“Hey, Lily,” Jax called to her. Lily stopped in the doorway, “Is it that bad?” Jax asked.
Lily nodded. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse, tired. “We were over by the Golden Gate Bridge,” she said, “just checking up on the guards there. The Angel was on patrol above us, and I was right near the approach to the bridge, down in the place that the brush has grown up.” She spoke as if she had been going over this story in her mind, waiting to tell it to someone. “I saw these soldiers coming along the approach. Three of them. All painted dead. Young men, all of them. They didn’t have any weapons.” Her voice was getting softer and softer. “The bridge guards ... the guards stopped them. It looked like the guards were telling them to go back. The three dead ones tried to push past the guards and there was a bit of a fight. One broke from it. He started running for the bridge.” She pushed her hair back with a dirty hand, frowning and shaking her head. “The Angel dropped a smoke bomb—I think he was trying to spoil the guards’ aim. I couldn’t see clearly. But I think they shot that soldier. The other two escaped under cover of the smoke, I think. But that kid—I think they shot him.” She was shaking her head wearily. “The rest of my squad was back farther; they didn’t see anything—just caught some of the smoke. But I think that they shot that kid, one of their own.”
“Maybe they figured that he wasn’t one of theirs if he was wearing our mark,” Jax said slowly. “And the general doesn’t like deserters.”
“You look like you could use some rest,” Danny-boy said gently.
Lily nodded and went on past the doorway. Jax watched her go and wondered if one of the deserters was a thin redhead whose uniform was marked with dirt from an open grave. “We’re going to have to kill the general,” she said.
He nodded. “I think you’re right.”
“No,” she said. “Not just label him dead. We have to kill him.”
Danny-boy shook his head. “He just needs to know that we can get him.”
“He won’t scare,” she said softly. “That won’t work. Not with the general.”
“Why are you so sure about that?”
“I understand him better than you do, Danny-boy,” she said impatiently. “Believe me, he won’t scare.”
“Why don’t we try it and see?” He leaned back in his chair and watched her face. “Can’t we do that?”
“You haven’t been out there much lately, have you?” Jax’s hands were clenched on the table in front of her. “The general stays in the most heavily guarded area. And they use real bullets, remember?”
“I’ve been out there,” he said softly. “I remember.”
“Sometimes I think maybe you’ve forgotten,” she said. “Or maybe you’ve started believing the stories that the soldiers are telling, maybe you believe I’m a ghost and you’re a god.”
He reached across the table and took one of her fists in his hands. “I don’t believe that.”
“You’re having too good a time with this,” she said. “You think it’s a game. It isn’t.”
“I don’t think it’s a game.”
“Then what the hell do you think? Why shouldn’t we kill the general?”
He was looking down at his hands, frowning. “You’ve got to realize that violence and death aren’t the only forces that can change the social order.”
She shook her head, watching his face, started to speak, then just shook her head again. She wearily rested her head on her hands. “I don’t have to realize that. I don’t have to realize anything.”
“We’ve started it this way,” he said. “We have to keep going or it’s all for nothing.” He spoke as if he were trying to convince himself. “If we kill him, that doesn’t end it. They’ll just send another general next year. We need to make him run.” He shrugged. “I’ll go in after him.”
“You wouldn’t make it past the first sentry.”
“I might surprise you.”
“Yeah, You might make it all the way to the second sentry.” She shook her head again. “I’ll go. I’ll help change the goddamn world. But I want you to know that I’m not doing it because I think it’ll work. I’m doing it because you think it will work. Okay? And if he doesn’t give up then, we’ll have to change our tactics.”
She turned away before he had time to argue.
* * * *
The deserter was the soldier Jax had caught sketching. His name, Jax learned, was Jason.
“So,” she said to him, “you’ve joined us. You still sketching?”
He nodded warily.
“Can I see what you’ve been doing lately?”
He handed her his notepad, and she flipped through the pages. On one page she found a sketch of her own face. She was grinning, and she wore a rifle slung over one shoulder. He had scrawled a title beneath the sketch— Ghost Lady.
“I’m not a ghost,” Jax said.
He shrugged. “Maybe not,” he admitted.
“Believe me. I’m not. In fact, I’m looking for a way to get into the general’s quarters when he’s asleep. And it can’t involve walking through walls or becoming invisible.”
He studied her face, chewing his lip. “You going to kill him?”
“I’ll kill him the same way I killed you.”
He shook his head, and his expression was grim. “You should really kill him. You can do it.”
She studied his face and shrugged again. “Can you draw me a map of the sentry posts around his quarters?” she asked him.
He nodded and started drawing. His map was detailed and complete. He knew the time that the guards changed, and he advised her that the best time to attack was about three in the morning when the guards were tired. She listened carefully, took his map, and rolled it neatly.
