by Curran, Tim
These thoughts flew through his head at amazing speed, but not a one actually stuck for the fear and revulsion filling him was simply too overwhelming.
About four feet from him, she stopped.
Stopped, cocked her head, and looked at him with eyes bleached white as grubs. Her face was contorted and hanging, a mask stitched together out of rags and wrinkles, set with scars and gaping holes. Poison drizzled from her colorless eyes and things squirmed inside her mouth. Her fissured lips pulled back from those decayed teeth. And that voice again, still like poured mud, but sweeter and strident almost: “Do you remember me, Eddie? Do you remember your old childhood friend? Do you remember me giggling in the closet and scratching under your bed and scraping my nails at your window pane? Of course you do! Just as you remember what I said to you…how I would nibble your gizzard and chew on your guts and wear your bowels as my necklace! Hee, hee, you remember, don’t you? And when I was done, as your precious mommy and daddy slept but two doors down, I would hold your hot and pumping heart in my hand and set my teeth into it…”
Stokley almost fell over.
He could feel her hot and rancid breath in his face like swamp gas.
But it had to be in his mind. He did not doubt the revolting physical reality of this living corpse before him, but she could not know his name and his boyhood fears. She just could not know these things. Offended by the very idea of it, his finger began jerking the trigger of the 9mm. The slugs passed cleanly through her with very little give at all. She jerked, but no more. It was like shooting into a wet canvas sack filled with carrion…holes were drilled into her and dark meat splattered against the wall behind her, but it had no more lasting effect.
Stokley heard himself scream as one of her hands closed over his gun-hand, gripping it tightly, a stinking juice running over his fist as from a squeezed out rag. And as she gripped, the flesh at the knuckles of that fungous hand popped open and a black acidic slime sprayed into his face, burning him and blinding him.
Then she had him, bathing him in her cold light and the smell of violated tombyards. She yanked him forward into her waiting stick arms and he fell against her, enveloped by her, his clawing fingers sinking into her flesh which had no more substance than cold bacon grease. Then that oval, dripping mouth was descending to swallow his own.
“This is what happens to bad boys, Eddie!” she breathed in his face. “This is what happens to bad little boys who don’t say their prayers at night! Now I have you and I won’t let go! Now I’ll suck your yummy guts out through your mouth and fill my empty belly…”
Which is exactly what she did.
Burned and insane and offended by the feel of her, Stokley just let it happen. And as he was vacuumed clean, he could only remember waking that morning and hearing the rain on the window. It sounded very much like his own blood did now as it struck the floor.
15
Ten minutes after they left Lily, Mitch and Tommy stopped by a 7-11 and got the strongest, blackest coffee they could dredge up from that bottomless pot. They said they needed it to steady their nerves and keep themselves awake, but truthfully, with all that they had seen now and those worse things they imagined, it was unlikely either of them would be nodding off for some time.
It was four in the afternoon by then and Mitch was almost shocked when he realized this. All these awful things happened in the span of a single day and in just a few hours to boot. It was more than a little amazing.
He thought: I woke up this morning only wanting this goddamned storm system to pass already and now here I am believing in zombies and all manner of crazy Halloween shit.
Tommy took them over to the West Town Mall where once again, Mitch hunted for Heather Sale’s little orange VW bug in the parking lot. There were something like 200 stores at Westtown and this was reflected by the massive wraparound parking lot that, flood or no flood, was easily two-thirds full. Something that Mitch found amazing with the things he had seen now.
Tommy parked outside Kohl’s and just sat there staring at him.
“What?” Mitch finally said, stealing another of his cigarettes.
Tommy just shook his head. “How can any of this shit be, Mitch? I mean…we did see what we saw today, am I right? I didn’t imagine that shit at Sadler’s or that dead bitch they pulled out of the pipe?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Then how? How in the Christ can this be?”
