Gods of Manhattan

by Al Ewing

  Crane felt his bladder let go.

  "Thunder rescues his steady - rescues 'Hamilton'-" The creature held up crooked fingers to make the quotation marks. "-and I crash into the rainforest, ejecting my skeletal stand-in into the flaming wreckage before taking off to hide out in the deepest darkest jungle for a while. Needless to say, poor old Doc's too distracted by the flame-grilled crispy death of his number one foe to look too closely at Venger. And even if he wasn't, what's he going to say? Hamilton's not acting like himself? The guy just got through being tortured! And even if Doc does think Hamilton's gone weird, he's not going to think 'oh no, Anton Venger', since he saw Anton Venger die and all... I mean, it's perfect-" He stopped, sniffing the air.

  "Christ, Parker! Do you know how that smells through these nostrils? I thought you were meant to be a dark avenger of the night?" Lomax leaned down, the vertebrae on his back pushing up through his skin, making small popping sounds. "Seriously, haven't you ever seen a man turning into a monster before?"

  "The serum." Crane croaked. "It doesn't work properly. This - this is too much -"

  Lomax laughed. "Says you. It's underperforming as far as I'm concerned. I wanted devil horns." He rubbed his temples experimentally. "Nope, nothing yet. Seriously, Parker, do you honestly think I wanted to be as good as Thunder? What's the point of that? He'll just call in S.T.E.A.M. or Maya's Leopard Warriors Of The Something-Something or, I don't know, that British guy, what's his name? Troy Mercury? Perseus Quicklime? You know who I mean, Untergang must have a file on him a foot thick." He shrugged. "Whatever. I need to be big enough to beat them all, Parker. Everybody in his little black book, one at a time or all together." He paused, scratching his chin. "My thinking's getting a little random, though, I'll admit. I keep getting this craving for raw meat. Where did I get up to?"

  Crane shook his head, despairing. "You faked your death."

  "I faked my death! Slimmed down on the trek back from the rainforest, invested in a wig and a beard and came back as Professor Timothy Larson, harmless opium proponent and total freak. Just the kind of guy you need to do work for you - criminal record, doesn't like cops, pro social justice, which is I think how you sold the whole 'war on crime' bill of goods to me... I was just what you needed. A top-flight scientist with no Untergang connections. A nice clean pair of hands."

  Crane looked up at the monster. All terror had left him, for the moment. He only felt numb. Disconnected. "I thought Timothy Larson was real. We did background checks. That business with the opium in the water..."

  Lomax laughed. "That's what makes it such a great alias! It was me. Just a different me, that's all." He cocked his head at Crane's mystified look. "Fine, the short version. I was born Timothy Larson Lomax, in Brooklyn. Willy - my dad - was an asshole, a pathetic little salesman, a phony little fake. All big dreams with no payoff. He died the way he lived, a failure. My big brother was headed the same way, too. Well, not me. I got out, went to college, got my professorship - as Timothy Larson. I didn't want to use Dad's name. Not back then."

  "You know the rest. Big in the early futurehead movement, the merry prankster version. Friends with Warhol. A big proponent of the opium culture. I actually did talk like that back then. Like, don't you think you should say hello to a tree today, maaaan? It's so, like, beautiful." He grinned, his new fangs prominent in his mouth, sharp and cruel. His head was starting to bump against the ceiling, leaving dents in the plaster, and small spurs of bone were pushing out through the backs of his ankles. "I got busted for trying to put an opium derivative in the water supply, trying to turn everybody in New York on at once. The first big plan. And you know what? I liked it. The rush of knowing that a whole city could start dancing to your tune - the power trip. It was a one-hit addiction, Parker, my boy. I wanted to do that kind of thing full-time. I wanted to remake society into what I wanted it to be. And I kind of figured I owed it to my Dad to make Lomax the name the whole world feared. I don't know if he'd have wanted it that way, but... well, I thought it was funny anyway. Professor Tim Larson died, and Lars Lomax was born. "

  Crane slumped back against the wall, staring listlessly at the black crust forming on the soles of Lomax's feet. "And when Lars Lomax died..."

