Z: Silas Morlock

Silas Morlock

Part Of A Novel By Mark Cantrell

Prologue : Life In Dark

THEY say the Universe will end in eternal darkness. So it began.

Not the universe of quarks and neutrinos and electrons and all the
other cosmic building blocks that crystallised into stars and planets
and living things, but the real universe; the one that knows
perception.

And so it began, with darkness, shade unknowable until its antithesis
came into being to give it meaning. That time arrived late, when a
strange bipedal creature covered in matted hair shivered under a star
filled night. It knew nothing of the minor world it occupied, of its
place in a mediocre galaxy orbiting an insignificant sun, but it was
about to do something profound of cosmological proportions, here in
this stellar backwater.

It struck two stones together. The sparks ignited a fire; not just the
kind that consumes kindling, but the kind that unravels reality. In
that fire, Mind was born. And with it, Soul.

Something else was born with that spark. It stirred in the heart of
darkness, attracted moth-like to illumination of Mind. The ting on the
shadows watched the hairy creature, as it grew in stature and skill and
went bald with the passage of time.

As it watched, it found sluggish thought, it mirrored the Mind, it
found and savoured desire. But still it watched. And waited. Patient
eternal. And then the time came when it too could strike, like that
long ago creature that birthed the Mind with the percussive action of
two flints.

When the Dark came alive in the primordial ocean of potential. Ever
since, Mankind has taken to the fireside in one form or another. A
place of safety against that which lurks in the shadows. But even the
brightest flames perish, if left untended.

Fragment of a manuscript discovered in the Urban Library of the
Incunabula.
Author unknown.

**********

CHAPTER 1: Cravings

CAXTON was late.

That was bad. Caxton was never late.

Adam tried to stay calm. He sipped his drink and pondered what might
have gone wrong. He didn't need this shit. Not here. Not now. He sipped
again, allowing the foul taste of the cheap booze to crush the
cravings. They were bad, but he could still control the hunger. Just.
So long as the man got here soon.

Maybe the police were here already? Waiting for the moment. The
bastards like to draw it out. Hit on a junkie just as the pain was
tearing his insides apart. He shivered and tried to suppress the
thought with another shot of cheap whiskey.

The place was dark and loud; just the way he and Caxton liked it. But
there were still too many eyes, too many ears. Any of them could belong
to the cops.

"Relax." Caxton's voice was strangely soothing, even as a memory.
"Nobody cares. Christ! I could gut you and nobody would flick an
eyebrow. That's the beauty of this place."

It was a basement bar somewhere off Urban Central. Hundreds existed
like this, but this one just happened to be Caxton's. Not that he owned
it; the place was one of his favourite haunts. A place for business.
Anonymous, just like the clientele.

If the place had a name, nobody bothered to remember. Raucous
anonymity, that's all it was. A place for the unknown, the silent
wanderers lost in the shade of the night, a haven of noise and booze
from a soulless world. Here, the friendless and the alone came to lose
themselves and endure the con of chemical life.

Somehow, he could easily imagine that nobody owned the place. That
people just turned up from their nowhere lives, that the booze
materialised and the bouncers just coalesced from the garbage in the
alley.

The perfect place for Caxton to operate, if only he'd get here and do
the deed.

He let his gaze slide across the writhing flesh that made up the
clientele. Flesh. That was the word. Just zombies out to lose
themselves in booze and sex. Not one had the guts to take their rush
for oblivion to its ultimate conclusion. Slow burn death. Well, this
was the place for that.

He let his eyes linger on a woman sat on a stool at the bar. Young or
old. Impossible to tell in this light. But her eyes were glazed. She
smiled, a flash of moonlight gleaming from the pearly opalescence of
her teeth, as the sweaty man with the beard sucked on the nape of her
neck, one hand groping her breasts, his crotch rubbing against her hip.
Meat guzzling meat. He turned away.

The whiskey burned in his belly, fuelling his impatience and the
growing cravings. It was getting too much. The sweat on his forehead no
longer had anything to do with confined body heat. Cold. Sweat.
Hungering. He gritted his teeth and cursed Caxton.

"Come on."

