Dead Boys (2 page)

“The point of
leaving
.” She was playing pat-a-cake now, at the tempo of a dirge. “They send servants, the servants don’t want to small talk. And it’s quiet that gets us through the years.”

Jacob steeled himself and stepped into the doorway. “What I have to ask is too—too personal to entrust to a proxy. Both for me and for you. I’m not here to speak to Ma Kicks.”

For the first time, she seemed to give him her full attention, her hands plopping into her lap. Even the baby’s restless feet were still.

“I’m here,” he went on, “to ask a question of Clarissa.”

Her body stiffened. Jacob grabbed the flaking corner of her doorway, suddenly fearful that he’d gone about this all wrong.

“That—that’s what they called you, isn’t it? In the days when you worked beneath Dead City’s streets?”

Her head was shaking, as if palsied. She seemed unable to speak. He could think of nothing to do but press on.

“When you worked in the Tunnels, with that traveler known to every citizen as—”

Then the chamber exploded in a din so abrasive that both of them ducked.

“Remington!” she roared over what sounded like a jackhammer atop the hollow drum of the room. “I told you not to play up there!” Hustling Jacob out of the way, she stomped onto the path that curved up and around the water tower. Stunned by her sudden animation, he followed behind, striding uneasily onto the percussive roof.

There, leaping to and fro with that utter lack of coordination that is the hallmark of a recent immigrant to the Land of the Dead, a teenaged boy as pale as milk was at play. In his hand he held a gutless tennis racket, which he swung with savage ineptitude at the trio of blackbirds flapping and diving at his head, trying for his eyes. The boy’s freckled face was seized in an expression of amiable surprise, and his body, clad only in blue jeans, was so perfectly unblemished that Jacob couldn’t imagine how he’d died.

“Didn’t I tell you to keep off the roof?” scolded Ma Kicks, snatching the racket from his hand and whacking it sidewise into one of the blackbirds. It tumbled down the side of Southheap, squawking in protest. Its partners, impressed by her aim, flapped away, and she aimed the racket at Remington. “Didn’t I tell you, now?”

Jacob was still struggling to assimilate the change in her demeanor, to say nothing of her sudden increase in volume.

“But, Ma,” said Remington, his voice an earnest alto, “those big birds were picking on a little one! They picked him right apart.” Ma Kicks tossed the racket off the roof, and Remington turned to Jacob, as if they were old friends. “This little crow, you should have seen him go. He caught a beetle all on his own, and then those three big guys swooped down and tore his belly open to get it out. Well, he pecked the biggest one of them right in the eye, and then two of them held his wings in their beaks while the other one tore them off, like
kkkkt
!” As he swung his bare arms through the air to illustrate, he lost his footing and slammed onto his back, sending a thunderclap through the roof of the chamber.

Ma Kicks paced close to Jacob, leaning close. “This little fool don’t heed a word I say,” she said, in a conspirator’s whisper. “Crawled straight up here from the river and had his mortis on my doorstep, and now I can’t get rid of him.”

“That’s—quite the predicament,” said Jacob under his breath. It occurred to him that Ma Kicks had taken a sort of surrogate, a child who could act where hers could not. He wondered if the bond of motherhood, if nothing else, might stir her from inaction.

“Where did that little crow go, anyway?” Shoving himself onto his bare feet, Remington stumbled around in a circle, and as he turned his back, Jacob saw the jagged wound that had caused his death. The back of his head had been obliterated by a shotgun, and nothing remained but gleaming bone.

“That’s why I call him Remington,” murmured Ma Kicks. “Dummy crossed over with his brainpan clean as a mixing-bowl. Big toe stuck in a shottie’s trigger-guard. Came up the Heap using it as a walking stick. But since he left his brains behind, he don’t remember a moment of his life. Boy’s halfway between an idiot and an angel, but the idiot half is on my last nerve.

“Aw, Remy, put that bird down!” she cried, staggering off the roof in disgust. “Nasty things got diseases even a corpse could catch.”

Remington bounded up to Jacob, thrusting his cradled hands out before him. “See, look at him! He’s scrappy. And little. I think he’s like a kid crow.”

