Richard Kadrey - Dead Set

“But you just did it,” she said. “You said you’re supposed to rest now. They can’t call you right back. Can they?”

Her father looked down at her. “It’s never happened before.” He leaned his head on his arms, propped on the sea horse’s back. “I know what this is. It’s Hecate. She wants to trap you and she thinks if she calls me back you’ll follow. You have to leave now. Right now. To hell with the tide. I have to go to the café.” He let go of the sea horse and collapsed onto the carousel platform.

Zoe scrambled over to him and pulled him upright. “Look at you. You can’t even stand up,” she said. “I’m supposed to watch you walk off and get bled to death?”

“Neither of us has a choice.”

She stood and pushed her father back against the carousel pole. She smiled at him. “Listen to me. Don’t go.”

“I have to. I can’t help myself.”

“Try. I know what to do. It’s so simple,” she said. She stopped at the edge of the platform. “Stay here. Don’t follow the siren. Fight it. Everything is going to be all right.”

She jumped down onto the sand. Her father said something as she went, but she couldn’t hear him over the wailing of the siren. Zoe felt good, energized, better than she’d felt since the funeral. For the first time she saw things with total clarity and knew exactly what she had to do. It was so simple. She was a little scared as she fell into step with the souls marching to the café, but she was excited, too. It felt good to be doing something real after having lived so long in a stagnant gray gloom. She wondered if it hurt when you were covered with the snakes. A few had bitten her the last time. The bites stung a little, but it wasn’t that bad. She remembered that Mr. Danvers had said there were bats and snakes with anesthetic in their saliva, so their prey wouldn’t feel their bite. Maybe these snakes were like that. She took a deep breath and let it out, knowing that she’d have the answer soon enough.

This is was what I should have done the moment I got to Iphigene . It’s what the city wanted-blood and sacrifice-and it would have it. Not a pale ghost version, but the blood of a living person. That should make Hecate happy enough to leave Dad alone.

She fell into step with the other dazed spirits, jostling and being jostled as she pushed her way to the middle of the throng. She was nervous, but she knew that was all right; normal, even. Zoe let go of everything she’d been clinging to and let herself be swept along by the tide of dead souls.

In front of her was an older man who was nearly bald. A few bristly sugar-white hairs on the back of his head were pressed flat by a plastic bag pulled tight onto his scalp. Reading upside down, Zoe made out the words WHITE RABBIT and saw a picture of an overly cute bunny. She remembered White Rabbit candies. They sometimes came with the check when her family would go out for dinner in Chinatown. The old man in front of her was using the bag as a makeshift rain hat. Next to him was a girl just a few years older than Zoe. Her head was shaved and she had large Chinese-style dragons tattooed on her scalp above each ear. The dragon on the left was red and the one on the right was blue. Zoe wondered what that meant. She wished she’d met the girl somewhere else so she could ask. She looked like someone who would have been in the club the night her mother and father met.

The steady sound of the siren soon melted into the background and everything seemed to go very quiet. Zoe’s gaze flickered back and forth between the twin dragons and the cartoon rabbit as she splashed through the silent streets.

Time was moving in funny ways. A block could shoot by in a second, but passing a single building could take hours. It was the fear, she knew, playing with her head. Zoe closed her eyes and let the crowd guide her with the motion of their bodies. She felt like an overwound guitar string, vibrating at some unnaturally bright and delirious frequency, knowing she could snap at any moment. She hoped they reached the café soon.

A moment later, the siren stopped, for real this time, leaving the street in unsettling quiet. Zoe opened her eyes. There in front of her was the café. Scared though she was, she smiled to herself, suddenly remembering something her mother had once told her: “Be careful what you wish for.” Without a word, the crowd began filing through the open door. Zoe followed them in.

Inside, she went to an empty table near the front window. It felt important that she be able to see outside and not be suffocated by the Half Moon Café’s drab walls. The gray street through the window might be dead, but at least it looked a little bit like the world and home.

Zoe took off her coat slowly. She had to. Her hands felt thick and clumsy, like she was wearing mittens. She took a deep breath, her face filling with heat. She ignored the sensation, refusing to think about it. She didn’t allow any thoughts to form in her mind at all. What she needed to do was to keep her body moving and not think about anything.

She stood and folded her overcoat, but as she dropped it over the back of her chair, the straight razor clattered to the floor. She grabbed it up and stuffed it into the pocket of her hoodie, hoping that no one had seen it, but it gave her an idea. She checked her pants pockets, and when what she was looking for wasn’t there, she checked the pockets of her coat. Nothing. Valentine’s compass was gone. Somewhere, through all the running and hiding, she’d lost it. It was too bad. It was something of his and something from home. And so she wrapped her fingers around the razor. She needed something to hold on to when it, and it was the only word her mind would permit her at that point, was happening. She unzipped her hoodie and pushed it back, exposing her shoulders and neck. She pushed up her sleeves and rested her hands on the table, waiting.

Nothing moved outside the window. Everyone was inside. The café was about half full. Zoe turned around in her seat. No one was talking to anyone. Most people were staring off into space, either still under the hypnotic effects of the siren or just wanting not to make eye contact with anyone. Zoe looked around for the man with the White Rabbit bag on his head, but she couldn’t find him. She spotted the girl with the tattoos near the back of the place, under a dusty cuckoo clock. Zoe smiled at her, but the girl turned away.

Without her wanting it, an image of her mother popped into her head. She wondered where her mother was right now. In a funny way, as far as Zoe was from home, she felt close to her. She’d made her own sacrifice, given up so much, and now here was Zoe about to do the same and she wanted to talk to her mother about it, maybe thank her and maybe get some reassurance that she was doing the right thing. I don’t even know what’s going to happen next. Wish I’d had the chance to say something to her in case I’m not going home.

“Look at the brave little princess all alone. Where’s Daddy? Did he abandon you again? First in the world above and now here. He’s not a very good daddy, is he?” Zoe knew who was speaking without turning around, though his voice was different now. It was more of a whisper, and he had a slight lisp that turned each s into a hiss.

Zoe looked up into Emmett’s cold snake eyes. He was a horrible sight-a glistening cobra’s head perched atop a man’s body. His tongue shot out every few seconds to taste the air. Ugly as he was, seeing him now, she wasn’t frightened as she had been the first time she saw him. The awful thing she’d been dreading was happening and was no longer a crippling imaginary terror. As scared as she was, she could hide it. Don’t give him the satisfaction, she thought.