The Baron led the Zombie, Phyllis, and Marco out of Foley Square a little after 5AM. Together, they walked south to Chambers Street, at the northeast corner of City Hall Park. A handful of taxis were dropping off the first wave of bureaucrats and paper pushers who worked there or in the Municipal Building, and they flagged down one of the drivers for a ride to Greenwich Village. On the way, they reviewed the final details of their plan in four discrete steps. It was simple to implement, fairly flexible in case of failure, and elegantly solved multiple problems at once.
First, they would extract the Cat just outside the temple. The process would be messy, and it’d cause a legitimate medical emergency. However, with the Cat hidden on the Zombie’s person, they wouldn’t have to worry about anyone coercing them to give it up.
Second, they’d bring Marco into the temple to be healed. In every occult community, many people besides the banker assisted with major transactions of prestige and cash. Dedicated treasurers were common, but Oracles often doubled as middlemen for especially expensive payments of either kind. Since most medical wishes were costly, the Oracle usually had the banked prestige and practice to efficiently heal heavy wounds.
Thus, they’d bring Marco to Oracle Maurice Clare.
Third, they’d pay for the prestige to wish for Marco’s health. Denisov wouldn’t be able to assist anymore, and Phyllis’s pool was effectively off-limits. The Baron would have to pay for it with a check, and though it’d put a serious strain on his liquid funds, there was an opportunity to make the money back and then some. If they succeeded, the promised payment from the Orthodox faction would cover their losses many times over.
Fourth, they’d have the Zombie deliver Marco back to Phyllis. She would get the teenager to safety. The Baron would remain behind in the temple, surrendering to New York before Schuler could find them. Then the Zombie would return to him, and they’d wait for a summons from Tammany Hall.
They had the means.
The Zombie was once a skilled barber, having removed bullets and other sundry from the Baron’s body during the Fall of Trust. Technically, he hadn’t been taught proper surgery, but he’d known how to pick a man apart with a blade, and he’d always had either the advantage of someone’s prestige or the Baron’s natural resistance to help him. Similarly, though to a lesser degree, the Baron himself was familiar with practical anatomy, having assisted real surgeons with field hospital amputations and the autopsies of murdered officers during the Napoleonic Wars. Either one of them could cut out the Cat with a good knife.
They had the target.
The Oracle of the 8th Street Temple, Maurice Clare, was emotionally invested in bringing the Baron under control. He’d be desperate, malleable, so long as that prize was in sight.
It was the safest place in Manhattan.
Schuler would be searching around major subway stations, beginning most likely near the Biltmore Hotel. By rushing to a secure New York location, they were likely to avoid Schuler’s early sweeps, and any CPUSA members in Lower Manhattan would be avoiding New York’s troops. Best of all, they could surrender and send Marco to safety before Schuler detected the presence of the artifact, and if it was revealed, the temple’s neutrality would briefly protect them. After that, the Baron and Zombie would face New York’s massive, organized response.
The cabbie, who’d remained silent throughout the drive, asked them only one question as they neared 8th and Greenwich. “Are you writers in the Village?” He was an old man, poorly shaven, wearing an ascot cap and too many layers of clothes in place of a jacket. To hear him take an interest shocked them all back to reality. This was still New York City. This was still a secular world.
Their conversation had been too abstract and absurd to be worth hiding from secular ears. Now it was being reflected back onto them. The cabbie was placing their struggle into a secular context. How would it have seemed to him, to hear them talk about these things with familiarity? Artifacts, temples, prestige, and oracles were all sensible terms with pedestrian meanings, and the jargon of the occult reflected them in funhouse mirrors. The semantics of the occult did not map to the cabbie’s. It was yet another reason that the secret of prestige was easily kept. Leaks sounded more like fantasy than fact.
“Sorry, sir,” the Baron said from the seat behind the driver, “We’ve been so wrapped up in our project. We were rude.”
“Oh, it’s fine. What kind of writing is it?”
“Film script,” the Zombie answered. “Ever seen Destination Moon?”
The cabbie’s tired face rose into a sunrise-bright smile. “Oh, I loved it!”
“Did you? We’re working with the producer.”
“It was beautiful, all color, and those props! Did you know the moon was kinda like the Bonneville salt flats? I used to spend the night out there, when I was a youngster.”
