The Last Days p-2

by Scott Westerfeld

  The weird thing was how much the vacant lots scared them. Even the mastiff was slinking past open spaces, when normally she would have charged straight in for a run.

  How weird was that? A creature the size of a horse who’d been cooped up in a Manhattan apartment all day, and all she wanted to do was cling to me, shivering like a wet poodle.

  In this mood, the commotion of Times Square was going to turn my pack into a portable riot. It seemed like Moz and I might have to see my drummer some other day.

  Then we passed the mouth of a dark alley, and things really got paranormal.

  The bull terrier—who always has to pee on everything—took advantage of the anarchy to pull us all in. He trotted to the piss-stained wall, cocked his leg halfway, then suddenly froze, staring into the darkness. The yapping of the other dogs choked off, like seven muzzles had been strapped on all at once.

  The alleyway was full of eyes.

  Hundreds of tiny faces gazed up at us from the shadows. Behind me trucks rushed past, and I could feel the warmth of sunlight on my back, the reassuring pace and movement of the real world. But in the alley everything was frozen, time interrupted. The bulbous bodies of the rats were motionless, huddled against garbage bags, their teeth bared, heads poking out of holes and crannies. Nothing moved but a shimmer of whiskers as a thousand nostrils tested the air.

  In the farthest corner, a lone cat was perched high on a leaking pile of garbage. It stared down at me, unimpressed by my small army of dogs, offended by my presence in the alley. I felt tiny under its arrogant gaze—like some street kid who’d stumbled into a five-star restaurant looking for a place to pee.

  The cat blinked its red eyes, then yawned, its pink tongue curling.

  This is totally unfool, I thought. If my Dobermans spotted that cat, they’d go after it, dragging me and the whole pack deep into the alley. I could imagine myself returning seven rat-bitten, half-rabid canines to the doormen and never seeing another dime of dog-walking money again.

  “Come on, guys,” I murmured, gently pulling the fistful of leashes backward. “Nothing to see here.”

  But they were paralyzed, transfixed by the galaxy of eyes.

  The cat opened its mouth again, letting out a long, irritated mrrr-row…

  And the Dobermans ran like scaredy-cats.

  They both leaped straight up, twisting around in midair, and charged past me toward the sunlight. The others followed in a mob, wrapping their leashes around my legs and dragging me stumbling into the street.

  It was all I could do to stay on my feet as the mastiff charged ahead, opening up into her full gallop. She pulled the rest of us straight out onto the road, where a yellow flash of taxi screeched past dead ahead of us. A squat little delivery van squealed around us, horn blaring, scaring the mastiff into a sharp left turn.

  We were headed down the middle of the street now, a garbage truck thundering along in front of us, the delivery van behind. We were in traffic, as if I’d decided to take a dog-powered chariot out for a little spin.

  Unfortunately, I’d sort of forgotten to bring the chariot, so I was stumbling and staggering, seven leashes still tangled around my legs. And if I fell down, I knew the mastiff would keep going, galloping along until my face had been rubbed off completely on the asphalt. Even if my face friction somehow brought the pack to a halt, the pursuing delivery van would squash us all flat.

  It was still blaring its horn, because that was clearly helping, and the two guys on the back of the garbage truck were laughing, pointing their giant-gloved fingers at me. A pair of bike messengers shot past in polka-dotted Lycra, me and my dogs just another bunch of clowns at the rodeo.

  The whole procession swerved around some street work ahead, and suddenly my feet were slipping across an expanse of loose sand. I spotted an abandoned pizza box and planted my sneakers on it. Then I was skidding, my free hand in the air, riding the box like it was a boogie board at the beach.

  Just when it was getting fun, the garbage truck began to slow, pulling up in front of a big apartment building with long, turd-shaped garbage bags piled outside. The truck filled the whole street, leaving nowhere for the pack to go.

  Our momentum stalled, and the pack’s energy wrapped itself into a tightly wound bundle of nipping and barking. By now the little dogs could hardly even stand, reduced as they were to a spaghetti mishmash of leashes and legs. Even the mastiff was tired out, her long, curving tongue lapping at the air.

