Emergence (35 page)

The sea smell, the cool wind of the oncoming evening. He stepped onto the railing.

“Sorry about the door,” he mumbled lamely.

He jumped and took off over the roof.

He didn’t feel like crowing, so he screamed until he thought his voice would crack.

But of course it never did.

TEN

The front doors of the LF Municipal Courthouse opened and Lance Lattimer’s defense attorneys were assailed by the waiting mob of reporters who thrust microphones in their directions and shouted questions, and angry, sign -wielding protesters shrieking for their client’s blood.

These were not Blowback’s targets.

He was suited up in a wide open empty office space on the thirtieth floor of a high rise facing the back of the courthouse, which his employer had rented for him.

Away from the tumult of the press, four SWAT officers wheeled the nearly-comatose Lance Lattimer out of the prisoner dock into a waiting MRUV flanked by two police motorcycles and two squad cars. It was one of those re-purposed military MRAPs, spray painted black and tagged LFPD, specifically, a Cat II 18-ton BAE Caiman 6x6 Multi-Terrain Vehicle.

As the gate opened and the cruisers turned onto Knoll Street, Blowback dipped the barrel of his rifle ever so slightly downward through the neat hole cut in the glass, and sighted the two motorcycle cops.

The one on the right raised his gloved hand to the gate operator in the booth.

Begin part two.

Blowback killed the operator as he lifted a hand in answer, then took out the two bike cops.

The MTV was already turning the corner, the squads raising their sirens. If they had heard the reports, they took no notice.

Blowback pulled his rifle back inside and walked casually along the side of the building, past the empty cubicles as he had done every day for the past week, timing the progression of Lattimer’s entourage.

By the time he reached the southeast corner of the building and slid his rifle through the hole cut in that window, the cruisers had turned the corner ahead of the MTV, making their way towards the tall county jail three blocks over.

There were two policemen in each cruiser and their windshields were like movie screens. In four seconds they were slumped in their seats behind white webs of shattered glass, and the patrol cars drifted together, then rolled to a stop.

The MTV came next.

This next trick had required some planning. Blowback ejected his magazine and rammed home a fresh one of FMJ rounds.

As the MTV operator noticed his entourage’s condition, he did what Blowback had expected him to do. The driver and passenger shutters slammed down and the big engine gunned.

The MTV barreled forward, smashing its two dead escorts aside and rolling for home, the cop driver trusting that Tensylon composite armor to protect them from the rifle shots that had taken out their comrades.

Blowback didn’t aim at the vehicle.

Instead, he smashed the window, stood in the whipping wind, and aimed for a spot his employer had told him about in the intersection just ahead, marked with an innocuous blot of orange spray paint, such as a road crew or city surveyor might leave to mark his work. He didn’t sight it. The high winds would make a liar out of anybody’s scope. He just took his time, checked his own instincts against the wind velocity calculators in his helmet, and squeezed.

As the nose of the MRAP got within a few feet of the spot, the supersonic missile of copper broke the pavement and set off the subterranean IED he had been assured was there.

About eight-hundred pounds of TNT exploded under the vehicle, collapsing the street under its prodigious weight, and flinging the unwieldy MTV on its side. He’d learned that one in the Helmland province.

Blowback shouldered the rifle, cinched it tight, flipped the trigger finger back on his heavy gloves and kicked the coil of nylon rope into space. He checked his carabiners and chest rig and leaned over the edge so that he was facing straight down.

Then he began to run, left arm extended, playing the rope in a rapid Aussie descent that took him all the way to the ground in seconds.

Boots on the pavement, he hastily disconnected his device from the harness at his back and unslung his rifle, stalking straight toward the upended MTV and checking about warily for tangos.

He had thirty seconds. He could already hear the inbound choppers. He doubted anybody in the MTV was dead. That armor was hellishly effective. But they were tumbled dry.

He clambered up onto the MTV and slapped a shaped charge from his thigh pocket onto the hatch and laid his rifle on the hull.

The heavy door blew open and he leapt inside with his Ka-bar. The interior lights were fucked, but in his helmet he could see clear as day, and he dispatched the four SWAT inside and moved onto Lattimer.

