Suicide Kings

1

Thursday,

November 26

Thanksgiving Day

Guit District

The Sudd, Sudan

The Caliphate of Arabia

From way up here it was all so clear.

Over here on the left were the Simba Brigades, the armed forces of the People’s Paradise of Africa. They had foolishly deployed in an area, a couple square miles in extent, which were among the very few in the southern Sudanese papyrus swamp called the Sudd. They had armor, glittering dully in the sullen southern Sudan morning sun, dug in by bulldozers and concealed in clumps of brush and stands of trees: mostly Indian Vijayanta tanks and British-made Nigerian Mark IIIs, which were almost the same thing. They were enhanced unevenly by upgrades provided by the PPA’s Chinese patrons.

Dug in alongside them were armored cars, light tanks, and several thousand mechanized infantry. They were long-term veterans of the war that had liberated and unified Central Africa, leavened by Nigerians trained to a fare-thee-well. Advised by Indian army officers, they had made a stab at catching their enemies debarking from the evanescent and nameless tributary or strand of the Nile onto ground where they could maneuver. Now with small arms and rockets they fought a desperate battle against superior numbers of Caliphate tanks and men.

Tank main guns cracked like thunder. Rockets sprang away, drawing lines of cottony white smoke behind them that settled and dissipated slowly in air so humid and heavy the flying man almost felt he could walk on it. Vehicles blossomed in sudden fire, the ripples of their fatal detonations propagating outward, the shock waves punching at the bare pale skin of the man’s face. On columns of black smoke and red fire the smell of fuel combusting mounted upward, momentarily overcoming the hot reek of vegetation rotting in the endless swamps, the acrid stink of spent propellant giving way to the deceptive barbecue aroma of burning human flesh.

Up here was too high to hear the screams. Not that they carried far under the colossal head-crushing din of modern war.

The Caliphate forces rolled forward from barges guarded by Russian-made armored riverboats flying green banners that stirred like the shit-brown surface of the river in a sluggish breeze. Their fighting vehicles were mostly Russian made. Flat T-72s and a few more modern T-90s led the wave. Following came Echelons of BMP-2 and -3 personnel carriers with 30-millimeter machine cannon snarling from their turrets and laser-guided antitank missiles leaping away from rails mounted on the low turrets.

After the PPA’s initial shatter of success, superior Caliphate numbers began to tell. Betrayed by their own fire, defending tanks and rocket nests were rapidly destroyed in turn. Adopting the classic Muslim crescent fighting formation, the attacking armor winged out to either side to envelop their foes. Then their infantry could dismount from the BMPs and dig them out and kill them. Despite spiking casualties the PPA’s camouflage-clad black veterans held tenaciously and fought.

Up above the world so high, skimming in and out of a cloud in the sky, the man didn’t much care if he was seen or not. It would be better if he wasn’t, of course; it’d make for a better surprise. Not that surprise mattered. Not in the military sense. The people like ants down there on the green and murk-brown ground couldn’t change what was about to happen.

But nobody looked. In a world where flying humans weren’t unknown, they still weren’t anything anybody, y’know, expected to see.

A roaring filled the sky, growing in the north. He heard it even above the anvils-of-the-gods racket of modern war. Looking around, the flying man saw two spots appear in the blue sky, just above the flat swamp horizon.

“My turn,” he told the wind aloud. He dove.

They flashed past on his right: two Russian-made ground-attack SU-25s, as squat and unlovely as their NATO nickname of “Frogfoot.” The PPA fighters, always deficient in combat aircraft-expensive to buy, crew, and maintain-had little answer except man-portable surface-to-air missiles, already arcing up from below and already chasing the dazzling foolish fires of the flares the Caliph’s pilots seeded behind them. Even a single pair of attack planes, with Gatling cannon, antitank rockets, and armor-piercing bombs, could torch tanks like a kid with a magnifying glass plus ants.

Except just before they passed him by the man flung his right arm out. A white beam flashed from his palm that made the flares look dim. It punched a neat hole through both aircraft.

They stumbled in yellow flames as fuel and munitions blew up, and fell like disgraced stars.

It was a Sign. A beat after the planes exploded a darkness came upon the land. Like a wave it mounted and rolled forward, across the overmatched PPA defenses toward the triumphantly advancing Muslim army.

The flying man laughed again. He imagined the green-flagged enemy below: confidence faltering, turning quickly to sheer existential terror. It must seem to them that their Allah had forsaken them in spades.

But the liberators hadn’t won the battle. Not yet. Their night-vision gear was as helpless in this unnatural Dark as the Caliphate’s. All the enemy need do was roll forward blind and they’d smash the defenders to jam in their holes. Time for Leucrotta to do his thing. And, of course, the flying man, who swatted multimillion-dollar aircraft like mosquitoes.

It was good to be an ace. And more: an ace with nearly the powers of a god. A god of retribution. A god of Revolution.

He was the Radical. And it was cool to be him.

Into the Darkness he dropped. It clutched him like the fingers of a man drowned in some cold ocean, enwrapped him in fog blacker than a banker’s heart. But he could see: the girl had touched his eyes with her cool slim fingers. It was like threaded twilight that leached away all colors. To announce his advent he loosed a sunbeam, another. Two of the leading T-90s flared up in response. The turret of one rose up ten feet on a geyser of white fire as its ammo stores exploded. The massive turret dropped back, not entirely in place, so that the red glare of the hell unleashed within shown clearly even to eyes blinded by the Dark.

The Caliphate tankers were totally freaking. Most had stopped when they quit being able to see outside their armored monstrosities. Others continued to plunge on, crashing into each other or crushing smaller AFVs like roaches. A T-72 fired its main gun, torching a brother tank forty feet ahead. Despite the poison smoke that threatened to choke him, Tom threw back his golden head and laughed.

In terror Arab and Sudanese troops began to spill out of their personnel carriers. Some fell as more Caliphate gunners panicked and cut loose with machine guns. More tanks shot blindly. Others flared up like monster firework fountains.

Rockets buzzed past from behind him. The Darkness had walked among the front-line antitank pits and picked tanks and anointed their crews, too. They could see to slaughter blind foes.

Tom looked back toward the PPA lines. Through the murk surged a big four-footed form, a slope-backed high-shouldered avalanche of spotted fur and massive muscles. Saliva streamed from huge black jaws. It was a spotted hyena, Crocuta crocuta. But not a normal animal: a giant, four feet high at the shoulders and four hundred pounds easy. It was a were, a shape-shifter. The third ace the PPA had brought to the battle.

Behind it ran a dozen naked men. Even as Tom watched, their dark, sweat-glistening bodies began to flow and change. They became leopards, four melanistic, the rest tawny and spotted.

No aces, these. The innermost circle of the mystic Leopard Society, who had in horrific secret rituals accepted the bite of Alicia Nshombo. Even their fellow Leopard Men-the PPA’s shock troops and secret police-feared them.

The snarl of a twelve-cylinder diesel filled Tom’s ears, driving out even the near continuous explosions. He sprang upward. For a moment he hung in orbit. The stars shone down. He lingered a heartbeat, enough to feel the sting of the naked sun and the pressing of his eyeballs and blood outward against the vacuum. He didn’t explode in vacuum: no one did. It was just a single atmosphere’s difference in pressure: deal.

Then he was back, hovering two meters above a T-90 whose driver had decided or been ordered to charge straight ahead toward the infidels, in hopes of escaping the blackness, or at least getting to grips with the foe. Heat belching from the topside vents of the 1,100-horsepower engine enveloped him like dragon’s breath. He dropped to the deck behind the turret.

