by Diane Duane
He pushed the earplug jack into the transistor and listened.
"A Hong Kong investment group is close to a deal with Stark Industries to finance a $3 billion housing development on the Hudson River site where real estate developers had once planned to build Television City. The plan for a vast media center on the Riverside between 59th and 72nd Streets foundered nearly a decade ago when attacked by city planners and neighborhood activists as a leviathan that would tax the area's infrastructure and environmental resources. It is believed that Stark's plan to introduce low-income housing for the area will meet with far greater approval—"
"I can still hear that thing," Mike said loudly. "Can't you turn it down?"
Harry was strongly tempted to tell his companion to wrap a pillow around his head and shut up. Since they started dossing here some six nights ago, Mike's constant complaining had been getting on Harry's nerves. There wasn't much he could do about it, though. He was aware that his companion was a bit of a sneak and a bully, and if Harry did anything to push him out of this warehouse, Mike would tell others about it. Shortly thereafter, the place would be full of other people, who would crowd in and steal from each other and get falling-down drunk on cheap booze, or blitzed on drugs, and would generally make the experience even more unpleasant than it already was. So Harry turned the transistor down just as far as he could, and lay there listening.
"District Attorney Tower has announced that he will be running for another term this year, citing his excellent conviction record and his toughness on paranormal criminals. He is expected to run unopposed—"
Harry waited to see what Mike would say. For the moment, at least, he lay quiet. At the end of that story, the radio said, ". . . and if you have a news story, call 212-555-1212. The best news story of the week wins fifty dollars."
Harry yawned. He knew the number by heart, but the odds of him seeing anything newsworthy enough to win such a fabulous amount were less than nil.
"I can't stand it," Mike said. "I can still hear it!"
Harry opened his mouth to say, "You're nuts!" and then shut it again. He knew, though Mike had never told him so, that he had just recently been discharged from the Payne Whitney Clinic across town. Or more accurately, he had signed himself out, after having been brought in half-crazed from drinking what seemed to have been bad booze—or maybe it had been Sterno. In any case, Mike had taken advantage of seventy-two hours' worth of good food and a cleanup before signing himself out. "Had to get out," Mike had said to him when they met again on the street. "They talk to you all the time—they never stop. I woulda gone nuts for sure. And there were rats in the walls."
Privately, Harry believed otherwise. He was no expert, but he thought that Mike sometimes heard and saw a lot of things that weren't there. The complaining about the radio was probably more of the same.
"I can't turn it down any further," he said.
"Well, you're a bastard, that's all," Mike said mildly, "just a bastard." He crawled out of his box and shed the first two or three layers of his wrappings.
Harry watched warily, wondering whether Mike was going to try to start a fight with him again, as he had a couple of nights ago, when he claimed Harry had been whispering all night. It had been more of an abortive struggle than a fight, but it had wound up with Mike ostentatiously hauling his bedding over to the other side of the warehouse—his mien indicating that this was meant as a penalty for Harry's bad behavior.
"I can't stand the noise," Mike said. "I'm going to sleep over here." And once more he proceeded to drag his box and his various bags full of belongings, one at a time, with a great show of effort and trouble, over by the canisters stacked up against the wall. This left at least fifty feet between Harry and Mike, and Harry was just as glad: it was that much further for the lice to walk.
Mike started the arduous business of rewrapping and reinserting himself into the bedding. Harry, with only a touch of irony, waited until Mike was finished with all this, then shouted, "Can you hear anything now?"
"Nothing but your big mouth," the answer came back after a moment.
Harry raised his eyebrows in resignation and went back to listening to the radio.
"An amino acid has been found for the first time in large galactic clouds, proving that one of the molecules important to the formation of life can exist in deep space, researchers say. Yanti Miao and Yi-Jehng Knan of the University of Illinois at Urbana reported Tuesday—"
"Hey," Mike's voice came from the other side of the warehouse floor, "I hear something!"
Oh, God, Harry thought. I was almost asleep. "What?"
"I dunno. I heard something outside the wall—bangin'."
Harry rolled his eyes. This, too, was a story he had heard before. Things banging on the wall, rats, things walking on the roof—"For God's sake, Mike, just wrap a pillow around your head, or something. It'll go away!"
"No it won't," Mike said with almost pleased certainty. "It didn't in the hospital."
Harry sighed. "Look, just lie down and go to sleep!"
"It's still there," Mike said. "Bangin'."
Unutterably weary, Harry took the earplugs out of his ears and listened.
Bang.
Very faint, but definitely there. "You got one this time, Mike," he said softly.
Bang. And definitely harder, so that he felt it through the floor. Bang.
"Now what the hell could that be at this time of night?" he wondered.
The two of them lay there, across the floor from one another, staring into the near-darkness and listening. Only a faint golden light came in through the high windows from outside—the reflected streetlights from the next street over. It gleamed faintly in their eyes as they turned to look at each other.
