Wild Cards

by George R. R. Martin

  Wind rushed past them from the tunnel as the AA train approached the station.

  Neither noticed that a dozen people had all managed to get to the subway entrance simultaneously. Most of the crowd had attended a late showing of The Godfather and were continuing an animated discussion of whether or not Coppola had exaggerated the Mafia's role in modern crime.

  Someone who hadn't been at the screening was a transit worker who had had a long and trying day. He just wanted to go home and get dinner, not necessarily in that order. The newspapers had been pushing again; even that Joker Rights stuff couldn't keep them occupied all the time. The transit man had been pulled off his regular track-checking duties to spend eighteen hours searching vainly for alligators in sewers and subway tunnels, conduit shafts, and deep utility holes. He mentally cursed his employers for kowtowing to the sensationalist press, and especially cursed the bird-dogging reporters he'd finally ditched.

  The transit worker hung back a little, trying to stay out of the melee as the group fumbled for tokens and started through the gates. The moviegoers chattered as they went.

  With a roar and braking screech of metal on metal, the AA local burst out of the tunnel.

  On the platform, all manner of people confronted each other. Swearing in Italian, Lummy let go of his victim and looked around for a bolt-hole.

  The first two couples had entered and were staring at the scene in front of them. One of the men moved toward Lucky Lummy as the other man grabbed his date and tried to retreat.

  The doors of the local hissed open. At this time of night, there were few passengers on the train and no one got off.

  “There's never a transit cop when you need one,” said the wouldbe rescuer. Momentarily, Lummy considered leaping for the punk and punching out his lights. Instead he feinted at the man, then half-limped, half-ran into the last car. The doors snapped closed and the train began to move. It might have been the light, but the bright grafitti on the sides seemed to change.

  From inside the car, Lucky Lummy laughed and gestured obscenely at Sarah, who was feeling for bruises and trying to rearrange her soiled clothing. Lummy aimed a second gesture at the woman's inadvertent rescuers as the entire group converged on Sarah.

  Abruptly Lummy's face contorted with fear and then outright terror as he began beating on the doors. The man who had tried to stop Lummy caught one last glimpse of him clawing at the rear door of the car as the train sped into darkness.

  “What a creep!” said the date of the would-be rescuer. “Was he one of those jokers?”

  “Naw,” said his friend. “Just a garden-variety asshole.”

  Everyone froze as they heard the screams from the uptown tunnel. Over the diminishing roar of the local, they could hear Lummy's hopeless, agonized cries. The train vanished. But the screams lasted until at least 83rd Street.

  The transit worker moved toward the downtown tunnel as the hero of the hour was congratulated by the mostly unharmed Sarah, as well as by the rest of the onlookers. Another transit employee came down the steps at the other end of the platform.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “Sewer Jack! Jack Robicheaux. Don't you ever sleep?”

  The exhausted man ignored him and let himself through a metal access door. As he walked down the tunnel, he began shedding his clothes. A watcher might have thought she had seen a man squatting down and crawling along the damp floor of the tunnel, a man who had grown a long snout filled with sharp, misshapen teeth and a muscular tail capable of smashing the watcher into jam. But no one saw the flash of greenish-gray scales as the erstwhile transit worker joined the darkness and was gone.

  Back on the 81st Street platform, the spectators were still so transfixed by the echoes of Lummy's dying screams that few noted the rumbling, bass roar from the other direction.

  Her last class over, Rosemary walked wearily toward the 116th Street subway entrance. One more task completed for today. Now she was on her way to her father's apartment to see her fiancé. She had never had much enthusiasm for that, but these days she had little enthusiasm for anything at all. Rosemary moved through the days wishing that something in her life would be resolved.

  She shifted her armload of books to her right arm as, one-handed, she sifted through her purse for a token. Walking through the gate, she paused, standing to one side to stay out of the path of the other students. Judging from the placards carried by a number of the people, the latest antiwar rally must have just ended. Rosemary noted some apparently normal kids carrying signs lettered with the Joker Brigade's informal slogan: LAST TO GO—FIRST TO DIE.

