by M. T. Miller
“That doesn’t mean much,” Rush said before blowing in her cup. “I remember you back while you were in charge. All work and no play; that’s you. Well, was.”
“Was, yes,” the Nameless said. He sipped his coffee without trying to cool it. “And now I have this. You. Sometimes I find it hard to believe it is real.”
Rush tasted her coffee, then blew on it again. “I’ve had my share of trippin’. If I remember right, so did you.”
“I did,” the Nameless said, remembering the one time he took her substances. It wasn’t a fond memory. He would change the subject. “I am surprised by one thing, though.”
“Shoot,” she said.
“How are you dealing with this lack of action?” he asked.
She grinned. “Plenty of action here, Bones.”
“You know what I mean.”
“To tell you the truth,” she said, “I dunno. I’m fine. No sudden urge to maul someone, or get away from it all.” She took a lock of hair and twisted it around her finger. “Good company, I guess.”
“The best,” the Nameless chuckled. He took a swig, killing half the mug’s contents.
“But you know what?” Rush took another sip, this one longer than the last.
“Yes?”
“That doesn’t mean I never feel like bashing heads anymore,” she said. “So how ‘bout that patrol? Maybe we get lucky. Find someone to beat up.”
The Nameless downed what was left of his coffee.
“You always know how to improve my mood,” he said.
Chapter Two
Side by side, the Nameless and Rush advanced down a narrow, cement-paved street. All around them were houses, similar to the ones in the Underbelly. They weren’t run-down or deserted, but the relative inexperience of the builders was notable.
“We’re chasing ghosts again, right?” Rush said. Cohabitation did little to change her choice of clothing, and she still wore full-body fishnets with strategically placed pieces of leather and denim. A single SMG hung holstered at her right hip. She didn’t need it, but every little bit helped.
“Ghosts, monsters, killers. Whatever is stupid enough to disturb our peace,” the Nameless said. Concealed below his black trench coat was a pair of automatic pistols. No one needed to know about the grenade below the left holster. His left sleeve and boot both hid knives, though the one in the boot was larger. He missed his trusty revolver, but one makes do with what they’ve got.
“Sure,” Rush said, pointing to an alley to their right. “But this one’s been quiet for a while now.”
“True.” Something was killing people in his city. Keyword: was. The murders had stopped two weeks ago, and hadn’t resumed yet. There had been no fatalities since then, and a total of zero missing persons. Whoever the killer was, they were likely still alive.
He ran his fingers over the sheriff’s star on his chest as they advanced. “I still find it peculiar that you couldn’t trace the killer via scent.”
“We’ve been over this. The crime scenes smelled funny, yeah, but the scent disappears as soon as I move away.” Rush stopped near the alley’s entrance. The barriers the police had set around it were no longer there. The man was still dead.
“Which means that the killer is no longer in the city,” the Nameless mused as he stared into the passage. He remembered the mess within, as well as the one in the main street. It resembled an animal attack, but the elegance of the killer’s escape suggested human intelligence. A particularly deranged maniac, perhaps? Or something unnatural like me?
“Or the asshole’s found a way to hide from my nose,” Rush said, turning back to the street. She paced around the area they’d found the other victim.
“Can it be done?” the Nameless asked.
“Beats me,” Rush said. “No one’s done it before, but yeah, I guess you could. Dunno how, though. He’d have to, like, take a bath right here, and then keep doing it for days. Rub himself with alcohol, maybe. No idea.”
Unlikely, the Nameless thought. He pointed back to the alley. “So we have a Hector Perez, dismembered and partially eaten.” He waved his other hand in the direction of the street. “And an Owen Smith, killed after witnessing the murder.”
“And that was just the beginning,” Rush said. She got down on one knee and scratched the pavement with a violet nail. Judging by her expression, her find was a dud.
