Limbus, Inc., Book III

by Jonathan Maberry

  “I think you’re right, Jules. I died.”

  *

  Life at the shack settled into an eternal routine. Beachcombing and birdwatching. Long, intermittent naps. She studied the sea, which she yearned for and dreaded—nothing entirely new, except the intensity. Campfires at night. Cheap booze and decent grass. Thom dreamed of treading water in the dark while a massive shape glided past. She also dreamed of being hunted in a forest, of running endlessly, too terrified to glance over her shoulder and glimpse her pursuer.

  She compared revisionist histories with her rescuer.

  Jules killed a man in Ohio in 1986. He’d clerked for a mom and pop hardware store. A biker staggered in, high on meth, and waved a gun, demanding the cash in the till. Jules picked up a ball peen hammer and clocked the biker between his running lights. Dead on the way to the floor and five to twenty on a manslaughter rap for Jules. “Wasn’t any meanness to it. All I saw was that gun. I smelled beer and craziness on the guy. Figured he’d shoot me once I handed over the cash. When I hit him, my arm belonged to somebody else.”

  He shipped to a medium security prison. Flew the coop one July afternoon while doing a stint with the highway crew. Simply eased into the bushes on the side of the road while another convict yelled about leg cramps. Kept right on walking until he reached the Pacific Ocean. Three decades on and his face hadn’t graced the wanted flyers at the post office. He figured maybe the world had rolled on and forgotten him.

  He asked Thom if she’d done a murder too. She smoked one of Jules’ wretched cigarettes and considered the question. They sat on a boulder and watched the sun set over the water.

  She said, “Worse. I turned thirty-something. The ultimate betrayal of the social contract. Can’t age. Can’t get fat. Can’t get stretchmarks. God help you if your tits sag. You’re supposed to burn your swimsuits and disappear. That’s the rule. You move to New Zealand and herd llamas, or crawl into a hole.”

  “I guess you’ve done it. None of your fans would recognize you.” He’d gone to the flea market and scrounged her a floppy, wide-brimmed gardening hat, sunglasses, a selection of pastel summer blouses, baggy linen pants, and sandals.

  She agreed—nobody would recognize this emaciated, battered, and wild-eyed beach bum woman with the fresh scars and too-angular cheekbones; not even the cops unless they ran her fingerprints.

  “Thanks for everything. I’m strong, I’m good.”

  “Moving on?”

  “Gotta keep rambling.”

  “Well it isn’t much…” He gestured vaguely toward his shack. She’d tried to fuck him twice, once in deferment of expressed gratitude, and later as a matter of pride. He’d apologized and said he’d gone celibate in prison.

  “Where will you go? What will you do?” He spoke with patently feigned disinterest. More likely, he wanted to ask if she still planned to off herself after his efforts. She wasn’t quite certain and made no promises. Old Thom was history and dropping off the face of the earth suited Plain Jane, so perhaps extraordinary measures were no longer necessary.

  What to do with herself was indeed an open question. Most of Thom’s considerable wealth had swirled down the drain well before current events. Her siblings would soon divide the remainder as inheritance, depending upon the machinery of the California legal system. It was the pirate’s life for her.

  “I’m going to do what you do.”

  “Aw, kid, you’re no bum,” he said.

  “Jules?”

  “Yeah, kid?”

  “That man you killed. Is he still alive? People who are supposed to be dead sometimes aren’t.”

  “Look at you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “His brains stuck to the hammer. I don’t—he’s dead-dead.”

  “Dead-dead.”

  It was getting dark and Jules’ face smudged with shadow. “The cops should have come sniffing around by now. Yeah, what a thought! That rotten bastard revived and went home to his rotten family. The cops were so embarrassed they let sleeping dogs lie and didn’t bother to contact me with the good news. Afraid I’d sue them to hell and back for false imprisonment. That’s not the best explanation.”

  “What’s the best explanation?”

  “Parallel universe. Turn the radio dial and you’re still riding in your car, the sun is still shining, there’s the same old Pacific on your right. Instead of Motown, suddenly you’re tuned into NPR. Dial another micrometer and you’ve got chamber music. It might be the same deal on a larger scale. Quantum entanglement. Swing the hammer, you’re a fugitive. Don’t swing the hammer and you’re a corpse at the boneyard. Turn the dial, it’s one or the other, or both.”