The crow and its wings, stunned by the shock of division, lay perfectly still in the boy’s cradled hands. “Let’s sit down here,” said Jacob, clearing a space in the rubble and depositing his knapsack by its side, sensing a rare opportunity to win the seer’s favor. “Put the crow down, if you would, and we’ll see if we can stitch him up.” With nimble, practiced gestures, he pulled out several plastic canisters, selecting a needle and a spool. “The thread’s black, you see, so it will blend right in.”

“Will his wings work?”

“No way to know unless we try,” said Jacob, teasing the skin loose from the wing-stubs with a dental tool. He glanced at Ma Kicks, who was watching them sidelong. “I rarely work with postmortem severance, but since the incident was recent, there’s hope.”

As Remington stared in mute fascination, Jacob told him to retrieve a film canister full of paper clips from the knapsack and straighten two of them. “We’ll fix the wings to the body with those,” he explained as Remington fumbled with the cap. “I’ll have to jam them into the muscles to keep them in place, but it won’t hurt your friend. He’s past all that now.”

“How do you know how to do this?” said Remington, popping the cap open, spilling paper clips everywhere.

“Not to worry, I’ll pick those up in a moment. I know how to do this because this is how I earn my keep. I’m a preservationist: I apply cosmetic, medical, and taxidermic principles to the business of keeping long-dead corpses looking like they were only just living. I don’t get many crows for clients, though; I fix people. Although my first client, believe it or not, was a rat named Japheth.”

“A talking rat?” said Remington.

“Not that I noticed.” Jacob dipped his needle into the skin at the crow’s shoulder, then through the wing. “I named him myself. His situation was rather similar to that of your friend: he’d made his way out of the river, and some citizen, in spite or ignorance, had stomped on him. As a result, his front end worked, but his little bottom dragged on the ground, and as he passed by the spot where I’d been sitting since my mortis passed, I found him so pitiful that I determined to fix him using the basic skills of taxidermy, a hobby of mine in livelier times.

“I had a theory I was eager to test, you see. Some of the corpses I’d seen on the streets were like you: they had bodies like living folk, with muscles and organs intact. But some—forgive me, Clarissa—were more like Ma Kicks, little more than skeletons dressed in skin.”

“Hell, I know what I look like,” muttered Ma Kicks, keeping an eye on Remington while she reached absentmindedly into her womb.

“So what was the theory?” said Remington.

“Since the corpses who were only skin and bone seemed to move just as well as the fleshy ones,” said Jacob, testing the flexibility of one reattached wing with his fingers, “I came to believe that bones are the engine driving the motion of the dead.”

“Bones are the engine,” whispered Remington, as if he might be quizzed on this point.

“To prove this theory, I experimented on little Japheth, who didn’t object. With the pocket-knife I’d brought with me from the Lands Above—”

“The what?”

“That’s what we call the world of the living, where all corpses come from. In any case: with my pocket-knife, I skinned the little fellow, keeping his pelt on a nearby ledge to cure. Gently, I pulled all the muscles from all his bones, then sat for weeks whittling what’s called a body-mold from a piece of driftwood.”

“That’s gross,” said Remington with approval. “What’s a body-mold?”

“A carving that replicates the musculature. A fake body, if you will, that fits inside the skin. A tall order, since I wanted to fit his tiny bones inside the wood just as they’d have sat in the muscles. If bones were indeed the engine that drove Japheth’s motion, I’d have to leave them in place if I wanted him to be able to move.

“While I carved, Japheth’s skeleton waited patiently, holding together all the while, even scuttling around at a surprisingly rapid clip. When I finished, I snapped the body mold into place and sewed up his skin, which by then was as dry as a little rug, enabling him to walk proudly, looking as hearty as a sewer-rat in its prime. After that, I was able to swap him for three years’ credit, with which I purchased my first set of tools. And that,” said Jacob, snipping the thread on the crow’s second wing, “is how I developed the Jacob Campbell Preservative Treatment.”

“Preservative Treatment,” Remington pronounced, jabbing a finger perilously close to Jacob’s cheek. “Is that what’s wrong with your face?”

“What’s—
wrong
? Whatever do you mean?” Grasping the crow in one hand, Jacob dipped the other into his knapsack, retrieving a cracked compact mirror and rapidly inspecting himself. All was well, he found to his relief: his yellowed teeth still shone through grimacing lips; his milky eyes remained firmly ensconced in their sockets; his kinky hair yet clung to his scalp; and, most importantly, his skin let no bone show through. To achieve this effect at his level of decay, he’d had to patch himself with a dark brown leather that matched his natural hue, then buff the new hide with shoe polish. “My dear boy, this is
intentional
. More, this is the best that any corpse could hope for!”

