Dead Boys (13 page)

The head said nothing, but his teeth squeaked.

“Would you welcome that fate, Etienne? How long would it take you to hide away in your own mind again, I wonder?”

Etienne struggled to wrench his eyelids shut, but they’d been open too long.

“There is a degree,” said Jacob, “to which your circumstance affects you, however small. And if there are places you find repulsive, there must be places that displease you less, whether in the underworld or in the Lands Above.”

“Perhaps.”

The silence went on long enough that Jacob feared he’d pushed Etienne too far. But he held still, and in time he was rewarded.

“They said I should wait,” whispered Etienne. “When I crossed, they said to wait there, that the Poet could help me. But they didn’t know for how long: it might be days, or it might be years. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I’d waited.

“The place is called White City. Until we get there, I’ll tell you nothing of my crossing. I won’t be disposed of again.”

“Understood,” said Jacob. “Which way does White City lie?”

“To the south, past the end of Lethe. For now, we follow the river.”

Jacob, overcome, held the driftwood plaque to his chest and carried it to the riverbank, eager to share the news. As soon as he stepped out of the cave, however, he was struck speechless. Adam and Eve were up to their chests in the river, pulling to shore a bloated corpse in a frilly turquoise dress, while Remington knelt on the chest of a second corpse, a naked man whose head Leopold was twisting to and fro like an apple stem.

“What are you doing?” said Jacob, his voice tight with revulsion, but there was no need for an answer. The next twist made it clear, snapping the motionless corpse’s head clean off his neck.

“There we are!” said Leopold. “The water’s loosened them right up.”

Remington tottered over to Adam and Eve, who held the second floater upright as he dragged her dress off of her body.

Etienne, trapped on his plaque, was attempting to writhe away with the power of his lower jaw. “Please,” he moaned, “not again.”

“Leopold,” said Jacob, “what harm have these floaters done to anyone?”

Leopold regarded the curly-haired head in his hands. “Probably nothing,” he said, “but who knows? This one might have been a serial killer. He could be napping off his sins.” He tossed the head into the river, where it sent up a plume of purple water. “Really, Jacob, I don’t see why you’re so squeamish. They’re vegetables whether they’re whole or chopped. If they had a strong enough objection to beheading, I’m sure they’d be motivated to quicken like the rest of us!”

“I don’t think they mind,” said Remington, struggling with the female floater’s head. “These ones aren’t like us. They can’t even see. Their lights are out, Jake! You can tell.”

“Twist and pull, boy, twist and pull!” said Leopold.

“Right!” Remington popped the head loose and staggered backward, heaving it high into the air. By the time it struck the water, he’d dragged the newly headless floaters side-by-side on the riverbank, where he and Leopold wrestled their arms and legs together before standing back to survey their work.

Seeing how they’d linked the floaters, Jacob suddenly understood their purpose. “Disgusting, but effective. The Masker arrives, spots these decoys, believes them to be our abandoned raft, and sends his men into the caves to find us.”

“And by the time they find their way out of that maze,” said Leopold, “we’ll be well on our way to wherever it is we’re going. Now, have the two of you come to an understanding?”

“We have.” Jacob laid his hands on the side of the plaque. “We’re heading south, to White City.”

“A second metropolis! What a delightful development. We might find anything there! Think of the traditions we’ll learn, the corpses we’ll meet. Think of the shops they might have, the goods they might trade! They might well have a bazaar that puts the markets at Lazarus Quay to shame, wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t think I would,” said Jacob, his suspicions aroused. “It’s not as if corpses
need
anything. Perhaps we’ll find a city with no economy at all.”

“Perish the thought,” said Leopold, horrified. “We’re creatures of habit, surely! Destined to spend our time spending time, or something very like it. Aren’t we?”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” said Jacob, unable to fathom what Leopold was after, but sure that questioning him would yield nothing but lies.

