by Jason Ridler
But fuck if their nails hadn’t cut Herc’s shirt to shreds.
“Hands off the duds!” I said as they reached for me again. “It’s a loaner.” Exhausted and body aching, I fired a spinning heel kick that made my hamstrings burn and damn near tore out my crotch, making me regret all the mornings I didn’t do the stretches Dr. Fuji swore were the secrets to a long and fruitful life of protecting yourself.
But it bought me a breather to take in just what fresh hell I’d fallen into.
Above me was the chute that had been the ride’s chief novelty. I’d apparently landed on a sea of sleeping Lotus heads, which no doubt awoke their anger. Around us were broken pieces of Tumbledown: wall paintings of upside down families having upside down dinner, stray bumper cars kissing each other at odd angles, canvas torn to make blankets, and all around me the stink of the skids from loose bowels and voided innards along with the sour tang of ancient urine from days unending. The smell of where road kids end up if they take a wrong turn and follow it straight to a dead end. Gentleman junkies always softened the horror of the needle brigade. I never understood the chic of it all, living in an opium dream while there was so much of life to be had. I had sympathy for the chronics with no money and nothing left but bad backs and split stomachs who could find no relief beyond the next fix.
They inched toward me again.
A roundhouse kick kept what seemed to be about twenty desperate creatures at bay, but I was convinced I’d torn my pooper three inches and promised myself to never avoid morning stretching again. “Sorry to crash the slumber party,” I said. “If you can just show me to the exit.”
“No exit,” one said, laughing before covering their face with yellow nails. “No exit.”
“A Sartre fan,” I said. “How . . . fitting. Look, I’ve got nothing you want.”
“You have the only thing I want,” said a white-haired skull with eyes.
I elbowed his chin and he crumpled like tissue paper. Thankfully, his swollen chest was pulsing. The rest backed off but growled.
“Didn’t want to do that. I want Sonny.”
The snarls around me were mixed with sounds of anger and confusion.
“He’s our friend,” a small creature whispered.
“Who said that?”
The little voice scurried in the dark and hid within one of the kissing bumper cars.
A kid.
One that didn’t make the grade to sleep upstairs on the floor.
My patience melted like butter under a blow torch. “Out of my way. You get this one chance.”
“You’re our last chance!” another voice screeched, and I gave its owner an uppercut without even glancing.
The others took a step back.
“Why is he doing this to you? Why is he keeping you here?”
“Rats,” said another voice. “Rats, that’s what we were. To our family.”
“Tests”—another.
“We’re all rats here”—another.
“What tests?” I said. “Don’t make me drop another one of you.”
“He waits,” said the kid in the bumper car.
“Move,” I said, and they scattered a bit so I could approach the youngest among them.
A girl. No more than ten. Face blue as the moon. Veins tattooed her face like an Escher sketch. “Waits for what, kiddo?”
She blinked. “For us.” She blinked again. “He waits for us to die. Lifting things. Fighting each other. He times us.” Her hand snuck out of her ragged green sweater. “Click.” She imitated a stopwatch.
“He’s timing us now,” she said. “How long it takes.”
Damn it.
They’d all slipped behind me. “I’m sorry,” she said, face shaking, hands gripping her sweater.
“Don’t be, kiddo. For anything.”
Gummy teeth clacked behind my back, and I totally lost my shit.
I moved with the grace of a ghost, felling each one of the litter of ragged desperate souls around me like toy soldiers before a flamethrower. Chopping the deadwood before me, I was sickened to my guts. These were victims, not predators; they needed medical help, not right crosses and axe kicks. I kept my blows at twenty-five percent, hitting to stop, to stumble, to knock away, not to crush, to kill, to maim. Still, the bodies filled the floor like debris from an overturned trashcan and regrets chewed my moral compass.
When the last fell, my anger was still raging at an all-time high.
The girl in the bumper car cried.
“He’s watching,” I said. “Isn’t he?”
She nodded.
