Battle Hill Bolero

by Daniel José Older

  “You . . . you saved me,” I said.

  “Don’t get misty eyed about it. I made a strategic choice. You’re worth more to us in a fight than the chairman, that’s all.” I help him to his feet, and we stumble toward the corridor, where mayhem reigns. Soulcatchers run wild, screaming, vanishing, collapsing. Some of them cut each other down in a frantic bid to escape the endless howling.

  Flores shakes his head, and we launch into the madness. “And we’re about to be in a hell of a fight.”

  CYCLE FOUR

  WAR

  Sólo dejar desolación, gemido,

  El imperio macabró de la muerte,

  Sobre el pueblo entero destruido.

  Cada vez que me acuerdo del ciclón,

  Se me enferma el corazón.

  But all that remained was desolation, groans,

  The macabre empire of death,

  Over the entire destroyed nation.

  Every time I remember the cyclone,

  Suffering overtakes my heart.

  “El Trío y el Ciclón”

  Trío Matamoros

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sasha

  Things have gotten pretty dire when that satanic screech rips through all of us.

  For a flickering second, I think I’m going to pass out—the world gets murky, and the floor seems to veer toward me. I hang on, though, come around with one hand pressed against the filthy warehouse wall, the other on my face, both blades on the floor.

  Never let go your weapons, Sasha. Reza’s voice, like some dapper, gunslinging Yoda with infinite more game and a Crown Vic. It brings me back to myself.

  I drop to one knee, retrieve them, glance up and down the corridor. The soulcatchers that had been cornered are shrieking, collapsing, fading. We’d already lost half the dozen or so Squad 9ers we came in with, and two more shimmer into nothingness when the ngk screech peaks.

  We have to get out of here.

  I grab Captain Bell and help her up, her ghostly luminescence quivering in the half-light of the hallway. “We leave the way we come in,” she says.

  “And now’s our chance.”

  “Carlos?”

  I shake my head. “The plan is to meet at the battlefield, so that’s what we do.” Bell nods and gathers the troops. Carlos knows what he’s doing, but that smile he flashed as we parted spoke of some devious plan, and a few of the Squad 9ers that left with him met back up with us, saying they’d been separated and Carlos had all but vanished . . . I can’t think about it now. I start out ahead of the squad, cutting down the scattered ’catchers that haven’t fled yet.

  A few round the corner behind us and come tearing up the corridor. I don’t think they pose much threat, but I’m relieved to see Squad 9 achingly gear up anyway. The renegade ’catchers collect their dropped blades and stumble into a loose formation around Bell. I think it’s more instinct than protocol at this point; I’ve never seen a squad so attached to their leader. Bell gives a hoarse cry and charges. The Council ’catchers hesitate, and that’s probably what does them in. Squad 9 barrels into them like a tattered stampede, massacring the ’catchers where they stand.

  They turn their weary eyes to me.

  “This way,” I say. “And kill anything that moves.”

  —

  The winter night air is life. It’s the sudden silence after what felt like a million years of earsplitting wretchedness. It’s peace in the thick of battle. We barrel out the door, these four renegade soulcatchers and I, and stumble-run down the block like sprinting drunks on a binge. A few scattered Council ’catchers lay recovering on the cobblestones, but they’re too stunned to care about our ragtag group. Behind us, the mass exodus has begun. I glimpse back when we reach the wide expanse of Third Avenue beneath the BQE. ’Catchers, ministers, and bureaucrats flood out of the Council’s windows, walls, and doors. Their tattered shrouds flutter down from the upper floors, some already fading into nothingness.

  There are so many of them. Hundreds, still alive and recuperating.

  A bellow erupts from somewhere in the building, and I cringe. It’s one I’ve heard before: the throng haints are loose. And they’re pissed. One emerges from the front wall of the Council, those long, mouth-covered arms stretching all the way across the street as its eyeless head lurches from side to side in agony. Another begins breaching the wall behind it, and I’ve seen enough. Captain Bell’s sharp intake of breath lets me know she has too.

