Bad Glass

by Richard E. Gropp

  They were fast, and I could feel them gaining on me. The back of my neck tingled in anticipation, bracing me for that final, brutal snap, preparing me for the razor-sharp jaws that would sink into my fragile flesh at any moment now.

  There was no way I could outrun them. No way in hell.

  Then, suddenly, I was free, bursting out of the trees and falling forward into a scrim of leaves and decaying mulch. I spun around on the ground and started pushing myself backward, keeping my eyes on the trees, unable to get up off my ass.

  “Dean!” Amanda cried out in surprise just before I collided with her legs and knocked her to the ground.

  “Move!” I panted. “Move, move, move!” I continued to push myself backward, using my legs to propel myself away from the trees. Then my feet began to slip, and, finally, I stopped.

  The trees were still. There was no sign of the dogs.

  Amanda remained where she’d landed, watching me with huge perplexed eyes. “Your hand. You’re bleeding!” She crawled forward and grabbed my hand, rotating it front to back, inspecting the damage.

  For a while, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the trees; then a sharp pain blossomed in my palm. I sucked a breath through my teeth and turned toward her probing fingers. “The dogs, the fucking dogs,” I said. “They’re crazed. How’d you get past them?”

  She glanced up from my palm and shook her head. “I didn’t see them. I didn’t see a thing.”

  With the tail of her shirt, she wiped the blood away from my palm, revealing a pair of deep holes. It was my left hand, and the holes were spaced on either side of my previous wound—the line of raw flesh that had been ripped away in the apartment building. Amanda turned my hand over, exposing a single puncture wound in the web between my thumb and forefinger. This was the nastiest of the holes. My stomach began to turn, and I looked away.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not yet,” I hissed. The fear had begun to subside, replaced by frustration and anger. “I’m sure it will. Give it a couple minutes and I’m sure it’ll be hurting like a motherfucker.”

  Amanda shook her head. “You must have startled them,” she said. “You must have done something wrong.”

  I gave her an incredulous look, and she stared right back, stubborn, unwilling to hear anything bad about her precious dogs.

  “You see my hand?” I asked, raising it up so the blood spilled down my wrist and dripped onto my jeans. “You see what they did?”

  Amanda didn’t reply. She ripped a strip of cloth from the bottom of her shirt and wrapped it around my palm. “Give it some pressure,” she said. “We’ll clean it up when we get home.” Then she grabbed my uninjured hand and pulled me to my feet.

  “This is what I was looking at when you bowled me over,” she said.

  I looked around, finally calm enough to take in my surroundings. We’d passed through the stand of trees and were now standing in front of an open cave mouth, an oval swatch of darkness punched into the face of a fairly steep hill. The opening was only about four feet high, and its edges were ragged, as if it had been chewed into the earth. The grass in front of the entrance was muddy, imprinted with the shape of a hundred large, hand-size paws.

  I lifted my camera and took a couple of shots. At first, I tried to use my injured left hand, but a sharp jab of fire made me drop the camera back against my chest. Finally, I managed to prop it up on the palm of my right hand and gingerly stab at the shutter release with my left thumb.

  “This is where they come from,” Amanda whispered, a hint of awe in her voice. “This is where they live!”

  Before I could stop her, Amanda took a step forward, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted “Hello!” I listened as that word echoed again and again—hello, hello, hello—getting fainter as it passed deeper underground.

  Judging by that sound, those reverberations, it wasn’t a cave we were facing—a shallow little grotto—but rather a tunnel, leading down into the earth.

  Amanda began toward the opening, and I jolted forward, reaching out to stop her. As soon as I touched her arm, a low growl erupted from the dark tunnel—a sustained, multivoiced rumble, like rocks grinding in the heart of the earth. “We’re not going in there, Amanda. No fucking way!”

  She turned toward me, a blank look on her face. I raised my hand, showing her my bloodstained bandage. After a couple of seconds, she nodded, finally relenting.

  “Maybe later,” she said, a dreamy quality to her voice. “When you’re better. When we’re better prepared.”

