Naked, Stoned, and Stabbed

by Bradley Denton

  I wobbled as I stood, but steadied myself on the streetlight pole and took inventory. My boots were still tied. My jeans were soiled, but only with dirt. I hadn’t embarrassed myself. My T-shirt had come untucked. My trusty gray canvas jacket stank of smoke, but it had kept my shirt and skin intact when Adesina had kicked me to the floor. My head still swiveled, my mouth tasted only slightly of copper, and my blue specs were, somehow, still seated on my nose. All my senses seemed operational.

  So despite my initial agony and blackout, I had come through this evening’s big shouts better than I’d come through the first one, on my fifteenth birthday. That had been worse because I’d tried to clamp my mouth shut. So some of the force had been directed down at my own guts, resulting in a hiatal hernia and what a laconic sawbones had called “just a touch” of internal bleeding.

  “Nevertheless,” the doc had continued, “whatever caused this, I advise against repeating the activity.”

  But even if I had understood what that first shout had been, I still would have tried to push it down. No matter how things had degenerated between us, I couldn’t very well kill my own mum. As it was, the small portion of the shout that had escaped my lips had thrown her across the flat and given her a radial fracture.

  So as soon as a nurse had told me I was about to be released from hospital, and that my mum would be notified, I’d slipped away. Fortunately, I’d already stashed a few hundred quid from repairing guitars and amps, using one of my clients as a bank. It had been just enough to purchase a birth certificate and passport from an East End artisan, with both documents indicating I was three years older than I was. So if anyone were to ask, I was eighteen.

  Then my “banker” had informed me that an old mate of his, Liam, was hiring crew for a certain iconic rock band’s upcoming Continental and North American tours. Minimum age requirement: Eighteen.

  That tip had gotten me out of the UK for a good long while, which was just what I needed. Because if I had stayed in Britain, I might have been tempted to go home. And if Mum were ever to hit me in the face again, with all those rings she wears … Well, it wouldn’t be a good job. Not for anyone.

  Which was what I was thinking as I leaned against the streetlight pole and watched Adesina fly out over the edge of the Ballroom roof again. This time, she wasn’t carrying anyone.

  “Everyone’s getting out the regular way now, Mom!” she called.

  And that was why I’d been thinking about my mum. Because Adesina, the angel who had saved me, kept addressing my secret big sis as “Mom.”

  As the Yanks say, it was messing with my head.

  “Come down, then,” Bubbles said, “and we’ll leave the rest to the professionals.” Her voice was strong enough that I could hear it through all the noise, despite the fact that a truck was sitting between us. “We’ll have the medics look you over, and maybe then we can go home. After which you’re not allowed to date again until you’re thirty. And I mean your real age, so we’re talking another two decades.”

  Adesina began to descend, high-fiving a firefighter on the ladder on her way down. “I’m fine!” she said. “I hardly breathed any smoke. And we have to find Peter. He was helping people get out through the hole in the wall, but I don’t know what happened to him after that. He hasn’t answered my texts.”

  So the kilt-wearing lad on wheels was her boyfriend, and his name was Peter. My head was clear enough now to understand that much. But I was still having trouble with the Amazing Bubbles being “Mom.” And with Adesina being—what, ten years old?

  “Oh!” Adesina exclaimed. “We also need to make sure Freddie is okay!”

  That made me feel a bit better. She hadn’t forgotten me.

  “Who’s Freddie?” Big Sis asked.

  “Come on, Mom! He’s who I told you about in my second and third texts. The dude who blasted the holes.”

  “Well, it’s no wonder I didn’t catch who that guy was,” Bubbles said. “See, after your first text that said ‘Fire,’ I was sort of focused on getting out of the tub.”

  “That guy is Freddie!” Adesina said. “He got knocked out when I helped him make the hole in the roof. But then there were a lot of people I had to try to rescue, so I just flew him out here and—”

  Adesina dropped out of sight behind the fire truck, and her voice blended with all the other noises flooding Delancey.

  It occurred to me then that where I was standing right now, where Adesina had left me, was the first place she and Big Sis would look for me.

