The Last Days

The thing inside me flinched.

Zombie made a grumpy noise and rolled over on my belly. His big green eyes opened slowly, surveying Pearl.

"I have good news," she said softly. When I first got sick, I hated the sound of her voice, but not anymore. I was getting better - I didn't hate Pearl, or anyone human. All I hated now was the Vile Thing she brought every time she visited. It hung from her hands, one eyeball dangling, leering at me.

I tried to smile, but the lenses of Pearl's glasses caught the candlelight, bright as a camera flash, and I had to turn away.

She raised her voice a little. "You okay?"

"Sure. It's just a little bright today." Sometimes I blew out the candle, but that made Luz cross. She said I'd have to get used to it if I was ever going to leave this room again.

But my room was nice. It smelled like Zombie and me and the thing inside us.

"So I met these guys," Pearl said, talking fast now, forgetting to whisper. "They've been playing together for a while. They're nine kinds of raw, not like Nervous - "

I must have flinched again, because Pearl went quiet. Zombie mur-rowed and dropped heavily to the floor. He started toward her, winding his way through my old toys and clothes and sheet music, all the objects on the floor that crept closer every night while I slept.

"We weren't so bad," I managed to say.

"Yeah, but these guys are fawesome." She paused, smiling at herself. Pearl always liked silly, made-up words. "They're sort of New Sound, like Morgan's Army, but more raw. Like when we started, before you-know-who messed up your head. But without six composers trying to write one song. These two guys are much more..."

"Controllable?" I said.

Pearl frowned, and the Vile Thing in her hands glared at me.

"I was going to say mellow."

Zombie had tiptoed up behind Pearl, like he'd been planning to wind through her legs. But he was slinking close to the floor now, sniffing at her shoes suspiciously. He didn't like the smell of anyone but me these days.

"But I was thinking, and maybe this is stupid." Pearl shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "If these guys work out, and you keep getting better - "

"I'm already better."

"That's what Luz says. The three of us aren't ready yet, but maybe by the time we are..." Her voice wavered, sounding fragile. "It would be great if you could sing for us."

Her words made me close my eyes, something huge moving through my body, half painful, half restless. It took a moment to recognize, because it had been gone for so long.

To twist and turn, spreading out and surrounding people, drowning them - my voice seething, boiling, filling up the air.

I wanted to sing again...

A slow sigh deflated me. What if it still hurt, like everything else that wasn't Zombie or darkness? I had to test myself first.

"Could you do something for me, Pearl?"

"Anything."

"Say my name."

"Crap, no way. Luz would kick my ass."

I smelled Pearl's fear in the room and heard Zombie's soft footfalls retreating from her. He jumped up onto the bed, warm and nervous next to me. I opened my eyes, trying not to squint in the candle-brightness.

Pearl was sweating again, pacing like Zombie does because Luz never lets him go outside. "She said that singing might be okay. But your name? Are you sure?"

"I'm not sure, Pearl. That's why you have to."

She swallowed. "Okay... Min."

I snorted. "Shiny, smelly Pearl. Can't even do the whole thing?"

She stared at me for a long moment, then said softly, "Minerva?"

I shuddered out of habit, but the sickness didn't come. Then she said the name again, and nothing swept through me. Nothing but relief. Even Luz had never managed that.

It felt outlandish and magnificent, as naughty as a cigarette after voice class. I closed my eyes and smiled.

"Are you okay?" she whispered.

"Very. And I want to sing for your band, Pearl. You brought music, didn't you?"

She nodded, smiling back at me. "Yeah. I mean, I wasn't sure if you... But we have this really cool riff." She reached into her pocket for a little white sliver of plastic, then began to unwind the earphones wrapped around it. "This is after only one day of practice - well, six years and a day - but there's no chorus or anything yet. You can write your own words."

"I can do words." Words were the first thing I'd gotten back. There were notebooks full of scrawl underneath the bed, filled with all my new secrets. New songs about the deep.

Pearl had an adapter in one hand. She was looking around for my stereo.

"I broke it," I said sadly.

"Your Bang and Olufsen? That's a drag." She frowned. "Say, you didn't throw it out the window, did you?"

I giggled. "No, silly. Down the stairs." I reached out my hand. "Come here. We can share."

She paused for a moment, glancing back at the door.