  Using my good hand, I pulled her away from the dark entrance. It was hard on her, I could tell, leaving it behind. As long as the hole was in view, she kept glancing back over her shoulder, a wistful look on her face.

  I remained tense as we skirted the nearby patch of trees and set off for home.

  By the time we got back to the house, the shock of my injury had faded and my hand had started to throb. The bones felt sore, bruised and out of place inside my flesh.

  We found Mac, Floyd, and Sabine in the kitchen.

  “Amanda!” As soon as we entered, Mac swept across the room and lifted her into his arms. “I woke up and you were gone. I thought … I thought …” He paused, taking a moment to compose himself. “Tell me, what happened?”

  “Nothing,” she said, pushing out of his embrace. “We both woke up early, so I thought I’d show Dean around the neighborhood.”

  All eyes turned toward me, and Amanda shot me a meaningful look. I got the message loud and clear: nothing about the dogs, nothing about the tunnel.

  There was silence for a moment, then Sabine shouted “Fuck,” finally noticing my hand. The bandage had soaked all the way through, and I was dripping blood onto the floor. “What the fuck happened to Dean?”

  “Jesus,” Floyd added. He stood up and backed away from his place at the kitchen table, blanching at the sight of my bloody hand. Sabine grabbed me by the shoulder and led me over to Floyd’s abandoned seat. I dropped my backpack to the ground and let her push me down into the chair.

  Sabine unwrapped my blood-soaked bandage and held my hand open on the tabletop. She examined my wounds for a second, then raised her dark, kohl-rimmed eyes to my face. Her question was still there: What the fuck happened?

  I glanced up at Amanda, and she lowered her eyes to the ground. Mac was watching her closely; he was so focused on his girlfriend, he hadn’t given me or my bloody hand a second glance.

  “I tried to pet a dog,” I said. “A stray. He must have been hungry.”

  “Yeah. Fucking brilliant,” Sabine huffed sarcastically. “Petting stray dogs? You’re a fucking Rhodes scholar, now, aren’tcha?”

  Sabine cleaned the puncture wounds with water and a clean cloth. The worst of the holes was as big around as a dime; Sabine moved the skin, and I could see lengths of tendon through the opening: bunches of purple-red cord quivering in the open air. It was a nauseating sight. Floyd brought a first aid kit from the bathroom, then averted his eyes as Sabine flushed the wounds with antiseptic and bound them with gauze.

  Once she was done, Sabine shook her head. “Those are some pretty nasty holes you’ve got there,” she said. “I cleaned them out as best I could, but you’re going to have to watch out for infection. That could fuck you up but good.” She made a clicking sound with her tongue. “And I’m not even going to mention rabies.”

  I nodded. That was something I didn’t want to think about. Spokane was cut off from the world. Where would I go for real medical attention? The military? Or I could always just leave, I thought. But the thought of fleeing the city, just when I was starting to get some good photographs, filled me with dread.

  “Look on the bright side,” she added with a sly smile. “You’re going to be rocking some pretty cool scars after this. And if you want, you’re only a couple millimeters away from a real bitching hand piercing.”

  Floyd laughed—a loud hyena snort—and I found myself smiling despite my worry and pain.

  I heard th
e front door swing open, and the kitchen fell silent. Everyone turned toward the entrance just as Taylor walked in. She was clutching a stocking cap in one hand, using the other to brush strands of long black hair from her sweaty forehead. She had a bright smile on her lips, but it turned a bit quizzical as she glanced around the room, trying to figure out what was going on.

  “What happened?” she asked, nodding toward my bandaged hand. Now that it was wrapped in clean, white gauze, the sight was far less nauseating than it had been.

  “Dean got—” Sabine began, but I cut her off.

  “I just hurt my hand a bit,” I said. “Not a big deal.” I pointed to the bandage and shrugged dismissively. “Just a precaution.”

  I know it sounds stupid, but I really didn’t want Taylor to know the extent of my injuries. I liked her, and I wanted her to think I was all macho and strong, not some walking disaster area.

