Apocalypse Now Now (26 page)

‘So it shape-shifts?’ I say.

‘No,’ he says impatiently, ‘it helps the user to shape-shift.’

‘Shape-shift …’ I say.

‘Sometimes I think you’re just acting stupid to piss me off,’ Ronin says. ‘Transform, magically transmute into another form.’ He puts his thumbs together to make a bird shape. ‘If we use this we can fly into the compound, change back into our human forms, find Pat and then get the hell out of there.’

‘Brilliant,’ I say. ‘Let’s do this.’

‘Hmm,’ Ronin says, rubbing his beard.

‘Problem?’

‘Well, these kinds of things are a little bit finicky. Talismanic lore suggests that certain talismans are usable only by those they’re given to.’

‘I’m not fucking doing any magic after what happened last time.’

‘A few visions. I goddamn set myself on fire the first bit of magic I tried to do.’

‘Yeah, but that’s you,’ I say.

‘C’mon, all you need to do is to tap into it,’ he says. ‘And hold the form you want us to transform into in your mind.’

‘And you’re sure it’s that easy?’

‘Only one way to find out,’ he says, handing me the pendant. ‘But we’re going to have to strip down first.’

I grudgingly take off my clothes and avert my eyes from the naked form of the hairy, ginger bounty hunter like its a gym changing room. I follow Ronin’s lead and stuff my clothes into my bag.

I take the penndant and feel its comforting warmth. I breathe deeply and try to clear my mind. I feel a little tug from it in my palm. That’s a good sign.

‘Just clear your mind completely,’ Ronin says. ‘And remember
to focus on the transformation for both of us. It’s going to be useless if you transform into a bird and leave me standing here without wings.’

I nod and fix both of us in my mind’s eye. Ronin with his red beard and wild hair. Me with my dark hair and glasses. This is easier than I thought. The pendant gives another little tug of confirmation.

‘An eagle,’ Ronin says. ‘An eagle or maybe a hawk. Something airborne, quick and that won’t be prey.’

I’m concentrating hard when I hear scuttling near my legs, and something runs over my foot. God, was that a …?’

‘You’re an idiot,’ Ronin, the little grey vermin, chirrups. ‘What part of “eagle” didn’t you understand?’

‘You look good,’ I chitter to Ronin as I rub my face with my brown paws. Being a rat isn’t so bad. You can get into small places, you have sharp little teeth and there’s none of the abstract anxiety of the human world. You’re small, you’re dirty and you don’t care. The problem is that being a rodent isn’t exactly suitable for our purposes. Klipspringer’s strongstrong magic turned out to be a little unstable; instead of flying into the base we’re going to have to scuttle.

‘Come on, it worked pretty well,’ I say. ‘I even managed to transform our stuff.’ The little bags strapped to our rodent backs have our miniaturised clothes, weapons and flammables that we brought with us.

‘This is going to end badly,’ Ronin says with a little rodent scowl.

‘C’mon, lighten up,’ I say. ‘At least we’re not going to get executed on sight.’

‘Just don’t eat any suspicious-looking cheese,’ Ronin chitters as we scamper through the network of dark caves.

We reach a large, cathedral-like cavern that’s littered with large chunks of shiny quartz and edge past a vast pool of stagnant grey water, finding ourselves in front of an electrified fence that blocks access to a concrete bunker built into the walls of the cave.

‘This is where those wings would have come in handy,’ Ronin says, baring his little incisors. He’s right. The fence throbs with electricity and the gaps between are way too small for us to get through. We scuttle around it looking for an entry point. Nothing. I see a small patch of fence that runs across a part of the floor that’s dirt, not rock, so we can dig under it.

‘Over here,’ I chitter excitedly.

‘Um, sparky,’ Ronin says.

‘We can dig under it.’

‘No, just –’ His rat eyes have become unfeasibly large.

‘What? I know you’re the bad-ass “supernatural bounty hunter”, I say, making little air quotes with my paws. ‘Sometimes I have good ideas too.’

‘Yeah, you’re great,’ Ronin says. ‘It’s just that there’s a huge snake behind you.’

I spin around just in time to see the bullet-shaped head of a cobra darting toward me. My rat reflexes get me out of the way just as the fangs extend and snap through the empty air.

I scramble backwards as the sleek, shiny body flies forward, just missing me again. The snake contemplates us with little black eyes. ‘Aren’t they more scared of us than we are of them?’ I gasp.

