Hazardous Materials

by Matthew Quinn Martin

  Unlike most games Jarrod had seen, this one didn’t have a joystick, just a small wheel and a single button. Above the button was the word Start, below it Fire. He tapped it once. He heard a metallic plink and spotted a quarter tumbling from the coin slot. Must be a glitch, he thought. But still, it was strange. It was as if the Polybius itself were issuing him a formal invitation—or perhaps a challenge.

  He bent down and picked up the quarter. He walked it across his knuckles for a moment, a trick Simon had taught him. Feeling the metal warm as it slid between his fingers, he wondered how long the quarter had sat in the Polybius’s belly. Three decades? More? He wondered who might have been the last person to hold it. One of the eight people who’d faced their own personal Game Over that day, blood and brains splattered across the inside of the arcade? Or maybe, just maybe, this quarter had last jingled in the pocket of Shaw himself.

  Jarrod dropped the coin into the slot. Challenge accepted.

  Sinneschlöshen 1981 flattened to a line, then shortened to a single white dot. The dot bloomed, lashing out vectors of red and green. They linked to form a cylinder. Jarrod flicked the track wheel, and the cylinder began to spin. A line of type scrolled across the top of the screen: Prepare to take aim. A beat after the words appeared, a grating metallic voice repeated: “Prepare to take aim.”

  A simple gunlike shape appeared at the bottom of the screen, barrel aimed right down the cylinder. Jarrod hit the Fire button. A burst of light flew down the mouth of the vortex. At the bottom of the tube, a pair of two-legged creatures appeared. Instantly, they began to scuttle up the walls, moving like spider crabs, all angles and points.

  Jarrod rotated the cylinder until the crab creatures were in his sights. He hit them easily, and they broke in half. But each half reformed as a new creature. Jarrod fired again and again. With each bull’s-eye the creatures only doubled in number. Within seconds, there were too many to count, far too many to shoot. They roiled up the inside of the cylinder, heading straight for him. He tried to shake the thought that if the creatures reached him, they would crack the glass and pull him inside, pull him right to the bottom of that swirling vortex.

  “Warning,” the voice buzzed, a digitized monotone. “Danger.”

  “No kidding.” Jarrod slapped faster at the button, picking off more and more of the creatures. But something tugged at the back of his mind. What am I doing? Why am I still doing this? Why am I playing this stupid game? I just need to take a picture of the screen. I don’t need to beat this thing.

  But he kept playing, pushing back against the rising tide of creatures until they finally began to recede. Eventually, only a single creature remained. Jarrod spun it into range and fired. The thing came apart, falling into disconnected lines that, this time, did not reassemble. He let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. The cylinder was empty.

  “Phase one completed,” the voice said. “Prepare for phase two.”

  Jarrod caught sight of some numbers—or maybe symbols—flashing at the corners of the screen. They whipped by too fast to read. A glowing ring rippled the length of the cylinder, catching his attention. He stared at it, and it began to pulse, bathing his face in a cold blue light.

  A comforting, familiar light.

  JARROD STOOD IN the roller rink. Things he’d known for sure that they’d demolished and carted away were back in place. Things he’d ripped out with his own hands were whole again. And not just whole; they were new. Things like what he stared at now. Things like the mural.

  He narrowed his gaze at it. The colors were bright. The paint fresh. And things, again, were not as he remembered them. Instead of pins, the man leading the children now juggled bones. The eyes of the woman fleeing the satyr seemed full of allure instead of fear. Her head tilted coquettishly, and her hand, once held out in warning, now beckoned. The man kneeling at the pool wasn’t simply looking anymore; he scooped the water for a drink. And the mermaids floating lazily around him flashed hungry smiles of needle-sharp teeth.

  It’s all different. But of course it was. It was a dream, and he knew that. Things are different in dreams.

  “You like that thing?” Ludwig’s voice came from far behind him.

  He turned to see his boss at the edge of the rink itself. In one hand dangled a pair of roller skates, in the other a smoldering Newport Light. And there was something else different about Ludwig. His eyes were gone. Where they should have been were only dark patches of nothingness. “You can see it?” Jarrod asked, wondering why he wasn’t terrified. It was a dream, he justified. Things were different in dreams. “You can see me?”

