The Resurrectionist

8

In its day, Harmony Prosthetics had provided something resembling wholeness to generations of the maimed and the amputated around the globe. At one time, it was the second largest replacement limb, bone, socket, and eyeball manufacturer in the world, shipping “artificial anatomicals,” as the catalogs called them, to every industrial sector on the planet. Founded by the Hanger family in the wake of the Civil War, the company prospered for a century, bingeing on government contracts with every martial conflict, and reinvesting in R & D during the periods of peace. But markets and technologies tend to change and those that can’t adapt die ugly deaths. And in the end, so it was with Harmony, which had succumbed more than a decade earlier to a combination of blows from both its Asian rivals and the miracles of microsurgery.

All that was left of this proud enterprise was the factory on Grenada, in the heart of Bangkok Park, a classic red brick mill, six stories tall and a full block wide. It had once employed two shifts of three hundred men each, and its smokestacks loomed over all of Bangkok like crosses on the road to Rome, spewing the plumed black smudge of rubber and plastic by-product seven days each week. Since then, most of the smokestacks had half fallen, leaving battered towers crumbling lazily beneath Quinsigamond’s toxic rains. And the mill beneath the stacks was a mausoleum of fiberglass hands and silicon palates, housing the typical urban scavengers — rats, pigeons, cockroaches, and, of late, a pack of nomadic bikers known as the Abominations.

Run by Buzz Cote, a burly veteran of the crank wars, the Abominations were classic renegades. Unaffiliated and proud of it, they swooped into towns like a plague, announcing their presence but never their agenda. Coming to Quinsigamond out of Phoenix, they found their way to the Harmony as if it were the ancestral home. They installed themselves in the mill and put their bikes on display in the gravel lot next door, as if taunting the local gangs, daring an offensive.

It had been six months since Buzz and his creatures arrived but, so far, no one had challenged them. Which was, to Buzz, a mixed blessing. Tranquillity begat productivity, but it tended to make the boys edgy. And being in one place for too long made them downright pissy. That’s when they started to fight amongst themselves. With any luck they’d be pulling out of the city in another week or two but Buzz knew, from experience, you don’t rely on luck. So tonight, he was sending the boys out on a run, to let them gorge on a little speed, maybe find a roadhouse where they could kick some ass and steal some poon.

“Ladies,” he said, as he walked inside the circle of revving hogs, clapping his boys on the back or the head, “do me proud, but come back in one piece.”

When he got to the end of the line, he laid a hand on the shoulder of his second in command and leaned in to the Spider’s ear.

“I need you to hang back with me,” Buzz said.

Spider let up on the throttle but squinted at Buzz to show his confusion. Buzz shook his head.

“Can’t be helped,” he said. “But I’ll make it up to you, I swear.” Then he stepped back to the next in line, the Elephant, and yelled, “Spider’s hanging back with me. We got some business. You’re in charge, Tubby. Keep the family circle.”

The Elephant nodded, both thrilled and frightened by the responsibility. Then he signaled with his pudgy hand and led the pack out of the lot and out of the Park, headed for some restorative mayhem.

Spider waited until all the boys had departed and the roar of the hogs was fading down Grenada. Then he leaned back in his mount and said, “The fuck, Buzz?”

Buzz chucked his deputy under the chin and said, “What’s the matter, boy? You ain’t getting enough?”

“I get all I need,” Spider said, shutting down his bike and climbing off to hover under Buzz’s chin.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Buzz said, slinging an arm across Spider’s neck to walk him back into the factory. “You barely got enough left for our girl.”

“I ain’t heard her complain,” Spider said.

“Well, now,” Buzz said, “complaining ain’t exactly Nadia’s style. Is it?”

Spider started to laugh and said, “I guess it ain’t.” And then they were both laughing, punching and poking each other, just a couple of irrepressible rebels, like in the old days back in Oakland, when they’d first gotten together. Back when the family was new and everything seemed inevitable. They’d met at a swap out in the hills of Berkeley, a kind of underground flea market for bikers and dopers and anarchists. Spider was buying a unit of crank and Buzz was picking up a case of test tubes and they almost came to blows over who would get the same issue of a favorite comic book.

Until that day, Spider had been a committed loner. On his own since the age of ten, he’d imagined himself the last individual, and he’d valued independence over any other virtue he’d ever sampled. But here he was, three years in, an Abomination. Another motherless brother, as the song put it. The thing was, Buzz had offered what no one else could — a shared independence. A liberty so radical it could scorch all the old freedoms and deliver an emancipation too real to refuse.

