Jabberwock Jack

by Dennis Liggio

  Let me paint the picture for you. An almost typical night at Twin Eagles. We had taken up a booth. It was Szandor, Lem, Dickie, and a few other friends from the old neighborhood as well as from Szandor and Dickie's former bands. Carly and I were sitting in the booth too, but we were a little aloof from the rest of the group. Szandor was drunk and telling stories. They all knew we hunted, so that wasn't a secret Szandor needed to keep. I think he was talking about some zombies we had killed, interweaving the dangerousness with how awesome we were at killing them.

  Szandor lit up a cigarette - one of those Pall Malls he was infatuated with. Someone mentioned that those things were gonna kill him. Obviously not one of his usual friends if they were bothering to say that. Even if they truly did frown on smoking, they knew how useless that statement was on Szandor.

  In response, my brother took a dramatic drag on the cigarette then blew the smoke out in the air, looking at it pensively. I had seen this move far too many times to know it as anything other than Szandor trying to look cool. With a grin he said, "Well, we all know it's not cigarettes that are going to kill me."

  "So what do you mean by that?" said Carly. I could tell by her tone that she knew what he meant, but she was trying to play Devil's advocate. I knew this wasn't going to go well.

  "What?" said Szandor, jarred from his posturing.

  "What do you actually mean when you say that?" continued Carly. "You're not going to die from cigarettes. So then, what? Your dangerous job? Zombies? Are you sitting here implying that you're going to die from a monster? A zombie bite? Is that actually what you think? You're living your life, expecting that you're going to end it bitten by a creature and lurching around the sewers in some mindless undeath? That's your life's final destination? That's all you expect for yourself?"

  There was a moment of silence, then Szandor's friends started laughing - not full on laughter, but half stifled background laughter. My brother had a hurt expression that ended in a frown. "Lay off, okay."

  "You're the one who has my boyfriend's back," said Carly. "I worry about you keeping him alive if you don't give a damn about yourself."

  "We're just talking here," said Szandor.

  "Is it really just talk?" said Carly.

  "As much as your being an ass right now is talk," responded my brother.

  And that's around where I stepped in to calm down the situation, cutting off raised voices and hurt feelings. I took Carly home, which defused that moment. But it had blown the curtains off what Szandor and Carly thought of each other. Where before there were just undercurrents, after that they were more openly hostile, even if it was still passive aggressively. As brother and boyfriend, I had always wanted them to get along and of course that had failed miserably.

  So now as I typed up a text message to Carly in the van, I shrugged off Szandor's suggestions she was bad for me or the hunt. That's not to say some of his barbs didn't stick. It softened the text I was going to send to something a bit more simple: Was thinking of you. Going to be unavailable for a day or two, will talk soon. Nothing major, just a quick and neutral text. Playing it safe. Then I put my phone away and went back to criticizing my brother on his driving.

  Our caravan of hunter vehicles had pulled into an underground parking garage. We ignored the parking stub the machine gave us and followed the others down to the lowest level of the garage. Just before getting there, we saw two men who were standing by a chain link fence gate. One was wearing overalls with the parking garage's logo, the other was wearing a wrinkled brown suit. Once he saw Meat, the guy in the suit ordered the other to open up the gate and let us all through. We all parked and started pulling out our gear.

  The parking garage was owned by Vic Fontaine, a legitimate businessman who owned a few buildings in town. He was the one in the suit. Meat had cleared out a particularly bad infestation in one of his buildings, so there was a favor owed. Fontaine exchanged a few words with Meat, handed him a spare key for the fence, then he and his worker headed up toward the exit.

  Rather than a simple manhole cover, the garage had a whole access panel, probably intended for the city's use. Two metal doors on the floor folded out. They were usually kept locked, but considering our accumulated lock picking experience, it might as well have been unlocked.

