Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman

by Duncan Eagleson

  “I never said he didn’t,” the sergeant allowed. “Sure, there might have been a few lowlifes who didn’t like Fitch much. But, hell... Even though he was career guard, nearly the Old Man’s age—due for retirement in another three years, he never made it above Guardsman First Class. He was never involved in any big cases, except as backup. Never made any important collars, nothing like that. Not too many people willing to kill over a few minor citations or traffic fines.”

  “Well,” I said, “we’ve got enough to get started on, anyway. We can leave Guardsman Fitch for the moment, and get working on the others—but we’ll come back to him. What were you thinking was your own next step?”

  “I was figuring on talking to Czernoff’s associates.”

  “Okay. Byer leave, Rok can join you on that. Morgan and I should check the sites of the murders. It isn’t likely we’ll find shades or spirits hanging around there at this late date, but you never know.”

  Morgan and Rok both gave me a quizzical look, but I ignored them. I wasn’t going to say out loud that working with Sergeant Robles would be too distracting for me. Rok had eyes for no woman but Morgan, so it was safer this way.

  INTERLUDE: THE GREAT CRASH

  Volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, crop failures, economic collapse, riots, bombs, EMPs, monsters and zombies and domestic terrorists, oh, my. Where does one begin with the Great Crash? Why did it happen? Why all of it at once? Which parts were random disasters, and which human created?

  Some historians would assert it was all human created. Fiscal and environmental irresponsibility certainly prepared the way for the disasters of that period. The economic situation in the states was already perilous when Hurricane Arthur hit the Gulf Coast. Arthur devastated much of Louisiana and Texas, areas barely recovered from Katrina a generation or so before. The oil distribution system collapsed, and riots began even before the bombs began exploding.

  Terrorists, taking advantage of the mounting chaos, set off bombs in seven American cities, including one small nuclear bomb in a place called LA on the west coast. Another nuke was intended for Washington, but was intercepted by federal agents. The LA nuke was a low-yield, one-kiloton suitcase bomb, dropped from a civilian aircraft and detonated in the air. This had the result of spectacular and horrifying immediate local effects, but resulted in fewer casualties in the long run, since there was less widespread fallout.

  The death toll was in the hundreds of thousands. Arizona, New Mexico, and northern California were flooded with refugees. Arizona was particularly hard hit, as prevailing winds had brought the plumes of fallout to some sections of that state. The scientists all predicted it would be twenty years before the area could be reclaimed, but they were wrong. Southern California would never be reclaimed. The following year, an earthquake resulted in much of Southern California being swallowed by the Pacific Ocean.

  Crops were already failing around the world, a plague known as “colony collapse disorder” having wiped out most of the planet’s bees. Agricultural crops were not being pollinated. The effect of the LA nuke on the climate was not the nuclear winter a larger bomb would have produced, but harvests the world over were thinner in the following years, and within five years there was widespread starvation around the globe. Despite all this, recovery was considered possible until the volcanic eruptions.

  Volcanoes throughout the Pacific Ring of Fire suddenly became active, spewing ash and smoke into the air that accomplished what the LA nuke had not. Global warming was no longer an issue, as temperatures cooled by an average of seven degrees for the next ten years. The death tolls would mount into the millions.

  Finally, the anomalies began. Monsters appeared. Places slipped in time. Whole areas experienced an apparent twisting of the laws of physics.

  The Great Crash: An Historical Perspective

  Ronald Olsen, Errant Press, New Washington, 226 AC

  9. THE BAR OF GOLD—Five Weeks Ago

  He was in the shape of a Mayacan sailor—there were many of those who hung around the Bar of Gold, so he’d be perfectly inconspicuous. The target was sitting with his first mate in a booth at the back. The place wasn’t crowded, and the booth next to them was empty. He ordered a beer at the bar, and then took it to the empty booth. He brought out a newsfeed, unrolled it, and laid the plastic sheet on the table. He began tapping his way idly through the pages as he pretended to sip the beer. Behind him, the captain of the Bay Queen and his mate were becoming quite drunk. There was something going on with them. Usually when these sailors got drunk they became louder, more boisterous. These two became quieter, their tones more serious and intense. But he could not make out more than a few words.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated. Shifted the shape of his inner ears, making the left one less sensitive, to screen out the general noise of the bar, the right one more acute, so as to pick up the quiet conversation.

