The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl

by Tim Pratt

  “Partly that,” Marzi said. “But . . . well, for instance, tonight, in the Red Room, I thought I saw—”

  “Huh,” Jonathan said, his voice strange and flat. They looked up, and he pointed toward the front door. “Remember that crazy mud-girl? She’s out on the deck.” He squinted. “And she brought a friend.”

  “There are lights on in there,” Denis said, standing on the corner with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. There was dirt under his fingernails, and as long as he kept his hands out of sight, he didn’t have to think about that much. The worst thing was, he was almost getting used to the nastiness. When he’d been in the shower, with Jane, there were moments when he felt real pleasure. The sensation of making love to the mud-girl was bizarre but not unpleasant—cool, yielding, slick. If only he could do something about her mineral smell, he might even be able to bear the thought of fucking her again. At least they didn’t have to worry about pregnancy. And the mud certainly washed off easily enough, when they were done. As long as they always made love in the shower . . .

  But Jane the lover was gone now, replaced by Jane the zealot. She was naked, except for the mud, of course, but Denis had gradually accepted that the mud was more skin and substance than it was clothing or armor. Her hair was tentacle-thick, dreadlocks sculpted from mud. “What are they doing there?” she seethed. “It’s three o’clock in the morning! The café should be empty!” She whirled and glared at Denis. “Are there usually people here so late?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said, stifling a yawn. “I’m normally in bed by now.” Though not normally sleeping, he admitted to himself. He slept no more than four hours a night, usually, and often sleeping that much was a struggle. More often he simply lay in bed, imagining crystal lattices filling the air. And when he slept, he dreamed of a great machine, a steam-powered contrivance of chrome and gears and treads. A grinding machine that tore up trees, houses, and streets, using everything in its path as fuel to feed its hungry engine of a heart. And to what purpose? Why did the machine go on? Simply so that it could obtain more fuel, he supposed, and continue grinding, leaving only a scoured plain in its wake.

  “Do you suppose they’re guards?” Jane said, as if thinking aloud rather than actually asking a question. “Do you think they’re guarding the goddess? Or tormenting her, laughing at her bondage?”

  “I hate to ask, lover, but . . . if this prison is so secure, if it can successfully contain the spirit of the earth, how are we supposed to get your goddess out?” Denis had come to regret his lie. Telling Jane she’d been transformed by the goddess had seemed a neat way to sidestep the issue of her death and to prevent further hysteria, but now it had led to this unpleasant little field trip . . . and he still had mud on his boots. And mud under his fingernails, as far as that went. How could he lure her away from this nonsensical quest?

  Maybe it would be best to let her break into the café, he thought. Let her see there’s nothing imprisoned there, put her face-to-face with the absence of her goddess. Though I’m sure she’d incorporate that into her delusional system, too.

  “It’s always easier to break into a prison than it is to break out,” Jane said. “Besides which . . . I have gifts.” She held up her hands, and the mud began to run down her forearms. Her hands were melting, disappearing. Then new digits began to grow from her wrists, longer than fingers, sharper, thicker. Fingers like spikes, or chisels. “I can break down doors, gouge my way through walls. Mud can be soft, Denis, or it can be dried and fired and made solid as bricks. It can ooze through the tiniest cracks, or it can fall down a hillside and destroy a village.” She turned her face toward him, and the glow from a nearby streetlight gleamed on the wet white mud that was her face. “I will set her free. I won’t be stopped.” She walked toward the café then, straight for the main steps, up onto the deck.

  Cursing under his breath, Denis followed her. That thing she’d done with her hands . . . Things shouldn’t be that mutable. Things should have a form, and stick to it. And if things absolutely had to change, they should only grow simpler. Lately Denis’s life had become increasingly, unpleasantly complex.

  Why couldn’t you have stayed dead? he thought venomously, looking at Jane’s back. If he drove a knife between her shoulder blades now, it would effect no change whatsoever—it would just pass through her, as she’d pushed her forefinger through the palm of her hand earlier tonight.

  Not for the first time, Denis felt a surge of real fear at what Jane had become.

  Denis climbed the steps and stood beside her, looking into the main room of Genius Loci. Marzi was there, and her friend Lindsay, and a man that Denis didn’t know. They were all looking out the window, and the man was pointing.

