I know what I’m about to do and I already hate myself for conceiving of it. But there’s no other way. I place my half-gloved hands on either side of the fridge and with two quick moves tip the thing onto one side and then lurch it forward at a diagonal away from the wall. About fifty shadows skitter out around my feet and I catch my breath, dancing backwards, point the can down and push hard on the trigger button. They scramble away in a frenzy and I’m left panting, sweating, and cursing as quietly as I can. I still myself, will my terror back into the iron box I keep it tucked away in. Breathe. There’s something behind the fridge. Something besides hairy ungodly insects I mean. It’s a small door, wood-carved and old-fashioned, but just a brass hole where the knob’s supposed to be.
Fuckers.
I want to hold my breath but I know that’ll only make things worse when something awful happens, and I’m positive something awful is about to happen. So I breathe, reluctantly, deeply, as I reach my finger into the hole. The door swings open with a creak, reveals more darkness. And I’m actually relieved I finally have real cause to unholster this glock and point it into the emptiness as I step-by-step it down some old stairs.
* * *
The wall doesn’t crawl to life when I swat it with my hand. It’s solid and cool, not even the bumpy decay I was expecting in my less wild nightmares. I flick something and a fluorescent glow blinks to life from the ceiling. It reveals a recently remodeled basement, shiny white walls and gray carpets, even that fresh paint smell. A couple of boxes are stacked in one of the corners and the floor is covered with children’s toys. There are stuffed animals, plastic trains and action figures. It makes me nauseous, so I try to keep my eyes away from the toys as I work the perimeter of the room, checking the wall for irregularities. There are none: Everything is solid sounding, support beams right where they should be, paint even. I shove the boxes over to the side and there behind them is another small doorway. This one is just big enough to fit through if I duck, and it has a doorknob.
I realize I’m sweating. And my breathing’s not quite right. None of which is usual for me. I won’t go into details, but The Bad Years put me in the face of every imaginable form of death, my own and others’, and I’m one of the only ones who made it out of that time alive. Charo’s another, but even he had it relatively easy compared to what I got mixed up in. They say Death walks just a few feet to the left of every man. Fuck that. Me and Death are kissing cousins. But right here right now? I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. Besides the obvious things. I guess I’m still not right. Maybe I’ll never be. Or maybe it’s the hairy monsters, whose absence in the basement is somehow even more unnerving to me than their abundance in the kitchen. Or maybe it’s those toys, which have no business being in a place like this. Whatever this is.
Or maybe it’s the muffled grunt that comes dancing out of the darkness in front of me. I almost yell, “Angie?” but then I remember Angie’s gone, she’s gone. Dead. It’s Shelly I’m trying to find. Shelly. And maybe that was her. It could’ve been. There was a wetness to it, like whoever grunted was choking on her own saliva. Or blood. Enough. I shut down my imagination and duck into the darkness.
* * *
I’m in a tunnel. I believe this to be true because of the way the tiny shuffles of my feet echo around me. And there’s water streaming down the middle and an ancient, moldy smell. And I realize something, something I’ve been wondering about since the moment Charo reminded me how close we were to the house we tore up all those months ago: They are connected, the two sites. Some underground tunnel links one to the other and who knows how many others? And I’m in the dank belly of that tunnel, trying not to get my feet wet or make too much noise and gliding along towards those occasional muffled grunts. Or sobs. Or moans. Each one is a little different. I’m not even sure they’re all from the same person.
I step forward and almost yell because my foot doesn’t find the floor, it just goes down into a thick wet muck. I come down hard on the other knee, soaking that pant leg too, but stop myself from crashing all the way in, pull my feet back. When I catch my breath and make sure nothing’s crawling on me, I probe around the edges of the hole with my steel-tipped toepoint. It’s not so large, I can easily hop across. The question is, how many more are there? And how deep do they go? I hadn’t wanted to use my flashlight because there’s really no better way to warn someone you’re coming than shining a light down a dark tunnel, but at this point I’m not even sure if it matters. I didn’t scream but I’ve definitely caused some ruckus on the way.
