Suicide Kings

14

Wednesday,

December 9

The Lab at Nyunzu, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

The child soldier had told them the landmarks to watch for. The lab at Nyunzu, he’d said, was east of the town, so they’d encounter it first.

Wally cut the engine of the boat once they sighted the rocky island the kid had described; they let the boat drift downstream with the current, staying close to the southern shore and eventually tying up well before they were in sight of the compound. They plunged into the jungle as quietly as possible with Wally leading, his powerful arms clearing the way.

It might have been an idyllic march under other circumstances. Monkeys clambered overhead, calling and scattering; bright parrots and macaws flitted from branch to branch. There were calls: grunts and hoots and gurgles that Jerusha could not identify, and unseen forms that went crashing away as they approached. There were strange plants and flowers sprouting up from the ground at their feet. It would have been fascinating, had she been able to pay attention.

But… there was a smell, a horrible smell drifting through the jungle, and it grew worse as they approached the lab encampment.

Wally hunkered down suddenly, gesturing at Jerusha. Crouching, she crept forward. The smell was nearly overpowering. Through the cover of huge, paddle-shaped green leaves, she could see that the area in front of them had been cleared all the way down to the river. A backhoe, its bucket and wheels mud-encrusted, sat at their left not ten feet away. There were buildings erected there, most of them open-sided.

And there, in the humid shade…

They were caged in small boxes, stacked two high: children, none of them more than ten or eleven. They were emaciated and fly-blown. Thin fingers gripped the wire that wrapped their wooden cells, and they were guarded by children who were not much older than them and a few adults in military uniforms.

But it was what was closer to them that was truly horrifying. Near the backhoe, the earth had been dug up and disturbed. Black and bloated flies hovered over the clods; white maggots wriggled in the soil; white-headed vultures crowded there. Here and there, horrific forms thrust out of the earth in a mockery of life: an arm, a leg, a hand with splayed fingers, to be picked at by the vultures’ hooked beaks. This was a mass grave, poorly covered, and the source of the stench. Jerusha felt her stomach heave, and she forced the bile back down.

Oh, God, this is worse than we imagined…

Even as they watched, a door opened in a walled building with a rusting tin roof. Two Leopard Men emerged, a man in a doctor’s white lab coat, and a boy of perhaps twelve accompanying them.

The boy looked frightened and uncertain. Jerusha felt Wally start as he saw them: one of the Leopard Men was the were-leopard they’d encountered on the river, with scabbed-over cuts on his face and arms. The doctor held a tray with several hypodermic needles on it. They went to the nearest of the structures holding the caged children.

“Let him do it,” Jerusha heard one of the Leopard Men say to the doctor in French, gesturing at the boy. “Go on,” he said to the boy. “Prove your loyalty. Prove you’re a man.”

The boy visibly gulped and plucked one of the hypodermics from the tray. He approached the nearest cage. One of the soldiers opened the lock, pulled at the rickety door, and reached toward the young girl inside, who was crouching as far away as possible. He grasped the girl’s arm and pulled her halfway from the cage. “Allez-y,” the Leopard Man said. “Do it.”

The boy plunged the hypodermic into the girl’s arm. She screamed as he pressed the plunger and yanked it out again. The soldier shoved her back in the cage and slammed the door shut again. And Wally…

Wally roared a wordless fury and sprang toward the Leopard Men. Vultures squawked and scattered out of his way. Jerusha didn’t have time to stop his charge; in a few seconds, Wally was in the middle of a firefight and she could only respond.

Automatic weapons were chattering from all directions. She could hear bullets shrilling and tearing chunks from the leaves to either side of her; a green rain was falling all around her. Someone screamed-not Wally-and she heard the sinister, low growling of a leopard. Taking a breath, Jerusha pushed through the screen of greenery and into the clearing, trying to make sense of the chaos.

Everyone’s attention seemed to be on Wally, who had closed on the Leopard Men. The doctor was running toward the lab building, his white coat flapping. The boy that had been with him was also retreating-toward the river. One of the Leopard Men was on the ground, his weapon gone to rust in his hands and his arms broken; the other had shifted to leopard form and was snarling at Wally, ready to leap. The guards were firing at him, and bullets were pinging and whining from his body, gouging shiny dings in the black iron.

Jerusha ran over the broken ground of the grave pit as the vultures scowled at her, not daring to look down and hoping that no one would see her. She plunged her hand into the seed belt, not caring what she brought out. She cast the seeds hard toward the soldiers. Green erupted around them-some were vines that she wrapped around the guards, tearing away their weapons from their grasp at the same time; a few were trees that she brought up thick between them and Wally, who had closed with the were-leopard. She half closed her eyes, trying to be the plants, to control as many of them at once as she could, as closely as she could. She heard the liquid snarl of a leopard.

