Gods of Chicago: Omnibus Edition

by Sikes, AJ

  “Okay, then—” Brand said, cutting himself off as more gunfire peppered the soil nearby. “They’ve got us pinned down here. I need to get a hold of a crab. There’s nothing for it but to get one of those things and take it around with us, getting as many pictures into that viewer as possible. Now, when I give the word—”

  Conroy was already moving, rolling out from under the park bench and racing across the lawn. Bullets licked the night sky and picked up dirt and dusted snow. Brand tore after the kid, yelling his name, but Conroy kept on and made a beeline for the remains of the old well. He reached it and slid onto his belly beside the hole. Then he was down and vanished from sight.

  Brand raced for the hole as more gunfire crackled into the night. He felt the pills of lead whipping by him and picking at the earth, telling him to run faster and harder. Then he saw the crab. The tiny automaton cantered around the ruined well, its little legs picking a path over cinder and shattered brick. Conroy must have spotted it and gone after it.

  Mortar rounds whistled in again, taking apart the treeline and benches in the far corner of the park. Roots and branches flew in all directions amidst clouds of earth and rock. The night shook and Brand felt his legs turn to jelly. He went down just shy of the hole and crawled on his belly the rest of the way. Inside the hole, Brand saw the splintered end of a ladder; its timbers poked up from the darkness, all bent and shattered like a thousand knives. The kid shouted up from the bottom and Brand spun himself around. He felt his knee brush against something hard at the edge of the hole as he slid his legs over the edge and felt for the ladder with his feet. A mortar round whistled down and Brand dropped into the hole. His feet hit mud at the bottom just as the round came in, sending earth and rock down on top of them.

  #

  Bullets hissed their deadly whispers overhead and Brand shrank into the mud, retreating further from the opening above. Conroy hung onto the ladder beside him, eyes wide with shock. His back pressed against the damp earth of the shaft, dislodging clumps of soil that tumbled to the pile of rock and mud below. Brand lifted his feet from the muddy earth and clapped a hand on the kid’s shoulder.

  “Just keep your head down, okay? We’ll get outta this.”

  Conroy nodded and lifted a finger to point up the ladder.

  “The viewer. I—”

  Brand followed the kid’s finger upward and saw the leather strap of his viewer hung up on the broken post of the ladder above them. Hazy smoke wafted overhead in the glow of firelight from the burning neighborhood. Brand tasted ash and then the shaft closed in around his vision. The splintered ends of the ladder stood, jagged against the sky, like the fangs of a giant serpent that threatened to swallow him and Conroy whole. Brand’s teeth chattered a cadence of terror. Conroy had a hand on Brand’s shoulder now, tugging or shaking. The kid’s mouth hung open, then he worked his jaw like he was shouting.

  All around Brand was silence except for the shelling and the zipping passage of lead over the hole. Another mortar round whistled in and fell nearby. The shaft shook and sloughed off another layer of soil as debris rained down from outside. The musty taste of soil mixed in Brand’s mouth with the acrid flavor of gun smoke. Underneath it all, Brand caught the rich smell of burning wood.

  Brand’s gut turned and twisted into a ball of agony. He looked over at Conroy. The kid had his head tilted back, looking up and out of the hole. Brand followed his line of sight up the ladder to where the photo viewer strap had hung up on the broken rungs at the top.

  Conroy climbed the ladder and Brand shouted at him.

  “Just leave it, Conroy. We can’t go up there. We can’t help anymore. We’re sunk.”

  The kid was still moving. Brand lashed a hand upwards, grasping, frantic, and feeble.

  “Conroy! Come back, Conroy! You’ll get killed!”

  #

  Aiden threw himself up the ladder. He could hear Mr. Brand shouting at him, but the gunfire and explosions outside muffled the words. Just before he reached the top, Aiden looked down into his boss’s face. He saw a man he’d never met. A twisted, terrified face stared up at him. Muddy streaks framed Mr. Brand’s shuddering mouth.

  “I’m all right!” Aiden shouted down.

