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Mississippi Roll
George Raymond Richard Martin


Wild Cards
The return of the famous shared-world superhero books created and edited by George R. R. Martin, author of A Song of Ice and Fire.



The American Triad Series

#1: Mississippi Roll

#2: Low Chicago

#3: Texas Hold 'Em



Perfect for current fans and new readers alike, Mississippi Roll is an all-new, adventurous jaunt along one of America’s greatest rivers, featuring many beloved characters from the Wild Cards universe

Edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author George R. R. Martin, Mississippi Roll features the writing talents of Stephen Leigh, David D. Levine, John Jos. Miller, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Cherie Priest, and Carrie Vaughn.





Mississippi Roll

Edited by George R. R. Martin
















Copyright


HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF



www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)



First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017



Copyright © George R.R. Martin and the Wild Cards Trust 2017



Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover images © Shutterstock.com



George R.R. Martin and the Wild Cards Trust 2017 assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.



A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.



This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.



All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.



Source ISBN: 9780008283551

Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008286521

Version: 2018-07-03




Dedication


For Edward Bryant brother-in-arms father to gators our ace on roller skates







Copyright Acknowledgments


‘In the Shadow of Tall Stacks’ copyright © 2017 by Stephen Leigh.

‘Wingless Angel’ copyright © 2017 by John Jos. Miller.

‘A Big Break in the Small Time’ copyright © 2017 by Carrie Vaughn.

‘Death on the Water’ copyright © 2017 by Cherie Priest.

‘Find the Lady’ copyright © 2017 by Kevin Andrew Murphy.

‘Under the Arch’ copyright © 2017 by David D. Levine.




Mississippi Roll Rules



♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

Mississippi Roll is a seven-card stud poker game.

The rules are as follows:



1. Seven cards are dealt to each player, facedown.

2. Each player passes one card to the player on his left.

3. Each player passes two cards to the player on his left.

4. Each player passes three cards to the player on his left.

5. Each player discards two cards from his hand, arranges the five remaining cards in the order he wishes to reveal them, and places his hand facedown in a pack before him on the table.

6. The players roll their top card. A round of betting follows, starting with the player with the high card showing.

7. The remaining cards are revealed one by one, with each roll followed by a round of betting.

8. The high hand and low hand split the pot.




In the Shadow of Tall Stacks

by Stephen Leigh

Part 1




    February 27, 1951

Mardi Gras was long past – a full three weeks ago, which unfortunately meant that the bulk of the tourists had vanished back to wherever they’d come from, which in turn meant that it had been a few weeks since the steamboat Natchez had last seen anything resembling a full house for its daily local cruises. At nine in the morning, it was sixty-seven degrees and ninety-seven percent humidity; not raining, though a thick, wet fog still cloaked the Mississippi and the wharf where the Natchez was docked near Jackson Square and the French Quarter. There was barely any breeze, and the fog seemed to squat on New Orleans like some gigantic and foul specter, muffling what little noise the not-quite-awake city mustered.

Wilbur Leathers, captain and owner of the Natchez, wasn’t entirely awake himself, admittedly. The steamboat’s engineer, Patrick O’Flaherty, had roused him an hour ago; he’d wanted to fire up the boilers and check questionable pressure readings in several of the lines before they left the dock to head upriver. The engineer’s knock had also awakened Eleanor, Wilbur’s wife. Wilbur had told O’Flaherty to go ahead, then dressed, kissed the sleepy Eleanor, and gone down intending to supervise the work. He’d also – at Eleanor’s request – started a pot of coffee in the tiny crew mess on the main deck. He held two steaming mugs in his hands as he emerged onto the foredeck. Wilbur heard the boilers to the rear of the main deck already producing a good head of steam and hissing through the ’scape pipes up on the hurricane deck. He sniffed the curling steam from the coffee mugs: his own simply black, Eleanor’s au lait and flavored with chicory.

Eleanor had told him only two days ago that she was certain she was pregnant, having missed her second time of the month a few weeks ago, and now experiencing nausea in the mornings. He’d hugged her tight, both of them ecstatic about the news. He was going to be a father. They were going to start their family. He already loved Eleanor more than ever, four years into their marriage, and he was certain that his son or daughter would only increase the bliss.

The only storm clouds on the horizon of their future were financial ones, though those were tall and plentiful.

Wilbur glanced eastward to where a dim glow heralded the sun that would eventually dissipate the fog. Wilbur judged that it would be an hour or more before the fog cleared enough for easy navigation: a shame. For several reasons, he wanted to be out on the river and heading north to Baton Rouge as soon as possible. Only four of the staterooms were currently booked, but it wasn’t likely that any more were going to fill on a Tuesday morning three weeks after Mardi Gras. They wouldn’t be entirely deadheading; there were crates of good china stacked on the deck due in Memphis by Tuesday next, as well as boxes of felt hats, shoes, and boots destined for the St Louis markets, but those were barely enough to pay the bills.

Wilbur heaved a sigh, shaking his head.

‘Is that my coffee, darling?’ He heard Eleanor’s voice from above, and looked up to see her leaning over the railing of the hurricane deck, smiling at him and already dressed for the day. He raised one of the mugs toward her.

‘Right here, love.’

‘Then bring it up.’ She scowled theatrically at him, with a grin lurking on her lips. ‘Unless you want to deal with a very grumpy wife all morning.’

He laughed. ‘Coming right up. But I still have to check on O’Flaherty.’ Wilbur turned toward the stairs, then stopped. A figure was stalking through the fog and up the gangway of the boat. ‘Oh no,’ Wilbur muttered. ‘Just what I need this morning …’ Then, loudly enough that the man stepping onto the Natchez’s main deck could hear him: ‘Mr Carpenter, what brings you out so early in the morning?’

Marcus Carpenter was a burly, solid, and florid man in a suit that already looked rumpled and slept-in despite the early-morning hour – or maybe the man had been up all night. He looked sour and angry to Wilbur, but then Wilbur had rarely seen the man show any other emotions. ‘You know what I want, Leathers.’ Carpenter glanced up to where Eleanor stood watching, then at the two mugs of coffee steaming in Wilbur’s hands. ‘Perhaps you and I should discuss this privately.’

‘Perhaps we should,’ Wilbur told him. He lifted the mug in his left hand toward Eleanor, watching from above, and placed her mug on the railing of the foredeck as Eleanor nodded to him. He took a long swallow from his mug and placed it alongside Eleanor’s. ‘Let’s go back to the boiler room,’ he told Carpenter. ‘I have to check on my engineer anyway.’

Carpenter gave a shrug. Wilbur led the man back through the door of the main deck, down between the crates stacked there, and into the passage that led back to the boiler and engine rooms. Carpenter followed, and as they entered the short corridor that held the sleeping barracks for deckhands and roustabouts, his voice growled at Wilbur’s back. ‘Look, I ain’t here to beat around the goddamn bush. I want the money you owe to me and my associates, and I want it today, Leathers. You said you’d have it after Mardi Gras, but somehow none of us have seen a fucking penny so far.’

Such vile language … Carpenter’s habitual spewing of profanity wasn’t the only reason that Wilbur despised the man, but it certainly fit the image.

The heat of the boilers and the hissing of steam surged around them as Wilbur opened the wooden door at the end of the corridor. He couldn’t see O’Flaherty; the man must have gone farther astern to the engine room. Wilbur turned back to Carpenter, who filled the doorway of the boiler room as if blocking Wilbur from retreating that way. ‘Look, Mr Carpenter,’ Wilbur said, ‘Mardi Gras just wasn’t as profitable as we’d hoped, and I had some unexpected expenses for repairs on top of that—’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Carpenter interrupted. ‘That’s the same old crap you handed me last time, and your excuses ain’t gonna pay back the loan we gave you or the interest you’re racking up. We’re not happy. When we’re not happy, my job is to ensure that you’re not going to be fucking happy either.’

‘Give me just another week, Mr Carpenter. I’ll get you at least the interest on the loan.’

‘A week? And let you take off upriver and maybe never come back?’ Carpenter was already shaking his head. He waved a hand at the boilers. ‘Not a fucking chance. You already got steam up, so there’s no “week” for you or even another day. I need to see the goddamn green in my hand, and I need to see it now.’ Carpenter took a surprisingly quick step toward Wilbur, a hand the size of a holiday ham reaching for him before he could retreat, grabbing Wilbur by the collar of his brocaded captain’s jacket and twisting. ‘I see that green or you’re going to be seeing red,’ Carpenter told him. His breath reeked of cigarettes and coffee.

Wilbur glanced down at the hand holding him. His eyes narrowed as he felt heat rising up his neck: ‘that infamous Leathers temper,’ as his mother and Eleanor both called it. ‘You’ll let go of me, Carpenter. Now.’

‘Or you’ll do what?’ Carpenter scoffed, the retort sending a spray of saliva into Wilbur’s face. With that, Wilbur sent a punch over the larger man’s arm, slamming his fist hard into Carpenter’s cheek; the man let go of Wilbur, staggering back a step. Then, with a shout, Carpenter charged back in, his huge hands fisted now. Wilbur tried to block the blows, but one connected hard with the side of his face, sending him down to the deck. Carpenter’s foot came back, the toe of his shoe driving hard into Wilbur’s stomach, doubling him over as all the air left him.

Through a growing haze of blood and anger, Wilbur saw a large pipe wrench on the decking under one of the boilers. He snatched at the tool, warm from the heat of the boilers, and brought it down hard on Carpenter’s shoe. He heard bones crack in Carpenter’s foot as the man howled. ‘Shit! You fucking asshole!’

Wilbur managed to get his feet under him, hunched over as he waved the wrench in his hand toward Carpenter. He took a step toward the man, raising the pipe again. ‘This is my boat, not yours!’ he shouted as he advanced. ‘I built her and she’s mine. You’ll get your money in due time, all of it – I keep my promises and I pay my debts. Now get the hell off my boat or I’ll throw you off.’ The curse word was an indication of just how furious Wilbur had become: he’d always been taught that gentlemen never cursed, and despite the fact that he heard profanity regularly from crewmembers, dockworkers, and the likes of Carpenter, he only rarely used such language himself. He took another step toward Carpenter, still waving the wrench.

What happened then would remain indelibly in his memory. As if in slow motion, he saw Carpenter reach under his suit jacket and pull out a snub-nosed revolver. The first shot went wild, hitting one of the steam pipes and sending a cloud of searing, scalding heat over Wilbur.

In that moment, even amidst the adrenaline surge and before Carpenter could pull the trigger again, Wilbur felt something shift and change and break inside him, the sensation taking his breath away and making him drop the wrench from the shock and pain. His body no longer seemed completely his. Wilbur was still trying to make sense of what was happening to him when the next two shots hit him directly in the chest.

He expected to feel pain. He didn’t – not from the steam, not from the bullet wounds. Enveloped in the surging, deadly cloud, he felt himself fall, sprawling and bleeding on the deck. Inside, though – that change was still happening, still tearing at him, even as he felt his body dying around him.

‘You fucking asshole!’ Carpenter shouted, standing one-footed and looking down at him as Wilbur tried to shape words, tried to shout or scream or wail, though nothing emerged from his mouth. ‘Maybe I’ll just take out the interest from that pretty wife of yours, you goddamn bastard.’

Carpenter spat on the body, turned, and started to limp away toward the foredeck and gangway. Toward where, Wilbur was very afraid, Eleanor would be. His rage engulfed him, as hissing and furious as the steam venting from the pipes. Within the steam, he felt power surge within him. He rose, screaming wordlessly as he rushed toward Carpenter.

The man’s mouth opened, his eyes widened almost comically, as if Wilbur were the vision of some monstrous creature leaping toward him as he lifted his hands to ward off the attack. Wilbur expected to feel the shock of their collision, but there was none. Instead – strangely, impossibly – he was inside Carpenter. ‘No! Fuck! You’re burning me!’ the man shouted, and Wilbur heard that scream as if it were his own voice, and he heard Carpenter’s thoughts as well. Shit! Shit! It hurts. It’s burning me, and I can’t breathe! Can’t breathe … Carpenter’s hands flailed at his own body as if trying to put out an invisible fire, and Wilbur felt the motion of Carpenter’s hands as his own. Wilbur could see through the man’s eyes as well, and he saw his own body bleeding on the floor of the boiler room, eyes open and unseeing as steam continued to flow outward over it.

‘Is that me? How?’ he gasped, and he heard his words emerge from Carpenter’s throat. But he could also feel the searing agony in the man’s body, and Wilbur took a step away from the man as Carpenter collapsed on the floor, twitching and vomiting dark blood and bile before going still.

Stream wreathed Wilbur as he stared now at two bodies in the room: Carpenter’s and his own. ‘Wilbur!’ he heard Eleanor shout distantly, and from the engine room farther to the rear of the Natchez, O’Flaherty also called out: ‘Cap’n? M’God, what’s happened here?’

The hissing steam around Wilbur died as O’Flaherty cut off the flow to the pipes. O’Flaherty hurried forward, glancing at Carpenter before crouching down alongside Wilbur’s impossibly disconnected and bleeding body, ignoring the Wilbur standing behind him dripping cooling steam.

‘O’Flaherty,’ Wilbur said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m right here. Behind you. Look at me, man.’ He reached out to touch the engineer on the shoulder; his hand, pressing hard, went straight into the man, leaving behind a spreading wet stain on his coveralls. O’Flaherty, for his part, jumped up and slapped at his shoulder with a curse.

‘Feck, I’m burned. I t’ought I shut off—’ He stopped. He stared at Wilbur. His face went pale. ‘Sweet bleedin’ Jaysus, ’tis the cap’n’s haint,’ he whispered, his Irish-accented brogue heavy as he scrambled backwards away from Wilbur like a scuttling crab, pushing with his feet and hands.

They both heard growing cries of alarm from the foredeck: Eleanor’s voice, as well as the deeper shouts of sleepy deckhands roused by the gunshots. O’Flaherty found his footing and went running toward the sound. With a glance back at the bodies (That can’t be me. That can’t be me lying there dead.) Wilbur followed. O’Flaherty had let the door to the boiler room shut behind him. Wilbur reached out to push it open; the door didn’t move but his hand went through it as it had into Carpenter and O’Flaherty. Wilbur drew back and tried again with the same result. This time, he continued to push – his entire body passing reluctantly through the door, like pushing through a sheet of gelatin.

He didn’t pause to wonder at that; he went through the corridor, among the stacks of crates, and out onto the foredeck. A couple of deckhands had gathered there, trying to find the source of the disturbance. O’Flaherty was holding Eleanor, who struggled in his grasp, trying to go toward the boiler room. ‘Yah should’nah see the cap’n that way,’ O’Flaherty was telling Eleanor, ‘nor his haint.’

‘I need to … I need …’ Eleanor gasped, then broke into a deep sobbing as she sagged in O’Flaherty’s arms.

‘He’s gone, Missus Leathers. Gone. I’m so sorry,’ O’Flaherty whispered, clutching her. Wilbur could see the two mugs of coffee, still sitting on the foredeck rail. ‘At least he took that bastard Carpenter with him.’

‘Eleanor, he’s wrong. I’m not dead.’ Wilbur moved behind O’Flaherty so he could look into Eleanor’s face. ‘I’m right here.’ Her gaze stared through him, a wisp contained within the fog-draped sunlight, as Eleanor continued to sob in O’Flaherty’s arms. He could feel his body cooling, water puddling where he stood. ‘Eleanor, O’Flaherty – talk to me!’ Neither of them responded.

