Richard Kadrey - Dead Set

“You’re hurt,” Valentine said. Her took her hand and helped her to the stairs. “Sit.”

Kneeling on the dirt floor, Valentine pulled a long, dirty white rag from the pocket of his greatcoat. He pulled off Zoe’s sneaker and socks and carefully wrapped the rag around her ankle and foot, slipping her sneaker back on when he was done. As he worked, all Zoe could see of him was the top of his head and the occasional glint of light off his iron hands.

“Try that,” Valentine said.

Zoe stood, slowly putting weight on her bad leg. It stung, but the pain didn’t make her want to retch anymore.

“That’s a lot better. Thanks.”

Valentine nodded and started up the stairs. At the top he turned and said, “Keep your coat buttoned and your head down. Walk slow, like you’ve got nowhere to go and all eternity to get there.”

“Do we have to go back out right now? I’m kind of freaked by this place.”

“ ’Course you are,” said Valentine. “You’re not supposed to be here. None of us are.”

He stepped out first, then motioned for Zoe to follow him. They walked down the wet night street away from the direction in which Zoe had been running. The rain was misting down, making tiny diamonds on her overcoat as she and Valentine came to better-lit streets. Zoe looped one of her arms around one of Valentine’s. She felt him stiffen for a moment, but he didn’t pull away.

They crossed a broad street that she recognized. They were near the bar and boardwalk where the crowd had spotted her, she thought, a little afraid. But this time she wasn’t alone. She looked at her sleeves, staring at the rain jewels there.

Heavily muscled, with bodies and huge heads that reminded her of the granite gargoyles on churches, enormous black dogs were eating something that lay in the gutter. The dogs from her dreams.

Zoe felt Valentine tug her arm. “Don’t look,” he said. “They’re Queen Hecate’s spies.”

Zoe couldn’t help glancing back. “What are they eating?” The dogs hungrily ripped into their food. “It almost looks like a body.”

“I told you not to look.”

Zoe closed her eyes for a few seconds and let Valentine lead her. All her life she’d wanted to live in her dreams with her brother and now her dreams had come true. But they weren’t alone and it was both wonderful and horrible.

When they were well past the dogs, Zoe whispered, “Valentine, what happened to the city? I was just here a day ago and it was beautiful.”

Valentine shook his head. “Nothing happened. The city’s been like this for as long as anyone can remember. Father tricked you with pretty pictures and sweet lies. He showed you what you wanted to see so you’d get the hell out and never come back. Why did you come back?”

“I think I did something bad. I just wanted to see if he was all right.”

“You think you’re going to fix anything? Look at this place. Look at these people. Look at me.” He lifted his head a little way out his high collar. She caught a glimpse of stitches in his face. Not the kind the doctor had given her after she’d fallen as a kid. These stitches were thick and crude, like wires in cheap leather. “Don’t worry. Father hasn’t been here long enough to look like me. But he’s not exactly what you remember.”

“What the fuck is this place? Are we in hell?”

“Yeah, but not the one you mean.” They turned off the well-lit streets into a darker industrial area. Broken fences ringed fields full of strange and fearsome machines: cranes with what looked like claws, bulldozers with teeth. What lay ahead was even stranger.

Just a few blocks off the main road, the streets weren’t straight anymore, and neither were the buildings. They twisted around, over and under each other, like weeds and vines in an abandoned garden. Some buildings stood straight up while others lay on their sides like snakes, wrapping around other twisted buildings, strangling the upright ones so they shrank to almost nothing at the middle but bulged at the tops and bottoms.

Valentine said, “The city used to be called Calumet. That means ‘peace.’ Now it’s Iphigene. Only Queen Hecate knows what that means, and no one’s asking her.”

“That’s the queen the dogs spy for?”

He nodded. “She rules Iphigene. We’re her loyal subjects. She’s been the queen here for over a thousand years. Maybe thousands. No one can say exactly.”

In the distance, Zoe thought she could see a dark apartment building rise from the ground, windows and doors sliding into place as the place unfurled like a blooming flower.

“She doesn’t sound like much of a queen.”

“The city wasn’t always like this. Before Hecate, we had day and night just like anywhere else. They say that when she crowned herself, the first thing she did was steal the sun out of the sky and hide it somewhere in her palace.”

“Why?”

“She’s the moon. The moon is Hecate.” He looked up at the bright white orb hanging over the sluggish ocean. “We can only love her and worship her under the moon. Anyway, that’s what the old-timers told me.”

The road took them under a kind of arch where two buildings had collided and grew upright against each other. Zoe could swear she heard a subtle crunch and creak as the buildings continued to move and grow above them.

“Old-timers. Old spirits, you mean? Old souls.” Zoe was suddenly cold again. “It’s all so real and solid here. It’s weird to think that everyone here is dead. That you’re all ghosts.”

“But that’s what we are.”

“But I can see you and touch you.”

“Spirits are real. And this is a place for spirits. You’re the strange one around here.”

She smiled a little at Valentine. “Thanks for letting me hold on to you. I know you don’t like it, but I really need to right now.”

“I’m just not used to it. It’s kind of nice, in a weird way. No one’s ever really, you know, touched me before.”

Zoe tightened the arm she’d looped through his and pulled him a little closer. He didn’t resist. “There’s Dad. He’s here now.”

“So? I’m just some strange guy in your dreams, remember?”

“No, you’re not. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have. . well, died.”

“If you’re going to get technical,” he said. Valentine drew in a long breath and blew mist into the night air. “Anyway, I know Father, but he’s doesn’t know I’m around. That’s how I like it, so don’t go doing nothing dramatic.”

“Are you mad at him?”

“Nope.”

“You’re hiding from him like you hid from me that time I upset you up in the tree fort.”

“Maybe. Or maybe just because, okay? Stop asking so many damned questions,” he snapped.

“Sorry.” Two black dogs were fighting over a dead rat in the middle of a deserted intersection. They stopped and watched Zoe and Valentine intently as they passed, then they went back to their fight.

“I’m sorry,” said Valentine. “I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s okay. Can I ask you one more question?”

“Sure.”

“You’re here, but Mom and Dad never talked about you. You’re not. . Mom and Dad didn’t. .”

“Am I an abortion, you mean?”

Zoe looked down at her feet. “Yeah.”

“A miscarriage. And that’s your last question about that. You’ve got other stuff to worry about.” On a street of derelict garages, Zoe followed Valentine up a fire escape two floors onto the tilted roof of one building. From three stories up, Iphigene was laid out at Zoe’s feet.

Gazing out toward the beach, she thought that the city didn’t look so bad. Kind of old and run-down, but not in a bad way. But the city was stranger when she looked inland. Nothing made sense. Streets bent and buckled and circled back on each other around buildings that lay like earthworms after a rain. It reminded Zoe of an M. C. Escher print Laura had of crazy stairs that ran into each other at impossible angles. Laura, Zoe thought. What would she think if she could see me now?