Finch

by Jeff VanderMeer

  Dapple jumped off the boat. “How'd you know where to find us?” he demanded. The anger of a desperate man.

  “Relax. Blakely told me,” Finch said. “I was already on this side of the bay.”

  But Dapple's face darkened at the mention of Blakely. He looked more nervous than usual. The body language of a mouse or rat. Twitching. Had two guns. Both gray cap issue. One drawn. One stuck through his belt. He wore a mottled green shirt too big for him and black trousers shoved into brown boots. Like a doll dressed for war.

  As ever, Wyte hid himself in a bulky, tightly buttoned overcoat. An angry red splotch had drifted down his forehead. Had colonized half of one eye. Cheek. Chin. The splotch had elongated and widened his face. Made his head more like a porous marble bust. He wore black gloves over his hands. Red and white threads had emerged from his sleeves. Wandered of their own accord.

  As Wyte trod heavily closer, he extended his hand. Gave Finch a thankful look as they shook. Wyte's grip was strong but gave. Like the glove was full of moist bread. Finch suppressed a shudder from the sense of things moving inside each finger.

  “Where were you this morning?” Wyte asked. Dapple stood behind him, eclipsed.

  “I'll tell you later.”

  “Why not tell me now.” Finch heard the fear in Wyte's voice.

  “No,” Finch said, laying the word down hard.

  Wyte considered that for a moment. Like it was a wall between them. Looked back toward the boat as if thinking about getting back on it. “Did Blakely tell you our mission?”

  “I told Wyte we should just. Should just run,” Dapple said, breaking in. “That this is going to. Going to get us killed.” Sometimes Dapple stopped in mid-sentence. Like an actor trying to perfect a line.

  “Listen, Wyte,” Finch said, ignoring Dapple. “I came down off the ridge. There are Partials following you. A few hundred feet behind. They're probably watching us now.”

  Or they've got a spy on you, Wyte, and they don't need to watch us.

  Wyte grimaced. Dapple stared at the water like he expected something to erupt out of it.

  “What do we do.” Dapple asked. Didn't seem to expect an answer.

  “Shut up, Dapple,” Wyte whispered.

  “Carry out our mission. Come home alive. Like always.” Finch putting emphasis on our. An ache in his throat. Knew Wyte would understand that Finch wouldn't have come down the ridge for anyone else.

  No matter that you're not always the Wyte I remember.

  A sudden spark in Wyte's eyes. Something that glittered. Began to fade almost as soon as it had passed through.

  “Like old times,” Wyte said. A wry grin. “Like when I taught you how to deal with ship captains down at the docks.” His voice was crumbling like a ruined wall. The edges of words worn away.

  Finch was too tired to take the brunt of that. “We should get moving.”

  He wanted action so he wouldn't have to think.

  About any of it.

  Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

  3

  he haze of the Religious Quarter came closer and closer. A fake fairy tale city-within-a-city above them. Of those following, no sight. Just the sound of gravel once, dislodged. A distant muttered curse.

  After a climb, the ground leveled out. They came to a long, tall wall parallel to a rough road. Ahead, the wall ran on into the distance, buckled and cracked in places. Like it was having trouble restraining what it had been made to hold back. Coming over the wall: the lime scent, the rich greens of the Religious Quarter. Fungus and trees wedded in a vast alliance. Looked like nothing more or less than a fiery explosion, frozen in time. Bullet holes in the wall, in dozens of places. The blackish spray of old blood where someone had gotten unlucky. Under it all, a latticework of fungus. Faintly visible. Faintly green-glowing.

  ,,This is Scarp Lane,“ Wyte said. ”I was here before the Rising. Treelined. Nice homes. Bars and restaurants and dance halls. Little alcoves for people to put up offerings to their gods. You could indulge in your favorite vice and then walk right over and pray it away. Between the wars, it used to be a nice row of wrought-iron streetlamps and sidewalk vendors."

  Finch frowned. Used to be. Wyte didn't usually indulge in used to be.

  Nothing for it but to follow the wall.

