by Chuck Wendig
“Shoot!” he screams. “Shoot.”
The woman starts to run.
Guns go up.
Just before bullets start to chatter—
Foosh.
Harsh beams from a pair of spotlights. He shields his eyes as the barking chatter of guns fills the air, shells bouncing and rolling, lighting up the space next to him—
Then the lights click off again.
The darkness of his eyes is again consumed with ghosts—these of light and distortion, ill-shapes and jellyfish blobs in his vision. His men have stopped firing and he yells—in a voice he can barely hear though it remains his own—“Keep shooting!”
And they shoot.
Bullets, ricocheting off something. A shape there in the shadowy passage ahead.
He thinks, That’s not possible. A trick of the eye.
Because surely he couldn’t be seeing a tank down here. A small tank, too—like something out of an earlier war, this ghost a machine ghost from conflicts forgotten.
The men see it, too. Because they stop firing.
And for a few moments, everything is again cast to darkness.
But then the tank returns fire.
A single gun spits a loud clatter of bullets—one cyclopean eye flashing.
Everything moves in slow motion. Nestor turns. Tries to run. Heel skidding on dust and scree. He sees Mikhail’s face disappear. Veronika spinning about like a vodka bottle on an empty table. Oleg chewed to bits as if by vicious, invisible rats—bullets punching through him, pulling bits off.
Nestor screams, catches one bullet right to the back of the head and—
*
Soon, the smoke clears.
The top of the tank groans, the wheel on the lid spinning before it pops.
Werth is first out. Mookie next.
Werth hoots. “That was fun!”
But Mookie doesn’t think so. This wasn’t fun for him. This was work. This was misery, putting Skelly out there like that. He hops down, and hurries to her side—Skelly, who stands there cradling a hand dripping blood, looking like she’s just been dragged underneath a car for about six miles. He reaches out with a pair of meaty hands, flips on one of the spotlights Burnsy had mounted to the Ford 3-Ton tank, then gingerly holds her in front of it, examining all her bruises and wounds. He can feel his heart kicking hard in his chest, burning through the Viridian in there like a steam engine scorching coal, a hot gunpowder burn—
“That goddamn dirty sonofa—” he says, but she stops him with a finger to his lips.
She smiles, woozy, and says, “He’s dead. I’m alive. We got the book. Baby, we got the book.”
“Your hand. I shoulda never—Skelly, I’m sorry—your face—”
“S’allright, sugar. I’m still pretty.”
“Damn right you are.”
He pulls her close—gently, carefully.
But anger is part of who he is. It lives in him—a bear that never sleeps, never hibernates, quick to rouse. And before he even knows he’s doing it, he’s pulling away from her and stomping over to the pile of bodies there—
He has no idea which one is Nestor Volodin. And he doesn’t care. Because all these monsters are responsible. Mookie lifts a boot and stomps on one head, then another, feeling skull give away beneath his boot, skin sliding over broken bone, scalp peeling—
Skelly calls after him. Mookie hears Werth saying to let him go because he gets like this sometimes.
Mookie growls, raises his boot again—
The body beneath him rolls over. Hands up, shaking, waving. Teeth chattering as if the man is cold. Some thick-necked muscle-head. Russian, probably. Mookie growls a feral “fuck you” as he brings the boot up higher—
“Wait wait nnnggh wait please, nngh shit wait—”
The man’s accent isn’t Russian. His words are throttled by pain.
“Who the fuck are you?” Mookie asks.
“Alon... Alonzo Can-can-candlefly.”
Then the man folds in on himself in a fetal tuck. Crying. Whimpering.
“Candlefly,” Mookie says. He turns to the others. “This the buyer?”
Skelly nods.
Well, look at that.