  As we started lowering ourselves down, Delilah placed a relay at the entrance. The relay was attached to a long cable went that to her car. Using a system of batteries in the car, the relay would boost the signal and in theory link up with Paulie's mysterious relays around the city. Once underground, she'd be placing them along our path, hopefully to keep better contact with Paulie. But based on the terrible phone coverage we got in the Avalon sewers, this seemed like a waste of time. Of course, if having this communication actually worked and saved our lives, I was more than willing to eat my share of crow.

  I took a quick look over the group, comparing their equipment. Szandor and I were carrying spear guns and otherwise were dressed as we normally were for underground delves, albeit with heavier backpacks. Meat was carrying a spear gun like us, but I noticed he still had at least two visible pistols on him. Knowing him, he probably had more pistols hidden on his person. He was also helping to carry the large amount of electronic gear that Delilah needed for this trip. That made sense, as he probably had the most raw physical strength of anyone. Delilah herself had her custom P90 rifle slung over her shoulder. Her backpack seemed overfull even with Meat helping; the top of that backpack was at least a foot over her head, maybe higher. As soon as we were underground and lights were on, she took out some devices that looked like GPS and started fiddling with them, following the group out of the corner of her eye. Diego was dressed as he had been above ground. He carried a long hunting rifle over his back and a lighter backpack than most of us. He still wore his snakeskin boots, which seemed ill-suited for the underground.

  "Look at those boots," whispered Szandor to me.

  "That just means it's even more important for you to kill and skin Jack for your footwear," I said with some amusement.

  "For sure," said my brother.

  We were in a long sewer tunnel. A long stream of water and waste ran down the middle of it with cement walkways on either side. Occasionally it intersected with another tunnel channeling the water and there were walkways over the water. Side access tunnels also occasionally dotted the walls. About every one hundred yards there should be a ladder and a manhole, but many of the ladders were broken and some Avalon manholes had been built over, leaving the task of finding exits from the sewer a matter of luck or knowledge rather than finding the first working ladder.

  It was a sewer, so of course it was dirty and smelly. The fact that Avalon Maintenance crews only did limited work down here due to danger meant it was even dirtier and smellier, as certain nonessential pipes which burst weren't fixed and blockages that didn't significantly affect drainage were left unfixed for a long time.

  "Ugh, what is that smell?" said Diego. He was clearly not well suited for the sewers.

  "It's a sewer," said Szandor. He gestured toward the stream of water and waste next to us. Normally it would be a small bubbling stream, but it was now a quick moving river after the recent rains.

  "The Russian sewers weren't this bad!" responded Diego.

  "Well, this is a bunch of crap that's been shit out of some good old American guts!" said Szandor sarcastically. "Seriously, are you going to start comparing shit smells now? It's all bad!"

  "Just put on your mask," I said.

  Diego nodded and pulled his gas mask on. The rest of us might put on our masks later, but this smell was not nearly as bad as Diego thought. It got way worse. On the plus side, we didn't need to listen to him complaining anymore, since the mask muffled his voice.

  Fala lowered herself into the tunnel with surprising grace. She had changed into a strange jacket. It had originally been a black hooded jacket, but it had been painstakingly modified. The shoulders were covered with black feathers. The hood, which sh
e kept down most of the time we were underground, had two yellow eyes painted on it. She looked like some black bird, which was probably her intent. At her waist were sheathed two long knives.

  Noticing our glances at her weapons, she smiled a toothy grin. "Jack may have teeth, but I have talons." She carried no gun. Despite her witchy nature and her knives, I really wondered whether she should be on this trip.

  Jericho came down last. He also had declined to bring a gun. He didn't even have a spear gun. He carried only one weapon that I could see: a harpoon. Maybe it was a spear. It was a long shaft with a barbed point and a nasty edge. The blade was matte black, probably tarred for stealth. It was the shaft that was strange to me. Rather than being completely uniform, like a staff, there were places where it seemed to curve outward, widening. But not for a grip. I also could swear I saw the glint of Avalon Brass when it caught the light, coming from writing on the shaft.

