Apocalypse Now Now (12 page)

‘I need to talk to you,’ I shout after him.

‘You have some kind of medical condition that prevents you from going outside?’ he says, peering back through the window.

‘No, I just would prefer that we –’

‘You’re not one of those bubble boys, are you? I saw one of them on TV. He could only live in a bubble because all the germs and shit would kill him.’

‘No, I’m not a bubble boy.’

‘Then if you want to talk to me I’ll be on the roof.’

Shit. I’m quickly starting to feel like this isn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped. I put my hands on the windowsill and lift myself through, easing my feet onto the old metal platform.

The metal shrieks under our weight.

I walk carefully up the stairs, wincing with every whining step, forcing myself not to look down into the alley below. I finally hit the last rust-covered step and clamber onto the rooftop with a real sense of relief.

The roof is covered with plants. There are dozens of orchids
underneath a shade cloth and I notice the familiar six-pronged marijuana leaf rising up behind them. In the corner a chicken-wire aviary holds a selection of pigeons sitting and preening themselves in the sun.

‘You’ve got two minutes. If you try to sell me a cellphone contract or enlighten me in the way of the Harry Krishna, they’ll never find your body,’ Ronin says matter-of-factly.

‘Ha ha,’ I say without enthusiasm.

He looks at me quizzically. ‘Something funny?’

He takes off his trench coat to reveal a dirty wifebeater and old-fashioned braces that clip onto his pinstripe suit pants. He is heavily tattooed; some kind of military heraldry with a shield and crossed swords decorates his left forearm, writing in a jagged, arcane script shows over the neck of his vest and a naked woman smiles salaciously from his right bicep. ‘Wait till you see what she does when I flex,’ he says with a grin.

Only now do I notice the sawn-off shotgun that hangs in a long holster at his side. He pulls the shotgun out and lays it reverently on the rooftop. The handle is made of a polished dark wood and the twin chrome barrels are engraved with pictures of mermaids, dwarves and some kind of weird monster, woven together in an intricate pattern. ‘Pretty, isn’t she?’ he purrs as he strokes the weapon. ‘Her name’s Warchild. Touch her and I’ll rip your pancreas out.’

‘Whatever,’ I say. I don’t touch the gun.

‘What can I do for you, sparky?’ Ronin says, stretching his arms above him and looking out at the smog-shrouded CBD.

‘I’m Baxter Zevcenko,’ I say, ‘I’m looking for my girlfriend.’

He lights another cigarette and drops into a martial arts stance, the cigarette jutting from the corner of his mouth like he’s the Keith Richards of kung fu. ‘Is she Bulgarian and fond of latex?’ he asks.

‘No,’ I say.

‘Then I haven’t seen her.’

He extends his front hand forward like a claw and executes a series of strikes that would definitely cause some serious oesoph-ageal damage if used on a human being. He stretches down into the splits and takes a long drag of his cigarette.

‘Pocket of my coat,’ he says, taking the cigarette from his mouth and using it point toward his trench coat.

I walk over and dig my hand into the pocket, hitting something solid and pulling it out. It’s a steel hip flask in a leather pouch. I walk over to where Ronin is sitting contentedly in the splits and hand it to him. He grabs it from me, unstops it and takes a long sip.

‘It’s nine o’clock in the morning,’ I say.

‘Are you one of those talking alarm clocks?’ he barks, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘What are you doing anyway?’ I say. ‘I really need to talk to you.’

‘Relentless Drunk Immortal Fist,’ he says, taking a deep drag of his cigarette and then pushing his hands out in front of him and breathing out the smoke. ‘Created at the Jade Stem Temple in China. Lemme tell you, those little bastards created some of the most vicious fighting styles in the world.’

‘They’ll probably be ruling the world in a couple of years,’ I say. ‘You might want to try to be a bit more PC.’

‘Not the Chinese, asshole,’ Ronin says. ‘Dwarves. Jade Stem Temple was a Dwarven monastery in the 1300s.’

‘Dwarves?’ I echo.

‘Listen, sparky,’ Ronin says, pushing himself up out of the splits and onto one leg, an arm swept up above his head and whipping from side to side like it’s a venomous scorpion tail, ‘get to the point or get the hell off my rooftop.’

‘My girlfriend has been kidnapped,’ I say.

He nods. ‘It happens, kid.’

‘You deal with strange occurrences, right?’ I say.

‘Not to burst your safe little suburban bubble, but kidnapping isn’t that strange in this town.’

