by Pasha Malla
Griggs eyed the NFLM’s Silver Personality, whose face glowed an ungodly russet in We-TV Studios’ halogen-lit hallways, chin jutting from it in a dimpled, tanned promontory. He had the eager look of a camper on parents’ visiting day, standing there with his hands clasped, rocking on his heels. The unsolicited and disarmingly thorough tour was finally over, here at the control room.
Noodles checked his watch. Tapped it. Held it to his ear. Didn’t nod.
We’re fine, said Griggs. Let’s proceed to the task at hand?
Of course! Head on in, I’ll get you guys set up.
Wagstaffe wheeled two chairs up to the console, patted them for Griggs and Noodles to sit, flicked a switch, and a bank of monitors came to life.
Grab headsets, said Wagstaffe. They’re tuned to the NFLM frequency. What else?
As long as we can monitor all the Squads, said Griggs, we should be fine.
Wagstaffe puffed his chest. Well with ten thousand cameras — Eyes on the City, as we say! — feeding live right here, you’ll be able to see anything you want. Actually, he said, tweaking a knob on the console, for a little intimate entertainment, if we switch over to the live We-TV feeds, there’s a lonely Fort Stone housewife who —
That won’t be necessary, said Griggs, smacking his hand away. Now, shouldn’t you get back to your movie?
Our movie, Griggs — All in Together Now, right? We’re almost done the final cut! It’s going to be —
Noodles nodded curtly toward the door.
Mr. Imperial Master, said Wagstaffe, retreating. Mr. Head Scientist — good lookin out!
Though the monitors displayed the whole city — the Institute’s Quad, the parking lot of IFC Stadium, a rooftop camera surveying People Park from the Museum of Prosperity — every view was obscured by fog. Even the Knock Street Station security camera across from the Temple revealed only a faint glimpse of Pea and Dack standing sentry on the front porch.
Griggs pulled a list and a pen from his pocket. Let’s see . . . Magurk’s got the roundup underway — anyone not from here, anyone suspicious, they’ll be taken in — check. D-Squad is looking for Favours, Diamond-Wood’s going to find the Mayor, bridge access is still blocked, check, check, check. Radios are back up. Wagstaffe’s — sorry, our — movie is almost ready to go, Island Amusements is set to open for families, check and check. Starx and Bailie — no word yet, but they’re on the hunt for that kid. And then there’s Raven . . . Anything else?
Noodles motioned for the list and Griggs’ pen. He made an addendum, and with a long-nailed index finger tapped the freshly bulleted point:
• Revenge.
UP OVER THE common Pearl floated, pumpkin-sized knee dragging her beneath it. Along she scudded, sweeping the occasional languid backstroke or, with her good leg, whipkicks that stirred the fog into spirals.
Her mind was so blank she was unaware of its blankness. Everything was airy, empty, nothing mattered. She had a vague impression of the ground hundreds of feet below, and yet with this realization came no fear, only lightness, the heedless ease of a sleeping child.
She drifted out of the park’s northern side, a sign emerged out of the mist: STREET’S MILK & THINGS. As she swept past, Pearl reached out and grabbed its corner, hung on for a moment, her knee tugged her away. There was no breeze to speak of: the knee seemed to enjoy a velocity and volition of its own.
Pearl was lofted out over Street’s empty parking lot. East along Topside Drive the rollercoasters of Island Amusements appeared in silhouette, skeletal dinosaurs prowling the fog. Across the road she was carried, distantly aware of people below, the faraway sounds of idling engines and horns and voices.
From above came a fluttering sound. A bird swooped down, disappeared, circled back, and, as Pearl reached the far side of Topside Drive, made another pass. At the shoreline the fog parted: mist swirled around the bushes on the chalky hillside but ceded abruptly at the water. She floated out over the Narrows. The opposite bank was low and flat.
The bird returned, soaring up from below and gliding for a moment alongside, a flock partner or mate. It seemed to regard Pearl with curiosity, this bird — a pigeon. Then it did a little loop and landed on her inflated kneecap, adjusted its footing, ruffled its feathers, and settled. In tandem she and this new passenger traversed the slate-coloured channel over which Guardian Bridge had once risen. On the far shore an airplane was taking off from the airport. The skies above the mainland were blue and clear.