  "Re-enter Timothy Larson. So now I had my man in place to grab the blood, and all the equipment and notes to become the beautiful creature of God you see before you today." Lomax sat on one of the heavy tables, crushing the glass bottles and tubes resting there under him. As the table creaked under his weight, a hissing stream of acid ran from the smashed equipment, gouging a deep crevice in the thick wood before dripping off the table-top and onto the back of his leg.

  He didn't seem to notice.

  "And then nothing happened. Nobody needed a transfusion. A year went by. Two. Your little scheme went plodding along pretty much as I expected, in that it was an excuse for you to play vigilante and bone hot chicks on Der Fuehrer's dime. Venger was getting restless, and he'd managed to alienate Thunder completely, what with all his clumsy attempts to get that blood. I mean, he was pretty much asking Thunder to approve a private fascist militia made up of supermen. Nice work Anton. So there was pretty much no chance he'd go to him unless it was a total emergency. I tried setting up a couple of those, but no go. Nobody ever got hurt badly enough. My big plan was a washout. And then..."

  He smiled, licking his fangs. "...El Sombra hit town."

  Crane blinked. "Who?"

  Lomax slammed his fist into the wall, leaving a crater in the concrete. "That's what I mean about you! You're the head of Untergang. Act like it! Call home! Daddy Hitler's got a file on this guy he could use as a doorstop!" He shook his head in disgust. "He's the half-naked guy with the sword, okay? He kills Nazis. That's all he does. It's his entire shtick. Seriously, one phone call would have saved hours of hanging around hissing like a broken kettle. Anyway, when he hit town and the small-time creeps and Untergangsters - all the ones who were sitting around on their keisters because you weren't using them - when they started dropping like flies, I saw an opportunity. I set up a meet and told him all about Donner."

  Crane went white. "You dare-"

  Lomax laughed. "What are you gonna do about it, tough guy?" Crane sank back to his slumped position on the floor, staring between his shoes, not daring to lift his eyes. Lomax chuckled, his tail thumping against the sagging table like a dog's. "See, once you'd let me into your little clique, it made it easy to find things out. I drop your name, get some tidbits, then drop those tidbits to the right people and they think I'm on the level and give me bigger stuff... pretty soon I knew all about Donner's little exile. Hell, I had the memo from that time he killed a hooker. 'Mein fuehrer, we hast ein little problem...' El Sombra loved that, I'll tell you."

  Crane shook his head, not speaking.

  "So he killed the guy stone dead, and a couple of days later the papers had a field day with it, pretty much like I knew they would. 'Wuxtry, wuxtry! Dead man dies again!' Face it, tiger, this is the one!" He laughed like an earthquake. "I knew that'd bring you running, and I knew Thunder was going to send his top clue-hunting guy to the murder scene, on account of that whole thing they had going on in the forties. And Thunder's top man just happens to be a big bisexual deformed guy. Just the kind of subhuman - sorry, inhuman - the Blood-Spider likes to shoot whenever he gets an excuse, right?" The table began to crack under Lomax's weight, and he stood, the top of his head cracking into the ceiling and bringing down a flurry of plaster.

  "Damn! Where the hell am I getting all this mass from? I have to study this later. So, Parker, are you all up to speed?"

  Crane scowled. "Why didn't Venger give you the blood directly? Why that nonsense with the telegram?"

  "Not nonsense. Deniability. If Venger goes to me with the one thing Untergang have wanted since they started out, that kind of blows my cover. Plus, I wanted him dead." Crane looked at Lomax in astonishment. "Oh, what? You honestly want a psychopath who knows how to melt people running around thinking he's in love wi
th you? Because that's a great recipe for a long and healthy life. Don't make me the bad guy here, okay? He had to go. So, I told him you worked for me, not the other way around, and he should contact you once he had the blood. I figured I could trust you to do what you do with Venger and then bring the blood back to me, because where else would it go?"

  "Straight to Germany." Crane muttered. "That's the protocol."

  Lomax smiled. "You're in New York, Parker Crane. Protocol went out the window the second you arrived. This isn't a protocol kind of town. This is a town that breeds monsters and heroes, geniuses and madmen. This town makes gods, Parker." He shook his head, a look of amused pity on his distorted face, as the hue of his skin deepened and turned a rich, livid crimson. "And heaven help you, you wanted to be one of us."

  He laughed, and the sound was like stone falling on stone.

  "You wanted to kick it with the Gods of Manhattan. How's that working out for you?"

