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Post by effinfitz on Mar 8, 2013 22:03:54 GMT -8
I think, perhaps, that it was something of a premonition that brought on such introspection that night.
I'd been working in the empty halls of Ægir Communications' controversial headquarters when the message came, only just moving to my new office on the thirty-second floor. Perhaps it was the luxury of the late-night shift's stillness, or even the unspoken excitement in claiming a new corner of it as my own, but I found myself giving the building more thought in those past few hours than I had in the previous two years I'd worked there. I could not shake the thought that it was a peculiarly designed building, nor the suspicion that it might have been made so for some deliberate purpose.
Only a few years old itself, the Solvall rose thirty-three stories above Brooklyn's East River, its ponderous crown looming over the surface of the water like some stylized raven might. I do not think it was an image that founder Solveig Rystaad had intended, but between the historic landmark it was built over and his own death shortly thereafter the funerary overtones had been difficult to dispel. One imagines the new Sponsors loved it.
My new office had no such view of the river. Instead I overlooked the company campus, at last cleared of riotous former employees by autumn's chill and the looming threat of Hurricane Sandy. Until recently city police and our own security had been trying to bring some order to the scene, to little effect. Cold, though, had sent them running, leaving only picket signs and signed petitions to mark their passing. Beyond the campus the rest of the city carried on, as yet uncaring.
Not that I could see to such detail at that hour. One entire wall of my office was glass, which did little to comfort me as I listened to the growing, howling winds outside buffet the building. Only that thin pane of glass stood between me and a blue-black panorama barely lit by street lamps and amber windows. It was a quarter to ten, and in a little more than two hours the date would be the twenty-eighth of October, 2012. A late night at the office, perhaps, but I wanted to make my transition as smooth as possible by moving in fully before actually taking up the position. I'd been working in silence since a late dinner taken in solitude at my desk, left undisturbed by the housekeeping contractors after telling them to take the night off.
When my phone chimed atop the desk, then, the sound seemed quite thunderous.
I'd long since programmed an alert whenever a message was sent to Ægir's head office. I'd worked there for over year as the corporate secretary, first under Solveig himself and then for his daughter, Seanne. The restructuring following Solveig's death had been a chaotic time, and I'd thrown myself wholly into the task of keeping the company solvent until such time as the younger Rystaad could find her footing. She had just recently begun to assert herself, and it had been disagreements regarding company direction that had necessitated my "lateral promotion" to director of our Investigations department. There'd been no public announcement as such, and to the rank-and-file employees like Mrs. Gutierrez I was still very much the CEO's business manager. It wasn't at all out of place for the Shipping department to notify me of a problem -- only the late hour made it exceptional.
"No contact from Herman or Project: ÆSIR," the subject line read.
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Post by effinfitz on Mar 11, 2013 23:08:05 GMT -8
Welcome to existence, Book.
I hate to bring you in on such inauspicious circumstances, I truly do. It's an awful night to come to life, but there's a hindbrain tattoo beating out warning signals in my head, morse code heartbeat for "something wicked this way comes." Superstitious fortune-gauging, but I've this notion that even a poor man's presentment merits recording and I'll be needing you to carry that weight.
As the mother told her son when the horse went lame.
I woke up with a post-fever sickness, a fetal curl sweating under a blanket of chills that the fog had wrapped me in. Cold-black hands overnight and that briefest, oldest terror. My arms and legs wouldn't lift me, my heart wouldn't beat. My lungs, half-filled with sea spray and coagulated rust, wouldn't inflate. I could feel the tide in my chest, hear the waves in my ears. Drowning on dry land, Book.
One five second lifetime later and I'd surfaced, hands and knees and vomiting up the caul of Charybdis in broken, brutal bronchospasms. Hurt like hell, retching so hard that my stomach wrapped itself around my spine so it wouldn't come up, too, and it was glorious. I would have kissed the blood-stained rock I was kneeling on, phlegmy bile and all, but my veins were running on fumes and I worried that a sudden head rush might have pitched me over right back to where I'd started.
For a moment I wondered if that had already happened. Only for a moment. Had there been blood on the stone before I'd started coughing it up?
I stood, legs numb but sturdy, pins-and-needles skipping down my synapses. I could hear the surf again, tired swells beating the cliffs outside because they were to old to stop tearing them down. They pushed the wind ahead of them, a tired bellows stoking an engine so worn down the air whistled through the gaps in its skin. I heard the gull cries, pirate profiteers pilfering the eyes of the dead, replacing them with worms and the eggs of elder maggots. Saw the broken branches, bodies. All of them just phantoms past the edge of perception. Everything was subdued, radio on but the volume's so broken all you could hear was that dog whistle keening. Electric air. I tried to remember how I got here.
I write everything down, Book. You can call it a compulsion if you like, and it is. So when I finally reclaimed my senses, several pregnant seconds staring at a headless corpse later, the first thing I did was look for your predecessor. Of course he was gone. Not in my pocket, where I usually keep you guys when I'm not carving out your pages. Not on the refuse-crusted rock where I might have dropped him when I fell. Not in the silent tidewash reflecting the corpseglow mold creeping up the cavern walls.
Not anywhere around the gutted thoughts and memories, arranged life offerings around the headless messermensch mouldering against the cave wall.
Welcome to existence, Book. It goes downhill from here.
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Post by effinfitz on Mar 13, 2013 22:59:49 GMT -8
Project: ÆSIR had been one of our first independent sorties into the sordid, Sponsor-dominated Secret World we now lived in. An opening gambit, maybe. Testing the waters.
