Krokodil Tears Page 3

  Her head lolled to one side, and her eye fluttered shut. Something moved, and she looked again. There was a shadow on the shower curtain, a human-shape holding something in an upraised arm.

  The plastic dimpled, and a silvery point poked through. It was a long knife. The curtain tore, and the figure stabbed…

  IV

  Hawk-That-Settles, son of Two-Dogs-Dying, was waiting. But he knew his wait was nearly over.

  His people, the Navaho, had been waiting for nearly a hundred and fifty years. Brutally suppressed by bluecoats led by Rope Thrower, known to whites as Kit Carson, in 1863, they had been out of the major Indian Wars because the Reservation lands given to them were so arid and dreary that even the white man didn’t want to kick them off to somewhere else. No gold, no oil, no food, no water: just Navaho, persisting as they always had done, getting drunk and stubbornly refusing to die out. Now, the whole of the West and the Mid-West was like the Navaho Reservation. Before Rope Thrower subdued the Great Chief Manuelito—among whose lieutenants was Hawk’s many-times-great grandfather Armijo—the Navaho had been herders of horses and cattle, cultivators of corn, pumpkins, wheat and melons and famous for their groves of peach trees. The Navaho had respected Rope Thrower as a warrior, but could never forgive the destruction of their prized orchards. Removed from their fertile lands in what became New Mexico, the Navaho were transported to the Bosque Redondo and into the mountains.

  Now, in Monument Valley, on the border between Arizona and Utah, Hawk pulled his stetson lower, to keep the glare of the sun from his face, and strode out of the drugstore to join the depressed knot of Indians at the roadside. The motorwagons were passing them by, a battered parade. Two-Dogs was slumped in his usual chair, with four legs of unequal length, sucking like a baby on the brown-paper-wrapped bottle he always carried. Hawk nodded to his father, the man who had tutored him as a Dreamwalker, and was not acknowledged. He knew all the others by name, by the names of their families for generations past. It was his place to remember the ancestors. He was the medicine man, now that Two-Dogs was the whisky Navaho.

  Bowed, weary, and with deeply-lined faces, the Indians all looked ancient, even the children. If possible, life was harder even for these ragged redskins than it had been for their forefathers after the war with Rope Thrower, when their livelihood had been deliberately burned away from them. Only Jennifer White Dove replied to his greeting, with a light smile. They were of an age, Hawk and Jennifer, and had been close as teenagers, before Hawk joined up with the Sons of Geronimo and left the Reservation, intent on changing the world. By the time he had been through that and was ready to return, Jennifer had been married and divorced and was almost a stranger again.

  The motorwagons were full of smiling, unreadable pilgrims in black, presumably joyous at being so close to their destination, Salt Lake City. The convoys had been coming through all week. Hawk still had the shakes, although they were coming under control. He had been doing road duty when the first wagons rolled past, with a US Cavalry Escort, and he had looked upon the face of the Josephite leader and known that these were the last days of the world. Nguyen Seth was his name. Hawk had read about him in the newsfax, but rarely watched teevee, and so had never seen his face before. That is, not in the flesh.

  From his childhood, he had known the face, had seen it in paintings and had drawn it himself. It was the bone-white, dark-hole-eyed—sunglasses, he now realized—face of the Summoner. Two-Dogs had not always been a whisky Navaho, and he had taught his son the stories his father had taught to him. The stories of the Last Days, when the Summoner would open up the Dark Reaches of the Spirit Lands and call down the worst of the manitous to lay waste the worlds of the white man and the red.

  Since he had caught sight of the Summoner, he had not liked to watch the resettlers pouring through into Utah, knowing what it was they were really following. He had talked with a plastic young couple in the Reservation Diner, listened to them enthusing about their new-found life and, the dictates of their faith, but had seen the deadness in their hearts. Some of the Reservation Indians had gone with them when they left, eager for a chance at something better. The Navaho Josephites were all young, as young as he had been when he joined the Sons and painted his face to strike a blow at the heart of the white man’s world. That had been a futile crusade, he knew now, but it was better than the lie Seth offered, the lie that concealed the end of all things.

