“Do you solve all your problems with excessive violence?” Reimar asked pointedly as they walked.
“Only the irritating ones,” Talia rumbled warningly.
Reimar shut up.
They walked through the door and down a wide corridor to where it opened into an even wider room. A crystal chandelier in immaculate condition hung from the ceiling. A broad staircase straddled the rear of the room leading up to a wide landing that swept about the eaves of the room and spread back, beyond where they could see down an array of corridors. A metal gantry hung over the landing on the east side. Every surface was dark wood, every wall was purple, and gold-framed paintings adorned the walls in a haphazard fashion, as if Kazimir Malevich had switched careers to interior design and gone nuts with the joint.
They climbed the stairs until they stood just below the chandelier. Suddenly the lights cut out completely for a moment, then a pale blue glow seeped down from an orb hanging below the chandelier, illuminating Reimar’s surprised looking face and reflecting softly from Talia’s armour. The light accumulated into a sphere, an egg shape then, slowly, began to take on the countenance of a bald man. “Welcome,” the man began. “For those of you who do not know me, my name is Fitzpatrick Smulch. And what you see before you, my fellow artistic…visionaries, is, quite frankly, Paradise.”
“I think it’s just a message,” Reimar said and turned to Talia. She ran her hand through the hologram. It ignored the intrusion and continued with its message.
“…Mezzanines where the champagne will flow in the memory of our fellow man, halls that will echo with symphonies to the end of the world. Here, artists, we spend the last of our days…” The hologram rambled on in this vein for some time. Reimar lost interest and ambled over to the paintings.
Talia tilted her head to one side, stepped closer and watched the hologram with intense concentration. As it spoke, its eyes were reflected in the lenses over hers. A crash to her right. She twisted and grabbed the assault rifle over her right shoulder. She levelled it at a sheepish looking Reimar, who stood next to a painting that not so long ago had hung on the wall behind him. “Woops!”
Talia lowered the gun slightly and shook her head, but a shriek made her raise it again, to the gantry above them. What can only be described as an outlandishly dressed zombie leapt, snarling over the railing. Seconds later it smacked into the ground minus a large portion of its cranium as Talia fired. She spun on the spot, and put a bullet through a second creature’s chest as it rounded the end of the adjacent corridor. It ran for a second more, tripped, then bounced over the banister and smashed through the chandelier with a noise like a firework in a mystic’s shop. The room was pitch black once again as the hologram vanished.
Reimar pressed himself to the wall as he heard more running footsteps. Staccato blasts thundered in the hall as Talia fired again and again. The brief flashes of light only illuminated the gun, Talia’s helmet and the foot of the staircase in front of her. She was clearly having no problems shooting in the dark. Pained, angry shrieks filled the air. Then the firing stopped and a deafening clang filled the hall as Talia hit the floor.
A few seconds of blackness filled with the muffled sounds of a struggle. Orange light glowed weakly as the knife in Talia’s hand dropped onto the carpet. The zombie, a pink feather elegantly stuck through a headband around its skull, hissed and grabbed Talia’s helmet. She struggled vainly for a moment in its grip then paused. She grabbed it bodily around the neck, head-butted it with violent gusto and ripped its arm off with her free hand. The feather zombie, still rather dazed, made to stand up. Talia sank her knife into its neck and it collapsed back onto her with a thud.
Hauling the corpse off her she met the charge of the next creature (this one entertained a crimson leotard and a black fedora) by stooping low. It ran at her as she stepped forwards, and, grabbing it by the throat she threw it bodily over her head. It arched gracefully in parabola to land far less gracefully in the gloom beyond the feeble glow of the knife. The crunch as its head hit the floor provided audible confirmation of its demise.
