A Battler story in two parts
In collaboration with Ramón Sierra
An ominous silhouette passed between the grey and black clouds. If it had been possible to view stars from within Clot City, the silhouette would have blocked them; as it was, all the slowly moving shape covered were the red and white flashes of airplanes. Prostitutes prostituted, muggers mugged and addicts satisfied their addictions as if it were any other night. All anyone noticed was the uncertain sense of a pall being cast over them – that and a hum, a hum they considered to be the buzzing of their own skulls. No one could have expected what was to come, not even those who lived for this type of thing.
The Battler, fully dressed in his flashy red and black zombie-fighting costume, sat at the counter at Wyndham’s Burger Joint eating a gourmet hamburger. He chewed quickly but powerfully, licking the spattered condiments from the scarred geography of his mouth. Despite spending his nights pounding rotting flesh, the Battler still could not resist ground beef – he needed some kind of fuel for his self-made body, even if that fuel was a guilty pleasure.
After his last bite, he pulled his mask over his mouth and left the usual tip. He got up from his stool and strolled down the linoleum floor, the hem of his trench coat scattering crumbs across the tiles, and placed his gloved hand on the door handle.
‘Ya know yer money ain’t good ’ere!’ Wyndham called after, clenching a fistful of green. ‘Yer fists’re payment enough!’
The Battler paused at the door, nodded slowly and left the Joint, the door rattling to a close behind him.
If he had left but a minute earlier he would have noticed something off about the sky – at the moment, however, it was raining, and the only thing off about the sky to the Battler were the raindrops falling on top of his head. He knew the rain would eventually seep through his costume, mingle with his sweat and cleanse his skin of dried blood. Which was nice. But a wet costume only made him heavier, so . . .
He dipped into a nearby alley, one with enough planters to keep him from becoming drenched. Rain tended to last no longer than ten minutes in the city, so he figured he might as well wait this one out.
As he stood with his back to the cold, clammy cement wall, he watched the entrance to the alley, losing himself in the light mist forming over the city street. He thought of the two zombies he had just pounded to a pulp outside Wyndham’s kitchen. Wyndham had said they had been his nephews, but Wyndham had stepped on their rotting skulls all the same – after the Battler had immobilised them, anyway.
But that was okay, right? They were not his nephews anymore. Right?
The Battler was thankful he did not know anyone who had died recently: it was a known fact the zombies in Clot City were automatically drawn to loved ones and familiar faces from their previous lives.
When the zombies had first started appearing, they were not much of a problem – they were disgusting, pus-filled, maggot-ridden, yellow liquid-oozing caricatures of their former selves, incapable of thought, but at least they were not dangerous. They made everyone ill – both physically and mentally – and generally made walking the streets at night an uncomfortable experience, but at least they did not actively harm anyone. Now it seemed like some switch had been flipped somewhere, a switch linked to every mushy undead brain, and the zombies could not get enough of killing people.
The police force arrested these zombies, but that was it – the zombies were read their rights and kept in cells until their individual trials began. Sometimes people died at these trials.
And the people did not like any of this. That was why vigilantes like the Battler were around.
A boy in a dirty grey cloak landed on top of the Battler, startling him. The Battler grabbed the boy from around his neck and threw him to the ground, holding him there with his heavy boot on the boy’s leg. The boy kept his face covered with his hood and did not make a single sound.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ the Battler asked.
When the boy did not respond, the Battler concluded he must be a zombie, albeit a particularly well-intact one. He raised his fist.
‘Wait!’ called a female voice from high above. ‘Don’t hurt him!’
The Battler looked up to see a blonde girl peering down from behind a planter, the mist of rain combining with the building’s white safety lights to form a halo around her head. Even from this distance, the Battler could feel the girl’s sharp blue eyes piercing through his costume and into his battered soul.
‘What is he?’ the Battler called up.
‘He’s . . . an orphan. He thought you were someone else. Wait, I’m coming down.’
