… all the sciences. I met him again in New York, and he hadn’t changed. He was so… square.”
With the last word, the Kimberly Joy Christopher mask seemed to slip, and Kimberly Ann Cordayne peeked out from behind it. Bugsy sat across from her, leaning forward to keep from sinking irretrievably into the couch.
“He wanted so badly to be part of the scene,” she said. “He wanted to be free and unfettered by all the old morality that we’d been taught. He wanted to be political. And he just wasn’t. He wanted
…”
She paused, her head tilted as if she were listening to someone. Jesus, maybe. “That’s not fair,” she said. “That’s not true. He didn’t want any of those things. Not really. It was just that the men I was sleeping with back then were all like that. Not just the Radical. There was Jim and Teddy and Gabriel and… I couldn’t make a list, Mr. Tipton. But they were all the same. Young, strong, political, sure of themselves. Mark wanted to be like them.”
“Because he wanted to sleep with you?” Bugsy asked.
“He was a sweet boy,” she said.
Ah, Mark, you poor little geek, Bugsy thought. You wanted to get laid, and you wound up being her best girlfriend. “What about Sprout?” he asked.
“I came back to Mark,” she said. “It was later. I’d followed my chosen path. It led to… very dark places. I was very, very lost back then. I was looking for the light of Christ, and Mark was the nearest thing I knew. He was a good-hearted man. So when I needed a safe haven, I found him.”
“You got married,” Bugsy said. “Got pregnant. Had Sprout.”
“I am a sinner,” she said. “I have confessed myself to the Lord, and he has forgiven me. My sins have been washed from me.” She sounded angry saying it. Like she was talking him into something. Or maybe herself. Kimberly Joy squared her shoulders, her jowly chin raised in defiance if not pride.
“Okay,” Bugsy said. “Good. I mean, good on you with the sin washing and all. But… Sprout?”
“I hated it that I’d been afflicted with a retarded child,” she said. “I found the thought alone repulsive. Do you understand how far I had fallen? God sent me a little girl made from purest love, and I rejected her in my heart.”
“You sure fought like hell for her when it came time for the custody battle,” he said.
“I was angry,” she said. “I was weak, and I hated Mark because he was capable of loving her and I wasn’t. So I made myself believe that I loved her, that I needed her, and I did everything I could to take her from him. And I suppose I succeeded. I wept when they made her a ward of the state, and put me away, too. And Mark. They called Mark an unfit parent because he was involved with the drug scene. And they took her away from him, too. This was all my doing, Mr. Tipton. The drugs, my daughter, Mark’s so-called friends…”
“What about the Radical and Sprout? Why does he care so much about her?”
In the silence, the small wall-mounted heater clicked. The samovar let out a small hiss. Kimberly Joy Christopher looked into his eyes with distress and confusion that told him he had reached something deep within her. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” she said.
14
Wednesday,
December 9
The Lab at Nyunzu, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
The child soldier had told them the landmarks to watch for. The lab at Nyunzu, he’d said, was east of the town, so they’d encounter it first.
Wally cut the engine of the boat once they sighted the rocky island the kid had described; they let the boat drift downstream with the current, staying close to the southern shore and eventually tying up well before they were in sight of the compound. They plunged into the jungle as quietly as possible with Wally leading, his powerful arms clearing the way.
It might have been an idyllic march under other circumstances. Monkeys clambered overhead, calling and scattering; bright parrots and macaws flitted from branch to branch. There were calls: grunts and hoots and gurgles that Jerusha could not identify, and unseen forms that went crashing away as they approached. There were strange plants and flowers sprouting up from the ground at their feet. It would have been fascinating, had she been able to pay attention.
But… there was a smell, a horrible smell drifting through the jungle, and it grew worse as they approached the lab encampment.
Wally hunkered down suddenly, gesturing at Jerusha. Crouching, she crept forward. The smell was nearly overpowering. Through the cover of huge, paddle-shaped green leaves, she could see that the area in front of them had been cleared all the way down to the river. A backhoe, its bucket and wheels mud-encrusted, sat at their left not ten feet away. There were buildings erected there, most of them open-sided.
