Not here. Not now.
"Wait!" he called. "I'm coming with you."
Together, they went from the catacombs out into the streets of Jerusalem.
In the hours since Hannah and Gregg had seen the water truck, the Black Trump had begun its terrible reign in the Jokers' Quarter. For those infected, the first symptom was a raging headache, followed quickly by a fever that would not break. Still, this was no worse than a bad sinus infection. "A few days bed rest, some decongestants ..." That was the doctor's reply to the first calls from the parents of the joker children sprayed by Harvest.
In another few hours, those same parents called again, in fear and panic this time.
The virus attacked the bloodstream, tearing apart the red blood cells and at the same time sending a series of disastrous clots throughout the body. The skin became a network of bruises, and the thinning soft skin tore open with the slightest provocation - the bleeding, once begun, would not stop. Purple lesions were visible within six hours, and the victims bled from every available orifice: the mouth, the nose, the anus, the eyes, from the ripped skin. That blood was laden with the virus, and a touch was enough to infect someone. Coughing, the victims sprayed poison into the air. Later, the victims would vomit immense quantities of black fluid: clotted blood and bile.
As the clots rippled through the body, strokes were common. Victim's faces became rigid, masklike, expressionless. Like a zombie, they might lie unresponsive or their personality might change: rage and acute paranoia were common. Bleeding, dying, some fought those trying to care for them, breaking away with desperate strength and escaping out into the city.
In every case, those infected would die. There was no reprieve.
The Black Trump was the Black Queen done slowly. It was the rot of the grave inflicted on a living, aware host. It was agony and torture and anguish, and death was the only release from its grasp.
The evening breeze scattered the seeds of terror, and they grew.
Gregg and Hannah entered into a scene of carnage. Fires were burning in several of the houses - whether set by the infected themselves or by terrified neighbors, they'd never know. The strobes of police and fire vehicles bounced from the walls.
Gregg could sense the quick rise of fright in Needles. The boy's face was drawn and pale. He cradled his Uzi in his hands, twisting them around the short, ugly barrel, his claws clattering against the vented steel. Gregg could see his fear, coiling green around him. Puppetman hollered and fought - Stop it! Goddamn you, stop it! - but the bars held. "I wish I knew where Zoe was," Needles said as they came to the gate out of the quarter. "Jellyhead, Angelfish, Anna. I wish I knew they were okay."
Hannah glanced at Gregg. Don't let him go! "Go on," Hannah said. "We know how to get to the Wall. One person more or less isn't going to make any difference. Not now. Go on."
Needles hesitated. Then he nodded. As Puppetman shrilled curses, he took off running back into the Quarter. The strings to the youth pulled taut, thinning with distance, and then Gregg could no longer feel him. Hannah sighed, and Gregg saw the tears behind the glass ports of her mask.
What the hell. There's a thousand more out here tonight ...
He had no idea how long it took to move through the nightmare streets to the Wailing Wall. Crowds raced through the narrow streets, screaming and raging, breaking windows of the shops, looting, attacking people blindly. Twice, Hannah had to fire her weapon in the air to frighten off attackers. There were bodies everywhere, and it was difficult to tell if they'd been killed in the rioting or by the Black Trump. Gregg didn't bother to look closely enough to tell. Puppetman screamed the whole time, shaking the walls of Gregg's mind in terror, afraid that with each ragged inhalation Gregg was breathing in their eventual death.
As they approached the square before the Wall, they could smell smoke and see firelight bouncing from the fronts of the stalls. "Shit," Hannah breathed, and ran.
The water truck was burning, the smoke black and full of the smell of burning rubber, gasoline, and flesh. There were bodies scattered around the truck; some Fists, but most of them in the uniform of the Sharks. "I don't see Harvest, or the Dog," Hannah said. She leaned down, peering at the nearest body, and Gregg saw her pull back as red terror shot from her mind. Puppetman moaned. "Christ!" Hannah said. She backed away.
"What?" Gregg asked. "Who is it?"
"A Shark. A nat," Hannah answered. "But look - " She pointed, and her finger trembled. Gregg sidled forward on all sixes, ready to retreat and feeling his body trembling. In the light of the burning truck, he could see the man's face.
