Battle Hill Bolero

by Daniel José Older

C’s eyes narrow on the ghost, and there’s death in them, the Deep kind. But he relents, stomping off to brood for a bit.

  “Where does that leave us, then?” Riley asks. It’s a fair question, genuinely meant. He’ll be a good commander, provided we give him the chance to command.

  “I used to coach the football team at Bellington High, where I taught,” Sylvia Bell says.

  Riley shakes his head. “You fulla surprises, Sylvia.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. We had a move we’d do in a bind—the Plowman’s Plunge, the kids called it. Last down and you’re just a few yards from the touchdown line, you run it, right?”

  “Depends who the QB is,” Riley says.

  Sylvia wisely ignores him. “The offensive line forms a moving fortress around the quarterback, right? Then they just plow through the defense as one, blocking any tackles as they go.”

  “Hardcore,” Talbot says.

  “The front entrance to Council headquarters will be the most heavily guarded. But the side door where Carlos goes in? Less so. We run the Plowman’s Plunge on them, C and Sasha will be able to get inside, drop the ngks, and then escape in the confusion.”

  Vincent lowers his hood and smiles. “I like it.” I hadn’t realized how young he is; that goatee is just a wisp on his wide, friendly face, his eyes a child’s. He must’ve been just fifteen or sixteen when the cops blew him away.

  “But who—” Riley starts; then he stops.

  “Squad 9, of course,” Sylvia says.

  “It’s a suicide mission.”

  “Squad 9,” Sylvia says again. “It’s what we do.”

  “Besides,” Talbot points out, “they got the ’catcher uniforms. That oughta send just enough confusion through the ranks to give ’em some element of surprise.”

  Riley rocks back and forth once, making up his face. I can tell he doesn’t like it—it’s the same face Carlos made when I told him I’d be going along on the mission. We all wait for Riley to get over it, and, to his credit, he quickly does. “Bet,” he says with a grimace. “We’ll begin assembling in the hills. Your team is ready to roll?”

  Sylvia smiles like she’s been waiting her whole life to roll up on the Council in a burly crew of renegade ’catchers running interference for two halfies carrying tiny spirit-annihilating freaks in duffel bags. “At your command, sir.”

  —

  The sight of the four telemons marching through the field toward us sends a chill through me. Carlos and I stand at the cemetery gate. A gray haze encroaches on the pale sky; the air tastes of snow. Around us, Squad 9 stands at attention, their flowing capes fluttering in the icy wind.

  “Are the telemons like you guys?” Sylvia asks.

  Carlos shakes his head. “I don’t think so. There’s something about those guys that’s not of here. Or was never really alive.”

  The wave of nausea and generalized bitterness hits like a hangover typhoon. I squint through the first blast of it. Beside me, Carlos rubs his face and scowls. A murmur of discontent roils through Squad 9.

  “Not a shred of humanity,” I say. “More like an extension of the ngks themselves. Or just a vehicle—a man-shaped taxi.” Which makes me think of Reza. And the twins. Who I may never see again. Which is why I’d been trying not to think too much about them. The last conversation with the cabin folks was strained and confusing. They don’t even let Gordo talk to me anymore because he can’t lie for shit, so it’s Reza who brushes off all my attempts to find out what the hell is going on out there. Xiomara and Jackson happily gurgle and chatter into the phone whenever I call, though, and I guess that’s about all I can ask for right now.

  “It would be too much to ask for the man-taxis to deliver the packages, huh?” Sylvia mutters as the telemon spread in a line before us and gently lower the four matching duffel bags. “I mean, it’s like, their job, you know?”

  The towering, stone-faced men unzip their bags and we all shove the blueberry gum Baba Eddie got us into our mouths and start chewing ferociously. It’s working, I’m sure, but the whole world still ripples with despair, and unease bristles from my gut to my forehead.

  “The rule is,” Reza told me when we were staking out one of our first runs, “when you on the prowl, everyone you love in life is already gone. Not even dead, just gone. They never existed. You’re alone in the world, a beacon. You feel me?”

  I nodded, but my face told her I was unconvinced.

