E-Branch - Invaders Part 1

E-Branch: Invaders.

by Brian Lumley.

Prologue.

In Xanadu, Jethro Manchester had built a pleasure dome, in fact the Pleasure Dome Casino. But that was some time ago, and since then Manchester's fortunes had changed. Now both the casino and the mountain resort of Xanadu belonged to another, to Aristotle Milan, and the new resident-owner's needs required that he make certain alterations.

The casino was a great dome of gla.s.s and chrome. It was a three-storey affair - or four-storey, if one included a smaller dome, which sat like a bubble or a raised blister on top of the main structure - that lorded its location at Xanadu's hub, on a false plateau in a high, dog-leg fold of the Australian Macpherson Range of mountains.

Now it was night, but still the work on Mr Milan's alterations continued. He wanted the work completed to his specifications before he reopened Xanadu to the public in just a few days'

time. And in his private accommodation in the high bubble dome, Milan himself supervised the last of the work; or if not supervised, at least he was there to see it finished to his satisfaction. But Milan's presence - or more specifically the annoyance that accompanied it - wasn't to Derek Hinch's liking.

Hinch was a painter and decorator, but at times like this he ten ded to think of himself more as a steeplejack. Inside the bubble it wasn't so bad ... there wasn't very far to fall if he made the VTTT.

cla.s.sic mistake of stepping back a few paces to admire his work! But outside, some fifty or sixty feet off the ground: that had been nerve-racking, and thank G.o.d he was done with it now.

But black? Painting perfectly good windows black, both inside and out? It didn't make a lot of sense to Derek Hinch. And as for Mr Milan: he didn't make much sense either! The guy must be some kind of eccentric, a nut case, albeit a very rich, powerful one. The way he prowled through the glitzy false opulence of this place, apparently lost in some indefinable distance, in s.p.a.ce and time; though mainly (Hinch suspected) lost in a world of his own, the extravagance of his thoughts.

And his music ... his b.l.o.o.d.y terrible, interminable music! There was a gleaming antique jukebox at one end of a small, gently curving, mahogany-topped bar on the perimeter of the bubble, and when Milan was taking it easy he would sit there in an armchair with a drink, just listening to the music ... the same d.a.m.n tunes or songs, or just, well, music, over and over again.

And it was driving Hinch nuts, too!

Not that Hinch didn't care for the stuff; he liked - or he used to like, and he would have continued to like - all of this stuff just fine ... if he hadn't been obliged to listen to each piece at least thirty or forty times in the s.p.a.ce of just seven nights. So thank G.o.d he was almost finished here!

But nights! Why in h.e.l.l couldn't this work be done in daylight hours? And why in h.e.l.l couldn't Milan sleep nights - like any other mad millionaire? And why in double-d.a.m.ned Ml did he have to play his b.l.o.o.d.y music like this!?

What was it that was playing now? d.a.m.n, the tunes had kind of run together in Hindi's head; he had heard them so often, he knew what was coming next! Mr rich-foreign-handsome- b.l.o.o.d.y-b.a.s.t.a.r.d Milan kept playing them in sequence, in some kind of order of preference. But it was the order of disorder, totally out of order, to Hinch's way of thinking.

Oh, yes - now he remembered - Zorba's Dance, that was it!

All bouzoukis, fast drumbeats, and Anthony b.l.o.o.d.y Quinn dancing on a beach! A Greek thing that was almost as much an antique as the machine that played it. One of those tunes that never dies, one which as far as Hinch was concerned could die any time it f.u.c.king well liked! And of course as the tune ended, Hinch knew the next item in the circular, never-ending repertoire. And here it came yet again: 'Suns.h.i.+ne, you may find my window but you won't find me ...'

Some kind of blues with a Country and Western flavour, and lyrics too deep for Hinch to understand ... pleasing to listen to, even soothing, in a way... if you hadn't heard it half a dozen times already this very night! Some old black guy, singing his heart out about misery. But to Hinch's mind the only misery lay in having to listen to it over and over again.

'So, you don't care for my music, Mr Hinch?' The voice was deep yet oiled; it seemed to rumble, or purr, yet was in no way cat-like. On the other hand, Milan's movements were cat-like as he came from the bar with a drink in his long-fingered hand, to gaze out on the night through an open window. But if it wasn't painted black, (Hinch thought), there'd >e no need to open the f.u.c.king thing! Not that there's anything to see out there. While out loud he said, 'Er, did I say something about your music? I have a habit of talking to myself while I'm working. It doesn't mean anything.' Oh yes it f.u.c.king does!

