***
Seb stopped in the corridor. He had no idea which way to go. He felt/heard/touched a crackle of raw energy coming from his right. The door at the end of the corridor glowed like a heat source looked at with a thermal imaging camera. He ran toward it. As he got closer, he realized the door wasn't right - no handle, no way in.
"Don't stop," said Seb2 as he put his shoulder to the door and plowed into it. The sudden lack of resistance when he had been expecting solid oak was a shock; he stumbled as he came through the door. It felt like running from a car to a house in a violent rain storm. His body was pummeled by tiny specks of force, smacking against his skin. Then he was through.
The stunning woman from the Blackjack table was in the middle of the room, surrounded by small fires. Seb felt Walt's presence beside him as he half-fell through the doorway. He stepped in front of him, just as black lightning arced from her fingertips. Time began to slow again, but there was nowhere to move unless he was willing to let Walt take the blast.
"Oh, shit," said Seb2 as the darkness reached Seb and engulfed his body.
In the room's center, Sonia's eyes widened as the situation changed. She and Walt both saw what happened during the next 5.6 seconds. For the first 2.7 seconds, Seb's body took the full force of the attack and reacted as any organic matter would if suddenly exposed to a burst of tightly-directed heat. The skin peeled away from his face and hands, his flesh bubbled, boiled, melted and shriveled to cling to his skeleton.
Walt decided he would never eat ribs again.
The next 2.9 seconds reversed the process. Seb's body sizzled like bacon on a griddle as the blackened flesh sloughed off and fell to the floor. Red, bloody, raw muscle grew back, followed by skin, hair and clothes. Sonia had the ringside view as Seb's face rebuilt itself around his teeth, which had been pretty much the only recognizably human feature left on top of his spinal cord. The final touch was his eyes, pushing back into his empty sockets with a slightly wet plopping sound.
There was a moment's silence.
Sonia moved first, spinning around and sprinting for the wall behind her. She jumped as she approached it and sailed through as if it had been an open window rather than 2cm plaster, 3cm boarding and 15cm solid brick. Outside the building, 23 floors above the street, she spread her arms and legs as gravity did its job and pulled her toward the sidewalk. Her skin darkened and stretched as she fell. Anyone looking up would have seen a dark shadow in a dark sky, nothing more. A skein of flesh flowed from her spreadeagled hands to her feet and - as her limbs continued to stretch, bones hollowing as they grew - her descent slowed significantly. She moved her left foot upwards and her body turned right gliding away from the casino. She spotted a low building four blocks away and headed for it. At the last moment, she turned into the wind and wrenched her body into an upright position, dropping onto the roof with no more impact than a medium-sized bird.
Chapter 23
Las Vegas
The sign outside advertised it as a Gentleman's Club, which Seb could only assume was meant ironically. He had always associated the word 'gentleman' with Alistair Cooke, the presenter of Masterpiece Theatre in the late 80s and early 90s. It was one of the few programs the occupants of the children's home were allowed to watch and Seb had always been fascinated by the well-dressed, well-spoken, well-mannered presenter. Seb looked around the table in the private booth the hostess had led them to. Three women were sat with him, two of them topless. The topless ones were kissing each other while the third one had one hand sliding suggestively up and down a champagne glass, the other hand between her legs as she looked first at the girls, then at Seb. Nope, just can't see Alistair Cooke fitting into this picture.
Walt came back with a bottle of fine bourbon, a woman on each arm. They squeezed into the booth. Seb was drinking beer. A cold beer really seemed to hit the spot when you'd just had your entire body burned to a crisp by a beautiful naked Georgian witch.
"Ladies," said Walt, "give us a few minutes. I need to talk to my friend." The women started to leave.
"Go have a drink on us," he called after them, then sat down and poured a shot of bourbon to go with Seb's beer.
"Gotta tell you, son, I've never seen anything quite like that. Hell of a thing," said Walt, knocking back his first shot then refilling his glass. "What did you do back there?"
