Authors: Richard Kadrey
I didn’t expect him to even know that word, much less use it.
“No one’s taken you out of here recently? Even if it was just for a little while?”
“That I would remember. Why would I go? I have everything I want right here.”
“Not free-range flesh. You like Tracy and Fiona and you’d never hurt them, but what about a stranger? What if someone took you out of here and let you loose on someone you didn’t know?”
He looks at the floor. Crosses his legs and shifts in his seat like it’s suddenly uncomfortable.
“I’m not sure,” he says. “But as I said, I haven’t left the apartment in a long time.”
“Maybe it’s time to take a break,” says Tracy.
“Just one more thing. If a regular person like Tracy here got bitten by someone like you, or maybe a zed, is there some way to fix her?”
“You mean so she doesn’t die and return?”
“Yes.”
“No. There’s nothing for that.”
Tracy comes over and stands between Johnny and us.
“That’s it for now. Let’s let Johnny have his snack, and if he feels like it, he can answer a few more questions.”
As Tracy talks, Johnny takes off the top of the cooler and looks inside. He goes to a dresser and takes a plastic sheet from the top and spreads it on the floor like a picnic blanket. He rips off the top of one of the bags of jelly beans and pours the candy into the pig guts and blood, stirring it with his fingers. He looks at us and grins.
“I have a bit of a sweet tooth.”
“Let’s go have some coffee and let Johnny eat,” says Tracy, shooing us out of the room and closing the door.
“He likes to eat by himself. He knows his food bothers living people. It’s his way of being polite.”
“He’s not what I expected. He’s like a kid.”
Fiona started the coffeemaker while we were in with Johnny. It smells good. She pours cups for all of us.
“He isn’t always like this. None of the undead sleep, but they still have bodies and bodies need rest. Every few weeks, Johnny goes into a kind of fugue state. Sleepy. Vague. Uncommunicative. Like he’s suddenly autistic. After a couple of days, he starts coming out of it. That’s what he’s doing now, so he’s a little slower than usual.”
“How’s his memory?”
“Look, if you still think someone’s been sneaking him out, you can forget it. Johnny’s tagged with one of those house-arrest ankle bracelets. If he tried to leave here or if someone tried to take him, alarms would go off all over the place.”
“Someone could disable it with tools or magic.”
“Yeah, but they’d have to know about it. The bracelet isn’t on his ankle. It’s inside him. Sewed inside his stomach cavity.”
Dammit. Cabal using Johnny as a blunt instrument was a nice neat package, but Johnny seems to be off the hook. Cabal, on the other hand, is still homecoming king to me. I just need to connect a few more dots.
Allegra pours cream and sugar into her coffee.
“How’d he get the name Johnny Thunders?”
Fiona smiles like a mother remembering her kid’s first step.
“Johnny was in one of his fugues when they brought him here. I think moving when he was zoned out was hard on him. He ignored us and didn’t talk for days. He just stared at the wall. We used to leave the TV or music on when we weren’t in the room so he’d have company. Usually one
of us was in the apartment, but this one night Tracy’s car broke down and I had to go and pick her up. When we got back, Johnny was bouncing up and down singing along with the stereo. It was the Murder City Devils song ‘Johnny Thunders.’”
I drink the coffee straight. It feels good to have coffee for its own sake and not to cure the night before.
“Why was he staring at his hands with a magnifier when we went in?”
Tracy says, “He wasn’t staring. He was working. I said it before, Savants are obsessives. They do something really well and they do it over and over again. They’ll do it forever, I guess.”
She pours herself more coffee.
“Johnny likes words and he likes geology. He’s transcribing the entire
Oxford English Dictionary
onto grains of sand. The last time I asked, he was up to ‘farraginous.’”
I take my coffee, go back to Johnny’s door, and open it. He’s bent over the cooler on his knees, a fistful of pig guts in each hand. His mouth and chest are smeared with blood and half-dissolved jelly beans. Not exactly a yearbook photo, but I saw plenty worse Downtown. Hell, I did worse. When Johnny notices me he smiles.
“These are really good. Thanks.”
“Before Tracy told me to bring the candy, I didn’t even know Drifters could taste anything.”
