by Eoin Colfer
On the way back from Journey, the warehouse computer had notified them of a shootout outside a bank on the expensive end of Journey. The Supernaturalists camped on a rooftop and took potshots at Parasites that flocked to the scene.
The sun was poking through rainbow smog when they finally arrived home. Even Ditto was too tired for jokes, his small face drawn, his kid’s trousers spattered with the blood of those he’d tended to.
They sat around the table, chewing on processed dinners from flash-food packs. Cosmo pulled the tab on his food pack, waiting ten seconds for the heat to spread through his rations.
“I thought we did okay tonight,” he said. “No one got hurt, and we blasted a hundred of those creatures.”
Stefan threw down his army-issue spoon. “And tomorrow night there’ll be two hundred to take their place.”
Cosmo finished his food in silence, chewing slowly. “You know what I think?”
Stefan leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. His body language should have told Cosmo to shut up. “No, Cosmo— what do you think?”
Mona shot Cosmo a warning look, but he forged on.
“I think that if we could find out where they lived, then we could do some real damage.”
Stefan laughed sharply, rubbing his face with both hands. “For nearly three years I’ve been doing this, and I never thought of that. Wow, you must be some kind of genius, Cosmo. Find out where they live. Amazing.”
Cosmo’s new knee suddenly began to itch. “I just thought . . .”
Stefan stood abruptly, his chair sliding across the floor. He reined his temper in, but it was an effort. “I know what you thought, Cosmo. I’ve thought about it too. Find the nest, and take them all out at the same time. It’s a perfectly good idea, except for one thing. We can’t find it.
“Suddenly I’m not hungry,” he finished. “I’m going to bed.” The tall boy dragged his feet into his cubicle, pulling the curtain behind him.
Ditto managed a chuckle. “Well done on the sucking up to the boss, new boy.”
“Leave him alone, Ditto,” said Mona. “Or I’ll make you stand in the corner.”
Ditto laughed, raising his tiny fists. “I know I’m a pacifist, Mona, but I’ll make an exception for you.”
Cosmo pushed his own food away. “I didn’t mean to upset him.”
Mona scooped the unfinished meals into her own carton. “It’s not your fault, Cosmo. This is Stefan’s whole life. Awake and asleep. It’s what he lives for. And every night he has to face the fact that we’re not making a dent.”
“I keep thinking that there’s something I don’t know. Some other reason we’re doing this.”
Ditto opened a beer, draining half the bottle in one gulp. “We’re helping people, isn’t that enough?”
“We’re helping people? No other reason.”
Mona and Ditto shared a look. Cosmo caught it. “I get it. I’m not part of the group yet.”
Mona draped an arm over his shoulder. “You know what, Cosmo? You’re too tense. You need to get out for a walk.”
Cosmo thought of Ziplock suddenly. “I haven’t been out for a walk in fourteen years.”
“No time like the present,” said Mona, grabbing her jacket. “I can stay awake for a few more hours if you can. Vamos.”
Cosmo followed her to the elevator. “Where are we going?”
“Wait and see.”
“Ditto, you coming?”
The tiny Bartoli baby settled back in his chair, flicking on the TV. “Am I coming? No, thanks. I went for a walk with Mona once—I was lucky to make it back with all my fingers.”
Cosmo grinned weakly. “He’s joking? Right?”
Mona pushed him into the elevator cage. “No, Cosmo,” she said closing the grille. “He’s not joking. But hey, who needs ten fingers?”
Mona led Cosmo through the maze of supply pipes and abandoned assembly lines to a large loading bay on the ground floor. A hulking panel truck sat heavy on its suspension on the parking ramp.
Mona slapped the fender, scattering a swarm of rust mites. Rust mites were a new breed of insect that had evolved in Satellite City. The TV brains said that they were nature’s new superbug and would outlive even the cockroaches.
“The Pigmobile. This old heap has saved our hides more than once.”
Cosmo kicked one of the tires. “We’re not actually going to ride in this, are we?”
Mona popped the bonnet. “Don’t be fooled by the exterior.
I prefer drab to stolen. But we’re not riding today, Cosmo. The engine’s manifold is shot. We need a new one, or at least one that’s not too second hand.”
