Hollywood Dead

by Richard Kadrey

  “I think so. Anyway, it’s not carpet.”

  She kicks at the path with the toe of her boot.

  “Ewww. Are those bones?”

  “Very old bones. Cartilage. Remains of anything that dies in the forest.”

  “Jesus. You take me to the nicest places.”

  She looks at the bones again.

  “You think there are people in the road?”

  “No. Anything that talks gets buried. These are just birds and mice and things.”

  Candy bumps into me, trying to keep away from the eyes on the edge of the trail.

  “You might have told me about some of this before.”

  “I didn’t know if we were in the right place.”

  “Still. Whenever you take someone somewhere that’s made of eyeballs and bones, it’s just good manners to warn them.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  I almost say, I’ll remember that for next time, but catch myself.

  “Okay. We’re in the right world. Where is Hijruun?”

  “If we’re lucky, right down there.”

  I point to a tower standing at the intersection of four trails. Candy starts walking faster but falls back when my bad leg won’t let me keep up. Still, when we make it there a half hour later, I’m feeling good.

  “Okay. That’s impressive,” says Candy.

  “This is the right place. I remember Hijruun describing it to Azazel.”

  The tower is around fifty feet high and capped with a vaulted roof that gently rises and falls, like the building is breathing. The main structure is made entirely from gravestones that have been cut to fit together like a massive jigsaw puzzle. The courtyard area is surrounded by high curtains of animal bones.

  “You could have told me about that too,” says Candy.

  “If you don’t like that you’re not going to like the doorbell.”

  Candy looks and shakes her head. “I’m definitely not touching it.”

  “Always leaving me with the dirty work.”

  “You are the dirty work.”

  A large pair of pink, healthy-looking lungs hangs on a hook near the door. I squeeze them and a horn blares somewhere inside the tower.

  Candy rubs her nose.

  “That’s gross. You’re gross.”

  “That’s half the reason you like me.”

  “True. You really do take me to the most glamorous places.”

  “You better hope he doesn’t ask us in for tea and crumpets. You don’t want to know what those are like.”

  “Still gross.”

  I give the lungs another squeeze, but no one comes down. When I try the knob on the gravestone door it swings open.

  There’s a long spiral staircase. Every few feet, candles burn within holders made from ribs and vertebrae. Books and papers are scattered on the stairs. A small table by the door is on its side.

  I look at Candy.

  “Do you have your knife?”

  “Always.”

  “Keep it ready.”

  She takes it out of her jacket.

  “No one’s home?”

  “I don’t think so. But they left in a hurry.”

  “Do you think the killers got here ahead of us?”

  “I doubt it. Those faction pricks would have burned the tower as a warning to everyone else.”

  “What are we going to do now?” says Candy.

  I think for a minute.

  “Fuck. I’m going to have to do some tracking hoodoo.”

  “Are you strong enough for that?”

  “I don’t have any choice. I’m not going to sit around and rot.”

  “How can I help?”

  We go outside. I take out the black blade and kneel on the ground.

  “Keep your eyes open. If anything weird comes at us, let me know.”

  “Weird?” she says. “What’s your standard for weird here? Someone riding a bicycle made of tits and assholes?”

  “Definitely let me know about that. I wouldn’t want to miss it.”

  With the blade, I cut a magic circle into the ground. I don’t have a map of the place to use as a reference, so I’m going to have to use some extra-elaborate hoodoo, which is going to tire me out and take a lot longer to set up.

  A gentle wind blows through the forest, passing through the bone curtains and making them rattle like bamboo wind chimes.

  I’m on my knees trying to carve intricate mystical scripts and sigils into the ground and it’s not working. Everywhere around here is covered in the bone carpet we walked to get here. Cutting it is easy, but it’s too soft to hold the hoodoo forms I need. I’m going to have to dig down until I hit dirt and start over. This is going to take forever.

  I’ve gouged out a couple of clumps of bones when the wind stirs and the curtain rattles again.

  “Stark!” yells Candy.

  Something bursts through the hanging bones, something we didn’t see earlier because it too is bones. It’s ten feet tall, with a head like an elongated fish skull. Its entire body is made out of smaller animal skulls, some with jutting horns and antlers. It moves quickly and quietly, knocking Candy flying with the back of its arm. Over its head, the bone mountain holds a cleaver that’s as long as I am tall. When it swings the blade down at me, I know I’m fucked. My bad leg is too far gone for me to move quickly. All I can do is roll away and hope for the best. The little skulls on its back giggle and guffaw at me.

  I get lucky with the first blow and it misses. The cleaver goes in so hard that the ground shakes. It takes it a couple of tries for it to pull the thing free.

  “Hijruun!” I shout.

  If he hears me, he doesn’t care.

  The moment the cleaver comes free, Hijruun swings at me again. I can’t move out of the way this time and my injured arm isn’t going to stop a blade that weighs as much as a narwhal. Without thinking, I reach out with my prosthetic hand—and catch the cleaver. The impact just about knocks me over. While on one knee, I grab the top of the cleaver with my other hand and spin my whole body. There’s a loud snap as Hijruun’s hand breaks off at the wrist. He falls to his knees, howling and cackling with laughter.

