by Ciar Cullen
Footage?
“That’s not right.” I clutched at Jack. He didn’t pull away, but blew out a deep breath and threw an arm around my shoulder in a way Petti would not have approved. I guess he decided I was a moron—I am sometimes. More importantly, he didn’t think I was responsible for this one.
“It will go down in Lakewood, New Jersey. It’s a few decades early, but who’s counting? Damn it.”
He sat on the bench and pulled me next to him. “Give me a minute.”
As if I’d do or say a thing to make him angry or move away. I’d never sat with him. Sleeve touching sleeve. I noticed the tiny dark hairs on his wrist, the smell of sweet pipe tobacco and shaving soap, his breathing. His tan hands were those of a working man, despite his starched clothes.
“It’s getting worse, Fen. I’m failing. We’re failing.”
“We’ll figure it out.” As if I had any clue how we were going to stop time from going haywire. So lame, telling the Man it would all be fine.
“Let’s shred Steamside so I can think in peace. I know you hate the shred.” He glanced at me in challenge. That I even figured into his thought process thrilled me.
“It’s not that bad. Not as bad as an axe to the skull. Close.”
“It hasn’t gotten better for you, you’re like a TAT.” But his voice was laced more with sympathy than disdain. And he’d called me Fen, a nickname no one else had used.
“We’re screwed, Fen. Royally. I’m failing you.”
“Me?”
“I meant all of the Punks.” He arched a brow and smiled a bit. I didn’t know him well, didn’t know that look. I guess I amused him, with my obvious crush. He was probably so used to crushing the hopes of his female charges. For just a moment, though, I caught a hint of a glimpse of a connection.
Jack took my hand and pulled me close before we went to the land that time not only forgot, but never knew existed. In that moment, right before the ripples of a continuum gone noncontiguous tore my flesh apart, Jack leaned in and mumbled that my mourning period was over. That one embrace was more sensual than some of the sex I’d had. Maybe it was the layers of itchy clothing separating us, or the inappropriateness of it for the era—downright shameful. Perhaps the heat of his breath on my neck, grazing me like a phantom kiss. Or perhaps, I was just so obsessed with him that I couldn’t separate my fantasies from reality anymore. He electrified me.
“Wear blue,” he ordered.
“Blue?”
He nodded.
“Do you like blue?”
He simply smiled in a way that fired my nerve endings into overdrive.
I did wear only blue, from that day on. I found my Punk name and my Punk style, which included the showing of a fair amount of cleavage, a killer pair of round sunglasses, and a skirt I drew up on one side to show off my legs. And the pistol the Man himself left on my bunk, strapped to one thigh. Everyone has a day, now and then, that helps define them. I cried less after that day. I belonged, even if it was only among Punks.
Chapter Three
Miss Fenwick takes a position of importance.
Steamside living wasn’t a hell of lot more glamorous than downtown 1890 New York, where immigrants languished in squalor. We shared quarters, at least two to a room, in a handful of brick row houses and tiny workshops. Our town, if you want to call a few square miles a town, had one half-cobbled street and even gas streetlights. It looked like a little lopsided medieval fortress, walled in a circle on a low hill. It took the Punks over a year to build the Wall, made of mud bricks and odds and ends of lumber. On second thought, it wasn’t much like a medieval fortress unless you were drunk and squinted. More like a fortress a neighborhood of adolescent boys might build.
As far as anyone could tell, we were pretty close, if not on, Central Park. Superimposed, I guess you’d say. At least when we shredded to Normal, that’s where we always ended up. I’d tried to think myself somewhere else, from a different spot in the Park to a different city. Nope, you’d close your eyes, stand in what the Punks dubbed, for obvious reasons, the Vortex, and let it pummel you through to the other side. When you opened your eyes, you’d be facing the Great Lawn, with your back to Cleopatra’s Needle. We always slipped into Normal 1890 unnoticed, although there were a few close calls. The Normals could see us, talk to us, and assumed we were just like them.
