Kzine Issue 19

by Graeme Hurry et al.

  Stay Safe splatted on the hard stone, palm up.

  A bullet hole the size of a fist appeared in Ahmmad’s shoulder, and the sword that had been swooping toward my sternum clattered to the rock. Go Sean.

  The claymore was too heavy for me to wield one-handed, so I discarded it and dived between Ahmmad’s legs. Snatching his fallen sword, I plunged it up into his unarmored thigh. He grunted with rage. I rolled left. Pain and blood gushed from my mangled stump. Flat on my back, I fished my revolver out of its ankle holster and sighted his unibrow.

  He froze.

  Battle-crazed semi-mythical marginally demonic super soldiers didn’t hesitate, but somewhere deep inside, my long-neglected angel said, He’s surrendering.

  I kept the gun trained between his unblinking eyes. “Drop the sword, asshole. Hands on your head.”

  A crooked smile as Ahmmad very slowly raised his hands. I glimpsed a tiny red button sewn into his glove just as his thumb twitched.

  Screw the angel, I thought, firing blindly. The cave collapsed around us.

  * * *

  I awoke in the medical ward of an aircraft carrier somewhere south of Yemen. Sean sat slouched in a straight-backed chair, reading Mercenary Weekly. He looked up, “Hey there, dude.”

  My body felt like it was stuck in a vise. I winced as I struggled to turn my head. My neck was stuck in a vise, or at least a brace. Crazy leaned in and kissed me on the lips. I tried to stroke her cheek with my left hand, and then inadvertently screamed when I remembered that sword slicing off my left arm.

  Crazy giggled. Silent, but still a giggle. Nothing about this was funny, and my stump radiated pain through my entire body. “Ahmmad?” I croaked. My voice sounded like I had swallowed a kilo of gravel.

  “They never found him,” Sean said, mirroring Crazy’s palms up gesture. “Never found your arm either. We tried. Sorry about that, Hard.” He chuckled. Snipers did so not chuckle.

  “What the fuck is so funny about my missing arm?” I felt terrible as soon as I said it, for Crazy went ashen again. She reached tentatively over me and touched my left elbow.

  “Ouch, that really—” I stopped. It did really hurt, but I appeared to have a left elbow. I yanked up the sheet. A left elbow and a quarter of a forearm. With Stay Safe written in tiny letters on fresh skin, more pink than black.

  I vividly recalled not having a left elbow in the cave. Another scream. The nurse ran in. Sean shoed her out. “Randi says to tell you it will grow back. Something about a gift.”

  The gift of the einherjar, both a blessing and a curse. We didn’t die in bed, and we didn’t play dominos at the VA for the rest of our years. “How did you get me out?”

  “That was all Crazy. She set off charge after charge, a demolitionist’s search grid.”

  Thank you, I mouthed, squeezing her hand again, before dozing off to sleep.

  I dreamed of blood under a microscope, white and red cells battling it out on a glass slide. The blood cells were tiny but deadly, detonating in suicide attacks with enormous explosions. Never-ending attacks that seemed to do no damage yet made the laboratory quake. Then the blood cells were all gone, and I was on a beach, just me and Crazy. It was a really fine dream, until I picked a fight with the towel boy.

  I awoke and screamed from the pain. Regrowing an arm hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

  “Dude, you need to shape up,” Sean said. For some bizarre reason, he had traded his stocking cap for a beret, his Metallica t-shirt for dress blues. Crazy wore her dress uniform too, in a skirt of all things. And she had legs.

  “Uh, what’s with the peacock suits?” I asked.

  Crazy turned rigid, pantomiming a salute. Except she wasn’t pantomiming, and Sean had gone to attention too.

  “Hello soldier,” a familiar voice said from over my shoulder.

  “Sir.” I saluted as best I could with an arm in a sling, still unsure whom I was addressing.

  “At ease, son. Thanks for all you have done for your country.” His hair grayer, his smile even broader, the President took my bandaged hand.

  “Thank you, sir.” I wrenched my head from the brace, suppressed a scream of pain, and sat up. The sling apparatus crashed to the floor. I realized his thumb was turning pale within my grip and released him. “Sorry, sir.”

