Mysteria Vermis

A Punk Wars story by johnnedwill

Hailey leant on the barge's railing, watching Something Street drift past her. Even though she was a veteran explorer of the dimensional anomaly, there were times that she was surprised by what happened there. Something Street was fickle, capricious in its moods. A prominent landmark - one that had been there for months - might vanish overnight, never to be seen again. Alleys, even entire stretches of Something Street, would phase in from other realities then return to where they had come from. 

This, however, was the first time that Harley had seen such a dramatic change in the structure of the Street itself. The last time she had come this way, Something Street had been a narrow alley, dark in the shadow of impossibly high organic structures. Stalls had lined the thoroughfare, selling trinkets from long-dead civilisations. But in the time since then, Something Street had changed. It was not unknown for a new interface to elsewhere to appear, or perhaps an offshoot merge to impose a new set of dominant axioms. Those who knew Something Street and who were used to its ways always found a way to adapt to the changes. If they couldn't, then there was always somewhere else to go - somewhere more suited to their needs. After all, Something Street was infinite in its variety.

Something Street - at least the part of it that Hailey now found herself on - was a maze of canals and flooded streets. Walkways ran above the grey waters, allowing beings to make their way from place to place in relative dryness. Floating transports, either floating barges or fast boats, carried people and cargo along the waterways. From her vantage point on the waist of the ponderous vessel, Hailey could look down into the canal and see shadows moving below the surface. It was almost as if there was another world down there; one that had a parallel existence. But the water was too dark, too thick with silt and rubbish for Harley to be sure of what she saw.

Hailey felt a tug at the sleeve of her plaid shirt.

"What's up, H?" It was Gregor - the man who was paying Hailey to act as a guide for this foray into Something Street. To her eyes, he was cute in a bookish kind of way. When he had contacted Bailey, asking for her to help him get to his brother, Haley had agreed straightaway.

Hailey looked up from her contemplation of the turbid waters. "Oh. Hey. Just thinking."

Gregor smiled at her. "About what?"

"Just ... ." Hailey took a deep breath. "Just this." She gestured at one of the nearby buildings. Behind smoked glass windows, humanoid shapes were parading back and forth, watched by an appreciative crowd of gaudily-dressed beings. "Your brother really lives here?"

"He did. But now?" Gregor shrugged. "I've just got this to go on." He pulled out a brown- edged scroll from the inside pocket of his jacket. "But half the directions don't make sense any more."

Hailey took the scroll and unrolled it. Somebody had written on it in a scrawling hand. "Well, if you know what to look for, then these still make sense. We're definitely on the right track. We just have to hope that we can be dropped off close enough to where we need to be. I don't want to have to try and work out how to get here on foot." She looked up at the sky. "We'd better get inside."

"Why?" Gregor turned to follow Hailey as she headed for the barge's saloon. "Because it's going to rain."

The walkways around them blossomed with opening umbrellas.

The barge stopped at a makeshift pier to allow passengers to board and alight. Sturdy robots held the mooring lines tight in their manipulators, then cast off. Hailey and Gregor stood on

the quayside, waiting for the crowd to disperse before getting their bearings. "Are you sure this is the right place?" Gregor asked.

Hailey pointed at a rippling banner that hung from a nearby building. "That tells me we are."

Gregor squinted at the flowing script on the flag. "You can read that?" "No. But I know that it's on the directions your brother sent."

"So where do we go from here?"

Hailey opened the scroll and looked around. The buildings here were almost identical grey slabs of rain-spotted concrete. The only differences were in the arrangements of the windows. "This way," she said.

"Are you - ?" Gregor began, but Hailey was already making her way towards a narrow alley between two of the blocks. Gregor hurried after her, trying to keep her in sight in the throng of passers-by.

The pair arrived at a deserted courtyard. It was surrounded on all four sides by tall, brutalist buildings. Grey light and grey rain filtered in from above, streaking the walls that defined the space. Hailey checked the scroll, comparing the instructions on it to the symbols on the buildings, then made her mind up. "Come on."

