“Well, who’s Al, then?”
“Some guy I used to know. He was rich as hell, and had connections so he never had to pay rent. He even had a car.”
“That guy!” said Zach. “I wrecked his car once.”
“Yeah, well, a couple of weeks ago he got drunk in the middle of the night and decided to drive around and just play bumper cars or whatever. A Lawman pulled him over. Al got out, but then a Smith rode up. He tried to run over the Lawman, but that guy jumped over the hood. Poor Al got smeared when the Smith plowed into him! I heard the Lawman got a few weeks of paid vacation, because seeing the body traumatized him so bad.”
“Why didn’t the Lawman shoot the Smith?” said Wodan.
“He was probably worried the Smith would shoot back!” said Jens, cackling. “But anyway, yeah, Bob, that guy downstairs. I get to hear his nonsense every day since I had to move out of Al’s place. If Bob doesn’t throw himself off this roof because the most cold-hearted bitch in Pontius dumped him, or if he doesn’t force me to beat his ass to death just to put us both out of our misery, he’ll realize it’s the best thing that ever happened to him.”
“Uh oh,” said Zach. “You’re about to move on Anne again. I can tell.”
“The hell I am!” said Jens. “I would never get back with that girl again. Never, not ever, Zach.”
“The hell you wouldn’t!” said a voice. They watched as another young man climbed the ladder to meet them. He had square features and a confident posture. He was the most well-dressed out of all of them. As he popped a cigarette into his mouth, he said, “Jens, you’d screw a hole in the wall if you had someone around to document the event.”
“Pete!” said Jens, clapping a hand on the newcomer. Wodan noted that Pete and Zach gave one another a single hard glance, then ignored one another the rest of the night. Pete’s voice was loud and his mannerisms had a masculine edge, but behind his face there was something soft and guarded about him. As Wodan grew drunk he found himself making any wild statement that would cause Pete to whiplash his head backward and give vent to laughter that echoed off the rooftops. There was something about him that Wodan liked immediately, but he found it strange that Zach obviously did not trust him.
The sun lowered until it burned just over the rooftops, throwing their four shadows across the entire city. Jens tipped the bottle back and, before it was empty, Pete said, “I’ve got money for booze if you guys can produce a place for me to sleep.”
“Stay here,” said Jens, “if you don’t mind Anne hitting on you all night.”
“I can handle that. Let’s go.”
As the four walked to find more alcohol, Jens launched into a story about an abandoned building full of labyrinthine corridors and rooms laid out without pattern or sense of any kind. He claimed that anyone who entered risked never coming out again.
“What’s in it?” said Wodan.
“It’s been a while since I was there,” said Jens. “There was... I think...”
“Lying,” said Zach. “Lying!”
Pete turned to Wodan, then said, “How well do you know Jens?”
“Not very,” said Wodan.
“So he hasn’t had the chance to tell you that he lies constantly?”
“Not this time!” said Jens, chest swelling. “I distinctly remember a bum sex room. Bums used to infest the place and they’d, you know, get a bunch of stuff together that they could ram up their asses, and then they’d-”
“Let’s go!” said Zach. “Let’s go right now!”
“Arlight, fine,” said Jens. “Let’s go there right now, then.”
“It’s like a mental disorder,” said Pete, explaining to Wodan. “You listen to him and you’ll start to think he has the most checkered history of anyone you ever met, but then you’ll find out that he spends most of his day sitting in a chair and staring at a wall and coming up with this stuff.”
“I’m down for an adventure,” said Wodan. “Even if the story’s false, we might end up finding the truth out there in the wrong end of town!”
The four friends set off and found a dark merchant district. Pete went off alone to find beer while the others entered a general store. Before the door had shut behind them, Zach and Jens began arguing about whether to buy candles or expensive oil-burning lamps.
“I’m not wasting money on lamps,” said Zach. “I’m not even a fan of candles, for that matter. If we can adjust our eyes to the dark, we’ll be more in tune with our environment and immediately have an advantage over any opponents who weakened their eyes through light-dependency.”
