Atomic Underworld: Part One

by Conner, Jack

  Through the fog a cluster of lights materialized. He aimed for it.

  The lights drew closer, closer ...

  A dark shape ahead. He saw a boat, figures hunched over the gunwales, lines leading into the water. Early risers. Fishermen eager for a nighttime haul, when the big fish were about. Such creatures were dangerous, but lucrative. Even as Tavlin watched, one of the mutants cried out, his line jerked, and the two others in the boat leapt to assist him before his catch could drag him overboard.

  Despite the severity of their situation, they glanced up in startlement as Tavlin roared in out of the fog, and he could only imagine the taut expression on his face.

  Another gunshot cracked behind him. Fire lanced up his left arm, and he thought he cried out but wasn’t sure. Ignoring the pain, he steered around the fishermen who were directly in his path.

  Still watching him, they clung onto the hooked line, but at the sound of another gunshot one of them dove down and came up with a shotgun, probably used as a last resort to subdue any catch that threatened to eat them or capsize them. Tavlin ducked even further down, but the fisherman didn’t aim at him but at the boat that must be behind him, just an approaching shadow in the fog.

  Tavlin raced toward the docks, which he could see now, a line of shabby wooden peers and juts, boats bobbing in the vague swells, mist coiling between them. Alchemical lamps of glowing red helped drive back the stink of the sewers. A few guards strolled along the docks, paid by the city to prevent boat-theft. Something about the city beyond told Tavlin this wasn’t Muscud. Its towers were too tall, too thick. Lights strung from them stretched all the way up to the cistern ceiling, nestled between stalactites limned in red light.

  Tavlin reached the docks just as the shotgun roared behind him. More gunshots split the silence. The shotgun boomed again. He heard cursing, a grunt, a splash, more shots, then silence save for the motor of the boat growing louder. Damn.

  He clambered onto the docks, blood cascading down his arm. Rotten wood groaned under his heel. One of the guards rushed over clutching at his sidearm. He was a stocky, thick-chested fellow with a crest on his head and gills on his neck.

  “Hold there! Hold!”

  Tavlin ignored him and bent over the boat to retrieve the suitcase. When he came up, the guard was pointing a gun at his chest, perhaps fearing he’d gone for a weapon.

  “Stop right there!”

  Tavlin stabbed a finger toward the open water with the hand not holding the briefcase. At the motion, the guard flinched, and Tavlin half-thought he would shoot him, but the blast didn’t come.

  “Hear that?” Tavlin said, meaning the sound of the approaching boat.

  The guard cocked an ear. The other three guards were rushing over, too. Likely they had all heard the gunshots.

  “They’re armed,” Tavlin said. “They tried to mug me in the passages. I came here from Muscud.”

  The guard glanced him over, suddenly realizing he wasn’t a mutant. “You live Muscud-way?”

  Time to use his ace in the hole. “I work for Boss Vassas. He’ll vouch for me. Listen, there’s no time. Those bastards just killed three of your fishermen, and they’re coming for me next.”

  But, as soon as he said it, he realized it wasn’t true. The sound of the engine was fading now, not growing.

  “They must have seen you,” he said, to the congregation of guards. The first guard exchanged glances with the others.

  “Boss Vassas, huh?” said one.

  “That’s right.”

  “Three?” said another. He appeared pained.

  “That’s right.” Tavlin wished he’d had the presence of mind to throw his gun overboard. When they searched the boat they would find it, and it might not be too dissimilar from the one that killed the fishermen, if they were really dead, and he didn’t see how they couldn’t be if they’d been firing on his attackers but his attackers were still alive. He’d heard other guns, though. Maybe the people aboard the pursuing boat had opened up with types of guns different from his own.

  The guards’ thinking was going along different lines, however.

  “Might be we never saw you,” mused the first one. He eyed the briefcase speculatively.

  Tavlin fingered the blood trickling down his arm. He didn’t have time for this. Already he felt dizzy. “I don’t have any money. This—” he rattled the briefcase “—there’s nothing of value here to anyone but me.” He shook his head. Spots were starting to form in his vision.

