"And, yea, though I ride my bike through the valley of the shadow of death," Lisa muttered, "I shall fear no evil." It was a silly thing to say, but she'd been doing a lot of that in the last three hours or so.
Ever since Billy left her at the bat.
And the ramifications of his words began to truly sink in.
If it's flesh and blood, I can handle it, she had said, and she still stood pretty much by that claim. There was only one problem, which neither she nor Billy had posed: but what if it isn't?
Variations on that basic theme had taken her through two more pitchers and all but fifteen minutes of the subsequent time, left her in the slowly-intensifying grip of irrational terror. It was one thing to sit there and calmly discuss the supernatural, quite another to cruise the night streets alone with the eyes of Hell upon you.
And in the fifteen minutes since she'd left the bar, she hadn't been able to shake the fear. Every cab, car, or bus that came an inch too near had a demon, in potentia, behind the wheel; every shadow was a possible breeding ground for the evil. The feeble jokes and fractured fairy-tale quotes had helped, but only a little.
"God, I wish I had a gun," she told herself out loud. Not a joke. "God, I wish I were already home." She had less than twenty blocks to go, but the distance had never seemed longer.
She pedaled west on Fifteenth Street, quickly but cautiously. It was nice to escape the traffic for a while; no cars pursued or passed her. Up ahead, the light at the Fifth Avenue intersection was getting ready to change in her favor.
It did, and she wheeled across the avenue. The one car caught at the light politely refrained from mowing her down. At the southeast corner a small group of trendies stepped into the Peppermint Lounge. Other than that, there was no one to be seen. Lisa allowed herself one brief, deep sigh of relief as she reentered the Fifteenth Street shadows.
And that was, of course, when it happened.
The thing was squat and gray and roughly the size of a cocker spaniel. It raced out from under the parked car to her left and straight into her path before her hands could squeeze the brakes. There was the squeal of rubber and something else, a solid thud, a sudden weightlessness . . .
. . . and then she was bouncing off the macadam, the bike flipping and crashing behind her. She rolled, bracing herself against every impact, half expecting a car to zoom up on her now and finish the job.
None did. She thanked God for that, and that she knew how to land: she could easily have broken her neck.
Her bike wasn't quite so lucky.
Lisa came up cursing the shadows and whatever the hell she'd hit, then limped over to her poor old ugly machine. The rear wheel was still spinning; the front rim was dented, a good two inches of center. A thin smear of blood, shiny black under the streetlights, marked the point of impact. It matched the one on the pavement, which trailed off like an oily ribbon into the shadows on the far side.
"Good!" she yelled at the end of the bloody trail. "I hope I did more than bend your rim. God damn you!" Later on, she'd feel bad about wounding a poor dumb animal. Right now she just wished it had never been born. If the Humane Society doesn't like it, she thought, they can just pay to fix my fucking bike.
She gave the front tire a tentative spin. It made a halfhearted three-quarters revolution and locked dead-tight as the bend hit the forks. "Shit," she hissed, kicking it. Which made no difference. "You ain't goin' nowhere. If you think I'm gonna carry you home, you're crazy."
There was a No Parking sign at the curb, right next to the car that the thing had run out from under. "Thanks a lot, mac," she said, kicking the hubcap. It left a little dent that would have to do. Then she lugged the bike over to the sign, got her locks and chain in motion.
Maybe this is better, it occurred to her. I don't know why, but a cab ride sounds mighty appealing right now.
And if I lock you up real good, she told the bike, stringing chain through every available strut and angle, there's a thirty percent chance that you'll still be here in the morning.
These were all cheerful thoughts, and they were starting to work their magic.
Until she saw the legs—too close—behind her.
Lisa's reaction time had been pumped up mightily by her trip over the top; the added adrenaline turned her movements into a whirling blur of killing motion. She spun, blocked, and with a short, clipped keai! delivered a palm-up, straight-armed blow.
Squarely into the nose of one terrified Stanley Peckard.
She recognized him a fraction of a second too late: too late to do anything but take the lethal edge off the momentum. But she still heard his shrill scream, saw his wide marble eyes, felt the snapping of bone and cartilage.
She felt absolutely terrible.
"I'm sorry—" she began. He didn't seem to hear her. He just stared at her, eyes crawling with panic and pain. The cup of his hands overflowed with blood; she noticed that they were wearing black gloves.
Then he turned and ran away, stumbling over his own feet, smacking into the wall and rebounding. He stumbled off and around the corner, into the service alley behind the Peppermint Lounge. She could still hear him crying.
"Oh, Jesus," she moaned. She could just see his little brain hemorrhaging now. She thought she'd pulled the punch enough, but she couldn't be sure.
And if he dies, her mind droned sickly. And if he dies...
There was no choice. Not really.
She followed him into the alley.
There were demons in his head, and they'd always taken the best care of him.
But now something was drastically wrong.
For starters Stanley refused to believe that they really wanted him to kill her. Even though they kept going
(NOW)
and
(NOW)
he knew that there had to be some kind of mistake.
Because she was his friend, she was different, she was special, she was the only one who was nice to him at all, and so they had to understand that he wouldn't, he couldn't.
