Hope and Undead Elvis (30 page)

"The father of your baby?" asked Margaret.

"No. Not exactly." Hope sighed.

Margaret's laugh was gentle. "Dear, either he is or he isn't."

"Then he isn't. We never hooked up."

"So what is he to you?"

Hope didn't answer right away. What
was
Undead Elvis to her? He had been her guide, her confidant, and her sounding board during the first portion of her journey. He'd given her a destination, listened to her rambling on, and carried her when she no longer had the strength to walk for herself. He'd helped her to discover a vast well of fortitude, both physical and emotional, that she hadn't known she'd possessed. Without him, she felt sure she would have died many months ago. She realized, with some astonishment, how much she'd transformed over the course of her pregnancy. Now she'd become to others what Undead Elvis had been to her. Was this part of how her child was supposed to fix the world? Would her son have those same qualities that Undead Elvis had inspired within her and now she inspired in others?

She hoped so.

"He's a friend," she said at last. "And if he needs me, I have to help him."

"I can show you where the entrance to the Pit is," said Margaret, "but I can't take you down there." She offered a wry smile. "It's not wheelchair-accessible. I wish I could do more than that, but I'm afraid of what's down there."

"What
is
down there?"

"The stuff of nightmares. People who've lost their humanity over the Deuce and his goddamned chips. People who'll do anything, sell anything if the price is right. People who are killing themselves on the treadmills and cycles, starving to death just to get that one chip so they can run upstairs and pull a slot machine lever."

Fidel rolled over on the bed, splaying his paws up in the air, and groaned in his sleep. Hope patted his soft tummy. He opened his eyes and looked at her, still more asleep than awake. She could see herself reflected in the dark pools of his pupils, and the woman she saw wouldn't be afraid to face down the monsters below if it meant she could save her friend. "Okay, you show me and I'll take it from there."

"Tonight?"

"Now, if you will."

"I don't know…" The bravado Margaret had displayed earlier vanished as the woman seemed to sink into her wheelchair.

Hope reached out and squeezed her hand. "Margaret, listen. I said I'm leaving as soon as this storm clears up, and you can come with me."

"You mean… leave the Casino?"

"Yes. This place is poison to everyone in it. If it doesn't kill you all, the Righteous Flame will when they get here."

"The what?"

"The worst thing you can imagine. They're coming. They've been coming for months. Every time I get a little further ahead of them, then they catch up. I believe that if we make it to Graceland, we'll be safe from them there."

"And then what?"

Hope cradled her belly. "And then we fix the world."

Margaret shook her head. "Nothing can do that now."

"Not yet. Please, will you show me the Pit?"

"No, I can't. I'm too frightened."

"Then tell me where it is."

Margaret sighed. "All right. Turn right out of my room and go to the very end of the hall. There's a stairwell which leads down to the basement where the kitchens, maintenance, and laundry rooms are. Go through there and you'll find a door labeled
Backup Generator
. The Pit is beyond there. After that, I can't help you."

"Are there people down there? Guards and stuff?"

"Probably. I don't know much more than I've told you."

Hope stood. She handed the receipt Margaret had typed up for her earlier back to the older woman. "Hold this for me. If anything… Just hold it for me, okay? And make sure Fidel gets fed if I'm not back in time to do it myself?"

"I will." Margaret sniffled. "Did you really mean it? I can go with you when you leave?"

"Of course."

"I'd like that. I always wanted to go to Graceland. Never got to."

Hope smiled. "I hear it's beautiful."

Margaret caught her hand and kissed it, then held it against her cheek for a moment. "Good luck, Hope. I'll see you very soon."

Hope left the room and waddled down the hall, following Margaret's directions. Her belly felt larger than ever, and she wondered how close she was to her due date. Due date was such an odd term, she realized. It implied that childbirth would follow the calendar, but with the world's end, calendars and even time itself had ceased to have any meaning for her.

Her baby would come when he was ready.

She found the stairs and sighed as she regarded the steps descending into darkness. "Least I'm getting my exercise," she said aloud to herself. Nevertheless, she took frequent rests and was careful to hold the rail at all times. So many stairs when she couldn't see her feet made her edgy. Nobody else was on the staircase. She figured most everyone was either sleeping or gambling.

Just when she didn't think she could take it anymore, she found the bottom. She'd have sat and rested on the stairs if she thought she'd be able to stand back up afterward. Instead, she pressed on through a basement lit only by sporadic candle stubs.

She came to the door Margaret had described. A man sat dozing in a chair, the front legs off the floor and back tipped against the wall. As Hope approached, she stepped on a steel plate on the floor that moved under her weight and made some suspended pans jangle together. The man's eyes opened and he raised a pistol Hope hadn't seen.

"You ain't supposed to be down here," he said. "Only folks who got no chips, and then they got to be brung."

Hope would have raised her hands, but she was too tired. "It's all right," she said. "Mr. Deuce sent me down here." She lowered her voice with an conspiratorial air. "To talk to the guy. The blue one."

The man's eyes widened. "Him?"

Hope felt an invigorating thrill of success course through her. She'd bluffed as well as any high-stakes poker player and the man had folded his hand. "Yeah. Is he still in the same place?"

"All the way in the back? Yeah he is," said the man. He glanced down at her belly. "You, um, are you gonna have a kid?"

Hope's smile turned genuine. "Yes." She rubbed her belly.

