“Yeah,” says Efrim. He knows this house. He smells the people who live here sure as he smells the mold lurking beneath the floor. He grew up in a house just like it. Replace the river smell with sewer stench, trade crabs and crayfish for rats the size of cats. Nausea washes over him, the same soul-sickness that hit him earlier that night, had him pondering death.
Kitchen’s empty. Dishes piled up in the sink. Rotten food a feast for hundreds of cockroaches.
“Hello,” someone clicks.
Moric and Efrim one-eighty, find themselves aiming at a pre-teen shub’nar. The boy barely reaches up to Efrim’s chest. He is shirtless and wears ill-fitting pants, ragged things. Grime and mud stain his face, his chest.
Efrim clicks the boy’s name, and the boy nods in response.
“Lower your weapon, Mor. Slide up your visor.”
“Why?”
“We’re scaring him.”
“He doesn’t look scared to me.”
“Lower your damn weapon.”
“Okay, okay.”
The boy looks up at Efrim. “I am ready to go, sir.”
“Go where?”
“To the desert place. Thank you for helping me.”
“It wasn’t us, boy.”
“You sound funny.” The boy’s tentacles wriggle softly. Laughter.
“What’s he saying?” says Moric.
“Shut up, I’ll explain later.”
“But you are here to take me, yes?” clicks the shub’nar.
“How old are you?”
“In seasons?”
“Yes.”
“Eleven winters.”
Efrim frowns. Eleven winters. Barely older than when he himself ran away from home, learned to live in the ghetto, found ways to survive the city, what it does to people. Eight winters ago.
“What did you do, kid? What happened?”
“I asked for help and I got it. Now I would like to express gratitude by repaying my debt.”
“Where are your parents?”
The shub’nar extends his suction cup-covered arm towards the stairs. “Upper floor.”
“Okay, stay here.”
Efrim nods at Moric. “His parents are up there. Let’s go.”
Up the stairs. The smell intensifies and Efrim knows what lies in wait. In the bedroom, he crouches by the rotting corpses, piled atop one another like vulgar ragdolls. Dried blood splatters on every surface. He slaps the flies away, rolls the mother’s corpse over. Her torso has been shredded open from neck to crotch. Her breasts have been cut off and are nowhere to be found. Her insides have the consistency of stew. Her beak has been shoved between her legs. Her mouth-tentacles have been ripped off and planted in her eye sockets.
Efrim takes a moment to remove his helmet and then throws up.
“Those wayfarers did that,” he says, wiping his mouth. “She was tortured for a long time.”
Moric shakes his head. “How’d they get here? And if they can get here, why bother opening a portal downtown?”
“I don’t know,” mumbles Efrim.
He doesn’t close the mother’s eyes, doesn’t waste time going over the father’s body.
Back down the stairs, Efrim kneels by the waiting child. He brushes dirt away from the boy’s face, stares into his black eyes. “Why?”
“They were not good parents. They did not honor the blood bond.”
Efrim is close enough to see the ugly details on the child’s skin: bruises, cuts, scars. An ideogram of abuse. “How did it happen?”
“I prayed.”
“You prayed? To whom?”
“I prayed to the blind horned ones who bask in the suns.”
“How did you know to pray to them?”
The child hesitates.
“Come on, you can tell me.”
“I read about them in a book of prayers. It said they grant wishes to the just. It said they dispense justice. I think I am just. So I clicked the words three times and they helped me.”
Efrim turns to look at Moric. “The boy used an incantation. Probably from a black journal. He had his parents assassinated.” Efrim swallows hard. “Given how badly they were tortured, I don’t think they merely beat him.”
“How’d he get ahold of the rites?” Moric asks.
“Boy, where did you get the book of prayers?”
“From a shaman. He is well-known here. He lives close by.”
“Is he of your race?”
The boy shakes his head. “No. Bat-kin.”
Camazotz, thinks Efrim. “Okay. And how did you pay?”
The kid stares at him for a long time. Eventually, he lowers his head. “I didn’t have any money,” he clicks.
Efrim nods, understands. He remembers footsteps in the hallway at night.
“I want to go,” clicks the shub’nar. “I must repay my debt.”
“Let’s get you out of this place.”
They take a detour on the way back, staying out of sight of roaming shub’nar. Two humans trying to escort a young kin away from his home would bring nothing but blood. When they reach the transport, Efrim straps the shub’nar in the back and asks, “The shaman, where does he live?”
The boy tells him.
Moric stands by the vehicle, smoking. “We ready?”
“I’ll be right back. You watch him.”
“What, you gonna leave me alone with the fucking squid-spawn?”
Efrim hammers the butt of his rifle through Moric’s open visor, then slams the weapon horizontally into his throat, choking him and pinning him against the vehicle’s shell. Moric’s feet are lifted off the ground.
“You do not talk to him. You do not call him a squid. Humanoctopus would be more appropriate, by the way, you dumb cunt. You do not taunt him. You wait for me quietly. I will ask him when I get back. If you so much as look at him or take off without me, I will do worse things to you than what happened to his parents. Are we understood, you fat racist piece of shit?”
“Understood,” blurts Moric through broken teeth, blood gushing from his nostrils.