The second thing he couldn't believe was that they'd let her hurt him.
Until he realized that, in his moment of pain, the Voices had gone silent.
So he ran, heading for the triangle of shadow at the back of the alley, hoping to hide from both his friend and the Voices forever. Even through the pain, there was something sweet and wonderful about owning his own brain again. It was a feeling that he did not want to lose.
So when the
(WHAT ARE YOU DOING)
voices began to
(GET BACK THERE)
return, Stanley Peckard fought back. For the first time ever.
Stanley Peckard fought back hard.
But they had strength in numbers, and they were legion inside him: gnawing on his every nerve, poking more of the bleeding holes inside his brain. They had the numbers, and they were much more accustomed to controlling him than he was to controlling himself. They put the knife in his hand
(NOW!!!)
and he fought them. They tried to make him stand
(NOW!!!!!)
and he fought them. They made him cry out with the pain.
But he fought them.
Through it all, he fought them.
The service alley running between the Peppermint Lounge and the Chelsea Lane apartments was a well-lit, well-tended one: bright flood lamps serviced the rear court/ loading area, and a streetlight obliquely covered the entrance. Together they cut a neat swath of overlapping refracted light, with only a narrow wedge-shaped slice from the Peppermint's blind side left over. It was a perfect and pitch-black isosceles triangle, its B-side lightly touching the side wall of the Chelsea.
He was in there. She couldn't see him, but she could hear him. And what she heard was so miserable, so absolutely fucking pathetic that it made her flesh crawl.
"Oh, Jesus," she moaned again, picturing the scene in the emergency room when she brought him in to die. It forced a painful shudder through her body as she stepped into the darkness.
&
nbsp; She spotted him, finally, hunkered up against the wall. He had one hand on his face, the other tucked around his middle, while he rocked back and forth on his haunches and wailed.
"Stanley," she said softly, reaching out to touch his shoulder. He jerked away with surprising deliberation, screaming something that sounded like LEE ME 'LONE!
"Stanley. No," she persisted. Her eyes were burning, beginning to water. She couldn't help it, any more than she could stop her own body from shaking. "I'm gonna help you, okay? We're gonna go to the hospital now."
She got both hands firmly on his shoulders. He screeched, but didn't pull away. Very slowly she turned him around and started hoisting him to his feet.
"It gonna be alri—" she began.
Stanley came up.
And the knife went in.
There was no pain at first. Just a horribly clear sensation of penetration as the knife came up from out of nowhere and slid between her legs. It took a full second for her to realize what had happened, another to stare unbelievingly into Stanley's face.
And then, at last, his features registered: the stubble, the teeth, the aspirin-sized dimple.
But by then, it was far too late.
The knife pierced her on the inside of the left thigh, sliding in on a line with the uppermost part of her femur, serrating its way across the depression immediately below the fold of her groin. Lisa tried to pull away at the last second, her hands still clutching at Stanley's shoulders. She pushed off.
Her leg gave out.
And the two of them went down, Stanley falling fully on top of her. The force of the impact drove the knife in deeper, severing the femoral artery. Lisa's world went white with pain, came back red an instant later as time itself went rubbery and she dimly heard herself screaming, screaming as the first gush of blood spilled across her belly, filling the air with its hot, coppery tang.
All of her senses seemed to amplify, moment by moment. She felt his hot, stinking bulk lift up: he was straddling her, one knee on each side of the ruined leg, left arm extended fully, its fat little hand supporting him, his face mere inches from her own. She felt the blade pull wetly from her wound, saw it arcing up and wavering like a cobra preparing to strike.
And in that last precarious instant, without thinking, she moved . . .
He was off-balance and hesitating, and that was all it took. She pushed off, hitting a bridge with her thighs flexed and her shoulders planted, simultaneously pushing his left arm out and away. The pain in her leg was excruciating, the sensation of blood tracking up her torso even more so. Her ruined leg threatened to buckle, but she managed to bring her right knee in hard, ramming into the nerve ganglia in his left armpit with all the strength she could muster.
Stanley shrieked as the joint dislocated, the force of the blow knocking him sideways and down. Lisa rolled out from under him, reversing positions, straddling his prone form. She yanked his left arm out to its full reach and brought her left elbow down like a hammer once! twice!
Stanley shrieked again.
His arm was shattered. Her strength was spent. She used the last ounce of it to push off and away. Stanley stumbled to his feet and ran, shrieking and flailing, into the night.
She didn't know which way he went. She didn't care. She'd kill him later, if she . . .
If she . . .
All told, a grand total of forty-seven seconds had passed. It was the dispassionate voice of the Master Timekeeper in Lisa's head that ultimately got her up, quoting a litany of statistics on just how little time it took to succumb to shock and blood loss. She knew she didn't have much time to play with, and none to waste. And so, drawing on reservoirs of will she would never have believed possible, Lisa stood.
And, dragging her bloody left leg behind her, made it to the street.
Freddie Brown was, by his own admission, not the greatest guy in the world. He smoked, he drank, he cussed like a sailor, he bet on the horses and got into fights. "If I was any damn good at all," he told his wife at least once a week, "I wouldn't still be drivin' a goddam cab. I wouldn't be always lettin' you down."
