Other Worlds: Street Meat by Norman Spinrad

STREET MEAT.
Norman Spinrad is the author of ten novels, including The Iron Dream, currently banned in Germany, Bug Jack Barron, soon to become a Universal film directed by Costa-Gavras, and The Void Captain’s Tale, his latest, currently out from Timescape Books.
A word of warning: What follows is not for the faint of heart. It is a gritty, all-too-realistic picture of life in New York City in the not-too-distant future. It’s not a pleasant picture, and overall, this is not a pleasant story. Told from the point of view of two denizens of this urban nightmare, the language and the settings are true to the story’s premise.
However, Norman Spinrad is such a master of his craft that despite these factors, he manages to imbue the characters with both dignity and humor, letting them and the story rise above the squalor.

Mai suerte and good, so it goes in La Vida, no, and sometimes a streetie can’t tell which is going to lead to which.
Bad luck for Gonzo that he lost his kibble kard when a city cop caught him trying to boost a roasted rat from a peddler who had the mother on the pad. Could you believe it, a rat peddler with the dinero to pad one of New York’s finest?
Maybe a smarter streetie than Gonzo wouldn’t have had so much trouble featuring that. Manhattan was full of rats, natch, but those ratones had more street smarts than, say, the likes of Gonzo, and half of them were rabid, so ratcatching was not for everyone. But a guy with the cojones and the talent could bag the buggers free, roast ’em over a garbage fire, and get five bucks a pop free and clear. A king ratter with a tight culo for dinero who held his luck for five years might even save up the bread to put a down payment on a room, or anyway a share in one. So slipping the local muni ten on the side every week was just playing the percentages, the closest a streetie could come to having his very own zonie.
But the street smarts to comprend all this Gonzo did not have, and so while the ratter was looking the other way, he hooked a fat sizzling one off the grill, not getting ten feet before he was collared with the evidence dangling still steaming from his hand. Good luck and bad.
First offense for street snatch was loss of kard, second was six months in the South Bronx digging holes on a cup of kibble a day, at the end of which, if you were one of the 60 percent who survived, you were issued a special blue kard, which marked you as a two-timer. And if a bluekarder got busted, it was lobe-job time, muchacho.
So the bad luck was the bust, and the good luck was that Gonzo did have enough street smarts to comprend the instant justice system. Most blue-karders had the smarts to throw the marker away, figuring a cup of kibble a day courtesy of the Welfare was not worth the inevitability of a lobe-job if you were busted with a blue ticket on your person. But Gonzo had the smarts to figure that the best course was to stay the hell out of the South Bronx in the first place. So after he lost his red kard the first time, he had spent a starving six days stalking streeties until he could bash a legit red-karder and steal a new one.
So even though this was really his second bust, he had a red kard in his possession to lose, and escaped with nothing worse than kard konfiscation. And of course, loss of the rat.
And muy pronto, one piece of good luck seemed to lead to another.
Street sex was not ordinarily Gonzo’s bag—not because of excess scruples, but because, with his skeletal frame, stinking threads, and face full of pimples, he was not exactly equipped for a prime career as street meat. But what he needed more than anything else right now was another kosher kard and the best place to boost one was the meat rack at fourteenth and Third.

These environs were about as low a meat rack as existed even in the Pig Apple, which was exactly the point. Any meat rack much more savory than this involved transactions between streeties and gainfully employed townies. Any market involving transactions between streeties and townies would be infested with muni cops, or even, if the market were patronized by pervos from a plush zone, by bad-ass zonies. Besides, townies, being employed, did not carry kibble kards.
Hard as it was for even Gonzo to comprend, Fourteen and Three was a meat rack in which the johns were streeties. Here streetie pervos could score for a joint or a jug or a stringy old pigeon, and the cops there don’t need you and man they expect the same.
The good luck was that Gonzo scored a geek almost at once, and a feeble old sack of stuff at that. Leaning up against the wall of a burned out building like barely able to stand, this white-haired old slimepot, wearing a drape stitched together out of the same potato sacking his street bag was made of, leered out of an alley at Gonzo, dangling a half-eaten rat invitingly.
“Rat for a rack?” he croaked.
“Name your game.”
“Gum-gum, giggles.”
Well, any streetie willing to trade a rat for a rack was odds on to be carrying a kibble kard, who could ask for a better dig to do the dirt than this alley, and this gaf was in no shape to offer a tussle. As far as Gonzo was concerned, this was almost too good to be true.
The bad luck was that he was right. Gonzo nodded his agreement and followed the gaf a few steps deeper into the alley. But as soon as the john began fumbling with his drape, Gonzo grabbed him around the throat with one paw, and stifled his scream with the other.
Frog-marching his victim even deeper into the alley, he demanded: “Koff your kard!”
The old geek’s mouth muttered against his palm.
“Yawp, you pervo, and I’ll tear your tongue out,” Gonzo said, removing the gagging hand.
The pervo giggled quietly. “Yock’s on you, younger,” he said. “Ain’t carrying no kard.” His face suddenly went through some weird transformation, as did his voice. “In point of fact, you foul creature, you’ve just assaulted a townie. It’s a lobe-job for you, sonny, if you’re caught.”
“Townie? Geek like you’s a townie, I’m a plush zone shimmer!”
“Vice verse, villain,” the old man gabbled. “I’m the plushie tushie, primed for prole place plunder. Slumming for sleazo sex, son, see the scene?”

Dimly, Gonzo saw the scene. He’d heard the word from the bird on this kind of turd. Rich townie pervos from some plush zone palace day-tripping the streeties, copping their sick kicks in streetie drag. On the other hand, it could be a scam to let him lam.
But with both hands on this dirty mother, it didn’t really matter. A red flash went off in Gonzo’s brain, bolts of lightning seared down his arms, and, gibbering and screaming curses in some primal language of formless and innocent rage, he bashed the pervo’s head against the wall with a dull sickening thunk, and dropped the limp remains to the ground like a sack.
Running on red-hot automatic now, Gonzo snatched up his victim’s street bag and rat, and fled up Third Avenue babbling and swearing, as if some cunning buried deep within his backbrain knew that no one on the sidewalks of good old New York was about to screw with a brain-burned screamer.
It was a job. She was a townie. That was all that Mary Smith knew and all she needed to know, or so she continually told herself at times like these. She owned an entire room in what had once been a luxury building on 78th and Riverside. There were twenty-five million people out of work in the US of A, and somewhere between five hundred thousand and two million streeties in New York who had neither jobs nor domiciles. Who thought themselves lucky when they got themselves a rat to supplement their kibble ration, assuming they even had kards. She was a townie. She had a job. She owned a co-op room with thirty-seven years to go on a forty-year mortgage.
In point of fact, while this was all that Mary needed to know, when she let herself, she knew far more than that.
