Wildcards - Jokertown Shuffle - Wildcards - Jokertown Shuffle Part 5
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Wildcards - Jokertown Shuffle Part 5

Add were bloody. All had open wounds. Most had arrows sticking in chests, throats, backs, or eyes. Their faces, as Brennan watched them approach, were mostly familiar, and he realized that these were the men he had kidded since coming back to the city.

There were a dot of them.

Brennan was momentarily frozen, unable to decide upon a plan of action as the dead men approached. There was a sudden movement, a sudden flicker of motion that Brennan caught out of the corner of his eye. He whirled to face it head-on and, saw a ghastly-grinning man with a horribly tattooed face tanding within arm's length of him.

It was Scar, the teleporting ace and gang deader who Brennan had kidded when he'd first come to the city. Scar's face was tattooed with the scarlet and black whorls that were the mark of the Cannibal Headhunters. He was a sadistic ace who took vast delight in utilizing his power to help him slowly slice up his victims with a straight razor. "I'm back, asshole," he said in a ghastly whisper through the throat that Brennan had crushed with a bowstring. "And this time I've got help." He gestured at the company of dead men slowly surrounding them in the brutal heat.

"You'll need it," Brennan said with a confidence he didn't totally feed. "I already kidded you once."

Scar hissed in rage, disappeared, and reappeared right in Brennan's face. He slashed out with his straight razor. Brennan ducked and half blocked the blow, but not before the razor cut across his chest, slicing his sweat-soaked T-shirt and scoring the flesh underneath. Scar disappeared, then flicked back into existence half a dozen feet from Brennan.

"Time to play," the sadistic ace said.

Brennan felt blood mingle with the sweat running down his chest, and he suddenly realized that he could die in this place. He looked around quickly, spotted a narrow gap between two dead Egrets who were closing in on him, and sprinted for it. Brennan stiff-armed the Egret who moved to intercept him and pushed his way through.

"Run, you bastard, run!" Scar screamed with crazed delight. "You'll never get away, never! You're meat--dead, rotting meat!"

Brennan ran, the dead men on his trail, Scar watching and laughing horrible constricted daughter.

Rick and Mick held up the pickle jar and looked at it intently. Brutus stared back at them, his face forlornly pressed up against the glass, bruised and swollen. Blood trickled from his nose, and he tried, unsuccessfully, to cradle his broken right arm as Rick shook the jar and watched the joker bounce around.

"Why are we bringing the little geek with us?" he asked Kien.

Kien glanced down at him as he drove carefully through the flurry of fat damp snowflakes. "Ultimately, as a receptacle for Captain Brennan s soul. After we've captured them, I've decided to have our jumper allies transfer me to his body for a while and him to that thing."

"Cool," Rick said. He gave the bottle another shake. "Better take the did off and give the geek a little air," Mick said. "He's starting to turn blue."

Kien chuckled indulgently, then turned his attention back to the street. Kien didn't dike driving, and he liked driving in snowstorms even less, but he wanted privacy on this trip. Once it was over, he would have another body, another identity, one that no one would survive to know about. Not the jumpers who would effect the transference. Not even Rick and Mick. He glanced at the monsters torturing the helpless little joker. They were getting almost as much fun from that as they had when they manhandled the joker until it told where Jennifer was being kept in the clinic.

They had their crude uses, but Kien knew he wouldn't miss them. It was time to invest in a better grade of help.

Kien pulled into the clinic's parking lot, next to the van that had ARCHER LANDSCAPING AND GARDENING painted on its side. It had taken months of detective work to track down Brennan and his bitch, but nothing was beyond Kien's power.

Nothing.

"All right. Wait here until I send for you, then bring your friend," Kien said, gesturing at the pickle jar.

Rick held it up, giving it another shake as Kien slipped out of the car. Kien would miss the thrill of being an ace when he gave up this body. He faded down to his eyes-it had taken a little practice to realize that when he faded out totally, he was also totally blind-and moved through the falling snow like an animated silhouette. He made his way to an unlocked service entrance at the back of the clinic and silently slipped inside. He paused for a moment, orienting himself, then went to the room on the top floor the pathetic joker had told him about.

It was easy to fade to nothing whenever he saw an approaching nurse or orderly, easy to fade his eyes back in when he heard them walk by. No one saw him. The door to the room was shut. Kien looked through the small window set high on the security door and saw Brennan's bitch lying in the bed, her forehead bandaged.

The big joker priest, Father Squid, was standing next to the bed. Someone was sitting in a chair next to the priest, but the priest was in the way, and Kien couldn't identify him. Or her.

Everyone was intent on Brennan's bitch. Kien drew the gun he carried in his coat pocket and pushed open the door. "Be quiet," he said in his most commanding voice, "and I'll let you live awhile."

