This is an early draft of the first part of a story in my collection Pulp Nova.
He walks, this man, in a country where people ride or take the rails. He places one foot in front of the other at a steady pace, following the trail that other men and horses have made. He steps around the piles of horseshit with a nimble step, almost a dancer, hopping from one foot to another with an assured stride and an almost childish joy.
He strikes a strange figure, this one, especially for the plains, especially on foot. He wears a fine grey suit and a bowler hat beneath the dust. Despite the beating sun, he doesn’t seem to sweat. Any sane man would dress light, cover himself with a duster, and wear something tough like denim. Not this man. His only concessions to the task at hand are a walking cane – of all things – and a pair of sturdy boots. At his neck is a cravat of silk and, unlike any other man you’ll meet in this untamed land, he is shaven cleanly, save for his impressively carved sideburns.
Every step kicks up dust and turns the grey of his suit brown up to the knees. His heavy satchel hangs at his side, threatening to pull him over, but it just sets him at a jaunty angle, like his hat. A simple bowler lacks a brim to keep the sun from his eyes, and surprisingly smooth skin is tanned a deep brown from which steel grey eyes sparkle with a permanent tweak of mirth.
He stops when a rock breaks the monotony of the plains and pauses to rest his feet, sitting on its sun-warmed surface for a drink of tepid water and to scrunch his toes in his boots. America’s big, and it’s a long, long way to walk. It pays for a man to take his time, especially if he is doing it to take in the sights rather than travelling for any reason.
Something catches his eye, and he turns, spitting a mouthful of dusty water to the side and dabbing his mouth with a handkerchief. There was dust rising on the horizon, further up the trail. A column of it rose into the air above the red and brown of the grasses. The wind whipped the grass in waves, and it reminded him, strangely, of the smoke rising from the steamers on the Atlantic. He doubted it was a steamer, though, not on dry land. More likely, some horses, going pretty fast from the amount of dust.
He wasn’t going to outrun whoever it was, and there was no telling who or what they were, so there was no point worrying about it. He took another sip of water and slid his pack from his shoulder, setting his cane to the side with it and pulling on his kid-skin gloves from his pocket. It couldn’t hurt to be a little careful.
The column of dust got closer and closer until it resolved itself into two horses, riding along the trail, side by side. He shielded his eyes against the sun and squinted, carefully. Two men, broad hats and dusters, bulging saddlebags. They were riding hard, but they seemed to slow when they spotted him, walking the horses until they came into range of conversation.
“Howdy,” the man who spoke wore a broad brown hat. His shirt was stained yellow with sweat and dust, and a red kerchief hung around his neck. There was a pistol on each hip, and he was wary, pushing his duster back behind the holsters and turning his horse side on.
The second man was a Mexican by the look of him, swarthy and heavily moustachioed with the long points of his lip-brush dangling down to his collar. A bandoleer of shotgun shells crossed his chest, and there was a shotgun and a Winchester in the two long sleeves at the front of his saddle.
“Good day to you,” the man on the rock spoke, tipping his hat slightly. The clipped and superior tones of a clear British accent making him seem even more alien and outlandish in such a setting.
“Jesuscristo, I never heard someone talk like that,” exclaimed the Mexican, laughing and leaning forward in his saddle.
“Me neither,” the pistoleer muttered and spat a brown stream of tobacco onto the grass. “Where you from, Mister?”
“Civilisation,” said the man with a smile. “London, England.”
“British, huh? Don’t know that I cotton to redcoats, Mister.”
“Now, now, that was a long time ago. You chaps were killing each other more recently than that.”
The man with the pistols shrugged and cast his glance this way and that before turning back to the gentleman on the rock. “Where’s your horse, hoss?”
“My horse? Oh, it’s not my horse, it’s Shanks’ pony,” the Englishman grinned and tapped his hand against his legs.
“Then you’d be Shanks,” the pistoleer’s horse sidestepped a little closer with a kick at its side, tossing its head but seeming to appreciate the chance to rest.
“Well, I suppose I am. What would be your chaps’ names?”
“I am Xavier…” the Mexican answered before the man with the pistols waved him quiet.
“You not wearing any iron, Mister Shanks?” the pistoleer urged his horse a little closer again, hooves kicking up dust as it pranced in annoyance.
“I didn’t really see the need,” the gentleman shrugged and slipped off the rock to stand, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his waistcoat from which a pair of watch chains depended and swung, gleaming silver in the sun.
“And whut’s in the bag?” the Mexican was staying quiet now, but looking nervous, glancing from Shanks to his friend and back again.
“My tools. I’m a watchmaker, just a hobby, you understand? That and my money,” Shanks smiled and rocked on his heels, quirking an eyebrow as he watched the man’s reaction.
“Money, huh?” The pistoleer’s hand darted and drew his Colt, levelling it at Shanks, eyes narrowed like a hawk stooping for the kill. “Reckon a man as finely dressed as you has less need of his dollars and cents than men like us, down on our luck.”
Shanks kept his hands in his pockets and gently shrugged his shoulders, that supercilious smile never leaving his face. “I dare say you’re right, Sir, but it would still be theft.”
The Mexican was even more nervous now, shifting in his saddle, licking his lips at the confrontation. He could see that Shanks wasn’t perturbed, anxious, not so much as a bead of sweat on his brow. “Jon, I don’t know about this man. Something’s wrong.”
“Shut up, Xavier. Now then, Mr Redcoat, how about we start with those fine watches of yours? I know a man in Waco that’ll pay a fine amount of dollars for Stirling silver.” He thumbed back the hammer on his pistol and renewed his aim, hand as steady as a rock.
“I commend you, Jon, you know your silver. As you will then…”
Shanks dipped his hands deeper into the pockets of his waistcoat and drew them out with blinding speed. Light danced briefly on a pair of silver-plated pocket revolvers, Webleys, attached by the long chains to the buttons of the waistcoat. There was a double boom and a cloud of smoke as they went off together, and the heavy .450 bullets took Jon through his eyes and flung him back from his horse into the dust in a shower of blood.
Xavier sat up, bolt straight in his saddle and stared at the Englishman whose gleaming silvered guns were now aimed with deadly precision at his own face, the hammers already back, he hadn’t even seen him re-cock the gun. “I don’t want any trouble, Mr Shanks. I didn’t want to rob you.”
“Good chap, Xavier. Why don’t you ride along them, hmm? I’m sure you have places to be. Don’t worry about Jon here, I’ll take care of him, or at least the buzzards will.”
Xavier nodded hard, his hat falling back from its head on its ties, and he kicked his horse into life, fleeing down the trail as fast as he could. The fear of god chasing him like the cavalry itself was on his heels.
Shanks watched him go and eased the hammers down on his pistols, pushing them into his pockets and smoothing the line of his suit. Jon’s horse was placidly eating grass now, seemingly glad to have less weight on its back. Shanks approached it gingerly and rifled through the saddlebags. Not a lot of use, jerky, pemmican, a little water, a handful of dollars and thievings that were of no interest to him.
“You’re bloody lucky I didn’t shoot you. Can’t stand horses.” The creature paid him no heed until he slapped it on the flank and sent it running away down the trail in Xavier’s wake.
Jon’s body didn’t have a lot to offer either, just chewing tobacco – a foul habit – and a few more dollars to add to the collection. Shanks left him there, staring blindly up at the sky through two bloody holes, a warning to other would-be thieves. Americans, so uncivilised.
He paced back to the rock and lifted his pack, pushing it back over his shoulder and snatching up his cane with a spinning flourish. It shouldn’t be too far to the next town, if his reckoning was correct. Might even get there by sundown.
Whistling a happy tune, Shanks sauntered on as the buzzards wheeled and landed behind him in a raucous party, fighting over his leavings.
This is the first part of a story that appears in Pulp Nova.
THOCK!
The machete blade bit into the succulent green of the tree and stuck fast. White rubbery goop seeped out of the trunk and gummed around the blade, already sticky. Every time he cut, Bernard had to stop, wipe the goo from the blade and start over. The trees here were too big, too dense, to cut through, and the undergrowth was all this rubbery tangle. The stuff smelled like a mix of school glue and semen, which really wasn’t that pleasant at all.
He stopped and rubbed the gluey mix from the blade, turning to look to the rest of his team. Christ was a local doctor and bore the joke-making of his name with remarkable stoicism. He wasn’t that good at cutting through the undergrowth, but with all these blades flying about, you wanted someone who was a dab hand with a needle. Divine, French-educated, Congolese by birth, was a scientist like him. Her shock of dark, curly hair was yanked back into a tight braid. She was strong, drenched with sweat as she clove away at the undergrowth with the rest of them. Ray and Fred, their guards, all he’d gotten out of them were their first names. They didn’t deign to help chop, but that wasn’t their job. They scanned the dense jungle – even though they couldn’t see very far at all, AK-47s slung back over their shoulders.
Fred had his boots off, hung around his neck, and walked barefoot over fallen tree trunks and deep leaf litter. Bernard looked down at the mass of crawling insects, thorns and other creatures around his boots and shook his head. You wouldn’t catch him doing that. Far too many scorpions, centipedes, ants, snakes and other stinging, venomous, poisonous creatures waiting for a nice chunk of prime Belgian flesh.
“Mr Vandenbosch!” Divine’s heavily accented French called from the side of the little trail they’d been cutting. It was damn slow going.
“Yes, Miss Kayembe?” he stopped and turned, wiping his brow; the sweat never stopped flowing down into his eyes.
“I think I’ve found one of the plants that were in the report,” she said, hunkered down now, the hacking replaced by a gentle parting of the foliage.
Bernard carefully paced over to her, leaving the Doctor to make what little headway he could by himself against the combative plant life. There, between Divine’s calloused fingers, was a tiny little flower, four-petalled, delicate, but the scent was strong. Just as had been described. This was why he was here: the area was relatively unexplored, and the potential for new pharmaceuticals synthesised from the plant life of these regions was enormous.
“There’s another one…” Divine parted the rubbery undergrowth, and there was a treasure-house of the little flowers, their antiseptic smell suddenly making the jungle smell like a doctor’s waiting room.
“So many… I wonder why nothing’s eating them.” Bernard reached back into his pack and fished out a sample jar and a trowel, stabbing it into the dirt to work out one of the little white jewels and its roots.
“We’re in the right place at least!” Divine smiled a broad white smile and held back the plants as Bernard dug around the roots, brushing aside the dried husks of dead insects to reach the loamy soil beneath.
A bare foot, thick with rough skin, appeared next to him as he dug, and he looked up, blinking to Fred, standing over him and sucking his teeth. “It’s getting dark quick, Mr Vandenbosch. We need to find a place to make camp.”
Bernard nodded and lifted the plant into its container, screwing on the lid. He turned to Divine as she stood, knees cracking as she did so. “Make a note of the location on the GPS so we can get back here at first light. I’m going to want a few more samples.”
Divine nodded and took her tablet out of her cargo shorts. She tapped at it with the stylus and then abruptly stopped, giving a strange and sudden grunt. Bernard stood, immediately, staring at her as she dropped her tablet and lifted her hand to her chest. A scarlet stain was spreading across her vest, soaking through the fabric. Her knees began to buckle, and she tried to form a word, blood trickling from her lips, before she was yanked back and up, arms and legs thrown forward, her body hauled out of sight into the leaves and the trees.
“Merde!” Fred and Ray unslung their guns and worked the bolts. There was a whooshing sound and Bernard saw a golden blade, like a broad spear tip, pierce Christ’s head, emerging through his mouth in a shower of gore and then yanking back, taking his head off above his mandible and spraying gore over the leaves as his body fell back.