"You do that, too, right?" said Seb, still slightly in shock from what had happened. He should be dead - again - but his body seemed to be able to take any amount of damage and recover. Seb2 was right, he couldn't be killed. "Heal, I mean. You can heal yourself."
"Yes I can," said Walt, draining his third shot. He started to pour another, then grabbed a champagne glass, tossed what was left in it over his shoulder and filled it with bourbon before taking a long swallow. He smiled. "But what you did was incredible."
He edged closer to Seb and put his hand on his shoulder. His hand was shaking slightly. Seb couldn't decide if he was scared or excited. Both, probably.
"I heal, sure," said Walt. "I've been beaten up, shot, knifed. Even had a hand taken off with a machete one time." He laughed and waved a perfectly whole and healthy hand at Seb. "It didn't take."
"So we can both do it," said Seb. "It's part of using Manna."
"Well, yes and no," said Walt, encouraging Seb to drink faster. Seb felt impossibly, fantastically alive. He drank.
"Thing is," said Walt, "anyone who Uses has some kind of accelerated healing. Some more than others. At one end of the scale, a broken arm might heal in days rather than weeks. When I was shot, they picked seven bullets out of my stomach and chest. I should have died within hours. Now I don't have a single scar to show for it."
"So your power is like mine," said Seb.
"Hardly," said Walt. "I thought I was a bit of a prodigy, but you just knocked me off my perch, big time. It took me six days to recover. Six days. You didn't even take six seconds. You were burned alive, Seb, I saw your bones, your skull. I don't even know how what I just saw is possible, but here you are, sitting next to me, good as new. Thing is-." He hesitated as if unsure.
"What?" said Seb.
"Well, you already know Users live longer. Manna protects us from all sickness, as far as I can tell. With serious illnesses, we know it can slow down the spread of a disease to such an extent that it would take decades, rather months, to kill us. Unnatural deaths are very, very unusual in Users. But it does happen, and when it does, it's always down to one of two possible causes." Walt thought for a second. "Both, occasionally."
"Which are?" said Seb.
"Brain death, or severe brain damage, is one. Your brain takes a bullet, you might be ok, but if it passes through whichever bit of you controls Manna - and the jury's still out on which bit that is - then you're dead."
"I'll try to remember to duck," said Seb. "What's the other?"
"Fire," said Walt. "It may come down to the same thing in the end - the brain destroyed by fire, but Manna can't stop the flames, so if you don't throw yourself into the nearest river, your number's up. At least, that was the lowdown before this evening. Then you got fried and came back. I was behind you, I felt the intensity of that heat. No way you should be sitting there right now. No way."
"Guess the theory was wrong, then," said Seb.
"Guess so. Or you're doing something new."
"Well, if I am, I don't have a clue how."
Walt sighed. "Yeah, I believe that. Anyway," he said, smiling, "I bet you're buzzing."
"What?" said Seb.
"Don't forget how long I've been using Manna," said Walt. "Whenever any of us Use, it just makes us want to grab life by the balls and never let go. You feeling it, Seb, my boy?" he put his other hand on Seb's other shoulder and grinned at the younger man.
Seb laughed.
"Yeah, I'm feeling it all right, Walt. In fact," he said, recalling another of Mee's favorite phrases, "it's fair to say I'm buzzing like a bastard."
"Good," said Walt. "Life is out there, waiting
for us. And this isn't the movies. You get great power, you don't have to turn into a boring schmuck. You can live a little. You can live a lot."
The club's hostess returned with the girls and a fresh round of drinks. Walt gave her a $20,000 casino chip.
"Call a limo for us, Trix. Take the rest of the night off. Bring the girls and bring your magic bag."
The hostess - Trix - said something to the nearest girl who giggled and took the other away to get their coats. Then she leaned over the table, her flimsy blouse revealing breasts for which her plastic surgeon had - deservedly - won an award.
"Walt," she said, "you are a very, very naughty man. Now bring your handsome friend and let's go have some fun."