Wilbur reached out – careful not to press too hard – to touch Eleanor’s shoulder. He saw the fabric of her robe darken as his fingertips touched her, drops of water spreading out and steaming in the cooler air as Eleanor drew back in alarm. He pulled his hand back, startled. His world and New Orleans reeled around him suddenly in a drunken, wild dance.

‘I’m not dead,’ he whispered to Eleanor, to the fog, to the boat, to the river. ‘I’m here. I’m not dead. I’m right here.’

No one answered.


♣ ♦ ♠ ♥







In the Shadow of Tall Stacks

Part 2




    October 2016

‘Right here’ Wilbur Leathers stayed. For sixty-five years.

He had no choice. When Eleanor left the Natchez later that day in 1951, Wilbur tried to follow her and found he could not. It was as if an invisible wall had been erected around the steamboat, one that would not allow him to pass.

Eleanor had vanished into New Orleans and never returned to the boat again; the body that was Wilbur-but-not-Wilbur was removed by the police coroner, followed by that of the internally boiled Carpenter. Both corpses were taken away, presumably to autopsies and eventual burial. Wilbur would never know.

He remained on the Natchez, never aging: not as the Natchez changed owners over the slow decades; not as new men (and now a woman) stepped aboard to captain her; not as innumerable crewmembers came and went; not as the Natchez herself aged and became steadily more shabby before undergoing renovations, a cycle that had now been repeated twice over. ‘Steam Wilbur’, they started to call him: the crewmembers and the passengers who glimpsed him as he found he could materialize himself at will when the steam was up on the boat. ‘Steam Wilbur’: the most famous haint on what was known now as the most haunted steamboat on the Mississippi.

Only he was the only haint. All the other supposed ghosts existed only in the pamphlets the current owners of the boat distributed, with sometimes lurid details of the ‘haints’ aboard. Wilbur had seen the pamphlets and read the stories of the ghosts who reputedly were aboard: for instance, eleven-year-old Lizbeth Hamilton, touted as a ‘wispy, translucent figure seen on the darkest nights on the main deck, where she died in a tragic fall.’ Wilbur had actually witnessed Lizbeth’s death in 1978 as the Natchez was steaming downriver from St Louis and passing Cape Girardeau. Lizbeth had been dressed in a Billy Joel T-shirt and jeans, her brown hair in pigtails with strands escaping from baby blue ribbons. It had been windy and rather cold that October night, with a light drizzle spraying the decks. Lizbeth’s parents had booked passage for Vicksburg to meet relatives. The Natchez, under new ownership and new captainship again, was – in Wilbur’s view – growing increasingly shabby and sloppily run. Lizbeth had left her parents’ cabin on the boiler deck; Wilbur heard her running footsteps from where he was prowling on the texas deck, and he glanced over the railing in time to see her slip on a thin layer of ice that had formed on the deck. Her momentum took her to the railing; she clutched at it, screaming in panic, but the railing was loose and Wilbur heard the crack of rotten wood. Lizbeth went over still holding the broken railing, falling hard onto the main deck and breaking her neck.

But no ghost had risen from her poor corpse. No ghost haunted the main deck, or any other. Not the passenger named Robert who messily committed suicide in 1958 in his stateroom; not the wife found by her husband in flagrante delicto with another man in 1963 – her lover fled naked for his life before jumping overboard to safety, but the husband had strangled his unfaithful wife to death before the then-captain and crew, alerted by the uproar, overpowered him; not the drunken and clumsy idiot who managed to fall backward over the railing into the thrashing paddle wheel in 1988.

Those who died on the Natchez – and there had been a few more over the years – never stayed on the Natchez. Wilbur had no other haints as companions, despite the owners’ advertisements, intended to entice and titillate potential passengers.

Of which there were currently quite a few. The Natchez was readying to leave her home port of New Orleans and head upriver, first to St Louis, then back down the Mississippi a bit to the confluence of the Ohio and on up the Ohio to Cincinnati, where the steamboat would be part of Cincinnati’s periodic Tall Stacks festival. Many of the passengers had booked passage specifically to attend the festival, though there were also those who were traveling to one or another of the towns and cities along the way.

For Wilbur, the Tall Stacks festivals were a somewhat bittersweet reminder of old times: a dozen or so steamboats lined up along Riverboat Row, even if the majority of them weren’t real steamboats anymore but pale imitations – diesel-powered excursion boats whose paddles were there purely for decoration, or overgrown abominations like the American Queen. The festival reminded him of tales that his father had long ago told him, woven from his own childhood growing up with Wilbur’s grandfather Thomas Leathers, who had built and captained the first eight steamboats named Natchez.

Still, Wilbur would normally have been looking forward to Tall Stacks, especially since his Natchez was scheduled to race against the Belle of Louisville and the Delta Queen once they arrived. A previous Natchez had famously raced (and lost to) the Robert E. Lee, a scene celebrated in the huge painting that dominated the main salon on the boiler deck.

But the rumors Wilbur was hearing rather dampened any enthusiasm he might have mustered. Wilbur ‘talked’ often enough with Jeremiah Smalls, his one confidant on the Natchez and the boat’s chief pilot for the last dozen years. According to Jeremiah, it appeared that the current owners of the Natchez were considering ‘options’ for making the boat more profitable – and some of those options terrified Wilbur, seeing as this boat was also his prison.

Over the years, then the decades, Wilbur told himself that his was a just sentence; he’d killed Carpenter in a rage, and so he deserved this exile on the boat he’d built for committing the sin of murder. He deserved losing Eleanor, who must now be ninety years old or already dead. He deserved the punishment of never knowing his son or daughter, if Eleanor had perhaps remarried and had other children, if perhaps there were grandchildren of his out in the world.

Justice. Karma. Payment for his sins. Wilbur had been brought up Methodist, but he’d lost his faith somewhere along the way. He didn’t know if there was a God or not, but whether it was God’s hand or simple fate that had marooned him on his own vessel, it was his sentence to bear.

It was a bright day in New Orleans, and Wilbur hadn’t taken in steam in hours. Even filled with steam and willing himself to be visible, in sunlight he’d be little more than a passing wisp of cloud, perhaps a stray, soggy refugee from the stacks or the ’scape pipes or a leaking radiator. But Wilbur was content to be invisible at the moment. He walked the main deck – at least, that was his perception of what he was doing, though he’d seen his reflection in a window or mirror many times over the decades, and to an outsider, he was a specter gliding soundlessly just above the boards. There were far more people on board than usual for the Natchez; it was looking like this would be a profitable trip, and he entertained the thought that this might change the minds of the consortium that owned the boat.

As he turned the corner of the promenade and moved toward the gangway leading to the dock, three young men, laden with odd pieces of equipment, were coming toward him, talking excitedly among themselves. They’d come aboard the night before: two brothers, Ryan and Kevin Forge, and Sean Venters, a cousin. According to Jeremiah, they had a cable television TV show (both cable and television being technologies that simply made Wilbur shake his steamy head in mingled wonder and disgust) called The Dead Report, where they investigated the paranormal. They were aboard looking for the Natchez’s nonexistent ghosts … and especially Steam Wilbur.

‘The EMF fields are fluctuating like crazy,’ Sean was saying to Ryan as Kevin filmed their interaction, walking backward. ‘We’re close to something.’ Wilbur had to step/glide aside quickly to avoid having Kevin pass directly through him – he didn’t intend to give the ghost hunters anything to talk about on their show.

‘Supposedly there’s a ghost around here – a little girl named Lizbeth,’ Ryan said. He was dark-haired and muscular, with tattoos crawling his arms (another new societal change that made Wilbur shake his head – even the sailors Wilbur had known in the war hadn’t defaced their bodies this much). ‘If we can find a cold spot, maybe we can make contact with her …’

Wilbur let the trio pass him, then continued around to the dock side of the ship.


♣

The Natchez was bustling with activity everywhere. The dock side of the main deck was swarming with visitors and passengers, the air was alive with chatter as deckhands and roustabouts doubled as bellboys, carrying luggage from the dock onto the steamboat and up to the staterooms and cabins on the boiler deck.

Wilbur could see Captain Marjorie Montaigne looking like she’d just stepped out from the late 1800s in her captain’s uniform with its ostentatious piping and embroidery. Montaigne had taken over as captain of the Natchez almost a decade ago; as far as Wilbur was concerned, if none of the captains since his death had been as competent as he’d been, he had to grudgingly admit Montaigne had managed to turn around or at least stop the decline of the Natchez during her tenure.

She was also a lesbian, and admitted that openly – another new societal twitch that Wilbur didn’t quite understand or agree with. In his day, one kept such things tightly closeted and one never talked about them. Still, he had to allow that Montaigne did her job as captain well enough, and though it was still a rarity to see a female captain on the river, she was more than a match for the sometimes crude and misogynistic crewmembers. Wilbur’s own aunt, Blanche Leathers, had become captain of the Natchez way back in 1894, long before women were at all common in the workplace, let alone running a steamboat on the Mississippi. At least Montaigne was following a Leathers tradition, even if she wasn’t family.

Captain Montaigne was greeting arrivals at the gangway leading down to the wharf as Wilbur drifted past her, unseen. He’d overheard earlier talk from the captain that there might be several wild card aces among the entertainers as well as the passengers at various points along the cruise; in fact, the Jokertown Boys, a joker boy band that had been famous a decade and a half ago, had been aboard for some time now, having most recently played the night before. Their supposed music failed to impress Wilbur, who still preferred the big band sound of the ’40s and early ’50s, or classic New Orleans jazz. The band’s keyboardist, ‘Gimcrack’ – a stupid name, in Wilbur’s opinion – had also been hired to play the boat’s calliope during the cruises, though at the moment it was silent, the boilers still waiting to be fully fired up tomorrow evening when the Natchez would be under way.

He saw Kitty Strobe, the junior pilot for the Natchez, walking toward the stairs, probably heading up to the pilothouse to help Jeremiah with preparations for getting under way. As usual, despite the New Orleans heat, she was wearing a large baggy sweater and long pants, as well as large dark sunglasses. Wilbur smiled to himself: he knew why she dressed that way, even if no one else on the boat was aware of it.

Captain Montaigne was speaking with a man who looked distressingly like a cartoon fox, accompanied by a woman who sported cat’s ears, nose, and whiskers in an otherwise normal face. Jokers, Wilbur thought. Or aces … ‘Mr Yamauchi, Ms Otto, welcome aboard,’ the captain said with her Cajun accent. ‘I’m glad to see both of you. Your equipment and luggage arrived yesterday. I have your stateroom ready; your luggage is there waiting for you. I assume you’ll want to take a look at the Bayou Lounge, as that’s where you’ll be performing your act; I’ll have one of the deckhands escort you up there. The Jokertown Boys will be sharing the bill with you …’

Her voice trailed off as Wilbur drifted on past her and up the staircase, causing a descending deckhand to shudder as Wilbur passed partially through the man. Since the boilers were still cool, Wilbur was invisible, barely warm, and relatively dry at the moment.

Wilbur continued up past the boiler deck and texas deck until he was standing on the open hurricane deck atop the boat. Wilbur stood near the calliope, a classic Thomas J. Nichol – built steam calliope salvaged from the sunken remains of the side-wheeler Island Queen, destroyed by fire. Wilbur had paid to lovingly (and expensively) have the calliope restored. The acquisition of the calliope had been one of Wilbur’s proudest accomplishments when he’d built this iteration of his family’s Natchez boats, that and the fact that he’d also been able to salvage murals and paintings from the eighth Natchez, built by his grandfather.

He’d built the Natchez to be as much a part of him as he was now part of it.

Neither Jeremiah nor Kitty Strobe was in the pilothouse, so Wilbur continued up the short flight of stairs and into the enclosure. There was the bell made of 250 melted silver dollars that Wilbur had salvaged from the SS J. D. Ayres; the steam whistle from a steamboat that sank in 1908 on the Monongahela River; the massive white oak and steel wheel from the Hamiltonian, and the ornate control and communications panels, refurbished and modernized over long decades by the boat’s subsequent owners, far different from the time when Wilbur had stood here. Alive. With Eleanor at his side.

Eleanor … The pilothouse’s expansive windows allowed Wilbur to see the river and New Orleans in all directions. From his vantage point, he could view the wharf, the French Quarter, and nearby Jackson Square. He looked out over New Orleans, wondering if she was still there somewhere, wondering if their child was out there as well. Eleanor, what kind of life did Carpenter steal from us? Where would we have gone, what would we have become?

Of course, he’d also stolen Carpenter’s life. He’d sometimes wondered if Carpenter had had a family, if his wife and maybe his kids had expected him to come home for dinner that February night so many decades ago. I’m still paying for that. I wonder if Carpenter’s doing the same somewhere, or maybe everything just ended for him then, even if it didn’t for me …

Wilbur turned his gaze eastward past the huge stern wheelhouse and down the wide Mississippi. That was where the MS Gustav Schröder, a rusting, decrepit cargo ship flying the Liberian flag, was moored near the river’s intersection with the Intracoastal Waterway, guarded by the Coast Guard cutter Triton and boats from the New Orleans Port Police – all of them five miles downriver. With the river’s curves and all the other river traffic, Wilbur couldn’t make out the ship from this distance, but Schröder had been the subject of lots of talk and gossip and arguments aboard the Natchez in recent days. The vessel was reputedly stuffed with more than nine hundred refugees from Kazakhstan, wherever the hell that was, and the Schröder was out of fuel and food. According to the news reports from Jeremiah’s radio, a very few passengers with the proper papers had been permitted to disembark; the rest were still aboard, forbidden to come ashore.

That seemed to please the majority of the crew, from what Wilbur had overheard.

‘We don’t need those fuckin’ foreign jokers,’ Mickey Lee Payne, the assistant ‘mud’ clerk, had declared only two nights ago, down on the main deck where the crew had gathered in one of the bunk rooms. Mickey Lee, in Wilbur’s opinion, was mostly a scrawny, loudmouthed bigot; if Wilbur were captain, he’d have the man tossed off the boat … Though he had to admit that his own grandfather had probably been a bigot of the same stripe. ‘We got enough of our own freaks. Who the hell knows how many of ’em might be infectious? Did you fucking see the pictures from over there? Christ! Thousands and thousands of people died, and the rest went bugfuck. They were eating fucking babies. You ask me, that new guy that took control over there has the right idea getting rid of the jokers. I say we need to do the same kinda strong leadership: close the damn borders, send ’em back, and good riddance.’ There’d been a rumble of general agreement with Mickey Lee’s statement from many of the crew.

For Wilbur, Kazakhstan and its problems seemed as distant as the moon. His world was the Natchez. No, it was good enough for the moment to simply stand in the pilothouse as he had back when he’d still been alive and look out over the Quarter, watching the bustle on the dock and on the river around him and anticipating another voyage upriver, even if he was no longer the boat’s captain. He thought about the steamboat race that would be the showpiece of the Tall Stacks festival in Cincinnati, imagining the Natchez steaming past her competitors. In that moment, he would feel some satisfaction. In that moment, he might see the Natchez less as a prison and more as the boat he’d been so proud to create. His legacy, born of imagination and memories and the dreams of his ancestors. The only child it would seem he’d ever know.

