High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel

by George R. R. Martin

  “No, seriously. I’m seeing furrows in the earth and, and, it looks like what little remains of this building was torn apart by an earthquake.”

  “You know it’s probably not even earth anymore,” said Mollie. “Not really. It’s—”

  Ana Cortez.

  The name leapt unbidden into Mollie’s mind. She didn’t think she’d absorbed any of the information about the A-team that Babel had given her. In fact, she’d consciously tried to disregard the briefing, knowing better than anybody that the aces who’d gone on that first ill-advised foray were forever lost. But now one name from the briefing echoed through her memory.

  Ana Cortez. Earth Witch.

  Mollie sat up, aching from the hard floor. “Show me.”

  As always, it took a bit of triangulation and negotiation before she zeroed in on the location that one of Joey’s wandering zombies had shambled to. But sure enough, barely visible through the sepulchral non-Euclidean meat-fog, the ground—she’d never call it earth—had been torn apart as if ruptured with a giant machine. Machinery didn’t work there, of course. The furrow cut through a nest of pulsing purple roots to an edifice that might once have been a building but which was now a shuddering blubbery massif covered in boils and suppurating gashes. The flesh structure had collapsed where it met the furrow, as though it had been shaken apart.

  It was a tedious process, following the furrows through the zombie’s eyes, constantly closing and opening new portals. But she eventually found a rent in the ground that looked as though somebody had physically peeled back a layer and laid it back down with a deliberate wrinkle. A shelter; a hiding spot.

  Joey enlisted several more dead things scattered around the hellscape to help with the digging. If there was one thing zombies could do, it was scrabble at dirt, impervious to rot and ruin. Though it had been buttressed with stones and roots, the dead tore it open in short order.

  It was a burrow. Maybe a crypt. It contained an unconscious woman, Joey reported. When the excavation was complete, Mollie gritted her teeth and widened the portal to Talas for a quick look. The woman in the burrow was barefoot. She looked to be in her late twenties. It looked as though the ground had simply swallowed her, as though taking her into its embrace. She’d hidden herself, Mollie realized.

  Safe in the outermost ring of the warehouse, Babel looked at the unconscious woman through a high-powered rifle scope. “That’s Ana!” she shouted.

  Mollie opened a portal under Ana and dropped her in the lobby of the Jokertown Clinic. Then she slammed the connection to Talas closed again.

  “Boston may be shit, hot and sticky, but the show is brilliant. Lovely reviews for the previews. I’m sure we’ll get to Broadway.”

  Franny and Abigail the Understudy were seated at his favorite restaurant, Mary’s Lamb. Mary herself, cloaked and masked, was lumbering about refilling coffee cups and asking how folks liked the food. Abby was slathering ginger jam on a scone, but persisting in talking with her hands as well as her voice so dollops of jam were falling like sugar bombs onto the white tablecloth.

  “I just hope the producers don’t decide to recast. I think I’m safe. It’s a small part. But pivotal, absolutely pivotal. And one reviewer actually mentioned me.” She gave a brief frown. “I do hope it wasn’t because of all that flap at the circus.”

  Franny reached across the table and laid a hand over hers. The movement pulled at the stitches in his side and he winced. Abby didn’t notice. He wasn’t surprised. She was a terribly self-involved little person, but utterly adorable.

  “I’m sure it wasn’t that. I bet you were great. Let me know when you open. I’ll be there on opening night.” Except there won’t be a Broadway or a New York or a world by then unless Babel and Ray and Mollie and the others succeed. He pushed away the thought.

  “I’ll get you a ticket, and I’m so sorry I didn’t call. I got your messages, but it’s just been so hectic.”

  “That’s okay. I just got back into town yesterday. I was in Kazakhstan.”

  No reaction. “I do rather think the second act needs work. All the energy drops out, and we have to work all that much harder in the third act to build it back.”

  Franny tried to figure out how to penetrate the bubble in which she surrounded herself. He could tell her the first part of the story and seem like a big goddamn hero. Brilliant detective who broke the case, and then bucked authority to go and rescue the captured jokers. Make himself seem like a “movie cop” as Jamal would have put it.