The Battler expected a long wait as she climbed down the stairs of the building, found the exit and met up with them. Instead she stood on top of the planter, the tips of her boots peeking past the wood, and – with only the slightest fraction of a moment’s hesitation – stepped into the air and dropped down onto the Battler’s head.
‘Jaysus!’ the Battler cried out, holding his throbbing temple.
The girl quickly collected herself and helped the boy up. The boy hid shyly behind her.
‘Okay, now you explain this,’ the Battler demanded impatiently.
‘This is Jacob,’ the girl said, moving the boy in front of her. ‘He doesn’t speak. Not after . . . Well, he’s an orphan. Has been for a couple years now. He can . . . You have to be careful around him. He’s sharp in more ways than one. I’m surprised you’re still standing, to be honest.’
‘Me?’ the Battler asked incredulously. ‘You’re surprised I’m still standing? I’m surprised he can still stand after I stepped on his leg! He looks as delicate as a leaf in that funny little cloak.’
‘That “funny little cloak” is what keeps him safe. But you don’t need to know that.’
The Battler shook his head in disbelief.
‘I don’t know if you know who I am, but—’
‘We know who you are. We didn’t at first, but we do now.’
The Battler gave this some pause before remembering his own fame.
‘Okay. Now tell me about yourself: I want to know if you’re as crazy as you’re making yourself out to be.’
‘Ah, that’s easy. My name is Crystal. I’m Jacob’s protector.’
The Battler looked at her more closely: she had light blonde hair and was wearing white, sturdy clothes. There were not many citizens in Clot City who wore white. Given her appearance, her fall from above and her choice of words, the Battler would not have been surprised if she had told him she was the boy’s guardian angel. Or some kind of angel. The Battler waited for more, but when she did not say anything else, he spoke up:
‘That’s it?’
‘Oh, there’s a lot more. It kind of depends on how much time you have, and how much you actually care.’
‘And you’re willing to tell me all this because . . . ?’
‘I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot, Mr. Battler. We can help each other. We should be helping each other. Let me tell you about how things went for us, and then we can discuss how things should go.’
The Battler scratched his mask.
‘Colour me intrigued,’ he said. ‘Shoot.’
‘We should probably find a better place to talk first.’
‘“Better”?’
‘More comfortable. Follow me.’
Crystal turned and headed further into the alley. The Battler looked down at Jacob, who shot daggers from his eyes before turning and following his so-called protector. The Battler would never be able to forget those eyes: cold and bitter, they could not have been the eyes of a mere child.
It was Jacob’s eyes that first made the Battler feel he had to help these people.
Crystal’s idea of a ‘more comfortable’ place had been the second floor of an abandoned building. She sat with Jacob atop a giant crate while the Battler sat on a slightly smaller one. The Battler wondered how many people were being eaten alive by zombies while they were sitting there.
‘I’m going to tell you the story of how Jacob and I got together,’ Crystal began. ‘I’m not too good at telling stories – I’m about as good as a ten-year-old boy, really – but all that matters is that everything I’m about to tell you is true.
‘I first met Jacob in Shine City.’
‘Never heard of it,’ said the Battler, crossing his arms.
‘Okay. How about shut up and listen for a little bit? So I first met Jacob in Shine City. It’s far away – really far away – and not that big or that well known, and I think a lot of people would prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist right now, but . . . When I first met Jacob, he was cowering in the corner of an alley, tucked between some cardboard boxes. When I went to help him out of it, he cut my arm with a dagger. See?’
She showed off a stroke of pink calligraphy that went up her wrist.
‘It turns out he had just watched his parents being eaten by vampires. Want to know how I know this?’
She tapped her temple.
‘It’s because I saw some of their bones and clothes just outside the alley. It’s also because Jacob and I have a telepathic link, a bond. I only have it with Jacob. Actually, I don’t know if we have a telepathic link for sure – it might just be my imagination. Maybe we just get along really, really well, and I’m only confusing that for a telepathic bond. I don’t know! It’s hard to tell these things when Jacob can’t talk. He can’t even write. I guess his parents hadn’t been all that great to begin with. Oh well.’