The camazotz shaman sleeps upside down in his tent, surrounded by stacks of books, potions lining the shelves. The bat-kin opens his eyes and Efrim feels his lips widening into a demonic grin as he aims.
“What do you want?” the shaman moans.
“A retribution in blood,” says Efrim.
He shoots the shaman in the crotch three times. The camazotz falls to the ground. It feels good, emptying those bullets. It feels a long time coming. He sees a different face, lying there, bleeding to death.
Efrim walks out of the tent smiling.
Return to Ghoulish Bend. They walk past the two animists, the vines open. Efrim turns to Moric and says, “Get lost.”
“What?”
“You get lost. You’re done. Go home. Bandage your face up, get a bender to fix your teeth and your nose.”
“I’m gonna report you.”
“No, you won’t.”
Moric spits on the ground then walks away.
The young shub’nar and Efrim walk to the portal area. More troops, more squadrons have joined the fray. Dozens upon dozens of rifles, canes, and bows are aimed at the three reptile-kin. Two additional ships now patrol the area. The wayfarers do not appear to have moved at all.
Duke Iravi Zorem stomps over to Efrim, and nods at the child. “I’m impressed, ensign. Have you run into any trouble?”
Efrim looks up to the jentil, his head reaching halfway to the man’s chest. “Some trouble.”
“Shub’nar body count?”
“Zero.”
“And your partner?”
“He’s a piece of shit and I would like to request that your Highness remove him from the force.”
“I will take it under consideration due to your performance. The boy came willingly?”
“Yes.”
“Parents?”
“Dead,” Efrim says, nodding in the direction of the wayfarers. “They were summoned by the boy.”<
br />
“I see,” says the Duke. “Hired killers. Arbiters, you think?”
“Yes. Or something close to that. Distant judicars. Permission to approach them?”
“Granted.”
The young shub’nar looks enraptured by the wide-open gate, the electricity raging from its maw, the strangers waiting for him.
“Come,” says Efrim, and offers the child his hand. The child grasps it. They walk.
“Hello,” clicks the boy. “Thank you for your help.”
“Hello, young one,” replies the same reptilian who addressed the Duke earlier that night. Efrim blinks. “You can speak shub’nar?”
“Somewhat.”
“What is your race called?”
“There is no name in the sea tongue for it, nor in any language you might know.”
“Why do you want the boy?”
The wayfarer speaks using a heavily accented shub’nar sub-slang. “We agreed to dispense justice. We found his cause worthy, so we championed him. Now one must be cleansed.”
“Hasn’t he suffered enough?”
The thing cocks its head to the side. “Of course. Too much. He has suffered the blood price. He has suffered many other prices through his life, but he chose to endure the blood price on his own.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I understand,” clicks Efrim.
“He killed his breeders.”
“You didn’t do it for him?”
The wayfarer chuffles. “If we could freely sneak into your homes, human, why would we be standing here like dumb grass-grazers? No, we only gave him the approval, and a dash of power to follow through. As I told you, we believed his plea to be worthy. Now we will welcome him and nurse him through his soul-debt.”
Efrim sees the mother’s corpse again. Days and nights of torture. Mangled body parts soaking in puddles of blood. A stain on the boy’s soul. “Will he return to the city?”
“That will be up to him, once he has healed.”
“I will come with you,” says the boy, and he lets go of Efrim’s hand. He runs to the wayfarers, and turns back to wave. “Good-bye, funny speaker.”
“Good-bye, little one.”
The three wayfarers and the boy head towards the gate.
“Wait,” shouts Efrim.
Their main speaker stops. The other two and the child disappear through the portal. “Yes?”
Efrim considers his words, then says, “Every night I wish I could have paid the blood price when I was his age.”
The creature speaks without facing him. “You carry this boy’s ache?”
“Yes.”
“What is it you seek?”
Efrim stares down at his badge, his weapon. “Justice,” he says.
“Then come with us,” the arbiter says, and Efrim walks toward the beckoning light.
axel taiari
is a french writer, born in paris in 1984. his writing has appeared in multiple magazines and anthologies including bastion, 365tomorrows, no colony, cease, cows, and several others. he is the co-author of the soul standard, a noir novel-in-novellas to be published by dzanc books in 2015. read more at www.axeltaiari.com.
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JOSHUA CITY IS ONE OF SEVEN MAJOR CITY-STATES, A POST-APOCALYPTIC ALTERNATE REALITY WHERE WATER IS SCARCE AND TECHNOLOGY IS AT MID-TWENTIETH-CENTURY SOVIET LEVELS. AS THE NOVEL OPENS, THE BAIKAL SEA HAS BEEN POISONED, CAUSING A MAJOR OUTBREAK OF A LEPROSY-LIKE DISEASE CALLED NECROSIS. AGAINST THIS BACKDROP OF INCREASING VIOLENCE AND OPPRESSION, WE SEE THE LIVES OF SEVERAL CHARACTERS PLAY OUT.
“A cautionary tale, historical artifact, and literary
work of the highest artistry.”
—OKLA ELLIOTT & RAUL CLEMENT, from the introduction
Exigencies Page 24