  Mr. Brand didn’t seem to hear him. He was looking around the hole now, shaking and reaching out to touch the walls. When he looked back up at Aiden, his eyes were hollow, empty of everything but fear. Tearing his eyes away from that face, Aiden turned to the mouth of the hole. Clouds of oily smoke sailed overhead and bullets whipped at the air. Aiden’s heart dropped into his shoes when he saw the viewer strap hung limp against the ladder.

  The photo viewer had to be just beyond the shaft. If he kept down low, he could grab it and be back to safety inside of two seconds. Aiden looked down between his feet one last time. Mr. Brand’s empty eyes stared up at him, seeing nothing. Hissing out a curse, Aiden tensed to climb from the hole. He waited for the gunfire to break and sprang up, dodging around the split timbers of the ladder. He dropped flat and strafed his gaze around the hole, looking for the viewer. He spotted it as another mortar round whistled in.

  #

  Brand’s vision shook with the impact of the blast above. He clapped his hands to his head and tightened his guts. He looked up after the dirt stopped falling on him. The broken ladder extended from the mouth of the hole, but Conroy wasn’t on it. Panic rushed through his arms and legs and he flung himself at the ladder only to tumble backwards into a heap in the mud.

  He’d been left to die again. Alone. They’d all gone over the trench wall and left him. All the young men he’d talked to about homes and wives, their mother’s cooking and their best girls waiting for them. Those boys never came back to the trench. They never showed up at Dearborn to meet him like they said. Never took him to meet their sisters or their wives’ friends. And how could they? Almost every guy he’d talked to in the trenches had been killed.

  Brand shook and felt a shivering start in the seat of his pants. He looked around him and saw he was ass down and up to his hips in mud. With a disgusted grunt he pulled himself free, clinging to the rungs of the ladder in the trench wall. An explosion sounded above him and he put a hand to his belly, holding himself together like he’d learned to do. Like every man who’d stood in a trench learned to do if he wanted to sleep in clean pants. Brand let himself chuckle at the irony.

  Debris came down into the trench and he put a hand over his head. A shower of dirt fell into the hole. Then something heavy came down, striking his hand and sending a dull ache through his fingers and wrist.

  “Aggh!” Brand shouted, shaking his numb hand and looking around for a sign of what hit him. Nestled into the mud at his feet was a square leather case. A single lens, smeared with mud, stared up at him from the top of the case.

  “No good for taking pictures with a black eye like that.”

  Brand leaned down and scooped the case out of the mud. He rotated it and examined the metallic object held snug inside the worn leather jacket.

  “What kind of dope makes a camera with no place for the film?”

  A voice called down from the top of the trench in reply. “Did it break?”

  Brand looked up, saw a kid’s face peering down at him, streaked with mud and what looked like blood on one side.

  “Aw hell,” the kid said, his face bent around a frown.

  “Conroy! Conroy, you’re alive! Get down here!” Brand climbed with all his strength, skipping rungs until he came eye to eye with the kid.

  #

  “Conroy. What’s it like out there? You made it back! Where’d you leave Jenkins and Gordon? Tell me they’re all right.”

  “The photo viewer, Mr. Brand. I— Did it break?”

  “What—” Aiden’s boss shook his head and cast his eyes around him, down into the shaft, up into the smokey sky, and then back
into Aiden’s questioning face.

  “Get in here you dunce!” Mr. Brand reached over Aiden’s shoulder and grabbed the heavy coat, pulling him into the shaft head first.

  Aiden gripped the ladder and levered himself around his boss’s back. He walked his feet down the side of the shaft for support until they were in their original position, two startled men hanging onto a broken ladder to nowhere in the middle of a battlefield.

  “Mr. Brand? You all right?”

  “Yeah, Conroy. I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  Aiden let his boss have a minute. Mr. Brand combed his fingers through his hair, scraping away dirt and splinters.

  “How about that, Conroy? I thought—”

  Aiden searched his boss’s face, watched it slacken and shift away from the tortured fearful mask it had been a moment ago.

