The Iron Swamp

by J V Wordsworth

  If Wolsad was Hayson's idea of a joke, it wasn't funny. That promotion sparked so little enthusiasm in him was generally something I respected, but it just made Wolsad seem even limper. When it came to impersonating troglodyte pimps with heads full of muscle, Wolsad was the wrong man. But with no replacement, I was forced to accept his appointment with the same relish as he had for it himself.

  My SP tablet bleeped. The single word message simply read, OK.

  The sudden sensation of heat made me flick off my coat. Loshe was going to the baths, meaning that as long as Kathryn told Ruby about him then everything was running according to plan. It seemed logical that if Ruby was trying to kill all of these people then Kathryn would have a list of names, though even if she did, I had no guarantees that Loshe was on it. He traveled with Deson and Kenrey prior to the burning down of the orphanage, and Mrs. Jason had confirmed he still hired girls, but I still knew very little about the exact cause of Ruby's vendetta.

  Loshe's agreement was a relief, but it also brought a level of clarity that I was engineering the death of another human being. Importantly, I could not be sure he meant me any harm. I didn't even know for sure that he was a pedophile or a rapist, which would mean that in such regard he was no worse than me, keeping a secret for his own preservation. I always assumed the worst about people, but in truth I knew nothing about this man. He could have a family; people dependent on his survival.

  On the tailside was the possibility that I was right about him. He was a pedophile rapist and murderer who had, or would, order my death and those of my colleagues. Any hesitation on my part would lead to our own assassinations rather than his. I had a responsibility to Becky, Sikes, and even Hayson, to save their lives, which meant that Loshe had to die. If he turned out to be a philanthropist, I would make amends for it standing over his corpse. At terminus, whether Loshe was killed or not came down to Ruby, and that would reflect his guilt or innocence as well as anything.

  Wolsad was making his way to the door at the rate of an aquatic animal dying of thirst.

  "Get going." I pushed him forward causing him to stumble over the metal step. "You tell Kathryn as naturally as possible, and then give her space in case she needs the network screen to contact Ruby."

  Wolsad looked back at me like a glass skeleton.

  "Don't fail me," I said, and turned to Sikes. "Wally, you need to get down to those baths. Pose as a customer not a police officer, map out the access points, and find out about their security systems. Most importantly, find out if they're watching the private baths on security cameras."

  Becky nudged the pimp with her foot. "And what do we do with him?"

  "We'll have to cut his throat," I said, winking at her. Fresh whimpers came from the floor, but his body remained as limp as water weed. "Or we could just tie him up and leave him in the van until we're finished."

  Becky smiled. "It seems a lot easier just to cut his throat."

  More whimpering.

  "You'll have to go find some better restraints inside the station while I watch over him."

  Becky opened the door and ran up the steps, leaving it wide open. I sighed at her complete lack of caution and went to shut it.

  The door was almost clicked back in place when a fist pushed its way in, knuckles clunking against the steel before the sliding metal rebounded. Surprised, I stepped back, allowing the fist to unfurl and force the door open. In stepped Lisbold, grinning as he shook the sting off his digits. The hand fell to his side as he raised a 67S police issue pistol in the other. He clambered in, squatting in front of the door as he closed it.

  Chapter 23

  In full Kaeroshi swamp gear, Lisbold was only recognizable by the streaks of blond fanning out as they tried to cover too much head. His eyes hid behind black mist goggles, their bronze rims protruding over his flattened nose. His tin-beige coat and trousers puffed with insulating zeolate designed to keep a man warm and dry at the bottom of a frozen lake. Inflated to twice his normal size, Lisbold was overdressed even for the dank cities of The Kaerosh, leaving me with little doubt of his intention.

  In my pocket I still had the vansetomia, but there was no way I would be fast enough. "Lisbold, the man on the floor is dangerous. We need to tie him up before the effects of the drug wear off, then you and I can sort out our differences later."

  Ever the friend maker, Lisbold kicked the pimp in the face. "I reckon he should be out for a bit longer, and our little chat can't wait."

