He shrugged. “Well, sweetie, a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. It’s my duty. Like, destiny.”
She reached up and took his face in both hands. He blinked in surprise. She’d never done that before. Sprout pulled his face toward hers. Uncomprehending, he yielded.
She kissed his forehead.
“Good-bye,” she said, speaking more carefully than usual. “You tried your very bestest to make everything all right for me. Thank you.”
She let him go. He smiled at her. “Sure, Sprout. Anything for you, honey.”
He turned back to the low dim hallway. “Here,” he said, turning back with the huge box cradled dubiously in his arms. “Merry Christmas.”
She squealed with delight. “Oh, what is it? What, what, what?”
“Open it and find out.”
As she dropped to her knees and began to tug at the bow he crooked a grin and nodded at the open book on her bed. “I hope you like dinosaurs.”
Blythe van Renssaeler
Memorial Clinic, Jokertown
Manhattan, New York
The third season of American Hero was playing on the static-ridden television mounted in the corner of her room.
Jerusha watched it mostly because it was easier than turning her head. Peregrine was interviewing someone called Adamantine, whose disturbingly smooth body looked like it was computer-generated rather than real. Their words sounded like so much mush in Jerusha’s ear. “I’m very proud to have been chosen for this show,” Adamantine droned in a voice pitched heroically low. “I’m ready to prove myself here, and to prove to America that I deserve to be the next American Hero, like the great heroes who have been here before me.”
Do you know how stupid you all sound? she wanted to rail at Peregrine, at Adamantine. It was all so petty, so unimportant. That was the one lesson she’d taken away from her own stint on the program: none of it mattered at all.
Dr. Finn cantered into the room, his hooves bagged in sterile slippers, muffling the clatter against the linoleum floors. The centaur snagged the chart from the wall holder, glancing over it. His blond head—the hair touched with grey at the temples—shook as he made a note and placed it back. He placed his pen back in the pocket of the lab coat he wore.
“Take two aspirin and call you in the morning?” Jerusha said.
He favored her with a wry smile. “I wish it were that simple.”
“Pretty much anything would be simpler than this.” Jerusha lifted an arm, stabbed with a double set of IVs. She was surrounded by a metal forest of poles with plastic fluid bags hanging from them. A tray piled with plastic-domed plates sat on one side of the bed, from which wafted the smell of cafeteria food.
Finn’s tail flicked, almost angrily. “Your body’s locked in overdrive, Jerusha. You’re burning up calories at an impossible rate. But your digestive system isn’t absorbing nutrients very well at all. That’s why you’re constantly famished. Your body’s devouring itself because that’s all it has to feed on.”
“So tell me that you can fix it.” She saw the answer before he spoke, and fear stabbed her. “You can’t, can you?”
“Not yet. We’re still running tests, and we have a few ideas to try. We’ll figure this out.”
“You do a good job of sounding confident, Doc. And if you don’t figure it out?”
“We will,” he said firmly. “Now, get some rest, and let me get back to my lab work. I’d hate for you to think that we’ve been taking all that blood for nothing.” He checked her IV levels, patted her shoulder, and left the room. She smiled at him, because she thought it was what he would want to see. The brave patient, suffering in silence.
When the door closed, she let the smile collapse. Dying. You’re dying. She could feel it, a certainty in the pit of her stomach. She was going to leave this all. Soon.
She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t let herself. She shouldn’t feel pity for herself, not when so many others were suffering and had suffered worse. She thought of New Orleans, of Bubbles, Ink, and Hoodoo Mama. She thought of her parents—on their way here from Yosemite, Dr. Finn had told her.
She would miss them all.
She thought of Wally, wandering somewhere in the People’s Paradise, intent on his quest. He was still alive. She was certain of that. He had promised her . . . and she had made the same promise for him, a promise she was going to break. You stay alive for me, Wally. And I’ll stay alive for you . . .
She would miss him most of all.