Spider wasn’t sure when he’d stopped believing Buzz Cote’s bullshit. Maybe it was Cincinnati. Maybe Louisville. But wherever it had happened, it was, he knew, the first time he’d experienced genuine grief. In the wake of that grief came the decision to split off from the family and form his own crew. And now, whenever the thought of fucking over Buzz and the boys started to bother him, Spider just remembered the fact of his own disbelief and the anxiety melted away instantly.

“You really think it’s a good idea, though,” Spider said as they entered the mill, “lettin’ the boys ride without me?”

“The boys’ll be fine,” Buzz said. “You got to have more faith.”

“But what was so important, you needed me to hang back?”

“It’s a bird problem,” Buzz said, his face as serious as his tone.

“A bird problem,” Spider said. “What the fuck’s that mean?”

“I’ll show you,” said Buzz, and he led the way through the first floor toward the rear of the mill.

The factory was organized by product makes and models, with each floor given over to the many shapes and sizes of a particular replacement part. The layout followed the logic of the human body itself: feet and legs were manufactured on the first floor; testicles and hips on the second; hands, arms, elbows, and shoulders on the third; all manner of oral implements — from tongues to teeth to palates — on the fourth; and eyeballs and sockets, ears and noses on the fifth. Skull plates, administrative offices, and research and development shared the top floor.

Buzz had poked around a bit up on six, rooted through R & D prototypes that had been left behind. He didn’t recognize everything he inspected, but some of the products left him with a queasy feeling that lasted several nights.

The work area of each floor was a plain of open space, made into intricate mazes by aisles of mammoth heavy machinery, all of it gunmetal gray or dull green. The floors were cold concrete, stained black by oil; the ceilings, a tangled canopy of wiring and piping. There were small, boxy windows fit into the brick here and there, but the glass was a heavy, opaque variety that let in little light. In addition, the windows were fitted, inside and out, with security grates, a black wire mesh, which gave a sense that the building could be converted from factory to penitentiary in a heartbeat.

The rear of the first floor was outfitted with a huge cafeteria. When the Abominations first colonized the Harmony, Buzz had the boys cart out all but the largest of the round, aluminum lunch tables and the bikers dropped their bedrolls and turned the room into a dormitory and clubhouse. They had running water and the Fluke had managed to jerry-rig some electricity to power the lights, stove, and refrigerator.

Beyond the cafeteria, at the very back of the mill, was a freight lift whose car remained locked up on the sixth floor no matter what the Ant tried. So, instead of elevator races for entertainment, the boys had begun climbing in the shaft, hauling themselves up and down like apes on the chains and wires that dangled into the blackness of the cellar.

As he moved through the central aisle between the gargantuan lathes, Buzz suddenly let out a war cry and started to sprint toward the shaft. Spider flinched but caught on fast and began to race after his leader. And when they reached the shaft, the two men flung themselves at the same time, catching different cables and lowering their bodies, hand over hand, into the bowels of the factory.

They emerged into the basement, a cavern of piping, storage, and furnaces that stunk of chemicals and sewage. Buzz pulled out a flashlight and clicked on a beam that revealed hundreds of drums of dyes and oils, countless barrels of paints and pigments. And though neither one of them said anything, they could both feel the rats breathing among the abandoned supplies.

In the center of the darkness sat a monster of an incinerator, a huge brick kiln, like a prison house for elves, with a cast-iron door on its face big enough for a man to climb through. The top of the oven fed into a steel funnel that tied to the factory’s main stack, which rose up through all the floors and, finally, through the roof.

Buzz put down the flashlight and took hold of the gear wheel on the furnace door as if he wanted to pry it loose from the incinerator. He made a face as though furious and constipated, then he used all of his upper body strength to budge the wheel. It groaned through years of rust but it turned, slowly and with a terrible sound. And when it could turn no more, Buzz took a breath, stepped back, and pulled the door open.

Spider hunched to look inside. He stared for several seconds but could see nothing. Straightening up, he looked at Buzz and shrugged.

“I need you,” Buzz said, “to climb in.”

It was a moment before Spider could laugh and, when he did, Buzz joined in. But when the laughing faded, awkwardly, Buzz said, “In you go.”

“The fuck you say?” Spider asked.

“Look,” Buzz said, “I’d go myself, but I’m just too big.”

Spider hunched again, tried to see inside the incinerator and came upright, just as confused.

“I’m not going in there,” he said.

Buzz sighed.

“It’s like this,” he said. “Somehow, a bird got in there. Made a nest, you know. Up in the stack.”

“A bird?” Spider said. “Who the fuck cares?”

