Among The Dead.

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3:20 a.m.

 

28th October

 

‘What’s worse? That you’re not fucking her, or someone else is?’

Tao’s words rang in his alcohol soaked head, almost as loudly as the music. Drinking alone again, the answers were nowhere to be found.

No change there, then…

‘Hell, some of that shit’s on me,’ Tao added. ‘After all, I introduced you to the cunt.’ This was said earlier, along with the parting shot. ‘There is pussy whipped, and then there’s your sorry ass.’

Wilson Heights in Sector 11 was the most dilapidated part of town, the epicentre of Old Quarter. Headquarters of the poor and unemployed: the perceived dregs of Golgothan society. On the edge of the lawless Outland Sectors, Old Quarter drew the kinky adventurous rich; the hedonists looking to indulge their fetishes. Wilson Heights’ labyrinthine maze of back streets and narrow alleyways offered up a delicatessen of dive bars and subterranean (or Hive) clubs. Whenever the elite citizens of what the rest of American called ‘The Black Metropolis’ fancied a walk on their wild sides, they could be found in their thousands there after dark. Named after the long dead Barbican councilman who’d originally neglected its upkeep, Wilson Heights was a crumbling testament to a megalopolis on the verge of implosion.

Night after night the various Golgothan subcultures gathered – a rubberised congregation of body modified freaks, waiting to be admitted to the various ‘churches’. In Wilson Heights one could quench one’s every conceivable thirst. You always found what you were looking for there, for a price and the price was invariably high.

That was all well and good, unless what you were looking for was peace to think, or in his case brood. He’d somehow managed to end up in his favourite night-spot, far below the filthy garbage choked streets.

Seventh Tier, known to its regulars simply as 7T, was the most lavish and popular Hive club in the Sector. The foreboding labyrinth had been converted from a network of wine cellars and catacombs beneath a partially demolished derelict church in the 1980’s. What was left of the building above ground served as the reception area. The sub-levels were a shiny black stone temple to gothic sensibility. Each of 7T’s customer accessible floors had an extensive bar constructed in imported Chinese obsidian and gold. There were private chambers, or ‘sanctums’ as the management called them, on offer for certain customers who liked to lock themselves in soundproofed seclusion with their toys. These accommodations didn’t come cheap, but then nothing at 7T did.

All seven bars offered a colourful abundance of alcoholic intoxicants that dazzled the eye, tempted the palate and ultimately fucked with the mind. Only the best, most expensive and rare imported liquors were on show for the predominantly Emo/Goth and BDSM consumer base.

The music was deafening. So much so it almost took his mind off the neuron splitting headache. It did nothing for the grief. It did nothing for the anger… He sat in the centre of the Grand Bar on the seventh tier, deep underground. It was pretty much identical to the other six above, only much wider and longer. The seventh tier catacombs gradually opened out into a vast concert hall, adapted from a cavern discovered when excavating. He leaned over the bar adjacent to the huge black concrete dance floor, separated from the stage by a yawning chasm that dissected the monstrous cave.

He took another hard swallow of bourbon, trying to ignore the rhythmic thrashing of several hundred headbangers filling the floor with human swell. A sea of hands raised aloft saluted the metal band playing to a packed-out crowd. The dense suffocating humidity was getting on his nerves. The rough-edged kiss of Kentucky Straight always felt good – to begin with. A couple of hours later it was going down more like chilled lead, and he was achingly familiar with lead. A sure sign he’d long since exceeded his limit. He found himself staring at the panoramic mirror behind the bar. It was illuminated by photonic fire ensuring the booze was well advertised, but in no danger of going up in flames. His throat was bothering him now. There wasn’t much not bothering to him, now he came to think of it. He’d smoked more than usual. A whole carton of Cairo Opals. That wasn’t good either. Egyptian cigarettes and regret didn’t mix. He half-turned on his stool to look at the crowd.

7T was once again wall-to-wall with Golgotha’s amassed Emo, Goth and S&M subculture. Everywhere about him stood mimes-from-hell in their leather and lace, all white foundation, eye shadow, gimp masks and black lipstick. That was just the men. Thick air was like incessant chatter, shouted above the racket from on stage: annoying. He was so hot he almost choked on his own breath. The atmosphere was cloying, rife with the stink of alcohol and smoke from someone else’s lungs. There was also the heady aroma of mouthwash, toothpaste and a myriad of blended cheap and expensive colognes, obviously bathed in. Maybe it was time to leave.