“Yes,” the Nameless nodded, placing his hands into his pockets. “The other killings. Jennifer Waters. Kurt Brown. Much Dickings. Cleo Pe—“
Rush broke into a laughter, and the Nameless found it hard to keep a straight face.
“Are you going to do that every time?” he asked.
“I’ll stop when it stops being funny,” she said, still laughing.
“The man is dead,” the Nameless said.
“A man with a funny name is dead,” she corrected him.
“True enough,” the Nameless said. “No one forced him to pick that name. He made his choice.”
“Yup,” Rush said. She was getting nearer. “Though what do we know? Maybe his old one was worse.”
This time, the Nameless laughed.
“You were saying?” she said, now standing a couple feet away. Her eyes were fixed on his.
“I wanted to name all the victims, but that would be pointless.” He said. “We know their names. Running them through our heads for the nth time will change little. Eleven dead over the course of ten days. After that, nothing.”
“I’m tellin’ you we’re chasing ghosts,” she said. “Zero activity. If anything, the Circle’s more peaceful.”
“It is,” the Nameless said. “But it is that way because the people are afraid. First of us, then of this killer. Scare them a bit more and they will stop eating and drinking.”
“That might not be such a bad idea,” she grinned. “Save the city some money.”
“Still,” the Nameless said, this time ignoring her joke, “a lack of activity now does not make us free to let our guards down. In all likelihood, the killer is still alive. Inactive, but alive. If our vigilance can save but one more life, then—“
“Then vigilant we must be,” Rush said, in exaggerated imitation of him.
“Exactly,” the Nameless said. He was smiling again.
***
Side by side, the Nameless and Rush re-visited every single murder location. He recounted the facts. She focused on the details. No one made any headway.
“Nothing,” he said as he tugged the tape that marked the final crime scene.
“No reason to apologize for wasting my time,” Rush quipped. She stood in the isolated area, the backyard of a particularly large house. Her nostrils were wide. Apparently, she was still trying to catch a scent.
“I know,” the Nameless said with a faint smile. “No time is wasted in good company.”
“At least you’re modest,” Rush said. Her face betrayed frustration. “No use. Trail goes cold as soon as I take a couple steps.” She kicked the dirt nearby, spraying the fence with brown.
“Don’t damage the crime scene further,” the Nameless said.
“Or?” Rush said. She turned toward him and started to approach. This wasn’t her usual gait. It was slow and sensual, her skin sliding beneath her fishnets.
“I’m afraid that’s classified,” the Nameless said.
“Is it, now?” she asked, now holding the tape.
“Indeed,” the Nameless said. Their faces were but an inch apart.
“But I want to know,” she teased.
“This is information I can only divulge in private,” he said.
“Then what are we waiting for?” she asked.
In tandem, they raised the tape so Rush could pass. Without a word, they began their walk home.
Along the way, the Nameless noted Rush’s eyes as they darted left and right, up and down. Her body language told him what he already assumed: she wasn’t looking for danger. She was merely enjoying the scenery.
Beautiful, the th
ought raced through his mind.
“You know,” she said as her eyes focused on his, “I find it hilarious how unable you are to just enjoy the moment.”
“I do not perceive things as you do,” the Nameless said. And you are a far more interesting sight.
“Can’t argue with that,” she said. “But still, you’ve got yourself the most extreme case of tunnel vision I’ve ever seen. It’s all about the goal with you, isn’t it? How you get to it doesn’t matter as much, right?”
“Mostly true,” he said. “But if possible, I would like to minimize the casualties of said journey.”
“There you go,” she said. “I speak Spanish, you speak English. Except I can barely say a word of actual Spanish, but you get my point.”
“Does it bother you?”
“Naw.” Rush grinned. “It’d be boring if we were the same, y’know?”
The Nameless nodded. He was just about to say something, when a series of loud thuds reached his ears. Judging by the way Rush’s neck tensed, she knew something he didn’t.
