Lieutenant Arkham: Elves and Bullets

by Alessio Lanterna

  Oda. They come from the southern continent, hunchbacks from births, they get even more deformed as they age. Their legs are shorter than those belonging to a human, but their upper limbs almost touch the ground and end in six-fingered hands as big as anvils. Officially, these giants with skin as grey as rock, are classified as sentients, despite the fact that their appearance suggests quite the opposite. Greenish villi with a diameter of at least five centimetres hang down their gorilla-bodybuilder chests. Their eyes don’t have an iris, double eyelids like amphibians. But what really freaks me out about the way they look is their over-sized mouths, permanently wide open: because they don’t have a nose, Odas have to breathe through the mouth, this is what produces their characteristic wheeze. In the wild these beasts hunt in the savannah at night, combining good night vision with excellent skills of perception, meaning that they know exactly what is going on around them as far as five hundred metres away. I’ve always wondered if in the City these skills are impaired by traffic. There’s a hell of a difference between a clearing in the wild and a structure shaken by high winds and trodden by thirty million living beings, with their cars, factories and loud speakers.

  There are two males, who luckily are wearing only partially ripped underpants, and a female with a swollen belly, adorned with coloured trinkets ‘round her neck and in that stuff resembling hair. Oda clans all work in the same way, at least that’s what people say who have found the desire and courage to study them (many have died, of course). Pregnant females almost always lead the community, while the males, only marginally more intelligent than lichen, take care of the hunting and defending their territory. A newborn Oda is, on average, 2’ 7” tall, but reaches a height of eight feet in a year. Because a female can give birth to four babies with each pregnancy, the first explorers who entered into contact with the clans of savages on the mainland of the southern continent wondered why these giants hadn’t spread as far as the coast, and entered into conflict with the throngs of kingdoms of dark-skinned humans along the coast. The reason for this? Simple, they’re cannibals. Their answer to any social dispute is to devour each other. A male at the top of the social structure is too old to defend himself from a younger male? The youngster eats him. Vice versa, an overly bold kid questions the authority of an adult? Gnom. A female doesn’t get pregnant fast enough after the last litter? Yum yum. Someone gets wounded during a hunting session? Second helpings for all. On the surface this looks like an effective system, based on discipline and a fast generational turnover. On the other hand, it doesn’t leave a great deal of room for learning and culture, which is still strictly tribal even amongst Odas who have made it, by means of systems unknown to the City.

  “Ask… you… look for… Eton…”

  The female is speaking, her voice is flat and punctuated with pauses that last forever. I interrogated an Oda once. It took me an hour only to find out that she didn’t know anything that was of any use to me. Talking together is an immense effort for them.

  “I’m looking for him too!” exclaims the addict, scratching himself all the while. The Odas watch him, fluttering the membrane in their eyes and rhythmically inflating the two air sacs on their necks. The female croaks something, like a bull frog that’s just devoured the whole pond, crocodiles included. The three giants turn to face me.

  “Ask… you… look…”

  “Yes.” I nod, interrupting the excruciating of syllables. “I’m looking for Eton. Do you know where he is?”

  I doubt that getting my badge out would do much good. They exchange a few croaky words in their incomprehensible language.

  “Come…” the female says in the end, pointing at the place they came out of. Fleabag sets off enthusiastically, but the monsters stare at me when I don’t display the slightest inclination of moving.

  “No, thanks. I just dropped by to say hello.” No fucking way am I going into a dark hole with them. Bet they want to play at ‘guess who’s coming to dinner’, I’ll willingly give up my place to the psycho with scabies.

  “Come…” repeats the female, completely monotone as before.

  The males are resting their hands on the ground. Shit. They’re getting ready to jump. From this distance they’ll flatten me like an empty can.

  “Easy now, I’m with the Federal Guard. I’ll show you my badge.”

  “What? Federal Guard?” The junkie’s alarmed. Slowly, I move my hand towards my badge, but the Odas mustn’t have understood me. The stunned words from the other poor bastard are the last thing I hear before a menhir of muscle performs an olympic leap and landing me with a punch to the head, I just keep on getting battered today without really knowing exactly why.

