Can’t. Too high.
We would flood his system with adrenaline, but who knows if that would explode his overtaxed heart like a water balloon? We’re reduced to jerking him along, awkward in Carrie’s tight grip, as our new hazmat friends swing wide of the crumpled mini-car on their way to us. Trent’s head flops to the left, his vision filled with the approaching hospital, which appears empty: nobody standing on the front sidewalk, no faces at the windows. You’d think a car crash fifty yards away would have brought out a nurse or two.
Curious.
Unless there’s something wrong inside.
Something that you’d need an army of men in hazmat suits to handle.
We reach the deep awning over the emergency room doors, and our pursuers stop cold. One of the hazmat people yells something, his voice tinged with panic, but the distance and the plastic sheath over his face make it impossible to determine any words. Another one slaps a glove over Detective Banks’s chest, stopping him in his tracks. Detective Banks turns and says something to the uniformed cop, whose pale and sweaty face seems frozen in maximum fear.
“Maybe we should . . . ” Trent begins, but before he can complete the sentence, the doors of the emergency room hiss open, framing a figure silhouetted by harsh white light. It’s Bill, dressed in a loose hospital gown, a bent cigarette pasted in the corner of his mouth.
“Hey, kiddo,” Bill says, and Trent’s system floods with happy neurochemicals that burn away some of the drug fog. Love is the ultimate cure, isn’t that what they say?
Yet something is terribly wrong with Bill. His head tilts at an odd angle, the fingers of his right hand twitching relentlessly against his gown, like worms crawling for food deep in the earth. As Trent breaks free of Carrie’s grasp and stumbles closer, we see that one of Bill’s pupils is locked to the right, giving him an odd wall-eyed look.
We catch a flickering in Bill’s right ear. A black tendril that darts into the air, like a living root, before retreating.
It seems that Bill’s hospital treatments failed to kill us after all.
“The golden goal attained.” Bill flashes yellow teeth. “Total control.”
18.
Bill waves a gray hand, his fingers still jittering madly. “Come here, Trent.”
“Are you okay?” Trent says, stepping forward—and then Carrie clutches his arm, her nails digging into his flesh until the pain begins to approach the dulling ache of his bullet wound. “What’s ‘total control’ mean?”
He’s got us inside him, we tell Trent. We’ve taken over.
Taken over? Trent’s mind rattles like a rat in a cage. You mean that’s not my uncle?
No, yes . . . we mean . . .
Trent begins to freak out: Do you want to do THAT to me?
Have we said we wanted to do that?
Bill lowers his hand. He’s trying to smile, but his lips writhe and jerk. A doctor might diagnose that as a nerve issue, which wouldn’t be too far off. The bit of us that stayed in Bill and took total control, maybe it’s still trying to figure out how to drive that lump of flesh. After just a few hours in Trent’s well-tuned body, we’d started to forget the A-1 horrorshow of Bill’s sagging muscles and deadened nerves, his tendons like overworked rubber bands and his brain channels clogged with chemicals.
Come to think of it, we feel a little sorry for the bit of us controlling him. If Trent is a brand-new sedan with a kickass stereo and one of those fancy dashboards you can plug a phone into, Bill is the equivalent of a rusty junker with an engine that will only kick to life if you roll it downhill first.
We might not have a high opinion of Bill, but the entire city seems to fear him. Trent glances back at the parking lot flooding with more men in hazmat suits, accompanied by men in black riot gear. A forest of rifles pointing in our direction, frightened eyes squinting at us from behind clear plastic face-shields. Hundreds of them must have the hospital complex surrounded. Despite all the weaponry that can transform us into a blood-mist, we’re actually more concerned about Detectives Mott and Banks, who have disappeared from view. They surely lurk nearby.
“At best,” Bill says, “you’ll go to jail for crashing past their security. At worst, they’ll declare you’ve violated a biological containment area, and you know what’ll happen then?”
“They throw us a big-ass party?” Carrie asks, her voice flat.
“You’ll disappear. Maybe they’ll kill you. Some of those cops dressed up like SWAT, they’re carrying flame throwers.” Bill chuckles at the idea of ending one’s existence as a lump of smoking charcoal. “I’m sorry, but your one chance is with me.”
