Pollen

by Jeff Noon

  He caught it. Now here he is, standing around and waiting, the morning coming on strong in a mini-dress of orange. Why was Boda being so good to him? Coyote couldn’t answer. It had been ages since goodness had lapped at his bowl. Why now? All he could do was thank her with a kiss, and then proceed to his destination. But that kiss had sparked something within him, a recognition of the good times long gone, and those yet to come, like the mileage on a black cab’s clock; roads taken and untaken.

  There is a noise to the right of him, out beyond where his headlights fade. He turns to look, but can see nothing, only the parched grass moving in slow waves like thickened tongues in the night. He goes for a deep sniff, letting the whole of the landscape into his nostrils. He catches the ozone bass of the rain clouds, and the tart mid-range sterility of the grass and earth, and some high, treble note he can’t place. But nothing dangerous, nothing human or half-human. Not yet.

  He leans against the driver’s door, cig in mouth, listening to Gumbo YaYa introducing the next record, watching the clouds getting heavier, and thinking about his daughter, and about driver Boda, and the time, and how it is all running out, for him and for everybody else, all his big-money-grabbing so-called friends, unless this fucking fare turns up!

  He drags the Napalm down to the filter, throws it away. It glows for a moment, lighting up a small patch of earth. The earth was one step away from death around here, since the Bad Blood had fallen. Thanatos, the big papers had called it. The cheaper ones called it Limp, or Gaga or Mothballer. Christ! Did it matter what they called it? The world beyond the cities was a desert of dreams. It rained about once every six months this far out from the towns, and they say there are some holes in the world in these parts. Trust Coyote to get the job of driving through it all, on the dark roads, with maybe some bad passenger on board. If they ever make an entrance, that is. It was now 4.10 and still no sign. Sometimes Coyote thought that Manchester was the last wet place on earth, and it was this that made him long for its dampened streets. He curses the fact that he is out here, maybe waiting on nothing, just some crazy rumour that Boda has heard. Maybe there isn’t a fare. The only legal transport that works the Limbo is the big monster trucks of Vaz International as they smooth their way from city to city. He had passed one on the way to the pick-up point: a massive juggernaut filled with firepower and floodlights, a screaming steel banshee in the night that had almost caused Coyote to total his black cab into the darkness. This road isn’t even on any of the official maps. Of course Coyote doesn’t hold with official maps. He has the world inside his head. Like a dog urinating on lamp posts, Coyote marks out his territory as he comes to it.

  Coyote is a map.

  He lifts his snout to the wind, sniffing out the odours of storm, and then glances down at his watch.

  4.12.

  The sun is making a pink glimmer at the edges of his world. The day is fast approaching, and unless he delivers this fare within the next hour Coyote could well find himself out on a fragment, driving in Limboland, giving free rides to Zombies and other undesirables. It just wasn’t on. Didn’t they realise that time was death? If you got the seconds wrong…

  Something screamed in the distance: a terrible keening, a high, scratching sound, like grit inside an eyeball.

  Coyote fires up a replacement Napalm, sucks deep of the smoke and then looks out over the moors, watching for the parasites. Mostly they were called Zombies, sometimes Ghosts, sometimes the Half-alivers. Like most things these days they had many names. And Limbo was where they lived, but not from choice. Strict regulations kept them out of the towns and the cities. So this dried-up expanse of wind-beaten rock and earth had become a nesting place. But they couldn’t resist the warmth of human companionship, and the few passing cars were the perfect chance to hitch an illegal ride back home. Coyote isn’t too worried. He has a lot of dog in him, and a Dog can beat a Zombie, on a good day. Still, best to keep an eye and a nostril open.

  He looks at his watch again. 4.15. The sun is definitely up and running along the edges of the night. Maybe it is time to call this ride off? Didn’t they say wait until 4.15 and then get out of there? Now it’s raining. Just his luck. It rains twice a year, Coyote catches a shower. But it wasn’t a Manchester kind of rain, more of a viscous flood of thick liquid; looks like being a real drenching session. Another scream from the darkness. There are only so many terrifying screams in the night that a young dogboy can take. Coyote places his paw on the cab’s doorhandle, turning it to open…

  But listen…listen and smell. Just now, just on the edge of a new day…he catches the scent of flowers.

