Nocturnal: A Novel

Pookie took a better look around the room. A floor of white-painted stones, walls of the same material curving up to form a domed ceiling, and the white bars of a jail door.

“So where the hell are we?”

Robertson shrugged. “We don’t know. Underground, we think.”

MMMMM MARIE’S CHILDREN HAVE US. WE ARE FUCKED. YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THE MONKEY-THING THAT CAME AND TOOK ME. WE ARE SO FUCKED.

At least they’d left Biz his voice box. He had to jam it up under his collar to talk.

Pookie tried the collar again: tight, solid, didn’t feel like he’d be able to get it off. Behind the collar, a heavy chain led back into the wall. There was a way out of this, there had to be — he would not die down here.

Down here … with the cannibals.

“Chief,” he said, “what happens now?” He could judge her later. All that mattered now was getting out of here alive.

She pulled her daughters a little closer, but stayed quiet.

“Answer him,” Verde said. He pulled at his collar, as if it was the only thing stopping him from attacking her. “You traitorous cunt, answer him.”

She looked up. Her eyes … Pookie wasn’t even sure if she knew where she was. Amy Zou had gone bye-bye.

A metallic sound clanged through the walls. Pookie was yanked backward by his collar. He stumbled, tried to stay on his feet — his back hit the wall. The collar clanged into something and the pulling stopped. Pookie tried to pull away, but he couldn’t budge.

A squeal of metal drew all eyes to the opening jail door. A fat old lady walked in. She wore a dowdy, knee- length dress, a gray sweater and a babushka — yellow with a pattern of purple plums.

“You are all criminals,” she said in a voice as pleasant as you’d expect from a wrinkled gramma. “It is time for your trial.”

She stepped back out of the white room.

A swarm of men rushed in, all wearing hooded white robes and rubber masks. They filled the room, groups of them moving to each chained person. As if that wasn’t surreal enough, the first one to rush Pookie looked like the Burger King. Pookie threw a straight right jab that knocked the King off his feet, then quickly went down under the weight of the others.

Cloaks and Daggers

John Smith didn’t know what to think.

His Harley roared down the street. He followed the black station wagon. For once, he wasn’t afraid of some random gunman. He didn’t have the bandwidth to fear them, not with trying to process what he’d seen. That woman had delivered electrical shocks with metal whips. Did the whips generate the shocks, or did she generate them? Oh, and the small detail that he’d shot her in the face. Instead of hitting the deck and joining Club Bodybag, she’d jumped out of a third-story window. She should have been a broken thing on the sidewalk, but when he got down to the street, she was gone.

And it wasn’t just the girl with the chains. What was the deal with the gigantic, bony head? Robin had shot that man four or five times at point-blank range, yet the man had stood up.

So, yeah, maybe there were worse things to fear than snipers.

Robin, dead. Murdered like a goddamn druglord, gunned down in her own apartment. And her last words to John: looks like you’re not afraid to be a cop anymore. Well, she was wrong about that. He was still terrified, but Bryan needed help and that was that.

Lives were in danger. Time to step up and do his part.

The Magnum’s brake lights flashed. The car pulled into the parking lot of a closed Walgreens. The drugstore itself was on one side of the empty lot. Two-story buildings lined the rear and the other side, creating a walled-in space viewable only from the road. The Magnum drove to the back and parked. John pulled up next to it.

Bryan got out of the station wagon, a flat-black pistol in his right hand. A mask, the same color as his peacoat, hung down over his face. He looked around, then aimed the pistol up at a corner of the parking lot and fired. A camera erupted in a small cloud of sparks. He did it again with a second camera. Another look around to be sure he’d got them all, then he opened the front passenger door, reached in with his left hand and dragged out a black man by his neck. The man had a handcuff locked on his right wrist; the cuff’s partner dangled free from the short chain. John didn’t recognize the guy.

Bryan pulled the man to the front of the Magnum, then pushed until the man sat on the hood.

“You came out of a Muni tunnel at the Civic Center,” Bryan said. “You’re going to show us where.”

The man shook his head, shook it hard. “No sir, I don’t know where I was.”

Still holding the man’s neck, a masked Bryan leaned in. “Aggie, you’re going to show me.”

The man — Aggie, apparently — shook his head so hard his lips bounced from side to side. “No way! I’m not going back there!”

Bryan’s right hand came up; the barrel of his gun pressed into Aggie’s left cheekbone.

John’s hand shot inside his motorcycle jacket to the handle of his own weapon. “Bryan, stop it!”

“John,” Bryan said without turning around, “you’re either with me, or you’re an obstacle. Back off.”

Bryan was way past the edge. If John moved too fast, if he did anything wrong, that poor guy’s brains could splatter all over the car’s hood. Bryan had already killed one person that night, and acted like he wouldn’t hesitate to kill another.

“Backing off,” John said. “Just take it easy.”

The Magnum’s driver’s door opened and a man got out slowly. John didn’t recognize the heavily pierced, thirty something rocker.

Bryan pushed the gun in a little harder, tilting Aggie’s head to the right. Aggie’s eyes scrunched up tight.

“I don’t know you,” Bryan said. “I don’t care what happens to you. You’re either going to take me into that tunnel and show me where they kept you, or I’m going to pull this trigger.”

Aggie’s breath came in fast, short bursts. “Tunnel is hidden,” he said through clenched teeth. “Don’t know where it is, exactly.”

Bryan shook his masked head. “Not good enough.”

The rocker raised his hands, palms out. “Cop, listen. He can’t help us. Erickson has been hunting for their lair for fifty years. He never found it.”

“I’m not Erickson,” Bryan said.

John thought of going for his gun again, but that would only aggravate Bryan. Any added stress could make him pull that trigger. Come on, Terminator, snap out of it, he’s just a civilian.

Bryan leaned in until his eyes were only an inch from Aggie’s. “You’re going to take me down there, Aggie. I know that’ll scare you and I don’t give a shit. The only way you see the sunrise ever again is if you show me what I want to see.”

Aggie opened one eye. He raised his eyebrow in an expression of a man hopeful to make a deal. “The baby?”

Bryan shook his head. “No fucking way.”

Aggie opened the other eye. He stared back with fearful defiance. “Then shoot me. I’d rather eat a bullet than go out the way they do it.”

Bryan paused. He nodded. “Okay. You take us in there, and I’ll see what I can do. But I can’t promise anything.”

“If you did promise, I’d know you was lying,” Aggie said. “Now can you let go of my throat and get that goddamn gun out of my face?”

Bryan leaned back, pulled Aggie to his feet. Bryan’s right hand slid behind his back and into a hidden slot in the peacoat. Like a magician’s trick, prest-o change-o, the pistol vanished.

“One more thing,” Aggie said. “I ain’t going in without a gun.”

Bryan seemed to consider this.

“No way,” John said. “Bryan, he’s a civilian. Do you even know this guy?”