Fun was something Seb had never been particularly good at. He knew what it looked like, even tried joining in, but it had never felt entirely natural to him. He didn't need years of psychotherapy to tell him what he already knew. He was - effectively - an orphan, his mother dead hours after giving birth to him, his father unknown. St Benet's had been the only childhood he had known and he couldn't fault the love and care shown to him and his fellow outcasts by the Sisters and by Father O, but all the kids had seen TV shows and read books, so they knew what a normal loving family looked like. Was it possible to miss something you've never had? In Seb's experience, yes it was, if what you were missing was a mother to stroke your hair and make you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Or a father to make you laugh, tell you stories and throw a baseball to you in the back yard.
There were plenty of opportunities for fun after leaving the Home. All of which were down to music. His musical talent had been recognized early and he had been allowed to skip basketball practise three afternoons a week to sit at the beat-up piano in the dining room. Some of the notes at the top of the keyboard stuck, the ivory was yellow and sticky, and the lowest notes carried on ringing tunelessly for half a minute after they sounded. One of the sisters - Barbara - had been a decent classical pianist and she'd guided Seb through early folk songs, gradually introducing some theory and scales. Then some simplified Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn. And, one unforgettable afternoon two years after Seb had first sat at a piano, Bach. The first Bach piece Seb learned, the piece Sister Barbara played to him that Fall afternoon, marked a clear turning point in Seb's life. He had enjoyed playing piano before that, realized he had some talent. What Bach did was open up his mind to the seemingly infinite possibilities of existence. It was as if he'd walked around with his head wrapped in bandages and someone had just ripped them away, saying, "This is what life looks like. This is what life sounds like, what it smells like, what it feels like."
Sister Barbara had sensed a little of what he was feeling when she finished playing the C Major prelude. She sat in silence for about a minute, then turned to look at Seb.
"That was good," he said, "play it again." So she did, then he said, "Can you teach me how to play it?" Nearly 20 years later, it was the music he had chosen to accompany his suicide.
He loved classical music throughout his teens, but could hardly avoid the rock and pop music scene in New York. St Benet's was in Brooklyn and there had been live music venues nearby. When the wind was in the right direction, you could hear the bass and drums at night and imagine the packed basement rooms, the sweat, the dancing, the excitement. No wonder the bands always seemed to speed up mid-song. Something in Seb responded to even that tiny hint of the excitement of live rock'n'roll. He took to hanging around the local music store, playing the keyboards he couldn't afford. Ted, the owner, recognized an opportunity when he saw one and gave Seb a Saturday job, demonstrating home keyboards to middle-class parents shopping for their progeny. Seb could make the cheapest piece of gear sound good, but Ted had him unleash his best stuff on the keyboards with the biggest margin. Ted sold a lot of keyboards, Seb got to play the latest gear and meet some local musicians. So when the manager of a touring band came in looking for a keys player, Ted pointed at Seb. He knew he was losing his best salesman, but he even let Seb have the rig he would need at cost and told him he could pay him back monthly from his tour earnings. Ted was a good guy.
Seb was seventeen when he joined The Backstabbers for nine months schlepping round a couple hundred second-rate bars and venues across America. He loved it. He sent postcards to Father O, Sister Barbara and the other kids at St Benet's for the first month, then he stopped. He had never been back. He'd often meant to go, had often intended to pick up a phone. But when weeks stretched into months and years, it became more difficult, then seemingly impossible. Years later, when his song Sunburst Sunday had been used as the theme tune for a daytime soap, he'd arranged with his agent for 50% of the royalties to go to St Benet's. Anonymously. He had harbored no ill-feeling toward his childhood home. It's just once you've decided to go forward and you've started putting one foot down after another, it gets harder and harder to look back over your shoulder at where you started out.
