by Sean Platt
“Interesting. Did he tell you why?”
“No, sir,” Ed shook his head. “But I got the feeling that they said he had something to do with Oct. 15.”
Boricio smiled weirdly, then swallowed, “You sure they didn’t mean me?”
“They said he was from my world,” Ed said. “Why? Were you responsible for this?”
“Not directly, no,” Boricio said, answering the question as though the taste was new to his tongue.
Ed wondered why Boricio was telling them the truth, assuming he was.
Ed asked, “What does that mean, not directly?”
“It means I don’t feel like talking about it,” Boricio said with a sudden glare. “Common denominators are that all of us are looking to find this other Boricio, but I’m curious, Mr. Keenan, did your Wonder Twin tell you anything about me? About Oct. 15? Anything at all?”
“Like I said, I didn’t even know about you. I was told to find the Boricio from my world. I was, and am, on a need-to-know basis, and either they didn’t know what happened, or didn’t feel I needed to know. All they told me was that we, most of the people at Black Island, were from my world. We all got sucked over. And most of the people on this world either vanished or were killed. That’s the sum of what I know.”
“What about you?” Boricio turned to Brent.
“I only know what Ed told me,” Brent said.
“Tell me, how many others are on the island?” Boricio asked.
“A few hundred,” Ed answered, being purposefully vague. “Led by a civilian President, Andre Pembrook, a figurehead put in place to help keep the people in line. I’m not sure who’s really pulling the strings, if it’s my double, or someone above him I’ve not yet met.”
“And how many of those are native to this world?”
“Six that I know of,” Ed said.
“Do you know their names?”
“Well, there’s Keenan, and a man named Sullivan was one of them. Not sure if that’s his first or last name.”
“It’s both, actually,” Boricio asked. “His parents had an odd sense of humor. A sense of humor that skipped at least one goddamned generation,” he looked at Ed, “in case he was putting on a nice show for you while you were there.”
“No,” Ed shook his head. “He didn’t strike me as a good-time Charlie.”
“Anyone else?” Boricio asked.
“Introductions were sparse,” Ed said. “Anyone in particular you’re wondering about?”
“Do you know if a man named Will survived?”
“Will Bishop?” Ed said.
Boricio’s face lit up. “Yes. He’s there?”
“He’s one of the scientists, or a consultant to the scientists, whatever, but I’ve not met him.”
Boricio whispered to himself, “Oh God, he’s alive,” but Ed wasn’t sure if he was relieved or saddened by the news.
“What about a boy? Luca?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Ed said. “I think the others were all scientists. They were in a room or something, which somehow spared them.”
Boricio’s eye grazed the top of his desk.
Ed wondered what in the hell had happened, how Boricio knew these people — he must’ve been from there — and most of all, why in the hell Black Island was looking for Boricio’s twin rather than the man from their own world.
Ed asked, “Why are you looking for the other Boricio?”
“To try and right some wrongs,” he said. “You two interested in helping?”
“That depends,” Ed held Boricio’s gaze. “Can you help me get my daughter from Black Island? They’re holding her, kind of forcing me to find Boricio in exchange for her return.”
“Wow, they’re taking this shit seriously,” Boricio said. “Guess I can’t blame them. Though I’m curious how they know he’s here, and why they think he can help them.”
Ed asked, “So, can you help me get my daughter, her friend, and possibly her friend’s baby to safety?”
“Well, if you can help get me on Black Island, I can help you once we’re there.”
“Sounds like a deal,” Ed said.
“Yes, but first we have to get the other Boricio.”
“You know where he is?” Ed asked.
“No, but I have two people here that do.”
“Why do you think they sent me to look for him rather than you?” Ed asked.
“I’m not sure,” Boricio shook his head. “But I think it has something to do with Luca.”
Ed wanted to ask Boricio more, but knew he wouldn’t answer. Ed had known too many men who lived with an army of skeletons hiding miles of secrets. The man on the other side of the desk looked like he could’ve been their general.