  Flowers! In this part of the world? On the moorlands? It just doesn’t make sense. Nothing can grow in such germ-ridden, festering soil. Bad Blood has rained on these lands.

  So what exactly is this aroma?

  Petunia. Jasmine. Rosemary. Primrose. Several other scents in there as well, intermingling—his usually all-knowing nose unable to distinguish the various elements. The smell is making him want to sneeze. Coyote suffers from hayfever, every year, no exceptions. Was this going to be a bad season?

  Leaves shiver on the oak tree. Something dark nudges into Coyote’s vision. Shit, there weren’t any leaves on that tree, Coyote was certain of this. What, exactly, was shivering?

  Two people appear out of the mist. A man and a child. The man is carrying a large sack. They don’t smell like Zombies; this is Coyote’s first reaction. They smell like a garden, an unruly rain-sodden wilderness.

  The child is hiding under an extra-long anorak, hood up, drawstring pulled tight, so that you can’t see anything of her, only the eyes. Eyes of bright emerald shining out from the darkness of her hood.

  Coyote knows that the child is female, maybe ten or eleven, right on the edge of puberty. He can tell this from the smell, the smell of young girl. The scent is sweet and high, in relief against the smell of the rain, which is acrid and sour. The rain is making a sleek mess of Coyote’s fur. Coyote has the uncomfortable feeling that these people are bringing the rain with them. He can smell the flowers real strong now. His nostrils are being invaded. Coyote is sneezing. He squashes his cig underfoot, into the soft mud that is forming there, opens the cab door, gets in, turns off the good Gumbo.

  Coyote knows his place.

  The girl climbs into the back of the cab, plumping herself down on the leatherette seats. The man is banging on the boot with one hand, demanding it be opened. Coyote activates the boot-switch, and he feels the cab groan slightly under the new load of the sack. The man comes round to Coyote’s window. He has a face made out of soot. ‘She’s got the fare,’ he says. His voice is like mud being stirred up on a rainy day. ‘You know where she’s going?’

  Coyote doesn’t even nod, he’s too busy spreading Sneeza Freeza on his nostrils. With his unjuiced other hand he activates the meter, the flag fall. This was what the old boys called the initial fare. It comes from way back, when a green flag had dropped down from the mechanism, indicating that the cab was chosen. Coyote still calls it that, even though the green flag has long vanished; that’s the kind of guy he is. The meter comes up all green and shiny: 3.80. Standard fare, one passenger. He hits the extras button for the sack-luggage. It comes up with a 0.60 for the weight. Then he pressed the button marked L for Limbo, and the meter lights up a cool 400.20, which is what he charges for a pick-up outside the cities. Limbo-driving is very dangerous, and Coyote reckons he’s worth every penny.

  ‘Alexandra Park, Manchester,’ the man says. ‘You got that?’

  Coyote ignores him.

  Black cab sure is a beauty; just listen to that old engine ticking! Coyote feels the power coming on. The Knowledge. That’s what the drivers call it—the Knowledge of all the streets: where they all lie, how dangerous they are, what lies in wait in all the dark shadows. Coyote is running it already.

  The back wheels spin up a cloud of mud as he moves off. The man is hanging on to the door. Maybe he gets some friction burns that day.
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br />   Like who the fuck cares?

  4.22.

  The day is already up, soon to be light; now it will be even more difficult to steal past the City Guards on duty, they will be checking all incoming vehicles for Zombies. Coyote is going to have to play this neat, maybe take a hidden door through Frontier Town. There can’t be many city dwellers with Coyote’s knowledge of the hidden roads into and out of Limbo. Time back he used to take some Vurt feathers to help him drive. But he came to know that his edge was crumbling. Nowadays, Coyote drives naked, featherless. The cab’s headlights pick up images of dead trees and the burnt out carcasses of cars. He is driving like a Zombie himself, totally at one with the knowledge of the real and its shadow.

