Angelfire mt-2

by Marc Zicree

  Magritte looked at him for a moment, then took Goldie’s hand. She led him toward the wall. It thinned to transparency before her and she floated in, pulling Goldie along with her. The rest of us followed.

  “Man,” murmured Enid. “I do not like this one damn bit.”

  The mist tingled and was bone-chillingly cold. I’d come to associate flare magic with warmth, but this billowing, ruby fog brushed us with icy fingertips.

  The reddish haze thinned and faded as we crossed the bridge. The bluff, weather-stained walls of massive buildings rose steeply before us on each side of the avenue and curved away into the gloom along the river’s course. On the other side the street was deserted and littered and silent. It was nothing like the Chicago I remembered from my last visit.

  When we set foot on terra firma again, we looked down an even deeper canyon than the one we’d just crossed-an avenue flanked on both sides by skyscrapers. Their upper floors were lost in the haze. Sears Tower was just down the street to our left; other giants competed with it to overwhelm us. Crimson light glittered on the windows high up, as if fires burned behind them. But there were no fires there. Those floors would be all but unreachable.

  “No wind,” said Goldie. “It stopped when we crossed over.”

  “So much for the Windy City,” Enid murmured, peering around. “D’you hear that?”

  Goldie nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I hear it.”

  “Hear what?” Colleen demanded.

  “The music,” whispered Magritte.

  “Blues,” said Enid. “But twisted.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” Colleen said, frowning.

  “Me neither,” I said, trying very hard to detect anything through the gurgle of water behind us. “Can you tell where it’s coming from?”

  Magritte pivoted slowly in the air, head cocked, listening. The rest of us watched her, expectant.

  “Goldie,” she said, “go up there, to the corner. Matter of fact, go around the corner so I can’t even see you.”

  Goldie stared up at her. “Maggie, no.”

  “Do it. It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not all right.”

  “I want to taste the power, but I can’t with you covering me. If this is firefly stuff, then the Storm still won’t be able to hear me. If this is the Storm, we’re shit out of luck, anyway.”

  They locked gazes for a moment, then Goldie slipped the tether from his wrist and handed the loop of nylon to Enid. Clutching his machete, he turned and made his way up to the intersection with many backward glances. With one last look at Magritte, he disappeared around the corner.

  I watched her face intently. We all watched her.

  She seemed puzzled, uneasy, and fearful in turns. “This is weird. It’s not the Storm, but it’s like the Storm. No, no, that’s not right. It-it keeps changing. And it-” She froze, and the hunted look came to her eyes. The look I’d seen when the Source’s touch was on her. The look I’d seen in Tina’s eyes more than once. “I can’t,” she said. She shuddered and closed her eyes. “I don’t want to. Please don’t make me.”

  “Maggie?” Enid took a tighter hold on her tether, tugging her to his side.

  She opened her eyes then, catching me in a hot pewter gaze. “It’s trying to talk to me,” she whispered. “I can’t let it talk to me.”

  Before I could ask her what “it” was, Goldie let out a wild yell. Thrown into fight or flight mode, we ran, weapons ready, Enid dragging Maggie in his wake. Goldie was standing on the far side of the intersection, back pressed to the wall of what had been a bank. He was looking away from us, farther down Jackson Street.

  “What is it?” I shouted, dread making my voice sharp. “What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t answer.

  I crossed the intersection on a wave of adrenaline, my eyes reflexively following his. At the bottom of the long city block, people strolled the sidewalks; a variety of wheeled vehicles moved through the intersection; there were street vendors. All eerily normal by any previous standard of normalcy. It was as if we’d stepped back in time to a Chicago that had not yet been through an industrial revolution.

  Beside me, Goldie murmured what I took to be a quotation: “ ‘She is always a novelty, for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.’ ”

  TWENTY-ONE

  GOLDIE

  Twain’s words fall off my tongue into a vacuum. I don’t hear myself say them, because there are wild animals in my head. They’ve been there since just after I went around the corner. It is as if a door has opened, letting in something that makes me doubt my already questionable sanity. In a New York minute, I’d get down on my knees and beg Cal to high tail it back across the Jackson Street Bridge, collect our horses, and get the hell out of town.

