Krokodil Tears Read online

  Dark Future

  Krokodil Tears

  Jack Yeovil

  Published by GW Books

  Copyright © 1990 Games Workshop

  ISBN: 1–872372–18-X

  Version: 1.0

  Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

  —J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, 1904.

  For Janet, something more than a star.

  September 27th 1991

  THE BRYCE-HOARE AGENCY

  “Protecting Colorado From Juvenile Crime since 1985”

  SURNAME: Bonney

  FORENAMES: Jessamyn Amanda

  GENERAL INFORMATION

  KNOWN ALIASES: Jazzbeaux, Red Jesse, Juicer, J’Am, Minnie Molotov, others

  DATE OF BIRTH: November 15th, 1978

  PLACE OF BIRTH: Denver NoGo, Colorado

  SEX: Fem

  RACE: Cauc.

  STATUS: Single, juvie

  HEIGHT: 5’ 4”

  EYES: Green

  HAIR: Black

  BIO-IMPLANTS: Four red metal stars inset in subject’s knuckles.

  DIST. MARKS: Teardrop mole under left eye. Faint but numerous scars across back. Subject denies she has been beaten, but her case worker (Ref: DOUANIER, LYNN Dept. of Child Welfare) reports that subject’s father (see: BONNEY, BRUNO) has been issued with three prior warnings, re: child abuse. My conclusion is that the father regularly chastised the subject with a rod or a cane.

  OFFICER’S REMARKS: Majorette type, but dresses like Morticia Adams. Cleaned-up, could pass for Rosanna Arquette.

  A.T.O.A. DETAILS

  CLOTHING AT TIME OF ARREST: black fishnet tights (ragged), black pseudoleather skirt, black pseudoleather waistcoat, black pseudoleather boots, one black suede glove (with talons), copper chain-link belt, bra and underpants, long scarf (weighted at one end, i.e.: cross-ref under WEAPONS).

  PERSONAL POSSESSIONS AT TIME OF ARREST: Black pseudoleather handbag, $765.84 in bills and coins, sundry items of correspondence, vial of pills (as yet unidentified), powder compact, hyposqueeze and two cartridges of smack-synth, three lipsticks (black, blue, red), pocket calculator, issue of Moscow Beat magazine, badge of tri-D likeness of Petya Tcherkassoff, hammer-and-sickle earrings (cross-ref under WEAPONS?), credit cards (American Express, Disneycard, MasterGrab), five ampoules of morph-plus, Walkman glasses (with five Soviet-import musichips), N-R-Gee candy, diary (locked), dampraguettes, clippings from Guns and Killing magazine.

  WEAPONS AT TIME OF ARREST: 27 loose rounds of .44 Scum Stopper ammunition (subject had no gun A.T.O.A), straight razor, stiletto in ankle-holster, Swiss Army nunchaka, filed-sharp fetish bracelets.

  OFFICER’S REMARKS: subject’s clothing and possessions turned over to the care of the matron, weapons given in to custody of the court.

  HISTORY AND SOCIAL STANDING

  ADDRESS: NFA

  KNOWN RELATIVES: Bonney, Bruno (father), deceased. Bonney, Robyn is the name under ‘mother’ on her birth certificate, but no such individual is traceable.

  KNOWN CRIMINAL ASSOCIATES: Jean, Andrew (member of Psychopomps gangcult); Threadneedle, Simon (biosurgeon); Kristaldo, Gaspar (pimp, drug dealer, assassin-for-hire).

  KNOWN CRIMINAL AFFILIATIONS: The Psychopomps, Denver Chapter. Subject holds rank of a Provisional War Chief in the Psychopomps’ Junior League Cadre.

  OCCUPATION: High school student. Subject’s counsellor (Ref; WESLEY, SANDRA JEANE, Barry Goldwater High) cannot recall ever seeing her on the premises.

  CREDIT RATING: Fair

  PREVIOUS ARRESTS: Possession and sale of controlled substances, possession and use of a deadly weapon, assault with intent to commit serious injury, grand theft auto, being in charge of a vehicle while under the influence of a controlled substance, destruction of state property, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, driving without due c and a, conspiracy to solicit prostitution, taking part in an illegal sporting event.