He could imagine that sweet moment already: his Natchez demonstrating what a magnificent boat she was, even in her seventieth decade. He caressed the wheel in front of him, stroking it like a lover, laying his hand there and letting it sink gently into the wood, merging his being with the boat. Part of me. Always part of me …

It was a beautiful day. There would be beautiful nights to come, as well, with a nearly full boat, the steam up in the boilers, and the paddle wheel lashing the brown water of the river as they moved upriver. Soon. Very soon. Eleanor, I’m afraid I’m leaving you again, if you’re still out there. And this time I don’t know if I’ll be back.

Wilbur shook his head at the thought and scowled. His exile on the Natchez was only bearable when they were on the river with the paddle wheel thrashing the water. Soon …

The rest of the time … well, that was hardly worth thinking about.


♣ ♦ ♠ ♥




Wingless Angel

By John Jos. Miller


By the time Billy Ray had arrived on site the MS Gustav Schröder had been anchored downriver from the New Orleans passenger ship terminals for almost two days. He and his SCARE team – part of it, anyway; the rest hadn’t yet arrived – stood on the north bank of the Mississippi River. The Schröder was anchored downstream, with the Triton, a Coast Guard cutter, anchored nearby to make sure none of the refugees slipped away. There was no doubt that the Van Rennsaeler administration was determined to keep the Kazakh refugees off American soil, though possible sanctuary in the French Quarter was only a moderate swim away.

Ray eyed the Schröder dubiously from his vantage point on the riverbank, which was adjacent to a small dock near the cruise ship terminal where a Port Police launch was moored. The freighter was too distant to discern details, but Ray was pretty sure that she was no titan of the seas.

‘How many refugees did AG Cruz say were crammed on that tub?’ he asked, frowning.

‘Nine hundred and thirty-seven,’ the Midnight Angel said quietly at his side. Her voice was empty of inflection. She could have been talking about sacks of potatoes, not people.

‘She doesn’t look big enough to lug nine hundred and thirty-seven toasters across the Atlantic, let alone that many people,’ Ray mused.

He glanced at her as she stood next to him, SCARE Agent Moon by her side. In human form Moon was a small, deformed joker who could barely crawl, but the wild card had given her the power to transform into any canid species she could envision, living or extinct, from the Chihuahua to the dire wolf. She was currently a big, fluffy sable collie whose resemblance to TV’s beloved Lassie was uncanny. Ray knew she’d chosen her most friendly form intentionally for the Angel’s benefit as it was the most comforting avatar in her repertoire. Ray caught Moon’s eye and nodded. Her tail thumped the ground sympathetically.

The Angel was staring into the distance, at nothing, really. She was gaunt, her eyes sunken and blank. That was better, Ray reflected, than the haunted look they usually had, an expression she’d rarely been able to shake since their return from Kazakhstan. A month ago, deep in a fit of despondency even greater than usual, she’d shaved off the mane of thick, dark hair that had hung down to her waist. The new growth was streaked with white. She no longer wore her leathers, even on a mission, for they reminded her too much of the nightmare of Talas. Instead she had on khaki slacks and a thick, long-sleeved, shapeless pullover. Despite the heat and humidity of the New Orleans summer day, her face was pale and sweatless.

Moon pressed against her side and whined softly, but the Angel didn’t respond. She only stared unseeingly as a tall black woman, a bit beyond statuesque, approached the three SCARE agents. The newcomer was middle-aged, with straightened hair worn in a stiff updo with descending ringlets. Her mannish tailored suit was much too heavy for the New Orleans climate and she was paying for her dubious fashion choice with droplets of perspiration running down her face. Ray’s own suit was faultlessly tailored linen, superbly suited for the local climate. Ray recognized her from the attorney general’s description.

‘Agent Jones?’

She reached into a pocket of her suit and produced a badge, holding it up for all to see. ‘Ms Evangelique Jones,’ she said, with the emphasis on the Ms. ‘Immigration and Customs Enforcement.’

‘Right, ICE,’ Ray said in an unimpressed tone. ‘Attorney General Cruz informed me that you were in charge of this …’ Ray’s voice ran down and he gestured vaguely out to the Schröder.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘My job is to ensure that these so-called refugees don’t set foot on American soil without proper authorization. That those without papers take their dirty genes back to wherever they came from or to whatever hellhole will accept them. But not here.’

‘Hellhole?’ For the first time the Angel seemed engaged. She turned and looked at Jones. ‘What do you know about hell?’

She caught Jones’s gaze with her own bleak stare and the ICE agent paused in whatever she’d intended to say. ‘Well – I —’

Ray cleared his throat and Jones’s attention shifted back to him. ‘All right. And exactly where are we in this … situation?’

Her lips tightened in a grimace. ‘Apparently this little scheme to subvert American immigration law is being perpetrated by a known prostitute, a Ukrainian national with connections to the Russian mafia named Olena Davydenko, and—’

‘Olena?’ Ray said.

‘Are you deaf, Mr Ray?’ Jones asked. ‘Or am I speaking in some foreign—’

Ray and the Angel stared at each other, ignoring the ICE agent as Moon looked on with her narrow gaze fixed on the newcomer.

‘We knew that these refugees were Kazakhs,’ Ray said thoughtfully, ‘but no one told us that Davydenko was involved in this.’

‘And if she is, he must be, too,’ the Angel said harshly.

Jones, her eyes shifting between them, frowned. ‘If by he, you mean her partner in miscegenation—’

‘Infamous Black Tongue,’ the Angel said as Ray said simultaneously, ‘Miscegenation?’

‘You two are the rudest people I have ever met,’ Jones said, ‘always interrupting—’

‘Sorry,’ Ray interrupted. ‘It’s just that the Angel and I have a history with those two – we were all at Talas, though I got there at the end. The Angel did a lot of the heavy lifting. That included a mano-a-mano battle with the Black Tongue himself.’ His gaze narrowed. ‘I wish I’d been there for that.’

‘Yes.’ Jones looked at them as if their actions were part of some kind of dubious activity. ‘I read all about it.’

‘I just mention it so you know that we’re not unaware of the refugees’ background.’

‘That’s all yesterday’s news,’ Jones said. ‘We have more important matters to deal with now.’ She looked at them thoughtfully. ‘I suppose you’d better come along. I have some news to deliver to the miscreants on the Schröder.’ Jones walked past them toward the police launch moored at the nearby dock meant for small river craft.

‘Good news, I hope,’ Ray said.

‘Oh yes.’

Jones strode over the gangway and an officer from the New Orleans Port Police helped her down into the bow of the launch that would ferry them to the Schröder. Ray and the Angel followed, with Moon bringing up the rear. The officer looked at Moon skeptically as she jumped down into the bow next to the Angel. It seemed as if he wanted to say something, but bit back his words as the Angel just looked at him. They cast off and started toward the freighter moored in the middle of the river.

As they glided along with the current, they passed demonstrators who had gathered on the riverbank in two distinct groups separated by a police barrier and a squadron of New Orleans city cops. The larger bunch were maybe a hundred strong. Most carried signs that were either anti – wild carder or pro – Liberty Party, which had unexpectedly swept Pauline van Rennsaeler to the presidency the previous November. Others waved random historical battle or political flags that had no connection to the current refugee crisis.

The smaller group numbered no more than twenty. Their banners showed sympathy for the trapped refugees, some proclaiming their allegiance to the JADL, the Joker Anti-Defamation League.

‘What a freak show,’ Ray muttered.

‘I hope you’re not referring to these fine Americans exercising their constitutional right to free speech,’ Jones said.

Ray was saved from answering her question as they reached the Schröder. She looked even more dubious from up close. The freighter was a battered, rusty, near-dilapidated wreck that had probably spent her maiden voyage dodging German submarines during World War II. Of course she flew the Liberian flag, which meant that she operated under the laxest licensing and inspection regime in the entire nautical world.

The only way to board her was a rickety ladder extending down from the main deck. The police launch sidled close and Jones led the way up the ladder. Ray followed, with the Angel carrying Moon in one arm as her paws couldn’t handle the narrow steps. Jones was puffing as she reached the end of the climb and accepted an extended hand to help her over the top and onto the Schröder’s deck.

‘Thank you—’ she began to say as she looked up, then fell silent.

The man standing before her smiled and released her hand. He was old but distinguished looking, in a gray charcoal-colored suit that Ray’s practiced eye told him cost more than twice his own. His long and still abundant silver hair was pulled back in a ponytail and he leaned on a heavy wooden cane. His shoes, like his suit, were handmade and expensive. The right one encased an obvious prosthesis, which extended upward into an artificial leg, the extent of which was hidden by an expertly tailored pants leg. He smiled at Jones as she gained the deck.

Three companions stood grouped behind him. One was a man of similar age, smaller, with a lined, pale face that showed no expression at all as he looked over the newcomers. The second was a striking woman in a formfitting blue silk shirt tucked into tight blue jeans that showcased her splendid figure. It was, Ray realized, a theme of a sort. Her skin was a deep rich blue, her thick, long hair a shade darker, and her eyes the clear cerulean of a cloudless summer sky. The third person was a young man in a black suit with a priest’s collar. He was serious-looking in an intense way, with regular features, dark eyes, and short dark hair.

‘Agents Ray and Angel,’ the silver-haired man said. ‘Pleased to see you. Splendid work, saving the world and all that. Splendid.’ He looked at Moon, whom the Angel had set down on the deck. ‘And this is?’

‘SCARE Agent Moon,’ the Angel said.

‘A were-canid,’ Ray explained as Moon thumped her tail against the deck.

‘Of course,’ the man said. He turned toward Jones. ‘I am Dr Pretorius. You must be Ms Jones, the ICE agent in charge. I’ve been retained to represent the Schröder refugees in their attempt to secure political asylum.’

‘By whom?’ Jones asked in a somewhat less pleasant tone.

Pretorius smiled. ‘The Joker Anti-Defamation League.’ He gestured toward the three who stood by him. ‘This is Mr Robicheaux and Ms Blue, their representatives.’ He indicated the young man. ‘And Father Joachim Aguilera of the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker.’

If Robicheaux was a joker, Ray thought, his deformities were hidden. Unlike Pretorius, his clothing was that of a working man. He wore a short-sleeved shirt tucked into worn jeans and work boots that had seen hard use. His eyes were dark and, like his expression, opaque as his gaze swept them all. He nodded. Ray nodded back.

‘We have much to discuss. The others are waiting. If you will follow me.’ Pretorius leaned heavily on his cane as he limped away.

They fell in line behind the lawyer. As he led them across the main deck, Ray’s nostrils flared. The Schröder’s interior matched its exterior in terms of grime, rust, and general decrepitude. The deck needed a new paint job, not to mention a thorough washing. Usually, Ray thought – though his experience with boats of any kind was rather limited – you see crewmen bustling about on errands and chores, taking care of vital upkeep and minor repairs. But they saw no one, crew or passengers, as they made their way to a hatch leading down into the ship’s hold. It was so quiet that it was more than a little eerie. The Schröder might as well have been manned by a crew of ghosts.

Ray and the Angel exchanged glances. She can feel it, too, he thought. He glanced at Moon and saw her sniff the air. An expression of disgust washed over her lean-jawed face. Ray lacked the acute senses that Moon had, but he could smell the stench, too. Had smelled it since they’d reached the deck. It was getting worse, and it hit them like a slap on the face when Pretorius led them down the ladder into the ship’s hold.

The vessel’s only cargo was inside. People. They were everywhere in the gloom of the poorly lit, practically unvented hold. Men, women, and children looked at them wearily as they descended the ladder, hunger, hope, and fear in their eyes. Ray guessed that this trip had been as hellish as the demon-haunted last days of their home city of Talas. Most were gaunt. Many just lay on the dirty bedding that was their only protection against the harshness of the hold’s metal floor. Ray had been in better-smelling swamps. He didn’t want to even try to imagine the privations these people had undergone during their voyage.

Ray and the Angel kept stoic expressions on their faces, but Jones recoiled and audibly gagged.

‘My God,’ she said, ‘don’t you people bathe?’

‘In what?’ asked the woman approaching them. Her voice was bitter and bore an East European accent. Ray recognized her as Olena Davydenko, the daughter of a deceased Ukrainian mobster. She’d used her dead father’s fortune to finance this desperate quest for safety and freedom. Olena looked at them cooly. She was blond and pretty, Ray thought, in a brittle, high-fashion sort of way. She was accompanied by a young woman who was a bare inch or two over five feet. She had clear pale skin that had a golden sheen to it. And she was staring at the Angel, who seemed uncomfortably aware of her gaze. At least the Black Tongue was nowhere in sight. If IBT and the Angel came face-to-face again – Ray pushed the thought away and forced himself to concentrate on the here and now.

‘We have barely enough water to drink,’ Olena continued bitterly. ‘We have no food, no fuel, no medical supplies—’

‘Not my concern!’ Jones snapped. ‘You people should have been better prepared for your little cruise.’

Pretorius held up his hands. ‘This is all beside the point.’

‘The point being,’ Jones said implacably, ‘that of all the people who decided to take this trip, very few have the proper documentation or even family members already living in the United States willing to sponsor them. No one lacking a sponsor or the proper documents will be allowed off this ship.’

Dr Pretorius gestured to an angry Olena, who handed him an expensive-looking briefcase. Ray figured that while most of the onlooking refugees probably couldn’t follow the conversation in English, they had no problems understanding the gist of it. Pretorius extracted an impressively thick document from the briefcase and handed it to Jones.

She glanced at it. ‘What’s this?’

‘A brief requesting political asylum for all my clients,’ Pretorius said. ‘The government in Kazakhstan has collapsed. The warlords are fighting over the scraps of their country, but they all agree on one thing. They fear, wrongly and unjustly, that somehow the plague that struck Talas was brought on by the wild card virus and that the madness that destroyed the city was somehow spread by the jokers living there. Nonsense, of course, but that’s not stopping them from waging genocide against all wild carders. These people couldn’t stay in Talas and be killed. They can’t go back. They’re claiming asylum.’

‘You know that this must be adjudicated at higher levels of government—’

‘I ask for an expedited hearing. In the meantime, we need food, water, medical—’

‘I’m sure they do.’ Jones started back up the ladder, taking Pretorius’s brief with her.

The joker lawyer looked at Ray. ‘That was pleasant.’

‘Yeah,’ Ray said. He was starting to have a very bad feeling about this mission. It wasn’t as cut-and-dried as it had first seemed. He hadn’t signed up to bully helpless jokers, women and children among them.

The young woman standing with Olena looked at Angel and spoke in accented but clear English. ‘I am called Tulpar. I was in Talas, too. I saw you fighting monsters. They called you the Angel of the Alleyways, the Madonna of the Blade—’

The Angel looked down. ‘I lost it.’

A look of sympathy crossed the girl’s face. ‘I see that your pain is great. But you helped us once. The people, the children, are starving—’

The Angel turned her face, stood silent for a moment, then followed Jones up the ladder.

Moon whined and went after her, taking the ladder carefully. Ray looked at Pretorius, who was watching with pursed lips, and then at the Kazakh girl. ‘She’s been hurt deeper than you know by what happened in Talas.’

‘I could see it on her face,’ she said.

Ray nodded and hurried after them. Jones had crossed the deck and was going down to the waiting Port Police launch. The Angel, again holding Moon with the agent’s front paws over her shoulder, was following.

