Wild Cards V: Down and Dirty

by George R. R. Martin

  Rosemary had gotten to her feet and was backing away from the embattled group of men. More shapes of various sizes were streaking out of the night to throw themselves onto the men, hissing, screeching, howling with unmistakable anger. Someone tore himself loose from the group and ran past Rosemary and Jane, screaming as he tried to shake the rat off his arm and pull the squirrel away from his neck. Something clattered at Jane’s feet, and she looked down at it: a gun.

  Her legs gave out and she slid down the building onto her knees. She picked the gun up and stared at it for a moment. Then Rosemary was shaking her.

  “Come on,” she said, pulling Jane to her feet and forcing her to run along the walk in front of the theatre, out to the sidewalk on the other side of Sheridan Square.

  Several large stray dogs were waiting for them in a strange, loose formation. Jane blinked at them groggily, barely aware of Rosemary’s arms around her. After a moment the dogs broke and ran back the way she and Rosemary had come. The shouts of the men turned to screams over the sounds of growling and baying.

  Jane staggered along the street, still in Rosemary’s grasp. “Goddamn you, run,” Rosemary said close to her ear. On the edge of consciousness, she stumbled along until the awful noise began to fade behind them. The absence of Ti Malice was gaining on her again, countering the drug in her system, making each step more painful than the last as it brought her back into full awareness.

  She gave Rosemary a mighty shove and broke away from her, staggering up against a lightpole. Catching herself, she looked around; the streets were deserted except for the two of them.

  “Jane,” Rosemary said tensely. “I’ll take you somewhere you’ll be safe. And then you can explain—”

  “Stay away from me!” she shouted, raising her hand. Rosemary backed off quickly and she saw why; she still had the gun and she was pointing it at the other woman. Her first impulse was to toss it away and tell Rosemary she meant her no harm, she’d been tricked and she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding a gun. But it didn’t matter whether she meant Rosemary any harm or not—anyone around her would be in terrible danger for as long as she lived.

  “You get out of here, Rosemary,” she said shakily, keeping the gun on her. “You go someplace you’ll be safe, and you thank God there still is such a place for you. Because there’s no place like that for me anymore!”

  Rosemary opened her mouth to say something, and Jane thrust her gun hand forward.

  “Go on!”

  Rosemary backed away a few steps, then turned and broke into a run.

  Still hanging on the lamppost as if she were some kind of comical, innocent drunk, Jane studied the gun in her hand. She didn’t know anything about guns except for what was generally known. But that would be enough.

  You just put it in your mouth. Aim the barrel toward the top of your head and count to three and you’ll be free. Nothing could be easier.

  Her hand turned very slowly, as if there was still some reluctance somewhere in her.

  Unless, of course, you want to walk around like this for the next forty or so years. The craving flared in her and her hand moved quickly. Barrel in the mouth. Just turn it around so the trigger faces the sky. The metal tasted sour and made her lower teeth ache. She swallowed openmouthed and took a firmer grip on the gun.

  Count to three and you’ll be free. She remembered how it felt the first time Ti Malice had climbed onto her back, the way his small hands had touched her, eager, greedy, confident. She must have looked at Hiram the way Rosemary had been looking at her. (A spasm of shuddering swept over her, the strange, physical sickness she’d been feeling, but she managed to keep the gun in place.)

  Count to three and you’ll be free. She remembered the feel of Ezili’s skin and the taste of her. Ezili would have enjoyed the sight of her standing on a deserted street with a gun in her mouth. (Now there was a prickly sensation crawling over her shoulders and down her arms, her torso, her legs, as though a small fire had broken out in her skin.)

  Count to three and you’ll be free. She remembered Croyd; she remembered walking with Sal only to have him turn into a man with a mouse’s head. It was Sal she was a great disappointment to, not Hiram Worchester. Sal had believed in what she was. Hiram had never really known her. (Her flesh began to simmer.)