* * *
Something else I’ve learned: I take power from my dapper. Perhaps I have some well-dressed angels watching over me, whoever they are, but when I have my slick on full charge I am unstoppable in combat. It’s just how things work for me. And now my pants are definitely ruined, I’ve probably got some awful fungus living in my sock and who knows what else?
Up ahead there’s a dim light; it’s pouring out of some larger room, delineating the edge of the tunnel. I’m so transfixed by it I step forward again and slip into a world of shit, all the way to my waist in ick. I slosh forward. Things are rubbing against my legs and I don’t have to reach down to know they’re body parts. But I do. I do and I pull out an arm. It’s slender, feminine and green with decay and it’s not the one I want but now I know something; I reach again into the muck and retrieve another arm, discard it and then another and another. And then I stop, because the ring I gave Angie is staring back at me from the rotten, gray-green finger. It is connected to a hand, an arm. It’s not Angie’s—not the way I remember her. Peels of dead skin hang off the water-bloated forearm and the whole thing is tinged with that sickly rot green. I don’t want to see the face. I can’t see the face. I have to see the face. I’m about to pull her all the way out when a scream bleats out up ahead. Then the walls around me come to life.
It’s dark so I can barely make it out, but everything is moving. It’s not just the walls. The black water froths with tiny ripples, little shiny pale backs dip and wrestle across the surface. I catch the scream in my own mouth, bury it back down. Holding tight to Angie’s dead arm, I raise my eyes towards the edge of the tunnel. All the movement is directed towards the light. Shelly—it is her, there’s no doubt—is screaming like her skin is being flayed off. In between screams she whimpers, sobs, and pleads. It’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard.
I can’t lose Angie again. Not even her rotten corpse. I can’t. The burden of it is holding me up but there’s nothing else to be done. I leave her hand sticking out of the water at the edge of the tunnel.
The tunnel opens into a dim cavern. In the center, a cement platform rises out of the black water. Shelly’s hanging upside-down over the platform, suspended by ropes that reach into the darkness. There’s a pale man in a long black robe standing behind her, and beside him is a short, lopsided man with yellowish skin and a sweat-soaked button shirt. He looks familiar somehow; maybe I knew him during The Bad Years, although it’s hard to imagine forgetting a face as collapsed on itself and anguished as that one. Then again, there’s a lot of things I’ve erased from that time.
I have one glock out and leveled steadily at the air around Shelly. She’s still in her clothes, but they’re all hanging at weird angles and she’s trembling, gasping, screaming. She’s between me and the two men. I can’t make out what they’re doing to her but it looks like both have their pants on, so that’s something. All I need is for one of them to move just far enough away for me to get a clear shot. The water around me is still frothing with its millions of swarming vagrants; they’re paddling frantic billions of legs, propelling their shelled monstrosity selves towards the platform. They don’t even seem to notice or care about me, and that’s just fine because it gives me the mental space to keep my aim steady.
Just when I think I’m going to have to change my position and risk blowing my hiding spot, the tall, robed one steps to the side. Before I fire I make out his face—a middle-aged man,
white, with light-brown eyebrows and a tensely furrowed brow. His eyes squint with intense concentration, his mouth opens and closes in what I can only imagine to be some demonic prayer. He’s alongside Shelly now, reaching up to her face with a long, ugly hand—too long, I think, just before I squeeze the trigger and blow a nice hole in it. My second shot tears a gash across his face. That should be the kill shot but he doesn’t fall, just turns his broken head towards me, his mouth open in shock.
The little sweaty one roars, a terrible high-pitched sound that I wish I’d never heard, and then vaults across the water into the darkness of the far side of the room. He moves fluidly; he’s somehow short and gangly at the same time, and his head is so big and boxy it looks like it should throw him off balance. But this one’s the least of my concerns right now, considering the guy whose face I just shot off is still standing there staring at me and Shelly is screaming again and the army of insects has begun swarming up the platform towards her.
