Nica of Los Angeles Page 15

  Yet here we were in the Little Bar, overwhelmed by our night's assignment. Last night, visitors had trickled from the Connectors. Tonight, they poured. Tonight was also a more hectic and crowded night for the Largo theater - a sold-out comedy show, a benefit featuring everybody from Seinfeld to Russell Brand. Hernandez and I debated whether the volume of Travelers linked to conditions at the Largo: in tonight's crowds, more people could move through Connectors without detection. Amazing how oblivious we all can be to the strangers around us. Hernandez and I were the only ones who noticed traffic through the Connectors.

  Most of tonight's Travelers arrived from the Connector in the bar and hurried to depart via the Connector in the theater. They had a negative vibe I couldn't identify at first. About the time Hernandez said, "they look worried," I realized they reminded me of crowds I'd seen in a recent news special.

  "They look like refugees."

  "Hurrying away from something," Hernandez agreed.

  The Little Room shuts down during performances, and we couldn't buy last-minute tickets to the sold-out show, so when the show began we strolled through the neighborhood, headed for the truck, parked a few blocks away. The piranhas were back inside my shoulder and Hernandez kept my mind off the pain by having me describe it in lurid detail. By the time I was done, I was speaking from memory of the pain.

  "It hurts so much less! You are my hero. You did that. How did you do that?"

  "When you describe the pain, you accept it without trying to change it and that limits its effect on you."

  "My hero and my mystic."

  He snorted, or I did. It was a perfect night for a walk. The breeze carried a hint of cooling and pushed ginormous phosphorescent clouds overhead, their edges illumined by the nearly full moon. Their undersides glowed with reflected city lights. Somewhere nearby was a late blooming jasmine, which reminded me, "I really miss Anya."

  "Is she very different from Anwyl?"

  "Oh, yeah, and she bosses him around."

  "That is difficult to imagine."

  "What is even crazier is -"

  "Nica." For an instant her voice was everywhere.

  We stopped and looked around, searched everywhere, earning puzzled wary glances from the dog walkers and after-dinner strollers who passed by. None of them acted like they had heard the voice.

  "Anya!" I whispered to Hernandez. Even though this universal voice might be a private experience, I sensed that I should keep its identity quiet.

  "Convey this message to the others." The bougainvillea vibrated with her words.

  "Do you see where she is?"

  Hernandez touched my arm. He looked like an Old Testament illustration. Awestruck, he pointed at the cloud overhead. Anya's next words confirmed that her voice came from the cloud. Messengers and spies. That's what Miles had told us about clouds.

  "Tell them this: 'Two in the west for three. And raspberries.'" Her final words felt illusory, a tromp l'ears as a wind picked up and faint thunder rolled. As the last word vibrated around us, the cloud spread and blocked the moon.

  The first raindrops plunked our cheeks as we stared skyward. So did the second third tenth drops. Finally, Hernandez came to and got us running to his truck.

  Like most of our summer thunderstorms, this one was over before you could wish you owned an umbrella, and afterward the air was as soft as a bunny.

  Although it seemed pretty clear the encounter with Anya was over, we sat in the truck with the windows down. Just in case.

  "'Two in the west for three,'" Hernandez repeated, like repetition would give it meaning. "'With raspberries.'"

  "It must be a code. She usually makes more sense than that. Sometimes."

  As anxious as we were to deliver this message, we decided that we must first finish our observations at the Connectors. As soon as the Largo closed and our evening's assignment concluded, we would tell Henrietta about the cloud's message. And maybe we would go talk to the Watts Towers, too. We spent the rest of our break trying to decode the message itself. Hernandez guessed and raspberries was an authentication, a prearranged proof the message was from Anya. That made sense. Clouds could be messengers or spies and our allies shouldn't count on Hernandez or me to detect the difference.

  The rain was over by the time we got settled into the truck and soon the dog walkers were back outside with their mutts. Pardon the hell out of moi. No mutts in this part of town. None of those people strolling and chatting past our truck behaved like they had just heard a cloud talk. We had to conclude that the cloud's message came only to us, even though it emanated from everywhere. Trying to understand this new reality gave me the same kind of thrill and sore brain I get when I think about infinity.