Squatting, Tom gripped. Grunting, he stood. He dead lifted the heavy turret right out of its ring. Spinning in place, he hurled it like a colossal discus toward a nearby T-72. It struck the side of its turret. A violent white flash momentarily obscured both as ammo stowed in both turrets went off.

Tom dropped to the ground on the first tank’s far side. Still massive despite the loss of turret and gun, it heeled perceptibly toward him as the blast fronts from multiple explosions slammed into it. High-velocity fragments cracked like bullets overhead.

The driver’s hatch fell open with a ring as the last remaining crewman sought to abandon ship. Suddenly a giant bristling shape hunched on the truncated tank’s low-sloped bow armor plate. Sensing danger the driver, half out of his hatch, froze.

Then he screamed as Leucrotta’s immense jaws slammed shut with a terrible crunch, biting the driver’s face off the front of his skull.

Tom took in the situation. The whole Caliphate armored force milled in utter confusion. At least the parts that weren’t burning. Leucrotta and the were-leopards ran freely and killed dismounted soldiers like rabbits. The Darkness-touched PPA gunners continued to pour fire and steel into their enemies. The whole Muslim army was finished as a coherent force; it was now a stampede seeking in all directions for an exit.

All that remained was to slaughter everything in reach. Tom Weathers really liked that part.

Jackson Square

New Orleans, Louisiana

Michelle is lying on a beach letting the sun bake her.

The outline of a boy blocks out the sun. “Who are you?” she asks.

He opens his mouth, but words don’t come out. Light and fire spew forth.

Michelle wants to run away, but she knows she can’t escape. Fire and light and power surge into her. Her body expands, opening to the overwhelming force. The power goes on and on and then the weight is crushing her, bearing her down into the ground. The earth groans beneath her. And the power inside her is thick, overwhelming, brutal. It’s running through her veins. It wants out.

It wants to bubble.

Just as she feels the bubbles start to flow, she hears Juliet.

“I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” Juliet says. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed petting a small rabbit.

When did we end up in bed? Michelle wonders. And where did the bunny come from?

“Ink, you don’t have to fucking be here all the time,” says Joey. Joey is sitting on the other side of Michelle. A cold worm burrows into her stomach. Does Juliet know about that night with Joey in the hurricane?

“What else can I do?” A tear rolls down Juliet’s cheek and Michelle reaches out to wipe it away. But her hand comes in contact not with Juliet’s warm face, but with cold, rubbery flesh.

She jerks her hand back, but it connects with more dead skin.

“Jesus,” she says. But Jesus isn’t here. It’s just her alone.

It’s dark, but not impenetrable darkness. She’s lying inside a tangle of corpses piled up on one another.

Is this another Behatu camp nightmare? But it doesn’t feel right. The colors are wrong. The light is off. And, it smells. It smells like rotting flesh. She’s never had a sense of smell in a dream before.

Michelle tries to turn over, but she can’t feel her legs. Her arms are useless weight, too. The light filtering through the dead limbs around her is greenish. And the air is thick and humid.

Panic begins to crawl into her throat. She’s alive, but no one knows it. No one knows she’s here. “Help me!” she screams.

“You know, we’re her parents, and if we say she’s dead, she’s dead.” Mommy? What was she doing here?

“You people are even worse than Michelle said you were.” What was Ink saying? Now they were all sitting on the bed in Juliet and Michelle’s apartment. The sheets were a pretty floral pattern that Michelle bought because Ink liked flowers.

“I don’t care if you and Michelle are involved in some sickening relationship,” Daddy said. “We have rights.”

“The fuck you do,” said Hoodoo Mama.

Oh, God, Michelle thought. Joey will kill them.

“Best as I can tell, you fuckers have no cocksucking rights regarding Bubbles here ’t’all. Selfish pieces of sticky brown…”

“Joey!” Ink again.

“My goodness,” her mother says. How could her mother’s voice send a knife of pain through Michelle while at the same time she still wanted to curl up in her mother’s arms?

But her mother is gone now. Michelle is back in the pile of bodies. Down in the twilight of dead flesh.

“Help me,” she whispers.

A spider slides down a fine silk filament and dangles in front of her. It puts its front legs under its chin and studies her. Then it points up. Michelle rolls awkwardly onto her back to look in the direction its foot is pointing.

Peering over the edge of the pit is a leopard. Its eyes glow phosphorescent yellow. Cold sweat breaks out on Michelle’s brow. Her fear is coppery in her mouth. Another leopard joins the first. Soon the entire edge of the pit is rimmed with them.

The leopards exchange glances, occasionally yawning, revealing sharp, ivory-colored teeth. Then they begin to growl. Low guttural sounds like they’re talking to each other.

Her heart is pounding. They must know she’s down here. They must know she’s alive. They must smell the fear on her. She can smell it herself now, along with the heavy feral odor of the cats. Tears burn her eyes. She tries to blink them away, but they slip out and slide down her cheeks, leaving an itchy trail.

What the hell? Michelle thinks. I’m the Amazing Bubbles. I don’t lie in a pit crying because some damn leopards are looking at me like I’m lunch. They can’t do anything to me.

And she tries to bubble, but she can’t. No hands, she thinks. If I had hands, I could bubble.

“You’re not so fucking special, Michelle,” Joey says. “And zombies are not disgusting.”

Michelle looks down at herself. She’s turned a greyish color and her clothes are in tatters. Black mold is growing on her skin. She holds her hand up in front of her face. At least now she has a hand. Bones peek out between the rotted parts of her fingers.

“This is so wrong,” she says.

Barataria Basin

New Orleans, Louisiana

Jerusha Carter gazed Out over a mile-wide expanse of open water. White egrets floated overhead like quick, noisy clouds; blue herons waded in the nearby shallows, and an alligator’s tail sluiced through the brackish water not far from her boat.

The scene wasn’t entirely idyllic; the sun was merciless, drawing wet circles under her armpits and beading her forehead. Midges, mosquitoes, and huge black flies tormented her. The muck had managed to overtop her high boots and slither down both legs. A storm front was coming in from the Gulf: thunderheads white above and slate grey below piled on the horizon, and the mutter of distant thunder grumbled in the afternoon heat.

The Barataria Basin was a marsh south of the city of New Orleans, one of the several such natural buffers for the city and St. Bernard Parish in the event of a hurricane. It was Jerusha’s job to help restore it. Once, she’d been told, before the levees had been built, this entire area had been marshland, not a lake. Since the 1930s, the area around New Orleans had lost two thousand square miles of coastal wetlands. According to the experts who had briefed Jerusha, for every 2.7 miles of wetland, hurricane storm surge could be reduced by one foot. Therefore, to protect the city from future disasters, it was vital that the wetlands be restored.

That was backbreaking, hard work. Silt had to be hauled in to be dumped in the open water to make it shallow enough to allow the plants that had once flourished here to grow again. Jerusha’s part came when the silt had been dumped and the margins of the lake were ready to be replanted. There, her wild card gift could make short work of what would otherwise take months or years.

Yesterday, it had been bulwhip; today Jerusha was spreading cordgrass- Spartina spartinae, specifically, Gulf cordgrass, with its ability to grow rapidly and to thrive in water of varying salinity. Without Jerusha, teams of volunteers would have been brought in to plant mats of seedlings in the mud and silt, which in time would grow into dense, tough plants high enough to hide a person entirely.

