It picked up the cop by the throat and rammed him against the pawnshop shutter. The cop’s boots dangled inches above the sidewalk. A sharp thumb gored into his neck. Blood squirted like juice from an orange.
With its free hand – it was more hand than paw, long fingers tipped with horny razors – the animal tore its prey’s flak-jacket out through his uniform, exposing a white torso, hairless and untattooed. With three passes of its hand, it left a mark.
Zig-zag-zig.
The animal squeezed harder, and the cop’s head popped off his spine. The creature dropped its kill.
The Death Squad brought up firearms and emptied them into the animal. It jitter-slammed against the shutter, explosions bursting against stiff, red fur. Stuart’s ears were assaulted by the intolerable blurt of close-up gunfire. Forgotten, he pulled himself to his feet.
He should run.
. . . but he needed to see what happened next.
After a continuous burst of co-ordinated fire, the Death Squad shut off the bullet-spray to examine their kill.
Hey man, should’ve seen the beast we brought down last night. Freak must’ve got loose from a zoo or something . . .
The animal still stood, scorched and smoking. Its ragged clothes were holed and afire. But it wasn’t dead, didn’t seem even to be hurt.
Stuart looked at its eyes. It was not an animal, not entirely.
“Take a head-shot,” someone ordered.
A rifle came up, and a red dot wavered against the beast-man’s forehead. There was a bone-snap as the rifle discharged.
“On the button.”
There was a blackened patch above the thatch of darker eyebrow fur, but the eyes were still alive.
“Mother . . .”
The hunter pushed away from the pawnshop, and attacked. Besides the dead killer, there were seven men in the squad. Within twenty seconds, they were all dead or dying.
Stuart couldn’t look away. The hunter was fast and sure, a graceful yet deadly dancer. Smooth muscle shifted under a thick pelt. Eyes, teeth and claws shone silver. A red veil splattered across silver.
Several cops got off more shots. Others tried to get away. It was all useless. Uniforms came apart. Screams bubbled through cracked helmets. Limbs wrenched from trunks like twigs from branches, ropy coils of gut pulled through claw-holes.
All the dead were marked with the zig-zag-zig.
It was over so quickly Stuart’s ears still ached from the gunfire. He had not got used to the fact that he was saved from the descent of the knife.
Saved, but for how long?
The beast-man who had executed the Death Squad rooted on all-fours among his kill, shutting off voices that still moaned. Satisfied, mouth stuffed with flesh, he stood erect and bipedal. Surrounded by dead, this was the ruler of the Jungle. A broad chest inflated and the hunter howled at the moon.
The howl was an animal sound, but the song of a man was mixed in. Stuart knew eyes were looking, from behind shutters, through windows, from alleys. In the Jungle, they knew about the hunter. They just hadn’t told the Man.
The hunter’s song ended. With sharp nyctalopic eyes, he glanced about the street. Somewhere above, a helicopter’s muffled blades cut through thick air. More back-up coming down.
Stuart was against the abandoned patrol car. The hunter looked at him, full mouth curving wickedly, more and more teeth exposed.
Having fought for it, the hunter was entitled to this scrap of food. This time, Stuart was calm before death.
The hunter’s mouth grew wider still. The shark-grin was a smile. The whole snouted head shook as the hunter swallowed what he was chewing. He padded towards Stuart, interest in his intelligent eyes.
The eyes were familiar.
Stuart knew the beast-man wasn’t going to kill him. This hunter bore down only on those who deserved death.
The hunter was close, now. Stuart saw a human face buried under the animal’s skin, and just failed to recognize it. The beast-man breathed heavily through his snout. He reached out to touch Stuart’s face. Stuart saw a leathery, hairless palm; short, ruffled bristles running down each finger; polished, sharp oval knife-nails.
The hunter laid his hand against Stuart’s face. Stuart tried not to flinch. They looked at each other, each seeing something.
The beast-man pulled away, almost whirling in the air. He extended a long, clawed forefinger and etched a swift zig-zag-zig into the roof of the patrol car, then bounded away.
Stuart was alone on the street with eight torn and bleeding corpses.
