Authors: Jeff Noon
“Sometimes, Zero…”
“What?”
“Sometimes I can’t make you out.”
“Sometimes…” And Zero Clegg looked at me then, as though to say Sometimes I can’t make myself out. So shut the fuck up.
I got all this bitterness over the Shadow, so I did what I was here for. “Let’s search,” I said.
The two of us going through a taxi-dog’s personal belongings, hoping for a trace, finding nothing but trivia, the collected fare-droppings of a lonely life: biscuits crumbling and model aeroplanes dancing and cold tea solidifying in a china cup. Cheap crime novels folded open beside the single bed. Manchester City Vurtball programmes piled up neat in files. An official supporters’ club diary lying on the dresser. I opened it up, turning to the latest pages, saw the name Boda there, shut the book tight. I slipped it into my pocket, not wanting Zero to see.
“What you found?” Zero asked.
“Nothing yet,” I lied, not knowing why. Except that Zero was looking for traces of a Zombie pick-up, because that would pacify the dogs of the city, or so Kracker believed. The cops were still hoping to close this case down quickly, with a Zombie at the end of it. But the Zombies were not natural-born killers, they were just desperate survivors. The world in those days was on a constant knife-edge between species. Through the tiny window above Coyote’s bed, I could hear the dog-people barking, their growling voices full of hatred and fear.
“Jesus, I hate this,” Zero said. “Searching through victims’ things. It’s so depressing.” He was holding up a clear plastic container.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Nano-fleas.”
“What?”
“Robo-fleas. You buy them from the pet shop. Symbiosis, Smokey. The give-and-take scenario. Keeps a doggy clean.”
I shuddered, right down to Shadow-level; the things that dog-people got up to. Now Zero was twisting off the lid, and I was scared suddenly, irrationally. Please don’t let those monsters out of the jar! What can you do with such feelings?
“Come look at this, Clegg,” I said, hoping to distract him. My eyes were scanning the big map on the wall. “You seeing what I’m seeing?”
Cop-dog sneezed: “Just looks like a mess to me. What you saying?”
“I’m saying this is where he went.”
The map was pricked with pins, and scribbled over with felt-tip markings. It was a map of Manchester, and all the outlying regions. Limbo was represented by snakes creeping along dirt roads. “You see, just here?” I said, and Zero came in close. “This is where Coyote made the pick-up.” I was pointing to a lonely pin stuck into the map, into the Limbo out beyond Littleborough, north-east of the city, where the map went fuzzy with bad knowledge. Blackstone Edge. Just beneath the pin, written in a doggy hand, yesterday’s date, May 1, and a time, 4.00 a.m. Below that, a featherphone number.
“I think you should call that number, Clegg,” I said.
Clegg breathed in loudly, and then sneezed, sending the jar of nano-fleas flying. “Jesus-Dung! Look what you made me do now.” Already he was scratching at his fur.
“I’m not saying this Boda killed him,” I said. “I’m just saying that she might have. Are we good cops, or not?”
“You think we’re good cops?” Zero was itching from the flea-bites.
“Can you get Columbus to download a picture of Boda for me? If Boda didn’t kill Coyote, she just might know who did. We can at least try.”
“Kracker says no, Kracker says close it down. That’s it.”
I couldn’t believe that Kracker and Zero Clegg were so mightily against searching for Boda. Surely that was the major route? Was something secret going on, some hidden cop-story? Or else was I just full of bad Shadows? Whatever, I was sure that I didn’t want Zero to see the taxi-dog’s diary.
“Kracker’s the master,” Zero was saying. “He’s the boss. And there’s more important things on his files. Xcabs are complaining about Gumbo YaYa again, about how he keeps breaking into the map-data. Kracker wants me on that trail.”
“You think I’m worried about some old hippy, Zero?”
“Who just happens to be breaking the law.”
“I’ve got some strong feelings about this case, Zero.”
“Keep them to yourself, and stop calling me Zero.” He couldn’t stop scratching at the jumping nano-fleas.
“Give me one run at it, please. Let’s track down that map number. Are you going to help me?”
“I came here with you, didn’t I? Shit. It’s a good job nobody fancies you, Smokey. They’d have a hell of a time keeping up.”
I didn’t answer.
