Second Chance

by Chet Williamson

  Curly was waiting at the car, and Woody threw the rifle and shotgun into the back seat, then put an arm around Curly and drew him away, several yards down the street. "I've been thinking," Woody said softly. ""This is hard, but it's the way it is. We can't let the old man go."

  "What!"

  "Listen to me. He tells the police, they find Mrs. Aarons, they've got our description, the description of the car, and they get us before we get back to Iselin. We need a day, Curly. A day to get everyone back for tomorrow night. And he's dead anyway. He's got the virus just like we do."

  "You mean . . . kill him?"

  Woody nodded his head. "I don't know what else we can do.”

  “Tie him up, take him with us, Jesus . . ."

  "He could get loose, and what would we do with him? No. Don't you see, if we can do what we have to do, then he won't be dead, because none of it happened. None of this happened."

  "Yeah, great—you gonna shoot him in the head and then tell him he's not dead?"

  "We can't jeopardize this."

  "And we can't kill a guy either!"

  "It's like a dream, Curly. None of it's real. It's like killing somebody in a dream."

  "And is Keith a dream?" Curly said, pointing to the wrapped corpse several yards away. "Is Tracy a dream too? Are your kids a dream? It's reality, Woody. And you'll really be killing someone!"

  Woody looked at his friend for a long time, thinking about pulling the trigger, thinking about Tracy and Peter and Louisa. "It doesn't matter," he finally said. "It doesn't matter if it's a dream. And it doesn't matter if it's reality. Because if this is real, and this is the only reality, then we're all dead anyway."

  "Dead but not damned," Curly said. "And that's what you are if you murder that old man."

  "I already took a monster out of hell. I already set him loose on the world. One murder's nothing next to that. I can't be any more damned than I already am."

  Woody pulled the pistol from his belt, walked to the car, shoved the key in the trunk, opened it. "Get out."

  "Woody . . ." He heard Curly coming up behind him, and turned, pointing the gun at Curly's chest.

  “Just wait here," Woody said. "Mr. Rooney and I are going to make a phone call. Come on, Rooney. Get out."

  Rooney climbed out with difficulty. "I was only yelling because I thought you guys had forgot me. Who we callin'?"

  "The police," said Woody, wondering if he could do what he had to do. His arguments had seemed sound when he had talked to Curly, but there was a difference between hypothesis and reality, however tenuous that reality might be. "We're going to call the police. From your house."

  "Woody . . ." Curly said again. His voice was pleading, and in the dim glow of the streetlight Woody thought he saw tears in his eyes.

  Woody shook his head, steeled himself. "Wait for me."

  He gestured with the gun, and Rooney walked ahead of him toward the house. The dog started to bark again. As they passed it, Woody asked Rooney if there was some way to keep the dog quiet.

  "Had him for ten years," Rooney said. "If I knew some way, I woulda done it by now."

  Woody wanted to laugh at the comment, but did not allow himself to. This man is a dream, he told himself. And when things are right again, he'll be alive, and he'll never know that I killed him, not even in dreams. He's a dream, I'm a dream, this gun is a dream, and as they walked through the house, Woody told himself to believe it, over and over again, until he did believe, believed long enough to point a gun, and when Rooney reached for the phone, Woody put the pistol against the back of his head and pulled the trigger.

  And nothing happened.

  Woody had tensed for the now familiar sound, but the dry click was far more shocking. It froze him, as a dozen questions and options ran through his mind. But it didn't freeze Rooney.

  The old man swung around and smashed the handset against Woody's left ear. A crashing sound exploded inside his head, and he staggered, and the next thing he knew the man was on him, legs wrapped around Woody's thighs, one arm choking him, the other hand battering the top of his head with a bony fist.

  "Try'n shoot me, y'sonabitch!" Rooney howled, and the dog howled too, and Woody twisted around, dropped the empty pistol, buried his head in the man's reeking shoulder, shook him like a bull trying to shake off a terrier. But the old man held on, still hitting, hitting until weakness joined the dizziness, and Woody knew he was going to fall, and thought that if he did more than fall, that if he threw himself to the ground—

  He did, and felt his chin smashed back by Rooney's collarbone when they landed, but the old man was underneath, and took the brunt of the impact, cushioning Woody's fall. The pinioning legs went limp, the arm stopped choking, the fist stopped beating, and the curses turned to a groan.

