Wild Cards

by George R. R. Martin

  In the darkness of the alley, the cats observed the jokers' meal. Turning to the calico, the black formed the image of a fish's skeleton and they moved back toward the street. On 6th Avenue, the black sent a picture of Bagabond to the calico. They loped uptown until a slow-moving produce truck provided a ride. Many blocks later, the truck neared a Chinese market and the black recognized the familiar scent. As the truck began to brake, both cats leaped out. They kept to the dark beyond the range of the streetlights until they reached the open-air grocery.

  It was still long before dawn and the truckers were unloading the day's fresh produce. The black cat smelled freshly slaughtered chicken; his tongue extended to touch his upper lip. Then he uttered a short growl to his companion. The calico leapt onto a display of tomatoes and began to claw them to pieces.

  The proprietor yelled in Chinese and hurled his clipboard at the marauding cat. He missed. The men unloading the truck stopped and stared at the apparently insane feline.

  “Worse'n Jokertown,” one muttered.

  “That's one big sumbitchin' kitty,” said the other.

  As soon as their attention was fixed on the calico cat destroying the tomatoes, the waiting black cat sprang to the back of the truck and seized a chicken in his mouth. The black was a very large cat, at least forty pounds, and he lifted the chicken with ease. Leaping off the tailgate, he ran into the darkness of the alley. At the same time, the calico dodged a broom handle and bounded after.

  The black cat waited for the calico halfway down the next block. When the calico reached him, both cats howled in unison. It had been a good hunt. With the calico occasionally aiding the black in lifting the chicken onto curbs, they loped back to the park and the bag lady.

  A fellow street dweller had once called her Bagabond in one of his more sober moments and the name had stuck. Her people, the wild creatures of the city, called her by no name, only by their images of her. Those were enough. And she only remembered her name once in a while.

  Bagabond pulled around herself the fine green coat that she had found in an apartment-house dumpster. She sat up, careful not to displace the opossum. With the opossum settled in her lap and a squirrel on each shoulder, she greeted the proud black and calico cats with their prize. Moving with an ease that would have amazed the few street denizens who had anything to do with her, the woman reached out and patted the heads of the two feral cats. As she did, she formed the image in her mind of a particularly scrawny chicken, already half-eaten, being dragged out of a restaurant garbage can by the pair.

  The black stuck his nose into the air and snorted gently as he obliterated the image in both his head and Bagabond's. The calico merged a meow with a growl in mock anger and stretched her head toward the woman's. Catching Bagabond's eye, the calico replayed the hunt as she had perceived it: the calico at least the size of a lion, surrounded by human legs much like mobile tree trunks. Brave calico spotting the prey, a chicken the size of a house. Fierce calico leaping toward a human throat, fangs bared . . .

  The scene went blank as Bagabond abruptly focused elsewhere. The calico began to protest until a heavy black paw rolled her over on her back and held her down. The calico stilled her protest, head twisted to the side to watch the woman's face. The black was stiff with anticipation.

  The picture formed in all three minds: dead rats. The image was obliterated by Bagabond's anger. She rose, shaking off the squirrels and setting the opossum to one side. Without hesitation, she turned and started into one of the tangential, descending tunnels. The black cat bounded silently past and moved ahead to act as a scout. The calico paced the woman.

  “Something's eating my rats.”

  The tunnels were black; sometimes a little bioluminescence shed the only light. Bagabond couldn't see as well as the cats, but she could use their eyes.

  The black picked up a strange scent when the three of them were deep beneath the park. The only connection he could make was with a shifting creature that was equal parts snake and lizard.

  A hundred yards farther, they came upon a devastated rats' nest. None of the rats lived. Some were half-eaten. All the bodies had been mangled.

  Bagabond and her companions stumbled on in the wet tunnel. The woman slid off a ledge and found herself hip-deep in disgusting water. Unidentifiable chunks batted against her legs in the moderate current. Her temper was not improved.

  The black cat bristled and projected the same image as a few minutes before, but now the creature was even larger. The cat suggested they all three back out of this passageway now. Quickly. Quietly.

