High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel

by George R. R. Martin

  Marcus pushed the thoughts away, shocked at himself. What the fuck? Why would you even think that? Instead, he pulled up Olena’s face. The one he knew, not the flip side that he now feared was behind it. He wondered how he could’ve forgotten her for even a second. Her face, and with it he remembered what they were doing and why and what could be after they escaped this place. That’s what they were going to do. Not join in the horror, but escape it. He tried desperately to hold on to that.

  Cool the fuck down, Marcus. Five minutes. Five minutes and we’ll get out of here.

  The only problem was that he doubted they had five minutes. His skin itched. Adrenaline coursed through him, screaming at him, ripping at every fiber of his being, telling him to flee. To fucking flee right now. There was the guard, but he could kill that fucker in an instant. Smack him with his tongue and pick up his Uzi or whatever the fuck it was and squirm. Anyone got in his way he’d shoot them to pieces. He could see it in his mind, bodies jerking, limbs twirling away, heads exploding. He’d kill every crazy fucking thing in here.

  Marcus looked at him, mouth awash with the glorious tang of poison. He didn’t strike.

  The man’s small eyes were pinned to something in the distance, so intense in their fear that Marcus forgot his sudden murderous anger. He turned. Something large was moving on a street adjacent to the green space in front of the casino. He couldn’t see it yet, just the shadow of it cast huge against the buildings. Slow moving, many limbed. Massive.

  “No,” Marcus said. Whatever was about to step into view … No. He didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want it to exist. No, it shouldn’t and hadn’t and couldn’t exist. Just no.

  The creature had many legs. Tall, spindly things, jointed like a spider’s. But it didn’t move like a spider. It progressed forward slowly, both deliberate and meandering at the same time, like some prehistoric giant grazing. Its bulbous body looked, from a distance, to be spotted with blotchy stains. Above it a massive, tentacle-like head. Marcus knew it was a head by the way it moved, turning this way and that as if it were looking around. It had no eyes that he could make out, but still he was sure it could see. No mouth or ears, but he knew it was a head.

  “Are you seeing this?” Marcus asked.

  The thug didn’t say anything. Of course he wouldn’t, but yeah he was seeing it.

  Marcus knew without any lingering doubt that this was no crazy night of bizarre jokers let loose on Talas. He’d suspected that for some time, but seeing this thing … Seeing this he knew in every molecule of his body that it wasn’t of this earth. It was other, and not even other like jokers were other. Something else. Much worse.

  Once in the clear, Marcus realized what the creature was doing. Though it walked with what looked like randomness, it wasn’t without purpose. Its legs swiped out at anyone near enough to reach. It shoved the people—creatures, jokers, monster, whatever—into its pocked body. What he thought were blotches were cell-like divots. Once jammed in there, the people thrashed and fought, but they were stuck. And soon they grew still. The creature passed over dead bodies, ignoring them, snatching only the living.

  “It’s grazing,” Marcus said.

  As if words were all he was waiting for, the thug lost it. Letting out a scream, he ran forward, Uzi blazing as he did so. He shot wildly: at the body, the legs, up at the head that turned and studied him with more disinterest than alarm. He nearly got under the monster. He tilted his weapon to unload into its underbelly. That’s when one of the legs lifted. It swiped around in a motion that started slow but morphed into deceptive speed. It snatched the man up and shoved him, still screaming and firing, into one of the pits in its undercarriage.

  The amorphous head turned toward Marcus, who had slithered forward when the man attacked. The creature eased its bulk toward him, like an ocean liner making a slow turn. Marcus drew back into the casino’s entryway. He hid in the shadows, pushing his tail back into the farther dark. He waited, trying to keep his breathing from rasping too loudly. He couldn’t. The great underbelly of the thing grew closer, but he couldn’t see the head anymore. He could feel the weight of its steps making the ground tremble. He could’ve squirmed farther in, but he was transfixed. The creature shifted again. It turned and showed him its side and moved on, legs taking their slow, ghastly steps.