  The Indians of the Plains—Apache and Comanche—that he had known in the Sons of Geronimo had sworn that the white man’s time was nearing an end, and that the buffalo would return. But he knew these were dreams of sand. The buffalo could do nothing against the deadweight of the Europeans.

  He had been waiting for the spirit warrior his father had told him of in infancy, the One-Eyed White Girl. If the Summoner was abroad, then he would soon be followed. It was revealed in the series of pictures, drawn and redrawn in his family for generations. Two-Dogs said the One-Eyed White Girl would have steel in her muscles and fire in her empty eye, and that she would come to the Navaho—to the family of Armijas—or her education. It was the duty of the medicine man of the line of Armijas to tutor the spirit warrior through the Seven Levels, to prepare her for the final battle, in which she would stand with the other spirit warriors—the Holy Woman From Across the Great Water, the Man With Music in His Heart, the Red-Handed One, the Yellowlegs Who Has Lost Much, the Great Father in White, the Man Who Rides Alone—against the army of the manitous and the story would end.

  Hawk had seen it told as a series of pictures on buffalo hides. The last pictures were just darkness. Much had been foretold, but the ultimate outcome was unknown, unknowable. “I envy you, my son,” Two-Dogs had told him yesterday, “you will see the last pictures.” Two-Dogs claimed his time was almost up, and was drinking even more heavily than usual. He had foreseen his death so many times that Hawk no longer bothered much with such presentiments, but, this time, things were different…

  The Sons of Geronimo had been a wash-out in the end. Lots of fiery meetings and grand gestures, plenty of petitions to Washington and protests outside John Wayne movies, but in the end they had just been a bunch of dumb redskins battering their heads against the white man’s bricks. Their political campaign had been as ineffectual as their terrorist “outrages,” which had harmed no one but the odd insurance firm. Chata, their chief, had been shot dead by a bank guard in Wyoming during an attempted hold-up. The Sons had been running short of funds. Then Ulzana, the Apple Apache in his Gucci Ghost Shirt, would-be heir to the eagle-feathers, graduated from Berkeley, and set up a computer software firm. Hawk had sent him a parcel containing a bisected apple: red outside, white inside. The trickle of money raised by the tribes had dried up, the teevee crews stopped coming round, and the white girls all drifted away, with or without their pale-skinned babies, petitioning to rejoin the master race. Hawk didn’t know where the others were. What had happened to Sacheen Littlefeather? Sky Buffalo? William Silverheels? Two-Dogs-Dying had shrugged, and gone back to waiting for his monthly security cheques. Only Hawk-That-Settles was there to carry the dream forward, to pass it on—if need be—to his son.

  Now, there would be no son.

  The motorwagons were gone, and everyone was drifting away. Jennifer White Dove smiled at him again, almost soliciting his interest. On the Reservation, being a medicine man meant literally that these days. He was in charge of the drugstore, and Jennifer’s husband had left her with a habit or two. Sometimes, he knew, she would bruise herself with a rock to get morph-plus out of him. There were a lot of Indians like that, so used to the cycle of hurt and deadening that it was a snowballing addiction. He didn’t meet her eyes, and she drifted away with the others.

  “Father?”

  Two-Dogs looked up, eyes not focusing.

  “Father, I must leave.”

  Two-Dogs nodded his head, yes. “The Holy-Place-From-Over-the-Great-Water?”

  “Yes, father.” It was the title of one of the pictures.
Two-Dogs had long ago found the real place, an abandoned monastery in the desert. It was far south, near the Mexican border.

  “She will come to you there, the One-Eyed White Girl.”

  “So you have said.”

  “And so my father said before me. So we have all said, back to the times of the peach trees.”

  There was an embarrassing pause. Hawk always felt ill at ease in these conversations, as if he were forced to read the lines of a savage redskin in a Hollywood film. He did not talk like this with anyone else, but his father would not laugh at talk of the Holy-Place-From-Over-the-Great-Water or the Yellowlegs Who Has Lost Much.

