Still, it was possible that, if Jigsaw’s thievery were to be discovered, Raj might receive some—if not all—of the blame. Better he tell Lau and let the boss sort it out. It seemed the best way to avoid any of this coming back on Raj personally.
And besides, he really didn’t like Jigsaw Ramirez.
IV
Lau was livid.
And it wasn’t as if Raj had never seen the man angry before, but this was a whole new level of rage.
When Raj told his boss what had transpired with Jigsaw, Lau immediately checked the log on his computer terminal. When Jigsaw had entered the tracking information into his datapad, the device synced the details with Lau’s system. And as Raj had said, Jigsaw only logged receiving six vials of Twitch instead of the eight he’d actually been given.
Raj expected his part in the nasty business would be done, but Lau slapped a comm into Raj’s hand and instructed him to return to Mission Avenue to keep an eye on Jigsaw. If and when Jigsaw left the patch, Raj was to immediately inform the boss.
Raj groaned inwardly. With his shoulders slumped, he made his way back into the night. The fog had come in again, shrouding the entire Alley with a veil of gloom that put the boy ill at ease.
He found the sub-dealer where he’d left him and located a darkened alcove from which he could observe Jigsaw at a distance, without being noticed. It was hardly enthralling work.
For several hours, the junkies came and went, their expressions positively manic with delight at having procured the reagents of their chosen vices.
Raj could understand the allure of chemical alteration. Life in Butcher’s Alley was hard, and it was no wonder so many people chose to escape it in some way. In fact, Raj had even found it difficult to blame his parents for their habits.
But Raj had never tried synthetics himself and doubted he ever would. Despite his circumstances, he liked his brain the way it was and didn’t see the need to alter it any time soon.
Finally, Jigsaw made to leave, and Raj’s senses sprang into a high level of alertness. He got on the comm and sent a message to Lau.
—JIGSAW ON THE MOVE—
Without waiting for a reply, Raj followed Jigsaw as the sub made his way purposefully down the street. Raj kept his distance, doing his best to keep track of the man through the lingering fog.
Raj’s comm emitted a soft tone.
—FOLLOW AND REPORT!—
The streets were more sparsely populated than they’d been during the daylight hours or the early evening. But even so, scores of vagrants and other ne’er-do-wells still lined the filthy boulevards. Shelter was at a premium, and many simply had no place to go.
Raj briefly lost his bearing on the sub and began to panic. But then he caught sight of the man ducking into an alleyway. Raj crept up to the corner and peered around carefully.
Jigsaw was making his way up an iron stairway, toward a landing that stretched along the side of a building. Raj watched as the sub-dealer walked along the grated gallery until he reached a single metal door next to a row of darkened windows.
Jigsaw reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, slender object—one of the vials he’d purloined earlier that evening. He tilted his head back and lifted the cylinder to his eye.
Raj couldn’t see the silvery liquid fall into Jigsaw’s orb, but when the man spasmed, Raj knew he was already experiencing the fast-acting, euphoric effects of the drug.
Jigsaw lurched forward, stumbling toward the door. The empty Twitch vial fell from his hand and clattered against the gallery grating before falling through to the street below. The sub fumbled at the door’s handle and practically collapsed through the entryway, out of Raj’s view. A moment later, a light came on in the windows.
Raj pulled out his comm and thumbed a quick message to Lau, along with a positioning signal. A few seconds later, Lau messaged back that he was on his way. It wouldn’t take the boss long to get there; he wouldn’t be coming on foot.
Raj was anxious to be done with this mess—the sooner the better.
Something caught Raj’s eye.
Under the metal stairway, he spied a reddish glow, subtly illuminating the darkness. He was quite sure the flickering light hadn’t been there before. His curiosity kicked in, and he cautiously crept forward.
Raj bent down toward the glow and immediately saw what it was. The vial Jigsaw had dropped from above was lying on the ground. Its red band was pulsating ominously. Raj picked it up and peered at the thing. He’d been perplexed as to why a drug vial would have an LED attached to it and was even more confused at that moment.