‘That’s when we’re humans, asshole. Right now we’re food,’ Ronin chitters as the bullet-shaped head lashes forward again.

My little rat legs plough into the ground and I make a break for it back through the tunnel. The snake whips its long body around and lunges after me, sliding easily over rocks and branches, and gaining on me as I run for my little rat life.

The menacing hiss from behind me spurs me on to feats of super-rodent effort. I rush past bushes which jut from the cave, wincing as sharp little thorns dig into my fur, and make a wide circle through the cave. It’s then that I see it. There in the electrified fencing is a hole. It’s a small hole, sure, but then again I am a rat.

I scamper toward it as the snake rises up to lock onto me like a heat-seeking missile. I know I’m not going to make it. Those huge, poisonous fangs are going to dig into my little rat torso and I’m going to die instantly of shock. It somehow seems fitting that I die as a rat. I’m sure Esmé would approve.

Then the grey rat attacks. In a normal Darwinian universe the cobra would win a fight with a rat every time. But in this case it is fighting a transmogrified psychotic bounty hunter so I’m guessing the same rules don’t apply.

With a screech of fury, the little grey bundle of terror lands on the snake and begins ripping at it with its mouth. Little teeth tear at the snake’s head and eyes. It reels around and snaps its jaws millimetres away from Ronin’s furry flesh. With a shriek Ronin drops down and latches onto the throat of the angry cobra.

The snake whips about, but Ronin hangs on like some kind of rodent rodeo cowboy. The cobra slithers down to the ground and tries to move, but it can’t. It lies on the ground, its lithe body jerking about with its final death spasm.

The grey rat trots toward me, its face blackened with snake blood. It grins, revealing his bloody little teeth. ‘Maybe being a rat isn’t so bad after all,’ he says.

‘Thanks,’ I say, still watching the cobra.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how long this transmogrification will last.’

We scuttle through the hole and onto the cold concrete. The bunker leads into a long, illuminated tunnel and we stay close to the walls as we move forward, keeping a furtive lookout for more snakes. The tunnel opens out into another huge cavern which holds a cluster of square, grey buildings. The concrete is wet with some kind of rancid-smelling liquid. I can’t help but think of the human polony that has been shuttled into the lab from the Flesh Palace and I sincerely hope we’re not wriggling through organ juice.

As we get close enough to the buildings for my rat eyes to focus properly, my heart base-jumps into my stomach. Two monsters stare blankly out from a guard post at the base of the hill.

They’re bipedal, but hunch forward like chimpanzees, their heads fat and warped with large white eyes. Short black hair juts unevenly from their faces and bodies. They are, in short, disgusting. ‘Gogs,’ Ronin whispers. ‘I fucking hate Gogs. One of Mirth’s little inventions.’

We make a large circle around them and get into one the buildings through an air duct. Ronin leads, his bushy tail in my face as we patter through the long, metallic chute. The air is humid and the further we get into the maze of the ventilation system, the more it begins to stink of flesh and death.

‘We need to find somewhere to change back or we’re going to get trapped in these ducts,’ Ronin says. The smell has become stronger and things begin to get hazy as noxious fumes pour in from the laboratory. I spot an opening up ahead. I have no idea where it leads but we need to get out of here and fast. ‘There,’ I say.

Ronin scrambles toward the vent and jumps through. I follow his grey tail as we hurtle down the metallic chute toward a light. Then we’re in the air and tumbling through open space. Ronin hits a metal table with a clang and bounces off onto the floor. I slam into a cabinet and claw frantically for a foothold as I ricochet from shelf to shelf. My paw catches on something and there’s a blinding white flash of pain as the nail is ripped out.

It’s while I’m lying dazed on the floor that I begin to change back. I feel my body turning to liquid and pooling on the tiled floor like a spilled soda. I can feel my hands ooze together and regain feeling as my body sucks itself out of the ooze and reshapes itself. Finally I’m able to flex my fingers. I feel whole again. I feel human. I look down at my hands and see that the nail of my left index finger has been ripped off completely. It hurts like hell and is bleeding all over the white tiled floor.

Ronin has finished his transformation too and is crouched on the floor, naked except for his backpack. I push myself to my feet and take my backpack off my shoulders and pull my clothes out. My forehead is still throbbing and the pain from my left hand is making me feel faint.

Ronin dresses and slides Warchild home into her scabbard. ‘How’s the hand?’

‘Hurts.’

‘Well, suck it up,’ he says. ‘Being a rodent was the easy part of this little adventure.’

