Authors: Jeff Noon
The front rider’s teeth are dripping with juice, and its savage hand reaches in; long, years-uncut fingernails madly scratching at dog-flesh, drawing blood. Coyote finds what he’s looking for, and then raises his free hand towards the Zombie’s face. He stares deep into a pair of monstrous eyes for a tiny moment and then pulls the trigger. The pocket gun makes a sweet discharge; small fire from a taxi-dog’s fingers. A rich and hot splatter of Zombie flesh sizzles on Coyote’s face as he drops the gun to the cab floor, only to let the smoke clear on a broken nose and one clear and dripping eye looking back at him. The other eye is a messed-up pulp of blood and gelatine. The rider is still clinging, hanging on to the door frame with crooked fingers, screaming out messages of hate, its burning face still reaching in for the dogman.
Coyote does the only thing he can, bringing his jaws down hard—
Christ! I’ll need a bath after this!
—around what’s left of the Zombie’s sorry face. He has the satisfying feel of meat in the mouth, even if it is the taste of death he is rending from the bone. Coyote is total dog for just about two seconds as he bites clean through the blood and the flesh and the pain and the time and the bad smell of a bad day in a bad life, until the screech of a bullhorn calls out to his submerged self. A glimpse ahead blinds him with headlights and fear, but everything’s working now, the game is his. He opens his jaws to let the Zombie struggle free, works the wheel, turning the whole world to the left to let the oncoming behemoth of a Vaz truck squeeze past, a splinter’s breath, wrong side of the road, and then jabs a good elbow into the rider’s face, just the right moment, sending it flying loose from the cab. It splats against the steel-plated sides of the truck. Way to go, Zombie-breath.
He checks the mirror. A pale white arm is wrapped around the girl’s throat. Her anorak hood is protecting her somewhat, but hardly enough, and Coyote can see that she’s suffering. Maybe he should stop the cab, open the door, get out and confront the Zombie with his flame gun and his world-famous bite. Maybe give him the same message that his partner got: a faceful of pain. But can he stop the cab? Maybe there are other Zombies waiting for a free ride? And can he afford the time anyway? The sun is rising, and how is he going to get back into Manchester, in the daylight, with an illegal immigrant on board?
What kind of bad game is this, exactly?
But then a wailing comes from the back seat, and Coyote thinks he has lost his fare, which kills his soul; Coyote has never lost a passenger before. He glimpses the young girl in the mirror, and she’s smiling from under the hood. The Zombie is clinging to her body, but its face looks a mess, like the girl did something to it. Coyote can’t work out what has happened, only that the scent of flowers is smothering him. He can’t stop sneezing, and then he thinks, what a time to be sneezing.
“Done well, kid,” he says to her, receiving no answer, only the restful swishing of the windscreen wipers.
“Okay back there?” he asks. Meaning—if you want to push that Zombie out the window, go right ahead, but you’ll be doing it yourself. This road is just too dangerous.
Silence from the passenger, so Coyote glances at the clock, 5.30 it reads, and then he adds some more extras to the meter to take account of the cost of two broken windows and the pain of struggling with Zombies. Standard fare now reads 18.40. Extras now reads 1275.60. Zombies cost money. Coyote didn’t enjoy struggling with them, but if he had to, and if he turned out the winner, well then, he was grateful for the cash; the dream trip was coming up close. In the mirror he can see the passenger stroking the Zombie’s head, like it’s some kind of pet. Jesus! Can you believe this girl? What the hell am I carrying? And what did she do to the Zombie? Why is life so difficult for a top dog driver? And why am I feeling so completely sexy, all of a sudden?
Indeed the dog driver has an almighty erection. He can feel it nudging the bottom of the steering wheel, and it feels so good that Coyote thinks he can drive that cab no-handed. It must be something to do with the smell she’s giving off, stroking that dead Zombie like a well-fucked lover; the whole cab feels like a garden in the springtime, heavy with a fog of pollen. Coyote is sneezing with a hard-on, which is like coming from both ends. It tastes like summer is in his mouth and in his pants, and the night is turning into the golden flower of morning as he slides the cab down the throat of the hills towards the drop-off, twelve miles to go before the seeding point…
Frontier Town North.
