Wet wood cracked and split as Lucas applied the tire iron. When the seal was broken, a putrid smell burst from within that even the mask Lucas wore could not hide. A greenish haze arose that was visible for only a moment. He glanced just once at the bony thing inside before taking his position. Julian walked up to the box and raised his arm above the frozen rictus of the boy’s mouth. Bringing a sharpened knife to his own wrist, he made a deep horizontal slice. Blood jetted from his wound to fall upon the boy’s face and into his open mouth. It rained upon the blackened and bloated tongue that protruded obscenely from within.
Closing his eyes a moment later, Julian did not see the loosened flesh and bony arm reach out from the box to take his arm and bring it closer. But he heard the creaking of dry muscles followed by a slurp slurp slurping sound. He felt the thing bring his wrist to its bloated lips as its fangs reached out and it began to drink. Weakened now and already half-drained, Julian opened his eyes to look down at what was left of the boy. His flesh was green and runny, strewn throughout with blackish flecks. The face had begun to melt backwards, giving him the appearance of being mostly mouth. Blondish brown hair had fallen out in clumps and taken bits of skull with it. He watched the thing open its gunk encrusted eyes and a moment later saw the greenish jellied orbs. But even as he watched, a reddish glow began to appear in those melted things. This was the most dangerous time.
Feeling faint, Julian reached for the mug of blood stew next to him and began to drink, replenishing some of what Dugan was taking. When he heard a dusty whisper begin to come from the boy’s throat and felt its teeth bite, he stepped back and lifted his arm. A phlegmy roar rose up from the thing. It reached its blackened hands to the sides of the box in a doomed attempt to rise. Lucas was ready. He stepped closer to the box and raised the mallet and stake into position. The now yellowish eyes did not move, but the faint glow within them did. A grunt that might’ve been fear came from the corpse thing.
“Behave yourself kid,” Lucas said. “You’ll feel better in no time,”
Stronger now with the fortitude offered by his drink, Julian removed the handkerchief from his bloody wrist and once again offered it to the thing in the box. This time, two skeletal hands reached out to clutch it firmly and bring it close. The thing was stronger already. Slurp slurp slurping sounds began again. Lucas stayed on guard.
2
The tongue lashing Arthur received from the DCI was nothing compared to the silent disapproval and disappointment that emanated from his father. There were no pastries waiting for him upon this visit to the home office of Atlas Consulting. And though he knew it quite impossible she knew anything about it, it seemed to him that even the receptionist was cool to his presence. Or maybe he was just being paranoid.
But he did what he had to do. He sat in front of old Rutherford’s desk — a desk it now seemed fairly certain would never be his — and took it. His father looked wan and pale, the result of sleepless nights no doubt spent trying to fix all that Arthur had put in jeopardy. When his father was finished chewing him out, Arthur said what he came here to say.
“I want the uncle,” he declared.
His father raised his eyebrows as if he didn’t understand. It was clear to Arthur then that indeed the old man was losing it.
“The uncle,” he said again. “The CIA has had him from the very start, yet they’ve provided no information whatsoever that would lead to the kid’s whereabouts. Perhaps their heavy-handed tactics didn’t work this time, or maybe they didn’t ask the right questions. Hell, maybe they just killed him. But however it went down, I assure you there is more than enough blame to go around. It isn’t our fault they have been less than forthcoming.”
His father looked at him almost hopefully. His eyes seemed less dim. This was an angle he obviously hadn’t thought of.
“Why, you’re right, my boy,” he said. “Of course. I should have thought of that myself. We can’t be expected to put on a full court press when we don’t know the play, can we? Good thinking. I’ll see what I can do.”
Arthur’s spirits were lifted somewhat by the old man’s reaction. At the very least, it might be enough to salvage something of his and the Company’s reputation. As he walked down the long hallway after departing the old man’s office, he again found himself imagining his photograph on the wall next to his father’s. Maybe someday, right next to his son’s. Maybe — just maybe — all was not lost.