  Sabine, Floyd, and Amanda gave me perplexed looks, but they didn’t argue. And Mac, for his part, remained completely impassive.

  “Well, if you’re up for it, I think we can still make the hospital raid.” Taylor tapped at the face of her watch. “If we hurry.”

  “Grappling hooks this time?” Floyd said, a wicked smile spreading across his lips. “I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

  I nodded my consent, and Taylor smiled approvingly. She seemed to be in a good mood, and the light in her eyes made me forget all about the holes in my hand.

  Our vantage point was cold. Extremely cold.

  We lay perched atop a building about a block away from the hospital, completely exposed to the frigid wind blowing out of the north. Taylor had brought a couple of blankets, and the six of us lay huddled close together—elbow to elbow, with our arms braced up beneath our chins—staring across the street at the commotion a block away.

  Charlie and Devon were the only ones missing. When we checked their rooms before leaving, we’d found Devon gone, and Charlie … well, Charlie had refused to budge, muttering a single dispirited sentence through his locked door.

  I had my camera cradled in my uninjured hand, the lens cranked to its longest telephoto setting. Sabine had my camcorder, and I could hear her cooing as she played with the buttons, checking out its various features.

  “They think it might be the epicenter of what’s happening,” Taylor said. She lay to my right, her palms cupped around her eyes in order to block out the sun. “They’ve tried four—” “Five!” Floyd interjected. “—five times before. But the people they send in keep getting lost and confused, and they stumble out hours—or days—later. And none of them can say what happens.”

  “And some of them don’t come out at all,” Floyd added.

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Taylor said, adding a dismissive cluck.

  “They couldn’t get through on the ground floor,” Floyd said, continuing Taylor’s explanation, “so they’re trying farther up this time.”

  “Shhhh!” Sabine hissed. “They’re going in!”

  I panned my lens down to the base of the hospital building. There was a cluster of military vehicles parked on the sidewalk: a single open-backed transport and three Jeeps. A tent had been erected in the parking lot thirty feet away, and a massive computer console was visible through its open door. The computer was surrounded by three officers, one of them pacing nervously in and out of view.

  At the sound of a loud, hollow thump, I panned to a group of soldiers on the sidewalk. A thin trickle of smoke spun up into the sky above their heads, following the graceful arc of a flying rope. A grappling hook hit the hospital’s roof ten floors up, and I watched as a soldier pulled the rope tight, testing its strength. He strained against the rope for a couple of seconds, then handed it over to a helmeted comrade, giving him a reassuring pat on the back.

  The helmeted soldier was wearing a military-green backpack; I could see a brick-shaped radio strapped to one side and a rifle strapped to the other. The cylindrical body of a camera was mounted to the top of his helmet.

  After giving the rope a tug of his own, the soldier stepped up to the building and began climbing its side. He moved slowly, hunting for footholds with cautious deliberation. When he got up to the third floor, he stepped onto a window ledge, turned his shoulder against a tall pane of glass, and quickly smashed it in with his elbow.

  Then, after a moment’s hesitation, the soldier disappeared inside, trailing behind a length of electric-yellow rope.

  For nearly ten minutes, we watched this yellow tether spool through the window frame, moving in fits and starts. It was extremely tedious. As I lay on the rooftop, I could feel my injured left hand stiffening into a useless claw—bruised muscle pulling tight beneath damaged skin—and the camera in my right seemed to get heavier with each passing second. Then the rope stopped moving, and for a handful of minutes there was nothing, nothing at all. Just boredom.

  I could hear Floyd fidgeting two berths to my left. “How long—” he started to say, but motion down in the parking lot stopped him short. The three officers had stormed out of their command tent, their eyes turned up toward the building.

  I panned back in time to see the soldier fly out of the window.

  Not fall. Fly.

  Propelled out into empty space. Thrown, perhaps. Or maybe he dived, throwing himself out the window at full sprint.