  “It’s beginning,” I say. “We gotta let the others know.”

  I throw up a silent prayer that Carlos is okay, wherever the hell he is, and then the five us turn our backs on all that festering destruction and run.

  —

  Riley’s voice booms out across the open field as we enter the cemetery. Even from here, I can hear the urgency in his call.

  I’m guessing the Council knows what they’re about to walk into, one way or another. They’re incompetent on many levels, but generally it’s an incompetence born from the inability to wield such a colossal, corrupt mass of dead bureaucrats. And anyway: trying to regulate the line between life and death would bring out the useless fuck in even the most organized desk maven. But they’re not stupid. And when it comes to protecting their power to define, they become suddenly ruthlessly efficient. They’ll walk into our little trap alright, but they won’t be caught unaware.

  “And no more.” Riley’s words echo along the hillside and seem to cover the whole sky. Some ghost voice-projection trick. I’m guessing he’s made the same calculation as I just did and said Fuck the element of surprise in favor of the terror of his Godlike voice ruling the battlefield before the fight has even begun. “I said, no more!” he thunders. And then I hear it: a reply so gigantic and unwavering even the throng haints must flinch: “No more!” a thousand ghosts rage at once.

  “Tonight, we say no more!”

  “NO MORE!” Their voices become one. I feel it in my knees, my gut, as the surviving Squad 9ers and I dash up the hill toward the Gothic spires of Green-Wood’s inner gate.

  A burly groundsman stands next to a wheelbarrow, gazing uneasily at the hill above him. He has no idea, I’m sure, that hundreds of angry spirits lay in wait, their translucent fingers clutching axes, long blades, daggers, rapiers. But he knows something’s up, and he’s not thrilled. He shakes his head, mutters, “Fuck this.” Then he drops the wheelbarrow and starts closing up for the night.

  “For as long as we’ve known death, we’ve known the weight of this Council on our back, directing our every move, their long fingers reaching into our hearts and minds!” Riley hollers.

  “NO MORE!”

  “For as long as we’ve known death, we’ve tasted the bitterness of overregulation,corruption, brutality, murder. Massacres!”

  “NO MORE!”

  The last few tourists make a hasty exit. I walk through the gate without being seen and disappear into the shadows of the cemetery.

  “We have been beaten down, held back, kept from our loved ones, burnt, tortured, broken, silenced.”

  “NO MORE!”

  “They have torn us from our loved ones, killed our families.”

  “NO MORE!”

  Up ahead, something glints in the darkness beneath a copse of trees. Squad 9 and I move up a sloping field between elaborate crypts and weeping angels.

  “We have played by their rules, but tonight . . .” He’s relishing this moment. Joy and rage pulse through every word. “Tonight we say NO.”

  “NO MORE!”

  “We say no!”

  “NO MORE!”

  “No fucking more!”

  “NO MORE!”

  Swishes of movement flicker along the tree line ahead. We’ve reached the outer rim of this magnificent ghost army, and I feel their combined power rattle through me. The commanders of each legion stand out front�
��I see Saeen, Kaya Doxtator, Vincent Jackson and his Black Hoodies. Further along, La Venganza and Talbot head up their troops. In the distance, some gangly, elongated heads poke out over the trees: the river giants. The whole army faces a pillared mausoleum. Riley’s on the roof of it, his back to us, his soldiers spread out before him. Damian hovers on one side; Cyrus Langley stands solemnly at the other.

  “We are many, and we spring from many sources.” Riley’s voice is hoarse with strain and emotion. “But tonight we form one river, one tide. In life, we were felled by cancer, murder, tragedy, accident. Tonight, we are murder; we are tragedy. Blood and mayhem is our name. They are damaged, and their cause is weak, but they have the numbers. That means we must be the destroyers. No peace, no negotiation, no mercy. We strike once, and that’s to kill.”

  An eerie silence fills the air—the first hesitation I’ve felt from them. I glance over at Bell, and she has all love in her eyes. Riley is doing her proud.