Solomon Island, legally quarantined by Homeland Security and physically isolated by a ring of deadly fog, still supported a stubborn population of maybe three dozen survivors from a town once over twelve hundred. Our Sponsors, callous, faceless figures all, couldn't be less concerned. Seanne had gone around them, securing some level of political support to start a food drive. It hadn't been terribly difficult. Charities are always good publicity.
Staffing it appropriately had been another matter. Ægir has a pool of field agents spread across different departments, so that no matter the exact objective we'd be able to dispatch someone with both the correct skills and an...optimistic...chance of survival. But most of these agents had come "recommended" to us by our Sponsors, and I admit to being paranoid enough to want Ægir's initiative handled by a proven Ægir employee. Too, most of these field agents had day jobs with us, at least on paper, and might also be needed across the globe for some other emergency at a moment's notice.
In the end, I perhaps overstretched my assumed authority by selecting Dieter Herman. I could certainly justify the choice -- he had the experience, yet lacked both the youth and the more exotic capabilities of our newer hires. Too, his loyalty was unquestionable. He had been Solveig's right hand for decades, only stepping away from his administrative responsibilities after what I'm told was a nervous breakdown of sorts. It would be dishonest to suggest that he'd ever recovered fully, but I did nurse a small hope that this mildly prestigious, if non-essential assignment might in some way rehabilitate him. It seems condescending now, giving a toy to a child to keep him quiet for a long car ride. But I was naive, and I imagine I still carried some misplaced guilt over taking his job from him.
The shipping department's phone didn't even ring twice before Mrs. Gutierrez answered, breathless and anxious as always. As always, I tried to calm her constant panic. I may as well have asked the wind to stop blowing outside.
"Oh, Mila!" An informality, but one I've found makes employees much more comfortable being ordered about by former interns. "Mila, did you get my message? About Project Asa- or Iza- whatever?"
She laughed, a nervous chuckle. Maybe to suggest a shared joke over the silliness of the project name. Alternatively, to show that she understood that the project was a serious matter and she could only hope I would find amusement in her mangling of its title. I couldn't be sure. Casual conversation was not my forte. "I did, yes. How overdue is he? Is he normally late?"
"No, never! This is the first time! He always hands in his purchase reqs at four o'clock on the dot, every Friday. I was going to give him until I finished up everything else I had to do, but I can't wait any longer! Can you hear the wind outside?"
I assured her that I certainly could. "I appreciate the notice, Mary. Will you need any help getting home? I could call a driver, if you'd like."
"'Berto's waiting outside with the van -- but, oh, God, oh God, oh God. You don't think the basement will flood, will it? Maybe I should get a dolly and cart everything upstairs somewhere, don't you think?"
"I'm sure that won't be necessary. You'd better meet your husband before things get any worse, yes?" The central stock room was a warehouse larger than most houses, filled with equipment Mary was scarcely trained to look at, let alone transport herself. Too, the basements went on for several floors beneath it, and connected directly to the East River in several locations. I didn't have any confidence that logic could calm her, though, so I went with practicality instead. "I'm sure your daughter will be worried about you."
Practicality and outright manipulation. Oh, wouldn't our Sponsors be proud.
"Oh, you're right! When you're right, you're right, and you are ab-so-lutely right. Oh my God. I have to get going! Is there anything else I should be doing for Herman, or can it wait until Monday?"
I assured her I would take care of it personally, which placated her enough that she only needed another three minutes to say goodbye and hang up the phone. Record haste. In contrast, it took me nearly four to consider my options. In my defense, I split the time trying to reach him over Ægir's various communication networks, which accomplished very little except to make me sound somewhat foolish to all the other field agents listening in. Fortunately none of the new hires had ever met him, and Seanne herself was indisposed. I did not, just yet, want to broadcast that we had a missing operative. It's terrible for morale, worse still for the odds of any future independent ventures.
Waiting for the situation to resolve itself wasn't an option, clearly. Alerting our security staff would be proper protocol, but their director and I had never quite seen eye-to-eye, and he made no excuses about being a Sponsored mole. I didn't alert any of the extrafactional contractors we often worked with for the same reason -- Ægir had a shaky reputation in the Secret World at present, and the company could Ill afford to further jeopardize its credibility.
I couldn't go myself, because there was no one else in the building who could improvise a requisition order in Herman's absence. Seanne herself may have been able and willing, depending on how indisposed she was at the moment, but it seemed premature to alert her that her father's best friend had suddenly gone missing while on an assignment she didn't even know about.
In desperation I contacted ESI Labs, and hoped that they wouldn't ask too many questions. I'd hate to have to lie to them more than strictly necessary.
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Post by effinfitz on Mar 15, 2013 0:58:35 GMT -8
I circumnavigated that cave thirteen times widdershins, Book. Looked for enlightenment in tidal pools so Filthy black that my socks were soaked through with a chorus of fibrous whispers. "Let us in," they'd beg. "Let us in and we will show you answers from your own lips. Walk away from universal fetters. Stand forever at the third hour past the midnight of causality."
I confess I hardly listened. It's a poor private detective that ignores his senses, but no sane man ever took a telemarketer seriously. I let it go to that falsely sweet voicemail of the soul, where a thousand honeyed voices informed all comers that their call was very important. Please hold.
Still no sign of your predecessor, Book. I scouted that grotto over and again in the hemorrhaged light of dearly departed retinas, scented dead air only saved from being contagion by honeycomb filters spinning in my bronchi like prayer wheels. The only clues that suggested themselves were that body, those bloodstains, and the cliff overlooking it all. Circular circumspection only says so much, but I'll stenograph it here for the sake of completeness.
