I smiled; he smiled. The three of us headed out.
We found a flight of precarious steps leading down through the broken statues and weeds and windblown trash. The gardens ended at the edge of the cliff. A stone parapet studded with broken chunks of sculpture did double duty as a retaining wall. The hillside fell away, a long steep way down, to the ocean, a view of dark wrinkled water edged with white on the pale beach. Off to the south, we could see the remains of Playland. Just beyond those lay a dark strip of wild green: Golden Gate Park. I could just make out the windmill.
I focused my attention on the ruins of Playland, turned by distance into a sketch map of ten acres of chaos. The layout struck me as far more haphazard than the Playland in San Francisco. In the book I’d found at Wagner’s, the two amusement parks looked somewhat alike, each an arrangement of rides and concessions organized around two pair of cross streets like city blocks. After the split of worlds and the disaster, they had changed in separate ways. Here in SanFran the streets had disappeared into a confusion of shapes, as if booths and rides had sprung up wherever anyone felt like putting them.
Along the east side, back toward town, ran the dead roller coaster, a wooden skeleton like the spine and ribs of some sea creature picked clean by scavengers. Just west of it a big circle of concrete marked the location of the merry-go-round. On the southwest corner stood the crumbling stucco walls of a substantial building. Other than those landmarks, nothing came clear. I saw a jumble of shapes like the contents of a huge wastepaper basket spread out on a floor. Here and there the hazy sunlight picked out a gleam of metal.
I had no idea what shape represented what ride or location. Nothing matched my mental images of the map in the book or in the map Javert and I had sketched out. I sent my mind out to Javert and felt him come back online. I focused hard on my view of the ruins.
MESS. BROKEN CORAL. YOUR OCEANS. BOTTLES BAGS PLASTIC.
I took this as meaning the view reminded him of a dead coral reef.
Too true,
I replied.
Much too true.
“Can you see the location of that hatch?” Ari said.
“No, not from here. I hope to God I can find it down there.”
He winced. “So do I.”
Behind us someone whistled. I spun around and saw the red-haired little person. He hurried over and pulled a big tangle of bushes and weeds away from the stonework. A clumsy-looking wooden door appeared.
“Stairs down,” he said. “I’ll close it after you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Wish us luck!”
“Luck, and our prayers go with you!”
We all had to stoop and wriggle to get through the door. Once we stood on the stone stairs, however, in a few long strides Dad walked us down. Another few strides, and we reached the chain-link fence that surrounded the ruins.
Here at street level the landscape—a junkyard—confused me even worse. Piles and heaps of boards, lumps of fallen stucco, twisted hunks of metal, tip-tilted walls, beams and girders that stuck up randomly through mounds of outright garbage—I had no idea what we were seeing. Javert informed me that he could make no sense of what my mind relayed. I wasn’t surprised. Dad, Ari, and I moved along the fence until we found an entrance that someone had improvised with a pair of wire cutters. By then it was five minutes to three. Ari pulled his communicator from his shirt pocket and confirmed that Jan and his squad were waiting on the far side of the complex.
“They’ll be moving in soon,” Ari said. “Nola, any sign of Claw?”
I felt the Maculate’s energy, a pulse like a beating heart, moving through the rubble. My mind objectified him as the stink of carrion.
“He’s inside the fence. Either he can do fast walking, or he knows some secret entrance. He got past Hendriks’ squad, anyway.”
“Other Storm Blue men?”
“Yes. Three by the roller coaster. Personnel out in the street to the south. That’s on Fulton. Between Playland and
the park.” I refocused and got a better fix on a pulse of fading Qi. “Someone’s dying. Another’s trying to help. More men than that. I think some of the men at the safe houses must have escaped and gotten back here.”
Ari said something foul and clicked the communicator on. “I’m going to call down Spare14 and the others. The situation’s too dangerous for the three of us to handle.”
“Okay, but make it fast. We’ve got to reach Michael before these guys get underground to help Scorch hunt.”
“True. I—”
A burst of gunfire off to the south interrupted him. The communicator beeped. With a flick of his thumb he answered, listened, then nodded and clicked off.
“Hafner’s moving down Fulton Street,” Ari said. “Cleaning up the stragglers. Very well. We’ll continue as planned.”
