Busted Flush Read online

  “I’m Miss Partridge”—the old woman glared through rain-specked bifocals—“and you fuckin’ killed me, you fuckin’ lily-white lard-ass bitch!” Her frail arms pushed on the arms of her wheelchair and she stood up, straightening her crooked back with a crack of snapping bones. “Go ahead, blow me up, you fucker!” She stalked forward as Michelle stepped back, a bubble forming between her fingers, pretty as a snow globe. “I seen you on TV, I fuckin’ know what you can do.” She gestured to the crowd, waving to several news cameras. “Go ahead and show all these nice people the sort of bitch who’d kill a little old lady with a fuckin’ bubble!”

  “Hoodoo Mama, I presume,” Jonathan said, looking at her.

  “Who the fuck wants to know?” she snapped, glaring at him, her milky eyes magnified to near the size of her face.

  Ellen presumed as well. She handed the umbrella back to Mayor Connick and in three paces was at the wheelchair. She turned and sat down, placed her hands on the armrests, feet on the footrests, and closed her eyes.

  Miss Partridge opened them.

  She looked around, taking in the crowd. “Lan’ sakes, it’s a miracle,” she breathed. “I ain’t seen this clear in years.”

  Not quite a miracle, Ellen apologized. The wild card. I brought you back—you’re in my body—but someone else is using yours.

  Miss Partridge’s shock was also kindled with anger and recognition. She wheeled her chair around to face where Michelle’s team and the mayor stood in a confrontation with her former body. “Joey Hebert!” she called sharply. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  “Jesus fuckin’ H. Christ!” The old zombie woman turned, looking down at the woman in the wheelchair. “How the fuck do you know my name?”

  “Don’t you be speakin’ blasphemy with my poor dead lips, Josephine Hebert,” Miss Partridge snapped. “I know your hoodoo tricks. I knew you even before, back when you an’ Shaquilla Jones was smokin’ joints and drinkin’ Mickeys under my porch an’ you begged me not to tell your mama.” She wheeled her chair right up to the zombie’s legs. “An’ I didn’t, so don’t you be sassin’ me now. You ain’t got no call to be abusin’ my corpse after all I done for you.”

  “Fuck you,” the old zombie spat, “you ain’t Miss Partridge. You’re some rich-ass white chick.”

  Miss Partridge raised one hand and looked at it in wonder. “Why so I is. But you sure ain’t me neither, Joey Hebert, even if you be talkin’ with my old lips.” She put her hands on the wheels of her chair decisively. “An’ I may be a white girl now, but I kin still tan your backside once I fine where you is.” She wheeled, scanning the crowd, and stopped as she came to a scrawny girl-child, not quite a woman, with a ring in her navel, a red streak in her hair, and her eyes unfocused and glassy as any zombie’s. “There you be. . . .”

  She began to wheel forward but suddenly the connection was broken. Ellen felt claws around her throat, strong as a harpy’s, tearing her out of the chair, throttling her from behind, and then there was a deafening explosion. Something spattered the back of Ellen’s head and she fell to the ground beside the wheelchair, landing hard on her hands and knees, rainwater and blood splashing as the crowd screamed, nat and joker alike running in horror, trampling the press.

  Ellen rolled, then Jonathan was helping her up, pulling her away from the headless corpse of the old woman as it staggered about in the rain, waving her gnarled hands, blood spurting from the stump of her neck. A bubble floated through the air and blew off her right arm.

  There was a momentary echoing silence. Then, behind them, came the roar of the bus.

  Jonathan shoved Ellen out of the way but was not so fast himself, the bumper throwing him to the ground, the wheels coming over his legs as the jauntily smiling zombie driver flashed Ellen a gilded grin. But rather than an explosion of red, the tires sprayed green, thousands and thousands of wasps flying out from under the undercarriage, swirling around her. Then came a horrible rumbling and a quaking of the earth and the bus moved another seven yards before its front end was swallowed up by a huge crevasse in the asphalt.

  The second bus wheeled toward the panicked crowd, Reverend Winter-green waddling after it, waving his cross. “The Power of Christ compels thee!” He fell on his belly in the rain, a sad and tragic figure until the next moment, when his legs pulled into his body, his arms as well, and then a huge fleshy sphere wrapped in white linen rolled over where his head had been, gathering momentum until it struck the bus square in the side, tipping it over.

