did it, but Jerusha had a soothing touch.
She’d kissed him.
“Good night,” he said to Ghost. She didn’t respond. But she didn’t run away, either.
Sleep came easily that night. But his dreams pelted him with nonsensical images all night long. Images of Lucien, and baobab trees, and Ghost, and crocodiles, and Jerusha.
Kisangani, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Night had fallen. Joey and Michelle were walking through a part of Kisangani that the jungle had taken over. Occasionally, a chunk of road appeared under their feet and they could still make out the shapes of houses even though some were falling down or covered in foliage.
Michelle was beginning to think the nurse had given them bad directions when she saw a collection of red roofs on the next hill. They were the same roofs as the ones in her dreams about Adesina.
Joey fell against Michelle. Michelle grabbed her arm and steadied her. Joey’s flesh was still hot. “Hold on.” Michelle touched Joey’s forehead and it was burning. She’s in no shape to go into a fight. “I’m going to take you back to the hospital.”
“Fuck you are!” Joey yanked her arm out of Michelle’s grasp. “We have to help the kids. They’re just little fuckers and they’re close. So close. I can help. Look.” A zombie staggered out of a crumbling house. Hoodoo Mama’s zombies were never what might be called graceful, but this one looked drunk. It tried to hit Michelle, but it missed her and Michelle didn’t even move.
“We need to go back to the hospital.”
“No! No!” Joey grabbed Michelle’s hand. “The kids really aren’t very far away. I’ll stay here. You go on. Find that little fucker you’re looking for.”
“I don’t want to leave you…”
“Bubbles,” Joey said. Her voice was softer. “You’ll come back for me. I can sleep here. I just need to sleep awhile.” She limped to one of the overgrown houses, pulled aside the vines covering the door, and went inside. Michelle followed.
Inside was a table, some wooden chairs, and a small bed. Joey pulled the tattered cover off the bed. The mattress was moldy, so she slid that off as well. There was a sheet of plywood underneath. Joey lay down on it.
“Look, just go find that little girl. I’ll come after I sleep. I’ll meet you in the morning. I can follow the trail of dead.” She closed her eyes.
Michelle was torn. She desperately needed to get to Adesina, but she didn’t want to leave Joey.
But the compound was so close.
Adesina was so close.
Blythe van Renssaeler
Memorial Clinic, Jokertown
Manhattan, New York
Jerusha carter looked like hell.
The woman he’d known had been vibrant, alive, rich and funny and vital. The woman in the hospital bed before them now could have been in the final stages of AIDS or cancer or starvation. Her muscles were atrophied, the protein all cannibalized for the energy stored there. Her eyes had sunken back into her skull, the pads of fat thinned and gone away. Her smile was painful to watch.
Ellen sat on the edge of the bed, holding Jerusha’s withered hand. Lohengrin was at the foot of the bed in a wheelchair, his own hospital gown looking cold and insufficient. Half his head was wrapped in gauze, his one remaining eye staring out like something equal parts ice and rage.
Slowly, her voice catching on itself, Jerusha made things worse. The Nshombos, Rustbelt and his missing sponsored kid, the Radical and the child aces. Bugsy listened to the whole ugly story, and found himself shocked but not surprised. The crazed bastards in the PPA had remembered what they’d all let themselves forget: the wild card was first and foremost a weapon.
When Lohengrin spun his chair and pushed himself out into the hallway, Bugsy followed. “I am calling the Committee,” Klaus said. “I am calling Jayewardene. This is an abomination.”
“Yeah,” Bugsy said.
“We will arrange an action,” Lohengrin said, pushing his wheels harder at every second syllable. “A strike force.”
“Lohengrin, hey, hold up. Lohengrin! ”
The German spun, blocking a nurse, and held up a finger as if scolding Bugsy. “If this is not what the Committee is for, then it is for nothing. If we are not to prevent things such as this, we have no reason to be. I no longer care what the Chinese ambassador or the Indian consulate say! If any stand against us, then they are in the wrong!”
“Yeah, but that aside,” Bugsy said, “we’re in a hospital. You’re in a wheelchair.”
Lohengrin frowned. The nurse went around them, making impatient noises under his breath.
“I’m just saying, we went up against the Radical without an army of were-leopards and the Kindergarten Kill Klub to back him up, and he handed us our collective ass,” Bugsy said. “You get Jayewardene to sign off on it, we can all go off to Africa, and that’s great. But what the hell are we going to do once we get there?”
31
Saturday,
December 26
Kisangani, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
It was strange to see the pretty little buildings with their red roofs and the neat pathways. It all looked so friendly and innocent, except for the heavily armed soldiers patrolling through the compound. A few of them wore the leopard-skin fezzes she’d seen in her dreams.
When the wind shifted, the stench of the pit floated to her. Michelle walked into the compound. It took a moment before she was noticed, but when they saw her all hell broke loose. The soldiers began to shout, and pointing their guns. Michelle hoped they would shoot her.
One of the soldiers began barking questions at her. At least she assumed they were questions. He was speaking in some local dialect. She smiled at him and held her palm up. A bubble appeared and he stopped talking. Then she let the bubble fly. It hit him full in the chest. He flew backward, gun tumbling in the air with him.
It got the reaction she’d hoped for. The other soldiers started firing on her and she started to expand as she absorbed the kinetic energy of their bullets.
By the time the soldiers had emptied their clips to no effect, the Leopard Men had transformed into cats. They sprang at her, and Michelle fell backward, buried under a pile of leopards. They ripped at her flesh with their teeth and claws, and she laughed. Each bite, each slash left her bigger and more powerful than before.
Just when she was about to blast them off, she heard a sharp command. “Stop it! Stop it right now!”
The leopards jumped away from her and slunk over to where a short, fat woman was standing. She was dressed in a bright, geometric print dress with an equally bright kerchief in her hair. Michelle hauled herself up, palms up, ready to bubble.
“I know who you are,” the woman said. “You are the girl who saved that city in America.”
“And who are you?”
The fat woman chuckled good-naturedly. “I am the sun, the moon, and the stars here. I am the Mother of the Nation. I am Alicia Nshombo. And I have your friend.” She gestured, and a soldier came forward, carrying Joey in his arms. She was unconscious and limp.
“We’ve been tracking you two since you got off the river,” Alicia Nshombo said cheerfully. Her English had a lilting accent. “We lost you after you went with that pilot, but then you went to one of my hospitals. Wasn’t that