Without the dregs of humanity blocking the view, you could see the basement of Tumbledown was as big as its main floor, except for a partition made by an old P.O.P curtain blaring WELCOME TO TUMBLEDOWN! THE TOPSY-TURVY ADVENTURE ONLY AT PACIFIC OCEAN PARK!
“Sonny?” I said to the tarp, reaching into my trunks. I yanked out the encoder. It was immaculate. “Time to talk.”
The canvas parted down the middle.
Through it stepped the Scandinavian giant I’d seen at the Legion Hall, carrying a gas can in his left hand. The guy who had been among the protesters, the one with the calm face and the twitchy hand. This time, the hand was as calm as the rest of him. It held a stopwatch. He clicked it.
“Time’s up, Brimstone.”
34
I WAITED. I LOOKED AROUND AT THE BROKEN LIVES at my feet. Then I looked at Sonny.
“Okay, time’s up for what?”
“For you. And the people you beat up.”
“That’s rich coming from a filth peddler.”
“I’m sure that’s what they’re going to call you when they find the mess here.”
I laughed, then marched toward him. “If you think you’re going to pin this on me, hero, you’re in for a rude awakening after I knock you out.” I slid so my right shoulder was in position and prepared to unleash the unspent rage of the day and make good my promise to Cactus. I shot my hands up.
“Kevin?”
A rustle from the bumper cars. Goddamn it.
Kevin’s left hand held the girl by her shoulder, like any big brother would, but the large hunting knife he held to her throat ruined the familial portrait. His face was blank.
Sonny cleared a path, spilling gas until it washed through the stink of the humanity he was preparing to set afire. “You’re almost a perfect patsy, Brimstone. When they find what’s left of you here, there won’t be any further investigation. The weirdo perv detective was running a cult in Dogtown. The place collapsed because of a stray cigarette, lighting old canisters of fuel. You’ve sped up my timetable somewhat, but we’re still on schedule. Only a tad early.” His voice was relaxed, in command, as if all of this had transpired according to plan. I hated it like an open sore on my ball sack.
“Nice plan. Love the stopwatch. And the gas can. It’s like a tribute to Adolf Eichmann, author of the Holocaust. Efficient inhumanity.”
“If you’re expecting to be rescued by the Mossad, I assure you they have bigger fish to fry in Argentina than the workings of a petty detective here. We have a better future to plan.”
I looked at Kevin. “You believe this guy?”
“Kevin knows that freedom comes with responsibility and sacrifice,” Sonny said, kicking two of his victims into a huddled pile. “Tumbledown is more than a structure. It’s an idea. And ideas have no prisons.”
“Kid, this claptrap is from Brainwashing 101,” I said. “Open your eyes, use your mind, and ask when it’s ever okay to kill a kid who did nothing wrong. Here’s a hint: NEVER!”
Sonny finished his circle. “Loyalty is built with trust,” he said. “Who trusts you, Brimstone? The Apache who is dying? The married man whose wife you fucked? The dead man whose life you made fun of tonight?” Gasoline splashed my back and I covered my eyes. “If not for Kevin, you would have been caught, and yet you’d tell Kevin to abandon the man who saved him from the streets?”
I shook the gas from my body. “Kid, listen.
I’ve seen guys like this one. They promise you magic. They promise you a warm cot and a better tomorrow. But they don’t promise for free. You’re a good kid, Kevin. You’re a natural leader. Lead by example. Right now. Would you ask your gang to slit a kid’s throat?”
Another splash shut me up and had me coughing my guts out. Kevin just held the girl like a frozen puppet.
There was no other choice.
Tyger Tyger, burning—
Black snakes of smoke choked my mind and lungs and deep down, from the dark recesses, I heard Tia’s cackle from a thousand mouths. Hahahahah! How pathetic, you think the doors to such places are known only to the weak? Such places are now denied you, as Tiamat commands! HAHAHA!
I coughed gas, now on all fours, floored, surrounded by the doomed. Sonny stood before the canvas partition, placing the gas can on the ground.
“Now, Kevin,” he said.
But he didn’t move.
“Put her in the circle.”
I shook my head, blood rolling out of my nose from the failed joyride. “Do the right thing.”