  "About what? You got fired for your own stupidity. It had nothing to do with me."

  He smacked me in the face with the gun hard enough to knock me to the floor. "Odd how everyone you don't like keeps getting fired."

  I tried to stand, but the motion made me feel dizzy, and I fell again.

  "Get us out of here, short ass. The slider won't register my voice since you got me fired." He took my tablet from me and gestured again for me to tell the van to move.

  "Where are we going?" There was no point in refusal. If he was mad enough to abduct me so close to a police station in a police van, then he was mad enough to shoot me in one.

  "Where do you think?"

  "The Hotel Fyadarra?"

  From his seat, he kicked me in the stomach. "Try again."

  "The swamp." I exhaled the word amid a spasm of pain.

  He grinned. "No one makes a fool out of me frak-wit."

  "No one except the woman who gave birth to you."

  He slapped me across the face with less enthusiasm than the last time, satisfied that he could meet word with fist for as long as I continued to talk. Leaning back, he stretched his legs towards the pimp. "I dare you to run that mouth of yours again."

  I said nothing. Perhaps having him beat me was a good stalling tactic, but at the cost of severe weakening. My gut, thigh, and face all sent shooting pains through my body with the slightest movement. I wasn't built for fighting. I'd always known that. In a less civilized age I wouldn't have made it through my first cycles.

  He shoved me onto a seat. "Tell it to take us to Von Ras."

  "Why?" I said, hiding my surprise that we were not off to Cosaw or Lisaw. Since the destruction of The Drys, Von Ras was the second biggest swamp north of the Line of Knives.

  "Because, you piece of dis, I'm going to feed you to the fracking degodiles."

  I said nothing. Von Ras was full of creatures that made Lisbold and his weapon look like a child with a water pistol, but I could also see the sense in it. There were people in the smaller swamps, children playing, adults walking or looking for their kids. Witnesses. Lisbold was not SP; he couldn't just bury me in shallow swamp at the outskirts of a city with impunity. If he wanted to get away with murder then his best bet was that my body was never found. No one was conducting an investigation into the intestinal tracts of the Von Ras degodiles, not even if I was Clazran himself.

  Lisbold rammed the point of his gun into my mouth bashing my teeth so hard it sent a ringing through my head. "I swore I'd feed you to them, dwarf, when you got me fired. And now I got my chance. Tell it to get moving, or you die right here right now, and don't think I'll make it any faster."

  "South of Von Ras," I told the slider, and we started moving.

  "Who's this?" asked Lisbold, kicking the pimp again.

  "Do you care?"

  He shrugged. "What else are we going to talk about?"

  My tongue sat in a pool of blood and saliva, forcing me to swallow before I answered. "How about nothing?" I felt across my teeth until I reached a gap where the gun had knocked one of them out. Tapping the nerve with the tip of my tongue, it sent electricity through my jaw akin to biting down on a blade.

  The journey from Las Hek to Von Ras wouldn't take long. I had to think of something soon. If I could inject him with vansetomia, he would go as limp as Oldan swimming in his own drool. Lisbold was a brute, muscly where weight approximated to strength, but he was also stupid. And stupid people made mistakes.

  "You got a lot of enemies, you know?" he sa
id, looking down the sights of his gun at me as if he was aiming at something in the distance. "People are lining up to bring you down."

  He tapped his tablet and it started dialing. "Fache, I got him. Meet where we said."

  Fache hung up. Lisbold showed me every tooth in his mouth. "He's looking forward to watching those crocs pull you apart almost as much as me."

  In my pocket I readied a syringe, screwing the needle onto the top ready to jam it into him if he got close enough.

  "You two been following me?" I said.

  He laughed. "Actually, yeah, but it was my informant who told me where you were. I wanted to get your little bitch as well, but I'll get her later." He chewed on his gums. "Throwing jaffee in my face."

  This was my chance to provoke him.

  "Even if you kill me, you stupid fool, this will be the end of you. It was never me who ruined your career. It was you when you admitted how useless you were at Clazran's dinner. This is the same; it's you destroying yourself through your own moronic barbarity."

