Midnight Taxi Tango

by Daniel José Older

  We’re gearing up: long hooded jackets and flak vests, firepower holstered; a belt with various death-bringing goodies strapped to it, including three of my custom-made insecticide grenades; Memo with his ax and chain; Sasha has a monstrous-curved scimitar and a short blade; Bri and I have machetes in each hand. I don’t like how little we know and like even less that we’re relying on this hand-to-hand bullshit, but there’s no other way.

  “We have to assume so,” I say. “But realistically, they’re short-staffed when it comes to nonroach dudes. By my count, Gregorio only had a small handful of Survivors at his disposal after he betrayed Marie. Minus Sasha, minus Blaine. And I don’t think the roach guys can function as lookouts.”

  “Let’s go,” Sasha says. She’s already at the edge of the forest, peering out into the moonlit field. For a woman with her babies in enemy hands, she’s holding up impressively. Sasha’s a warrior though; I see it all over her. She knows where to store up that anguish and fear so it doesn’t get in the way of what needs to be done. I just hope she knows how to let it out when it’s all over.

  We move in silence across the field. The marshy soil squishes beneath our feet. Up ahead, the lighthouse forms a towering shadow against the dark sky, one dimly lit room at the top. We keep a wide berth between us: Memo and Sasha on either side, Bri and me in the middle. Feels too easy, but it always feels like that right up until all hell releases and you hate yourself for ever thinking it was easy. It’s only when we’re about twenty feet from the lighthouse that I remember the tunnels.

  Tunnels mean entrances. Which means—

  “Watch the grou—” I start to say. The crack of a rifle cuts me off. Bri’s head flies back—in the dark I see a chunk of it hurl upward as she falls. Sasha and I drop into the tall grass. The field comes to life around Bri’s fallen body. First it’s just movement, squirming shadows. I brace myself for another swarm. Instead, a man lifts himself out of the earth, then another.

  Then another.

  Five, now six roach men rise, converge on Bri. Memo yells, “No!” and another shot rings out—this one I hear thump into the dirt a few feet from us.

  Memo is a damned fool.

  Bri is dead.

  He swings the chain in a wide circle, clobbering two roach guys, then lops off the head of a third. Two lurch forward at the same time, splattering him with their swarms.

  Ahead of me, the tall grass rustles and a shadow begins to squirm free from the tunnel below. I roll toward it, kneel. Both my machetes come down at the same time. Behind me, Sasha grunts and then Memo starts screaming. It’s not a sound I’ve ever heard him make before, and he’s been shot how many times now? Then his scream becomes a muffled choke, and I know it’s because they’ve entered him. I bring the machetes down again and again, until the thing beneath me is just a muddled pool of flesh stopping up the tunnel entrance.

  The third shot rings out as I’m dropping back into the grass. One of the Blattodeons working on Memo falls backward hissing.

  Then I see Sasha. She appears behind the horde of them; that scimitar flashes in the moonlight, and she starts cutting. As they turn, she slides backward into the night, seeming to disappear, and then shows up on the other side with a sharp upswing, decapitating another. She destroys three, four, five of them before another shot sends them all scattering.

  “No pulse,” Sasha whisper-yells from where Memo fell. Bless her for caring enough to check. And damn it damn it damn it.

  Memo is dead.

  Bri is dead.

  Later, we will mourn. Now we have to survive. And kill these roach motherfuckers.

  We rise at the same time and sprint the remaining fifteen feet to the lighthouse in a wide, ever-changing arc, arriving breathless against the wall. Behind us, the Blattodeons close back in on Memo’s body.

  The lighthouse stretches above us, its peeling plaster facade illuminated in soft moonlight. I unholster my Glock, block out the feeling that a hundred roaches are swarming toward me. If I were the shooter, I’d be peeking over now, seeing if there was an easy shot to take. I can’t make out anything against that night sky though. Any second now, Sasha will see that my gun is out and—

  “Reza!” Sasha hisses.

  Above us, a shadow adjusts; the barrel of a rifle glints in the moonlight.