Ray, feeling helpless, watched her. It had been a very difficult time, with the Angel growing more withdrawn and despondent despite the counseling she’d had. Ray had thought that maybe getting her out into the field might start her back on the road to who she’d once been, but, if anything, it seemed she was getting worse. He didn’t know where to turn himself, or what to do, and that helplessness was churning deep inside and turning to an anger that he couldn’t focus on any one person or thing. It was just grinding at him.

He started down after the Angel as sudden shouting from the riverbank caught his attention. A group of the anti-refugee protesters from the Liberty Party had surged against the flimsy barrier separating them from the pro-refugee JADL contingent and were breaking through the thin blue line that was all that kept the two groups apart.

‘Crap,’ Ray said.

He glanced down. The Angel, too, had paused on her way down and was watching the drama unfold on the riverbank.

‘Hurry up,’ Ray called. ‘We’ve got to stop this before someone gets hurt!’

The Angel nodded and dropped the remaining dozen feet or so to the launch’s deck, landed lightly, and set Moon down. Ray swarmed down the ladder like a monkey in a major hurry and in a moment was at the Angel’s side.

‘Cast off,’ he shouted. ‘Head for the landing across the river!’

‘I give the orders here, Ray,’ Jones said coldly. ‘Just what are your intentions?’

‘My intentions,’ he said in a dangerously level voice, ‘are to keep people from getting hurt.’ He locked eyes with the officer in charge of the launch.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said crisply.

Jones sighed. ‘Very well. Though I don’t know what you can do.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ the Angel said.

The launch cast away from the Schröder and swept out in an arc, taking them to the northern bank, as everyone onboard watched what was happening on shore with concern.

The small JADL contingent was holding their ground as the anti-refugee protesters broke through the police barrier. Ray and the others on the launch could hear their angry shouts as they ran, screaming and waving their signs. The one in the lead was a heavyset man whose sign read Go Home Genetic Waist! The ones following him shoved aside the few cops who were bobbing helplessly in the mob’s wake like corks in an unleashed torrent.

‘Oh crap,’ Ray repeated.

And as the protesters approached the JADL demonstrators – slowly, because their signs weighed them down and most weren’t in the best shape and it was a very hot and humid day – the zombies began to appear.

They didn’t pop up out of thin air, but instead hauled themselves out of the river, climbing the steps at the landing toward which the launch was heading, like corpses rising from a watery grave. And make no mistake, they all were dead as shit. Not one was complete. Some were missing only fingers or an ear or an eye, others were less whole. Their sodden clothes oozed stinking seawater, which nicely complemented their body odors – a combination of rotting flesh and astringent embalming chemicals. The protesters outnumbered them ten to one, but Ray figured that the zombies were probably more intent on their purpose.

‘Goddammit!’ Ray swore aloud. He felt a sudden twinge of despair when the Angel didn’t respond to his blasphemy. She never did, anymore. ‘Goddammit!’ he repeated.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ Jones said.

‘You’ve never seen a zombie attack before?’ the Angel asked, conversationally.

‘Swing it around parallel to the shore,’ Ray shouted as the launch neared the riverbank. He climbed out on the bow.

‘What is he doing now?’ Jones wondered.

‘He’s going to make someone pay,’ the Angel said softly, but she didn’t say for what.

Moon whined by her side.

‘Go ahead and help him, if you want.’ Moon put a paw on her knee, beseechingly. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ the Angel said in a faraway voice. ‘They’re only zombies.’

By now the protesters were all quite aware of the creatures shambling toward them. The mob’s first reaction was to stumble to an uncertain halt, stand, and stare. Ray wanted to scream aloud to Hoodoo Mama – only she could be orchestrating this – but that would sound silly. ‘Josephine’ was too formal, and ‘Joey’ – he’d never called her that. The anger continued to build in him – the months and months of watching the Angel grow ever more inward, ever more detached, ever more untouchable and desolate – and he found his voice in a wordless cry of his own rage and despair.

He leaped as the launch swung around as he’d directed, setting a new unofficial world record for the standing long jump, and hit halfway up the stairway going up the riverbank. He stuck his landing and was moving a moment after his feet touched ground.

Moon followed him. She leaped from the bow, her fur flowing in the air as she dove into the water and came up swimming, reaching the foot of the staircase as Ray clambered up to the top.

By now, the shambling newcomers had inserted themselves between the two groups of demonstrators, a half score undead facing the larger contingent of the living. As the reeking zombies continued their slow approach, the demonstrators turned en masse and, bumbling and battering against one another, retreated. Many added to the chaos by screaming incoherently. Some threw away their signs, some used them to bludgeon a way to safety.

Many suddenly also realized that Ray was coming toward them with the speed of a runaway train and a look on his face that was not entirely rational. Moon followed behind him, barking ferociously. He heard Moon, but his heart sank when he realized that the Angel had remained on the launch, looking on. It all just made him even more angry.

Some protesters fled; some froze in fear, creating a major traffic jam as those behind them either blundered to a halt or tried to fight through the paralyzed clumps of humanity.

Ray hit the scrum of uncertain protesters like the running back he’d been in college. It all came back to him, like a riding a bicycle that’d been parked for forty years. He smiled crazily as he headed for an imaginary goal line, jinking and darting through the defenders, none laying a hand on him, his eyes on the prize ahead.

The biggest of the zombies, a huge man who’d once been black but was now a washed-out, grayish color, was in the lead. He had a nasty bullet hole in his forehead, but that didn’t seem to be bothering him any as he reached for the unlucky protester at the rear of the pack. She’d fallen down and the zombie was looming over her, opening wide jaws, which showed gaps where, Ray guessed, gold teeth had once gleamed.

A last moment of cognition, of recognition of danger, must have flickered through the dim recesses of the zombie’s brain, for a whisper of what looked to Ray like surprise passed over his face, and then Ray leaped over his intended victim and hit him at full speed, shoulder first, arms wrapped around him.

The zombie came apart.

Fuck, Ray thought, I’m wearing a new suit.

He clutched the top half of the zombie’s body, various organs dangling from it like really ugly candy hanging from a shattered piñata. The zombie’s bottom half, from the ass down, hit the asphalt walkway and skidded. Ray’s forward momentum shot them into another zombie and the two and a half of them hit the ground in a tangle of limbs.

Ray had rarely – no, never – been so disgusted in his life. He was covered by water-soaked zombie goo, his new suit was ruined, and he was still, in general, pissed off. The zombie on the bottom of the dog-pile tried to bite him, and Ray put his fist through its face, smashing it like a two-week-old Halloween pumpkin. Then he was on his feet, stamping, until the zombie’s chest was a flattened mass of fetid flesh and shattered bones.

If the remaining zombies in Ray’s vicinity had any humanity left about them, or even some low degree of animal cunning, they would’ve fled. But no. They were zombies. They converged on their new, nearest target.

Ray realized that all the protesters had gotten to safety – out of the corner of his eye he saw the cops helping some of them and Moon was harassing and gnawing off bits of other zombies – but he wasn’t done yet. He had to hit something to work the anger out of his system, and zombies made good targets.

He grabbed the right wrist of the nearest and flipped it to the ground. He put his foot – his shoes, too, were finished, Ray realized – in its armpit and twisted. The arm came off like a well-roasted chicken wing and Ray was just in time to duck and whirl and smack another attacking zombie right in the face with his unconventional yet effective flail.

The zombie’s head sailed off its rather scrawny neck and it twirled in a little uncertain dance and immediately fell over the edge of the riverbank, bounced a few times, and was swallowed by the waiting river. Ray whirled about, but the other zombies had stopped in their tracks.

‘Come on, you sons of bitches,’ Ray shouted, though two of the zombies were clearly women. He didn’t really care.

But they, or more properly, Hoodoo Mama, had had enough. She wasn’t exactly frugal with her undead soldiers, but neither did she waste them for no reason. Those left standing all turned in unison and marched toward the riverbank.

‘Come on!’ Ray shouted in frustration. ‘Come on!’

But no one heeded his challenge.

‘Shit!’ Ray yelled. Still enraged, he hurled the zombie arm at the last zombie before it could jump off the bank, hitting it in the back and knocking it into the river below. Ray took a deep breath. ‘Shit,’ he repeated, more quietly this time.

He stalked back to the clump of protesters. Moon trotted next to him, her beautiful coat soaked in zombie goo, sneezing and hacking up bits from her narrow-jawed mouth.

‘Thanks,’ Ray said.

She wagged her tail.

The launch had landed during the fight and Jones had disembarked, followed by Ray and the Port Police crew.

Jones planted herself in front of him. ‘Agent Ray—’ she began, but stopped when Ray raised his right hand and she saw the look in his eyes.

He was covered in gore, soaked in embalming chemicals and bodily fluids, smeared with rotting flesh and squashed organs.

‘I’m going back to the motel now,’ he said. He was surprised to hear the calmness in his voice. ‘I have to take a shower.’ He looked at his wife. The look in her eyes – was it sorrow? Loss? Nothing at all? – bit deeper than any wound he’d ever received in his forty years in government service.

The Angel and Moon followed him as he walked away.


♠

‘Who told you where I live?’ Joey Hebert asked sullenly as Ray stood before the door of her shotgun shack. The picket fence around the front yard was more gray than white and had more gaps in it than a meth head’s dental work. The front porch sagged and the entire building listed uncertainly like a drunken sailor. ‘It was Bubbles, wasn’t it?’

Ray suppressed a sigh. He’d decided to take this one on alone, leaving the Angel and Moon at the Motel 6 where they were staying. He feared that Hoodoo Mama might remind her even more of Talas. Months of therapy had done little to help the Angel. Sitting around DC hadn’t helped either. He’d hoped that what he thought would be a relatively innocuous assignment might start to shake her out of her depression, but the Angel wasn’t responding at all to being in the field. The shields she’d erected around herself after Talas were still impenetrable. And now Ray had to worry about the twists the mission was taking. Well, one thing at a time.

‘Let me in, Joey.’ He decided on the informal approach. ‘We have to talk.’

Hoodoo Mama glared at him. She was a scrawny, young black woman with an expression that was mostly always angry. Ray knew the feeling.

‘We have to talk,’ he repeated flatly.

After a moment she said, ‘I guess I can’t make you shut your mouth.’ She opened the screen door and stepped aside.

The front room was a mess. Ray’s sense of neatness was offended. The room was poorly lit by a single forty-watt bulb in a floor lamp that stood next to a dirty, beat-up sofa. The coffee table in front of it was littered with old Chinese food and pizza boxes, the worn carpet was splotched with dried mud and less identifiable stains. The room smelled of dust and decay and death. ‘Jesus,’ Ray said, ‘would it hurt to have one of your zombies run a broom through this place occasionally?’

Joey shrugged defensively. ‘I just got back into town – right before I heard about the ship of refugees being held up in the harbor. They’re mostly wild carders, you know.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Ray said patiently. ‘And you’re not helping—’

‘Someone’s got to help them, Mr High-and-Mighty Government Man,’ Joey said, bitterly. ‘Someone’s got to keep them safe from those creepy-ass Liberty Party motherfuckers.’

‘That’s my job,’ Ray said.

‘Are you going to do it?’

Ray’s crooked features suddenly froze in a clenched-tooth grin. ‘You ever heard of me shirking my duty?’

‘What is your duty, Mr High-and-Mighty Government Man?’ Joey replied.

‘Trust me,’ he said, and repeated after her unamused bark of laughter, ‘trust me. If you want, keep an eye on the situation – I know you have a legion of dead pigeons and rats you use as spies. Have an entire division of zombies on hand just in case things go wrong. But for Christ’s sake, keep them out of sight. You’re not helping by having the walking dead show up at every little provocation.’

Joey eyed him, Ray thought, with more speculation than distrust. ‘You got a plan to save those poor people?’

‘I’m working on one,’ Ray said. It almost surprised him to realize that he was. But in her own unsubtle way, he realized that Joey was right.

She nodded. ‘All right. If you said you had one I wouldn’t believe you, because no one can save them. They’re fucked. But I’ll be damned if I’m just going to let them quietly sail off to their doom.’

‘I’ll take your word on that.’ Ray turned to leave, stopped, and looked back. ‘And Bubbles said to call her. Your cell phone isn’t working and she’s worried about you.’

‘Damn it!’ Hoodoo Mama said as Ray let the screen door bang shut after him.

He went down the sagging wooden stairs carefully, fully aware that there could be an army of small dead things with sharp pointy teeth under them that Joey could send after him. But he felt that they had found at least a tiny bit of common ground, and zombies were one less thing he had to worry about, for now. There were plenty of others.

Like the man sitting in the locked black Escalade he’d left parked up the street from Joey’s shack. There were no working streetlights in Hoodoo Mama’s neighborhood, so Ray could barely discern the silhouette in the front passenger seat. He thought that it was a man, a small man, perhaps a boy. He seemed utterly unconcerned as Ray approached the vehicle, so Ray simply opened the driver’s side door and bent down to look in.

From close up Ray could see that he was indeed a small, slight white man, probably in his early seventies. He had a pleasant face that had been roughly treated by the passage of time. What hair wasn’t covered by his porkpie hat was white and cut short. Ray suddenly recognized him. ‘You’re the JADL guy from the boat. Robicheaux, right?’

He smiled. His teeth were even and white. ‘Right, Mr Ray.’

‘Can I help you?’

‘No, but I want to help you.’ He had a Cajun accent.

Why not? Ray thought. A small old dude was just who he needed on his side. ‘How?’ Ray slid into the car and closed the door.

‘Information, Mr Ray. I know what’s going on among the refugees – and it’s not good.’

Ray sighed as he pulled into the deserted street. ‘What’s happening?’

‘They’re scared, Mr Ray. Tired and hungry. They were hoping for sanctuary and have been turned away—’

‘Pretorius says they have a shot—’

‘No. Asylum will be granted to a token few – the Handsmith and his son, the ace Tulpar, maybe two dozen passengers in all. Aces and nats, every one.’

‘And the jokers?’

‘Van Rennsaeler made a deal with the British PM – they’re sending them to Rathlin Island.’

Ray frowned. ‘That rock off the coast of Northern Ireland?’

‘It was once a joker colony. Pretty much abandoned these days.’

‘So they’re sending them to some gulag – out of sight and out of mind.’

‘That’s the plan.’

‘I can hear the but you left unsaid.’

The old man smiled wryly. ‘Very perceptive, Mr Ray. There are several buts. The Handsmith has refused the deal, as has Tulpar. There’s talk of mutiny aboard the ship – of taking it over and trying for Brazil, Africa, maybe.’

Ray snorted. ‘Yeah, Jesus, great idea.’

‘There’s more. A few of the refugees belong to a joker terrorist gang – the Twisted Fists. Others are starting to listen to them.’

‘To do what?’ Ray asked. ‘Go up against the US Coast Guard?’

‘They are desperate.’

‘It would be a bloodbath.’

‘Which is something your job is to prevent.’

Ray pulled the Escalade over to the side of the street and slammed it into park.

‘How’d this come down to me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t speak for the government. I work for the government.’

The old man looked at him, his lined face composed. ‘If not you, who then?’

‘Shit,’ Ray said.

‘But for the fortunate turn of the card, you and I could be one of those jokers.’ If he was a joker, Ray thought, it didn’t show. An ace, maybe? Ray had never heard of him, but that meant little. Your card could turn when you were seven or seventy, or maybe he had some crappy little power that attracted no attention in the wild card world. ‘If as a nation we turn our back on a handful of brothers and sisters whose only crime was to be born in a savage land, how long will it be before other ships are sent to Rathlin, packed with those of our own nation who some people still despise? What then, Mr Ray?’