“I thought we were just going for a walk.”
“We are walking,” grunted Mona, yanking the tubular manifold from its clips. “No choice in the matter. I just need to do some business on the way.”
“So, what do you need me for?” asked Cosmo, although in truth he was more than happy to accompany Mona anywhere she wanted to go. After all, he was fourteen years old, and Mona was the first girl he had ever spoken to unsupervised.
Mona wrapped the manifold in a rag. “Cosmo, I need you for backup.”
Booshka was Big Pig slang for car theft. There were so many stolen automobiles in this region of Westside that the entire area was nicknamed after the pastime.
Teenage booshka pirates popped BMWs, Kroms, and Benzes right out of their racks in the uptown parking lots and refitted them for off-road racing. Every night, groups of youths gathered in abandoned warehouses for illegal drag races.
Booshka. Mona Vasquez’s home turf.
It took almost an hour for the pair to walk from Abracadabra Street down to Booshka. South along Journey, then across the river to the old police blockade. Once past the line of burned-out cars, the pair were living on their wits. No police would respond to an alert from Booshka.
Cosmo tried to make himself invisible. It was a trick he’d learned in Clarissa Frayne. Shoulders hunched, small steps, and don’t make eye contact with anybody. Mona did not subscribe to the invisibility theory.
“Down here, Cosmo. You gotta walk tall. Any of these vultures smell weakness, and they’ll mess you up faster than sugar in a gas tank.”
The vultures in question were groups of adolescents on their way home from a night’s drag racing. They lounged on the sidewalk, or bounced their automobiles along the street on enhanced suspensions. There was no Satellite guidance down here; everything was manual.
Most of the vultures seemed to know Mona. “Hey, chiquita,” shouted one of a large group, a muscular youth with a bandanna tied over one eye. “When are you coming racing again, Mona? We miss you.”
Mona grinned. “Hola, Miguel. Maybe I’ll come race when you build something worth racing against. I could walk faster than that last piece of junk.”
Miguel moaned, placing one hand over his heart as though he’d been shot. “You got me, Vasquez. But someday I’ll get you.”
Mona kept grinning, but also kept walking. “In your dreams, Miguel. In your dreams.”
When they had rounded a corner, Mona shuddered. Her bravado was all for show; beneath it, the girl was worried. “I thought they might ask me to come back. Miguel is a Sweetheart.”
Cosmo blinked. “You think so?”
Mona punched him on the shoulder. “No, estúpido, not that kind of sweetheart. The Sweethearts are the biggest gang in Booshka. I used to run with them. I was their mech girl, looking after the hot rods. You check under those bandannas they wear, and you’ll find a tattoo just like mine.” Mona pointed to the DNA strand over her eyebrow.
“That’s a gang tattoo, isn’t it? What does it mean?”
Mona leaned close so Cosmo could get a better look at the ink over her eye. “It’s a DNA strand made from car parts. You see the wheels and the pistons? It means that deep down all Sweethearts are the same. We live to race.”
They walked on for several blocks, past the rows of pig-iron housing and barricaded shops. Vendors were w
arming up their street burners, protecting their wares with large dogs or visible sidearms. Several other gang members called out to Mona. And not just Sweethearts: they passed Celtic, Anglo, Slav, African, and Asian groups. Mona explained as they went along.
“Those are the Irish I’s. They specialize in truckjacking from the docks across the bridge.” She pointed at a pair of Africans in black suits. “Those tall guys are the Zools. Bodyguards mostly, they all learn some kind of African martial arts. One of those guys throws something sharp at you, and it’s all over.”
Cosmo tried to make himself look even more invisible.
“Those men with the piercings are the Bulldogs. They can strip a bike down in seconds. You turn away to tie your bootlace and when you turn back, your bike is just a skeleton.”
“How did you get out of the Sweethearts?” asked Cosmo. “I thought gang membership was a for-life kind of thing.”
