Читать книгу DeVille's Contract - Scott Zarcinas - Страница 17

The After Life

STARING at the rat, Louis felt the grip of revulsion twist in his gut. The stench of horseshit had become overwhelming the instant Smiggins had entered the room. Flash Freddy was still smiling his salesman’s smile, but he had another thing coming if he thought the CEO of Global Resolutions Network was going to work with a guy like this. It was a goddamn insult. If this scrawny rat as his PA was a condition of becoming IMC, then there was no way in hell he was going to sign the goddamn contract. Wouldn’t even think about it. An eight-figure sum wouldn’t be enough to entice him to the negotiating table.

“I think you’ll enjoy working with each other,” Flash Freddy said, motioning for Smiggins to get closer.

By far the smallest of them, Smiggins was also standing upright, his spine bent like someone three times his age. For some reason, his bony claws were clasping a calculator to his chest. To Louis’ relief, he stayed exactly where he was, keeping the safety of the open door at his back.

“The Boss is staking the future of LeMont International Enterprises on your ability to get along with one another,” Flash Freddy said, hooding his eyes. “He’s invested a lot in getting you here, Mr. DeVille. Had to pull a lot of strings. We wouldn’t want to disappoint him now, would we?”

Louis kept eyeing the revolting critter near the doorway. His navy blue suit and pinstriped tie was identical to his colleague’s, yet beneath it the rat seemed to be wasting away. The jacket sagged over his shoulders like a baggy raincoat, and the backs of the legs hung like two limp flags at half-mast. His tail furthermore, poking out from the seam of his trousers, jerked like a worm stretched unnaturally long and thin in the throes of death. “You injected me with some kind of sleeping drug,” Louis said, rubbing his neck.

The rat sniggered, and like the lizard had done before removed a drug bottle from his inner suit. “For your own protection,” he said, swallowing a pill and pocketing the bottle.

Louis cringed with disgust, wondering just how in hell he expected any respect with such a high-pitched feminine squeal. He’d be buggered before he allowed this goddamn faggot to work as his PA.

Flash Freddy flicked his tongue and licked his lips. “Most new clients don’t handle the transition very well,” he said. “We’ve found it easier for all concerned to induce a state of somnolence when they first arrive. It… uh, kind of lessens the shock, if you know what I mean. You, by the way, are handling the whole thing extremely well.”

Louis glanced at his reflection again, hitching the toga strap that had slipped from his shoulder. The lizard had absolutely no idea how much trouble he had accepting this new image of himself.

“Before The Boss established the protocol of sleep induction, we used to do nothing,” Flash Freddy went on. “We used to let the newbies sort it out themselves, but too many of them went completely nuts.” He shook his head and chuckled at the memory of some or other amusing incident with a newbie. “You wouldn’t believe what some of them did, I tell you. Head banging. Wailing and gnashing of teeth. Fur pulling and self-mutilation. Some are still staring at themselves in the Mirror of Truth as we speak, thousands of years after arriving. As you can imagine, it became a bit of a problem for The Boss.”

Flash Freddy and Smiggins glanced at each other, sharing a private joke. Louis just stared at them. “Thousands of years?” he said.

“Hmm? What? Of course,” Flash Freddy said. “This is the After Life, Mr. DeVille. Or hadn’t you worked that out yet?”

Louis guessed he kind of had. How else could he have turned into a goddamn weasel? It was just… well, he was kind of hoping he hadn’t died so soon. There were still so many things he wanted to do. So many women, so little time. As it was, he now had a whole heap of questions he wanted answering. “How do you know I’m not just having one of those goddamn lucid dreams? I mean, really, look at the two of you. Who’s ever seen a lizard and a rat in a two-piece suit? And what about me? I look goddamn ridiculous in this thing.”

With surprising alacrity, in the time it took Smiggins to snigger, Flash Freddy reached out and plucked one of Louis’ whiskers. “Ow!” Louis said. He flinched and took a step back, rubbing the end of his snout. “Why’d you do that?”

