Darkborn (14 page)

Mad
, Will thought.

That face looked absolutely mad. The train started again.

And Kiff was quiet. “Hey, look,” he said.

Will saw Tim get out of his seat to see what Kiff was pointing at.

Will half listened.

“Shit, they’re tearing’ down Steeplechase,” Kiff said. Now he turned back to look at Will and the others, his face red, flaming with indignation. “There’s a sign that says ‘Demolition — Fall 1965.’”

“What?” Will said, not really hearing everything Kiff said. He got to his feet, but already the giant white building and the surrounding outdoor rides were streaming away, vanishing .
 
.
 
.

But he could see the big word —”Demolition” — running right above the entrance to Steeplechase, covering the top of the letters where it said “The Funny Place.”

“Oh, no,” Will said. “That stinks.”

Things weren’t supposed to change, Will thought. Some things are supposed to stay the same .
 
.
 
. so you can get older and go away, but when you come back to your world, your life was still here.

But he was learning that it wasn’t like that.

It all fades away. Faster than you can imagine.

“So they’re going to tear the place down,” Whalen said. “It’s a fire trap anyway.”

Will felt as if he’d like to smash Whalen then.

Whalen grinned at him. A self-satisfied smirk.

I sure as hell don’t like him, Will thought.

Not at all.

He shook his head and turned back to the window. The train passed the new aquarium building, still looking unfinished, with great planks of wood crossing the craters made by wheelbarrow ruts and dump-truck tires.

“We get off the next stop,” Kiff said. “And then we’ll see how lucky we are today.” .

And Will looked at Jamaica Bay, just to the east.

Filled with small white flecks, white specks that made the sea look alive .
 
.
 
.

“No, Tim, you wait out here. You’ll only screw it up if
you
go inside.”

Whalen shook his head at Kiff. “Can you two just fucking do it so we can get going? I could use some antifreeze.” He laughed.

And Whalen was right, Will thought. It was cooler here by the water, almost cold. The wind blew steadily, and they weren’t even at the water yet.

The small liquor store was just ahead .
 
.
 
. while they argued outside of it, looking about as inconspicuous as five underage, potential customers could look.

“If I go in first,” Tim said, “I can bullshit with the guy. Okay? Distract him. And then you” — Tim said, pointing a finger at Kiff’s chest — “show up to buy a bottle of Old Grand-Dad.”

Kiff shook his head.

If they screwed this up, who knew where they’d find another liquor store. Will looked at Mike Narrio, holding his book bag tightly, as if he’d gotten onto a wrong bus.

“Give it a shot, Kiff,” Will said. “Tim can bullshit with the best of them.”

Tim grinned. “Exactly my point.”

And then Kiff nodded, reluctantly. He gestured for Tim to lead the way in. Kiff followed while Will and the others backed away, down the block, the wind at their backs.

Whalen put up his collar.

“Damn, it’s cold,” he said.

They waited.

After a few minutes, Narrio said, “What do you think is happening in there?”

Will shook his head. “I dunno .
 
.
 
.”

They waited silently a few more minutes. No one came out.

And no one went in.

What
is
going on? Will wondered.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the liquor store to hell. Next stop, the drunk tank at Red Hook prison.

“Shit,” Whalen groaned. “What’s keeping them?”

The door opened.

It was Tim.

But he only came halfway out.

What the hell is going on?

Then Will saw Tim turn back, talking to somebody inside. The owner, most likely. Talking, gesturing. Tim smiled.

Then he grinned, waved, and walked away from the store. The door shut noisily behind him.

He kept walking, as if he didn’t see the three of them crouched there, awaiting the results of the quest.

“How did it — ?” Will started.

“Come on,” Tim said. “Start walking, follow me.” He spoke through clenched teeth.

Now we’re behind the iron curtain, thought Will. A dozen spies have their Uzis and telephoto lens trained on us. And one false move .
 
.
 
.

They reached the corner.

“How did it go?” Whalen insisted.

Tim didn’t turn to look at him. Instead he checked the highway.

But there were no cars here. Who’d come here? What in the world for?

There were just some tiny, squat homes, some with window boxes and dry flowers, and others with white paint peeling, flaking off the side, littering the overgrown grass.

Lampposts, telephone poles. Ye olde liquor store. But that was it.

The next block was short. Just half a normal city block. The side facing the highway had a few more homes, even smaller. The color scheme seemed a bit off. A purple door here. A striped mailbox there. One turquoise wall surrounded by a washed-out white.

A dog barked at them as they walked past the line of small houses.

And behind the houses was a field. There were the remains of a baseball backstop, but it had been claimed by the tall reedy grasses.

It was a forgotten park. Unused, unmowed.

Because — thought Will — there are no kids here.

They’ve all been taken by the liquor store man.

Finally Tim turned to them. “I don’t know how the fuck Kiff did. Okay? I talked to the guy about what a dumb-ass politician LBJ was, how what the country really needed was Barry Goldwater to kick some tail in Southeast Asia. The guy was a vet. Flags and shit all over the store. Fought in the Big One, as Dobie Gillis’s Dad used to say. World War II. He agreed with me. I was just keeping the guy preoccupied. But Kiff took forever to find a bottle.”

