“Beth, this has to be even more quiet than when we were rigging the ‘Series. This is truly off the record. You can’t tell anyone you helped us out, even when you hear about it on the news.”
Beth checked the pot of papier mache-like substance, giving it a little stir. “It’s completely secret, but I’m going to hear about it on the news?”
“We’re them kinda guys.” Mission Creep put in. Being on the table for four hours is no easy task for someone with my temperament, but I got through it. Beth guided me to a mirror and I was well-pleased with the effect that she had created: lumpy skin, slightly uneven and off-center eyes, pendulous pseudoboobs, scraggly and discolored hair. For as long as I could stand it, I was an orcish woman. The operative phrase was ‘stand it.’ The costume was heavy and unwieldly, and it made it difficult to do very many things, including but not limited to evacuating bodily waste. But we had a mission, and we had a deadline, and this was all going to be over soon.
Beth wouldn’t hear of taking any payment for her miraculous prosthesis. Mission Creep reached towards his belt, and for a horrid and panicked moment I thought he was going to pull out his piece and put a bullet in her forehead. But he was only going for his wallet. He bought us forty head of pixie, which Beth was delighted to sell.
Back in the jingomobile, Mission Creep immediately snorted a head. I sighed and looked at him, knowing that I could really use some chemical help for the next several hours. There was no damn way I was going to be able to pass a pixie head up this hideous orc snout. The Creep laughed and crushed a couple pixie noggins against his dashboard, their dried and powdered brains forming neat lines. He handed me a straw. I thought about how scandalous a high-ranking secret society member and a gross orc woman doing pixie lines must look at this moment to someone observing us through the corvette windshield. No one was, and who would care if they did? Grateful, I accepted the straw and bent over the glittering blue powder.
7
Over the next ten and a half hours, the news, the tabloids, and the gossip circuit were inundated with an absurd story. An inconsolable, blubbering orcish woman named Olgahelga Butterbatter sobbed to anyone who would listen that the platinum-selling singer Crystal Crowne was the father of her child. The story started as the exclusive province of entertainment news and other such things that should not even exist, but it gathered size as it rolled toward the village of public opinion like a snow boulder in an avalanche, a stupendous and stupid scandal.
“Crystal Crowne is a woman.” One interviewer said, seeming a little exasperated. He was also sweating, as if he were embarrassed.
“Crista Crowne nah a wumma!” Olgahelga blubbered. It was as if she were trying to do a stereotypical orc accent. The studio audience should have cared about a million things more than whether or not Crystal Crowne had male sexual organs. The epidemic of poverty, the growing political divisions, President Gild’s corruption, the looming specter of war with Kargivia—but they could not care about these things. It was as if a vampiric parasite sat nestled deep inside Olgahelga, sucking lifeblood from the fascination and disgusted expressions of anyone who followed her story. With a big enough needle to poke at an insecurity, you can make the whole world flinch.
“Where’s the baby, then?” The interviewer demanded.
“Nahhw baby, awh ho-ho-hol…” Olgahelga sobbed. She would always answer this question with this statement or something similar. No one knew what it meant, but it somehow carried an insidious and intoxicating connotation of murder and hush money.
“Actually, if you think about it, a lot of it makes sense.” One commentator pointed out. “It seems like she—or he—has never kept a lover for more than a couple weeks. And that name ‘Crystal Crowne’ has a sort of phallic spin, doesn’t it? Think about the lyrics of ‘High Scepter.’ Look at the imagery in her music videos and shows. Just think about it.”
The story was powerful because it touched the giant throbbing nerve of tortured Provisian male insecurity. No peasant man who had ever jerked it to Crystal Crowne could know peace until he had answers, so the media-monetary complex kicked into overdrive. It got so bad that the star herself had to do interviews and try to debunk the rumors about her. “Are you a man?” One asked her, point blank. She stared uncertainly back at him, an austere and icy beauty with blue and white hair. “Do you have a penis?”
And this is the truth, and this is what I understood, because I am the greatest Outlaw-Journalist to ever walk the earth, and I only gave it up because I found a cheaper and faster way to get my thrills and my cash. The truth is this: implicit in every question is the belief that the question deserves to be asked in the first place. And if you ask a question that hits the right vital points, that makes people disturbed and interested and disgusted, you can distract anyone. You too can be the great Flexenco with his magically appearing Provisian tusk beasts, even if you have to be a tusk beast yourself.