The priest turned and stared. Kien let his gun fade in until everyone could see it. "Don't be stupid," Kien said, and the priest held his ground, an unreadable expression on his ugly joker face. "Stand back, slowly. And remember, I'm not afraid to shoot."

"Listen to him," the joker priest said. "It's Fadeout, of the Shadow Fists. He means what he says."

"You're right," Kien said, laughing aloud, "but also wrong. Very, very wrong."

There seemed to be no reason to remain invisible any longer. Kien faded in as the priest stepped back from the bed, and the person sitting in the chair looked up at him. Kien stared. It was a small Asian man, white-haired, wrinkle-faced, with a long, sparse chin beard. He was dressed in shabby, patched clothes. It was his father.

Kien's gun shook as he pointed it at him.

"Such a son," his father said in the familiar hated tone of voice.

The old man shook his head sadly, and Kien started to lower the gun. It's a trick, he suddenly thought. It's got to be a trick. He raised the gun again, trembling fingers almost pulling the trigger unwillingly.

"Who are you?" Kien asked.

The image of his father shook his head again, sadly. "It is an evil child who doesn't recognize his own father, Hsiang Yu," the apparition said.

"What do you want from me?" Kien shouted, unnerved at the spectre's use of his real name.

His father shook his head. "Only the respect due me. For that," he continued, "I will give you a gift. Your greatest, fondest desire."

"What's that?" Kien asked in a shaken voice.

"Do you want the head of Daniel Brennan?" his father purred.

Kien's eyes grew wide. "You know I do."

"Then you shall have it," Kien's father told him. "If," he added in the voice of a devil, "you are man enough to take it."

His father pointed to the other side of the bed. Kien carefully leaned forward, looking over the bed, and saw Brennan lying asleep on the floor.

Kien smiled wolfishly. "This is a great gift, oh Father," he said, and pointed his gun at Brennan.

His father shook his head. "You were always one for taking the easy way, my son," he said.

Kien glanced at him, but before he could say anything, there was a sudden, terrifying wrenching. Kien felt his mind whirling into a mad vortex. He closed his eyes, but it wouldn't stop. He tried to vomit, but he couldn't. He swallowed hot bile, and when he opened his eyes again, he lurched forward to steady himself against the great teakwood desk that stood in the office of his apartment that overlooked Central Park.

He took a deep breath, fighting the nausea still rumbling through his stomach, and looked around. It was his office, all right. Everything looked normal. All his art treasures were in their places, all his expensive furniture polished and unmarred, even the surface of his teakwood desk, which had been horribly damaged during his faked death when that idiot Blaise had pinned his watchdog joker to its surface with a letter opener.

He ran his hand pensively across the desktop that was so highly polished that he could see himself in it. He leaned forward for a closer look, mumbling to himself as he realized that he was back in his old body. He was Kien again. He looked at his right hand and wrung it with his left, and then laughed a short relieved laugh. At least he had two whole hands. He looked away, startled when the door to his office opened.

Wyrm stood in the doorway. But that couldn't be. Wyrm was dead. He looked dead, Kien suddenly realized-and pissed.

"I wasss your loyal ssservant," the scaleless reptiloid joker hissed, "and I died becausssse of your ssschemes."

"It wasn't my fault," Kien protested. He still half refused to believe that Wyrm was standing before him, but the evidence was hard to ignore. It looked like Wyrm, talked like Wyrm, and even had a big ugly wound in its throat where Fadeout had stuck it with the same letter opener that had killed the watchdog joker. "Fadeout killed you," Kien added. Wyrm approached, still looking angry, and Kien drew back behind his desk. Wyrm was inhumanly strong, and his bite was highly poisonous. Kien knew that he was no match for the joker.

"I died," Wyrm hissed furiously, "becaussse you wouldn't give me the loyalty I alwayssss gave you." He loomed over Kien like an avatar of death, and the general cringed. Kien pictured Wyrm's great gaping maw crunching down ruthlessly on his throat.

"Don't," he managed to get out. "Don't," he repeated, shielding his face with his arms.

Wyrm drew back with a sneer. "You're not to meet your dessstiny at my handsss,"

he said, clenching and unclenching powerful fists. "But out there." The joker pointed out the window facing Central Park.

Kien came around from behind his desk cautiously and peered out. Central Park was gone. In its place was a dense, thick jungle.

Just like home, Kien thought. Just like Vietnam.

Brennan ran, pursued by dead men and Scar's maniacal laughter.

Scar was toying with him, Brennan realized. The teleporting ace could have forced a face-off, but apparently wanted to make Brennan suffer before finishing him off. He flickered just in front of or just behind Brennan, slashing ferociously with his razor. Sometimes Brennan dodged or blocked, sometimes he didn't. His shirt was soon in tatters, and he was leaving a splattered trail of blood for the pursuing dead men to follow.