  C.C. had always been into that. She had even sung her songs at a few of the less-rowdy gatherings. One day she had even brought home a fellow activist, a guy named Fortunato. While it was nice that the man was involved with the Joker Rights movement, Rosemary didn't like pimps, geishas or no geishas, in her apartment. It had caused one of the few fights she had ever had with C.C. In the end C.C. had agreed to check with Rosemary more closely about future dinner guests.

  C.C. Ryder had tried and tried to convince Rosemary to become active, but Rosemary believed that helping a few people directly could do as much good as standing around shouting condemnations of the “Establishment.” Probably a lot more good. Rosemary knew she came from a conservative family. Her roommate rarely let her forget it.

  Rosemary took a deep breath and launched herself into the flood of people. All the late classes had evidently gotten out at the same time.

  As Rosemary walked onto the platform, she moved around the rear of the crowd so she could end up at the far side of the waiting area. She didn't feel like being that close to people right now. Moments later she felt the flood of dank tunnel air and shivered inside her damp sweater.

  Deafening, depressing, the local swept by her. All the cars had been defaced, but the last car was even more peculiarly decorated. Rosemary was reminded of the tattooed woman in the Ringling Brothers show she had seen in the old Garden. She had often wondered at the psychology of the kids who wrote on the sides of the trains. Sometimes she didn't like what their words revealed. New York was not always a nice place to live.

  I won't think about it. She thought about it. The image of C.C. lying comatose in the I.C. ward of St. Jude's glittered in her mind. She saw the shiny life-support machines. Because C.C. had had no relatives to notify, Rosemary had even been there when the nurses changed the dressings. She remembered the bruises, the black and poisonously blue patches that covered most of C.C.'s body. The doctors were unsure exactly how many times the young woman had been raped. Rosemary had wanted to empathize. She couldn't. She wasn't even sure how to begin. All she could do was to wait and hope. And then C.C. had vanished from the hospital.

  The last car looked to be empty. As Rosemary started toward it, she glanced at the graffito. She stopped dead, her eyes tracking the words written on the dark side of the car:

  Parsley, sage, Rosemary?

  Time . . .

  Time is for others, not for me.

  “C.C.! What?” Disregarding the other people who had spotted the unoccupied car, she pushed her way to the doors. They were closed. Rosemary dropped her books and tried to claw the doors open. She felt a nail break. Failing, she beat on the doors until the train began to pull slowly out of the station.

  “No!”

  Rosemary's eyes filled with tears at the final sight of her name and another of C.C.'s lyrics:

  You can't fight the end,

  But you can take revenge.

  Rosemary said nothing else, only stared after the train. She looked down at her fists. The apparently steel door had been soft and yielding, warm. Had someone given her acid? Was it a coincidence? Was C.C. living underground? Was C.C. alive at all?

  It was a long time before the next train came.

  He hunted in the near-darkness.

  The hunger was upon him; the hunger that seemed never to be fully satisfied. And so he hunted.

  Dimly, ever so faintly, he recalled a time and a pl
ace when it had been different. He had been someone—what was that?—something else.

  He looked, but saw little. In this gloom and especially in the foul water choked with debris, his eyes served little use. More important were the tastes and smells, the tiny particles that told him both what lay in the distance—meals to seek patiently—and of the immediate satisfactions that hovered, unsuspecting, just beyond the length of his snout.

  He could hear the vibrations: the powerful, slow movements from side to side as his tail muscled through the water; the crushing, but distant waves beating down from the city above; the myriad tiny actions of food scurrying about in the darkness.

  The filthy water broke around his wide, flat snout, the current streaming to either side of the raised nostrils. Occasionally the transparent membranes would slide down across the protruding eyes, then slip up again.

  As large as he was—barely able to fit through some of the tunnels he had traversed during this time of feeding—he made very little noise. Tonight most of the sounds that accompanied him came from the prey, were cried out during the devouring.

