Carrol snatched an unlit cigarette from the ground and waved it at her. "He took my lucky lighter! My Pittsburgh Steelers Zippo!"
As Sascha helped Carrol to her feet, Buzz and Towers charged around the corner. There was no sign of Espinoza.
Buzz and Towers sprinted the length of the block, then slowed and stopped at the next cross-street. Buzz put out a hand to hold back Towers while he peered around the corner...
And then he dove back as a burning man hurtled screaming into the intersection.
Buzz dropped his gun and pulled Towers with him, tackling her against a wall. The burning man bolted past, the flames from his body singeing the hair on Buzz's left arm.
"Espinoza!" Towers pushed away from Buzz and ran after the burning man. As Buzz scooped up his gun from the pavement, he glimpsed a black and gold cigarette lighter and an uncapped red gasoline can in the street.
*****
Later, Towers stood over the smoking corpse on the sidewalk and made a call on her radio. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her uniform...then seemed to realize she was being watched and turned so Buzz and the others couldn't see her face.
"Poor thing," said Sascha. "He was her boyfriend."
Buzz almost asked how she knew...but then he let it lie. It just didn't matter.
"Good news is, we know for sure it's contagious." Carrol paced in a circle, holding her lower back...bandy-legged, upper body cocked forward so she looked like a strutting chicken.
"Bad news is, we know for sure it's contagious," said Sascha. "And here we all are in the hot zone."
Towers snapped something into her radio, and Buzz nodded. "She's setting up the countywide quarantine. Where do we go from here?"
Sascha sighed loudly. She stood, lost in thought, for a long moment, the fingertips of one hand covering her mouth. Finally, she looked at Carrol. "I wonder what Espinoza told her?"
"He didn't tell us squat." Carrol looked at Buzz. "You said he and Towers were talking in the alley when you caught up with them."
"I couldn't hear what they were saying," said Buzz.
"So let's ask Towers," said Carrol.
"We should tie her up first, actually," said Sascha.
Carrol rubbed her back. "Only if you do the tying."
"What's the point?" said Buzz. "Why do we care what he said to her?"
Sascha patted his shoulder. "We're being optimistic, honey."
Buzz frowned. "Optimistic?"
"Yeah." Carrol strutted over and shoved her sourpuss kisser in his face. "Because if it's some kind of spell or mind control, not an airborne contagion or reality collapse, we might still have a chance of walking out of here in one piece."
*****
"He told me a story," said Towers. "The same one the little girl told him."
"A story?" Carrol lit a cigarette and leaned back in the recliner with her feet up. She'd insisted on interviewing Towers where there was padded furniture to ease her back spasms...and Buzz had found her a comfort zone in the living room of a house along Main Street. It was one of the many homes left empty and wide open in the wake of the big die-off in town. "What, like Dr. Seuss?"
Towers, who sat on the sofa between Sascha and Buzz, shook her head. "It was a weird story. I'm not even sure if he finished it, to tell the truth."
"What was it about?" Sascha switched on a digital voice recorder and pointed it at Towers. "How much of it do you remember?"
Towers cocked her head and frowned. "A good bit, actually. It starts like this: Long before these times in which we live, there was a boy in a bucket..."
*****
The boy's name was Lucid, and he was born as a half-formed creature. Hands, like antlers, grew from the top of his head. A ring of teeth ran all around his face. He had mouths where his ears should have been, and a throbbing heart where his mouth should have been. Pulsing veins and arteries were his hair.
Lucid was little more than a head and a sac full of organs in a wooden bucket. His tribe only kept him alive because he was the son of the chief...and because, as the son of the chief, he was considered a god.
Someday, he would rule the tribe in his father's place. He was certainly smart enough for it. In fact, he was smarter than anyone. He had plenty of time to think in that bucket of his.
That was how he came up with his plan. The one that began the day after his father, the chief, died.
"Most of you can't stand to look at me." That was what he said when they placed his bucket on the throne. His voice was like the croaking of a toad. "You need to get used to seeing me as your chief and your god.
"That is why," said Lucid, "I will come to live with each of you for a week at a time. I will eat with you at your tables. I will sleep with you in your beds. You will come to think of me as a member of your families.
"Now who wants to be first?"
No one volunteered, so Lucid made the choice.
And one by one, the families of the tribe took turns living with him. Feeding him through the slimy mouths on the sides of his head. Cleaning his soiled bucket. Watching his deformed body day in and day out, squirming and oozing and pulsating.
Feeling his rubbery flesh nestle against them in their beds in the night, slithering against their bare skin in ways that made them shudder, ways they would never
Forget...
Forget forget forget...
*****
I forget!
Damn it!
They made me forget the best parts of it! The story Espinoza told Towers, and Towers told Buzz and the sisters!
My story! They made me forget parts of my own story! Parts of my self!
Those damned LaVerge sisters!
I wish you could see me the way I was meant to be seen. I wish you could read me in my entirety. I guarantee, you wouldn't be able to resist me.