They pushed through a set of doors, into a narrow corridor that led to a stairwell. Fluorescent strip lights hummed to themselves and cast harsh shadows as they made their way up six flights. Gregor stopped halfway to catch his breath. "Can't we just take the lift?"

"It wasn't in the directions."

The stairwell opened onto a long corridor lined with grey doors that were identical, save for the numbered plaque on each one. Hailey stopped by one. "Here." She pointed. "He's your brother. I think he might be expecting you."

Gregor stood in front of the door and hammered on it with his fist. The sound was quickly lost in the corridor, leaving behind a sense of emptiness in the dead air. There was no response.

"Maybe he's not in?" Hailey asked.

"I don't know." Gregor fumbled in his pocket. "But he did send me this." He held up a plastic card about ten centimetres long and looked for somewhere to put it. There was a small slot by the side of the door. "There." Gregor put the card in the slot. There was a loud click from a hidden mechanism, and the door opened a crack. "I think we can go in."

A wall of foul air hit the them as soon as Gregor opened the apartment door. He recoiled, coughing and retching, his eyes burning and watering. Hailey retreated into the fresher air of the corridor. "What the - !" she gasped. "It's like a meat locker in there!"

Gregor wiped his eyes. "I don't even want to know."

Hailey fumbled in her satchel and brought out a jar of ointment. "Here." She opened the jar and dabbed some of the contents onto her upper lip, just below her nose. "Try this."

"What is it?" Gregor took the jar and sniffed at it.

"Tiger balm. I got the idea from one of those detective shows. You know - one of those 'body-of-the-week' things."

Gregor eyed her. "Do you deal with dead bodies a lot?"

"No. But sometimes the people I deal with? Let's just say that they have different ideas of what constitutes hygiene."

"Fine." Gregor smeared some of the yellow balm along his upper lip. "It smells like ... ."

"Not rotten meat." Hailey glanced at her companion. "After you. It is your brother's place."

The apartment was small and utilitarian: a single room, barely big enough to hold a couch and a kitchenette. One wall of the small apartment was taken up by a video screen that cast a flickering light across the room. The image on the screen was blurred and streaked with static and data artefacts. A single door on the opposite wall led to another room - the bathroom, Hailey guessed.

"Looks like nobody's home," Hailey remarked.

Gregor headed for the kitchenette. He opened a cupboard door, revealing the blue-lit interior of a refrigerator. "Well, this is still working. Not that there's anything in here to go off."

"So where's the smell coming from?"

They both looked towards the door in the far wall, then at each other. Gregor blanched. "Alright. I'll look." He crossed the apartment and and opened the door. "Fuck," he said in a flat voice, then started to sob. Hailey came up behind him and looked over his shoulder.

The door did indeed open into a bathroom - a tile-lined cubicle that was a combination shower and lavatory. Like the rest of the apartment, the bathroom was sparse and utilitarian. Slumped against a wall, just under the shower head, was what had once being a living human being. Now it was just a mass of misshapen flesh, crawling with yellow maggots. The stench of putrefying meat fought hard against the ointment's spicy, medicinal odour. "Fuck, yeah," Hailey said softly. "That's ... ."

She pulled Gregor out of the bathroom, then pulled the door shut. "Is that your brother?"

It took Gregor a moment to recover his senses enough to speak. "I-I d-don't know," he began.

Hailey took him by the shoulders and guided him to the couch. "Sit down. You're in shock." A little bit of pressure, and Gregor sat down. And so am I, Hailey thought. But one of us has to keep it together for now.

"Maybe we should call someone?" Gregor looked up at Hailey, his eyes wide and pleading.

"Like who?"

"Like the police?"

"We're on Something Street!" Hailey glared at Gregor. "There's nobody in charge here! And even if there was, we'd just as likely end up in the shit for that!" She looked around, then stopped at the kitchenette. "I'll get you some coffee. And I could do with some as well."

"Coffee." Gregor's response was flat and emotionless. "Yes. Please."

