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The Revisionaries

Page 16

by A. R. Moxon


  “You want to want to. But you can’t quite want to. If you could want to, then you would want to. But every time you try to want to, you find you don’t want to. Right?”

  Bullshit, Julius thinks, but his fists stay put. One of them rises, vaguely, then drops again. He grins flopsweat desperation, remembering the way Morris had looked, knowing he now looks the same—like a guy trying to pretend he hadn’t hit himself in the foot with a chainsaw.

  Morris laughs. “You can’t hurt me, but it’s not because you’re so loving and holy. It’s that invisible dummy over there and his stolen magic. You? You’d have killed me with your bare hands to get what you want. Good to know you have no scruples. Right?”

  A low remark, not worth dignifying with an answer, no matter how true. Julius moves behind the stretcher, now ominously free of movement.

  “I’ll carry him past you, then. You can’t do anything to me.”

  “Not to you. But him? I’ll cut him to pieces before I let him get away. I don’t need him. I only need what he took from me.”

  Julius takes the stretcher by the handles, wrenches the thing from the wall, relieved at the weight of it—Gordy’s still lying there.

  “What a situation we find ourselves in,” says Morris. “Here you are, with my prize. And here I am between you and your only way out. And I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “Yes, but that’s only a problem for you.” Morris strolls back to his sword, picks it up, makes it disappear in his clothing, resumes his blockade pose. “My people know where I am. Tell me: Who knows where you are? Meanwhile, pretty soon, when I don’t show up as expected, my folks will come quickly.” Morris pauses. “In fact…we’ve been at this for a while, haven’t we? They may be on their way already.”

  Julius takes a panicked look backward; there’s nothing to be seen but the silver portal, clearly a door, but still distant. Imagines the tunnel beginning to fill with killers, the walls bleeding cardinal red…

  Immediate movement becomes more imperative than direction; Julius takes the handles once more, pushes the stretcher away from Morris toward the only door in sight.

  “Taking him my way?” Morris loping behind. “Fine with me. Like a bellboy, yes?”

  Julius keeps pushing. Moving still seems wiser than not moving.

  “I can’t hurt you,” Morris chirps. “But my people can; I won’t even need to give a command. The moment they see you, they’ll know what to do. They put on a great show. It all happens at once. They do it so all the pieces hit the floor except for the head. The head stays right where it was, balanced on the blades.”

  Moving faster seems wiser than moving slower. Julius breaks into a sort of mangled trot. Landing on the side of the foot spares his toe slightly, but Morris has no trouble keeping up. The circumference of the steel door ahead grows larger by torturous irreducible increments. Julius pays this door little attention; it’s clearly locked, and his curiosity for any mystery has attenuated in favor of solutions, salvation, deliverance. Of far greater interest: to the left of the vault the tunnel jogs off, leading to a round room, within which he sees a bulky coffinlike shape draped in a white sheet, which is of no interest at all…and a freight elevator door—which, at the present moment, is everything. Giddy with relief, Julius clambers to it, thumbs the UP button, and the doors swing open with a tin ding, the most welcome sound in the world. Julius thrusts the stubborn stretcher over the lip of elevator door track and blocks the door with his body. Morris says, “Enjoy yourself. Six of my men are waiting for me up there, all armed.”

  Julius allows himself a smirk. “If that were true, you wouldn’t be telling me.” He knows he’s scored; before the doors glide shut, he sees the tightening at the mouth and eyes of Morris’s otherwise inscrutable face, and, after the short ride up, when the doors rock open, he finds himself in an unguarded room, dark, long and narrow.