  Woody ignored the hot pain in his jaw, and pushed himself away from Rooney, who was flailing his hands and starting to roll over. He looked about in panic, and saw a rack of rusty kitchen knives on the cluttered counter. He glanced from the knives to the man on the floor and sobbed, unable to imagine the sensation of pressing sharp metal into flesh, afraid to grasp the worn wooden handles.

  But then Rooney had the handset of the phone, was pushing himself to his feet, and his other hand was reaching for the buttons of the wall phone's dial.

  Woody dove at him, knocked him to the floor again, grabbed the cord and jerked it out of the wall. Rooney came at his face, his wiry fingers hooked into claws, and his long, yellow nails raked Woody's cheek.

  There were no words or curses now. All energy had gone to the physical, and Rooney kicked out for Woody's groin. Woody turned just in time, taking the blow on his thigh. Then he grabbed the edge of the counter and got to his feet. His hands scrabbled on the countertop until he reached the knives, and he clutched a grease-covered handle. But just as he pulled it from the wooden rack, he felt Rooney grasp his buttocks, and suddenly the world was filled with a terrible, nauseating pain.

  Rooney, holding Woody's hips like a lover, had slammed his head into Woody's crotch, and was doing it over and over, and with every blow the pain became sharper, dulling Woody's reason so that the only thing in the world that mattered was stopping the pain.

  The blade of the knife he held was only three inches long, and he buried it in the back of Rooney's neck so deeply that most of the handle entered as well.

  Rooney's head fell one last time, softly, against Woody's groin, and his hands dropped as he toppled over sideways, hitting the floor with his shoulder. He looked up at Woody as though he was suddenly confused, not knowing what to make of this carbon steel wild card sticking in his neck.

  Then he coughed blood and lay back gently, the weight of his head pressing the base of the knife handle against the yellow linoleum so that the patchily shaven wattles of his neck stretched, and the skin parted, and the point of the knife peeked out like some shy, rusty parasite, tenderly severing the jugular as it passed. Blood pumped, and the old man's face twitched with every heartbeat, and Woody watched in horror as the puddle on the floor grew wider.

  "I'm sorry," he whispered. "Oh God, I'm sorry . . ." But Rooney didn't answer.

  Woody looked away for a long time. He told himself it had to be this way, and that he had to stay, to make sure Rooney was dead. His heart was sick at having killed this man, but what made him even sicker was not knowing why.

  It had been the only thing to do, as he had told Curly. But had he stabbed him to save the world, or to stop the pain Rooney was causing? If the former, he could feel like a soldier. But if the latter, he thought, he was no more than a murderer. And with a knife, feeling the blade slip in, like cutting a piece of meat . . .

  The knowledge of what he had done and the sickness the physical pain had caused brought up what little was in his stomach, and he vomited into the sink, then leaned on the counter, resting his head on his forearms, and breathed deeply until the spasms stopped threatening. By that time Rooney was dead.

  Woody took the empty pistol, turned o
ut the lights and went out the front door, locking it behind him. The dog barked at him savagely, but he didn't look at it as he walked toward the car.

  Curly was still standing in the dim glow of the street light, his face tense. "Did you . . . do it?" he said. "I didn't hear a shot."

  "I didn't shoot," Woody said, spitting away the bile that had come up with the words. "But he's dead."

  Curly frowned. "What'd you . . . how'd you do it?"

  "I stabbed him. I stabbed him to death. Now let's get this . . . piece of shit in the trunk. Then you drive. I'm tired."

  They put Keith's body inside and slammed the trunk lid, then got in the car and drove out of Colver without speaking. But after a few miles, Curly said, "You were right."

  "About what."

  "Having to . . . kill the guy. I couldn't have done it. I'm . . . I'm glad you could."