30
They’re gone. Burnsy left. Hrothk is gone. The golem’s absence stings a little but I don’t pretend to know what goes in those rock-filled brains. Burnsy, though. That one hurts. I thought he trusted me. I thought I could trust him. For an ex-addict, he’s a judgey jerk, you know? Whatever. Good riddance. If he’s right about things, and I find out, I’ll stop. I’ll walk away and—god, what then? Kill myself? Eat a bullet? Jump into a hole. Damnit, I don’t know! I don’t want to think about that. He can’t be right. It can’t be true. I won’t allow that to be. Regardless, before he left, Hrothk at least left me a present: he found Ochre. Down there in the dark somewhere. He left it in his room, on his cot, the only thing that remained of him: a small tube of the golden stuff, looking like the dried-dirt column from the nest of a mud dauber wasp, like the ones that used to grow sometimes on the side of our house. So I’ve got Ochre and now all I need is Viridian. On that front, Ernesto Candlefly has yet to come through.
— from the journals of Eleanor Jessamyne Pearl, Living Dead Girl
*
Down here, underneath Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, the walls have a damp, sea-brine stink. Some of the old sewer bricks in this tunnel have been popped out, replaced with bones—dog skulls, cat bodies, human skulls crushed and fit into place.
The plan worked. Better than expected in some ways—worse in others. Skelly had the tracker so they knew where to plant the explosives—focused C4 charges courtesy of the Sandhogs. They were reluctant, of course. Mookie met with the new union head of the 147-and-a-half: Davey Morgan’s replacement, a little human bridge abutment named Sally Corners. Sally, gruff as a bulldog, hands dry and cakey like limescale on an old drain, threatened to blow his guts out with a sawed-off she kept in the Pig. Because, she said, Mookie destroyed their work on the water tunnel.
He pointed out that, sure, but he also saved the other two tunnels.
Which means he saved Manhattan. And their legacy.
That got her. And her face told him she knew it all along.
And so: a couple bricks of C4. Explosives aren’t a pair of scissors—they’re not real precise and if you’re not careful, you’ll kill someone. But she helped him work up a blast pattern (a series of dots) to allow him to bring the floor down without blowing everybody in the restaurant to bloody gobbets.
The goal was the safe.
The safe that wasn’t even supposed to be open but someone, Skelly—smart as the crack of a cat-o-nine tails—got them to open it and so that part was easy like Sunday morning. The downside was they kicked the shit out of her. And put a knife through her hand. A hand currently healing—the wound sizzling under the soft spread of emerald powder. Mookie’s starting to think that if the Green Grave had a motto, it’d be: “Saving you from the six feet under, one teaspoon at a time.”
Of course, he’s almost out of Viridian again.
But he’ll be seeing Bellbook and Woodwine soon. He’ll resupply then.
The other win: Alonzo Candlefly.
Muscle-headed Mookie-wannabe. Ernesto’s man.
And also the buyer for the Maro Mergos.
They drag Alonzo behind the tank. They drive it down under Brighton, to a drainage conduit: big round room under the street, like the hub of a spire with six smaller tunnels traveling away like the spokes of a wheel. Water and trash pouring down, cold and slushy—they’re calling for some questionable weather, apparently.
One last gasping grasp of winter before spring.
There, standing on one of the slippery brick walkways, Lacey Aces stands with the book. Mookie breathes a sigh of relief. He never liked handing the book off to her, but Skelly said that was essential. Just in case everything fucked them sideways, the book wouldn’t be there to fall back into monstrous hands. He thought she might skate o
ff again, sell it right back to the Russians for a cool double-dip. But Skelly was sure the girl would come through, saying, “If she doesn’t, she knows my ghost will haunt her till she’s a ghost, too, and then I’ll feed her damned soul to the god-worms myself.”
Turns out, Skelly had it right. Because there’s Lacey. And she’s got the book.
They unhook Alonzo. He’s in pain. The daemons—they’re not supposed to be here in the Deep Downstairs. It’s killing him. Or at least twisting him up so bad he wishes he were dead. He’s sweating. Arthritic. Shaking like the last leaf on a tree in fall.
Mookie kicks him in the ass.
Alonzo whimpers and cries out.
“Candlefly sent you?” Mookie asks.
“Nnngh. I am a Candlefly.”
“Right. Whatever. Ernie, I mean. Ernesto.”
“Yeah, yeah, h... him.”