  PREVIOUS CONVICTIONS: Taking part in an illegal sporting event (she’s a warehouse gladiatrix), destruction of state property.

  OFFICER’S REMARKS: Cute kid!

  CURRENT ARREST DETAILS

  CHARGE: Homicide

  SITE OF ARREST: The Babushka Beat Nite Klub, Intersection Peebles Drive and 124th Street.

  ARRESTING OFFICER: Patrolman L. J. Leonowens (Patrolwoman L. G. Tuttle, Civilian Auxiliary, P. T. Garratt, assisting).

  COMPLAINANT: State, on behalf of the deceased (BONNEY, BRUNO).

  OFFICER’S REMARKS: Subject will not serve time on this one. No one reading this report or attending subsequent trial will have any doubts as to the facts of the case, and it is my opinion that subject will, repeat, WILL re-offend. But Jessamyn Amanda Bonney is thirteen years old, and Bruno Bonney was slime wrapped up in a human skin. The judge will give her a medal and a lollipop, the Provisional War Chief will become a ward of the State, and she will be back out on the streets. This situation will obtain until November 15th 1996, when subject will reach her majority and cease to be the concern of this agency, whereupon I recommend her file be turned over to all major law enforcement operations in the South-West.

  Signed, sincerely yours,

  Lucius J. Leonowens.

  Report filed with Bryce-Hoare Central 27–9–91. Fax print-out copies cc: DOUANIER, LYNN (Dept. Child Welfare), WESLEY, SANDRA JEANE (Barry Goldwater High), RODRIGUEZ, HOLM (Dept. Corrections), BERGER, HAMILTON (District Attorney’s Office), CLUTE, JOHN QUINCY (Medical Examiner), PRINGLE, DAVID (United Press International).

  Part One: Jazzbeaux

  I

  Dying is easy, as her old man used to say, it’s the coming back that’s hard.

  Inside her head, there was darkness. A red darkness. She was sinking slowly into it. Her optic implant was dangling useless on her cheek, her durium skull platelocks were bent uncomfortably inside her head. That wasn’t supposed to happen. They were under guarantee. Doc Threadneedle had used only the best scav medtech from the Thalamus Corp.

  There were dead people in the road with her. The Feelgood Saloon was burning, and there were overturned ve-hickles all around. The whole town was going up in flames.

  All you need to he a freedom fighter, Petya Tcherkassoff sang on his “The World We Have Lost,” is a fiddle and a bow and a cigarette lighter.

  Somewhere in the darkness outside her head, something—an animal or a person—was howling in pain.

  There was a dull whumpf! as a gastank exploded. Jazzbeaux felt specks of heat on her face. The hardtop shuddered with the impact of flying debris. She knew she was lucky not to have been cut in half by a razor-edged cardoor playing frisbee.

  Her father, of course, was dead. He had never come back.

  The longer she lay here, the shorter the odds became…

  … she tried to open her eye—the right one, the one that was still there—and found it glued shut. She had blood on her face, dried-up and mixed with grit from the road.

  The preacherman had hauled her out of the Feelgood and battered her face against the road. That was how she lost her optic implant, how her platelocks got knocked out of shape.

  The road. All her pain came from the road.

  Get your kicksssssssssssssssss, the preacher had hissed, on Route SixSixSixxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx! [1]

  She had a skullcracker of a headache, and guessed she’d been opened in several places by knifecuts, branded in others by dollops of fire.

  Sicksicksick, sicksicksick, sicksicksick, sicksicksick…

  … she kept losing herself, losing her train of thought. She wished she had listened when Doc Threadneedle tried to tell her about her brain. It’s where you live, the Doc had said, you should take care of it. Well, she had tried. A durium skullsheath doesn’t come cheap. A year’s worth of fenc
ed scav had brought her the treatment. It was supposed to be like armour inside your head. Guaranteed sound against anything up to a direct hit in the eyeball with a ScumStopper bullet.