  It’s all I need.

  My first shot catches the gun itself, my second the shooter. Both land in quick succession a few feet from Sasha. She jumps out of the way, then closes the deal with a swift scimitar chop. “Fuck,” she gasps, pulling her blade out of the woman’s skull. “That was Francine. Fuck. She was a . . . friend.”

  Some of the roach guys have left the fray over Memo and turned toward us.

  “Come on,” I say. “Dr. T said the entrance is on the other side.”

  The woods we came from pulse with the strobe of an approaching ambulance. Above us, a baby cries.

  CYCLE FOUR

  THE MAD ARCHITECT’S LIGHTHOUSE

  La noche era oscura como boca’e lobo;

  testigo, solito, la luz de un candil.

  Total, casi nada: un beso en la sombra . . .

  Dos cuerpos cayeron, y una maldición;

  y allí, comisario, si usted no se asombra,

  yo encontré dos vainas para mi facón.

  The night was dark like the mouth of a wolf;

  a candle’s flame the single witness.

  And so, nothing; a kiss in the shadows . . .

  Two bodies dropped, and just one curse;

  and there, Commissioner, if you can believe it,

  I found two scabbards in which to plunge my blade.

  “A la luz del candil”

  tango, 1927

  Julio Navarrine

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Carlos

  They’re shooting.

  The rifle shots echo in the cool Long Island night.

  They’re shooting, and my babies are there. Sasha’s there. As long as I’ve known I have twins, they’ve been in mortal danger. I haven’t even seen them yet and some disgusting madman is shooting near them. Sasha’s just come back into my life and now this . . .

  I don’t care if the bastards see us coming. I’ll erase them from existence. As soon as the ambulance stops beside the Partymobile, I fly out and break for the clearing. I only stop because Kia jumps out after me and grabs my shoulder.

  “C, hold up!”

  “No.” My voice is cold. Death is all over me: mine. Theirs. I will bring the world down on them.

  “Carlos, listen to me. We gotta do this right, man. You can’t just go all kill kill kill.”

  “I can.” She always reads me. “I will.”

  “No, mothafucka, you won’t. You’ll run twenty feet out into that field and get clipped, and then you’ll be dead and we’ll be short one useful-ass pair of hands. And then those roaches will do what they’ve been trying to do and we will fucking lose. Do you hear me?”

  She’s on her tiptoes, all up in my face. And she’s right. Kia’s always fucking right. Damn telepathic teenager. I exhale a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

  “It’s true, Carlos.” Rohan walks up behind Kia. His gigantic smile is a long-lost memory. Those two bluish handprints on either side of his neck are gonna be there for a while. “We need to do this right.” Rohan will never be the same.

  “Together,” Gio says, walking up with Rigo.

  I nod at them. “Kia, you—”

  “We’ve been through this already, C, and we don’t have time to go through it again. If you leave me behind, I’ll do something stupid like follow you all by myself and get killed and then you’ll feel guilty. Let’s save ourselves an argument we both already know I’m gonna win.”

  I rub my eyes and nod. “Fine, but . . . stay . . . careful.” No words can make sense of a time like this. “And no shooting.
Not till we know where . . .”

  “I know, man,” Rohan says. He drops the gym bag he’d grabbed from his taxi on our way out here. “I brought machetes.”

  A grim smile creases my face. “Let’s do this, then.”

  “I’m staying here,” Victor adds, unnecessarily.

  Another rifle shot breaks the night. “Alright,” I say. My breath slows. The red veil has lifted. I have to remember to thank Kia when this is all over.

  • • •

  Out in the field, shadows move back and forth.

  Blattodeons. I can see from their off-kilter stagger.

  “How you wanna play it?” Gio asks as we step out into the moonlight.

  “There’s no way to approach undercover,” I say. “The edge of the forest is too far away in either direction.”

  “Bum-rush,” Rohan says. “Like we usedta do in the Bad Years.”

  “Roll up on them fast and vicious?” Rigo says. “I am with this plan.”

  “What about the shooter?” Kia asks.

