by Z. Rider
“Jesus.” Ray ducked his head a little to look into Dan’s face, lifting a hand toward Dan’s jaw. “What the—”
A muscle in the side of Dan’s jaw pulled tight. His shoulder clenched. His fist came up, fast. Throwing the punch was like watching someone else doing it. The contact of knuckles to the soft area under Ray’s cheek barely registered. The force knocked Ray’s head aside, made him stumble back, spilling over the front of the couch. Ray tried to get out of the way, but Dan grabbed him by the shirtfront and shoved him back, climbing onto him. Ray tried to sit up, push him off. Dan knocked him back hard enough to make Ray’s head thud on the cabinet over the couch. The magnetic catch tripped, the door popping open as Dan dragged Ray forward by the shirt.
Gritting his teeth, Ray tried to wrestle his arm off him.
Dan lunged. His teeth snapped. Ray dodged, just missing getting a hole in his cheek. As he shoved his hand up to protect himself, Dan’s teeth found purchase in the fleshy heel of it. Ray yelled out and kicked him from below. Dan felt it distantly, but his jaws loosened reflexively.
Ripping his hand free, Ray shoved him aside, palm against the side of Dan’s face as he struggled to get himself out from under him. Dan snapped his teeth again, got an elbow hard in the jaw for it. He didn’t give a fuck because his teeth scraped along the skin there, and he dove forward to try to bite it, pushed by the need to feel his teeth break through skin, feel blood burst into his mouth. He tore at Ray’s hair, but Ray had leverage now. With his forearm braced against Dan’s neck, he managed to steamroll him backward, tripping over his own feet on the patch of carpet between couch and wall.
The wall shuddered as Dan’s shoulders hit.
His vision swarmed. He tried to get at Ray with his teeth again, and Ray heaved him back with both hands on his chest.
His skull banged the edge of the audio system, pain rattling dully through bone. His knees went loose, like someone had pulled the pin out of a hinge. He clasped his head. He was hyperventilating, or close to it, breaths coming fast and shallow and panicked. He had Ray’s shirt bunched in his hand, hanging on.
“Dan.”
“Stop…”
“Dan, what the fuck?”
“Bees…” Ray’s heart thudded under his knuckles. They spread like a swarming flower through his brain. His vision muddied. Ray’s mouth, saying who knew what, became a gaping hole of darkness.
The last sensation he had was of dropping, fast.
Darkness. Confusion. He swung out at something, connected hard. A smell, bright like new pennies, filled his head with a roar like a jet taking off in his skull. He threw himself toward it, mouth first.
† † †
Darkness.
Silence.
Peace.
A familiar cough.
He peeled his eyes open to the kind of brightness you only see in the morning. He looked to one side: a window with a curtain half pulled across it. Ugly fucking curtain, textured with muted multicolors, the kind of pattern that didn’t want to be anything in particular, like it would offend someone if it were flowers or checks or stripes, so it was a bland blur.
“Hey.” Ray’s voice.
He moved his eyes to catch Ray stepping up to the side of the bed. Behind Ray was another ugly curtain, this one sectioning them off from the rest of the room.
“Hospital?”
“Yeah.” He curled his hands around the bedrail.
Movement at the end of the bed—Jamie getting up from a chair.
“Go grab a nurse,” Ray said.
“Right.” Jamie gaped at Dan, wide-eyed.
Ray turned his head, and Jamie snapped out of it. He ducked through the ugly curtain, leaving it waving in his wake.
“What happened?” Dan asked.
“You fucking tell me. How’re you feeling?”
His mouth was dry. He made a face and tried to work up some spit. He pushed down against the mattress, trying to sit up. Pain stabbed his knuckles—a lot like right after he’d hit that wall when Jamie’d pissed him off. Was this right after that? What about all that stuff that’d happened in between—the bat, had he dreamed that?
Carey came through the curtain, a can of Coke in each hand.
“He’s awake,” Ray said.
“Can I have some of that?” Dan croaked.
