Dead City (3 page)

'The sun raised itself wearily over the walls of his city, rays creeping in, long shadows of the decaying buildings sprawling forth like remedial shadow puppets formed by hands with too many fingers.'

Jon had been up since long before dawn, and his narration wasn't at its best. Dead Cities didn't let you sleep much. The constant moaning and groaning, gnarling and gnawing from the denizens had left Jon with a routine of three to five hours of slumber if he was lucky, often broken up into fifteen to twenty minute chunks.

For the last hour, he had been attempting to keep the peace, as two wights argued over a kitten.

* * * *

Wights, from ye olde Middle English word 'whit', were bottom-feeders of the unliving world. They were sentient to some degree, and usually died of natural causes, but had suffered from some degenerative ailment before their passing, usually dementia or Alzheimer's.

This led to conversations not unlike those Jon had been having with Dildo since he arrived three weeks ago, but much more repetitive.

* * * *`

“S'mine!” said the first wight, for the hundred and sixteenth time.
Jon had been counting.

“S'mine!!” said the second. For the hundred and fifty-sixth time.

The second's pre-death dementia was, Jon reasoned, further along than that of the first. About a third of this argument had been the second wight shouting at his own reflection.
The kitten did not seem phased by any of this. It had curled up in Jon's lap whilst the disagreement continued in front of them.

“S'mine!”  said the first again.
Jon looked at the kitten, resting softly on his knees.

“You're very calm for a little guy who's being argued over as a snack.” he said.

The kitten looked up at him and mewed in agreement.

“Yeah, you're right.” said Jon, standing up.

Kitten in hand, he sighed as he glanced back and forth between the two unlivings before walking out. The wights didn't seem to notice.

“S'mine!” said the second. He looked down and spotted his reflection in a puddle again “S'mine!” he shouted at the floor, kicking the water. The third wight was vanquished.

“S'mine!” he said triumphantly, forgetting that the first wight was still there and turning to claim his prize, but Jon and the kitten had gone.

Since the dead stopped dying, there had been a resurgence in mediums and exorcists. Where once the yellow pages was full of exterminators for rodents and vermin, now there was a whole section devoted to ridding oneself of pesky unliving, in whatever form they may return.

* * * *

Ashley had never known of anyone who had been haunted, so having no referral, picked the  biggest advert on the first page. She glossed over the many companies named
'AAA111 Exorcism incorporated'
and their kin, figuring it was better to have an exorcist who can afford a large box with a picture, rather than a less affluent sole trader who had used their mighty single brain cell to work out that the book was alphabetised.

She had spent the night sleeping in her car, parked up in the lot of a Toys 'R' Us, and had been woken unceremoniously by the squealing of a gaggle of children, which to her sleeping brain sounded like an army of ghouls screaming to steal her soul.

Having rung the exorcist, she sat in the car impatiently outside of her own house, still in her night clothes, waiting for them to arrive. At twelve-thirty, two hours later than expected, a large black van finally parked up outside the house, 'ExorSisters' airbrushed on the doors.

The two eponymous women emerged from either side, and Ashley left the safety of her car to introduce herself. They were younger than she expected, but looked exactly how she pictured them; skinny, long black hair, naturally pale to the point of essentially being goth without trying. They were wearing white t-shirts and black overalls with name tags sewn on the lapels.

“You're Ash?” the first sister asked.

“Yeah, you're...”

“I'm Hannah, she's Anna”
Ashley was confused.

“Your name tag said Anna.” she said.

“Shit.” said Hannah, turning to Anna. “We did it again...”

“Fucksticks. This shouldn't happen so often. We should sew our names on them or something!”
The ExorSisters laughed, Ashley smiled politely, not finding her situation funny.

“This the house?” said Hannah, indicating to the building they had parked up in front of.
Ashley looked up at the house and nodded. The curtains were drawn at all the windows, and she found herself feeling uncomfortable, trapped outside the home she once loved.

“Keys?” asked Anna.

She handed them over and watched as the two dainty women opened up the doors of their van, pulling out flight cases that looked heavier than the two of them put together. Once all the gear was out, they pushed the cases to the door and Anna inserted the key.

“You coming in with us?” asked Hannah.
Ashley shook her head, remaining by the van.

