I felt a catch in my throat.
I glanced around, half expecting to find Snowman and his band of Whiteface Warriors standing nearby, but Aimi was alone. Steeling myself, I left the bike and started toward the monument.
Aimi glanced up as I approached. She looked thin, transparent, her eyes and mouth dark smudges in her porcelain white face. She should have looked beautiful, ethereal; instead, in the whiteface and black makeup, she looked like a big, horrible, Victorian doll come to demonic life, and again I wondered what was wrong with Aimi, what terrible disease was eating through her.
I stopped when I reached the outer edges of the flowers strewn across the massive plot. As far as I knew, none of the kids who had been buried the day before were in Aimi’s circle. I had no idea why she was here. Hell, I didn’t even know why I was here, except that I felt I owed something to the kids who had died at the club. Maybe she felt the same way.
Our eyes finally met. “You came,” she said, an eerie thing to say, like she had expected me to be here, like she had been anticipating it. Her eyes flicked up and down. “Did you know any of the students?”
“No. I just…I felt I should be here. Pay my last respects, I guess,” I said, stuffing my hands in my pockets. “I keep thinking about those kids caught in the building, what it must have been like for them when they realized they were going to die, when nobody was going to save them and they weren’t going to wake up from a bad dream.”
“I know.” She bent down to set the white bundle of lilies tied with a black ribbon down and then glanced at the names of so many of our classmates engraved on the wall. She let out her breath. “I keep dreaming about it.”
I waited, letting the moment linger, until Aimi lifted her head and broke the silence. “Kevin, are you staying in the city?”
I kicked at some loose gravel. More than half of the city had already been evacuated or were in the process of taking off. Most were heading for New Jersey, Pennsylvania, anywhere they thought, or only hoped, was safe. I felt too ashamed to admit that my dad and I were a part of the panicked majority that were working on leaving. “Yeah,” I finally fibbed, then felt really bad. “I mean…we’re going to leave eventually. Soon, I guess. Are you?”
She shook her head. “My dad has to stay, to clean up this mess.”
That made sense. “He’s keeping you here?”
I saw a shadow pass behind her eyes. Her face became hard and suddenly very old, almost haggard. “He always keeps me with him.” She shrugged. “My mom died when I was born. It’s always been just the two of us, and he’s…excitable. Daddy always needs to know where I am.”
“Sorry,” I said, feeling like I’d crossed some invisible line. “I just figured he’d send you away. Some place safe. I mean…it’s a dad thing, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” Aimi sighed, suddenly sounding angry. “But I can’t go ten feet without him. Without being watched constantly.”
Unfortunately, I knew what she was talking about.
She nodded at some trees. “Take a look.”
I pushed some professionally trimmed fir trees aside. On the other side of the hill was a long, paved road and a slick black limo waiting at the curb, with a chauffeur leaning against the driver’s side, reading a newspaper. I would have been seriously jealous about Aimi’s ride, except that the chauffeur looked exactly like the MuraTech men who had interrogated me at the police station. I swear, Dr. Mura’s MIB clones were everywhere, and they all looked alike. I wondered if there was a big machine somewhere that just stamped out the same thing over and over.
Maybe, I thought, being rich wasn’t so great. Especially if it meant your parents were even more psycho about watching you than my dad was.
Aimi turned, her gestures almost mechanical, and brushed down her long black mourning dress. She glanced over to my side of the street where Jennie was parked. “It must be great being able to go where you want, when you want to.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I didn’t bother to mention that I was sort of grounded forever after that little escapade the other night.
She started toward the road, glancing furtively over her shoulder as if she were afraid there were MuraTech men hiding in all the bushes, waiting for her to step out of line. When she reached the bike, she ran her hands over Jennie’s handlebars with exaggerated care. “Kevin,” she said, turning her coal-black eyes on me, her expression suddenly young and yearning, almost desperate. “We don’t have much time left. Will you take me for a ride into the city?”
3
“Don’t you want to change?” I asked as I reached for my helmet. I turned to look at Aimi, the elaborate, frothy lace dress, the ribbons in her hair, the long, lace black gloves. I looked at her pale, stoic face.
She glanced over to where I knew the limo driver was pouring over the Sunday odds on the opposite side of the hill. She put a lacy finger to her lips. “What I want is to get out of here,” she whispered. Gathering her skirts, she slipped into the saddle behind me as easily as if she were dressed in jeans and a tee and slid her hands around my waist. It was a really good feeling.
“Won’t you get in trouble?” I said, not that I was opposed to the idea of taking a hot girl into the city, but I’d had a lot of experience with spazzy parents of late.
“Do you really care?”
“Do you?”
She put her mouth very close to my ear. I could almost taste her perfume. Like, wow. “Just ride, handsome,” she said.
I kicked Jennie to life and listened to the familiar beat of her old V-4 engine turning over, kicked the brake stand up and cruised out into the street, conscious of the extra weight on the bike. I took her slow at first, but pretty soon the three of us found our groove. Jennie was an ugly bike—nothing like John Woo would use, whatever Terry thought—but Wayne had been a mechanical genius, and true to his legacy, she rode like an angel.
“Where do you want to go?” I said.