“How about some water?” Carey said.
“Whatever. Anything. Where are we?”
“New York,” Carey said. “How are you feeling?”
“Thirsty.” He glanced down at his hand, still throbbing like he’d been in a fight. It was swaddled in white bandages. He looked at Ray for the first time—really looked at him. His breath caught as sensations came rushing back, noises—the congestion in his chest and the black static in his vision.
Carey opened his mouth to say something, and Jamie and Moss came charging through the curtain. “Nurse is coming,” Jamie said, and on the heels of his words, the curtain flared.
“Good morning, Mr. Ferry. How are we feeling?” The nurse clamped something that looked like a bulky clothespin to his finger, and while that did whatever it was supposed to do, she popped a cone onto the end of a thermometer and held it to his ear.
His headache was gone, he realized. In fact, he felt pretty good for a change. When he said so—cautiously, with last night leaning hard on his thoughts—the nurse said, “That’s what we like to hear. I’ll let the doctor know you’re awake, and we’ll get you something to eat as soon as she clears it. Sound good?”
“Can I get some water?”
“Got some right here.” She lifted a pitcher, ice thumping plastic. She filled a cup halfway and handed it to him.
He downed it in three gulps, the best thing he’d ever tasted.
Jamie stepped aside to let her out, then they were alone again, the five of them.
“Any idea what happened?” Carey said.
Dan shook his head.
Ray leaned against a wall, his arms crossed, watching him.
“All right. I’ve still gotta get in touch with the promoter.” Carey ran a hand over the shine of his head, though, instead of reaching for his phone.
“I don’t want to stay here,” Dan said.
“Yeah, we don’t want that either. I’m just waiting to see if we have to reschedule the rest of the dates and get you home.”
He closed his eyes and leaned back, swallowing hard. He did not want to reschedule fucking dates.
As the curtain rolled back, he turned his head. A woman in a doctor’s coat strode in, her dark hair fraying from what had probably started the shift as a tidy ponytail. A line of blue ink marred the white over her breast pocket. She looked like she’d spent the night popping Adderall.
“Mr. Ferry,” she said.
“I wish people would stop calling me that.”
“I’m Doctor Shue.”
“I’m Dan, actually.”
“How are you feeling?” she asked, drawing a penlight out of her pocket.
“What’s wrong with me?”
She clicked the light on and shined it in his eyes. “Your blood work looks good, vitals look good. CT scan. How’s your hand?”
He flexed it. “A little sore. Did I—”
“Any history of seizures?” She moved to the other eye.
“No.”
“Any history of it in the family?”
“Not that I know of. Did I have a seizure?”
The flashlight clicked off. “Has this ever happened before?”
“What? Waking up in the hospital with no idea what’s going on?” He rubbed the blanket, his knuckles itching under the gauze bandage.
She scanned his chart. “Any history of violent episodes?”
“No.”
“Do you remember coming to the hospital?”
“No.”
“How about the CT scan?”
He gave a short, frustrated shake of his head.
“Well,” she said, “we have a tech who’s not going to forget you anyt
ime soon.”
He didn’t know what to say.
She pointed the end of the penlight at his bandaged knuckles. “You popped him a good one in the nose. We had to pull you off and sedate you.”
Jamie said, “You were trying to bite him,” his eyes wide.
That was unsettling as fuck. “I totally don’t remember that.”
“I thought something might show up on the tox screen to explain it,” the doctor said, “but it came back clean. Did you take anything last night?”
“Not unless you count a few bites of a shitty Hot Pocket.”
“What about you?” she asked Ray.
“Me?”
“I’m just hunting around for an explanation for what you thought you saw.”
Dan shot his gaze toward Ray. “What’d you see?”
“Worms in your eyes,” Carey said.
“What?”
“Thin little squiggly things.” Ray held up his thumb and finger, pinched close together.
Dan looked toward the doctor, who said nothing.
“Moss didn’t see it,” Ray said, “and neither did anyone by the time we got you here, but before you crashed, I thought I saw…things in your eyes.”