“That’s completely absurd!” shouted Jens. “You’re royalty, you have your pants specially made to hold all the money you’re carrying, and yet somehow you’re the biggest tightwad I’ve ever met!”
“If we do encounter a bunch of lowlifes,” offered Wodan, “then they’ll probably be pale from living in this abandoned building, and a strong light could blind them. It would give us the chance to run or kill them, if we have to.”
“That makes sense, but it sounds psychotic,” said Jens, shaking his head at both of them. “This isn’t about whether or not we’ll be able to overpower a bunch of subterranean, inhuman mutants, or some dumb shit like that. It’s about Zach always letting other people pay even though you can clearly see his pants bulging out on both sides.”
“Oh, it won’t come down to a fight?” said Zach. “So there is no bum sex room. You practically just admitted it!”
“It’ll come down to a fight, alright!” said Jens, grasping Zach by his shirt. “How long’s it been since you went crazy, Zach? Are we due for another round of you blacking out and destroying something? You won’t pay for some decent lamps, but I’ll bet your dad would pay for this store if you went nuts in here!”
“What’s this about somebody going crazy?” said Wodan, separating the two. “None of us is crazy, alright? Let’s just-”
“You don’t know Zach, then,” said Jens, staring at the other.
“What the hell are you girls doing?” said Pete, entering behind them. He carried a case of beer over one shoulder, and three lamps by his side. “I could hear a lot of shouting, but not a lot of supplies-gathering. I could only afford these lamps – somebody’s gonna have to go without.”
“I’ll go without,” said Zach. “I don’t need your charity, Pete.”
“Fine,” said Pete. “But I just spent the last of my money. If we don’t find a buried treasure or something, then I’m screwed.”
Wodan took the heavy case of beers from Pete, then they waited outside while Zach bought a deluxe lamp with a focusing lens capable of casting a beam of light far ahead. The boys trekked through increasingly dilapidated neighborhoods, fearless as they passed beers to one another. Jens complained about his various jobs or Anne or the phoniness of others in general. Pete either poked fun as Jens’s phoniness, or would bring up various subjects but inevitably glance at Zach and then let the matter drop before the prince of Hargis could join in. Zach seemed oblivious to the irritation of the others, and talked about the history of Pontius, how entire sections of the town would be abandoned as businesses moved either to accommodate the whims of the wealthy or to avoid surges of gang violence. It was not unheard of for one neighborhood to slowly reclaim an empty section nearby after it had lain abandoned for a dozen or a hundred years, but Zach was more interested in tales of people spelunking in distant, abandoned sections, scouring for goods or squatting for as long as possible. Wodan became inspired and claimed that this exploration could change all of them, then Jens felt inspired as well and gave further tales of the bum sex room that he had supposedly seen so long ago.
The buildings thinned out and the little noises made by people and machines disappeared. The avenues were in total darkness, so the boys lit their lamps. Wodan felt the ghosts that hung about the desolate place, the echoes of ancient inhabitation. They came to a massive three-story brick structure that stood alone, surrounded by a rusting barbed-wire fence. They
made their way through an opening, then walked through the weeds that broke through the concrete lot.
They found wide front doors held shut by a padlock significantly newer than the rest of the structure. Jens broke into a grin, then said, “I bet some Lawman found this place, then the city officials spent a week debating on what they should do about it. I bet careers began and ended before they decided to throw a five dollar lock on this thing!”
“Not enough to stop us,” said Zach, shimmying up a drainpipe that led to a series of handholds along the second-story windows. Wodan felt a twinge of vertigo and wondered if his drunkenness would kill him if he followed. Zach rambled on about different schools of climbing, the best means possible for ascending inhospitable vertical surfaces, the benefits of drunkenness for endowing the climber with bravery, flexibility, even a heightened sense of carefulness depending on the experience of the drunk. Finally he crossed the ledge, then came to a landing that jutted out from a shorter section of the building. He disappeared.
“Is there a way in?” said Jens. “You see any broken windows?”
