The Night Market

by Rawlins, Zachary

  The man behind the counter fumbled shells into the gun and took aim. Jenny twisted the cord and shifted her weight, forcing the fat man up while she crouched behind. His ample chest was enough to absorb both barrels, his bulk shielding Jenny from the blast. She ripped the cord free and kicked the fat man aside, his body tumbling to the floor, motionless and bleeding, his face swollen and vividly purple. Cursing, the man behind the counter tried frantically to reload, shells spilling from his shaking fingers.

  He just managed to finish loading, but he never had the opportunity to fire. Jenny vaulted the counter feet-first, planting one sneaker directly in his face and knocking him from his chair. He raised the shotgun, but Jenny batted it aside and then delivered a brutal kick to his face, snapping his neck back. He fell to his hands and knees, blood leaking from his mouth while he crawled aimlessly. Jenny raised the chair he had been sitting in above her head, and smiled at the pathetic noise he made, begging for mercy with a broken jaw.

  Yael closed her eyes to spare herself the finale and kept them closed until the noises stopped. She turned her head before she opened her eyes, in time to see the guard from the outer door burst into the room, waving an enormous revolver around dramatically.

  “Jenny!” Yael screamed, her hands digging frantically through her belt pouch.

  The sound of the revolver discharging was dull and distant in comparison to the roar of the shotgun, and the shot went wide, knocking out one of the inactive lighting fixtures overhead, filling the air with dust and powdered glass. Jenny took the opportunity to duck behind the counter, reaching for the discarded shotgun. The revolver jumped in the guard’s hand again, and the bullet punched through the glass counter and into Jenny’s shoulder, knocking her to the ground. Jenny whined with pain as she crawled, her fingers closing around the shotgun. Yael scrambled across the floor, staying low and hopefully outside of the shooter’s vision.

  The third round hit Jenny in the side with a frightening, meaty sound.

  Yael brought the titanium spike down with both hands, driving it through the leather of the man’s shoe and into the meat of his foot. She kept pressing until she felt the tip break through the sole of his shoe and scrape the ground, until he kicked her away while howling in pain and rage.

  The shotgun went off in Jenny’s hand. Yael watched the man crumple with a guilty sort of satisfaction.

  “Ow. Shit. Ow,” Jenny said, using the shotgun as a cane to help her to her feet. “Fuck me, but that could have gone better. You okay, Yael?”

  Yael nodded. The side of her face was sore where the man had kicked her, but nothing had broken. One of her ears had been clipped by a stray shotgun pellet, but it was hardly even bleeding.

  “Yes. What about you – are you okay?”

  Jenny did not look okay. She moved slowly as she reloaded the shotgun from the pile of spilled shells on the countertop, swearing and wincing, using only one of her arms. Her other arm clutched at her wounded side, hiding the extent of her injuries from Yael. Blood dripped on the carpet all around Jenny’s shoes like a leaking faucet.

  “What? This? Oh, yeah. I’m pretty much...”

  Jenny paused and aimed the shotgun at the man she had battered with the chair, still twitching on the ground next to her. She discharged both barrels, deafening Yael all over again.

  “...fine. I could use a hand, though, if you don’t mind helping...Yael? Could you help me out here?”

  Jenny turned slowly, leaning on the empty shotgun. Yael was trying to hold perfectly still, which was quite difficult, given the mostly-naked woman holding a box cutter to her throat. Her hands shook so badly that it kept nicking Yael’s neck, starting little rivulets of blood that tickled her as they dripped.

  “You wanna let her go, bitch,” Jenny ordered, sliding over the counter in obvious pain. “Then you get to walk away. Nobody cares about you.”

  “You killed them,” the woman blubbered, sobbing into Yael’s hair. “You killed all of them!”

  “I didn’t kill you, though,” Jenny pointed out, continuing her hobbled and relentless advance. “Mistake on my part. What’s it matter to you? There’s always demand for whores. Why don’t you find another gang to pimp your ass?”