  “What?” The mate’s voice sounded incredulous. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  “Keep your voice down,” said the captain. “You knew I fought in the Takeover, right? Happened that toward the end I was with the group took Crichton’s headquarters. You’ve seen the CA Tower?” The captain paused, and the secret listener could imagine the first mate nodding. “Big place, like a rabbit warren inside. Well, I get separated from the other guys, and I find myself in a suite of offices that seems deserted. I’m about to leave, try to find the other fellas, and suddenly here comes this big galoot around the corner, a huge fuckin’ monster of a gun in his hands. I seen the guy before he sees me. I squeezed off a shot and dove behind one of the desks. I’m sweating so hard I can hardly keep hold of my gun, and I’m expecting the guy’s monster weapon to go off like a bomb and blow me and the desk both to bits. But alls I hear is a groan. I peek out around the edge of the desk, and the guy is on the floor, in a huge pool of blood. At first I thought he could be faking to draw me out, but then I realize the blood’s not fake.

  “Now, you gotta understand, we was just regular workin’ stiffs facing Crichton’s trained bullies. We was all sorta on edge, a little jumpy on the trigger. Me, I’d never killed anyone before in my life. I was so shook up I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. So I walk over to this dead guy, right? Turn him over with my foot, and lo and behold if it ain’t the old Crichton himself. I left him there, found my way back to the rest of my crew and never said a word. Crichton was reported as being killed in the fighting, and no one ever knew who it was actually killed him. ’Cept me. And now you.”

  “No shit?” said the mate. “So why’d you keep this a secret all these years? Anybody else woulda been boastin’ and puffing themselves up about such a thing. Me, why I’d have been drinkin’ for free on a story like that the rest of my life. I mean, I know you’re a modest man, Cap, but shit…”

  “Tell you the truth, I was ashamed. I didn’t feel like a big hero, just liked I’d fucked up. I shot first and didn’t try to capture the guy alive. That was cowardly.”

  “That was fuckin’ smart, you ask me.”

  “Didn’t feel that way to me. Roth was hot to bring Crichton up on charges, see him go to jail. He didn’t want a dead city boss as a possible martyr his people might rally around. I screwed up, ruined Roth’s plans. Never wanted Boss Roth to know I was the guy did it.”

  “People still would have called you a hero. They’d have carried you through the streets cheering.”

  “I never wanted anything like that. Only reason I was in the fight was to see the Takeover happen, get Bay City on a democratic basis. Roth was a hero, and Adams, guys like that. I was just a working Joe who was unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and shot first to save his own skin.”

  “So why you telling me this now?”

  “You’re my man, Don. I’m an old man now, and I expect you to take over for me when I’m gone. Take care of Christine, and take care of the Bay Queen. I don’t want there to be any secrets between us.”

  In the next b
ooth, the man who looked like a Mayacan sailor sat frozen, staring straight ahead, gripping the handle of his beer mug with white knuckles. Slowly and carefully, he released his grip on the mug. Yes, he thought, I made the right choice. This is the one. Whether his story was true, or just an empty boast to his first mate, he would be the one to start with.

  10. WOLF

  We left Rok and Robles heading for the motor pool, and Morgan and I went downstairs to the evidence lockers. From the boat captain’s effects we selected a medallion made of shell, with an image of a sea turtle—one of Huey Otiz’s avatars. From the harlot’s we picked up a Marilyn pin in the shape of an off-center heart with eyes and lips inscribed on it. From the teacher, a pocket protector containing several pens and pencils, and from the guardsman, his badge.

