Mississippi Roll_A Wild Cards Novel

by George R. R. Martin

  “Sonofabitch,” Jack growled, and took off down the gangplank with Timur right behind him. But though Aiman’s stumpy little legs slowed the teenagers, they had a lead on him—thirty feet in space and sixty years in age. By the time he reached the bottom of the gangplank they were maybe fifty feet away. Even as he ran after them, rain splatting in his face and his pounding feet splashing in the parking lot’s growing puddles, he felt his wind failing and they pulled farther and farther ahead. Shit shit shit, he thought, but didn’t have the breath to curse out loud.

  Finally he had to stop, panting hard, hands on knees. The rain hammered his back, ran down his neck, and trickled past his collarbones to his chest. He looked up to see the kids reach the edge of the parking lot, look both ways, cross the street … and vanish into a storm drain.

  Storm drain.

  “Aw, Jesus,” Jack said, and looked up. Low, thick clouds rushed past, their dark bellies dimly illuminated by the city’s sodium lights, and a torrent of rain came pouring down into his face. “Jesus fucking fuck.”

  He was just trying to decide whether to follow them down the drain or go back to the boat for help when Timur passed him, running full-tilt, charging after the kids without question or pause. Then Jack heard heavy, splashing footfalls off to his right: Erzhan, also running for the storm drain. He was younger and fitter than Timur, but Timur had a head start and would reach the drain first. But what would happen after that?

  Looking at Timur’s retreating back, Jack couldn’t help but notice how well-defined his shoulders were, not to mention the firm ass that strained the wet fabric of his trousers. “Jack, you are an idiot,” he said, and ran after him.

  Timur slipped into the storm drain as neatly as a Louisiana gator sliding from the bank into a rushing river. Jack, not far behind him, had a harder time of it, but made it down into the catch basin below the drain inlet without breaking anything.

  The catch basin was big enough for the two men to stand erect, and Jack found Timur peering both ways down the adjacent pipe, clearly trying to determine which way the teenagers had gone. Water cascaded from the inlet behind them to splash in the pool at their feet; it already was running nearly knee high.

  Jack wiped the water from his face, but it was immediately replaced by drops bouncing off the walls. At least it was rainwater, not sewage. “What the fuck were they thinking?” he shouted over the splashing and gurgling. “Storm drain’s no place for civilians.”

  Timur shrugged. “We must find them before Erzhan does. I go this way, you go that way.”

  “No.” Jack stopped Timur with a hand on his shoulder. “Never go alone. Too dangerous.” He pointed down at the water; it was black and completely opaque in the sodium light that filtered down from the street. “There could be a drop-off under that, and you’d never see it before you stepped into it.” He held out a hand. “Hold on. If one of us falls into deep water, the other pulls him out.”

  Timur took Jack’s hand. His palm, though wet, was warm and hard as a bear’s paw. “Fine. Which way?”

  Jack held up a finger for silence, closed his eyes, and listened hard. His hearing wasn’t quite as good as it used to be, but above the white noise of the water’s flow he made out a rhythmic sloshing—with the tempo of short-legged footsteps in deep water—off to the left. He heard high-pitched vocalizations as well, but whether they were the giggles of a lovestruck teenager on an adventure or the panicked cries of one whose feet had been swept out from under her by a swift current he could not say. “This way,” he said, pointing definitively.

  But following the kids proved a much harder task than it had appeared at first. St. Louis, like many U.S. cities, seemed to be in the midst of a big storm sewer project, and the pipes they found themselves traversing were huge, new, only mostly finished, and not very well labeled. The watercourse forked and forked again, and the echoes multiplied; several times Jack discovered after a turn that Tazh’s and Aiman’s sloshing footsteps were receding, not growing closer, and they had to double back to the last intersection. Jack soon realized that he was quite thoroughly lost, and there was no telling where Erzhan might be.

  Even worse, the sounds of the fleeing teenagers were beginning to be overwhelmed by a great rushing noise. Jack, to his concern, knew this sound well. The clouds above were really letting loose now, dumping buckets of rain on the city, and the sewers would soon begin to fill with water.

