by Pasha Malla
See what’s coming, sighed Walters. Hence the surprise, Reed, of whatever what is.
In the sideview mirror Reed checked the trailer. It rolled along steadily behind the pickup, a boxy shadow back there in the purple evening. From the cupholder he took a walkie-talkie, confirmed the seizure and signed off: D-Squad, Good lookin out.
Poor guy, said Walters between drags. You got to feel sorry for him.
Reed merged onto Lowell Overpass. How do you mean?
Oh, he’s a total applehead. I mean, what’s he doing, living in a parking lot? It’s amazing it took this long to get him out of there. Still though, he said. Still . . .
Enh, said Reed. You heard the HG’s: this weekend’s supposed to go smooth, no hiccups. Who knows what trouble that guy might have had planned. What did Magurk call him? A genital wart on the dong of the city.
Walters ashed out the window, inhaled, blew smoke into traffic.
You think too much, Walters.
So what? We’re just doing our job?
Exactly. We’re just doing our job.
DURING THE DAY THE ZONE was a storybook of wonders: why did that person have a parrot on her shoulder? What was happening down that alleyway with three men arguing around a dolly heaped with copper? This litter of thousands of orange paper dots — who, how, when, what? But in the cold, still night with the only life her own jammering heart and the cloudpuffs of her breath, Debbie’s curiosity shrivelled. You bundled against the cold. You were wary. Any shadow could morph into a thief slinking at you with a blade.
After sunset the Zone always felt a little chillier, the air a little thinner, than the rest of the city. It didn’t help that the breakwater subdued the tides, or the lack of lights in the old stockyards cast the western side of F Street in gloom, or that UOT and Blackacres emptied at dusk: the soup kitchen and shelters and Golden Barrel began to admit their nocturnal clienteles, the shops lowered their shutters, families withdrew into their houses for the night. The only people out would be patrols of Helpers, whistling cheerfully as they strolled the streets, clubs hidden in their pantlegs. At night anything could happen here, and often it did: instead of a place of stories, it became a place where stories happened to you.
Following Calum up F toward Whitehall, Debbie talked unceasingly, if only to distract from their footfalls, calling out to be chased.
So you’re really in with these folks now, huh?
Sure.
They’re okay?
They’re okay.
You’re not worried about —
Calum clicked his tongue. There’s nothing to worry about. You have this idea that these people are like, not people. Maybe they just figured out something different than you. Maybe they look at what you think’s a normal life and are just like, that’s not for me. Maybe it’s too safe and boring and there’s nothing, there’s no edge to it. So they make something else. And maybe their something else isn’t for you.
Well why take me there then?
So you can see.
Does this mean you’ve been before? You’ve hung out with them lots? Calum?
He quickened his pace.
At F Street and Tangent 20 the Yellowline sloped downward and continued at streetlevel into the Whitehall Barns, and it was here that Calum veered inland. He led Debbie down a laneway between empty warehouses, through the hole in the chainlink, to the silos. In there? she said, and he told her, Yep — though he seemed to waver, and it was Debbie who went first.
Inside, the moon sliced through the shattered windows and played jagged patterns over the concrete floor. Flashlight, said Calum. Debbie turned it on: a dab of yellow quivered at their feet, down a flight of slatted metal stairs to the basement, where bunches of candles burned on either side of a door propped open with a chair.
Then they were in the service tunnels angling down beneath Whitehall, the temperature warmed, Debbie shed her coat and sweater, carried them heaped in her arms. An industrial noise came grinding up the tunnel. As they descended it intensified, a grating drone that set Debbie’s teeth on edge. On and on they went, deeper and deeper underground. Finally the tunnel released them into a sort of grotto, where the sound exploded: a terrible music that was huge and cruel and everywhere.
Debbie killed the flashlight. Motes of colour swam before her eyes, she plugged her ears and blinked at the sparkling dark. Gradually she was able to pick out industrial lamps strung along extension cords ringing the room. Beyond their alcoves of weak light the room was a fathomless smudge. Slowly the shadows took shape, they seemed to swell and pulse and writhe — people.