This is the part where I don’t panic. It’d be easy to. It’s what my body aches to do. But I don’t. I unholster the second glock, train one at the head and the other right at the heart. Before I can squeeze the triggers though, the slippery fuck ducks down. At first I thought he was finally collapsing but no, instead he slides into the water and wades quickly towards me.
This is the part where I panic. A little. I don’t know how many shots I squeeze off, only that I’m firing and firing and the air is exploding around me, the cruel bursts of gunfire echoing up the dark walls of the cavern, and I don’t stop shooting until the clicks that mean I’m out of bullets.
For a second he just stands there. Angry holes pockmark his face, his hands, those long robes. Little curls of smoke plume out of each one and I can only imagine what the blowout from the exit wounds must be like on the other side. Then I see the skin on his neck shudder; it’s moving. It’s alive. It’s one of those evil fucking insects, making its skittish, evil way up his chin across his startled face. Another one detaches itself from his flesh and then another and I finally understand: They are his flesh. They pour across his face, burst from this sleeves. What’s left is a trembling skull, tattered skin barely hanging on, two wide-open eyes. The robes he was wearing cave in on themselves and sink into the water as a thousand little shiny monsters swarm out of the murk where the man was just standing.
I’m frozen. Nothing in the world is alive except the billions of crawling fuckmonsters and the memory of Angie, and Angie’s dead, she’s definitely dead now, and that thought alone, her monstrous corpse, her empty eyes, that is what finally breaks me from this nightmare of stillness. Shelly is still dangling and whimpering. I move towards her at first without thinking, automatic pilot, through the scattering of life, careful not to get caught up in the thing’s robes. Something moves in the darkness beyond the platform and I snap to attention. My glock is reloaded and pointed at the nothingness, little splotches dance across my sightline. I see nothing.
“Please,” Shelly moans. “Please.” I move closer to her but I keep my eyes on the emptiness and my gun ready. And then I finally turn to her, because something keeps calling my attention, something just out the corner of my eye. It’s a splotch on her leg. She’s filthy and her light-brown skin shines with sweat but there’s something else. I heave onto the platform, finally out of that filth, and she looks up at me. Black rivers of eyeliner and sweat swivel down her cheeks, her lipstick is smudged straight across her face, her dress hangs loosely from her shoulders. But most important of all, that dark smudge on her calf: It’s red. Dark red. A bullet hole. Shelly’s been shot, I realize as I fuss with the ropes around her wrists. I shot her.
* * *
We’re at the tunnel edge when I hesitate. You can judge me if you want, but if you haven’t felt a girl like Angie move beneath you, look at you the way she looked at me, and then lost her forever, you just don’t know. I hesitate because I can’t have both, but I can’t stomach the thought of leaving Angie’s sad corpse behind. Not now. Not when I just found her.
Could this love be greater even than my will to live? I think if I hadn’t shot Shelly I’d really be in a fix. I’d probably try to bring them both and then we’d be caught for sure. Shelly lets out a series of gasps. I don’t think the wound is too bad—looks like it went straight through without clipping any major arteries, but still: It’s there. I look at the spot where the top of Angie’s green-brown hand breaks the surface and then I shoulder Shelly and we hobble through the tunnel and carefully, painfully up the stairs.
It’s behind me. That gangly motherfucker. I can hear it scrabbling around, limping with that horrible grace through the tunnel towards us. Shelly screams, a horrible gurgly sound, and we break into a pathetic, ungainly run. We’re out of the kitchen and into the front foyer when I hear the wooden door bust open and smack against the wall. It’s panting and sniveling and I would turn back and take a shot but we’re already at the front of the house. Someone’s standing there in the darkness of the porch, a short, stalky figure. I raise my gun, bracing myself against the wall.
“Reza?” Charo. My God, it’s Charo.
“Charo!” I gasp and drag Shelly with me out into the fresh night air. Charo raises a shotgun as we pass. He points it into the hallway. His face, I catch a glimpse of it before I hurtle down the stairs, it’s calm, not tensed or sweaty or nothing; his eyes so peaceful, almost sleepy. I know that face. It means he’s about to kill.