  Jane knew them all, apparently. “Those three,” she said, through clenched teeth. “They struck me before—they mocked me. They led others in mockery.” She lifted her altered hand, as if to wave at them. “I will not be mocked.”

  Denis reached out, to touch her shoulder, to calm and restrain her, but then he thought of the feel of the mud, and the mixed feelings of lust and disgust that Jane’s new texture awakened, and he lowered his hand. He was tired; he was resigned. Let her burst through the bay window into the café. Let her rip all their heads off, and tear up the floorboards, and look for her goddess. Denis couldn’t bring himself to care anymore.

  He heard footsteps behind them, and turned, expecting a police officer, or a homeless person, already deciding how to deal with either one.

  But it was only Beej, holding a wadded-up black garbage bag. “Hi, Denis, mud-girl,” he said, bobbing his weasellike head. “Have you come to be acolytes of the earthquake god, too?”

  “Puppet of the patriarchy,” Jane spat.

  The front door of Genius Loci opened a crack, and Marzi stuck her head out. “Sorry, folks,” she said. “We’re closed. Why don’t you go to the Saturn Café? They’re still open.”

  “Hi, Marzi,” Beej said cheerfully. “I’ve come to liberate the earthquake god.”

  Curiouser and curiouser, Denis thought. But before he could say or do anything in response, Jane snarled, rather dramatically, and launched herself at Marzi, and Denis had little choice but to give the ensuing events his full attention.

  Hole Up

  * * *

  “Fuck!” Marzi shouted, and pulled the door shut just as Jane slammed against it. For a moment, Marzi’s face was mere inches from Jane’s, only the thin pane of glass in the door separating them. Marzi stumbled back from the fury in Jane’s expression. “Get lost, or we’re calling the cops!” she shouted, and Jane flinched, more at the volume than the threat, Marzi thought.

  Beej ambled up the steps, smiling sheepishly. He held up a pair of red-handled wire cutters. “Sorry,” he said. “I cut the phone lines, when I saw you guys in there. See, there’s this earthquake god, and if you called for help—”

  Jane shoved Beej aside, sending him stumbling into a table. Denis came hurrying up the stairs, saying “Jane” in a half-pleading, half-threatening tone. Jane whirled and began arguing with him, gesturing fiercely at the door as Marzi watched.

  “The phone’s out,” Jonathan said, and Marzi turned to see him standing by the counter, holding the receiver in his hand. Marzi opened her mouth, then closed it again. What could she say? Things had gotten pathologically weird in the past two minutes. Beej had cut the phone lines? Marzi couldn’t begin to assimilate that—it was too bizarre, too made-for-TV-movie.

  Lindsay rolled her eyes. “What, do they think this is 1981?” She reached into her purse and withdrew her cell phone. She dialed, then said, “Yeah, we’re at one sixty-one Ash Street, Genius Loci café, and there’s three people outside threatening us, trying to break in.” She paused, then brightened. “Yeah, hey, Joey! They got you on night dispatch, huh? So, could you send somebody over to—great. Sure, I’ll stay on the line, let me pass on the good word.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s Joey Montaigne, you remember him, he used to skateboard do
wn by the boardwalk all the time? He’s a cop now, isn’t it wild? Anyway, he’s sending some guys, and since the police station’s only a couple of blocks away . . .” She held up her forefinger and cocked her head, listening.

  Marzi listened, too, and heard sirens approaching.

  “The sirens are a nice touch, Joey,” Lindsay said into the phone. “Though I think they’re scaring off the bad guys.”

  Denis grabbed Jane’s arm and tugged her toward the street, looking around, panicked. Jane looked into the café, her face white and baleful. Marzi grinned at her and waved. “Bye now,” she said.

  Jane bared her teeth and hissed, like one of those exotic cockroaches, and then allowed Denis to lead her down the steps and along the sidewalk, away from the approaching sirens.

  Jonathan came to stand beside Marzi, looking out the door. “This may be the strangest night of my life,” he said.

  “It’s climbing the charts for me, too,” Marzi said.