“Stefan saved me. Eighteen months ago I was in a drag crash, a bad one. One of my lungs had collapsed and I was bleeding to death. The Parasites were settling in to suck me dry, and of course my brother Sweethearts scattered as soon as I hit that pylon. Stefan was out on a night patrol and heard the explosion. He came down here and blasted those monsters right off my chest. Ditto inflated my lung and they dropped me at General. On the way I was babbling about blue creatures sucking my life away, so a week later Stefan showed up at the hospital and offered me a new life. I took it. There was nothing to stay in Booshka for. My parents are gone and Stefan is eighteen, so he sponsors me. You can’t believe how good it feels to be a legal citizen. I don’t have to spend my life waiting for the state police to toss me in some institution.”
“And the Sweethearts just let you go? Their best mechanic?”
Mona stopped at a stall and bought a couple of fresh rolls. They sat on upturned trash cans, eating the hot bread.
“It wasn’t that easy. Miguel turned up at Abracadabra Street one night with a bunch of muscle. Stefan let them get into the loading bay, then he turned on the spotlights. He told Miguel that the Sweethearts had forfeited their right to my services when they left me to die.”
“And the Sweethearts left it at that?” said Cosmo skeptically.
“No,” admitted Mona. “Stefan offered them a Myishi Z-twelve prototype nitrous racer in return for my ticket out of the gang.”
“Stefan bought you?”
Mona punched him on the shoulder again. “No, Cosmo. He bought my freedom. That’s why we’re riding in the Pigmobile these days. And that’s why we’re down here looking for an ancient manifold.” Mona finished her snack, throwing the wrapper in a street incinerator. “Let’s go. We have some negotiating to do.”
Cosmo followed Mona down a narrow alley that reeked of raw sewage and motor oil. Rats tussled over food scraps, and rust mites burrowed into exposed patches of girder on the pig-iron walls. Mona pulled aside a lank oil-stained cloth. Behind it was a steel door with a security camera. Mona tapped on the safety screen. “Hola, Jean-Pierre, open up.”
Nothing for a moment, then a crackle of static. “Mona Vasquez, you’re still alive. Who’s the kid?”
“Cosmo is with me. I can vouch for him.”
The locking bars were remote opened, and the door swung aside. “Come on in, but don’t touch anything.”
They stepped into a mechanic’s dream. The very walls appeared to be constructed from car parts. Everything from the latest plasma converters to ancient combustion engine components. They passed a maze of auto-parts walls and several cars in various stages of repair.
A tall slender man was buried to his waist in the engine of a Krom six-wheel-drive. His fine blond hair was tied back in a ponytail and every exposed inch of his skin was blackened by oil and exhaust fumes.
“Hey, Jean-Pierre, what’s happening?”
The man extricated himself from the engine, pulling off magnifier goggles. “Vasquez, ça va? What’s happening is that you are about to pay me the hundred dinars that you owe me for that exhaust box.”
Mona laughed. “Vaya al infierno, Jean-Pierre. Go to hell. That exhaust box was full of filler. It blew up after a hundred miles. What I should do is kick your French behind all over this shop.”
Jean-Pierre shrugged. “Très bien. Okay, you can’t blame a man for trying.”
“You owe me one and I’ve come to collect.” Mona threw the manifold on a workbench. “You get me one of these and we’ll call it even.”
“Even? You’re kidding me, Mona. These aren’t easy to come by. Eighty dinars, if I can find one.”
Mona folded her arms. “Thirty dinars, hombre. And you already know whether you have one or not.”
Jean-Pierre smiled broadly, his teeth bright against the oil. “Mona, I have missed you. Okay, thirty, but only because you make me laugh.”
Jean-Pierre disappeared between two metal-lined aisles.
“He’s the only half-reliable parts man in Booshka,” Mona told Cosmo. “Whatever you need, Jean-Pierre can get it or make it. The gangs leave him alone, because without him their rides would fall apart.”
Jean-Pierre returned, twirling a replacement manifold like a baton. There was a Parasite perched on his shoulder. Cosmo reared backward, knocking over a tower of hubcaps. “Mona! Look! Can’t you see it?”
The Frenchman frowned. “Hey, mon ami, watch the merchandise. What’s the matter with you?”
Mona didn’t bat an eyelid. “Ignore him, Jean-Pierre. He’s crazy. He swallowed too many fumes at the drag meets. Sometimes he sees things.”
Cosmo couldn’t take his eyes off the creature, crouched there, waiting. “Can’t we do something? Kill it?”
