by E. E. Knight
“Have fun, kid. Pleasure doing business with you.”
As soon as the cop had passed out the metal door to the yard, Valentine hardened his ears. Burt and the Twisted Cross man seemed to be going down some stairs.
“Got the old thirst, huh?” Burt asked.
“You know it,” King said, his rubber-soled feet squeaking a little against the stone stairs.
“Your bro recovered from that shotgun blast yet?”
“Yeah, sure. He won’t win any dance contests, but he gets around well enough. For a while there, I was limping even when I wasn’t in the tank.”
“How long were you hooked up this time?”
“Almost a week. Fucker fed three times. Made me want it so bad I almost bit the guy pulling me out. But the general was happy with what we did; gave the whole team two weeks off. We wiped out a whole nest of rebs in the Smokies.”
Valentine heard keys rattling and the sound of a door being opened somewhere below.
“General shouldn’t make you pull such long shifts. I heard some of your guys went nuts after…”
The clang of the door shutting echoed loudly enough for Valentine to hear with soft ears. The voices were gone.
He waited fifteen minutes before the basement door opened again, and Burt’s ponderous step ascended the stairs, key ring jangling. Burt returned to the linoleum-floored room, and Valentine rose to meet him.
“My name’s Pillow, sir. First visit to the Zoo.”
“Burt Walker. Chief of One-Way Exhibits.”
“One-Way?”
“Now and then we get troublemakers the management wants to make an example of. Don’t matter how they die, as long as it’s ugly. Whatcha lookin‘ for, Pillow? Something the girls out there can’t handle?”
“You might say that. It’s something I don’t like talking about.”
“Hey, kid, I heard it all, believe me,” Burt said, in a rich, world-weary tone. “But I respect people’s privacy. You just gotta let me know one thing… Will she still be alive when you’re done? ”Cause if you kill her, I gotta charge you big-time.“
“She’ll live, Mr. Walker. That’s a promise.”
"Okay, then, but remember what I said and don’t get carried away. I gotta see the cash, though.“
Valentine flashed his breast-pocket wad. “I want to see the girls first. I’m willing to pay, but I don’t want anyone whose already used up. Someone kind of innocent and fresh,” Valentine said.
“Hey, Pillow, you want innocent and fresh, you have to come to the special show tonight. When I saw her, I almost decided to come out of retirement. But I’ll let Clubber and Valkyrie and my two best Grogs do her.”
Walker took Valentine to the basement stairs.
“This’ll be private, right?”
“Kid, there’s curtains on the cells. Don’t worry about noise; no one’s going to disturb you.”
They came up against the metal basement door. Walker thumbed through a ring of keys and opened it. They passed though to a spacious lower level.
It reminded Valentine of a stable, except for the dirty white tile everywhere. A series of cells with barred doors lined the walls. Valentine smelled blood, urine, and feces without even using his hard sense of smell. Another man in a khaki uniform sat at a desk, talking animatedly over a phone.
“Hey, Burt! There are problems up top. There’s a fire in the Grog pens, and the stables. Can you believe it?”
“Oh, fine,” Walker said, disgusted. “Stupid Grogs. ”Cause they’re cheap and eat anything, we gotta employ ‘em. They’re more trouble than they’re worth. Find Clubber and go help out at the stables. I don’t give a shit if the Grog pens burn right to the ground. They can spend the winter under Lakeshore Drive for all I care.“
The man nodded and disappeared up the stairs to the first floor.
“Okay, kid. Check out the cells, and then we’ll talk price.”
One of the doors slid open, and Jimmy King staggered out. He was nude, hollow chested, with spindly arms and legs. His face was covered in blood, and it ran down his chest into a mat of sticky black hair. He wiped blood from his eyes with slow, tired movements.
“Hey, King,” Walker called. “Go use the hose, will ya? You’re dripping all over the place.”