  There’s an ever-present jerky creep of movement along one wall; shafts of light play intermittently on the floor and the cinder block of the wall opposite. There’s the unmistakable scent of axle grease and, incongruously, odors of a dive bar: notes of vomit over robust tones of deep-fried food, wafts of cheap beer, the humidity of a crowded room. Nearby, there’s some sort of movement on the left wall, but the main thing is the noise, coming from everywhere around: a tumult, loud rock music insisting it’s more than a feeling, and voices—a hundred or more—all proclaiming themselves to one another and to the world, a never-ceasing echoing blabber of mutual celebration. And, nearer to him, breaking like waves over this sonic ocean, an incessant crashing Julius can’t place. It’s a terribly disorienting incompatibility, the sound of so many people, but the sight of none; he’s totally alone—no, wait, not totally. There’s another person standing here in the twilight. It’s a loony, bathrobe and all. Head half-shaved, the rest dyed purple. Between her jaws she methodically chews a green toothbrush. She’s studying the machinery in the wall with obsessed appreciation. He’s upon her before she notices him. Unperturbed to see Julius standing there, she points to the machinery. “They have two series,” she says. “See? Like dumbwaiters. They run it with pulleys.”

  Julius sees the elevator doors shut; down again goes the car. Time to get moving. Behind the loony, at the end of the dark hallway, Julius sees a wedge of light let in by a doorway, presumably propped open when the she made her way back here. He pushes the stretcher past, making for the exit.

  “Hey, Mister,” she says as he passes. “Do you know me?”

  Julius studies her for a moment. “Sorry, no.”

  She sighs. “Nobody does. I wish I could remember.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  She’s impatient with him now. “Maybe he knows.” Indicating the stretcher. Julius looks but sees nothing.

  “You…you see him?”

  She snorts. “I have eyes.” She turns back to the machinery. “It’s done with pulleys.” Julius, antsy, moves on; as he does, he inspects her gadget, which takes up the whole length of the left wall, and knows at once where he is—My God. It’s full of bowling pins. I’m at Barney’s.

  The machines are pulling gourd-shaped, red-collared, white wooden pins from a trough into an ingenious contraption of conveyers and pulleys to a sort of pin-elevator, where each one drops into its own pin-shaped empty tube, ready for placement, perched on the far end of the lane, prepared for the next CRASH-rattle-rattle-rattle, while the spangled or marbled or black balls are gathered out of the tray by another series of canvas belts and shot back up the way they came. Julius can’t blame the loony for her fascination; under normal circumstances he might also pause. These days Barney’s usually keeps most of the lanes dark—but given the racket, they’re all apparently in use.

  From a distance he sees the indicator light of the elevator, summoned again from the floor below. Morris, ascending. Julius gets moving as fast as his one good foot and one good hand will allow, pushing the stretcher like a skateboard. Brilliant, this stretcher, his best friend, his savior—until at the doorway they have a sharp difference of opinions, the stretcher having not been designed to negotiate tight spaces or sharp corners. Before Julius makes it through the doorway, he sees the elevator doors open, and hears the shout behind him even over the dim, then Morris is charging down the hallway. With a great wrench, Julius frees stretcher from doorframe, shoots through, and is immediately swallowed by howling madness.

  Loonies. Everywhere, loonies. Barney’s has been overrun. They’re eight deep on each lane, tossing balls without regard for life or safety. A roister of drunken energized loonies, their voices reverberating, overwhelming the classic rock piping through the speakers—Since when did loonies have anything approaching energy? And where did they get cash? But there’s no time to spare on mystery. Dave’s still waiting back at the Wales—but how to get there? His original plan flushed, Julius cycles desperately through his options: The
Neon Chapel, now nearby but never a first choice, is completely out of the question now—to endanger the brothers and sisters…endanger Nettles? No. Forget location. All you need is the next step. Make distance between you and him. But the notion of gaining ground is ridiculous; pushing a stretcher through this throng is like pushing a pencil though a keyhole the wide way. And, even if you had an empty highway between here and your destination (whatever that might now be), what distance can you make? Your whole leg’s a mess.

  The throb from Julius’s foot has now migrated to somewhere around the upper shin, the damaged toe presents ominous frozen splinters of numbness, while the knee screams, abused and torn from the orthopedic nightmare of his improvised side-foot stride. There’s nothing to do but put most of the weight firmly on the stretcher and muscle through the throng as well as can be managed, muttering here and there “Sorry, sorry, ‘scuse me, sorry,” the words lost amid the hoot and bluster and roll of ball on wood and pinclatter, picking a torturous path toward the doorway and goddammit what are all these loonies doing here?