  When we got back to the Largo, the show was just letting out and to get back inside the theater compound, we pushed against the tide of chattering leave-takers. The bar was open and packed, the theater was emptying fast. We opted to check the Connector in the theater before they shut those doors.

  "Looking for anyone we'd like to see?"

  Hearing that voice was more fun than dragging my knuckles across a grater. "Detective Fitzpatrick," I alerted Hernandez, but Mathead took it as a greeting. Scabman stepped from behind her, widening the sea of Largo attendees who flowed around us. Hernandez nodded without surprise. He turned away from me in order to lock his view on Scabman, whose lips twitched. When the crowd thinned, we would be able to hear Scabman's little sucking sounds, so my short-term goal was to be gone before then.

  "Imagine my surprise to learn that you have this important job where you frame people for a living."

  "Your arrest wasn't our doing, although we were highly interested to learn about it. Weren't we interested?" She did something I hoped never to do, she touched Scabman on the arm, unleashing a nod that hammered the air with his forehead. "If you help us find Ben Taggart, maybe we could put in a good word for you where it counts."

  "What do you want with Taggart?" Hernandez drew their attention. Their eyes were so dark and so bright.

  "We were close and now we've lost touch," Mathead mourned.

  A fresh breeze came up and blew their medicinal smell away. Their eyes stopped glittering when a shadow fell on them. Anwyl. I had never been so happy to see him - and he always puts a pistol in my pocket.

  "We must make haste," he greeted us and ignored them. Scabman took a step back and I swear the little sucking sounds developed a whimper.

  Mathead stepped between Anwyl and me. She looked from Hernandez to me and back again, spoke slowly like we were supposed to memorize her words. "Tell Ben he has 24 hours to get in touch."

  Anwyl pushed her aside. "These are not messengers. Begone." And then he had his arms around us and guided us to the Little Bar.

  "You must avoid those creatures henceforth," he advised me.

  "I couldn't agree more!" I assured him.

  The bar was filled to capacity and there was a line of people waiting their turn to go inside. No one else could enter until somebody left. Nobody could enter except Anwyl, who shouldered us ahead of him. I expected Mathead to follow us. I expected the front of the line to complain. Instead, for a split second, everything froze - mouths contorted, heads mid-turn, words crystallized in the air from a dozen conversations "Harry... second... wasted... Tuesday... tour... sister...Venice... cutest... sale... because..." - and it was like we stepped through a life-size photo of a busy evening at the Largo. When the freeze ended, we were inside the bar.

  A trio of patrons gulped to finish full glasses of wine, stood and vacated as we approached their table. We sat. Although we held no drinks, no one questioned our right to occupy a table.

  "We heard her voice," I told Anwyl, cautious about uttering Anya's name although I had to yell to hear my own voice in the post-show racket.

  "Expect a message each day henceforth," he nodded. "What word this day?"

  "'Two in the west for three,'" I quoted, and again he nodded as though not surprised.

  "'And raspberri
es,'" Hernandez added.

  Anwyl reacted like Hernandez had sprouted pink wings. "Raspberries! Are you certain?"

  "As reasonably as we can be, given that we have no idea what your codes mean and you have no plan to tell us."

  "We must make haste." He stood, watched us exchange a look that said we weren’t moving without explanation. He sat again with a sigh. Humans. Can't live with 'em, can't exterminate 'em without repercussions. "It is a simple code to rank how rapidly our enemies proceed."

  "A is slowest?" Hernandez guessed.

  Before Anwyl finished his nod, I was on my feet. "Then R is way too close to Z. Where do we need to go next?"

  "To the west," Anwyl said, nodding toward the Connector in the aisle beside the bar.

