The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet)

by Peter Empringham

  At the bar, Mary had been pleased to be offered a complimentary drink; she had never really seen the Afterlife as being all-inclusive, although when she thought more, the boisterous environment of the Caribbean; lobster-skinned and trying to find a live football match whilst sweating neat Pina Colada could be Hell. Or Heaven. Geoffrey and Marcel watched as she ordered a Tequila Sunrise, and then followed suit.

  “I’ve never had one of these before,” said Geoffrey, pursing his lips and sucking through the curly plastic straw. He smacked his lips. “It’s wonderful.”

  Behind him, Marcel was hacking bile into a pot plant, having just taken a large swig of what tasted to him like some combination of spleen, socks, and some detritus found at the back of a recycled fridge.

  “How does this game work?” Geoffrey, ignoring the spluttering to his rear, whispered to Mary. She pondered the chances of his grasping the intricacies of poker as the Indian man raised the pot with rather too much enthusiasm for Marchant’s comfort.

  “They get two cards down. They’re called the Hole cards. Then the dealer shows three cards, that’s the flop. They have a bit of a bet. The dealer shows another, The Turn, and they have another bet. Then finally he shows one more, The River, and they bet again until the best hand wins.”

  She sipped the orange/red drink and looked at him with satisfaction having delivered the Jackanory version of Poker. It evaded the nuance of bluff, raising, Blinds, and any detail which she felt would have caused him confusion. Which, broadly speaking, was any detail.

  “What’s the best hand?” he hissed.

  “Around here,” they both turned to look at the disturbingly green Marcel, “it could just be having a hand.”

  Justin had two sixes in the hole, but The Flop hadn’t helped too much, producing the Jack and Queen of Clubs and the Three of Hearts. The betting had advanced a touch too rapidly for confidence, led by the Indian, who, it has to be said, was in such a state of perspiration that Justin had changed his idea of the cause of death to drowning.

  The Turn provided the eight of clubs, and Marchant prepared to fold his hand. The Indian, on the other hand, let a cry of joy, picked up his hole cards, stared at them with glee, and shook his head as if amazed at the wonder of some perfect circumstance. He shook his head, which unfortunately gave Justin the benefit of introduction to sweat which was not his own, a feeling no-one really wants outside the bedroom. He’d never seen anyone projectile sweating before.

  He, like the others in the room, became very aware of the South American paying no attention to his cards, or indeed those laying on the table, but instead staring solidly at the porcine Indian.

  “Who’s to bet?” asked Justin, lightly, hoping to cut what had rapidly developed into an atmosphere. He looked at Bonnie, who had her eyes fixed silently on the South American.

  After a moment, the South American slowly raised his hand, opened up a finger, and placed it firmly on one of the two cards face down in front of the Indian. The owner of the hand looked up slowly at the owner of the finger.

  “That’s my card.” The South American, the scar livid around his neck, gazed at his moistening opponent. Justin opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it. Geoffrey sucked the dregs of his drink noisily, but no-one looked up.

  “I don’t think so.” The Indian toyed with the chips in front of him, picked up a handful and threw them casually into the pot. “I’ll go twenty.”

  “Not on my card.” said the South American, opening his hand and picking up the card.

  The Indian, to Marchant’s amazement, slammed his hand down on top. A fountain of blood spurted onto the table, revealed, when the Indian removed his hand, to have been caused by a stiletto which now pinned the South American to the card he wanted so much to retain. Justin, eyes pinned to his own cards to avoid causing offence, heard the gasp from Mary at the bar but made the conscious effort not to do anything that may draw attention to himself.

  The South American was turning a ghastly green-tinged shade of pale, holding the stare of the Indian. The naval officer casually raised the pot, apparently unaware of anything strange happening. Which showed some real self-control given that the South American had now reached out his hand and was throttling his attacker.

