Black Blood

by John Meaney

  And if the Vital Renewal Bill is passed?

  This was insane.

  I'll be a nonperson. A thing.

  He had to trust his observations and his logic.

  “Tell me more about the convoys, Atlong.”

  “We've already got our own people among the GA workers, and the military will cooperate.”

  “This isn't as off the books as it looks, is it?”

  “That depends on how you look at it.” Hayes had re-entered the lounge. “Discounting the fact that if we screw up, we'll get disowned and fired, jailed or killed, it's kind of official… almost. Nearly.”

  “So tell me about the convoy.”

  “Well, the one tomorrow,” said Atlong, “will be the first that we've interfered with.”

  “So if I mess things up, you've lost your chance?”

  “Uh-huh. Please do it right.”

  Fredrix yawned, and Donal realized that it was getting late.

  “Hayes? What time's your family coming back?”

  “Tomorrow, late. Staying with my sister-in-law. You and Temesin can billet here tonight.”

  Donal nodded, noting the use of billet. Hayes was ex-military, and so were the others, almost certainly.

  “Detailed briefing coming up?”

  “Sure. Let me get the coffee on first.”

  “One thing,” said Donal. “You've been watching the GA place. Any sightings of Malfax Cortindo?”

  “That bastard. Yeah, he comes and goes, not to any schedule we've determined.”

  “So if I go in, he might not be there? They don't need his presence all the time?”

  “That's right.”

  “Does that imply,” asked Donal, “that Brax Devlin is a mage in his own right?”

  Brint hissed and splayed his claws.

  Donal looked at Hayes.

  “That means, ‘Fucked if we know.’”

  “Oh.”

  “Feel secure. You're among professionals.”

  Climbing the stairs afterward, Donal noticed a pair of heavy, curved dark-blue shades lying on a small table. For a moment, they caught his attention, then he shook his head, forgetting about them. He carried on to the front room, where Hayes had said he could stay. Temesin was going to use the middle daughter's bedroom.

  “You might need this.” Temesin held out a small black spiked device. “It's an adapter.”

  “Thanks.”

  Donal went into the room, closed the door, and looked around. On the bed, which he wasn't going to use, someone had laid a dark form-fitting jumpsuit and a pair of combat boots. That was good.

  He went to the window and looked out. Brightness filled the exterior world. A few glistening cars—iridescent purple, some gold and bronze—still crawled along the street, but most people were indoors and settling down to sleep.

  The adapter fit in the wall socket. Donal stripped above the waist, and opened his chest cavity. His narrow power cord connected the adapter to his heart socket.

  He pulled on the dark glasses that Temesin had given him.

  I hope he gets some sleep.

  Had Donal been alive, needing sleep, he'd have found it difficult to close his eyes in this place. As it was, he left the drapes open, and stood unmoving at the window, staring out at the sunlit night.

  Not sunlit. Mirrorlit.

  Close enough.

  He watched the world, and felt his energy build.

  Several minutes later and two thousand miles away, at the edge of Black Iron Forest, a convoy of camouflage-painted trucks mixed in with black-painted buses came to a halt. The buses had the insignia of several different police departments on them, but Major Walvern grouped them together in his mind under the name of Rectalfuck County PD.

  The drivers weren't the asswipe cops who'd made the roundups. They were Walvern's men, and therefore trusted.

  “Sheila,” he muttered.

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing, Lieutenant. Carry on.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Troops jumped down from the army trucks first, surrounding the commandeered police buses. Then the bus doors opened, and the white-faced passengers began to descend. They stared at the clearing beyond, unable to help themselves.

  It would have been poetic, or something, for the zombies to dig their own graves. However, Major Walvern's orders had been clear: swiftness was a priority. That was why teams from the Engineering Corps had already dug five long pits in the clearing. Soil was heaped up on the black grass, but it was not exactly bodies that the soil would cover up.