Remington nodded. “It’s freaky.”

Jacob stowed his mirror, considering that Ma Kicks’ pronounced decomposition was the boy’s only basis for comparison. He tried to calm himself. “I can assure you, Remington, that this is a top-notch preservation. Not quite the Campbell Treatment, I admit, as I’ve made notable progress in the industry since I first worked, with hand-mirror and scalpel, on my own fresh body. But it’s still stylish, effective, and envied by all but the wealthiest of my clients. At any rate!” he chirped, handing over the crow. “Your feathered friend should come around in awhile, and we’ll see if his wings have recovered.”

“Thanks, Jake!” cried Remington, nuzzling its beak with his button nose, an act of intimacy that caused both Jacob and Ma Kicks to turn away in disgust.

Jacob stood, slipping the knapsack over his arms. Ma Kicks crooked a finger at him, starting down the path. As they departed, Remington began humming tunelessly to his pet, stroking its wings against its body as if he hoped to cuddle it back to health.

“I see the little one isn’t your only charge,” Jacob ventured. “That boy you’ve adopted is cheerful enough, even if he suffers from a surplus of enthusiasm.”

“Please,” said Ma Kicks, both hands on her back. “I had enough to deal with before he came.
Another
loudmouth in the cave? No thank you.” She hobbled into her chamber and sat heavily on the floor, moaning as if the motion caused her pain. “You got a way with him, Patches. First time he’s been quietly occupied since his mortis. Sit.” She parted her shawl like a curtain and gently dipped her hands into her belly, resting her baby’s feet against their palms as she let out a long, rattling sigh. “Now. Something about the Tunnels, was it? Let’s get this over with.”

“Gladly,” said Jacob, settling in as best he could in those cramped quarters. “I’m tremendously excited to have the opportunity to speak to you about this matter at last. I can’t tell you how long the path was that led to your door! But after a diligent search, I found an old acquaintance of yours who let me in on a little secret. Ah, but where are my manners? You should have your tribute.”

He pulled a package wrapped in brown paper from the depths of his knapsack and handed it over, bowing his head. Ma Kicks tore it open without ceremony. It was an unblemished picture-book he’d come by at great expense, with an illustration of a girl crawling into a mirror embossed on its cover. She held it briefly in front of her stomach, muttering, “Book,” then tossed it into a splintered trunk. The gift elicited a series of kicks from within her womb, which Jacob hoped were demonstrative of excitement, not annoyance.

“In any case,” he continued, “I rather doubt anyone else has made this connection. Tell me, Clarissa—”

“Call me Ma.” Her body had fallen still again, her voice fallen back to a whisper.

“As you wish. Ma, is it true that you once knew that adventurer known to Dead City as the Living Man?”

No answer came. She didn’t budge, but her child began to twitch—unless Jacob’s eyes were deceiving him, almost rhythmically.

“Most would call his story a folktale,” Jacob said. “But I believe—I
know
better. And my source has told me that you have first-hand experience.”

“Ain’t a topic I care to discuss,” she whispered.

Her silence stung. Jacob felt like a fool for assuming that Ma Kicks would receive him with soft surprise, then joyfully help him when he told her of his intentions.

No matter. She’d hear of his adventures with the Living Man one day. For now, he’d fib a bit. An oblique approach would serve him better than showing his hand. “What bothers me, you know, is how misunderstood he is in the culture of the city. To think that such a remarkable explorer could cheat the laws of life and death, only to end up the object of ridicule—why, it positively pains me.” Not a grunt from Ma Kicks. Jacob leaned forward. “Help me tell his story truly. Let’s set it to rights. Let us not allow that brave soul to remain a punchline.” The baby’s kicks seemed to be getting faster. Was that a good sign or a bad one? Jacob, at a loss and possessing no solid information, went out on a limb. “Let us tell the truth at last about—about what
happened
to him.”

Her hand drifted toward a pile of blankets. “Who you been talking to?”

“My informant would give no name. He said only that he knew you long ago. Beneath the city.”

“Barnabas is a liar. Always was.”