Dead Streets (27 page)

  Trouble was magic doesn't come cheap in Nekropolis and Carnage needed money in order to continue hiring witches and warlocks and so the living vehicle had be come a mercenary, taking on high risk, high reward jobs to make enough darkgems to afford the cost of exorcism spells. And if a job was so dangerous that Carnage was finally destroyed during it, well, that was OK too. Just as long as the spirit trapped within the Caddy's metal body was free in the end. Of course, in order to do his work more effectively, Carnage had used some of his profits on upgrades like a high performance engine, a steel reinforced suspension system and his ohso-useful machine gun. After all, as the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money.

  What all this added up to was an insanely dangerous self repairing haunted car with nothing to lose and at that moment the damned thing was hot on our trail.

  I knew that Lazlo's cab could heal a certain amount of superficial damage on its own, but anything more than that would require extensive repairs. The cab was a tough little car, but I knew it couldn't withstand a full out attack by Carnage.

  "Try and lose him!" I shouted to Lazlo.

  "Lose him?" the demon shouted back. "I'll be lucky if I can keep us on the road!"

  "Just do your best!"

  I started rifling through my pockets, searching among the magic items Shrike had brought me, hoping that there was something I might be able to use to at least slow Carnage down. Devona did the same, and while we searched, Carnage unleashed another burst of gunfire.

  Devona and I ducked as the rear window shattered. Lazlo's cab screamed in pain and swerved violently to the left, right into the path of oncoming traffic. I caught a momentary glimpse of a large semi truck with a grinning green goblin face on the cab coming straight at us. I thought the truck was going to slam into us and deprive Carnage of his bounty, but Lazlo managed to yank the cab's steering wheel to the right in time to avoid colliding with the truck and the goblin face seemed to laugh at us as the huge vehicle roared past.

  I noticed the cab was slowing down and the engine began to make unsettling sputtering noises. I assumed some of that last burst of gunfire had done more to the cab than simply break some glass and I wasn't sure how much longer Lazlo's vehicle would be able to keep going before it would be forced to pull over. Not long, I guessed.

  Devona and I were still searching among our paltry supply of weaponry but in the back of my mind I was already considering giving myself up. Carnage wouldn't hurt me. He needed me more or less intact in order to collect the bounty on me. But when the possessed Caddy was on a mission it wasn't particular about who got hurt in the crossfire, hence his name. If this kept up there was an excellent chance that Devona and Lazlo would end up seriously injured, maybe even dead, and I wasn't about to let that happen simply to save my own slowly rotting hide.

  I was about to tell Lazlo to pull over when Devona held up what appeared to be a ball made of woven black twigs.

  "Got it!" she said, grinning.

  It was one of the items I'd passed on when we'd looked through them in Westerna's, primarily because I hadn't recognized it and didn't know what it did. But before I could ask Devona what she had she turned around and chucked the object out the now open back window. The ebon twigball flew through the air toward Carnage's windshield. The ball looked solid enough, but when it hit the glass it flattened like liquid and expanded to cover the entire windshield. It then seemed to sink into the glass as if the Caddy was absorbing the black substance and then it was gone and the windshield was clear once more.

  The effect was instantaneous. The machine gun's barrel drooped and Carnage began to slow down, swaying gently from side to side.

  "What was that?" I asked.

  Devona was still grinning. "Caligari's Sleep. It's a common spell used by Bloodborn who either haven't developed their hypnotic abilities or are simply too lazy to use them. The spell makes its victim sleepy and open to suggestion."

  "Kind of like a daterape drug," I said. "Classy." Still, I couldn't argue with the effect it was having on Carnage. The car didn't have a flesh-and-blood body, but the spell must've been designed to affect a victim's psyche regardless of what form that psyche resided in, because it was clearly working. But the question was for how long.

