Blake’s forehead was pushed hard against the cold concrete and he was licking blood and snot from under his nose, tears tracking slowly down his cheeks, but Finch forced himself to laugh. “That’s what you think? Paramilitary? I’m a criminal, shithead. We thought your boss was muling meth, and we were going to blackmail her.”
The handgun trembled again when Vick shivered. “Then you’re a fucking idiot for not figuring it out sooner. Caveman to the core.”
“How about you and me go bare knuckle?” Finch suggested. “You always wanted a try, remember? Anyone can put a slug in a skull. Not anyone can say they fist-fought a neo. Come on, Vicky.”
Finch was ready for it when a forearm slammed the back of his neck. “I’m going to eat you, caveman,” Vick hissed in his ear, burrowing the gun under Finch’s shoulder blade. “I’m going to eat your corpse. Think about that. Maybe a bit stringy. I’ll still eat it.”
“Vicky,” Finch repeated. “She call you that when she throws you around in bed? Does she make you dye your hair red and get your skin bleached?”
The gun slid up to knock against the back of Finch’s skull. He tried not to shudder. Blake’s beetle black eyes were wide and he was mouthing what looked like shut up, Unit, shut the fuck up.
“You’ll never be a real caveman, though,” Finch said. “Poor circulation. Good luck in the Ice Age.”
He slammed his hand backward into Vick’s wobbling wrist, flinging himself away from the wall. The gun went off; he felt the sonic clap like a bludgeon to the skull and for a wild moment he thought he’d been shot. The lights flicked out—Finch remembered they were on a timer, remembered Blake had dialled it back—then his hands found Vick’s neck and he forgot about everything but crushing his trachea.
A leg hooked him down and they fell to the floor; his sole slipped off the frozen vomit, and his kneecap cracked against the concrete. Metal bounced against his elbow and skittered away—the gun was gone. Vick scrabbled at his hands, clawing with manicured nails, but Finch held tight and tighter until the kicks became sluggish and Vick made a ragged vibration deep in his chest and the cartilage finally gave way. The puff of dead man’s air caught Finch in the face. He retched.
“Unit, you going to throw up again?” came Blake’s brittle voice, swimming through the fading keen in Finch’s ears. “He dead? I been sitting on his legs. Unless that’s you. You dead?”
“No. You?”
Blake’s fingers found Finch’s face in the dark; Finch found Blake’s numb lips and kissed them softly.
“Unit,” he mumbled. “Vomit breath.”
They left Vick crumpled on the freezer floor and stumbled their way to the fire exit, Finch limping, Blake stubbornly trying to support some of his weight. The street outside became a silent movie as Finch’s hearing slipped away again. He could mostly hear his breathing, and blood swirling in his inner ear as they staggered down the block. Blake’s voice was tinny and indistinct. It took him a while to realize what he was saying.
“It’s uploaded, Unit. The clone in Carnivor’s freezer. Those cams from private dining. Everything Vicky said. All in my cloud now.” Blake raised his gloved hand and pressed a fingertip to Finch’s plug. “Look.”
Finch shut his eyes and saw the events of the past half hour race past in digital. Peeling back the membrane. Watching the smart-glove projection. Vick’s disembodied head. The gun. He found his good leg trembling.
“All you have to do is disperse it,” Blake said. “If that’s what you want. I figure blackmailing someone as psychotic as Carrow is a shit plan anyway.”
Finch hesitated for only a second before he selected dispersal and watched the web traffic begin to swell. The snaps and captions and visual/audio recordings began to expand outward, link by link, blooming like argon across forums and news recyclers. By morning, it would be everywhere.
“Of course, we need to get the fuck out of Dodge, now,” Blake admitted. “Unless you think you can stand up to, you know, legal scrutiny and shit. We can swing down to the coast. San Diego again. You go back to bouncing, I leave off net scamming and try to find something legit. No more B&E, no more blackmail, no more getting mixed up with units who kill units.” He paused. “You know. Boring shit.”
“West Coast might not be far enough,” Finch said, opening his eyes. “We’ll be famous after this.”
“Unit, I know.” He blinked. “Autocab’s on its way. It’ll meet us up on the corner.”