  Vines began to erupt from the crevasse, pale green with purple blossoms, but ginormous, a cross-pollination of Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Shop of Horrors, overgrowing the whole fleet, stopping the last bus in its tracks, and sealing the zombies inside.

  “Kudzu!” Mayor Connick cried aghast. “I told her to plant anything but kudzu!”

  Ellen heard a soft moan behind her then and turned as Jonathan crawled out from under the first bus—or more horribly, half of him did. Like a bisected wasp, his upper torso struggled forward until Ellen hoisted him up, cradling him in his sport coat. “Are you okay?”

  “No, but—” He paused, wincing. “Well, no butt. It got my butt and my upper legs. Help me, I—” He winced again.

  Ellen carried him over to Miss Partridge’s wheelchair, the wasps swarming over him, forming a green lap blanket as the rain continued to fall.

  “I’ve never really done this before,” Jonathan admitted shakily.

  “You’ve lost your legs,” Ellen stated, horrified.

  “No, just my pants.” Jonathan winced and the green wasps seethed. “Most of my legs are here, just not all the bits that connect them.” He gasped and squeezed her hand. “I can re-form pieces but . . .” Ellen just held his hand as he clenched his eyes shut tight and moaned in pain, and she watched as his paunch melted away along with most of the fat on his body, tiny lumps moving under his skin, moving purposefully down to what there was left of his lower half.

  “Is everyone all right?” Bubbles asked, squelching over with someone’s umbrella. She’d ballooned up fatter than the Reverend and then some, evidently having stopped another bus.

  Jonathan opened his brilliant eyes and stared at her. “Apart from losing my legs, just peachy,” he said at last. “You?”

  She stood there, her kaftan now a skintight muumuu. “You lost your—”

  “I think I can get them back. How’s everyone else?”

  “Ana’s overdone it. Again.” From the sound of it, this was a regular occurrence. “The Reverend’s helping her. And the mayor’s blown a fuse but Jerusha can deal with him. The zombies don’t seem to be a problem right now anyway. They’re just slumped over the steering wheels like someone cut their strings. Or maybe they’re playing dead.” She paused, then looked at Ellen worriedly. “That old woman I blew up . . . Hoodoo Mama’s work?”

  “Who else? I saw her at the hospital,” Ellen said. “Nick did, too. And Miss Partridge knew her from way back. Young girl, Creole-looking, red streak in her hair. Looks like a boy.”

  Jonathan looked confused. “She was at the hospital?”

  “You were paying attention to the vending machines.” Ellen glanced to the crowd, but Joey Hebert had vanished in the throng. “Do you have anything to sketch with?”

  “You’re an artist, too?” Bubbles opened an exquisite Hermès bag with one fat hand and fumbled out a stack of glossy photographs and a Sharpie.

  “Not really, but my mother was.” Ellen took them, photos backside up, as Bubbles came over next to her, giving her shelter with her umbrella. She raised her hand to her cameo, touching her fingers to the smooth wet stone.

  There was a blink and a familiar presence, and Ellen thought her explanation all in a rush: Mom, please, it’s an emergency—I need a sketch.

  “Well, nice to see you, too, dear,” Mrs. Allworth remarked, glancing to Bubbles, then looking at the end of the upended giant-kudzu-covered bus. “Where are we?”

  New Orleans, bu
t I swear, it’s an emergency. We need a sketch of this girl. Ellen remembered her, the girl Nick had seen in the waiting room, the glassy-eyed teen in the crowd, the child Miss Partridge had known and in some part loved, a dozen images.

  “She’d be prettier if she didn’t frown like that.” Mrs. Allworth uncapped the pen. “Is this all we have to work with?”

  Yes, Mom. But please. I’ve been practicing, but I’m only good with fashions, not faces.

  “Of course, dear,” said her mother. “Anything for you.” With sure, swift strokes, she began to sketch a montage of Hoodoo Mama, aka Josephine “Joey” Hebert, one pose after another, angry, wary, sullen, none of them happy. “So,” Mrs. Allworth asked conversationally, “are you seeing anyone?” Ellen couldn’t shield a flash image of Jonathan, and Mrs. Allworth glanced over and raised an eyebrow. “Well,” she sniffed at last, “at least this one’s not dead, but honestly, young man, work on your posture.” She then lowered the edge of her sketch and noticed the wheelchair and the lack of legs. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I—” Then she noticed the lap blanket of poison-green wasps.

