by Ben Farthing
He tucked eight bills under a business card and gave them to Diondre, who counted it with one hand, then drew a line on one bill with a brown marker. He accepted the offering price so quickly Everard realized he could have got a better deal.
"Cool, cool. My girl's probably pissed I left her alone so long. Take care." Diondre tossed the rest of his sandwich in the trash and went inside the restaurant.
Everard crouched in front of George's carrier to quickly move the pistol from the bag to his waistband without being obvious about it.
Now that he could defend himself, his problems felt a lot more manageable. He hoped meeting up with Bill Bill would go as smoothly.
He glanced at the vet's business card again.
299 12th St NW
Something strange about that address.
Closer than he thought. Only a few blocks away, probably right across Constitution Avenue from the National Mall. Weird place for a vet.
A third man with stitches walked down the sidewalk, this one looking like the surgeon had botched it. After the afternoon he'd had, Everard didn't like coincidences. He stiffened, touched his waistband. The stitched man walked on past.
Must be some plastic surgery support group nearby. Nothing too weird. Everard scratched at his cheek.
With the carrier in one hand and the paper bag in the other (he hadn't eaten dinner yet, after all), he walked south.
Everard passed the IRS building, which stood on the corner of 12th and Constitution.
The address above the door caught Everard's attention:
302 12th St NW
His shoulders dropped. This building took up the whole block. 299 would be just south of the next road... on the Mall.
He looked across Constitution Avenue, at the backs of two Smithsonian museums. Manicured lawns and trimmed maple trees said that there were no veterinary clinics tucked away in any corner.
Bill Bill had given him the wrong card. The old man probably didn't know what year it was—no use getting angry at him.
"Don't suppose you can tell me where your vet is?" Everard asked George. He crossed Constitution, enjoying the implanted nature while he figured out his next step. Bill Bill would probably head back home once Everard didn't show up, which meant Everard should get back there first to deal with whoever was waiting.
The thought made him anxious. He'd never shot anyone, and preferred to keep it that way. He was confident he could, though. He logged a couple hours every month at the shooting range.
Looking at the business card again, Everard sat on a bench. He set the carrier next to him. George meowed.
"Don't worry too much about it," he consoled the cat. "There's more to life than sex."
Calling the cops was out of the question. They'd make him file a report, and while Everard Harrison definitely existed in some government records, the name wasn't in all of them. Too much scrutiny and they might notice that despite being twenty-nine, the records had only appeared thirteen years ago.
If he wanted to keep living under the radar, he had to deal with these people - and their bounty - himself.
He stood and paced, psyching himself up to head back and try to be an action star. He held the business card with both hands.
"Two ninety-nine would be..." he walked a few steps north. "Here."
He faced a tree, and looked up into the branches. "Any vets up there?" he called.
When he looked back down, there was a staircase descending into the ground.
A wrought iron hand railing held a plaque:
299 12th St NW
Both the Comic Sans font and the address itself matched the business card.
Steps curved down out of sight.
Everard looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. Wait. How had he not noticed? He'd walked past it a second before. It wasn't until he was looking for the address that he'd seen it.
He walked a circle around it, but couldn't see any deeper.
Weird. Must go to the basement of one of the Smithsonians.
Bill Bill had given him the wrong business card. Of course, that raised the question: what connection did his crazy old neighbor have with whatever waited at the bottom of these stairs?
A woman carrying a briefcase walked past without so much as glancing at the staircase. A tourist family with bored teenagers did the same.
Everard picked up George's carrier. He could investigate this mystery on a day there weren't people out to get him.
George rowled, low and deep.
"What are you still angry about?"
The pale white stitched man was crossing Constitution, headed directly for Everard, a scrap of paper in his fist, about the size of Everard's wanted flyer.
Everard moved to the other side of the path. The man still headed for him. Everard turned around. From the other direction came another man with stitches, skin hanging loose and sickly like another victim of botched surgery.
The thin crowd of tourists didn't seem to notice either man.
The swarm of holes jumped to the front of Everard's mind, the sickening feeling he'd got from the woman crept back into his gut.
Everard reached for the Ruger, but he couldn't open fire here. And he doubted he'd be able to sprint past them. What he needed was a place to get the drop on these guys, so he could ask a few questions.
He looked at the staircase.
"Good enough." He walked casually toward the stairs, timing it so he'd reach them as a pink-shirted tourist group passed by.
Under bright-colored cover, Everard ducked underground.
Chapter Four
Everard stepped up out of the staircase.
He felt a low buzz through his body that died down as he took another step.
He paused. Behind him, spiraling cement stairs descended into the ground. He'd walked down into the dark, around the bend—still going down—and then found himself ascending.
How could he have got so turned around that he didn't realize he'd starting going up?
There was no way he'd blacked out. He checked his phone. There was no missing time.
As his eyes adjusted, a car horn echoed up the stairs, the sounds of Constitution Avenue proclaiming that it was still there, below him somehow.
Footsteps banged up the iron steps.
Everard squinted into the darkness to find a place to hide. That trippy staircase had robbed him of all intentions to jump the stitched men.