  Before Crane could answer, there was a sound of thunder and the room shook, as if in an earthquake. "What was that?" Crane gasped, looking up at Lomax in renewed terror. "A bomb?"

  "A landing." Lomax grinned. He flexed one massive hand, then the other, and the bones of his knuckles popped through the skin like a set of brutal spikes. When he looked back at the cowering Crane, his eyes seemed to glow. He chuckled, deep in his monster's throat, and spoke a single word.

  "Showtime."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Doc Thunder and The Ultimate Foe

  "This is the place?"

  As Doc stepped out of the crater he'd made on the sidewalk from his landing, El Sombra took a long look around at his surroundings. A wide street, almost deserted, with only the occasional hansom cab and bicycle passing through. A small dead zone in the middle of New York's life. From this failed street, lined with businesses either closed for the day or closed forever, smaller alleys extended, crusted with grime and filth - and down one alley, nestled tightly between a shuttered, long-empty breaker bar on one side and a cheap chapbook store on the other, he could see a metal door. The same metal door he'd seen the Blood-Spider walk into after the battle on the hospital roof. "This is it, amigo. What say we go knock on that door and end this?"

  Doc shook his head.

  "He won't use the door."

  From somewhere down the alley, there was a massive explosion, a destructive crash like a wrecking ball tearing through masonry. The empty chapbook store seemed to shake. Then another crash. Louder this time. Closer.

  "Brace yourself." Doc murmured, his eyes cold, focussed. Almost unconsciously, he adopted a ready stance, his feet planted, braced against the coming impact.

  Another crash, and the window of the chapbook store cracked, a single line splitting the big, friendly window from top to bottom. A couple of chapbooks shivered and fell off the shelves.

  El Sombra took a couple of steps back and drew his sword. Gently, he reached down and touched the small, hard object in his pocket, wondering.

  Another crash. Louder still.

  Doc breathed in. A single drop of sweat formed on his brow, reflecting the gaslight.

  And then something terrifying smashed through the brick and plaster forming the back wall of the chapbook store, running through wooden shelves loaded with chapbooks and shattering them to matchwood with a swipe of its hand, the air clouded for a moment by the bright, primary-coloured pages before whatever it was burst out of the front window in a cascade of exploding glass, aiming right at Doc Thunder with a punch that took him off his feet and sent him careening through space into the brick wall on the other side.

  The thing that had once been Lars Lomax roared.

  It was fully ten feet of muscle, bone and sinew; its back, arms and legs covered with thick, red, shaggy hair, the great bony dome of its head bare apart from the thick eyebrows that sprouted from the protuberance of its brow. Spurs of thick, rock-like bone poked from knuckles, elbows, kneecaps and the backs of ankles. Its skin was a livid crimson, stretched taut over a tapestry of muscles upon muscles, a terrifying parody of anatomy that constantly flexed and shifted with the beast's every breath. Its eyes almost glowed, a rich bloody red, and instead of human teeth it possessed great murderous fangs, huge and sharp. Strangest of all - stranger even than the toes that had fused together, the soles of the feet replaced by a black, hoof-like carapace - was the thick tail of flesh that swished and swiped, back and forth, growing from the small of its back, just above the ruined remains of a pair of tan slacks.

  There was nothing in it that would be recognisable as human, never mind as Lars Lomax. In fact, it looked like nothing so much as Satan himself, come to earth to feed on the sins of mankind. And yet, there was something in its bearing, in its inhuman, arrogant confidence, in the way its eyes blazed with mocking hatred at the fallen Thunder, as if daring him to get up and take further punishment - something that said that this was indeed the enemy of the Earth, the most dangerous man alive, the one man Doc Thunder could never truly defeat, not so long as he lived.

  The Lomax-thing stared down at El Sombra, and El Sombra stared back, his sword raised. He'd dealt with monsters before. He'd faced human devils, battled killer machines, flying snipers and armoured tanks, stared down the armed might of Hitler's war machine. But this...

  "El Sombra, right? We've met, sort of." The voice was like a cathedral collapsing into rubble. "I was the guy who put you onto Donner. I couldn't have done it without you." He grinned, his tongue licking over those razor-sharp teeth. "I owe you a lot, pal, so here's a warning. Try and use that little toothpick on me and you'll just ruin it. And then..." He smirked, and the muscles in his chest and back flexed obscenely. "Then, I'll ruin you. Seriously, if I get pissed at you, I can turn you into hamburger as easily as tapping my toes. I'll make you eat that sword sideways and crap it out the same way, pal."