Later that day, Zero drove out with me, North, to the dead places. There were flowers growing from the tarmac as we travelled through the city of Manchester, and tribes of dogs gathering at our heels. The air was heavy with pollen messages. Zero was sneezing and scratching as he stuffed a blue phone-feather into his jaws. He called up the number listed on Coyote’s wall-map, and then told me that only static cracklings were answering him. And then he sneezed once again, and cursed the hayfever. This journey had caused some arguments, especially when I asked for a three-car patrol: one in front, one behind. And a heavy gun presence. All of which had met with refusal. Zero was playing it strong, saying that no Zombie fucker was going to mess with him. But I could see the fear in his eyes, especially as we moved through the mutant tribes of North Manchester. “Jesus-Dog!” he said to me. “What’s up with the world these days? Nobody’s just themselves anymore. Jesus, will you look at that! You see that creature there, Smokey? What the hell is that? Fucking mutant!” This last shouted through the window.
“You know what, Zero?” I answered. “They say that some of them have even got Dog inside them.”
“Yeah, well… that’s a cheap shot, Smokey. Dog-Christ! It makes you wonder just how bad Zombies are.”
Then we came to the northern gate of the city, outgoing, a giant shell of a building where sparks flew from lightning rods, and the monster trucks were washed down for Zombie travellers. We nudged the car into a waiting line behind an International Vaz transporter. Its back wheels loomed larger than the Fiery Comet, and City Guardsmen shone lasers under the truck’s carriage for illegal goods. Behind a wire fence I could see over to the incoming door, where tankers were being sprayed with anti-Zombie juice.
The truck in front of us moved forward, and whilst Zero was feeding his cop-code to the guardian, a snarling came from the incoming side, and something banged against the wires.
Zombie hitcher sprayed down from the incoming vehicle.
Legs and arms thrashing against the wire.
Zero shouted to some dumb customs attendant, “Jesus-Dog! Do we have to put up with this?” The incoming Zombie worked his slithering arms through the mesh until he was almost scratching at our car with his talons. Sizzling grease splashed against our windscreen. Zero pulled out his gun. “I’m gonna take that fucker.” He wound down the window. I told him to cool down, but once the dog was up in Clegg, there was no stopping him. The guardsmen got to the Zombie first, stabbing at the creature with their lightning rods. Then, a terrible howling that even Zero backed away from, and the smell of burning half-dead flesh in the air. The Zombie was shrivelled to a crisp. It made me think about my sweet, illicit Jewel, left all alone in his bedroom back at my flat. How could I protect him?
We made our way through the checkpoint, left the main road, and then scudded along a dirt track, past crashed cars and a burnt out train carriage in the middle of the moors, miles from any rail-track.
Limboland.
A large, withered oak tree we found there, bent by the wind, its branches forming a web of connections. Beyond that a final telegraph pole was etched against the trembling sky.
Exact co-ordinates. Blackstone Edge.
There was nothing but dead grass and dry winds. Zero was sneezing crazy, his gun-hand twitching constantly at his holster as he scanned the moorlands for Zombies. “You know there’s holes out here, don’t you?” he said. “Holes from the Vurt.”
I walked further out into the moors. Off the telegraph pole a long wire dangled from one of the connectors; tuberous roots sprouting from the end of it disappeared into the wet suck of the earth.
To the south of the city, just beyond the realms of the map, before the vast moorlands of Limbo take over, there is an Xcab parked under an overhang of rock. It was safe here, no cops to deal with. The road dropped away into nothingness just beyond Alderley Edge. The driver had travelled just far enough to disengage Columbus.
It had been a lonely path out to this rock, courtesy of an A–Z book. Boda had paid a tidy sum to a sullen perimeter-being in order to find a hidden track. Last night she had slept in the cab, with the brush of leaves against the windows, and the moanings of Zombies from the outlying moors. She had activated all the defence systems, and Charrie had promised her he would keep his eyes open, but still her sleep had been fitful, disturbed by the heavy rumblings of Vaz wagons as they thundered by and by the pain that travelled her wounded road. And, more deeply, by the thoughts of Coyote. She couldn’t get rid of the thought that she’d killed him; it was her fault. Her mind had played at this for hours in the darkness. If only Roberman hadn’t passed that Limbo fare to her. If only she hadn’t given Coyote that same fare. If only Coyote hadn’t called that number. If only she’d loved him more, and earlier. If only, if only, if only… there are too many if onlys in her life. And what was Columbus up to now? What had she done wrong to bring on the boss’s wrath? Boda had reached into her shoulder bag then, to pull out her address book. In it she had jotted down the number that Coyote had rung. Limbo number. She could maybe ring that number? Find some clue that way about the killer of the taxi-dog. Does she want to find his killer? Yes, because that would redeem her for giving him the number. But how can she get to a phone without going back on to the map? Eventually she had drifted into sleep, woken up with the same problem. She’s been sitting in the cab for hours now, getting hungry and frustrated. It’s the second day of her new world, getting towards dark again, Zombie time, and the girl is feeling scared.
