Clark's back smacked the pavement, the snow providing no cushioning. His spine crackled with pain. He realized he still had momentum and had the wherewithal to curl into a ball, protecting his head. He came to an untidy halt some two hundred feet from his first impact.
Clark unraveled and stood, just in time to see Jakes' unmarked disappear into a vacated Starbucks, exploding on impact. The explosion tore through the storefront, killing anyone inside the Crown Victoria. Clark thanked the cop for his sacrifice.
But his relief was momentary, as a phoenix rose from the flames and soared into the sky. Clark knew the flaming survivor was no legendary bird.
"Sleath," he muttered.
Clark had to get to Coit Tower before Sleath could destroy Christmas.
A MUNI bus shuddered to a halt before Clark under a popping cacophony of asthmatic airbrakes. The driver's face was a mosaic of confusion. Clark rushed to the door and slammed his fists against the Plexiglas. "Let me in!" he shouted.
The doors clattered open. "What the hell happened?" the wire-haired woman demanded.
Clark clambered aboard. "I need your bus."
"You ain't having my damn bus."
"I don't have time for this. Gimme the bus." Clark spotted three passengers towards the rear of the bus staring at him and out the window. "You'll have to get off too."
"No one's going anywhere," the driver insisted
"Get off the goddamn bus!"
Clark ripped open the driver's protective door. He yanked the overweight woman from her comfortable perch and bundled her out the door. He didn't have to ask the passengers twice. One glance from him and they flew out the rear exit.
Dropping into the driver's seat, Clark instructed, "Call the cops. Tell them Jakes is dead, that their witness has gone to Coit Tower, and to send back-up."
"You're in a whole world of shit now," the driver insisted.
"We all are," Clark said, thinking of Sleath destroying the Christmas Bell. He closed the doors and roared off, pulling an illegal U-turn on the one-way street.
Luckily, Clark knew how to handle a bus from a temporary job as a summer school driver during his third year of college. His skills were rusty, but he'd get there. But, stealing a bus wasn't the best idea he'd ever had. Getting to Coit Tower required negotiating a number of narrow switchbacks, which had the added obstacle of parked cars clogging the roads. Clark brushed cars aside with destructive intent. Vehicles lost more than door mirrors. The bus removed fenders, crunched doors, blew out windows and reduced full sizes to compacts. Buildings faired only slightly better. Even with no cars, some bends were so tight that Clark collected stucco and siding.
The bus didn't make it to Coit Tower's parking lot. Clark called it a day when the bus ploughed into two cars parked on either side of the road. He leapt from the vehicle's rear passenger exit and raced up the hill to the screams of protesting neighbors.
Out of breath and with starlight popping in his gaze, Clark rounded the tower to find he was too late. Jakes' guards were on their backs with their eyes missing. Both men still had their weapons in their hands. Having twice seen Sleath at work, he doubted the cops had even fired off a round. Clark stepped between the corpses.
He froze.
Echoing laughter trickled down the coiling stairway. Clark knew Sleath had found the Christmas Bell. But he guessed he didn't have seven slay bells dangling from his knife. Jakes and the cops made four, five and six. Without a seventh victim, Christmas was safe and the bell couldn't be broken. Clark accepted he was probably Sleath's seventh and final victim. Better him than some other poor unsuspecting sap. He checked his watch-five minutes to twelve.
Clark smiled. Time wasn't on Sleath's side. The elf had to claim seven victims before Christmas Day. Clark guessed he could last five minutes. Or die trying. He bent to take a gun from one of the dead cops.
Clark grasped the automatic. The dead cop snatched his wrist. Clark stiffened and gasped. The cop stared at him with an eyeless gaze.
"You'd better be a good guy," the blind cop demanded.
"I am," Clark replied.
"Take the gun, if you want." He released his grip on Clark's arm. "It won't do you any good, but this will."
The cop produced a remote control device. Clark took it.
"What is it?"
"We guessed we wouldn't hold him back. The place is wired."
Clark patted the cop on the chest. "I'll get help when I can."
"Don't bother. I don't wanna live. I saw his knife pierce my brain. I even saw my soul escape."
The cop continued to ramble but Clark had already entered the tower. Climbing the steps, he called out. "Hey, Sleath! You killed seven yet?"
