The old guy had a good bit of stubble. Looked healthy, not strong. About normal for an old guy, Frank reckoned.
Smoker, though. Taking chances. Frank almost laughed at his own thought process. What the fuck? Worrying about the old guy’s chances of cancer?
Plus, you know…old naked guy in the middle of a dead city, smoking a cigarette like nothing mattered, grinning at a man with one hand who held a bloody axe in the rough center of a circle of mutilated corpses.
Careful, Frank’s rare mind cautioned. Time to be really, really, fucking careful. He lowered the axe, because if the old guy wasn’t worried about the scenario, then Frank knew he sure as shit better be.
“Smoke or not?” offered the guy a second time. The guy’s teeth, Frank noted, were perfectly white.
Strike two, thought Frank, despite his fever.
Either this is some deep delirium trip, or something’s rotten in Denmark.
Frank’s childhood had been steeped in superstition, religion, folklore.
Old naked guy, untouched in the middle of Armageddon? Staring at a man holding an axe in the middle of a pile of bodies and body parts, not even looking at those bodies? Casual, unafraid…clean?
It stank, all right.
Have a care, he thought again.
“Thanks for the offer,” said Frank. “Don’t smoke, though. Bad for your health.”
“Everyone’s got something, though, right? Gotta have a vice.”
“Vice? I don’t think so,” said Frank. He shrugged. What’s a vice, after all? Something you take pleasure from, while others try to make you feel guilty about it?
Frank didn’t take pleasure, and he certainly had nothing to feel guilt about.
But it wouldn’t do to tell that to this guy. Frank was as sure of that as he was that he’d be wanking lefties from now on.
“I like vodka. Got any vodka?”
“Ha,” laughed the man. And, as he laughed, he held out a small shot glass—frosted—full of clear fluid.
It looked good. Frank was thirsty.
But thirsty enough to drink something magicked out of nothing?
Nope. No. Frank’s mother and father hadn’t raised him to be a fool, and he wasn’t about to start now. He might be dying—most probably was. He might be hallucinating. But he wasn’t about to start taking gifts from weird naked guys in the middle of a city of the dead.
“Thanks,” he said. But he made no move to take the drink.
The naked old man shrugged. “Tough nut to crack, eh?”
Frank shook his head. “Not particularly. Tell you what, though. Point me in the right direction for a sticky plaster,” he said, holding his stump aloft, “and we’ll call it quits.”
The man grinned, all shiny teeth and good humor.
“Frank Liebowicz, I do believe you deserve a solid…just for the chuckles, if nothing else. “
“Then I’ll say thank you and be moving right along,” replied Frank with a grateful nod. He wanted, right now, to be anywhere but here, with this lunatic ghoul, angel, demon, whatever he was. But you couldn’t rush these things. Sometimes, axes and guns and fist weren’t the tools for the job.
Sometimes, when a man’s got nothing left but his wits, those wits had better be up to scratch.
The old guy turned on the smile again. Took a long drag on his cigarette, then knocked back the vodka in one hard shot.
“That way’s south. There’s a pharmacy…used to be a straight run with a set of lights in between. Not now. Where the lights were, there’s a burned-out bus. Can’t miss it. Just past the burned bus, you’ll find it.”
“Thank you,” said Frank. His head was swimming, he was weak, but he still managed to push himself from his seat (When did I sit down again? he wondered) to standing. He used the axe as a walking stick. For some reason, he didn’t think it’d do him much good against the smoking man anyway.
“One good turn?” said the man before Frank could leave.
Frank gritted his teeth.
Dealing with the devil…a fool’s game. But he was in a corner with no other way out. He had his rules. Don’t run, don’t hold back. But then his rules didn’t really cover this.
He looked back at the old guy and waited a beat for him to speak.
“There’s a man over the West End I’ve a soft spot for. Get what you need, head that way, eh?”
“How will I know him? How will I find him?”