  “Mr. Brand?”

  “Eh? Yeah, Conroy. It’s me. You did good getting this back for us,” he said, hefting the photo viewer. “Sorry I. . .I’m sorry, Conroy.”

  Aiden took the praise in stride and ignored the apology. He worried more about what came next.

  “Does it still work? I didn’t mean to drop it. Our good luck it wasn’t blown to pieces and then I go and drop it.”

  “It works fine.” Mr. Brand fiddled with dials on the box and it gave a low hum.

  Aiden flinched when his boss broke out in laughter and held the viewer out. Aiden took it and stared at the view screen.

  He saw himself in snowy black and white reaching for the viewer, his face set and determined as a soldier’s.

  “There’s a crab up there, Conroy. Now’s our chance to show the people what’s happening.”

  Chapter 51

  Up above, the shelling and gunfire had stopped. Brand went up the ladder and told Conroy to keep the viewer close and to stay down in the hole. At the top, Brand scanned the sky. The gunships were gone. Only the broadcast ship remained, still mocking the scene with its fabricated picture show and phony reports.

  Brand cursed under his breath and edged up higher to look out from the mouth of the shaft. Desolate ground surrounded the old well. All around were bits of trees like bone fragments, hedges scattered like confetti, and pieces of rock mixed in with churned earth and mud. Around the park in every direction, flames stood out from rooftops, waving to Brand through the dark night. Haze and soot filled the air. A clicking sound to Brand’s right nearly sent him down the ladder in fright. But he spotted the crab and lurched out of the hole to grab it. He slid in the mud and overshot the little device, falling against a mound of rocks and earth.

  Conroy came out of the hole after him, carrying the viewer against his chest. The crab turned toward them, flicking its single lens back and forth. A whirring sound came from the machine and a light shone out from a small port in its shell. Brand scurried around to its right and scooped the crab up in his hands. The single eye rotated left and right as Brand, still crouching, carried it over to Conroy. He aimed it at the ground as he approached and told the kid to get the viewer out. Conroy worked the lever and soon enough the view screen showed an image of Brand lying on his belly, his face smeared with mud. The image moved then, showing Brand rising slightly onto his hands and knees, then crouching and coming forward, to the right edge of the image view. Then only his foot remained in the view screen.

  “This thing gets more than one picture,” Brand said, examining at the crab. It was a new type he hadn’t seen before. At the base of the little machine’s shell, on the back, Brand saw the trademark of Tesla Electromagnetics.

  “C’mon,” he said, holding the crab with one hand over its lens. “This is our ticket to the truth.” Brand set out at a march, dodging around fallen trees and the small craters that turned their course through the park into a trip backwards in time. Conroy slid in a mud puddle and nearly went down. Brand slowed their pace, but kept moving. If he stopped, he knew he’d find himself back in the trenches of memory.

  “Let’s get into the neighborhood,” Brand said as the kid tagged along beside him, eyeing the crab like it was a box of candy. His face drooped at the mention of the neighborhood though.

  “What’re we after? I thought we needed pictures of what’s happening.”

  “We do. I’d like to get some of the people who live around here. I just hope if we find them we can still ask them for a picture.”

  #

  Following his boss through the ravaged landscape of the park, Aiden darted his eyes in every direction, and waited for the sound of gunfire. His excitement had waned in the space of their last few steps. Maybe it was the way his boss talked about seeing people and asking for pictures.

  They marched through the park, finally reaching a small grove of trees at the edge of the devastated ground. Mr. Brand stepped into the trees and made to crouch down among them, but he backed up and motioned for Aiden to follow him around the grove. As they moved on, Aiden looked for a reason for their detour and saw two bodies tumbled together in amongst the trees. Two soldiers were lying dead, their guns missing and their boots, too. Their bloody faces told Aiden the men had been beaten up. Aiden looked at his own hands and remembered the soldier he and his boss tried to save in the trees earlier. He could still feel the sticky wetness of the man’s blood on his palms.