3
For fear of causing any further damage, they didn’t move the thing from its box until the next evening. Although Lucas had applied copious amounts of balm and lotion, while taking him out of the casket, large chunks of skin and hair stuck to the fouled satin inside. In what seemed an unfair trade, equal amounts of torn satin remained embedded within the boy. Putting on thick gloves, Lucas carried the thing over to the bed, where he cut the now toxic clothes from his ravaged body. He used a scalpel to cut away the satin he could not pull off. Over the next few evenings, he saw to its immediate needs, though its needs were few. The boy’s appetite for blood cocktail was insatiable, however, and the dark liquid had its intended effect.
During those first few days, the bloated tongue-thing began to shrink. Cracked and broken skin began to heal and regenerate. Over his weak unspoken objection, Lucas shaved the boy’s head to rid him of what remained of his stringy, dead hair. Before dawn broke each morning, he wrapped the boy gently in a thick red robe and placed him comfortably beneath his bed.
On the fifth day, Lucas helped the slim hunk of skin and bone stand for the first time, on two wobbly sticks that were once his legs. The pain looked excruciating, but it was an important step. On the seventh day, the boy left his room for the first time to learn how to walk again. With Lucas behind him, he walked up and down the long hallway, only occasionally needing the help of the walls to regain his balance. By the ninth day, tufts of hair began sprouting again. To the boy’s own surprise, short blond whiskers began to sprout from beneath his no longer blackened lower lip.
It was at the two week mark that the boy could once again move about on his own without help. He began to wake up each evening as he had done before, finding the tray set out beside his door. It was another week before he made his way to the library and saw a stack of books awaited him. He had no interest in those. However, beside the books were two thick manila folders. Dugan walked to the table and sat down.
While reaching out for them, he smiled to realize he had paused to take a deep breath. One of the cruel lessons he’d learned in those weeks underground was that breathing for him was merely an artifact leftover from his humanity. He no longer needed to breathe. Still, it was nice to smell things now and again. He reached for the first of the folders and opened it.
Greeting him were yellowed newspaper clippings from the last century, seemingly randomly selected chronicles of death and destruction. He went through each of them carefully, one by one. Mine disasters that killed dozens. Cholera and typhoid epidemics. Levee breaks. But even back then, there were follow-up articles that doubted the official version of events or that blamed the government for incompetence. People spoke of night wanderers seen in the days and weeks afterward. Persons who went missing who were still unaccounted for. The cover-ups got easier as the new century dawned. Both technology and human nature brought an unending variety of new and clever ways to explain away an invasion of the undead. Explosions. Air disasters. Crazed murderous rampages. Sinkholes that swallowed entire towns.
Toward the end of the twentieth-century came the cult phenomena and their propensity to commit suicide en masse. Whole towns were evacuated when “cancer causing agents” were discovered in the topsoil. An entire town in Pennsylvania was evacuated from an underground fire in a coal seam. It wasn’t hard to lose a few people here and there when whole towns were evacuated, or dozens of cultists killed themselves. Dugan supposed it wasn’t even hard to lose a few hundred.
What seemed to make the cover-ups easiest as the century came to a close were new in
dustries based on fear and paranoia and conspiracy. Ironically, these often serious attempts to alert the public only ended up drowning out truth from fiction. From book publishing to tabloid newspapers and television docudramas, to the dusk-to-dawn radio shows, America just couldn’t get enough of the stuff. Dugan smiled to realize then that they were their own worst enemy, and that the greatest predator since the age of the dinosaur lived under their very noses. All the evidence was there, but they had chosen not to see. Anyway, the government would take care of them, from the cradle to the grave, the government would take care of them.
It was the last of the newspaper clippings that most interested him. They were from his own hometown of Grantham:
Grantham, Massachusetts – In what state and federal authorities are calling a series of bad coincidences, but what some local residents term suspicious, a train containing Hydrogen Dioxide derailed just outside the small town of Grantham in southwestern Worcester County last evening at about five-thirty P.M.