But when he saw the young woman collapse at the corner in a pool of her own blood, he didn't hesitate for a second.
"What are you doing?" the man in the backseat howled as the cab squealed to a halt at the corner.
"I'm lettin' you out," Freddie said, slamming it into park. He was out the door and around the other side before his passenger had time to so much as fart.
The woman was gaunt and pasty white. Dark hollows surrounded her glazing eyes. When he hoisted her up, she screamed "SAINT VINCENT'S! HURRY!" and nailed him with a hollow gaze. The whole front of her body was covered with blood, from her toes to her chin. In the cold night air, it steamed.
Freddie heard the car door open behind him, felt the passenger come to his side. "Jesus Christ," the guy whispered; but he took her by one arm without needing to be asked.
They got her into the backseat in a matter of five seconds. Freddie ran back to his seat. The cab was in motion before the door even closed.
"Hang on, baby. Hang on," he droned, gunning it. He laid on the horn the whole way down Fourteenth Street, running the red light at sixty mph, almost getting broadsided as he flew across Sixth Avenue.
It was less than a mile to St. Vincent's Hospital. He got there in just under four minutes. It was the longest four minutes of his life.
And hers . . .
The whole way there, the Master Timekeeper kept ticking.
And the blood just kept on flowing.
Lisa hadn't been able to stanch it: no place for a tourniquet, no decent pressure point she could find. She hadn't been able to bring herself to look at the wound quite yet, but she could tell by the blood that it was worse than she dared admit. To admit the worst would be death. And she would not die. She would not die. She—
The cab screeched around Seventh Avenue South. The driver's voice was a soothing drone, but she couldn't be sure what he was saying. She was tired, and the world was getting fuzzy, and—
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! her mind screamed. DON'T FADE! DON'T FADE!
She fought for consciousness, forced her mind to concentrate. Stanley, Stan the Man, Stan Peckerhead what was his fucking last NAME??? She had to tell Billy. He had to know. He's the one, Billy. He's the one you want. He's the one who—
She reached into her pocket and grabbed her little notebook, her pen. Her arms felt so heavy, so—
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
It was hard to write, hard to see in the darkened jostling interior of the cab. But she did it. And she made the driver take it, made him promise to take it to Billy.
Billy . . .
The cabbie was saying the same shit over and over, like a mantra: "We almost there. Don' worry. You be all right . . ." It was kinda funny.
It reminded her of Gloria, somehow. Maybe the accent. Gloria used to talk about her street smarts and how to defend herself against attackers.
Gloria was good. Maybe not equipped to handle knife-wielding imbeciles and severed arteries, but—
Lisa laughed, a thin trickle of blood showing at the corner of her mouth. She coughed it back. The cabbie looked warily into the rearview mirror. St. Vincent's loomed up in front of them.
The driver practically drove the cab through the Emergency room. He was out of the car and into the double doors before the engine had even died. Lisa tried to smile in appreciation, but he was already gone, and her mouth didn't work at all.
Then he was back, dragging two attendants and a stretcher. Maybe she'd make it, after all. The Master Timekeeper was still ticking.
She tried to think of Mona, but her image refused to come clear. Gloria was hogging her mind's eye: Gloria, in the robes she wore when being, not only her friend, but her sensei.
"Four rules," Gloria had said, "that you've got to remember always. One: you've got to be ready for anything."
The door of the cab opened. Three sets of hands pulled her out and laid her
on the stretcher.
"Two: you've got to be willing to do whatever is required."
The double doors slammed open. She felt herself rolling along the corridor, felt many eyes upon her.
"Three: you've got to be able to pull it off."
Rolling, rolling. The lights, whipping past her. Too bright. Too bright. The little wheels, spinning.
Gloria's voice faded out. It didn't matter. Lisa remembered.
Good ol' Rule Number Four:
Sometimes, just sometimes . . .
You've got to be lucky.
PART FOUR
THE DOWNHILL SIDE
"An' some folks get bent all outta shape.
Warped out on hatred, lies and rape.
Look out! Here come da killer ape!
The ugliness twists them.
They're never the same . . ."
Billy Rowe
Twisted Toward Life
FORTY
WHAT IT TAKES
He met her on the sidewalk, out front of Emergency. Both of them were too numb to speak or express much of anything. Both of them had been crying. Neither of them were nearly done.
When it was time to go in, they did so silently and without touching.
It was all they could do to keep from dying themselves.
Farley Broome was a wiseass, and had been for many years. Working the morgue had honed his gift to a marrow-scraping sharpness. But he was not without tact, and he knew the difference between an official observer and a genuine mourner. When it came to pain, he knew enough to shut up.
When the young man and woman walked into the room, he did so with casual grace.
Broome had had intimate contact with a lot of dead people in his thirty-odd years of service, not the least of whom was his old partner. Rick Halpern had choked to death on an egg-salad-and-Bacos sandwich not three weeks earlier; the new kid, Louis, was a prettyboy with very little perspective at all. He still fought the gag reflex at the sight of shotgun wounds or major traffic fatalities. He still had a lot to learn.
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