Dead bodies aren't rare here on the island, but headless ones didn't often find themselves so carefully arranged. If they could still talk, I reckon as the five feathered offerings around him would agree with me. It's a real trick to identify a corpse with no face, but it was a fresh one: new to the island. It was still a sallow shadow of pink, and decollation aside undamaged. The ragged stump of his neck suggested his decapitation may have been delivered by the maw of a lawnmower.
Gore stained his hands and sleeves, crusted deep under the fingernails with the featherous guts of faithful friends. The left hand had that index-finger callous one gets from pulling too many triggers too often. The skin was dry and worn, wrinkled and as tough as leather. The palms were blister-white and chafed, fingers still half-bent in a broken death grip. There was no dirt pressed on to them, no sea-scum. If he'd been pinned down he would have clawed and pushed against the ground, torn his hands to pieces. His right hand was still in a closed fist. I pried it open as respectfully as one can in such a situation, though odds were against him holding on to a clue at the expense of his head. Odds were wrong, as it happened. He'd held on to a few ripped strands of hair, flecks of scalp still hanging from them like wormbait.
Neither hand held a Book, disappointingly. Each had been holding something more substantial than they did now, so I was left to wonder who'd been robbing corpses so recently, and in such a cruddy damn neighborhood.
I kept circling. Blood was hard enough to see in poor lighting like this, but the black sludge leaking up from the tidal pools made it worse still. I've no shame in admitting that my eyesight isn't what I'd like it to be (and how could it be, Book? After seeing more knives than Ma Gamble kept in her kitchen drawer?), but in that Forest Between Worlds I've learned ways to make up the difference. Old, hunter-gatherer ways. Hivemind ways, ideas too massive to house in neurons and ion channels. But if you turned your brain sideways just right, held it open at just the right, impossible angles, some of those alien thoughts can pass through for the briefest of moments.
The real trick is in the mantra, the incantation of the jñānasattva to keep your mind mostly intact while the dharma train blazed a rail right through it. Things Man Was Not Meant To Know have a horribly poisonous effect on the things a man already did know, as it happens. So we all make like Dorothy and tell ourself there's no place like home, no place like home, all while the whole idea of "place" is stripped away from us faster than dignity in a prison shower.
When I could open my eyes again I could see gold, feel the subtle twitches of another slave's antenna, and knew that it had worked.
Every erythrocyte in the cave shone like an infant sun in a giant's clasped hands, now, and I could bend, follow that light like a baby bloom just after snowmelt. I could see the cheese grater flecks on the stone where I'd woken up. The thick, violent slashes in a circle around it, at a consistent radius of three feet and one sword arm, like someone had dipped a paintbrush in han artery and twirled it all about.
My headless friend was as black as a dress store mannequin, but gold still dusted his fingertips, highlighted his stump. Under his right leg was the kind of thick pool with heavy spotting around it that comes from a busted spray can. Slashes, again, but graceless ones. At least four. Thick, heavy hackjobs, like a butcher with a blunted cleaver.
There was a trail from the body, too. A barest glimmer of one, through the pools and out the cave's mouth. The first touch of daylight would crush my senses back to four dimensions, and I didn't t hold any illusions of being able to follow the scent like a bloodhound might. But I knew where to look next, anyway. I had a feeling I already knew what was on top of that cliff, why the stale wind blowing over its edge smelled like fool's gold and rimed couplets.
But I didn't have a ladder in my pocket. Think of me what you will, Book, but I can only jump so high.
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Post by effinfitz on Mar 16, 2013 23:03:10 GMT -8
Engineering Solutions and Innovations, LLC, was one of the subsidiaries that had come under Ægir's corporate umbrella following Solveig's death. Uninspiring name aside, they brought in an almost troublesomely healthy profit by designing weapons for world militaries -- weapons for their most Secret of divisions, so to speak. They only designed the prototypes, leaving mass production and its associated costs and headaches to their generally satisfied clients. Thorough testing of the designs were also ESI's responsibility, one they usually entrusted to an eccentric pair that very nearly lived in the field for all the time they spent there. Testing weapons, you understand.
It turned out, quite fortuitously, that Catalina Morales had an unhealthy fondness for dispatching zombies. Her more erudite half, Felicia Corazon, could rarely muster any fondness for anything unless she was allowed to make it explode. Aside from their expertise in monster hunting and engineering, they were generally uneducated, crude, and prone to legal trouble.
Perfect, in other words, for Solomon Island.
Miss Corazon was actually listed in the company directory under "On-site Development Supervisor," so I called her first. Let it ring. Listened to the voice mail message, took note of the "Ai! Eef it's a problem with something' exploding, eet's the product tester's fault." Wrote down Miss Morales's number as she read it off. Three cheers for passing the buck.
Catalina answered almost instantly. "Morales!"
Distracted. Hushed. Picked up on the first ring. I muttered a silent prayer that she wasn't just at the movie theater. "Catalina. How's the hunt?"
There was the briefest of pauses while she tried to think who I might be, punctuated by vindicating gull cries and waves in the distance. I had to keep her off-balance. She saw the phone number, knew I was with the company. "If you'd rather not answer it's fine. But we've a situation developing and you're the only one close enough to deal with it."
Another brief pause, then Catalina muttered, sighed. Instantly compliant, in the way of someone who learned early to be wary of people with authority. "Ai, si, of course. What's the problem?"
"Lost contact with one of our own. How far are you from the Sheriff's office?"
"Ah...maybe ten minutes, depending on traffic?" I heard Miss Corazon asking questions in the background. Time to hurry, before Catalina thought to follow up on any of them.
"Good, call me when you get there for further directions. Be safe."
I disconnected even as she agreed with me. Time was of even more of the essence, now. It had occurred to me that I knew absolutely nothing of how Herman's operation worked, and Mary had already left for the night.