  Bringing his eyes up to level again, Aiden returned a half smile from his boss and then retreated into his thoughts as they paused by the last tree. He wanted to get somewhere safe and soon. The man who had died in the trees haunted Aiden’s memory. Don’t, don’t, don’t. Aiden heard the word and felt the weight of it like a command. He kept adding to the soldier’s dying breath. Don’t kill me. Don’t leave me here. Don’t let me die.

  Mr. Brand was moving again, and Aiden made to follow. He stopped in his tracks when his boss gave a jerk and stood stock still in the night. Worried that Mr. Brand might be panicking again, Aiden went up and put a hand to his shoulder to jostle him. Instead, Aiden saw the city behind the curtain, and he saw who his boss really was.

  #

  Brand felt a hot piercing run from his guts up to his head. He shook his head and stiffened where he stood. The world around him split apart, fracturing like window glass around a bullet. The trees flickered in and out of sight, and the nearby buildings did the same. Like when he’d been with Chief on the bike. He saw the world of memories behind the curtain, and he saw the city he knew, the real world around him with the grove and its gruesome secrets, the burning houses, and the blackness of night swelling from every shadow. Chicago City wavered and Brand struggled to focus on anything solid, anything that might tether him in place against the threatening nausea that upended his perspective and made the world into a halo of memories that belonged to other people all mixed in with his own. He felt a touch on his shoulder and sensed Conroy trying to nudge him.

  The sensation inside Brand shifted, from a burning insight to an expanding intimacy. Brand shook his head, unable to believe what he saw or deny what he felt. The sense of expansion filled his chest, like he’d taken a breath that could blow out every fire in the neighborhood. He felt his presence extend out into the city around him, touching everything and everyone in the space of the park. He felt and saw Conroy, standing behind him and filled with a warm light that emanated trust, like the bond he’d felt with the boys in the trenches.

  Brand felt the Governor’s soldiers, too, still roaming the streets of the neighborhood. They appeared in Brand’s mind as steel-gray automatons marching with a single purpose and no direction of their own. He saw the citizens fighting back, too. Some appeared as reddened husks, empty of anything but a desire for battle. They picked up weapons from fallen soldiers they had just beaten to death. The war-maddened fiends fired wildly at their enemies, furious with bloodlust. Others looked empty of everything but a need for vengeance, their will a black vortex, whirling them around the neighborhood and guidi
ng them only to satisfy that single goal. Still others danced in and out of Brand’s inner vision like extensions of himself; they seemed prepared to survive at any cost but were moving away from the fighting and from a swelling sensation that Brand could only describe as the city’s pain.

  Brand saw these people in his mind’s eye, saw them helping each other, fleeing and running and lending a hand to anyone they found along the way. Gypsies and negroes held each other as bullets flew overhead. Jews and Italians. German and Irish and Greek. They all held together like a net spread around the ruined parts of the city to catch anyone who might fall.

  Brand felt the most intimately connected to these people, and he sent his gratitude out to them, and a promise that their work would not go unnoticed. And in a flash, his every nerve flared with fire. Brand turned to Conroy. The kid leaned against a tree, his mouth open in shock, staring at Brand like he’d just done some kind of magic trick. Brand opened his mouth to tell the kid it was all right, even if he had no idea what all right meant anymore. As the first words hit his tongue, the tree Conroy leaned on quivered and seemed to ripple. The kid fell back as the air around the tree lifted aside, revealing a Bicycle Man. Brand had to smile when he saw his old friend again.

  “You picked a fine time to give me the rest of story, Chief.”

  Chief’s eyes didn’t return the kindness Brand felt in his heart. “I’ve got something here for you, Mitch,” Chief said, reaching into his satchel. He withdrew a slender metal object, like a cigar tube stopped by corks at both ends. Brand felt his smile drooping, but forced humor into his voice.

  “Funny stuff from you, and at a time like this. That’s rich, Chief. Now how about it?”

  “It’s a— It’s a message. For you,” Chief said.