A sick, wet heat crawled up Dan’s face. He clutched the sheet with his good hand.
“What I think”—Dr. Shue lowered the tablet with his info on it—“is that the both of you have been on the road a lot, under a lot of stress, with not enough sleep and a fair amount of alcohol, if nothing else.” She lifted an eyebrow. “You’re probably suffering from stress and exhaustion, and once you get some rest you’ll find the symptoms don’t repeat themselves.” She slipped the flashlight into her pocket. “But if you do have an experience like this again, you need to make an appointment with your doctor.”
“Does that mean I can go?” Exhaustion. He liked that diagnosis. “What about the things in my eyes?”
“If you have any vision problems, you should come back or see your own doctor.”
“I had headaches,” he said. “And buzzing…”
“With some rest, exercise, and a healthy diet, I think you’ll be feeling a lot more yourself. More fruits and vegetables, less caffeine and alcohol, okay? Any other questions?”
“Well,” Carey said once she was gone, “I guess that’s good news.”
Jamie stretched his arms toward the ceiling, the hem of his t-shirt hiking up to expose a slice of belly. “Are we getting a hotel?”
“Yeah, I’ve gotta arrange that and cancel the show still.”
Dan turned his head. “Hey.”
Ray lifted his chin, acknowledging him.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just a few bruises. I’m more worried about you.”
“I actually feel pretty good.” The sun was shining, the headache was finally fucking gone. So were the… Holy shit. Were they? “Come here.”
Ray stepped closer, curling his fingers on the bedrail again.
Dan laid a hand over one.
Holy shit. The fucking bees were gone.
Ray’s hand shifted under his, turning over. Dan let his own slip away. And saw the purplish bruise on the heel of Ray’s hand, the faint tooth-shaped dents in it. “Shit. I’m…really fucking sorry. Can you still play?”
He closed his fist, opened it back up. “Yeah, it’s nothing.”
“Do you want to play?”
“Ain’t that what we’re on this crazy ride for?”
Dan shoved the sheets down. “Where are my clothes?” He swung his legs over the side of the bed. Ray backpedaled a few steps, knocking into a rolling bedside table.
“Whoa.” Carey put his hands up. “You might want to wait till they take your plug out at least.”
The line coming out of the back of Dan’s hand rattled against the IV pole.
He looked at Ray again for a long second. Couldn’t say he blamed him for the reticence to get too close when he was on his feet. Ray put his hands up a little, a gesture to say he was okay, keep going. “I can get my fucking pants on at least. Are you gonna drink that soda?” He was still dying of thirst. “What time is it?”
Ray crouched and dragged a bulky plastic bag from underneath the bed while Carey said, “Almost noon.”
“How far’s the venue?” Dan asked.
“An hour and half, two with traffic.”
“That works.” He grabbed the pair of jeans Ray’d pulled out of the bag. “We can make that work.”
“You’re not thinking of playing, are you?” Carey asked.
“I feel great. Seriously. And if we get the fuck out of here fast enough, maybe no one will realize we were ever here.” Just get this fucking tour over with. And stay out of the news. That was all he asked. They needed to go home and get their heads back together. He needed to go home and get his head back together. What they didn’t need was to have to get back on the fucking road two weeks from now for a rescheduled show. Unless someone in the band was fucking dead, they had a policy of no cancellations, only reschedules. Even the time they’d been a no-show at a festival thanks to canceled flights, they’d managed to get another date booked in the same city a few months later—with a liquor manufacturer sponsoring it, allowing them to let five hundred fans exchange their old festival tickets for entrance to the show.
“Well, at least one of us got a good night’s sleep,” Ray said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Dan stopped.
Ray looked like he’d been wadded up and shoved in a duffle bag, then shook out and stood on his feet. Five o’clock shadow, dark smudges under his eyes. He could use a shower and a comb through his hair. They all could. “Shit,” Dan said. “We were getting a day room today.”