“Oh, you’ll find him. No worries. He’s a fella in need of a friend. Like you, Frank. Like you.”
Frank had no choice. He nodded his assent, then, leaning heavily on his axe, headed south.
He didn’t look back. Not because he was afraid. Frank didn’t feel things keenly like others might. It wasn’t fear. It was just good fucking sense.
Walk on, Frank, he counseled.
Good advice, he thought.
38
The way to the pharmacy, it turned out, wasn’t past the bus, but through it. The red double-decker was largely unscathed on the outside. From top through to the bottom, though, had been torn open by what could only have been a meteor fragment.
Frank ducked inside the bus, expecting corpses and the stench of the old dead. But nothing. The bus was empty bar a couple of jarring touches of normality: a cigarette, unsmoked, an iPod, someone’s sandwich moldering in between the seat and the side of the bus. He walked in a crouch along the windows, some shattered, some not. Into the first floor, through the base of the bus and out, into the pharmacy. The bus was halfway into the pharmacy. The first few aisles and their contents had been knocked all over the shop floor by the impact.
Buses didn’t sit empty and idle on city streets. The only time buses were completely empty in London was, perhaps, overnight in a depot somewhere.
What had happened to the passengers? The driver?
Where was the blood, the dead, the limbs?
Frank stopped in the center of the pharmacy and looked back out at the torn streets, the broken roads and pavements.
Nothing. No one. No bodies, no survivors, no wounded. No screaming, no sirens. The occasional explosion. Howling dusky wind. Crashing sounds, breaking glass. Yes, all the sounds you’d expect to hear in a city crumbling…
But where the fuck were all the people?
Maybe I am dead, thought Frank. But then he looked at his arm, the purple one without a hand.
If I were dead, would I bother with such a fucked-up illusion?
Truth was, Frank didn’t know. He didn’t know much about anything anymore.
Once, life had made some kind of sense. Long periods of rest, followed by short bursts of intense activity. Food and sleep, television, music, books.
A quiet, solitary life, in many ways. But one that he’d been happy enough to live.
Now? Only the simple imperative to survive.
Survival was everything.
“And right now,” he told himself in the battered, empty pharmacy, “time to get on with living.”
If I’m not already dead, his bastard mind added.
Working on the assumption that he was actually still alive, he got busy with trying to save that life. Might be an illusion, might not. He was leaning toward this being real. Surely, he thought, his arm hurt too damn much for this to be some kind of afterlife.
Might’ve been a hell, but then Frank didn’t believe in hell, or heaven. He believed in himself.
Himself, and nothing else.
39
Frank figured the good stuff, the kind of stuff he needed most immediately, would be behind the counter where the pharmacists worked, parceling out pills and ointments, lotions and potions.
His head was swimming, but he wasn’t hallucinating or entirely delirious. Maybe a little delirious with infection (had the naked guy been real?) but certainly a long way from stupid, still.
He needed antibiotics. Something broad-based, he figured, because he didn’t know what kind of infection he had, nor did he have any way of finding out.
Amoxicillin, penic
illin…something along those lines. Might be they’d have some brand name he wouldn’t recognize, but he’d taken antibiotics before (once for an infected bite—human). Painkillers, but nothing that’d knock the shit out of him. Some kind of antiseptic solution. Iodine, maybe.
He tried to think if there’d be any other medicines he might need, right now.
Multivitamins probably wouldn’t hurt. He’d need vitamins and minerals if he was going to heal, and they’d help him heal a little faster than without. A long-term thing, but Frank wasn’t a man planning on dying, but living.
He found the antibiotics. All the good painkillers (the morphine derivatives, anyway) were gone. But he found some pain medicine and the iodine on the shelves. The iodine was on a shelf with gauze, plasters, bandages…he took pretty much all he could, emptying the shelf, and filled a tin medicine box that would have cost him £24.99 only a couple of days before.