There are lights playing above the horizon, deep into Limboland. She doesn’t want to think about what may be out there. She has heard so many rumours. Boda is safe here, for the moment, caught between authority and chaos, as long as she can keep the Zombies at bay. But the idea of stasis does not appeal. Another Vaz wagon speeds along the Limbo road. Charrie rocks with the vibrations. DO I HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THIS DISTURBANCE? he says.
“What choice do we have?” Boda asks. “And how come I’m still hearing your voice? You should be dead to my ears.”
I WOULDN’T MIND SOMETHING TO EAT, ACTUALLY.
“Eat?”
PETROL, DEAR.
“Me too,” Boda replies. “Food, that is.” A second Vaz wagon thunders by, like an ocean liner lit by fire. Boda starts up Charrie’s engine and pulls on to the road in the wake of the wagon, speeding down to where the lights are dancing in deep Limbo.
Twenty minutes later they pull on to the forecourt of an isolated petrol station and cafe. The building is bleak as a ruin, standing alone amidst the wastes of Limbo. A ramshackle neon sign reads COUNTRY JOE’S FOOD AND FUEL SALOON. TAX-FREE PETROL. LAST STOP BEFORE THE END OF THE WORLD, ROOMS VACANT. From lasers mounted on the roof of the cafe, lights are playing in the sky. Boda pays for some petrol and then asks the young dogkid on the pump if a room is available. He just gives a nod towards the illuminated sign and growls, “Can’t you read, Shadowbitch? Ask for Joanna.”
What does he mean, Shadowbitch? Is that what I am now?
It throws her for a second, as she makes her way towards the swing doors of the saloon. Country and Western music can be heard from the inside, a woman’s voice singing, and the sound of men joining in with ribald whoops of delight.
Boda stands outside, looking in over the top of the batwing doors…
Directly opposite, on a wooden stage designed to represent a hillbilly-style ranch house, the woman is singing to her own acoustic guitar accompaniment. The singer is a ravaged blond affair, done up in cowgirl clothing: Stetson, bootlace tie and a frilly gingham skirt.
“… As some good steer makes a run for open ground, Joe makes a loop to pull that maverick down.”
Then she goes into the chorus, something about having “maverick tendencies” in her heart. The crowd of rough-hewn truckers join in lustily, a bellowing of cheers and a blast of sneezing. Also, a stranger noise, a kind of wet humming, comes from the farther side of the room. Dark shapes move there. The song ends and the singer makes her way over to the bar, fighting off the advances of the crowd with a firm hand and a delighted smile.
Boda steps into the room.
Silence greets her. A single throaty whistle pierces the air. Then a terrifying sneeze. About half of the truckers are wearing improvised pollen masks, coloured bandannas covering their mouths and noses. One of the truckers slaps his knee, an invitation for Boda to take a seat there.
Boda refuses, politely.
The truckers are fine—Boda can take that, having spent nine years on the road herself—but as she walks further into the bar the dark shapes in the corner start to move towards her.
Zombies! Shit!
The creatures are looking at her through a haze of smoke and sweat. The truckers are seated down one side of the room, the Zombies down the other. Between them rides a shimmering breath of thick air, like a curtain pulled across something distasteful. The singer is smiling at her from behind the bar. An impressive range of Wild West regalia is mounted on the wall, including five or six revolvers and a rifle. The truckers and the Zombies are staring at Boda’s naked skull-map. Boda drags the woollen hat out of her shoulder bag, pulls it down over her head, and then asks the singer, “You got any Boomer juice?”
Laughter from the trucker side of the room. More sneezes.
“Ain’t much call for Boomer around these parts,” the singer replies. “Got some nice Jack Daniels bourbon. That do you?”
Boda nods, pays for the fire-water, drinks half of it. Two feet away from her the trembling curtain of air separates her from a big Zombie man, seven feet tall, who seems almost human. Sure, he’s greasy and bits of his body are kind of loose, but compared to his drinking companions, a ragged pack of whom are now lined up against the invisible dividing wall, this lumpen guy is like some kind of Vurt star. He seems to know this. A bright yellow Stetson hat is jammed down onto his skull. The barmaid steps through the curtain of air, serves the big Zombie, and then steps back into the truckers’ side.