Ray fell forward, bringing his attacker with him, using him to break his fall. Whoever had him still wouldn’t let go, but Ray twisted like an eel, turned, and butted hard enough with the top of his head to bring tears to his eyes.
His head connected with the bottom of his attacker’s chin. Whoever had him pulled back at the sudden pain and Ray wriggled free.
Ray hit the guy three times before he realized who it was.
“Christ,” he said, and stood up.
Quasiman, Father Squid’s handy joker, lay on the ground, bleeding from his lips and nose. No wonder, Ray thought, he hadn’t heard anyone sneaking up on him. Quasiman was a teleport. He’d probably swooped down on Ray from his favorite position atop the church’s roof like a hawk on a pigeon, stepping off into space and materializing right before landing on Ray’s back.
“What are you doing?” Ray asked the joker-ace.
Quasiman straightened up slowly. He was big and ugly, hunchbacked and half-witted as well. But in the strength department he was up there with heavyweights like Modular Man and the Golden Weenie.
“Guarding the cemetery,” Quasiman said, “from grave-robbers.”
“Well, shit,” Ray said, “we’re not grave-robbers. We’re federal agents.”
He turned to Battle and Puckett. Battle was watching with a guarded expression. Ray found it as difficult as ever to read what was going on in his devious brain. Puckett was also looking on, frozen in mid-motion with a shovelful of dirt. The events of the last few seconds had totally overwhelmed what passed for his mental processes and he was still trying to figure out how to react. He came to a decision and resumed shoveling.
“We have a court order to exhume this body,” Ray explained. He turned to Battle. “Don’t we?”
“Indeed we do,” Battle said. He reached into his jacket pocket, extracted a folded sheaf of papers, waved them at Quasiman, and then put them away again.
Quasiman nodded slowly. “Why do you want the body?”
“It’s not the body,” Battle explained impatiently. “It’s — ah!”
There came the scrape of shovel on wood, and everyone gathered around the grave as Puckett scraped dirt off the top of the casket. He tossed his shovel on the back-dirt pile, then horsed the coffin out of its hole using brute strength. He tipped it over the lip of the hole and pushed it onto the ground. He clambered stiffly out of the grave, somehow looking very much in his element.
“Open it,” Battle commanded.
Puckett didn’t need a crowbar. He hooked one hand under the coffin’s lid and pulled. There was a squeal of protest as nails were yanked from holes they’d been in for two years. Ray screwed up his nose, expecting a hideous odor, but it wasn’t too bad.
There wasn’t much left of Brian Boyd, a.k.a. Blockhead. He hadn’t been a big guy to begin with and his remains had shrunken down to the size of a withered child.
Battle peered closely at the body, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet like he did whenever he was excited. “There,’ he said, bending down and pointing. “The ring.”
Puckett bent stiffly and reached into the casket. There was a brittle cracking sound and he offered Battle the corpse’s desiccated left ring finger, ring still attached.
Battle shook his head. “I don’t want the goddamn finger. Just the ring.”
Puckett stripped the gold wedding ring off the finger and tossed the digit back into the coffin. He gave Battle the ring. Battle took it and put it into his coat pocket, smiling, happy as a goddamn clam.
Ray looked at Quasiman and suppressed a shrug. He still didn’t get it. But Battle was the boss.
The boss checked his watch. “Ah, good,” he said. “I still have time to make my appointment. Ray, I have one last thing for you to do tonight.”
He swept out of the graveyard, Puckett following him. Ray paused and looked at Quasiman, but found nothing to say. He followed Battle and Puckett from the graveyard. He looked back when they’d reached the gate and saw that Quasiman had retrieved the shovel Puckett had discarded. He was standing by the open coffin and empty grave, a bewildered expression on his sad, ugly face.
It took Modular Man hours to deliver the messages to all the joker combat groups hidden in various parts of the New York area. Most of them had been hiding in small apartments for days and — when he could read the jokers’ expressions at all — they seemed happy at last to have a chance to get out of their claustrophobic surroundings and attack something.
All the groups seemed to have television sets, and CNN’s bluish glow illuminated their crowded apartments full of sleeping pallets and weaponry. The rooms were crowded with the mingled scents of Cosmoline and unwashed bodies.
“They’re just discussing you,” said one adolescent. He was part of the last group to be visited, thin to the point of anorexia and pale enough to remind the android — with a private shudder — of the albino Croyd. He dressed all in gothic black and wore shades even at night. He seemed to be this group’s jumper.
Modular Man glanced up at the set and felt something flutter through his macro-atomic heart. The screen was full of a close-up of a blond woman named Cyndi. The television identified her as soap opera actress.
“I know Modular Man,” she said. “I know he’s not doing this from choice.”
“You tell um, bitch,” laughed one gray-skinned joker. He brandished his k-bar suggestively.
“Maybe he’s been jumped,” Cyndi said.
The interviewer’s response was reasonable. “How do you jump a machine?” he asked.
“Are you kidding? How do you jump a human?”
Modular Man had to admire her.
“He’s got to do what his creator tells him,” Cyndi continued. “He has to have been ordered to do this. Or maybe somebody’s messed with his programming. But if he’s fighting the government, I know it’s not from choice.”
The adolescent grinned up at Modular Man. His teeth were bad. “That true?” he asked.
“More or less.”
“Life sucks, huh?”
“That interpretation has occurred to me.” Images of Cyndi floated through his memory.
“And now you’re stuck on the Rox.” The kid laughed. “Man, I’m glad I’m not on that island being a target for napalm an’ cruise missiles an’ shit.”
“Your sympathy is noted.”
The kid laughed again, then jumped as lightning struck nearby and a blast of thunder rattled the windows. “Shit,” he said again.
Modular Man left to return to the Rox.
A strange, dark storm was hovering over Brooklyn, more or less where Zappa had his headquarters at Ebbets Field.
Modular Man didn’t want to know.
The Aborigine realized he was not the only prisoner in the drab cell block as Kafka led him down the narrow passage. At the very end of the hall was a young woman. She slumped against the barred door of her cell. Wyungare caught a glimpse of dark spiked hair and stained leather. He could smell her hysteria, a pungent odor that ate corrosively at his nostrils.
Two doors farther, the joker jammed a key into a lock and twisted. Then he tugged at the door. Wyungare helped him wrestle it open. Kafka stared at him sideways.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You’re weird, guy.” He shut the door after the Aborigine and locked it. “Sleep tight, people,” he said to the two prisoners.
Wyungare looked around at his new — temporary, he hoped — home. It looked like a medieval monk’s cell, or something out of a dungeon, which figured, considering what he could deduce about Bloat’s maturity level and range of interests. He put his palm against the wall. Hard, cold stone blocks. Unyielding.