  “Er…I’ll fold.” Justin spoke quietly, the words barely audible above the rattling breathing of the Indian, who slowly pulled the knife from the other’s hand and card and with remarkable swiftness for one asphyxiating, thrust it into the chest of his opponent.

  Justin had played poker in some strange places, and indeed had felt a palpable threat in some of them. None of his previous experiences, however, truly prepared him for the simultaneous deaths of two of his playing partners, one from a wound to the heart, the other strangled by the relentless grasp of the hand around his neck. They pitched sideways from their seats and lay slowly twitching on the floor.

  “Don’t fold. It’s just you and me now. It’s worth the punt for the pot, surely?” The Officer’s words were measured and calm, as though the mutual murder of two of the players were an everyday occurrence. Which, in this place, it may well have been. Justin glanced at the pot, which had not been particularly significant. It had now been augmented by the Englishman with the large quantities of chips which had been in front of the two players who were even now being removed by a couple of large henchmen. He had no hand, but then maybe it was worth the risk after all. He matched the bet.

  Mary had watched first with horror as the two players had killed each other, then with consternation as Capone, who leaned quietly in the corner, simply motioned to his two men to remove the corpses. Now, she, Geoffrey and Marcel were glued to the game. In the centre of the table was a huge pile of chips; enough, they guessed, to finance their shopping expedition to rescue the Afternet. The dealer, Bonnie, looked from Justin to the Officer.

  “Do they just carry on?” Mary whispered. Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders, having about as much idea of what was happening as he did of how to manage a huge computer system.

  “They get one more card face up.” She said. “The River. Then that’s it. They bet or quit. I hope he knows what he’s doing.”

  Bonnie dealt the card. Six of spades. Marchant knew it was as good as he could have hoped for. It gave him three sixes, but the shared cards gave his opponent the chance of a straight, eight to Queen, or a flush if he had two clubs in the hole. He had just about enough money to play another hand, and the Officer had seemed confident when he raised before the minor kerfuffle ending in two deaths. Any hint that his opponent had something good and he would get out.

  The calm figure opposite considered his hole cards, then replaced them on the table and looked at Marchant. He cast his eyes to the ceiling for a moment and then down to the pile of chips in front of him.

  “I’ll go all in.” He slowly pushed the stacks into the middle of the table. Shit, thought Marchant, he’s got the flush.

  “Too hot for me.” He said with forced joviality, and made to pick up his cards. The move was stopped by the quiet, educated tone of the man opposite.

  “I think you should play.”

  Justin looked across the table, assuming a jovial attempt to keep him in a losing game. “No, really.” He said. “I think this one is yours.”

  “Even so.” There wasn’t much humour in the stare of his opponent, and the room was unbelievably silent. He looked round quickly to his colleagues, but they all seemed to have developed a keen interest in the contents of their drinks.

  Bonnie broke the pregnant pause.

  “That’ll be all in for you too, then.” Her face was deadpan, and Justin realised that this was not the moment to fight the corner for free will. With a sigh, he pushed his chips into the middle of the table.

  “And that.” They all turned to look at Capone, who pointed to Marcel as he spoke.

  “Me?” The Frenchman laughed nervously.

  “Not you, you idiot.” Capone walked slowly across, grasped him by the arm and coolly pulled
open the fist which clasped the necklace. “That.”

  “O, come on,” said Marcel, “you’ve got all those chips. This is nothing, it just has sentimental value.”

  “No time to get sentimental, now you’re dead, my friend. ‘All in’ means all in, so it goes on the table either on its own or with the hand. Your choice.” It went on the table and the hand was hurriedly thrust into a pocket.

  This was it then. Geoffrey glanced at Marcel, who was staring at the necklace, glittering, coiled atop the pile of gambling chips on the table. Win, and they would have enough money to buy what they needed to fix the system; lose and an imperfect forever stretched ahead of them.

  “He didn’t want to bet.” Said Mary. “I don’t like this.” Marcel looked at her and shrugged. His face suggested that his mind was already imaging the endless punishments to come.

