City of the Snakes (27 page)

“But—”

“I’m not prepared to risk the lives of my Troops. Besides, moving my forces there would leave me open to an attack by the Kluxers.”

“If you don’t quell the riots, the Snakes will take control of the east. You’ll face a war on two fronts.”

“The Snakes won’t work with the Kluxers. They hate each other. It’ll be war, a war neither can win by themselves. Sooner or later Davern or his counterpart will come to me for help.”

“Playing both ends against the middle, Ford? A dangerous game.”

“Leave me to worry about the games, Algiers. You focus on finding Capac.” He cuts the connection, leaving me to curse his name to the smoke-obscured heavens and kick the nearest wall with frustration.

I spend the afternoon and evening as Paucar Wami, doing what little I can to restore the peace. I shouldn’t get involved, but I can’t stand by and let looting, raping and killing go ahead unheeded. These are my people. If I can protect some few of them, I must.

After hours of action, I knock the heads of a pair of muggers together and break their fingers. Leaving them in the gutter, I head for home. I need food and rest—I’ve got a long, taxing, bloody night ahead of me.

I smell the visitor when I open the door, the musky stench of the underground impossible to disguise. I pause in the doorway and consider retreat, but this is my home and I’m not about to give it up lightly. Entering, I shut the door and switch on the light in the living room. The real Paucar Wami smiles at me from where he stands by the window. “A fine night, hmm, Al m’boy?”

I go to the kitchen, fix a sandwich, fetch two cans of beer from the fridge and toss one to my father. He catches, opens and raises it to his lips in one smooth movement. I flop on the couch and munch my sandwich. “How long have you been back among the living?”

“Since this morning.” He belches and eyes me, amused. “You don’t seem fazed by my ability to return from the dead.”

“When you’ve seen one zombie, you’ve seen them all.”

“You have changed. The Al I remember had no time for the occult. He would have been busy seeking logical solutions to explain my existence.”

I shrug. “I’ve learned to take the world for what it is. If corpses return to life, so be it.”

Wami observes me intensely. His eyes linger on the finger hanging from my neck but he doesn’t ask about it. “If I did not know better, I could
almost think I was gazing into a mirror,” he remarks approvingly. “You look older than me—you need to hide those wrinkles—your face isn’t quite as angular as mine, and some scars show through your tattoos, but otherwise you’re a near-perfect likeness.”

“Mother always said I favored your side of the family.”

He laughs. “And you’ve developed a sense of humor! You have done the old man proud.”

I’m not sure whether he’s being sarcastic or paying me a genuine compliment. I don’t much care. “Why are you here? Did your masters send you?”

“No man can call himself my master,” Wami growls. “The priests command me but it is a temporary arrangement. Their hour of control will pass, as Ferdinand Dorak’s did. I am my own man.”

“You’re deluding yourself,” I sneer. “You’re their puppet and always have been. Now be a good boy and spit out whatever message they gave you for me.”

His face darkens and his lips curl. I stare at him impassively. “They said they started this riot and they can finish it,” he mutters bitterly, dropping his gaze. “If you pledge allegiance, they will send in the Snakes and restore order.”

“Do you know they plan to oust you in favor of me? The Snakes are designed to be led by me, not you.”

“I would not have it any other way,” he says. “I savor my own company. I could not tolerate leadership. You can have your pitiful Snakes.”

“But I don’t want them. Tell the
villacs
to go fuck themselves.”

Wami throws back his head and laughs. His white teeth flash in the light of the bulb. “You should choose your words carefully when dealing with your enemies, Al m’boy. There is a time for honesty and a time for diplomacy.”

“Then put it diplomatically to them. I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

My father’s eyes narrow. “That is foolish. I hate the priests but I respect them. You think the world cannot hurt you, that because you do not fear death, no one can tell you what to do. That is not so. As free as you have become, you are not invulnerable. By no means give yourself over to the Incan devils, but work with them. We all must make concessions at various times.”

I shake my head. “I won’t dance to their tune. They want me to lead the Snakes—I won’t. They want me to work with Capac Raimi—I won’t. They want me to make this city theirs—I won’t.”

“Very well.” Wami stands. “I have passed on their message and you have given your reply. I think they expected no different.” He strides to the window—when it comes to entering and leaving a room, I guess it’s a case of like father, like son—then stops. “Out of curiosity, where have you been?”

“On the streets, doing what I can to help.”

He frowns. “Why?”

“I grew up here. I know these people. I care.”

“Caring is dangerous. The
villacs
might use it against you.”

“They can’t. There’s a limit to my sympathies. I’ll help where I can, but if the priests threaten my neighbors and make it a condition that I do as they say or they’ll go to war on those I know…” I shrug.

“Calculated care,” Wami muses. “A curious concept. Do you intend returning to the streets tonight?”

“After I’ve rested and eaten.”

“Would you care for a partner?”

“You want to help me restore peace and order?” I ask suspiciously.

“Fuck that,” he laughs. “These people’s plight is of no interest to me. But it has been a long time since I had the run of the city. The
villacs
did not tell me to hurry back, only to return once I had finished with you.”

He playfully kneels and puts his hand on his heart. “Let me run beside you, Al m’boy. I swear I will follow your lead and only kill those you deem fit. I will be your right-hand man. Together we can do more than you could by yourself.”

“That’s true,” I murmur. “But could I trust you?”

“I give my word that I will be obedient, and my word is as strong now as it was ten years ago.”

“But two Paucar Wamis would be confusing.”

“Slap on your paint and wig and be Al Jeery.”

“I won’t—can’t—kill as myself. You’d have to don the disguise.”

“Very well. Your will is mine, O great and noble Caesar.”

“And cut the wisecracks,” I snap, returning to the kitchen.

