The wounded were the worst because he could do nothing for them. The damage to the Wall he could fix — the Wall was only an image taken from his mind and made real with Bloat’s gift. But the jokers were real. Though he tried, he couldn’t close the wounds, knit the bones, or graft new skin over the bums. They moaned, they screamed, they clutched themselves. Their pain and terror brought tears to Teddy’s eyes. Your fault. This is your fault… He couldn’t tell where the words came from, but they clamored in his head. Teddy blinked away the tears, not caring that any of the others saw his weakness. He walked along the rim of the Wall, and with each of the worst of the wounded, he stole a bit of the power and sent them back to the island, to the emergency clinic that Kafka had hurriedly set up.
It was all he could do.
“You’ll be fine,” he told them, though he was sure most of them would die.
He came to the ruins of the main gatehouse. Modular Man was still there, watching the rubble carefully. Shroud came up from the joker brigade with the android. “Governor,” he said. “It was a little bit of hell here. The demons helped, but there were a lot of nats, and the aces… Modular Man…”
“I know.”
“Hope you have a good insurance policy,” Modular Man said.
“We’re okay.” Teddy said it loudly, so that all of them could hear. “You hear me? We’re okay. We still have our big guns: Modular Man here, Dylan, Pulse’s body, most of the jumpers. We’re still trying to wake up Croyd…” Teddy found that he was getting tired of the litany himself.
“Is it over?” Shroud asked. “Are you sure, Governor?”
Teddy listened to the head-voices, sorting out the jokers and jumpers and trying to find anyone who didn’t belong. It was easy to close his eyes. Very, very easy. There were two intruding voices in the chorus of the Rox. Two voices: both in agony, both rambling and confused. Below.
“They’re still alive,” he said.
“Won’t be for long, I’ll bet,” Shroud answered. “Can’t be much air down in that mess.”
The Outcast listened again. Detroit Steel — no, Mike was his name — was dying as Teddy listened, suffocating to death in his broken suit of armor. Snotman was pinned down, furious, with only enough energy to keep the enormous weight of concrete and stone from crushing him, and that ebbing with each moment. Shroud was right. They would die. Slowly. Horribly.
While he listened.
“Get them out,” he said to Modular Man.
“Hey, wait a minute, Governor,” Shroud protested, pulling at the Outcast’s cloak. “We just lost a lot of our people taking out these two bastards. And you want to dig ’em up again?” Around him, other jokers shouted agreement. “Let the fuckers die,” they said. “They’re getting what they deserve. Bury the mothers.”
Mikey… got get out ’cause the kid can’t take care of himself… he needs me … God don’t let me die like this all alone…
“Dig them up,” Teddy said again.
“Governor, are you crazy?”
The Outcast whirled around to face Shroud, and the joker drew back at the fury on Teddy’s face. “We won,” he told the jokers gathered around him. “We won and this time we’re going to ask for everything we need and we won’t settle for less. We’re going to shove this defeat down their throats. We’re going to make them pay for every joker who lost a life, for every drop of blood. I promise you that.” He paused. “But we gotta have some compassion. We gotta have some humanity. I won’t have anyone die like this, not when it doesn’t have to happen.”
He heard the thought, heard it from several of them in a dozen variations. The governor’s gone soft. He’s scared and he’s lost his edge. Teddy even wondered if they were right. Maybe he should let them die. Maybe it made more sense. It just didn’t feel right. He didn’t want to have to hear their dying thoughts, didn’t know if he could bear the guilt. The governor’s gone soft…
But none of the jokers said the thought aloud.
“Governor, there is a certain problem with Snotman …” Modular Man interjected.
“I know that. You think I’m stupid?” Teddy took a deep breath, calming himself. “Get Detroit Steel out first. He’s not a problem — without the suit, he’s just a guy. Then start on Snotman. Take your time and be careful when you dig him up. I’ve been listening to him. He’s exhausted now and doesn’t have much strength left. Don’t touch him: uncover the feet and bind them, then the arms. Tie him up; don’t let anyone hit him or shoot him or harm him in any way. Don’t, for God’s sake, drop him. Just take him to the Iron Keep and throw — no, gently place — him in a cell by the others. Just keep him bound and alone so he can’t run against the walls or have someone else hit him.”
The Outcast looked at all of them, the sullen joker faces. “Dig them up,” he said again. “I want you all to help.”
He waited, wondering what he’d do if they refused. Obedient as he had to be, Modular Man had already gone to the mounded wreckage and begun levering away slabs of concrete. Slowly, Shroud turned and went to help the android, the others following.
Teddy, exhausted, felt his body dissolve.
The dungeon was damp and cold, and the blackness had a weight of its own. The bodysnatcher carried a torch to light his way down the narrow, twisting steps.
The girl was slumped against the wall in the back of her cell. There was straw in her hair. She lifted her head slowly, blinking at the light of the torch. After so much darkness, it must have been hard to bear. Her tears had left tracks through the dirt on her face. She stared up at the bodysnatcher with eyes gone numb and dead. Then somehow she recognized him. “Pulse?” Her voice was hoarse and raw. She got unsteadily to her feet, leaning on the wall. “Pulse, help me, please… She moved toward the bars.
“You should take better care of that meat,” the bodysnatcher told her. “Molly will be wanting it back. She’s sentimental like that.”
The girl in Molly Bolt’s body shrank back, suddenly afraid. “Oh, God,” she said. “You too.”
“Your daddy’s dead,” the bodysnatcher said. “Molly did him real nice. Smashed him like a fat blue bug. You should have been there. But then, you were, weren’t you?”
The girl just looked at him for a long moment, as if she couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then she started to scream. The bodysnatcher smiled and walked away.
Way down at the far end of the dungeon, he felt eyes watching as he passed. The bodysnatcher stopped and peered into the last cell, where a slender, half-naked black man sat cross-legged on the floor. “Your turn is coming,” he promised
“Excellent,” Wyungare replied. “I thought room service had forgotten about me. There’s been no shortage of roaches, but they’re a poor substitute for witchitty grubs.”
“That’s straw you’re sitting on,” the bodysnatcher told him. “What do you suppose would happen if I tossed the torch onto that nice dry straw?”
“You would stumble in the darkness on your way out, and be forced to grope your way up the stairs,” Wyungare pointed out.
His calm pissed the bodysnatcher off no end. “You’d burn to death, you stupid nigger!”
Wyungare shrugged. “That too,” he admitted.
The bodysnatcher was thinking about going to his light-form and burning a hole through the abo’s face when he heard a deep rumble far above, and the dungeon shuddered under his feet. He almost dropped the torch. “What was that?” he said, startled.