People Park (32 page)

THAT’S HIM,
said Starx. That’s the kid.

What kid — oh. Him?

That kid on the corner there. The one who spat on you.

Across the intersection of F and 10 the fog opened to reveal the Golden Barrel Taverne. From the Citywagon idling at the corner Olpert watched: onto the sidewalk stumbled a someone in a black sweatshirt, hood up. His movements were a sleepwalker’s — that sludgy, heavyfooted trudge through one’s own inner world.

Same shirt, said Starx, same slouch. Though, fug. All these people look the same to me.

Olpert squinted. The fog swirled, the figure disappeared. Are you sure that’s him? What’s he doing?

Take the wheel, said Starx, unbuckling his seatbelt. I’m going.

A lump bobbed in Olpert’s throat.

These animals, they need to pay.

Starx flew into the street like a great khaki bat, the fog closed around him. A scrabble of footsteps, muffled shouts, Olpert thought he heard his name, opened his door, reconsidered, and slid into the driver’s seat. As he edged the Citywagon forward, the passengerside door flapped and creaked. A misty whorl shivered up over the hood. Olpert eased on the accelerator, couldn’t see anything.

And then a person came reeling out of the fog, right in the path of the car. Olpert yelped, stomped the gas. The figure, black as a shadow, thumped into the grille, flipped over the hood, and amid a screech of brakes rolled up and wedged between the open door and the windshield.

The car idled. A jagged hypotenuse cracked the glass. Beyond it the fog tumbled and seethed. Half lolling into the car, half dangling outside, hung a boy.

Starx appeared, stared at the body, at Olpert, and back.

Olpert felt he’d swallowed a handful of tacks and his stomach was a clothesdryer, tumbling them around.

Starx spoke — Holy fug, Bailie — and some part of Olpert released
and drifted off into the mist. He felt light, watching Starx peel the kid from the doorframe and lay his body, limp as a sack of flour, on the hood of the car. Starx listened to the chest, felt for a pulse inside the hood. He’s dead, said Starx, eyes wide and astonished. We killed him.

We? said Olpert.

We.

Up and down F Street, nothing but fog.

Open the trunk, said Starx. His voice was solemn.

Olpert did.

Now help me.

Together they hoisted the body into the trunk. Gently Starx folded the kid’s legs, crossed his arms on his chest. Around his left wrist, a fork. The hood came loose: one side of his face was a mess, the left eye swollen shut, the cheek stippled with dried blood.

At least it’s him, said Starx, the kid who spat on you. See?

Olpert’s vision swam. The tailpipe spewed exhaust against his legs, pleasant and warm, he didn’t want to move. Starx closed the trunk and guided Olpert into the passenger seat. But the door wouldn’t close properly, it kept popping open.

Just hang on to it, said Starx.

Olpert did.

Listen, Bailie, this is the reason we’re in this organization. You have a problem, they take care of it. We’ll take him to the
HG
’s. They’ll know what to do. Right?

Okay.

He handed Olpert the walkie-talkie. You talk though. Your gramps an
OG
and all.

Okay.

Bailie, it’s going to be fine. It’s an accident. I pushed him, sure, but I didn’t realize you were — not that it was your fault
. . .
Starx massaged his temples with his thumbs. Just an accident, he said. They’ll take care of it.

Starx turned onto Tangent 10. Waiting for a response over the radio, Olpert stared at his reflection in the sideview mirror. A smudge marked his jawline from ear to chin: he wiped at it, but the mark remained. Vaguely aware of Griggs’ voice —
What is it, B-Squad
— calling from his lap, Olpert peered at the mirror: the mark wasn’t on his face at all. It was the glass, he realized, smeared with something red and sticky-looking and wet.

VI

VENING WAS
coming and the armoire was empty. Or it appeared empty, it was possible
that if Sam looked one place then Raven went somewhere else, that
he could somehow read Sam’s thoughts and knew where his eyes would go and bounce from that spot to another. The door was secure, the lock held fast, there was no chance the illustrationist could have tunnelled his way out, what would he have used?

