zombies of widgeroo – chapter eleven

chapter eleven – history, places of power, the infinite, and a break in the traffic

the vampire, cordon bent, slumped on a couch.

rubella sat on the floor, her head in his lap.

coogs perched on a kitchen chair, his arms crossed over the back of the chair.

i lay on the second couch, feet up and sprawled as though i’d been thrown there without thought as to how i landed.

this was probably very true.

his cheek was cut open, and still bleeding. he wasn’t wearing a uniform, but instead had a sleeveless shirt with a large mcdonalds symbol on it. upside down. impressive magic. anti-mcdonalds magic had been popular a few centuries ago.

i hadn’t known coogs had been involved in cults.

outside, gulls swirled in the wind. i wondered at the sound – birds were rare these days.

“where are we?” i asked.

coogs shrugged. “a place. i’m kind of surprised you showed up here, actually.”

fuck knows where it is.

but it’s there.

the sound of the ocean, swatting dry land with its wet back.

without looking, i knew that, outside on the beach, skinny was making castles in the sand. she was humming to herself. i couldn’t quite place the tune, but i knew it was an ancient overture.

possibly by the misfits when glenn danzig was their conductor.

what had cagliostro been wanting to tell me?

something the comte should have.

“i didn’t mean to,” i muttered, rubbing my head. something behind my eyes ached. “i had hoped to stay ahead of you.”

“never do get what we want, mate.” coogs shrugged and offered me a cup of coffee.

i took it and sipped. “thankyou.”

“see, me, all i wanted in life was to get into the pants of the local witch. but some cunt went and beat me to it.”

“would it help if i said i was sorry?”

“would you mean it?”

“probably not.”

“why’d you do it?”

“it seemed like a good idea at the time. besides, i don’t think she was taking no for an answer.”

he studied me for a moment, flicking something between his fingers. with a small sigh, i realised it was my biro.

not that i needed it to reduce him, and everything in a rather large radius, to ashes.

it was just that i kind of liked that biro.

the thought stuck there for a moment before i realised i hadn’t thought about any limit to that radius before. just how much could i reduce to ashes?

with that pen, i certainly could do things not many of the great ceos of old could have dreamed of with their small desires for accumulated wealth and hoarded treasures. how little they understood of the universe, and their potential in it.

why, the possibilities were infinite!

their dreams had been so small. diminutive.

tiny.

molecular.

byte-sized.

whereas, sometimes i saw things inside my head. worlds foreign, yet familiar.

and always i was was pulled on vacant strings back to this tiny insignificant planet.

tiny planet.

one among an infinite number of worlds.

oh, the nature of the infinite. endless in size and scope. how to understand that the loop which grows is also the loop which shrinks?

perhaps, i thought as i stared into the ghostly steam rising from my coffee, those shrunken dreams had strengthened mine.

the coffee, made of atoms.

the monitors, made of nanoprobes.

a mist of red. each blood droplet so fine splashing against my skin.

the monitors infinitely large, their nanoprobes infinitely small.

and when one was destroyed, the others failed to exist.

without the large, the small fell apart.

without the small, the large disintegrated.

there was something there.

something important.

something vital to the very fabric of magic.

something like a paradox, but the kind of paradox which must be sustained.

coogs laughed.

my train of thought disintegrated like a mist of red collapsing to the tiles.

“yes,” he allowed. “she probably wouldn’t at that. but you have to understand, mate. there you were, looking like a fucking desert bum, coming into my town and immediately jumping into the sack with the one bitch i’d made perfectly clear to all who passed was my property. it didn’t look good to my soldiers. they began to lose faith in me. can’t keep a leader who’s been made a fool of by a passing tramp. it’s bad for morale. discipline goes right the fuck outta the window. then you disappeared off the face of the planet. and how could i explain to them what you were? fuck, even i don’t know what you are, and i was there.”

“you were at widgeroo?”

he frowned, then. he stopped twirling the biro and stared hard into my eyes. “don’t lie to me. we’ve known each other a long time. you’ve known me since i was a kid. you conjured a nymph for me on my fifteenth. i remember, man. don’t lie. you were there, you should know if i was or wasn’t.”

he twirled the biro faster between his fingers, obviously agitated and trying to keep his anger at bay. it danced for him, and i wished i could do that trick.

i wondered how it was done, and my fingers itched to give it a try.

basic biomagic, but aesthetic.

