I heard that sound again, like plasterboard buckling, only thicker, deeper, longer. But I was too damaged and too far away to do a damn thing about it.
31
Crunch.
They say the brain protects itself from unpleasant memories by forgetting them. This was a sound that wouldn’t leave easily, no matter how bad your memory.
Crunch.
It was already crawling around between my ears, looking for a spot to lay eggs. I’d forget the texture of Lenore’s skin, the sound of her voice, her eyes, her name, hell, my own name, long before I forgot that sound.
Crunch.
The heads reacted in unison, like a bottle of electric syrup hit them all at once. Did all of them remember the sound? They’d heard it before. In unison, they spoke a single, dry-whispered word: “No.”
Odell Jenkins’s body plopped back down like a piece of luggage dropped by an invisible hand. Turgeon went to his knees, not from exhaustion or horror. He was thrilled, giddy, and eager to grab his prize. He lifted the head by its sandy curls and gave it a great big smile.
Its eyes twirled, then moved in a jerky pattern, right, left, up, down. Finally, they fixed on the decapitated body. No matter what angle Turgeon held the head as he admired it, its eyes remained on the body, as if it realized they used to belong together. The mouth moved, tried to scream, but unlike the others, it hadn’t yet learned how to make any sounds. It just stretched its jaw, going through the motions, acting, in Jonesey’s words, as if.
There were only ten feet between us, tops. The clippers were still clamped shut. But you know those dreams where you can’t move even though you absolutely have to? This was one. If my ankle hadn’t been broken, I’m sure I could’ve reached him before Turgeon picked up the choppers and got them open again, but every time I took a step, it felt like my foot would tear off completely.
I always felt bad for those chakz who looked like they were in a grade-B movie, but here I was, dragging my leg, lurching just like a Romero wannabe. Instead of attacking, I limped off, heading for the nearest pillar, praying I’d blend in with the darkness behind the plastic.
Turgeon heard me, but didn’t see me yet. His head was up, scanning. His voice called out above the hissing heads: “Mann?”
He put his new trophy down and snarled at the others, “Quiet! Quiet! Can’t you see I have to find him!” When they didn’t obey, he kicked at them. He even raised the blade like he was going to stab his favorite. “Don’t make me hurt you, Daddy! Quiet them down, now!”
While he tried to get his eggs in a row, I shambled deeper into shadow. It was slow going, but I still had my one last trick. If I could come up behind him, I could still use the vial. All I’d have to do would be to pull it out, clamp down, and spray it into his liveblood face. It’d be all over, except for the running from the bomb.
As I winced and crept along, “Daddy” neared his boy. The head looked up at the killer with an expression I thought might be hatred, then clicked its tongue a few times and made a high-pitched whistling noise that seemed to come from his nose, like a steam kettle. At once, the others settled down.
Turgeon picked up the blade, then turned off the vacuums. Suddenly, dead or not, it was too quiet for me to move without being heard.
Fortunately, it was also quiet enough for Turgeon to hear the beeping timer. Eyes wide, he cursed under his breath and made for the dolly, moving away from me. As he pushed aside the plastic, he realized the ticking bomb wasn’t his only problem. Nell Parker was missing. He hadn’t seen her run.
He popped up like a jack-in-the-box, his funky blue eyes drilling every corner of the long funhouse maze of plastic sheets, work-light reflections, and stagnant shadows.
I knelt, with less trouble than I expected, and grabbed a small chunk of plasterboard. I threw it hard. It skittered along the ground about five feet in front of where I was hiding. Turgeon turned to it, following the sound as the plaster rolled into a different darkness.
I’d expected him to turn the timer off before coming after me, but he didn’t. He just stepped back in my direction. Either he figured there was plenty of time left before the big ka-boom, or I was wrong and this was a suicide run. I tossed another piece, bringing him closer, then another. It was time to fish out the vial, but my bruised tongue felt like a piece of hot charcoal in my mouth. I felt like a stroke victim trying to cover six months of therapy in under a minute.
