Infection rates around crematoriums and landfill incinerators were well above national and global averages. Eventually the incongruity was noticed. Sleepless were no longer burned. They were limed and buried in concrete-lined mass graves. Deep.
Some countries were still burning. If one cared to track such things via the many thousands of SLP-related blogs, one gathered that the hinterlands of civilization had not gotten the word. In wide swaths of Africa and Asia, corpse pyres burned nonstop, the new dead piled on by the lowest castes. The longer the fires burned, the larger they grew, their plumes of smoke and infection creating more fuel. I’d been told by a Navy airman I’d met in casual circumstances that his carrier strike group fighter wing had flown escort for tankers dropping flame retardant on those blazes. The natives restarted their fires in short order, and the strategy shifted. Before his group had been recalled to waters closer to home, the airman had flown multiple missions firing Maverick missiles at towering piles of burning human bodies. The logic behind this new strategy, if one can use the word “logic” in this scenario, was not only to decimate the burn site but to terrorize the populace out of the practice of corpse burning. The fact that the attacks rained SLP ash and mist upon the locals seemed to be considered an acceptable level of collateral damage.
I never saw the airman again, naturally, but I have occasionally thought about him. He woke in the middle of the night, crying. He had reason. And I held him until the sun brought some light into the room and he said he had to go. His CSG was setting sail again, for where he was not certain. But the George Washington was soon offshore of Venezuela, and I am certain he became embroiled in that bit of twenty-first-century gunboat diplomacy. Finding new raw materials for his nightmares.
No, contagion was not an issue, no matter how deeply or extensively one chose to plumb the Midnight Carnival. Which is not to say that there wasn’t an ample supply of unpleasant deaths available to the unwary. Along with perversity in their desires, many sleepless also brought with them an absolute disregard for their own well-being. So it was that Vinnie and I maintained a prudent watchfulness as we strolled.
A thick-bodied boy in a faded Los Angeles Raiders hoodie shuffled past, offering a whispered chant.
“Dreamer. Dreamer. Dreamer.”
It would be bootleg, of course. A compound of heroin and ketamine most likely. Called double horse, it was the most popular home brew version of the real drug. So potent, it could knock even a late-stages sleepless to his knees and offer a brief period of sensation that I’d been told felt much like severe food poisoning without the diarrhea and vomiting. That this should be desirable was all one really needed to know about the ravages of SLP.
At a table filled with hand-painted miniatures of stock nonplayer characters and creatures from Chasm Tide, Vinnie paused to look over the selection.
“The kid back there, Ciccio, he loves the game.”
I stood at an angle to him, keeping an eye on the aisle at his back.
“A nephew?”
He shook his head, inspecting the detail on an ogre.
“Grandson of one of my uncle’s war buddies. His mom is Italian. His scumbag dad who split on the kid and his mom, he’s American. We were able to get some paperwork done, make something happen. Got him out of the Mid-European Quarantine Zone. Traveling with that accent, kid must have caught shit everywhere. You know, they still haven’t unsealed the Italian border. Known for how long that SLP and FFI aren’t the same thing, but the UN still won’t open the damn border.”
He put the ogre down and picked up a Chasm Wraith.
“Once he was out of the MEQZ, he went into the pipeline. A guy who used to handle mostly Bulgarian girls for the skin trade when you had to reach overseas for that kind of thing, got him across for us. Dealing with INS once he was here, that was an exercise in bullshit that I never want to repeat. Finally, I asked some guy in an office downtown what the hell it would cost, theoretically, to get the kid out of processing, with or without papers.”
I nodded.
“And what was the theoretical cost?”
“Ten theoretical grand. U.S. Cash money. Asshole. I could have done double that if he’d asked. Cheapskate corruption.”
He held a Kraken between thumb and forefinger.
“How much?”
The proprietor looked up from the elf he was painting, squinted.
“Fifty.”
From the neck of his fish gut-stained butcher’s smock Vinnie pulled a plastic card on a chain. The miniatures painter took an RFID interrogator from below his table, aimed it at the card, and pulled the trigger, reading the details from the chip embedded in the card as they scrolled on the small screen at the butt of the interrogator.
“Fishmonger?”
Vinnie nodded.
“I got eels, fresh as daisies, give you ten pounds.”
The man set the plastic gun down.
“I’ll pick them up before morning.”
They shook hands. And we walked away, Vinnie dropping the card all carnival-licensed vendors were meant to carry back inside his smock.
“The kid’s mom, her we couldn’t do shit about. Child of an American, sure. Full-blooded Italian wife of an American, no. Kid plays that game every chance he gets. His mom is in there. They meet up. Talk. Walk around. Whatever. I don’t really get it, but it’s what they do.”
He looked at the Kraken, shrugged, put it in his pocket.
“So before I start up again with another story, you want to tell me what’s on your mind?”
I reached inside my jacket and took out one of the pictures I had printed from the gold farm security DVD.
“He’s a police officer, Vincent. Undercover. I assume narcotics.”
He took a passing glance at the picture and stuffed it into a pocket, coming out with his Salems and his lighter.
“Quality’s not great.”
“No, it is not.”
He lit a cigarette.
“It’s been a long time for me. Finished my twenty years a long time ago.”
“I know, Vincent.”
He blew some smoke as we passed a tent that promised the spectacle of sleepless fighting barehanded, no quarter asked or given.
“Not too many of my people left on the force.”
“Yes.”
He held up a hand.
“Not that I won’t try. I’m just saying that this may be my last trip to that well. And I can’t say for sure than I’ll find any water this time.”
“Whatever you can do would be appreciated.”
“I’ll see what I see.”
I patted his arm.
“And if there is anything I could do for you?”
He stopped walking.
“Well, I hate to ask.”
“Please.”
He shook his head.
“Just those MS-13 cocksuckers. Nothing I can’t handle in the long run. But I’d rather not be looking over my shoulder.”
I nodded.
“Tattoos of red monster eyes on his eyelids, you said?”
“Yeah. Him.”
I smiled.
“Well, then, he should be easy enough to find.”
He put out his hand.
“Thanks, Jasper, that’s a load off.”
“My pleasure, Vincent.”
And we parted ways.
It was, in fact, easy enough to find the young Salvadoran gangster with the tattooed eyelids. And, as advertised, he did, when I presumed to confront him, close his eyes as a form of attempted intimidation.
An unfortunate choice of tactics on his part.
His posse, when I had finished with him, wisely stood down. Safe to say they saw no reason to avenge him, so certain it was that some other of them would have to assume his mantle of leadership.
No matter. Jefe or not, Vinnie’s antagonist would no longer be showing his monster eyes to intended victims. He’d not be closing his eyes at all. Not until such time as he might be able to find a plastic surgeon willing to perhaps take flaps of skin from his buttocks out of which to form new eyelids.