Midnight Taxi Tango

by Daniel José Older

  The Master Hive.

  Tartus beelines for the lighthouse.

  Blade out, I follow.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Reza

  A spiral staircase leads up to an open-air platform that winds around the center of the lighthouse. A low cement wall and then thick glass encase the central area, bulletproof if I had to guess. A closed door on either side. No giant bulb glares out to the ocean, just a dim neon in the ceiling, and that’s probably all there’s ever been. Tartus built this place with his own twisted intentions in mind—the lighthouse motif is a ruse.

  I stay low. Signal at Sasha not to move.

  Gregorio will be standing in the center. He’ll be in a frenzy—his gunner is dead, last line of defense probably, and he knows we’re coming. Heavily armed, a gun and a blade at the very least. The babies will be at his feet, hopefully in a bassinet of some kind.

  He’s out of his territory, caught up in someone else’s game now, and he knows the full wrath of Sasha and Carlos is headed his way.

  He doesn’t know about mine though.

  I peek up just enough to see the top of Gregorio’s head, his wild brown hair and sweaty brow. I dip back down. Sasha’s been composing herself again. She fixes a steady glare on me, fighting, I know, the need to run up there and bring down death in a fury. Whatever deep-breathing shit she’s doing to keep under control, I’m grateful. This is gonna be touch and go straight through.

  “The far side,” I whisper. “Stay low. There’s a door over there. I’ll come in from the end. You’ll know when to move.”

  Above us, one of the twins gurgles and then cries. Sasha cringes, her eyes watery. She pushes it away. Nods.

  I want to hug her. It’s not a feeling I’m used to. I make a mental note to do that when this is over. Blot out the dangling “if” phrase that wants to tack itself on. We hold eye contact for a few seconds, finding, I hope, mutual stabilization. Then she slides past me and crawls onto the platform.

  I let a few more seconds pass for Sasha to get in position, then rise from the stairwell, machete in one hand, Glock in the other.

  Gregorio sees me and fires five quick pistol shots that pockmark an unruly constellation across the glass. Both babies are screaming now; I glimpse their tiny brown faces, mouths wide-open, eyes squeezed shut. They’re huddled together in a little wicker basket on the floor. Gregorio yells, charges the door as I open it. My machete smashes the gun from his hand. He’s already swinging the blade in a wide arc at me from the other side, and all I can do is throw myself backward, out of his reach. The blade clinks off the doorway, and then Gregorio looks past me, up at the sky in a frenzy, and yells, “They come!” He pulls back into the room, slamming the door with a scowl, and turns. The thick glass muffles his howled curses.

  The twins are gone.

  Gregorio lurches toward the far door—I imagine Sasha has huddled back out of sight with the babies. I’m about to enter and finish the job while he’s distracted—but he doesn’t make it; something catches his eye and he spins back, sweat flying around him, and stands in the center of the glass enclosure.

  Finally, I look up. A trembling horde blots out the whole sky: the Master Hive. They swarm toward the top of the lighthouse, whistling and clicking in the night wind. They’re bigger than the other ones, their flight an ungainly flutter. Gregorio looks up as the Hive bursts downward out of an opening in the ceiling like a squirming reverse oil fissure from the sky.

  They don’t flutter; they dive-bomb, directly into Gregorio’s open mouth.

  It only takes a few seconds. By the time I get a grip on myself and lunge at the door, Glock out, the bugs are all gone and Gregorio is . . . changed. His arms extend past the jacket sleeves, end in too-long fingers. His mouth hangs open, a string of brown drool trailing out. His eyes have glazed over with a yellowy film.

  I pull open the door and squeeze off four shots, clipping him twice. He’s faster now, each movement sharp and guided by that precise, collective intent. He dips and darts in a wild circle, stopping suddenly, then jumping into the air. Thick blood seeps from his shoulder and one thigh, but the wounds don’t seem to register.

  I’m trying to track his erratic movements for another shot when he suddenly swings the far door open, grabs something off the ground, and rushes around the catwalk toward me with a snarl.