I reached for my keys and made for the nearest elevator. It was time for some detective work.
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Post by effinfitz on Mar 18, 2013 22:56:41 GMT -8
As soon as I stepped into fresh air and the coast and the waves Newtonian physics reasserted itself with a gunshot to the occiput, reality bullets that rushed down the arteries like suspended embolisms, banged around like bumper cars on an icy interstate before settling in my bladder, spent and bloated.
I unzipped and pissed on the beach, Book, while lightless angles put up the pillar of heaven and chiseled out the horizon. Came out like roofing nails and bubblegum. It was glorious. Angervadil and the sunless night. Grief-wading, anguish-streaming; damn thing deserved a saga I wasn't qualified to write and scribbled these liner notes to anyway. My only regret was that I couldn't properly wash my hands of it after, but I hoped the sea wouldn't mind serving as the poor man's antiseptic. Compared to all the other indignities heap on her, I reckoned as this one might at least be forgivable.
As the adulterer said when he asked his wife to do the dishes.
I felt refreshed enough after to think clearly, so when the pressure in the back of my head never receded I nodded to myself and grunted. A few years of lonely is plenty long enough to learn to act like you're a silver screen hero, keeping the story moving by narrating it to yourself in gravel tones and steely glares. But the Duke never had black veins throbbing in his orbits, never had his fifty-yard stare turned to fifty shades of dead colors howling like ghosts from a spectral graveyard.
There were places on the island like this -- places all over the world, but they were usually small and isolated and not terribly prone to having me blindly stumble into them. Places where the world slipped away in a puddle of drool from some nameless Sleeper's suppurating pharynx. Places where the flesh-and-sinew threat of keewaqu and nábleikr weren't the embodied bogeymen of local legend but vested symbols of the swirling entropy locked in the nightmares of the universe. Dangerous places. All of Solomon Island's buried in monsters, but the ones here were of the kind that made superheroes like myself want to travel in groups.
I might have called someone, Book, if I had your predecessor with me. No slight intended, but he had all my contact information. One of a thousand reasons I'd prefer to find him again. But he wasn't here, and between us and whatever direction he was moving in were the walls of Smuggler's Scar, a rather nasty row of cliffs that the sea had started to eat holes in before realizing it wasn't worth the effort. Every pit and cavity held mouthless faces with a thousand gibbering voices, ready for some face time with the first honey roasted nut to roll by --
Stop looking at me like that. Go be someone else's Book if you're going to get all critical on me. I'll let you think about that while I go hug a madman and tell him he's forgiven.
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Post by effinfitz on Mar 19, 2013 23:50:18 GMT -8
It took thirty five seconds for the elevator to travel from the thirty-second floor to the first basement, a hollowed-out section of foundation that housed Mary and several other mundane concerns. By the twelfth floor I decided that I'd need help for the office side of the operation, too. Facing all the same disclaimers and restrictions to navigate as when I was selecting a field team, I couldn't think of a solid idea of whom to call until I was unlocking Mary's door. Barely over a minute from elevator to office.
It was unconscious, but I couldn't help but to try for stealth as I rummaged throu the spilling chaos of Mary's filing system. It felt like I was breaking in. Or, no. I was, most certainly, breaking in. Anyone soothed by the fact that it was the best option was far further down the sociopath scale than I.
A necessary evil was, by definition, still evil. Yes?
Mary's paperwork was still actually paper -- a back-up that did as little to reassure her as it did to keep them secure. But she was of that generation that proclaimed the greatness of computers while sending their mail in stamped envelopes, and her usefulness was such that we'd been willing to overlook her adoration for the antiquated.
I was revisiting that opinion at present, though.
I was flipping through folder after folder in a filing cabinet big enough to move my apartment into, looking for Dieter's most recent communication. Last Friday would have been the nineteenth -- there! -- and four o'clock was near the end of office hours. So it'd be near the end, and -- no, no. Mary always worked late. Not so far back. My hand was getting sore just from pulling random papers and reading the time stamp on them. Mary surely did this with both hands, but my other was busy calling the FBI's New York City headquarters. I hardly listened to the other end, navigating bureaucracy on autopilot and concentrating on my search.
"Hello, yes. Cyber division, please." Preposterous name. What was this? No, just a perishable supply request. The Starbucks on the eighteenth floor was low on creamer. Yesterday.
"Dawson, was it? Mila Cameron, Ægir Communications. Fine, thanks, and you?" I refiled an order for updated heat sinks, from tech support. Eleven in the morning.
"Yes, sorry about the late hour. We've been having a slight issue with someone hacking our front page with wholly inappropriate material. I was hoping you might be able to trace an IP address for me." Pizza for a department lunch party. You could put that on a purchase req?
"I'm well aware of that, yes, thank you. This does present a clear and present issue for us, though, and we need to follow up on it directly as well. I'm sure I don't understand the security concerns as well as Mr. Martinique does, though. Would you like me to put him on?" A request for fire resistant suits from engineering. Hm. Two o'clock.
"I'm so glad we could work this out, yes, thank you. You have a pen with you?" I had to pause a moment as I checked my phone for the number. I sincerely hoped it didn't belong to some donated library computer. I read it off, listens to him repeat it back to me.
"Yes, please do. Just the contact information will do. I'll stay on the line." Another request from engineering. Twelve new fire extinguishers. Hm. Two thirty-eight.
"Lucy Randall? No, no. Just give me the numbers, I'll remember them." There! A requisition with Herman's cribbed shorthand, and Project: ÆSIR written in the department heading. Perfect. "Yes, that will be all, Dawson, thank you very much. And don't worry, I'm sure you'll forget all about this after a cup of coffee, yes? Wonderful. Good night."