  Bagabond blocked out the suggestion as she sidled along a slimy wall to another ravaged nest. Some of these rats were still alive. Their simple picture of their destroyer was the shadowy image of an impossibly large and ugly snake. She shut off the brains of the mortally injured and moved on.

  Five yards down the passage was an alcove that provided drainage for a section of the park above. The entrance was three feet above the floor of the tunnel. The black crouched there, muscles taut, ears laid back, yowling softly. He was scared. The calico disdainfully started for the opening, but the black knocked her aside. The larger cat looked back at Bagabond and sent every negative image he could.

  Carried by her anger, Bagabond indicated she would go in first. She took a breath, gasped, and crawled into the alcove.

  It was lit by a grating in the roof, some twenty feet above. The gray light fell on the naked body of a man. He looked to Bagabond to be in his thirties, muscled but not overly so. No flab. Bagabond noted vaguely that he didn't look as wasted as most of the derelicts she had seen. For a moment, she thought he was dead, yet another victim of the mysterious killer. But as her mind focused on the man, she realized he was just asleep.

  The cats had followed her into the chamber. The black growled in confusion. His senses told him the trail of the lizard-snake thing ended here—it ceased where the man lay. Bagabond felt something strange about the man. She didn't usually try to read humans; it was too difficult. Their minds were complex. They plotted, schemed. Slowly she knelt beside him and extended her hand.

  The man woke up, caught sight of the dirty street person about to touch him, and jerked away.

  “Wha' you want?”

  She stared at him.

  He realized he was naked and hauled himself to the entry of the cave passage—He heard a deep growl, recoiled, barely evaded a swipe from the claws of the biggest cat he'd ever seen. For a moment, he felt himself sliding into the darkness inside his mind. Then he was into the main tunnel and gone.

  The cats were crying with questions, but Bagabond had no answers. Almost, she thought. Inside his mind. I almost felt . . . what? Gone.

  Bagabond, the calico, and the black searched for another hour, but they found no more trace of the strange scent. There was no monster in the tunnel.

  The transients, derelicts, bag ladies, and other street people began their day early, when the best cans and bottles were to be found. Rosemary had slipped out of the penthouse early as well. She had barely slept, and that morning, knowing what was almost certainly happening behind the closed doors of the library, she wanted to get out quickly. The dons were declaring war.

  Central Park with its trees, bushes, and benches was heaven for a certain portion of the street people. This sunny morning, Rosemary was looking for a few she had undertaken to help. As she reached the second park bench beyond the stone bridge, a man in tattered clothing hid a bottle in a bush beside the bench and jumped to his feet. He wore an olive-drab fatigue jacket with a less-faded place on one shoulder where the Joker Brigade “cannon fodder” patch had once been sewn. Rosemary had suggested it was not prudent to wear the patch this far uptown.

  “Hello, Crawler,” said the social worker. Somewhere in his late twenties—Rosemary couldn't tell from the vet's sunburned face—he had taken his nickname from his Army job in Vietnam: tunnel crawler. He'd re-upped twice. Then Crawler had seen enough.

  “Hey, Rosemary. You got m
y new goggles yet?” Crawler wore a makeshift pair—cheap 14th Street sunglasses, the eyepieces built up with dirty white adhesive tape. Underneath, Rosemary knew his eyes were dark and overlarge, extraordinarily sensitive.

  “I've requested the funding. It will be a while before we can get them. You know red tape—just like in the service.”

  “Shoot.” But the derelict still smiled as he fell in step beside her.

  Rosemary hesitated, then said. “You can still check in with the V.A., you know. They'll fix you up.”

  “Fuck no,” said Crawler, sounding alarmed. “Guys like me, they go in a V.A. and they never come back out.”

  Rosemary started to say, “That's nonsense,” but thought better of it. “Crawler, do you know anything about the underground? You know, the subway tunnels and all that?”

  “Some. I mean, I need the shelter. I just don't like bein' down there. 'Sides, there's creepy stuff goin' on down there. I hear things about alligators, stuff like that. Maybe it's all from winos with the d.t.'s, but I don't wanna find out.”

