High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel

by George R. R. Martin

  The portal to Talas blinked shut. And just like that, the rage and madness left her. She could see and think clearly again. Apparently so could her family, because now the barn echoed with the horrified screaming of the confused, horrified, viciously wounded Steunenberg clan.

  What the …

  How did …

  Jesus fucking Christ …

  They’d turned into a lunatic psycho-cannibal flashmob just like the one she witnessed on the streets outside the casino. In fact she’d tried to—

  Oh, holy fuck. She had actually intended to pull out Brent’s intestines and use them to “cure” him of his evil. She’d actually believed that made sense, understood it would work, knew it was the right thing to do.

  It hurt, the dry heaving. Her stomach gave up nothing but a few drops of bile. Her throat stung, burned raw by acid and shame and fuckfuckfuckingshitwhatthehellwasthat. The others were emptying their stomachs, too.

  Screw Talas. She was never, EVER going back. It was a fucking lunatic asylum hellhole, and she wanted no part of it. Somebody must have decided to use it as a testing ground for chemical warfare or something. To see what happened when you doused an entire city with something that turned people into psychopaths. Yeah. That was probably it. Well, to hell with the second safe. They’d taken as much as they could from Baba Yaga, so Mollie had no absolutely no reason whatsoever to return. Good.

  Except: the chair.

  The lone Louis XIV chair standing incongruously among a dozen other pieces of furniture, no two of the same style. Lost and abandoned in a city full of psychotic madmen. They’d break into Baba Yaga’s quarters eventually. Would they smash to flinders everything they found in the insane scramble to destroy one another as fiendishly as possible?

  She couldn’t leave it vulnerable like that. It was already going to be hard to face herself in the mirror every day in the aftermath of whatever had come over her and her siblings. But if she left Ffodor there, inside that horrifying maelstrom of sickness and madness …

  Mollie reopened the portal to Talas.

  Writhing on the floor, her father cried, “Mollie, no!”

  Mollie leapt back into Baba Yaga’s quarters. Somebody was just outside, shouting in Russian and kicking the door to the apartment. The locks looked ready to fail. The door frame had cracks in it.

  The chair was heavy, but she could lug it. She couldn’t bear to damage it by dropping it through a hole to slam into the barn floor like the slot machines, so instead she pushed it through an opening in space between Kazakhstan and Idaho, then closed—come ON, close you son of a bitch—the doorways again. It took a few seconds, but by the time she broke the connection to Talas, Troy was already hefting the crowbar again and leering through his unrecognizable toothless ground-hamburger face. He dropped the crowbar and started keening again. But it wasn’t mindless screaming anymore. The wounded Steunenbergs raised their voices in a chorus of despair.

  The Louis XIV chair couldn’t have been more out of place amid the dirt, hay, and cow shit of the family barn. But Mollie dragged it into the corner of the cleanest stall, curled up in it, and cried herself asleep.

  There were military police and barricades at the entrance to the Shymkent International Airport. Franny, trapped in a line of cars, watched as car after car came to a stop, had a conversation, executed a U-turn, and left. While he was waiting a military jet came screaming in overhead heading for a landing.

  Eventually it was their turn. A guard leaned in the window and peered at Franny and at Baba Yaga. Franny stiffened until his muscles felt like they were going to crack. The man said something, and Franny shook his head.

  “English?” he said hopefully. The guard shook his head.

  He repeated what he had said before in more emphatic tones and hand gestures that seemed to indicate no entrance.

  There was the sound of a car door slamming. A woman walked up, mid-forties, very chic, spoke to the guard and then turned to Franny.

  “I heard you say you were English.” She spoke English with a pronounced Italian accent.

  “Uh … American actually, but I don’t speak the lingo here.”

  “The airport has been taken by the military. All commercial flights have left or they are grounded. They are saying to check back tomorrow.”

  “All commercial flights. Are there private planes? Are they flying? Could you ask for me? My grandmother is really sick. We came here so she could show me home and she got blood poisoning. We need to get back to Manhattan—” Franny clamped his jaw shut to stop the nervous, exhausted babble.

