The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy

by Mark D. Diehl

  Soup, just like Laurel the Chicken.

  Was her pride worth fighting for? Her health? Nothing like that mattered as much as survival, right now. She retched a bit but she made herself turn around, slapping her hand down on the counter. She needed something to cover herself, she didn’t have much time, and things would only be increasingly hopeless from here on out.

  “Everything’s off limits,” she said. Her voice stuck and she cleared her throat. Tears ran down her hot face. “Except the basics. You put it in, you fuck, and you’re gone. That’s it.”

  Better now than after the corporate birth control wears off.

  “All right.” He held out the jacket and she watched her hands slowly grasp it.

  “Smart girl,” he said. “And a tough bargainer for a Departed. You might just survive after all.” He put his arm behind her back and guided her toward the room.

  3

  A Zone Back Street

  Len showed the hooker his rig and bottle of powder. “You probably know some cheap hotels around here, huh?” he asked. “I don’t want anything but a place to sleep and maybe some food. I’ll share this with you and whoever we need to bargain with, if you can help me.”

  The woman sniffed, looking away.

  “Obviously I can’t hurt you,” he said, giving one pathetic breathy laugh at his own pitiful state. “We can have just… just a moment of peace, without pain,” he said.

  After a moment, she nodded. Len extended a hand and tried to help her up, but she was too heavy and he nearly toppled. They held onto each other for balance and he tried to start walking, but she seemed frozen in place.

  Was someone approaching? Len pivoted his head quickly, expecting a threat. Following her gaze he realized she was staring at the severed toe. “C’mon,” he said. “That’s not a souvenir you’re gonna want.”

  A Closed but Crowded Restaurant Outside Rio de Janeiro’s Cidade de Deus Slum, 1977

  Lucas Araújo lay curled on a sheet of plywood, which rested on a metal cart. Men tied his wrists together behind his knees. At sixteen years old, he was young and strong enough to have put up a good fight, but instead he remained compliant and still except for his body’s uncontrollable shuddering. This was a small storeroom, set off from the main dining and kitchen area where the mostly white-clad crowd danced and chanted in the ongoing Macumba ritual. The thick wooden door slightly muffled the sound as the drums repeated their quick but rhythmic do-DOONK, do-DOONK, do-DOONK.

  Just yesterday Lucas would have thought this man towering over him was an ordinary restaurant owner, whose establishment Lucas had attempted to burglarize. Today he had learned that this was the man known as o Caimão, the Caiman, famous as the most vicious gangster in the city. O Caimão had punctuated the lesson by repeatedly breaking the shinbone of Lucas’s four-year-old brother Vinicius with a hammer, crippling the boy and further burdening their already impoverished family.

  On the shelf near him were dozens of yellow cans reading “feijão,” the same as the can of beans he’d had in his hand when he was caught.

  “Let’s give you another pill, okay?” o Caimão said, opening a small brown bottle. Lucas gobbled it greedily from his palm. Even with two of these powerful tranquilizers already in his system, his body shook so much he was nearly toppling the cart.

  “You probably wonder why I give you these,” o Caimão said. “If I want to make a point, demonstrate my power to the community, shouldn’t I want you to scream and thrash? Wouldn’t that make them fear me most?” He grinned, making the puckered, acne-scarred flesh of his cheeks crease, but leaving his eyes cold and flat beneath his close-trimmed black hair. “There’s something more important than showing them I can cause you pain, boy. They already know that. But if instead I show them you’re willing to die for my agenda, well, that’s something else again. That’s how we change their fear into devotion. Your example will teach them to fear me, but also that my agenda is worth sacrifice, commitment, even piety.”

  The glassy black eyes stared down pitilessly as his captor continued speaking. “If you thrash and scream, it looks more like you were forced. But if they see you alive, submitting to my power, then they see that even your desire to live is subordinate to my will. They see devotion.”