  One of the garbage guys swung himself down to work a big lever on the side of the truck, its huge maw opening in front of us with a metal screech. The other jumped off and shouted at me through the din.

  “Hey, boss! You didn’t take those pooches into that alley back there, did you?” He pointed over my shoulder, but I knew which one he meant.

  “Um, yeah?”

  He shook his head. “Bad idea. Even we don’t go down there no more. Not worth it.”

  I blinked, still trying to catch my breath. “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you hear about the crisis? Way things are going, you got to be respectful. Let the rats have some of the city back, you know?” He laughed, patting the rumbling metal expanse with his gloved hand. “Especially if you don’t got a big truck to protect you. Bunch of pooches isn’t enough these days.”

  He turned to the pile of bags behind him and kicked one viciously. Waiting for a second to make sure no tiny creatures scattered from it, he shouldered the bag and began to feed its length into the giant steel maw.

  I blew out a slow breath, knelt down, and started to untangle my dogs, wondering what they and the Sanitation Department knew that I didn’t. Moz had said some paranormal stuff about the woman who’d tossed him her guitar—that she was part of something bigger—and I’d read there was a crime wave now, to go along with the heat and the garbage.

  But wasn’t it always like this in the middle of every long summer, brains beginning to zigzag in the fawesome temperatures?

  Of course, the day before, Moz and I had watched that black water spraying out of a fire hydrant, as if something old and rotten had been dredged up beneath the city. Despite the heat bouncing off the asphalt, I shivered, thinking about what I’d seen back in that alley. That cat was in charge of all those rats, one glance had told me. Like my dogs, those glowing eyes were one big pack, but the feline had total control, no jostling or butt-sniffing required, like they were all family. And that just wasn’t natural.

  The delivery truck guy blared his horn at me one more time—like it was me in his way and not the garbage truck—so I gave him the finger. On the other side of his glass, his face broke into a smile, as if a little disrespect was all he’d been looking for.

  Before the garbage truck was done, I got the pack unwound and back onto the sidewalk. We headed across town, toward the bottom end of Times Square, where we were supposed to meet Moz.

  Maybe we could see my drummer after all. The hundred-yard dash had finally worn my dogs out, and the mastiff trotted ahead, tail high, having taken over through the mysteries of dog-pack democracy. Maybe it was because she’d led us down the street to safety, or because the Dobermans had fled first from the rat-infested alley.

  Whatever. At least it was all decided now, and someone other than me was in charge.

  8. CASH MONEY CREW

  — MOZ-

  Times Square was buzzing.

  Even in broad daylight, the battery of lights and billboards rattled me, rubbing my brain raw. Huge video screens were wrapped around the curving buildings over my head, shimmering like water in the rain, ads for computers and cosmetics flickering across them. News bites scrolled past on glittering strips, punctuated by nonsense stock-ticker symbols.

  I was an insect in a canyon of giant TVs, mystified and irrelevant.

  And penniless.

  I’d never felt poor before, never once. I’d always thought it was moronic to ogle car ads and store windows, but now that I needed it, I saw money everywhere—in silver initials
on thousand-dollar handbags, woven like gold threads into suits and silk scarves, and in the flickering images overhead. On the subway coming up here, I’d coveted the dollars invisibly stockpiled in magnetic strips on MetroCards, even the change rattling in beggars’ paper cups.

  Money, money, everywhere.

  I couldn’t go back to my piece-of-crap guitar after that Stratocaster. I had to own that same smooth action, those purring depths and crystal highs. Of course, maybe it didn’t have to be a ’75 with gold pickups. In the music stores on Forty-eighth Street, I’d found a few cheaper guitars I could live with, but I still needed to scrape together about two thousand bucks before the crazy woman returned.

  Problem was, I had no idea how.

  I’m not lazy, but money and me don’t mix. Every time I get a job, something always happens. The boss tells me to smile, pretending I want to be at work when I’d rather be anywhere else. Or makes me call in every week to ask for my hours, and it turns into a whole extra job finding out when I’m supposed to be at my job. And whenever I explain these issues, someone always asks me the dreaded question, If you hate it so much, why don’t you just quit?

