Atomic Underworld: Part One

by Conner, Jack

  Tavlin wrestled with Havictus. He kneed the bald man in the groin. Clubbed him on the head. Havictus elbowed him in the face and punched him in the throat. If Tavlin hadn’t drawn back at the last second, the blow would have crushed his larynx.

  Each man grabbed the gun and tried to shove it toward the other. Tavlin grunted and strained, feeling every muscle tense in his body, feeling sweat ooze from every pore. He could smell the beef and cabbage that Havictus had had for lunch.

  Finally Tavlin bit into Havictus’s gun-hand wrist as hard as he could. He sank his teeth into Havictus until he could feel his teeth clamping bone, until pain filled his jaw and blood flooded his mouth.

  Havictus arched his head back and screamed. The hand loosened. The gun flew over the edge of the boat into the water. With pain-fueled strength, Havictus struck Tavlin across the face with his left elbow, launching Tavlin backwards. Havictus rose to his feet, glaring wildly around, clutching his bleeding wrist. Blood pumped through his fingers.

  Tavlin searched for a weapon. The Octunggen manning the engine had been shot, and he had crumpled over, bleeding to death. Tavlin rooted through the man’s jacket for his gun.

  Havictus whistled and gestured, and a boat roared over to him. He scrambled aboard and barked orders in Octunggen. Even as the boat jettisoned off into the darkness, he wrested a submachine gun away from one of his people and turned to fire at Tavlin, even as Tavlin fired at him with his liberated pistol. Havictus fired first, and his rounds tore stitching through the boat. Gouts of water shot up from the holes. Tavlin flung himself to the side. His shot went wild.

  When he glanced back up, his gun trained in the direction Havictus had been, the bald man was gone into the gloom.

  Water began to fill Tavlin’s vessel through the bullet holes.

  Sweating, knowing that he would be infected if he became submerged, Tavlin started the engine of the sinking craft and aimed it at a nearby boat. It struck, knocking one Octunggen overboard and sending the other two to their knees. Tavlin shot one in the chest and dodged a blast from the other. One of Vassas’s men, or perhaps even Vassas himself, finished off the surviving gunman, and the man toppled over the side with a shattered skull even as Tavlin leapt into his boat. The boat he’d been on sank with a pop and a gurgle.

  Tavlin piloted his boat toward the one Sophia occupied, barreling toward her even as bullets tore the air around him. Some smacked into the boat or dotted the water, while others ricocheted off the walls, and Tavlin felt more than one whiz by his head.

  Too late, the two men in Sophia’s boat saw him coming and adjusted their guns to fire on him. He shot one through the face—the man flew backward and vanished—and the other collapsed when Tavlin rammed his boat. Tavlin shot him point-blank through the chest before he could reorient himself.

  Sophia had thrown herself to the floor, and as Tavlin hunkered over her, fumbling at her ropes, she thrashed and cursed through her gag. Soon he had her hands free, and she tore off her hood herself and spat out the gag. Her eyes were wild, her hair in disarray, and someone had given her a black eye. Nonetheless, she was the most wonderful sight Tavlin had ever seen. Even as she swore at him and struggled against him, he took her in his arms and kissed her.

  She didn’t exactly melt, but her struggles turned less aggressive. Then she pulled away and slapped his face.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “But—”

  Her voice softened. “Thank you, Tav. I do appreciate you saving me. But … no.”

  By the time he’d started the motor and glanced around, several of the other Octunggen boats had taken off in the same direction as Havictus, and one more was just vanishing. The Octunggen that had stayed behind were quickly dying, and bodies littered the small boats or bobbed in the water between them, water which was now slicked with blood. As Tavlin watched, some thing below the surface dragged one of the corpses down with a sudden sharp movement. Bubbles frothed the surface filled with pink and red, and the body did not reappear.

  Boss Vassas’s men pushed their boats forward, even as Tavlin did, and Tavlin met Vassas in the middle of the intersection. All the Octunggen had fled or perished. Vassas appeared hard and winded, his face red, a submachine gun clutched in a meaty fist. A bullet had grazed one of his arms, and blood trickled freely from the wound. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “You got her,” he said, nodding once at Sophia, who nodded back. “Good. And I saw the briefcase go back under. Now let’s lam it.”

