SS 04: Devil Said Bang: A Sandman Slim Novel

by Richard Kadrey

  “I’ll do my evil best to stay off the couch, sir.”

  I lie down next to her. She slides against me.

  Someone knocks on the bedroom doorframe.

  “We’re out of beer,” says Kasabian. Then, when he sees us, “Oh Christ. Is this turning into a domestic bliss situation? I can’t stand that It’s a Wonderful Life crap. Take me back and let me die at Max Overdrive.”

  “Be nice, Kas, and I’ll loan you my hentai discs,” says Candy.

  Kasabian frowns.

  “Schoolgirls and tentacles? No thanks. I prefer my porn mammal-only.”

  “Hot cow-on-cow action. I like it,” Candy says.

  Kasabian puts his hands up in an “I’ve had enough” gesture.

  “I’ll leave you degenerates to work out whatever it is you’re working out. Just remember that I claim the bedroom at the far end of the place. It has the second biggest TV.”

  I look at Candy.

  “As much as I’d like to give you a proper naked welcome, I have to go and see a man about a ghost. You know where the food is. Please make Kasabian watch whatever you think will annoy him most.”

  “Where are you going? Can I come along?”

  “You got knifed a few hours ago, so no.”

  “She just got skin. She didn’t even hit muscle.”

  I put on my boots and check my ammo.

  “No.”

  She sits up.

  “Seriously, we talked about this. When you run off somewhere you might not come back from, I go with you. No more stoic monosyllabic bullshit.”

  I set aside the Glock and put the .45, the knife, and na’at in my coat. I hate that Candy is right. We made a deal and I don’t want to be an overprotective liar right off the bat. There’s plenty of time for that later.

  “Okay. But you stay behind me if the things heat up. No going Jade and eating people. It’s my circus and I’m the ringmaster. Got it?”

  “What does that make me?”

  “You’re the head clown. You get out of the little car first while the others are still crushed inside.”

  “And when they’re out, you know what we’re doing?”

  “What?”

  “Clown-car sex.”

  I hope Traven gets here soon.

  Traven calls twenty minutes later. Candy and I go down and meet him out front.

  She brings the folding pistol with her. She’s already covered the case with InuYasha and Samurai Champloo stickers. I’m not sure if that’s technically low profile but the case looks more like an eighth grader’s lunch box than a gun tote, so I guess it works.

  Traven is in the car when we get there. He’s uncomfortable in the presence of the last few beautiful people fleeing the hotel. Their opulence and generic decadence must be like seeing Martians to a cloistered brainiac like him.

  “Thanks for the ride, Father.”

  “I’m glad to help. You picked a good day to go to the ocean. Most sensible people—”

  “Let me guess. Are hunkering down because the sky is plaid and Godzilla is fighting with Paul Bunyan in the Scientology building parking lot.”

  “I’ll drive and you’ll see.”

  “Hi, Father,” says Candy.

  He smiles to her in the rearview mirror.

  “It’s good to see you.”

  Traven drives west on Sunset and I do see. The sky isn’t a bad color but the light pulses like a slow strobe. It’s the kind of thing that could give you a migraine if you stared at it long enough. Farther down Sunset, it gets more interesting. Sometime during the night, cars, mailboxes, stoplights, and telephone poles sank a foot into the roadbed like someone turned on a hot plate below the street. Traven’s Geo Metro bounces over asphalt frozen into low waves. Cop cars block side streets that have collapsed into sinkholes. A few look like they’re floating several feet in the air. The PTSD Hell flashbacks are coming on strong. At least there’s not much traffic.

  “Do you still want to go all the way to Malibu?”

  “I have to but you don’t,” I say. “Drop us off and I can steal something.”

  He shakes his head.

  “No. I want to tell you a story and I’d like to tell it now. It has to do with the Qomrama Om Ya and it ties into all this madness.”

  “The ghost girl too. She’s scared to death of it.”

  “You showed it to her?”

  “I hit her with it. It’s the only thing that stopped her. And she has a name. Lamia.”

  “Are you absolutely sure about that?”

  Traven sounds about like someone just read him the winning Lotto numbers and he thinks he hit the Mega Millions.

  “It’s two syllables. Even I can remember that.”

  “So what is the Qomrama?” asks Candy.

  Traven looks at me out of the corner of his eye.

  “Remember you once asked me where I thought the old gods, the Angra Om Ya, had gone?”

  “Yeah. You said you thought they hadn’t left but you didn’t say what that meant.”

  “Well, I was wrong. They are gone. But not for much longer.”

  “How soon is longer? I mean the world is coming apart.”

  Traven picks up a book from the dashboard. It’s an old one I once saw in his apartment. There are rust-colored stains on the front that are probably blood.

  “Lamia is the name of an avatar of one of the Angra Om Ya.”

  “I pistol-whipped a goddess?”

  He shakes his head.

  “I think what you encountered was a kind of demon. An incomplete piece of one of the Angra.”