‘Shit,’ Ray said again.

‘But,’ the old man said thoughtfully, ‘all is not entirely lost. The JADL has been in contact with a man who calls himself Witness. For a million dollars he’s offered to provide haven for the refugees in Cuba. That island isn’t exactly, uh, strict when it comes to immigration, and, uh, other laws. It could easily absorb a few hundred refugees, or act as a transit point once they acquire proper identification.’

But Ray’s mind had turned back a decade. ‘This guy calls himself Witness,’ he asked, ‘what’s he look like?’


♦

The Angel was still awake when Ray returned to their hotel room. She slept very little, ate very little, and never smiled. She was sitting on the bed, watching some Mexican talk show. Ray knew that she didn’t speak Spanish. It was all noise to her, like the rest of the world washing through her head but failing to distract her from the horrors she’d faced in Talas.

‘I’m back,’ he said, eliciting only a flicker of interest. ‘You’ll never guess who I ran into.’

Her eyes slid over to him, which was encouraging.

‘The JADL guy we met on the ship,’ he said, undressing down to his underwear and carefully hanging up his suit in the hotel room’s closet. The room was small, but neat, one of the lesser chains as SCARE didn’t have the budget to put its agents up at the really nice places with gyms and saunas and free breakfasts. But Ray didn’t much care as long as it was clean.

The night was hot and humid, but the Angel had cranked up the air conditioner until it was bordering on wintry in the room. Ray got into the bed next to her.

‘The small man? He seemed nice,’ the Angel said. There was a faraway look in her eyes.

‘Yeah.’ Ray looked at her thoughtfully. ‘But he’s in the fight, in his own way.’

‘What do you mean?’ the Angel asked.

Ray kept the smile off his face. At least he’d engaged her, aroused her curiosity. That was something.

‘He’s working with the JADL, trying to help the refugees.’ Ray relayed the information that’d been given to him, but when he was partway through the Angel turned her attention back to the television screen. ‘Only thing is, along with the nutjobs trying to keep the refugees off American soil, apparently there’s another problem festering behind the scenes. The Twisted Fists may get involved.’ That evoked no interest. ‘And a group headed by some guy who calls himself Witness.’

This captured the Angel’s attention. She turned her gaze back upon Ray. ‘The Witness?’ she asked.

Ray nodded. ‘He fits the description.’

Angel, looking thoughtful, relaxed, shifted against Ray’s chest, laying her head on his shoulder.

‘The Witness,’ she repeated.

He held her a long time as her breathing relaxed and her eyes slowly closed and at last she fell asleep. Moving slowly and carefully, he reached out for the remote and turned off the television. Now, finally, he could sleep, too.


♥

The rest of the team arrived the next morning when Ray, the Angel, and Moon were eating breakfast in the motel’s coffee shop. The Angel was listlessly picking at her pancakes. Ray himself had almost as little appetite lately as his wife, but he managed to finish his omelet between feeding Moon cut-up bits of her breakfast steak. She was still a collie. She preferred a canid form for public appearances, and Ray was long used to dealing with recalcitrant waitresses and busybody onlookers. He handled their questions, usually, with patient explanations, but today he wasn’t in the mood and resorted to his best glare, sometimes reinforced by a flash of his official badge. It worked.

Two tall, thin, pale, well-dressed men approached their table, accompanied by another agent wearing fatigues, a camo T-shirt, and combat boots.

Ray nodded as they stopped before the table. ‘Harry, Max.’ He paused. ‘Colonel,’ he added dryly.

The ‘Colonel’ was directed at the newcomer in fatigues. He was young, as were the other two, but much more nondescript, with fair hair, a fair complexion, and light blond hair. His eyebrows were almost invisible against his pale complexion. He was a former army corporal from Fairbanks, Alaska, named Alan Spencer. He’d competed on the second season of American Hero, jumping several ranks by calling himself ‘Colonel Centigrade.’ After failing to win the game show he’d transferred out of the army into SCARE.

‘I hab a cold,’ he announced in a nasal, sniffling voice.

Ray exchanged glances with the Angel, but decided not to comment on the irony of Centigrade’s statement. Colonel Centigrade was a bit of a fuckup and his freezing powers weren’t the most reliable. He wasn’t exactly vital to the plan that Ray was evolving in his mind, whereas Harrison and Maximillian Klingensmith were. They were identical twins, down to the black eye patch each wore over his left eye and the sweep of inky black feathers that covered their scalps in lieu of hair. Their nicknames, derived from their joker aspect and from parents who had academic backgrounds in, respectively, ornithology and Nordic studies, were Huginn and Munnin.

‘You boys have breakfast yet?’ Ray asked.

‘No, sir,’ they all said in unison.

‘Take a seat,’ he said, moving closer to the Angel. He liked the Klingensmith twins. They were respectful, resourceful, and quite useful. They piled into the booth, Spencer’s ass half hanging over the bench’s edge. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do …’


♣

The zombie intervention between the JADL demonstrators and the anti – wild card protesters had the unfortunate effect of intensifying the conflict. The ensuing publicity brought out not only more protesters on both sides – many more on the anti – wild card side – but literally hundreds of curious bystanders who were determined to view the next scene in the drama unreeling before their eager eyes. The number of police officers manning the barrier keeping the opposing groups apart had also increased dramatically, but Ray could easily read the concern on their faces. Something had to be done to defuse the situation before real violence erupted.

Ray was hopeful that his talk with Hoodoo Mama had dissuaded her from further use of her undead hordes – at least for now – but the swelling numbers of participants on both sides of the controversy had him worried.

The pro-refugee faction had maybe doubled in size, but the numbers of those protesting against the Kazakh newcomers had swelled almost exponentially, both in numbers and in passion.

It was hard to say what looked angrier, the crowd waving their signs and screaming imprecations at the moored freighter, or the morning sky, which was black with thunderheads that threatened a cloudburst at any moment. It was not a happy morning, and Ray saw that the only thing that could possibly make it worse was about to occur.

Evangelique Jones arrived on the scene. She looked glad to see Ray, which immediately made him suspicious. ‘Well, Director Ray,’ she said with a smile that was smug and gloating at the same time, ‘word has come down from Washington. Their final decision, so to say.’

Ray flashed back to what he’d learned the night before.

‘They’ve decided on asylum? That was fast.’

Evangelique nodded. ‘Twenty-nine of them will be afforded political refugee status. The rest will be accorded sanctuary on an island off the coast of Northern Ireland—’

‘Rathlin,’ Ray interrupted.

She looked at him suspiciously. ‘How did you know?’

Ray shrugged. He didn’t want to give away his source of inside information. He should have kept his mouth shut, but it was too late. ‘Where else could it be? I mean – it’s been used as a joker sanctuary in the past.’

‘Yessss,’ the ICE agent said. Before she could add anything, a huge clap of thunder sounded and lightning streaked across the sky and it opened up to a steady fall of rain.

Ray looked up as the droplets pattered upon his face, soaking him almost instantly. ‘Maybe this’ll disperse the crowd,’ he said hopefully.

But the sudden downpour did nothing to break up the mob that was now surging back and forth in a wavelike manner. It served instead to seem to rile them up, make them even more convinced of their anger.

‘Hey,’ Ray suddenly said, ‘I know those guys!’

Jones frowned. ‘Who?’

‘Him,’ Ray said, and then corrected himself, ‘I mean them.’

He pointed to a large figure at the head of the JADL contingent. He – they – were a large joker bifurcated from the waist up with two torsos, two sets of shoulders and arms, and, of course, two heads. Each held a sign in a brawny arm. One read Welcome refugees!, the other, Foreigners go home! They seemed to be arguing with each other. Their argument quickly evolved into a shoving match that a couple of cops moved in quickly to break up, then stopped, stumped.

‘I used them as an informant back in the day – Rick and Mick.’ Ray sighed. ‘They could never get along.’

The onlookers and both batches of protesters were enjoying the show, shouting encouragement at them and egging them on. They started swatting at each other with their signs. The pair overtipped and crashed into one of the segments of waist-high fencing that separated the two groups. Their weight crushed it to the ground, bringing down a section of fence maybe ten feet long.

For a moment there was silence, then an angry surge forward by the larger anti – wild card faction, who saw a clear path to the JADL demonstrators.

‘Crap,’ Ray muttered. He realized that he was saying that a lot lately. He looked almost desperately at his team. They were too few to do much against the hundreds surging forward to take out their frustrations on the smaller number of joker counterprotesters. If only Washington had supplied him with some heavy hitters they could at least—

‘Centigrade!’ Ray suddenly barked. He couldn’t make himself add the man’s self-appointed rank.

Spencer stepped forward, a little uncertainly. ‘Sir?’ he asked in a more hesitant than military manner.

‘Do your stuff.’

‘Sir?’

Ray gestured at the scene before them. ‘Make it snow. Make it snow like it was fucking Christmas.’

It finally dawned on the colonel. ‘Yes, sir!’ He stepped away from the others.

‘What in the world?’ Jones asked as Spencer’s face froze in a mask of fierce concentration. A minute passed, then she angrily turned to Ray. ‘If you don’t tell me what that man—’

Ray pointed his right hand at her to shush her and pointed to the sky with his left.

You could just barely see it against the dark thunderheads and the streams of rain as the first snowflakes formed. A cool breeze swept down over them as in an area maybe a hundred yards across and directly above the heads of the demonstrators, sleet started to fall among the raindrops.

When the first bits of ice hit the protesters an uncertain note rumbled through the crowd. Some looked up unbelievingly at the sky. Some pointed, some cried out loud. As the rain fell it was turning to snow about fifty or sixty feet above their heads. Snow. In New Orleans. In the summer. It was … unnatural …

Within moments the surging crowd had stopped. Everyone, the bystanders, the demonstrators on both sides, the cops standing gallantly between them, looked up at the sky, mixed wonder and fear on their faces.

Ray and the others, still getting soaked by the warm rain, could nonetheless feel the chilling breeze blowing from the pocket of extraordinary weather that was now pelting down on the demonstrators as a mix of big, fluffy snowflakes and freezing sleet.

Ray looked from the sky to Colonel Centigrade. His teeth were clenched now, his face was white. Cords stood out on his neck and he was shaking. He looked about ready to collapse.

‘Hold on!’ Ray barked. ‘Concentrate! Another minute—’

The demonstrators had withstood the muggy heat, the harsh sun, even zombies, all of which were to be expected in New Orleans. But a snowstorm? No. That was freakishly grotesque. Voodoo of the worst sort. And goddamned cold.

The mass of demonstrators broke and ran, streaming away through various cross streets, along with the crowd that had gathered to watch the show, leaving only the puzzled and shivering police still manning the barricades.

‘All right, Centigrade,’ Ray snapped, ‘at ease!’

Spencer swayed on his feet and would have collapsed if Maximillian Klingensmith hadn’t grabbed him. Or maybe it was Harrison. Ray wasn’t sure.

‘He did that?’ Jones asked unbelievingly.

Ray nodded, smiling at Spencer, who was grinning weakly as he leaned on his fellow agent.

‘Yes, he did,’ Ray said proudly.

She barely, Ray noted, suppressed a shiver as a flicker of – what? – disgust, perhaps, flashed across her face. ‘All right.’ Jones looked up at the sky. It was still raining. ‘I suppose he can’t stop that?’

Ray shook his head. ‘Not part of his powers.’

‘No. Of course not.’ Jones ran her hand through her hair, which had collapsed in soggy ringlets around her face, pushing it back. ‘Well, rain or shine, it’s my duty to serve these papers.’

Ray hazarded a guess. ‘Max?’

The agent keeping Colonel Centigrade from collapsing with weariness nodded.

‘Take the colonel back to the motel.’ He’d earned that with his heroic efforts, Ray thought. ‘Get him whatever he needs – food, drink, dry clothes.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Max said, and Spencer managed a tiny sneeze.

‘And for God’s sake,’ Ray added, ‘get him something for that cold.’ He looked at Jones. ‘The rest of us will accompany Agent Jones to the Schröder.’

‘I don’t think that’s necessary,’ Jones said.

‘I’m in charge of your security,’ Ray replied, ‘and I think it is. After all, you’re going to be delivering news to a large number of people who might take it very badly.’

Jones frowned. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

‘Perhaps I am,’ Ray said.


♠

The conditions aboard the Schröder hadn’t changed. It would be hard, Ray reflected, for it to get much worse, and there was no way it was going to get any better.

Jones had ordered the ship’s entire complement to gather on deck, probably, Ray thought, because she’d learned somehow that the news had already reached the refugees, who were regarding her with what could only be silent anger on their faces. Or maybe, he thought, she was just being cautious and figured that she’d be safer there than down in the hold. And also because it just smelled so bad down there.

Backed by Ray, Moon, the Angel, and the Klingensmith brother known as Huginn, she stood on a small raised platform on the bow in front of a set of hatches that led down into the hold, waiting impatiently as all crew and passengers gathered around on the main deck. Fortunately the rain had ceased just before they’d boarded the ship and the blazing sun was doing its best to dry up all the excess moisture that had leaked down from the sky. Ray could feel steam rising from his suit.

It took more than a few minutes for them all to assemble. Olena stood before Jones, who looked down impassively from the height of the raised platform from which she could survey the deck. Dr Pretorius stood with Olena, as did the young woman ace, Tulpar, and the Handsmith, a broad, chunky man with his hands wrapped in strips of burlap. His son, Nurassyl, was next to him, looking like a ghost draped in a sheet, his exposed flesh glistening with the moisture that he exuded, supported by a platform of tiny wriggling tentacles in lieu of feet. Ray recognized some others from the initial meeting, though the JADL representatives were both missing, as was the young priest.

Ray heard the Angel suddenly hiss angrily and he turned and saw Marcus Morgan, the Infamous Black Tongue, coiled behind and partly concealed by a freight derrick midway down the deck. From the waist up he was naked, exposing the body of a fit, young African-American man. He was naked from the waist down, too, but the rest of him was that of an outsized coral snake, glistening in alternating bands of black, yellow, and scarlet scales. He made the largest anaconda look like a garter snake.

The Angel clenched her teeth, took a step forward. Ray laid a warning hand on her shoulder and she angrily shrugged it off. She and IBT, as he called himself, had fought a personal duel at the conclusion of the Talas episode that had left her badly wounded. It had taken her months to recover from her injuries and that had coincided with her long slide into post-traumatic stress.

Ray was unsure what effect seeing him again would have on her. Basically, it seemed to be making her angry, which was something at least. He didn’t know if it was good or bad, but at least his presence was eliciting some sort of reaction.

Jones cleared her throat and began to speak.

‘I am Evangelique Jones, of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I have passed on to Washington your lawyer’s’ – and here she fixed Dr Pretorius with a hard stare that he calmly returned – ‘brief, which has been considered at the highest levels of government. The request for asylum has been granted—’

At this seemingly miraculous reversal of their fortunes an eruption of cheers exploded from the refugees, which built higher and higher as those who understood English translated for those who didn’t. Jones fell silent and looked on with a small smile on her face until the cheering and hugging and cries of joy slowly died down.

