Samurai and Other Stories (4 page)

Rickman was so excited that he didn’t notice that the walls of his apartment beat in time to the music.

Nor did he spot that when he turned his back, the plasma ball grew, stretching like an inflating balloon. Cobalt blue colours flashed and it
surged.

Rickman was its first victim.

*
   
*
   
*

The cops arrived ten minutes later in response to a neighbour’s complaint about the noise.
 

When they burst in the door a plasma ball of rainbow colours rose to dance in the air in front of them, a swirling aura of gold and purple and black.

The sound started.

It was low at first, almost inaudible, but it rose to a crescendo until their ears were buffeted with raucous, mocking, piping; a cacophony of high fluting that crashed discordantly over them.

Then the smell hit them, the foetid, unmistakable odour of death that caught at the back of the throat and threatened to send their guts into spasm.

The cops ran.
 

They didn’t look back, and all the time the crazed fluting danced in the air around them. They called for help; but each shout only brought a fresh
surge
in the plasma. The air above the plasma crackled with electricity, blue static running over the formless mass.
 

It dragged itself across the floor leaving a grey glistening streak of slime behind it.

Within the protoplasm things moved, detached bones flowing, scraps of clothing fused with unidentifiable pieces of flesh. The surface boiled in numerous small lesions that bubbled and split like pieces of over-ripe fruit.

But worst of all was the source of the fluting. A huge, red, meaty maw pulsed wetly in time with the cacophony.

The younger of the cops made it to the elevator and slammed the button. He screamed, frustrated, as the doors were slow in starting to move. He let them open just enough to slip inside before he turned to look for his partner.

She was less than two yards from him, arms outstretched, pleading. He began to move towards her when she stopped and was jerked backwards like a marionette. Her mouth opened wide into a scream and she fell forward, her right hand hitting the
down
button even as he stretched out vainly.

The door began to close and, no matter how much he strained at it, he was unable to stop it from shutting completely and he could do nothing but watch the events in the hallway beyond through the small window.

The plasma had caught her by the ankle. Oily colours flowed across her body, the protoplasm gripping her tight.
 

She struggled hard to no avail.

Their eyes met, just once. Her mouth opened as if she was trying to speak, and that was when the swirling blob engulfed her head and the noises from her throat ceased to sound human.

The protoplasm
surged
again, and suddenly the window of the cab was coated with slime.
 

The cop gagged and fought hard to keep down the bile as a human foot, still trailing bloody threads behind it, floated across his view.

She was the second victim.

*
   
*
   
*

The cop spent the next fifteen minutes persuading his superiors that there was a problem in the tower block. In that time the plasma ate the little old lady in number 621 who played her radio too loud, the three kids jamming on electric guitars in 437 and the family in 223 who had been watching the latest Disney animation on their 60 inch TV screen.

By the time the cop’s backup team arrived it had already filled the whole of the ground floor public area. The cop made sure he was first back through the door, but what met him made him step back immediately.

The floor was covered by a shimmering rainbow blob nearly four feet thick. There were things embedded in it—blood and hair and bones and eyes, all jumbled like a manic jigsaw, fused and running in to one another as if assembled by a demented sculptor. And in the middle of the floor something rose up out of the mass, a forearm stripped to the bone, skeletal fingers reaching for the roof. On each fingertip a grey, opaque eyeball stared blindly out at him.

That wasn’t the worst thing though. The worst thing was the way the bones of the wrist cracked and groaned as the hand turned, the fingers flexing and bending as all five eyes rolled in bony sockets and stared straight at him. The mocking cacophony of high fluting crashed discordantly over him.

He raised his gun and fired.
 

The noise echoed loudly in the hallway.
 

The plasma surged again, enfolding the cop until he fell into it, like a drowning man going down for the last time. The plasma rolled forward forcing its way out onto the sidewalk beyond.

The backup team saw what happened to the cop. They started in with their own weapons.
 

The air filled with the noise of gunfire.

The plasma
surged
and took them.

Sirens blared as the squad cars of more backup teams arrived in the street.

The plasma
surged
and took them too.

*
   
*
   
*

The mayor got involved ten minutes later. Assembled in his room were the chief of police, the mayor’s press officer and the chief of the fire service.

“So what is it doing now?” the mayor asked.

“Still growing,” the chief of police answered. “And still feeding.” The policeman was white as a sheet, and visibly trembling.

“How many casualties?” the mayor whispered.

“Too many to count,” the press officer said. “It has covered three blocks... and we don’t know if anybody is still alive in the area.”

“That’s it,” the mayor said. “Call in the National Guard... and somebody close that window!”

Outside, the crazed fluting of Rickman’s plasma filled the air.

*
   
*
   
*

People screamed.

The plasma
surged
.

It took thirty minutes to muster the National Guard. In that time, the plasma spread by five blocks in every direction.
 

If there was a noise, it consumed whatever made it. Trucks, people, dogs and subway cars, all fell under the surging protoplasm, and all served to feed its exponential growth.

The National Guard brought in jeeps.

The plasma ate them.

They brought in choppers.

The plasma ate them... protoplasmic tendrils shooting skyward to suck the machines out of the air.

The Guard used bazookas.

The plasma
surged
, and suddenly, the Guard were gone.

The city was full of noise.

The plasma fed.

*
   
*
   
*

The president got involved twenty minutes later. Assembled in his room were the chief of staff, the head of Homeland Security and the director of the FBI.

“So what is it doing now?” the president asked.

“Still growing,” the head of Homeland Security answered. “And still feeding.” He was white as a sheet, and visibly trembling.

“How many casualties?” the president whispered.