“I don’t know,” Carrie says, so low it’s hard to hear over the officials shouting, the screech of tires as a black Humvee rounds a nearby corner.
“Then wait for the nice men with guns.” Clapping his hands, Bill retreats into the emergency room. Despite his bulk and the poor condition of his flesh, he moves with a spring in his step.
Trent starts to follow, only for Carrie to grab his arm again. Her eyes like dull marbles in the light blazing through the emergency-room doors. She’s overloaded, in that magical zone where shock and fatigue give way to an inner nothingness. We don’t blame her at all. When she woke up this morning, she no doubt anticipated another boring day of delivering pizzas and weed, maybe capped off with a beer and some television. A few hours later, she’s been in a car crash, a gunfight, and now, something far weirder.
We’re tempted to feel sorry for her, just like we felt sorry for Trent when trauma made his brain freeze, but at the same time we want to grip her by the shirt and shake her, scream in her face that she needs to nut up, display a little more fortitude, or she won’t survive. How did humans make it this far as a species if they can’t seem to process any kind of trauma? We survived the terrors of a ship bilge tank, followed by the unfathomable abyss of the deep ocean, when we were only a few days old. Compared to that, Carrie, today has been easy, you hear? Easy.
No, we need to get a grip. We’re also a little stunned by the latest developments.
When Trent pulls away from Carrie, she lets him go. Perhaps she recognizes that Trent’s connection to Bill is too deep, woven into the very fabric of his being. We’re fascinated by Bill’s resurrection, although it scares us a little. The part of us inside Bill—what has it seen and done in our absence? Does it hate us for abandoning us? What did it do to activate every cop and scientist within five hundred miles?
The ER waiting room stinks of cleanser that fails to hide a deeper, meatier scent: spilled blood, torn flesh. The rows of plastic seats are empty. Gripping Trent’s tendons, we twist his head for a better look around, already fearing that we’ll see a pile of dead bodies in a corner, but the space is clean. We hear a buzzing, so faint it’s barely a sound. Is it coming from the lights above? Or from somewhere deep in the building?
There’s a dark smear on the floor behind the reception desk, so faint you might mistake it for a scuff left by a plastic wheel. We know it’s blood, though. It’s the one spot that someone missed when they wiped this space down.
We tell Trent none of this. He shoves through the doors, Carrie on his heels, and we find ourselves in a bright corridor lined with gurneys, all burdened with bodies wrapped in white sheets. From what we know of hospitals—Bill visited more than a few in his time—this is not the proper procedure for storing corpses, which are usually wheeled into the morgue or, if things are particularly bad, left in a cool room away from the hospital’s usual hustle. Respect for the departed, and all that. Did Bill kill all these folks?
It’s impossible to imagine. Even if the bit of us in Bill decided to make him do his best impersonation of Charles Whitman, we can’t envision Bill doing much damage before a couple of young, healthy guards put him down with guns or tasers. If worst came to worst, an octogenarian in a wheelchair could probably have taken him out with a well-timed ramming maneuver.
We take a turn in the corridor, and things get worse. A pair of f
luorescent tubes dangle from their fixtures, their flickering light illuminating the enormous holes punched in the walls. The sight of it makes Carrie stop, her breath loud. “What the fuck happened here?” she asks.
“They tried to stop us,” Bill says, never breaking stride. “They failed.”
“They? Us?” Carrie pokes a finger in one of the holes, which is ragged at the edges. A shotgun blast, we’re sure of it.
Spinning on Trent, Bill raises his eyebrows. “She doesn’t know?”
Play dumb, we tell him, suddenly fearful for Carrie’s life. Whatever happened here today, it might have led the part of us inside Bill to hate the entire human race. And Bill is clearly far more dangerous than his broken-down hulk suggests.
“Know what?” Trent asks.
Bill rolls his eyes. Given how his pupils have drifted, the effect is disorienting, like staring into one of those pattern-puzzles designed to trick your mind. “Girl, we don’t know if you’re Trent’s girlfriend or just a friend or what, but Trent has a parasite inside of him. It thinks, it feels, by this point it’s probably taken control of his limbs.”
