I lay on the couch, shivering and dying. My body knew it. My mind knew it.
Tyler came down as Elsie brought food to the table, looking as if he hadn’t slept in days. Dark circles framed his puffy eyes. His clothes looked rumpled and disheveled. He poured a cup of coffee and ate sparingly, agreeing in low tones to head out with Keith shortly to bury Joshua.
They ended up with an extra body. Devon had died during the night, slipping away so quietly that in the morning rush of breakfast and bathroom, most thought him still asleep. In less than a day and a half, our numbers had been cut by a third. If Daniel’s predictions had any truth to them, only two would escape the disease entirely. The rest of us vacillated at some undefined point between living and dead, though his concept of shade had begun to make sense where I was concerned. Gorgol had offered me a chance at living, tempering the idea with the caveat that I had to die first. What that meant, I had no idea, but in terms of what the future might hold, two thoughts seemed to explain the notion of shade quite well. Either we all went through whatever process where we died in order to live, or some final decision would decide the future. No matter how I twisted the possibilities in my mind, those two options provided the only reasonable answers.
For most, choosing life might be a no-brainer. When it came to me, trying to weave reality with the twisted trails of could be, proved both exhausting and frustrating. The immediate dilemma of what to do with the man begat the question of, what would happen in the long term? Once we were all up and smiling and healthy, what then? Did we just sit around and sing camp songs by firelight? The beasts had been searching for me before. The instant Gorgol left, they’d know where I was. Opting to live beyond The Fever only seemed to offer a different death a few days later. Having seen their methods, the thought of slipping away actually seemed better.
Somewhere along the line, I found myself floating in that half-awake, half-asleep state where thoughts come random and strange and dreams linger close by. I had neither the future nor the station on my mind at that point, having given up trying to follow the twisted trails of possibility and reality. Instead, Becky stood framed against the skyline, one hand atop a swollen and gravid stomach that looked as if it could burst at any moment.
The wind blew through her hair, pulling it sideways. Behind her, the sunset painted the sky in shades of red, orange, and purple. She was smiling in a rare display of happiness. We hadn’t planned the pregnancy. We hadn’t even been trying. Many would have called it accidental. That definition has little truth to it though. People don’t engage in sex by accident. What they do is either forget or play the odds one too many times. Our gamble at the mom and pop lottery had come on a night when the condom box sitting next to the bed proved empty.
That gentle slip into a ten year old memory sent me struggling upright with a new determination bolting through my chest. If Gorgol wanted a confrontation, he could have one. Everything died. Sometimes, things just took a little extra killing to get the job done.
I rose and looked back toward the people behind me. Denise and Kate sat at the table dipping tea bags into steaming water. Elsie puttered about in the kitchen. I couldn’t tell if she was working up another meal or still cleaning up from the last. The back door stood open. Beyond it, an indistinct form shifted behind the rows of boards that had been nailed up as a barrier. I couldn’t tell who, but it looked like they were pawing through the chicken coop.
Kate looked up. The girl really was beautiful. I’d never given her much of a chance at anything and wondered if, like Keith, my act of stereotyping had prevented me from recognizing a value far beyond what I’d assigned to her.
“Do me a favor, head upstairs and go through everyone’s possessions. Bring me any religious symbol you can find. I don’t care what it is.”
She blinked. “Okay. “
I didn’t wait for the question at the end of her drawn out agreement. “Denise, find Keith for me and tell him to make me a stake maybe an inch or two thick and sharpen it at one end.”
The same puzzled look slid across her face. I knew they had to be wondering if The Fever hadn’t grabbed hold of my mind.
Maybe it had.
I watched them go and turned toward the kitchen. Elsie leaned against the stove with one hand on her hip. I ignored her and dug through our paltry selection of silverware. The forks and spoons held no interest. The diving knife off Angel did. Elsie used it like a butcher knife when she cooked. I held it up and ran my thumb along the blade. The twinge of steel slicing through skin told me it would serve the purpose I had in mind.
Elsie looked at the blade and back to me. “I’m almost afraid to ask,” she said, the dubious tone clear in her voice.
I cut my eyes toward her and offered her the best grin I could manage. “The little imps go down with bullets and frying pans. Dragons don’t do well with bullets in their eyes. Shotguns do one hell of a number on things that look like gargoyles.”
She stared at me expectantly. “So?”
“Well, Gabriel committed suicide by killing himself like you’d do a vampire. Maybe that’s what he thought he was turning into. Along that same line, Marcy didn’t seem to care at all if I shot her.”
I swiveled the blade in front of me, watching the light flash off the edge. A cough rumbled in my chest. I let it subside before I continued. “But, that little medallion sure did the trick.”
I paused and grimaced, “and I bit the worm in half.”
My stomach, already unsettled, lurched at the memory of the vile fluid flooding my mouth. I shoved the thought away and turned to face her.
“It seems direct involvement has something to do with killing stuff that won’t die in a normal fashion. If I have to, I’ll drive a stake through the man’s heart, shove every cross down his throat that Kate can find, and cut him open looking for worms.”
“And you want Daniel in there when you do it?” she gasped.