The clingers to the centre have absolutely zero idea of what the boundaries are like. They imagine giant, electrified fences encircling the limits of the Manchester map. They imagine heavily armed City Guards patrolling the circumference. Of course, at the four gates, the north, east, south and west gates, this was more or less true. But all the spaces in between are populated with chancers eager for extra cash. The further you went from the centre, the trickier the company. Frontier Town, they called it, this circular conglomeration of shanties and gypsy-dog camps. Edge-walkers. The people of the limits. Outlaws and roustabouts. Coyote pays an Asian dog-girl two black Vurt feathers to let him through her hidden road. Some small trouble then, with a couple of cop-cars patrolling the frontier. But the map and the road come together. The journey is foreplay, and he handles it with aplomb. He has to stop off a few times to let some more patrollers go by, and just to collect his fear and his bearing, but mostly he makes the driving easy, bringing the cab into a smooth entry.
Manchester was his lover.
Cruising home.
At one point, riding the Oxford Road, just past the University, an Xcab passes them, heading back towards Manchester Centre. With a sweet rush of blood to his head and yet more to his groin, Coyote recognises Boda behind the wheel of the rival cab. He raises a wet paw to her wave, and he can hear her talking to him, in his mind; she’s saying something like Imperial driving, dogboy, like she can send these messages out, loud and clear. Like she has the Shadow. Maybe she was a Shadow. Maybe she was. He sends back the message, Got young Persephone girl on board. Just thinking it, and, sure enough, Boda comes back with, Good Limbo tripping, Coy. Maybe they could really get something together, Coyote and Xcabber. Definitely. He would go find her in the taxi-rank later, once this fare is dropped.
“Good Limbo tripping, Coy,” the passenger repeats, like she too has been spoken to by Shadows.
The fare meter, all added up, thanks to the sorry little cop chase, now reads a very healthy 1597.20. Big money! Coyote’s ticket out of trouble. But listen to him sneeze. Also, the almighty hard-on. “Perfume heavy, flower-girl,” he says.
“Thank you,” the passenger answers. “Are we there yet?”
“Nearly there,” he replies. “Alexandra Park, you want?”
“Take me to the grass.”
It was an easy ride. Driving towards the curried flavours of Rusholme, and then a right on to Claremont Road. The park was shimmering by, a brooding expanse of trees and shadows.
“Just here, on the left, please,” the passenger calls.
Coyote stops the cab by the park gate. 6.14. Spots of rain are hitting the windscreen. The dogman feels at home. “You okay, passenger?” he asks. “No cab-lag?” This is what some of the weaker travellers feel when pushed through bad fare-zones. One glimpse tells him that all is sweet with the young girl. He looks at the fare meter. “That will be one thousand, five hundred and ninety-nine pounds and forty pence, please.”
When it comes to asking for a fare, Coyote speaks pure English.
“Got it right here.” She pulls a flower, a black pansy, out of her anorak pocket.
“What this?”
Persephone passes the flower through the grille, so that Coyote can hold it in his paws. The eyes of a poor dog captivated by petals of night. But still, will this pay for Pleasureville?
“Some joke, passenger-girl?” Coyote asks.
“Try it,” the young girl says. “Why don’t you?”
So Coyote feeds the flower into the credit slot on the meter. At 6.16 a.m. precisely the green light of the fare turns to a yellow 1599.40, and the words PAID IN FULL appear on the screen, and Coyote is amazed at the sight. The money has flooded into his system.
At that precise moment—Monday 1 May, 6.16 a.m.—a boy named Brian Swallow vanished from his feathery bed in Wilmslow. The parents, John and Mavis Swallow, didn’t notice their son’s disappearance until they awoke at 7.30. Brian’s room was empty, his blankets ruffled as though by a violent struggle. His window was locked, from the inside, as were all other windows and doors. They called the police. An Inspector Tom Dove came to see them. The parents told Tom Dove that they’d kissed their loving son before he went to sleep at 10.15 the night before, and then gone to bed themselves, locking all the doors behind them. The detective had looked around the boy’s bedroom, sniffed at the bed sheets, and then at the air. He had experienced this atmosphere too many times before not to know what it meant. Somebody, somewhere, was being exchanged for something from the Vurt. That wouldn’t make it any easier to explain to Mr and Mrs Swallow. Tom Dove sighed, and then broke the news to the distraught parents.
Coyote feels light-headed. The money is getting to him. He feels like an insider all of a sudden.
“You like?” Persephone asks.
“I like. I do like. Good ride.” He gazes at the paid-in-full sign for a while, before opening his door. He curses at the broken window, and at the pain in his right cheek, where the glass was digging in. Never mind all that. This fare was worth it. He moves around to the back door of the cab. The girl undoes her straps, pushing the now weightless body of the Zombie on to the cab floor. Coyote realizes that he’ll have to dump that sad and drained creature somewhere. Then the young girl gets out of the cab. She steps up close to Coyote. Her perfume is caressing his nostrils. He wants to sneeze, but manages to hold it back.
“Thanks for getting me here,” she says.
“No problems,” he answers.