“Kevin, I always give people three chances. And this is your last.”
“You don’t owe anybody a murder,” I said, leaking crimson like water from a busted Dutch dike. “Even those who saved your life.” I blinked. “Trust me.”
Sonny sighed, putting the stopwatch in the front pocket of his striped trousers, then reached for his ass pocket. “This is why we optimize with a Plan B.”
A figure emerged from the canvas behind Kevin. At first, I didn’t recognize the shadow, but as he lifted his skateboard I realized it was Austen. I screamed, “Move!”
Austen’s skateboard crashed against Kevin’s skull, and the lights went out in his young eyes as Sonny lit a cigarette with a lighter . . . which clearly displayed the stylized initials C&C.
Carruthers and Carruthers.
Austen bent and grabbed the knife from Kevin’s limp hand. Pushing the girl to one side, he hurled the blade.
It cut the air between us in an awkward spin.
My right hand shook as it dropped the encoder and I leapt for the blade, sensing its spinning angle of descent, just as I had with a thousand card tricks, knife throws, and juggling pins over the years. The same hand that had stopped a bullet now shook as a hunting blade bit into its callused palm like a starved cannibal.
I rammed my shoulder straight into Austen’s chest, hearing his sternum break as I turned in mid-air.
Sonny was already through the tarp, heading upstairs.
From my position atop Austen on the floor, I chucked the blade like a dart toward the canvas concealing Sonny, not trusting myself to do anything fancy.
It soared through the air as flames rose from the floor.
I scrambled to my feet. Air became smoke, and I could hear Tia’s laughter in the crackling flames.
No time for gentleness, I grabbed the blue girl. “I’m getting you out.”
She nodded and I flung her over my right shoulder.
Kevin became deadweight in my arms.
The fire circled the damned.
And, glowing on the floor, was the encoder.
I knelt, arms shaking, freed a hand, and reached for the compass on top.
“It’s mine!” screamed one of the Lotus heads, who grabbed the device as the flame cut under his arm.
The compass broke off, its petal of Black Lotus in my hand.
“No!” he screamed, now wreathed in flame, as the other heads tore at him, assuming he had the leaf that was in my trembling hand.
I turned to the tarp, something in me cringing.
Behind me, Austen was choking and shaking and didn’t have a chance.
Good, part of me thought . . .
I sighed, shoved the compass in my mouth, then kneeled to grab his thin ankle.
I dragged Austen and carried Kevin and the girl to the opening in the canvas. Flames lit up the stairs before me.
Halfway up was Sonny, clawing for a door. The knife handle stuck out from directly between his shoulder blades.
Each step shook under my weight as I clambered up.
He reached for the door. “No. I accounted for everything.”
“Nope,” I said through clenched teeth. “You failed to account for the underdogs having guts, you fucking shitheel. “
I ax-kicked the blade into his back until it punctured his lung, and his breath was a wet release of red. His body slid down into the furnace of screams, C&C lighter still in his hands. The single shred of evidence that would tie them to the crimes they’d clearly committed . . .
But the Blue Girl coughed and I climbed to the door—
—which opened.
Braids. Illuminated by the fire: Kevin’s girl. She held a bat.
“Either swing or get out of the way!” I said.
She dropped the bat, took the smaller girl, and helped me Kevin and Austen up and off the stairs before the first flame licked Sonny’s trousers. We were surrounded by Tumbledown kids—the cleaners and the cool ones—so many confused faces, both their leaders out for the count.
But there was no time for an epic speech on freedom and such. “Run you little bastards! Run! Fire!”
I glanced back as flames lit up Sonny’s backside. All life was void from his sly eyes. The lighter was still clutched in his dead hand. I spat, and the spit hissed into vapor as his skin began to sizzle.
Outside at the far edge of the lawn, the kids went into action like a casualty-clearing station. Someone grabbed two skateboards and laid them down for Kevin and Austen. I did a quick check on Austen myself. “Braids?” I said. “Keep an eye out. He popped Kevin good.”
“What?” she said, tossing a winter vest on Blue Girl. “I’ll break his face for that.”
