Forests of the Night

by S. Andrew Swann

  He stopped at the sink. Its stainless steel was covered with a thin layer of dust. He turned on the water. There was a banshee scream from the plumbing, and a hard knocking shook the faucet. It sputtered twice, splattering rust-red water speckled with black muck, and settled into a shuddering stream. Nohar killed it.

  He opened drawers, but there wasn't much to see. One drawer held a five-centimeter-long mummified body—a mouse or a bat.

  The house was empty. The place had the same smell as the boxes in Manny's attic—dry and dusty. Any odor with texture to it had faded long ago to a nothing-smell. Even the little mouse corpse smelled only of dust.

  There was a newspaper—a real newspaper, not a fax—lining a drawer. He pulled out the sheet. The date on the paper was January 12th, 2038, fifteen years ago. The headline was ironic, considering Bobby's view on recent events. According to the paper, NASA had just gotten appropriations to test the nuclear engines for its deep-probe project. The original plan was to have a dozen probes going to all the near star systems. Now, fifteen years later, Congress was going to scuttle the project before the first one was even launched.

  The end of the Pan-Asian war was news, even two years after the fact. The paper had a rundown on the latest Chinese atrocities in occupied Japan. It also contained the latest 2038 reshuffling of the boundaries within a balkanized India. The Saudis had finally killed off their last oil fire, and found their market gone along with the internal-combustion engine. Even the sheikhs were driving electric. Israel hadn't yet been driven into the sea, but most of the occupied territory was now radioactive. Russia had signed peace treaties with Turkmen and Azerbaidzhan—finally. And the INS released new figures on annual morey immigration. In 2037, it topped at one-point-eight million. Putting the new, 2038 moreau population at over ten million. The United States had the largest moreau population in the world—with the possible exception of China from which no figures were available.

  A candidate for the state senate named Binder was adding his voice to the growing concern about moreau immigration. Bobby was right about Binder's radical shift. Binder spoke before the Cleveland City Club about the moral imperative to allow moreau refugees across the border. Poor tired huddled masses and all that. Five years later, Moreytown would explode into an orgy of violence, and Binder would be in the House as the congressman from the 12th district of Ohio with promises to ban moreau immigration altogether.

  He balled up the depressing paper. It crinkled and disintegrated like an old brown leaf. He dropped the remains and kicked the pieces away as he entered the living room.

  The living room had wall-to-wall carpeting, an old comm, nothing else. Nohar walked to the comm, kicking up dust and loose pieces of carpet. Worth a try. "Comm on."

  It must have heard him. He could hear a click from inside the machine. Nohar looked over the relic as it began to warm up. It was a Sony, and that meant old, at least five years older than the paper. Probably came with the house.

  The picture was wavy, and the "message waiting" signal had carved a ghost image into the phosphor. The voice the comm used was obviously synthetic. It tried to sound human, but it sounded more fake than Nohar's own comm.

  "Comm is on."

  At least the commands were standardized. He asked it for messages, and there were one hundred and twenty-eight of them. The comm's memory was filled, and had been for quite some time. Each new message was erasing an older one—stupid system, Nohar's home comm erased anything more than a month old to avoid memory problems.

  Nohar wondered what kind of messages were waiting on the comm. It was clear now the intended recipient didn't exist.

  "Play."

  Static, then a digital low-resolution picture with every tenth pixel gone to volatile memory heaven. "Kathy Tsoravitch, I wish—bzzt—in person. Even so I wish to give my personal—bzzt—for your generous contribution—bzzt—''

  Hell, it was Binder. Saturday, July 19th. The last night Stephie had seen Johnson alive.

  Nohar smiled. She had last seen Johnson at a fundraiser—that Saturday. On that same night, Binder was thanking the nonexistent Kathy Tsoravitch for her generous contribution. A contribution that must form part of that missing/not missing three million dollars.

  Now he had something to play with. He wondered how well Thomson or Harrison could stonewall if he threw this in their faces.

  However, this was only one message. He played the next one. "Play."