“Anywhere!” she said, sounding breathless. “Just drive!”
We cruised through the downtown Brooklyn Garden District, the wind flicking through our clothes and hair. With half the city gone, the streets were practically all ours. Aimi wrapped her arms tight around my waist, and it wasn’t long before she rested her head against my shoulder and I could smell the strawberry of her shampoo. We passed old brownstones and empty parks, crumbling theatres and churches full of the devout praying for deliverance. Out on the street the remaining people were packing their belongings in cars for their extended trip out of the city, or, if they didn’t have transport, backpacking it out of there. They looked up as we cruised by, probably trying to figure out why the Revolutionary France chick was riding with the punk kid. But I didn’t care. We didn’t care. For the moment, at least, the city was ours.
We were halfway down a tree-lined street (trees do grow in Brooklyn, by the way, however stunted) when Aimi lifted her head at the sound of heavy metal being played at roughly the volume of a nuclear explosion and tapped my shoulder. I slowed the bike as we came upon an old two-story saltbox that had somehow retained its shingles despite the earth-shattering pounding of the bass beat emanating from within. There were a circle of kids camped out on the front lawn, drinking and smoking doobs, and above them, hanging from the eaves of the porch, was a homemade banner that proudly proclaimed QILIN, WE WELCOME U TO NYC!
From my time in San Francisco I knew immediately what it was: a monster party. Let me explain. You know those hurricane parties you always hear about down in Florida, where a big group of people stand around in glass buildings, getting blitzed and waiting for the storm to hit and make them all martyrs? Yeah, you got it.
As I pulled to the curb, one of the stoners in a stocking cap immediately stood up and swayed toward us, grinning maniacally and clutching the neck of a bottle of Wild Turkey. “Hey, man, glad you could make it!” he screamed over the music pounding from the house like he knew us, was expecting us. He extended his smoke. “Take a hit, man,” he said. “Makes y
ou mellow.”
I really wasn’t into that—I mean, I’m not that corrupt, at least, not yet. I looked over, afraid Aimi might take up his invitation. Since she was richer than God, she probably knew more about recreational drugs than anyone at school. But I found to my relief that she was shaking her head. The kid looked crestfallen. Aimi looked over the group. “What are all you doing here? Shouldn’t you be leaving the city?”
“There’s nowhere else to go, and pretty soon we’ll all be dead anyway,” said the stoner with a shrug. He pulled his wool cap down halfway over his eyes and squinted up at the sky like he expected it to start raining stones at any moment—or monsters. “Fuck it. Might as well enjoy yourself while you can.”
I looked over the other stoners who were presently engaged in a deep, philosophical conversation about which borough Qilin ought to wipe out next, the Bronx or Brooklyn—the Bronx was winning more votes because Brooklyn had better pizzerias—and felt an annoying pang of sympathy. It was pretty obvious from their appearances that they were way too poor to leave the city. Like most folks in the projects, they were stuck here and forced to make do while the military did its best to root Qilin out of the sewer system—if, indeed, they could.
Aimi took my hand and pulled me away, leading me inside the house. The minute we stepped inside we were assaulted by heavy metal being played at such a high volume I thought the bones inside my body were going to crumble. Mind you, I like loud music, and I like metal as much as the next guy, but you reach a point when it’s so loud there’s no music left, just one long ongoing cacophony. We were way past that point. Now couple that with about five dozen kids screaming at each other in order to be heard overtop it, the sound of explosions from a group of kids playing Grand Theft Auto on a widescreen television in the living room, the shrieks of a half dozen half-dressed and extremely high girls chasing each other around the room with cans of Reddi Whip, and about a dozen guys clay pigeon-shooting with the house flatware and a couple of BB rifles, and there you had it. It was like Dante’s version of hell, for teenagers.
Aimi seemed to like it, though. I guess it was a big change from what she was used to. After seeing the stretch limo, I could imagine her dad dragging her to dull dinner parties full of Waterford crystal and boring rich banker guys in tuxedoes who drank dry martinis and talked about their stock investments. I think in the Land of the Rich, burping at the table is probably a hanging offense. She moved from room to room, staring at everything in wide-eyed wonder.
I really couldn’t blame her. It was my first “adult” party, too. I mean, I’m not Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I didn’t think it would be kids playing Twister, drinking Kool-Aid and watching Disney movies on TV. I just wasn’t ready for the oceans of booze that were flowing, or the number of kids who were high and cackling, or the incredibly diverse number of drugs that were being passed around as party favors—by a candy striper, no less. As we passed through the rooms, we saw a buffet on the dining room table—greasy open pizza boxes and half empty buckets of fried chicken, and about two dozen empty and mostly-empty bottles of hard liquor rolling around the tables and on the floor. On the sofa were three or four kids making out, all together. I mean, you could have filmed an episode of Girls Gone Wild here. I wasn’t used to this scene.
Everyone appeared to be having fun, but at the same time it was a pretty dismal scene, like everyone knew it could only end one way—with Qilin’s arrival—and they were going to get in as much life as possible before it was all snuffed out.
