Server Down (7 page)

Wal-Mart had shoes for every purpose. Most of his purposes required good traction and low visibility, especially at night. Matching the black body paint wasn't a problem.

The light he'd seen was out by the time he got back to the house. Another was on in a different room. He could see a shadow moving around in there. He thought she might be up and getting ready to leave. He used the limb of a shade tree to go over the spiked metal wall and made short work of the locks on the back door. Having no pockets, he put the picks in his mouth and reviewed his preparations.

He didn't have a headband or a feather. Too little time to find and redesign a headdress from the toy department, and it wasn't something his victim was likely to notice.

He hadn't shaved his head, either. A black swim cap would do nicely. As he slipped through the back door he had to laugh silently at the idea. Shaving his head—that would be overkill.

***

Minstrel show?” Mad Dog said. “Oh, this isn't blackface. I'm Cheyenne and I'm painted because it helps me focus when I'm trying to contact the spirit world.”

One of the men laughed. “We got our own contact with the spirit world right here.” He drained a tall can and crushed it in his hand.

“Cheyenne, huh?” another said. His voice wasn't hostile, just curious. “I'm Cherokee.”

“And I'm fucking Apache,” said the one who'd accused Mad Dog of going to a minstrel show.

“No, really,” the Cherokee said. “On my momma's side. She was a half-breed.”

“Me too,” Mad Dog said. “My mother always claimed to be half Cheyenne and half wildcat. She didn't live Cheyenne, though. Didn't know much about their ways. I had to find that out for myself.”

The little group was silent for a minute, with only the first one muttering comments about wise-ass honkies to himself.

“I tried that,” the Cherokee said. “Wouldn't nobody talk to a no account Black man like me. Seems we're considered inferior by Indians as well as everybody else.”

“Got that right.” It was one of the guys leaning on a fender.

“Always the black knight,” somebody else said. A wise and thoughtful comment, and as unlikely in a group of post-midnight street drinkers as a Cheyenne painted for a spirit quest or a sympathetic Cherokee.

“True,” Mad Dog said. “The Cheyenne, they didn't want to talk to me at first. Especially after a little research showed mom was equal parts Cheyenne and Buffalo Soldier.”

“Now you're shittin' me,” Cherokee said.

“No, really,” Mad Dog countered. “A sergeant in the 10th Cavalry was my great-granddaddy.”

Nobody said anything to that.

“And,” Mad Dog continued, “I got acquainted with a Choctaw once. Choctaw and Cherokee have a lot in common, since they're both members of the Five Civilized Tribes.”

“I've heard that,” Cherokee said.

“That Choctaw, he was dying,” Mad Dog said. “I gave him a tree burial so Bonepicker and Buzzardman could clean the flesh off his bones before I put him in a burial mound.”

“What bullshit.” The first guy, the one who'd been looking for trouble from the start, had had enough.

“Shut up, man,” Cherokee said. “He's right. I read up on it. That's the way it's got to be done, you want your soul to travel to the Milky Way like it's supposed to.”

“The Milky Way,” Mad Dog said, “is where my people go, too.”

“Well fuck me, then,” the trouble maker said. He tossed Mad Dog a sixteen-ouncer. “Sit down and tell us about your spirit world while you share some of ours.”

Mad Dog, who limited himself to occasional beers or glasses of wine, popped the top on the malt liquor can. “Thanks,” he said, and went over and sat by the guy who'd thrown him the drink. “That's real kind of you.”

“I guess we're all brothers here,” the man said.

Cherokee said, “That's a fact.” After a general rumble of agreement from the rest of the men, he continued. “What else do you know about my people?”

“Not a lot,” but Mad Dog figured he could always slip over into Cheyenne lore when he ran out of Chocktaw. And maybe these guys would let him use a telephone. Or give him a ride. Or just refrain from pounding the honky in blackface into a bloody pulp.

***

The sheriff hadn't really thought this would work, so he didn't have a ready answer for Fig Zit's question. He had no idea who Fig Zit really was. But this god-like cartoon character didn't know who Madwulf was, either. And that might keep the conversation going. Maybe even tease some clue out of the monster.

