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| A broken man, in a broken world. What's not to love? |
What's "Old Soldiers" About?
A Snippet, For Your Reading Pleasure
The Babylon Gate had been a symbol of hope, once upon a time. A huge edifice built from heavy gauge materials, the Gate had originally been fronted with a bas-relief of angels frolicking in polished clouds. It had been a promise of safety for everyone who entered. That promise had never been tested, though, and as the years fell away, the Babylon Gate had faded. Now the angels leered from their perches, and the laurels on their brows had withered and darkened like forgotten funeral wreaths. All told, the Gate looked like an ancient mausoleum for some long-dead titan, rather than a passage to safety from the threats of the world above.
I was twenty meters from the gate when its halogen eyes blinked to life. The search lights swiveled in recessed sockets, squealing as they brought their beams to bear on me. I stopped, hunching my shoulders as a gust of wind drove a slick of rain against the back of my neck. An alarm warbled from the Gate; a buzzard with a craw full of cancer. I held my hands up, and listened for the tell-tale clank of the remote defense system coming online. Despite the entrance's appearance, I knew the guns were regularly cleaned, and regularly used.
“Identify yourself,” the Gate demanded, a bored voice demanded from the inset speaker system.
I straightened my shoulders, and snapped off the appropriate reply. “Pollux, Myrmidon, 698254.”
The Gate was silent while it considered my request. One minute passed. After two minutes, the Gate's eyes rolled back behind their protective cauls, and the street was left in relative darkness. Two minutes after that, the cannons slid back into their protective sheaths, and a low groan came from the base of the Gate as one of the walking doors shuddered aside. I lowered my head, and entered.
The inside of the Babylon Gate had seen even less maintenance than the outside. The foot lights flickered like dying fireflies. The rubber mats had rotted away in places, exposing the concrete underneath. Floor vents that had once been smooth and efficient creaked like broken shutters, and belched noxious clouds of decontaminating mist as I walked past them. The Argon-72 stung my eyes, and tried to crawl up my nose as I splashed through a puddle of stagnant water. I stepped through a sensor array, and no alarm bells went off. Either it had decided I could pass, or the array was dead.
The concourse beyond the intake hall was built to the same, grand dimensions as the rest of the Gate, but whatever looks it had left were lost in the shadows. Load-bearing caryatids watched me pass with their tarnished, marble eyes, and rusting copper nymphs rasped nonsense words at me from dried-up fountains as air blew through their empty pipes. Old shards of glass crunched under my boots, and a few moldering sleeping bags sat slumped against the walls like discarded cocoons. Ashes and soot stained corners where campfires had been lit. I paused, standing on the south side of a column. All I heard was the muted noise of the outside world, and all I smelled was the damp must of an unused place. I doubled my pace, picking my way down dusty corridors, and striding past old, stone benches carved to look like ancient wood. I crossed the central mosaic without glancing down at the faded map of the city's boroughs, and approached the Hundred-Yard Stairs.
The Stairs were the central feature of the Babylon Gate, and they had been designed with the city's population in mind. While not quite as wide as their namesake, the Stairs could swallow a battalion without hesitation. The steps had been carefully carved to minimize falls, and despite both extensive use and subsequent neglect, they were bedrock solid. Most of the brass handrails had been destroyed, and a majority of the light sconces had been shattered, but the stairs themselves were as strong as they'd ever been.
I descended quickly. The first and second landings were empty, but the sour ghost of toke smoke left behind by pipe users haunted the rafters, and chafed at the inside of my nose. I paused on the third landing, and checked the hieroglyphics on the walls. They'd changed since I'd last been down this way.
The mural of the red serpent on the far wall had been the most recent piece of artwork four months ago. It had been marked out, with black X's drawn through the eyes by whoever had taken the turf from the Scale Kings. A black, upraised fist with spikes on the knuckles had been stamped over the serpent, but the Brass Knuckle Brotherhood's tag had been crossed out with a green paint pen. Two crude skulls with lumpy berets were drawn a little further along the wall, their jaws open in either screams or laughter. The artist had more enthusiasm than talent, but the mark got the point across. I touched my thumb to the paint, and felt the residual moisture beneath the skin. The new tribe had marked its territory no more than three days ago. I turned away from the urban cave paintings, and continued my descent.
I smelled the next landing before I saw it; a mix of body odor, and burning industrial waste. The floor space was clotted with supine forms. They reclined on busted cushions, leaned into corners, and sprawled with their heads on folded coats. Flick torches and strike-anywhere matches flared, warming glass pipes and ceramic bowls. Chapped lips sucked at half a hundred poisons, and blew out little pieces of the tokers' souls in a chemical rainbow. I took shallow breaths through my mouth, and tried to keep as much of the haze out of my lungs as possible. A few eyes rolled to follow me, but most of the hop heads either didn't see me, or figured I was part of their self-inflicted stupors.
