Mississippi Roll

Three companions stood grouped behind him. One was a man of similar age, smaller, with a lined, pale face that showed no expression at all as he looked over the newcomers. The second was a striking woman in a formfitting blue silk shirt tucked into tight blue jeans that showcased her splendid figure. It was, Ray realized, a theme of a sort. Her skin was a deep rich blue, her thick, long hair a shade darker, and her eyes the clear cerulean of a cloudless summer sky. The third person was a young man in a black suit with a priest’s collar. He was serious-looking in an intense way, with regular features, dark eyes, and short dark hair.

‘Agents Ray and Angel,’ the silver-haired man said. ‘Pleased to see you. Splendid work, saving the world and all that. Splendid.’ He looked at Moon, whom the Angel had set down on the deck. ‘And this is?’

‘SCARE Agent Moon,’ the Angel said.

‘A were-canid,’ Ray explained as Moon thumped her tail against the deck.

‘Of course,’ the man said. He turned toward Jones. ‘I am Dr Pretorius. You must be Ms Jones, the ICE agent in charge. I’ve been retained to represent the Schröder refugees in their attempt to secure political asylum.’

‘By whom?’ Jones asked in a somewhat less pleasant tone.

Pretorius smiled. ‘The Joker Anti-Defamation League.’ He gestured toward the three who stood by him. ‘This is Mr Robicheaux and Ms Blue, their representatives.’ He indicated the young man. ‘And Father Joachim Aguilera of the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker.’

If Robicheaux was a joker, Ray thought, his deformities were hidden. Unlike Pretorius, his clothing was that of a working man. He wore a short-sleeved shirt tucked into worn jeans and work boots that had seen hard use. His eyes were dark and, like his expression, opaque as his gaze swept them all. He nodded. Ray nodded back.

‘We have much to discuss. The others are waiting. If you will follow me.’ Pretorius leaned heavily on his cane as he limped away.

They fell in line behind the lawyer. As he led them across the main deck, Ray’s nostrils flared. The Schröder’s interior matched its exterior in terms of grime, rust, and general decrepitude. The deck needed a new paint job, not to mention a thorough washing. Usually, Ray thought – though his experience with boats of any kind was rather limited – you see crewmen bustling about on errands and chores, taking care of vital upkeep and minor repairs. But they saw no one, crew or passengers, as they made their way to a hatch leading down into the ship’s hold. It was so quiet that it was more than a little eerie. The Schröder might as well have been manned by a crew of ghosts.

Ray and the Angel exchanged glances. She can feel it, too, he thought. He glanced at Moon and saw her sniff the air. An expression of disgust washed over her lean-jawed face. Ray lacked the acute senses that Moon had, but he could smell the stench, too. Had smelled it since they’d reached the deck. It was getting worse, and it hit them like a slap on the face when Pretorius led them down the ladder into the ship’s hold.

The vessel’s only cargo was inside. People. They were everywhere in the gloom of the poorly lit, practically unvented hold. Men, women, and children looked at them wearily as they descended the ladder, hunger, hope, and fear in their eyes. Ray guessed that this trip had been as hellish as the demon-haunted last days of their home city of Talas. Most were gaunt. Many just lay on the dirty bedding that was their only protection against the harshness of the hold’s metal floor. Ray had been in better-smelling swamps. He didn’t want to even try to imagine the privations these people had undergone during their voyage.

Ray and the Angel kept stoic expressions on their faces, but Jones recoiled and audibly gagged.

‘My God,’ she said, ‘don’t you people bathe?’

‘In what?’ asked the woman approaching them. Her voice was bitter and bore an East European accent. Ray recognized her as Olena Davydenko, the daughter of a deceased Ukrainian mobster. She’d used her dead father’s fortune to finance this desperate quest for safety and freedom. Olena looked at them cooly. She was blond and pretty, Ray thought, in a brittle, high-fashion sort of way. She was accompanied by a young woman who was a bare inch or two over five feet. She had clear pale skin that had a golden sheen to it. And she was staring at the Angel, who seemed uncomfortably aware of her gaze. At least the Black Tongue was nowhere in sight. If IBT and the Angel came face-to-face again – Ray pushed the thought away and forced himself to concentrate on the here and now.