“I’ve run the flats,” the Zombie said, and he wasn’t lying.
“There’d be hundreds of us out there after the races. The girls and the beer, you bet! We couldn’t sleep on the speedway though, so we’d go out onto the lakebed with our firewood, and there’d be these cracks in the salt pan wide enough to fit your thumb. Just like the moon, big old cracks, and grey as far as the eye can see. It was something.”
“It was beautiful,” the Zombie agreed.
The driver was smiling after his ramble. Ignorance really was a kind of bliss. Before Marco had become a cultist, swallowing the Cat had been little more than a favor to a half-absent father. It would’ve been easier if it could have remained that way, an artifact lost to the ages, just as it was better that the driver now believed they were spinning yarns.
They paid the fare and the cabbie dropped them off north of the temple at Jackson Square Park. It was a barren triangle of land at the intersection of 8th and Greenwich Avenue, something they’d bypassed yesterday by going up the back alleys of the rows. This little squib of park was surrounded by brick residential buildings, all red and brown.
Once upon a time, plants had grown in the soil here, but only barren dirt greeted them between spreads of rusted iron fencing, a scattering of concrete benches, and a dry fountain. Hollow tree planters pockmarked the fence border every meter or so, reminding the neighborhood of its failure to remain affluent or influential.
Once the taxi had driven off, they entered the park—the most poorly lit stretch of terrain in the area—and laid Marco out on a flat stone bench. This would be their operating table.
“Do you still have that knife?” the Baron asked Marco.
“Jesus,” Marco swore. “Are you talking about my Swiss army piece?”
“I am.”
“Yeah, I still got it.” Marco reached into a pocket, found the little knife, and offered it to the Baron. “You sure this will work? I had trouble cutting a steak with that thing.”
The Baron nodded carefully. “Trust me. It’ll be sharp enough to do the job.”
“Yeah.” Marco closed his eyes and shuddered.
“Do you want me or the Zombie to do it?”
“Who’d do a better job?”
“Honestly, the Zombie would. He’s way better at cutting people open.”
“Then him,” Marco said.
The Baron passed the Swiss knife over. “You’re up, friend.”
“Thank you!” the Zombie said with relish.
“Are you sure we can do this in poor light?” Phyllis asked.
The Baron glanced at her, face half-shaded in the pre-dawn dark, far from any street lamps. “Don’t worry. He’s got a sense for this kind of thing.”
The Zombie opened the little knife and held it up to his eye, inspecting the edge. “I’ll slice you quick. Just tell me, where’s the Cat?”
Marco opened his eyes and propped up on his elbows. “You don’t know?”
The Zombie snorted with delight. “Calm down. I know where your stomach is.”
“Jesus, how could you not know where it is? Jesus Christ.”
The Zombie lowered the blade, frowning at the young man. “I know where your stomach is. I’ll just need your help for a few seconds first. We’ll find the Cat, okay?”
“Okay, okay.” Marco took a deep breath and laid back down. “Jesus, okay.”
The Zombie tilted the little blade around like an instructor’s baton. “The incision will hurt, but no more than being punched hard in the stomach. What I’m saying is, you won’t even have to scream. It just won’t be that bad.”
“God, how do you know that?”
The Zombie grinned. “The Cat is what will hurt badly.”
Marco looked at the Baron. “Why?”
“It’s not just floating around in your stomach,” the Baron said.
Marco’s eyes opened a little bit. Realization must’ve hit him. The Cat hadn’t moved the slightest bit since he’d swallowed it. It was anchored to the stomach lining. “Oh, fuck.”
The Baron elaborated. “We’ll have to reach in and rip the Cat out of its seating. That’ll leave a bleeding crater in your stomach. Our hands aren’t clean either, so we’ll be rushing to heal you before you bleed too much or catch anything.”
“How do you know this?”
The Zombie laughed. “Pulling the Cat has killed anyone who wasn’t healed, kid. That’s why we came here before cutting you open.”
Marco rubbed his eyebrows and groaned. He would’ve preferred not to know the mortality rate of the surgery they were about to perform.