  “Are ya with me?” Riley yells into the silence. He sounds suddenly like he’s working the crowd at Summer Jam.

  “Yaaaaaaaaah!” The revolution screams back. The battle cry lasts several moments. Behind us, the Council army has begun gathering at the cemetery gate. I see Damian glance back, then nudge Riley, who turns to look. A scowl crosses his face, a flash of fear maybe. I wonder what he sees. He turns back to his troops.

  “Tonight,” Riley rasps, “we rise as one and change the world. Say it!”

  “Tonight we rise as one and change the world!”

  “Tonight we rise as one and change the world!”

  “Tonight we rise as one and change the world!”

  From somewhere in the masses, another group of voices rises: “No! More! No! More! No! More!” The chant becomes a relentless, driving beat as the rest of the army repeats: “Tonight we rise as one and change the world!”

  I need to see whatever it was that threw Riley. Bell and I exchange a glance and then make our way through the tombstones to higher ground.

  “Tonight we rise as one and change the world!”

  “NO! MORE! NO! MORE! NO! MORE!”

  I step up on a headstone and climb to the roof of a crypt. Sylvia Bell is beside me.

  “Tonight we rise as one and change the world!”

  “NO! MORE! NO! MORE! NO! MORE!”

  Another mass of voices rises. It’s high pitched, like many, many children, and then I realize that’s exactly what it is: the ghostlings have formed their own contingent—fed up, I’m sure, with doing the Council’s menial dirty work and annoying little errands, fed up with endless dead-lives of perpetual servitude and aimlessness. They have come. Their song is a haunting coo, familiar somehow; it stretches beneath the other two chants, threading them together, punctuating the breaks, a relentless oooooooh that chills my bones.

  “Tonight we rise as one and change the world!”

  “NO! MORE! NO! MORE! NO! MORE!”

  “Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhh!”

  And then I recognize it: the song I played for Carlos so many months ago, that first night we spent in each other’s arms. The one I’m told he couldn’t stop humming the whole time we were apart. The ghostlings must’ve picked it up from him and made it their own.

  For a moment, I just let the whole thundering war song sweep over me, let it rise inside me. Then I turn, and my breath catches. The Council ranks have swelled, almost doubled from what we thought they’d be. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of soulcatcher helmets stretch out across the field below us and clutter the dark streets along the cemetery. Throng haints stomp amongst them—at least a half dozen, including that one gigantic one.

  “Tonight!” Riley’s voice rings out over the others. “For all our lost loved ones! For our own survival! For Mama Esther! Tonight!”

  The chant comes even louder at the mention of her name: “NO! MORE! NO! MORE!”

  “We rise as one and change the world!”

  “NO! MORE! NO! MORE!”

  “It begins now!”

  Riley draws his blade, turns toward the enemy, and hurls into the air.

  Carlos

  I can’t stop grinning.

  There are more ’catchers up in here than any of us had imagined. It may be what crushes the revolution.

  Still: the grin stretches unabated, undimmed, across my face.

  The ngk call has faded finally, but their relentless ick still sullies up the air; even with stick after stick of this blueberry gum, their ethereal hell burns through me.

  And yet . . . this smile won’t stop.

  It’s not that I’m happy, I realize as I race down another corridor and round a corner. Three ’catchers help each other along toward me, one flickering in a way that means he won’t last long. I cut through them before the first can raise his sword, leaving them in fading ruins behind me. Collapse against a wall. Shove some more gum in my mouth. Press forward.

  Where was I?

  Up ahead, Botus’s retinue shimmers around another corner, just out of reach.

  But I know where they’re going.

  It’s not that I’m happy. I burn down this corridor quickly—there’s no one to stop me, and I’m bolstered by the fresh gum.

  I’ve been happy, and it’s not this. This is a skull’s rictus more than any expression of joy. You could call it, perhaps, satisfaction.

