The Blue Blazes

by Chuck Wendig

  But Mookie knows what could happen. He’s seen worse.

  So when the train plunges through the tunnel before Penn Station, when his cell signal goes dead and out there in the darkness he sees the sparking blue of powerlines snapping, he feels his teeth grit, his eyes water, his balls cinch up toward his belly. He thinks he sees something, or someone, standing out there on an abandoned platform, lit by the sparking blue, but then the train moves and the shape is gone.

  Then it’s light and the muffled voice coming over the speakers.

  Penn Station, New York City.

  Mookie gets off the train.

  Everyone avoids him as he exits. It’s not just because he’s a big sonofabitch. It’s because he looks like he could knock the heads off their shoulders with but a flick of his wrist. It’s because he looks like he might eat them if he gets hungry enough. It’s because he looks like something out of a bad dream.

  Maybe he is.

  Dreams of hands pulling her down through water. Then into the muddy bottom. Bubbles in black muck. Down, through the mud, wriggling like a reverse worm, into the catacombs. The maze like a bundle of snakes, loops and whorls against loops and whorls, her running through tight tunnels that empty out into epic chambers, past glowing rock like tropical coral, past fungal shelves that smell of rotting meat, past an overturned shopping cart with a human skeleton draped upon it – skull-teeth clack-clack-clacking.

  Something chasing her. Away and into the dark.

  A black shape. Flinty, silver eyes – like hematite catching light.

  It’s faster than she is.

  Suddenly she’s above. City streets. Flickering lights. People are screaming. The earth shudders. Something dark coils around the Chrysler Building.

  Then: another sound. Feet stomping on rock. Like hooves on cobblestone.

  A hand falls on her shoulder–

  Big hand. Hard hand with scabs on the knuckles. A hard shove and she’s down on the ground. Palms stinging against asphalt. She rolls over. She sees. It’s him.

  “Daddy?” she says, voice damp and smothered – something in her throat –

  Nora awakens. Mouth gaping as if emerging back up through the water in her dreams, gasping and then gagging and then coughing. Mouth thick with the treacly mouth-breather spit-crust. She makes an ugh sound, fumbles on the coffee table – she fell asleep on the couch last night – for a bottle of iced tea. Not much in it and it tastes foul, but wet is wet and she doesn’t feel like getting up, not yet.

  There, next to the bottle, on the far side of a cat-chewed remote control, lies a small Altoids tin. She grabs for it, gently opens it, the little metal hinges squeaking.

  In the corner of the tin sits a small residue of blue powder.

  Just looking at it makes her heart flutter. Makes her brow hot.

  So little left. Less than a thimble’s worth. One use, maybe two.

  Part of her itches to use it. Grab it. Smudge it. Give into it.

  But she doesn’t. There’s no point. She has to be practical with this stuff. Reserve it for when she’ll need it most – and that time may be coming soon.

  As though on cue, her phone vibrates on the table. Screen lights up with a text.

  From her boy-toy:

  Will I see you tonight? <3 C.

  Another swig of rancid tea to wash down the bad taste and the worse dreams.

  “You bet your ass you will,” Nora says, texting him with a more moderate:

  l8r, yes.

  She holds the phone to her chest and smiles. The whole thing will flip soon enough. Thanks to her. And then she’ll have all the Cerulean she could ever want.

  And Daddy will have to ask her for permission to get a taste.

  Mookie gets a text from Werth. It’s the address. Then a follow-up text, all caps:

  WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU YOURE LATE

  Mookie doesn’t know what to say so he texts back nothing.

  He knows the address, at least. East Village. Little Poland. Tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Wila’s. Good golabki. Killer kielbasa.

  He thinks to take a cab, but most the time they don’t stop for a big scary bastard like him. And fitting into the back of a cab sucks. It always feels like one of his elbows is going to bust out a window, or his head is going to pop up through the roof. He’s been in tighter places – the Great Below isn’t always roomy, what with its tight labyrinthine hallways and suffocating chambers – but somehow the back of a cab always makes him feel claustrophobic. And out of control.

  And Mookie doesn’t like to feel out of control.

  But today, no choice. Cab’ll move quicker than he can on foot. And he’s already late.

  To stop a cab he steps out in front of one. Brakes screech.

  He gives the chipmunk-cheeked Sikh behind the wheel the address. The Sikh gives him a look of bewilderment and maybe even fear. But Mookie just growls and the man flips the meter and drives.

