Dead Set

by Richard Kadrey

  “You’ll do great,” said Zoe, stealing a half slice of toast from her mother’s plate.

  “Hey!” her mother said. “Now I’m going to starve to death!”

  “Don’t worry. It’s your first day. They’ll take you to lunch,” said Zoe cheerfully.

  “You think so? That would be nice,” her mother said, her voice dropping into a low, thoughtful tone. “If they don’t and I faint at my desk, I’ll tell them it’s my daughter’s fault.”

  “Say, do we still have that old Polaroid around?”

  “The camera? Yeah, it’s in one of those boxes behind the couch. The one marked ‘Random Household,’ I think. You going to take some pictures?”

  “Yeah. I thought maybe I’d shoot some stuff around here for Julie and Laura.”

  “Great idea,” said her mother distractedly. She set her coffee cup and plate in the sink. “Is my hair okay?”

  “Great.”

  “See you tonight.”

  After her mother left, Zoe thought about what she could to do to get ready. She should have known Ammut wasn’t going to let her get away. She’d killed his mother, even if she hadn’t meant to. And Valentine had warned her that the snakes wouldn’t finish him off. He’d marked her window for two nights running. She was certain that he’d come for her tonight. He liked threes.

  Gathering the clothes she wore in Iphigene, she left them in a pile by the window. In the bathroom, she checked the cabinets for rubbing alcohol, but didn’t find any. She dug through the boxes in her closet and found an old diary with a few dollars hidden in the spine. She got dressed and walked to the corner.

  The liquor store sold cigarettes individually, for a dollar each, and on the counter were little glass tubes that were labeled as cigarette holders but which everyone with two brain cells knew were actually crack pipes. On the shelves were brightly colored candles set in tall glass holders with pictures of Jesus and saints she’d never heard of. There were dusty boxes of ancient laundry soap and pet food, but she couldn’t find any rubbing alcohol. But she noticed that the store seemed to have every kind of liquor known to man. She went to the counter, where the bored clerk was watching a talk show on a small television propped up on a milk crate, and pointed to a pint bottle of vodka on a lower shelf, a cheap off-brand with a white plastic screw-on cap.

  “How much?” she asked.

  “You got ID?” asked the clerk.

  Zoe leaned around the man and saw a hand-lettered sticker reading “$3.99” by the vodka. She put five dollars on the counter, took another five from her pocket and set it on top. It was all the money she had. The clerk looked her over for a moment. Zoe looked right back at him, hoping her scratches and bruises made her look older. The clerk took a small bag from under the counter, slipped the bottle inside, and twisted the top closed. As he handed it to her, he swept the ten dollars off the counter and into the pocket of his baggy chinos.

  “There’s no drinking in front of the store,” he said.

  Zoe took the bottle back to her room and hid it under the mattress. In the living room, she found her mother’s cigarettes and the disposable plastic lighter. She threw the cigarettes in the trash and took the lighter to her room, slipping it under the mattress with the vodka. She went into the kitchen and found a small box of laundry detergent and put it in the pocket of her heaviest winter coat.

  She napped as much as she could during the afternoon so that she could stay awake later. She tried to will herself not to dream, but it didn’t work. When the dreams came, they were confusing, a murky combination of Iphigene’s worst sights—the dying dead, the flying snakes descending on her father—and the tree fort where she and Valentine had played. The fort and tree were burning and the snakes she’d seen there once before had overrun the field.

  When she got into bed that night, Zoe wore her old, scuffed combat boots, along with her winter coat, her jeans, and Ammut’s oversize pants that she’d stolen in Iphigene. She was hot and uncomfortable fully dressed under the covers, but if what Mr. Danvers had told the class about snakes was right, it could work. She lay down and closed her eyes, but she didn’t fall sleep.

