by K. W. Jeter
Another sound cut through the static and the distant, eroded voices. The telephone was ringing. Its note was muffled by the bed's other pillow, which had flopped over on the table, hiding the things on it.
The phone went on ringing. She heard it-the ringing was inside her head now, bouncing back and forth-but she didn't stir. If she ignored it, eventually it would go away. Everything went away-eventually.
It didn't. It went on.
"Motherfucker." She spoke the word into the pillow under her face, feeling her numbed lips move against the cloth. She raised her head. The whole side of her face felt numb, as though the blood had been drained from it.
Pushing the dry tangle of her hair away from her eyes, she fumbled her other hand toward the noise. The pillow fell off the bedside table, and the phone's ring shrieked louder.
She managed to get it to her ear.
"Yeah?" Her tongue felt like some alien creature that had taken up residence in her mouth, a space too small for it. Mumbling: "What d'ya want?"
"Lindy, it's me… it's Mike…"
The words, the voice, jolted her into full consciousness. As if the chemicals in her blood and brain had evaporated, replaced by adrenaline. She sat upright on the bed, drawing her legs underneath her, clutching the phone, the most valuable thing in the world, with both hands.
"Mike-" Her brain raced ahead; it took a second for her own words to catch up. "Where are you? How did you-"
His voice, an unsteady whisper but his voice, cut her short. "Never mind… we can talk about that later… when you get here. First… you've got to help me." For a few seconds, she heard nothing but his breathing, dragging and rough. Then he spoke again: "I'm going to need some stuff…"
***
Doot had had to stay in the phone booth, his butt sticking out past the folded-up door, to keep the guy standing so he could go on talking. Some of the things the guy said, to whomever was on the other end of the line, made sense-it sounded like doctor stuff, things the guy needed to try to take care of himself-and other things he couldn't figure out at all. That part didn't sound too good.
"All right…" The man's voice had dwindled down to a whisper, a breath. "Just hurry…" The phone fell from his hand and dangled at the end of its cord.
He draped the man's arm over his shoulder and carried him out of the booth to the motorbike. The guy looked even worse than before. Maybe he really was dying.
The bruised face lifted toward his. "Let's go back…" The lips barely moved. "Just gotta wait…"
They'd have to do the whole bungee cord routine again. Doot pulled the cord out of the back pocket of his jeans and looped it underneath the denim jacket, the man's weight sagging against the elastic. He got him straddling the bike's passenger seat, then climbed on and hooked the cord around his own chest.
The bike sputtered to life. Its headlight swept across the empty reach of the parking lot as Doot swung the machine back out onto the road.
***
She flew through the apartment, grabbing things and running back to the bedroom to stuff them into the suitcase.
Some of the things were easy to find, even in the apartment's trashed-out state. Things that were legal, that had never had to be hidden. Mike's doctor stuff, antibiotics and simple shit like that. She threw them in on top of the clothes, both his and hers, that she'd snatched out of the dresser drawers.
Other stuff… She stood for a moment beside the bed, eyes closed, gathering her breath. Then she swiftly knelt down and tugged at the carpet underneath the bed frame. The deep pile's backing had been slit; the point of a triangle peeled back in her hand. From the hiding place cut in the floorboards, she took out a small cardboard box, its flaps held down by a rubber band around it. She straightened up and threw the box into the suitcase. The rubber band snapped, and an assortment of hypodermics and glass vials and orange-capped plastic containers, their contents rattling, spilled out.
She stood up and slammed the case's lid shut, snapping the locks into place.
With the suitcase in one hand and her coat draped over the other, she couldn't manage to pull the apartment's front door shut behind her.
"Fuck it."
She left the door open and headed for the stairs. Through the building's glass door at the bottom, she could see the Corvette waiting at the curb.
NINE
Doot left the guy lying on the floor of the old clinic's lobby, wrapped up in the blankets he'd had to fetch back in from the building's porch.
