End Time (47 page)

Angel Kid:
He's just using you. Don't let him own you.

Devil Kid:
Own you? He birthed you. If he hadn't showed up, you'd still be hidin' under the kitchen sink with Liquid-Plumr and Mr. Clean. You'd still be waitin' for Dimples to get done with Mama so he could …

Kid's muttering grew softer, and she stopped catching words. Except for the words
Room Time
.

Lila finally looked around the room she shared with Maria, and couldn't help laughing.
More wallpaper
. A Beatrix Potter woodland mural ran the length of her larger bed and from floor to ceiling. Aunt Jemima Puddleduck, Mr. Fox in his red waistcoat, Mrs. Tittlemouse's mousy daughters, dancing in their pretty dresses holding their long tails—all the creatures from that Potter woman's fanciful mind. Peter Rabbit. Benjamin Bunny.…

You could even write your name on a sign plank planted inside the forest scene so you could tell everyone whose room this was. The gaunt man had pasted their names over the previous child occupant. Now the sign plank read:

LILA & LIL' MARIA'S BURROW

Ah, that Master Piper thought of everything. Or did he? Mr. P. was like an awkward adult who knew nothing of young people, but still presumed to grasp their whims. Maybe this was age-appropriate for Little Maria, but a grown-up young woman? Lila sensed a weakness in him:
conceit.

Then it struck her.… Since her failed escape, the impulse to flee had vanished. Not that Lila had fallen in with Mr. P., but her desire to watch over the other two children overpowered any fear for her own personal safety. The way Maria cradled the bunny in her arms as she slept, the way Kid struggled over right and wrong; neither the little girl nor the young man belonged in Mr. P.'s world.

The bar of morning light from the window crossed Maria's face. She groggily sat up in bed and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, then heard Kid's mumbling voice; Maria looked to the older girl for an explanation. The Kit-Cat clock on the wall in the other room rolled its eyes. Seven minutes to eight; rise and shine.

“C'mon,” Lila told her. “Let's see what we can find for breakfast.”

Kid's bedclothes rustled. “I'm not hungry,” he grumbled.

“I wasn't speaking to you,” Lila said.

Maria patted her mussed hair and then the plushy, stuffed bunny. Lila shared a look with the little girl. An understanding flowed between them, a kind of bond. Was there still hope for Kid? Maybe they could drain the poison. Breach his walls without breaking him. In so many ways the young man was still so needy. Lila went to their shared bathroom and stood in the open door to the boy's room. Kid had tangled his covers in his feet and struggled to free them. The Kit-Cat clock grinned at her.

“No breakfast unless you wash your face,” she said sternly.

Kid lurched from bed, brushed past her to the bathroom sink, and turned on the taps. The children's toiletries, toothbrushes, and toothpaste had been laid out; he pondered them for a moment. Mr. P. had thought of everything. He splashed water on his face. “Eggs Benedict?” Kid asked with a tiny note of hope. “Canadian bacon? Buttered toast?” The young man looked curiously at her.

“Only if you wash your face,” Lila told him.

 

25

Hall of the Rat King

Lila made eggs Benedict, extra bacon, English muffins, the hollandaise sauce, even parsley garnish. Other mornings she made French toast or blueberry pancakes. The huge kitchen in the apartment was outfitted with every kind of stainless-steel appliance. The humongous refrigerator stocked to overflowing: not only milk and eggs, but frozen mango slices and stone crab claws. If they ran out of Nutella or smoked Alaskan trout, there was a phone number for the local Food Emporium on a magnetic shopping list, and the supermarket delivered.

Days passed, then more days. The dead end of September had arrived. Mr. P. seemed to have forgotten all about them. They saw him only when he came in during mealtimes to nosh, or pick off the children's plates. Otherwise, he left the youngsters to their own devices, sequestering himself beyond a grand Tudor arch in a large wood-paneled study off the living room. And they were careful not to disturb him, like kids told to play quietly outside Daddy's office. When Lila asked if he needed anything—snack, a soda—he merely shook his head. “Time to pour castor oil on the waters. No rest for the wicked.”

So far, mission accomplished.

