Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (28 page)

"They'll hurt you eventually, dammit!" Finch got off another
round.

Dapple convulsed. Blood rushed out of his mouth. His eyes stared
toward the sky. Lifeless.

"Fuck."

Finch grabbed Wyte's shirtsleeve. Pulled him in close. Green
pallor. Tongue purple. Eyes like black marbles shot through with gold
worms. A bullet lodged in his left cheek. Coin-shaped. Like a curious
birthmark.

"Wyte! We've got to get out of here. Do you understand?"

Wyte seemed to wake up. Spittle came out of his mouth as he said,
"We'll go right through the Partials." Firing with his straight right arm
as he talked. Bullets slamming into his side. Finch could hear them
making impact. Being absorbed. "There's an alley behind them. Up
or down the street you're dead. But if we're fast, right through the
Partials works."

"How the fuck does that work?" Finch shouted at Wyte.

"I go out first, shielding you," Wyte said impatiently. Almost with
a snarl.

"With your body?" Finch said, incredulous. "That's crazy."

Grinned at him. One eye on the street. "It's all fucked up. What's
one more thing? Trust me, Finch."

"You'll die if you do this, Wyte," Finch said.

"No. I won't." Never heard Wyte so confident.

A bullet spiraled into Wyte's left thigh. He didn't even flinch.

Grim smile. "I love you, Wyte." And he did, he realized.

A smile back from Wyte like it was the old days before the Rising.

Later, in memory, it would be a fractured mix of shouts and screams
and bullets flying and Finch running into the back of Wyte to keep as
close as possible. Tripping over the things crawling off of Wyte's legs.
Wyte exploding out from their shelter, overcoat thrown aside to reveal
a body become other. A garden of fungus. Arms ballooning out into
sudden wings of brilliant purple-red-orange. Legs lost in shelves and
plateaus and spikes of green and blue. Back broader and insanely
strong and gray. Head suddenly elongated and widened. As he ran a
high-pitched scream came from his mouth that frightened Finch and
bloodied the ears of the Partials.

The bullets. Wyte kept taking them like gifts. They tore through
his limbs, lodged in his torso. Leaving holes. Leaving daylight. That
closed up. And running in the shadow of that magnificence, as Wyte's
scream became a roar again and they were assailing the ramparts of
the Partials, he felt as if he were following some sort of god, his own
gun like a toy as, from the shelter that was Wyte, he shot back at the
chapel to keep the rebels pinned down.

Wyte's voice came out incomprehensible and strange now. Guttural
and animal-like. No part of him in those moments that was human.
Once he looked back at Finch to make sure he was still there. The whites
of his eyes colonized. His pupils looking like something trapped. Trapped
forever inside its own flesh.

For awhile it was as if Wyte had lent Finch that kind of vision, because
he could see the bullets coming. As if Finch were floating overhead,
watching. And it was ecstasy or some kind of odd heaven. The surprise
that eclipsed the Partials' pale faces as Wyte overran their positions.
Wyte trying to outrun something he couldn't outrun. Tendrils from his
chest racing out to impale them. The weeping muzzle of his gun taking
them in the legs, the heads. Faces trampled under his charge. Fungal
eyes still clicking and clicking as the bodies lay dead. While even the
rebels' fire had become scattershot from the shock of the new. From
seeing the glory that Wyte had become. The monster.

Then it all came crashing down and Finch was in his skin again. In
that one last look back he saw it all as a crazed tableau of men fallen,
falling, firing, or running at an impossible speed. Almost distant
enough as they made it to the warren of streets beyond to think of
them as the silhouettes of broken, spasming dolls.

Realized he was roaring, too, like Wyte. As the tears ran down his face.
As he kept firing behind him long after the enemy had faded into time
and distance.

reathless. Aching. Side hurting. Wyte trailing bits of things
into the rubble behind them. Waiting for a bullet in the back
of the head that never came. The acrid smell of spent ammo. A
shambling halt under the shadow of the arch. The boat still
tethered in the canal. The sky dark gray.

Wyte was still coming down from whatever had possessed him.
Voice slick with some hidden discharge. Muttering: "Like wheat. Like
paper. Just shredding them. Just running through them."

Finch babbling back. Exhilarated. Heart still beating so hard in his chest.

Wyte's face had regained a semblance of the normal, skin sealed
over the bullets. Already now looking drawn, diminished. Finch
kept seeing Wyte killing the Partials.

Wyte had rebuttoned his trench coat. The lining torn. Hung down
below the hem. Mud-spattered. Blood-spattered. About a dozen
bullet holes in it. Small orange mushroom caps peeked out from
the holes. Others had burst through the fabric. Around the buttons,
purple fungus rasped out, probing.

"Wyte, Dapple's dead," Finch said.

"I know, Finch. I saw. Get in the boat."

Finch climbed in and sat down. Held himself rigid as Wyte made the
difficult negotiation of casting off and jumping in without capsizing
them. Wyte sat down opposite. The boat glided across the water, back
the way it had come. Like magic.

"You saved my life, Wyte," Finch said. And it was true. Monstrously
true. Kept staring at Wyte with a kind of awe. Wyte's strength had
manifested in a way Finch still couldn't quite believe.

