Richard Kadrey - Dead Set

I should have stayed in that room with the teeth and hair and tears. That’s where I belong. That’s all I am. . Just pieces of a person .

Something snapped inside her, and without thinking, Zoe screamed and kicked the stone in front of her. It hurt, but she didn’t care. She grabbed garbage from the floor and hurled it at the wall-cans, old magazines, a motorcycle chain, a beer bottle. The bottle shattered against rough rock, sending shards flying back at her. She covered her face, but felt blood running down her arms where pieces had cut her. The blood mixed with the black filth on her hands. The sight of it made her very tired. Tears ran down her face. She wiped them away and sagged against the wall.

From far below, something rumbled. Zoe stepped back and the noise stopped. She pressed her weight into the stones, but nothing happened. She touched the stones to see if she could feel any movement. The rumbling came again, faintly. A moment later, the wall started to open, but stopped when she pulled back her hands. Zoe looked down and understood. She wiped her hands over her face, smearing her tears onto them, then touched the wall again. When her wet fingers came in contact with the stone, the wall swung back like a door opening.

Another tunnel lay ahead, crowded with the skeletons of rusted-out old buses half buried in mud. There was a narrow pathway through the debris, and at the end of the path was an opening onto what looked like a street.

Slowly and carefully, Zoe made her way between the mounds of garbage, limping on her twisted ankle. Rats scrabbled along the tops of the buses, their small, sharp claws ticking on the metal. Zoe could see their glittering eyes and twitching, inquisitive noses as they followed her passage through their kingdom. There was nothing threatening about the rats. They were just curious and cautious, but she also got the idea that the rats were partly staring at her in wonder, as if they knew something she didn’t.

A light rain was falling where the tunnel ended. A street spread out before her and a cloudy sky hung above. It was night and the rain was stinging cold, but to Zoe it felt like the most glorious shower in the world. She held out her hands and rubbed them together, washing off as much of the grime as she could. Then she looked up and let the rain rinse her face clean. There was a full moon, high in the cloudy sky over a calm, black sea. It was a beautiful sight. A sudden blast of wind came from the direction of the water, carrying an ocean chill. Zoe shivered in her wet clothes. By the far wall a heavy black overcoat hung off the end of a bedpost. She picked up and inspected it. The coat was relatively clean and no rats seemed to have claimed it for their own, so she put it on. The weight and warmth made her feel better instantly. But that good feeling only lasted for a moment. Above the bedpost where the coat had hung, a single word was carved into the high granite wall:

IPHIGENE

There must be some mistake. The garbage-strewn passage and this dreary, pitted road couldn’t be part of the same town where she’d just spent a day with her father, could they? Maybe there was more than one Iphigene.

A horn blared at her from nearby. Two bright lights crossed over her. A screech echoed off the rocky cliff as tires tried to grip the wet road. Zoe lurched back and pressed herself against the hill. She’d wandered to the center of the road without even realizing it. A bus swerved around where she’d been a second earlier and continued on, disappearing around the curve. Everything was suddenly quiet, except for the rain, which was coming down harder than ever. Wind from the ocean threw itself against the hillside and the rain seemed suspended in the air, like shuddering Christmas lights. Iphigene, whatever version of Iphigene she’d stumbled into, lay just around the corner ahead. She’d come much too far to simply turn back without a look, so she started walking.

Her right leg hurt. She’d twisted her ankle coming down the giant stairs and now her whole leg throbbed. Her sneakers were soaked through, but she could live with that. It meant they couldn’t get any wetter. She pulled the coat tighter around her, hoping it would warm her up. It helped a little, but not much. As she neared the town, the rain turned to a fine mist. Zoe heard the sound of the surf breaking quietly on the shore below the boardwalk. The fat, ice-white moon cast its reflection onto the dark water. For just a moment, no more than a heartbeat, the moon looked to Zoe like a giant eye watching everything and everyone in Iphigene, including her. Then the feeling was gone and it was just the moon again.

Ahead, the bus that had almost run her down sat idling by the curb. The front and rear doors were open and people were stepping down to the pavement. Many of the new arrivals stood on the corner, seemingly confused. They turned in slow circles like lost dogs trying to catch a scent that would lead them home. A few walked up the street, drawn by the sounds coming from the bars, while others crossed over to the boardwalk to stare at the ocean.

Zoe approached a plump man in a dark brown suit at least a size too small for him. The rain plastered his straw-colored hair across his forehead and his white shirt across the ample curve of his belly. He and a handful of others seemed unwilling to move far from the idling bus.

“This isn’t right,” murmured the fat man.

“Uh, excuse me,” said Zoe.

He looked down at her. “It’s all wrong,” he said.

“I’m looking for someone.”

The plump man turned in a slow circle, his arms held out in a gesture of confusion. “It’s not supposed to be like this.” He wrapped his thick hands around the bus-stop sign and shook it, as if to see if it was real. When the sign stayed firmly rooted to the street, he seemed to shrink a little. He shuffled away, around the corner, muttering to himself, “This isn’t right.”

Zoe put up the collar on her coat and held it closed with one hand. She went down the strangely-familiar-but-unfamiliar street, keeping her head down, trying to blend in with the new arrivals. At least then she’d have an excuse for checking the place out so much.

What had gone wrong with the city? Zoe wondered. She passed the newsstand with the green awning. The newspapers and magazines lay in bloated piles, waterlogged and black with mildew. The clothing store where, she remembered, they sold coats like the one she now wore was empty. Broken mannequins lay among the sodden shadows, broken limbs scattered across the cracked linoleum floor.

On the next block, one of the big restaurants where, as her father had explained to her, nervous souls ate endless, pointless meals, was dark. The shattered front window had been carelessly repaired with cardboard and tape. Fireflies moved in sluggish lines inside the dirty glass. No, not fireflies, she thought as her eyes adjusted to the dark. People were moving around carrying miniature oil lamps made from ancient apothecary and liquor bottles. Zoe could make out a few faces inside the restaurant. They stared out at her with such hunger and dark resentment that it scared her. She turned away and crossed over to the boardwalk.

There were fewer people by the beach. An old man a few feet to her right was staring out at the moon, rubbing and flexing his arm as if it hurt. When he moved it, the arm squeaked. In the moonlight, Zoe saw that the man’s arms were tarnished metal pipes, sort of like what they used in the bathrooms at school. The man’s ragged coat was a patchwork of other coats, pieces of plastic, and what looked like vinyl from a car seat. All the pieces were stitched together crudely with string and wire. Zoe turned her head, looking down the length of the boulevard. A woman limped along on a carved leg from a piano bench. A young boy tossed a ball in the air and stabbed it in midair with a short knife that protruded from the end of his arm where his hand should be. Everyone on the street seemed to be held together with rags and junkyard plunder.