Atomic Underworld: Part One

by Conner, Jack

  The smells relaxed Tavlin for some reason. This had been his home, or at least the place where he had spent the most time, for nearly a decade, though that time had long since passed.

  “It hasn’t changed much,” he said.

  Frankie raised a hairless eyebrow. “Oh, there’s change, all right. You’ll see. C'mon. We have to meet the Boss.”

  They moved into the backrooms, and the sounds of revelry from the front diminished into a vague roar. Here secretaries typed notes and hard-looking men cleaned guns. Several looked up as Tavlin walked past, and he noted familiar faces. “Hey, it’s Tavlin!” one said. “What gives?” “You back or what?”

  “Or what,” Tavlin replied, though he couldn’t resist a small smile. He was rarely greeted with warmth in the world above.

  They moved toward a certain back room. Its stone walls were thicker than the others, yet even so Tavlin heard grunts and smacking sounds when he drew close. Two toughs stood beside the door. One was tall, slick and pale. He had no nose, at least not a human one, but a rounded lump with holes in it like a fish might have, and his eyes were solid black, shark-like. He was Galesh, the Boss’s right-hand man. The other man, Edgar, was shorter and more human-looking, though he possessed the gills of a fish, which pulsed weirdly on his thick neck.

  “Boss’s busy,” Galesh said, when Tavlin and Frankie approached.

  A smacking sound came from the other side of the metal door, and a curse.

  “He’ll see us,” Frankie said.

  Galesh studied him a moment, then rapped on the door, and someone on the other side slid away the small panel. A short exchange followed, locks popped and the door banged open, revealing a small, dingy stone room lit by a hanging alchemical lamp; its red fluid flowed slowly, making the light shift in languid motions. A man strapped to a wooden chair hunched in the middle of the room. Bruises covered his face and body, and blood soaked his hair and pretty much every other part of him. One of his arms had the texture of a sea horse. He looked even redder with the light on him, but Tavlin figured he was red enough.

  Boss Vassas stood over the man, shirtsleeves rolled up, blood dripping from his fists, chest heaving. The Boss was of medium height, but his chest was deep and his arms thick. His mutations were subtler than some; he bore a slightly piscine cast, his mouth a little too wide, his lips thick, his skin grayish, but nothing overt. He could almost pass for an uninfected. He had a rugged face, with bushy black eyebrows and short wavy black hair, now with as much salt in it as pepper, normally combed back from his broad forehead but at the moment disheveled and sweat-soaked. An old scar curled up from his right eye, disappearing into the hairline over his ear.

  “Where the hell is it?” he demanded of the man in the chair. “Why’d you take it—why? And why’d you kill her, you fuck!” He balled a fist and struck the man in the face. The man listed backward and would have fallen but for the nails sticking the chair to the floor. Even so, the wood creaked, and Tavlin supposed the Boss would soon need a new chair. “Damn you!”

  The man spat blood. “I’m t-telling you, w-we didn’t take it. It wasn’t us. And I d-didn’t kill anybody!”

  Boss Vassas started to punch him again, then sighed and lowered his fist. “You sure can take a lot of punishment for a liar.”

  Frankie cleared his throat, and the Boss swung his gaze in the direction of the newcomers. He took in Tavlin and nodded in acknowledgement. Tavlin nodded back, feeling his throat constrict. There was a desperate, harried look about the Boss that he had never seen before. Vassas’s eyes were bloodshot, his complexion even more ashen than usual.

  “You made it,” Vassas said. “Good.”

  Tavlin indicated the man in the chair. “Mind if I ask what he did?”

  “I-I didn’t do nothing!”

  Vassas backhanded him across the face. “Let’s talk outside,” the Boss told Tavlin.

  He led the way out of the small room and Galesh closed the door behind them. When they were out of earshot of the beaten man, Vassas said, “Truth is, I don’t know who did it. I thought it must be that creep’s gang, they’re the only ones stupid enough to come into my territory lately—but maybe not.”

  “That was one of Grund’s boys, wasn’t it?” said Frankie, then with an aside to Tavlin: “Suvesh Grund runs his own crew outta the Blighted Quarter. He’s trying to expand.”