  I have just enough time to holster the Glock and raise my machete with both hands to meet the scimitar strike. Steel glances off steel and my arms feel like Jell-O from the reverberations. I’m still recovering, backstepping, but he keeps swinging, mouth open, eyes wide. I parry, parry, and then I’m behind the door and he shoves it forward with a kick, smashing it against me, and I’m on my ass and he’s howling, clamoring down into the darkness of the lighthouse, gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Carlos

  I’m barreling up the spiral stairwell full throttle when Gregorio emerges. He swings out of the shadows and clatters onto the landing a few steps above me. Moonlight from a dusty window throws a trembling illumination over his contorted face. He moves with that same lopsided, impossible agility Jeremy did, lunges at me in quick, jerky shocks with a huge curved blade.

  I parry his first swing, and the next rains down half a second later.

  “Traitor,” Gregorio gasps, his voice a raspy, buzzing whisper like Jeremy’s was. “Traitor to the Survivors, traitor to yourself.”

  I have no time for poetry. I sweep away another slash and then advance, clipping Gregorio in the shoulder as he backwalks up the stairs.

  He howls, lurches forward.

  Someone is behind me.

  I can’t take my eyes off Gregorio’s onslaught, but that ghostly presence slides like an icicle along my spine.

  “Traitor,” Gregorio yells over the clanging steel.

  He’s getting faster in his fury. I can barely keep up.

  “Garrick!” a voice yells from down the stairwell. “Tartus!”

  I almost roll my eyes. This babbling, self-centered fool . . . still in the game?

  “Oh, findling I see, findling out the field has altered quite, I see, I see,” Tartus mutters, his voice growing gradually louder as he approaches. I still can’t look back, because Gregorio keeps swinging at my face, and his long-ass arms give him that extra-lethal reach. “The Master Hive has selected another, which means I too must select another, and then one day soon the Trinity will be complete, the Trinity Blatodeo will be complete! Ah, fortune smiles upon he who makes decisions in the mire, eh. It is simple really. What appears to be chaos is truly providence. The swarm knows, always, and their moves are true. I must select another, and lo, another lays himself before my path.”

  Enough playing. My babies are upstairs. Sasha is upstairs. I put some extra oomph into my next block, sweeping Gregorio’s scimitar far to the side, and then slice into his chest before he can bring it back. He snarls, backsteps again, and I fake left and then stab for his heart. He parries just in time, but my blade still catches him in the gut. He looks up at me with obscenely wide eyes, mouth hanging open further.

  I wind up for the kill shot while he’s still stunned. Icy fingers wrap around my throat. A hand closes around my blade arm; I’m yanked backward.

  “See,” Tartus’s voice whispers in my ear, his frigid breath against my neck. “You’ll do nicely.”

  In front of me, Gregorio raises his scimitar and smiles.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Kia

  Oh, this mothafucka.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Reza

  I stumble down the stairwell, loosening the grenade on my shoulder sash as I go. I steady myself on the handrail and glance over. Kia hacks and slashes the air just behind Carlos’s back, and for a second I think she’s attacking him. But no, this is some ghost shit happening; I see her blade catch in the air and slow as it carves through the darknes
s. Something is on Carlos. Or it was. Whatever had been strangling him from the back is in tatters now; Kia unleashed a thorough murking on it. Carlos, suddenly freed, propels forward blade-first into Gregorio. Gregorio’s raised scimitar flies out of his hand, clatters down the stairs.

  “Carlos,” I yell. “Up here.” He puts his shoulder into it and charges up the stairs, pushing Gregorio on the blade ahead of him. I take three steps back until I’m on the walkway again, motion Sasha to stay down with the kids, and throw open the door to the center room.

  Gregorio emerges seconds later, those long arms flailing, Carlos’s blade sticking out of his back. “In here,” I yell as Carlos passes. “And then get back.” He pushes one last time, putting Gregorio right in the doorway, then pulls his blade free. I step in front of Gregorio, shove the grenade into his mouth, and pull the pin. A swift kick throws him backward into the room. Then I slam the door and throw myself to the ground.

