Thub thub... Klank klank... A heartbeat.
The Enterprise.
It roared -- the sound was Anno Domini, dinosaurial, land before time. It brought silt snowing from the ceiling and made the floor throb, a wash of noise enveloping Joe's legs and fluttering up his pants. Water sloshed over the tub's edges.
"Lombardi!" The harder the secretary pulled, the more desperately Joe held on.
The secretary reached for the empty bucket near his feet. His fingertips curled around the handle. Joe didn't see the secretary's arm swinging, didn't see the bucket coming hard and fast towards his face.
Pop. Crackle. Joe fell to his knees. The secretary rushed to the elevator. Joe was aware of the people in their looking at him, aware of their fear. But as the doors closed, that fear began mingling with relief. Glad, obviously, to not be Joseph Lombardi.
All the weight in Joe's head, it was shifting to one side of his face. He was dizzy, disoriented. He expected unconsciousness to take him. He wanted it to take him. Only, the numbness never came.
What did come, creeping ever closer with awful inevitability, was the creature. Taking tentative steps on long, thin stalks that swelled to bony globes at the knees.
"Jowww..." it said.
That got Joe back on his feet. That got him thinking about escape. That and the creature's horizon-wide mouth. And the straining tongue, a massive, rippling muscle that snaked out to sop at the air.
But there was nowhere to escape to. The elevator was gone. There was only...there was... He dug into his coat, taking out Alan's gun. The creature lurched toward the bathtub and easily flipped it sideways. Gallons of canal water went sliding across the floor, splashing against Joe's loafers.
"Ju-oh...Jerm..."
Joe closed his eyes. He pointed the gun and fired. Bang.
The recoil sent him stumbling backward, where he crashed into a pillar. He rolled around it, but soon he was running into another one, and then another. He had to hurry. He had to get away. That tongue... Like in his dream...
"Joe."
Trapped, it seemed, by these goddamn pillars, blocking his escape. And then suddenly Joe's legs were being swept above his head and he was hanging upside down, the hem of his trench coat firmly in the grip of the chuckling monster.
Oh God. It brought its face next to his. He saw the breeding lumps of skin there and watched the jowls ooze a brown sauce. The heat was unbearable, a withering blast that scraped your skin. Sweat continually rinsed the creature, splashing on Joe, burning where it touched. The tongue hovered just inside its whale's mouth, pacing behind rows of teeth like a caged lion. Its distended heart loped insanely against the top of Joe's upside down head, messing Joe's hair.
Oh God, no. And it's breath. It reeked of...of rot and decay. But of something else too, something stronger, something unmissable... Time. History. The history of the canal. The inception, the burning inception, the layers, the creek, the draw, the drain, the eons and on and on, the marsh the malaria the feeders the breeders the sea, always the sea. The waters pooling, the algae, the insects, the digging, the biggening, the widening, the feeding, the dumping, the flowing, the filling, the more the more the more, at last, all this, all rumbling from the passage of the creatures tumorous throat, compressed into one noxious whiff.
Joe's arms swung wildly, just above the floor. The gun accidentally flashed in his hand. Bang.
The creature took hold of Joe's shoulder and spun him right side up. It brought its strep-colored lips close to his ear and whispered him a message. Concisely. Precisely. Just one word.
And for Joe, things finally made sense. He now knew what this monster was. He knew its secret. And it, it-- It couldn't be. No. It just wasn't possible. It was... Because if it was...
It had said...
Oh God.
Oh no. Please God, no.
Please, anything but that...
*
On the inside, the building was everything you'd expect a bastion of disorder to be: a Beirut, a public pool, a standing disaster overrun by vermin. As squalid as Alan's very principles were pure. The place was obviously a quick cop out for a high or a hand job.
But upstairs somewhere, that was the epicenter. The grizzly's den, squatter HQ, error central. Alan felt such a definite sense of righteousness in this place -- it was just so utterly beneath him.
He found the elevator. There were no buttons, just an unwieldy lever, something better suited to lowering drawbridges or launching catapults. He shoved it with his elbow, avoiding it with his hands. The capsule began shuddering skyward, and Alan found himself blind, enveloped in jock-strap darkness.
