The Atomic Sea: Part Nine

by Jack Conner

  They stepped into the streets and entered the town, passing the lashed-together boats, piers and platforms that composed the city’s foundation, and the great shabby buildings that rose from it. Canals ran all through the city, and boats came and went. Tavlin saw one mutant emerge from the water, dripping and holding a white fish in his mouth. Children ran down the streets, laughing or fleeing, clutching stolen purses and burned rats. Whores leaned against cracked pillars, and piano music drifted from between batwing doors. Tavlin saw shops and businesses, just like a real city almost—well, a human one, he amended. There were no autos or horse-drawn carriages down here, but there were bicycles and motorcycles, and they careened around the corners, scattering pedestrians before them like sodden leaves.

  One mutant with the chameleon-skin of an octopus stood on a podium before a small crowd, shouting over the babble, “... and see the error of your ways. Convert and accept the divinity of Magoth, and you will be saved when he descends from the Holy House …”

  Tavlin chuckled. “Magoth has a promoter now?”

  Frankie didn’t give the expected answer. “That guy’s not just some madman. He’s a preacher, one of several at the church.”

  “A church ... to Magoth? It’s just some boogeyman of the sewers!”

  “I wouldn’t say that too loudly. I know when you lived here there was only a few that worshipped it, it was just another cult, but it’s caught on lately. It’s a regular religion now.”

  Tavlin nodded noncommittally, but he didn’t say what he was thinking. He didn’t know what Frankie had bought into.

  They arrived at one of the largest and proudest of the buildings in Muscud, a large stone structure held aloft by pillars anchored into the artificial lake bed. Stone steps led up past decorative if chipped columns to an impressive doorway spanned by colored beads. A man with a tongue like an anemone and striations like a sea bass parted the beads when he saw Frankie, and held it open as Tavlin and the goons filed past. They entered the Hall of the Wide-Mouth, most notorious den in Muscud. Shady-looking mutants played pool, gambled at large tables, drank at the bar under a cloud of smoke, engaged in private dealings in the booths. Whores of all descriptions prowled among them, stroking arms, whispering in ears, and occasionally leading a man or woman up to the second floor where the real fun took place. It all stank of smoke, cigarette and otherwise, seaweed and grease. The latter came from the kitchens, and fried things that were likely caught down here and quite unprocessed were shoved before hungry mouths.

  The smells relaxed Tavlin for some reason. This had been his home, or at least the place where he had spent the most time, for nearly a decade, though that time had long since passed.

  “It hasn’t changed much,” he said.

  Frankie raised a hairless eyebrow. “Oh, there’s change, all right. You’ll see. C'mon. We have to meet the Boss.”

  They moved into the backrooms, and the sounds of revelry from the front diminished into a vague roar. Here secretaries typed notes and hard-looking men cleaned guns. Several looked up as Tavlin walked past, and he noted familiar faces. “Hey, it’s Tavlin!” one said. “What gives?” “You back or what?”

  “Or what,” Tavlin replied, though he couldn’t resist a small smile. He was rarely greeted with warmth in the world above.

  They moved toward a certain back room. Its stone walls were thicker than the others, yet even so Tavlin heard grunts and smacking sounds when he drew close. Two toughs stood beside the door. One was tall, slick and pale. He had no nose, at least not a human one, but a rounded lump with holes in it like a fish might have, and his eyes were solid black, shark-like. He was Galesh, the Boss’s right-hand man. The other man, Edgar, was shorter and more human-looking, though he possessed the gills of a fish, which pulsed weirdly on his thick neck.

  “Boss’s busy,” Galesh said, when Tavlin and Frankie approached.

  A smacking sound came from the other side of the metal door, and a curse.

  “He’ll see us,” Frankie said.

  Galesh studied him a moment, then rapped on the door, and someone on the other side slid away the small panel. A short exchange followed, locks popped and the door banged open, revealing a small, dingy stone room lit by a hanging alchemical lamp; its red fluid flowed slowly, making the light shift in languid motions. A man strapped to a wooden chair hunched in the middle of the room. Bruises covered his face and body, and blood soaked his hair and pretty much every other part of him. One of his arms had the texture of a sea horse. He looked even redder with the light on him, but Tavlin figured he was red enough.

  Boss Vassas stood over the man, shirtsleeves rolled up, blood dripping from his fists, chest heaving. The Boss was of medium height, but his chest was deep and his arms thick. His mutations were subtler than some; he bore a slightly piscine cast, his mouth a little too wide, his lips thick, his skin grayish, but nothing overt. He could almost pass for an uninfected. He had a rugged face, with bushy black eyebrows and short wavy black hair, now with as much salt in it as pepper, normally combed back from his broad forehead but at the moment disheveled and sweat-soaked. An old scar curled up from his right eye, disappearing into the hairline over his ear.