"Don't worry. Luz went downstairs already." She was working in the kitchen now, preparing my nighttime botanicas. I could hear the rumble of water through the pipes and smell garlic and mandrake tea being strained. "She trusts you enough not to listen in."

"Oh. That's good, I guess." Pearl put the adapter back in her pocket and took a step closer, the Vile Thing leering at me from her hand.

"But you have to put that thing down," I said, waving one hand.

She paused, and I could smell her start to sweat again.

"Don't you trust me, shiny Pearl?" I squinted up at her. "You know I would never eat you."

"Um, yeah." She swallowed. "And that's really non-threatening of you, Minerva."

I smiled again at the sound of my own name, and Pearl smiled back, finally believing how much better I was. She knelt, placing the Vile Thing carefully on the floor, like it might explode.

Taking a deep breath, she began to cross the room with measured steps. Zombie padded away as she grew closer, and I smelled the catnip on Pearl's shoes. That's why he was being so edgy. She smelled like his old toys, which he hated these days.

He went over to sniff the Vile Thing, which suddenly had turned into just some old doll. It looked lifeless and defeated there on the floor, not nearly as vile as it had been.

More relief flowed through me. Just the thought of singing was making me stronger. Even the shiny candlelight didn't seem so jagged.

Pearl sat next to me on the bed, the music player in her hand glowing now. I saw the apple shape on it and flinched a little, remembering that I had thrown something out the window - eighty gigs of music that smelly boy had given me.

Pearl reached across, pushing my hair back behind one ear with trembling fingers. I realized how greasy it was, even though Luz made me shower every single Saturday.

"Do I look horrible?" I asked quietly. I hadn't seen myself in... two months, if it was August.

"No. You're still beautiful." She grinned, putting one earphone in her own ear. "Maybe a little skinny. Doesn't Luz feed you?"

I smiled, thinking of all the raw meat I'd eaten for lunch. Bacon cold and salty, the strips still clinging together, fresh from between plastic. And then the chicken whose neck I'd heard Luz wring in the backyard, its skin still prickly from being plucked, its living blood hot down my throat. And still I was hungry.

As Pearl leaned forward in the Apple glow, I saw the pulse in her throat, and the beast inside me growled.

Mustn't eat Pearl, I reminded myself.

She gave the other earphone to me, and I put it in. We looked into each other's eyes from a few inches away, tethered by the split white cord. It was strange and intense - no one but Luz had dared get this close to me since I'd bitten that stupid doctor.

I could smell coffee on Pearl's breath, the clean sweat of summer heat, the separate scent of fear. Her pupils were huge, and I remembered that to her eyes, my room was dark. My life was spent in shadows now.

There was a hint of moisture between her upper lip and nose, in that little depression the size of a fingertip. I leaned forward, wanting to lick it, to see if it was salty like the bacon had been...

Then she squeezed the player, and music spilled into me.

It started abruptly - a rough edit, not even on the downbeat - but the riff was too gutsy to care. One guitar rumbled underneath, simple as a bass part, someone playing with three untutored fingers. Another guitar played up high, full of restless and cluttered energy, seductively neurotic.

Neither was Pearl, I could tell.

Then she entered on keys, spindly and thin but fitting perfectly. She was even leaving room for me, laying low, like she never had back in the System.

That thought made me jealous - little Pearl growing up a bit while I'd been lying here in shadows. Suddenly, I wanted to get up and put on clothes and sunglasses, go out into the world.

Soon, I thought, still listening. The music had me humming, venturing into the spaces Pearl had left open, finding lines to twist and turn. She was right - it was New Sound-ish, like all those indie bands we'd loved last spring. But less frantic, as smooth as water. My whole body wanted to jump into this music.

But when my lips first parted, only random curses spilled out, verses from the earliest, most unreadable scrawl in the notebooks under my bed. Then they sputtered to a halt, like the fading geyser from a shaken beer bottle, and I gradually gained control. I began to murmur a jagged, wordless song across the music.

For a few moments it was beautiful, a savage version of my old self, though with new spells in it. The sound of my own singing made the beast inside me burn, but clever Pearl had cheated it for a few moments: I could only hear myself with one ear. The other was filled with the riff, a dense and splendid protection.

