by Alex White
Loxley nodded. No reason to lie; she wasn’t any good at it. “I am.”
The car lurched forward and they sped down the serpentine streets of the seventh ring. It disoriented Loxley to be in a car, and she tried to remember how Nora had gotten over it. She took deep breaths and always kept the windows in her sight; the rushing scenery helped her to stay oriented. Duke folded his fingers over his gut and smiled. He reminded her of the pot-belly stove that Rick kept in his apartment. She shook her head, trying to focus, but her mind kept racing to take her anywhere but here.
“Did you know that your friend did something wrong?”
She sensed something rare to her – the bitter taste of anger, settling in the back of her mind. “No.”
He shook his head. “It’s the truth, I’m afraid. Your friend –”
“No, she didn’t do anything wrong,” Loxley interrupted.
“Now how can you know that?”
“Because she told me. She told me lots of things – everything she knows about you,” she said, forcing herself to look him in the eye like Nora would. Duke’s facial muscles moved, but Loxley couldn’t divine how she’d made him feel. She wanted him to get scared – as scared as she was – but he didn’t seem different to her.
“Did she now?”
“Yeah. You had Hiram kill her, so you’re a murderer and I’m going to kill you, too. Either me or the Consortium.”
A blush crept over Duke’s face, and he looked to his men in turn. She watched each of their faces, trying to make out what they really thought. Hiram’s lips went taut and his irises contracted. Duke’s face remained impassive, but he took a big, long breath. The men on either side of her tensed, their muscles bulging beneath their coats. That remark had upset them, but she didn’t think it had made them scared.
“Murder is a sin. I served justice in the name of the greater good. Miss Vickers lied to me, and she was going to get a lot of innocent people killed if she told them what she knew.”
Loxley cocked her head. “You’re not a cop. You can’t do that – just kill people like that.”
“I’m the highest authority in the Hole. I helped build this place. That makes me a righteous revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”
Her pulse quickened. She wanted to hit him, to slam her arms against him until there was nothing left of his face. “That’s not a law.”
“It’s from the Bible.”
“That’s just some book. It’s not the law. The law says murder is wrong.”
Hiram snorted and Duke frowned at him. “But God gives man the authority to carry out executions.”
“There is no God. Not your God, anyway.”
Improbably, Duke began to laugh. The car slowed; closing bells must have just rang at Vulcan’s Bazaar, and the streetwalkers would be coming out soon. Loxley spotted the steel snake writhing past the car, and she squinted, searching the faces in the crowd. The limousine slowed even more, surrounded by the throng of shopkeeps headed home alongside their customers. Marie honked the horn.
Marie – she must have known what was happening to Loxley. Nora thought of her as a plain, hare-lipped woman, put upon by the oaf in the ice cream suit, but Loxley knew the driver must be complicit in these affairs. Loxley wondered if Marie had helped deliver Nora’s body to her apartment, but she already knew the answer would be yes.
“Loxley, I want you to pray with me,” said Duke. “We’re going to pray for your soul.”
“No. Then you’ll just kill me. That’s what you do.”
Duke began to laugh harder. He slapped Hiram’s leg, and for some reason, the killer didn’t take offense to the gesture. Loxley hoped that one man hitting the other would be construed as an assault, but not at all – Hiram laughed, too. The fat man looked at the killer and shrugged.
“Don’t you want to be saved?” asked Duke.
Loxley held her fingers in a crushing grip to keep from shaking them out. “Yes. From you.”
The car was at a crawl. She looked past Duke, observing a dozen faces in the crowd: the meat man, the blacksmith, the mechanic, the pornography salesman, the chicken vendor, the man who sold stolen purses, the watchmaker, the wig lady, and on and on. Then she saw the policeman, and he turned to face the car – it was Officer Crutchfield. He looked right past them, unable to see through the tinted glass.
But he hated her. Would he help her?