Dark blood was still pulsing from his mouth, from his nose, from his wide-open eyes. His arms were covered with purple bruises, and they leaked blood as well. He smelled of corruption.
"Yes," someone said harshly to their right. The voice was familiar. "Humorous, isn't it?" The speaker came around the corner of one of the stalls, using an automatic weapon for a crutch, and Gregg saw the mask: a hound's face. A bullet had shattered the man's right leg; Gregg could see the blood and the fragments of white bone in the gaping wound. The Dog had wrapped a tourniquet about the leg just below the knee.
"What's humorous?" Gregg asked.
"The Black Trump kills nats, too. Don't you find that funny? I do. It's the funniest damn thing I've ever heard."
The Black Dog laughed, a sound dark as the blood.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
It's a war, Zoe told herself, it's a war and people are dying, but it can't be the Black Trump. It can't be!
Billy Ray led her into a room where her last shreds of hope lay dead, where huddled corpses lay in heaps. The simoom howled outside and the Black Trump was loose in Jerusalem.
"Come on, Zoe!" Billy Ray shoved through the doorway of the tiny rooftop room. Zoe scanned the huddled corpses as she went past them, looking for Anne, or Owl, but these were strangers. They weren't hers, thank God. She followed Billy Ray out, down ancient stairs whose steps were smooth curves, the stone worn away by generations of human feet.
Billy Ray vanished in the crowd on the street. A joker appeared out of the haze and snatched at the pink snout of Zoe's surgical mask. Zoe straight-armed the poor devil out of the way. Damn, if only she'd thought to carry the carton of masks out of the lab! Too late, too late. She pulled the kilim over her head to hide the mask and kept running.
Got to get Anne. Got to get the kids. The Trump is loose and they might die, but I know enough isolation technique so we won't spread it to each other - so does Jellyhead, she's had some medical training; she can take care of the others if I die.
Gunfire broke out where two alleys intersected. Zoe caught a glimpse of the black robes of Fist guards battling nats in green-and-brown camo. She dodged into a twisting alley, away from the guns and the screams.
No go. The alley dead-ended in a pile of burning mattresses. Clouds or black smoke that reeked of kerosene rolled toward her. Zoe ducked under an awning and jerked a table out from beneath it, scattering cucumbers and lemons into the street. She hoisted herself onto the awning and climbed the wall.
Others had taken to the rooftops, trying to avoid the crush of the streets. Zoe saw a rifle aimed in her direction, dropped and rolled, and ran for home. Someone screamed behind her. In the alleys below, coughs and pleas rose from the swirling crowds. A few robed figures crawled toward the city gates, or lay against the walls, no longer able to crawl.
But Zoe was running the other way, into the Quarter.
She reached her own roof, dropped onto the tiny stoop, and pounded on the door.
"Mama! Mama, let me in!"
"Zoe!" An adolescent's voice cracked on the shouted word; Owl? Angelfish? The door opened and Zoe faced a rifle barrel, Angelfish above it. Anne sat on a chair, her hands behind her. Both of them were masked in doubled bandanas, but they were masked.
"Don't touch me!" Zoe slid inside the door and braced her back against the wall, her hands behind her. A newscaster's rapid patter came from Needles' boombox
in the corner. "Where's everybody? We've got to get out of here!"
"Jellyhead's out with Jan and Balthazar, setting up quarantine shelters where they can," Anne said. "Angel tied me to this chair when I tried to leave with them."
"I had to," Angel said. "I'm sorry, Zoe, but - "
The stripes on Angel's face pulsed with color; he was nervous about Zoe's reaction. "Good for you, Angel." Food, some water, the rifle Angel held should keep people from coughing in their faces. Zoe grabbed a clean garbage bag and pulled food and a plastic jug of cold water out of the tiny fridge. Were the waterlines contaminated? We'll boil it before we drink it.
"They say it's a biologic weapon that kills jokers. We have to fight it, Zoe. Let me help them. I'm going to die anyway," Anne said.
