“I already called a doctor to come by today, but that was before this. And what exactly could the doctor do?” Michelle asked. She opened the refrigerator, took out the cream, and set it on the dining-room table. “Tell me my daughter is encased in a cocoon? Pretty sure that’s self-evident.”
Joey lit the burner under the coffeepot, then looked at Michelle with serious eyes.
“Or we can try to go in there with her. You know, like last time. Maybe she’d be able to let us in.”
“No,” Michelle said, holding up her hands. “We talked about this. There’s too much adult stuff rattling around in our heads she doesn’t need to be exposed to. We made sure she couldn’t get to those parts last time, but now, who knows just how bad things are for her in there—and if she could control things the way she did before.”
“We could call Wally,” Michelle said, thinking out loud. “He dealt with all kinds of issues when he brought Ghost back. Maybe he’ll know someone who can help. Someone in Jokertown.”
Joey shrugged. “You know plenty of people there,” she said, turning up the burner under the coffee. “And if you thought any of them could help, you’d be on the phone to them right now.”
Michelle sat down at the table and traced the wood grain with her finger. A few minutes later, Joey set a cup of coffee in front of her. She sipped it, and though normally she loved Joey’s coffee, today it tasted like nothing at all.
She couldn’t just sit here. It wasn’t in her nature. She pulled her phone out of the pocket of her robe. One button push was all she needed.
“Hey, Wally. It’s Michelle. Can you come by my apartment after you drop Ghost off at school? There’s something I need to show you.”
They reached Shymkent in the cold hours of Wednesday morning. Franny had been forced to stop more than he wanted to allow troop conveys to rumble past. He’d stopped twice more when he became alarmed by Baba Yaga’s moans and the streaks of black that were spreading like tentacles up her arm. One time he managed to get a bit of water down her throat and she had cried out what sounded like a name, Tolenka, and clutched at Franny’s shirt. More alarming were the few tears that ran into the wrinkles on her sunken cheeks. She didn’t seem like the kind of broad who would cry about anything.
During the drive Franny had tried to plan. He would have to find a pilot with flexible ethics, and hire a private jet. He hoped that satchel held enough to do the job. On the outskirts of the city he debated—hospital or hotel or just park the car at the airport and wait for morning? He glanced back at Baba Yaga. Her skin was waxy, yellow, and drool ran from the corner of her mouth. If possible she looked worse than she had only a few hours before. He had to find medical help, but if he went to a hospital there were going to be awkward questions. He was also low on gas, and when he spotted an all-night truck stop he pulled in to refill the tank.
As he climbed out of the van there was a sound like a giant chewing rocks and out of the darkness came a link of tanks grinding their way down the street. First troops and now tanks. Things were clearly escalating, but what? Once more he thought about Mollie. She could have taken him anywhere and it would probably be better than this shit. He shook it off and went inside to pay.
The man behind the counter had a five o’clock shadow that almost rivaled Franny’s and soul-empty eyes. Those blank eyes did flick down toward the bloodstains on his shirt and the waistband of his trousers, but no comment was made. Franny didn’t speak, just jerked his head toward the van and the gas pump and laid money on the counter. The man was equally silent, just turned on the pump.
As they drove away Franny had a feeling he had overpaid by a lot, but since he had no idea about Kazakh money he let it go. He realized he was exhausted and ravenous. The last food he’d eaten had been half a fish yesterday morning. Sitting in the van didn’t look like a good option for either of them, and from a hotel maybe he could try to find a doctor. It would also be good to take a shower, eat some food, and maybe at some point he’d get to sleep. Assuming he could with the grinding agony in his side and shoulder. Maybe that hypothetical doctor could get him some painkillers.
