Naked, Stoned, and Stabbed

by Bradley Denton

  Liam was still keeping the maniacs away from us. “I knew that had to be Ms. Bubbles over there!” he yelled. “Once she gets here, it’d be my honor to give her as much of a thumping as she likes. Then she can machine-gun-bubble all these nutters!”

  I tried to imagine how that would work out. The mob in the plaza extended all the way across the park. Even if the Amazing Bubbles could reach us and fatten up, there was no way she would be able to deal with all those maniacs before the SWAT teams arrived and the violence escalated. Not without seriously injuring or killing people herself.

  The sirens were getting louder, and I could see more flashing red and blue lights to the north. The SWAT units would be on us in two minutes. At most.

  “No,” I said. In that moment, it was the only word I could muster. “No.”

  As maniacal as all those nats had become, Liam was right: They knew not what they did. The only thing they had done of their own free will was attend a concert—a pretty damn good one, too—and they’d been happily enjoying the show along with everyone else. Nats and jokers alike.

  In fact, for a few hours, there in the Bowery Ballroom, there hadn’t been any nats or jokers. Or aces, either.

  We had all been Wholigans.

  And now a lot of us had been hurt. But “hurt” was as far as I was going to let it go.

  No. It was as far as we were going to let it go.

  I looked straight up. Le Turtle was on the ground floor of a six-story apartment building. It was maybe seventy feet to the roof. That would be enough.

  “Morpho Girl!” I said. “Do you and your mom have your phones?”

  Adesina looked at me, startled. “Well, sure.”

  That’s what I’d thought. “Okay, good. And after what we did in the Ballroom, you trust me, yeah?”

  She frowned. “I—guess so.”

  It wasn’t quite a vote of confidence, but it would have to do. I looked at Peter. “Segway! We have to clear a path to the Amazing Bubbles. Roll toward her, fast, and get close enough so some of those nats around her come after you. Then zip up the street to draw them away. Go just far enough so that when you wheel around and come back this way, you’re rolling as fast as you can when you’re here at Le Turtle. Top speed!” I looked at Liam, who had a moment between maniac attacks. “And when Segway rolls past, both ways, don’t let the nutters slow him down.”

  Liam looked gobsmacked that I was giving him orders. But he gave me a sharp nod and said, “Right, mate.”

  Peter was staring at me. “And, uh, where am I supposed to stop when I come back here at top speed?”

  I used the sternest tone I could muster. “Stop at Adesina’s mom. Put your head down and ram her with that helmet. Hard.”

  Peter’s eyes grew wide as saucers.

  “Oh, hell no,” he said.

  More of the nats from the plaza, and stragglers on the street, were coming at us now. The cluster around the Amazing Bubbles was getting bigger, too. More batons were swinging in the plaza. And the SWAT teams were drawing near.

  “Segway, please—” I began.

  But I didn’t have to finish, because Morpho Girl shouted over me. “Peter, go!” she yelled.

  His eyes still wide, Segway took off toward the cluster.

  I looked at Adesina and pointed up. “Get me to the roof.” Then, as she launched into the air and hovered over my head, I gave Liam a glance. “You got this?”

  He gave me a feral grin and, without looking, clotheslined a shrieking nat the size of a mountain gorilla. “Whaddaya take me fer?”

  I reached up and grasped Adesina’s ankles. I remembered how fast she could accelerate, so I held on tight.

  As we shot upward, I saw that her purple Chuck Taylors had silver shoelaces. Why hadn’t I noticed that before?

  * * *

  In seconds, I was standing on the metal flashing at the lip of the roof. A sharp breeze hit my skin and made me shiver.

  I released my grip on Morpho Girl as I looked down at the melee below. I could see the entire park plaza and the swarming maniacs therein, plus those in the street, all illuminated by streetlights. To the south, I could see two police vans and three cruisers with flashing lights approaching on Delancey, and to the north, three more vans and five cruisers on Houston. One of the vans had already turned from Houston onto Chrystie.

  Segway had reached the cluster of maniacs surrounding the Amazing Bubbles, who was an island in the eye of a hurricane. Segway zipped back and forth along the northern edge of the storm, his two wheels compressing to one again, and then he spun and rushed northward with at least fifteen of the nats giving chase. The northern edge of the hurricane had been broken.