  Beyond the road. Hawk saw the table mountains lumped against the sky. They had made many Hollywood films here. As a young man, Two-Dogs had fought with many armies of extras, firing off pretend guns at John Wayne in Stagecoach, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Searchers. Once, Hawk had found a faded snapshot of Two-Dogs dressed in the beads and paint of an Apache standing proudly between a smiling John Wayne and a one-eyed Irishman he guessed was the movie director John Ford. Later, ashamed, Two-Dogs would picket screenings of the films he had appeared in, although he admitted in private that many times as a young man he had eaten well at a movie commissary when he would otherwise have starved. Once, a message had been sent to Ford in Hollywood, entreating aid for the Navahos after a hard winter, and the director had found a Western script to make in Monument Valley simply to bring some money to the tribe. Still, Hollywood had done an irreparable harm to Hie Indian, perpetuating the lies of the Manifest Destiny, the Savage Redskin and the Noble Bluecoats.

  Two-Dogs took a swig on his bottle. Hawk would never grow old like this.

  “Goodbye, father.”

  Two-Dogs nodded, and Hawk turned. He had a long walk before him.

  V

  The figure stabbed at the empty air.

  Naked and wet, Jazzbeaux leaped out of the tub at the knife-wielder. She didn’t need this, but she was prepared. She hadn’t lived through the hell of Spanish Fork to be carved up by some common-or-garden psychopath.

  The knife raked her side, but she ignored the pain and struck out with the flat of her hand at the psycho’s chin.

  It was the old woman, she assumed. As the knife darted towards her like a hawk’s beak, she glimpsed iron grey hair in a bun, and saw the swish of the long, faded dress.

  Her blow connected, and Ma Katz staggered backwards, blade scraping the flower-pattern wallpaper. Jazzbeaux half-turned and launched a kick, punching with the side of her foot into the old woman’s stomach.

  The knife came again, and she chopped with both hands at Ma Katz’s wrist, satisfied by the crunch of breaking bones.

  Ma Katz shrieked like a wounded eagle, and the knife clattered to the floor. The old woman’s fingers curved into talons and she scratched at Jazzbeaux’s face.

  There wasn’t much more Ma Katz could do to her face that Elder Seth hadn’t, but lines of pain opened up, and Jazzbeaux felt her vision distorting. She was used to having one eye, but now she knew she wasn’t seeing what she should.

  Ma Katz’s face, twisted by hatred, was that of her son.

  Jazzbeaux made a point with the fingers of her left hand, and jabbed it into the old woman’s throat, twice.

  Ma Katz coughed and spluttered, yellow tears coursing down her face. Jazzbeaux grabbed the old woman’s hair, and it came away in her hand.

  Sobbing, Herman Katz sank to the floor, drawing in his arms and legs as he assumed a foetal ball, trying to return to the safety of his mother’s womb.

  Jazzbeaux threw the wig into the toilet, and reached for a towel. She didn’t fully understand the set-up at the Katz Motel, but she had been through the fires, and was surviving.

  Bruno Bonney had been fond of quoting Nietzsche. That which does not kill me makes me stronger. Of course, that was before she had killed him.

  Herman?—Ma Katz?—whoever—had not killed her. She was stronger.

  Now, she wanted breakfast.

  VI

  In the deserted city, Roger Duroc waited for Nguyen Seth and the resettlers. His prep crew had coptered in a few days ago, but it was psychologically important for the movement that the first arrivals turn up in the old way, like the Mormon pioneers who had first built by the Salt Lake and made the desert bloom.

  Duroc’s team had got the power on, and he had sent exterminator packs into the streets to begin the task of clearing out the vermin that still clung to the ruins. He had picked up a group of experienced hunter-killers from the Phoenix NoGo, and turned them loose on the remaining sandrats. There were less in Salt Lake than in most ghost cities, because of the lack of water. For the first few years, that would be the big problem for the resettlers too, but a pipeline was being built that would bring a supply down from Canada.

  Seth had it all worked out.

  With the backing of President North, the Josephite Church was building its sanctuary in the former state of Utah. Now, it was renamed Deseret, and was only technically a part of the United States of America. It would have its own flag, its own judicial system, its own state religion, its own Great and Secret Purpose.

  Duroc looked over the reports from the engineers he had sent down into the dry sewers. Their casualties had been acceptable, and the cynogen had put an end to the indigenous subterraneans. Tunnel-fighting. That took him back to the ’Nam, where he had joined up with the Summoner and later fought with the VC against the Ivans.

