The Blue Blazes

by Chuck Wendig

  Mookie’s at the door. Barbarian at the gates. Werth watches as Haversham ushers Mookie inside. Like a man leading a dire wolf in on a leash.

  Mookie. With a heavy cleaver hanging at his hip in a sheath. And his beat-to-shit leather satchel dangling over his beefy shoulder.

  Candlefly approaches from around the corner. Smiling. Hand extended.

  Mookie sees him. But then looks past him.

  Right at Werth.

  The lip curl. The narrowed gaze. The popping knuckles. Hate waits hot in that gaze. He thinks I betrayed him, Werth thinks. Shit, maybe I did.

  “Mr Pearl,” Candlefly says, his voice more unctuous than usual. He doesn’t wait for Mookie to return the handshake – Ernesto reaches right in, pushes his hand into Mookie’s gargantuan grip.

  His eyes suddenly go wide.

  Werth hears the grinding of knucklebones.

  “You’ve got an impressive…” Candlefly’s head cranes on his neck. The pain in his wince is obvious. “Handshake.”

  “Boss said it was how you got someone’s measure,” Mookie growls. “I wanted you to have my measure.”

  “Consider it so.”

  “My daughter.”

  “–is downstairs.”

  “You hurt her.”

  “She attacked us.” A lie. Werth knows they sent people after her.

  Candlefly tries to retrieve his hand. But Mookie doesn’t relinquish the man.

  “Where’s the Boss?”

  “Upstairs. Resting. Recovering.” Werth hears that and thinks: yeah, right.

  “I want to see Nora.”

  “Of course,” Candlefly says. “This way, please? Though, first you’ll have to… let go of my hand?”

  Mookie says nothing, instead makes the sound in his chest of a tomb being opened. He finally lets go of Candlefly’s hand.

  “Shall we?”

  Candlefly heads toward the cellar steps.

  Mookie walks after, once more giving Werth a look. In that look, Werth can practically see himself being torn limb-from-limb in the dark behind Mookie’s eye.

  Werth gives him a nod. As if to say, “It’s OK”.

  All Mookie does is bear his teeth like a rabid dog.

  He follows the two of them downstairs, walking with Haversham.

  Down into the wine cellar. Racks of wine necks and bottle bottoms. Barrels in the back. Warm lighting. Everything smells of wood and must and the faint sour tang of spilled wine. And there, in the middle, in a chair:

  Nora.

  Mookie pushes past Candlefly. He runs to her, drops to his knees. Cups her head in his hands. “You’re all right?”

  She wrenches her head away, then gently pushes his hands away from her face.

  “I’m fine,” she says.

  He goggles at her. “You’re… not hurt. Or tied up.”

  “Duh.”

  “I don’t get it.” He turns. Gives a desperate look to the others, then back to Nora. “They hurt you.”

  “Just a little.” She smiles, then tilts her neck to show off an already-healing wound. A Snakeface bite. “You got played, Daddy. It was the only way to get you here. Make you think I was in danger. You’d do anything for me, I said.”

  “Nora–”

  “There’s a new business arrangement. You’re at the bottom of it.”

  “The hell?” Mookie doesn’t understand. All he knows is one sentence is tumbling through his head again and again: You got played, Daddy.

  “I’m going to be your–”

  Then: a sound. Off to Mookie’s left. A heel-scuff.

  Nora’s gaze flits in that direction. Her eyes go wide. Then she looks right.

  She mouths the word before she says it: “No. No!”

  Suddenly her gaze locks with his and all she says is:

  “Run!”

  She hates him. That’s what she tells herself as he comes into that wine cellar like a beast led to slaughter. He was married to the mob. They were his family. Not her. Not Mom. And now…

  And now here he stands, the poor dope about to have his manhood rubber-banded and sliced off by the very Organization to which he pledged his fealty–

  That hate inside her rises hot and feels just. It tastes of sweet comeuppance. You deserve this, you dick. She’s old enough now to recognize that this is a teenage hate, the petulant hate of children for their parents, but it’s so deep-seated, so integral to who Nora is, she can’t help but take pleasure at it.

