Текст книги "Kill City Blues"

Автор книги: Richard Kadrey

Соавторы: Richard Kadrey,Richard Kadrey
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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

I say, “We should get moving,” to Delon.

He goes to one of the standing mall maps. It’s as tall as he is, upright and square, like one of Kubrick’s monoliths from 2001. Delon wipes fungus from the front of the map with his jacket sleeve.

“I thought you knew the mall by heart,” says Traven.

“I do,” says Delon. “I just want to make sure we’re oriented correctly.”

Everyone gets out their flashlights and clusters around him, reading off the names of the expensive shops over his shoulder. Candy comes up to me and nods at the tree.

“I told you it was Christmas. You should have given me my present.”

“That’s not a Christmas tree. That’s Swamp Thing’s summer home.”

She heads to where the others are standing. I pop the cylinder on the Colt to make sure it’s fully loaded. It is. I follow her over.

“Got it,” says Paul. He points to a “You Are Here” arrow on the map. “I know where to go from here.”

“Which way?” I say.

He points off to the left.

“Up.”

Through the green-tinged dimness I see stairs and, beside them, a two-story-high pile of garbage.

“That way.”

“Let’s get going.”

I hang back and let Delon walk point. Not that he needs any encouragement. I think he’s been looking forward to being in charge. I wonder how his brain works. He’s not a computer. He’s goddamn Stretch Armstrong. It’s not like he’s downloading video to a chip in his brain. All his memories and personality must be hoodoo Atticus stuck in his head when he was screwing the skull shut. What I really want to know is if Delon knows he’s a cuckoo clock or does he think he’s a real boy? Part of it is cheap curiosity and part of it is self-defense. I keep thinking about Trevor stepping in front of that bus. Did he do it because he knew he was replaceable or because he thought he was sacrificing himself for the Angra cause? I’d love to get hold of a Paul or Trevor or Donny Osmond or whatever other names they have and let Manimal Mike take it apart to see what makes it run.

As we climb, I can feel people’s nerves kicking in. Before this, meeting the Kill City crazies was an abstract concept. Now a machine is taking us to a meet and greet with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. I have to admit that I’m a little concerned myself. As we reach each floor, I keep an eye open for shadows that might hide an ambush or ones dark enough that I can pull people into.

I say, “How far are we going?”

“Twelve floors. All the way to the top. There’s a hotel up there with views all the way from the ocean to the city.”

He sounds like a fucking real estate developer.

The empty retail spaces don’t look like they were ever stores. More like strange minimalist art. Hard geometric lines and soft fungal patches behind smashed security gates. The funny thing is that the scattered glass and broken fixtures are the only things that make the spaces look like humans built them and that anything with a frontal lobe might have wanted to go inside.

“What do you know about the Mangarms?” says Traven.

“Like I said, they’re Sub Rosa,” says Delon. “Old-world types that specialized in black magic.”

“Baleful,” says Candy.

“What?”

“The correct Sub Rosa term is Baleful magic. Not black. He told me,” she says, pointing to me.

“Thank you,” says Delon, trying not to sound too sarcastic. “May I go on?”

“Please do.”

“They were and I suppose still are black potionists. They made poisons and hexes subtle enough to get around all but the most powerful charms. The problem is that their old-school magic didn’t keep up with modern medicine. Antibiotics, transfusions, and stomach pumps put them out of business.”

He looks at Candy.

“The Mangarm term for it is ‘scientificated magic.’ ”

“Cool.”

Glass elevator enclosures run alongside the stairs. It looks like they haven’t worked since the day the place closed down. But someone is using them. Ropes have been strung inside. There are pulleys every couple of floors. My guess is that the setup runs all the way to the top. It’s probably how the Mangarms move swag from the lower floors to home sweet home. It also explains the garbage heap in the lobby. Whatever they don’t want anymore goes over the railing to the floor. I wonder what living over your own garbage dump smells like in high summer.