She knew that “Smith” was a “family name” she had given herself to celebrate the miracle of obtaining employment. She knew that she had grown up possessing only the name “Maria.” She knew that until five years ago she had been a streetie, surviving by wits, hooking, and the considerable jungle judo she had been forced to pick up in the process. She knew that it had been only a fantastic piece of luck which had placed her in position to rescue a lousy plushie tushie from a mugger by practical application of these street fighting skills and so secure this job as a zonie.
Of course she was never unaware that she was a zonie.
She carried an old Uzi machine pistol which required constant maintenance. Six days a week, she reported to work at the headquarters of the Upper East Side Security Zone Guard Force. Six days a week, she guarded the frontier or shepherded Upper East Side plushie tushies on their forays beyond the borders of the Security Zone.
She also knew, when she let herself, that she had killed and/or wounded any number of streeties in the line of duty.
What she never let herself know was her body count. What she also never allowed herself to ponder, not even for an instant, was the moral ambiguity of being an ex-streetie protecting loathsome plushie tushies from the very reality from which she herself had escaped.
Indeed, she tried not to think of her charges as “plushie tushies” at all. They were Clients. They were People of Means. They were the Source of Employment. They had made her a Townie.
But at times like these, her double-think wavered. It was plain impossible to think of Missus Gloria Van Gelder as anything but a plushie tushie. In fact it was impossible to think of this woman as anything but a brainless, arrogant, gold-plated bitch.
What else could you call a woman who required the services of a helicopter, a pilot, and a zonie to take her and her wretched cocker spaniel Dearie back and forth to the Ellis Island Recreation Zone in order to let the little monster frolic in the grass and pee against a real tree? The fuel bill alone was probably the equivalent of three months’ salary for Mary. And while a million streeties subsisted on kibble and the occasional rat, the wretched beast, sleek, fat, and yapping, devoured enough horsemeat daily to treat three streeties to a deluxe banquet.
And now, as the helicopter clattered over the gray canyons of Manhattan in the late afternoon twilight, the dog was squirming and yammering on the fat woman’s lap as if its bladder was once again filled to bursting. Mary only hoped that the creature would piss right on Missus Gloria Van Gelder’s pink satin jumpsuit. Or better yet, decide to take a dump.
Missus Van Gelder, however, now decided to forestall any such catastrophe. “We must land immediately,” she told the pilot. “Dearie has to make a wee-wee.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible, madam,” the mournfulfaced pilot said. “We’re over an un-Zoned part of Manhattan. We’ll be home in a few minutes, Dearie will just have to wait until then.”
“Dearie is a dog, you imbecile!” Missus Van Gelder shrieked. “Do you think you can explain that to him? Do you think I intend to let him make all over me? You will land this machine at once! Right down there in that big burned out crater! Down! Now!”
“He’s right, Missus Van Gelder,” Mary said. “That’s not a safe area.”
The plushie tushie stared at her with eyes of blue gimlet steel. “You’re a zonie, aren’t you?” she said thinly. “You’ve got a machine gun, don’t you? What do you people think we pay you for? So that my little Dearie can piss on my pants?”
“I don’t think—”
“You’re not paid to think, you insolent creature!” Missus Gloria Van Gelder shouted. “You’re paid to provide protection, and you, my man, are paid to fly this helicopter where I tell you to! Another word of argument out of either of you, and you can go back to eating kibble and dead rats!

You will land at once!”
As if to agree with his mistress, Dearie began to make a horrible, whimpering keening sound. It was almost enough to make Mary bash its stupid brains out with the butt of her Uzi and then turn the business end on the dog’s mistress.
Almost enough. Instead, she gritted her teeth against the sound and her fury and double-checked her weapon as the helicopter descended towards the country of the streeties.
“Son-of-a-bitch-culo-cabron-bastard-plushie-tushiechingada- mother . . .”
Screaming more or less the same limited vocabulary of rage over and over again, Gonzo walked more slowly up
Third Avenue now, flinging old newspapers, crushed beercans, wads of toilet tissue, and more amorphous highclass townie garbage from the pervo’s street bag to the four winds.
For that was all that seemed to be in the bag, newspapers, empty aluminum cans, tampons, bits of cardboard, useless scraps of rag, a lot of townie crap without so much as an edible apple core or a gnawable rabbit bone, or any other potentially nutritive scrap of organic matter. As for the pervo’s half-eaten rat, whoever had previously munched on it must have done his gobbling quite a while ago. Even Gonzo was not ready to tear the thing apart for what edible bits might conceivably remain, at least not yet. Though he wasn’t ready to throw the rat away either, seeing as how it might just be possible to slip it to a blind beggar with a bad head cold in exchange for a butt or a belt of meth.
“Stinking-culo-mother-plushie-pervo-cabron-bitchbastard!”
If Gonzo hadn’t been too pissed off to think, he might just have been able to realize what deep shit he was really in. A real streetie’s real street bag would be filled with useful items—pieces of cloth big enough to stitch into something, fresh rat bones, bits of firewood, a brick that could be used as a weapon, maybe even a book of matches, a homemade shiv, or some real chunks of ratmeat if you hit the jackpot— not old paper and plushie tushie garbage that could have only come from a Zone. No real street bag, this. Meaning no real streetie, the stiff he had left in the alley. Meaning that if he were caught, it wouldn’t be the South Bronx or even a lobe-job, but a one-way token to Tube City, where, so the word from the bird had it, his meat would be used to give kibble what little flavor it had.
“Goddamn-madre-jumping-son-of-a-cabron-bitch-putaaargh!”

Verbally exhausted but still livid with rage, and still loping aimlessly northward, Gonzo upended the street bag, grabbed the bottom, and whirled it around his head, spraying the last bits of crap all over himself and another nearby screamer—a stooped, white-haired old woman dressed only in a ragged robe of brown paper and caught in an angry argument with an invisible Virgin Mary.
Nothing unusual about that. The street was full of babblers and screamers as always, gibbering to themselves or to invisible companions, and no streetie survived very long reacting to anything so trivial as being showered with old paper and garbage from someone else’s shit-fit.
But what was unusual—so unusual that it caused Gonzo to react once more to his environment and start thinking again—was that the dirty old chocha suddenly bellywhopped to the filthy pavement, grimy paw out-thrust to cover something that had clattered from the bag.
Moving with street smart instincts, Gonzo stomped on the hand with the full weight of his body, eliciting a liquid scream of pain, then kicked upward, catching the crone in the chops and flipping her over on her back, where she scrabbled and moaned like an overturned turtle.
And there on the cracked and filthy pavement was a metallic yellow coin. Prong a dong, a subway token!
A subway token! Five bucks in townie dinero! When the winter winds began to blow in a few months, could be worth a streetie’s sweet life to risk the old Subterranio.
Didn’t snow down under the ground. Warm it wasn’t, but you didn’t freeze, either. Good suerte again! Good luck too that only this old chocha had seen it.
