Atomic Underworld: Part One Read online

  ATOMIC UNDERWORLD:

  VOLUME ONE

  by Jack Conner

  Copyright 2016

  All rights reserved

  Cover image used with permission

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  Chapter 1

  The three moons shone high over the Atomic Sea the night Frankie found him.

  Tavlin was playing cards at Savver’s, a tavern situated on a rooftop garden perched atop a tall, gargoyle-encrusted building of weathered stone. Lightning flickered up from the harbor in a thousand electric tongues, and somewhere a gas pocket exploded out over the waters, but Tavlin was too far away to hear the thunder or the boom, and he was winning besides.

  “Match and raise,” he said, flicking in several chips.

  “You’re cheating,” said Verigga, a hulking woman with a scar across one eye and half her face.

  The others at the table quieted. They were a rough lot, hard and tattooed and grim. Smoke wreathed up from their cigarettes and cigars, but that was the only movement at the table.

  “I’m in a good mood, so I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Tavlin said.

  “You’re a cheat,” Verigga said. Her scarred eye was white, and milky clouds drifted across the pupil. “I been studyin’ you. I admit I don’t know how you’re doin’ it, but I know you are.”

  Tavlin relaxed. She can’t prove anything. “Apologize.”

  “Do what?”

  “Else I’ll have to consider your accusation as calling me out.”

  “I’m not apologizing.”

  With exaggerated calmness, he stuffed and lit his pipe. The tobacco was an alchemical concoction, and the smoke that curled up from the bowl bore a greenish tint.

  “I choose knives,” he said, then waited. Please work.

  Verigga paused, as if his choice had actually made her rethink her accusation, then made a decision. She climbed to her feet, knocking her chair to the floor (which was more dramatic than Tavlin thought strictly necessary), and stabbed a finger at him. “That man’s a cheat or I’m a beauty queen, there ain’t no two ways about it.”

  Tavlin felt himself grow cold. His reputation wasn’t good enough to survive such allegations. He’d already been banned from multiple gambling houses, which is why he shivered on a rooftop garden two hours past midnight with this lot.

  Slowly, making a show of it, he mounted to his own feet, placed his pipe on the table, and glared at Verigga. There was still a chance to scare her off.

  “Are you calling me out?” he said.

  “I damn well am.”

  “Knives, then.” His reputation in knives was something he had paid very well for.

  Too well, as it turned out.

  She spat. “Do I look like I fear knives, Tavlin Two-Bit—or anything else?”

  “Maybe a shower.”

  Apparently that was the wrong thing to say. She reached to her waist and ripped out the largest knife he’d ever seen. It should have been wielded by some knight of ages past against some lumbering reptile or monstrous bug.

  “Shall we take this somewhere else?” she said. “I hate to get blood on the money.”

  Tavlin glanced to the others. They traded looks, but none volunteered to help. Likely they wondered if Verigga might be right.

  A dark figure appeared behind the woman. A short sharp length of metal glimmered at her throat. A voice croaked, “Leave now or go home shorter.”

  Verigga seemed about to move against her assailant, but the knife twitched, and blood leaked down her neck.

  With a snarl, she shoved her own weapon back into its sheath. The blade at her throat retracted. She spun about, but the other knife was still out, and it danced back and forth as if taunting her. Its wielder stood in shadow.

  “This isn’t over,” she said to Tavlin, then gathered up her money and stormed off.

  Tavlin wiped sweat from his forehead. “To whom do I owe the thanks?—not that I needed the help, mind.”

  Out of the shadow stepped a squat figure, more toad than man, with dark green skin, bulbous neck and torso, and jutting, wide-lipped batrachian mouth. He was obviously infected. Mutated. Many of the infected lived here in Hissig, constant reminders of the nearness of the Atomic Sea. What was more, Tavlin recognized him.

  “Frankie.”

  Frankie’s webbed hands moved, and the knife disappeared. His eyes stared at Tavlin, unblinking. “We need to talk.”

