Cold Fury (33 page)

Today, I climbed only to the second floor.

My unconscious will and heavy feet led me to Lou’s room, where I shut the bedroom door, overcome by a sudden and exhausting sense of desolation. I lay back on his bed, flipped a switch on his rocket-ship clock, and looked at a faint green moon on the ceiling intersected by an even fainter 1:58 p.m. Now that moon felt as far away as my family, and even farther than our former life when we lived here together, blissfully unaware of what was to come.

As empty as the house was, it paled next to Rispoli & Sons Fancy Pastries.

The bakery had not churned out a cake, pie, or molasses cookie in months. Instead of bubbling with light, the neon sign was just a jumble of dark glass tubes. When it occurred to me that regulars and neighborhood old-timers would notice that the
CLOSED
sign never turned to
OPEN
, I papered over the windows and hung a sign that reads
REMODELING! PLEASE PARDON OUR DUST!
I was more concerned that the Outfit would become aware of it and begin asking questions I couldn’t answer. All it would take was one suspicious thug to link my dad’s ongoing absence as Counselor-at-Large to the bakery’s closure, and every crook in Chicago would start whispering the most dreaded term in organized crime—
rat.
For the well-being of my family (if they were even still alive) and the preservation of my own neck, I could not allow anyone to assume that my dad had disappeared to become an FBI informant. I’d continued with the excuse that he’s ill, even hinting at something terminal, which didn’t feel too far from the truth. I closed my eyes, squeezing away tears, overwhelmed by the feeling that there was
nothing
I could do. It’d been so long since I’d seen them, sometimes I had to concentrate just to picture their faces and remember their voices. Even now, all I could hear was an old familiar tune—

Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin’ town

Chicago, Chicago, I’ll show you around, I love it

—tinkling off-key, like being played on a kiddie piano, while a scratchy Frank Sinatra recording crooned along. I remembered Elzy belting it out when I was a little kid and she was still my nanny, and I glanced up at the green glowing moon on the ceiling, intersected by a flashing 2:11 p.m. Right in the middle of Mr. Ficcanaso’s nap time. It meant the elderly snoop wasn’t watching my house.

Outside the door, wooden stairs creaked softly as someone tried not to be heard.

I sat up and stared at the doorknob, watching it turn slowly, silently, and ran for it like an insane linebacker. I threw all hundred and five pounds against the door and twisted the lock. Someone on the other side hit the ground hard as I flew to the window and looked down at the Mister Kreamy Kone truck parked on the bumper of the Lincoln. Moments later, a shoulder assaulted the door like a battering ram. The wood groaned, hinges complained, but the lock held; another shot like that and I wouldn’t be so lucky. I looked out again, saw the pulled shades at Mr. Ficcanaso’s house—
the little war hero just had to take a nap while I was being attacked!—
and realized that the bedroom window was my only option for escape. I opened it and scrambled outside, inching madly along the narrow ledge toward a maple tree’s creeping branches. It was too far away, so I stretched for it, slipped, grasped at empty air, and then desperately pushed off with my other foot, hoping to reach the tree, which I did. In fact, I hit every branch on the way to the ground. I kissed Earth with a thud, feeling like I’d been tenderized by hockey sticks. Above me, Lou’s bedroom door split and shattered, and I rolled to my feet, ignoring waves of nauseating pain, poised to sprint for the car, when something in my gut made me stop. It felt like a mistake to look up at the window, but I couldn’t help myself.

It was leaning on the ledge with both hands, staring back.

I say “it” because the gender was indistinguishable.

Maybe it should be simple to discern one’s sex when he or she is covered in something skintight and black, but this thing’s body was model-thin and androgynous—a life-sized is-it-a-Barbie-or-a-Ken? It wore a weirdly militaristic uniform in the same fathomless shade of black as the ice cream trucks, so taut and glossy it could have been latex, complete with a perfectly knotted black necktie, jaunty cap, and elbow-high gloves. A thick leather belt cinched its nonexistent waist while its crisp pant legs were tucked tightly into tall black leather boots. The only other color in the ensemble was red, the letters
MKK
encircled by the red outline of an ice cream truck, stitched on its breast and left shirtsleeve and, even odder, something heavy, silver, and shiny hanging from its neck. All of that was unsettling enough, but the creepiness factor was dominated by the Ice Cream Creature’s face. It was composed of small, sexless features covered with snow-white flesh, its mouth a tight blue line, giving it the appearance of a death mask.