  “Idiot,” Vassas said with sudden violence. “It can only lead to war, and that’s the last thing any of us need.”

  Tavlin tried not to think of the ragged man in the chair. He had seen Boss Vassas beat people before, but for some reason it shocked him all over again, and he reminded himself why he had left this life.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “What exactly did you think that man did?”

  Boss Vassas didn’t answer at once. He motioned to Edgar, who produced and lit a cigar for him. Smoke wreathed Vassas’s head, and his bloodshot eyes peered through the smoke at Tavlin. “That’s why I called you here. I hope you haven’t eaten.”

  *

  Tavlin hadn’t eaten, and he was glad of it. It was only after the implications sank in, though, that he felt truly queasy.

  Boss Vassas ushered him up to his suite on the third and highest floor. Half the floor was devoted to rooms for his boys, the other half was his private penthouse. Few went into the penthouse save Vassas and his women. He had two women that lived with him, though they weren’t permanent and frequently rotated with the women on the second story—at least historically that had been the case. Around the time Tavlin had left, a girl he knew named Nancy had taken up residence with the Boss, and Vassas had fallen so hard for her he’d invited her to stay for good, and so she had, demanding only that she be the only woman there. He’d agreed, and from what Tavlin witnessed they’d been very happy together. In the time since he’d left, rumor ran that little had changed save that Nancy had only grown more lovely and strong-willed and had begun exercising some authority with the crew, which Vassas actually encouraged.

  Tavlin had rarely been to the penthouse before, and he saw that, as he’d remembered, the suite was large and opulent. Ancient tapestries hung on the walls beside priceless paintings, and thick animal hide carpets draped the floors. Idols and statues of various empires stood all about, surely stolen or looted. Many of the statues were nudes. Vassas had fine taste in art and furniture, and though he acted rough in front of his men Tavlin knew him to be a sensitive and intelligent man in private.

  Bodies lay all over—though at first Tavlin didn’t realize what they were. There were five of them—one woman, Frankie said, and four of Vassas’s soldiers. “They musta heard her scream and come runnin’ in, then they got what she got,” Frankie said.

  What they got exactly was obviously the source of Vassas’s unease (or part of it), and it was clear why it unnerved him. The bodies no longer looked human. The flesh had been turned translucent, slightly whitish, and been made rubbery, like the flesh of a jellyfish. Tavlin could see the internal organs through the flesh, and they had been turned translucent as well. The bodies had been ripped apart, as if by a blast or an animal attack, and pieces of them were strewn all around the room. They stank somewhat of ammonia but did not emit the normal odor of a human corpse, which Tavlin to his chagrin was all too familiar with. One didn’t live amongst the mob for a decade and not see a few bodies. Whitish flesh hung from the walls, the furniture, sagging and stinking. An overhead fan spun, making the ribbons of flesh flap and stream.

  Seeing the corpses hit Tavlin hard, perhaps because he hadn’t seen dead people in a while, but also, he was certain, because of what it meant.

  Something unnatural had happened here.

  “What could have done this?” he said, hearing the numbness in his voice, one hand over his mouth and nose to block out the stench of ammonia. He staggered through the room, cataloguing what he saw, trying not to step in anything wet.

  “If I knew, my blood pressure would be a lot lower,” Vassas said. He stared ab
out the room and shook his head. His bloodshot gaze landed on the body of the woman, and a long sigh escaped his lips.

  “That was Nancy?” Tavlin said, and Vassas nodded raggedly. Tavlin thought he might have been crying earlier. His eyes were very red. “I’m sorry,” Tavlin said. “Nancy was a good woman.” She had been a friend of Sophia’s, too, he remembered, but he didn’t say so. “When did this happen?”

  “Coupla-three hours ago. I figured it was Grund at first and sent some boys to get him or one of his men for questioning. But it just didn’t feel right—how could that bastard have done … this? So I sent for you, too.”

  “I don’t know what I can do.” Tavlin made his way through the room. Frankie hung back by the doorway. None of the other men had accompanied them. “Who else knows about this?”