  There were so many cells, pits like smallpox scars, each the perfect size for whatever had been shoved inside it. Each pit pulsed and relaxed, squeezed its inhabitant and then let go. Each time the people inside died a little more. One after another emaciated faces slid by Marcus. Skin shrunken to skulls. Cavernous eyes and bulging cheekbones, bare skulls as hair sloughed away. Some of them looked at him. That was the worse part. They were so desolate. Faces of people who knew the truth of the world and had been shattered by it. Marcus had seen faces like that before. Black and white images that he couldn’t place. But yes, he had seen them. He tried to remember where.

  Ray and Angel met Lonnegan and Stevens, as arranged, on the lowest step leading up to Fort Freak’s main entrance, away from the trickle of traffic entering and leaving the precinct house so that they couldn’t be overheard if they spoke quietly. Which they did.

  “What’s the latest?” he asked Lonnegan.

  The detective shrugged. “They’re interrogating the thugs who fell from the ceiling. But they’re just dumbfucks with guns who were looting the casino. And their story is … confused. At best.” She paused. “And Norwood.”

  “We got in touch with the family,” the Angel said. “They’re coming in to claim possession of the body.”

  Lonnegan nodded. “At least they have that.”

  “At least,” the Angel agreed. “Others—Father Squid—who knows who else?—are still missing.”

  “The jokers are telling their stories,” Stevens said.

  “Who ordered them held incommunicado?” Ray asked.

  Lonnegan and Stevens exchanged glances.

  “Mendelberg,” Stevens said.

  “Why?” Ray asked loud enough to draw a glance from a passing cop.

  “We don’t know. Maseryk’s pissed,” Stevens said. He looked worried. “I hope he’s not in on—”

  He shut his mouth, suddenly.

  “On what?” Ray asked, his voice suddenly smooth as silk.

  Lonnegan and Stevens exchanged glances again.

  “Whatever the hell that’s been going on in the precinct,” Lonnegan said frankly. “Mendelberg is gone. Took off mid-shift. No one knows why.”

  Ray nodded. “Someone call her residence?”

  “Several someones,” Lonnegan said, “including Maseryk. He wants me to check out her residence.”

  “That’s a start,” Ray said. “Why don’t you take Angel with you?” He turned an eye, suddenly frowning. “I’ll take the kid here and he can introduce me to the intricacies of the precinct house. There’s some stuff I’d like to check up on. Some interrogations I’d like to observe.”

  “Uh,” Stevens said.

  Lonnegan nodded judiciously. “Good idea.”

  “What about Maseryk?” Stevens asked.

  “You let me worry about Maseryk,” Ray said. He turned to the Angel. “Be careful,” he said. “Now we got teleporters involved, Kazakh gunmen, and God alone knows what the fuck else will turn up next.”

  “You too,” the Angel said. She wanted to kiss him, even briefly, and she knew Billy knew it, but he smiled his somewhat crooked smile, and gripped her hand, warmly, briefly.

  He looked to Lonnegan, nodded, and said crisply, “Good luck.” She nodded back and he turned and took the steps at a methodical jog, Stevens following in his wake.

  “Come on,” Joan said to the Angel. She gestured with her head in the direction opposite to the one the boys had gone. “Let’s go get my car.”

  “And then?” the Angel asked, falling in step. They were of a height, the Angel fractionally taller, and they matched strides, walking fast.

  “We find Mendelberg.”

 
“If she’s really not at home?”

  “We hope we don’t find her body.”

  The Angel had to agree. They walked on, reaching a busier street and getting glances and the occasional catcall from the cheekier onlookers and passersby, as was not uncommon in the city, not even Jokertown.

  “A girl hanging out with you could get a complex pretty quickly,” Razor Joan commented.

  The Angel glanced at her, looked away. “You’re very pretty yourself.”

  Lonnegan unself-consciously ran a hand through her long blond hair. “I do all right,” she said. “But you look like a young Sophia Loren, Jesus Christ, look at you—”

  “Don’t—” the Angel began automatically, then cut herself off. She wasn’t sure why. It was hard for her, talking like this with another woman.

  “Don’t what?” Lonnegan asked. Her expression was quizzical, almost innocently.

  “Don’t blaspheme,” the Angel said. She could feel herself blushing. “I—” She paused. She couldn’t say, I’m sorry. “I grew up in a very religious home.”