All this passed through Gonzo’s brain as he was scooping up his treasure and stuffing it safely into his jock. Only then did he pause to think that it had to be more than good luck that twenty other street smart bonzos weren’t even now kicking the crap out of him fighting for the prize. Only then did he dig that all the other streeties in the vecino were eyeing the sky and listening to the sound pound. And only after that did the clattering chattering penetrate his conscious attention.
Whop-whop, chop-chop, a goddamn helicop was descending through the jagged canyon of burnt-out factory loft buildings towards the big bomb crater on Third and 30th. And this was no machine gun chop from the muni cops, it was a plushie tushie helicop, and it must be in deep trouble to be dumb enough to come down here in a streetie zone like a fat juicy bone!
Snatching up the empty bag in case of swag, Gonzo joined the gleeful rush to greet this tasty meat dropping right down to the nonexistent mercy of the street.
A sinking feeling blossomed in Mary’s stomach as the helicopter fluttered down past the burned-out buildings to land in a big rubble-strewn crater conveniently left as a landing pad by some thoughtful terrorist’s bomb of days gone by. And not just from the drop.
They were coming down right in the middle of a crowd of streeties; or rather a crowd of streeties, maybe as many as three dozen of them, was forming up around the crater as they came down into it.
The pilot moaned as the skids touched down. Dearie whimpered and squirmed in the lap of Missus Van Gelder, who cuffed him across the muzzle. “If you pee on me, I’ll kill you, Dearie!” she shrieked.
“Don’t turn off the engine!” Mary told the pilot as she cocked the Uzi. “This could get rough.”
The three of them sat there for a long moment as the circle of filthy, haggard, hungry-eyed streeties hesitantly began to converge, step by halting step, on the grounded helicopter, whose rotors turned slowly and throbbingly overhead as if to provide ominous background music.
But that stupid plushie tushie bitch had all the street smarts of her pissy little lap-dog. “Well what are you waiting for, you idiot?” she said, jamming the leash into the hand of the ashenfaced pilot. “Go take Dearie for his walk before he makes all over.”
Despairingly, imploringly, the pilot locked eyes with Mary for a long moment. She shrugged unhappily at him. “Make it fast,” she told him, brandishing her Uzi upwards like a spear. “Stay right by the helicopter and I’ll cover you.”
“Mama mia . . .” the pilot groaned. But he popped the canopy, and, as Mary stood up levelling the Uzi at the streeties as menacingly as she could manage, he snatched up the dog and stepped out onto the ground.
The circle of streeties seemed to ooze backwards a few steps as they caught sight of the machine pistol. But then, with an audible sigh of collective lust, they seemed to flow forward again as they saw the cocker spaniel already squatting and pissing as the pilot set it down.
Street smart memories that she thought she had lost, that she had tried so hard to lose, flooded in on Mary. She knew all too well what was going through those perpetually-starved brains out there. A dog! An actual dog!
Forty pounds of meat! Twenty or thirty rats’ worth, sleek and fat and well-fed, enough for three months of luxury, maybe more if you didn’t make a pig of yourself! She could all but feel the drool forming in her own mouth out of timewarped sympathy.
“Pero!” someone shouted. “Pero, pero, pero!”
“Dog!”
“MEAT!”
“MEAT! MEAT! MEAT!” more than one voice shouted.
Then they were all chanting it, inching towards the helicopter and working up their courage for a charge.
“MEAT! MEAT! MEAT!”
Mary waved her Uzi in the air. “Get back!” she shouted.
“Get back, you dirty.”
A chunk of stone came sailing up out of the anonymity of the mob, missing both her and the helicopter. Then a brick hit the canopy, shattering half of it into a webwork of cracks. All at once, bricks and stones and pieces of broken bottles were whistling overhead, raining down on the helicopter as the mob, with an animal growl, surged forward.
“Shoot!” Missus Van Gelder screamed. “Shoot! Shoot!
Shoot! Kill the dirty sons of bitches!”
As dozens of wild-eyed howling streeties shambled like killer apes towards the helicopter, Mary didn’t have to be told what to do. Her finger tightened on the trigger, sending a short loud burst of gunfire right into the mob.
Streeties shrieked and fell. The mob abruptly turned tail and began to flee in all directions like the denizens of an anthill fleeing from the sudden shock of a boot-heel.
But Mary hardly noticed any of this. For the sudden screaming burst of machine gun fire had passed not three feet from the pilot’s head, scaring him out of his socks. He threw up his hands in panic, and in so doing, let go of the leash.
The panicked cocker spaniel, yelping and barking, went tear-assing across the crater right on the heels of the fleeing streeties.
Gonzo, stuck in the rear of the crowd of streeties by the press of bodies, was frozen for a moment by the sound of machine gun fire and screams of agony, long enough to be knocked on his ass by some bonzo when the mob turned to flee.
Scrabbling to his feet in terror, he saw a black furry shape dashing right by his arm, barking and whining. The dog! What luck! Forty pounds of meat for the monster, muchacho!
Before his fuddled brain even had time to form these simple thoughts, his street smart instincts had acted. With lightning speed and with every ounce of strength in his scrawny arm, he raised up his fist and brought it down on the head of the cocker spaniel.
Before the pole-axed dog could even hit the ground, he snatched it up by the tail, stuffed it head-first into his street bag, shouldered the sack, and was up and running like a son of a bitch.
“My God, he’s got Dearie!” Missus Van Gelder screamed.
“Stop him! Stop him!”
But even as Mary fired, the plushie tushie bitch yanked at her arm, and the burst did nothing more than send chips of stone flying into the air not ten yards from the helicopter.
“Don’t shoot, you imbecile, you could hit Dearie!”
Then Gloria Van Gelder’s pale powdered puss was inches from her own, as livid and drooling with rage as any Mary had seen in her previous incarnation as a streetie.
“You go out there, you incompetent cow, and you bring back my Dearie alive, or you don’t bother to come back at all!” she snarled in a hysterical voice backed with cold steel. “I’ll have you digging rocks in the South Bronx till you drop! I’ll lobe you myself! I’ll have you ground up into kibble! And don’t you think I can’t do it, you wretched scum.”
Mary didn’t. Not for a moment did she doubt that with a wave of her fat-fingered hand, this chocha could and would destroy everything she had become since she clawed her way off the street. But for one brief moment, she did toy with the delicious notion of jamming the muzzle of her Uzi right down this lousy plushie tushie’s throat and emptying an entire magazine directly into her stinking guts.
Then she was off and running.
High on the fly with swag in his bag, Gonzo’s street smarts put brains in his feet. The mob was fleeing south on Third, the street was hot on the trot as the bird spread the word, and he knew he didn’t have much chance of keeping forty pounds of dog in his bag on a streetie main drag. He needed to fade from this scene like a submarine, and so he turned east on the first side street.
His luck held. No one else had made this turn. There was nothing on this narrow street but burned out building shells mounded with ancient garbage. Somewhere in these ruins there must be something sharp enough to cut up the mutt into meat, and if he could score a match somewhere.
But as he paused for a moment to catch his breath and check out his chances, he heard the sound of running feet.