  She thought everything had gone sideways. Casimir, dead. An attack on the Get-Em-Girls. The death of the Majestic Immortals. Then: she gets taken by a pair of Snakefaces to what she assumed was the grave. But Candlefly – the face of the new Organization, or so he said – offered her a new deal, instead.

  Bring in your father and you can be his boss.

  Then he clarified: His Keeper. His Master.

  Some girls for Christmas want Barbie Dream Cars or ponies. Other girls want makeup, or a new cell phone, or hell, when she was 12 she wanted a pellet rifle (which she did not get). But now, all she wants is a collar around Mookie’s neck. And she wants to be the one holding the leash.

  And that’s what she’s about to tell him.

  She’s about to say, I’m going to be your boss. You’re going to be my little bitch. You’ll do everything I want. You’ll furnish me in Blue. You’ll kill anybody who gets in my way. You’ll get me a puppy for my birthday. You asshole.

  Before she can say any of that, she sees the darkness move between wine racks.

  A Snakeface assassin emerges – one of the killers who attacked her and brought her here. It’s the thin one, but the fat one is only a step behind.

  And then off to the right is the third.

  The one Candlefly calls “old friend”.

  All of them, fangs out. Tentacles searching the air silently.

  It’s then she realizes: they’re going to kill my father.

  That’s when it all melts away. The anger. The hate. Like ice in the Devil’s mouth.

  She doesn’t expect the word to come out of her, but there it is, screamed aloud, betraying everything she wanted, everything that she believes herself to be:

  “Run!”

  He didn’t see that coming.

  The first thought that pops into Werth’s head as chaos takes hold is an oddly calm and quiet one: The little sociopathic bitch has a heart after all. Buried somewhere under that glacier she calls a soul.

  Then the thought is gone as it all goes to epic shit.

  Nora screams for her father to run.

  But Mookie does no such thing. He lurches to his feet. Puts his daughter at his back in a protective stance and stands tall as the first two Snakefaces close in.

  The one that looks like Spall leaps – and meets Mookie’s thundercrack fist, head snapping back and shattering a bottle. Red wine spills like blood.

  The other – Not-Lutkevich – tries to tackle Mookie from the side, but it’s like a dog hitting the side of a school bus: he thuds dully into the slab of meat that is Mookie Pearl, and Mookie picks him up and slams him down on his knee. Like a child breaking a twig over his leg. Lutkevich rolls to the ground, doubled over.

  But Sorago–

  Sorago’s fast.

  He twists out of the way of a backhanded hammer-fist, comes up around and behind Mookie as if the laws of physics are no longer in service – fangs thrust forward, glistening.

  They plunge into the back of Mookie’s neck.

  Werth thinks, This is it, goddamn, Mookie’s down for the count, and he looks to Haversham, but Haversham is just staring, a bug-eyed fly-catcher who’s never been in the shit, who’s never been in the fray with bullets knocking splinters out of the doorframe inches from his head, who lives a life of spreadsheets and appointment books.

  But Mookie isn’t done for. Not by a long shot.

  The big sonofabitch spins. Sorago barely holds on with squirming tentacle-fingers, fangs still embedded in Mookie’s neck. The other two – Sirin and Sarn
osh, Werth thinks their names are – lurch up, hissing, arcs of spat venom just missing Mookie’s face.

  Mookie drives his hulking body backward. A rack topples. Glass shatters. Sorago drops, flailing.

  Candlefly sees an opening.

  Werth watches, horror-struck.

  The man reaches into his suit.

  Draws a small pistol. A Walther. Points it not at Mookie–

  But at Nora. She rushes to meet him, a sudden glimpse of the father within the daughter, a feral tiger sprung free from its cage–

  Candlefly clips her across the face with the gun. She hits the floor and rolls into a ball, clutching her cheek. He points the gun at her.

  Then–

  Mookie, now free of Sorago, slams into Candlefly. He drives him forward into another rack: bottles fall, thud, roll free. Candlefly tries to bring up the gun but Mookie knees him in the groin, grabs the man’s wrist and twists–

  Snap. Bright white bone spears – like sharp teeth, Werth thinks – poke free from Candlefly’s wrist as the man cries out.

  Mookie hefts Candlefly up by the throat, drives a cannonball fist into the man’s face – boom – just as Not-Spall’s fangs sink into the meaty back of Mookie’s neck.