  "My dear friend, K—bzzt—Tsoravitch. Even though I am unable to thank you in—bzzt—I am giving you my personal promise that I will jus—bzzt—your con-fid—bzzt—I intend to fulfill my promises of law and order—bzzt—waste in government, and humane laws to promote huma—bzzt—and I am glad there are still people like you in this—bzzt—"

  Someone named Henry Davis in Washington D.C. Nohar didn't believe in coincidence. The first two messages were thanks for political contributions—

  "Play."

  Berthold Maelger from Little Rock, Arkansas, a month ago. Thanks for helping his run for the Senate, appreciating the fact transplanted natives still took an interest in Arkansas politics. He promised his best to try and eliminate pork-barrel politics and to legislate the Hot Springs federal moreau community out of existence.

  "Play."

  Prentice Charvat, Jackson, Mississippi, same week as Maelger. Running for the Senate. Nohar knew him. The vids portrayed him as the most abrasive and vocal anti-morey congressman in the House. He let it be known he wouldn't stop at sterilization. He wanted to deport the moreys—by force if necessary.

  Nohar played every single message. With a few exceptions for junk calls and wrong numbers, the entire message queue consisted of thankful politicians. The queue went back for nearly two years. Even with the repeats, Nohar must have counted over ninety different congressmen—only two or three Senators—that owed Kathy Tsoravitch thanks for her contributions.

  Between taxes and donations, it was a good thing Kathy didn't exist. Her salary barely covered her expenses.

  Nohar walked back to the cab, dazed. He let himself in the back and sat in silence for a few minutes. The cabby didn't seem to mind, though after a while she asked, ' 'We gonna sit here, or you got somewhere else in mind?"

  "Get on the Midtown Corridor, go to the end of Mayfield. There's a parking garage behind the Triangle office building."

  She nodded and started gabbing again as the Tory left Shaker. Nohar was ignoring her. Zips or not, cops or not, he had to empty his apartment. There were things he needed to wipe off his comm, there was the remaining ammo for his gun, and, of course, there was his cat. He was going to have to take Cat over to Manny's, since he didn't know when, or if, he'd get back to his apartment again.

  Fortunately, there was more than one way in.

  They rounded the Triangle and Nohar saw his Jerboa. His car was now a burned-out effigy at the base of the pylons under the old railroad bridge. He thought he caught some movement around the abandoned bus, but his vision wasn't good enough to make it out.

  The parking garage was a block away and behind the Triangle. It had its own street. Two-lane blacktop ran under a bridge straight to it. Nohar's office card-key let them in. He told her to go to the fourth level and park. There, he put forty dollars on the meter. "Wait for me until that runs out."

  "Sure thing."

  Nohar got out of the cab and walked to the barrier at the edge of the fourth floor and looked out. The garage was a relatively new addition to the Triangle, but it was old enough to predate the expansion of Mor-eytown into what used to be Little Italy. Now, Mor-eytown surrounded the garage on three sides. For four floors, the openings in the sides of the structure were covered by chain link and barbed wire. However, years had atrophied security, and one corner of the chain link on the fourth floor had been pulled away from the concrete.

  Nohar looked out of the hole now. No sign of the Zips yet. A meter away and down was the tar roof of a neighboring apartment building. The piercing smell of the tar made h
is sinuses ache. The building blocked his view of the street, which was good. It meant anyone on street level couldn't see him.

  Nohar straddled the lip and ducked under the gap in the security fence. He reached over with his good left leg. His left foot hit the tar roof and slid a little. The tar was melting in the heat. He was glad for the boots he'd found at Manny's, tar'd be impossible to get out of his fur.

  Nohar eased himself across the gap, trying to be gentle to his injured leg. He brought his right foot down on a clay tile on the lip of the roof. The tile was loose and his leg slipped. His foot followed the tile into the narrow gap between the building and the garage. He managed to hook his claws into the fence to avoid falling.

  The tile exploded on top of a green trash bin below him. The sound was like a rifle shot.