I hung up as I slammed the file cabinet closed, stopping only to return everything to how I'd found it before rushing back to my own office. Before anyone could see me, really.
Guilty conscience. I started to feel better when the elevator lifted out of the basement and I could see the sky outside rough the windows. Still three minutes and change before Miss Morales expected to reach the Sheriff's department.
I dialed a new number on my phone while it was still fresh on my mind. A young girl -- or, rather, near my own age -- answered, wide awake and suspicious. I put on my best business smile and projected it through the phone.
"Hey there. Lucy Randall? Mila Cameron, Ægir Communications. Don't hang up, please. I know where you do your laundry."
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Post by effinfitz on Mar 20, 2013 23:19:45 GMT -8
I'll spare you all the details, Book, because some things aren't hardly worth the remembering. There was a hateful darkness and a lashing of teeth, and somewhere in the mess of me giving the slippery bugger a hug and telling him that it's all good my spleen ruptured. Quick way to go. Hurt like you'd expect. Saw Glory. Got pulled to the side, heard a thousand buzzing wings tell me "not yet."
Not yet.
I replied that I had figured as much, and felt tiny feathered legs pick me up by the soulscruff and give me a shove. I fell apart and rolled with it, skimmed the surface of the world like drops of water over a man-o'-war's membrane. The landscape blurred and ran by like under the a Blackbird's blades. I felt the anima as I grew closer. Felt the ripple all around, matter and magic fighting to fill the little void my death had left. Finally reached the sphincter between life and death and squeezed back through, body building itself back together one molecule at a time.
Born again, Book. No better than before.
Next to me was the Duke himself, eating baked beans over a campfire while a surplus of the dead milled around the highway in front of him. I said howdy. He said steady on, Pilgrim. I left it at that.
There was a Sherriff's office up the road some, though the road was, as mentioned, less than friendly. I didn't take more than two steps in before the first pack rounded on me, all at once like a rehearsed performance. Synchronized cannibalism. Bits of skin rotting and flaking off onto clothes that hadn't been clean since Judgement Day debuted its Solomon Island teaser track, claimed the living from a life of rug rats and cable bills and spat out the shells all over our backyards.
Shells.
Used to be neighbors. Family friends. Relatives. Uninvited dinner guests -- reckon as they still had that going for them. Broken teeth and splintered fingers, torn clothes and ragged voices all reaching for me as I took Solomon Road north. These weren't monsters, Book. These were beggars looking for a pound of flesh I couldn't spare, dragging themselves out from the shelter of overturned cars and reaching for the hem of my garment. Three feet of steel swung from my hip, a reincarnated plough share that I'd beaten into a blade for purposes of poor karma. I couldn't draw her, though. Not on neighbors.
Didn't need to.
Every new nobody that's swallowed some honey and signed their senses away gets thrown out here to get their first merit badges. The Duke guarded the gate and pointed them in the right direction, fight-or-flight and the proportional strength of a nascent divinity did the rest. After six months of using Kingsmouth and Solomon Island for training day the shamblers on this road would fall apart if you so much as looked at them the wrong way. And I had a thousand compound eyes looking out, Book. Lord forgive me.
They couldn't even get close enough to shake my hand, and I never had to lift a finger. The rest of my night hadn't been any better -- I had time to realize this on the way up, stepping around all the broken bits and pieces as they fell on the road in front of me -- and I reckoned I couldn't blame the guards at the Sheriff's little enclave for getting antsy when I got close. I tell all the ladies that I don't look much better than half-dead on the best days, Book, and if you don't understand that then you just don't realize what an understatement it is.
My luck that Deputy Kaboodle was awake then, and between him shouting hello and me waving for him to shut up before someone thought we knew each other the guards figured I was lively enough to be let in. Nice people, really. Wouldn't invite them for Christmas dinner, maybe, but wouldn't turn them away neither.
Reckons as that's as much as we can ask for, these days. That and maybe making it to next Christmas.
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Post by effinfitz on Mar 23, 2013 0:12:01 GMT -8
Lucy lived with her mother in Fort Greene. Ten minutes away, let's say. Another five to grab her purse and make an excuse to her mother. A couple more to find a place to park and get escorted upstairs by security. Twenty minutes, altogether, to come up with a presentation that didn't send her running away in terror.
Clearly, more lying would be necessary.
I filled out a blank requisition form while I thought on that, simply copying information down from Dieter' original script. Sundries, mostly. Food. Water filters. Underwear of varying sizes, which I admit I hadn't even considered. I doubted Herman would simply guess measurements. Or quantities, for that matter. He had to have had some way of contacting --
I answered the phone before it actually rang. Secretary's reflexes, one supposes. It had lit up, and I recognized the number. "You're there?"
"Ai, si. Es an angry crowd tonight. Some drunk just walked out. What do you need?"
I considered. Went for broke. "Hand the phone to the Sheriff, if would. I'll talk to her directly."
She did, and I reintroduced myself to Sheriff Bannerman. She didn't remember me. Under the circumstances, I couldn't blame her. Still, I managed to soothe her immediate suspicions and get her talking about the food deliveries. She wasn't terribly knowledgeable. Or believable, but at this point I'd both heard and encountered far more fantastic things. So the news that the small survivor's enclave and Herman communicated by messenger ravens -- not a trick I thought they could be trained to do -- or that the supplies were dropped off by a vagrant native weren't so much terribly shocking as terribly unhelpful.
Of course, if I'd simply thought to ask her for an address earlier on in the conversation, we may have saved quite a bit of time. Lesson learned.
Herman was based out of a larger house just south of the Sheriff and through a rather claustrophobic tunnel. Not far at all. I thanked her, assured her we'd take care of her shipment immediately, and asked to speak to my field agent again.
