All the Rage

by F. Paul Wilson

  But what possible interest could a molecular biologist like Dr. Luc Monnet have in a traveling sideshow? Didn't seem likely it was related to what Nadia had hired him for, but experience had taught him that all too often the most disparate-seeming things could wind up connected.

  He had to see this place in daylight. Tomorrow was Sunday. Too bad he couldn't bring Gia and Vicky along. He'd bet Vicks had never seen an "oddity emporium." But after spotting that Beagle Boy, no way. Tomorrow would be a solo flight.

  He crept back to his car and pointed it toward Manhattan. Once through the tunnel, he swung by Sutton Square to see if Dragovic's men were back on watchdog duty but saw no sign.

  He wondered if they'd be back tomorrow. They'd camped out all day without catching even a glimpse of Gia, so maybe they'd think she was away for the weekend and give up.

  And maybe they wouldn't.

  If they were back in the morning he'd have to deal with them again. He'd been cooking up an idea, but he'd need help.

  Jack drove to the Upper West Side and, miracle of miracles, found a parking spot half a block from his apartment—had to love these holiday weekends. He walked over to Julio's.

  The usual crowd was stacked at the bar, but the table area was only moderately filled.

  "Slow night?" Jack asked as Julio handed him a Rolling Rock long-neck.

  They were standing by the window under the hanging plants. Jack's head brushed against one of the pots, causing a minor snowfall from the dead asparagus fern.

  "Yeah!" Julio said, beaming and rubbing his hands together. He was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt as usual, and the motion caused muscles to ripple up and down his pumped-up arms. "Isn't it great. Just like the old days."

  The yups and dinks were all out of town. The regulars at Julio's, working guys who had been coming in since he opened the place, weren't the type to leave on three-day weekends.

  "I'm going to need a favor tomorrow," Jack said. "The driving kind."

  "Sure. When?"

  "Sometime between twelve and one will do."

  "What I gotta do?"

  Jack explained the details. Julio liked them, and so they agreed to meet around noon.

  Jack walked home feeling as if the various situations around him might be under control. Not a comforting thought. Experience had taught him that the time you feel things are under control is the time you should start some serious worrying.

  He managed to stay awake through the Lancaster-York The Island of Dr. Moreau, which somehow managed to make a fascinating story very dull. Barbara Carrera was gorgeous, but the luscious Movielab greens of the island sapped the atmosphere, and Richard Basehart didn't quite cut it as the Sayer of the Law. It was an official entry in the Moreau Festival, though, and he felt obliged to sit through it. A penance of sorts before the guilty pleasure to come: the hilarious Brando-Kilmer version from 1996.

  SUNDAY

  1

  Oh, no, Nadia thought as she gazed at the shape floating before her. Oh please don't let this be true.

  But how could she deny what was staring her in the face?

  She hadn't slept much last night. She hadn't expected to after Jack dropped that bomb on her yesterday. It's not Berzerk anymore. Every so often the stuff turns inert—all at once. This stuff turned the other day.

  Turns inert… just like the molecule Dr. Monnet wanted her to stabilize. His had also turned the other day… inert.

  The first thing she'd done upon arriving this morning was prepare a sample of Jack's yellow powder for the imager. She'd inserted it a moment ago and now its molecular structure floated before her: an exact duplicate of the Loki molecule after it became inert.

  If inert Berzerk equaled inert Loki, then the inescapable conclusion was that active Loki was active Berzerk. Dr. Monnet had her working on stabilizing a designer drug that induced violent behavior.

  Amid a wave of nausea, she dropped into a chair. She had to face it: Dr. Monnet was involved with a dangerous drug. But to what extent? Was he manufactaring it for Milos Dragovic or merely trying to stabilize it for him?

  And how willing was his participation? That was the real crux. Nadia couldn't help but notice how anxious Dr. Monnet seemed. That certainly was a good indication that he could be being pressured, even threatened. Or was she simply looking for excuses?

  No. She had to have faith that he was not a willing party. And besides, logic said it couldn't be for the money. It made no sense for Dr. Monnet to be involved in illegal drugs when there was so much money to be made in the legal ones.

