Nocturnal

The Rude Awakening

Pookie’s eyes opened slowly to nothing but whiteness.

Don’t take me back to the white room …

That’s what Aggie James had said. Terrified, freaked-out Aggie.

Pookie blinked against the pain in his throat. He reached up to touch his neck — his hands felt metal.

A collar.

MMMMM HE’S AWAKE.

Pookie sat up and looked around. He was in a circular white room. All around him were people with collars, chains leading from the collars through metal flanges in the white walls.

Rich Verde.

Jesse Sharrow.

Sean Robertson.

Mr. Biz-Nass.

Baldwin Metz.

Amy Zou, twin girls with black hair on either side of her, clinging to her.

Pookie stood. He looked from person to person. “What the hell is this?”

Rich tilted his head toward Zou. “Ask her,” he said. “She sold us out.”

Zou dipped her head, pulled her girls in tighter. She squeezed them. One of the girls was crying hard, her body shaking with tired sobs. The other stared out with murderous eyes through scattered, heavy black hair, as if she was looking for someone to hurt.

Pookie turned back to Rich. Rich had never looked like a pleasant person, but now he stared at Chief Zou like he’d put a fire ax in her head the first chance he got.

“Verde, what do you mean she sold us out?”

Rich spit in her direction. “Lying whore!”

“Knock it off,” Robertson said. “She had to do it. They killed her husband. They took her daughters. The Mason Tunnel murder was a setup. She called me, Jesse, Rich, Metz, got us all to the tunnel, and then … these things took us.”

Robertson wasn’t wearing glasses, not that they would have fit over his horribly swollen right eye. A cut on his head oozed a thin trail of blood. Someone had worked him over real solid. Pookie wondered what their assailants had looked like. Then he realized he didn’t want to know — his own run-in with beak-nose and the human snake was plenty to think about.

Maybe Zou had had a choice, maybe not. All Pookie knew was she had sold him out, sold Bryan out, and if there had actually been a fire ax within reach, Pookie would have sharpened it, polished it, then handed it to Polyester Rich with a dramatic flourish.

Pookie took a better look around the room. A floor of white-painted stones, walls of the same material curving up to form a domed ceiling, and the white bars of a jail door.

“So where the hell are we?”

Robertson shrugged. “We don’t know. Underground, we think.”

MMMMM MARIE’S CHILDREN HAVE US. WE ARE FUCKED. YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THE MONKEY-THING THAT CAME AND TOOK ME. WE ARE SO FUCKED.

At least they’d left Biz his voice box. He had to jam it up under his collar to talk.

Pookie tried the collar again: tight, solid, didn’t feel like he’d be able to get it off. Behind the collar, a heavy chain led back into the wall. There was a way out of this, there had to be — he would not die down here.

Down here … with the cannibals.

“Chief,” he said, “what happens now?” He could judge her later. All that mattered now was getting out of here alive.

She pulled her daughters a little closer, but stayed quiet.

“Answer him,” Verde said. He pulled at his collar, as if it was the only thing stopping him from attacking her. “You traitorous cunt, answer him.”

She looked up. Her eyes … Pookie wasn’t even sure if she knew where she was. Amy Zou had gone bye-bye.

A metallic sound clanged through the walls. Pookie was yanked backward by his collar. He stumbled, tried to stay on his feet — his back hit the wall. The collar clanged into something and the pulling stopped. Pookie tried to pull away, but he couldn’t budge.

A squeal of metal drew all eyes to the opening jail door. A fat old lady walked in. She wore a dowdy, knee-length dress, a gray sweater and a babushka — yellow with a pattern of purple plums.

“You are all criminals,” she said in a voice as pleasant as you’d expect from a wrinkled gramma. “It is time for your trial.”

She stepped back out of the white room.

A swarm of men rushed in, all wearing hooded white robes and rubber masks. They filled the room, groups of them moving to each chained person. As if that wasn’t surreal enough, the first one to rush Pookie looked like the Burger King. Pookie threw a straight right jab that knocked the King off his feet, then quickly went down under the weight of the others.