by Chuck Wendig
“At what cost?” Werth asks.
“Oh, come now. I don’t know what you mean!”
“You know just what the hell I mean. You didn’t offer up this information out of the good of your heart.” Werth looks to Candlefly. “He didn’t, did he?”
A gentle shake of Candlefly’s head. “No.”
“What’d he want?”
“He had a laundry list of desires. A waive of protection fees for the next year, information on his enemies, a talk with the Lantern Jacks – who have been encroaching on his business in the last few months.”
“Pumpkin-headed savages,” Smiley says.
Candlefly lifts the back of his coat. From a back pocket, he pulls a small square box with a silver seal on it: a burning fly inside an old lantern.
He hands it to Werth.
“Fuck am I supposed to do with this?”
“Open it.” Candlefly sighs.
He does. It’s peacock powder. Smurf. Cerulean. It’s untouched. A perfect little beach dune of blue dust. Does Candlefly not use? Does he need to use?
“I want you to see.” Candlefly says.
“I know what Smiley is.”
“Please. Just do me this concession.” Candlefly, to make things clear, lifts his jacket, just to ensure that Werth sees the Walther hanging at his hip.
“Fine.” Werth digs in a thumb. Takes too much – a callow and meaningless rebellion against this man – and smears it on each temple. The Blazes crackle and ripple. The pain of his body drifts out to sea. It’s still there, but it’s far off.
He turns. Sees the human façade fall away. The Snakeface is revealed. Squirming in his zip-tie bonds. Fangs clicking against fangs.
But then something else appears.
Something back among the bottles and barrels. A shimmer in the air, like a mist that dissipates when you look directly at it. A black shadow rises up through the floor as if the wood is insubstantial. Silver shining eyes. Fingers like scissors.
“Jesus. What… what is that?”
Candlefly smiles. Claps Werth on the shoulder. “I told you about the carrot. This is the stick.”
Smiley cries out. Knows that something’s wrong, that his time is coming. The Naga starts to thrash. The chair rocks back and forth. His mouth opens – a breathy hiss emits.
Smiley starts turning red. Body tensing.
His left arm starts to shift. Bulge like a hose with a kink in it, then squish down – it starts sliding through the zip-ties one by one. Swell up. Shrink back. Swell up. Shrink back. Then he starts freeing a leg – the shoe pops off, the whole foot tilts down at an impossible angle as Smiley starts to force it through each tight plastic loop.
The black shadow-thing moves fast.
Like a blanket it covers the top half of the Snakeface. Scissor-fingers plunge into the Snakeface’s head and chest. Smiley spasms, body caught in the throes of a violent seizure. It isn’t long before the spasms become a tremor and the tremors fade to a few myoclonic twitches. Those last shudders call to mind a piece of food being eaten. An apple. Or corn off a cob.
Candlefly squeezes Werth’s bicep.
“Over here.” As the shadow-thing… feeds, Candlefly brings over a leather bag. He opens it up. Inside: stacks of money. Twenties. Banded. “Here is the carrot. I want your help. I want you to tell me where your friend is.”
“I… I can just call him. I’ll have him come here.”
“Yes. Do that. We need to know where he is.”
“I already know where he is.”
“Oh? Do tell, James. We can go pick him up.”
Werth swallows a hard knot and gives the address to Candlefly.
Candlefly meets Sorago in the hall.
“Here’s the address,” Ernesto says, handing his old friend a written slip.
“I’ll handle it.”
“Let the Organization pick up the pieces on this one. Interface with Haversham, have them send a couple of their own to clean up the mess.”
“And if they can’t?”
“Then that’s a win for us either way. The herd must be thinned. We must whittle this stick to a sharpened point.” It was true. If the killers took care of Mookie and – bonus points – the daughter, so be it. If the Organization assassins ended up on the slab? Fine. At this point it was a numbers game.
“Pearl’s a special case.”
“Is he? He’s the bull. We are the matadors.”
“He’s the one who saved the miner down in the tunnel.”
“Was he?” That’s news. “Perhaps he’s a very lucky bull.”
“Or smarter than we think.”