  20. No One Waits To Enter That Connector

  As we headed for the Connector, Anwyl made us hold hands and as a loose human triangle we shoved our way through the Largo crowd. This did not make friends. Otherwise, we were ignored. No one wondered why a trio headed for the solo bathroom, and no one saw us leave the Frame, which I knew had happened when the bar sounds damped, then muted.

  We took four steps through a narrow dank tunnel, then the temperature dropped thirty degrees and clammy walls mushroomed around us. I knew this Frame. The Cobra had dragged me into it last night and, returning now, I wanted to do two things: shriek and run. Fortunately, Anwyl kept us moving forward. The walls dropped away as we went through another tunnel, longer, broader, and brighter. One hundred nine steps later, Anwyl loosened his grip on my hand and I slipped. I grabbed at a tree with a slick trunk, which made me slide further. Every surface here was covered with a soft lichen that pulsed with pearly light. I clutched Anwyl's arm with both my forearms and this kept my sliding under control as we advanced. It sounded like Hernandez stayed upright; I heard him slip-walk behind me. Another tunnel, and we were on a flat sandy plain where Anwyl released our hands.

  Through all the Connectors, we had bumped and shouldered refugees who pushed to go in the opposite direction - to get away from our destination. We paused at the top of an incline and the refugees flowed around us. "Turn back, fools!" one whispered. I shrugged it off because I knew Anwyl would.

  A Connector is a corridor unlike any of the Frames it connects and when we exited our last Connector, I recognized my surroundings again. We were in a Frame configured (as Hernandez would say) like home. We stood on a subtle hill looking west to where Olympic Boulevard slides down toward the ocean. We were about a mile southwest of the Largo, heading toward Venice Beach. This Frame was only superficially similar to home, I soon realized. The landforms were recognizable, and in silhouette - if I squinted - the buildings were about the same, but they were empty shells without walls or roofs: skeletal edifices that felt more cemetery than construction zone. People flowed along the streets and through the buildings. The flow coagulated as they waited to enter the Connector we had just exited. I saw other bottlenecks in the flow of people and pointed to one.

  "Are they waiting to use another Connector over there?"

  "They are."

  "Where does that one go?" Such a look he gave me. I didn't want to hear the insult that went with that look, so I answered myself, "It goes to another Frame. Duh. Got that part. I mean - oh, never mind."

  We stood at our vantage point, watching the flow. Anwyl explained that this Frame is a hub of Connectors. From here, Travelers can go in all directions, and that is just what they did as we watched.

  "We must determine their direction of origin," Anwyl instructed. Because they reminded me of refugees, I was not surprised he thought these Travelers came from a single location. We watched. There were so many eddies and whirlpools of activity, it was not clear which Connector was the source of the refugees.

  Among the refugees I spotted other Travelers who seemed to be making routine trips. They would emerge from a Connector and be surprised to encounter a crowd headed the opposite way; and they showed more frustration than fear as they shoved their way through the crowd to reach another Connector. Overall, the flow of refugees slowed as we observed. Bottlenecks and ill-formed lines were everywhere, as Travelers waited to leave this hub. Amazingly, no arguments broke out, despite the fear-filled haste.

  "I suppose asking somebody is out of the question," I said, at the same moment Hernandez pointed to our far right.

  "No one waits to enter that Connector." As we watched, one of the non-refugees tried to do so, but a refugee grabbed his arm and said something that made both turn and flee.

  "Quickly," Anwyl loped down the hill toward the Connector that had no entry line.

  Quickly was relative in these crowds. We jogged a shortcut through a dilapidated building shell that had no refugees inside; I could only hope it was sturdier than it looked. There was a reason the crowds avoided this structure. The steel girders were lacy with holes as though infested with iron moths.

  "Does anyone live in this Frame?"

  "No. It is a dead Frame."

  And then we were out from under the building and in too much commotion to talk.

  Here at the bottom of the incline, it was hard to get bearings. I wasn't sure where our target Connector was and maybe Anwyl wasn't, either. He stopped to evaluate the refugee flow. I touched his arm and pointed to Hernandez, who pushed through the crowd with conviction. He knew the way. Anwyl bared his teeth in respect and we followed Hernandez.