  An absurd thought. I don’t allow it access to my tongue. I pretend I’m utterly fascinated by the flow of people in the next cross street. Under the weird, hazy, demigloom of the Bubble, they float like varicolored motes back and forth across the intersection.

  “You nuts, boy?”

  I look up, wondering if I’ve inadvertently leaked mental chaos onto the sidewalk, to find Enid in my face. I realize I’ve walked about a quarter of the way down the block without any awareness of having moved. My quaking threatens to go public. If this is the beginning of a manic episode, the timing is cosmically bad.

  Nuts? “That’s the rumor,” I mumble.

  Enid plants one hand firmly in the middle of my chest.

  “What’re you thinking? You don’t even know where in hell you’re going.”

  An interesting choice of words. An unwanted chuckle bubbles out of me. I swallow it. “Sorry… um, just curious, I guess.”

  Colleen is at my shoulder, peering into my face. “Oh, jeez, Cal, look at his eyes-he’s only half here.” She grasps the sleeve of my jacket, digging in her little cat claws. “We’re not natives in Oz, Dorothy. Try not to wander off, okay?”

  “No need to be snide,” I tell her. “I get the picture.”

  Cal turns to Howard, who’s standing a little away from us, trying to hide in the shadow of a mailbox. “Fill us in, Howard. What can we expect here?”

  Howard snuffles a little and looks down the hill. “Dunno,” he mumbles. “Haven’t been in for a long time.” “Welcome to terra incognita,” I murmur.

  Cal fires a glance at me, then swings back to Howard. “What do you know?” Even I can tell his patience is fraying. “Angelfire’s welcome here.”

  Cal looks down toward the busy intersection. “We just go?”

  Howard’s face puckers as if the question perplexes him. “Sure.”

  Cal nods and turns to Magritte. “Before we go anywhere, I have to know what you sensed back there just now, Maggie. You said it was like the Storm. Is it … How, like the Storm? How much like the Storm?”

  Maggie and I trade glances. She has gotten hold of herself, of her fear. She shames me and buoys me up in that look. She knows I know.

  “It has the same … texture,” I answer for her. “It… uh … sounds like the Source, as if it’s, I don’t know, speaking the same language.”

  They all stare at me, and Cal sweeps a hand through the luminous web that binds me to Magritte. “You were half a block away from her.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Describe it.”

  “Confusing. Anomalous. I don’t have words… It’s like a … a stew of energies, sounds, voices, textures. A kaleidoscope. Dark. Sentient. Aware.”

  Cal’s eyes are narrow cat slits. “One voice, or many?” Maggie quivers. “One voice,” she says, and I shake my head, unwilling to let the half-truth slip by.

  “In front of many,” I add.

  “ ‘My name is Legion.’ ” Doc had probably not meant to be heard. He blinks as if our sudden regard is blinding, and shrugs. “The Gospels. Christ casts a demon out of a young boy and asks its name. That is the answer it gives: ‘My name is Legion.’ ”

  “Well, I’m freaked
out,” says Colleen, hugging her crossbow to her breast. Her tone is light, sarcastic, but she means it. If only it were demons.

  “Like Fred?” Cal asks me. “Was it like Fred Wishart? One of the Many? A shard? A piece of the Source? Or was it more?”

  Fred Wishart was working on Uncle Sam’s little science project when it derailed. We had met him, after a fashion, in Boone’s Gap. Or at least we had met what was left of him before the Source finally tied up all its loose ends. Fred was just that, a loose end, an appendage to the Source. And he had drawn his considerable powers from it.

  A piece of the Source. “I don’t know. I can’t tell.” “Don’t know? Or don’t want to know?”

  I’m stopped by the look on Cal’s face. I realize what he’s asking and it stuns me.

  He steps closer, penetrating my defenses for the second time today. Perimeter alarms go off all over the place. “You said it yourself-it costs a lot to let the Source in. I wouldn’t blame you for blocking it out by any means you could.”