“Shit’s about to go down, Bones!” She pointed a finger toward a street to the left. “Bar! Chairs breaking! Maybe some heads as well!”
The Nameless ran, and so did Rush. The bar was close; she didn’t beat him there by much. Like nearly everything in the Circle, it resembled dwellings from a bygone age. It was rectangular, made of bricks and cement, and with badly-fitted square windows.
The doors were wide open. Before them were some twenty people, mostly young and middle-aged men. They had formed a circle around something, most likely a fight.
The Nameless didn’t let it escalate. He swung his coat to the side and pulled a pistol out of its holster. He pointed it skyward and fired a single round.
“Break it up!” he commanded.
The men stopped shouting. One by one they turned to the Nameless, letting him into the center of the circle. In it were a pair of men, one large and burly, the other lean and dark-skinned. The large man held a piece of a stool, while the other one was armed with a broken bottle.
Rush neither spoke nor acted. This kind of thing usually bored her.
“Explain yourselves,” the Nameless shouted to the mass. Silence.
The black man stepped forward. The others moved aside, letting him through. He dropped what was left of the bottle, and continued to approach.
“Emile?” the Nameless asked in a surprised tone. The former (or perhaps still-current) leader of the New Voodoo Movement had seen better days. He was always thin, but there used to be a sense of tidiness and style to the priest. Now his hair was overgrown and messy, his suit dirty and torn in several places. The side of his head was sticky with what seemed to be blood.
Rush tensed up. The Nameless knew what it meant. The volume and rate of the man’s heartbeat told her of his rage.
“Relax,” the Nameless told her. “This man is a friend.”
“Is that what we are, now?” Emile said bitterly, now standing right before them. One of his front teeth was missing, and his breath smelled of cheap alcohol.
“We were the last time I checked,” the Nameless said.
“Good, good,” Emile said. “’Cause friends look out for one another, right?” He turned to Rush. “Right? They don’t leave each other hanging, yeah? They don’t build on dead bodies, then grab positions of power and forget about each other.” He turned toward the Nameless again. “Or am I wrong… friend?”
The Nameless’ brow furrowed. He touched his sheriff’s star. “I am hardly in a position of power. This is little more than responsibility.”
“You’ve got it all figured out, right?” Emile continued. Whether or not he registered what the Nameless said was not apparent. “You’ve fixed things up for everyone. Well, everyone except us poor Voodoo people. We can go and rot, right? Who cares about us now that we have no magic, yeah?” His eyes were as black as coal. There was not a hint of the green that used to appear, back when he could do his thing.
“You are all free men, are you not?” the Nameless said. “As far as I know, everyone is allowed to do more or less as they wish, for as long as it is not harmful to the city. Your people can either settle in the Circle, or apply for positions in the pyramid.”
Emile didn’t speak. His angry stare spoke volumes.
“To my knowledge, this city is yours as much as it is everyone else’s,” the Nameless concluded. “Or am I mistaken?”
Emile swallowed. He seemed to have regained some composure. “Do I need to remind you of the life my people had back in New Orleans? This here, this new Babylon, it’s a joke.”
“And did I destroy your old life?” the Nameless asked. “Did I detonate the bombs? Did I force your late boss to draft me into your war?” He pointed a finger at the priest’s chest. “Or did you and I make the most out of a bad situation and end that conflict as well as we could?”
Emile’s stare dropped. “Look at me. Do I look well?”
“I see a scuffle,” the Nameless said. “And I see that you started it.”
Emile resumed eye contact. The muscles in his face tightened, causing Rush to step forward.
“And what’ll you do if I escalate it?” he asked.
“That, I would not recommend,” the Nameless said.
Emile clenched both fists. For a second or two, he seemed to wrestle with his thoughts. Then, with speed unbecoming of a drunk, he turned to his left and started walking away.
Knowing full well that Rush was about to say something, the Nameless chose to speak before her. He didn’t need to her to provoke the priest, so he addressed the men.