‘We have barely enough water to drink,’ Olena continued bitterly. ‘We have no food, no fuel, no medical supplies—’

‘Not my concern!’ Jones snapped. ‘You people should have been better prepared for your little cruise.’

Pretorius held up his hands. ‘This is all beside the point.’

‘The point being,’ Jones said implacably, ‘that of all the people who decided to take this trip, very few have the proper documentation or even family members already living in the United States willing to sponsor them. No one lacking a sponsor or the proper documents will be allowed off this ship.’

Dr Pretorius gestured to an angry Olena, who handed him an expensive-looking briefcase. Ray figured that while most of the onlooking refugees probably couldn’t follow the conversation in English, they had no problems understanding the gist of it. Pretorius extracted an impressively thick document from the briefcase and handed it to Jones.

She glanced at it. ‘What’s this?’

‘A brief requesting political asylum for all my clients,’ Pretorius said. ‘The government in Kazakhstan has collapsed. The warlords are fighting over the scraps of their country, but they all agree on one thing. They fear, wrongly and unjustly, that somehow the plague that struck Talas was brought on by the wild card virus and that the madness that destroyed the city was somehow spread by the jokers living there. Nonsense, of course, but that’s not stopping them from waging genocide against all wild carders. These people couldn’t stay in Talas and be killed. They can’t go back. They’re claiming asylum.’

‘You know that this must be adjudicated at higher levels of government—’

‘I ask for an expedited hearing. In the meantime, we need food, water, medical—’

‘I’m sure they do.’ Jones started back up the ladder, taking Pretorius’s brief with her.

The joker lawyer looked at Ray. ‘That was pleasant.’

‘Yeah,’ Ray said. He was starting to have a very bad feeling about this mission. It wasn’t as cut-and-dried as it had first seemed. He hadn’t signed up to bully helpless jokers, women and children among them.

The young woman standing with Olena looked at Angel and spoke in accented but clear English. ‘I am called Tulpar. I was in Talas, too. I saw you fighting monsters. They called you the Angel of the Alleyways, the Madonna of the Blade—’

The Angel looked down. ‘I lost it.’

A look of sympathy crossed the girl’s face. ‘I see that your pain is great. But you helped us once. The people, the children, are starving—’

The Angel turned her face, stood silent for a moment, then followed Jones up the ladder.

Moon whined and went after her, taking the ladder carefully. Ray looked at Pretorius, who was watching with pursed lips, and then at the Kazakh girl. ‘She’s been hurt deeper than you know by what happened in Talas.’

‘I could see it on her face,’ she said.

Ray nodded and hurried after them. Jones had crossed the deck and was going down to the waiting Port Police launch. The Angel, again holding Moon with the agent’s front paws over her shoulder, was following.

Ray, feeling helpless, watched her. It had been a very difficult time, with the Angel growing more withdrawn and despondent despite the counseling she’d had. Ray had thought that maybe getting her out into the field might start her back on the road to who she’d once been, but, if anything, it seemed she was getting worse. He didn’t know where to turn himself, or what to do, and that helplessness was churning deep inside and turning to an anger that he couldn’t focus on any one person or thing. It was just grinding at him.

He started down after the Angel as sudden shouting from the riverbank caught his attention. A group of the anti-refugee protesters from the Liberty Party had surged against the flimsy barrier separating them from the pro-refugee JADL contingent and were breaking through the thin blue line that was all that kept the two groups apart.

‘Crap,’ Ray said.

He glanced down. The Angel, too, had paused on her way down and was watching the drama unfold on the riverbank.

‘Hurry up,’ Ray called. ‘We’ve got to stop this before someone gets hurt!’

The Angel nodded and dropped the remaining dozen feet or so to the launch’s deck, landed lightly, and set Moon down. Ray swarmed down the ladder like a monkey in a major hurry and in a moment was at the Angel’s side.

‘Cast off,’ he shouted. ‘Head for the landing across the river!’

‘I give the orders here, Ray,’ Jones said coldly. ‘Just what are your intentions?’

‘My intentions,’ he said in a dangerously level voice, ‘are to keep people from getting hurt.’ He locked eyes with the officer in charge of the launch.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said crisply.

Jones sighed. ‘Very well. Though I don’t know what you can do.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ the Angel said.

