Weekly Drabble #227: City of the Angel (Patreon)

With the themes of 'what sort of place is this' from Tom Pouce and 'kicking reality in the nuts' from Burning Desire, we return to Chi-Town. The first drafts of this story focused a bit more on the 'broken reality' aspect, but I felt that something focusing more on the personal aspects of our favourite harried ant - I mean, detective - resonated better. Hope you enjoy!

~

City of the Angel:

Is this still home?

Geoff watched as a team of Top Men in biohazard suits manhandled the charred and fused remains of thirty-some men and women into the back of a large truck. The second ‘fleshmonger’ had manifested in a senior citizens’ center. Luckily, someone had noticed what was happening and the creature only... devoured? absorbed? assimilated? killed a third of the inhabitants before help could arrive. A SWAT team kept the creature penned in until a unit of National Guard could arrive, roasting it with flamethrowers until it stopped moving and – finally – didn’t climb back to its feet.

The residents in the facility had been evacuated, as had those in the neighbouring buildings. The unmarked trucks arrived, Top Men spilling out to lay claim to the dead fleshmonger like worker ants coming to harvest a grub and carry it back to their colony.

“Well,” Joanne said as she took out a cigarette, holding it between her left fore and middle fingers. “That’s two.”

A young lieutenant in urban camo came up to McLeary and his partner, nodding to her but offering him a salute. “Sir.”

Geoff’s mouth twitched. He wasn’t a sir by any means, but his position of ‘tolerated ant’ apparently gave him a level of authority a mere city detective wasn’t usually granted by other services. That, or a level of suspicion and hostility that went far beyond what a city detective usually received.

He attempted to replicate the younger man’s gesture. “Uh, at ease lieutenant. What can I do for you?”

The lieutenant’s face was covered with ash from the battle’s brief, but intense climax. Behind him, firefighter teams hurried to put out the burning nursing home. Ambulances and paramedics were tending to the evacuees. McLeary could just barely hear the nearest of them talking, shaking his head in disbelief. “Eighty-three years. Eighty-three years I lived in this city and I ain’t never seen anything like this.” Others just stared in shock, playing the horror they’d barely escaped – and many of their friends hadn’t – over and over in their minds. The good news was that they wouldn’t be without a place to live. So many other citizens had fled the city that there would be plenty of facilities that could take them in. It wouldn’t do anything for the possessions lost, the lives destroyed or the sense of safety that these men and women had had torn from them.

Is this still home?

Geoff realized the lieutenant was speaking. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t catch that.”

“I was saying that the cleanup crews,” the young officer shot a glance at the suited Top Men and their biohazard gear-wearing compatriots, “are taking that, uh, that thing away. Do you... do you know where it goes? Where any of the things they bag and tag get taken?”

McLeary didn’t. ‘Above his pay grade’ was what he was told by people who only gave him the authority of any other city cop. He didn’t know where any of the bodies, the Faceless thing, cultists or anything else disappeared to. They went in the back of a truck or a van and he never saw any of them again. Part of him thought that that was for the best. The other part got very uneasy about people who didn’t know – or worse thought they knew – what they were doing poking about with Melinoë’s wake. Seals splashing behind a boat, never realizing how close they were getting to the spinning propellers...

“I don’t,” he told the soldier. “But I’ve been assured that Top Men are dealing with it.”

The lieutenant’s face scrunched. “I’ve seen that movie too, sir.”

“Then you know they never had any more trouble with the Ark after that.”

“I think this is a little different, sir.”

Geoff’s feigned mirth vanished. “You’re right. But anywhere they go is better than having them in the city, isn’t it?”

The lieutenant might have been young, but he wasn’t dumb. “I suppose so,” he agreed, not sounding like he actually was in agreement. “At least we stopped this one.”

“At least you did,” Geoff corrected. “You and SWAT. All I did was sit around and wait for the shooting to stop.” And not be able to a damn thing about any of it.“You and your people did good today. The city’s just a bit safer.” He meant it, but he knew how little that meant.

“Sure. But will that matter? I mean...” the soldier’s voice dropped. “She’s still here.” Before Mcleary could answer that, the lieutenant looked over his shoulder and saw his unit’s captain gesturing for him. “I have to go, sir. Take care.”

“You too, lieutenant. You and your people.”

“Thank you, sir. We’ll do our best.”

As soon as the lieutenant departed, Joanne returned to her spot at Geoff’s side. “So,” she repeated. “That’s two.”

“That’s two,” he agreed.

She put the unlit cigarette in her mouth. “And we have no fucking idea where the third one is.”

“Not a clue,” he agreed.

“I hate this fucking city,” she told him. “I wish we could just go back to the gangs, drugs and rampant corruption. I’d be so happy if all we had to deal with was gang-bangers painting the walls with each others’ brains, coke bricks coming off the pier and crooked politicians telling us to tread lightly on their scummy friends. You remember those days, Geoff?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I do.”

“Some days... some days I just think I do. Like this is how life has always been and the other stuff, the stuff before the Incident was just some weird dream and I wish... I wish I could go back to it.” She wasn’t looking at him, her voice trembling. “And some times I think I hear a voice telling me how I can.”

Geoff didn’t need to ask the how. He’d seen plenty of that already, people who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave finally giving in to the whispers in the dark. He put his hand on the smaller woman’s shoulder. “Hatsuki,” he said. Then: “Joanne.” She looked up at him. “That ever happens again, you call me. You listen to my voice, you got that?” She opened her mouth to object, but Geoff didn’t let her. “I’m senior to you, Hatsuki. That’s an order and you damn well better follow it.”

The half-Japanese women closed her jaw with a click, watching him carefully. Then she nodded. The two of them stood in silence as thirty human bodies blended into a single corpse were locked behind an armoured truck’s doors and a small military convoy pulled out of the lot, taking the dead fleshmonger off to wherever the Top Men laired. “Can I crash at your place tonight?” Joanne asked.

“Yeah,” McLeary said. “I have some whisky I’ve been saving. I’ll show you what ‘drunk as an Irishman’ means.”

“Got enough to wipe this shit from our memories?”

“Not even close. But it’ll help.”

“I’d like that,” Joanne said with a fragile smile. She took the cigarette from her mouth and put it back in the pack. “Let’s wrap this up and get the fuck out of here. Maybe if we’re lucky some fucking banger will blow another’s brains out and we can end the shift with something normal.”

“Normal would be good,” Geoff agreed. “Let’s hope we’re lucky, then.”

He looked at the burning building, stream of water slowly quenching the fire, the dozens of shell-shocked survivors and the milling troops and Top Men, all of them like ants from a disturbed hive.

Is this still home?

Less and less every day.