“This party is over,” he said. “Head on home.”
“But I’ve got a permit,” the bar’s owner said as he stepped out. “I can keep this baby open 24/7.”
“Not today,” the Nameless said. “Shut it down for the night. Open up at sunrise if you want. Understood?”
The owner nodded. He wasn’t too thrilled about it.
Rush stepped toward the mass. She inhaled deep, and said, “What’re you, deaf? Fuck off!”
They dispersed in a matter of seconds.
***
On the way home, the Nameless found his thoughts uneasy. Everyone is responsible for their own fate, he told himself. It didn’t make things easier.
Emile simply wasn’t the same after New Orleans disappeared in a cloud of nuclear fire. The Holy One had thought that destroying the city would help it win the war. All it did was create more misery. Emile had, within a single night, lost the majority of his people. To make matters worse, the black mirror, apparently the source of his (and the other black priests’) magic, was likewise obliterated in the blast. He was powerless in every conceivable way.
And what his loss started, our trip finished, the Nameless thought.
Soon after the war ended, the Nameless and Emile led a small group northeast. With other supernatural elements explored or extinguished, the Mist was the last great unknown, and the expedition didn’t change that fact. There were no casualties. No expedition member disappeared or got swallowed by the shifting, unpredictable Mist. Everyone kept their cool as the car advanced toward D.C. Only the Nameless kept that cool until the end.
They never managed to reach the city, though they did try. As they got closer over the course of their many-days journey, so did the fog become more and more difficult to avoid. No one who had entered it before their expedition had ever returned, so that was one frontier the Nameless was not too keen on exploring. After days of futile attempts, the group finally gave up and went back to Babylon.
Everyone was disappointed, but Emile took it the hardest. He had hoped to find some answers, perhaps even a new way of communicating with the god he’d been cut away from. Whether or not he’d since found his answers at the bottom of a bottle was anyone’s guess.
“I thought you had met Emile before,” the Nameless said to Rush as he opened the gate to their home, an unassuming concrete cube in a sea of concrete cubes.
/> “He looked, acted, and smelled so different back then,” Rush said, “you might as well say it was a different guy.”
“Yes, I reckon you are right,” the Nameless said. Time changes everyone and everything. Sometimes for the better, mostly for the worse.
“I’d have no problem bashing ‘im on the head,” she said, stepping into their yard. “Given the shape he’s in, I don’t think anyone’d notice.” She smiled. “Who knows, maybe it’d even help him.”
The Nameless smiled as well, though his was bitter. “And you accuse me of not noticing details.”
Rush unlocked the door and pushed him in. She turned to face the Nameless. “Oh, you do. Just not the important ones.”
The Nameless approached. They stood face to face.
“But that’s okay,” she said. “Some things aren’t for everyone to see.”
Chapter Three
A series of loud thuds pierced the veil of sleep, pulling the Nameless back to his bed. He opened his eyes and found another, violet gaze staring back at him.
“’S for you,” Rush said in an annoyed tone. She was lying nude, mimicking the Nameless’ position. “You don’t shut him up, I’m gonna do it for you.”
Still groggy, the Nameless straightened himself up to sit on the bed. He was always a light sleeper, yes, but some awakenings were less pleasant than others. Especially now that he hadn’t killed in months.
The banging resumed. It came from the front door.
“I’ll handle it,” he said just as Rush was about to comment again.
As he rose, the Nameless caught a glimpse of the window. Even though the curtain had been drawn, it was clearly bright outside. Noon, or later. He quickly slipped into his underwear, then a clean set of pants. He turned toward Rush. Still lying down, she propped her chin in her hand and stared at him in slight annoyance.
“Rest,” he said.
“I’ll rest once I know we don’t have an emergency,” she said.
“Fair enough,” he said as he went for the door.
He squinted when he opened it, but recognized the guest instantly. He was distinctive enough to know even without full use of sight.