The prisoner looked like a whacked out Hannibal Lecter, mummified in restraints, head lolling from the IVs, which had been thrown about the cabin.

Blowback ripped them free of his arms and pulled out the special cocktail his employer had provided. He had no idea what was inside, just what it was meant to do; counteract the crap that was keeping Tantrum in check.

He stabbed Lattimer in the neck and jammed the plunger down.

The misty eyes cleared like fog being blown from a lake.

Still he blinked tiredly.

Blowback slapped him three times, gripping his jaw on the last rebound, hard, and saw the blood run over the web of his thumb and forefinger.

“Wakey, wakey,” he said, and watched the man’s face flush red.

Time to go.

He turned and climbed out of the MTV.

There was a chopper circling his position.

He swept up his rifle and dropped the pilot in the cockpit, putting the bird into a violent spin that sent the police sniper inside it tumbling. His scream ended when he burst on the street a few feet away.

While the co-pilot wrestled to keep the chopper in the air, Blowback slipped into the crater the explosives had made, and dropped into the sewer tunnel beneath.

He headed east, towards the drainage ditch where a motorbike waited.

End part two.

#

Nico stared at the cocaine on the kitchen island.

Was he really going to do this?

A little taste of A-level success and he was back to his old tricks?

Where the hell was Jimmy anyway, to stop him?

Damn Jimmy.

But it wasn’t his fault, was it? That was more of old Nico’s thinking. Everything that happened to him, everything he did to himself, was somebody else’s fault. The bleary, half-remembered nights of vomit and blowjobs, where sometimes he was the recipient and sometimes the giver of both, the nightmarish pulse of those shitty nightclubs and the bastards in their high-end cars with the high-end girls looking fearfully at his face, some of them even crying at the sight of him.

Where did it all come from? Not from him burying his nose in this little pile of blessed forgetfulness. No, couldn’t be that. Had to be Barry.

Barry the bogeyman. Barry with that disgusting crease of flesh between his shorn pelvis and Roman lord’s belly, imprinted with the band of his underwear like some faded fresco, stroking his hair but pressing his head forward. Down.

Barry and his friends, each a carnival show horror unveiled, a terror to him and the other children, some of them laughing as the other kids cried, drowning out their wails of horror and abject misery with their own moans of pleasure, filling scenes better left dark with stark camera flashes to preserve the moments on their incriminating hard drives at home, to entice other creeping ‘friends” from their various infernal circles to join Barry’s parties.

But they weren’t really Barry’s parties, were they? He knew that.

Barry was the lapdog, the sniveling Smee to Hook, that foul master-pervert who ruled alone like a masked and decadent Bligh from the theater-sticky quarterdeck of his own personal mockup Jolly Roger, the boards stained by every conceivable bodily fluid, but most especially children’s tears.

That hook flashed always in the back of his mind.

Jimmy had told him of the baby rapers and pedos he’d taken down. Told him in detail of what he’d found in their dens. Maybe the relation of his deeds had been meant to give Nico comfort, or maybe it had been meant to salve the guilt he felt for everything that had happened. It was strange to think of it as survivor’s guilt, but there it was. Something like that drove Jimmy, drove Pan. But Jimmy had never found that bastard with the hook.

What had gotten him thinking about it?

The set?

He’d been overjoyed to be on a professional set again. They filmed
Capes
at Perennial, right across from the Lost Boys stage where he’d left fifty percent of his skin blackening on the walls all those years ago. He’d missed that bustle, that feeling of importance walking on a quality set in costume. Oh, he had always joshed with the crew, treated them like equals, but in his heart, there was that unmistakable lordliness of celebrity. Empty, he knew, but a pleasant illusion.

And
Capes
was professional. No one-man band, fly-by-night, one-camera setup
Gutmunchers
affair. Everything by the numbers, yes sir, no sir. Assembly line of makeup artists, real clappers, cameras more expensive than his house.