A wave of people appeared and swept across the street, descending on the dead squad like vultures. The black van was hot-wired and driven off. Bodies were stripped of guns, knives, radios, flak-jackets, boots, belts, everything. Stuart was manhandled away from the patrol car, and five young men with gang colours and power tools got to work on it, disassembling the vehicle like a factory team in reverse motion.
He stumbled through the carrion-stripping crowd, thinking of the eyes of the beast-man. For him, the world had changed; he shared the earth with creatures of wonder and moonlight.
A helicopter lowered, and light brighter than the sun raked across the street. Stuart’s eyes stung as if he stared into a nuclear fireball. A call-to-attention signal whined.
Someone fired single shots at the huey, which responded with a rain of strafing. Holes pocked in the asphalt, puncturing legs and vehicles, as a chaingun raked the crowd.
Stuart remembered Muldoon Pezz’s apocalypse talk. And the negro spiritual quoted by James Baldwin.
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water, the fire next time . . .”
Things were moving too fast to keep up.
“LAPD,” announced a robocop voice from the huey. “Cease and desist . . .”
The helicopter touched down daintily between bodies. Cops hit the street, firing indiscriminately . . .
“Cease and desist . . .”
This time, Stuart ran.
XIV From the Corrido of Diego
“ ‘Hoy, pachuco,’ I was greeted outside the bar.
“Miguel Ynostrosa whirled down the boulevard, dancing as much as walking, pleated pants flapping. He wore ‘drapes’: high-waisted pants with loose legs and tight cuffs; wide-brimmed hat with a velvet band; jacket a yard across at the shoulders, cinched tight in the middle; a loop of watchchain; pointed-toes and highly polished shoes.
“My outfit was no less outlandish. We were both zoot-suiters. I raised my hand to receive the slap of greeting.
“ ‘Papers come through, Diego,’ he said. ‘You lookin at a private, first class.’
“Everybody was enlisting. I wondered if there was a way round my lack of birth papers. Throats in Berlin and Tokyo which would be the better for Fox’s attention. I had always been a lone predator. It was probable I could not survive unnoticed in the services.
“ ‘Maybe soon you’re lookin at a seriente,’ Ynostrosa grinned.
“He was a good kid, an epitome of pachucismo but with a streak of the political. We met collecting for the Sleepy Lagoon Defence Fund.
“To be young and have a Spanish surname in the early ’40s was to be branded a gangster by the yellow press. When a murder was committed near a swimming hole the Hearst papers tagged ‘the Sleepy Lagoon’, seventeen youths were convicted. The ‘evidence’ consisted of confessions beaten out of the defendants. The case was fought through appeal after appeal. What the Scottsboro Boys were to blacks and Sacco and Vanzetti to union men, Sleepy Lagoon was to the chicano.
“Roosevelt promised to be a ‘Good Neighbour’ to Latin Americans abroad, but his policies had no influence with the Los Angeles police, courts and city council.
“We strolled down the boulevard. The bars were full of sailors, in town on leave from the Chavez Ravine Armory. Everyone was waiting to go overseas. The city was bustling to a swing beat. Panicky citizens had been known to imagine Japanese subs in the municipal plunges and bombers over the La Brea Ta
r Pits.
“Ynostrosa suggested we go to the movie theatre. There was a re-release double bill: The Mark of Zorro, with Tyrone Power, and The Wolf Man, with Lon Chaney. I’d seen both, but there were always people at the theatre, zoot-suiters and their girls. Afterwards, we could get a crowd together and go to one of the night-clubs that admited coloureds and ‘Mexicans’.
“It was early June, a clear night. The breeze smelled of oranges. The moon was past full.
“A sailor slouched at the corner of an alley, dragging on a Lucky, looking up and down the street. I could tell he was lookout. His buddies were probably among the garbage cans with a whore.
“As the sailor saw us, he tossed his butt and looked over his shoulder. There was a faint glow on his face, which shocked me. At this time of the month, my strange sight was at its weakest.
“In the alley, someone was being beaten up. We stopped by the sailor and looked past him. Five of his comrades, caps askew, were beating and kicking a boy who wore a zoot-suit.