Rather than try to move it again, I shoved my index finger in my mouth. It was too thick to dig under my jaw, but I did manage, with a wild blast of hurting, to push my tongue into the hollow. From there, it scooped the vial out. I held it gently between my back molars, shivering as the ache rushed through me in waves. I was ready for Turgeon.
But he was gone.
While I’d been fussing with my bruised tongue, he’d slipped off. I looked at the heads, hoping they’d give me a clue, but they were helter-skelter, as if whatever intelligence they possessed had fled. Even Daddy lay listlessly on his side, staring up at the work light as if it were the sun and he was tanning at the beach.
I found another piece of plaster and threw it. But when it landed and rolled, Baby-Egghead called out, “Stupid, Mann. Really stupid!”
I scanned the filthy sheen of the plastic, eyed the grays and blacks, looked for odd shadows near the light. Nothing moved. All I heard was the beeping. Where was he?
A skittering on the floor caught my attention. I turned my head in time to see a piece of rolling plaster. It stopped in a pool of light on the opposite side of the pillar I was near.
“I can play, too!” he said.
If he came at me with those blades from behind I was a goner. I pushed my back into the concrete. Even if he came at me head-on, at least I had a chance to poison the son of a bitch. Not that it would do much for me, long-term. If I remembered my VX correctly, with a full dose it’d take two minutes for him to pass out, another twenty for brain death. That was more than enough time to lop a head off. Much as I wanted to watch him die, I didn’t particularly want a floor view.
A shadow grew along the floor on my left, distorting against the broken plasterboard Jenkins would never be cleaning. I saw the distended shape of the egghead, the shoulders, the length of the clippers. He was right there, just on the other side of the pillar, about to see me.
I inched away from the column, turned to face the shadow, and hobbled backward, timing my steps with the beeps, hoping there wasn’t anything on the floor behind me to trip me up.
The shadow stopped moving. It lay there on the ground, neither advancing or retreating. The shadow lips parted. His high-pitched voice, disembodied, floated across the dark into my increasingly pathetic hiding spot.
He was whispering, so softly I barely heard him above the beeping.
“Almost over now, Mr. Mann. Mr. Mann. You want to hear something else funny? Way back when I found you and your wife, I thought you’d be the hardest. But you were the easiest of all of them.”
What was he on about?
He went on. It was an intimate whisper, the voice of a sleepy child lying in bed, talking to a parent. “I watched for months, up in the trees, behind the bushes. I saw how she drove you crazy, how she’d push you right up to the edge. But you wouldn’t jump. You couldn’t. You were a chained dog, a poor chained dog. And she was a sadist with a stick. Do you remember that?”
Bad as my memory was, it wasn’t how I recalled things. Maybe that’s how a fucked-up kid would see it, good guy/bad guy, someone to root for, a villain to hate.
It was obvious he was trying to get to me, keep me distracted. He kept cooing, reciting details, telling me what was in our house, talking about the photos on the fridge, what we’d had for dinner, what dishes were left in the sink.
How long had that son of a bitch been stalking us?
“And the hole in the wall from the bottle you threw the night before.”
That I hadn’t remembered until he reminded me. It was the day Booth denied me that
raise, the money Lenore and I’d been banking on. Not getting it meant our debt would keep piling up. It also meant we’d keep holding off on having kids. Forever, as it turned out.
In that sick singsong voice, Turgeon whispered every word of the argument I had with Lenore that night. “You said, ‘Just admit it, you blame me. Just fucking admit you blame me.’ She wouldn’t. She’d say, ‘No, I don’t blame you.’ Then a minute later she’d remind you of something else you’d put on the credit card. ‘I just don’t understand why you had to get that TV set. We can live without TV.’ ”
Every word brought up an ugly picture. Only now it wasn’t just me and Lenore. Turgeon was there, too, outside the window, lurking behind a bush.
As he went on, his tone changed. Something lizard-like grew behind the sweetness. He knew it was working. He knew he was getting to me. Smart. Smart sick fuck. He knew I’d only hear him if I was nearby. He wanted a reaction, any reaction, anything that’d let him gauge where I was.