  As we advanced, the crowds thinned and became distinct as individuals. There were some who could not pass for human. One had body hair that looked like fur - wouldn't that be a treat to never mind let's maintain our PG rating - a walk that used all fours, and sightless eyes with long erect whiskers for navigation. Holy mother of Mister Rogers, did that one have a third eye? Frigging awesome! Many of the non-humans lugged bags and rucksacks and had the air of disoriented tourists.

  We spotted the Connector that Hernandez had identified back yonder. Sure enough, nobody lined up to enter it. With this visual confirmation of our target, our pace quickened, until a hand with seven digits grabbed Anwyl's arm.

  "Turn back, friend! Foul death lies ahead!"

  Anwyl tapped the hand to thank and dismiss. The warner stood a moment, perhaps to say more, then doubled his speed away.

  Our last few hundred steps, we passed no one. Everybody else had gotten the hell out of this Dodge. Without slacking pace, Anwyl grabbed our hands and in our loose human triangle we entered the Connector. Now we would see what everyone fled.

  The walls squished in an intestinal way and I stumbled more than once in soft muck that lined this Connector. It smelled like third grade when the Halloween haunted house did too good a job. It smelled like fear. Adrenaline. Undesired bodily emissions.

  And then we were through the Connector to a Frame of horrors.

  I recognized the area. It was called Ocean Park in my Frame, but this was Ocean Park before gentrification and during genocide. The congested streets were the same as in my Frame, but here the streets were packed with corpses. And body parts. And the occasional barely-living soul, dragging itself toward the Connector because that is where it was headed before it sustained fatal injury. I understood that compulsion. I wanted to expend my last breaths elsewhere, too.

  The air smelled of ocean salts and blood. From the main thoroughfare, Lincoln Boulevard, came sounds of death and battle. Anwyl headed that way, which pulled us with him, which made him stop. "Stay here," he told us, but he didn't let go of our hands. "Come -" he began again, and took a step back toward the Connector. Then shadows covered us.

  "Stay inside us," Monk greeted us.

  "At all times," Miles added. Hernandez and I climbed to cling to girders deep inside Miles, while Anwyl strode forward to climb Monk. As the Towers translated toward the battle, they elevated several feet above the ground to avoid bodies.

  We stopped at an intersection and watched the carnage evolve. The slaughter of the remaining refugees. Some refugees still carried bags of belongings, now hoisted for futile prote
ction. Most had dropped everything and huddled under whatever cover they could find - storefronts, building entries, parking structures, corpses.

  At that time, it was the worst thing I had ever seen.

  Most of the death came from above, from thousands of birds with stiff backs and wings that were layered and rippling. I thought they were birds, anyway, until light reflected on a dust jacket. These weren't birds; they were books.

  The killer books sliced through the air, spines up, propelled by slowly flapping covers. Under each of them a black rain fell; their pages riffled and shed letters that had a delicate look and a deadly touch. The letters were all edges and the edges were unthinkably sharp. Some of them stretched to the size of razor blades as they fell, others remained tiny and fell as a deadly black dust. The letters impaled themselves into concrete sidewalks. They sliced long curls of metal from a railing. They slid through flesh and bone so cleanly that the victims kept running a few steps before falling into pieces. Occasionally, a picture slid from a large-format book and became a free-flying guillotine blade.

  Those who managed to outrun a book did not get far. They would trip over a pile of body parts or slip in a pool of blood, then futilely regain balance as the slow-moving book caught up to them.

  Some books approached us. Monk vibrated and lightning cracked at his peak. The closest books exploded in flaming ashes. Most of their letters melted, hitting the ground in congealed lumps; some letters shot sideways, slicing through other books and more refugees.

  A quintet of books hovered beyond Miles, pacing us just outside the zone where they would explode. I recognized their dust jackets. Los Angeles City Library. "Those are the books that Anya made me leave on the stairs!" I yelled to Anwyl.

  He watched them hover at my eye level. "They have attached to you. They seek to do your bidding."