Nocturnal: A Novel

  “Okay,” Bryan said. “You’re right. We keep the secret. So what do we do now?”

  Alder tapped his cane on the floor twice, click-click. “We have to go to the hospital. If Marie’s Children find out Savior is hurt, they might come after him. You need to help us protect Erickson until he heals.”

  Bryan shook his head. “I can’t go to the hospital.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I sort of got fired.”

  Adam rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s just fucking fantastic. Thank goodness we have you on our side. Such an asset to the team.”

  Alder didn’t seem phased by the news. He looked Bryan up and down, then turned to his grandson. “Adam. I think the time has come for a new Savior.”

  Adam stared at his grandfather for a moment, then started laughing. “A pig? Grampa, have you been taking too many meds? There’s no way we can—”

  “Adam! There isn’t any other choice! It has to be Bryan.”

  Has to be Bryan? What were they talking about? Alder didn’t mean …

  “Me? You want me to be a Savior?”

  Alder nodded. “Except for Jebediah, all the other Saviors are dead. This is your destiny.”

  “Destiny? Give me a break, man. I’ve got some messed-up genetics and a family that lied to me my whole life. That’s tragedy, not destiny. What’s next? You going to tell me everything happens for a reason?”

  Alder shook his head. “No. I’m going to tell you that if you don’t help us, Erickson may die and this city will turn into a hellhole.”

  Bryan thought of the shark-toothed man on the embalming table. He’d felt that man’s fear in a nightmare, felt the terror at the unforgiving hands of Savior.

  “Erickson tried to kill me. If I save him, am I going to wind up stuffed in that basement?”

  Alder shook his head. “Jebediah reacted on instinct. For so long, he’s been the only one hunting Marie’s Children. But if you join us, Bryan, we will have two Saviors. You could hunt together.”

  Hunt together. Erickson was his half-brother. So were all the other obscenities, but Erickson wasn’t like them; he was a protector, not a murderer. A harsh reality hit home — Jebediah Erickson might be the only true family Bryan could ever have.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. This all sounds crazy, I’m just trying to figure out what to do next.”

  Alder nodded. “That’s logical. But won’t you at least see what we have to offer? I realize the last basement you saw may have been disturbing, but if you’re anything like Jebediah, you’ll find our basement far more to your liking”

  Alder and Adam walked deeper into the house.

  Bryan didn’t know what else to do, so he followed.

  The Kingdom

  So many babies.

  The nursery was the final stop on Rex’s tour of his new realm. Hillary had been so eager to show him everything. Sly and Pierre came with, of course.

  Realm. That was a cool word; he’d read about realms in his many fantasy stories, played in them on video games. It was just a cooler word than kingdom. And this really wasn’t a kingdom, anyway. The tour showed him that.

  A kingdom was a huge thing, sprawling as far as the eye could see. Home wasn’t that big, just a collection of the two large caverns, two smaller caverns, thirteen isolated clusters of caves, and — of course — tunnels, tunnels and more tunnels. He’d seen the library (it had dehumidifiers to keep the books dry), the kitchen (complete with what was left of Alex, who tasted delicious), the theater (they had an old, giant-sized TV and a copy of just about every movie Rex had ever heard of) and the armory that held all the guns. Lots of guns. Hillary and Sly told him that there were other tunnel clusters elsewhere in the city, but those would have to wait. He had seen the main areas of Home, then finished up at the nursery.

  Dozens of old bassinets, beat-up cribs and even metal tubs with blankets lined the edges of the small room. Babies of different shapes and colors lay in most of these things. Women — both strange-looking and normal — tended to the babies, cuddled them, took care of them when they cried. So much love. Secondhand toys littered the floor.

  Giggling little kids also scurried through the room. When they saw Rex, they ran to him. He recognized Vanilla Gorilla, Crabapple Bob and the other children who had chased Alex down and torn him to pieces. Hands reached to Rex, tugged at his clothes — these children wanted to be picked up and held. Some were too big for that, and at any rate, that probably wasn’t kingly behavior.

  “Sly,” he said, and that was all he had to say. Sly made fake roaring noises and picked the children up, tossing them lightly away. The children squealed and laughed, but they gave Rex space.