  “I will ask. Poor lady. She looks very bad.”

  There was more conversation. In the line behind them someone began blowing his horn. The woman turned back to him. “There are a few private planes still here, but he says it’s not permitted to enter the airport grounds. I am sorry.”

  “Well, thanks for your help.” She returned to her car. Franny executed the U-turn and drove away. He then set out driving around the perimeter of the airport. Somewhere there was going to be another gate for deliveries. And perhaps a persuadable/bribable guard.

  The Angel had never been to Brighton Beach before. It had an aura of middle-class respectability about it, but the Angel knew that that was a bit of a lie. Still, it was largely quiet and homey-looking, especially the old but well-tended apartment building where Captain Mendelberg had a first-floor, two-bedroom apartment.

  Miraculously, there was a parking space available right across the street from it, where Lonnegan expertly maneuvered her car. They got out and sauntered across the street, and pushed the doorbell once and nearly instantaneously an old and pleasantly plump woman in a long flowered dress, sensible shoes, thick stockings of some artificial material that wasn’t nylon, and a babushka opened the door.

  “Yes?” she asked pleasantly, with a pleasant smile.

  Lonnegan showed her her badge.

  “Is Chavvah Mendelberg in?” Lonnegan asked. “We work with her, but she didn’t show up this morning and we haven’t been able to get in touch with her. We’re concerned.”

  The sight of Lonnegan’s badge, the Angel thought, had caused the expression on the apple-cheeked old lady to become withdrawn, ever so slightly.

  “Why, Chavveh hasn’t lived here for months.”

  Joan looked at her blankly. “For months?”

  “Why, yes.”

  Joan looked at the Angel, frowning, then turned back to the old lady. “You’re sure?”

  Her eyes suddenly turned hard. “I’m the landlady, ain’t I?”

  Before she could agree, the door closed suddenly, loudly, in her face.

  They looked at each other again.

  “What now?” the Angel asked.

  “Well,” Joan said thoughtfully, “there’s always Uncle Ivan.”

  The day had gone entirely to hell after the morning conference with Jayewardene. Klaus had left the office before she could talk to him, not returning until an hour ago and not answering the text she’d sent him; she wasn’t sure where he’d gone or why, and she’d been too busy to find out. Ink had been passing reports to Barbara all morning, and all of them were depressing. Accompanied by Ink, she went into the afternoon staff briefing feeling harried and stressed.

  This should have been Lohengrin’s meeting, but he’d finally sent a text message that she should run the briefing, that he’d be there but hadn’t been able to prepare. That told her more than any words about Lohengrin’s attitude.

  They all looked up at her as she entered the room. She tried to smile at Klaus, but his face was frozen with an expression she couldn’t quite decipher. Michelle—Bubbles—wasn’t present but several minor aces were: Aero, the Spanish air-manipulating ace; Doktor Omweer, the first significant ace from the Netherlands; Wilma Mankiller, the Canadian strongwoman; Snow Blind, another Canadian ace with the ability to temporarily blind people; along with two of the aces who had been to Peru with them—Brave Hawk and Tinker. Barbara sat at the head of the table next t
o Klaus; Ink took the chair on the other side of her, an iPad sitting in front of her to call up reports, photos, and videos as Barbara needed. “Secretary-General Jayewardene wanted to be here but he’s meeting right now with Representative Temir Bondarenko of Kazakhstan at the UN. I hope he’ll have news for us later.”

  “What is going on there?” Tinker asked, his muscular arms flexing as he shifted in his seat. Barbara shook her head.

  “We’re still not certain.” She didn’t dare glance over to Klaus. “Hopefully Mr. Bondarenko has better information he can relay to us. Right now, it’s apparent we have a crisis there that seems to be getting increasingly worse and widespread every few hours, but exactly what’s causing it…” She shrugged. “And there’s more critical news that I’ve just received in the last few hours.” Ink had told her that Klaus hadn’t yet been given the report; she heard his chair turn to look at her. “I hate having to relay this news, which I know is going to pain many of you here, myself not least of all. General Ramos has been assassinated in Peru, apparently poisoned. The New Shining Path, and especially Curare, are suspected.”

