by Chuck Wendig
Back among the ramshackle houses of Daisypusher, Skelly stalks the street with her big-ass blade pointed forward. Some of the huddled dead point the way, back toward Burnsy’s house, back toward the craggy pocket end of this old corpse-town. “There!” a dead child in a dirty pair of footy pajamas cries. “Back there!”
For a moment she thinks she’ll take a moment. Put the ol’ roller skates on. The ground here is smoother, more sculpted – not too craggy, only a few lips of rock and stone. It’ll allow her to move fast. Do her kick-ass roller-derby thing.
But then she thinks: no time to lace up. Just move, move, move.
So that’s what she does. She moves.
Into Burnsy’s place – a trio of gobs root around the place, throwing jars that pop, soul-cages that clang and roll. One of them holds up the wooden box with the phial of amber sap inside and it jabbers in triumph–
Just as Skelly cleaves its head open with Santa Muerte, her Bowie. It slumps backward, the box landing on its soft, oily belly.
The other two squeal in surprise–
Skelly uses that surprise. She smashes the butt of her knife into what passes for the one’s nose, sticks the blade into the eye – and brain – of the second. As the nose-smashed gobbo reels, leathery lids blinking over bulbous eyes–
Slice.
She cuts its throat.
It tumbles into a puddle of its own black blood.
They came for the box, she thinks.
She picks it up. Wipes blood off it. Skelly steps back outside as a few of the Daisypusher dead gather around. The pink-robed hausfrau hurries up, points toward the rock wall – “I saw some of them go that way!”
Skelly thrusts the box into the dead lady’s hands. “Here, Pinky. I need you to hold onto this. Give it to Lister– er, Burnsy, OK?”
A quick nod. “Sure thing, miss.”
Skelly hands off the box and hurries away – she reaches the end of the carved out cavern in which Daisypusher sits, the rock wall that forms the end of the line for the far end of town. No gobbos–
But then she spies something at her feet – a pile of earthen dust sitting there like pencil shavings.
It’s funny how the brain sometimes misses a beat. Or takes too long to connect ideas. It’s only a half-second when Skelly walks up, sees the pile, and then answers her own mystery. They must’ve bored a hole in the rock above our heads.
Except that last thought suddenly becomes: the rock above my head.
She looks up. Another wrong move. She should have sidestepped, backed away, any movement but standing there and craning her head heavenward.
A ring of goblin faces greet her from within the rock.
A ratty noose drops down–
It catches around her neck. She screams.
Suddenly it’s pulled taut. She can’t breathe.
They begin to haul her up.
Head pulsing. Legs kicking.
Her knife clatters to the ground.
She tries to scream again, but now it’s just a squeaky hoarse whisper.
They pull her up through the hole. Body scoured by scabrous rock.
They laugh as they drag her through the darkness.
18
The greatest trick the monsters have is that they can look like us. Maybe soon they’ll learn to act like us. Maybe one day they will even become us. Am I mad?
– from the Journals of John Atticus Oakes, Cartographer of the Great Below
It’s been a long fucking day down there.
Davey Morgan takes the train back out to Staten Island. Battered and bruised. Put through the wringer. Same way he feels every day on the job.
He loves it anyway. It’s who he is.
Even now, as he returns home, he knows there’s no night of R&R awaiting. His daughter Cassie is off at NYU, but he could call her, could have her come over. They’d eat some ice cream from the corner store, maybe watch a movie. Maybe Die Hard. It’s his favorite movie – how could it not be? She pretends it’s hers, too. Maybe it really is, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that she does it to make him happy. Even says all the lines along with him. Such a good girl.
But tonight’s not about the R&R, it’s about more work. They’re coming up on the blasting radius for the nexus of the three tunnels. He’s got to sit and work on the blasting pattern. It’ll come to him. How to open up Water Tunnel #3 without bringing the other ones crashing down on their heads – drowning his crew and drying up the city.
He steps into the house. Peels off his boots. Roots through the fridge for a beer.
“Daddy.”
He turns. “Cassie!” There stands his daughter. His baby girl. His heart swells.