‘This isn’t a very touching story,’ the Battler threw in.
‘No, I guess not,’ Crystal admitted. ‘But there’s a lot of blood in it. Shine City was overrun with vampires. Do you know anything about vampires?’
‘No.’
‘They’re kind of like zombies, but . . . worse. They’re intelligent, they enjoy what they do and you can’t actually kill them.’
‘Doesn’t sound like much fun.’
‘Right! That’s exactly right. It’s not fun, especially when you’re holed up in some dark, gothic castle, awaiting your eventual demise at the hands of these things. Jacob and I found ourselves in this place, temporarily abandoned by someone named Lord Tech. Lord Tech might be a vampire – the chief vampire – but we’re not exactly sure. I’ve only seen him once. Jacob doesn’t know who he is. What we do know is that he created both the vampires and the zombies.’
‘!’
‘Anyway, we hoped we would be safe in the basement of this castle, but the vampires found their way in. As we searched around for weaponry, we found a cloak – Jacob’s cloak – which is . . . Okay, I might as well tell you. There are two sides to the cloak, the inside and the outside, and the outside temporarily alters the molecular structure of anything that touches it so that what’s inside the cloak remains unharmed. That’s what helped us get out of the castle alive. Well, that and Jacob’s apparent proficiency with daggers. I don’t know why it is, but he seems to have an infinite supply of them tucked away somewhere, and he can do the most horrible things with them. He decapitated every single vampire that entered that castle. That bought us some time – it tends to take a few days for a vampire to reattach such an appendage.’
‘That’s . . . insane. I don’t even know why I believe you, but I do.’
‘It’s because I’m telling the truth. We came all the way to Clot City to find someone who can help us put a stop to Lord Tech.’
‘Why all the way here? Why not someplace closer to Shine City?’
‘Because Lord Tech is here. We don’t know where, exactly, but we know he’s here. The zombie uprising is proof of this.’
The Battler gave it some thought. Thanks to his mask, neither Crystal nor Jacob could tell how, exactly, he was thinking about it – if he was confused, worried or something else. All they could see was a vigilante sitting quietly on a crate.
Then the crate burst open.
Fruit chunks and juices splattered towards Crystal and Jacob. Jacob instantly pulled up his cloak to protect them from the renegade fruit debris, the juice splashing off the material and landing on the floor. From within the cloak they could hear the sounds of battling, sloshing and dripping.
Jacob pulled back the cloak so they could make sense of what had happened: a zombie, engorged on wasua fruit, was tussling with the Battler, and the wasua fruit had given the zombie an extra limb.
‘What do you think?’ Crystal asked Jacob. ‘Should we help him?’
Jacob did not respond. Instead he perched gargoyle-still on the edge of the crate, his cold eyes tracing the details of the battle below. If the vague messages being received by Crystal’s telepathic link were correct, he was either waiting for an opening or waiting to see which of the two died first – though in the zombie’s case it would actually be its second death.
The Battler sent a gloved fist into the zombie’s decaying head and small, rotted teeth shot out the back of its skull. The zombie, screeching through the new hole in its head, scratched at the Battler’s shoulder, its bony fingertips tearing through his coat. The zombie then jammed a finger into the Battler.
‘Ow,’ Crystal said, wincing as she held her own shoulder.
When the zombie yanked back its hand, the finger came loose and popped off inside the Battler’s costume. If the zombie had been able to see – and if the Battler’s mask were not so opaque – it would have witnessed the terrifying sight of the Battler narrowing his eyes in anger. The Battler grabbed the zombie by its arms and kicked its legs out from under it.
Splash!
The zombie landed in the mess of wasua fruit that soaked the floor. Before the Battler could deliver the finishing blow, however, Jacob dropped down from the giant crate and landed on the zombie’s torso, the impact exploding the zombie’s limbs in four different directions. The Battler noticed the tips of daggers being retracted into Jacob’s cloak as he stood.