Talia stood up, calmly looked around, picked up the gun, the knife, and went looking for Reimar. He sat breathing heavily beside a clearly incensed creature. He’d smashed the painting that had started the whole affair over its head, and now it hopped about gnashing its teeth as its hands wriggled around absurdly by its waist. The zombie’s face and torso had burst through the middle of one of Rachel Ruysch’s still life flower paintings like some sort of hideous petunia. Talia casually lopped its head off.
“What are they?” Reimar panted, “Mutants?”
“No,” Talia replied as she wiped the still hissing blade on the zombie’s torso before dumping its body back on the floor. “Something far worse.” The skin was taunt on the creature’s face, brown and mottled. Strange tubular growths erupted in clumps across the right of its face. The tubes pulsated rhythmically and Reimar quickly looked away as what looked suspiciously like a tentacle emerged from one. They were the same creatures from the forest.
“Fantastic,” he muttered grimly.
“Come, if we hurry, the others may still be alive,” Talia said bluntly.
“Yea…,” Reimar hesitated. “I don’t suppose you have a light do you?” They were still in darkness. Without the low light vision the suit gave her Talia would have seen as little as Reimar.
She shook her head, realised he wouldn’t be able to see it, sighed inside her helmet and grabbed a large painting from the wall behind Reimar. She trod on it until it was a pile of shattered sticks and cloth, then wrapping the mess up, set it alight with the still glowing barrel of her assault rifle.
“Ah, that’s better,” Reimar breathed happily, unaware of the artistic assassination. No sooner had the words left his mouth than beyond him, in the darkness, calls echoed and screamed distantly. Talia took his hand, pulled him away, and together they ran.
Through halls and corridors, below sweeping mezzanines and under marble arches they ran, while wails of the creatures behind them came ever closer. Not much light shone anywhere barring the odd, still glowing, dim yellow bulb, and the occasional window or skylight that let in the glance of the moon. It could have been described as almost romantic, if one weren’t running for one’s life in the dark from hungry, diseased cannibals - unless that’s your thing of course.
It certainly wasn’t Reimar’s. His sweaty palms were clenched in fists, he felt sick, shaky, but alert as never before. He ran easily, quickly behind Talia. Her rifle slung over one shoulder, she didn’t seem fazed at all. Underneath her armour, however, her hands shook as she paused to look at the brass compass around her neck. The surroundings had certainly gotten more luxurious as they had run, and, taking her helmet off for a moment, she could feel the beginnings of a chill that could only mean an exit to the outside.
She snapped her helmet back in place, looked at Reimar and gestured with her head down a side passage. He took two steps forwards, but a fell shadow with yellow eyes dropped from the ceiling. It hissed. He stopped and fumbled for the rifle over his shoulder. Talia’s gun kicked. The flash lit up the creature’s face for a split second, then in the darkness that followed it smacked to the floor.
They ran on, stepping over the body and found themselves in a wide, round room. A massive circular skylight let in cold white light, which played over the shell of a shattered ballroom. The glass was gone from the skylight and from the windows cut into the rock around them, and where doors had once led outside, only fractured pillars and shredded curtains remained to frame the opening.
Reimar stepped forwards cautiously. Something tinkled and cracked underfoot. Looking down he saw a pair of round spectacles. He’d broken the last piece of intact glass in the room.
Something flitted in the shadows around the walls and both humans reached quickly over their shoulders. A bandy legged creature oscillated out of the shadows and across the parquet floor of the ballroom. The creature held a piece of bamboo in one yellow
ed, decayed fist while the other reached for the pouch by its waist. It put its mouth to the bamboo and blew. A dart cut Reimar’s shoulder as it whizzed by. He returned the hospitality by blowing the creature’s fungus infested brains out onto the wall behind it. Talia followed his example and killed several more of the odd-looking monstrosities as they broiled out of the dark.
They moved across the room as they fought. Piles of bones and outlandish clothing answered the unasked question of where most of the bunker’s original occupants had perished. This place was nothing but a bone-strewn palace.