“Where ya goin?” Petti fell in step with me as I sauntered down Main Street, as we called our path near the Wall. She always found me, like she had a Fenwick homing device. She never seemed to want anything in particular. I guess it was her way of socializing. One thing about Steamside—you were never alone. It got tiring. I had sympathy for prisoners, who could never find quiet, but the company never quelled loneliness. Except as far as I knew, I hadn’t done anything to deserve my prison.
“Oh, thought I’d pick up a few things at the store.” We didn’t have a store, of course. We stole every brick, beam, pipe, hatpin, tin of tea, and rack of lamb from Normal. Of the fifty or so of us, ten worked as full-time thieves—taking orders from the Man and picking up odds and ends to trade with the rest of us. I learned it paid to get close to the (Artful) Dodgers, as we called them. Or at least not to piss them off.
They called the rest of us Whores, because there wasn’t much you wouldn’t do for something new to read, or a new corset. Not that I did that—but a few might have, including Screw. He never seemed to run out of exquisite clothes.
Petti took off her top hat and threw it precisely onto a bent nail protruding from the Wall’s ladder. “Tired of that hat. I’d really like a new one. But I’m too lazy to go to Normal for a new one.”
She reached into her drawstring silk purse and pulled out a Tarot deck.
“Huh, they have Tarot in 1890?” She rolled her eyes and fanned the cards out in her palm, indicating I should pick one.
I ignored her.
“I’m practicing. Come on, Fen, don’t be such a sad sack.”
“Oh, all right.” I tapped a card and she examined it, and then shoved it back in the deck.
“Not good. Not good at all.”
“Hell, what now? You’re always bringing me such great news.”
“Your living arrangements are about to change.”
“Meaning?”
“Jack’s putting you up in Screw’s room. Switching me to Barber’s room.”
“What the hell for?” Oh, God, does he mean me to hook up with Screw? To get me off his back? Am I that obvious?
“Our job is to obey orders. You’ll enjoy Screw’s company. Maybe you can apprentice in his shop.”
Screw could make anything, if you could pinch the right raw materials, and sometimes it was as if he made something from nothing. The Dodgers brought back beautiful watches, only to have Screw gut them and use the tiny gears and springs for one of his widgets. He’d outfitted the lot of us in goggles, although the only one who needed them was the Man, and his few friends that got to ride with him occasionally. I bartered my cell phone (no, you can’t hear me now) for a yo-yo with clock gears and jewels that glinted in the sunlight when it spun. Most of the women (and a fair number of the guys) wore jewelry that looked like it came from the inside of a tiny factory, made by Victorian elves. Screw was responsible for our style as he’d been into this Goth look back home.
Screw’s creations weren’t all about aesthetics, though. His drafting table (I heard that the Man made it for him) held the original plans for our town, the Wall, and a good deal of our furniture. I’m pretty sure I saw a prototype for a robot in Screw’s machine shop, but he frowned when I asked him about it.
“Do you know what a robot is, Fenwick?” I’d cringed at his disdain.
“Got it. No computers, no artificial intelligence. Still, it looks a lot like an R2D2 or something.”
“It’s a steampowered street sweeper.”
“We don’t have a street, do we? I mean, there’s a half of a street, but it’s dirt. Why would we want to sweep it?”
He’d rolled his eyes.
“So it is a robot?”
“Go play with your yo-yo.”
The guy was a mechanical wizard, MIT graduate, all around geek, and very sarcastic. And he was beautiful, in a way no man has the right. Great skin, and long, thick eyelashes.
I guess as roommates go, I’d scored. But who was really behind the switch? Was Petti bored with me? I couldn’t shake the feeling that Jack was pushing me into another man’s arms. Hell, he probably didn’t think about me, much less care about my stupid crush.
I wanted a cool talent, but it would definitely not be in Screw’s workshop, as Petti well knew. Screw banned me from all the workshops because of my total lack of mechanical aptitude. He joked that I could break the velocipede he was making for Jack’s birthday just by thinking about it. It turns out he may have been close to the truth.
The irony wasn’t lost on me that I was terrified I’d get kicked out of Steamside, when I’d spent most of my days cursing I was there in the first place.
