by Abra SW
Lacey’s shoulders slumped slightly before she pulled them straight. “Well, we need to speak to the authorities. We’d welcome an escort—”
“Sorry, lady. I’m on duty.” He glanced over at the laborers hauling bricks. “Hey, one of you want to guide these strangers? It’ll count toward your food ration. I’ll square it with your gang boss.”
A small woman with sweat running down her forehead and dirt in the creases of her neck scowled in the policeman’s direction, but after she dropped her stack of bricks—nearly half as tall as she was—on the pile of building materials, she trotted over to them. “I’ll do it, boss,” she volunteered. “I know the way to Central.” In marked contrast to her slum accent, she wore what had once been a fine dress, before it was dirtied and patched with lower-grade fabric.
“I bet you do,” the policeman said. “No tricks, hear? You deal straight with these people, even if they are strangers. The commissioner wants trade.” His face soured and his hand tightened on his ham sandwich. “Not like we’ve got anything to trade, though, unless you’re looking to collect bodies.”
“No, thank you,” Lacey said politely.
“No tricks,” their new guide promised. “I don’t want to be an example.” She turned to Lacey. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Name’s Deborah Rowan.” She stuck out her hand.
Lacey took it, dirty though it was. When they shook, she felt the strength of that small, calloused hand. “Lacey Miller. Charmed, I’m sure, Miss Rowan,” she murmured.
“Call me Deb.”
Lacey inclined her head.
The policeman grunted. “You lot carrying any contraband? Food, weapons, liquor?”
“No, sir,” Ginger assured him.
The policeman seemed to weigh the value of searching them against the inconvenience of having to set his ham sandwich aside. “You look like decent people, so I’ll let you go without a search this time. If you are carrying contraband, they’ll find out soon enough, and you’ll regret it.” He jerked his head. “Go on.”
“Thank you, officer,” Ginger and Lacey chorused.
Deb smiled sweetly. “This way, lady and gents!”
She strode ahead, leading them past the fortification-in-progress and out onto the stone bridge that arched over the river. “Welcome to New York City,” Deb said. “We call this the High Bridge, because if you look over the edge, you’ll see it’s mighty high!” She chuckled at her own joke. “Its fancy official name is the Aqueduct Bridge, but if you call it that when you’re trying to find your way back here, nobody’ll know what you’re talking about.”
Lacey froze. “You said aqueduct? We’re walking across an aqueduct?”
Deb shrugged. “Yes.”
“The water aether could explode at any moment!” Lacey hoisted her skirts. “Run!”
Michael bolted. Ginger peered at the bridge with a thoughtful expression on his face, and Christopher dithered beside Ginger.
“No, no!” Deb caught Lacey’s arm. “It’s safe. No aether engineering involved. We know all about the exploding water mains. That’s in the warnings posters.” Deb rolled her eyes. “ ‘Do not use water taps or pumps. Use only pumps marked as safe by the Sanitary Squad. Do not use mechanical lighting unless the same applies.’ I tell you, I’m not fond of coppers, but the guys on the sanitation squad are made of solid brass, if you know what I’m saying.” She stomped her foot on the bridge. “This is just water flowing downhill. Good thing, too. Without fresh water, we’d be drinking from the harbor.” She made a face. “That’s not a good idea if you want your bowels to stay regular.”
“Oh.” Lacey dropped her skirts, feeling a flush creep across her cheeks. She’d made a fool of herself. She lifted her chin and pasted a perfectly correct smile on her lips. “Well. Thank you.”
Michael returned, rather shame-faced. Lacey gave him a charitable smile. “Not your fault,” she said. “I was mistaken.” Her expression gave no sign that the words tasted like gall on her tongue.
Once they were halfway across the bridge, out of earshot of the officer guarding the wall, Ginger mused, “Police putting up safety warnings and checking the aetheric devices. Police as city guards. It will be interesting to learn if the mayor is a figurehead only, or if he’s controlling the police force.”
Lacey shot him a quelling look. “Interesting? If we play this wrong, we could all end up hauling bricks like those poor people building the wall.”