  “They will kill me,” the woman sobbed, waving the razor around wildly, petrifying Yael. “You know that. No one will ever take a chance with me, not after something like this!”

  “So? I got my own problems. Tell me this, though – how does cutting the girl fix anything for you?”

  The woman took a step back and almost fell over, steadying herself with Yael’s shoulder at the last moment. The razor dug into her neck and Yael cried out, certain that she was about to die, scattered drops of blood dotting the front of her shirt. Jenny limped forward, bracing herself with the empty shotgun and whatever else became handy.

  “Back off or I will kill her! I will!” The woman was shouting, hysterical.

  “Let’s say you do that. What do you think will happen then? Do you think you can kill me, too?”

  “I don’t – you stay back. I will...”

  “...kill her. Yeah, you said that. Explore the possibility a little further. What is it that you think will happen when we are alone, bitch? Do you want that?”

  Jenny was injured, but relentless. The woman wavered and Yael allowed herself a glimmer of hope.

  “You try and work in this town, another crew will probably kill you to be certain you didn’t have something to do with this. That’s what you are worried about, right? Well, pardon me for saying so, but your priorities are all fucked up.”

  “I’m warning you...”

  Jenny shuffled closer.

  “Don’t do it.”

  “Last chance, I swear! I will kill...”

  “I heard you. But you better not even try.”

  “What?”

  “’Cause if you don’t do what I tell you, then the shit I will do to you will be so much worse. When I am done with you – and that will take a long time – you’ll still be alive. You don’t know what I’m capable of. I’m going to start with that razor of yours, bitch. Tell me – which do you like better? Your eyes or your thumbs?”

  “Stay away!”

  The woman tripped over something. Yael saw her opportunity and shoved her elbow into the woman’s midsection to make space between them, struggling to break free from the arms wrapped around her.

  It didn’t work. Tumbling backwards, pressed against the chest of a half-naked woman, Yael could only watch the razor move inexorably toward her throat. When it finally buried itself in flesh, even the sound hurt.

  Yael didn’t immediately realize that was the only thing that hurt. The razor remained inches away from her throat, suspended deep between the index and middle fingers of Jenny’s right hand.

  “I told you not to do that!” Jenny shrieked, shaking her hand until the razor fell out. She lunged at the topless woman, lashing the shotgun across her face, shoving Yael aside in the process. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  Jenny planted one foot on the woman’s sternum, eyes burning, and shifted her grip on the shotgun.

  “Jenny...”

  Yael’s voice was nothing more than a whisper.

  “I told you not to do that, bitch! I told you!”

  Jenny slammed the butt of the shotgun against the crown of the woman’s head, the skin peeling back to expose a few inches of white skull. Yael didn’t close her eyes in time to avoid seeing it, and somehow, she couldn’t seem to once it started. Jenny struck the woman again, shattering her jaw and splattering the drywall with teeth and blood. The woman couldn’t scream any longer, she just whined and moaned hideously, like an injured animal. Jenny hit her with the stock of the gun again. The woman fell to the ground, face down and still, but Jenny didn’t stop beating her. Yael watched without realizing that she was mumbling virtually silent pleas for Jenny to stop.

  By the time Jenny finished, what remained of the woman was unrecognizable, like a discarded and leaking prop for
a horror movie, not something that had been a human being a few minutes before.

  Jenny whistled and wiped her forehead as if she were exhausted from an honest day’s work.

  “Ow. Okay, maybe I really am hurt.”

  She fell to her knees, then attempted to stand back up using the blood-coated shotgun. It slipped from her grasp, sending Jenny tumbling back to the ground.

  “Yael? Little help?”

  “Jenny!”

  Yael was freed from the horror that had held her transfixed and ran over to Jenny, trying to avoid the bodies scattered around the room. Jenny’s side was soaked red from the wounds to her ribs and shoulder. Her right hand was split halfway to the wrist and pouring blood. Yael tried to puzzle out a way to help Jenny to her feet without touching any of her injuries.