  His nostrils gave him the first inkling of the feast to come, but was shortly followed by messages from his ears. Although he hated to leave this sanctuary that covered nearly all of his body, he knew he must go where the food was. The mouth of another tunnel loomed to one side. There was barely enough room in the passageway for even so flexible a body as his to turn and enter the new watercourse. The water became shallower and ended altogether within two body-lengths of the entrance.

  It didn't matter. His legs worked well enough, and he could move almost as silently as before. He could still smell the prey waiting for him somewhere ahead. Nearer. Near. Very close. He could hear sounds: squeaks, squeals, the scurrying of feet, the brush of furry bodies against stone.

  They wouldn't expect him; there were few predators in these tunnels deep down. He was upon them in an instant, the first one crushed between his jaws, its death-cry warning the others. The prey scattered in panic. Except for those without escape routes, there was no attempt to fight back. They ran.

  Most who lived longest scurried away from the monster in their midst—and encountered the bricked-up end of the tunnel. Others tried to sprint around him—one even daring to leap across his scaly back—but the lashing tail smashed them against the unyielding walls. Still others ran directly into his mouth, cowering only in the split second before the great teeth came together.

  The agonized squeals peaked and subsided. The blood flowed deliciously. The meat and hair and bones lay satisfyingly in his stomach. A few among the prey still lived. They crawled away from the slaughter as best they could. The hunter started to follow, but his meal sat heavily. For now he was too sated to follow, or to care. He made it as far as the edge of the water and then stopped. Now he wanted to sleep.

  First he would break the silence. It was allowed. This was his territory. It was all his territory. The great jaws opened and he issued a penetrating, rumbling roar that echoed for many seconds through the seemingly endless labyrinth of tunnels and ducts, passageways and stone corridors.

  When the echoes finally died, the predator slept. But he was the only one.

  * * *

  Rosemary said hello to Alfredo, who was on security duty tonight. He smiled at her as she signed in, and shook his head when he saw the stack of books she carried.

  “I can get you help with that, Miss Maria.”

  “No thanks, Alfredo. I can manage just fine.”

  “I remember carrying your books for you when you were just a bambina, Miss Maria. You used to say you wanted to marry me when you grew up. No more, eh?”

  “Sorry, Alfredo, I'm just fickle.” Rosemary smiled and batted her eyes. It wasn't easy to joke or even be pleasant. She wanted this evening, this day, to end.

  She was alone in the elevator and took the opportunity to rest her head against the side of the car for a moment. She indeed remembered Alfredo carrying her books to school. It had been during one of the wars in her childhood. What a family.

  When the elevator doors opened, the two men in front of the entry to the penthouse came to attention. They relaxed as she approached, but each looked unusually solemn.

  “Max. What's happened?” Rosemary looked questioningly at the taller of the two identically black-suited men.

  Max shook his head and opened the door for her.

  Rosemary walked between the oppressive, dark oak-paneled walls toward the library. The ancient oil paintings did nothing to relieve the gloom.

  At the door of the library, she started to knock, but the heavy, carved doors swung inward before she struck them. Her father stood in the doorway, his silhouette illuminated by the lamp on his desk.

  He took both her hands and held them tightly. “Maria, it's Lombardo. He's no longer with us.”

  “What happened?” She stared at her father's face. The areas beneath his eyes were dark. His jowls sagged even more than she remembered.

  Her father gestured. “These young men brought the news.”

  Frankie, Joey, and Little Renaldo stood clumped together. Joey literally held his hat in his hands.

  “We told Don Carlos, Maria. Lucky Lum—er, Lombardo was coming right over here but he stopped for a minute in the subway.”

  “He wanted to get some gum, I think.” Frankie volunteered the information as if it had some significance.

  “Yeah, anyway. He didn't come out. We were just hanging around,” said Joey, “so we decided to find out what was going on when we heard about a . . . disturbance in the station. When we got there, we found out what happened.”