Ginger refused to quell. “Exactly. Interesting, like I said. The bit where they said they want trade was promising.”
“You mean the bit where they said they didn’t have anything to trade?” Her voice rose incredulously. She glanced ahead of them, but their guide kept walking as if she hadn’t heard anything. “Except bodies?” She shook her head and stalked away to walk beside their guide.
On the other side of the river, Lacey stopped and looked around. No guard waited for incomers. No pedestrians bustled around on errands. No children played in the street. No hackney cab drivers waited to pick up custom. The only sign of life was a mangy dog pissing against the wall of a jewelry shop. When he saw he had an audience, he slunk away into the shadows.
“Where is everybody?” Christopher asked.
“Going about their lawful business or sitting in the dark in their apartment,” Deb answered. “Come on, keep it moving. It ain’t good to linger.”
As they moved through the deserted streets of Manhattan, Lacey couldn’t suppress a crawling feeling, as if a venomous spider were walking over her skin. There was no visible reason for it. Three- and four-story brick buildings rose placidly on either side of the street, staring down on the travelers with darkened windows. A light dusting of snow gilded the wrought iron balconies and fire escapes. No laundry hung out the windows. Colorful shop awnings arched over the sidewalks, but the shops beneath were locked and shut, or boarded shut. She’d seen far worse in Boston. Here, there were few broken windows, and most of those had been boarded up. Only one building showed signs of a serious attempt to set fire to it. But Boston had been filled with life, even though the dead were everywhere. Here, the only sound was their own footsteps. The only company was the dead.
“Did she linger?” Ginger jerked his thumb at a female corpse dangling from a flag pole. Swelling distended her rotting flesh. She wore the dress of a laboring-class woman. The worn fabric had been carefully patched with cloth scraps that almost matched. “Is that what happened to her?”
Deb glanced at the body and away. “She did something. I don’t know what. I don’t know her. She died a while ago. She doesn’t have a sign on her neck, so it was probably during the riots.”
“So you did have riots!”
“Not for long. Turns out the commissioner was a patrolman during the Draft Riots. He saw his partner torn to pieces by a mob, and he swore he’d never let that happen again. He had a plan to keep riots in check. It worked. We’re all peaceful and law-abiding now.” Deb’s face set in grim lines.
“Surely that’s a good thing?” Lacey said.
“Sure. Sure it is.” Deb plowed forward through the streets. “Just ask the dead.”
They walked in silence for the next couple of miles, passing perhaps a dozen pedestrians along the way. All hurried past with their eyes downcast and their shoulders hunched. They also passed men who seemed to be of a different sort. Those men leaned against doorways or sat on stoops, watching those who passed with hard eyes. They weren’t visibly armed except with a short truncheon, but they still struck a certain intimidating note. Each wore a blue band tied around his upper arm.
“If it’s so safe,” Christopher asked, “why are there no shops open? Why are there so few people in the streets? And who are they?” Christopher jerked his chin slightly at one of the blue-banded, a rough-looking fellow sitting on a stoop smoking a cigarette.
“Most of the shops that are still open moved closer in to the center, so they aren’t drawing people out here,” Deb answered. “You’ll see soon. There’s
no workers because the corpse gang and the authorized salvagers already moved through here.”
“Authorized salvagers?” Ginger raised an eyebrow.
Deb jerked her thumb at a bloated and fly-bit corpse hanging from a tree. “Looters get strung up.”
“And them?” Christopher began to raise his hand, but Deb grabbed it.
“Don’t point,” she hissed. “They know you’re tourists because of the way you’re rubbernecking. But you’ve got a guide—that’s me—so they’ve decided you’re not trouble. Don’t change that.”
“Okay, okay!” Christopher pulled his hand back. “So who are they?”
“Special patrolmen,” Deb said quietly, not looking in the man’s direction. “Police commissioners have the power to appoint special patrolmen when there might be riots and suchlike. We only have the one commissioner now—” she didn’t specify what had happened to the others, “—and he used that power.” She shrugged. “They’re not so bad, I guess. They know what it is to be poor. Most of them aren’t bullies, especially after the commissioner hanged a couple who, ah, ‘overstepped their authority.’ There’s just so many of them, all snooping and prying, it makes a body nervous.”