  Capone and the three burly men leaned casually on the corner of the bar. The flabby gangster glanced at his guests with a thin smile.

  “Why don’t we all have a drink before they show, just to help the suspense? Barman, give everyone a double shot of Jack.”

  As the drinks were distributed, Mary caught the eye of Marchant, incongruous in the runner’s headband. He shook his head, seized the glass and knocked the bourbon back. Next to her, Marcel did the same, then let loose a gagging cough. “Jesus Christ!” he muttered, “That is so disgusting.”

  Bonnie took a sip of the bourbon and looked to the two players.

  “Ok guys, let’s see who gets the pot.” She fanned the exposed cards in order: Three of hearts, six of spades, and then the group of clubs which gave Marchant the main concern, eight, Jack, and Queen. She gestured to the naval officer, who slowly picked up his two hole cards, looked at them deadpan, and then at Marchant. Reaching out, he separated the clubs, and with the merest hint of a smile placed his nine and ten of clubs in order. Straight flush, just about as good as it gets.

  It didn’t need Desmond Morris to read the meaning of the slump in Justin’s shoulders. The Officer’s face broadened into a grin and Marchant resignedly tossed his cards onto the table. He turned to his colleagues.

  “Sorry.” He said. “I wouldn’t have bet if it hadn’t been for…” he gestured helplessly at Capone and his accompanying muscle.

  The room was silent. The to-be-expected whoops of victory from the Officer, the triumphant gathering-in of the pot, had not arisen. Instead, he stared at the table, face set rigid. Capone’s face, reddening, was set in a grimace.

  “Give me another of those disgusting drinks.” Said Marcel. The barman obliged, and the debonair Frenchman drained it in one draught, controlled his reflux, and murmured “Oh my good God!” as he set the glass back on the bar.

  The growing atmosphere in the room was punctured by the American woman, who looked from one player to the other with some surprise. “The pot is yours.”

  She gestured to Marchant, who spun his head, bewildered, towards his friends at the bar. Geoffrey beamed, but Mary turned to Marcel with a quizzical look.

  “Three sixes.” He said, still hacking from the taste of the drink. “Nothing beats the number of the Beast round here.”

  He moved quickly to the table, grabbing a bag from the end of the bar. Marchant was still frozen, perplexed, until Marcel nudged him and together they began shovelling the chips into the bag. Marcel plucked the necklace from the pile, gave it a quick kiss, and thrust it into his pocket.

  He dragged Marchant to his feet, and gestured to the others to follow, heading rapidly to the cashier’s desk.

  “Oh, can’t we stay for another drink, to celebrate?” Geoffrey was in party mood.

  Marcel didn’t reply, simply taking his colleague’s arm and pulling him along. The cashier looked at them with some distaste and then began to hand over large piles of money, which Marcel stashed rapidly. The others were not convinced of the urgency, but everyone turned at the sound of the clearing of a throat behind them, to look at the tall figure of the Naval Officer, who was calmly drawing on a cheroot.

  Marchant, flushed with his success, thrust out a hand. “Thought you had me there for a minute, but hey, skill always tells in the end. No hard feelings?”

  The Officer ignored the hand, exhaled a cloud of bluish smoke, and spoke calmly.

  “Not from me. But you see, I play for the house.”

  “Shit” said Marcel.

  “Which means that Rule 1 applies.”

  “Double shit.”

  Geoffrey, remaining the only person who didn’t have at least some inkling of what this might mean, if only from the increasing proximity of the burly minders, asked the obvious question even as Marcel’s eyes darted right and left.

  “No problem. What’s Rule 1 then?”

  The tall figure flicked a tail of ash onto the front of Geoffrey’s cardigan, allowed himself a small smile.

  “House wins.”