  “They know you gathered my friends, my family, my neighbors,” Lucas slurred. “They know you caught me stealing from this restaurant, and you threatened to torture until death everyone close to me, before my eyes, unless I agreed. It is still fear.”

  “There is always fear in any dealing with true power,” o Caimão said. “How could there not be? But fear alone would not get us to this point, would not produce such a volunteer as you. Today your entire life energizes my expanding power and authority, teaching everyone that it is proper, even natural, to willingly lay down their lives for me. Besides, after you’re gone, there will only be me to tell the story. Your death stands for whatever I say, because I alone have the power to say it.”

  Lucas felt himself losing connection with his consciousness. All tension drained from his muscles.

  “Yes! Good!” o Caimão said. “Your eyes roll up, just like the Macumba men when they say they’re possessed by spirits. The guests will see this as some kind of sign. I don’t care what their superstition tells them, as long as their minds accept that I am worthy of reverence and awe.”

  Lucas felt his face droop toward the plywood. They were wheeling him into the main area now and a Macumba man was waving a dead rooster over him. The man had cut or yanked the tongue out of the chicken’s beak and it now sat in front of Lucas on the plywood. “You will speak the language of the dead,” the Macumba man whispered, biting a piece off of Lucas’s ear and lapping at his trickling blood. Lucas felt his own tongue swell in shock or disgust, but he was too drugged for much to register beyond that.

  O Caimão laughed. “They listen to this man, yet people say I’m crazy. He says he can follow you, see what happens after your death, by tasting your blood first. I let him, why not? It’s a community service.” He smiled impassively down at Lucas.

  The tempo of the drumbeats remained constant but they seemed to be hitting them harder: do-DOONK, do-DOONK, do-DOONK. The plywood levitated above the room.

  No. Not levitated. Men had lifted it. Lucas jerked and twitched, but it was true: In this drugged state, he was rendered incapable of mounting even symbolic resistance.

  The heat seared his eyes and lungs as they pulled down on the wide tubular handle and lowered the restaurant oven’s pitted white enamel door. The rectangular opening was too narrow for him to have fit if he hadn’t been bound this way. They pushed the plywood inside and slammed the door shut. Lucas was unconscious before his addled mind could make him scream, and then he separated from his body.

  Amelix Integrations Secure Research Memo

  Engineered Organism Division

  Dr. Reni Donova, H.S., DCS, Vice President

  AAA CLEARANCE LEVEL OR ABOVE ONLY

  Re: Projects RT1117 and RT1118: Communication by Unknown Means

  Dr. Donova, ma’am:

  This memo is to keep you informed of recent developments with the animals in Projects RT1117 and RT1118.

  The Generation 1 (G-1) rats were observed communicating with the Generation 2 (G-2) rats while in neither visual nor aural contact.

  An experiment was conducted in which each generation was intentionally disturbed/agitated while physically separated from the other. Both generations evinced ability to sense the agitation of the other and respond instantly, standing on hind legs with straight spines and eyes toward wherever the disturbance was taking place. When the agitated animals were relocated to more distant parts of the laboratory, the non-agitated generation still became concurrently alert and instantly located the other rats and the disturbance, in multiple trials. Though the mechanism of communication remains unknown at this time, the outcome is identical regardless of which animal group is directly disturbed.

  As you know, G1 was the first gro
up of animals directly exposed to the symbiotic fungus now known among those with clearance as the “Deity Strain,” internal catalog #616Tr3312s. G2 was exposed only to air exhaled by G1, not to the strain directly, for a period of sixty seconds before a complete flush with sterilized air. At no point have the animals seen each other or been caged in the same room. There appears to be no difference between the generations as to the sending and receiving of communications.

  An experiment is being designed to further test the modes of communication, beginning with a screen for subsonic and ultrasonic waves and progressing to scans to detect any anomalous electromagnetic waves. Detailed laboratory notes are available for your review in the DEO archives.