“Too many to count,” the chief of staff said. “It has taken most of New York State... and we don’t know if anybody is still alive in the area. It will be here in minutes.”

“That’s it,” the president said. “Call in the Air Force. We’re going to nuke it... and somebody shut that window!”

Outside, the crazed fluting of Rickman’s plasma filled the air.

*
   
*
   
*

The plasma lay along the eastern seaboard covering most of New York and New Jersey.

Flocks of birds cawed and fluttered.

The plasma ate them.

Three passenger jets inward bound from Europe passed overhead at thirty thousand feet.

The plasma threw up tendrils and ate them.

The bomber carrying the nuke came in at over a thousand miles per hour.

The plasma ate it.
 

The nuke exploded creating a fireball of white heat and radiation at more than a million degrees centigrade.

The plasma ate it,
surged,
and headed for Canada.

*
   
*
   
*

The president of the European Union got involved an hour later. Assembled in his room were the heads of the UK, France and Germany. The president of Russia was on a TV screen, linked in by satellite.

“So what is it doing now?” the president of the EU asked.

“Still growing,” the Russian president answered. “And still feeding.” He was white as a sheet, and visibly trembling.

“How many casualties?” the president whispered.

“Too many to count,” the prime minister of the UK said. “It has covered most of North America and is heading south and east fast... and we don’t know if anybody is still alive anywhere. It will be here in minutes.”

“We only have one option,” the president said. `We hit it with every missile NATO and Russia have, and hope for the best. And somebody close that window!”
 

Outside, the crazed fluting of Rickman’s plasma filled the air.

*
   
*
   
*

Over a thousand nuclear weapons were launched in the next fifteen minutes... enough firepower to start, or finish, a global war, enough mega-tonnage to destroy every city on the planet.

The plasma ate them all and
surged.

*
   
*
   
*

The last human beings on the planet got involved an hour later. Assembled in a lab at the South Pole were scientists from the US, Brazil, France and Germany.

“So what is it doing now?” the Brazilian asked.

“Still growing,” the head scientist answered. “And still feeding.” He was white as a sheet, and visibly trembling.

“Is there anybody left?” someone whispered.

“I doubt it,” the Frenchman said. “The last we heard it had covered the rest of the planet and was heading south fast.”

“We only have one option,” the head scientist said. “We keep quiet, and hope it passes.”
 

The crazed fluting of Rickman’s plasma filled the air.

The scientists sat in silence, barely breathing.

Their generator kicked in noisily.

The plasma
surged.

HOME IS THE SAILOR

I smoked too many cigarettes, sipped too much Highland Park and let Bessie Smith tell me just how bad men were. For once thin afternoon sun shone on Glasgow; the last traces of winter just a distant memory. Old Joe started up “Just One Cornetto” in the shop downstairs. I didn’t have a case, and I didn’t care.

It was Easter weekend, and all was right with the world.

I should have known it was too good to last.

I heard him coming up the stairs. Sherlock Holmes could have told you his height, weight, shoe-size and nationality from the noise he made. All I knew was that he was either ill or very old; he’d taken the stairs like he was climbing a mountain with a Sherpa on his back.

He rapped on the outside door.
 

Shave and a haircut, two bits.

“Come in. Adams Massage Services is open for business.”

At first I thought it was someone wandering in off the street. He was unkempt, unshaven, eyes red and bleary. He wore an old brown wool suit over a long, out of shape cardigan and his hair stood out from his scalp in strange clumps. I’ve rarely seen a man more in need of a drink.

Or a meal.

He was so thin as to be almost skeletal, the skin on his face stretched tight across his cheeks. I was worried that if I made him smile his face might split open like an over-ripe fruit.

“Are you Adams?” he said as he came in. He turned out to be younger than I’d first taken him for, somewhere in his fifties at a guess, but his mileage was much higher. “Jim at the Twa Dugs said you might be able to help me.”

I waved him in.

“It’s about time Jim started calling in some of the favours I owe him. Sit down, Mr...?”

“Duncan. Ian Duncan.”

He sat, perched at the front of the chair, as if afraid to relax. His eyes flickered around the room, never staying long on anything, never looking straight at me.

“Smoke?” I asked, offering him the packet.

He shook his head.
 

“It might kill me,” he said.

I lit up anyway... a smell wafted from the man, a thick oily tang so strong that even the pungent Camels didn’t help much.

Time for business.

“So what can I do for you, Mr. Duncan?”

“I’m going to die sometime this weekend. I need you to stop them.”

I stared back at him.

“Sounds like a job for the Polis to me,” I said.

He laughed, making it sound like a sob. He took a bundle of fifty pound notes from his pocket and slapped them on the table. I tried not to salivate.

“No. This is no job for the terminally narrow-minded,” he said. “I need somebody with a certain kind of experience.
Your
kind of experience.”

Somebody put a cold brick in my stomach, and I had a sudden urge to stick my fingers in my ears. I got the whisky out of the drawer. I offered him one. He shook his head, but his eyes didn’t stray from the bottle. I poured his measure into a glass alongside my own and sent them chasing after each other before speaking.

“And exactly what kind of experience do I need to help you?”

A good storyteller practices his tale. At first, when he tells the story, he sounds like your dad ruining his favourite dinner table joke for the hundredth time.
 

Oh wait... did I tell you the horse had a pig with him?

But gradually he begins to understand the rhythm of the story, and how it depends on knowing all the little details, even the ones that no one ever sees or hears. He knows what colour of trousers he was wearing the day the story took place, he knows that the police dog had a bad leg, he knows that the toilet block smelled of piss and shit. He has the sense of place so firmly in his mind that even he almost believes he’s been there. Once he’s done all that, he tells the killer story, complete with unexpected punch line.