Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6)

by Lee Bond

  Frustrated beyond all reason, Marko tossed his own implement to the ground next to Cooler Guy’s cut-out tool and moved up to Garth. “So you see? Area is haunted. Power tools don’t like it here.”

  Garth pursed his lips thoughtfully and resumed pretending he was considering the validity of Marko’s words when in truth, he was considering the ramifications of what his invisible, capable-of-carrying-a-current blood meant for the future of his war against both Baron Samiel and Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles.

  His blood … catching the current like that … if there was a way he could somehow harness that weirdness, turn it to something useful … there was no telling what could be accomplished.

  And more to the point, if no one here could see the blood, it provided him with a nice –if rough and ready- way to prove something …

  “… Nickels, Mister Nickels! Hello?”

  Garth blinked and came back to the land of the living. “Hey, yeah, what? I was … busy. Plotting the … world domination.” He grinned sheepishly.

  “So this whole hallway doesn’t like power tools of any kind.” Marko repeated stridently. “You saw it.”

  “Yup. Sure did.” Garth pointed at the wall and made an electrocution sound. “Brrrrzzzap. Everything stopped working. Right before my own eyes. It’s not America’s Most Haunted Construction Site Next on Discovery Channel-worthy, mind you, but, yeah, hey whaddya know? Haunted hallway. Only you’re not dead or anything and there’s, like, no ghosts or anything rolling around the place demanding you avenge their lost souls and for sure there ain’t any little kids roaming anywhere bringing animals back from the other side, so we … we got all bases covered. Yeah. Okay. Good talk.”

  “But…” Marko grabbed Garth by the shoulder. He blanched a bit when the smaller man looked at the huge hand closed around his shoulder like it was a porterhouse steak ready to be eaten. He forged on ahead regardless. “It’s going to take longer to use muscle power. Probably whole day.”

  Garth felt his forehead beetle all on it’s own. “That’s what this was about? Bonuses?”

  Marko nodded awkwardly.

  “Oh for the love …” Garth bit back the rest of his retort out of respect for Marko’s cross. “Are you? Are you serious right now? Marko, man, that’s like … seven hundred and sixteen hours I’m never getting back! We, like, stood here for decades discussing the, uh, hauntedness of this hallway! I mean, don’t get me wrong, bro, watching you short out two power tools was kind of dope and all, but … really? Bonuses?”

  Cooler Guy hooted and bit into his second sandwich.

  Marko wrung his hands back and forth like he was washing them. “I just … I didn’t want you to think we were being lazy or something. I … we take our work serious.”

  Garth wanted to point out that Marko’s boss was an overdressed peacock with obvious ties to organized crime, which kind of invalidated the whole seriousness of how anyone might take a job that could have Federal Agents crawling all over their toolboxes demanding receipts and wanting to know if they’d tied anyone to any foundation supports before blowing up buildings, only he didn’t because Marko looked like he’d seen better days.

  Instead of teasing the brute, Garth let out a thin sigh. “Hey, look. You guys are rock solid here. You got nothing to worry about. If you’re, like, a day or two behind schedule and that’s it, don’t sweat it. You’re golden. Okay? Just … next time, if you, uh, run into anything like this but no one, hmm, dies or anything? Just … keep on trucking. You follow? Only bug me again if an actual fucking ghost comes crawling out of the woodwork, talking backwards and shit, and, uh, like, barfing tarry black shit out their mouths.”

  Marko nodded, extremely happy that the boss understood what was going on and why. He watched Garth clomp his way back up the stairs before hurrying back to the area that was a major thorn in his side and kicked Sam in the boot. “Okay, asshat, get back to work. Get the others.”

  Sam rose up off his cooler making spooky, eerie noises while he spoke, “Okaaaay, Markoooo, whatever yooooouuu sayyyy.”

  Marko laughed, then punched Sam in the chest. “No fucking around. Mister Nickels says he won’t penalize us, but I know these types. He’ll try to fuck us if he can.”