It means that I'm p.i.s.sed to death with you, and your b.l.o.o.d.y music, and with b.l.o.o.d.y Kanadu, and all of this b.l.o.o.d.y black paint!

He looked down on Milan from a height of some twelve feet, from a wheeled scaffolding tower where he had just put the finis.h.i.+ng touches to the last pane of a high window. And that was it: the entire interior surface, every square foot of hundreds of square feet of gla.s.s, varnished for adhesion, painted black, and finally layered with polyurethane lacquer for durability. A double-dyed b astard of a job!

'Perhaps I don't pay you enough?' said M ilan, as Hinch put down his roller, wiped his hands, came clambering down from on high.

'The money's fine,' the bad-tempered Hinch said. He stood six feet tall, but still had to lift his head a fraction to look up at his employer. 'And I'd like it now, for I'm all done.'

'Then if the payment is fine,' said Milan, 'it can only be that I was right and it's the music. Or perhaps it's me? Do you find my presence unsettling?'

While he was speaking, Hinch had checked him out - again.

For Aristotle Milan was the kind of man you looked at twice.

At a guess he'd be maybe forty, forty-five years old. Difficult to be more specific than that, because his looks were sort of timeless. He was probably sixty but topped-up with expensive monkey hormones or some such. Something was running through his veins, keeping him young, for sure. Spoiled, rich b.a.s.t.a.r.d!

But foreign? Even without the name to give him away, there could be no mistaking that: Italian with a touch of Greek - but in any case a mongrel, in Hinch's eyes. Milan's hair was black as night; worn long, it swept back from a high, broad forehead, and its s.h.i.+ning ringlets curled on his shoulders. And handsome: he had the kind of Mediterranean looks that seemed to appeal to a lot of women. Hinch would guess that his bedroom crawled with all kinds of young, good-looking, dirty women.

His ears were fleshy - what could be seen of them - but he wore his sideboards thick and lacquered back to cover the upper extremities. Something odd about his nose, too: a flatfish look to it, as if Nature had pushed it back a little too far, and his nostrils were too large and flaring. And then those arcing eyebrows over deep-sunken, jet-black eyes ... those eyes that were Milan's most startling feature. Jet-black, and yet Hinch couldn't be certain. Catch them at the right angle, they'd sometimes gleam a golden, feral yellow. And despite the nose, still those eyes loaned Milan the looks of a bird of prey.

But handsome? Maybe Hinch was all wrong about that. It was simply the attraction of Milan's odd - his strange or foreign, his almost alien - features, that was all. And as for Mediterranean: well, that didn't seem quite right either, not with the cold pallor of his flesh, and the blood red of his lips. He was something of a weird one, this Milan, for sure. Something of an enigma. An unknown or unspecified quant.i.ty.

'Payment when the job is done,' Milan spoke again, the rumble lower than ever. 'Which it isn't, not quite, not yet.'

'What?' Hinch stared hard at him, tried to look hard, too - difficult with a man as sure of himself as Milan. Or as sure of his filthy money! But Hinch reckoned that for all his lousy millions, still Milan would be a cinch in a fight. Hinch was a powerful, brutal fighter, the victor of a dozen rough-house brawls. And Milan - he had the hands of a pianist, fingers like a girl! Hw/Hinch would bet his life that Milan had never felt a bunch of knuckles bouncing off that ugly nose of his. And the thought never occurred to him that he had already bet his life.

c.o.c.king his head a little on one side, Milan looked at him curiously, sighed and said, 'First it's my music, and then it's because you've had to work late into the night, and now ... now it's personal, to the point that you insult me and even measure your physical strength against mine, like an opponent... as if you could ever be an opponent. Or is it all just jealousy?'

And suddenly it sank into Hinch's less than enormous brain that while he'd thought all of these things, he hadn't actually voiced any of them - not even about the music! Was he that easy to read?

But he was tired of all this, and so, changing the subject he said, 'What's that about the job not being finished? I mean, you wouldn't be trying to avoid paying me - would you?' And the threat in his words, the way he growled them, was obvious. 'Not at all,' Milan told him. 'Payment is most certainly, very definitely due. And you shall have it. But out there - on the outside of the dome, just a little to the left of this open window here - there's a spot you missed. And I suffer from this affliction: I can't deal with too much sunlight. My eyes and my skin are vulnerable. And so, you see, while suns.h.i.+ne may find my window, it must never find me. The work must be finished, to my satisfaction. That was our contract, Mr Hinch.'

G.o.d d.a.m.n this weird b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Hinch thought, as he paced to the window, leaned out (but carefully,) and looked to the left.