  Even as the turnip-picker’s face contorted with the mental effort of trying to compute these simple words, Marcel snapped into action, sweeping a row of burning candles from their holders with the heavy bag of cash and smashing the bottle of bourbon over them, where after a moment of indecision, it erupted with a whoosh of flame, engulfing the heavy curtains behind the bar. Acrid smoke began to fill the room as the heavy men moved towards them.

  “Quickly, this way.” Mary, Justin, and Geoffrey followed as Marcel ducked around the other side of the card table, the air a little clearer, but even so their eyes beginning to sting from the smoke.

  They were confronted by the elegant dealer holding an ancient machine gun, possibly an essential accessory for a lady in this netherworld.

  “Say bye-bye guys” she said, smiling, and there was no doubt they were about to be massively perforated, and would have been had Mary not cracked her around the head with a chair.

  “Bloody hell” said Marchant, looking at the heap on the floor, then back to their new colleague.

  “Saw it on the telly.” She said.

  “Come on, come on, come on.” Marcel screamed at them, Capone’s men beginning to emerge coughing from the pall of smoke. Marcel led them quickly to a door at the other end of the room, fast-spreading flames beginning to lick at its frames. They heard, in the bedlam, screams from the turmoil behind them. He opened the door and they ploughed through, charging down a half-lit corridor and bursting through another door into the gloomy light of the outside world. Breathless, they followed Marcel as he ran, the bag swinging in his hand, down a series of alleyways until he finally slowed, looked behind them and leaned back against the wall, gulping the thick air.

  “Jesus Marcel,” said Justin, hands on his knees as he sucked in deep breaths, “how the hell did you know how to get us out of there?”

  “In my life, I never went anywhere without having an exit strategy.” He raised the bag. “Anyway. We got the money!” He and Justin did something as close to a jig as their panting allowed.

  “Guys.” Mary’s voice at first didn’t interrupt their prancing.

  “Guys.” She said, more insistently. They shared a look of irritation at the interruption of their fun, and looked around. Behind her the alley remained empty of pursuers, evening beginning to darken the slice of sky in view. Mary’s face bore none of the sense of celebration the two men were sharing.

  “Where’s Geoffrey?” she said.

  CHAPTER 13

  Just as the danger to the foursome in the gangster’s gambling den had escalated, Ron and his motley band of adventurers had simultaneously found themselves swivelling their necks anxiously in search of the nearest escape route. It was reasonable to say that Ron had always had some doubt about importing the political theories of a reformer from 18th century America to present day Armageddon. He was bred, however, of English lower middle class stock, and there is a gene somewhere in this subset which identifies a ‘better’ within moments. This prompts its owner to agree with everything the well-bred suggest whilst narrowly avoiding an actual bow or curtsey.

 
Lincoln, on the other hand, was visibly shocked at the failure of his plan. His track record of convincing hostile crowds that there was a humane and rational way of solving all problems was a matter of real pride to him. After a few initial heckles, this crowd had listened with affected interest to what Staveley-Down had presented. He painted to them a picture of fulfilment, of completion, even the possibility of redemption. However, when he had taken the time to look into their hating eyes, he had struggled to sound convincing about the long-odds chance that just maybe they had done enough good to be pulled at the lost moment from the fiery maw of Satan himself.

  Lincoln’s view, that if you want to rabble-rouse you need to get yourself some rabble, was really based on experience gained from whipping up the uneducated to fight because they believed they were wronged, or if that failed, paying them. Sometimes both. In any case, there had been a gain to be made in some way for rising up. The crowd eyeballing the British flier, bearing the wounds they arrived with plus some added since for good measure, had been irredeemable in life and had come to relish the unconstrained criminality in which they could engage. Many thought that this actually was their Afterlife, and that apart from dying in horrible pain every so often, living in a hellhole, and eating things not designed for the purpose, it was not so bad. Others suspected this wasn’t really eternity, and that the alternative was very hot, utterly interminable, and probably included little figures with horns running off into the distance with your still-attached intestines. Ron and his troupe didn’t even have any money with which to entice their support. This was a rabble without a cause.