Jokertown Shuffle

6.

Brennan ran, pursued by dead men and Scar's maniacal laughter.

Scar was toying with him, Brennan realized. The teleporting ace could have forced a face-off, but apparently wanted to make Brennan suffer before finishing him off. He flickered just in front of or just behind Brennan, slashing ferociously with his razor. Sometimes Brennan dodged or blocked, sometimes he didn't. His shirt was soon in tatters, and he was leaving a splattered trail of blood for the pursuing dead men to follow.

Even without Scar, there were too many corpses to handle. He needed help, and he needed weapons, preferably both. But the run-down streets were deserted, the decaying buildings dark and empty.

Brennan was in excellent physical condition, but his pursuers didn't tire. He knew he couldn't keep running and running. He'd eventually fall exhausted, and then his foes could deal with him at their leisure. Somehow he had to shake the pursuit, which seemed unlikely, or at least break up the pack and deal with it in small groups.

A familiar building caught his eye as he surged up the street, gasping in the killing heat, throat dry, heart starting to pound. It was the Famous Bowery Wild Card Dime Museum. Inside it would be cool, and dark, with plenty of hiding places.

He pounded up the stairs, twenty yards ahead of his nearest pursuer, and slammed hard against the front door. It swung wide open, and the cool, dark interior of the museum beckoned him. He dashed inside and put his back against the wall, catching his breath before moving into the interior.

He looked around at the familiar exhibits, the wall of monstrous joker babies floating in jars, the diorama of the Four Aces, Earth verses the Swarm, Kien's assassins attacking him and Ann-Marie. Brennan stopped and stared. There was, of course, no such exhibit in the real Famous Bowery Wild Card Dime Museum, but then, this wasn't the real Famous Bowery Wild Card Dime Museum. This version of it had been conjured from the depths of Brennan's mind and was filled with the archetypes and images that had shaped his psyche over the years.

He wandered on to the next exhibit. It was the Fall of Saigon recreated in all its casual brutality. Brennan was in the foreground ripping off his captain's bars and walking away from it. There was a scene of him fighting some forgotten battle in some forgotten Asian country during his mercenary years and one of him practicing Zen archery in the temple with his roshi Ishida looking on. There was Brennan after his return to the States in Minh's restaurant, but too late to do anything besides avenge his comrade's death at the hands of the Immaculate Egrets. There was Brennan meeting Chrysalis, Brennan fighting the Swarm, Brennan and Jennifer.

He wandered on in a daze. The last exhibit took him full circle in time and history, and he found himself looking at a diorama that was similar, so similar, to the first one he'd seen. Kien's assassins were breaking into his house, but it was Jennifer, not Ann-Marie, lying covered in blood.

Am I doomed, Brennan wondered, to repeat the cycle of death time and time again despite my best intentions? Are destruction and violence always to follow me like vicious pet dogs that I can never tame? He reached out a hand toward the wax figure of Jennifer in the last diorama, and a sound made him stop, turn, and look.

Scar stood at the head of the pack of dead men, grinning like an idiot.

"You think you're so smart," Scar said, mockingly. "We knew this was the first place you'd go." He looked over and pointed at a diorama that Brennan hadn't noticed before. "Wanna see the future, asshole? Look over there."

It was a scene of Brennan lying bloody and torn, Scar crouched on his chest, holding a dripping straight razor in one hand and Brennan's heart in the other.

Brennan turned to face the sadistic ace, and the myriad pairs of shining, unblinking eyes of all the men Brennan had killed since coming back to the city. There was nowhere to run, no place to go. "Let's see," he said, "if dead men can die twice."

Scar grinned, lifted his razor, and flickered out of sight. He popped into existence three feet to Brennan's right. Brennan moved to block him, but something interceded.

Something that appeared from the shadows at Brennan's back quick as a cat, and struck Scar with a wooden staff. Scar took the blow on his throat and staggered back, wide-eyed and gaping like a suffocating fish. He dropped his razor, went down on his knees, and like Brennan, stared at the newcomer.

It was a man, a young man in his midteens. He was shorter than Brennan, slimly built but lithely muscled. He wore black pants and black slippers, and handled a bo staff with the ease of an expert martial artist.