“Look at you, girl. Surprising an old man like that.” He winks and points the beer at her. “You should be more careful. Could give a fella a heart attack.”
She smiles. “Can I have a hug, Daddy?”
A hug? That’s not like her. She’s not the huggy type. Not after their mother passed. Still. NYU’s been hard on her. He sets the beer down, steps forward–
Her eyes.
Oh, god, her eyes.
Those aren’t her eyes.
Move you old bastard.
He turns, throws the beer bottle–
Already “Cassie” is ducking it – brown bottle pops, foam everywhere – and she moves fast. He grabs for a French knife out of the block next to the toaster, but it’s too late – Cassie spins him around, wrenches his head back. He feels his vertebrae pop. He sees her mouth open: foul teeth descend. Snakeface, he thinks. Which means Cassie is dead. Or bled out somewhere.
He brings the blade up into Not-Cassie’s gut.
Then teeth tear into his neck.
The world lifts upward as though pulled on strings.
Darkness launches forth to replace it.
Sorago stands over the miner’s body as the Vollrath slithers forward and plunges its blade-fingers into the corpse’s head and heart.
Then it begins to noisily drink from the body. Not blood. But information. Knowledge. Memories.
The Naga presses his tentacle-hand against the wound in his gut. It comes away sticky with smoldering blood. The human wounded him. Disappointing. It’ll heal because he’ll make it heal. The medicine lies there on the floor before him, after all.
“Do we have what we need?”
A LIFE OF PAIN AND LITTLE PLEASURE.
“That is not what I mean.” Then he adds: “Dread Chevalier.” An unpleasant honorific, but the Vollrath seem to prefer it.
I SEE IT ALL. THE DEATH OF HIS WIFE. THE GRIEFSTRUCK WORKMAN. ARTHRITIS. PROSTATE CANCER OF WHICH HE WAS UNAWARE.
“Do you have the blasting plan?”
I HAVE ALL THE BLASTING PLANS. I HAVE HIS KNOWLEDGE.
“Good.”
HE KNOWS THE ONE KNOWN AS PEARL. I SENSE RESPECT. AND FEAR. AND A MEASURE OF AWE.
“We’re not worried about Pearl.” Sorago pauses. Candlefly isn’t concerned. Mookie Pearl is a thug. Just like Spall or Lutkevich. He’s a pawn in a game he doesn’t even understand. Unless… “Should we be worried about him?”
On this, the Vollrath is silent. It pulls away from the corpse of Davey Morgan and hovers there behind, rippling in a non-existent wind.
WE HAVE WHAT WE REQUIRE.
Sorago hesitates. “Good. Then if you’ll excuse me.”
He kneels down by the body, plunges his fangs into the dead man’s neck, and begins to drink in great coppery gulps. As the blood slides down the back of his leathery throat, he already feels the warmth of his stomach wound begin to tingle and itch.
And ultimately, heal.
Candlefly paces.
He opens and closes the blade of a cigar cutter again and again, each time imagining Mookie Pearl’s nose, thumb, or balls getting snipped.
But once in a while Ernesto’s mind wanders and he imagines his own flesh inside the cigar cutter’s razor mouth – this is his fault, isn’t it? He thought to dismiss Pearl. Just some thug. Twice n
ow he’s disrupted their plans – a child kicking over a sandcastle. He stopped them from taking the knowledge from Davey Morgan’s brain. And now? He thwarted the attack on Daisypusher.
Which means they don’t have the Ochre.
Which means…
He cannot abide that thought.
Renata will be gravely disappointed in him. She will tell the children. Oscar won’t understand. But Adelina, she is a cruel girl, in her way. Like Mookie’s own.
His wife is not a Candlefly, not by birth, and the others will laugh at him. They will mock his ambitions. Ambitions they expect him to serve alone.
A spike of anger at that: the families want him to fail. They expect him to do this alone. They don’t understand what’s at stake. They believe him incapable.
He’ll show them.
He receives a text from Sorago:
It is done.
There. One part of the puzzle down.
He does not do this “texting” thing – so instead he just dials Sorago.