“I could just go in and start looking for Michael,” Dad said.
“I said, we’ll continue as planned.”
“You’re in charge, then?”
“I should think that was made clear when we were discussing the matter back in Spare’s office. If you’d been there—” Ari left the rest unsaid.
They both looked my way. I felt a sudden sympathy for King Solomon, he of the difficult judgments.
“Dad,” I said, weaseling, “Ari was in the Israeli army. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Umph,” was all Dad answered, but he turned away and began studying the rubble ahead. Ari smiled but mercifully kept silent.
The next few minutes passed entirely too slowly. The sun kept trying to break through the yellow fog. The day was not precisely hot but unpleasantly humid. I became more and more aware of the stink from the garbage just ahead of us. The place doubtless lacked working plumbing. Somewhere there had to be dung heaps, my nose told me, just like in the Dark Ages.
Ari and Dad both stood as still as if they’d been turned to marble themselves. Neither looked the other’s way. I felt my heart pounding like a drum that urged me to dance. I had to struggle to imitate them and stay still. Now and then
I heard gunshots and tried to persuade myself that the noise came from a long way away.
I was more frightened for Michael than myself. As Sean had said, Michael was moving through the underground complex, darting down tunnels, pausing to press himself against walls and listen, hunting Scorch even as Scorch hunted him. When I felt Javert ride into my mind on a wave of concern, I remembered that I had a powerful ally.
Can you tell Mike to just get the hell out of there?
I TRY.
I was aware of Javert sending the words that I lacked the talent to send. I felt Michael’s mind shutting them out with a barrage of sheer anger.
HE THINKS TRAP LIE.
Crud.
Javert agreed. When I concentrated on Michael again, I could tell that his location lay somewhere to the north and roughly in the center strip of the ruins. He was moving too fast through too complex a space for me to be more precise. When I relayed this information to Ari, I whispered.
“I doubt if Scorch can hear you,” he said.
Ari appeared to be on the verge of smiling. I couldn’t believe that he could be so calm, until I remembered that his entire life had trained him for just this sort of operation. He glanced at his watch.
“Hendriks should be in by now. Let’s go.”
Javert, we’re going in.
CAREFUL!
You bet.
In single file we picked our way through the break in the fence. Piles of trash had blown up against the chain links and stuck into a crazy quilt of papers and wet garbage. Flies buzzed around the stink and crawled on the trash, as thick as black mold. The gang had simply thrown all kinds of leavings out there, human waste as well as food scraps. I gagged but kept walking. A few yards brought us into somewhat cleaner air.
Directly ahead lay a six-foot-high tangle of metal chains around big wooden boards, streaked with faded pink paint, and some indeterminate hunks of concrete. Ari held up one
hand for a stop, but while Dad and I waited, he picked his way around the pile. He paused to look ahead, then beckoned for us to join him. I followed him blindly. The visual disorder, the stinks, the scuttling sounds made by fleeing rats—I was losing my power to think clearly, losing even the ability to make sense of what I was seeing.
Javert, help! I’m drowning in Chaos. Clues, we had clues.
CLOWN FACE. REMEMBER CLOWN FACE.
Right! Thank God! We saw it underground.
“We want the fun house,” I said aloud. “But I don’t have any idea of where it is, not in all of this.”
All this rubble looks alike.
TOO TRUE.
Ari muttered in Hebrew. Even though I couldn’t understand a word of it, the familiar sounds were oddly soothing.
We moved around that first pile of junk to find ourselves standing on what must have once been a street or wide path. All around us ruins spread out, stinking, heaped up, random, and inhabited by filthy small lives. Crumbling stucco walls, about shoulder high and black with graffiti, stood to our right, while on the left big shards of shattered glass lay in a rough square about ten feet on a side. We kept close to the wall and walked forward a few steps.
“Claw,” Ari said. “Where?”
I let my mind roam through the aboveground wreckage off to the south—to our right, that is, at that moment. With Javert’s help, I saw in vision the circular patch I’d noted from the cliffside. Beside it, something that looked like a huge metal broken umbrella hung at an angle from some kind of pole.
“By the remains of the merry-go-round,” I said. “Working his way north toward us.”