  “I’m good,” Jenny wheezed, waving her away. “I can take care of myself. I need you to open the safe. Do you think you can do that?”

  Yael’s fear drained away in an instant, leaving only raw, indignant anger.

  “You must be kidding,” Yael said, rubbing the bruise that was forming on her cheek, where she had been kicked. “Jenny, tell me that this wasn’t about drugs.”

  Jenny poked at her mutilated hand and yawned.

  “No...you wouldn’t...”

  “She did,” Tobi said grimly, trotting in to inspect the wreckage in the room. “And she will do it again, if you give her a chance. I told you that you couldn’t trust her, Yael.”

  “It’s not what you think,” Jenny said, shaking her head. “Anti-Human Serum 125? That stuff is poison. I don’t plan on getting high with it. It’s a weapon.”

  “And what about the Azure, Miss Frost?” Yael said, repressing her anger. “What is that for?”

  For a moment, Yael thought she saw unease in Jenny’s expression; not exactly guilt, but something in the neighborhood of regret or self-reflection.

  “I heard they harvest it in dreams. That people who take it dream about the places it comes from.” Jenny examined her partially bisected hand with amusement. “You said that I needed a key like yours, Yael, a key from a dream. And I’ve never had one.”

  Tobi and Yael exchanged looks, then Tobi shrugged. The novelty of a cat shrugging had not yet worn off.

  “Never had a what, Miss Frost?”

  “A dream,” Jenny said, grimacing as she slid her back slowly up the wall, working her way back to her feet with gritted teeth. “I’ve never had one. Not in the pop-music sense.”

  “She is playing on your sympathy, Yael.”

  “Shut the fuck up, you piece-of-shit cat!”

  “Jenny Frost,” Yael snapped, her voice so stern that Jenny and Tobi both froze momentarily, then turned in unison to stare at her. “If you don’t watch your language, I won’t even consider opening the safe for you.”

  Jenny actually hung her head. Yael almost laughed. She was so transparent in her manipulations, so mercurial and cruel, just like a child.

  “Sorry. I meant to say, ‘Shut up, you stupid cat.’”

  “Noted,” Tobi hissed, stalking away.

  Yael wasn’t certain what to feel, but fortunately, her traumatized and overwhelmed brain had settled on nothing at all, like walking with her eyes closed.

  Jenny stumbled over to the wrecked counter, then sighed and fumbled through the pile of broken glass that had formerly been shelves.

  “All gone,” Jenny muttered, oblivious to the new wounds the glass opened in her good hand. “Blown to pieces. Yael, can you open this safe?”

  “Miss Frost, I can’t believe that you would...”

  “Pretty please? At least take a look before I bleed to death?”

  Yael stomped over, glaring at the floor because there was glass on the ground. Tobi cleaned himself aloofly in a far corner.

  “A safe is not the same thing as a lock,” Yael muttered, crouching down to take a closer look.

  She had expected an electronic readout like the one on the strongbox her father kept in his closet, filled with papers and finger-sized ingots of the exotic white metal the Visitors used as currency, or a dial, like the safes in old movies. Yael found something much more primitive, the kind of thing a paranoid housewife might buy to hide inexpensive jewelry. It wasn’t a safe. It was a metal footlocker with a relatively basic key lock.

  Yael briefly entertained the idea of searching for the key, until she remembered that it was on the person of a corpse. She took her picks from their velvet wrap and set to work instead, glad to have something to do, a distraction.

  “This would be a great deal easier,” Yael said crossly, searching for a catch with her most compact lever, “if you weren’t staring over my shoulder.”

  “Sorry,” Jenny said, grinning. “I was just thinking you look pretty cool doing that. Picking locks and stuff.”

  “Please be quiet,” Yael said, bending over the lock so that no one would see her blush. “I’m trying to work.”

  “Right, right.”