  “Yeah, they found him in about two dozen—”

  “Frankie!”

  “Yes, Don Carlo.”

  “That will be all for tonight, boys. I will see you in the morning.”

  The three young men nodded and touched their foreheads in Rosemary's direction as they left.

  “I'm sorry, Maria,” said her father.

  “I don't understand. Who would have done this?”

  “Maria, you know Lombardo worked with our family business. Others knew that. And they knew he was about to become my son. We think it may have been someone trying to hurt me.” Don Carlo's voice sounded sad. “There have been other incidents lately. There are those who want to take away what we have worked for a lifetime to achieve.” His voice hardened again. “We won't let them get away with this. I promise, Maria!”

  “Maria, I have some nice lasagna. Your favorite. Please, try to eat.” Rosemary's mother spoke from out of the shadows. She rose to take Rosemary to the kitchen, escorting her with an arm around her shoulders.

  “Mama, you shouldn't have held supper for me.”

  “I didn't. I knew you would be late and so I saved some for you.”

  Rosemary said to her mother, “Mama, I didn't love him.”

  “Ssh. I know.” She touched her daughter's lips. “But you would have grown to care for him. I could see how well you got along.”

  “Mama, you don't—” Rosemary was interrupted by her father's voice following them from the library.

  “It has to be melanzanes, blacks! Who else would be attacking us now? They have to be coming down from Harlem through the tunnels. They've wanted our territories for years. Especially they want a susina like Jokertown. No, jokers would never dare do this on their own, but the blacks could be using them as a distraction.”

  Rosemary heard silence, followed by tinny squeaks from the telephone. Her mother tugged at her arm.

  Don Carlo said, “They must be stopped now or they will threaten all the Families. They're savages.”

  Another pause.

  “I do not exaggerate.”

  “Maria . . .” said her mother.

  “Tomorrow morning, then,” said Don Carlo. “Early. Good.”

  “See, Maria. Your father will take care of it.” Her mother led Rosemary into the harvest-gold kitchen with all its bright appliances, the walls lined with framed
samplers of old-country homilies. She thought of telling her mother about C.C. and the subway, but it seemed impossible now. It had to have been her imagination. She just wanted to sleep. She didn't want to eat. She couldn't take anything else tonight.

  The bag lady stirred in her sleep and one of the pair of large cats beside her moved out of the way. He raised his head and sniffed at his companion. Leaving the woman with an opossum curled against her stomach, the two cats silently stalked out into the darkness of the abandoned subway tunnel. The neglected 86th Street cutoff took them toward food.

  Both cats were hungry themselves, but now they hunted for their woman's breakfast. Using a drainage tunnel, they exited into the park and out beneath the maples to the street. When a New York Times delivery truck paused at a light, the black cat looked at the calico and pointed his muzzle at the truck. As the truck pulled away, they leaped aboard. Settled on the back of the truck, the black created the image of mounds of fish and shared it with the calico. Watching the city blocks pass, they waited for the telltale scent of fish. Finally, as the truck slowed, the calico smelled fish and impatiently jumped down from the vehicle. Yowling angrily, the black followed her down an alley. Both stopped when the scent of strange humans overwhelmed the food. Farther down the alley was a crowd of jokers, crude parodies of normal humans. Dressed in rags, they searched through the garbage for food.

  A wedge of light spilled into the alley as a door opened. The cats smelled fresh food as a well-dressed man, larger than any of the scavengers, carried boxes into the alley.

  “Please.” The fat man spoke to the paralyzed jokers in a soft voice filled with pain. “I have food for you here.”

  The frozen scene ended as the jokers rushed together toward the cartons and began ripping them open. They jostled each other and fought for position to get at the rich food.

  “Stop!” A tall joker cried out in the midst of the chaos. “Are we not men?”

  The jokers paused and withdrew from the boxes, allowing the fat man to dole out the food to each of them. The tall joker was the last to be served. As the host handed him food, he spoke again. “Sir, we thank Aces High.”