"Oh, god," someone said behind Tom, a man's voice, husky but raw with fear. "Oh, god, it's the wild card."
"We're all going to die," an old woman said. " I seen it in '46. They're just gonna keep us here."
"It's those jokers," suggested a man in a three-piece suit. "Barnett is right, they shouldn't be living with normal people, they spread disease."
"No," Tom said. "The wild card isn't contagious."
"Sez you. Oh, god, we probably all got it already."
"There's a carrier," the trucker shouted down. Tom could hear the crackle of his CB radio. "Some fucking joker. He's spreading it wherever he goes."
"That's not possible," Tom said.
"Goddamn joker-lover," someone shouted at him.
"I got to get home to my babies," a young woman wailed. "Take it easy," Tom started to say, but it was too late, way too late. He heard crying, screaming, shouted obscenities. The crowd seemed to explode as people ran off in a dozen directions. Somebody slammed into him hard. Tom staggered back, then fell as he was buffeted from the side. He almost lost his grip on the suitcase, but he hung on grimly, even when a boot stomped painfully on his calf. He rolled under the truck. Feet rushed past him. He crawled between the wheels of the semi, dragging his bags behind him, and got to his feet on the sidewalk, half-dazed. This is fucking crazy, he thought.
Way down Canal, the helicopter began another pass. Tom watched it come, the crowd surging hysterically around him. The chopper will calm them down, he thought, it has to.
When the first tear gas canisters began to rain down into the street, trailing yellow smoke, he turned and dodged into the nearest alley and began to run.
The noise dwindled behind as Tom fled through alleys and side streets. He'd gone three blocks and was breathing hard when he noticed a cellar door ajar under a bookstore. He hesitated a moment, but when he heard the sound of running feet on the cross street, his mind was made up for him.
It was cool and quiet inside. Tom gratefully dropped the suitcase and sat cross-legged on the cement floor. He leaned back against the wall and listened. The air raid sirens had finally quieted, but he heard horns and an ambulance and the distant, angry rumble of shouts.
Off to his right he heard the scrape of a footstep. Tom's head snapped around. "Who's there?"
There was only silence. The cellar was dark and gloomy. Tom got to his feet. He could swear he'd heard something. He took a step forward, froze, cocked his head. Then he was sure. Someone was back there, behind those boxes. He could hear the short, ragged sound of their breathing.
Tom wasn't going any closer. He backed toward the door and gave the boxes a hard telekinetic shove. The whole stack went over,. cardboard ripping, and dozens of glossy paperback copies of More Disgusting joker jokes cascaded from a torn carton. There was a grunt of surprise and pain from behind the boxes.
Tom edged forward and pushed the top boxes in the feebly moving pile off to the side, using his hands this time. "Don't hurt me!" a voice pleaded from under the books. "No one's going to hurt you," Tom said. He shifted a torn box, spilling more paperbacks onto the floor. Half-buried underneath, a man curled in a fetal ball, arms locked protectively around his head. "Come on out of there."
"I wasn't doing nothing," the man on the floor said in a thin, whispery voice. " I just come in to hide."
"I was hiding, too," Tom said. "It's okay. Come on out." The man stirred, unfolded, got warily to his feet. There was something dreadfully wrong with the way he moved. "I ain't so good to look at," he warned in that thin, rustling voice.
"I don't care," said Tom.
Walking in a painful crabbed sideways motion, the man edged forward into the light, and Tom got a good look at him. An instant of revulsion gave way to sudden, overwhelming pity. Even in the dim light in the back of the cellar, Tom could see how cruelly the joker's body had been twisted. One of his legs was much longer than the other, triple-jointed, and attached backward, so the knee bent in the wrong direction. The other leg, the 'normal' one, ended in a clubfoot. A cluster of tiny vestigial hands grew from the swollen flesh of his right forearm. His skin was glossy black, bone-white, chocolate-brown, and copper-red in patches all over his body; there was no way to tell what race he'd belonged to originally. Only his face was normal. It was a beautiful face; blue-eyed, blond, strong. A movie star's face.
"I'm Mishmash," the joker whispered timidly.
But the movie star lips hadn't moved, and there was no life in those deep, clear blue eyes. Then Tom saw the second head, the hideous little monkey-face peeping cautiously out of the unbuttoned shirt. It sprouted crookedly from the joker's ample gut, as purple as an old bruise.
Tom felt nauseated. It must have showed on his face because Mishmash turned away. "Sorry," he muttered, "sorry."
"What happened?" Tom forced himself to ask. "Why are you hiding here?"
"I saw them," the joker told him, his back to Tom. "These guys. Nats. They had this joker; they were beating the hell out of him. They would of done me, too, only I snuck away. They said it was all our fault. I got to get home."
"Where do you live?" Tom asked.
Mishmash made a wet, muffled sound that might have been a laugh and half-turned. The little head twisted up to look at Tom. "Jokertown," he said.
"Yeah," Tom said, feeling very stupid. Of course he lived in Jokertown, where the fuck else could he live? "That's only a few blocks away. I'll take you there."
"You got a car?"
"No," Tom said. "We'll have to walk."
"I don't walk so good."
"We'll go slow," Tom said.
They went slow.
Dusk was falling when Tom finally emerged, cautiously, from the cellar refuge. The street had been quiet for hours, but Mishmash was too frightened to venture out until dark. "They'll hurt me," he kept saying.
Even when twilight began to gather, the joker was still reluctant to move. Tom went first to scout the block. There were lights in a few apartments, and he heard the sound of a television blaring from a third-story window, and more police sirens, far off in the distance. Otherwise the city seemed deathly quiet. He walked around the block slowly, moving from doorway to doorway like a GI in a war movie. There were no cars, no pedestrians, nothing. All the storefronts were dark, secured by accordion grills and steel shutters. Even the neighborhood bars were closed. Tom saw a few broken windows, and just around the corner the overturned, burned-out hulk of a police car sat square in the middle of the intersection. A huge Marlboro billboard had been defaced with red paint; KILL ALL JOKERS, it said. He decided not to take Mishmash down that street.
When he returned, the joker was waiting. He'd moved the suitcase and shopping bag to the doorway. " I told you not to touch those," Tom snapped in annoyance, and felt immediately guilty when he saw how Mishmash quailed under his voice.
He picked up the bags. "C'mon," he said, stepping back outside. Mishmash followed, his every step a hideous twisting dance. They went slowly. They went very slowly.
They stayed mostly to alleys and side streets south of Canal, resting frequently. The damned suitcase seemed to get heavier with each passing block.
They were catching their breath by a Dumpster just off Church Street when a tank rolled past the mouth of the alley, followed by a half dozen National Guardsmen on foot. One of them glanced to his left, saw Mishmash, and began to raise his rifle. Tom stood up, stepped in front of the joker. For an instant his eyes met the Guardsman's. He was only a kid, Tom saw, no more than nineteen or twenty. The boy looked at Tom for a long moment, then lowered his gun, nodded, and walked on.