Jerusha clenched her hands in the bedsheets. Her arms were brown, dry sticks on the white bedsheet. She let the sobs come then. She could not hold them back.
Ellen Allworth’s Apartment
Manhattan, New York
Bugsy sat in cameo’s bed. Ellen was in the living room, humming to herself. The last couple of days, she’d been in a pretty good mood, or if she hadn’t, she’d faked it well enough that he couldn’t tell the difference. She’d even put the earring in, giving Bugsy and Simoon the night and most of the morning together.
He didn’t know why she’d done that. He’d been on the edge of calling the whole thing off and going back to his own much-neglected place, but she’d become Simoon. She’d pulled him back. And that was what he didn’t understand.
He thought about Popinjay’s description of the Radical. The one face of a multiple personality who knew what all the others were up to. Was that Cameo, too? Was it really Simoon he was kissing, or was that echo of her just another facet of Cameo? Was Nick really Nick, or the embodied memory? Were there four of them sharing this apartment, or really only two?
The fact was Ellen’s wild card didn’t bring people back from the dead. The objects she used to channel people only held the memories from the last time the thing and the person had been together. Simoon—the real Simoon—had experienced that last fight, had known she was dying at the hands of the Righteous Djinn. The one he’d been sleeping with had never had that experience.
So what did that tell you?
The phone rang, and Ellen picked it up. Bugsy rolled over onto the pillow. He had to do it. He had to call this whole thing off, go start hanging out at the bars around entomology conferences. Get a normal girlfriend. Just before he did it, he had to finish talking himself into the belief that breaking up wouldn’t mean killing Aliyah all over again. He had to believe that she’d never really been there, and he hadn’t managed that yet.
“Hi, Babs. What’s up? What? Jerusha’s in town!” Ellen said from the other room. “No, I didn’t know. How is she?”
A silence. When Ellen’s voice came again, it was as harsh as sandpaper. “What do you mean dying?”
Somewhere North of Kindu, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
It was the strangest thing.
Wally slowed again when he passed the village of Kindu, a few days after destroying the floating laboratory. He wanted folks to get a good look at him. He expected much the same reaction he’d received in Kongolo, where the sight and sound of a PPA boat had caused most folks to flee.
But they didn’t.
It began with just a handful of folks out on the docks. They pointed at Wally, jumped up and down, shouted to one another. More people came outside, and more still, until they lined the docks and shoreline. He couldn’t tell what they were saying.
But it sounded, for all the world, like cheering.
Huh. Wonder what that’s all about. Holiday, maybe.
Past Kindu, he sped downriver as fast as possible, leading what he hoped would become a concerted effort to chase and catch him. Anything to give Jerusha an edge.
He also felt a great urgency to get to the Bunia lab while he could still fight. Before all of his skin rusted and rotted apart. Because that was getting worse every day.
By the time he passed Kindu, Wally had burned through both of the fuel canisters he’d salvaged from the barge. He turned for the riverbank around sunset, the engine coughing and sputtering. He coasted the last few feet, saving a
few splashes of gasoline for the morning, when he’d set the boat on fire. With luck, the smoke would draw more pursuers. It had worked before.
At some point he had to leave the river anyway. According to the GPS, he’d traveled a few hundred miles since splitting off from Jerusha. Eventually the Lualaba would turn west and become the Congo River; following it all the way to a tributary that flowed down from around Bunia would take him hundreds of miles out of his way. And that was ignoring the little problem of Boyoma Falls: six miles of waterfalls at the transition from Lualaba to Congo.
Striking out overland was the only choice.
The evening’s first stars glimmered overhead in a clear sky with no threat of overnight rain. Which was a nice break, since his tent was ruined. He whistled. A guy sure could see the stars here, out in the middle of nowhere. Better than he’d ever seen them anywhere else, even better than from the middle of the Persian Gulf.
He wondered if Lucien had known many constellations. It would have been fun to ask him about that.
