Dead in the Water_A Space Team Universe Novel Read online

  “Gone. Maybe gone gone, but I doubt it.”

  “Ye useless pair of bastards,” Artur said, but he sounded good-natured about it. “Ye know what else needs gone? That fecking smell.”

  He jabbed a thumb back along the corridor behind him. “Come on, I’m sure I spotted some shower rooms this way,” he said, then he winked at Ollie. “If ye’re lucky, Peaches, I might even scrub yer back.”

  EIGHT

  THEY STOPPED by Dan’s pod first, so he could grab his coat. If it came to it, he could shower off the shizz, dispose of his clothes, and then use the coat to cover himself until he could find replacements. Ollie reckoned she could ‘borrow’ some of Banbara’s clothes, although as Banbara had been several dress sizes larger than Ollie, and had twice as many limbs, Dan couldn’t quite fathom how this was going to work.

  To his surprise, when he returned to his pod his filing cabinet and boxes were standing in the corner beside the slop bucket. With some difficulty, he wrenched open the second drawer of the cabinet, revealing a tangle of stained shirts and patched pants. Fishing inside, he pulled out a set, then opened the drawer below so Ollie could get to her own clothes.

  She took out a t-shirt with a green blob on the front. The blob had two big round eyes that seemed to gaze hopefully at her as she considered it.

  But no. Returning it to the drawer, she chose something else and held it up. The text on this one announced that you didn’t have to be crazy to wear it, but went on to suggest that it probably helped.

  No. She returned it and reached for something else.

  Dan grabbed the first available shirt from the drawer and thrust it into her arms. “Here. It isn’t a damn fashion show. Now grab some pants and let’s go get showered.”

  Artur rubbed his hands together. “Now ye’re talking,” he said, but Dan had bad news for him.

  “Artur, stay here and guard this stuff. I don’t want those shizznod roommates coming back and helping themselves.”

  “What?” Artur glanced at Ollie, then back to Dan. “Aw, come on there, Deadman. Don’t ye be acting the maggot on me.”

  “I mean it,” Dan insisted. “If they get their hands on some of the gear in that bottom drawer, there’s no saying what they might let loose. Stay here. Keep it safe.”

  “Why can’t ye do it yerself?”

  Dan gestured to himself, and the layer of fecal matter currently air drying on his clothes and skin.

  Artur groaned. “Fine. But ye owe me big time for this.”

  “Fair enough,” Dan said. He looked to Ollie. “You ready?”

  Ollie nodded. “Ready,” she said. “No, wait!”

  She quickly swapped the t-shirt for a different one, then nodded again. “Ready.”

  It wasn’t far to the shower room, but they had to pass quite a few people to get there. Fortunately, even in the busiest corridors a path would magically open ahead of them as anything with a nose hastily pressed itself against the walls and turned their faces away.

  The soundtrack to their walk was a chorus of gagging, retching and derogatory remarks, but at least no one tried to get in their way or challenge them.

  Behind the shower room door were three identical cubicles. Each one had a drain in the floor, and cracked, grotty tiles on the walls. The only other feature was a rectangular storage chest that stood against the back wall and doubled as a bench.

  “What do I do?” Ollie asked, looking the stalls up and down.

  Dan pointed to the first. “Go in there. Get undressed. Put both sets of clothes in the locker, but keep them well apart so the new set doesn’t get dirty.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then wait. I’ll be right next door.”

  Ollie took a deep breath. Considering the state of them, and how confined a space they were in, she regretted it immediately, but she tried not to let on.

  “OK. Let’s do it!” she announced, visibly steeling herself.

  “It’s just a shower,” Dan said. “Just water. Nothing dangerous.”

  “Got it!” said Ollie. She took a step forward.

  She took a step back.

  “What if I drown?”

  Dan sighed. “It doesn’t fill with water. It’ll just pour down on you and wash everything away.”

  “OK, then!” Ollie said. She took a step forward.

  She took a step back.

  “What if it washes me away?”

  “Just get in the damn shower,” Dan said, pointing into the cubicle.