As he puzzled over the thing’s purpose, he heard a low, rumbling sound. The vial slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground.
Raj turned his attention toward the street, just in time to see Lau arrive on his antique street bike.
The cycle rolled to a stop, and Raj’s boss jumped off and stormed toward him.
“Where is he?” said Lau in a demanding tone.
Wordlessly, Raj pointed up toward the gallery. Lau glanced upward before launching himself up the stairs, taking three at a time, each boot fall ringing out with a loud, clanging sound. Lau obviously wasn’t too worried about the element of surprise.
It occurred to Raj that he should take this opportunity to make a hasty exit; he had zero desire to be a witness to murder, not that any crime committed in Butcher’s Alley would ever be investigated. Lau was more likely to die at the hands of a greedy competitor before ever being brought to any kind of justice by the Constabulary.
Lau stopped at the top of the stairs. He yelled down to Raj.
“Get up here, Raj! I’m gonna need your help with this sorry bái chī’s body when I get done with him.”
Raj swore under his breath and hoped Lau was just exaggerating. But he didn’t think so.
He climbed the stairs as Lau was stomping over to the doorway. Without slowing, the crime boss kicked the door with his booted foot. It flew off its hinges with a crash. It was the first time Raj had seen Lau’s biologically engineered body in action. Raj at once understood why the man was the head of a lucrative crime organization, dominating a substantial portion of Butcher’s Alley. People were afraid of Lau. Unfortunately for Jigsaw, he was apparently too stupid to know just how afraid he should have been.
Raj reached the row of windows just as he heard Lau start to shout. “You think you can steal from me, you bloody hún dàn?”
Raj peered through the windows to see Lau standing over Jigsaw’s supine body, inside a small and filth-ridden flat. The sub-dealer was lying on a dirty mattress on the floor and appeared to be spasming. Raj assumed this was the effect of the synthetic, not a result of anything Lau had done to the sub. Raj’s boss apparently had yet to lay a hand on the unfortunate fool.
“Wake up so I can beat you to death!” said Lau, screaming.
But Jigsaw was practically catatonic. Having dealt with junkies his entire life, Raj knew the man wouldn’t be coming around anytime soon. He was probably completely unaware Lau was even in the room.
Then Jigsaw stopped convulsing altogether, and Raj thought for a moment the sub was coming out of his euphoria. But then the drugged-out criminal’s body arched in a massive seizure that contorted his spine beyond what Raj would have thought possible.
Lau backed away slightly, a shocked look on his face.
Jigsaw’s arms began to flail wildly, and Raj watched in horror as the man’s eyeballs bulged outward. He screamed—a high-pitched wail that split Raj’s eardrums, forcing him to clap his hands over the sides of his head in an effort to block the painful sound.
Jigsaw’s face exploded in a spray of blood, splattering the walls and Lau in scarlet-colored gore.
Raj flew back against the gallery railing and sucked in a gasping breath. A surge of adrenaline sent his heart into overdrive.
He couldn’t believe what he’d just seen, and his mind raced as he tried feverishly to comprehend the implications. Unbidden, connections formed in h
is brain, pieces to a puzzle his mind had been trying to construct for a while.
An intense shiver went up Raj’s spine. He felt something, a presence. He looked down to the alleyway below, and what he saw made his already panicking mind reel with unspeakable horror.
A tall figure was turning into the alleyway, long, black robes billowing around his legs as he walked. The hooded priest—the unmistakable, multi-rayed star glowed on his chest—seemed to take no notice of Raj. The priest walked directly beneath the suspended gallery, stooped down, and came back up again holding something in his hand—the pulsing Twitch vial.
The priest began to tilt his head upward, and Raj lurched away from the rail. His back hit the wall beside the window, and he quickly twisted his body in an attempt to remain unseen. He stumbled through the open doorway, onto his back; the fall knocked the wind out of him. He frantically twisted his neck around to take in his surroundings.