The rattle of the AKs was deafening, even if he was used to the sounds of battle, and Bernard hunkered low, arms over his head against the sound as Fred and Ray opened fire, blind, into the jungle around them. The stink of gunsmoke took over now, and hot brass fell all around him like rain, bullets tearing up the jungle, blowing red-hot splinters of fractured wood into the air.
It was brief and deafening, over as quickly as it started, spent magazines dropped in their haste to reload, slamming them home and knocking them to shake the bullets into place.
“Stay down, Mr Vandenbosch,” Fred half crouched to press a hand against Bernard’s shoulder and then crept, hunched over, a metre – perhaps two – down the trail.
Bernard scrambled for his machete – better than nothing – he couldn’t root in his pack, there was too much going on. “Klootzaks…” he hissed under his breath, scrabbling, putting his back to a tree trunk for cover.
There was a single shot from Ray, a bright flare against the darkening jungle and then he too was gone, pulled into the undergrowth with barely a chance to scream. There was only Fred left. Barefoot Fred, creeping down the trail, eyes to the canopy, big and white and alert.
Fred didn’t see it, though. The giant shadow, more ape than man. Sleek and bald and dark as night, naked as a newborn. Bernard only saw it because of the golden gleam of its spear in the waning light. It was walking down the side of one of the great trees, long toes wrapped around the trunk, silent for something seven feet tall. Bernard tried to open his mouth, tried to shout, to scream, but nothing would come. The great black shadow dropped silently down behind Fred and, with one massive hand, twisted his head on his shoulders until the blank white eyes were staring back at Bernard.
“Merde!” Bernard found his voice now, scrambling for his pack, tearing it open as more of the shadows slipped down from the trees, hulking brutes, muscled and sleek as leopards, fanged teeth showing in toothy grins. “What the fuck are you?”
They stepped closer, closer, loosening those strange short spears in their hands, each attached to a golden chain, wrapped around their bulging forearms. This was it. He was going to die. He couldn’t get his gun out in time. It was wedged beneath the laptop, the sample pots, all the useless paraphernalia of science. He was dead, dead, dead.
“IAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIA!” A banshee scream came out of the jungle and made itself heard, even through the deafness from the gunshots. A white streak came rocketing out of the dense jungle and smashed into one of the great black giants, carrying it over to the ground with sheer momentum. There was a flash of gold and a fount of blood, and only then would his eyes focus.
Straddling one of the dead giants was a girl, white as a ghost, naked as her enemy, her hair a shock of gleaming white dreadlocks. She was unadorned save for a belt and necklace of gold, and now her white body was smeared with red blood that matched the feral gleam of her eyes. She stood on the fallen giant and screamed at its brothers that same deafening ululation. “IAIAIIAIAIAIAIA!”
The giant shadows took a step back, and one swung up its spear, hurling it with terrible might towards the wiry girl. She moved like a snake, twisted and snatched the spear by its haft, yanking it forward with such brutal force that the chain stripped the skin from the giant’s forearms and sent it screaming and bubbling to its knees with pain.
The last turned and ran. It leapt into the trees with unnatural speed, hands and feet gripping together, propelling it into the deepening dark and the thick of the wilderness away from the ghost that had killed its fellows.
The red and white demon girl stepped down from the body and casually stabbed the whimpering, kneeling giant through the top of his skull with her curved golden dagger. Yanking it free with the same casual ease and leaving the body to fall into the rotting loam. The blade went away, clinging to her belt as she slunk with cat-like, careful grace and crouched before Bernard, offering him her bloodied hand.
He gladly took her hand and let her lift him to his feet. She was as tall as him, a six-foot Amazon of a girl, broad-hipped, red-eyed, flat of nose with a sumptuous mouth that formed no words. She simply led him, silently, by the hand, and he went, gladly.
This story (in full, not just this part) is part of the Pulp Nova collection.
The wind whipped through the dusty settlement, whipping up sand and casting it down the empty streets. It settled in drifts in doorways, on steps, against the orange-blossomed hulks of old, rusty cars and the worn tarmac of the old roads. It found no eyes to sting with its radioactive grit. Even the rad-scorpions weren’t out today. Angel’s Spring was shut up, locked and closed for business. The only people anywhere in the town were the sulking and reluctant guards, up on the towers and they were wearing goggles.
The relative silence of the desert town was abruptly broken by the clarion blast of an airhorn from the old rink. In its wake came the deafening roar of an excited crowd. The cars around the rink weren’t the same rusting hulks. These would run though they didn’t look the kind to run away, rather they looked like the sort of cars that would start a fight. Armoured and spiked, horribly be-weaponed. These were fighting vehicles, the kind that could make it across the atomic wasteland safely to find this place.
What could draw them here? So far from home and safety.
A painted sign, hanging loosely over the door, rattled in the dry wind and hollered its silent proclamation to the world:
“National League Roller Brawl – Semi Final – TODAY!”
Inside the rink was almost pristine, though the animal skulls nailed to the walls made it look a little ‘different’. The banked walls of wood and metal were battered into shape. They still formed a perfect circuit, a smooth oval battleground for the war to come.
The two teams were lining up for the final period, battered, bruised and bloodied, nearly at the end of the match. Hel’s Belles represented Angel’s Spring, the home-town advantage. A tough bunch of women, padded and armoured, gloved and face-painted. Torn fishnets and ripped white shirts, bronze and gold pads and helmets. Five of them slid out onto the rink and took their place to ear-bleeding roar of the crowd. Hellen strapped the jammer helmet over her leonine mane of blonde hair, jerking the strap tight and nodding to the rest of the girls as they took their place.
Angelicar was a squat, brutal, tank of a woman. Big bosomed and thick thighed, gap-toothed and freckled. She took her place in line, smacking her fists together and nodding back.
Swish was a pretty one, built like a pin-up, curves in all the right places, a favourite with the fans. She was fast, slippery and somehow never seemed to catch one in the face.
Spike seemed taller than the other girls, but that was just her custom boots. She stood on tiptoe like a ballet dancer, poised perfectly on only four wheels,l but at her heel a vicious metal spike protruded, a weapon and a brake, thirsting to draw more blood.
Wheely was a fighter. Scarred from a life in the wasteland and still half wild with it. She cut her hair with a knife and refused to cover her slashed eye with a patch. She’d been as beautiful as Swish, once, but not any more. Whipcord thin and more scar and gristle than skin and flesh.
The rest of the team watched intently from the sidelines. Pincushion, Biter, Farm, Donna, Becca, teeth gritted, fists pumping the air to cheer them on. It all came down to this last jam and there weren’t that many points in it between Hel’s Belles and their dangerous opposition, the Manhatin’ Project.
Out of Science City, snooty and superior, the Project weren’t the most physical of opponents, but those strange blade-skates they wore made them fast and manoeuvrable and they always had one trick or another up their sleeve. They were fragile though, soft, pampered. Several of them were already out with injuries and they could only just scrape up a full team for this final outing. All or nothing.
The Belle’s slammed their helmets together, face to face, breathing each other’s breath, glossed lips almost touching, eyes flickering back and forth between each other as Hellen set out the plan. “We get out there and we beat them down hard. We’re a little ahead on points and that’s all we need to do to get this shit secured. Got it?”
“Got it!” They slammed helmets again and took up position. Hellen checked the formation and then twisted her head to look across to the Project. There was a lot of hand-waving going on over there but also a lot of nodding. They seemed to have a plan of their own and it probably wasn’t getting their skulls crushed. Now it was down to skill. Skill and luck.
The air horn screamed again and was almost instantly drowned out by the cacophony of the crowd. The whole rink shook, physically, with the sound and the stamping of feet against the floor. Both teams leapt to life like mirrors of each other, wheels biting into the track and shoving them forward at speed.
Hellen pounded way with her feet, swinging her arms back and fort as she powered away, ahead of the girls, leaving them behind, strung out to block Project from coming through. They were already closing the gap, their jammer behind a phalanx of lab-coated rollergirls, skimming forward on their blades with ease and speed.
“Damn, got to get me some of those,” Hellen closed her eyes and put her head down low, thighs and calves on fire as she put every sinew, every muscle, every bit of energy she had into speed. She roared around the rink, wheels grinding as she slid out to the edge, powering back to the inside line, using the slope for that extra little bit of speed.
She was coming around as fast as she ever had now, the faces of the crowd blurring into a single streak, a single animal shout. Ahead of her, the Project girls tangled with the Belles, throwing themselves into them with reckless abandon that didn’t seem to make any sense. They couldn’t beat them pound for pound but they weren’t trying to. They threw themselves into the Belles and wrapped themselves around them, bringing them down into a tangled pile of arms, legs and wheels. Angelicar slid on with one of the clinging Project girls on her back, hands over her eyes. She span around and around, trying to shake her off, flying off the circuit, over the boundary and into the air, head over heels she smashed into the unfortunate crowd to a roar of delight. A greaser’s fine pompadour and film-star features crushed flat under Angelicar’s ample hips.
The Project jammer, Nicola Tesla, leapt over the tangle of bodies, barely, landing awkwardly on her skates, windmilling arms and sprawling legs as she struggled to keep her balance and managed, against the odds to straighten herself out. She twisted her head back and gave Hellen a supercilious little wave and stuck out her tongue. There was a sudden, explosive ‘whoosh’ and three feet of flame shot out the back of her skates, sending her hurtling around at blinding speed, her coat flapping behind her like a superhero’s cape, cast off to fly through the air behind her.
They were a couple of points ahead now. The plan had failed. Nicola was coming around the track like a bullet and that would put them way too far ahead for the points to be clawed back. Hellen twisted to the side and slid to a halt next to the tangle of wrestling, fighting bodies. Wheely was straddling one poor girl and punching her repeatedly in the face. Bloodied glasses came spinning out of the scrum as Hellen stopped, crunching the lenses under her brake.
There was only one way to stop this and only a split-second to make the decision. Hellen finished her twist and rocked up on her toe-brakes, digging into the floor beneath her and setting her body ready, tensed. Coiling up like a compressed spring.
Nicola came hurtling around at jet speed, smoke trailing behind her, eyes watering as she struggled to stay on the track. She could barely see but all she had to do was pass the mob one last time and the game would belong to the Project. It was an all or nothing move.
Hellen wasn’t having it. Not today.
She licked her lips and narrowed her eyes, watching the oncoming Project girl with the intensity of a marine sniper. At the last possible moment she uncoiled, leaping up and forward a single step, lashing out with her fist in a long, straight punch at the rolling rocket girl.
The crowd went silent as steely fist met a brittle jaw that snapped like matchwood. Time seemed to slow down as the shockwave of the impact travelled through Hellen’s body, bones jarred, a ripple through her flesh that made her breasts and ass quiver and drove her back a metre along the track. She carved two line lines of burned rubber into the track before she came to a halt. Nicola fared worse, smacked in the face her arms and legs flew out in front of her and the jets kept firing, flipping her into the air in a flaring lopp to crash down with an eye-watering smack, face first into the deck.
Hellen grunted and grabbed her arm, crunching her shoulder back into its socket from the dislocation of the impact. Gingerly, she picked the teeth out of her gloves. Her whole right side was numb but there was still one more thing she had to do. Grunting at the pain from the bruised bones she picked her way slow and careful amongst the wrestling and kicking bodies. Spike was choking one black-eyed girl with her own bra and the Science City team was all but wiped out. One trembling, gloved hand reached out with broken fingers to try and grab Hellen’s foot but Swish clamped one poor girl’s face between her thighs and leaned over, biting the reaching fingers with a feral snarl that tore through the leather.