Turning, he was brought right down to the ground, clown, by the sight of the zonie from the helicop halfway up the street behind him, running hard, closing fast, and waving that goddamn machine gun chop.
“Son-of-a-mother-jumping-puta-goddamn-zonie-bitch!” he screamed in outrage as he made his feet do their stuff. But with forty pounds of dog on his back, he wasn’t going to outrun no zonie for long.
And ditching the dogmeat to save his own was not even a thought that crossed his mind. She was starting to gain on him as he turned the corner and came out onto Lexington. Bad luck, boy, muy malo!
And then good.
He had come out onto the next main drag not a block from a subway stop! And for the first time in his life, he had a token in his jock!
The shock of such an incredible roll of good fortune—a token, the dog, now a subway stop—was like a cold whack in the chops that brought Gonzo’s street smarts rushing back.
Against all reasonable animal instincts, knowing that his pursuer would now be closing even faster, he forced himself to slow to a trot, and then to a mere brisky saunter as he entered the sphere of attention of the muni cop guarding the entrance against the more obvious chopartists, screamers, and psychoscum. Be cool, don’t be a fool, he told himself, flashing his token for the indifferent benefit of the bored muni as he descended the stairs to the subway station.
Mary turned the corner onto Lexington just in time to catch a glimpse of the top of a heavily-laden street bag disappearing down the stairs of the subway entrance up the block right under the stupid eyes of some lobed-out muni. Or so she thought. At this distance, it was hard to tell one swag bag from another, and for a few moments she could still delude herself that maybe she wasn’t going to have to chase the damn dog-snatcher through the subway, where her chances of catching him were slim to none.
But the mother was nowhere else in sight as she trotted up to the muni, waving her Uzi as a badge of zoniehood to cut any crap, and her brief interrogation of the cop put the seal on it.
“Skinny pimply geek with a dog in his bag?”
“Plenty of skin and bones with pimples, ain’t seen no dog in three years, whaddaya think this is, Madison and 60?”
“What just went down the stairs. Pimples? Heavy bag?”
“Yeah, regular pimple-puss. Big bag of swag, now thatya mention it, musta had fifty pounds of crap in there. Flashing a token too.”
Oh no! The odds against any streetie having a token were ten to one against. The odds against the one streetie that snatched the damn dog having one were forget it. Mary had hoped that if the bonzo had ducked into the subway entrance, he had simply panicked, wouldn’t get past the barrier, she’d be able to comer him like a nice fat trapped rat. But if the mother got past the barrier and into the Subterranio itself—
“Mierda!” she snarled, and dashed down the stairs.
One bit of luck was that this was a small local station, this entrance only opened onto the uptown local platform.
At the bottom of the stairs was the entrance barrier and a small one-man token fortress. The barrier was the usual floor-to-ceiling wall of rusting, bullet-pocked three-inch armor plate. The fortress was a seven-by-seven-by-seven cube of the same, with a rotating tv camera enclosed in bullet-proof glass on top, a single money-and-token slot at shoulder level and the muzzle of a fifty-caliber machine gun poking out just below it. One of the three revolving turnstile doors in the barrier was just turning shut behind someone. No one in sight, and no place here to hide.
Mary wasted no time interrogating the token clerk, seeing as how her eardrums and the soles of her feet were picking up the vibes of a train approaching distantly down the tunnel. She stuck a token in the turnstile slot, and with a belt from her shoulders, forced the rusty stile barrier to turn, valving her onto the subway platform.
The uptown platform was dim, gray-green, filthy, stinking, and pretty deserted. A muni armed with an M-16 lounged under one of the still-working lights close by the barrier. Four townies in subway masks stuck close by him staring across the tracks at the downtown platform. Up the platform towards the uptown end, a female streetie squatted. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Mary could see the lights of a train approaching the platform from downtown. That end of the platform lay in darkness, all the lights there having long since ceased to function. Odds on, her quarry was down there somewhere…
She turned to interrogate the muni. “Did you see where—”
At that inopportune moment, with a roar, a squeal, and a gut-wrenching clatter, the train barrelled into the station—
“—Wha—?”
“—Did you see—”
“—Huh—?”
—Hiss! Crunch! Squeal! Clang! The train came to a juddering halt and half the car doors slid open.
“I SAID DID YOU SEE A BONZO WITH A HEAVY STREET BAG?”
“Ya gotta scream in my face like that?” the muni snarled intelligibly in the momentary silence.
The masked townies (Mickey Mouse, Horseface, Clown, Frankenstein) dashed into the nearest car. The streetie daintily wiped her butt with the hem of her robe.
“I said, did you—”
Way at the downtown end, a figure carrying a heavy bag and glancing in Mary’s direction dashed out of the darkness into a subway car. The doors started to close—
“Crap!” Mary snarled, dashing for the nearest door, and managing to wedge it just enough ajar with the butt of her Uzi to snake inside.
Clunk! Hiss! Whirr! Jolt! The train began to pull out of the station.
Safe for the moment, Gonzo had time to think, and once he began to think, he couldn’t figure this crazy zonie. Why had she chased him this far? Natch, forty pounds of dogmeat would be a neat snatch even for a zonie, she must have the drool for the pero. But then why hadn’t she chopped at him with her piece; she sure hadn’t been slow with the blow back at the helicop. Loco in the coco, jamoco!
Gonzo dashed up the subway car to check out the doors at the uptown end. Days of yore, these had opened to connect the cars, but they had been long since welded shut for security isolation. Once he saw that the weld still held, that the zonie couldn’t carhop in here after him, he dropped down on one of the blue-green plastic benches that ran the length of the subway car to catch his breath and suss the scene.
There were only about a dozen people in this car, and they were all townies hiding behind their subway masks, staring into space trying to pretend that no one else existed in the hope that no one would notice they existed. No streeties to get any droolies for what might be in his bag.
Good thing too, because now he could see that the bottom of the bag was oozing blood. Anyone with street smarts knew that fresh blood meant raw meat, skeet. Only these townies, lobed-out for the duration behind their dumb masks with goo jammed up their ears, too gutless to even let their faces hang out naked in the Subterranio, would make like they couldn’t see he had mucho muncho in his poncho.
Hanging by one hand from a subway handle and dangling her chop from the other, Mary was given a wide zone all to herself by the masked townies, who sucked themselves even deeper into subway trance at the sight of this armed crazy, as she pondered the tactical situation. There were five cars between her and the bonzo and most if not all of the doors between would be welded shut. So you could say that she had him cornered in the extreme downtown sardine can. All she had to do was get to him.
Which, she realized, she could do at thirty fourth Street, the next station. Timing and speed, that was her need.
When the train stopped and the doors opened, she would dash out, run down the platform, and with luck get into the car where he was holed up before they closed again. The trick was the timing—she had to make sure that he didn’t slip out as she was slipping in. If he did, she’d be stuck in the train while he stood on the platform waving bye-bye and then her only chance would be to risk a head-shot on the flyby and hope she didn’t hit Dearie in the bargain.