  What a fuck-awful day.

  I wake up to constant, agonising stabs of pain. It’s all dark. There’s a drums-only jam session inside my head, worthy of one of the worst hangovers of my life. Feeling around I realise that I’m surrounded by a series of vertical wooden bars. By following them I can confirm what I suspected: I’m in a cage. The different-sized planks seem to have been recycled; despite this they are effectively held together by some sort of string, it’s been knotted carefully. I could actually manage to untie it and escape but I think it would take hours. If I strain my ears I can make out a distant buzzing noise, this is overlaid with the now familiar incessant scratching of the junkie. I don’t want to attract his attention, but when I twist my body in the cramped cell, my body contorts painfully and I involuntarily produce a moan of suffering. Fleabag interrupts his otherwise relentless business and repeatedly interrogates the darkness. If the slight echo is anything to go by we’re imprisoned in a reasonably large space.

  “Yes, I’m here,” I answer in the end, with a grimace.

  “We’ve got to escape!”

  Why do I only come across morons? Is it something in the water, has the whole city turned stupid?

  “I suppose you’re in a cage, too.”

  “A wooden cage, yessir. I can’t even stand up.”

  “Marvelous. I reckon we’ve ended up in the pantry.”

  “You mean they’re going to eat us?!”

  I don’t answer him, and he starts snivelling. I proceed with the inventory, while my eyes adjust to the dark. They’ve taken my regulation gun, wallet, ID holder, cigarettes, lighter, keys, mobile phone and the fucking envelope, in other words everything except the only thing they couldn’t find. The Altra.

  Nevertheless I check to see it’s still there, calling it from out of the dimensional pocket. It jumps into my hand, faithful as ever; holding it gives my morale a boost. One of the many runes engraved on the weapon gives it the priceless ability to disappear into another plane of existence together with its holder as soon as it’s put away. It’s more than ‘simple’ invisibility: it literally vanishes from this world, so no search or identification spell can find it. Only the person who placed it back in its holster can bring it back to this existence, meaning that if I were to die before managing to extract it, this unique firearm would be lost forever. It is a full optional piece, of course.

  I run my fingers over the rune engraved on the tiny torch stowed away under the barrel, it activates immediately and projects a clear beam of light. I’m in a kind of cave, roughly hewn out of the concrete with basic tools, or maybe even the grey monsters’ bare hands. There are steel supports placed at regular intervals which connect the floor and the ceiling, the only bastion against the threat of collapse. Copious pools of some liquid or other take up most of the floor space, they correspond to the pipes which were severed during the building work. Clearly, I’m inside a layer between two levels, like the dog track. What with gangsters, gremlins and Odas busy transforming Nectropis into a piece of Gruyère cheese, I’m amazed the City hasn’t collapsed in on itself. It’ll surely happen sooner or later. Anyway, I’ve got more important things to worry about for the moment.

  I carry on exploring, and come up against my companion in this unlucky adventure, who mutters something incomprehensible. As soon as
the light hits him, he stops scratching to shield his eyes. His face has four red welts on his left cheek, the only one I can see. The junkie is having really bad withdrawal symptoms. Even his arms are dripping with sweat. Fleabag is literally falling apart with all the layers of skin he’s ripped off; never seen anything like it. I bet he can’t even stand up. On the left there’s a tunnel, the only visible way out from my position.

  I turn the torch off in case I attract the attention of some disgusting beast and shoot at the bars where they meet at the top of the cage and replace the gun in its holster Another great feature of the Altra is that it doesn’t make a sound when it fires, so the only sound accompanying the bullets is that of splintering wood, which disperses amongst the myriad of squeaks and creaks in the surrounding environment. I could blow away the bars completely and go right now, but go where? Only the Gods know how far these tunnels extend. For all I know, I could be wandering for days in a maze of tunnels, before collapsing from exhaustion and getting myself devoured by a grey giant with the IQ of a stalactite. I need someone to guide me out of here. And to get me my stuff back. I check with my foot that the damaged bars are ready to be knocked out with a good kick, when the time comes. At first glance, the Odas probably won’t notice that the cage isn’t as solid as it should be. May the Pale take me if I have to give these overgrown toads my envelope and mobile phone with all those numbers on the memory card.