* * *
The last time I cried was in the fourth grade and it was the first time I’d been shot. And the first time I ever shot anybody. That was it. Angie used to cry when she came hard enough, great heaving sobs as her pelvis rocked into my face and my hands worked her nipples. It would move me, believe me it did, but never in a way you could see. She could see it, knew how to decipher those small shudders along my well-defined cheekbones, the way I’d look away, the patterns of my breath. But no one else. No one else could ever know.
Now, running full bodied and barely breathing out of this house, I still don’t cry. I almost do though. It’s the closest I’ve come in all these years, the tears sneaking around the edges of my eyes, waiting. The truth is, I’m too afraid to cry. Too in it. I hurl forward and it’s like Shelly is barely there, might as well be floating above me for all I notice, but we’re both out and breathing and panting and she’s throwing up, bleeding still, and I’m not thinking about Angie’s broken abused body being back in there all alone with the monsters I’m not I’m not I’m not but I am.
Miguel is standing there in front of his Crown Vic. He’s got one of those emergency gray rescue blankets opened up and I’ve never been so happy to see him in my life. I hand Shelly off to him and he makes a little Shelly burrito with that blanket around her and lifts her easily into the cab. Then he looks at me. I’m soaking wet and panting, put my hands on my knees and lean forward to catch my breath, but otherwise I’m okay. I wave him off.
“The fuck happened?” Charo wants to know. No boom came from the doorway; the thing must’ve held back. Surely it’s watching us, lurking.
“Angie” is all I can say. “Angie.”
It’s all I need to say. Charo nods his chin towards where Shelly is writhing in the backseat. “¿Y esa?”
“Flesh wound,” I say. “But I don’t know what else happened before I got there. They were doing something when I showed up.”
“How many?”
“At least two. A … thing … man, I guess. And something else. Something cockroachy in a robe. I got it though. But there’s more, I know there’s more. But Charo…”
He looks at me. His expression’s still that muted emptiness that means someone’s about to die, but I know he’s listening. “I have to get her. I have to go back in.”
Miguel knows better than to say anything, but I see him start forward with horror. Charo just nods towards the door. “She’s…?”
“She’s dead, yeah.” First time I’ve said it. First time it’s felt true. It only makes t
he need to bring that body back stronger. I won’t take a full breath until it’s done. “I can’t leave her.”
Charo studies me for a fraction of a second. “Miguel,” he says, still staring at me. “Take Shelly to Dr. Tijou. Tell her what happened.”
“What the fuck did happen?”
“Tell her what you know.”
Miguel shakes his head, walks around to the driver’s side. He gives me one last doubtful look, mutters, “Be careful,” and then hops in and speeds off.
“Your trunk is full?” Charo says.
“Always.”
The street is empty. It’s late, a quiet night. We gear up quickly: more ammo clips, more bug spray, some shock grenades. We move fast up the porch and into the house. Our motions are aligned: a singular two-headed four-armed angel of death, a perfect killing machine after decades of staying alive side by side. The place is empty again: No movement, no shadows spring to life. That smell lingers though, it’s a decaying type of stench. It’s everywhere.
Down the stairs and through the freaky clean playroom, into the tunnel. Nothing comes. No bugs, no gangly man. Nada.
“Here.” The first word I’ve spoken in what seems like a long, long time; it’s just a hoarse whisper. I wade back into the dark waters, glock leveled at the blackness around me. The light at the far end is out, so I have to feel my way along. Behind me, Charo makes barely a sound as he enters the water, the slightest intake of breath and then a tiny splash as the waves circle outward from him.
I have one hand stretched out ahead of me, just over the surface of the water. I feel those body parts rub against my legs as I move forward. I should be near the edge by now but there’s no Angie. A little desperation creeps into my grasping, a whisper of nervousness. She’s not here. I make a little splish noise as my hand pats the water. She’s not here. I reach down, holding my breath, swipe from side to side. Nothing.
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