“Hm. Fine, fine. Send some backup. Look to your friends in the caste.”
Sorago nods.
“For the family,” the Naga says.
13
The Underworld has many names because we have given it many names. The Great Below. The Deep Downstairs. Hell. Hades. Tartarus. Gimkodan. Naraka. It has many names and many places. This is not the only Underworld. There are many Hells beneath many parts of the world, all connecting at the bottom. The geography of our Hell is not fully mapped – it is a quantity that many have claimed impossible to know. But I feel differently. I feel it can be mapped. That its stories can and should be told. I will walk this sunless realm. I will start here, in the upper portions, in the place we call the Shallows. Then, into the labyrinth called the Fathomless Tangle. Then one day I shall find my way to the Ravenous Expanse. Where the eyeless gods of this place moan and gnash teeth the size of skyscrapers.
– from the Journals of John Atticus Oakes, Cartographer of the Great Below
Nora fidgets. She chews an unpainted nail down to the quick. A bead of blood rises. She holds it up, sees the torchlight captured in the curve of the red.
“You sure that was a good idea, sugar?” Skelly asks her.
“It’s part of the plan.”
“A plan you just made up.”
“We have to adjust. Things are… changing.”
“You’re bringing trouble to our doorstep.”
“Part of the price.” Nora shrugs. She tries not to act nervous, tries to act cool as an ice cube in a snowman’s mouth, but all she can do is keep biting one fingernail after the next. “Nothing good is ever free.”
Skelly paces. On one side of her face is the blue LED light from a camping lantern sitting atop an overturned oil drum. The other side, lit by firelight. A two-faced mask. Finally she turns, thrusts a finger up in Nora’s face.
“You’re playing with fire, kitten. You’re telling them things just to rile ’em all up. I don’t know if you have this all figured out as neat and nice as you want. There’s gonna be blowback. I don’t think you get that.”
Everything’s unstable, now. Things were supposed to go differently but they didn’t and now here she is. Making up the story as it goes along.
“I get it!” Nora barks. “Jesus. What are you, my mother?” Calm down, you need these girls. “Listen. I know it’s like I… threw a lit M-80 into a crowd. And maybe I did. But it’ll clear a space. A space for me. For you. For the gang. I’ll bring you guys with me. The Boss is sick. His grandson is…” Here she hesitates. Deep breath. “Dead.”
Skelly walks up. Gets nose-to-nose with Nora.
Nora smells bubblegum and cigarettes.
“You better be right,” Skelly says. “Because, baby girl, if you fuck us over or fuck us up, I’ll crawl out of the corpse-pile dead or alive and skin you with Santa Muerte here–” The woman taps the hilt of the sheathed Bowie. “We square?”
“We’re–”
Above their heads, above the floor, they hear a sound: Whump whump whump.
“Someone’s here,” Lulu says. Breathless with anticipation. Lulu seems to get off on this kind of thing. Fear. Danger. Like she’s French-kissing Death in the broom closet.
Skelly shoots her a look. “Yeah, we got that, Lou.” She turns to Nora. “They’re here. Already. Let’s hit the tunnels and–”
�
��No,” Nora says. “If this was a hit squad they wouldn’t be knocking. Listen to that sound.” How loud it is. Him with those big stupid fists. Sometimes she thinks that’s where the old man keeps his brains. “I know who it is. It’s my father.”
“See? Blowback’s already started.”
Another three knocks. Whump whump whump. Louder now.
Skelly hisses, “What do we do?”
Nora jerks a thumb toward one of the posters. Zardoz. “I’m gonna hit the bricks. I’ve got to find some leverage. You stay behind. Talk to him. Throw him off my trail. Stay with him if you can. Last thing I need is that big dumb monkey messing up my plans.”
“You really don’t like him, do you?”
Nora doesn’t answer. Instead she just walks over to the poster. Already two of the Get-Em-Girls are ahead of her – one in a pair of oil-stained denim overalls, the other in a black cardigan with a coffin stitched on the back, and in the front, cleavage so deep you could lose your car keys and money-clip down there. Maybe the whole purse.
The girls unpin the Zardoz poster at the bottom, then roll it up.