Raj was in a hallway, stretching back into darkness. Beside him, the door to Jigsaw’s tiny flat was open, and he saw Lau, standing over the lifeless body of his sub-dealer.
Lau was looking at himself in amazement; he was covered in Jigsaw’s blood. When Lau noticed Raj lying there, the crime boss seemed to snap out of his shocked state.
“Do you see this fàng pì?” he said in a disbelieving, hushed voice. “I didn’t even touch him.”
Raj stared at his employer and then down at the body of Jigsaw. It looked unreal but strangely familiar. A lifeless hunk of flesh with no face. Just like his parents.
“He’s coming,” Raj said to Lau.
The boy struggled to his feet and fled, down the hallway, away from the light. A closed door at the far end of the passage blocked him; it was locked. He tried jerking the door open, but it wouldn’t give. His strength was limited, and he found himself desperately wishing for implants like Lau’s.
Raj sank to the floor—the door at his back—quaking in fear. He waited.
A moment later, the priest appeared on the gallery outside, beyond the open door. The tall man’s face was still concealed underneath his black hood, but his bony hands were hanging at his side. The thin pale fingers, longer now than Raj remembered, were tipped in dangerous-looking claws.
The priest moved into the hallway and then into Jigsaw’s flat.
Raj heard Lau’s voice.
“You!” he said. “What is all this? You did this! Your product—”
Raj heard a shrill, shrieking sound, and once again, he had to cover his ears. It didn’t help. He heard Lau scream, followed by a sickening, crunching racket. Raj knew the horrendous sound meant the man who’d spent thousands to make himself into a lethal killing machine was experiencing a massive amount of pain.
Then the noise stopped. So did Lau’s screaming.
For a long time, Raj heard nothing more. After several moments, it occurred to him he might be able to escape. He knew the priest—if that’s even what it truly was—was still in the flat. Raj couldn’t imagine what was happening in there and was sure he didn’t care. But if he was quiet, he thought he might be able to sneak past the apartment doorway.
Raj willed himself to move. He made his way, as stealthily as possible, toward the gallery. When he reached the doorway to the flat, he inched his face toward the edge, one eye peeking into the room.
All semblance of stealth vanished, and Raj fell to the floor, his mind bursting into flames of pain at the unbelievable sight before him.
Lau’s mangled corpse was lying just beyond the threshold of the doorway. It looked as if he’d been folded neatly in half, like a napkin. His legs were bent backward; his head rested impossibly against the heels of his boots. He was lying in a pool of his own blood, which was only then beginning to cross into the hallway, inching toward Raj.
Beyond Lau’s body was something for which Raj had no classification.
The priest—yet, not a priest—was hunched over what remained of Jigsaw Ramirez. But the thing was wholly unlike the being Raj had previously encountered. Whereas before the priest had decidedly put the boy ill at ease, the transformed thing before Raj at that moment filled him with an indescribable and near insanity-inducing dread.
The black cassock had been cast aside and lay crumpled on the floor. The thing that had worn it was not a man at all, but a creature unlike any the boy had ever seen. It possessed a head, two arms, and two legs, but its resemblance to a human person ended there.
The monster’s pallid skin was stretched taut over its sinewy frame. Its bulbous head was skeletal-looking, noseless, and without any ears Raj could identify. Two black-as-night, pupil-less orbs served as eyes, and rows of razor-sharp teeth clacked menacingly in a gaping maw below them.
Along the creature’s spine were two layered rows of thin, slime-covered appendages, writhing and undulating like the arms of a sea-dwelling animal Raj had once seen in a book. Each of these tentacles ended in fin-like pads, lined with sharp, fang-like protuberances.
Raj knew this beast was not from the world of men, though he couldn’t imagine from what terrible dimension it came. The boy was paralyzed with a deep, piercing fear and found himself unable to move.
He watched, helpless, as the monster held aloft a cylindrical, metal object in its elongated, clawed fingers. The object was glowing with an eerie blue cast, bathing the room in a similar hue, which darkened the color of the blood on the floor and walls.