  The flat screen on the wall erupted with photographs: General Ramos, Curare, Cocomama, then a sequence of pictures and videos of street fighting between rock-throwing mobs and armed police. “There have been incidents in Lima, in Iquitos, in Trujillo,” Barbara continued as the aces watched the screens. “At Machu Picchu, a group of tourists was assaulted and robbed by a suspected New Shining Path group; some of the injuries were severe.” Barbara couldn’t hold back the sigh that escaped her. “A bare two days after having signed a peace accord, and it looks like everything we accomplished there is already falling apart. We may end up having to go back. The Secretary-General’s office has already had overtures from President Fujimori’s office.”

  Klaus’s fist came down hard on the table, startling Barbara. “Paper doesn’t solve anything,” he muttered. “Signatures and empty words. That’s all they are.”

  Everyone stared at him. Klaus slumped back in his seat, shaking his head but saying nothing more. He waved a hand toward Barbara, who took a deep breath, glancing past Klaus to the window to where the East River glistened in sunlight with the tourist boats plowing its brown water, as if nothing at all was happening out in the world. “On yet another front, I’ve talked to the various embassies in East Timor, and with President Ramos-Horta. They all seem to feel that things are calmer there today, and the Secretary-General agrees with me that for right now, sending one of our teams in would be premature. Talas is where our attention needs to be for the moment.”

  “Then what about sending in an advance team to scout things out and report back directly to the Secretary-General, Lohengrin, and you?” Doktor Omweer asked, his words touched with a strong Dutch accent.

  “Are you volunteering, Doktor?” Barbara asked, and the man’s eyes widened.

  “I? If that is your wish, I certainly would do so. After all, there was a reason I was chosen to control the power of lightning. No one else could—”

  “Yes,” Barbara interrupted before the man could go on—as they all knew he would. She heard a quiet snort of laughter from Ink, who openly referred to the ace as “Herr Doktor Earworm” for his tendency to ramble on and on about himself. “At this point no decisions have been made, but an advance team is something that the Secretary-General and I have already kicked around.” Klaus glanced sharply at her with that. “If we decide to go that way, I’ll certainly remember your offer. But right now … Let’s look at the information we do have, sketchy as it may be.”

  Barbara nodded to Ink. The window shades closed, hiding the view of the East River, the room lights dimmed, and grainy and dark videos began to play on the screens around the room. Dozens of people—men, women, children—ran screaming across a wide boulevard from what looked like a cloud of roiling darkness that pursued them; those who fell in the rush were simply trampled. In the light of a streetlamp in the middle of a square, a crowd appeared to have set upon itself, with people striking each other chaotically. A joker, wearing only the remnants of torn and bloodied clothing, ran clumsily toward the camera, her left side visibly larger and more muscular than her right; in her left arm, she brandished what looked to be someone’s lower leg. She stopped a few feet from the lens and took a bite from the leg’s calf, glaring at the camera in freeze-frame.

  “We’ll start with this,” Barbara began.

  I have to be dreaming, Marcus told himself, pleaded with himself. Please just be a dream. That’s all. The longest, most fucked-up nightmare the world has ever known. Please, let me wake up.

  The one good thing about nightmares, he’d always thought, was that when they got bad enough and presented horrors too enormous to face, he’d wake up. The unthinkable—being unthinkable—would drive him out of the subconscious and back to reality. He’d find himself gasping, tangled in sweat-stained sheets, eyes casting about the dark corners of his room, and relief would wash over him like a narcotic. God how he wished that would happen now.

  It didn’t, and the faces of the trapped ones still haunted Marcus when Olena ran through the casino lobby. She raced for the door, and was nearly through it before Marcus called to her and slid out of the shadows. She spun, her face white-pale even in the murky light. She looked terrified. She stepped back from him, stumbling over debris on the floor. “No!” she yelled. “No!”