  After all her preparations, she still didn’t know if she was ready. Not “ready as in having no plan.” She had a plan for once, as ridiculous as it was. No, she wasn’t sure she was ready mentally to act, to do what needed to be done. It had been easier in Iphigene, threatening a kidnapper, taunting Emmett in the café, fighting the dying dead with her bare hands. None of it was completely real, and the parts that were real worked within a whole different set of rules from this world. She wasn’t the same person here. She felt smaller and more vulnerable. The thought of going back to school the following week made her queasy. Would anyone have even noticed her absence? Absynthe, probably. Maybe Mr. Danvers, still the most interesting adult she knew. If everything worked out tonight, she’d see if she could find him a tooth to pay him back for the one she’d stolen.

  She lay in bed for hours, listening to every footfall and creak in the building. Someone was playing some techno very quietly. All that came through the wall was the rhythmic thumping of the bass. A baby wailed miserably, stopped, and then in ten minutes started crying again. Car alarms and sirens went off distantly in the street below.

  Sometime after two A.M., a shadow crossed her window. She opened her eyes a little more, but kept very still. There was definitely something outside the glass. She heard scratching noises and the sound of ripping nails as something pulled at the window frame. Then it stopped, and everything seemed to go quiet.

  Her window exploded into the room, in a shower of glass and splintering wood. Something heavy landed near the foot of her bed. Zoe rolled to her right, onto the floor and away from the shadow that was rushing toward her. All the extra clothes she was wearing seemed to be working the way she’d hoped. They hid enough of her body heat that the shadow ignored her and attacked the warm spot on the bed where she’d been. The shadow brought down its knife, stabbing the crumpled sheets over and over again, until the box spring underneath cracked.

  Zoe slid toward the window with her back pressed against the wall. As she reached the end of the bed, one of her boots came down on some broken glass, crunching loudly. The shadow looked up and lunged across the bed for her.

  The flash on the old Polaroid blinded him, but in the millisecond before she dropped the camera and ran for the window, Zoe got a good look at him. The white glare of the flash lit up Ammut’s cobra head in stark relief. His face was more monstrous than ever. When the young snakes had smelled his living blood back in the café, they must have gone wild. Most of Ammut’s face had been torn off, exposing the bones and taut muscles around his mouth. His black tongue darted out, tasting the air, but Zoe was already climbing out the window. Ammut lunged for her, but she got her foot out just in time and he tore his arm on the shards of glass rimming the window frame.

  Zoe banged up the fire escape, trying to keep her head clear and not to panic. As she put her foot down on the top step, the old metal gave way, and the step collapsed under her. She fell on her face, and when she rolled over, Ammut was almost on top of her. She kicked at his injured face with her boot and he howled in pain. As he fell back he slashed the air with his knife, catching the side of her injured ankle. The cut hurt, but not enough to stop her. She hopped the last couple of steps to the roof and looked back. Ammut wasn’t there. Zoe turned in frantic circles trying to find him. She didn’t see anything. There was a scrabbling sound behind her and she turned just in time to see Ammut leap at her from the drainpipe he’d climbed.

  He landed on her hard and they rolled over and over across the roof, coming to a stop with Ammut on top. Zoe could smell the thick snake blood trickling from the wound she’d opened up when she kicked him. His tongue darted out, tasting the air. Trying to taste my fear, she thought. Ammut grabbed Zoe’s throat, digging his dirty human nails into her skin, and raised
the knife over his head.

  “For Mother,” he hissed.

  Zoe took her hand from her coat pocket and threw a handful of the dry laundry soap into Ammut’s eyes. He screamed, this time more in fury than pain, and swung the knife down in a shimmering arc at Zoe’s head. She bit his wrist and twisted her head. The knife slammed into the roof, burying itself up to the hilt, close enough to tear away strands of Zoe’s hair. She dug her teeth into Ammut’s wrist and threw the rest of the soap. Ammut let go of her throat and she squirmed out from between his legs while he rubbed the soap from his eyes with one hand and twisted the knife from the roof with the other.

