The Cleanup

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  "Fuck you," Billy said.

  Christopher smiled. The notebook closed with a startling snap . . .

  . . . and Billy felt the center of his breastbone shatter, felt the cold steel sliding inward, sawing back a second, punching through again. He stared down at his chest in horror and agony, watching the black heart-blood spurting out from the hole that had opened there. He felt himself staggering backward, mind reeling, getting flashes of a flat, black, non-reflective blade some four days past, catching up with him now . . .

  . . . and his right hand tore open, distracting him for a second, making him stare at the mangled palm as if to confirm its existence. A scream that wasn't his own raked his eardrums. His own mouth, when he opened it, was a heavily-flowing fountain of gore . . .

  . . . but his mind was suddenly lucid, and it spoke to him even as the roar of gunfire echoed in his ears and the top of his head blew off, striking the window behind him, both glass and bone reduced to twinkling shards . . .

  . . . and his mind said good-bye, Mona, don't worry, it's not so bad as the rest of the bullets, some three days late, made a flying red pudding of his skull. He hoped that she could hear him. He was reasonably sure . . .

  . . . and then, with eyes and ears that no longer existed, he saw and heard the screeching van's approach, and he thought ah yes, there's still that, and the other thing, too . . .

  . . . and then Billy's body lifted right out of his shoes and went flying across the room, a skin-bag filled with broken bones and mashed, no-longer-vital organs. It plowed through what was left of the window and impacted against the metal guardrail of the fire escape, snapping the spine in two, sending the lifeless sack of meat pinwheeling three stories down to the pavement below . . .

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FROM THE HEAVENS

  Flecks of cindered paper flew through the air like shooting stars: the glowing remains of Billy's hellish strategies, cindered off the walls. The mouth of Hell was gone, returning the room to its former dimensions.

  Billy, too, was gone, leaving only his shoes and the stench of his death behind.

  But the monster was still there: scratching its chin, staring off into the middle distance. "Damn," it said. "We were so close. Every time, we get so close . . ."

  Then it turned to her; and for the first time, she felt its cold gaze boring into her own. It smiled, almost kindly, and reopened the notebook to the very first page.

  Which was blank.

  And waiting.

  "How 'bout you?" It said. "Care to give it a whirl? Clean up the streets?"

  Mona screamed.

  "Guess not," it said, shrugging.

  Mona screamed again, only faintly aware that her body was moving. Her legs hit the windowsill just above the kneecaps, sent her toppling backward into the night. Her arms flailed back automatically, hands instantly sliced and stained by the meat and broken glass that covered the fire escape landing.

  But the fall and the cool night air were a slap across her sanity The next scream throttled on its way to her lips as she dragged herself the rest of the way out of the room, pulled herself to her feet, hit the first step leading downward and then just kept going.

  Below, Stanton Street was silent and empty. The pool of streetlight, the construction site darkness, ran together with the uncaring moon and sky above. The only sounds were her own feet clanging against the metal stairs, the hysterical rasp of her breathing, the distant keening weep weep weep of a police car's siren, too far away to matter.

  And the laughter, pouring out of the window above her.

  She didn't turn to look. She didn't need to see. The second-floor landing was just five steps below her now. Four steps. Three. She jumped the last two and landed with her hands already against the railing, gripping it, hoisting her over the side . . .

  . . . and she was there, just as they'd said she would be: his Very Bestest Girl Ever, dropping down from the heavens . . .

  . . . and the fall itself was painless until the end, her few airborne seconds alive with triumph and exhilaration. Then the ground came up to meet her—too fast, too fast—and before she could get her proper balance, her feet were impacting and the angle was all wrong and her knees were buckling as the pain screamed up her legs and her head traveled the last five feet to the pavement in agony.

  She tried to stand. Her left knee refused to cooperate. "Please!" she screamed. It screamed back at her, unbending. She put all of her weight behind her right leg, struggling upward . . .