He was like a little boy looking for answers about the big, brave world. How come the stars don’t fall from heaven or the birds know how to fly south, Uncle Mitch? Except in this case it was a little more along the lines of, how can the dead be walking and why are they so pissed at the living? How can a lady with no legs and half her body all burned up like she’d been slow roasted on one side, still be moving? And why does the yellow rain make people melt? Mitch wished he had some good answers, but all he had were a lot more questions.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “Something’s gone to hell with the natural order of things and in the back of my mind I’m looking for a common cause.”
“Are you finding one?”
“It all seems to stem from that explosion out at the base.”
“I’ve been thinking that, too.”
Mitch pulled off his cigarette. “It makes you really wonder what they were working on out there. I mean, that place has been high security since I was in high school. You hear things about medical research and battlefield medicine, that sort of shit. I know it’s overseen by the Army Medical Command and the Army Research Office. That much has been in the papers…but what else? What the hell else goes on out there? What really goes on?”
“Depends who you listen to.”
Mitch nodded. “You ever know anyone who’s been out there since it became a research installation? I mean anyone at all?”
“No, nobody. They need work done out there—plumbing, boilers, electrical, whatever—they bring in outside contractors. Out-of-state, I hear. Outfits from out east somewhere. That’s what’s said anyway.”
“I’d like to get a look at that place, get some answers to all this.”
That made Tommy laugh. “You can’t get anywhere near it. You ever seen the signs on the road leading in? USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED. Something like that. No, you’ll never get in there anymore than you’ll get in Area 51 or any of those places. If the Army says fuel tanks exploded, we’re gonna have to accept that. Unless you wanna write your congressman.”
But Mitch had already thought about that. With the shit happening, wasn’t some sort of investigation into that place justified? He’d thought about writing his congressman, emailing him or something. Maybe getting a couple thousand signatures demanding action. But that took time. Lots of time. And the way he was seeing it, they didn’t have much of that. Who really knew how deep the shroud of secrecy ran out there…it might be a wall of silence that even congress couldn’t penetrate.
“I’m thinking about the media, Tommy.”
“The news?”
“Sure.”
“I had a cousin who was a reporter. But he just handled pork futures.”
Mitch ignored him. “We got two fucking TV stations in this city, a big newspaper, and about a dozen radio stations. Seems like those people might be the ones to put on the pressure, maybe get some answers.”
But Tommy just shook his head. “Sounds good, but I’m willing to bet they’ll be handed some bullshit story and that they’ll accept it. Just blindly accept it. That’s the way it is now, Mitch. All those rich corporate assholes own the media at the highest level and if they don’t play ball, they start yanking advertisers, make sure that certain papers or TV stations don’t get access to the good stuff. They play ball and ride the company line or they’re left out in the cold. Look what happened over in Iraq for chrissake. That was the biggest shitstorm shoved down our throats since Vietnam…but the media played along. At least when I was a kid during ‘Nam, those journalists were asking tough qu
estions and making those fuckwits at the top responsible for all their lies.”
Mitch knew he was right.
The media was in the pocket of the military and the politicians and that was because they were owned by corporations. It was sickening. That whole Iraq war was an atrocity, all those brave men and women losing their lives to support lies, corporate maneuvering, and political scheming. And the media just shrugged and said, oh well? We just report what’s given to us and that’s that.
Would any of it be any different here?
Not likely.
Greed was eating the guts out of the country and had been for years and people just didn’t give a shit. They paid their taxes, supported a government based on lies that threw away their sons and daughters, and believed everything that was handed them. And wasn’t that just peachy?
“I’m thinking if something’s going to be done here, Mitch, then we—me and you and every other little guy in this city—will have to do it ourselves. If any of this breaks, they’ll probably blame it on terrorists or whatever the flavor of the week is. You sure as hell can’t trust our politicians because shit always floats to the top.”
Mitch smiled. “Amen. Terror alert is indigo this week.”
Only thing was, none of it was very funny.