He stood, swaying a little, in the shop, trying to think of other things he might need. He took a couple handfuls of energy sweets. The pharmacy didn’t sell drinks, but they had protein powders and pills. He took some of those, too.
He didn’t see any useful tools. A pair of scissors that’d be fine for the bandaging, but useless on flesh. But then he wasn’t really expecting to find operating tools in the pharmacy. He’d need a hospital, or maybe a doctor’s clinic. His bone was ragged, as was his flesh. He was going to have to tidy it up if he was going to stand half a chance of living the week out, and to do that, he’d need a hospital, although the chances of finding one standing, with doctors and nurses? He was beginning to think the chances of that happening were slim indeed.
As it was, the fire had cauterized the wound, shriveled the capillaries, stopped his blood from pouring out. But the wound was still open to every speck of dirt and dust in the unnatural wind tearing around the broken streets.
Maybe a home-improvements store? Something to cut the bone down…need to stitch up the mess, trim the dead flesh…
Got a long way to go yet, Frank, he thought. He popped a couple of his antibiotics and four painkillers.
Long way yet.
40
Frank wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t figure out the way west. He felt like shit and he was burning up. Probably, he thought, in danger of dying at some point. Almost certainly, if he couldn’t get what he needed and get the infection under control.
He wondered how long he could last. Wondered if his will was strong enough.
Frank thought plenty as he stumbled across London, the pharmacy at his back and the West End somewhere ahead. He leaned on his axe, his crutch and his weapon both.
Naked guy hadn’t told him exactly where he’d find this friend in need, but somehow he thought the specifics weren’t going to prove all that important.
The city had been largely turned on its head. Roads and paths were blocked, sending Frank out of his way to keep traveling west. The ground rumbled, from time to time. Frank thought that maybe, somewhere far beneath his feet, parts of the underground system were collapsing. Might be London’s Victorian sewage system, finally giving up the ghost, but it felt like larger disturbances. Once, the ground shook so hard that he fell and cracked his head. When he found his feet again, his stump was bleeding afresh, and this time Frank noted a hint of sickness in the smell coming from the wound. A little pus (it looked purple, but then, pretty much everything was tainted with purple) and the beginnings of some kind of rot.
He had no idea how long he’d been walking when he finally emerged onto the carnage of what had once been a large square. Water everywhere, small fires, fissures in the pavement. A large statue lay in shattered pieces all around, and in the center of it all, a man, hands outstretched, stumbling over the wreckage.
Behind the man, unseen, the butchers.
Behind the butchers?
Frank.
“Fuck it,” whispered Frank. Weak and tired, but he wasn’t going to get a better shot at this.
He’d have to manage one hell of a surprise to even the odds, though, because the guy in the center of the chaos seemed to be completely blind, which made him utterly fucking useless to Frank.
But he’d made a deal, hadn’t he?
And running wasn’t an option.
“Fuck it,” he said again, and moved in the only direction he knew how. Forward. Toward the butchers.
No gun. One arm. But Frank grinned like a man who’d put it all on black and landed smack on thirteen. His face was gaunt and pale and the grin wasn’t pretty but it was a kind of happy look on his face. Not like pleasure, but satisfaction.
He hefted his axe. Found he could barely lift it.
Getting weaker, he thought. Dying?
Maybe.
Didn’t stop him grinning, though, and when he reached the first butcher, the man was so intent on his blind prey that he didn’t make a sound, but fell dead at Frank’s feet.
The axe got stuck in the man’s head, though, and as he fell he dragged the weapon from Frank’s weakened grip. Body thumped down and the axe handle clattered on the pavement.
The butchers turned to Frank, bleeding from their ragged crowns.
No little kings, though, noted Frank coldly and with satisfaction (maybe slight relief, too).
His axe wouldn’t come free. The butcher he’d killed was only armed with a shitty little knife, like a fucking paring blade for vegetables or something.