“Stop!” yells Brigitte.

Everyone freezes where they are.

Brigitte flashes forward and knocks Delon onto his face. Something creaks and blasts by us, swinging from a wire that reaches up into the dark over our heads. It smashes into the railing on the far side of the stairs, taking out a few feet of it, before swinging back and almost clipping Traven. It cracks the opposite railing and gets stuck there. Everyone turns their flashlights on the thing.

It’s smashed to bits, only held together with yards of wire and duct tape. Sharpened metal spikes stick out at all angles. The center of the thing is dull beige plastic with holes in the front where keys might have been.

Father Traven examines it, pushing pieces of crushed plastic back into place.

“It’s a cash register,” he says. “Sharpened rebar wrapped around a cash register.”

Brigitte gets up and goes to him.

“Are you all right? It almost hit you.”

He touches her shoulder.

“I’m fine. Really.”

Brigitte gets on her knees, shining her flashlight on the steps until she finds what she’s looking for.

“You see? Here.”

Her light illuminates several feet of monofilament line stretched across one of the stairs. It hangs loose where Paul stepped on it.

“It’s a trip wire,” says Vidocq.

“Thank you,” says Paul. He looks a little shaken. No. He doesn’t know he’s a machine. He thinks he’s going to live a long and productive life, marry and have a pack of little toasters to bounce on his knee.

I say, “From now on, we don’t all shine our lights in the same spot. Move them around. Look for other traps.”

“I guess we’ve officially lost the element of surprise,” says Candy.

Paul runs his light over the next few steps and starts up again. The rest of us follow.

“Glad you came along, Father?” I say. “What’s the story about Jonah getting swallowed by the whale?”

“I was thinking more about Dante,” he says.

Vidocq says, “But when Dante went up he was ascending to Heaven.”

“I don’t think we’ll find Heaven in here, up or down.”

By the tenth floor we’re sweating like pigs. By the eleventh we’re sweating like filthy pigs. It’s a relief to hit the last staircase until it stops halfway up. There’s at least a fifteen-foot gap between where we are and the top of the stairs.

Lights come on overhead. Flashlights shine down into our eyes with more lights blinking on in the hotel level above.

“Stay where you are.”

It’s a raspy male voice. A whiskey voice or just someone who took a hit to the throat hard enough that it never healed right. There are six other guys behind him. All are armed with homemade blades, morning stars, and slings.

“Who are you?”

Paul takes half a step forward, right to the gap.

“We’re friends. We’d like to speak to Hattie.”

“Would you? Why would Mama Hattie want to speak to you?”

“We have offerings.”

“What kind?”

“Special. But they’re only for Hattie.”

The guy turns and chats away with a couple of other members of the welcoming committee. They’re wearing a ragged assortment of designer robes and furs. From what Delon said, I’d guess a mix of family heirlooms and things they looted from the stores below.

Candy whispers, “Who’s Hattie?”

“The family matriarch,” says Delon.

The group above breaks up. The rasper comes back to the front.

“Go away. We don’t need your offerings. We get what we need just fine.”

“Not this you don’t.”

“What is it?”

“Nehebkau’s Tears.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Shut up, you ignorant boy.”

It’s a woman’s voice, coming from behind the group. An old woman pushes her way to the front.

The whole Mangarm crew is gaunt but the woman looks like a mummy with a hangover. But she’s alive. I can hear her heart and smell her sweat, which isn’t all that pleasant.

She looks at Rasper and shakes her head.

“If you were good for anything besides stealing drugs from college kids’ backpacks, you’d know exactly what Nehebkau’s Tears are.”

She turns and looks down at us.

“Please forgive Diogo. I love my boys, but this one took one too many pretty pills and it’s left him with a skull full of fiddler crabs.”

She scratches the back of his head like he’s the not very bright family dog. She looks Delon over. The woman might look frail but her eyes are bright and hard.