  And I say, “Good point.” And quit.

  In that flickering canyon of advertising, two thousand dollars had never seemed so far away.

  Zahler was waiting at the corner where he’d said to meet, seven dogs in tow.

  He was panting and sweaty, but his entourage looked happy—gazing up at the signs, sniffing at tourists passing by. It was all just flickering lights to them.

  No jobs, no money. Lucky dogs.

  “How much you get paid for that, Zahler?”

  “Not enough,” he panted. “Almost got killed on the way down here!”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. One of the little ones was nibbling me, and I knelt and petted him. “This guy looks deadly.”

  “No really, Moz. There was this alley… and this cat.”

  “An alley cat? And you with only seven dogs.” One of which was gigantic, like a horse with long, flowing hair. I stroked its head, laughing at Zahler.

  Still panting, he pointed his free hand at one of the little ones. “It’s all his fault, for peeing.”

  “Huh?”

  “It was just—never mind.” He frowned. “Listen, you hear that drumming? It’s her. Come on.”

  I grabbed the monster-dog’s leash from Zahler, and then two more, pulling the three of them away from a pretzel cart whose ripples of heat smelled like seared salt and fresh bread. “So, you think Pearl will approve of this drummer?”

  “Sure. Pearl’s all about talent, and this girl is fexcellent.”

  “But she plays on the street, Zahler? She could be homeless or something.”

  He snorted. “Compared to Pearl, you and me are practically homeless. Didn’t you see that apartment?”

  “Yeah, I saw that apartment.” I could still smell the money crammed into every corner.

  “And there were stairs. More floors than we even saw.”

  “Sure, Pearl’s insanely rich. And this is supposed to convince me she can deal with a homeless drummer?”

  “We don’t know that this girl’s homeless, Moz. Anyway, all I’m saying is that if Pearl can deal with you and me, she’s no snob.”

  I shrugged. Snob wasn’t the word I would’ve used.

  “Are you still bummed because of what she did to the Riff?”

  “No. Once I got used to the idea of flushing all those years of practice down the toilet, I got over it.”

  “Dude! You are still bummed.”

  “No, I mean it.”

  “Look, I know it hurts, Moz. But she’s going to make us huge!”

  “I get it, Zahler.” I sighed, angling my dogs away from a hot-dog cart. Of course, practicing yesterday had hurt—but so did getting a tattoo, or watching a perfect sunset, or playing till your fingers bled. Sometimes you just had to sit there and deal with the pain.

  Pearl had rubbed me raw, but she knew how to listen. She could hear the heart of the Big Riff, and she hadn’t done anything I wouldn’t have if I’d been listening. I’d had six years to figure out what she’d recognized in six minutes. That’s what made me cringe.

  That and the whammy she’d put on Zahler. He wouldn’t shut up about how brilliant Pearl was, how she was going to make us big, how things were finally going to happen. Like all those years with just the two of us had been a waste of time.

  Zahler had a total crush on Pearl—that was obvious. But if I said so out loud, he’d just roast me with his death stare. And talk about wasting time: girls like her were about as likely to hook up with boys like us as Zahler’s dogs were to pull him to the moon.

  “Okay, I thought you said she was a drummer.”

  “What?” Zahler cried above the rumble. “You don’t call that drumming?”

  “Well, she’s got drumsticks. But I thought drummers were to supposed to have drums.” I shook my head, trying to keep my three curious dogs from surging into the rapt crowd of tourists, Times Square locals, and loitering cops surrounding the woman.

  “Yeah, well, imagine if she did have drums. Listen to how much sound she’s getting out of those paint cans!”

  “Those are actually paint buckets, Zahler.”

  “What’s the diff?”

  I sighed. Painting had been one of my shorter-lived jobs, because they just gave you the colors to use, instead of letting you decide. “Paint cans are the metal containers that paint comes in. Paint buckets are the plastic tubs you mix it up in. Neither of them are drums.”