Then, silence—no more bangings.
"Aah, it's probably someone unloading something," Harry said after a while. "Maybe that Seven-Eleven over in the next block getting a late delivery."
Mike groaned. And groaned again, then, and Harry realized abruptly that it was not Mike at all, but a sound that was coming from the wall itself. A long, slow, straining sound of—metal, perhaps? He stared at the source.
In the darkness, your eyes fool you, so at first he simply didn't believe what he saw. The wall near the canisters was bowing inward toward them, almost stretching as if it were flexible, and being pushed from behind. Then a sudden sagging, the whole shape of the wall changing as it went to powder, and almost liquidly slumped away from itself, bowed further inward—
And then with a dreadful clanging crash, several of the big canisters were tipped away from the wall by what was coming through it, pushing them—the lowest ones fell over sideways and rolled. One of them stacked higher, slightly over to one side, teetered, leaned away from its stack, then crashed to the floor and burst open.
It fell right on the cardboard box where Mike had been sleeping. At the first dreadful noise the wall made, he had scrambled out and was now standing safe from the canister's fall, but not safe from its contents, with which it sprayed him liberally as it burst. A sort of metallic chemical smell filled the air.
Mike shook himself all over and started jumping around and waving his arms, cursing a blue streak. "What the hell, what is this sh—"
The last of the canisters fell down, missing and rolling away, drowning the sound of his cursing. And then something jumped through the hole in the wall.
Harry looked at it, and swallowed—and had to swallow again, because in that second his mouth had gone so dry, there was nothing left to swallow with. In the shadows of the warehouse, the thing that stood there was blacker still. Whatever light there was in there fell on it and vanished, as if into a hole. It was man-shaped, big, and powerful-looking, with huge pale eyes—
Mike, still waving his arms around, jumping and swearing, took a long moment to see it. Harry concentrated on staying very still and very quiet, and not moving in his bag. He might not have a television himself at this point in his career, but he certainly looked at them whe
n he passed the TV stores on the Avenue. And he knew that dreadful shape—it had been in the news often enough lately. A terrible creature, half man, half God knew what. And Mike, infuriated, spotted it, and went at it waving his arms.
For the moment it seemed not to have noticed. It was crouching like some kind of strange animal. From a huge fanged mouth it emitted an awful long tongue, broad and prehensile and slobbering, and it began to lap at the stuff which had burst from the containers. Mike lurched toward it, windmilling his arms inanely as if he were trying to scare off a stray dog.
For a few breaths' worth of time, it ignored him. Harry lay there, completely still, while the sweat broke out all over him, and the blood pounded in his ears. The black creature seemed to grin with that huge mouthful of fangs as it lapped and lapped with the huge snakelike tongue.
But Mike was far gone in annoyance or paranoia, and he went right up to the creature, yelling, and kicked it.
It noticed him then.
It noticed his leg first, the tongue wrapping around it and sliding up and down it as if it were thirsty for the stuff which had drenched Mike. Mike hopped and roared with loathing and annoyance, and he batted at the dark shape.
Then he roared on a higher note, much higher, as it pounced on Mike.
It was not long about exercising its teeth on him. Harry lay there transfixed by horror, now, not by fear for himself. Eventually the screaming stopped, as the dark shape ferreted out the last few delicacies it was interested in, and finally dropped the hideous form that had been Mike.
Then it went back to its drinking, decorous and unself-conscious as some beast by a pool out on the veldt. It cleaned up every last drop of the spilled stuff on the floor . . . not despising or declining the blood.
And then it stood up and looked around thoughtfully, like a man, with those great pale glaring eyes.
Its eyes rested on Harry.
He lay there frozen, on his side, watching, a trickle of drool running unnoticed out of his shocked-open mouth.
The creature turned away, whipped a few more of the nastily dextrous tendrils around several of the canisters, and effortlessly leapt out the hole in the wall with them, silent in the silence.
Gone.
It was a long, long time before Harry could move. When he did, it took him a while to stand up, and he stood still in the one spot, shaking like an old palsied bum, for many minutes.
Then, carefully, avoiding the still-wet spots, and the gobbets and tatters of Mike that lay around on the floor, he made his way out through the hole the creature had left . . . feeling in his pocket for a quarter to call the radio station, and collect his fifty dollars.
It took Spider-Man a long time to get up after the fight. First he saw to the camera, unloading the film and tucking it away in his costume, and then he found that he didn't feel very well. He sat down, breathed deeply, and tried hard not to throw up. It was as usual: the reaction hit him later, sometimes worse than other times.
Finally he decided he really had to get himself moving. He started web-swinging his way home, taking his time and not overexerting himself. His whole body felt like one big bruise, and several times he had to stop and blink when his vision wobbled or swam. He found himself wondering whether the pumpkin bomb had possibly left him with a borderline concussion along with everything else. Hope not, he thought. At least I wasn't unconscious at all. It was a relief. Going to the emergency room as a walk-in patient held certain complications for superheroes with secret identities—especially as regarded sorting out the medical insurance. . . .
