The Cleanup

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  He did it, anyway.

  It should not have been a surprise. But it was. When he opened the front door of the building and the stink of evil just upped and vanished, Billy was stunned. He didn't know what to do.

  He hadn't counted on the fifteen billion distinctive scents that pervaded any given New York City street at any given moment. He hadn't anticipated the breeze. For some reason he'd been expecting a yellow brick road, and when it wasn't there—

  "God damn it!" He kicked a garbage can. His foot went through its side. "GOD DAMN IT TO HELL!" He yanked his foot away. Some indistinguishable rot had, in that short second, taken up residence on his boot. The stink of it bit quite plainly into his nostrils.

  But the stink of Stanley Peckard was gone.

  And there was nothing left to do but scream and rant and rave and kick some more garbage cans, all of which he did. His mind started thinking some very crazy things: What if I just burn every apartment in Manhattan, block by block and street by street, until I hear him scream? for example . . . and it was everything he could do just to keep from acting them out.

  Until a voice in his head said, softly and distinctly, Go home.

  Which didn't make any sense at all. No, it didn't. If he wanted to catch ol' Stan the Man, it made more sense to just hang around here with the rats and the acrobatic furniture. Didn't it? He felt quite sure. He

  (shut up just do it go home shut up)

  blinked. There was a voice in his head, and he didn't recognize it. He stared down Thirteenth Street toward First Avenue, and it was very strange, because a thick fog seemed to have settled where no fog had been before. He shook his head, and

  (go home)

  the voice was louder, it annoyed him, it seemed to prickle at the base of his skull. Billy shook his head, as if to clear it. The surrounding fog seemed to lift for a second. "Fuck this," he hissed, and

  (!!!!!!)

  the pain was a white-hot searing at the base of his skull, branding irons in the shape of needles, jabbing inward and twisting as they dug smoldering holes that

  (go home)

  went away suddenly as he opened his eyes and stared into the billowing fog. He didn't understand what was happening. That didn't seem to matter. His legs were moving, a shambling stride that dragged him bodily toward First Avenue and the Saturday-night bustle of happening New York.

  A swarm of yellow cabs was buzzing up First. Billy felt his arm reach out and start to wave. A pair of hookers in hot pants were flouncing up the sidewalk; he faintly felt one of them brush against him, heard the sixth-grade sultry voices ask if he wanted a date wanted a date wanted a—

  A cab screeched to a halt at the curb in front of him. He felt his hand open the back door, felt himself climb inside. He heard a voice outside his head say Hey buddy howya doin' whereya goin'.

  He heard himself say that he was going to Thirteen Stanton Street, saw the man in the front seat write it down.

  Jeezuz did you see those cunts I don't believe the shit they pull I kid you not said the voice from outside of his head. Undecipherable scenery whipped past the window. The cab seemed full of smoke. Lemme tell ya sumpin' buddy I hate them cunts I see 'em every day they drive me fuckin' bananas.

  Billy tried to get a grip on himself. It didn't work very well. The tingling at the base of his skull was still there. It made him feel like a puppet with a papier-mâché head, twitching at the end of strings that were impossible to see.

  Every day I'm givin' rides to those fuckin' cunts an' I don't get a fuckin' thing you know why that is lemme tell ya, the voice continued. Boss has a deal with the fuckin' pimp he gets his blow jobs for free we get to drive 'em around for free do we see anything a tip a blow job not on your life mister sometimes they drag their johns right into the backseat right where you're sittin' an' do 'em up with all this fuckin' and suckin' and they charge fifty a hunnert dollars but do I ever see any of it do I ever even get a fuckin' piece of tail for my trouble pal you better believe I don't it drives me crazy fuckin' cunts.

  Billy felt himself start to get angry. The cab, like the voice, went on and on and on.

  Slowly . . . very slowly . . . the fog began to lift.

  Know what I'd like to do one day, buddy? the voice went on. I'd like to grab one of them bitches.

