Down And Dirty

A well-dressed fiftyish woman sat behind the wheel of the silver Jaguar. "Do you know what's going on?" she asked.

Tom shrugged.

A lot of people were out of their cars now. A man in a Mercedes 450 SL stood with one foot in his car and one on the street, his cellular phone in his hand. "Nine-one-one's still busy," he told the people gathered around him.

"Fuckin' cops," someone complained.

Tom had reached the intersection when he saw the helicopter sweeping down Canal just above rooftop level. Dust whirled and old newspapers shivered in the gutters. The rotors were so loud, even at a distance. I never made so much fucking noise, Tom thought; something about the helicopter reminded him weirdly of the Turtle. He heard the crackle of a loudspeaker, the words lost in the street noise.

A pimpled teenager leaned out of a white Ford pickup with Jersey plates. "The Guard," he shouted. "That's a Guard chopper!" He waved at the helicopter.

The whap-whap-whap of the rotors mingled with the horns and sirens and shouting to drown out the loudspeakers. Horns began to fall silent. "… your homes…"

Someone began shouting obscenities.

The chopper dipped lower, came on. Even Tom saw the military markings now, the National Guard insignia. The loudspeakers boomed. ". .. closed… repeat: Holland Tu

Huge gusts of wind kicked up all around him as the helicopter passed directly overhead. Tom dropped to one knee and covered his face against the dust and dirt.

"The tu

When the copter reached the end of stalled traffic, two blocks farther back, it peeled off and rose high in the air, a small black shape in the sky, then circled back for another loop. The people in the streets looked at each other.

"They can't mean me, I'm from Iowa," a fat woman a

The cops had finally arrived. Two patrol cars edged down the sidewalk carefully, bypassing the worst of the congestion. A black policeman got out and started snapping orders. One or two people got back into their cars obediently. The rest surrounded the cop, all of them talking at once. Others, lots of them, had abandoned their vehicles. A stream of people headed up Canal Street, toward the entrance to the Holland Tu

Tom went with them, moving along slower than most, struggling with the weight of his bags. He was sweating. A woman passed him at a dead run, looking ragged and near hysteria. The helicopter flew over again, loudspeakers blaring, warning the crowd to turn back.

"Martial law!" a truck driver shouted down from the cab of his semi. A wall of people formed around the truck, trapping Tom in their midst. He was shoved up against the tractor's rear wheel as the crowd pressed closer for news. "It just came over the CB," the trucker said. "The motherfuckers have declared martial law. Not just the Holland Tu

"Oh, god," someone said behind Tom, a man's voice, husky but raw with fear. "Oh, god, it's the wild card."

"We're all going to die," an old woman said. " I seen it in '46. They're just go

"It's those jokers," suggested a man in a three-piece suit. "Barnett is right, they shouldn't be living with normal people, they spread disease."

"No," Tom said. "The wild card isn't contagious."

"Sez you. Oh, god, we probably all got it already."

"There's a carrier," the trucker shouted down. Tom could hear the crackle of his CB radio. "Some fucking joker. He's spreading it wherever he goes."

"That's not possible," Tom said.

"Goddamn joker-lover," someone shouted at him.

"I got to get home to my babies," a young woman wailed. "Take it easy," Tom started to say, but it was too late, way too late. He heard crying, screaming, shouted obscenities. The crowd seemed to explode as people ran off in a dozen directions. Somebody slammed into him hard. Tom staggered back, then fell as he was buffeted from the side. He almost lost his grip on the suitcase, but he hung on grimly, even when a boot stomped painfully on his calf. He rolled under the truck. Feet rushed past him. He crawled between the wheels of the semi, dragging his bags behind him, and got to his feet on the sidewalk, half-dazed. This is fucking crazy, he thought.

Way down Canal, the helicopter began another pass. Tom watched it come, the crowd surging hysterically around him. The chopper will calm them down, he thought, it has to.

When the first tear gas canisters began to rain down into the street, trailing yellow smoke, he turned and dodged into the nearest alley and began to run.

The noise dwindled behind as Tom fled through alleys and side streets. He'd gone three blocks and was breathing hard when he noticed a cellar door ajar under a bookstore. He hesitated a moment, but when he heard the sound of ru

It was cool and quiet inside. Tom gratefully dropped the suitcase and sat cross-legged on the cement floor. He leaned back against the wall and listened. The air raid sirens had finally quieted, but he heard horns and an ambulance and the distant, angry rumble of shouts.

Off to his right he heard the scrape of a footstep. Tom's head snapped around. "Who's there?"

There was only silence. The cellar was dark and gloomy. Tom got to his feet. He could swear he'd heard something. He took a step forward, froze, cocked his head. Then he was sure. Someone was back there, behind those boxes. He could hear the short, ragged sound of their breathing.

Tom wasn't going any closer. He backed toward the door and gave the boxes a hard telekinetic shove. The whole stack went over,. cardboard ripping, and dozens of glossy paperback copies of More Disgusting joker jokes cascaded from a torn carton. There was a grunt of surprise and pain from behind the boxes.

Tom edged forward and pushed the top boxes in the feebly moving pile off to the side, using his hands this time. "Don't hurt me!" a voice pleaded from under the books. "No one's going to hurt you," Tom said. He shifted a torn box, spilling more paperbacks onto the floor. Half-buried underneath, a man curled in a fetal ball, arms locked protectively around his head. "Come on out of there."

"I wasn't doing nothing," the man on the floor said in a thin, whispery voice. " I just come in to hide."

"I was hiding, too," Tom said. "It's okay. Come on out." The man stirred, unfolded, got warily to his feet. There was something dreadfully wrong with the way he moved. "I ain't so good to look at," he warned in that thin, rustling voice.

"I don't care," said Tom.

Walking in a painful crabbed sideways motion, the man edged forward into the light, and Tom got a good look at him. An instant of revulsion gave way to sudden, overwhelming pity. Even in the dim light in the back of the cellar, Tom could see how cruelly the joker's body had been twisted. One of his legs was much longer than the other, triple-jointed, and attached backward, so the knee bent in the wrong direction. The other leg, the 'normal' one, ended in a clubfoot. A cluster of tiny vestigial hands grew from the swollen flesh of his right forearm. His skin was glossy black, bone-white, chocolate-brown, and copper-red in patches all over his body; there was no way to tell what race he'd belonged to originally. Only his face was normal. It was a beautiful face; blue-eyed, blond, strong. A movie star's face.

"I'm Mishmash," the joker whispered timidly.

But the movie star lips hadn't moved, and there was no life in those deep, clear blue eyes. Then Tom saw the second head, the hideous little monkey-face peeping cautiously out of the unbuttoned shirt. It sprouted crookedly from the joker's ample gut, as purple as an old bruise.