  Recognition swept across his eyes as he nonchalantly tried to shake circulation back into his hand. “I know you, don’t I? Some sort of scientist, right?”

  “Yes, sir. Corporal Regis. Sir.”

  He stepped back slightly as his handler whispered in his ear. “Of course, the cancer-fighting hero. Our nation is now doubly indebted to you, Dr.—”

  The steel hatch to the ward burst off its hinges, clattering across the spotless floor like a frost giant’s discus. A toddler in a yellow sundress scampered into the room carrying a toy sword. She dodged the two secret service agents who attempted to tackle her and jumped onto my lap. “Hej Papa.”

  “Hi Siggi,” I said, nuzzling her blond hair with my chin. I kissed her dark cheek. The sword was resting on my thigh, the metal cold, the blade far sharper than any toy. That little devil was perpetually encamped upon her shoulder. “My you’ve grown. How did you get here?”

  “Momma.”

  My head snapped toward the hatchway, pain lancing down my spine. Randi had a war ax over one shoulder and a diaper bag over the other, staring down three Secret Service agents with drawn handguns. Crazy stood in the middle, a white-gloved hand held out like a traffic cop toward each.

  “You might want to check the ax,” I said to Randi, before slowly turning my head back to face the President. He was attempting to cower behind two more agents without looking like he was doing so. “She’s with me, sir. My, um, ex.”

  “Make you a deal, boys,” Randi said with a grin, blue eyes retreating into sunken sockets, hair blazing white hot. “You put your itty bitty guns away; I stow the ax. After your boss gives Hard another medal, I’ll tell you who killed JFK.”

  Siggi tried on that same grin, her tiny face just as skeletal, her eyes as blue. “Betcha it was an einherja.”

  I grimaced. The President looked confused. Crazy cocked her head, stared at Randi for a moment and winked.

  THE DEATH POOL

  by Jeremy Essex

  For a week afterwards, nothing could have made Reggie go back to the place where it had happened. But after seven sleepless, nightmare haunted nights, he was finally compelled to return to the villa.

  He left his car by the edge of the woods, walking the final mile of his journey along the green, sloping hillside, the abundance of tall, leafy trees sheltering him from the baking heat of the Italian sun. As had been the case a week ago, he saw almost no one else for the entire length of his walk between the road and the house, only a teenage couple lying together in a cluster of trees. The villa was in a secluded spot, just outside Chiesiola, and about one kilometre from the coast. Reggie could hear the sea crashing in the distance as the grand looking house finally emerged from within the trees.

  He was approaching the house from the rear, so as not to be seen going in from the street entrance. He went in through the rear gate, pausing for a moment while he surveyed the villa’s two acres of lush garden. He studied the shuttered windows of the empty house, then began to walk towards the grove at the bottom of the garden. In his mind, he saw Mark waving to him from the entrance to the dark cave.

  “Reggie!” Mark’s voice echoed to him from seven days ago. “Great to see you man!”

  Mark was standing there in his shorts and sandals, his ever present dark shades shielding his eyes, showing off his tanned, muscly arms. Standing there, like he owned the whole of Italy, instead of a just low quality insurance brokers. There had been a time, of course, when Reggie had genuinely liked Mark, genuinely respected him, when the two of them had first met, sharing digs in the same house in London. Reggie had been at university then, Mark had just been starting his own business, and the two of them had been fast friends.

 
But that had been a long time ago.

  Mark’s ghost clapped him on the back. “How’s your hotel?”

  “Fine.”

  “You know you could have stayed here. I’m on my own at the moment.”

  “Amanda’s not here?”

  “Her mother lives in Tuscany. She’s over there for a week. Reggie, come and look at this.”

  Reggie stepped inside the cave. The heat was abruptly sucked out of the blistering Italian day as the world transformed around him into a dark, shadowy netherland carved out of black rock. Glistening stalactites hung from the jagged ceiling. As his eyes adjusted, he began to make out the cavern’s gently undulating floor. A large drop of moisture dripped from a stalactite, plopping against the surface of the underground pool.