He had secured both Lila for her outstanding genetic qualities, and the little girl for her nascent powers of insight and foresight, keeping both females like a couple of Rapunzels in a tower far from the outside world. Neither of them would fall into the hands of subterranean government dimwits in the worm-crawls of Hillsboro, Ohio; much better to be held in reserve until he knew what circumstances required. Lila and Little Maria were his secret weapon, to be used only at a time and place of his choosing. He had to prepare the way, abolish comfort and normality forever. Achieve a measure of destruction called
Point of No Return
. Then he'd know the proper way to employ the two females.

No doubt the worms of Hillsboro knew of Lila Chen's Indianapolis hospital stay, accessing her records from their own search engines. They might even have traced the two girls to New York via the Gulfstream's manifest or flight plan, but those techno naïfs at Pi R Squared hadn't earned the right to partake in the fruits of the Pied Piper's labor or the privilege of joining him at the adult table.

Mr. P. sat at his desk watching three flat HD screens, each tuned to different channels and running picture-in-picture. By his elbow stood an original Astro lava lamp, the only decoration in his study. As he worked the
Twilight Zone
phone, he stroked the transparent cone, and the red wax blobs in the lamp rose and fell, slowly coming to a boil as he made countless calls to the furthest reaches of Piper Holdings.

Very soon, a stream of directives drummed out of Mr. P.'s office, straight to Kid's iPad, the newest supersized version. Lila and Maria watched with growing apprehension as Kid let slip the rats of war. While his nimble fingers touched and pinched the screen, Kid chatted amiably about chaos in times past:

“In 1348, the Black Death came to Medieval Europe on the backs of rats and their fleas. Thirty to fifty percent of the population was infected and died. Not enough people remained to even bury the dead. Peasants brought in from the countryside dug graves at extortionate rates.”

He plucked a Dalekto tab from a candy bowl and stuck it under his tongue. Without moving from the iPad screen, he stealthily glanced at the two girls to gauge their reaction. Nothing overt, no condemnation; instead, the two were wary, as if wondering where he was going with this.

He almost told the two girls the depth and breadth of Piper's plan, revealing how he and Mr. P. were going to raise their own medieval plague. Using rats, fleas,
and
mosquitoes; much, much worse than anything in times past. How an infection rate of only five or ten percent guaranteed certain collapse of modern civil society. But something made him hesitate. He was afraid Lila and Lil' Maria would treat him as they treated Mr. P.—with silent loathing. The gaunt man gave off a faint stench: the scent of deceit, the aroma of a sneer. And suddenly Kid didn't want to smell like that.

Instead he told them, “Believe it or not, we're much more vulnerable today than the world of superstitious serfs and Popes who thought maggots sprouted from rotting fish. And so chaos comes on smaller wings.”

Again, he glanced at them surreptitiously. The girls didn't like where this was going. And Lila and Maria knew about Skeeterbugs. Kid had plenty of digital images of them. But when Kid said “chaos comes on smaller wings” the girls could tell it wasn't just actual carriers he meant. Clearly his mind had taken on a greater depth. By rendering complex events into unique, graspable bits, he demonstrated the true mark of high-end thinking: similes, metaphors, allegories, and parables. Analogies. Some called it
the very core of cognition
.

He took the drug tab out of his mouth to examine how much had dissolved, then popped it back in his mouth. He caught his two companions' worried eyes. The Too-Much-Drugs Look.

“It makes me smarter,” Kid said. “I think faster; I work faster. Makes me better.”

“No, it doesn't,” Lila exclaimed. “It just feels that way.”

Little Maria's voice piped up like a bird, “Food makes you smarter. A bath every day makes you smarter. Not
that
stuff.” He made a show of ignoring them and thought about the tiny white-robed Angel Kid and red-robed Devil Kid perched on his shoulders, arguing in his ears. The two cartoon characters were on the verge of starting up again, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. In a few seconds he'd be babbling like an idiot in front of everyone. Lila laid a single finger on his forearm, and he felt a kind of warmth flow through him. Lila's magic touch. Angel Kid and Devil Kid held their tongues.