Sometimes, I feel like the missing pieces are still there. Maybe, if I just look in the right places, I could find them and put myself back together.
Maybe, if I follow the parts I still remember, they'll lead me to the parts I've lost.
*****
"You're wrong, Sergeant." Carrol flicked cigarette ashes in her cupped hand. "This story isn't weird. It's twisted."
"It's disgusting," said Sascha. "Demented."
"I don't get it," said Buzz. "It doesn't make sense."
Towers shrugged. "Don't ask me. I didn't write the story. All I can do is tell you the rest..."
*****
After many weeks, Lucid had finished his visits with the members of his tribe. Never before had the tribe gotten to know him so well.
And never before had they been so glad to get away from him.
But Lucid was not done with his plan, and he would not leave his tribesmen alone for long. Soon, he called them together for more announcements.
"Thank you for welcoming me into your homes." Lucid sloshed in his bucket as he turned from side to side, taking in the crowd from his bamboo throne. "I finally feel accepted and loved by you all. I truly feel as if I am part of your families now."
The tribe applauded because they were happy it was over.
"In fact, I am so moved by your hospitality and love," said Lucid, "that I shall bestow upon you a great gift in return."
"What gift?" The tribe sounded expectant.
"I shall become an actual part of your families," said Lucid. "Through marriage."
"Through marriage?" The tribe sounded horrified.
"I shall marry the eldest daughter of every family in my tribe," said Lucid. "Together, we shall conceive the next generation."
"Conceive?" said a tribesman.
"We didn't think you could," said a tribeswoman.
"Of course I can!" Lucid laughed. "Now bring me your daughters!"
For the next month, Lucid married a daughter a day. After each ceremony, his retainers carried his bucket to a special tent. The brides were brought in next, and reached into the bucket.
They fished in the putrid ooze, holding their breath against
the stench as they followed Lucid's instructions. Things they could not see squirmed and pinched at their fingers, latching on and burrowing into their flesh. They wept for days and tried to
Forget...
Forget...
*****
Not again!
I forget!
If only I were still whole. If only you could read the real me, just as Towers told Buzz and the LaVerges.
I was magnificent. I was revolting and beautiful at the same time.
Before the LaVerges did their dirty work, I radiated the power that had brought down empires. Collapsed civilizations.
Controlled minds in that very room in Lasco, New Mexico, when my latest acolyte presented me from start to finish in my original, unexpurgated form.
*****
After Lucid had married the eldest daughters of the tribe, leaving every one of them forever scarred--both physically and mentally--he moved on to the next step of his great plan. The last step.
Once again, he called all the people of the tribe before him. By now, after living with him and losing their beautiful daughters to his ugliness, the people were crushed. Their grotesque god in a bucket had twisted their spirits and filled their hearts with horror.
Now, he would take them one step further into hell.
"You have welcomed me into your homes," said Lucid, peering over the rim of his bucket. "You have made me part of your families. Now, I give you the greatest gift of all: the chance to become one with your god."
The people of the tribe stared vacantly at his obscene, bucket-bound mass. Flies buzzed around his pulsating blood-vessel hair.
"Here is how this communion will come to pass," said Lucid. "Each of you will offer one part of yourself...one sacrifice that will bind you to me.
"Now come forward and unite with my divinity!" Lucid bobbed in his bucket, spilling rancid fluid over the sides. "One at a time! Chanting prayers and crawling on your hands and knees, please!"
As the people approached, Lucid's surgeon went to work on them. He hacked a different body part from each one and placed it in a framework—a man-shaped framework.
From one man, he cut a hand, chopping through the wrist with a cleaver. From another man, he carved off a face.
He removed a woman's skin, cutting carefully from chin to ankles, slicing with the razor as the woman's chanting turned to shrieks, and then he...
He...
*****
I don't know.
I can't remember.
I've no idea what comes next. That part of the story is lost to me. That part of me is gone.
It survived for all the long ages, passed down from one storyteller to the next, from the earliest human beings all the way to Sergeant Towers. In fact, Towers might have been the last person to retell me in my glorious entirety.
I apologize for not being able to recapture her exact words that day. Suffice it to say, she finished telling Buzz Mahaffey and the LaVerge sisters every last wonderful bit of my original text, and then she said...
*****
"The End." Towers stared at the glass coffee table. "That's all Espinoza told me."
"What a downer." Carrol scowled and lit another cigarette. "The least you could've done was jazz that thing up for us with a little creative editing."
Sascha leaned forward on the couch and met Carrol's gaze. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"If it has to do with getting home in time for my tango lesson," said Carrol, "then yes."
"What do you think?" Sascha locked eyes with Buzz. "What should we do next?"
Buzz shrugged. "You're the experts."
"Okey-doke." Sascha extended a hand. "Give me your weapon."
"You too, sweetpea." Carrol snapped her fingers and pointed at Towers. "Cough it up."