Hellen tottered over the mob on her toes, hopping over the tangle. The score ticked over. Behind her the flaring rocket-skates finally gave out with a sputtering hiss. It was obvious Nicola wasn’t getting up again. Blood trickled down the slope of the track and puddled against the inside of the rink, trickling from Nicola’s ruined face. The refs looked to each other and there seemed to be an accord. That was it. The horn sounded and the match was over. Ignominiously, but it was over and the Belles had won.
The crowd went crazy, nuts. The cheep piss-swill they sold in the bar went splashing into the air as everyone hurled their cups up to the sky. Better that than their stomachs. Hellen roared with victory, throwing up her aching arms, victory signs from each to the stands as the Belles echoed her cry with a whooping, amazon call of their own.
This is an early first draft of the first part of this story, you can find it and the rest of my neo-pulp stories in the collection Pulp Nova, available at Lulu.
Tessa groaned and wound the sheets around her head, hoping the noise would go away, but it wouldn’t, the clamorous ring of her TeleBand just keep going and going, the greenish light of its screen flashing as it strove to get her attention. She fumbled her arm out of the mummified cocoon of her sheets and groped for her glasses on the bedside fresher, fumbling them onto her face and falling with a thump onto the floor as she writhed like some bizarre linen caterpillar across the floor to the Teleband.
Cold metal and worn leather were felt against her fingertips and she sat up, the sheet falling around her slender, shirt-covered body as she hit the answer button and squinted through the thumbprint on her glasses at the tri-d, metal face that appeared, hovering, over her wristband.
“Maam.”
It was Robur, her partner, a 41st interation 124C model Metalman, not very lifelike, but an effective partner and a good ‘man’ to have on your side in a fight.
“Robur… you do understand that humans have to sleep right? I have to get eight hours natural a week rather than hypersleep or I’m no good to anyone.” Tessa pulled up the hem of her nightshirt and wiped the lens of her glasses so she could see more clearly. He was just a Metalman, he wouldn’t care about a little flashed skin.
“I am sorry maam but Captain Newton was most insistant that I contact you. We have a Code Prometheus incident at the BioVat facility on the corner of Gernsback and Capek. The proctors are containing it at the moment but they want Science Police on site as soon as possible.”
Robur’s voice became more and more annoying the longer he spoke for, that grating buzz of an artificial voicebox was especially irritating before coffee and breakfast.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can Robur. Have the proctors set up a perimeter one block around BioVat and deploy Mag Screens for containment. I’m on my way.”
Tessa slapped the TeleBand and cut him off, stepping up out of the cocoon of sheets and peeling off her nightshirt.
“Lights!”
The daybulbs glowed dimly and slowly built up to full brightness as she crossed the room to get her uniform. She paused a moment and wrinkled her nose at the sight of herself in the mirror. Short curly hair, Buddy-Holly glasses, a figure so slim and boyish that if it wasn’t for the way her hips moved everyone would think she was a man. She was strong though, despite being slight, flexible and fast and – most importantly – brilliant. They’d wanted her to go into research, her parents, but the Science Police was where it was at, safeguarding the advances of others and protecting the city from the terrors that lay beyond the dome.
Tessa pulled on her foil cap and stepped into the ion shower. There was a hum and a tingle as the electric stream and a gust of air blew away the top layer of dead skin cells and she hopped back out, pulling on her uniform. Royal blue trousers a size too big for her, a black blouse and white tie, her gunbelt with its ionic pistol and her long white lab coat. Lastly she strapped her Science Police band to her other wrist and checked herself in the mirror. It would do.
Tessa threw open the window and stepped out onto the balcony, pressing the button on her TeleBand to summon a police disk. Below her the whole of Science City Zero was laid out, a glittering panorama of lights and sounds, the shining beacons of cars, planes, disks and balloons. The spires of the banded towers, the web of their skywalks and transit tubes. Above it all the great arch of the dome, the night sky barely seen beyond it, only The Moon bright enough to compete with the scintillating, kaleidoscopic glow of the city.
The disk arrived, swooping up to her balcony on dim pencil beams of force. Tessa leapt aboard and swept down over the city, heading as fast as she dared towards the incident.
***
Tessa swept down out of the sky and jumped from the disk, leaving it to flit its way to another appointment with a sudden surge in velocity. Fishing in her pockets she popped a caffeine and a breakfast pill from her dispenser and strode purposefully up to the line of proctors, waving to Robur as she did so.
“Ah, greetings Maam.” The Metalman waved to her, his chassis gleaming beneath the daybulb streetlights, all burnished blue-steel and armoured rivets. He was surrounded by proctors in their heavy armour, lightning guns in their hands as the finished establishing their perimeter.
“Report?”
“The cordon has been thrown around as you requested, the incident appears to be contained but there is ongoing violence within the BioVat building. Spy-Ray examination reveals several unidentified hominid-like forms and several scientists inside, perhaps hostages. There’s interference from the fires and electrical shorts, so that information is only seventy-percent accurate, for which I apologise.”
Tessa turned to the proctor captain, looking up, her neck aching as she looked into his faceless helmet.
“We’ve surrounded the building with ten megawatt energy screens and have deployed three units in a cordon around the building, there to back you up should things go pear-shaped maam. Captain Newton has ordered us to cooperate fully, but we’re only to enter at your behest.”
Tessa popped another caffeine pill, she had a feeling she’d need it. As she swallowed she unbuckled her holster and hoisted out her ionic pistol, checking the charge and the settings, nodding to Robur to do the same.
“What do we know about BioVat Robur?”
“Independent biological research and development company maam. They research into synthetic life but their bread and butter is creating synth-men for biological experimentation.”
“Brainless clones for medical research… who’d attack a medical facility?” Tessa scowled and marched up to the line, gesturing the proctor on duty to take this screen down when they went through. Robur pulled his own pistol and stood beside her.
“Three, two, one…”
The crackling screen faded out with a low buzz and the two ran forward, the light slap of her All-Stars contrasting with the heavy clank-clank of Robur’s feet. He wasn’t exactly stealthy. The screen came back up behind them, sealing the area behind an impenetrable screen of force and they slammed up against the wall, either side of the door.
“Ready?”
Robur’s steely head nodded, once, the glow behind his eyes intensifying and then he stepped around, kicking the revolving door out of its housing and sending it sliding violently across the foyer to smash the reception desk to smithereens.
Inside it was chaos, full of smoke, fires burning here and there, showers of sparks as cabling burned and shorted. The ground was slippery with a pinkish goo and the cause was readily apparent. Deformed, cancerous, muscles ballooned to ridiculous proportions, the synth-men had broken free of their containers. Twisted, like hairless gorillas, veins pulsing, rage in their eyes, the handful in the entrance turned their incoherent anger on the interlopers and leapt to the attack.
“Does not compute!” Robur cried with what sounded like genuine anguish. “Synth-men have no brains… no conciousness!”
“Worry about that later!” Tessa darted inside, sliding on a slick of the pinkish goo and ducking under the tree-trunk arm of one of the synth-men. Her ionic pistol hummed in her hand as she twisted, sliding on her bottom across the chequered floor and firing, a blue beam of coherent electricity striking the synth-man and hurling him to the far wall with the stink of ozone and bacon.
The remaining synth-men bounded and leapt, roaring like jungle apes as they moved. Tessa scrambled out of the way as one landed on the spot where she had just been. Thanking blind chance that she was as small and slight as she was. Where it landed the floor cratered, muscle so dense it must have weighed twice as much as it should and been in unspeakable agony, crushed by its own muscles. Robur shot the other out of the air deftly with his pistol, playing his beam across the creature’s chest until he was sure it was still.
By then the third had gotten its meaty paw upon Tessa and had her by the ankle, hauling her upside down before it’s face, ape-like fangs bared as it roared, spattering her glasses with spittle. There was a crash nearby as Robur slammed into the remaining synth-man before he could recover, bearing him down to the ground and pounding his neanderthal brow with fists like hammers while Tessa twisted and struggled.
Blinded by the spit she felt its other hand grasp her around her head, the span of its fingers sufficient to pluck her cranium from her spine as though it were plucking a grape. She tried to calm herself, to remember her scientific boxing lessons and then she lashed out with all the strength she could muster, slamming two of her knuckles one side of the synth-man’s head and the butt of her pistol the other, just between the ear and the jaw.
The creature roared and dropped her, she landed awkwardly on her shoulders and back, upside down, lifting the ionic pistol and blindly firing between the creature’s legs. The roar became a howl, high pitched almost beyond hearing and this time the ozone stink was mixed with burning hair as the thing dropped like a felled tree.
The bone-crunching noises of Robur’s fight also came to a halt and he strode over to help her up.
“Are you alright maam?”
“No thanks to you. Why didn’t you attack the one that had me?”
“I knew you could handle it maam, within a ninety-three percent probability anyway. Taking the remaining problem out of the equation seemed the best course of action.”
“There’ll be others, we need to get to the lab where the spy-ray saw the scientists.”
They nodded to each other and ascended the stairs two and three at a time, heading back through the offices, blasting left and right as more of the synth-men emerged from the side rooms, blinded by pain and rage there was nothing they could do but put them down.
“This is monstrous, whoever did this is a sociopath.” Tessa growled as they stood back to back, blasting away at the tide of muscle that dogged their every step, climbing over the bodies of dead office workers and the remnants of destroyed desks as they finally got back to the factory doors.
They burst through and slammed the metal doors shut behind them, standing on the gantry that lead to the control chamber, beneath them a sea of tubes, many of them broken, filled with the pink plasm that supported the synth-men growth, but there was only one inside. A brute bigger than any other they had seen, towering over the cowering scientists in the control room.
“Hold the fort Robur, I’m going to get the scientists.”
The Metalman nodded and slid his arms through the handles, bracing back against the door as it rang like a bell, massive fists hammering from the other side, roars and snarls of frustrated as the iron and steel of robot and door refused to give, though it began to dent.
The hulking synth-man turned, one eye massive and yellow, larger than the other, one whole side of its body larger than the other. Clumsily it turned and loped towards her as she marched towards it, ionic pistol raised.
“Science Police, surrender to impartial justice!” She gave the warning, even though she knew it couldn’t understand. The body of a monster and the mind of a newborn.
Predictably, it ignored her and began to run, a lopsided lope towards her.
Behind her Robur channelled his own power into his chassis, electrifying himself and the door, shocking the synth-men hammering on the other side to death, his whole body arched and glowing, heating up from the power coursing through him.
For her part Tessa kept marching on the giant synth-man, depressing the firing stud on her pistol, the blue coruscating light struck the creature full in the chest, burning its flesh, charring its skin, but still it kept on coming, teeth bared, marching into the ravening beam as though walking into the wind.
Tessa stared, disbelieving as the massive creature came closer, closer, closer and reached into the beam, burning off one of its own fingers to snatch the pistol from her hand. It grinned in triumph as it crushing it like a drinks can in its maimed fist but Tessa didn’t miss a beat, swinging her leg back, then forward and planting the very toe of her boot into the mass of dangling flesh between the things legs. It grunted and she grasped, and pivoted, using its own off-centre weight to hurl it from the gantry to plummet to its broken-necked doom amongst the shattered tubes below.
The fight was over, the scientists in shock and useless as witnesses. They called in the proctors to guide them out and put out the fires, that left them free to look over the control room without interference. It was a wreck, a mess, evidence was hard to come by in such a disruption of blood and wreckage, but they divided it up into sections and went through it methodically, despite Tessa’s aches and pains. This was where a Metalman came into his own, they couldn’t experience boredom and his mechanical precision was an inspiration.
