Billy Ray tackled her hard enough to steal her breath and send them both skidding and rolling across the hard concrete floor. She dropped Ffodor’s femur. A rabbit punch snapped her head back. Ray wound up for a more powerful blow, one with his shoulder behind it. Mollie threw up a portal shield to intercept his fist, but his reflexes were too fast. He threw wide before she could chop his hand off at the wrist. Fine. She dropped him through a wide floor portal twinned to one in the ceiling; the SCARE agent fell from ceiling to floor over and over again, faster and faster, until he was a blur.
All these motherfuckers did was try to distract her while she held the connection to Talas. It’d be easier to hold the line once they were all buried in the maggot queen’s stomach.
Mollie turned just in time to see Joey’s zombie mutt crouching for a lunge at her throat. She moved the portal in the ceiling. Billy Ray pancaked the zombie pooch when he hit the warehouse floor at terminal velocity, about 120 miles per hour.
Joey screamed with inchoate rage.
What was the crack the bitch made about American Hero? She deserved to get her eyes shoved down her throat for that. But Mollie could do even better. She hurled herself on the smaller woman. Pinned her to the ground—easy peasy, Mollie outweighed her, let’s hear the little shit make fun of her weight now—and clamped her teeth on Joey’s eyebrow ridge. She craned her neck. Flesh tore with the sound of a wet bedsheet ripping in half. Joey screamed. Mollie swallowed warm rubbery flesh stippled with bristles.
Joey’s remaining fingers tore a furrow in Mollie’s face while an ice-cold hand reached around from behind to clamp on her throat. Squeezed. Mollie couldn’t breathe. Needed air. Mollie clawed at the arm but couldn’t loosen its grip. The vise on her throat squeezed harder. The room got darker.
Thwip. A bee stung her in the ass. Thwip, thwip. Then two more followed suit, one in the small of the back and the other just under her left breast. The opportunistic motherfuckers.
Spinning shadows engulfed the warehouse. The last things Mollie saw before it all went black was a severed corpse arm falling free of her neck; Joey clutching one bloody hand to her chest and the other to a hamburger-raw spot over her eye while more blood sheeted down her face; and a gang of toe tags shambling through the portal as it closed on them.
The Russian goon leaned against the wall, his chair canted onto the back legs while he picked his teeth with a well-chewed toothpick. He gave Franny a casual nod of greeting reminiscent of the nods he’d received from his fellow cops who ringed the clinic. It bothered Franny that this criminal treated him with the same acceptance and familiarity.
Before he reached the hospital door it was opened and five men in expensive bespoke suits walked out. They all carried briefcases that cost as much as a year’s salary for a lot of people. Franny recognized two of them—they were the top criminal defense lawyers in New York and they only represented high-profile, high-dollar clients.
He couldn’t help but contrast his appearance with these men. Franny might have a law degree, but that’s where the resemblance ended. He was dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt and instead of a twenty-thousand-dollar Lederer de Paris briefcase he carried a bag of take-out Chinese food. They probably thought he was the delivery boy.
And wasn’t that exactly what he was? He’d delivered Baba Yaga to New York. Delivered Babel. Delivered Mollie.
He almost tossed the food into a nearby trash can. Food he’d brought for the old lady because … He tried to analyze why he had brought her a late-night dinner and realized it was because he felt a strange bond to the old bitch and if he was honest he had no place else to go.
The back of the hospital bed was elevated and the old woman was flicking from news channel to news channel.
“I see you had company,” Franny said.
Baba Yaga grunted. “Hardly a social call if you have to pay them. What have you brought?” She nodded toward the sack.
“Chinese. You didn’t strike me as the pizza type.”
He pulled over the rolling table and started setting out containers. Baba Yaga watched him, frowning. “Why are you here, boy?”
“I’m not sure. I felt like I ought to check on you, I guess.” He glanced up at the television.
“You have no sweetheart to fuck before the world ends?” she asked. Her tone implied that she knew damn well he didn’t.
“You don’t seem to think it’s ending,” he said as he dished out General Tso’s chicken. “Not if you’re preparing for your prosecution.”
