“Lookit me Quirky!” the youngster proclaimed as she sailed on by, arms outstretched.
“I see,” said Corky with a grin. “You’re a swan.”
She stopped and glanced at him, her head cocked and a smile on her pouty little lips. “Nu-uh. I’m a Shellybird.”
“That so? And what’s a Shellybird eat?”
Her smile stretched wider. “OREOS!”
A mad cackle escaped her lips and Shelly was off again. Corky leaned back against the wall and watched her. He felt his heart soaring, just like she was pretending to do. He’d grown to adore that little girl so much. She was like a daughter to him. She brought him joy each day, doing her part to heal his crushed soul. Little by little, with each caring embrace she gave him, the guilt of his earlier, horrible actions waned just that much. Not that he would ever forget the face of Shelly Robinson, the little girl he accidentally killed before the world fell apart. No, that would never happen. Corky wouldn’t allow it. But if caring for this new Shelly, the one with the carefree spirit and obvious affection for him, meant that he could somehow atone for his deeds, then that’s what he would do. He owed the spirits of the dead at least that much, if not more.
Allison leaned back, stretched her arms above her head, and yawned. Shelly ceased her frantic scurrying and mimicked her mother. Allison then turned to her husband and said, “Hun, I’m exhausted. I’m going upstairs.”
Tom nodded.
Allison stood and gathered up her daughter. “Bye Daddy, bye Corky, bye other guys!” Shelly exclaimed as she waved from over her mother’s shoulder. Doug and Horace offered a wave in return while Hector raised his glass and hiccupped. Corky grinned and passed her a thumbs-up, which she gladly returned before disappearing out the door.
With the child gone, Corky had nothing to distract him from more thoughts of Stanley. His mood soured and he felt his face droop. He played with the frayed knee of his jeans, rolling the strings around his meaty fingers and making the hole wider. He thought of Stanley’s unremarkable appearance, a shell that hid the most compassionate and loving man he’d ever known. Out of all those who had fled the diner in Roanoke with him, Stan was always the one he felt closest to. The funny thing was, he didn’t realize it at the time. Now that he was gone there was a hole there, one that no one else could fill. He started to feel dizzy.
A hand fell on his shoulder and he looked up. Tom stood above him, hand outstretched. “What do you say, Charles,” the man said. “Care to share a drink with a friend?”
Corky shook his head. “Nah, that’s all right.” He rose on his sore legs and teetered a bit to the side. He felt drunk already, even though he hadn’t had a sip all night. “I think I’m gonna take my cue from Ally and the little’un,” he said. “Time for me to get some shuteye.”
Tom backed up and cleared room for him to leave. His head was down and he appeared disappointed. Corky put his hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “Hey, no worries, bro. Maybe tomorrow.”
As Corky left the room, swaying a bit as he walked, he heard Tom say, “Can I join you?” followed by Hector replying, “Fuck off, muchacho,” in his slurred, drunken speech. Corky felt horrible. He wanted to turn around right then, storm back into the room and share that drink with the man, but he couldn’t. His head ached from sorrow. It felt like it was slowly killing him on the inside.
Go say goodnight to the girls, he told himself. Give Shelly a hug. That’ll help take some of the pain away. Steinberg’s a grown man. He can handle himself just fine.
With a solid goal in mind, one that didn’t involve confrontation, Corky tramped up the stairs. Once again, he was smiling.
* * *
They hate you, Thomas.
The voice, the invader in his head, was back.
Tom hadn’t heard it since the day they buried Stan. It had reached the point where he thought he was free now, that helping his soul’s subjugator vanquish Stanley Clark had been his final test. But now it had returned, so strong that it rattled his teeth when it spoke.
“Please, leave me alone,” Tom moaned.
We have a deal, Thomas. Or have you forgotten that?
Pain pierced his temples, and Tom had to chomp down on his tongue to stop from screaming. He rolled over and dropped off the side of the bed, hitting the carpeted floor with a thud. He had to get out of there fast, before Allison woke up and asked him why he was talking to himself.