  Not even the satisfaction of the win—not yet. This is the satisfaction of a plan well carried out. Botus couldn’t kill me, not yet—I have too much valuable information. And I knew those ngks would sing soon enough. It was just a matter of waiting. Potentially very painful waiting, but what’s pain in the face of delicious revenge? It’s nothing, that’s what it is. It’s temporary. Revenge is forever. A closed loop, after so much openness.

  The stairwell is a ghastly ruin: no banister, trash strewn about everywhere, missing steps. A ’catcher is halfway down from the floor above where I stand; she sees me, turns around, and disappears back where she came from. I hurl down two flights, almost tripping several times, pause on a landing to catch my breath.

  Below, Botus is cursing out his retinue: “Stay tighter, maggots. Don’t you dare lapse in your duties. We join the battle soon enough, and you’ll have your chance to die gloriously if that’s what you seek. For now, you stay alive and by my side.”

  Can’t. Stop. Smiling.

  The muscles in my face ache with this perpetual, stupid grin. If I wasn’t me, I’d probably punch myself in the face just to wipe the damn thing off. Down another flight, then another; then the world gets even darker: the basement level. A few scattered wall lights flicker here and there, but mostly it’s shadow. Botus’s men flicker up ahead, an accidental beacon. From the floor plans Mama Esther provided, I have a pretty clear idea how this all works: like the other floors, the basement has a single corridor wrapping around its perimeter that crosses to the far side at three different places. The rest of it is a cavernous supply room and some electrical and heating closets tucked away in various corners. The entrada should be at the far end of the corridor we’re currently hurtling down.

  The air is stank down here, but by the grace of whatever creepy physics applies to ngks, their presence seems concentrated above them: the roiling degradation is almost entirely absent. I jump over a trashed office desk and come down in a full sprint. I can make out the flapping, translucent capes of Botus’s escort.

  We can’t be far from the entrada now. If they make it, there’ll be an entire swarming army of ancient, dilapidated ghosts waiting for them on the other side: Hell’s lost-soul welcoming committee. Those geriatrics mean sanctuary for Botus and his men; sliding amongst them and disappearing will be no thing, and I’ll have to hack my way through just to survive. They love a fresh body, and they’ll swarm me in seconds.

  I run harder, trying not to think of the last time I was racing someone to a
n entrada, the blade leaving my hand, the sound of it renting Trevor’s flesh, his body collapsing on the cold December ground of Prospect Park.

  I draw, closing on the rear guard, slide my bad leg to the side, and pivot off my good one, launching forward with a roar. The first meets my blade with his but doesn’t see the dagger coming from my other hand. I catch him across the neck with a long slice, nearly decapitating him, and parry a thrust from one of his companions as I stumble forward, catching my balance. The second ’catcher swings again; I barely have time to deflect his blade away when another comes at me from the other side.

  “Finish him!” Botus yells, breathless and not even trying to conceal his terror. “The rest of you, with me!”

  He’s making a dash for it. The downside of the ngks’ foulness being antigravity is these ’catchers have recovered some too. I throw my back against a wall, swatting away jabs as I move. They’re underestimating me because of this limp—I can feel it in their casual attacks. Considering how dire this is for their boss, they shouldn’t be this cool. Fine. I feint back a half step, then launch forward, kicking one in the chest with my bad leg—yes, it hurts—and brushing the other blade aside with mine. He staggers, and I catch him full in the face with this dagger.

  I behead his buddy as he’s stumbling to stand and then run, harder this time, sweat coating me, both blades drawn, down the corridor toward Hell, knowing all the while that I’m too late—Botus is gone.

  The infinite emptiness of Hell lies ahead. I don’t slow my roll as I approach, don’t have time to get existential or cute about this shit. I run full speed, point first into the entrada, fully ready to slash my way through whatever old fogies get between me and Botus.

  Instead, I find nothing.

  An empty field stretches around me. I make it for about the size of Council HQ. Beyond the field, twisted towers and half-melted row houses reach toward the broken, purplish sky. The air is sharp and tinged with that acidy scent of endless death.

  But where are the dead?