  I should go to the police, she thought, but quickly changed her mind.

  An investigation might or might not lead to Dragovic, but it would certainly expose Dr. Monnet's involvement. He could wind up in jail while Dragovic remained untouched.

  There had to be another way. Jack was the key. She prayed he'd come up with something soon.

  One thing she did know, though: she wasn't going to do another lick of work on this molecule until she had some answers.

  2

  Ivo had the wheel this time. Another day spent in front of the town house would garner attention, so they'd parked on the west side of Sutton Place this morning in front of a marble-faced apartment house, slightly uptown from Fifty-eighth Street and across from Sutton Square. From this spot he had a good view of the town house.

  Yesterday's collision with the truck still bothered him: Accident or intentional? How to tell?

  Their car today was another Town Car, but older. Since they'd parked Ivo had been noticing an odor.

  "What's that smell?"

  Vuk sniffed and ran a hand through his bleached hair. "Smells like piss."

  "Right," Ivo said, nodding. "We got a car somebody pissed his pants in. Backseat, I'll bet."

  Vuk smiled. "Someone was awfully frightened while riding in this car. Very likely his last ride."

  "Well," Ivo said, "if a pee-stained car is our worst punishment, I'll take it."

  Vuk laughed. "The boss was mad as hell, wasn't he. We're lucky we got off with our skins."

  Ivo nodded. They could laugh now, but last night it had been no laughing matter. Normally Dragovic would shrug off an accident like a pierced radiator, but he'd flown off the handle, raging about the security area like a madman. He was still in a fury over the tire attack, wanting to kill somebody for it, but who? For a few moments Ivo had been ready to piss his own pants, fearing that he and Vuk would end up as surrogate whipping boys.

  But then Dragovic had stopped abruptly, almost in midshout, and stalked from the room, leaving Vuk and Ivo—and no doubt many of the others present—shaken and sweaty.

  Ivo remembered a sergeant like that in Kosovo. He'd had that same unpredictable, almost psychopathic streak. But at least the Army's rules and regulations had restrained him somewhat. Dragovic had nothing to hold him back. The rules were all his and he could change them whenever he pleased.

  Ivo missed the Army, even though much time was spent sitting around waiting for something to happen or to be told what to do. Mostly he missed the structured existence. He did not miss the fighting.

  He still had nightmares about Kosovo. He hadn't taken part in the cleansing. Never in a thousand lifetimes could he step into a home and shoot everyone in sight. Most of that had been done by the local police and paramilitaries. Some soldiers had participated—Vuk, for one—but most just stood by and let it happen.

  That was my sin, Ivo thought. Turning my head. That and looting.

  The looting had been so senseless—carrying off televisions with no way to get them back home. Only the officers had access to trucks, and they simply commandeered the most valuable items from the men under them and shipped them home.

  The Ivo who left Kosovo was a far cry from the Ivo who had entered that hellish province. The night before boarding the transport out, he'd prayed that he wouldn't have to kill. But he'd returned with blood on his hands—the blood of a few KLA guerrillas, and civilians as well. But he'd killed civilians o
nly when they'd asked for it.

  His unit had been stationed in the area between Gnjilane and Zegra, and no one who was not there could ever understand what it was like. An old woman would hobble by a group of soldiers and, just before turning a corner, toss a hand grenade into their midst.

  Sometimes you had to shoot first. Ivo knew fellows who hesitated. They went home in boxes.

  Ivo had learned, and he'd returned to Belgrade in one piece. But the pale face and dead baffled eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy he'd shot, an unarmed boy who'd looked like he was armed but was only looking for a handout, had followed Ivo home and stayed with him.

  At least in the Army you had the weight of the government behind you. Here, with Dragovic, the government was against you. But either way, you spent a lot of time waiting. Like now.

  "Do you think the man from the beach was in that truck yesterday?" Vuk said, nodding toward the town house.

  Ivo glanced at him. Why was he always paired with Vuk? He liked nothing about him. Too rash, always looking for trouble. Why look for trouble when it had so many ways of finding you.