  Yes, clearer. The world was getting clearer. Billy began to make out the details of his strange new world. The full ashtray in the armrest to his right. The plastic barrier between the front and back seats, halfway open. The meter, reading $1.80 plus the fifty cents it added for driving at night. The hack license beside it, mounted on the dashboard: a black-and-white photograph of an ugly pug-faced man next to the words WEINSTEIN, EDWARD in big block letters.

  Eddie, muh man, you're an ugly bastard, he heard himself think in his very own voice. It cheered him up. The tingling was still there, but it had receded into a kind of tactile background noise.

  "Beat the shit out of her, an' make her do what I want for a couple hours of so. Teach 'er who the hell is boss. Know what I mean?" the cabbie persisted.

  The world outside the window was visible now, too. He was on Second Avenue, with Fifth Street whizzing past. He saw the Hunan restaurant, which always smelled like insecticide, about to whiz by on his right; and he realized that if he heard one more word out of the mouth of Weinstein, Edward, there was a very good chance that something nasty might happen.

  "This is fine," Billy said. "Pull it over here."

  "What?" The cabbie plied his brakes with sudden, jerking finesse. "I thought you said—"

  "Never mind what I said. This is fine. This is great."

  "Whatever you say, buddy. Your money, not mine." Eddie sounded less than thrilled, but he pulled over to the curb anyway and flipped of the meter.

  "Here's your fare," Billy said.

  The cabbie let out a sudden, gurgling yelp. It may have had something to do with the fact that his tongue was disintegrating.

  "And here's your tip."

  The cabbie clutched his groin and tried to scream. No go. A thin plume of smoke wafted out of his mouth. It was matched by another cloud, wafting out of his open zipper.

  "And now you won't have to look at 'em, either."

  The cabbie's fingers were like meathooks in a long-abandoned slaughterhouse, hanging in the air for no good reason at all. Perhaps it was to indicate his anguish.

  Perhaps it was because his eyeballs were frying right out of his head.

  Billy left Weinstein, Edward and his idling cab to the caprices of fate and the dregs of Second Avenue. Not even the prickling at the base of his skull could bother him now. He was happy again. He knew just what to do.

  He was going home.

  And he didn't have very far to walk at all.

  FIFTY-THREE

  THE TRUTH

  The kitchen was dark when Larry opened the door. He stood well back in the shadows, a scarecrow silhouette. "You're not ready for this," he said. He didn't sound like he was kidding.

  "I don't care," Mona countered, stepping into the apartment. Her first step in landed on a bloody shard of broken glass. It crunched under her foot. So what.

  "No, Mona. You really don't want to see this." Larry, in fact, was in deadly earnest.

  She was ready for him to try and hold up an arm to stop her. She was ready to swat it away. He didn't. Apparently Larry didn't even have the wherewithal to do that. Which was fine.

  She had a more important battle to fight.

  It had been five months since she'd last set foot in this apartment. It had happened only once, and that once had been enough. The destruction barely surprised her—would barely have surprised her even in happier times—if the horror were not raging all around her like tracer rounds in a firefight. Not even the stink, like rotten-egg farts in a closet, could get between her and what she had to do.

  "Shut the door, Larry," she said. "Come on."

  Reluctantly, Larry obliged. For the first time she noticed how badly he was shaking: the door shimm
ied in her hands like a Times Square stripper in the instant before he let it go. Whatever he had seen—whatever it was that he was about to share with her—it had made a rubbery strawberry jam of his spine.

  I don't care, she reiterated, this time silently. I need to know. I've come this far.

  "Come on," she repeated, turning impatiently toward him.

  And that was when he turned on the light.

  "Oh, my God." The words came out slowly, with a lot of space between. "My God, Larry. What happened to you?"

  "Oh, nothing," Larry said, following up with a nervous giggle. "Your boyfriend looked at me funny, that's all." He took a step toward her, and the first lump of fear started climbing up her throat.

  Larry's skin was lobster red. There was no other way to describe it. He looked like he'd pulled a Rip Van Winkle in the middle of the Mohave Desert. There were cracks in his skin, oozing ever-so-slightly. It was painful to look at; she could imagine what it felt like to wear.