Carrie turns to Trent. “What the hell?”
“That parasite, it’s inside Bill, too.”
Bill taps his chest. “In fact, we’ve become Bill. The only thing we’re wondering is, have we become Trent, too?”
We sigh. Might as well tell the truth.
Carrie will think I’m crazy! Trent snaps.
If we get out of here, you can tell her you were playing along.
“I’m still here,” Trent says. “But we talk. Me and the parasite.”
“Good. We can work with that.” Bill stands a little straighter, his shivering lips peeling back from his teeth. Trying to smile. Should we even think of this creature as ‘Bill’? Or is everyone’s favorite corrupt bureaucrat totally vaporized, leaving behind this meat-suit?
Buzzing fills Trent’s ears. At first, we think it’s from the damaged lights, but no, it hums in our skin, our bones, trying to dig its way into Trent’s brain. It’s Us-in-Bill, with some new ability we can’t quite fathom, trying to worm his way into Trent’s thoughts. How is that possible?
The buzzing in Trent’s ears increases, maddening, but the drugs blunt some of its effect. Maybe that’s the solution here. Maybe if we want to prevent Us-in-Bill from invading Trent’s mind, we need to snort more cocaine, or inject Trent’s veins with interesting chemicals. This is a hospital, right? There must be something great in a nearby fridge.
No, concentrate. We’re being ridiculous.
We tug on the corners of Trent’s mouth, forcing a smile for Bill, whose own smile fades. He knows that we know what he’s up to. He’ll try again. What other new abilities does he possess? Did he murder everyone in this place through the power of his mind?
Carrie takes a deep breath, straightening her back, and says: “Trent, you can meet me outside. Or stay here. Your call.”
“I don’t know,” Trent almost whispers.
She places a hand on his cheek, her thumb bracketing his chin as she turns his face to hers, and her gaze is warm and soft. In that moment we glimpse the spark that ignited whatever they used to have. Trent feels it, too, because for the first time we receive one of his memories in full, vibrant color: The two of them lying on a mattress on a floor, huddled beneath a dark-blue comforter, their lips locked, their hands entwined, naked, thrusting. A ball of shared heat on a winter’s night, the world compressed into two minds. So beautiful it fritzes my circuits. This is true love, the kind that Bill never fully experienced, or else forgot altogether after his wife passed away.
This kind of love, even a one-second hit feels purer than any chemical we could introduce into our bloodstream. Astonishing. Truly astonishing.
Before Trent can surface another memory, Carrie turns and sprints for it, never looking back as she disappears around the corner. The dim thump of the emergency-room doors opening. Trent takes a step in her direction, as if to follow—only for Bill’s hand to slam down onto his shoulder.
We take back everything we might have said about Bill’s weaknesses. His fingers dig into Trent’s flesh like steel claws. We sense that, if Trent tries to run, Bill will rip the flesh from his bones as easily as he might take apart a piece of fried chicken.
“So much for your girlfriend,” Bill says.
“She didn’t give me any time,” Trent says.
“That’s women for you.”
We hate Bill a little for that, because as much as we hated Carrie for freezing up outside the hospital, we would hate to see something happen to her. Bill might have tried to fill these kids’ heads with fear of the men with guns, but we have to hope that they’ll treat her gently. She’ll be okay, we tell Trent. She’ll say she was kidnapped or something, and they’ll believe her.
Why would they?
He is right. If today has shown anything, it’s that humans are impulsive and so, so stupid, especially when the situation demands they behave intelligently. As our furry friends demonstrated, they also lack the capacity for mercy. The reality is, once the cops find the drugs in the mini-car, and realize she was a delivery person for Big Jim, Carrie will face some Hiroshima-caliber legal problems. And yet, even a few years in a jail cell might prove better than whatever Bill has unleashed inside this hospital.
“What now?” Trent asks.
Ask him how he killed all these people, we suggest.
No! Trent jolts with fear.
Why not?
Because he might kill me!