  “Hey, fleabag,” I call into the darkness.

  “Fimir,” fleabag protests from his cage.

  “Fimir. I’ve got a plan as to how to escape from this place, but you’ve got to help me.”

  “Great, mate. What do I have to do?”

  “They’ll come sooner or later. You’ve got to attract their attention, Distract them.”

  “No problem!” he exclaims, resuming his noisy self-quartering business.

  Time passes, marked only by the rhythmic sound of lacerating human flesh and interrupted by the odd muffled whimper. As I gradually regain awareness, the pain increases, revealing fresh wounds and bruises. One of these is a nasty cut on my right eyebrow which needs at least four or five stitches. Clearly, Oda’s fist must have gotten me on the face, not on the head. Or, then again, maybe he just hit me all over, which is what logically happens when you’ve got a fist the size of a size fifteen ski boot. In fact, if that sledgehammer had hit me smack in the face I’d be writhing in the last throes of death, with half my face gone. But I’m not. They wanted to keep us alive. Why? Perhaps they prefer their food fresh. The TV documentary I saw about Odas didn’t explain this disturbing detail about the diet of these giant cannibals. An hour passes, or it could be ten minutes, when I reach the end of my tether and explode.

  “Give that fucking scratching a rest, for fuck’s sake. You’ll bleed to death if you carry on like that.”

  “Shit, cop, do you think I’m enjoying myself? I’m not, not one fucking bit. But I can’t help it.”

  “You’re making my headache worse.”

  “Fuck you, copper!”

  More empty minutes pass. Maybe they’ve simply left us here, to die of starvation. I’m getting more and more impatient with every tap of my nail. Perhaps I should just knock the bars down and go.

  They’re coming.

  There are three of them again, probably the same ones as before and they’ve come for a snack. Predictably, they aren’t carrying any source of light, so I can only make out vague, wheezing silhouettes. Go, fleabag, this is your thirty seconds of glory. Fimir starts screaming at them to let him out, initially to no avail. The three monsters stop a few feet away from both cages and croak. Maybe they can’t agree on a condiment. The junkie only stops every now and again, and only interrupts himself for a good old scratch of his face. In the end his insistence is rewarded and the creatures start to move in his direction. When the three shapes close in on fleabag’s cage I kick the weakened side with both feet, letting out a cry of pain at the same time.

  Shit. Only one bar has come off.

  The trio has heard me.

  Another kick finally makes a hole big enough for me to squeeze through, but there’s not enough time left. The two males are ready to jump as soon as I stick my nose out. However, they don’t know I’m armed. Getting into position so I can shoot causes more moans of agony. It’d probably be funny to someone looking in from the outside. A poor bastard trying to wriggle about in a broken cell with three Odas staring at him with saliva dribbling from their slack mouths. Quickly, I take aim and fire at the first one. Despite the gigantic target, it’s still tricky, what with the lack of light and my awkward position, and to be quite honest, I’m not the world’s best shot. Aldenos was a good shot, God rest his soul. I make do with an average mark at our shooting range.

  After all, I’m brandishing a one-of-a-kind weapon. Thanks to the Altra, I’m an infallible sniper. The first of the two males sways momentarily before going down, while the two remaining Odas watch him in confusion. A moment’s delay is enough to bring down the second male, come out and point the torch beam onto the female, who’s getting ready to jump. Even though she doesn’t possess the same power as the other two on the ground, she’s still a potentially lethal opponent. Whom I need alive. Slowly, very slowly, I move closer to the surviving Oda. Both of the dead bodies next to her have a great fat hole in their heads. During all the years of our working partnership, I’ve noticed that my gun has a marked tendency to hit its victims in lethal points on the body, regardless of the accuracy of my aim. ‘My life’s masterpiece’ is how Beron described it when he gave it to me. Considering that we’re talking about one of the greatest master engravers in the world, if not the absolute best, the Altra could be ranked as an actual legendary weapon. If I were a famous king or an important person at least, they’d most likely write a song about it.