"But not Dapple," Wyte said. "Dapple's dead. And I feel beaten
and bruised all over."

Had Wyte passed a point of no return? More things that had
colonized him peered out from the collar of the coat. Spilled out
from his pants legs. Erupted in red-and-green patterns from his
boots. A stench of overwhelming sweetness. Of corruption.

"Don't go back to the station," Finch said. "Not today."

"We were sent there to die, weren't we?" Matter-of-fact.

For my sins.

"Maybe we weren't," Finch said, thinking about the Partial
standing over Shriek's body. Lecturing him about how Partials saw
more than gray caps. "Maybe it's all falling apart. In front of our eyes.
Everything."

Wyte made a wet clucking sound. He was trying to laugh. "Didn't it fall
apart a long time ago?"

Knew Wyte was thinking about his wife, his kids, the little house they'd
shared together so long ago.

Finch didn't want that in his head, shot a glance up toward the
ridge. Anyone could pick them off. Anyone. "Stay at home. I'll
figure it out. Call you."

Wyte nodded again, almost slumped over in his seat. A kind of glow
had begun to suffuse his features. Green-golden.

Or you'll call me. Suppressed a shudder.

Finch's vision blurred. Too many things to keep inside. Every time he
thought he'd tamped down one thing, another came rushing up.

A long silence. A complex smile played across Wyte's blurring lips.
Finally said, "You know, Finch, I think we're a lot closer to solving
this case."

A double take from Finch. A stifled smile. "Yeah, Wyte. Sure you
do. Rest now. Sleep. I'll keep watch."

Wyte nodded. Closed his eyes.

A flake of something floated onto Finch's shoulder. Then another
and another. He looked up to see that it was snowing. It was snowing
in Ambergris.

As the white flakes drifted down, Finch on a hunch looked back.
The white dome of the farthest camp had disappeared, replaced by an
impression of billowing whiteness. An outline of what had once been.
Realized that bits of fungus were raining down on them.

Raindrops followed, thick but sparse. Finch blinking them away. He
laughed then. A wide laugh. Showing his teeth.

The "snow" still coming down. Falling onto Wyte's slack face. Melting
away. Into him.

y the time Finch made it back to the hotel, he was almost asleep
on his feet. Keeping him awake: left shoulder on fire. A bullet
hole through the right arm of his jacket. Would've nicked him if he'd
been a fatter man. A sharp pain in his ankle when he climbed the
steps to the lobby. Stomach empty and complaining. Even after he
bought some sad-looking plums. On credit. With a threat. From a
woman who'd set them out on her stoop like a row of Bosun's carvings.
Ate them on the way back to the hotel. Slowly.

Passed the Photographer inside. Grunted a hello. The Photographer
just stared at him.

Lots of love to you, too.

He turned left in the courtyard, descended. Stopped at Rathven's
door. Knocked.

A slow, reluctant opening. Long wedge of light. When Rathven
looked up at Finch he thought he saw the secret knowledge they
shared shining through her eyes.

A frown hardened her face. "What do you want?" She had one arm
behind her back, hiding something. Wore severe pants and a shirt
that almost made her look like an Irregular.

"You called me. Remember?"

She seemed to consider that. Almost as if she couldn't tell if he was
lying. That she couldn't remember making the call.

"Can I come in?" Finch said, pressing.

"No. I mean, not now. You look like a wreck. What happened to you?"

Felt exposed there, in the hallway.

"Just let me in," he said, pushing at the door. Seeing if it would
give. Seeing if she would give. "Of course I look rough. It's been a
rough day."

"Stay where you are," Rathven said. She was stronger than she
looked. The door hadn't even trembled. Or she'd wedged something
behind it. "Are you drunk?" she asked.

Brought up short by the question, he shook his head. "No, of
course not. At least tell me why you called." Felt like he had stone
blocks attached to his legs. His vision was swimming. The words
he said came both fast and slow. Didn't wait for her hesitation,
said, "Don't tell me it was nothing. Something's obviously wrong.
You're not yourself."

A fire in her hazel eyes. A kind of scorn in the set of her mouth.
Her rigid stance. "Do you blame me?" she spat out. "And youyou're not `yourself' either. I don't know who you are. You work
for the gray caps but you help me get someone out of the camps.
You help people in this building but then you go off and do Truff
knows what during the day. For them. For them. You're in a good
humor. You're in a bad mood. Sullen. Distant. Suddenly friendly.
You like coffee, then suddenly you like tea. Why wouldn't I be
wary?"

The words hit him like a blow to the head. Felt the corridor
swirling.

"I have to sit down," he said. "If I have to, I'll sit down right here."
The nausea had come back. Kept seeing Bliss and the tunnel they'd
fallen through. Holding onto Bliss's shoulders had made it real,
hard to shake off.

Rathven, continuing: "You bring me these lists. These lists of
dead people. And you say research them, and it turns out you're
investigating the murder of someone who couldn't possibly have been
alive. It's a burden knowing that. Thinking that maybe you're not
even working on a murder case. That maybe you're just crazy."