  He yells, a muffled howl cut short by the sharp crack of the stun grenade, then a splatter. Thick yellow smoke congeals in the room. Entrails encrusted with crumpled roach corpses slide down the inside of the glass.

  Kia runs up the stairs and freezes. “What the entire fucking fuck though?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Carlos

  My babies.

  They are tiny and wrinkly and their fingers are even tinier and their tiny faces have tiny creases. Their little squinty eyes squeeze shut; their little chins double up as they scream.

  They are perfect.

  And most of all, they are alive.

  “You’re bleeding,” Sasha says. She’s huddled against the wall, cradling one howling ball of perfection in each arm. A slab of intestine slides slowly down the other side of the glass above her head. Thick yellow smoke still clouds the inner room.

  “Can I . . . ? Can I hold them?”

  “Carlos, you’re bleeding.”

  “I’m fine. Can I hold them?”

  “Sit.”

  I do. Put my back to all that ichor and hell and slide down beside this woman I’ve missed and barely know and, somehow, still love. She looks over at me, eyes red from crying, and I see something else there. There’s a sorrow beyond all of this.

  “Are you okay?”

  She shakes her head. “But this isn’t the time for all that. Here.” One, then the other. They’re warm. Their tiny hearts beat through their tiny bodies, telegraph itty-bitty messages into my arms, my own heart. Life is so fucking fragile. Death lurks all around us. For as long as I’ve had a memory, life has been a tenuous, trembling thread that I’m only barely attached to. I had a whole life once. Memories, a childhood. Parents. Kids maybe. Maybe I was in love. Maybe heartbroken. Someone wiped that all away. I look down at the gurgling bundles. How could anyone hurt these tiny things?

  “Carlos?”

  I don’t realize I’m crying till I look up at her and tears slip down my cheeks and off my chin. Sasha actually smiles. It’s the saddest smile in the universe, but I’ll take it.

  “C?” It’s Kia, sounding way more tentative than usual. “I hate to interrupt, you know . . . but there’s ghosts out there.”

  I don’t care.

  It’s the damnedest feeling, after all that caring. Since I saw that photo on Caitlin’s computer the other night, I’ve done nothing but care. My entire being became a projectile hurtling toward whatever I could do to keep them safe. And now it’s over, these two bundles nestle in my arms—their crying has turned to satisfied little lip smacks—and this woman sits beside me and—

  “I think that’s Riley and Sylvia. And there’s the rest of Squad 9. The roach guys are all splattered. There’s Gio and Rohan. There’s Rigo; he’s limping though. They’re alive.”

  Alright, I care about that. Beyond that though? I just want this . . . I want this moment right here. One of the babies opens a single tiny eye and looks up at me.

  I’m crying again.

  “Carlos . . .”

  “Kia, I need a . . .”

  “There some other ghosts at the edge of the woods. They’re tall as fuck. What’s going on?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Kia

  Carlos shoots me the illest shut-the-fuck-up face, but I don’t take it personal. He passes the babies back to Sasha, and I help him stand. That shoulder wound doesn’t look too bad, but he should probably get it disinfected. Who knows what kinda fuckdemon cooties were on that scimitar? He looks out on the dark field. I follow his eyes to the moonlit killing ground and then the towering shrouds out at the edge of the trees.

  “Shit,” Carlos says. He shares a look with Sasha and then runs downstairs.

  “I’m not gonna bother asking if you’re okay,” I tell Sasha, “cuz that would be ridiculous. But do you need anything?”

  She shakes her head and scowls a smile. “Thanks. I will be okay though. Go find out what’s going on, Kia. Don’t worry about us.”

  Reza’s in the lighthouse room with a gas mask on. I walk in, my sleeve over my mouth and nose, as she brings her boot down on another crumpled roach. “Just tidying up,” she says. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  “Alright,” I say. I head down the winding stairwell, sidestepping blood splatter, and out into the field.

