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

by Lee Bond

  Oh and the things they got up to when they were high! They seemed to fight, all the time. With one another, against one another … great big mashups wherever there was an open field or an empty parking lot. It was amazing. Young Ferret, who’d never learned how to throw a punch beyond watching someone do it on television, knew how to fight with the best of them when he was cracked out of his gourd on Zee.

  Sketch, nearly forty and a veteran drug user and something of a local legend because he was still alive at forty and a veteran drug user, looked over the lip of the parkade wall and down at the idiots working for their piece of the American Pie. He remembered the American Pie Dream. He was old enough. Back in the day, when he’d been a kid, they’d been at the heart and in the center of everything big and bold and beautiful. There’d been wars all over the place, Uncle Sam and his Glorious Eagle of Justice hammering Democracy through walls and slamming Freedom into tent cities left, right and center. They’d been the biggest kids on the block and they hadn’t been afraid to show it, no they hadn’t.

  Well, now, the only person on the block that was biggest was him. He’d been using Zee for six years. It was in him, now. All the time. Even when he hadn’t popped a fresh cap of the smelly brew into his body through one of the many permanent holes in his forearms or legs, there was that amazing coiling and uncoiling feeling deep in the skin. It went past being high. It went past being so out of your mind you imagined it.

  Sketch knew the drug was making him into something different, something wild, something this world had never seen before, and after talking to some of the other veterans in the group -when they weren't high, of course- they felt the same. They didn’t like bringing it up, feared that if one of the younger ones caught wind of what had to be some big thing, some secret thing, cooked up by someone somewhere, they’d run to the cops.

  Then it’d be tests. Psy-co-logical evals. Sketch wouldn’t take another one of those if his life depended on it. DNA tests. Cultures. Whatever the hell else the po-lice did these days.

  Sketch didn’t want none of that. He wanted to see what he was becoming. Wanted to open his eyes one days and look upon some rough new beast.

  The leader of the trio brave enough to court danger and disaster for a lifetime supply of Alphonse-Zee hawked a gob over the lip and watched Ferret push and pull and poke at his face for what felt like seventeen hours but was probably closer to a few seconds at most because the sun hadn’t moved. He remembered the early stages of the change. That’s what Ferret was doing, even if he didn’t know it.

  Feeling his face because his face didn’t feel right. Like there were missing ridges or bones or plates. Sketch was jealous of Ferret because of what he was going through. How much fun it’d be to go through that transformation again.

  “What’s that, kiddo?” Sketch looked over at Crink, who was squatting over a plastic bag full of junk she’d accumulated since making their sneakety-sneak way through all the big earthmovers, talking about selling scraps of copper wire and chunks of steel and a few misplaced tools to buy her next dose. She was an idiot. In her mid-twenties, she’d only just discovered Zee and was barely more than a fucking tweaker. But she had potential, which was why she was here. Because she was a heavy user. More than Ferret, and Ferret had dived nose first into the tiny little glass containers with the thick rubber stoppers. Most kids took their time with Zee. A dose here, a dose there, but not their Crink, oh no, no, Crink, she was all about Zee. All day.

  “And stop that. You’re gonna pull one of your piercings out, then you’ll fucking bleed all over the place and we’d have to leave, head back to Tenters, find that asshole free medic, and that guy's a cockfuck. And we'd be missing this. So knock it the fuck off."

  Crink yanked on her full-blown dreadlocks hard enough to pop a few strands loose from her forehead. “Silt. No. Bilt? Will. Glasses all crooked. Voice like honeyed wine.”

  “Just sit your ass over there and count your ill-gotten gains, you cracked out slit. When we need you, we’ll point you like a gun and fire you.” Sketch walked over and grabbed Ferret’s hands and held them down. The boy struggled because his subconscious said this was going to turn into a rough sex thing, but Sketch … wasn’t interested in that anymore. His thing didn’t get hard at normal times and he’d never liked boys besides, not even enough when he’d been a young stoner to pretend, just for free dope. “Let it happen, kiddo. Nothing bad is happening. It’s just … a new part of the high. Is that what you don’t like?”