“i’m not lying, coogs,” i told him, struggling to sit up. i pushed my fists against my eyes. “i can’t remember everything. sometimes . . . sometimes it’s there, and sometimes it’s just cracked images. i see things from a long time ago. from before the times of the great microsoft domination, even. from before the rising of mcdonalds. i see it, coogs. i don’t understand much of it. but it’s there. and other bits are just holes. holes which have been burned out of my skull. or something.”

coogs nodded, and put the biro on the table behind him. “i wasn’t at widgeroo. but jubei was.”

“jubei was at widgeroo?” i stared at him in shock.

i hadn’t known that.

or, rather, i couldn’t remember it.

“you don’t remember that, i take it?”

i shook my head.

“pity,” coogs muttered. “that’s what i wanted to talk to you about. i just wanted to know. i couldn’t ask you when we last met. i didn’t have the time. my enforcers were a little restless to go play with the natives. i don’t generally go in for that stuff, but a leader’s got to do some things he doesn’t necessarily agree with. it’s the rules. i have rules, you know.”

jubei, screaming for his guards.

danaya, tears falling onto my face.

coogs, his mailed fist tearing her away from me.

jubei, screaming.

danaya, disappearing on wings of moonlight.

coogs, kneeling down. prodding me, softly. “sorry, mate. you know i’m gonna have to hit you for a bit. it’s the rules, you know.”

i looked up into his impassive face and nodded. “sure, coogs. i know.”

now he watched me, nodding slowly, his cheek bleeding. i wondered who had cut it open. the witchgirl who remained unmoving at the feet of the vampire?

“sure, coogs,” i said. “i know.”

“he went to widgeroo because he’d heard the rebels were massing there,” coogs said. “after it was over, i heard you were there. i figured jubei had found that out and followed you. he hadn’t trusted me enough after your escape. i think he knew we had been friends in the old days. anyway, he was mad by that stage. berserk. foamed at the mouth a few times. hardly ever said a thing without her name in it somewhere. so, now i have you here, and now that it doesn’t matter, maybe you’ll tell me about her?”

danaya.

“what about her?”

“what is she? she weren’t no ordinary spirit. i’m no mage, but i’ve been around you lot long enough to know the difference between a spirit, a demonette, and even a nymph.” he grinned. “especially a nymph.”

“i’m not sure what she was, coogs. jubei had this idea. see, he’d found some old inscription. he just told me who to summon, and i did the ritual.”

“so why didn’t you just give control of her to him when he asked?”

“coogs, i couldn’t! i didn’t know what she was, and i can’t bind something i don’t know the nature of. i told jubei many times that i had no power over her.”

“yet, you summoned her.”

“oh, i don’t think i did. even durious wasn’t able to summon her. i think she let me summon her.”

“doesn’t that scare you at all? for some reason it frightens the shit out me. she always made me feel uneasy. especially the way she just flitted in and out of the castle. like she owned the place. and how jubei just went mental every time she was near. i always wondered if she made him feel that way.”

“as soon as i saw her, i recognised her. don’t ask me to explain that, coogs. i can’t. i don’t know the answers. but let’s just say that i really believe she only came when i called because she wanted to meet me. not because i called, or because jubei was who he was. i think she was more curious. i honestly don’t know. she never did give me anything.”

“jubei thought you were keeping her power to yourself.”

“jubei was mental,” i smiled. “no, danaya has never even helped me with a spell. at the most she stands around and calls everything i do primitive and overly-sophisticated. i don’t understand her. since jubei had you tear us apart, she rarely visits me anyway. i feel she’s waiting for me to finish my task.”

“your task?”

i shrugged.

danaya, floating in the desert, her smile touching my cheek.

“the change must be made. do not falter in your quest.”

“danaya, when have i ever faltered? when they stripped the skin from my feet and forced me to walk on my belly down the mountains of peru, did i falter then?”

jubei, screaming for his guards.

jubei, leaning over me. “your body will be nailed to the city gates, where it will hang until this world is dust.”

i shuddered.

with my fingers, i traced a minor sign of the lesser aspirin rune in the air and spoke a power word. more minor magic, but effective.

the pain faded.

i rubbed the final ache from my eyes.

“you have a gift for stealing women, it seems,” he said. “i wanted her, but she chose you. that witch, i mean. i don’t know why.”

i shrugged. “i just followed the path to see where it went.”