Slowly the Dalekto tab soured. He brought his hand to his lips like he had to cough; surreptitiously he spat out the lozenge so neither girl would see.
Don't let on. In case you can't beat it. In case the Dalekto gets you in the end …
He felt a twinge of cowardice that he couldn't do it up front. Maybe that meant he wouldn't be able to quit this monkey crap. Best hide the doubt, deep down.

He pointed to his iPad, exuding confidence for the girls' benefit.

“Want to know how Mr. P. gets things done?” Neither girl replied. He told them anyway. “He's been around so long, he knows everything everybody's ever done and ever thought. He's been a thousand different men and countless creatures. He speaks in tongues, the language of every animal. When Mr. P. decided to get involved again, he talked to the insects first, the ants especially. The ants follow orders without question. The rats, because they're smart. The rats are his banzai troops, his kamikazes, knowing however many of them die, they'll still breed their way to the top of the food chain.”

Kid's fingers danced across the iPad screen.

“Get a load of this.” The brave blue shield of the NYPD appeared. He'd tapped into New York Police Department's real-time office security feed at One Police Plaza: the cops' own security cameras, in the corridors and cubicles, stairwells and fire doors. The screen cut itself into dozens of boxes, each one a thumbnail of a different camera. Kid touched one thumbnail. One image expanded to fill the screen.

A basement-level camera showed conduits, steam pipes, and a pair of elevator doors. The thrum of generators filled the audio. As One Police Plaza was a modern building from the 1970s as opposed to the 1870s, the basement area was brightly painted and well lit, not your typical New Jack City dungeon.

The elevator doors opened, and two building engineers emerged, one of them talking personal stuff. “I told her if her brother comes around drunk again, barfing on the front steps, he's going direct to Queens Memorial holding his friggin' head—”

The two men stopped short; three bold rats hustled into view at the bottom of the frame. Both men jumped back against the basement wall, too surprised to gasp. The rodents paused aggressively, measuring their competition. Three rats vs. two men, the odds almost even. One guy started to kick them, and the rats scattered.

“Oh, they're not going to like that,” the Kid remarked. “Mr. P. has a certain affinity for these creatures. They're organized, they're highly social, and they listen well. Now he's told each and every one of them they have nothing to fear. The world is their rat run.”

Suddenly there were six rats in the hallway instead of three. The first wave had called in reinforcements. Go ahead, Dumbo, try kicking now. The two men turned tail and ran for their lives, retreating down the basement corridor. They hammered the elevator button, the doors sluggishly opened, and the two building engineers leapt inside, punching every button in sight. The elevator doors sluggishly closed, cutting off the horde of rats skittering along the floor.

Whew.
Close call.

The Kid touched another thumbnail. Now they were looking at the Real-Time Crime Center, a kind of Mission Control inside One Police Plaza—a dark, cavernous room with lit Jumbotrons staring down at platoons of smaller desks, keyboards, and flat-screens. A wide shot of police bureaucrats and office workers. People talked on the phones like quacking ducks; others traipsed along the aisles.

Suddenly there was a bellow of panic and revulsion: a plainclothes cop in a bad suit and tie nearly fell over his chair and began doing the Mexican Hat Dance. He pulled his gun and started waving it around; people shrieked and ducked, but luckily, nothing went bang.

An office worker flew out of her cubicle—an attractive woman in a business suit—she did the stamp dance in high heels. A stream of invective flew out of her mouth. “What the F—!” and more. You could see objects falling out of the drop ceiling. In the Real-Time Crime Center it was raining real-time rats.

One last thumbnail of Police Plaza's lobby showed a bank of elevators. The metal doors slid open. A body fell out: arm, neck, and the back of a man's head. One of the guys from the basement, his clothes shredded and hunks of flesh missing. A gang of brown rodents stood their ground, defying anyone to come closer. One person screamed or maybe they all did; the lobby scattered.

Lila and Lil' Maria watched, too daunted to say anything.

“It won't take much,” Kid said to his two companions. “Just a little poke. Y'see, when the rats crawl out of their basements in every tenement, whole neighborhoods will be overrun, ungovernable. It's not rocket science. It's sociology. Remove a rat's fear of punishment, and the world of men goes to hell.”