  "Come on," Larry said, imitating her tone. "We've got all fucking night, right? You wanna see it? Let's see it." Larry came closer, and she instinctively recoiled. He came closer still, and she realized that at least part of the stink was coming from him. It was acrid and pungent and everything she'd never wanted to smell before. It made the lump in her throat identify itself as bile. It made her ill.

  "Let's go," Larry said, taking hold of her arm. He sneered, and his teeth shone yellow against the baked skin. Hostility had taken over where the fear left off in his eyes. She could see it. She could feel it.

  That was when she yanked away.

  "HEY!" she yelled, baring her own perfect white teeth. Larry looked startled and alarmed. Pshaw. "Keep your goddam hands to yourself, Larry! I swear to God, I'll break 'em!"

  Larry just stared at her, eyes wide and unblinking.

  "Understand?"

  "I'm s-sorry," he said. Blinking now. Blinking back tears. "It's just that—"

  "I know," she cut in, her voice softening now. "I'm sorry, too. Come on."

  Then they moved, together, toward the darkness on the other side of Billy's bedroom door.

  Larry had already seen it, so he knew how bad it was. He had tried to warn her. She'd fought him down.

  Now it was time to pay the piper.

  The stuff on the file cards was bad enough. It said everything that needed to be said and more about what Billy was up to and what he had become. Coupled with the newspaper clippings, the data laid out in his family tree of lunacy painted an awfully damn clear picture.

  Billy was the vigilante.

  The vigilante was a loon.

  But the photos he'd framed his ravings with were the ugliest things of all. They made his worst tirades seem almost sensible by comparison, showed even his most cogent ramblings to be the blasphemy that they were. He recognized the two men in the underexposed photographs, though he'd never seen the big one so cheesy white or the little one in so many pieces. He knew them for what they'd done to the apartment.

  He didn't know what they had done to Mona.

  But all the wind seemed to go out of her when she looked at them. It was like watching a balloon deflate. The supertough woman who had plowed her way past him had decayed into a solid wad of gibbering wet-faced pain.

  No. Not quite so easy. She huffed herself back up to her regular height; and though her words wheezed out like an agonizing gas attack, they did so with heavyweight intensity.

  "So this is it, huh?" she said. "So this is what became of my man." She let out a little laugh, then: hideous, bitter as a mouthful of sulfur. "Oh, baby. I suppose I ought to offer you a medal—"

  "Yeah. Maybe you should," said the voice from behind them.

  Mona turned.

  Larry turned.

  Billy stood in the doorway.

  "I think that I deserve some kind of medal," he continued. His eyes were like taillights: crimson flicker and glow. "I wasted them, Mona. I did it for you."

  Billy moved toward Mona. Mona backed away. Without even thinking, Larry stepped between them. Thought came a moment later, saying what am I DOING?

  But by then it was too late. He had Billy's undivided attention.

  "And you!" Billy enthused. He had a shark's winning smile. "I thought you were smarter than this, man! I thought that you knew how to read!"

  "Billy, stop," Larry said. It was all he could think of.

  "Stop what?" Billy asked. His smile beamed out and touched nothing, because it wasn't real. "Stop you from coming in here? I already tried that. Stop her from coming in here? I already tried that, too. It seems like nobody wants to listen to what I have to say anymore. Breaks my heart. Honest ta God, it does."

  "Bullshit," Mona said.

  "Oh!" Billy flapped his hands limp-wristedly, made a grand display of his alarum. "Oh! Oh! Oh! And I suppose you know exactly how I feel!"

  "I don't think you feel a fucking thing," Mona growled.

  "Otherwise you wouldn't be treating us this way."

  Billy paused for a moment of what looked like reassessment. Larry had no idea what he was going to do, but he leapt at the opportunity to do it.

  "Billy," he said. "Come on. We're your friends. We don't want to hassle with you. We want to work things out—"

  "SHUT UP!" The sheer force of it knocked him back three feet. The flat, soulless red gleam of those eyes put him back beside Mona, very close to the back of the room. "I already told you what I think of you, man! If I accidentally stepped on you, I'd scrape my boot off at the nearest curb! You're a turd, man! You're a turd! The line between you and your bullshit has ceased to exist!"