Today was also Thanksgiving. There were no teams out here today. Jerusha was working alone. Everyone else had somewhere to go, somewhere to be: with family, with friends. She tried not to think about that, tried to forget the frozen Swanson turkey dinner waiting for her back at the empty apartment or the call to her parents she’d make while she was eating, listening to their voices and their good wishes and the laughter of their friends in the background, which would only make her feel more alone. Jerusha’s seed belt was full of cordgrass seed, and it needed to be planted. Today.

She stepped out into the knee-deep muck of newly dumped silt, her boots squelching loudly as the mud sucked at them. She plunged her hand into one of the pouches on her belt and tossed handfuls of the tiny seeds onto the ground in a wide arc in front of her. She closed her eyes momentarily: she could feel the seeds and the pulsing of nascent life within them. She drew on the wild card power within her, Gardener’s power, funneling it from her mind into the seeds. She could feel them responding: growing and bursting, tiny coils of green springing from them, roots digging into the soft mud, tender shoots reaching for the sun. She led the cordgrass, feeding the power slowly and carefully.

She was the cordgrass, taking in the nutrients of sun and water and earth and using it, her cells bursting and growing at an impossible rate, forming and re-forming, new shoots birthing every second. She could see the grass rising in front of her, writhing and twisting, a year’s growth taking place in a few moments. As the grass lifted higher, Jerusha laughed, a throaty sound that held a deep, strange satisfaction. There were a few people who might recognize that laugh-it was the same laugh she sometimes gave, involuntarily, in the midst of sex: a vocal, joyous call that came from her core.

Gardening as orgasm.

The cordgrass lifted, writhing and twisting-and atop a cluster of stalks a few feet away something floppy and brown was snagged, bending the grass under its weight.

She let the power fall from her. She felt her shoulders sag: using the ability the wild card had given her always tired her. Usually, after a day out here, she would go back to her apartment and just fall into bed to sleep twelve hours or more. That was most of her days: wake up early, come out here and spread seeds to restore the marshland until near sundown, then back to the city for a quick bite in a restaurant or in her apartment (but alone, always alone), then sleep. Rinse and repeat. Over and over.

Jerusha waded through the mud to the new cordgrass. She pulled the sopping wet piece of felt from the stalks. It took a moment for Jerusha to unfold it and see that it was a hat-a battered, moldy, and filthy fedora, the lining torn and mostly missing, the band gone entirely. A mussel shell clung stubbornly to the fabric; it reeked of the swamp.

She shook her head: Another fedora. We’ve sent Cameo at least a dozen hats we’ve found out here, hoping it was the one she lost. The only way to know for certain was to send this one to her also: a Thanksgiving present. She’d do that when she got back.

Jerusha sighed, glancing at the sun and the clouds. The storm was rolling in. It was time to head back unless she wanted to be caught in the weather, which would only make an already miserable Thanksgiving more miserable.

Holding the sodden hat by the brim, she made her way back to where she’d tied up her boat.

The Winslow Household

Boston, Massachusetts

“Son of a Bitch! I can’t believe he dropped that pass!”

Noel Matthews was jerked back to his surroundings by the shout from his father-in-law. He couldn’t believe he was sitting in front of an entertainment center that looked like it should be the command deck of an aircraft carrier while his American in-laws watched football and shouted at the big-screen television.

Of course it wasn’t really football. It was that turgidly slow American game where extremely large men dressed in padding and tight pants jumped on each other and patted each other’s asses. For a country that was so uptight about fags this seemed an odd sport to be the national pasttime.

Noel reached for his bourbon and soda, and groaned faintly as he shifted on the couch to reach the glass. It felt like a cannonball had replaced his gut, and he surreptitiously undid the button on his slacks. It was Thanksgiving-that peculiar American holiday that seemed to be a celebration of gluttony and taking advantage of the Indians.

But there had been no choice. He and Niobe were living in New York because of fertility treatments at the Jokertown Clinic. Her parents were close by in Massachusetts. And Niobe was determined to show off her famous and successful husband to the old money society that had shunned her when her wild card expressed and she became a joker. Noel had consented to be displayed like a prize Scottish salmon because they had treated Niobe so shabbily, and gloating was a perfectly acceptable response.

Murmuring about “needing the lavatory,” Noel made his escape from the company of men to go in search of his wife. In the kitchen he discovered hired help busily washing up the dishes and packaging the leftovers into plastic containers. Noel was rich now, but he hadn’t been raised rich. They had lived modestly on his mother’s salary as a Cambridge professor. In his house there was no hired help.

He paused in the hallway and listened. The soprano piping of women’s voices in the living room vied with the basso shouts and bellows from the den. As he walked down the long hall, past a rather impressive modern art collection, he buttoned his pants and suit coat.

The living room was done in shades of gold and green, and a fire in the large marble hearth made the room seem cozy and warm. Outside, the big pines in the front yard groaned in the wind. It would snow by morning. Thank God they had a way home from this circle of family hell even if they closed the airport.

Arranging his features into a pleasant smile, he approached the women seated on sofas surrounding a low table that held a silver tea and coffee set. The scent added to the feeling of conviviality, as did the staccato of conversation. He was pleased to see that Niobe was chattering with the best of them, and that her chic equaled or excelled the other women.

It was amazing what a year of contentment-and the tender care of hairdressers in New York, spas on the Dead Sea, and couture in Paris-had done for her hair, skin, and wardrobe. The only jarring note was the thick tail that wrapped around his darling’s feet. At least the laser treatments had removed the bristles.

Their eyes met, and Noel was pleased to see the triumph brimming in hers. He came around behind the sofa, leaned down, kissed her on the cheek, and made a single white rose appear. Niobe blushed, and he was pleased to see her cousin Phoebe look down and frown into her tea. The woman had spent the afternoon placing her fingertips on his forearm, leaning forward so her breasts would be displayed, and generally making a fool of herself.

“You’re not watching?” his mother-in-law said.

“Forgive me, but they’re fools. They’re watching large men grunting and falling down in the mud. I, however, am no fool. I would rather spend my time with the ladies.”

Their laughter fell like ice around him. Niobe wasn’t laughing. He knew her husky little chuckle. She was looking at him, wide-eyed and questioning. He gave her a reassuring smile.

He studied his mother-in-law’s profile, and briefly regretted he’d abandoned his previous profession. If ever a person deserved killing it was Rachel Winslow. When Niobe’s wild card had turned, she had tried to pass her off as a cousin’s child, and when Niobe had been driven to attempt suicide her parents had sent her away to a facility where she was treated like a cross between a lab rat and a sex toy.

His wife handed him a cup of tea. The china was so thin and fragile that it felt like a cricket’s wing in his hand. He looked down and realized she’d already doctored it with a dollop of cream. It squeezed his heart to know that there was someone in the world who knew how he took his tea, and liked his eggs, the temperature of his bathwater. And he returned the favor. They were bonded physically, emotionally, and mentally, and she had helped to close the hole in his heart left after the death of his father a little over a year ago.

He settled onto the sofa next to Niobe and sipped his tea. Noel found himself reaching for one of the cheese crackers. God knew he wasn’t hungry, but nerves made him want to do something with his hands, and he wasn’t allowed to smoke in his in-laws’ house. He was saved from more calories when he felt the cell phone in his left pocket begin to vibrate.

He set aside his cup, pulled out the phone, murmured an apology, and retreated to stand by the window. The caller ID offered only unknown caller, but he recognized the foreign exchange number- Baghdad!