  Zombies were the curse of every driver’s life. Coyote had heard tales in the all-night cafes about cars found lodged in some slimy ditch somewhere down a back street of Manchester, the drivers’ bodies jammed in the seat, hands still clenched on the steering wheel. There were various stories about the state of the bodies. That all of their teeth had been removed. That their heads had been severed, and placed on the front of the hood like some Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy. That their genitals were found inside the petrol tank. Coyote doesn’t know what to believe. All he wants, all that he can do, his only skill, is to drive people from address to address, whether they be in Manchester, or in Limbo. And now here he is doing it, his favourite game: driving some strange fare towards Manchester, accelerating towards the thin gap that leads to a small country road that leads back towards the heat. Maybe this time the dream will happen, and Pleasureville will be lying in wait just around the next turning. If he could just deliver this fare.

  4.41.

  The dashboard clock is shining a bright green. It reminds him of the passenger’s eyes. So very pure. He bends around a little, to speak through the wire grille, ‘What want Manchester, miss?’ The question comes out like a low growl, because the Coyote is a halfdog and this is how he speaks, making human words out of a dog’s tongue.

  The young girl doesn’t answer.

  Coyote tries again. ‘You got ID?’

  No answer. No matter; Coyote knew this was an illegal run anyway.

  ‘Strapped up proper?’

  Again, no answer. But by twisting around Coyote can see that the safety straps are in place around that young body. ‘Weather bad,’ he tries. ‘Time of year?’

  The young girl in the back pulls her anorak hood tighter around her face.

  Okay, so she’s not a talker. She will just have to live with Coyote’s voice, that is all. Coyote likes to talk to his passengers.

  ‘What name, kid?’ he asks.

  Maybe she’s not going to answer. There’s a full ten seconds or so, and then, finally, she says, ‘You can call me Persephone.’ Her voice is sweet and sticky. Like a dollop of honey.

  ‘Persephone. Name is nice,’ Coyote tells her.

  No response.

  Just the soft whispering of black trees on either side of the road. Now and again, the moon peeping out, a mute face from the clouds. But the sun is coming up, and Coyote’s driving down towards it. Maybe he’s free of the Zombies this run; those half-alivers hated the daylight. The noise of rain against the windscreen. The smell of flowers coming from the back of the cab. The air is cloying. Coyote feels a real big sneeze coming on. This hayfever is going to be the death of me.

  Straining with his doggy eyes to steer a good clean path through the torrent of rain, he gets a sudden picture of Boda’s sweet face in his mind. He lets that vision draw him forth, back towards his Fallowfield flat. Then he gets the tingle; the fur on the back of his neck sticking up straight. Something’s about to go wrong, he knows it. Coyote’s looking all around, left to right, for trouble. Sees nothing. Then a loud, pulpy thud from the back of the cab, and the young girl starts screaming.

  Coyote checks the mirror, just sees darkness, the girl moving away from the left side window. He turns his head, his nose taking in bad smells. He can’t see what it is. ‘What happening?’ he calls out. The girl just screams some more. Coyote turns his head right round to see, and the car hits something in the road. What the fuck was that? Coyote spins his snout back to the front, only to see the hedge coming up close. He switches to hyper-dog mode, makes a cool swing on the wheel, turning the cab around to where the Catseyes are winking. Something hits the windscreen.

  Jesus!

  The face of a Zombie, squashed against the glass.

  Now he’s got two of them, one on the back, one on the front, and the stench of half-life is making him retch. The one on the front is staring in at him. Its face is cracked and ragged, wet with rain, with bits of skin hanging off in black flags. Red eyes look at him, full of a terrible need for sustenance. The girl is making some kind of noise from the back seat. Dog driver just yells at her to keep away from the window, but already the front rider has got a finger’s grip on the door handle.

  Should’ve taken that Vurt, mad dogger!

  The only way forward is forward, so Coyote presses his foot all the way down, turning the world into a dark blur. The rider is still hanging on though. Now its other hand is banging on the driver’s side window. Wouldn’t be so bad except it has some kind of rock in there. Coyote swerves the cab to the left and then a fast right again, driving on all fours now, like a true dog. But this Zombie is a seasoned hitcher. The rock comes down with a hard blow, making a web of cracks in the window. Another blow, and the window smashes. A shard of glass embeds itself in the taxi-dog’s cheeks. No pain, not yet, just the overwhelming sense of pride being punctured. That’s my cab window, Limbo-fucker! Get your filth off my life!—Coyote works the lock and then knocks open the cab door—hard!—so that it flies back on a well-greased hinge, taking the Zombie with it. The thing is smashed against the body of the cab, and then the door swings around again. Coyote knocks it back again, but those hard-riding fingers are still gripping the door handle. Coyote pulls the door shut. The Zombie is pressing his broken face against the smashed-up window. Meanwhile Coyote is scrabbling about with one hand in the glove compartment. Where the hell did I put that thing? The Zombie’s head is reaching in to take a bite. Another blow, from the back this time, as the other Zombie makes a crack in the back left window. The girl is screaming.