  "I suspect it, but I couldn't prove it."

  Neither had mentioned their suspicions about the truck to Dragovic or anyone else last night. They'd have looked like fools for allowing themselves to be suckered, and they knew how the boss dealt with fools.

  "One thing I do know," Ivo said, "is that after it happened, whoever lives there was able to come and go as free as they pleased. And that makes me—"

  The car jolted and rocked as something slammed into the left front fender, knocking Ivo against Vuk.

  "Sranje!" Vuk shouted as he was thrown against the passenger door.

  Ivo straightened in his seat and looked around. His first thought: Not that truck again!

  But instead of a truck he saw an old rusted-out Ford with its right front bumper buried in the Lincoln's fender. But no bearded man behind the wheel. This time it was a short, muscular Hispanic.

  "Hey, sorry, meng," the man said with an apologetic smile. "This old thing don't steer too good."

  "Govno!" Ivo yelled as he tried to push his door open, but the Ford was too close.

  Vuk was already opening the passenger door, but by the time he'd reached the sidewalk, the Ford was screeching away, leaving them coughing in the thick white smoke from its exhaust.

  "Get him!" Vuk shouted.

  Ivo was already turning the key. As he threw the Lincoln into gear and hit the gas, it lurched forward a foot or so before swerving toward the curb. Ivo cursed and yanked on the steering wheel but it wouldn't budge.

  "What's wrong?" Vuk said.

  "Jammed!"

  Vuk jumped out and ran around to the front of a car where he froze. Then his face contorted as he began swearing and kicking at the front tire.

  Ivo got out to see what he was doing.

  "Look!" Vuk shouted. "Look!"

  In an instant he understood: the Ford had scored a direct hit on the wheel, leaving it cocked on its axle.

  Ivo turned and watched the battered old car dwindling in the distance on Sutton Place. Then he swung around and glared at the town house.

  Vuk followed his gaze. "You don't think…"

  "The man who hit us just now was not the man from the beach," Ivo said. "But still…"

  Vuk turned back to the car. "Never mind him. What are we going to do about this?"

  Ivo's anger faded to fear as he realized they were going to have to report another disabled car to Dragovic.

  Vuk paled. The same must have dawned on him. "We'll have to get it fixed! Immediately!"

  "On a Sunday?" Ivo said. "How?"

  "I don't know, but we must!"

  As Vuk yanked out his cell phone and began jabbing the keypad, Ivo's mind raced. If they could have the car towed, somehow get it repaired, they'd say nothing. As for watching the house… they'd lie… report no activity. No one was home anyway.

  But they had to fix this damn car.

  3

  "One child," Jack said as he handed a ten to the guy in the ticket booth.

  He was a beefy type, wearing a straw boater. He looked around.

  "What child?"

  "Me. I'm a kid at heart."

  "Funny," the ticket man said without a smile as he slid an adult ticket and change across the tray.

  Jack entered the main tent of the Ozymandias Prather Oddity Emporium and checked out his fellow attendees: a sparse and varied crew, everything from middle-class folk who looked like they'd just come from church to Goth types in full black regalia.

  At first glance the show looked pretty shabby. Everything seemed so worn, from the signs above the booths to the poles supporting the canvas. Look up and it was immediately apparent from the sunlight leaking through that the Oddity Emporium was in need of new tents. He wondered what they did when it rained. Thunderstorms were predicted for later. Jack was glad he'd be out of here long before then.

  As he moved along he tried to classify the Oddity Emporium. In some ways it was a freak show, and in many ways not.

  First off, Jack had never seen freaks like some of these. Sure, they had the World's Fattest Man, a giant billed as the World's Tallest Man, two sisters with undersized heads who sang in piercing falsetto harmony—nothing so special about them.

  Then they came to the others.

  By definition freaks were supposed to be strange, but these went beyond strange into the positively alien. The Alligator Boy, the Bird Man with flapping feathered wings… these "freaks" were so alien they couldn't be real.

  Like the Snake Man. Jack couldn't see where the real him ended and the fake began.