But soon enough the sickness closed my throat, the song choking to a stop. I looked at Pearl, to see if I'd imagined it. Her eyes, inches from mine, glowed like her music player's screen.

Catching my breath, I concentrated on the riff again, listening. She was right: They were way outside the System, this oddball pair of guitarists. They had pulled something out of me, slipped it right past the beast.

"Where did you find them?"

"Sixth Street. Totally random."

"Hmm. The one who can really play, he sounds..." I swallowed.

"Yeah," Pearl said. "He's lateral and raw, like I always wanted Nervous System to be. No lessons, or at least not many, and no theory classes. He fills up whatever space you give him. Almost out of control, but like you said, controllable. He's the Taj Mahal of random guitarists."

I smiled. All those things were true, but I hadn't been thinking them.

To me, he sounded more like... yummy.

PART II

AUDITIONS

The Plague of Justinian was the first time the Black Death appeared.

Fifteen hundred years ago, the emperor Justinian had just embarked on his greatest work: the rebuilding of the Roman Empire. He wanted to reunite its two halves and place the known world under Roman rule once more.

But as his vast war began, the Black Death came. It swept across the eastern Mediterranean, leaving millions dead in its wake. Thousands died daily in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, and Justinian was forced to watch his dreams crumble.

Oddly, historians aren't certain what the Black Death was. Bubonic plague? Typhus? Something else? A few historians suggest that it was a random assortment of diseases brought on by one overriding factor: an explosion of the rat population fostered by the Roman army's vast stores of grain.

That's close, but not quite.

Whatever caused it, the Black Death's effects were clear. The Roman Empire slipped into history at last. Much of the mathematics, literature, and science of the ancients was lost. A dark age descended on Europe.

Or, as we said back then, "Humanity lost that round."

NIGHT MAYOR TAPES:

142¨C146

7. STRAY CATS

-  ZAHLER-

My dogs were acting paranormal that day, all edgy and anxious.

The first bunch seemed fine when I picked them up. In the air-conditioned lobby of their fancy Hell's Kitchen building, they were full of energy, eager to be walked. Ernesto, the doorman, handed over the four leashes and an envelope stuffed with cash, my pay for that week. And then - like every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday - I headed one block uptown to pick up three more.

I got the idea of being a dog walker from an old trick of mine. Whenever I was totally bummed, I'd go over to the Tompkins Square Park dog run - a big open space that's just for dogs and owners - and watch them jumping on one another, sniffing butts and chasing balls. Huge dogs and tiny ones, graceful retrievers and spastic poodles were all jumbled together and all fawesomely ecstatic to get out of their tiny, lonely New York apartments and into a chase, a growling match, or a mad dash to nowhere in particular. No matter how depressed I was, the sight of scrappy puppies facing off with German shepherds always made me feel much better. So why not be paid to get cheered up?

You don't make much per dog per hour, but if you can handle six or seven at a time, it starts to add up. Most times it's easy money.

Sometimes it's not.

Straight out the door, the heat and stink seemed to get to them. The two Doberman brothers who usually kept order were nipping at each other, and the schnauzer and bull terrier were acting all paranoid, zigzagging every time a car door slammed, too jittery even to sniff at piles of garbage. As we battled down the street, their leashes kept tangling, like long hair on a breezy day.

Things only got worse when I picked up the second pack. The doorman realized that the owner of the insanely huge mastiff had forgotten to leave money for me and buzzed up to ask her about it. While I waited, the two packs started tangling with each other, nipping and jumping, their barking echoing off the marble walls and floor of the lobby.

I tried to unwind them and restore order, one nervous eyeball on the elevator. It would be totally unfool for my customers to see their dogs brawling when they were supposed to be getting exercise. So when nobody answered the doorman's buzzing, I didn't stick around to complain, just hauled them out of there and back into the heat.

I was already wishing I hadn't been in such a hurry to show Moz our possible drummer. A trip to the anarchy of Times Square was exactly what my unruly dog pack didn't need.

Here's what I've learned about dogs:

They're a lot like pretty girls. Having one or two around makes everything more fun, but when you get a whole bunch together, it turns into one big power struggle. Every time you add or subtract from the pack, everything gets rearranged. The top dog might wind up number two or fall all the way to the bottom. As I watched the Doberman brothers trying to stare down the mastiff, I was starting to wonder if being in a band was pretty much the same thing - more Nature Channel than MTV.