He knew a lot of people in Baghdad, but they only knew his identity as the Muslim ace, Bahir. Only one person knew that Noel was Bahir-his onetime Cambridge house mate, now head of the Caliphate and implacable enemy, Prince Siraj of Jordan.

This was a clean phone. The fact that Siraj had the number meant the Caliphate’s intelligence services had been working overtime. Looking for him and finding him. Tension buzzed along every nerve as Noel considered his options.

Better to know what he’s up to. Noel answered the phone.

“I didn’t know if you’d take the call,” came that familiar baritone.

“I almost didn’t.” Silence stretched between them. Noel pulled out his cigarette case.

Finally Siraj spoke. “I need your help. Will you come to Baghdad, now?” Anxiety roughened his fruity BBC vowels.

It was the last thing Noel had expected. He fumbled out a cigarette and thrust it between his lips. “Ah, well… let me see

… the last time we met you had your guards shoot me. The time before that you had me thrown into an Egyptian prison. I think I’ll skip the third time. It might be the charm for you.”

“I give you my word I won’t make a move against you. I really do need your help.”

Siraj suddenly sounded very young, like the friend who’d gotten into trouble with a professor’s daughter and come to Noel for help, or the friend who’d loaned him the money to pay off his gambling debts when Noel had become fascinated with the ponies in his sophomore year.

But there was no place for sentimentality. “Why?”

“Half of my armor’s been destroyed in the Sudd. This is my last army, Noel, and it’s all that stands between the Caliphate and the People’s Paradise of Africa. And you in the West do not want Nshombo and Tom Weathers controlling the oil. Trust me.”

“Well, that really is the crux of the problem. I don’t trust you. Sorry about your army, but I’m out of the game. For good. Just an average citizen now. Lovely talking to you.” Noel hung up the phone, and rejoined Niobe.

She looked up at him, and he was struck again by her beautiful green eyes. “Was that Kevin?” she said, referring to his agent.

“Yes,” Noel lied.

“You have a cigarette in your mouth!” his tanned and brittle mother-in-law said, forcing the words past clenched teeth.

“Yes, but it’s not lit. I’ll go outside and rectify that.”

Stellar

Manhattan, New York

Wally tugged on the collar of his tuxedo. The tailor had insisted the tux fit him perfectly. As perfectly as anything could fit a man with iron skin and rivets, anyway. But it sure didn’t feel right.

He stopped fiddling with the bow tie. He didn’t know how to tie it; it would be embarrassing if he had to ask a waiter to help him fix it.

The elevator glided to a stop. It jounced slightly as Wally stepped out.

“Hey, Rusty! Get over here, you.”

Ana Cortez stood outside Stellar with a phone to her ear. It looked like she had stepped outside to take a call. She smiled and waved to Wally as he clanked out of the elevator lobby.

His footwear, like his tuxedo, had been specially tailored for him. The fancy Italian shoes looked nice, but they were pretty flimsy; they did little to lessen the pounding of iron feet on a marble floor. Wally would have preferred a less formal Thanksgiving.

Back home, denim overalls and work boots were perfectly acceptable holiday attire. He’d considered going home to Minnesota for the holiday, but in spite of the growing loneliness and homesickness that hovered over him like a cloud these days, he’d decided against it. Every visit home felt more awkward than the last one.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Mom, Dad, and Pete. He missed them pretty bad. More than anything he wanted to go back home to the days before American Hero. He wanted to spend one more Saturday afternoon watching TV with his brother, while their dad snored in his easy chair.

Thing was, Pete had never traveled farther from home than Duluth. His folks had been born and raised on the Iron Range. It was their whole world. Sometimes Wally wished he could go back to being that way, too.

His family imagined Wally’s life was glamorous. Exciting. Full of adventure. And it made them so happy, thinking that. The last time he went home, he thought his folks were going to burst with pride. Wally Gunderson, the hero. Wally Gunderson, international traveler. Wally Gunderson, troubleshooter for the United Nations. Pete always questioned him about the places he visited for the Committee, all the people he worked with, all the good deeds he’d done.

Every visit, it got harder and harder to tell them what they wanted to hear. To avoid telling them about the boredom, the loneliness, the dread and fear he felt every time the Committee sent him someplace new, the sense of confusion about what he was doing and why he was doing it, the sense that he’d stopped being heroic a long time ago.

Wally hadn’t spent much time at home after his trip to the Caliphate.

“Rusty’s here,” Ana said into her phone. She cupped her hand over it. “Kate says hi.”

“Howdy, Ana. Howdy, Kate.”

Into the phone, Ana said, “He says howdy back… uh-huh… uh-huh.” She laughed. “I doubt it… I should go. Happy Thanksgiving to you, too. Call me later and we’ll compare notes.” Ana shut her phone with a snap. “I’m glad to see you. You look good.”

“You too, Ana.” Her dress looked expensive. It even matched the blue in her earrings.

She reached up to give him a quick hug. Wally dwarfed her. “Gosh,” he said. He returned the hug, gently.

He looked into the restaurant, where white-coated waiters carried trays, pitchers, and bottles between the tables. They looked like photo-negatives of Wally, except not as large. Inside, the clink of cutlery chirped through the murmur of conversation. Unfamiliar faces, unfamiliar voices. A sad feeling crept over Wally.

He went inside with Ana. The maitre d’ greeted them. He didn’t bother to ask if they were on the guest list; everybody knew Rustbelt and Earth Witch, two of the Committee’s founding members. He paused in the act of ushering them toward the hors d’oeuvres when he noted the gouges Wally’s heels left in the floor. The pencil-thin mustache quivered on his lip. He sniffed. But he didn’t raise a fuss. His establishment was full of aces.

Not that Wally knew many of them. The Committee wasn’t like it had been in the beginning. It was much bigger nowadays. Which was good, really, since it was becoming more international. No longer just a bunch of kids from some dumb TV show. It felt more professional, but also more sterile. He’d met a few of the newer members in passing at other Committee functions-Garou, Noppera-bo, the Strangelets. One of the new guys, Glassteel, nodded companionably at Wally as he passed; they’d worked together in Haiti. They made a pretty okay team, though Wally had liked working with DB the best, and DB was gone now.

Most of the guests had congregated around the long tables where the appetizers had been laid out, near the windows overlooking the Manhattan skyline. Wally munched on miniature hot dogs bathed in fancy ketchup while eavesdropping, trying to find a conversation he could join. The battle in the Sudd dominated most of the conversations. Wally had seen a blurb about it on one of those big stock-ticker things in Times Square during the cab ride to the Empire State Building.

“The PPA has overstretched itself,” declared Snowblind in her elegant French-Canadian accent. If silk could talk, thought Wally, it would sound like Snowblind. “There’s no need for the Committee to involve itself. Once the Caliphate regroups, this will be over quickly.”

Brave Hawk shook his head. “Not if Ra gets involved. Old Egypt doesn’t have much use for the Caliphate.”

Wally didn’t have much of a head for political discussions, and truth be told he wasn’t all that keen on Brave Hawk anyway. So he wandered farther down the table, where the hors d’oeuvres included grapes, smelly cheese, and pear slices marinated in port wine. Those were pretty good.

Tinker and Burrowing Owl argued about the World Court. The pending war crimes trials of Captain Flint and the Highwayman were almost as divisive an issue as the fighting in Sudan. Burrowing Owl thought it was a meaningless show trial; Tinker thought both men deserved to be tried before the world. “Oy, Rusty,” said Tinker. “What do you think?”