  I wasn’t ready for that. So I pushed away from the streetlight and headed east, struggling through a dead shrub and then wobbling along the wide concrete median. I wanted to get away as fast as possible, but didn’t think I was steady enough to run. And if I fell, I might give a yelp and blow a crater into the pavement. Also, a lot of other people were running, and if I ran and then collided with one of them, that might do something worse than blowing a crater. I had just now been electrocuted and kicked to the floor to save dozens of Wholigans, and I didn’t want to spoil it by turning any of them into pulp.

  My phone buzzed in my back pocket again. Astonished it was still working, I brought it out as I turned left past a cluster of NYPD cruisers and headed north on Chrystie. I was in the lanes meant for southbound traffic, but at the moment, the street was wholly occupied by a few hundred coughing Ballroom escapees, all stumbling northward.

  Most of them were making for the triage station, but not I. My plan was to head up another block to The Who’s hotel at Chrystie and Stanton. From what the Amazing Bubbles had said, she would be bringing Morpho Girl—“Morpho,” like the butterfly, I realized—to the park plaza to be examined. And I didn’t want them to find me there any more than I’d wanted them to find me in the median. Nor did I want them to spot me on the street. But I blended in well with the throng, since I was just one of many who were staring down at phones as we staggered along. The glowing rectangles joined with the streetlights to illuminate the small fogs of our breath.

  My phone screen had a thin crack running across it, but it still came to life when I gave it a tap. Liam had sent me two texts—one, as I’d guessed, from just after I’d electrocuted myself. The second was from just now:

  FUK IF UR ALIVE IM @ MEDIC IN PARK LOOKN 4 U. GOT LADS 2 HOTEL N CAME BAK BUT THINGS GETTN BARMY. WAS SOMETHN IN SMOKE. WHOLIGANS STARTN 2 GO ROUND THE TWIST.

  I tried to text a reply and tell him we could just meet at the hotel. But for that, my touchscreen wouldn’t work.

  Bugger it. I would have to stop at the triage station after all.

  And then, when I was twenty seconds from the plaza, another text popped up:

  SPOTTD SCUM WHAT SET PYROS W POISON SMOKE GNNA CRAK SKULL.

  I heard a shriek ahead, and it multiplied and rippled toward me from scores of throats. In the middle of the shriek came a metallic crash.

  So now, wobbly or not, I began to run.

  * * *

  The forty-foot-wide brick plaza had become a scene from Bedlam.

  Dozens of jokers of all shapes, sizes, and sorts, some of whom I recognized from the Ballroom—jokers with extra arms or legs, jokers with tentacles, jokers with scales, jokers with flowers sprouting from their heads, jokers with necks like giraffes or heads like hippopotami—all were pressed with their backs against the ironwork fences on the northern and southern boundaries of the plaza, all the way across the park to Forsyth. They had terror in their eyes. They were being shielded by two thin blue lines of cops and medics, jokers and nats standing together. The medics had linked arms with some of the cops, and the rest of the cops had batons at the ready.

  Between those blue lines, in the middle of the plaza, more than two hundred nats were rioting. They had overturned an emergency medical services van that had pulled onto the bricks, and now they were swarming over it, ripping off the doors and emptying it of every piece of equipment, all of which went flying into the air like jagged confetti. As it came down, most of the rioters dodged it. But
a few didn’t, and they fell to the bricks, bleeding. They lay among dozens of dropped smartphones, some of which were glowing and buzzing, and some of which had already been trampled to pieces.

  The only reason the fallen nats weren’t trampled themselves was because more and more of the rioters were joining screaming nats at either side of the plaza. They were lunging at the trapped jokers, and they were only just being held at bay by the thin blue lines.

  A few of the jokers closest to Chrystie tried to escape into the street, but were driven back by a swarm of nats on the asphalt. I found myself in the middle of that swarm, which just moments before had been Wholigans running up the street with me. But now they swirled, stomped, and screamed.

  Whatever had turned them into a psychotic mob hadn’t affected me. And at first, none of them seemed to notice. They all surged toward the plaza, and I stumbled backward to get away from them. But I collided with a patrol car blocking the entrance to Rivington Street, and six or seven stragglers turned toward me. They hunched over, cocked their heads, and sniffed the air. Then their lips curled back from their teeth. And over the shrieks of the mob, I heard them snarl.