Waiting in the gloom, staring tensely upward, Alan knew that Joe and his ilk needed him. Chaos without order, why, that was just untenable. In fact, without rules, disorder was powerless, it had no form. It was nothing. It was never the other way around, however. In fact, order was better off without chaos. Complete order, that was how heaven was. Where everyone does what you say, everything exists in its proper place, and there was no uncertainty or doubt. Just rules and regulations. And it was all just wonderful.
The elevator began squealing, childbirth type noises that meant either imminent arrival or imminent malfunction. A seam of light appeared near the car's ceiling. It widened, bringing the top floor into view. Alan thought he detected something familiar, something hated -- the loathed pill of the canal.
He soared into the room, a sight to behold, pulsing with gallon doses of adrenaline. He noted the gloss of toilet water on the ground. He heard speaking, but the voice, it sounded more like the gnawing of a trash compactor. Through the pillars he caught glimpses of an upended bathtub and islands of empty bedding. Good lord. All those people, they lived here in 24-hour filth, constantly dosing on gangrene and fleas.
Alan came to the ugly glade of the bathtub. That's where he found Joe -- the coat gave him away, glistening with reflective crusts. And there was someone else, they had Joe in their arms and were cradling him, whispering.
It seemed to Alan, in all the haze and opaque shadow, that the glimpsed outline of this person was impossible. Giant. The back hunched over, swept up like an enormous wave.
Quite an imagination, the brain. Oh, the tricks it plays.
"Drop him," ordered Alan. "Fucking now!"
The whispering stopped. Joe's attacker snapped its head in his direction, causing Alan's blood to lurch. What he was seeing -- face like a distended navel, skin that exploded and sprayed in places -- it just wasn't feasible.
The attacker threw Joe to the floor and darted backward into the dark. Alan pursued. There was a thudding, sliding crash that rattled from a huge pipe in one of the windows. And beneath this opening lay, undoubtedly and unquestionably, a man.
Seeing this Alan felt...he felt relief. The room was brighter now, and the guy who'd had a hold of Joe, he was just some skinny punk, some hippie panhandler. And that was all he was, with a face like any face you'd see. Well, not any face -- it was the face of a nobody, the face of everyone who'd ever begged for a dollar. But familiar at least. As the guy was making a run for it, he must have slipped and knocked himself cold.
Alan left him for now. He hurried back to Joe -- Joe lay in a pile, strangely limp, looking hollowed out. But no sucking bullet holes to be found. No jets of blood. No mortality.
"Joe! You okay?"
Joe slowly moved, crawling forward onto his knees. There was something helplessly mechanical about his motions, like a creature with no head, some headless crustacean. He still had Alan's gun.
"What the hell happened here!"
The side of Joe's face looked like a volcano, busted and red and seeping lava. Survivable, though. Mixed with the blood was a layer of perspiration, a very measurable layer, in the realm of quarters of an inch.
Alan was whirling -- heart going, muscles cramped, his whole body turned full volume. Holy fuck, this place was horrible. A fucking satanic gallbladder. He'd had a shock there, at first. Fucking trick of the light, fuck
ing optical illusion.
"Dammit, Joe! What the fuck is going on? Who the hell is that guy? Jesus-fucking-Christ, it's like the intestines in here!"
An idea briefly flashed. The water on the floor... Could the squatters have been trying to wash something away? Something like blood? Joe was in a hurry to get here -- he must have known something was in the works. Maybe these fuckers liked skin. Rose, the guy with the knife, all those goons. A ritual thing, ritual murder, the deranged byproduct of marginalized minds. They'd do it for kicks, as a taunt, a disgusting raspberry from the periphery.
"Joe, get a hold of yourself -- like fucking right now. And you need to tell me, before this place gives me rabies, what just fucking happened!"
Joe gurgled incoherently. Eherk...eherk. He was crying.
No. Emphatically: no. Alan was owed answers. You didn't walk into a hovel, a literal bedpan, like this out of charity, just to let Joe eherk his way out of responsibility. Not when there was so much hanging in the balance.