Forty-five minutes later, as the combined forces of the nearest towns fought that blaze, a devastating accident occurred within the town itself, where a farm vehicle collided with a tanker truck containing yet another toxic chemical. Making matters worse, the accident and subsequent explosion occurred just outside a residential neighborhood. That entire section of town was evacuated, “Just to be on the safe side,” said Roger Gooding, Regional Coordinator of the EPA, in a short briefing for reporters last night. It is unknown at this time when — or if — residents might be allowed to return.
Access into and out of town was restricted immediately, with Massachusetts state troopers placed on Route 495 to the east and on Route 135 to the west to turn back traffic. With entry into town impossible, many commuters were forced to find a friend or family member to take them in, or find a local hotel room, which reports indicate by then were hard to come by.
Meanwhile, helicopters ferrying agents from a host of federal agencies, including the EPA and the NTSB, were heard throughout the night moving back and forth throughout the town. Because of the lack of access, we were unable to confirm many of the details they provided, nor were we able to learn of any injuries or deaths. A press conference is scheduled for 9:00 this morning to discuss the ongoing clean up.
Dugan set the article aside. He remembered only some of it, of course, but that was to be expected. He’d been going through the change — his first, aborted change, he now knew — at the time. But he remembered his friends being there for him: Jimmy, Moon, and Mike, and he smiled to recall their faces. His girlfriend Andy had been there too, whispering to his other friends in a darkened hallway. Then, his uncle arrived with an EMT friend who pumped the life-giving liquid into his arm and took away his pain. He remembered only snippets of the rest: being smuggled past roadblocks, and the helicopters with their beams of light, in what had been the start of their cross country run.
Closing that folder, he set it aside and reached for the next. Thinner, it opened onto a glossy annual report for a company called Atlas Consulting. Based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, Dugan read they had interests all over the world, in shipping, oil, gas, and petrochemicals. Those were merely side interests, it seemed, because their primary line of business appeared to be security consulting, and their primary client was the United States Government. Dugan stopped reading for a moment to stare into the smiling face of a gray haired man who was its CEO.
Setting that brochure aside, he looked to the next set of documents, a dossier on a man named John Arthur. Dugan instantly recognized the face that stared back at him from a Xeroxed photo. It was a face he had burned into his brain. He compared the photos and made the connection. The CEO of Atlas and John Arthur were indeed father and son. Killing his kind was their real family business.
He absorbed the rest of the information included in the dossier, much of it personal in nature, and understood that these were the men behind the black helicopters. These were the men who were trying to kill him. More importantly, these were the men who had taken his uncle.
4
Dugan awoke the next evening and crawled from his sinecure to find a new suit of clothes laid upon his bed. The past few weeks he’d worn only a loose fitting tracksuit. Though he wasn’t where needed to be in terms of his healing, he had put on some weight. It would be nice to wear clothes again. In addition to the black suit, gray shirt, and shoes, there was a thick cashmere jacket to protect against the winter chill. Before getting dressed, he fed for what he knew would be the last time upon the brothy liquid and lean strips of meaty venison Lucas had left for him in the hallway. He packed what few personal possessions he still had, then took the elevator upstairs into the marble foyer, leaving his things by the door.
When he walked into the study, all was as he remembered. The lights were low. A warm fire burned in the fireplace. There was a pitcher upon the table that separated the two comfortable leather chairs. Julian was waiting.
“You look remarkably well for a dead man,” he said. Dugan didn’t smile. Julian continued. “Well don’t just stand there, boy. You are welcome to join me. Or, you are welcome to leave. As it has always been, the choice is yours.”
Dugan stood his ground a moment before walking toward the sitting area. Lucas made some noise from behind to remind him he was there. Dugan took another moment before taking his seat.