And really, all the jostling was a big waste of time, because Pearl was clearly the right girl to run things.

Don't get me wrong, the Mosquito was my oldest and best friend. I would never have picked up a guitar if it hadn't been for him, and he was the fawesomest musician I'd ever seen. But Moz wasn't cut out to be in charge. Of anything. He'd never held on to even the crappiest job, because any kind of organized activity - waiting in line, filling out forms, showing up on time - made him all buzzy. There was no way he could keep five or six unruly musicians on their leashes and pull them all in the same direction.

As for me, I thought the little dogs had the right attitude. The schnauzer didn't really care whether the mastiff or the Dobermans took charge: he just wanted to sniff some butt and get on with the walk.

He just wanted the struggle to be over.

Today, though, nobody was in control - certainly not me. The seven leashes in my hand didn't mean squat. Each time we got to an intersection, I'd try to pull us toward Times Square, but the pack kept freaking out about every stray scent, surging off in random directions. I'd let them wander a bit until they got it out of their system, then pull them back toward the way I wanted us to go. We weren't going to set any crosstown speed records, but at least there was plenty of time before we were supposed to meet Moz, who, like I just mentioned, was probably going to be late anyway.

The weird thing was how much the vacant lots scared them. Even the mastiff was slinking past open spaces, when normally she would have charged straight in for a run.

How weird was that? A creature the size of a horse who'd been cooped up in a Manhattan apartment all day, and all she wanted to do was cling to me, shivering like a wet poodle.

In this mood, the commotion of Times Square was going to turn my pack into a portable riot. It seemed like Moz and I might have to see my drummer some other day.

Then we passed the mouth of a dark alley, and things really got paranormal.

The bull terrier - who always has to pee on everything - took advantage of the anarchy to pull us all in. He trotted to the piss-stained wall, cocked his leg halfway, then suddenly froze, staring into the darkness. The yapping of the other dogs choked off, like seven muzzles had been strapped on all at once.

The alleyway was full of eyes.

Hundreds of tiny faces gazed up at us from the shadows. Behind me trucks rushed past, and I could feel the warmth of sunlight on my back, the reassuring pace and movement of the real world. But in the alley everything was frozen, time interrupted. The bulbous bodies of the rats were motionless, huddled against garbage bags, their teeth bared, heads poking out of holes and crannies. Nothing moved but a shimmer of whiskers as a thousand nostrils tested the air.

In the farthest corner, a lone cat was perched high on a leaking pile of garbage. It stared down at me, unimpressed by my small army of dogs, offended by my presence in the alley. I felt tiny under its arrogant gaze - like some street kid who'd stumbled into a five-star restaurant looking for a place to pee.

The cat blinked its red eyes, then yawned, its pink tongue curling.

This is totally unfool, I thought. If my Dobermans spotted that cat, they'd go after it, dragging me and the whole pack deep into the alley. I could imagine myself returning seven rat-bitten, half-rabid canines to the doormen and never seeing another dime of dog-walking money again.

"Come on, guys," I murmured, gently pulling the fistful of leashes backward. "Nothing to see here."

But they were paralyzed, transfixed by the galaxy of eyes.

The cat opened its mouth again, letting out a long, irritated mrrr-row...

And the Dobermans ran like scaredy-cats.

They both leaped straight up, twisting around in midair, and charged past me toward the sunlight. The others followed in a mob, wrapping their leashes around my legs and dragging me stumbling into the street.

It was all I could do to stay on my feet as the mastiff charged ahead, opening up into her full gallop. She pulled the rest of us straight out onto the road, where a yellow flash of taxi screeched past dead ahead of us. A squat little delivery van squealed around us, horn blaring, scaring the mastiff into a sharp left turn.

We were headed down the middle of the street now, a garbage truck thundering along in front of us, the delivery van behind. We were in traffic, as if I'd decided to take a dog-powered chariot out for a little spin.

Unfortunately, I'd sort of forgotten to bring the chariot, so I was stumbling and staggering, seven leashes still tangled around my legs. And if I fell down, I knew the mastiff would keep going, galloping along until my face had been rubbed off completely on the asphalt. Even if my face friction somehow brought the pack to a halt, the pursuing delivery van would squash us all flat.