  "Let's get going," said Jericho. If the old man had been serious and stern above ground, down here with his game face on he was practically frightening. The depths had made his presence even sharper and harder than before. He moved toward the front of the group and began leading our company of seven.

  I lagged behind a bit so I could walk next to Meat.

  "What's with that harpoon?" I said to him, keeping my voice low, particularly now that we were underground. The only sounds were the dripping and trickling of water accompanied by our footsteps. There were a few murmurs of other conversations. Diego was trying to say something to Szandor, not realizing the mask made him nearly incomprehensible.

  Meat took a look at Jericho, as if gauging whether he could hear us or not.

  "You remember that Jack took his leg, right?

  I nodded.

  "Well, that's not entirely true."

  I raised my eyebrow but waited for the explanation.

  "Jack didn't get his mouth totally closed around Jericho's leg. When Jericho was finally pulled back away... Jack's teeth had ripped all the flesh off Jericho's leg. But the bones were still attached."

  My whole body tensed. That sounded like some sort of hell, worse than just having your leg lopped off. It was having your leg scraped off.

  "They had to cut the bones off," said Meat, "there was no way to save what... uh... tissue was still attached to them. But Jericho kept those bones. I don't know who he found to do it, but he found someone who would do what he wanted. The core of that spear is his leg bones. That spear basically is his missing leg. And he intends to kill Jack with it."

  "That's..." I started to say.

  "Best to keep that opinion to yourself," said Meat. "Down here, talk isn't as silent as you think. But that should be a sign of the lengths Jericho is going to go to if it means Jack's death. Remember that. For good and for ill."

  My pace slowed so Meat ended up walking past me. I had a sudden chill. I hadn't realized just the type of man I was down here with. If he was going to turn his missing leg into a weapon... what did it mean for the team he assembled to take down the creature? I now wondered if Jericho saw us all as expendable tools to get Jack.

  We walked for about half an hour in the sewers without interruption. I wasn't surprised. We hadn't heard of any activity around here in recent days. If monsters were going to be active, they tended to do that at night - even underground, they somehow seemed to know the day cycle. We headed west, toward the more recent Jack pings in Southend. But we weren't yet in the Undersystem.

  "So this isn't even the area where we're going to track Jack?" said Diego, pulling his mask off to rub his sweaty face. "Why didn't we just go straight down into this Undersystem?"

  "We're looking for a good entrance to it," I said. "Some are blocked, some are to the wrong part of the Undersystem. But honestly it's about a good entrance. You're welcome to jump in this water current and swim your way down to the Undersystem."

  "You'll get down there real fast," volunteered Szandor.

  "But who knows where?" I said. "And you won't know how to get back up."

  "I get it, I get it," said Diego. "I just didn't expect it so wet down here."

  "In a fucking sewer, no way," said Szandor sarcastically, but with a smile.

  Diego sighed in frustration. "No, I mean compared to the tunnels in Russia. They didn't smell like this. They weren't so humid. So wet."

  "That's the Avalon rainy season," I said. "These are all full of rainwater. You would have been better off a few months ago."

  "But that's not when Jack was here," said Delilah. "And from everything I hear, once we get down into the Undersystem, it's going to get a whole lot wetter."

  "We should have brought a canoe," said Diego.

  "We're here!" called Meat from the front of the group. His light shined on an arrow painted fluorescent orange. Meat had been here last week and had flagged this location in preparation for this trip. That was good. What was bad was that he must have been sloppy about it or something. Maybe he made too much noise when he had left it, or maybe he had dropped beef jerky or something. I had no idea what, but the nook the arrow pointed at was no longer empty. At the sound of our voices, two creatures lurched around the corner.

  Ripped and dirty clothes covered stiff bodies. One of them wore the bright yellow jumper of a New Avalon maintenance worker, but he no longer had that job. He no longer had any job. He was dead, just like his friend. Gray desiccated skin told the tale of about a month down here in the sewers rotting and trying to find someone to bite. They had probably wandered for miles down here. And now they wanted to bite us.