The Baron elaborated with the explicit goal of calming Marco down. “Pretty much the entire Orthodox succession since the rediscovery of the Cat is a series of peaceful guttings followed by another leader swallowing the damn thing. There’s no affordable way to wish it loose, if it’s even possible to wish it out. It’s either magical surgery or death.”
“It’ll be okay,” Phyllis said to Marco. “I’ll take it out. My hands are small, and I can clear your stomach first.” She cleared her throat. “I wish his breakfast moved into his small intestine.”
Marco squinted, groaning for a moment as his stomach made audible squelching noises. “Oh, that is weird. I thought you couldn’t do something like that.”
“It counts as healing ahead of a surgery,” Phyllis said.
He shuddered at the thought. “Okay, anything else?”
“I’ll give you thirty seconds of numbness,” Phyllis added, “but it will hurt eventually.”
“Okay,” Marco muttered. “Okay.”
The Zombie tapped the open blade against his cheek, little blue-yellow flashes as it caught the early light of some distant window. “There’s a silver lining. You’ll be able to brag someday to your friends. ‘See this scar here? This was when I was stabbed with a spear.’ They’ll buy it.”
“When would I have been stabbed with a spear?”
“That’s the fun part. Make it up!” The Zombie reached for the hem of Marco’s shirt.
“Wait! How’re you going to get me inside the temple?”
“I’ll carry you. Kick down the door. Simple. Now stop stalling.” The Zombie pulled up the hem of Marco’s t-shirt past his ribs.
Marco took a deep breath, his chest heaving.
The Zombie traced a finger on the left side of Marco’s abdomen, in the middle just below the last rib. “Is it there?”
“Uh—no? I felt it, uh, a little to the side.”
The Zombie moved his finger in.
“Other way.”
The Zombie tapped Marco on the left side, a couple of inches below the rib. “Right there?”
“Yeah, I remember it burning. Right there.”
The Zombie pressed in gently a few times. “I think I can feel it. Baron? Hold his chest. Phyllis? His waist. Don’t let him move.”
They positioned themselves as directed, putting their limbs down over his body. The Baron could feel Marco’s heart thundering beneath his arms. “Calm down.”
“Don’t piss yourself,” Phyllis added.
Marco closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.
The Zombie put two fingers over Marco’s belly, spreading them apart to stretch the tissue beneath his fingertips. “Marco, this is going to take a few cuts, then Phyllis is going to reach in with a couple of fingers and pull out the Cat. You’ll bleed a lot. Try to stay calm.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Marco said, absolutely not okay. He took a long, shaking breath, then blew it out slowly. “I’m ready,” he lied.
The Zombie gently touched the blade against Marco’s belly, the handle tilted far up. He would apply only a little of the edge, using heavy pressure. “Prep for the cut. Call it when ready.”
The Baron and Phyllis applied their full weight to Marco.
“Numbness for thirty seconds,” Phyllis wished.
“Start at will,” the Baron ordered.
The Zombie pressed in, then dragged the knife. Marco twitched, his limbs stiffened and shook, but the Baron squeezed the teen to the slab until his arms hurt. A sound emerged from Marco’s taut lips, a distant whine squeezed and compressed by force of will.
“I thought he was numb,” the Baron said to Phyllis.
“I lost the prestige,” Phyllis argued.
“I feel cold,” Marco said through gritted teeth. “And pressure.”
“No pain at least,” Phyllis whispered.
Four inches of belly skin were split open like fresh pork, pale pink and briefly bloodless. The Zombie gently tugged to see how deep the first cut ran, and bright red blood began condensing along the walls of the incision. “Dull blade,” he judged. “Four cuts total, maybe five.”
He put the tip at a steeper angle, pressed harder and pulled the blade as smoothly as a machine. A tiny squeal emerged from Marco. The Zombie was pleased with his handiwork. He pushed with his fingers and the wound slid open like a split glove, revealing a filmy membrane and the gristle of fat, the dermal gap already filling with the gentle accumulation of blood.
The Zombie angled the blade even steeper, but there was less pressure and less speed on this slice. Fat, membrane, and orange fibrous layers broke away at knifepoint like clipped elastic, but the real target was a marbled, bacon-like streak of abdominal muscle. The blade eased through thick, succulent muscle fibers, which twitched and contracted, practically ripping themselves in twain. The Zombie sighed at what he must’ve seen as poetic beauty, enjoying the accidental eagerness for the wounded tissue to rend itself asunder. Thicker, juicier arteries immediately gushed onto the bare metal, filling the chasm with thick fluid.