  . . . and he was moving out of the construction site shadows, only dimly aware of having done this before or of the hideous completion it implied. His one good hand buried itself in his pocket, pulling out the Master Carver; the other stretched out before him like a fetid, five-fingered Goodyear blimp.

  He was dying, yes he was, every shambling step forward weaker than the last . . .

  . . . but she was close now, less than six feet away, less than five, and she was beautiful, more beautiful than he'd dared to ever ever hope, even though she was screaming . . .

  . . . and she was four feet away . . .

  . . . as the car screamed left onto Stanton Street, headlights instantly nailing the two agonized figures in the middle of the block. "Holy shit," Hamilton hissed, focusing on the reflection of the knife, momentarily dragging his attention away from the steering wheel in his hands

  . . . as the tires skidded diagonally across the asphalt, Rizzo shouting something incomprehensible in the second before the passenger side of the cruiser slammed into the parked cars lining the south side of Stanton Street. . .

  . . . but it didn't stop the nightmare that was dragging itself painfully toward her. She could see the glistening blade that its right hand held aloft, the purpled and elephantine fingers groping at the air less than six inches from her throat.

  The motion was automatic. She barely even knew she was doing it. Left hand coming under-and-in to cup the forearm, right hand

  (i'll die before i let this happen to you again)

  locking in on the outside, at the elbow, and pushing, pushing, the hideous exploding sounds muffled by the jacket's sleeve . . .

  . . . and he could feel the demons leaving his mind, bailing out as his elbow gave and the white-hot pain went BING down the length of his spine. Rats off an utterly sinking ship, abandoning him to yowling and spinning retreat from his Bestest Girl, the one it had all been for . . .

  . . . as Hamilton crawled out of the driver's seat and assumed a shooting stance. Legs splayed. Arms loose. Body balanced.

  Finger firmly on the trigger.

  "Now," he said, squeezing off the first shot. He couldn't see the hole, but the jerking of the man's body let him know that his aim was true. He fired again, and the knife went flying, and the first hole secreted a bloody red rose that stood out brilliantly against the tan trench coat.

  The second hole bloomed just as the third and fourth shots took his target to the mat. I got you, fucker! he thought in the second before he realized that he didn't even know who he'd just killed . . .

  . . . but Stanley Peckard was happy. The pain, unbearable only seconds before, was slipping away beneath the cool dark dying waves that enveloped him now. And his mind, for the first time in as long as he could remember, was completely his own.

  Stanley's eyesight had never been good, and imminent death did nothing to improve upon it. Even with the night's sky clear, he could not see the stars.

  But the moon was there: a big bright circle of light at the end of a long dark tunnel. He smiled, and all of reality funneled down to that one gleaming hole in the sky. Everything else—the pavement, the pain, the Bestest Girl that had never been his, no, not even for a second—all of it simply ceased to be.

  When he closed his eyes, he could still see the light: too beautiful for words as it shone down upon him, warming him, gently urging him to rise . . .

  Which he did.

  Without, even once, looking back.

  The door on the passenger's si
de was hopelessly jammed. It didn't matter. Whatever had happened had happened so quickly that Rizzo felt strangely like an innocent bystander.

  Whatever had happened, it was over.

  Hamilton was moving, very slowly, toward the girl. Rizzo took the opportunity to radio in for reinforcements, though there didn't seem to be any particular hurry. One dead man; one wounded girl; another body, just beyond, that he suspected was profoundly dead, too.

  Then he slid out the driver's side and stood where Hamilton had been when he'd fired the shots: the first killing shots, Rizzo was quite sure, that his partner had ever fired.

  This is gonna be a bitch, his mind informed him in no uncertain terms. Already, Hamilton had dropped to his knees beside the girl, and she had thrown herself into his arms, and it was painfully obvious to Rizzo that at least one of them was crying hysterically.

  There was nothing else to do, so Rizzo lit a cigarette and walked over to the bodies, scrupulously steering clear of the living. There was nothing he could do for them, either. The dead, at least, wouldn't mind his hanging around.

