Wild Cards

by George R. R. Martin

  All he really had time to say was, “Wha' de hail—” as he fetched up against the stone of the tunnel's far wall and crumpled to the floor. For the moment, he was stunned by concussion and flash. He blinked and realized he could see smoke swirling, and the hand-held lights that illuminated the smoke.

  He heard a voice say, “Jesus Christ, Renaldo! We weren't going up against a tank.”

  Another voice said, “Sorta sorry to do this one. Hate to kill anybody sounded that much like Chuck Berry.”

  “Well,” said a third, “at least he had to be a spook.”

  “Check it out, Renaldo. Guy probably looks like an open can of Spam, but you better find out for sure.”

  “Yo, Joey.”

  The lights came closer, bobbing in the dissipating smoke.

  They're gon' kill me, Jack thought, reverting to the dialect of his childhood. There was at first no emotion to the realization. Then the anger started. He let the feeling sweep over him. The anger escalated to rage. Adrenaline pricklings agonized his nerves. Jack felt the first brush of what he had used to think was the onset of loup-garou madness.

  “Hey, I think I see something! Off to your left, Renaldo.”

  The one called Renaldo approached. “Yeah, I got him. Now I'll make sure.” He raised his weapon, taking aim with the light held tight along the stock.

  That pushed Jack over the edge. You chill son of a bitch!

  Pain, welcome pain, wracked him. He . . . changed.

  His brain seemed to spin, his mind folding in on itself endlessly down into the primal reptile level. His body was elongating, thickening; his jaw thrust forward, the teeth springing up in profusion. He felt the length of perfectly toned muscles, the balance of his tail. The utter power of his body . . . he felt it completely.

  Then he saw the prey in front of him, the menace.

  “Oh, my God!” Little Renaldo cried. His finger tightened on the trigger of the M-16. The first burst of tracers went wild. He never had the chance for a second.

  The creature that had been Jack lunged forward, the jaws closing around Renaldo's waist, twisting and tearing at his flesh. The man's light spun, smashed, and went out.

  The other men started firing wildly.

  The alligator registered the cries, the screams. The smell of terror. Good. The prey was easier when it located itself. He dropped Renaldo's corpse and moved toward the lights, the bull roar of his challenge filling the tunnel.

  “For the love of God, Joey! Help me!”

  “Hold on. I can't see where you went!”

  The corridor was narrow, the materials old and decaying. Caught between two equally tempting morsels, the alligator twisted around in the confined space. He saw flashes of light, felt a few stinging impacts, mainly in his tail. He heard the prey screaming.

  “Joey, it busted my leg!”

  More flashes. An explosion. Acrid smoke choked his nostrils. Irregular chunks of stone fell from the ceiling. Rotten beams splintered. Deteriorated cement collapsed. Part of the floor beneath him gave way and his twelve-foot length tumbled heavily down an incline. Smoke, dust, and solid debris rained from above.

  The alligator smashed into a thin metal hatch that had never been engineered for this kind of force. The aluminum tore like ripping canvas and he toppled into an open shaft. He fell for another twenty feet before crashing into a spider's nest of wooden beams. Bits of debris followed for a little while. Then there was silence, both above and below. The alligator rested in darkness. When he tried to flex his body, nothing much happened. He was thoroughly jammed into a wooden cat's cradle. A beam was wedged securely across his snout. He couldn't even open his jaws.

  He attempted to roar, but the sound came out more as a muffled growl. He blinked his eyes, seeing nothing. His strength was dwindling, shock taking its toll.

  He didn't want to die here. He wished to end in the water.

  Worse, the alligator didn't want to die hungry.

  He was starved.

  Bagabond felt something she hadn't experienced for a long time, sympathy, for Rosemary Muldoon. She knew the social worker wanted to help, but how could Bagabond tell her that she didn't need help? Puzzled by that emotion, Bagabond discovered another one. She could be happy with the caring and companionship of her friends, however nonhuman they might be.