Ghost hovered nearby while Wally succeeded, with much difficulty, to clean the leopard scratches on his back. He treated them with disinfectant lotion, and even managed to place clean new bandages on them. It would have been a lot easier with Jerusha’s help. It would have felt better, too. The lotion felt hot and itchy when Wally did it, but Jerusha had a soothing touch.
She’d kissed him.
“Good night,” he said to Ghost. She didn’t respond. But she didn’t run away, either.
Sleep came easily that night. But his dreams pelted him with nonsensical images all night long. Images of Lucien, and baobab trees, and Ghost, and crocodiles, and Jerusha.
Kisangani, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Night had fallen. Joey and Michelle were walking through a part of Kisangani that the jungle had taken over. Occasionally, a chunk of road appeared under their feet and they could still make out the shapes of houses even though some were falling down or covered in foliage.
Michelle was beginning to think the nurse had given them bad directions when she saw a collection of red roofs on the next hill. They were the same roofs as the ones in her dreams about Adesina.
Joey fell against Michelle. Michelle grabbed her arm and steadied her. Joey’s flesh was still hot. “Hold on.” Michelle touched Joey’s forehead and it was burning. She’s in no shape to go into a fight. “I’m going to take you back to the hospital.”
“Fuck you are!” Joey yanked her arm out of Michelle’s grasp. “We have to help the kids. They’re just little fuckers and they’re close. So close. I can help. Look.” A zombie staggered out of a crumbling house. Hoodoo Mama’s zombies were never what might be called graceful, but this one looked drunk. It tried to hit Michelle, but it missed her and Michelle didn’t even move.
“We need to go back to the hospital.”
“No! No!” Joey grabbed Michelle’s hand. “The kids really aren’t very far away. I’ll stay here. You go on. Find that little fucker you’re looking for.”
“I don’t want to leave you . . .”
“Bubbles,” Joey said. Her voice was softer. “You’ll come back for me. I can sleep here. I just need to sleep awhile.” She limped to one of the overgrown houses, pulled aside the vines covering the door, and went inside. Michelle followed.
Inside was a table, some wooden chairs, and a small bed. Joey pulled the tattered cover off the bed. The mattress was moldy, so she slid that off as well. There was a sheet of plywood underneath. Joey lay down on it.
“Look, just go find that little girl. I’ll come after I sleep. I’ll meet you in the morning. I can follow the trail of dead.” She closed her eyes.
Michelle was torn. She desperately needed to get to Adesina, but she didn’t want to leave Joey.
But the compound was so close.
Adesina was so close.
Blythe van Renssaeler
Memorial Clinic, Jokertown
Manhattan, New York
Jerusha carter looked like hell.
The woman he’d known had been vibrant, alive, rich and funny and vital. The woman in the hospital bed before them now could have been in the final stages of AIDS or cancer or starvation. Her muscles were atrophied, the protein all cannibalized for the energy stored there. Her eyes had sunken back into her skull, the pads of fat thinned and gone away. Her smile was painful to watch.
Ellen sat on the edge of the bed, holding Jerusha’s withered hand. Lohengrin was at the foot of the bed in a wheelchair, his own hospital gown looking cold and insufficient. Half his head was wrapped in gauze, his one remaining eye staring out like something equal parts ice and rage.
Slowly, her voice catching on itself, Jerusha made things worse. The Nshombos, Rustbelt and his missing sponsored kid, the Radical and the child aces. Bugsy listened to the whole ugly story, and found himself shocked but not surprised. The crazed bastards in the PPA had remembered what they’d all let themselves forget: the wild card was first and foremost a weapon.
When Lohengrin spun his chair and pushed himself out into the hallway, Bugsy followed. “I am calling the Committee,” Klaus said. “I am calling Jayewardene. This is an abomination.”
“Yeah,” Bugsy said.
“We will arrange an action,” Lohengrin said, pushing his wheels harder at every second syllable. “A strike force.”
“Lohengrin, hey, hold up. Lohengrin!”
