Just one day into the planet settling into its new orbit—not even—and already humans were acting more vicious, more cunning, and more deadly than the super-predators. But most folks in these behind-the-times districts lived day-to-day, so one day would have been all it would have taken.
“Sorry, pal,” said a vamp, apologizing for putting Soren on the menu, descending and morphing out of batwing mode and into human mode, his mental projections into Soren’s head passing for “clothing” of his otherwise naked body. He’d either missed what had just happened, or had been provoked by it. “This is nothing personal, but we’re holding off on sucking on superior blood lines until we can’t survive without them.”
“I understand entirely,” Soren said, smiling. It was not the human in him smiling. The vamp, relying on his hypnotizing abilities was doing the eye thing on him, walking closer, confident his prey was now too enchanted to put up a fight. Soren did his eye thing on him; his eyes glowed an instant before firing lasers into the vamp’s eyes, leaving nothing but smoldering eye sockets where once there were eyeballs. The ashes were caught up in the bluster of cold air until they were flushed out of the cavities in his skull entirely.
The vamp shrieked in agony. Soren curled his right arm, preparing to deliver a karate chop to the side of the neck, which he held only long enough for the nano to grow out of the sides of his hand and lower arm. Then he delivered the fatal blow, sending the vamp’s head rolling in the direction of the now denuded werewolf. It hadn’t taken the pack of humans long to strip the hairy, mangy animal of flesh; that was extreme times for you; you honed your survival skills or you perished. And the present didn’t belong to people who couldn’t de-flesh an animal before the other hyenas and vultures got there—speaking figuratively, he might add; considering the district they were in, the distinction was worth emphasizing.
The vamp’s head rolled toward one of the kids that was late arriving at the scene of the felled werewolf. He kicked the head back toward Soren like a soccer ball, before bending over before him and stuffing it in his burlap bag. “My mum loves the heads, the eyes and the cheeks, particularly. Thanks, Soren.” The cherub-faced nine-year-old with the blond curly hair and flushed cheeks just added irony to the moment, considering such facades were usually painted alongside angel’s wings.
Soren snarled at the mention of his name. He and Victor both had become celebrities when partnering up to rid the world of cosmic wizards in round one of whatever match Victor was still waging with them. But “Soren” sounded distasteful to his ears. The name, along with the identity, seemed increasingly foreign to him.
The kid had started in on the dead vamp, capturing the blood in a series of bottles he’d set up on the ground with the help of his older brother, who had strung a rope around the ankles of the dead vamp and hoisted him high enough off the ground to drain him faster through the neck. Possibly they were thinking they could live much longer drinking vamp blood in small doses if the food ran out again. Whatever was going through their minds, they were keen on working fast. Two other brothers, bigger still than the one that had done the heavy lifting for the youngest sibling, were already fighting off other human vultures eager to tear at the vamp’s body, in order to give their younger brothers space to work.
The metal flasks collecting up the blood had already been corked and thrown into the much bigger burlap bag of the bigger, beefier brother. He was helping his younger sibling make the choice cuts of meat before they had to flee the scene because the other brothers couldn’t fend off the human predators any longer. Making the most of what little time they had, they smartly went for the organs—where the vitamins and nutrients were most concentrated, leaving the muscle meats for the next in line. And then they whistled to the two other brothers, and the entire gang was on their way, disappearing into the half-destroyed buildings.
Soren eyed the fires burning inside homes, fed by the wood from the damaged furniture and walls that hadn’t survive whatever knocked the planet out of orbit.
There were plenty of fires burning on the streets too, the pyres made from more fully collapsed buildings. Soren guessed the ones warming themselves by the fires were cleaning up the streets and the neighborhood in their own inimical fashion.
One of the wealthier members of the district pulled up in a horse drawn carriage—a young man of courting age in a bowler hat, sideburns all the way down to the jawline that would take a hedge-trimming license to keep in line—raced up the stairs of a lodge; hoping to find a family member he was concerned about, presumably, making sure he, she, or they had survived the massive earthquake. Either he wasn’t thinking straight, or he’d decided the sacrifice was worth it, but he was barely out of sight before a mob descended on his poor horse. They were cutting it up before it had time to die.
Soren stared at the spectacle, emotionally numbed. His capacity for empathy had been muted by the cabbalistic nanites working their magic inside him, to still unknown ends. They couldn’t be bothered to numb his pain; perhaps that was to make him more amenable to their other renovations. This, despite Naomi’s earlier observations that they were entirely devoted to numbing him entirely. Maybe she’d misread the nature of the numbing nerves they were going after—she was hardly the scientist he was. He could speculate on these matters later; for now, he was late to get to the Chinatown district to meet a wizard who could help him decipher the cabbalistic magic inscribed in his nanites.
If the magic was strange and esoteric enough, and ancient enough, Chinatown was the go-to district; the Chinese civilization traced back thousands of years. Their sages and holy men, and their wizards, had been among the first and the most powerful. It was just a district he hated to go to. As a known chi master, it meant besting everyone who got in his way to get to the wizard he needed to confer with. Worry about that, Soren, when you get there.