  A translucent block of soapy gel stood at the side of each pit. Across each block, metal netting stretched, held tautly in place with iron pegs. The arrangement was precise. Walvern called them zombie-strainers. The grass around the blocks was already dying.

  The first squad of soldiers had already led six captives to stand against a gel block. The squad leader looked to Lieutenant Davix, who in turn looked to Major Walvern. Walvern nodded.

  Most of the squad raised rifles, preparing to aim, under orders to fire head-shots only. Other soldiers were taking hold of long insulated poles, ready to push the zombies into the acid gel block.

  The flesh would go straight through, while the metal netting would catch the valuable bones.

  Walvern bit his lower lip, aware of the blood that sprang from the puncture, not caring.

  It had been seven whole years since he had returned from leave to find that Sheila, silly bitch, had not only gotten herself killed in an accident, but resurrected. At night, the thing that mocked the memory of her stood sleepless, laughing at him. Dealing with the abomination had been the most courageous, empowering act of his life.

  No one would ever find that body.

  “Bitch,” he muttered now.

  He raised his hand. A downward chop, and more monstrosities would be removed from the world.

  “Ready …”

  His teeth were stained with his own blood.

  In her tiny apartment in Lower Halls, old Mrs. Westrason woke up when the phone rang. Although it was late, she smiled at the sound, and climbed out of her bed with an agility she had thought long lost. She padded into the sitting-room, and picked up the indigo receiver.

  “Hello? Yes, of course.”

  She smiled again.

  “I'm feeling wonderful. And at my age too.”

  Then she listened.

  “Why not? I've got carving knives in the kitchen, and oil I can put in a bottle. Will someone light the wick for me, when I need it? Oh, thank you.”

  Some part of her was aware that perhaps two thousand similar conversations were taking place in Tristopolis. The thought made her feel warm and comfortable inside.

  “Oh, zombies. Yes, marvelous. How many would you like me to kill?”

  She bent her head forward, listening carefully.

  The glossy, vast apartment took up the entire 227th floor of Darksan Tower. In the main lounge, Harald and Ruth Zarenski sat together. There were sounds from the kitchen.

  “Guys? I can't find any food.”

  Harald shook his head, got up, and went to look. Brian was peering inside metal cupboards, finding bare shelves.

  “Donal and Laura weren't the world's best homemakers,” said Harald. “But check the pantry to your right.”

  “Oh, okay.” Brian's blue skin grew a little paler as he opened the pantry door. “Stasis field. And some cheese inside that might be, what, prehistoric?”

  The phones—there were seven extensions scattered around the apartment—rang. Ruth picked up the receiver—the black receiver—close to her.

  “Really? Of course. Please send them up.”

  Brian and Harald looked at each other. Then Ruth reached the kitchen doorway.

  “Cops are coming,” she said.

  “Death damn it,” muttered Brian. “We're cops, aren't we?”

  “Just make yourself fucking scarce.”

  There was a chime, warning that the elevator was about to reach their lobby.<
br />
  “Move it,” said Harald.

  In his office, Captain Sandarov sat alone at his desk, waiting for the call. He reached into his desk drawer, pulled out the blue-and-white photograph of his resurrected parents that had been hidden for so long, and propped it in place, in full view.

  Whatever happened tonight, he would live or die by his principles.

  A sergeant called Royle, with a gray moustache and a stone expression, led the team of uniforms into the apartment. The men spread out through the elegant rooms.

  “What are you looking for, Sergeant?” asked Ruth.

  “Nonhumans, ma'am, as I'm sure you're aware.”

  “You won't find any here,” said Harald. “Not in our home.”

  “This place”—Royle gestured at the gleaming lounge and sneered—“is due to be possessed by the city, I think you'll find.”

  “No.” Ruth took hold of Harald's hand. “We bought this apartment from Riordan, when he was still legal owner. We're the owners now, not the city, and with papers to prove it.”

  “Huh.”