  She turned away. “I’m not even going to ask.” With one finger, she lifted the choker from her throat, Ellen’s throat, breaking contact between skin and brooch, severing the channel.

  “Uh,” said Jonathan as Ellen handed him the sketch, “nice to have met your mom?”

  Ellen attempted a grin.

  Jonathan looked at the images and his wasps did as well, turning as one to examine each face. A few crawled over them, then began to shake their rear ends, doing a waspish macarena. Then the whole cloud, the lower half of Jonathan Hive, took off, dodging raindrops. “Fly!” Jonathan called. “Fly, my pretties!” He turned to Ellen as she folded up the sketch sheet and slipped it in her purse. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

  “I think you just said it to CNN,” Bubbles pointed out, indicating the lurking news crews.

  The Reverend came over next, his suit split down the sides and ground with mud down the front and presumably the back, but otherwise no worse for the wear. “Oh, my poor boy,” the Reverend said, falling to one knee and grasping Jonathan’s left hand. “May I pray for you?”

  “Got any prayers for people who lose their asses?”

  “Samuel 6:5 and 6:17,” the Reverend said brightly. “God’s right ahead of you there.” He bowed his head, clutching his cross and his Bible in the other hand. “O Lord, please bless this poor sinner and fill him with Your Holy Spirit. Let him be filled and made whole. May—”

  “Oh, my God,” said Jonathan, getting religion rather abruptly, staring at the dark sky transfixed, eyes so wide they were almost glowing. “Oh, my God. Brace yourself. It’s coming.”

  Reverend Wintergreen bowed his head. “Are you seeing God’s Kingdom, my boy?”

  “Worse,” breathed Jonathan. “Harriet.”

  A swarm of wasps fell from the sky, clutching to Jonathan for dear life, and three seconds later, the wind followed, a raw blast of screaming fury. Ellen clung to the handles of Miss Partridge’s wheelchair, Jonathan only anchored by the Reverend holding his hand, and the next moment, the hand ripped free, crumbling away at the wrist into green motes, the rest of Jonathan eroding away as well until nothing was left but an empty wheelchair that was wrenched from her grip. Ellen was flung back, finding herself caught by the even greater mass of the Amazing Bubbles—Michelle, her rock in the storm, almost literally—and after an interminable interval that was probably just minutes, the first wave passed, Harriet lulling to a driving rainstorm.

  “Jonathan . . .,” Ellen breathed, looking at the shamble of humanity. He was gone.

  “Bugsy’s been scattered before. He has to save himself.” Bubbles held her. “Ellen, you’re my ace in the hole. I need you to track Hoodoo Mama. How are your detective skills?”

  Ellen clutched the ermine-tailed purse still slung across her chest. “Professional.”

  “Good. What I needed to hear. Meet me at the hotel at nightfall.”

  Of course, it was not Ellen who was the detective, but Nick. She walked far enough back to the Quarter to find a bar where she could seek shelter, then took out his hat along with the sketch. Hey Nickie, Ellen thought. We’ve got a problem. She briefly filled in the details.

  “Good detective work,” Nick complimented her. “You and your mom are hired.”

  Nick, I’m serious. What do we do now?

  “No great mystery, Elle. Just legwork. Ask around.” And so began what felt like a demented pub crawl, going from one shuttered business to another, pounding on doors until they found someone to let them inside and look at sketches. Josephine Hebert was known mostly by face. A few folk knew the name “Joey” and that she was sometimes seen around Congo Square.

  Doubt she’ll be hanging out, Ellen thought, but she has to get her corpses somewhere.

  “Good thinking.” They struggled to the nearest funeral home, where they found that Josephine Hebert had instituted a “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t get strangled by the zombies that walk out the back” policy. She was also in the habit of sending them home when they got a bit ripe, but the traumatized mortician neither knew nor wanted to know where she lived.

  Nick went back out into the storm, clutching his hat. Halfway down Royale, Harriet hit again. A shutter tore off a building nearby and Nick dove to safety, in the process letting go.

  Ellen watched his hat go flying down the street. “Nick!” she screamed, louder than the wind, rushing after it. But as fast as she ran, a hurricane was faster and the old fedora blew up Royale until it caught on a wrought-iron balcony, plastered against the metalwork a story up.