“That may prove more troublesome,” he chuckles. “But for you, Al m’boy, I will try. Now, where do you keep the weapons?”

We prowl the night like a pair of panthers, gliding silently above and around the chaos on the streets, observing, monitoring, interceding when I judge fit. I’d forgotten how swift and ethereal my father can be. His feet barely seem to touch the rooftops and pavements. Sometimes, as we’re moving, I close my eyes and it’s impossible to know he’s there.

His fingers twitch occasionally as we study the fighting, and I know he’d love to be in the thick of it, cutting loose, making up for the years he’s missed. My father was created for one purpose only, to kill. Holding himself in check at a time like this, when the opportunities for murder are countless, must be torture. But he remains true to his word, acting only when I say, restraining himself when we strike.

We pull rioters off three cops who’ve been detached from their unit, and guide them to safety. We spy a leering man leading two children down an alley. His intentions are sickly clear. We stop him before he assaults them and crucify him to a door, using nails from a nearby crate.

The night air’s hot and smoky. Sweat has drenched the back of my T-shirt but not my father’s. He’s as cool as ever, breathing in the thick, toxic air as if it were blowing fresh off a mountain.

We’ve been on patrol for almost two hours and still haven’t killed. I sense Wami’s growing impatience. I’d like to feed him a victim, to ensure he doesn’t snap and go off on a slaughter spree, but I’m not going to single out anyone for execution unless they truly deserve it.

Finally, half an hour later, we spot a gang of five youths torturing an old man. An old lady, presumably his wife, lies on the street beside him, raped and butchered, her naked body a bloody, shredded mess.

“Now?” Wami asks politely, testing one of the knives he took from my kitchen.

“Now,” I agree darkly.

“Let me go first,” he says, moving to the edge of the roof, pocketing the pair of sunglasses I gave him to camouflage his green eyes. “You pick off any runners.”

There’s a pipe down the wall that I expect him to use, but he merely
steps off the edge and drops three stories, landing like a cat, ready for combat. I’m tempted to leap like him—anything he can do—but I don’t want to end up in the hospital with a broken leg, so I take the pipe.

By the time I hit the ground, two of the gang are down, clutching their throats, dying. Wami moves upon the third, blocks a knife as it’s thrust at his face, ducks, grabs the young man’s penis and testicles—he’s naked from the waist down, his lower body red from his rape of the old woman—and rips them off.

As Wami drops the sexual organs and moves on to his fourth victim, the fifth man makes a break for freedom. He rushes past the spot where I’m standing in the shadows. I stretch out a hand, a sharp blade held rigid between my fingers, and press it to the side of his neck. His momentum forces the blade in deep and he hits the ground heavily, blood spraying from the opened artery, limbs thrashing.

Leaving the dying boy, I check to make sure my father doesn’t need any further assistance—he’s put the fourth teen down, and has returned to the third, to feed him his severed manhood—then go to see if the old man’s alive. He is, but one of his eyes has been gouged out and there are ugly wounds to his chest and stomach.

“Easy,” I whisper as he tries to struggle to his feet.

“Elsa?” he wheezes, gazing at me imploringly.

“Dead.” I hold him down, trying to judge the severity of his wounds.

He goes limp in my arms. “They wanted money,” he sobs. “I gave it. But it… wasn’t enough. They dragged us out and…”

“Save your breath. You’re going to live, but only if you—”

“No,” he gasps. “Don’t want to. Not without… Elsa.”

I hesitate, but only briefly. “Are you sure?” I ask. He locks gazes with me, sees the intent in my eyes, and smiles peacefully. I make it quick and painless, then lay him beside his wife and cover her body with scraps of clothes I find lying nearby.

“A touching scene,” Wami murmurs. He’s standing directly behind me.

“I thought you’d spend more time on your playthings,” I retort, wiping my hands clean on my pants.

“I am rusty. I hit them too hard. But not to worry—the night is young and there are more to be killed. I will find my touch before we are through.”
He steps over the dead pair and studies my face. “You killed impassively, Al m’boy. Very commendable.”

“I did what I had to,” I answer simply.

He clears his throat. “It may be an imprudent question, but can I ask how many you have dispatched since taking to the streets all those years ago?”

“I gave up counting.”

“A hundred? Two hundred? More?”

“I don’t keep track. I kill when I have to but I take no pleasure from it.”

Wami can’t hide a look of disappointment. “Not as advanced as I thought,” he mutters. “You live with death but do not love it. To truly be me, you should savor each murder. To kill mechanically is not enough. You must kill lovingly.”

“If I did, I’d become you for real. Then I’d care about nothing but the killing, and the reason for putting myself through this would be lost.”

“What
is
that reason?” Wami asks.

I tug gently on the finger hanging from my neck. “You haven’t remembered any more about Bill Casey?”

“The policeman,” my father sighs. “I thought about him in the quiet moments since the priests resurrected me, but my memories are no clearer now than before.”

“When you recall who he is, you’ll know why I had to become you.” With that, I spin away and take to the rooftops again, leaving him to make of the puzzle what he will.

We monitor, intervene, break up and kill until the sun rises and Saturday dawns. We keep conversation to a minimum, conferring only when it’s time to take life. I sense Wami racking his thoughts for memories of Bill, but he asks no more about him. I’m not sure how many we execute between us—I allow the memory of one kill to blend with the next—but somewhere between fifteen and twenty. All guilty. All deserving of their fate.

As the sun rises and the east quietens for the first time since the outbreak of violence, my father returns my sunglasses and wig, and says he’d better head back underground. “The
villacs
will not approve of my being out all night, but they will accept it. If I remain absent much longer, however, they might recall me by that most irritating of devices—extinction.”

“They can kill you even when they aren’t near you?” I ask.