He picked a run-down-looking hotel with a lot of trucks parked in front of weathered doors. He buttoned the tux jacket to hide the blood that now formed a Rorschach test on his shirt. There was a heavyset woman with bottle-blond hair behind the desk, a cigarette hung from her lower lip as if affixed there with glue. She was staring at an old-style tube TV that sat on the counter. The images showed mobs in the street, police in riot gear, bricks and stones and Molotov cocktails being thrown. Occasionally the picture would cut back to an older man in a suit behind the ubiquitous news desk. He and his female counterpart sounded serious, but Franny had no idea what they were saying. Then he recognized that equestrian statue. The riots were occurring in Talas. At first his reaction was indifference—couldn’t happen to a nicer shithole. Then he remembered the fear and the gnawing rage he’d felt in that hospital, Baba Yaga’s ominous warnings, and he felt a lot less dismissive.
The clerk continued to ignore him and watch the television. This time he was going to have to speak.
“Uh, hi. Need a room. Two beds.” He should have left it at that, but he found himself adding, “I’m an American. Came to visit my grandma. We got lost that’s why we’re so late—”
“Don’t care,” the woman said. “Four thousand five hundred tenge.”
“Uh, wow, okay.”
“You got dollars?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll take twenty-five of those instead.”
“Okay.”
Franny returned to the van and pulled out a bundled stack. Everything in the bag were hundreds. “Well crap.” He folded a bill between his fingers and thought; made up his mind. Returning to the lobby he held the bill so the woman could see the denomination.
“How about this. I need a clean shirt and pants, socks and underwear, a razor and shaving soap, some pain pills and antibiotic ointment and bandages. Oh, and something to eat. I get that from you and you get this hundred to cover the cost and another hundred when you deliver.”
The woman shifted the cigarette to the other side of her mouth. “Deal.” She slid a key across the desk to him.
“Don’t call the cops.”
“You think I’m an idiot? They would just take the money from me.”
Franny nodded, swept up the key, and left. Parking in front of the room he unlocked the door and left it standing open while he went back for Baba Yaga. She weighed next to nothing, but it was still almost too much for his shoulder and side. By the time he carried her through the door his legs were shaking and tears of pain were rolling down his cheeks. He collapsed onto his knees and dropped the old lady. She gave a moan, and a babble of Russian. Her eyes rolled back and Franny panicked.
“Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh shit, don’t die.”
He checked her pulse. Nothing. He had taken CPR as part of his training for the NYPD. He leaned down ready to start CPR, then jerked away from that slack mouth wet with drool. Did she have to be conscious to use her power? Or would her spit kill him? He decided not to find out. He started chest compressions and felt a rib break beneath his clasped hands. The old woman gave a gasping breath.
Shaking in reaction Franny gritted his teeth and lifted her onto the bed. He returned to the van for the satchel, then sank down onto the other bed. He pulled the pistol out of his waistband and set it next to him.
A knock at the door jerked him from a sleep he hadn’t intended to take. He yelled as the sudden clenching of his muscles tore at the wound in his side. He groped and found the pistol. Clutching it tightly he tottered to the door, and looked through the peephole. It was the woman from the front desk. He opened the door. She carried a paper bag that sported a spreading grease stain on the bottom, and was filling the room with both strong and tempting odors. She also had a bag of clothing and toiletries and the requested medicine.
“Thanks,” Franny said, and he handed over the second h
undred. He hesitated then said, “Wait.” He went to the bed and pulled out another two hundred dollars.
The woman was staring blank-eyed at Baba Yaga unconscious on the bed in her absurd evening gown.
“Your grandma don’t look so good. You don’t look so good.”
“Yeah. We need a doctor. One with your discretion.”
“What? What is this dis … dis—”
“Somebody who won’t talk.”
“I don’t know any doctors.” Franny closed his eyes and swayed. Hopelessness washed over him. “But I know a vet,” she added.
“I’ll take anything.” He handed her the money.
She left and he opened the bag. The food proved to be meat wrapped in soft pastry. It was like lamb, but much stronger. He guessed it was mutton. He didn’t care. It was delicious. He left one of the pastries for Baba Yaga assuming she ever recovered enough to eat, and hit the shower.
The tile was cracked underfoot and the wallpaper in one corner of the bathroom had pulled loose to reveal mold growing beneath it. The hot water eased the tension in his back and shoulders, but stung both bullet wounds. The purloined dress shoes had rubbed blisters on both his heels so that was another source of pain.