"Morales."
"You heard the directions?"
"Si. Quick walk, if the roads are clear."
"Excellent. Call me when you get there, please."
I cut the call -- the sort of bullshit maneuver that implies authority when one had no time to earn respect. I put it on my to-do list for later. More coals.
I had no time to worry about it, though. A sharp knock preceded someone opening my door. Security. I recognized the uniform if not the face. A smaller body peeked out from around his arm. A young girl with tragically mussed up hair and dressed in thrift store chic. Glasses thick enough to stop bullets.
I smiled. "Miss Randall. Do please come on in."
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Post by effinfitz on Mar 25, 2013 0:41:39 GMT -8
Getting dressed down by your hometown is the pits, Book. Don't let anyone tell you different. Sheriff looked at me like I was one of the boys after a three week bender made them think their sedan could double as a fishing boat. Looked at me down her nose and fired off a "Waddya want?"
No place like home, Book.
I couldn't really think of much to say to that. I'd already gotten what I needed: hungry faces. Empty water jugs left out and open in the open, in case it rained. Clothes so soiled it was the shitstains what held them together. Guards outside waiting to the last before firing, not about to waste any shots. Supplies low.
She was still dressing me down. I heard it, but it wasn't worth remembering past the bit about me being late and empty handed. See, Book? Never can hold on to anything unless I write it down. And keep it from walking off. Have to work on that.
I went ahead and mentioned that I had a long day, asked if she'd seen our guy. Figured it was a guy. It's always a guy.
It was a guy.
She gave me a queer look, not all that terribly unexpected. Said he was probably still holed up in his safe house with his birds. Told her that was well and good, but there were probably two whole houses on the islands that could house a person and pet, each on opposite jack-ass ends of everything. That look got even funnier, and even some of the others started turning around to wonder what I was on about. Brought back old, old thoughts of the boy who spoke to flowers in winter and was deafened by spring colors. I could see it on their faces, and Sheriff could to. She shut them up with a glare that could strip paint and gave me a gentle shove out the door.
"Gowan home, Gamble," is what she told me.
I'm still forgiving her for that.
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Post by effinfitz on Mar 26, 2013 22:48:36 GMT -8
Lucy was the first pleasant surprise all evening. She apologized for being late, saying the weather outside had gotten worse and e was driving like an idiot. That everyone was doing their Friday night DUI celebration probably didn't help. Once I managed to convince her that she wasn't in any danger of being arrested, sued, or dumped over the Brooklyn Bridge she was even interested in what I had to say. A novel experience for a secretary, to be sure.
She was quiet at first, and I had to tease out her first words with assurances and thinly-veiled compliments. Smart people like being recognized as such, so when I told her I didn't have anyone else qualified to help it was both true and dishonest. She asked what I needed help with, nervously, and I explained that we had a missing employee, and needed to retrace his steps with only the barest of information. She nodded, asked why I didn't go to the police. Smart.
"Our man's quite a ways away from police jurisdiction, sadly."
She blinked, paused, stalled for time while she pretended to figure out what that meant. I turned my laptop to her, web browser open, tabs for everything from Herman's employee profile to the known details of ÆSIR's operations. Which were few, but there was enough information that I had a small concern former safety if she didn't take the job.
She was a quick study. "Wait, there's a quarantined island in Maryland?"
"It's a long story. I'd be happy to tell you all about it after we find our employee. Deal?"
She considered, sitting there in one of the office chairs in front of my desk. Looking between the information on my monitor and my face. I was sitting on the desk over her, one of the few ways I've ever been able to look down on people. I quirked one eyebrow, pressing the question.
She was still thinking when my phone rang. Miss Morales. I answered without ever breaking eye contact. "There already?"
"Almost. Someone's cleared the road ahead of us. Recently."
That didn't seem terribly problematic. Even at these later hours, there would be Faction representatives patrolling the island on their little errands.
"Excellent. Take advantage of it. Give the details to my assistant, if you can."
She replied but I couldn't hear it, already handing off the phone to Lucy. She looked at it, then me, like I was crazy. But curiosity and fear are strong motivators. She took the phone.
"Hey! Ah, this...this is Lucy. What's up?"
Phone skills minimal. We'd have to work on that. I watched her response as Morales updated her -- watched her eyes widen. Her mouth hang open. She'd be hearing about zombies, then. Perhaps I should have warned her.
No. She'd have ran.
I took my laptop back, started going through all our latest reports form the Island. Known Faction operatives. Movements of the various monster groups. Weather. Illnesses. Anything that might have caused us to lose contact with Herman. I used the landline phone the office came with it try and reach the listed contact number, see if he'd maybe lost service. It rang, so no. But no answer. A prompt to leave a message in a curt, scratchy, still-accented voice. I left one, asking him to please call us back. Gave the time, date. My office number. Then I hung up, and tried again on the listed house phone.
Same results. Same response.
Solomon Island was a hostile environment, true. But Herman wasn't prone to either mistakes or panic, and everything I pulled up suggested that the status quo in his area hadn't changed much at all in the past two weeks. No danger, then.
Which meant he'd left voluntarily.
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Post by effinfitz on Mar 28, 2013 22:59:15 GMT -8
I could have made better time, sure, but I needed as much of the hourglass as I could hold to calm my nerves and get my bearings straight. So I sent myself rudderless down Solomon Road, backtracking past the Duke and his deathless admirers, feeling the agitation cut my timer short. Felt tired ventricles beat too fast and spread the sickness about. I tried to claim some Zen by bringing rest to the restless, casual swipes with a Dragon's claw that cut the threads animating them like sinew and chicken wire. It was like looking down at the heavens, Book: by trying, failing.