  “Where the hell is it?” he demanded of the man in the chair. “Why’d you take it—why? And why’d you kill her, you fuck!” He balled a fist and struck the man in the face. The man listed backward and would have fallen but for the nails sticking the chair to the floor. Even so, the wood creaked, and Tavlin supposed the Boss would soon need a new chair. “Damn you!”

  The man spat blood. “I’m t-telling you, w-we didn’t take it. It wasn’t us. And I d-didn’t kill anybody!”

  Boss Vassas started to punch him again, then sighed and lowered his fist. “You sure can take a lot of punishment for a liar.”

  Frankie cleared his throat, and the Boss swung his gaze in the direction of the newcomers. He took in Tavlin and nodded in acknowledgement. Tavlin nodded back, feeling his throat constrict. There was a desperate, harried look about the Boss that he had never seen before. Vassas’s eyes were bloodshot, his complexion even more ashen than usual.

  “You made it,” Vassas said. “Good.”

  Tavlin indicated the man in the chair. “Mind if I ask what he did?”

  “I-I didn’t do nothing!”

  Vassas backhanded him across the face. “Let’s talk outside,” the Boss told Tavlin.

  He led the way out of the small room and Galesh closed the door behind them. When they were out of earshot of the beaten man, Vassas said, “Truth is, I don’t know who did it. I thought it must be that creep’s gang, they’re the only ones stupid enough to come into my territory lately—but maybe not.”

  “That was one of Grund’s boys, wasn’t it?” said Frankie, then with an aside to Tavlin: “Suvesh Grund runs his own crew outta the Blighted Quarter. He’s trying to expand.”

  “Idiot,” Vassas said with sudden violence. “It can only lead to war, and that’s the last thing any of us need.”

  Tavlin tried not to think of the ragged man in the chair. He had seen Boss Vassas beat people before, but for some reason it shocked him all over again, and he reminded himself why he had left this life.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “What exactly did you think that man did?”

  Boss Vassas didn’t answer at once. He motioned to Edgar, who produced and lit a cigar for him. Smoke wreathed Vassas’s head, and his bloodshot eyes peered through the smoke at Tavlin. “That’s why I called you here. I hope you haven’t eaten.”

  * * *

  Tavlin hadn’t eaten, and he was glad of it. It was only after the implications sank in, though, that he felt truly queasy.

  Boss Vassas ushered him up to his suite on the third and highest floor. Half the floor was devoted to rooms for his boys, the other half was his private penthouse. Few went into the penthouse save Vassas and his women. He had two women that lived with him, though they weren’t permanent and frequently rotated with the women on the second stor
y—at least historically that had been the case. Around the time Tavlin had left, a girl he knew named Nancy had taken up residence with the Boss, and Vassas had fallen so hard for her he’d invited her to stay for good, and so she had, demanding only that she be the only woman there. He’d agreed, and from what Tavlin witnessed they’d been very happy together. In the time since he’d left, rumor ran that little had changed save that Nancy had only grown more lovely and strong-willed and had begun exercising some authority with the crew, which Vassas actually encouraged.

  Tavlin had rarely been to the penthouse before, and he saw that, as he’d remembered, the suite was large and opulent. Ancient tapestries hung on the walls beside priceless paintings, and thick animal hide carpets draped the floors. Idols and statues of various empires stood all about, surely stolen or looted. Many of the statues were nudes. Vassas had fine taste in art and furniture, and though he acted rough in front of his men Tavlin knew him to be a sensitive and intelligent man in private.

  Bodies lay all over—though at first Tavlin didn’t realize what they were. There were five of them—one woman, Frankie said, and four of Vassas’s soldiers. “They musta heard her scream and come runnin’ in, then they got what she got,” Frankie said.

  What they got exactly was obviously the source of Vassas’s unease (or part of it), and it was clear why it unnerved him. The bodies no longer looked human. The flesh had been turned translucent, slightly whitish, and been made rubbery, like the flesh of a jellyfish. Tavlin could see the internal organs through the flesh, and they had been turned translucent as well. The bodies had been ripped apart, as if by a blast or an animal attack, and pieces of them were strewn all around the room. They stank somewhat of ammonia but did not emit the normal odor of a human corpse, which Tavlin to his chagrin was all too familiar with. One didn’t live amongst the mob for a decade and not see a few bodies. Whitish flesh hung from the walls, the furniture, sagging and stinking. An overhead fan spun, making the ribbons of flesh flap and stream.