  He stood up as best he could in the cramped space, a mad look on his face as if every vestige of control had departed him.

  "E.V. STOP," I shouted. Before he could balance, the slider began emergency deceleration, catapulting Lisbold to the front of the van on top of the pimp. It threw me sideways as well, but I kept hold of the syringe, righting myself faster before Lisbold could turn. I pulled the syringe out of my pocket and brought it down as fast as I could.

  The gun went off, and for a moment my hand dipped into Cythuria. Sharp pain ran down my arm as if trapped under something heavy. By the time the syringe hit Lisbold's leg it wasn't a syringe anymore, just shards of glass mingled with my own blood.

  Lisbold pulled his leg away before I could bury a shard through his puffy trousers, then plowed a fist into my chest sending me sprawling backward, coughing and wheezing. I heaved air into my lungs. My vision blurred as my eyes flooded, but not enough. I could still see the hole in my hand where the bullet passed through.

  My middle and index finger burned with every movement, but my little and ring finger were dead. They hung limp on the edge of my hand like sticks rammed into place. I strained to bring about some sign of life in them, but nothing.

  Lisbold jabbed the point of the gun in my face. "Tell the slider to start moving again."

  I muttered the command, unable to talk above a whisper.

  "Louder." He pulled me into a seated position causing blood and drool to drop onto my lap. Still stunned, my head sagged sideways, weightless and independent. My consciousness was ebbing away with the trickle of blood from my hand. Lisbold slapped me on the side of the face. "If you pass out, you die here, and neither of us want that."

  I barely felt it. He slapped me again and once more before I felt Cos flooding back to me. He was right. I didn't want to die here. "E.V. stop over, South Von Ras."

  The slider pulled away.

  Lisbold started going through my pockets, pulling out the bottles of vansetomia and its antidote. He ran his hands round me, shifting me as if I was a sack of potatoes. "Why don't you carry a gun?"

  "I'd only end up shooting myself with it."

  He laughed, picking me up and sticking me back on the seat. "Don't do that again, or you'll wish you hadn't."

  I poked a finger through the hole in my hand in a motion both remarkable and trivial. "I already wish I hadn't."

  He snorted, grabbing the first aid kit from beneath the seat. "You'll need to bandage that. We don't want to be attracting things before we get you to the degodiles."

  After that we sat in silence for a while, but as the slider reached the south of Von Ras, Lisbold perked up again. "Tell it to stop by the side of the road and then continue round east towards Picto, stopping every ten kims."

  I did as instructed. He had at least enough sense to know that we were probably being tracked by now. That was a shame. "Did Fache tell you to do that?" I asked.

  "Frak off, dwarf. I'm not an idiot."

  I was in enough pain, so I made no retort. We went round the outskirts of Von Ras on the K8, a wide road with two lanes in both directions raised above the ground on a plastic scaffold that became visible as the road turned. The trees grew tall above our heads and disappeared below the road, giving the K8 the appearance of a huge circular bridge. Finally, we saw another slider pulled over at the side of the road, and Lisbold instructed me to make ours join it. I hesitated for as long as possible, obliging only when he raised his gun.

  The slider pulled over, and Lisbold was on top of the pimp. "What shall we do with him? Can't take him with us like this, and we can't leave him here." He reached down to a vallee skin pouch hung at his hip and pulled out a blade as long as my forearm with ridges on the top designed to lacerate flesh. Oldan groaned, interpreting what was happening outside his vision.

  "Wait," I said. "We can take him with us. You just need to give him the antivenom."

  Lisbold considered this for a moment. "Take too long. Have to kill him here."

  "Wait!" I hesitated as he pulled the pimp's head up by his hair. "It benefits no one to kill him here. He dies, I lose a potential ally to help me escape, and you have a bloody corpse of a man too heavy to drag as evidence of your crime."

  Lisbold laughed. "Still think you're going to escape do you?"

  "Otherwise, I would have made you shoot me at the police station. It all depends how confident you are that you can control a dwarf and a man whose hands are cuffed behind his back."