16
When they got to the precinct house downtown, Tommy was happy to see that George Lake, a shirttail cousin of his, was working the desk. He looked like he was really having some time of it. It was standing room only, people crowding around and cops rushing back and forth. Some guy with more tattoos than teeth was demanding his rights and some lady was crying that her husband was lost. Two burly cops came in out of the rain pushing three handcuffed gangbangers in front of them.
“Grand Central Station,” Tommy said.
George Lake, a husky guy with a bald head, said, “Wish I could say I’m happy to see you, Tommy, but I’m up to my left nut around here. Please tell me you’re not here to file a missing persons report.”
Tommy looked at Mitch and Mitch just shook his head. “No, I guess not.” He introduced George to Mitch and told him about Chrissy, that she’d probably turn up. George said they better take some particulars just in case. He handed them off to another cop who took Chrissy’s name and that of her friends. Just the basics.
“C’mon,” George said. “Time for my coffee break anyhow. Let’s go out to the garage where a guy can catch a few puffs without the tobacco Gestapo looking over his shoulders.”
He led them out of the pandemonium and into a parking garage where things were a little quieter. Cops were dragging perps from patrol cars or shoving them in for the ride over to the county jail.
“You see this shit?” George said, drawing off a thin cigar. “Last few days, this is what we got. Just a madhouse. We’re all pulling double shifts now. What a mess. Not only do we have a grade-A clusterfuck with this flooding, but we got all the rats coming out of the woodwork, stealing and robbing and looting. Jesus Jolly Christ.”
He told them it was just a mess. While a lot of people had abandoned the city and the Black River Valley in general, a lot more had stayed and simply refused to be moved. National Guard units had been in Bethany and River Town all day trying to get people out, but some of them just wouldn’t go.
“National Guard has itself a big tent camp set up outside of the city. Hundreds of people there. Most of the missing are probably out there. Maybe your kid is, too, Mitch.”
Mitch wasn’t so sure. “She’s just been gone since this morning, but my wife is having a cow about it, got me and Tommy pounding the streets.”
“She’ll turn up,” George said. “Most of ‘em will.”
“Not all of ‘em,” Mitch said. “Some of ‘em aren’t coming back. At least, not the way they left.”
Tommy gave him a look. “Yeah, it’s plenty bad out there.”
George sighed. “Tell me about it. We can’t handle this. Even with the other precincts and guys pulling twelve hour shifts, we can’t possibly handle something like this.”
“I suppose not,” Tommy said.
George looked around. “There’s shit coming down, cousin of mine, that you just wouldn’t believe. Last night, a minivan full of girls from over to the Holy Covenant Catholic school in East Genessee just up and vanished. Eight of ‘em ranging from seven to ten years old. A nun disappeared with them. You believe that? They were coming back from choir practice over at St. Tommy’s Cathedral.”
“And you can’t find ‘em?”
“No, not a thing. Oh, we found the van, all right. It was abandoned about six blocks from Holy Covenant, right at the edge of Bethany. It was sitting in about a foot of standing water, one of those flooded streets. Not enough to conk it out, though. Just sitting there, doors all wide open like that nun and her girls got out to look at something and never got back in.”
Mitch swallowed. Yeah, it was building now. There was no doubt of that. The worst of it in the flooded areas, but progressing along with the water into the rest of the city.
Tommy pulled off his cigarette. “You been hearing any of this weird shit about some funny rain falling?”
“Yeah, that one’s been passing around since the explosion out at Fort Bullshit.”
“Anything to it?”
George was slow to answer. “I don’t know, maybe. We had a couple uniforms over in Crandon today got exposed to something. They took ‘em over to St. Mary’s. Word has it they’re flying ‘em to the burn center down in Madison. Least that’s what’s being said.”
Mitch swallowed down something dry in his throat. He’d seen those two cops. Only place they’d be flying them would be to a morgue drawer. There was absolutely no possibility they had survived that yellow rain. None.
Tommy looked over at him and then looked away real quickly.
