King Bullet

by Richard Kadrey

She sits in a chair in the corner of the room.

  “I don’t like it. Janet. Tell him.”

  They say, “I don’t like it either. Why is it always you who has to do these things?”

  “Because he asked for me. He almost killed Kasabian to get my attention last time. What will he do if I ignore him this time?”

  Janet comes over and hugs me.

  “I know that all makes sense, but I still don’t want you to go.”

  “I don’t either. If Abbot had done his damn job and killed the King I wouldn’t have to. But he blew it. Now it’s my mess to clean up.”

  “I’m going with you,” says Brigitte.

  I shake my head.

  “There’s no fucking way.”

  “You cannot go in there alone. You need someone to watch your back.”

  “Why? There’s going to be fifty, a hundred of them. What’s going to happen except that you get hurt too?”

  “There is no argument. I’m going.”

  “Maybe you can help her,” says Fuck Hollywood. “Get her some body armor or something.”

  “There,” says Brigitte. “You can’t say no now.”

  “I don’t have anything like that here. I’m going to have to go out and steal it.”

  “There’s about a million boarded-up stores. It won’t be hard,” say Fuck Hollywood.

  I look at Janet.

  “What do you think?”

  They have their arms around themselves.

  “I’d be less scared if Brigitte went with you.”

  “All right. I guess I just have to find a cop supply house.”

  “Found one,” says Fuck Hollywood. She holds up her phone so I can see the screen. “There’s one at La Brea and West Third. Uniform Professional Warehouse.”

  “There. The matter is settled,” says Brigitte.

  Janet says, “When are you meeting him?”

  “Nine tonight.”

  “That will put you out after the curfew.”

  “I have no intention of either of us being out in the street. We’ll shadow walk both ways.”

  No one says anything for a minute. Then Fuck Hollywood says, “I know it’s early, but can we start drinking?”

  “I wouldn’t mind one,” says Janet.

  Brigitte nods.

  “Me too.”

  It’s unanimous. I take the bottle from my coat and set it on the table.

  Fuck Hollywood frowns.

  “Are you wearing my coat?”

  “Yeah. I lost mine. Is that okay?”

  “Just don’t get it burned up or anything. I like that coat.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “And don’t get any more blood on it. It has plenty.”

  “Got it.”

  I smile at her, but she looks scared.

  Janet gets some glasses from the kitchen and hands them out. We pass around the bottle. After a couple rounds, I slip out to the cop supply house and come back with enough gear to outfit a small army. We spend an hour or so dressing up Brigitte like a Transformer until we come up with a combination of gear that protects her but lets her move too. Then we pass around the bottle until it’s empty.

  Janet takes me back into the bedroom and we lie down together. They hold on to me tight and I pull them close. We’re both a little drunk and fall asleep for a while. I wake up a few hours later and go into the bathroom to call Abbot.

  “This is a terrible idea,” he says when I explain what I’m going to do.

  “I know it is. So give me an alternative.”

  There’s a pause.

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Then stop talking about it and tell me about the weapon. First, why didn’t you tell me about it before? It could have solved everybody’s problems.”

  “I don’t have a lot of information about the weapon beyond the fact that it exists.”

  “Can you get it for me?”

  “I’m working on it. But the Golden Vigil is still a thorny issue with the government. There are a lot of people who want it swept under the rug, so getting some of the old equipment out of lockdown is going to be tricky.”

  “You’re the Council. You people are magic. Do something. Hoodoo someone and get them to sign whatever goddamn forms they have to sign.”

  “I keep telling you it doesn’t work that way.”

  “Then what use are any of you? Assuming I survive tonight, don’t call me again until you have the weapon.”

  I hang up on him. He calls me back a second later, but I let the call go to voicemail. Fuck Hollywood and Brigitte are watching a movie in the living room while Kasabian snores away on the sofa. I make some tea and bring it in to Janet, but they’re asleep. I lie down with them and wait for night to fall.

  The Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel is a seventies tropical oasis at the corner of Yucca Street and Grace Avenue in North Hollywood. Dozens of discreet rooms and a big pool surrounded by lots of palm trees and ferns. Chaise longues and beach umbrellas everywhere on the concrete shoreline. It’s a legend among the older rock and roll crowd for its bar and debauched parties.

  But the place hasn’t done so well since the virus hit. It pretty much shut down early in the epidemic. I don’t know when or how King Bullet took it over, but his presence is obvious from a block away.

  Me and Brigitte check out the Hawaiian from across the street. She’s strapped into so much body armor she looks like a miniature Gundam. Most of the hotel’s lounges and umbrellas are in the pool, along with an assortment of TVs and mattresses. An early-sixties Cadillac Eldorado is nose down in the water, its tail fins pointing skyward like some chrome and plastic Stonehenge.

  There are Shoggots everywhere—on this street, sitting or lying facedown by the pool, either passed out or dead. A few look our way, but none seem very interested in us. I look at Brigitte.

  “You ready for this?”

  “Of course not. Are you?”

  “Not even a little.”