They staggered on in silence. It had rained while they were inside; the sidewalk was slick. The lampposts flickered on in sequence as they passed underneath.
“Brazil is pretty far,” Finch said slowly, watching their shadow hobble along on long dark stilts. “Sao Paulo.”
Blake stared at him, incredulous. “You mean go find that illegal clone factory, right? You trying to be a hero or something? Going paramilitary on me?”
Finch exhaled a long plume of breath into the cold air as the autocab pulled up to the curb. “That list you made. The things I care about. You should have been on it.”
Blake fixed him with a piercing look. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Up near the top. Beard-level, maybe.” Blake laughed; Finch tried to grin. “And under that, I think it’s time to make room for some other shit.”
“Hero shit, you mean,” Blake said, leaning back on the autocab.
“I’d view it more as self-improvement.”
“I’ll think about it, Unit. No promises.”
Finch opened the door, Blake bypassed the payment screen, and the cab slid off into the night, flashing nearby attractions and restaurant suggestions on the upholstery. They watched in real time, without speaking, as Carnivor dropped off the list.
TRIBES
A.M. Dellamonica
Ling Yuan was the only one who saw the bird.
He had glossy jet-black feathers, a sharp beak, and a necklace made of clamshell and crumpled tinfoil. When he flew through the Science Room, gusts raised by his wings tore the spectral cobwebs off the teacher.
From beak to tail, he was as big as a shopping cart.
Just another ghost in a haunt-crammed school. Ling turned back to the window. Out on the lawn her own spook, Xian, was waiting. They’d been playing Faces. Ling mugged—faking joy, sorrow, silliness—and the ghost struck poses that copied her mood.
Resembling for the most part a just-grown doe, Xian had the tail of an ox, the sturdy hooves of a pony, and a bay coat shot through with gold and turquoise strands. Her head was recognizably that of a deer, with placid brown eyes and splayed ears. Hidden within her muzzle, though, were the razored teeth of a wolf.
Ling aped exaggerated surprise, mouthing the word ‘Boo!’ Xian sprang upward, then wobbled around weak-kneed, faking panic and its aftermath.
A sudden wave of stench—smoke, burning hair—interrupted the game. Coughing, Ling scanned the room. Marianne Schroeder and one of her Prettygirl minions were singeing the ends off Stacy’s braids. A marble gargoyle—like Xian and the bird, invisible to the others—was egging them on.
Mr. Rupert shook free of his chair. “Shouldn’t we all be in our assigned seats?”
A sigh ran through class. Gretchen pocketed her lighter and released Stacy’s hair. Ling joined a wary group of fellow-students at a table; it was her, Marianne, Roger from Yearbook, and a hulking kid named Brett who mostly hung out in Shop.
As groups of friends broke apart, the haunts in the room shifted uncomfortably, unsure who to shadow. Several glided off, no doubt headed for other classrooms where the lines of allegiance were clearer.
Talons clicking, the bird bounced up to the front. To Ling’s surprise, Mr. Rupert looked straight at it.
“Who are you?”
“New Student,” it cawed.
Ling covered her left eye—her seeing eye. The haunts vanished, and instead of a big bird perched on the edge of the teacher’s desk, she saw a boy of about sixteen, with feathery black hair and red-brown skin.
“Say hello to J
ake Raven, everyone,” Mr. Rupert said, triggering some half-hearted mumbles. “Jake, tell us something about yourself.”
“Glad you asked,” Jake said. “I created the world—feel free to thank me later—and stole the sun, stars and moon to light it. I found the People in a clamshell . . .”
“Very funny,” Mr. Rupert interrupted. “I was so hoping we’d get another comedian. Take a seat, please.”
Birdboy hopped over to an empty chair. Two seconds later, Eddie Cojo showed up.
Eddie had been gone for two weeks, but he looked like he still belonged in a hospital. Stitches criss-crossed his face, and his arm was entombed in a cast. Running from fingertips to elbow, the plaster was—like everything that got within range of Eddie’s pen or carving blade—enlivened with hand-drawn doodles, traditional Haida figures, skewed and altered into capering cartoons. He wasn’t walking so much as shuffling, moving as if every step hurt.
Eddie spotted ‘Jake’ perching on a desk near the window.