  There was Power in the room now. Incredible, killing Power. Larry knew that there was nothing in his repertoire that could even begin to combat it. He felt absolutely powerless. He felt his own death, screaming toward him like a train.

  "And how 'bout you?" Mona inquired suddenly. Larry whipped around to look at her. Her features were set. She was a rock. "How about you and your bullshit, Billy? Writing your pretty notes, doing your dirty deeds. How clean are you, my love, to be throwing these stones?"

  "Why don't you shut up?"

  The tingling in the back of his head had been a warm and pleasant thing, like a wicked cocaine buzz that just went on and on and on. Now it was starting to ache. Billy didn't like that.

  But Mona's words had punched a hole in him, and that was a fact. He could feel the righteousness leaking out of him like sand from a shattered hourglass. It was a horrible feeling, because it stripped him of his armor; and without it, he felt naked and puny and oh so ashamed

  (NO!)

  and he hated to feel that way, but it was true, it was true. His head was really aching now. He had never felt quite so miserable in his life. Mona was still staring at him with those cold dark eyes, still waiting for an answer. He felt himself wanting to drop to his knees and cry Oh baby, A baby, I'm so sorry

  (!!!!!)

  and the million hot needles ground into his brain, dropping him to his knees after all, quite sure that he was screaming

  (now)

  and then the pain was gone, and a little voice in his head said, I could kill her, and it sounded like a perfectly reasonable suggestion.

  His head felt nice again.

  He stood.

  He smiled.

  "Mona," he said. Very soft. All strychnine and honey. "Mona, sweets, let me ask you something. What are you doing here? Why didn't you believe me when I told you that you didn't want to know?"

  Mona's voice, when she answered, was soft but firm. Like her tits, he mused. Oh, yes. Like her pretty pretty titties.

  "Because I love you . . ." she began.

  Billy laughed uproariously. "Oh, you do?" he shrieked, clapping his hands.

  ". . .and because I needed to know what was going on," she continued, slightly louder. She was blushing, her lovely dark skin darkening further as her hot blood welled up beneath the surface. All that passionate lovetalk, no doubt. Billy half wondered if he was blush
ing, too. He doubted it.

  On the other hand, it occurred to him, if Larry was blushing, nobody'd be able to tell. It struck him as pretty funny.

  "By the way, Lar'," he interrupted. "Nice tan."

  "God damn it, Billy!" Mona roared. "Will you STOP AND LISTEN TO ME?"

  "Ummm . . . no," he said, turning back to her. "I don't think so, darlin'. I'm just not in the mood. I don't want to hear about how much you love me, or how scared you were for me, or how your delightfully heaving bosom doth beat with ardor true.

  "No. But I'll tell you what I would like to do. He smiled and slid his tongue along his top row of teeth. I'd like to just . . . look at you for a moment."

  Mona looked properly horrified. Billy's smile increased to match it. God, she was gorgeous! Even now, with her eyes widening and her lips peeling back in revulsion and terror, she was one of the hottest little numbers ever to stroll down the pike. That dancer's body. The dancer's grace with which she commanded it. And that face.

  All the aching had moved from his head to his hard-on. That was good. The mellow tingling at the base of his skull told him so. He remembered all the times that they had made love together

  (no, fucked, that's all it was, only fucking)

  and he realized that he had to be crazy to give up a hot little twat like that. Uh-uh. No way. Ridiculous, he told himself.

  Thank God it wasn't too late.

  "Oh, Mona," he said, moving closer as she backed away. "Oh, Mona Mona Mona. You love it when I say your name, don't you? Of course you do. It's because you love me so very much.

  "And you know how I can tell that you love me?" he continued. "I can tell by the way that you run off and fuck Dave every time that I piss you off. I can tell by the way that you respect my every wish. Oh, yeah. You love me, baby. You've said so yourself."

  Mona had backed up to the point where she couldn't back up anymore: flush against the open window that led to the fire escape, that same ol' fire escape that had given him the ringside seat for the slaughter of Jennifer Mason. Larry was beside her, also flush against the wall. But Larry didn't matter. If Larry was very lucky he would get to watch.