  Sam cupped a hand to his mouth. “All right you sonsabitches, we’re doing this old school. Sledgehammers and the whole shebang. If someone’s got that Chain Gang song by that fuckin’ guy on their phone, let’s play that shit.”

  ***

  On his way up the stairs –which were even more rickety now that guys were roaming to and fro on the lower levels to sit for lunch or to hang out or whatever- Garth grabbed a spool of untended wire and some other odds and ends. He wasn’t precisely sure what he was going to get up to with the stuff he’d ‘stolen’, but there was a nascent plan bubbling deep down in the depths of his Engineer’s mind.

  Halfway up the stairs –smack dab on the mid-level landing, in fact- Garth ran into Dave of Dave’s Construction, looking more than a little embarrassed and flustered at having been found in an area where he and his had specifically been told they shouldn’t go.

  Pretending he wasn’t holding stuff that belonged to someone that might actually miss what he’d borrowed, Garth sort of cradled his hands behind his back while speaking in a long, slow, drawl. “Heyyyyy, Dave, how’s it going?”

  Unlike Armin Delano, Dave Winters was third generation San Franciscan all the way down to his toes and buckled under the pressure of the million or so unmentioned questions and polite accusations issuing forth from the simple question. “I’m sorry, Mister Nickels, I was just up there looking for you and I know you said we weren’t allowed to go up there under any circumstances but I needed to ask you a few questions and well, I figured they couldn’t wait so…”

  Garth wanted to say the odds of Dave Winters being in the employ of Baron Samiel was one of the slimmest things ever, but the time-traveling dictator had ways and means that could turn anyone to his whimsy in just a few hours. Dave didn’t feel like he’d been turned into a lower-level ODDities –those that didn’t need to wear the permanent, hard lenses over their eyes to protect them from whatever it was they were being protected from-, though, so for the time being, he was going to treat this little lapse in judgment precisely as what it was.

  A lapse in judgment brought on by a sudden and intense desire to know things.

  And also, he was going to have to spend the next six or so hours digging through everything upstairs in search of anything remotely resembling a bug, but whatever. You couldn’t run around accusing everyone of being an ODDity, not right off the bat.

  “What’s got your brain in a twist, there, Dave?”

  Aware he’d been spared a lashing, Dave cleared his throat and started up. “Well, first, I was … I was wondering what you were going to do about security, Mister Nickels. I know you intend on staying onsite the whole time, but the practical reality of the situation is that the whole of the downstairs area is incredibly unsecure, and once we start working on the exterior of the building …”

  “When do you think that’ll actually be?” Garth interrupted.

  “A week and a half, maybe two?” Dave hesitated with his answer. “I’ve got all my guys and a few other, smaller crews working with me, men I’ve worked with before, so all told, there’s about a hundred of us, but with larger crews comes more coordination, more room for miscommunication as well. Anyways, like I was saying, once we start working on the outside, this whole place is going to be an open-market bazaar for the, ah, you see…”

  “The locals.” Garth nodded, seeing where Dave’s head was at. He hadn’t been overly worried for himself, but now that he looked at things from Dave’s perspective, leaving the actual site unsecure meant leaving the workers’ tools and other stuff begging to be stolen by sneak thieves.

  And if there was anyone who could move quietly, it was well-motivated opportunists looking to sell everything from left behind tools to yards and yards of copper and other met
als.

  Dave flushed, more than a little embarrassed. “It’s hard going all over. That’s why I was happy when I saw you’d brought Armin along for the deconstruction. He … well. Some people will stay away from here is what I’m saying, but not everyone. If you … catch my drift. Had you given any thoughts to hiring a security firm?”

  Garth decided to be honest for a change. It was refreshing. “Truthfully, Dave, no. I was more concerned about my own stuff upstairs and hadn’t even thought about what you guys might be leaving behind end of day. Now, as you know, I’m new in town, picked you and Armin out of the phone book because there’s this other thing being built not too far from here…”

  “Some kind of nightclub.” Dave offered helpfully. “Full of strippers and alcoholics and who knows what.”

  Momentary flashes of Lissande Amour appearing on stage, doing her Grade A, number one homage to Santanico Pandemonium’s ultra-hot, ultra-sexy dance in the Titty Twister burned their way through Garth’s limbic region.

