Paint It Black (Sonja Blue)

by Nancy A. Collins

  She paused to watch the young men as they talked among themselves, drank forties of malt liquor, and openly smoked reeking marijuana blunts the size of cigars, gun-butts jutting from their waistbands. Both groups seemed of equal size, their members a mix of white, black and brown, which she found surprising, given the city’s tendency toward segregating itself.

  The gang loitering in front of the Dance Macabre wore black leather jackets festooned with chrome studs outlining inverted five-pointed stars across their backs. The ones milling outside Rackham’s wore identical leather jackets-except that the backs were decorated with stylized Jolly Rogers, the crossed legbones replaced by spoons. Despite the intense, glowering stares flashing between the two groups, neither side offered to move from their respective posts.

  Just then a late-fifties Cadillac, its tail fins raised high like the dorsal of a shark, turned the corner. Suitcase-sized speakers blasted out hip-hop so bass-heavy it made her ribs vibrate in time with the beat.

  “Here comes the Batmobile,” a Hispanic youth with a blossom of acne across his thin face announced in an over-loud voice. “Ditch the weed.”

  The gang-members outside the Dance Macabre tossed away their joints and pulled out their guns, moving to form a human corridor. The vintage Cadillac pulled up to the curb. The windows were so heavily tinted they looked like mirrors. One of them sprang forward and opened the rear passenger door.

  The first person out of the car was a tall, striking woman dressed in low-cut black leather pants and steel-tipped boots. As she turned to face the others, her black leather jacket swung open, revealing that she was naked from the waist up, with stainless-steel rings piercing her nipples. The right side of her head was shaved to the skull, while the hair on the left hung to her waist like a drape of black silk. Her features were strong and clean and would have been considered classically beautiful if not for the plethora of metal hoops and studs dangling from her nose, lips, and brow ridge. In her right hand she held a loaded crossbow. The pierced woman quickly checked the perimeter, then gestured to her fellow passengers that the coast was clear.

  An extremely pale young woman, her hair the color of smoke, climbed out of the back seat. She was dressed all in white, from her satin pumps and plunging silk evening gown to the mink coat she clutched in her arms like a life preserver. Her face was so perfect it looked like it belonged on a china doll instead of a living woman. Yet, for all her loveliness, there was something wrong. Her movements were jerky and deliberate, like those of a marionette, as the woman with the crossbow hustled her toward the entrance of the club. Her lavender-colored eyes were as glazed as a tranquilized gazelle’s.

  “Mama! Mama!”

  The woman in white froze in mid-step, a flicker of emotion suddenly crossing her otherwise placid face. “Ryan?”

  “Mama!”

  A young boy, no older than five, darted between the gangbangers’ legs. He was thin and ragged, and made a grab for the woman in white’s dress. Her eyelids twitched, like those of a sleepwalker emerging from a dream.

  The pierced woman cursed and made a grab for the boy, only to have him scoot between her legs and into the street. She angrily pointed her crossbow at the pimply-faced gangbanger who’d opened the car door for her, who jumped to something resembling attention. “Cavalera! I thought I told you dumb fucks to deal with that little cocksucker! You heard what Esher said about lettin’ that brat get near her! Don’t just stand there with your fuckin’ thumbs up your ass! Get him! And take Cro-Mag with you!” She snarled over her shoulder, revealing strong white fangs and eyes the color of wine as she propelled the woman in white toward the door of the club.

  Cavalera and Cro-Mag, a hulking Anglo youth with a lantern jaw, promptly sprinted down the street in pursuit of the boy. The kid had a half-block head-start, but their legs were twice as long, and within seconds they closed in on him. Cro-Mag made a flying tackle, knocking the terrified child to the ground.

  “You shoulda kept playin’ football,” Cavalera laughed.

  “Nah. Can’t read. If I wanted to stay on the team, I had to take retard classes. Fuck that shit, man!” Cro-Mag grinned as he got to his feet. He held the boy by his shirt collar, dangling him above the ground like a baby rabbit. “What we gonna do with this little shit?”

  Cavalera shrugged as he pulled the gun from his waistband. “You heard Decima, homey.”