  “Pretty good, huh?’ a voice beside him bellows. It’s Morris. Unencumbered, he’s caught up quickly. Julius ignores him, keeps moving. But Morris continues, chummy. “They just got a double dose of pharmaceutical-grade pep.”

  Julius tries to ignore him and push.

  “What’s concerning me,” Morris says, right up beside him: “is determining how far our embargo against harm goes. Is it just between you and me, or does it go farther? Certainly, I could test it. Any of these around us seem disposable, don’t you think?”

  Julius grunts. The door is near. Soon he’ll be clear of this crowd, able to execute whatever passes for a run. And then what, dummy? Outrun Morris on a lame leg, a broken toe? No hope. Never mind. Don’t think of it. Push.

  “However, I don’t like to kill anything that’s mine. You never know who might prove interesting. It must be said, you’ve proven interesting. Very interesting, just by surviving as long as you have.” Morris produces a device. “Good news! I finally got reception. The cavalry has been called. You’re going to have an amazing opportunity to become even more interesting. Alternatively, you could stop being interesting. Leave this baggage and limp away. No hard feelings, no problem, we’ll never mention it again.”

  Don’t think about it. Just push.

  “Meanwhile, I still have to experiment. Find somebody I’m comfortable hurting.”

  Don’t think. Push.

  “Maybe you’re leading me to somebody like that now?”

  Push push push. The door is tantalizingly near now. So near. It’s here. You’ve made it.

  “I mean, where could you possibly hope to be escaping to?”

  Push push pu—

  Barney’s main doors swing both ways, saloon style. Julius rams the stretcher through them, and, as he comes through, finally stops, as he takes in the sight of his doom.

  Barney’s was only the start. Outside, the crowd continues. Loonies cluster on Transept Ave, both ways, as far as he can see, as if there’s been some sort of exponential explosion of loonies…were there this many all along? Yes, of course there were. They’ve been thick as sparrows on a telephone wire, gathering on the sidewalks lining streets over square miles of the Corners, huddled in murmurations of expanding and collapsing shuffling clouds of mentally ill figures in empty lots. The majority of them—nervous, frightened, shy—have been hiding in the less-traveled nooks and crannies, but now, made strangely bold, they’ve emerged. Apparently, there are enough to fill the street from here to Ralph’s: loonies swinging from streetlamps. Loonies wrestling and spinning in the street. Loonies scuttling like crabs from one building to another; a lunatic mob. It’s as if, after years cooped up, after days staring at the cracks in the sidewalk, all of them have decided, as a corporate entity, to take in the full universe. A sudden inheritance of attention and energy, withheld from them over numbed years, has been liquidated, interest compounded, and deposited directly into their limbic systems. Every building on every street has a tributary trickling off from the main human flow, an army-ant chain of lunatics heading to promiscuously sample whatever each building or establishment has to offer—mostly something illegal, shifty, or, at least rowdy and destructive—while another chain marches away from that prospect to the next thing, both chains going at the top speed possible and jostling each other, but each keeping to the right and moving efficiently, each loony looking for their own specific destiny, object of obsession, grand purpose, topic of the day, major field of study, and each of them, having discovered it, wears the same look of focused intensity, of open curiosity, worn by the woman examining the pin-setting mechanism.

  The loonies carry fruits of their successful looting: boxes of donuts and electronic goods, cans of sardines, fistfuls of cash, bottles of booze, cell phones and other random electronics, a loose bowling pin. A pair of mattresses, a loony atop each, crowd-surfs upon waves of loony hands. Loonies hang from windows of buildings. Loonies carouse with the more adventurous members of the gangs, who seek profit from these new fish. Everywhere Julius looks he sees dashing, pushing, hysterical laughter, loonies swinging shopping bags above their heads like plastic bolas, hopping onto the hoods of cars and into beds of trucks, playing in the spray of a vandalized fire hydrant, screeching bug-eyed in the upswing of amphetamine hypertension. Cheap squibs explode around him in startling serial bursts of harmless brimstone. Julius wants to collapse atop the stretcher. It’s too much. It’s defeat. Clearly there will be no straight path to anything like a hiding place, no way to break away from Morris, only more of the same torturous crowdbreaking inch-by-inch work, and at this moment Gordy begins to scream again, howling past fear or pain, failing to reappear as his voice makes itself known even above the clamor.