  Such a happy place, at least on the surface. The more Rex looked around, the more he noticed the bad things — many of the babies just lay there. Some were coughing lightly, some cried and whimpered. Most of them looked sick.

  “Hillary, what’s wrong with them?”

  Hillary reached into a metal tub and gently lifted a yellow-skinned child who had just one big, blue eye in the middle of its face. The eyelid drooped half shut, and the eye seemed to stare out into nothing. She cradled the child in her arms.

  “Mommy is old,” Hillary said. “Old even for us.”

  “How old is she?”

  Hillary shrugged. “I was born in 1864. Mommy was at least fifty when she had me.”

  Hillary was a hundred and fifty years old? Holy shit! Would Rex live that long? Maybe even longer than that, because Mommy was already two hundred years old.

  Hillary lifted the child and kissed its forehead. “Mommy has as many babies as she used to, but the older she gets, the more of them that are born dead. Those who live are often sickly. Most of the children do not make it past their first birthday.”

  Rex again looked around the room, taking in the numbers. These babies were his brothers and sisters — how many of them would just die? It was terrible and heartbreaking; it hurt to even think about it. “What about doctors? Can’t we take them to a hospital?”

  Hillary shrugged as she gently rocked the one-eyed baby. “Could we take this one to the hospital? I think not. We do all we can, but even if we had medicine, we wouldn’t know which kind to give. This is why I worked so hard to bring in a new king, so that the people could spread. If our kind is to survive, we have to spread.”

  Many of these babies would die, and yet Firstborn killed baby kings? Why would anyone kill children? Rex wondered if he had made a mistake by sparing Firstborn’s life. Maybe, but there was something about that tall man, something great.

  There had to be a reason why Firstborn killed babies.

  “Sly, where does Firstborn live?”

  “In a room on the Alamandralina, the ship you saw when you first got here,” Sly said. “Firstborn has it good — his room is the nicest place in all of Home.”

  “Take me there,” Rex said. “If he’s not there already, you take Pierre and Fort and whoever else you need and bring him. He doesn’t have a choice.”

  Gear

  The Jessups’ basement had a workbench identical to the one at Erickson’s house. Bryan looked over the gear — rig for bow maintenance and repair, barrel of arrow shafts, rack of polished arrowheads, a custom gun rack holding four Fabrique Nationale five-sevens and three USAS-12 semiautomatic shotguns. It was clearly a backup base of operations for Erickson, in case anything happened to his house.

  The Jessups also had several spotless fabricating machines: drills, presses, grinding wheels and more. One entire wall held a rack of gray plastic pull-out bins, each neatly labeled with names of various parts or components. A place for everything, and everything in its anal-retentive place.

  At the back end of the basement sat a fully equipped hospital bed. A wheelchair sat next to it. Like everything else in the basement, both bed and chair gleamed from what had to be a daily cleaning. They also had a heart monitor, an autoclave, a portable x-ray machine, a rack of medical supplies and some other equ
ipment Bryan didn’t recognize. He wondered if the stainless-steel fridge next to the bed contained supplies of Erickson’s blood.

  “You guys into home health care?”

  “It’s for Jebediah,” Alder said. “Occasionally he is injured when fighting Marie’s Children.”

  Had the bear-thing in Erickson’s basement drawn blood? Maybe taken a pound of flesh? He wondered what happened if Erickson/Savior was wounded in the field. Who would bail him out?

  “You guys ever help Erickson go after Marie’s Children?”

  Alder shrugged. “Sometimes he asks for our assistance.”

  Bryan looked at the Jessups for what they were: an old man who could barely walk and a scrawny loudmouth. He made a mental note that if he did become a monster-hunter — as ridiculous as that sounded — he’d find more reliable backup than these two.

  Alder seemed to sag a little. He walked to a chair and slowly sat.

  Adam ran to him. “Grampa, you okay?”

  The old man nodded. “I’m fine. I just need to rest for a second. Adam, give Bryan what he needs.”

  Adam nodded. His snotty attitude seemed to vanish as he pulled two flat-black five-sevens out of the rack and set them down on the workshop table. Bryan picked one up, feeling the weight. He ejected the twenty-round magazine and saw that the bullets were tipped in black — the rounds were armor-piercing SS190s.