Sam had trunked him, the illustrationist had told him how:
The image I take with me into the trunk dictates where I will reappear.
The image had been of the armoire. Sam had drawn it. But what if his drawing hadn’t been perfect enough? Maybe the perspective was off, or he’d gotten the shading wrong
. . .
Where might Raven have trunked to instead?

Sam rapped on the door. It’s dinnertime okay.

No answer. Yet the basement felt different, emptier somehow. Sam pressed his ear to the door, heard only wood.

Outside the light was shifting, the sprinkler hissed and sputtered across the lawn. And time’s machine was still silent.

Sam said, Okay I’m nuking dinner.

He carried the dead bird upstairs, struck by the weightlessness of it, a pocket of air wrapped in feathers, and put it in the
kitchen trash. From the freezer he took two trays of nuclear dinners,
punctured the cellophane lids with a knife, and while they were nuking he took the knife in his fist as a murderer might and stabbed twice at the air. He pressed the blade into his fingertip, felt the sharp prick, pushed until it punctured the skin and a droplet of blood swelled and ran down his finger in a twisting ribbon.

With the nuked dinners stacked in one hand and the knife in the bloody other he went back downstairs and stood before the armoire and said, I have your dinner but I cut myself okay.

No reply.

Sam closed his fingers around the handle of the knife and made a stabbing pose. He said, I cut myself, I need your help, come on out. Help me.

The sprinkler on the lawn stopped. The silence was absolute.

Raven I’m just trying to do the work okay. You stopped time’s machine before the third hand came all the way around. Monday the work’s over though right Raven? I’ll let you out then. But I need your help okay. Please Raven. Please okay?

Nothing.

Sam went at the armoire with the steak knife: he stabbed, the handle snapped, Sam kept stabbing the door clutching just the blade. Blood ran down his arm and smeared his fingers and he kept stabbing and scraping, shearing wood from the door, saying, Help me, help me, help me.

He stopped. The pain in his hand was a sharp wet twang and he uncurled his fingers with difficulty. He’d buried the blade into his palm, he had to wiggle it out, the sound it made was gristly. The blood was sticky and hot and everywhere. Sam took off his three watches, lay them side by each on his bed, the third hand stuck at nine. Then he wrapped his wounded hand in ducktape, thinking as he did of Adine’s face in the hospital, swathed in bandages, the eyes hidden somewhere deep inside, seeing nothing.

CAN I GET
you a drink, said Wagstaffe. Or something to eat — sausages
maybe?

Griggs eyed the
NFLM
’s Silver Personality, whose face glowed an ungodly russet in We-
TV
Studios’ halogen-lit hallways, chin jutting from it in a dimpled, tanned promontory. He had the eager look of a camper on parents’ visiting day, standing there with his hands clasped, rocking on his heels. The unsolicited and disarmingly thorough tour was finally over, here at the control room.

Noodles checked his watch. Tapped it. Held it to his ear. Didn’t nod.

We’re fine, said Griggs. Let’s proceed to the task at hand?

Of course! Head on in, I’ll get you guys set up.

Wagstaffe wheeled two chairs up to the console, patted them for Griggs and Noodles to sit, flicked a switch, and a bank of monitors came to life.

Grab headsets, said Wagstaffe. They’re tuned to the
NFLM
frequency. What else?

As long as we can monitor all the Squads, said Griggs, we should be fine.

Wagstaffe puffed his chest. Well with ten thousand cameras —
Eyes on the City, as we say! — feeding live right here, you’ll be able to see anything you want. Actually, he said, tweaking a knob on the console, for a little
intimate entertainment
, if we switch over to the live We-
TV
feeds, there’s a lonely Fort Stone housewife who —

That won’t be necessary, said Griggs, smacking his hand away. Now, shouldn’t you get back to your movie?

Our
movie, Griggs —
All in Together Now
, right? We’re almost done the final cut! It’s going to be —

Noodles nodded curtly toward the door.

Mr. Imperial Master, said Wagstaffe, retreating. Mr. Head Scientist — good lookin out!

Though the monitors displayed the whole city — the Institute’s Quad, the parking lot of
IFC
Stadium, a rooftop camera surveying People Park from the Museum of Prosperity — every view was obscured by fog. Even the Knock Street Station security camera across from the Temple revealed only a faint glimpse of Pea and Dack standing sentry on the front porch.

