by E. E. Knight
“Don’t mention it. If you decide to move here, I might be able to connect you to a job. For, say, fifteen percent out of your first year’s paychecks. I could even need a favor myself someday. You might be able to help me with that, and I’d be able to give you a hell of a lot more in return than your captain, or whatever he is. And Chicago beats the hell out of living up in Cheeseland.”
“It’s my kind of town,” Valentine agreed.
Valentine arranged for his room with Denise. The room was small and clean and had a mattress to die for. Valentine inspected the late Virgil Ames’s pistol again. It was an old army Colt automatic, firing the powerful .45 ACP cartridge. It wouldn’t necessarily stop a Reaper, but it would give it something to think about. The gun belt also held four spare magazines, all of which were full. With the ammunition in the gun, that gave him thirty-five rounds. More than enough, as he did not want to use the weapon except as a last resort.
Valentine stretched out on the bed and forced himself to sleep for two hours. He showered and put the gun belt and his knife back in his pillowcase sack.
He ate downstairs in the Club room. The food was simple, satisfying, and overpriced: He paid twenty-five dollars for an overloaded sandwich and a pot of tea. He looked at an employee working on a case that held smoking paraphernalia and had a thought.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said to the server behind the counter. “Do you have any waterproof matches?”
“Huh?” the waiter asked, flummoxed.
“He means the big matches in the tins,” the man arranging cigars in the display case said. Valentine noticed a tattoo with a dagger stuck through a skull on his arm. “They work good even in the rain.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for,” Valentine agreed. “I’m outside a lot, and it’s a bitch to light a cigar in wet weather.”
“Here’s what you want,” the cigar man said, putting a circular tin in front of Valentine. Valentine unscrewed the lid and extracted a three-inch match. The entire thing was lightly coated with a waxy substance. Valentine struck one on the strip at the side of the tin, and it flared into a white light. He could feel the heat on his face. “That’s magnesium,” the man explained. “It’ll get a cigar going in any wind, unless your tobacco is soaked, of course.”
“Hey, thanks. Can’t find these in Wisconsin. How much for a tin?”
“They ain’t cheap. Fifty bucks for a tin of ten matches.”
“If I buy five tins, will you give them to me for two hundred?”
“Sure, seeing as you’re a friend of the man upstairs.”
“Done,” Valentine agreed, and toked the man the other fifty.
“You must not get to Chicago often.”
“No, there’s lots of things here that you can’t get in Wisconsin. Like the Zoo.”
The tattooed man looked wistful. “Yes, but I can’t afford to go there often. Once in a while I buy a cheap pass off the Duke.”
“Ever been to the Black Hole?”
“Oh sure, I’ve checked it out a couple of times. I’ve got a strong stomach for that kind of thing. Some of it even turned me on.”
“Do they ever let regular guys get at the girls, or is it just shows?”
“Oh, if you’ve got a couple thou in cash, they got these rooms in the basement. Soundproofed, you know. And you can do anything you want. Anything. After all, the women and men in the Black Hole, well, they’re the people that the Kur decided deserved something worse than the Loop.”
“You don’t know anyone who works there, do you?”
“Nahh, sorry. Wish I did. But you seem to know how to toke. Just get the money in the right hands, and you’ll be fine.”
Valentine paid for his matches and took his leave of the eatery. He approached Wideload, still on duty, blocking the door like a parked dump truck.
“Leaving?” Wideload said, stepping aside to open the door after a glance outside. “Fun starts soon.”
Valentine squeezed past the human obstacle and entered the street.
He turned and looked up the sidewalk in the direction of Lake Michigan. A black van, its windows reinforced with wire, stood on the curb in front of him. The initials css and a small logo were stenciled in white on its side. The chicago security service?
Two grubby youths leaning on a corner stubbed out their half-smoked cigarettes.
A silent siren went off in Valentine’s head. Tobacco in Chicago wouldn’t be wasted by street punks. He heard footsteps behind him.
For a moment his body betrayed him: His legs turned to bags of water. When the handle on the back door of the CSS van turned, he knew the trap was being sprung.