It was Tessa that found it though, breaking open the feeder mechanism to the MONOVAC she ran her fingers down the mass of punch-cards and felt the hard edges of newer cards inserted into the sequence.
“What do you make of these Robur?” She plucked the newer cards out of the feeder, tucking torn pieces from her notebook into the gaps to mark the spaces.
The Metalman took the cards and fed them into his universal slot, shuffling them like a stage magician as they flew into his slot and his tubes and switches cogitated with a noisy flickering, digesting the information.
“They’re plasm codes maam. I am no expert but according to my interior library these sequences relate to muscle, bone and nerve tissue growth, including brain tissue. I conjecture that…”
“…someone introduced a little Mr Hyde into our mindless Doctor Jeckylls.”
“Indeed maam.”
“So then, there’s no question.”
“None at all maam.”
Tessa tossed the remaining punch cards angrily onto the floor, spilling them everywhere, kicking the pile so it fell between the slats in the gantry and turning back to Robur, stabbig her finger into his impassive face.
This is an early draft of the first part. You can find all my neo-pulp stories collected in Pulp Nova via Lulu.
Heat haze shimmered over the salt flats, making the surface look like water. Doctor Green took a swig from her bottle of water, grimacing at the tepid warmth of it, and she’d only been out of the car for a short while. You could see for miles on a good day, but today the view was obscured by smoke. Wreckage lay over some distance, wheels and foil-thin aluminium and titanium. The kind of thing yokels might mistake for a UFO crash. She sighed and flipped open her notepad, rechecking her notes while the medical team zipped up the body bag and the police hovered around her.
“Can you tell us anything yet?”
The depressingly and ostentatiously Mormon sheriff had been a pain in her backside since she’d arrived, standing over her shoulder while she examined the body and the wreckage of the Swift IV, the latest foolhardy attempt at a land speed record with a rocket-powered cigar tube on wheels.
“Anything I tell you is only going to be preliminary.” She sighed, pushing her hair back from her face, the sweat slicking it out of her eyes. “I think it’s safe to say he died almost instantly when the steering column pierced him, speared his heart and broke his spine in two places. That seems the most likely cause of death. As to the vehicle’s cause of failure, you’re better off asking the mechanics.”
“How fascinating.” This new interruption was a deep, basso rumble of a voice that almost made her jump out of her shoes. It seemed to come out of nowhere, and she and Sheriff Bralan turned as one to look at the source.
He was a towering man, unbelievably not sweating in the noon sun as it glared off the flat. He wore a thin white shirt and tan-coloured trousers, heavy walking boots, his only concession to the sun a pair of classic, black, Ray-Ban sunglasses and a white cloth tied as a bandanna around his neck. Inexplicably, he wore heavy gloves over his hands, one of them holding a slung pack over his shoulder. There wasn’t an ounce of spare fat on him. He didn’t look like a gross, overblown caricature, not a body builder, more like an anatomical diagram or a classical Greek statue, though the look was marred by the strange tattoos that covered his cheek, jaw and neck, vanishing down beneath the shirt.
“He with you?” The sheriff drawled, hand going down to his gunbelt, a move that the giant reacted to with only the barest flicker of a smile.
“No.” She said. “I’d remember him. He’s not part of the car crew either.”
The sheriff drew his revolver and levelled it at the big man. “We’ve got to account for everyone here, mister…”
“Doctor.” The big man interrupted.
“…and this might well be sabotage. So you’re going to have to come with me.” The sheriff finished, undaunted.
“A crashed supercar, a dead driver – judging from the bag – the police are suspicious and what I take to be a scientist or doctor already on the scene, and you want me to waste my time coming with you to answer tedious questions?” The big man stared at the sheriff as though he were something one might find upon overturning a rotting log. “I am Doctor Oswald Stone, and I was out walking. If I am to get to the bottom of this intriguing mystery, I cannot afford to waste time with you.”
She went to open her mouth and interject, but his authority questioned, the sheriff was in no mood to play nice. He cocked back the hammer on his revolver as his deputy crab-scuttled behind the giant man, hand to his own gunbelt.
The big man gave her an apologetic look, and then there was an abrupt blur of motion. One muscular leg snapped back as straight as a laser beam and hit the deputy just beneath his ribs. There was a brief, loud, woof of expelled air as he flew back several metres and slid to a halt, slumped over himself, desperately trying to breathe.
The sheriff did no better. The big man’s gloved hand grasped his pistol with impossible strength and tore it from his hand in the same motion as he kicked the deputy, flicking the gun away with a casual gesture that sent it flying out across the flats, vanishing into the heat haze.
“If you can find your gun, you’re welcome to try and take me in for questioning.” The big man said, returning to his casual, relaxed stance and turning to her.
“If you’re a doctor as well, this could get terribly confusing. Call me Doc or Osmium, and you are?”
Her heart pounding in her chest with fear, she swallowed it back and answered him. “Doctor Susan Green, pathology mostly, but I dabble and do medical support for things like this. What are you a doctor of?” She felt like an idiot saying that, given what just happened, but banal pleasantries were better than being kicked.
“Oh, life, the cosmos, everything and anything interesting. I’ll call you, Susan, then, if you don’t mind.” Doc shifted his pack back into place on his shoulder and began pacing over towards the wreckage. With the sheriff swearing a blue streak and chasing after his gun and the deputy trying to work up enough breath to vomit, she followed hurriedly in Doc’s trail like the tail of a comet, finding herself babbling about the accident.
Eli Grange had been the best driver, on paper, with three previous record attempts, jet fighter experience, and inhumanly good reflexes. The car had been checked over a dozen times. The safety harness and other life-preserving equipment were all in good order. Everything had some form of redundancy and safety, and yet… something had gone wrong. On the first proper run, the rear end had drifted, and the car had tumbled end over end, side over side, until it was completely wrecked.
The Doc crouched amongst the main body of the debris, listening, asking questions, technical questions about the wheels, about the chassis, about the engine. Intelligent, seeking questions that she couldn’t always answer, but he seemed to be finding his way. She glanced about her in a panic and saw the rest of the pit crew heading over, angry, curious, wondering who the hell this man was, perhaps, just as she was.
“Who the hell is this guy?” Mick, the chief engineer on the project, lumbered up, a big guy but heavy with it, unlike this ‘Doc’ person.
“Doc Osmium,” Susan answered, without a trace of humour, still unsettled from the brief fight. “He’s dangerous.”
“AHA!” The Doc shouted, emerging from the debris holding a tiny piece of metal, startling them both as more of the engineering crew arrived.
“You can’t go messing with that! We need to work out what caused the accident.” Mick thundered, stamping towards the Doc with a look of murderous intent. The Doc thrust the tiny piece of metal beneath his nose, bringing him to a halt.
“The lox regulator valve. There’s a tiny grain of sand between the washer and the nut, keeping it fractionally open. I surmise that this caused a tiny fluctuation in the fuel feed to the car’s rocket, which was enough – at full acceleration – to throw the tail off, leading to the crash. As to the rest, the abruptness of the crash and the fact that it was side on seems to have tumbled the car in such a way that your safety precautions were only minimally effective. An enormous string of bad luck…”
Mick stared at the washer as the others arrived. “Bad luck?”
Before the question could be pursued any further, the Doc abruptly froze, slowly raising his hands from his sides. Susan’s head jolted around, expecting to see the sheriff threatening the big man again, but it wasn’t; it was Jose from the pit crew, an ugly slab of an automatic pistol in his hand, levelled at the Doc.
“Couldn’t just let me get away, could you, Osmium?” Jose’s voice was different, hard-edged; he meant to use the gun, she could tell. “Had to follow me, all the way out here, track me down and put me away. Madre de Dios man, they were only samples.”
The Doc’s face twisted into a feral snarl. “Irreplaceable samples collected by Charles Darwin himself, priceless. Would you believe me if I told you that I wasn’t actually here for you? This is the most terrible coincidence.”
Jose shook his head and laughed. “That smooth tongue might be a hit with the ladies, Osmium, but it’s not going to get you out of this.”
Susan saw his knuckles tighten around the trigger, and she acted. Her boot caught Jose – if that was his name – in the back of the knee and sent him down to the ground. The pistol barked, the bullet going wide, sparks flying as it ricocheted off the car’s wreckage. With Jose down, the Doc moved with that unnatural precision and speed again, grabbing a blackened piece of metal and hurling it like a discus. The heavy sheet slammed into Jose’s throat with a sickening ‘Chud!’ and he fell back, stone dead to the flat ground, the metal embedded halfway through his neck.
Susan stared wide-eyed at the Doc as he picked his way out of the debris, the rest of the crew keeping well back from him now as he crouched over Jose’s body.
“Carlos Ortega, a thief and a murderer, wanted by Interpol for theft to order. The funny thing is that I wasn’t here looking for him at all. I really was just walking.” The big man looked up at Susan and frowned, his face creasing, the tattoos on his cheek twitching as his jaw muscles worked.
“I happen to be walking here, he happens to be here, there’s an accident that is wildly unlikely stemming from a tiny flaw in an otherwise perfect machine… and you’re here.” His steely eyes settled on Susan.
“So? It’s just blind chance, isn’t it? Things like this do happen… synchronicity they call it don’t they?”
The Doc stood up again. “Synchronicity is what we call it when causally unrelated events occur that seem to hold meaning beyond coincidence. In a truly random universe, we might brush it off, but I’m afraid I’m still a bit of a stuffy old Newtonian, clockwork universe fan. I’m a big supporter of cause and effect, even in quantum physics, and this seems to stretch the odds a little too far for me. Something more is going on.”
He stepped forward, those Olympian features twisting into a wry and enticing grin as he offered her his massive, gloved hand.
This was an early draft of the first part of the story. You can buy all my neo-pulp stories collected in Pulp Nova from Lulu.
Ace slumped over the chipped formica of the counter and gripped another full glass of scotch in his scarred and meaty fist. He was a great bull of a man, swaying slightly in his drunken haze and running his hand through the thick beard and tangled locks of a man who’d spent a long time in space. His battered flight jacket bore a faded RAF roundel on the back, and his denim was worn thin from frequent use and stained with oil. Low on his hip hung an Eliminator pistol in a worn-smooth holster, but nobody in The Proxima Bar seemed to pay it any heed.
A gloved hand smacked down on Ace’s shoulder, startling him, making him spill a little of his scotch over the filthy bar.
“Mein Herr, you are Englisher, yes? I recognise zer badge on your jacket. Royal Marines, ya?”
Ace grunted and started licking the spilt whisky from his fingertips, giving the German a sidelong glance. The German and his two friends behind him, grinning and muttering to each other. That was all the response he gave them, not a single word otherwise.
“Kriegsmarine.” The German said, pointing to himself and his friends. “Picked up your mess on Gelida, ja? When you broke and ran?”
Ace tossed back the scotch and spun the squeaking stool around, setting his jaw, grinding his teeth until his jaw muscles bunched, staring deep into the German’s eyes with an unwavering stare. The big blonde man wilted slightly under Ace’s drunken glare, but couldn’t back down in front of his friends.
“Run and hide. Like little girls. While we fight and die, like men.”
Ace sized him up, ignoring his words and his fruity accent as the German regained some of his courage, puffing out his chest like a strutting cockatoo. Huffing and puffing as his friends laughed behind him, her jabbered away like it meant anything. Ace ground his teeth harder, and then with the power and speed of a tiger, he pounced, lashing out with the glass in his hand and ramming the base of it into the German’s big mouth.
Teeth crunched, glass shattered. The barman studiously ignored it all, turning away and intently polishing his glass. The man choked on blood and shards and fell back, clutching his ruined mouth with both of his hands. His friends were stunned, standing there with their mouths open as the stream of invective had cut off in an instant.
