by Steven Welch
Let’s be clear. The Glowing Lion Fish was a beautiful animal. A head like a traditional lion on shoulders ornate with fins and behind, along the back, it had the display of spines that gave them their name.
Zuzu admired the beauty even as she considered how to kill it.
She crouched beneath The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault. Her knees ached but if she stood there was a good chance that she might be eaten. So there was that. Her blue jumpsuit was tighter than it once had been, but she felt it complimented her curves nicely, particularly her thick biceps and thighs. Zuzu lifted many weights and consumed a great deal of beer to become strong and thick and she was proud of her power and the meaty prominence of her haunches. She liked how she looked, having only half a head of hair and weathered face. When men met Zuzu for the first time they knew without question that here was someone who did not give a shit and would snap their spine without hesitation. Or at least that’s what she hoped they thought.
Zuzu watched the Glowing Lion Fish. There were at least two others in The Louvre but this beast was alone for the moment, sprawled in the hall’s center like a mutant house cat. She lifted her crossbow and sighted the creature. It would be an easy shot but if the first hit didn’t kill or incapacitate the brute, she would be in a world of hurt.
And I don’t know if I really want to kill it, she thought. They’re so damned cool.
But I’ve already been paid. A case of beer and a hundred rounds of good ammo. Damn.
A man came to her several nights before with the offer. He and his family could not visit The Louvre since the Glowing Lion Fish made it their home. Well, not entirely true. They visited the first time unaware of the new occupants and the man’s uncle was eaten. The risk of being devoured soured the family on their excursions to the museum, but they were art lovers and would not be deterred.
So, he came to Les Scaphandriers, The Astonishing Aquanauts, for help.
Well, that’s fine but these animals need a home too and I’m not keen on killing them just so some idiot and his brood can ogle the artwork when they get a wild hair, Zuzu thought. Besides, with these things on the prowl it was less likely that any of the idiots from The Truth would put the torch to a Da Vinci or anything. Less for me to worry about.
The mission of the Aquanauts was ongoing and clear. Preserve the beautiful things of the time before The Turn, catalogue, explore, and by doing so, bring back a culture brighter and better than ever before. The Louvre had been the least of their concerns because, untouched, it was relatively safe. And frankly, there were far too many pieces of art in the vast collection to even think of transporting halfway across town to their archive at L’Académie.
Of course, Zuzu thought, I’ve been crouching now for ten minutes and when I stand my knees will make a sound like popcorn being popped and the Glowing Lion Fish will absolutely hear me and certainly attack. Not sure I can hit it if it’s on the move and I don’t want to get eaten, not even for a case of beer and a hundred rounds of good ammo.
Damn.
She shifted. Her left knee made a little snap. The Glowing Lion Fish moved its head as if it heard then settled back down.
Zuzu reached into the quiver on her back and pulled out a dart.
Tranquilizer. I can make this work.
And if not? Dead. Right, bad idea. She put the tranquilizer dart back into the quiver.
I will not kill these animals.
Zuzu slipped the crossbow onto her back and then moved into a crab walk position. If I crab walk out of here, or at least far enough away, then my knees won’t crackle and maybe I can get out of this mess in one piece.
She began to crab walk out of the Denon Wing. Her triceps were strong, but it was only moments before they burned.
Stupid. Zuzu gritted her thick wide teeth and muscled on until she bumped into something large and alive.
She turned pivoted and stared into the curious eyes of another Glowing Lion Fish.
Now, she had trained with Jules Valiance and his Astonishing Aquanauts, and that training had been peculiar and rigorous and covered some strange territory. Death was to be expected and surprise was to be embraced.
Zuzu frowned and quickly reviewed her situation.
One carnivorous beast twenty meters away, the other in her face. A third somewhere, unseen. Physical position unfortunately compromised because the “crab walk” stance is not conducive to a quick violent response against this particular threat. Help in the form of two Aquanauts in training watching no doubt with a certain degree of horror from the far doorway to the left. Potential writer of obituary observing the situation from the doorway to the far right, accompanied by his partner who carried only a mallet and would certainly be drunk.
In the space of three seconds Zuzu reviewed her options and calculated them all as useless.
Well, there’s three seconds I’ll never get back, she thought.
Boldly do the unexpected and absurd. She’d learned that much from old Jules Valiance.
She sang.
Zuzu did not have a voice suitable for public performance but she had pitch control and the rich, husky timbre of her throat was pleasant enough for drunken ballads in candle-lit dens or a baby’s lullaby. There was something warm and touching in her rough delivery. Her eyes locked with the wide, clear eyes of the Glowing Sea Lion and she began her song in a low rumble that built steadily. The melody was “Mamma Mia” but she understandably forgot the lyrics in the moment so she improvised.
The beast showed teeth like cutlery but didn’t strike. Zuzu sang and remained as still as she could.
The other Glowing Sea Lion approached. It sniffed her crotch then pawed at her leg. Zuzu remained calm and sang.
It would be a good death, she thought.
“Hey! Have a piece of this!” A short man with a thick face appeared at the far right doorway. He extended his leg and pulled his pants up to reveal a meaty white calf.