“That’s the thing,” Buzz said, upbeat, as if his deputy were about to see the light. “It’s Nadia. She says she can’t sleep at night. The bird’s making all these noises. Keeping her awake.”

“I ain’t heard no bird. What the fuck kind of bird is it?”

“How do I know what kind of bird it is? What difference does that make? Nadia wants it gone.”

“I’m telling you,” said Spider, “I ain’t heard no bird.”

“And I’m telling you,” Buzz said, “Nadia says it’s there. And she wants it gone.”

“I’m a light sleeper,” Spider said. “I’d have heard a bird.”

Buzz waited a second, scratched his belly, drummed on his leg with the flashlight.

“You calling Nadia a liar?”

“’Course not,” Spider snapped. “That’s not what I’m saying at all.” He tried to think and then said, “Maybe it’s a bat. Maybe that’s what she’s hearing.”

“She said bird.”

“How’d a bird get in the stack?” Spider asked.

“How the hell you think?” Buzz said. “It came down from the top.”

“So you’re saying I have to go in there?”

“It’s a piece of cake,” Buzz said. “There’s a ladder mounted on the inside of the stack—”

“You’re shittin’ me,” Spider said. “A ladder?”

“A ladder,” Buzz insisted. “For maintenance. You got to clean these out, you know. They’re just like chimneys. Only worse. They get buildup.”

“This is fuckin’ nuts,” Spider said. “Couldn’t Nadia just sleep someplace else in the building?”

“You want to tell her to move?”

“I could get burnt up in there.”

“This thing,” Buzz said, kicking the incinerator, “hasn’t fired in ten years. There’s no power.”

“So I go in?” said Spider.

Buzz nodded.

“And I find the ladder?”

Another nod.

“And I climb up till I find a bird’s nest?”

“That’s it,” said Buzz. “It’ll be up near the top.”

“Up near the top? I can’t fit up there.”

“You’d be surprised,” Buzz said. “There’s more than enough room.”

“And when I find the fuckin’ nest? What do I do?”

“Well, if the bird’s there, you kill it.”

“Kill it?”

“Yeah, grab it and kill it. Just twist the neck.”

“I never killed no bird.”

“That,” said Buzz, “I find hard to believe.”

“What if it ain’t there?” asked Spider.

“Just knock down the nest. It comes back, sees you been up in there, it’ll fly off.”

“This is fuckin’ stupid.”

“You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” Buzz said. “Five, ten minutes, we’re done. Then we’ll kick back, have a few drinks, and wait for Nadia. We show her the bird is dead, you know she’ll be grateful.”

“You’re sayin’ I missed a run with the boys for this?”

“You’re my deputy, Spider,” Buzz said. “It’s not all privilege. There’s some responsibilities, too. Now get the fuck in there.”

The tone said that Buzz’s patience was gone, so Spider pushed his head through the incinerator door, hesitated a second, then hauled the rest of his body inside. Buzz kneeled down outside and thrust his head and the hand that held the flashlight into the furnace.

“I’ll be right here,” he said to the Spider. “I’ll light it up so you can see.”

“Christ,” said Spider, “I can barely breathe in here.”

“Go up, kill the bird, and come down,” said Buzz. “A moron could do this.”

And with that comment, Spider began climbing up the walls of the stack. In seconds, he was covered in soot and ash. Each time he passed through a flue, the stack grew a little narrower and Spider muttered to himself. Down below, Buzz ignored the curses and tried to make light.

“Stop whining,” he said. “You can have Nadia first.”

The words echoed and crumbs of rusted iron rained down from the rungs beneath Spider’s hands and feet and settled on Buzz’s head and arm.

“For this,” Spider yelled down, “I should get her first and second.”

“Fine with me, son,” Buzz said, “but I don’t think you’d live to tell that story.”

“Maybe,” said Spider. “But I’d die a happy man.”

He climbed more quickly, trying to think of Nadia and the night ahead. But the stack contracted dramatically now and the rungs of the ladder began to shrink.

Finally, Spider stopped his ascent and said, “There’s something blocking the stack.”

“Is it the nest?” Buzz asked.

“I dunno,” Spider yelled and Buzz could hear the strain in his voice. “Whatever it is, I can’t reach it. And I can’t go up any higher. It’s too tight.”

“Take another step,” Buzz said, pulling his trunk farther into the mouth of the furnace. “You can do it.”

“I can’t,” Spider said. “It’s too narrow.”

“Christ,” Buzz said, “you’re almost there. Just stretch up and grab. You can do it.”

“I’m stretching,” said Spider, angry now. “I’m telling you, I can’t reach it.”