  Woody said nothing in reply. The ache in his groin was nothing compared to the other ache he felt, farther in.

  Ten miles away from Colver, they approached a closed gas station where a telephone booth gleamed like a squat lighthouse in the ocean of night. "Pull over," Woody said. "We'll call them from here. The faster they all get to Iselin the better."

  Eddie Phelps answered on the first ring. "We have him, Eddie," Woody said. "You and Dale come out as soon as you can. We'll be at the apartment in a few hours at most."

  Eddie didn't answer right away. Then, "You have him? You found Keith?"

  "Yeah."

  "My God. This is really real, isn't it? I never thought you'd find him. I never thought it would come to this."

  "Well, it has. So get out here as soon as you can.”

  “Woody . . ."

  "What?"

  "Does Dale have to go back with us . . . when we . . . if we can take back Keith?"

  "Yeah. Sure he does. There were eight before, Eddie, so there should be eight now. The more there are, the stronger our, what, I don't know, aura will be."

  "I'm not going to leave him back there, Woody. I just want you to know that. I'm not leaving him there."

  "Nobody's leaving anybody there, Eddie. Except for Keith. Now get your ass out here, okay?"

  Frank McDonald was even more difficult to talk to. "Woody, Woody, Woody, this is crazy," he said, after Woody told him to fly up immediately. He sounded near tears.

  "Listen to me, Frank. Everything else is crazy too. Your wife was crazy. The world is going crazy. Have you heard about the plague? Or don't you listen to TV or read the papers? Keith did it, goddammit, and I've gotten myself in so deep I can't get out unless we do this. But it's not just for me—it's for everybody. And it's for Judy too. You don't get out here right away, Judy rots in some mental home, if she and your kids and all of us don't die of this fucking virus first. You got me?"

  Now he was crying. "All right . . . all right . . . I'll come. I'll leave now . . ."

  Diane Franklin gave him no argument. She just said, "He's really there? It's Keith?" and then, when Woody told her that it was, she said, "I'm going to the airport now," and hung up.

  Tracy was the last he called. "We have him."

  "Keith?"

  "Yes."

  "Was it hard?"

  "Harder than I can ever say. I don't know if it'll work, but there's no alternative. He's . . . dead."

  "Dead?"

  "He killed himself. But we have his body." He gave a shuddering sigh. "I don't know if it'll work. I don't know anything anymore, don't know myself . . . I had to kill somebody, Tracy. An old man."

  "Woody . . ."

  "If I hadn't, it would have been all over before we even got started. But I don't know why I killed him . . . he was hurting me, and I knew I had to do it, had to, but . . ." He trailed off, wishing that she was there to hold him or to hate him. Just that she was there would have been enough. "Will you come?"

  "You know I will. I told Teresa I might have to leave quickly. I'll call her, have her come over right away. I'll be there as soon as I can. Oh, Woody," she said, "I love you. I don't care what you've had to do. I know that you had to do it. Take care of yourself, my darling, and I'll be with you very soon. As soon as I can."

  "All right," he said, tears blinding him. "All right. I love you too. And . . . give my love to the kids. Please. Kiss them real hard for me.”

  "I will. I promise I will."

  Kiss them, he thought as he hung up. A kiss from their father who loves them and may have to do something that makes it so they can never live, have never lived. Oh God, let them know how much I love them both. And let her know.

  They arrived at the apartment just after midnight, parked the car by the door, and waited until the parking lot of Parini's was empty of late night drinkers. Then they opened the trunk and carried Keith Aarons's green plastic-wrapped body inside the door. Woody waited with it, while Curly moved the car into a less conspicuous parking place.

  As he waited in the night with a dead man, Woody thought about how much the past few months seemed like a dream. It had started that way, after all, as a dream of a better time, a time when life tasted both sweet and sharp at once. A time that had died when the girl he loved had died, and he had wanted nothing more than to make that time live again.

  He had succeeded. Oh God, how he had succeeded. The time had lived, and the girl had lived, and something else had lived too. He looked down at the corpse, and had to keep himself from kicking it in rage.