The digital clock on the bank near home said 4:02, with two bulbs missing, and 81 degrees. Lord, the heat. . . . There was this blessing, at least: the city seemed mercifully quiet as he made his way back.
Very wearily he climbed up the wall toward their apartment, avoiding the windows belonging to the two nurses on four who were working night shift this spring and summer, and the third-floor windows of the garbage guy who was always up and out around four-thirty.
He found the bedroom window open just that crack, pushed it open, and found the lights all out inside as he stepped carefully over the sill and closed the window behind him. He looked at the bed. There was a curled-up shape there, hunched under the covers. He looked at it lovingly and was about to head for the bathroom when the shape said, "Out late tonight. . . ."
"Later than planned," he said, pulling his mask off wearily, "that's for sure."
MJ sat up in bed and turned the light on. She didn't look like she'd slept at all. "Sorry," he said, knowing she hadn't.
She yawned and leaned forward, smiling a small smile. "At least you came back," she said.
The issue of his "night job," and his need to risk himself webslinging for the public good, had been a source of concern. Peter had felt for a long time before they got serious that a costumed crimefighter had no business having a permanent relationship with someone who, by that relationship, would be put permanently at risk. It hadn't stopped him from dating, with various levels of seriousness, both superheroes and mere mortals—something that MJ was always quick to point out when the subject came up. She also pointed out that there were other costumed crimefighters and superheroes who were happily married and carried on more or less normal family lives, even without their alternate identities being known. That much he himself had shared with her. There was no reason they couldn't make it work as well. "All you have to do," she kept saying at such times, "is give up the angst."
Anyway, now she said nothing about those other discussions, though the memory of them clearly lurked behind her eyes. "You made the news," MJ said.
"I did?" He blinked as he pulled the costume top over his head. "That was quick. Didn't see any news people turn up before I left—"
"Yup. You made WNN."
"What??" That confused him. "Must have been a pretty slow news night," Peter muttered. "I still don't see how they managed to find out about that—"
MJ laughed at him softly, but there was a worried edge to the sound. She swung out of the bed. "Boy, you must be getting blasé. After what's been going on around this town the past few years, it is not going to be considered a slow news night when Venom turns up again—"
"What?!"
The laugh definitely had more of the nervous edge to it. She turned and felt around in the semidarkness for the nightgown left over the bedside chair. "Venom," she said, and then looked at him. Her mouth fell open. "I assumed—" She shut the mouth again. "You weren't out fighting Venom?"
"Hobgoblin, actually." But now his head was spinning.
She stared at him again. "It was on the news, like I said. Something about him having been seen at a warehouse downtown. There was a murder—and then he made off with some—radioactive waste, I think they said."
"Who was murdered?"
MJ shook her head. "Some homeless guy."
Peter was perplexed. "Doesn't sound like Venom," he said. "Radioactive waste? What would Venom want that for? As for murdering a homeless person—" He shook his head too. "That sounds even less like him."
He handed MJ his costume top. "I thought," she said, "when you were out late . . ." Then she looked down at her hands and wrinkled her nose. "This can wait," MJ said. "I think I'd better wash this thing." She held the top away from her, with a most dubious expression. "And I think you'd better change your deodorant. Phooey!"
"You didn't have the night that I had," Peter said, "for which you should be grateful."
"Every minute of the day," MJ said, with her mouth going wry. "Have you given any thought to making a summerweight one? This can't be comfortable in this weather."
"In all my vast amounts of spare time," Peter said, "yes, the thought has crossed my mind, but picking the right tailor is a problem." MJ winced, then grinned and turned away.
"I'll just wash it," she said. "Did you buy more Woolite yesterday?"
"Oh, cripes, I forgot."
"Oh well. Dishwashing liquid'll have to do. Don't forget the Woolite th
is time."
"Yes, master."
"Have you got everything off of the belt? All your little Spidey-gadgets?"
"Uh huh."
She looked at his abstracted expression and, smiling, handed him back the costume. "You'd better go through it yourself—I can never find all those compartments. The thing's worse than your photojournalist's vest."
Peter took it, obediently enough, and removed from the top a couple of spider-tracers and some spare change. Then he shucked out of the bottom and gave it to her.
"You go get in the tub, tiger," MJ said, turning away again. "You can use a soak to relax."
"And to make me fit for human company?" he shouted down the hall after her.
A slightly strangled laugh came back. "After you're done," she said, "we can look at WNN. It'll be back on again."
Peter sighed, went to the hall closet for a towel, then ambled to the bathroom.
It was just like life to pull something like this on him now. Venom. But he's supposed to be in San Francisco—
Then again, this sudden appearance was not necessarily a surprise. Every time in the past he had thought Eddie Brock, the man who had become Venom, was out of his life, back he would come.
