People Park (33 page)

The trunk was opened, slammed shut.

No one in here, called a second voice — flatter, kazoo-toned, but also very young.

The figure pulled her hood aside to reveal hair shaved into a handprint. But the Hand made no intimations of recognition, just flicked her weapon between Debbie’s outstretched legs: the chains jingled, brushed her thighs.

Please —

Again the Hand whacked the chains against the pavement.

The first voice, shrill as a whistle, demanded, Where is he?

Debbie raised her hands in a pacifying gesture. Who? I don’t know. Please.

Your car took Calum, said the second voice. Your car hit him and took him, it said, moving out from behind the Citywagon. We saw it happen.

We see everything, said the first voice.

The speakers appeared on either side of the Hand, tiny creatures each carrying makeshift weapons: two-by-fours with metal prongs ducktaped to both ends. Ten years old, Debbie guessed — and only three attackers, she’d assumed a mob of dozens.

Calum, said Debbie. I know Calum. Who took him, what are you talking about.

The Hand stared back, unspeaking.

The kid on her left said, What do you know? Can you help us?

Tell me what happened, maybe I can —

He was hit by a car like this one. This car.

No, this is a Citywagon, they all look the same — wait, he was
hit
? Is he okay?

They took him, said Right. They put him in the back part.

Oh god. Was he alive? Is he all right? Where did they go?

We don’t know.

The Hand shifted. The bike chains clinked.

We’ll find him, said Debbie. I can tell you care about him, and I care about him too —

Shut up, said Left. We need to find him.

We need to, said Right.

I know. I didn’t know — but yes. We need to find him. There’s a Citywagon depot —

We’re taking your car, said Right. Drive us.

I can’t, it’s not my car —

The Hand lashed the ground again, Debbie sprung away. The girl’s eyes were hateful.

Okay, said Debbie, hands up, placating. Let’s go, we’ll find him.

INTO THE DUSK
they sprung, up through the bowels of Whitehall and south on F Street beneath the Yellowline tracks, three phan
toms in hoods pushing and the Mayor white-knuckling the dessert
cart, rumbling over the uneven sidewalk, jarred by potholes and cracks in the road. The fog had lifted to form a cloudbank into which the day was fading, inky shadows spilled from the feet of the Blackacres lowrises, the twilight pixelated and staticky and through it the hooded triumvirate rolled the Mayor, past darkened derelict housing all sad old ghostfaces on the eastside of F.

At Tangent 18 a sour, chemical smell swelled up — Lowell Canal. The Mayor’s eyes watered and nostrils burned, her tear-streaked cheeks whipped dry by the wind. On she was driven, down F past a blur of descending east-west Tangents — 17, 16, 15 — and three-storey walkups, some with plastic sheeting for windows, others freshly painted with windowboxes sprouting green shoots. A Citywagon whipped past at F and 12 and was gone.

Two blocks south, passing the Golden Barrel Taverne, the pace slowed. The Mayor checked the lower tier of the cart: her legs were still there, ducktaped down. And then the slap of feet on pavement silenced and she was released. She rattled along for another half block before the cart slowed and banked left and bumped up to the curb. She faced the depthless shadows of an alleyway.

A block north her hooded abductors collected in the middle of F Street, conferring in low voices — a fourth figure had joined them, big and shirtless and wearing a strange helmet. They seemed to have forgotten about her entirely. She listened, could make out nothing distinct, just low muttering. She got a fingernail under a corner of the gag, and was just beginning to peel it away when lights flooded F Street.

There was a roar and a screech of brakes, the blare of highbeams. Doors opened, two Helpers tumbled out shouting, Hey you —
Θ
top there — Get them! But her kidnappers had slipped off into the shadows, or become shadows. The Mayor struggled with her gag, thrashed atop the cart to draw attention, but the streetlights were out, she was lost and mute in the pitch. The partners piled back into their pickup truck, which went squealing up F Street.

But before the Mayor could feel too dejected, she was bumping up over the curb. She looked around: no one was there. The cart seemed to be moving on its own — rolling forward, very slowly,
over the sidewalk and into the alley. The air felt thick. The shadows
enfolded her, it was like entering a mine or a cave. No, a lair: something huge and horrible made its home here.

As she thought this a humid and foul-smelling breeze washed over her face. Then another in a rotten swell — breaths, she realized. The cart pushed deeper. She seemed to be teetering at the edge of a slope, the front wheels angled over. A pause. The Mayor gripped the sides of the cart. The moment stretched out, expanded. Another breath gusted up from below. And then the cart tipped over and she was plummeting headlong and reckless toward whatever lurked in the depths of that terrible dark.