"I gotta go now." Doot slid the water bottle and the Pepsi and what was left of the food closer to the man, then stood up. I'll be back in the morning, see how you're doing. Okay?"
The other nodded weakly, his head barely moving. He hadn't opened his eyes in all the time Doot had been half carrying, half walking him back into the building.
He watched the man for a moment longer, the slight, quick motion of the chest rising and falling. Then he reached down and switched off the flashlight sitting on the floor. The lobby's walls vanished into darkness. He turned and headed for the moonlit outline of the door.
What the fuck have I gotten myself into? Doot beat himself over the head with the question as the motorbike sped as best it could down the road. He'd left his denim jacket buttoned around the injured man, and now the night's chill tore through the thin cotton of his shirt. It was more than the night that shivered goosebumps up his arms. Now that he had time to think-riding the bike at night always drew out his thoughts-there was also time to get spooked.
He didn't even know who the fuck this guy was. He'd thought he'd heard a woman's voice coming over the pay phone's line, calling him Mike-that was all. Whatever the guy's name was, he was in deep shit. If Doot's father hadn't found him, the guy would already have sunk in the shit, and the brown waves would be rolling over his head. That was what worried Doot: if somebody had wanted this Mike character dead, then they probably wouldn't be too happy to find out he was still alive. And they wouldn't be too friendly with anybody who was helping him stay alive.
You idiot. He squinted into the cold wind. What a fuckin' mess-he'd already gotten himself into it far enough that he didn't see how he could pull his foot out. If he just left the guy out there, and didn't go back again… Maybe, maybe not. The guy couldn't have dragged his ass all the way out to that old clinic building by himself, not the way he was beat up. Somebody would've had to have helped him. And if the people who'd beat the crap out of this Mike were still around, or came back, they might want to know who the local good Samaritans were. Which would mean more shit, heavy shit, for Doot and his dad.
He didn't even know why he'd stepped in it. Going out there and dropping off some food and water for the guy, like his dad had told him to-that was one thing. But strapping him onto the bike and hauling him all over the place, right on the road where any pair of headlights could have caught them… Jesus H. Christ. He must've been out of his flipping mind.
That was the big problem with living out here in the middle of nowhere. It was something Anne, his buddy from school, was always talking about, why she'd been scheming since she was ten years old on how to get out of here. People got so stupid and bored in a dump like this-he could see Anne flailing about with her hands when she said it, making bored a two-syllable cry up to the ceiling of her bedroom-that they'd jump off a cliff, with a six-pack, every can opened, pressed up to their guzzling faces, just to break the monotony.
He knew she was right. This was a great place to live, if all you ever wanted to do was get blasted out of your mind and pile your daddy's pickup into a telephone pole, with a Metallica tape cranking away in the dash.
Look at the way he'd fallen right into doing whatever that guy had asked him to do. He'd already been able to see the deep shit coming in like a tide-you didn't have to be a fuckin' genius to figure these things out-and still he'd gone and done it. He bit his lip, shaking his head over the bike's handlebars. How stupid could you get?
He didn't know. I suppose I got a good chance of finding out. W
hat he needed now was to get some sleep, maybe think about all this stuff in the morning. He could call up Anne and talk to her, tell her what was going on-she could keep a secret. He'd told her all kinds of things that nobody else knew. Maybe she'd be able to figure out what he should do now.
Underneath the cold pinpricks of light, he rolled on the bike's accelerator, heading for home.
***
Mike listened to the rasp of the kid's motorbike fading away-a million miles, then more, down the straight road that ran through the night. If there had been any other sound, it would have blotted out the tiny engine's sputter.