  Zoe got up and limped to the far side of the roof as quietly as she could. A few seconds later, Ammut managed to pry the knife loose from the roof and he stood up. Zoe held her breath. He still rubbed his eyes, squinting and cursing, trying to get the last of the soap out. He knelt down on his haunches and blinked. What looked like an extra, transparent eyelid came down, clearing the soap to the bottom of his eye, where he wiped it away with the back of his hand. Zoe knew she didn’t have much time. Ammut was already turning his head this way and that, scanning the roof for her body heat.

  The cool San Francisco night was touched with fog, and there was a slight breeze that carried the smell of car exhaust and pizza from the joint around the corner.

  Zoe took the vodka from her back pocket and poured it on the T-shirt she’d left to air out days before. The smell caught Ammut’s attention. His tongue darted out, trying to find the source of the smell. Zoe’s pounding heart felt as if it was going to crack her ribs. This was it.

  She unbuttoned her heavy winter coat and let it fall to the ground. Ammut’s head immediately snapped in her direction. He charged forward, his jaws wide and distended, as if he wanted to swallow her in one gulp. Zoe took a step back so that her heels were hanging off the edge of the roof. She waited until he was halfway to her.

  As Ammut reached out to grab her, Zoe flicked the plastic lighter once, twice, and held it to the vodka-soaked shirt. She threw herself down hard as she tossed the burning shirt high into the air behind her. With her eyes closed and blood pounding in her ears, she heard Ammut run past her and off the roof.

  Zoe’s heart wouldn’t slow down. She was paralyzed where she lay, afraid to open her eyes, afraid to move, imagining Ammut standing over her, his jaws gaping wide. But nothing happened.

  Finally, she forced her eyes open and looked around. She’d heard right. Ammut wasn’t there. She was alone under the stars. Too out of breath to stand, she crawled the few feet to the roof’s edge and looked down. The shirt was still burning faintly in the alley five floors below, but there was no body. A pillar of gray ash eddied and danced in the crosscurrents as the night breeze swirled in the narrow alley. A few minutes later the ashes were gone, drifting into the street, waiting for the first rain to wash them down the sewer all the way back to Iphigene.

  She limped back down the stairs to her room. Her bleeding ankle was hurting, and she’d jammed her shoulder when she’d hit the roof. Inside, Zoe’s mother was standing in the middle of the wrecked bedroom looking lost, one hand clamped over her mouth. As Zoe climbed through the window, her mother asked uncertainly, “Zoe?”

  “It’s okay, Mom. It’s me.” Zoe limped over and dropped onto the edge of her broken bed. Her mother came and knelt beside her, moving her hands over Zoe’s face, her arms and legs, checking to see that she was still intact. Zoe winced when her mother touched her shoulder. Her mother drew her hand back.

  “We should get you to a doctor,” she said.

  “And pay for it with what?” Zoe asked.

  “Don’t worry about that,” said her mother. “I’ve got a job now.”

  “Listen, Mom,” Zoe said, feeling down beside the bed. Every part of her hurt, but there was something left to do. “Everyone in the building probably just heard that window break and someone’s already called the cops.”

  “Good,” her mother said. “Let the cops do something useful for a change.”

  “When they get here, I’m going to tell them it was a crackhead who followed me home from school the other day. But that’s a lie, okay?” She looked into her mother’s eyes and saw growing fear and suspicion. “The other night when I told you about seeing Dad and Valentine in Iphigene, and Queen Hecate and Emmett, you said you believed me, but you didn’t really, did you?”

  Her mother rubbed Zoe’s back in small circles. It was a comforting feeling, something she’d done when Zoe was a little girl and sick. “I do believe you. Mostly. I want to believe it.”

  Zoe nodded. “It’s okay. I know how crazy it all sounds,” she said. “But it wasn’t a crackhead who broke in here tonight.” She handed her mother the Polaroid photo she’d picked up off the floor. “It was Emmett,” she said.

  When the police arrived, Zoe told them the story about the crackhead. By the time he’d escaped to the roof, the crackhead must have panicked and disappeared. She told the police that he’d made all kinds of disgusting sexual remarks and threats the day before. She told them everything she knew they wanted to hear. The cops nodded and took notes without seeming particularly interested in any of it. Before they left, they gave Zoe’s mother a little card with a case number on it. The one thing the cops did that made Zoe grateful was shoo away the other tenants who’d clustered outside the apartment door, gawking and trying to get a look at the crack girl.