“Let me see the Tears. I’ve handled them before, so I’ll know if you’re lying. If you are, I’m going to have my boys kill you.”

Delon tosses the bottle across the chasm. Hattie catches it easily. I reach up, pull Delon off the top step, and go up there myself. I have one hand under my coat, ready to pull the Colt the moment anyone twitches. A second later Brigitte is standing next to me. I can’t see it but I know she has her CO₂ gun handy. If she can get it out without anyone noticing, Candy will be pulling her 9mm folding pistol. Vidocq will have palmed a noxious potion or two. I hope Father Traven has the sense to stay in the back. I don’t know what Delon is doing, but it suddenly bothers me to have him behind me at a moment like this.

“What are the Tears?” Traven says.

Delon says, “One of the most potent poisons known to the Sub Rosa, mortals, or Lurkers. And it’s undetectable. Worth a fortune.”

Hattie opens the vial and sniffs it. Touches the underside of the stopper to her tongue. I hear Delon gasp. She swishes the stuff around in her mouth for a moment. Then half spits, half coughs it out with a wad of phlegm.

She looks at Delon and laughs.

“Don’t you worry about old Hattie. I’ve been around poisons and potions, elixirs and venoms, every kind of nostrum and bane that you can think of. It’s worn out this old body, but it’s left me immune to about everything made or grown on this earth.”

She looks at the bottle, smacks her lips, and puts it in her pocket.

“Let them up, boys,” she says, then points at me. “But keep an eye on the scarred one. He looks shiftier than a drunken sidewinder.”

Diogo and his boys grab ropes suspended over the stairs and pull. A makeshift ramp made of old pieces of scaffolding wired haphazardly together swings up into place. With a thud, the ramp bangs into the bottom of the steps and Hattie’s boys tie off the ropes.

“You first, Cortés,” I say, and shove Delon onto the ramp. It sways and the ropes creak and Hattie’s boys laugh, but the thing holds together. Delon walks up the ramp like he’s barefoot and stepping on razor blades.

“One at a time,” I say to the others, and start across. I let go of the Colt so I can put out my hands to keep my balance. I don’t bother looking down. I have a pretty good picture in my head of the garbage heap twelve floors below. I don’t want to end up another empty juice box on the pile.

I make it across and Candy stumbles up behind me a second later. Then Brigitte and the rest.

Diogo and his boys take us into the remains of the Blue Pavilion Hotel. The place is in better shape than downstairs but could still use a good hosing down. Hurricane and smaller oil lamps light the lobby and surrounding halls. The lobby furniture is patched with duct tape and random swatches of fabric. Some of the chairs have no legs and sit flat on the floor. All the glass in the panoramic windows is covered with heavy curtains, which makes sense. They don’t want anyone on the beach to see the lights from up here. Duct tape covers slits in the curtain every ten feet or so. Spy holes. It’s a damp, depressing place, but at least we’re high enough that there isn’t fungus and mold everywhere.

“Come sit by me,” Hattie says to Delon.

She perches on a heavy wood-and-gilt chair against the wall. Her secondhand throne. Delon goes over and sits in a smaller chair slightly off to the side.

Up here, the Mangarms look a little less like the Texas Chain Saw psychobillies I thought they were on the stairs. In here, with their patched robes and mangy furs, they look like sad, faded royalty. The bluebloods of a kingdom as long gone and dead as Atlantis.

“Tell me why you’re here,” Hattie says. “You didn’t come for potions since it’s clear you have your own. You’re not looking for sanctuary because . . . well, this isn’t the place for it and we aren’t the kind of people likely to give it.”

Diogo and the boys chuckle and elbow one another. They love their mom. I wonder how long they’re going to last when she finally kicks it. I give them six months.

“We’re looking for a ghost,” says Delon.

Hattie leans back on her throne and laces her fingers together.

“There are many ghosts in here. Are you looking for one in particular?”

“An old one. A little mad they say. He thinks he knows secrets.”