A rasping chuckle greeted Clark. "My little friend. The one that got away. Is that you? I thought it was-I can smell you. Come on up and I'll tell you what I know."
"Sure you don't want to come down here? By my reckoning, you're out of time." Clark thumbed the detonator.
"Who says I'm waiting for you? Who says I don't have a little friend up here now?"
"Momma!" a little girl's voice shrieked.
"You son of a bitch!"
Clark raced up the steps, clutching the remote control tightly. He couldn't let the explosive off now. Not with a kid up there.
The burden of time wasn't Sleath's. It was Clark's. If Sleath's time ran out, he could always sacrifice the child. He checked his watch-two minutes to twelve.
Clark burst onto the observation level. The place was lit with Christmas lights. His clothes singed, Sleath sat in a chair with the Christmas Bell on his lap. He poked at it with his blade. Six bells tinkled from the knife's butt. The child was nowhere to be seen.
"Where is she?"
"Who?"
"Don't piss about. The girl. Where is she?"
"Oh, her." Recollection crossed Sleath's face. "I was always good at mimicking people. Drove Saint Nicholas mad."
"What?"
"Momma," Sleath said in the child's voice.
How dumb had he been? Clark couldn't describe how big a fool he felt. He glanced at his watch. There was time for one last thing.
Sleath rose. "Give me your soul."
"I don't think so." Clark brandished the remote. "The bell is wired."
Sleath smirked and shook his head. The elf rotated the bell to show its underside. All that was there was the clapper.
"I think someone's been lying to you. Now, gimme your eyes."
Clark looked up at the ceiling in despair, then smiled. Sleath was wrong. Clark hadn't been lied to. He'd just misunderstood. It was the Christmas lights. Tied to each light was a chunk of plastic explosive with a wire running from each piece. Clark smiled.
"Do yourself a favor, Sleath. Take a Christmas off."
Sleath growled and raced across the floor.
More out of good fortune than anything else, Clark was standing next to the elevator. He punched the down arrow. The doors slid open and he dived inside, striking the door close button. The door eased shut.
Through an ever-narrowing gap, Clark watched Sleath charge towards him. Sleath made a final lunge, but was too late. The doors closed. His knife pierced the metal door, but the elevator descended unabated.
Clark heard Sleath hurl frustrated insults. He laughed and checked his watch-ten seconds.
"Merry Christmas to you," he said and pressed the detonator.
The explosion rocked the elevator before something snapped and the elevator car plunged. Clark was weightless as the car fell but was thrown to the ground as it struck bottom, its walls buckling. The doors were parted, wrenched open by the impact. Clark slipped through the gap. He tore out of the tower, into the parking lot.
He was greeted by strewn rubble. He whirled to gaze at Coit Tower's peak. It wasn't there. The observation level was gone. A smoldering stump remained in its place.
He wondered if he'd been successful. There was no sign that Christmas hadn't arrived, but the absence of Sleath's remains caused his heart to flutter in the fear of failure.
Then, he spotted his proof-the Christmas Bell. He rushed towards it. Not a scratch was on it. And why would there be? Jakes said it was indestructible. And as if to confirm that Christmas was safe, Sleath's knife was lying next to the bell, just as unharmed, and the six bells from his six victims were missing. He gathered up both items and struck the knife against the bell. It rang loud and proud above the wail of police and fire sirens.
"Merry Christmas, everyone!" he cheered.
SIMON WOOD
is a California transplant from England. He shares his world with Julie (his American wife), Royston (a Longhaired Dachshund) and Streetcar (a cat), all rescued from the barbaric Californian streets. In the last three years, but he's had nearly eighty stories published around the world. Last August, his debut novel, the suspense-thriller, "Accidents Waiting To Happen" was released and was nominated for a Bloody Dagger award. His short story collection "Dragged Into Darkness" will released this August. Readers can keep up to date with Simon
through his website http://www.simonwood.net.
The Santa of Sector 24-G
By Scott Christian Carr
(Lower Level-Designation UNDERCLASS, LndFil #862b)
Neural Log: 23:62-14-
--Digging and scratching with my bare hands in the petrified crust of Landfill 862b, also known as The Floor, The Bath, The South Pole, The Refuservoir-a mineralized shell of a millennia's worth of sewage, soot, spit, grime, carbo-hydro-peroxol exhaust, petrified bird and rat shit, decomposing food containers, acid rain and sludge, all baked to a crust and hardened in the cold ultraviolet gloom and the dank, mildewed shadow of the lower abyss. I never thought I could fall so low.