“All you have to do,” said Buzz, “is knock it down.”

Spider cursed and struggled. The bricks were rubbing against his shoulders and his lungs were starting to convulse on him.

“I gotta come down,” he screamed in a voice too loud and high to plausibly deny panic.

Buzz stretched out his arm and shined his light up the cylinder. “You’ve almost got it. Just reach up. I know you can do this.”

“This is bullshit, you son of a bitch,” Spider yelled, enraged.

“Push yourself up,” Buzz yelled, in the voice of the father, a sound so weighted with threat that he saved it for the rarest of emergencies. “Force yourself up there.”

Spider gritted his teeth and jammed his body forward with everything he had. He felt the bricks squeezing in on his shoulders and his ass but he managed to raise his knee until his foot found the next rung and he hoisted himself that much farther. He was wrapped in brick now, corseted in mortar and creosote, but the nest was just above his head.

He stopped in place, took in some sooty air, got control, and said, “I get back down, Buzz, you and I are gonna have some words.”

“Just get the fucking bird,” Buzz said.

Slowly Spider found a way to inch his arm up over his head. He poked at the bottom of the nest and found it so dry and brittle that it began to break up with his touch. He fingered away at this dry bowl of twigs, leaves, wire, and plastic. And when he reached inside the bowl, he found no bird, only a fat wad of paper, which he grabbed and pulled down before his face.

“Did you get it?” Buzz asked from below, his voice now soft and emotionless.

Spider didn’t answer. Between the beam of Buzz’s light shooting up and the slice of moonlight that drifted down into the stack, he was able to see the object in his hands — a filthy envelope full of cash.

And just as Spider made out the logo of the Peck Clinic beneath a stain of ash, Buzz snapped off the flashlight.

Spider startled and dropped the envelope and money floated down over Buzz and into the belly of the furnace.

“What the fuck,” Spider yelled. “Turn on the light, asshole.”

He tried to take a step down to a lower rung only to find that the bricks refused to let go of his shoulders. The Spider screamed and tried to thrash his way free but his jerking and bucking made his situation only worse.

“You stupid bitch,” Buzz yelled from the belly of the furnace, his tone just short of regretful. “You think Nadia doesn’t know every goddamn thing that happens at that clinic?”

“Get me out of here,” Spider hollered, enraged and terrified, his body futilely trying to convulse within its minute confines. Dirt and rust and soot and some twigs from the nest fell into his eyes.

“I bring you into Limbo,” Buzz yelled, not caring if Spider could hear him over the screaming. “And this is how you repay me.”

Spider tried to push himself off of the ladder, but nothing happened. Pieces of the nest fell into his mouth and he began to spit and choke.

“I bring you to meet the freaks,” Buzz yelled, “and you do business with the enemy? You give that fucking doctor exactly what he needs. And then you hide the fucking money from me?”

At the height of his frenzy, Spider was granted the single moment of clarity in a life so twisted by violence and bad luck that it could culminate only in this kind of demise. He used the moment to make a request.

“Buzz,” he yelled. “Don’t do it this way. Help me come down and you can cut my throat.”

Buzz stayed silent for a minute, letting the Spider think he was mulling the option. Then he laughed and yelled up the stack.

“Can’t do it, Spider. I want you to think about what you’ve done while you’re drying out up there. You know, I might’ve even understood if you’d thrown in with Nadia and the last clinic and that fucking madness. But to choose that asshole Peck. You’re a real disappointment to me, Spider. And I want you to really understand what you’ve thrown away. Should take you three, four days to dehydrate—”

“The boys won’t let you do this,” Spider screamed.

“As far as the boys are concerned,” Buzz said, “you’re headed south to scout things out for us.”

“But they’ll hear me.”

“The boys won’t be back till sometime tomorrow,” Buzz said. “By then, without any water and with all that soot and shit in your lungs and throat, you won’t sound like much more than a bird that got stuck in the stack somewhere.”

The words yanked Spider back into his panic and he began to holler again, something about Limbo being bullshit, and Buzz, a fool and a liar. And then the yelling degenerated into a kind of scatological prayer, made of equal parts terror and rage, and losing meaning as it progressed.

The big man pulled himself out of the furnace, stood, and pushed the door closed. He could still hear the screaming, but now it was muffled, the words indistinct. Taking hold of the gear wheel, he began to turn it like a skipper steering his ship through a chaotic sea. When he heard the furnace door lock, he left his hands on the wheel for a moment and let his body slump, suddenly exhausted. And he thought, once again, about the obligations of the patriarch.