  Here it was. The source of all the fuss.

  “Found it just two days after we moved in,” he heard Mark explaining to him. “The entrance to this cave was all covered by growth, I had to pull it all away. Apparently the floor of the cave used to be totally solid. What’s happened is, the floor has collapsed, revealing a huge underground lake beneath it.”

  “How deep is it?” Reggie’s words had echoed eerily against the walls of the cave, as if a hoard of unseen speakers, hiding somewhere in the darkness, whispered them back at him.

  “We don’t know yet,” Mark had said. “Some divers are coming out next month. But it’s deep. It’s what’s called a sinkhole. Apparently they have them all over southern Italy. There’s one near Rome that has been proved to be four hundred metres deep. It’s an entrance to an underground body of water, isolated from the sea for maybe millions of years. They can contain their own totally unique eco systems. There’s one in Mexico, apparently, where they’ve discovered six unknown species of bacteria. Biologists are falling over themselves to study this one. I’m going to let them, of course. For a reasonable price.”

  Mark had stepped to the edge of the rippling water, grinning at his reflection as he gazed into the dark depths.

  “Just think of it Reggie. Sealed up for millions of years. There could be things down there that no one’s ever seen.” He’d grinned broadly at Reggie. “It’s worth a fortune.”

  Reggie shivered. He closed his eyes as he saw himself stepping up behind Mark.

  “It’s fascinating Mark,” Reggie had said as he’d placed his hands against Mark’s back and shoved him into the water. Mark had cried and gasped, a splashing cacophony as he clawed desperately at the sides of the pool. The sinkhole was a sheer drop downwards, and every time Mark’s fingers grasped at the edge of the cave floor, Reggie had kicked them away.

  Mark had been a poor swimmer. “I’m drowning,” he’d cried, his mouth full of water. “Reggie! Reggie pleeeease!”

  Reggie had waited until Mark had stopped struggling, the back of the corpse’s head bobbing just above the water, then he’d turned and walked on trembling legs across the garden, back to his car.

  He’d spent the next week at the hotel, expecting the phone to ring at every moment.

  “Mr Lederer there’s some terrible news.”

  “Mr Lederer the police are here to see you.”

  But no one had phoned. No one had come. The body still had not been found, and now Reggie couldn’t stay away any longer. He had to see it again.

  Reggie’s heart beat furiously as he stepped towards the edge of the pool, his eyes narrowing, searching for the shape of the corpse floating in the water. Sunlight filtered into the cave, streaks of brightness lay across the rock floor and touched the edge of the dark pool. He studied every inch of the circular body of water, but its surface was perfectly flat. Finally, he knelt by the edge of the pool and stared down into its depths.

  The corpse should float. Shouldn’t it? It’s not there, almost as if… as if I didn’t kill him. As if it was all a dream.

  Deep down in the water, a pale shape seemed to shimmer up towards the surface. Reggie thought it resembled the shape of a dead face, before the image dissolved into wriggling fragments. He closed his eyes, crying out as he stumbled away from the pool. Finally he gripped himself, looking down into the featureless water until he was sure there really was nothing there.

  The body had gone. Could things have eaten it? Mark had said the sinkhole could be full of lifeforms.

  Or had somebody found it?

  He heard a sound, as if the echoes of his thoughts were magnifying inside the cave. Darkness moved in the corner of his eye.

  Reggie gave a yell. The sides of the cave pulsed in and out of existence, until his brain told him that the figure standing in front of him was a real, living human being.

  “Amanda.” Reggie almost laughed. “I didn’t think you were here.”

  Mark’s wife stepped around the edge of the pool, unblocking the cave’s entrance, the newly released sunlight revealing strands of her fire red hair. Amanda was twenty eight, tall and slender, her red hair falling past her shoulders. Her eyes looked into Reggie’s, then they moved very slowly downwards to the surface of the water.

  “I got back an hour ago,” she said. “I didn’t know how long to stay at mother’s.”

  “I thought the house was empty,” said Reggie.

  Amanda’s eyes were still locked onto the surface of the pool. “I hadn’t heard… anything from Mark… since Saturday.” She finally tore her gaze away, looking down at her feet, then closing her eyes.