  “Let him go, assholes!”

  The gang-members turned in the direction of the voice. An older man with a gray-flecked beard and long flowing silver hair that fell almost to his belt stepped out of the alleyway, quickly closing the distance between them. With his tie-dyed T-shirt, faded jeans, and beat-up high-tops, he could have passed for a hippie version of Gandalf the Grey. The sawed-off shotgun in his hands did not waver. Cro-Mag swore under his breath and let the boy drop. The child instantly regained his footing and scampered off into the shadows.

  “That’s good. You did the right thing that time, pal,” the old hippie said. “You-with the gun—you gonna do the right thing, too?”

  “Fuck you, old man!” Cavalera spat, trying his best to keep his voice from cracking.

  “I may be old, punk, but I still know shit when I smell it! Now throw down the gun or I’ll cut you off at the knees!”

  Cavalera bit his lower lip to keep it from quivering. For all his bravado, he looked as if he were about to cry. “We gonna fuck you up, motherfucker!” he spat as he tossed the gun onto the sidewalk. “You fuckin’ with the Five Points Gang, asshole—you fuckin’ with Esher!”

  Without being told, the boy scuttled forward and snagged the discarded weapon. In his hands it looked like a vicious oversized toy.

  “I’m quakin’ in my boots, punk! Now you, big boy—take out your gun and kick it over to me!” A grumbling Cro-Mag did as he was told. “Good. Now, if you boys had half the brains God gave you, you’d get the hell outta this stinkin’ place and forget you ever heard of Esher,” the old hippie sighed. “But something tells me thinking’s not your strong suit. Get outta here, the both of you—and if I see either of you near the kid again, I’ll let you have it with both barrels! And next time I won’t bother to announce myself!”

  As Cro-Mag and Cavalera turned to leave, the old hippie let out his breath and lowered his weapon. Suddenly the pair turned and rushed him. Cro-Mag grabbed the shotgun while Cavalera dove toward the boy.

  “Give it up, old man!” Cro-Mag grinned, displaying crooked teeth. “Cav’s right—you’re fuckin’ with the wrong gang!”

  A shrill, high-pitched shriek of pain cut the night, and Cro-Mag turned to see his friend collapse in the gutter, a switchblade buried in his chest. The old hippie slammed the butt of the shotgun into his opponent’s jaw. Cro-Mag staggered backward, looking stunned. He touched his dripping mouth, stared at the blood for a moment, then looked at his attacker in disbelief.

  “That hurt.”

  “I meant it to,” the old hippie replied, driving the butt of the shotgun directly between Cro-Mag’s eyes. This time the gang member went down and stayed there.

  The old hippie stood on the curb, gun in hand, and stared down at the Goliath he’d toppled. His hands trembled and his breath came in ragged gasps.

  “What you did was very brave. Foolish, but brave.”

  He pivoted on his heel, bringing the shotgun to bear on the stranger standing behind him. She was a woman in her early twenties, dressed in tattered jeans, scuffed Doc Martens, a black leather jacket, and mirrored sunglasses, with choppy-cut dark hair. She had the boy in her arms, holding him so that he rode her left hip.

  “Jesus, lady!” the old hippie rasped as he lowered his weapon. “Don’t go sneakin’ up on me like that!”

  “It’s what I do best,” she replied as she lowered the child to the sidewalk. The boy shot forward like an arrow, wrapping his thin arms around the older man’s waist. He ruffled the child’s hair, then held him at arm’s length, frowning in reproof. “I tell you to
be careful when you leave the house, and this is what happens! What’d you do, Ryan?”

  “I saw her, Eddie! I even touched her this time! She said my name!”

  The man called Eddie rolled his eyes. “Christ-on-a-crutch, kid! You’re gonna get us both killed doin’ shit like that!”

  Sonja plucked the switchblade from Cavalera’s lifeless heart. As she wiped off the blood, she nudged Cro-Mag with a steel-tipped boot. “This one’s still alive. I’d put a round through his skull, if I were you.”