“Get down!” Ari pointed at a pile of rusty metal that once upon a time had been a bumper car.
Dad and I squatted down behind it. Ari went down on one knee with the rifle loose in his hands. I ran a second SM:P. The Maculate ducked and dodged behind heaps of rubble as he zigzagged through the ruins. Like Michael, he moved too quickly for me to pinpoint his location.
“He’s changed direction,” I said. “He’s moving east now,
farther in, and no one’s following him. He’s given Hafner the slip.”
I scanned for Michael: found him, standing in the dark in some indeterminate location below us in a narrow space, waiting, furious, listening. Another man, also furious, also underground, moving very slowly forward. Above ground: one human man running for his life. The stink that represented Claw to my consciousness intruded on the scan.
“The Maculate’s stopped running,” I said. “He’s walking with a kind of purposeful stride.”
“Is he armed?” Ari said.
“I don’t know, but I bet he is. I can just pick up his vibrations. They’re murderous.”
“That I’ll well believe.”
Dad snorted. “You can believe anything she says,” he remarked to empty air.
“Keep your voice down,” Ari said, again to the empty air.
My stomach began to hurt. I focused on the job in hand. I was profoundly grateful that I had Javert as backup.
I FIND SIGN. SHOW YOU. ALSO CLAW.
An image presented itself to my mind.
Thank you! That’s it, all right.
“I see the Maculate,” I said aloud. “He’s got a long gun. It looks weird. Behind him a rusty sign says ‘Fun House this way.’ There’s an arrow.” I raised my arm to point in the matching direction. “That’s the way we need to go.”
“To the south, then.” Ari spoke quietly.
Dad nodded his agreement, not that Ari had asked for it. We got back to our feet. We turned around the corner of the stucco walls and began heading along a narrow path. It twisted and turned between piles of planks, faded signs, a broken stove, more thick chains, ruined by rust. Over everything lay a fine drift of trash and garbage. I had no idea of where we were in relation to the ocean or to anything else.
Ari smiled. I looked where he pointed and saw a three-foot sign about twenty yards away, hanging at an angle above a pair of sagging wooden walls. The arrow read “Fun House this Way” and indicated the east, deeper in.
“I hope that no one’s turned the damn thing around,” Dad said.
“So do I.” Ari shrugged the problem away. “We’ll find out soon enough if they have.”
“A path’s been cleared in that direction,” I said. “I bet it’s the right way.”
By following that path, we reached the shelter of a decayed ice cream stand. Two walls and the metal counter still stood. A burst of gunfire sounded from the direction of the roller coaster.
“Down!” Dad grabbed me by the shoulders.
We fell more than knelt together behind the shelter of a heap of old metal signs. Ari squatted down nearby and took out his communicator. His SPP terrified me. He cared nothing about his own safety. He wanted one thing: blood, the deaths of those who threatened my family—his family too, now. The rage that he kept chained had broken free.
“Hendriks?” Ari’s voice was perfectly calm, perfectly cold.
I could hear the faint sound of Jan’s answer. “All okay here. Two dead Storm Blue men.”
“Good.”
“Has O’Grady picked up more personnel above ground?”
“Yes,” I said. “One guy, trying to climb over the fence at the east edge.”
Ari relayed the message, then said, “I’ll be moving my unit to the entrance hatch.”
Jan answered. “We’ll pick off the fugitive and meet you there.”
The path followed a set of rusted, twisted tracks, sort of like train tracks but much narrower. Here and there we passed overturned cars of some sort, bulbous things from a kiddie ride, most likely. The path stopped at a roughly oval-shaped patch of cleared ground. In the middle, lying flat, metal gleamed.
“The hatch,” I said. “But Claw’s still above ground. We must have gotten here ahead of him. We need to hide.”
“He can smell us,” Ari said. “He’s hunting ape.”
All three of us took what shelter we could behind a pile
of broken planks that lay against one of the kiddie-ride cars. Two huge red-rimmed eyes stared at us from the rubble. I nearly screamed before I realized that they’d been painted on the front of a kiddie-train car, this one shaped like a ladybug. I cursed all whimsy and ran more scans.
I could feel Claw’s presence nearby, smell the stink of carrion growing stronger.