  She did have a warm place to sleep. Her home beneath Central Park was close to the steam tunnels. Bagabond had slowly furnished it with the best the street had to offer. A broken red director's chair was the only furniture, but there were rags and blankets deeply covering the floor. A velvet painting of lions on the veld leaned against one wall and a wooden carving of a leopard stood in one corner. One of the leopard's legs was missing but it occupied a place of honor.

  Drowsing there in the abandoned 86th Street cutoff tunnel, Bagabond even remembered the person she had once been, Suzanne Melot—The surge of pain that crashed across her mind interrupted her thoughts. The strength of the cry caused the black cat to moan in pain. As the wave receded, the black sent to Bagabond the same image he had taken from the creature that had attacked the rats. Bagabond agreed mentally. Neither could she quite nail down the image. The creature seemed to be a huge lizard, but it somehow wasn't entirely animal. And it was hurt.

  Bagabond sighed and rose. “We have to find it if we are going to have peace and quiet.” The black was not in favor of this solution until another wave of anguish came. He snarled and ran into the tunnel to Bagabond's left. The calico felt only the edge of the pain as it passed through Bagabond and the black. Bagabond replayed a little of the cry of pain and the calico flattened to the ground, ears back. The image of the black appeared in Bagabond's mind and the calico dashed down the tunnel in pursuit. Bagabond told the calico to wait for her, and they began to track both the black and the injured creature.

  It took time to find them. The creature really did resemble nothing so much as a giant lizard. It was trapped beneath a fall of timbers in an unfinished tunnel. The black crouched a few feet away, staring at this apparition.

  Bagabond looked at the trapped creature and laughed. “So there really are alligators in the sewers.” The alligator twitched its tail, knocking a few bricks across the tunnel. “But that's not all you are, is it?”

  There was no way she and the cats could free the alligator. Bagabond knelt and examined the timbers trapping the beast as she called her friends to help her. She reached out and stroked the alligator's head, calming him with the images she sent. She sensed the creature drifting in and out of consciousness.

  The animals arrived at different times. An uneasy peace held as Bagabond directed each according to its abilities. Rats gnawed, a pair of wild dogs provided muscle, the opossums and raccoons carried off small stones. The black and the calico aided Bagabond in controlling the volatile mix of animals.

  When the smaller debris had been cleared away and timbers and boards shifted or gnawed through, Bagabond began hauling on the alligator. Between her tugging and his struggles, Jack fought his way free. Bagabond ended up with a very tired and bruised alligator across her lap. The black and the calico told the creatures who had helped to leave.

  The two cats watched as Bagabond rubbed the underside of the alligator's jaw, calming the creature. As she stroked it, the snout and tail began to shorten. The scaly hide became smooth, pale skin. The stubby limbs elongated into arms and legs. In a few minutes, Bagabond was holding the naked, bruised body of the man they had found before. As the change took place, Bagabond realized that at some indefinable point, she could no longer control this creature or read his thoughts. Somehow she had missed the critical division between man and beast.

  She got up, lifting the man off her, and walked toward the end of the tunnel. The calico accompanied her. The black stayed beside the man.

  Why? Bagabond thought.

  Why? the black countered. The work they had just done, as seen through the cat's eyes, played across her mind.

  The calico looked from one to the
other. She had not been invited into this conversation.

  Alligator, Bagabond explained, not human.

  In her mind the alligator became a man.

  “Curiosity . . .” Bagabond spoke aloud for the first time since the rescue operation had commenced.

  The black sent a picture of a black cat on its back with paws in the air.

  Bagabond sat down beside the man. In a few minutes he began to move. Painfully he sat up. In the dim light filtering from above, he recognized Bagabond as the old woman he had seen the day before.

  “Wha' happen? I remember running into a bunch of crazies with guns, and then things get fuzzy.” He tried to focus on the crone, who kept splitting into two images. “I think maybe I've got a concussion.”

