Authors: Zachary Rawlins
“Ran into someone like that once, a few years ago,”
Jenny muttered with obvious, if grudging, respect. “Wish I’d known all that
back then. Would have saved me an awful lot of stabbing. I’ve been trying to
figure out how to go about hurting something like that ever since...”
“You have such lovely hobbies.”
“...and that’s when I found out about this stuff. Rumor
is that somebody used a little AHS-125 to incapacitate a shoggoth. I figure if
it works on one invulnerable monster from beyond the stars, then it will
probably work on the whole lot.”
Yael shook her head while looking at the three tiny
ampules arranged like darts in a small box about twice the size of a match
book. They looked like rigid plastic toothpaste tubes, translucent in the
center to show the strange liquid they contained. The capped needle on the
syringe seemed unnecessarily long.
“This is that ‘Anti-Human Serum’, correct? These
ampules are for me?”
Jenny managed about a third of a nod.
“Your share. I found six, we are splitting
fifty-fifty. Ain’t about to tackle one of those things with my bare hands.”
“And what am I supposed to do with these?”
“When shit goes down, stick one of your Visitors with a
syringe of this, in an artery if you can manage that. It’ll work faster. You
may as well fill them now, so they’re ready to go.”
It wasn’t a difficult process. Jenny talked her
through it, and within a few minutes, the ampules were empty, and the three
syringes were filled with oily liquid. Yael regarded the box with considerably
more caution, placing it carefully in the interior pocket on her windbreaker.
“What will happen?”
“They should pass out, swell up, and turn purple. It’s
like an allergic reaction, a whole body thing. Works really fast. Seen it
happen to junkies. Nasty shit.”
“Miss Frost...”
“...I know, I know. It won’t kill them. Assuming they‘re
alive to start with, this crap is supposed to
extend
lifespan. That’s
the whole ‘125’ part. You don’t have to worry about upsetting your poor bleeding
heart.”
“Do people actually use this drug for fun?”
Jenny winced.
“Not exactly,” Jenny said grimly. “Not for fun. The
thing about 125 – it’ll fix you, no matter what you’re hooked on. Fiending for
smack or speed, doesn’t make any difference. Of course, after the comedown, you
got a whole new addiction to deal with...”
Yael shifted uncertainly, though the train’s motion
remained smooth. She found herself holding on to her anger as if it were
something she would regret losing.
“What about the Azure, then? What is that for?”
“There isn’t any.”
Yael studied Jenny’s eyes for any sign of a lie, but
she already knew there was no point. Jenny didn’t think enough of the world to
bother with deception.
“None?”
“Nope. All I got is the AHS-125.”
“But... Jenny... why?”
Jenny’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared, which
was more or less the extent of motion currently available to her.
“Those bastards, the what-did-you-call-them...”
“Visitors?”
“Yeah. Those guys. Mr. Yog and Mr. Sothoth. The
lawyers or whatever...”
Yael sat down on the edge of the bed, crowding close
to Jenny, her head pounding with something that she couldn’t quite remember. It
was like beginning a sentence only to have the point drift away, or remembering
the melody to a song but forgetting the words.
“What were their names again?”
“Yog and Sothoth. How could I forget names like that? Gave
me their card and everything.”
Jenny indicated the pile of clothes that had been
salvaged and washed by the hotel staff before they had departed. Yael leaned
over, searching for the business card. She couldn’t help but notice how meager
Jenny’s possessions were, hardly more than matches and pocket change. The card
was in one of her pockets, wrinkled and torn, but legible.
It was indisputably the card of a lawyer representing
the firm of Yog & Sothoth. The cardstock was heavy and expensive, embossed
with a logo that was hauntingly familiar. A card like this, Yael knew from
experience, was meant to make a very specific statement about the wealth of the
person handing it out.
Not really the sort of the thing Yael expected to find
in the Waste, much less in the possession of Jenny Frost.