“I waited and waited and waited. You were a police officer. Your friends were police officers. They wouldn’t believe you did it. They’d help you. But she was so much like my mommy. Mom did the exact same thing to my daddy, drove him away, then drove my stepdaddy away. Your wife had the same hair, the same eyes; sometimes she used the same words, so I had to keep watching. I wanted you to do it. I kept hoping you would. I was rooting for you. Even when I saw her fucking your boss, I didn’t act. I thought maybe it was just a onetime thing. But when it happened again and again, and I realized how much she liked it because she was hurting you . . . well, then I knew I was right. I knew you’d be left all alone . . . like me. I don’t believe in destiny, but it sure was lucky, don’t you think?”
Something skittered in the darkness behind me, breaking the spell. It could have been an echo from the heads, a leaking pipe; it could’ve been nothing, but Turgeon thought it was me. The shadow moved again. He was moving toward it, toward me.
“I took thirty pictures and sent you the best. After I e-mailed it, I had to move fast. I’d timed your commute. Twenty-two minutes, and of course you’d be speeding.”
He was six feet away.
“I came in through the living room window, took your baseball bat from the closet. She was in the kitchen. I was very good. When I hit her the first time, she only just started to be surprised.”
Four feet.
“I hit her on the side of the head, but she fought. Even when she went down, she was still conscious. I had to keep going. I had to make sure she wouldn’t scream.”
Three feet. Judging from the shadow, his head was angled not at me, but at the darkness where the sound came from.
“She scratched and kicked and clawed. She called out for help, but only once.”
Two. He should have seen me by now, but he didn’t see me. I was a thing.
“She didn’t call for you, though. That’s how I knew this was the most right thing I’d done since my own mommy.”
I was a thing, and he wasn’t a shadow anymore. As he came around the corner of the pillar, I saw his lips moving. “ ‘Tom,’ she called out, ‘Tom!’ ”
A wave washed over me; I thought it was nausea, or the electric syrup, but it was rage, stronger than any chak was supposed to feel. Before the sick feeling could kick in, I rushed around the far side of the pillar, thinking I’d be behind him.
He whirled too quickly. All at once there was some distance between us and I was facing the open blades. They snapped closed as I hobbled back, pinching a tiny piece from my neck.
My foot slipped sideways, off the broken ankle. The basement spun. Next thing I knew I was on my back. The capsule flew into the back of my throat and I nearly swallowed it.
Turgeon opened the blades and came forward.
I coughed, trying to hack the vial back into my mouth. The pain in my mouth got into a fight with the pain in my ankle over who’d get me killed first. I put my palms and my good foot to the floor and pulled myself away, moving backward like a big, sickly, hobbled spider.
My right hand hit something heavy, a two-by-four. It was full of nails. I knew because one pierced my palm when I grabbed it. It stung, but that didn’t stop me from swinging. I slammed Turgeon in the calf. He screamed, again looked like he would cry, then stepped back. I swung again, hitting the clippers hard enough to make them clamp shut.
Nail still through my palm, I wedged the wood under my armpit and forced myself to standing. This time I didn’t run; I lurched forward, toward the opening blades. I didn’t give a fuck about my head anymore.
Turgeon shivered with glee at the sight of me. He had the blades open and out, half expecting I’d run straight into them. Instead, I swung the board again, knocking the clippers away. Then I grabbed his shoulder, crushed the vial between my teeth, and sprayed green poison and glass shards right in his face.
His egghead doused in the oily liquid, he pulled away, sputtering, and rushed into the darkness. I could feel a small bit of the viscous stuff clinging to the insides of my cheeks. I shut my mouth, in case he needed another whiff, and, using my two-by-four crutch, hobbled after him.
I heard steps, then silence, then that skittering again. What was he up to? Crap. I glanced back at where the clippers had fallen. They were gone. Dead man or not, he had them again.
How much longer until two minutes were up? Could he still get me? I had to hide and wait him out. I stepped along, no longer sure whether my foot was attached or I was walking on leg bone.