He worked at his breathing, each pull into his lungs forced by his will. He'd tried opening his eyes-that had taken an effort as well-but he wasn't going to try again. The sensation of darkness spinning-of not even being able to see anything, yet sensing that the dark was twisting and blurring around him, as though he were falling down an endless, unlit mine shaft-had frightened him. A small calm voice in his head had announced, as though speaking of some stranger anesthetized on the table: So this is what it feels like to die. The fingers of his good hand had dug into the kid's arm as he'd been carried into the building.
If he just kept quiet, just stayed submerged under the wash of the pain and the dizziness… if he could just make it to the morning, and then the bright hours after that… however long it took for Lindy to get here…
If he could take another breath, and then one after that…
Easy, he told himself. It's the easiest thing in the world. He didn't have a single other thing to do now. The whole world had shrunk down to this, a dark, empty, dust-smelling room in some shabby old building falling down around him.
I should've asked-his thoughts wandered, his breathing going on by itself; that was a good sign, he knew. I should've asked him where the fuck am I. What this place was; some kind of hospital, he figured, if the things he'd seen upstairs were really there, and not just part of the dreaming. And that would be funny-he could feel the skin of his face tightening in a rictuslike smile. What he needed was to be in a hospital, and here he was in one, only it looked as though he were about a hundred years too late.
You missed your appointment, doctor… A snippy little receptionist's voice. Perhaps we can reschedule you… perhaps you can come back tomorrow…
A laugh scraped out of his throat. It died, and he had to roll onto his shoulder to spit out a sour wad of blood and phlegm. In the silence that flowed back over him, as he let his shoulders fall back onto the blankets, he heard something moving outside, nearly silent itself-a motion that touched the air, parted it like a weightless curtain, and left it in place, unchanged. The easing of weight onto powdery dust, the step of a tracking animal, leaving nothing but the marks of its passage.
Mike's eyes opened, involuntarily. Adrenaline seeped around his spine, pointing his senses. He could hear the creature outside, the slow investigation of its muzzle around the building's walls. And the others, the rest of them-all that had come down out of the hills, toward the scent of blood.
He could see the walls and ceiling in the faint blue light seeping inside; the adrenal rush had brought things into focus. He turned on his side and pulled himself toward the window. Levering himself up with his elbow on the sill, he peered through the largest crack between the boards.
Outside, the red eyes prowled back and forth, pacing the limits of their night territory.
He brought his gaze up, toward the crest of the hills. Another creature was there, gazing down at the building. Upright, a silhouette against the black of the sky, a hole where the stars were blotted out in the shape of a man.
The figure in the distance stood unmoving, watching, the same as the others.
Mike drew back from the window. He lay on the floor, wrapping the nest of blankets around himself. Already, the world out in the night was slipping away, another darkness welling up inside him. He closed his eyes and let go, feeling the floor yield beneath his weight, the earth beneath gaping open to receive him.
***
Doot saw the lights spilling out from the house. Even before he switched off the motorbike's engine, he could hear the raucous laughter and the voices shouting. Somebody's boom-box added thudding bass notes to the mix.
"Shit." He said it out loud, gazing in dismay at the house; his house, or really his dad's. Invaded by a party that was news to him. Sitting on the bike, out in the gravel driveway, he could hear a girl's shrieking, high-pitched laugh and an answering male guffaw. Then glass breaking; it sounded like an empty beer bottle hitting the concrete steps out in back.
The front door was unlocked and open a couple of inches. He pushed it the rest of the way, and the noise and light washed over him. His heart sank.
"Doot! Doot, my man!" Stevie Garza grabbed him around the shoulders, slopping beer onto his chest. The can dangled loose from Garza's other hand. The face looming into Doot's was all red and sweaty. "I told ya… didn't I tell ya… we'd see ya around." He poked his finger into Doot's breastbone; more beer fizzed onto his shirt. "We brought the party to your place!"
He pushed Garza away, the drunk kid staggering back against his buddies. Doot shoved his way through the crowd-there were at least a couple dozen other teenagers packed into the tiny living room-and toward the kitchen. Some of the laughing faces he recognized from the high school, others he didn't. The cigarette smoke and smell of spilled beer, and the pounding metal from the box sitting on top of the TV, made the place seem even smaller.