  At this hour, the streets are crowded. People going to work. Or looking for work. Or tourists coming into the city. A hippy woman on her cell bumps into a reedy little black dude struggling past with a Great Dane that looks more horse than dog. A Korean pushes a bike with a bent wheel. Homeless guys push shopping carts filled with cats and blankets, booze and busted-ass dreams. Men with loud ties pass women with short skirts. Children run to school, mothers trailing after.

  None of these people get it.

  It’s not their fault. He knows that. They’re ignorant. Blind. Eyes stapled shut. It’s like how nobody in this city looks at anybody else. They don’t look because they don’t want to see. Someone gets mugged, another yells “rape,” and nobody comes calling. People get beaten to death in stairwells, cries rising up through the building so that half the apartments can hear it, and by the time someone calls the cops, the body is cold, the blood is thick, and the killer is on the L train ten blocks away.

  They don’t know what lies beneath. What walks around them.

  Maybe it’s because they know. Secretly. They feel it vibrating in the deep of their bones, twisting in their stomach like an unspoken and misunderstood fear. Some part of the primal animal mind tells them, hey, right now, something awful – not someone, but something – might be walking right next to you. Sizing you up for a snack. Thinking to drag you down into the dark and stuff you full of its fingers and tongues and lay eggs in all your holes. The monsters are here. You know it, I know it – so why even look?

  Mookie’s not blazing. Not right now. So he’s just as blind as the rest of them.

  But that doesn’t change what he knows.

  He knows that the monsters are real.

  And they’re here. Hidden in plain sight.

  Skint is an ashy, dry-skinned albino. Sells flowers all around TriBeCa to make a buck. At least, that’s what he wants people to think. Nora knows him for something else: he’s a guy who brings people together. He knows everybody. Sets up meetings. He’s not an info broker like that Snakeface in Chinatown, but he can plant a whisper in every ear that matters.

  He’s also not human. Not all the way, anyway.

  He’s a half-and-half. Were she Blazing, she’d see a long-limbed freak with skin like cracked vellum and eyes like unpopped blood blisters.

  Thankfully, right now she’s Blind.

  She shoves a cuppa coffee in his free hand. In the other hand, he holds a bundle of roses. Other flowers sit in makeshift containers around his feet.

  “Little Miss Thing,” Skint says. “Whadda you want?”

  “Bought you Starbucks,” she says, smiling.

  “I don’t drink Starbucks. Their coffee tastes like burned pubes.”

  “I think you’ll like it.”

  “I said I don’t drink this nasty-ass–” Suddenly he stops. Weighs the cup, finds it lacking. Skint’s dusty eyebrows lift in a curious arch and he pops the top. He sees the money curled inside. “Yeah, OK. What?”

  “Don’t act so surprised I’m coming to you.”

  “I jus
t figured you were done in this town. Hadn’t heard much from you in the last few months. One minute you were selling Blue, next minute, poof.”

  A jogger in a blue knit cap almost knocks her off her feet. She gives him the finger and barks some profanity about the jogger’s mother, then turns back to the albino. “Yeah, well. Things cooled down. But I’m back. I need you to get word out.”

  “To who?”

  “To everybody. All the gang heads.”

  He looks at the cup. Then back at her. “This for that?”

  “It’s enough. Besides, when I’m done, there’ll be more. A lot more.”

  He’s dubious. That’s fine. Let him think she’s blowing hot air. He says, “I think you’re a bad investment, so let’s just call this charity, eh? What’s the message?”

  “I want you to tell them that the Boss is a dead man. That it’s time to take back the city. You tell them I have a guy on the inside and a plan to bring it all crashing down.”

  He laughs. “Big talk. And sounds like bullshit.”

  “Just tell them, already. Unless you like all this?” She sweeps her arms as if to encompass the grandeur of standing on a shitty city corner. “The Organization doesn’t think a split-skinned freak like you is fit to kiss Zoladski’s dirty shoes. You’re a nobody out here. A piece of monster trash. But that can change. You can make them kiss your feet. Then kick them in the teeth as they pucker up.”

  He pauses. Shifts from foot to foot, all anxious-like.

  “Yeah. Yeah, fine. I’ll tell them.”

  “Tell them all. And let them know I’ll be in touch.”