  One was wearing a black hoodie that said PINBALL WIZARD in jagged silver letters, and another was wearing a QUADROPHENIA T-shirt. I caught glimpses of Union Jacks, blue latticework, a can of baked beans, and flying doves as they all moved toward me.

  Then I heard Liam’s rough roar to my right. “Freddie!” he bellowed. “Fer God’s sake, get over here!”

  I dove toward his voice, and the gang of half a dozen Freddie-hating maniacs lunged for me. A few of them slammed into the police cruiser and fell to the street. One tried to grab my arm, but he got my jacket, and I shucked out of it. Goodbye, faithful jacket. Then a maniac closed a fist on my T-shirt to the left of the bull’s-eye. Another grabbed it on the right. I pulled backward, spun away so the shirt ripped, and left them with scraps. The air hit my bare chest like ice water.

  Then a big, meaty hand grabbed me by the collar and dragged me up from the street. I found myself standing on the sidewalk in front of an oak-and-glass restaurant entrance that said LE TURTLE. For an instant, a horrified waiter stared at me from the other side. Then he flipped over a CLOSED sign and cut the inside lights, and I saw my reflection. I looked like a half-naked, wheatish ghost with round blue eyeglasses and colorless hair. My T-shirt consisted of the sleeves, the collar, and the top of the bull’s-eye, plus a ragged curtain down my back. The tattoo of a Fender Deluxe Reverb amp on the right side of my chest was raked with red lines where a maniac had clawed me. But I hadn’t felt it, so it hadn’t provoked a shout.

  I looked to my left and saw Liam’s bushy-bearded face looming over me. He was standing with his back against a brick wall, and he had my collar bunched in his left fist. Meanwhile, his right arm, as thick as a small goat and almost as hairy, had an orange-haired, hatchet-faced man pinned to the wall by the throat. The hatchet-faced man was wearing a green tracksuit that made his skin look yellow. He was gurgling and thrashing, holding a glowing smartphone in one hand.

  “This bag o’ shite drugged us!” Liam bellowed. “I knew it soon as I got into clean air. We were lucky to hustle out before gettin’ a full dose. So forgive the Wholigans, Freddie, for they know not what they do.” He sniffed the air. “Jeezus, lad, you stink like Satan’s bum.” He let go of my collar.

  The hatchet-faced man stopped thrashing. And despite the fact that Liam’s arm was across his windpipe, he sneered.

  “You got some dose, bear-man,” he said. He spoke with a Russian accent. “Xeno smoke lets natural person smell what others are. Joker smells like vermin, so must kill. Ace smells like hyena. Foul, but dangerous to touch. Boy is ace, yes? But not strong ace. Stench can confuse at first, if ace not strong.” He managed to nod toward the street. “Look now.”

  I turned toward Chrystie. The nats who had tried to attack me had followed as far as the curb. But now they were backing away and shaking their heads like dogs trying to get rid of skunk spray. I took a step toward them, and they shrieked, spun, and ran to the plaza to join their fellow maniacs in threatening the terrified jokers.

  In that instant, I was overwhelmed by a cold fury. I whirled back toward Liam and the Russian.

  “Gaffer,” I said. My voice was hoarse. “Hit me. I’ll take off his head.”

  Liam snorted. “Not on your Nelly! You’ll take off my arm as well. We’ll let the coppers have him.”

  “He’s beaten the coppers!” I waved at the scene behind me. “He set fire to the Ballroom and nearly killed us all, and he’s poisoned the nats so they’ll finish the job. And he’s proud!”

  The Russian was pinned to the wall, so he couldn’t shrug. But his face took on an “oh well” expression. “Sorry about fire. Was supposed to just be smoke, with jokers locked inside so natural persons could kill. Will fix next time. But situation now is working also, yes?” He sneered again. “Xeno may fade in hour or two, but will be enough. Purge of jokers will have begun. So sure, give me to police. Comrades will see what Xeno can do, and continue liberation.”

  Liam’s big left fist swung around and caught the Russian square in the face. The Russian’s eyes rolled up to the whites, and his arms went limp. His phone clattered to the sidewalk. Liam took his right arm away from the Russian’s throat, and the berk crumpled into a green and yellow pile.

  “Shut yer gob, you tosser,” Liam said. He leaned over, picked up the Russian’s phone, and put it into his back pocket. “Rotter was makin’ a video of all this and smirkin’ like he was shootin’ a snuff film.”