Behind. Behind.

Jerusha turned even as the creature started its run toward her, lifting into the air with powerful legs, claws ready to rip and slice. She flung the seed in her hand toward it. It was a toss that would have made Curveball proud: into the beast’s open mouth. She tore at the seed with her mind, with the power the wild card had given her, ripping the growth out faster than she’d ever done it before. In mid-leap, greenery erupted from the leopard’s neck and mouth: even as the creature slammed into her, even as she fell and the Leopard Man rolled past her. Roots grabbed the earth and held; the leopard yowled, a terrifying scream, and the cat was suddenly a man again, writhing and tearing at the branches still growing longer and thicker, rupturing his neck and finally tearing his head entirely loose from his body. Arterial blood fountained from the body as the tree shot upward.

A mango, Jerusha realized belatedly.

Two of the buildings were on fire. Jerusha didn’t know why: perhaps stray bullets or ricochets had ignited the oil and gasoline cans scattered through the compound. Yards away, Wally slammed the other were-leopard to earth and stomped on it. The crack of its spine was audible even against the gunfire.

The nearest child soldier flung his weapon to the ground and ran screaming, and suddenly they were all fleeing. Strangely, she thought she saw blood running down Wally’s left leg, a long line of it, and he limped as he took a step and spun around.

Wally shouted, “Lucien! Where are you!” Jerusha could hear the sinister crackling of the fire, and the plaintive, alarmed shouts of the kids in their cages. Wally had already moved toward them, putting his hand on the wires and dissolving them into ruddy powder. He was pulling kids out, calling for Lucien as he did so.

Jerusha shuddered. The were-leopard’s head was staring at her, caught in the fork of a mango branch nearly at eye level. Mangoes were ripening around it, and Jerusha found herself shaking.

She went to help Wally.

Michelle Pond’s Apartment

Manhattan, New York

“You need to pay these bills,” Juliet said in a reproachful voice as she shuffled the piles of mail that covered Michelle’s kitchen table.

“You know, I started going through them, and I just couldn’t concentrate,” Michelle said. “I mean, I don’t really care right now. They aren’t stuck in a pit of corpses. You know?”

She felt Juliet kiss her hair. “They’ll still need to be paid,” she said softly.

“After I find Adesina.” Michelle glanced at Juliet and saw the pensive expression on her face. I am being the bad girlfriend again. And only a week out of her coma. It had to be a land-speed record.

“Sweetie,” she said, touching Juliet’s face. “You did more than anyone has ever done for me in my entire life. I’m sorry I didn’t get around to doing all that grown-up stuff like naming you the executor for my estate, making a will, and us getting, well… anyway.”

She pulled Juliet’s face close, lingering as their mouths met and tongues danced. When they were both dizzy and needed air, she continued. “What I need to do is get to Adesina. And there’s a way. It means asking Noel for a favor, which sucks. But beggars can’t be choosers.”

“What the hell is going on in here?” Joey said as she came into the room. Her hair was rumpled from sleep and there was a crease down one cheek where she’d slept on it. She flopped into Michelle’s overstuffed armchair. “I don’t s’ppose there’s any coffee? Fuck.”

“There’s coffee and breakfast on the stove,” Michelle said. “Eat fast because I’m calling Niobe in a few minutes to see if we can drop by.” It was almost nine o’clock. She could call at nine. Nine was a perfectly reasonable hour to phone.

Michelle had had another dream the night before. This one was a little different. Adesina wasn’t in the pit in this one. She was in a small room instead. The walls were painted a cold bluish white, and there were pictures pinned to the wall of storybook characters. Michelle didn’t recognize most of them-and the ones she did know looked out of place. Someone had tried to make this room less antiseptic and scary, but all they’d done was accentuate that this was not a fun place for a child to be.

When Michelle tried to look around, she had slipped out of Adesina’s memory and into one of her own dreams.

This was an old dream. She was alone in the house. It wasn’t her parents’ house. It was the strange, alien-feeling house that always appeared in this dream. She is inside it and lost. Then she sees the bunny. She starts to follow it. But it runs away. Finally, she comes to a door at the end of the hallway. The bunny must be inside. But when she opens the door, the room is bathed in blood.

Nine o’clock.