"Get up, Joe."
Joe just sat there.
And then something happened. Something Alan couldn't explain. A force, or energy, it came to him, as if from across plains of space and atmosphere and clouds. Something that had been waiting for a long time, since before Alan was born, maybe. Waiting for this moment. And now it was finally here, a welcome electricity that jumped into Alan's arm and turned it silver. He shivered, warm with power, and slapped Joe across the mouth.
A spray of sweat splattered against a pillar.
Alan was stunned. That had come out of nowhere. What's more -- it had felt good. Invigorating, like a dip in a frozen sea. And Alan badly wanted more. He needed more. But this time with the fist, with the knuckles...
Alan drew his hand back, pulling it high over his head, far as he could reach... But then the anger...he felt embarrassed suddenly. It was so unlike him, to lash out like that, without thinking...
Well, why shouldn't he get mad? Especially when there were so many who were deserving of his fury. Like Joe's attacker. Alan glared. At last, the man was up and moving, crawling towards Alan. Animals were crawlers.
Alan went and kicked him. The guy was filthy, enthusiastically so, bronzed with grime, a dirt tan. And his eyes, juiced with a bad infection. The guy emptily blinked.
"Hey buddy, you fucking hearing me? Listen, you're going to do exactly what I say. You're going to sit back down, you're going to keep your hands where I can see them, and then you're going to start talking. What did you do to Joe, that's my first question. You better hope he's okay, asshole. Hello?"
The guy wasn't comprehending. He must still be dizzy from his fall. "Pay attention, fucker. Tell me about your buddies -- I want to know exactly what you and your little tribe were doing up here in this goddamn vomitorium."
The bum flopped onto his stomach and tried executing a slow dog paddle across the floor. Alan flexed his fingers. It was coming, he could feel it... From across the firmament, the gathering roar...
"Are you hearing me, asshole?"
The guy looked up at him and mumbled something. It sounded like, "Gingerbread."
Alan's fist abruptly exploded against the man's jaw. There was an incredibly gratifying, if not downright amazing, report. One befitting a small firearm, metallic, vibrating the floor and air. Alan stared in awe at his own clenched hand.
But it wasn't right, that noise. There it went again. It lasted longer this time, a jarring moan. The sound of a machine under torture.
It was the elevator.
Joe... Joe? With a start, Alan realized that Joe was gone. Wasn't there. All that remained was a ring of sweat on the floor. But...but Alan could still feel the contours of Joe's recent face, the energy was still zinging in his fingertips.
Alan dashed to the elevator. He barked Joe's name. The car was already disappearing into the floor. Joe's back was turned.
Alan balanced on the brink of the elevator shaft, watching the car's roof fall further and further away. It seemed to be taking all the explanations and answers with it. But Alan could still catch him, especially at the pace Joe traveled. The only problem was, there was no way to get the elevator back upstairs.
The other guy would know a way out. These types, they always had their secret exits and escape hatches, entire warrens of tunnels right underground for conducting guerilla mischief. Alan had been a bit physical with the man, maybe a little on the side of lasting damage. But no matter. If the punk was out cold, Alan could just slap him awake.
Alan went back to the tub, but discovered that one very crucial element was lacking. One vagrant. Alan retraced his steps and tried again.
In the ensuing search, digging through the odor, the grime, the lice, Alan began to sense a growing unbalance. A slight tinge of hysteria. God, it was hot in here. God it was nauseous. If there was a hell, this was it. Who knew, all this time, hell: it was right in town. The huge pipe in the wall, it dropped five stories straight into the fucking river. This was ridiculous -- there had to be another way out. Of course there was. Otherwise... Otherwise Alan might not want to think about that. Man, these walls, it seemed smaller in here, smaller every second. It was tiny almost. So small every surface in the place was practically rubbing on him.
He had to give ol' pandemonium some credit. Joe and a whole pack of degenerate murderers (and even if they hadn't murdered, well, people like that were always guilty of something) were probably right now having a big laugh at his expense. All those mistakes, all those errors, fleeing out into the world. Apparently these creeps could now transport themselves through space and time, fancy that. And apparently, unless he jumped down the elevator shaft, or dove into the canal, Alan was trapped. Even worse, he was ineffective. On the most important day of the most important case of his career. Nay, his life.
