Paradise Damned

by S. M. Reine

  Dana was already playing outside again. She drew a circle around herself in the dirt, using a stick broken off of the sagebrush. Her flannel pajama shorts were dusty. Her fine blond hair was still in the braids that her mother always gave her right before bed.

  “Whatcha doin’?” she asked, drawing radiating lines off of the circle.

  Anthony slowed to a stop at her side. “Running. What are you doing?”

  “Making a circle of power,” Dana said. “I’m going to cast a spell.”

  He planted his hands on his hips and tried to slow his breathing. He was too hot now that he had stopped moving. “Have you decided that you’re a witch today? I thought you were a kopis yesterday.”

  Dana looked offended with all of her seven-year-old gravity. “I can be both.”

  “Sorry,” Anthony said. “I forgot.”

  The screen door squealed open.

  “Your phone’s ringing, Anthony,” shouted Leticia McIntyre, apparently unworried about waking the year-old baby sleeping on her shoulder.

  He held out his hands. She tossed the phone over the side of the stairs, and he caught it.

  “Thanks,” Anthony said.

  She went back inside, and he tilted the screen so that it was shaded enough to read.

  Unknown number.

  He refused the call and pocketed it.

  Lucas would be up for drills soon, so Anthony took the opportunity to duck inside for a drink of water. Leticia cooked breakfast, Debora still fast asleep on her shoulder as she banged around the kitchen in search of a clean skillet.

  “Grab the milk, Tony,” she said. “How was your run this morning?”

  He pulled the carton out of the refrigerator. “It was good.”

  “You know, if I didn’t have to feed the kids, I wouldn’t willingly wake up at three in the morning to go frolicking around the desert.” Leticia filled a bottle with milk, balancing the baby on her hip so that she could use both hands. A spot of drool was spreading over her chest. “I’d be sleeping.”

  “Guess I’m stupid,” Anthony said.

  “I’m just saying, if you want to be up that early, maybe you could try watching Dana’s pre-dawn episode of Caillou with her sometimes so I can actually sleep.” She shrugged. “Just a thought.”

  Anthony grimaced. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  He grabbed a donut out of the box on the counter and went outside again before she could suggest more babysitting. Anthony had been living with the McIntyres for three months now. He did his fair share of watching Dana, whether or not he wanted to, and even played with Debora sometimes. But when Lucas approached him to ask if Anthony wanted to be his new trainee, he hadn’t mentioned midnight wakings as part of the arrangement.

  Still, he kept an eye on Dana while he ate his cruller, brushing crumbs off of his lap.

  His phone rang again in his pocket. The same unknown number that had been calling him earlier was giving it a second try. He hung up again.

  “What do you got?” Dana asked.

  “It’s a donut.”

  “Give me some,” she said.

  Anthony grudgingly ripped off a piece and she took it with dirt-caked fingers, jamming the entire thing in her face at once.

  Lucas stepped outside and sat next to Anthony, already wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. “You’re not eating a donut for breakfast, are you, pumpkin?” he asked, setting a pair of sneakers on the step below him.

  Dana grinned. There was frosting between her teeth.

  “It’s a glycogen refuel,” Anthony said. He handed her another piece.

  “Oh, well, that’s different.” Lucas pulled his daughter toward him and planted a kiss on her head. “You’re not wearing sunblock. Get inside.”

  She rolled her eyes, but obeyed. Anthony sneaked the last bite of his cruller to her before she left.

  “It looks like there’s been activity near the mines northeast of here,” Anthony said, wiping his hands on his sweats. “I saw tracks while I was out jogging. I’m not sure what kind—maybe more spider-demons?”

  Lucas glanced over his shoulder, as if to make sure his daughter was out of earshot. Satisfied, he said, “Fuck that.”

  “Well, maybe they were big coyotes.”

  “Eight-legged coyotes?”

  Anthony shrugged. “I’ll take a closer look tonight.”

  Lucas’s response was interrupted by Anthony’s phone ringing again. Maybe it was his imagination, but Anthony thought that it sounded more insistent this time.

