When the world came to an end only a cesspool was left.
It pulsed and simmered with a fetid vitality that left no remaining man uncertain, in his private thoughts, that L.A., Los Angeles -- the City of the Angels, was now the moribund waste of a perverted architect's mind.
When civilization slipped away down the San Andreas Fault, under the cloud of nuclear war, a whole new age was born. It was an age that crept out of the dark alleys and sewers and found a debased equality with the vermin that lurked in the gutters. No more did the light of day brighten up the cloudless skies. The living survived in the cocooning darkness of the night where everything was camouflaged in shadows of gray. Nothing bore close scrutiny as there was nothing left worth studying. Better to shield the remains in the deadly darkness and pretend that there had never been a preferable alternative. The glorious past never existed, society's rules were a mere myth perpetrated by the senile and the dangerously insane. Only the waste land of crumbling desolation was an accepted reality and the rules that governed the new, primitive millennia were based upon the ultimate in weaponry -- and, more precisely, upon the ultimate champion who could wield his execution powers.
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Alone.
In the savage cold of a deep, dark night a tall, blond man stood strongly erect in the mouth of a dangerously crumbling alley. Around his feet sat the huddled, black shapes of giant rats, snuffling at his knee-high boots, expecting attention of some kind. Their red, beady eyes flashed in the blackness as they peered up at their lord and master. White cartilage-ridged tails flicked spasmodically in apprehension and their hairless, blackened bodies shivered in the moaning wind. Impatient with the man's silent vigil the largest rat snickered in a desire for action.
Instantly, the tall, armored man turned his eyes upon them. His cold blue stare alighted like a hex upon the creatures at his feet. The rat cowered down under the almost inhuman glance. It sensed the smoldering power that was subtly controlled behind the eyes and scurried away among the decaying vegetation and refuse that blanketed the alley.
The man shifted his cramped muscles under his neatly cut, studded, green leather body suit. Heavily gauntleted hands flexed over the stock of a remodeled, multi-shot, Magnum handgun. The newest killing machine to fall into the Champion's hands. Mean and brutal, with a killing power unmatched, it gave the Champion the confidence and the right to walk the quake-shattered streets out in the open. No one crossed the Champion's path; no one dare, as yet, lay down the challenge.
Until tonight . . . .
His law was the last word, his actions free and deliberate. All who lived under his protection worshipped at his feet. They abased themselves before his hypnotic presence and power.
But even the Champion was owned.
The price of the Champion had been high. A multitude and variety of drugs was his price. An enormous task to fulfill, but fulfill it they did. They needed him, all of them, to survive. Survival was paramount, and so they would continue to meet his price regardless of personal cost and sacrifice. They had to. They were the last recognizably human citizens of Los Angeles, and they wanted to survive. To live, and rebuild their city, their homes, their families. But to raise a phoenix from ashes that were continually preyed upon by the mutated creatures who roamed the bones of the city, cost them dearly. To begin with they needed their hard-won territory protected; they needed a defender, a champion . . . .
In the tall, blond, frigid man they found their killing machine. They had taken him from the wreckage of his wasted home and remolded him into their bought and kept champion. They had known of his previous reputation. His warped rejuvenation had been worth the enormous drain on their resources. They had created the perfect protector. Continually high on his personal cocktail of drugs, he would do their bidding unquestioned. He acted out their requests like an automaton fashioned in flesh and blood. Impersonal, unfeeling, his communication was spartan, his expression carved from granite.
The Champion's eyes raked over the rubble-strewn street once more, calculating the possibly evil content of the shadows and last remaining doorways. Nothing moved in the stark moonlight, nothing twitched or gibbered on the night air. It appeared to be safe and he ventured out across the cracked tarmac to the chipped yellow line in the roadway. Positioned with a boot on either side of the dotted line, his eyes bore into the horizon of the road as he ensured that his way was not going to be barricaded. The Champion walked where he wanted. This night all other commune protectors stayed hidden. Cowering into the rank crevices of their pathetically small, ruined territories, they mouthed useless prayers and platitudes to a God in whom they no longer believed. For fear he would come. It mattered not that religion was against street law, they needed the meager comfort it afforded. Fear was the killer in the city now. It was the first and the last breath on everyone's lips and it gave the people the crazed look of the living dead--which they were.