“The attack on Daisypusher failed,” Sorago says.
“Yes, I’m well-aware. The Vollrath here know all.”
“We should have sent them. I should’ve gone. Let me go still–”
“No. I’ll need you here soon. Take Sirin and Sarnosh. Find the girl. I have a new idea.”
“The girl.”
“Nora Pearl. Find Nora Pearl.”
On the run. Hungry. Tired.
But excited, too. Things are twisting out of her grip, but Nora knows that if she can just regain her hold – even one finger’s worth – then as it all falls apart she’ll be there to make something of the pieces.
The plan is still in play.
She’s already gone to the Sinner Kids – those white faux church-boys from the Upper West Side. Already secured the promises of the Haitians and Jamaicans of the Black Sleeves in Harlem (and just now she wishes she’d grabbed a cup of goat curry to go since they do their business out of a little restaurant called Oxtail Billy’s). It wasn’t easy to get the gangs to follow her: but offering them some low-cost Peacock Powder was a good start – and puts some money in her pocket.
Plus, claiming to have killed Casimir Zoladski gets her mad respect. You have to listen to me now, she thinks. What she tries not to think about is just what that respect has cost her. Look forward, not backward. What’s behind you is just a big stupid wall of pain. Ahead is the promised land.
Now: time to meet the Majestic Immortals in Washington Heights.
They’re a mean-ass crew. Strange mix, too: Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, couple Jewish kids. They wear hoodies with a crown and halo on the backs and fronts. Nora was just a kid when it happened, but she’s heard that, ten years back, they pushed out another gang trying to step on their corners, the Electric Mongols. Chaos-sowing lunatics, anarchy-with-the-circled-A types. Wore 3D glasses. Dropped a lot of acid. The Immortals ran them out, but not before stringing up the bodies from streetlights. Hands and feet chopped off. The crown and halo carved into their foreheads.
She hears the Mongols have resurfaced recently – sometimes they pop up in the Bronx, sometimes in Queens. But they’re not her problem. Not today.
Today is about the Immortals.
Nora wants them on board. Needs them on board. After the Mongols came through and the Immortals handled it, the Organization punished them for taking action on their own. Cut their supply. “Rezoned” their territory.
They’ve got an axe. She wants to help them grind it.
The Immortals operate out of the top floor of a new-law tenement house in one of the old Irish blocks of the city. Nora expects to have to plead right at the front door. Usually they’ve got a guy watching the stairs – walk in, and there he sits. Now it’s just an empty stool. They’re usually more careful than that.
Into the stairwell.
The lights are dim. Flickering and snapping. The stairway is painted in a swimming pool blue. Nora heads up the steps, feet echoing. Ten flights. It will be a hard walk but not an impossible one. Washington Heights is already on a steep-ass hill. And you don’t live in New York without learning to walk some stairs. When she first moved here, she was used to life in the burbs – walking three floors sucked the life right out of her. Left her wheezing. Made her look like a real rube, total amateur hour, lost her some cred right out of the gate. Thank god she had a lot of cred to lose. Getting her father to clear out that entrenched gobbo nest at the restaurant earned her big ups around the city. People knew what she could do, then.
But she blew it. She didn’t have the people. She remembers reading about the Iraq War and how when America kicked the stuffing out of Baghdad how the biggest issue in getting everything back to normal was infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. Not just putting streets and water and sewage back in order, but also putting people in place.
She didn’t have people. Didn’t have a coalition.
That’s what this is about. She has an opportunity. An opportunity that’s different today than it was a week ago but ever since…
Well.
Let’s just say it’s time to evolve. Like a good animal she survives through adaptation.
Four flights. Now five. Heart and feet pounding in alternating rhythms.
She could use some Blue. That would keep her moving. But she’s only got a few more hits and doesn’t want to waste them here. That’s OK, she tells herself. Soon as this all shakes loose she’ll be in control of her own supply. Hell, her own resupply. Maybe after all is said and done her father will finally see what she is. What she’s capable of. He won’t ignore her anymore. The reality of the situation will hit him full in that confused gorilla face of his, and then he’ll come work for her.