The launch cast away from the Schröder and swept out in an arc, taking them to the northern bank, as everyone onboard watched what was happening on shore with concern.

The small JADL contingent was holding their ground as the anti-refugee protesters broke through the police barrier. Ray and the others on the launch could hear their angry shouts as they ran, screaming and waving their signs. The one in the lead was a heavyset man whose sign read Go Home Genetic Waist! The ones following him shoved aside the few cops who were bobbing helplessly in the mob’s wake like corks in an unleashed torrent.

‘Oh crap,’ Ray repeated.

And as the protesters approached the JADL demonstrators – slowly, because their signs weighed them down and most weren’t in the best shape and it was a very hot and humid day – the zombies began to appear.

They didn’t pop up out of thin air, but instead hauled themselves out of the river, climbing the steps at the landing toward which the launch was heading, like corpses rising from a watery grave. And make no mistake, they all were dead as shit. Not one was complete. Some were missing only fingers or an ear or an eye, others were less whole. Their sodden clothes oozed stinking seawater, which nicely complemented their body odors – a combination of rotting flesh and astringent embalming chemicals. The protesters outnumbered them ten to one, but Ray figured that the zombies were probably more intent on their purpose.

‘Goddammit!’ Ray swore aloud. He felt a sudden twinge of despair when the Angel didn’t respond to his blasphemy. She never did, anymore. ‘Goddammit!’ he repeated.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ Jones said.

‘You’ve never seen a zombie attack before?’ the Angel asked, conversationally.

‘Swing it around parallel to the shore,’ Ray shouted as the launch neared the riverbank. He climbed out on the bow.

‘What is he doing now?’ Jones wondered.

‘He’s going to make someone pay,’ the Angel said softly, but she didn’t say for what.

Moon whined by her side.

‘Go ahead and help him, if you want.’ Moon put a paw on her knee, beseechingly. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ the Angel said in a faraway voice. ‘They’re only zombies.’

By now the protesters were all quite aware of the creatures shambling toward them. The mob’s first reaction was to stumble to an uncertain halt, stand, and stare. Ray wanted to scream aloud to Hoodoo Mama – only she could be orchestrating this – but that would sound silly. ‘Josephine’ was too formal, and ‘Joey’ – he’d never called her that. The anger continued to build in him – the months and months of watching the Angel grow ever more inward, ever more detached, ever more untouchable and desolate – and he found his voice in a wordless cry of his own rage and despair.

He leaped as the launch swung around as he’d directed, setting a new unofficial world record for the standing long jump, and hit halfway up the stairway going up the riverbank. He stuck his landing and was moving a moment after his feet touched ground.

Moon followed him. She leaped from the bow, her fur flowing in the air as she dove into the water and came up swimming, reaching the foot of the staircase as Ray clambered up to the top.

By now, the shambling newcomers had inserted themselves between the two groups of demonstrators, a half score undead facing the larger contingent of the living. As the reeking zombies continued their slow approach, the demonstrators turned en masse and, bumbling and battering against one another, retreated. Many added to the chaos by screaming incoherently. Some threw away their signs, some used them to bludgeon a way to safety.

Many suddenly also realized that Ray was coming toward them with the speed of a runaway train and a look on his face that was not entirely rational. Moon followed behind him, barking ferociously. He heard Moon, but his heart sank when he realized that the Angel had remained on the launch, looking on. It all just made him even more angry.

Some protesters fled; some froze in fear, creating a major traffic jam as those behind them either blundered to a halt or tried to fight through the paralyzed clumps of humanity.

Ray hit the scrum of uncertain protesters like the running back he’d been in college. It all came back to him, like a riding a bicycle that’d been parked for forty years. He smiled crazily as he headed for an imaginary goal line, jinking and darting through the defenders, none laying a hand on him, his eyes on the prize ahead.

The biggest of the zombies, a huge man who’d once been black but was now a washed-out, grayish color, was in the lead. He had a nasty bullet hole in his forehead, but that didn’t seem to be bothering him any as he reached for the unlucky protester at the rear of the pack. She’d fallen down and the zombie was looming over her, opening wide jaws, which showed gaps where, Ray guessed, gold teeth had once gleamed.

A last moment of cognition, of recognition of danger, must have flickered through the dim recesses of the zombie’s brain, for a whisper of what looked to Ray like surprise passed over his face, and then Ray leaped over his intended victim and hit him at full speed, shoulder first, arms wrapped around him.