  He waited until she had stepped inside before entering the next stall along and closing the door behind him.

  Opening the lid of the storage chest, he placed his clean clothes inside, tucking them all the way over on the left. Technically, they were now merely cleanish. While he’d wiped his hands as best he could before picking them up, the fact he’d wiped them on his current filthy attire meant his fingers were pretty much still as shizz-sodden as the rest of him.

  That done, he began peeling off his waistcoat and shirt. They were stuck to his back and under his arms with toxic moisture, and it took him several seconds of wrestling until he successfully pulled his way free.

  “On second thought, don’t put your old clothes in the box,” Dan said, watching the liquid dribble out of his. “Toss them on the floor or put them on top of the box. We’ll leave them here.”

  Ollie’s voice came out muffled as she wrestled her shirt over her head. “Mmkay.”

  Dan kicked off his boots. As one toppled over, yet more liquid spilled out. His feet left blackish-brown prints on the tiled floor as he took off his pants and tossed them onto the floor in the corner.

  From outside, he heard the main shower room door open, and a man’s voice let out a cheep of surprise and delight.

  “Oh, man…” the guy said.

  “Hello,” said Ollie.

  “Hell-lo!”

  Dan groaned. “Ollie, tell me you closed the damn cubicle door?”

  “There’s a cubicle door?”

  Dan wrenched open his own door, revealing his fully naked body in all its hideous, stitched-together glory. A scrawny man with a beard, a sponge-stick and a visible erection stood framed in the shower room doorway. His face fell when he saw Dan. It wasn’t the only thing that drooped.

  “Fonk off,” Dan warned him, as the man stumbled back in horror. “Ollie. Close the door.”

  Both doors clunked shut pretty much simultaneously. Dan hung off a second to make sure the man wasn’t going to come back in, then closed his, too.

  “OK. I’m naked,” Ollie announced.

  “Good for you,” said Dan.

  Once upon a time, his head would have been filling with some fairly vivid mental images right about now, but his lack of blood flow and hormones meant the thought didn’t even occur to him.

  “What happens now?” Ollie asked.

  Dan looked up at the ceiling, expecting to see water jets there. Instead, he saw a few patches of damp, a peeling strip of paint, and a hand-written price-list for some quite specific sexual services, along with the number of a pod to visit if interested in making further inquiries.

  “Uh, there should be water,” Dan said.

  “OK,” said Ollie. She waited. “When?”

  “I don’t know,” Dan admitted, then the floor vibrated beneath them as the cubicle began to move.

  Of course.

  “What’s happening?” Ollie yelped.

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” Dan said. “We used to use these back in some of the older Tribunal stations. It’s a conveyor system.”

  “Aha! Right,” said Ollie. Then: “What does that mean?”

  “It means…” Dan began, then a jet sprayed and Ollie screamed in the next stall over. Despite the last couple of days he’d had, Dan couldn’t help but smile. “…you’re about to get wet.”

  The water blasted down on him from above as the conveyor system carried the cubicles on. The first burst was cold enough for even his mostly lifeless nerve-endings to pic
k up on, which explained Ollie’s reaction.

  The second burst was less cold, but only marginally. It had a detergent sort of smell to it, and formed a thin layer of bubbles where it hit Dan’s skin. The bubbles foamed and fizzed as they consumed the dirt, and by the time the third – and coldest – water blast had hit him, Dan was as clean as he was ever likely to get.

  “You OK?” he called.

  “F-freezing!” Ollie replied through chattering teeth.

  “Almost done,” Dan said.

  Ollie chirped in panic. “Almost?”

  She needn’t have worried. No more icy downpours lashed her bare skin. Instead, two cushions of warm air rose from the floor and rolled down from the ceiling, meeting somewhere around her stomach. It felt like slipping into socks that had been warmed in front of the fire, only the sock wasn’t just for her foot, but her whole body.

  “Aah. That’s better,” she said.

  Dan nodded. “When it stops, get your clothes on,” he said, then he made a point of clarifying. “The new ones. Leave the old ones.”