“maybe that’s where i went wrong,” he chuckled. then shrugged. “when you escaped the dungeons, jubei had a fit. you just faded away. right in front of my eyes, too…”

cordon’s breath whistled out from between his broken fangs as he suddenly seemed interested in what we were saying. the witchgirl groaned, but he ignored her. “you mean, he’s the one?”

coogs grinned at them. “the one? fuck, boy, there’s never been another.”

the vampire looked impressed, frightened and awed all in the one expression. i thought he should be proud of that.

i was only ever able to master one at a time.

rubella looked at coogs. “can we go now?” she asked, quietly.

“i’m not going to feed you,” he snorted.

“wait,” i put my arm up as she got to her feet, cordon helping her. “i was wondering if you could tell me something.”

“what could i tell you?” she asked, clutching the jar closer. “there’s nothing i could tell you. you’re more powerful than i am. surely you know it all by now.”

“noone can ever know it all,” i said, nearly automatically. “no, i need to know about sempala.”

“what about her?”

“who’s sempala?” coogs asked.

she shrugged. “i met her last year, on all taxes eve. fatty introduced me to her. she had the coolest green hair. she said she was a witch, but i didn’t believe her.”

“why not?” i asked, even though i believed she was right. whatever sempala was, she wasn’t a witch.

“she seemed to know stuff,” the girl blushed. “me, i only know what fatty taught me, and what was in my grandmother’s books. and my gran, she only knew stuff she said she’d found in a book, too. most of what she did was just for show. she has to make a living, you know. she has a crystal ball, though, but it’s broken. it only shows stuff which has happened, not what will happen.”

“where can i find sempala?”

rubella shrugged. “i wasn’t really her friend. but fatty said he always met her at a roadhouse outside of widgeroo.”

and then she and cordon walked outside into the sunlight, toward the ocean.

i didn’t think i’d see them again, but that didn’t bother me.

coogs grinned at me. “widgeroo.”

i smiled. “widgeroo.”

“i’ve been meaning to ask,” he said, scraping the chair across the floor as he got to his feet. he picked up and tossed the biro at me, unconcerned by what i’d do with it. then he moved to the fridge and took out a bottle. he cracked the lid and drank deeply. sighed a pleasure sigh, before continuing. “what was the magic you used to escape the dungeons? it disintegrated the spells binding you, and killed three mages. only durious, helios, and durgen survived. durgen went mad, by the way.”

“i’m sorry to hear that. but i couldn’t stay anymore. i don’t know what spell it was. years ago, when a land called america existed somewhere in the west, i was in a temple,” i put my fist to my head and tried to remember. “i saw things in there, but i’m still not sure what i saw. blood, suspended in time. faces in the sky, or in the ceiling. painted faces. danaya was there, and she told me to find jubei – no, not jubei. she told me to find the overlord. there’s the difference i didn’t understand until black rock. when she was with me while i was with jubei, she seemed to want to tell me things but said it was my task to complete, not hers.”

“jubei was pissed. the blood he spilled could’ve drowned oceans.”

“that’s why durious opposed him?”

“no, not until helios voiced his doubts and was dealt with. then durious ran. in the middle of the night. destroyed a battalion of my enforcers getting away.”

“no mean feat.”

“i was impressed. pissed, but impressed. not nearly as impressed as i was when the world was turned into a wasteland virtually overnight. they say a spell was cast which destroyed everything from the age before. i’m not sure how i feel about being around as one age died and another began. i blamed durious, for a while, but when i found he’d died at widgeroo, i could only think you must have joined him after your escape. or he joined you?”

“i can’t remember that bit. i was there when he died. and you’re right, i cast the spell.”

“i wanted to kill you for that. one day i was bodyguard to the new capitalist overlord, and the next i was nothing,” he snapped his fingers. “nothing. i managed to keep a few enforcers with me, and we moved around, looking for a good town to take as our own. we found it. but it’s hardly paradise, is it? not really the kind of thing a soldier dreams of protecting from hordes of enemy troops.”

“i’m sorry. when i cast the spell, i didn’t know what it was. the blood that was spilled that day affected me somehow. i couldn’t think clearly. i don’t think any of us could.”

“i heard it was bad there.”