  Tavlin cashed in his chips—this was not a formal casino, but there was an independent bookie—and followed Frankie into a shadowed corner of the tavern garden. Midnight blooms nodded all around, lacing the night with a lavender fragrance, and from somewhere drifted the sounds of jazzy music, crackly and fitful, as if emitted from an old gramophone, not one of the newer record players. It echoed strangely through the misty spaces between this building and the next. The drinking and gambling continued, but here Tavlin and Frankie had a sphere of privacy.

  “What’s this about?” Tavlin asked. If he hurried, he could get back to the game without missing more than a hand.

  “There’s trouble.”

  “There always is.”

  “This ain’t like most trouble.”

  Tavlin felt a sinking sensation. “I’m afraid to ask, but you still work for Boss Vassas, don’t you?” When Frankie said nothing, just stood there stone-faced, blinking his frog eyes slowly, Tavlin grimaced. “This trouble ... it wouldn’t have anything to do with him, would it?”

  “Who else?”

  “Shit. Listen, Frankie, I want no part of this. I don’t even know what this is and I want no part of it.” He started to leave.

  “I’m afraid I ain’t askin’.”

  Two large figures materialized from the darkness. They were infected, too, huge and piscine. Their fish scales glistened wetly in the moonlight.

  “Sonofabitch.” Tavlin glared. “Alright, what’s this about?”

  “Now you’re talkin’. And it’s better to show you. Come’n.”

  Frankie set off for the stairs. Reluctantly, Tavlin followed, knowing it would be better to miss the game than to offend Boss Vassas. The two goons trailed him. The group reached the stairs, took them to the next level down, then a fire escape. This led to a gravel-lined surface, and from here they took a bridge of bolted metal pipes over to another rooftop. Wind howled about them, bringing with it drops of moisture and flapping Tavlin’s coat out behind him. It was a cold, wet night, but he navigated the aerial highway with practiced ease. To the west, lightning flickered up from the seething, toxic water of the Atomic Sea, and Tavlin tried not to think about the monstrous things that lived in it. One of them—or something derived from them, anyway—slithered up a wall across the way: a fur-covered octopus, or drypuss, searching for a rat to eat, or maybe a family pet or infant if it could get in through a window.

  “You shouldn’t have helped me,” Tavlin said. “What if word spreads that I can’t take care of myself? Which I could have, by the way.”

  “Yeah,” Frankie said. “She looked like a pushover.”

  “Even so.”

  Frankie shrugged. “You seemed like you could use the help, and I need you alive. Ain’t my job to look after your career, or whatever the hell it is. Just what are you doing up here, anyway? You had a life down below.”

  Tavlin scowled at Frankie’s wattled neck. “I have a life here.”

  “Yeah. Some life. Livin’ outta rats’ dens, cheatin’ lowlifes at crummy bars. Why d’ya cheat, anyway? You’re pretty good on your own.”

  “I don’t cheat.”

  “L
isten, I saw you. That cyclops may not’ve seen the cards up your sleeve, but I did.”

  Tavlin said nothing. On one hand, he was relieved that Frankie had helped him. If he’d won the duel against Verigga and had killed her, he would have had to drink himself to sleep for many nights afterwards. It would have been different if she’d been wrong, but to stick someone for catching you actually cheating seemed like bad form. And of course, he might not have won.

  “Whatever,” Frankie went on. “You’re goin’ below now.”

  Tavlin repressed a shudder. “Must we?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you won’t tell me why?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “As long as it’s not about some debt I owe ... It’s not, is it?”

  Frankie’s grunt was his only answer.

  They passed down through the city, the crowded, ancient metropolis of Hissig, capital of Ghenisa. Fog curled through the streets, and moisture beaded the smoked glass above. Thick domes fashioned of stone and massively encrusted buildings loomed in the darkness, moisture dripping from the horns and teeth of gargoyles and serpentine dragons, and from the breasts of six-armed goddesses and other creatures of myth. Great stone buildings and monuments hunched like sentinels, interspersed with occasional skyscrapers. The older buildings showed countless pocks and scars from war, most notably the Revolution fifty years ago and the dark times of the War of the Severance hundreds of years before that, but there was still some signs of the debaucheries and madness of the Withdraw nearly a thousand years ago.