When all was said and done, I only had to spend twelve hours in the suit. Mission Creep cut me out with a machete, the cool air like paradise on my bark. Our manufactured drivel story had taken Wolfram’s scoop right out of its bassinette and dashed it against the hospital floor. The only people who had paid any attention to the intelligence agencies infiltrating the news or Operation Screech Owl were alternative media types who were always four months ahead of everything and always completely right and always totally ignored. As for the intelligence spooks/reporters, they were covering Crystal Crowne’s ugly lovechildren like all the supposedly authentic reporters. And that was how I earned my third degree in the Brotherhood of Dry Men.
“BURNING ADRENOCHROME”
1
I was tied to the rail of the barge, right next to Mission Creep. The moon overhead was high and freakishly big, illuminating the Sea of Bleak. A quarter mile away, the abandoned oil rig was still on fire. The energy companies don’t vacate those things unless there’s nothing left to extract, but to me it remained an open question whether the thing would explode and take us with it. Technically, that would mean we had accomplished the mission.
The remaining smugglers were off in the cabin of the ship, tensely discussing what should be done with us. They’d have executed us outright, but they had seen our Dry Men rings, and that had given them a case of the howling were-flaffs. Neither of us had been shot, though it had been close. Still, they’d done a number on us. The Creep was losing a steady stream of blood over the edge of the deck. I was in even worse shape, losing both blood and my stock of xylem and phloem, the vital fluids forming a witch’s brew in the sea beneath us.
Confirming my suspicions of exactly how bad all this was, Dread showed up. “Forres’ mon. They done hangen you uppen de dry?”
“Dread—what the fuck am I supposed to do to get myself out of this one? I have no weapons and I can’t move and I’m bleeding out.”
“Yah, mon. De Dreadman be comin’ only when t’ings be atta der worst.”
“Well, Gods, man. If you only come when I’m in a fix, can’t you help me out?” I had wondered about this before. I’m not what one would call a stranger to hallucinations, and Dread was not one. He was too consistent. He had a personality. Sure, he was easier to find if you were having a bad trip, but in some sense of the word, he was real. “What in fuck’s name am I supposed to do?”
“Forrest! Who you talkin’ to, boy? Dontcha go an’ crack up on me, na.” Mission Creep said. Dread was playing idly with the platinum skulls adorning his dreadlocks.
“You frien’ needa you help now. I be goin’. If you trade inna secrets, you best be usen de secrets onna high-seas.” And just like that, he was gone, vanishing into the blackness.
“What secrets on the high seas, you useless foul-weather friend! You dumb, patois-talking, parachute instructing…” Mission Creep was laughing. I felt a cold chill stir what remained of my blood. “Creep, what are you laughing about?”
“You done giv’ me uh idea, boy.” We were fastened to the rails with heavy chains. The prot
ruding nails were useless for freeing ourselves. But Mission Creep shimmied upwards towards one of them, and plunged the hideous spike right into the vein of his forearm. He sliced right up the track. “Yuh can jus’ call me Tommy Tetanus, son!” He guffawed.
The day had started so well.
2
That morning, Mission Creep had been all excited. His usual swagger was more like a jig as he joyously selected his deadliest toys from the armory. “Smugglas!” He said. “Ones that ain’ be black marketin’ fo’ our side! That means we get to blow ‘em up!”
I decided that this amount of detail was insufficient. The Creep whistled, tunelessly but happily, as his fingers skipped down a rack of silencers. He picked one and screwed it onto a collapsible rifle. I decided that I had better just read the file. I almost dropped it when I opened it, because the bastard’s photograph was that ugly. The Creep and I are professional ugly, but this cat who was clipped in to the front of the dossier was the stuff of legends. He had no nose, only an empty socket. Lank, almost non-existent hair hung over bulging and sepulchral eyes. He was so emaciated that his skin clung to every plane of his skull, exacerbating the effect of the missing nose. ‘Charles Chubb’ the text under the photograph read.