  “I'm looking for someone,” said Rosemary.

  Crawler wasn't listening. “Only the really weird people live down there.” He mumbled something. “. . . even stranger than down on the East Side—you know, the Town. She lives down deep.” Crawler pointed at the crone sitting on the ground under a maple tree. She was a hundred yards away, but Rosemary could have sworn there were pigeons sitting on the woman's head and a squirrel perched on her shoulder. Rosemary cocked her head and looked back at the little man.

  “That's just Bagabond,” she said. “No need to worry about her . . .” Rosemary realized that Crawler was no longer with her. He was panhandling a well-dressed businessman getting exercise by walking to work. She shook her head in mixed disapproval and resignation.

  By the time Rosemary turned back toward Bagabond, the pigeons and squirrel were gone. Rosemary shook her head to clear it. My imagination really is working overtime, she thought, walking toward the bag lady. Just another lost soul.

  “Hello, Bagabond.”

  The old woman with stringy hair turned her head away and stared across the park.

  “My name is Rosemary. I talked to you before. I tried to find you a nice place to live. Do you remember?” Rosemary squatted down on the ground to speak at Bagabond's level.

  The black cat she had seen before came up to Bagabond and began rubbing against her. She stroked its head and murmured incomprehensible sounds.

  “Please talk to me. I want to get you food. I want to get you a good place to live.” Rosemary held out her hand. The ring on her third finger glittered in the sun.

  The woman on the ground drew her legs up against herself and clutched the plastic trashbag filled with her treasures. She began rocking back and forth and crooning. The black cat turned to look at Rosemary and she flinched against its glare.

  “I'll talk to you later. I'll come back and see you.” Rosemary rose stiffly. Her face tightened, and for just a moment, she felt like crying to ease the frustration. She only wanted to help. Someone. Anyone. To feel good about something.

  She walked away from Bagabond and back toward Central Park West and the subway entrance. Her father's war council had frightened her. She had never liked what he did, and her entire life seemed to be a search for escape and redemption, atonement. The sins of the fathers. Rosemary wanted peace, but whenever she thought she could get it, it retreated beyond her grasp. C.C. had been a last chance. So was each one of the derelicts she failed to help. There was a key to reaching Bagabond. There had to be.

  Rosemary descended the steps, waited, dropped in her token, walked down the second stairway onto the platform in a daze. The blast of cool air entered the station followed by the AA train. Rosemary barely glanced up from the floor and moved stiffly toward the nearest car.

  As she was about to step onto the train, her eyes widened and she stepped back into the crowd, drawing glares and a few curses for breaking the flow. That last car. It had more of C.C.'s lyrics painted on the side in a shade of red that reminded her of blood. C.C. had always been something of a manic-depressive and Rosemary had always known her mood by what she wrote or sang. The C.C. who had written these words was depressed beyond even Rosemary's experience:

  Blood and bones

  Take me home

  People there I owe

  People there gonna go

  Down with me to

  Hell Down with me to Hell

  Approaching the car, Rosemary saw words she knew had not been there seconds ago.

  Rosie, Rosie, pretty Rosie

  Leave this place

  Forget my face

  Don't cry

  Rosie, Rosie, pretty Rosie

  “I'm going to find you, C.C. I'm going to save you.” Rosemary again fought to get into the car she now realized was covered with fragments of C.C.'s songs, some that she recognized, others that had to be new. Once more the car rejected her. Breathing hard, eyes wide, Rosemary watched the car move into the tunnel. She gasped as the side of the car was suddenly covered with tears of blood.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God . . .” Rosemary absurdly remembered the stories of saints from her childhood. For just a moment, she wondered if the world was ending, if the wars and the deaths, the jokers and the hate, truly prefigured the Apocalypse.

  It was noon.

  American B–52s were bombing Hanoi and Haiphong. Quang Tri was shaky, as the North Vietnamese were on the march. In Washington, D.C., politicians exchanged increasingly frantic phone calls about a recent burglary. The question in some quarters was, is Donald Segretti an ace?