Even without Scar, there were too many corpses to handle. He needed help, and he needed weapons, preferably both. But the run-down streets were deserted, the decaying buildings dark and empty.

Brennan was in excellent physical condition, but his pursuers didn't tire. He knew he couldn't keep running and running. He'd eventually fall exhausted, and then his foes could deal with him at their leisure. Somehow he had to shake the pursuit, which seemed unlikely, or at least break up the pack and deal with it in small groups.

A familiar building caught his eye as he surged up the street, gasping in the killing heat, throat dry, heart starting to pound. It was the Famous Bowery Wild Card Dime Museum. Inside it would be cool, and dark, with plenty of hiding places.

He pounded up the stairs, twenty yards ahead of his nearest pursuer, and slammed hard against the front door. It swung wide open, and the cool, dark interior of the museum beckoned him. He dashed inside and put his back against the wall, catching his breath before moving into the interior.

He looked around at the familiar exhibits, the wall of monstrous joker babies floating in jars, the diorama of the Four Aces, Earth verses the Swarm, Kien's assassins attacking him and Ann-Marie. Brennan stopped and stared. There was, of course, no such exhibit in the real Famous Bowery Wild Card Dime Museum, but then, this wasn't the real Famous Bowery Wild Card Dime Museum. This version of it had been conjured from the depths of Brennan's mind and was filled with the archetypes and images that had shaped his psyche over the years.

He wandered on to the next exhibit. It was the Fall of Saigon recreated in all its casual brutality. Brennan was in the foreground ripping off his captain's bars and walking away from it. There was a scene of him fighting some forgotten battle in some forgotten Asian country during his mercenary years and one of him practicing Zen archery in the temple with his roshi Ishida looking on. There was Brennan after his return to the States in Minh's restaurant, but too late to do anything besides avenge his comrade's death at the hands of the Immaculate Egrets. There was Brennan meeting Chrysalis, Brennan fighting the Swarm, Brennan and Jennifer.

He wandered on in a daze. The last exhibit took him full circle in time and history, and he found himself looking at a diorama that was similar, so similar, to the first one he'd seen. Kien's assassins were breaking into his house, but it was Jennifer, not Ann-Marie, lying covered in blood.

Am I doomed, Brennan wondered, to repeat the cycle of death time and time again despite my best intentions? Are destruction and violence always to follow me like vicious pet dogs that I can never tame? He reached out a hand toward the wax figure of Jennifer in the last diorama, and a sound made him stop, turn, and look.

Scar stood at the head of the pack of dead men, grinning like an idiot.

"You think you're so smart," Scar said, mockingly. "We knew this was the first place you'd go." He looked over and pointed at a diorama that Brennan hadn't noticed before. "Wanna see the future, asshole? Look over there."

It was a scene of Brennan lying bloody and torn, Scar crouched on his chest, holding a dripping straight razor in one hand and Brennan's heart in the other.

Brennan turned to face the sadistic ace, and the myriad pairs of shining, unblinking eyes of all the men Brennan had killed since coming back to the city.

There was nowhere to run, no place to go. "Let's see," he said, "if dead men can die twice."

Scar grinned, lifted his razor, and flickered out of sight. He popped into existence three feet to Brennan's right. Brennan moved to block him, but something interceded.

Something that appeared from the shadows at Brennan's back quick as a cat, and struck Scar with a wooden staff. Scar took the blow on his throat and staggered back, wide-eyed and gaping like a suffocating fish. He dropped his razor, went down on his knees, and like Brennan, stared at the newcomer.

It was a man, a young man in his midteens. He was shorter than Brennan, slimly built but lithely muscled. He wore black pants and black slippers, and handled a bo staff with the ease of an expert martial artist.

Scar looked from the newcomer to Brennan, hate glinting in his crazed eyes. He sighed, as if with a final expulsion of breath, "Not again..." and collapsed on the floor, his hands clutching his severely crushed throat.

A murmur rose from the ranks of the dead men as the newcomer spoke. "You know who I am," he said in a soft youthful voice. "You know that I stand with this man. As do," he said, gesturing with his staff, "these others."

The dead men looked around the dark chamber, as did Brennan. His lips worked, but he was too stunned to speak. There was his old comrade the Tiger Scout Minh, with his daughter Mai, who had sacrificed herself so that the earth would be free of the Swarm. There was Sergeant Gulgowski and his squad from Nam. There was Chrysalis with a swarm of manikins at her feet.

The dead men still outnumbered them, but punks and bullies that they were, they no longer seemed to have guts for a fight. Brennan watched in astonishment as they drifted back slowly through the darkness until all were gone. And when he looked around, all his old friends and allies had also disappeared, all except the youth who stood before him. "Who are you?" Brennan asked quietly.

His young ally said nothing but turned slowly to face Brennan for the first time. Brennan stared into his face and thought, My God, he's got Ann-Marie's eyes. He smiled, and he had Ann-Marie's smile too.