  “Nice tinfoil hat you got there, buddy.”

  She didn’t have much experience with murderers or man slaughterers. Jules seemed docile in thought and deed, yet his crime must’ve left a stain on whatever passes for the mortal soul. No takebacks once a man tastes blood. Former goddess Thom would’ve despised him for a dozen reasons, beginning with his slovenly appearance and ending with his impotence. Plain Jane would’ve stayed forever, slowly sinking into the tar pit of a Jimmy Buffet-themed purgatory. Newly risen Thom appreciated his feral kindness and forgave him his sins. He hadn’t asked why she tried to end herself. That forbearance represented uncommon courtesy. Nonetheless, she swiped thirty-six dollars from his wallet and was in the wind by sunrise.

  *

  Thom hitched a ride with a pair of coeds in a Volkswagen Thing and dozed several hours inland and north. The girls dropped her on the main street of a sprawling industrial town. She bought combat boots and a Leatherman knife at an Army-Navy Surplus store. That left eight dollars and change in her pocket. She initiated heavy eye-contact with two men browsing the camping section and the lady at the register. Nobody gave her a second glance.

  Why had she traveled away from the ocean? She’d purchased the mansion for the view, the damp salt breeze, and the storms that lighted the entire house with sizzles of blue and white. The water appealed to some hindbrain desire; it beckoned with the seductiveness of an addiction. Thom was fed up to the gills with addiction. She vowed to keep putting miles behind her.

  The eight bucks went on a burger, fries, and large coke. All that remained of her ill-gotten gains were two dimes, three pennies, and a business card she’d accidentally grabbed from Jules’ wallet in the dark. Soiled, tattered, and reeking of hemp and whiskey, its logo was of a distorted hemisphere split as if by a cleaver.

  The card read:

  LIMBUS, Inc.

  Are you laid off, downsized, undersized?

  Call us. We employ. 1-800‐555-0606.

  How lucky do you feel?

  Her body ached. She was destitute and essentially unemployable. World class modeling didn’t prepare one for the blue-collar job market, although she’d probably pick up the art of doling five-dollar hand jobs at truck stops. No, she definitely didn’t feel lucky.

  Why not? whispered Plain Jane. Instead of fish food in the Pacific, here you sit, digesting a burger in Downtown America in complete anonymity. We’re living a charmed life. You should make the call. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  Thom’s skin prickled as she threw the card away. She didn’t see it again for three weeks.

  Interlude: Doomsday Variations

  KRAKATOA (ALPHA CONTINUUM) RECORDING 6:

  “Mr. (static), rise and shine.”

  Lieutenant Burton pronounces my name with respectful venom, brings me home from dreamland. His voice is nasal. He’s come with my summons to an officer’s pow-wow. He’s checking me out, wondering if I’m too drunk for action.

  Of course I’m drunk. I’ve been drunk going on three years. Best three years I’ve had since the world went tits-up, no contest.

  I rise naked, loom over the lieutenant in his pressed olive uniform and shiny boots. I do it for the flinch. I’m not a giant—submarine cabins flatter me. That and everybody born after Doomsday tends to be short and sickly. Everybody born after Doomsday
is a tin soldier or a Napoleon wannabe.

  Unlike the merry crew, water rationing doesn’t apply to him. Burton bathes every morning; shaves too. Usually has a pithy remark at the ready. He’s steady in the face of imminent defeat. The British Empire could’ve used a chap of his caliber a couple centuries ago. His aplomb is entirely wasted on the mongrel elements that comprise the Republic of North America Expeditionary Forces.

  Burton’s bland mask is slipping. His cheeks are rosy. He’s impatient to unlimber the murder machines. Finally, a chance to wreak havoc and I’m holding up the production.

  I love to fuck with his mind. “Don’t fret. We’ve got, what, four warheads left? You’ll get to uncork one.” I clap him on the shoulder as I squeeze by to rummage in my locker.

  Burton says, “We’ll be there soon.”