  Royle turned and stomped around the room. His skin grew darker with rage as his men, one by one, reported failure.

  “Come on,” he said finally.

  After the cops had left in the elevator, Ruth continued to hold Harald's hand. Neither of them said anything.

  Then the chime sounded again, and the elevator door reopened. Royle came back in.

  “Forgot something.”

  He went in and out of every room, some twice, before deciding that no nonhuman had crept out of a hiding place. His skin a little more normal-hued, but still looking angry, he stomped back to the anteroom, got into the elevator, and told it to descend.

  Harald went to a shield-shaped mirror on the corridor wall, rapped it, and pulled it open. Beyond was a vertical shaft, and a luminescent green-gray ladder to which Brian was clinging tightly, his expression strained.

  “Safe for now,” said Harald.

  As soon as it rang, Sandarov grabbed the receiver from the hook.

  “Yes … Oh. Yes, Mayor Camberg. Congratulations, sir. Tristopolis needs you.”

  He listened a while more, then grinned.

  “Definitely. Yes. Right away.”

  Quietly, he put the phone down. Then he stood up, punched his right fist into the air, and yelled: “Yes!”

  Although it was late, a handful of detectives were working in the outer room. One of them opened Sandarov's door.

  “Captain? Is everything all right?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Sir?”

  “I'm not exactly Captain any longer.”

  “What?” The detective frowned, then said: “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  A grin, almost as wide as Sandarov's, stretched across the detective's face.

  “Congratulations, Commissioner Sandarov.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  The fortified chamber was deep belowground, surrounded by solid stone, guarded by pentagonal steel doors several feet thick. Inside, on stepped tiers, consoles stood in rows, festooned with cables and switches. Hundreds of indigo-uniformed men with empty eye sockets sat at the consoles. Each man wore an indigo headset, and whispered sounds that no ordinary human throat could have uttered. Their voices were chaotic overlays, and only their own trained senses—trained in the crucible of agony—could separate out the meanings. Each man was conducting up to thirteen conversations simultaneously, with different words transmitted down different lines, to different people.

  “Yes, Mrs. Westrason, take your sharpest knives now and …”

  “You will feel good as you kill…”

  “That's right, all the zombies …”

  The massive doors blew inward, spilling the eyeless men from their seats. They turned, although they surely could not see, to face the dark-suited men and women pouring into the chamber.

  “Special Agent Hall,” called one of the newcomers. “Federal spellbinder. Raise your hands, you are all—”

  The eyeless men snarled, clenching their fists in unison, and blackness swept from their eyes in a torrent, whirling into a massive vortex, heading for the spellbinders.

  Then sapphire lightning exploded across the room.

  “—dead,” finished Hall.

  Eyeless corpses wearing indigo uniforms sprawled everywhere. None of the dark-suited men or women smiled or showed any other emotion.

  They were federal spellbinders.

  Mrs. Westrason clucked, stared at the dead receiver in her hand, and put it down. Then she blinked sleepily at the room.

  “I'm going back to bed,” she said.

  Major Walvern's hand was still upraised when he saw white movement among the dense trees of Black Iron Forest. He could not have said what held him back from making the final gesture.

  The zombies lined up against the execution pit, the others still to be herded from the buses, the soldiers about to fire—everyone stopped still, and waited.

  And then they came, white and silent, out of cover.

  “Sweet Hades,” muttered someone.

  The white wolves took up position in front of the zombies, and turned to face the soldiers.

  “Oh, shit.”

  There was a thud as a rifle fell to the ground. Then a cacophony of thumps and rattles accompanied the mass dropping of weapons. Almost simultaneously, every soldier jerked into a run and fled, heading away from their vehicles, all training forgotten. Even Lieutenant Davix was sprinting down the road.

  Only Major Walvern stood in place.

  “Sheila,” he whispered.

  The white wolves advanced on him.

