Free Penny Dreadful by Will Christopher Baer Page B

down the hall to the elevator. His pants were too short and his wide buttocks swung like loose freight. He looked like the fucking white rabbit. He was neurotically cheerful and at least two hours late for work.
    I sighed and opened the envelope to find a plastic evidence bag containing maybe an ounce of coke. Maybe less. I was hopeless at eyeballing weights. I shook my head in disgust as my nose began to itch. There was also an array of credit cards and ID under various names. My favorite was Ray Fine. I could be Ray Fine for a while. There was no cash in the envelope, however. Moon seemed to think that I could easily peddle the coke for a little spending money. It was not exactly what I had been hoping to do this morning but I would have to manage. I am so bad with drugs, though. I’m terrible at selling them. I always manage to get myself ripped off and whatever slim profit I come away with is most likely to find its way up my nose. Of course, there was no investment in this case. It was all profit and I should really taste the product before I tried to unload it. What if it was a lot of speed and aspirin and somebody wanted to gut me for burning them? That wouldn’t do at all. I merrily chopped out a couple of skinny lines with Ray’s platinum Visa card and of course had nothing at all to use as a tube, not a single dollar bill to hoover them with. This was perfect. The lines wiggled on Moon’s chipped counter and I was sure that I would sneeze and blow them away before I could find a tube of some kind. I opened my wallet and got out my social security card. It was a little soft and ragged but it did roll up nicely. The coke was pure and fine and now I couldn’t feel my own tongue. And what do you know but I decided I was suddenly pretty cheerful and thought a walk was just what I needed.
    Besides, the apartment had settled into a mid-morning gloom that I really couldn’t bear.
    Mingus:
    Four doorways and he had come this way before. These were the runnels beneath Los Angeles. Dark, with pockets of burning steam. Land mines. And blackened corpses lay everywhere. Four doors. One of them had the faint red glow of a laser trip wire. Immediate death. As for the other three, well. That was the question. Aliens waited behind two of them. And the fourth held a medkit, possibly a key. He couldn’t remember. Okay, okay. He checked his health. A sliver of yellow. He could take one, maybe two shots and he was meat. No problem. He just couldn’t afford to choose the wrong door. But if he did, he was by God taking a few aliens out with him. The ugly lizard boys. He checked his weapon. A chaingun, with twenty-nine rounds. Fucking worthless. He could easily waste that firing at shadows and he scrolled through his weapons for something better. Flamethrower: always a lot of fun but unreliable. Shotgun: two useless shells. Nine millimeter: full clip. Rocket launcher: suicidal in such close quarters. The nine it was, then.
    Now.
    Which door did he like. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to think.
    Pounding, pounding. Someone was pounding on the door.
    Mingus opened his eyes and his perspective had changed somewhat. It was still a first-person shooter but he could see more of his body than he should have been able to. His feet, his legs. His abdomen. And his hands, which were empty. They weren’t holding a weapon and this wasn’t what he thought it was. This wasn’t a video game.
    This was life, or something like it.
    The top of a flight of stairs, a white lightbulb. A single moth darting around it. Chrome was beside him, leaning against chipped gray plaster with a look of mild irritation on his face.
    Where are we?
    Chrome smiled at him. I’m at Goo’s place, he said. Or rather, I’m waiting outside of Goo’s place. I’m lurking in the shadows. I don’t know where the devil you are.
    Yes, I’m sorry. I was in LA, in the sewers. Hunting aliens.
    It’s nice to have you back, said Chrome.
    It was an overload, a crash. A