"Jesus Christ!" The narrow door to the kitchen's broom closet hung open; they'd found the cases of beer his dad kept stacked up in there. His dad got them cheap from a buddy of his that worked in the distributor's warehouse. Now the six cardboard cartons were spread out over the floor and on the sink counter and were empty except for crumpled-up cans.
Doot grabbed the arm of one of the guys leaning up against the wall. The floor around his feet was littered with ground-out cigarette stubs. "How the fuck did you get in here?"
He didn't have to wait for the guy's answer. He saw now the window broken by the back door, the sparkle of the glass shards across the linoleum. "Aww, shit…"
He heard a couple of the assholes snickering at him.
Somebody pushed a half-full beer can into his hand. "Hey, lighten up, man-"
Another voice joined in. "Don't sweat it. Your old man's out of town."
A couple was going at it over by the refrigerator, her back against it, the guy's hand roaming under her tank-top. A line of white elastic showed under the opened top button of her jeans.
Doot took a hit off the beer and wandered with it to the other side of the house. Through the bathroom doorway, he saw somebody hugging the bowl and making outboard motor noises. The guy's spine arched as though he were trying to bring his kidneys up. The sour odor of beer puke floated out.
Slumped against the hallway wall, Doot worked at what was left in the can. The music's pulse came through the plaster and into the back of his head.
There were too fucking many of them to get rid of. And there was no way he was going to call the cops; they'd haul his ass off along with everybody else's, and his dad would hit the fucking roof if he had to come down to the station. Which would be days from now, anyway, before his dad came back from his run. All of these jerks would be prancing around on the streets, and he'd still be cooling his heels in the juvie slammer.
He'd have to ride it out. In the morning, he could check out the damage. In the meantime… He crumpled the empty in his fist, dropped it, and went back to the kitchen to see if he could scout out another.
***
The sun poured down on the green lawns and the people there, standing and talking or moving about in a langorous summer haze.
Mike felt his arm being taken by the young woman, her hand pressing softly above his elbow. "Let's go inside. It's so hot out here." She smiled at him. The feathered wisps of her hair traced across her neck as she reached to place the badminton racquet on one of the canv
as and wood folding chairs.
She had eyes like Lindy's, or the way Lindy's were without the chemical glaze. But the smile was sweeter, more demure and secretive. She tilted her head to one side, still smiling at him, her other hand joining the first in its light grasp. He could feel each small finger, and the stiff lace at her wrists poking against his skin. The touch pulled at a wire that ran directly to his groin.
One of the blue-caped nurses pushed a wheelchair past them, with a gray-haired woman fluttering a paper fan. The girl tugged and led him up the curving path toward the clinic building, its windows glinting pieces of the sun.
He halted at the first step and looked across the lawns to the rolling, brilliant sky. Behind the sunlight, as though it were a backdrop painted on thin silk, he could see the night, the stars' points of ice glittering in darkness.
"Come on," said the girl in the antique dress, with the lace up to her throat. She had already mounted the first couple of steps to the building's verandah; she smiled and pulled playfully on his arm. "No shilly-shallying now."
"It's all right," he murmured. He looked up at her. "There's plenty of time. This is all just dreaming." Behind him, he felt the strolling forms on the lawn waver and shift, as though a breeze had fluttered the backdrop.
He brought his gaze around from her, and out to the hills. There were none of the animals with the red, watching eyes; they were back in that other world, where it was still night. But the figure he had seen in silhouette, up on the crest of the nearest hill… The man was there, standing in the exact same place, revealed in daylight. In a doctor's white coat, his arms folded across his chest. Mike could just make out the man's face, at this distance. The same face he'd dreamed before, the flesh pared down over the skull; the doctor who'd raised the scalpel up to the examining room's light.