  “Maybe Boss Vassas is willing to fork something over,” said the second guard.

  “Yeah,” said another, then added, “If this hume isn’t full of shit.” He peered out into the mist. “Hud and Wally were out there. Wally took his son. If they’re all dead …”

  “Shit,” said the third one. He removed his cap and placed it over his heart. To Tavlin, he said, “If you killed Wally, I ain’t takin’ no bribe.”

  “I didn’t,” Tavlin said. “The muggers did. But just to clear up any suspicion, Boss Vassas will donate something to your favorite local charity. He’ll even give you the money with the understanding that you turn it to over to them yourself, if you see what I mean. I’m sorry about the fishermen—maybe some of them made it. You should send a patrol out to hunt the ones who did this.” He swayed. “Listen, I need a doctor. Let’s work this out later.”

  They exchanged more glances. The first one said, “I’ll take ‘im to Doc Sarn and put ‘im up somewhere. In the morning I’ll send someone over Muscud-way and see what we can see about Boss Vassas. If ‘e’s game, ‘e’s game.”

  The others nodded. One added, “And if’s not, we’ll have to start thinkin’ about pressin’ charges.”

  Another grunted. “Guess we’d better take a look at the bodies. Maybe someone’s still alive.”

  *

  The first guard showed Tavlin through town toward the doctor’s.

  “Welcome to Taluush,” he said. “I’m Sergeant Wales. Of the Night Watch.”

  Tavlin nodded. “There’s no Night Watch in Muscud. Different sectors hire their own, ah, guards.” He’d been about to say goons. “We only have one police officer.”

  “Yeah. Mirely. I know ‘im.” He spat. “Straight as a hunchback.”

  “Yes. Very different from here, I’m sure.”

  Sgt. Wales raised a hairless eyebrow. One corner of his lips hooked upward, and a glint of amusement shone in his eye. “Quite different,” was all he said.

  They passed into the town, and Tavlin beheld strange dwellings he’d never seen the like of before. They appeared as if they had been secreted or drooled by some insect. They comprised most of the ground level, and he felt as though he were walking through some massive hive. They were round, yellow-gray lumpen things with no visible apertures. Thick black hoses sprouted from their sides, and he could hear the chugging of generators. Taluush was a vertical city, and Tavlin saw that more normal, human habitations comprised the upper levels, with a sort of buffer of shops and hanging plazas separating this lower level from the sections above.

  Sgt. Wales saw his amazement. “You’ve never been to Taluush before? No? Surely you’ve heard about it.”

  “Just rumors. Something about one of the old races, but I never thought ...”

  Sgt. Wales gestured expansively to the hive-like structures that occupied the first level. They were clustered along wide canals, and they glistened in the red light like giant cocoons. “We’re right on top of the Rifts, y’know? Whoever built this section of the sewer used a natural system of underground rivers, and some of them have chasms that plunge all the way down to some underground sea or lake or somesuch, I don't know. Well, the G’zai lived down there. Still do. In some black ocean, can you imagine? One of the pre-human races. Never had much doings with us. There usedta be a bunch of disappearances, people said they caused them, but who knows?”

  “What are they doing up here, then?”

  Tavlin and the sergeant were passing over a bridge between concen
trations of the cocoon-like dwellings, making for a ramp that spiraled toward the upper levels. Though weak, Tavlin couldn’t help but look over the side of the bridge into the water, imagining the bed of the cistern chamber, a natural lake bed if the sergeant wasn’t bullshitting him, and the black rift that led down gods knew how deep to some prehistoric sea. Ancient seas linking up with sewer systems linking up with the strange energies of the Atomic Sea ... it would all make for a heady brew. He didn’t want to imagine the creatures that might live in it, that might have developed a culture in it.

  “We trade with ‘em,” Sgt. Wales added.

  “Trade? What could you possibly have to trade? Do they even have hands?”