Hattie nods.

“Yes. The old Roman. I know of him. Why do you want him?”

Delon smiles.

“We want to know his secrets.”

Hattie glances back at us.

“There are six of you. That’s a lot of people for a dead man’s secrets.”

“Too many people, if you ask me,” says Delon. “I’d prefer to be doing this on my own.”

“Then you’re a fool,” says Hattie. “No one goes alone here. Especially to the old ghost. He’s at the very bottom of this castle keep, in the old baths in the basement.”

“You mean a spa?”

Hattie makes a face.

“No. Roman baths. Saltwater baths from the sea. Some lunatic’s idea of a health balm. Me, I’d rather bathe with rats than the fetid ocean that surrounds this place.”

Finally, Hattie and I agree on something.

The rest of us sit on the patched furniture across the room from Her Royal Highness. Diogo and his crew stand around us. One with close-cropped white hair has noticed Candy’s shiny backpack. He pokes at it with the tip of his sword. Candy pulls the pack onto her lap.

“We were hoping you might take us to the old Roman,” Delon says.

Hattie shakes her head.

“Can’t. It’s not in our territory. It’s the Shoggots’ and we don’t go in there. Hell, we don’t even like to trade with them.”

Diogo has noticed that Vidocq is still holding a vial in one hand. He points to it with a knife and Vidocq gives it to him with a smile. He shakes it and sniffs. Opens the top and gets a face full of acrid white smoke. We’re all choking and coughing by the time the idiot gets the stopper back in.

Hattie looks at our gagging group and says, “I was just telling this gentleman how we don’t like trading with the Shoggots, except some of the more gullible among us do, don’t we, Diogo?”

He waves away some smoke and smiles at her.

“Yes, Mama.”

“Those swords and knives the boys like to show off. Trust me, they don’t have the wit among them to make something like that. That’s Shoggot work. They’re good makers. Especially sharp things.”

“Maybe you could take us to meet them,” says Delon.

She raises her eyebrows.

“When I called you a fool earlier, I meant it figuratively. Now you’re making me think I might have a been a bit too generous.”

“But you know how to contact them.”

“Why would I do that?”

Delon reaches into his bag and pulls out another small bottle.

“Salt distilled from the River Gihon in Third Heaven, which cures all poisons.”

Hattie takes it from him and holds it up to the light. Satisfied with what she sees, she puts it in her pocket with the Tears.

“What else have you got in that bag?” she says.

“Nothing that would interest a lady like you.”

“Really? Why don’t I have my boys take it and chuck you all over the balcony.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” I say.

Hattie turns to me.

“Which one of these assholes do you like the least? I’ll do you a favor and kill him first.”

Diogo takes a step toward me, but Hattie stops him with a short wave.

“This one looked like bad news from the moment I saw him. What’s wrong with his face? No one brings a man like that along who isn’t looking for trouble.”

“Not with you,” Delon says. “Sometimes we don’t get to pick and choose who we deal with, do we? Like you and the Shoggots. He’s my Shoggot.”

Hattie gives a short, snorting laugh that ends in ragged coughs.

“Here I was feeling sorry for us and you’ve got to haul around your own monster. Look at him. He’d like to put a knife into your back right now.”

I shrug.

“Nothing personal. I always want to stab someone.”

“This motley crew looks like more trouble than they’re worth,” says Hattie. “Give them to the Shoggots. May they choke on each other.”

Hattie gets up and starts down a hall with her boys.

“You wait here while we prepare. Don’t steal anything. I’ll know if you do.”

She points to a hotel surveillance camera that hasn’t worked since disco was king.

Delon comes back to where the rest of us are sitting.

“Do you trust them?” I say.

He shrugs.

“What choice do we have?”

“That’s not what I asked. Does the family keep its promises?”

“Tykho said yes, but you’ll notice that she’s not here.”

I turn to the others.