When I was in spitting distance of the tunnel to southern half of the island the Dragon asked me why I even needed his claw. Told him to defend myself, of course, which was a lie. He laughed and told me I didn't need him at all, then, and curled up to sleep for the night, which made my devious efforts all but impossible. This all made me feel a little better, which wasn't the point but twice as welcome. Felt my pulse slow down, felt the cold sweat dry away like afterbirth in a sunlamp.
The shamblers would look at me now, grey eyes blind, then just turn back and keep on swatting at the leafless skeletons they were mistaking for prey.
I prayed for them, because that's what one does, and because there's not much else to do in a dark tunnel other than pray and move forward. There wasn't any wind here to strip away a brimstone stink coming from the other side, no sea breeze to usher a fisherman home. Just a slice of grey-black sky at the other end of nothing at all, bleeding fog and siren song into a one-way empty space.
I walked towards it.
Sure, I as much as had to. But that's never been a selling motivation for anyone in history unless their needs were wants as well, and I certainly didn't want to. Call it childish, but as you're doing that let me explain.
I've been nearly everywhere, Book, fought things so forgotten they didn'tevenhave names anymore. There's not much left this world or any other world what connects to it can show me that I haven't seen -- but some things you're smart enough not to look at twice. You burn the Book that kept it for you and throw the ashes to the tide. Mind's eye blind spot. The ones that don't grow scar-hide armor so thick they can't feel the wind on their face anymore, and that's even worse.
If you're human things will hurt, Book. There's no more shame than joy in it.
I kept my eyes closed when a rush of half-remembered, half-rotten faces tried to dash past me. They ignored me as much as I ignored them, and the barnacle call behind them like a war-pig's conch. Another hand took mine and moved it to my sidearm, moved my sword in every direction at once. Stopped traffic. I didn't look, Book, just ignored the signals and plowed though. The war-pig squealed like a boiled lobster and that was the end of it.
My sword was back at my side, no longer carving a path through the mu-space for my mind to travel. My heartbeat had calmed down again, and if the nerves were numb I could at least still feel the current in my veins, telling me to go west, young man.
I looked up, saw the house. Breathed it all in. Still hurt, and that's all the reassuring I needed to step forward.
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Post by effinfitz on Mar 30, 2013 23:21:35 GMT -8
Catalina stayed in contact with us for the rest of the trek, Lucy opting to turn on the speakerphone rather than update me periodically. A bit distracting, but understandable. I gave up any further pretense of not listening when Morales reported that they were approaching the tunnel.
"Some zombies here. One second."
Lucy looked up at me, face an unhealthy shade of green. This may have been a bit much for her to take in all at once. I was leaning against a corner of the desk, arms crossed, listening. I nodded, blinked once in acknowledgement of Lucy's understandable concern. I might have tried to explain how Morales and Corazon were in no danger, but the encounter would be over long before I finished talking.
She looked like she might have used a hug. Poor girl. I reached out with one arm, pressed the mute button so that the field team wouldn't hear anything.
Lucy yelped at the first shots.
Distinct cracks. Two. Three. Five. Rifle fire, drawing them out. The first shot would have only wounded the target. By the second or third, though, the anima they were channeling into each shot should have easily dropped a single zombie. The pack might have been half a dozen strong, given previous field reports and the number of distinct voices one could hear groaning through Morales's earpiece. Only four, now, taking the opening fire into account. Then the basso roar of a wide-gauge shotgun, more distant than the rifle fire. That would be Corazon, then, probably moving to flank the zombies as they lurched after Morales. Too scattered for a single shot to dispatch them all. There was still one gurgling voice in the background. Then a very wet, very explosive crunch. Morales, by the sound quality. Rifle butting the last of them.
Not the last. Not at this hour.
Lucy looked back up after only a moment of silence, pale and hyperventilating. She looked about ready to either scream or ask a question, but I held up a finger for silence that she was thankfully still composed enough to respect.
"Looks all clear, Miss! We're moving -- ai, Dios mio."
I closed my eyes, sighed. Of course. Reports indicated no recent surges in monster activity: we were past due for one now. It was just our poor fortune that our field agents were on the main road, and that their gunfire had attracted the rest of the pack. There had to be at least a score of them approaching Cat's position, just judging by the voices and the barely audible crunch of grass and dead leaves under the zombies' feet.
I unmuted the phone. "Morales! The tunnel. Is it clear?"
A moment's silence from her as she swung around to check. "Si! looks clear!"
"Lead them down that way, slowly. Funnel them. If you've any explosives they'll be twice as effective there, yes?"
Rifle fire. Not single, controlled shots anymore. Bursts. Full auto spreads. I wondered just how much ammo she was carrying. "Understood! Tink! We're backing up!" A response that I couldn't make out -- my Spanish was nonexistent. Certainly angry, though. With a touch of defiance to it. The very opposite of dismissive, then, which meant she was following my advice.
Good.
I muted the line again, paying only token attention to the assault rifle's enfilade and the shotgun's punctuating fire. Taking out strays that had gotten too close, likely. The zombies couldn't actually fear death, by definition, or else I'd suggest that Corazon was directing traffic for Morales's benefit. The was little enough conversation between them. A coordinated team, used to working with each other.
Lucy looked about ready to pass out.
I smiled in a way that probably wasn't half so reassuring as I'd hoped it would be, took a twenty from a money clip I keep for unplanned tips and bribes, handed it to her. She looked up.
"I'll never ask you to do this again, I promise, but it's been a long night. There's a twenty-four hour Starbucks on the twenty-seventh floor. Opposite side of the building -- just head towards the river. Ask security if you need any more directions. Think you're up to it?"