The pigeon seemed both wary and dismissive of the human being connected to its roost. It clucked. The Narrows rippled along. A slight breeze ruffled Pearl’s hair. She waited, watching the bird, should she shoo it away or let it rest? But before she could decide, it straightened, fluffed its wings, extended its neck, and, with a swift, downward stroke, drove its beak into her knee. Chirruping gaily, the pigeon lifted and flapped madly back to the island.
Air whistled out of the hole, the balloon began deflating, Pearl sank toward the water — fifty feet up, now forty, she could smell it: clamshells and rust. The current rushed swift and purposeful to the east, a branch went whisking by, thirty feet below. The skin around her kneecap had gone baggy and loose.
She had to get to shore, either the mainland or the island, she was halfway to both. One was home, the other — something else. Wheeling, Pearl paddled the air, arms thrashing, lowered ever closer to the murmuring Narrows.
THE THUD AGAINST the side of the Citywagon at first struck Debbie as a hiccup in the exhaust. But then figures swarmed out of the fog, surrounded the car. How many people, a dozen, it was impossible to tell, one stood at the car’s fender, holding a plank with spikes at both ends, there was nowhere to go, they were everywhere.
The driverside door was pounded, voices were hollering. Debbie fumbled with the locks — and something smashed into the window, crinkling it in a greenish web, and she screamed, and the pipe or crowbar was swung again, and the window caved inward, greenish glass sprinkled her lap.
A high, childish voice cried, Out of the car, out of the car!
Debbie went foetal, the door was opened, hands undid her seatbelt and dragged her out and shoved her ass-first onto the tarmac, and for a moment everything went still.
Over her stood a figure, hood pulled tight around its face, holding a mophandle with bike chains attached to one end.
The trunk was opened, slammed shut.
No one in here, called a second voice — flatter, kazoo-toned, but also very young.
The figure pulled her hood aside to reveal hair shaved into a handprint. But the Hand made no intimations of recognition, just flicked her weapon between Debbie’s outstretched legs: the chains jingled, brushed her thighs.
Please —
Again the Hand whacked the chains against the pavement.
The first voice, shrill as a whistle, demanded, Where is he?
Debbie raised her hands in a pacifying gesture. Who? I don’t know. Please.
Your car took Calum, said the second voice. Your car hit him and took him, it said, moving out from behind the Citywagon. We saw it happen.
We see everything, said the first voice.
The speakers appeared on either side of the Hand, tiny creatures each carrying makeshift weapons: two-by-fours with metal prongs ducktaped to both ends. Ten years old, Debbie guessed — and only three attackers, she’d assumed a mob of dozens.
Calum, said Debbie. I know Calum. Who took him, what are you talking about.
The Hand stared back, unspeaking.
The kid on her left said, What do you know? Can you help us?
Tell me what happened, maybe I can —
He was hit by a car like this one. This car.
No, this is a Citywagon, they all look the same — wait, he was hit? Is he okay?
They took him, said Right. They put him in the back part.
Oh god. Wa
s he alive? Is he all right? Where did they go?
We don’t know.
The Hand shifted. The bike chains clinked.
We’ll find him, said Debbie. I can tell you care about him, and I care about him too —
Shut up, said Left. We need to find him.
We need to, said Right.
I know. I didn’t know — but yes. We need to find him. There’s a Citywagon depot —
We’re taking your car, said Right. Drive us.
I can’t, it’s not my car —
The Hand lashed the ground again, Debbie sprung away. The girl’s eyes were hateful.
Okay, said Debbie, hands up, placating. Let’s go, we’ll find him.
INTO THE DUSK they sprung, up through the bowels of Whitehall and south on F Street beneath the Yellowline tracks, three phantoms in hoods pushing and the Mayor white-knuckling the dessert cart, rumbling over the uneven sidewalk, jarred by potholes and cracks in the road. The fog had lifted to form a cloudbank into which the day was fading, inky shadows spilled from the feet of the Blackacres lowrises, the twilight pixelated and staticky and through it the hooded triumvirate rolled the Mayor, past darkened derelict housing all sad old ghostfaces on the eastside of F.