“The sailor called; his shipmates left off work and rushed out. We were surrounded by a white wall.
“ ‘Fuckin’ zooters,’ the smallest sailor spat.
“ ‘Zooter’ was the 1943 synonym for ‘greaser’.
“A zoot-suit was seen by anglo service-men as a challenge to uniformed manhood. Unjustifiably, zoot-suiters were reckoned draft-dodgers, seducers of left-behind sweethearts, sons of fascist Spain, black marketeers.
“ ‘Strip your drapes,’ a sailor said, shoving me hard in the chest.
“I snarled, Fox struggling inside me. The moon-time was just past.
“ ‘Fuckin’ animals. Look at the hair-oil on this nance, Costigan.’
“ ‘Strip your drapes,’ Costigan repeated.
“The sailors began to rip our clothes. We fought, but there were reinforcements. Word got into the bars that the Navy was giving zoot-suit hoodlums a lesson. More sailors, plus soldiers and marines, rushed to join in.
“Ynostrosa fought harder than I. For so long, I had relied on Fox; now, there was only Diego. Fox was a month away.
“We were stripped to our skivvies, bloodied and battered and left in the street. Then the police came and arrested us. As we were man-handled into a paddy wagon, I saw the uniformed mob roll down the boulevard, seizing another young zoot-suiter. Four were required to hold back a girl as twenty or thirty heroes trampled her beau. As she spat and kicked, hair coming loose from her high pompadour, soldiers made jokes about Mexican spitfires.
“An anglo rushed up to the wagon, protesting. He was a bar-owner, and his place had been smashed up by sailors. A zoot-suiter had been thrown through a window.
“ ‘It’s a matter for the Shore Patrol,’ a cop told him, turning away.”
“That night, and for about a week afterwards, hordes of servicemen charged into town, hired fleets of taxicabs, and cruised the streets in search of zooters. Girls were raped, boys were killed, but only pachucos were arrested. No sailor, soldier, or marine was charged with any crime. The police adopted a policy of driving meekly in the wake of the mobs and arresting their battered victims. Newspaper editorials praised servicemen who took action against ‘lawlessness’. Many openly lamented that the raids were stopped, on orders from on high, before ‘the zoot-suit problem’ was subjected to a final solution.
“Miguel Ynostrosa never went into the army; he lost the use of his legs.
“In the lock-up, I healed fast and was at least safe from further brutality. Enraged, I heard of the cripples and mothers beaten by the cops when they protested arrests. The Los Angeles City Council adopted a resolution which made the wearing of a zoot-suit a crime.
“I sweated out a long month, knowing the moon nights were approaching. The bars of my cell seemed strong, maybe strong enough to hold Fox. The faces of men around me began to glow. I knew I would have to resist the change.
“I remembered the sailors in the alley. Some faces had glowed, some hadn’t. Some believed they were doing the right thing; perhaps they were worse than the men who relished the chance to go out and beat someone up without suffering consequences.
“I was released after three weeks, no charges laid against me. During the moon-nights, I prowled the streets, searching for glowing faces and sailor suits. I found prey, but never saw any of the men who crippled Ynostrosa. I killed drunken servicemen, whom I found alone. Once, I found two Military Policemen raping a girl, and exulted in killing them. The girl saw me up close, but never told.
“At the end of the full moon, I was exhausted. I had done nothing, though the press screamed at the police for failing to catch the ‘Zorro Killer’ who left the zig-zag-zig on his victims. Those who had attacked the zoot-suiters were mainly overseas, directing aggression against the Japanese; within a few years, most would probably be dead. It was not up to me which would live through Guadalcanal or Midway; just and unjust, good and bad, all would fall in this War.”
“I was tired and I knew what Hendrik had meant by my curse. No matter how I fought and killed for my people, no matter how many zig-zag-zigs I left, I could do nothing.
“I was one creature, alone and unaided. Evil was too vast, a mob with no true leaders. I couldn’t even protect friends like Ynostrosa, let alone an entire race, an entire country. But still I saw the glow in the faces of those who deserved to die, still I changed on moon-nights and left my zig-zag-zig.