  ‘Back then’ –in the other reality- he’d only just begun to suspect that there was something all the way wrong with her, and yet, for all that ODDity-edness and her allegiance to a man dedicated to fucking the planet’s history up six ways from Sunday, you just couldn’t deny that the woman had a smoking hot body.

  One she knew how to use very well.

  “Good to know, good to know.” Garth mimed making a note in a book; whether Dave knew or would even care, the Arcade was going to be adults-only six days a week, with the distinct possibility of letting horrible fatshits like Emerson Lane and his evil crew of fucked up preteens in on Sunday to let loose with their mental asses. Larry might hate it, but whatever. It wasn’t like any of them were real, so what did injured fake-feelings matter? “Anyways, like I said, I’m new here, and you’ve obviously done a lot of thinking about this already. Any security groups in town you prefer?”

  “Ordinarily I’d go with Armada or Brick Wall, but … Armin’s had issues with them before.” Dave refused to elaborate, not that he needed to, since Garth was already nodding his head knowingly. “So if I was the one in charge, I’d hire Securicorps. They’re a solid group of professionals. They even have some guys that saw action overseas.”

  “Great, awesome.” Garth loved him some security firms that hired guys that’d done service in any branch of the military. They tended to bring a whole other level of pragmatism to the playground and, in this particular instance, if any of Samiel’s thugs and goons showed up to the party early, it'd be nice to have guys with solid combat experience on site. They might bet rattled by any weirdness that cropped up, but they'd sure as shit keep pulling that trigger. “I’ll take care of that right away.”

  Well, not precisely right away. Employing a full-time security force wasn’t cheap and a lot of his money had already been spent hiring Dave and Triple-A. The forty grand windfall coming back from Armin was a nice little nest egg, but the equipment and materials to start crafting graphene circuits and aerogel containers fell so far away from ‘cheap’ that it wasn’t even funny. Then, of course, there was designing and implementing the DNA scanners to find out –once and for fucking all- exactly what was up with anyone touched by Samiel’s evil.

  He needed a ton more money, and quickly. Only, feisty little Special Agent Devlin stood in his way, waving ‘Unfair Advantage’ signs all over the place like some kind of evil cheerleader.

  There had to be a way around her!

  Dave smiled and nodded a few times, clearly pleased with himself. “And the, uh, the second thing is … is more of two other things, really…”

  Garth knew this conversation was going to wind up costing him a fuckton of money he didn’t have. “Oh yeah?”

  “Well, I’ve been looking over the layout you provided us … did you draw them up by yourself?” Dave asked.

  “Yeah. I just bought a bunch of huge paper sheets and stuff and just went at it. Why?”

  “They’re pretty professionally designed. There’s nothing … anyways. From what it looks like, you’re aiming for a max capacity of somewhere in the neighborhood of five or six hundred people on a busy night, right?”

  Five or six hundred completely unimportant men and women surrounding two of the most important people the world had ever seen.

  Garth nodded. “Yeah, give or take. I mean, it’s not like I’m expecting this thing to take off or anything.”

  Dave shot Garth a flat look. Anyone sinking this much money, time and effort into an endeavor not only expected it to ‘take off’, they were planning on it hitting the atmosphere in under thirty seconds.

  “Where are they going to park? This whole entire area isn’t zoned for that kind of overflow and I guarantee you, you’ll have the city upset with you in seconds the moment these roads are filled with parked cars. The neighbors already complain, and that's just for other neighbors' vehicles. Now, whoever you dealt with at the Planning Department to get all this up and rolling missed it, which is bad for them, but … you'll need a parking structure. At least three floors, with around a hundred and fifty spots per level.”

  Garth looked to the windows. There, in his mind’s eye, great big bags of money started flapping away. “I did not think this through.”

  Damn Special Agent Angela Devlin. There had to be a way to skirt her evil attentions. He just didn’t have the kind of money he’d been hoping to have!