  “But she’s the ghost of a real little girl. She was born in Spain.”

  “How will lost deities enter our universe from the outside? They’re creatures without form. Maybe they have to do it through the mortal bodies to gain substance. What kind of a girl was she? Was she considered holy? Did she perform miracles?”

  “She was a monster. Her own village killed her and buried her in an unconsecrated cemetery.”

  Traven is quiet for a minute.

  “I wonder if she brought the Qomrama Om Ya with her or came to retrieve it?”

  “Forget the girl. What’s the Qomrama?”

  Traven slows and steers us around a sinkhole that’s swallowed part of a sandwich shop and auto-parts store. Cops on the side streets look worn and shell-shocked.

  “In the first language, ‘Om Ya’ simply means ‘God.’ ‘Angra,’ depending on how you say it, means ‘great’ or ‘grievous.’ ‘Qomrama’ is a bit murkier but it means something like ‘devourer.’ The Qomrama Om Ya is the Godeater. A weapon designed by gods to kill other gods.”

  I check the side mirror.

  “Father, did you come straight to the Chateau from your place?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  Candy looks out the rear window. I keep an eye on the mirror.

  “There’s only one car back there and it’s been with us for several blocks. Speed up.”

  The car falls back for a few seconds then speeds up and stays on our tail. It’s a Charger, not that that matters. In a flat-out chase, a skateboarder with a broken ankle can outrun a Geo Metro. The Charger is overkill. It accelerates and comes up behind us.

  “Take it up to forty and keep it there.”

  “The car will shake apart on this uneven pavement.”

  “Yeah, but it’ll make it harder for them to shoot at us.”


  “Oh,” says Traven. He hits the gas.

  The Charger doesn’t even notice. It pulls up alongside and King Cairo rolls down the front passenger window.

  “Switch places with me,” I say to Candy.

  I squeeze into the backseat and she gets in the front.

  Flame hits the side of the Metro.

  “Don’t slow down.”

  Traven nods. Steers around the bumps the best he can.

  Cairo is hanging out the window of the other car. Rolling his eyes and making faces. He tosses another fire hex at the Metro. It hits hard enough to shake the little car.

  Candy is turned around in the front seat looking at me.

  “Remember when I told you I was going to take you shooting?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Congratulations. Consider this your first lesson.”

  I take a 9mm clip from my pocket and hand it to her. She grins like a wolf. Hits the release and the gun case opens like a metal flower. She shoulders the gun, slides in the clip, and chambers a round.

  “Don’t get too excited. You don’t shoot until I say to and you only shoot at what I tell you to. Got it?”

  She nods. With the gun in her hands, she can’t stop smiling. Traven isn’t. Flames are hitting his car, blistering the paint and turning the driver-side window black. And now there’s an armed amateur in the seat next to him.

  “Aren’t you glad you came along, Father?”

  “I wanted to do more than read books. I guess this is it.”

  “Welcome to le merdier. Does this back window roll down?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Too bad.”

  I put my fist through it. It catches around my wrist like a big glass bracelet. I pull it off and throw it at Cairo just as he’s about to toss more fire our way. The glass shatters in Cairo’s face. He slides back into the car, covering his eyes. The Charger slows down.

  “Is it over?” asks Traven. “Did we win?”

  “No and I doubt it.”

  The Charger cuts right and gets behind us again.

  “Keep talking, Father. I like hearing stories when I’m killing people. Lamia is a demon of an Angra. How did she get here? What does she want?”

  Traven’s voice quivers a little. I can’t tell if it’s fear or the uneven road.

  “The weapon is your answer. She, and we can assume the rest of the Angra, will return to take back what’s theirs.”

  “The Qomrama?”

  “If the books are right, they’ll want everything. The entire universe.”

  The Charger moves up on us again. I can see Cairo shouting at the driver.

  “Candy, shoot that son of a bitch.”

  “Which one?”

  “Any of them. Just pop a couple of shots at them and see what they do. Keep talking, Father.”

  Candy leans out the window and shoots twice. One shot misses and the other takes out one of the Charger’s headlights. Not a bad start. It gets them to put a little more distance between us.

  “Father?”

  “We once talked about the idea that the being we call God is merely the Demiurge.”

  “More like the universe’s janitor than an all-powerful creator. Got it.”

  “The book you saw in my office when we first met. The one you called the Angra Om Ya Bible has an alternate Creation story. It’s entirely possible that the entity that we call God didn’t create this universe. The Angra Om Ya did. God merely usurped it.”

  The Charger pulls up right on our bumper and Cairo climbs out of the sunroof.

  “Slow down,” I shout.

  Traven backs off the accelerator.

  Behind us, the Charger lurches, trying to keep from hitting our bumper. Cairo slams into the side of the sunroof and falls back inside.

  “Keep going.”

  “Talking or driving?” says Traven.

  “Both. See if you can hit the windshield, Candy.”