  “No,” Tavlin said. “We’ve got the bastards on the run. Now it’s time to finish them off. But have one of your men take Sophia back."

  “I’m not going anywhere, except after them,” she said.

  “Fine,” said Vassas, and there was a gleam in his eyes. “Let’s end this.”

  They roared after the Octunggen. Tavlin allowed Vassas to take the lead before his men, but Tavlin and Sophia occupied the next space in line. They tore down dark halls, slowing only enough to let their lantern-light show them the way; Sophia knelt in the bow, holding a lantern out over the water. When it shone off a moss-covered wall that threatened to crack their boat to splinters, they curved sharply off. At times they lost the Octunggen only to see one of their boats vanishing around a bend ahead.

  At last Tavlin and Sophia burst out in a large chamber, huge and high and cavernous. The boats of the Octunggen flew across the black water before them ... right toward the Temple of Magoth.

  Tavlin swore.

  So did Sophia. “Not this again,” she said.

  The Temple blazed ahead, massive and phosphorescent, a shining, glowing beacon in the dark. Its graceful columns proudly held up the great canopy, and the work being done on it was even more advanced than last time, the strange angles and facets even more pronounced. The whole thing shone a ghostly pearl-white. The brightest light came from the interior, flooding out from windows and doorways. The illumination bathed the surface of the cistern lake, throwing light far out into the great chamber. And, just as before, the sound of singing carried across the waters.

  The boats of Vassas’s men slowed momentarily. Vassas’s eyes bulged, and his mouth hung open. The singing washed over them.

  Tavlin clamped his hands over his ears, and Sophia did likewise.

  “Back!” Tavlin shouted to Vassas. “Go back! Cover your ears! Don’t listen. GO BACK!”

  Instead, one boat at a time, Vassas’s men revved their boats’ motors and started forward, though whether toward the Octunggen or the Temple Tavlin couldn’t say. He wasn’t sure if they knew, either. Vassas started to motor toward the Temple, as well.

  “Hells,” Tavlin said.

  He aimed his own boat toward Vassas’s and gritted his teeth.

  “Hang on,” he told Sophia.

  They struck with such suddenness that Vassas was knocked to his knees, and the other man in the boat with him nearly went overboard. Shock passed across Vassas’s face, but then a look of dazzlement replaced it—as the singing drove reason from his brain—and Tavlin saw Vassas start to look around for a means of continuing toward the Temple.

  His eyes settled on Tavlin’s boat.

  Vassas rushed him. Tavlin hit him on the head, hard, with an oar. Vassas toppled like a sack of spuds, and Tavlin wrestled him aboard the vessel. Vassas’s man tried to tackle them, but Sophia shot at him. Startled, he leapt back. She blasted out the engine, leaving him stranded. He cursed them as they moved away. Tavlin wanted to believe this might have saved the man, but he thought he knew better. The cultists would round him up soon enough, or maybe the Octunggen would.

  Tavlin sat Vassas down as gently as he could, then returned to the motor. Plugging one ear with a finger and trying to press the other to his shoulder, he piloted the boat out of the Temple chamber and into the halls beyond. He looked back over his shoulder once to see the other boats vanishing into the white glow emitted by the Temple. Among the men in the boats was Galesh, whom Tavlin had known for many years and liked a good deal. Dear god
s, Tavlin thought. What will happen to them now? Anguish rose in him, and he wished there was something he could do to stop the men from going to their dooms—for what else could it be?—but there was nothing he could think of, nothing that could turn them back. They were lost. The singing was all around them, somehow both crashing and mellifluous at the same time, beautiful and terrible, and completely overwhelming.

  Feeling his eyes burn, Tavlin turned back around and continued piloting the boat further from the chamber of the Temple. The sound of the singing lessened with each yard. At last the sound became too faint to master Tavlin, and he unstopped his ears. Breathing heavily, he shared a look with Sophia.

  “They’re all gone,” he gasped. “All Vassas’s men. Or at least the ones he took with him.”

  She looked as shaken as he felt. “I wonder what the people at the Temple will do with them.”

