The Devil's Alphabet

by Daryl Gregory

  Pax said, “Doreen. You know this can’t work.”

  “Look who’s awake,” Doreen said. She braked, then started turning the van around. “You don’t know how well we’ve planned this, Paxton. This is just step two in our ten-step plan.”

  Pax pushed himself to a sitting position. “But this is kidnapping. You’re going to have cops all over you. FBI, even. And you’re not exactly going to be able to blend in with the population.”

  “Who’s going to call the cops? Rhonda?” Doreen leaned to look in her side-view mirror and backed the van up to the Home’s front door. “Uh-uh. Drug dealers can’t call the cops. That’s the beauty of stealing from a criminal.”

  “You’re not serious,” Pax said. “The only beauty is that instead of calling the cops they just kill you.”

  “Let ’er try,” Doreen said.

  Jesus Christ, Pax thought. They thought they were Bonnie and Clyde, but hadn’t bothered to watch the end of the movie.

  Doreen studied the side-view mirrors, her sausage fingers drumming the steering wheel. Pax turned sideways, which put him directly behind the driver’s seat and a foot closer to the Wal-Mart bag holding the box of plastic utensils. Fifty spoons, forks, and knives.

  Doreen must have noticed something in the mirrors. She leaned out the window and called, “What?”

  Clete shouted something Pax couldn’t catch. Doreen opened her door and hopped out.

  Pax scooted closer to the bag and grabbed the box of utensils. It was glued shut. He tore at the lip of the lid, but the duct tape around his wrists restricted his leverage. Outside the van, Doreen and Clete argued about something.

  Pax tucked the box under his knee and pulled back on the lid with both hands. The cardboard ripped open and utensils spilled onto the floor. He grabbed at a plastic knife—and then the rear doors unlocked. He tipped a Wal-Mart bag on top of the mess, then twisted around as the door swung open.

  “Come out of there,” Doreen said. Behind her Clete was already going back into the building.

  “What’s going on?” Pax asked.

  “Can’t leave you out here alone,” she said. She grabbed him by the front of his shirt and dragged him toward her with ease. “We need to put you to work.” She set him on his feet and gave him a little push that sent him hopping toward the building.

  Rhonda, Everett, and Barron sat in chairs in the atrium. Only Barron looked upset: face beet red, patches of sweat darkening his brown uniform. Travis had duct taped the guard’s arms to the chair and he’d started working on his legs.

  “Morning, Paxton,” Rhonda said.

  “Morning,” Pax said. He stood there with his bound wrists and ankles, feeling like a bowling pin. Everett, calm as ever, nodded at him.

  Clete had acquired a second pistol—from Everett?—and waved both of them in the captives’ direction. “This is taking too long,” he said.

  “We should have used tie wrap,” Doreen said. “I said to buy tie wrap.”

  “I told you, they didn’t have—never mind. Doreen, you go get the old man. He’s in the first room on the right.”

  “Me? But he’s huge. Have Travis do it.”

  “Travis is going to take Everett down to unlock the coolers.”

  “And what are you going to be doing?” Doreen asked.

  “I’m going to be emptying the safe! You know that’s part of the plan.”

  Rhonda said, “You have a plan?”

  “A ten-point plan,” Pax said.

  “Everybody shut up!” Clete shouted. “Paxton, start wrapping Rhonda. Doreen, please go find Harlan? There’s a wheelchair back there somewhere.”

  Pax lifted his wrists. “I’m kind of tied up here.”

  Travis got to his feet and slapped the big silver roll of duct tape into Paxton’s hands. “Work it out.” Then Travis withdrew his own pistol from his waistband and nodded at Everett. “Let’s go downstairs,” he said.

  Everett looked at Rhonda. Rhonda said, “The key to the coolers is in the safe.”

  Clete stared at her. “You’re lying.”

  Rhonda rolled her eyes. “Goodness gracious, Clete, where would you keep the keys?”

  “Okay, fine,” Clete said. “We were going to open the safe anyway.” He pointed a gun at Rhonda. “It’s payday.”

  “You said that when you came in,” Rhonda said.

  Pax started to mention how Clete had been practicing in the van, then thought better of it.