Once I’d recovered from what I suppose amounts to a nervous breakdown (I try to forget about those weeks), they put me in the kitchen. When they realized I only knew how to burn water and couldn’t ever make decent coffee in the odd bronze contraption that didn’t resemble a Mr. Coffee machine, they tried me in the laundry. I ruined one of Jack’s best shirts, which sent me into a second spiral of depression.
You still don’t get it, I know. I’m not weak. I’m not a helpless dimwitted blonde. You might not do any better in my shoes, okay?
“Petti, can I ask you something and get a real answer?”
“I give real answers.”
“You give circus tent answers. Try really hard, okay?”
She folded her glasses and tucked them away, put her hand on my arm to show me she was listening.
“Why does it seem like everyone here is happy except for me? I don’t think I belong here.”
“None of us belong here, Fen. Sweet thing.” She laced her arm in mine and we continued our walk. “Someday, when you and Jack are curled up in one another’s arms, ask him about our first year here. How much we cried. How insane we felt.”
She’d done it again, deflected every brain neuron with mention of her brother. I couldn’t remember what I’d asked her. I wouldn’t miss the relentless teasing of my old roommate as I fell asleep. Petti would prop her cute little head on one hand and look at me from her bunk. “I wonder who Jack is with tonight.” Or “I think I saw Jack looking at you today.” Then she’d leave me to stare at the ceiling.
“You’re a bitch, Annalise Pettigrew.” She giggled as I stormed off to my room to gather my pathetic bundle of possessions and move in with Screw.
* * *
My stomach churned when I heard him in our room. What the hell did Screw think about the new arrangements? I didn’t knock because no one knocked Steamside. You simply made enough noise to warn others you were coming.
Screw looked up from his bunk, where he filed at one of the endless pieces of metal strewn about the room.
“Welcome to Neverland. I’m sure we’ll get along splendidly if you don’t snore and you don’t touch my things. You don’t snore, right?”
“From one asshole roommate to another. Splendid. If you don’t mind, you can take your things off my bed.”
“They’re yours.” His grin lit up the dingy cell.
A fall-action Winchester rifle and a six round .45 Remington pistol lay on the bunk. My dad had an Italian replica of the .45. He’d always said his collection would go to me, during the peaceful, remorseful times that followed his drunken tirades about me or my mom.
Screw peered up from his work with a smirk. No, I’m not one of those gun freaks, don’t get me wrong. I’d been taught to shoot from an early age, primed for a career in law enforcement, and endlessly reminded of my failures by my father.
“Do you know what these are worth?” I couldn’t take it in. They weren’t antiques, but brand new. I had trouble sometimes getting over the newness of stuff that should be on the Antiques Road Show.
Screw sniffed out a laugh. “Probably about ten bucks a piece. The Man said if you don’t know how to use them, bring them back to him. But you did brag a bit to Petti about shooting.”
“Jack bought these for little old me?”
“I thought girls liked perfume and flowers. Weapons.” Screw smacked his forehead.
I laughed at that, and Screw joined me. Not a day went by that some chick didn’t hit on Screw, bringing him gifts.
“Oh.” I sat on my bunk and checked out the line of the rifle. “I guess that means I’m a cop or something? Or am I supposed to hunt? I’m not a hunter.”
“I don’t think you’re the new sheriff in town. If you hadn’t noticed, the trouble is outside the Wall.”
My heart sank. I know I’ll seem like more of a wuss to you, but think about it. If all the nasty shit from your nightmares came to life and wandered outside your city, you wouldn’t want to be guarding the city limits, would you?
Here there be dragons. And dragonflies the size of dragons, along with less attractive super-enlarged vermin. And every other freaking nightmarish creature you’ve ever seen in a horror movie, read about in a book, or woke over in a trembling sweat. It’s an alphabet soup of paranormalcy. I mean, we have zombies. Real zombies. Witches, werewolves, monsters, aliens, gigantic everything… If you’ve dreamt about it, it lives Steamside. Because, you see, that’s how they got there in the first place. You all are to blame. We see your nightmares. Petti thinks they crawled through the Vortex with us.