  A deep rumble of thunder echoed down the tunnel then, as though the storm wanted to confirm Jack’s fears. “Hurry!” he shouted to Timur, pulling the horn-headed joker forward.

  Timur came along willingly, but the fast-running water was now up to the men’s hips, slowing their progress and occasionally knocking one or the other off his feet. But their tightly held hands and Timur’s determined strength made sure neither one was washed away. Jack could only hope that the shorter Tazh and Aiman were coping as well.

  The only good news was that the fresh rainwater barely stank at all, by Jack’s standards; even so, it smelled of compost and dead fish and old motor oil. Timur’s nose wrinkled with distaste, but he said nothing.

  Suddenly a loud and very clear cry of dismay sounded from around a curve in the tunnel, accompanied by panicked splashing. Jack and Timur shot worried looks at each other and sloshed forward as rapidly as they could. The increasing current was now coming from behind them; the challenge was to stay vertical.

  They rounded the corner and saw two heads and six arms thrashing above the water’s churning black surface; the kids’ intermittent, gurgling cries could barely be heard over the water’s rush and splash. Timur and Jack moved as fast as they dared, the strength of their shared grip keeping them upright as they accelerated to nearly a running pace.

  They both stepped off the edge at the same time.

  Jack’s head went under immediately. He managed not to inhale any water, but he was forced to let go of Timur’s hand, thrashing back to the surface with a ragged gasp. The current swirled him around, disorienting him.

  Suddenly a rough, rusty pipe whacked his shoulder, and he grabbed it instinctively, hauling himself up until his head was above the surface. He took two shuddering breaths, shaking his head to clear his nose and ears. Thin stripes of yellow sodium light shone down through grates overhead, vaguely illuminating a large chamber where three main feeder channels joined together. The water stank of gasoline and tar.

  From here he could see Tazh and Aiman, thrashing panicked and helpless as they floated downstream in the chaotic current. They clung together, which Jack wasn’t sure was the best strategy for staying afloat, but with six arms between the two of them they seemed to be keeping both heads above water … for now. They were plainly inexperienced swimmers and tiring rapidly.

  But there was Timur, heading right for them with a powerful, assured breaststroke. Jack could see his mouth move—no doubt shouting something calming and encouraging in Kazakh—but over the thundering current Jack couldn’t hear a thing. The teenagers’ noses were barely above water, eyes wide from terror and heads shuddering with the uncoordinated thrashing of their arms and legs. They reached out with all six arms for their rescuer …

  … who was suddenly dragged below the surface in a flailing, splashing thrash.

  A moment later the reason for his mysterious disappearance became clear as a black, scaly, beaver-like tail rose briefly from the roiling water.

  Erzhan! He must have caught up with them by swimming beneath the surface. Jack held his breath, hoping that Timur could defeat or escape the younger joker. But though Timur’s horn-topped head popped up, gasping, from the churning foam, he didn’t seem to be winning. In fact, the expression in Timur’s brown eyes told Jack he was losing badly.

  Jack clung to the pipe, panicked and uncertain, looking for an opportunity to act—to grab a flailing arm or leg and haul Timur to safety, or to kick Erzhan in the head. But the battling jokers were too far away, the light too poor, the action too chaotic. Or was it just fear that kept him
from acting? Fear that he, too—a weak, skinny, none-too-buoyant old man—would be pulled under, pointlessly raising the evening’s death toll from three to four?

  It was not an unreasonable fear.

  But he had an alternative. It was not one he welcomed, but it was the best one he had.

  He concentrated on his anger—the fierce, burning, unreasoning rage—at Erzhan, at the terrible situation, at all the obstacles and disappointments and prejudice he’d faced in his seventy-nine years. He focused it into the deep, primal force that had shaped his life ever since the wild card virus had infected his body.

  And then he let the gator go.