Reaching the doors, they backed out into the cold air onto a ledge which wound up and to the right, bending around the circumference of the mountain. Moonlight panned out across the valley floor below them. The glowing rock itself hid behind black clouds in the sky, and peered down over them at the humans as they ran the path up the mountain. Screams of anger sounded behind them from deep in the mountain halls.
The rubble-strewn slope was steep and winding, but fear lent wings to their feet and they moved quickly. They reached the top breathless. They paused but could hear nothing behind them. The howling winds erased any sound but their own mournful voices. They hurried across the rocky ledge and dived through a ragged hole in the rock they found there. Open like a broken maw, the mountain smiled with jagged teeth as they hurried down into the depths of its gullet.
Inside, they carried on, Reimar holding the torch while Talia reloaded. They walked quickly and alertly, but nothing leapt from the shadows. They came quickly to a polished large wooden door, set oddly into the gunmetal-grey rock. Reimar gave it an experimental push. It didn’t budge. Talia turned and put the rifle to her shoulder once more, tense and alert. Familiar noises in the tunnel behind them set Reimar’s jaw. He dropped the torch and raised his rifle as the first creature bounded round the corner.
The door behind Reimar and Talia opened slowly. Neither of them questioned how or why, but piled in gratefully. The door shut once more quickly behind them, sealing behind the bloodcurdling screams in the dark.
8: A machine, a monster; an immortal born
“Well, that was unexpected,” Reimar panted as he tried to calm his thudding heart.
Talia ripped her helmet off and nodded. “Yea…” she started breathlessly, doubled over with her hands on her knees as she fought for breath.
“Really?” came a third voice. Talia stood up, grabbed her rifle from the floor and aimed it in a series of jerking movements into the gloom around them. “Then how about this?” the voice continued, untroubled, as lights flared in the black to reveal Bayan standing at the rear of room. She smiled as Talia aimed the rifle at her. “Please, darling, put that away before you hurt somebody,” she drawled.
Reimar relaxed, loosening his grip on the gun in his hands. “I know her,” he explained.
“How?” Talia growled. She didn’t lower the gun.
“Errr,” Reimar paused.
“Where do I start?” Bayan started, walking forwards. “First I kidnapped him, then I shot him, before I sold him into slavery to an unpleasant man to settle an old debt.” Talia tensed and her eyes narrowed. Her finger squeezed a minute amount on the trigger. Bayan kept on walking. “But then I saved him, we got separated and his droid (Bayan gestured across the room to Meinal, who was leaning against a wooden pillar to her left. He nodded slowly at Talia) brought me here.” She finished, walking the final step until the barrel of Talia’s gun was an inch away from her forehead. “So how about you put the gun down?” she suggested quietly, looking unflinchingly into Talia’s eyes.
For a moment neither moved. Then Talia lowered her gun. “Good girl,” Bayan said. She looked at Reimar and smiled.
“If you’ve quite finished waving guns around, I’d like to ask some questions…” came a voice from above them.
“Bloody hell, that jar’s got a brain in!” Reimar yelled, understandably in some shock.
“Hmm, yes, quite, well once you’ve finished having a jolly good gawp perhaps you would like to tell us why you’re here?” Isambard said, slightly testily.
“I…well…,” Reimar turned to Bayan speechlessly.
She shrugged. “They are a bit blunt,” she said apologetically.
“I…a bit blunt?” Reimar stuttered, “it’s a brain! In a jar! Who puts a brain in a jar? What even is this place? How is it talking and… where’s my Granny?” He finished weakly.
There was a pause. “It’s rather demanding isn’t it?” Kingdom observed.
Reimar’s mouth hung open. “Which one do you want me to answer first?” Bayan asked, not unkindly.
*
Talia sat cross-legged before the fire that burned cheerfully in the grate. Large doors behind her and Reimar had opened up into the rear of the brains’ library. She’d adjusted to their new surroundings and fortunes as ruggedly as she adapted to everything. Everything except this bloody freezing part of the planet. Out of her armour and wrapped up in a thick woolly pelt that one of the strange floating brains in jars had proudly announced came from something called a ‘polar bear’, she studied the room she found herself in with a mild curiosity.