  Ellen raced. The ironwork was twisted with roses and vines, painted black, cutting into her hands, but panic numbed the pain. She was almost to the balcony when Harriet lulled and Nick’s precious hat fell to the street. Ellen jumped down, stumbling, lunging for it. For Nick.

  The wind rose up again, stealing him. Twice, she almost caught the circle of felt. Twice more, Harriet taunted her. Then the hat fetched up against the legs of a child. At least, the stature and the American Hero BRICKBAT children’s jumper said child. Above that was a rubbery ebony-skinned cross between a golliwog, a cyclops, and a sea anemone.

  The joker child picked up Nick’s hat in his-her-its tentacles and held it.

  “My hat!” Ellen called, rushing forward. “Give it to me!”

  The child’s eye went wide above its fanged mouth and it ran, Ellen chasing, her own mouth open in a wordless scream. Only when the water overtook her did she realize that it had not been her the child had been running from, but the levee breach behind them.

  She tumbled end over end, swallowing mouthfuls of the muddy Mississippi, then came up, gasping and sputtering. But a lifetime on sailboats and yachts made for a strong swimmer, and a midcalf silk dress was not the least practical garment when swimming for your life.

  Nick’s hat bobbed a ways away, floating like a paper boat. The other direction, the child surfaced, squalling, thrashing its tentacles. Ellen knew drowning terror when she saw it. Despite having drawn a joker designed for water, it had never learned to swim.

  She prayed for Nick to forgive her, but knew he wouldn’t if she made any other choice. Wouldn’t make any other choice himself. She swam for the drowning child.

  Its tentacles whipped around her, almost drowning her in the process, but she ducked down and it released her. She surfaced and caught it from behind, letting it wrap its tentacles around one arm. It was hard going, but at last she got to solid footing. “You okay, honey?”

  The joker child clung to her wordlessly, but seemed unhurt. Ellen glanced back to the flooded street. Blocks away, a speck may have been Nick’s hat. The wind blew. It was gone.

  Her shoes were also gone, lost somewhere in the floodwaters. But she didn’t need shoes to hot-wire a car. At this point, she didn’t even need to channel Great-Aunt Lila.

  The joker child seemed enthralled by this and Ellen was glad it foun
d larceny so entertaining. She didn’t know what she felt. Joy at having saved another human life. Fear that she would never find Nick again. Anger that she had been forced to choose. Maybe grief.

  Reverend Wintergreen was onstage at the Superdome, leading prayers. Ellen wasn’t the only one who had lost someone, but she knew him. “Oh, yea,” he said, looking down at what Ellen had brought him, “suffer the little children. . . . What’s your name, my child?”

  The joker child gurgled wordlessly into the microphone.

  “It’s PJ!” came a chorus. Actually, a duet—Ellen turned as Rick and Mick forced their way through the crowd of joker refugees near the front. The joker child wrapped its tentacles around both their necks. “You find PJ’s mama?” asked the one with the goatee.

  “No,” Ellen said. She didn’t know whether PJ was Rick and Mick’s son or niece or maybe just some child they knew. “Uh . . . PJ was alone.” Ellen paused. It was a long shot, but maybe not that long. Mick and Rick had known everyone on the seedy side in Jokertown, and New Orleans couldn’t be that different. “I’m looking for someone, too.” She took out the sketch.

  It was waterlogged but intact. The twins studied it. “Oh, yeah, that’s Joey,” said the one with the goatee. “Foulest fucking mouth in the Quarter. She lives in a red shotgun over on Treme. By the old St. Louis cemetery. Can’t miss it. Hoodoo marks chalked all over the front.”

  “She’s Hoodoo Mama, right?”

  Rick and Mick both laughed. “Joey?” said the first. “Nah, she’s just a street punk.”

  “Hoodoo Mama’s this old Creole witch, blind as a bat and older than grave dirt. Calls up hellhounds to serve her, and the dead are her eyes, even the pigeons.”

  Ellen nodded. As she left, a young black woman reached into a suitcase and handed her a pair of pink sneakers, which Ellen wore back into the storm to make her way to the hotel.

  Nick was gone. Nick, the brave one. He’d been with her so many years, and now a piece of her heart had been ripped out, blown away by the hurricane. But when she stepped into the main foyer of their house at the Place D’Armes, she heard a voice. Not Nick’s, but . . .