  When everyone was gone and she’d locked the apartment door, Zoe’s mother took the photo of Ammut from the pocket of her robe and stared at it as if trying to force a rational answer out of the flat, overly lighted image. Finally, she dropped it onto the living room table and shook her head. “I believe,” she said. Then she turned to Zoe and asked, “Did you throw all my cigarettes away?”

  “Yep.”

  Later, when Zoe fell asleep on the couch, there was nothing but peaceful blackness. She didn’t dream at all, or if she did, none of it was important enough to remember.

  That Monday, while Zoe was getting ready to go back to school, the insurance company called. They’d located her father’s paperwork and were finally processing the claim. Considering how important that had been to her at one point, it felt sort of weird and anticlimactic.

  They didn’t bother with the story about a sick relative. Zoe was still bruised and scraped enough when she went back to school that her mother gave her a note about a car accident during a family road trip.

  “I hope everyone is all right,” said the woman in the school office who took her note. She was a nice older woman who wore a gray sweater over a white blouse covered in small yellow flowers. Pinned to the blouse was a silver rhinestone pin in the shape of a fluffy cat. Two greenish-yellow rhinestones set into the cat’s face served as its eyes.

  “That’s a nice pin,” said Zoe.

  “Thank you, dear. It reminds me of my poor deceased kitty, Fuller.”

  “I once saw a snake with green eyes like that.”

  The woman gave a shudder. “Oh,” she said, “I don’t like snakes.”

  “Neither do I,” said Zoe.

  The school day passed in the same vague way that they’d all passed before she’d left. The classes weren’t bad. They just hadn’t become any more interesting while she was gone. Besides, she knew she could pass most of them by reading the textbook the night before any big tests, so she didn’t worry about it. The teachers were all coolly polite when she handed each the permission slip allowing her back into each class. Some clearly didn’t remember that she’d even been in their class, which, she had to admit, made sense considering how much school she’d cut in the weeks before she’d followed Emmett into the sewer. The good news was that since she’d allegedly been in a car accident, she was exempt from making up all the homework she’d missed. Each teacher gave her an outline of what the class had covered during her absence. None of it looked very hard. Zoe had no doub
t that she could get caught up with most of her classes by the weekend.

  Mr. Danvers’s class was in the afternoon and she was nervous about going back. Did he know that she’d stolen from him? She hoped he wouldn’t make a scene in front of the whole class.

  He’d just finished taking the roll when she entered the class and handed him the permission slip. Zoe kept her gaze on his desk until he spoke.

  “Our wanderer’s returned. How are you doing?” he asked. When Zoe looked up, he was smiling down at her.

  She relaxed a little. There wasn’t going to be a scene after all. “Pretty good, thanks,” she said.

  “You look like you were doing stunts for the next Mad Max movie.”

  “I feel like it, too.”

  He signed her form and handed it back to her. “I’m glad you’re okay, Zoe. It’s good to have you back.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll get you the information on what you missed after class. Stick around for a couple of minutes, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said, and headed for her seat in the back of the room. She didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone else in class, so she looked at the anatomy charts on the back wall. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Absynthe and turned to give her a rueful little smile. Absynthe had added purple extensions to her hair while Zoe had been gone. They looked really nice over her blue hair. Absynthe pointed to her face and lifted her hands to mime What happened? Zoe mouthed, “Later,” and sat at her usual seat in the back.

  After class, Zoe hung around while Mr. Danvers copied some notes from his lesson plans for her. When he handed them to her, he said, “Don’t go getting in any more accidents for a while, okay? You don’t talk much in class, but it’s nice to know that at least someone smart is out there listening.”

  She tried to suppress the smile that wanted to break out on her face. Instead she blushed and said, “Thanks. I’m not going anywhere for a long time.”