“That’s what most people think. They bring smelly meat and old, clotted blood. That’s zed food. This is better.”
“You’re welcome. Who comes to see you?”
He shrugs.
“A few Sub Rosas. I think they’re important, but they’re not very interesting. They always ask about what I remember. I tell them the same thing I told you. I don’t remember anything before waking up, but I think they think if they keep asking, I’ll remember and they’ll win a prize or something.”
“Even if you do remember, you don’t have to tell them anything. They’re your memories, not theirs.”
He nods and shoves more pig into his mouth.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to finish my coffee and come back and talk a little more.”
“Okay,” he says through a full mouth.
I go back to the kitchen and Fiona pours more coffee.
Tracy stares at me.
“You must walk on goddamn water. Johnny never just talks to people like that, especially when he’s eating.”
“I get along pretty well with monsters.”
“Johnny’s not a monster,” says Fiona in a tone that tells me I’m not getting any more of her coffee.
“Yeah, he is. Look out your window. Johnny’s the worst nightmare most of those people will ever have.”
“That’s only because they don’t know him.”
“They don’t want to know him. Or you. You feed the monster and hide his leftovers in the trash under the pizza boxes. Don’t get me wrong. I like monsters. But to people who don’t like them, people who help monsters are monsters, too.”
“What are you getting at?” asks Tracy.
“How did you end up being Johnny’s stepmoms?”
“Granddad was Sub Rosa, but Dad wasn’t born with the
gift and neither were any of us. After Granddad died, the family kind of went to shit. You heard about Enoch Springheel?”
“Yeah.”
“He was a distant cousin. His part of the family used to look after Johnny. When there was just Enoch left, well, he couldn’t take care of himself, much less a Savant. That’s when we got him.”
“I’m going to see if Johnny’s finished,” says Fiona, and goes to his room.
“A few of the big families kicked in and pay us to look after him,” says Tracy. “They make like they’re doing us a favor because all us Springheels are such losers. The truth is that none of them want Johnny around. For all their money and power, they’re a bunch of pussies.”
She looks over her shoulder.
“Don’t tell Fi I said it like that.”
“We’ll keep your secret,” says Allegra.
Tracy looks at my coat, then at me.
“Are you packing?”
“Always.”
“Can I see?”
I take out the Smith & Wesson and hand it to her butt end first. She weighs the .460 in her hand.
“What are you planning on shooting with this?”
“You never know when Hannibal is going to come back with his elephants.”
She hands me back the pistol.
“Years ago I was a cop. I’m glad I don’t have to carry anymore.”
“With Drifters loose, you might want to reconsider that. At least for the next few days.”
She shrugs.
“I’ll think about it.”
Fiona comes back with a plastic trash bag filled with something wet.
“Johnny is finished and cleaned up. You can talk to him for a few more minutes, but then I think that’s enough for today.”
She means she wants us out of here, but she’s too polite to say it.
We go back to Johnny’s room and sit down. He looks a lot better than when we first came in. Alert and awake.
“I just want to ask you a couple more things and then we’ll leave you alone.”
“That’s okay. I like talking to you.”
“Tracy tells me that you used to live at the Springheels’ house. I’ve been there, too. Did you ever go into the basement behind the wall?”
“All the time. Enoch liked us to play down there.”
I seriously don’t want to know anything about the games an autophagia freak would play with a zombie.
“Last night a group of Drifters came out of the basement. There was a big hole in one wall. It looked new and like it might have led to a tunnel. Do you know where it goes?”
“A lot of the old family houses were built over the caves in case they needed to run away. Of course, they don’t use them anymore. Enoch didn’t have much common sense, but even he wouldn’t go down there. Live people never go into the Jackal’s Backbone.”
“Tell me about the Jackal’s Backbone, Johnny.”
“It’s where the dead people live. It’s where everybody lives.”
“What do you mean ‘everybody’?”
“Everybody who dies in Los Angeles goes into the Jackal’s Backbone and stays there. Unless they find one of the tunnels that leads out or unless someone comes and gets them, like me. I guess it’s pretty crowded down there these days.”
A sick, cold feeling rises from my stomach.