  Bagabond shrugged and pointed at the beams from the roof-collapse behind him. By straining his eyes, he could see what looked like hundreds of pawprints on the floor and the walls around the cave-in. In the center of the devastation, Jack also saw the imprint of a monstrous tail.

  “Christ, not again.” Jack turned back to Bagabond. “When you got here, what did you see?”

  She turned partly away from him, still silent. He saw her mouth quirk in a partial smile beneath the stringy hair. Was she mad?

  “Merde. What am I going to do?” Jack was almost bowled over by the pair of black paws that struck his chest. “Easy, boy. You're the biggest kitty I've seen since I left the swamps.” The black cat's eyes stared into his with an odd intensity. “What is it?”

  “He wants to know how you do it.” The old woman's voice did not match her appearance. It was young and held a touch of humor. “Be careful. You're spaced, just like you were coming out of Thorazine.” She took his arm as he tried to stand.

  When he was upright, she said, “You're not going to make it far like that.” She began to take off her coat.

  “Mon Dieu. Thanks.” Feeling his skin flush, Jack shrugged into her green cloth coat and wrapped it around himself. It covered him from neck to knees, but left his arms bare from the elbows down.

  “Where do you live?” Bagabond gazed at him without expression. Jack appreciated the kindness.

  “Downtown. Down on Broadway near the City Hall station. Are we anywhere close to a train?” Jack was not used to being lost, and found that he disliked the feeling intensely.

  In answer, Bagabond picked her way to the tunnel entrance. She didn't look back to see if he was following when she turned to the right.

  “Your mistress, she is a little strange. No offense,” Jack said to the black cat. It paced him as he trailed the bag lady. The cat looked up at him, sniffed, and twitched his tail.

  “Who am I to talk, eh?”

  Although Jack attempted to keep up with Bagabond, he quickly fell behind. Eventually, at the black's appeal, she returned and helped support the man, pulling his arm across her shoulders.

  Jack finally recognized the tunnels as they came into the 57th Street station. He was amazed at the change in Bagabond as they made their way onto the platform. Even though she was still holding him up, the woman seemed to hang off him. She shuffled now instead of striding, and kept her eyes on the ground. Those waiting on the platform gave them plenty of room.

  The subway pulled in, the last car covered with unusually bright graffiti. Bagabond hauled Jack toward the vividly decorated car. Jack had time to read some of the more coherent phrases covering the side.

  Are you unusual?

  Did you feel the fire?

  Are you burning inside?

  The flames devour us all,

  But never let us die.

  It never ends, forever in flame.

  Jack thought some of the phrases changed as he watched, but that had to be an effect of his concussed brain. Bagabond pulled him inside. The doors closed, leaving some very angry transit customers outside.

  “Stop?” Bagabond was nothing if not economical with her words, Jack thought.

  “City Hall.” Jack slumped and rested his head against the back of the seat, closing his eyes as the train rolled downtown. He did not notice that the seat molded itself around his body to support it while he slept. He failed to realize that the doors never again opened until they reached his stop.

  The cats were not entirely happy with this subway ride. The calico was flatly terrified. Ears laid back, tail straight and fluffed out, she leaned into Bagabond's side. The black gingerly kneaded the floor of the car. The texture was only partially familiar. He wondered at the heat and the confusing scent all around him.

  Bagabond tried to focus on the interior of the dark car. There were no sharp angles here. Dim shapes seemed to change form subtly in her peripheral vision. I've felt nothing like this, she thought, since the acid trip. She extended her consciousness beyond the cats and Jack. She couldn't define the who that she briefly contacted. But she felt the overwhelming comfort, the warmth, and the protectiveness that surrounded them here.

  Cautiously she settled back in her seat and stroked the calico.

  “This is it,” said Jack.

  He had recovered sufficiently to lead their small party through the City Hall station, beyond a bewildering succession of maintenance closets, and into another labyrinth of unused tunnels. He'd rigged sections of the passages with lights which he turned on and off as needed as they proceeded toward his home. When he opened the last door, he stood aside and waved Bagabond and the cats inside. He smiled proudly as they stared around the long room.