Ace wasn’t above kicking a man while he was down and slipping from the stool, reared back his steel-toed boot and drove it with uncaring force deep into the bleeding man’s crotch. His eyes bulged near out of their sockets – at least he was distracted from the ruin of his mouth. He toppled with glacial slowness, sideways onto the ground as Ace jabbed a finger at the other two Kriegsmarine.
“Want some, you crumbs?” Ace finally spoke, his voice like someone gargling gravel.
One of the Germans turned and ran, his tail between his legs; the other one grabbed a bottle and smashed it against the side of the table. Ace sighed and clenched his fist, but before the two could join battle, a burly, blond-haired man smashed a stool over the top of the German’s head, and he went down like a puppet with its strings cut.
“Could have handled him.” Muttered Ace, turning back to his drink.
The blond muscled up to Ace and offered his hand. “Damn, Mister, but you can fight. Put ‘er there. I’m Bang Donnybrook. These are my friends, Gail and Professor Quartus.”
Ace didn’t take his hand, but he turned his head and gave all three of them the once-over with his steely eyes.
The blond was a big, broad man, but too clean-shaven and picture-perfect to be a veteran, though he had a couple of scars here and there and clearly thought of himself as a capable man. He was grinning with his perfect white teeth, hand still thrust out, trying not to look insulted that Ace hadn’t shaken it, but he was.
The Professor was a mischievous imp of a man with strong Semitic features and a wicked, mirthful intelligence behind his eyes. A slide rule was tucked into the pocket of his patch-elbowed jacket, and he managed to exude, all at once, the confident intellect of a genius and the louche arrogance of a hop-head. “Given your skills…” He said, smiling at Ace’s snubbing of his blond friend, “…we have a proposition for you. If you might be interested.”
Ace considered, licking the taste of the scotch from his teeth as he turned his eyes on the last member of the trio. She was a raven-haired beauty with a great rack, hidden away though it was in a severe professional woman’s dress. Maybe a reporter or something? Nice gams too, skirt hugging them like a glove. She shifted a little uncomfortably under his eyes, and it was clear by the wrinkle of her nose that his ragged looks and brutal nature disgusted her.
“Say your piece.” Ace rumbled, setting his haunches back on the worn barstool and signalling the barkeep for another glass.
“We’ll need you sober.” The woman, Gail, sniffed, tugging her purse tighter to her body.
“If he says yes.” The professor remarked with a snort of laughter.
“Let’s hear it. Once I say yes, I’ll be sober on your time.” Ace grabbed the glass and held it, waiting to hear what they had to say.
“We need a pilot.” Said Bang, the blond giant.
“So hop a passenger ship. You don’t need me.”
“We’re going to Dyzan.” The professor said, leaning forward in an arch, in a conspiratorial whisper.
“In the post-war chaos and with the civil war going on there?” Ace stared at the trio like they were retarded. “Why the hell would you want to go there?”
“That’s our business.” Said Bang, trying to reassert his leadership and dominance over the Professor, who was clearly his intellectual superior. “We’ll pay you well.”
Gail opened her purse and stepped forward, showing its contents to Ace. Gold glittered inside, and more, the unmistakable lustre of Gelidan sapphires and the golden gleam of a Dyzan slave harness. Perhaps not a King’s ransom, but at least a Prince’s ransom, more than enough to risk the war-torn planet Dyzan, Earth’s hidden twin behind the sun, the exotic and deadly world that had invaded the Earth and brought an end to the war, until they were overthrown. The last thing Ace wanted to do was go back there; he’d killed enough of the Dyzanian people to last him a lifetime. Then again… money and even though Bang and Gail wore matching rings, she wouldn’t be the first married woman he’d seduced away from her husband – if he managed it.
Ace stroked his stubbled chin and downed his glass. “I’ll do it. My ship’s in the dock. We can leave whenever you want.”
They were in a hurry and grabbed their bags, all but hustling Ace out of the bar and then letting him take the lead, barrelling down the crowded street in a drunken swagger and shoving people out of his way, swearing like a sailor as a jetpack swooshed a little too close overhead.
Even drunk Ace could tell they were on edge, and that put him on edge. He could tell they were being followed as they made their way to the offshore private spaceport. It was a rusting hole, but Ace couldn’t land at Manhattan Spaceport any more, not after that ‘incident’ with the customs patrol.
Paranoid as years of war and betrayal had made him, it didn’t take Ace long to spot the men who were following them. Trenchcoats and hats, they couldn’t look any more suspicious if they were trying to. Ace took a roundabout route and, turning a corner, wheeled around. “Hide.” He grunted to the trio and turned back, peering his head around the corner.
The three men were walking abreast with grim intent. Ace wasn’t the type to take any chances and drew his eliminator, thumbing the safety. The sleek and deadly blaster hummed in his hand, and he stepped out into the alley, levelling it at the man in the centre.
There was a whip-crack of annihilated air particles as he depressed the firing stud. The ravening beam lanced out and struck the man full in the chest, burning a glowing hole the size of a football through his chest and melting the bricks behind him.
To their credit, the others didn’t scream, didn’t run; they drew their own weapons and sprang to the sides of the alley, their hats falling from their heads, revealing the polished domes and horseshoe moustaches typical of imperial warriors from Dyzan, some remnant of the Emperor’s guard intent on revenge, perhaps. Their golden fist-guns cracked and sparked, invisible bolts of energy striking the wall behind Ace and exploding the brickwork into red-glowing fragments.
Ace calmly stood as the bolts struck around him, dialling the Eliminator’s emitter to maximum aperture and levelling it down the alleyway, thumbing the firing stud for a second time. There was no snap-crack this time; the dispersed energy was nowhere near as powerful. He kept the stud down as the air shimmered beneath the beam’s power. Scraps of paper burst into flame, paint peeled. The men from Dyzan screamed as their clothing smouldered and caught, lighting them up as human torches. Ace calmly paced towards them, narrowing the aperture as they screamed and rolled on the ground, playing it over them like a hose until they melted like candles thrust into a hearth. Finally, the last, bubbling scream came to a halt, and he took his finger off the stud.
Almost immediately, he sprang to a ready stance again, a whirl of black robes ducking back around the corner out of sight, an enemy he had missed. A skilful one. All the more reason to get away and all too good an indicator that there was much more to this than the trio had told him. Wasn’t that just his luck?
The Black Rat is a vigilante pulp story, a sort of ‘working class Batman’, from my collection Pulp Nova. You can purchase Pulp Nova at Lulu.com. This is an early draft of the first chapter of that story.
The two lads marched down the street, swinging their shoulders, cans of beer in their hands and long tartan scarves flowing out behind them, sloshing beer in their exuberance and shouting at the top of their lungs.
“B-A-Y, B-A-Y, B-A-Y C-I-T-Y, With an R-O-double-L, E-R-S, Bay City Rollers are the best!”
“SHUT UP!” Came a hoarse holler from further down the street, the shape of a naked, beer-bellied man silhouetted by a dim, flickering yellow light. “Some of us are trying to sleep!”
“Fuck of you wanker!” The lads shouted back in unison and then ducked into a side alley together, one of them stopping at the mouth to watch the street while the other vanished back into the dark and yanked a can of spray paint out of his pocket, spraying the wall, writing out the name of his idols one giant letter at a time.
He’d just finished the ‘Y’ when he stumbled against something in the dark, fumbling out his lighter and flicking it on, casting a shaky light over the alley. Half – or more – of the street lights were out; it was the only way to see, but you could get away with a lot in the dark. Swings and roundabouts.
The dancing flame revealed a pile of newspaper and cardboard, but there was something underneath it, something heavy that wouldn’t shift. He crouched down, curious, and threw back the card and paper back out of the way, falling back with a little girly shriek as the light revealed the battered black face of a corpse.
“There’s a dead wog back here, Derek!”
The other lad came scrambling back and took out his pocket torch, flicking it on and playing it over the corpse. “Fuck me… check his wallet Alan.”
With the torchlight playing over the body, Alan crouched down and started to rummage through the corpse’s clothes, plucking out his wallet. “Christ alive, there’s a Henry and at least a couple of ponies in here.”
“and i am quite certain his family would like both back, if, indeed, they are his.” The voice was strange, quiet, muffled, but it had a way of cutting clean across your perception, right through the sound of traffic and the huffed breaths of the two youths.
They turned, as one, towards the end of the alley, and Derek’s torch played over a strange figure. He wasn’t tall, perhaps five seven, five eight at the most. He was dressed entirely in black from top to bottom, a ragged figure in black leather jeans and a tattered old trench coat with a high collar. Even his hands were covered with black gloves. The only colour they could see was gleaming red circles in the dark like demonic eyes, but they weren’t, they were lenses, lenses on a gas mask.
“Who the fuck is this spaz?” Alan stood tall; now he’d recovered from the surprise. Stepping towards the strange man at the mouth of the alley.
“what’s wrong with you that you’d steal from a corpse? What’s wrong with you that you’d have no respect for this poor, dead man?”
“What’s wrong with you that you give a fuck you weird-lookin’ nonce?” Alan stepped up to him and reached out to shove the short man’s shoulder, unsettled by his strange appearance and wanting to feel strong in front of his friend.
The man in black twisted with the shove and balled his left hand into a fist, bringing it hard across Alan’s jaw. It hit him like a steam train, the glove weighted with lead filings. There was a crunch from his face, and teeth parted company with jaw as he was bodily flung into the wall of the alley, spitting enamel and giving a strange, gurgling, bloody scream as he slumped to the ground, clutching his ruined mouth.
“Keep the fuck back from me!” Derek stumbled away, keeping the torch on the man as he slowly walked towards him, fumbling in his back pocket for his switchblade, clicking it open and holding it out threateningly in his shaking hand.
“you really don’t want to do that.” The man pushed back his jacket to reveal a dark leather belt around his waist from which hung a half dozen ‘holsters’ each a different shape.
“Is that a utility belt? Do you think you’re Adam West or something?” Derek laughed nervously, stepping forward, jabbing threateningly with the knife.
The man feinted right with his fist, and Derek slashed at him with the blade, scraping across leather, only to get his wrist snatched in the man’s other hand. He wasn’t big, but he was stron,g and Derek was slammed against the back wall, his arm held in that iron grip as the man unbuckled one ‘holster’ with a fluid motion, snatching out a hammer and smashing it into Derek’s hand, shattering small bones and making him keen like a banshee.
“no, it’s a tool belt.”
The red-eyed man in black handcuffed the two men together – no points in wasting cuffs – and left them clinging to each other, weeping and swearing around their wounds and the blood, taking what comfort they could from each other.
Leaving them to their misery, he stepped over to the body and respectfully uncovered it, pushing back his sleeve and playing dim red lights over it, plucking up the discarded wallet for a look at it. There was something off about this: the money, the drugs, the way he’d been killed.
The body was covered in long, straight bruises, clustered around the top of his body. A tentative touch confirmed broken, floating ribs, found swollen and bruised flesh, a softness here and there on the man’s skull where the bone had been cracked and shattered. The man had been systematically beaten to death over the course of some time.
The man in black peeled back the gas mask, just up over his nose and his mouth, revealing a broad, bristled chin as he leaned down to sniff at the corpse.
“ganj, so he was a dealer after all,” he murmured to himself, pulling the mask back down and turning back to the wallet. Something didn’t add up.
Opening it up there wasn’t much in there, just some cards and paper; the only notes were crisp and new. The drugs, an eighth of an ounce of marijuana resin, were in a brand spanking new plastic bag, way too large for the small amount of drugs that were there. Something was absolutely, definitely, off.