  “I see plenty. Plenty enough, anyway.” He exhaled a billowing cloud of blue smoke. Behind him, the door to the arcade beckoned with a wash of flashing lights.

  Jarrod could smell charred mint all the way on the other side of the rink. No. That’s not right, he thought. Can you smell things in dreams? He wasn’t sure. It doesn’t matter. Things are different in dreams.

  “Smoke?” Ludwig asked, dropping the roller skates and reaching for his pack. The twin voids of his eyeless sockets seemed to take in everything and nothing at all.

  “I don’t smoke.”

  Ludwig laughed. “You will. You will. And you know what they say.” He drew deep on his cigarette. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. You don’t smoke now, bucko, you’re gonna smoke later. You’re gonna burn.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” came another voice from his left. A small voice. “You need to be strong. You need to prepare.”

  The voice belonged to a little boy, maybe five years old, standing next to him, dressed in zip-front footie pajamas. His eyes were bright with life but tarnished by sorrow. “Who are you?”

  The boy simply took Jarrod’s hand in his, and together they faced the mural again. “He can’t see them.”

  “See what?”

  “Look.” The boy pointed one small finger at the trees in the background of the painting.

  Jarrod leaned close. The shadows in the forest began to move, shifting closer to them. Patches of gloom seemed to coalesce into eyes—eyes and teeth. From the corners of his vision, he caught flashes of figures slithering in the darkness, but when he twisted his head to face them, nothing was there but flat paint. “What are they?”

  “Demons,” the boy answered.

  “Die demon die,” Jarrod muttered to himself, remembering the graffiti. He peered even closer at the mural. The juggler now juggled knives. The children’s eyes had been replaced by hollow blanks the same as Ludwig’s. The woman’s arm had grown long and boneless. It wrapped around the satyr’s neck, choking. And the man was gone. Where he’d knelt at the pool was a growing slick of blood.

  “They can change,” the boy said. “The demons. They can make us see what they want. See what we want. It was a gift from their masters. A gift for them. A curse for us. A weapon.”

  “Weapon . . .”

  The boy clamped down on Jarrod’s hand. “The end is coming. You need to prepare.”

  “The end of what?”

  “Us,” Ludwig called from the other side of the rink, laughing. “Us. Them. Difference does it make?” His cigarette dropped from his hand. Small flames sprouted from where it landed on the carpet.

  “Don’t listen to him,” the boy insisted. “You know what you need to do.” He pointed past Ludwig to the door of the arcade. Through the arch, Jarrod could see shadows flitting back and forth. Behind them was the Polybius. “You can stop them.”

  Jarrod felt hot. Sweat beaded his brow. He wiped it away, turning to see Ludwig trying to tie on his roller skates while an inferno raged around him. Smoke choked the air. Fire ate at the walls, taking big, greedy bites.

  “Told you you were gonna smoke,” Ludwig said, his head on fire. “Told you you were gonna burn.”

  The fire was suddenly everywhere. A million invisible needles tore th
rough Jarrod as the flames climbed his back, coiling around him. He watched his skin blister, turn black, and peel. It’s just a dream, he told himself. A dream. But the pain screamed differently.

  Melting flesh dripped from the boy’s charred face, his hair now a shock of fire. He turned to Jarrod, eyes accusing. “You can stop this.” His mouth was gone, his face just a leering skull. But the voice was inside Jarrod’s head. “You have to stop it.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am,” he answered. “You know what you have to do.” The boy let go of Jarrod and was lost to the smoke, lost to the fire.

  Jarrod raised his hand, nothing now but black bone and raw sinew. In it he held a gun. The barrel shone with a glow that was almost holy. He started walking toward the arcade door.

  FOUR

  Jarrod jolted awake.

  Knock-knock-knock.

  He lay sprawled out on his bed, his neck one solid column of agony, screaming at him as he tried to roll over. He tugged at his shirt, and found it glued to his skin by a film of sweat. Harsh splinters of daylight edged through his drapes, shanking his eyes. Dawn already? he thought. He must have fallen asleep. He’d had a dream. It was—

  Knock-knock-knock.