“I thought there might be a chance.” She gestured at the television. “Until I saw how badly you people have messed up. America proves once again to be a disappointment.” She snorted and folded her remaining arm across her chest.
“If you had leveled with me on the plane I could have called. Kept them from sending the aces. It was the right move based on what they knew. You don’t get to criticize them because you fucked up by playing for leverage.” Franny realized he was on his feet and shouting.
The guard appeared in the door. Baba Yaga waved him away. Her next remark surprised Franny. “I suppose that is true.” She took a few bites of the food he’d set out for her. “And it is human nature to grasp and cling to life and to hope. If they can keep Tolenka alive they may buy enough time to find a solution.” She tried another bite of General Tso’s chicken. “I also understand you have retired from the hero business.”
“Huh?”
“When that UN person and the ugly man came with maps and wanted me to pinpoint the location of the hospital. They said you had declined to help. I’m surprised. I would have expected you to leap onto your white horse.”
“Maybe I learned something from you. It should be all about me and my stuff.”
“I would have gone, Francis. I offered, but the doctors say I might not survive the journey, and Mr. Ray seems not to trust me.”
“Trying to guilt me?”
“Trying to understand why you’re fool enough not to try and save yourself.” Baba Yaga gestured up at the now muted pictures flicking by on the television screen.
It was showing a loop of a Kazakh general drawing a gun and shooting an interviewing journalist in the face. Blood and brains sprayed out the back of the man’s skull.
“That will soon be your fate, Francis. Who will you shoot? Or perhaps what happens to you will be worse. Some survivors have slithered out of the affected area. I believe some troops beat one of them to death before they realized it was a human. Or used to be.”
Guilt lay on the back of his tongue, an oily horrible taste. “I’m an ordinary person. Just a normal guy. What could I possibly do in that?” He gestured at the screen.
“Die fighting to live instead of cowering.”
“Good-bye, Mariamna, it was interesting meeting you. Maybe I’ll get to testify at your trial.”
“If the world survives I doubt it will go that far. My legal team seems rather confident the blame will fall on the underlings who undertook this terrible criminal operation beneath the nose of a fragile and senile old woman.” The sharp expression in her eyes died and her face went slack. She suddenly looked like a woman lost to dementia. She shook it off and gave him one of her wintery smiles. “I will never see the inside of a jail. I have millions in Switzerland and the Caymans, and money can fix anything.”
“Except the end of the world,” Franny said and he left.
“Don’t be stupid, Marcus,” Olena said. “Eat. When was the last time you had a hot meal?”
“When was the last time anybody from the village had a hot meal? They should be in here with us. There’s room enough.”
He said this without managing the certainty he intended. The warehouse-like space they were in was crowded with people, buzzing with activity. There were bureaucrats with their air of importance, suits gathered in clusters, cell phones to their ears, gesturing to underlings who darted back and forth on various errands. There were the few aces he recognized, Bugsy and Tinker and the Lama, who were the
mselves engaged in a high-profile briefing at a table some distance away. Among all this even more people milled around. Military and civilian alike, they grazed the buffet tables, chowing down donuts and inhaling coffee. Worse, some stood with glazed expressions on their faces. If that was unnerving enough, there were the ever-present Russian soldiers, machine guns hung over their shoulders. They didn’t look happy to have any of the foreigners here, but they stared with particularly withering animosity at Marcus. He couldn’t tell what they hated him more for, being a joker or being with Olena.
For her part, Olena didn’t seem the least bit intimidated about them. “Russian pricks,” she’d called them. She shot a few choice Russian words at them on several occasions. Marcus assumed she was responding to insults to him. He couldn’t understand a word of it, but he didn’t have to. Their disdain for him was clear enough.
Olena picked up the spoon that Marcus had so far ignored. She scooped up a dollop of mashed potatoes and waved it before his mouth. Ignoring it, he said, “There must be someplace secluded in here. That’s all I’m talking about. Just let us have the corner of some old warehouse somewhere. Is that too much to ask? I should talk to—”
Olena shoved the spoon in his mouth. She grabbed his chin and encouraged him to chew. “Eat first. Then save the world.”