For now, there’s the matter of getting clear of this district. Now that the rest of the weak and infirmed have been fed on, your smell is drawing every supernatural predator for miles. And you can’t afford the time delay of putting them all down.
Chinatown was one of the districts adjacent to Victorian London—Shelley-style. The other was the one he’d retreated to, Victorian England—minus the supernaturals, save for him. He couldn’t abide by the Frankenstein wannabes in this sector constantly asking for advice. He was staring now at one of them fighting off a pack of werewolves. He was throwing them around pretty well. But he’d wear himself out sooner rather than later, and then the vamps, hovering above him in batwing mode would descend for their supper.
For now, Soren took advantage of the distraction and wended his way through the last remaining streets as fast as he could. His gait was impaired, and he moaned in pain with each stride. His joints felt arthritic. It seemed as if he only had full range of motion any more in a blinding rage—the only time he was free of pain. Killing the werewolf back there and the vamp was an exquisite release; he wasn’t even enraged at the attack so much as at the indignity of being sniffed out as being more dead than alive. Were the cabbalistic nanites herding him in a particularly direction? At the moment, he was more concerned about herding himself out of this district.
The side streets were no better than the main streets. The Frankenstein monsters were everywhere on the menu, being eviscerated or torn limb from limb under the light of the full moon that had brought all the werewolves out, not just some that had elected to turn whenever they wished. “Please, help me push back my insides,” said one of the Frankenstein monsters. Soren bent down to help the man, stuffing back in his intestines a few feet at a time.
Soren heard the slurping, snarling sounds of the wolf nearby. Glanced up from his handiwork to observe the animal chewing his favorite part of the body, as Soren slid in the last of this fellow’s intestines. The wolf had hold of this Frankenstein’s monster’s liver. Soren went up to the beast and grabbed both ends of its mouth and pulled wide, unhinging his jaw briefly before ripping it off entirely. He retrie
ved the perforated liver as the wolf yelped, died, and changed back to human form, all in quick succession, its mouth still torn wide open. The werewolf had worn no magical amulets and bore no signs of the beast. That didn’t rule out magic, but the genetic makeovers were pretty good these days; he could have been a CRISPR-derived werewolf, able to change from one form to the next, simply by changing brainwave patterns.
Soren traipsed the remaining two-thirds of the liver back to the Frankenstein monster he was tending. The man was sprawled across the three rising steps to a lodge. Callous residents were walking in and out of the place without giving him a second look. Bent down by his side, Soren said, “Is sticking this thing back in going to do any good?” he asked as he was surgically attaching the liver with the help of his laser vision to the main arteries and veins leading to and from.
“Yes, I heal rather well.”
Soren glared at him, his eyes still glowing no doubt from firing up the lasers earlier and perhaps reflecting little more than his envy—now that all emotions were tinged with a bit of rage, or what emotions remained that the cabbalistic nanites hadn’t sent into remission. “We used to have that in common.”
There were a few more Frankenstein monsters up and down the street meeting no less undignified of an end, but they would be dead before Soren could get to them in any case. He may as well continue with the one he was working on. One of the Victorian ladies twirling a parasol had just stepped out of the lodge and around his patient after putting her already-turned-up-by-fault-of-genetics nose up at him. Soren said, “Yes, that’ll do nicely.” He lurched after her and ripped a seam of one of the more prominent threads of her elaborate hoop-skirt dress. He kept pulling until the outfit started becoming undone. Her gasps of surprise and whining whelps were moderated only by the confining corset she was wearing.
“Why, you impertinent commoner!” she finally managed.
“Why, you callous bitch.” He kept pulling, and when she resisted, he yanked the entire dress off her and took it with him just in case he needed extra thread from it. While she was standing, covering herself as best she could with her hands and screaming, the one that had dressed her, a presumed servant, was trying to cover her with a shawl, Soren returned to the pair of them. He yanked the purse out of the servant’s hands, and retrieved the sewing kit he needed with the different sized needles and threads. “Sorry, I didn’t think of this sooner,” he said. “You can have the dress back.” After yanking some more thread off of it, he threw it at the two ladies as if covering a sculpture entitled “Two Undone Women” with a spread of fabric.
The beast inside him was a little slower at putting two and two together; or it would have occurred to him sooner that if the woman attended her lady’s attire, and possibly did her hair and makeup, too, she might well have a sewing kit on her for emergencies.
Soren was already back at his patient’s side as the two women hightailed it back inside the building for an emergency repair job to end all emergency repair jobs, dress in hand. “If you wait a second, you can have the sewing kit back,” Soren said, raising his voice at the servant.
The lady gave permission for her attendant to wait, but she herself refused to stand another second watching the gruesome sight of the man being stitched up, so grabbed the dress and fled upstairs.
Soren finished stitching up his patient and handed the kit back to her. The attendant smiled secretly at him, no doubt delighted for her slave-driver of a boss to have gotten her comeuppance for once. “I’m sure it’ll be understandable, in having to put that dress back together on her so fast, if the needle poked her more than a few times.”