  “Olena,” he pleaded, “it’s just me. It’s Marcus.” He nearly said that he wasn’t a monster, but considering the things he had thought, and the moments he’d forgotten her, and the fear behind it that he was only a stray thought or two from doing vile, vile things … He just said, hoping it was true, “It’s me. It’s me that loves you.”

  To his relief, her face flashed with recognition. She ran toward him, smashed into his chest, and squeezed him. Nothing had ever felt better. But it was over in a heartbeat. She fell back, her face going hard. She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the door. “We have to go.”

  “Do they have the stuff your dad wanted?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “But…” Marcus peered back into the casino, looking for signs of the others. “What about your dad?”

  Olena breathed a moment, clearly controlling her frustration with him. “There was something in there. A thing that … that … that just shouldn’t be. A mouth.”

  “A mouth? Olena tell me!”

  She looked annoyed, gritted her teeth, but she spoke in a fast whisper. “We got to Baba Yaga’s offices quickly. It was dark and our flashlights didn’t work and there was no electricity. But we used lighters and found the room. Andrii made a fire in a trash bucket and we went to work. I thought we were really going to get away with it. And then something blew out the fire. Just like that it was gone. Something began moving around us, making a sound like…” She opened her mouth and, hissing out a long breath, trilled her tongue in a staccato rhythm. “It was language, but not of this world. It was the tongue of Lucifer. That’s what it was. We could see nothing. We couldn’t see it at all, but the way it talked and laughed … We knew it could see us fine. It kept moving. And then, just before it struck, its body lit up. A great, awful mouth. Rows of teeth. Just a mouth and two legs. The light lasted just long enough for its jaws to close on Andrii’s head. Then it went dark. Darker than before. That’s when I ran. The others … I don’t know. There. You know. Let’s go now.”

  He didn’t argue with her, and he decided not to tell her about the things he’d seen. “You still have your gun?”

  It was a stupid question. She had it out and held in a two-handed grip. She answered, “What does it look like?”

  Not only did she have it, she used it. As they ran, hoping they were moving toward the edge of the city, they passed one monstrosity after another. Some ignored them; others came for them. Olena clipped the knee of a girl with screaming mouths on both her cheeks. It didn’t stop her screaming, but she could only scrabble after them, dragging herself with thin arms
. After that, Olena shot a man through the heart when he came at them. Literally, through the heart. The organ was on the outside of his chest, beating. It popped like a blood-filled balloon. And then there was a drooling, big-mouthed monster of a thing. It was something like a gargoyle, but like the underworld version of one. Stalactite-like protrusions hung from its flesh, dangling when it moved. It had eyes, though it didn’t seem capable of opening them. They moved beneath the cream-colored skin of its eyelids. It turned toward them, nostrils flaring. But it didn’t move. Marcus thought they could go around it. Olena had a different opinion. She slammed one shot right into its forehead, exploding the back of its head in a spray of muck.

  When Marcus looked at her, she said, by way of explanation, “What? You saw it. It was sniffing. Sniffing!” She punctuated this by stomping on the shattered skull until she slipped.

  We really, really needed to get out of the city, Marcus thought.

  He spotted the grazing thing in the distance and pulled Olena back from the road leading toward it. “Not that way. Don’t go near that.”

  They cut across the street and veered off on a diagonal that led to one of the bridges over the river. As they ran for the bridge a figure rose up out of the river, rubbing his chest and arms like he was washing. He was tall, twenty feet or so. Scrawny, with bulging knees. Butt naked. It was this particular part of his anatomy that was most prominently projected toward them. His head and hands were outsized even for his tall frame. But it was the way his skin glistened that drew Marcus’s recognition. Beneath the river water the muck he was trying to wash clean clung to him. His efforts only smeared it across his flesh.

  When the scent of him hit Marcus he couldn’t help but gasp, “Vaporlock?”