“So you’re not a ghost,” he said then.
“Not yet,” she said. “If this information is wrong, I may become one.” And she ran away to kill the general.
* * * *
Catseye and Zatch had volunteered to create a distraction at one edge of the area occupied by the army, using smoke grenades and fireworks. At two in the morning they waited with Jax, resting for a moment on the flat roof of a store about a half mile from downtown. Three of Gambit’s bells were still ringing—a sweet high note, a deep bass note, and the middle C from the Buddhist gong.
“It’ll be fine,” Catseye said. Zatch looked tired, but Catseye was still cheerful. He was grinning, looking out toward City Hall. Only one of the neon lights of downtown still glowed—a red stripe that ran down the side of one building and corkscrewed up another. “You’ll do great,” he said to Jax.
She did all right. She went in through the alleys, then up the backside of the building.
The night was dark. No moon. The air was heavy with the smell of smoke. Jax caught the sentry on the roof from behind, labeled him dead, slung a rope down the side of the building, and climbed down to the general’s window. She could hear shouting and muffled explosions in the distance, see the billowing smoke rising, but the street below her was quiet.
She let herself in quietly through the open window. The general was sleeping soundly, but she clapped a rag soaked in a concoction of Tiger’s making over his mouth and nose. He struggled for a moment, then relaxed.
He looked older now than he had looked on the bridge. His gray hair was rumpled; his skin was slack and wrinkled. He frowned, even in his sleep.
With the red paint that had become her trademark, she labeled himdead and signed by jax on his cheek. Once, she heard the sentry at the door cough. In the distance she could hear gunfire. But that was all. She left through the window, climbed down the back of the house, and ran away through the alleys. The smell of smoke was strong.
Catseye and Zatch were late reaching the rendezvous point. Jax sat in the shadows in the corner of a rooftop, listening to the distant gunfire and wondering where they were. She heard them before she saw them. Zatch’s voice was a soft, encouraging monologue. “Not much farther. Come on. Just a little bit farther. It’ll be
all right.”
She met them halfway up the stairs and helped Zatch lower Catseye to sit on a step. Catseye’s eyes were half-closed. By the dim light of her flashlight Jax could see how pale he was. The right leg of his jeans was soaked with blood. His thigh was wrapped in a crude bandage, made from Zatch’s shirt. “He caught a bullet,” Zatch said softly. “He caught it in the thigh. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Jax?” Catseye’s voice was a whisper. She leaned over him and put a hand on his shoulder. She could feel him trembling. “Jax, I want to paint ... I want to paint the battle we just fought. The colors—the colors were great.” He stopped for breath- “Fireworks against the darkness. I want to paint that.”
“We’ll get you home,” she said. “It’ll be all right.” She straightened up, her hand still on his shoulder. “Headquarters is only about a mile from here. I’ll get help. You stay here with him.” Zatch nodded. She hesitated for a moment, then took her jacket off and draped it over Catseye’s shoulders. “We’ll get you back,” she said to him.
She ran away and she came back with Doc. She rode the white horse that Lily had captured on the first night of the war, galloping through the dark streets with Doc riding behind her and clinging to her waist. The streets were quiet; even the distant shouting had subsided. Dawn had touched the eastern sky with an angry red glow.
The stairwell was dark. “Zatch?” she said softly. She could hear him breathing in the darkness.
“I’m here,” he said.
“Doc’s here. How’s Catseye?” She was climbing the stairs, hurrying toward him.
“Too late.” Zatch was sitting on the stairs, his broad shoulders hunched forward, his head bowed. He looked up at her, and she could see the smudges of soot and blood on his face. “He died not long after you left. Nothing I could do. He just died.”
Doc stood over Catseye’s body. He lifted Jax’s jacket from him and put it around Jax’s shoulders. Only then did she realize that she was cold.
Jax took Catseye home on the back of the white horse. She walked with Doc and Zatch, leading the horse. At headquarters (temporarily located in an old apartment building), she left Doc to take care of the body and told Zatch to get some rest.
She found Danny-boy and The Machine in what had once been the recreation room. “The general wants to talk with you,” Danny-boy said as she walked in the door. “He’s been waiting for a while. We were starting to worry.”
Jax took the microphone and pulled on the headphones. “Hello, General,” she said. Her voice sounded very tired.
Through the headphones she heard a rustle of clothing as the general shifted position, the clink of a bottle against a glass, and the gurgle of liquor being poured. “I’d offer you a glass,” he said. “But I think the gesture would be wasted.”
Jax visualized the old man sitting in an easy chair in his room. She thought he might be wearing his jacket. He would be leaning forward a little, a glass cupped between his hands. Her lettering was on his forehead and cheek.
“When are you going to give up and pull out, General?” she asked him wearily. “Three quarters of your men are dead; the others are worried. You’re a dead man yourself.”