  Rohan snorts. “I’m guessing Reza and them ’bouta handle that.”

  “Either way, it’ll be a tight fray,” I put in. “There won’t be much of a shot to take.”

  “Except they won’t care about taking out a few of their own,” Gio says.

  We’re halfway across the field. Most of the figures are clustered around one spot, moving rhythmically. A few more sprint toward the abandoned lighthouse.

  Rohan squints as he walks, his fingers opening one by one. “Eight . . . ten . . . a dozen. I count fourteen. Carlos, soon as we carve a good chunk outta them, break for the lighthouse and see what’s what. We’ll handle the rest, yes?”

  “Keep Kia safe,” I say.

  I can almost hear Kia roll her eyes. “Keep yourself safe.”

  “We got Kia,” Gio says. “You get yours.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ to it but to do it,” Rohan says.

  We run.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Kia

  There’s this King Impervious line: A bitch’ll bite this breaker / in the fight to die a faker / think ya love her, boy, I’ll make her / bring ya bitch so I can take her.

  Whatever bite this breaker means, the King keeps winning, one way or another. If the words themselves don’t tell you that, her delivery makes it abundantly clear. She spits it like she’s actually on fire, like she’s got a sword that’s on fire and she’s slashing through all the haters one by mothafuckin’ one. Like, all the fools that told her how she would never be shit are just exploding in flames around her and she’s laughing through the smoke rising off their smoldering corpses.

  Something like that.

  Anyway, that’s what keeps rolling through my head as we charge through this field toward the Blattodeon horde. I’ll be honest with you: after the past couple days of holy terror and emotional mindfucks, running feels amazing, even if it’s into certain death. The momentum of these four badasses running beside me carries all the way up to the edge of the horde. Then they must hear us coming. They turn, and between their shuffling feet I see two bodies torn to pieces.

  I’ve never seen a human being reduced to shredded hunks of meat like that. I slow my steps, then stop. Gio and Rigo fly past me, both spinning up and smashing blades first into the crowd like they’ve been waiting all their lives for this moment. I see their machetes flash in the moonlight as bodies fall all around them and swarms of roaches burst into the night air.

  Rohan and Carlos spring ahead to the Blattodeons approaching the lighthouse. They come up quiet behind them—this group doesn’t even have a chance to turn around before those blades begin cutting them down one by one. Within seconds, five have fallen and the rest scatter to either side, regrouping for a counterattack.

  One of them ends up away from the rest. He spins a slow, uneven circle, arms flailing.

  I realize suddenly I’m out of breath. “A bitch’ll bite . . . this breaker,” I say between pants. “In the fight to die a faker.” The Blattodeon’s gaze settles on me. My hands wrap around the handle of this machete. He snarls. The short sword Carlos gave me is hanging from my waist. “Think you love her . . . boy, I’ll make her.” He starts walking toward me. “Bring ya bitch so I can take her.” I’m a machine of death. I’m Reza. I’m Carlos. Gio.

  I can’t breathe.

  “A bitch’ll bite this breaker.” He’s gonna stop like five feet away and spray those roaches. And I’ll turn like Gio does. Wrap this jacket around me and the roaches’ll scatter and then I’ll smash him. But I don’t even want to feel their fucking feet against my back, don’t want those one or two errant ones to crawl through my clothes and poison me with their tiny horrible touch. No.

  No!

  I charge. He’s in front of me before I thought he’d be, just there, suddenly, and I can make out the individual roaches squirming over his face as he leans back and I draw my blade across my shoulders with both hands. I swing it upward over his face without stopping, using the momentum of my own running body as leverage. Half his head flies into the air in a swarm of bugs. I keep running. His body thumps to the ground behind me.

  It’s done.

  I still can’t breathe, but it’s done. I try not to think about how that thing was once a person, had a family. The sounds of grunting and tearing flesh fill the world.