  He checked the number. It had changed. The area code was 775—northern Nevada.

  “Hang on,” Anthony said, walking around the end of the trailer so that he could answer it in privacy. “Hello?”

  The other end of the line crackled. The voice that came through was distant, echoing. “Hey, Anthony. It’s Benjamin. How are you?”

  “Fine,” he said cautiously, trying to think of which Benjamin might have been calling him from the Reno area. He had known a couple of Benjamins before he’d dropped out of UNR, but they had all evacuated in the demon apocalypse, and none of them would have had his new number anyway.

  This Benjamin apparently knew that Anthony was confused. He said, “Benjamin Flynn. Remember?”

  Anthony suddenly forgot how to stand. His shoulder thudded into the sun-warmed wall of the trailer, and a cat shot out from under the floor to dart away.

  He did remember Benjamin Flynn. He remembered far too well. Benjamin was a teenager formerly in the employ of the Union of Kopides and Aspides as a precognitive. Creepy as hell. Anthony hadn’t heard from him since a single text message that had led him to find his ex-girlfriend’s body floating in the middle of Lake Tahoe.

  Anthony considered hanging up.

  “Wait, don’t disconnect,” Benjamin said. “Lucas McIntyre’s about to get a phone call, and we need to talk about it.”

  “How do you know?” Anthony asked, leaning around the side of the trailer. Lucas was still lacing up his shoes.

  “You know how.”

  “I guess the better question is why? Don’t you only see big stuff?”

  “Oh,” Benjamin said, “this is big.”

  Lucas startled, extracting a cell phone from the pocket of his sweat pants. Anthony felt dizzy. It shouldn’t have surprised him—of all the things that Benjamin had prophesied, phone calls seemed minor.

  As Anthony watched, Lucas answered the phone.

  Benjamin kept talking. “That’s a guy named Malcolm Gallagher calling. He hooked up with Lucas a long time ago during this fight in the Grand Canyon. That was a big deal, too. But this is bigger.” The line crackled loudly and then cleared again, as if Benjamin were walking through an area with poor reception. “He’s asking Lucas to send him a new passport, some American dollars, and rubles—that’s Russian currency. Lucas is going to agree. He’s nice like that.”

  “What are you getting at here?”

  “Malcolm’s being evasive about why he wants to go to Russia. He won’t answer any of Lucas’s questions. But you guys need to go to Russia, too,” Benjamin said. “You want to fly into a city called Yakutsk, rent a car, and meet Malcolm in Oymyakon. And you need to do it as soon as possible.”

  Anthony felt cold all over. “Wait, Russia?”

  “Yeah. Russia. It’ll be cooler there than Las Vegas.”

  He could almost hear the smile in Benjamin’s voice.

  Lucas looked like he was really focused on his phone call—it must have been pretty intense. He paced by the front door of the trailer, scuffing Dana’s makeshift circle of power, tugging on his ear piercings like he always did when something was upsetting him. If Anthony had any ear piercings, he would have probably been pulling on them, too.

  “I’m not in the mood for a vacation,” Anthony said. “We’ve got stuff happening here, too, you know. Demon-spiders and a new casino and stuff.”

  “Yeah, I know. Trust me, though, this is more important. In about four days, some big stuff is going t
o go down in Oymyakon. The Union’s sending an entire army there to handle it. If you guys don’t intervene, a lot of people will die—and a lot of them will be innocent people, in case that’s not clear.”

  “I have to be honest, Benjamin,” Anthony said. “Union army? You’re not convincing me to go.”

  “Just do it. The odds of your survival are really good. I can see you partying in Hong Kong two weeks from now. You’ll hook up with a hot chick and everything.”

  Anthony wasn’t quite sure how he felt about some teenage prophet using psychic powers to watch his hookups. He also wasn’t sure how he felt about his “odds” of survival—he kind of preferred a guarantee. “If it’s that good, maybe I’ll skip Russia and go right to Hong Kong.”

  “Talk it over with Lucas. Okay? I have to go,” Benjamin said. “Remember: Oymyakon. Four days.”