A tunnel is revealed.
Nora grabs one of the lanterns as Mookie knocks again.
Skelly and her share a look. Nora’s not sure it’s a friendly one.
She gives a flip little wave and a tight little smile even though her insides are a tumult of howling winds and breaking trees. Then she disappears down the tunnel and they re-roll the poster behind her.
Werth’s not here and he’s not answering his phone and Mookie’s riding the razor’s edge of this Blazes high – though by now it’s not a razor’s edge so much as it is the jagged teeth of a shattered mirror. By now the high is all coarse-grit sandpaper and hungry teeth.
So, hell with it. He stomps up to the door. Knocks three times. Figures he owes his daughter that much. Best not to come in hard.
Nothing.
Another three.
Goddamnit, Nora, answer the door.
He moves to the side. Peers in yellow-stained windows that are behind iron mesh like the door. Can’t see squat. Goes back to the door. Rattles the chain and padlock. He wonders if they even come out through this door all that often. If they have a hole that takes them down into the Deep Downstairs…
That would let them move beneath the streets. Or even deeper. Hidden the whole time. Some gangs are smart and move that way. Not that the tunnels are safer than the streets – but that’s the price you pay to stay outta sight. Plus, the dead-town of Daisypusher isn’t even a half-day walk, sitting underneath both of the Marble Cemeteries on the East side. Go north and you’d get to Yonder, though the reasons for going there are few and far between. South you could work your way to the Oddments. Still, the tunnels in between are long and dark and full of who-knows-what. Gobbos. Monsters who are half-human but all-mad. Blue addicts. Cultists. Mole Men. Thugs who belong to Mookie and the Organization.
For now, he needs to refocus. He’s up top. The sun’ll be up soon. And he’s got a door with a chain-and-padlock standing between him and his daughter.
He figures the heavy back-end of the cleaver will do the job.
But before he even gets to unsheathe it–
The door behind the cage opens.
He knows the woman. Skelly. Head of the Get-Em-Girls. She’s an OK broad. Smart. Tough. Sassy. Doesn’t take shit from anybody.
Pretty, too. He could stare into those eyes for hours. Not that she’d enjoy that. Having Mookie stare you down doesn’t add up to a “romantic gesture” so much as it does the “piercing stare of a sociopath”.
Still. Skelly’s never done him wrong in the past. The gang makes a lot of noise about the Organization, but all the gangs do and he always figured it was part of their act: tough-talking authority-hating rockabilly roller girls, spitting in the eye of The Man, always wanting a bigger piece of the pie. They’ve never moved to do anything to back up all that boom and bluster.
But now Mookie’s not so sure.
“Mookie Pearl,” she says. “The biggest, baldest, most beautiful Daddy-o on the block.”
He grunts. “Skelly.”
“What’s the tale, nightingale?”
“I’m bettin’ you know why I’m here.”
“I don’t pretend to read minds. Though that’s something I’d sure love to do. Can you imagine? Wouldn’t you love to see what those dirty-birdies think about?” She tilts her head and the blue bangs hang like the tail-feathers of a drunken peacock. “Smart money says that everybody thinks about sex and death 24/7. I know I do. Sex more than death.” She bats her eyelashes. “How about you?”
She’s playing around, but Mookie can see it on her – the smile is forced. She’s nervous.
“You have someone here.”
“We have lots of someones here. But we don’t run girls like that, Mookie. You want that sorta thing, you’re gonna need to check with the Sinner Kids, maybe the Railroaders. I suspect they have a stable of beautiful honeys, oh, and boys too if you like that–”
“Stop. I’m looking for the girl calls herself Persephone.”
“Ohhh. Don’t you mean your daughter?”
A gut-punch. It staggers him. That information’s getting out, then, too. Skelly eyes him. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know how to answer that without getting himself in trouble. All Mookie can do is flare his nostrils, let out a short, sharp breath.
“We’re all friends, here,” she says. Gives him a wink.
Skelly pulls the chain around, unlocks the padlock.
She unlocks it, waves him inside.
And soon as he’s through the door, a shotgun barrel jams into the side of his neck.
Figures.
They close the door behind him.