Thirty-Four
Luca Harding
Dunn, Georgia
Boricio’s Compound
March 2012
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT …
In his dream, Luca was a child again.
He was back home, it was the middle of the night, and he was pushing the door to his parent’s bedroom open, peeking into the darkness. They were still sleeping. He crept into the room, then stumbled on something in the middle of the floor.
He expected to hear his mom or dad yell, “Luca!” since that’s what always happened when he woke them up by being loud. Nothing but silence greeted him, however.
Just as Luca regained his balance, he tripped on something else, sending his body into an awkward ballet. He twisted toward the foot of the bed, and smashed his side hard against the wood frame.
Luca heard the loud thrump-bdddd-rumps as whatever he kicked — his dad was always leaving his shoes in the middle of the room — rolled across the floor before coming to a stop.
Luca cried out, holding his side from the bed’s assault, but fortunately, they had slept through his whine.
Luca climbed onto the bed, then crept up toward the front, squeezing his body in between his mother and father.
As he nudged his way toward the top, he noticed that he was lying in something cold and sticky.
“Mom . . . Dad . . . ?” Luca swallowed.
“Mom . . . Dad . . . ?” His right hand found his mom’s stomach, then inched up and along her side, over her shoulders and up to her neck, until Luca was screaming at the jagged meat zigzagging across the sawed-off flesh.
Luca leapt from the bed, landed hard onto the floor, then rose from the wood and raced toward the wall. He flipped on the light then turned back toward the bed, screaming louder as he saw the part of his dad he’d kicked into the corner, and the part of his mom whose face was frozen, staring at him from the floor between the wall and the bed.
The lights flickered, then went daylight bright.
He was in the middle of a big city. Not Las Orillas. It had to be New York since Luca was looking at the same buildings from his vacation two summers before. Except now he was alone, in the middle of a city, surrounded by towering mountains of bent yellow steel, all of them flowing from the top with fountains of blood.
Luca’s throat was too old and caked with age for him to scream, so he woke with the terrible howl caught inside his cracking gullet.
Luca blinked his eyes and trembled beneath the sheets.
Despite the horror of his dream, a part of Luca enjoyed its reality. Even if it was a nightmare, it wasn’t real. So, the bad stuff couldn’t really happen, but he still got to feel like he was 8, instead of the old man he’d become. It was a miracle his grandpa had been able to laugh as much as he had before he died, since he had to feel about as old as Luca’s body felt now. Even when Luca wanted to laugh, just thinking about it was almost more pain than Luca could stand.
He took a full minute to climb from bed, then another getting to the bathroom. Luca constantly had to pee, even though it seemed like he never ever had to poop. And even when he could poop, it took forever and sometimes hurt.
Luca leapt from the toilet seat, startled, as a crack of thunder roared from a pistol outside, followed almo
st instantly by another. Then silence.
Luca was already dressed from the day before, since he hated changing into pajamas and Mary said he didn’t have to. He slipped on his shoes, then went outside, pushed open the fence to the backyard, and then joined to watch the target practice.
Though you couldn’t tell who pulled the trigger from the sound of the bullet, Luca felt positive Paola’s shot was what he’d heard from the bathroom, so he wasn’t the least bit surprised to see her holding the gun and taking fresh aim at a row of bottles on the fence.
Paola pulled the trigger. The bullet blasted from her gun, and whistled into the forest.
Boricio said, “Try again, and stop thinking.”
Paola took a few seconds, steadied her arm and closed her eye, then squeezed the trigger and missed again.
Boricio walked up to Paola, held out his palm, curled his fingers around the butt the second it was set inside it, then raised the pistol and blasted two shots from its barrel like he was finishing a sentence.
Twin bottles exploded in unison; glass shattered like the roar of applause.
Boricio handed the gun back to Paola.