  “Oh, you’ll see them, you stay here long enough. They come out sometimes. But yeah, we trade. They have certain chemicals our alchemists use. Maybe they secrete them, or spit them, or, well, I don’t know and not sure I want to. Our alchemists grow all sorts of weird plants in our gardens. You’ve heard of the Gardens of Taluush? Well, the G’zai trade for our blooms and fruits. Maybe they eat ‘em, use ‘em in their rituals, whatever. We use their chems, they use our greens, we try not to kill each other.” He rolled his shoulders. “Been this way for a long time.”

  “We have something similar in Muscud, with the Ualissi, but they stay in their own quarter. They’re part aquatic, too, but they’re from some chain of islands near the equator—or they were. The islands vanished long ago, destroyed by some enemies of the Ualissi, I’ve heard, and the Ualissi scattered to all corners of the globe, always seeking out the darkest corners they could find—in hiding from whoever did it, I suppose.”

  “I’ve heard of the Ualissi. The G’zai don’t like them. Old foes of some sort, though not likely the one that sank their islands.”

  “You get along with the G’zai?”

  “We try. They’re not like us. There’s always some in town, though—their ambassadors or merchants. Workers. You’ll see.”

  Wales showed Tavlin up the spiraling ramp, which led up a thick tower constructed of scrap metal, wood, debris and lots and lots of wire. Rooms like caverns opened from it. The towers of Taluush rose up to the ceiling, all connected by swaying bridges and ropes and chains. Some ropes and chains held aloft large platforms upon which people congregated, but for the main part Tavlin saw activity in the shops and taverns. Actual dwellings seemed to be clustered higher above, as far as the human and human-like inhabitants of Taluush could get from the G’zai. Looking down, Tavlin saw that there were doorways mounted in the top of the G’zai’s hive structures, and the sergeant informed him that the hives were filled with water; the pipes and hoses Tavlin had seen created a suction that pulled up the water from the cistern lake; other pipes purified it. The G’zai came and went via entrances in the hives’ bases and tops. Tavlin looked for the G’zai themselves but saw nothing but mutants and the occasional uninfected human ambling about the city.

  Traffic was slow this early in the morning, but it was starting to pick up. Lamp-lighters brightened the lamps already lit and sparked others of whiter hue, bringing an illumination not unlike dawn to Taluush. Music crackled from cobbled-together radios, the signal poor through so many layers of concrete. Tavlin knew Muscud boasted a radio station, a little one-room affair, but he didn’t hear the familiar tones of Raging Marv, so maybe the signal didn’t reach.

  He clutched his wound with his right hand, feeling blood seep between his fingers. Meanwhile the fingers of his left hand, which held the suitcase, steadily grew numb. He supposed he was leaving a trail of blood behind him.

  “Here we are.”

  Sgt. Wales showed him into one of the yawning openings on the tower, under a sign that blinked on and off: CL NIC, one of the letters burned out. It smelled of mold and antiseptic, and the light in here seemed a sort of green, the walls an unpleasant greenish-yellow. A fly buzzed about the ceiling lamp.

  A receptionist with fish-lips and seaweed hair looked up from her dime romance. “First one of the day.”

  “Is Doc Sarn in?” Wales asked.

  “This early? But there’s a nurse.”

  She rang a bell. A figure stepped out of the back room and Tavlin felt warm, firm hands guiding him forwards. He was distinctly faint now, and everything seemed faded, washed-out. Sgt. Wales’s voice seemed to come from miles away.

  Tavlin was shoved onto a bed, and the nurse rolled up his sleeve. When that didn’t get the sleeve up far enough, she produced a pair of scissors, but Tavlin waved them away. He only had one set of clothes on him. Reluctantly, she helped him out of his leather jacket, then his shirt.

  It was as she bent to analyze his wound that he was able to focus long enough to get a look at her, and when he did he thought he had passed out for sure.

  It can’t be ...

  She was far away, in one of the distant cities Maya had mentioned. She was gone, far gone, and there was no getting her back. And ... a nurse?

  She crystallized before him, becoming real.

  Their eyes met.

  His heart stopped. Then, slowly, started. His head swam.

  “Sophia ...”

  “Yes, it’s me, you son of a bitch. Now what have you done to yourself?”