And then it removed its small black sunglasses.

Its eyes pulsated like two electric cherries.

So shiny, so red, and so sickly wrong.

I was stuck in the ghoulishness of it, my feet magnetized to the ground, when the thing leapt from the window. It fell quickly and landed deftly on both feet, and I turned and sprinted for the Lincoln, jumped inside and locked the doors. I fumbled the key into the ignition and cranked the engine just as the thing threw itself onto the hood like a rabid vampire-monkey. We were inches apart, its wet breath steaming the windshield between us. Fear and injustice flooded my chest as a cold blue flame flickered beneath it, making the bitter brew bubble and spit; I was calm but furious. I’d never seen the thing before now, even though it had been chasing me for weeks. The truck’s windshield was tinted black and it had no windows, the vehicle operating as a vending machine on wheels; a kid deposited money into a slot, made his frozen selection, and out it popped. I’d begun to wonder if it was unmanned and remote-controlled. Now I had an answer as my burning blue eyes locked onto its glowing red eyes. We were face-to-face as I deployed ghiaccio furioso with a vengeance, searching its psyche for its very worst fear, and—nothing. I blinked again, but cold fury bounced back and stung my brain like a cloud of angry bees. The windshield wasn’t the problem—I’d conducted experiments of ghiaccio furioso on (poor) Doug, trying to ascertain its power, and knew that glass was no barrier against the concentrated rage. I still couldn’t summon cold fury at will, but once an intense emotional state kindled it deep in my gut, I’d learned to control its intensity in the same way that a stovetop flame can be turned up or down.

The thing’s eyes widened, showing fat clusters of veins pumped full of blood.

Its pupils pulsated in time to its heartbeat, nearly thump-thumping out of its skull.

It drew its head back, hammered it against the windshield, shook it, and did it again even harder.

Broken glass rained down as the thing’s head vibrated on its neck, ready to smash through, and I leaned as hard as I could on the gas pedal, tearing through a hedge onto Balmoral Avenue. The creature was flung up and over the top of the car while I cranked the wheel, hauling ass onto Clark Street and up Lawrence Avenue at
sixty-seventy-eighty
miles per hour. I was sure I’d thrown the creature free, and sat back cautiously listening to the world whistling past, which became a sudden slitting of fabric, a determined ripping of seams, and I was stabbed in the neck by a hunk of windshield as sharp as a surgical tool. The creature lunged through the convertible top, slashing at my face, missing, gashing my shoulder, and I swerved crazily, trying to shake it off. Car horns screamed, and I remembered the loaded .45 in the glove compartment. I scrabbled for the gun, found it, and blasted through the convertible top
once-twice-three
times. The thing shrieked and barrel-rolled over the trunk as a moving van veered wildly but failed to brake, followed by a sick
thunk!

In an instant the creature was gone for good. When I was far enough away, I pulled to the curb and caught my breath, shocked at being alive. It was too close, I shouldn’t have survived, and yet there I sat in (almost) one piece, heart hammering at my chest, blood dripping down my neck and raging in my ears. I leaned my forehead against the steering wheel and closed my eyes, flooded with relief but also feeling like someone who’d traded a punch in the gut for a kick in the face. Being free of that demon wasn’t really freedom at all, since I was still trapped in the endless vortex of no family and no way to find them. In the most basic sense, losing the Ice Cream Creature was good because I was safer, but bad because it was a twisted link to my family, but good because I wasn’t dead and could still try to find them, but bad because—

—because a piano began to plunk and a voice began to croon.

Chicago, Chicago, I’ll show you around, I love it!

