Black Knight 02 - Back in Black (26 page)

Then he pulled his pants up. He looked around for a moment, and noted the absence of his hat. It was nowhere in sight. He stumbled forward through swirling smoke, tripping over fallen bathroom doors, and out into the flaming wreckage of Stiltzkin’s.

Memories of the Djibouti neohuman riots trampled into his mind as he saw the utter devastation wrought by the attack. Fires blazed everywhere, outnumbered only by the bodies that lay crumpled under debris, draped over the bar, scattered in pieces. He saw one young neohuman lying at an impossible angle, back broken, slowly dying, blood bubbling from his mouth. Noose tried to ignore the groans and screams, the cries for help.

Noose started toward the street, then stopped, holding a hand to his bloody head. His eyes scoured the debris and flames, checking the dismembered corpses that lay sprawled about him. He limped to the nearest form and turned it over to reveal half the face of a dwarf. He moved to another body, found another dwarf, and yet another. All around him he could see only dwarven bodies.

Above the crackling of the flames, a faint wail of sirens grew louder, meshing hauntingly with the cries of the dying. Noose scowled in frustration, and paused in his examination of another body. He spun around, scanning the surrounding ruins, not finding what he sought.

Hands clenched, Noose walked hesitantly across the body- and rubble-strewn dance floor. He raised his arms to ward off the heat from the flames across the bar. One barely conscious victim tugged at the hem of his duster, but Noose only grimaced and pulled away from a face he didn’t know. Compassion makes for good priests, not mercenaries.

He stomped through the fallen doorway and out onto the sidewalk. The sirens neared, screaming now, no more than a block away. He looked around the street, his vision blurred, at burning human and genny bodies slumped amidst chunks of concrete, plastic fragments, and an overturned ground vehicle melted almost beyond recognition. His eyes focused on the rundown apartment building across the street, whose inhabitants stared wide-eyed through shattered windows. Except for one apartment on the third floor.

As gawking neighbors gathered around the decimated club, Noose walked stiffly across the debris-ridden street and around the apartment building. He found the rear entrance open and showing signs of forced entry. The short walk had cleared his head somewhat. He bent down to a puddle, splashing rainwater on his face. Reaching under his duster, he pulled out his Colt Stormer 11mm automag. It was bloody. He probed beneath his coat again, and found a tender wound at his side. Gritting his teeth, he walked up the stairs to the third floor, gun held tightly.

After only a few moments he found the open doorway. Walking inside the vacant apartment, his experienced eyes swiftly cataloged the few contents: spent cannon shells, discarded magazines, missile storage tube, crumpled Kokastik pack and butts, and a can of coagulant spray. Blast burns covered the ceiling near the shattered windows.

“Messy,” he muttered, walking over to the window. He looked out just in time to see paramedics running from ambulances into the burning club. Police skycars with flashing lights hovered to the ground and disgorged cops who pushed gawkers away from the fires. The dull whine of a heavy aerodyne grew louder.

Noose turned back to the apartment and walked into the bathroom. He glanced in the mirror and noticed that he looked even worse than he felt. A gash bled above his left eye, and water, blood, and filth soaked his hair. He bent over the sink and splashed his face with water.
 

Returning to the main room, Noose collected several items. As he retrieved the coagulant spray, he saw the pool of blood by the inner wall. He knelt down beside it and found the shard of bloody plastic. Smiling, he retrieved it, too.

Noose cast one last glance around the room and left. He retraced his steps down the stairs, holstered the Stormer, and walked back out to the street.

A large crowd strained behind the freshly-erected police lines, curious people not satisfied with the death and misery beamed into their apartments from around the world. The citizens of the Regional Atlanta Metroplex wanted more mayhem than the news reported about illegal German urban jousting tournaments, neobeast swarms in the ruins of Djibouti, Sicilian blood riots, and Chinese warlord conflicts. They wanted their gore up close and personal. Tonight, there was more than enough gore to go around. Enough to sate a diehard Kreugermaniac.

Noose frowned, and pushed his way to the front of the crowd. Standing just behind the yellow tape line, he watched as paramedics ran to and fro amidst the rubble inside the club. A row of bodies already lined the sidewalk. One paramedic pushed a stretcher holding a bleeding survivor into a medical aerodyne. Its engines whined to life as he slid the door shut.

Two other medical craft hummed softly on the ground nearby and a fourth hovered overhead, sharing the airspace with two news vehicles and an intimidating police gunship. Fire engines sprayed down the dwindling flames, police questioned witnesses. Noose saw one of the onlookers pointing to the apartment building.

The dwarf pushed his way out of the crowd, the missile tube concealed under his duster, and limped off down the street.

The Chosen

By John G. Hartness

Chapter 1

I sensed him before I saw him. I always do. I was just sitting there, minding my own business, playing a little blackjack when I felt his presence over my right shoulder.
 

“Hi, Lucky.”
 

“Big A.”
 

I hate that. He always has to go there right away. And he’s supposed to be subtle. Ass.
 

“Been here long?” He asked.
 

“A while. Playing a little cards. You?”

“Well, you know me, Big A, I’ve got a place here. I love this town. Everything about it just calls to me.”
 

“Yeah, I think I heard that somewhere.”
 

I finally glanced over and gave him the satisfaction of a look. A new look for him this time around – red riding leathers, no helmet of course, black boots, black hair tied back in a ponytail and sunglasses. The sunglasses were kind of a given, I suppose.
 

“Nice outfit. You look like one of the cavemen in that insurance commercial.”
 

“Thanks. You, as always, look well put-together.”
 