His head cradled in his hands, Tom stumbled out of the room and into the hallway. The world spun out of control as his master squeezed his brain with ethereal fingers, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. His hip thwacked against one of the small wooden tables in the hall, knocking over the lamp that stood atop it. The lamp fell and bounced on the carpet, thankfully not breaking.
His legs went out on him and he collapsed in a heap. Images invaded his mind’s eye, visions of city streets littered with bloody human remains. The images grew clearer, closer, and he noticed Allison and Shelly on top of the pile, their innards spilling over the jumbled mess of arms and legs. In his head he shouted for everything to stop. And stop it did.
“Fine,” gasped Tom. “What do you want me to do?”
You must leave now, Thomas, and bring the others with you. There is someone I need you to find for me.
Tom shook his head. “I can’t leave. Ally and Shelly like it here. Besides, the others know this is a safe place…”
Laughter filled his head. I have told you before, the voice said, there is no safe place. It appears the time has come to show the rest how true that is.
Tom sobbed quietly as pain again wedged into his brain, and he allowed his conscience to take control.
Do not cry for them. They care nothing for you.
He didn’t have the strength to argue.
When the pain subsided, Tom stood up on weak legs and stumbled down the hallway. The darkness engulfed him, the only light coming from the candelabra placed at the bottom of the stairwell. But Tom needed no light to guide him, for the path became clear to him in the form of a shining, rectangular mirage. So he moved forward, until he reached the glowing portal.
He turned the knob and opened the door, and the ethereal glow disappeared, replaced by flickering candlelight. The hinges squeaked just a bit, enough to cast a nervous shudder up his spine. He took a step inside. His eyes fell upon the bed and the old man sleeping atop the covers. Horace coughed and rolled over, and Tom froze. Not until the old scientist had resumed his deep, wheezing snores did Tom dare move his feet.
At the far corner of the room, sitting beside an opened window, was a desk covered with research equipment. It was this desk that Tom was pulled toward, the objects on its surface glowing the same way the door to Horace’s room had. When he finally arrived at it—the journey seemed to take forever—he bent over and inched open the top drawer.
From within the drawer he removed a notebook, clipped open to the last page written upon. The words jumped out at him in the darkness, legible as they would be in the light of day. Incubation of a single cell approx 35 sec, the scrawled writing said. Complete assimilation in a human predicted at approx 48 hrs, depending on strength of cellular resistance. This tells me nothing. I’ve written it all before.
These observations, and the hopelessness they displayed, went on and on the further back through the pages Tom flipped. He instantly felt sorry for the old man: so intelligent, so honorable, and yet he was trying to solve something that could never be solved. He started to feel bad for him, but then that pain in his brain came again, that squeezing sensation, and he quickly plunged his hands back into the drawer until they fell upon a cylindrical, metal object.
An old thermos.
Twisting the cap off, Tom reached his fingers inside. They brushed against something crinkly—a plastic bag, he assumed—and he pulled it out. It turned out to be two items, both in separate bags.
In one bag was a small amount of some black substance that looked like a rotten tortilla crumb, no bigger tha
n a pencil eraser. This bag he stuffed back into the thermos. The second bag, the one containing a vial marked Dehydrated/Pure, shone like a beacon. He took the vial out and removed the rubber stopper.
He grabbed a plastic cup off the table beside the sleeping Horace, inhaled to make sure it didn’t contain any foreign substance, and then tilted the vial. A small amount of the sand-like matter the tube held trickled into the cup. When his master said that was enough, Tom set down the cup, re-stopped the vial, placed it back in the bag, back in the thermos, and then back in the drawer.
Horace grunted, freezing him for a moment, but then the old man once more started snoring.