Mookie hunkers down. Underbitten jaw grinding teeth as if to say, I could pulverize your bones between my teeth. You may look big. But I am big. I can punch you so hard you’ll shit out both your kidneys. He grabs the younger daemon’s face and turns it toward him. “You wanna see the sunlight ever again, here’s how this works: you’re gonna tell me everything you know about what’s going on with Ernie, my daughter, the wedding, all of it. And you’re gonna tell me why he wanted this book.”
“I... I... mmmnot s’posed to—”
Slap. Mookie brings a cupped hand down on Alonzo’s head. Right on the air. Like a thunderclap probably inside his head—his skull bouncing against the brick.
“Spill it.”
And he does.
And when he’s done, Mookie holds his head and looks deep into the man’s trembling eyes—and he wrenches that head sharply to the left, snapping the neck. It doesn’t go all the way the first time. He has to wrench it a few times, like twisting a sapling until it splinters and breaks.
The others goggle at him. Lacey looks horrified.
Skelly, still holding her hand like a broken wing, says, “Babe, you didn’t—”
“I did. It’s done. I can’t have one of Ernesto’s daemon flunkies out there. It’s not my job to be merciful. It’s my job to get shit done and get my daughter clear of this mess. He was an obstacle now. He’d a been an obstacle later. Fuck him. Let’s go.”
*
Early morning. Back at Mookie’s bar. Sun won’t be up for a few hours.
Outside, snow has begun to fall. Big, fat flakes—like chips of coconut frosting, all the world glazed. They’re saying a few inches on the ground, maybe, by the end of the day.
Skelly’s upstairs. Sleeping. She’s had a lot taken out of her. Mookie feels awful. Putting her through that. He wanted to be the one. But she said it’d mean more if it was her. That the Russians weren’t favorable toward the Get-Em-Girls and they’d see her as a prize—Mookie took a little umbrage at that, said he was a prize, too, damnit. He killed a couple of their thugs at the church, said they’d probably want a piece of him.
But then she gave the reason that convinced him.
“They’ll underestimate me, sugar. I’m a woman. They’ll walk me right up to the gates of Hell and hand me a key because never in a million years will they think I can really hurt them and their big bad borscht-stirring dicks. They’ll be afraid of you. We don’t want them afraid, honey. We want them relaxing their assholes—all the easier to cram our boot up there when the time comes.”
She was right. But she paid the price for it.
This thing has a higher and higher price every time he makes a move.
That’s starting to scare him a little.
Right now, though, he’s just gonna sit here. Listen to the faintest whisper of snow against the window. Eat some meat. All he had in the little fridge was a mild soppressata. Tongue. Belly. Face. Odd parts of the pig. That’s what sausage is—all the odd parts, the unwanted bits, the weird and worrying offal. Mixed with spices. Forcemeat pushed through to a casing made of intestine. And then people eat it. They eat something they’d never have eaten otherwise, never have desired given their constituent parts. Most people won’t eat the meat boiled off a hog’s skull. (Mookie would, but Mookie is Mookie. Mookie gnaws on pig ears, sucks meat from pickled hooves. He’d eat the squeal if you could package it.) But you stick it in a sausage and suddenly it’s all okay.
People are weird. He doesn’t get people. But that’s why he does what he does. That’s why he works better down Below than up Above. He can punch a gobbo so hard the thing erupts into a rain of gobbo guts, but standing in line at the bank gives him the shivering shits. Interacting with Snakefaces? Fine. Talking to real people? Jesus fuck.
The world isn’t palatable to him, and he isn’t palatable to the world.
He’s the boiled face-meat, not the sausage.
Whatever.
The soppressata is good. He knows a guy who smokes his soppressata—not a euphemism for anything—and it’s damn good, if unusual. Mookie misses making charcuterie. He misses going to the farm. Selecting a hog. Hanging. Butchering. Curing.
Maybe one day. Maybe when all this is over.
His jaw works on the dry salami. He makes small satisfying noises. Exhaled moans. Little grunts. Words of bliss spoken in the back of his throat that never quite reach his lips. But suddenly those words are cut short—
He’s not alone.
And it isn’t Skelly.
He whirls on the stool, kicks it out from under him, hand on his cleaver—
Werth holds up his hands. “Slow your roll, cowboy.”