  For a split second, the soldier fell through the air, his body perfectly limp, spinning toward the sky. Then he hit the sidewalk with a loud crack. For a moment, his comrades on the ground stood frozen in place, unsure how to react. In fact, the whole scene stood frozen in time: that motionless body lying still on the ground, those paralyzed clumps of soldiers and officers.

  Then the fallen soldier heaved himself up off the ground.

  Shedding first his helmet, then his backpack, the soldier—injured and broken—stumbled away from the building, moving in a crazed, drunken gait.

  Photograph. October 19, 09:23 P.M. The red guitar:

  A close-up of guitar strings. Solid white lines against deep red lacquer.

  The shot is far enough back to show the curve of the instrument’s body, a pair of graceful S’s just inside the top and bottom of the frame. The red lacquer is immaculate, smooth as unsmudged glass. Near the central hole it is a dark red verging on burgundy, but it lightens up as it nears the body’s edge, where it glows like a brilliant flame.

  There is a hand hovering over the guitar—dirty fingers frozen in motion, caught coaxing the thin nylon strings into indistinct blurs. The index finger has a cracked, ragged nail, and a thin band of blood encircles the dirty cuticle. The pad of the finger-turned partway toward the camera—is coated with blood, matching the guitar’s grisly color.

  I had the falling soldier on my mind all the way to Mama Cass’s: his brief flight through the air, his impact, and then that odd drunken stagger. The fall should have killed him. But he got up and continued on, a spring-driven wind-up toy, too damaged to comprehend, too damaged to just lie down.

  “Do you think he’ll be all right?” Sabine asked as we crossed under I-90 and approached the restaurant.

  “He went totally limp, like a wet noodle,” Floyd said. “And noodles don’t break.”

  “But why did he jump?” Sabine asked. “What did he find in there?”

  I was watching Taylor as we walked. She stayed a couple of steps ahead, leading the way. In response to Sabine’s question, she looked back over her shoulder and shrugged. Her eyes were vacant, her thoughts a million miles away.

  Nobody spoke. There was no answer to Sabine’s question.

  Sabine grunted and looked down at the camcorder in her hand. She’d flipped open the viewscreen and was watching the video of the falling soldier. Her fingers shuttled back and forth between “play” and “rewind,” as she watched the fall over and over again.

  We continued in silence.

  It was a little after one o’clock when we reached Mama Cass and the Char-Grilled Miracle. We found the tables packed with hun
gry lunchtime customers. There were at least thirty people seated in the open dining area and another fifteen gathered on the sidewalk outside. It was a shock, seeing so many dirty faces gathered together in one place. It made me wonder just how many people were left here in the city. Two hundred? Three hundred?

  Wandering the empty streets, it was easy to get caught up in the desolation of this place, easy to think that we were the only people left in the world—just our little household, along with the military, of course. But there were other civilians out there, holed up behind doors, making do without electricity and hot water, without Internet, cable, and phone service.

  I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures, trying to get some candid shots. These were truly interesting people. Beneath all that dirt and exhaustion—beneath the ragged clothing, snaggled hair, chapped lips, and bloodshot eyes—there was genuine character and resolve.

  These were the people who had stayed despite having every reason to leave.

  “Cool it, Dean,” Taylor hissed beneath her breath. “You’re making everyone nervous.”

  She was right. I glanced up and found myself the focus of wary glances and more than a couple of threatening glares. Several people had turned their bodies away, trying to shield themselves from my camera.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, addressing the crowded room. I un-slung my backpack and tucked the camera back inside.

  “Why, if it isn’t my favorite band of vagabonds … plus one!”

  I turned and found a smiling, middle-aged black woman striding our way. She was thin as a stick, and her wide smile revealed pearl-white teeth. She was dressed in stylish ski gear, impeccably clean and perfectly fitted.

  “Sharon!” Sabine exclaimed with a grin, moving forward to give the older woman a hug. “When’d you get back?”

  “About an hour ago. I got a lift from the infantry.” She pointed to a table of soldiers on the other side of the room. In response, the uniformed men looked up from their massive plates of food and snapped off nearly synchronized salutes.