  The door. Who the hell is knocking this early? It was the weekend. It was his day off.

  Knock-knock-knock.

  “Fuck! All right! Give me a minute.” Jarrod lurched for the door, easing off a leg that was more needles than pins. He gripped the knob, ready to put that whole turn-the-other-cheek thing to the test if he opened it to find a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses. He leaned in at the peephole, blinking away the light that skewered him straight in the optic nerve.

  It was his friend Geoff, fisheyed by the glass. Jarrod inched the door open. Daylight washed over him like a wave. He staggered back, nausea wriggling up his throat.

  “Dude? Just about to give up. Been knocking for like five minutes.”

  “What are you doing here?” Jarrod managed with a small belch, barely able to peel his swollen tongue from the roof of his mouth.

  “What are you talking about?” Geoff pushed his way inside. “Thought we were going out.”

  “Right, right . . . I forgot.” The truth was, it wasn’t that Jarrod had forgotten; it was that he didn’t even remember.

  Geoff was dressed in dark jeans, a striped Oxford shirt, and a velour jacket, his hair plastered back in a slightly fascist cut that was all the rage. Even through the fog, Jarrod had to admit that his friend seemed awfully put together for such an early hour.

  “What time is it?”

  “Dude, it’s like five o’clock.”

  “Can’t be. Sun’s up.”

  “You on the crank or something? Five o’clock . . . in the p.m.”

  “Five p.m.?”

  Geoff waved at the air as he walked past Jarrod. “Dude, you reek.”

  “Can’t be,” he repeated.

  “Sorry, bud. You reek. Like reek reek.”

  Jarrod fanned his shirt, catching a whiff of his own funk. Geoff was right. He didn’t just reek. He stank as if he’d bedded down in a sewer. But five in the afternoon? That can’t be right. He dug a chunk of sand from one eye, then pulled his phone from his pocket. 4:50 p.m. Right there on the screen, along with a listing of four missed calls, three from Geoff and one from Ludwig.

  “Whoa!” Geoff said, eyeing the Polybius. “Where did you get that thing? From that shitty job with the porno-stache guy?”

  “Yes.”

  The screen was black. Jarrod tried to remember when he’d stopped playing, when the game had ended and the dreams had begun. He dug deep but came back with nothing.

  “Does it work?” Geoff was already rooting in his pocket for some change.

  “No. No, it doesn’t.”

  Why did I say that? Jarrod wondered. Yes was what he thought he’d said, but his ears heard the same no that Geoff’s must have.

  “Shame.” Geoff walked to the bathroom. Jarrod heard the shower tap twist open with a rusty squeak. A rush of water followed. “Dude, you better hop in that. No way we’re pulling trim with you smelling like my uncle Alastair’s colostomy bag.”

  Jarrod wilted onto his bed, a ring tolling in his ears, bile rising in his throat. He couldn’t even imagine submitting to that shower’s punishing stream, no matter what he smelled like. And the last thing on his mind was chasing “trim.”

  “Dude? You cool?”

  “Nope,” Jarrod admitted. “I don’t think I can go out tonight, Geoff. I’m broke as that camel . . . you know, the one with the straw and all that.”

  “Come on, man. You know I got this.”

  Jarrod did know. Geoff had a solid job as a programmer. Nine times out of ten, he’d pick up the tab before Jarrod could even reach for it. The tenth time, he’d pick it up after Jarrod made a halfhearted grab. “. . . I don’t know.”

  “Come on. Not like you’re a charity case. I need a wingman; think of it as freelance work.”

  That only made it worse. Was that what he was? A rent-a-friend? A freelance wingman?

  “What’s going on?”

  “I had this nightmare,” Jarrod said, as much to the ceiling as to Geoff. “It was awful. This . . .” He reached into his mind, trying to grasp the images, but they slipped away like silk on satin. “Never mind.” He stood up, clutching his head. Fighting the urge to throw up, he crossed to the sink and poured himself a tumblerful of metallic tap water.