Two massive arms enveloped him. Wideload locked his hands in a deadly variation of the Heimlich maneuver, but instead of pushing up into his diaphragm he pulled Valentine to him in a rib-squeezing embrace. Valentine’s breath left him.
A second pair of men approached from across the street.
One, tall and thin wearing a red tank top and pair of chain-mail gloves, removed a pair of familiar sunglasses as he ran toward Wideload and his victim.
“You’re—,” Wideload started to say, when Valentine brought his booted heel down hard on his captor’s instep. He thrust back his head, and felt a solid thunk. The bear hug ceased.
The four men closing on him were trying to trap him between the Clubs Flush wall and the CSS van. Its rusty back door swung open. He lashed out with his foot, kicking the door closed again. It shut on something, fingers or a foot; muffled howls echoed from inside the van.
He ran across the street, accidentally spilling a pair of riders on bicycles as they turned on their rubberless wheels to avoid him. The four pursuers tried to triangulate in on him, but he called on his speed and his legs answered. He cornered around a parked horse wagon so fast his feet skidded on the pavement. But he maintained his balance… just.
With open sidewalk ahead of him he broke into a loping run. A few loungers on doorsteps stared as he passed. He chanced a glance over his shoulder; the four were sprinting to catch him.
Thirty seconds passed, and the four became three. In another minute, the three were two. By the time Valentine turned a corner, running up a series of short cluttered blocks, the two had become one: the tall man with the chain-mail gloves. His red tank top was dark with sweat.
Valentine turned down an alley and found breath in his body to do one more sprint. He zigzagged around fetid mountains of refuse, scattering rats with his passage. His pursuer just managed to start down the alley as Valentine turned the corner at the other end. To the east down this street he saw an end to the buildings. I must be near the lakeshore… and the Zoo.
He pressed himself up against the corner and listened to his pursuer’s heavy breathing and heavier footsteps as he trotted up the alley. The man slowed, sucking wind as he approached the alley’s exit.
When he knew the man was about to come around the corner, Valentine lunged. He brought his knee up into the winded man’s groin. Chain-Mail Gloves managed to avoid the blow, but Valentine’s thick thigh still caught him in the stomach. The blow was just as debilitating: The Chicago air left Chain-Mail Gloves’s lungs in a gasp, and he bent over in breathless agony. In no mood for a fair fight, Valentine grabbed his assailant by his hair and brought his knee up again. Cartilage gave way with a sickening crunch. The man went down, now out of what wasn’t much of a fight to begin with.
The Wolf shuddered, still keyed up. He pulled the gloves from the unconscious man and added them to his sack of weapons, then trembled again. But for a different reason.
A Reaper. Coming, and already so near.
Valentine tried to clear his mind, make it as empty and transparent as a paneless window. He stepped back into the shadows of the alley, moving away from the Reaper. At the other end, he dug himself into a pile of trash, burrowing on his knees and elbows into the filth. He felt cockroaches crunch and crawl as he joined them at the bottom of the sodden refuse pile.
The alley grew colde
r.
Up, you, up , Valentine heard a Reaper say, seemingly in his ear.
The Wolf almost leaped to his feet, ready to fight and die, when he realized the voice was at the end of the alley with the Duke’s thug.
Center, center, i’ve got to center or …, David thought frantically.
You, foodling —where is the terrorist?
“Murfer… motherfucker jumped me,” the man groaned, in the sharp honking tones of a man with a broken nose. “I dunno… speak clear, willya? Who? Ohmygod!”
Awake now?
“Yessir… umm, I think he went… toward the lake? That’s where he was running. Sorta.”
You were supposed to follow him, not take him.
“The Duke said—”
The duke isn’t here, or he would be taken… instead of you!
A motor at Valentine’s end of the alley drowned out the Reaper’s low hissing voice. He looked out from beneath his garbage and saw a gleaming red car stop. One of the punks who had dropped out of the footrace sat on the hood, directing it. Rats scattered again as the man jumped off and the passenger door opened.