  Zabeth B.D. Chelsea, DCS

  A Zone Hotel Room

  Lucas gently stroked the face of the woman with whom this tortured, meatless body had checked in. That man had been Len, and he had been even poorer than Lucas had been back in Brazil. He had access to the memories of the man who had previously controlled this body, though that man existed no more in this world. Those memories showed that this body had injected a drug with the rig that now sat on the windowsill, while the woman had sniffed the same drug as powder through a tube.

  Her eyelids were fluttering now.

  She groaned and thrashed. “Shhh, shhh, shhh,” Lucas whispered. “It’s all right. Shhh, shhh.” He stroked her hair.

  Her eyes opened. He watched as she took in the room, the view out the window, the rig, and himself. He had done the same thing, matching his own perception of this world with the memories the other man had left him. She gasped suddenly and bent down to where her foot rested on a pillow, feeling the makeshift bandage fastened around the stump of her missing toe.

  “You are from some other place, some other time?” he asked, raising a shockingly skinny arm from where her neck had previously rested upon it.

  She nodded slowly, narrowing her eyes.

  “I am Lucas Araújo,” he said. “I am sixteen years old, from Brazil.” He watched her as she processed the information.

  “I… am Inti,” she said. “I remember that. But …”

  “It is confusing,” he said. “I felt the same when I woke. This place, this body, this language, all different. But I woke maybe two hours ago. Since then, I have been sitting here as you slept, letting the memories come to me. If you stay quiet and listen, the memories will come to you, too, I think. It’s good that you already remember who you are, your name. It took some time for me to see, because my memories are jumbled with someone else’s.” She wriggled and moaned. He gently touched her cheekbone with two fingers. “It is a pretty name, too, Inti.”

  “It means the sun,” she said. She paused, thinking, staying quiet like he had suggested. “I am… fourteen years old. Or, I was fourteen then. There are other memories, too. Other memories that are not mine.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I have those, too. From another person who is not here now. If you practice, you can let them blend together. What’s in your head that you did not live, it can help you see your own life differently.”

  She was quiet again, for a much longer time. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter, her speech much slower. “I believe that my life was several hundred years ago, though I do not remember so many years.” She fell silent, staring into space with a dreamy look. “I begin to see what you mean about letting all the memories work together. It is very strange. My home is the place these people would call Peru.” She smiled slightly. “I can see … a map. Not from my world, from this one. It has my mountains on it. I can read it and see that I am from Peru, and I can see Brazil, too, Lucas. It seems we were… neighbors, almost.” She turned on the bed they shared, to better face him.

  “And in your place, Peru, did you die, Inti?”

  She nodded again. “The village leaders said a maiden had to die, to please the gods and protect our home, our people. It was a great honor to give this gift to our people. I volunteered. They…they gave me strong drinks with alcohol and drugs, and they carried me up to the mountain.” Her eyes settled on him. He watched them soften as she discerned his new body’s extreme deterioration.

  “You died willingly for an agenda,” he muttered. He cleared his throat and continued in a clearer voice. “Now we’re back, you and I, to see the world our sacrifices have built. You can remember things the other woman knew?” he asked. “I am the same. The man who had this body is gone, but I know what he knew. It is the same for you, I think.”

  She shook her head slightly. “This person is not gone. I can feel her inside me. She still lives.” Inti gave him an amused smirk. “Perhaps we are different in this because while each man is just one man, every woman is many women.”

  He smiled back.

  “She thought this was cocaine,” Inti said, gesturing at the little jar of powder. “That’s a preparation from leaves my people chewed and used for tea.” She paused for a moment and then asked, “Do you know why we are here?”

  Lucas shook his head. “Maybe it’s because you and I both gave up our lives for others. Perhaps we’re back merely to live again, just to share this moment together.”

  The Place Mr. B’s Memories Called the Zone

  After he was relatively certain the Pink Shit had done its work on the Garbageman, Furius circled back to find him. Presumably, they would all eventually come searching for the new legion, but he was particularly looking forward to this man’s absolute obedience once he swore the sacramentum and became a proper legionary. In this case it was worth the extra nuisance of collecting him while still unconscious.