  Another hit. Candlefly’s face rocks back. Blood squirts from his nostrils.

  Not-Lutkevich coils around Mookie’s leg–

  Fangs sink into Mookie’s calf.

  A third punch. Candlefly’s face looks like a package of ground chuck. A red, half-collapsed mess.

  Now Sorago steps in.

  The assassin doesn’t move swiftly. He stands up from the wreckage of a wine rack, dusts himself off. Werth watches the Snakeface stalk across the floor with confidence.

  The Naga comes up behind Mookie like a shadow.

  Werth thinks: Help him!

  But help who? Which one?

  Instead, he does nothing.

  Sorago’s fangs again sink into the side of Mookie’s neck.

  Mookie’s hand darts to his side. Grabs the cleaver there. Unhooks it from his belt, raises it up–

  It hangs over Candlefly’s head. The Sword of Damocles. Swaying gently.

  His arm drops to his side.

  The cleaver drops to the floor. The corner of the blade ka-chunks into the wood and sticks there.

  Candlefly’s breath comes as a ragged whistle through a ruined nose. Blood bubbles up from lips split and torn by his own now-loose teeth. He wipes his face across the sleeve of his suit, leaving a crimson streak on soft beige.

  With his unbroken hand, Ernesto pushes gently on Mookie’s chest.

  The big thug falls. The floor shakes. A lamp rattles.

  Werth stands. Stock still, like any movement might be construed as a treachery against… someone, anyone. He doesn’t know what to do. Every part of him is paralyzed by indecision and uncertainty. His loyalty is flapping loose in the wind.

  Blood on his fists. Rage in his heart. One of Candlefly’s teeth stuck in the meat around his knuckle. The poison runs through him, turning his blood to slush. Squeezing his muscles so hard they lock up tight and lose all sense of tension. He stands. Still awake. Still aware. But he can’t do anything. His mind is unmoored from the rest of him. His body adrift, a boat on an ocean without a sail or a rudder – him the captive captain, unable to command his ship. And then one more bite and no more punches and Candlefly wipes his messy face on his nice suit and puts one finger on Mookie’s chest and pushes. It doesn’t even feel like he’s falling. It feels like the world is lurching upward. Like the train next to you is drifting backward when really you’re the one moving forward.

  The ground hurries up to meet him.

  There, flat on his back. He sees Nora. Now up and crawling. The man, Candlefly, is yelling at his Snakeface friend – something about being slow, no hurry, while he was getting pummeled to a pulp. Then Haversham, that weak-kneed weasel, points to Nora and sounds a cry of alarm–

  She’s getting up now, getting her legs under her–

  Run, baby, run.

  But Candlefly stalks toward her. Gun out. As she tries to stand he bashes her in the back of the head. Mookie tries to scream, tries to tell Candlefly he’s going to rip his spine out his mouth and reinstall it through his asshole, but all he can do is whimper and mewl as Nora rolls over–

  Candlefly straddles her–

  She holds up her hands like that matters–

  Then Candlefly puts a bullet into her gut. Bang.

  Mookie bites through his own tongue.

  Tastes blood. Smells gunpowder. Sees darkness.

  22

  We are lost in the Tangle. Its labyrinthine passages confound. Passages up, holes down, tunnels east, caverns west – endlessly looping upon themselves. Direction has no meaning. Nor does time. It’s like outer space – or, perhaps, its opposite. I’ve seen many places – rooms, if you will – that are distinct. Rooms of stalagmites and stalactites that look like bloodied teeth, grottos with rock outcroppings that look like faces, old goblin nests filled with the remnants of stolen humanity: a child’s tricycle, a stop light, a fireman’s mask. Dangers abound, too: pools of stinking sulfur, drips of snotty acid from stone above, pockets of gas – some that choke, some that conjure sleep, some that will strip the skin from your bones. Cerberus, who I’ve since learned is really named Danny, is still leading us forward, but though he claims to know the way, his roving gaze tells me we’re lost. To my mind, we have only one important direction to reach the Expanse: down, down, always down.

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

  A goblin hand touches her face. Skelly gasps, cries out – consciousness slamming back into her like the action on a pistol. Her hand feels on the ground, finds a rock–

  Bam. Clocks it into the side of the monster.

