by Gemma Files
This fatal Widow’s kiss he’s waited for, in vain, for oh so very long—Prendegrace’s familiar poison, seeping into Jean-Guy’s veins, his heart. Stopping him in his tracks.
All this—blood—
Blood, for all that blood shed. The Revolution’s tide, finally stemmed with an offering made from his own body, his own—damned—
—soul.
Prendegrace raises red lips. He wipes them, pauses, coughs again—more wetly, this time. And asks, aloud:
“By your favor, Citizen . . . what year is this, exactly?”
“Year Zero,” Jean-Guy whispers back.
And lets himself go.
Flare
I RENT A BASEMENT apartment in Chinatown. That was one of the terms of my contract. With my kind of hours—8:00 PM to 6:00 or so the next morning—I need a place to sleep undisturbed, insulated from noise or light. My bedroom is a sweaty concrete box with a single, carefully bricked-up window. On those rare occasions when I wake before sunset, I lie there and watch the tiny chinks between mortar and stone widen as the draft leaks in off Spadina, making the dust motes dance. I hear my landlord, Mr. Pang, open his refrigerator door to check that none of the eggs has hatched while he was out. Outside, a crazy woman sorts garbage and sings.
Eventually, I get up. And go to work.
* * *
Sometimes I dream. Then the walls melt in a rush of sand and sickening heat: Dar es ‘alaf, 1991. A radio blares Megadeath as we turn and run, choking on equal parts nerve gas and dope fumes. Screams rise, and crunching, while we tear at the wall of corpses around us with our bare hands, desperate to escape—
—the wave.
A wave of flame. Twenty, thirty, fifty feet high and tiger-bright, guttering milk-blank smoke. It sweeps down, implacable. Over and around and through us. Until we’re nothing but ash on the desert wind, blown high and wide, up into an endless sky.
It’s always the same.
In the dream, I am never afraid.
In the dream, I am the fire.
* * *
At 8:30 PM this evening, the telephone hissed. I caught it up.
“Yes.”
“Where you been?” Battaglia whined.
I assumed it was a rhetorical question. “You know my schedule.”
“Yeah, well—Charlie wants to see you.”
I snagged one black boot, scanning the room for its mate. “That much is obvious.” Rummaging underneath the lip of my bed, I felt the edge of something vinyl, and dragged it free: Success. “When?”
“Right now.”
“Then tell him I’ll be late,” I said, and hung up.
Five minutes to change my underwear and wriggle into my bodysuit, five more to the garage, three more on top of that to load my belt and kick-start my bike. Twenty-five minutes later, I braked in front of Myczyk Trash Removal.
Charlie was already inside, waiting for me.
* * *
I opened Charlie’s office door without knocking, and found him in his usual spot—behind the desk. Battaglia leant against the left-hand corner, smoking nervously. I gave that game up ten years ago, myself, and have never regretted it since. A filthy habit.
Not to mention dangerous.
“Myczyk.”
“Vosloo.”
We looked each other over. A study in not unpleasant contrasts—big Polish-Italian gangster, little Korean-South African arsonist: Our cultural mosaic at work. And pretty nicely, in his case, except for that scar creasing the left corner of his mouth into a permanent sneer . . .
As if I really had time for that sort of thing, anyway.
“The Spiro job, Vosloo,” Charlie said. “Been some complications.”
Spiro Garments, corner of Church and Queen. Last night. Simple torch job.
“Such as?”
He settled back in his chair. “Such as the stiff in the cellar. Firemen got there first. Now the cops’re in on it too, and the press looks hungry—bad publicity, Vosloo.”
I folded my arms. “What can I say? PR’s never been my area of expertise.”
Charlie stretched—a predatory gesture. Then again, he could make pouring coffee look predatory. Sure impressed Battaglia, though; he almost dropped a new-lit Camel down the front of his shirt, then burned his fingers trying to catch it before it set his chest-hair on fire.