  Doreen shook her head and walked toward the double doors that divided the atrium from the patient rooms. Her jeans rode low on her hips, exposing a pale freckled back and an angel wing tattoo over the crack of her ass. Clete herded Everett and Rhonda toward Rhonda’s office, and Paxton followed, taking tiny penguin steps. He stumbled and Travis said, “Hold on a second.” He took a pen knife from his pocket and sliced between Paxton’s ankles. Pax worked his legs and the rest of the tape peeled apart.

  “Thanks,” Paxton said.

  “Just move,” Travis said. The boy was frowning deeply, as if this little adventure wasn’t turning out to be as fun as he’d expected. Or maybe, Pax thought, he was figuring out that Clete and Doreen weren’t the criminal masterminds he thought they were.

  Inside the office, Everett leaned against one wall, arms crossed in front of him. Rhonda was stooped in front of the safe, working the dial. “So Clete, what was this plan of yours? I mean the other nine steps.”

  “Just open it,” Clete said.

  “You’re going to, what? Drive to a motel somewhere, feed Harlan fast food and squeeze out vintage?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then what?”

  Clete looked at Travis, his grin saying, Can you believe how stupid she is? “Uh, then we sell the stuff and get rich?” He laughed.

  Rhonda pressed down on the safe’s handle and pulled the door open.

  “Don’t you pull a gun out of there,” Clete said. The pistol in his left hand was pointed at her temple.

  Rhonda shook her head in annoyance. “Here,” she said, and tossed him a key ring. Both Clete’s hands were occupied, and the keys bounced off his stomach and hit the floor.

  Travis stooped to pick them up. “Okay,” he said to Everett. He didn’t sound happy.

  Everett shrugged and walked out of the room with Travis’ gun at his back. “Hurry,” Clete said.

  Rhonda stood and straightened her suit jacket. “Let me understand this. You’re going to take as much vintage as you can carry, and take Harlan with you, and take Paxton with you to keep Harlan producing.”

  “Wrap her up,” Clete said to Paxton. He gestured with the gun for Rhonda to take a seat in her big leather desk chair. Rhonda sighed and sat, and Paxton kneeled next to her.

  “After you sell off the vintage in the coolers, you’ve just got Harlan,” Rhonda said. “Say you manage to keep him alive and producing. That gives you about four ounces of vintage to sell a day.”

  “At least four,” Clete said.

  “Okay, say five. Or ten! Why not?”

  Pax pulled off a long stretch of tape with his teeth, then tore it off. He began to wrap it around her shins and the central post of the desk chair. Rhonda was wearing nylons, so at least the tape wouldn’t pull her hair off when it was removed.

  Rhonda said to Clete, “So how did you figure to make money with that? You can’t sell it to charlies—after today you’ll never be able to set foot in Switchcreek again. And I can’t see much of a market anywhere else.”

  “Ha! Doreen said you’d say that. We’re not idiots, Aunt Rhonda. We’ll sell it to the outsiders, just like you do.”

  “Really.”

  “Don’t play dumb. I’ve seen what the vintage does to them.”

  “Have you? Give an unchanged person the vintage and they get all weepy and sentimental, and then fall asleep. Not exactly a wonder drug. You’d be better off selling them Nyquil.”

  “That’s the old weak shit,” Clete said, and he squatted to look into the safe. �
��The stuff from Elwyn and Bob and the other old men. Harlan’s vintage, though—that knocks skips on their asses. And the best thing is, it’s addictive as all hell.”

  “So are cigarettes, hon, but even Marlboro has a marketing plan. Ooh, careful there, Paxton, I don’t have the best circulation.”

  “Make it tight,” Clete said.

  A savage expression flickered across Rhonda’s face, quick as the chop of a cleaver. Pax looked at Clete, but the chub boy had missed it—he was pulling out the account book and a stack of papers.

  “All righty then,” Rhonda said, her voice as calm as before. “Say that you did have the world’s greatest narcotic—and you don’t—you’ve still got major sales and distribution problems. First of all, how’re you going to get people to try it? They never heard of this stuff, they don’t know what it does. There’s no demand. You’d spend the first year giving away free samples just to explain what your product was.”

  Clete looked up in annoyance. “No I wouldn’t. Now where’s the cash?”

  “Then you’ve got to think about the competition,” Rhonda said. She shifted her weight as Pax started to wrap her left arm. “How you going to outsell something as cheap as meth? Any hillbilly with a hotplate can make crystal meth. Or Oxycontin? Or cocaine? Tons of that stuff is crossing the border every day. You think you can meet those price points? It’s like trying to compete with Wal-Mart. All you’ve got is a few dribs and drabs of vintage.”