Soon they’d rebuilt their three-corpse raft and were safely afloat, watching their decoys recede. “White City,” said Leopold. “To think I’ve never even heard of it! Etienne, while I will only be convinced of your pedigree when the gates to the living world open and I can see the dancing girls on the other side, I am nonetheless pleased to welcome you to our little tribe, particularly at a moment when our fortunes are on the upswing. I think I speak for all of us when I say that any information you would care to impart about the customs or economy of this White City would be greatly appreciated, as not a word of its existence has reached its doubtless dingier counterpart.”

“It’s better seen than discussed,” said Etienne, his voice tight.

Leopold peered at him. “Good Lord, you’re offended by that business with the floaters, aren’t you? Solidarity among heads: who would have thought it?”

No one knew how to break the silence that had fallen over the little raft, but while the other three were caught up in the awkwardness of the moment, Remington stared up at the valley walls, which were in the midst of such change that he exclaimed, “How beautiful!”

Jacob recoiled from the word, which, after years of disuse, had become repulsive, but in the end he was unable to argue against it, so thoroughly was he overwhelmed by a sensation that brought his mind into union with his field of vision. “Beautiful,” he said aloud, for the first time in years.

For miles, the rock on either side of the waters underwent such remarkable changes in color, shape, and texture that it seemed to metamorphose as they watched, as if it had mastered some marmoreal art forgotten by its neighbors. Legitimate volcanic formations were trumped by structures impossible outside of the realm of dream: here a gnarled wheel of purple rock sprouted thirty-foot spokes the color of bone; there a pale hill was cloven in two, revealing what appeared to be organs of stone within; and for miles beyond, the valley walls were low, slate-gray, and etched with playful, chalky abstractions.

When a shining, obsidian sculpture-garden rose, Jacob and Leopold joined Remington in exclaiming at the sights they imagined they saw there, the three of them like children under a sky of fast-moving clouds. Though every phenomenon (from the rippling taffy-colors of a stone aurora to the pitted walls that looked like corrugated tin) appeared to be a natural work of stone and mineral, their collective effect was a declaration that the world of death was more than they’d imagined.

“I’d stopped wondering what the underworld was,” said Jacob as they passed a spiral stairway jutting from a sheer wall. “Now I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop.”

“I once heard a drunkard in the Tunnels,” said Leopold softly, “insisting that this world was nothing but the final dream of a dying woman’s brain, and that all of us are nothing but the old girl’s figments. At the time I thought it was ludicrous.”

“A customer once told me he believed we’re sharing a dream between our graves, a joint hallucination originating from a single graveyard,” said Jacob. “As I put the knife to his face, he murmured, ‘Who knows what dreams they’re having in the next cemetery?’”

“This world is real enough,” said Etienne as four massive, impassive masks glowered down at them from the sides of the river, their ovoid faces as featureless and placid as those of infants in the womb. “Which isn’t to say it wasn’t dreamed, once.”

“What the devil does that mean?” said Leopold, but Etienne would not elaborate.

As they floated farther into the stone garden, they caught occasional glimpses of the geography beyond the valley. The land they were floating into was rising steeply, and the walls around them were dwindling, becoming more tentative and ill-formed until the garden melted into flat earth.

“It’s coming,” said Etienne. “The Terminus. Run these corpses aground, and quickly!” Without a sound, Remington aimed Adam and Eve onto the banks.

Finally on solid ground, the band of corpses trudged upward for hours, gaining what seemed a pitiful distance for their efforts now that they were accustomed to the speed of river travel. The steep ascent left the river far below, sunk between steep walls, and made every step difficult.

“It’s worse than Southheap,” said Jacob, glancing down and wishing he hadn’t.

“You’re crazy, Jake!” said Remington. “At least this mountain is solid. Besides, the view is incredible. Check that out!” he shouted, leaning over the edge. “There’s a little floater there, way down in the distance! See him, in the red shirt? Hello, little floater, hello!

“I’m going to race him. Crow, see if you can get a better look!” The bird squawked thrice, but declined the invitation, loath to leave its nest. As for Remington, he toddled as quickly as he could, but between the incline of the hill and the growing force of the river below, he had little hope of keeping up. The floater, visible despite the distance because of his bright red shirt, was tossed above and yanked beneath the surface repeatedly. This sudden, cruel streak of Lethe’s currents was the only thing that kept Remington from losing sight of him completely, since each time the floater went under he emerged further upstream, tugged backward by a powerful counter-current.