  “What?”

  “Easy to say when you don’t have kids,” I said.

  Reza raised an eyebrow. “How you know I don’t have kids?”

  It took practice, but I got the swing of it. There’s a drawer I put them in, sits in the far reaches of my mind, and that’s where they stay.

  But this chilly afternoon, as that early winter darkness menaces the edge of the sky, Xiomara’s and Jackson’s little faces won’t leave me alone. That foul ngk magic must’ve upturned my file cabinet, because I imagine Carlos the way he looked in my vision of his death, my blade entering, the fury and fear etched on his face, my name—my old name—on his lips.

  God, I hate ngks.

  “Let’s do this,” I say. The little pale monsters writhe and chuckle from their duffel bags, small heads poking out like newly hatched fetus demons. “Zip them back in please.”

  The telemons’ dead eyes register nothing. After a pause, they lean over and close the ngks back in the bags. Then they turn around and walk back into the gathering darkness.

  As Squad 9 falls into formation around us, I turn to Carlos, put my hand on his chest. “Be careful,” I say. His heart slams against my palm, and he takes in my face with a strange mix of hunger and desperation. Then he blinks and it’s gone: the warrior mask slides into place, clicks, and he’s unflappable. He smiles, a true, arrogant kind of smirk, and then kisses me hard.

  “You too. After all this, it’d suck to lose you again.”

  I roll my eyes, close them, fight off the image of those tiny, beautiful faces staring back at me. When I look back up at Carlos, my own mask is on, and I’m ready.

  —

  The ngks are heavier than they look. I have a duffel bag slung over each shoulder; Carlos has two on one shoulder, three on the other. “They can’t fucking bike their little asses up in there?” he grumbles.

  “They’re stationary bikes, man,” I hiss. “Leave it.”

  The feeling of that squishy flesh and the occasional poke of a handlebar against my back is some kind of sickening, but I manage to get used to it pretty quickly. Chewing extra hard on the blueberry gum, we find our stride, this monster made of many, moving as one out the cemetery gate and across the street.

  The wide avenues of Sunset Park bustle with Mexican families and random hipsters. Through the haze of Squad 9, I can make out the bakeries and barbershops lining the block, a fruit stand, a nightclub, a pseudo-botánica. I wonder how the Iyawo’s doing, and Baba Eddie, who saved my life, and then I think about the twins, and then I stop, return to the present, the sacks of tiny, hideous monsters pressed against my back, the throng of badass spirits around me.

  Carlos.

  We angle down a residential block, brick row houses glistening with Christmas decorations and a snow-covered Virgin Mary gazing serenely at the parked SUVs and telephone poles.

  The renegade soulcatchers bristle as we approach the wide throughway beneath the BQE. An early-evening traffic snarl rumbles along above us; porn shops, a uniform store, and a busted little Dominican place glare from across the street. The trilling anxiety of ngkness simmers along with us, occasionally blasting to fever pitch and then fading like some hellish tide. Any second now, we’ll see the front guard. Surely. They can’t all be holed up in there, right?

  But no ’catchers step in our path as we sweep down the cobbled industrial streets between two massive warehouses. Carlos and I trade a sideways glance; he shrugs
.

  “Forward to the side door as planned?” Sylvia Bell asks from her position directly in front of us.

  “Aye,” Carlos says.

  The bay is a gray splash at the end of the block, almost indistinguishable from the graying sky. The street is deserted. The shuttered windows and gloomy, rotting facade of the Council headquarters tower over us. Up ahead, cement steps lead to a rusted, graffiti-splattered door.

  “Squad 9,” Sylvia growls. “Battle formation. Blades out!”

  A rustle of movement erupts around us, and the renegade ’catchers tighten their huddle as their blades emerge. Carlos and I are inside a bristling, sharp-edged cloud of walking death. One of the ngks adjusts its position in the pack, and I shudder. Then the door flies open, and a battalion of Council soulcatchers pours out.