  Despite its name, Caligari's Sleep didn't render Carnage unconscious, just really, really sleepy. The deadly vehicle might not have been shooting at us anymore but neither had it broken off its pursuit. Carnage's glowing red headlights had dimmed and the vehicle was moving more slowly and swerving back and forth, but it was still managing to keep up with us. It didn't help that Lazlo's cab wasn't moving very fast at that moment either. Vehicles began passing us, drivers honking angrily and making obscene gestures as they flashed by. Several made mystic passes with their hands as if trying to lay a curse on us for pissing them off. They needn't have bothered. Given the way things had been going for me lately, I figured I'd already exceeded my bad luck quota for the next several decades at least.

  Right then I wished that Shrike had brought me a bazooka instead of a .45 and I was amusing myself by imagining firing one at Carnage through the open back window when Lazlo said, "Great, that's all we need!"

  Devona and I looked forward to see what he was talking about. Before us in the middle of the street was a massive misshapen being that resembled a small mountain formed entirely of flesh. Hundreds of legs – some human, most not – stuck out from its bottom to support its weight and provide locomotion, while the rest of the creature's surface was covered with other body parts: hands, arms, chests, abdomens, genitals, buttocks and worst of all, heads. Gazes blank, mouths gaping wide, tongues lolling, drool streaming past their lips. This was one of the strangest creatures in Nekropolis and probably the single most annoying one.

  The Conglomeration.

  No one knows where it came from, what it wants, or for that matter, exactly what the damned thing is. What it does is wander randomly through the city, absorbing anyone unlucky enough or stupid enough not to get out of its way in time. Mostly, the Darklords tolerate the Conglomeration's presence since in many ways it's like evolution in action, absorbing both the slow of foot and slow of mind. But whenever it gets too large – and it certainly appeared to be on the verge of that now – the physicians at the Fever House are alerted and they dispatch a specially designed ambulance to capture the Conglomeration and bring it to the facility where they begin the painstaking and laborious process of separating the people that had been absorbed. The story goes that when the doctors finally finish there's never anything left over that's wholly and completely the Conglomeration. It's like the creature doesn't exist in and of itself. But a few days later, it – or a replacement – is back on the street, absorbing bodies again.

  "Can you go around it?" Devona asked.

  "Yeah," Lazlo said. "It's not that big yet, but it's blocking enough of the road to cause a real slowdown." He glanced up at the rearview. "I'm afraid it'll give Carnage a chance to catch up to us."

  "Which would be bad," I said. "Especially when it manages to shake off Caligari's Sleep." Something I feared would happen sooner rather than later.

  A thought occurred to me then. Carnage wasn't alive in the strictest sense of the word, but then concepts like life and death are more than a little fuzzy in Nekropolis. Carnage had a soul and could think and act independently. In many ways, the vehicle wasn't all that different from me. I was kind of alive, wasn't I? And I didn't want to get absorbed by the Conglomeration. And hadn't Devona told me that the recipients of Caligari's Sleep were highly suggestible?

  I didn't waste anymore time thinking about it, primarily because we didn't have anymore time. The traffic ahead of us had slowed considerably and it would only be a few moments more before Carnage, sleepy though he was, caught up to us.

  I turned around in my seat and leaned out the open back window. Before Devona could ask me what I was doing, I shouted, "Hey, Carnage! Don't tell anyone, but I'm hiding inside the Conglomeration!"

  The crimson glow within the possessed Caddy's headlights had almost gone out by then but now it flared back to full blazing strength. The vehicle's engine roared and Carnage surged past us, swerving around slower-moving cars as it aimed straight for the Conglomeration. Carnage's hood mounted machine gun raised into firing position and began blasting the Conglomeration with rounds of ammo. At first the gigantic fleshy mass of body parts didn't seem to notice it was under attack, but then the eyes of all its heads came into focus and turned to look at the vehicle firing upon it. Faces contorted in anger and cries of rage issued from all its mouths. Undeterred Carnage continued forward, gun blazing away. Alarmed motorists in the immediate vicinity began trying to pull their vehicles out of the line of fire and if they found their way blocked by other cars and trucks they simply bailed out and ran for it. Lazlo lifted his foot off the gas and allowed his cab to slow down, which turned out to be an extremely wise move when a furious Conglomeration threw itself forward and fell down on top of Carnage.