Zuzu raised an eyebrow. Not what she would have done, but it was a decent enough attempt.
It worked. The two creatures made grunting noises and bounded off down the hall, their massive nails making loud tappings and scrapings against the floor.
They were moving fast so they had trouble stopping when they passed through the doorway. Two men, one of them the fellow with the plump calf, quickly ducked in and slammed the massive doors behind them.
“Run!”
There was a slamming, slashing, crashing at the thick old doors. The wood wouldn’t last long.
So she ran on tingling legs that popped and crackled until she was out of the Denon, down the dead escalators, and out the front door of the old museum into the wide open square beyond.
Two men, the plump one and the taller, thin one, were already there, panting and out of breath. Zuzu smiled and winked at them. The thin one winked back. The plump one spit.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” he said in French.
Zuzu shrugged.
“I’ve had none of their beer and we’ve fired none of their ammo. This is a risk and reward proposition and I’m not sure that the risk is worth the reward. I don’t want to kill the things. Seems a shame.”
The thin one spoke then.
“Agreed. They’re beautiful creatures and not doing any harm. Truth be told, they’re protecting the paintings. That’s the point, right?”
“But that nice el-Noori family,” said the plump one, “How are they going to teach their son about world culture if they can’t even walk through the Louvre without fear of being eaten?”
“They can visit our gallery in L’Académie. It’s not The Louvre but it’s not shit either. Maybe they should get off their asses and consider helping us start a new world culture,” she said.
Robert shrugged his slender shoulders.
“Nice family, though,” he said.
“Time to contact Elise. Let’s go. Nice family,” she said with a snort as she turned and began the walk back to L’Académie.
Renny, t
he plump one, and Robert, the thin one, followed.
THE SHORTWAVE
Elise could talk to the world from her penthouse.
There wasn’t much of a world left but there were still voices out there in the air, voices that could be discovered as she worked the portable shortwave radio that rested on a coffee table. A cable ran from the transceiver out to the rooftop at exactly the right length. She was on a high band frequency so the world could be hers if conditions were good. The voices were like ghosts, most of them. Strange languages crying out for anyone to answer. Elise understood French, Spanish, a bit of Arabic from her friends in Paris and her travels to this place, and a few words in Somali. So, sometimes she could hear a fragment of conversation that told her of people a world away who were looking for food, for weapons, for help, for hope.
Mostly, though, there was just a wash of static.
The world was an empty place now.
She slept after she returned to her penthouse from the pool deck. Elise rinsed her clothes in the tub of fresh well water in the ornate bathroom then draped everything over the balcony railing to dry. She cleaned her cuts and wounds with a bottle of moonshine she kept in the room then rinsed off with a bucket and a sponge while standing in the huge shower space. Marble tiles. Gold faucet fittings. Mirrors that seemed to go on forever.
There was a print of abstract patterns in a metal frame on the wall. She replaced the print with Van Gogh’s sunflowers.
Elise then hung the painting next to the others she nailed to the wall of the hotel room. A Matisse, a Renoir, several prints of work by Picasso, several others. It was a gallery of dreams and it had taken her months to collect them on her journey from Istanbul to Aqaba.
Clean, wearing an old t-shirt and a pair of shorts, she walked onto the balcony and stared out over the gulf.
The sea was as calm as a sheet of glass under the bright morning sun. She was ten stories up and from here she could see Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt. There was an overturned tanker the size of a small mountain that dominated the part of the sea closest to the shoreline of hotels and pool decks. It was a black and rusting thing, a carcass from a different time. Orcanum crabs the size of dogs used the tanker as a shelter and could be seen most days clambering up and down the sides. She rowed a little skiff out to the tanker when she arrived in Aqaba and had tried to communicate with these crabs but they were feral and dangerous. Not like one she had known at The Turn.
The area was almost fished out before The Turn but sea life returned in the past five years. There were few fishermen on the Gulf of Aqaba now and they fished from shore or from small boats. The fish, the shrimp, the squid, and the sharks thrived. The great and beautiful reefs came back as well. Their growth was a mystery to Elise. She imagined the creatures that comprised the reef were smart enough to understand humans were no longer a problem so they had blossomed out of celebration.
Not sure how many days left here. Need to dive again soon, she thought as she lightly turned the pale yellow knob of the old shortwave radio. Just static.
Her eyes were closed but her mind was open and active as she listened intently for voices from around the world. Minutes passed. Just static. Her stomach rumbled. She pulled a bag of crisps from a drawer in the coffee table and munched. Crisps lasted forever, sealed in their little bags and tins. Pringles were her favorite, and they seemed to have been a favorite to half of the Middle East because she found the unopened little tins everywhere as she traveled to this place.
Her eyes drifted back to the Van Gogh now and then.
She listened. A ghost of a voice rose from the static then disappeared again. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman but it sounded like English. Something about a storm? She adjusted the dial ever so slightly. There was a digital setting, but it didn’t always work well so she preferred to search through the ether bit by bit. Static. Damn. She moved the dial in the tiniest of increments trying to find that voice. A treasure hunt for ghosts. There. A woman’s voice, crackling and ghosting and drifting in and out.