Were they dancing to this tuneless music that rattled Debbie’s bones inside her skin? There were people around the periphery too. In one of the nearby light nooks a hooded figure held out a forearm to someone else dragging a piece of glass across the skin: the blood swelled in black bubbles, wiped away with a rag. They noticed Debbie watching, turned toward her, faces just shadows inside their hoods.
Where was Calum, he was gone. Debbie squinted. How many people were there? Thirty, forty, hundreds, she couldn’t tell. And even with her ears plugged the music throbbed inside her head. Though this was hardly music, no instruments, no one was singing. It was noise, yet somehow immediate and intimate, even alive. It seemed, thought Debbie, to billow mistlike from the room itself and swirling to consume everyone within.
Tentatively she took her fingers out of her ears, let the sound come screaming in, tried to make sense of it. The whining through the middle range was reminiscent of the staticky screech of a distorted guitar, the pulse beneath it seemed percussive, but there was no sign of either guitars or drums. Just people, ringed by a dozen or so megalithic towers of speakers and amps, wires webbed overtop in a ropy ceiling. Inside these towers the crowd milled and shifted — slow, almost purposeful.
Calum stood at the edge of the cipher, backlit, talking to a girl wearing what appeared to be a glove for a hat.
Debbie caught his eye and waved. He ignored her, kept talking to the girl. But then he eyed Debbie again and finally came over and slouched in front of her like a child humouring a parent he wants to escape.
What is this music? she yelled. What do you call it?
Calum pulled away, looked around, leaned in again, didn’t speak.
Is there a band? Where are they?
Calum’s lips moved but Debbie heard nothing.
The band, Debbie screamed, and placed her ear to Calum’s lips.
There’s no band, he said. We’re the band. He gestured above, at the network of wires overtop the dancefloor. Those are sensors. The sound comes from us, moving around. However we move is whatever we hear. You hate it, don’t you?
He seemed almost gleeful. Cal, said Debbie, why did you bring me here?
Why? So you could see.
But there’s nothing to see!
A sour look Debbie couldn’t quite read passed over his face, frustration or regret. He muttered something and drifted away, back toward the girl in the odd hat — not a hat but hair, Debbie realized, palming her skull.
This girl spat, said something to Calum, who looked at Debbie, quickly, then away. The urge to calm whatever she had unsettled fluttered up, but the girl took Calum by the hand, moved out of the light and into the crowd.
And Debbie was left alone with the music. It was horrible — like a hand over her mouth, like hands on her throat, like hands tightening on her shoulders and stomach and thighs. It stabbed into her ears, filled her face, centipedelike went scuttling down her spine, spread pulsing back up into her chest, expanded, tingled all the way to her fingertips and out again, into the world, as shreds of exhausted light. She tried to find something in it, to trace some melody or beauty. But she couldn’t. She didn’t understand.
Calum and the girl had vanished. The two who’d been cutting each other were gone too, all that remained in the lampligh
t was a shard of bloodied glass. Everyone was inside the circle now. Except Debbie, who groped toward the tunnel, found its opening, entered, the walls rough as gravel. She remembered the flashlight: it strobed wildly ahead of her as she went splashing through puddles that hadn’t been there on the way in, the cavernous hall chased her with its screams.
After a time the music faded to a distant drone, farther along the only sounds in the tunnel were Debbie’s footsteps and the rasp of her breath. She leaned against one of the walls: moist, almost spongy, she recoiled from it shivering. Behind her and ahead, the flashlight shone into blackness. Hello? she called. Her voice didn’t even echo, just seemed swallowed by the dark.
She couldn’t go back, not to what was there. And so she continued on — the corridor sloped down, leading her even deeper beneath the city. She turned back and there was the music, faint but screeching. So down again she went. What was this lightless place, where would it take her, the smell was earthy, the floor became dirt and the flashlight wobbled over it, was it fading? A knot bobbed in Debbie’s throat, she blundered on.
And up ahead was a shaft of light.
Debbie raced to it: a grate, high above, and a ladder leading up. She pocketed the flashlight and climbed. The grate swung open — the street, and air, sweet and cool, and the night sky, the vast burnt skin of it bruised by citylights.