That’s the prize. The one that makes her feel like a kid on Christmas morning. Waiting to open the present you’ve always wanted.
Her Christmas mornings were never like that. She got presents. Mookie gave Mom money, Mom bought stuff. But Mookie – Dad, ugh – was never there. Maybe he was when she was really little, but by the time she was seven or eight, he hardly ever left the city. When he did, he and Mom fought like a mongoose and a cobra. Few times a year she saw him, he was itchy, edgy, sleep-deprived. Beaten to hell, too. Mom would patch him up. She even got good at stitches. That was the one time the two of them didn’t fight. He’d sit on the toilet, wincing and bleeding. And Mom would hover at his side, behind him, in front – Bactine, Band-Aids, gauze, peroxide, swabs, needle, thread, a fistful of Tylenol. Bloody rags in a trashcan. Stain-stick for the shirts.
That’s what she really wanted for Christmas in those days: just to have Daddy come home and be with her.
But that turned sour by the time she was a teenager.
No amount of money he’d send would matter.
And now all that money is hers, anyway.
Sometimes she thinks: I can still take the inheritance. I can still blow town. I can go anywhere I want.
She thinks that, but she keeps going up, up, up.
Six floors. Seven.
It’s on the seventh floor that she sees the first fly.
A fat one, too. Fat like he’s been feasting on a Thanksgiving turkey.
Buzz, buzz.
Eighth floor.
That’s when she sees the gun.
It’s just lying there. Little .38 snubnose. Blued pitted steel.
Three steps up above that is an empty .38 shell.
She smells it, then, the stink of gunpowder. Hanging there. Not too strong.
But there just the same.
Alarm bells go off. Run run run.
No. Hold your ground, she tells herself. This is New York Fucking City. Stand tall. Hang tough. Nobody abides a coward in this town. You want to go up against the Organization, you can’t shake like a leaf anytime there’s a stiff breeze.
Ninth floor.
Blood. Just a speckling – a few flecks of it. Still a little wet. Not dried yet.
Turn and go, nobody will know you were here. T
his isn’t good–
She has to see. Has to know. Information is power. If she comes and goes without finding out what happened, what’s the value? There has to be value. She has to own this, earn this, learn something she can use.
At the top of the tenth floor steps, she sees a dark-skinned hand draped between the bars of the stairway railing.
She’s shaking now. Trying not to, but shaking.
A leaf in a wind.
Shut up.
Stupid girl. Don’t be weak.
Keep walking.
Walking.
To the top.
Bodies. Five here. Hoodies. Crowns. Halos. Blood.
One shot in the head, his brains caught by the hood of his sweatshirt. Another with bullets stitched across his chest.
But the third and fourth…
Their necks are ripped out. A Hispanic kid, his throat torn from the front. A black girl, Dominican maybe, the side of hers chewed open.
Ahead is the door into their safehouse.
It is no longer safe. It hangs open. She sees the hallway and a handful of doors, and in that hallway and between those doors are more bodies. Another five, easy.
Then a door down that hallway squeaks open.
A bulldog of a man in a cheap gray suit steps out. Grinning at her. She knows his face. One of the Organization lieutenants. A hands-on hitter. Spall. Or Lutkevich. They come in a pair and she’s not sure which one is which, but he’s damn sure one of them.
He waves at her. Little waggling fingers. Playful-like. Toodle-oo.
They’re ahead of her. They knew. Somehow, they knew. The Sinner Boys gave her up. Or the Black Sleeves. She told them where she was going. Damnit. Damnit.
The bulldog’s got a gun. A shotgun. Pump action with the sling hanging loose.
But then he does a strange thing: he drops it. Holds up his hands as he walks toward the door, toward her. “Hey,” he says. “Wait there. Let’s be friends.”
Big smile.
A trick. It’s a goddamn trick. He knows the shotgun has a spray pattern. Won’t get a good hit on her from here. Pellets. Just pellets.
He’s going to get close. Stick her with a knife.
Fuck this. She knows enough. Time to run.