Wally shrugged. “Um…” What did he think? “I think they did a real bad thing, killing all those folks. But I think they did an even worse thing by making that poor little boy do it.”

Burrowing Owl frowned. “Yes, but what about sovereignty and jurisdiction?”

Wally sighed, wishing it was time to sit down and eat.

Jerusha Carter’s Apartment

Garden District

New Orleans, Louisiana

Her cell phone chirped before the bell on the microwave went off. That puzzled her, since it was an hour earlier where her parents were, and they would usually still be sitting at the Thanksgiving table at this point. She picked up the cell from the entrance-hall table, glancing at the number on the front.

It wasn’t her parents; it was Juliet Summers. Ink. Strange. She knew Ink, of course, but they certainly weren’t close.

“Hey,” she answered. “Ink. What’s up?”

“Jerusha? I need your help.” There was someone shouting, no, cursing in the background. A woman. “That’s Joey. Those scumbag LaFleurs convinced a judge to give them that court order. They’re gonna pull the plug on Michelle.”

Jerusha was shocked. Michelle Pond-the Amazing Bubbles-had been lying comatose in Jackson Square for more than a year, since the day she saved New Orleans from destruction by absorbing the blast of a nuclear explosion. For the past six months, her estranged parents had been fighting in court to obtain a court order allowing them to terminate their daughter’s nutrition and hydration.

Jerusha could not believe they had actually won. “If they do this, what do the doctors say will happen to Bubbles?”

“No one’s certain,” said Ink, “but their best guess is that given the massive amounts of nutrients that Michelle has been consuming every hour, and with a body as dense and heavy as hers, the results would be very quick. Her bodily processes could begin to deteriorate almost immediately-increased heart rate, blood pressure, organ failure. Death in no more than three hours, maybe sooner.” Ink sighed. “Or maybe she’ll just starve to death.”

On Thanksgiving. The LaFleurs had a ghastly sense of irony, Jerusha thought. “What can I do?” She was no lawyer. The Committee had no legal standing within the United States.

“You can help me stop Joey,” Ink replied. “She’s gone crazy. She’s pulled up every halfway fresh corpse in the city, and some that aren’t so fresh. She says she’s going to kill the LaFleurs as soon as they show their faces in Jackson Square.”

Hoodoo Mama. I should have known. Joey Hebert had been born angry, as far as she could tell, and being turned down by the Committee had not improved her disposition.

“She won’t listen to me,” Ink was saying, “and you’re the only one in New Orleans who might have the power to stop her before someone gets hurt. But you gotta get down there quick. You hear me?”

The shouting in the background continued. Joey, Jerusha realized. Then Ink was yelling back. “ Damn it, Joey. Calm down, girl. You’re gonna bust an artery.”

The phone went dead. “Ink?” Jerusha said.

Nothing.

She flipped the phone shut. The microwave bell rang in the kitchen. She could smell the turkey.

Jerusha put her phone in the pocket of her jeans and grabbed her keys.

The Clarke Household

Barlow’s Landing, Massachusetts

“I see,” margaret Tipton-Clarke said, in a voice that meant she didn’t see at all. “So you’re… dead?”

Jonathan Tipton-Clarke, or Jonathan Hive, but most often Bugsy, had known that bringing his girlfriend to Thanksgiving dinner was going to be tricky. He hadn’t appreciated the full depth of the issue. His mother kept asking difficult questions. His older brother Robert and sister-in-law Norma were scowling over their plates of cranberry sauce and turkey like sour-faced bookends without the books. The twin sisters were grinning with near cannibalistic delight. It just wasn’t going to be a good night.

Ellen was very pretty-thin, blond, dressed in a dark charcoal item that clung in all the right places without seeming slutty. It, like all of Ellen’s best dresses, had been designed especially for her by the ghost of Coco Chanel. The cameo she wore at her neck looked like it had been picked to go with the outfit more than the other way around. Just to look at her, she fit perfectly with the Tipton-Clarke family decor. Classy, expensive without having neon “nouveau riche” on her forehead. The earring was maybe a little bit off, but that was really nonoptional.

True, she was almost two decades older than Jonathan, which would have been a little weird all on its own. More the issue was that she wasn’t exactly his girlfriend. She was the ace who could channel the spirits of the dead. The dead like his girlfriend.

Aliyah didn’t wear Ellen with quite the same style that Ellen wore the dress.

“Yeah,” she said, using Ellen’s mouth. “I… I died back when the Caliphate army was attacking the jokers in Egypt, right before they formed the Committee? If you read about it, they might have called me Simoon. That was my ace name on American Hero. There was an ace on the other side called the Righteous Djinn? In Egypt, I mean. Not on the show.”

When Aliyah got nervous, she ran her sentences together and everything she said turned into a question. When Jonathan got nervous, bits of his body broke off as small, green, wasplike insects, so it was hard to really fault her. He took a bite of stuffing. It was a little on the salty side, as usual, but if he kept his mouth full he wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. That seemed the best strategy.

“That must have been terrible for you, dear,” his mother said.

“Oh, I don’t remember it,” Aliyah said. “I wasn’t wearing my earring. At the time. I mean, I was a sandstorm when it happened, so it’s not like I had any clothes on.”

One of the twins, Charlotte he thought, leaned forward on her elbows. Her smile was vulpine. “That’s just fascinating,” she said.

“Well, Ellen can only pull me back from the last time I was wearing my earring.”

“No,” Charlotte (or maybe Denise) said. “I mean you fought naked ?”

Aliyah blushed and stammered, her hands moving like they weren’t sure where they were supposed to be. With a small internal sigh, Jonathan decided it was time to go ahead and lose his temper. “She was a sandstorm,” he said. “Big whirly scour-your-flesh-to-the-bone sandstorm. The kind that could kill you.”

Charlotte’s smile turned to him. There was a little victory in it. I could kill you, too, he thought, and Charlotte yelped and slapped her thigh. She pulled up a small, acid-green body with crumpled wings.

“Oops,” Bugsy said. “Sorry.”

“You act like you can’t control those things,” Charlotte said. Or maybe Denise. “You aren’t fooling anyone.”

“Is it possible,” Bugsy’s older brother said in a strangled voice, “to have a simple, calm, normal family meal without going into detail about the naked dead women with whom my brother is sleeping?”

“Spirit of the season,” Jonathan said. “I mean, unless there’s something else to be thankful for.”

“Excuse me,” Aliyah said, stood up, and walked unsteadily from the room.

“So, Robert,” Jonathan said. “Have you and Norma gotten knocked up yet, or have the doctors decided there’s no lead in the old Wooster pencil after all?”

“That is none of your-”

“Oh, Robert, he didn’t mean anything by-” their mother said.

“Norma!” Denise (or maybe Charlotte) said. “I’ve been so worried but I didn’t dare-”

With his brother’s penis squarely on the chopping block, Jonathan pushed his plate aside and followed Ellen to the den. The room glowed in the festal candlelight. Two wide sofas in leather the color of chocolate seemed cozy, looking out through the glass-wall picture window at the angry Atlantic Ocean. Ellen sat on one, legs tucked up under her. He could tell by the way she held herself that the earring wasn’t in.

“I told you so,” he said.

“You really did,” Ellen said. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

“The nice thing about Jerry Springer is that you get to throw chairs. I never get to throw chairs.”

“And your mother,” Ellen said. “She’s the worst of all.”