  “N-n-no.” Ferret stammered, working his hands free from Sketch’s tough grip. “W-w-well, maybe yes. Feels like my face is going to split open and a new me is going to come screaming out. But that’s not what I don’t like.”

  “Then what?” Sketch thought he might know, but held his tongue. Psychically, he urged the young user to open up, to spill his guts.

  “It’s … it’s the … everything.” Ferret jabbed two rigid fingers against a temple over and over again, hard enough to break wood. “It’s … it’s the old man in the ugly car with the slow eyes that know more than we ever will and I feel like I know everything already. How can he know more than us? We know the secrets or soon will. Why do his eyes say he knows more when he’s not … one of us? And … and …” Ferret licked his lips compulsively, rabidly, before resuming, “and … and this name … how … where? It … it comes to me in whispers! Never heard this name before, Sketch. Never. When I hear it, my blood gets hot and I want to fight like we do in Candlestick.”

  Crink, rocking back and forth over her haul, started crooning. “Nickelsnickelsnickelsnickls. Time to make a change. Nickelsnickelsnickels. Time to make a change. Change The Line, change the time. Heheheh. Oh yes. Time to make a change to time.”

  Sketch looked over his shoulder with enough fury to blot out the sun. Crink, back turned to them both, flinched like she’d been struck in the back of the head and shut the hell up, resumed working wordlessly through her stupid, useless haul. He saw in Ferret’s wide eyes all kinds questions that wanted to burn through his lips and out into the air, but it wasn’t time yet. Might not never be time, but the older user was damned certain the kiddo in front of him with all his piercings and tattoos and weird hair that spoke long and loud of issues with mommy or daddy was going to be one of the toughest of them all. Only using for about two years, and already he could hear the whispers in the Zee.

  “It ain’t no thing, Ferret.” Sketch whispered. “Ain’t no thing at all, just a special part of the drug. It’s got levels, but you know that right? Remember being like that slut over there? That dirty, crusty thing with the dreadlocks rocking back and forth over three dollars’ worth of junk, singing ‘bout how she’s gonna get high tonight, go to Garfield and fight with her idiot friends? How when you were straight you didn’t want to be like that again, and then one day, you weren’t? How you were just as high as ever, with all that strength burning through you and burning you up but you were just … clearer? Still willing to do whatever it took to get that next dose, hungry for it, willing to kill for it but … smarter about it. More cunning?” When Ferret nodded, confusion turning to understanding, Sketch continued, smiling wider and wider, revealing what might or might not turn out to be more teeth than he should actually have. “This is like that. Only more. Only better. Sometimes there are … messages. In the drug. No one knows how it happens. But there are …”

  “Someone’s coming.” Crink hissed, running full tilt back to the other two, instinctively knowing that the best place to be when trouble came down was beside Sketch and Ferret. She’d seen them fight. She could feel their strength, pouring out of them in brilliant golden waves. She knew she was their gun, she knew they might fire her at whoever was coming, and that was okay with her.

  She was the gun. She was the bullet. They’d fire her. She’d kill whoever was coming up the ramp, humming some tune that felt familiar to her. Then she’d get that lifetime supply of Zee. High all the time. Turning, turning, turning. Turning into something else,
something that had no words. Something like Sketch and Ferret.

  She couldn’t wait.

  Crink crouched low beside Sketch, smiled ear to ear when one of his rough, scarred hands settled onto the top of her skull. She felt Ferret move to the other side, wasn’t surprised to see that he didn’t crouch like she did, felt his urge to put his hand on top of her head as well. Didn’t know what it meant, other than maybe something wonderful.

  Sketch tilted his head slowly, like a raptor sensing prey in the woods. “She’s right. Probably one of those security guards. Get ready.”

  “They look tough.” Ferret whispered the opinion almost sub-vocally, both Sketch and Crink hearing it all the same. “Like, Army tough.”

  Sketch laughed, deep and low, a rumbling beast. His Zee was finally burning, uncoiling massive strength through his entire body. What a wonderful drug. He thanked God he’d found it. “We’re tough, Ferret. Us. Not them. We’re tougher than anyone who doesn’t use. Get ready. We kill this asshole, we’ll have to find somewhere else to hide until nightfall, okay? Gotta keep down low and out of sight until we find the face to the name.”

