The Blue Blazes (30 page)

The radio at Sorago’s hip crackles.

“Sorago. Answer me. Over.”

They share a look. The radio hisses. “What’s going on down there? Over.”

“They’re up there,” Nora says. “Waiting.”

“Motherfucker was probably gonna be the one pushing the plunger on this dynamite,” Burnsy says. He walks over and yanks on the sheared det-cord, pulling a dozen sticks of dynamite from their hole.

“Not a plunger,” Mookie rasps. “Button.”

Burnsy grabs his crotch. “I got your button right here.”

“Would you guys be quiet?” Skelly says. “You hear that?”

“Hear what?” Burnsy asks, but she shushes him, taps her ear.

Somewhere far off is an infernal roar.

“What is that?” Nora asks, voice low.

“Him,” Mookie says. “The Boss.”

“Oh, shit,” Nora says.

Skelly pales. “I saw… I saw what he can do.”

“We have to go,” Nora says. “We have to leave.”

“But where? How?” Skelly asks. “This is a dead-end. And the way out is a one-way street straight toward–”

The wail and roar again. Closer this time.

“We can’t fight him,” Skelly says.

“I’m gonna have to,” Mookie says. Everything hurts. He can barely lift a fist to swing it. If only he had the Red Rage. Maybe he could grab some dynamite and… “Hold up. I got an idea.”

His voice is sluggish. Mush-mouthed. But he tells them in a string of broken words.

Burnsy’s blistery lips twist into a dramatic frown. “I fucking hate you, did I ever tell you that?”

“Sorry.” Mookie shrugs. “Better hurry. Gotta get these fans set up.”

 

Vithra runs on all fours, loping forth like the spawn of the Devil and the meanest wolf in the woods. His long limbs spring him forward, leech mouth squirming and gnashing. Claws clicking on concrete.

He’s going to kill them. Whoever is here, he’s going to rip them into so many ribbons. Then decorate himself and the walls. The idea thrills him. To make something pretty out of so much blood.

He hates humans. Disgusting things. The hairless apes crawled out of the trees and claimed dominance over the land and sea and sky. And he and his brothers and sisters were forced to stay down in the dark with the earthworms and voles and eyeless crickets. It was the daemons – daemons like Candlefly – who forced the Hungry Ones into the deepest pits and would do so again given half a chance. And it was the humans who kept them there. Millennium after millennium.

But with the city gone, they will have a kingdom once more to call their own.

He’ll find a way to dispatch Candlefly. The man is arrogant. He oversteps his bounds. He will leave an opening, and Vithra will crawl through it.

But first, the end of this tunnel. The blast didn’t work. It won’t matter. He won’t need dynamite. He’ll use his claws. His teeth. The whole of his body. He’ll launch himself into the rock and tear through it like he’s tearing through some poor fool’s belly to get to his guts.

The tunnels will break and the water will flow and he will swim in it as the city above goes thirsty. As the men are moved out. As the monsters move in.

Ahead is a haze of smoke. Whirling like a sideways cyclone.

He hears the thrum of distant fans.

He cares little for the machinations of man. He continues forward.

Hungry. Always hungry.

It’s then he sees something ahead–

Something smaller than him. Racing forward with equal speed.

A beast of the Great Below, he thinks.

But then he sees. It is no beast.

It is a machine. On four wheels.

Vithra howls at it in rage.

 

Nora presses the walkie-talkie button, holds it to Mookie’s face. He clears his throat. Tries to get his growl on, sound as much like Sorago as he can manage.

“Detonate,” he says. “Over.”

 

 

 

Candlefly hears it and laughs.

He punches the button.

 

Vithra leaps over the quad. It passes underneath as he hits the ground again.

Trailing behind are a dozen sticks of dynamite. Connected to the braid of det-cord.

There’s a sizzle. The cord burns.