  People began to appear in doorways. Leaning against rusting lampposts. On balconies. Dark in complexion. Wore strange hats. Stared you in the eye. Challenged silently why you were here. Sometimes as many as six or seven. Loitering on a street corner. Any time Finch saw more than four people gathered in one place, he figured the gray caps had used their resources elsewhere.

  “Put your badges away,” Finch said, suddenly.

  Dapple had been holding his badge so anyone could see it. Protested, even after Wyte made his own disappear.

  “Seen any Partials here?” Finch asked.

  “No.”

  “Seen anyone who would give a shit about your badge?”

  Dapple didn't respond.

  “And you won't, either,” Finch continued. “Not this close to the wall. Except for the ones following us.”

  They'd be heavily armed. Probably with fungal weapons. Moving in a tight formation. If they were doing more than shadowing Wyte and Dapple, gray caps might be following, too.

  From below.

  The chapel at 1829 Northwest Scarp Lane pushed out from the wall. It had once been a modest two-story church topped by a silver metal dome. Now that dome was spackled and overgrown with rich burnished copper-bronze-amber mold that met a sea of mixed sea greens and blues creeping up. Little rounded windows in the dome. Perfect firing lines.

  Beneath, the green-and-white paint of the rounded walls had peeled away to reveal dry dark wood beneath. In the center, a large ornate double door. To either side, hollowed-out alcoves that Finch didn't think led anywhere. In front of all three, a facade of archways.

  A horseshoe-shaped barricade of six or seven tanks with a sandbag wall curved from just beyond the side of the chapel to around the front of it. The tanks nestled together as if sleeping. Been there seven years at least. Burnt out. Crumbling. Faithful old Hoegbotton insignia still visible on the sides. Delicate snow-white mushrooms had overtaken them. Fernlike green tendrils grew from their rusted tops: all that was left of the men that had been flushed out.

  Less than one hundred feet between the chapel entrance and the sandbag wall. Anyone could have manned it. At any time. Rival armies and militias had marched and retreated across that damaged ground for more than forty years.

  No one in sight now, in either direction. Yet another kind of sign.

  “Great fucking place for an ambush,” Finch said, as they stood outside the chapel. At their backs, beyond the tanks and sandbags, a warren of streets. Burnt-out schools, apartments, abandoned businesses.

  “I don't like it, either,” Wyte said.

  “What if it's a test? A test to prove our loyalty?” Dapple said. “And it's not a rebel safe house at all.”

  “Shut up,” Wyte said. Shifting his weight from foot to foot as if something pained him. To Finch: “If anyone is in there, we ask a few questions. Try to get some information to satisfy Heretic. Get out.”

  Finch nodded. If anyone was in there, Finch didn't know if they'd get many words in before the shooting started. Rebel safe house. Three detectives working for the gray caps, with Partials backing them up. Be better off turning in their guns, asking for mercy. Maybe.

  Dapple looked close to tears. “We should get. The hell out now.”

  “Changed your mind? Then why don't you stay out here,” Finch said. “Guard the door. Duck inside and tell us if you see anything suspicious.” Dapple would be less dangerous as a guard than backing them up.

  “With Partials out here?” Dapple protested.

  Finch checked the magazine in the semi-automatic. Released the safety. “You'll do it, Dapple, and you'll be happy about it. And Dapple? Don't run away. We'll find you.”

  “Enough!” Wyte said.
“Let's get this over with.”

  The language of men scared shitless.

  Wyte put his hand in the huge left-side pocket of his coat. The one with the growing verdigris stain. The one with his gun in it.

  He walked through the middle doorway, Finch behind him.

  Dark and cool inside. A second door just a few feet after the first. Wyte pushed it open. Finch covered him.

  As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Finch let the room come to him. The smell of moist, rotting wood. A high ceiling that made every step echo up in the rafters. Two sets of pews, in twelve rows. Leading up to a raised wooden platform with an ornate, carved railing. Beyond that, red curtains. The supports for a chandelier hung down from the ceiling. But there was no chandelier. On the right side of the dais, an iron staircase curled up toward the dome.

  “What the hell is that?” Wyte said, pointing.

  As his eyes adjusted, Finch could see that a long, low glass-lined counter ran along the right side of the dais. Couldn't tell what was inside it.

  “I don't know.”