  “These are illegal,” Bryan said.

  “Uh-oh,” Adam said. He held out his wrists. “Better slap the cuffs on me. Oh, wait, you sorta got fired.”

  He walked to a bin and pulled out a rolled-up canvas rig. “Try this on,” he said, and tossed it to Bryan.

  Bryan unfolded it. The rig held two holsters at the small of the back, three loaded magazines on the left shoulder strap, another three on the right. He unzipped his sweatshirt and set it on the workbench, then slid his arms through the rig’s shoulder straps and fastened the belt around his waist. Bryan picked up the five-sevens, reached behind his back and slid them into the holsters. The guns clicked home, the barrels pointing down toward his ass and the handles pointing out to his sides. He imagined they looked like a buck-steel butterfly back there.

  He held his hands in front of him, then whipped them to the small of his back, grabbed the handles and drew. The guns came out smooth and clean. He repeated the action three times — so natural, so intuitive.

  He holstered them again. “What about a knife? Like Erickson had?”

  Adam pulled a box out of a bin and handed it over. Bryan opened it to find a flat-black Ka-Bar knife. The edge gleamed with sharpness, but the flat of the blade also had a strange shimmer. Bryan ran his finger along the flat, wiping off a streak of gel.

  “Don’t do that,” Alder said.

  “Why?” Bryan said, but even as he said it he felt his fingertip start to burn.

  Alder sighed. “Because it’s poisonous to you, that’s why.”

  Adam handed Bryan a rag.

  Bryan quickly rubbed off the burning material. “We found paste on Erickson’s arrowhead. Is this the same stuff? How does it work?”

  Adam nodded. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Marie’s Children heal very quickly. Uncle Jeb says they can heal up from just about anything shy of a disembowelment or decapitation. The silver paste blocks that ability, meaning a wound that would be fatal to a normal man is also fatal to them.”

  Bryan fastened the knife through his belt to hang on his left hip. “So why the arrows and the knives and shit? Why not just make the bullets out of the material?”

  “The specific material won’t form a solid,” Adam said. “As a paste, it sticks to the damaged tissue. If it’s a liquid or even a powder, the monsters’ systems just move it along and they heal up. The paste would just burn off of a bullet in flight. Bullets also have a nasty habit of going through a body, not lodging in place. The best way to kill these bastards is to stick them with something that has the paste on it, and make sure that something stays stuck. That’s why we make the broadheads the way we do.”

  Bryan drew the knife. “Does this stick?”

  “Does if you hold it in,” Adam said. “Shove it in and stay there for a while, which isn’t as naughty as it sounds.”

  Bryan put the knife back in the sheath. “So why is Erickson still in the hospital?”

  Alder stood, grunting a little as he rose to his feet. “Because he’s like me — he’s old. He’s not healing as fast as he used to. You must have hit him in a vital spot. His body is healing, but the paste slows it. Let that be a valuable lesson to you, Inspector — if you want to kill one of them, it’s best if you stab them in the heart, not the belly.”

  “Or the brain,” Adam said. “Or cut off their heads, that’ll work.”

  Bryan realized he might have to bury that blade in the chest of a bear-thing, or maybe even a little girl holding a fork and a knife.

  “How’d you guys come up with the paste?”

  Alder laughed. “Oh, for that part we are merely cooks reading from a recipe. The formula originated in Europe several centuries ago. There was a time when these creatures were more plentiful. Alchemists, and then eventually chemists after them, had many subjects upon which to experiment.”

  “Experiments?”

  Alder nodded. “Monsters were cut up very slowly. Alchemists experimented with different mixtures, slowly testing them on their subjects. Sometimes the creatures stayed alive for months. The researches finally found a compound that worked, and it has been used ever since. But we can talk about that some other time. Adam, show Bryan the greatest prize of them all.”

  Adam walked to a metal case set against the wall. He set the case on the workbench, opened it and pulled out a beautiful bow made of steel and wood. He offered the bow to Bryan.

  Bryan didn’t take it. He looked at it, then looked up at Adam. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Shoot it, stupid.”