I shook my head. “I don’t want to do it at all. Daniel is my last hope for figuring out if there’s a deal to be made or not. If not, well, that room might get messy.”
“You’re sick,” she said. “Your face is flushed and you look like you’re going to fall over.”
“Then you know how I feel which is why we’re doing this today. By tomorrow, I don’t know if I’ll be coherent, much less capable.”
Fear played across her face. I felt sorry for the old woman. Daniel saw most of us as shades, even himself. His life depended on what happened in my bedroom as much as mine. Elsie had found something she couldn’t control. She couldn’t protect him. It had her terrified.
“I’ll make Daniel leave if it gets bad. I promise,” I told her.
Defiance crept into her voice. “Oh, he’s not going in there without me. I won’t allow it.”
“Yes, you will. You have to, Elsie. You rush to his defense at the least little thing. Believe me when I tell you, I understand.”
I sighed, the sound coming out as tired as I felt. “And believe me when I tell you, I can’t let you this time. His life and mine depends on it. Maybe all our lives do.”
The look on her face told me I’d have a battle on my hands when the time came. I turned and walked toward the front of the station, fighting a cough and shivering, even though Elsie and the rest had looked comfortable.
I didn’t have long before the confrontation. I intended to find a little of the peace that had brought me to the island before I had to fight to stay alive on it. The front door banged behind me when I walked out on the porch.
A bright sun hung high over the ocean. Perfectly spaced breakers rolled little white caps as far down the coast as I could see. The wind blew in from the west carrying enough warmth that, for a few minutes at least, the shivering abated.
I sat on the steps and listened to Kate rustle through bags upstairs. Keith banged away at something behind the station. Elsie called Daniel inside. The moment felt wonderfully good and right. I laid back against the floorboards and closed my eyes, res
ting in the heat, thinking about my son, my father, lives cut short and lives unfulfilled. Somewhere in the memories, sleep came.
Denise shook me awake. She held a sharp stake nearly two feet long and as thick as my wrist. “We have everything,” she said, staring down at me with worried eyes. Above her head, the ever-present ponytail perched tight and taut.
I pulled myself up into a sitting position, feeling as tired as I’d been when I laid down. I sat for a long moment with my head in my hands, wondering if I’d ever rest in the sun again.
The answer didn’t matter. Lives depended on me. One of them had yet to be born.
The thought brought my head up. “Go tell Elsie it’s time. Get the rest out. I don’t care where you go. Just get out of the house until I come get you.”
She stepped back, the fear plain on her face. Seconds later, she was gone. I sat on the porch until I heard them all inside before I rose.
A crossroad waited inside. I didn’t know what stepping into the middle of it would bring, but knew I had to. The time had come to shoot Craps with a devil where lives sat on the Pass Line hoping I’d roll a natural.
I’d never been a betting man. Maybe fate would shine on me. Maybe I’d be stricken with a spate of beginners luck.
For too long, life had held too many questions and not enough answers. I was about to fix that problem, at least in this case. I’d either walk out with a deal we could live with, or he would die.
The options list stopped right there. No checkbox existed with Gorgol’s name next to it. If it came down to a fight, he would die. He might possess powers I could not even imagine, but I had a child yet to be born. I’d carve the word Father in his ass and chase him all the way back to hell if I had to.
Of that, I was certain.
Chapter XXVIII - Battle Lines
I had two potential battles staring me in the face. The first evaporated before the rules of engagement had been fully defined. Elsie watched while I gathered up the items Kate had found. The haul surprised me. Half a dozen little gold and silver images dangled from one type of chain or another. I had no idea what Gorgol’s persuasion might be, but I had Christ on a cross, a squatting Buddha, a weird and tangled symbol of sun and moon wrapped around each other that looked as if it might be of Mayan origin, and a couple of saints for him to eat. I figured I’d go for the shotgun approach if we reached that point. Instead of picking and choosing, I’d stuff the lot down his throat.
“I didn’t know we were so,” I said and paused, looking for the right word, “spiritual here.”
Kate shrugged. . “Most of them belonged to Jessie. She was a good Catholic girl, you know. The Buddha and the sun-moon symbol are mine.”
I glanced up.
“Inside joke,” she said and sighed. “A few years ago, Jessie had three wrecks in the space of four months. I bought her a Saint Anthony charm. He’s the patron Saint of drivers. She didn’t have anymore after that.”
The woman smiled faintly. “Since then, we’ve kept our bases covered. One of those is Saint Frances, Saint of the sea. He seemed a good idea for this trip.”
She paused. “Come to think of it, Patroclus would have been better.”
I shot her a questioning look.
“He covers fevers and demons,” she explained.
I wrapped the charms in a bit of cloth and laid them next to the diving knife and the stake. The little group waiting around the table shuffled uneasily. The cough that bubbled up in my chest and erupted into a series of chest-wracking spasms didn’t help. Fear rode strong across most of the faces. Two stood out in the opposite direction when it came to emotions.
Tyler and Elsie managed to look both determined and stubborn. Elsie stood out in my mind as the first battle. I needed Daniel in the room with me, but not her. Tyler’s expression surprised me.