  And then another one lopes toward me. He’s already leaning back. I don’t have time to even swing, so I barrel into him full force and we both topple. They’re on me—I can feel the horrible gentle brush of wing and antenna against my skin—but it doesn’t matter. The whole world becomes the blur of thrashing arms and expressionless face in front of me. I catch a hand across the face but there isn’t much force behind it, slap both his arms away with my left hand, and bring down the blade with my right. It’s not the best hit ever. I’m off balance and distracted by the hundreds of tiny legs, but the weapon finds its mark in the center of his face and then I put my shoulders into it and drive the point home, through flesh and bone and into whatever dusty mush is left of his brain. I throw myself away from his body and roll over a few times in the grass to get the remaining roaches off me.

  There isn’t time to freak out, even though it’s all my body wants to do. When I rise, Gio is a few feet away spinning up from the ground, a tornado of feet and blades, and a roach man, now just a shriveled core, falls, squirting dark blood, beneath his onslaught.

  Out beyond the fighting, something flickers. It’s farther off in the field: a silvery shroud plodding along through the darkness, tall but drooping over. I step toward it, squinting.

  The figure takes long strides through the field. It’s heading for the lighthouse. I walk past Gio as he brings his machete down again and again on the writhing form beneath him. The far tree line, the sky, the lighthouse, the sounds of battle: they all swirl into an irrelevant haze around this single, trudging spirit.

  I run. The wind catches my fro, kisses my face. My hand finds the blade handle in my belt. A few steps from the figure, I slow my roll, catch my breath. And then I realize who it is.

  “Garrick! Tartus!”

  But what is Tartus doing all the way out here? I fall into step behind him, blade ready. The fighting rages on to my left, yells and steel slashing flesh as shadows converge and collapse. I pray my friends are okay.

  “Garrick! Tartus!”

  We’re not lined up with the lighthouse after all. If we stay on this line, Tartus’s trajectory will bring us a few feet wide of the tower. He can’t be up to any good, can he? Considering how desperate and fucked up everything is, I should probably just cut him down right now and have it done with. He either doesn’t notice me or doesn’t care I’m here. It would be easy: one slice through the back, just like Carlos taught me. You trying to really kill a ghost for good, C said, you stab or slice at the head or torso. One or two good cuts and that’
s it; the deal is done.

  “Garrick! Tartus!”

  In theory.

  But C also fucked up his whole entire half-life by cutting down Trevor too quick. Never rush to the kill, he also said, and I could see the memories flood through his eyes. Find out what’s going on. But stay ready. Shit gets hairy fast with the dead.

  So I keep my steady pace behind Tartus as he slouches along, past the lighthouse he built. He stops suddenly, not far from it. His beady ghost eyes dance admiringly along the tarnished structure. “Yes, ah yes, but no, not yet, but soon, yes, soon and yes, all is so, just so, yes.”

  Is he talking to me?

  “Garrick! Tartus!”

  I wait. Sweat slides down my back and chills me in the cool night air.

  “Soon . . . soon . . . soooooon . . . but see the angles, rivets, slipstreams of divinity that collide upon this structure, eh? The best structures are collisions, of course, of course. The best structures are collisions. And here, oh child, we collide. We collide and continue, yes, but only because one such as I made a structure such as this, oh, one with foresight, eh, one who Garrick! Tartus! Saw what would be, was called mad for it, mad . . .”

  A weepy hiccup interrupts his ramble. Tears stream down his shimmering face.

  “But aren’t we all? Mad or called such when the time is not ready for the gifts we have brought, yes. Yes and yes, and here we are alas, child, amid the collision. They said madman, but here we are and soon, soooon comes the time as the tide turns, the sea brings salt, the salt brings dust, makes decay the crumbling bay collapses with a sigh. It is a relief, to drown, until the wind takes up the tide again and we begin . . . again . . . and collide.”

  Mad architect and cheesy coffee shop slam poet. I’m intrigued.

  “Garrick! Tartus!” he yells suddenly. “It’s come! Incomplete by half but still . . . whole, always whole. The alignment shall still be true, if lessened. It’s come!”

  I follow Tartus’s gaze to the sky, out above the trees. A dark splotch stains a moonlit cloud. It’s moving toward us.