"Ma! Listen to me! There are dead nats on the streets out there! This plague kills everyone who gets it! The Black Dog has a nuclear bomb, and if the Black Trump doesn't kill us, he'll set it off, or the UN will use one of theirs to do the job! We can try to live through this or we can get blasted into atoms!"
"We can't leave," Anne said. Even perched on a kitchen chair with her hands tied behind her, she spoke with sweet reason. "The UN has set up roadblocks. So if you'll just have Angel untie me, we can get to work. While we have our strength, we'll do what we can."
"... repeat, do not try to leave Jerusalem. If you feel ill, please report to the medical stations in your neighborhood, where UN workers will assist you. Do not pan - "
The announcers voice stopped abruptly, replaced by static.
"Angel?" Zoe tied the plastic sack of food and water to the belt of her robe and signalled Angelfish with a look. He untied Anne's bonds. She blinked at the smoke outside and started down the stairs.
"No, Ma," Zoe said. "Up on the roof."
"What?"
"There's transportation there," Zoe said. She leaped and scrambled up, Angel beside her with his rifle.
"Hold up your arms, Ma," Zoe said.
"Oh, for pity's sake," Anne said, but she lifted her arms, they hauled, and Anne made it over the parapet and onto the roof.
Zoe puffed her carpet back to life, settled Anne in the middle, and climbed into steering position. "Get on behind us, Angel," she yelled. "Pour when I say!"
Angel dripped water onto the carpet's tail, Zoe shouted, and they lifted off into the smoke.
"Shit, Zoelady!" Angel yelled "This is seriously righteous!"
"Can we pick up Jan and Needles?" Anne asked.
"I'm looking, Mama." Zoe aimed the carpet for the shortest route over the walls. The three of us barely fit on this thing; no, Ma, I can't get them.
Up, up, over street fires and screams. The red streaks of tracer bullets dotted the smoky air. Zoe cleared the wall and aimed for high, for south. She could see the Zion gate, the road to Bethlehem. On it, Israeli and Palestinian soldiers in gas masks and goggles stood back-to-back, ready to shoot anyone trying to come in or out of the tortured city.
Zoe pushed the carpet into a steep climb.
A cluster of bright blossoms flared up from the Allenby bridge. She stared at it in fascination. It was pretty, and so far away.
The carpet lurched.
"Zoe, I'm hit!" Angel yelled.
Anne twisted around and got hold of the boy, pulling him toward her with a mother's strength. The carpet bucked and Zoe fought for control. Back. Back into that hell.
She circled the carpet toward the walls and down into the city, aiming for any refuge, dodging bullets she couldn't see, looking for the thickest smoke, the greatest confusion. Among the buildings now, skimming the tops of the crowded, narrow streets.
Anne's voice screamed something she couldn't understand, a distraction Zoe didn't need; around this corner was a straight stretch of street where she could set this baby down.
Bruckner, Bjorn's voice said.
He isn't here, Daddy. Zoe skidded the carpet to a halt in the crowded street. The crowd was fleeing something she couldn't see.
"Nuke!" she heard. "They're going to blow us to hell!"
In wedge formation, a dozen black-robed jokers with rifles fought their way through the smoke-hazed crowd. Zoe got her arms beneath Angel's armpits and heaved him toward the scant shelter of a doorway, out of the line of traffic. Anne threw herself over Angel, shielding him with her body.
Open mouths, screams, chatter of automatic fire, the cracks of rifle stocks and fists, Zoe took an elbow in the ribs and stumbled against the wall, kicking out at the black robe in front of her.
The joker grabbed her and pulled her away from Anne and Angel.
"Mama!" Zoe screamed. "Let me go!" She struggled with the joker who held her and tried to fight her way back toward Anne. He slapped her, a blow that made her gasp. Above his mask, strange yellow eyes -
"Balthazar!"
"Hurry, Zoe!" the goat man yelled.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Ray had never seen a city gone mad before. People were fighting with nothing to fight for, running with nowhere to run. They were looting and stealing even as they sweated blood.
He looked all over the city for Harvest. He saw her handiwork everywhere. Darkness had fallen by the time he reached the Wailing Wall. He heard the sound a block away; when he entered the square, a thousand candles were burning. A great mass of people knelt at the Wall, praying with all their hearts, men and women and jokers intermixed; in their fear and grief, no one was trying to enforce the age-old segregations.