"Are you real?" Brennan whispered.

"As real as I would have been if things had worked out differently." He leaned on his staff, still smiling. "Come," he said, "it's time to go to the center of things. Everyone is waiting."

Brennan nodded. There was much he wanted to ask the boy, but he stopped himself.

Somehow, he thought, it was better not to question some things. Some things it was better simply to accept.

The two left the Dime Museum in companionable silence. In the company of the boy the city no longer seemed so deathly hot, so terribly decayed. Brennan noted signs of life as green plants thrust through the cracks in the sidewalk, and a cool breeze blew through the concrete canyons.

The walk seemed to last a long time, but Brennan didn't mind. The farther they went, the more calm he felt. They were headed, he realized, toward Central Park.

Of course. The "center of things."

Only this was not the Central Park that Brennan knew. It was a jungle that seemed to have been lifted out of Southeast Asia and transplanted into Brennan's dream Manhattan. Brennan and the boy stopped at the edge of the jungle.

"You have to proceed alone," the boy told him. Brennan nodded. "Thank you," he said, "for your help and your companionship. Will I ever see you again?"

The boy shrugged. "Many things are possible." Brennan nodded again. He opened his arms. The boy came to him, and they hugged fiercely. Brennan kissed the top of his head, and then they parted. The boy smiled and, twirling his staff, disappeared into the heat waves rising up from the streets of the smoldering city. Brennan watched him until he was gone, then plunged into the jungle.

Kien hated the jungle. He'd always hated the jungle. He was an urbanite at heart. He liked air-conditioning, ice cubes in his drinks, and buildings with real floors and walls, all of which were rather lacking in the jungle.

But Wyrm had told him that his destiny was here, and he wasn't about to argue with the dead joker. He hit upon a strangely familiar path as soon as he reached the jungle. He half knew where it would take him as soon as he found it, so it was no real surprise that he came upon the village where he'd spent his childhood. It was strange, but Kien was beyond surprise by now. He accepted it as he accepted all the strangeness of this place, but he approached the village with all the caution that he could muster because he still had the feeling that death could be found here much as it could be found in the real world.

The village seemed deserted. He headed straight for the dirt-floored store that was his father's, where he'd spent so many hated hours when he was a child.

His father, Kien thought, had been such a hypocrite, always crying and moaning about how poor they were. He would scarcely put decent food on the table, let alone buy decent clothes for his children. It was bad enough growing up ethnic Chinese among the damned Vietnamese. It was worse to wear ragged and patched clothes that made him the laughingstock of the village school. And it wasn't, Kien remembered as he approached the store's entrance, that they didn't have the money. No. Kien's father, besides being a shrewd businessman in his dealings with the village, was also a blackmarketeer. He sold weapons, munitions, and medicine to the insurgents fighting the French, and everything he sold, he sold dear.

Kien walked into the dark interior of the store. Old Dad had plenty of money. In fact, Kien knew where the miser hid it, buried beneath a pile of cheap straw mats in a cache dug into the store's dirt floor. Right there.

As Kien looked at the spot in the floor, he was seized with the same compulsion that had once gripped him over thirty-five years ago. He took a sharp-pointed mattock down from those hanging from hooks on the wall and roughly pushed the pile of cheap mats away. He started to dig in a frenzy, cutting quickly through the cool, slightly moist soil in a spate of wild hoeing. Within moments he had dug a hole over two feet deep, and the blade of the mattock hit something that clanged with a metallic chink. He dropped the mattock, grubbed with his hands in the dirt, and pulled out a metallic strongbox that felt heavy with the weight of untold riches.

"You!" a voice squeaked in rage.

Kien looked wildly over his shoulder. It was Old Dad. "What are you doing there?

What are you doing with my box?"

"I--" Kien began, confused by the blurring of memories and events unfolding before him.

"My son, a thief," the old man said haughtily. He raised the cane that he always carried and struck Kien sharply on the shoulder. Kien ducked his head like a turtle retreating into his shell and took the blow as he always did.

Old Dad struck him again and again, and something snapped in Kien. He wailed in anger and pain, reached out and grabbed the object nearest to him, and struck out wildly at his father. He felt the shock of contact run up his arms, and his father stopped beating him. He opened his eyes and saw the truth that he had hidden with a thousand elaborate lies. He saw the mattock blade embedded in the center of his father's forehead. Old Dad looked at him with astonished, already glazed eyes.

He was dead. Kien had killed him. There was only one thing to do now. He had to run. He needed money. He reached gingerly over his father's cooling corpse and lifted the key the old man wore on a thong around his neck. He put the key into his pocket and tucked the strongbox under his arm. It was heavy, heavy enough to buy him a new life and a new identity in Saigon. He could finally get out of the jungle.