At Tangent 18 a sour, chemical smell swelled up — Lowell Canal. The Mayor’s eyes watered and nostrils burned, her tear-streaked cheeks whipped dry by the wind. On she was driven, down F past a blur of descending east-west Tangents — 17, 16, 15 — and three-storey walkups, some with plastic sheeting for windows, others freshly painted with windowboxes sprouting green shoots. A Citywagon whipped past at F and 12 and was gone.
Two blocks south, passing the Golden Barrel Taverne, the pace slowed. The Mayor checked the lower tier of the cart: her legs were still there, ducktaped down. And then the slap of feet on pavement silenced and she was released. She rattled along for another half block before the cart slowed and banked left and bumped up to the curb. She faced the depthless shadows of an alleyway.
A block north her hooded abductors collected in the middle of F Street, conferring in low voices — a fourth figure had joined them, big and shirtless and wearing a strange helmet. They seemed to have forgotten about her entirely. She listened, could make out nothing distinct, just low muttering. She got a fingernail under a corner of the gag, and was just beginning to peel it away when lights flooded F Street.
There was a roar and a screech of brakes, the blare of highbeams. Doors opened, two Helpers tumbled out shouting, Hey you — Θtop there — Get them! But her kidnappers had slipped off into the shadows, or become shadows. The Mayor struggled with her gag, thrashed atop the cart to draw attention, but the streetlights were out, she was lost and mute in the pitch. The partners piled back into their pickup truck, which went squealing up F Street.
But before the Mayor could feel too dejected, she was bumping up over the curb. She looked around: no one was there. The cart seemed to be moving on its own — rolling forward, very slowly, over the sidewalk and into the alley. The air felt thick. The shadows enfolded her, it was like entering a mine or a cave. No, a lair: something huge and horrible made its home here.
As she thought this a humid and foul-smelling breeze washed over her face. Then another in a rotten swell — breaths, she realized. The cart pushed deeper. She seemed to be teetering at the edge of a slope, the front wheels angled over. A pause. The Mayor gripped the sides of the cart. The moment stretched out, expanded. Another breath gusted up from below. And then the cart tipped over and she was plummeting headlong and reckless toward whatever lurked in the depths of that terrible dark.
VII
FTER SOME indeterminate amount of time, the We-TV countdown in Cinecity reached the Top 10. Each clip was met with cheers and groans, fans and detractors trying to drown out the other. Top 10 status was the province of the truly sensational. At #5, on the Devourers’ channel three men had set fire to a car and were eating it, piece by flaming piece. People howled.
At #4: Stupid Fat People Humiliated in Public Bathrooms by Drunk Babies.
At #3: The Lady Y’s Lingerie Pillowfight Extravaganza (Semi-Finals).
At #2: Isa Lanyess, In the Know.
At #1, of course, was Salami Talk.
Lucal Wagstaffe grinned. I’m very happy to retain my position at the top of your charts. Nice to know you all still like to watch. (A slow lick of his upper teeth, the tip chomped off a pepperette.) But this isn’t about me. I’m only here to introduce one of many highlights of the Silver Jubilee weekend, and also an amazing example of our citizens coming together in harmony. What you’re about to see has come from you, dedicated viewers — a movie for the people, by the people. The result reflects not just who we are, but what we all want to be. So sit back, relax, break out a sausage, slide the sausage slowly into your mouth, bite down, slowly, allow the juices to burst over your tongue, and enjoy.
Cinecity buzzed as the film began.
THE NEW FRATERNAL LEAGUE OF MEN AND WE-TV PRESENT:
ALL IN TOGETHER NOW
A SILVER JUBILEE SPECTACULAR
Through a pair of binoculars Gregory Eternity gazes squintingly, like a moustachioed and gunslung nearsighted person, though he isn’t (nearsighted), he can see really great, out over the roiling black waters, which are also white where the waves lick like black yet white-tipped tongues into whitecaps, of the Lake.