Down in the den it was minimally quieter—the noise was down to about the level of an earthquake. A bunch of kids were playing pool in the corner, trying to bounce the balls off the velvet, while the real study-hounds and geeks had gathered around a TV and were glued to an address by the Pope about the Endtimes and the rise of Satan in the form of kaiju.
Aimi and I stood in the doorway and watched. There was a cutaway of a choir of school-age children assembled in the middle of St. Peter’s Cathedral, candles in hand, singing hymns. Aimi took a deep, shuddering breath at the sight of the vigil, her shoulders rising and falling. “What if Qilin really is a demon, Kevin?” she said. “What are we going to do when it comes back?”
I thought about taking her aside and telling her about Raiju—and about the Keepers. About Snowman and his control over Qilin. But if I said that, she might think I was making it all up just to hurt Snowman in her eyes. And anyway, how could I expect her to believe anything so wild like the Keepers? This stuff was insane even to me.
But I had to say something. The longer she hung with Snowman, the more danger she was in. Qilin could rise at any time, and the last thing I wanted was Aimi caught in the middle of our little war. I was about to open my mouth when a cue ball came out of nowhere and hammered me in the shoulder, hard. I turned, ready to lay into the dumbass who jumped the ball my way…then recognized one of the pool players in the corner as Troy.
He stood up, twirling the cue stick in one hand like he thought he was Mr. Kung Fu, while Zack stood like a brick wall behind him, doing the whole lackey backup thing. Ever notice that bullies always have backup? It’s like they can’t quite do it all on their little own.
I massaged my sore shoulder, trying not to look too surprised. I was still doing better than Troy, with his bandaged nose and most of his face swollen a deep purple. He looked like he’d tried to make out with a truck going 30 miles an hour—and failed. Oh man, I was so dead.
“You,” he said. But it sounded like Munchkin talk with his nose all messed up. “What are you doing here, dead man?”
I thought about going up to him and punching him in his already-broken nose. Nah, that would make his friends beat me to death with their pool cues. I decided instead on the dignified response—apologizing and turning around and guiding Aimi out of the house. Except, when it came right down to it, I did neither. I said, “When did they let you out of the zoo, Troy? Won’t your handlers be missing you?”
Aimi covered her mouth with both hands to stifle a laugh.
I admit I could have handled things better than this. But there was just something about Troy that pissed me off on a deeply primal level. A psychologist would probably have said I was working out my past aggressions with Bryce, since I would never get a chance to settle things in person with him. They might have said I have issues. But I like to think it was the nauseatingly cocky look on Troy’s face, despite the broken nose. That and the fact that Troy was just plain stupid. I mean, do you need to be humiliated twice in front of your peers before you learn to back down?
“You got some guts for a yellow chink,” said Troy.
That’s an approximation, by the way. His words were way more garbled than that and enunciated in Munchkin-speech, but I figured it out. And that’s another thing. Kids like me have been clashing with kids like Troy since probably before the Stone Age, and yet the taunts and name-calling never get any more creative. It’s always about being different from the core group. But then, I’d been hearing that crap since kindergarten, when kids stopped being kids and started being prejudice like their parents. The Asians never felt I was good enough to join their little reindeer games, and the whites think hanging with me will slant their eyes.
Okay, I admit it. I have anger-management issues. Happy?
“Guts,” I reminded him, “and an unbroken nose, dumbass.”
If he was a cartoon character, steam would have poured out of Troy’s ears with the sound of a whistle. Zack was slightly more subtle: he cracked his knuckles and grimaced like someone had stuffed his mouth full of sour Warheads.
They looked at each other, then glared at me with collective hatred. Now this scene I was used to. Gripping their pool cues in white-knuckled fists, they swaggered over to beat the crap out of me.
4
“Kevin, what if you could stop Qilin?” Aimi said. She was standing beside me in the holding cell of the 84th Precinct, and she said it with a lilt in her voice.
My stomach flipped over, thou
gh that had nothing to do with the various aches and bruises that Troy and Zack had bequeathed me. Still, I wondered how she had read so close to my rambling, ongoing thoughts. I leaned my forehead against the bars of the drunk tank and stared at my feet.
“I mean…what if you knew something that the military didn’t? But it would hurt you to tell them. Would you still do it?” she asked, turning to look at me with dire eyes. “Would you do anything to stop it? Anything at all?”
I wondered if she knew about Snowman. And if so, would she defend him, even knowing what he was…what he was capable of?
“You were in San Francisco,” she persisted. “You know what can happen. What would you do?”
My mouth was suddenly so dry it took me a couple tries to find my voice. But I told the truth anyway. “I’d do whatever I had to do to protect those around me.”
Her hand sought mine, took it, like that night behind the club. Her hand had been so weak and cold then. Tonight, though, there was strength in her grip, and hard chips of determination in her eyes. “Thank you,” she said, and reached up and kissed me on the cheek, making me wince as she hit a sore spot.
“For what?”
“For tonight. For everything.” She drew back, and I saw her eyes: black, fathomless, almost surreal in her deathly white face. They looked like portals of black glass. She pressed her hands prayerfully together. “This was the best night of my whole life!”
Raiju: A Kaiju Hunter Novel (The Kaiju Hunter) Page 10