Towers glared and rested a hand on her holster. "Not going to happen."
Carrol blew a jet of smoke from one side of her mouth, then slid it around to the other side. "So you'd rather die than surrender your weapon? Because that's the scenario we're looking at here."
"Why is that?" said Buzz. "What exactly is going on here?"
Sascha looked at the window, and Buzz did the same. It was getting dark; the sun had gone down while Towers told her story.
"We don't have time to explain." Sascha locked eyes with Buzz. "You'll just have to trust us, Buzzie."
It went against all his training and experience, but Buzz found himself putting his faith in her. His hand found the grip of the nine-mil in his shoulder holster.
Towers elbowed him in the side. "What if they're the threat? What if they want our guns so they can use them on us?"
Carrol pulled the lever on the side of the recliner, dropping the footrest with a bang and flinging the backrest forward. "Earth to Towers! We work direct for the President, sugarplum! You think the President of the United States wants you dead?"
Buzz pulled the nine-mil from his holster and laid the gun on the coffee table in front of Towers. "We're in over our heads on this one, Sergeant. Let's give the professionals the benefit of the doubt."
"Can we please move this along?" Sascha scooped up Buzz's gun from the table. "We're running out of time."
"Running out of time till what?" said Towers. "What's going to happen?"
"For the love a' Mike!" Carrol struggled to her feet, keeping her back stiff and pushing off the armrests with both hands. "Will you just give her the gee-dee gun?"
"Do you need an Executive Order, Sergeant?" said Buzz. "Because I can make that happen."
Towers glared and drew her pistol. She popped out the ammo cartridge and pocketed it, then held the gun suspended above the coffee table.
And let it drop.
The glass table shattered under the weight of the gun, spraying everyone on the sofa with shards. Buzz flung up his hands to shield his face, then jumped up to shake off the debris.
Without a word, Towers stood and marched away from the sofa.
"Hey! Yo!" Sascha leaped to her feet and grabbed Towers by the elbow. "Back yard, please." Sascha turned Towers and bobbed her head at Buzz and Carrol. "All of you. Keep an eye on each other while I work."
Carrol hobbled over and leaned a forearm on Sascha's shoulder. "That's right, kiddies. Chop chop now."
Sascha shrugged off the forearm. "You too, Sis."
Carrol looked stunned. "But we're a team."
"Not for long, Sis." Sascha kissed her on the forehead. "Not if I can't fix this in a hurry."
*****
That was when it started. When Sascha LaVerge started working on me.
I had to hand it to her. She figured me out. She realized I was the cause of the trouble in Lasco. She even had an idea of how to stop me.
Sascha understood that stories are more than a beginning, middle, and end. Much more than plot and characters and setting and theme.
We have language and rhythm and algorithms and code...a kind of software that can change the human brain. Program it.
We are mind control in its purest form. We can make you feel happy or angry or sad. We can change the way you feel about your family, your government, your life. We can make you take a stand or fall in love or choose a career or take a trip. We can make you love your neighbor, hate your neighbor, hate yourself.
And if we're strong enough, like me--like I used to be--we can make you kill yourself.
You can't stop us, either, once we've gotten inside your head. At least, you shouldn't be able to.
Unless you're Sascha LaVerge.
Sascha sat at the kitchen table in the borrowed house and listened to me all over again, playing back Towers' performance on the digital recorder. Sascha listened carefully, made notes, and plotted her strategy.
Beads of sweat stood out on her creased forehead. Her heart pounded like a bass drum in her chest. She knew she was running out of time. I still had a chance to beat her.
And it seemed, for a while, that I would win. When the shouting and crashing started in the back yard, she knew I
had the upper hand.
But she kept working in the kitchen anyway, totally focused, working on me...even as I kept working on her friends.
*****
Grunting, Towers strained against Buzz's grip, forcing the jagged, bloody shard of coffee table glass toward her own left wrist.
Buzz held on to her right arm with both hands, straining to keep her from closing the deal. She'd already slashed the left wrist crossways twice, and blood was oozing from the wounds.
Why Towers was doing it, she hadn't said. The move had come without warning. Towers had managed to sneak the glass shard from the coffee table wreckage out to the back yard without Buzz noticing until she'd started slicing.
Towers wasn't explaining, but the connection to the other suicides was clear enough to Buzz. She was just another link in the chain from the dead little girl and Espinoza...a chain that probably wouldn't end with her.
"Sergeant Towers! Stand down!" Buzz barked it like an order in the hope of getting through to the trooper.
But she ignored him. Her eyes remained glazed-over, her teeth clenched, her arms rigid. The bloody shard glittered in the moonlight.
Abruptly, Towers shifted position and increased the pressure behind the shard, nearly snapping Buzz's resistance. Buzz flowed with the sudden change, though, and compensated for the increased pressure. Then, he tried her tactic for himself, shifting hard and hauling her forward.
Warning! Do Not Read This Story! Page 2