  Or he could focus on how he’d been wounded and play the sympathy card. But he didn’t want her pity, he wanted … well, what he wanted was to get laid and this might be his last chance before the world ended. But first he had to break her out of her bubble.

  He pulled his focus back to what she was saying. “… essential the other actor actually listens to what you’re saying and not just sit there thinking about what they’re going to say next. It can’t always be about you, and this girl who’s playing my older sister keeps stealing the few scenes I do have—”

  “Abby.” The urgency in his voice penetrated.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Have you caught any news?”

  “I don’t watch the news. It’s all just wars and rumors of wars and there’s nothing I can do about any of it so why make myself stressed over things I can’t change?”

  “So you have no idea what’s going on in Kazakhstan? You know, that place where I was until just a few days ago? That place where people are going nuts and killing each other?”

  “Well, no. Based on what you’re saying I’m glad I haven’t heard anything. It’s a good thing you’re not there any longer if that’s what’s happening.”

  He grabbed her hands. “Abby, something terrible is entering our world. Something that will drive us all crazy. Millions are going to die unless the Committee and others can stop it. If they fail there isn’t going to be a Broadway opening for your play. Everything…” He gestured at the cozy restaurant. “Is going to change. The world as we know it is ending. I’ll try to protect you. I want to, but … well, this might be our last chance.” He tightened his hold on her hands. “Sometimes you just have to seize life. You know carpe diem and all that.”

  Thank God she didn’t go what and misunderstand his meaning forcing him to spell it out in even more blunt terms. Unfortunately the conversation didn’t go where he’d hoped. She pulled one hand free and folded his hand in both of hers.

  “Oh, Franny, that’s so sweet, and I can’t tell you how flattering it is, but I just don’t feel that way about you. You’re such a dear friend, and I always know I can count on you to help me, which means so much to me. And really I’m not the right person for you. You’re so serious and dedicated. You need a girl who will always be there for you and support you. I’m much too focused on my own career, but I’ll always be your friend.”

  He felt his jaw aching as he clenched his teeth as the terrible, deadly words spooled out. Unfortunately she didn’t just leave it there.

  “As for this terrible thing. I’m sure the aces will take care of it. It seems like these horrible things never actually come to pass. Someone alway steps in to fix things.”

  The events of the past week crashed over him. Exhaustion and pain coupled with a gnawing guilt broke his fragile control. He leapt to his feet. So violent was the move that his chair crashed over backward. People looked up and Mary and her waitstaff who were carrying six plates froze.

  “Like things got fixed on September 15, 1946? Thousands of people died when the virus got released. Nobody stopped that. Or like all the people who died in the People’s Paradise just a couple of years ago? It doesn’t matter if this other actress is stealing your scenes. In just a few weeks you’re going to be ripping off your own face and eating it! And there won’t be anything the police or the army or anyone else can do to protect you because they will have gone mad, too! Hell, they won’t even be human any longer. People’s bodies, not just their minds, are bei
ng warped, twisted.”

  He realized he was shouting. The only sound in the restaurant was the musac playing in the background. Everyone was staring at him. He shook his head, and made a helpless gesture. Everyone resumed talking and obviously turned away. Mary and her staff set six plates down in front of the lone man sitting in a corner booth.

  “Oh, look, that must be Croyd,” Abby said brightly. “Obviously just now waking up. I really should say hello. Thank you for lunch. Well … I guess.” She stood and walked quickly away to the other table. Back to the ex-boyfriend. The ace.

  Franny threw a bill down on the table, and bolted out of the restaurant. He pictured Abby twisted into the shapes described by retching reporters. Or raped and murdered by some madman. He had a horrible moment wondering if he might be that man. He was crazy about her. What if he lost all inhibition and acted on his desire?

  He wanted to go back and apologize to Abby. To Mary. To everyone. For everything. For fucking up.

  They’d been at it for hours, the sun closer to rising than setting, when Mollie reluctantly widened yet another portal for a quick survey of something Joey had glimpsed through her toe tags’ putrefying eyes. Day and night seemed to carry little meaning so deep inside Horrorshow’s zone of influence; the fell luminescent fog illuminated everything with a sepulchral glow. Joey pointed to damage in the barely recognizable remnants of buildings, streets, people. Here and there, craters pocked the surreal landscape, or what might have been blast marks.