Most of the stuff can’t hurt you. That’s the irony of nightmares, I guess. You just tell them they aren’t real, and poof! Kinda like waking up. A few take some convincing and go down with a fight, gnawing or clawing or spitting fire. Petti thinks those are the products of the insane, people who can’t separate their nightmares from reality. It’s not pretty up there on the Wall.
“Ammo?”
Screw thumbed to the nightstand. “You’re on duty tonight. Jack said to be careful. He’s running out of jobs for you, you know.”
“Jack can kiss my ass.”
“In your dreams.”
“And yours, I bet.”
Screw laughed, not at all offended, leaving me once again to wonder about him. It wasn’t the first time I tried to picture him and the Man locked in a hunky embrace, and not the first time it did something for me.
I loaded both weapons, trying to calm shaky hands, wondering how I was going to kill the hour before dusk. I felt like I was about to walk the green mile, but no one had been killed on the Wall since my arrival. A few were gnawed by various creatures, but Barber had sewn them up well enough. The rumor was that Barber had been kicked out of med school, but he’d evidently retained enough basic knowledge to handle minor ailments.
Things could get a bit hairy without antibiotics. We used whiskey or morphine to kill pain. Jack locked the latter up in his quarters, or we’d all become addicts. Just about every medicinal elixir in Normal contained morphine, and the number of people addicted to the stuff was astounding. Jack forbid the Dodgers to bring Bayer’s new medicine, heroin, Steamside.
Jack purportedly had a bit of an absinthe habit, which I found a little pretentious. Screw said it was just because he was from New Orleans, which is famous for the stuff. Everyone defended Jack, whether he needed it or not. I guess the truth is that we all loved him. Maybe we just needed to believe in something or someone.
“Night, Screw.”
He peered up. “Don’t widen those emo blue eyes at me, Fenwick. You’ll be fine, and I’m not going to hug you goodbye, no matter how much you beg me.”
“Screw you.”
Screw threw down his file and pulled me into his arms for a shocking, tantalizing, too quick kiss on the lips. I thought my legs would go out from under me. I wiped my mouth in a dramatic display of disgust while trying to get my body under control.
“Just in case a zombie gets yo
u,” he explained with a self-satisfied smirk. I must have looked dreamy. I piss myself off so much.
“I’ll bring one back as a pet.” I turned to the door and he grabbed me by the shoulder. I was afraid to turn, afraid I’d cry or pour my guts out. I wasn’t a TAT anymore; I had to suck it up, all the time. Just like back home, on the job as an EMT. Sure, we had the heart attacks and high fevers, car accidents and false alarms. But also beaten and raped women, children killed by parental neglect, teenagers blowing each other’s heads off over drugs. Some things stayed with you. Sometimes you just couldn’t suck it up. I prayed the Wall wasn’t going to be one of them.
I squeezed Screw’s hand without turning around and mumbled goodnight.
“Say hi to Sweet Pea for me.”
Sweet Pea was in charge of the Wall. We’d never exchanged more than a quick greeting, and I worried about impressing her, about impressing Jack. I’d show up early for my shift on the Wall and hope they’d notice my courage and team spirit.
The sky turned gunmetal gray and the few gas streetlights we had, thanks to Screw, came to an eerie glow on the uneven road. I nodded to a few Dodgers going out for their own rounds and even found the nerve to ask one to bring me back stockings if he could. They called him Prince Albert, but I suspected it was more his likeness to the singer Prince than any royalty. Short and wiry, he approached me and poked me in the arm with his walking stick that no doubt doubled as a weapon. He eyed me for size and slipped into the dark alley you took to get to the train station. I’d climb the ladder and guard Prince Albert and all the Punks from the night terrors. I’d blow the suckers into a whole other dimension. I hoped to hell Jack would see it. I’m a damned good shot.
Sweet Pea was neither sweet nor small, but rather 6’2”, all sharp edged, physically and temperamentally. She preferred to be called Lieutenant and even wore an old Union uniform. Old in 1890 years. It had patches on the pants, jacket, and hat, and made her look like a scarecrow, with her unkempt black curls poking out at odd angles. She intrigued me.