Valentine heard screaming, the terrible gurgling sound of a man being fed on, from the other end of the alley. The cold spot on Valentine’s mind marking the Reaper swelled and pulsed as it conducted the aura to its Master Vampire. All around the neighborhood Valentine heard doors slamming and windows closing.
From beneath a mass of flattened cardboard Valentine watched the Duke, in all his gauche splendor, blanch as he looked down the alley. The Duke gulped, and slunk into the alley toward the scene. His henchman trailed him for two steps, then thought better of it and returned to the car. The Duke rubbed the brass ring on his finger. Valentine wondered if he sought comfort in its touch, or perhaps imagined what having his finger pulled off would feel like. The Wolf read mortal fear in the Duke’s eyes before he passed. He let his ears take over, afraid to shift his position. The Reaper had senses other than that which allowed it to read auras.
The good duke, the Reaper whispered, slowly and thickly. Eight years with a brass ring courtesy of his aura-drunk lord, dealer of powder-white chemical joy. Harborer of terrorists.
“How was I to know, sir?”
You are too ready to do business first and ask questions not at all. You have tap-danced close to the edge of the law too many times: others in the order are beginning to take notice, like this fiasco, my instructions were not clear?
“I just thought—”
You’re kept alive to do, not think, the Reaper hissed.
“Well, why should that damn renegade get my money anyway, sir? He’s up to no good; throw him in the clink and be done with him.”
That “damn renegade” is something special, one of my clan sensed him coming into the train yard, we want to know, who he is going to meet, what they know, and what they plan, his kind do not just wander into town to look around, he’s one of that breed our foe-kin use for their dirty work, clean up this mess and return to your club, we will take over the search.
“He said he was going to the Zoo.”
A cover story, or perhaps…
“What shall I do with my man?”
Throw the corpse to the snappers, i go now, to find what you have lost, i felt his aura hot and clear for a moment as he fought with your man, i can find him again.
The chilling spot in Valentine’s mind moved away. He waited while the Duke had another henchman carry the corpse to his trunk. By the time they left the alley, it had grown dark.
Valentine emerged from underneath the garbage and left the alley. He concentrated on keeping lifesign down, casting about for somewhere to get some clean clothes. He found a used-leather-goods store and purchased four cheap belts and a long leather trench coat that was missing some buttons. He put the black coat on after paying for it. In an alley, he put on the gun belt and the parang and filled his pockets with the tins of matches. He tucked a belt up his left sleeve and rolled the others up and put them in his pants pockets. His remaining cash lay folded in his breast pocket, next to his identity papers and a small white card.
Well, I’m as ready for the Zoo as i’ll ever be, Valentine thought. Pray God the Zoo isn’t ready for me.
Chapter Thirteen
The Zoo: Lincoln Park, a green oasis between the shores of Lake Michigan and the shattered city, is considered the premier entertainment tract of Chicago, and indeed the Midwest. From what had been the oldest zoo in the United States at the south to the Elks’ temple in the north, Lincoln Park as run by the Kurians is a mixture of Sodom and Mardi Gras. Along with its adjacent gambling ship tied up at the old Chicago Yacht Club in Belmont Harbor, it offers diversions to suit the most jaded palate. From late March to November, “Carnal-val” is in session. This nonstop party provides much-needed relief for the favored Quislings who are allowed to attend. During Chicago’s dreary winters, the action is limited to the indoors but remains just as wild. With good behavior, a Midwestern Quisling can expect a trip into Chicago to visit the Zoo every few years. They are released in groups, and anywhere from two to a hundred go to Chicago together,-with the direst warnings about what will happen to the rest should any desert. Parties from places as far away as Canada, Ohio, and even Colorado and Kansas visit for up to a month. But as the money runs out to the point that even shoes are sold to pay for unholy delights, the trips are ended early by mutual consent. Everyone knows the destination for those left penniless in a city where there is no such thing as a free meal or room. Within the confines of the Zoo, there is no curfew as there is everywhere else in the city. There is ample if poor-quality food and drink to be had at any hour from street vendors, tented cantinas, and permanent restaurants. Mounted officers, equipped like the statue of Phil Sheridan with sword and pistol, patrol the area from their headquarters in the old Chicago Historical Society building. They do very little to break up disturbances, and only a fistfight that threatens to grow into a riot will cause them to do anything but pause and sit their horses to watch. Everyone from magicians to three-card monte operators to street musicians tries to make a living on the streets, but nothing can be sold on the grounds of the park save food, drink, tobacco, drugs, and flesh.