Uncle was going to be pissed. Yet again he’d stood him up for dinner.

What the fuck.

In his frame of mind, he wouldn’t have been much company anyway. He’d just spent three hours being interrogated by police, after the Senator for Connecticut had been murdered, alongside her Bound Concubine, both while under his firm’s protection. The SIS Colonel had been pissed. As far as he was concerned Senator Michaelson should’ve been under GPD protection for her stay in Golgotha. The fact she’d contracted private security was an insult to the city. All he could think, as Colonel Cole spat insults and innuendo at him, was of the river of arterial splatter caused by the edged weapons of an unseen assassin. Michaelson had been in bed with her Concubine when the killer had somehow got past both him and his partner for the assignment. Dalton hadn’t even got a shot off before being cut in two. Literally cut in two. Another condolence v-mail he’d have to make to proud loving parents…

Leaving the Metro North Citadel, he’d come out into the late night chaos of Tanaka Avenue. At the earliest opportunity he’d taken a left turn off the eight lane concrete artery into Hermes. That was where he saw her. The sight of his ex-wife on the crowded 24-hour shopping street had only added injury to Cole’s many colourful insults. You can’t reopen a wound that never truly healed. Her image had to be destroyed. Even thinking about that cold-hearted bitch stung. Thoughts of her had to be eradicated. Alcohol seemed like the best way. He smirked at the thought. What he wanted now was a decent strong black coffee. That had some chance of reviving his tattered spirits, merely replacing one chemical poison for another. His reflection in the mirror wall sat motionless, staring back at him from behind Oakley shades.

Slowly he opened another carton of Cairo Opals.

The memory of Sandy, walking down Hermes Avenue through the huddled mass of early morning Christmas shoppers, wouldn’t leave his mind. She’d had a Harvey Nichols bag in one gloved hand, lover-boy in the other. He was some hotshot neurosurgeon, recently transferred from Key West to the Elysian Fields: Dr Wolff Matthias. Why the hell anyone in their right mind would move from the near-tropical climes of Florida to Connecticut was beyond him. They’d met at a Golgothan Medical Society dinner at the Grand Hyatt. The state medical board held them annually, at the city’s most expensive business hotel. He remembered those functions well, from the days when it’d been him on Sandy’s arm, not some Norwegian asshole. He didn’t love her anymore, he was certain of that. So why did seeing her with another man gnaw at him so much? Maybe it was because she didn’t deserve to be happy. Then again, neither did he. Moreover, if the bugs in her apartment and on her phone lines were anything to go by, she wasn’t…

He knew all this because it was his business to know, sort of. He was highly skilled in intelligence gathering and personal security. In some cases, too bloody good. It’d made him a rich man, by 21st century Western standards. Still, money didn’t buy happiness, as the cliché went. It didn’t buy a sound sleep either. He glanced up from the bar. His reflection brought a humourless smile. He cursed himself for his inability to let go of the past. Stalking his ex-wife was time consuming business he’d long since tired of. The spare time surveillance had long since stopped. His men had even been assigned the task of following Sandy in the past, when their schedules allowed. They’d started asking too many questions, in the end. It was their right to know what was going on he supposed, with a shrug directed at no one specific. Paying work took up too many darkness hours. He’d left the Wi-Fi taps on her phones, streaming to an encrypted server, even if he rarely listened to them. His tired eyes were drawn once more to his own gaunt reflection. ‘You’re an asshole, and you’re miserable’, His reflection glowered back at him balefully.

He glanced over his shoulder at the undulating human tide, rising and falling in time to the frenzied rhythm of the band. There were many young girls in the swell; dark gothic beauties in leather, rubber and lace. Hot sweating nubile bodies tumbled about behind him on the dance floor. His narrow nostrils flared, catching the scent of slick flesh and exotic perfume. His personal secretary: Lucretia, was in the crowd that night. He’d spotted her earlier – thrashing her lithe milk white body around in the human tide. She’d tipped him a nod more than once, but remained in the arms of her boyfriend, respecting the boss’ privacy. Beads of sweat where highlighted in the intense glare of the overhead spots, running down bare backs. He suddenly felt predatory, needing to fuck. Fuck away his annoyance, fuck away the self-loathing and the pain. It would be so easy to lose, deep inside one of those young vampiric creatures close by.