The bandage on his side was filthy. He gritted his teeth and ripped it off, figuring no covering was better than risking infection. The wound was gaping open where the stitches had ripped loose. Franny dabbed the strong-smelling ointment onto his bullet wounds, gasped at the pain, and stuck on clean bandages. He then wrapped a tissue-thin towel around his waist and stood over the stained sink to shave. It felt good to scrape away three days of beard.
Slipping back into the bedroom he paused at Baba Yaga’s side. Her breathing was labored but at least he had her breathing again.
He lifted her arm to check her pulse and she woke. She stared up at him, her eyes cloudy. She seemed scared as well as confused. “Tolenka?” she whispered.
“No, Frank. Would you like to eat something? It’s a bit cold, but—” She shook her head and moaned.
Her lips were dry and cracked and she ran her tongue constantly across them. He went into the bathroom and filled a plastic cup with water. He held her while she took a few small sips. It seemed to revive her somewhat. She seemed to actually see him.
“You shaved,” she said faintly.
He rubbed a hand across his chin. “Yeah.” He suddenly realized he was still wearing just a towel. The old woman seemed to read his thoughts, and gave him that grim smile, though it seemed more like a grimace. “You’re not hard to look at, boy.”
“Thanks, I guess. Do you want to try and eat?”
She shook her head. “Too sick. Like fire in the veins.” Her voice was threadlike, fading. He barely heard her add, “Maybe better … to die … now. Not wait … for…” She slid once more into unconsciousness.
Franny changed into the clean clothes the woman had brought. Fatigue dragged at every muscle and his eyes felt like they’d been washed with sand. He settled in a sagging chair to wait, pistol in his lap. He checked to make sure he didn’t have a round in the chamber in case he fell asleep again and dropped the damn thing but the grinding pain from the gunshot wounds kept him awake. Almost two hours later the woman returned with a short, fireplug-shaped man with pronounced epicanthic folds and iron-grey hair.
“Someone is hurt,” he said. He spoke English with a decided British accent.
Franny nodded. “My, my grandmother. She’s … poisoned. A snake. I think she may have a broken shoulder, too.”
“Big snake,” the vet said.
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Let’s look.” He moved to Baba Yaga’s side and studied her left hand where IBT’s tongue had given her a glancing blow. It was horribly swollen, blackened with red streaks sweeping up the arm toward Franny’s makeshift tourniquet. The vet drew in a hissing breath between his teeth. “This is bad. How long ago did you apply the tourniquet?”
Franny rubbed at his forehead. “I don’t know. Twelve, fourteen hours?”
“The circulation’s been cut off for too long. The arm needs to come off.”
“Shit.” Franny ran an agitated hand through his hair. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“It was the right thing. Old lady like this, the poison would certainly have killed her.”
“How many questions are there going to be at a hospital?” Franny asked.
“A lot. I can do this. I amputate legs off cats and dogs, but we have to go to my office.”
“How much?” Franny asked.
“Five thousand—American.”
“Could she survive to get to New York?”
“Probably not.”
“Will she survive the surgery?”
“Maybe.”
“Not a lot of certainty either way.”
“She’s got a better chance if we get the arm off. I’m going to need help. Are you squeamish?”
“I’ve watched autopsies,” Franny answered.
“Then you’ll probably do.”
It took a day to fix the hydraulic cutter. Mollie kept a periodic eye on Baba Yaga’s apartment in the casino. Nobody showed up, though, so after Dad and Brent managed to clean spilled lubricant from the compressor valves and replace the shorted wiring, they were ready to try again.
As Mollie’d expected, the safe was welded to beams inside the closet walls. But the cutter, designed for chewing through broken farm equipment, made short work of the studs. Mollie had managed to get the safe half pried out of the wall when the shrieking started.
The cutter was so loud that at first she thought it was her imagination. Then she heard it again, so she momentarily switched off the cutter in order to listen. She leaned out of the closet, cocked her head toward the portal to Idaho.
She called, “Everything okay back there?”