Tom tiptoed out of the room with the plastic cup gently resting in his hand. He glanced at the door across the hall, the entrance to the room where the young Marine slept, and made sure he was even quieter than when he entered. The last thing he needed was for Doug to wake up and question him. The kid didn’t trust him as it was. He knew he’d never be able to explain why stealing granules of hyper-concentrated contaminant from Horace’s room didn’t make him untrustworthy.
From there he crept down the stairs, past the fountain and the dripping candelabra, and through the hall leading to the kitchen. Once there he clicked on the light, which in turn activated the generator, causing a grinding noise to fill his ears. He hoped the others were sleeping too deeply—and had drunk too much—to notice.
Tom placed the cup on the counter, snatched a knife from the butcher block, and proceeded to run its dull blade across his thumb. It hurt like hell, pressing his flesh the way he did, and he suddenly had a vision of Allison and Shelly being torn apart, bit-by-bit, by creatures with claws much sharper than the blade in his hand. He swallowed his pain and kept going, until a bead of red cascaded over his knuckle.
Holding his thumb over the cup, he squeezed out a few drops of blood. They plunked to the bottom like rainwater but avoided the powder resting on the other side. Tom then dabbed at the wound with a paper towel, leaned over the sink, and ran a thin stream of water from the faucet over it until the bleeding stopped.
Tom glanced into the cup and watched as a strange phenomenon occurred. The granules shook like Mexican jumping beans, shimmying their way across the tiny span separating them from the small puddle of his life’s essence. When they entered the pool the blood slowly darkened, going from bright red to deep crimson to a solemn shade of brown. It thickened as well, until it looked like an oil slick.
“What do I do now?” asked Tom, his voice a frightened murmur.
My influence has weakened, replied the voice. Now you must go to the one who is open to it.
“And who’s that?”
That pressure in his head again.
Do I need to tell you?
“No,” Tom muttered, timidly. “I think I know.”
Good.
He stuffed the soiled paper towel, a pack of wet wipes, and a zip-lock bag from the pantry into his pocket. Picking up the cup once more, Tom exited the kitchen, making sure to leave it exactly as he’d found it. He made his way down the hall and past the reception desk until he reached the staff quarters on the other side. He didn’t need the ethereal glow this time, for the candelabra’s flickering radiance provided all the light he needed. He stopped at the door to Hector Conseca’s room, pressed his ear to the door, heard the chubby, disgruntled Mexican snoring as loud as a papa bear protecting his cub, and then turned the knob and stepped inside.
Hector, while loved by everyone, had a short fuse and a seemingly bipolar personality. While he treated Tom with respect most of the time, when he got drunk he was apt to lash out at him seemingly without reason, demonstrating his instability. Also, after spending time with the group for more than three months, Hector was the only one of the lot who seemed to get sick. He was constantly sniffling, snot drenching his mustache and making it glisten, especially the more he drank. If the authority in Tom’s head, the Sam he’d met so long ago, said there was only one open to his influence, Tom assumed it was him.
He hovered over the snoring man and began to have second thoughts. Everything was a maze of shadows and shapes. I don’t want to do this, he pleaded. Please, I can find another way. I promise.
No promises. No other way.
But…
Agony clenched Tom’s neck and he doubled over, almost falling into the passed-out Mexican. He fought through the pain and kept it together, eventually forcing his body to rise up straight. “Fine,” he grumbled, smoothing his sweat-drenched, thinning hair on the side of his head. “Have it your way.”
Quickly, before it spoils.
Tom poked his hand into the cup and gathered the rapidly congealing substance on the tip of his index finger. The stuff seemed to wrap around it, writhing like a snake. He fought the urge to retch and put down the cup. With his free hand he pinched Hector’s nose shut.
Hector’s mouth popped open and a stale gust of air puffed out, reeking of liquor and gradually rotting gums. Again Tom felt like he would be sick as bile rose in his throat. He held his breath and brought the hand with the substance forward. His middle finger lifted Hector’s top lip while his index finger smeared the substance—Sam’s extract combined with Tom’s blood—onto the man’s bleeding gums. Hector snapped his jaw shut and Tom barely got his fingers out before they were bitten. The unconscious man then rolled to his side, smacking his lips as if he hadn’t taken a sip of water for days.