  Skint lifts the coffee cup as if to toast. “To the future, then.”

  Wila’s.

  Counter on the left. Register. Seats at the counter and a bunch of rickety tables and ratty booths. Everything cast in a color like old lemon meringue pie.

  No hostess here. Just a tired-looking waitress with hound-dog eyes and hair dyed so red it’s almost purple. She shows off a set of nicotine teeth, tells Mookie he can sit anywhere. He shakes his head. Points upstairs.

  “Oh,” she says. Then she gives him a sad smile. “You look like a growing boy. You want something to take up? Pierogie?”

  He does. He wants a pierogie. Or a link of kielbasa. But no time. He feels his mouth water like a dog staring at a steak.

  The waitress leads the way upstairs.

  The smells of the kitchen are strong here. Paprika and vinegar. Sharp bite of fennel. Garlic, too. Mookie wants to pause here on the steps, take it all in.

  But–

  The Boss awaits.

  At the top of the steps is a door with peeling blue paint. Mookie walks through.

  Nora stands across the street. Under the awning of a little café, pigeons dancing around her feet.

  She watches her father go into the Polish joint. Dumb monkey. The old man looks rougher than usual. Her poison did a number on him, but here he is, anyway. She knew it wouldn’t kill him; that was never a question. The Snakeface that sold it to her made sure it wasn’t the deadly stuff – just the “go the fuck to sleep” stuff. (She’s not sure how they know to milk different venoms from their nasty little… fang glands or whatever, they just do. And she’s content with that answer.)

  It’s in this moment that she realizes she has a lot of power.

  Right now, she’s privy to a secret meeting of lieutenants and higher-ups in the Organization. All gathered under a single, ill-defended roof.

  I could call the gangs.

  I could leak it to Smiley.

  I could stir up a pack of pissed-off gobbos looking for a chance to get back at the group of humans who have helped keep them bottled up and kept below.

  I could call up some hobo with a shotgun to kick down the door and blast all those a-holes into bloody bits.

  But she just stands there. Eating a Luna bar.

  She could do a lot of things. Instead, she does nothing. Just stands there. Eating a Luna bar.

  It’s all going to shake out the right way no matter what. Patience will win the day. She has her way in. The old man is going bye-bye. The house of cards will fall and she will be the one to help rebuild it.

  She tells herself it has nothing to do with the fact her father’s inside. Instead of sleeping off the Snakeface venom on the floor of his Podunk bar. That’s definitely not it. Because she hates him. That’s what she tells herself.

  The door bangs as it shuts. A big banquet room full of the Organization’s lieutenants turn and stare at him as Mookie comes through. Jimmy Luscas in his sharkskin suit. Maria O’Malley in a heavy wool turtleneck. Not far away, Saul Bloom gives him an irritated look over his dark-rimmed glasses like, The fuck is wrong with you? But fear flashes in Bloom’s eyes, too – fear of who Mookie is and what he does.

  These aren’t Mookie’s people. Not really. They know him. Or know of him. They operate business in the city: gambling, protection, prostitution, imports, exports, all of it. They don’t handle what goes on beneath the streets. That’s what Werth does. And beneath Werth is Mookie. On paper, Werth’s a lieutenant and Mookie’s a soldier, but that ain’t quite right, either. They’re a two-man operation, a broken branch of the Organization’s family tree. Werth’s got Mookie, and Mookie has his own people. Mole Men. Blue-sifters. Informants. Addicts.

  Werth appears, catches Mookie’s elbow. Werth, the old goat. Wiry chin hairs. One half-lidded eye. One gray tooth. And now, thanks to Mookie’s own daughter, a cane. Werth isn’t a classy guy – given half a chance he’ll hang around in a dirty polo shirt drinking bad beer – but he’s got a top-shelf cane. Black like volcanic glass. Topped with a silver goat head. He gives Mookie the same look Bloom gave him, and whispers: “You’re late, you big asshole.”

  “I know.” He doesn’t say why.

  “You look like hot hell. I told you to dress nice.”

  “Didn’t have time.”

  “Didn’t have–? You had all night. You know what, never mind. I swear to fuck, Mook, sometimes…” He shakes his head. “Haversham talked for a little while. The company man ran the numbers, I ’bout fell asleep standing up. No Boss yet.”

  “Yeah.” The lieutenants start to mill and mumble. Impatient types. Mookie says, “Sorry I’m late.”