“Fuck it. We’ll be in our own homes in a couple days. I just want to make sure you’re doing the right thing. I mean, last night was pretty fucking crazy.”
“If you think we should take a night off,” Dan said, “I’m cool with it. I mean, I’d rather not.” He felt good, and there was no better place to be when he was feeling good than on stage in front of a crowd of fans singing their words back at them. “But I’m the one who got some sleep.”
“Nah, man,” Ray said. “People are at work, thinking about the show they’re gonna see tonight. Or getting on the road from four hours away to come see us. We’ve got a crew that’s gotta work for a living. Besides, what the fuck else are we gonna do all night if we don’t play? Tiddlywinks?”
“Jamie?” Dan asked.
“Tiddlywinks, drums, whatever you guys want. I’m cool.” He’d sprawled out in a vinyl-upholstered chair, one leg hanging over a wooden arm. Waiting—they were used to waiting.
“If you’re sure you’re okay,” Ray said.
“This is insane,” Carey said.
Ray glanced over his shoulder. “Noted.” Because if there was one thing Dan could count on with Ray and Ray could count on with him, it was they both wanted to be on stage more than they wanted to be anywhere else.
Especially if ‘anywhere else’ was a fucking hospital.
“We’ve gotta get out of here.” Dan looked at the IV in his hand. Fuck it. With a groan from Carey, he slid it out and used the tape that had held it there to stem the bleeding.
“Oh that’s sanitary,” Moss said.
“Fuck it. Let me get my boots on and let’s go.”
The women at the nurses’ station looked up at the crowd of them coming out of the room.
“Just a sec,” Dan said before veering toward the station. “Hey. How’s that CT scan guy?”
“Oh,” said an older lady with her red hair tucked under her cap, “not happy, I don’t suppose. But he’ll live.”
“I’m really sorry about that. Can you get me his name?”
He handed the slip of paper to Carey, who didn’t need to be told to make sure the guy got something for it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
They got to the club after three hours in traffic. Some of the crew—and Ray and Jamie—got in short naps duri
ng the ride. They loaded in as fast as they could, with the band lugging and connecting equipment alongside Stick and Moss. Soundcheck was short. Dinner came off sandwich trays backstage.
The show went well. Not the best on the tour, not even the best in the past month, but it went off without a hitch, despite everyone on the crew side-eyeing Dan, looking for him to start acting strange again. By the end of the show, he still felt as good as he had in the hospital, only with a layer of satisfying tiredness on top of it, the kind you got after good, hard work.
They pulled out on time, the bunch of them hanging out in the front lounge, drinking beer they’d gotten when they’d convinced the bus driver to pull in at a truck stop just before the interstate on-ramp. The show had gone well, and whatever’d happened the night before was a hundred miles behind them.
Now they were talking about the zombie apocalypse, what they would do if one happened.
“I’d stop at a library,” Moss said, “grab a bunch of books—foraging, hunting, trapping. I’d head out to the middle of nowhere with Deb and Penny, the middle of the woods somewhere. Up to Canada, maybe. Take a machete with me, bow and arrows, shovel and hoe.”
“There you go,” Stick said. “That’s what I’d grab me. A couple a’ hos. Maybe four or five of them.”
“And birth control pills?” Carey asked, his nose not buried in schedules and receipts for a change.
“Well, yeah, obviously,” Stick said. “But you know why I’d do it?”
“Because your pecker is your favorite thing?” Ray said.
“Pussy’s my favorite thing. But the way I see it, you’ve gotta have something to live for. These girls, I’d be their protector. I’d keep them safe from the zombies. As long as they had me, they’d be okay. And that’s what’d keep me going, taking care of the ladies.”
“What about you, Ray-Ray?” Moss asked.
“I’d shoot myself in the head.”
“Come on. Seriously.”
“Seriously. Who wants to live through that? Living in a bus is as primitive as I want to get.”
Moss tipped his head to look at him. “What if it was something real? Climate change, the honey bees all died, whatever.”