  The midtown Manhattan rush was ferocious. At Grand Central Station, Rosemary Muldoon looked for raggedy shadows she could follow into the darkness of the underground. A dozen blocks north, Jack Robicheaux plied his regular trade, clattering through the permanent darkness on his small electric cart, checking track integrity in tunnel after tunnel. And somewhere under the abandoned 86th Street cutoff, just beneath the floor of the south edge of Central Park Lake, Bagabond drifted on the edge of sleep, warmed by the cats and other beasts of her life.

  Noon. The war beneath Manhattan was starting.

  “Let me quote to you from a speech given once by Don Carlo Gambione himself,” said Frederico “the Butcher” Macellaio. He grimly surveyed the groups of capos and their soldiers gathered around him in the chamber. In the '30s, the huge room had been an underground repair facility for midtown transit. Before the Big War, it had been closed and sealed off when the T.A. decided to consolidate all maintenance yards across the river. The Gambione Family had soon taken the space over for storage of guns and other contraband, freight transfer, and occasional burials.

  The Butcher raised his voice and the words echoed. “What will make the difference for us in battle will be two things: discipline and loyalty.”

  Little Renaldo was standing off to one side with Frankie and Joey. “Not to mention automatic weapons and H.E.,” he said, smirking.

  Joey and Frankie exchanged glances. Frankie shrugged. Joey said, “God, guns, and glory.”

  Little Renaldo commented, “I'm bored. I wanna go shoot somethin'.”

  Joey said a little louder, so the Butcher could hear, “Hey, are we goin' to roust some rummies, or what? Who's fair game? Just the blacks? Jokers too?”

  “We don't know who their allies are,” said the Butcher. “We know they wouldn't act alone. There are traitors from among our own race helping them for money.”

  Little Renaldo's manic grin widened. “Free-fire zone,” he said. “Hoo-boy.” He tugged his boonie hat down snug.

  “Shit,” said Joey, “you weren't even there.”

  Little Renaldo gave him a thumbs-up. “I saw that John Wayne movie.”

  “That's the word from the Man, huh?” said Joey.

  The Butcher's smile was thin and cold. “Anybody gives you problems, just waste 'em.”

  The groups began to move out, scouts, squads, and platoons. The men h
ad their M-16s, pump scatterguns, a few M-60 machine guns, grenades and launchers, rockets, riot gas, sidearms, knives, and enough blocks of C-4 to handle any kind of heavy demolition.

  “Hey, Joey,” said Little Renaldo. “What you gonna shoot?”

  Joey slapped a magazine into the AK-47. This weapon wasn't from the Gambione armory. It was his own souvenir. He touched the polished wooden stock. “Maybe a 'gator.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don't you read any of them rags that's been talking about the giant alligators down here?”

  Little Renaldo looked at him doubtfully and shivered. “The jungle-jokers are one thing. I don't want to go up against no big lizards with teeth.”

  It was Joey's turn to grin.

  “No such things, right?” said Little Renaldo. “You're just shittin' me, right?”

  Joey shot him a jaunty thumbs-up.

  Jack had lost all track of time. He knew it had been a long while since he'd shunted his track maintenance vehicle off the main line onto a spur. Something was wrong. He decided to check out some of the more obscure routes. It was as though a piece of ice pressed against a spot just north of his tailbone.

  He'd heard trains, but they had passed at a distance. The tunnels he now traveled were seldom used except for diverted routes during high congestion, track fires, or other problems on the main line. He also heard far-off reports that sounded like gunfire.

  Jack sang. He filled the darkness with zydeco, the bluesy Cajun-Black mixture he remembered from his childhood. He started with the Big Bopper's “Chantilly Lace” and Clifton Chenier's “Ay-Tete-Fee,” segued into a Jimmy Newman medley and Slim Harpo's “Rainin' in My Heart.” He'd just pulled the switch and slid the car onto a spur he knew he hadn't checked in at least a year, when the world blew apart in a flash of red and yellow flame. He'd had time to sing one line of “L'Haricots sont pas sales” when the darkness fragmented, the pressure waves slammed against his ears, and the car and he took different, spinning, twisting directions through the air.