On the other hand, if she were willing to risk shooting at all . . .
Not without a certain strain of the brain, Gonzo tried to think like a zonie. What was her next move along this groove?
Hippity-hop, car-to-car at the next stop, that’s what he’d do if he were a zonie cop. And if he could hop out just as the doors were closing and she was hopping in . . . It’d be fun, son, she’d be off to the next station in the can, man, and he’d be standing there waving adios to the heat still holding the meat!
Mary leaned against the doors as the train clanked and squealed into the next station, primed to move the moment they opened. Grind! Squeal! Clank! Thud! Zip!
The doors opened. Or rather one of them did, the other jamming. Mary snaked through, elbowing aside a fat townie in a devil mask who was trying to get in, made up one car, slipped on some crap, stumbled into two more townies, swept them out of the way snarling, made another car length, saw the bonzo peering out of a door three cars ahead, made another car length—
—The train doors started to close—
—She made for the nearest one, saw her prey starting to dash out of the train onto the platform as she ducked inside—
And fired a long wild burst along the length of the intervening cars, scattering screaming townies, pinning him inside as the doors slid shut and the train left the station.
The townies caught in the car with this maniac and her smoking gun sat motionless behind their silly subway masks, cringing a bit as she glared at them while fitting in a fresh clip, but otherwise earnestly ignoring everything that happened in a punctilious display of standard straphanger manners. Only a couple of slimy streeties at the far end of the car were babbling and moaning.
“Snap your yaps, or I’ll ice your dice, lice!” Mary screamed at them. “I’ll drop that bop on the next goddamn stop!”
Gonzo knew he had to move now, like pow! or on the next pass, his ass was grass. The townies in the car were pissing and moaning, yet at the same time trying to pretend nothing had happened as they oozed as unobtrusively as possible towards the downtown end, away from the monster.
“Son-of-a-bitch-bastard-puta-mother!” he screamed at them as one switch in his brain clicked off, and another clicked on, and he grabbed a geek in a Mickey Mouse mask, who had been too slow in moving, by the throat.
“Snap your yap, jap!” he snarled as the townie gurgled and gargled. Street smarts took over, and, using the townie’s head like a hammer, he began battering at the nearest window.
Clang! Screech! Thud! The train pulled into the next station.
Mary squeezed through the half-opened doors, ran down the platform, shoving townies out of the way with the muzzle of her Uzi, and made it into the extreme downtown car.
Two rows of townies huddled towards the end of the car spaced and shaking behind their subway masks. Except for a geek in a Mickey Mouse mask who lay on the bench towards the middle of the car in a smear of blood, beneath a window whose glass had been battered out to form a jagged exit.
The doors slid shut. Gingerly, Mary stuck her head through the shard-guarded windowframe.
The train began to move.
Peering downtown as the train began to move uptown, she saw a figure carrying a heavy street bag on its shoulder tear-assing down the subway tunnel.
“Son-of-a-bitch-puta-mother-bastard!” she screamed, firing a wild burst after him without thinking. The bullets echoed and pinged harmlessly off the concrete walls, and then the sound was lost in the ear-killing noise of the subway train getting up to speed.
Now that he was home free all, Gonzo allowed himself the luxury of feeling his fatigue. Scattered blue lights bathed the subway tunnel in a dim pale glow. A line of pylons separated the uptown from the downtown tracks.
Man-sized alcoves were incised into the tunnel wall at regular intervals for the benefit of track crews avoiding passing trains. Gonzo huddled in one of these. His feet were meat, his back was beat, and he really wanted a cool 24 on his seat.
But while he was pretty sure he had given the zonie the slip, he knew he wasn’t quite finished with this run, son.
Not until he had the dog butchered, dressed out, and cooked. For one thing, a forty pound mutt was only maybe thirty for the gut, and after having his ass chased all over already, he didn’t feature carrying the useless extra freight.
For another, raw dogmeat would start to stink in a day or two.
With all the old metal junk down here, finding something to use as a knife wouldn’t exactly be worth your life, but he couldn’t cook his snatch without a match, and just sitting down in the open and barbecuing a whole dog would draw every streetie within range like birds to a turd.
Much as he disliked the notion, he had to admit that a few pounds of the dog could buy him everything he needed, if he could find a solo lobo with a secret hooch where he could poach the pooch. Some dumb suck too weak to try and push his luck.
Come to think of it, a chick would sure do the trick…
Running on old street smart reflexes without being dumb enough to take time to think, Mary got off the uptown train, fought her way through the rush crush in this town under the ground, slipped into a downtown just pulling out, rode it two stops, and got off again. Couldn’t have taken more than five minutes.
Which meant that the bonzo who she had last seen running downtown through the tunnel had to be uptown from her now and heading her way down the uptown tunnel.
Fortunately for her, most of the lights at the uptown end of the downtown platform were long since gone, but there was still one burning at the uptown end of the platform across the tracks. Which meant that if she lay prone on the end of the platform, she would be invisible to anyone emerging from the tunnel, whereas he would become a nicely silhouetted target at point-blank range. Which meant that she should be able to drop him with a good tight headshot without much risk of hitting the dog.
But once she took up this position, lying out of sight in the filth and shadows, she had nothing to do but listen and think and smell the stink.
Like most townies without plushie tushie bread, Mary was constrained to ride the subway back and forth between work and her room. Although she felt a certain contempt for herself for doing it, like most townies, she wore earplugs against the noise, and a subway mask between her private inner world and the collective bummer of the subway and her fellow straphangers. This was usually enough to space her into the traditional subway riding trance, which hypnotic state was usually enough to allow her to push full awareness of the olfactory component of her surroundings below the level of conscious awareness.
But now, unmasked, unplugged, lying right in the down and dirty, and forced by the pragmatics of the situation into full sensory alert, she really smelled the subway for the first time in either this or her previous life.
It stank. P.U. B.O. L.A.M.F. Like rank.
It stank of generations of piss and sweat and crap. It stank of the collective body odor of the tens of thousands of scum lower than streeties who actually lived down here. It stank of old broiled rat and garbage-fire smoke. It stank of the tension, suppressed fear, and sour despair of the millions of townies who found themselves processed through it twice a day.
Once you let the smell penetrate your awareness, it permeated your whole being, it let you know that your own body odor was another part of the ghastly whole. It was a stink that made Mary think, and what she thought about was her own state of sweaty despair.
Dearie, the goddamn stupid mutt, might very well already be dead. She had seen the dog bashed on the head, hadn’t she, and the sucker had really been brained. Come to think of it, she had never seen a struggling sign of life in the street bag, and had heard not a bark or whine of protest from the normally noisy creature throughout the whole chase.