Michelle flipped open her phone. “Keep it quiet, I’m calling.” A few minutes later she hung up. “Niobe says we can come over now.”

“So, what do we need to take with us to the Congo?” Juliet asked.

“Well, you don’t need to take anything,” Michelle replied. “You’re not going.”

“You are not going to the PPA by yourself!”

“I’m not,” Michelle replied. “Joey is coming with me.”

That got Joey’s attention. “What the fuck?”

“I need someone who’s good in a fight,” Michelle said. “Someone who can also blend in if she needs to.”

“She’s from New Orleans, not Africa.” Juliet’s voice had risen to a shout. “Have you lost your mind? And what are you going to tell them about her? She’s your jungle princess?”

“Hey!” Joey said.

“She’s going as my assistant,” Michelle said.

“She can’t be your assistant. She doesn’t know the first thing about… about, anything! Arghhhh!”

Michelle was torn between frustration and guilt. She wanted to get to Niobe’s place now, but she also needed Juliet to understand why she couldn’t come to the Congo.

“Look, Juliet, I love you.” She pulled up a chair next to Juliet and took her hand. “That’s why I’m not going to take you into a banana republic where there’s God-only-knows-what horrific shit going on. You’re an ace. But, sweetie, your power, it’s kinda deuce-y.”

Juliet slumped in her chair. Her face crumbled, and Michelle felt sick to her stomach as Juliet began to cry.

“You are stupidly brave.” Michelle kissed Ink’s hand. “My God, you stood up to my parents. For that alone they should give a medal. I will not let you put yourself in harm’s way unnecessarily.”

Silently, Juliet wept.

“God damn it, Ink,” Joey said. “This is fucking Africa, man. Lions and tigers and shit, guys with guns, and that Weathers buttwipe for lagniappe. You going to scare ’em off with your tats? Fuck that cheese.”

“ Yu… yu… you two dumbasses are completely inept when it comes to people!” Juliet hiccuped.

“It’s true, we suck at that.”

“Assistant? She won’t fool anyone!” Juliet yanked her hand out of Michelle’s and then grabbed a handful of Kleenex out of the box. “She’ll screw it up the first time she opens her mouth. Look at her. She’s a mess.”

“That’s why we have to make her over before we get Noel to take us there.”

“Make me over?” Joey was outraged. “What the fuck.”

“Nothing too elaborate. Just fix your hair and-”

“Hell, no. I like my hair the way it is.”

“What happened to you in that coma?” Juliet asked between hiccupy sniffles. “When did you become so bossy?”

Michelle stared at her, perplexed by the question. “I’m doing what I always do. I take care of things.”

Nyunzu, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

“Lucien!” wally cupped his hands to his mouth. His voice reverberated across the smoking grounds of the laboratory. The whine of over-taxed boat engines receded into the distance, their own boat among them. “Lucien!”

Wally inhaled, swelling his chest with air like the bellows of a pipe organ. “ LUCIEN! Come on out, guy! It’s me, Wally!”

The corner of a tin roof crash-clanged to the ground when a mud-brick retaining wall collapsed. Jerusha’s plants had damaged the wall; Wally’s yelling shook it just enough to finish the job.

He paced through the ruins, forced to limp because of the jags of pain in his leg. Where a bullet had grazed a thick spot of rust… but he’d think about what that meant after he found Lucien.

Smoke stung his nose, burned his throat. He felt like he was choking. “You’re-” His cough sounded like a stone knocking around inside a washing machine. He struggled to get the words out. “You’re safe now.”

His eyes watered. Was that the smoke?

Why hadn’t Lucien come out yet? He must have been frightened by all the fighting. He must have been good at hiding, the little guy. Wally hadn’t seen the barest trace of him. Not in the barracks. Not in the lab itself. Not in the cages, thank God.

And over there, at the edge of the clearing… No. Wally didn’t want to look over there. Lucien wasn’t there. He couldn’t be.

“Lucien!”

“Wally.”

“Lucien!”

“Wally!” Jerusha took his hand. “Let me help you.”

Wally was so caught up with his search and his worry that he didn’t notice right away that they were holding hands. But then he did, and his stomach did a somersault.

She pulled him toward a knot of children huddled together in the shadow of the ruined lab. The kids shrank back, clutched each other more tightly when the pair approached. They had tear-streaked faces and runny noses.

Jerusha knelt before the kids. She spoke to them gently, in French. She pointed at herself and Wally. Wally caught the name “Lucien.”

The kids didn’t say anything. They stared at Jerusha and Wally, wide-eyed. One little boy gave his head the tiniest shake. He said something to his companions, but it didn’t sound like French.

