Dreaming the Perpetual Dream
Page 18
His cry was drowned out by another, as a soldier stepped up behind the one firing.
“Stop shooting!” he yelled. “He has the EMF generator panel open! Stop shooting, man! You’ll erase us all!”
The soldier’s brain had already registered the command to pull the trigger. Link watched his eyes go wide, as if he understood what was about to happen and couldn’t stop it. A laser shot out of the barrel, and the entire panel filled with light. Cervice fell from the hole, one shoulder a charred stump and half of his face a twisted melted mess. Flames licked the wall all around the panel, and Link’s reaching hand finally fell on the weapon he had dropped.
Link took one last look at Cervice. The robot was gone, but that didn’t mean Link was not clear on what he had to do. He raised the pistol, lined up the sights on the blazing opening, and pulled the trigger repeatedly. The fire turned to a smoking inferno with the first few shots, as the guards raced across the room to leap on him. Before they could seize him, Link bit his lip and fired one last shot into the open panel.
The room was filled with a blinding light, a deafening explosion threw all three men against the far wall, and Link felt his consciousness slipping away as he struck the unforgiving vertical surface.
EPILOGUE
Her hand curled into a loose fist, Sherry knocked on the door for the third time. Several seconds passed with no response. She leaned into the jamb, called out quietly.
“Link!” she said. “Link, it’s me. It’s Sherry. Open up.”
Again, she rapped her knuckles on the thin barrier.
“Link!” she cried, louder. “I saw your car! I know you’re in there! Open up! We need to talk!”
Another stretch of silence was the only response. Sherry bit her lip, and tried the door handle. It turned in her hand, and she paused. Looking around, Sherry shrugged and pushed the door open slowly.
“Link!” she called out. “I’m coming in!”
The living room was no more or less a mess than she expected it to be. Sherry moved through the space, and hesitated before moving through the next door. It stood slightly ajar.
“Link?”
Her voice was barely a whisper at this point, although it sounded thunderous to her in the stillness before and after she spoke. Pressing on, she reached out and opened the door the rest of the way.
Sherry gasped, and rushed to kneel next to the bed. Link was lying on his back, his head propped slightly forward by a pillow. His jaw was slack, his mouth gaped open, and his lips were dry and cracked. Open and unseeing, his eyes gazed at nothing with a complete lack of intensity.
Waving her hand in front of his face, Sherry called his name again. Nothing roused him, even when she shook him lightly and then not so lightly by the shoulder. She tried to close his eyes, so she would stop being drawn to that awful empty stare. They popped open again immediately, as soon as she moved her fingers from his eyelids. Finally she stood up, and pulled her phone out of her purse.
The voice on the other end was terse, and insistent.
“Nine one one,” she said. “Is this an emergency?”
Sherry looked down, shuddered.
“Yeah,” she said. “My boy...uh, my friend seems to have had some kind of seizure, or stroke or something. He’s totally unresponsive.”
Quick and dry, the voice came back almost immediately.
“Were you taking drugs?” she asked.
Sherry looked around.
“I wasn’t,” she said. “He might have been. I only just got here. There is a bottle of pills on his nightstand. I’ve been texting and calling him for two days. He went kind of off the rails the last couple weeks, and really started turning into a completely different person. Of course, I didn’t know him that well be—”
“What is your location?” the woman said, cutting her off.
Again, Sherry cast about the room with her eyes.
“Let me grab a piece of mail, or something,” she said.
The next few minutes seemed interminable to her, and Sherry quickly tired of going over the scant details she could give over and over again. She realized the woman was just keeping her on the phone when she heard a knock coming from the other room.
“Oh!” Sherry said. “Did you send someone?”
“I did,” she responded. “Are they there?”
Sherry nodded.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think so. I’m going to check now.”
Two paramedics stood waiting on the landing, a man and a woman; Sherry ushered them inside. She pointed to the open bedroom door, and spoke to the dispatcher at the same time.
“It’s them,” she said. “Thank you.”
Without hearing whatever the woman might have said in response, Sherry hung up and trailed them into the bedroom.
“Thanks for coming,” she said. “He was like this when I found him.”
While the man leaned over Link’s unresponsive form and tried to rouse him in much the same ways Sherry had only minutes earlier, the woman began to echo the dispatcher’s string of questions.
“Does your boyfriend do drugs?” she said.
Sherry shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know. He’s not my boyfriend. There are some pills, over there.”
First she pointed, then Sherry moved to pick up the bottle. She untwisted the cap, and peered inside.
“It’s nearly empty,” she said.
She looked at the date, shook her head.
“This prescription isn’t very old,” she said. “It shouldn’t be so empty.”
The man had stopped trying to rouse Link. He looked up at Sherry, from his bent position, and jerked his chin toward his partner.