“Easy, save it for later. Right now, get all who can move to run, take the rest in the car. You need to scramble before the cops descend like flies on a turd.”
She grimaced, then nodded, knowing that whatever dream Tumbledown portended to be, it was junk. Worse, burning junk.
The kids of Tumbledown took care of each other and began to vanish. I tossed her the keys and the youngest and most wounded were rolled into the Continental.
Before they loaded him into the car, I tapped Kevin’s pressure points until his eyeballs flickered. He was knocked out, but not for good. His eyes opened. Dull, but awake.
“Hey . . . I’m . . . I’m—”
I raised my hand. “You’re a kid. And a good one. Just took some bad advice. And when you had your fill, you stood up and took a chance at the right thing. No reason to apologize.”
“Wasn’t going to.”
“Oh?”
“I’m . . . I’m in charge. Of them. Now. I can’t let them down.”
I smiled. “I bet you won’t.”
Sirens. Closing. “Better get you in the car.”
He pulled himself up, woozy, but on two feet. The kid was made of sterner stuff than me.
“I’ll walk.” He reached for his board, and almost collapsed. I righted him. “Allow me to carry your board.” I thumbed at Austen, the sole man left on the grass.
“He’s still one of us.”
“Even after trying to kill you?”
“He wanted to be Sonny’s boy.” He shrugged. “So did I. Who better to help him than me?”
I laughed. “Okay, hero. Let’s get you out of here. Braids is driving.”
I rolled the board to the car. He looked back. “Where are you going?”
“Need to see a friend at the hospital. The guy whose life is on the line.”
I held out the compass. “Over such a small thing do empires die.”
Kevin grabbed his board. “Which hospital?”
“Why?”
He smiled. “I . . . want to bring some flowers. For your friend.”
35
CACTUS HUNG IN SUSPENSION, AS IF FLYING ABOVE the world that was trying to get rid of him. Tube in his mouth making him breathe. Swathed in more, and cleaner,
bandages than Karloff’s mummy. Under the linen I knew his back side was a model of No Man’s Land, littered with torn flesh instead of shrapnel and barbed wire.
“Hey, Sarge.” I said, knowing he’d hate it, but he said nothing. I still wore the shredded wrestling costume, but I’d acquired a white doctor’s coat to complete the ensemble. It was a good compliment to his own. “Sorry about the duds, but you hated my fashion sense anyway, and are probably glad that I showed up without a clown suit. See, I had to sweet-talk a nurse to get me in—she got me the lab coat—and I have a meeting to attend, so this will be quick. It is close to noon, which is the time they have scheduled to pull your plug. But I got the guy. The real pusher behind the attack. He’s charred in an amusement park attraction’s basement. So, my promise has been kept. If you died now, you wouldn’t haunt me.”
Okay, I was stretching the truth. There was so much more to it. Maybe I’d explain it all to Cactus one day, but for now it was enough for him to know that Sonny, the no-good bastard whose hand had thrown the grenade, was dead. I fulfilled my promise to Cactus. Besides, he wasn’t going to die.
I checked the door. “But I’m going to do you one better.”
With the deft hand of a career card sharp, I took out the tube and placed it on the bed. Then, I unscrewed the encoder’s compass, took out its petal of Black Lotus, and placed it with the remaining petals I’d had in my wrestling boot. “Good enough to heal Sumerian warriors, so I suspect it will do in a pinch for a real Apache warrior.”
I placed the leaf in his mouth and closed it.
And waited.
And waited.
“Not sure about the dosage, Sarge, but that’s eight times the amount that sent Kodiak over the edge.”
I waited.
The door opened and a doctor wearing wire-rimmed glasses looked at me like I’d fallen out of a ZAP! comic. “What the hell is going on here? Who are you?”
I kept my hand clamped on the old soldier—and then his lips twitched. I raised my hands in surrender. “I’m the trustee of Cactus’s estate.”
“Nurse,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Where’s that lawyer who’s been hovering around?” A reply from outside the room I couldn’t make out. “Then find him!”