“Ask him the same thing,” the sheriff said. “Ask him who we are?”

Mrs. Kraus typed and the character threw his head back and laughed at her message.

“You're Harvey Edward Mad Dog,” the voice boomed. “You're a sad old man from the middle of nowhere and I can kill you in reality as easily as I do here. As easily as I destroyed your home. As easily as I turned you into a murderer. You are nothing and I am all powerful.”

“Not so all powerful as he thinks,” the sheriff said. “Let's tell him so. Say, ‘I am not Mad Dog.'”

Mrs. Kraus did it, and this time the character didn't respond. It just stood there, breathing deeply, occasionally rolling broad shoulders.

“That stopped him in his tracks,” Mrs. Kraus said.

A bright pink message appeared at the bottom of their screen. “I guess you can't sleep any better without me than I can without you. Unless you're about to log off, I'll come help you run some quests.”

The message was from a character named Pamdora.

“That pink,” Mrs. Kraus said. “That's a whisper. Supposed to be a way for one character to talk to another without anyone else in the game knowing.”

“You suppose that's Pam Epperson?” Pam was a young lady from Benteen County who'd left Kansas to play in a piano bar in Las Vegas, but not before starting an unlikely romance with the sheriff's brother.

“Makes sense,” Mrs. Kraus said, “since she gave Mad Dog the game and got him started playing it.”

“You can whisper back, right?”

Mrs. Kraus nodded.

“Just warn her then, ‘trouble with Fig Zit.' Maybe she already knows about this guy.”

Mrs. Kraus sent the reply, but just as she did, Fig Zit spoke again.

“Good morning, Mrs. Kraus,” the creature said. “And Englishman, too, I presume.”

***

Heather peeked out the front window of Ms. Jardine's living room. The uniformed TPD officer who had followed them back to the house was still out there, parked in the driveway immediately behind Ms. Jardine's Prius. They might not be prisoners, but the police weren't planning to let them come and go without knowing about it.

Deputy Heather had called her dad and reported the circumstances. Live with it and get some sleep, her father said. Tomorrow might get hectic and he was working some angles back in Kansas. He'd keep her posted if anything important happened.

Ms. Jardine offered Heather a drink. Something to calm her down and help her get that sleep. Heather declined. Her host poured a glass of cabernet sauvignon for herself and curled up on one of her sofas. Heather was a little surprised not to be offered a hit on the bong that sat in front of the fireplace, but apparently it was there for decorative rather than functional reasons. It certainly fit the décor, which Heather decided was best described as delayed flower child. Paisleys and beaded curtains predominated.

Ms. Jardine lived just east of the university in a trendy neighborhood she laughingly referred to as Barrio Volvo. On the less desirable fringes, actually, where student rentals had become as common as owner-occupied properties. Parking was such a problem near the university, that Ms. Jardine had been forced to provide Heather with a guest permit to put in the front window of her rental car. That vehicle was right out front, not twenty feet from the police car. Getting out of the house wouldn't be a problem. It had a back door. A gate led to an alley behind. But Heather wasn't going to find another car in which she could go chasing after her uncle, not at this time of night. The only ones available to her were Jardine's Prius and her rental Kia. Both under the watchful eye of the officer parked in the driveway.

“You really should try to get some rest,” Ms. Jardine said.

Heather wasn't interested. Not with Mad Dog the object of a citywide manhunt.

“I've got to go look for him,” she insisted. Mad Dog was out there somewhere, on his own in a strange city. And a killer was on the loose. Worse yet, Captain Matus seemed convinced Mad Dog and the killer were one and the same. The Captain had seemed angry enough to bring in Mad Dog conveniently dead so all the troublesome problems of proving his guilt wouldn't be necessary.

Ms. Jardine listened sympathetically as Heather shared her worries. “I don't know how you expect to find him,” she said. But, in the end, she agreed to help Heather slip TPD's surveillance.

A few minutes later, Heather exited the back door, used one wall of the house to block the policeman's view, and waited at the edge of the front yard for Ms. Jardine's grand performance. It came right on schedule. The front door flew open and Jardine ran down the driveway in a convincing state of hysterics. The cop leaped out of the car and she threw herself into his arms.