There wasn’t time right now to think it through; there was the roar of an engine and the squeal of tyres. The man in black darted his head around, the red lenses of his mask darkening in the suddenly harsh light of the beams. The doors flew open, and heavy shoes slammed down on the pavement. He scrambled back away from the bod,y but the alley stopped in a dead end, the heavy closed door at the back of a chippy.
“’Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello…” laughed one of the coppers as they strolled up towards him, hand thrust into his pocket, pushing through the sling on his truncheon and dragging it out, slapping it into his palm while his partner hung back a bit.
“i don’t want to hurt you, but i will if i have to.”
“Are you threatening a police officer, squire?” His partner was paying attention now, taking out his own truncheon, the pair of them blocking the whole exit.
“Christ…” said the copper at the back, spotting the rollers and the state they were in. “A body and two beatings? Off to an early start today, this evening aren’t we, Sir?” The two police officers looked to each other, and their demeanour changed subtly.
“body?” The penny dropped. Nobody would have managed to get word out about the body yet. They’d barely even looked down the alley yet. They knew. They knew already. They’d always known. “what I said earlier? I’ve changed my mind.”
He pressed back against the chippy door and braced his boot against it before springing forward towards them. They met halfway down the alley, and he brought up his arms, twisting side to side, blocking one truncheon blow with his arm, the other smacking into his belly with a solid thump that surprised the copper who swung it.
That was his chance, snapping out with his fist and spreading the officer’s nose across his face, sending him sprawling with his cap flipping through the air to fall to the dirt. That was all he needed. Now there was space to run, where there were a couple of cops, there’d likely be more, especially if they knew about the corpse.
The man in black hunkered down and ran, heavy boots denting the bonnet of the Rover as he leapt up and over it, ragged leather coat streaming out behind him as he ran, the remaining cop in pursuit, dropping behind him as he wove through the darkened streets at breakneck pace, knowing them like the back of his hand.
When the policeman came to another alleyway and shone his torch down it, there was no sign of the man in black. It was empty, nothing but a manhole cover and a piece of card fluttering to the floor.
A piece of card with a sketch of a rat and the words “i know,” scrawled upon it.
Our system-agnostic Giallo settings, are collections of characters and circumstances, adventure kits rather than out-and-out adventures. Here’s a bonus adventure by the author – Miguel Ribeiro. Buy our Giallo RPG books HERE. They are more directly useful with Actual Fucking Monsters, but easily adaptable to any system.
Orpheum Lofts is one of our system-agnostic Giallo settings, these books are collections of characters and circumstances, adventure kits rather than out-and-out adventures. Here’s a bonus adventure by the author – Miguel Ribeiro. Buy our Giallo RPG books HERE. They are more directly useful with Actual Fucking Monsters, but easily adaptable to any system.
HER HEART WAS A LOCKED ROOM AND NOBODY HAD THE KEY
This is a short scenario to be combined with Postmortem Giallo: Orpheum Lofts, or even played without it. It’s a clichéd giallo story, which features several of the tropes associated with the genre and starts with the murder of a Loft’s resident, the jazz singer Stephanie Armitage. The players can choose among a list of pre-generated characters or come up with their own. By default, the scenario uses Actual Fucking Monsters mechanics,but it’s easy to adapt it to any other contemporary horror role-playing game system.
THE LOFTS
The Orpheum Lofts were built in the 1920s and, long ago, they were upper-middle-class dwellings. Over time, there has been an enormous change in the surrounding area, which led to extreme property devaluation. Consequently, the building has decayed, the beautiful Art Déco façade is now in shambles, the lift rarely works, the sewage pipes, old-fashioned and rotten, taint the air with the foetid odour of waste and, in the basement, a deepening sinkhole will probably cause structural damage to the whole building. It’s not a nice place to live anymore.
CAST
The cast is divided among Playable and Non-Playable Characters. They all have attached giallo tropes. If you would like to connect the clichés to game mechanics, there are penalties which can be used attached to certain tropes. For instance, an Outsider character should have increased difficulty when dealing with authorities and in most social rolls. The Prime Suspects’ relation with the police should also be rather strained. The same holds true for other Suspects and Unreliable Witness; but, as Witness only, a failure shouldn’t get a character detained, more likely moved up to Suspect level. Possible Victims should have increased difficulties when dealing with tense situations, or when being pursued by aggressors. Lesbians may have a hard time dealing with male characters, especially if they are authority figures or conservatives. Unwilling Investigators may even get a downgraded difficulty when gathering clues, but this will lead them to become either Possible Victims or Suspects. Maybe even both. Weirdoes should have high penalties to all social rolls and are on their way to become Prime Suspects at the first failure. These trope mechanics could work also in a similar way as Consequences do in Actual Fucking Monsters (p. 63).
PLAYABLE CHARACTERS:
BILLY BRUBAKER: he’s a small-town boy recently arrived in New York. Young, handsome and athletic, at first he wanted to be a model, an actor, a singer or some other kind of star. Then he watched Midnight Cowboy, in a late night movie screening, got scarred, and found a job at the Stardust Café, waiting tables. He has worked there for little more than a month and he’s in lust with Stephanie Armitage, a jazz musician who plays at the Café every Friday night. She doesn’t give him the time of day but, luckily, he found a vacant apartment near her place. He watches her undress at night and dress in the morning. She doesn’t seem to care about being watched by the neighbours, her bedroom curtains are always open, so jerking-off to Stephie has become his nightly ritual. He’s an Outsider, a Voyeur and the Unreliable Crime Witness. He could become a Suspect too. He lives in the 8th floor of a building with a view over the Orpheum Lofts.
OLIVIA WATSON: a year ago, Olivia Watson was a name to be reckoned with, a shining star in New York’s journalistic milieu. An investigative reporter for the NY Times, she had a reputation for being absolutely ruthless and sharp. In other words, she’s the worst kind of bitch. For two years, Olivia managed to deliver the most sensationalist news articles. Amoral and ambitious, Olivia is capable of anything for a good story. A well-placed lover in the Mayor’s office passed her exclusive and confidential information about the city’s affairs, a mutually beneficial relation that did wonders for Watson’s career. However, she wasn’t content to publish only the dirt that suited the Mayor’s political agenda. Olivia wanted more. Everything! Perhaps she was blinded by ambition… Olivia began to dig deeper than she was allowed to and, when she tried to write about the web of corruption in New York City, all doors slammed in her face. Her blazing career crumbled in seconds. Now, she works for a sleazy tabloid and had to move to the decaying Orpheum Lofts building. That’s how she met Tracy Cates, an Anthropologist. Olivia was following up a story about sadomasochist nightclubs and had – what was expected to be – a one night affair with the Columbia University assistant professor. It turned up to be more than that; they are engaged in a relationship and Tracy almost moved to her flat. She’s an Outsider. At 30-something, she’s still beautiful enough to be a Victim, but probably too old to be the giallo star. She’s also a Lesbian Lover. Olivia lives in the 7th floor.
JOE DOBBS AND/ OR MURIEL DOBBS: the Dobbs couple owns the Stardust Café. Joe and Muriel’s dream is opening a bigger place, located in a better and busier part of town. For now, they have to make do with what they have and cater to their clientele, consisting mainly of students and intellectuals, who enjoy Tribeca’s nightlife. Joe is a sensible guy and most of his clients see him as a friend and a confidant. Muriel helps her husband managing the Stardust Café, and waits at tables. She isn’t as solicitous and charismatic as her husband, but the male clientele loves her. Joe and Muriel are very close to the first victim, so they are potential Unwilling Investigators and, most likely, Murder Suspects. Muriel could also be one of the next Victims, especially if she’s a non-player character. They live both in Tribeca, but not that close to the Lofts.
PETER STONE: though he hasn’t lived in Orpheum Lofts for several years, he occasionally calls Andy, the janitor, to talk about life in the old neighbourhood. That’s how he comes to know about Stephanie’s death. Peter, a retired NYPD detective, hasn’t seen her for more than three years, but still has a certain fondness for the girl. Not the kind of grandfatherly affection, but something carnal. He maintains a connection to the NYPD, but he’s too old to be of use and there are rumours that he’s lately becoming senile. He lives in Jersey now, and will stay at a fleabag hotel to help with the investigation, so he’s an Outsider. If Peter gets too involved in the story he may become a Murder Witness, and his old age and nosey attitude will turn Pete into an Unreliable Witness.
STEPHANIE ARMITAGE: red-haired, green eyed, dresses in an exceptionally elegant way, has a melodious voice and a seductive, hypnotising look. She is a gorgeous and alluring woman. She also dies right at the beginning of the scenario and all that will mean very little then. Stephanie was a jazz singer and acted frequently at the Stardust Café. The first victim lived on the 7th floor.
KARL HUGHES: an intellectual type, who studies at a local university and majors in Art History and Music. To pay for his studies he does bartender work and gigs with his jazz group in some bars, including the Stardust Café. He lives in the Orpheum Lofts and has a kind of relationship with a jobless actress, Julia Lowell. He doesn’t like her that much, though. In fact, he was in love with Stephanie, but the singer never cared for him, though they had a short affair in the past. Karl’s the Prime Suspect. The fact that he looks like Jeffrey Dahmer doesn’t help a bit. Karl lives on the 6th floor.
KARL HUGHES
Mind: d8 Body: d8 Spirit: d8 Mask: University Student d4 Skill: Art History d8 Skill: Music Theory d8 Skill: Musician d8 Initiative: d8+d4
TRACY CATES: a 30-something Anthropologist who works at Columbia University, where she’s an Assistant Professor. Tracy is preparing her PhD thesis on the cultural relevance of alternative sexual practices, such as bondage and sadomasochism. She’s bisexual and fell in love with Olivia Watson a couple of months ago. The strange thing is Olivia moved to the same building where Tracy used to live with her former boyfriend, George, a weird fellow fascinated with Coney Island amusement parks, who mysteriously vanished a while ago. She’s a Lesbian Lover, too old and not attractive enough to be a giallo star. Perhaps not even a Victim. She lives in Chelsea, but spends a lot of time in Olivia’s apartment, on the 7th floor.
THE MYSTERY TENANT: Tall, slim, always wearing a black Mackintosh, a dark fedora and sunglasses. No one at the Lofts has seen his face yet. He appears from time to time in his flat and stays there for only a few days. No one knows his real name, how old he is or what’s his job. He rented the apartment almost three years ago, but he rarely goes there. The neighbours gossip about him and spread imagined stories about the man’s true identity. The local kids are also rather curious (and frightened) about the Mystery Tenant and call him The Living Vampire. They fantasize he’s a rare type of bloodsucker, who’s still alive, but has monstrous powers and can even walk in sunlight, but still has to take special precautions, like wearing a hat and sunglasses. He may become a Prime Suspect if the characters convince the detectives of that. Or else, later in the scenario, when Karl is arrested. He has rented an apartment on the 9th floor.
ANDY MCDUFF, THE JANITOR: Andy is bearded, out of shape, has short thinning hair, rarely talks to the tenants – just casual conversation –, and spends most of his time reading horror novels or staring at the lobby walls, sitting by his desk. He looks kind of creepy and he was known to have a fixation on Stephanie. The singer surely didn’t feed his interest; she avoided him like the plague. He’s a widower and some of the tenants suspect he murdered his late wife or that he has an unhealthy relationship with his teenage daughter, Charlie. He’s a Weirdo, not very likely to be a Prime Suspect. Andy lives in the ground floor, at the janitor’s flat.