  “You mean this is going to stop?” Ollie groaned, wriggling in the warm air as she tried to wring every last moment of enjoyment out of it.

  And then, to her immense disappointment, the warm air became just regular air, and goosebumps prickled on her purple-pink skin.

  Dan lifted the lid of the chest and took out his mostly clean clothes. He leaned against the wall as he pulled on his pants.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Ollie.

  “How did that go?” Dan asked.

  “Remember the monster thing? In the sewers?”

  “It was forty minutes ago,” Dan said. His buttons locked themselves together, then the pants tightened around his waist. “Yes, I remember it. Why?”

  “Did you get the feeling that it was suffering?”

  “You ask me, it wasn’t suffering enough,” Dan said.

  “No, it’s just… Did you get a sort of feeling from it?”

  “I got a spike through the fonking shoulder from it,” Dan said, pulling on his shirt. “Does that count?”

  “It’s just…”

  Dan pulled the front of his shirt together and waited until it had fastened. “Just what?”

  “I kind of got the feeling that it was in pain, or sad, or something,” Ollie said. “I can’t really explain more than that.”

  Dan shrugged and reached for his waistcoat. “I’m not sending it a card, if that’s where this is going.”

  The shower cubicles rumbled to a stop, almost throwing them both off balance. The doors opened all on their own, and Dan was just wrestling his feet into his surprisingly dry boots when Ollie appeared around the door frame, fully dressed and perfectly clean.

  The slogan on the front of her t-shirt read: My Other Ships a Nebucore 6000!

  It bothered Dan for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was missing an apostrophe. Secondly, it didn’t make any fonking sense. He chose to rise above both issues, though, and kept them to himself.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  Dan pulled on his hat, curved down the front of the brim a little, then nodded. “All set.”

  THEY RETURNED to the pod to find Artur sitting on top of the filing cabinet, and Dan’s roommates unconscious on the floor. Technically, Tor – the larger of the two – only had the back of his head and top of his shoulders on the floor, the rest of him being wedged between the wall and the bunk beds, but the result was much the same.

  “What happened?” Dan asked. “Did they try to get into the filing cabinet?”

  “They did,” Artur confirmed. “Well, they didn’t try exactly, but they were going to. I could tell.”

  Dan nudged Gunnak with his foot to check if he was alive. The little guy whimpered beneath his breath, which was proof enough.

  “How could you tell?” Ollie asked.

  “They just… they had that sort of look about them, ye know, Peaches? Like, I could tell by their faces they were thinking about opening one of the drawers and taking a look-see. Sure, it was written all over them.”

  “So you beat them unconscious?”

  “So I beat them unconscious,” Artur confirmed. He pointed to Tor. “Twice, in the big lad’s case. He woke up. Near frightened the life out of me.”

  Dan bent over and slapped Tor around the face a few times until he grunted awake. “Hey. You listening?” Dan asked.

  Tor’s eyes widened when he got an up-close eyeful of Dan’s scarred, decaying features. He tried to back away, but there was nowhere for him to go.

  “That’s mine,” Dan said, pointing to the filing cabinet. “Is that clear? Everything in there, and everything in those boxes is mine. It’s also rigged, so I’ll know if you’ve touched anything. And so help me, if you touch anything, I will not be responsible for my actions.”

  He gestured to Artur. “And I’ll be even less responsible for his. Is that clear?”

  Tor didn’t hesitate. He nodded frantically. “Clear. It’s clear. I’ve got it.”

  Dan straightened. “Good. Because I’m making you responsible for it. Anyone touches it – anyone – and the buck stops with you.” He smiled, showing off his surprisingly good teeth. “Got it?”

  “Got it. G-got it,” Tor confirmed, still nodding. It wasn’t clear, in fact, if he was ever going to stop nodding. “I’ll make sure no one touches it.”

  “I appreciate that,” Dan said. He eyeballed him for a while, then turned to Artur and Ollie. “Now, what time is it?”

  “Half past how-the-feck-should-I-know?” Artur replied. “Why?”

  “Because I have an appointment,” Dan said. He made for the door. “But first, I’m getting my gun back.”