  Adesina landed beside me. She pointed straight down.

  “Who’s the guy in the green tracksuit, lying on the sidewalk? He’s, like, right behind where you were standing.”

  I was watching Segway, Liam, and the mob. “That’s who did this,” I said. “He drugged the nats with the smoke in the Ballroom. Some Russian arse.”

  Adesina gave a gasp. “Another one?”

  I didn’t ask what she meant, because I had to keep track of the action below. Segway had made it past Liam, zigging and zagging around numerous maniacs, and Liam had helped him out by booting a few of them toward the park. But now the first police van coming down Chrystie had almost reached Stanton, just a block north. And more vans and cruisers were turning onto Chrystie from both Houston and Delancey.

  The mob in the park was still screaming and lunging against the thin blue lines. And the lines were breaking. Jokers were being attacked, falling to the bricks.

  The synthesizer break from “Won’t Get Fooled Again” started playing in my head. We were already in the middle of the drum buildup.

  “Adesina, phone your mom.”

  “I can text—”

  “She’ll need to hear you.”

  I kept focus on the street and the plaza. So I didn’t see Adesina take her phone from her pocket. But I heard her say, “Mom?”

  And I saw the Amazing Bubbles press her hand to the side of her silver-blonde mane. She was looking up at me and Adesina.

  I glanced to the north. Segway had turned back before reaching Stanton, and the first police van had been forced to slam on its brakes to avoid hitting him. Good. That bought us a few more seconds.

  Now Segway was streaking southward.

  “Morpho Girl!” I barked. She was standing to my right, and much too close. “Take off! Get away! And tell your mom that the moment she gets fat, the very instant, she has to blast me. One shot, everything she has.”

  Adesina gasped again. She lowered her phone and gripped my arm.

  “Freddie, you don’t know how much that can be,” she said. “I mean, you really don’t know!”

  I shook off her hand. “You said you’d trust me. Tell her!”

  “But she won’t!” Adesina said. “I know her, and she won’t!”

  I was staring straight at the Amazing Bubbles now.

  In my peripheral vision, I caught the blue-helmeted blur of Segway directly below.

  The Moonie drums in my head were approaching a climax.

  “Yes, she will,” I said.

  I put my hand on Adesina’s neck and threw her off the roof.

  She gave a short, startled scream. Her mother heard it.

  Adesina dropped below the edge of the roof. If she had been a regular kid, she would have fallen to the sidewalk and died.

  But she was Morpho Girl. I kept my eyes on Bubbles, but I felt the rush of air from Adesina’s wings as she began to swoop up and away.

  By then, I had raised my right middle finger to my big sis.

  And Segway hit her. Head down, full steam. Right in the solar plexus.

  I heard a whump and saw concentric rings of vapor radiate out as if blown away by a sudden explosion of heat. Peter bounced back as if he’d hit a wall of rubber, and he tumbled arse over teakettle, bowling over two or three maniacal nats in the process.

&n
bsp; Meanwhile, in the tiniest fraction of a second, of a nanosecond, the Amazing Bubbles expanded. Her oversized sweater stretched to its limits, and her white-blonde mane became a spiked corona around the enraged visage of a goddess.

  Her tree trunk of a right arm shot out, and I saw a shining, silvery globe burst from her palm and blaze toward me.

  I wasn’t sure of its size, because it was coming straight at my head. Maybe a football. You know, a proper football. Or maybe it was three times larger. Five. Ten. Fifty.

  The synthesizer and drums reached their peak.

  So I looked toward the plaza, and across the raging sea of maniacs to Forsyth. If I aimed at the buildings there, the Wholigans wouldn’t take a direct hit. They would catch the spreading lower edge of the shock wave, and then the reflection from the buildings as the leading edge bounced back. And maybe there would be no deaths.

  Well, maybe one.

  In an instant, the black sky turned crimson, then golden, and then an unbearably brilliant white as every star in the Milky Way went nova. A hundred thousand spikes of lightning stabbed into my skull, my eyes, my throat, my lungs, my heart. My arms spasmed outward. The tattoo on my chest caught fire, and the fire rushed to the rest of my flesh like burning magnesium.