“Grumph,” Hector muttered in his sleep.
Tom backed up, opened the pack of wet wipes, and cleaned the residue off his fingers. He could feel it squirming around still, and the sensation appalled him. When he’d thoroughly scrubbed, he dropped the wet wipe, its wrapper, and the paper towel from earlier into the cup, tucked the cup into the zip-lock bag, sealed it shut, and shoved it into his pocket. He then exited the room, a bit noisier than before, and almost ran to the recreation room, where the remnants of the late-evening fire still burned. He jabbed at the remaining two smoldering logs with a poker, helping them to catch fire once more, and dropped the bag containing the evidence of his night’s efforts between them. He watched the plastic melt and smelled its pungent odor. Fearful others might notice the black smoke exiting the fireplace, he slid the glass doors shut, closed the flue, and waited until the coals, dying out with no oxygen, swallowed the last remnants of his guilt.
When that was finished, Tom hurried to the stairs. It seemed each one creaked with every step he took. He heard Doug and Horace stirring in their beds and noticed a faint glow enter the hallway. The sun was coming up. He had to get back to his room before anyone found him.
He made it, just barely. Just as his door clicked shut, he heard another door open and drowsy feet stumble down the hall. He assumed it was Doug, seeing as the footsteps were light and confident despite their unevenness. Tom breathed a sigh of relief and slid down the wall until his butt rested on the floor.
“Daddy?” an innocent voice asked.
Tom’s eyes shot up in horror. He saw Shelly sitting on the bed, staring at him with her wide, walnut-sized eyes. She cocked her head, and he got the distinct impression his daughter, young as she was, knew exactly what he’d just done. Sorrow built up in his throat.
“Daddy, what’s wrong?” said Shelly, and Tom lost it. He crawled over to his daughter and she leaned into him. In that moment he hated himself, his passions, his drive, the deal he’d made. He realized, right then and there, that the entirety of his life had been a lie. Pulling her off the bed, he held her there, rocking her, allowing her tiny five-year-old hands to caress the back of his head while he sobbed. Allison stirred in bed.
Pathetic, the voice in his head proclaimed.
Tom didn’t argue.
* * *
When he first started coughing, Hector tried to ignore it. You’re just beaten down, he thought. Too much cervesa, too little sleep. Or maybe it’s one of those spring colds. But then the headache started, rising from his sinuses and zapping his brain like a million tiny electric eel
s. Sweat poured off his forehead. His throat tightened as it had when he’d been stricken with strep as a kid. His stomach clenched and he constantly felt the urge to take a dump, but when he sat on the toilet nothing came out but gas.
In short, he knew he was in deep shit.
He hid from his friends for most of that day, only venturing out to refill his pitcher of water. Whenever anyone asked him what was wrong he waved them off, saying it was nothing but a bad hangover. He didn’t want them to know. He didn’t want himself to know. He’d seen what happened to Jose Reviez, the guy who’d lived in the apartment next to him. The paramedics had taken him away four days before all hell broke loose, never to be seen again.
Don’t think about it, he thought. It’s not what you think it is.
That evening, when he tasted blood and checked the mirror, he knew he was wrong. His gums had developed painful, bleeding sores. His teeth felt hollow, as if he hadn’t brushed them in years. But none of that compared to what he saw when he took off his shirt. His skin was covered in red-and-yellow blotches from collarbone to bellybutton. In the center of a few of these blotches was what appeared to be the head of a pimple. He squeezed one—it hurt like hell—and a pinkish fluid oozed out. He covered himself up as best as he could, retreated to bed, and curled up beneath the covers, praying over and over again that sleep would cure him of whatever had gone wrong.
Death Springs Eternal Page 7