There was no phone number or address, but Yael already
knew how to contact the owners. The card was frigid to the touch, like a thin
sliver of ice. Anyone who fell asleep holding it would enjoy a private audience
with Mr. Yog and Mr. Sothoth.
Anyone except for Jenny Frost, who didn’t dream.
“It was weird. I’m wandering around in the middle of a
dust storm, trying to find some place that was at least a little sheltered from
the wind to set up camp and wait it out. Then the dust clears and these two
weirdos in robes are waiting. They have a desk and paperwork and shi-”
“Miss Frost!”
“Right. Sorry. Anyway, we had a little chat. Can’t say
I enjoyed it much. Yog, he’s the bigger of the two, he barely talked at all. Sothoth,
the skinny one, did most of the talking. His voice...was awful. Don’t ask me to
describe it, because I don’t know how, okay? Listening to him sucked. Bastard
went on and on. Most of it was about you.”
Her brother had warned her that she would have enemies
when it became obvious that his disappearance was inevitable. He warned her not
to trust people in general and Visitors specifically. She was surprised
nonetheless.
Yael knew with a morbid certainty that the potential
of her own disappearance had haunted her brother’s nightmares, because he had
written of them liberally in the diary that she was not supposed to know about.
He would have disapproved of what she was doing and chided her for taking
unnecessary risks. Yael had prepared herself for the idea that he might be
disappointed in her, or angry.
She had never considered the possibility that his most
paranoid delusions might be proven right.
“I’m certain he had a great deal to say. Mr. Sothoth
is in a position to know a great deal. Yog & Sothoth is my family’s legal
firm, after all.”
Jenny’s jaw dropped as far as her bandages would
allow.
“Your family has lawyers?”
“Stop it.”
“No, really, how much trouble do you people get into,
anyway?”
“Be serious,” Yael pleaded. “This is hard for me.”
“I am serious,” Jenny insisted. “If your family wasn’t
doing something shady, then why would they need a law firm on the payroll?
Normally, people only talk to lawyers as an alternative to jail.”
Yael poked at Jenny’s exposed midsection playfully,
causing her to flinch and grimace.
“Stop changing the subject. You still haven’t told me
why you helped me.”
“That shit you told me, about the key disappearing if
you died? That true?”
Yael nodded, wounded that Jenny would doubt her.
“Thought so. You are too damn honest, Yael. That’s not
a problem most lawyers have. They didn’t mention anything about the Silver Key
disappearing if you died. They told me where to find you and when you would be
there, but nothing about that.”
“Did they,” Yael paused, working through a knot in her
throat, “want you to kill me?”
“They seemed to know who I was,” Jenny said blithely.
“They told me what you looked like, where to find you, that you had what I
needed on your skinny ass. I put the picture together myself.”
“Oh my God,” Yael whispered. “Sothoth was at my Bat
Mitzvah.”
“Your what?”
“Never mind.”
“Hey, why are those freaks your lawyers, anyway?”
“Because my family does business with the Outer Dark,”
Yael said, shrugging as if the scandalous admission meant nothing to her. “They
provide my family with financial and legal advice we couldn’t get any other
way. Yog & Sothoth are the oldest and best firm the Visitors have to offer.”
Jenny looked skeptical.
“And what do they get in return?”
Yael’s voice had become very small, so that she could
hardly hear it over the sound of train’s ceaseless rattling.
“I have no idea.”
“You
had
no idea. Bet you have a guess now…”
Yael wrapped her arms around Jenny’s neck and then buried
her head in the hollow of Jenny’s uninjured shoulder, bursting into hysterical,
uncontrollable tears. The shame of crying in front of Jenny made her weep
harder, sniffling and whimpering like a child into bare skin.
“Hey, Yael?” Jenny tried to flinch away, but there was
nowhere for her to go. “What the hell is this?”
“Thank you, Jenny,” Yael said, her voice muffled,
because her face was pressed into the cotton of Jenny’s faded t-shirt. “I owe
you.”