And if the dog hadn’t been dead when the bonzo had stuffed it in the bag, there was a good chance that he was killing it right now. Man, if she were the streetie with a dog in her bag, she’d sure as hell make sure the mother was dead as soon as possible. Even if he thought she had given up, he’d know that a bark or a yelp would attract attention, and any such attention you drew down here would mean nothing but trouble of the worst possible kind…
Out of the corner of her eye, she clocked the comings and goings on the subway platform. The evening rush was in full swing. Train after train roared by scant feet from where she lay, rattling her brain. Masked townies zipped in and out through the crush trying hard not to see each other or anything else.
This not being one of the main station complexes, what they were really trying to avoid seeing was little in evidence—the permanent floating population of streeties, of things lower than streeties, that lived, or at any rate existed, down here full time, the Subway Scum that never saw the light of day.
Even in the worst times of her dimly-remembered streetie days, Maria had never been dumb or desperate enough to spend the hours between 9 P.M. and 7 a.m. in the subway, not even when the streets above were filled with slimy slushed snow and the temperature at night hit ten below. When the subways shut down at 9, all the lights went out, and what hid in the tunnels and crannies during the subway “day” slithered out to claim a night blacker than a plushie tushie’s heart. And the word from the bird was that anything that moved was meat.
You could get a hint of what that meant if you glimpsed out of the corner of your eye at what lurked around the darker edges of the major stations like Times Square or Grand Central during the day. Babblers and screamers.
Lumps of filthy flesh sleeping under mounds of newspapers. Bits and pieces of bone it didn’t pay to look too closely at piled around last night’s cookfires.
Even with plenty of ammo for the Uzi, Mary didn’t have the dumb guts to risk being caught down here when the lights went out. She’d give up first, she’d take her chances with Missus Gloria Van Gelder, she’d go back to the streets, she’d.

Oh no!
Oh yes!
Mary snapped out of the hypnogogic reverie into which, in retrospect, she realized she had fallen. How long had she lain here? How many trains had gone by? She’d lost track.
She’d lost count, or never taken it. But she’d certainly been lurking here more than long enough for the bonzo with the dog to come slinking up the tunnel.
If he was going to.
Crap, it figured! She’d been a zonie too long. She’d lost her street smarts, she’d forgotten how to think like truly desperate prey. If she were the streetie with a dog in her poke, if she had been chased and nearly nailed by a zonie with an Uzi, what would she do? She’d hole up in that tunnel between stations and stay out of sight until the lights went out, that’s what she’d do! Figuring correctly that no townie, not even a heeled zonie, would want her ass bad enough to risk her own in the subway after 9. Then, and only then, would she sneak up the tunnel towards the nearest station, and, unless her luck was bad, escape to the street with the meat.
Face it Maria, that suck isn’t going to come walking down these tracks while the lights are on. And even if you’re crazy enough to wait here till they go out, which you are not, you won’t even be able to see well enough to get a clean head-shot from five feet out.
You’ve been handing yourself a con, mon, she knew. Only two ways to go, mojo. Into that tunnel after the suck before the lights go out, or hang it up and let the mother keep the pup, in which case your meat will be back on the street.
Mary got to her feet, pretending for a moment that she was making up her mind, that the possibility of true choice really existed. A train came roaring into the station not three feet from her nose. The rush was waning now, only about a dozen townies got on, and fewer got off. She had no more time to play games with her mind. It was now or never.
So when the train left the station, she slipped over the platform lip and onto the downtown tracks. Keeping close to the tunnel wall and away from the electrified third rail, she went trotting off uptown through the tunnel, following the dim line of blue bulbs ever deeper into the semidarkness, eyes alert for any movement up ahead, ears pricked to anticipate the rumble of trains approaching from the rear, nerves scraping rawer and rawer with the everbuilding tension.
Gonzo didn’t feature this, he didn’t like the look of it at all. He’d been slowly and ever so carefully making his way downtown through the tunnel, following the trail of blue bulbs, ducking into an inspection alcove every time a train began to approach, long before he became visible in the oncoming lights. Starting and freezing every time he heard a rat scuttle or the unfathomable clank of distant machinery.
Now he was approaching a totally dark section of the tunnel where all the lights were out, every last one of them, downtown and up, for as far ahead as his eyes could see.
As he squinted into the dark trying unsuccessfully to penetrate the ominous gloom, something seemed unnatural about the situation, you didn’t expect things to be working down here very well, but . . .
Then he felt the pressure wave of an oncoming train moving uptown towards him from behind the blackness. He ducked into an alcove, and a minute or two later, the onrushing headlights of the train lit up the dark section of tunnel for a few moments as it came around a bend into visibility.
In those few moments, Gonzo saw that the dead bulbs up ahead hadn’t merely been burned out and never replaced.
Every last one of them on both the uptown and downtown sides of the tunnel had been smashed. And for a flash Gonzo saw, or thought he saw, or tried to convince himself he didn’t see, a big, hairy, raggy-baggy shape shamble quickly across the tracks like a jungle ape. Clutching something that seemed to gleam like a well-cleaned blade.
Mary plastered herself to the tunnel wall as the train went by. When it had passed, she looked uptown with a sinking feeling in her guts.
The next whole section of the tunnel was dark. Dead black dark. So dark that she reflexively glanced behind her at the receding row of dim lights just to make sure that they were still on, that she hadn’t lost track of time and been caught down here after nine. When she assured herself that the lights behind her were still feebly burning, a part of her, a big part of her, wanted to turn tail and follow them home rather than venture further into the dark and deadly.
But she knew that if she followed those lights now, if she left this damn place without the goddamn dog, there wouldn’t be any home to return to—no job, therefore no money, therefore no next month’s payment on her room, therefore no room, therefore her ass would be back on the street.
Son of a chicken bitch! she told herself. You’ve got your chop, girl! Got your zonie moves, you mean jungle-mother!
And if I was that gonzo sucker, I’d be right there in the dark lurking, figuring this poor little muchacha would chicken out and start twitching and jerking. Go get that suck, with any luck, he’s in there just waiting for mama!
Thus pumping herself up, Mary slowly began walking uptown again, into the darkened section of tunnel, up on the balls of her feet, her finger on the trigger, holding the Uzi before her like a spear.

Within twenty yards or so, the tunnel took a bend, and when she had rounded it, she was walking through total blackness. Her nerves started screaming in protest, but she couldn’t let herself stop now. Even though every fall of her feet sounded to her like an elephant crunching along on broken glass. Even though she froze every few feet at little sounds, real or imagined.
The darkness seemed to go on forever in space and in time. Phantom shapes were flickering across the insides of her blinded eyes, glowing yellow eyes, gleaming mouths full of razor-sharp teeth, horribly flapping wings of night, and the squealing and scraping of rats and bats and things that.
“Gargha! Eeegah!”
Something screaming, gibbering, puke-stinking foul, strong and heavy, suddenly smashed into her in the darkness, mewling and slavering and slamming her up against a tunnel pylon! Teeth sank into her shoulder sending a lightning bolt of pain down her arm, claws raked her face, the Uzi went flying into the darkness.