VII

FTER SOME
indeterminate amount of time, the We-
TV
countdown in Cinecity reached the Top 10. Each clip was met with cheers and groans, fans and detractors trying to drown out the other. Top 10 status was the province of the truly sensational. At #5, on the Devourers’ channel three men had set fire to a car and were eating it, piece by flaming piece. People howled.

At #4:
Stupid Fat People Humiliated in Public Bathrooms by Drunk Babies
.
At #3:
The Lady Y’s Lingerie Pillowfight Extravaganza (Semi-Finals).
At #2:
Isa Lanyess, In the Know.
At #1, of course, was
Salami Talk.

Lucal Wagstaffe grinned. I’m very happy to retain my
position
at the
top
of your charts. Nice to know you all still
like to watch
. (A slow lick of his upper teeth, the tip chomped off a pepperette.) But this isn’t about me. I’m only here to introduce one
of many highlights of the Silver Jubilee weekend, and also an amazing example of our citizens coming together in harmony. What you’re about to see has come from you, dedicated viewers — a movie
for
the people,
by
the people. The result reflects not just who we are, but what we all want to be. So sit back, relax, break out a sausage, slide the sausage slowly into your mouth, bite down, slowly, allow the juices to burst over your tongue, and enjoy.

Cinecity buzzed as the film began.

THE NEW FRATERNAL LEAGUE OF MEN AND WE-TV PRESENT:
ALL IN TOGETHER NOW
A SILVER JUBILEE SPECTACULAR

Through a pair of binoculars Gregory Eternity gazes squintingly, like a moustachioed and gunslung nearsighted person, though he isn’t (nearsighted), he can see really great, out over the roiling black waters, which are also white where the waves lick like black yet white-tipped tongues into whitecaps, of the Lake.

He lowers the binoculars as a look of consternation sweeps over his face at the same time as a cloud sweeps over the sun, metaphorically. What could be out there? his scrutinizing gaze seems to suggest. Something, suggests his gaze, as he squints and looks through the binoculars again. Maybe something evil
. . .

Something’s out there, he intones brassily, and his second-in-command, a buxom and curvaceously sensual yet with a look in her eye that says,
Just fuggin try me
, woman named Isabella who wears bulletbelts crisscrossed over her torso, combat boots, and cool reflective shades behind which it’s impossible to tell what she’s thinking, says sultrily, I think you’re right.

He turns to Isabella and kisses her, hard, his moustaches smearing against her soft, creamy skin like a broom pressed against a wall and smeared around as though to scrub something gross off of it.

Take me, she says. So he does. Gregory Eternity takes her, right there, soft and then hard, poetically on his mother’s grave in the middle of the Necropolis.

But while they are taking each other something moves on the
horizon — something black, something not quiet human, something
with the reek of the inhuman about it like a stinky halo of otherworldly danger and evildoing. Something evil.

What are we doing? says Gregory Eternity, withdrawing briefly from Isabella, already well on her way to her sixth climax. She is a woman ripe in her prime.

Isabella climaxes anyway, then collapses on the bed of flowers they laid there earlier — the reason they’ve come to the Necropolis being to lay flowers for Gregory Eternity’s dead mother, who passed quietly at her own home surrounded by friends and family, except Gregory Eternity, who was out drinking cider with his buddies, and now carries guilt like a bag of rotten squab because he could have saved her with one of his kidneys, but didn’t, for reasons unexplained. Probably medical.

Danger-slash-evil is moving closer.

Who is it? says Gregory Eternity, who quit drinking through a supportive twelve-step program at the Museum of Prosperity (Sundays 2–4 p.m.). But it must be a rhetorical question, because then he answers himself sort of: It’s not human.

Isabella shudders visibly. What do we do? she asks questioningly.

Gregory Eternity squints again, putting his pants back on. We defend this place, he growls. This is our home and no outsiders will ever come here and take it from us. This is where we live and so do our friends and families, except my mother, who is dead,
RIP
. It’s the best city in the world. Do they think they can come here and take it from us?

I don’t fuggin think so, says Isabella, producing a huge gun from somewhere, cocking it, and glaring with a come-and-get-it look at the encroaching boats (they’re actually boats). She focuses her aim on the lead boat, which sails a flag featuring a foreign symbol that is inhuman and alien (not necessarily of the outerspace variety) but most of all, undoubtedly evil.

This. Ends.
Now
! ejaculates Gregory Eternity.

Isabella echoes, Now!

But the boats aren’t in range yet, and first they’ll have to call a town meeting to assemble an army to defend the island. But it will end soon. Very, extremely soon.

PEARL’S GAIT SEEMED
even more laboured than usual. From the steps of the Museum of Prosperity Kellogg watched her approach from Topside Drive: dragging herself along, heaving one step to the next. Her jeans were torn at the knee, the hole gaped raggedly. But, most important, she didn’t have Gip’s knapsack.