The German spun, blocking a nurse, and held up a finger as if scolding Bugsy. “If this is not what the Committee is for, then it is for nothing. If we are not to prevent things such as this, we have no reason to be. I no longer care what the Chinese ambassador or the Indian consulate say! If any stand against us, then they are in the wrong!”
“Yeah, but that aside,” Bugsy said, “we’re in a hospital. You’re in a wheelchair.”
Lohengrin frowned. The nurse went around them, making impatient noises under his breath.
“I’m just saying, we went up against the Radical without an army of were-leopards and the Kindergarten Kill Klub to back him up, and he handed us our collective ass,” Bugsy said. “You get Jayewardene to sign off on it, we can all go off to Africa, and that’s great. But what the hell are we going to do once we get there?”
Saturday,
December 26
Kisangani, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
It was strange to see the pretty little buildings with their red roofs and the neat pathways. It all looked so friendly and innocent, except for the heavily armed soldiers patrolling through the compound. A few of them wore the leopard-skin fezzes she’d seen in her dreams.
When the wind shifted, the stench of the pit floated to her. Michelle walked into the compound. It took a moment before she was noticed, but when they saw her all hell broke loose. The soldiers began to shout, and pointing their guns. Michelle hoped they would shoot her.
One of the soldiers began barking questions at her. At least she assumed they were questions. He was speaking in some local dialect. She smiled at him and held her palm up. A bubble appeared and he stopped talking. Then she let the bubble fly. It hit him full in the chest. He flew backward, gun tumbling in the air with him.
It got the reaction she’d hoped for. The other soldiers started firing on her and she started to expand as she absorbed the kinetic energy of their bullets.
By the time the soldiers had emptied their clips to no effect, the Leopard Men had transformed into cats. They sprang at her, and Michelle fell backward, buried under a pile of leopards. They ripped at her flesh with their teeth and claws, and she laughed. Each bite, each slash left her bigger and more powerful than before.
Just when she was about to blast them off, she heard a sharp command. “Stop it! Stop it right now!”
The leopards jumped away from her and slunk over to where a short, fat woman was standing. She was dressed in a bright, geometric print dress with an equally bright kerchief in her hair. Michelle hauled herself up, palms
up, ready to bubble.
“I know who you are,” the woman said. “You are the girl who saved that city in America.”
“And who are you?”
The fat woman chuckled good-naturedly. “I am the sun, the moon, and the stars here. I am the Mother of the Nation. I am Alicia Nshombo. And I have your friend.” She gestured, and a soldier came forward, carrying Joey in his arms. She was unconscious and limp.
“We’ve been tracking you two since you got off the river,” Alicia Nshombo said cheerfully. Her English had a lilting accent. “We lost you after you went with that pilot, but then you went to one of my hospitals. Wasn’t that wonderful? The nurses there love me.”
“What do you want?” Michelle asked.
Alicia snapped her fingers, and two guards appeared with a chair. “I don’t know. Why are you here?”
“Sightseeing,” Michelle said. She was furious at herself for leaving Joey behind. It was an amateur move.
“In Kisangani?”
“We got a little lost.”
Alicia laughed. “My dear, you are amusing. And quite pretty. Has anyone ever told you you’re very pretty?”
Michelle just stared. She wanted to say, Seriously? I’ve been a model my whole goddamn life. Yeah, you could say I’ve been told that. Instead she said, dryly, “Thank you, what a nice thing to say.” And she tried not to notice the way Alicia was eyeing her.
“I like you,” Alicia said. “Perhaps you and I can come to an arrangement. We have doctors here. They can help your little friend.” She snapped her fingers again, and the guards carried Joey off to one of the pretty little buildings. “If you give me any trouble, I will have her killed. We don’t want that, do we? You’ll come and have dinner with me. We will talk.” She got up from her chair and started walking away. The leopards followed her.
So did Michelle.
Southwest of Bunia, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
“Geez,” said Wally. “What kind of kid doesn’t like peanut butter?”