Suicide Kings

24

Saturday,

December 19

On the Lualaba River, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

Sleep had become an ephemeral, abstract concept to Wally. Sleep was the thing his body tried to do to pass the time between attacks from Ghost. His exhaustion was so complete that he could nod off almost instantly, but Ghost woke him too frequently for the sleep to do any good. He never got more than an hour or two before she returned.

She’s just a little kid, he reminded himself. Wally wouldn’t let himself be angry. Not with Ghost. Somebody had made her this way. She was just a little girl.

But that was little consolation, when their interaction unfolded the same way every time: Ghost hit him with the knife. He woke up. He tried and failed to catch her. She receded into the jungle.

Over and over and over again. All night long.

When morning finally came, Wally woke to find the sun shining in his eyes. He moaned and rolled over, trying vainly to fend off the headache. But it was the perfect recipe for a migraine: massive sleep deprivation capped off with a burst of sunlight straight into his tired eyes.

Sunlight? Wally sat up. Rays of light streamed through the tatters of his shredded tent.

Ghost, it seemed, was just as frustrated as Wally.

Ellen Allworth’s Apartment

Manhattan, New York

Bugsy swam slowly up toward consciousness. The ceiling was familiar. He was at Ellen’s place. New York, thank God. His body felt thick and sluggish. The general sense of illness might have been jet lag or the weird systemic rebellion of having lost too many wasps at once. The sheets and pillow were crisp and cool and deeply comfortable, except that was desperately hungry.

He levered himself up out of bed and stumbled to the living room. The pajama legs were too long, folding up under his feet and trying to trip him. Ellen, alone on the couch, was gently stroking the ruined fedora. Will-o’-Wisp. Nick.

“Hey,” Bugsy said. “You okay?”

Ellen looked up at him, the corners of her mouth turned down. “Sure,” she said. “It’s just… I’m still a little messed up after Paris. I didn’t know Garou, but I had coffee with Burrowing Owl before things got bad. He was a nice guy. He was going to Marseilles after the conference. Now he won’t.”

“Yeah. I mean, you could take him, I guess. If it’s important.”

“I could,” she said. Her voice was tired and thin. “They’re all like that. My Nick. Mom. Aliyah. All of them. I’m always the last chance. The one hope of doing whatever it was that wasn’t done before they had to go.”

“You don’t have to, you know,” Bugsy said.

“Of course I have to.” She held up Nick’s hat, as if it was a counterargument. “I’m one of them myself, right? The queen of holding on after it’s too late.”

How long had it been? he wondered. How many years exactly had the real Nick been gone, and Cameo holding on to the memory of him. Keeping the reminder of his absence fresh every time she put the hat on, pulled him into her body again, talked with him. How many times in that private internal conversation had she told him how much she loved him? How many times had he said it back to her?

He was looking at a wound that was never going to heal, bleeding again. “Hey,” he said gently. “I know this is hard. Seriously. At some point, you’ve got to let him go-”

“No, I don’t. I can’t. I can’t let any of them go, Bugsy, because if I do, then they’re dead. Really dead. Finally dead. Permanently. As long as I can bring them back. Talk to them. Be them…”

As long as you can do that, nothing ever ends, Bugsy thought. As long as you can do that, you’re going to be carrying everything and everyone forever. Your mom. Your boyfriend. My girlfriend. You’re responsible for keeping all of them alive, because they’re already dead. You poor bastard.

“Yeah,” Bugsy said. “Okay.”

On the Congo River, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

The pit. Again. Michelle is sick of the pit. She is sick of the smell, and the dark, and the bodies.

“Adesina?” she sighs. “Where are you?”

A hand drops onto her shoulder and she jumps. When she turns, no one is there. The pile in the pit shifts. It moves as if possessed.

“Adesina!”

“Miss! Wake up, miss.”

Michelle jerked awake.

“Your friend,” Kengo said. “I’m worried about her.”

She pushed her hair back from her face and sat up in the bunk. “Did she sleep?”

Kengo shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe a little. She just keeps staring into the jungle. And she says things. Is she crazy?”

“You mean more so than usual?” Michelle poured herself a cup of water from the container on the small galley counter. It was warm and brackish, but given how crappy her mouth tasted she figured it could only help. “I’ll go talk to her.”

She went topside. It wasn’t raining, but the humidity was so high it might as well have been. The sky was overcast and there was a preternatural quiet.

Joey was still sitting on the back bench of the boat, huddled in the poncho.

“You should take that off,” Michelle said. “It’s not raining anymore.”

Joey glanced up at her and Michelle was shocked to see how bad she looked.

“I’m cold, Bubbles. Really fucking cold.”

Michelle squatted down and took her hand. It was icy and she wanted to sympathize, but she didn’t have time for Joey to fall apart. She needed her to be Hoodoo Mama.

“You’re going to get sick if you don’t rest,” Michelle said. “At some point we’re going to be walking, and you need to be stronger.”