  Finch drifted ahead of Wyte. Walked up the carpet with Wyte behind. Climbed onto the platform from the steps built into the right side.

  The counter. Under the smudged glass, a series of arms and heads. The arms looked like prosthetics. Didn't understand the heads with their hollow eye sockets any better.

  “Why in a church?” Wyte asked.

  Finch shushed him.

  Beyond the counter: a doorway covered with a tapestry of Manzikert subduing the gray caps.

  Finch motioned toward the tapestry with his Lewden Special.

  Wyte shook his head. Too dangerous. Too unknown.

  Finch nodded.

  Wyte retreated into the shadows to the left of the counter. Pulled the gun from his pocket. It looped spirals of dark fluid onto his overcoat. Finch bent at the knees, put the counter between his body and the doorway. Aimed at the tapestry.

  “Is anyone there?” Finch said. Loud enough to be heard in any backroom.

  Something fell. Like a jar or tin.

  “Is anyone there?” Finch repeated. His heart felt like a fragile animal inside his chest. Trying to get free. Being battered in the attempt. Kept switching the gun from hand to hand. So he could wipe his sweaty palms on his shirt.

  A kind of hesitation from beyond the doorway. A kind of poised silence. Then a careful movement swept aside the tapestry. A short, thin woman walked out.

  She stood behind the counter as Finch rose, gun at his side. Wyte reappeared from the shadows.

  The woman's gray hair had been pulled back into a tight ponytail. She wore a formless blue dress with a black belt. Her face was heavily lined. Her mouth drooped on the left side as if from a stroke. Or an old wound. Finch thought he could see the whispering line of a scar across the cheek.

  “Point your gun somewhere else, detective,” she said, staring at Wyte. Her voice had gravel in it. Finch had no doubt she'd commanded men before.

  The seepage had become a constant spatter against the wooden floor. But Finch couldn't tell if it came from the gun or from Wyte.

  Wyte lowered his gun.

  “Who says we're detectives?” Finch said.

  Her eyes were the color of a knife blade. “That's a gray cap weapon.”

  “We're investigating a murder,” Finch said. “That's all we're here for.”

  “All?” she echoed.

  Finch wondered what they looked like to her. Wyte transforming. Him tired and dirty. In Wyte's crappy shoes.

  Wyte asked, “What's your name?”

  No answer.

  “We could bring you in for questioning,” Wyte said.

  “But you won't, because I'm an old woman,” she said in a whisper. “Because you're decent men.”

  Wyte snorted, losing patience. “A night in the station holding cell might make you more talkative.”

  The full, hawklike intensity of her stare focused on Wyte. “You want a name? It's Jane Smith.”

  Wyte opened his mouth. Closed it again.

  Finch gave Wyte a wary look. Said to her, “What are all these parts doing here?”

  “This is a business. People who've been released from the camps come here if they've lost a leg. Or an arm.”

  “Or a head?” Finch asked.

  “You seem to be keeping yours, detective,” she snapped.

  Wyte said, “Are you the Lady in Blue?”

  Finch knew he'd meant it as a kind of joke. But Wyte's voice couldn't convey a joke anymore.

  A look of disbelief spread across the woman's thin features. The wrinkles at the sides of her eyes bunched up. She began to guffaw. The roughest, crudest laughter Finch had ever heard from a woman.

  When she had recovered, she said, “You should leave. Now.”

  “Bellum omnium contra omnes,” Finch said. Put as much weight as he could behind the words. As if he meant to physically move her with them. Couldn't have said where the impulse came from, to say it. Wyte gasped.

  Her eyes opened wide. The color in her cheeks deepened.

  “There is a way,” she said. Hesitated. As if she'd made a mistake.

  Finch repeated the words: bellum omnium contra omnes.

  Her features hardened. “I don't think I know what you're talking about after all.”

  “I think you do,” Finch said. He hadn't given the right response, but he'd been close.

  Wyte pulled out his gun, brushed past Finch, and shoved it in the woman's face.

  “Wyte...” Finch said in a warning tone.

  “No, Finch,” Wyte said. “I'm sick of this. Sick of it. She's lying. You want this to go down like Bliss all over again? Well, I don't.” Wyte pushed the muzzle into the woman's forehead until the discharge dribbled down her face. She closed her eyes, winced, said again, “I don't know what it means. I don't.”