I pull the rest of my clothes on and jam my finger in my mouth to try and stop the bleeding. The metallic taste of blood fills my mouth. ‘Here,’ Ronin says, handing me a dirty cloth from one of the shelves. I wrap the cloth around my hand. The bounty hunter walks over to the door and looks through the glass panel into the corridor. ‘OK, we’re not here to fight,’ he says. ‘We find Pat, free her and get the hell out of here, got it?’

‘What about Tomas?’

He shrugs. ‘If the disco-ball isn’t dead he can come too.’

‘And if we meet any of the Murder?’ I say.

Ronin takes off his backpack and hauls out a canister of petrol. ‘Then we torch them.’

We slide out into the empty corridor and walk quickly toward a door at the bottom of it. He peers through the glass panel. ‘Gog,’ he mouths. I shake my head and point back to the way we came. He smiles, draws a finger across his throat, and opens the door. Great, so much for not being here to fight.

Ronin is a blur of movement as buries his blade in the Gog’s thick, bulbous neck. With a bellow it lashes out and grabs him by the coat. Ronin smashes his elbow into its head and a fountain of blood sprays from its face. It screams and spins him around, slamming him into a wall. With a wicked precision it rakes syphilitic claws across his face.

I try to land a kick on the creature’s muscular black-haired back but my foot glances harmlessly off it. Way to go, Bruce Lee. It nonchalantly flings a simian arm backwards and knocks me to the ground.

The Gog returns to Ronin, trying to rip off his face with its jaws. He frantically jams an elbow under its throat and holds its gaping mandibles away from his face. I start to push myself to my feet and my hands come into contact with a metal stand for an IV drip which has been left in the corridor. I haul myself to my feet and wrap my fingers around the stand, wrenching it back and forth until the metal pole comes loose.

Without any kind of fighting skills to rely on, I revert to the age-old tactic of jamming a sharp object as hard as I can into an opponent’s head. The metal pole enters the Gog’s head at an odd angle beneath the left ear and skewers its brain like a kebab. It slumps spasmodically and I grab the pole as the thing tries to regain its feet. I pull the pole free from its head and then stab it furiously into its body like I’m skiing on a slick red slope. Gog blood sprays onto my clothes and face. I keep stabbing until the thing stops writhing and then I sink to my knees breathing hard. Baxter Zevcenko, monster killer!

‘No time to rest,’ Ronin says, pulling me to my feet.

‘You OK?’ I gasp.

‘I’ll live,’ he says, touching his lacerated face gingerly.

‘Suck it up,’ I say with a grin.

We peek through a door that opens up to a large laboratory which houses huge vats of dark liquid that gurgle and spit smoke into the air like fat, diseased smokers. I recoil and cover my face with my arm. The place reeks of fat and flesh and oil like a huge cannibal takeout grill room.

Guys in lab coats are attending to Gogs that are in various stages of existence. Several of the creatures’ heads are floating in a vat, tendrils trailing beneath them like jellyfish. There are Siamese
Gogs, joined at the spine, which are having needles and probes stuck into them. Another, similar to the one we just killed, is being cut and probed – its agonised reactions being recorded by the dispassionate men of science that scuttle around the lab.

As we turn back into the corridor I’m flung off my feet. I hit the ground hard. My glasses are thrown from my face and I try to get up but the world spins around me. I scrabble for my glasses and put them back on. I see a Crow lifting Ronin into the air. I see a Gog lumbering toward me.

‘Go,’ Ronin says as he struggles.

I scramble to my knees and pull the revolver out from my waistband.

Ronin hangs from the Crow’s claw, his feet swinging like a dead man hanging from the gallows. He still manages to wrench Warchild from beneath his coat and turns, sights and then fires. Warchild roars and the Gog’s head disappears in a magenta shower.

The Crow responds by carelessly knocking Warchild from Ronin’s hand and slamming him onto the ground. I fumble with the revolver and squeeze off a shot. ‘Urgh,’ Ronin shouts as the round clips him on the shoulder. ‘Jesus, sparky,’ he shouts. ‘Try shooting at the bad guys.’

I aim the barrel of the gun more carefully this time, making sure it is dead centre with the dark shape before squeezing. The kick jerks my hand back but the blast hits the Crow in the chest. Bullseye. The bird shrugs it off as if it were a paintball. I don’t see or hear the other Gog until it’s right on top of me, its arm slashing down. My head bounces off the concrete floor and there’s a high-pitched ringing in my ears. Darkness pools over my eyes like an oil slick.