“Keep your weapons handy but don’t get itchy and start shooting at shadows.”

Vidocq looks at the hall that the Mangarms went down.

“I’d love to know more about their potion making. When this is over, maybe I’ll come back and do some trading of my own.”

“You do and I’ll tell Allegra,” says Candy.

Vidocq narrows his eyes.

“God does not love snitches does he, Father?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Traven. “We’re no longer on speaking terms.”

Hattie and the boys come back, but seeing them doesn’t fill me with confidence. They’ve left the robes and furs behind and have armored up in a garbage-dump combination of shoulder pads, padded hockey pants, hard hats, and football and baseball helmets. Diogo is looking particularly proud of his mall-cop shirt and badge. They’ve left their swords behind and are carrying axes and baseball bats.

“I don’t believe we dressed properly for the party,” says Brigitte.

“Anyone with second thoughts can still go back,” I say. “After this, I’m not so sure.”

Candy punches my arm.

“Stop playing Nick Fury. We’re all on board.”

“I just want to make sure everybody knows.”

Brigitte looks at Candy.

“He’s so funny when he’s playing Dad.”

“Isn’t he just,” she says.

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m more used to doing these things on my own. Not as part of a school field trip.”

Vidocq says, “Consider that for once you’ll have people to watch your back.”

“You’ll need them,” says Hattie, and puts on a wired-front hockey helmet. “Let’s go.”

We walk the twelve floors back to street level. I have a feeling they have the rope-and-pulley system rigged to get up and down faster but they don’t want us to see how it works. At the bottom, Hattie and her crew lead the way with lanterns and we head deeper into the mall.

There’s rubble everywhere, but we’re not in the worst of the wreckage. The big concrete slabs were probably dumped there during the time when the construction crew was looking for bodies. In the dim light, the random piles of stones make the place look like a haute couture Pompeii. We’re moving in a single small pool of light. Our footsteps echo off the walls. Insects buzz around our heads.

We go through a food court the size of a football stadium. The place hasn’t been looted. It’s been ripped to pieces by people looking for every spare corn dog and chicken wing they could find. Farther on are the dried remains of an old water park. Slides, fountains, and indoor surfing with an artificial wave machine. Nails and hooks have been driven into the walls, and clothes, all rotten now, hang in the dark. Crushed cans and plastic bottles litter the floor. People used to wash and haul water to their little fiefdoms from here. A desiccated body lies in the bone-dry fountain. The skull is crushed. Dried blood spray on the fallen concrete and in patches on the floor. I bet this was where they used to hold bazaars and where someone broke the truce big-time. I have a bad feeling I know who did it and we’re strolling right to them.

Paper crunches under our feet. Images torn from books and magazines are glued to the floor in patterns. The pages have bubbled up, are slick in the humid air, but a clear path is laid out through them. A long straight line, then a tight turn to the left. The path doubles back on itself several times in smaller and smaller curves. The pattern stretches out all round us in a circle thirty or more feet across. It’s a complex maze with a kind of cloverleaf at the center. A labyrinth. A meditation path, like you see in some old churches. The path of this labyrinth is paved with photos of the world outside Kill City. Hollywood. New York. Paris. Mountains. Someone doesn’t want to forget where they came from. The world as a holy relic. It’s funny to think of L.A.’s short con streets as some poor slob’s idea of Heaven, but there it is.

Father Traven’s light dips as he trips and almost goes down. Brigitte, right beside him, grabs him before he falls. I should have looked him over better when we got out of the van. He might be sleep-deprived, coming off the booze. Also, this is a pretty odd place to drag someone who’s spent his life in libraries. Was it a mistake bringing him? Brigitte never gets too far from him and I don’t think she would have let him come if she thought he couldn’t handle it. Still, I need to keep my eye on him.

I move the beam of my small LED flashlight over the empty storefronts as we move beyond the food court. They look ancient. Like caves for Neanderthals. This is the part of town the Flintstones don’t come to after dark.