Pearly? Hey, Pearly, we’re up here. Kellogg stood and waved. Look, kids, it’s Mummy!

We are wasting valuable
time
, said Gip. How many times do I have to tell you?

I know, champ. I know. But know what? When you’re old like me you’re going to look back on this and think, gee, it was so great to have that time with my family, so great to spend time with my parents now they’re dead.

Dad? said Elsie-Anne.

Ha, no, I’m not dead yet, Annie, don’t you worry.

Not
. . .
yet, she whispered.

Kellogg ran at Pearl, a plastic bag from the Museum’s giftshop swinging in his hand, and hugged her clumsily.Pearly, he said, I got you a present! He produced a sweatshirt. Islandwear! You’re a local, figured you should dress the part.

No backpack, she said. No meds.

Aren’t you going to put it on?

Maybe later.

Okay. Kellogg took it from her, held it up to his wife’s chest, his own. But hey, mind if I wear it? Getting a little chilly out here with the sun going down and all, is all.

Sure.

Kellogg disappeared inside the shirt, struggled to find the arms, popped his head out the top, and announced, Well hello again, Family Poole!

Gip came down the steps. Mummy, did you find my book?

I —

Well obviously not, since you don’t have it. How am I supposed
to take over for Raven if I don’t even know what Situation this is? You
promised
, Mummy, that you were going to come back with my book, I went through that whole stupid Museum with
him
— he jabbed a thumb at his father — and the Sand City model isn’t even
working
, it’s just covered in fog like outside, and here you are without my book even though I thought you knew what you were doing, but look, you haven’t even done your
job
and —

Pearl’s open palm connected with a sharp smack. The air seemed to fall apart: it was as though a blade had sliced down and guillotined the space between her and the rest of her family. Pearl’s hand shrank to her side, its imprint reddened on Gip’s cheek, the Pooles tableau’d: mother and father and son, Elsie-Anne talked to her purse on the steps.

Gip didn’t move, didn’t make a sound.

Pearl buried her face in her hands, then gathered Gip in her arms. Kellogg checked up and down Parkside West: a family watched from the opposite side of the street. He stepped into their sightline, turned his back, widened his stance. This was private.

I’m sorry, Pearl said, stroking Gip’s cheek. I’m feeling a little
. . .
off. I shouldn’t have —

Well no kidding, Pearly, said Kellogg. I mean, sheesh.

Gip whimpered. Pearl held him close.

From the steps: Did Mummy hit Stuppa?

Kellogg wheeled. Hey! No way, Annie. The Pooles don’t hit our kids. Right?

But, Dad, I —

Nope! Gip had a bee on his cheek is all. Can’t ever be too careful! Right, Pearly?

Kellogg smiled broadly, eyes blazing. And watching his wife and son, their arms around each other, he felt certain that it was not Gip who needed holding. If released, Pearl seemed ready to collapse. And so Kellogg joined the huddle, wrapped and squeezed them tight. Everything’s going to be okay, he whispered. I just love you guys
so much.

THE HAND TAPPED
the passengerside window with a fingernail.

Right, said one of the kids from the backseat.

Debbie killed the lights and turned onto Knock Street, jostling over the cobblestones. The streetlights were on here, it was disorienting after piloting through the murk of
UOT
.

Stop here, said the other kid.

She parked at the entrance to Knock Street Station. Across the road, the Island Flat Company flagship restaurant, a two-storey complex that occupied half the block, glowed in twin golden stripes from each of its floors. High above the
IFC
logo flashed, one letter to the next, over a flatlike obelisk.
At the edge of forever
buzzed beneath in orange squiggles.

Beside it the
NFLM
Temple looked abandoned, the flickering bulbs on either side of the
S I A I O N
sign seemed the faint lifesigns of a comatose patient. Debbie laughed: the windows had been blackedup.

And another lot north was the Citywagon Depot, a grid of three dozen vehicles, identical and silver and sleek. Each car was plugged into consoles upon which greenly blinked the time: 9:00. Though it wasn’t nine.

Okay, said Debbie, here we are. I don’t know how you expect to get into the trunks —

One of the twins, halfway out of the car, said, Let us worry about that, and the other said, Leave the engine running, and they followed the Hand into the Depot, leaving their weapons in the backseat.

In the
IFC
’s upper-floor window, two men in
NFLM
gear were sitting down with trays of flats. There was something familiar about them: one presided over his food with a simian sort of hunch, his partner, lanky and blond-bearded, demurely tucked a napkin into his collar. The stockier man angled his head, jaws unhinged, to stuff a flat halfway into his mouth, while the other deposited unwanted toppings into a napkin and inspected the offal as a virologist might some rare and curious disease. Then he spoke, and though his lips blubbed silently, each s whistled between his whiskers as:
Θ
.