A tremble flicked booze across his face. He wiped himself and sucked
his fingers, savouring the taste of salt and booze. His insides were
writhing. His head ached with each bombastic thud of the bass. That he
could cope with. It was the high-pitched wails of the notes that sliced
through his brain like lightening, searing away his self-control. He
could feel his brain, shuddering, writhing, craving. He could taste the
chemical imbalance, pumping out poisons: messengers of death
multiplying in his body. He needed his fix. Fast. To crush the growing
death reaching out to squeeze his mind and soul.

The woman at the bar again. Shit. She was looking right him. He stared
into the deep pools of her eyes and froze like a rabbit in headlights.
She knew him. She knew what he was. She knew everything he needed.
Exposed. He couldn't move. She had him.

Then she giggled and let her head fall against the man groping her. The
man's hands squeezed and her mouth opened wide with a shriek of drunken
pleasure. Things tumbled down the man's back. Maggots. Writhing as they
fell. Wriggling over the floor. She looked at him again and
laughed.

Revulsion churning, he turned away. Death-heads stared at him from the
dance floor, the bar, all the dark nooks and crannies briefly
illuminated by the strobes. The dead were watching. Dark pools where
eyes should be. Fleshless faces laughing at him. The dead all around.
Laughing. Laughing at him and his craving for just another shot of
life. He was losing it. He was fucking losing it and the dead all
around. Dead things surrounded him and his head wanted to explode
rather than be like them.

The glass shouted like a gunshot as he slammed it down. He groaned and
put his head in his hands. The room was starting to spin. He was losing
it. Too much alcohol shit and the hungering knotting his guts.

"Caxton! Where the fuck are you!"

He hadn't realised he'd shouted out loud. He looked up in alarm. A
couple of dead-eyed glances came his way, but that was all. He was
still invisible. Flesh in a flesh bar. Nothing more. No laughing
damned. A trickle of sweat tickled his upper lip and he wiped it
away.

"Keep your fucking voice down!"

Shock. Pleasure. Relief. Caxton squeezed his bulk into the seat across
from him, briefcase quickly slipped out of sight beneath the table.
Adam was so relieved he actually reached out and clasped the big man's
hands.

Caxton brushed him away and started to roll himself a cigarette, his
powerful eyes unflinching as they seared into Adam. He was a powerful
man, with a deep resonant voice. This he seldom raised. He seldom
needed to. His words conveyed strength and even in the decibel hell of
this flesh bar, he could hear every word Caxton said. Caxton was the
sort of man who could make himself heard even at the end of the
world.

"Things are bad," he said, "they're looking for me. Have you been
shouting your mouth off?"

"No. No."

"You'd better not have."

"Where the fuck have you been? I'm hurting here!"

"Keep your voice down."

"I don't care about that. I need it, Cax. Real bad."

Caxton shook his head and glanced down to re-light his cigarette. "You
think you're hurting now," he said. "Think what it'd be like
inside."

"Prison doesn't scare me. I could score okay."

"Not the shit I sell."

The black man stared at him from beneath his mane of greying dreads as
though he was seeing him for the first time.

"Jesus, you look like shit. You've left it too long. I told you about
that. You've got to keep it together or they'll find you and then
you're really gone."
Adam couldn't meet his gaze. He put his hands in his face and then
swept them over his sodden hair. "I know, I know. Have you got
it?"

Caxton's hand disappeared beneath the table and a package was tapped
against his leg. Adam reached underneath and took the package. As
discretely as his trembling hands would allow, he slipped it into his
pocket.

"You got a double dose there. Don't rush it, okay?"

"Double?"

"You won't see me for a while."

"But --"

"Don't worry. I'll find you, when the time's right. Just don't rush
that shit and you'll get through. Okay?"

"Why?"

"Like I said, things are bad at the moment. I need to keep a low
profile for a while. This place is out of business too. Don't ask
around for me here again. You got that?"
He nodded dumbly.

"Good. Now get lost before you draw attention to me."

ENDS

NOTE: Silas Morlock is currently unfinished.

Mark Cantrell,
October 2001

Copyright (c) October 2001. All Rights Reserved.