  “But you’re selling it to outsiders!” Clete said. “Everybody knows you’re making a ton of money off the old men. Look at this place—you built this whole building, you’ve got that car, you run the whole town … Next you’re going to tell me that bullshit that you’re using it for research.”

  “Oh, hon, that’s just what we tell the stupid people,” Rhonda said.

  Pax stopped his wrapping. “What?”

  “The just-plain-ignorant—that would be you, Clete—think I’m a Colombian drug lord or something, selling vintage all over Tennessee. All I have to do is be vague and people let their imagination run away with them. And the smart people—”

  “Yeah, what do you tell them?” Clete asked.

  “Hon, the smart people figure it out on their own,” Rhonda said, as if explaining it to a child. “That’s how you know they’re smart people.”

  Pax noticed movement and looked up. Everett stood just outside the doorway, his white polo shirt covered in a rooster tail of bright red blood. And then he stepped back out of Paxton’s line of sight.

  “You’re lying,” Clete said to Rhonda. A note of doubt had crept into his voice. “I know you’re lying.”

  “Hon, you keep saying that, but I don’t have to lie to you, because I know how screwed you are. You were screwed from step one. You jumped into this without doing some very basic research.”

  “You’re just making this up,” he said.

  “Let me ask you, Clete. How many skips have you tried out the reverend’s vintage on?”

  “I didn’t have the reverend’s vintage, so I couldn’t very well try it out, could I? Besides, I didn’t have to. I saw what it did to Paxton. One drop and the boy starts tripping like a hippie. He told me he’d never felt any drug like Harlan’s vintage. Ain’t that right, Paxton?”

  Pax said nothing. He knelt on the floor beside Aunt Rhonda, the nearly empty spool of tape in his hands. He’d finished securing her to the chair. He hadn’t wrapped her too tightly, but he hoped it looked convincing.

  “See, he’s still half-stoned. This morning I caught him talking to the wallpaper. Doreen said Harlan’s stuff sets off these mirror cells in your head—”

  “Mirror neurons,” Rhonda said.

  “Yeah, the empathy thing,” Clete said. “And the emotion stuff. Love Potion Number Nine.”

  Rhonda shook her head. “Clete, you do know that Doreen’s not a real nurse? She’s barely a candy striper. She only knows what Dr. Fraelich tells her, and I doubt she understands a tenth of that. And even then, the doctor’s just guessing. The most data she’s ever gotten was when she sat around watching Paxton rant and rave for a few days. And even she got it wrong.”

  “What wrong?” Clete said, frustrated.

  “Hon, it’s not Harlan that’s different,” Rhonda said. “It’s Paxton.”

  Out in the hallway, a slam that sounded like a gunshot. Clete spun toward the doorway, one arm up—and then Doreen charged into the room. She saw the gun aimed at her and yelped.

  “Jesus, Doreen, I nearly shot you!” Clete said.

  “The TV,” she said. “You got to see this.”

  “Where’s Harlan?”

  “I couldn’t get him up! You have to see it. Some city in South America—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Clete swung back to Rhonda. “Now what the fuck do you mean, Paxton’s different?”

  “Just try Harlan’s vintage on another skip, and you’ll see it doesn’t have anywhere near the same effect.”

  “Hey, who’s bleeding?” Doreen asked. She was looking at the floor by her feet, where Everett had been standing a minute earlier.

  Clete turned to snarl at her, but then he paused, frowned. Pax could see the bad thought forming in his brain. Travis should have been back by now, but Rhonda had kept talking and talking.

  Pax looked up at Rhonda. Her expression was strangely sad.

  “Travis?” Clete called in a strangled voice. He bolted for the door. “Travis!” He shouldered Doreen aside and ran through the doorway—and vanished.

  Pax had seen nothing but a blur moving in from the right, and then Clete was knocked out of the frame, gone as if he’d been snipped from a film.

  Doreen screamed and ran out of the room. Pax followed.

  Clete was on his back, Everett on top of him, one hand braced against Clete’s neck, the other clenched into a fist. He struck Clete once, twice. A white tooth shot out of the boy’s mouth like a spitball.