  Chapter 5

  “Easy, now.” He winced as she sewed up his arm. He had lost a good deal of blood—the bullet had nicked a vessel—but she had sewn it up without Doctor Sarn’s help, for apparently he was sleeping off a drunk somewhere, and she was closing up the wound herself. With a little too much relish, he thought. “Go in a straight line, for Gam’s sake. That’s crooked as a con.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  It was true. She had no anesthetic except for a bottle of cheap vodka, and he drank with his free arm while she operated. His head reeled, and he felt nauseous.

  “Who, me?” He blinked. “Where’s the sergeant?”

  “You didn’t notice? He left awhile ago. Said he had to go check on your story.”

  Tavlin burped. “Let him. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  She raised her eyebrows, and as he looked once more into her face he was reminded how beautiful she was. She had been even more beautiful in her prime, back when he had met her and courted her, but she was still lovely now, after years of whoring, addiction, recovery, one disastrous marriage, and Jameson ... She had blue-green eyes, dark red hair that normally fell in curls to her shoulders but which was tied up behind her head at the moment, wide full lips and a slightly upturned, impish nose. Her cheekbones were high, bold, her neck long and slender. She had strong hands and a strong, slender, womanly body, now covered in a stained nurses’ uniform that was covered in patches and scratches and looked handed-down.

  Her eyes were steady. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, what’s in the briefcase?”

  He smiled, feeling the vodka. “My laundry.”

  She sniffed, went back to sewing. “Stolen money, probably. Or your gambling proceeds, not that there’s any difference these days. I’ve heard about what you’ve been up to.”

  “What have you heard?” Except it came out Whaddaoo ‘eard?

  She didn’t look up, but he felt a sharp tug. “You’ve been cheating the uppers. Getting kicked out of club after club.” She gave another sharp tug, and he tried to resist a wince.

  He downed another sip, but slowly this time.

  “Well?” she said. “You don’t have some smart answer to that?”

  He said nothing.

  She sighed. One more sharp, painful tug, and then she rose and rinsed off her hands. The doctor’s office used a heavy filter for its water, and it was actually clear enough to see through, though Tavlin still wouldn’t touch the stuff.

  “Well?” she demanded with her back turned to him. “What are you doing here, shot up and with some mysterious laundry case?”

  “The usual. Favor for Boss Vassas.”

  “So you’re back in the racket, then?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “What did you say?” she said.


  “Favor. As in temporary.”

  “It’s gonna be permanent, you catch another bullet.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  He mounted to his feet, feeling the shaking in his legs. How far could he go? “Thanks for the treatment. I’ll come back when I can pay you.”

  “I don’t want your money. I never did.”

  “I guess not. You coulda made much more if you hadn’t married me and started giving it away for free.”

  She turned her head to him. “Maybe I should start collecting back-payments on that. It was never a real marriage anyway.”

  That stung. As if aware of it, she looked away. He grunted, knocked back one last swig and set the vodka down. “Tell Sgt. Wales I’ll find him.”

  With that, he staggered from the clinic. She didn’t stop him, didn’t say a word. Outside it seemed colder than it had before, even with the added press of people and the brighter lights. Her words echoed in his ears, and he felt something clench deep inside.

  How could she say that?

  He tried to shrug it off. Briefcase in hand, he marched away from the clinic, but it came out as more of a prolonged stumble. People eyed him with distaste as he passed them. Even down here, it was too early to be drunk. The briefcase seemed heavy. He thought his curiosity was making it even heavier, the weight of all his expectations. Although in truth he didn’t know what to expect. The Octunggen, if that’s what they’d been, had stolen strange, ancient jewelry, maybe other things, and they had done something to them at the factory in Muscud. If the contents of the briefcase represented the fruit of their labors, it could be very valuable indeed.

  Tavlin decided he would catch up with Sgt. Wales later. If word didn’t arrive from Boss Vassas, Tavlin would have to chew the slug and pay the cops himself, if they really demanded it (and since there was no one else to be held accountable for the murders and he was partially responsible, they might), and the doctor’s office, too. He still had half his gambling proceeds. The other half rested in the lockbox in his room at the Twirling Skirt ... along with one other, very important item. At any rate, he’d prefer not to use his own money if he could help it.