His first thought was that he was in some poorly lit, underground warehouse, wide enough that he couldn't see the walls, with massive gray cement structures holding up a roof high enough that he could barely see it.
This was not how he imagined a Smithsonian basement. Soft earth gave a little under his feet, with brown and white strands sticking up like a sparse imitation of grass.
He ran light-footed to one of the structures, and sat against it, hoping the shadow covered him. He shushed George and pulled the Ruger from his waistband. Let him get his bearings, and then he could think about questioning his pursuers.
The stitched men appeared out of the staircase. They ran right by, as if they thought they knew where he'd be.
Everard exhaled. He'd go after them in a second. Maybe.
For now, though, where was he?
Brick made up the first few feet of the structure he leaned against, and then blank cement stretched high above.
Everard's gaze followed it up into the shadows. Splotches of light glowed above, forming constellations more like deep sea phosphorescence than starlight. They gave off most of the light in the cavern, alongside a dim glow from around the far edge of the cement structure.
"You go to a weird vet," he told George.
Footsteps echoed up the stairs. Down. Whatever.
Everard stood, brushing dirt off his pants.
A woman in a red dress - more Little House On The Prairie than Lady In Red - hurried out of the staircase, saw Everard, and hesitated. "Oh," she said. "Hi."
"Hey." Everard held the gun behin
d his back.
"Well." She hiked her bag up higher on her shoulder. "Don't mind me."
She walked past Everard, towards the glow at the end of the cement structure.
"Wait," he called. "Where are we?"
Something clinked in her bag as she turned around. "Are you teasing? You wouldn't be here if you didn't know. As if you wouldn't know."
"I really don't."
"Why'd you bring a cat?"
"Oh, I'm looking for a vet, I guess." He lifted George's carrier, so she could see inside.
"He doesn't look sick."
"He's supposed to get neutered."
She scrunched her nose. "Horrid practice. I don't know of any veterinarians in this nook, but if you find one, ask to keep the testicles. I'll pay you a pretty penny for them."
Everard coughed.
"It's not as weird as it sounds. And Hexers are hardly the only ones who use them. The Hoodoo women use human testicles in one of their tricks."
"You're not making any more sense."
"And you're not living up to your reputation. You're more nervous than a witch in Salem."
"Yeah, well... what? Look, if there's no vet down here, I guess I'll get out of your hair. I've got a more pressing problem." It took forty minutes to get anywhere by car in D.C., so Everard figured he still had about half an hour before Bill Bill made it back. He moved toward the stairs, but the woman didn't get out of the way.
"The only Periphery veterinarian I know of works over in the Tysons Corner nook. Can't get there from here, though."
"There's no vet in Tysons Corner." Three floors of overpriced clothes and shoddy electronics, not to mention a food court that would burn the nostrils off a sewage plant worker, but definitely no vet clinic.
"The nook, not the mall," she said. "Either way, he's only open normal business hours. But if you need help with your other problem, there's a meeting starting right now."
Great, she either thought he needed group counseling or Alcoholics Anonymous. "No, it's not that kind of problem."
"Nonsense, it's everyone's civic duty to attend the town halls. Even emergency sessions like this one."
Okay, not an AA meeting. "I'm not real big on being a good citizen." He stepped closer, hoping she would get the hint to let him pass.
She didn't, oblivious as she riffled through her purse. "If that was true, you wouldn't be alive. Even someone like you."
"Who do you think I am?"
She clucked her tongue. "I knew you were eccentric, but at a certain point it's just rude, don't you think?"
"Sorry. Do you have a name?" Maybe being polite would get her to move.
"You really did forget it? Lucy."
"Pleasure. I'm Everard."
She reached out, realized she was holding what she'd removed from her purse, then extended her left hand.
Everard tucked the pistol in the back of his pants - subtly, he hoped - then shook her hand.
The offending object Lucy held was a popsicle-stick figuring of a man, hanged from a yarn noose long enough to hang around Lucy's neck, where she placed it. "Can't be too careful," she said.
"Whatever you say."
"Are you coming to the meeting? I could walk with you. Remind people I could still be part of influential circles, if I wanted to."
"Again, I'm only Everard. But sorry, I don't think I need that meeting."
Stomping footsteps preceded a grizzled military man running up (down?) the stairs, wearing fatigues different from any Everard had ever seen. Dots and lines of white and silver, in patterns over a black background like a street grid that was organized in some places and chaotic in others; tiny knobs and wires that may have been three dimensional or just sewn-on images, but the light and the curves of the clothes made it difficult to tell. He looked like he wanted to blend in with a computer motherboard.
The soldier nodded to Everard and Lucy, who stepped out of the way. "Sir. Ma'am."
He jogged alongside the cement structure and then around behind it.
"What did you say this place was?" Everard asked, cautiously following the soldier.
"The Mall nook."
"Some sort of Comicon thing going on?" He widened his path, trying to see around the end of the structure.
"Nothing like that tonight. Like I said, just the meeting between ink and the Burgesses."
Everard stopped. He yanked the flyer out of his pocket.
House of Burg-
"Who's that?"
"You're committed to this clueless farce, are you?" Lucy put her hands on her hips. "Ink is the same group they were last time anybody saw you. Only now they've got enough influence to rival the Burgesses."