And there, in the humid shade…
They were caged in small boxes, stacked two high: children, none of them more than ten or eleven. They were emaciated and fly-blown. Thin fingers gripped the wire that wrapped their wooden cells, and they were guarded by children who were not much older than them and a few adults in military uniforms.
But it was what was closer to them that was truly horrifying. Near the backhoe, the earth had been dug up and disturbed. Black and bloated flies hovered over the clods; white maggots wriggled in the soil; white-headed vultures crowded there. Here and there, horrific forms thrust out of the earth in a mockery of life: an arm, a leg, a hand with splayed fingers, to be picked at by the vultures’ hooked beaks. This was a mass grave, poorly covered, and the source of the stench. Jerusha felt her stomach heave, and she forced the bile back down.
Oh, God, this is worse than we imagined…
Even as they watched, a door opened in a walled building with a rusting tin roof. Two Leopard Men emerged, a man in a doctor’s white lab coat, and a boy of perhaps twelve accompanying them.
The boy looked frightened and uncertain. Jerusha felt Wally start as he saw them: one of the Leopard Men was the were-leopard they’d encountered on the river, with scabbed-over cuts on his face and arms. The doctor held a tray with several hypodermic needles on it. They went to the nearest of the structures holding the caged children.
“Let him do it,” Jerusha heard one of the Leopard Men say to the doctor in French, gesturing at the boy. “Go on,” he said to the boy. “Prove your loyalty. Prove you’re a man.”
The boy visibly gulped and plucked one of the hypodermics from the tray. He approached the nearest cage. One of the soldiers opened the lock, pulled at the rickety door, and reached toward the young girl inside, who was crouching as far away as possible. He grasped the girl’s arm and pulled her halfway from the cage. “Allez-y,” the Leopard Man said. “Do it.”
The boy plunged the hypodermic into the girl’s arm. She screamed as he pressed the plunger and yanked it out again. The soldier shoved her back in the cage and slammed the door shut again. And Wally…
Wally roared a wordless fury and sprang toward the Leopard Men. Vultures squawked and scattered out of his way. Jerusha didn’t have time to stop his charge; in a few seconds, Wally was in the middle of a firefight and she could only respond.
Automatic weapons were chattering from all directions. She could hear bullets shrilling and tearing chunks from the leaves to either side of her; a green rain was falling all around her. Someone screamed-not Wally-and she heard the sinister, low growling of a leopard. Taking a breath, Jerusha pushed through the screen of greenery and into the clearing, trying to make sense of the chaos.
Everyone’s attention seemed to be on Wally, who had closed on the Leopard Men. The doctor was running toward the lab building, his white coat flapping. The boy that had been with him was also retreating-toward the river. One of the Leopard Men was on the ground, his weapon gone to rust in his hands and his arms broken; the other had shifted to leopard form and was snarling at Wally, ready to leap. The guards were firing at him, and bullets were pinging and whining from his body, gouging shiny dings in the black
iron.
Jerusha ran over the broken ground of the grave pit as the vultures scowled at her, not daring to look down and hoping that no one would see her. She plunged her hand into the seed belt, not caring what she brought out. She cast the seeds hard toward the soldiers. Green erupted around them-some were vines that she wrapped around the guards, tearing away their weapons from their grasp at the same time; a few were trees that she brought up thick between them and Wally, who had closed with the were-leopard. She half closed her eyes, trying to be the plants, to control as many of them at once as she could, as closely as she could. She heard the liquid snarl of a leopard.
Behind. Behind.
Jerusha turned even as the creature started its run toward her, lifting into the air with powerful legs, claws ready to rip and slice. She flung the seed in her hand toward it. It was a toss that would have made Curveball proud: into the beast’s open mouth. She tore at the seed with her mind, with the power the wild card had given her, ripping the growth out faster than she’d ever done it before. In mid-leap, greenery erupted from the leopard’s neck and mouth: even as the creature slammed into her, even as she fell and the Leopard Man rolled past her. Roots grabbed the earth and held; the leopard yowled, a terrifying scream, and the cat was suddenly a man again, writhing and tearing at the branches still growing longer and thicker, rupturing his neck and finally tearing his head entirely loose from his body. Arterial blood fountained from the body as the tree shot upward.