  Ferret licked his lips, ran a trembling hand across his eyebrows, felt the piercings there, one, two, three. “Face to the name.”

  Crink, nearly on all fours, whispered the words without understanding what they meant. “Face to the name.”

  ***

  The spicy/tangy stink tripled in strength, an eruption of odor that filled Garth with an urgency he’d not felt since he’d learned to recognize the danger in gearheads topped to the brim with Dark Iron. Danger lurked on the final floor of the parkade.

  “Maybe that’s all it is.” Garth surmised as he nevertheless prepped himself for whatever waited on three, laughing at the mental imagery of a brave and valiant hero moving to do battle with dragons. “Maybe it’s just … like, an olfactory response. I know for fucking certain I ever smell Kingsblood again I am going to go full on Specter on who-the-fuck-ever it is. I ain’t even wait. I’ll be …” He crested the ramp, took the corner and took in the weird fucking guy in the leather jacket and the horrible faux-hawk, the … person that might be a lady with the dreadlocks and the bright purple parachute pants and the kid with a face full of metal and regrettable life-choices when it came to tattoo placement and shook his head.

  Because of course it’d have to be something fucking weird like this.

  And then it clicked.

  Scent memory finally collided with actual memory to provide him with more than a partial clue. He knew where he’d smelt this before and … it wasn’t good.

  He was looking at Ziggurat fiends.

  The Specter started with what he’d learned about Zigg in the 25th century and went backwards, working up a proper profile for the users in front of him; in the original timeline, he’d never encountered anything but the ultimate form of soldier working for Baron Samiel. Lissande, the crusty old fuck running the illegal prison outside Vegas, Gigantor-Rex the Absurdly Huge Bouncer in Gentleman Jim’s, a few others. They’d been his match in terms of speed, strength and durability, forcing him to incur huge amounts of personal injury while he’d waited for a moment to use some of his Kin’kithal abilities without being caught to bring the fight to an end.

  Up The Line, in the 25th, freaks and geeks like the trio of Thunderdome rejects before him had been a rampant plague, not quite as bad as Lissande and the others, but so very close to God soldiers –there’d been a few notable exceptions of mutated asshats reaching near-Harmony strength, but again, that future had been whacked- that again, he’d resorted to flagrant displays of power to bring things to a close.

  And that had brought Wayfarers to his door, which hadn’t … hadn’t ended so well.

  Zigg-heads from the future had been born and raised on something known locally as Ometh, which –theoretically- worked out to be a degraded form of ‘Omega’, implying that Samiel’s evil fucking drug had reached the pinnacle of perfection in that timeframe.

  “Meaning,” Garth muttered to himself as he approached the trio warily, “these guys are using Aleph, or Alpha. So … increased speed, increased stamina, definitely increased strength. Hmm…” As he got closer, the Specter caught sight of telltale mirroring between all three and nodded to himself, unhappy at what he saw. “Low-grade telepathic link. Fuck my life. Oh, and ain’t this fucking perfect? Oh! And they all got themselves some battle scars! So fucking awesome!”

  Sketch eyeballed the slab of muscle with the too-bright eyes coming up on them, whispering as quiet as quiet could be that they needed to be careful, careful, careful. The intruder had more than Army training, was more than tough. He didn’t know how he knew. Maybe it was those blue eyes.

  They burned like fire. Like lamps in the night. They hurt his eyes, and Sketch didn’t like that.

  Loud enough for the other man to hear, Sketch started talking in that calm, liquid way his voice went when he was on Zee. Best to be polite, right? Until he got close? Then Crink would be off the leash and at his throat before anyone knew what was happening.

  “What’s the matter, sir?”

  Plastering a smile on his face, Garth stopped precisely five feet from the hostile trio, almost laughing at the perceptible ripple of dismay that started on the weird dog-lady’s not un-pretty face before shivering through Middle Boss Man’s scarred and flecked face before punching Young and Stupidly Pierced Boss Kid’s scrawny mug.

  Sorry guys, no free full body dog-lady lunges today, Garth thought gleefully to himself. “Restricted area. You gotta go.”