  “Just you, me, Frankie and Galesh,” Vassas said. “And that’s the way it stays. The other boys know somethin’s up, but they don’t know what. Shit, I don’t know how we’re gonna get rid of the bodies. Can’t let the boys see ‘em like this.”

  Tavlin wanted to ask why, but that would be disingenuous. He knew Vassas feared any questioning of his power. An unfathomable attack in his very lair resulting in the deaths of five people under his protection would rattle his organization to the foundation. If it had just been straight murder with normal corpses, that would have been bad enough, but this ...

  Tavlin found his way to the largest statue of all. It stood before Vassas’s huge wooden bed, a cluster of small black obelisks, with the central obelisk rising higher than the others, though how high it was impossible to tell, for the statue had been broken off, and black stone shards littered the floor around it.

  Tavlin eyed the broken top. “Why would they take the top?”

  “There was this gem, a bloody red gem big as your fist,” Vassas said.

  “I hated that thing,” Frankie said from the doorway. His eyes were on the bodies, and he looked nervous. “Always gave me the creeps.” To Tavlin, he added, “It looked like it burned. There was some fire, deep inside.”

  “It was beautiful,” Vassas said. “Got it from a merchant from Taluush. Said he found it in some ancient ruins.”

  “How ancient?” asked Tavlin.

  “Pre-human, he said. Some inhuman thing built that statue. I always liked to think the gem gave me power. Maybe that’s why someone took it. I want it back. But that’s secondary.” His eyes misted as they returned to Nancy. “I want revenge.”

  The Boss’s voice shook, and Tavlin felt something twist in his heart. Nancy had been a hell of a gal, even a friend. By the expression on Vassas’s face, she had been something more to him than that, more even than a lover.

  “I’m no assassin,” Tavlin said. “I’m a card-player. And, lately, not a very good one.”

  “I don’t want you to get revenge for me,” Vassas said. “If I know who did this, I can get that myself. But I need to know who. Here’s why I had Frankie get you, Tavlin: I need someone, someone I know, someone I can trust. You ran my gambling hall for ten years. You’re a good man, and we been through a lot of shit together. You helped make me the most powerful boss in Muscud. I don’t know why you left, but I let you go and never thought about doin’ anything else. Now I need you back. Somethin’ dangerous is out there, and I don’t know what it’s up to, but it ain’t good. It killed five people by unnatural means to obtain something unnatural.” His voice hardened. “What do you think it’s gonna do with that gem?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Me, either. But these sewers are home to all sorts of things that have fallen through the cracks o’ regular society. Secrets lost long ago up top are still shakin’ things up down here, and some are still waitin’ to be found. And some shouldn’t ever be found.”

  “You think this is one of those.”

  Vassas nodded. “If I send one of my men to poke into this thing, word will get out. People will find out what happened here. Whatever did this will find out I’m on its trail.” Vassas ran a hand across his face. “I don’t want that.”

  “I wouldn’t either.”

  “But you … they won’t suspect you. You’ve been gone long enough to be seen as independent. So that’s it, Tavlin. I need you to figure this mess out and end it before it gets any worse. I’ll pay you for the trouble, but I know you. You liked Nancy almost as much as I did. You’d probably do it just for her. But pay you I will. What do you say?”

  Chapter 2

  A motorcycle nearly ran Tavlin over, but he was so wrapped up in his thoughts he forgot to give its driver the finger as he crossed the street, coughing on the diesel fumes.

  He pressed his way through the thickly-packed gathering on the cracked sidewalk, making his way down streets that had once been familiar but were now subtly alien, though he couldn’t define exactly why. Strange buildings of crumbling brick, stone and mud huddled over him, and weird light bathed their windows. He passed a concert hall and heard the singing of a fish woman. It was unsettling but oddly beautiful. A man with a tentacle where his right arm should be played a guitar as he lounged against a peeling wall. Stroking the strings with his suckered limb, he accepted donations out of a patched hat at his feet. A pretty little girl with yellow curls and the stunning colorations of a rainbow fish passed out fliers; Tavlin accepted one and saw that it was for the Church of Magoth. He crumpled it up and threw it away at the next fly-covered trashcan … which needed emptying.