Sofa cushions lashed together are makeshift beds for whoever lived there. Pits for cook fires are gouged out of the linoleum floors. Gray piles of ash dumped outside the folding-glass doors.

Scuffling sounds and a whisper come from a derelict high-end stereo store. Something glitters inside. Eyes. I look around at the other stores. Lots more eyes in there. I pull the Colt and cock the hammer, holding it up so everyone can see.

“Sit back and watch the show, folks. Do nothing more.”

We walk for over an hour, sticking to shadows when we can. We only move out into the open when there’s no other way around piles of rubble. I don’t know about anyone else, but I can hear footsteps keeping pace with us one or two floors up. I walk closer to Hattie.

“Friends?”

She shakes her head.

“No one to be worried about. A mongrel Lurker pack. Bunch of softies. We’ve put them in their place before.”

Diogo and some of the other boys throw stones up into the dark. They bounce off the walls and shatter already broken windows. You can tell from the sound that they never hit whoever’s following us.

One of Hattie’s other sons, a tall boy she called Doolittle, drops his pants and moons the upper floors. A second later, a stone flies down from the dark and hits him in the ass. He screams and curses. Hattie cuffs him on the ear.

“That’s what you get when you act a fool.”

Up ahead comes the unmistakable sound of skin slamming into skin. Boots colliding with something soft. Heavy, short breaths. Three gulping air hard. One grunting and coughing as each kick threatens to collapse bruised lungs. I run toward the sound.

The three on their feet look like extra-hard-luck street people. Layers of filthy coats and patched pants give them the look of bears in wino costumes. Whoever is on the floor is trying to fight back, throwing kicks and punches, but from that angle they don’t have enough power to make the grizzlies back off.

Still running, I kick the closest one in the small of the back and he goes down on his face, teeth or something else important clattering across the tile floor. The one on my right swings a wedge of scalpel-sharp glass mounted on the end of a chair leg. I punch him in the throat, take the homemade hatchet, and slam the wooden grip into his knees, knocking him off his feet. The last of the guys is smaller than the other two. He has a butcher knife, and by the way he moves, it looks like he knows how to use it. I point the Colt between his eyes.

“Put it on the ground.”

He does it.

“Now scoot before I get a finger cramp and this thing goes off.”

He backs away slowly until he’s out of the light. I hear someone running away and put the gun back in my pocket.

Whoever was taking the beating is still on the floor, but at least his eyes are open. He’s skinny. Young-looking and small. Not much bigger than a kid. He’s dressed from head to toe in dirty, loose gray clothes that look like heavy pajamas.

“You okay?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t think they’ll be back for a while. You can get up.”

The kid struggles to his feet, holding his left elbow tight to his side. His face is bruised and bloody, his upper lip swollen.

“You got a name?”

He moves slightly to his right. Hesitates. That’s when I see the sword lying a few feet away. The kid dives for it, rolling more gracefully than I would have expected with his injuries. The blade is beautiful. Perfect, polished steel. It glints in the harsh LED light. Maybe the kid knows that. He flashes it, making several passes, light shining from the flat of the blade and leaving trails in the air. For a second I’m blind and I put my hand in my pocket for my gun. By the time I can see again, the kid is gone. Quiet little bastard. I didn’t hear a thing.

From behind me Candy says, “Friend of yours?”

“Apparently not.”

“Maybe instead of your blunderbuss you should use your na’at. Shoot the gun once and everyone in the Lower Forty-eight will know we’re here.”

“Yeah, but no one in Kill City knows what a na’at is, so it doesn’t help to flash it. A gun is like love. The universal language.”

“I can’t decide if that’s poetry or a desperate cry for help.”

“We should keep moving,” says Hattie.

The dark closes in around us again, like we’re marching straight up a dinosaur’s ass. Or we’re lost in an old haunted fortress in a Euro-horror flick. Tombs of the Blind Dead. A hapless bunch of schmucks trapped in a cracked palace with an army of Templar zombies.