  “Walk away and live,” Morris shouts. “It’s the only offer you’ll get.”

  It sounds so inviting, so completely reasonable. Walk away. Melt into the mass. Become nothing, find Dave Waverly, tend wounds, return to life. You’ve done all you could. You’ve done more than most would…

  Then Gordy screams again, and Julius knows he’s not out of the thicket yet—to abandon this boy in his moment of need would be a betrayal, not only of him, but of yourself. Of what you are: the cat who steps between bullets, who challenges guns, who brings the peace at the expense of his own bleeding meat. Julius makes for bare stretches, pockets devoid of lunatic, where he can skateboard a little and spare his foot, but most empty places corresponded to the edges of the street; he has curbs to contend with, banging up against them, cursing as the jolts enrage his bitten thumb, broken foot, or one of the other smaller injuries only now beginning to present themselves. Exhaustion eats him. His lungs are bags that take in and release pain. His leg is wrapped in thorns, his foot is a dead hunk of ice that has been nailed to his ankle, his body is fire. Spots dance fervid before his eyes. Morris paces alongside, laughing at each hindrance. Julius now knows where he must go—there’s no other choice. There’s no shaking Morris; speeding away is impossibility, and as for fighting him, punching him, beating him until he…he…

  What, Julius wonders, was I just thinking about?

  Step by tortured step, Ralph’s draws nearer. The thing about the chase is the next step. If you have that, eventually even the horizon falls. Take the next step, that’s all. You’ll still have the bastard with you when you get there, which is bad, but Donk is still your friend, and maybe he and Bailey can handle him and get us both away before the collective cadre of cardinals come capering, carve our corpuscles into cutlets, careful, caution, consider, you’re alliterally going crazy here…

  “What you don’t realize,” Morris says, and then without pause or preface he falls with surgical neatness down one of the many manholes left lidless in Loony Island, courtesy of enterprising scrap-iron expropriators. Even over loony-hubbub, Julius can hear his sudden surprised shout, followed by a splash of impact below and
near-simultaneous scream of pain—Let his leg be broken and not just ankle sprained, let the bone be poking out of his…Julius’s mind trails off, baffled yet again by the combination of Morris and the idea of physical harm…

  Still a stroke of luck. Don’t squander. Push. Push.

  As if his thoughts have been read by some perverse spirit, Julius immediately finds his way blocked by a loony who comes floating out from the crowd to stand exactly opposite him, hands gripping the stretcher rails, preventing any hope of forward momentum—while Julius, who knows beyond doubt the injured Morris, fetlock most certainly befricked but not entirely befuckled, is already making his agonized way to the ladder leading up—gives in to despair at last. This lunatic is an emaciated jittery mess; there’s no real physical threat to him under normal circumstance, but though Julius realizes the idea of fighting him is simple—no mysterious fiat imposed by partially visible men here—he has nothing left with which to fight. This is it. Tank empty. It’s all been too much. Dark spots claim his vision.

  “Hoe hoe holy shit, Captain,” the loony says, and Julius realizes with bewildered relief this isn’t any random loony, but Brother Tennessee, still wearing the bathrobe of his tribe, grinning like a freak. “Holy shit. That’s Gordy-Gord. You’ve got my Gordy.”

  Julius glances stretcherward, briefly catching a flash of Gordy before he flicks out again.

  Tennessee’s face works hard against weeping. “That’s Gordy, Father. That’s my son, my son, my son. My boy gone forever.”

  With his last strength, Julius heaves himself onto the stretcher, feels the unseen actuality of Gordy beneath.

  “Ralph’s. Take us to Donk,” he croaks, and sees Tennessee take hold of the stretcher before the darkness rises up in his vision, a malignant peaceful wave. The last thing he feels before it meets him is the stretcher beginning to move, slow, and then faster.

 

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