Clack of beak, ruffle of feathers. “Hey, cousin,” Jake said. He sounded friendly enough.
All he got in return was a scowl. Eddie pointedly tapped his sling with one finger before picking an empty seat on the opposite side of the room. Hunched over the broken arm, he began to draw.
He’d sit there for the rest of the day, if he could, outlining and inking without saying a word.
But nobody got left alone, did they? Two weeks before, the boys’ basketball team had surrounded Eddie in the schoolyard. Ling saw their team spook, a kraken, hissing encouragement and gliding among the ball players, who cheered as their star center, Mike Shaughnessy, stomped and kicked Eddie. Blue scales glinting in the sun, the water-serpent swam through the grass like it was water, undulating through the sod.
All the students had been out in the yard, clustered into clubs. Marianne and her Prettygirls were up on the bleachers. The best view from which to preside over the slaughter, Ling had thought, helpless and furious.
Ling’s sister Polly had told her that the haunts took a student each year, sometime between First Term Finals and Club Day. It was inevitable, Polly insisted—sighted or not, there was nothing the Yuan girls could do but make sure it wasn’t them.
And maybe that was true, but Ling had decided to try protecting Eddie. She’d tried to show him what the school was, to make him see, to save him. It hadn’t worked; all she’d done was embarrass herself.
So she’d thought, anyway. Then two weeks ago, as Mike raised his boot, as the kraken licked its chops and all the spooks moved in to witness the end, Eddie straightened from his curled, hands-over-head position on the ground. “Can’t you do something?” he’d said, lips dribbling blood as he spoke, each word oddly calm and measured. As if he wasn’t getting the crap kicked out of him. As if he wasn’t about to die.
Did I do it after all? Ling wondered, at the time. Can he see?
A raven dove off the school roof then, cawing, buzzing the Basketball Boys. Flinching away, they gave Eddie a chance to lurch clear of their circle. Leaping the school’s boundary wall, he’d staggered into the street . . . only to get pasted by a westbound car.
Now here he was, stitched and plastered, glaring at Jake, so pissed Ling didn’t think he noticed the predatory grins of the Basketball Boys.
“Good to have you back, Ed.” Mr. Rupert was on his feet, passing out booklets and peering at faces. Mostly teachers didn’t notice anything that happened at MacKenzie Secondary. If they got free of the cobwebs and happened to catch you misbehaving, they’d send you to Detention. The study cubicle outside Miss Marino’s office was where the haunts’ power was at their strongest. An hour there was enough to make kids start eating their own hair; half a day could give them heart failure.
“As you know, class, there’s been some violence . . .” The title of the handout was Student Guide to Talking Through Conflict.
Eyes glazed. Kids yawned. The Prettygirls reached for their phones. But before text messages started flying, a spider dropped down from the fluorescent lights and began webbing Mr. Rupert up again.
The teacher wandered back to his chair.
There was a relieved murmur as everyone shoved the booklets aside and returned to their friends. Stacy, clutching her singed braid and a recent exam, begged her way into the circle of Honours students. Three girls from the Drama Club clustered around Ling. At MacKenzie Secondary, safety lay in numbers.
The kraken flicked Jazinda a threatening glance as she settled next to Ling. Xian immediately leapt through the window, landing between Jaz and the kraken. Head lowered, she pawed at the ground, threatening to butt. The kraken undulated backward, sinking into the floor until only the tops of its eyes were visible.
Ling closed her left eye and the haunts vanished. Everyone was watching the new kid. Nobody else—well, except maybe Eddie—could tell he was a bird.
If he had really been a boy, it would have been hard to guess where Jake fit. He looked stringy and agile, possibly right for the track team. He was cute, but his clothes weren’t expensive enough to get him in with the Liberty Heights kids. Maybe the jazz band?
He smiled at her, head tilted.
Ling opened both eyes, making him a bird again. Xian reappeared, along with the others—the gargoyle, Marianne’s blonde prince, the spider, still working on Mr. Rupert, and the leprechaun who hung with the Honours students.
Jake hopped across the desks toward Eddie.