  Beej appeared in the doorway like some lateral jack-in-the-box. He scratched his fuzzy scalp with the end of the wire cutters. “Hey, Marzi, let me in,” he said. “Sorry I came on so strong, cut the phone lines and all; I got a little too James Bond, I know. But see, I’m supposed to free the earthquake god, and it’ll only take a minute, really—”

  “Beej,” Marzi said. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Have you totally lost your mind?”

  “My mind’s been found, Marzi,” he said, so earnest it made Marzi’s heart break. “I’ve got a purpose now.” He put the palm of his hand flat on the glass. “Let me in, please?”

  A police car pulled up to the curb. The passenger door opened, and a young officer emerged, his hand on his holster. “You, on the steps!” he shouted. “Police! Turn around with your hands in the air!”

  Beej’s face fell. He looked at the wire cutters in his hands. “Didn’t work, did it?” he said mournfully. “I screwed up.”

  Marzi, absurdly, felt the urge to say You did your best. But she only shook her head.

  Beej turned around, holding his hands up. At the cop’s instruction, he dropped the wire cutters and came down the stairs to the pavement, where the cop quickly cuffed him and shoved him in the back of the car. Moments later, three other police cars arrived, lights flashing. Marzi, Jonathan, and Lindsay stood in the doorway, watching. Lindsay kept chatting with Joey for a while, then Marzi heard her say, “Shouldn’t we free up this line? I mean, for other emergencies?” She hit the disconnect button and grinned. “I let Joey cop a feel off me when we were fifteen, and he’s been willing to do anything for me ever since.”

  “Lucky for us,” Marzi said. What would have happened if the police hadn’t come, if Denis hadn’t been there to restrain Jane? Marzi didn’t want to think about it. But Jane was still out there, in the night, and she definitely seemed to have something personal against Marzi. She’d be back, muddy and feral, and what would Marzi do then?

  Denis drove home slowly, scanning the streets and sidewalks for signs of the police. He imagined a SWAT team—men in black body armor, with webbed belts full of tear gas grenades, holding complex guns with the strange curvature of modern abstract sculpture. On one level, he knew such fears were absurd, but that didn’t erase them.

  Jane sat fuming and quietly furious in the passenger seat; literally fuming, faint trailers of white steam rising from cracks in her muddy body. Her smell was overpoweringly earthy, fragrant, mineral. He could feel the heat of her fury, and wondered if her skin would harden, dry, and—dare he hope?—crack into fragments.

  “We were this close,” Jane said.

  “Didn’t you hear the sirens? We would have gotten caught!”

  “No cell can hold me. I’ll never be a political prisoner.”

  That’s all very well for you, Denis thought. What about me? “I’m not so formidable,” he said, turning a corner, careful to obey the speed limit. “They could still be coming after us! I’m sure Marzi recognized me. There might be cops waiting for us at home!”

  “We didn’t do anything,” she spat. “What, trespassing?” She flicked her hand in dismissal, sending a glob of mud flying, to stick on the dashboard. “And anyway, if we’d gotten inside, freed the goddess, none of that would matter, the cops would be stripped of their power, the patriarchy would topple, the—”

  “Would you just shut the fuck up?” Denis said, surprised at the calmness in his voice; he felt like his brain was boiling, but his words came out tough-guy cool. Jane could disembowel him with one hand, turn her fingers into chisels and open him alive. He knew that, but he could take no more. “I’m tired. Maybe you don’t need to sleep anymore, but the goodwill of the goddess doesn’t sustain me.” He pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building, a knot of tension in his belly dissolving when he saw there were no police cars waiting. Yet.

  “I’m going home,” Jane said, through clenched teeth.

  “Fine by—” he began, then stopped. How could he have forgotten?

  The body. Jane’s body. If Mud-Jane was a ghost, then the corpse was real, and it was still in the back of her car, rotting in place. Jane might not notice it, but what if someone else did? Especially if the cops investigated, went to Jane’s apartment, became curious about her mud-covered car . . . He had to get rid of the body, and that meant Jane couldn’t leave and take her mud chariot away.

  Forcing himself not to hesitate, he put his hand on Jane’s knee. His fingers sank in slightly. She didn’t react, but she didn’t get out of the car, either, just sat, still, like an unfinished statue.

  “Janey, darling, I’m sorry. I’m a jerk. I am. I know how important this is to you.”