She looked at me, uncomprehending. Then she shook her head, cleared it, and nodded. Assured me she would be right back.
I turned back to the laptop as soon as she left. I tentatively believed she would return, but a test of her conviction at this point seemed prudent. Meanwhile, I busied myself finding anything at all about the house itself, for whenever the agents from ESI finished clearing the throng. They weren't in any danger, of course. Even I'd survived zombie onslaughts, and I was hardly a combat operative.
Twenty zombies, I'd guessed earlier. Another five minutes to deal with them and get to Herman's safe house. It would take Lucy maybe eight to get coffee and come back, assuming she planned to return at all. Time enough for them to get inside and out of danger.
Gunshots again. My head snapped up, a terrible reaction. From the window -- but no. Not gunfire. Rain, hammering the window every bit as fierce.
Sandy had arrived. Delightful.
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Post by effinfitz on Apr 1, 2013 23:00:18 GMT -8
For too long and a half I stood over the body, blade bared and bleeding, wondering how to move forward. All around me swarmed overly amiable neighbors that had once sworn on their mothers' graves that they'd only visit over their own dead bodies, clawing at the trees and the fence like drunken stagehands trying to tear the whole damned theater down. Maybe because they were trying to get to me. Maybe because the slaughterhouse sounds spilling out from the tunnel up the road had gotten them agitated. There was certainly a convergence happening. I could hear the shield brothers of the pale man I'd just gutted bellowing in the distance, sharkskin berserkers egging on their thralls. Wasn't quite yet the full moon, so something else was riling them hereabouts. But they stayed just out of reach, rancid about it. Wild dogs on a foreign leash.
Ordinarily I'd put pacifying them at a higher priority than investigating, what with the Sheriff's right up the road there. But whoever was holding the tunnel was packing anima, making them overqualified to handle a horde or two like this. They'd just as likely head my way when they ran out of things to shoot at or with, so it made more sense for me to get a head start and make the place look nice for them.
Of course, the place would be sealed up tighter than an only daughter on a warm night. Reinforced to keep out intruders. Thorough job, too. When I tugged at the door the House just laughed at me: "Oh, sure, now you want to come in?"
I circled the house, hand on the wall to feel her heartbeat, soothe it calm. There's no sense talking to a certain kind of angry, Book, and there're few words sharper than the ones coiled around a jilted lover's doorstep. Razorwire welcome, and the House was at that mad and then some. "Shuttered up alone and lonesome," she told me. "Every cherished friend and memory flying off in opposite directions with cross-eyed, cross-fingered promises to come back soon. Wait for me, I'll come back soon."
My fingers pushed through a blackened window pane, and she drew first blood. Pushed further and only felt brick, left a hot lead handprint on her like a lipstick smear and kept going, leaving my mark. Behind me the mob caught the scent, redoubled their frothing and flailing, and came no closer for it.
I made a full circuit, coming back to the front door with one hand bleeding like stink and the other so tired of bearing arms that the fingers had gone numb. Still more accusations, Book. Your predecessor might have been able to tell me how many years she'd been sitting here with nothing but angry thoughts for company. How many years she'd been practicing this speech. "Hopeful waiting turns to festering patience and a hot-coal cautery over the original affection," spoke the leaves clogging her gutter. "Family dinners and holidays make way for cold guilt creep. Every breath chokes on an accusation:
"Where did you go? What was so important?"
I moved to cut off the telling, feet remembering old steps and arms recalling the motions of a younger man who would still smile at sneaking in after curfew. The tree growing outside my bedroom window was taller now, and if I wasn't quite as limber now I had a world's borrowed life-breath to make up the difference. Whatever was inside could wait a minute longer for me to get there, I reckoned, and I'd be much rather hear any grievances the past still held against the gift of my presence in person.
I let the neighbors continue to gather, still clawing in the dust, bloodstained gums spilling drool on the fenceposts.
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Post by effinfitz on Apr 4, 2013 2:02:25 GMT -8
I had to adjust estimates. The sudden rain would probably elicit some smalltalk, and the barista on duty was a college sophomore with far too much to say to women in his age group. Lucy seemed shy and overwhelmed, too much so to talk. Still, he could delay the preparation long enough to try.
Give her another three minutes, then.
Just as well. Solomon Island seemed to be exempt from global weather patterns, but the uptick in local activity exceeded my estimates by a shameful margin. Morales had been forced to give up her rifle for swordplay -- she'd run out of ammunition before running out of targets. Corazon's shotgun was still active, though. Odd. I was familiar with shotguns, and even with the slower rate of fire she couldn't have been carrying enough shells to last this long in a pitched battle.
Alternate ammunition system? Would have to ask. Later.
"Another wave's coming from the south! We won't be able to hold this spot."
I considered. Finding Herman at the expense of of the nearby survivor's enclave wasn't a fair exchange by any measure. For all their abilities, the field agents did have practical limitations to how long they could hold off a determined assault. In the background noise, barely audible over the phone's attempt to translate close-ranged gunfire and violent dismemberment, was the basso profundo roar of one of the sea-creatures who marshaled the zombies. "Draug," the reports had dubbed them. The one making noise was likely between one and two stories tall, all but immune to conventional weaponry and strong enough to swat aside the abandoned cars the once cluttered the roads with only the briefest of pauses.
Morales and Corazon would have slaughtered it in seconds at full strength. Now, low on ammunition and reaching peak fatigue, they probably wouldn't survive the encounter. Granted, death was only a temporary setback, but...
I sighed, cut the call just as a second, answering roar came over the speaker. Dialed a new number.
"Ægir Communications. Don't hang up. You still have agents at the Amusement Park, yes?"
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