  For a moment Nohar could sense a target strapped to the back of his head. Once it was clear no one was going to appear at the sound, he could move again. Staying to the rear, to avoid being seen from May field, Nohar crossed the connecting roofs to reach his own building, which was a floor taller than its neighbors. Five windows with wrought-iron bars stared across the roof at Nohar. He made for the rearmost one.

  The bars were connected to iron cross-members that were bolted to the brick wall. However, security maintenance was even more lax here. The bolts were resting in holes of crumbling masonry and the whole iron construction came loose with a slight pull on Nohar's part.

  The window was painted shut, the glass was missing, and a black-painted sheet of plywood had been nailed over it from the inside. He stood upon a wobbly right leg and kicked in the plywood with his left foot. The plywood gave too easily and Nohar had to catch himself on the window frame. It almost broke off in his claws. Tight fit, but he managed to lower himself through the opening he made. He briefly considered replacing things, but if cops or Zips were around, he might need to leave in a hurry.

  He was in a broom closet at the end of the fourth-floor hallway. The sheet of plywood had landed on a double-basin sink and Nohar had used it as a step to get down from the window. The sink was now at a forty-five-degree angle from the horizontal, and rusty water was beginning to pool across the hexagonal tiles on the floor.

  Nohar made for the stairs.

  As he descended, the odor of tar receded. He became aware of a familiar perfume-The Vind came out. Nohar backed toward the wall and crept down the steps. He rounded the landing, sliding under the window to the street, and pointed the gun down toward the third floor. No one. There was the ghost smell of blood-He was getting a sick feeling.

  Bottom of the stairs, nobody in the third-floor hallway. Three meters away, his door was ajar. The frame was splintered, proving Nohar's belief in the useless-ness of an armored door in a wooden door frame.

  No sounds. The perfume was still ghostlike, but the blood was stronger. Nohar flattened himself against the right side of the door frame and pointed the Vind through the opening as he pushed the door open with his foot. Blood, feces, the burning smell of terror filled the apartment—

  Nohar covered all the rooms in record time, but the bastards were gone.

  They had left Cat in the shower. Nohar found his pet, strips of skin removed from the back and chest, lying in a pool of blood, urine, and feces. They'd hadn't even had the decency to kill the animal before they left it. Cat had bled to death, limping around the stainless-steel pit.

  Shaving is a different thing to a morey than it is to a human. To a morey it is a gesture of hatred and contempt. Removal of hair is still the basis of it, but the skin is often removed as well. Survival is rare.

  The Zips couldn't find Nohar, so they had shaved Cat.

  They left a message on the mirror for him, in Cat's blood. "You next, pretty kitty."

  Nohar put his fist through it.

  Chapter 17

  Nohar wanted to kill something.

  It was an effort for him not to listen to the adrenaline and finish trashing the apartment. What was worse, every time he thought of Cat, he couldn't help picturing Stephie—

  He tried to calm himself by making a methodical inventory of the damage. The Zips had wrecked his comm, along with most of his apartment. They had shredded his clothes out of spite. The couch was dead; it had been ailing to begin with. The kitchen was a disaster. It looked like the Zips had been trying to burn down the building.

  But they had missed the two extra magazines for the Vind. Those were where Nohar had left them, on top of the cabinets in the kitchen. The rats weren't particularly thorough, just violent.

  Once he made sure the ammo was the only thing he could salvage, he took a sheet—one they had shredded—and wrapped Cat's stiffening body in it. The blood soaked through immediately, and Nohar wrapped him in another sheet, and finally stuffed him into a pillowcase. He didn't know what he was going to do with the corpse, but he couldn't leave it here.

  On the way back to the cab, Nohar had the gun out. He hoped the Zips would show themselves, but the way was clear through to the garage. He bolstered the gun as he closed in on the cab.

  The cabbie interrupted him before he could get in

  "What hit your hand? No, don't want to know—stop right there."

  Now what?

  "No shit, piss, or blood in the back of my cab. They lemme drive, but I clean it up." She got out of the cab and walked around to the back and popped the trunk. She pulled out a first aid kit. " 'Spect one hell of a tip for this. Come 'ere."