  Eddie shook his head. “I don’t do shit like that unless I can’t avoid it. Look, lady—I appreciate you steppin’ in like you did—”

  “You can thank me later. Now, are you going to keep us standing on the sidewalk the rest of the night or are we going to find someplace to hide? I suspect their posse is already headed this way.”

  The older man nodded and scooped up the boy. “You’re right. We better hurry. My place isn’t that far.”

  She followed him down the narrow, foul-smelling passageway, emerging onto the next avenue. If anything, it was even more blighted than The Street With No Name. He hurried down a flight of steps to the basement entrance of a crumbling brownstone. He pulled a key ring from his pants pocket and unlocked the door. Once inside, he set the boy down and quickly secured it with a cross-bolt made from an old railroad tie.

  The front room of the basement apartment was large, filled with books that spilled from narrowly spaced shelves that reached to the ceiling. The place smelled of old paper and moldering leather. Eddie let out a deep breath and allowed his shoulders to slump, but he did not set aside the sawed-off shotgun he held cradled in his arms.

  “You try anything funny, lady, and I’ll spray your brains all over the walls. I’d really hate to have that happen, seeing as how you saved the boy and that I’m such a lousy housekeeper.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Eddie?” the boy whispered.

  “What is it, kid?”

  “Can I have some cookies?”

  He ruffled the boy’s prematurely gray hair. “I don’t know, Ryan—can you?”

  The child gave an exaggerated sigh and rolled his eyes. “May I have some cookies?”

  “Yes, you may. But leave me some Oreos this time!” he shouted, as the boy sprinted through the towering mounds of books to the rear of the apartment.

  “Is he your son?” she asked.

  Eddie shook his head and laughed. “Hell no! I don’t know who his daddy is—neither does he. But I just couldn’t let the poor kid starve to death on the street—or worse—could I?”

  “His mother was the woman I saw getting out of the car?” “Was she wearing white?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was her, all right. Her name’s Nikola. Was she with a kinky-lookin’ chick with fishin’ lures stuck all over her face and tits?”

  “Indeed she was.”

  “That was Decima—she’s Esher’s lieutenant.”

  “Who’s Esher?”

  Eddie gave her an odd look. “You really don’t know?”

  “I’m new in town,” she explained quietly. “Why don’t you fill me in?”

  “Sure—let’s go sit down and I’ll tell you what I know over coffee.”

  The back of the apartment was considerably neater than the front half, even though books challenged the major appliances for territory in the small kitchen. Ryan was sitting on an upended plastic milk crate in the corner, a dog-eared comic book draped across his knees and cookie crumbs smeared over his chin.

  “Excuse the mess,” Eddie grunted as he moved a pile of old paperbacks from the only other chair in the room. “Normally I don’t let anyone past the threshold—but I’ve learned to listen my instincts.”

  “And what do they have to say about me?”

  He looked at her for a long moment, as if trying to read a message only he could see. “I think you can be trusted. God knows why. I hope it’s not just an acid flashback.”

  “I will take your vote of confidence as a compliment.” She picked up a copy of Fate Magazine, blowing a cloud of dust from its faded cover. “How long have you lived here, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “No, I don’t mind: I’ve been living in Deadtown since the mid-seventies.”

  “Has it always been like this?”

  Eddie shook his head as he lit the gas range. “It hasn’t always been this rough, but it’s always been a weird scene. I mean, this is ten square blocks of Nowhere in a major city! And I do mean Nowhere! I remember hearing some story that back in the Colonial days this part of town was a safe haven for rebel smugglers, and ever since then it’s been an unofficial “neutral zone” for those outside the law.

  “Back during the Civil War, Confederate sympathizers and other tough characters used to hang out here. Toward the end of the last century, it was full of immigrants and lowlifes. Me, I found out about it in ’73. I moved here to dodge the draft. I can’t stand cold winters, so Canada was never an option.”

  Sonja raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You’ve been hiding out here for over thirty-five years?”

  Eddie shrugged as he ladled instant coffee into a pair of chipped mugs. “I’m not really hiding out anymore—leastwise, not from the government. I took advantage of the amnesty years ago. But I got used to living here, and I’d be hard put to get by this cheaply anywhere else in the country! I don’t pay rent. No one does here! It’s a squatter community.”