“OFFICER CRUTCHFIELD!” she screamed over and over, even as Pucker-lips tackled her to the footwell. She continued to scream as he ground her face into the clean, cream-colored carpet. He tried to get his fingers over her mouth, and she bit him. She kicked out, and her leg solidly struck the door panel with a loud thud. She did it as fast as possible, hoping the muffled sounds would get through to Officer Crutchfield.
“Shut up!” shouted Pucker-lips, and her vision flashed as he plowed a fist into the back of her neck.
Her words became slippery, and she lost control of them in favor of aimless shouting and stilted humming. He drove a knee into her back, crushing her chest against the floor. She felt something hard in her front coveralls pocket – her curved pruning knife. She refocused to grab hold of her voice. She had to make contact with Officer Crutchfield. She pushed back against her assailant, sending him off-balance, sat up and screeched as loudly as she could.
Outside, Crutchfield turned to face the car and placed a hand on his gun. He stepped in front of the vehicle, out of sight, and Loxley could hear him shouting at Marie.
Loxley was pummeled to the ground for her trouble. The man on top of her drew his pistol and placed it to her cheek as he crouched over her head. “You keep your mouth shut,” he rumbled.
Hiram had his gun out in a flash. “You ready to shoot a cop if this goes wrong?” he whispered with a grin. The third man unholstered his weapon as well, making Loxley and Duke the only unarmed people in the car.
“Look what you’ve done, Miss Fiddleback,” said Duke. “If we have to hurt that man, it’s on your head.”
Tense seconds ticked by. Loxley heard the driver’s side door open. Then Officer Crutchfield was in view, coming around the car toward the door nearest Duke, his gun at the ready. There was no way the policeman could see them through the tinted windows. All eyes were diverted from Loxley, and she sneaked a hand to her breast to slowly unzip her coveralls pocket.
“Wait until he opens the door,” breathed Hiram. He scooted away from Duke on his seat to aim better. “Get a clear shot.”
She slipped her fingers inside her pocket and grabbed hold of the pruning knife’s wooden handle. Outside, Officer Crutchfield took aim at the window next to Duke and stepped backwards out of view.
“Come out with your hands up!” he shouted.
“I’ve got a shot,” said the third gunman.
Pucker-lips kept his gun to her cheek.
“Wait for it,” said Hiram. “Come open the door, you motherfucker.”
Officer Crutchfield didn’t come any closer, though. Loxley pulled her knife partway out of her coveralls and got a solid grip on the handle. Still, no one looked at her.
“His backup is going to be here any minute,” said Pucker-lips.
“Yeah,” said Hiram. “Take him on my signal. Three... Two... One...”
Loxley spun around and jammed her hooked pruning knife deep into Pucker-lips’s inner thigh. She yanked, opening up his leg, hot blood spraying her face. Pure red sloshed over creamy white carpet, and the cabin filled with a chilling howl. Pucker-lips brought the gun to her face and she shoved his arm up. His pistol blasted twice, and she kneed him in the groin as hard as she could. For a heartbeat, she made eye contact with the man as they wrestled, his face turning pale, his blood still gushing over her.
Other hands clawed at her hair, and sunlight flooded the cabin as the passenger side door whipped open. The hands let go. Shots cracked through the car and shouts filled her ears. She shoved Pucker-lips off of her; he gave no resistance. She didn’t look around to see what els
e was happening; she scrambled to her feet and grabbed the driver’s side door handle. Her slick fingers lost their grip, and it took her two tries to get the door open.
She heard Officer Crutchfield shout her name as she rolled out onto the street. When she looked up, it seemed as though a million eyes were upon her – a sea of frightened faces keeping their distance. All those eyes; her chest tightened and she clawed her way across the ground, trying to focus on the asphalt. She painted the pavement red with each movement, like a brush on canvas, and her hands lay empty; she’d left her blade in Pucker-lips.
Someone from the crowd helped her up, and she screamed, shoving the person away. She dared not look them in the face – too many strangers. She hazarded a glance back at the limousine and saw Officer Crutchfield shooting into it, trying to get behind a light pole as he did.