  Though, he supposed, like Furius himself, the legionary would be someone else, not actually the Garbageman. He would have already sworn the sacramentum a few thousand years ago.

  The Garbageman was nowhere to be found.

  While the Garbageman had ensured that Mr. B had no idea where he lived, it was relatively common knowledge that he had worked at the Dobo Protein Refinery. For now, he would just turn his attention to running down his list of B’s contacts and moving as much Pink Shit as he could.

  The Zone Hotel Room

  Addi’s foot throbbed, sending pain signals not just from the swollen part that remained, but even a phantom sensation from the missing toe itself.

  The sun was up. The window was caked with so much grime it was hard to see through, but there was no mistaking the daylight coming in. Why hadn’t they been thrown out yet?

  She remembered the drug and the girl in her head. There was no better way to make a seventeen-year-old prostitute feel like shit than to have a fourteen-year-old virgin inside her head, dredging up memory after memory of degradation and abuse. The visitor was shocked at every recollection, but kept forcing herself to dig deeper, layering new associations of disgust and horror on top of the memories Addi had tried to bury. Worse, the girl seemed to have fallen in love with this slabbie, who had given her the drug in the first place.

  The drug! She had used it to pay for this room. Charley at the desk downstairs probably had someone else in his head, now, too.

  If the sun was up now, it had been several hours since the Garbageman had taken her toe. That was several toes he would take, now, and still she had no money. The girl, Inti, had warm and sweet memories of just talking and cuddling with the slabbie all night. There’d been no way he could’ve done anything more than that, anyway, in his starved and exhausted state. Addi had never known before what closeness and intimacy felt like. The many protective walls she’d built around her psyche kept her from experiencing such things. Right now, though, there was no time to be sentimental or weirded out. They had to get out of this room and hopefully slip past Charley, and then she had to evade the Garbageman or suffer worse pain and disfigurement.

  “Hey,” she said, nudging him, searching Inti’s memory for his name. “Hey, Lucas. Time to go.” She put a hand on his shirtless chest and shook gently. His skin was cold and the shrunken body was stiff.

  “Sorry, Inti,” she sighe
d. “Your new love is dead.”

  Little Guadalajara, “La Guada,” the Zone

  “Arrulfo, it’s not good that you teach him to rely only on you,” a voice said. “He needs to have others in his life he can trust. This trip will be dangerous and if you go, he’s going to go, too, because you taught him to be glued to your side.”

  “Rosa, we have talked about this. It is difficult for him to trust people, but he has learned to trust me. Because I’m the only one he trusts, he needs me, he relies only on me.”

  “He can’t go with us.”

  “He can’t stay alone. He won’t.”

  The voices were in the hallway outside this room.

  Ernesto Silva ran the ballpoint of a long dead pen cartridge around the bearing track of the rear wheel hub from the bicycle he was restoring. There were little pits there, evidenced by the pen point’s wobbles and vibrations. He had a smooth stone with a nice corner that could fit into the track and gently abrade away the unevenness. The tiny bearings themselves were corroded and misshapen, too, but Ernesto could roll them against the flat part of his stone to smooth them. When he was finished the track would be slightly larger than the original manufacture and the bearings would be slightly smaller, but he could compensate by packing them with wax from a toilet seal he’d taken out of a crumbling abandoned building.

  Someone knocked on the open doorframe behind him.

  The bike’s axle wobbled as he rolled it against the floor. Ernesto always worked in this spot because he knew the floor was smooth and level. The wobble meant the axle was bent. It was as wide as his palm and nearly as thick as his pinky finger, made of hardened steel. There was no way to bend it back straight, even if he’d still had his pliers, which had been stolen. He did have a fist-sized rock with a rounded point he could use to pound the axle against the floor. That could make it straighter than now, but it would also introduce new pits for him to have to smooth out again. Even after pounding it that way, the axle would never be truly straight.