“Look, Hannah Montana,” he said. “Thinking is A+ when you’re sucking face for a grade, but it’ll get you a big, fat F in Staying Alive. If a thought takes you longer than two seconds when you’re slipping around the sweaty insides of a what-in-the-hell-am-I-gonna-do-sorta moment, then you’ve gotta know good judgment at the speed of a blink. Now, ole Boricio may say a lot of things that make you wonder whether he’s the messiah of mathematical truth, since it’s such a high percentage of what I say, but there ain’t nothing I’ve said to you yet, and nothing I’m ever gonna say, that’s truer than that. You’ve gotta trust your gut — everything else is just a lie you’ve learned to believe.”
Paola nodded.
Boricio nodded back. “Look where you’re shooting, then pull the trigger. If you have to aim, then learn to do it faster.”
He took a step back behind Paola, then turned and winked at Luca. Luca smiled back, though he wasn’t really feeling it.
Paola drew a deep breath, aimed the gun — but only for a second — then squeezed the trigger twice, missing both times.
She lowered her arm, yelled at the top of her lungs for what felt like maybe a full minute, though that might’ve only been because Luca had to pee, then raised it and pulled the trigger twice more.
Both bullets found their mark and the bottles shattered.
Paola’s eyes widened and she jumped up and down, squealing. Boricio was whooping and hollering and congratulating Paola, while still managing to keep the morning PG-rated, which was probably why Mary, standing behind them both, was smiling at Boricio, for maybe the first time ever.
Boricio finished reloading the gun — Luca always forgot what their different numbers were called, though he thought it might have been a .45 — when he handed it back to Paola then spun to find the source of the sudden growl he heard behind him.
Before Luca managed to turn his head, Boricio said, “Who left the gate open?”
But Boricio didn’t ask like he was mad. It was a soft question, said in a soft voice. Mary and Paola said, “Not me” together.
“I did,” Luca said, turning to see what the other three already had: the biggest dog Luca, or maybe anyone in the whole world, had ever seen. It was larger than Paola and almost bigger than Boricio.
It looked like a wolf, but larger than any wolf Luca had ever seen on TV or in a movie. It was dark-gray — having a coat so filthy it was almost black — with teeth that looked like knives. The dogs lips were curled high enough to see the black skin meeting between them.
The dog’s heavy snarl rumbled through the backyard, and nobody dared move for fear of alarming the beast.
Boricio stepped to the front of the group as Luca stared, slowly stepping back toward Paola.
Mary looked over at Boricio. “What are you thinking?” she whispered, looking Boricio up and down as if she were trying to figure him out.
Boricio said, “I’m thinking that I’ve not seen more than a half dozen dogs that I can think of in one half of a beer-battered bullshit of a year, and that right now I’m staring at one that’s bigger than three of King Kong’s big, swinging cock sacks put together.” Still speaking softly, Boricio added, “And my agreement to keep shit PG is null and fucking void when Paul Bunyan’s Cujo is in our yard.”
The dog remained still, but its growl grew louder.
“You’re gonna have to shoot the dog, okay, honey?” Boricio said, cocking his head slightly toward Paola, who was maybe 15 feet away from Boricio, and therefore unable to simply hand him the gun.
Luca could only stare at the back of Paola’s lightly swaying head as she whimpered three feet in front of him. “I can’t,” she squeaked.
“You can,” Boricio said calmly, “because you have to, okay?”
Luca couldn’t believe it, but Boricio’s voice was almost soothing. Adding to the disbelief, he said, “You can do it, sweetheart,” then kept speaking in that same soothing voice, his eyes on the unmoving dog while he made all his words for Paola.
“Look at how he’s standing, agitated, high on all fours, head straight like he was pledging allegiance to Lassie, back raised like it’s a second from launch.” Boricio’s head barely twitched, like he wanted to gesture more but knew he couldn’t. “And see how his tail’s sticking straight out? If dogs are as scared of us as we are of them — like stupid people say — then their tails are tucked between their legs. But that tail right there is about as straight as a pecker on prom night.”