Despite feeling guilty he was eating when the villagers were still locked out, he did as she ordered. Doing his best not to enjoy the food, he tucked into potatoes, sausages, and overcooked peas. For a time he got lost in doing one simple thing, lifting a spoon to his mouth and eating. He didn’t even notice how much of a relief it was. Nothing he’d heard since entering the Cosmodrome had been good news. From things Bugsy, Tinker, and the Lama had said, he gathered that not only were things still fucked up in Talas, but that the nightmare world he’d seen there had continued to spread. A whole team of aces had gone in and hadn’t been able to do a thing about it. Fucking depressing. He and Olena had been debriefed by some nondescript suit whose face Marcus forgot the moment he left him. Guy hadn’t really seemed interested, and Babel hadn’t deigned to speak with him herself.
As soon as he wiped the tin plate clean, all the miserable facts fell back on him. They were inside, but so what? There was nothing but bad news, and the only people he cared about were still locked outside, with the contagion heading toward them like some all-consuming nightmare of a dust storm. It was coming; of that Marcus was completely sure.
“I gotta talk to Babel,” he said. “Just talk sense to her, you know?”
“I don’t think she wants to speak to you,” Olena said, with a flatness that Marcus read as sarcastic.
“What are we going to do, then? We can’t just sit here. Maybe we should get the fuck out. No one would stop us from leaving. Let’s get the others and keep moving. There’s got to be someplace we could hold up, just be by ourselves.”
“And let the world go to hell?” There was that flatness again.
“I’m just trying … to … to do something!”
She slipped an arm around back and leaned her head on his shoulder. “I know, Marcus. You’re right. We should go. Get supplies. Water. All the food they’ll let us take. Fuel. Whatever we can get, and then go.”
“Should we tell your father?”
“Fuck him,” Olena said. “He doesn’t care about me. I’m better off without him.” And then, with a deeper level of conviction, “We’re better off without him.”
Marcus pressed his lips, gently, to her forehead. “All right. I’m gonna go see if they’ll help us.” He jutted his chin toward where the aces were milling about after their briefing ended. “Tinker, at least. He seems decent.”
Slithering through the crowd toward them, Marcus noticed someone who made him pull up. A black woman—the first he’d seen in a long time—had just emerged from one of the many corridors leading out of the main warehouse. It wasn’t just her race he noticed, though. It was the pained expression on her blood-smeared face and the way she held a hand wrapped in bloody gauze clamped at the wrist with her other hand. She met Marcus’s gaze, paused a moment to stare at him, but then carried on as several people helped clear the way through the crowd for her.
Bugsy seemed to be waiting for him when he approached the aces. Marcus asked, “That woman, what happened to her?”
“Joey?” Bugsy asked. “Also known as Hoodoo Mama. Tesseract happened to her. Bit off her finger.”
“Hoodoo Mama, that’s right,” Marcus said. “And … Wait. Tesseract? You mean Mollie? The bitch that snatched the jokers and brought them here?”
Bugsy swiped his longish hair away from his face. “That would be the one. See how desperate we are?”
“Damn,” Marcus said. His eyes found Joey again. She was seated now, with medical aides buzzing around her.
“Too right,” Bugsy said. “She’s a real piece of work on the best of days, but from what I hear she’s pretty much batshit crazy. Which is a problem since she’s pretty much the only ace in this deck that Babel really had a plan for. Possible savior of the world, but she’d rather bite people’s fingers off. Joey’s not getting that finger back, either.”
Marcus kept staring at her, feeling the shape of an idea turning to face him. When he had it, he said, “Actually, I think maybe she could.” Without another word, he turned and slithered toward Joey and the swarm of activity around her. He got as near as he could, pausing to watch a doctor snap on his rubber gloves.
She said, “Let’s have a look.” She gently peeled the wrapping from around Joey’s hand, ribbon by ribbon until the bloody mess of it was revealed. One finger was cut clean away. The stump pulsed blood that immediately began to trail down her wrist. “Is there any way to get the missing digit?”
“No,” Joey said. “It’s fucking gone.”