  Ferret felt all his muscles tense rock solid. Then they tensed some more. The agony on his bones was immense. He felt like he was going to break into pieces if he didn’t start moving soon, but Sketch was keeping them all in place. There was something … there wasn’t … the … the man with the eyes wasn’t normal. He could tell Sketch thought the same.

  “Relax, boss,” Sketch crooned calmly, raising the one hand not on Crink’s head, “we were just looking …”

  “I can see what you were looking for.” Garth’s eyes flickered to the plastic garbage bag full of crap, dragging all six eyes pointing his way along for the ride. “And that’s theft.”

  Ferret scratched hard at his throat, heedless of the marks that went red almost immediately. “You know how it is.”

  Garth shifted his body weight to the balls of his heels. Skinny Poor Life Choice Kid was a fucking rocket waiting to launch. Dog-Lady with Dreads –Garth stomached a surge of bile as he errantly wondered what those dreadlocks smelled like beneath the stink of Ziggurat clotting his nostrils- was doing the mutated human version of fighting against the leash and Middle Black Guy with Stupid Faux-Hawk was just … chilling. In control of the drug that bopped along his central nervous system.

  Middle Guy had to go first then. There was no doubt this was going to devolve into violence.

  It was just a matter of when, and how much damage he was going to have to take while disarming the center of the telepathic wave zipping between all three. Once the head of the hydra was taken down, the other two would fall in easy enough fashion.

  Garth grimaced. ‘Easy enough’ meant taking damage. There was no way around it. Without his Kin’kithal powers –or hell, even his Onyx Brigadier powers, at this point- getting out of this situation without a nasty new scar or three wasn’t going to happen. Not in this or any other lifetime.

  The only thing working for him was his know-how. That was something that the Emperor-for-Life couldn’t take away, and that left him in the upper hand position, even if only by a thin margin.

  Ensuring that he kept his hands ready to move but nowhere near any kind of positioning or posturing that suggested he was going to fly into violence at any second –all three of them, especially Black Mohawk Guy and Unfortunate Tattoo and Piercing Kid- were rocking some pretty serious hyper-vigilance vibes in addition to some wicked-looking fight bites on their hands and knuckles, Garth spoke again, as calm and as mellow as a Southern
er in the middle of a heat wave.

  “Leave now, guys, and all will be ignored and forgiven.” No sense in ignoring the possibility of a peaceful resolution. Also no sense in remaining a completely docile target, either; he was going to keep his hands outside ‘the box’ –that area between stomach and heart where it was generally best to keep your hands when in the middle of a confrontation- but that didn’t mean he had to stand there like a punching bag. He ever so gently maneuvered his wide body into a bladed stance, feeling frustration when all three Zigg-heads adjusted automatically. “I get it. This place looks like a horn a’plenty to people who’re … who need stuff to sell so they can buy other stuff. Leave now, let all your … friends … know that it ain’t worth it, and I’ll consider this a favorable encounter.”

  It was hard to keep his hand on Crink’s head. Something about the man with the eyes that were starting to hurt his eyes was putting Sketch on the kind of edge he hadn’t felt since the one or two times he’d seen one of them in the distance, doling out fresh hits of Zigg to dealers eager to make serious bank. The hand, heavily scarred and nicked along one side where one of the younger pups had bitten hard into the skin in a frantic effort to live, kept … wanting to float off. Light as air.

  Crink wouldn’t mind; Sketch could feel the rabid girl’s insistent hunger bubbling up through his infinitely calmer demeanor. Ferret wasn’t much further behind, but there was an order to these things. They’d all see the same. They all knew there were fifteen soldiers in the area, boys and girls who’d definitely seen action somewhere in the world, were definitely the kind of people that they needed to watch out for.

  Sketch was no fool. He knew they were tough, and fast, and even stronger than they had any right to be when they were high –and sometimes even when they weren’t- on Zigg-Aleph, but that didn’t beat experience. They hadn’t seen this one doing the rounds. He looked tough, but so did bouncers at clubs. They were just big and mean looking. The man in the middle looked down at Crink, and her hideous dreadlocks, and smiled. Crink could take the meanest bouncer in town down to the ground, filthy teeth at his carotid before the man even knew what was happening.