Suicide Kings by Wild Cards Trust

Author:Wild Cards Trust
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Khartoum, Sudan

The Caliphate of Arabia

All hospitals smell the same—alcohol, blood, feces, fading flowers, disinfectant, and sickness.

Prince Siraj held a handkerchief—liberally sprinkled with aftershave—to his nose. Noel had smelled worse. Since this hospital was in Khartoum, you had the added charm of cots lining the dingy concrete walls. Each cot held a moaning, crying patient. Some held two. “You know, we could have held this meeting in Paris again,” Noel said.

“I want you to see something.” Siraj’s tone was terse, despite being muffled by the square of linen. He pushed open the door to a room. There were only four beds inside. Whoever they were here to see clearly rated.

Noel followed Siraj to a bed near an open window. A desultory breeze filled with heat and the reek of camel dung floated through. A skeletal figure lay in the bed. His skin stretched over the bones in his face, and his eyes were so sunken that Noel thought they had been removed. His long beard looked like moss hanging from an ancient dead tree. The single sheet rose and fell as the man sucked in air in short, shallow gasps. An IV hung next to the bed. The man’s arms were purple and black from the needles. Noel tilted the IV bag toward the light and read, D5 half normal saline KCL20meq/multivits.

“This is how he looked ten days ago,” Siraj said.

Noel took the iPhone and inspected the image. The white robe strained over a vast belly and the cheeks above the beard were ruddy and fat, as if Santa had decided to holiday in warmer climes. He glanced again at the figure in the bed. There was enough in the shape of the brow and jaw for him to recognize it as the same man.

“You know what this means?”

“I won’t deny you the pleasure of telling me.”

Siraj shot him a venomous glance. “He’s starving to death. Starving! He’s lost 209 pounds in a week. Nothing helps. At first he stuffed himself, but then he became too weak to lift the food to his mouth. Now this.” The prince flicked the bag with a forefinger. “And it’s having no effect.” Siraj paced back and forth at the foot of the man’s bed. The sunken eyes flicked back and forth following his movements. Desperation gave some life to the dark irises. “When he could still talk he said he was bitten by a little boy. There were three of these monstrous children present at Khartoum. One of them could take down a building. The other reduced people to shriveled husks. Where are they coming from? How many more of these monsters does Weathers have?”

“I’ll be going back to the PPA in a day or two. I’ll see what I can discover.”

“In a day or two?” Siraj’s voice rose in outrage. “What the hell have you been doing?”

Noel tried to hang on to his own fraying temper. “Assembling my team. I’ll be putting them in place in Kongoville.”

“If you locate these monsters, kill them,” Siraj ordered.

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