“Walking through blood?”

“Whatever it takes.”

Joey leaned in closer to Michelle and started stroking her arm.

“I’m cold, Bubbles,” she said again. Her voice was thick with Cajun honey. “I’m so cold. We could warm each other up. You remember, like we did back home. It was cold then, too.”

“It wasn’t cold,” Michelle said, pulling away. “It was in the middle of a hurricane and it was a mistake. I’m not making the same mistake again.”

“You’re a hard-ass, Bubbles,” Joey said sadly. “I always thought you were so nice, so fucking sweet with your blond hair and your green eyes. Not anymore. You’d walk over corpses to do what you needed to, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe,” Michelle said. “But I don’t want to be walking over yours. Go get some sleep.”

Joey pulled the poncho over her head and then handed it to Michelle. “They’re all so fucking little,” Joey said. “Do all the kids die here?”

“I don’t know. I’m just trying to save one.”

Joey stumbled past her and went inside the cabin.

And as Michelle watched the jungle slip by on the river, it began to rain. She pulled on the poncho and lifted the hood over her head.

Then, over the rain, she could hear something that made her want to cry. It was the sound of Joey and Kengo fucking. Joey was using Kengo to fuck away whatever was preying on her out there in the jungle.

On the Lualaba River, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

Something had to give. It did, finally, around midday.

Wally guided his boat into a shaded cove along the river when the rain came. The patter of raindrops on his head felt like somebody had taken a jackhammer to his skull. Even the tiniest ripples on the water vibrated the boat enough to make Wally moan in agony. He’d given Jerusha all of their painkillers, so he had to ride out the migraine.

He wondered if he shouldn’t just give himself over to the PPA. Anything had to be better than this.

Wally lay down in the boat. What point was there in going ashore? His tent was useless. He closed his eyes. Sleep claimed him instantly.

Until his leg erupted in searing pain. Wally yelped. He sat up, fast enough to rock the boat.

Ghost huddled over his shin, jabbing at a rust spot with her knife. She pivoted the knife, digging at a rivet. Wally realized she was trying to pry his rivets out, to open up his leg and get a better target. It hurt like heck.

“Hey, knock it off,” he said. He reached for her.

Ghost saw him, and dematerialized again. But her preoccupation with the rivets in his leg delayed her just a fraction of second, which was enough time for Wally to dart forward and touch the blade with a fingertip.

It became a ghost knife in her hands. Then it became a ghost knife with a rusty blade. And then it was a ghost knife handle and a pile of rust.

Yep. Steel.

Ghost looked at her ruined knife, then at Wally, then at the remains of the blade. For the first time, the expression on her face changed. Her little eyebrows squeezed together, the corners of her mouth turned down. Anger? Fear? Irritation? Wally couldn’t read her.

She lifted the wooden knife handle threateningly, but she looked a little confused. It might have been cute, if she wasn’t trying to figure out how to stab him. Was she planning to hit him with it?

“A www, come on.” Wally shook his aching head. “Give it a rest, would ya?” He lay down in the boat again. “Try to get some sleep,” he slurred. “You’re still growing.”

Sleep claimed him. And it held him for many, many hours.

On the Congo River, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

Kengo came up from the cabin. Michelle expected him to have a smile on his face, or to be swaggering, but instead he just looked frightened. He moved stiffly, like an old man. He gingerly sat down next to her.

“There is something wrong with your friend,” he said.

“Really? It didn’t stop you from screwing her.”

“She is pretty.” His hands shook as he lit a cigarette. “And I thought, well… it doesn’t matter. Yes, I slept with her. But she is so violent.” He put the cigarette into the corner of his mouth, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and showed Michelle the scratches along his arms. “My back is worse. I don’t know what is chasing her, but I think it rides somewhere inside her.”

Part of Michelle wanted to sympathize with Kengo. After all, Joey had scared him and hurt him. But part of her just wanted him to shut up. She couldn’t worry about both Joey and Adesina.

“Is there a place called Kisan, along the river?” Michelle asked.

Kengo shook his head. “No, no place called Kisan. Do you mean Kisangani?”

Something about the name rang inside Michelle. She knew she’d never heard it before, but it sounded right.

“Yes, that’s it,” she replied. “Kisangani. I need to find the Kisangani Children’s Hospital.” When Kengo said “Kisangani,” a memory of her dream about Adesina became sharper. The details were suddenly more in focus.

“You do not want to go there,” Kengo said, holding his hands up in front of him. “That’s a very bad place.”

“There’s something important I have to do there.”

He stared at her for a moment. “You are both madwomen. Possessed.”

Michelle opened her hand and let a bubble form. “The demons fled this world on September 15, 1946,” she said as she let the bubble loose into the murky river. Water spewed up from the small explosion that followed.

“Do you think any demon would dare come here now?” She got up. “Now stop screwing around and get me to Kisangani.”

People’s Palace

Kongoville, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

“Hei-lian?” He said softly from the doorway.