  “I don’t know how to shoot a bow. I’ve never shot one in my life.”

  Alder seemed stunned.

  Adam started laughing. He set the bow back in the case. “What did you think, Grampa, that he’d just be a natural?”

  “I thought … well, yes,” Alder said. “It never crossed my mind he wouldn’t know how to shoot.”

  Bryan reached out and ran his fingertips along the bow. He had to admit that it was a beautiful, elegant weapon. “Maybe I’ll work my way up to that. Got anything else that would give me a little range?”

  Adam pointed to a drawer. “Stun grenades?”

  “In a hospital?” Bryan said. “I don’t think so.”

  Adam nodded. He walked to another drawer and pulled a contraption of straps, buckles, and a lethal-looking blade packed in on top of a compressed metal coil. “Spring-loaded knife,” he said as he handed it over. “Six-inch titanium blade that will arrive at its destination with an agenda and a bad attitude. And before you try to test the edge, genius, the answer is yeah, it’s poisoned.”

  Bryan strapped it underneath his left forearm. Adam showed him the mechanism — a rapid wrist-flick up would fire the heavy blade.

  Alder tapped his cane twice on the floor. “And now for the pièce de résistance.” He walked to a cabinet. With great dramatic flair, he opened the cabinet and pulled out a green cloak. He held it forward, a proud smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

  “Inspector Bryan Clauser, this cloak is the mark of the Saviors. We are asking you to embrace this role, to become one of us.”

  Bryan stared at the cloak. “I’m going into a hospital,” he said. “I don’t think Sherwood Forest is on the way.”

  Adam started laughing again. He covered his face with his hands, as if to say oh man, you stepped in it this time.

  Alder’s face screwed up into a mask of contempt. “A half hour ago, Inspector, I could have shot you as a monster. Now you are a Savior, and you won’t wear the cloak? Just who in the hell do you think you are?”

  Bryan tried not to laugh
, but he made the mistake of looking at Adam who still had his face in his hands and was shaking his head. Despite the mutant chromosome, the killing dreams, a ruined career and a trail of corpses, Bryan couldn’t suppress a smirk as the situation’s absurdity caught up with him — this old man not only wanted to dress Bryan up like a superhero, but he couldn’t fathom that Bryan wasn’t oh-so-excited about the idea.

  Alder held the cloak up again, as if Bryan hadn’t really seen it the first time. “But it’s bulletproof.”

  Bryan tried to squeeze back the laughter, but he couldn’t. “Uh, can’t I heal real fast?”

  “Of course,” Alder said. “But healing won’t put your liver back in your body if they shoot it out of you.”

  Bryan stopped laughing. “The monsters use guns?”

  “Of course they use guns,” Alder said. “Guns work. They’re monsters, not idiots.”

  So they could claw him, bite him, and they could put a couple of rounds in him as well? As Pookie would say, awesome. Still, though, the cloak was too damn conspicuous.

  “As far as I know, Chief Zou is going to throw me in jail the second she sees me,” Bryan said. “So I’ll stick to my usual clothes.”

  Adam took the cloak from his mystified grandfather and hung it back up in the cabinet. “If you change your mind, cop, I’ve got some other stuff you could try.” He shut the door.

  Alder huffed. “Adam, he is not going to wear that ridiculous outfit you came up with. We have tradition. The disrespect of today’s youth, I swear.” He turned back to Bryan. “And don’t you worry about Amy Zou. I’ll handle her. We’d best get to the hospital.”

  The old man was right. If Bryan wanted to help Erickson, he couldn’t do it from the Jessups’ basement. Like it or not, Jebediah Erickson was Bryan’s brother. He was family, something that Bryan wanted desperately.

  “Okay,” Bryan said. “Let’s do it. Am I driving, or do you guys have a car?”

  Adam started laughing again.

  Council Meeting

  During Rex’s tour, he’d seen that the people of Home made do with very little. Some had electricity, but most did not. Dampness hung in the air. Gleaming moisture covered many walls. In some places tiny streams trickled along eroded rivulets in tunnel floors. For most, Home was whatever they carved out of centuries-old landfill.