  “Wyte, this won't get you what you want,” Finch said.

  Turned his pale, monstrous head for a second. “Hell it won't.”

  “For Truff's sake, Wyte! Put down the fucking gun!”

  “If I do, she's going to kill us,” Wyte said. The gun slipping in his grasp. Finger still tight on the trigger. “Can't you feel it? We're going to die here because of her.” Voice small and low. His shape beneath the overcoat in the grip of some terrible insurrection.

  The woman's eyes fluttered, closed again. Waiting for the bullet while Wyte waited for his answer.

  No way to get to Wyte before he shot her.

  Saved by Dapple calling out in alarm from beyond the door. “Partials!”

  Wyte looked toward the door. Lowered the gun. But something was swimming in his eyes. Something that wasn't part of him. Not really.

  The woman leaned down, fast.

  The front of the counter exploded in a cloud of dust and debris.

  The force threw Finch up against the rail, drove Wyte down to one knee. Wyte's gun skittered across the floor. A piece of wood had grazed Finch's left arm. His ears rang from the blast. Through the wreckage of the counter, Finch could see the cannon of a gun that had done the damage. Mounted on a metal stand.

  The woman had leapt to the spiral staircase. She was shouting to someone above her. Coughing, Finch got off a shot that bit into the steps at her heels. Then the darkness took her.

  Wyte recovered his weapon, started to move toward the stairs. Finch followed, then stopped. Pulled at Wyte's coat sleeve.

  “Fuck. Wait.”

  “Wait, Finch? Wait?” Straining against his grip. “Goddammit, she's getting away!”

  The sound of gunfire. Coming from the top of the chapel. And a torrent of boots on steps from beyond the tapestry door.

  “No! Didn't you hear Dapple? And there's a whole fucking army coming.”

  “Shit,” Wyte said. No longer pulling away.

  They ran back down the carpet. Past the pews.

  Bullets sprayed in a torrent against the outside of the chapel walls. A muted cry from Dapple.

  Brought them up short at
the double doors.

  Finch looked at Wyte. Wyte looked back at him. Knew they were thinking the same thing. Better outside with Partials than trapped inside with the rebels.

  Finch heard the sound of the tapestry parting just as they burst through the double doors. Out into the light. Stumbled over Dapple lying on his back in the dirt between the doors and the archways. Face slack. Clipped by a fungal bullet. Left shoulder turning black. Neck covered in looping veins of dark red that made him look like an obscene map. Convulsions already. Eyes distant. Muttering through a mouth flecked with spit. His guns beside him.

  Finch looked up to see Partials behind the sandbags, amongst the tanks. Dozens of them. Pale faces. Dark clothing. Aiming up at the top of the chapel and the sharpshooters pouring fire down on them.

  Frozen for an instant. Caught between two bad choices. Didn't know how Dapple had gotten hit.

  Then a roar from next to him. Wyte was roaring. Standing straight up. Not caring if he got hit. Finch could just see the Partials moving back and forth behind their shelter. The liquid muzzle flashes.

  “No, Wyte!” But it was too late. Wyte was shooting at them, and shooting and shooting. Bullets stitched through the dirt. Smacked into the stone of the archways.

  No chance for finding common cause now. They had to get away from the front door.

  “Wyte! Come on!” Shoved Wyte toward the alcove to their right. Finch dragging Dapple, who had gone silent with shock. Wyte still blazing away with his gun, gone mad with the pressure. Goading them. Laughing at them. Their confused pale faces in Finch's confused vision like smears of fat.

  Between the alcove and the archway in front of it: enough cover to get Dapple out of sight and Finch mostly out of the line of fire.

  But Wyte, oblivious, was beginning to scare Finch. A fungal bullet ripped right into Wyte's arm as he shot back at them. The bullet just stuck there. Absorbed by Wyte's body.

  Finch got off a couple shots at the Partials. Semi-automatic bucking in his hand. Smelled the acid smoke of the aftermath. None of the Partials went down. Had about ten bullets in the gun. More clips in his pockets.