The Champion turned his head slowly toward the north, sniffing the air with his highly tuned, drug-induced senses. As his head moved, the long, blond ceremonial plaits down his back rustled their gold tail clasps over his bandolier. The dull chimes that broke the unnatural silence were a constant reminder to the secreted watchers that this was the prize of the city, of the Territory. He was the killing machine and for every ten dead protectors there was a gold-tipped plait. The Champion's head was ringed in sculptured hair and gold. When a lone prowler caught the sound of the rustling gold he knew the Champion was coming. When a prowler never heard the sound of the plaits against the studded armor but saw the hell-spawned figure, gun in rock-still fist, he knew he was dead. The Champion was good, very good at his job. His methods were meticulous and performed with an air of professional detachment, almost as if he had been trained to this work. On his broad chest he bore the only other ceremonial mark of his rank and profession: a gold shield. Scarred and dented from the horrors of the Armageddon, it was still a recognized sign of the bastardized law now enforced in the city. The Champion wore the shield out of a perverse desire to remind the mutants, whom he exterminated on his missions, that they had never escaped him before and still could not hide from his swift and final justice.
Moonlight caught the shield and it glinted sharply like flying sparks from an anvil. The Champion squared his shoulders and ran an expert eye over his body, tallying his weaponry as a last check before he embarked upon his mission. His owners had chosen him well. He enjoyed a challenge but there were so few to stand against him now. So few. However, tonight was special and he almost felt the lost stirrings of living excitement. Alas for him, the drugs held a deadly calm over his being. And yet it was a numbness that allowed him to operate and survive duty nights, when he must secure the Territory against the encroaching, deformed filth and mutants who had no commune, no territory, nothing. And that was how it was meant to stay. The Territory was claimed by the Owners, and the Champion saw that it stayed that way. A long-standing equilibrium unfortunately now teetered on the brink of a newly-risen threat from the Northern Sector.
He turned his head back toward the north-east and took a deep, satisfying breath. Tonight he would fulfill his mission and wipe out the Protector of the Northern Sector Commune. His reward was to be the ultimate drug: heroin. He smiled and licked his wide lips in anticipation. It was a reward beyond price. Those who were left alive had sold their souls and worse for any drugs available. They would affiliate themselves to any commune, and trade themselves as slave labor to the owners for the multi-colored capsules. Money had no value in the city; men lived and died for a narcotic of any kind, to help them forget the living hell in which they existed.
Smugly, the Champion set off to walk to the Northern Sector. He knew his strength, his power, his skill. No one and nothing was going to deprive him of the greatest prize ever set. It was going to be his before the night was ended. All his. He would savor its effects. Thrill to the spell it would weave over his hollow mind. And he knew that once he stuck the needle into his grafted intracath he could become a servant of the narcotic forever. The thought pleased him. Forever was not such a long time and the present offered him a dull void. He shivered as his skin crawled with the near tangibility of it; he so badly wanted it that he could almost feel the reality behind his conjured mental images. And to think he had once kicked the habit -- had fought and struggled against it. He smiled a hard, ironic smile and lengthened his stride. But at that time he had not been ready, had not accepted its tempting benefits. He had preferred the life he lived before. Now, he desired the heroin like he desired a clean and untainted woman for his bed. His lust was barely suppressed under the mix of uppers and downers. He wanted the drug. He wanted to win tonight. Needed to win tonight. Killing the Other in the Northern Sector would give him his reward.
He would succeed . . . . He was invincible.
His name was the Champion.
The hours clicked silently over on his digital watch, secured into the cuff of his metal-ridged gauntlet, and his stride did not alter from the precise and easy step of a man who walked with a sure confidence. From the shadows of the rotted facades came the whispers and jitters of the hidden populace who were brave enough to risk a sight of the Champion. In filth and squalor they counted their days and awaited their eradication at his hand. Tonight they knew of his purpose and felt the clammy shadow of death pass over them. Their respite would be brief. He would hunt again tomorrow, but while this tainted night stretched into the immensity of time, they could look upon his passage with a fear of wondrous excitement. Tonight he was not hunting them -- but another.
The Champion paused under an old neon hotel sign that flickered on and off erratically due to its faulty circuit, an oasis of power in the otherwise darkened street. A blood-red light bathed him in its wavering glow, stabbing down from the cracked and flawed wall above. Deliberate blue eyes read the street nameplate with deadpan reaction. Wilshire Boulevard. He was heading in the right direction, on the right road. Most streets no longer existed. Transport was by foot. Few animals and no gasoline. Vehicles lay like discarded toys over the wastelands. No one to repair them, nothing to juice their tanks and few people left who would care to ride them. Quickly the people forgot the rule of the mobile machine and it fell into the awaiting mythological gap vacated by the end of civilization: thus becoming the new legend to tell the mutated offspring. All new civilizations needed their founding myths and legends. The car could be a beginning.