  He turned, looking down at Doc Thunder, who was picking himself up from the shattered remains of the shopfront he'd been punched into. "Go for the eyes," Doc coughed, wiping a trickle of blood from his mouth. "The rest of his skin's too tough to cut, but his eyes might be-"

  Lomax grabbed hold of Doc's head, lifting him up and then slamming him down, face-first into the sidewalk, before placing the ball of a black foot on the back of his hated enemy's head, grinding him into the smashed concrete. El Sombra raised his sword, and Lomax shook his head, turning his terrible red-eyed gaze full on the masked man. "Bad idea." he growled. "Listen, El Crazy, I'm as tolerant as the next guy but I'm on the verge of losing my temper. There's a perfectly good Nazi back there - leader of Untergang, remember? That criminal organisation you don't like? Why don't you go finish him off and leave me alone?"

  El Sombra looked at him for a long moment, then walked towards the ruined chapbook store, climbing through the shattered window and then through the hole Lomax had made in the wall.

  Lomax watched him go, and then turned back to Doc, squirming underneath the sole of his foot. "Looks like you just can't get the help these days. So, Thunder, who's coming to save you next? Maya? I'd hate to burst her head like a melon, but I can't have her beat me at chess again. Monk Olsen? Oh, wait, he's in that coma, my bad. I'll drop by the hospital later for some intensive chiropractics, fold him into an origami bird or something, how's that? Who does that leave... your cook? Easton West, everybody's favourite tough cop? The man rides a bike and smokes, sometimes both at once! I'm shaking - ooh, wait! Jack Scorpio, agent of S.T.E.A.M.! God, I've wanted to take care of that old blowhard for years!"

  From behind, there was the thunder of hooves; a policeman on horseback, alerted by the commotion. At the sight of what Lomax had become, he drew his .38 and opened fire, to no avail. The bullets bounced harmlessly off Lomax's back as if they were raindrops. Snarling, the monstrosity turned around, reaching out and grabbing hold of the horse's neck. Then - with the terrible crack of fracturing vertebrae - he swung the beast upwards, killing it instantly and sending the rider tumbling off its back and onto the glass-covered tarmac. L
aughing monstrously, Lomax swung the dead beast around his head, then brought it down, using it like a bludgeon on the stunned policeman. Horse and rider smashed together, the creature bursting open, sending a tide of blood and horse-offal spilling out into the road. The cop, crushed and suffocated beneath the weight of his own dead animal, managed to stay conscious for a few moments before surrendering to oblivion.

  Doc felt the pressure of Lomax's foot ease for a micro-second as he swung the beast through the air, and he took his chance, Pressing his flat palms against the concrete of the sidewalk with all his strength, he managed to lift himself up just enough to squirm out from underneath, rolling clear before the man-monster could grab hold of him again.

  "I don't need anybody else to fight my battles, Lomax," he muttered as he staggered to his feet, a stream of blood coursing from a broken nose. "I don't care what you've done to yourself. You've committed too many crimes to be allowed to walk free." His eyes narrowed. "It ends here."

  Lomax raised one massive, shaggy eyebrow, then looked at the horse, still shuddering in its final convulsions, the policeman having already gone still. "Cruelty to animals. That always was one of your buttons." He chuckled, raising his fists, the spurs of bone at his knuckles jutting out toward Thunder like stone-age knives. "You realise no prison on the planet is going to hold me now, don't you? I mean, I was hard enough to keep locked away before. But now, they couldn't even keep me in custody for an hour. Not for a minute, not a second!" His brutal, inhuman laugh roared out under the night sky. "So are you going to kill me this time? Is the great Doc Thunder, the man who wants to save everybody in the whole wide world, going to get his hands a little bloody?"

  Doc looked Lomax right in his eye, the blue piercing gaze duelling with eyes more at home in hell. "If I have to. I'm not proud of it, and I'm not happy about it, and if there's a way to contain and cure you, I'm going to find it. But a lot of people have died because of you and me, because I always underestimate just how wrong you are in that head of yours. And I can't stomach any more."