Then two of the tentacles extended around to the creature’s front and, very delicately, reached into the cavity that had been Jigsaw’s cranium. When the tendrils emerged from that sickening hole, they were carefully supporting a slimy cluster of what looked like glowing beads.
The thing held the canister close to the gelatinous mass, and the tentacles lowered the stuff into the cylindrical container. The creature then sealed the container and cradled it, almost lovingly, in its hands, lightly tracing the rim on top with one of its padded tentacles.
Raj understood.
Eggs.
The beast’s offspring, infused into a human host by means of the Twitch synthetic to gestate and later be retrieved by the alien parent.
Raj’s mind flashed back to the image of the vial he’d picked up outside, its LED flashing in the darkness of the alleyway below the apartment. It must have been some kind of tracking signal, alerting the monstrous being that a new host had been implanted.
Rancid bile rose up in the back of Raj’s throat at the thought of it. These things were reproducing, right here in Butcher’s Alley, and using a population the larger world didn’t care about to do so.
Twitch.
Half red, half blue. Control groups, Raj thought. The red vials were the batch of synthetic containing the alien embryos or whatever they were. The blue vials were possibly benign. He reasoned that some of the drug had to be inert, or its popularity wouldn’t grow. The things had to get people to want to use the stuff.
Raj had to get away, had to warn someone.
His mind froze, and he realized the creature was looking right at him.
Everything stopped, as if time was paralyzed. But it was just an illusion.
The beast let out a piercing cry, and Raj thought his heart might explode from fear.
He regained his senses and the use of his legs and was just about to make a run for it. But then he noticed something by his feet.
Lau’s pistol—the one he always kept tucked in his pants but rarely used—was lying in the pool of blood that was now beginning to stain Raj’s shoes.
As the creature lunged, Raj grabbed for the gun. He was barely able to bring the weapon to bear and squeeze off an unaimed shot before the thing reached him.
Raj heard a loud crack; the monster reeled back and screamed.
Raj ran.
When he reached the gallery, he felt something grab him around the throat. Raj clutched at the railing and was able to latch on with one hand; the other still held Lau’s gun.
The creature’s tentacle squeezed, cutting off Raj’s air and pul
ling him back. He tried to take a breath but couldn’t. He could feel the alien’s presence right behind him, on the landing, and knew he wouldn’t escape.
But then the pull of the tentacle around his throat relaxed slightly, and Raj yanked his body forward. The motion sent him toppling over the railing, but he didn’t fall. He realized with horror he was being held aloft by the monster’s powerful appendage.
Raj could see it fully then, standing on the gallery, observing him with what seemed to be an amused expression. In its clawed hand was the canister, glowing brightly. The hulking thing almost seemed to smile as the tentacle tightened its grip around Raj’s neck, and he began to lose consciousness. His head tingled; his vision blurred.
In a moment of sheer desperation, Raj held the gun out and squeezed the trigger repeatedly. Flashes of light blazed, but he only heard muffled pops, followed by the muted shrieking of the beast holding him over the chasm of darkness.
Raj was blacking out but saw a blue-tinted blur fall past him into the alley. And then the pressure on his windpipe relaxed, and he could breathe again. He realized a fraction of a second later he was falling.
Searing pain shot up his body as the ground came up to meet him. Excruciating agony consumed him, and he knew something was definitely broken—his legs, certainly, and probably something else besides.
The monster was still shrieking in rage above.
Raj’s vision cleared, though his eyes watered from the pain overwhelming his system. He noticed something beside him. The alien being’s canister was lying there; its metal lid had sprung open, and the gelatinous cluster of orbs had spilled out onto the ground.
The eggs were pulsing with life.
In that moment, Raj saw an opportunity. He told himself he must act. And it wasn’t because he cared about what had happened to Jigsaw or Lau. Not even the memory of his parents gave him much cause for vengeance. But it wasn’t right. It just wasn’t right. These things were killing people to reproduce. Someone had to do something, and right then, that someone was him.
The Lurkers & Other Strange Tales Page 8