Scar looked from the newcomer to Brennan, hate glinting in his crazed eyes. He sighed, as if with a final expulsion of breath, "Not again…" and collapsed on the floor, his hands clutching his severely crushed throat.

A murmur rose from the ranks of the dead men as the newcomer spoke. "You know who I am," he said in a soft youthful voice. "You know that I stand with this man. As do," he said, gesturing with his staff, "these others."

The dead men looked around the dark chamber, as did Brennan. His lips worked, but he was too stunned to speak. There was his old comrade the Tiger Scout Minh, with his daughter Mai, who had sacrificed herself so that the earth would be free of the Swarm. There was Sergeant Gulgowski and his squad from Nam. There was Chrysalis with a swarm of manikins at her feet.

The dead men still outnumbered them, but punks and bullies that they were, they no longer seemed to have guts for a fight. Brennan watched in astonishment as they drifted back slowly through the darkness until all were gone. And when he looked around, all his old friends and allies had also disappeared, all except the youth who stood before him. "Who are you?" Brennan asked quietly.

His young ally said nothing but turned slowly to face Brennan for the first time. Brennan stared into his face and thought, My God, he's got Ann-Marie's eyes. He smiled, and he had Ann-Marie's smile too.

"Are you real?" Brennan whispered.

"As real as I would have been if things had worked out differently." He leaned on his staff, still smiling. "Come," he said, "it's time to go to the center of things. Everyone is waiting."

Brennan nodded. There was much he wanted to ask the boy, but he stopped himself. Somehow, he thought, it was better not to question some things. Some things it was better simply to accept.

The two left the Dime Museum in companionable silence. In the company of the boy the city no longer seemed so deathly hot, so terribly decayed. Brennan noted signs of life as green plants thrust through the cracks in the sidewalk, and a cool breeze blew through the concrete canyons.

The walk seemed to last a long time, but Brennan didn't mind. The farther they went, the more calm he felt. They were headed, he realized, toward Central Park. Of course. The "center of things."

Only this was not the Central Park that Brennan knew. It was a jungle that seemed to have been lifted out of Southeast Asia and transplanted into Brennan's dream Manhattan. Brennan and the boy stopped at the edge of the jungle.

"You have to proceed alone," the boy told him. Brennan nodded. "Thank you," he said, "for your help and your companionship. Will I ever see you again?"

The boy shrugged. "Many things are possible." Brennan nodded again. He opened his arms. The boy came to him, and they hugged fiercely. Brennan kissed the top of his head, and then they parted. The boy smiled and, twirling his staff, disappeared into the heat waves rising up from the streets of the smoldering city. Brennan watched him until he was gone, then plunged into the jungle.

Kien hated the jungle. He'd always hated the jungle. He was an urbanite at heart. He liked air-conditioning, ice cubes in his drinks, and buildings with real floors and walls, all of which were rather lacking in the jungle.

But Wyrm had told him that his destiny was here, and he wasn't about to argue with the dead joker. He hit upon a strangely familiar path as soon as he reached the jungle. He half knew where it would take him as soon as he found it, so it was no real surprise that he came upon the village where he'd spent his childhood. It was strange, but Kien was beyond surprise by now. He accepted it as he accepted all the strangeness of this place, but he approached the village with all the caution that he could muster because he still had the feeling that death could be found here much as it could be found in the real world.

The village seemed deserted. He headed straight for the dirt-floored store that was his father's, where he'd spent so many hated hours when he was a child.

His father, Kien thought, had been such a hypocrite, always crying and moaning about how poor they were. He would scarcely put decent food on the table, let alone buy decent clothes for his children. It was bad enough growing up ethnic Chinese among the damned Vietnamese. It was worse to wear ragged and patched clothes that made him the laughingstock of the village school. And it wasn't, Kien remembered as he approached the store's entrance, that they didn't have the money. No. Kien's father, besides being a shrewd businessman in his dealings with the village, was also a blackmarketeer. He sold weapons, munitions, and medicine to the insurgents fighting the French, and everything he sold, he sold dear.

Kien walked into the dark interior of the store. Old Dad had plenty of money. In fact, Kien knew where the miser hid it, buried beneath a pile of cheap straw mats in a cache dug into the store's dirt floor. Right there.