But: 'G.o.d?' said Milan, from close behind. 'Your G.o.d, Mr Hinch? Well, if there is such a Being - and if his sphere of influence is as extensive as you suppose - I think you may safely a.s.sume that he "d.a.m.ned" me a very long time ago.'

'Eh?' said Hinch, looking back into the dome, surprised by and wondering at the sudden change in Milan's tone of voice.

Milan moved or flowed closer; his slim fingers were strong where they came down on Hindi's hand, trapping it on the window sill. And leaning closer still, with his face just inches away, he smiled and hissed, 'You don't much care for heights, do you, Mr Hinch? In fact you care for them even less than you care for me, or for my music.'

'What the b.l.o.o.d.y ... ?' Hinch looked into eyes that were no longer black or feral but uniformly red, flaring like lamps.'

'b.l.o.o.d.y?' the other repeated him, his voice a phlegmy gurgle now, full of l.u.s.t, and his breath a hot, coppery stench in Hindi's face. 'Ah, yesssss! But not your blood, not this time, Mr Hinch.

Your blood is unworthy. You are unworthy!'

'Jesus Christ!' Hinch gasped, choked, tried to draw away -and failed.

'Call on who or whatever you like.' Milan continued to pin him to the window ledge, and moved his free hand to the back of Hinch's thick neck. 'No one and nothing can help you now.'

'You're a f.u.c.king madman!' Hinch jerked and wriggled, but he couldn't pull free. The other's strength was unbelievable.

'And you ... you are nothing!' Milan told him, continuing to smile, or at least doing something with his face.

Hinch saw it, but didn't believe it: the way Milan's lips curled back and away from his elongating jaws, the teeth curving up through his splitting gums, his ridged, convoluted nose flatt ening back, while his nostrils gaped and sniffed. And the red blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

Then Milan freed Hinch's hand in order to clench his fist and hit him in his ribs - such a blow that Hinch, burly as he was, was lifted from his feet. At the same time, Milan hoisted him by the scruff of the neck and tilted him forward; concerted movements designed to topple him into s.p.a.ce.

And as the shrieking Hinch flipped out into the night, so the Thing that looked like a man released him.

Hinch fell, but only for a moment. Then his shriek became a gasp as he came down on his belly and cracked ribs across the safety rail of a painter's platform slung between twin gantries.

From above, seven or eight feet to the open window, Hinch heard Milan's cursing. And struggling to his feet inside the platform he looked up - to see that hideous, livid face looking down on him!

Then, moving like liquid lightning, Milan was up onto the window ledge, and light as a feather came leaping to the bouncing, rocking platform. His intentions were unmistakable, and as he landed Hinch went to kick him in the groin. Milan caught his foot, twisted it until the ankle broke, then reached out with a long arm to grab the other's throat. And without pause, lifting Hinch bodily into the air, he thrust him out beyond the rim of the safety rail - and let him fall.

As Hinch fell - grasping at thin air and failing to catch it - he was aware that Milan was speaking to him one last time.

But whether it was a physical voice he heard, a chuckling whisper in his head, or simply something imagined, he couldn't have said. And he certainly didn't have time to worry about it.

Paid in fully the crazed voice whispered. For your insults if not for your work. So be it!

And below, cras.h.i.+ng down head first, Hinch was dead before the pain had time to register. Like an egg dropped on the floor, the contents of his skull splattered at first. But the grey was soon drowned in a thick, night-d ark pool that formed around his shattered head.

While up above, that terrible face continued to smile down on him... for a little while, until Aristotle Milan's features melted

PART ONE.

back into a more acceptable form, and he gave a careless shrug, and grunted again, 'So be it!'

Then he returned to listening to his music, and no other's thoughts to disturb him now, in the solitude of a strange place in a strange land ... An 'unfortunate accident,' was how local newspape rs would later report the mat ter. They also reported Milan's generous offer to pay all of the funeral expenses, and his very generous donation to Derek Hindi's widow ...

The How Of It

CHAPTER ONE

See The Creechur.

It was hot as h.e.l.l, and flies the size of Jake Cutter's little fingernails had been committing suicide on the vehicle's windscreen for more than a hundred and fifty miles now, ever since they'd left Wiluna and 'civilization' behind.

'Phew!' Jake said, sluicing sweat from his brow and out of the open window of their specially adapted Land Rover. The top was back and the windows wound down, yet the hot wind of pa.s.sage that pushed their wide-brimmed Aussie hats back from their foreheads, tightened their chinstraps around their throats and ruffled their s.h.i.+rts still made it feel like they were driving headlong into a bonfire. And the 'road' ahead - which in fact was scarcely better than a track - wavered like a smoke-ghost in the heat haze of what appeared to be an empty, ever- expanding distance.