  “It’s important to the world, Denis. The world is filthy, it’s a wreck, and men made it that way.” She didn’t look at him, still gazed out the window, but Denis did his best to seem attentive. “I’m in a unique position to change things. You can’t imagine the forces moving through me. The goddess who gave me these powers . . . she can change the world. Remake it. Shape it like . . .”

  “Like clay?” he said.

  She nodded slowly. “Yes. She can give the world a better shape.”

  Jane took a breath—something she did quite irregularly, Denis had noticed; breathing seemed to have become optional for her. “You’ve been good about this, Denis, helping me through my transition, keeping me from panicking, showing me the benefits of my situation. But this is more important than anything, than the possibility of jail, than our relationship, more important than art. Do you get that?”

  “I’m beginning to understand,” he said. “Will you come inside with me? Get some sleep, and then we’ll figure out what to do next?”

  “Yes,” Jane said simply, and got out of the car.

  Denis sighed in relief. Now he had time to think. The police would almost certainly come sooner or later, but he was pretty sure he could talk his way out of that. He and Jane hadn’t really done anything, after all. Beej was the one who actually vandalized things. Denis could come up with a story for why he and Jane were out walking. . . .

  Denis went into his apartment, after Jane. She was sitting on his white couch, looking blankly at the wall, perhaps deep in thought, perhaps not thinking at all. “Sweetheart,” Denis said. “I’m, ah, going to move your car.”

  She turned her head and regarded him wordlessly.

  “You don’t have a visitor’s pass, and they’ll tow cars from this lot. There’s barely enough parking for all the tenants, you know that.”

  “Fine,” Jane said.

  “If anyone comes to the door . . . don’t answer it, okay?”

  “I will speak to no one but the goddess this day, Denis. I have much to think about.”

  “Right. Good.” He went out to Jane’s car, opened the filthy door, and slid inside. He shuddered. The smell of urine from the back, the coating of mud all over the car—it repulsed him, but this was necessary. He tried to decide what to do.

  It wasn’t as if he’d killed her. Her body would
show no signs of foul play. She’d died of suffocation, he assumed—would they be able to tell that? Denis didn’t know much about forensic science, just that it could be incredibly revealing. Surely it would be obvious that she hadn’t been murdered? Not exactly murdered, anyway. But they would be able to estimate time of death, and Denis had been seen with Jane since her death, and other people had seen her—or the mud-her, anyway. What would the police make of that?

  Denis had to get rid of the body, and it wouldn’t hurt to get rid of the car. Getting rid of Mud-Jane would be nice, too, but he wasn’t sure how to do that, how something like her could be disposed of.

  Denis started the car and drove, hunched over the steering wheel, tense and wishing for invisibility. He took back streets, heading steadily up into the hills, until he reached the place where Jane’s car had been buried, where all this mess began. It was four in the morning and there was no traffic, no one up on these dark roads. He drove the car close to the heap of drying mud and stopped, steeling himself for what was to come. Finally, he opened the hatchback and looked at Jane’s still body. He breathed through his mouth—the stink was stronger back here—and concentrated on the clockwork of his glands, on calming himself down. He lifted her body out of the car, reminding himself the corpse wasn’t a person, just meat, and he could stand to touch meat. It was difficult to lift her, far harder than he’d expected. She’d stiffened in death, and seemed heavier than she’d ever been in life. Strange bubbling sounds came from her stomach, gases expanding, he supposed. Denis dragged her toward the mountain of mud, where her car had been buried before she managed to drive it out. He dropped her body in the cavity where her car had been, a place surrounded on three sides by high walls of slowly drying mud. Then he went back to her car, started the engine, and drove it into the heap of mud, slowly nudging with the car’s front end. Under the pressure from the car, the mud walls collapsed, burying Jane’s body. Denis backed the car away and looked at the mound of mud in the uneven light from the dirt-caked headlights. It looked like a mudslide, that was all—a big mudslide, but certainly not suspicious. And back here, off the road, with nothing but mud and trees around anyway, who would bother to dig through it? Who would come looking? There were animals here, mountain lions, but it seemed unlikely they would smell her body and dig through hundreds of pounds of mud to get to it.