  Donal took off his shades, and turned over his wrist. His watch face showed a solid disk of black, indicating full power. He disconnected the cord, checked his chest cavity, and smiled.

  “Time,” he said.

  He sealed up the cavity.

  Black beetlehovers, the size of houses, hung in the air overhead, the beat of their wings a deep, subsonic vibration that shook the guts of every person on the ground. Even Donal was affected, but he was able to push the feelings into some imaginary distance, to oblivion.

  Feeling warm in his dark jumpsuit, he drank cool water from a flask, preparing himself. His physiological processes still utilized water. While he rarely needed to eat, or drink anything but the occasional H2O, he deliberately hallucinated now that he was drinking strong coffee, remembering the taste, building it up on his tongue, with that cleansing, warm feeling of caffeine-high sweeping up and down through his body.

  Temesin was frowning, perhaps trying to work out whether someone had laced the water with stimulants. Donal felt himself grow sharper, stand taller, because the strong imagined experience had produced exactly the neurochemical effect of the real thing.

  Being a zombie had its advantages.

  “I'm ready,” he said.

  “All right.”

  They walked up a sloping embankment that was covered in blue grass, and reached the straight white road where the military convoy had halted. In the middle of the convoy were two huge silver trucks, without insignia. They were the Gladius Armaments vehicles, transporting weapons components, and advertising would have been inappropriate. Right now, they weren't exactly anonymous, with military trucks fore and aft, and the beetlehovers overhead.

  One of the beetlehovers descended, so that Donal could just make out a silhouette of the pilot, through the convex black-glass “eyes,” across which reflected sunlight slid. Heavy automatic cannons were slung beneath the buzzing wings.

  “It would be a lot easier,” said Donal, “if you guys just blasted your way inside.”

  “We will.” Hayes approached, carrying what looked like a black stave. “Here's the flare. I'm going to fit it here, on this external rack.”

  The lead silver truck had a section for equipment on the rear of the cab. Hayes pushed the stavelike flare into clips, fastening it vertically in place.

  Donal glan
ced at the military trucks. Most of the soldiers were out of sight. The others—big muscular men, short lean men (the majority), and fit-looking women, all of them intelligent and hard-eyed—gave Donal confidence. Hayes had said that the normal escort would have been from an ordinary regiment; but today, the troops were special forces.

  “It flares silver,” Hayes said now, tapping the stave. “It's a different color from anything built by GA.”

  “Good.”

  Fleming and Atlong were fitting a metal ladder onto the side of the truck. Fleming climbed up first, walked along the flat spine of the truck, and got to work on a hatch.

  “Where's Brint?” asked Hayes.

  “Here he is.”

  Brint was ascending the blue-grass embankment, his mandibles working without sound, his forelimbs held high. He wore a garish yellow sleeveless shirt over his chitinous torso. The shirt was unbuttoned, swinging open, revealing twin rows of bulbous sacs, each twice the size of a human fist.

  “He's in a cheerful mood,” said Hayes. “Okay, Donal. Up you get.”

  Donal climbed the ladder, and stood on the flat strip that ran the length of the silver cargo trailer. Fleming had already worked the hatch open and pulled it backward.

  “We don't have much time,” he said, “before the little bastards try to climb up.”

  “Let me see.”

  Donal peered into the open hatch. Down inside, thousands of small black armored creatures—stingers—were scuttling across equipment crates. They were part of the security system that GA used to protect their freight. Any one of the stingers could kill a man.

  “Pleasant little fuckers,” muttered Fleming. “Sooner you than me, Riordan.”

  “I'm not going to enjoy this, am I?”

  “I doubt it. And here comes Brint, ready to do his thing.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  From the ground, Hayes called up: “Remember, the convoy will hang around as long as possible on-site, and if they leave before you send up the signal, they'll travel really slowly.”

  Donal nodded, understanding that the message was to move carefully, taking his time, not to be seen before he found the evidence that he, more than anyone else, should be able to track down.