  A man that looked like a great anthropomorphic clam, his white skin glistening, sold fish that must be diseased on a street corner, and Tavlin blanched at the sight. Diseased fish from the Atomic Sea was what contaminated most people in the first place—that and unprotected sex with an infected person, or birth from same. Seafood had to be carefully processed to be safe, but some were too poor or too hungry to care, and so they ate black market seafood regardless of the risk. The result was mutation or death, sometimes both. Once they were mutated, they didn’t seem to care anymore, and they would eat diseased food willingly, perhaps even preferring it to clean food, but the sight turned Tavlin’s stomach. Of course, the infected down here were different in some ways; many were descendents of the original mutants from the Dark Times, and as such they held themselves with more pride than first-generation mutants and would exalt in thumbing their noses (if they had them) at an uninfected.

  Here and there throughout the city he saw them—normal people, uninfected, true humans like himself. They were people who for one reason or another had left mainstream society and joined the mutants. Most were on the run from the law, debt collectors, the sanitarium, or some combination of the three. Tavlin couldn’t remember what exactly had driven him down here all those years ago. He’d been a junkie and a thief and he thought he remembered having some vague notion of getting clean and starting over again. He hadn’t believed in the cities in the sewers—like most people he thought them an urban myth, though one that had lasted for hundreds of years—but his underworld connections had led him to Muscud, and there he had stayed. He’d gotten clean like he’d promised himself, had even found a respectable job, by his standards, and he had found a lot more besides. Until ... Jameson.

  He sighed, kept going.

  At one point he nearly collided with an unusual form clad in a trench coat, but he quickly saw that the coat was merely to hide the being’s true shape. It was one of the Ualissi, the gelatinous pre-human race that occupied its own ghetto of Muscud. Its mucus had penetrated the trench coat, making it sticky, and Tavlin wiped his hands on his pants as he gave the creature space to pass on by. Above and below the trench coat the being pulsed with bioluminescence, and Tavlin had to admit it was beautiful in its own way, if eerie. And sticky. Mostly the Ualissi kept to their own quarter, and he was surprised to see this one out and about, but then they did have errands that took them beyond their area of town, and who knows, maybe they had become more outgoing since he’d been away. Then again …

  The ruby.

  As casually a
s he could, Tavlin scanned the thing’s pockets for any suspicious bulges. They were all wet and pasted against its swollen form. If there had been any pre-human gems hidden upon the creature’s being, Tavlin would see them. He could find nothing, though. The creature was innocent—of this, at least.

  Tavlin pressed on. Soon he found himself before a tall building crammed between two others. It had a gabled roof and a wide front porch. Music drifted out from it, something swinging and light, and there were lights and the sounds of laughter. A wooden sign proclaimed THE TWIRLING SKIRT.

  He mounted the front porch, passed a couple necking on the swing bench, its chains creaking, and crossed into the parlor where people danced on hardwood floors and others reclined on sofas or chaise lounges, while a jazzy band played on a dais, their saxophones flashing like molten gold, violins sawing like grasshoppers. The women dressed scantily, some barely dressed at all.

  A pretty young woman with iridescent scales on half of her face approached Tavlin and stroked his arm. “And how are you doing this fine evening, handsome?”

  “Fine, Maya, how are you?”

  Her eyes widened. “Tavlin Two-Bit! Can it be? It’s been ages!” She gave him a big hug and drew him aside, making him sit on an unoccupied sofa. She reclined next to him. He could feel her thigh pressing into his own, and smell her heady, cloying perfume, like some overripe orchid. “What brings you back Muscud-way?”

  “Boss Vassas, he ...” Vassas had sworn him to silence on the subject of the strange deaths. One reason Vassas had wanted an outsider on the case was because he would be less likely to spread the news. “Well, he has work for me.”

  “Got tired of the life above, huh? Well, I don’t miss it either. I mean, I miss the shops, and the fine clothes, and how clean and nice everything is—but who needs it? To be looked down on, treated like a plague victim ...”