Babylon Terminal Read online

  As I stepped through into her cluttered little office, Lenore saw me but didn’t acknowledge my presence. Instead she continued staring off into space, occasionally bringing a bottle of rum to her lips or taking a puff on a non-filtered cigarette resting on a glass ashtray on the desk to her right.

  The entire place smelled of cum, booze, cigarettes and sweat.

  I studied her in silence. The jet-black hair teased high and sprayed into a bouffant-gone-mad, the heavy makeup caked across sagging skin, false eyelashes batting slowly, inky appendages overshadowing sleepy blue eyes, lips painted circus-red, her aged porno-star body clad in knee-high leather boots, a miniskirt and a low-cut, skin-tight blouse.

  I remembered Julia standing with me in the rain on a stormy night long ago, watching this woman through blurred windows as she moved about an apartment Julia had grown up in but had never before seen. I remembered how Julia trembled in the cold rain, even when I held her tight, and how she reached out through the darkness at the building and the woman inside who was her mother and yet wasn’t her mother, as if she might somehow be able to touch her not only across such a distance, but across time and reason and the chasm that imprisoned us in this dungeon of shadows. As if by doing so she might somehow be able to better understand.

  “What do you want?” she asked in a gravelly voice that sounded like she’d spent the last several hours screaming at the top of her lungs.

  “Julia’s gone.”

  She took a drag on her cigarette, her lips leaving a red smear in their wake. “So go find her,” she said, exhaling through her nose.

  “I intend to.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I thought she might’ve stopped here on her way out.”

  “You thought wrong.” Lenore crushed the cigarette in the ashtray, then snatched the bottle of rum and had herself a nice long swig. “But then that’s nothing new for you.”

  “Or you.”

  She finally looked at me, but it was with disdain. “Why would she come here?”

  “You’re her mother.”

  “And yet I’m not.” A faint trace of what may have been an ironic smile appeared, then faded. “She didn’t say goodbye. But I’ve known for a while now she’d go. It’s been obvious to everyone.”

  “Not to me.”

  “You haven’t been paying attention.”

  “I’m going after her.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  Lenore rose to her feet. She looked shaky, but steadied herself against the desk. “You think you’re gonna question me, is that it?”

  “Julia could be in a great deal of danger, Lenore.”

  “We’re all in a great deal of danger, you stupid sonofabitch. You fucking child. Every second of our existence is nothing but dangerous.” She raised her free hand and threw it up over her head in a whirling motion, her breasts jiggling and barely contained in the skimpy top. “Look at me, what do you see?”

  “I see a sad, lonely, angry old woman.”

  She held her ground, staring me down with contempt. “I never liked you.”

  “I know. Not many do.”

  “Can you blame them?”

  “Probably not.”

  Lenore plopped back down into the chair, arms dangling at her side lifelessly. She didn’t bother trying to hide the track marks and bruises along her arms, and I didn’t bother pretending I hadn’t seen them. They were as much a part of her as her outfits and dated hairdo.

  “But you love your daughter, don’t you?”

  She didn’t answer, didn’t have to.

  “If you know anything, tell me. Help me find her.”

  “There’s nothing to find. I’m all that’s left.” Lenore sat back in the chair, her legs sliding open enough to reveal she wasn’t wearing panties.

  I turned away. “Christ.”

  She laughed, but it soon became a rumbling cough that throttled her entire body and left her breathless and gasping for air.

  I knew she’d have to fix soon, and I didn’t want to be there when she did.

  “Don’t worry,” she cackled, “the night loves her children.”

  A mass of flies I hadn’t noticed previously buzzed and crawled in frenzy around the only light fixture in the room, a filthy dome light on the ceiling, reminding us both of the masters they—and we—served. Maybe they’d been there all along, or maybe Lenore had conjured them somehow, it didn’t matter. The night may have loved us, but it was an abusive love, a violent and lonely love, a cold love. I watched the creatures grow in number, as if they were emerging from the fixture itself, until the entire thing became an undulating mass of flying insects.

  “I’m not interested in your parlor tricks,” I told her.

  “We are parlor tricks.” She smiled, her teeth stained with lipstick. “Rumors whispered in the rain…in darkness…actors performing in empty theaters.”

  “And Julia, what is she?”

  “Gone for a reason, that’s what she is.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Not so much as goodbye. But I knew she’d go. I’m her mother.”

  “And yet you aren’t.”

  She gripped her breasts, pushed them together into an enormous swell of cleavage. “Want me to be your mommy too?”

  “Talk about a dream.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, boy. Even Julia didn’t want you anymore.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Probably,” she said through a heavy sigh, “never can tell with me.”

  “It was a mistake for me to come here.”

  “Yup, sure was. Go see Joey the Creep instead, or Bobby Blades.”

  I nodded. “They’re on the list.”

  It was the closest Lenore was going to come to helping me.

  She slid open her middle desk drawer, pulled out her kit, a syringe, some rubber tubing, a spoon and a book of matches. “It’ll be light soon, almost time to dream.”

  “I think Julia’s going to the ocean.”