And there was Paul Thurbee AKA Nathan Renner AKA The Nightjar, beloved daytime soap star turned
Person’s
Sexiest Man Alive two years running, and his bubbly popstar girlfriend Jolene, chatting up the Emperor of Pop himself, Elton bloody Ormond, all in posh red velvet jacket and black silk shirt, leather pants and on every ring a diamond. He was holding on, was old Elt. He’d changed his look oh half a dozen times since he’d done
Peter `N Wendy
at the height of his record-breaking $125 million Malcontent tour. Now he favored wide dark shades, a pencil thin mustache, and long, perpetually wet black hair. He was pale as a bloody vampire and Nico had almost bowled over some poor PA to get to the craft table where the three of them were standing.

“Oy!” he’d gushed. “Smashing! Smashing to see you all.””

Paul Thurbee had done a double take at his approach, the prat. About to compliment the makeup department till he realized who he was, no doubt.

“Oh, hey. Nico Tinkburn!”

“Tinkham!”

Prat
.

“Tinkham!” said Thurbee, turning to his girlfriend. “This is Nico Tinkham,” he said to Jolene, knowing it was him that needed the introducing and not her. “You know, from…”

She smiled and put out her hand.

He took it in his and gave it a light squeeze, still grinning.

“From…,” he repeated, flashing that glamour girl smile that hid her vapid.

“Ah,
Gutmunchers
?” he suggested.

“No no no,” said Thurbee snapping his fingers. “What’s the name? You know. The show! With the…”

“
Peter `N Wendy
,” said Elton Ormond in his unusually high voice. Some people said he took something to keep it that high, or had had something done.

He reached across the craft table and Jolene and Thurbee sort of faded away.

“No no no,” Thurbee said, still snapping his fingers.

“It’s nice to see you again, Nico,” Ormond squeaked, so quietly Nico had to lean in to hear him.

He noticed the plastic surgery scars up close, which the hair and the glasses were meant to hide. He was stretched thin, old Elton Ormond, desperately trying to stay young and dynamic in a business being overrun with vapid cunts like Jolene.

Nico had never met Elton Ormond before. The mega-star had visited the set of his self-proclaimed favorite show once when he hadn’t been there, and Elton Ormond had taken Jimmy and Cassidy out for ice cream and a movie or something, at his own private residence, Second Star Ranch, that half-mythical three-thousand acre wonderland of weirdness the general public loved to speculate about but almost nobody had ever seen.

Jimmy and Cassidy had told them it was like a private amusement park with a zoo, a roller coaster, carousel, even a bloody water park all in this secluded valley somewhere in San Bernardo.

His hand was slight, but burning somehow. Warm, like it had been in his pockets. Or maybe that was just Nico’s starstruck imagination. He had been a fan of Elton Ormond since he was a kid. His mum had played the old Ormond Boys records, and pointed out his soulful wailing over the synchronized voices of his older brothers. Elton Ormond had grown up in showbiz. He’d been a star at seven-years old. He was a legend.

“Mister Ormond! I…I’m a huge fan! This is so brilliant!”

Elton Ormond had said it was good to see him…again? But of course he meant
Peter `N Wendy
. Elton Ormond probably didn’t watch shite like
Gutmunchers
and reality TV.

To his surprise, Ormond’s free hand went up and touched the burned side of his face. “Oh, you were Slightly. I’m so sorry.””

That strange gesture had given him a chill.

Ormond must have seen the look on his face, because he excused himself and withdrew. Put his hands in his pockets and flitted off to his nearby security guards, who folded in on him, obscuring him from view.

“Fuckin’ weirdo,” muttered Jolene, reaching for a miniature wiener in a tiny croissant covered in little black poppy seeds.

“Watch your figure, babe,” Paul Thurbee urged as she stuffed the whole thing in her mouth.

Nico retained that strange feeling the rest of the work day. He’d floated on through rehearsal, been cued several times during shooting, visibly annoying the director and the other actors. Somebody whispered he was still on drugs.

He wasn’t, but he’d stopped for some on the way home.

Now he was staring at this little ski slope of oblivion, and smelling his hand.

The hand that had shook Elton Ormond’s.

The smell of Elton Ormond was still there, even after an eleven-hour shoot, a lunch break, and a furious scrubbing.

It wouldn’t come off.

He put the flats of his hands on the counter and stared hard at the cocaine. It was white as the chalk cliffs at Dover where his mum had taken him once on holiday. It was pure as his first snow. He wanted to bury his face in it, to fill his nostrils with that pleasant, heady burn.