The Backstabbers had long since decided that a derisory pay check and a life of tour buses and cheap hotels could be partially compensated for by the allure of small town girls. Groupies were considered an honorable tradition by band, crew and the girls themselves, though no one could really say why. Girls offering their bodies to strange men simply because they could play a guitar didn't make much sense under any kind of scrutiny. Seb thought it was the fantasy of freedom. The band breezed into town, played up a storm and were gone in the morning to continue their glamorous lives elsewhere. The groupies never seemed to consider that their little town - the cheap hotel where they'd snorted cocaine with the drummer then shared him with the girl from the diner - was anything but unique. It was just another part of the routine for the band, alongside crappy road food and bad quality VHS porn on the tour bus. But the groupies wanted to feel special, chosen. And that's exactly how they did feel. For one night. Then it was the early morning walk home in last night's clothes, carrying their heels and hoping not to see anyone they knew.
Seb indulged, of course. He was seventeen and women were making themselves available. He threw himself into it whole-heartedly at first. But eventually he started to feel bad every morning, feel used. It was Jerry the drummer's comedic refrain on the bus: "Man, I feel used, I feel dirty. The world is a wicked and terrible place. Let's do it again." But Seb started to take walks after the gig, get back to the hotel later, alone. Keep himself to himself a little more. He tried blaming the feelings of guilt on his Catholic upbringing, but he couldn't make it stick. He loved sex, that much was obvious, but he'd like to experience it with someone who'd remember his name. Not just in the morning, but preferably during the act itself.
The drugs had been fun, too, for a while, but the torpor of a day smoking weed followed by the manic coke-fueled gigs, bourbon at the hotel and the inevitable 5am heart-hammering insomnia made for a soul-sapping routine. When the band fell apart in LA, Seb was happy to take a piano residency in a hotel, clean up his lifestyle and spend his days writing songs.
Now, at 32 years old, after reaching another turning point in his life two days previously, Seb sat in a huge jacuzzi with seven naked women and Walt. And - much to his amazement - it felt good. Real good.
Walt was pretty happy, too. "About now," he said, "any normal degenerate with unlimited funds, surrounded by beautiful women in a hot tub would probably start taking some high quality drugs. Trix here is known for her ability to procure fine Columbian product and I'm sure she didn't come empty handed, did you, Trix?"
Trix smiled and shook her head. Seb had often wondered if artificially enlarged breasts floated or sank in liquid and Trix had provided him with an answer. If she ever found herself the victim of a shipwreck far from land, she wouldn't have to waste any energy treading water. In fact, she could probably save at least three other people. Surely they were uncomfortable? He had never found "enhanced" breasts remotely arousing. They were like a traffic wreck - you might slow down to look at them but you felt slightly sick and ashamed the longer you hung around. Trix got out o
f the tub and swayed over to an attaché case she had brought with her, lifting it onto a marble table. Inside was a bag of cocaine crystals, a battery powered coffee grinder, a square mirror and a pile of crisp $100 bills. Trix filled the grinder and, while it was buzzing away and jittering across the table top, she started rolling a bill into a tight tube. She saw Seb watching and laughed.
"Just doesn't feel right using smaller denominations," she said.
Walt hoisted himself out of the bubbling water and shrugged on a robe.
"Come on, Seb" he said, "let's give the ladies some privacy. Something I want to show you."
Seb gently and somewhat regretfully moved one of the girls' hands from his groin and tried to think of something capable of making an erection subside quickly, a difficult feat at any time, now rendered virtually impossible by the sheer quantity and quality of naked flesh surrounding him. Even Seb's go-to image to delay an imminent orgasm - that of Woody Allen playing the clarinet - wasn't getting the job done on this occasion.
Walt, guessing Seb's predicament, laughed.
"I think you'll find you can control that, now," he said.
Seb thought for a second then understood. Very gently he turned his attention to his genitals and imagined his penis in its resting state. The erection disappeared. He was surprised how much more control he had over his use of Manna. It had almost been instinctive this time. He was about to get up when he decided his flaccid manhood might not be that impressive emerging from water. Especially in front of this particular audience. Sending up an automatic silent apology to any higher power, he added some length and girth to his penis before climbing out of the jacuzzi, putting on a robe and following Walt into his study.
World Walker 1: The World Walker Page 18