It is this last that is the real attraction of the Zoo. Under every lamppost, at every corner, and inside every barroom, women, a few men, and the occasional child can be found for a price. At the top of the carnal hierarchy are the showgirls, performing everything from stripteases in the clubs on Clark to variegated sexual displays behind the bars of the Zoo that would make those performed in pre-Kurian Bangkok seem tame. Next come the geishas. These women, found in some of the better bars, act as short-term girlfriends to the Quislings on vacation who want more than just sex, providing a sympathetic ear as well as other favors. The full-time companionship of a geisha for a week or two is out of the price range of all but the wealthiest Quislings, but bar girls in the saloons will do the same as long as the soldier keeps buying them watery drinks. Finally there are the colorful streetwalkers in a variety of flavors, offering their services anywhere from alley and bush to the little flotilla of old boats anchored in the park’s Lake Michigan—fed waterways.
The careers of the Zoo women are short, and most come to a sad end in the Loop. A few make enough money to retire to Ringland or open an establishment of their own. A few more leave the Zoo permanently in the company of a Quisling. But for most, it is a degrading road that leads to servicing the most perverted and violent customers before the final trip downtown.
As for the Quislings, like carnivorous flowers attracting insects with bright color and perfume, only to trap and devour them within, the wanton joys of the Zoo leave many too broke to get home and, unless they are smart or lucky, they become prime candidates for the Loop.
The night breeze no longer blew just cool, but downright cold. Scattered clouds crossed the full moon like inky stains. Below, the color had drained from Chicago’s streets, leaving a world of low-contrast black and white. As Valent
ine drew farther away from Rush Street, the streetlights became irregular, and those that still functioned gave light to a few square yards around the pole. Scattered figures clutched their coats or thrust hands deep into their pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind as they brushed past Valentine without a word or a glance. Beater cars and small trucks chugged along the streets, most without benefit of headlights, as clattering bicycles dodged out of their way. Valentine could hear the clopping sound of hoofbeats on pavement down a nearby alley. He cast about with his nose; the city seemed overwhelmed by an oily petroleum smell and dusty coalsmoke. The gutters reeked of urine.
Valentine glanced up again at the moon. Its chalky whiteness comforted him somehow. Full moon, good night for a Wolf. But a sudden wave of fear passed through him, leaving his back running with cold sweat and his hair bristling. He paused under a light, ostensibly to check his map, when motion ahead caught his eye.
Pedestrians parted like a school of fish swerving to avoid a cruising shark. A Reaper garbed in a shirt, trousers, boots, and a cape—rather than the usual robes—moved toward the dead heart of the city. It ran with great multiyard leaps, like a deer bounding through the woods. Valentine’s hand fell instinctively toward his gun, but he managed to change the gesture into a simple thrust of his fist into his coat pocket. The Reaper passed without a glance in his direction, its sickly yellow eyes blazing like tiny lightbulbs. Valentine turned and watched it go. It reached the back of a slow-moving car, a ramshackle vehicle with wood planks where the panels and roof used to be. The Hood leaped over it in a single bound, cape flapping like bat wings in the night, and disappeared out of sight as the startled driver stood on his squealing brakes.
Somewhere to the east, Valentine could hear Lake Michigan lapping at its breakwaters. He sensed lights and music somewhere to the north, a mass of noise that could only mean the Zoo. To either side of him, ruined blocks of rubble sprouted shanties like wooden toadstools. Some buildings still stood and showed signs of irregular maintenance—everything from glass to iron bars to wooden shutters covered the windows, and the smells of cooking wafted out into the street. He could make out trees in the lights ahead, and now several figures had joined him in moving toward the Zoo. Most of them had brightly colored cards dangling from thin beaded chains around their necks.