Ray could hardly believe the evident glee she was taking in delivering her message in this provocative manner. Even the Angel seemed to forget about IBT and stared at her incredulously.

‘—to the following individuals,’ Jones continued in a loud, satisfied voice. ‘Olena Davydenko. The individual known as the Handsmith. His son, Nurassyl. Inkar Omarov, also known as the Tulpar—’

She continued to read off the names, slowly, sonorously, enjoying the looks on the faces below her as the hope began to drain out of them as they realized that all of those who’d been granted asylum were the few nats among them, the even fewer aces, and those rare jokers with useful abilities or money. After reading off the twenty-ninth name Jones folded the document and looked up impassively.

‘The rest of you,’ she intoned, ‘will remain aboard the Schröder until such time she can be refueled, whence she shall leave the territorial water of the United States and set course to Rathlin Island off the coast of Northern Ireland, where you shall be granted permanent refuge.’

‘This is outrageous!’ Pretorius shouted. ‘I shall appeal!’

Jones looked at him calmly. ‘As I told you, this has been considered at the highest levels of the American government. There is no appeal.’

‘I will not leave my people,’ the Handsmith shouted.

His cry was echoed by others whom Jones had named, anger in every voice.

‘Moon,’ Ray said quietly. ‘Get ready to change.’

The collie standing by the Angel’s side nodded.

The crowd of refugees made an almost instinctive surge forward. Jones, nonplussed, blinked at the anger and hatred she saw on the hundreds of faces before them.

‘Now,’ Ray said, and instead of a friendly collie, a dire wolf stood on the platform with them, six hundred pounds of sin with fangs like a saber-toothed tiger.

The crowd stopped as one, though IBT slithered forward, shouldering aside refugees as he pushed his way to the front. Inkar Omarov transformed as quickly and smoothly as Moon had, becoming the Tulpar of Kazakh legend, the golden-coated, eagle-winged horse with razor-sharp hooves.

‘Stop!’ Dr Pretorius limped forward, pushing himself to stand between Jones and the SCARE agents and the seething crowd of refugees. ‘Nothing will be solved by violence! There is another way. There must be another way.’

The aging lawyer dominated the scene by the sheer force of his personality, stemming the tide of rage before it overwhelmed the situation.

‘You expect us to turn away and slink off into the darkness,’ Olena said heatedly, ‘when we have no fuel, no food? How can we even hope to recross the Atlantic—’

‘As I told you,’ Jones said with surprising calmness, ‘the United States will be more than pleased to fill your fuel tanks. It’s a cheap enough price to pay to be rid of you.’

‘But the food,’ Olena added, ‘we’re almost out—’

Jones shrugged. ‘Can’t help you there,’ she said. ‘There’s been no official requisition for supplies—’

Ray had suddenly had enough. ‘Screw that,’ he said. He reached into his back pants pocket, took out his wallet. ‘Harry,’ he said to the agent by his side, ‘take this.’ He handed him a credit card. ‘Go clean out a 7-Eleven or something. Get a boatload of food—’

‘Director Ray,’ Jones said in a hard voice.

‘We’re talking about children, here,’ Ray said stiffly. ‘Children, women, old people – hell, no one deserves to starve.’

‘Wait,’ Pretorius said. He took his own wallet out of a pocket in his jacket and extracted a card. ‘I appreciate the generous offer, Agent Ray.’ He held out a card. ‘But take mine. It probably has a higher limit.’

It was black.

Ray and Pretorius locked gazes, and Ray nodded. ‘Do it,’ he said to the young agent. He quirked an eyebrow, and Huginn nodded. He stepped away from the others and took the card Pretorius offered. He turned, headed for the police launch that was awaiting them.

‘Well,’ Jones said. ‘Is anyone accompanying us to shore?’

There was a ripple in the crowd, as if a wind were blowing, but not one of the named refugees stepped forward.

Jones swept them with her gaze. ‘Fools,’ she said. She followed Huginn to the launch.

‘Let’s go.’ Ray took the Angel’s arm, and she started at the touch, like a nervous horse. She looked at him with something of the old fire in her eyes, then nodded.

‘Moon,’ Ray said, ‘you’d better power down. I don’t think there’s enough room in the launch for you in this form.’

The agent was a collie before Ray could blink. She smiled and wagged her tail.

Ray turned to Pretorius. ‘Harry will be back with the food as soon as he can.’

‘Thank you,’ Pretorius said simply.

Ray shrugged. ‘Like I said. None of these people deserve to starve.’ Then he added in a low voice that only the lawyer could hear, ‘One of the boys is going to stick around for a while. Kind of keep an eye on things.’

‘I understand,’ Pretorius said. ‘He’ll be safe.’

‘Maybe,’ Ray said, ‘there is a way where we can work this out.’


♦

Evangelique Jones was as good as her word. By that afternoon a tanker had moseyed up to the Schröder and was pumping enough fuel into her tanks to get them back across the Atlantic.

Ray and the rest of the SCARE team waited on the riverbank. Some protestors from both sides had reassembled, but the earlier storm had taken the starch out of their attitude. Rick and Mick were not to be seen. Probably, Ray thought, off arguing about what to have for dinner.

Ray realized that it would all eventually build up until it started to chafe and something set it off again. More violence was inevitable as long as the Schröder was moored in sight of everyone. He hoped that she wouldn’t be there much longer. He was sympathetic to the plight of the refugees, but there wasn’t much he could do for them, other than ensure their safety when they were still under his watch. And that he was going to do.

They waited patiently until Harry Klingensmith returned with a rental truck full of food and supplies.

They helped the crew of the police launch, moored as usual at the small dock near their vantage point, load the supplies. It took several trips for the launch to ferry it all across to the Schröder. Obviously, there wasn’t enough to provide provisions for the refugees for a voyage across the ocean, but for now it would furnish them with a decent meal after days of rationing.

It took a couple of hours to get all the groceries unloaded. When the task was finished Ray thanked the launch’s crew for their help and then he and the others headed back to the motel. No one noticed that Max Klingensmith had remained on the Schröder.


♥

They all crowded into the room shared by Ray and the Angel. Colonel Centigrade was lying on the bed, still exhausted and fighting his bad head cold. Moon, still in her collie form, curled up next to him on the bed, but watched alertly as Harrison Klingensmith took the room’s only comfortable chair, settled into it. The Angel looked on with some interest while Ray paced restlessly back and forth across the small room.

‘What can you see?’ he asked the pale, scarecrow-thin SCARE agent.

Huginn screwed both eyes shut tightly, frowning with concentration. When he opened them he stared at the plain, dull green drapes drawn across the hotel room window.

‘I see,’ he intoned in a soft, faraway voice, ‘people eating.’

Ray made an impatient sound.

‘Munnin,’ he added, ‘is panning the room. It looks mostly calm. Most seem resigned, some are angry.’

He went on, narrating the scene as if it were a movie, relaying what his twin brother could see with his own left eye. His right eye saw just the blank cloth of the drapery he was staring at. This mixed vision shared by two minds could be disorienting as hell, which was why he concentrated his own sight on a neutral view. His brother also saw what he saw from his left eye. Their ace had no distance limit and could never be turned off. Unfortunately – or, for them, perhaps fortunately – vision was the only sense they shared, and it had taken long and hard practice to get used to the disorientation this collective sight caused. It was, of course, an ideal means of instantaneously transferring information.

‘Hold on – something’s happening. Max is leaving the hold where most of the refugees are encamped.’

‘Why?’ Ray stopped pacing.

‘Hard to say. He’s being stealthy, though. Sneaking. He’s good at that. Sticking to shadows, ducking. He’s on deck. It’s dark now, nighttime. He’s watching a small launch approach. Men are coming aboard.’

‘How many?’

‘I count eight. Max is going to the bridge. Olena’s there with the captain and some of his officers and the man you described as the JADL liaison, who’s talking to them. He looks worried, like he’s trying to tell them something they’re not believing. Max is concealed outside the bridge, but he can hear them. Hold on. He’s writing something – we carry pads to communicate complicated messages. I can read it as he writes. Robicheaux says that you can’t trust the man called Witness. He’s gotten in touch with his contacts in Cuba – someone from the Gambione family. No one in Havana knows anything about the Schröder getting asylum there. But they know this guy Witness – he’s heavily into human trafficking.’

‘I knew it,’ the Angel said between clenched teeth. ‘I knew they couldn’t trust the bastard.’

‘Wait – the men are coming to the bridge. Max is retreating into deeper cover. The one leading them is big, blond, muscles like a weightlifter. Handsome, except for a smashed nose. The men with him are armed. They’re dragging the old guy from the bridge, Olena is trying to stop them but they’re pushing her down. She’s screaming. They’re – they’re throwing the old guy off the side of the ship. That guy, that snake guy is coming fast, to the bridge. They’re shooting at him—’

‘Damn!’ Ray said. ‘We’ve got to get there, fast! We should have staked out someplace closer, dammit!’

‘The Schröder’s engines are starting. There’s commotion on the Coast Guard cutter. Lights are going on all over her!’

‘Angel—’ Ray said.

‘I can’t help you,’ she said numbly. ‘You know I can’t.’ She couldn’t look him in the eyes.

Ray stood before her, took her arms, and lifted her from her chair. Supporting her weight, he held her upright before him.

‘You have to,’ he said. ‘But not me. You have to help those people on that goddamned boat. There’s no telling what will happen to them.’

‘I’m sorry—’

‘I know you are,’ Ray said earnestly. ‘And I know you’re hurt. I understand if you can’t do this anymore. But if you have anything left, now’s the time to dig down deep and find it. Just get me there – that’s all you have to do. I promise.’

Ray could feel her body stiffen, her legs take her weight, and she stood upright, on her own.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘but we’d better step outside.’

Ray smiled. ‘Good point,’ he said. He turned to the others. ‘Follow as quickly as you can.’

He tossed the keys to the Escalade to Huginn and hand in hand he and the Angel ran out the motel room door, down the hallway, and to a side exit off the first floor.

The night was hot and muggy, as usual for New Orleans. They stood together in the parking lot, bathed in the light of the incandescent bulbs illuminating the rows of cars.

The Angel put her arms around him. ‘I could drink a case of you,’ she murmured, and pulled him close.

He put his arms around her and they kissed. Ray felt as if he could feel the hurt and need in her and kissed her as if to draw it all out of her and into himself. After a moment he felt heat all around him and he knew it for the touch of the unburning flames that covered her wings, and suddenly they were airborne. Ray could feel the rush of the breeze from her beating wings upon his face and he laughed aloud as the Angel’s strength bore him effortlessly through the sky.

The city of New Orleans was spread below them, its streets outlined by lamplights and rows of car headlights moving like tracers over the ground. After the Angel gained sufficient altitude she turned toward the river and the bend bordering the French Quarter. It took only a minute or two, traveling as the angel flies, until they could see the lighted deck of the Schröder moving on the river, being pursued by half a dozen launches as well as the Coast Guard cutter Triton, which was quickly gaining on her.

‘She’s under way,’ Ray said.

The Angel’s expression was serene as a Madonna’s. Ray felt a stab of happiness to see her so. All the cares and worry and anxiety were washed away from her face as she bore them both through the sky.

Ray frowned as he looked down at the ship. ‘She’s moving pretty fast,’ he said. ‘The cutter is trying to block her way – they’re going to collide!’

The ships hit with the anguished scream of shrieking metal as the Angel spiraled down to the Schröder’s main deck. The much larger freighter smashed the cutter aside as if she were a plastic toy. The Coast Guard vessel buckled where the freighter’s prow struck her amidships. The Schröder continued to plow serenely upstream as the Triton broke into two pieces. The launches trailing the runaway freighter stopped to pick up sailors who’d abandoned the wrecked and rapidly sinking Triton.

The Angel touched down on the stern of the freighter, unnoticed in the darkness.

‘All right,’ Ray said quietly. ‘You stay here. I’m going to go see what the hell is going on.’

The Angel shook her head. ‘No, I’m coming with you.’

‘You going to be all right?’ he asked, his expression concerned.

‘Maybe. I don’t know. But I do know that there’s someone I wouldn’t mind seeing again.’

‘All right. If you’re sure.’

‘I already said that I’m not.’ Ray didn’t mind the impatience in her voice and in her expression. It was at least a sign of engagement, of a return to the world. ‘I’ll be right behind you.’ She smiled and Ray liked that even better. ‘One sword at least thy right shall guard.’

Ray remembered those same words spoken a dozen years ago and moved off into the darkness feeling whole for the first time in a long time.

The decks were deserted and quiet. His first thought was for the refugees. They found a companionway headed down into the hold and cat-footed it into the eerily lit space where they bivouacked. The lighting was provided by strung bulbs of low wattage that gleamed like will-o’-the-wisps hovering over a swamp. The air still smelled terrible. As they went silently down the ladder, they could see the mass of people sitting and standing in close ranks in the cramped hold, three men covering them with automatic rifles.

‘Jesus,’ one of them was saying, ‘what a sorry-assed lot. Be lucky if one in ten of them was worth keeping.’

‘They are a pretty useless bunch of rag-heads. Still, I reckon some of them will bring a nice price. The rest, well, fuck ’em. They can go down with the ship when we scuttle it.’

‘Hey,’ said the third, the one in the middle, ‘give me a cig, will you? I need something to cover up the stench in here.’

Ray reached the hold’s floor, maybe twenty feet behind them.

‘I need a light myself.’ The three men sidled together, keeping their rifles pointed at the mass of people in front of them. Many of the refugees, at least those who hadn’t sunken into complete lethargy, must have seen Ray creeping as stealthily as a panther, but no one gave him away with either a look or a gesture.

One of the men cradled his rifle to his side under his arm while he bent down to light his cigarette with the match offered him by the middle man, while the third reached for a packet he kept in his shirt pocket.

Morons, Ray thought, and when he was six feet away sprang with his arms widespread.

He grabbed the collars of the man to the right and to the left and smashed both their heads into that of the man in the middle. The colliding skulls made satisfyingly loud sounds. Ray held the two up by their collars as their knees sagged while the third slipped silently to the hold’s floor.

The refugees looked almost as stunned as Ray’s victims as he shook the two guards like a terrier with rats in its jaws, just to make sure they were out, then swiftly checked them all for more weapons. ‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ he told the refugees, ‘someone tie them up.’

Twenty-odd prisoners leaped forward in response. It probably would have gone more efficiently if they didn’t keep getting in one another’s way, but Ray let them have their fun. In a few moments the three were tied and gagged and Ray had distributed their guns to refugees who professed familiarity with the weapons.

‘Keep your eye on them while we take care of the rest,’ Ray told them.

‘Let us go with you,’ one of the Kazakhs offered.

Ray shook his head. ‘This job is for professionals. You stay here and guard these bozos.’

They reluctantly accepted his advice, and Ray returned to the stairway, where the Angel stood watching him.

‘I didn’t think you’d need my help,’ she said.

Ray snorted. ‘Not with those idiots. But there’s five left. Let’s check the bridge.’

The Angel nodded, and they went up the walkway to the deck above, where all was still darkness. Ahead, in the bow, they could see the lit bridge and the figures who occupied it, who were unidentifiable at this distance.

They moved quietly toward the light. Halfway there, Ray put out his arm in warning and he and the Angel stopped. They could hear something slithering before them in the darkness.

‘The snake,’ the Angel said quietly, and suddenly before them loomed IBT.

Ray thrust himself forward between him and the Angel.