“Give those to her,” he said. “You shouldn’t be handling them.”
Sherry frowned, capped the bottle again and passed it to the woman. They exchanged a glance, while the other paramedic put his attention back on Link; Sherry gestured toward the door.
“Maybe we should leave him to his work,” Sherry suggested.
He jerked his head up, and looked at each of them in turn.
“I mean, thank you,” Sherry smiled sweetly. “I just don’t want to be in your way. Do you want a cup of coffee, or something?”
The paramedic shook his head, pulled a stethoscope from his pocket and clipped it about his neck.
“Your boyfriend seems to be in real trouble here,” he said.
Sherry held her hands up in front of her.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she said. “We were dating, for a minute; then he started acting weird, and kind of unbearable. Could it have been those pills? Do they cause erratic behavior?”
He was staring at her, the look on his face nearly as blank and uninterested as the one Link wore. The pills had gone into the woman’s pocket, without either of them looking at the bottle. After a moment he shrugged, and looked away. He said nothing.
Sherry nodded.
“So,” she said. “No coffee then.”
She smiled weakly at the woman, and slipped from the room.
While she warmed up the machine and washed one of the several dirty mugs laying about the apartment, Sherry tried to listen to them through the open doorway. She could only pick out snippets of the conversation, most of which meant nothing to her. All she really made out clearly was him telling her they needed to go get the stretcher, and bring the patient in to be looked at. Sherry moved to the coffee brewer, and busied herself making a cup.
By the time they returned with the trundling cot, Sherry had found some creamer in the fridge and dumped a generous amount in her coffee. She noted that it tasted a little off, and checked the expiration date on the bottle. Sniffing the steaming brew, she could swear it smelled like a handful of coins were in the cup along with the coffee and flavored cream. Sherry shrugged, and had anothe
r long sip; she needed it, and the metallic aftertaste wasn’t strong enough to deter her from drinking more.
The woman stepped into the room, walking backward. She was pulling the gurney, or guiding it; Link’s feet came through the doorway first, followed by the rest of him. He looked as he had on his own bed, completely intact and absolutely absent all at the same time.
“You can’t ride with us,” she said, “unless you’re family. Sorry. You can follow us, though. We’re taking him to Western Memorial.”
She looked apologetic, and Sherry couldn’t figure out if it was because they couldn’t give her a ride or because Link had become some kind of vegetable. Sherry nearly reminded them that he wasn’t her boyfriend once more, though no one had suggested it for awhile. Instead she smiled, and nodded.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be along shortly.”
They closed the door behind them, and Sherry spoke aloud to the empty living room.
“Or not,” she said. “Probably not.”
Sherry yawned, and took her cup of coffee in the bedroom. She set the mug on the nightstand, next to Link’s alarm clock. The pills were gone, as she assumed they would be; she wished she had at least written down the name on the bottle, so she could do a little curious research. Casting about with her gaze, she saw something on the floor next to the bed. She knelt to pick it up.
Pinching it between her thumb and forefinger, Sherry brought the single pill up close to her face and inspected it carefully. Before regaining her feet, she noticed something she hadn’t seen while she had been standing. She reached under the bed, and fished out another bottle of pills. The label said they were some kind of sleeping pills, and the prescription date was even more recent than the other had been. She opened the bottle, and peered inside.
A distinct metallic odor wafted from the bottle. Sherry crinkled her nose at the smell, and glanced at the coffee cup she had set on the nightstand. She reached out, picked it up, and compared the odors. Exhaustion had fallen over her like a wet blanket, and she was pretty sure she knew why. She yawned, as if to illustrate the point, and set the coffee and the pill down next to each other.
Taking her phone out of her purse once more, Sherry opened the camera app and took a photo of the pill. She dusted it off against her blouse, made sure the photo was clear, and popped it in her mouth.
Sherry lay down, and closed her eyes.
Also available from J.K. Norry
The Ringer series
Ringing in a Voyage
Ringing in a New Year
Ringing in a Summer (coming in 2018)
Zombie Zero
Zombie Zero: The First Zombie
Zombie Zero: The Last Zombie
Zombie Zero: The Short Stories
Volume 1: The Sickness Spreads
Volume 2: The Beginning of the End
Volume 3: Love Lost at Sea
Volume 4: The Zombie Killers
Volume 5: Monstrous Consequences
Volume 6: The Heart of the Monster
Walking Between Worlds
Demons & Angels (Book I)
Rise of the Walker King (Book II)
Fall of the Walker King (Book III)
The Demon Be Damned (coming in 2018)
As Jay Norry
Stumbling Backasswards Into the Light
Learn more about Jay at www.JayNorry.com
Sign up for the Secret Society of Deeper Meaning, and get exclusive content, the weekly newsletter, and much more:
http://eepurl.com/T3NdD