  Any second now, the vultures would arrive. Already, nearly every window on the goddam block had a light on behind it. It flashed him back to the last time he'd visited Stanton Street at night. The flashing lights. The barricades. The video cameras and microphones. The endless questions.

  The white chalk line.

  Yeah, there was always a fucking carnival when someone died. It made him sick; but, just like with almost everything else, there was nothing he could do about it. The sense of powerlessness made him feel crazy sometimes: made him wish that he could do something, anything, to put an end to the endless veil of tears.

  When those feelings came up, he clamped down on them hard.

  The first police car wheeled around the corner, immediately followed by another. And another. And another. The first wave of geeks began to pour from the doorways. Rizzo didn't look at any of them.

  Rizzo stared at the moon, so distant and cold. The moon stared back.

  Neither one of them seemed to feel much of anything at all.

  EPILOGUE

  PAX

  "Some folks is crazy.

  Some say I am.

  Some say I'm crazy

  Cuz I give a damn.

  But I ain't here to cry.

  An' I ain't here to fight.

  I just wanna show you

  The twist toward the Light . . ."

  Billy Rowe

  Twisted Toward Life

  Griffin Records

  All told, it had been an extraordinarily pleasant afternoon for Frank Rizzo. The weather was great. Lunch—Cajun food, a first for Frank—had been fine. The conversation was relaxed and amiable. Even his bursitis had seemingly taken the day off.

  Something was bound to screw up.

  Then the song came over the radio, and he knew just what it would be.

  "Omigod!" Hamilton exclaimed, reaching over and honking the volume up suddenly. "Frank, check it out."

  The tinny speakers howled fur mercy. Dennis grinned sardonically. Rizzo just groaned and gunned the sedan up Tenth Avenue, slicing in and out of pre-rush hour traffic like a shark through a barrier reef. He personally hadn't given a warm fart for music, period, ever since that little bomb-shocked Norseman took Glenn Miller and the heart of Big Band on an icy dive into the English Channel back in '44. And his apathy bridged into full-blown contempt when it came to the ultramodern, digitally processed crap that clogged up the airwaves these days. Even this tune, which struck him as marginally more soulful than the rest.

  Especially this tune.

  Sure, it was a ballad. And it was surprisingly lush and haunting; one might even call it bittersweet. But the singer still yowled like a banshee on a washboard when he should have been crooning. And the whole thing still made him uncomfortable.

  It reminded him of too many things that were best left forgotten.

  He threw a baleful glance at Hamilton, who rocked back and forth and drummed his fingertips on the dash in polyrhythmic accompaniment. "Tell you what," he said. "if you don't turn that down, I'm gonna pull behind that bus, follow it all the way up to Columbus Circle, and let the exhaust fumes kill whatever's left of your brain.

  Dennis drummed on, undaunted. "You'll go with me, you know."

  "Jesus, I'm trembling like a leaf. I'd rather die than listen to this caterwauling crap."

  The drumming stopped.

  "You know what your problem is, my man?" Dennis said reasonably. "I mean, aside from the fact that you're a sour-faced, insensitive, cranky old coot who doesn't keep up on the current cultural events."

  Rizzo shook his head. "Do tell," he said.

  "You can't admit that maybe, just maybe, you were wrong about him."

  Rizzo shook his head some more and ran the yellow light at Fifty-seventh Street, hooking deftly around the bus. He was on the verge of nailing Junior with any of a possible half-dozen stunning retorts when the deejay came up over the fade-out, voice crackling.

  "And that was David Hart and the Brakes here on Ninety-two Rock, doing their new tune, 'Twisted.' . . ."

  And Hamilton watched as Rizzo just dried up in mid comeback. Maybe it was the news that Dennis had plucked straight off MTV; maybe he was just tired of arguing about it.

  "Partner," he said at last, "you sure know how to fuck up a perfectly good reunion."