  But the preacherman had opened up a crack, and got into her greymass. Somehow, he had wormed his way into her private self, the place where she lived. And he had done a lot of mischief in there. She knew her body could be fixed, but she wasn’t sure about the important stuff. Doc Threadneedle couldn’t replace neurons and synapses. Even the GenTech wizards, Dr Zarathustra and W. D. Donovan, could only reconstruct a ruined face; they couldn’t do anything about a shredded psyche, a ruptured personality, a raped memory…

  … somewhere in the distance, there was gunfire. Shots were exchanged. Then, nothing. She could hear fires crackling. The thing in pain was out of it now. Spanish Fork, Utah, was another ghost town. She was probably the only thing alive in it. Soon, the predators would lope out of the desert for her. On the road with the Psychopomps, she had seen some pretty weird critters, wolfrat coyotes, subhume vermin, sharkmouth rabbits. They had to eat red meat one day out of seven.

  Jessamyn.

  Amanda.

  Bonney.

  She held onto herself, trying to come to the surface of her cranial quicksand.

  Jessamyn Amanda Bonney.

  Nobody called her that any more. Nobody but cops and ops and soce workers. Not since her old man.

  Jessa–MYN, her Dead Daddy whispered in her inner ear, cain’t you be more sociable?

  No, not Jessamyn. She didn’t live here any more. Jazzbeaux. She was Jazzbeaux. That was her name in the Psychopomps, that was who she was. Jazz–beaux!

  She brought her right hand up to her face. A numbed pain told her two of the fingers were broken. She rubbed her eye, and tried to open it again. The blood crust cracked, and she saw the night sky.

  Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight…

  … pushing hard with her elbows, she half-sat in the road. Her back ached, but her spine was undamaged. That was something. The Feelgood was a stone shell full of glowing ashes. A half-burned corpse sprawled on the steps, the top of its head gone. That had been the town’s boss-man, Judge Colpeper. A wind had come through with the Josephites, and blown away the man’s whole world. … I wish I may, I wish I might…

  … the starlight and the firelight went to her head like a blow, and she blinked uncontrollably. Her damaged implant was leaking biofluid. Delicately, with an unbroken thumb and ringfinger, she eased the ball-shaped doodad back into its socket. The connections were loose, and the optic burner didn’t respond to her impulse command. No prob. Doc Threadneedle could fix that. At least, he could if the fault was in the machine rather than in the meat.

  She found her eyepatch on the ground, and slipped it on over her optic. She pulled her hair out from over the patchcord, and passed her fingers through it. Blood, dirt and filth came loose. Her broken fingerbones ground painfully.

  … have the wish I wish tonight.

  … she was more in control now. Soon, she would be able to stand up, able to walk out of here on her own two legs.

  The chapter was finished, she guessed. Andrew Jean, her lieutenant for the past two years, was a few yards away, skin in shreds, orange beehive hairdo picked to pieces. The corpse looked as if it had been attacked by dagger-billed birds. The ’pomps who weren’t dead had gone off with the preacherman.

  The preacher. He was the start of it. Seth was his name. Elder Seth. The Josephite.

  He had seemed to be such a nothing, meek and mild in his black suit and wide-brimmed hat, calm behind his mirrorshades, surrounded by his quivering flock.

  Such a nothing.

  The motorwagons were pulled over to the side of the interstate when the Psychopomps’ advance scouts first sighted them. Jazzbeaux was on her way to a pre-arranged duel of honour with the Daughters of the American Revolution. There was a territorial matter to be settled. It was an important fight, and she shouldn’t have been conce with petty pickings like the hymn-singers. She could have passed by without rumbling the Josephites, or just given them a light pasting and taken their food and fuel. She had other business to cover, major league business. There was no need to take the time to beat up on the new pioneers.

  But there was Elder Seth, standing tall, and smiling just like her old man. On sight, she knew she would have to take him down.

  The scav was pathetic. She took Seth’s mirrorshades. At first, she just wanted to look into his eyes, to taste his fear. But there was no fear. She hadn’t been able to read anything from the ice-chips that stared back at her. Not even when she had Andrew Jean and the others cut out a couple of the pioneers and pizza them across the two-lane blacktop. She remembered the names of the dead. Brother Akins, Brother Finnegan, Brother Dzundza. She never forgot the names of her dead.

  She could have killed him then. Done it easy, shoved a gun into his mouth and squeezed off a ScumStopper through the roof of his mouth, exploded his brain.