  “Blitz!” Sylvia yells, and Sqaud 9 flushes forward. Carlos and I stumble along, nearly carried off our feet by the rush of spirit. The soldiers smash into each other with a whoosh and the clang of ghost steel. One of our entourage drops immediately, and two more stumble backward into Carlos, clutching their blade arms. But the Council ’catchers scatter to either side, unable to hold off the sustained forward motion of Squad 9. We push through the last few holdouts, crushing one beneath us, and suddenly the world becomes much, much darker.

  We are inside.

  The last time I entered Council headquarters it was to receive my official pardon for existing, and my whole body was heavy with the brand-new knowledge that I’d killed Carlos. It overshadowed the shallow joy of being able to come out of hiding (I was barely hiding anyway) and tainted the greater relief of having helped eradicate the Blattodeons. The twins were safe—that was the most important thing—but the pain of what I knew was about to happen still cast its shadow as Botus grinned across the table at me. I would tell Carlos—worse: I would show him, allow him into the unearthed memory. And he would understand that his last word was my name and it was a prayer, one for mercy, not love. And that all of this hell that he lived now, this lifeless life, this ongoing death—that’s because of me. I did that. And then he would walk away. And I’d be left alone, standing beneath that gray sky by the bay, broken and twisted inside, and maybe I’d never feel whole again, having found this man I love and then lost him, again and again, by my own hand.

  Botus closed the meeting with a nod and a grin and a chilly handshake, and I walked outside and there was Carlos, and I let him in on our ghastly secret, and he walked away, and I stood there beneath that gray sky by the bay, broken and twisted inside, and hated him and hated myself and hated the Council and hated the sky.

  Now Carlos draws his blade as we move side by side down an open, misty corridor, and I draw mine. Squad 9 has widened its berth, and it looks like we have a moment to breathe before the next wave of ’catchers shows.

  “Gonna drop one here,” C says, slowing as the squad fans out around us. He lowers the bag and gingerly unzips it. Immediately, the aggravated ethereal buzz heightens around us. The ngk’s ugly little head emerges. It adjusts itself beneath the bag and then brushes itself free, emerging already mounted on the rickety little stationary bike and pedaling away.

  I have to yawn to clear my ears as some kind of slow-crawling death dirge erupts through me. “Just make sure you don’t touch ’em when you’re opening the bag,” Carlos says. “We wanna get em as spread out as possible so—”

  “We split up,” I say. “You go that way; I go this way. We each take half of Squad 9 and meet up back on the battlefield.”

  Carlos flashes a grim smile. “Indeed.”

  “I love you,” I say, surprising even myself as I pull him close for a kiss.

  “I love you too,” Carlos says, then blinks a few thousand times.

  “Alright, go.”

  “Incoming!” Sylvia yells.

  “Go,” I say. “Don’t die.”

  He smiles, turns, and then he’s gone.

  “Again,” I whisper. And cringe.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Caitlin

  Yeah, it’s been a shitty week.

  Two weeks.

  Whatever: I’ve been in the hole.

  First of all, worst of all: there’s a tiny modulating loop of sound that won’t stop cycling through my left ear. The doctors say it’s tinnitus, but I’m not stupid. That’s the last sound Mama Esther made, that final, triumphant cackle as she exploded outward in a million smithereens and rained fire, metal, and stone on all of us. My fire. My men’s fire. Rained it right back on us as she died.

  And that laugh.

  It was a winning laugh, not the desperate final howl of the doomed.

  And some shard of her laugh must’ve lodged in my earhole. That’s all I can figure, because it was there waiting for me, looping endlessly, when I woke up at the New York Presbyterian Burn Center. And it’s there still, today, two weeks later, as I walk up the chilly, misty stairwell in Council headquarters.

  Fuck ghosts; I can see my fucking breath in this place. And I’m small—circulation gridlocks in all those tiny rivulets and vesicles. HQ needs central heating, is what I’m saying, but I get it: it wasn’t built for me.

  Still: fuck ghosts.