  We walk over to the hotel to see what kind of reception we might get. Brigitte has her gun out and I have the na’at in my hand. But we don’t need them. The Shoggots couldn’t care less about us. Maybe they got the word that we were coming or they’re just too far gone into virus psychosis to register us as real. Still, we move slowly and carefully, trying not to make a sound.

  We pass the first group of Shoggots and make it past the pool. Then, me and Brigitte look at each other.

  “Where to?” she asks.

  “I have no idea. He didn’t say.”

  “Lovely. I suppose he meant to disorient you.”

  “He’s off to a good start. Come on. Let’s take a look at the front office and see if there’s anything in there.”

  The check-in area for the Hollywood Hawaiian looks like the rest of the place—like a bunch of deranged monkeys hopped up on meth systematically dismantled the place. There’s a bloody body behind the counter. It’s been stripped clean of everything but the surgical mask still on its face.

  We’re about to head out when Brigitte spots a map of the hotel on the wall. All the rooms look pretty much the same except for three: the bar, a conference room, and the bridal suite.

  The bar seems like a good choice, so we head there first.

  When we get there it’s full of drunk and passed-out Shoggots, but no King Bullet. Another corpse is sprawled in one of the go-go dancer cages on the side of the little stage.

  The conference room is an even bigger waste of time. Just a junkyard of smashed video equipment and broken tables and chairs. That leaves only one place where the King might be.

  We hear the bridal suite before we see it. It sounds like New Year’s Eve on fast-forward, complete with gunshots and screams. I take off my mask before we go inside. Brigitte understands why. We have to make an impression on King Bullet and he wouldn’t respect me if we came in timid and masked up. To Brigitte’s credit, she slips hers off too before we go inside.

  No one even notices us when we come in. There’s
a party going on inside, and it looks like it’s been going on for days. Maybe weeks.

  To the right of the door is a large hot tub full of guns and ammo. A series of long tables ring the room. One is piled high with meat and cake and booze. On another table is a mountain of cash—bundled twenties, fifties, and hundreds. Another table is covered with prescription bottles. Hundreds of them. People help themselves to whatever they want. The truly jaded Shoggots don’t bother with the bottles. They grab handfuls of mystery medicine from a fish tank at the end of the table, filled to the brim with a colorful assortment of pills, tabs, and gel caps.

  The screams we heard from the hall come from a far corner of the room. It’s a scarification station. New Shoggots or jaded ones who aren’t quite Halloween ugly enough yet get their features done by what I guess are their equivalents of tattoo artists. Only they don’t work with needles. I mean they do, but they also use scalpels, branding irons, dental tools, acid, and little saws. Some of the Shoggots gobble fistfuls of pain pills. Others grin through the agony, at one with their psycho ugliness.

  In another corner of the room, a small Asian man in a dirty white apron is chained to the wall.

  The bridal suite’s heart-shaped bed stands on end at the far side of the room. They’ve been using it for target practice. Knives cover the front and it’s full of bullet holes.

  Someone is playing Skull Valley Sheep Kill’s new album at full blast so that it almost shakes the walls, and it really pisses me off they like my music.

  The place reeks of sweat and vinegar.

  King Bullet is sitting at a table by himself, as quiet and still as the room is loud and chaotic. He has his skull mask on, as well as what looks like the bloody shirt of the check-in clerk. Surrounding him on the table are heaps of sushi along with his kpinga and his gold narco .45s. On a TV nearby, Julie Andrews sings about how the hills are alive with the sound of music.

  When we reach his table, he looks from Julie to us. I sit down. He laughs.

  “There he is. Mayor McCheese himself. And he brought a friend,” says King Bullet. He gives Brigitte a little wave. “Hello, dear.” She ignores him, keeping an eye on the room.

  A sweaty creep in a sleeveless My Favorite Martian T-shirt comes over. The shirt is three or four sizes too small, so his hairy gut peeks out from underneath. He looks Brigitte over.

  “I know you,” says the creep. “You were in Orgy of the Murder Girls.”

  I wave my arm up and down to catch his eye.

  “Be nice. She’s a friend of mine.”

  He looks to King Bullet.

  “What’s-her-name here does porn.”

  “So what?” I say. “Everybody’s got to pay the bills.”

  He looks at her again.

  “She fucks like a fucking demon.”

  Brigitte just stares at him. When I start to get up King Bullet says, “Go have some pills, Monkey.”

  A few seconds pass and the creep wobbles away to the pill table, making jerkoff gestures as he goes.

  The King picks up a piece of sushi and says, “Don’t mind him. This uni has more brains than Monkey.”

  I look at him.

  “Why don’t you take that mask off?”

  He sets the uni down and looks over the food.

  “Maybe later. When you’ve earned it.”

  “Who are you?”

  He laughs again, a little giddy this time. He’s playing a game and we’re in his house, so we have to go by his rules. The King chuckles one last time and looks at me, all innocence.

  “Who am I? Just another small-town boy trying to make it big in Hollywood.”

  I shake my head.

  “I think you peaked too early. Just another one-hit wonder. Why don’t you go home?”

  “Those other people didn’t have a plan.”

  “And you do?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I’m more of a mellow ‘California Dreamin’’ kind of guy.”

  King Bullet laughs at that and pushes some sushi my way.