  Tavlin passed a window through which a radio hissed and crackled: “ ... which the Archchancellor of Octung denies. He continues to claim the expansion and development of the Octunggen military is for defensive purposes only. Meanwhile he and his party members have been giving stirring speeches to packed crowds in Lusterqal and elsewhere, and there is much activity around the temples to the Collossum. Reporters are being shut out and even evicted from the country ...”

  “Damned Octung,” Frankie snorted as they scrambled down another fire escape. “They’ll make their war, you can be sure of that.”

  Tavlin knew Frankie was probably right. And Octung was only half a continent away from Ghenisa. When the war started, Ghenisa would be hard pressed. Already refugees seeking asylum or a boat out were beginning to arrive in Hissig.

  “We’ll hold,” Tavlin said with more confidence than he felt.

  They reached street level and passed through the swirling, acrid fog until they arrived at a manhole cover. Tavlin watched skeptically as the two goons jimmied it up. The manhole cover groaned as metal grated on asphalt, and the big men rolled it away. Revealed in its place was a dark, gaping pit. A fetid reek curled out. As Tavlin stared at the darkness, a wave of dread seemed to settle in his gut.

  “I don’t like this.”

  “You don’t have to,” Frankie said. “Just get your head out of your ass and come on.”

  Frankie slipped into the hole, having to squeeze his slimy bulk through, and descended via the rungs bolted into the sewer wall. The goons prodded Tavlin toward the hole, and for a moment he thought of running—it was starting to feel like a good idea—but he knew if he ran he would have to keep on running. With a sigh, he followed Frankie down. Instantly the stink of the sewer wrapped him in its embrace, and he felt his gorge rise. He tried to resurrect his old immunity to the reek, but it didn’t come.

  He lit on a concrete surface, and darkness surrounded him—almost. The large men had replaced the manhole cover, but a thin slice of light came from overhead, and it glimmered off the slowly-moving river that ran by the walkway. Tavlin tried not to look at it for long, and its stench made him want to retch. His eyes burned.

  “I better get paid for this,” he said.

  “That’s up to you and the boss.”

  That gave Tavlin some hope. He wasn’t being taken to his death, then. At least not directly. And profit was always something to look forward to.

  The rough men lit flashlights, and the group set off. They passed down this hall, then another. The walls were composed of rough-hewn stone blocks, scored by time and marked by graffiti, some of which looked quite old, written in languages Tavlin didn’t even recognize. He knew the sewer system was a composite thing, built over centuries by the different nations that had occupied Hissig. Much of it had been carved out of the earth thousands of years ago, back when the Empire of L’oh had ruled the continent. He thought the section he was walking through now was probably built by them. But some of it was built in even older times, by civilizations thriving before humans had walked the planet.

  Something splashed in the fetid river, and one of the goons shone a flashlight on it. Nothing. Then: a white shape breached the surface, slipped back under. It had gills and whiskers. “Wish I’d brought my net,” said the man.

  Tavlin tried to resist curling his lip. The sewers merged with underground tunnels that ran to the Atomic Sea, and the waters had become mixed with the sea’s strange energies. Now an entire ecosystem lived down here, but it was an ecosystem that Tavlin would prefer not to dwell on.

  They walked for a ways, sometimes ducking down narrow, slimy tunnels, sometimes crossing bridges over the river—bridges that seemed formed by the secretions of some awful insect—sometimes descending stairs beside ancient locks, coming into a lower part of the sewer, and finally the tunnel they walked through spilled out into a great chamber, one of the huge cisterns where someone could shout at one end and not hear his echo for minutes afterward, if at all. Here the ceiling arched to a dome overhead, so high up Tavlin couldn’t see it, and the river became a lake. In the center of the lake lights blazed and shapes shifted and swayed to unknown rhythms. Tavlin saw boats lashed together, ancient piers and docks, buildings rising from the chaos. Sounds drifted across the waters. Tavlin heard music.