George blew smoke out of his nose. “We’ve had nothing but weird shit for days and it seems to be getting worse. I’m guessing people are just panicking…but there is some bad shit coming down out there, boys, that’s for sure. We’ve had more than one cop suffer a nervous breakdown in the past forty-eight hours.”
“Why? What did they see?” Tommy asked him.
He just shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m figuring it’s plenty bad.”
Mitch noticed how he did not meet their eyes when he said this. He was probably lying or just concealing something and you couldn’t really blame him; cops were supposed to quell panic, not create it.
“You don’t have any kids, do you, Tommy?”
“Nope. Not a one that I know about.”
George licked his lips and looked around. It seemed like he wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. “I guess…I guess that if you did, I’d tell you to pull them out of the city for awhile until things cool down.”
“Because of the rain?” Tommy said.
He shook his head. “No…not really. I don’t know. Just that there’s been a lot of crime. You got gangs of…of people out there that are pretty desperate. That’s all I’m saying.”
Mitch took the opening. “Yeah, I’ve heard there’s some weird ones out in the storm. People are saying some of ‘em look kind of funny, like maybe they’re—”
“Crazy or something,” Tommy broke in.
“Sure, lunatics. Some people just went nuts with what’s going on and others…well, there’s some mad shit out there, boys. Really mad shit. You just never know what you might run into out there. You just never know.”
Mitch was going to press it, ask what sort of things they might run into out there, but he didn’t have the heart. George Lake looked—as they said when they were kids—screwed, chewed, and barbecued. But Mitch was willing to bet he knew some things that he wasn’t about to put into words, at least not with a couple civilian johnnies. He believed George when he said some cops had seen things that made them suffer nervous breakdowns. He was willing to bet they’d seen things that had not just unhinged their minds, but turned their hair white. M
aybe all the cops didn’t know what was going on here or refused to believe, but many of them did. And still they were out there, trying to reign in the madness and restore some sort of order. You had to hand it to them for that. That took guts.
“No, if I was you boys,” George said, “I’d beat those streets for your girl. We’re stretched pretty thin here. If you find her, then wait for daylight and get out of the city for a few days. If you don’t find her by dark, well, just hole up for the night. She’ll probably be doing the same somewhere else. But I’d get inside before dark.”
“Why’s that?” Mitch asked him.
George looked uncomfortable. “Just dangerous out there with the storm. And after dark…well, it could get a little wild out there after dark.”
Tommy said, “Well, I got a four-ten in the rack of my pick-up. I’m thinking that’ll be enough.”
But by the look in George Lake’s eyes, you could see he wasn’t so sure about that. “I’m just saying, you should get in by dark, that’s all.”
“She’s my kid, George,” Mitch said. “I just can’t leave her out there missing.”
George stubbed his cigar in an ashtray next to a green, peeling bench. “There’s gonna be lots of kids missing out there tonight, mister.”
17
Tommy drove over to East Genessee, which had become something of a bedroom community for the city. There had been lots of urban renewal there as the yuppies had flooded in with their minivans and modular homes.
Like Pennacott Lane getting devoured by Main Street and the University, Genessee had been similarly gobbled up through the years. It had worked pretty hard to erase its industrial past. Gone were much of the factories and machine shops that had marked its heart when Mitch was a kid and with them had left the saloons and strip joints, the sandwich counters and rows of seedy railroad hotels and freight yards where the bums used to live in their shacks. What was left were blocks and blocks of urban blight…empty storefronts and failed businesses, boarded-up dance halls and pool rooms, deserted tenements awaiting the wrecking ball. Those manufacturing plants and tool-and-die shops that still stood were gray, grim, and abandoned behind high chainlink fences, their sprawling parking lots sprouting weeds where once hundreds of cars were parked. East Genessee, like much of the city, had lost jobs by the hundreds in the past twenty-five years. Most of them had been sold overseas by the big corporations and their politico pals.