When I passed by one of the plastic sheets, something moved right behind it. Thinking it had to be him, I whirled, pulled the sheet away, and exhaled the last of the poison.
Only it wasn’t Turgeon. It was Misty.
Somehow she’d found me, even down here, even in the dark. She gasped when I surprised her, took a deep breath, then smiled when she realized it was me, not knowing I’d just killed her.
Maybe it was the deep breath she took, but the VX seemed to work on her a lot faster than I thought it could. A few seconds later, her eyelids fluttered.
32
“Misty.”
Her lips parted, but without a word, she fell. Too shocked to catch her, I threw myself onto the cold floor beside her. A long, stringy trail of saliva dripped from the side of her open mouth.
“Misty?”
I’d already exhaled most of the gas. There was only a little left, not even a full dose. Maybe she’d be okay. Right? She had to be.
I slapped her hand, felt her forehead, pulled back an eyelid. Her pupil was a pinprick, a distant black star surrounded by hazel. I said her name a few times more. She started twitching. I couldn’t tell if she was responding or having some kind of seizure.
I hooked my arms under hers, pulled, and half crawled. After what seemed a million years, we reached the dolly. The timer was beeping its little head off, like an oven screaming that the cookies were ready and about to burn.
Fuck it. I grabbed the round plastic thing and jabbed the first button. I thought the next thing I’d see would be a flash followed by a whole lot of nothing, but the beeping stopped. No ka-boom. If only everything else were that easy.
I pulled the bomb off the dolly and yanked Misty on. My right foot was no longer good for much except dangling from my ankle by a flap of skin and muscle, so I grabbed the handle and hopped as I pushed. As we moved, I listed and groaned just like a zombie should.
After all, that’s what I was, right? A grade-B monster.
The wheels wobbled, crunched on plaster, loud now that the vacuums were off. I pushed Misty from shadow to light, shadow to light. At the end of the maze, I pounded the elevator button like it was Turgeon’s head. He had to be dead by now, but nerve gas had been too good for him. I should find his body and use the cash he’d given me to bring him back just so I could kill him again. For Lenore. For Misty. For Nell, Frank, and Colin.
For the hell of it.
By the time the doors opened, Misty didn’t look like she was breathing. I wheeled her
in and slammed the button marked ER. The door didn’t close fast enough, so I pulled it, so hard I nearly took it off its guide. Stupid. Fucking stupid. If I’d broken it, we’d have been stuck down here.
The car jerked, then moved up, slower than a snail. Misty looked still. A kind of body memory kicked in. I pressed on her chest three times, held her nose, and blew into her mouth. It was CPR, but at the time I didn’t remember the initials or what they meant.
How had she found me? Of course. I’d called her on the phone, and she tracked me through the GPS in it. I was sorry she had talked me into getting the damn thing. Did she bring the cops? No. They wouldn’t have let her in here at all. The phone, where was it? Back in the parking lot. I searched for hers, but couldn’t find it.
I stared at her face. She looked like she was sleeping, sleeping without air. Poor thing probably inhaled enough asbestos to kill her all over again in a year just by coming down here.
But I had to remember she wasn’t like me. She was alive, still alive. She could heal. That meant there was hope. And she was strong. Crack hadn’t killed her; maybe the gas couldn’t, either. I kept up the compressions, the breathing.
Did it help? I didn’t know. I only knew I couldn’t risk doing nothing.
Forever passed before the doors opened on an empty ER hallway. There was less dust in the air here, but still enough for the sunlight to illuminate. I did my grunting one-legged dance, got the dolly to a desk, and grabbed the phone. Dead, to coin a phrase.
I had to find help. There had to be something someone could do. I wheeled her toward the Exit signs, stopping twice for more compressions and breathing. We passed the examination area: two rows of cold hospital beds, white and silver. Some had sheets so tight it was obvious no one had ever used them. Others had curtains drawn around, like they were hiding something ugly. I thought about laying her down in one to make her more comfortable while I tried to get help, but I realized no one living would want to come in here.
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