“Here we go...” said Anna, turning the key and pushing the door open.
A soft squeal whined out as the hinges reticently stretched their mouths wide.

“Looks good so far...” said Hannah, giving a smile back to Ashley, who still wasn't convinced.
Anna took a step towards the threshold of the door and was rewarded with it slamming into her face, her nose exploding with blood.

“Jesus!” shrieked Ashley, as Anna took some steps back, hand at her nose.

The ExorSister turned, decorating the garden with a rain of bright crimson.

“S'fine!” said Anna, putting her head back. “Happens all the time.”

“Told you we should've worn crash helmets on this one.” said Hannah.

“Little late for that now...” muffled her sister, blood snaking its way down through her fingers as it heeded the call of gravity.
She reached back for the key and turned it again, the door squealing as it opened inwards, and took a step beyond the threshold. Again, the door came for her, but this time she blocked its path with a steadfast boot.

“Nice try, Casper.” she said, wiping her hands on her overalls and turning to Hannah. “See, this is why black is a good colour for overalls – clients never see how much you bleed.”

“Apart from when you're actually bleeding in front of them...” said Hannah.

“Apart from then, obviously.”

Anna pushed the door open and held it as Hannah started wheeling the cases inside. When they were all done, Hannah beckoned Ashley to join them as her ExorSister set up the instruments. She refused, but the woman insisted on at least fetching her some clothes and letting her change in the back of their van whilst she waited for them to get the lay of the land inside her former home.

Half an hour later they were up and running, spectre-scopes and EVP detectors in every room sending signals back to the base-camp they had set up in the hallway.

Ashley watched from the garden, kicking at the dried blood on the path, wondering if it would stain and lower the price of the house, then wondering if she cared. The ExorSisters walked out and joined her in the garden to give her a summation of their findings thusfar.

“Well, we have good news and bad news...” said Anna.

“Both are kinda bad, but there's good sides to one.” added Hannah, swiftly being nudged by her sister to shut up.

“So what is it?” Ashley asked.
The ExorSisters looked at one another.

“It's a poltergeist alright, but not your average poltergeist.” said Anna. “Usually poltergeists are multiform, in a bunch of places around your house at once, like they'll knock every book off your shelf in one go. Usually they're incorporeal but can affect the corporal, our world. Usually you just suck them up into a spirit orb and you're done.”

“You're saying 'usually' a lot...” noted Ashley, as a sickly feeling started bubbling in her stomach.

“Yeah...” said Hannah “That's the small problem we're having. Your guy isn't all over one room, he's isolated to one area, then moves to the next. You said he pulled books off the shelf one at a time – that's not how poltergeists roll.”

“But he
is
a poltergeist?”

“Probably.”

“Yeah.” asserted Anna. “Totally probably. We're just going to need some more time to work out how to deal with this fucker.”

“How much time?”

“Can you find somewhere to stay for the rest of the week?” she asked.

Ashley looked up at the house, the curtains in their bedroom were wide open, and even though there was nobody visibly standing there, she knew she was being watched.

“Yeah.  I'll find somewhere.”

'He was covered in blood. So much blood. It might not have been his, but that only made him angrier.'

The narration was also making Jon angrier. He was staring down the three aptrgangrs that had just snatched the kitten from his hands and proceeded to rip the delicate little thing apart in front of his very eyes, showering him with its entrails.

* * * *

Aptrgangrs, or 'monoliths' as Jon called them, based on their sheer size and his lack of confidence about the pronunciation of the old Norse word, were one of the largest unliving sub-species. Standing at least seven foot tall, they preferred destruction over sating the hunger-lust that afflicted the corporeal undead.

Monoliths were often juicers and steroid abusers in their living state, and something in the course of their transition into unlife had accelerated the effect of the drugs coursing through their systems, hulking them out to the size of giant, decaying bears, with the aggressive attitude to match.

* * * *

“You shouldn't have done that.” he said to them, hands at his baton holsters, like an old west gun-slinger.
Jon didn't know the three aptrgangrs by (rotting) face, nor by name, but knew he'd met them before and who they would likely answer to. He recognised them mostly for their sheer size, each of them standing at least two feet taller than him.