In truth, she cared little about her surroundings. She cared much more about staying warm. Outside her armour the world felt a lot colder; the fire and furs combined only just kept her from shivering. Beneath the armour she only wore a functional pair of black tracksuit pants and a red tank top that flaunted the powerful yet graceful curve of her shoulders. Now only the top half of her head and her keen royal blue eyes showed above the white fur. She sneezed once, and blinked in surprise.
She sat at the end of the brains’ hall. The brains themselves had been silent for some time now. They didn’t move in their jars and appeared to all be deep in thought. It was funny, the things people did before the Collapse. They’d saved the brains of people they admired: artists, scholars and even generals. Then they sealed them in here while the rest of them prepared outside to meet the end of the world. Or at least that’s what the brains had said. But why would they make no attempt to save themselves? There was room enough in here for plenty of people, the complex apparently ran for miles beneath the mantle of the mountain. Talia shuddered and snapped herself out of it. No point asking questions when answers didn’t exist.
Her fire was at the far end of the hall, beneath the mezzanine and before the giant circular window set into the eastern wall. Stars peppered the midnight blue sky outside. Talia yawned hugely. After a time, she curled up and fell asleep before the fire in a furry cocoon.
Meinal remained where he was. He hadn’t moved from his pillar in the shadows at the far end of the room, and he observed Talia carefully.
He looked to one side. Talia’s armour lay in a heap before the door. One shoulder plate faced him across the room. The three silver stars joined by a pair of straight brass lines gleamed in the flickering light. He turned back to Talia, his eye a pale blue tinged with purple which glowed defiantly in the dark.
Tired from the day’s events, Reimar left Bayan where he’d been talking with her upstairs and wandered down the spiralling iron stairs to the library. Walking straight past Meinal, he sat down next to Talia. She opened her eyes and looked up briefly. “This is the woman who sold you?” she sniffed derisively, watching Bayan walk across the mezzanine. She looked at him narrowly, “I do not like her, or this.” She gestured with her head at their surroundings.
“Neither do I, but at least it’s warm and flesh eating monster free,” Reimar said heavily.
“Something feels wrong,” Talia remarked. She had sat up partially, propping herself up with one arm. “That droid is trouble.”
Reimar looked surprised. “Trouble? Meinal is on our side.”
“Is he?” Talia asked blankly. “Droids do as they are told. The only thing you should be concerned with, is who really tells him what to do.” She lay back down, “You will not have been his first master, nor his last.”
“So what do we do?” Reimar asked quietly. He h
ad learned by now to respect Talia’s vigilant gut.
“Now? Now we sleep, little wraith,” Talia said softly as she rolled over. “A tired mind makes foolish mistakes.” With that she appeared to fall asleep. Reimar went over his conversation with Bayan. He too felt something was wrong. Bayan had been evasive, and Meinal had barely moved let alone spoken. Reimar didn’t like any of this either. He sighed. Not for the first time he wished he was back in Bastion. Civilisation seemed so far away. Eventually he took Talia’s advice. For several hours the two slept.
Bayan remained awake, standing before the large circular window with her arms folded. She remained immobile until the sun began to rise in the East. She looked down sadly as the first rays gently caressed her skin, sighed deeply and walked across the mezzanine to the railings, turning her back to the light. She leaned over and looked down at Reimar, asleep in an armchair beside Talia. Conflict was clear in her eyes.
9: No-one likes a third wheel
Reimar awoke in the dark. He was sitting on a chair. His arms were bound to the arms of the chair with a rough rope that grazed his skin as he made to move. He could move his fingers, but to do so with his left hand provoked a deep, dull, pain from his forearm.
The Jagged Teeth Page 5