And people: a crowd of students lined up along the street, an ordered line behind a velvet rope of girls in too-tiny skirts and boys in too-tight tops, and beneath everything thumped a dull and steady bassbeat.
The Dredge Niteclub. She’d come out in its gutters.
VIII
T EIGHT-THIRTY a Yellowline train dumped the Pooles into Mount Mustela, a neighbourhood known for okay restaurants and furshops and Bookland, the city’s oldest bookshop, said Kellogg’s CityGuide. From the platform the escalator lowered him and Pearl and Gip and Elsie-Anne, conversing with her purse, while Kellogg enthused, How about that train, eh, guys? Can you believe there’s no one driving those things, pretty amazing. You want to talk magic? And those moving sidewalks — just whoop, all aboard! And off you go.
They were spit out where Mustela Boulevard deadended at Tangent 1, a turnaround from which the 72 Steps switchbacked down the bluffs to Budai Beach. From here the alleged mountain (more modestly, a hill) lifted to the Mount Mustela Necropolis at its top end. On either side were residential neighbourhoods, fractals of courts and crescents, each house and duplex and walkup glowing golden with the lives lived inside. Surf rumbled, the night held the island in its fist, the air smelled of deepfry and the fishy lake, and Kellogg took it all in, beaming.
We’re here, he said. The Pooles have arrived.
I’m hungry, said Gip.
Well how about some island flats? The local specialty, isn’t that right, Pearly?
You bet, she said. Inkerman’s at Mustela and Tangent 4. Best flats in town.
Best in town? Is that what my guidebook says? I thought —
It’s what I say, said Pearl.
Gotcha. Kellogg pointed to a streetlight: a buttery flame danced inside a wrought iron cage. Check it out, guys — fire!
Gas lamps, said Pearl. That’s new.
Why does no one care about me? said Gip. I’m hungry, I said, a million times.
The Pooles swept north, Kellogg in the lead brandishing his CityGuide, Gip next in his knapsack, then Pearl holding hands with Elsie-Anne, who whispered into her purse. At Inkerman’s they were greeted with a HOLIDAY HOURS SORRY notice over padlocked metal shutters.
Great, said Gip thinly, just great. What now? Are we going to starve to death?
Did you take your meds? said Kellogg, then to Pearl: You gave him his meds, right?
The gas lamps seemed to slow and gutter. At the fur concern next door a man wheeled display racks off the sidewalk, shaggy pelts jostling as if still alive, and closed up for the night. A few doors up a woman was folding up a sandwich board — BOOKLAND: NEW AND USED BOOKS. Kellogg sprinted toward her yelling, Hey, hey you there!
The proprietor slipped into her shop, studied him through a little window in the door.
Hi? said Kellogg. Sorry, we just want directions.
I’m closed, she said, voice muffled. Open by appointment only.
We’re just looking for island flats, he said. Or anything really. Food.
Pearl came up, holding Gip’s and Elsie-Anne’s hands. Raven! screamed Gip, and pointed at the storefront display, a tower of Illustrations: A Grammar.
My family, said Kellogg, gesturing grandly.
The woman spoke to Pearl: It’s food you’re after? Flats?
Or anything. Anywhere to eat.
Only stuff that’s open now this far north is in UOT. But you don’t want to go there. Not this late. You’d do better down on Knock Street. Lots of restaurants there.
For tourists, said Pearl.
The woman stared.
My wife’s from here, Kellogg explained.
Oh, said the woman.
We’re here for the Jubilee!
Well good luck, said the woman, and trotted off into her store.
Pearl snorted, shook her head. What a charmer. See why I left?
Oh come on now, said Kellogg. Probably gave her a shock is all! But how bad is OUT?
UOT, Upper Olde Towne. I guess there are patrols and stuff now, they’ve cleaned it up a bunch. My friend Debbie lives out there. It’s where we’re meeting later.
So then, really, said Kellogg, how bad can it be?