Not that he didn't have this under control, it was very much under control, don't be crazy, he'd figure this out. It was fine. It was all fine.
Alan returned to the elevator shaft. He leaned forward and howled into the depths.
>> CHAPTER NINE <<
"Hey, Alan." Pause. "You look like shit." That was Womack, who had stopped mid-hallway to stare, with almost pornographic curiosity, as Alan came rushing past.
"Get the first aid kit," gulped Alan, out of breath, as he ran to the bathroom.
Alan knew how he looked. It was worse than the arm, the shirt, and the knee. Now it was also the fire escape. Yes, the fire escape had come to his eventual rescue, albeit grudgingly. But first he'd had to find it. And finding it meant maintaining his composure long enough to sort through the footprints he had discovered, showing on the drier parts of floor, a huge tangle of them, like the aftermath of some caterpillar misadventure, until he finally divined a lone, pigeon-toed pair -- belonging to his vanished panhandler, no doubt -- wandering off opposite the elevator. Straight to a window boarded up with plywood. Only that plywood, one easy push and it glid open on the smoothest hinges known to man.
It was an amazing moment. To go from rank and hopeless, to bright and fresh and freedom. That gulp of air was the sweetest he'd ever tasted, the breeze that strolled past his cheeks was the kindest he'd ever known.
And then he saw the fire escape. It was a starving, skeletal thing, all barbs and points. Hostile. Something only a fool would entrust his life to. And Alan, by circumstance, was exactly that fool.
All the way down, the fire escape begrudged him. It harassed him. And then it marked him, soiling his skin, his hair, and his clothes with a thousand-year-old pomade of pigeon slime and brick dandruff (the stuff had been frosted inches deep on the ladders). And then to further the humiliation, just as Alan neared the end of his treacherous descent, the final ladder left him kicking some eight feet above the Earth's surface. He could see everything from up there -- precipitation brewing in the north, wildfires to the west, and holy-moly look at that traffic. Alan rolled his ankle upon re-entry and then suffered an awful few seconds when it sounded as if the whole tragic, rickety mess was going to c
ome toppling down on top of him, bringing the entire building with it.
Afterward, he took to the streets on foot. What he should have done was scan all the back roads and the dumpster dives for any sign of Joe or his friends. But instead Alan did something else, something of which he was already deeply ashamed.
He fled. He had to. Because being in that room, being trapped there, it was indescribable. What if he hadn't gotten out? What if that place had become his tomb?
And what in God's name was that smell? It was no sweet honey, surely. More like a moldy nut (and to be entirely precise, rather an old world kind of moldy, a mouldy). The odor had followed him all the way here to the police station bathroom, where he now stood eyeing the mirror above the sink, afraid of what it might show him.
He nervously approached. The person he saw reflected? It wasn't someone he recognized. It was a subway rat. One that roots around the tracks and in the butts and the standing water, down there in the pits. Dead in a year from...from...well, it was obvious. Dead from dirt.
And then Alan had a realization. He sniffed himself. Oh dear. He sniffed himself again. Oh my. The smell...the smell was him.
This, this was some other Alan. Shadow Alan. Skids Alan. Dropout D'Angelo. And dare he even think it...vagrant Alan. He stank, and he wanted to weep, to kneel on the tile and let his sobs echo throughout the cathedral-like toilet, crying for himself. All his work and careful maintenance, all of it brought to this, this frightening low. It was not what he deserved at all.
He quickly unbuttoned his shirt. The fabric clung to him, so fond had it become of his oils and greases. Peeling it off unleashed a shameful cloud of body fog, steaming the mirror and prompting a recent arrival to cry out from his stall.
From the dispenser Alan took as much soap as he could hold, mixing it with scalding water. He drenched the arms with soapy paste, especially his cut, scrubbing past the point of pain, wiping off the tar of blood and grime. He did his armpits and chest. His face was next, he massaged every pore, coating himself in sterilizing lather.
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