The keeper of the bird stall, a pale man with a carefully groomed black mustache, was scratching his stomach, his expression mild and blank.
After the children came five dancers in the skeleton-suits of La Noche de Muerte, though Yamazaki saw that several of the masks were only half-masks, micropore respirators molded to resemble the grinning jaws of skulls. These were teenagers, evidently, and shaking to some inner music of plague and chaos. There was a strong erotic undercurrent, a violence, to the black, bone-painted thighs, the white cartoon pelvises daubed on narrow denimed buttocks. As the bonedancers passed, one fixed Yamazaki with a sharp stare, blue adolescent eyes above the black, molded nostrils of the white respirator.
Then two tall figures, black men in an ugly beige face-paint, costumed as surgeons, in pale green gowns and long gloves of scarlet latex. Were they the doctors, predominantly white, who had failed to rescue so many, prior to Shapelys advent, or did they somehow represent the Brazilian biomedical firms who had so successfully and lucratively overseen Shapelys transformation, the illiterate prostitute become the splendid source? And after them, the first of the bodies, wrapped and bound in layers of milky plastic, each one tiding a two-wheeled cart of the kind manufactured here to transport baggage or bulk foodstuffs. The carts, temporarily equipped with narrow pallets of plywood, were steered along, front and back, by men and women of no special costume or demeanor, though Yamazaki noted that they looked neither to the right nor left, and seemed to make no eye-contact with the onlookers.
Theres Nigel the bookseller said, and probably built the cart theyre taking him off on.
These are the victims of the storm? Yarnazaki ventured.
Not Nigel the woman said, narrowing her eyes as she saw that he was a stranger. Not with those holes in him
Seven in all, each to its cart, and then a man and a woman, in identical paper coveralls, carrying between them a laminated lithograph of Shapely, one of those saccharine portraits, large of eye and hollow of cheek, that invariably left Yamazaki feeling slightly queasy.
But then a small, red, capering figure. A tailless, hornless devil, perhaps, dancing with an enormous gun, an ancient AK-47, its bolt long gone, the curved magazine carved from wood, and all of it dipped, once, into red enamel, worn now by hands, by processions.
And Yamazaki knew, without asking, that the red dancer represented the way of Shapelys going, like some terrible base stupidity waiting at the core of things.
Skinner-san? The notebook ready. I saw a procession today. Bodies being taken from the bridge. The dead from the Storm.
Cant keep em out here. Cant throw em in the water. City sticks on that. We pass em over for cremation. Some people, they dont hold with fire, they bury em over on Treasure. Kind of people live out on Treasure, you kind of wonder if that makes much sense.
In the procession there were many references to Shapely, to his story.
Skinner nodded over his little television.
Children masked as J.D. Shapely, two black men painted as white doctors, Shapelys portrait
Skinner grunted. Then, distantly: While since I saw one of those.
And at the end, a small figure, red. Dancing. With an assault rifle.
Uh-huh. Skinner nodded.
Yamazaki activated the notebooks transcription function.
Me, you know, I never even got it. Off him, I mean. That piece of him in everybody now. Couldnt see the point at my age and anyway I never held with medicine. Happened I never got the other kind either, not that I didnt have plenty of chances. Youre too young to remember how it felt, though. Oh, I know, I know you all think you live in all the times at once, everything recorded for you, its all there to play back. Digital. Thats all that is, though: playback. You still dont remember what it felt like, watching them pile up like that. Not here so much, bad as it was, but Thailand, Africa, Brazil. Jesus, Scooter. That thing was just romping on us. But slow, slow, slowmotion thing. Those retroviruses are. One man told me once, and he had the old kind, and died of it, how wed lived in this funny little pocket of time when a lot of people got to feel like a piece of ass wasnt going to kill anybody, not even a woman. See, they always had to worry anyway, every time its a chance, get knocked up and maybe die in childbirth, die getting rid of it, or anyway your lifes not gonna be the same. But in that pocket, there, there were pills for that, whatnot, shots for the other things, even the ones had killed people all over hell, before. That was a time, Scooter. So here this thing comes along, changes it back. And were sliding up on woo, shits changing all over, got civil wars in Europe already and this AIDS thing just kicking along. You know they tried to say it was the gays, said it was the CIA, said it was the U.S. Army in some fort in Maryland. Said it was people cornholing green monkeys. I swear to God. You know what it was? People. Just too goddamn many of em, Scooter. Flying all the fuck over everywhere and walking around back in there. Bet your ass somebodys gonna pick up a bug or two. Every place on the damn planet just a couple of hours from any other place. So heres poor fucking Shapely comes along, hes got this mutant strain wont kill you. Wont do shit to you at all, cept it eats the old kind for breakfast. And I dont buy any of that bullshit he was Jesus, Scooter. Didnt think Jesus was, either.
Any coffee left?
I will pump stove.
Put a little drop of Three-in-One in that hole by the piston-arm, Scooter. Leather gasket in there. Keeps it soft.
She didnt see that first bullet, but it must have hit a wire or something, coming through, because the lights came on. She did see the second one, or anyway the hole it blew in the leather-grain plastic. Something inside her stopped, learning this about bullets: that one second there isnt any hole, the next second there is. Nothing in between. You see it happen, but you cant watch it happening.
Then she got down on her hands and her knees and started crawling. Because she couldnt just stand there and wait for the next one. When she got up by the door, she could see her black pants crumpled up on the floor there, beside a set of keys on a gray, leather-grain plastic tab. There was this smell from when hed shot the gun into the floor. Maybe from the carpet burning, too, because she could see that the edges of the holes were scorched and sort of melted.
Now she could hear him yelling, somewhere outside, hoarse and hollow and chased by echoes. Held her breath. Yelling how they (who?) did the best PR in the world, how theyd sold Hunnis Millbank, now theyd sell Sunflower. If she heard it right.
Down by the door, here. Driver side.
It was Rydell, the door on that side standing open.
He left the keys in here she said.
Think hes gone down there where the Dream Walls franchise used to be.
What if he comes back?
31. Driver side
Probably come back anyway, we stick around here. You crawl up there and toss me those?
She edged through the door and between the buckets. Saw Rydells head there, by the open door. Grabbed the keys and threw them sideways, without looking. Snatched her pants and scooted backward, wondering could she maybe fit in the fridge, if she folded her legs up?
Why dont you lie down flat on the floor back there His voice from the drivers seat.
Lie down?
Minimum silhouette.
Huh?
Hes going to start shooting. When I do this Ignition-sound. Glass flying from fresh holes in the windshield and she threw herself flat. The RV lurched backward, turning tight, and she could hear him slapping the console, trying to find some function he needed, as more bullets came, each one distinct, a blow, like someone was swinging an invisible hammer, taking care to keep the rhythm.