"You know what I want, Scribble," he says.
Yeah. What we all want A glass of Fetish. Clean drugs. Good friends. A hot partner. All that.
Something more.
A squaring of the tides.
Sneak preview. I'm getting word of a new theatre. Hasn't got a name yet. Working title is Bootleg Dreams. I've met the hero figure. His name is Scratch, and he tells a well wicked story. The names have been changed, to protect the guilty. This is how it starts: Wendy comes out of the all-night Vurt-U-Want, clutching a bag of goodies. You're a member of this gang of young hip malcontents. They call themselves the CRASH DRIVERS, so that's what I'm calling this new feather trip. The hero's name is Scratch, and this is one yellow shining journey. Golden yellow. Boy, have you got problems! First off your sister, Shona, has been caught in Metaland, swapped for a lump of lard alien. Your job is to get this Shona back to base Earth. Of course that's virtually impossible; nobody's managed it before. Still you can't stop trying anyway, because of the deep love. Then there's the fact that the evil shecop Moloch is after you. For putting scratches in her face, no less. Your best friend, The Weevil, isn't helping, with his constant desire for the gutter. He wants to drag you right down next to him, keep you there, in the dirtiness. It's a hard life, and most probably you're going to die in this crazy Yellow. Be very, very careful. This ride is not for the weak. It's a psycho. A bit like real life.
Well maybe not quite that bad.
Some bad things buried out on the moors. Some good things as well, some innocent things. Some things that didn't want to get buried. Some that did. Some that got buried by accident, by snowfall or rockfall or soil slippage. Some that buried themselves, wanting the darkness to fall over their all-seeing eyes.
Plenty get buried there, out on the moors. It's where you go, when you come from Manchester, and you want to bury, get buried, or be buried.
On the way through the night, we talked about the wound. The way it was turning, spiralling out from its point of entry, coming in colours like a rainbow, crumbling at the edges in paisley shapes.
"I'm on a spree!" said the Beetle. "Stop complaining."
"It's not getting better, Bee," I heard Mandy say back, but some change was coming over the man, and it was making him ramble.
"I don't want it to get better!" he shouted. "I like it like this. Hey, Scribb! You seen my new colours?"
"Sure, Bee. Looking good."
I had to chance random glances now and then, along some straight path of road. And then back to the wheel.
The air outside was dark pitch, flittering with passing shapes, like grey ghosts; trees, houses, signals. And it was a good job I was feathered up to the Racer, because that meant that somebody else was holding the van, some expert, some young kid expert.
At least the rain had stopped. Stopped some time in the night, leaving the roads wet, slippery.
I took another glance back, and the colours were glowing, spreading out from Beetle's shoulder, taking charge of him, reaching almost to his elbow on one side, to the back of his neck on the other. Mandy was cradling his head in her palms. The dark air of the van suffused into a soft aura around his body.
I turned back to the road and the driving.
Didn't really know where we were going, just knew we were getting there.
Baby Racer.
"I do think it's bad, Bee," Tristan was saying. "Extremely."
"Shit! Don't scare me, man," Beetle replied. "It feels good. The pain's drifting away. You get that, Trist? No fucking pain! Listen to me!"
We were listening.
"You know what that means?" said Tristan, quietly, almost like he didn't want the Beetle to hear.
I was waiting for the Beetle's reply.
Took an age to come, and it was quiet, like the shadow of a voice, "Not me… I'm pure… tell me I'm pure…" You could feel the hurt in there, as the Beetle's mind played against the wound, but I didn't look back. No way. Just kept my eyes blacked out to everything but the road ahead, losing myself in the darkness and the Vurt and the driving.
Please, somebody, take me away from this. Give me a straight road, a well-lit road, a sign-posted road, anything but this wounded road.
Tristan pushed through the gap, and settled into the passenger seat. He had the shotgun in his lap and the bag over his shoulder, and he was holding on to both of them real tight, like he was scared of losing them. From the back I could hear the dogs whimpering over the dead Suze.
We let some darkness pass, out beyond the lamps now, deep country.
"It's a Mandel Bullet," he whispered, keeping it secret.
"I was trying not to think that," I replied.
"Murdoch's got him."
Jesus! Does it have to be like this?
"No one escapes it," Tristan said. "Once bitten, that worm just keeps on growing, spreading, multiplying. You can't stop it. No way. He's going fractal." Sounded final, like an official result in Vurtball, beamed in from the judge's bench. "It's a slow death," Tristan added.
"Don't say that," I whispered back "Please. Don't say that."
No use. Just no use.
I was driving through the night, listening to Beetle's laughter, as the worm took over.
"There's no antidote, Scribb," said Tristan.
No answer. No antidote.
Beetle was doomed.
I guess he knew that anyway, being the Beetle, being au fait with everything. That's the twister; you might know all the details of Mandel bullets, still didn't stop you enjoying the trip as they killed you. Mandel Bullets were designed to take advantage of the near miss, the wounding shot. If at first you don't succeed, put a parasite in there. Let that parasite suck the last remnants of life away, crumbling the skin into fragments. Each bullet contained a fractal virus. It takes maybe five seconds for the program to unload, direct to the cell walls. With twenty-four hours, forty-eight at the most, the entire metabolism has been taken over. You're dead. And how. The deepest cut was that those last twenty-four hours of your life were going to be the best you'd ever lived, as the fractals lit up like a rainbow, giving you visions of glory, and that was why the Beetle was singing now, his mind taken over, singing the praises of life.
Even in the midst of death, singing praises…
"You've been talking to my brother," Tristan said, calling me down from my thoughts. I took my eyes off the road for a second. Baby Racer kept his eyes there for me.
"What's that?" I asked.
"I saw you there, at the Slithy Tove."
The Game Cat? You saw him?"
"Oh yes. I can see him. When Geoffrey wants me to see, that is."
"Geoffrey?"
"Yeah. His real name. The Cat's best kept secret. Call him Geoffrey next time. He'll most probably kill you." I could hear Tristan laughing as I clenched my hands around the wheel rim, driving on air, dark air. "Did he mention that I was his brother?"
"Yes. I didn't believe it at first. But I've seen him since, in the Tapewormer."
"What did you talk about?"
"He said that he felt for you. That he -"
Tristan exploded. "That man should stay out of my life!" His voice was driven by fire. "That fucker only brings grief!"
"Sure, sure… whatever, Trist…" I said, cooling it down some.
We drove forward in silence for a few minutes.
"You want to talk?" I asked. Tristan turned his face to the side window, watching the black fields go by. "About how come you lost each other?"
When he spoke, it was coming from the depths, and he couldn't stand to look at me. "He went too far."
"What's that mean?"
"He went too far for me. So far, I couldn't follow. You got that?"
"I got it."
Got nothing at all. Except that Tristan wanted to talk about Game Cat, about Beetle, anything to stop the thoughts of Suze.