  Nohar hadn't bothered dressing his right hand. It hadn't seemed important. There were several deep cuts on the back of it, from punching the mirror.

  The cabbie cleaned off the wound and tied it up.

  "There—what's in the bag?"

  "A dead cat."

  "Won't ask if that's a joke. Put it in the trunk."

  What now? Nohar got in the back of the cab and tried to think clearly, putting his head in his hands.

  "Where to now?"

  "Sit tight for a minute. We're still running off the forty bucks I gave you."

  "Sure 'nuff."

  Damn good thing Angel didn't want to be left alone in the apartment.

  Should have ditched things when he had the chance. Now he was waist-deep in shit river no matter what he did. Ziphead had a serious in for him. Guess the limit for rodents in this towns topped off at six-He shook his head. That kind of thinking didn't help.

  He wanted to claw the upholstery, but it wasn't his car.

  The Zips had trashed his comm, that was bad. If Terin knew what she was doing, she would have dumped the call record and read or copied the ram-cards before her muscle scragged them. The Zips would have his Binder database. That was public info, not too bad. They had all his photographs. Again, something he could live without.

  But now they had the forensic data base, and that was bad. Nohar didn't want to think what could happen if they figured he had a contact in the Medical Examiner's office.

  Worst of all, he had no idea what messages had been waiting for him.

  Nohar cursed under his breath. He was looking out the cab's window, across the garage and the bridge. He was looking at the Triangle office building-Wait a minute. He had another comm! If the calls were being forwarded—and most of them were—there would be a copy on the comm in his office. Did the Zips know about that? Were they watching his office? Did the gang even know he had an office?

  "So, you want a big tip?"

  She turned around and gave him a look ranking that as a stupid question.

  "Like to make a quick hundred?"

  "Nothing illegal?"

  "No." Nohar pulled out his card-key to the Triangle. "You just go to my office and pick up my messages."

  The cabbie only took a few seconds to make up her mind. She took his key and left the garage.

  She took her own sweet time getting back. It gave Nohar some more time to think. As Angel would say, things were beginning to look like they were going to ground zero on him.

  The Zips' nationwide spree of violence
made things loom large. MLI's pet congressmen were as ominous, and scared him more than the Zips—especially if MLI was as reactionary as Binder. He wished Smith wanted to have the meet tonight. Nohar didn't want to wait for tomorrow.

  The cabbie came back with a ramcard and sat back behind the wheel. "Like you, but I'm nearly off shift. Last ride, where to?"

  Nohar told her to drop him off downtown, near East Side. He was going to pay press secretary Thomson a visit.

  * * * *

  He had the cabby drop him off next to the lake.

  Nohar walked out on a pier, carrying Cat. He picked a chunk of crumbling asphalt and placed it into the pillowcase. After making sure the knot was tight, Nohar picked up the bundle and looked at it. It was a shapeless mass, but blood had seeped through and the outline of Cat's body was becoming visible in red. "Good-bye, you little missing link."

  He walked up to the end of the pier and looked over Lake Erie. There was an overwhelming organic stink from the reclamation algae that hugged the shore. He spared a glance to the light-green plants that shimmered slightly in the evening sun light. Then he tossed his package over the water like an ungainly shot put. Cat hit the water about five meters out, splattering algae. He watched as the pillowcase ballooned up with trapped air, then slowly sank with the weight of the asphalt, pulling the algae in behind it to cover the surface of the water again.

  He looked back behind him.

  A few blocks away were the massive East-Side con-dos. On top of one lived Desmond Thomson, Binder's press secretary. Nohar was angry enough about recent events to not even consider how the pinks would react to him. He needed to take this out on someone.

  Thomson would be a convenient target.

  Nohar started walking toward the condos. The sun was setting, coating the windows of the buildings in molten orange. As Nohar walked toward the building, he amused himself by picturing Thomson's reaction when he unfolded the conspiracy MLI represented, and how deeply the Binder campaign was involved. It wasn't something you could hide, once someone knew what to look for.