The modest, round-faced woman of mixed Asian and Native American descent—in sharp contrast to the white porcelain beauty of her mistress with sharply angled features—smiled even more broadly, and then slipped away with the darning kit.
“You think you can stand up?” Soren asked, already reaching to tuck his patient’s shoulder in under the man’s right arm.
His werewolf’s victim nodded and he assisted lifting his own weight by pushing up off the rising-wall-and-hand-rest-in-one at the edge of the steps. It was only when Soren had gotten him standing again that he took notice of how the stranger was stitched together. He wore nothing but a woolen trench coat, which was currently unbuttoned, exposing his principal suture marks—the ones attaching his head at the neck, and each of the arms and legs. “You couldn’t steal a body with all its limbs?” Soren said.
“I did. But then I lost one after the other in werewolf attacks.”
“How did you get around the tissue rejection issues?”
“Flesh-eating bacteria. Mutated, of course.”
“Of course.” Soren nodded. “Nice. Dare I say, even period-appropriate, if not downright retro.”
“I’m Norel,” his patient said with a smile. “The last name you can guess.”
“If, like me, you’re also the doctor, how did you get the head reattached?”
“Robots.” Norel held up his hand arrestingly. “Also period appropriate, I assure you. Very steampunk-looking things with Von Neuman devices comprising their brains and informing the surgery.”
“You’re more of a purist than me. I might have been tempted to get a more reliable robot for that part of the operation.”
Soren was helping him to walk, debating if he had time to get to the latest Frankenstein monster to come under attack.
“Go on, leave me,” Norel said, “I can use the walls for a crutch until you find your way back to me, if you find your way back.”
Soren hesitated, realizing he was risking the one he’d saved for the one surrounded by the pack of wolves, which would surely just turn on Norel the second he left his side. The moment’s hesitation was all it took for the latest victim to lose his head. Even if the pieces could be put back together using Norel’s technology, the brain had been perforated by the fangs of the werewolf’s teeth beyond any hope of recovery.
“I think you’re all the Frankenstein’s monsters I’m going to save today,” Soren said, once again assisting Norel by nesting under his arm and lifting.
“Point me in the direction of your lab.”
Norel pointed up the street to where it dead-ended at a pub. The merrymakers inside were drinking and whooping it up as if it were the height of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The warm amber light of the tavern spilled out, exhausting itself in short order against the colder shades of blue outside. Dawn was breaking. That meant the werewolves and vamps would be retreating, making the hobble toward the bar hopefully less eventful.
The numbers of supernatural entities were already thinning as Soren and Norel headed up the center of the street. A horse, tethered to a carriage, and rising up on its hind legs to stomp the werewolf creeping toward it as it neighed furiously, received a reprieve from the governor, as it were; the werewolf backing off, retreating into the shadows, and then up the street.
Soren shifted his attention to the bar. Those were some pretty inveterate alcoholics. No one showed any sign of letting up on the drinking. Maybe they had already caught a dose of End Times fever, since winter had arrived, along with nearly a foot of snow on the streets now—it had been flurrying all the while—at the height of summer.
No. It was the baseline for the place, good times and bad. That’s why Norel had situated his lab here, most likely in the basement, just beneath the establishment. That way, the dead-to-the-world drunks, or the ones that had drank themselves into a literal death, would be far fresher meat for harvesting. Beat the hell out of digging them up from graves.
“Your eyes flared just then,” Norel said. “I’m guessing you just figured out why I’m holed up in the basement of that bar.”
“It’s smart,” Soren said, smiling. “I should have thought of it myself, but then I have a thing for skylights and high ceilings.”
“I, on the other hand, do well in dark places. I think I was a caveman in a former life. Imagine, reincarnating after all these years to find
out that my skills are back in fashion again.”
Soren snickered. It had been a while. He had no explanation for why his connection with the mindchip had been reestablished, far less how it had lasted this long. Unless…. Could it be that the freshly installed communication nanites courtesy of his primitive nanite-making machine had brokered a peace, at least for now, between the warring tribes of nanites inside his body—the mandala-infused nanites, the cabbalistic nanites, and what remained of his original nanites?
Soren paused before the entrance to the bar. “Come on,” Norel prompted. “Don’t get bashful now. It’s my flesh-eating bacteria you want to get your hands on. I have a bottle I can lend you, along with my formula. If you make any improvements on it, be sure to let me know. It’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Or maybe you thought it was your compassion back there that saved me?”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Your eyes betray more than you know.”
“But I didn’t know your methods when I bent down to put you back together.”
“Didn’t you? The beast in you smelled the genetic modifications on me. It couldn’t fake compassion, so it let the mindchip have its way, allowed you to reach the compassion in yourself, so long as it served its purposes.”
“How could you know about…?”
Norel pointed to his nose. “Another genetic alteration. I can smell the cyberenhanced. Helps me know which werewolves and vamps to tangle with, and which to leave alone. After losing four limbs, I had to get creative. Like you, I’m strong enough to tear the ones that are simply genetically altered apart with my bare hands. But the others….”
Reviled Page 4