The zombie came apart.

Fuck, Ray thought, I’m wearing a new suit.

He clutched the top half of the zombie’s body, various organs dangling from it like really ugly candy hanging from a shattered piñata. The zombie’s bottom half, from the ass down, hit the asphalt walkway and skidded. Ray’s forward momentum shot them into another zombie and the two and a half of them hit the ground in a tangle of limbs.

Ray had rarely – no, never – been so disgusted in his life. He was covered by water-soaked zombie goo, his new suit was ruined, and he was still, in general, pissed off. The zombie on the bottom of the dog-pile tried to bite him, and Ray put his fist through its face, smashing it like a two-week-old Halloween pumpkin. Then he was on his feet, stamping, until the zombie’s chest was a flattened mass of fetid flesh and shattered bones.

If the remaining zombies in Ray’s vicinity had any humanity left about them, or even some low degree of animal cunning, they would’ve fled. But no. They were zombies. They converged on their new, nearest target.

Ray realized that all the protesters had gotten to safety – out of the corner of his eye he saw the cops helping some of them and Moon was harassing and gnawing off bits of other zombies – but he wasn’t done yet. He had to hit something to work the anger out of his system, and zombies made good targets.

He grabbed the right wrist of the nearest and flipped it to the ground. He put his foot – his shoes, too, were finished, Ray realized – in its armpit and twisted. The arm came off like a well-roasted chicken wing and Ray was just in time to duck and whirl and smack another attacking zombie right in the face with his unconventional yet effective flail.

The zombie’s head sailed off its rather scrawny neck and it twirled in a little uncertain dance and immediately fell over the edge of the riverbank, bounced a few times, and was swallowed by the waiting river. Ray whirled about, but the other zombies had stopped in their tracks.

‘Come on, you sons of bitches,’ Ray shouted, though two of the zombies were clearly women. He didn’t really care.

But they, or more properly, Hoodoo Mama, had had enough. She wasn’t exactly frugal with her undead soldiers, but neither did she waste them for no reason. Those left standing all turned in unison and marched toward the riverbank.

‘Come on!’ Ray shouted in frustration. ‘Come on!’

But no one heeded his challenge.

‘Shit!’ Ray yelled. Still enraged, he hurled the zombie arm at the last zombie before it could jump off the bank, hitting it in the back and knocking it into the river below. Ray took a deep breath. ‘Shit,’ he repeated, more quietly this time.

He stalked back to the clump of protesters. Moon trotted next to him, her beautiful coat soaked in zombie goo, sneezing and hacking up bits from her narrow-jawed mouth.

‘Thanks,’ Ray said.

She wagged her tail.

The launch had landed during the fight and Jones had disembarked, followed by Ray and the Port Police crew.

Jones planted herself in front of him. ‘Agent Ray—’ she began, but stopped when Ray raised his right hand and she saw the look in his eyes.

He was covered in gore, soaked in embalming chemicals and bodily fluids, smeared with rotting flesh and squashed organs.

‘I’m going back to the motel now,’ he said. He was surprised to hear the calmness in his voice. ‘I have to take a shower.’ He looked at his wife. The look in her eyes – was it sorrow? Loss? Nothing at all? – bit deeper than any wound he’d ever received in his forty years in government service.

The Angel and Moon followed him as he walked away.

‘Who told you where I live?’ Joey Hebert asked sullenly as Ray stood before the door of her shotgun shack. The picket fence around the front yard was more gray than white and had more gaps in it than a meth head’s dental work. The front porch sagged and the entire building listed uncertainly like a drunken sailor. ‘It was Bubbles, wasn’t it?’

Ray suppressed a sigh. He’d decided to take this one on alone, leaving the Angel and Moon at the Motel 6 where they were staying. He feared that Hoodoo Mama might remind her even more of Talas. Months of therapy had done little to help the Angel. Sitting around DC hadn’t helped either. He’d hoped that what he thought would be a relatively innocuous assignment might start to shake her out of her depression, but the Angel wasn’t responding at all to being in the field. The shields she’d erected around herself after Talas were still impenetrable. And now Ray had to worry about the twists the mission was taking. Well, one thing at a time.