The doctor inhaled. “Sorry to hear that. We’ll get this sterilized and—”
“Hoodoo Mama!” Marcus called. But that sounded weird, like it might be an insult. “Or, Joey … Look, this is going to sound strange, but you gotta come with me.”
She looked up and through the people attending her. Her face was raw and bruised, the flesh above her eye torn ragged and oozing. A nurse dabbed at it with a bit of gauze, but Joey yanked her head away. To Marcus, she said, “You’re IBT, huh? I been meaning to look you up. Next trip up to Jokertown, I thought, but no. Fucking Kazakhstan instead. Believe this shit?” She paused, her attitude slipping. “You ain’t exactly seeing me at my best.”
“I’ve got someone you need to meet. He’ll make you feel better.”
“Are you for real? Do I look like I’m up for it? Another time, sure, but—”
“No, I mean I know someone who could heal you. Like really heal you. Give you your finger back.”
Joey’s eyes narrowed. “Nigga, you playing with me? I don’t stand for being played. You got a pretty face, but I won’t hesitate to have some old shriveled up Russian zombie fucker eat your face off.”
“No, I swear it. I know a jo—I mean, I know an ace that can do it. I’ll take you to him.”
“This ace, he’s gonna give me my finger back? ’Cause shit if I know how to find it. Probably got a crab chewing on it right now.”
Marcus swallowed. Hoping it was true, he said, “He can do it.”
Numbness. Drifting. An unconscious entity floated on a formless sea, devoid of thought, memory, sensation, consequence. She was a disembodied mind, adrift and unconscious.
From somewhere a million miles away, a woman’s voice said, “Wow. She did a number on you.”
A man’s voice, equally distant. “Yeah, well. I’ve had worse.”
It sounded like he was missing some teeth. Like he’d fallen face-first from a great height.
“How is she?”
“Not good. Not good. She’s been practically comatose like this since…” A sigh. “The shrink says she might have had a permanent psychotic break.”
“Damn,” said the woman’s voice. There was a name attached to it
, a sound, a babbling brook. Babbling. Babel. “It must be awful, seeing this and wondering about your wife.”
Again, a man’s sigh. “She’s been over there awhile.”
“She’s a fighter. She’s tough.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you, Mollie,” whispered the woman. “We saved Ana because of you.”
A warm pair of lips touched her forehead. Trembling. Compassionate.
Revolting.
The touch of flesh brought memories of severed flesh and bone, the taste and texture against her tongue … The thought of a mouth reminded her of crab-things scuttling through the shadows, hideous human-sized spiders covered every inch with suppurating wounds that licked themselves with scaly tongues and suckled with baby teeth. Of mouths that opened to scream but could only choke on the squamous eyeballs within.
The touch of flesh. Sick, suppurating flesh.
Again, the compassionate kiss. Horrifying, disgusting, unwelcome touch of flesh.
A scream parted the formless sea. It persisted until the sound shredded her throat and she coughed on blood.
But then she remembered what she had done to Ffodor, how she’d desecrated his body—shattered him, used his broken mutated arms and legs as clubs—and she wailed anew.
“Look,” Joey said, “all I’m saying is that the little mollusk has a magic touch. Wasn’t more than five minutes caressing my hand before he grew me a new digit. Felt good, too. Kinda like the best finger work ever, if you know what I mean.” She pointed her newly restored finger at Nurassyl. “This kid. Shit, when he’s growed and learns what he can do to a girl with them tentacles he’ll be swimming in pussy.”
Nurassyl, who was standing flanked by Marcus and Olena and facing a contingent of international aces, flushed suddenly crimson.
“Really, Joey!” Babel said. “I’m translating. There’s a little boy here.”
Joey shrugged. “Truth is truth.”
“I’m up next,” Bugsy said. “For the healing, like, not the weird joker kid-sex stuff.”
Babel ignored him. She looked to Marcus, who grew instantly uneasy under her gaze, more so than with any of the other aces who huddled around them. She wasn’t impressive-looking, and he knew her powers weren’t deadly. But still, she scared him the way his high school librarian always had. She made him feel like he was about to do something wrong and she knew it before he did. “I appreciate what the boy did for Joey, but the situation with Mollie is graver than a single finger.”