How do Kill City’s residents live like this? I remember hearing about people living in New York’s abandoned subway tunnels. Mole People, they call them. Some scavenge outside during the day, but others never leave the tunnels. I guess you get more than used to the dark. You come to think of it as home. It sounds a bit like Hell. It’s the most awful place you can imagine, but after a while you start relying on the filth and blood, the cozy familiarity of betrayal and casual brutality. It’s more than coping. It’s adaptation. You go into the dark one species and mutate to fit your surroundings. Grow better eyes and ears. Get used to the feel of the air so you can tell when something is coming at you. After a while you’re so suited to the environment you’re a whole new species. Except for the ones who can’t make the change. They never stop struggling with the dark. They’re always looking for a way out. Those are the ones who build paper meditation walks dedicated to the world or kill so cleanly for their Hellion master that it’s completely unexpected when you finally cut their throats. Of course, if you make it out, what you’ll find is you’re now a stranger in two worlds because the dark changes you and you’ll never got back to what you were before you got lost.

“Look at this,” says Vidocq. He’s crouched on the floor looking at a plastic water bottle. He holds it up. “This is new. So is this.” He picks up a half-smoked cigarette and sniffs it. Holds it out to me. I sniff it too. I pull off the filter and examine the tobacco at that end. It’s fresh.

I say, “Tykho told me that someone else knows about the ghost. I guess we’re not alone. The question is, are they ahead of us or are they lost and stopped here to get their bearings?”

“We have to assume the worst,” says Delon.

“I agree,” says Brigitte. “We have to assume that they know more than we do.”

“Or they’re lost and are doing the simple thing,” says Candy.

I say, “What’s that?”

“They’re circling around behind and following us since we’re the ones with not one but two certified guides.”

I look at Delon and Hattie.

“How much longer?” I ask the old woman.

“We go down another level just ahead. It will be harder for anyone following us to keep up.”

“Let’s get there and shake these fuckers.”

Up ahead we come to a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Diogo goes in first, and when we’re through, he takes out a padlock and secures the door from inside. The lock is big, but I’m not convinced it will keep any motivated people out for long. Still, any lead it might give us is a help. When we start moving again I make sure that Delon stays up front with whichever son is leading the way.

We go down to a floor with mall administrative offices and lockers full of maintenance equipment. It’s cooler down here. Less green with vegetation, but there are thick black patches of mold over all the air vents and the air is thick. Water drips down from overhead pipes. Vlad the Impaler could move in and start scaring peasants from this doomsday dungeon.

Hattie looks me over in the pale lantern light.

“You’re Sub Rosa, aren’t you?” she says.

“How did you know?”

“You stink of it.”

“Sub Rosa?”

“Judgment. About my family.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t give a rat’s ass—half a rat’s ass—about your family. Besides, I’ve seen worse.”

“Where?”

“Right in town. You remember the Springheels?”

“Charm makers. Used to be high-and-mighty but aren’t held in much regard anymore.”

“If there were any left, you’d be fighting over the same stale pretzels and moldy Big Macs.”

“What happened to them?”

“The last son, Jack, he had a fetish for demons. He called up an eater one day and the party didn’t go the way he planned.”

“The eater got him?”

“Technically, a High Plains Drifter, a zombie—”

“I know what a Drifter is. Just because I live in the boonies, don’t count me as stupid. Now go on.”

“Anyway, a Drifter got him in the end, but if it hadn’t been one of them, an eater would have done it sooner or later. He was begging for it.”

She thinks about it for a minute.

“I suppose we look quite respectable compared to that.”

“Yeah. You’re mother of the year and I’m king of the Mouseketeers. We’re a couple of lottery winners with money to burn.”

“You’d have killed my boys back there, wouldn’t you?”

“Every one of them.”

“Is that how you got that face? Doing things of that sort?”