  Werth sizes him up. Keeps his voice low. “You didn’t call me back last night.”

  “Like I said, I was–”

  “Tired, I heard you. Was it her?”

  “Her who?” But Mookie knows what he’s asking and who he’s asking about.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Mook. You get a chance to take her out, you need to take her out.” He lowers his voice to a scratchy, rheumy whisper: “The Boss doesn’t know. Who she is to you. But the longer she’s out there the bigger the chance he’s going to figure it out. And that’s bad news. You hear?”

  He’s about to tell him, yeah, yeah, I hear, but then the crowd hushes.

  Up on the dais – a dais still ringed with crêpe ribbon and cut-out paper wedding bells from some event nights before – steps the Boss.

  The dread realization strikes him: Nora was right.

  The Boss has always been a small man: sharp and etched like a peach-pit, mean and jagged like a little kidney stone. But here he looks smaller. And weaker. Skin like paper. Hair like wisps of white silk.

  Haversham trails behind, wheeling an oxygen tank. In an Italian family he’d be considered a consigliere, but this isn’t an Italian family – and Haversham’s about the furthest thing from Italian you’ll get: pinched accountant face, white blond hair as thin and airy as a cottonball.

  The wheels on the oxygen tank squeak.

  The Boss steps up. Takes a hit off of the tank’s mask, then hands it to Haversham.

  The old man speaks.

  “I’ve got–”

  Voice like dry leaves in a closing fist. He coughs into his armpit. Something wet rumbles in his lungs and he pulls his arm away and tries again.

  3

  The criminal organization f
ound in other cities is barely that – “organization” is a joke, a lie, an easy bit of short-code spoken by people who don’t understand. It’s gang against gang. No quarter. No peace. No treaty. No cleanly-drawn territorial lines. A constant push-and-pull of drug corners and gun-runs and stables of foreign girls made into sex slaves. The battle lines redrawn in new blood day after day. That’s not New York. Here the Great Below altered the landscape both literally and figuratively. The monsters that came crawling up out of the broken mantle forced the game to change. Here the gangs found a tense, but effective, peace. They operate under a central authority: the Organization.

  – from the Journals of John Atticus Oakes, Cartographer of the Great Below

  The Boss stares out over a room with eyes so brown they’re almost black. Coals in cotton. The Lieutenants shift uncomfortably. Mookie feels gut-shot. The Boss being off the radar for so long – that was a mystery on its own but they figured, well, they figured a lot of things. Maybe he was running things on the down-low; he was old, approaching eighty, and the Organization was a creaky-but-effective machine. Maybe he was off somewhere talking to other criminal organizations – Philly, Boston, DC. Maybe he was taking an extended vacation. But this? Cancer?

  Behind the Boss, Haversham steeples his fingers – each hand a spider on a mirror. He looks ever the accountant, the company man.

  “I’m dying,” the Boss says again. He’s a small man, but the lights behind him lend him a long shadow. “The cancer’s all up in me. It’s, ahh–” Here he looks to Haversham. “What’s the word?” Haversham whispers and the Boss returns his gaze to the crowd. “Metastasized. Like bedbugs in city hotels. By the time they saw it, well.” He gives a shrug, takes another hit off the oxygen, throws the mask down like it’s a dirty rag. “I hate that thing. The oxygen tastes funny. Like minerals. Or pool chemicals.”

  Everybody’s quiet. After a few moments, Zoladski resumes speaking:

  “I built this thing we do from the ground-up fifty fucking years ago. I came up out of Philly, me and just a couple other guys. Alfie Luscas – Little Jimmy’s pop. Cyril Bartosiewicz. Max Dombrowski and his little brother, Joshy. I stole business from the Italians–” He pronounces it Eye-talians. “–and then me and my boys pushed back the Irish all the way to the Bowery and then we took the Bowery a few years later. Little gangs popped up, the Puerto Ricans, the Jamaicans, the Lantern Jacks, the Black Sleeves, the Railroad Boys…” He takes a moment, starts to cough. Haversham hands him the mask, but he swipes it away. “And instead of beating them back we brought them in. Made them a part of it. A real coalition. A fucking Organization, all official-like. You’re either in it and alive or outside it and dead. And the time came that we learned what lurked underneath our feet, we stood tall and kept what was ours.”