  “But listen, Moz. Her sound is huge!”

  My brain was already listening—my mouth was just giving Zahler a hard time out of habit and general annoyance—and the woman really did have a monster sound. Around her was arrayed every size of paint bucket you could buy, some stacked, some upside down, a few on their sides, making a sort of giant plastic xylophone.

  It took me a minute to figure out how a bunch of paint buckets could have so much power. She’d set up on a subway grate, suspending herself over a vast concrete echo chamber. Her tempo matched the timing of the echoes rumbling up from below, as if a ghost drummer were down there following her, exactly one beat behind. As my head tilted, I heard other ghosts: quicker echoes from the walls around us and from the concrete awning overhead.

  It was like an invisible drum chorus, led effortlessly from its center, her sticks flashing gracefully across battered white plastic, long black dreadlocks flying, eyes shut tight.

  “She’s pretty fool, Zahler,” I admitted.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Especially if we could rebuild this chunk of Times Square every place we played.”

  He let out an exasperated sigh. “What, the echoes? You never heard of digital delay?”

  I shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the same. Wouldn’t be as big.”

  “Doesn’t have to be as big, Moz. We don’t want her playing a gigantic drum solo like this; we want her smaller, fitting in with the rest of the band. Didn’t you learn anything yesterday?”

  I glared at him, the anger spilling out from the place I thought I’d had it tucked away, rippling through me again. “Yeah, I did: that you’re a total sucker for every chick who comes along with an instrument. Even if it’s a bunch of paint buckets!”

  His jaw dropped. “Dude! That is totally unfool! You just said she was great. And you know Pearl’s fexcellent too. Now you’re going to get all boys-only on me?”

  I turned away, thoughts echoing in my brain, like my skull was suddenly empty and lined with concrete. Between the Stratocaster that wasn’t mine, the other guitars I couldn’t afford, Pearl’s demolition of the Big Riff, and now the thought of paint buckets, it’d been too many adjustments to make in forty-eight hours.

  I almost wished it was just Zahler and me again. We’d been like a team that was a hundred points behind—we weren’t going to win anything, so we could just play and have fun. But Pearl had changed that. Everything was up in the air, a
nd how it all came down mattered now.

  Part of me hated her for that and hated Zahler for going along so easily.

  He kept quiet, wrangling the dogs while I calmed myself down.

  “All right,” I finally said. “Let’s talk to her. What have we got to lose?”

  We waited till she was packing up, stacking the buckets into one big tower. Her muscles glowed with sweat, and a few splinters from a stick she’d broken rolled in the breeze from a subway passing underneath.

  She glanced at us and our seven dogs.

  “You’re pretty good,” I said.

  She jutted her chin toward a paint bucket that was right side up and half full of change and singles, then went back to stacking.

  “Actually, we were wondering if you wanted to play with us sometime.”

  She shook her head, one of her eyes blinking rapidly. “This corner is mine. Had it for a year.”

  “Hey, we’re not moving in on you,” Zahler spoke up, waving his free hand. “We’re talking about you playing in our band. Rehearsing and recording and stuff. Getting famous.”

  I cringed. “Getting famous” had to be the lamest reason for doing anything.

  She shrugged, just a twitch of her shoulders. “How much?”

  “How much… what?” Zahler said.

  But it was obvious to me. The same thing that had been obvious all day.

  “Money,” I answered. “She wants money to play with us.”

  His eyes bugged. “You want cash?”

  She took a step forward and pulled a photo ID card from her pocket, waved it in Zahler’s face. “See that? That’s from the MTA. Says I can play down in the subway, legal and registered. Had to sit in front of a review panel to get that.” As she put the card away, a little shiver went through her body. “Except I don’t go down there anymore.”

  She kicked the upturned paint bucket, the pile of loose change clanking like a metallic cough. “Seventy, eighty bucks in there. Why would I play for free?”

  “Whoa, sorry.” Zahler started to pull his dogs away, giving me a look like she’d asked for our blood.