  The impact was tremendous, bouncing Devona and I out of our seats and fissuring the street with cracks. Bits of the Azure Slime oozed forth through the cracks as if curious to see what was going on above it, but a second later the Slime retreated, most likely having decided to leave the Conglomeration alone, perhaps as a courtesy from one absorbing monster to another.

  Lazlo had slammed on the brakes when the Conglomeration fell and now we – along with dozens of other drivers and sidewalk gawkers along both sides of Sybarite Street – watched and waited to see what would happen next.

  At first the Conglomeration just lay there in the street and I had the horrible feeling that any second we'd see Carnage come bursting out of the flesh mass, headlights shining with fury over having been tricked, gun ratcheting death as the Caddy came toward us. But instead the Conglomeration rose with slow, ponderous movements and we could see the undercarriage of a midnight-black Cadillac now embedded in its side. The Conglomeration just stood there for a moment, as if pondering the new addition to its body, and then it resumed its course, heading slowly down Sybarite Street.

  "I have no idea if the Conglomeration has anything even remotely resembling a digestive tract," I said, "but one way or another, I'll bet it's in for a serious case of heartburn after that."

  Devona smiled at me and I took her hand. To Lazlo, I said, "Can your cab make it to Nosferatomes or should we get out and walk?"

  Lazlo patted the dash. "What do you say, sweetie? Can you do a few more blocks before taking a rest?"

  The vehicle gave a weak bleat on its horn in response.

  "That's my girl!" Lazlo said.

  I almost felt like patting the back seat in thanks, but I resisted. After all, I have a reputation as a tough guy to maintain.

  As soon as he could Lazlo turned off onto a side street to get away from the Conglomeration and we continued on our way, the cab driving slowly but steadily toward Nosferatomes.

 

We had Lazlo drop us off a block away from the bookstore, just in case anyone was lying in wait for us outside. Lazlo wanted to stay but once Devona and I were out of the cab we could see how extensive the damage caused by Carnage was. The cab's chassis was riddled with bullet holes that leaked an oily brown ichor as if the vehicle was bleeding. I supposed in a sense it was. The engine was still running but it sounded weak and it knocked and pinged in a way that suggested it was on the verge of collapse.

  "Better get her to a mechanic," I told Lazlo. "Devona and I will be fine on our own." I knew no such thing, of course, but I couldn't allow Lazlo to continue helping us, not if it was going to cost his cab whatever version of life it possessed.

  Lazlo was torn and it took a bit more convincing on my part, but in the end he agreed.

  "Well, if you say so. She is sounding kind of punky. You two take care of yourselves, all right?"

  We promised we would and Lazlo put his cab in gear and drove slowly down the street, the engine protesting all the way. When he was gone we approached the bookstore on foot. After encountering both Crossbreed and Carnage in such a short span of time I was seriously paranoid but none of the pedestrians we passed paid any attention to us and by the time we reached Nosferatomes I was relatively confident there were no bounty hunters in the immediate vicinity, but I didn't allow myself to fully relax. In Nekropolis the moment you let your guard down is the moment you risk becoming someone's snack.

  Nosferatomes was housed in a nondescript two storey building constructed of gray brick with black roof tiles and shutters. A wooden sign hung above the door displaying the shop's name in stylized gothic letters. Aside from its name it could've been any used bookstore on Earth. A pair of other businesses flanked the shop: on the right, a Hemlocks, and on the left a restaurant called Matango. Hemlocks was a chain of coffee houses with locations spread throughout all five Dominions, though the majority of them are located in the Sprawl. They don't just serve regular coffee anymore than their earthly counterparts did. Blood clottes, marrowchinos and spinal fluid smoothees are only a few of their nauseating offerings. Every time I walk past one it makes me grateful that my taste buds are as dead as the rest of me.

  I'd never been to Matango before. It was a Japanese restaurant of a sort that specialized in mushroom dishes, a fact advertised by the various types of the fungi growing on the restaurant's stone walls. Supposedly the food there is so good it's addictive, but frequent diners need to be careful lest they find their skin taking on strange colors and textures. After all, there's a reason Matango's slogan is
You are what you eat.