“I got into the War, working in a defence plant. In October, 1944, the convictions of the Sleepy Lagoon defendants were reversed by the Court of Appeals. By then, they had served two years in jail. When released, several youths of previous good character turned in bitterness to crime and were swiftly returned to prison.
“When men with Spanish names came back from the Just War minus limbs or with medal ribbons and insisted they be served in ‘No Mexicans’ bars and restaurants, things began to change a little, on the surface.
“I began to feel old.”
XV
Firefights lit up the Jungle. The War on Zonk had just passed Def Con 4. A row of window-fronts exploded as fire raked across them. Next to tonight’s police action, the Rodney King beating was a misfiled parking ticket.
Stuart jogged through the pre-emptive riot reprisal, running with the fox as hounds made steady progress down wide streets. No arrests were being made, but instant sentences were carried out.
If he had a gun, he would shoot back.
There’d be nothing worth looting in the burning stores. People were too busy fleeing to take advantage of excellent terms offered on electrical goods.
This all couldn’t be some crazy scheme to trap the beast-man. This was way too big, way too organized. Even for a wonder like the hunter Stuart had seen, there was no need to send in an army. This had the feel of something long in the planning.
From helicopters, soothing voices assured those on the ground that they should lay down their arms and surrender.
“You will not be harmed.”
Nobody believed that. There were no innocent bystanders any more. If you got shot: sorry, but you must have been guilty.
What the hell was this all about?
Stuart made a bad decision, and took a left into a cross-street that turned out to be a blind alley. A wire-topped wall came up in front. He could never get over it.
He turned and pain caught up with him. His lungs and knees hurt. He was seven years away from his last rugby match; the only exercise he had taken since was climbing stairs.
“Shit,” he breathed.
A cop came into the alley, a flash-light fixed to his helmet like a miner’s lamp. That gave him both hands free to hold his gun.
Stuart reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his passport.
“British citizen,” he said. “Diplomatic Immunity,” he lied. “Civis romanus sum,” he tried, desperately.
“Who ya got?” someone shouted from outside the alley.
“Nigger on zonk,” the cop said over his shoulder.
As the s
omeone advised “waste him”, Stuart pushed himself away from the wall and at the cop.
He felt the gunbarrel slam against his shoulder, and was sure he’d been shot. The cop, surprised, collapsed backwards. His gun skittered away into garbage.
Stuart felt his wound. The barrel had just gouged at him, not even ripping his clothes.
Angry, he dug into the cop’s chest with his knees and wrestled off the lamp-helmet. A face appeared. Young, white, freckles. Stuart made a fist and smashed the cop’s nose, over and over.
Policemen Are Your Friends, he’d been taught in infants’ school. Cop is the natural-born enemy of the black man, he’d been told at a party.
Something animal inside made it necessary Stuart break this killer cop’s skull. He was becoming acclimatized to the Jungle.
A slim shadow fell on Stuart and the cop. Stuart looked up.
“Stop fuckin’ around and ice the pig,” a girl said.
Anger froze.
Ice, waste, kill . . .
“Pussy,” the girl said, kneeling. In the lamp-circle, Stuart recognized the half-oriental who had been with the Alcalde. She had a little silver gun, which she fired into the cop’s forehead.
Stuart felt the cop die, the last writhe of his body like a hobbyhorse between his legs.
He stood up, shuddering, cold.
“Come on, gangsta,” the girl said, “let’s get offstreet.”
She led him out of the alley and along the sidewalk to a door. Mop-up crews were proceeding ruthlessly down the boulevard.
The girl got the door open and shoved Stuart through. They were in a hallway, lit only by searchbeam passes over a skylight.
“Esperanza,” said a weak voice. “That you?”
Stuart looked at her. She shrugged and said “Esperanza Nguyen. Some call me Warchild, but that’s kidshit.”
The girl shouted back, identifying herself.
A door was opened and Esperanza marched Stuart into a room. Computers and desk-top publishing equipment on desks, framed covers of Spanish language periodicals on the walls.
One of the boys from the Coffee Stop, side soaked with blood, jittered around.
“How is he?” Esperanza asked.
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 63