A mango, Jerusha realized belatedly.
Two of the buildings were on fire. Jerusha didn’t know why: perhaps stray bullets or ricochets had ignited the oil and gasoline cans scattered through the compound. Yards away, Wally slammed the other were-leopard to earth and stomped on it. The crack of its spine was audible even against the gunfire.
The nearest child soldier flung his weapon to the ground and ran screaming, and suddenly they were all fleeing. Strangely, she thought she saw blood running down Wally’s left leg, a long line of it, and he limped as he took a step and spun around.
Wally shouted, “Lucien! Where are you!” Jerusha could hear the sinister crackling of the fire, and the plaintive, alarmed shouts of the kids in their cages. Wally had already moved toward them, putting his hand on the wires and dissolving them into ruddy powder. He was pulling kids out, calling for Lucien as he did so.
Jerusha shuddered. The were-leopard’s head was staring at her, caught in the fork of a mango branch nearly at eye level. Mangoes were ripening around it, and Jerusha found herself shaking.
She went to help Wally.
Michelle Pond’s Apartment
Manhattan, New York
“You need to pay these bills,” Juliet said in a reproachful voice as she shuffled the piles of mail that covered Michelle’s kitchen table.
“You know, I started going through them, and I just couldn’t concentrate,” Michelle said. “I mean, I don’t really care right now. They aren’t stuck in a pit of corpses. You know?”
She felt Juliet kiss her hair. “They’ll still need to be paid,” she said softly.
“After I find Adesina.” Michelle glanced at Juliet and saw the pensive expression on her face. I am being the bad girlfriend again. And only a week out of her coma. It had to be a land-speed record.
“Sweetie,” she said, touching Juliet’s face. “You did more than anyone has ever done for me in my entire life. I’m sorry I didn’t get around to doing all that grown-up stuff like naming you the executor for my estate, making a will, and us getting, well… anyway.”
She pulled Juliet’s face close, lingering as their mouths met and tongues danced. When they were both dizzy and needed air, she continued. “What I need to do is get to Adesina. And there’s a way. It means asking Noel for a favor, which sucks. But beggars can’t be choosers.”
“What the hell is going on in here?” Joey said as she came into the room. Her hair was rumpled from sleep and there was a crease down one cheek where she’d slept on it. She flopped into Michelle’s overstuffed armchair. “I don’t s’ppose there’s any coffee? Fuck.”
“There’s coffee and breakfast on the stove,” Michelle said. “Eat fast because I’m calling Niobe in a few minutes to see if we can drop by.” It was almost nine o’clock. She could call at nine. Nine was a perfectly reasonable hour to phone.
Michelle had had another dream the night before. This one was a little different. Adesina wasn’t in the pit in this one. She was in a small room instead. The walls were painted a cold bluish white, and there were pictures pinned to the wall of storybook characters. Michelle didn’t recognize most of them-and the ones she did know looked out of place. Someone had tried to make this room less antiseptic and scary, but all they’d done was accentuate that this was not a fun place for a child to be.
When Michelle tried to look around, she had slipped out of Adesina’s memory and into one of her own dreams.
This was an old dream. She was alone in the house. It wasn’t her parents’ house. It was the strange, alien-feeling house that always appeared in this dream. She is inside it and lost. Then she sees the bunny. She starts to follow it. But it runs away. Finally, she comes to a door at the end of the hallway. The bunny must be inside. But when she opens the door, the room is bathed in blood.
Nine o’clock.
Michelle flipped open her phone. “Keep it quiet, I’m calling.” A few minutes later she hung up. “Niobe says we can come over now.”
“So, what do we need to take with us to the Congo?” Juliet asked.
“Well, you don’t need to take anything,” Michelle replied. “You’re not going.”
“You are not going to the PPA by yourself!”