“What did he say?”

“Not sure,” said Jerusha. “But I think he’s translating to Baluba for me.”

“Hold on a sec,” said Wally. He squeezed Jerusha’s hand before releasing it. Freed children and emancipated staff members cowered when Wally limped across the clearing. The staff members looked even more frightened than the freed children; maybe they were right to do so.

Wally hurried to where he and Jerusha had stashed their packs, ignoring the pain in his leg. He dug out his photo of Lucien and brought it back to Jerusha.

She was talking with the little boy who translated for her. He had large, almond-shaped eyes. He looked to be nine or ten. His name was Cesar, she said.

Wally pointed at the photo. “Lucien?”

Cesar shook his head. So did the others.

Jerusha took Wally in one hand and Cesar in the other. She pulled them toward another, larger, group of kids. He held up the photo while she spoke in French and Cesar translated into Baluba. Nothing. Just confused glances.

They questioned everybody. A few of the former staff members trembled, or erupted into a torrent of French when Jerusha spoke to them. She translated their pleas for understanding, for mercy, for Wally and Jerusha not to hurt them. They’d been forced to do these terrible things against their will, she said. Jerusha’s eyes watered, too.

Wally grew more anxious, his palm sweaty in Jerusha’s hand, with every person they questioned. Every blank stare was another lost chance to find Lucien. Every shake of the head was another path to Lucien, closed.

Something tugged at his pant leg. He looked down. A little girl, not much older than eight or nine, looked up at Wally. Dozens of quivering fingers with gnarled, yellow nails protruded from her neck, arms, and legs; the poor thing was one of the dozens of jokers Wally had freed by disintegrating the cage doors. “Lucien?” she said quietly.

“Yes! Lucien!” He held up the photo. “Lucien?”

The little joker girl said something in French. Jerusha knelt beside her. They had a short conversation. It ended with the girl crying, and Jerusha turning pale.

“What? What did she say?”

Jerusha stood. She flung her arms around Wally, sniffling. “Oh, Wally… She says she was in a group of kids that received injections two days ago. She was the only survivor.” Her voice broke. She hugged him more tightly. “I think Lucien was in that group.”

“No. No, he wasn’t. That’s not true. She’s wrong.”

“She knew him, Wally. She’s from Kalemie, too.”

“No. Lucien’s alive and I’m gonna find him.”

“Lucien,” said the girl. She raised her arm, pointing. The extra fingers all bent in the same direction, like stalks of wheat bowing before the wind. They pointed toward the edge of the clearing, toward that place where Wally didn’t want to look.

Where the backhoe stood next to a wide mound of freshly turned soil. Where the jungle stank of death. Where vultures picked at the earth.

“No!” Wally limped to the mound. “No, no, no. Please, no.” He grabbed the backhoe and heaved, ripping it free with the shrieking of tortured metal. The vultures squawked in protest, the wind from their wings buffeting Wally as they leaped for the sky.

Wally gripped the backhoe bucket with both hands and scooped a long, narrow trench out of the mound. He flung the dirt away. He did it again and again, each pass going a little bit deeper, each pass proving that Lucien wasn’t here. Proving that Lucien was alive and safe. Somewhere.

Until he hit something soft. A tiny foot, caked in quicklime, curled toes sticking up through the mud.

“No!” Wally hurled away the broken backhoe arm; it whistled out over the jungle and disappeared. A distant clang echoed back a few seconds later, along with the screeching and shrieking of upset wildlife.

He fell to his knees. He dug with his hands. A shadow fell over him: Jerusha, weeping softly at grave’s edge.

The grave held seventeen little boys and girls, their bodies all ruined by the wild card virus. Melted, crystallized, putrefied, skinless, boneless, faceless. Black queens, and jokers who had survived the transformation only to be shot in the head. Or what passed for the head.

Lucien was near the bottom.

His body had become a kite. Narrow bones like pencils formed ugly bulges in his waxy, translucent skin. They’d torn through in places, cracking his skin like fragile parchment. His face had become flat and two-dimensional, like a stained-glass portrait of a little boy. But he still had those ears, those ridiculously large ears…

Lucien had died in an American Hero T-shirt. It was part of a whole package of clothes that Wally had sent; it had his face on the front.

He lifted Lucien out of the grave. Jerusha held Wally while he cradled his dead friend. They stayed that way a long time. Wally’s tears fell on Lucien’s lifeless body, a rain of salt and rust.