  The lights came up, and the guitar, bass, and cymbals came crashing down.

  And I screamed.

  Limbs blew off the trees in the park and flew through the night to splinter on distant walls. Windows shattered, and glass sleeted down for blocks. Streetlights burst, and steel poles swayed like bamboo.

  The edge of the shock wave hit the plaza, and almost everyone, nat and joker, cop and criminal, sinner and saint, new boss and old boss, fell to the earth as if blown down by a puff of breath from the lips of Shiva.

  Then the reflected wave returned, and those few who had been left standing joined the rest down on the asphalt, down on the concrete, down on the bricks. Even Liam, and even the Amazing Bubbles. They toppled like mountains chopped down by the edge of an invisible hand.

  And then the reflection hit me, too. It almost blew me backward, back onto the roof of the Le Turtle building. But my last shreds of reflex fought it, and they fought too hard.

  So I fell forward. As I went over, I saw the police vans and cruisers approaching the plaza. If they hurried, maybe all would be well. Maybe they could zip-tie the fallen nats before any could rise. Maybe no one would be hurt too badly. I had tried to stun everyone, to knock them down and take their breath away. But I knew there would be injuries. Maybe some bad ones.

  But no deaths. Please, no deaths.

  And maybe all the Wholigans drugged by the Xeno smoke would come back to themselves. So we could all see each other at another show sometime.

  I tumbled, glimpsing a brick wall and spinning lights and broken windows and then the concrete squares of the sidewalk. I would hit it right beside the crumpled Russian.

  Then I tumbled over once more, so I was looking up at the sky. It was dark again, just as a night sky should be.

  High above, I caught a glimmer of cobalt-blue wings.

  * * *

  For the longest time, I was Nothing.

  It wasn’t that I was suspended in Nothing. I was Nothing.

  Darkness. Emptiness. No light, no music. Nothing.

  And then:

  I dreamed of my mum.

  Except she wasn’t Mum. She looked like her, with her smooth, dark hair and chestnut eyes. And she sounded like her, her voice tinged with faint hints of Welsh and Punjabi, with a broader streak of American popster.

  But this Mum’s eyes were bright, her brow unfurrowed. And when she reached toward my face, I didn’t flinch. She gave me a light caress with her fingertips.

  Perhaps she was the Mum I had known when I was small. Until I was about eight.

  That was when her London modeling jobs, already few and far between, had evaporated. That was when she’d started taking the waitressing and cashiering jobs. Which, soon enough, had become few and far between as well.

  And she’d become angry. All the time. Mostly at me. After all, I was the thing that had changed her life, and not for the better.

  But that wasn’t who we were in the dream.

  In the dream, I’d been accepted to university, and was preparing to leave.

  Mum, her fingertips still on my cheek, said she was proud. But that I must phone her twice a week, and text more than that.

  I held up my phone and showed her the crack in the glass.

  Then Mum took her hand away, and she turned to smoke.

  I jerked awake, threw off the covers, and shouted, “Wait!”

  My voice was a croak.

  I was in bed, propped against the headboard with pillows. Across the room, in a big cream-colored chair in the corner, Adesina looked up from her phone. Her expression, much like the first time I’d seen her, was one of annoyance. The light from the floor lamp beside her chair made me squint.

  The blue edges of her wings were visible behind her shoulders. But she wasn’t wearing a Union Jack T-shirt or red stovepipe jeans. Now she wore a dark green pullover—which still had small slits for her insect legs—with khaki slacks and fuzzy orange socks. No shoes.

  She set her phone on the chair’s armrest, then raised an eyebrow. Her antennae gave a twitch. “Do you need me to, like, show you where the bathroom is?” she asked. She tucked a coppery dreadlock behind her ear. “I mean, again?”

  I looked around the room. A chest of drawers, a dresser. Art on the walls, including a watercolor of the Statue of Liberty and a framed photo of Adesina at nine or ten. A window looking out on a Manhattan street, maybe SoHo or Jokertown, with a sky turning to dusk. We were on the seventh or eighth floor of … somewhere.