The Twisted Cross man went to a washbasin with a floor drain beneath and began to hose himself off. Valentine walked up and down the cells, looking at the battered, pathetic figures behind the bars. Most of the stable-stall-size rooms were empty, and one held the remains of King’s purchase, lifeless legs spread wide and throat torn messily open. Valentine reached a smaller hallway, empty of cells with another gate at the end of it, and wandered down it. The sliding barred door blocked his way, and he could see a long, poorly lit tunnel on the other side of the bars.
Something from down the tunnel tickled at his nostrils. He hardened his sense of smell and sniffed at the air. His heart skipped a beat as he recognized the odor of rose-petal soap. He returned to the tiles of the wide central hallway.
King had dressed again and was leaving, almost scuttling out the door to the upstairs. Walker shook his head and hefted his bulk up from behind the desk.
“Okay, boy. I’m a busy man. Which one? King’s left me with a mess for the Grogs to clean up.”
“Sir, how about you let me have the one for tonight’s show? I won’t even bruise her.”
“Naw, sorry, kid. I’m already in Dutch about her. One of the guys got a little rough when she first got here, and I caught hell. They want her with a lot of energy for the show, you know? The guys always like it better if they aren’t half-dead to begin with.” Valentine looked in one of the pens at a curled up, sleeping black woman. “This one looks unspoiled. But I think she might be dead. I can’t see her breathing.”
“Eh? What’s that?”
“I don’t see anything moving. And her head’s at sort of a funny angle.”
Walker came over to the cage, reaching for an old-fashioned key. He looked inside.
“What the hell are you talking ‘bout, junior? I can see— graak!"
Walker’s last choked cry came as Valentine whipped the thin leather belt, wrapped tightly in each fist around the man’s neck. The chief’s massive frame heaved, and latissimus muscles the size of halved watermelons bulged against his shirt. Valentine leaped onto Walker’s back, wrapping his legs around his thick waist, and pulled on the leather garrote until his muscles flamed in agony. Walker crashed over backwards onto Valentine, trying to crush him with his weight, but the Chief of One-Way Exhibits weakened. Valentine rolled him onto his stomach with a heave, digging his knee into his opponent’s kidneys. Walker flapped like a landed fish as the muted crackling of his throat’s collapsing cartilage sounded through his gaping mouth. Valentine continued pulling until he could no longer hear a heartbeat. Then he stood, the odor of Walker’s feces and urine rank in his nostrils.
He turned the chief over, avoiding looking into the bulging eyes. Removing the key ring and a club from Walker’s belt, he pulled the body feetfirst into an open stall, closed the curtains, and slid the door shut, locking it. His hands shook as much from nerves as from muscular exhaustion as he went to the smaller corridor. The rose smell cahned him as he tried the barred gate. It did not yield until after he tried several different keys.
Perhaps the corridor had been brightly lit once, but now only a dank gloom filled his eyes. He used his nose to guide him, following the homing beacon of the rose smell to a cell door. The sound of quiet breathing behind the door reassured him.
“Molly, it’s me, David… I’m here to get you out,” he whispered, trying the keys. She did not respond, and he grew frantic. The lock finally yielded. He pushed the squealing door open. The cell was bare and dark, the cracked cement floor sliding down to a drainage hole.
Molly Carlson lay curled up in a corner, arms around her drawn-up legs, head resting sideways on her bare knees. She wore the tattered remnants of her white shirt from yesterday—yesterday, h
e thought, or a year ago?—and blood smeared the side of her face where it had dried from a bloody clot of pulled-out hair. Valentine’s heart ached at the purple bruises on her face and in her eye sockets. He knelt next to her.
“Molly, Molly! Molly,” he almost shouted, gripping her hand. He patted the side of her pallid cheek and futilely searched for a response. He felt a strong, steady pulse under her wrist. Was she drugged?
He reached around her shoulders and under her knees. “I’ll carry you out, then, Melissa,” he said, lifting her into his arms.
Like a jinni summoned by the use of its name, her eyelids fluttered open. “David?” she croaked. “No… yes… how?”
He bore her out of the cell and down the tunnel, away from the basement. “Explanations will have to wait. We’re both in a fix. But we’re getting out of here,” he said, quietly but with all the confidence he could muster.