A swift movement in the darkened alley-mouth behind him caused the Champion to spin instantly and reach for his throwing knife. A wickedly razor-sharp barbed knife snaked out of the gauntleted hand and flew with a precision that left the assailant reeling -- partly from disbelief at his skill and partly from the blow as it pierced his scrawny chest cavity and rested up to its ornately carved hilt. Purple-blue blood immediately flecked the lips of the ferociously squirming youth. His twisted hands dropped his futile weapon, a sharpened meat skewer, and thrashed and clawed at the metal deep within himself. His feeble attempts at removing the knife were pathetic. He died coughing, a choking gurgle of blood among the rotting remains of a commune vegetable store's refuse. An example of the unsuccessful reintroduction of fresh produce to the city. The organic matter had swiftly decayed. Pulped flesh of the fruits smeared the rapidly paling flesh of the rag-covered body and stained it brown. A final twitch of muscular spasm and the attacker was dead. A flight of whispered approval and acknowledgement due the Champion's skill rippled forth from the black windows and doorways. The audience considered the sight of his performance worth the risk of being so close to the meanest of men.
The Champion calmly surveyed the skull-eyed openings and refrained from bowing. He knew they had recognized him for what he was. He covered the ten feet to the body with a smoothness that made no sound. Planting his boot on the body's chest, he bent down to wrench free the knife. The barbed blade grated against the sternum and tore the hole of the wound wider. As it slithered loose it made a dribbling squelch as the suction was released. Carefully, he examined the blade to ensure that it was undamaged. All his weaponry was excellent. Honed to a fine precision. He wiped the red from its gleaming steel on the rags of the dead youth's shirt and slipped it back into a slit in his right boot. The longer stilettos in his boot, holster, and upper arm had not been needed. Without a backward glance or twinge of recrimination he resumed his journey toward the fulfillment of his mission.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Broken glass crunched noisily under the heavy green boots in the eerie silence.
A solitary man walked a measured distance through the gangrenous mess that had once been a thriving city street. Bricks and mortar were spewed over the road from the city's death-throes.
The Champion stopped abruptly and studied the decaying street nameplates lying on the ground. In the dark he could barely make out the letters. Dust and grime had coated the metal in thick layers. He approached the sign and squatted down to rub away some of the clinging dirt. Underneath was the word he was searching for: Bronson. He was at the corner of Wilshire and Bronson. He had made it this far. Confident, he rose and searched the mosaic-like roadway for an access point to the sewers. The Other dwelt down there, in the effluent of the city. This was why it had taken so long to locate him, to search him out and track him down. The Other's death was at hand; the Champion had used his spies well. He had always used informants, knew the ways and means of bringing pressure to bear and recently had enjoyed the methods of extracting that information. His mission would be completed. The Owners would be pleased. They would see he was rewarded handsomely.
The manhole cover was hidden under a collection of foul-smelling dead dogs. The Champion kicked the carcasses aside and ran gloved fingers over the rusting circle. Unhooking a large leather pouch from his left hip, he unlaced the fastening thong and rolled the leather flat. Inside was a selection of long metal implements: screwdrivers, knives, chisels, saw-blades, keys and cutters. Precisely, he removed a long screwdriver and inserted the tip under the rim of the cover. A sharp thrust and it slid under the metal, which rose slightly. His fingers hooked under before it could drop and, without a warning sound, he raised it clear of the hole. Setting it aside, he took a last glance at the deserted, lonely night, then slid his legs over the edge. Heavy-soled boots tolled on the rungs as he descended into the pitch-black bowels of the city.
A thin, dirty trickle of stinking effluent ran through the enormous pipe at the foot of the ladder-well. The Champion placed his feet solidly into the stomach-constricting filth and turned left and right to gauge his bearings. His informant had assured him that at the end of the main pipe there was a rising tunnel-way that led directly to the Other's domain. In the grim darkness the blond Champion flicked three of the plaits from his shoulder and smiled thinly. The killing machine was on his own turf now, playing the role he was trained for. And still using skills learned before The End. Getting this far had doubled his chances of success. Being on the prey's home ground gave him the advantage. The Other's defenses would be down; he would be off his guard, relaxing. He could take him out with such speed and ease it would leave only mild surprise. With luck, the Other may never even register his presence before he was dispatched into the unknown. It all depended on the mood of the Champion. Was he sadistically inclined tonight? Or merciful? He reflected. Neither, he was jubilant. He was mere minutes from his mission's end and his reward.