Soon as they do, Mookie grabs the shotgun by the barrel, yanks it out of the hand of the girl who’s holding it. She yelps as he rips it from her grip. She breaks a nail in the trigger guard. He hears it snap. The girl turns away. He sees a fiery wrench tat on her bicep.
“You don’t do guns in this gang,” Mookie says. He points it at Skelly.
“We might’ve changed that policy. You don’t know.”
“I know now.” He stares. “I don’t have time to fuck around.”
Skelly blinks. She’s flanked by a couple other bad girls in thigh-highs. One’s got a telescoping baton. The other a switchblade. They look confused, and give Skelly a quizzical look. She waves them off. Then she looks to the girl with the wrench tat.”You OK, Lou?”
“Yeah.” The girl cradles her paw. Mookie sees a little blood. Ripped the nail good.
He mutters a clumsy apology. Then a lightbulb flickers in the darkened refrigerator that is his brain. “Wait. Lou. You’re Louisa?”
“Uh-huh. I go by Lulu.”
“I know your girl, Karyn.”
Lulu’s face brightens. “Oh, hey. You know Karyn?”
“She’s my butcher.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“Yep.”
“And her pussy tastes like angel sweat.” Her lips suddenly wrinkle into an uncertain sneer. “Not that I’ve ever tasted angel sweat.”
Mookie feels a bloom rise to his cheeks.
Skelly rubs her eyes. “Hey, dolls, this is sweet and all, but anyway to cut to the quick?”
“I want to see Nora,” Mookie says.
“Don’t think so.”
“In case you missed the news, I’ve got a shotgun.”
Skelly stands firm. “Ho ho ho.”
“Jesus, Skelly, she’s in trouble.”
“She’s just fine, Pops,” says one of the stocking girls in the back. “You’re the ones who are in trouble, Meat Man!”
Skelly shushes her. “Your babygirl’s gone, you big gorilla.”
“Gone. Like outta the gang gone?”
“Like, not here at the moment gone.”
“So, she’s coming back.”
“She didn’t say.”
Mookie feels like a patch of skin got scra
ped off: rough, raw, abraded. “I don’t got time for this.”
“I’ll tell you where she went,” Skelly says.
“Will you, now? And what will it cost me?”
“You poppin’ the clutch and getting’ the hell out of here. Sound good, Pookie?”
“Pookie.” He grunts. “Sounds fine. Where’d she go?”
“Jersey City.”
“Jersey City. Where in Jersey City?”
“West side somewhere. I don’t know. She knows a guy out there. Someone she’s dating.”
Mookie feels a hot steam blast inside: an acid reflux sear at the back of his throat. Jersey City is a shit-hole. And a maze, to boot. It will take him a while to get out there and put the word out that he’s looking for her – he knows some folks in that direction, but not enough, not nearly enough, and soon as she sniffs the scent of him coming she’ll be like a trapdoor spider back in her hole. And a boyfriend? A boyfriend? His daddy brain goes haywire, picturing her with some Jersey City shithead, him getting his greasy hands up under her shirt, the punk thinking he can do things to Mookie Pearl’s daughter. And it’s then and there that Mookie decides he’s going to steal a fucking city bus and hit the Holland Tunnel and find this guy’s house and drive the bus over his head.
Except–
Skelly’s eyes. Her gaze flitting to him. Then the ground. Then to Lulu and they share a look, a look that doesn’t take longer than a second sliced in half and it’s then Mookie knows she’s lying.
“Bullshit,” he says, and he shoves past her. It is not a delicate shove, and Skelly almost loses her balance into the front desk.
Both of the garter belt girls step in front of him. One twirls the baton. The other flashes the switchblade in front of him – the swish of the blade cuts air in a sideways 8.
He holds them both off with the shotgun.
Mookie calls past the girls. “Nora? Nora, goddamnit.”
“Back off, mister,” says the Switchblade Sister.
“Yeah, get the fuck up outta here,” says Baton Twirler.
Mookie ignores them. Stomps on the floor. Hears the boards reverberate. “She down there? I heard you got a hollow carved out for yourselves.”
He goes to step past the two girls.