“There is that Demon-Queen-Directing-Her-Monstrous-Horde quality to her. It was more fun when Aunt Ida was still around. She was much worse.”

“Aliyah felt awful. I told her I’d apologize for her.”

“For getting beaten up by my family? Doesn’t that usually go the other way?”

“It usually does,” Ellen said coolly.

Before Jonathan could think of a good answer, his cell phone started the ring tone he’d set aside for the United Nations. Committee business calling. He dug it out of his jacket pocket, held up a single finger to Ellen, and said hello.

“Bugsy! I hope I’m not interrupting,” Lohengrin said.

“Not at all,” Jonathan said. “What’s up?”

Ellen rose, shaking her head slightly, and headed back toward the ongoing train wreck of the Tipton-Clarke Thanksgiving. Jonathan put one hand over his ear to block out the voices.

“Can you come to New York?” Lohengrin asked. “There’s something we need to discuss. An assignment.”

Jonathan nodded. Truth to tell, it was moments like these that made working with the United Nations fun. “You bet, buddy. I’ll be there with bells on,” he said. Then, “You know, I could probably have fit about three more b’s in that if I tried. Betcha buddy, I’ll be by with bells on my-”

“Jonathan? Are you okay?”

“I may be a wee teensy drunk,” Jonathan said. “Or I might hate my family. Hard to tell the difference. I’ll be in New York tomorrow. Don’t worry.”

Lohengrin dropped the line, and Jonathan put his cell phone away. The voices in the dining room had changed. With a sick curiosity, he made his way back to the table.

“You always did that, Maggie, ever since you were a little girl,” Ellen said, pointing an antique silver butter knife in his mother’s direction. “Salt, salt, salt. You’d think God never gave you taste buds.”

His mother’s cheeks had flushed and her lips pressed white and bloodless. Ellen turned to consider Jonathan, except whoever she was, it wasn’t Ellen. The familiar eyes surveyed him slowly. She snorted.

“Aunt Ida?” he said.

“I like this Ellen of yours, Johnny,” Ida said. “I’m surprised she puts up with you. Sit, sit, sit. I feel like I’m at the bottom of a well with you just looming there.”

“How did-?” he began as he sat.

Ida held up the silverware. “I always said this set was mine, and now I’ve proven it, haven’t I? Robert, dear? Pass the potatoes, and let’s see if she’s oversalted them, too. Maggie, stop looking at me like that. I was right, you were wrong, and no one is in the least surprised. Thanksgiving is a time for family. Try not to ruin it.”

Stellar

Manhattan, New York

“Ana?” wally whispered. “can I sit with you?”

“Sure.”

Wally followed her through a maze of round tables draped in billowing tablecloths. The lights were set low; candlelight and the glow from the skyline glinted on wineglasses and silverware. He nodded or waved at the few folks he recognized.

Ana led him to a table near the middle of the room. Wally’s own chair creaked precariously. He sat between Ana and the Llama. They’d never worked together, but Wally had met the South American ace at other Committee events. Wally always thought he looked a little like a giraffe, what with his long neck and all, but never mentioned it. “Hey, how ya doin’, fella? Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Hi,” said the Llama, chewing on something. That seemed strange, since the waiters hadn’t brought any food out yet. They didn’t even have bread on the table.

The Llama seemed distracted. Wally realized he was busy glaring across the room at the Lama.

Wally turned to Ana. “So how’s Kate these days?”

“Good, I guess. She’s glad to be back in school, but it’s probably kinda weird. I think she misses us. She doesn’t miss this stuff, though.” She pointed to the cyan United Nations banner hanging over the head table where Lohengrin, Babel, and a few others sat.

“Yeah.” The Committee had lost much of its allure for Wally over the past couple of years. For some reason he kept sticking with it, even though he’d found better ways to make a difference in people’s lives. A real difference. Plus, these shindigs weren’t the same without the old crew.

As if reading Wally’s mind, Ana asked, “Do you still keep in touch with DB?”

“Sure do.” They’d gone to war together, Wally and the rock star. Twice. They’d been through a lot.

He looked around the room. Except for Ana, none of the people he knew best were around. In addition to Kate and DB, Wally missed Michelle, who was still down in New Orleans and apparently not doing too good. King Cobalt, his first friend from American Hero, had died in Egypt. So had Simoon, who had been pretty nice to Wally.

Except that she wasn’t entirely dead, not all the time, anyway. Bugsy and Simoon were going out, which Wally couldn’t begin to understand. All he knew was that Bugsy spent most of his time these days with Cameo, who had joined the Committee last year in New Orleans, before she lost her old-time hat. They were having their own Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was a time to be with family. But what family? More and more, his visits home to Minnesota made him feel lonely and isolated. He thought he’d found a family, of sorts, with the Committee. And that had even been true for a short time. But he didn’t feel at home with the Committee any longer. And so Wally had tried to help other families, on his own, but now even that seemed to be going away.

A little cheer went up throughout the room when a stream of servers emerged from the kitchen. They brought out turkey, chicken, goose, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, three kinds of gravy, cranberries, corn bread, spinach salad, fruit salad, and pumpkin, pecan, apple, and cherry pie. They even brought out a turducken. Wally wouldn’t have known what that was if he hadn’t heard Holy Roller and Toad Man discussing it once, back before the big preacher had left the Committee to return to his church in Mississippi. Wally missed him.

He couldn’t imagine anybody eating so much food. And that made him think of Lucien, his little pen pal. A single table here probably held more food than his entire family saw in a month.

“You’re looking glum,” said Ana.

“Just missing folks, I guess.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Like, see, I got these pen pals. It happened because I saw a commercial late at night during a Frankie Yankovic marathon. You know, for one of those setups where you send in a few dollars to help out a kid somewhere?”

Ana smiled. She took a drumstick from the platter at the center of the table. “That’s great, Rusty.”

“Well, I got a few of them. But this one kid, his name’s Lucien, and me and he got to be pretty good friends, writing letters back and forth. But his last letter said-”

Babel started tapping her wineglass with a butter knife. It chimed through the dining room.

Lohengrin stood. He waited for a hush to fall over the room before speaking. The kitchen clamor ebbed and flowed as servers passed through double doors to the dining room.

“ Ja, ja. Welcome. My friends, we are the United Nations Committee for Extraordinary Interventions.” Polite applause. “Today we gather to celebrate our achievements and be thankful for the opportunities we’ve been given. And the world has much to be thankful for since our inception, no?” His laughter actually sounded like ho-ho-ho. Like Santa Claus, if Santa wore magical armor. Before meeting Lohengrin, Wally had never known anybody who laughed like that for real.

If Lucien and his family had much to be thankful for, it had nothing to do with the Committee. In fact, it seemed to be the only thing Rusty had done in the past couple of years that actually improved somebody’s life. But it didn’t even begin to make up for what he and DB had done in Iraq.

The German ace droned on and on, peppering his remarks with references to “my predecessor,” as though there had been some kind of special ceremony to transfer the reins of power when he took over the Committee. Everybody knew that John Fortune had bowed out quietly but quickly after becoming a nat for the second time. Rumor had it he was traveling the world, though to what end, nobody could say.

But thinking about John Fortune and his travels gave Wally an idea.

Jackson Square

New Orleans, Louisiana

The mood was ugly in Jackson Square. The triple spires of St. Louis Cathedral glistened in their spotlights; nearby, Andrew Jackson waved his hat atop his rearing horse. That was normal enough, but as Jerusha approached, she realized that the crowd ahead of her was… wrong. The stench of death hung around them, and their faces were stiff and unresponsive.