He lowers the binoculars as a look of consternation sweeps over his face at the same time as a cloud sweeps over the sun, metaphorically. What could be out there? his scrutinizing gaze seems to suggest. Something, suggests his gaze, as he squints and looks through the binoculars again. Maybe something evil . . .
Something’s out there, he intones brassily, and his second-in-command, a buxom and curvaceously sensual yet with a look in her eye that says, Just fuggin try me, woman named Isabella who wears bulletbelts crisscrossed over her torso, combat boots, and cool reflective shades behind which it’s impossible to tell what she’s thinking, says sultrily, I think you’re right.
He turns to Isabella and kisses her, hard, his moustaches smearing against her soft, creamy skin like a broom pressed against a wall and smeared around as though to scrub something gross off of it.
Take me, she says. So he does. Gregory Eternity takes her, right there, soft and then hard, poetically on his mother’s grave in the middle of the Necropolis.
But while they are taking each other something moves on the horizon — something black, something not quiet human, something with the reek of the inhuman about it like a stinky halo of otherworldly danger and evildoing. Something evil.
What are we doing? says Gregory Eternity, withdrawing briefly from Isabella, already well on her way to her sixth climax. She is a woman ripe in her prime.
Isabella climaxes anyway, then collapses on the bed of flowers they laid there earlier — the reason they’ve come to the Necropolis being to lay flowers for Gregory Eternity’s dead mother, who passed quietly at her own home surrounded by friends and family, except Gregory Eternity, who was out drinking cider with his buddies, and now carries guilt like a bag of rotten squab because he could have saved her with one of his kidneys, but didn’t, for reasons unexplained. Probably medical.
Danger-slash-evil is moving closer.
Who is it? says Gregory Eternity, who quit drinking through a supportive twelve-step program at the Museum of Prosperity (Sundays 2–4 p.m.). But it must be a rhetorical question, because then he answers himself sort of: It’s not human.
Isabella shudders visibly. What do we do? she asks questioningly.
Gregory Eternity squints again, putting his pants back on. We defend this place, he growls. This is our home and no outsiders will ever come here and take it from us. This is where we live and so do our friends and families, except my mother, who is dead, RIP. It’s the best city in the world. Do they think they can come here and take it from us?
I don’
t fuggin think so, says Isabella, producing a huge gun from somewhere, cocking it, and glaring with a come-and-get-it look at the encroaching boats (they’re actually boats). She focuses her aim on the lead boat, which sails a flag featuring a foreign symbol that is inhuman and alien (not necessarily of the outerspace variety) but most of all, undoubtedly evil.
This. Ends. Now! ejaculates Gregory Eternity.
Isabella echoes, Now!
But the boats aren’t in range yet, and first they’ll have to call a town meeting to assemble an army to defend the island. But it will end soon. Very, extremely soon.
PEARL’S GAIT SEEMED even more laboured than usual. From the steps of the Museum of Prosperity Kellogg watched her approach from Topside Drive: dragging herself along, heaving one step to the next. Her jeans were torn at the knee, the hole gaped raggedly. But, most important, she didn’t have Gip’s knapsack.
Pearly? Hey, Pearly, we’re up here. Kellogg stood and waved. Look, kids, it’s Mummy!
We are wasting valuable time, said Gip. How many times do I have to tell you?
I know, champ. I know. But know what? When you’re old like me you’re going to look back on this and think, gee, it was so great to have that time with my family, so great to spend time with my parents now they’re dead.
Dad? said Elsie-Anne.
Ha, no, I’m not dead yet, Annie, don’t you worry.
Not . . . yet, she whispered.
Kellogg ran at Pearl, a plastic bag from the Museum’s giftshop swinging in his hand, and hugged her clumsily.Pearly, he said, I got you a present! He produced a sweatshirt. Islandwear! You’re a local, figured you should dress the part.
No backpack, she said. No meds.
Aren’t you going to put it on?
Maybe later.
Okay. Kellogg took it from her, held it up to his wife’s chest, his own. But hey, mind if I wear it? Getting a little chilly out here with the sun going down and all, is all.
Sure.