  Dave chuckled, a bit wryly. “Most people don’t, sir, most people don’t. Now, I know a guy, his crew is decent enough and they’re hard-working, I can give him a call with the details and see what he can design for you. I took a quick look at the back of the school, and there’s quite a lot of space out there for you to play with. More than enough for a parking structure. I was thinking, if you were intent on having this … arcade of yours … becoming as popular as you wanted that you should do something with the rest of the outside as well…”

  Garth snapped his fingers, suddenly ablaze with ideas. “Oh man, we could do an outdoor theater! Get some raised seating out there, show awesome movies? Outdoor concerts? Oh shit, son, you just got yourself a massive bonus! Yes and yes again, Dave, get your man on this right away. I gotta get my finances in order!”

  If Special Agent Devlin was going to be monitoring –and judging- his stock market-related income, maybe there was something else he could do that was also legitimate but would still make him fat wads of cash, something she wouldn’t be able to keep him from doing.

  Dave watched Garth bound up the stairs, idly wondering what the man was going to do with a spool of wire and some random tools. Pushing the thought off to one side, he fished out his phone and called his brother, Peter. “Pete? Hey, Pete, lissen, I’ve got a job for you…”

  ***

  Flipping through the data stored on his piddy – in addition to contact info for the people down at the Planning Commission there were now virtual business cards for Dave’s Construction and Triple-A, as well as receipts for all his online purchases made earlier in the morning- Garth grinned when he came across the very impressive and daunting card for Special Agent Angela Devlin.

  It was unlike the others in every way; where, for instance, Dave Winters’ ‘Dave’s Construction’ card had the man’s name, business address and three different ways to get in touch with someone at his offices, Angela Devlin’s card sported a full on –and quite fancy- digital shield to go along with everything else. Any officer or other duly authorized representative looking through a person’s piddy coming across something like this resting alongside coupons and emails and all would have themselves the opportunity to ask far more interesting questions than ‘how much have you had to drink tonight’ and ‘where are you going tonight, sir’.

  “Yeah, more like ‘one day in the country and you catch the attention of the Federal government, Mister Nickels? What were you doing?’ and ‘What sort of prisons do they have in Switzerland, Mister Nickels?’.”

  Dropping down into one of those cheap, brightly colored
plastic chairs you found in school cafeterias the world over, Garth dialed his new best friend up, hoping she was going to be as excited to hear from him as he was for calling her up so early in their relationship.

  As it was a direct line, there was none of the usual routing call bullshit. The phone on the other end rang twice before a woman’s voice came over, crisp, clear and definitely not interested in any kind of monkeyshines or shenanigans. “Nickels. What is it?”

  “And a good early afternoon to you as well, Special Agent Angela Devlin.” Garth leaned back in the chair before abruptly changing his mind; as the chairs had been mostly designed with teenagers in mind, it’d started making ‘Imma break and drop your ass to the ground while you’re trying to sound cool and suave on the phone to a woman who is already poised to make your life a living hell if you don’t knock it the fuck off’.

  There was roughly a thirteen millisecond pause before Devlin spoke. “What is it?”

  “So, I was talking with my new lawyer this morning, Benny Wall?” Garth decided it was better to be up and pacing for this kind of conversation. Or no, better yet, placing an order for an ergonomic nerd-chair. Better to have one now and invent a better one later on, because really, he wasn’t the kind of guy to be sitting in chairs properly and the few he’d brought up from the cafeteria all looked similarly traitorous vis a vis lazy sitting and in addition to not wanting to sound like an idiot when he dropped to the floor whilst on the phone to Devlin, he also didn’t want to be found by any of the men working for him, all tangled up in Day-Glo orange chair pieces.

  “We’re aware.” Devlin’s tone was so sharp you could cut diamonds.

  “Word.” Garth peeked out the windows where –not too long ago- a predator drone had tried murdering him about a bazillion times.

  Refreshingly, instead of the epitome of urban warfare hovering there waiting to launch missiles, there were a bunch of those huge metal bins full of junk hauled from the classrooms. Some of Armin’s guys were sifting through them, no doubt hunting for anything of value that they might’ve missed.