  Count to three and you’ll be free. She remembered that none of it would matter if someone would bring Ti Malice to her right now, right this very second, and set him on her shoulders. She would toss the gun away and welcome his blissful presence inside of her, and he would make all of it unimportant in the universe of pleasure that he could pour into the void widening in her even as she stood there, feeling the hardness of the pistol against the roof of her mouth. (She was broiling alive now.)

  Count to three and you’ll be free. A small movement caught her eye; on the curb a squirrel was staring up at her with bright, curious little eyes. She swallowed openmouthed again and counted without hurrying.

  One. Two. Three.

  Her fingers squeezed the trigger. Absurdly, Sal’s voice spoke in her mind. Hey, cara mia, now what the hell you doin’?

  In the total silence of the street the click was deafening.

  Misfire.

  She sank down to the pavement, and the warm dark tide of the fever covered her over.

  She was in a soft realm of many colors. They came and went, conversing in human voices, sometimes speaking directly to her. She couldn’t answer; this wasn’t her realm, she was just waiting here. Besides, they said such funny things. Things like, The coma is unmistakable, it doesn’t happen that way to all of them, but when it does, we know what it is, and Why don’t we just put her in a bathtub and be done with it. The way the water’s pouring off her, her skin will rot before she has a chance to die, and oddest of all, Jane, why couldn’t I have helped. I should not have let my fatigue cause me to fail you. That was the brightest color, an extraordinary shade of red, sometimes with bright yellow accents.

  A little later all the colors went away (Unplug the machines and get them out of here, she’s not going to wake up), and there was only peace for a while. Then, somewhere far away, a phone rang. It’s for you, someone said, and she imagined that meant her.

  Jane. It’s time.

  She roused to a strange, soft awareness that reminded her of a lucid dream. The voice that had spoken sounded familiar. That you, Sal? I’ve been looking all over for you. Where are you?

  Never mind that now. It’s time.

  Time for what, Sal?

  Time for you to get up. There’s something very important you have to do. Come on now, open your eyes and get out of bed.

  She sat up, looking around. Tachyon’s clinic; how had she ended up back here? she wondered.

  Don’t worry about that. You have to hurry.

  All right, Sal.

  She slipped out of bed and padded across the room to the door barefoot. Just at the doorway she turned to look back at the bed. There was a pale shape on the mattress, slowly fading away like trick photography.

  Was that me, Sal?

  It was you. It isn’t you anymore. Go down the hall. Quickly now, there’s no time to lose.

  She seemed to float down the hall, her bare toes just a few inches above the cold floor. It was a great way to travel, she thought. Being dead had a lot to recommend it in the comfort department.

  You’re not dead.

  She accepted that with equanimity. It didn’t seem to be worth arguing about.

  This door. On your right. Go into that room.

  She wafted into the room and hovered next to one of the two beds, looking down at the occupant. Once she might have found his appearance frightening and pitiable. Now she looked down at him with complete and rational calm, taking in the sight of the enormous head on the pillow, cratered like the moon, except each crater was filled with an eye, most of them open. They watched her just as calmly, or so it seemed.

  A small hole near one of the craters opened, and she heard a whistl
e of breath. “Who are you? Are you a doctor?”

  Listen very carefully, because I have to leave now and you must remember this.

  She felt a small pang of fear. Leaving me again? Do you have to?

  Yes. But I am leaving you with a gift. It’s a very important gift. It’s a gift that Croyd gave you.

  What is it?

  You’ll find out.

  Something in the soft air around her changed, and she knew she was alone with the joker.

  Acting without her volition, her hand pulled the sheet back, exposing the rest of the joker’s body, which was cratered with more eyes, almost all over. They seemed to be forming as she watched. She would have to work fast so as not to hurt him.

  She climbed onto the mattress next to him and smiled. One area, fortunately, had been spared so far, and it was there that she began, moving with gentleness.

  “Lady, what the hell are you doing?”

  She couldn’t answer him, but it wasn’t necessary. Certainly he could see very well what she was doing.

  “Hammond. Hey, Hammond! Wake up! Tell me this isn’t a dream!”