“That is one chubby son-of-a-bitch.” I said. I turned past his picture, a bit too eagerly.
“Don’ be a-scar’d o’ him, Forres’. He’s one of our’n. Thatta what Blue Absinthe’ll do to a body, you drink too much.” The Creep hefted a Bowie knife and threw it at a target. He shook his head and chose another. I read on, skimming past the parts that bored me. The job seemed to center around some tiresome skirmish Dry Men operatives were having with the Free State of Kargivia and the Burialists. After Sub-commander Telemonte had taken over the KANL, he had formed an alliance with Burial and nationalized the banks. The upshot of all this—no more money laundering. This had put a dent in Dry Men finances, and it also meant that the smugglers were dealing more with the Ignobles, who had a chain of dirty banks in the parts of Kargivia that were still with the oligarchs, as well as in Provisia itself.
“What the hell is ‘adrenochrome’?” I asked. Mission Creep was happily attaching a series of black grenades onto a belt.
“Sad-istic superdrug!” Mission Creep exclaimed. “Only kin gettit by a-suckin’ it outta livin’ folks’ organs. We don’t hafta steal it, jus’ sinkit to them clammy depths so smugglas learn not to sell to ourn en’mies.”
We loaded the gear the Creep had chosen out to the jingomobile in two huge duffle bags, and then went back for an honest-to-Gods rocket launcher. Soon we were tearing down the Trash Junction Superhighway with enough ordnance to level a city block. If the kind of thing that happened on the TJSH every day happened to us and we crashed, we were goners, along with hundreds of other dumb saps who had taken their lives in their hands by attempting to commute to their legitimate places of employment. To make things worse, it was a long drive, as we had to get all the way from the Creep’s compound to the docks on the rundown outskirts of Archland, where Provisia met the Sea of Bleak.
I sighed and resigned myself to this grotesque and outrageous risk, this mission to kill people who would just as soon kill you as suck the juices from your organs. “Ace inna hole is Chubb.” Mission Creep explained. “Nuthin’ bettah than absinthe heads to hep yuh in this lina work, Forres’. They kin be bought an’ bought cheap. If they wan’ go’n turn on yuh, no one b’lieves ‘em en’how.”
3
I was lying on my belly near a downed tree, looking through a powerful sniper scope. For all the Creep’s excitement, everything was dead boring. It was coming up on early evening, but the air was so oppressive and muggy that even the bloat flies and filch parasites were too listless to pester me. The fallen tree was good cover; an excellent vantage point and great camouflage from the front, though I’ve never liked being around dead trees.
The plan, as near as I could discern it, was this: I was to camp at a good range with the rifle, now handily mounted on a tripod. The Creep was to meet Chubb on the rickety dock where the S.S. Leviathan was waiting. Here was an ugly ship, poorly maintained and stained with a thousand evil voyages. Chubb would lead Mission Creep on board; the explosives were covered by a layer of rolled and unmarked bills in case anyone got ideas about checking the bag. The cover story was that Creep wanted to do some moonlighting and that he was buying the Adrenochrome on the sly, selling it without the Dry Men’s blessing. My job was to take out as many smugglers as I could with the rifle whenever they were isolated and close to the rail, the hope being that they would go ass over tea kettle into the sea. Creep and Chubb would do what they could to hide any bodies that gravity didn’t help along, but their main prerogative was to blow the fuel tankers with the grenades and then get the hell out of there. I was to finish the job with the rocket launcher.
I watched as Chubb greeted Mission Creep. He was wearing a loose and billowing trench coat that looked as if it had actually seen combat in trenches. I had not counted on the fucker being so scary. The coat somehow made his morbid and horrendous emaciation more visible, more grotesque. The Creep embraced the murderous absinthe head like he was a beloved kid brother—I half expected him to give him a noodgie. I spotted a smuggler in camo and a spiked eye patch lighting a cigar near the port side. The shot was smooth and silent. I was almost sure that the bullet had gone through his good eye and out the other side.