  Makeup and prosthetics, Jack told himself.

  But the way he used his tail to wrap around a stuffed rabbit and squeeze it… just like a boa constrictor.

  A good fake, but still a fake. Had to be… even if this was Monroe.

  One aspect of the show that reinforced his feeling that these weren't real was that there was nothing sad or pathetic about these "freaks." No matter how bizarre their bodies, they seemed proud—almost belligerently so—of their deformities, as if the people strolling the midway were the freaks.

  Jack slowed before a booth with a midget standing on a miniature throne. He had a tiny handlebar mustache and slicked-down black hair parted in the middle. A gold-lettered sign hung above him: little sir echo.

  "Hi!" a little girl said.

  "Hi, yourself," the little man replied in a note-perfect imitation of the child's voice.

  "Hey, Mom!" she cried. "He sounds just like me!"

  "Hey, Mom!" Little Sir Echo said. "Come on over and listen to this guy!"

  Jack noticed a tension in the mother's smile and thought he knew why. The mimicked voice was too much like her child's—pitch and timbre, all perfect down to the subtlest nuance. If Jack had been facing away, he wouldn't have had the slightest doubt that the little girl had spoken. Amazing, but creepy too.

  "You're very good," Mom said.

  "I'm not very good," he replied in a perfect imitation of the woman's voice. "I'm the best. And your voice is as beautiful as you are."

  Mom flushed. "Why, thank you."

  The midget turned to Jack, still speaking in the woman's voice: "And you, sir—Mr. Strong Silent Type. Care to say anything?"

  "Yoo doorty rat!" Jack said in his best imitation of a bad comic imitating James Cagney. "Yoo killed my brutha!"

  The woman burst out laughing. She didn't say so, but she had to think it was awful… because it was.

  "A W. C. Fields fan!" the little man cried with a mischievous wink. "I have an old recording of one of his stage acts! Want to hear?"

  Without waiting for a reply, Sir Echo began to mimic the record, and a chill ran through Jack as he realized that the little man was faithfully reproducing not only the voice but the pops and cracks of the scratched vinyl as well.

  "Marvelous, my good man!" Jack said in a W. C. Fields imitation as bad as his Cagney. "Marvelous."

  He
moved off, wondering why he'd been afraid to let the midget hear his natural voice. Some prerational corner of his brain had shied away from it. Probably the same part that made jungle tribefolk shun a camera for fear it would steal their souls.

  As he passed a booth with a green-skinned fellow billed as "The Man from Mars," he glanced up and stopped cold.

  Dead ahead, a banner hung over the midway. Faded yellow letters spelled out sharkman. But it was the crude drawing that had captured his attention.

  Damn if it didn't resemble a rakosh.

  After what he'd seen here already, he wouldn't be half surprised if it were.

  Not that one of Kusum's rakoshi had a single chance in hell of being alive. They'd all died last summer between Governors Island and the Battery. He'd seen to that. Crisped them all in the hold of the ship that housed them. One of them did make it to shore, the one he'd dubbed Scar-lip, but it had swum back out into the burning water and had never returned.

  The rakoshi were dead, all of them. The species was extinct.

  But something here might resemble a rakosh, and if so, he was extra glad he hadn't brought Vicky along. Kusum Bahkti, the madman who'd controlled a nest of them, had vowed to wipe out the Westphalen bloodline; Vicky, as the last surviving Westphalen, had been his final target. His rakoshi emissaries had been relentless in their pursuit.

  Passing a stall containing a woman with a third eye in the center of her forehead that supposedly "Sees ALL!" Jack came to an old circus cart with iron bars on its open side, one of the old cages-on-wheels once used to transport and display lions and tigers and such. The sign above it read: the amazing sharkman! Jack noticed people leaning across the rope border; they'd peer into the cage, then back off with uneasy shrugs.

  This deserved a look.

  Jack pushed to the front and squinted into the dimly lit cage. Something there, slumped in the left rear corner, head down, chin on chest, immobile. Something huge, a seven-footer at least. Dark-skinned, manlike, and yet… undeniably alien.