  “Welcome back to Muscud,” Frankie said.

  Boats were tied up at a pier on this side, and for a price the boatman took them aboard one, started up the motor, which smoked and shuddered and sounded as if it had seen better days, and made for the town on the lake.

  Shapes swept down from above, and Tavlin winced as a drop of mucus fell on him. He shook it off. The shapes wheeled about the boat, then moved on, but not before he caught a glimpse of winged slug-like creatures with tendril-fringed, sucking mouths. Flails. They infested the sewers, stinking and dripping, living mostly off the slime that coated the walls. There were predatory varieties, however, and he kept an eye out.

  The city—so its residents called it, anyway—of Muscud drew nearer, and Tavlin looked on its familiar outlines with apprehension. Infected people tottered down the lanes of the makeshift community, slouched along the docks, called to each other from the balconies of listing buildings. Everything was worn, paint peeling (where there was paint), wood blistering, rat-things shimmying in the gutters, some structures built of stone, others from stolen debris sagging and about to collapse.

  At least it smelled better here. Alchemical lamps hung from the buildings, blazing redly out over the canals, and they drove back the stink, making the air not only breathable but actually pleasant, and slightly musky.

  Jazzy music from the bars and whorehouses rang out, blending with the cacophony of thousands of mutants talking and laughing and fighting and crying and carrying on their daily lives.

  “Good to be home, eh?” said Frankie.

  “This isn’t my home,” Tavlin said.

  The boatman tied them up to a dock, accepted Frankie’s tip, and waited for them to clamber off. Tavlin was just glad to be away from the stench and out of easy reach of the things in the water.

  They stepped into the streets and entered the town, passing the lashed-together boats, piers and platforms that composed the city’s foundation, and the great shabby buildings that rose from it. Canals ran all through the city, and boats came and went. Tavlin saw one mutant emerge from the water, dripping and holding a white fish in his mouth. Children
ran down the streets, laughing or fleeing, clutching stolen purses and burned rats. Whores leaned against cracked pillars, and piano music drifted from between batwing doors. Tavlin saw shops and businesses, just like a real city almost—well, a human one, he amended. There were no autos or horse-drawn carriages down here, but there were bicycles and motorcycles, and they careened around the corners, scattering pedestrians before them like sodden leaves.

  One mutant with the chameleon-skin of an octopus stood on a podium before a small crowd, shouting over the babble, “... and see the error of your ways. Convert and accept the divinity of Magoth, and you will be saved when he descends from the Holy House …”

  Tavlin chuckled. “Magoth has a promoter now?”

  Frankie didn’t give the expected answer. “That guy’s not just some madman. He’s a preacher, one of several at the church.”

  “A church ... to Magoth? It’s just some boogeyman of the sewers!”

  “I wouldn’t say that too loudly. I know when you lived here there was only a few that worshipped it, it was just another cult, but it’s caught on lately. It’s a regular religion now.”

  Tavlin nodded noncommittally, but he didn’t say what he was thinking. He didn’t know what Frankie had bought into.

  They arrived at one of the largest and proudest of the buildings in Muscud, a large stone structure held aloft by pillars anchored into the artificial lake bed. Stone steps led up past decorative if chipped columns to an impressive doorway spanned by colored beads. A man with a tongue like an anemone and striations like a sea bass parted the beads when he saw Frankie, and held it open as Tavlin and the goons filed past. They entered the Hall of the Wide-Mouth, most notorious den in Muscud. Shady-looking mutants played pool, gambled at large tables, drank at the bar under a cloud of smoke, engaged in private dealings in the booths. Whores of all descriptions prowled among them, stroking arms, whispering in ears, and occasionally leading a man or woman up to the second floor where the real fun took place. It all stank of smoke, cigarette and otherwise, seaweed and grease. The latter came from the kitchens, and fried things that were likely caught down here and quite unprocessed were shoved before hungry mouths.