The kraken hissed and Mike Shaughnessy feinted in Jake’s direction, lashing a foot out at ankle-busting height. The bird hopped sideways, delicately blowing a feather through the kraken’s leering jaws and down its open throat. There was a snap, and the intended kick went into a chair. Mike turned purple; the kraken reared back as if slapped.
Jake winked at Eddie, who glowered and kept cartooning. Feathers fluffing, the bird sat beside him.
Coughing up the feather violently, the kraken circled the room. It wanted someone to chew on; Ling could feel it.
Seconds later, a Goth Princess turned on one of her own, slapping the boy beside her with a velvet-gloved hand, then shoving him forcefully away.
The outcast, Andy Holmes, sputtered a weak protest as the kraken coiled around his feet. The Basketball Boys started up a low, rhythmic taunt: “Homo Holmes, Homo Holmes, fag, fag, fag.”
At lunchtime, Ling sent Xian to watch over her fellow Drama Queens before heading down to Props, a musty warren under the gymnasium stage where the school stored its theatre costumes and set pieces.
She had used a couple of screens to wall off a niche for herself, a corner that held a faded red recliner and an old brass candleholder. The space was no bigger than a closet, but she could doze, read scripts by candlelight, or eat her lunch in peace . . . all without seeing.
She was working her way through a damp tuna fish sandwich and Ionesco’s Rhinoceros when the trapdoor into Props squeaked. Ling quickly blew out the candlelight. That was too close.
Eddie’s voice echoed down. “I saved your ass, man. You let that car hit me.”
“You’re not dead, are you?” The other voice was a low croak—Jake.
“Yet,” Eddie said.
“Meaning?”
Click! The overhead lights blazed to life. “See these memorial plaques, Jake? A student goes nuts or gets fucked up or mostly just dies, every year just before Club Day. It’s because of these . . . spook things . . . all over school. Isn’t that right?”
“Obviously.”
“Can’t you get rid of them?”
“Rid? No. Stop ‘em, maybe.”
Ling pressed her right eye to the crack between the two screens. But for Eddie’s injuries, they looked like an ordinary pair of boys. Jake was dusting the plaques with his sleeve.
“Your school’s divided into factions and territories,” he said. “Gym belongs to the kraken, zombie hangs out in the parking lot with the stoners, the qi-lin lives here on stage—”
“Qi-lin,” interrupted Eddie. “The Drama spook—
the deer?”
“Ling’s deer.” Something about being named scraped her skin, like a cold butter knife dragging over her flesh.
“So?”
“One sacrificial student a year,” Jake murmured. “Spooks here, sleeping. I wonder why they’re awake now?”
“You’re asking me?” Eddie said.
“I’m not asking you, actually.” Jake turned his head, looking straight into Ling’s peering eye.
Dammit. He knew. He was of the spirit world, and he was asking her.
Reluctantly she emerged from her corner.
Eddie whirled, startled, his good fist raised and the plaster cast crossed protectively over his chest. It wasn’t much of a threat, but suddenly Xian was galloping down the steps, placing herself in front of Ling, head lowered to butt as she pawed at the floor. The pose sparked a dim urge within Ling to shove Eddie. Kick his ass off our turf, part of her whispered.
“It’s okay,” Ling said softly to Xian, who snorted in disbelief. She ached to touch the gold and turquoise mane; instead, she kissed the air between the big deer eyes. The qi-lin’s expression softened. Ling’s urge to protect Props faded.
Eddie peered behind her screen. “This is where you vanish to?”
He did notice when she wasn’t around. Ling fought a smile.
“Flirt on your own time, kids.” Jake stretched his talons.
Eddie bristled. “We aren’t—”
“Come on, Ling. Cough up.”
“My sister sees, same as me,” Ling interrupted. Her face was warm, and she locked her eyes on Jake. “It’s a family thing. She went here before me. Marianne Schoeder’s sister Ellie was her best friend.”
Jake let out a little rattle. “And . . .?”
Ling made herself go on. “Ellie had a stone. It’s smooth and round, like a mooncake. Someone found it, way back. Maybe thirty years ago?”
“Way back,” Jake said. “You newborns.”
“The grade twelves say one student keeps the stone, and before they graduate they have to pass it on. The keeper of the mooncake stone is protected. Their spook is strongest.”
Strangers Among Us Page 18