As Kien looked at the spot in the floor, he was seized with the same compulsion that had once gripped him over thirty-five years ago. He took a sharp-pointed mattock down from those hanging from hooks on the wall and roughly pushed the pile of cheap mats away. He started to dig in a frenzy, cutting quickly through the cool, slightly moist soil in a spate of wild hoeing. Within moments he had dug a hole over two feet deep, and the blade of the mattock hit something that clanged with a metallic chink. He dropped the mattock, grubbed with his hands in the dirt, and pulled out a metallic strongbox that felt heavy with the weight of untold riches.

"You!" a voice squeaked in rage.

Kien looked wildly over his shoulder. It was Old Dad. "What are you doing there? What are you doing with my box?"

"I-" Kien began, confused by the blurring of memories and events unfolding before him.

"My son, a thief," the old man said haughtily. He raised the cane that he always carried and struck Kien sharply on the shoulder. Kien ducked his head like a turtle retreating into his shell and took the blow as he always did.

Old Dad struck him again and again, and something snapped in Kien. He wailed in anger and pain, reached out and grabbed the object nearest to him, and struck out wildly at his father. He felt the shock of contact run up his arms, and his father stopped beating him. He opened his eyes and saw the truth that he had hidden with a thousand elaborate lies. He saw the mattock blade embedded in the center of his father's forehead. Old Dad looked at him with astonished, already glazed eyes.

He was dead. Kien had killed him. There was only one thing to do now. He had to run. He needed money. He reached gingerly over his father's cooling corpse and lifted the key the old man wore on a thong around his neck. He put the key into his pocket and tucked the strongbox under his arm. It was heavy, heavy enough to buy him a new life and a new identity in Saigon. He could finally get out of the jungle.

He rushed out of the store and came face-to-face with Daniel Brennan. The two stared at each other like the old enemies they were.

"What are you doing here?" Kien ground out.

"Looking for something you took from me," Brennan said. His eyes went from Kien's face to the box, and he remembered what Chrysalis had told him when he'd first come to the strange place.

Kien, too, looked at the box. "This is mine," he said. "I took it to buy myself a new life."

Brennan shook his head. "It is the means of my new life," he said, advancing.

Kien looked wildly around, but there was nowhere to go. He tried to dodge past Brennan, but Brennan was too fast for him. They grappled for the box, and it fell to the ground and burst like a ripe watermelon. Golden light shone out of the box so powerfully that it nearly blinded both men.

They shielded their eyes and stared as a tall slim figure stepped out of the light. It was Jennifer Maloy, naked and beautiful and alive.

She looked around dazedly, then saw Brennan. They met and embraced while Kien crawled to the shattered remnants of the strongbox, moaning like a lost child. Brennan hugged and kissed Jennifer, wanting never to let her go, but he finally had to release her to take a breath.

" I was so lost and afraid," she said. " I couldn't find my way back to you."

Brennan smoothed her hair and smiled. "It's over now," he said. "Let's go home."

Jennifer looked around in bewilderment and finally focused on Kien, who was staring like a broken man at the smashed and empty strongbox. "What about him?" she asked.

Brennan felt totally serene. It surprised him. All of the hate and anger had been burned away, perhaps by the joy of finding Jennifer again. He wondered for a moment if somehow, some impossible way, he'd achieved enlightenment, the ultimate Zen goal of a totally self-realized man, then rejected that notion as farfetched. He was hardly worthy of such a state.

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe we should just leave him." Kien looked up for the first time. "Leave me? Here?" Brennan looked at him with cold eyes. "Why not?" Kien jumped up and hurled himself at Brennan. Brennan met his furious attack calmly, serenely, simply pushing him aside, and Kien fell panting to the ground.

Brennan looked around. "This doesn't look like too bad a place to me," he said. "Probably better than you deserve."

"The jungle?" Kien cried, looking around wildly. "You don't know what I've done to escape this place! Don't leave me here!"

The desperation on Kien's face was almost enough to incline Brennan to pity. Almost. But there was little he could do about it anyway. He and Jennifer started to fade-or this strange little universe, this simulacrum built from the mortar and bricks of Brennan's memories and psyche, started to fade. They were never sure which.

But they heard Men scream, "Don't leave me here forever," and it echoed over and over again as a reedy voice crying, "ever… ever… ever…" like a condemned man questioning an unendurable sentence.

Then there was silence.