He made eye contact with her right before a bullet tore into his face.
She did not stop to scream his name. She did not wait to see if he was dead. She turned and shoved her way into the throng, smashing through them full-force. Behind her, doors slammed and tires screeched. A dozen different shouts filled the air, and she covered her ears. Static loomed in her brain, and she swallowed it in sandy gulps.
Loxley wove through the forest of legs, watching the ground rush by as she ran further and further away.
Chapter Eight
The River Jordan
LOXLEY WOUND THROUGH back streets, down alleyways and under bridges. She sought water and shelter. Her vision shrunk to only what lay before her, and she did not allow herself to waver from her task. Sunset came quickly in the bottom of the Hole, and soon she was able to flit from dark corner to dark corner, hidden from the sight of all the normal people.
Pucker-lips’s blood caked on her as it dried. He was surely dead. She hadn’t expected him to bleed that much when she’d stabbed him, certainly not the torrential outpouring that happened. With a single slice, she’d carved his body from his ghost.
Some people were scared of corpses. Loxley was, too, in a way; corpses were the heralds of spirits, like dark clouds that brought tornadoes. Some feared the dead body, itself, but a corpse was no different than something one might find at a butcher’s. Butchers sold all kinds of meat, and she never saw where it came from. She giggled at the idea that they might sell off their own dead, but then stopped short, realizing that might actually happen from time to time in the Hole.
What was lost when a person died? A ghost wasn’t a person, nor was a corpse. At least, she hoped a ghost wasn’t a person, all cruelty and violence. In the transaction between life and death, choice was removed from a person, and all that remained was anger. Her body dragged from the wounds Nora’s spirit had given her, and she shuddered when the wind kicked up.
She couldn’t go back home. Those men would be there. The police might be there, too, and by now they would be working for Duke. He could pay them to do bad things to her, or bring her to him. And what were Duke’s men doing now? Would they be in her garden, shoving her stuff around and looking under planters for a way to find her? After she’d stabbed one with a pruning knife, they might take all of her tools – things that had taken her years to collect.
She stopped walking and leaned against a wall. Her garden would die in her absence, her cart was gone, Officer Crutchfield would no longer protect her in the Bazaar and the Consortium manual was lost. Nora had left it at Duke’s before she died. It was all finished: all of her dreams and her future were forever changed. There was no way forward, no plan. She wanted to kill Duke and Hiram, but that was never going to happen now. She was nothing.
She reared back and thunked her head against the bricks, the clay rough on her forehead. She thought she should cry, but the noise felt empty. She didn’t have any more tears. She’d cried so hard the night Officer Crutchfield had tried to fuck her, but that seemed distant now. Hope made her cry, and now she had absolutely none.
She sunk to her knees, resting her knuckles on the frigid concrete. Up close to the bricks, she could see tiny grains of sand in the clay, and they had a little sparkle to them. She rolled her face from side to side, watching them scintillate under her gaze. Freezing to death made a lot of sense now. She should just die. The old and the sickly never made ghosts. She wondered if it would be the same for suicides.
“You all right?” came a man’s voice from a few feet behind her.
“N-n-no,” she stuttered. “Are you going to hurt me?”
“Wasn’t planning on it. You’re going to freeze to death out here.”
Her body felt like lead in spite of her shivering. “Good.”
“I think we need to get you washed up. Is that your blood?”
“A little of it. Most of it is someone else’s. Please don’t try to fuck me or kill me.”
For a moment, she heard nothing. Then, “Ain’t crazy enough to make for a woman covered in someone else’s blood. What happened to you, sister?”
She tried to wrap her mind around all the things that had brought her here. “E-everything.”
A heavy hand came to rest on her shoulder, and she screeched, knocking it away. Another hand joined the first and they seized her shoulders. She couldn’t break free of their grasp, and she sang as she tried to pry them off. After a moment, she realized the hands were attached to arms, which were in turn, attached to the rest of a man.