  He tapped his gun on the pimp's head. "Dwarfy has just bought you a bit more time; best repay him by getting him out of the swamp, eh?" He fiddled around in his pocket and pulled out the two bottles. "Which one is it?"

  I pointed at the larger bottle, the size of two of my fingers with a white label.

  "And the other one makes you go limp?"

  I nodded.

  Fache tapped on the door and swung it open. "Caught ourselves a small one, did we? Told you I'd get you back you pile of dis." He was wearing similar attire to Lisbold – mist goggles hiding his eyes behind black circles sealed to his face by silver rims. His thin trousers tucked into huge boots that came almost to his knees. But while Lisbold's puffed up clothes and bulging black goggles made him look like a posturing toad, Fache's concealed good looks were more frightening, as if behind those black lenses were eyeless tunnels.

  I smiled at him, manifesting my missing tooth and bleeding gums. Lisbold had made his first mistake. This was the first stop that wasn't at 10 kim intervals, so assuming there was anyone looking for me, I would be easy to find.

  Fache didn't smile back. I knew instantly it was his idea to feed me to the degodiles. He was no fool. This was a calculated risk, Fache's forte.

  I doubted this was a random location. We were precisely where we would find a degodile filled river just far enough in to ensure I would never be found.

  Lisbold fidgeted impatiently, waving the gun around. Nudging the pimp became pushing, and pushing became kicking. He was more afraid than I was. In truth, I had my reservations about keeping the pimp alive, but awaiting his resurrection bought me time. More importantly, it bought Becky and the search party time, but Lisbold knew they couldn't kill him. There would be no point in disposing of my remains so completely if they were just going to leave a dead pimp in a police slider.

  The colossal figure slowly began to animate and sat up. He tried talking, but all he accomplished was lip movements and groaning as saliva dripped to the floor.

  Lisbold waved the gun from me to the door. "Get moving."

  "Missing a tooth are we?" Fache said. He offered me a hand getting down, but I wouldn't touch him.

  Lisbold pushed the pimp as he shuffled forward on his ass like a baby. "That won't be the only thing he's missing soon enough."

  Oldan let his legs drop to the ground and pushed himself up, wobbling to one side. Fache caught him and righted him, laughing at the beast I'd seen break his restraints as if they were tissue paper. Lisbold help
ed hold him up until Fache could kick his legs apart enough for him to stand. I considered making a run for it, but they would have just dropped him and come after me.

  "Who is this, and what's happened to him?" asked Fache.

  "The dwarf drugged him," Lisbold said. "And who he is doesn't matter."

  The pimp took his first few steps teetering over like a new born deer as he picked up momentum. Fache and Lisbold pushed up against him like bracing posts, both men spitting laughter. "Either you hold yourself up, or we'll see if a bullet to your head improves you any."

  They let him go, and he took a single unsteady step without falling.

  Lisbold pointed the gun me, as if I'd forgotten. "Tell the van to keep going and making stops until it reaches Picto."

  I did as commanded, telling it to make stops at the same intervals. Then Lisbold smashed my tablet under his gun and filled his pocket with the pieces.

  "You on av ao ees," said the pimp.

  "I think he's retarded," Lisbold said, grinning as he gestured with his gun for me to get moving. Even on the side of the road the smell of rot and waste was already thick in my nostrils, and the damp wind prevented even the thickest clothes from feeling warm. My abductors were both wearing rib suits which clung to the skin like Lycra keeping the disease ridden air away, but I only had my rib vest. Good enough for the dank buildings and cities, it would offer little protection in the great swamps.

  The road was at least a man's length from the ground, which neither myself nor the pimp were in much condition to dismount. I peered over the sides to see the plastic rods holding up the road extruding from their rubbery support bases. They crisscrossed to make a scaffold that a larger man could climb without struggle, but for me it was not dissimilar to declining a ladder with three out of every four rungs removed.

  The pimp leapt over the edge, orchestrated by Lisbold. He landed on his feet, but the swamp opened up around him, sinking him to his knees before he fell forwards into the mud.

  "Get moving or you'll be following," Fache said to me, laughing.