“What’s changed the river so?” said Jacob. “It hardly seems like Lethe. It has whitecaps!”

“It might,” said Leopold in a strangled voice, “have something to do with
that
.” With a toss of his head he called attention to the Terminus, whose depths came into view as they rounded the gorge’s ultimate curve.

The floater leaped and shuttled along the frenzied river, which plunged ahead until the edge of the valley closed it off in a sudden curve. Miles below gaped an abyss twice the width of Lethe, a darkness devouring her rushing waters.

Upstream, the red scrap ceased thrashing and tipped over the edge. There was a flash in the darkness, and then there was nothing.

Staring down into that void, Jacob felt it again: an echo of that long-ago drought bobbed up out of the black. He could see himself falling, fluttering as he plunged into the great nothing.

One step and he’d forever be free from the burdens of existence.

“What is it?” whispered Leopold as another pair of floaters approached. “What’s down there?”

“You already know,” said Jacob, trying to turn away. “You’ve always known.”

“Maybe it’s another world,” said Remington doubtfully.

“It’s Hell,” said Leopold. “All this time we’ve wasted perching on its mouth, when we ought to be climbing to the highest peak we can find, as far as we can get from this darkness!”

“There is no Hell,” said Jacob. “There’s only us and that hole in everything, that gash in our dreams, that—”

“Oblivion,” said Etienne. “True death. This world is teetering on top of its open mouth, and always has been.”

The Terminus took one floater, then the next, without sound, without comment.

“No need to romanticize it,” said Etienne. “It’s where we’re all going. What we’re all hiding from. It’s not a sight you forget. And when things became too difficult to bear, I thought of it, again and again, not as a nightmare, but as a missed opportunity. I had my chance to jump, and I passed it by.

“You might find yourselves thinking back on this sight with longing, too. If there’s any faith in man left burning in your hearts, the Plains will grind it out like the end of a bidi.”

“The Plains?” shrieked Leopold, snapping them out of their reverie. “You’re leading us to the Plains of War?” He reared back, as if the head of Etienne Rassendren had tried to bite him. “Why, this is madness! The cranium’s a charlatan! Those savages will tear us apart like a rack of ribs! Oh, if only one corpse in the history of Hades had been a cartographer, I might have bought a map and avoided this horrid trip. I ought to surrender to the Masker. I’ll get a kinder reception from his minions than the Plainsmen!”

“Come now, Etienne, there must be another way,” said Jacob.

“None that you can survive,” said Etienne. “To the east are sandstorms strong enough to grind you to dust. To the west is the Wall of the World, which only the men of White City can cross. For us, the only way is straight ahead, through the Plains.”

“Will we have to fight?” said Remington.

“You can try,” said Etienne, “and the one who’s best at dodging can carry what’s left of the rest.”

Kneeling on the sloping ground, Jacob opened his knapsack and drew out his tools. With a hand-drill he bored two holes in the back of the driftwood, then strung the holes with a length of wire. Once the tools were replaced and the knapsack secure on his shoulders, he hung the driftwood plaque around his neck like a giant pendant. The severed head of the Living Man stared straight ahead from his breastbone, leaving Jacob’s hands free.

“I think I know what that garden was for,” said Remington. “All that crazy stuff we saw, all those sculptures: I think that’s supposed to be the last thing you see before the end.”

“The finale,” said Jacob, “before the night goes dark.”

“You speak as if there’s a sunrise,” said Leopold.

“Maybe there is,” said Jacob, more out of stubbornness than hope, turning away from the Terminus and starting up the hill.

Remington, with the crow peering suspiciously from the back of his skull, set off behind him, and Adam and Eve followed once Remington had turned away from the Terminus, as if that pit had spoken as clearly to their limbs as it had to the heads of their companions.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Plains of War