Ellen Datlow - After - Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

“The one called Caravaggio is going to direct this thing,” Depose told me. “He’ll get in touch. I trust you not to screw this up. Remember, Real, you owe me. You’re smart. You don’t need these dumb kids.” She indicated Dare and the boys.

And I nodded, kept my face straight, my eyes right on hers.

Depose was a power. When the militia at Liberty Land needed something done in the city, she was the one they hired. Somewhere down the line she’d want me working for her, but I didn’t want to get close and didn’t want to have to find out what was inside her brain.

In October the sun starts going down fast. We bought food and water at the Red Crescent kitchen before we headed back to our place, making a tight group with the boys on the outside and Dare and me and the gold in the center.

I told Dare what Depose told me, and she said, “If that’s Mai Kin, she tried to make herself look like you. Why did that happen?”

I shook my head because I didn’t know. “If what Depose told me means anything, there’ll be money.”

Dare said, “I don’t want that bull to think she owns us.”

Old people who remember twenty-five years back talk about how hot it is now, but winter when it comes can kill if you can’t stay warm. “We both felt cold a couple of nights ago,” I said. “It’s still okay in the days, but that’s what’s coming. Things are jumpy lately and we may need lots of gold to survive.”

Dare listened and said, “Okay, you’re right,” and I reached up and kissed her. Dumb girls have boyfriends; smart girls have other girls. And smart girls and gay boys are natural allies.

The street we were walking on had a lot of burned houses and an old railroad overhead that had mostly fallen down. Eighth Avenue when we crossed it had people. An open market about ten blocks uptown was breaking up; people loaded carts and trucks. Downtown, a UN Peacekeepers armored car was crossing the avenue.

On the next block a bicycle boy whizzed past, turned a hundred feet away, and looked us over. Another bike boy was on the other side of the busted street, then a third and a fourth. All of them thin with faces like the vultures you see sometimes near the river. They knew us and that we were coming back with gold; they called us faggots and dykes.

But the Peacekeepers shoot people like them if they see they have guns, and we’d handled these guys before. Our boys had their knives out, Dare had her hand on the jump pistol under her caftan, Not and Hassid yelled that the bike boys would starve soon. We never stopped moving, and they kept circling but never closed.

Then because it felt like the right time, I looked one in the face and caught sight of us in his eyes, caught the way he saw us: we were gold, we were sex. Then he knew something was inside him and freaked, almost fell off his bike before he and the rest of them faded away.

My mother knew some stuff about getting by. When there were still parties, when there was the thought of getting close to the ones running things and running with them, my mother was on the job. But wherever I got this skill, I didn’t get it from her.

I never met my father but she told me he was someone who traveled in important circles. He must have been some kind of prospect, because I think the reason she had me was to try and make him marry her.

People my mother’s age were big on names. When there’s no money, people do things like that. Dare’s mother named her only daughter Virginia Dare, after the first European baby born in the USA. The Virginia part got discarded since anything you hear about Washington and Virginia sounds worse than here.

But she kept the Dare. It’s an old word meaning tough, which is what she is: tough and beautiful. “Real!” she said, and I looked where she was looking. We were almost at our place. But on the next corner a building had fallen down last winter and blocked most of the street, and on the wreckage were Regalia and her crew.

Regalia was a six-foot-tall queen with paint on her face and an ax in her hand. A couple of years ago she had this giant boy Call who followed her like a stray dog, and her crew was IT.

But Call was dead white and got too much sun, which did him in. They say his face is partly gone and he’s a skeleton. I haven’t heard he’s dead but I haven’t seen him either.

In the last few weeks the city seemed to go desperate. For the second time in two blocks a gang wanted to take us on for a few gold coins. Again Dare took the lead and we came on like they weren’t even there. Her blade was in her right hand and her left was under her robe. Two steps more and she’d have drawn the jump gun and put a slug in Regalia’s stomach. I was reaching for Regalia’s brain.

It would have been better if we’d gone in and snuffed Regalia right then. Instead a truck with guys standing on the back and packing rifles came out of the twilight.

Regalia’s people saw this, and a couple started to back away. Then out of the cab jumped this bear, looking mean and huge in that light. One of Regalia’s crew yelled and started to run, another followed him, and Regalia went back howling at all of them.

Dare turned to face the bear, but I already knew what this was about. Caravaggio always had chimeras around him. The bear pulled himself up and said, “I am Ursus. I have a message for Real.” The voice was mostly human and hoarse and old. When I nodded, he said, “Caravaggio wishes that you come with us.”

Dare didn’t take her eyes off the bear and the guards on the back of the truck. “It’s okay,” I said. “This is what Depose talked about.”

Dare said, “I need to come with you.”

“I’d like that too. But we need you to guard the money. To make sure our place is defended. To come get me if something goes wrong.” I reached inside and showed her what we’d do together when I came back.

Finally she nodded, and I climbed into the truck and headed downtown to Studio Caravaggio. I know about the studio and about him.

That name is some artist hero in the past. Lots of old people took big artist names. We still got Mozart in the streets playing the same tune every day on a busted clarinet.

The quarter moon was up so there was some light, people slipping through the shadows where there were buildings standing. We passed a convoy of cars full of tourists and guards. The driver moved the truck around the holes and piles of rubbish in the street. He slowed when a religious crowd from the projects carrying torches and saints’ pictures and chanting crossed town on Fourteenth.

I saw Caravaggio when I was small and he drove by in a big car, had a gray beard and hair and dark eyes that stared out like a hunter’s, and someone told me he was looking for kids, and if he liked you and brought you home, you never worked or went hungry. Someone else said he took your soul first.

Years after that, they had this film festival and he showed a movie against the wall of a building at night. It was pieces of old past century movies with people crashing cars and blowing up buildings, making jokes as they broke glass, gunned down people, and wrecked New York and dozens of other places just for their own amusement.

All the kids watching it screamed and threw things at the stupid grinning twelve-foot-tall guys and women, the destroyers who used up our city and our world. Caravaggio was there nodding approval at our anger.

Studio Caravaggio is downtown on some blocks of old buildings still in good shape with generators and lights. Neighborhood guards with rifles stood on roofs and watched us come down the street. Their guns meant the Peacekeepers respected them like they did Depose.

Ursus went to a big metal gate, reached through that to a brass knocker on an iron door. He slammed the knocker a few times and a spy slot opened. “I brought Reality Girl.”