“Okay,” Charlie concluded, at last. “We’ll play it your way. Maybe you didn’t know he was there. Maybe you did, but you got carried away. You’re an artist, right? But here’s the thing, baby—cops trace you, the egg ends up on my face.” A pause. “Get it?”
“They won’t trace me.”
“Care to take a bet?”
He raised an eyebrow. I simply smiled.
“Why, Charlie. And I always thought you didn’t like to lose.”
Smoke hung in the air between us. When I left, my clothes would stink all night of Battaglia’s cheap aftershave (Selsun Blue?), mixed with the lingering reek of struck, sulphur-headed wooden matches.
“Are we done threatening each other now?” I asked.
Charlie narrowed his eyes. “If I wanted to wish you harm, Vocloo, believe me—you’d be harmed already.”
Cute turn of phrase. But I didn’t want to disillusion him; life’s a scary enough proposition, as it is.
“Fine, then. What do you want?”
He shrugged. “Look, I don’t have time to deal with this crap—that’s what I pay my lawyers for. I got a busy night ahead, and no time to play Sherlock Holmes Junior.”
“So . . . ?”
“So—you do it for me. Or you kiss your commission goodbye.”
I glanced over at Battaglia, who quickly looked away, took out a pocket knife, and started trimming his cuticles. I glanced back at Charlie, my own eyes narrowing. “We have a contract,” I reminded him.
Charlie didn’t answer.
“A contract,” I repeated. “You shook on it, right in front of me.”
Battaglia began whistling in mid-tune, something that could have been “Camptown Races” on the world’s worst day.
“Just remember that,” I said. And left.
* * *
It happens all the time.
I saw a picture, once: Two legs sitting in front of a blank TV set, the skin of their upper thighs fried so crisp it had partially melted to the chair beneath. Nothing else. Just a big pile of ash and a black spot on the ceiling which—on closer examination—turned out to be rendered grease. Investigators later found a tooth, embedded deep in the off-centre of the TV’s shattered screen.
They call it spontaneous human combustion.
I used to wonder how it would feel, back then. A stirring in the stomach, like really bad indigestion? A warm breath on the back of your neck? A fine red seed at the base of your spine, suddenly slapped awake, like some fire chakra primed to spark and bloom?
And then . . .
. . . the wave.
Like lava. Like the airless heart of a furnace. Like Ground Zero.
Like love.
* * *
“Maia Vosloo,” Harry Orphan repeated. He rolled my name in his mouth, like a pickled egg. “Long time, lady. Never thought I’d see you here.”
“In the Mood Ring?”
“Alive.”
Harry and I had met at Dar ‘es Alaf, before the wave. He’d been covering American women in action, or—as he put it—“The Babes Behind the Bombs.“ I was infantry, which hadn’t interested him much until I’d pointed out that if he followed my platoon long enough he was sure to be in line for a few charred civilians, not to mention a nice, juicy prospective “Why Are We in Kuwait?” sob-piece.
Ah, the simple pleasures.
Harry tugged at his wispy beard. I knew what he saw: A tiny woman wrapped scalp to sole in black vinyl, goggles sc
rewed down tight over the slits in her fetishistic full-face mask. A plastic zipper where my smile should be. I run a normal body temperature of one hundred and thirty degrees; in daylight, with my suit on, I can make thermometers explode.
Curiosity notwithstanding, Harry didn’t ask about my clothes. Or where I’d been for the last five years. Or whether or not my discharge had been . . . honorable.
I thought I could trust him. For a while.
“Harry,” I said, “I have a problem.”
I sketched in the details, and watched his color fade.
“Oh, Maia. Oh, shit.”
I went on, keeping my tone plausible. “You know me, Harry. Nothing if not professional. For murder, I charge extra—and I don’t recall my fee being anything out of the ordinary.” I paused. “I’ve been framed.”
He gulped. “Well, what do you think I can do about it?”
“Just a bit of extracurricular research. Access to your terminal at work.”
He bit his lip. “I don’t know.”