It was always uncomfortable to watch living meat under the butcher’s blade. Phyllis’s eyes were shut. Tears streamed down Marco’s face, even without pain. The Baron watched because he was responsible. Where the Zombie saw beauty, he saw an awful necessity.
The Zombie cut again, and the upmost layer of smooth muscle opened itself like a swollen eyelid, like a terrible toothless maw. He’d cut against the grain here. Below that, another layer was sliced along the fibers. The Zombie eased this deepest slit open with two bloody fingers. The beef-red meat, fatless and smooth, weeped eddies into the pooling blood. The Zombie balanced the knife briefly on Marco’s belly, then used a finger to sweep away all the fluid and sling it out onto the concrete.
Marco was huffing.
“Ten seconds,” Phyllis said softly.
“There.” The Zombie tapped a thin fatty layer, which slid over a thinner membrane below. Beneath his fingertips, a sac bulged ever so slightly into the relieved pressure of the open wound. “That’s the stomach.” He pressed down gently, and Marco suppressed a gag while folding up involuntarily.
The Baron redoubled his pressure, unfolding the teen. “Hurry.”
“I wish to add twenty seconds of numbness,” Phyllis whispered.
“Found it,” the Zombie declared. Blood flowed around his fingertips. “Cut five.” He turned the knife over backward, put the point directly above the bulging sac, and pushed down. Tissue split open eagerly; puffy pink folds of stomach lining fought to escape the pressure through the new wound. The Baron could detect the tang of dilute stomach acid mixing into the overwhelming bloody stench.
The Baron put a hand over Marco’s mouth, suppressing a terrified scream. “Shh,” he said, “shh, you’re okay. Breathe through your nose. You’re okay.”
Marco’s weeping was intense, but he nodded very slightly.
“Phyllis,” the Zombie said as calmly as an instructor. “The Cat is directly beneath the cut. Reach in, push your fingers under the edge of the statue, and pull very, very quickly, like you’re removing a bandage. You’re going to draw up his stomach lining, but if you’re quick, it won’t pull long. The more time you waste, the more this will hurt him.”
Phyllis forced her eyes open, tears streaming sympathetically, nose running, and with her right hand, she forced two fingers and a thumb down into Marco’s viscera. This was the spot where the stomach was close to the abdominal wall. It wasn’t even a deep or broad cut. The bleeding was objectively minor, the pain already completely managed, but the look on her face was of tremendous sorrow. She’d felt less remorse beating a man down with a pipe. She’d killed and felt less. Marco inhaled in a nasty way, and started to cough.
Phyllis’s expression hardened. She thrust her hand in deep, pushing out fresh blood in a splash over Marco’s skin, found something solid, and in one yank, she ripped out the Cat o’ Nine Lives with a wet, soft noise that the Baron hadn’t quite heard before, but instantly recognized as the whisper of tearing flesh.
Everyone winced but the Zombie, whose grin blossomed into a full body expression of triumph. “The Cat!” he shouted. “We have it!”
“Breathe!” the Baron shouted to Marco.
Marco turned his head and coughed up a stew-thick blend of blood and mucus, then took one gasp. He could still breathe. His lungs still worked. “Oh God.” His voice was ravaged, his body was quaking, but he was no longer trying to curl up around the damage.
“The pain will start in a moment,” the Baron whispered. “Stay still.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Marco said quickly. Then slowly at first, and with greater energy, he began to keen with rising agony. He’d survived worse, but the Cat was no longer able to sustain him with unnatural fire.
Phyllis stared at the object in her hands. It was a smooth black stone sculpture of a cat curled up to sleep, perfectly polished and no larger than a hefty walnut. Even after being pulled from the fleshy morass in Marco’s stomach wound, it was perfectly clean. Blood and mucus beaded up, slid away, and collected on her palm. It was always perfect, always clean, and the closest thing to immortality in a fallen world.
Author’s Note:
Whew. Marco is… free of the Cat, but not yet saved.
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
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