‘This is different,’ I say.

He rolls his eyes and then twists his body and holds his hands in front of him like dragon claws, an effect which is made more impressive by the cloud of cigarette smoke he exhales forcefully from his nostrils. ‘Gimme a break,’ he says. ‘Your girlfriend has probably run away or, worst case, been kidnapped by organ harvesters who want to sell her kidneys on the black market. Either way it’s not my problem.’

‘I found this,’ I say, taking the glowing tooth from my pocket.

He wobbles unsteadily in his kung-fu stance and almost topples over. He grabs my wrist and pulls the tooth from it, holding it up to the light as if he’s appraising an antique. ‘Now this changes everything.’

Ten minutes later we’re in his office. Ronin is sitting in the swivel chair with his boots up on the old desk. His ragged red head is barely visible through piles of folders that spill yellowed dog-eared paper onto the floor. I can’t help but notice that some of the papers on the floor have the words ‘final notice’ and ‘unpaid’ stamped across them in red. A variety of old scientific equipment – beakers, vials, brass tubing – is haphazardly arranged behind him on a shelf.

‘So you can help me?’ I say. My head is throbbing viciously and a headache is relentlessly punching its way into my brain. ‘I mean, you’re a doctor of this kind of stuff, right?’

He pulls a face. ‘Well, I’m not exactly a doctor, per se,’ he says. ‘More like I’ve got a PhD in the school of life with a specialisation from the school of hard knocks.’

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘With an honorary degree from the school of bad drugs.’

He frowns. ‘How do you know about that?’

I move a stack of dusty magazines from a low chair and sit
down. ‘I don’t know anything. Listen, I don’t care if you’re a real doctor or not. What I care about is if you can help me find my girlfriend.’

The headache rings in my ears and I put my hands to my temples. Nausea sloshes around fitfully in my stomach and I’m forced to steady myself on the chair.

‘Headache?’ he says.

I nod.

‘Gets all of us sometimes,’ he commiserates. He gestures at the hip flask on his desk. ‘Although some more than others.’

He yanks open a desk drawer and deposits a black cloth bag on a stack of papers. It’s about the size of a bowling ball, with angular silver lettering woven into it. ‘Don’t feel like playing Dungeons & Dragons,’ I say.

He snorts and shoves his thick hand into the bag and rummages through it. He pulls a curled black root from it. ‘Chew on it,’ he says.

‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘I could do with some codeine though.’

‘Chew it,’ he says again, shoving the root toward my face.

‘Sure, and then I pass out and wake up in a cellar smeared in my own blood. I’ve seen this movie.’

‘So what you’re saying is that you don’t trust me?’ Ronin says. ‘Well, if you don’t trust me to help you with your headache, how the fuck are you going to trust me to find your little lovie boo-boo?’

‘You’re not going to help me unless I chew on your root?’ I say.

‘Precisely,’ he says.

I sigh and reach across the table, grab the root and give it an exploratory sniff. It smells musty. I nibble the end. It tastes like old socks smell. ‘There,’ I say.

He grins and sits back in his chair. ‘Your headache will be gone in no time.’ He rummages again in the bag and pulls out a small leather pouch which holds a syringe and three vials filled with liquid.

‘Whoa,’ I say. ‘Can’t that wait till I’m gone?’

He lifts up his wifebeater and slides the needle into his stomach. ‘It’s for diabetes, dickwad,’ he says. ‘Try having a little fucking respect for the chronically ill.’

‘Oh,’ I say. The tension in my head has begun to recede.

Ronin winces as he spikes himself in the abdomen. ‘Never get used to this,’ he says. He replaces his diabetic paraphernalia in the bag and then grabs the tooth from his desk. He places it carefully on an old brass microscope on the shelf behind him. He adjusts a series of small dials and knobs. ‘Yep, yep, yep. We’ve got ourselves a genuine Obambo tooth,’ he says, his eyebrows bouncing up and down on his forehead in amazement. ‘Goddamn, that is something interesting. And connected to a kidnapping.’ He shakes his head in disbelief.

‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘but what is an Obambo?’

‘A perfectly rational question,’ he says. ‘With what you might find an entirely irrational answer.’

‘Try me,’ I respond.

‘Just remember you asked,’ he says. ‘Obambo. The glowing ones. Called ghosts, spirits or apparitions in most parts of Africa. Well, they
were
called that. They were hunted down and slaughtered. Some missionaries said that the locals had begun to worship them as idols and they needed to be eradicated. Some said they were children of Lucifer, light-bringers and fallen angels. And the ones villagers and missionaries didn’t get, the Strange Ones did.’