“I’m not leaving Kelly up there by herself,” he said when I turned around. “Denise said you wanted everyone out of the station. I’m staying.”
I studied him for a moment and nodded. I had no real control over any of them. I wanted them out because I wanted Elsie out and figured achieving that goal would be easier if they went en masse.
Elsie looked ready to argue. I ignored her and squatted down next to Daniel. He looked incredibly thin and frail in a shirt so big the short sleeves hung down to his forearms. Neither he nor Elsie had come to the island prepared for an extended stay. Both had worn odd bits of clothing scrounged from the rest over the past few weeks. He wouldn’t have to pick through the cast-offs any more. I’d seen that shirt on Devon before.
“Your grandma tell you what we’re going to do?”
He nodded. His hair had grown noticeably longer, the end curling around his collar and drooping down into his eyes.
“Ever play baseball?”
The boy shook his head that time.
“Yeah, well, me neither really. But, those guys like to give each other hand signals. We’re going to do the same thing.”
I reached down, put my hand against my thigh, and wiggled my fingers. “This means you think he’s telling the truth. And this,” I said lifting my thumb and thumping it against my leg, “means you think he’s lying. Can you do that?”
He nodded again.
“Good. Let me do the talking. You stand behind me. Whenever I turn around or look back, it means I need you to tell me what you think. Okay?”
“And I’ll be right behind you,” Elsie broke in. I looked up into glaring eyes that defied me to argue with her. I nearly gave in right there. Gorgol would take all the energy I had left. Wasting a ton arguing with her would do none of us any good.
Daniel looked up. Hair fell away from his face. He looked serious and somber.
“No Grandma, you can’t come.”
Elsie frowned at him and shot a mean look at me. “You been talking to him, Hill William? Because I told you, he is not going in there without me.”
I held up my hands and backed away. “That came from him, not me.”
She glanced back down at the boy. “Why would you say that?”
A tic trembled at the edge of his jaw. Despite his quiet and solemn stance, the boy was scared. “Because it feels bad when I think of you in there,” he said finally.
Elsie looked as if tears would come at any second. Her hands shook when she reached out and pushed his hair back. I’d spent the months following little William’s death tormented by my own thoughts, by a guilt that, right or wrong, would be mine forever to carry. She had to make the decision to let him go to a place she feared. If anything happened to him, the guilt would be crushing. There would be no wondering, no what-if’s. The decision would lie on her mind heavier than the weight of the entire world. Much of Elsie’s strength and a good bit of her agility in years that should have seen her slowing down seemed to come from caring for him. I could imagine her stubborn enough to override death, meeting the Grim Reaper head-on, shaking a finger at him and saying, not now, I have things to do.
I could just as easily imagine the guy sulking off, wondering why his mojo didn’t work on her and developing a sudden fear of little old women.
I watched her emotions play across her face. Every one of them steeled the determination inside me to bring the boy out safely. Daniel brought the moment to a close in a way that brooked no more arguments. He stepped away from her and looked up at me.
“I’m ready.”
An itch in my throat threatened another bout of coughing. I huffed hard enough to clear the feeling and picked up the crude weaponry from the table. With Daniel two steps behind me, I walked down the hall, leaving the group behind. I wanted them out of the station, but couldn’t force them to go. The sick feeling in my stomach and the irritating feel of something crawling at the back of my throat forced the issue to a head. Whether they stayed or left, the time had come to deal with Gorgol.
He sat upright on the sofa we’d pushed against the far wall, chest bared. The thing that acted like a man but looked as ancient as the Pyramids, gl
anced up, eyes bright and alert when I walked through the door. Seconds later, his gaze flickered over to Daniel.
He took in the handful of items I’d carried in with me. I set them down on the floor. Between the knife and stake, I spilled the religious amulets and charms. Gorgol watched intently, gaze wandering from each article to the next.
The black spider web of veins crossing his pale skull pulsed and writhed around the brown scar that split his head in two. Where the old wound trailed off under his left eye, it looked like half his face had been done in make-up, circa 1990 and the punk rock scene. Nothing about his head looked natural, from the odd eyes with their narrow pupils to anemic skin that looked like it had died a thousand years before.
“Wizard of Oz,” I mused out loud.
A heavy frown scored his forehead. “What?”
I felt my mouth twist into a wry grin. “You need a silk screen, a couple of jets of fire billowing up around you, and a big speaker to magnify your voice.”
The frown deepened.
“Old movie,” I said, offering as much explanation as he was going to get and hoping the man was as much a charade as the character in the movie.
He slid sideways and rose up on his knees. Every rib in his chest stood out clearly, the shadows between them like dark lines drawn across a field of white. He grinned. Spiked teeth framed a row of yellow bars across the dark opening between his lips.
Light burst through the slits in the shutters above him, reaching out to score crisp white lines across the floor. Dust drifted in the bright beams.
“You don’t look well, William,” he said, his voice still carrying the winded sound of a man whose lungs had rotted from the inside out.
“I don’t feel well,” I told him, “but you’re looking pretty good today.”
He ran a hand across the bandages that occupied almost half the right side of his body. “My wounds must have looked much worse than they were last night.”
The Island - The Final Chapters Page 8