  Anthony searched for an argument, trying to think of a compelling reason that he couldn’t go. But aside from the fact that he really had no urge to go running off to Russia, and he really had no urge to end up in the path of a Union army, there was nothing holding him back. The demon-spiders could probably wait. He had no job, no girlfriend, no more school.

  Benjamin didn’t give him time to think up an argument.

  “See you around,” he said, with the air of giving a final prophecy.

  Then the line went dead.

  Lucas hung up at the same time. He ambled toward Anthony while punching out a text message on his cell phone. “Drills are going to have to wait, Tony,” he said without looking up. “I’ve got to run into Vegas and overnight a passport to someone.”

  Anthony’s stomach lurched. “Who?”

  “Malcolm Gallagher,” Lucas said. “Kopis. Nice guy. He can really hold his drink.”

  He winced. “And…uh…how do you know this guy?”

  Lucas shrugged, pocketing his phone. “I met him at the Grand Canyon a while back. We were helping Elise kill shit. It was cool. Very messy, but cool.”

  Elise.

  All of the pieces clicked into place, and his shoulders sagged. Lucas noticed.

  “What’s wrong, man?”

  Anthony scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “How do you feel about a trip to Russia?”

  Malcolm Gallagher flinched every time he saw a black car.

  It didn’t even have to be an SUV to get him worrying, which was ridiculous. He had served as a commander with the Union for months. Of all people, he should have known best that the organization only allowed ridiculous, muscular machines in their vehicle fleets, like SUVs or actual fucking tanks.

  There was no reason for his adrenaline to shoot through the roof whenever he saw a black Pinto, or a Geo Metro. The Union would never lower itself to anything but the best and newest technology.

  But it wasn’t a rational reaction. From the moment he started on his journey to locate Elise Kavanagh, he was followed by the constant fear that the Union was going to find him again, arrest him, and drag his ass to Italy for execution.

  He probably should have been worrying about what he would find when he reached Elise. Knowing her, it would be something far worse than a bunch of bureaucratic kopides in a dick-measuring contest.

  Yet his arrival in Russia was about the furthest thing from his mind, and he still flinched every time he saw a black car.

  It only took one night for Lucas McIntyre to ship a passport and fake identification to him. By the time he picked the package up at the post office, Malcolm was sick of being so damn jumpy. His nerves were as brittle as chips of paint flaking in Colorado’s summer sunshine.

  “This is just fucking ridiculous,” he told the clerk behind the counter as he counted out cash. That lovely blond bird, Hannah Pritchard, had reluctantly dumped a few thousand dollars on him before he left the Faulkner house, and he needed something to fortify his nerves before taking his one-way suicide trip.

  “Ridiculous? I guess. But you can’t blame me for alcohol tax,” the clerk said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “I voted against the hike.”

  Actually, Malcolm hadn’t even looked at how much the bottle of gin would cost before taking it to the register. He frowned. “How much?”

  The clerk named a price. Malcolm laughed.

  “You’ve clearly never tried to get drunk in a Scandinavian country if you think that’s a lot of tax,” he said, slapping down a couple of twenties.

  A car passing the store window wiped the smile right off of his face. Malcolm stuffed the rest of the money into his jacket and watched a Prius slide past the window.

  It was dark gray, not black. It wasn’t like they were watching him buy alcohol right at that moment. Nobody was about gun him down where he stood and end his ill-fated trip before it began. The Union wasn’t all that concerned about fuel efficiency anyway.

  Still, better to go out with a smile on his face. As soon as the clerk handed him a receipt, Malcolm twisted the top off the bottle and took a swig.

  “You can’t drink that in here,” she said.

  The gin was total shit. Absolutely foul. It suited Malcolm’s mood. “Even if I share?” he asked, waving the bottle at her. “Come on, gorgeous. Drink with me.”

  The clerk’s glare was stonier than a sculpture.

  He knew where he wasn’t appreciated. Probably best to head out and face imminent doom, then.

  “Where’s the nearest airport?” Malcolm asked, double-checking that the passport was in his back pocket before limping toward the door.

  “You can’t drink your gin at the airport, either.”