Jenny patted Yael on the back clumsily with her
bandaged hand, clearly at a loss.
“What the hell are you thanking me for?”
Yael choked back further sobs, but kept her face in
the hollow of Jenny’s shoulder.
“You saved me.”
Jenny laughed, wriggling free of Yael’s embrace.
“I didn’t kill you, Princess. That’s not the same
thing.”
“It is,” Yael insisted, wiping her face with her hand.
“It means a lot to me, Jenny. I don’t – that is, I haven’t – well, I don’t have
many friends. Any friends. So I appreciate it.”
To Yael’s astonishment, Jenny blushed bright red and
swore under her breath.
“I am a little worried about Fenrir, though. Are you
sure he can follow the train tracks all this way?”
“Don’t worry for Fenrir, worry
about
him,
that’s my advice.”
“I feel bad, though, leaving him out there...”
“Why don’t you go for a walk, Princess,” Jenny
muttered, rolling over in her narrow bed. “I wanna take a nap. All your chatter
gives me a headache.”
Amused by Jenny’s forced anger, Yael obediently put on
her shoes and gathered her things, slipping her gas mask onto the top of her
head. She paused at the sectioned cabin door, then hurriedly ducked over
Jenny’s bunk to give her a quick, chaste kiss on the cheek before fleeing into
the hall.
***
The train was made of pitted dark iron and the track squealed and
complained beneath its weight, racing across a landscape so blighted that it
seemed to belong to another world. The cars were huge with narrow hallways that
rocked gently from one side to the other. Navigation was aided by brass railings
set along the length of the cars. There were eight cabins on each of the side
of the corridor, sealed with identical wood folding doors. Yael found the
hallway deserted, and paused to glance out a rattling window at the Waste. It
was almost pretty in its stark emptiness, when she had the opportunity to observe
it from a respectable distance.
She had to wrestle with the door at the end of the car
for a moment before she managed to force it open. Yael stepped out into the open
space between the cars, little more than a metal grating laid over the junction
with a pair of guardrails that made it marginally safer. If she had thought the
train was loud in the cabin, Yael found herself awed by the sheer magnitude of
the noise outside, a massive sound that resonated in her chest and brought
half-remembered ancestral nightmares to the surface. The smoke that the engine
belched was black and fetid with coal, and every exterior surface of the train
was coated in a thick layer of soot.
Making her way carefully from one car to the next,
Yael was grateful for her mask.
When she emerged in a dining car, replete with oscillating
chandeliers and tables with special mountings to hold crystal and silver, she
felt significantly less gratitude. The waiter in the tuxedo appeared decidedly
hostile, from what she could see of his pinched face behind his absurd
mustache.
“Miss,” the waiter sneered archly. “You are
underdressed.”
Yael glanced down at the scuffed surface of her
windbreaker, her threadbare pants, the tights beneath turned the no-color of
the Waste. She stared forlornly at her rain boots, which she had just recently
repaired with duct tape, and had to agree with him.
“You have a point, sir,” Yael conceded. “I am simply
passing through, however. I will not trouble your diners.”
“The cars beyond this are first-class. Certainly you
could have no business there.”
The elaborately dressed diners were staring, some in
annoyance, while others seemed amused by her plight.
“I am a passenger on this train. I was informed of no
such restrictions to my movements,” Yael snapped, suddenly determined to hold
her ground. “Who are you to bar my way?”
The waiter grabbed at her shoulder, but Yael shrugged free
of his grasp, his fingers finding no purchase on the slick fabric of her
windbreaker. He lunged at her again and she sidestepped him easily, causing him
to stumble into one of the tables, upsetting several wine glasses and
scandalizing two manicured ladies. The waiter extracted himself from the
wreckage of the table spouting apologies, his face beet red and the veins in
his neck bulging. He stalked toward Yael with his fists clenched, enraged and goaded
by the indignant remarks of the female diners. Yael wedged herself into one
corner of the dining car, uncertain and indignant.