Downwind from the addict's lounge was the cot shop. Ragged curtains hung from twine nets strung across the ceiling, providing minimal privacy for the minimal space you could rent. Some of the residents let out loud, wet snores I could smell from the center aisle. Others made noises that told me the occupants were wide awake, and engaged in vigorous activities. A boy with a for-rent look glanced my way from a cane chair at the end of the hall, and the two clock girls opposite him raised their heads when they heard my boots. The girls' eyes went wide, and the boy swallowed hard. I gave them a nod, but didn't slow my pace.
There was more, of course. Even after midnight, the Stairs were jiving. The gambler's hall had faro at one end, and dice at the other. On the next level down, a juke played party ballads while patrons dipped drinks out of an all-sorts barrel. Some people spilled their drinks when I walked in, and a few spit them out. A couple of the patrons froze in their seats, and at least three of them legged it down the stairs like I was some kind of specter. No one drew a weapon, though. It seemed that whoever the new management on the Stairs was, they were smart enough to keep the “no bullets, no blades” rule that had been common practice ever since the McNamara Bloodbath had shut the whole place down two years back.
I was most of the way to the lowest level by the time a welcoming party met me. There were six of them, and they were all local boys. They wore dirty dungarees bloused into steel-toed boots, and each one had a gear belt slung around his hips. The only other thing universal about them were their green berets, each one set with a skull. Some were Jolly Roger medallions, others were hoodoo fobs, and one had a unit patch where the skull was wearing its own cap, but every one of them had their band's flash firmly pinned in a place of honor. They rounded the base of the stairway, and were five steps into their charge when they came to a stumbling halt. They were breathing hard, but none of them seemed tired. They all had weapons, but hadn't drawn them yet. I stopped four steps up from the front-runner, a burly bruiser with a heavy scar across the bridge of his nose, and gave the pack a once-over.
“Help you?” I asked.
“Got word we had a Gate crasher,” the leader said, his words coming a little short as he tried to get his breathing back to normal.
“I'm just passing through,” I said.
“Got to pay the toll,” one of the others said. He was rangy, younger than his compatriots, and I could see the chip on his shoulder quite clearly from where I was standing.
“Is that right?” I asked the leader, tilting my chin toward the loud-mouth.
The party's speaker shrugged his left shoulder, and gave me a you-know-how-it-is smile. His right hand never strayed far from the sidearm hanging at his hip.
“Way I remember it, you paid to go up. Coming down was free if all you did was sight see.”
“New management, new rules,” the back-seat talker said. A few of the others nodded, but no one said anything.
“Is that the way it is?” I asked the one with the nose scar.
“That's the policy,” he said.
I nodded once, showing him I understood. The others relaxed slightly.
“What's the toll?” I asked.
The leader named me a figure. The others nodded approvingly. The young gun in the back was grinning, showing two poorly-formed silver teeth in his top row. I smiled, and approached the group until I was a single stair away. I rested my hand on the railing, a ten centimeter-thick bar of wrought iron bolted to the concrete. I rocked my hand gently, and the railing didn't wobble.
“Here's my counter-offer. Get out of my way, or I will make absolutely sure five of you won't be doing anything but popping pain pills and shitting in a bag for the next four months.” I squeezed my hand into a fist, and the railing twisted out-of-true in my grip. I pulled, and four support bolts snapped off like dandelion heads. “The sixth goes to the cold room. Any one of you tries to drag iron, I make him eat it. You receiving?”
I looked from one face to the next. The street soldiers had seen their share of trenches and blood, and anyone who was part of a crew that took the Stairs would need some serious hard cases to keep control of such sought after territory. They were fighters, and had probably been fighters most of their short lives. I watched as they looked at the malformed piece of pig iron in my hand, and re-calculated their odds of survival. A sallow-faced shooter took a smoke out from behind his ear, lit it, and folded his arms. One of his compatriots slid his hands into his back pockets, rolling out his neck like he was bored. His pulse beat hard in his neck, though, putting the lie to his relaxed pose. The others followed suit, leaning against the walls, tucking their thumbs behind their belts, or lacing their hands behind their heads in a show of getting their breath back. The kid in the back was squeezing his pistol's grip hard enough to turn his knuckles white, but when he looked in my face, he saw something that made him let go like the weapon had given him a shock.
The team's point man looked at the others, then back to me. He blew out a long breath, and stepped aside. I let go of the railing, and it thudded into place with a heavy clang. I nodded, dusted off my hands, and brushed past them. I didn't run, but I tuned my ears for the sound of metal clearing nylon. No one pulled the pin. I was out the front door two minutes later, standing on the upper deck of Babylon Proper.
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