Michelle was torn. She desperately needed to get to Adesina, but she didn’t want to leave Joey.
But the compound was so close.
Adesina was so close.
Blythe van Renssaeler
Memorial Clinic, Jokertown
Manhattan, New York
Jerusha carter looked like hell.
The woman he’d known had been vibrant, alive, rich and funny and vital. The woman in the hospital bed before them now could have been in the final stages of AIDS or cancer or starvation. Her muscles were atrophied, the protein all cannibalized for the energy stored there. Her eyes had sunken back into her skull, the pads of fat thinned and gone away. Her smile was painful to watch.
Ellen sat on the edge of the bed, holding Jerusha’s withered hand. Lohengrin was at the foot of the bed in a wheelchair, his own hospital gown looking cold and insufficient. Half his head was wrapped in gauze, his one remaining eye staring out like something equal parts ice and rage.
Slowly, her voice catching on itself, Jerusha made things worse. The Nshombos, Rustbelt and his missing sponsored kid, the Radical and the child aces. Bugsy listened to the whole ugly story, and found himself shocked but not surprised. The crazed bastards in the PPA had remembered what they’d all let themselves forget: the wild card was first and foremost a weapon.
When Lohengrin spun his chair and pushed himself out into the hallway, Bugsy followed. “I am calling the Committee,” Klaus said. “I am calling Jayewardene. This is an abomination.”
“Yeah,” Bugsy said.
“We will arrange an action,” Lohengrin said, pushing his wheels harder at every second syllable. “A strike force.”
“Lohengrin, hey, hold up. Lohengrin! ”
The German spun, blocking a nurse, and held up a finger as if scolding Bugsy. “If this is not what the Committee is for, then it is for nothing. If we are not to prevent things such as this, we have no reason to be. I no longer care what the Chinese ambassador or the Indian consulate say! If any stand against us, then they are in the wrong!”
“Yeah, but that aside,” Bugsy said, “we’re in a hospital. You’re in a wheelchair.”
Lohengrin frowned. The nurse went around them, making impatient noises under his breath.
“I’m just saying, we went up against the Radical without an army of were-leopards and the Kindergarten Kill Klub to back him up, and he handed us our collective ass,” Bugsy said. “You get Jayewardene to sign off on it, we can all go off to Africa, and that’s great. But what the hell are we going to do once we get there?”
31
Saturday,
December 26
Kisangani, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
It was strange to see the pretty little buildings with their red roofs and the neat pathways. It all looked so friendly and innocent, except for the heavily armed soldiers patrolling through the compound. A few of them wore the leopard-skin fezzes she’d seen in her dreams.
When the wind shifted, the stench of the pit floated to her. Michelle walked into the compound. It took a moment before she was noticed, but when they saw her all hell broke loose. The soldiers began to shout, and pointing their guns. Michelle hoped they would shoot her.
One of the soldiers began barking questions at her. At least she assumed they were questions. He was speaking in some local dialect. She smiled at him and held her palm up. A bubble appeared and he stopped talking. Then she let the bubble fly. It hit him full in the chest. He flew backward, gun tumbling in the air with him.
It got the reaction she’d hoped for. The other soldiers started firing on her and she started to expand as she absorbed the kinetic energy of their bullets.
By the time the soldiers had emptied their clips to no effect, the Leopard Men had transformed into cats. They sprang at her, and Michelle fell backward, buried under a pile of leopards. They ripped at her flesh with their teeth and claws, and she laughed. Each bite, each slash left her bigger and more powerful than before.
Just when she was about to blast them off, she heard a sharp command. “Stop it! Stop it right now!”
The leopards jumped away from her and slunk over to where a short, fat woman was standing. She was dressed in a bright, geometric print dress with an equally bright kerchief in her hair. Michelle hauled herself up, palms up, ready to bubble.
“I know who you are,” the woman said. “You are the girl who saved that city in America.”
“And who are you?”
The fat woman chuckled good-naturedly. “I am the sun, the moon, and the stars here. I am the Mother of the Nation. I am Alicia Nshombo. And I have your friend.” She gestured, and a soldier came forward, carrying Joey in his arms. She was unconscious and limp.
“We’ve been tracking you two since you got off the river,” Alicia Nshombo said cheerfully. Her English had a lilting accent. “We lost you after you went with that pilot, but then you went to one of my hospitals. Wasn’t that wonderful? The nurses there love me.”
“What do you want?” Michelle asked.
Alicia snapped her fingers, and two guards appeared with a chair. “I don’t know. Why are you here?”
“Sightseeing,” Michelle said. She was furious at herself for leaving Joey behind. It was an amateur move.
“In Kisangani?”
“We got a little lost.”
Alicia laughed. “My dear, you are amusing. And quite pretty. Has anyone ever told you you’re very pretty?”
Michelle just stared. She wanted to say, Seriously? I’ve been a model my whole goddamn life. Yeah, you could say I’ve been told that. Instead she said, dryly, “Thank you, what a nice thing to say.” And she tried not to notice the way Alicia was eyeing her.
“I like you,” Alicia said. “Perhaps you and I can come to an arrangement. We have doctors here. They can help your little friend.” She snapped her fingers again, and the guards carried Joey off to one of the pretty little buildings. “If you give me any trouble, I will have her killed. We don’t want that, do we? You’ll come and have dinner with me. We will talk.” She got up from her chair and started walking away. The leopards followed her.
So did Michelle.
Southwest of Bunia, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
“Geez,” said Wally. “What kind of kid doesn’t like peanut butter?”
Rain drizzled through the canopy of old-growth trees, pattering softly on Wally’s poncho. Off in the distance, far to the east, across a wide valley, the rain merged with the grey mist shrouding the craggy foothills of the Ruwenzori Mountains. The sickly sweet odor of mud and decaying vegetation, combined with the pall of charcoal smoke from upwind villages, threatened to put Wally off his lunch. Not that he smelled much better; he knew that when he finally removed his poncho, it would carry the musk scent of sweaty iron.
He held a jar of peanut butter in one hand, a banana in the other, both extended toward Ghost. He sat just inside the tree line at the edge of a grassy plain, getting a little shelter from the downpour. The trees also hid him from the helicopters; he’d been hearing those more and more frequently the past few days. The girl floated silently at the center of the meadow, where the rain fell hardest.
But the raindrops never fell on her; never touched her. Just as her feet never quite touched the ground.
She’d been drawing closer. He caught glimpses of her all day long now. No longer did she only come out at night, when he went to sleep. She floated after him through the forest without making a sound.
Wally said, “I bet you’ve never had peanut butter before. It’s real good, I promise. I practically grew up on this stuff.”
If Ghost understood his offer, she showed no sign of it. All she did was stare at him: motionless, unblinking, broken knife in hand. Unaffected by the drizzle that passed through her insubstantial body.