“If you can’t help me, Harry,” I said, softly, “I certainly understand.”
Harry sighed. He bit his lip again, worrying at it. He brushed back his thinning curls with one visibly sweaty palm.
Hurry up, I thought.
“Tonight?” He asked, at last.
“That’d be nice.”
He stood up. I joined him, pushing back my chair as he fumbled with his coat. “This place closes at one,” he said. “What say we take a stroll?”
And out we went, across the asphalt, neon reflections running like rain beneath our feet.
* * *
I let Harry struggle with the door’s lock for a full minute before I offered to help. “Thanks,” he gasped, and stepped aside. I heard him breathing raggedly, over my left shoulder, as I stooped to examine it. Not exactly complex. I removed a hairpin from my kit—not one of those half-plastic Western ones with its ends tipped in resin, but a true kanzashi of solid, blue-honed steel—and thrust it between the tumblers, as far as it would go.
Then I stood up again, and kicked the door in.
Harry’s editor’s office was cramped, and smelt of mouldy pizza. I’d expected as much. The Nova Express was nobody’s New York Times, just an underground rag with (fairly) new management that’d finally made the long plunge into a haze of recycled, high-yellow tabloid headlines: Two-headed feti, cannibalism, miracle cancer cures. They’d paid big bucks for Harry, though, mainly because he always knew just the right angle for a celebrity car crash, or a particularly gory industrial accident.
“What was the name of that building, again?”
“Spiro Garments,” I repeated, absently. A faded centrefold hung above the filing cabinet; she looked vaguely familiar to me. Closer examination placed her as my third-to-last landlady, the one whose house I’d had to take out after she broke my lease.
“Uh huh.” Tapping ensued, then stopped. Harry peered at the screen, pale yellow letters reversed and flashing across his lenses.
“That’s weird,” he said.
“What?”
He beckoned me over. A copy of the structure in question’s original bill of sale appeared onscreen, signed by one Albert Spiro. Harry scrolled down to show a will, recording the warehouse’s passage from Spiro—now dead—to one Giancarlo Stada.“
“Stada—”
“—witnessed the first deed, and collected on the second,” Harry agreed. “Now look at this.”
More tapping.
Stada, I thought. I’d heard it before, though in what context eluded me.
“Bingo,” Harry breathed.
Three articles, all set at Spiro Garments. Two were dated 1946. SHOOT-OUT IN CHURCH, FIVE DEAD. Ernst Vandecker had been arrested in the basement of St. Joseph of Arimathea’s after killing most of his gang and a pair of cops. AUSCHWEISS DIAMONDS STILL SOUGHT, read the second. Vandecker’s loot, for which he got a hundred and ten minimum with no parole, hadn’t been found yet. The last piece was an obituary-sized announcement from 1952. St. Joseph’s, bought by Stada, was going to be demolished to make way for a warehouse.
Stada.
Harry shook his head. “Dead end, Maia.”
But Ulrich would know who he was.
“Maybe not,” I said.
Then I heard footsteps.
Light, slow, and measured. Accompanied by a racing blur of heartbeats, a collective wheeze of imposed silence. Two, or more likely three. Probably armed. Definitely dangerous.
Outside the door.
“Get down,” I hissed, pushing Harry under the desk.
“What the—?”
The first shot popped over my head with a hiss-crunch of breaking glass, defacing the centrefold behind me. I palmed a smoke grenade and pulled the pin, lobbing it hard through what was left of the editor’s splintered name. The door bulged inward as it blew, and a boiling blue cloud filled the room. One gunman screamed as he caught some shrapnel in his leg and stumbled, snapping cartilage. Another shot erased the computer’s blinking screen.
“Window!” Harry gasped, teeth phosphorescent in the glare.
I nodded.
He threw the chair against the glass, then struggled to rip away the wire grating beyond. I stepped forward into the heart of the smoke and paused, listening.
Just two men after all. One was already down, holding his knee. The other whirled, aiming for where my head should be. I kicked him in the stomach. He staggered, then lunged—
—to catch my glove.
