Dark Blue Monstropolis

Argo looked to his log. He had been absently making and undoing a single change to a single music file for the last five minutes.

He sighed, flicked his visor up and sat for a moment, thinking. Or giving the air of one who is thinking: his mind did not want to go anywhere but back down into the bowels beneath the Fellowship Lodge.

He reached into his backpack and produced a small metal ball. He unscrewed the two halves of it and produced a pocket acetylene torch. Then he went to work on it. There was no undo feature when you were working with metal. At least he could only go forward.

It had taken Argo’s mind a moment to process exactly what he was seeing. Out of the corner of his eye, Mayster appeared to be experiencing the same thing.

Welsh had taken a look up and around, digested for a moment, and then walked on down the passageway, wisely leaving them to do the same in their own time.

In the moment before he registered was he was seeing, Argo thought, Right next to where they slept? Jesus, they kept this right next to where they slept?

Bones. The long hallway was filled down each side with human skeletal remains. Mounted to the wall were sometimes complete skeletons, sometimes only skulls. At any point, no matter where Argo looked, he could easily pick out the remains of twenty individuals.

As Argo stepped forward to examine a skull that was sitting on a shelf at his eye level, he noted that they each had writing, positioned in the middle of what would have been their foreheads.

NORTON, AUG. 2192

“They identify them,” Argo said to himself, feeling his skin crawl. “They write their names and the date for each on them.”

“How long has this shit been happening?” Mayster asked. He had picked up a skull and was looking at the date on it. “June 2181,” he read off.

“How long has the Lodge been here?”

Mayster blinked. “No idea. It was here when we got here.”

Argo stepped away from the skull. “Exactly.”

“This damn thing goes on for miles and keeps spiraling back down under itself,” Welsh said, walking slowly back down the hallway towards them. A fresh cigarette was clamped between his lips.

“Where’s Threnody?” Mayster asked.

“She’ll be along. She can cover ground faster than we can, we’re best just waiting here.” Welsh held out his hands and Mayster instinctively tossed him the skull. Welsh examined it. “They played it smart. Mostly. As smart as a pseudo-religious cannibal cult could be considered to be, I guess.

“They’d take people who wouldn’t be missed. Like musicians dumb enough to leave the Atlantic Union and tour beyond the Wall.”

“How did you find out about this?” Mayster asked. “They’ve been here forever and no one in town knew.”

“Peg Leg,” Welsh jerked a thumb back towards the dorm, “or whatever he’s going to be calling himself now. He made a supplies run, and we found him. We talked to him. He traded information for his life.” He flicked ashes off the end of his cigarette and drew from it thoughtfully. “We don’t like to go into anything without knowing what the shot is first.”

“I know what you mean,” Argo scowled. He wanted to get royally pissed about being on the dinner menu without his knowledge, but couldn’t. It wasn’t the strangest thing that had happened to him in his life, regardless.

Welsh smiled. “If you had known, would you have come along anyway?”

Mayster grinned, “For a paying gig?”

“Of course,” Argo had finished for him.

“Good lads,” Welsh said.

“Why the hell did you get involved with this in the first place?” Argo asked.

Threnody appeared behind Welsh so suddenly that even Welsh was startled.

Argo distantly felt glad that the guy who constantly snuck up on them was able to be snuck up on himself.

Threnody was carrying what looked to be a pillowcase. From the shape of what she had inside it, it was easy to guess what it held.

Welsh took it from her and looked into it. He nodded. “This is Jeni. She was eight years old. She was the daughter of a friend of ours.” He dropped his cigarette and ground it to death on the floor. “And that was when they ceased playing it smart.”

From there, Welsh had asked Argo and Mayster if they might bunk down with them for the night. They had a room booked with a hostel, but there was the threat of retaliation. Perhaps there were other members of the Lodge at large. Perhaps Peg Leg would sound the alarm and bring those other members running. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Argo had protested that their apartment was not much. Welsh laughed. “Whatever it is, we’ve seen worse and slept in it anyway.”

Mayster had offered Threnody his room but Argo had pointed out that Mayster’s room was a labyrinth of crap. Mayster had fumed, but he couldn’t deny it. Anything Mayster couldn’t fix, he felt honor bound somehow to keep–and thus monoliths of parts and gears, circuit boards and old monitor-visors littered the entire room. “Shithenge,” Argo had named it long ago.

Argo had offered up his room instead. Threnody smiled a little while she thanked him, before turning in for the night. Mayster had seen the smile and once Threnody was out of earshot, he proceeded to mutter terrible things about Argo’s parents under his breath while he busied himself getting ready for bed.

Welsh had taken the couch, but not before telling the both of them that they wanted to move at first light. Then he had handed them each a small device that looked like an EPROM. “Inoculations,” he explained.

You couldn’t enter the Atlantic Union’s borders without a sponsor. And even without a sponsor, you had to have myriad shots that cost a fortune. Word from the other side of the Wall was that anyone living in or near the Bowl was suspect from a health perspective. Everything west of the Wall was a festering pit, they believed.

They were half-right, anyway.

Mayster and Argo had looked at each of the small devices. “All of them?” Mayster had asked, impressed. “All in here?” Back in the Lodge, all the members of that fine establishment had ample reason to kill them. Now, half the population of Indianapolis would gladly kill them for what they were holding. To get all the treatments one needed to cross over…in one fell swoop? Fucking priceless.

“Yeah,” Welsh said, lighting up again from his apparently endless supply of smokes. “Best to slap it against your upper arm, almost like a TB test. Just a little harder.”

“A what?” Argo had asked.

Welsh was already shaking his head. “Never mind,” he chuckled a little. “Just dating myself. Listen, go ahead and do them now. Those are the last two of those I have.”

They did. Like little pinpricks, ice cold pinpricks, moving slowly around the perimeter of the devices. It tingled more than it stung, but he could tell it was there. The look on Mayster’s face was more confusion than anything else. “Worth more than both our lives put together and it’s over in five seconds,” he commented.

Welsh smiled, “A lot of things in this world are like that, I’m afraid. Both done then?”

They nodded.

“Great,” he said. He laid down on the couch, trenchcoat and all, and threw an arm over his eyes. “Now fuck off, would you? I’m exhausted.”