  Yes, they were zombies.

  Truthfully, zombies were not as horrible a monster as in movies. Yes, they were caused by something like a virus. But the virus/fungus/bacteria/curse/whatever had a long incubation phase and the cure was semi-known. That is, the cure existed and was easily obtainable (anti-fungal pills), but not all doctors knew what to prescribe. However, even if they never encountered the infection before, most doctors who had patients suffering from it figured it out in the week of incubation. Those victims were saved and lived long happy lives free of a thirst for human flesh. Most zombies were people who got bitten and then lost, often in the sewers. Only slight higher in priority than ghouls, zombies were probably the biggest occupational hazard for New Avalon maintenance workers. I know they typically had one person in the group carrying a shotgun for emergencies, but I hoped those guys were getting some serious hazard pay. Especially when they ended up like these two guys.

  Zombies weren't a big deal for my brother and I unless we were in a tight space or there were a lot of them. Blunt and sharp objects worked well with them. Romero rules were in effect - severing or damaging the brain was the most effective ways of dealing with them. Though to be fair, that was also one of the most lethal ways of dealing with most human beings as well. So normally, zombies were a breeze. But on this hunt for Jack, we just had one problem - we weren't geared for this. We were hunting a gigantic serpent. A spear gun seemed not very worthwhile for a zombie. And we really didn't have much in the way of hand to hand weapons.

  I saw Diego heft his hunting rifle and aim.

  Delilah pushed his rifle aside. "Are you stupid? No."

  "What?" said Diego, seeing these two figures lurch slowly toward us. Saliva dripped from one zombie's broken jaw.

  "Noise," I reminded him. "Shoot that thing and we'll alert everything around here to our presence. If there are more zombies, they're going to spill out like a goddamn slot machine. Even with a silencer it's too loud. Guns are bad zombie weapons."

  "Well, shit," said Diego, lowering his rifle and rubbing his forehead under his hat.

  "Delilah, can I beat on some zombies with the butt of this spear gun?" I asked. "Or is that going to break it or throw off the aim?"

  Her face twisted in thought. "Probably not. Just don't hit it too hard."

  "Don't hit it too hard? I want to hit it as hard as damn possible to kill it!"

  "Fuck this," said Szandor. He reached into his ja
cket and pulled out one of his trusty lead pipes. It was a shorter one, but still a deadly weapon.

  "Why do you have that?" said Delilah. "We agreed that there would be no lead pipes. That's unnecessary gear and weight for this mission."

  "Oh yeah, I remember you saying that," said Szandor, hefting the pipe. "But then I really sat down and thought about it for a while and decided Fuck You."

  Szandor ran forward and tackled the zombie in the maintenance gear. Taken by surprise, the zombie crumbled to the ground. The zombie started to snarl at him, but without even a pause, Szandor started hitting it in the head with the lead pipe. Repeatedly.

  The other zombie was confused by the rush of my brother's body and the sudden loss of his compatriot. The zombie awkwardly turned toward Szandor. It raised its arms to grab at my brother. Then it retched blood as a harpoon impaled it. A greater confusion appeared on its face as it couldn't move.

  A second later there was a thunk and it fell. Meat wiped the butt of the pistol he had just bashed the zombie's brains out with.

  "This one's down," said Meat. Jericho pulled his harpoon out of the dead zombie.

  Szandor wiped his pipe on the zombie's clothes and then pulled himself up. He brushed bits of blood and brain matter off his jacket. "This one's good too."

  "Any others?" said Jericho.

  "None," said Delilah. I also confirmed that we had only seen those two.

  "Onward," said Jericho imperiously.

  Around the corner, we found the access hatch Meat had picked for us. A large piece of solid metal stamped with the City of New Avalon Public Works logo, the access panel was held closed with a few large bolts. Around the panel was fluorescent orange spray paint, only slightly marred by dirt.