  He says, “Let’s start over. Have dinner with me.”

  Selecting a salmon roll, he pops it in his mouth. A second later he spits it out into his hand. Roots around the mess with a finger and pulls out a shard of glass.

  “Now how did that get in there?” he says.

  The King takes my plate away and holds it out in the direction of the man chained to the wall. He says, “Junji. Did you do that?”

  The chained man nods.

  “Of course.”

  “Why?”

  “I made it for you.”

  The King rubs his hand clean on the plate and sets it on the table.

  He says, “I admire your honesty and ambition.”

  With his clean hand he picks up one of the narco guns and pumps six shots into his sushi chef. Everybody but me and Brigitte laughs. Monkey steals Junji’s hachimaki and puts it on his own greasy head.

  With a sweep of his arm, King Bullet dumps all the food onto the floor.

  He says, “I guess sushi is off. Monkey, why don’t you take some money and get us dim sum?”

  Monkey squints.

  “What’s dim sum?”

  “You,” I say. “You’re dim sum, you fucking pork bun.”

  The King smiles and waves a hand at the comment.

  He says to me, “You need to relax and unwind a little. Want Monkey to bring you some pills?”

  By the aquarium, Monkey grabs a handful of random pills and stuffs them in his mouth and chews.

  I look back at the King.

  “I’ll pass.”

  He smiles to himself.

  “Before this is over, I’m going to suck the marrow from your bones.”

  I lean on the table.

  “I bet you’re the kind of guy who names his cock. Big Jim or maybe Krull.”

  King Bullet looks where I’m leaning.

  “Do you miss your special arm?” he says.

  “That Kissi thing? Why would I miss that?”

  “It made you special. It raised you above the ordinary drones and yet you couldn’t wait to get rid of it.”

  “They cut off my arm and gave me that Kissi thing as a joke. Would you want to carry around that memory and look at it every time you took a shower?”

  “More than anything.”

  I notice that the Shoggots here aren’t immune to autophagia. Scattered around the room, men and women gnaw on their hands and arms. No one pays them any attention.

  “Why do you have such a thing for me?” I say.

  Breathing in, the King giggles a little, having a grand time.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe you remind me of someone. Maybe I just don’t like your face.”

  “Let’s see yours, Brad Pitt.”

  He takes a pack of Maledictions from his pocket and sets them on the table between us. I’m shocked, but I try not to show it.

  I say, “Where did you get those?”

  “The same place you get them.”

  “You’re saying you can go Downtown?”

  The King ignores the question and strikes a match.

  “Would you like one?” he says.

  I don’t want to take anything from this prick, but I have to know if it’s real. I take a cigarette from the pack and he lights me up. Then he lights one for himself.

  Fuck me if this isn’t a real Malediction. But I’m still not buying his story that he can Lindy Hop into Hell and back. He’s got another angle. I just have to figure out what it is.

  “Tell me something,” he says. “What are you exactly? You used to kill monsters. What are you doing with nobodies like her?”

  He nods to Brigitte.

  “Careful. She’s a friend.”

  Monkey comes over and sniffs her neck. She backhands him onto the floor.

  “And that ridiculous thing in your bed,” the King goes on. “Not a man or a woman. A freak. Admit it.”

  I look around, wondering how many people I’d have to kill to
get out of here if I murdered King Bullet right now.

  I say, “Don’t even start that shit with me.”

  “How can you stick your cock in something like that?”

  I’m fast when I want to be. Faster than these doped-up hyenas. I slip the black blade from my coat and shove it through the King’s hand and into the table. When I take the knife out, I draw it through his hand, splitting his palm in two.

  The King just grins. By the time I put the blade away, his hand is almost healed.

  “Nice try,” he says. “But you should have taken my head.”

  “If that’s what you want. Hold still.”

  He laughs and claps his hands as if he’s just thought of something.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” says the King. “I’ll leave you and your friends alone. I’ll even leave L.A. You just have to do something for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  Serious now, he says, “I want you to admit what you are—and to make amends for it.”

  “Amends. That’s an awfully big word for a fuckwit in a Halloween mask.”

  He points to me.

  “But amends are what you owe. You owe your friends. L.A. The world. Me. You have to make things right.”

  “What amends do I owe you? What are you talking about?”

  He puts his palms on the table and leans forward.

  “I want you to get down on your knees and apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “For everything. Do you think a tenth of what’s happened the last few years would have happened without you? Your whole life, you’ve brought doom down on yourself over and over again. The world is just your collateral damage.”

  “I didn’t bring you here.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “How?”

  “Wrong question. The right one is why.”

  “Okay. Why?”

  “You’ll know that when you’ve earned a look at my true face.”

  His hands are still on the table. I grab them and pull him across to me. He doesn’t resist, just laughs as I haul his ass my way. A moment later, what feels like a ten-ton octopus lands on my back. It’s all grasping hands and arms that squeeze the breath from me. As bad as this shit hurts, I know I can kill King Bullet before this Shoggot octopus crushes me. But when I hear Brigitte scream, I know that they have her too, and I didn’t bring her along on a suicide run. I let go of the King and he waves a hand to get everybody off us.