  “That’s her trademark,” she said. “Michelle was here.” She glanced around the edges of the portal, as if triangulating. “I think she was standing over there when she threw that one. Try over there.”

  The lights flickered. In the far corner of the warehouse, Agent Vigil urgently waved his hand at his neck: their “cut it off” motion. Mollie fought to kill the portal; once the evil seeped through, they resisted her a bit, as though she were trying to uniformly compress a water balloon. But she managed to pinch off the incursion, then waited for the lights to return to normal operation. The SCARE team and its Russian counterparts monitored a bank of electronics inside the machoed-up Winnebago. She yawned hard enough for her jaw to pop while waiting for the all-clear. One of the Russian Andromeda Strain guys gave her the thumbs-up (who knew that was international?). Mollie rubbed her stinging eyes, steeled herself, and opened the bajillionth portal pair since entering the warehouse. The Talas side of this one opened on a site near where Joey had indicated.

  After finding Earth Witch in her burrow, they’d come up empty on the rescue front. Mollie had been ready to pack it in hours ago. She could barely concentrate. But Joey was relentless in her search for Bubbles.

  Here they found bodies strewn among the rubble. Vaguely recognizable human bodies. Some had been gnawed down to the bone by the significantly less human things scuttling through the mist. But Joey rubbed her hands together. “All right. About fuckin’ time. Now we’re in business. Hold it there.”

  “Um…”

  “I said fucking hold it there. You’re doing your thing, now let me do mine.” The corpses shuddered, flopped, rolled, and shambled to their feet. Or what remained of their feet. Just a few days ago, Mollie would have been sickened by the sight. Now she found herself hoping like hell that the rest of her morning would be as quaint as this.

  “Try to be quick, okay?”

  Joey rolled her eyes. “We’re a rescue party, not working the drive-through at a taco joint. So butch up, buttercup. But now that I have these guys—” She jerked a thumb at the portal and, by extension, her zombie henchmen. “You can pinch down the opening again.”

  Mollie braced herself for the incipient headache. But this time, shrinking the Talas portal was relatively easy. Compared to the crushing resistance that accompanied every other effort she’d made over the past several hours, it was almost a joy. She allowed herself a tired smile of relief.

  On reflection, she nudged the portal a bit wider, from a pinhole to the size of a quarter. It sounded like Joey was on to something; the more easily she could work, the faster they could finish this pointless bullshit and the sooner she could take a twenty-year nap.

  Joey muttered to herself, or the zombies, while she gathered an army to search for Bubbles. Mollie couldn’t see what was going down on the other side but she didn’t care. She concentrated on keeping the connection open. It was easy. She didn’t understand why she’d been so reticent about it before. Time passed.

  Pop. Pop. Pop. The lights on the innermost ring blinked out. In the distance, Mollie watched a little flurry of activity take over the SWAT guys in their comical hazmat suits. They looked like plastic-sack hand puppets. She laughed. Joey looked at her, frowning. Mollie pointed, singing, “C is for cookie which is good enough for me.”

  “Yeah, uh, hold that thought. I think I just saw her.”

  Joey didn’t get the joke. Oh, well. Screw her. Maybe the snot-nosed twerp would find it funny when Mollie doused her with gasoline and set her on fire. She had just begun to picture a gas station in Coeur d’Alene when another ring of lights went out. It actually made a difference; the warehouse was slightly dimmer now. That wasn’t good. They needed to see what they were doing. But Mollie could fix that. In fact, now that she thought about it, it was actually quite simple.

  She opened a new pair of portals. One up near the warehouse ceiling, just under the struts and beams, the other a mile over Australia’s Gold Coast to capture the rising sun. It was far better than the shitty artificial lights. She widened the portals to let nice natural light flood the warehouse. The interdimensional hole in the ceiling exploded to thirty feet in diameter. Beautiful sky. Mollie did this all while maintaining Joey’s doorway to zombie Talas.