  Tavlin continued on, and soon Vassas stirred and cracked an eye. He groaned, sat up, and Tavlin braced himself for any sudden movements. Vassas was fine, though—or as fine as he could be. He swore and vomited over the side, then rubbed his head.

  “What’d you bastards do to me?”

  “Tavlin saved your life,” Sophia said.

  Vassas glared around him. “Where’s … my boys?”

  When Tavlin told him, Vassas was inconsolable. He raged and screamed, kicking at the gunwales. He shouted so loudly Tavlin had to remind him some of the enemy might still be out here, hunting them. After that Vassas grew very quiet, and he picked up a submachine gun and clenched it tightly, peering all around them at the darkness.

  At last he said through clenched teeth, “They’ll pay for this, the sons of bitches. See if they won't.”

  Tavlin nodded but didn’t reply. Soon he saw a familiar-looking passage. The pattern of water reflected off the arching stone ceiling, slapping up against the stone columns. A half dozen boats bobbed there, their gunwales eaten away by gunfire. Bodies lay over their sides, and blood slicked the scummy surface. It stank of gunpowder and split intestines. Sophia placed a hand over her nose, and Tavlin tried not to breathe in.

  “What are we doing here?” Vassas said, training the gun all about them.

  “We have to retrieve the briefcase,” Tavlin said. “They may have dropped it when you attacked, but they know where it is now, and they’ll be back for it.”

  “We shouldn’t waste time. We need to get back to the Wide-Mouth and regroup.”

  “Tavlin’s right,” Sophia said, sounding reluctant. “We have to move that damned thing. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Havictus said it contained some sort of formula,” Tavlin said, “but that doesn’t make any sense to me. To me, a formula means math or chemistry or something. Maybe baby food. He was talking about the end of the world … and gods. And the formula is in a container for a fluid.”

  “And he’s giving it to the worshippers of Magoth?” Vassas said.

  “That’s right. Apparently Octung is using them for some purpose. Havictus wants the formula activated, whatever that means, although it sounds like if that happens … well, he said it would be the end of all I know.”

  “Damn.”

  “He also said only Magoth could activate it."

  "Magoth ..." Vassas looked pale. "Havictus spoke of the god as if it existed?”

  Tavlin nodded. "At any rate, I suppose Octung needs the cultists just like the cultists need Octung, since only Octung can provide the formula, at least that we know.”

  “I wonder if this has anything to do with the construction that’s going on at the Temple,” Sophia said.

  “You noticed that too?”

  She nodded.

  He found a long pole the Octunggen had been using to dredge the water and began hunting for the briefcase. He searched right below the boat whose crew had found the object. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before he encountered an obstruction and brought it up, and he almost laughed to see the dripping, seaweed-entangled briefcase. He shook it off and reeled it into the boat.

  Sophia backed away from it. “I can feel it.”

  “Yeah,” Vassas grunted. “Me too.”

  Tavlin noticed it, also—the same sensation he’d felt before, or at least a small drop of it, when he’d touched the side of the container in Taluush. It was an uncomfortable throbbing in his skull. Something bitter grew on his tongue. He tried to push it away.

  “Just ignore it,” he said. “Don’t let it get into your mind.”

  “What does that even mean?” Vassas’s voice was ragged.

  Tavlin lowered the briefcase to the deck, then threw a blanket over it. He didn’t answer the question, but he remembered the missing hours from the last time and the dim recollection of awful nightmares.

  “What can we do with it?” Sophia said. “I mean, if it is some weapon of Octung, or the cult of Magoth? Can we destroy it?”

  “I’ve been giving that a lot of thought,” Tavlin said.

  “And?” Vassas said.

  Tavlin scratched his cheek. “I learned in Taluush that the G’zai are enemies of the Ualissi—the pre-humans that live in Muscud.”

  “I do business with them sometimes,” Vassas said, nodding.

  “Well, if the G’zai are helping Octung because they share the same gods, then that might mean the Ualissi are opposed to those gods, maybe even that they worship gods who regard Octung’s gods as their enemies. A religious dispute between fanatical peoples. Anyway, they might know more about all this than we do—what the contents of that canister mean and how to counteract it. I say that when we get back to Muscud we look them up.”