Adhering strictly to his personal code of practice, he crept forward on feet of unerring stealth. One hand tracking the curve of the slime-covered pipe-wall, he progressed through the dark toward the next tunnel. Creatures of bizarre shape and intent scurried from his alien scent and purposeful tread. He spared them neither glance nor thought. His eyes bore into the blackness, seeking the moment when the dark would not be quite so black, the silence not quite so still.
Edging forward, he found his padded shoulder no longer touched the curving pipe-wall. He had found the turning point of the tunnel. Cheek grazing the brickwork buckled in the quake, he eased an eye around the corner. A smaller tunnel entrance lay before him. No water ran across its cracked bed and the rubbish and excrement had been swept aside. A sure sign, mused the Champion, that the Other was living here, was existing here, but only for a short time longer . . . if he had his way.
Finally, the slippery ground rose in marked progression. He paused, all senses alert. His hand covered the stock of his gun and locked it with a satisfying click into the specialized handgrip in his gauntlet. It could not be kicked loose or dropped. He could not be disarmed, unless his hand was severed.
Clinging to the inner wall, the green, wraith-like figure padded up the tunnel. Dulled metal of his bastardized gun gave the first hint of a light source up ahead as it glinted balefully in his molded grip. A faint orange glow illuminated the dried and crusting grime smeared across the wall, ceiling, and floor. The stench here was marginally better, but the danger of contamination from bacteria was still present. The Champion looked down at himself and noted the filth that clung to his taut body. He would sterilize himself of this place as soon as possible. Cleanse away this diseased night. His health must not fail him. Illness: it was the only fear he had. He resolved to culminate his mission quickly. He did not feel any mercy -- no, it was simply that he wanted the relatively antiseptic space of the outside. Calmly, he stepped around the final corner and into the light.
His assessment of the scene was rapid and correct. Every important detail was impregnated into the retinas of his iced eyes.
The Other was seated, as he had known he would be, upon a hugely ornate chair, carved with the grotesqueries of his adopted commune. He was drinking slowly from a plain goblet. Dark red wine. As he saw the Champion in the distant shadow's edge, he lowered the cup and placed it upon an equally baroque side table. The red velvet drapes that adorned the back wall seemed ludicrously out of place in the crumbling tunnel, but the precious electric light that lit his underground home was a tantalizing revelation. Now the Champion knew why he must kill the Other. The Territory wanted the Northern Sector's priceless possession -- the electric light and the source of power upon which it fed. Without a protector it would be theirs for the taking. For a moment his eyes had been drawn like a moth's to the source of brilliant whiteness. Now they snapped back to the man in the chair.
The Other rose and assumed a stance of perfect authority. No man trespasses in his domain.
His one deep blue eye glittered malevolently at the intruder. He was about to deal in death. His leather-covered arm moved toward the automatic rifle in his thigh holster. It snapped up into his left hand on the spring release. His face turned questioningly to the Champion, awaiting the next move. He was ready for the confrontation he knew must come. Tonight was as good as any other night. Death belonged to any darkness.
In the stark light, the Champion stared at the metal and flesh-fused face before him. The whole left side of the Other's face was a mask of molded metal and studded silver strips that seemed to be embedded into cartilage, flesh, and bone. The accentuated eye socket held an oval object that glimmered with a deadly hate. It did not end there as the skull of metal became a helm of some kind as it continued over his head. At the nape of the neck the head covering joined with an erect metal collar, which rose about his shoulders like a curving wall. His long thin nose was bisected with a sliver of metal, as was the left side of his thin lips. The whiteness of his skin stood out in blatant relief beside the metal, while the rest of his body was partially adorned in a network of midnight blue, figure-hugging leather strips. Muscles bulged under this lattice, obvious evidence of his power and strength.
In his heart the Champion knew he was looking at his successor. Or at least his equal.
Silence passed between them as they assessed each other's power. Protector to protector. Opponent against opponent. They both waited for the next move. A calculating menace seeped into the atmosphere.
The Other shifted his stance minusculely and tightened his grip on the trigger. The blond sensed the tensing in his body and raised the Magnum higher. He took a step forward for his executioner's stance. Legs astride, he, too, was ready.
Abruptly, the Other shouldered the gun, about to discharge a volley of scything shots. Just as suddenly he stopped as he saw clearly the gold badge upon the green-clad chest. His one visible dark brow frowned as a vague sense of unease crossed his racing mind. The blond hair made him falter . . . the blue eyes . . . .