  The shouts and shrieks behind me intensified. I turned toward the plaza again and saw that fifty or sixty of the drugged nats had boiled back into the street. Half of them charged north, and the other half charged south.

  I looked north and spotted the kilted lad, Peter, barreling toward us at high speed. He had somehow acquired a robin’s-egg-blue NYPD motorcycle helmet. The maniacs tried to converge on him, but he dodged and wove between them like an Olympic skier on a slalom course. At his first dodge, his axle compressed, and his two wheels merged into one. He leaned to the left and whipped around his first set of attackers, then leaned to the right and whipped around another. Then he did it again, and again. They couldn’t lay a finger on him.

  “Adesina!” he shouted.

  That’s when I looked south. Seventy yards away, my blue-winged angel was trying to rise from the street. But Xeno-drugged maniacs clawed at her legs to drag her down. And it looked like they were going to do it.

  * * *

  One of the enraged nats grabbed Adesina around her knees, and he rose a few feet with her as she struggled to ascend. Then a second nat grabbed the first one, and a third grabbed the second. Two or three more joined in, and they started pulling Adesina back toward the asphalt.

  I took a step toward her as Peter came abreast of me—but then a silvery bubble the size of a grapefruit shot up from the center of the nat cluster, and it caught the first maniac in the spine. He shrieked and lost his grip on Adesina, and the whole string collapsed. Adesina zipped upward.

  “Stay there, Peter!” she cried. “I’ll get you!” The street was full of shrieks, and more and more sirens were coming closer. I heard a helicopter closing in. But Morpho Girl’s voice rang out over all the noise.

  Peter twisted sideways and skittered to a halt a few yards ahead of me. His axle expanded as he came to a stop, his wheel splitting in two again.

  Adesina flew toward us, and she spotted me.

  “Freddie!” she called. “You’re okay!”

  Peter looked back at me. “Freddie?” Then he recognized me and rolled closer. “You’re the dude who blew the holes in the wall and ceiling! Nice work!”

  I was nonplussed, and I became excessively polite. “Er, well, thank you very much indeed. And you did a fine job helping others exit. Well done. Peter, is it?”

  Liam stomped past us into the middle of the street. “Write each other a couple a’ epic poem
s, why don’tcher,” he said, and knocked down two charging maniacs.

  “Thank you!” Peter said to Liam. Then he turned back to me. “It’s Peter, but some of my friends call me Segway.” He pointed at my chest. “Cool tattoo. What happened to your shirt?”

  I gestured toward another crazed nat Liam was fighting off, and then at the screaming mob in the plaza. They were coming closer and closer to overwhelming the thin blue lines protecting the jokers, and some of the cops had started swinging their batons. I saw one make contact, and the nat went down to the bricks. Which enraged those around him even further.

  “A riot happened to my shirt,” I said.

  Peter grimaced. “Yeah, we need to get out of here. I was just at Houston Street, and the cops up there said SWAT teams are on the way. They don’t know what’s made the nats go berserk, so they’re just gonna zip-tie everyone and take ’em to the Tombs. But I don’t see how they can do it without a bloodbath.” He tapped his helmet. “One of the cops tossed this to me when I started back. They don’t expect the night to end well.”

  Morpho Girl landed between us, her wings brushing me as she threw her arms around Peter’s neck. “Thanks for finally answering my texts!” She sounded irritated, but the neck-hug said something else.

  “Hey, I was kinda busy!” Peter said. “None of the people I took out of the Ballroom went crazy, so I had to help them get clear. Where’s your mom?”

  Adesina pointed back down the street. “Moving slow. Those psychos are trying to stop her, but whenever she gets close, they shake their heads and back away. Then they swarm in again. But none of them will hit her, which is totes frustrating ’cause she burned off almost all her fat making rescue bubbles. So, obvs, I was gonna fly her up and drop her—but the nats got between us and started grabbing me. I had to take off, and I think Mom used her last bit of fat to knock them away.”

  “Can’t she just throw herself down on the pavement or something?” Peter asked.

  “That might give her enough to bubble two or three psychos,” Adesina said. “But look how many there are! Somebody needs to, like, attack her.”