They heard glass shattering, then Zach called down, “Yeah, I do! Throw those beers up here.”
Pete took the case, then heaved them upward in a surprising show of strength.
“We better get up there before Zach drinks them all,” said Jens, biting the handle of his lamp before he grasped the pipe. Pete followed, then Wodan brought up the rear. He found his fear of heights dwindling as he pushed upward, clinging to rusted metal and chipped stone. He found the others drinking on the landing just as Zach clambered in through the broken window.
The halls were full of debris, chunks of fallen plaster, and dust motes travelling through their lights. The place was a maze of decay. Wodan swung his light about and saw a bare room with a diagram on the far wall, a collection of squares and letters.
“Look,” said Wodan. “A periodic table of elements.”
Jens looked at the diagram, then back to Wodan.
“It’s a diagram of all the elements,” said Wodan, “arranged in such a way that you can see their properties, and even guess the properties of unknown elements due to their arrangement, even before you find them in nature or make them yourself.”
“Must be some Smith shit,” said Jens. “Maybe this was one of their joints, a long time ago.”
“I wonder why they left.”
“They probably got found out by some other gang. They probably left this thing ’cause, to anyone else, it just looks like a bunch of nonsense. Maybe they thought it would scare some people off. How’d you know what it was, man?”
“This stuff is common knowledge where I was born,” said Wodan.
“It’s a shit move to call someone a liar,” said Jens, casting a glance at Zach, “but you’re definitely a weirdo, man.”
They continued on through the dark, still hallways. It was a skeleton of the past, full of rooms that held no clue to their true purpose. Wodan studied the others, their fear, their excitement. He could tell that the building appealed to Jens’s search for new and unexpected things, to Zach’s need to experience the unknown, and he guessed that even though Pete held himself with practiced caution, the ruins appealed to his attraction to darkness. There was something abnormal about the clean-cut young man.
“Look!” said Wodan. The others turned back. His light shone on a room filled with windows, the remains of a rotten couch, and tables filled with cookware covered in a layer of dust.
“If we moved in here,” said Wodan, “then this would be our living room.”
“Move in?” said Pete.
“Sounds weird,” said Jens, “but I was thinking the same thing.”
Pete looked about, then said, “Like boys building forts in their yards. Perfect for a bunch of guys that never grew up.”
“Or that can’t pay rent,” said Jens.
“You could raise a secret army in here,” said Zach. “It would be years before anyone else caught on.”
Jens cackled loudly, but Wodan said, “I agree.”
They approached a shattered window and looked out. From the third floor, they could see the lights of faraway avenues stretching out and rejoining the web of human society. Wodan looked at the street below just as a wild animal scampered across. An old sign shook in the wind, and Wodan could just make out the words
FLOYD STREET
“Holy SHIT!” a voice yelped. They jumped and realized that Jens was nowhere near. They ran, hearts pounding, lights bouncing. They saw lamplight from a room ahead. They entered and saw Jens staring, transfixed. When he turned to them, his face was stretched wide by a crazy smile.
Broken windows were laid against walls and along the floor. The walls were marked by crude sketches of naked men and women copulating, almost childish in design. A single rotten, stained mattress sat in the middle of the floor, like an altar.
“A ritual took place here,” said Wodan. “This is where humanity was sacrificed.”
“Smiths, or someone like them, might have been in here at one point,” said Zach, “but it looks like primitive subhumans took over.”
Shocked, the boys returned to the living room. Wodan stood at one of the open windows. Pete came to stand beside him. Finally Jens spoke up. “I realize you guys are all traumatized and shit, but can we go back to the part where I’m a compulsive liar and kind of clarify that point?”
“We really could raise an army here,” said Wodan.
“And do what with it?”
“Change the world,” Wodan said without hesitation.
Jens sighed, then said, “Wodan, maybe the shit that’s wrong with the world happens because too many people are trying to change the world.”
“That sounds wise,” said Wodan, turning away from the window, “but a philosophy like that favors the gangs.”