“What’s his problem?” Whalen said.

“Beats me, but I think it’s a pretty simple job to find a bottle of bourbon and bring it to the goddamn counter. Anyway, I asked the guy how to get to the aquarium. Just more bullshit. Then Kiff finally came to the counter. The guy kept talking. Starts in on how great it was JFK got his brains blown out. Didn’t deal with Kiff at all. Jeez, I had to go .
 
.
 
. he was talking me out of the goddamn store. I don’t know what happened.”

“Great. So now what?”

“On the way out I kinda nodded to Kiff .
 
.
 
. toward the water. If he gets something, he’ll follow us there.”

“And if not?” Whalen asked.

Tim grinned. “He’ll still follow us there. But then we’ll send him out to find another store.”

Will trailed behind them, listening to Tim. And Narrio was even further behind because — Will saw — Narrio kept looking back to see if Kiff was coming, if Kiff was following them down to the water.

But the streets were empty, absolutely deserted.

The dog even stopped barking.

Will looked ahead. He saw the ocean now, but nothing else. The road that ran from here to Sheepshead Bay was high, above the beach.

Tim hurried, his walk breaking into a run.

Will picked up his pace too .
 
.
 
. until he got to the edge of the road and saw that there was no beach.

No beach .
 
.
 
.

Because the beach was covered with a jumble of rocks — great, flat slabs of concrete. It was a cracked highway that ran from the jetty — where the bay met the ocean — and on toward the bay, as far as they could see.

“Where’s the beach?” Will asked.

The wind was in his face, blowing continuously, clear and clean, but laced with the salt water, the tangy taste of the ocean only yards away. Waves kicked drunkenly against the rocks while an occasional big surge sent a thin geyser rushing straight up into the sky.

Tim turned to him.

“There is no beach,” he said. “It’s all like this.”

“And what is this?” Whalen asked. Will saw Whalen’s eyes squint against the constant wind.

“It’s a walkway,” Tim said. “It’s a fucking promenade. There used to be a hotel here, a monster .
 
.
 
. forty years ago, maybe more. Manhattan Beach used to be a resort and it had this big sidewalk running from Brighton to Sheepshead Bay.”

No one said anything for a few seconds. The wind echoed in Will’s ears. Then .
 
.
 
.

“Well, what happened to it?” Narrio asked.

And everyone laughed, laughing at the way the question sounded, rolling so flatly and quietly out of Narrio’s mouth.

“Look at the water,” Tim said. “Right here, Jamaica Bay meets the Atlantic, Mikey. And when a mother of a storm hits, it can get real nasty. The people around here probably get their houses flooded out a couple times each year.”

Well, thought Will, that explains the low-rent look to the neighborhood.

“My old man said that there was a bitch of a hurricane in 1939, the same year Adolf started playing Risk with Europe. The hurricane hit Long Island and Brooklyn straight on.”

“No shit,” Whalen said.

Will looked out at the water, all bubbling and foamy, and so close. But he stood on the tilted chunks of concrete walkway, above the water, as if he were on the prow of a giant ship.

No, thought Will.

Not a ship.

More like a raft.

Adrift on the sea.

“Yes, Whalen. And the storm blew salt water two hundred miles away. Two hundred miles! To Vermont and New Hampshire. It ruined the apple crop, lifted houses up and tossed them miles away. And,” he said, taking a properly dramatic pause, “it did this .
 
.
 
.”

He gestured to the concrete walkway.

And — as Will turned — he saw something.

Just out of the corner of his eye.

Something small, and blackish gray.

Barely there-almost in his imagination.

Except — except .
 
.
 
. he got a
real good look
at something long and snaky as it disappeared between two big chunks of concrete, swallowed by the open crack.

“Hey,” Will said. He licked his lips. “Hey, guys, I think I just saw a rat.” He turned to Tim, who looked like the commander of this ill-fated vessel. “Are there rats here?”

Tim shrugged. “Beats me. I guess there are.” He looked around, sniffing the air, as if that would tell him something. “Sure .
 
.
 
. I guess there’d have to be. Sure. Probably water rats.”

“Oh, great,” Whalen said. “Now we’re going to get our butts chewed by rats. I always did want rabies.”

Will saw Narrio look around, holding his bag as if it were a weapon. And Will felt more and more empathy with Narrio. An early evening might be in order .
 
.
 
.

“You don’t bother them, and they won’t bother you,” Tim said.

Everyone considered the wisdom of those words until they heard a voice .
 
.
 
.

Above them, from the road.

Kiff.

Looking down at them.

He was grinning.

“Hey!” he yelled. He had one arm behind his back. He waited until everyone was looking.

Will looked up, but he also checked the crack that the rat had entered. It was a black hole.

And it would get blacker as the sun set .
 
.
 
.

Wherever the sun was in this cloudy sky.

“Hey!” Kiff yelled. And then he pulled his arm out in front of him and hoisted his prize, a brown bag, which he held aloft.

“Shit, the a-hole will probably drop it,” Tim said.

But Kiff reached over with his other hand. He looked delirious, mad with excitement. And he pulled out his treasure, the amber-brown bottle that was — Will realized — the only spot of color amid the gray stone and the gray sea and the gray sky.