Griggs pulled a list and a pen from his pocket. Let’s see
. . .
Magurk’s got the roundup underway — anyone not from here, anyone suspicious, they’ll be taken in — check. D-Squad is looking for Favours, Diamond-Wood’s going to find the Mayor, bridge access is still blocked, check, check, check. Radios are back up. Wagstaffe’s — sorry,
our
— movie
is almost ready to go, Island Amusements is set to open for families, check and check. Starx and Bailie — no word yet, but they’re on the hunt for that kid. And then there’s Raven
. . .
Anything else?

Noodles motioned for the list and Griggs’ pen. He made an addendum,
and with a long-nailed index finger tapped the freshly bulleted point:

• Revenge
.

UP OVER THE
common Pearl floated, pumpkin-sized knee dragging her beneath it. Along she scudded, sweeping the occasional languid backstroke or, with her good leg, whipkicks that stirred the fog into spirals.

Her mind was so blank she was unaware of its blankness. Everything was airy, empty, nothing mattered. She had a vague impression of the ground hundreds of feet below, and yet with this realization came no fear, only lightness, the heedless ease of a sleeping child.

She drifted out of the park’s northern side, a sign emerged out of the mist:
STREET’S MILK & THINGS
. As she swept past, Pearl reached out and grabbed its corner, hung on for a moment, her knee tugged her away. There was no breeze to speak of: the knee seemed to enjoy a velocity and volition of its own.

Pearl was lofted out over Street’s empty parking lot. East along Topside Drive the rollercoasters of Island Amusements appeared in silhouette, skeletal dinosaurs prowling the fog. Across the road she was carried, distantly aware of people below, the faraway sounds of idling engines and horns and voices.

From above came a fluttering sound. A bird swooped down, disappeared, circled back, and, as Pearl reached the far side of Topside Drive, made another pass. At the shoreline the fog parted: mist swirled around the bushes on the chalky hillside but ceded abruptly at the water. She floated out over the Narrows. The opposite bank was low and flat.

The bird returned, soaring up from below and gliding for a moment alongside, a flock partner or mate. It seemed to regard Pearl with curiosity, this bird — a pigeon. Then it did a little loop and landed on her inflated kneecap, adjusted its footing, ruffled its feathers, and settled. In tandem she and this new passenger traversed the slate-coloured channel over which Guardian Bridge had once risen. On the far shore an airplane was taking off from the airport. The skies above the mainland were blue and clear.

The pigeon seemed both wary and dismissive of the human being
connected to its roost. It clucked. The Narrows rippled along. A slight breeze ruffled Pearl’s hair. She waited, watching the bird, should she shoo it away or let it rest? But before she could decide, it straightened, fluffed its wings, extended its neck, and, with a swift, downward stroke, drove its beak into her knee. Chirruping gaily, the pigeon lifted and flapped madly back to the island.

Air whistled out of the hole, the balloon began deflating, Pearl sank toward the water — fifty feet up, now forty, she could smell it: clamshells and rust. The current rushed swift and purposeful to the east, a branch went whisking by, thirty feet below. The skin around her kneecap had gone baggy and loose.

She had to get to shore, either the mainland or the island, she was halfway to both. One was home, the other — something else. Wheeling, Pearl paddled the air, arms thrashing, lowered ever closer to the murmuring Narrows.

THE THUD AGAINST
the side of the Citywagon at first struck Debbie
as a hiccup in the exhaust. But then figures swarmed out of the fog, surrounded the car. How many people, a dozen, it was impossible to tell, one stood at the car’s fender, holding a plank with spikes at both ends, there was nowhere to go, they were everywhere.

The driverside door was pounded, voices were hollering. Debbie fumbled with the locks — and something smashed into the
window, crinkling it in a greenish web, and she screamed, and the
pipe or crowbar was swung again, and the window caved inward, greenish glass sprinkled her lap.

A high, childish voice cried, Out of the car, out of the car!

Debbie went foetal, the door was opened, hands undid her seatbelt and dragged her out and shoved her ass-first onto the tarmac, and for a moment everything went still.

Over her stood a figure, hood pulled tight around its face, holding a mophandle with bike chains attached to one end.