  Lonnegan snorted, not in an unfriendly manner. “So did I. And look how I turned out. I drink and I smoke pot—it’s true what they say; cops get the best weed—and I fornicate and I take the pill and I kill people.”

  “So do I,” the Angel said. “Except for the drinking. The pot smoking. And taking the pill.”

  “Well,” Razor Joan said, “I admit that I’m not big on the drinking part, but if you’re a cop and you want to have a good relationship with your co-workers, you have to drink some. Pot on the other hand—it really makes for some incredible sex.”

  The Angel had never talked about this before, but somehow the words came. “Billy and I already have that. I’m not sure I could handle it if it was even more incredible.”

  Razor Joan laughed, again, in not an unkind manner. “Why you sweet little Southern thing, you! Well, not so little, obviously.” She paused, then asked wickedly, “I noticed you didn’t deny the fornication part.”

  “Well … It was a sudden thing when we met. After all, the apocalypse was just around the corner and I had never…”

  “The Apocalypse? Good Lord! Uh—no blasphemy intended. We do have to sit down sometime and talk. Well—I suppose that’s as good a reason as any to lose your virginity … although that Apocalypse never did happen, did it?”

  “Of course not,” the Angel said. “We stopped it.”

  “We do have to sit down and talk some time,” Lonnegan muttered. “So, not to pry—well, screw it, I am prying. Isn’t it kind of dangerous, you and the mister trying for a baby?”

  “Huh?” The Angel was nonplussed.

  “Well, you didn’t cop to using birth control and you know what is most likely to happen when two aces have children.”

  “Oh.” It was a fact of life for the Angel that she’d lived with for so long that she hardly ever thought of it. And yes, she did know what happened, usually, when aces had children. Genetic laws were such that the odds were that it would die a horrible death. There was a slight chance that it would live as a terribly deformed joker. The possibility that it would draw an ace from the deck of the wild card was infinitesimally small. But still, the Angel had met John Fortune, the son of two aces, who’d been a good boy who turned into a courageous man, so there was always hope. If it were possible that she could bear children.

  “Doesn’t apply,” she told Lonnegan. But she wasn’t yet ready to delve deeply into her personal life with a stranger. “I’m sterile.”

  Lonnegan realized she’d struck a nerve. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” The Angel saw her flustered for the first time. “They have treatments now—”

  The Angel shook her head. “Not a chance.” She stopped. A delicious aroma was wafting down the avenue. She realized that she hadn’t eaten for hours, as did her stomach, which grumbled audibly and angrily. She knew that she needed refueling. She stopped, pointed to the hot dog cart parked by the curb, a dozen feet ahead of them.

  “Hungry?” she asked Razor Joan, who was still observing her closely, as if trying to unravel an enigma.

  “Sure. I could use something before we head off for Brighton Beach.”

  The Angel nodded and turned to the joker vendor who wore a white, puffy chef’s hat and a less than spotless white apron.

  “What can I get you ladies?” He had a spatula in one hand, a can of soda in the other, an open bun in his third, and a squeeze bottle of mustard in the one that grew out of his chest. The smell of onions and peppers popping on the grill drew a rush of saliva to the Angel’s mouth. They’d rushed off to the meeting without getting a bite of breakfast.

  “Six brats with the works—onions, peppers, and sauerkraut—and three Dr Peppers.” The Angel turned to Lonnegan. “What do you want?”

  Lonnegan laughed in sheer disbelief. “I’ll have two dogs with sauerkraut and mustard.” She laughed again. “Some of us have to keep an eye on our figures.”

  “Mollie!” Dad’s voice floated through the portal to Idaho. “Jesus Christ, what the hell are you waiting for?”

  I’m safe, she reminded herself. I’m smart, I’m safe, I’m quick. Smart enough not to venture outside these locked quarters, safe behind a locked door, quick enough to get away if anybody tries to break in. I’m okay. They can’t get me.