  Candy jumps on him from behind, holding her knife to his throat. She’s gone full Jade, so I wave with both hands to get her attention.

  “Hold on. It’s Hijruun. The one we’re looking for.”

  I look down at him. He nods and the little skulls titter.

  “Kill me quickly, Hell beast,” he simultaneously laughs and howls. “That’s the only favor I ask of you.”

  “Calm down, you bony fuck. I didn’t come all this way to kill you.”

  “Liar!” he chuckles. “I remember you from Azazel’s stable. You’re the slim one. The monster who kills monsters.”

  “I haven’t worked for him for a long time. In fact, I’m the one who killed him.”

  “Then damn you for that,” Hijruun chortles. “I have been without decent access to the Hellion court since he died.”

  I put away my knife and tell Candy to do the same. She does and transforms back into her human form.

  I say, “There is no Hellion court anymore. The place is a shambles.”

  “So I understand,” says Hijruun. “The war that shredded the place, was it your doing?”

  “Not entirely. But I helped.”

  Hijruun rises to his full height. His one bony hand holds on to his broken wrist.

  “If you’re not here to kill me, might I retrieve my hand?”

  “Just the hand. Leave the cleaver where it is.”

  “If you insist,” he laughs.

  Talking to him is unnerving. When everything I say is a joke, I can’t gauge his tone. And he doesn’t have a heart or eyes, so I’m screwed there too.

  He pulls his hand free of the cleaver and holds it to the end of his wrist. The bones knit back together in a few seconds.

  “Now, monster who no longer kills monsters,” he giggles. “Why have you come all this way?”

  I g
et closer.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I still kill monsters. But not today. Today, I’m here to warn you that someone is coming to kill you.”

  “If not you then who?”

  “Have you ever heard of Wormwood?”

  That gets some big yuks. He howls, sniggers, and guffaws for a long time. I can’t tell if he’s scared or thought the question was genuinely funny.

  “And here I was running from you,” he chuckles. “I ruined some books escaping my tower.”

  “Sorry, but I didn’t have your number. It sounds like you know who Wormwood is.”

  “That I do,” he laughs. “But why would Wormwood care about me?”

  “I don’t know, but your name was on a list of people to be murdered.”

  That really cracks him up. He laughs and laughs, but I get the feeling that might be how a cackler sounds when it’s in pain.

  “I’m not surprised,” Hijruun says with the smallest chuckle. “So many friends in so many realities have been taken. And you say it’s been Wormwood’s work?”

  “Yes.”

  “But which one? Each is more awful than the other. I can scarcely believe such malevolence,” he screeches.

  “I know what you mean. I’d like to kill them all.”

  Hijruun looks at us with his hollow eyes.

  “Neither of you is human, am I right?”

  “I’m half-human,” I say.

  “Then forgive me cursing you and all of your kind. Of all the evils I have seen in the centuries of my existence, I’ve never seen a species so dedicated to its own ruin and corruption.”

  “What do you mean?” says Candy.

  Hijruun looks at her, then back to me.

  “You know of Wormwood and the newer so-called Wormwood? Tell me which one is worse.”

  “That’s easy. The faction. They’re religious nuts killing everything in their way, in any reality, to get control of the world. Never trust a crusader.”

  He looks at Candy.

  “And you agree?” he giggles.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then what do you say to the ultimate goal of the original Wormwood? Do you judge their betrayal of the human race less harshly?”

  I say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Now he laughs for real.

  “You’re in a war and you don’t even know your enemy’s motives and goals. Perhaps you should go back to your old ways, slim one. You were a better assassin than a soldier.”

  “What does ‘betrayal of the human race’ mean?” says Candy. I can hear her worry for Alessa in every syllable.

  Hijruun and his skulls whoop.

  “The faction, as you call them, longs to serve a God who has no use for them. But the earlier, older Wormwood still lives only to serve itself. They’ve made a compact with God’s rebel angels to steal every mortal soul that is or has ever been to prevent them from entering Heaven. This will end the great war and things in the afterlife will regain their balance. As a half-human, you must be so proud.”

  He’s laughing harder than ever now. It’s distracting. I can’t think things through.

  “That doesn’t make sense. Even Wormwood members die. What’s going to happen to their souls when they go?”

  That cracks him up even more.

  “Nothing, because they won’t die. Part of their bargain with the rebels is a Heavenly elixir. It will render them as immortal as the angels themselves. This will make them kings of their world and lords of every human soul unto the end of time. It’s enough to make one laugh.”

  And he does just that.

  I look at Candy. We both know it, but she’s polite enough not to say it. This is who I’ve been working for. People who are going to own every human in existence. Wormwood can already buy and sell damnation. What will happen when they can sell immortality too? The kind of people who can afford that are exactly the kind who shouldn’t get near it. And I’ve been their stooge from the second I got back, paving the way for them to wipe out the faction and buy eternity for themselves and their friends. Now I am going to kill all of them. And I deserve to die along with them.

  “Stark warned you,” says Candy. “Isn’t that worth something?”

  “Of course,” laughs Hijruun. “My kind pays our debts. Ask what you will.”