“I’m not,” Michelle replied. “Joey is coming with me.”
That got Joey’s attention. “What the fuck?”
“I need someone who’s good in a fight,” Michelle said. “Someone who can also blend in if she needs to.”
“She’s from New Orleans, not Africa.” Juliet’s voice had risen to a shout. “Have you lost your mind? And what are you going to tell them about her? She’s your jungle princess?”
“Hey!” Joey said.
“She’s going as my assistant,” Michelle said.
“She can’t be your assistant. She doesn’t know the first thing about… about, anything! Arghhhh!”
Michelle was torn between frustration and guilt. She wanted to get to Niobe’s place now, but she also needed Juliet to understand why she couldn’t come to the Congo.
“Look, Juliet, I love you.” She pulled up a chair next to Juliet and took her hand. “That’s why I’m not going to take you into a banana republic where there’s God-only-knows-what horrific shit going on. You’re an ace. But, sweetie, your power, it’s kinda deuce-y.”
Juliet slumped in her chair. Her face crumbled, and Michelle felt sick to her stomach as Juliet began to cry.
“You are stupidly brave.” Michelle kissed Ink’s hand. “My God, you stood up to my parents. For that alone they should give a medal. I will not let you put yourself in harm’s way unnecessarily.”
Silently, Juliet wept.
“God damn it, Ink,” Joey said. “This is fucking Africa, man. Lions and tigers and shit, guys with guns, and that Weathers buttwipe for lagniappe. You going to scare ’em off with your tats? Fuck that cheese.”
“ Yu… yu… you two dumbasses are completely inept when it comes to people!” Juliet hiccuped.
“It’s true, we suck at that.”
“Assistant? She won’t fool anyone!” Juliet yanked her hand out of Michelle’s and then grabbed a handful of Kleenex out of the box. “She’ll screw it up the first time she opens her mouth. Look at her. She’s a mess.”
“That’s why we have to make her over before we get Noel to take us there.”
“Make me over?” Joey was outraged. “What the fuck.”
“Nothing too elaborate. Just fix your hair and-”
“Hell, no. I like my hair the way it is.”
&n
bsp; “What happened to you in that coma?” Juliet asked between hiccupy sniffles. “When did you become so bossy?”
Michelle stared at her, perplexed by the question. “I’m doing what I always do. I take care of things.”
Nyunzu, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
“Lucien!” wally cupped his hands to his mouth. His voice reverberated across the smoking grounds of the laboratory. The whine of over-taxed boat engines receded into the distance, their own boat among them. “Lucien!”
Wally inhaled, swelling his chest with air like the bellows of a pipe organ. “ LUCIEN! Come on out, guy! It’s me, Wally!”
The corner of a tin roof crash-clanged to the ground when a mud-brick retaining wall collapsed. Jerusha’s plants had damaged the wall; Wally’s yelling shook it just enough to finish the job.
He paced through the ruins, forced to limp because of the jags of pain in his leg. Where a bullet had grazed a thick spot of rust… but he’d think about what that meant after he found Lucien.
Smoke stung his nose, burned his throat. He felt like he was choking. “You’re-” His cough sounded like a stone knocking around inside a washing machine. He struggled to get the words out. “You’re safe now.”
His eyes watered. Was that the smoke?
Why hadn’t Lucien come out yet? He must have been frightened by all the fighting. He must have been good at hiding, the little guy. Wally hadn’t seen the barest trace of him. Not in the barracks. Not in the lab itself. Not in the cages, thank God.
And over there, at the edge of the clearing… No. Wally didn’t want to look over there. Lucien wasn’t there. He couldn’t be.
“Lucien!”
“Wally.”
“Lucien!”
“Wally!” Jerusha took his hand. “Let me help you.”
Wally was so caught up with his search and his worry that he didn’t notice right away that they were holding hands. But then he did, and his stomach did a somersault.
She pulled him toward a knot of children huddled together in the shadow of the ruined lab. The kids shrank back, clutched each other more tightly when the pair approached. They had tear-streaked faces and runny noses.
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