Tearing himself away from the smell of roses on her skin, he caught the scent of fresh air and followed it like a bloodhound on a trail. Soon they reached a small corridor, jutting off from the main one at an empty doorframe. Following the now stronger odor of the outdoors, Valentine reached a short set of stairs.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
“I think so, David. I thought I was dead. I made my mind die-Valentine looked into her battered features. He wanted to kiss her, but something in her haunted eyes held him back.
“Did they hurt you? Were you—?”
“Don’t ask, David. Maybe I’ll tell you someday. Now… now it’s out of my mind, and it’s staying out for a while. Where are we?”
“Chicago. The Zoo.”
“That’s where they said they were taking me. They said some big shots from downstate were going to come here and watch me… die.”
“You’re going to disappoint them, Molly.”
“But you can’t get out of Chicago. Not with me, anyway.”
“Watch us.”
“David, just shoot me. Shoot me and go, because after… I want you to get out, no matter what.”
He looked down at her, shaking his head. “Oh, no… ‘promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.” We’ll be out of their reach by midnight, one way or the other.“
“But how?”
“A Reaper is going to help us.”
The arena of the Black Hole glowed under bright arc lights. Valentine heard distant fire bells and smelled smoke; the Grogs had made good use of their matches. He covered Molly with his leather coat and took her wrist, then brought her out into the bright lights of the pit. Giving her a boost up the side of one of the walls, he followed, taking her offered hand.
The cool night air chilled his skin, and Molly gripped the coat around her as her teeth chattered. Confusion hung in the air along with the smoke from the fires. Through the scattered trees, Valentine could see two fires burning, and noisy crowds clustered around, perhaps helping, perhaps simply enjoying the excitement. Valentine got his bearings and hurried along the deserted sidewalks, ignoring the knots of people rushing to and fro. He sensed Reapers searching near the fire.
In the little dome-shaped cage, the Lifeweaver now wore the shape of a large sloth. The audience that had been present earlier was gone now save for two drunks passing a greasy bottle back and forth. Ignoring them, the tall keeper snapped shut a final shackle to the sloth’s curved paw and rapped it across the nose with a short black club similar to the one Valentine had taken from the body of the strangled chief. “Looks like you’re done for the night,” he said. “Everybody’s watching the Grog Quarter go up in flames.”
Valentine brought Molly around to the low cage door. “Hello, in there,” he called, flashing a handful of bills. “When you’re done, I need a favor.”
A look of tired distaste came over the keeper. “Hey half-breed, beat it. Go get your Big Medicine elsewhere. Just ‘cause it looks like an animal doesn’t mean it actually is. It’s just a trick. If you’re looking to fuck an ostrich or something, you’re outta luck.”
The keeper fastened the last cuff to the dried-out tree limb and approached the door. Valentine passed him the bills with his left hand, casually holding the right behind his leg. The keeper grabbed the money, counting it with his eyes. “Okay, okay, you got my attention. Now what—,” he began, bending almost double to squeeze his frame out of the low door to the The‘ keeper never ended his sentence; the hard wooden shaft of the club crashed into the back of his skull with a kraak. The keeper dropped, unconscious or dead.
Valentine added the keys to his growing collection and hurried to the tree. The ones for Rho the Lifeweaver hung from a second, smaller ring. If we make it, we live. If we don’t, nobody’s going to be an exhibit, he silently promised himself, and Molly. And Rho. As he unfastened the leg irons on the sloth, he patted it gently on the head.
A hunter? The other mind inside his head asked. A fleeting mental touch. Valentine, it’s you.
The shape blurred again as it fell to the ground, released from its bonds. Valentine knelt and grasped it by the shoulders. He found himself looking into the rugged face of his own father.
“Dad?” Valentine found himself saying without even thinking about it.
The shape blurred again and became a hawk-nosed, deep-eyed old man with a tuft of white hair at the temples. “Sorry, Valentine the Younger. I was thinking of your father. My control isn’t what it was,” it said in a croaking voice.
Molly grabbed at the bars behind him. “David, we don’t have much time. Those two drunks just took off!”