Flash Freddy held the whisker up in front of his face, examining it like a kid would eye the head of a grasshopper he had just detached from its body, then let it flutter to the ground. “Do you feel pain in dreams?” he asked. Smiggins sniggered again. “This is real, Mr. DeVille. The After Life is very real.”

Louis scoffed. “Then where am I? Heaven or hell?”

Smiggins briefly held his eye, then looked away and sniggered. Flash Freddy held out his arm, ushering him to the doorway. “Come now, Mr. DeVille. You’re an intelligent being. You don’t believe in that nonsense, do you?”

Louis didn’t really know the answer to that. He had lived his whole life a goddamn atheist. Thought he had worked out all the answers to life and death and the whole damned universe when he was in his twenties. Life was a jungle, survival of the fittest and all that. You were born, then you died. Whatever happened in between was purely a matter of how much goddamn hard work you put in, sprinkled here and there with a bit of good old-fashioned luck. Anyone with half a brain could see that you came from nothing, and you went back to nothing. Pure and simple.

Except that’s not how things had turned out, had it? There really was something after death. Well fancy that and bugger me. He kept rubbing the dull throb on the end of his snout. Goddamn hippies and religious freaks had it right all along. Who would’ve believed it?

Flash Freddy put his scaly claw on Louis’ shoulder. Louis hitched up his toga again and Smiggins stepped back, allowing them plenty of space to pass. “This isn’t exactly protocol,” Flash Freddy said, “but what the hell, I like you. Why don’t we hit the town and celebrate your arrival in style?”

Louis figured anything was better than sitting in this dingy room looking at his reflection in the Mirror of Truth for a thousand years like some newbie gone catatonic stupid. “Why not?” he said, approaching the door. “But one more thing. How long have I been dead? Just for interest sake.”

Flash Freddy looked over at Smiggins, who immediately punched some numbers on the calculator he had been cradling to his chest. “One hundred and seventy-three years, two-hundred and ninety-four days, eleven hours, sixteen minutes and…”

“Not that long,” Flash Freddy said.

“Not that long?” Louis could feel his eyes bulging out of their new sockets. “I’ve been dead three times longer than I was alive.”

“Eternity’s an awful lot longer. You’ll get used to it. As I said, some newbies take thousands of years to work out what’s going on. You’re doing remarkably well. I can see why The Boss thinks so much of you. You’ve got a smart brain for a weasel.”

Before stepping outside, Louis accidentally kicked something on the ground. It was the scrolled contract, the one with the purple ribbon he had tossed over his shoulder when still wrapped in bandages. He picked it up and handed it to the lizard. “Just a goddamn party invitation. Where’s the Mansion of Many Rooms, anyway?”

Eying it suspiciously, Flash Freddy shrugged and said that he had no idea. He had never heard of the place. He reached inside his inner pocket and removed a Zippo lighter. On it Louis saw the emblem of a lightening bolt striking a laughing lizard. “Sure you don’t want this?” Flash Freddy asked. When Louis nodded, he lit the lighter. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing happened.

“Nothing lasts long around here. That’s the third one this month,” he said, and tossed it away. The Zippo slid across the floor and hit the wall, snapping off its lid. He removed another one from his briefcase, which worked first time. Strangely, the flame that sprang from the flint had that same kind of sick grayness as the light in the room. Even the tortured shadow that leapt upon the wall behind him looked dim and gauzy, like some gothic painting faded to the point of nonexistence.

Louis watched the scroll burst into sickly gray flames. Flash Freddy then dropped it to the ground and let it burn until nothing remained but ashes. “You’ll let me know if you get any more of these invitations, won’t you?” he said, putting his claw back on Louis’s shoulder. Stepping into the outside tunnel, he flashed his salesman’s grin again. “What say we show you to your hotel before we hit the town? You must be dying to see where you’ll spend the rest of eternity.”

From a chamber somewhere down the tunnel, Louis heard the faint wails and gnashing of teeth of one of the newbies that hadn’t come to terms with who or what they had become. He hesitated, then hitched his toga and continued on. Better get used to it, sonny, he thought, brushing some flaky skin off his shoulder. Eternity’s a long damn time.