They'd finally realized that God doesn't give a rat's ass whether you're man, woman, or joker, Ray thought, and it's too damn late for most of them.
He was about to continue his hopeless quest to track down Harvest when an apparition, an answer to the wailing prayers of the multitude, appeared suddenly in the darkness. Quasiman.
He still had the tank strapped to his back. A hose ran from the tank. He started spraying the crowd. Candles began to flicker out.
At first most of the faithful didn't realize he was there, but a soaking from a power nozzle gets your attention pretty quickly. Someone else remembered that the Black Trump had been brought to Jerusalem as liquid sprayed over a crowd. And they went crazy. They deserted the Wall with a single, outraged roar.
Ray didn't know what the hunchback was doing, but he remembered his cryptic warning. Don't drink the wine.... It seemed clear to him that Quasi would never hurt anyone.
Not that the maddened crowd would see it that way.
Ray raced to Quasiman's side, flinging jokers aside as he bulled through. He planted himself firmly in front of the hunchback. Quasi had materialized in front of a hummus stand; the crowd could only come from the front and sides. "Back off!" Ray roared.
The crowd came at them with fear-maddened features and clawed hands, screaming and cursing in half a dozen languages while Quasiman looked on, blank-eyed. "No," the hunchback said. "I remember ... it's to help ..." Ray had said that he was going to kick ass. Well, here were a shit-load of asses to kick. He launched into a series of lightning attacks. He didn't have time to be careful. He felt bones snap and crunch as half a dozen of the mob went down in the first second. Some were trampled under and hurt a lot worse than by Rays fists, feet, or elbows.
Ray's broken arm hadn't fully knit. It hurt like a son of a bitch when he connected with it. The pain was turning to a deep nausea and he didn't know how long he'd be able to hold out; he was beginning to think that this hadn't been such a good idea.
Then the joker let fly with the sprayer he carried on his back.
The mob went schizo. Suddenly it no longer wanted to be near the carrier of death. The rioters in the front rank suddenly went into reverse. Those in the rear peeled off and the mob parted in front of them like the Red Sea in front of Moses.
Ray hunkered down and took a deep breath, letting his tingling arm dangle limply. "Jesus," he said aloud, "I need a vacation." He turned to Quasiman. "Well, now that I've saved your ass, tell me what the hell you've got there."
For once, Quasiman seemed t
o be relatively in one piece. "The Overtrump," he said. "Jay said to spray them all, all over the world ... To keep them safe ..."
Ray felt as if a crushing weight had been lifted from his shoulders. "Well, Christ, Quasi. Give me a squirt."
He took off his face mask and popped the filters out of his nose and Quasiman sprayed him in the face.
"Who made it?" Ray asked after Quasiman had hosed him down.
"Mark Meadows," Quasiman said.
"The hippie?" Ray asked. Jesus, who knows what was in something cooked up by Mark Meadows? Still, the guy was supposed to know his shit. "Well, how did he - never mind. Explanations later. Right now we have to get you to the authorities."
Quasiman nodded decisively. "I remember. Let's go."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Hannah turned to Gregg. Her face was lined, drawn. She brushed limp hair back from her face. "I ..." Hannah started to speak. She grimaced. Her hands fluttered up and fell again to her lap. "Gregg, this is it, isn't it? The Card Sharks got what they wanted, and more. Unless the Trump gets wiped out now, it's going to spread, and one hell of a lot of people are going to die. Everywhere. Everyone."
Gregg took a breath. He could smell the smoke, the death all around him, and he knew that if he could smell it, it could kill him. Fires lit the night sky. His body wanted to run, wanted to flee. Hannah had gone to the wounded Black Dog, helping the Fist leader. "Yeah. We lost - I thought we had a chance, but we lost."
"We can end it," Hannah said, "if we want to."
Puppetman howled, shaking the bars of his cage. "Hannah - "
"You know it's the only way, Gregg. There's no choice, not any more."
"Hannah, do you realize what you're saying? That means - "