  “Where does the water and power come from?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Rumor has it there’s some kind of deal with the city. Maybe it’s to keep Deadtown from spreading out into the surrounding area.”

  “From what you tell me, I’m surprised there aren’t more people living here.”

  “Oh, they’re here—you just don’t see ’em, that’s all!” he said with a humorless chuckle. “Those who call this neighborhood home have learned it pays to be invisible. But there’s not as many of us as there used to be, that’s for certain. Deadtown always did have its price for living here—but now it’s higher than ever.”

  “You mean the gangs?”

  “Gangs, schmangs!” he spat. “I mean the bastards behind them.” “The vampires.”

  Eddie grimaced. “You don’t hear that word used much around here. They’ve been around since the beginning, too. That’s one of the reasons this place ain’t full to overflowing with homeless. It’s haunted! I didn’t believe the stories when I first moved here. But one night, around the Bicentennial, I saw one of them take down a wino. I was plenty scared by what I saw—but I was even more frightened of going to jail! I just made it a point to get indoors by sundown after that. Everyone knew they existed back then, but they weren’t blatant about it, not like it is now.”

  The battered teakettle began its shrill shriek and Eddie quickly removed it from the heat. He continued to speak as he poured the hot water into the waiting mugs. “For the longest time, there was only one of ’em running things here; bloodsucker by the name of Sinjon. Then, about five years ago, this new vamp moves in. Calls himself Esher. Next thing I know, they’re going at it hammer-and-tongs, bringing in these teenaged psychos as muscle!

  “Sinjon’s boys are the Black Spoons—they’re his front men when it comes to drugs in the city. Story has it he controls most of the hardcore smack-and-crack trade on the Eastern Seaboard. Esher’s boys are the Five Points Gang—but they call themselves Pointers. They’re gun runners, mostly. Esher’s big into illegal weaponry. Everything from Saturday Night Specials to heat-seeking missiles. I wouldn’t put it past him to fence a thermonuclear device! Once the sun goes down, all traces of “normalcy” around here disappear and you only set foot outside at your own risk. Not that it’s much safer during the day. But at least while the sun is out, the vampires stay off the streets.”

  Sonja nodded her head in the direction of Ryan, who had abandoned his comic book and was curled up on a pile of old bl
ankets under the sink. “What about the boy’s mother?”

  Eddie took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. “She used to be an exotic dancer, over at the Wild Pony Club, a few blocks outside Deadtown’s perimeter. She was real good at it, I guess, because one night Esher comes into the club to watch her and the next thing anyone knows she’s the new “star” at his titty bar, the Dance Macabre. Of course, she had no idea what she was getting herself into. But I guess she found out soon enough.”

  “And the boy?”

  “He only wanted the woman, not her child. He was left behind, without any money or family or friends to help him. I’ll give the kid credit—when he realized his mom wasn’t coming back, he went out looking for her. That’s how I stumbled across him. He was eating out of a garbage can in the alley. I knew if I didn’t do something, he’d either starve to death or end up killed. Poor kid! He spends most of his time watching the house where his mother’s being kept, hoping for a chance to see her.” Eddie shivered, as if trying to shake himself free of an unpleasant memory, and held out the second cup to his guest. “I’m sorry! Where are my manners? Here’s your coffee—how do you like it? Black or white?”

  Sonja smiled without showing her teeth and waved aside the proffered mug. “I don’t drink—coffee.” She got up and knelt beside the sink, looking down at the boy’s thin, pale features. She reached down and brushed the fringe of hair on his forehead. Ryan murmured something in his sleep and pulled his blanket tighter. “The undead do not like children—save for food,” she explained. “They are unpleasant reminders to them that they are frozen in time, changeless and unchanging, locked outside the chain of Nature. The boy is lucky Esher did not have him killed the moment he saw him.”

  “Yeah,” sighed Eddie, as he poured the extra coffee down the sink. “Real lucky.” He glanced at her suspiciously. “You sure know a lot about vampires, lady. And, come to think of it, why are you wearing sunglasses after dark?”