  The model itself was unfamiliar but the construction of the lock was basic. The manufacturers hadn’t lavished much attention on the mechanism, given that a determined thief could simply steal the relatively lightweight box. Yael needed ten minutes with a long pick and tension wrench to trip all five pins, the cylinder turning over with a satisfying click.

  Yael stepped aside to let Jenny open the safe. She threw the metal door open, glanced inside and grunted with satisfaction. Then she removed a plastic bag from the lockbox, glancing at it briefly before she shoved it in her pocket.

  “Not bad, Yael,” Jenny said, pausing to attempt to tie her hair back with the blood spattered cord. “You aren’t useless after all.”

  “While we are on the subject of my usefulness,” Yael suggested hopefully, as both of them followed an irritated cat to the stairwell. “Do you want me to cut your hair?”

  9. The Sleep of Monsters

  Frigid and indifferent in geosynchronous orbit, or dead and dreaming beneath water the same pale grey as the sky. A year spent lighting candles, counting birds in flight, laying in crab grass and staring at clouds.

  “You are mad about the other night.”

  “I am not. You can do whatever you want, Miss Frost. It makes no difference to me.”

  “Nope. You’re pissed off at me. I can tell. I’m used to it.”

  “I would imagine so.”

  “See? You are all polite and bitchy. That means that you’re mad.”

  “No, it does not. I am always polite. And I don’t care for that sort – ”

  Jenny nodded enthusiastically from the lower bed in their cabin, where she lay prostrate, wrapped in a combination of bandages and blankets, like a spider caught in her own web.

  “There you go again. Is it because of the drugs?”

  Yael sighed and put down the book she had found in one of the train cars. It was very good, despite the odd title – halfway through and she still had no idea what a ‘Scanner Darkly’ was – but Jenny’s chatter kept distracting her. Anyway, Yael had to concede the possibility that the book was making her more paranoid than she was already.

  “Why in the world would you think that?”

  “I told you already. That wasn’t about getting high.”

  “Then what was it about? Would you care to explain?”

  Jenny grimaced, her face the only part of her that retained a natural range of motion.

  “Get rid of the cat,” Jenny said, nodding at Tobi, curled and purring near a window, “and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “He is asleep!”

  “Be a cold day in hell before I trust a sleeping cat.”

  Yael looked from one to the other in confusion. Finally, Tobi stood up partway, yawned and stretched elaborately, then hopped off the table and onto the floor.

  “I suppose I will take a little walk,” Tobi huffed, ignoring Yael’s apologetic expression. “I wanted to see the rest of the train in any case.”

  “Tobi...”

  “Try to get lost, v
ermin,” Jenny offered cheerfully as the door shut behind him.

  “Miss Frost!”

  “I’m serious,” Jenny confided. “You can’t trust a cat. They don’t care about anyone or anything but themselves.”

  “Sounds like you have something in common with them.”

  Jenny laughed as hard as the bandages around her chest would allow.

  “It’s a good thing that we are too big for them to hunt.”

  Yael shook her head sadly.

  “Get to the point, please. You promised an explanation.”

  Jenny’s attempt to glance around the room, as if to confirm they were alone, was rather ridiculously inhibited by her bandages.

  “I knew that you were coming, Yael. I waited around the Waste for you to show, about three days before you finally turned up.”

  Yael started, almost leapt from her seat.

  “What?!”

  “Yeah.” Jenny admitted it with a matter-of-fact shrug. “Nothing personal.”

  “Why would you...?”

  “Because they told me about the Silver Key, Yael.”

  Yael folded her arms across her chest. Her emotions were swirling madly – one moment, she was filled with burning umbrage, the next she simply felt confused. It seemed as if Jenny were constantly changing faces; every time they spoke she encountered a different girl. Her mannerisms remained consistent, but her motivations...

  Masks. Like her brother told her, once, while reciting the lessons of some nightmare. Everyone wore them.

  “Who is ‘they’?”

  “I think maybe a couple of your Visitors. Guys in robes, right? Weird voices?”