“Waves high at Blackpool. Stay clear of shore. Storm just arrived. Waves high. Stay clear of shore, Blackpool. Storms just arrived, Blackpool.”
A warning then, for boats.
That’s optimistic, Elise thought.
She laughed and shook her head. She had traveled far and had seen three boats big enough to be on the ocean.
Three.
The voice disappeared. Well, that’s the way. Just spirits coming and going. A lighthouse with a voice somewhere in the storm. Just drifting spirits.
She checked the time on the wrist gadget.
Damn. Elise wished that Jules could function as a long distance communicator too. She remembered how easy it was to call anyone, anywhere, in the time before The Turn. There had been phones everywhere. Of course, she had been a child and in an orphanage at that, so she didn’t have a phone, but they were out there nevertheless.
Jules could track targets with the proper chip, it held information, it could signal simple codes, but it certainly wasn’t a phone. Not even close. So now she was stuck with the damned shortwave and all of its limitations.
Ten o’clock in the morning, Elise Standard Time. Wherever she was, she was supposed to dial a specific frequency at ten o’clock in the morning. Days could pass, or even weeks, when she didn’t bother or couldn’t use the shortwave for any number of reasons, but here in Aqaba she’d had little excuse. She had been in the penthouse for three months, with a system to charge a battery and an open sky.
Elise pressed the trigger on the side of the radio. She dialed the correct frequency. The static lessened but didn’t disappear. She spoke into the microphone receiver.
“CQ CQ. CQ CQ. Paris, this is me. CQ CQ this is me. I’m ok. Everything is ok.”
Static, then, “Copy that, Elise,” Zuzu’s familiar voice, “we’re ok too. Where are you now?”
“Same.”
“Copy. Are you coming home?”
She sat quietly for a moment.
“Yeah, not yet. Big world. Found something new though. I have quite a stash.” Elise said.
Now there was silence from the other side. Just static for a few seconds.
“Time to take your stash to its home. Final leg of your mission. 30.0478 degrees North, 31.2336 degrees East. Then, come back to Paris,” said Zuzu.
Elise said nothing, but she scribbled the coordinates down on a piece of paper.
“Elise, you’ve done so well. Go to those coordinates. Drop what you’ve found there. You’ll understand when you arrive to that location. Just use your Aengus as a guide. Then, time to come home. Zuzu out.”
There was nothing more from the other voice.
Elise powered down the radio.
“Love you too,” she whispered to nobody.
THE RED BLOSSOM
The airship of Jack the Dream Butcher descended along the violence of winter winds onto the snowy hills of western France.
The sky jellies were dying and there had been nothing to feed them for the last few days of their long journey. The creatures lashed out with their long tentacles, tentacles that could kill a man or a cow with a touch, but Jack and his men had been clever in the design of their airship so they always remained just out of reach.
The descent was a spiral along the currents of wind, a battering of hail and snow, a hard and sudden plummet on the outskirts of an old village.
The men screamed and held tight to anything they could as their airship of plywood and metal sheet came apart like a child’s toy. Jack screamed along with the rest and he was just as surprised that he was in one piece after the chaos had settled.
He did not believe he was blessed. There was no purpose to that. He would die when he died and it would be as ignoble or as meaningful as that moment allowed.
Dominic hugged Jack and cried.
“Thought that was suicide, man. Really did. Flying across the Atlantic ocean in an RV? Flying with those jellyfish? You’re the real de
al, my brother. You are the real deal,” Dominic said with gasps and shouted words.
Jack hugged him back but did not shed tears. He looked back at the scattered debris of their vessel, the weak blobs that were the dying jellies, and the hustled movement of men as they gathered their things from the wreckage.
He was proud.
The forest was a chessboard of bare trees jutting out of low snow. The village just beyond the tree line seemed abandoned, a still ramble of stone buildings that loomed out of a thin fog.
There was a family in the village. They were the only residents. A father, a mother, and three young children. The parents were immigrant laborers from Sudan and they worked the fields of the villages as a way to survive when they made the hard journey to France. They were the only ones of the little village who survived The Turn. They raised a boy and two girls in the years that followed.
They were good people, but they were looking for something to believe in so they were the first to join Jack on this side of the Atlantic.
The Truth, because that’s what Jack called his army, traveled hard by foot for many days to the east and then south, along the Seine as it meandered down through the hills, the valleys, the towns, the cities. They began as twenty, then there were more, then there were thirty believers.
Nobody refused as they went. Jack made sense and everyone needs something to believe in.
There was a snowy morning in the Loire Valley, for example. The village was a beautiful tumble of old buildings. Six men and one woman lived there, and they stood around the fire that Jack and his men had built for warmth and to prepare food. Jack’s black leather coat was dusted with snow and his beard was long and white.
“What creatures came here at The Turn?” Jack asked in his halting French. The oldest of the six men of the village answered in English.
“They were skinny black men with many eyes and hands like blades. They climbed walls like they were spiders and killed everything they found, man, woman, cat, dog, you name it. We called them the men of many eyes. There was something big, too, bigger than a chateau, but it passed one night and we never saw it again thank God.”