The man that was once Konrad Zoladski is caught in a wave of fire. Hot white heat hits him like a tractor trailer. But there’s something else, too – an intricate cage the color of bronze. It breaks apart, spears of metal tearing through him–

And with it, a howling specter. A face, familiar. Casimir. His grandson. (Is he even Konrad Zoladski anymore?) The specter is a torn ribbon, a rain of knives, a howling mouth and a thousand eyes. Wraith-hands,
hands of wrath
, plunge into his mutated flesh and rend it asunder and fire fills the gaps.

Then the wave of white is gone, buried in darkness as the lights go out and the tunnel crashes down around him.

 

A fresh wave of smoke blows in, but the giant fans, running on generators, push it back. Burnsy sighs. “She was a good girl, that ride. God bless America.” He holds his hand over his chest and stands stiff.

“Guess we timed it right,” Nora says.

Burnsy drove the quad forward, the accelerators held down with electrical tape – he bailed off the back soon as he got it going in a straight line.

Skelly leans against the wall, exhales a heavy breath. “Are we done?”

They listen. No more bestial sounds from the dark.

“Think so,” Mookie says. It feels like his voice is coming back. The venom is still in him, but his heart is picking up the pace. Returning to the normal drum-beat he hears in the hollow of his head.

The radio crackles.

“What happened?
Who is this?
Over.”

Candlefly’s voice. They share a look. Mookie grabs the walkie with a numb hand, uses the meat of his palm to press the button.

“You’re damn right it’s over,” Mookie says. “All your buddies are dead, Candlefly. Tunnels One and Two are intact. You should run. Because I’m going to come for you soon as I see daylight. And when I find you, I’m going to tear you into hunks like a piece of fresh bread, and I’m going to dip those parts of you into your own blood.”

Then Mookie drops the walkie and stomps on it.

“Did you really need to stomp on the radio?” Burnsy asks.

Mookie shrugs. “Felt good.”

“Let’s find our way out of here,” Skelly says.

 

Water Tunnel #3 is collapsed. No way to get past it. And no Boss-thing corpse in sight. Down here it’s dark, and they’re thankful Burnsy brought a pair of headlamps.

Mookie directs them toward another bolthole. It will take them back out, he says, toward the Canal Street station. They walk for a while in the underground. They don’t talk. Occasionally they hear the wail and gibber of a goblin in the distance.

A sound, it seems, of the madness born of mourning.

As they walk, Nora starts to feel it. She almost forgot, almost felt normal.

But then–

It’s just an itch, at first. A twinge in her belly. Then a tickle over her flesh like the tiny legs of a thousand ants dancing. Anxiety begins to crawl up inside of her. Soon it’s more than that; it’s full-bore panic, scrabbling and slamming itself against the walls of her mind. Sweat pours out of her. Her mouth is dry as a desert wind. Her hands curl into claws; the muscles in her legs start to clench and cramp.

They get to an old rusty door with a cracked wire-frame window.

A subway train blasts past on the other side. Lights strobing.

Mookie goes to open the door.

She cries out.

He stops. Turns. The headlamp light shines bright in her eyes. She can’t see his face, but he can see hers and she wonders how she looks. If it’s half as bad as she feels–

“What’s wrong?” he asks, pulling her close.

“I can’t… go.”

“What?”

“I can’t go with you. Out… up. Back.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

She stifles an unexpected sob. “I’m… different. I belong here.”

“Nobody belongs here,” Skelly says. She pulls Nora close, but Nora draws away – her touch feels like burning. “Nora, whoa–”

“Oh, God,” Nora says. “It was the mushrooms. Wasn’t it?”

“You’re on mushrooms?” Skelly asks.

Burnsy steps past. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What mushrooms?”

“We found the Death’s Head,” Mookie says. “It’s a mushroom. She was… dying. Dead. I gave it to her…” He pulls them out of his pocket: the glow is gone. They’re shriveled and dry like little dessicated organs.

“Aw, shit,” Burnsy says. “Mookie. Nora. I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”

“What?” Nora asks. “What is it?”

“You’re right. You can’t leave. You’re… part of this place.”

“No, no, no,” Mookie says. “That’s bullshit. I can pick her up right now, and we can get the hell out of here.” He reaches for Nora, but she pulls away. She pulls away from all of them. Begins backing down the tunnel. Even receding ten feet calms her pulse-beat, lessens the itching.