  Reggie took hold of one of her pale hands. “It’s done,” he told her. “It’s finished.”

  Amanda finally looked up at him, her eyes wide in her white face, her lips trembling.

  “Is he?” Her eyes moved to the pool again.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh god.” Amanda turned away. “I thought, maybe you wouldn’t go through with it.”

  Reggie grabbed her as she began to walk away. “You knew I’d go through with it. Don’t start kidding yourself now. We did this Amanda. You and me.”

  He held her until she was forced to look into his eyes.

  It had started four weeks ago, in England, at Reggie’s flat in Kensington.

  “Leave him,” Reggie begged Amanda as they lay clasped together in his bed.

  “You know I can’t.”

  “But this villa, with you over there the whole time I’ll hardly ever see you.”

  “How many times have we done this Reggie? You know everything he gives me. And he pays for Mum to live in that seafront house. If I divorce him we’ll all lose everything.”

  “Everything?” Reggie had said furiously. “Remember Amanda, there’s one thing he’s never, ever been able to give you properly.”

  And then Reggie had reminded her, very fiercely.

  Afterwards, as Amanda lay panting next to him, she told him all about the sinkhole and the biologists.

  “He’s bound to ask you over to look at it. It’s all he talks about.”

  And there, as they’d lain kissing, reveling in each other’s sticky, sweaty bodies, they’d planned it.

  One week later, the invitation came.

  “I didn’t know if you were serious!” Amanda tried to pull away from him, her foot splashing against the edge of the pool. “I didn’t know if you’d really go through with it… I… I didn’t…”

  “Yes you did!” Reggie grabbed her again, forcing her to face him. “This is exactly what you wanted Amanda. You told me he drank too much in the afternoons, that he was always coming in here to look at the pool, that he could barely swim. You told me to come to the villa via the woods, because I wouldn’t be seen by anyone. You told me exactly how to do it.”

  Reggie looked at the pool. “It’ll be declared an accidental death. You’ll get all his money, and then we have everything. Amanda.”

  “But what if we don’t?” Amanda struggled. “What if you don’t get away with it?”

  “We will.” Reggie held her in front of him.

  “He’s dead Amanda. He’s dead, and I’m glad. Because I hated him. I hated him. I wanted what he had, and I took it.
”

  Amanda tried to look away. “I… I didn’t hate him.”

  “Maybe not,” said Reggie. “But you’re glad he’s dead, because now you’ve got everything you ever wanted.”

  Reggie pulled her against him. “Haven’t you Amanda?” He kissed her. “Haven’t you?”

  He pulled at her clothes. She struggled at first, but he held her firmly as he pulled off her blouse and her bra. She continued to protest feebly as he stripped her naked, but then she helped him take off his own clothes. He yanked her against him, pressing their fever hot naked bodies together.

  “Every time you came to me,” he said. “Every single time. You could never deny yourself, could you?”

  She began to kiss him, tremblingly, helplessly. Then Reggie stepped away, to the edge of the pool.

  “And now it’s all yours.” He pulled her towards him. “And you’re glad.”

  “No.”

  “Yes you are.”

  He leapt into the water, pulling her after him. She panicked and cried, until he held her against him. Unlike Mark, they were both strong swimmers. He steered her towards the middle of the pool, then to the far side until they came up against the sheer rock at the far edge. Holding her against the wall, he began to enter her.

  “Everything…” he said.

  Amanda held onto him.

  “… you want. Everything…”

  Her hands clawed at his back as he thrust deeper and deeper.

  “You want! Everything! Everything!”

  She wrapped her legs around him, hungrily pulling him deeper into her, her moans of terrible pleasure reaching fever pitch, louder and louder until her shrieks of unbearable joy became a cacophony of endless echoes inside the cave.

  * * *

  They lay side by side on the rock floor.

  “What we’ve done is evil,” she said.

  “I don’t care,” he replied.

  “Neither do I.” She kissed him.

  “You’ll have to report him missing.”

  “I know,” she said sleepily. He felt her shiver. “It’s cold.”