  Two pairs of portals, simultaneously. It was incredibly easy. She couldn’t understand for the life of her why she’d struggled so much with something so simple. A baby could do it. From the corner of her eye, she saw more plastic-suited mannequins gamboling about like puppets in the distance. She giggled.

  Joey said, “Uh…”

  “Eyes in the sky!”

  “You sure you want to be doing this?”

  Mollie stopped laughing. Fucking ungrateful bitch. “I’m helping you, you stupid cunt!”

  “Hey! Looney Tunes!” Joey wheeled on her, jabbing a finger in Mollie’s chest. Mollie traded the sunlight portal for one just before her sternum, just large enough for Joey’s finger.

  “I’m just about out of patience with you—” Jab, jab. “—you ugly-ass bi—”

  Mollie snapped the portal shut. It blinked closed on Joey’s finger, then blinked open again to catch the precious severed digit before it fell into the sea off the coast of Queensland.

  Joey doubled over, screaming, clutching the bloody stump where her finger had been. Red spray misted Mollie’s face and doused her shirt—that wretched little bitch fucking ruined Mollie’s shirt—where she hugged her hand to her stomach. Her finger made a tink-plop sound as it hit the concrete floor, first the fingernail side, and then the raspberry lollipop side. Mollie snatched it from the ground—five-second rule—lest the maggots swarm it and carry it back to their queen before it could be sanctified. Between licks of the stump of Joey’s finger, she said, “Don’t fucking touch me. Don’t you EVER FUCKING SMEAR YOUR FRANKENSTEIN GOD-MACHINE FILTH ON ME AGAIN!”

  She kicked Joey in the nose. It knocked the little cunt down, sent her sprawling. Mollie wound back and slapped her across the face for good measure.

  Mollie took her shirt off. It had been befouled and couldn’t be cleansed. Balled it up, threw it into the air, caught it with a portal that opened on the garbage incinerator in the basement of her apartment building in North Dakota. The finger went with it.

  Joey rolled to her feet. Time passed slowly, smoothly, like a magenta crayon dropped in a meat grinder.

  More lights blinked out. The next ring, and then the next. No matter. Mollie re-created the Australian sunlight portal. It was bright and warm in the wa
rehouse. The plastic-suit guys looked really worked up about something.

  Two portal pairs at once. God, it was easy. How had it ever been hard? Ffodor, that shitbag Ffodor, he was the problem. He’d clouded her mind, working against her, stifling her abilities, that miserable son of a bitch. She’d show him.

  A Louis XIV chair plummeted into the warehouse to shatter on the floor.

  She kept the Talas portal in place, of course; she didn’t want to interrupt the mission. The mission was important. The mission was her gateway to rebirth in a new world, a world carpeted with Joey’s flesh.

  One of the fakey plastic hazmat Mummenschanz puppets aimed his popgun at Mollie. She moved the sun portal again to intercept the dart and sent the projectile right back at the shooter, like she’d done with the Taser-happy frog cop in Paris. In seconds he slumped over, the electric-blue feather of a tranquilizer dart protruding from his cheap-ass Halloween costume. Fucking assholes. She’d fucking teach them not to attack her. She opened a portal under the Winnebago and dropped it on the shooter. Then—

  Something slammed into her ribs. Mollie tried to turn, but something clamped on her shoulder like a vise made of needles. She screamed.

  Joey’s zombie hound wrenched its head back and forth, giving off a burbling growl as it tore a chunk out of Mollie’s arm. She screamed again. She opened a portal underneath herself, dropping through the floor to escape zombie Fido.

  A trio of eyeball crabs scuttled through the Talas portal. Joey kicked one aside; it ruptured, splashing her with black ichor.

  “Where’d you go?” she screamed. “Come back here, you fat greasy shitstain, so that I can tear you apart!”

  Mollie crept up behind Joey, beside the broken chair. Blood streaming down her arm, she picked up Ffodor’s femur. (Suppressing another giggle as she did: Ffodor. Femur. Alliteration. Alligator. Antidisestablishmentarianism.) She wound back for a blow that would open the little cunt’s skull.

  “I FUCKING TOLD YOU NOT TO SMEAR YOUR FILTH ON ME! I TOLD YOU!”