“I’m fine,” she says. Suddenly puffing out her chest. Holding up her chin and blinking back tears. “I can handle it.”

Stay tough, she thinks. Take this like you’ve taken everything else. Suck it up, you stupid girl. Even still, her hands dart out, brace herself against the walls of the passage so she doesn’t collapse. Don’t let him see you like this. Don’t let him see you weak.

Mookie reaches for her, but she pushes him away.

Burnsy leads Mookie off and she hears the dead man telling him, “Mook. Listen. The stories about the purple skull – I didn’t know it was a mushroom, but people talk just the same. Always figured the old tales were bullshit but…It’s like the myths, right? Inanna or Orpheus or–”

“I don’t know shit about that!” Mookie roars, and he picks up Burnsy and slams him against the wall. “Don’t you fuck with me, Lister.”

Burnsy talks fast. “I’m just saying I’ve done some reading since I been down here and the old stories say that when you eat of the Underworld, you can’t always leave. Now, that ain’t universally true – shit, the Blue stuff alone makes that clear – but I’ve
heard
that the Death’s Head is different. That it’s like a trap. It keeps you alive but it also…
keeps
you, you know what I mean?”

Nora can’t help it. She turns around. Faces away. Arms crossed. The stance of the petulant teen,
she thinks, but it helps her. Calms her not to look at them. Her eyes forward, staring down the passage, she can’t help but think: Is this really my home now? This horrible place?
She still feels a hard pit in the middle of her. Like a hard stone in the space between her heart and her stomach.

Skelly holds her hand. For a while they just stand. Like people at a funeral, the awkwardness of their grief laid bare. Mookie presses his head against the stone wall of the passage. Burnsy looks down.

Finally, Nora says, “I said I’ll be OK, so I’ll be OK.”

“You can come to Daisypusher,” Burnsy says. “We’ll get you a place.”

“Living among the dead,” Nora says. She just barely manages to stifle a sob. “Awesome. Love it. Let’s do it.” She hears the sarcasm in her voice and feels a stab of shame.

“Better than dying.”

“What happens if I go out there?” she asks. “What happens if I
leave
?”

Burnsy shrugs. “Not sure we want to find out. Not today.”

“OK. OK.” She sniffles. “Let’s do this. Let’s go.”

She starts to storm forward, back down into depths. Mookie catches her shoulder, but she pulls away. He turns toward the others, asks, “Can you guys give us a minute?”

Skelly kisses her on the brow. Then she goes through the door. Burnsy nods, gives her an awkward clap on the shoulder. He follows after Skelly.

“This can’t be true,” Mookie says. “I’m gonna try to get you out.”

“Good for you. I don’t need your help.” She knows she sounds like a little bitch, but the words keep coming. “Go home, Mookie.”

“Don’t.” He pivots her, looks in her eyes. “Don’t do this. Not now. Don’t pull away. I’m your dad. You’re my baby girl. For a long time I couldn’t take care of you and I’m not gonna lose you now. Not to this place. I’ll fix this.”

She sucks in a deep breath. Hesitates. But then: “OK.”

“OK?”

“I said OK.”

“I love you,” he says. “And I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Those words, a stone thrown that shatters the whole dam. Waters flood. Drown her. Tears fall. Her cheeks feel warm and wet as her nose starts to plug up. “I love you, too.”

He pulls her close. Wraps his one arm around her. It’s strong enough for three, four arms. “I can stay a while if you want.”

“It’s OK. I’ll go with… Burnsy, is his name?”

“Yeah. He’s all right.” Mookie pauses. “I killed him. A while back.”

“Oh.”

“I know. But he’ll get you squared away. I’ll bring blankets. And food. Anything you need. You still like those little – shit, what are they called? The little chocolate buttons with the tiny white dots–”

“Non-pareils.”

“Yeah. Those. I’ll bring you a big bag of those.”

She kisses his cheek. “Bye, Daddy.”

He can’t seem to say goodbye. Looks like he tries, but his mouth can’t form the words. Instead he nods, musses her hair like he used to do when she was little.

