her smile.
“Hey, gorgeous, going our way?”
Zip glanced over her shoulder towards the source of the hail. A muscular, snow-white rhino, surrounded by a bevy of beauties dressed as flamingos, was waving its horned head from side to side and staring hungrily at her. She smiled, shook her head and turned away. That kind of thing was Pip’s world. Zip was trying to make her own space here, and until Peter had turned up in her little office, she’d been acclimatising fine.
To get into Club Trash’s foyer, management had to approve of your look. The vulgar, the unimaginatively trashy and the artless ugly never made it this far. To go further, your Headgear had to be clean. While waiting to be scanned, Zip wandered up a grand staircase and looked down on the excited and dazzling crowd.
The foyer music stopped. A
hundred metres away, a red and white flashing spotlight picked out a handsome, white centaur. Sirens began to blare. The man-horse burst into flames. It wasn’t just dodgy Headgear. This was a terrorist attack. Zip threw up every virus protection and switched her Headgear to paranoid mode. She should be safe.
Others weren’t so well protected. Around the burning figure, others were catching fire. A few at first, but it was spreading quickly. The crowd scrambled away from the immolated, like ripples in a burning oil slick trying to outrun the flames. Many fled the club, disappearing in a puff of white smoke. Those too close to the epicentre of the virus bomb found they couldn’t. Worse, they were frozen in place and couldn’t outrun the fire.
Screams and cries buffeted Zip. Seconds after the sirens had started, there were hundreds of flaming wretches.
The sirens fell silent. Lights stopped flashing. The burning corpses disappeared.
“All over, folks. Party on!” a soothing voice announced. The music returned.
Slowly, the space vacated by the infected started filling up with revellers. The noise levels mounted till everyone was back in the Club Trash mood. It was as if nothing had happened.
Back in their homes, most of the infected would be dead or severely brain damaged. They were already forgotten. If it wasn’t you, the party had to go on. There might not be much time left. They were right.
It smelt like a Pilgrimists’ attack, or maybe that’s what Orb Industries wanted people to think. The attacks were getting more frequent.
Zip was scanned and cleared. She selected the Church Bar and was enveloped in blue smoke. When the smoke dissipated, she found herself inside a secular representation of the Orb. A circular glass floor cut the Orb sphere in half. Overhead was a domed roof studded with diamonds. The half sphere below was filled with bright blue water and cavorting mermaids and mermen. The lovely fish-tailed girls were swimming in intricate, synchronised patterns, a sensual dance with dolphin-men and man-seals, who circled hungrily, obviously aroused. Zip found it soothing, hypnotic and very sexy. Memories of the attack were pushed aside.