My eyes darted to the rearview mirror as the little black ice cream truck materialized on the street behind me, slip-sliding through traffic. It wasn’t possible—I’d seen the thing hit by a van with my own eyes, or at least I thought I had, or at least I’d
heard
it—and yet it was six cars back, then two, gaining rapidly, and without thinking, my foot fell like lead on the gas pedal. The back tires were a spinning blur of black rubber and white smoke as I tore across lanes, my eyes filled with tears as I saw the sign—

CONSTRUCTION AHEAD—WILSON AVE. CLOSED—NO LOCAL TRAFFIC

—and I made a lunatic right turn, cars screeching and biting curbs behind me as I squinted into the rearview mirror. There was the truck, on two wheels, bumping onto four, on my tail as I sped past the wooden barriers and hit chewed-up Wilson Avenue that was waiting for new cement to be laid. It was like driving through the Grand Canyon, all deep craters and ragged potholes, and just as deserted—there were no other cars, the sidewalks were empty, and construction equipment sat unattended and idle. There was an end-of-the-world quality to it—I was in one of the largest cities on Earth, rocketing though an uninhabited wasteland, pursued by a relentless creature—and the bleakness of it all made me miss the sign posted at the cross street where the road rose up.

WILSON AVE. BRIDGE RECONSTRUCTION—NO ADMITTANCE

Maybe I did see it, and just sped up.

Maybe I’d finally had enough of trying to find my family, which felt as useless as grasping at a sweet breeze that had blown past long ago. I wasn’t even sure what drove me anymore, hope or routine, but each motivation seemed suddenly, laughingly futile, as did my whole existence. If my family was dead, then I wanted to die, and if I could never find them, then that was the same as death, wasn’t it? And then something light and airy filled my chest. It was a whispery notion that today was a fine day to die. It said that there was an easy way out, and that it lay just ahead.

Flying up the incline, knowing the Chicago River lurked on the other side, it dawned on me what a sucker’s game I was playing, searching for my family and running for my life. What a relief to have it over with! All I had to do was keep rolling! And there it was, my side of the bridge—a steel skeleton with girders wide enough to drive on, like rows of railroad tracks. There was nothing beneath except cables holding it all together like a huge Erector Set, and a seventy-foot drop. The other half of the bridge was gone. After a long span of air, under which the river bubbled and churned, Wilson Avenue continued on the opposite side. I looked out at that gap of nothingness and wondered how it would feel to be a part of it—to float for a split second with the wheels spinning, and then plummet headfirst, and then darkness. It would be so quiet to be dead. Suicide as an option to solving my problem seemed unquestionably correct, like doing myself a favor. My foot wavered between gas and brake, gas and brake, and gas won, and I floored it, heading for space while thinking of freedom, of peaceful resolution, except there would be none without knowing what happened to my family—no peace, no resolution, only a quiet eternity of unanswered nothingness—and I jammed on the brakes, but the steel was slick, and the Lincoln skidded to a slow, slippery stop with the front tires at the very edge of the last girders to nowhere.

In front of me, the summer wind whistled.

Below me, deep brown water swirled.

My heart hammered at my chest and somewhere far away a duck quacked.

And then I heard Frank Sinatra. He was crooning behind me as the truck crept up the bridge and squealed to a halt, and the creature climbed out holding something close to its face. I looked in the rearview mirror, wondering why the thing wasn’t torn up and bleeding, when its mouth moved, jaws tightened, and it ferociously licked an ice cream cone like a dehydrated dog lapping water. It was soft serve, one coil as red as its eyes and the other as white as its skin, woven into a sloppy pink concoction. When it was done, the thing flicked its hand like shaking liquid from an empty cup. Something glinted, sharp and silvery, as it climbed back into the truck, and I knew it would come for me now. I was quarry, meant to be captured, and inflicting serious injury seemed to be the creature’s strategy to accomplish it. When it came to cruel experimentation, me in a coma or confined to a bed or wheelchair was preferable to a punching, biting, kicking me. It wasn’t my long, thin body, my Roman nose, or the cheekbones I’d inherited from my mom it wanted—it was my blue eyes flecked with gold and the brain they were attached to. Lou told me on the Ferris wheel how they’d invaded my dad’s head. I knew it would be the same for me. Besides gray matter, the rest of me was just gristle.

I thought,
Moments ago, I was a fool who selfishly considered death.

I thought,
What I have inside me is so valuable to that thing, it’s vibrating.

I climbed out of the car, cracked my knuckles, and thought,
I’ll send the whole world to hell before anyone or anything takes me alive.

We stared at each other, me at the edge of the bridge while the thing idled thirty yards away, Sinatra crooning and piano tinkling as I walked toward it. Pointing at my eyes with both thumbs, I called out, “Yo, Red! You want to run me down, pluck out my eyeballs? Take a look inside my head, see what’s cooking in there?”