Then he’s gone.

 

31

 

I’m between. I mean that. Like, I don’t belong anywhere? I’m alive but bound to the land of the dead, which means I’m not all that alive, am I? I’m just a prettier zombie than the rest of these people here in Daisypusher. I feel between in a lot of ways, actually. I’m not a good girl, but maybe I’m not such a bad one. I love my father, but there’s a still part of me that hates him, too, because of Mom. I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t even know who I am. Burnsy tells me that’s called “being human” and, worse, “being a teenager”, but I think maybe he’s just trying to be nice. I’m just… between. I’m nowhere. I’m nobody. Maybe that’s OK. Maybe I can do something with it. For now, this place is my home. Not Daisypusher. I don’t belong here either. I mean, all of it is home. The Underworld. I press my hands to its walls, and I can feel it there. Almost like it’s aware of me – as much as I am of it. One day soon I’m going to explore my new home. All of it.

– from the Journals of Eleanor Jessamyne Pearl, Living Dead Girl

 

It’s an accounting of the dead.

First: Werth’s apartment. Mookie cleans it out. It’s a – well, a rat-trap isn’t the word because of all the cats. Turns out, Werth really liked cats. Or hated them and had them anyway. Maybe that makes it a really good rat-trap? Mookie doesn’t know, doesn’t care. He gives away everything that has value. Takes the cats to a shelter. All of it is hard to do with his one arm in a sling and the rest of his body feeling like it’s been put through a meat slicer. When he’s all done he stands at the door of the apartment and closes it and says goodbye to Werth inside his head. He’s still not sure how to feel about him. He liked Werth. But Werth treated him like shit for years. And at the end…

Well.

That poor old goat.

A day later: Karyn’s. At first he can’t tell her. He pretends that he’s here about losing the cleaver. But she’s distracted. She tries to push some charcuterie on him – good stuff, too, cantimpalo chorizo, salchichon, Jamon Serrano ham. But he can’t do it. Can’t take from her again and again, and finally he just spills it. Tells her all about Lulu. How he was there. How she died. He doesn’t spare a detail. What’s the point? He was never a good liar anyway. She breaks down. He sees it: the love was real. Not just a thing born of intensity. A lot of love isn’t love, it’s just a strong feeling that over time fades, but this, what Karyn feels, is true blue. And it kills her. And she kicks him out because he was there and, even if he didn’t kill Lulu, he can be her scapegoat. He wants to be.
Deserves
to be. She can pile all her grief and blame upon his ox-like shoulders and boot him out the door. Which she does.

On the third day: Davey Morgan’s funeral.

The cops found Cassie Morgan, Davey’s daughter, unconscious in her NYU dorm room. Half-dead, saved by a wandering RA. She’s at the funeral. Looking bleak. Barely keeping it together. Her emotional state blown apart like rock by dynamite. Mookie doesn’t bother trying to talk to her. She wouldn’t remember him, anyway. That was another lifetime. Besides: what would he even say?

The funeral – there’s a line out the door of people waiting to pay their respects. Sandhogs from the 147 and the 147½. EPA guys. Bunch of cops and firemen. They loved Davey. He ran dozens of crews over the years. He is beloved.

Few of them recognize Mookie. The ones that do give him looks.

You ain’t welcome here, Mikey.

He isn’t. But he stays just the same.

On the way back from the funeral, he puts some money into an account. For Lister’s kids. For Lister’s wife. He doesn’t know how long that money will last now that the Organization has gone to hell, but he does what he can.

Later, he talks to Skelly. She said she’s been down to see Nora already and asks him, has he gone yet? He tells her he hasn’t – he’s sent her a care package, meats and cheeses and those non-pareil things, but he says he’s got one more thing to do before he sees her.

“I gotta go see my ex-wife,” he says. “I made a promise.”

 

He knows something’s wrong when the plane turns over the ocean. Candlefly can feel it bank hard to the right – and then they’re flying in a new direction. Traveling south along the Spanish coast, not across the country. Which means he is not going home.

Home is Mallorca.

They’re heading toward…

The Canaries. That has to be it.