  “Wow, man.” Bagabond flinched as she took in the opulent furnishings and decor. The immediate impression was of red velvet and claw-footed divans.

  “You are younger than you look. That was my reaction too. Reminded me of Captain Nemo's stateroom . . .”

  “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

  “Yeah, right. You saw it too. One of the first movies I ever saw over to the parish theater.” They walked down the crimson-carpeted stairs flanked by gold stanchions and plush velvet ropes. Both cats ran ahead of them, the calico using the Victorian armchairs as hurdles. The electric light was augmented by flickering gas flames that gave the room an atmosphere out of the last century. The black cat trotted over the Persian carpets to the edge of the platform and looked back at the two humans.

  “He wants to know what this is and what's behind that door.” Bagabond steadied Jack as they moved slowly down the staircase. “You need to lie down.”

  “Soon enough. This is my home and behind the door is my bedroom. If we could head in that direction . . .” They started across the room. “This was the first subway in New York, built by a man named Alfred Beach back after the War Between the States. It only ran for two blocks. The Boss Tweed didn't want it so he shut it down, then they forgot about it. I found it a while after I started working for the Transit Authority—one of the benefits of the job. Don't know why it held up so well, but it's a good place for me. Just took a little cleaning up, is all.” They had walked to the other end of the room and Jack reached out to turn the handles on the ornate cast-bronze door. The center circle swung open. “This used to be the entrance to the pneumatic tube.”

  “I didn't expect this.” Bagabond was surprised to find that the interior of the tunnel was sparsely furnished. There was a homemade bed constructed out of pine boards, an equally homemade bookcase, and a plank chest.

  “All the comforts of home. Even my complete collection of Pogo books.” Jack looked innocently at Bagabond and she laughed, then seemed surprised at it.

  “Where's your iodine?” Bagabond looked around for a first aid kit.

  “Don't use that stuff. Can you get me some of those?” Jack pointed up at the spiderwebs.

  “You're kidding.”

  “Best poultice in the world. My grandma taught me that.”

  When Bagabond turned back to him, he had pulled on a pair of shorts and had a shirt in his hand. She handed over the spiderwebs and helped him bandage the worst abrasions.

  “So how did you end up down here?” Jack lay back on the bed, wi
ncing slightly, while Bagabond perched gingerly on the edge.

  “You're sure not like those social workers.” Bagabond watched the cats outside the door as they chased each other around the room. She turned back to him with an appraising look. “And they like you.

  “They let me out a while ago and I ended up back in the city. No place else to go. Met the black, started talking to him, and he talked back. So did a lot of the other animals, the ones that aren't human, anyway. I get along. I don't need people, don't want people around. People always mean bad luck for me. I can talk to you, too, when you're that other one, you know? Out there they call me Bagabond. I had another name once but I don't remember it much.”

  “They call me Sewer Jack.” Jack said it bitterly, in contrast to Bagabond's flat recitation. The burst of emotion she caught held screams, bright lights, and fear, and the haven of the swamp.

  “It was here—the creature. What are you?” Bagabond was con- fused; she had never before met this mixture of man and animal, with whom she could only sometimes communicate.

  “Both. You saw.”

  “Do you control it? Can you make yourself change?”

  “Did you ever see Lawrence Talbot as the wolfman? I change when I lose control or when I allow the beast to take over. I'm not cursed by the full moon; I'm cursed all the time. The loup-garou is a legend where I come from. The Cajuns all believe in it. When I was young, I did too. I was afraid I would hurt someone, so I went as far away as I could go. New York was a foreign country; no one would know me or bother me here.”

  His eyes focused on her now instead of the past. “Why the act? You can't be over forty-five.”

  “Twenty-six.” She looked down at Jack, wondering why it mattered. “It keeps them from bothering me so much.”

  Jack glanced through the open door at the railway clock on the opposite wall. “I'm getting hungry. How about you?”