  “Paxton!” someone shouted. Barron, tied to his chair twenty feet away, nodded fiercely at the floor. Clete’s pistol lay almost at the guard’s feet. Pax ran for it, moving awkwardly with his arms tied in front of him. He bent to scoop it up and then suddenly he was knocked sideways. He crashed into an end table, fell onto his side. His ribs, still sore from the beating weeks ago, erupted into fresh fire.

  Doreen had tackled him. She grabbed the pistol, jumped up, and swung it toward him.

  Pax scrambled to his feet. He seemed to hear the gunshot a moment after he ducked. He didn’t know where the bullet went, didn’t know if he was hit.

  There was nowhere to hide. Nothing in the lobby but two chairs, a couch, a few potted plants.

  Doreen fired again. Pax ran pell-mell for the double doors that led to the patient rooms, wild with the need to escape. The thirty feet to the doors seemed to stretch to the length of a football field. Finally he banged through the doors, and then he was falling against the second set of doors and onto the floor beyond. He hit with his forearms in front of him and pain shot through his elbows.

  His father’s room was just ahead, the first door on the right. Pax tried to push himself to his feet, but his arms wouldn’t work. He got his knees under him, then stood and stumbled forward. He dropped his bound arms like a club onto the door’s handle and pushed it open with his shoulder.

  His father was sitting up in bed, staring at the television.

  Pax pushed the door closed and then leaned against it. “Dad.” His father glanced at him, frowning, and then looked back at the TV. A female announcer said something about a state of emergency.

  “Dad. We have to block the door.”

  Over the noise of the TV he thought he heard the sound of another gunshot, but from this distance, through so many doors, he couldn’t be sure.

  “Dad! I need you to listen to me.”

  His father slowly shook his head. “It’s happening again,” he said.

  The handle rattled, and then the door opened a few inches and bumped against the back of the dresser
drawer. “It’s okay Paxton,” Aunt Rhonda said, sounding exasperated. “It’s safe to come out now.”

  It took him a minute to shove the furniture out of the way. Rhonda came into the room with a paper mask held over her nose. The cuff of her sleeve was stained with dark blood. Her hair was in disarray.

  “We aren’t dead, in case you were wondering,” she said, her voice muffled.

  “Are they?” Pax asked.

  “They ought to be.”

  “I think you should see what’s on the news,” he said.

  He moved out of the way so Rhonda could see the screen. His father said, “It’s bigger this time. A whole city.”

  “What’s bigger?” Rhonda asked.

  “The Changes,” Pax said.

  Chapter 15

  A TRIO OF beta girls stood awkwardly on the sidewalk, pinned in place by cameras and lights and microphones. One of them answered a question while the other two looked on. They didn’t seem to want to speak to the reporters, but they didn’t move away either. They may have been blanks, but they were also teenage Americans; they didn’t know how to say no to television.

  Pax stepped off the sidewalk to avoid the clump of media people surrounding them. He’d tried to drive to the clinic, but the downtown streets were packed. He’d been forced to park down on Bank Street, a quarter mile from the center of town. News vans, television trucks, and rental cars lined the street ahead of him; strange faces crowded the sidewalks. All this, just to cover the “local angle.”

  Before the Changes, the world had never heard of Switchcreek, Tennessee. And until yesterday, not many more had ever heard of Babahoyo, Ecuador. Now they were sister cities, united in disaster, death, and acts of God. Sodom and Gomorrah separated by two thousand miles and thirteen years.

  At least a thousand were dead in Babahoyo, and who knew how many more were stricken. The exact numbers varied by news channel, but every hour the estimates climbed.

  After Clete’s botched kidnapping yesterday, Pax had sat in his father’s room for most of the afternoon, watching the news. When he went home that night he kept the TV on, unable to look away: the cameras panning over rows of the sick laid out in hospital beds or across the floors of churches and schools; the close-ups of brown faces bleaching to chalk; the repetitive soundtrack of grunts and moans and cries in Spanish. And then, like a bizarre commercial break, a word from our previous victims, the people of Switchcreek. He saw Rhonda interviewed twice, and no one could have guessed that a few hours before she’d been duct taped to her chair and held at gunpoint. Back in the studios, scientists and special correspondents described the nature of TDS, charted its three variants, predicted that the current wave of TDS-A would give way to strains of B and C, and speculated baldly on the disease’s causes and probable vectors of transmission. It was painfully clear that in thirteen years no one had made much progress in understanding the disease.