“It’s not that simple, anyway. Even if we had a hundred guys in here doing pushups all day… what the hell good could they do, really?”
“Maybe nothing.” Wodan looked away. “I don’t have a solid argument. I spoke too soon. But it’s a fact that you guys don’t have a place to stay. You can stay with me, but I might be losing my place pretty soon, too. This place… there’s just something about it. And Zach, you could-”
“Don’t count on Zach,” said Jens, clapping a hand on Zach’s arm. “He’s about to crazy-out any day now. Aren’t you?”
Zach turned away. Wodan heard Pete lighting a cigarette at the window. Flashes of orange lit the hollows in his cheeks and eyes. “Jens doesn’t understand that we’re all kind of crazy, Wodan,” he said. “We’ll see. I think you might be on to something.”
* * *
That very night, Jens and Pete moved their meager belongings into Wodan’s apartment. The next day, Wodan woke up and bumped the bathroom door against Pete’s head, and he realized that his life alone was over and would never be the same again. That evening Jens disappeared to round up more friends while Pete and Wodan bought more booze and made their way to Anne’s.
When they arrived, the door was locked and the window was shut. “That whore locked us out!” said Pete. “She think some Coil assassin’s gonna sneak in and kill her?”
Before they could come up with a plan of infiltration, Zach approached. Pete’s face hardened as Wodan waved to his friend.
“What’re you guys about?” said Zach, grabbing the bottle.
“Jens is gettin’ some people together,” said Pete. “That Smith friend of his is bringing an air conditioner for Anne.”
“A Smith?” said Wodan. “Coming here? Are we setting up an ambush?”
“You already forgot?” said Pete. “He’s just a rank-and-file guy, he’s nothing to worry about. He’s a decent guy, I guess. He’s good at “losing” Smith equipment, and he broke one of Anne’s chairs last week, so this is his way of making up.”
Time passed as they drank on the front stoop. Wodan loosened up and eventually had both of his friends laughing. By the time darkness fell, Pete an
d Zach ended up embracing and laughing and Zach called Pete a “Prince of Pontius”. This was the first kindness that they had shown to one another, and Wodan laughed crazily as it happened.
A car pulled up and Jens hung from the window and shouted, “I know that goddamn laugh!”
A young woman exited the car and approached the stoop. She stopped before Wodan. Her hair was short and blond, and her eyes were hard little pinpricks of ice. As she stood in the dim light of the car’s headlights, Wodan was struck by the jagged hardness of her small frame.
“You’re Wodan?” she said.
He nodded.
“Jens says you’re a psychopath.”
“That’s not true at all,” said Wodan.
“He says you don’t have a bed or any furniture, and you drew stuff on the walls of your place, conspiracy stuff like the names of people who lead the Ugly, and it’s like a big web with targets marked all over it, and you’ve got some kind of knife made out of recycled metal or something, and also you sleep on a nest.”
“That’s all true,” said Wodan. “But it’s sort of, well, taken out of context.”
The young woman nodded slowly, then pursed her lips strangely. “I’m Anne,” she said, then unlocked the front door and entered.
Jens rolled out of the car and careened up the stairs, then grabbed a beer and disappeared inside. Two more young men exited the vehicle and opened the trunk. One was a rotund figure with a barrel chest, blond hair, and a Smith apron thrown over his shoulder. The other had pale skin and long black hair that covered his face. He lifted the large, blocky air conditioner and staggered under the weight.
“Pete!” the portly youth shouted as he approached. “Help Ullrich with that damn air conditioner!”
“Make Anne do it, Hunley,” said Pete, smoking calmly. “It’s her damn thing.”
Wodan moved to help but Pete grabbed his shoulder and shook his head quickly.
Hunley entered and immediately cried out, “Gods below, it’s hot in here! It’s hot as balls in here!”
He seems decent enough, thought Wodan. Could he really be a gangster? Has he ever killed anyone, I wonder?
Demonworld Book 3: The Floyd Street Massacre Page 8