“Please help,” Ms. Jardine cried. “Heather, she's gone.”

“What?” the officer said. “How?”

“Out the back and down the alley. Come. Help me stop her. It's not safe for a young girl out there.” Jardine dragged the cop up the driveway toward the back yard. The man resisted for a second, looking around as if deciding what to do.

“Hurry. I think we can still catch her.”

That did it. The officer followed Jardine around the other side of the house and Heather slipped out of hiding and rushed to her rental. She fumbled with the unfamiliar lock and then slid behind the wheel. Ms. Jardine and the officer were still behind the house as she guided the car into the street and aimed it toward the nearest exit from the neighborhood.

Ms. Jardine had said Tucson covered something like two-hundred square miles. That was at least a thousand less than the jurisdiction she was used to working back in Kansas. Two-hundred square miles was hardly worth mentioning, she told herself. She didn't believe it, but at least she was out here. She had a chance.

***

How can Fig Zit know who we are?” Englishman asked.

Mrs. Kraus had an answer. “He's a hacker. The security on this game's pretty high, but I get people whispering to me about how I can buy gold or high-level equipment for cash all the time. This guy's just at another level.”

“You're saying he's gotten into your account with War of Worldcraft?”

“Has to be.”

“But how? You're not even playing your own character.”

Mrs. Kraus threw her hands up in exasperation. “Hell, I'm no geek. I don't understand how this thing works. But Mad Dog and I turned out to be on the same server. It's not like Fig Zit had to sort through all the millions of people who play this game around the world. Or maybe he did. I don't know. But somehow he got into WOW's files and used some kind of program to find me. After that, guessing you're here would be easy.”

“Only if he knows Benteen County,” Englishman said.

“This has been interesting,” Fig Zit said, “but I've wasted too much time on you little people. Prepare to die.”

A pink message appeared in the bottom of the county's monitor. “Pam the Appalling, to the rescue—with dragons. Hurry back from the graveyard and help me kill him as he respawns.”

“What do we do?” Englishman asked.

“Prepare to die, like he said,” Mrs. Kraus said, typing madly. “Looks like Pam's rescue effort will fry us just as sure as Fig Zit's thunderbolts.”

“Vampire wizards suck!” Mrs. Kraus' message appeared in a little bubble over Madwulf's head.

Fig Zit laughed. “Very funny, Mrs. Kraus. You are a…how does your generation put it? Oh yes, a caution. You almost make me hate to do this.” The creature began rubbing his hands together, a sure sign he was about to cast a spell that would finish them.

“Here we go,” Mrs. Kraus said. But she wasn't talking about the fate Fig Zit had in mind for them. She was pointing over the monster's shoulder at a figure astride a winged horse, and, just behind her, a host of monstrous flying lizards belching smoke and flames.

“Lordy,” she said, “I think Pam's managed to bring Puff the Magic Dragon's Elite Reptilian Air Force.”

Fig Zit hurled a flaming snowball and Madwulf's health all but disappeared. Not quite dead yet, Mrs. Kraus struck the monster with a double-bladed ax and smiled as Pam sailed by. It didn't stop Fig Zit from slamming them again, but, as Madwulf toppled, Puff and his army peeled off from their pursuit of Pam and began bathing the Vampire Wizard with their fiery breaths and rending him with scalpel-sharp teeth and claws.

“Watch,” Mrs. Kraus said, pausing before sending Madwulf to the local graveyard again.

Fig Zit surprised her by killing five dragons and seriously damaging the last two before his corpse toppled and lay beside their own.

She hit the button and they were back at the cemetery, their spirit resurrected by the angel-like creature that resided there. They hadn't taken a dozen steps when Fig Zit's voice boomed out of the speakers once again.

“Damn you, Pamela Epperson. You should have minded your own business and had a good night's sleep in Las Vegas. Now I'm going to have to revenge myself on you, as well as some meddlesome folks in Benteen County. No more fun and games, little people. This ends now.”

And, suddenly, they weren't in the magical forest of towering waterfall trees anymore. Their screen had flashed back to the log-in page where a message declared, “Server Down!”