He crumpled into a heap against the rail. I looked sharp for anyone else, but the ship seemed empty. Eventually Creep and Chubb made their way onto the ship, and heaved Eyepatch overboard. There was still no one left to shoot. The sun was going down, and I was beginning to get nervous and restless. Mission Creep must have had ear mics or some sort of communication device that we could have brought. Why hadn’t we? I was guessing that one kill at this point was way below par. No good would come of having a crew of smugglers chasing us when we made our escape. I started to load the rocket launcher, just to have something to take my mind off how nervous I was getting. I was still wired from all the pixie heads I had busted when we were convincing the public that Lady Crystal Crowne was a hermaphrodite, so I was uncharacteristically jumpy and anxious. It was so bad that I was barely even curious about Adrenochrome.
The rocket clicked into place, and I tested the weight of the launcher on my knees. The scope on this was large, square, and primitive, but the Creep said it wouldn’t matter; as long as I hit the broad side of this obese and doddering ship, I could finish the job and bury it at sea. It wasn’t time for that yet. As the light faded, I started to get more nervous. I was about to switch to the rifle’s better scope when something wrapped around my neck and pulled.
I dropped the rocket launcher and it fired in a cacophonous cloud of smoke. I was sure I was deaf, now, but my body was occupied with more urgent problems. My hands clawed at the belt that was twisted like a noose around me; I was being pulled backwards through the choking and searing cloud. Looming bodies took on vague forms as they emerged from the smoke. I kicked at them wildly, still trying to pry my neck free of their trap. The ringing in my ears was shrill, but somehow it sounded like a distant death knell. I saw the oil rig burning. The rocket had not only fired too early, it had completely missed the target and hit another ship. Clubs fell. I shielded my head. I saw the shine of blades and I felt myself being cut, I felt myself screaming, though I couldn’t hear it. The clubs found their mark, and everything went black.
4
I woke up chained to the rails and bleeding. “Yuh done miss, boy.”
“Somebody jumped me. What’s going on? I only saw one crew member on the decks.”
“Yuh don’ load uh rock’launcher ‘til you ready to fire it.” In spite of the panic and the ache, I was pissed that he was blaming this on me. His intel seemed remarkably bad. How had he not known that most of the crew would be on the way back from a supply run or dealing or whoring or whatever it was they were doing? It was his job to know. I was about to ask if Chubb could h
elp us when a door opened and he emerged from the blackness. His fingers were sharp and splayed, almost vampiric in their boniness.
“Chubb!” The Creep exclaimed. “Yuh done sold us out?” Oh shit, I thought. This was even worse than I thought. Chubb approached. I noticed to my horror that he had nothing on his feet. He spent every day walking this splintery deck completely barefoot, and he was likely totally nude under the trench coat. It was hard to explain why this was so scary, but it was. He was like an amalgamation of nightmares: naked in public, hair and facial features falling apart, responsible for cataclysms he couldn’t remember. He didn’t care. “Ah hope that blue ab-sinthe dint rot yuh balls off, boy. Yuh better be a-ready to do us youself here ana now, or Ima tell your crew how long yuh been on th’ payroll.”
“Blue absinthe…” Chubb said, as if that was all he had heard of what the Creep had been threatening. He had dropped to his knees before us, his disgusting head horribly close. “I didn’t sell you out, Creep…you are my friend…” It was the worst voice I had ever heard. It was anti-nasal, because he had no nose—this made it a guttural grave-rattle, punctuated by whispy aspirations from his nose socket which blew his hair strands about. “…But blue absinthe is my best friend…my king…my pantheon of Gods…” Discolored tears were starting to flow from his bulging eyes. “…When you drink it, everything is different…you go to a better world… angels dance on your--”
“Yuh done sold us out for uh alla-kin-drink buffet.” The Creep insisted. “Well fuck you, Chubb. And quit pus’footin’ aroun’ an’ kill us.” A smuggler wearing a necklace of tusks motioned for Chubb, and he turned and left.
That was when I had my little talk with Dread and the Creep opened up his vein.
5
At first, I had thought that Mission Creep was trying to kill himself. Ordinarily a pussy way to go out, but war correspondence had taught me that there were cases, especially in espionage, where it was the wisest and most honorable action. Back in the old days you heard stories of what’s-his-name trying to munch a cap of cyanide from a hollow tooth rather than being taken alive by the Kargivians who shot him down. Given the people we were dealing with here, it would be better to die quickly than slowly.
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