The last stop was Chainlink Station on the north island. It was Sunday, so the crews hadn’t yet started constructing the hollow frames of the buildings. Everything was rubble, trampled beneath giant feet so that from across the river, back on the mainland, it looked a uniform flat.

Their four figures rose conspicuously above the debris. Zag looked down at the remains of what had been built for the very purpose of being destroyed. Something like understanding just barely eluded him.

“How are we gonna find a baby in all this shit?” he asked.

Blue picked up a splintered two-by-four. Kerb stepped onto a pile of steel and concrete to look around. Canary sat thoughtfully on what was left of a brick wall. Now it was a seat, a small but necessary metamorphosis for the progress of the world.

Blue motioned for Zag. “Get over here. Let me get on your shoulders for a look see.”

Zag crouched in front of her. She climbed on and flipped the front of her skirt onto the top of his head.

“I should probably tell you,” she said, “I’m not wearing panties, so don’t look back.”

He blushed to a dark shade of red, made darker in the shadow of her skirt, and stood up shakily.

“Don’t get light-headed while I’m up here, alright?”

She reached down and pinched his cheek, wistfully.

“Just look around already,” he mumbled.

Seeing Blue with a higher vantage, Kerb hopped down from his perch.

“See anything, Blue?”

“This place is a mess.”

“Anything besides the obvious?”

“Well, there’s some broken shit over there, and over there, and there…and over there there’s more broken shit.”

“Can we get somebody not worthless on Zag’s shoulders?”

“But I like riding Zaggy. Unless you want to.”

Kerb glared up at her, then quickly looked away. “Can you pull your skirt down? We’re supposed to be working.”

“Alright,” she tapped Zag on the head. “Let me down, Kerb’s getting jealous.”

Zag crouched, and she slid down his back making sure their bodies touched as much as possible.

Standing, wiping off imaginary dust (debris on the island was limited to chunks, as surfaces seldom remained in tact long enough for dust to settle), Canary walked away down the cracked asphalt that in another setting would have been called a street. Blue watched her go with a look of sincere confusion.

She asked, “Was it something I said?”

“For once, I don’t think so,” answered Kerb. “Let’s follow her.”

“You just want to look at her ass.”

“So do you.”

Blue grinned widely, “Come on Zaggy, we got a butt to follow. Wiggle, wiggle.”

Canary stopped at an opening in the forest of the devastation, a wide expanse of dry, brown grass. The texture of it was too perfect, like the chaos of everything around it had triggered a fractal growth pattern frozen into a beautiful illusion of order by the combination of drought and negligent irrigation.

In the middle of the park was the cubic base of a monument. Once, immortalized in proud bronzeness, had stood a statue of a hero from folklore, complete with coonskin cap, shotgun and mythos. There shall be no false idols before me, cried the city, and so down it came. Not that the city had orchestrated its own destruction, but that’s how it seemed.

A bushy-haired man sat half in the shade of the slab of black-stained, weathered granite, clutching a bundle of fabric. A baby, recognizable as such by the distinctive position of the man’s arms, the primate baby-cradle.

“That’s not a sack of potatoes he’s got,” Zag said.

“Unless he’s Irish,” said Kerb, “They always have potatoes.”

Blue glowered, “Hey, I’m Irish.”

“McTaggart is Scottish,” said Zag.

“Close enough. One sort of whiskey or another.”

Kerb said, “But the Irish generally avoid haggis.”

“As should everyone,” said Zag.

Canary walked across the flawless surface, creating a symphony of soft crunches, undoing what natured had wrought in favor of her own sort of perfection, subtly flawed. She touched the man on his frazzled head. He rocked back and forth, unwilling to let the baby go even though by this point he had surely realized the purpose of the strangers.

With disregard for the grass, the other three came up behind Canary. The base of the monument was bigger than it had looked from a distance, which explained how is had survived so many of Yorokobi’s rampages while the immortal monument on top of it had been squashed into a metal pancake.

Zag leaned down to look the man in the eyes. “Sir, give the baby back.”

Blue crouched and looked at Zag. “Give the baby back? That’s all you got? We need to work on our baby thief spiel, because this shit’s not going to cut it.”

“Yeah,” said Kerb. “Something along the lines of, Give us the motherfucking kid.”

Zag said, “I’m not too sure about using pornographic modifiers for the baby. How about, Motherfucker, give the baby back?”

“That’s it,” said Kerb.

“Bingo,” said Blue.

Take two. “Motherfucker, give the baby back.”

Like a child sharing his favorite toy, the man handed the baby to Canary. She held it up to her shoulder unnaturally, uncomfortably. The job was done.

Blue lagged behind as the other three walked back to the subway tunnel.

The man looked at her pathetically, “I just wanted a baby.”

“Then you’ll have to buy one like everybody else.”

She gripped her two-by-four with both hands, and with a swift, strong swing clocked him on the side of the head.

He collapsed face-first onto the brittle turf.

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NEXT: 4 - That Guy Over There