Blind guy was shouting, crying out. Confused and afraid, probably, hearing the noise Frank was making. He was aware his breath was ragged and hard and rattling. He was aware he was roaring in agony from his wound and his infection and maybe a little bloodred rage.
Despite that, he was happy enough. The paring knife was useless, but there were plenty of good honest rocks.
The butchers rushed Frank. He hefted a rock in his only hand, then, still looking like a lunatic, Frank Liebowicz went to work.
And damn if it didn’t feel good when skulls and bones broke beneath his blows. Damn if it wasn’t all simple, if it didn’t feel like a moment of brutal perfection.
VI. The Exalted Corpse
41
The basest emotions are often the most powerful of all. Fight or flight, the primeval imperative…human, yes, but more. Prehistoric. Saurian, maybe.
What could think, could fear. What could fear, could feel.
So why the fuck wasn’t the guy screaming?
Sid was getting angry and angry Sid made Silvia horny. She touched herself as she watched her brother go to work on the weird fucker in the barbed-wire crown.
The man cried while Sid cut. But it lacked the satisfaction factor for Sid, because the lunatic had been crying before they’d dragged him into the pool hall, where they’d been living like…well, king and queen of London.
“Why won’t he fucking scream or something? Fucker’s pissing me off.”
“Chop his fucking head off,” said Silvia, her little hand furiously scrabbling inside her trousers. Her voice was thick and slurred.
“Jesus, sis, are you fucking coming while I’m working?”
“Chop it off. Chop it off, please?”
Sid shook his head. He was well aware that he was a psychopath. But his sister? She was a fucking nutcase.
He did like that noise she made when she came, though. But fuck her. He was angry and he didn’t feel like chopping the budget Jesus’s head off, or anything else. He pushed himself away from the pool table where the man was pinned down. Silvia screamed.
“Sid!”
“Fuck you, sis. I’m not in the mood.”
Truth was, he was feeling…bored?
Yeah. Bored. Everything had been boring since the copper. No real people. Killing was supposed to be a laugh, for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t funny if they just lay there crying.
Those fucking crowned kings wouldn’t scream, wouldn’t speak, beg…didn’t do a thing but cry and then die.
And they looked grateful. Like they were happy.
It wasn
’t right.
He looked at Silvia. Now that was funny. She had her hand down her jeans, but she’d stopped wanking and was, instead, glaring at him with real fury.
Sid laughed.
Worth letting the bastard live just to see some real emotion for a change.
“What are you laughing at?” she said. One minute all moans, next, just moaning. Not for the first time, Sid half wondered, in a lazy kind of way, if he was any better off with Silvia than some people he’d known with wives.
“You, hand down your jeans,” he said, hoping his tone would irritate her if his words didn’t. “Halfway to heaven…”
“Fuck you,” she spat.
Sid laughed again. He approached and put his hand on her throat, cutting off any more words. He wanted to fight, or fuck. Didn’t really matter which.
“No, fuck you,” he said. He held her hard, grinning, getting hard.
She couldn’t breathe, and her face paled. But her little hand was working hard again.
Now this, thought Sid…this could prove interesting. He wondered if she’d come or die first, while he starved her of oxygen.
She came, then he let her breathe. She’d bitten her lip and blood flowed over her chin.
Sid was ready. He pulled himself free of his jeans. She still couldn’t speak, but was rasping something. Trying to speak. Her eyes were wide, but he didn’t care. It was his turn.
He pulled roughly at his jeans, then hers. He didn’t manage to get hers all the way clear, because right then something hit him like a fucking 4x4 bang on the nape of his neck. A smaller guy, with a thin neck, the blow would have killed him. As it was, Sid slid to the floor with a thump, out cold.
Then, the cut-rate Jesus in the clown’s crown hit Silvia along the side of the head with the thick end of a pool cue, too.
The man had torn himself free of the nails Sid had used to pin him to the pool table. Blood poured from torn flesh in so many places that the butcher looked as though he’d bathed in blood and tears.
Left to Darkness Page 11