  There signifies a set of coordinates on the Black Sea. Except, since the continents are busted pieces of crockery, it’s not the Black Sea anymore, is it? There is a bone-yellow coast pocked with craters and smashed cities that once belonged to Russians, Bulgarians, and who cares—the nations and its peoples are extinct. Might as well be Mars. Nothing belongs to anybody anymore. Which means we aren’t really anywhere.

  Burton has a nervous tic of braiding his mustache. Our former lieutenant, a redoubtable lad named Jacoby, clicked a set of keys as if he were Captain Queeg made flesh. Jacoby disappeared on a survey mission six months ago. Fell into a crevasse. We threw him a hell of a wake, even better than the one we threw for his predecessor. Right now Burton’s braiding like crazy.

  I dress slowly, pulling on a loose, grey jumpsuit. As the only civilian aboard the Krakatoa, I don’t rate a cool uniform. We go see Captain Pizarro.

  Pizarro—the name sums him up. He’s a real motherfucker. He’s also a political liability. When the brass back home decided to track down the architect of an unpleasant radio signal originating halfway across the globe, they thought of him. And Pizarro thought of me. Makes sense. To hell with my amnesty for services rendered to the Republic. I’ve got skills to pay the bills.

  Captain Pizarro is in a dandy mood. He’s sitting there in his cramped office, stroking his goatee and smiling. He resembles the devil, in fact. “That’ll do, Burt.” After he’s dismissed our favorite lieutenant, he points at a chair and I sit. I notice a spool of surveillance photographs. Pizarro ignores them and studies me, clacking his Nova Skulls signet against the desk. The wood is burnished with antiquity, and matches the color of the Captain’s skin. “A drink, Mr. (static)?” Those are the magic words.

  I’m looking at his ring and thinking how civilization has circled back to the dark ages, the other dark ages, that is. Mason, Mormon, Ancient Order of Hibernia—a man’s got to belong to something. Cults are the order of the day. For instance, I know of two centered on my person, but I try to keep from getting a swollen head. It’s mostly rumor, anyhow. Nobody’s given me a scepter or a tiara or some nifty title like Grand Imperceptor of Lupines.

  Captain Pizarro opens a cabinet and pulls down a bottle, does the honors. We clink tumblers of Tiger’s Milk. He may be the head honcho, but my booze is superior. He swallows fast, bares his teeth. Those teeth are too white, too healthy. He’s always smelled off kilter. This would bother me more under different circumstances. “To the good guys.”

  That’s hilarious. I croak, “There ain’t no good guys. There ain’t no bad guys. There’s just us chicken hawks.”

  Now he’s nodding, as if anything I say bears the slightest relevance to his squirmy, homicidal brain. He plucks at the surveillance spool. “This is interesting recon. Anomalous structures, anomalous activity.”

  I examine the spool, because he pushes it under my nose. A muddy composite of whorls and lines. Some rocks that are probably hills, some jagged squiggles I take for buildings. Buildings with thermal blobs of grey inside. People. Shouldn’t be any people here.

  He pours another round. “The scientists are quitting on the Reconstruction.”

  “I don’t talk to the scientists.”

  “No?” Easy to see he doesn’t buy that. He thinks I know something. Most people suspect me of being on the inside of some conspiracy or other. “Well, they say humanity is done for and that Earth is dying. This Ice Age won’t end for a thousand years. Unpleasant activity is occurring near the planet core. It might burst like popcorn on a griddle. Everything we’re doing is pointless as boxing the Jesuit. You believe them?”

  I push away the picture. “Don’t know for certain, Captain. I don’t think it’s dying, though. More like it’s going to sleep. Once we die off, she’ll stir, refreshed and green. Just minus us parasites.”

  “Same difference.”

  “You got me.”

  “Going to sleep.” Pizarro muses happily. “Best part is, it doesn’t matter. Am I right? We get to keep on keeping on for the limit of our natural spans. Maybe bury a few time capsules for alien explorers. I wonder what I should put in mine.”

  “Parakeet bones. A monkey skull. Confuse the hell out of them.”

  Pizarro laughs. He even sounds sane. The cracks barely show. “I’m launching a PM operation tomorrow. Your attendance is requested.”

  “You summoned me to the sanctum sanctorum to tell me that?”

  “No. The men fear your reputation. Every time I emerge from one of our tête-à-têtes uneaten, my own legend grows.”