Julian reached out to pour him a mug. After taking a long sip, Dugan put the mug down beside him. The two sat in silence for a while before the boy began to speak.
“I don’t forgive you Julian,” he began. “But of course, you already know that. You know I can never forgive you for what you did to me.” Looking away, he added quietly, “It didn’t have to be like that. You didn’t need to do that.”
Julian smiled. “The strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire, lad,” he said. “And one way or another, the process is the same.” Looking toward Dugan, he added dryly, “I can assure you, the bilge compartment of a nineteenth century schooner was no picnic.”
Dugan shook his head. “Don’t try and justify it. You’re wrong. But you’ll never admit it, and because of that, and because of what you did to me, I’ll never forgive you. And if I can give you a word of advice?” Dugan looked Julian in the eye. “Don’t ever turn your back on me. Ever.”
Julian held his eye a long moment before tearing it away. He reached down and poured himself a mug, drinking deeply before he spoke again.
“So tell me, Scott. Did it work? I’ve told you mine. Now, it’s your turn.”
Dugan chewed on his lip a while before speaking.
“I was born Scott Peter Dugan, fourteen . . .” he paused a moment. His eyes crinkled. “No, fifteen years ago. I come from the town of Grantham, in Massachusetts. My mother was a secretary. She died when I was young. My father was an engineer. He took her death badly and began to drink. I was made in a dark cave one evening by a boy named Stephen Harris, a schoolmate of mine. I had gone there to kill him. I was rescued by my best friend and a few others who then alerted my uncle.”
He smiled when speaking his next.
“I too was in the newspaper business . . . a lowly delivery boy, to be sure. But it was a job I took seriously. I lived in a neighborhood called Applewood, and it was as American as it sounds. My girlfriend was named Andrea. She lived on my street. My best friends were named Jimmy Thompson and Moon Lombard and Mike Dolloff.” He paused a moment. His eyes went sad. “I had another friend named Larry Miller. He was killed by my maker.” He went quiet again before adding, “My friends called me Dugan.”
For the next two hours, Dugan told his tale. Julian listened intently, asking a question now and then. He was surprised to hear Dugan kept journals in his former life, and encouraged him to begin again. Before the second hour was through, the two returned somewhat to the friendly conversation they had shared over the past months. But it would never be the same and both knew it.
Dugan had been quite serious in his warning to Julian. The rage and hatred h
e had built up during his weeks in the box may have abated somewhat for the time being. But it would never truly be sated until the man sitting next to him was dead. He took Julian’s silence on the matter as a signal that this was just the way that it worked.
When he finished telling his story, Dugan set down his mug and prepared to say goodbye. Before he stood, Julian reached to the floor beside him and handed Dugan a bulging leather satchel.
“I have taken the liberty of preparing some things for you,” he said. “Instructions for your continued education. Some books that may help you along the way. Lists of others I highly recommend. It’s nothing much.”
Dugan reached over and took the thick bag. He thanked him. Then, Julian reached into his breast pocket and removed a small, filthy canvas bag tied with string. Setting it on the table beside them, he opened it. Dugan looked down and saw that inside were a dozen jagged rocks encrusted with black. There was a dull gleam running throughout each of them. Julian reached in for one and handed it to Dugan.
“For luck,” he said.
Dugan took the nugget from Julian and brought it near to his eyes. From a distance, but growing louder, he began to hear the roar of a rushing stream. His own legs grew chilled. He felt a deep pain in his back. Closing his palm over the stone, Dugan closed his eyes and sensed at first the frustration and sense of failure of the man who had found it, followed by the dawning realization that his dream had come true. The very first thing the man had thought of after finding it was the eleven-year-old boy who was his son. Opening his eyes, Dugan looked across at Julian and saw that much of the boy remained in the man. He held the stone a moment longer before giving it back.
“I can’t take it,” he said. Julian appeared wounded by the rejection of his gift. It took Dugan a moment to understand.
Applewood (Book 2): Fledge Page 23