THE BANQUET HALL was in darkness. From Loopy’s bird sculpture, packed away in the hotel’s meatlocker between two gory sides of beef, one of the catering staff chiselled a few feathers into his end-of-shift schnapps, chugged it, then locked everything up and went home for the night. All but one head table had been cleared and folded up and stacked in a backroom. At this table, swirling a goblet of milk, sat the illustrationist. Beside him was the Mayor, or the two halves of the Mayor: her torso erect on the top shelf of the dessert cart, and below, heaped on the lower tier, her legs. She had the defeated look of a child promised a pony and whose parents instead have divorced.
The illustrationist spoke: This is not what I intended. I had thought to fill these folk with trembling and awe. With desire.
He sighed, swirled his milk, took a sip, swallowed.
The Mayor stared into the shadows of the banquet hall, saying nothing.
Something, anything. I wanted to make them feel. But they long only to be entertained. If that! One wonders if they know what they truly want . . . I’m a showman to them, nothing else. One would assume a show then is a means to attract their attention, to ignite some flicker in their spirits that gives way to —
Please fix me, said the Mayor.
Raven shook his head, continued: That gives way not to empty sentiment, Mrs. Mayor, but true, desirous feeling.
I feel something, if that counts. I feel annoyed. I feel you should fix me.
Oh, my sweet queen. That’s not at all what I mean.
PEARL LED THE WAY OUT of Mount Mustela, around a bend, down an alley painted black from road to roof, and out onto a different sort of street: one side all crumbling rowhouses, the other pawnshops and cheque-cashers, windows barred. Trash clotted the gutters, many streetlights were burnt out, the air was sickly and foul with sewage and rot. At the first corner huddled men who went silent as the Pooles approached. Pearl held Gip’s hand, Kellogg hoisted Elsie-Anne onto his shoulders, her purse atop his head, her legs yoked his neck. They hurried past the quiet men with a rigidity Kellogg hoped conveyed purpose, rather than fear.
No problems here, he whispered, in his pocket lacing keys between his fingers.
The Pooles went west along Tangent 7, the rowhouses of A Street gave way to the squat shapes of warehouses and storage facilities between C and D, many of the windows
punched out in spiky dark shapes. At F Street they headed north. Beyond the empty stockyards to the west shone the oily glint of the lake.
The only sounds were footsteps: Kellogg’s, with Pearl’s and Gip’s echoing half a block behind. The air was still and cold.
Pearl called, The Golden Barrel’s just ahead.
A motion sensor light flicked on as Kellogg passed what he mistook for another painted square, but a breeze wafted from it — an alley. He gripped his keys, ready should a drunk stumble out of the dark, to shred the man’s face with a razory punch.
Around the corner on Tangent 10 the Taverne’s blinking sign lit the sidewalk in orange flashes. Upon its roof was a movie-screen–sized billboard: the obelisk of the Island Flat Company’s logo and Food at the edge of forever scrawled beneath.
Suddenly Kellogg’s footsteps were without echo. He stopped, looked back: no Pearl, no Gip. The corner sat in darkness, they’d somehow not tripped the motion sensor.
Pearl? Kellogg called. Gip?
Nothing.
He lowered Elsie-Anne into his arms. Guys?
No reply.
Clutching his daughter he jogged back down F. The motion sensor triggered. Kellogg stopped. The light went off. He called his wife’s and son’s names again, with Elsie-Anne held close his heart thudded through both their bodies. He faced the alley: a murk too dark to be shadows, a void that existed beyond light.
Kellogg moved to the alley’s edge. He squinted. Nothing became clearer, nothing took form or shape. Pearl, Gip, he said, his voice weak. The blackness seemed wet. His pulse filled his ears, surged through his hands.
He hitched Elsie-Anne onto his hip and stepped forward. The shadows closed in. Another step, the ground sloped down. He pushed in a little farther and thought he saw movement. Then, faint and faraway, came a rushing, airy sound, and the breath of something huge whisked hot and cobwebby over his face.
Kellogg wheeled, stumbled, whispered, We’re okay, we’re okay, into his daughter’s hair, ran and nearly fell inside the Golden Barrel.
The bar’s half-dozen patrons swivelled to inspect him, and in disinterest or disappointment returned to their drinks.