  “Ow, fuck!”

  She staggers to her feet.

  A long tunnel. Subway tile merged with porous stone. The only light comes from flecks of glowing blue stuck in the pores of the tunnel walls. Like fireflies crushed into the rock.

  Burnsy is on the ground. Clutching his head.

  “Oh, shit,” Skelly says, hurrying over. Helping him up.

  “You brained me with a rock.”

  “Sorry, daddy-o.”

  “Daddy-o. Who does that? Who still uses that word?”

  She shrugs. “Kind of our thing. The Get-Em-Girls.” Whatever’s left of us, anyway. “It’s a habit. I don’t… I don’t know.”

  “Yeah. Well. A guy rescues you from a pack of goblins and nurses your cuts and he gets a rock to the dome to pay for it. That should teach me.”

  A wave of guilt washes over her. “I thought you were… one of them.”

  “I’m ugly, but I’m not that ugly. Anyway, if you’re up, it’s time to move. I haven’t heard any of those fuckers for a while, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still out there, searching. They’ll give up eventually – they have the patience of a twitchy cricket – but I still don’t want to take my chances.” As Burnsy talks, he starts packing up gear into an old 80s-era Jansport backpack.

  Her wounds suddenly flare with fresh pain – a slow sting that transitions to a hot throb. She lifts her hand to her face, where the bones cut her, and feels her palm is sticky. And it smells like a dead animal.

  Burnsy must see her face because he says, “It’s gopher grease.”

  “Do I wanna know?”

  “Not really.”

  She blanches. Sniffs it again. “I think I wanna know.”

  “There’s an animal down here. It’s like a gopher, but it’s all white, has eight legs, and is blind as my mother–”

  “So, nothing like a gopher.”

  “We call ’em gophers, all right? You know, just for being a smartass I’m gonna tell you the whole thing. That grease on your hand is from their anal glands.”

  “Oh, god!” She gags, turns, tries to wipe her hand on the wall.

  “Whoa, whoa, don’t do that. That stuff
is at a premium. It heals cuts like you wouldn’t believe. Keep that goop on you, goddamnit.”

  She winces. Lets her hand hang so she doesn’t have to smell it.

  Backpack slung over his blistered shoulder, he waves her on. “Let’s go, let’s go. We gotta move. I got a lead on the dead Zoladski kid.”

  “Change of subject,” she says, hurrying after him. “How’d you find me?”

  “Luck, mostly.”

  “You just… stumbled upon me.”

  “Nah. Not that lucky. I was looking, trust me – I told Mookie I would. The luck part is that I found a ghost that had seen you. The poor demised fucker didn’t know what he’d seen, of course – mostly he was just reliving his last moments in his head again and again – but he’d seen the gobbos dragging you and some of the other folks from Daisypusher. I knew the location of the temple. Went to scout it and there you were. Half-conscious. A pack of gobbos on your tail. They took you one direction, the Daisypusher dead in another.”

  They round a curve in the tunnel and she can feel a gentle slope downward.

  “And how’d we get away from them? The goblins.”

  He doesn’t have to answer her. All he has to do is point.

  Up ahead is a souped-up Yamaha four-wheeler. With big-ass wheels swaddled in spiked, studded chains. Like chains for driving on winter roads but juiced up on steroids. On the front of the quad is a goblin skull with plastic googly eyes. The rest of the thing is painted red, white, and blue.

  “Go America,” she says, somewhat breathless. “This is what you had under that tarp out back of your house, wasn’t it?”

  “You got it. She’s an all right ride. Better than walking on foot. Doesn’t get into the nooks and crannies, but she’ll take me most places in the Shallows, even carry me through some of the Tangle if I need her to.” He winces, straddles the seat. “Chafes the shit out of my thighs to drive, but such is the not-quite-life of a reanimated burn victim. Hop on.”

  He pats the seat.

  She eases behind him.

  He pops on a pair of goggles. Gives her a pair, too. They’re shop goggles made of clear – if dirty – plastic all the way around.

  Then–

  Key in the ignition. The engine gutters, then grumbles to life – a fat, slovenly dragon awakening from slumber after eating all the villagers.