  Jack struggled to retain his human consciousness, even as his face lengthened and his tail stretched out and his hands and feet warped into scaly, webbed claws. But it was fading quickly, drowned beneath the dark, hot awareness of his giant-alligator alter ego.

  Sewer Jack had come to St. Louis.

  The alligator thrashed in black, stinking water, struggling against imprisoning bonds. Rolling over and over in frustration and rage, he tore free of the fabric and leather that wrapped him, shreds of cloth drifting away in the churning current.

  He was in an enclosed space, all hard surfaces and strange angles; the current pushed him every which way, threatening to drive him into a wall or pillar at any moment. The turbid water was vile, rank with chemicals and gasoline, and nothing lived in it. No, wait … there were other living things here. Two forms struggled nearby, with two others paddling clumsily away beyond them. Food? Perhaps. Their scent was blocked by the foulness of the water.

  With smooth strokes of his webbed feet he thrust himself toward the nearer pair. Food they were, indeed; the scent of fresh, hot blood was rich in the water, and growing richer as the larger of the pair tore at the smaller with fierce claws. Either one would make a satisfying meal. With unerring instinct he drove for the smaller, injured one, great jaws agape …

  … and something intervened, closing his mouth and making him strike between the two with his snout, separating them and pushing them away from each other.

  Angrily he thrashed his head from side to side, as though to shake off some clinging parasite. But again that alien impulse seized him, forcing him to swim beneath the smaller, bleeding one and bear it upward on his back. The bigger one—the dark one with the broad tail—tried to climb aboard as well, its claws biting painfully into his scaly hide. The alligator pitched and twisted in the swirling current, legs beating against the water, fighting to regain control of himself even as he battled his unwanted passenger.

  Then the current drove him into something hard and angular, striking him right between the eyes. He saw flashing lights and bubbles escaped his nostrils. Both food things were thrown from his back into the water, but before he could turn and bite them the smaller one grabbed something above the surface and hauled itself out. Stunned by the blow, he was too slow to seize the other in his jaws before it too got away, propelling itself rapidly through the water with its broad tail.

  Filled with fury, he followed, his whole great body undulating in pursuit. But the thundering, filthy water obscured all his senses, and the swimmer was swift, and the black, scaly creature soon vanished into the turbid darkness.

  He surfaced, sniffing and peering all about, hoping to spot his prey by sight or scent. But it was the prey that spotted him first—a great weight struck just behind his head, thrusting him back beneath the water. His nostrils snapped shut instinctively, but the blow drove the breath from his lungs.

  The alligator thrashed and rolled, trying to shake his adversary off. But though the enemy was much smaller it was frighteningly strong, its legs clamping around his neck like a vise. His own front legs, with their lethal claws, were too short to reach the creature on his back, and though his jaws snapped and his head whipped back and forth his teeth closed on nothing but water.

  Down he dove, water rushing past his sides, but still his adversary clung to his back. He struck the hard, filthy bottom and pushed off with his legs, driving both of them back to the surface—and above it, splashing into the air in a rush of droplets that glimmered for a moment in the fitful light from the streetlights above. Then the combatants crashed together into the water again, waves reflecting back from the walls to batter them as they sank.

  Pain! Claws dug in on either side of his lower jaw, pulling upward with unbelievable force. The alligator fought back, writhing and bucking in the water, but still found his head pulled back and back, exposing his throat and making vertebrae creak in protest. His lungs burned from effort and lack of air.

  The enemy’s grip shifted. Still clinging to his neck with its powerful legs, it got one arm under his jaw, pulling back with all its considerable strength while the other hand’s talons clawed at the soft scales beneath his chin. The alligator’s legs thrashed ineffectually.

  He tasted blood, and the flow of hunger and rage that served him as a mind became tinged with fear.

  Suddenly the enemy let go of his back, and two bodies fell heavily into the water beside him, struggling together in a haze of bubbles. The smaller creature had returned—still bleeding, still weak and awkward in the water, but with the element of surprise it had managed to dislodge the larger one from the alligator’s back.