Mona picked up the hubcaps, glaring at him. “Shut up, Cosmo. There’s nothing there! Nothing, get it?”
Cosmo tried to read her brown eyes. She saw the creature, he was certain of it. “Nothing. I get it.”
“Good.” She counted out the dinar chips onto the workbench. Outside the blockade, most people used credit cards, but in Booshka, cash was king. “Here, thirty dinars.”
Jean-Pierre flicked the chips into a drawer. “The full thirty? Are you going soft on me, Vasquez?”
Mona took the manifold, resolutely ignoring the wide-eyed Parasite on Jean-Pierre’s shoulder. “No, I just know a deal when I see it.” She paused, eyes on the floor. “How have you been feeling lately?”
Jean-Pierre started. “Funny you should mention it. My chest feels tight. Just for the past few weeks. It’s probably nothing. I should go to a doctor in the city, but who trusts doctors, n’est ce pas?”
Mona looked the Frenchman in the eyes. “Get it seen to, Jean-Pierre. We’d all be lost without you.”
“Certainement. The customer is always right.” He pulled open a basket drawer on the wall. “Here, a set of plugs on the house, for my favorite customer.”
Mona pocketed the plugs, then kissed Jean-Pierre on the cheek. The Parasite casually moved out of her way. “Goodbye, Jean-Pierre. And thank you.”
The Frenchman rubbed his cheek. “A kiss? From Mona Vasquez? You’re not sick, are you?”
Mona glared malevolently at the Parasite. “No, Jean-Pierre. I’m not sick.”
Mona refused to say another word until she and Cosmo had put two blocks between them and Jean-Pierre’s workshop.
“Those monsters. Sometimes they know when a person is in harm’s way.”
“Why didn’t we do something?”
“Do what? Blast a hole in the air in broad daylight? Jean-Pierre would have shot us himself. There’s nothing we can do here, no more than we can go shooting up hospitals. Maybe Jean-Pierre will have a heart attack and the Parasite will push him over the edge. Natural causes, you see. Or maybe the Parasite will just siphon off a few years. That’s the beauty of their race, no one ever knows. No crime, no foul, no suspect, no victim. You know, only a year ago, you would never see a Parasite out during the day. But now it’s happening more and more.”
Cosmo studied the growing crowds on the stree
t. It was harder to see the Parasites in the daylight, but they were there, squatting on their targets’ shoulders or shadowing them from overhead.
Mona saw him watching. “That’s right. They don’t like the light much, but they’re here. They don’t like water either. It won’t kill them, but a good soaking can suck the energy right out of them. That’s why every day I pray for rain.”
“Is that it, then? Once a Parasite selects you, it’s all over?”
“Not necessarily. You can be saved by paramedics, or beat the odds, or like us, not go out on patrol that night. Parasites don’t generally show up until the incident occurs, but sometimes the smell of death is too strong to resist.”
They hurried through Booshka, toward the blockade. Cosmo kept his head down, terrified to draw attention from the Parasites. Scared that his gaze would attract one of them down to perch on his shoulder.
“Leaving so soon?” said a voice.
Miguel and the Sweethearts were hanging over a rail, three stories up.
“Gotta go,” replied Mona. “I got work to do.”
“You should stick around, chiquita. There’s something big happening tonight. We’re unveiling the Myishi Z-twelve. We’re going to clean up.”
“Really? Maybe you should give it a miss. I hear the smog is bad later.”
Miguel laughed. “What are you talking about, girl? The Sweethearts don’t care about no smog. Tonight we have business to take care of.”
Cosmo glanced upward, from the corner of one eye. Half a dozen Parasites had adhered to the wall above the Sweethearts’ heads, round eyes staring almost fondly at their targets.
Mona continued walking. “Looks like we’re going to be busy tonight too.”
CHAPTER 5
Sweethearts & Bulldogs
Twelve hours later Cosmo was back down in Booshka; this time in the back of the Pigmobile with the other Supernaturalists. Mona parked in the shadow of a corrugated sheet-metal awning opposite the Sweethearts’ headquarters, an abandoned police station inside the blockade. Outside, everything was locked down for the night, and the streets were deserted, apart from roving groups of youths and homeless wanderers.