  Dennis smiled. He knew that that was as close to a concession as he was ever likely to get. Rizzo returned the gesture. Peace resumed its reign.

  The sedan wheeled around Columbus Circle, slowing to a stop as it approached the Central Park West kiosk. They shook hands, wished each other well, and promised to stay in touch.

  A minute later, Dennis Hamilton was alone.

  The warm scent of early summer beckoned from the park. He opted to walk along the perimeter for a ways, watching the late afternoon sun filter through the trees in fat, golden dollops. He felt good. The humidity was mercifully low today; a sweet breeze rustled up from the bridle path, smelling of cool earth and new grass. That helped.

  He'd had a really good time with ol' Frank today, and that helped, too. Lots of catching up, with a minimum of bull. Nice. Dennis noted, with no surprise and some satisfaction, that Rizzo detested his new partner: a fresh-faced kid named Todd Sweitek. Rizzo nicknamed him the Slug and swore that his reasoning abilities were so slow they exuded a slime trail.

  Oh, well, Dennis mused. Some things never change.

  Whereas others changed quite a bit.

  Like the park, for example.

  Dennis found himself going there a lot in the wake of his early retirement. It was a good place to walk and think: large and lovely despite the decay. And even that appeared less and less prevalent in the past nine months. There was less graffiti, fewer broken bottles and discarded works than there'd been in years. Even the sight of a snatched and abandoned purse, its spilled contents fluttering in the breeze, had become the exception rather than the rule.

  It was still light-years from Paradise, and only fools ventured into its bowels after dark.

  There would always be fools.

  But the others were staying away. In droves.

  Because he's still out there, Dennis knew. Insofar as any of them know, he's still out there.

  And it was true. The fresh statistics that Rizzo had fed him served only to confirm what he and just about everyone else already suspected: violent crime was down.

  Oh, people still did one another in with gay abandon. They still abused and misused and mangled one another in the comfort and privacy of their own homes. White collar corporate sleazedom still thrived.

  But the streets . . .

  They were different now. Subtlely, palpably different. And apt to stay that way, so long as one simple, salient fact remained unchanged.

  The Vigilante was never captured.

  Billy Rowe died, insofar as the world-at-large knew or cared, protecting his lady-love: the innocent and final victim of the
Smiley-Face Slasher. Rizzo and Hamilton ultimately deemed it best to concur with and support that scenario, attributing his condition to the fight and the fall. His charred apartment offered little by way of conflicting evidence: it had burned—walls, floor, and ceiling—to a depth of precisely one-sixteenth of an inch, before putting itself out. Everything else was cindered: his newspaper clippings, his plans.

  His music.

  It was an anomaly of staggering proportion, and as such, was handled as all such anomalies are: it was ignored. Lost in the shuffle, dumped in the "suspicious origins" file, and forgotten about. Inspectors cited "faulty wiring" in the doorbell, and everyone seemed satisfied.

  Albert, the landlord, could not be reached for comment.

  Dennis Hamilton, as the firer-of-the-fatal-shot, endured his inevitable elevation to media hero with perfunctory grace and precious little said. He weathered the endless questions, accepted the commendations, and resigned quietly at the close of the official investigation. Life went on.

  And the carrion-eaters descended . . .

  The lurid cavalcade lasted another six weeks, as every television and newsstand and supermarket checkout lane in the land regurgitated ever-fresher, more highly-speculative glimpses into The World of Stanley Peckard. Time and Newsweek both bumped the latest summit meetings from their covers to accommodate rivaling variations on the carved-torso theme; and Time, in a particularly grisly move, placed that cover strategically into their new subscription-driving commercials, thereby lending a whole new meaning to "Time puts it all right in your hands."

  Phil Donahue, Bill Boggs, and a host of others tweaked the massmind with the requisite shows on sociosexual violence, all featuring the requisite panels of leading authorities, psychologists, and feminists.

  Paula Levin was conspicuously not in attendance. David Letterman did a disastrously unfunny bit on the "Slasher-Guy."