  “No, but I’d blame myself.” I wipe sweaty palms on my jeans. “Okay, let’s do this.” I close my eyes and arm myself to sample the strange, chaos vibe. To listen to the whispers in the air. But when I let my guard down, there’s nothing to listen to. There is a wall. And whatever we sensed has gone behind it. The Source has never closed itself off to me. I am the builder of the barricades; it possesses none.

  And yet… “It’s like it’s hiding from me. If this is the Source, Cal, it’s playing games.”

  Colleen turns to Cal and says, “If the Source is here, will we be ready for it?”

  “We have to be,” he tells her. “Enid, what do you need to do to jam Magritte from human sight? The way you did when Colleen first saw you.” Mentally, he has already moved on. I try to follow him.

  “I gotta sing out loud.”

  “Out loud?”

  “Don’t look at me, man. I don’t make the rules, I just play by ’em. I can jam the Storm by just thinking music. I can’t jam people’s eyes unless they can hear me.”

  “Okay. If we get into real trouble, you may just have to make Maggie disappear.”

  Enid’s dark face goes to ash. “Whatever it takes.”

  I snag Magritte’s tether and we head down toward the intersection of Jackson and Wells and our first close encounter with local life-forms. Howard hobbles along in front while the rest of us try damned hard not to look like a troop of tourist commandos. It’s difficult to appear nonchalant and harmless with a machete dangling at your hip.

  Not a single soul glances our way as we approach the intersection. It’s as if they can’t see us. The weirdness of this makes me turn back the way we’ve come.

  Anyone who’s watched a lot of horror flicks (or lived them) knows better than to do this, but I am forgetful of these mundane details.

  I catch Cal’s arm and turn him around so he’s facing our back trail. “Have you wondered why there are so many people down here on Wells and none up on Franklin?”

  “That’s … interesting,” Cal says, because behind us Jackson Street disappears into an opaque cloud of lumpy red. Well, less like a cloud and more like dense cotton candy. My fear that we’ve entered a trap escalates, but Cal is not panicking. “Not real comforting,” he adds.

  “Maggie,” I say, “look up our back trail.”

  She glances at me, then pivots gracefully in the air. After a moment she shrugs. “What?”

  “Cal and I see a thick, red cloud. What do you see?”

  “Same as before-just kinda hazy. Want me to check?” She tugs at her tether and I release it reluctantly. She’s gone in a heartbeat, surprising me all over again with how swiftly she can move, how like a hummingbird or a dragonfly.

  She disappears into the sticky-looking red stuff. Were we connected only by human sight, I’d be seriously freaked, but I know where she is and that she’s all right. As to the wall of cotton candy, after a moment’s concentration I see street, sidewalk, and asphalt arroyo-as Maggie sees it. Most comfortingly, I see the intersection of Jackson and Franklin. And I see Maggie.

  She is back at my side in a flash of aqua light, shaking her head and telling me what I already know. “Like I said- same as before.”

  I reconnect us.

  Cal affords the cotton candy wall one last, dubious look before we join the others at the corner. Intent on the street scene, they seem not to have noticed the illusory barrier. Cal sees fit not to mention it.

  We turn the corner onto Wells. In one step the city goes from deserted to bustling, but I remind myself that my standards are slightly skewed. Populated by bicycles, rickshaws, pedal-cabs, the occasional horse-or dog-drawn conveyance, by any pre-Change standard it’s still deserted. In and out among the larger vehicles weave people on skateboards, roller skates, scooters. It is muted traffic: no engine whine, no horn blare. Only the sound of bicycle gears, wheels against tarmac, shoe soles on asphalt, voices.

  People, all looking pretty normal (to me, at any rate), move along the wide sidewalk. Many carry bags and satchels of various kinds-paper, plastic, cloth. I even see bags from major department stores-Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus. Some folks wheel shopping carts full of stuff.

  Huh. Maybe in Chicago the bag ladies have taken over.

  Someone in a particular hurry shoves past me, pinballing me into Enid. I experience a moment of claustrophobia. It’s been months since I’ve been part of a street scene. I’d almost forgotten what it was like.