  Seeing the corpses hit Tavlin hard, perhaps because he hadn’t seen dead people in a while, but also, he was certain, because of what it meant.

  Something unnatural had happened here.

  “What could have done this?” he said, hearing the numbness in his voice, one hand over his mouth and nose to block out the stench of ammonia. He staggered through the room, cataloguing what he saw, trying not to step in anything wet.

  “If I knew, my blood pressure would be a lot lower,” Vassas said. He stared about the room and shook his head. His blood-shot gaze landed on the body of the woman, and a long sigh escaped his lips.

  “That was Nancy?” Tavlin said, and Vassas nodded raggedly. Tavlin thought he might have been crying earlier. His eyes were very red. “I’m sorry,” Tavlin said. “Nancy was a good woman.” She had been a friend of Sophia’s, too, he remembered, but he didn’t say so. “When did this happen?”

  “Coupla-three hours ago. I figured it was Grund at first and sent some boys to get him or one of his men for questioning. But it just didn’t feel right—how could that bastard have done … this? So I sent for you, too.”

  “I don’t know what I can do.” Tavlin made his way through the room. Frankie hung back by the doorway. None of the other men had accompanied them. “Who else knows about this?”

  “Just you, me, Frankie and Galesh,” Vassas said. “And that’s the way it stays. The other boys know somethin’s up, but they don’t know what. Shit, I don’t know how we’re gonna get rid of the bodies. Can’t let the boys see ‘em like this.”

  Tavlin wanted to ask why, but that would be disingenuous. He knew Vassas feared any questioning of his power. An unfathomable attack in his very lair resulting in the deaths of five people under his protection would rattle his organization to the foundation. If it had just been straight murder with normal corpses, that would have been bad enough, but this ...

  Tavlin found his way to the largest statue of all. It stood before Vassas’s huge wooden bed, a cluster of small black obelisks, with the central obelisk rising higher than the others, though how high it was impossible to tell, for the statue had been broken off, and black stone shards littered the floor around it.

  Tavlin eyed the broken top. “Why would they take the top?”

  “There was this gem, a bloody red gem big as your fist,” Vassas said.

  “I hated that thing,” Frankie said from the doorway. His eyes were on the bodies, and he looked nervous. “Always gave me the creeps.” To Tavlin, he added, “It looked like it burned. There was some fire, deep inside.”

  “It was beautiful,” Vassas said. “Got it from a merchant from Taluush. Said he found it in some ancient ruins.”

  “How ancient?” asked Tavlin.

  “Pre-human, he said. Some inhuman thing built that statue. I always liked to think the gem gave me power. Maybe that’s why someone took it. I want it back. But that’s secondary.” His eyes misted as they returned to Nancy. “I want revenge.”

  The Boss’s voice shook, and Tavlin felt something twist in his heart. Nancy had been a hell of a gal, even a friend. By the expression on Vassas’s face, she had been something more to him than that, more even than a lover.

  “I’m no assassin,” Tavlin said. “I’m a card-player. And, lately, not a very good one.”

  “I don’t want you to get revenge for me,” Vassas said. “If I know who did this, I can get that myself. But I need to know who. Here’s why I had Frankie get you, Tavlin: I need someone, someone I know, someone I can trust. You ran my gambling hall for ten years. You’re a good man, and we been through a lot of shit together. You helped make me the most powerful boss in Muscud. I don’t know why you left, but I let you go and never thought about doin’ anything else. Now I need you back. Somethin’ dangerous is out there, and I don’t know what it’s up to, but it ain’t good. It killed five people by unnatural means to obtain something unnatural.” His voice hardened. “What do you think it’s gonna do with that gem?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Me, either. But these sewers are home to all sorts of things that have fallen through the cracks o’ regular society. Secrets lost long ago up top are still shakin’ things up down here, and some are still waitin’ to be found. And some shouldn’t ever be found.”

  “You think this is one of those.”

  Vassas nodded. “If I send one of my men to poke into this thing, word will get out. People will find out what happened here. Whatever did this will find out I’m on its trail.” Vassas ran a hand across his face. “I don’t want that.”

  “I wouldn’t either.”

  “But you … they won’t suspect you. You’ve been gone long enough to be seen as independent. So that’s it, Tavlin. I need you to figure this mess out and end it before it gets any worse. I’ll pay you for the trouble, but I know you. You liked Nancy almost as much as I did. You’d probably do it just for her. But pay you I will. What do you say?”

  END OF SAMPLE

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6