  “As you say, Captain.”

  We finish our drinks and I’m headed through the door when he stops me. “Forgive a personal inquiry, Mr. (static). It is good to be a national hero, yes? Your atrocities are forgiven by a grateful populace.”

  “Folks appreciate the talents of a murderer when his weapons are pointed at their enemies.”

  “The sins of one generation become the fairytales of another. Do you regret shedding the aspect of the beast and dwelling in harmony among lesser men? Surely, you are tempted.”

  “Tempted how?”

  “To roam free. To shirk the oppressive obligations of an adoring public. To stalk and slay at your whim. To disappear into the wilderness forever.”

  I gaze over his shoulder to the mouth of a cavern. A man lies curled around bloody bones. The wet pelt of a bear is his bedding. He chews a femur. A younger, leaner me. Rude of brow and jaw, but me where it counts.

  “Honestly, Captain, I never think about those days.”

  END RECORDING

  Chapter 4 (Creely)

  Isaac Creely visited the zoo for two reasons: he loved to tease the animals, which he did by mocking their captivity and enslavement. Especially the tigers and the monkeys. Some of his worst nemeses went on four legs or slithered in the grass. Rudyard Kipling possessed startling insights on that front, didn’t he? Reason the second: beasts were keen to his unusual scent and paid him a lot of attention, his taunts notwithstanding. They understood the hunt and exhibited a sympathetic response to his imminent peril that he could easily read. Professional man-catchers smelled and behaved a certain way, whether a freelancer or a government drone. Four-legged predators unerringly recognized their two-legged kin among the gawping crowds.

  Recently he’d tasted danger on the wind. His instincts warned that someone was keeping tabs—the occasional prickle of the hair on his neck seldom lied.

  The National Security Agency profile made numerous assumptions about him. Several were correct—a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while. Basically, analysts were shooting in the dark. Most intelligence agencies are relatively sanguine regarding the inexplicable. If it’s not related to extraterrestrial (or extradimensional) life, and it’s not contagious, or doesn’t possess a dramatic upside for weaponization or profit, the powers-that-be prefer to conduct long range studies, file reports, and bury their findings in subcommittee minutes. In Creely’s experience, action always circled back to the bottom line. The bottom line is a fragile outcome—an outcome negatively affected by the whims of nervous Nelly politicians and the ever present threat of public exposure.

  Private operators wer
e where a man had to watch his ass. Detective agencies, bounty hunters, mercenary outfits, and security firms. These organizations are usually funded by rich, overly-inquisitive (or acquisitive) types, and swarming with ex-law enforcement professionals from every three letter acronym in the book.

  Creely had done a good job staying off the radar. Still, as one of his many fathers often opined, shit happens. A billionaire in France caught wind of his special qualities in 1964. The billionaire’s number-one heavy was a retired Mossad agent: Arvad Gurion, the eldest son of a Nazi hunter. Creely wished Arvad had followed in the old man’s footsteps. Arvad stalked Creely, evaluated his capabilities and vulnerabilities, and put him to sleep with a drugged cocktail, easy-peasy.

  “I hope you are under no illusions,” a silver-haired gentleman in a nice suit said to Creely. “You are a rat. You will endure torment and die. However, your contribution to science may prove to be important. Fingers crossed!”

  Creely (Daniel Abernathy in those days) had awakened inside a padded cell. The man in the suit introduced himself (from the opposite side of a bulletproof pane of glass) as Dr. Beringer. Ironically, the good doctor proudly served the SS during the war. He and Arvad Gurion were quite collegial. While his plasma made its way through an IV drip Creely had observed the men gambling at poker and sharing cigarettes.

  The padded cell lay inside a bunker far beneath a jungle in Southeast Asia. Researchers conducted a battery of tests—physiological and psychological. Blood and semen were drawn. Bone marrow and spinal fluid. Arvad applied moderate physical force; the Israeli Military euphemism for torture. After forty months of abuse, Dr. Beringer injected Creely with an overdose of anesthesia and harvested his organs. The remains were incinerated along with most of the records. Non-essential staff took a bullet in the back of the head. The skeleton crew of scientists accepted obscene bank drafts and unvoiced threats in exchange for their eternal silence.