  The Bay Queen, Arnold Hawthorne’s fishing boat, was no longer docked at the site of its captain-owner’s murder. After the initial investigations on site, it had been towed to the guard’s impound dock, where it stayed pending judicial disposition—apparently there had been a challenge to Hawthorne’s will, and the ownership of the boat was still being debated in the courts. The impound dock was just north of the shipping docks, in the no-man’s land between where the shipping docks ended and the docks for fishing boats and other small vessels began. It was protected on the street side with a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire, and I eyed it wondering what, if anything, protected the approach from the water.

  A bored city employee tore himself away from the bladeball game on his handheld long enough to glance at our identification, unlock the gate, and point in the general direction of the Bay Queen. Not that she was hard to find—most of the boats in the impound were small pleasure boats; there were only a couple of commercial vessels. Still, although she was small for a commercial boat, only forty feet or so, she was the biggest thing currently in the impound. She was a combination trawler and purse-seiner, with her superstructure forward, the trawl-seine winch just behind the wheelhouse. We clambered over the gunwale onto the deck and looked around. Though there was no doubt that the hold would be empty, the odor of dead fish permeated the vessel. Hawthorne had been killed in the wheelhouse, so we threaded our way to the forward hatch.

  Morgan set her portcomp unit on the dash and powered up. She plugged in the small electromagnetic field meter and gave me the nod. I produced the Huey medallion and held it up by its leather thong, slowing my breathing and reaching out with my mind. I could feel the leftover resonance of violent death, almost like a smell in the air, but that was all. No sense of presence, no lifting of the hair on the back of my neck, no whispering voice. After a suitable interval I opened my eyes and looked at Morgan.

  She shook her head. “Not a thing,” she said.

  I looked around the wheelhouse, at the control panels, the windshield. Something was wrong. Something was missing.

  “Crime scene photos—of this bridge,” I said.

  “Two seconds...” said Morgan. Her fingers fluttered over the keyboard, and she turned the comp unit toward me so I could page through the photos. I went through them forward, then, more slowly, backward. Each time, the same image caught my eye. It was a view through the forward windshield. I turned to look at the real thing, moved back to stand where the photographer had stood. Ignore the picture outside the windshield, I told myself. What was inside the wheelhouse, something added, something taken away, something different? It wasn’t the outside background, and it wasn’t the bloodstains. I looked back at the photo on the screen. The pendant.

  In the photograph, a Huey Otiz pendant hung in the center of the windshield, suspended from a peg or a hook in the woodwork above. Now it was gone. I looked more closely at the photo, zoomed in. It was a different pendant from the one I was holding. We were carrying the captain’s personal Huey talisman. I suspected the one in the photograph was the Bay Queen’s. Morgan looked over my shoulder at the screen. Looked from screen to windscreen.

  “You think the Beast came back to take the boat’s pendant,” she said.

  “Possibly. Someone took it, anyway.”

  “Why? Could you have gotten something off it?”

  “Not sure. But apparently he thought someone could.”

  “Maybe he wanted a souvenir.”

  I shook my head. “He took pieces of the victims’ bodies. Why would he want the pendant? No, this was an afterthought. I’m betting he infiltrated this place and took it after he heard there were Railwalkers here.”

  We packed up and headed out.

  The college teacher, Juan Castro, had been killed in a raised, covered passageway, like a bridge between two of the buildings on campus. When we arrived we discovered a small shrine had been set up there, flowers, pictures of the teacher, cards and corn dollies gathered on one side at the middle of the passageway. I brought out the pocket protector, Morgan fired up the electromagnetic frequency meter, but nothing showed here, either. We had carefully timed our arrival for shortly after the beginning of a class period, so as to minimize the possibility of interruption, but as we were packing up, a short, burly young man with wild black hair and beard appeared at one end of the passageway and stood looking at us.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  “I was going to ask you that. You’re Railwalkers, hunh?” I nodded. “Come to look for Juan’s spirit? Or some astral record of his murder or something?”