‘Stop right there,’ Ray said coldly, ‘or I will seriously fuck you up.’

The human part of IBT’s body was raised up. He was as tall as a tall man standing, while the coils of his snake body writhed behind him.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Billy Ray,’ Ray replied, ‘and I owe you big for what you did to my wife.’

‘Wife?’ The expression on the joker-ace’s face went puzzled. ‘I don’t—’ He suddenly caught sight of the Angel beside Ray. ‘She’s your wife?’

‘That’s right,’ Ray said in a flat voice.

‘I remember,’ the Infamous Black Tongue said. ‘It was in Kazakhstan, on the battlefield. Neither of us were in our right minds then.’

‘Whatever—’ Ray said, and the Angel took his arm, stopping him before he could move.

‘He’s right, Billy,’ the Angel said. ‘It’s what you’ve been telling me all this time.’

‘I am sorry for what happened,’ IBT said.

‘As am I,’ the Angel replied. ‘But there’s no time for apologies now. What’s happening on the bridge?’

‘We made a deal with the man who calls himself Witness. A million dollars to take us to refuge in Cuba. But it was all a trap – he just wanted the money and people he could sell into servitude. He plans to scuttle the ship once we’re out to sea, take off the ones he thinks would be useful, and let the old and infirm drown.’

‘Where’s the Witness?’ Ray asked.

‘On the bridge. He has Olena.’ IBT looked desperate. ‘We have to rescue her, but he has guns.’

For the first time Ray noticed that blood was oozing out of several segments of IBT’s colorful banded serpent body.

‘You’ve been shot,’ Ray said.

IBT shook his head. ‘That’s not important. He has Olena. We must rescue her.’

‘All right. Calm down,’ Ray said as he saw the desperate look return to the joker’s face. ‘Let’s see. There’s five of them—’

IBT shook his head. ‘Three. He sent out three men to guard the refugees in the hold—’

‘We took care of them,’ Ray said.

‘—and then two sentries to patrol the deck,’ IBT said, then added with some satisfaction, ‘and I took care of them.’

‘Okay,’ Ray said. He didn’t ask for details. ‘Uh, you didn’t run into a tall, pale, skinny guy in a dark suit, did you? Probably wearing a patch over one eye.’

‘No,’ IBT said.

‘Good. He’s one of us.’

IBT nodded.

‘All right,’ Ray said. ‘Time to take the bridge.’

It took only moments to arrange the ambush. IBT led them to a place of concealment where they had a decent view of the control room through the front windows shielding the bridge deck. The windows were already shot out, shattered in IBT’s original hopeless assault. They could see six people in the dim light of the chamber. Two were thugs with guns, one was Olena, the other two were the captain of the Schröder and his mate, who was steering the ship. The last—

‘It’s him,’ the Angel said.

It was the Witness. Ray had encountered him first during the mission on which he’d met the Midnight Angel. He knew that this Witness and the Angel had a history between them, but she’d never revealed the extent of it and he’d never asked her. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘no sense in putting this off.’ He looked at IBT. ‘Get in place. Move when you hear the shots.’

‘Give me three minutes,’ IBT said.

‘You got it,’ Ray said, and the Tongue slithered off into the darkness.

‘You don’t want to do this,’ the Angel said.

‘Kill these guys?’ Ray shrugged. ‘Not particularly.’

‘No.’ The Angel smiled. ‘You’re not cold-blooded. Hot-blooded, yes. But you can’t kill from ambush.’

‘There’s always a first time,’ Ray said.

‘Not if there’s another way.’

‘I told you. All you had to do is get me here. I would take care of the rest.’

‘I love you,’ the Angel said.

Ray smiled. ‘That’s good to hear.’

‘I know.’ She bowed her head. ‘Save me from evil, Lord,’ she prayed for the first time in months, ‘and heal this warrior’s heart.’

Her wings appeared and she shot up into the sky. She was above the sight line from the bridge in a second, a reverse meteor burning through the sky. In her hands, Ray saw, was her flaming sword. She flew above the bridge, cut her way through the roof, and dropped down on top of them. The sword cut two swaths through the air, left and right, and the barrels of the guns dropped, severed in two. She broke her grip on the sword’s hilt and it disappeared, going wherever the hell it went when she didn’t need it. Then she used her fists on them. They didn’t stand a chance.

‘You!’ the Witness said.

‘Me,’ the Angel agreed, and advanced on him.

He backed away, saying, ‘Not again, not again!’

‘Hmm,’ Ray said, and fired two shots into the air.

IBT burst through the door and threw a couple of loops of his body around the Witness.

‘The serpent!’ the Witness screamed. ‘Oh, God, not the serpent! Save me, oh, God, save me!’

IBT started to squeeze and the Witness screamed like a little girl.

Next to Ray, Maximillian Klingensmith appeared from out of the shadows.

‘Where you been?’ Ray asked.

‘Hiding from that snake guy,’ he said. ‘Everything under control?’

‘I guess so,’ Ray said.


♣

But, no, Ray realized. Their troubles were far from over.

He stood in what remained of the bridge, with the Angel, Olena, IBT, and the Schröder’s captain and mate. The Witness, who’d fainted dead away when the IBT had grabbed him, was tied up with his surviving men in the hold. The Schröder was still steaming upriver, being chased by more launches and followed on the road running alongside the river by a line of screaming police cars, their sirens wailing in the night.

‘Now what?’ Olena said miserably. ‘Our last hope is gone. Cuba was our last haven. What can we do now? We can’t let them be taken to Rathlin. That’s a prison sentence, a virtual death sentence.’

They all exchanged glances.

‘Well,’ Ray said, ‘far be it from me to encourage illegal behavior, but I think your best chance is to run for it.’

‘What?’ Olena said.

Ray shrugged. ‘Find someplace, run the ship aground, and leg it. Some of the refugees will probably be caught, but you can hardly have a more emotionally heart-touching revelation of their plight. The publicity will be killer. In the meantime, many will get away. It’s a big country. I’m sure there’s people out there willing to help, one way or another.’

‘But you, you say this? You represent the government.’

Ray sighed. ‘I’ve represented the government for forty years, and if it’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the government isn’t always right. The right thing for them in this case was to help your people, not turn their backs on them.’

‘The Lord,’ the Angel said quietly, ‘helps those who help themselves.’

‘There you go,’ Ray said.

Olena and IBT looked at each other. Then she looked at the captain.

‘Can this be done safely?’

‘Relatively,’ he said.

‘But your ship?’

He sighed. ‘My ship is old and so am I. I think we are both ready to retire.’

Olena took a deep breath. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it.’


♠

‘Are we doing the right thing here, Angel?’ Ray asked as they watched the crowd of refugees swarm the deck.

‘I think you’ve given them their best chance,’ she said.

They looked at Munnin. The patch was back over his left eye. ‘I see nothing,’ he said.

‘That’s probably for the best,’ Ray said. ‘Better hang on.’

They all grabbed onto the derrick in the center of the deck as the captain ran the ship aground. It hit the riverbank in the midst of a dark industrial area that consisted of large buildings set in a warren of narrow streets and alleys. The ship shuddered with a groaning cry of old metal tearing. Although the three kept their feet, on the deck below them many of the refugees went down. Some skidded and rolled, but most all got to their feet immediately and it was every man, woman, and child for themselves. They swarmed down gangplanks and ladders. The confident swimmers went over the side and into the water below.

The launches following them stopped dead, the police cars racing up the road skidded to a halt. The three SCARE agents watched the show unfold. It was like watching a surrealistic version of an old Keystone Kops movie with sound effects.

The refugees, vastly outnumbering their pursuers, were fleeing in all directions. Some few, of course, were caught.

Gunfire erupted from one police boat as someone started shooting at those who were swimming for it. Suddenly a vast, dark form erupted out of the river. It slammed into the launch, half lifting it out of the water. The launch rocked uncontrollably, and to Ray’s astonishment he realized that the attacker was a giant alligator. It was the largest gator that Ray had ever seen, fifteen feet long if it was an inch. The gator managed to hook a leg over the edge of the boat and clambered aboard like an avenging demon. It swept the boat clean of cops using its tail and then bellowed, its cry roaring eerily into the night. Using its snout as a battering ram, it sank the boat, then slipped under the water.

‘That’s not something you see every day,’ Ray remarked.

A barge rowed by zombies cut through the water, picking up a handful of refugees. Ray could see the Handsmith and his son among them before it disappeared into the darkness.

A golden creature, the winged Tulpar, appeared on the shore and charged the lead car in the police caravan that was chasing refugees who were fleeing into the warren of warehouses and industrial plants, smashing in its hood with her razor-sharp hooves. She leaped up onto the car’s roof, crumpling it, and managed to cripple half a dozen more before vanishing into the night.

The show was interrupted when Evangelique Jones appeared in one of the launches, looking up at them on the Schröder’s deck and shouting.

‘What’s going on here?’ she cried. ‘Why aren’t you helping to round up these illegal aliens?’

‘Not my assignment,’ Ray called down.

‘I’ll have your badge for this!’ Jones screamed at him.

‘All right,’ Ray said. He took it out and scaled it down at her. As usual, his aim was impeccable. It hit her in her ample bosom and fell down at her feet. She stared at him, her jaw dropping.

Ray looked at the Angel. She laughed aloud for the first time in way too long. Ray smiled at her. Her aim wasn’t as good. Hers plunked down into the river somewhere near the launch’s bow. Ray looked at Max.

‘You might want to hang on to yours.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the young agent said stoically.

‘It was nice working with you,’ Ray said.

‘Nice working with you, sir,’ Max replied.

Arm in arm, Ray and the Angel walked down one of the gangplanks leading to the riverbank. He felt relieved. Almost light-headed. For the first time in years it seemed as if nothing, not a single part of his body, hurt.

‘What now?’ the Angel asked.

Ray pursed his lips. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and saying it felt very good.

They’d walked a couple of miles down the riverbank back toward New Orleans, when Ray suddenly stopped.

‘Crap,’ he said. ‘I forgot all about the Witness and his men tied up in the Schröder’s hold.’

The Angel looked at him. ‘Would you think less of me if I told you that I hadn’t?’

Ray shrugged. ‘Oh well. Maybe someone will find them.’

Laughing, they resumed their stroll, heading toward the rising sun.


♣ ♦ ♠ ♥




In the Shadow of Tall Stacks

Part 3


Wilbur Leathers felt steam hissing in the boilers and surging through the lines as Travis Cottle, the current chief engineer – a coffee- and cigarette-addicted middle-aged man with graying and thinning brown hair – checked and tweaked the boilers, lines, and engines for the Natchez’s impending departure from New Orleans. Cottle was rather obsessive, in Wilbur’s opinion, always consulting the pressure gauges within the system – which dropped briefly whenever Wilbur borrowed steam from the lines, random failures of the system that seemed to infuriate Cottle as he could find no explanation for the pressure drops. If Wilbur wanted to, he could plunge his hands into one of the lines and draw the steam into him right now, allowing it to fill his body, and sending Cottle off on yet another paroxysm of double-checking all the lines and recalibrating the gauges.

Wilbur told himself he’d do that later. Maybe he’d even allow himself to become steamily visible, and if a passenger or two glimpsed him in the dark, it would only add to the popularity of the Natchez – though he’d make damn certain it wasn’t that obnoxious Dead Report crew; he didn’t intend to give them the pleasure.

Still, he could almost hear the shriek of alarm and wonder that would result. ‘Oh my God! Look! That’s Steam Wilbur! We’re actually seeing him! He’s real!’ But later. Later. Maybe. He’d left Cottle to his work, finding something on the main deck that interested him far more.

He could hear the Jokertown Boys doing their late show up in the Bayou Lounge – all of the passengers seemed to be there; the main deck was largely deserted and the main gangway had been withdrawn. The Quarter lights threw their futile beams into an overcast and occasionally dripping night sky. The promenades on the deck were empty, the passengers nearly all choosing to stay inside against the threatening weather.

There was some commotion going on downriver from where they were berthed. Wilbur could see a constellation of blue and red flashing lights crowding the shore a few miles downriver, and spotlights tore at the low clouds nearby, though whatever action they were illuminating was just beyond the downriver bend. He wondered what was happening, and if it had to do with that joker freighter.

JoHanna Potts, the head clerk, waited near the head of the gangway along with a quartet of deckhands. Jack, an older Cajun man whose skin looked as crinkled and dark as alligator hide, walked anxiously along the Natchez’s landing at the river’s edge; Jack had been hired as one of the bartenders for this cruise. Jack and JoHanna put Wilbur in mind of the old nursery rhyme about Jack Sprat and his wife: JoHanna was a wide and heavy African-American woman whose wrists and neck glittered with strands of gaudy costume jewelry; Jack, conversely, was rail-thin, normally dressed in dark pants and the white jacket he wore as bartender. But he wasn’t dressed that way now; in fact, his clothes seemed to be in tatters and soaked besides, and Wilbur couldn’t imagine what the old Cajun was doing out there.

As Wilbur pondered the scene, a small barge emerged from the darkness of the river. Wilbur stared at the craft in shock: it was being rowed by what appeared to be several … zombies. At least that’s what the rotting, peeling, and discolored flesh of their bodies, the jerky movements as they paddled the barge, and the horrific smell that the breeze off the river would indicate. Jack was hurrying over to the barge and helping perhaps twenty people inside out onto the landing. When they were all on the shore, the zombie crew – if that’s truly what they were – pushed away again, vanishing quickly into the night and heading back downriver.

‘Go on,’ he heard JoHanna say to the deckhands, who swung the gangway over to the dock once more. Wilbur went to the rail of the main deck; he could see Jack herding the people from the barge toward the Natchez. JoHanna waved to them, and the clot of people moved quickly up the gangway and onto the boat. The first of them came up the gangway and approached JoHanna; in the deck lights, Wilbur saw the man more clearly: a face neither young nor old, lined and weathered. His clothing was ragged, soiled, and tattered; most strange was the fact that his hands were covered by burlap, the rough cloth tied around them at his wrists. It didn’t look to Wilbur as if there were actual hands under those improvised mittens, nor did the man extend his hand to JoHanna. ‘I’m Jyrgal,’ he said, his voice heavily accented, his words halting. ‘Some call me the Handsmith. We are very grateful to you for your help.’ Sounds Russian, Wilbur thought, then he saw the others with him.

A boy stood behind Jyrgal, looking like a kid trying to play a ghost for Halloween, his head protruding from a simple sheet. The boy’s skin glistened and seemed to be covered in some gelatinous goo. Wilbur couldn’t see the boy’s hands; they were wrapped in a fold of the sheet. Jokers. Another man stepped up behind the two, also a joker, with a scaled, almost fishlike face, and a beaver’s tail protruding from underneath the hem of the long overcoat he wore. It struck Wilbur suddenly as the others came onto the deck of the Natchez, perhaps twenty of them: These people. These jokers … They must be from the Schröder – some of the Kazakh refugees. What in the world are they doing here on my boat?

The deckhands were already pulling in the gangway and swinging it forward once more, lashing it down. Jack had somehow disappeared entirely. Wilbur could hear footsteps and calls from the forward stairs. JoHanna gestured urgently to those jokers. ‘Follow me,’ JoHanna said. ‘Quietly; I can trust these men, but we can’t have anyone else seeing you …’

She led them with her wide, slow walk toward the stairs at the stern of the boat and began heavily climbing. As the last of the refugees was halfway up the stairs, following her, additional crewmembers began to spill out onto the main deck. ‘The cap’n’s putting us under way,’ Wilbur heard one of them say.