Paola whimpered again. “I can’t . . . ” she shook her head. “I just can’t do it.”
Boricio drew a deep breath, kept his eye on the beast, then said. “Look at his eyes, Paola. See how they’re centered on us, especially me? I break contact, and that great, big bear of a dog is gonna be on me like flies on a morning pile. So, I need you to pull the trigger, sweetie, and I need you to do it right fucking now.
“I can’t.”
Boricio snarled, and for a second Luca was sure he was gonna turn around and yank the gun from Paola. But then the dog snarled back, and Boricio must’ve figured she was standing too far away to get the gun before the dog was on top of him.
Mary said, “Paola, honey, it’s okay. Just pull the trigger.”
The gun still at her side, Paola said, “What if I miss? He’ll kill us all.”
Boricio said, “Then just don’t miss.”
Mary said, “We’re dead for sure if you don’t try.”
The gun shook at her side. She tried to raise it but whimpered instead.
The giant dog snarled, then roared. Boricio held his gaze, but the dog leapt at him anyway. Paola’s fingers stayed as frozen as her eyes were wide.
With no clue what he was doing, Luca suddenly found himself inside Paola’s head, then deeper into her mind’s twisting tunnels, and finally centered inside the specific memory that allowed him to raise her hand, and the pistol with it, then fire while thinking in less than a blink, landing the first bullet from the freshly loaded gun into the creature’s head.
The beast may have been a dog when the first bullet tore through its skull, but that first bullet gave birth to the unholy monstrosity that had been inside the dog all along. It came snarling from the dog’s falling skin, stretching its face like putty.
Paola was still aiming without using the trigger, so Luca kept firing from inside her mind, again and again. Each shot seemed to anger the rabid dog further, but was doing nothing to slow it down. But at least it was off of Boricio, rearing back on its hind legs and thrashing wildly through the air, like it was at war with itself, shrieking something that sounded like a dog’s bark and a human’s scream bleeding together.
The dog’s fur came off in chunks, revealing dark-black skin beneath it that reminded Luca of the monsters. It looked soaking wet, and was getting wetter as the massive dog’s bones seemed to shove themselves against
its skin, pushing against it until it started to tear. The dog lifted his nose to the sun and roared, its mouth twisting, knocking teeth from its maw to the ground to make room for more giant teeth, which erupted from its jaws like jagged swords.
Luca continued to empty Paola’s gun, until something inside her shattered and sobbed. Mary and Boricio ran to grab guns of their own from a bench 50 feet away, where Boricio had been spending each morning showing them how to clean and care for their weapons.
Mary picked up a pistol, Boricio grabbed two, then they emptied all three of them into the creature until it finally stopped twitching.
Like the half demon, half dog that it was, the creature bled in a medley of color, though mostly black and green and red, pouring from multiple holes and pooling into a single brew of dark and shiny purple mess.
Boricio, Mary, and Paola stood around the beast in stunned silence, before they caught one another’s expression and started to cheer.
“Fuck yeah! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Boricio said high-fiving Paola.
Luca had returned to his own head, and felt significantly weaker, but he hid the weakness behind a smile. He didn’t want Mary, Paola, and Boricio to worry about him.
Luca began to wonder just how much longer he’d be with them.
Thirty-Five
Other Ed Keenan
Black Island, New York
April 2012
SIX MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT …
Ed and Will were perched on the monastery’s roof, staring down into the darkness. The infected Guardsmen stood in a line in front of the building, but made no attempt to storm inside.
Holding the line, keeping us here.
Ed called Sullivan on the radio, updating him on the situation — the infection may have been incubating in people, and could have infiltrated the Facility.
“Test everyone,” Ed instructed. “Test them and quarantine the uninfected on Level 8. If we can’t get the situation under control we’ll need to activate a Hard Reset Protocol. Get someone out to the ferry and prepare for an evacuation of everyone up top. No one gets on without being tested. Any infected are to be shot on sight and their bodies burned. Understand?”