  “Don’t read too much into nightmares, bro. Nothing there but bad wiring.”

  Jarrod drained the cup in a single long swallow and refilled it. And drained that one, too. “I know, but—”

  “Ease up on the H-two-O, bro. Save some room in that bladder for beer.”

  “Right,” Jarrod said. He dropped the cup into the sink and stumbled toward the bathroom. “Think you can entertain yourself while I clean up?”

  “Sure. I’ll just whack off thinking about you naked.”

  Jarrod shut the door on the image and on Geoff. Steam had fogged the mirror, so he didn’t have to face his reflection. He brushed his teeth, twice, and it still tasted as if he’d taken a shit through his mouth. He couldn’t shake the dream. The images came at him from odd corners, a piece here, a piece there. The mural. Ludwig. The fire. The demons. The gun. And the boy.

  Enough! he screamed at himself, the thought ricocheting inside his skull. Just a dream. Get into the shower, and forget it. He stripped off his sweat-drenched clothes and stepped into the stall. The steaming water felt like teeth, tiny teeth that gnawed at him as the heat sank into his bones.

  His mind drifted again to the boy. There’d been a look in his eyes that Jarrod hadn’t been able to place until now. It was the same look his brother had had ten years ago, when he’d first come back from Afghanistan. And then again the night during Jarrod’s sophomore year of college when he was home on break. The night they all went out to the movies. All of them except Simon, who’d said he needed to stay home and “take care of something.”

  His brother didn’t leave a note. That might have been the worst part. Maybe he’d meant to end it in silence, but it had been an empty silence. A sucking void of silence. It left questions that were never going to be answered. Jarrod knew that now, even if his parents never would. No amount of conjecture or statistics about postwar suicides was ever going to fill that silence.

  Jarrod stayed in the shower until the hot water ran out. And after that, he stayed until the cold numbed his skin to rubber. He put on fresh clothes and emerged from the bathroom a new man, or at the very least a clean one.

  He was still shaking the last of the water from one ear when he saw that the Polybius was on—the screen a hypnotic swirl of vector lines.

  “Prepare to take aim,” came the stilted computer voice.

  “Thought you said this thi
ng doesn’t work,” Geoff said, turning to face the game.

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Looks like it works to me.” Geoff pulled a quarter from his pocket, and before Jarrod could stop him, it was already kissing the slot.

  “Wait! Don’t!”

  Geoff wasn’t listening. He plinked the coin in, and—

  bleep

  The screen blinked out.

  “Ahh! Man! That sucks!”

  “Told you it didn’t work.” Jarrod yanked the power cord from the wall. Time to unplug that dinosaur before it ended up burning his lovely shithole to the ground. Just like in the dream. “Must’ve been a short or something. Putting the stupid thing up on eBay tomorrow.” Before it can do any more damage.

  “Let’s at least open it up and get my quarter back out.”

  “I told you not to put any money in it.” Jarrod dropped the cord to the ground. “I’m keeping your quarter.”

  “You can keep . . . my nuts . . . in your mouth.” Geoff’s eyes landed on the screen. “That’s weird. Thought you unplugged it.”

  “I did.”

  The credit screen was still up. Sinneschlöshen 1981. Jarrod felt a twitch shudder through him, gripping him with a strong urge to stay and play the game, to shuffle Geoff off and lose himself in the Polybius’s helix of vector lines.

  “Must be that short you were talking about. Come on, ladies awaiting,” Geoff said, turning for the door.

  Jarrod watched the screen credit collapse into the familiar flickering white dot. But before it did, he saw something else, or thought he saw something else, perhaps.

  die demon die

  Case 744-AZ “POLYBIUS” Division Internal Document 264-B Page 7 of 45

  Subject: Geoffrey Reese

  Interrogator: Agent Sophie Knight

  KNIGHT – REESE

  (CONT’D PREVIOUS PAGE)

  motivations?

  A Look, I only knew Jarrod for something like two years when all of that went down. OK? Not like we grew up together.

  Q But you would have described your relationship at the time as close, correct?