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 phantoms 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 — Θtop 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.