  THE HATCH in the mirror closed, but Dan barely noticed. Instead, he focused on the weight of Mindy in his hand, and spent an enjoyable few seconds kneading her butt between his fingers.

  Man, he’d missed this weapon.

  Artur stood inside the breast pocket of Dan’s coat, his head and shoulders visible, his arms hanging out over the front. Ollie stood on Dan’s right, taking in her own reflection. She fiddled with the front of her hair. “I miss Banbara,” she said.

  “We all miss Barbara,” Dan lied.

  “Banbara,” Ollie corrected.

  “Hmm?” Dan looked up from the gun. “Oh. Yeah. Her, too.”

  “I just wish—”

  “Yeah, yeah, she’s gone, no point dwelling on it,” Dan said, taking Ollie by the arm and ushering her toward the ladder. “Let’s get moving. We’ve got some business to take care of.”

  “Where are we headed, exactly?” asked Artur.

  “Loopy Lou’s.”

  Artur craned his neck to look up at Dan, but from that angle could only make out the bottom of his chin. “Loopy Lou’s?” he asked, his eyebrows rising in surprise and consternation. But mostly consternation.

  “Yup,” Dan confirmed, and Artur felt a faint shudder ripple through the detective. “We’re going to Loopy Lou’s.”

  NINE

  LOOPY LOU’S billed itself as the premier children’s entertainment, soft play and food venue chain in all of Down Here. It was correct in none of these assertions. Even the vaguest scrutiny of any one of its thirty-seven establishments would reveal that it wasn’t even the premier children’s entertainment venue on any given street.

  In the case of this particular branch, that title instead belonged to House of Faces two doors down – a museum whose exhibits consisted entirely of painstakingly recreated waxwork faces of once-famous Down Here ‘celebrities’, only a handful of which even faintly resembled their owners. It was a testament to just how terrible Loopy Lou’s was that in terms of its ability to keep children amused and entertained, it came second to some largely unrecognizable model faces. And not even a close second, at that.

  The street outside both buildings was mostly deserted. Dan parked the Exodus as close as he could to Loopy Lou’s entrance, in the hope the sheer awfulness of the building would make the car l
ook better by comparison.

  Years ago, the place must’ve been a real assault on the eyeballs, but now the colorful murals had faded to pastel shades, and the neon awnings were dirty and torn. The large windows, designed to show how much fun the kids were having inside, were now crusted with dust and grime, making it almost impossible to see through them. Metal spikes had been bolted to the long flat windowsills, either to discourage people from sitting on them or to ensure that the only people who did were either perverts or psychopaths.

  The name of the place had been painted above the door in swirly, swooping script, but time had taken its toll on that, too, and anyone seeing the place for the first time would be forgiven for thinking it was called Loop Lo.

  There was a sandwich board style sign outside that promised ‘Fun! Food! Fun!’ Dan wasn’t sure if the second ‘Fun’ was deliberate, or if the person who’d written it had some sort of short-term memory problems. Either way, he was sure they could be brought to trial for false advertising.

  Like everywhere Down Here, throngs of pedestrians bustled by. Unlike other places, though, practically nobody stopped here, and Dan didn’t see a single person step inside as he and the others watched from the car.

  “God, we don’t have to go in, do we?” Artur asked.

  “I hope not,” Dan said, watching the building’s front door.

  “What is this place?” Ollie asked.

  “It’s where Deadman’s man works,” Artur said. “Ye know, the tanned fella wi’ the big muscles?”

  “No, I know. But what is it?”

  “It’s a horrible place,” Dan informed her. “That’s all you need to know.”

  Ollie pointed past him. “But it says it’s fun.”

  “It’s lying,” Artur assured her. “Trust me, I’ve been inside.”

  “Me too,” said Dan.

  Artur drew in a slow breath. “My condolences.”

  “Thanks. You too.”

  They waited and watched as thousands of Down Here citizens ebbed along the sidewalk like a river. No one spoke. No one smiled. They just flowed, endlessly flowed, from one end of the street to the next.