“Goddamnit, Werth. Goddamnit.”
“Sorry. Train’s, eh, not running. Snow.”
“You coulda come in the front door.”
“I went out the back. Still unlocked, so, I came in that way.”
“Fine. Whatever.” He sniffs. “Sit. You want?” He holds the little cutting board of meat, gives it a little shake—a clumsy way to be enticing.
“I still can’t stand that shit. You know what sausages look like to me? Dog dicks. Like, erections. Bright, red, long.”
“You spend a lot of time looking at dog dicks?”
Werth thumbs his dead tooth and laughs. “Funny.”
“I’m a real chuckle-machine,” Mookie grunts.
“I like hot dogs. You got any of those?”
“Sausages look like dog dicks but most hot dogs are dog dicks. Dog dicks and possum assholes and four rat pubes per square inch.”
Werth shrugs. “Protein, right?”
They laugh. It feels good.
“We had good times, eh, Mook?”
“Maybe. Bad times, too. Good or bad we get the time we get. You’re back, so I guess we get some more, eh?”
“What’s your plan?”
“Huh?”
“With the book. The plan.”
“Jesus, you old goat, I don’t wanna talk about this shit right now. I’m tired. Been a long handful of days. I just want to... you know.”
Werth nods. “Sure, sure. Yeah, of course.” But then thirty seconds later he’s saying, “You’re gonna get the book translated. Then head out to the West Coast. You only got, what, a week before the wedding? Cutting it close but I guess you’ll make it.”
“Yeah, Sally from the Sandhogs says she knows a translator so tomorrow I’ll head into the city and—shit, Werth, I told you, let’s talk about something else—”
But then Werth sniffs and coughs and licks his lips—nervous habits as the .38 snubnose he’s been hiding thuds against the bar top.
The old goat doesn’t look over. Just stares forward, at the depleted racks of booze. Gun pointed that way, too.
Shit.
Mookie sighs. “Trains were still running, weren’t they?”
“Ayup.” Werth nods, sucks air between his teeth.
“So. How’s this gonna work? You’re gonna shoot me, take the book. That it? You were never back here to help me. Who you working for? Candlefly. Shit. Fuck. Fuck. Just like back with Zoladski. You fucked me then, gonna fuck me no
w.”
“Not Candlefly,” Werth croaks. “Someone else.”
“Who?”
He hesitates. “Oakes.”
“What?”
“John Atticus Oakes is still down there. Alive and not-alive all at the same time. He took a dose of the Death’s Head, just like your little girl. But he went the other way. She tried to get out. He went deeper. The god-worms got to him. He’s the Skinless King now. Lord and maker of all those flesh-free freaks.”
“You. Working for him. Ain’t that a bitch.”
Werth itches his brow with the snubnose sight. “I didn’t come back to life because I had renewed purpose. I came back because he made me come back. He’s like, a... a necromancer or some shit. He would’ve skinned me too if it wasn’t for needing me to look like me in order to get close to you.”
Mookie moves a slow hand down to his belt. Where the cleaver still hangs, sharp with purpose and heavy with hunger. He pops the snap.
Werth looks up and wrinkles a brow.
“Oakes is pulling for your girl. Not because he gives a dog dick or possum butthole about her but because she’s knowingly or unknowingly heading toward the edge of everything, and bringing the world with it. Something he calls the grand inversion. Above as Below, Below as Above, blah blah blah bullshit.”
Mookie notices something.
Werth’s throat twitches, pulses. Like a bird is trapped in his throat, trying to flap its wings and find a way out.
What the—
Werth holds the gun now like he’s praying with it. “And Oakes, well. He can’t have this book, the Maro Mergos, getting to her.”
“So he sent you as the failsafe.”
“He sent me as the failsafe. You end up with the book, it’s my job to make sure it doesn’t stay in your hands. And if that means chopping your hands and head off, well.”
Mookie’s fist curls around the cleaver’s hilt. His knuckles pop. Goddamnit. Getting old is like that: his bones all creak and crackle now like ever step is him twisting up a sheet of bubble wrap.