“What'cha gonna do 'bout it, law-man?” scoffed the first monolith “Ain't we all got a fleshparty to be at?”.
Jon might not have known their names, but decided he'd call them
Denty
,
Legless
and 
Eletrotwat
.  Withdrawing the two batons from his holsters, he extended them with a flick of his wrists, sparking them to life.
Denty
smiled a decaying grin, his green teeth lined with blackened gums. Before the three giants knew what hit him,
Denty
was on the floor, spitting out pieces of his smashed cheekbone.

“Who's next?” asked Jon.
Legless rushed at him, only to have Jon sidestep, whipping both batons into the front of his kneecaps, one leg cracking as the knee folded forwards, the other ankle detaching completely, left standing straight up on its own, as if posed for a grisly still-life painting. Jon decided the monolith's new name was
Hoppy
.
Electrotwat growled a fearsome roar, which swiftly became a girlish scream, as two batons impacted with his microscopic testicles, inflicting tens of thousands of volts on impact.

Jon walked away from the three corpses left in various states of injury. He had a meatdrop to be at.

* * * *

The meatdrops were scheduled twice a week in London's Dead City. They barely lasted a day, let alone two to three, but Jon's request for more regular deliveries were denied on every occasion. He arrived just in time for the crane to swing its beak over the walls, pallets laden with meat in its grasp, donated from every supermarket and butcher within the M25.
It navigated to the allotted drop-off point, and hung in the air, awaiting instruction to let its cargo loose. Jon checked his watch and stood well back, the unliving all coming out from their shadows in case the package happened to break upon landing, throwing raw meat across the street, allowing them to nab extra flesh to be had outside of their regular rations.

As the clock struck one, the package fell, dropping through the air gracefully and landing with a
thud
in the middle of the road, completely in-tact.
Jon could see the creatures of the City were ravenous, and got in front of the pallets before they could pounce.

“Stand back folks, you know the score.”
A small army of unliving grunted and growled around him, angered by his presence.

“Come on now, calm down, you're all going to get your share.”

“We gets a share, but we don't gets equal, do we?” said an unusually eloquent spectre.

“You don't even have a body...” responded Jon, calmly. “How are you going to digest?”

“I likes to look at it, push it about a bit.” said the spectre, in a huff.

“Anyone who can actually
eat
got a complaint?”
Hands raised up. More hands than Jon was happy with.

“Alright then, I'll sort this out. Can I trust you all not to eat this shipment? You won't have a fleshparty whilst I'm gone?”
The growls and grunts tempered to moans and groans, as Jon went to do some more liaising.

* * * *

The Monolith at the door of the casino didn't have a chance to ask if Jon had an appointment, his face hitting the ground before his lips could part to relay a witticism. Jon stormed into the Necromancer's lair, emptying a bag of rotting meat down on his desk, knocking a series of vials of florescent liquid to the floor.

“For me?” the creature hissed with a sickly smile. “You're too kind.”

“What have I told you about sharing?” Jon asked, not in the mood for bullshit.

“Oh Jonathan, you know how things are...”

“I know there's dead out there who aren't getting enough meat in them, and that's pissing them off some.” said Jon.

“The boys must have miss-weighed, an accident, I assure you.” insisted the Necromancer.

“Right, your boys... get those pricks in line.”

“They barely know basic English, let alone rudimentary two dimensional shapes!” he cackled to himself.

Jon flicked his coat back and rested his hand on his holster

“Come now, Jonathan.” the Necromancer said, in a calm tone. “You know that's not how you and I operate.”

Jon's hand didn't waver as he stared down the creature he was forced to accommodate.

“You tell them who's boss.” said Jon. “I tell them to back off, lie down, roll over, they better fucking listen.”

“I'll do what I can.” the Necromancer replied, the decaying smile that accompanied his words didn't even appear slightly genuine.

“You dropped some shit...” Jon said, bending down to pick up the vials, throwing them on top of the stinking flesh he dumped on the desk.

“When your bouncer wakes up, tell them he can peel your boys off Borough Road.”
Jon turned to leave, confident his message had been received. As he left the casino, he felt increasingly more unsure, something in his gut telling him he'd given the message before, maybe more than once, and each time it had been ignored.

'There was a lot he couldn't remember. But what he did know was that he couldn't trust the Necromancer. When he picked up the vials that cascaded on to the floor, he was sly enough to palm one, and would stop at nothing to work out what was going down behind his back in the shadows of the City.'