  “The city that wouldn’t die,” I murmur.

  “That’s my Chicago,” says Enid.

  “This place is awfully well-kept for a postapocalyptic urban zone,” observes Colleen.

  She’s right. Among the relatively untwisted wreckage of civilization, the pedal-cabs travel surprisingly garbage-free streets to deliver surprisingly well-dressed passengers to shops that seem to be open for business. A number of them have patched windows, but no glass litters the sidewalks as it does outside the Bubble. The whole place is squeaky clean by postapocalypse standards.

  “No one’s armed, either,” Colleen notes. “At least not as far as I can see.”

  We’ve been visible since we stepped from the mists of Jackson Street, and no two people react to the sight of us in the same way. Some lower their heads, avert their eyes, shy out of our path. Others stare us down, boldly and speculatively, and make no move to give us a wider berth. I find I can predict who will react in a particular way by what they wear and how they move. Not so different from the world we left behind.

  Polarities. There are those who scurry or shuffle as if apologizing to the sidewalk. Their clothing suggests they have shopped in thrift stores or Dumpsters. These are the package-carriers, the cart-pushers. Street people. I know them. I am them. In this city, too, they are the shy ones. Seeming to exist in a parallel universe, they see not and are not seen.

  Then there are those who appear stunningly mundane, average, untouched. There is nothing shy about them. They own the pavement; they command it. The others weave around them, follow behind them, beg their pardon.

  “I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but people are definitely checking out Magritte.” Colleen has forsaken her usual position at rear guard to slip between Cal and me as we make our way down the block. “A guy in a turban just slunk by whispering prayers and shielding his face, and I’ve seen at least three people cross themselves or clutch at something around their necks when they see her.”

  We stop in the middle of the block and watch ourselves being watched. Colleen is right. People are checking out Magritte. Staring at Magritte, and finding her noteworthy. I glance around, claustrophobic again. In the semidarkness of a doorway a man in a suit-looking both at home and out of place at once-is studying us intently. Studying her.

  Panic rises in my throat.

  Cal looks down at our grunter Sacajawea and asks, “Is there something you want to tell us, Howard?”

  The little guy blinks up at Cal through his mirrored shades.
“Like what?”

  “Like, do these people consider Magritte a deity, or a demon, or what?”

  “Let’s just get the hell out of here,” I whisper, tensing to run.

  Colleen catches my arm in a steel grip. “Chill, Goldman.”

  Before I can “chill,” whistles cut the air behind us, letting out bleat after persistent bleat. I have images of policemen on black and white skateboards in pursuit of us gatecrashers. Everyone else draws back from the center of the sidewalk at the first tweet, but we flock dead center like a bunch of domestic turkeys awaiting the hatchet.

  Belatedly, we scatter, too. I grab Magritte and thrust her into the shelter of a wide archway before we are run down by three roller-bladers in Day-Glo spandex, knee pads, and helmets. Each wears a collection of fanny packs and a backpack, carries a baseball bat, and clutches a metal police whistle between his teeth. In a skirl of sound and a swirl of wind they are gone, flying ahead of us down the block. Our fellow travelers move back onto the sidewalk and continue their sojourns.

  I take a deep breath and loosen my hold on Magritte, if only a little.

  She peeks over my shoulder at the retreating couriers. “You okay?” The curve of her mouth suggests she is fighting the urge to laugh at me.

  Before I can answer, another voice intrudes: “Is that your deva?”

  “Day-vuh,” he says, and I wonder which one of us he’s mistaken for a Hindu deity. I turn, shielding Magritte with my body. It’s the Suit.

  “Excuse me?”

  He nods through me at Maggie. “The deva, she yours?” “Yeah, I’m his,” says Magritte. “Fuck off.” Her voice is harder, colder, more acidic than I’ve ever heard it.

  The suit seems amused. “You taking her in?”

  Taking her in. I’m Clueless Joe, here. “No.”

  “Really? That’s quite a mouth she’s got. Could be a real annoyance after a while. Interested in selling?”