  The lights flickered. The power was still variable, but it was a start. He had made his headquarters in what had been the presidential suite of the Hilton hotel. A portrait of Trickydick Nixon glowered down at him. Someone had shot its eyes out, perhaps a Comanche hoping to condemn the Ex-President’s incomplete spirit to an eternity of wandering between the winds.

  He had come a long way with the Elder, as had his family from time immemorial. He remembered the day in Paris, all those years ago, when his uncle had introduced him to the tall, quiet man to whom his life would be dedicated. Nguyen Seth hadn’t changed since then, Duroc knew. But then again, the Elder was older than he looked. Sometimes, he assumed the Elder had been around since the Creation. Once, tens of thousands of years ago, he might have been remotely human.

  Now, so close to the Last Days for which he had been prepared, Seth was what he was, and nothing less.

  Sometimes, Duroc missed his uncle. But the succession had had to take place. Duroc had had to come of age and replace the older Duroc in the service of Nguyen Seth.

  Blevins Barricune, the ex-Op Duroc had put in charge of the city limits, came through on the intercom.

  “We have a sighting, sir.”

  Duroc lit up a gauloise. “Good.”

  “Twenty or thirty ve-hickles, moving slowly.”

  “The wagon train?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Duroc blew a smoke ring. “Well, get the brass band out. The Elder will need a welcome. You know the hymns they must play.”

  “It will be done, sir. By the way, we’ve found some children in the old tabernacle. Five, between the ages of eight and twelve. They have no speech beyond grunts, but they’ve been surviving out here.”

  “Children?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “How remarkable. They must have endured many hardships to keep going out here.”

  “Yes. They overpowered Vercoe and Wood.”

  “Vercoe and Wood? What’s their status?”

  “Both casualties, sir.”

  “The children?”

  “Unharmed, mostly. Pouncey was Vercoe’s squeeze, and so he cut loose a bit with the cattle prod.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  Duroc picked up his broad-brimmed black hat, and set it upon his head. He examined himself in the mirror. He looked very clerical.

  “I’ll be down directly. Have a car ready to take me to the city limits. I’ll want to see the Elder arrive. The moment must be marked with all due ceremony. The vid team will rec
ord it for posterity.”

  That was a lie. There would be no posterity.

  “And the children?”

  “Oh, you know what to do. Hang them.”

  “Fine, sir.”

  “Let Pouncey do it. The man deserves something for his loss.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  Humming “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” Duroc left his suite.

  VII

  With her wounds dressed and bound and clean clothes on, Jazzbeaux felt approximately like a human being. That was dangerous, she knew. Ever since she had looked through Seth’s shades, she had been more than human. Or perhaps less. She felt an odd detachment that she would have to get used to. Her humanity was something useless to her, something that came from the Denver NoGo and which should have died in Spanish Fork with Andrew Jean and the others. She was still carrying it about, like a Mexican mother in a warzone still toting a dead baby at her breast. Membership in the human race was a psychological crutch she knew she could do without, but wasn’t quite ready to throw away yet. There would be time.

  She had left Herman Katz in the bathroom. He was verging on catatonia. Yesterday, she would have casually killed him. Now, she didn’t see the point. She was saving herself for Elder Seth.

  There was no food in the chalet, so she went up to the house. If there was no real Ma Katz to bother her, the place should be empty and Herman ought to have the makings of a breakfast. She wanted a pint of recaff and a toasted cheese sandwich. Perhaps a bowlful of Wally’s Whale Food, and a jujube or two to give it a buzz. Perhaps not. Perhaps she didn’t need drugs any more, didn’t want the buzz. There were enough new things going on in her mind.

  She climbed the rickety steps set into the hillside and got up to the porch of the Katz house. The door was open. Inside, the hallway was musty and dark. She saw an old French dresser with faded photographs in gilt frames under a bed of cobweb. An embroidered sampler hung on the wall, A BOY’S BEST FRIEND IS HIS MOTHER. Three identical aprons hung on a crooked coatstand. A buzzard, wings outstretched, posed stiffly over the kitchen door, its glass eyes thickly dusted-over.