Valentine helped the Lifeweaver to his feet. “Sir, we have to move. Can you walk?”
“I would love to walk. Run even, Valentine. But I fear I won’t be able to go far.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Now let’s see what you can do,” Valentine said, explaining his plan. “But we have to hurry.”
Somewhere, somehow, the Reapers knew. He felt them coming.
Following a Reaper through the crowds made negotiating the press of humans a simple task. People parted for the Reaper like the Red Sea before the Israelites. Valentine and Molly only had to stay a respectful distance behind the flowing cape.
“Open your stride a little more,” Valentine said in a low tone. The Reaper complied, almost goose-stepping into the street. “That one, the cab,” Valentine added.
A dirty yellow lump of dented metal sagged to one side on a broken suspension. The Reaper stepped to the driver’s side, reaching up to tap at the window, and paused, finding no window to tap on.
I need your ride, the Reaper breathed down at the driver. The grizzled driver looked up and lost perhaps two pounds while staring at the death’s-head face gazing down at him.
Valentine and Molly climbed in, and the young woman sagged against Valentine the instant they were seated on the badly sprung bench. The Reaper joined them, squeezing into the backseat. The driver did not offer to have the Reaper sit up front.
“Where to, sir?” the driver asked, the effort to sound normal sticking in his throat.
The great pier , the Reaper said as Valentine pointed to his small map, which was illuminated by the streetlights shining into the car.
“Be there in five minutes, sir.” The driver started his car. Valentine wondered if the man’s hair had always been that gray. The taxi began to roll, engine sputtering as diesel fumes leaked into the car.
The Lifeweaver switched to his telepathy. It gripped Valentine’s hand to make a more secure connection. Valentine, you have saved me. In ways you cannot imagine.
Don ‘t fool yourself , he thought back. We’re not out of it yet.
The audacity of this… It is worthy of your father. Once a rat passed through the Zoo, but she was so sickened by the goings-on she barely touched my mind before hurrying away.
How well did you know my father?
I trained him, Valentine the Younger. I invoked him as a wolf and saw in him the potential to be a great Bear. He and others forged Southern Command out of a few camps in the mount
ains. The worst days. But the Kurians grew to know and hate your father. He killed five of them. Not Grogs, not Reapers. Kurian Lords. They had a fortress in Saint Louis, suspended from the arch like a spider’s egg sac. He stole a small plane and parachuted onto it. When he finished, no Kurian within ever drank another aura.
I never knew this , Valentine thought back after a moment.
He was the best of men, beyond our design.
Design?
He once had a family in the Free Territory, but they were swallowed in a battle that raged years before your birth. He sought solace in the remoteness of the north, and I never met him again. I hope he found some measure of happiness before he died.
He did , Valentine responded.
They made their way through the pier, checkpoints and all, with the same simplicity granted by Rho’s Reaper aspect. Guards looked busy elsewhere, and port officials sprang into action, driving their work gangs into greater and greater efforts. Valentine urged them on, sensing a Reaper approaching from behind.
What had been Chicago’s Navy Pier was now only an ill-lit and deserted utilitarian warehouse for merchandise moving into and out of Chicago by water. The great concrete pier sprouted wooden docks like leaves from a branch. Valentine found a responsible official by searching out the most well-maintained uniform.
“You there,” he said, stepping from behind the Reaper. “Is there a ship here, the White-something-or-other?”
“Whitecloud, sir?” the officer said briskly. “She left this evening. Just under two hours ago. Probably halfway to Milwaukee by now.”
Valentine’s disappointment may have helped with the act. He thought for a moment. “Is it possible to still catch her?”
“Yessir. We have a fast motorized patrol boat. She could catch up in an hour.”
Bring it , the Reaper said, searching the dark horizon of the lake.
“Uh, follow me, sir,” the man stammered. “There’s only a skeleton crew. If you want more men for boarding, the White-cloud is pretty big, crew of a dozen or so—”
“I think we’ll be enough. The woman there just needs to go on board and identify someone. There’s a terrorist on board,” Valentine explained.