This is not good news.

As soon as everything went to hell – in some ways, quite literally – at the dig site, Candlefly knew it was done. Something had happened. No –
Mookie Pearl
had happened. A rogue element he again underestimated. His mistake. A big mistake. A final one.

He told Haversham to run.

Haversham didn’t hesitate. He turned tail and bolted.

As he ran, Candlefly shot him in the back of the head.

Then for him it was time to book a private plane and get out of here – already they were calling what happened a terrorist attack. If that got attached to him in any way, that would blow back on his family. They’d stayed hidden and out of sight for a long time. How crass and hollow it would be to suffer now not from some supernatural danger but from the mortal bureaucracy of American Homeland Security.

And now this. A turn of the plane.

A half hour later they land. The pilot doesn’t show his face. The door opens, and the steps descend. Outside, to one side is the snow-tipped peak of Mount Teide. On the other, the steel-blue ocean. And ahead: men with guns.

Ah. That’s how this is, then.

They walk him down a trail. To an old church with a dead tree outside that looks like a skeleton’s hand reaching toward – and forever failing to reach – heaven.

At the steps he sees her:

Renata.

His wife. Beautiful – those dark eyes, those broad hips, the way the wind feathers her shoulder-length hair. She looks like an eagle, cutting a dark, strong, noble shape.

The men with guns step aside and he thinks: I am pardoned
.
At least in part. This, then, a sign he is not welcome home, but at least a sign that he is still allowed to be with his family. He runs to embrace her at the top of the steps. He holds her close.

“Where are the children?” he whispers in her ear after kissing it. He calls for them: “Oscar! Adelina!”

She pulls away from him. Icily, she says, “They did not come.”

The men with guns step in behind him.

“Renata–”

“The family is displeased.” A pause. “All the families are.”

“My love–”

“Our bond is broken,” she says. “I am no longer your wife. I am once again a Glasstower. I am not a Candlefly.” His heart breaks. He almost collapses. “And neither are you. Goodbye, Ernesto.”

She cups his face with both hands, and then pushes past him. He reaches for her, tries to go with her – but the men with guns push him back. He tries to strike one.

A butt of an AK-47 crashes into his face. He feels an explosion behind his eyes.

They drag him into the church. And it’s then he sees what is to be his fate.

An old gate. To one of the many hells. The Underworld beneath New York is just one of many – one of nine major hells, to be exact. All of them dead-ending in the Expanse. Where the Hungry Ones still dwell.

This gate is just a hole ringed with stone. The rest of the church innards never existed. It’s just a façade, a false temple meant to fool crusaders so many years before.

Above it is a rope on an old pulley. At the end of that rope hangs a noose.

He screams. Tries to fight. Another hit to the nose. The nose breaks. He can’t see through the tears now. He tastes blood along with the salt air.

They wind the rope, not around his neck, but around his ankles.

Then they push him down, down, down–

He cries, “I cannot go! It is forbidden! Wait!
Wait
–” But his words are drowned out as the pain seizes him. The pain is like being robed in fire and ice, like being drowned in lava and frozen in a glacier. It feels as though his skin is being stripped away. As though hot iron rods are thrust up into the marrow of his bones. It hurts in his teeth. His balls. His soul.

It hurts eternally.

For he is immortal. And now, so is his pain.

 

Jess lives in a small house on Staten Island. It was their house once. But Mookie took his name off it a long time ago. Same as he took himself out of their lives. A fact he regrets now. He’s old and has nothing. Almost nothing. He can see Nora. He’ll see her every day if she’ll let him. It’s better than nothing, yeah. But it’s so much less than what he could have had.

He needs to tell her what happened. He can’t tell Jess the truth. How could he? He doesn’t want to poison her with that nonsense. Mookie never let her see any of that before and doesn’t want to start now.

So he can’t say, “Our daughter is alive but down in the dark.”

Or could he? Could he tell her everything? Could he show her?

He’s not sure. He holds the idea. Lets it swish around his head.

First, the hard part: knocking on the door.