She sat in the living room of the apartment on the People’s Palace’s third floor watching satellite television. She jumped at his voice. Her green silk robe fell open, letting her bare left breast peek out. “Tom?” she said tentatively. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“Mark. I talked to you before. Please say you remember?”

“Yes,” she said warily. “I’m still not sure if it’s a trick. You claim to be Tom’s alter ego. Mark Meadows.”

“He’s my alter ego. Never mind. The answer is, I don’t know what I’m doing up.”

She frowned. She didn’t bother closing the robe. Her beauty cut him like the blade of Lohengrin’s glowing sword. Whose kiss he remembered, sadly, as well as hers.

Feeling as if he were wrapped in cotton batting, he teetered to the arm of the sofa and sat near her. She lowered herself to perch on the edge of the cushion like a finch ready to fly away at the first hint of danger.

“I know it’s night, and the moon’s up. I can feel myself healing, even if I’m not feeling the pain I should be. That’s weird. When he’s gone through this before it hurt like hell. Anyway, why is he even here? He won’t spend the night the same place twice running, and he’s here in the palace? After trashing the whole peace conference?”

“When Tom got here he was raving, in obvious agony,” she said. “I could hardly believe he was even alive. The medics gave him sedatives and put him on a morphine drip. When his injuries began to heal visibly, I suggested they bring you- him -here.” She shrugged. “Hard to get better in hospital. It’s better in a familiar bed.”

“Yeah.” Mark nodded slowly. “So that’s it. He doesn’t take pain well. Ironic, huh? He’s tried so hard to stay off any kind of drugs for fear I’d take back over.”

“Have you?”

Did she sound eager, or was he wishful-thinking again? “No way. Sorry.”

“What do you want?”

He drew a deep breath to nerve himself. “This is harder than I thought. First, to get it over with: I love you, Sun Hei-lian. I’ve fallen for you hard.”

Her expression didn’t flicker. “Very well.”

“Yeah. I know. Pretty bizarre, right? And what I feel doesn’t put you under any obligation. Which is good, because you need to get away.”

“What do you mean?”

“Away. From here. From Tom. Sooner or later he’ll turn on you. The way he turned on Dolores. She was his lover, too. She worshipped him. And he killed her.”

“That was Butcher Dagon.”

“It was Tom. Dolores was going to tell the world that Dagon was working for Alicia, staging phony atrocities to justify the PPA invasion of Nigeria.”

Hei-lian did not seem too surprised. She studied him. “You say you care about me? About me, not just what I can do for you, with my pussy or my skills or my contacts?”

“Yeah.”

“But nobody’s cared about just me. Not since-since my father disowned me for joining the intelligence service to get him out of prison.”

“You deserve it, Hei-lian. But the truth is, it’s not only about you. Tom’s losing it.”

Her breath caught. “I’ve begun to suspect that, too.”

“You’re scared of him. I’ve seen it in your eyes. Even if Tom can’t.”

“He’s good at not seeing things he doesn’t want to.” She slumped forward, resting arms on thighs. “I’ve tried to warn Beijing. They won’t listen. They can’t see beyond the oil and the coltan and all the other resources they need to try to keep their economic boom alive.”

“He’ll turn on them, too.”

“But I’ve seen another side of him. That’s what’s so strange. He can be so gentle, even kind. To Sprout. Sometimes to me. That’s you, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “You could kill him, couldn’t you?”

She blinked and drew her head back on her slender neck. “What?”

“You’re a highly trained agent. You could kill him while he slept. You could to it tonight. All I have to do is go back in, lie down, and let go.” Mark shook his head. “I don’t have much longer anyway. He’s starting to come out of it. I can feel him stirring…”

She got up and walked a few paces from him with the green silk tail over her robe brushing the pale backs of her thighs. The television nattered mindlessly on low volume. “You’d let me kill you?”

“I’m asking you to kill me.” He sucked in breath through his teeth. “I know you’ve got a gun. I don’t want to live with what he’s done. What he’s doing. And I really don’t want to ride along for what he’s going to do. The murder, the destruction. And this child ace thing-the utter rape of innocence, man.” He shook his head. “Death’s got to be better than watching it all happen, knowing I was the one who set it all in motion. It’s not like it’s much of a life to lose, anyway. You’ve got a gun and you’re good with it. End it now.”

Sun walked toward him. “I’ve thought of killing him. But I haven’t. I loved him. I thought. I’ve been trying to figure out if there was some way to get him help.” She stopped just short of him. Her body almost touched his. He could feel her warmth and smell her personal scent. It always reminded him of green tea. “And now I know there’s something worth preserving inside him. For Sprout’s sake, if nothing else. I won’t kill him or you. Until I know there’s no other choice.”

He started to say something. She stretched up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “You’re a good man, Mark. I haven’t known many of those. Go back to bed. And relax: if I can’t find some way to help you, then I will find a way to kill you. And that’s a promise.”