  They came to collect me three days into my hospital stay. I was just starting to enjoy myself too. Got one of the orderlies to show me how to disable the limiter on my morphine doser, so life was, you know, good. As good as it can be when one’s holed up at the recovery unit. My burns weren’t even that bad, not really. All superficial, but everywhere—that supersonic boom Esther went out with was no kinda joke—so they brought me to the burn center as a precaution. A chunk of rock nearly brained me though, and mainly I’m on bleed watch.

  Plus that laughter. That put a damper on everything.

  The ’catcher squad showed up while a nurse was taking my blood pressure. Materialized in the shadowy part of the room in that awful ghost way that reminds you that you have no privacy whatsoever when it comes to the dead. I rolled my eyes, sent the nurse away, and snarled a “What?” at them.

  “Subminister Fern,” the squad leader said with a bow, “we have orders to bring you in.”

  “In?” For a second, my pulse sped up. Mama Esther’s cackle ratcheted up a notch.

  “For protection. It’s a Council-wide security measure. There’ve been . . . attacks. Small bands of rebels have targeted various Council entities.”

  “Terrorists.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Call them terrorists,” I said. “If you call them rebels, they’ve already won. Never mind. Where do they want me?”

  “Council headquarters, ma’am. They’ve prepared some very accommo—”

  “Hell no.”

  Except hell yes, as it turned out. A whole squad of ’catchers can be very persuasive if they need to be, and I didn’t have it in me to try and mindmeld them.

  So here I fucking am, and here the fuck I’ve been in this dank, breezy, death-filled trash hole, this extra-strength abortion of industrial proportions with its drip-drops and creaks and groans, shattered, boarded-up windows, and rusted file cabinets, rusted table tops, rusted light fixtures, skittering rats, and random, greenish puddles.

  I haven’t been to the place that ghosts call Hell, but this, right here, is Hell.

  I walk up another flight, pause at the landing, panting. More from irritation than exhaustion, though my energy’s been flagging since the blowup. And Mama Esther keeps cackling. A ’catcher squad bustles past, barely slowing to salute. I give them the finger. Somewhere a few floors down, there’s yelling.

  Something’s happening, maybe. Or maybe it’s just more phantasmagoric fuckshit.

  Worst part is, I actually miss those people that could loosely be described as my “friends.” Samantha, Gillian, Brittany. I’m sure they’re at Luther’s right now, maybe raising a toast to me. Or maybe forgetting I ever existe
d, like the tawdry bitches they probably are.

  I even miss Raj. Esther cackles louder. I wonder if I could slip out of this rotten anus of a building and secure a one-off. He texted me a few times in the days before the blowup. I’m sure I could wrangle back into his bed and ride him till this cackling stops and I remember what peace feels like.

  “Subminister Fern.” Seems a ’catcher has rolled up on me while I dawdled in this puddle of self-pity. I look up from the mire and cast her a withering glance. She is undaunted. “The chairman has requested your presence in the boardroom.”

  “Do you think if the chairman hadn’t requested my presence I’d be on this stairwell? I am coming.”

  “Due respect, ma’am: you’ve been standing still for ten minutes.”

  If that’s all the respect that’s due, I must not be worth much. “Get out of my way.” I scowl, shoving past the ’catcher and storming—slowly, achingly—up the next flight of stairs.

  —

  What the hell do you want? I’m about to shout when I finally make it to the top-floor boardroom, but there’s such a flurry of excitement when I walk in, the words get lost. Ministers and ’catchers alike flutter and fuss in a frenzy across the full length of the room. I notice a few of the High Seven in the mix, clucking and muttering about strategy with the rest of ’em. They’ve removed the massive table, and maps of various boroughs and parks cover the walls. At the far end, Botus sits in his worn leather executive chair, conferring with Juan Flores.

  I’ll be honest: few things shake me, but I still get a chill every time I see that faceless fuck. There is something very wrong with him. More wrong than the average, wrong-type creep that I deal with. Being near him is like drinking a whole glass of milk and realizing there was a dead mouse at the bottom. And then the dead mouse looks up at you and smiles.

  And it’s only gotten worse since the blowup.

  “Subminister Fern,” Botus says, smizing luxuriously. “So nice of you to join us.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I grunt, making my way down the long room toward him.