‘Ghosts?’ I say. ‘You’re joking, right?’ He raises an eyebrow and looks across the desk at me. ‘You came to a supernatural bounty hunter, what did you expect?’

‘But ghosts have my girlfriend? C’mon …’

‘They’re not really ghosts. If they were you’d be shit outta luck.’

‘If they’re not ghosts what are they? And why do they have my girlfriend? You’re fucking with me, right? This is some kind of prank?’

Ronin sighs. ‘It always happens. They come to someone that has “supernatural bounty hunter” on the door. I tell them that a supernatural creature is their problem and they look at me like I’m the crazy one.’

‘I’m just trying to understand what you’re saying,’ I say.

Ronin raises his hands palm up like he’s imploring the gods for patience. ‘What I was trying to say, if you’d stop running your mouth for one goddamn second, is that this is clearly an Obambo tooth. The faint glowing around the edges of the tooth is characteristic of the species.’

‘So you mean these things glow?’ I say. ‘Like as in emit light?’

‘Well, aren’t you an intellectual of surprising depth,’ Ronin says. ‘Yes, Obambo glow. As in emit twenty-four-hour neon ambience.’ He strokes his long beard braid. ‘My major concern is that it’s common knowledge they’re all extinct.’

‘So now you’re saying an extinct glowing ghost has my girlfriend?’ I say.

‘I’m not saying anything, sparky,’ he says. ‘You’re saying you found this tooth, I’m telling you what it is.’

‘Well, if one of these glowing things has Esmé, then I need your help,’ I say.

He frowns and reaches over to rummage in his black bag yet again. He pulls a domino, a bone and an old key from the bag and holds them cupped in both hands. ‘I need to consult the ancestors before I decide to help you,’ he says.

‘Oh, c’mon!’ I say, standing up and leaning my hands on his desk. ‘You’ve plied me with this shit since I got here and even you admit you’re not even a real doctor. I’d walk out of here but you’re the only person who has given me any clue as to what this glowing tooth is. Please, just cut the crap and help me.’

Ronin raises an eyebrow. ‘You don’t believe in your ancestors? You don’t believe that those in the past have an effect on those in the present?’

‘No,’ I say, ‘I don’t.’

He shrugs. ‘It doesn’t matter. The ancestors are there, whether you believe in them or not.’

‘OK, fine,’ I say. ‘Do your hoodoo-voodoo. Then can you help me find Esmé?’

He smiles benevolently. ‘If the ancestors will it.’

He shakes the three objects in his cupped hands and then throws them into the air. They cartwheel upwards and then drop, all three spinning like kites caught in a crosswind. The key hits the desk with a metallic
ching
and lands pointing toward me. The bone bounces off a stack of papers and lands on top of the key. The domino skitters across the desk and then flips up and balances perfectly on its side.

Ronin has gone into some kind of trance. His eyelids are flickering wildly and his tongue lolls back between parted lips. I lean forward and try to see if he’s faking. ‘The chariots are found and they will be unlocked,’ he says, and then with a gasp he falls forward, knocking a pile of papers onto the floor.

‘Bravo,’ I say, giving him a slow-clap. ‘That was some theatrical bullshit.’ If nothing else he’s proven that I’m no longer the craziest person in the room. Ronin rearranges his sweatband and looks at me with his blowtorch blue eyes.

‘Now, are you going to help me or not?’ I say.

‘Sparky,’ he says, leaning across the table, ‘I think I’m the only one who can help you.’

‘He who hesitates, meditates in the horizontal position’ – Monk Han Wukong

This is the first in a series of articles exploring the mythical framework of the Chinese internal martial arts. We start with an esoteric discipline that is now little known outside of a few practitioners but was once a feared martial art which renowned martial scholar Sun Lutang commented made ‘gods and demons quiver in fear’.

Zhuruquan
(Dwarf Fist) is a subset of the Northern school of Chinese gong fu and shares some characteristics with traditional Shaolin forms such as
Xiao Hong Chuan
(Small Flood Fist) and
Taizu Changquan
(Great Ancestral Longfist). Adding a simple brutality to the more elegant forms of the Northern style, Dwarf Fist has been called the ‘art of overkill’ by martial arts historians due to the proliferation of eye gouges, neck cranks, foot stomps and other ‘dirty’ street fighting techniques within the system.