  She ignored the sounds from the next bed, ignored everything except the task at hand, except task was entirely the wrong word for it. Loving someone was not a task. Loving someone could perform miracles.

  She felt his hands moving carefully on her, felt him quiver with pain. The eyes. How they all must hurt when anything touches him, she thought, and wondered who had been so thoughtless as to cover him with a sheet. Perhaps they’d just been waiting for him to die; this was the terminal ward, after all.

  “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ll do it all.”

  “Do anything you like!” he said, and groaned with enjoyment as he felt her enfold him.

  It was different when it was love, she thought happily. When it was love, there was no pain, no shame; of course. When it was love, you wanted to heal the other person of all hurts. And when it was love, that was really possible.

  She smoothed her hands over his chest and laid her head down on it to listen to his heartbeat. His arms went around her, and she could feel the new strength in them as they rocked together. Next to this, Ti Malice was a sad, sorry imitation of a kiss.

  And with that thought, she realized that the terrible void within her had vanished and she was free. She rose up and gave a shout of joy.

  A roomful of voices answered her.

  It was like a switch being thrown—suddenly she was awake, really awake, and she realized she was straddling a man in a hospital bed, a perfectly normal man with two, only two, green eyes, and sandy hair, who was looking up at her with a beatific smile on his young, plain face.

  “Lady,” he said, “this is what I call medication!”

  She twisted around and saw that the room behind her was filled with jokers of every variety, and among them, forcibly restrained, were two nurses and a doctor.

  They broke loose from their captors and rushed the bed, pulling her off and examining the man.

  “I saw it, but I don’t believe it!”

  “Right before my very eyes—”

  “I thought this one was already dead—”

  “Who are you? What room are you in?”

  She backed away from their questions, into the waiting arms of the jokers. A misshapen man whose features had been scrambled thrust his distorted face into hers and demanded, “Can I be next?”

  “No, me!” shouted someone else, and then hands were grabbing at her, pulling her every which way, trying to throw her down on the floor.

  “SAL!” she screamed.

  The room was suddenly filled with fog, and then a wall of water crashed through the door, slapping them all down. Jane let it carry her across the room, onto the ex-joker’s bed. She rolled into the headboard and slipped down to the floor. More fog poured into the room as she crawled around the confused, shouting, drenched mob splashing about in the ankle-deep water, and she fled through the open doorway.

  By the time the alarms went off, she had already left the building.

  The luncheonette was a far cry from Aces High, and the clientele didn’t tip nearly as well, but they didn’t expect a whole lot. Most of them hardly looked at her—a waitress with a short, punkish haircut and an ill-fitting, baggy white uniform wasn’t especially noteworthy in that part of town. The owner was a big motherly woman named Giselle who called her Lamb and asked nothing more of her help than their being on time and trying to remember any good jokes they overheard from the customers. Giselle collected jokes, and the regulars were always happy to supply them.

  Like the two-headed man who came in every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning for a bacon-and-egg sandwich. He/they always had a new one to offer.

  “Hey, have you heard the latest?” he/they said as she was setting the dish down in front of him/them. “There’s good news and there’s better news.”

  She smiled at each head politely. The two-headed man was one/two of the better tippers.

  “The good news is, there’s this woman that can turn you back into a nat by screwing you!”

  Her smile froze, but he/they didn’t seem to notice.

  “You know what the better news is?”

  She shook her head, unable to speak.

  “She’s really good-looking!” Both heads roared with laughter, accidentally bonking into each other. She tried to laugh with them, but she couldn’t manage even a mild ha-ha-ha. The heads sobered and looked up at her, slightly disappointed in her lack of reaction. “Hey, we guess you gotta be a joker—”

  “—to really appreciate it,” finished the other head, and giggled a little more.

  “It’s—it’s very good, really,” she said in a too-cheery voice. “I’ll have to remember to tell it to Giselle when she comes in. I don’t think she’s heard it yet.”

  “Well, don’t forget—”

  “—to tell her where—”

  “—you heard it first!”