‘You’re one scary kid,’ the Battler said.
‘What’s scary is how much you actually mean that,’ Crystal said.
‘Can you get down from there?’ the Battler asked Crystal, who was standing with arms akimbo atop the giant crate.
‘As sure as you can fight zombies,’ she said.
She leapt down the other side, disappearing behind the massive wooden box. When she reappeared, she was slapping wasua juice off her palms.
‘So how are we going after this “Lord Tech”?’ the Battler asked.
‘There should be a few ways. After all, no villain is infallible, and most of them love leaving clues.’
‘I guess I should know,’ the Battler said wistfully. ‘You may not believe it, but I was actually a villain for a little while.’
‘That might be easier to believe than you think,’ Crystal said. ‘Anyway, let’s get started. Clue the first: look for places where zombies are heavily concentrated. Back when the vampire domination was happening, I tended to see, smell and feel Lord Tech’s shadow lingering over large crops of vampires. Why? Because he unloaded them personally.’
‘Are you saying he might be driving around the city in a truck loaded with zombies?’
‘No, I didn’t actually say that. I don’t know how he does it, but he does, and that might be how we catch him.’
‘Hm.’
‘Clue the second: you’ll hear white noise whenever Lord Tech is nearby. This is a big one.’
‘It’s also pretty odd, if you ask me.’
Crystal let out an impatient sigh.
‘I know it is, Mr. Battler, but it’s from personal experience. It’s also one of the reasons why he’s called Lord Tech.’
‘So that ridiculous moniker isn’t actually his real name?’
‘No.’
The Battler stroked his masked chin thoughtfully.
‘That’s kind of disappointing,’ he said.
‘Clue the third: the one time I saw him he was wearing a masque. Not a Halloween mask, but the type you’d find at a high society ball. It covered his eyes, which were white almonds like a character in an old comic book, and the tips went past the sides of his head. The strangest thing was that it always seemed like the masque was moving and swirling around, like it couldn’t hold a single shape. I’ll never forget it. I thought he might have been wearing a shadow.’
‘And you swear he’s not a vampire?’
‘No, I said he might be a vampire. In fact, I’m pretty sure I even said he might be the chief vampire.’
‘Ah, right. So I gotta keep my eyes peeled for a dense group of zombies and a man with an amorphous masque. And I need to keep my ears peeled for some white noise.’
‘Right!’
‘Then let’s split up. I’ll go ahead and do Toothpick Street – it’s the longest street in Clot and I know it well. If anyone has come across white noise or zombie mobs, I can be sure to hear about it there.’
Crystal nodded.
‘We’ll do the Emerald District, since it’s nearby.’
‘Noted. But one last thing before I go – what should I do if I find him? Should I try to get in touch with you? And if so—’
‘Kill him,’ Crystal said succinctly and with certainty. ‘Put your fist into his brain and kill him.’
‘And if I want to get in touch with you?’
Crystal folded her arms. Even when she was acting tough, she still looked to the Battler like an angel. Jacob, however, still looked like he could rip out a man’s soul and eat it while it screamed.
‘If you need to get in touch with us, you’re not trying hard enough,’ Crystal said.
The vessel passed calmly through the clouds, imperceptibly altering its trajectory. As the clouds gradually rose above it, the vessel began taking on some semblance of life: red lights pulsed against its windows and the low whirr of an alarm cut through the ambience of the sky.
A large hatch burst open, and from the hatch poured forth a handful of vaguely-human silhouettes. The limbs of these silhouettes flailed; what might have been the shape of an arm detached from one, a leg from another.
The silhouettes hit the roofs of the city’s dark buildings in singles, then in groups of two or three. With each random landing came a loud thud, as of bony meat meeting a cement slab, followed by the pained moans of a creature that had long ago lost its sentience. These moans were followed by human screams.
The screams were chased after by the Battler.
Zombies In The Sky continues in Part 2