Hailey set to work, looking for coffee and mugs in the unfamiliar cupboards of the apartment. It didn't take her long to find a container full of a brown powder with a promising aroma, alongside a collection of shiny beakers. A spigot delivered a stream of hot water. As Hailey prepared the drinks, she kept up a stream of chatter, hoping to keep Gregor from sliding further into shock. "I don't know what it is about humans. Wherever we are, there is always coffee. I think

it's one of those universal constants. There's no cream or milk, so it'll have to be black. Is that alright with you, Gregor?"

A wet thump caught her attention. She spun around to see what was going on.

The maggot-riddled body from the wet room had forced its way out, into the lounge. It loomed over Gregor, one of its fists buried deep into his midriff. Gregor's mouth was wide open in silent agony. The corpse raised its other arm, revealing a wriggling mass that dripped from the corrupted flesh.

"Fuck! No!"

Hailey grabbed her satchel and hurled herself at the shambling form, swinging wildly. She wasn't motivated by bravery; more by the horror of not getting the rest of the money that Gregor owed her. The bag made contact with what had once been Gregor's brother, knocking it back and sending a spray of maggots across the room. A few landed on Hailey. She flailed at them in fear and disgust. "Get off! Get! Off!"

The thing - the walking corpse - stumbled upright and lurched towards Hailey, its arms outstretched. Hailey retreated, then turned to run away, around the couch. Gregor's brother followed her on stiff legs, its dead eyes unerringly looking at her. Hailey reached the other side of the couch and grabbed Gregor, pulling him after her. "C'mon! we've got to go!"

The pair stumbled out of the apartment and into the hall. They kept going, not stopping to close the door behind them. Their blind, panicked flight led them back to the rain-soaked courtyard between the buildings. It was only there that Hailey felt safe enough to stop and recover her breath. "Are you alright?" she wheezed.

It was obvious that Gregor was not alright. His face was grey, his eyes barely open. He clutched at his stomach and moaned. Between his blood-stained fingers, Hailey was sure that she could see maggots.

"Okay," Hailey muttered. "Okay. Got to do something." She stood up and hauled Gregor to his feet. :We're going to see a doctor - okay? I know a good one, not too far from here." So long as Something Street hasn't changed. "They know how to deal with things like this. Don't worry."

Doctor Izziz did business in another part of Something Street. Hailey had used its services before. Being a vespid - a giant, carnivorous insect with a yellow- and black-striped abdomen - its clinic was a cocoon of fibroid material that flowed like a waterfall through an offshoot alley.

"is good you came, yesyes," the doctor buzzed. Its voice came through a series of spiracles that ran down each side of its abdomen. The effect was like a choir, humming in unison. "Friend has colony infection. Colony infection is bad - yesyes?" Izziz held up a conical flask in a prosthetic hand, allowing Hailey to see the larvae writhing and twisting inside their glass prison.

Hailey looked away in disgust. "A colony?"

"Yesyes. Badbad," the doctor replied. "Colony breeds worms. Worms eat flesh, eat mind. Take over body. Badbad. Friend is infected. Need fumigation to kill colony, else be eaten. Treatment expensive."

"Expensive? How much?"

"How much you want friend to live?"

Hailey opened her satchel and rummaged through its contents. Experienced in the ways of Something Street, she had learnt never to go anywhere without something that could be traded. Money could not be relied on. Even precious metals might not be valuable to some. Barter, on the other hand, nearly always worked so long as one could find something somebody wanted. "How about this?" She pulled out a metal disc inscribed with mathematical equations.

Izziz snatched at the disc and turned it over, examining it. "No medicine, no biologicals to trade yesyes?"

"I can get you some if you give me some time."

"Hiss." The doctor stood motionless except for its mandibles, which chewed at the air. "Take as down payment, yesyes. Start treatment. You bring biologicals, finish treatment. Goodgood?"

Hailey did a quick calculation. If she was going to cut her losses on this job, then she would have to find something to pay the doctor. "Goodgood," she said, mimicking Izziz's tone. "Now, what would be best?"