The Altonevers (33 page)

Drug fueled orgies are all around when
they’re not dancing in large open circles. A tribal looking dance
with one person dancing to its center from each side of the circle
a time, coupling up and shuffling to the other side, then another
one would come from where in the circle the first two coupled would
land. Having walls of shifting and swimming psychedelic patterns
and depictions sexual imagery, and large panes of glass spread
through the room showing time lapse images of splitting atoms and
thermonuclear explosions, solar flares and black holes birthed into
being, and dying. Trees and leaves, whole forests growing. Water
flowing, filling and draining oceans all at once. Meteors falling
and mountains forming, volcanoes erupting everywhere you could
look. In what they call the dance floor is a holographic platform,
that grants the people who stand on it the pleasure of satisfying
even their deepest most perverse desires. The dance floor is filled
with people living out their own wildest fantasies melding with
other’s minds when under the nightclub’s beaming lights.

Anna is actually enjoying this place
from her bar stool, practically a mile from the dance floor. Liking
their primal way of dancing, indulging herself in what it must feel
like to be on the hallucinogenic everything most of these people
are on, and of have your most primal desires expressed publicly. It
must be so liberating, she thinks, though only as long as
participation in the often impromptu orgies and other sensory
delicacies is elective, which she isn’t sure of or too interested
in joining, though is a bit flattered by the occasional requests
for her to do.

“
See he's not so bad,
there’s a bunch of people, naked and stuff,” he says.

“
Are they talking about
reigning over an kingdom of gluttony and death for all eternity,”
she asks.

“
I don't think so, but I
haven't talked to most of them,” he answers. The two sit enjoying
the scene and guzzling the peppermint tasting phosphorescent
fountain soda, that flows as small glowing water falls down the
wall of the back bar behind a stocky bull of a bartender. Holding
her attention as she starts to suspect there are doses of something
in what they've drinking. She delves deeper into an irregular
rhythm creeping into coming into phase with the atmospheric flashes
of light filling the whole of the club until seeming as though the
light has body, mass and density, for a split seconds at a
time.

“
I think there’s something
in these drinks,” she says.

“
Yea me too, this is
great,” Cider says then leans in speaking gibberish and tapping the
inside of her right thigh, signaling he's spotted another goon.
That makes three in total, one gorilla standing directly behind
Anna, who’s facing Cider, the other a thin man spotted fifteen feet
away. Then there’s the bartender, a stern looking man with the eyes
of a serial killer, whose been eyeing them suspiciously since
they've strolled in.
The booming sounds
and all lights and glowing surfaces go suddenly black, leaving a
complete void in the place of the sensory over saturating stimuli
of the wave club’s design. Putting Anna and Cider and the rest of
the club into a momentary state of shock, paused in a vacuous pitch
black stasis. A violet light bursts out, hollowing the dance floor
of holographic fantasies like a flare through the air to begin the
violence.

The lights return and music resurfaces
as loudly as before. Anna hits the bartender with her full mug in
the face. The gorilla like man bear hugs her and Cider shoots him
in the foot. A few shots are fired from the man standing fifteen
feet away, just missing the two and shattering bottles of the back
bar. She jumps the bar and gets into a wrestling match with the
furious bartender she made into a cyclops a second ago. Cider
returns fire, hitting the man on the fourth vision impaired shot,
that he was allowed by using a club goer as a body shield. The
gorilla, enraged swings a wild fist with flaring nostrils, hitting
Cider just over his left ear.

“
Owwwww,” he screams,
Holding his ringing ear then ducking a second swing and standing
for second of looking the oaf in the face like a showboating boxer,
then shooting him twice in the stomach. Anna struggles with the
burly half blinded man, holding her own well enough until she’s
wrestled to the ground and the man gains leverage. The two laying
belly to belly, she's staring into his screaming face as he
strangles her. She desperately flails her legs and tries to gouge
out his good eye. Taking her last breath almost a minute ago her
face blues with bulging veins. The man’s drink serving strong hands
don’t loosen a bit, she screams with empty lungs then spits in the
man’s face thinking she’ll die. As her head feels it will burst and
eyes dimming, she struggling and getting her ankle high enough to
grab her gun and shoot wildly at the man, hitting his hip and right
under his right armpit.

She lays gasping for air by the time
Cider hops the bar and ducks for cover, stapling the bartenders
head to the ground.

“
It's a massacre out there,
and we ain’t got that kinda firepower,” he says, patting her on the
back and noticing her heavy breathing and lightening blue face,
then softly stroking her shoulder.

“
Anna, why are you so
sad?”

“
I'm not sad! that guy
almost killed me,” she coughs, gasping for air asking, “where were
you?”

“
In a gunfight. I got back
here as soon as I could. Like I promised. It was just that there
were bullets in the way,” he says.

“
Good enough,” she rasps,
and he pulls her from under the defiantly heavy dead bartender. A
colorful cascade of the bars sappy fluids spills down onto them
from some of the onslaughts gunfire shared between two heavily
armed rival clans. Ravaging the flesh of the fleeing frightened
crowds, dying on the dance floor, slaughtered in their fantasies.
The two keep their heads low, out of the violence, watching the
bending violet lights of the gluttonous alligators energy erupt as
he devours the life force of his foes in droves.

“
You see Anna, that is a
reaper. I am not a reaper.”

“
I never said you were a
reaper,” she says

“
Yes, you did.”

“
When?”

“
A lot when we
argue.”

“
And now is the time
for-”

“
Your right now’s not the
time for this.”

“
Okay. We could really die
here,” she says, nodding her head and staring blankly at
him.