  "Why didn't you stay there?" he asked it. "Why the hell didn't you stay dead?"

  The door opened and Curly came in. Woody turned to look at him, and from Curly's startled expression, he knew that his own face must be awash with rage. He looked away, and wrung his hands together until his fingers hurt. It drained away some of the fury, and he knelt and slipped his hands beneath the stiffening arms and around Keith's chest. Curly took the legs, and they climbed the stairs.

  Inside the apartment, Curly began to set the body down, but Woody grunted, "The kitchen," and they kept moving, setting Keith down just inside the kitchen door. Woody then opened the refrigerator and began removing the wire racks.

  "You want to put him in there?" Curly asked.

  Woody nodded. "Go down to the machine in back of Parini's and get some ice. Four, five bags."

  Curly started to say something, but instead shook his head and left the apartment. Woody finished taking out the racks, then slid out the meat drawer from its bracket and set it on the floor next to the racks. Then he took the bags from Keith's body, and was surprised to find how quickly the joints had begun to stiffen, the flesh to turn a pasty yellow. Keith's pants were soiled with the wastes that had leaked out of him, but there was little blood, even on the newspaper that Woody left wrapped around the head.

  He lifted the upper part of the body until the buttocks were resting on the solid bottom shelf, then pushed in the torso, bent the stiffening legs, turned the body to the side, and shoved the legs in under the bracket of the meat drawer so that Keith's left shoulder was against the back wall of the refrigerator. Then Woody closed the door and waited for Curly to return.

  He brought back five ten-pound bags of ice, and was sweating despite the amount of cold he held in his arms. "This really gonna do any good?" he asked, coming into the kitchen. When he saw the refrigerator door was closed, he lowered the bags gently to the floor. “Jesus. You got him in there already?"

  Woody nodded and opened the door. Curly looked and shook his head. "Oh man. I don't believe this."

  "I don't know if it'll help," Woody said. "But maybe the closer to life he is the easier it'll be. Come on. Let's get the ice in."

  Together they poured the cubes wherever they could get them to stay—in Keith's lap, behind his shoulders, around his legs. They loosened his clothing and poured cubes inside so that they were held against his flesh by his shirt and pants.

  It was grim work, and Curly once tried to lighten it with a remark about sangria being a lot easier to keep cold, but Woody didn't laugh, and they finished in silence, Curl
y pushing the door slowly closed as Woody dribbled in the last of the cubes.

  "All right," Woody said as he bunched up the plastic bags and threw them in the waste can. "We better get some sleep."

  "I don't tend to sleep too well with a stiff in the fridge."

  "We have to. We don't know when the others will start showing up, and we have to get some rest. There are no sheets on the bed, but they're soft. I'm exhausted and you are too."

  Curly nodded reluctantly. "Yeah. You're right as usual."

  Woody smiled without a trace of humor. "We'll see how right I am tomorrow night. When it's party time again."

  ~*~

  Despite what Woody told Curly, he couldn't sleep. He lay on his back, listening to the sounds of night in the apartment, hearing the compressor of the refrigerator turning on and off at long intervals. Then he heard a voice, and jerked in his bed before he realized it was Curly's.

  "You awake?" Curly had said softly.

  "Yeah."

  "Bitch to sleep, isn't it?"

  "Yeah, it is."

  "I mean, why waste time sleeping when in a couple weeks we might both be taking the big sleep, y'know?" They lay in silence for a time. "Woody?"

  "Mmm?"

  "You afraid to die?"

  "I guess so."

  "You believe there's anything afterwards?"

  "I don't know." It seemed, Woody thought, like the discussions he had had a hundred times in college, lying in the darkness with your roommates, talking about the things you couldn't learn in your classes the next day. "I guess I think there's more of a possibility now than I did before."

  "Yeah. What's happened to us . . . isn't natural."

  "No," Woody said, trying to think it through. "It is natural. Because it happened. We just don't understand how, that's all. So we call it supernatural. But if it happened, it's part of . . ." He looked for the word, but when he found it, it tasted sour in his mouth. ". . . part of reality."