His dark skin alarmed her, and she couldn’t look at his face for fear of what she might find. They ain’t all bad, but they ain’t us. Just keep to yourself.
Her fingers were electrified, but she hadn’t the energy to shake them out. “My mother said you ain’t all bad.”
“Do I know your momma?” He tried to get in front of her eyes, and she looked away.
She couldn’t meet someone’s gaze right now. Faces were too frightening – too difficult.
“That’s true,” he said. “Not sure anyone is all bad. You going to look me in the eyes?”
“No. I don’t want to look at you.”
“All right, then.” He let go and held a hand in front of her sight line. “Take my hand and we’ll get you cleaned up.”
He pulled her to her feet and led her deeper into the Hole, through passages she’d never seen before. As they traveled, their surroundings became more and more industrialized, and she heard the incessant clang of the Foundry, long and melodic. Down they went, descending a rusted ladder onto the eighth ring, ducking from alley to alley, then climbing down further, into nine. She’d never been down here before, and she’d heard stories of a lot of folk disappearing on this level.
She found the courage to look at the back of his head. He had short, curly black hair with a mix of white and gray. His shoulders were broad, and his clothes were ruined by greasy patches and threadbare spots. She couldn’t smell anything with her nose so stopped up, but she knew a homeless man by his look. Her mother had warned her about men like him, but her mother’s warnings had already been wrong too many times. There was no plan; no routine anymore.
Further into the tangle of pipes and machinery they went. Workers toiled in the distance, and the homeless fellow cautioned her about being seen. They slipped through holes she never would have spotted and climbed across many yards of conduit into the heart of the steelworks itself. She saw the massive smelter far below her, its orange glow like the sun on a summer day. It radiated a sweltering heat, and Loxley welcomed it into her bones with a sigh. She laid down on the pipes, ignoring how much the hot metal almost hurt to touch.
“Can’t stay here. You’ll get a bit cooked. Know that from experience,” said the man.
Her guide jumped down onto a catwalk, then helped her to follow. They stood before a huge structure that continuously belched white clouds into the sky. She’d seen it many times from all over the city, and wondered at its purpose. It filled the Hole with so much steam that the streets glowed every sunset on the eastern side. The man heaved open a great steel door and waved for her to follow him.
It w
as dim inside, and she could barely see anything. Running water echoed through the chamber, so loud that it drowned out all other sound with a wall of white noise. Her tightened muscles began to unwind as her heartbeat slowed. She inhaled deeply, savoring the hot, moist air as it wet her parched throat. She stood, rejuvenating, for a long minute before her guide came to her and motioned her forward to the middle of the catwalk. He pointed below, and she could not see anything through the steam.
“Follow me,” he shouted over the roar of the room. He climbed over the edge of the catwalk and leaned out, holding onto the railing. “And be sure and clinch up your butt.”
He let go, disappearing into the clouds. His fall didn’t frighten Loxley. The hot, rushing water did so much to calm her nerves that she felt a deep and abiding sense of well-being. Without a second’s pause, she scrambled over the railing and leaned back. What waited for her below? Why had he brought her here? Would she die? Did it matter?
She let go, allowing gravity to take her. All became weightless, then she plunged into warm water. She didn’t know how to swim, but she felt bubbles tickling her entire body, and the current pushed her upward. She broke the surface, and as she opened her mouth to breathe, she tasted clean water in which she swam. It was unlike anything else in the Hole, sweet and pure. It fizzed and wasn’t much hotter than her skin.
The light was better down here, and she could see that she was in a massive pool, as wide as a street and almost as long as her block. The metal walls surrounding them were lined with vents at regular intervals. The black man swam back and forth in it, lazily tumbling about under the surface. All along the edges of the room, Loxley spotted huge patches of moss, like plush green carpet.
After all she’d been through, it felt divine. The warmth, the caress of the bubbles, the taste and the smell rolled through her mind, along with the noise of a dozen waterfalls, to smooth out the ragged edges inside her. She held her breath and dipped her head under, listening to the way the chamber became a muted rumble like distant thunder.