  “He’s dying. Can you do anything to stop it?”

  The big bag of bones looks me over. After a while he says, “You wish to live forever?” Hijruun giggles.

  “No. Just my normal time.”

  The cackler thinks, the skulls along his body whispering and laughing at something we can’t hear and probably wouldn’t understand if we could.

  “There might be a way. A potion. Something very old. I have the makings in the tower. Come,” he snickers, then stops and looks at me.

  “Will you encounter either Wormwood again, do you think?” laughs Hijruun.

  “I’m sure of it.”

  Hijruun touches one of the skulls on his side and it pops open, revealing something gleaming inside.

  “Please give this to them,” he snickers.

  It’s a small clear crystal, about the size of my thumb.

  “What is it?”

  “A surprise,” Hijruun howls. “Now come. Let us see about your potion.”

  We barely get twenty feet.

  They come out of the trees, down the bone trail, and through the eyeball thicket. All in balaclavas and heavily armed. When they’re rushing us like that, I can’t tell how many of them there are, or if they’re Wormwood or the faction.

  As if that matters anymore.

  Hijruun grabs his enormous cleaver and slices the closest gunman in two, then swings it back, using the blunt side to crush the skull of another.

  Candy goes Jade and drops back behind the bone curtain, before bursting out again and bringing down two more gunmen.

  I can’t move as fast as Candy or Hijruun, so I empty the Glock and the Colt at the shooters. Each bullet hits, but the bastards are wearing body armor so all the shots do is make them dance a little. I retreat around the side of Hijruun’s tower and disappear into a shadow. When they come around for me, I jam the black blade into the base of the second shooter’s skull. By the time the first one has turned around, I’ve disappeared again. Come out by the side of a tree, swinging the na’at like a sword, slashing through his armor. As he falls, he fires wildly. I dive for cover, but not before a shot ricochets off my Kissi arm and slices my cheek. Perfect. I’m going to die even uglier now. By the time the idiot hits the ground, he’s blown through his clip, so I pig-stick the bastard through the heart.

  Just as I turn to check on Candy, something hits me in the side of the neck.

  I rip it out.

  It’s a tiny dart.

  I fall.

  There’s a gunman standing right over me.

  I get one last look at Hijruun lying facedown on the bone trail and Candy being chased into the forest by a couple more shooters.

  And I pass out.

  I DON’T KNOW how long I was unconscious. My head hurts like someone ran over it with a tank, but that could be the drugs or the fact I got shot in the fucking face. Blood is steadily oozing, down my cheek. I touch the wound and my hand comes back slick with something the color of old motor oil.

  “Anyone got a Band-Aid?”

  We’re in a big room. A huge damn room. Four of the masked shooters stand over me with their rifles ready to put many more holes in my body. That’s the last thing I want right now, so I stay down with my hands in plain sight.

  One of the shooters squats next to me and yanks off their balaclava.

  It’s Marcella.

  “Did you find that pay phone I told you about?”

  She shakes her head.

  “I gave a cabbie the twenty to borrow his phone.”

  “That is simpler. But doesn’t he have your pricks’ phone number now?”

  Marcella sighs dramatically. “We had to take him into custody. If he’
s good, we’ll make some modifications to his memory and send him home with a new phone.”

  “You keep telling yourself that, but Wormwood doesn’t have a good track record with catch and release.”

  She cocks her head at me.

  “You keep saying ‘Wormwood’ like the organizations are interchangeable. They’re the ones who want nothing more than to murder humanity. We want to improve it.”

  “From what I’ve seen, you’re both pretty okay with the idea of mass murder. What about your ritual at the chapel? There are four million people in L.A. How many were you looking to kill? One million as an object lesson to the others or all of them so you could repopulate the city with your Stepford Assholes?”

  Marcella looks up at the other shooters. They haven’t moved an inch. She stands up.

  “What if I explained our position to you from the beginning? Would you even listen?”

  “Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin. Wormwood explained and justified itself to me before. It was all lies. Your bunch? You’re the same shit just in a shiny new package.”

  “There’s nothing I can say to change your mind? Just to get you to be quiet for a while and listen?”

  “Nothing.”

  She looks past me to somewhere in the distance.

  “You look a lot worse than the last time I saw you. If you just cooperated a little, we might be able to help you.”

  The blood running down my neck is making my shirt and coat sticky.

  “I don’t want your help, but can I at least stop this damn bleeding?”

  “How?”

  “I have a bandage in my pocket.”

  Marcella says, “You’re aware there are three associates here who’ll shoot you if you try anything smart.”

  “Don’t worry. I haven’t done anything smart in years.”

  Very slowly, I take the duct tape from my pocket and show it to everyone. Cool. No one shoots me. I pull out a couple of inches and tear it off with my teeth. I’m still not shot. Things are going great. With my coat sleeve, I clean my cheek, then smack the tape into place. I put the roll back in my pocket and show everyone my hands.

  I say, “How do I look?”

  “Like a pail of manure dragged down a bumpy road and dumped into a river of puke,” says a familiar voice from behind me.

  He comes around the side and stands with Marcella.