Behind the vehicle, a mile-long plume of dust and blue-grey exhaust fumes drifted low over the scrub and the wilderness.

'That's your fifth "phew",' Liz Merrick told him. 'Feeling talkative today?'

'So what am I supposed to say?' He didn't even glance at her, though most men wouldn't have been able t o resist it. 'Oh dear, isn't it hot? Christ, it must be ninety!

"Phew" is about all I'm up to, because if I do more than open my mouth a crack - ugh!' And he spat out yet another wet fly.

it Liz squirmed and grimaced. 'What the h.e.l.l do they live on, I wonder? Way out here, I mean?' She swatted and missed as something small, black and nasty went zipping by.

'Things die out here/ Jake answered grimly. 'Maybe that's what they live on.' And just when she thought that was it, that he was all done for now: 'Anyway, the sun's going down over the hills there. Another half-hour or so, it'll be cooler. It won't get cold - not in this freaky weather - but at least you'll be able to breathe without frying your lungs.' Then he was done.

She turned her head to look at him more fully: his angular face in profile, his hard hands on the wheel, his lean outline. But if Jake noticed her frowning, curiously intent glance, well, it scarcely registered. That was how he was: hands off. And she thought: We make a d.a.m.ned odd couple!

She was right, they did. Jake hard yet supple, like whip-cord, and Liz soft and curvy. Him with his dark background and current ... condition, and Liz with her- -Which was when they hit a pothole, which simultaneously brought Liz's mind back to earth while lifting her backside eight inches off her seat. 'Jake, take it easy!' she gasped.

He nodded, in no way apologetically, almost absent-mindedly.

He had turned his head to look at her - no, Liz corrected herself - to look beyond her, westward where the rounded domes of gaunt, yellow- and red-ochre hills marched parallel with the road. They were pitted, those hills, pockmarked even from here. The same could be said of the desert all around, including the so-called road. 'These old mine workings,' Jake growled. 'Gold mines. That was subsidence back there, where the road is sinking into some old mine. I didn't see it because of this b.l.o.o.d.y heat haze.'

'Gold?' Squirming down into her seat, Liz tried to get comfortable again. Hah! she thought. As if I'd been comfortable in the first place!

'They found a few nuggets here/ he told her. 'There was a bit of a gold rush that didn't pan out. There may be gold here - there probably is - but first you have to survive to bring it up out of the ground. It just wasn't worth it ...'

'Because even without this awful El Nino weather, this was one h.e.l.l of an inhospitable place to survive in/ she nodded.

'Right/ Finally Jake glanced at her - at her this time. And while he was still looking she grinned nervously and said: 'What a place to spend your honeymoon! I should never have let you talk me into it/ A witticism, of course.

'Huh!' was his reply. s.h.i.+elding his eyes, he switched his attention back to the rounded hills with the sun's rim sitting on them like a golden, pus-filled blister on the slumping hip of some gigantic, reclining, decomposing woman.

'Fuel gauge is low/ Liz tapped on the gauge with a fingernail.

'Are we sure there's a gas station out here?' In fact she knew there was; it was right there on the map. It was just the awful heat, the condition of the road, evening setting in, and a perfectly normal case of nerves. Liz's tended to fray a little from time to time. As for Jake's ... well, she wasn't entirely sure about his, didn't even know if he had any.

'Gas station?' He glanced at her again. 'Sure there is. To service the local "community". Heck, around these parts there's point nine persons per hundred square miles!' While Jake's sarcasm dripped, it wasn't directed entirely at Liz but rather at their situation. Moreover, she thought she detected an unfamiliar edge to his voice. So perhaps he did have nerves after all. But still his completely humourless att.i.tude irritated her.

'That many people? Really?' For a moment she'd felt goaded into playing this insufferable man at his own game ... but only for a moment. Then, shrugging, she let it go. 'So what's it doing here? The gas station, I mean/ 'It's a relic of the gold rush/ he answered. 'The Australian Government keeps such places going with subsidies, or they simply could n't exist. They're watering holes in the middle of nowhere, way stations for the occasional wanderer. Don't expect too much, though. Maybe a bottle of warm beer - make sure you

12.

t-BKAJNrt. IJNVAJJtKS knock the cap off yourself... yes, I know you know that - no food, and if you need the loo you'd better do it before we get there.' Good advice, around these parts.

The road vanished about a mile ahead: an optical illusion, just like the heat haze. As the hills got higher, so the road began to climb, making everything seem on a level, horizontal. Only the throb of the motor told the truth: that the Land Rover was in fact labouring, however slightly. And in another minute they crested the rise.