  Lenore gave me her best demonic grin. “There is no ocean.”

  Flies fell from the ceiling like ash, fluttering down across her desk and the space between us. They were dead, all of them, dead.

  Giggling, she put her head back and caught some with her tongue, black snowflakes falling from a hopeless sky.

  I left her there. I had no use for her illusions and depraved nightmares.

  I had plenty of my own.

  3

  Lost in liquid static, disconnected from what I hope is reality, I see so clearly the face of my enemy. I recognize that face, and I am afraid. It knows me well, this old friend, this destroyer of light, this beast of masks and tentacles, horror and domination. No one gets away. Not really. Because its throne resides where no human can exist.

  The unseen world waits…invisible…cunning…ravenous.

  But all worlds are unseen. It all comes down to who is looking…and who is not.

  As I fall, tumbling away from that little room I thought so safe, away from that vision of Julia sitting at the dressing table in her flimsy nightgown, it whispers its lies. There is only one way to survive what is coming, and that is through its awful embrace.

  But ours is a symbiotic union. I see the symbols and secrets everywhere, flooding back into my mind in a violent rush of madness. Those things right before my eyes—everyone’s eyes—that we choose not to see, not to believe, bleeding evil, the crimson droplets falling as if from the infected fingertips of some ancient Rain Man.

  And hidden somewhere in all this lunacy are the tricks that make me numb to the night, at least for a time, and protect me from the horrible rains of Babylon.

  * * *

  I’d chased him across the city and through the rain for hours, tracking him from one hellhole to the next. He was good, better than most, but he was only postponing the inevitable, and we both knew it. He ran out of time on the rooftop of an abandoned, burn
ed-out building that had once been an apartment house. The rain was still coming down hard, and we were both soaked. Some distant city lights struggling to break through the dark sky provided the only illumination, but even backed into a corner at the edge of the roof, I could see him there, squirming in the shadows like the cornered rat he was, eel-thin, with long, stringy dark hair and beady eyes.

  I stopped a few feet from him and leaned forward, resting my hands on my thighs as I caught my breath. My hair was plastered to my face, my trench coat and clothes beneath sopping wet. We’d jumped across four rooftops before reaching this one, the last in a line of rotting behemoths along the edge of a dark, bleak city.

  “I don’t know shit,” Joey the Creep said, voice barely audible above the rain.

  I straightened up, chest still heaving and lungs aching with each breath.

  “For real,” he said, spitting the words at me now. “I don’t know where she is!”

  I stared at him through the rain.

  “Let me go, man.” His face twisted into a helpless grimace. “Just let me go.”

  “Why would you fuck with me, Joey? Why would you do that?”

  “I wouldn’t, I—I didn’t!” As he found the whites of my eyes in the darkness, he dropped to his knees and began to weep. “I was only trying to help her, man, I—I mean what the hell was I supposed to do?”

  I reached for the sawed-off shotgun strapped to my leg, grabbed hold of its pistol grip and pulled it free.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Just—fuck—don’t! I stayed away like you told me, man, I did! I swear I did! She came to me, all right?”

  “Why would she do that?”

  He looked away, dripping and pathetic. “She wanted to run.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, man. I didn’t ask and she didn’t say.”

  “Where was she running to?”

  “The ocean, she…”

  “You’re a lowlife piece of shit. Why would she go to you?”

  “She wanted me to run with her. She figured it’d be easier to survive if she wasn’t alone and that maybe I’d want out too. I told her I couldn’t do it, I—I’m no runner—you know that.”

  I took a step closer.

  “Shit,” he whimpered, bottom lip trembling. “Wait, just—me and Julia known each other forever—you know that! She came to me and I—trust me, man, I only tried to help! She wanted a weapon and she needed cash, but I—I told her I was tapped out and she should go see Bobby Blades.”

  “What else?”

  “I let her crash at my place for the day.”

  “Yeah, I bet you did.”

  “Shit, it’s—I didn’t mean it like that, man.”

  “What did I tell you, Joey?

  “I know, but—”

  “What did I tell you?”

  “If you ever found out I was around her again, you’d…”

  “I’d what?”

  “You’d kill me,” he sobbed, his face twisted. “But, dude, listen. Please, just…just…listen…okay? I didn’t run, man. You know I’d never do that, I mean, she asked but I said no. All I did was, I—I tried to help her. What was I supposed to do? She had nowhere else to go!”

  “What did I tell you?” I asked again.

  “Okay, I know, I—yes—but here’s the thing, I don’t, I mean—come on, man—why would I go to her? She came to me! I—fuck—you can’t just off me, bro. I’m on the list, you—I do my part! You can’t kill me!”

  I leveled the shotgun and shot him in the face.

  The impact exploded his head, and in a bloody spray of rain and brain matter, vaulted his body back and away, off the edge of the roof and into the night.

  With the sound of the blast still ringing in my ears, I closed my eyes and stood in the rain a while, hoping maybe it’d wash me clean. No such luck.