Halifax

Nova Scotia, Canada

It was a generic cheap hotel room, old-fashioned enough to look that way even to Mark’s eyes. Off-white wallpaper yellowed from decades of tobacco smoke before it was banned in even such out-of-the-way precincts as these, green pinstripes and fleurs de lys, a hunting print with dogs and guns and ducks on the wall. A little TV with bunny ears instead of a cable or satellite box. He smelled cleanser, heard the cicada drone of canned laughter on a TV set on the other side of a wall not strong enough. His alter ego didn’t care much about comfort, far less luxury. All Tom cared about was security.

“Sun Hei-lian,” he said. I’ve got the mouth, he thought, and he doesn’t know. “Listen to me.”

Sitting upright in bed beside him, combing that exquisite black hair threaded in fine silver, the naked woman froze. Her eyes alone moved toward where he lay on his side, fearing to move. “Your voice

…”

“… is different. Yeah. I’m not the Radical. Tom, you call him. I’m Mark.”

Very deliberately she laid the brush down on the flimsy hotel nightstand. He knew very well that not far from it lay a compact black Makarov pistol. Sun was an expert with a handgun. “Who are you? How did you take over Tom’s body?”

“I’m the rightful owner,” he said. “The man who calls himself Tom Weathers is a squatter.” She didn’t relax. But she brought her hand down to her lap. Good sign. “You look better firsthand,” he said before he could stop himself. She furrowed her brow. “I’ve watched you, all along,” he said, thinking, Oh, Jesus, I sound like Earth’s creepiest stalker. “I see… pretty much everything Tom does. But for me it’s all soft focus. Like a dream.”

“Is this some kind of trap?”

“The Radical can make himself look and sound like anybody else on Earth. Why would he try talking with a funny voice out of his own mouth?”

It took her a moment to answer. “For a long time,” she said, not looking at him, “I’ve felt there was something inside Tom. Something gentle. Someone… kind.”

She shook her head. “I was attracted from the first. He was a beautiful Western animal, stronger and more vital than any natural human being. And there was the wildness of him. Like an element of nature. Like wind and fire.” Her hair swept across her face like soft banners as she turned to look at him. “Why am I telling you this?”

“Because I’m him,” he said. “Only not really.”

She frowned. “What do you want with me?”

Everything, he longed to say. But… what was he? What did he have to offer a woman like this? His own body was middle-aged and gawky, not prepossessing, not the body of a rebel Greek god. And he didn’t even have it. And anyway, that wasn’t the urgency that drove him like a dehydrated man’s craving for cool water. “I wanted to thank you. For being kind to Sprout. But mostly to warn you. Somebody’s got to stop him. Haven’t you seen how he’s getting shorter-and shorter-fused all the time, more violent in his outbreaks? He’s losing his inhibitions.”

“Stop him? How?” She seemed to be asking mainly from intellectual curiosity.

“I don’t know,” he said. Maybe we can’t. He quelled the thought. Plenty of time to wallow in doubt later, when he was locked safely away back in the Radical’s subconscious.

“How could you stop him?”

“Take back control.”

“Can you?”

He grinned ruefully. His lips stretched in strange ways. As with seeing, feeling was different firsthand than at one remove. “No luck so far.” He gave Tom’s golden head a slight shake, the most he dared. “I won’t tell you to trust me. Just trust your judgment. I think you know the truth already. Don’t you? No one can control him. He can’t control himself.”

That perfect mouth thinned to a line. The thin network of lines that brought out only enhanced her beauty to his lost and lonely eyes. “Even if you are telling the truth-what can I do?”

“Help me. Try to find… something. Anything. If you can’t let me out, you have to find some way to destroy us. Me. Him. Whoever

… oh, shit. I’m losing it…” He heard his voice grow vague, as if coming from ever-farther away. Her face flickered as his lids fluttered before his eyes. “Gotta go… he’ll kill you if he knows I talked to you. I don’t want anybody else getting hurt for this stupid-crazy dream of mine.”

“Dream?”

“Peace, love, justice. All that good stuff. Turned out to be not that simple-no time. I can’t stand hurting anybody else. Especially not you. But not anyone. Not ever again. If you can’t let me out, you have to find some way to destroy us. Me. Him. Whoever. Please-”

Mark felt himself beginning to spin. “-destroy-”

And away he went.

“Aaaahh!” Tom Weathers sat up in bed and took his head in his hands.

She sat beside him, brush in hand, his Chinese angel. “The dreams

…” she said.

“Yeah.” His mouth was inexplicably dry. His tongue stung. “The dreams.”