ANDY MCDUFF
Mind: d10 Body: d8 Spirit: d6 Mask: English Teacher d4 Skill: Teaching d6 Skill: English Lit d6 Skill: English Language d6 Mask: Janitor d4 Skill: Cleaning d8 Skill: Plumber d8 Skill: Electrician d8 Initiative: d10+d4
LOUIS BROWN: nobody knows where he works, or even if he works at all. Since the man is black, his neighbours assume he’s a drug dealer. The strange visitors who regularly come by his apartment seem to confirm everybody’s suspicions. His trope is the Weirdo. In another genre, he would be the Token Black Man, and that put him among the first victims, but that’s not giallish at all. Louis Lives on the 9th floor.
JOHN BURTON: tall, dark, rough looking, he looks about 40 years old and is in very good shape. John is an ex-military, who currently works as a security guard. He has no ties to the other tenants. Sometimes, when he’s drunk, he gets aggressive. John may become a Suspect and he lives on the 7th floor.
DETECTIVE ALBERT TORELLO: an old and rough Homicide detective, Torello is nearing the age of retirement. He thinks he’s wise and clever, but he was never a competent cop. The years on the force turned him into a bitter man, twice divorced, no kids, with just an ulcer and an old dog to keep him company. He makes up his mind about guilty parties rather quickly and, since he’s a veteran, partners usually indulge him. But that gets innocent people in trouble. He’s the Veteran Cop and the Incompetent Detective.
DETECTIVE TONY DELGADO: unlike Torello, Delgado is a family man. He likes his job, but would rather spend more time with his beautiful wife, Rosie, who is a very busy nurse in a Brooklyn Hospital, and their daughter, young Iris. Tony tends to be more careful about handling investigations, but Torello is the senior detective and, most of the times, Delgado just gives up. He’s a Family Man.
As it often happens, Billy Brubaker is by the window at 2.30 AM, with the lights off, waiting for the “show”, the time when Stephanie comes home and undresses in her bedroom. She’s late, though, and he peaks at another one of the 7th floor windows. He notices two women having rough sex, not close enough to the window for him to have a good peak, but still. He may as well watch them while he waits…
Things get quite wild and steamy in Olivia’s bedroom; there are whips, nipple clamps, huge dildos, among other fun toys. Twenty minutes later, at 2.50 AM, Olivia closes the curtains on that particular show. Billy will probably look back at Stephanie’s window. If not, have him do a perception related check. The lights go on the singer’s flat and Stephanie appears by the window, preparing to take off her blouse. Meanwhile, someone, apparently a man, wearing a dark hat, a black Mackintosh and sunglasses, is about to attack her with a knife, from behind. She suffers multiple stabbings and dies at 3.15 AM.
AND THE GIALLO KILLER IS…
Julia Lowell, the wannabe actress, madly in love with Karl Hughes – who mistreats her frequently –, went insane with jealousy and killed Stephanie, for whom Karl was obsessed. She had been planning the murder for long. Julia isn’t as vapid, nice and harmless as everybody thinks, there’s an evil streak in that small-town girl. And after starring in so many slasher flicks, gore fests and erotic thrillers, she has a few tricks up her sleeve.
A week ago, Julia found Stephanie’s apartment keys on the lobby and she knew it was her chance. She entered the apartment disguised in an old Mackintosh and fedora she stole from a neighbour’s closet (retired movie star Dorothy McLane). The leather gloves and the sunglasses are Karl’s. The knife is new; she bought it in a small store in Chinatown. Julia has heard the neighbourhood kids blabbering about the Living Vampire and the way he dresses, and she is trying to pin the guilt on that enigmatic figure who, allegedly, rents a flat on the Orpheum. Meanwhile, she also has noticed that several men on the opposite building – not just Billy Brubeck – have the habit of staring into 7th floor’s windows. When she murdered Stephanie, Julia made sure she would be seen in disguise through the bedroom window. And, indeed, she was.
What happens next?
No matter what Billy does, Stephanie dies.
If he just stares, he will see the killer calmly stabbing Stephanie, while holding her mouth shut with a gloved hand. He will stab her repeatedly and violently after the first cut.
The lift in the Orpheum Lofts is working tonight. The lobby and hallways lights are on, but they are flickering.
Billy will not see anyone on the building’s lobby or stairs. The killer may still be inside the Orpheum.
If he runs up to her flat, he will find her already dead, lying in a pool of blood, with a look of agony on her pale, dead face.
If he alerts the neighbours, some will come: Ben Harker, an old, retired History professor who lives on the same floor, will rush to help; John Burton may open the door, but will get right back inside; Ron Taylor, an handsome former athlete, runs up the stairs from the 6th floor; Karl, who is (apparently) entering the building at the time hears the noise and goes straight up to the 7th floor; Tracy Cates might come at the door, but unless Olivia is a player character, she won’t care about what’s happening; Alice White, the religious freak who lives on the 8th floor, comes outside to praise the Lord and sing some hymns when she learns the harlot was killed. If Olivia isn’t a player character, she will come to the hallway alone, Tracy will stay inside. Eventually the janitor will come up, but not for several minutes. Given time, most people in the building will be on alert.
Meanwhile…
In New Jersey, Peter Stone was sleeping and had a nightmare about a beautiful woman being murdered by a disguised person. It could be a premonition, or just a retired Homicide cop who still dreams about murder. If he decides to call Andy, have him be informed by the janitor that Stephanie was killed. He may drive to New York as soon as he wants. He is a widower and no one cares about what he does with his time.
While closing shop, Joe and Muriel notice that Stephanie forgot her wallet, or some jewellery. Anything relevant enough for them to call her. She will not answer, by that time she will already be dead. If they decide heading for the Orpheum Lofts, they may arrive before or after the cops, game master’s choice.
THE COPS ARRIVE
Either summoned by a character or an NPC, the cops will show up soon enough. First the boys in blue, then the two detectives, Delgado and Torello. Some of the clues the detectives will uncover the characters may also want to investigate. Almost all of them will be available for regular citizens, but Peter Stone can lend a hand with some of the more difficult clues to obtain.
No one in the building seems to have heard strange noises. Most people were sound asleep. Olivia and Tracy were wide awake, but they had been doing their own strange noises for some time. The reporter claims she fell asleep around 3 AM. Tracy says she was showering around that time.
No one saw a person in a fedora and a dark Mackintosh enter or leave the building that night. There were no strangers dressed in any other way spotted inside the building either.
Andy McDuff went to bed around 11 PM. The lobby was unattended for a long time, but the door was kept closed, and the lock is intact.
There were no fingerprints in Stephanie’s bedroom other than the victim’s and Ron Taylor’s. The man claims he was there two nights ago. They slept together once in a while, though they had no steady relationship.
When lab results show up later, there will be record of some fibres in the body. They are from the killer’s Mackintosh, but for now there are no other clues. The lab report will probably arrive too late to be of use, but the Mackintosh was a relic from the 1930s. It was worn by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in Beijing Express (1930), a movie co-starred by Dorothy McLane, an ageing Silent Era star who lives in the Loft’s 4th floor. The Mackintosh and fedora had been hanging for decades inside her closet and were stolen by Julia days ago. Dorothy would never notice it; her house is like a movie museum. Stephanie wasn’t raped; all of the blood and other body fluids found were hers. The door lock wasn’t forced. No clues at all at the murder scene.
Stephanie Armitage lost her apartment keys a week before. She mentioned it to the janitor and other people in the building. It very likely the killer used them (and she did).
Everybody knows Karl Hughes was obsessed with Stephanie since their brief affair. The night of the murder, Karl was bartending in Greenwich Village. His alibi can be confirmed until around 2.30 PM. From then on, his word is all that’s left. Though he sometimes sleeps with his girlfriend, the wannabe actress Julia Lowell (who lives on the 4th floor, with roommate Monica Ashton Greene, a former socialite, turned into call girl), she dozed off in her own sofa while watching a Honeymooners marathon. Torello immediately identifies the prime suspect. Even though Delgado has reservations, Karl Hughes will be detained for further interrogation.
The killer’s description will bring to mind the tall tales of the Living Vampire, aka Mystery Tenant, who is supposed to show up at the Orpheum Lofts once in a while, carrying strange packages. The kids swear he carries parts of human bodies, maybe internal organs. Torello thinks it’s all a load of crap, but he will still contact Paul Abramowitz, the building’s owner. Abramowitz isn’t good at record keeping, but he has some documents signed by a certain M. Tenant. “M.” is for Michael, Abramowitz thinks. But it could also be for Murder. As Torello wants to frame Karl with homicide, he will simply connect the two things: Hughes has been planning this for long, rented the apartment on the 9th floor and sometimes carries around grocery bags, while disguised. The kids and the old gossips imagine there’s a spooky undead on the building and Karl can get away with murder, literally. No, he won’t! Torello is smarter than any musician.
If someone checks the apartment on the 9th floor, where the Living Vampire is supposed to live, he isn’t there. It’s just an empty flat.
The missing tenant’s story about sociopathic accountant George Wesley, can be introduced here as a red-herring. Perhaps George was, after all, the first victim? Or maybe he is hiding somewhere, even inside the Lofts, and he’s the real killer?
THE FOLLOWING DAY (SATURDAY)
Since there’s no incriminating evidence, the cops must let Karl go. Back in the Lofts people don’t trust him anymore. He was never loved, now he is despised. Tracy still believes his innocence, though, but she’s one of the few remaining. Julia, of course, knows he didn’t do it, and shows her support.
Any red-herrings should be introduced at this point, before Karl is incriminated. Louis Brown and Andy McDuff, the two Weirdoes, may become suspects. Someone will mention the Mystery Tenant, and the kids will tell their creepy stories. One of the neighbours may recall that John Burton was infatuated by Stephanie, or any other suspicious thing that happened in the past. You can use all that later, but for now the cops still need to listen to the characters; later, not so much.
This could be the end of the story, Julia feels relieved, now that her rival is gone, but while she is trying to cheer her boyfriend up, he slaps her and tells her it’s all over. This time, Julia really snaps. Now she will kill someone just to frame Karl and have her sweet revenge. There’s one easy and obvious target, Monica. Karl hates her, and the call girl hates him back. She’s Julia’s roommate, so it will be easy. Allow some time for the players to try following up on the clues and then…
THE SECOND MURDER (MONDAY)
Monica gets home by 2 AM, after attending to a client in a nearby hotel in Tribeca. While she is showering, Julia stabs her with a knife. It could be the same knife and she could be disguised, even if she isn’t expecting to be seen this time. She stashed the murder weapon and the disguise in the basement before the cops arrived on the scene, while everybody was still in shock. Nothing was found. She can stash it again in the same place, following the second murder.
After killing Monica (2.15 AM), Julia plants some compromising evidence: a piece of cloth ripped from one of Karl’s shirts and some of his hairs. Then she quietly goes to the basement, hides a bag with the murder weapon and the disguise, returns to her flat, bangs her head against the living room cupboard (to appear she was beaten), and calls the cops. Julia claims that someone entered the flat that night. She heard noises, Monica was in the shower, and she thought it might have been her. Suddenly, she was shoved against the cupboard and lay there, almost unconscious, for a while. She heard a muffled cry and someone left, in a hurry. She swears it was a man in a fedora and a Mackintosh, wearing sunglasses and black leather gloves.