“We’ll show you what we’ve been up to.” Bill resumes his zombie-like lurch down the corridor, gesturing for Trent to follow. “We were a little angry when you left us behind. Just going to put that out there. But we got over it. Talked to some people. Developed a real plan that we think you’re going to like.”
“Which people?”
“What?”
“Who did you talk to?”
“It’s a metaphor, Trent. We only rely on three folks for advice, and it’s we, us, and ourselves. Got it?”
“No . . . ”
Before that conversation gets any stranger, glass shatters beyond another turn in the hallway ahead. Is the SWAT team entering the building? Us-in-Bill might have killed a bunch of patients and doctors, but we’re hard-pressed to figure out how he could take out a couple dozen testosterone-filled warriors armed with automatic weapons. Perhaps this is the end of us.
Footsteps squeak on tile, and Detectives Mott and Banks appear at the far end of the hallway, both armed with pump-action shotguns and terrified expressions.
Our fear snaps away as rapidly as it arose. If anything, we’re embarrassed for Detective Mott, who didn’t bother to change out of his chipmunk costume before deciding to raid the hospital. Banks is better dressed for success, however, in a bullet-resistant vest.
“Hands!” Detective Mott yells. “Let me see those hands!”
Even Trent suppresses a giggle.
“Is that a standard detective uniform?” Bill chuckles.
“Hands!” Banks screams.
“We caught them at some kind of furry orgy,” Trent says. “The mayor was there. I think he died.”
“The mayor’s upstairs in the ICU,” Bill says. “He’s one of us now.”
The shotgun wavers in Mott’s grip. “Better show me those hands right now, or . . . ”
“Or what?” Bill strides toward them, hands at his sides. “You’ll shoot?”
Detective Banks, freaked out by the situation, pulls the trigger of her 12-gauge. In the tight confines of the hallway the sound is apocalyptic, bone-shattering, hammering Trent’s eardrums to paste. A storm of buckshot chews a piece of Bill’s flank, splattering the wall to his left with dark blood. The rest of the pellets scatter wide, dusting the ceiling
Bill stumbles, blood drooling from his torn shirt and painting his pants and shoes. His hand slaps the side of a gurney, arresting his fall. He pauses, slumped, and takes a syrupy breath.
&nbs
p; Detective Banks racks the slide of her shotgun.
Bill laughs and says, loudly enough for Trent to hear above the ringing in his ears: “Really, believe us, we’re so beyond this. If you want to live, you’ll run.”
Banks raises the shotgun again.
“Fine,” Bill says. Standing tall, he stretches his arms wide, spreading the skin around his wound. More of his blood rains onto the tile, but he never falters, his face impassive as stone. That buzzing deepens and slows until it hits a frequency that sings through Trent’s sinuses and skull like a tuning fork, making him sneeze.
The barrel of Mott’s shotgun trembles in rhythm with the buzzing. Then it rises, pushing against Mott’s clenching hands. Mott whimpers like an animal caught in a trap.
“Mott?” Banks asks, eyes widening, although she doesn’t stop pointing her pump-action at Bill.
“What the hell’s going on?” Mott moans. “I’m not doing this. Please, Banks, you have to help me . . . ”
If Banks were smart, she would finish what she started and pull the trigger on Bill, but something about her partner raising his gun to her seems to have short-circuited her decision-making capabilities. Through gritted teeth she says, “Don’t point that at me,” and yet she remains frozen as the barrel of Mott’s shotgun creeps in her direction, inch by painful inch. Unless Bill is somehow fixing her in place, too?
“Detective Mott, remember this morning?” Bill rasps. “When we were in the hospital bed, and you bent over me?”
“I remember,” Mott whines. “Please, what’s happening?”
Syrup-thick blood spills from between Bill’s teeth and down his chin. “Right when you were telling us, um, that you were going to bury the asshole who killed Frank beneath the jail—your words—we gave you a little gift. A little bit of us, you could say. Long story short, your body isn’t yours anymore.”
“Put it down.” Banks says quietly. “Partner, don’t make me shoot you.”
“Can’t,” Mott replies. One sweating pinkie pops away from the shotgun’s grip, but his other nine fingers remain welded to the weapon. His trigger finger tightens.
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