  “Something like that,” I said. “You knew Juan Castro?”

  “I was his grad student assistant, so, yeah, I guess I knew him about as well as anyone here. Something in particular you want to know?”

  “Anything you can tell me about him. Any enemies? Anything he said or did generate hard feelings anywhere?”

  “Well, he was a passionate guy. Some of his ideas about literature might be called controversial—he was a little to the right of Singer, super conservative—but I can’t see any of his professional rivals having him killed over it.” He sighed and hesitated for a moment, then added, “He was active in politics, off and on.”

  “And he was a conservative, politically?”

  “No. Y’know, it’s funny, Juan was real progressive, politically.”

  “Why is that funny?” asked Morgan.

  “Well, he was such a traditionalist when it came to his classes, the literature he taught. He’d reprinted some of the really old pre-Crash classics at his own expense. Twain, Joyce, deLint, Rowling, Michener, people like that. But politically, well... He supported Roth before the Takeover, and worked Roth’s Boss campaign at least once afterward. He used to quote ancient radicals, too, like Paine and Leary, Marx, Ventura. What was that Moore quote he used to use? ‘People should not be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of its people.’”

  “Are people afraid of the Roth administration?” Morgan asked.

  “Nah.” He chuckled. “Oh, there are probably a few, holdovers from the Crichton years, but mostly, no. People trust Roth.”

  “So Castro was an activist? Any of his work threaten the Roth administration? Would someone in the government have wanted him dead?”

  “I’m a radical, not a conspiracy nut. No, I don’t think Roth or any of his people had it in for Juan Castro. You have to understand, he didn’t set himself up as an opponent to Roth and his people. He wasn’t calling for another Takeover or anything. Juan and Roth had similar ideals. Juan just thought the city could move along faster toward being a true democracy.”

  We thanked the young man for his time, took his contact info in case we had any further questions, and went on our way.

  ***

  Guardsman Fitch had not been on duty when he was killed, but had been in the tram station at Central and Fifth, waiting to transfer to the downtown line. There was no way we were going to get any privacy there unless we waited until the wee hours of the morning, when the guardsman had been killed. By now it was mid-afternoon, and the station wasn’t full; there were a dozen or so people on the platform waiting for the tram. Since
we didn’t want to wait, we set up in the quietest corner we could, but had no better luck here than we had at the previous two locations.

  At the tram overpass where the Harlot Mascarpone was killed Morgan got some blips on the meter, but in an open public street there was no telling what could occasion that. If the spirit or even the shade of Suzi Mascarpone had been hanging about, we should have gotten a bigger reaction to the Marilyn pin.

  All in all, a pretty disappointing day. Not that we had expected dramatic results. Hawthorne, Castro and Fitch had all been killed three weeks or more ago. This long after the deaths, unless people had reported a haunting of some sort, chances were that there’d be no sign of shades or spirits. We’d had slightly better hopes for Mascarpone, whose death was less than a week before, but we weren’t counting on anything. Even the shade of Chief Adams, who had been killed only three days back, had been weak and almost dissipated. Still, we had to check. It would have been foolish and negligent not to.

  When we arrived back at the CA Tower, Rok and Robles were still out. I changed into workout clothes, left Morgan scanning the net, and went down to the guards’ underground gym. It was a good-sized space, well equipped with weights, boxing ring, heavy bag, standing bag, several wakimara. It was practically empty at this time of day. There was one guard whose name escaped me working out in a sort of desultory way with the weights. I stretched out some, and then moved into what we call “the crowbar,” a series of exercises combining elements of calisthenics, yoga, and various martial arts—especially baritsu, the martial art that’s the closest thing to an “official” Railwalker style of fighting (hence the slang term among walkers, “crowbar”).

  Finishing my series of exercises, it was time for my run. I barely looked at the three treadmills set to one side. I never liked running on a treadmill. I preferred Parkering (what some call free running) anyway. I approached the guy on the weights.