‘Let me in, Joey.’ He decided on the informal approach. ‘We have to talk.’

Hoodoo Mama glared at him. She was a scrawny, young black woman with an expression that was mostly always angry. Ray knew the feeling.

‘We have to talk,’ he repeated flatly.

After a moment she said, ‘I guess I can’t make you shut your mouth.’ She opened the screen door and stepped aside.

The front room was a mess. Ray’s sense of neatness was offended. The room was poorly lit by a single forty-watt bulb in a floor lamp that stood next to a dirty, beat-up sofa. The coffee table in front of it was littered with old Chinese food and pizza boxes, the worn carpet was splotched with dried mud and less identifiable stains. The room smelled of dust and decay and death. ‘Jesus,’ Ray said, ‘would it hurt to have one of your zombies run a broom through this place occasionally?’

Joey shrugged defensively. ‘I just got back into town – right before I heard about the ship of refugees being held up in the harbor. They’re mostly wild carders, you know.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Ray said patiently. ‘And you’re not helping—’

‘Someone’s got to help them, Mr High-and-Mighty Government Man,’ Joey said, bitterly. ‘Someone’s got to keep them safe from those creepy-ass Liberty Party motherfuckers.’

‘That’s my job,’ Ray said.

‘Are you going to do it?’

Ray’s crooked features suddenly froze in a clenched-tooth grin. ‘You ever heard of me shirking my duty?’

‘What is your duty, Mr High-and-Mighty Government Man?’ Joey replied.

‘Trust me,’ he said, and repeated after her unamused bark of laughter, ‘trust me. If you want, keep an eye on the situation – I know you have a legion of dead pigeons and rats you use as spies. Have an entire division of zombies on hand just in case things go wrong. But for Christ’s sake, keep them out of sight. You’re not helping by having the walking dead show up at every little provocation.’

Joey eyed him, Ray thought, with more speculation than distrust. ‘You got a plan to save those poor people?’

‘I’m working on one,’ Ray said. It almost surprised him to realize that he was. But in her own unsubtle way, he realized that Joey was right.

She nodded. ‘All right. If you said you had one I wouldn’t believe you, because no one can save them. They’re fucked. But I’ll be damned if I’m just going to let them quietly sail off to their doom.’

‘I’ll take your word on that.’ Ray turned to leave, stopped, and looked back. ‘And Bubbles said to call her. Your cell phone isn’t working and she’s worried about you.’

‘Damn it!’ Hoodoo Mama said as Ray let the screen door bang shut after him.

He went down the sagging wooden stairs carefully, fully aware that there could be an army of small dead things with sharp pointy teeth under them that Joey could send after him. But he felt that they had found at least a tiny bit of common ground, and zombies were one less thing he had to worry about, for now. There were plenty of others.

Like the man sitting in the locked black Escalade he’d left parked up the street from Joey’s shack. There were no working streetlights in Hoodoo Mama’s neighborhood, so Ray could barely discern the silhouette in the front passenger seat. He thought that it was a man, a small man, perhaps a boy. He seemed utterly unconcerned as Ray approached the vehicle, so Ray simply opened the driver’s side door and bent down to look in.

From close up Ray could see that he was indeed a small, slight white man, probably in his early seventies. He had a pleasant face that had been roughly treated by the passage of time. What hair wasn’t covered by his porkpie hat was white and cut short. Ray suddenly recognized him. ‘You’re the JADL guy from the boat. Robicheaux, right?’

He smiled. His teeth were even and white. ‘Right, Mr Ray.’

‘Can I help you?’

‘No, but I want to help you.’ He had a Cajun accent.

Why not? Ray thought. A small old dude was just who he needed on his side. ‘How?’ Ray slid into the car and closed the door.

‘Information, Mr Ray. I know what’s going on among the refugees – and it’s not good.’

Ray sighed as he pulled into the deserted street. ‘What’s happening?’

‘They’re scared, Mr Ray. Tired and hungry. They were hoping for sanctuary and have been turned away—’

‘Pretorius says they have a shot—’

‘No. Asylum will be granted to a token few – the Handsmith and his son, the ace Tulpar, maybe two dozen passengers in all. Aces and nats, every one.’

‘And the jokers?’

‘Van Rennsaeler made a deal with the British PM – they’re sending them to Rathlin Island.’