It was all the Champion needed. The explosion of his weapon became a thunder-loud cacophony in the enclosed tunnel. The rapid and immediate discharge of six Magnum slugs at once tore into the muscular torso of the Other. The blue-leathered body jack-knifed into the chair and lay still, sprawled over the carved arms. The rifle slid from his lifeless fingers onto the cement floor with a dull thud. His helmeted head lolled backwards on a loose neck.
The Champion released the gun from the handgrip and instantly reloaded the empty chambers. With drill-induced precision, he completed his set moves of extermination. The gun slid back into the holster -- he unlocked his legs from the wide stance. For several seconds he simply stood, awaiting the echoes of death to die away in the riddled sewer system. As the cordite dispersed, he approached the body draped across the chair like a discarded tin soldier.
The metal visage was even more bizarre close to.
Strange . . . so very strange.
It stirred his drug-dulled memories in a way he dreaded.
A chill crawled through him.
The features of the Other made his pulse beat faster and his stomach lurched in a way beyond his physical control. On the broad and scarred chest, among other metal commune decorations, was a polished gold shield. The same as his own.
The same as his own.
Disturbed, he held his breath and swallowed slowly. With a rock steady index finger, the Champion tilted the red-speckled head toward him. The coveted light brought the flesh, bone, and intricate helmet into naked relief. Half a face, half a man. And then he saw it.
A lone dark curl.
It had escaped the helm and face-covering. Body sweat and blood had fixed it to the damp forehead forever.
His fingers slid out from under the chin allowing the head to flop backwards against the sculptured side of the chair. For long moments he stood, immobile, unthinking, and yet menaced from within by a trace of . . . something . . . .
Desire to understand made the Champion pry the helm from the still head. It clattered, ringing around his feet on the stained and bloodied ground. Revealed was the grossly deformed half-face. Gaunt and hollowed.
Puzzled, the Champion struggled to bring forth the memory he now wished for, craved for. Like a filtered dream from a paradise lost, a realization and awareness surmounted the barricade of drugs in his mind. And his body recoiled with semi-understanding. An automatic reflex-action propelled the Champion away into the shadows from whence he came. Back into the disguising darkness.
But his eyes would not leave the tableau before him.
No . . . never . . . he was lost on that night of the apocalypse. There has never been any word . . . never a sign.
Pressing against the crusting wall, the Champion shivered, eyes a suspicious glare of desperate denial. The jet eye of the discarded helmet stared accusingly from the feet of the corpse. It would not release him from its hypnotic hold. It begged him to honor his thoughts.
No -- he ceased with the millions of others that night. He . . . never came back.
Reluctantly, he pulled away from the wall, turned and headed back down the tunnel. But the image chased him on, clinging to his heels. He quickened his pace, hesitating only at the junction of the main channel. As he trod through the watery waste, he tried to close his mind to the suppressed visions that were rearing up to haunt his living somnambulism. But they charged forth through the gray mists behind his wide, staring eyes. He bit them back, shutting away his doped-out past behind a portcullis of will.
But the shield and the hair . . . and the face. The face.
He must be close to the ladder-well now. He strained into the rancid blackness for his means of escape. But all he saw was the Magnum-riddled body.
He'd always promised to be here, beside me. He hasn't returned. Mourning has been terminated. Death was accepted. That cyborg corpse was not him!
He sensed the change in temperature; he could smell the street. With deft confidence, he placed his hand on a rung of the ladder, sure it would be there in the ebony dark. Glancing up, he caught the tiny points, of stars in the circular patch of night sky. He had only to climb to be free of this place.
But he had to take that one look back.
For what? A tightening in his chest made it difficult to breathe. His gold clasps clicked against each other in the deathly quiet. Tonight he would plait the last remaining loose hair. He had his quota. But . . . .
Who else could pose as equal? Who else could be favored as successor?
A rare sense of loss briefly crossed his mind. But he no longer recognized his own feelings. He no longer felt the deep core within him. There was no need to remember them. Not anymore.
Hard, he squared his shoulders.
I deny it!
Now was his reality, not some suspect memory of a failed age. Now it was the quick or the dead. Survival of the fittest. The corpse back there had not been quick enough.
I am the Champion. It is my right. I have earned it.
He placed a boot on the bottom rung and began to ascend back toward the street. Above lay his reward and he wanted its guaranteed release. Now. He would use it as his salvation -- a means to an absolution of this night. Why, he did not know.
But in his kingdom of the street, he would continue his vocation with a new zeal. He would continue to Protect and Serve. He was the Champion.
And now at least he knew . . . .
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