  The bed was queen-size, with half a dozen soft pillows, a couple of cushy blankets, and a comforter. To my right was a walnut nightstand with a reading lamp, along with my blue spectacles and a glass of water.

  I would have expected to wake up in hospital, which I would have hated. Assuming I woke up at all. But this was someone’s bedroom.

  Every joint and muscle in my body reacted as if stuffed with broken glass. But I managed to push out from the pillows and swing my legs to sit on the edge of the mattress. Then, with my head starting to throb, I had a quick look at myself.

  I was wearing white socks, gray sweatpants, and a too-large navy blue T-shirt. The shirt had a gold logo that I pulled away from my chest to read. It said JOKERTOWN MOB!

  “That’s my school jazz band,” Adesina said. “I’m the bass player. Peter plays trumpet. By the way, I’m missing practice right now. Not that you should feel guilty about that.”

  I smoothed out the shirt. “You guys any good?”

  She gave me a sardonic smile. “We’re hella good. And if you start acting like someone who isn’t a poopyhead, I’ll show you our YouTube channel.”

  No doubt about it. Adesina was a musician.

  “That explains why you were at a Who concert,” I said. “Our demographic skews a bit older, but bass players of all ages seem keen to watch Mr. Entwistle at work.”

  Adesina rolled her eyes. “Well, yeah! But Peter wanted to go, too. I mean, OMG, great music is great music, right?” Her eyes narrowed. “Besides, I bet you’re not much older than we are. And you’re one of their roadies.”

  I picked up my specs from the nightstand, grimacing as the jagged bits of glass in my arm shuffled about. “Yes, well,” I said. “I’m mature for my age.” I put on the specs with my hands shaking. But the throbbing in my head eased a tad as the tinted lenses dimmed the light.

  Adesina pointed at her photograph on the wall. “That was me a year ago. You got nothing on me in the ‘mature for your age’ department.”

  I looked down at the logo on my shirt again. The MOB! part was ringing in my head. “I have nothing on you in any regard,” I said. “If not for you, everyone at the concert…” I tried to swallow. My voice was thin and ragged, and I was thirsty. But I didn’t think I coul
d lift the glass of water from the nightstand.

  Adesina stood. “Freddie, don’t you jump down that bunny chute again. We totes do not want you to go lights-out so we have to start all over.”

  I was confused. “Bunny chute?”

  “Rabbit hole, or whatever! Jeez!”

  Okay. Stay above ground, then. Ask the question.

  But it was as if my throat were trying to close around a wire brush.

  Then Adesina was standing in front of me, holding the glass of water to my lips. “Just a sip,” she said. “Don’t gulp it, or you’ll get all spewy again, like when I fed you that oatmeal this morning.”

  A sip helped. “What happened to…” I took a painful breath. “Everyone in the park?”

  She set down the glass. “I think you just like hearing it. You pretty much saved everyone, okay? I mean, some people got concussions, and there were a few broken arms and wrists. Some ruptured eardrums, duh. And a couple of skull fractures, but you didn’t do those. Anyway, it’s been three days, and something like thirty people are still in the hospital. Twitter says a few of the nats are having psychotic episodes, but everyone else seems to be over it. Oh, and there were maybe ten or twelve nats who ran off before the cops could stop them. So no one knows if they’re all right, or if they’re still smoke-crazy.”

  The smoke. That evil shite.

  “What about the Russian?” I rasped.

  “That creep disappeared. I mean, he was still on the sidewalk when you fell. I saw him. But by the time the cops showed up, like a minute later, he was gone.”

  Hell and damn. “So he got away with it.”

  “Nope, he’s ska-rewed,” Adesina said. “Your boss had his phone. So now the cops have his contacts.” She made a low noise in her throat. “Also, it looks like he knows this other crook-type Russian I ran into a few months ago. That jerkface was trying to enslave joker kids—so guess what, he wound up on Rikers. And now with this Xeno thing, the cops think there must be a whole gang of them.” She gave a shudder. “The good news is that the police think they can get the smoke guy. The bad news is that I didn’t tell my mom about my run-in with the first guy, and now she knows. Lucky you, you were still unconscious when we had that discussion.”