Been there. Done that. Didn’t work, still kept doing it.

He crushed the fresh carton of cigarettes in an angry fist, jamming a disposable Stimcred card in the slot on the bar, between the puddles of spilt liquor, for one of the anorexic girl tenders to process. Scraping long sweaty black hair from his pale face only seemed to make his tired eyes throb harder. The blindness may’ve been cured, but the skull crushing headaches remained. His forehead glistened with sweat, glinting in the harsh light sweeping back and forth from overhead spots, high in the ceiling. Time to leave. He whirled off his barstool and picked his way back through the crowded catacombs uneasily. He took the elevator up to reception, collected his long coat and weapons from the Custodian, a sullen panda eyed anorexic, and staggered out into the frozen night air.

Deimos Street was poorly lit, like most of Sector 11. As a result, the narrow network of interconnecting alleys behind the main roads were cloaked in shadow. Bad light was okay with him. His damaged optic nerves preferred the dark. Most of the time they presented him with an amped up, washed out view. Other times they worked with razor sharp clarity. Both disorienting side effects of having both eyes flash-fried in the blinding glare of a magnesium-chromide explosion. The diamond splinter headaches were a fact of life now, something only alcohol or sleeping in an isolation chamber could alleviate. The Police Ophthalmologist told him, six months before his court martial, that only custom optics or a complete eye transplant would stop the pain. The condition: Retinal Extrasensory Transmission, or RET, was the worst case ever recorded in GPD history. The level of hypersensitivity his retinas channelled through his optic nerves was rated at nine times the normal scale: RET-9. A contact of Tao’s at Oakley Mad Science had developed Plutonite prescription lens’ made specifically for RET. They were the only things between him and the light. The ultra-strong filtering properties of his iridium blasted lenses broke down light to a manageable level. Despite the torture, the idea of cloned or artificial eyeballs made his skin crawl. That, and he kind of liked the revulsion his oily black sclera evoked in people who saw him without the shades. His eyes weren’t the problem when he stepped outside the club however. The drainage in Sector 11 was far worse than the lighting. He found himself wishing he hadn’t sent his car home.

The rank odour of garbage choked sewer systems beneath the asphalt drive filtered cleanly through crisp sub-zero night. The dense snowfall and ice storms of the past few weeks had blanketed Golgotha in white, partially cloaking the urban decay. The howling wind had dropped, for the moment. At least that was something. His well-worn boots scrunched on the compacted snow of the sidewalk outside 7T.

At that early morning hour there were few Golgothan homeless, Shamblers, about. His acute sense of hearing, as much as his highly sensitive vision, picked up one or two in the side streets though, muttering and moaning with no brazier to keep warm around. He made it as far as the vomit-encrusted trash cans on the corner near Cain Boulevard, before he toppled over. He landed softly in a pile of newly dumped black vinyl garbage bags. Lying on his back for a long moment, completely relaxed, he stared up between the buildings at the smog obscured stars. It’d be light in a few hours. Still the Golgothan sky held a yellow chemical stain. Breath evaporated above his face in a cloud of grey vapour…

All thoughts of cold cotton sheets and hot coffee evaporated like steam, as he heard the ear-splitting screech of tires under hard breaking. The highly polished ebony side panel, of what he assumed was a stretch limousine, obscured his sideways view of the street. He heard a door being flipped open above his head, and then two shapely tawny legs in stack heels dropped onto the sidewalk next to him. Black eyes widened behind dark glasses. His sunken upturned cheek was tickled by falling snow. A wintry smile spread on his pale face.

‘Well,’ Said a sweet husky voice. ‘What are you doing lying there?’

Alcohol thinned blood coursed through him suddenly injected with adrenaline that rebooted his tired senses. The surge in his narrow veins chased the testosterone levels, as those legs slid nearer in partially melted snow. Honey-tanned muscular calves and elegant ankles above white leather heels were right in front of him, an inch from his nose. The female voice spoke again, but he was too far gone to connect with the words. His view of the sky had become skewed by the poison in his veins – only some of it alcohol. He merely reached tentatively out and stroked the right ankle with frozen slim fingers. When his ears detected no protesting tone, he reached out with the left hand and stroked both firm legs together.