“it was where we were.”

jubei, leading his forces against us. his orders screamed across the battlefield.

fliers dropped their explosive spells down upon our positions. fragments of living acid chewed through flesh and bone.

durious shouted to his company to fall back.

i took his arm. “wait, i think there’s another way.”

i was reeling. the blood was strong.

temple runes blinded me, and i showed him a rune, and called its power name.

i don’t know where the name came from, but durious was impressed. he flung his arms wide and screamed, “we are on the edge of a new age, old friend! the world is hours away from its rebirth!”

a voice whispered in my brain.

seductive.

suggestive.

i couldn’t think what it was trying to say.

and there, in the distance, was jubei, dressed in his suit of arms, tie flapping in the wind. blood bursting from holes in his suit. screaming as his army felt every blood vessel in their body burst into thousands of particles.

sprayed across the battlefield.

and jubei, wallet in hand, stepping through the confusion. protected, no doubt, from highest order magics. his wallet, i knew, contained some of the greatest symbols since the breaking of the feudal lords.

but, something whispered in a voice like creaking leather. there is a way. a way to break his insurances…

jubei, rising up in front of me, eyes wide and bleeding. spitting foam, and waving a small plastic card carved upon with platinum runes. i should have felt fear at the sight of that.

and, into the sudden silence, “if i cannot have her, then you never will…”

his arm swung.

i didn’t even try to stop the blow.

it never came.

durious, stepping up, glancing once at the body of the fallen overlord. “so, it ends.”

i turned to him, my face feeling at once absurd and alien. like a latex mask. “no, durious. so it begins!”

the words spun through my mind.

i had killed jubei despite his insurances.

killing someone who was insured was, according to every one of my masters, absolutely impossible. that’s what insurances were for.

yet, i had done something unthinkable.

i felt my own insurances and wondered just how much they were really worth.

jubei, curled up in the mud.

a corpse.

coogs shuffled back to his seat and leaned on the back of it, his bottle half-empty. “and what are you going to do if i let you go?”

“i’m going back to widgeroo.”

“you know what that will do? to this world? to everything here?”

“it will probably mean the destruction of everything, yes. but i have to go. i have to finish the spell. if i don’t, they will just wait there for me anyway. maybe, if they wait long enough, they might come looking. did cordon tell you what was in the black rock?”

“he said zombies. zombies are popping up all over the place nowadays. signs of the times. i didn’t think they had anything to do with widgeroo.”

“i think they did. they bowed to me. i think they’ll spread across the world, sooner or later. what about you? what will you do?”

“the wife left not long after i went on the road after you. with a trucker, of all people.”

“i’m sorry about that.”

“i’m not,” he snorted. “she was a bitch anyway. i’m not an enforcer anymore.”

“i know.”

he touched his cheek. “my men betrayed me. they didn’t agree with my search for you. i’m lucky to be alive, to tell the truth.”

“what saved you?”

he grinned. “why, you did, mate. when you reappeared, everything around you turned to dust. except me. i don’t know why i was spared, but one second i was being beaten by my own fucking enforcers, and the next they were blood spots floating in the air, and you were there, unconscious. i carried you here. i wanted to know, you see. i never knew what really happened. i would still like to know what power it was that let you free of me not once, but twice.”

“i got lucky the second time. there was a body in my room.”

“yes, an accident, i’m told. it doesn’t matter. something protects you. are you, by chance, insured?”

“i have been, but only for a few days.”

“fucking typical. dangerous magic, that. even i know that much.”

“true. it’s another reason i must go to widgeroo.”

“why’s that?”

“it is, on this world, my place. the lines running across the globe, those invisible threads, they meet there. it is my place. there, my power is strongest. i believe it will all end there. or, perhaps, begin?”

he picked up a bottle, and opened it. he took a long drink. “whatever is there, i no longer care. i am not an enforcer, so i am not bound by rules. i had merely hoped to learn what happened to jubei, but as you don’t know, there’s no point keeping you here. as for widgeroo, well, what you do now, you do alone. nothing new to you, i guess, but now you know you don’t have to look over your shoulder for the big bad coogs,” he took another swallow. “i would also have killed you for touching my witch. but if you’re insured, there’s not much point trying, is there?”

“not really, no. but if it will make you feel better to try,” i said, putting my biro back into my pocket. “feel free…”

he smiled. “for old times sake?”

“yes.”

he waved the bottle toward the door. “get out of here. go to widgeroo. kill us all. get out before i change my mind and nail you to the wall like jubei would have liked.”

“would you have done it, coogs? would you have nailed me to that gate and left me there?”

“of course,” he grunted. “but if it pleases you to believe it, i would have visited on my days off, at least to talk about footy.”

“i would have liked that.”

and i would have, too.

not the gate, of course.

or the footy.

but the visits, those i would have liked.

Tags: zombies of widgeroo