  But she let him live. She took his dark glasses, and let him live. Two mistakes. Bad ones.

  … citizens, Psychopomps, Cav. There were lots of casualties. Jazzbeaux had been out of it for most of the fighting, but she could tell from the leavings that things had got serious. Some of the people looked as if they had been torn apart by animals with more in the way of teeth and claws than the Good Lord intended for them to have. Cheeks, a gaudy girl who had been riding with the ’pomps for the last few months, was literally crushed flat into the road, dead eyes staring from a foot-wide face. A farmer was burned to the bone inside his unmarked Oshkosh B’Gosh bib-alls. A black US Cavalryman was slumped against the front window of the drug store, dead without a mark on him. She unbuttoned his holster, and took out his sidearm. She had lost her own gun back in the Feelgood.

  The official killing iron was heavier than she was used to, but it would do the job. She unbuckled the yellowlegs’ gunbelt, and cinched it around her hips.

  Then, she picked up a half-brick and threw it through the drugstore window. Picking the glass away from the display, she reached for a squirter of morph-plus. She exposed her wrist, and jabbed the painkiller into her bloodstream.

  Her head clearing slightly, she filled her jacket pockets with pills and ju-jujubes. She popped a glojo capsule into her mouth, and rolled it around on her tongue, not biting into it. The buzz seeped through her body. Some of the pain went away. Some.

  There was something strange about the preacher’s shades. Jazzbeaux had been wearing them on and off for two days. They were clearer than regular dark glasses, and did funny things to her. Once or twice, she thought she saw things in the periphery of her vision that couldn’t be there. Indistinct things, but somehow unsettling. “Whassamatter, Jazzbie,” Andrew Jean had asked, “you a loca lady bug? You’re spookola in spades this ayem…”

  After a while, she began to get migraines. She took the glasses off, and thought about throwing them away, driving her cyke over them. But she just slung them around her neck.

  The world looked real again, but she found herself wanting to put the glasses on again. It was like when she was eight, and Dead Daddy put her on Hero–9 to keep her under control. She had had to wean herself off the dope over a period of years, and still felt the occasional urge for a H–9 hit. This was an irrational longing too, but after a while it became irresistible. She fought it for as long as she could, but it was such a silly thing. She was a War Chief She wasn’t afraid to wear a pair of glasses.

  This time, the effect was different. Colours were brighter, but less sharp. There were shadows where there shouldn’t be. It was a little like a Hero–9 or Method–1 buzz, but without any of the elation. Somehow, with the glasses on, she felt compelled to look back over her shoulder all the time.

  Like one that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, Tasha sang on her Ancient Mariner Mambo album, and having once turned round walks on, and turns no more his head; because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread.
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  It was like that. You didn’t see the frightful fiend, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  The preacher was coming after her, coming for his property. That shouldn’t have scared her.

  But it did.

  … There was a well nearby. Her waterdetector—now lost—had twanged when they crossed the Spanish Fork city limits. She would need a drink soon, and food.

  She couldn’t find a ve-hickle that worked. She supposed Elder Seth must have taken them all with him when he left in his motorwagon train. He would be half-way to Salt Lake City by now.

  Now, she was coming for him. He had done his best to destroy her, and she was still here. She was still Jazzbeaux.

  She squatted by the mess that had been Andrew Jean, and said her goodbyes. Andrew Jean had been a good ’pomp, a good gangbuddy. Nobody deserved to die like that.

  Except the preacherman. Elder Seth needed to die slowly. He had been invincible earlier, when he had changed—the real self pushing out from behind his human mask—but now he was her meat.

  The preacher had taken a girl out to kill her, but had made of her a weapon which could be used against him.

  Jazzbeaux walked away from Andrew Jean. Just off the main street, she found the first of the carrion creatures. It was a bad one, a mew-tater. There was some kind of housecat in there, but it was the size of a moose, had white skunkmarks down its back, and the buds of vestigial extra heads hanging in its neckfur. It had gathered three or four corpses, and was playing with them, slicing them out of their clothes. Its saliva was corrosive, and etched patterns in the pale, dead skin of its supper.