Zombies.

There were at least a couple dozen, more than she’d seen Hoodoo Mama raise up for a long time. At least with Thanksgiving the usual crowds in Jackson Square were sparse, though there were still enough onlookers watching from a wary distance to make Jerusha nervous.

Joey and Juliet were standing at the makeshift wooden “shrine” that enclosed Bubbles, its planks adorned with ribbons and handwritten testimonials. The thick pipes of Michelle’s feeding tubes stabbed into the white cloth that covered her body, which had sunk so deeply into the soft ground that pumps had to remove the water that would otherwise have flooded the depression. Jerusha could hear Joey shouting into the night. “Fuck them. Goddamn leeches. They stole her fucking money. Now they want to kill her, too? Well, fuck that.”

Ink was standing next to Joey, an arm around her, her voice so quiet that Jerusha couldn’t hear it. Whatever she was saying, Joey didn’t like it. Her zombies muttered and groaned. “I ain’t gonna let that that cocksucker of a father and her cunt mother screw Michelle again. I ain’t.” Her lips were pressed into a tight line. A hardness came over her thin face. She ran a hand through the tangled shock of brown hair, ruffling the bright red streak. “I’ll fucking rip them both into a hundred fucking pieces. I swear.”

“Ink, Joey,” Jerusha said loudly, skirting the edge of the zombie crowd. “Listen, you can’t…”

She stopped at the sound of sirens, cutting through the low whine of the pumps driving Michelle’s feeding tubes. Along Decatur Street, a small motorcade pulled into the square, pulling up on the far side of Bubbles’s shrine, near a large grey electrical box. Jerusha plunged a hand into the open zipper of the pouch at her waist, fingering the seeds inside.

NOLA SWAT police officers piled out of the first three black vans, their faces masked by riot helmets, armed with what looked to be shotguns. Ira and Sharon LaFleur emerged from a limousine, accompanied by another phalanx of policemen.

Jerusha had always pictured them as villains, monsters who would steal money from their child. She’d expected their sins to be written on their faces, but they weren’t. Ira was balding and overweight, looking pudgy and ineffectual; Sharon’s face was drawn and haggard and thin, but the lines were those of a model: like her daughter’s face, what Bubbles might look like in another quarter century. They looked ordinary.

“Motherfuckers!” Hoodoo Mama shrieked, and her zombies howled with her. Ink had both arms around Joey, clinging to her desperately. Joey pointed at the LaFleurs. “You miserable cocksuckers! You stay the fuck away from her, you hear me!”

Sharon LaFleur looked at them, hand over mouth. The zombies started to shamble toward them. The cops shuffled nervously, weapons up and ready. “Joey, you can’t!” Jerusha shouted.

Joey shook her head. “You kill her,” she screamed at the LaFleurs, “and I’ll just raise her up again. She’ll be the biggest fucking zombie in the whole goddamn world. You hear me, you cocksuckers?”

Ira LaFleur nodded to the officers nearest the grey box, which now had a panel open. The low whine of the pumps driving Bubbles’s feeding tubes suddenly vanished. The silence was more terrible than any sound could have been.

The zombies screamed as one, wordless. They advanced.

“Damn it.” Jerusha pulled her hand from the pouch, fisted around the contents there. She flung them wide. As soon as the seeds hit the ground, they were rising, a wriggling carpet of vines that tore through the pavement of Jackson Square. Kudzu. Jerusha guided the growth in her mind, snarling the vines around the zombies’ legs, bodies, and arms, encasing them in living green chains. She coiled them around Joey and Ink for good measure. Hoodoo Mama glared at her, cursing wildly.

The SWAT officers were piling back into the vans, hustling the LaFleurs back to their limo. With a scream of sirens, the cars backed away and sped off again.

“Stop them!” Joey screeched. Spittle was flying from her mouth. “God damn it, Gardener, you’re a fucker just like them. Just like them. You’re letting them kill her.”

Jerusha had no answer. “I’m sorry,” she told them.

“Fuck you’re sorry,” said Hoodoo Mama. “And fuck you, too, cunt. You better hope that Bubbles doesn’t die. ’Cause if she does, you’re next.”

Stellar

Manhattan, New York

After the meal-after the clink of silverware and the random chorus of burps and satisfied mmmmm ’s died down, after the last slice of pumpkin pie had been tucked away (Wally had two pieces), when most of the conversation in the room was a hushed murmur as people slipped collectively into a digestive stupor-Wally excused himself and went over to Lohengrin’s table.

Klaus was deep in conversation with Babel when Wally clanked up to their table. They must have been discussing something pretty intense because it took them a few seconds to notice Wally. He caught something about New Orleans, Sudan, and the Caliphate before they tapered off to look up at him. Babel grinned. “Happy Thanksgiving, Rustbelt.”

Wally said, “Thanks. Um, you, too.” He didn’t know her very well, but she made him uncomfortable. He remembered how she’d sabotaged DB when he split with the Committee, and wondered if she’d do the same thing to him, since he and DB were friends.

Lohengrin yawned. Two empty wine bottles rattled on the table when he stretched his legs. He motioned for Wally to sit and join them. “A good feast, ja?”

“Oh, you bet,” said Wally, taking a chair. “I like them sweet potatoes with the marshmallows on top. Real tasty.” He nodded, and patted his stomach. His cummerbund muted, ever so slightly, the clang of iron against iron. “Hey, I have a question.”

Lohengrin sat a little straighter. “What troubles you, my mighty friend?”

“Well, see, I was wondering if we’d be doing anything in Africa sometime soon. I mean, you know, the Committee.”

Babel assumed the tone that people did so frequently around Wally. The tone that spoke volumes about what they thought of him and his faculties. “Well, Rustbelt, it’s a very complicated situation. The Committee’s involvement with Noel Matthews in New Orleans put us on precarious footing with Tom Weathers, and by extension the Nshombos.”

“Oh, sure. Sure. But I didn’t mean about any of that. It’s just, see, I have this pen pal. My friend Lucien. He and his family live up in the Congo thereabouts.”

Babel cocked an eyebrow. “Pen pal?”

“I sponsor him. I send a few dollars every month and it pays for his school and medicine and stuff.”

“Ah.” Lohengrin nodded. He approved of noble causes.

“Anyway, his last letter kind of worried me. He was real excited because he’d been chosen to attend a brand-new school. But he said that the soldiers who picked him told him he wouldn’t be allowed to write to me no more. And that when Sister Julie tried to stop them from taking the last bunch of kids to the school-Sister Julie is a nun in his village, you see-well, he said they hurt her. And I thought, that doesn’t sound right. I mean, what the heck kind of school has soldiers? So I figured, maybe the next time I go somewhere, you could send me to Congo and I could check in on him.”

Babel said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Rustbelt. There’s no telling how Weathers and the PPA would react if they believed the Committee was encroaching on their territory.”

“But I wouldn’t be, not really. I’d just be visiting Lucien and making sure the little guy is okay.”

Again, that tone. “Yes, certainly. You know that, and we know that, but the Nshombos would never believe it. And, let’s face it, you aren’t inconspicuous. They’d know you were there. Ostensibly on Committee business.”

Lohengrin yawned again. “Frau Baden is correct that the situation is complicated. We must be careful with the Nshombos.” Wally slumped in his chair. “But,” Lohengrin continued, solemnly putting a hand on Wally’s shoulder, “your cause is just. I promise to do what I can to help your missing friend.”