  • • •

  “And then they showed up,” Riley says as I walk up. Beside him, Sylvia Bell casts anxious looks back at the tall, glowing shadows.

  “The fuck are they?” Carlos asks.

  Riley scowls. “Throng haints.”

  “The fuck’s a—”

  “Many spirits bound together against their will into one angry, awful core,” Sylvia says.

  “I don’t like them,” Carlos declares. “Why are they here?”

  “Last I heard,” Riley says, “it was a rumor whispered along back channels at Council HQ. That was a few months ago. Didn’t take it seriously. Some kinda pilot program out on an island somewhere in New York Harbor. Enforce the enforcers or some shit. They mentioned them at the academy once, but it was like a warning: look out for throng haints. Don’t engage with ’em, just run. That’s about it.”

  “Until now,” Carlos says. “Enforce the enforcers as in some internal affairs type thing?”

  Around us, Gio, Rigo, and Rohan pull corpses toward the underground tunnels. Two bodies, one gigantic, the other small, lie off to the side, covered by jackets.

  Riley makes a face. “Something like that.”

  Sylvia turns to Riley. “We’re out.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not doing this. I’m not doing another investigation for the Council. Not putting Squad 9 through it. Nope. Too many unanswered questions, too much bullshit. They’re gonna wanna know why we engaged in an unlawful assault, and all we wanna know is why they are protecting a monster like Caitlin Fern. I’m not doing it.”

  Riley raises his eyebrows and looks like he’s about to retort, but instead he just sighs. “I get it.”

  “We have the ghostlings subdued and safe and we’re taking them with us.” With a flash of her hand, Sylvia has the entirety of Squad 9 in a tight formation around her. “You’re not coming.” It’s a statement, not a question.

  Riley shakes his head, very slightly. “Not . . . yet.” A choked whisper.

  Sylvia nods. “I understand.” She closes the space between them. “Soon though. Don’t let them steal your soul, my friend.”

  She looks at me and Carlos, nods one time, and then she’s gone, lost amid the rush of Squad 9 as they flash across the field, beyond the lighthouse, and disappear into the forest.

  “All I am is soul,” Riley says quietly. No one laughs. And then everyone shudders, because a bone-chilling shriek cuts the quiet night. Even Gio and Rigo look up with worried faces. It sounds like a hundred wolves, auto-tuned by Satan. The shriek gets louder and the throng haints sweep throu
gh us, all icy tendrils and towering shrouds covered in screaming mouths, and then they’re gone, vanished into the woods, hot on the trail of the newly renegade Squad 9.

  No one says anything for a few seconds, we just stand there stupefied. It felt like the passing frozen wind took shards of our souls along with it.

  Footsteps approach from the lighthouse, but I don’t even have it in me to turn and see who it is. “Come on, people,” Reza barks as she stomps past. “We got dead to bury.”

  EPILOGUE

  La vez que quise ser bueno en la cara se me rieron;

  cuando grité una injusticia, la fuerza me hizo callar;

  la esperanza fue mi amante; el desengaño mi amigo . . .

  Toda carta tiene contra y toda contra se da!

  When I tried to do right, they laughed in my face;

  when I raised my voice against injustice, they shut me up;

  hope was my lover; disillusionment my friend . . .

  Every card has an opposite side, and that’s the side we’re dealt.

  “Las Cuarenta”

  tango, 1937

  Francisco Gorrindo

  Carlos

  How’d he take it?” Reza asks. We’re at the diner. A big meal is in my belly, and I’m sipping coffee and staring across the table at Kia like a concerned dad. Which, I guess I am, just not hers.

  Kia shrugs. “Good as any dad would, I guess. Maybe better even. He still mad though.”

  “I would be too,” Reza says. “But I get it. I dropped out of school in the sixth grade, never looked back.”

  “I’m not dropping out,” Kia says. “I’m just taking a break. Doing something that’s right for me for once in my life, instead of trying to please everyone else.”