Particularly, Lacey thought, a body who hadn’t necessarily been on the right side of the law even in regular times. “Where did he get them all?” she asked. “Surely they wouldn’t just volunteer.”
“It’s not a bad choice. I volunteered to carry bricks out to the wall. You think I’m the volunteering type? People volunteer real fast when food is on the line. The corpse gang? Volunteers. The authorized salvagers? Volunteers—and I wish I could have gotten in that gang. I hear they can slip a little something in their pocket as long as it’s not contraband.”
Lacey blinked. “Compared to the corpse gang, I suppose the special patrolmen have a pleasant job.”
“Yeah, the special patrolmen have it pretty good. Worst they have to deal with is cracking skulls if there’s trouble. Most of them come from the street gangs so they’ve got no trouble with that.” She eyed a patrolman enviously. “They wouldn’t take the girls, though.”
Lacey refrained from comment.
“Anyway,” Deb said, “we’re almost there.”
“There where?”
“There where people moved. Once the corpse gang cleared out the apartments, if they left a zero chalked on the door, well, you could move right in. People feel more comfortable living near each other, instead of in a dead zone. More company, fewer memories. The stores followed. You’ll find ones that are actually open here. It feels like the city used to, except most of the neighbors are new. “ Deb chuckled harshly. “The new New York!”
“Where are we going?” After the reaction of the policeman at the wall, Lacey didn’t want to ask directly about the Mayor.
“The rail-line. The commissioner’s got some of the horsecars running again. They only run on a few of the lines they used to, but it’s better than walking. You won’t find a horse-drawn cab these days, not unless the cabbie’s extremely well-armed.”
Lacey didn’t ask for details. She didn’t want to know, not in a city this hungry. Of course, the instant she tried not to think about it, her imagination conjured up all sorts of gruesome images. She was very glad they hadn’t ridden into New York.
Seemingly tiring of the question-and-answer routine, Deb strode ahead.
The new New York was a shadow of what the city had been before the aether storm, but it was a shadow cast by a living thing. Everywhere were posters warning about prohibited behavior and allowed consumables. The sound of babies crying penetrated through apartment walls. Laundry flapped from windows overhead. Women swept building stoops. Men hustled past with bags of—well, in these times, best not to think too closely about what might be in the bag. Within two blocks, Lacey saw a grocer, a butcher, and a ladies notions shop that were open for business. The ladies notions shop seemed best stocked and least populated.
“Here we are,” Deb said, stopping in front of a jewelry store whose proprietor eyed them with a particularly hungry expression and then turned away with his shoulders slumped when they clustered under a sign that said, “Horsecars stop here.” Deb sighed. “Poor bugger. Pardon my language. Wonder how long he’ll last? Nobody’s buying gewgaws.”
“When will the horsecar come?” Michael asked.
Deb shrugged. “When it comes.”
“We should split up and go look for Mr. Doom,” Michael said to Christopher. “He won’t be in a government office.” A look of doubt came over his face. “I don’t think so, anyhow.”
Deb laughed. “Doom’s everywhere, Mister. No looking needed.”
“No, no!” Michael hurried to explain. “Mr. Ben Doom is a monkey who ran away from the circus. Have you heard anyone talk about seeing a monkey? Have you seen him?”
The girl blinked, and for a moment the mask of cynicism fell from her face. “A monkey, here? Wouldn’t that be a sight! I’d trade my ration coupons for a week to see something like that!”
“That’s rather the idea,” Ginger muttered under his breath.
Deb sighed. “No, I haven’t seen anything like that. No one else has either. They’d talk about something like that, you can bet on it!”
Michael squared his shoulders. “We’ll just have to keep looking, then. Somewhere, somebody has to have seen him!” He strode away.
“We’ll turn this place inside-out,” Christopher said to Ginger, with what Lacey thought seemed like extra emphasis. “See you back at the camp.”