  “In math there’s something called M-theory. It says that we live in a universe with many parallel dimensions and many universes all separated by infinitely large membranes.”

  Candy pulls the trigger just as we hit a bump and the shot goes high. The second shot hits the Charger’s windshield.

  “Nice work, Calamity Jane. Get back inside the car and wait for me.”

  Traven says, “I believe that the Angra are in one of the parallel universes and that the changes in reality we’re experiencing have been going on longer than we think but have only become noticeable now.”

  “With all the dreamers dying, I’m not surprised.”

  “The breakdown of reality caused a crack in one of the membranes and a tiny piece of Lamia leaked back into this universe.”

  “How did the Angra end up in another universe?”

  “According to the alternate history, God tricked them. The Angra were already here when our God manifested Himself. When He made Himself known, He gave the Angra an offering.”

  “What kind?”

  “The books don’t say. But it was a trick, and exiled them beyond the edge of our universe.”

  “And now they want back in to take what’s theirs. Which is everything.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  We hit a deep gulley that rattles everyone’s teeth.

  “And they’ll kill God to do it,” Traven says.

  “That old man has more enemies than Stalin.”

  The Charger accelerates. It comes around parallel to us. The road is getting worse. It rattles my bones and balls but it forces the heavy Charger to slow down.

  “What happens to us if they come back?”

  “The book doesn’t say. But there are other texts that talk about battles between Gods in other dimensions.”

  “And?”

  “In every one, the winner scours the universe clean and starts over.”

  “Scouring sounds bad,” says Candy.

  “Can we stop them?”

  “I have no idea,” Traven says.

  The Charger pulls up parallel again. Cairo climbs out the sunroof on top of the car.

  “Look at the bright side, Father. When the Angra destroy everything, there won’t be a Hell for you to go to.”

  “Every Apocalypse has a silver lining,” says Candy.

  “That’s my girl.”

  “Can I shoot some more?”

  “Almost. When I get out, you come back here. If anyone in the Charger shoots at us or tries to get out, you shoot them. Don’t waste ammo. Unless Cairo looks like he’s going to win. Then spray the fucking car and kill as many of them as you can.”

  “Neat,” she says.

  I put my hand on Traven’s shoulder.

  “When you hear me stomp on the roof, hit the brakes. Don’t worry about me.”

  He nods.

  I pop the sunroof and crawl out on top. The cheap plastic hinges snap and the sunroof flies off the car and into the street behind us. Cairo opens his arms in greeting. I give him the finger.

  He’s fast. He crouches and throws a shower of fire my way underhanded, like a softball pitcher.

  I drop back halfway down into the sunroof and the fire passes over me.

  “Shoot,” I say to Candy. She does, whooping like she’s at the rodeo. Glass explodes out of the Charger’s side windows.

  I toss some arena hoodoo Cairo’s way. It’s an old crushing hex. Supposed to break an en
emy’s bones. Cairo dodges the hex but I didn’t throw it at him. I hit the car’s engine.

  There’s a horrible grinding and snap as the Charger’s engine drops and hits the street, gouging deep ruts in the road. Cairo flies off the roof, bounces off the hood, and falls in front of the Charger. I stomp my boot and Traven stops the Geo. I jump off the back, throwing protection hoodoo around me as I hit and roll. Cairo lands on the street in front of his car. From where I’m lying, I’m at just the right angle to see the Charger roll right over him.

  Candy blows the rest of her clip into the side of Cairo’s car. His boys duck out the passenger side and take off down a side street.

  Traven backs up. I climb into the car.

  “Turn us around. I’ll hurt Teddy later. We’re going to Blackburn’s.”

  Candy blows across the tip of her gun barrel like a cowgirl, leans between the seats, and gives me a kiss. She uses her thumb to wipe lip gloss off my lips.

  “Why Blackburn’s?” she asks.

  “Cairo was using hoodoo in the open right in front of God and Joe SixPack. Either he’s nuts or they’re not after Saint James anymore but me instead. Permission could only come from Blackburn or Aelita and I know where Blackburn is.”

  We drive past Cairo’s car. The engine steams and spits. Spills gas all over the street. There’s blood on the bumper and a long wet streak on the asphalt like something was dragged but Cairo’s body is gone.

  I give Traven Blackburn’s address and we head over.

  “I hate to point out something to you,” he says.

  “If it isn’t ‘Great job. I’m thrilled to be on your side,’ I don’t want to hear it.”

  “We’re on a major thoroughfare. Half the streets we just passed had traffic cameras. Tomorrow LAPD will have the entire fight on tape.”

  Shit.

  “No worries, Father. With the street fucked up, the cameras are probably out and half the police force will be hunkered down at home. By the time someone looks over the tapes, we’ll either be dead or heroes.”

  “Or dead heroes,” says Candy.

  Traven thinks for a long minute.

  “At times of crisis, my mother used to recite an old Hungarian saying. ‘The strength of the serpent and the peace of the dove.’ ”