Then there was a quick flash of blue light that engraved an awful after-image on her retinas as it faded as fast as it had come.
Muzzle first, the machine pistol had hit the third rail, fusing and sizzling in a shower of electric blue sparks that revealed.
A huge hulking male thing, all muscles, rotten rags, crap-matted hair and beard, pinning her to the pylon with its body, lifting a face that was all hair and red eyes and brown jagged teeth dripping with her own blood, so close to her nose that she gagged on the fetid stench of its horrid breath as the after-image faded to black.
“Puta-mother!” she screamed in the dark, and, bracing her back against the pylon, brought her knee up with desperate strength at where she calculated its crotch would be.
“Eeeeee!” A shrill burbling scream and something soft bruising against her kneecap. Claws at her eyes. Something hard hit her gut, knocking the wind out of her. Her knees started to fold and she began to fall.
But not before she brought down the heel of her right hand where she hoped a neck would be and felt a satisfying resistance against it as she fell forward into a stunning jolt of head on head.
Something stabbed feebly at her chest. Then she was down on the dirt with a heavy weight atop her drooling and grunting and clawing at her face.
And the sound of a train clattering toward her from around the bend in the tunnel.
Somehow, she got her feet up, wedged in between her stomach and the creature. She could feel the pressure wave of the approaching train now, see a light rushing towards her, eclipsed by the dark bulk pressing down on her body.
“Eee-YAH!” she shouted, putting all her remaining strength into a double-legged kick, flipping the thing up off her, back-first into the side of the train rushing past them at high speed.
The body bounced off the moving train like a basketball off a backboard and smashed into her as she tried to rise, knocking her over backwards.
There was a sudden sharp pain at the back of her head and then her own lights went out.
Gonzo had no idea how long he had been frozen there, squeezing as deep into the alcove as possible, trying to become invisible.
He had seen a thing much too big for him to want to tussle shamble across the tracks. He had heard screams and grunts and the sounds of bovver. Then an electric blue flash and two struggling figures as something hit the third rail. Then more screams and fight sounds. Then the lights of an approaching train outlining two nasty mothers rolling around on the tracks. Then nothing but darkness and silence up ahead for a long, long time.
No logician he, but this kind of calculation his street smarts could handle: he had seen something too big to mess with, that something had gotten into it with something else, therefore whichever one of them had come out on top, he did not feature facing it, in the dark or in the light.
No way he was going to go ahead towards whatever lurked in the dark. And unless the two of them had offed each other or the train had gotten them both, a percentage you had to be loco in the coco to play, something muy fuerte was up ahead of him in the dark, and might be silently creeping up the tunnel towards him right now.
So if he turned tail and fled uptown, he might be spotted by the whatever, a little guy with a big bag outlined by the tunnel lights before him. Yeah, he’d be visible, and whatever was down there would be watching him out of the impenetrable dark.
So the scam, Sam, was to hold the line. When the whole subway went dark, the percentage would be his, he knew there was something down there, but it didn’t know about him. He hoped. When neither of them could see, if he could move without tipping a sound, he could slink uptown home free.
Dashing down the snowy street five steps ahead of two dudes with open flies. She grabbed the rat by its tail and bashed its brains out against the wall. Grabbing up a brick from the pile of rubble, she smacked him across the chops with it. The dog ran yelping and screaming. The john, grunting and swearing. Gobbets of pigeon slid down her gullet. A throb of pain somewhere, and a deeper, duller thud of pain somewhere else.
Maria didn’t really know when she had come to.
Shoulder, right. Head, right. Fragments of dream-images whirling behind her eyes at some point became fragments of fear images whirling in the dark. She had a head and shoulder somewhere, and they hurt like a son of a bitch.
Body, right. There was a body laying on some hard rocks or something, didn’t feel good. Her body. She had a body. It was laying in a twisted heap with a bonging header and a sharp pain in its right shoulder. She was laying on the ground with a pain in her shoulder and another in her head. She was waking up, or maybe she had been awake for a while without really knowing it. Open the eyes.
Nada. Big black nothing. Panic. What the.
Memories came flooding back. The dark section of tunnel. A fight. The train. A hit on the head. Then nothing.
Until now.
She was Maria. No, she was a zonie named.
Reflexively, she reached for the reassurance of her Uzi. It wasn’t there. Then she remembered the gun hitting the third rail, and it all came back to her, and she knew where she was and what had happened.
Her Uzi was done for. She had kicked that filthy putamother right into a train, and then the body must have bounced into her, bashing her head against something which must have knocked her out. She didn’t have any way of knowing how long she had been out cold in hours and minutes, but that didn’t matter the way time was measured down here. Because what counted, all that counted, was that it was after nine in the subway, all the lights were out, and her chop would be useless even if she stumbled on it in the dark.
The panic returned, an informed, logical panic this time, and all the worse for its clarity. She couldn’t see anything.
She didn’t know which way was uptown or downtown and there was no way to figure it out. She caught herself freaking before she realized that that didn’t matter now.
Because she was in deep enough shit without worrying about any goddamn dog anymore. And whichever way she went, she’d come to a station.
She took a deep breath, gathering her wits. Find the tunnel wall. Once she did that, she’d have the whole width of a set of subway tracks between her and the third rail. To be on the safe side, better crawl.
So instead of rising, she began crawling blindly through the muck and filth of the tunnel floor.
She hadn’t gone more than a few yards before her outstretched fingers recoiled from something warm and soft and sticky. Reflexively withdrawing, she reflexively stifled a reflexive scream.
Nothing moved. The moment of panic passed as she realized this must be the corpse of her attacker. Whom she had bounced off a fast-moving train, and who therefore must be very, very dead.
She relaxed. She almost felt good. She had won. She had killed this great big crazy mother. And he had been armed with a knife.
A knife.
Efficiently, professionally, she ran her fingers all over the corpse until she found it, realizing, but not really caring, that the sticky wet stuff she was getting all over herself was blood. Then she touched something hard and metallic.
Gingerly, she ran her fingertips along it until she touched rags. A rag-wrapped handle. She had it. She snatched it up.
She had a knife. It might not be an Uzi, but at least it was a weapon.
It felt so much better to be heeled. Maria felt an almost sensual calm passing from the handle of the knife, down her arm, into her body, and thence to her brain, which slowly assumed a predator’s icy calm. Having a weapon again made it possible to think clearly.
For one thing, it was stupid to be crawling around in the muck worrying about touching the third rail; it was after nine, all the electricity was off. She scrambled to her feet as soundlessly as possible, for silence was still golden down here in the dangerous dark. She reached down and took off her shoes, the better to simulate a predator padding through the jungle of the night.
Cunningly, methodically, she began to pad in ever widening spiralling circles, until, inevitably, the outstretched fingers of her left hand touched the tunnel wall. Choosing an arbitrary direction, she pressed her body up against the concrete.
Feeling along the wall with her left hand, holding the knife cocked for action in her right, breathing in short, silent little sips, placing one foot softly and carefully in front of the other, she began creeping up the tunnel.