“Well, gosh. That’s swell, Lohengrin.” Wally practically leaped out of his chair, grinning. The Committee would help him go find Lucien! “I can’t wait.”

“Yes. I believe that if I ask him, Jayewardene will make careful inquiries through diplomatic channels.”

Inquiries? Oh. Wally tried to hide his disappointment. “Right. That’ll be a big help, no doubt. I sure do appreciate it.”

He returned to his table, just long enough to say good night to Ana; the Llama had already left. Wally didn’t much feel like hopping in a taxi when he got down to the street, so he started walking in the general direction of Jokertown.

A thin dusting of snow covered the sidewalks. It fell in large flakes that drifted slowly to the ground like cotton. The clouds overhead and the snow underfoot reflected the soft glow of the city in all its colors, making everything look like a Christmas tree decoration.

Back home, Wally and his brother Pete used to make snow forts during Christmas vacation. He remembered countless snowball fights on winter mornings, too, waiting for the school bus. Lucien had loved hearing about stuff like that; to him, snow was the white stuff on distant mountains. Wally had secretly hoped he’d get to take him to the mountains someday, so he could see the snow firsthand.

But Lohengrin and Babel had been pretty clear. If he wanted to go to Africa, he’d have to go privately.

The Winslow Household

Boston, Massachusetts

They finished off the evening playing bridge and eating another round of pie before retiring to Niobe’s old bedroom. Niobe found this embarrassing and Noel found it charming. He investigated her bookcase filled with a collection of late Victorian and early twentieth-century children’s books- The Bird’s Christmas Carol, The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, Little Lord Fauntleroy. He rooted through the closet and discovered a stuffed animal collection (now consigned to the top shelf), and picked out a few choice specimens to take home to New York. For our baby, he thought, but neither of them gave voice to that. This was the fourth try, and they were both too superstitious to invoke the child out loud lest it lead to another miscarriage.

Noel read aloud from Fauntleroy until Niobe’s eyelids dropped and her breathing slowed. “He had a cruel tongue and a bitter nature, and he took pleasure in sneering at people and making them feel uncomfortable…” Noel’s voice died away. He slowly slipped his arm from beneath her, snapped off the light, and settled down to sleep.

It took a long time because he kept replaying the conversation with Siraj, and wondering what it all meant.

Rusty’s Hotel Room

Jokertown

Manhattan, New York

“Um, hi? DB?”

The phone receiver compressed the noise of a raucous party into a dull roar. “What? Who is this?”

“It’s me, Wally.”

A long pause. “Ollie?” DB sounded distracted. Then, more muffled, he shouted, “Hey! Leave that fucker for me!” This was followed by peals of high-pitched laughter. Wally had looked online; it was a little after eleven in Mumbai.

“No, Wally. You know, Rustbelt?”

Another pause. Then: “Rusty! How the hell are ya? Great to hear ya. Hey, guys, it’s Rusty!”

This provoked a chorus of greetings from the other members of Joker Plague.

“Same to you, fella. Look, I was wondering-”

“You need tickets to the show? No problem! You’ve got a permanent backstage pass, you know that.” Something shattered, followed by more groupie laughter. Bottom shouted something that Rusty couldn’t quite make out. “Wait. You’re in India?”

“What? No. But I was wondering, since your tour is winding up soon-”

“-Yeah, one more month, then we’re back in the States. God damn it, S’Live, I told you to leave it-”

“-if you’d wanna go to the Congo-”

“-bongo drums? We don’t play much world music-”

“-no, I said Congo, like the country-”

“-country? Yeah, I hate that shit, too. What the hell is that? Hey, Rusty, I gotta go, I think I smell smoke. Take care of yourself, pal!” Click.

Well, cripes. Wally had figured that if anybody would join him on a trip to Africa, it would be Drummer Boy. They’d been comrades in arms (and arms, and arms) more than once. But it seemed that DB was busy with his old life.

Wally thought about other folks he knew. Kate was real nice, but it sounded from Ana like she’d had enough of traveling for a while. He would have asked Ana, too, but she’d told him the Committee was sending her to China. The government there had specifically requested Ana’s consultations on a series of giant dams they were building.

He toyed with the idea of contacting Jamal Norwood. Stuntman had probably learned a whole lot about finding missing people while working for SCARE. Plus, he was real tough. And he sorta owed Wally for all that stuff he said back on American Hero. But Jamal would never agree to help him. Plus, Wally didn’t want to travel with somebody who disliked him so much. Even he could foresee an awkward and unpleasant conversation.

One more name sprang to mind: Jerusha Carter. Gardener’s ace couldn’t be better suited to traveling through Africa. She was perfect for the trip in just about every way. He even knew her, a little bit.

It took some calling around to other Committee members before he got Jerusha’s cell number. Wally reclined on the bed in his hotel room. The mattress groaned; somewhere halfway across the country, a telephone rang.

“Hello?” A weary voice, thick with fatigue. Behind it, what sounded like voices raised in quiet song, like they were singing hymns or something. Not like in church, though. It sounded more like a vigil.

“Um, hi. Jerusha?”

“Yes.” Her voice got distant, and the background noise got louder, as if she was holding the phone away from her face to look at the caller ID. “Who is this?”

“It’s me, Wally. Gunderson. You know, Rustbelt? We worked together when the Committee sent us to Timor.”

“Oh, Wally. I thought I recognized your voice.” A pause. “What’s up?”

“I was wondering-um, are you okay? You sound real tired. No offense or anything.”

“Uh… it’s been a tough few days down here. Did you hear about Michelle? Her parents?”

“Yeah. It’s a bad deal.” The thought of Bubbles helpless like that-at the mercy of others-made him think of Lucien, and brought on another pang of anxiety.

“Really bad.” Jerusha sighed, loudly. “Anyway. What’s up?”

Wally didn’t know the best way to broach the subject. He plunged ahead: “Do you wanna go to Africa with me?”

“Why is Lohengrin sending you to Africa?”

“He’s not,” said Wally.

Another pause. “Huh?”

Wally explained the situation.

“So… you want me to go to the PPA to help you find your pen pal?”

“Yep. Well, no, I mean, I thought we’d go to the Congo, where Lucien’s from.”

Jerusha said, “That’s in the PPA.”

“Oh.”

“Ugh, Wally…” Wally recognized that tone. It was the sound of somebody cradling her head in her hands. “Say. Why did you ask me?”

Oops. “Well, you’re real smart. And you know about jungles and stuff. And you’re, um…”

“I’m what?”

“Black.”

“Uh-huh.” Jerusha’s tone here was a little harder to read. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. “Look. What you’re trying to do is very sweet. But I think you’re biting off more than you can chew. Even with that giant jaw of yours. Besides, I have my hands full down here.”

“What if I came and helped out?”

“That’s nice of you, but it wouldn’t change my answer.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry, Wally. Don’t do anything rash, okay?”

“You bet.”

Wally stared at the ceiling. That’s in the PPA. He hadn’t put that together before. He knew a little about the PPA; that whole mess down in New Orleans, Bubbles and all, was tied up with the PPA. He knew that much. But until she’d said it, he hadn’t associated Tom Weathers and Dr. Nshombo and the PPA with Lucien’s Congo.

All the more reason to go to Africa, and the sooner the better. All the more reason to find a traveling companion. But the more he thought about it, the more Jerusha seemed the best choice.