  He winked. Since he was wearing a bandana over his missing eye, it probably looked like he was blinking, but he hoped the sentiment got across. “I’ll finish it by the time I get there. Trust me. Airport?”

  The clerk made a map appear. She put two fingers on it. “We’re here,” she said, tapping the right finger. “Airport’s over there. I’ll let you take this. You look like you need it a lot more than I do.”

  “You’re a peach,” he said. It used to be that he could make any woman smile with a few compliments like that, but it didn’t seem to work quite as well now that his face had been chewed on by a chisav. “Where can I rent a car?”

  The clerk raised her eyebrows at the bottle he was holding. “Actually, I’ll call you a cab,” she said. “I don’t know what part of Europe you come outta, but America’s civilized. We have open container laws.”

  “Civility! All these laws!” Malcolm faked a swoon. “It’s too much for me. I can hardly cope with the restrictions.”

  “Here’s another friendly tip,” she said. “Talk as little as possible to the TSA agents.”

  He had to laugh. As if airport security could be any worse than the Union.

  “Thanks for the tip, gorgeous.”

  She rolled her eyes as she picked up the phone.

  Malcolm stood in the shade of one of the strip mall’s tacky stucco pillars while waiting for the cab to arrive, guzzling as much of the gin as he could manage. He tried to be sneaky about it. Even though the liquor store’s windows were tinted so that he couldn’t see inside, he had a feeling that commandant clerk in there was watching.

  He hadn’t bought a particularly large bottle, but he knew his limits. He stopped when he got halfway through. It was just the right amount of buzz—enough that he didn’t worry that the yellow cab might be driven by a Union kopis, but not quite so much that he missed the trash can when he threw out the rest of the bottle.

  “My trusty steed!” he declared, jumping into the taxi. “Take me to the airport!”

  The driver must have been warned about Malcolm’s condition by the clerk, because he only shook his head and turned on the meter.

  Driving through Colorado was probably very scenic. It was certainly a sprawling, open land, and the skies were so much bigger than what he was used to back home. But even though he was drunk enough not to worry about his cab driver being an undercover Union agent (highly doubtful, considering that the Union didn’t empl
oy ancient Iranians with scraggly neckbeards), he still wasn’t quite drunk enough to stop being completely jumpy. Malcolm spent most of the drive twisted around in his seat, watching traffic behind them.

  If there were any black SUVs following them, none of them materialized on the way to the Denver airport. Malcolm paid his sullen, tolerant driver, and got into line at the ticket counter.

  He watched the crowd around him while he waited for his turn.

  Of the crowd passing by, many wore all black: black jeans, black skirts, black tank tops, or, worst of all, black polo shirts. Malcolm suddenly couldn’t remember if it was normal for Americans to wear so many dark colors. He knew the French were like that, staid fuckers, but Americans were a brash people. Everything about them was in your face, and their clothes were no exception.

  It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility for the Union to anticipate Malcolm’s move to the airport and get there first. He had crash-landed in the Colorado forest. There weren’t many other places for him to go.

  A woman glanced at him as she passed. Malcolm tensed, prepared for a gun to emerge from that slinky little black skirt.

  “How can I help you, sir?”

  It was his turn at the counter. Malcolm almost fell over from the shock of being addressed.

  Grabbing the counter to keep himself upright, he said, “One way to Yakutsk, Russia.”

  He picked the soonest flight, gave the rest of his money to the nice woman with the wing pin on her (very nice) breasts, and headed for the security checkpoint. For the first time in his life, he was happy to see the long security lines, the metal detectors, and bored-looking employees in ill-fitting uniforms. It meant that no weapons were getting past that line—no knives, no guns, and certainly no Union kopides driving huge fucking tanks.

  One quick waltz through security, and he would be safe.

  Amazingly, of all the things that flagged an “enhanced screening,” being drunk and twitchy was not one of them. Malcolm watched as a young couple was taken aside to have their diaper bag inspected—the formula most likely containing materials for an IED, naturally—while he managed to skirt through the scanners without even a second glance from his friends at the TSA.