Ginger nodded. “I’ll keep an eye out too. Good luck.”
“Likewise!” Christopher turned and trotted off after Michael, who was already making inquiries of a young girl holding a basket of flowers for sale. The girl shook her head.
Watching them, Lacey said, “Finding a stray monkey in a city this size—or persuading the powers that be to let us set up the circus and maybe even to resupply us? I think they have the easier task.”
Sometime later, the horsecar stopped in front of them. Seeing it did not change her mind. The horse-pulled streetcar was three-quarters full, and every face inside was tight with anxiety. On the front platform, two hawk-eyed policemen with rifles to hand accompanied the driver. “Central Police Department,” the conductor announced. “All aboard.”
“That’s you,” Deb said, nudging them.
“You’re not accompanying us?” Lacey asked.
“Not me.”
Lacey must have looked as adrift as she suddenly felt, because Deb relented and added, “Look. It’ll be okay. The commissioner isn’t unreasonable. And if you need a guide later, you can usually find me at the Glorious Green Grocer. Spend half my day waiting in line for rations there, I do.”
“Thank you.” Lacey shook the other woman’s grimy hand again, vigorously, before stepping into the horsecar. As the conductor blew his whistle one last time and the driver giddyaped to the horses, she leaned in to Ginger and said quietly, “We asked to see the Mayor, the authority in charge. Why did she take us to the police station?”
“Maybe he’s under arrest,” Ginger answered whimsically.
The horses sweated as they pulled the car along the rail lines. Inside, the passengers did, too. The air inside the car was sharp with the acrid tang of anxious perspiration.
Lacey’s nerves were wound too tight for her to pay much attention to the passing scenery. Still, she noticed that every mile or so, swollen fruit hung from tree or lamppost.
“City’s going to smell a lot worse once the thaw sets in,” Ginger said after they passed one particularly gruesome specimen. “If the city was more Northern, it wouldn’t be this bad. They’ve had just a few too many warm winter days.”
“In the spring, sickness will hit hard, with all the corpses around.”
“Dead bodies, in and of themselves, don’t spread disease as much as you might think. Ask the doctor.”
“Perhaps I will,” she said, giving him a sideways look and pointedly not asking,
And why do you know so much about dead bodies?
When the conductor blew his whistle and shouted, “Central Police Department,” Lacey and Ginger clambered down obediently. The other passengers pressed past them, swarming up wide stone steps to an imposing brick building. Iron bars guarded the windows. Special patrolmen and uniformed policemen teemed around the doors.
Lacey snagged the sleeve of a passing patrolman. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, chin thrust forward. “We were hoping to see the Mayor.” This time, she would get a straight answer.
The patrolman looked at her with an expression she couldn’t decipher. Surely, she’d done nothing to earn his—distaste?
He jerked his thumb upward. “Look your fill.”
Lacey and Ginger followed his gesture up, to the flagpole—and the corpse dangling from it. His features were too distorted to recognize. In life, he’d been a portly man. He wore fine clothes, though his trousers were soiled. Nobody had stripped the corpse’s body. His fingers puffed around heavy golden rings, and the mayor’s chain of office dangled from his neck like a noose.
The placard hanging around his bloated neck read, “Accepted bribes.”
“We will talk to the commissioner, then,” Lacey said numbly. “He would seem to be our only choice.”
“You saw how he treated the mayor,” Ginger said in an undertone, after looking around to be sure nobody was within earshot. “That was a man with power in this town. We sure don’t have any. What do you think he’s going to do with us?”
Chapter 11
~* * *~
A Hive of Scum and Villainy
Michael Hunter, the Animal Handler
New York City
Michael stared unhappily at the tall brick buildings. One look at those wrought-iron balconies and fire escapes, and Mr. Ben Doom would be up them and across the roofs. Or he might go to ground in one of the thousands of abandoned apartments. Or he might perch in a tree in one of the parks, maybe sharing limb-space with a dangling corpse. Or—
The city was so big, it could swallow him whole and lick its lips afterward.