“
I don't know. This guy
seems to be doing a pretty good job out there, and it's a pretty
nice light show too,” he says.
Anna peeks
up over the bar like the soldiers in trenches peer into no machine
gun nest. Seeing that the dreams, minutes ago brightly burning, are
dimming and twisting into grim ghastly nightmares devoured by Yaku
before her eyes. Filling her mind with horrible sights can never
unsee.

“
Okay, yeah…It looks like
he’s winning,” she reports, “I mean it is mostly a firefight, but
there are a lot of other casualties many dreams have died. To sum
it up its carnage out there.”

“
So what do you think?” he
asks.

“
I think we get the hell
out of here,” she says. He pecks her on the lips and springs into
action, hopping over the bar in a single leap, then bounds back
behind the bar a second later.

“
There's a lot more action
out there than I thought,” he says.

“
Oh save me my white
knight.”

“
Oh shove it,” he says and
the two exchange obnoxious looks with the utmost insincerity.
Watching the frenzied tempest of lights clashing overhead like
magnetic fields at war. The glowing blues of Yaku's rivals are
weakening then being violently overtaken, diminishing to deepening
his violets now dominating the room. In a matter of minutes all the
sound stops and the room is pitch black again. The sudden stripping
away of the wave club’s overwhelming stimuli leaves the two in
shock instantly standing in a sensory vacuum.
Hearing only the footsteps of a giant's shoe clacking against
the synthetic floor. The two look at each other and stay as still
as sleeping cats, the footsteps stop, leaving a few moments utterly
blank black silence.

“
I can see the smoke of
your cigarette,” Yaku says with glitch rasp.

“
Idiot!” she says smacking
his shoulder.

“
What?” he
shrugs.

“
Come out come out wherever
you are. Your right there. Don’t worry it's me your
friend.”

“
I think we should go out,
he's saying nice things,” says Cider.

“
Yeah with the voice of
someone who has the flu, in hell,” she says.

“
Relax, what else can you
do. It's funny you know, how necessity has a way of freeing one
from the worry of doing,” Cider says.

“
Yeah I guess,” she frowns,
then stands. Cider right behind her after admiring her behind,
pretends to be a bartender.

“
So what will it be
friend?” he asks.

“
Hahahaha, we should be
going, others will be arriving soon,” the thin glutton says. He's
the only one alive on a blank checkered dance floor, littered with
those who've died in their dreams, and others for their ideas of
honor. Yakutom is barely containing the energy he consumed, he's
overflowing with purplish plasma spilling from his scarred shoulder
blade. His bones oscillate under his skin, making him appear his
body is vibrating.

“
We have to go now. This is
the match that will ignite the flames of wrath and vengeance that
will engulf the clans to cinders. They will come looking here
first, that’s how the fire will spread,” Yaku says smiling.
The two stand stunned in mind numbing awe, as
their senses go through withdrawal from the all enveloping
overwhelming sensory stimuli of the wave club suddenly snapping to
a soundless pitch black nothing. Yaku huffs from his satchel, his
life line, that he breathes like a deep sea diver breathes from an
air tank. She sees Yaku, bound to a physical addiction that
resembles his insatiable lust for the energy around to feed his own
euphoria. They leave the wreckage of shattered bodies and broken
glass, the whole club now devoid of any movement, of anything for
the senses to feel, dead and empty.

They're thirty stories high in a
flying car at a vision blurring speed. The two and Yaku are in the
middle car of a three car convoy, moving up down and diagonally
with complete disregard for traffic laws or others. The glutton
fervently huffs his powder, almost pulling the whole satchel into
his lungs. The oinking, snorting squeals of him clearing his nose
proceeds a rocket passing an inch under their vehicle. Exploding
with no flame against a glass facade, heating the glass to burst
outward and cooling a second later into the shape of a liquid rose
frozen in place.

“
Did you see that?” she
says with her face pressed against the window, admiring the
rocket’s flower like blast wave spread tens of feet across the side
of the wall.

“
Lose them,” Yaku orders
his driver. The goon’s speed up, way up, evading and reprising with
rockets of their own. Rocket propelled grenades are the best to
blow enemies out of the sky and onto the street. Blow out one of
the millions of apartments of this colossal illuminated
metropolis.

“
It is rising,” Yaku says
looking around to the thunderous cascade of explosions blowing the
surface glass of every colored structure into dust, with cars
streaking through them flying everywhere fighting falling and
swooping fill his field of view. The clan's cars are at full scale
war, whizzing through the sky and streets like fighting hornets
while raining rockets at each other, vitrifying a rose garden of
their explosions on the city’s glass surfaces in the process. A
kamikaze slams into the car in front of them, stripping it from the
air with a splash of fire.

Their car banks wildly down and left,
then rises higher and higher. Leading a car tailing them up to a
moment of no momentum, free floating, free of G force, then
plunging downward for seconds, banking left to wrap around a tall
building. Dipping swerving at several streets, exhausting all his
best tricks, the driver can’t shake the bogies consistently at
their seven o' clock. He slams on the breaks, cuts the steer shaft
sharply right and stomps on reverse as hard as he can. Cider and
Anna are thrown into the seats in front of them. Yaku riding
shotgun, smashes the windshield with his face. The driver, the only
one wearing his seat belt is fine. Anna aims a rocket launcher with
the rocket a foot from Cider’s face. A boom, as the rocket leaves a
burst of smoke that fills the car pushing them to their seats and
yaku’s face again against the windshield. Sending a refractive
streak of heat through the air toward their persistent pursuers now
at their nine thirty, exploding flamelessly into the back bumper of
the fourth car, that crashes into the one in front of it, which
sideswipes the second car and falls into a clump of wreckage cart
wheeling across the street before completely bursting into a ring
of fire.

“
Wooooooo! good timing
Carrots hahaha,” Cider yells smiling through a face of
ash.

“
That was so awesome,” she
says riding the rush of releasing such destruction, in defense at
that.