  What no one knew was that I’d already completed my last assignment punishing those who broke the rules. I was done with all of it. I didn’t care what was supposed to be anymore, I only knew I wanted peace. The job had left me with more demons than most of those I’d tracked down and eliminated, and now it was only a matter of time before Julia came down the pipe as an assignment. Not for me, but someone else, and I had to move before that happened. Fuck the rules. Nobody knew where the hell they came from or who had invented them anyway. I’d go after her, but I wasn’t going to take her out for running. I only wanted to find her before another Dreamcatcher did. And I didn’t care what I had to do to make sure that happened.

  I glanced down at the blood Joey the Creep had left behind along the edge of the roof. Then I walked away, dead inside as the broken bodies and bad dreams in my wake.

  * * *

  Rain was still pummeling the city when I wandered into the public food district, a congested and bustling neighborhood of three streets that catered to those in need of something hot, fast and easy to eat, if not necessarily good. Mixed in were cheap retail carts and makeshift storefronts hastily thrown together at the mouths of alleys or burned-out buildings nobody used anymore, or maybe never had. Pushing through the hordes of merchants, patrons, streetwalkers, pimps and other lowlifes that populated the area, I made my way to a block where I often ate, then selected one of the portable food wagons that lined the narrow street. Dropping onto the only vacant stool, I leaned forward onto the small counter so the awning could shield me from most of the downpour, then lit a cigarette and waited. A few minutes later, a heavyset woman in a ragged, once-ornate dress, and a colorful scarf pulled tight over black hair piled high on her head, made her way over to me. I’d eaten at this cart countless times, and there was always someone new working it.

  “Let me get a chicken with beans and rice,” I said above the din of rain.

  “¿Frijoles rojos o negros?” she called back.

  “Rojos.” I noticed the guy next to me had a bottle of beer. “¿El frío de la cerveza?”

  “¿Por qué no ser?” she snapped.

  “A continuación, tirar uno de los de también.”

  Once she’d moved away, I looked around. All the merchants had awnings or makeshift sheets and tarps up, which in the steady downpour, gave the narrow street an even eerier look than usual. Mostly the same cast of characters on the street, hustling about, working the grift or looking for things they’d never find, squeezing by one another, blind mice all, hurrying off to God knew where just like always. Even the unfamiliar faces looked the same. Nothing ever really changed around here. New actors, maybe, but the same tired old roles.

  Right around the time I finished my butt the woman slid a bowl in front of me, then slapped a plastic fork and a paper napkin down alongside it. The bowl held a pile of red beans, rice and pulled chicken. It was hot and there was plenty of it, although it looked somehow less than fresh. I motioned to a bottle of hot sauce behind the counter. She fetched it for me, then looked at me with an impatient smirk, awaiting payment.

  I flashed my credentials, letting her know this one was on the house.

  With a look of disgust I’d long become accustomed to, she stomped off to wait on the next wave of customers. I pulled my long coat in tighter around me, leaned closer to the counter, and under the minimal protection the awning provided, doused my dinner in cayenne sauce. Reminded me of blood, but then, it always had.

  Somewhere behind me a woman screamed. It was loud but brief, and while some turned to see what it was all about, I powered down a mouthful of food instead. Whatever was going on was business as usual in this neck of the woods and none of my concern. I was off the clock anyway.

  In a cold and unrelenting rain, I ate my meal, such as it was, and did my best to put all the horrible things knocking around in my head to sleep for a while, the lights from the carts and kiosks the only illumination in an otherwise brutally dark night.

  I wasn’t quite done when the stool to my left freed up. The guy eating wasn’t finished yet, but when he was told to move, he moved. I understood why when I saw who’d taken his place.


  Shadow was full-blooded Navajo and looked the part, from his dark chiseled features to his jet-black hair that hung down past his shoulders, to his wide-brimmed black felt hat featuring a band around the base that showcased colorful tribal symbols. His coat was the same as mine, a standard-issue long trench. I couldn’t remember how long we’d worked together, but he’d been in the game at least as long as I had, and that was a long time. His name was well-earned. Most runners were dead before they even knew he was there, and he had the ability to enter and leave a scene like a fucking ghost, a shadow, there one minute and gone the next. “Been looking for you,” he said in his usual monotone.

  “What do you want? I’m eating.”

  “You know what they put in that?”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said, scraping what was left from the bowl into my mouth.

  “Mostly rodent.”

  I dropped the bowl and wiped my mouth. “What do you want?”

  “Cap needs to see you.”

  “You running errands for him now?”

  I could never tell what Shadow was thinking because, far as I knew, he only had one expression, and it was completely noncommittal. What I did know was how lethal he could be, and a sense of humor wasn’t exactly at the head of his skill set.

  “I was going out anyway,” he finally said. “Told him I’d look around and let him know if I saw you.”

  I took a few gulps of beer. “So what’s he want?”

  “Wants you in his office. Now.”

  “Why?”

  Shadow stared at me.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, “all right.”

  As I finished my beer, put the bottle down on the counter and lit another cigarette, the Mexican woman returned and asked Shadow for his order. He dismissed her with a menacing sideways glance.

  I watched as she gathered my trash, then disappeared.

  When I turned back to Shadow, he was gone too.

  4