Things have changed around here. Not a surprise. A new look out back: white picket, a classic fence, instead of the chain-link he put up. He hears a dog barking out back, too. A little yap. Like a terrier or something.
So she has a dog
. Potted plants line the steps. Mums. She wasn’t much of a green thumb, always killed plants, but as far as he knows, mums are pretty hardy flowers.

He stands on the stoop. One arm in a sling.

He’s faced gobbos and inhuman crime lords and ancient worm-gods and yet here he’s more scared than he’s been in a long time. Mookie wants to run. Like a gun-shy puppy.

But then he’s doing it even before he realizes it.

Knock knock knock.
 

Footsteps. Fast approaching.

The door opens and a young girl, maybe twelve years old, stares out. Red hair in pigtails. She squints. “Who are you?”

“Who are
you
?”

“I’m…” She catches herself. “
Not telling
you that. Mom!”

She runs back inside the house, slamming the door.

A minute later, a woman comes to the door. A short, squat woman. Hand inside a dishtowel, which is itself inside a glass as she cleans it. “Help you?” she asks.

“You’re not Jess.”

“No. I’m Marie.”

“I want Jess.”

“Jess Stevens?”

“No. Who the hell is Jess Stevens?”

“Lives down the block.”

It strikes him like a fist to the gut.
She got remarried
.

“Mid-forties?” he asks. “Hair the color of a penny?”

“No. Early thirties. Blonde. Bartender at Coyle’s.” The woman suddenly narrows her eyes. “Wait, are you talking about the woman who used to live here?”

“Yeah. Jess Pearl.”

“Who are you?”

“Her husband.” He sighs. “Ex. Ex-husband.”

The woman’s face falls.

“I’m sorry, but….” She looks suddenly uncomfortable. “She’s… she’s dead.”

“What?” He almost laughs. “She’s not dead.”

“She died… not quite two years ago. Bad hit-and-run accident. Some drunk plowed into her. Accident, I guess. We bought the house out of auction from her – your, ah, her? – daughter. She’d just turned eighteen or something and we put in a bid…” She stops talking. “I’m so sorry.”

Impossible. His thoughts spin around inside his head like a tornado. One second he wants to cry out, push past this woman, find out where they’re hiding Jess. The next second he wants to punch her in the mouth, knock her head clean off her shoulders for lying to him like that. Then he wants to collapse here on the stoop, curl up in a big broken ball of grief and gristle, and weep till the sun goes down and the moon pops up.

All he does is mutter, “Thank you” in a voice he’s not sure is his own. Then he shuffles away from the front door and takes ten steps.

He stands there. This was their house. That was his wife.

Hit-and-run accident.

She died.

She’s dead.

We bought the house out of auction from your daughter
.

That wouldn’t have been long before Nora came to him the last time. When she lied to him. And got him to wipe out that nest of gobbos. And shot Werth. Jesus. He always wondered where she got the capital to set up shop so early. From this. From the house sale. And from insurance and whatever money Mookie’d been sending to Jess.

He’d been inadvertently funding his own daughter’s attacks against him.

He didn’t even know his own ex-wife – the mother of his child – was dead.

No wonder Nora hated him.

He does all he can do. He goes home, to the bar, and drinks himself to sleep.

 

He wakes up at the bar. A plate of chicken fingers in front of him, mostly cold. He knows he didn’t put it there. Nor did he put the bottled water there.

He lifts his brow. Bleary-eyed, he sees Nora sitting next to him.

“Hey, Daddy-o.”

The voice. Rich, dark. Bourbon and cigarettes and chocolate. No. It’s not Nora. It’s Skelly. Or Kelly. That’s what she said: “Call me Kelly from now on.” So he does.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey back.”

She runs her hand across his scalp like his head’s a bowling ball and her fingers are seeking the holes. He holds up the water. “This you?”

“No, it’s a water bottle.”

“Funny.”

“I thought so.”

“Thanks for the water. And the chicken.”

She pats the top of his head. “My pleasure, big fella.”

“You want some meat?” he asks.

“That a come on?”

“I got meat in the fridge.”

“Nope, still not sure if this is a come on or not.”