  She returned to the closet. “Heads up!” she called. She pushed the liberated safe through to Idaho. It crashed to the floor of the barn to smash against a pair of mangled slot machines. Dad and Brent hauled the safe aside and went to work with more hydraulic tools while the other boys kept pounding on the pile of slot machines. Judging from the mounds of coins it appeared they’d gotten the hang of opening them.

  Mollie dragged Baba Yaga’s bed aside. Then she moved the portal so the lines for the hydraulic cutter could reach the safe in the floor. The whine of the cutting tool helped to drown out the screaming and shooting and murdering of the pitched battle from elsewhere inside the casino. It would be over quickly; how could an unarmed homicidal cannibal flashmob hope to overpower angry Ukrainian and Kazakh mobsters armed to the teeth with automatics?

  She tried to focus on extricating the safe. But all she could see was the baby, its head impaled on an iron fence post, passersby tearing viciously at each other in the scramble to consume the twitching infant … Why WHY WHY the fuck would people do that? What the hell had happened out there? It made her so goddamned angry she boiled over with an empowering rage that made her invincible. It was sick and wrong and she needed to make those motherfuckers understand … Maybe she’d smash their faces against metal spikes and see how they liked it … They’d cry for mercy and repent when it was her teeth in their throats, her fingers gouging their eyes …

  The cutting tool died out. So did the lights. It was as though the creeping blackout on the street had oozed into the casino to play havoc with the power here, too.

  Distracted by her own swelling sense of rage, and the nightmare vision playing on endless loop inside her mind’s eye, and half deaf from the residual whine of the hydraulics, she didn’t hear the footsteps. She didn’t realize she wasn’t alone until a double loop of hydraulic lines and electrical cables snapped tight against her throat. She dropped the cutter, fingers scrabbling at the bands of plastic and rubber pinching off her windpipe.

  “Cunt! You fucking cunt!”

  Spittle misted the side of her face as Brent screamed in her ear. He hauled on the cables hard enough to physically yank her off her feet. Flecks of more spittle pattered against her neck while he screamed at her, while her fingers clawed ineffectually at the cables around her throat, while her lungs burned, while her dangling feet kicked wildly for purchase.

  A red veil fell over the contracting world. Baba Yaga’s bedroom and all of her furniture—her enemies, her victims—retreated to the end of a narrow tunnel. Mollie flailed, squirmed, kicked, but Brent was too big, too strong, too enraged. The cables cut into her neck. Just before the lights went out, a voice whispered to her
from the past, from vastly better days: Be smart.

  Mollie created a doorway to Idaho under Brent’s feet. Together they fell from Talas to the family barn. The impact jarred him hard enough to loosen his grip. She rolled away through dirt and straw, unwrapping the cables around her throat. Mollie sucked down air with explosive gasps. The red veil over the world receded, leaving a pounding headache and incandescent rage in its wake.

  That motherfucker. First he booby-trapped the refrigerator with a mousetrap, then he fucking tried to strangle her while she was in the middle of trying to make them all rich. She’d slash him open, and strangle him with his own intestines, she had no choice he was infected with a madness that only she could see a festering boil filled with pus that could only be cleansed tying it off with his own entrails and pulling tightly to rupture the cyst and then she would consume the madness before it reinfected the others consume it transform it spit it out reborn reformed repurposed they didn’t understand she had to show them but Jim and Troy were too busy smashing at each other with crowbars to hear the truth of her revelation and she couldn’t find a blade for opening Brent’s stomach but there were knives in the kitchen blades for cleansing toward the house she went but Dad was in her way Dad looming over her with a pitchfork and he had the infection too and she had to cleanse him but he lunged at her she leapt aside and then the screaming started again as the tines went through Brent’s stomach because Dad knew the only cure was to be found in her brother’s innards so he twisted the fork and Brent screamed again but Dad was doing it wrong and he’d never cure his own sickness this way so she folded space and then the pitchfork tines went through a hole in Brent into Dad’s own gut and he screamed and dropped the pitchfork as the red sickness seeped out of him but the thing wearing Troy’s skin planted another crowbar blow to Jim’s face and she had to cure him too but now Dad held the pitchfork handle like a staff and he swung it at her head cracking against her temple swinging bashing kicking at her smashing at Mollie breaking her concentration—