His nails snagged it, ripping it.
Oh, nonononono.
“I really wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” I said, reasonably enough. He just snarled. I sighed, and shrugged.
“Have it your way, then.”
And the rip grew wider, peeling back. Peeling open like the crack of an unlocked door. Still wider. Until, at last, the skin began to show.
“What the hell—?”
He flinched back, light spilling up at him.
Too late.
My hand tightened on his, flesh scalding at my touch. He gasped, too surprised to scream. Because something was coming, spiraling up inside me, spilling out around me. Ground zero for the wave, arched fifty feet high. Shimmering.
And hot.
Harry looked back, already half-thrust to safety, and froze—so I pivoted and kicked him the rest of the way through.
“Lady—” my hired gun said, or started to. But the dust motes burst aflame, all at once, and seared his throat to silence.
I put a finger to his lips.
“Sssh,” I said. “It’ll be over before you know it.”
He threw up his hands, pleading, and the room went white.
* * *
It was raining steadily now. Police cars screamed by as I dragged Harry through the alley, clambering over piles of old magazines and split garbage bags. He paused, mouth open, at the curb to watch me scrape a crushed tomato from my bootheel, simultaneously suturing my rip (fire in the hole, Vosloo; bank it quick) with some electrician’s tape from my backpack.
“Call a cab, Harry,” I said without looking up.
No reply.
“Harry.”
Harry licked his lips, and swallowed hard.
“You blew up my office,” he said.
I straightened, glove firmly re-rigged. Much trial and error had determined the quickest way to button up and prevent secondary explosions. The effort was proving well worth the cost.
“What are you?” Harry asked.
My shadow spilled over his like dark wine. Our eyes met. He flinched.
I shrugged. “What I’ve always been, Harry.”
Over his left shoulder the moon resurfaced briefly, a fish’s dark belly breaking water. “What Dar es ‘alaf made me. Saddam had gas bombs, so they issued us suits�
�but nobody really knew how they’d react under combat situations. They needed rats for the maze, and we were elected. It was a test. Operation Flare, they called it. And when that big wave finally came down, most of us melted down on impact to so much rubberized ash—but I rode the fucker all the way back home.
“Remember my platoon, Harry? Flax. Anderson. Doon. They’re spread thin across a ten-mile blast zone, out in the middle of the desert somewhere, because they just didn’t have what it takes to stare the fire down . . . whatever the hell that is. But me—”
I opened my eyes, only to find that the moon was gone. Inspected the tape: That famous Flare Effect once more safely throttled back to a hot little molecular shiver. Just an itch—which would eventually have to be scratched.
But not now. Not here under the rain-diffused streetlight with Harry trembling at my side.
“Me, I’m still here,” I finished at last. “And I do as I damned well do.”
* * *
It was 3:30 a.m. by the time we reached the Fallout Shelter. I prised the staff restroom window open, slipped inside, and settled down on the nearest toilet seat to wait. Harry stayed out under the sign, still shivering, hands thrust deep in his pockets. No complaints, no commentary, just a numb bemused kind of silence.
I can’t really say I minded.
At 4:58, I finally heard the door open. I thought it best to let him finish before stepping from the stall.
“Ulrich,” I said.
He wheeled, almost zipping up his testicles. “Christ Almighty!”
Not quite.
But seeing as his pants were back up, I thought we might as well get down to business.
“I need information, Ulrich.”
He peered at me through watering eyes. “Why me?”
“Because you’re my informant.”
“Right,” he muttered. “Okay, what about?”
“Ernst Vandecker, the 1946 haul. And a man named Stada.”
Ulrich sniffed. “Old news, Flare. So why should I bother?”
I smiled. “Just for kicks?”
Ulrich gulped reflexively, hiding it behind one palm. “Right,” he repeated. “Connect the dots, my favourite game. Okay.” He paused, thinking.
I gave him his moment. Rain beat through the open window, washing the peeling paint below it clean.