  “I won’t,” she said, still smiling her frozen smile at each head. “I won’t forget. I promise.”

  Takedown

  by Leanne C. Harper

  ROSEMARY STARED OUT INTO the spring rain. Gray and dirty, outside it looked more like winter. Chris Mazzucchelli droned on in the background. Christ, how had she ever gotten involved with a jerk like him? Living underground with him had shown her the difference between dealing with Chris on an occasional basis and being together nearly twenty-four hours a day. He was no longer a romantic rebel in her eyes; he was a vicious punk. The problem was he was her vicious punk.

  She returned her attention to the crisis at hand, but her eyes were immediately caught by the sight of Chris’s rattail bouncing up and down on his back as he paced the dingy little Alphabet City hotel room they were using as a safe house.

  “We lost eight capos to this double cross. Fiore, Baldacci, Schiaparelli, Hancock, and my brother. Dead. Vince Schiaparelli looked like he had been turned inside out. Fiore’s skin turned into stone and he choked to death. Hancock and Baldacci weren’t there anymore—just puddles with bones sticking out. My brother—” Here even he gagged and hesitated. “Three more, worse than dead. Matriona and Cheng walked away. They’re fine, just fine. Since then we’ve been able to do nothing more than stay even, if that.”

  “And what did we get? Siu Ma. We already knew about her. We’ve tried to kidnap her twice, for Christ’s sake. We know who’s behind the Immaculate Egrets. But we still don’t know who the ultimate leader is.” Rosemary Gambione shook her head. “Even if Croyd knew something truly useful, they didn’t get it out of him. Great. The Shadow Fists must have gotten to him. We hit a few more Shadow Fist operations, lose some more of our people, and we’re just as far away as ever. Even worse, they’ve started using some kind of biological warfare against us. I wonder whose side this Croyd is really on.”

  “Well, O fearless leader, any ideas? I’ve done everything I can think of.” Chris spun on her, anger and fear mixed evenly on his face. “And d
o me a favor, don’t bring up your fucking father again. I’ve had about all I can take of that, too.”

  “Find your informer, this Croyd. Maybe he does have something more. Let’s try to find out how the Shadow Fists got hold of this wild card virus they used. If they have it, we need it.” Rosemary thought but did not voice her apprehension that if the Families were this far behind, they had already lost the war. She was the sole surviving don. The Shadow Fists had gotten all the others. This war had begun to feel like Vietnam, and they weren’t on the right side.

  “I’ll do what I can. By this time he’s probably in Outer fucking Mongolia.” Chris looked unimpressed by her request.

  “Chris. Get him.” Rosemary used the drill sergeant tone deliberately. She suspected that he did not always follow her orders. She wondered at the speed with which the papers had gotten hold of her true background and whether the source could have been within the Family. Mazzucchelli looked back at her with swiftly concealed loathing.

  “Anything you say. Dear.” Chris stalked across the room before turning back at the door. “By the way, you might find it amusing that our boy Bludgeon apparently beat the shit out of Sewer Jack Robicheaux a few nights ago. He found out that Jack turned us down, I guess, and took it upon himself to teach the dirty little Cajun a lesson in manners. I gave him a little bonus for the job, in your name, of course.”

  Rosemary sat on the bed. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. She was completely isolated from her people. Chris told her it was the only way to guarantee her security, but the situation was getting to her. She looked across the room to the door. She didn’t feel like an all-powerful Mafia don. She felt like a prisoner.

  Bagabond let herself into C.C. Ryder’s loft expecting that C.C. would be in the studio. Instead, Cordelia was bothering C.C. again. She wondered what Cordelia wanted this time. Bagabond had had to dodge around even more people wearing the useless surgical masks. She had no sympathy for those panicked by this new outbreak of the wild card virus. Maybe it would do them some good. Paced by the ginger cat, Bagabond walked over to the couch and sat down on the floor beside C.C. The ginger put her head in Bagabond’s lap. Both women nodded to her before continuing their discussion.