  “Stop. Let’s discuss this.”

  A low, threatening rasping sound.

  “All I want is my stuff back, then I’ll go.”

  “Oi!” pipes up Fimir. “Come on, get me out of here!”

  “He…” the Oda starts, “ no… out… he… scratch.”

  “Hey, let me out!”

  The Oda crouches in silence.

  “Shut your mouth.” I try to keep Fimir quiet.

  “What the fuck? We had a deal!”

  “Look at yourself, you fuckwit. You’re covered in blood from head to toe, your own blood. It’s a miracle you’re still able to keep on yelling. Where the hell do you think you can go?”

  “Dirty bastard, get me out of here!”

  “Shut up and die, arsehole. So, shall we go?” I finally ask the Oda, ignoring the renewed protests from the junkie. Slowly, the beast shows me the way, trying not to lose sight of me. Fimir’s insults are on my heels for a few metres, then we enter the maze of tunnels and he becomes a vague vibration in the past.

  Just as I feared, the labyrinth of tunnels is vast and intricate. We change direction several times before reaching another cave, smaller than the one with the cages and filled with objects from who knows how many robberies, it’s a sort of treasure chamber. Wonder if they do anything with this stuff or they just accumulate it for the sheer pleasure of doing so. My guide points to the first pile, my stuff is on top.

  “Stand still in that corner.” I make her move to one side by gesturing with my gun. She obeys.

  I collect my things, and without ever letting my guard down I have a rummage in the pile, I empty a couple of wallets and pocket a handsome wristwatch. There’s almost certainly a load of money here, what with stolen goods and cash, but it’s just as likely that there are other giants around. It breaks my heart – I think to myself, stuffing another banknote in my pocket – but I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave all these goodies right here. Then, like a ray of divine light shining out of the heavens above, my torch beam happens upon a transparent packet, partially hidden by a wide-brimmed hat. It probably isn’t flour, if the Oda’s eating habits are anything to go by.

  In f
act it is half a kilo of Onirò. A winning fucking ticket to the national fucking lottery. I stuff it in my pocket after preparing a super fast line on the back of my hand, being very careful not to completely split the packaging. Half a kilo! Fuck me, so, all things considered, the battering I got wasn’t in vain. Actually, it was well worth it. My pain starts to ease off. I might even go and kiss that slathering monster watching me inscrutably. Or then again, maybe not. Who knows how many drugs there are here. Tens of thousands of crowns’ worth, without a doubt. Maybe even enough to get that wanker Ugube off my back for good. Ah, shit, if only I could talk to these dribbling beasts.

  I’m wasting time here. I’m better off getting out with what I’ve managed to seize, than staying and risk getting beaten up again. And then I’ve got a job to finish…

  “Fuck, I hate this!” I exclaim in frustration in the female’s direction who, as usual, shows no sign of having understood. Even in this kind of situation that bastard magical contract doesn’t let up.

  “Come on, take me back to where you captured me.”

  With the barrel of my gun aimed squarely on the Oda’s back, I leave the room, wondering if I had a choice would I really have wanted to leave straightaway. Another five minutes of nondescript tunnels, then another cave, much bigger than the previous one, takes me by surprise after turning left. Fifty or so monsters slowly turn round to look at me and growl. Shit, the grey bitch has brought me straight into a trap.

  Smack bang into the dining room.

  A large bonfire in the middle of the room is giving off thick black smoke, I’m surprised to see that there’s a strange, homemade ventilation system. A humanoid body, virtually unrecognizable, is in the heart of the fire, burnt to a crisp. On closer examination, the Odas must be in the middle of some weird ritual, led by a female (she’s heavily pregnant too) she’s wearing lots more coloured trinkets than my guide. Anyway, whatever they were doing to that poor sap, they certainly weren’t about to eat him, unless the bejewelled chef got the cooking time wrong and nobody else noticed. My guide croaks something or other, I reply by raising the barrel of my gun. I know one thing for sure: the two and a half cartridges I’ve got left will never be enough for all of them.