"Who are the Burgesses? I think they-" Everard almost said are after me, but switched it to, "want to see me."
"They haven't changed since you were outside last, still acting like they run things. Honestly, I thought you kept up to date on the goings-ons."
Everard tucked the flyer away. These were his guys. Lucky he found this place. Wait, no. Bill Bill sent him here.
The old man was tied up in this. He'd sent Everard here on purpose.
And here Everard had been willing to give him half his paycheck to protect him. "Where can I find the Burgesses?" he said through gritted teeth.
"The emergency town hall," said Lucy. "Mr. President will be running it."
"I think I'll join you, then." Part of Everard knew approaching these guys head on wasn't the best idea. But they'd targeted him, sent people after him, violating the privacy he'd worked so hard to build. His stomach clenched as he thought of that woman's skin condition. Maybe Bill Bill had broke into his house, slipped something into his food to make him hallucinate.
Lucy pulled her bag back onto her shoulder and waddled with the weight of it.
Everard wanted a free hand to draw his pistol, so he quickly opened George's carrier and tossed in the paper bag and sandwich. He followed after Lucy, toward the glow, in the direction the stitched men had gone.
"Say," she said, "maybe you can do me a favor."
He had enough bizarre favors for one night. "I really can't."
"Nonsense, this'll help you, too. You've noticed these wretched booms, right?"
"Who hasn't?"
"The Burgesses keep pretending like no one has. But if they won't listen to us, maybe ink will."
"Why are they called 'ink?'"
"Because they're incorporated, I suppose."
She'd been saying Inc.
Lucy prattled on. "They'll listen to you. You haven't left your house in, what, 30 years? If you came out because of the booms, they'd have to listen. Maybe then we can get past the damned drama going on - pardon my language. The rumor is Mr. President says Inc and the CEO are behind the booms, while Inc is blaming Undone Duncan and his reskinned. Best thing about Inc standing up to the Burgesses? Now there's two groups hoping to win our favor by bestowing on us all sorts of nice gifts - food for the hungry, personal space heaters for the cold, the CFO even caught the Face Without a Name, to the pleasure of grieving parents everywhere. Mr. President is embarrassed his Regulars couldn't find the bastard—pardon my language—but now folks are walking around feeling safe again at night. Well, unless you accept the sad fact that our closets and basements are getting more restless. And of course, those cannon booms everyone's up in arms about."
Finally, something that made sense in her rambling. "Is that what the booms are? Cannons?"
"Oh, I haven't a clue. Sounds like it though, doesn't it?"
Lucy kept on about what different people thought the booms might be, dropping enough trippy names to make Everard suspect she was on drugs.
Maybe the Burgesses were drug dealers, although that didn't seem like Bill Bill's MO.
He followed the rambling woman, peering into the dark, but it only revealed the brick and cement structure to his left, and dirt to his right. Dirt with that stringy little white grass.
Midstride, he bent down to pluck a strand. George complai
ned about the sudden movement.
Everard rolled the odd grass between his fingers. He suddenly recognized the plant. This wasn't grass at all. Well, it was. Just, it wasn't the above-the-ground, green part of the grass.
"They're roots," he said, interrupting Lucy's monologue.
"Of course, dear, what else would they be?"
"Roots don't grow up."
"Which is why you see them here, underneath."
"If we're underneath the Mall, the roots should be up there." He pointed at the eerie constellations.
"Didn't we use the same stairs? The Mall nook is beneath the National Mall. That way is up." She pointed at her feet and stomped, then smacked the cement structure. "Your standing next to the the Museum of American History. Its foundation, anyways."
"That makes less sense than buying George's balls."
"And yet both are happening," she walked around the corner of the foundation. "Please, save the ignorant act. I won't give away your secret, but just because you stay cooped up inside doesn't mean people have forgotten what you look like."
Everard prepared the perfect response, a clever retort that both proved how wrong Lucy was and called her intelligence into question, but then he followed her around the corner and it promptly left his mind.
Someone had blended a cavern, a shopping mall, and a street bazaar, and then invited a thousand movie extras.
Everard leaned on the cement to steady himself. He didn't see any other huge structures like this one, but smaller buildings and stalls stretched as far as he could see. Which, admittedly, wasn't far. Lampposts - topped with blurry glass cases that glowed a shifting green - illuminated everything well enough, but the chaotic density of the buildings and people only revealed the outskirts of the world.
A man wearing a jacket covered in feathers yelled over a shop counter at teenage identical twin boys. A typical soccer mom made her way through the crowd, pushing a stroller that contained a writhing, furry pile of what looked like bats. People made way for three men wearing trenchcoats and fedoras, and carrying violin cases. Other oddities populated the crowd as well: a woman wearing nothing but a loincloth (who caused the soccer mom to shield her impressionable bats' eyes), a college aged kid with a Snidely Whiplash mustache wearing what looked like an 1800's train conductor's uniform, an elderly man in knee-length britches and a white powdered wig escorting a woman in a hoop skirt who carried a parasol, a gang of kids throwing tiny firecrackers and laughing at the people who jumped.