Gonzo had lost his nerve, and he was just on the verge of admitting it to himself. Fact was, as long as he stayed here frozen to the tunnel wall in the soundless dark, he was safe.
Nothing could see him, and as long as he didn’t move, nothing could hear him either. Whereas the moment he moved, anything that was waiting in the dark, anything that even now could be inches from his face could—
—a soft, warm, sweaty palm brushed against his cheek—
—He started, jumped, screamed, felt something whistle past his throat, wet his pants, and—
“I’ve got a knife, twitch and you croak, bloke!” Maria hissed in the dark, listening for something to slash at.
Silence. Darkness. The sound of ragged breathing over to the right, or her imagination? A stand-off. She had the knife, but both of them were blind. A waiting game. The first one to make a sound would reveal their position, and then . . .
Slowly, ever so slowly in the silent dark, Gonzo’s street smarts began to overcome his fear. A voice. He had heard a chick’s voice. Did she really have a knife? Or was all that a scam, man? Or was she as scared crapless as he was? Or more afraid? He knew that what he was facing was only a muchacha with or without a blade, whereas she didn’t know what he was. . . .
A chick . . . Hadn’t he been planning to do a trick with a chick?
He made his voice as deep and menacing as he could, stepping back and aside as he spoke so she couldn’t slash at the sound. “Deal, muchacha! Got a sweet deal for you.”
Silence. Darkness. Nada.
“Come on, girl, give it a whirl,” Gonzo said irritably now.
More silence. Then, over to the left, and maybe moving, a hesitant, harsh female voice. “What’s the word, turd?”
Ah, got her talking now. If I can only . . .
“Got a match, snatch?”
“What if I do?”
“Take a peek, freak.”
“What’s your scam, Sam?”
“Meat’s the treat, skeet!” Gonzo said seductively. “I got it, you cook it. Take a look, I won’t bite.”
Meat? Dogmeat? Maria could hear her heart pounding in the dark. Could it be? Could this be the bonzo who pinched the dog? Standing right there in front of her knife offering his life?
She had to. She had it made, she had the blade, and if she saw it was the suck, he was fresh out of luck.
Trembling, she fished around in a pocket with her left hand and extracted a book of paper matches. Still clutching the knife handle, she used both hands to get it open, tore off a match. Holding the matchbook in her left hand, the knife and the match in her right, she struck it and
—the sudden light dazzled her—
—something leaped and battered at her hands—
—the match guttered back into darkness—
—the knife was gone—
Now that he had copped the blade, Gonzo had it made.
He could leave her in the dark and make a run . . . or he could really have some fun. And the snatch probably had another match. . . .
“Hey, you got more fire, muchacha?” he said.
Nada. She was playing it cool, she was nobody’s fool.
“Meat’s the treat, skeet, like I say. I got a whole dog in my bag! Come on, what do you say, a big piece of my meat for a little piece of yours.”
Ice-cold, red-hot, Maria did a slow bum in the dark, cursing her own stupidity, but still praising her luck at finding the suck. The puta-mother she was after! Her ticket back to the Zone! But the mother had her knife, and after he had her bod, it would probably be her life.
After he had her bod, she realized with slow deliberation.
Yeah, she’d be safe until he’d done his fun. And she’d handled the big geek who’d had the knife in the first place, hadn’t she? And this was a scrawny little crud, she had her zonie moves, and when he started to groove . . .
I know who he is, but he doesn’t know what I am, she realized. Better play it dumb and hook the scum.
“Dog . .?” she said in a little girl voice. “You gotta dog?”
“We got a deal, girl?”
“But . . . but how do I know you won’t just feed me the blade?”
“Dead gash ain’t no stash.”
Maria jut all the dumb little chocha stupidity she could into her voice. “Okay, man, I take a chance. . . .”
“Gotta hooch where we can cook the pooch?”
Mother, the dumb geek thought she was Subway Scum!
Her confidence began to grow; that might be another angle she could use. “Forty Second Street,” she said, realizing suddenly that if she had run into him, she must have been heading uptown. Forty second on the IRT East meant Grand Central, a whole underground town, clown, where I can find someplace safe to grass your ass.
“No quick moves,” said a voice coming towards her.
“Don’t freak.” Then she felt an arm snake around her back and a sharp little prick between her shoulder-blades. “No smart stuff, muff,” he said beside her ear. And then they started walking uptown through the dark tunnel together, just like lovey-doves.
Gonzo had never spent a night in the Subterranio, let alone with anything in his bag worth a tussle to Subway Scum muscle, so his nerves began to twitch when he saw the smoky red glow of fires up ahead. Still, he figured he had an edge, or so he told himself. Primero, he had the knife, and for another, he had this chick as back-up, and this snatch had managed to come out on top in a one-onone with that big and bad back there. This was Subway Scum gash, muchacho, she knew how the land lay, she knew what games to play.
But he’d better not pop that he was as cherry down here as some dumb muni cop. “Look, we stick together, right?” he said as they approached the flickering, smoldering, dull red light outlining the mouth of the tunnel. “We back each other up?”
“That’s the scam, Sam. For tonight, you’re my man.”
“Okay, then no tricks, chick,” he said, removing the point of the knife from the pit of her back, and letting it dangle from his hand in plain dangerous sight. “Just remember, I’ve still got the blade.”
As they emerged from the cover of the tunnel and into the Forty SecondStreet station, Gonzo could see that there were dozens of fires burning in the station above. In the smoky smelly light, he got his first real look at his lady of the night. Subway Scum for sure, mon! She was wearing something that might once have been yellow but was now a raggy bag smeared with blood, and crap, and ashy grey mung. Her tough-looking face was more of the same— scratched, and bruised, and caked with crud and old blood.
She was one mean-looking mama, and that gave him cojones. They were a bad-looking combo, Mister and Missus Kick-Your-Ass, with a bag and a knife, screw with us, and it’s worth your life!
Maria had seen the Grand Central subway station often enough by day, it was the biggest there was, one of the main hubs of the whole system, an underground town with newsstands and veggie stalls, rag stores and smoke stands, rat peddlers and knife shops, pom racks and meat racks.
Dozens of stalls and stands and stores and peddlers, hundreds of thousands of potential customers passing through, and the city taking its cut from all the action, meaning that there was always a small army of munis conspicuously in evidence to keep things cool.
But now, as they crawled up off the tracks onto the platform, it was a different world. All the floating peddlers were long since gone and all the stands and stalls and stores were sealed with armor-plate shutters that looked about three feet thick. Not a cop to be found, natch, and of course not a single electric light or townie in a subway mask.
But there sure was light and sound and plenty of raw meat around!
There were two platforms in this part of the station dividing four sets of tracks, and there were dozens of little fires burning on them where little solitary groups of shadowy figures hunched, rocking back and forth like spastics, mumbling and gabbling, and roasting rats and other morsels of meat. The flickering intermittent firelight tu