  The front rider’s teeth are dripping with juice, and its savage hand reaches in; long, years-uncut fingernails madly scratching at dog-flesh, drawing blood. Coyote finds what he’s looking for, and then raises his free hand towards the Zombie’s face. He stares deep into a pair of monstrous eyes for a tiny moment and then pulls the trigger. The pocket gun makes a sweet discharge; small fire from a taxi-dog’s fingers. A rich and hot splatter of Zombie flesh sizzles on Coyote’s face as he drops the gun to the cab floor, only to let the smoke clear on a broken nose and one clear and dripping eye looking back at him. The other eye is a messed-up pulp of blood and gelatine. The rider is still clinging, hanging on to the door frame with crooked fingers, screaming out messages of hate, its burning face still reaching in for the dogman.

  Coyote does the only thing he can, bringing his jaws down hard—

  Christ! I’ll need a bath after this!

  —around what’s left of the Zombie’s sorry face. He has the satisfying feel of meat in the mouth, even if it is the taste of death he is rending from the bone. Coyote is total dog for just about two seconds as he bites clean through the blood and the flesh and the pain and the time and the bad smell of a bad day in a bad life, until the screech of a bullhorn calls out to his submerged self. A glimpse ahead blinds him with headlights and fear, but everything’s working now, the game is his. He opens his jaws to let the Zombie struggle free, works the wheel, turning the whole world to the left to let the oncoming behemoth of a Vaz truck squeeze past, a splinter’s breath, wrong side of the road, and then jabs a good elbow into the rider’s face, just the right moment, sending it flying loose from the cab. It splats against the steel-plated sides of the truck. Way to go, Zombie-breath.

  H
e checks the mirror. A pale white arm is wrapped around the girl’s throat. Her anorak hood is protecting her somewhat, but hardly enough, and Coyote can see that she’s suffering. Maybe he should stop the cab, open the door, get out and confront the Zombie with his flame gun and his world-famous bite. Maybe give him the same message that his partner got: a faceful of pain. But can he stop the cab? Maybe there are other Zombies waiting for a free ride? And can he afford the time anyway? The sun is rising, and how is he going to get back into Manchester, in the daylight, with an illegal immigrant on board?

  What kind of bad game is this, exactly?

  But then a wailing comes from the back seat, and Coyote thinks he has lost his fare, which kills his soul; Coyote has never lost a passenger before. He glimpses the young girl in the mirror, and she’s smiling from under the hood. The Zombie is clinging to her body, but its face looks a mess, like the girl did something to it. Coyote can’t work out what has happened, only that the scent of flowers is smothering him. He can’t stop sneezing, and then he thinks, what a time to be sneezing.

  ‘Done well, kid,’ he says to her, receiving no answer, only the restful swishing of the windscreen wipers.

  ‘Okay back there?’ he asks. Meaning—if you want to push that Zombie out the window, go right ahead, but you’ll be doing it yourself. This road is just too dangerous.

  Silence from the passenger, so Coyote glances at the clock, 5.30 it reads, and then he adds some more extras to the meter to take account of the cost of two broken windows and the pain of struggling with Zombies. Standard fare now reads 18.40. Extras now reads 1275.60. Zombies cost money. Coyote didn’t enjoy struggling with them, but if he had to, and if he turned out the winner, well then, he was grateful for the cash; the dream trip was coming up close. In the mirror he can see the passenger stroking the Zombie’s head, like it’s some kind of pet. Jesus! Can you believe this girl? What the hell am I carrying? And what did she do to the Zombie? Why is life so difficult for a top dog driver? And why am I feeling so completely sexy, all of a sudden?