I’ve never been sure how to take his compliments, and I wasn’t in Las Vegas to think, so I just went for face value. I was wearing a worn t-shirt I’d picked up at a roadside store somewhere in Montana sometime in the past, and a thrift store work shirt with the “arry” over the left breast pocket. I don’t know if it used to say “Larry” or “Harry.” Neither one was my name; I just gave Goodwill $2.99 for the shirt.
 

“Thanks.”
 

For once he didn’t press the issue and stopped talking, just sat beside me and slid the dealer a hundred. . So we played blackjack together for a while. Me playing green chips, him moving quickly from green to black to purple all the way up to the yellow $1,000 chips in a couple of short hours. He lost just enough hands to keep from getting thrown out, but not quite enough to keep the eye in the sky from getting suspicious.
 

“A, looks like we’ve got company.”

“You got a mouse in your pocket? I’m not the one that’s been sitting here counting cards for three hours.”

“Yeah, but I’m not the one who took twenty grand in chips out of my safe deposit box this morning. Chips, I might add, that came from a casino that was demolished a couple decades ago.”
 

I hate that he always has more information than he rightfully should. I suppose, to give him his due, that he does have people literally everywhere in this town. But it’s still annoying. I’ll grant that visiting a box that hasn’t been touched in 25 years might raise an eyebrow or two, but I’m still blaming the attention of the lummox in the off-the-rack suit on my unwanted companion’s unabashed card-counting. Either way, the brutes in suits might have had a few questions for me that I wasn’t fully prepared to answer at exactly that moment, so I looked at my old pal Lucky.
 

“Keys?”

“Might I suggest California? I hear San Francisco’s nice this time of year, and you know how much you love seafood. Why not check out Fisherman’s Wharf, visit Alcatraz, you know, see the sights a little. My bike’s out front. You’ll know which one. You owe me.”

“We’d have to be even for me to owe you. And we’re not even. This doesn’t even come close. Nowhere near to close.”

“You really know how to wound a guy, Big A.”
 

“Bite me.” With that, I grabbed Lucky’s keys from the table, tossed a green chip to the dealer and headed for the cage. I spotted another security goon between me and the cage, so I decided on discretion as the better part of valor, tossed a couple grand in chips into the air and used the resulting pandemonium to make my less-than-subtle way to the exit. As I glanced back towards the table where I had left Lucky, I noticed that he and the two guards were having a beer and yukking it up like long-lost frat brothers. Which for all I knew, they might have been.
 

He was right; I picked out his bike right away. It was a big, loud ostentatious black thing with flames painted on the gas tank. Subtle. I swear the thing looked
hungry
. I put the key in the ignition (an apple key chain? Really?) and headed South down the Strip, putting California firmly behind me as I remembered Lucky suggesting it. I’m not a contrary person by nature, but I learned a long time ago that it was a pretty safe bet to do the opposite of anything that Lucky wanted me to do.
 

Okay, so looking back on it, maybe opening a 25-year-old lock box wasn’t exactly the most under the radar move I could have made. I know that people take out safe deposit boxes in this town all the time. But not all of them pay the rent on those boxes with automatic debits from numbered accounts. And I just had the bad luck to run into the same security guard that rented me the box the first time, on his first day of the job 25 years ago. Little bugger had a good memory, that’s for sure. And I guess I hadn’t changed much since then. Ok, make that not at all. But I’m still blaming Lucky. After all, he’s been taking the blame for things for millennia now, so what’s one more little incident?
 

Maybe I should back up a little. This is as good a time as any for introductions. My name is Adam. No, I don’t have a last name. Yes,
that
Adam. No really, you can feel for the rib if you like. But it’s better if you don’t. I’m ticklish.
 

Chapter 2

I rode south a few hours. Just outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico, I pulled over to watch the sunset. And think. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Lucky, or Lucypher if we wanted to be precise about it, to show up unannounced, but this time I hadn’t seen him in years. I wondered what he wanted. He always wants something, and he usually gets it. And it’s usually not good either to be the one who gives it to him or to be between him and his goals. It’s better to sit on the sidelines and watch the carnage, hoping not to get too much splatter on your shoes.
 

That’s what I’ve done for years – watch. I’ve watched people grow from just a couple to billions of huddled masses, yearning for something or another. I’ve watched people kill each other over pennies in the street and I’ve watched people give their last breath to help a stranger. And through it all, ever since the Garden, Lucky has been a constant. Always around, always goading something into action. I never know why or what he wants, I just watch.
 

But this little interaction was different. This was the first time in a long time that Lucky had been goading
me
. He wanted me to do something, and whatever it was, I didn’t want to do it. The last time I did anything he wanted it didn’t turn out so well for me, so I’ve tried to steer clear of his maneuvering since then. So I sat and watched the desert turn from a superheated wasteland to a patchwork canvas of light and rolling shadows. I like sunsets; they carry the memory of the day before and the promise of the one yet to come.
 

Eve always preferred sunrises. She said they were more anticipatory, like a held breath before the day explodes like a sneeze all over the world.
 

Yeah, Eve’s real too. It all is, except for the bit about Lucky being a serpent. That was a little bit of poetic license on Moses’ part; he was always creeped out by snakes and I think the whole serpent thing was just an underhanded way of making sure people overall didn’t like snakes any more than he did. Really, Lucky was our friend, and was in the Garden with us from the very beginning. Several of the Archangels used to come visit in the Garden: Gabriel, Ariel, Jophiel and Metatron were there the most, but after we left the Garden we saw more of Azrael than we really wanted to.
 

So yeah, Lucky was around the Garden. And we really did all live there with all the beasts in perfect harmony and everybody lived forever and nobody died and it was all sweetness and light. But that can’t sustain. And it didn’t. And then there was the whole war in Heaven thing, and the angels didn’t come around much after that, and when Lucky did come back to visit, he had another agenda in mind. One that changed things for us forever.