  “They have strange technology,” Sophia nodded. “Maybe they really could do something about it, or help us figure out how to do something.”

  “We’ll do it,” Vassas said. “That thing … it makes my skin crawl.”

  “Mine, too,” Sophia admitted, her voice small.

  Tavlin bent over the engine, planning to pilot them back to Muscud, but, before he could even open the engine up, she appeared.

  The girl in white.

  “Oh, no …”

  Ghostly and phosphorescent, she materialized from around a bend. She was as beautiful as before—lovely, shimmering, floating across the water on a bed of white vapor that curled around her, enfolding her slender, naked body in phantasmagorical clouds. Her hair stirred to the currents of some sea or wind that Tavlin could not fathom, and her luminous eyes gazed straight at him, searing his soul with their power.

  “No no no,” he said. His voice came out in a choke. “You ... you do see her?”

  “Yes,” said Sophia, her voice a throaty rasp. “I see her.”

  “Who is she?” said Vassas. "What is she?"

  As the girl drifted closer, her eyes drank in Tavlin and the briefcase.

  “You,” she said. “You took it!”

  He opened and closed his mouth. “Yes, of c-course I did. You said that last time.”

  “Why? Why did you take it?” It was as if he had committed some grievous wrong, a personal affront to her. As she spoke, the anger visibly built up in her.

  “I-I—”

  Suddenly the anger overwhelmed her and she shot forward. One of her hands wrapped around Tavlin’s throat. Her touch was like ice, but it burned, and he screamed as she wrenched him upward. He flailed and beat at her. Below, Vassas shot the girl, or rather through her, trying to aim around Tavlin, while Sophia struck at her with an oar. The oar passed right through.

  “Why did you take it?” the girl screamed, staring straight into Tavlin’s eyes, his soul. As she spoke, she continued to choke him, shaking him like a dog would shake a bird

  Tavlin started to lose consciousness. His grip on the briefcase loosened, but he retained enough awareness to keep hold of it. He was dimly aware of Sophia and Vassas fighting the girl, trying to get him back, but she was apparently immune to their efforts, and their blows just passed through her. Tavlin gagged, unable to breathe, feeling his skull pound.

  B
ehind the girl, boats appeared, lantern-light winking through the mist. Vaguely Tavlin saw mutants in robes crowding the vessels, many of them armed. When they saw the ghost-girl, their eyes filled with reverence—but not surprise, or at least not complete surprise; something about this was strange to them, but she at least was known somehow. Had they been following her? Had she led them here? In any case, they saw Tavlin and the others, and immediately they lifted their guns toward Sophia and Vassas.

  “Run!” Tavlin choked. “Run!”

  “We can’t leave you!” Sophia said. She grabbed Vassas’s gun and fired a burst at the mutants. They ducked down as bullets whizzed over their heads.

  Vassas was more pragmatic. “We’ll come back for you,” he said as he started the motor. “We’ll get these bastards, see if we don’t.”

  “No,” Sophia said. “We can’t leave him, you bastard.”

  “Take this,” Tavlin wheezed, and hurled the briefcase to them. He almost missed. Sophia had to stretch herself out to catch it, and even so she almost tumbled into the filthy channel.

  Vassas opened the motor, and the boat sped away, Sophia righting herself as they went. The newly arrived mutants fired at them, and bullets struck the wall behind them, sending fragments everywhere. Enraged, Sophia fired back. Tavlin saw her out of the corner of his vision, her eyes aflame, standing on the pitching deck of the boat firing the submachine gun even as bullets kicked the water around her and flashed off the pillars behind her—then she was gone. Vassas piloted the boat down a tunnel and out of sight.

  The robed people gave chase, howling as they roared down the hall after the two. Tavlin heard gunshots. Some of the infected people, however, gathered around Tavlin and the girl.

  He had stopped flailing and fighting. All the strength had left him, and he felt himself beginning to fade. Helplessly, he stared into the face of the girl.

  The rage seemed to have left her, leaving her full of pity. She was very beautiful, like an angel, almost. She set him down in one of the boats.

  As darkness came over him, Tavlin heard one of the infected people ask, “What shall we do with him, Lady?”