“I don’t give up,” he said. “I never have.” His voice was slow and considering. “I don’t know how.” He paused, and she imagined he was taking a sip of whiskey. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “You realize that when I catch you, I’ll have to kill you.”
“Why?”
“To prove that you’re just a woman, nothing more. My men think you are a ghost. Or a goddess. You’re not a woman to them. You’re a mystery to them, and they are beginning to fear you more than they fear me. So I’ll have to kill you. I think you understand.” She heard his chair creak as he leaned forward. “I think you know the need for blood and the need for fear. You understand that I must kill you.”
“You won’t catch me,” she said.
“Ah,” said the general. “You sound so sure. Perhaps you believe your own legend. Maybe you think that you are more than mortal.” Jax said nothing. “My men once thought I was more than mortal.” His voice was softer, a little blurred. Jax wondered how many drinks he had had. “They know now that I’m not. Now that they have seen this mark on my forehead. But even when they thought I was more than I am, I never made the mistake of believing the stories. I always remembered that I could be killed. You must always remember that.” His voice was almost warm, the voice of an uncle giving advice to a nephew. “Remember that I can kill you.”
“You won’t catch me, General,” she said. When she reached up to turn off the microphone, her hand was shaking. She stood slowly and walked over to where Danny-boy stood.
“We can’t scare him,” she said. “We have to kill him.” Her hands would not stop shaking. Even when Danny-boy took her hands in his, she kept trembling. “I could have killed him last night. Then Catseye would have died for a reason.”
His grip on her hands tightened, and she realized that he did not know about Catseye. “Catseye died in the raid last night,” she said. “And the general’s still alive.” She did not know she was crying until Danny-boy reached up to brush a tear from her cheek. “If I had killed the general, then Catseye would be dead for a reason. As it is, he’s just dead.”
“He died for something,” Danny-boy said. “He—”
She shook her head and freed her hand from his grasp. “No,” she said. She stepped back from him. He watched her, his hands open at his sides.
“Jax,” he said.
She shook her head, unwilling to listen. Danny-boy laid a hand on her arm as she started to walk away. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“I’m going to kill the general,” she said, and she kept walking. She went to the door and was surprised to find Danny-boy still at her side. He put a hand on her shoulder, and she shrugged it off. He took her hand. She stepped back, jerked her hand out and up to break his grip. Her hands were in fists. “Don’t get in the way, Danny,” she said.”You grieve for Catseye your way. I’ll do it mine. Don’t get in the way.” She turned from him and ran into the darkness.
It was morning, but the streets seemed very dark. The city smelled of smoke, and she could hear gunfire, always gunfire. The darkness around her seemed like the darkness of a dream, where some things are very clear and others are vague and ill formed, as if only half-imagined. She was very tired, and the shadows seemed to move in the empty streets. She ran through the alleys and climbed from rooftop to rooftop. She stopped when she saw a sentry in the street below, climbed down, and caught him from behind with a blow from her billy club. His face was very pale, a pale oval in the half-imagined darkness, and for a moment he looked like Catseye. He had the same dark curly hair, the same pointed chin. She hesitated, distracted, confused.
The man’s replacement caught her from behind. His shouts brought a patrol, and the patrol took her prisoner. She was tired; she did not fight. She looked at them—five young men, three labeled dead—and shook her head slowly. They stood around her, keeping a respectful distance, holding their rifles ready. The man who searched her did it quickly, then stepped away. They were afraid, she knew. She was tired, but they feared her.
When she rubbed her forehead, her hand came away streaked with blood. Her other hand ached. When she opened it, she found that she had gashed the palm. She had a vague memory of falling and catching herself with that hand, but she could not remember when or where. She rubbed at the cut, trying to rub some of the blood away, and she was surprised to feel pain. They marched her through the streets.
The soldiers took her directly to the general. She waited in the living room of the house, under guard, while a soldier went to fetch him. He came to the room quickly. His gray hair was rumpled, as if he had been asleep. His shirt was wrinkled, and one cuff was marked with a coffee stain. He looked tired. “So, you’re Jax,” he said. He stood with his hands locked behind his back. The word dead was still on his forehead. She stood in the center of th
e room, soldiers on both sides, and did not say anything.
He studied her for a moment. She stared back, her face carefully neutral. “Can you speak, Jax?” he said.
“I can.”
“Make that, “’Yes sir.’ “
She studied him for a moment and considered her options. It was a moment of decision. “Why?” she asked.
He studied her for a long moment. Still smiling, he reached out and slapped her across the face. She did not dodge far enough to avoid the blow.
“You don’t need to ask that. You’re not stupid. You’re not armed, and my soldiers are all around you. Say, ‘Yes sir.’ “
Universe 14 - [Anthology] Page 11