THE COPS ARRIVE, AGAIN
This time there are no surprises; Torello and Delgado immediately detain Karl, as suspect of both homicides. If the characters have clues that point elsewhere, the detectives will give them a couple of minutes, but Torello’s mind is made up. Karl was home that night; he worked an early shift at a restaurant in Tribeca. He’s angry and shouts a lot when arrested. After all, he’s a creep, but still innocent of these crimes… The compromising evidence in the bathroom, though too obvious, is corroborative and that’s more than enough for Torello. Even Delgado is starting to agree with the older detective. Monica Ashton Green had a terrible relationship with Karl. She may have found out something about the Stephanie killing, or she was just pestering the Jeffrey Dahmer lookalike. Whatever it was, he killed her. For the cops, that’s final.
Again, no one saw the Mystery Tenant (who isn’t at home, by the way).
In fact, no one saw anything out of the ordinary, except for… Clayton Cox, a punk everybody in the building hates, thinks he saw a blonde woman going to the basement. He was coming home after a gig with his band, The Cunts, around 2.20 AM. He really saw Julia, but he will not say anything about it, unless questioned.
Julia’s version seems accurate.
Karl has no alibi; he was already sleeping when the murder occurred.
NEXT WEEK ON…
From this point on any unavoidable event will probably fail, appear silly or look a lot like railroading. So, let’s stick to optional events. If you’re in a hurry, just plant seeds of suspicion about someone else’s involvement in the crimes, and wait for the characters to dig up more clues, or find a fault in Julia’s plan.
If they get too close to the truth she may try to kill again, this time perhaps one of the player characters. Maybe the Janitor (or his daughter, Charlie) finds the stash in the basement. The Mackintosh, the fedora or the knife will certainly have some DNA material capable of identifying the real killer. Or perhaps Dorothy McLane decides to rearrange her closet and notices the Mackintosh and fedora of her beloved Doug are missing. Andy and Dorothy may come public with the clues, or they may be murdered by Julia before having the chance to talk about it.
If you want to prolong this, add another killer, the Mystery Tenant. There’s no reason for Julia to keep killing after Karl is arrested. She got rid of her rival and framed her unloving boyfriend. Even Monica was only collateral damage, they were friends. The only motive for the wannabe actress to kill again is to avoid being found. But the Mystery Tenant may have his own reasons. Among the possible victims of the deranged Giallo Killer are:
Julia Lowell herself, an obvious choice if the characters suspect she had something to do with the murders.
Have Andy and Louis Brown been prowling around the Lofts? Kill them now!
Olivia Watson, especially if the reporter is digging too deep into the murder investigation.
Peter Stone, for the exact same reason as Olivia. But it’s much less sexy to kill a retired detective, so keep him for later.
Muriel Dobbs, whatever she’s been doing, Joe’s wife is rather good looking and will turn into a beautiful corpse.
Joe Dobbs, the ex-military can be a dangerous man to cross, and the Giallo Killer may target him just to make sure he will not turn into a menace.
Tracy Cates, she is a sadomasochist, the Giallo Killer can make her killing a work of art.
The two detectives and the player characters may become victims, but not too soon.
If you own Postmortem Giallo: Orpheum Lofts you have a fuller cast of possible Victims for your Giallo Killer.
If you are a film buff or a horror aficionado chances are you’ve already come across several giallo movies. Otherwise, unless you’re Italian, it’s possible you haven’t even heard about them. Violent, sexy, stylish and deliciously kitsch, characterized by flashy décors, extreme close-ups, grandiose soundtracks and gruesome murder scenes, these are among the most “problematic” – to use an expression unfortunately associated with art and entertainment – productions in movie history. If you add black leather gloves, big knives, Mackintosh wearing killers and awful dubbing to the list of common tropes you’ll probably identify the genre, even if you do not recognize the name. Spaghetti thriller, as it is also know, hasn’t been that popular for a long time, but left its mark in mainstream horror.
The word “giallo” (plural “gialli)means “yellow” in Italian and, originally, it referred to a collection of cheap paperback crime novels, most of them translations of hardboiled and murder mystery classics – like Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and Raymond Chandler – published by Mondadori Editore since the late 1920s, and which had garish yellow covers.
In the late 1960s the term was internationalized, thanks to its film iteration. Mario Bava, one of the most famous filmmakers who came to be associated with the genre, directed the first giallo movie, La Ragazza che Sapeva Troppo (The Girl Who Knew Too Much, 1963). Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Lamberto Bava, Ruggero Deodato, Enzo G. Castellari are some of the other well-known names connected to giallo. Luchino Visconti has also been added to the category by a few critics due to the film Obsession (1943) and, if you accept that, he’s certainly the most reputable director on record to this day.
To define giallo isn’t easy. More than a genre, in the usual sense of the word in movie theory, it is a concept defined only by common tropes that includes movies which are catalogued into different categories, such as thriller, crime drama, murder-mystery, slasher and horror. Depending on who does the classification, you may even find cannibal horror and spaghetti western among the classics. Sexuality, violence, voyeurism, hallucination, dream, delusion, alienation, paranoia are the most common themes and they appear, with different degrees of relevance, in most gialli.
There is an obvious connection to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960). Hitchcock was also Brian De Palma’s main influence, and De Palma directed Dressed to Kill (1980). The famous thriller starring Michael Caine combines elements taken from the Master of Suspense himself with cues from Italian horror. Quite a lot of the stylistic elements and tropes in Dressed to Kill, from voyeurism to sexuality, including psychosis, art, music – and if that isn’t enough, razor blades and black leather gloves – gave rise to an American version of giallo. It’s still a relevant work and influenced other directors, but some of the traits were lost along the way.
Another thing you may have noticed about these movies is the title: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Blood and Black Lace, Five Dolls for an August Moon, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, The Perfume of the Lady in Black. Some of these sound like thriller titles, but none seems remotely kindred to American slasher flicks. There’s a certain lyricism about spaghetti thrillers, rather common in other Italian cinema, which seems a little odd when associated with such displays of violence. The passionate way of handling horror is amongst the finest details added to the genre by European filmmakers.
And since the clichés are what makes the giallo movie, let’s expand on that a bit. The first true gialli were produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time of social turmoil and change. Sexual liberation was still associated with feminism at the time, and the eroticization of film was hanging on a thread, trying to keep balance between the expression of male desires and fetishisms and what today would be named female empowerment. In other European countries where there was a movie industry (mainly France), certain controversial themes were already being explored but, considering these are mostly Italian productions, and that Italy still was – in part due to religious constraints –, a conservative society, there was a breakthrough behind the gialli. Naked female bodies and sex aren’t the only contentious features. Homosexuality, mental illness, drug abuse and criminality are part of the issues on which Italian horror presented social commentary.
The sexploitation trope shows up in two major variants: having a female or male protagonist usually defines how the sexualisation will work in the narrative. In spaghetti thrillers the protagonists are primarily female and, while that doesn’t mean there will be no violence directed at women, at least we know for sure that, until the very end, the star will not die. Since in a female led film there are much more opportunities for eroticism other than the violent murder scenes, nudity usually abounds. There are certainly further defining traits in movies with a woman protagonist other than nakedness. As an example, the male stars commonly have the role of witness or investigator, while women are often the targets of psychotic killers. That’s not always like that, though. Sometimes the villain is a woman, as is the case of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) and The Killer Nun (1979).
When a man leads the cast – like in Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Deep Red (1975) – it is likely that he will be witness to one or more ghastly homicides. In male ledmovies, the protagonist is ordinarily a foreigner, and that’s another important trope, related to the outsider role. On the one hand, this was the chance to internationalize the genre, by hiring American, British and French movie stars, such as Karl Malden, David Hemmings, John Saxon, Donald Pleasance and Jean-Louis Trintignant. Even when the protagonist isn’t a foreigner, he is normally outside his milieu, as it happens with the journalist played by Tomas Milian in Lucio Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972). On the other hand, having a foreigner character helps solidify the alienation trope. There’s a cultural and linguistic barrier but, more than that, when the crime investigation starts, the authorities tend to distrust the outsider’s testimony. In female led movies, the doubts arise from their own traditionally related female weaknesses, like a tendency to overdramatize or having hysterical reactions to shocking events.
The voyeurism trope sometimes gets mixed up with the outsider one. That’s what happens in Deep Red – a seminal work by Dario Argento – in which David Hemmings plays jazz musician Marcus Dally, who witnesses a murder from afar. When the characters themselves aren’t witnesses to crimes we, the spectators, are. Every spaghetti thriller has at least a murder scene in which the audience is invited to watch a grisly homicide while it happens, from a first or third person view. The voyeuristic approach isn’t just fetishist; it is profoundly connected to the inner workings of the genre. Rarely are the characters police officers or detectives. That’s another sort of production, the poliziotteschi, influenced by gritty French and American action movies of the ‘70s (like the Dirty Harry and Death Wish series). In gialli the authorities are usually portrayed in a bad light, as corrupt, aggressive, contemptuous, incompetent and distrustful. The disdain for authority figures’ deductive ability is also part of the social commentary so frequent in Italian horror.
The already mentioned violence is ubiquitous in the genre. The crimes are commonly dreadful affairs and the murder scenes more graphic than contemporary American counterparts. Violence is increasingly sexualized, taking advantage of the social upheaval of the time. Unlike what happens in Psycho, the shower scenes in these films reveal more than they conceal. It’s quite possible gialli take the lead among the most disturbing horror and thriller productions of the same period. Perhaps it is not a disadvantage that this is a niche, or it would be more likely to be “cancelled” nowadays. Nonetheless, psychological horror is as important as violence. Unlike other Italian horror subgenres of the epoch, this one doesn’t thrive on gore.
Although special effects play a very small role, gialli rely heavily on visual impact. Lurid colours, bright neon, lush décors, impressive façades and plenty works of art, all have a part in creating the adequate mise-en-scène. The use of close-ups of objects and body parts, bizarre camera angles and disorienting framing and editing fuels the atmosphere of delirium and confusion. At the same time there’s also an obsession with luxury, present in other genres of the 1970s. Locales are carefully chosen, there’s a notorious prevalence of Art Déco architecture and house interiors are lavishly decorated. Some scenes take place in decaying buildings, but even those are rather stylish.
The musical score is also an important factor. It mixes several styles, from lounge music to progressive rock, there’s always great care in the soundtrack choice and the way it is intertwined with sound effects to breathe life into the whole ambiance. The esteemed Ennio Morricone authored several scores, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971), Cold Eyes of Fear (1971), Cat O’ Nine Tales (1971), What Have You Done to Solange? (1972) and Spasmo (1974) among them. The progressive rock band Goblin had a prolific collaboration with director Dario Argento that encompasses Deep Red, Suspiria (1977), Phenomena (1985), Sleepless (2001) and they also recorded musical scores for other Italian horror directors like Joe D’Amato (Beyond the Darkness, 1979).
Selected giallo filmography:
Ossessione/ Obsession (1943), La ragazza che sapeva troppo/ The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), 6 donne per l’assassino/ Blood and Black Lace (1964), Orgasmo (1969), L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo/ The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Il rosso segno della follia/ Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970), 5 bambole per la luna d’agosto/ Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970)/ Il gatto a nove code/ The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971), 4 mosche di velluto grigio/ Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), Una lucertola con la pelle di donna/ A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971), Cosa avete fatto a Solange?/ What Have you Done to Solange? (1972), Non si sevizia un paperino/ Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972), Il tuo vizio è una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave/ Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972), Il profumo della signora in nero/ The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974), Spasmo (1974), Profondo Rosso/ Deep Red (1975), Gatti rossi in un labirinto di vetro/ Eyeball (1975), Suor Homicidi/ Killer Nun (1979) Sette note in nero/ Seven Notes in Black (1977), Lo squartatore di New York/ New York Ripper (1982), Tenebrae (1982), Phenomena (1985), Morirai a mezzanotte/ You Die at Midnight (1986), Delirium (1987), Opera (1988), The Stendhal Syndrome (1996)
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