The man smiled back at her. "Good. The world needs kids in it. Now more'n ever. Hang on, lemme let you in." He took a key that was hanging inside his shirt and opened the door. It swung out to reveal a darkened corridor lit by a couple flickering candles. A stench of unwashed bodies mixed with vomit, urine, and acidic diarrhea to create a miasma that struck her almost like a physical blow. Hope gasped and covered her nose. "Yeah, it's kinda strong," said the man. "Hey, Chris? She's going to talk to that one guy. She's not here to work."

"Okay," said a disembodied voice. Other rhythmic noises punctuated the silence: the sound of footsteps on treadmills, the hiss of stationary bike sprockets, the sour exhalations of exhausted workers.

Hope shuffled through the oppressive hall. She could feel the eyes of those consigned to hard labor upon her as she walked, even though she could only see them as lumpy, misshapen shadows stinking of sweat and futility. A man who'd once been fat and now had his skin hanging off his shrinking frame vomited down his front. The yellowish bile soaked his shorts and ran down his legs as he staggered along a treadmill. His eyes were rolled back in his head, like a dead man who hadn't realized his life was already over.

The man called Chris sat at a desk, resting his feet upon it and paging through a coverless paperback by candlelight. His eyes glittered in the darkness like a crow's.

"Please," whispered a voice from one of the workers. "A chip. Anything. Save me."

Hope shuddered and hurried on to the end of the hall. She felt a terrible, pressing need to help these people, slaves to the Casino, but didn't know how. Someone behind her stumbled and fell off a treadmill, causing Chris to rise from his lazy vigilance. "Goddammit, Himmel, you ain't been workin' even two hours yet. Get your lazy ass back up." The sound of a booted foot hitting flesh drawn tight from starvation and fatigue shook Hope like a gunshot.

She reached the end of the hall and with a quaking hand she could barely see, pushed open the door.

There he was, in a pool of light from a cold fluorescent bulb. His jumpsuit, once pristine, was torn and stained, and his bluish flesh looked like it had begun to decay at last. His perfectly-coiffed hair hung around his lowered head like filthy rags as he trudged onward, never stopping as the treadmill turned a generator. A chain ran from one wrist to the treadmill handle, binding him without rest or reprieve. Hope gasped in surprise and horror. "
Elvis!
"

She heard a horrifying hiss behind her and spun to see a great black bird perched on a shelf with its wings spread wide.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Hope and Shades

Hope screamed as the bird flapped its wings and hissed at her again. It dove from its perch and flew toward her with its talons outstretched, seeking soft tissue to rend.

She fell backward against the door, unmindful of everything except protecting her baby. The bird squawked in surprise as its momentum was checked. Undead Elvis had flung out his free hand to snag the bird's leg. He swung it around hard into the wall. It exploded into a puff of black sand that scattered across the floor.

For a moment, Hope was frozen, her heart pounding and clutching at her belly. Then she was at Undead Elvis's side, her arms around him, openly weeping. "I missed you. I missed you so much."

"I missed you too, Li'l lady. I'm glad you found me."

Hope reached up to her head and removed the sunglasses which had perched there for months. "I found these. They're yours, aren't they? I saved them for you." She handed them to him.

Undead Elvis smiled. "There they are." He put them on and a remarkable transformation came over him. His jumpsuit became whole and as shiny as when Hope had first met him. His skin repaired itself. His hair became perfect once more. "That's more like it.
Uh-huh
."

The door burst open, followed by Chris with the other guard, their guns drawn. "What the hell is going on here?"

"Please, you have to let him go," said Hope.

"He ain't goin' nowhere," said the first guard. "He's a machine, that one."

"We checked," said Chris. "You ain't supposed to be down here at all, bun in the oven or not."

"No, you don't understand," cried Hope. "You have to let him go. He's supposed to come with me!" She grabbed the chain holding Undead Elvis to the treadmill and rattled it, as if doing so would release it.

"Knock it off, girl," said the other guard. "You best come with us."

"No! You have to free him!" Hope grasped Undead Elvis like he was a life preserver and she was drowning. She hadn't come so far, lived through so much, just to lose him again. "Please!"

"Take her to Shades," said Chris. "Don't bother The Deuce at this time of night."

"All right," said the other guard. They wrestled Hope away from Undead Elvis until she could do nothing but scream in miserable fury. They pulled her away, as rough as they dared to be with her burgeoning belly.

"I'll come back for you," screamed Hope. "I'll come back—
oh!
" A sudden, sharp pain tore through her abdomen, sending shockwaves to the ends of her figures and toes. She stopped fighting the men and instead clutched at them for support. As quickly as the pain had come on, it subsided, leaving her gasping for breath.

It was a contraction. It had to be. But it wasn't time yet for her baby to come. Her anguish and stress was carrying over to him, and if she didn't calm down, it would lead to the exact circumstance she wanted to avoid: having the baby under Mr. Duce's watchful eyes.

She gulped and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry," she said to the men. "I'll cooperate. Just please don't hurt him."

"Hurt him?" Chris laughed in an unkind way. "He ain't alive, far as we can tell. He ain't stopped walkin' that generator for months. We wouldn't have any power at all if not for him."

"We're takin' you to Shades," said the other man, as-yet-unnamed. "He runs things down here. He's The Deuce's man. He'll decide what to do with you."

"Might be a fine." Chris licked his lips. "Might get to take it outta your ass."

The other guard shoved him. "Hey, be nice. She's gonna have a kid!"

Charlie was unmoved. "So?"

They came to a door with the words
Shades Office
hand-painted upon them, missing apostrophe and all. Charlie knocked. "Shades, man, you in there? We got us a troublemaker."