‘She’s in a fucking shitty mood, too,’ another replied. ‘Make sure everything’s ready unless you want her to bite your head off.’

‘Prob’ly her time of the month,’ one of the quartet who had helped JoHanna called back. Rough laughter followed.

‘Quit yappin’ and start workin’.’ A tinny voice rattled the speaker of the intercom from the pilothouse on the hurricane deck: Jeremiah Smalls, the head pilot of the Natchez. ‘Otherwise I’ll mention that last remark to the cap’n, an’ I’ll help her toss any heads she bites off over the side. I intend to pull away from this dock in fifteen minutes. It’s a lousy night, but steam’s up and time’s a-wastin’, people, so either do your jobs or get off the boat.’

The voices faded as Wilbur followed JoHanna and the refugees: up past the boiler deck to the texas deck. Captain Montaigne was standing at the head of the stairs, watching them as the group ascended. She nodded to JoHanna – breathing heavily from the ascent – and to Jyrgal. If she was struck by the appearance of these people, her face showed nothing of it.

‘I’ve made sure all the crew except Jeremiah’s off this deck at the moment – and he’s up in the pilothouse, making preparations for us to disembark,’ the captain said. ‘Some of you will be staying in adjacent staterooms up here; the rest will be moving to one of the crew rooms down on the main deck – JoHanna will take you down as soon as we’re done here. With so many of you, it’s going to be close quarters, I’m afraid, at least at first, and you’re going to have to be quiet and careful. If you’re discovered and the authorities are called in, you’ll all be deported and everyone who has helped you get here will be in great trouble. Do you understand me?’

‘We do, Captain,’ Jyrgal answered. ‘JoHanna and Jack have both told us this. We’ll cause you no trouble. You have my word.’

‘See that you keep that promise,’ Montaigne said. To Wilbur, she looked uncertain and more than a little worried about the prospect. Still, she nodded and allowed JoHanna to lead the little group to the stateroom toward the stern, next to JoHanna’s own room. JoHanna hurried them in, then shut the door quickly behind them as Wilbur watched Captain Montaigne climb the short flight of stairs up to the hurricane deck and the pilothouse. Wilbur went to the wall of the refugees’ room and pushed himself through until he stood inside, though he kept his form deliberately invisible for the moment.

‘… best we could do,’ JoHanna was saying, with Jyrgal translating to the others. ‘Jyrgal will select the group to go down to the main deck with me.’ The captain hadn’t been joking about tight quarters – even with a portion of the group leaving, this was worse than the crew bunk rooms down on the main deck. Wilbur had no idea how all of them were going to sleep, much less tolerate being in the same room for any amount of time. JoHanna pointed to an interior door to the left. ‘That door leads to an adjoining cabin that’s also for your use. I’ve put mats in there for sleeping; you can roll them up for more room when you’re not using them. Each room also has its own bathroom, as does the room on the main deck, so you don’t need to go outside for that. I’ll have a trusted crew member, maybe Jack but possibly someone else, drop off food for everyone and pick up the trays afterward. If you hear a knock like this’ – JoHanna knocked on the wall: two quick raps, a pause, three more quick ones, then a last short one – ‘you can open the outside door. Otherwise, don’t open the door for anyone else, keep it locked from the inside, and make sure the windows are always covered. Does everyone – and I mean every one of you – understand that?’

The group nodded, their assorted faces – most displaying obvious joker attributes – solemn. ‘Good,’ JoHanna said. ‘Arrangements are being made through the Joker Anti-Defamation League, the JADL, to get you to sanctuary cities along the river. We’ll be dropping you off along the way, no more than two or three at a time, where you’ll be given aid. In the meantime, make yourselves as comfortable as you can and stay as quiet as possible.’

‘You should not worry,’ Jyrgal told her in his slow English. ‘This is much better than where we were, and we are very grateful for your help.’

JoHanna gave a sigh as she went to the door. ‘No one deserves to be treated the way you have, and I’m ashamed for my country. I’m glad we could help. I just hope …’ She didn’t finish the thought, and Wilbur watched her nod to the refugees. ‘All right, those who Jyrgal chose, come with me.’ JoHanna opened the door, peered out along the promenade, and slid out quickly, gesturing for the smaller group to follow her.

Wilbur remained behind. He stared at them – a threat to his boat and thus to his own safety – as memory swept over him …


♦

It was March of 1948, and he and Eleanor, not yet a year married, were in Cincinnati, where Wilbur was supervising the finishing touches on the Natchez, already afloat on the Ohio and readying for its maiden voyage down the Ohio and on to the Mississippi toward its future home of New Orleans. They’d been in the Netherland Plaza Pavillion Caprice, where they’d listened to the radio broadcast of the NCAA finals game between Baylor and Kentucky. Kentucky had won, 58–42, and Alex Groza had won the Most Outstanding Player trophy for having scored fifty-four points during the tournament. There were whispers among some of the people listening that perhaps the unstoppable Groza might be one of those ‘aces’ that people were talking about.

Now, with the ball game over and a local band playing on the stage, they were enjoying highballs at their table as the waitstaff, nearly all of them colored, circulated among the tables. Wilbur was telling Eleanor some of the history of his grandfather’s sequence of Natchez steamboats. ‘He was a tough and stubborn old bird, from what I understand. Had to be, to keep building all those new boats time and time again.’

‘You never knew him?’ Eleanor asked. She was scissoring a jeweled pendant in her fingers, the light catching on the facets of the large emerald that was its centerpiece: a gift from her parents when they’d announced their engagement.

‘He died in New Orleans in 1896, twenty years before I’d be born – believe it or not, after being struck by a hit-and-run bicyclist. My dad was only three at the time.’ Wilbur lifted a hand at the slow beginning of his wife’s smile. ‘Uh-uh. You’re not allowed to laugh at that,’ he said. ‘It was a tragedy.’

‘Being killed by a hit-and-run bicycle?’

‘Grandpa Thomas was eighty. Not exactly a spring chicken.’

‘Thought you said he was a tough and stubborn old bird. Though if he still managed to get his poor second wife pregnant in his seventies …’ She laughed, and Wilbur had to laugh along with her.

‘He saw a lot in his time,’ he told her. ‘The Civil War, for instance.’

Eleanor nodded at that, sipping at her highball. One of the waiters passed the table, refilling their water glasses, his skin starkly dark against the white sleeves of his jacket. Wilbur saw her gaze follow the man. ‘I’ve been reading up on steamboats on my own, since we’re going to be living on one,’ Eleanor said, her attention moving from the waiter back to Wilbur. ‘I learned that some of them used to smuggle slaves from the South. Brought them here to Cincinnati sometimes, in fact …’ She stopped, looking embarrassed, taking another, longer sip from the glass. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I know how your grandfather …’

Wilbur shrugged. ‘My grandfather was a man of his time and place,’ he said. ‘Yes, he was a Confederate and unapologetic about his views. Heck, Eleanor, the sixth Natchez took Jefferson Davis to his home after he’d been elected president of the Confederate States of America; Granddad used his boat to transport Confederate troops to Memphis; and – according to what I’ve been told by family – he deliberately torched that Natchez in 1863 to keep her from being seized by Union forces. He never smuggled any slaves to freedom; in fact, from what I’ve been told, he despised the captains who did and considered them traitors. After the war, he refused to fly the Stars and Stripes flag on any of his boats – he finally, finally let the eighth Natchez raise the American flag in 1885, as she passed Vicksburg. Sometimes …’ Wilbur managed a wan smile and lifted his own drink. ‘Sometimes I think I’m glad I never had the chance to know him. After what I saw in the war, after what we heard was done in Germany to the Jews, and the horrors the Japs inflicted on the Chinese … well, Grandpa Thomas’s political beliefs feel like a bloody stain on my family’s legacy.’ He grunted a short, deprecating laugh. ‘Families – they all have skeletons they’d prefer to keep buried.’

‘You’re not your grandfather, Wilbur,’ she told him. ‘As you said, he was a man of his time. Any sins he might have committed aren’t yours to bear.’ She put her hand over his on the tablecloth, her wide blue eyes searching his own. ‘You aren’t him, Wilbur,’ she said with a slow emphasis. ‘You’re a far better and wiser man. I wouldn’t have fallen in love with someone who wasn’t also a good and compassionate person. Which is what you are.’

She leaned over and kissed him. ‘Now let’s go upstairs to our room,’ she said. ‘And no more talking about your grandpa Thomas.’


♥

He remembered how they’d made love that night, and how they’d moved aboard the Natchez two days later, which would be their home for the next three years, until that day when everything changed …

Now Wilbur was looking at twenty or so ragged, tired, and frightened refugees packed into a cabin just as those smuggled slaves might have been a century and a half earlier, and the sight tore at him. Here, it seemed, was a chance for the Natchez to atone, at least a little, for Thomas. Here was a chance for Wilbur to do something his grandfather had refused to do.

What Eleanor, with her empathy for anyone in trouble, would have insisted he do. She’d called Wilbur ‘good and compassionate’. He was afraid she’d overstated his qualities, but …

For Eleanor’s sake, he would help Captain Montaigne, JoHanna, and Jack to bring these people to freedom. He would do what he could to make sure that happened.

Wilbur went to the nearest wall, where the steam lines ran to the ’scape pipes. He could feel the warmth of the steam like a welcome embrace, and he closed his eyes, pushing his hands through the wall and into the pipe, absorbing the heat that flowed there and letting it fill him. As he took in the steam, he also allowed his form to slowly materialize in wispy clouds. With only a single light on in the otherwise dark room, he was easily visible – in the mirror installed on the far wall, he could see his semitransparent, cloud-like form: a middle-aged man in an old-fashioned captain’s uniform and cap – Wilbur as he’d once been.

A young woman with a froth of lacy gills around her neck was the first of the refugees to notice him. She gasped and pointed, and a babble of voices erupted around him. The beaver-like joker glared at him threateningly. Wilbur lifted a finger to his lips, shaking his head, and they quieted, all of them moving back from the apparition. He motioned to Jyrgal to come closer; the joker did so with obvious reluctance. ‘I will also help you,’ Wilbur said slowly with an exaggerated emphasis, though he knew that none of the living could hear him. He’d hoped that the joker could manage to read his lips, but Jyrgal shook his head.

‘I do not understand you,’ he said. Fear trembled in his voice, and a mittened hand touched his ear. ‘I can’t hear the words …’

Wilbur glanced around the room for paper and a pen or pencil. Seeing none, he sighed and glided, cloud-like, over to the mirror. They moved aside as he approached, as if he were Moses parting the Red Sea. Standing in front of the mirror, he raised his hand; using his index finger as a pencil, he wrote on the mirror in steamy, blurred, and dripping letters:

YOU MUST DO AS THEY SAY. YOU MUST STAY HIDDEN.

He looked at Jyrgal. The man was staring at the writing, but Wilbur couldn’t tell if he could read English or not. There was a box of tissues on a small table under the mirror; in his steam form, Wilbur was capable of handling and moving small objects. He plucked a tissue from the box and used it to wipe away the letters, then placed the now-sopping tissue back on the table. He wrote again.

I WILL ALSO HELP YOU.

Jyrgal still stared, as did the others. ‘Do you understand?’ Wilbur asked. ‘Tell me.’

No one answered, at least not in English. There was only the chaos of voices speaking their own language, and Jyrgal’s expression didn’t lend any confidence that he understood the writing.

Wilbur held out his hand to the mirror again; this time it didn’t steam up as quickly, and he could see from the increasing transparency of his reflection that his steam-created body had cooled somewhat – he could never stay long in full steam form. Glancing around at the refugees around him, he chose one who looked young and in relatively good health: a rather excessively hairy young man with four arms. He slid quickly into the joker’s body before the young man had time to move.

Carefully … After killing Carpenter by doing what he was doing now, Wilbur hadn’t tried to take possession of a body for a long time, but over the decades, driven by curiosity and wanting to find a way off the Natchez, he had – though he’d found that even in possession of another person’s body, the ship still wouldn’t permit him to leave. But he knew now to allow his body to cool significantly first before entering a person, and not to stay too long.

In the moment Wilbur slid into the body of the joker from Kazakhstan, he was the joker. He knew the man’s name: Tazhibai. He could feel Tazhibai’s confusion and fear, and images of the man’s memory flooded him. Wilbur ignored the glimpses of Tazhibai’s life – he didn’t have the luxury of time to examine them, not if he wanted Tazhibai to live.

Instead, he quickly wrenched away control of Tazhibai’s body from the joker. He pointed to Jyrgal with all four arms (a decidedly strange sensation, Wilbur thought), and spoke in English. ‘Don’t be afraid. My name is Wilbur, and I’m also here to help you,’ he said. ‘Do as JoHanna and the captain tell you, and I will also watch over all of you. Tell them, Jyrgal. Oh, and this young man isn’t going to be feeling very good for the next few hours. Tell him I’m terribly sorry, but this was the easiest way for you to understand me.’

With that, Wilbur slid away from the joker again. The young man’s clothing was drenched, and he was suddenly and rather explosively ill from the effects of the hot steam and the water his body had taken in. ‘Really, really sorry,’ Wilbur said again, though he knew none of them could hear him now. They were all staring at him, uncertain. ‘Okay, then … I’ll check in on you later.’

With that, he turned – all of them moving back quickly except for the four-armed joker, who crouched, moaning, on the floor as a young woman with incredibly long arms but only short stubs for legs put an arm around him in comfort and stared at Wilbur with decided malice. Wilbur slid across the room to the outside wall and through.

He left behind a man-shaped, dripping wet spot on the wall.


♣

As he left the refugees’ cabin, Wilbur felt the boat lurch as the stern wheel suddenly engaged, followed by three short blasts from the steam whistle. The calliope wheezed and began playing ‘Southern Nights’ as the Natchez nosed out from the dock, the paddles lashing the brown water into foam as it pushed the boat against the Mississippi’s relentless southward current. Passengers crowded the rails down on the boiler deck, shouting loudly and holding plastic drink cups, waving to those on the shore.

They were under way.

Cool enough now that even if he wished it he was no longer easily visible, Wilbur went up the nearest starboard stairs to the hurricane deck. He could see Gimcrack, the keyboard player for the Jokertown Boys, standing at the calliope keyboard, decked out in a white dress shirt with puffy sleeves held down by sleeve garters, over which he wore a fancifully embroidered vest. The calliope’s pipes vented slightly off-key bursts of white steam in response to his fingers on the keys.

Evidently Captain Montaigne had opened the stairways on the port side of the boat to the passengers, who were normally not permitted on the hurricane deck. Some of them were watching Gimcrack play or gazing out over New Orleans, glittering and alight in the night with the river a dark, winding trail in its midst. Some of the passengers appeared to be jokers themselves: a few steps away, Wilbur saw one older man with a pair of gigantic, curling ram’s horns sprouting from his temples, holding hands with an extremely tall and extremely attractive older woman. Jokers or aces? Wilbur wondered.

The truth was that Wilbur had wondered that about himself. Every ghost he ever heard about in stories had been a cold presence; he was a hot one. And he’d seen how the wild card virus could change someone drastically: after all, he’d been there in New York to see it start.

He would never forget …


♠

It was September 15, 1946 …




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