Just a cold, rainy morning on the moors, a bad trip through Limbo, two crazy Zombies, one of them lying dead in the cab, some glass in the cheek, some half-dead flesh in the mouth, a big mother of a Vaz truck almost flattening me, a small loss of blood, a maze-game with the City Guards, a ride with the scent of flowers exploding my nose
.
“Let me pay you,” Persephone says.
“Already done.”
“More than that.” Persephone pulls down her hood.
Coyote looks at the young girl. Her face is very beautiful. He feels like a bee, drawn to that sight, that perfume. So tempting. He doesn’t know where to look. He looks over to the trees of Alexandra Park. Does no good. He has to look back. Those sparkling eyes of green, they look just like two flowers staring deep into him. The girl’s young and full lips, like two trembling petals. “Kiss me,” she says. This girl must be eleven years old at the most, but Coyote’s lips cannot help but descend to hers, tasting the pollen. He can feel her tongue pushing deep into his throat…
Jesus, nobody can have a tongue that long
.
He is thinking about his unknown father, his dead mother, and his rarely seen daughter. And about his angry ex-wife, and about Boda’s sweet and tempting song. Some last feelings.
And then his mind explodes with blackness and colours.
… oh my God! The flowers are dancing… dancing…
One minute twenty-five seconds later, Coyote was dead.
My boss was called Kracker: Chief of Police, Jakob Kracker. The only man named—by his parents—after a certain brand of thin, dry wafer. All the cops called him the Biscuit Boy behind his back. It was Kracker’s voice, coming over my bedside telephone, that started me on this trip. It was early morning, 1 May of the year in question. His words took a hard journey towards my parched, wine-heavy brain: “Sibyl Jones… I’ve got a case for you.” A body had been found, just outside the gates of Alexandra Park. I was to get over there immediately. This was a strange one, Kracker had said, but would say no more. What did I care? Death was my speciality. So I had dressed quickly and then made my usual detour into the second bedroom, where my love, my Jewel, lay sleeping. I had lifted the lid to his cot, blown him a kiss. Then I left the house and stepped into the Ford Comet, riding it through the rain towards the park at Moss Side. I hated to leave Jewel alone, but a cop must work hard in bad times. I grabbed a cigarette from the dashboard pack with one hand. Napalms, of course. The message read: SMOKING MAKES YOU WRITE BETTER—HIS MAJESTY’S OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHER.
The taste of smoke in my throat. In these days of dry dust I can still remember that taste like the breath of a wicked lover on the lips and tongue.
I lived in Victoria Park in those days, as I still do; a comfortable rented flat that I had bought from the landlord after my husband left. I had married early, age of eighteen, already pregnant. Had my baby girl, Belinda Jones, seven months later. My husband left nine years after that. And four days after my husband, my daughter, Belinda, ran away. She was nine years old, and that was no age for a young girl to go wandering. But wander she did, calling me some bad names for forcing her father to leave. This was her way of seeing it. I guess she loved him more than me, despite everything. But where did she go? Where? I had searched all over for Belinda since then, but no trace of her anywhere, not even her name or her destination. This has been one of the journeys of my life.
Now that journey was nearly at an end. Towards the dream…
The cop system was a bellyful of messages that long-ago morning as I drove my Fiery Comet over towards Moss Side. I wasn’t in the mood for official voices—all those coded tales of imminent or actual violence—so I had moved along from the police waves, until I picked up the Gumbo YaYa talking. The Manchester Cops had been searching for this hippy pirate for years, finding nothing but his voice floating down from nowhere…
“Dearie dearie. Good morning, or what? That was I Can Hear the Grass Grow by The Move, and there has been a sudden surge to the old Gumbo’s nostrils. Flowers in the rain, indeed. Big jump in the grain count. I can hear them jumping. This old hippy is sneezing already. Ya Ya! The flowers are spurting pollen all over the Manchester map. Gumbo never seen such a giant, golden step before. Spent some seconds accessing the data-feather; last such power-surge logged in the far-off and forgotten days of Fecundity 10. Of course we are nowhere near the all-time record count yet, but still, this is worrying. Must be a freak blip. Stay cool. Keep those nostrils clean with Sneeza Freeza. Send off today for the Doctor Gumbo’s own-brand nostril plugs. May John Barleycorn show mercy. The pollen count is 85 and rising. News just in from the street of a juicy murder. More on that when I access today’s cop-feather. You know they change the code every day but the good Gumbo, he can always find a window. And now my people, listen to this beauty from Scott Mackenzie, nineteen sixty-seven. And remember, if you’re going to San Francisco this year, be sure to wear something floral in your hair…”