Fall so low-both metaphorically and literally. Last thing I remember before hitting the bottom and blacking out was the fall. Slipping and tripping, pushed over the broken guardrail in ghetto-town. Hitting the slime-sloped wall and sliding backwards a thousand feet down into the waste and sewage of Crack City's Refuservoir. Cast down among the bottom-dwellers and the sludge-eaters, the wildlife and vermin.
Never imagined I could fall so low.--
Neural Log: 23:62-18-
--How did it ever come to this? Just four clicks and a handful of rotations ago I was clocking in at the data factory-DF #3674e-my own small cubicle in Block 6780923, factory level 16, on the Inner Ring. The Inner Ring! From the cafeteria, through the window, I could even see the bottommost patios of 24-G.
24-G!-the Sector of the Rich and Famous, the Top Dogs, the Elite.
Those luxurious habitat rings at the uppermost levels of Crack City seemed almost to be within arms' reach from the factory's cafeteria window. Though I might never walk those gold-crusted, credit strewn sidewalks in this life-never bask in the Sun, filtered down through the Crack and through UV-shaded, tinted street visors-though I might never stand with my eyes turned crackwards up towards that crimson slash of unbroken sky-though I might never know the pleasures of the sluggish life, the luxurious way, the Aristocrat's world, I could at least see the underside of the life I was struggling towards from the factory's cafeteria window. And that is better than most.
And I could hope.
And I could dream.
And I could wonder.
And I could pray, and wish, and work my fingers to paper-cut nubs and my eyes to myopic, monitor-burned orbs. I could pray that if I gave hard enough, and worked long enough, that-if not in my next life, or the next, or the next after that-that eventually I might be reborn just a level closer, a level higher, a level nearer to the Blessed Ones up on 24-G.
And in this life I could take comfort in my very proximity to 24-G. Unlike the millions of struggling souls in the levels below me, I could actually see what I was striving toward, who I was working for. Sector 24-G was within sight!-infinitely beyond the reach of my undeserving hands, perhaps, but within sight nevertheless.
It even seemed (though I would never voice it externally-or even internally within the nosey earshot of my mandatory neural implant) to be within reach of the grasping, yearning fingers of my soul. Not this incarnation or the next, maybe, but some not-too-distant iteration down the conveyor belt of promised lives. Distant, no doubt. Far off, certainly. But within reach, oh god yes…--
Neural Log: 23:62-20-
--Ain't life grand? Without the struggle, without the strife-without want and need and desire and desperation, I ask you, what else is there?
At times (in the secret part of my brain, cloistered away from those probing electronic fingers and eavesdropping sensors of the greedy neural log) I even pitied the elite of Sector 24-G. Can you believe it? Well, I did! They who had it all: everything, every need, every desire, every whim on a string…
Yes, even if I didn't realize it consciously, wouldn't admit it subconsciously, I pitied them, in a way. For at that high a level, what more could came after?
But then, my conditioning kicks in and I rethink my unthunk thoughts. Their Way was not mine to question-for surely, the knowledge to be known at such a level would so far transcend the minds of we the lower level masses that it was foolish to even ponder. The spiritual struggles of Aristocrats on 24-G… One might as wonder how many holo-angels could swing on the tip of a pleasure-needle.
You could never seek to understand them, those angelic denizens of 24-G. You could only want to be them. And that is how it should be. No questions, only answers. Wait and work. Work and wait. Life in Crack City goes on, the obedient ascend, the lazy drift downward. Sink or swim. Work and fly. Think and fall. All is as it should be. Knowledge is a gift. Amen.
This is how I used to think. Until I fell, that is…--
Neural Log: 23:62-60-
--I keep blacking out. I'd hit my head in the fall. Or maybe the toxins and the fumes here at the bottom of the lower abyss have overwhelmed me. My muscles and bones ache from the impact. My skin tingles and itches and burns. My lungs are heavy and my lips and nostrils are coated with thick, mucousey carbo-soot. Sick and nauseous, my empty stomach keeps trying to heave out food that isn't there.