“When you say ‘everybody’ do you mean all the people in the cemeteries? What about the people before that? Before the city was here. Are they there, too?”
“Everybody. The Jackal’s Backbone has been around for a long time.”
“What if someone wasn’t buried? What if they were cremated and their ashes scattered in the ocean?”
He thinks about that for a minute.
“I don’t know. I only remember a little of the caves from when I woke up and before they took me away. The rest I learned from people who come by to talk to me.”
“Like Cabal.”
“He knows a lot about them. He said there’s someone else who knows even more and told him about the Backbone after he did something for them.”
“Do you remember what he did?”
“No.”
“If I wanted to go into the Jackal’s Backbone, would you go with me? You could show me where you woke up.”
“I don’t remember it very well.”
“Maybe you will if you go back.”
“Maybe.”
“Would you go with me?”
“Hey,” says Tracy. “You can’t ask him that.”
Johnny says, “I don’t think you should go into the Backbone. It doesn’t seem right.”
“I have to. Someone is using Drifters to kill people they don’t like and now some are loose in the city. I have a feeling more are going to get loose. I need to understand why it’s happening. And there’s someone I need to look for and see if she’s in the Backbone.”
“You won’t be able to find one person. There’s about a million people there.”
“I still have to try. Will you go with me?”
Tracy says, “Johnny, don’t listen. You don’t want to go out there where people will be afraid of you.”
“No one will know I’m there if I go into the Backbone.”
“You can’t leave,” says Tracy. “That’s final.”
She whips around at me and sticks a finger in my face.
“And you, asshole. I knew I shouldn’t have let you in. Get out.”
“Johnny is one of the twenty-seven. I think if he wants something, he should get it. Including going home.”
“Get out.”
“It’s your choice, Johnny.”
“You need to leave now.”
I turn around. It’s Fiona. She looks very determined. The .45 automatic in her hand is probably helping with that.
I turn to Tracy. “Let me guess. Your old cop gun, right?”
Tracy says, “It’s a big bad world out there. A lady needs to know how to defend herself, doesn’t she, Fi?”
“Herself and her loved ones. You two need to leave.”
Allegra is frozen in her seat. I think it’s been kind of a long day for her. I take her arm and pull her to her feet.
“Okay, we’re going. You be careful with that.”
Fiona cocks it.
“Go to hell.”
Allegra tugs on my coat.
“Let’s go.”
We start for the door, Fiona behind us, an angry righteous mom defending her brood.
“Fi?”
It’s Johnny calling.
“Yeah?”
Fiona pushes us the last few feet and throws the dead bolt to let us out.
“I think I want to go.”
“No you don’t, Johnny. It’s dangerous and you can’t trust these people.”
“I think I want to go.”
“Let’s talk about it after they’re gone.”
“I don’t think I want to talk about it. I want to go.”
Fiona keeps the gun on us. She looks back at Johnny standing in the doorway to his room.
He says, “I want to go.”
“You can’t.”
“Stark’s right. I’m one of the special ones. Sometimes I get to say what I do.”
She sighs and says, “Johnny, the twenty-seven thing is made up. It’s a way to keep you smart ones together and controlled.”
“I still want to go. We’ll go tonight. It’s too bright out now. It hurts my eyes. Come back tonight. When is it dark, Tracy?”
“It gets dark late, honey. And you want it real dark if you go out. Don’t go out before eleven.”
“Come back at eleven,” says Johnny.
“I’ll be here.”
Johnny goes back into his room and for a second I think that Fiona might shoot us on principle. Finally she puts the gun on the kitchen counter. Tracy puts her arm around her.
“Get the fuck out,” she says.
When we get outside, Allegra wants to run but I hold her back. Even with people, running makes you look like prey and we don’t want to look like prey to an angry mom with a .45.
“Now you know some of the kinds of things Eugène and I have seen. What do you think?”
Allegra holds a hand over her mouth. I can feel her trembling under all the shirts and sweaters Vidocq made her wear. Get ready for the waterworks. Get ready for her to puke. This is when it always happens. People get away from danger, start to relax, and it all comes out at once.
“What do you think?”
She lowers her hand.
“That was the most awesome thing ever.”