Brent said, “You done yet? Why are you stopping?”
Mollie shrugged. Weird.
But just as she was about to return her attention to the half-extricated safe, she heard it again. And this time she heard it clearly. This was more than shrieking; it was an almost inhuman wailing, coming from outside the casino. Something about the noise triggered some remnant of the hindbrain that evolution had forgotten to remove from modern humans: she jolted with a physically painful urge to flee, and the nape of her neck broke out in tingling gooseflesh. She dropped the cutter and went to the bedroom window.
Given what she knew of the casino and the people who ran it, not to mention the people it catered to, she’d half expected to find a demilitarized zone outside the window. Her mental picture of Talas was of a place that could have been featured for a cover story in Shitholes of the World magazine. But in fact Baba Yaga’s apartments overlooked a scene that might have been anywhere in Europe. Folks on the street weren’t dressed any worse than they might have been in New York, or Perth, or Johannesburg. The streets—clean, leafy boulevards—featured fountains, pedestrian arcades, and an impressive investment in public art. She saw cafés, tram stops, people strolling hand in hand or pushing strollers. Oil money at work, Mollie realized. Maybe the local oligarchs preferred not to live in a shithole. Even the mountains in the far distance were rather picturesque. It didn’t seem so awful.
Except for the guy sitting outside a sidewalk café near the end of the street, shrieking like a monkey with its arms stuck in a garbage disposal while he repeatedly rammed the neck of a broken water bottle into his own eye socket. Bloody debris rained over his and neighboring tables.
Nobody tried to help him. Nobody tried to stop him.
“What the fuck?” she gasped.
In fact—
Mollie emptied her stomach. Half-digested chunks of bacon and egg spewed across the window sash. Runnels of yellow chyme trickled down the wall. She staggered, caught her balance on a divan, realized the divan had probably been a person once, nearly choked on a second wave of stomach acid, and stumbled against the wall.
Fuck Talas. She’d
thought the joker fight club was the sickest shit she’d ever seen, but compared to the self-inflicted carnage on the street it was downright tame. What the fuck kind of messed-up shit was that? To hell with Bumfuckistan. She’d take Baba Yaga’s money and get way the hell away from here.
The shrieking hadn’t stopped by the time she wiped the worst of the taste from her mouth. If anything … the hair on Mollie’s nape tried to stand on end again … it was stronger now, a chorus rather than the lamentations of a lone viciously suicidal nut job.
She chanced another peek. The streetlights went out a few seconds later, but not before she saw the entire café going mad. The first guy was now trying to—oh, Jesus—
Mollie’s stomach rebelled again. She doubled over, dry heaving.
—he was clawing at his mangled eye sockets, trying to scoop the gore into his mouth. While others slashed each other with silverware, teeth, even their own fingers. In seconds the street scene had gone from something normal to a fucking massacre. She’d glimpsed an Audi running back and forth over the same pedestrian, spinning tires spraying viscera to rain on passersby who were too busy trying to chew each other’s faces off like starving rats to care. In the residual glow of the casino marquee, a young woman pushing a stroller stopped, lifted the child overhead—
(Mollie pounded on the window. “Jesus Christ! Stop! STOP!” But nobody could hear her.)
—and slammed the mewling baby on the ornamental points of the wrought-iron fence around the café. Passersby hurled themselves at the impaled newborn, like a psycho cannibal rugby scrum, and in the instant before the casino marquee blinked out all Mollie could see of the murdered child were gobbets of flesh fountaining from the center of the pack. Mollie screamed until her knees gave out.
She crawled away from the window, dry heaving, tasting bile. I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe, she reminded herself. Those fucked-up motherfuckers can’t get in. Baba Yaga’s quarters are locked from outside. If those psychopaths outside try to break into the casino they’ll first have to deal with everybody else trying to rob this place. The mobsters had automatic weapons; they’d mow down the psycho cannibal flashmob before it got halfway across the lobby. And I can be gone in half a second. I’m safe. I’m not in any danger. I’m safe. A few more minutes and I never have to come back.