  The alligator surfaced, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out in a great roar of pain and anger, then breathing in again and diving deep.

  The two creatures still fought each other, the churning water around them now black with blood. Over and over they tumbled, a fog of bubbles obscuring the scene. He could not defeat the larger creature. It was too strong, too fast, too clever. He should swim far away, find easier prey.

  But he could not let it kill the one that had helped him.

  Again he drove himself between them—this time obeying his own instincts rather than the alien presence that had directed him before—battering the combatants apart with his great snout.

  Once the two were separated, it became clear which was which. He snapped at the larger one, feeling flesh tear between his teeth and tasting sweet blood, but it wriggled free and vanished into the murky depths. Fearing another counterattack, the alligator caught the smaller, drifting creature with one forelimb and, with swift strokes of his legs and tail, carried it away downstream.

  For a moment the alligator felt relief at his escape. But the channel was narrowing as the current dragged them along, and again he was slammed against a protruding object. Before he could recover himself, another unexpected blow stunned him, and another.

  In fury and confusion he lashed out at everything, battering his tail and snout against rough unyielding concrete. But the water pushed still harder and faster as the channel grew tighter, beating him against the sides with repeated punishing blows. He snapped at the things that struck him but succeeded only in breaking a tooth on the fast-moving wall.

  He was weakening—he was running out of air. He had not surfaced in too long, and this place was so hard and strange and disorienting. He struggled to the surface, to take a breath, but at the top of the tunnel he found only more hard concrete. Panicked, he flailed his legs and tail, not knowing which direction to swim. He needed air!

  And then, out of nowhere, a warm hand gripped his shoulder. Another rested between his bulging eyes, gently massaging his scales.

  The much smaller body moved against him, its touch calming his panic and its swimming motions guiding him around until his snout faced into the current. Reassured, reoriented, he stroked hard with his legs until the concrete that scraped against his back fell away, leaving only blessed air. He drew in a deep, comforting breath, as the other’s hand continued to soothe his scaly brow.

  This was something new in the alligator’s experience. In a long, long life of rage, hunger, and fear he had never before felt such an emotion. It was strange, and frightening, and yet also somehow comforting.

  He closed his eyes and let himself relax into it.

  Jack awoke with a gasp as T
imur surfaced. The turban-horned joker was swimming on his back like an otter, holding Jack to his warm tummy with one arm, paddling with the other arm and his sturdy legs. “I have you, friend,” he murmured in Jack’s ear. “You are safe now.” His voice rumbled low against Jack’s shoulder blades.

  Jack realized he was naked.

  He didn’t care.

  The current seemed to be slowing. With strong, smooth strokes Timur brought them to a ledge, then helped Jack to drag himself from the water up onto it. He lay there on his stomach, retching foul water, shivering from cold and exhaustion. He was battered and bleeding and every muscle ached.

  “Erzhan?” he choked out. Timur shrugged. “The kids?”

  “There.” He pointed, and Jack saw them clinging to a pipe on another ledge, some thirty feet distant across a roaring current. They looked like a pair of miserable drowned rats, but they were in no danger.

  But then came a crashing splash and a roar of rage, and a black scaly figure burst from the water onto the other ledge.

  Erzhan was bleeding from multiple gashes on his back and side, and his broad beaver-like tail dragged as he crawled across the ledge toward his daughter and her lover. But he was still moving, and as Jack contemplated the churning waters between them he realized that he lacked the strength even to swim that distance, never mind to fight the younger joker on the other side of it. Timur released Jack’s shoulders, dragged himself to the water’s edge … and collapsed there, too exhausted to move any farther, staring across the current with hopeless despair.

  Erzhan reached the gasping lovers and levered himself upright, pushing Tazhibai aside to land in a heap like a discarded blanket against the wall. The water that ran from Erzhan’s face, Jack saw, was more than just storm runoff … his expression left no doubt of the anguish he felt. But though it might be more in sorrow than in anger, still he gripped his daughter’s throat and began to squeeze.