by Curtis, Greg
What did it mean? Did it mean anything? Or nothing at all? And how did it compare with his having two hearts? He had no idea of course. But as he rode away – trying all the time not to look over his shoulder to see if he was being followed – he had the strange feeling they were all connected somehow. The white haired people. The changes he was going through. The disasters happening to the city. And the dreams. Most especially the dreams.
The dreams were the key he knew. He just wished he knew what they meant.
Chapter Fourteen.
Will lay on the floor of the lounge staring at the pen and paper in front of him and wondered what he should do. Should he laugh hysterically? Or cry? Or maybe both? After all, both seemed like perfectly reasonable things to do to him.
It wasn't the lying down that had broken his calm. He'd been getting used to the fact that he was losing all the flexibility in his spine. And so when he'd finally found himself unable to sit that had just been what he had more or less expected. And at least it didn't hurt that much. The pain in his back, now that it had apparently become a solid lump of bone, had eased. Other things still hurt, his guts especially, but not his back. Not so much anyway. And maybe in time the other things would stop hurting too. When they'd finished going through whatever changes were underway. It was almost something to look forward to.
Until he'd lain down on the floor to do a little more work on his thesis and discovered a whole new problem. One he had never even considered. He couldn't read!
How could he have forgotten how to read?! Will just didn't understand that. It made no sense. But it had happened to him. As he stared at the piles of notes in front of him, the notes he’d written only days and weeks before, he understood them perfectly. He knew what they said. He understood the thought processes that had gone into writing them. But today he found he couldn't read the words. He couldn't write them either. The pen in his hand was completely useless to him. He knew what it was and how it worked. But he couldn't seem to work out what shapes it should make to write a word or a single letter. It was as though the entire concept of writing made no longer made any sense.
Logically he knew what had happened. The changes in his body had reached his brain, and that part of his brain that allowed him to read and write had been rewired. Probably turned to soup. And while that was a terrible thing, worse was the question of what else would be going wrong inside his skull? Or what already had? The sad fact was that the changes were so gradual that he didn't notice them until they had reached some critical stage. And then there were some inside him that he hadn’t known about at all. Like having two hearts. There could well be much more wrong with him and he wouldn't know. There probably was.
Frustrated and frightened Will threw down the pen, awkwardly got up – having no flexibility in his back made the task more than difficult – and walked outside into the sunshine. He needed the sunshine. Something about it helped him. Made him feel better. More like a man. If he still was a man. Some days he wasn't sure so of that either. Not of what he was or what he was becoming. There was a point at which a man stopped being just a mutant or a freak and became something completely other. He suspected he was fast approaching that point.
The back yard was Will's favourite part of the flat these days. It had been even before the disasters had hit them. Yet it wasn't grand. It wasn't even very large. Just a simple grass lawn, a few trees and a small outdoor sitting area – a pair of wooden benches concreted into the ground on either side of a fire pit. Still, before everything had gone wrong he'd enjoyed coming out here – especially in the evenings – and lighting a fire. Letting the problems of the day slip by. Many evenings he, Mark and Richard had sat there drinking a few cold beers and talking about nothing of any importance. This wasn't the place for important things. It was a place to simply relax.
Now it had in some ways actually improved. Okay, so the shed was now a ruin. He might even have pulled large chunks of its remains apart and nailed them into the roof in a desperate attempt to make things structurally sound up there, but that didn't matter. The lawns hadn't been mowed in six weeks and had several larger craters in them. The fence was smashed. But still the garden was somehow more soothing than before. In part that had to be because of the lack of traffic noise. Even here, only a few blocks from the boulevard the noise had been relentless until the ice storm. All day and all night, cars engines had roared, horns had blown and every so often that background noise was punctuated by the sound of sirens. No more though. Now everything was silent.
There were stars at night too. Without the people and the traffic, the smog had cleared away, while without power the lights from the city had died, and for the first time in years he could look up at night and see stars. The Milky Way in all its glory, stretched out across the blackness. It was an impressive sight. And to echo the glory of the heavens at night the days came with skies of perfect blue.
This was looking like one of those days. The sun was shining and there wasn't a cloud in sight. The grey clouds threatening him were all in his thoughts.
Will tossed the kettle on to the fire and hoped that the coffee would help as well. Since he'd run out of gas the little camp stove had become useless to him. So he'd resorted to using the fire pit by placing a steel hot plate – actually the boot of his car after some crude alterations done to it with a hammer had converted it into a table – over the top. The remains of the shed was working as firewood. It worked well enough to heat water at least. And these days that was as much as he needed to cook. He ate fairly much everything raw. The cooking seemed to damage the flavour. But who would eat raw potatoes? Only him.
“Doctor, where the bloody hell are you?!” Will shouted at the air.
He'd been doing that a lot of late as the frustration and fear built within him. But it didn't really matter. There was no one around to hear him any more. In the days and weeks following the fire storm, the exodus had moved into full swing. People were fleeing the city in their millions rather than staying anywhere near the city as they waited for the next catastrophe to hit. And so he'd watched them march past with their packs on their backs and suitcases in their hands, not in their ones and twos, but in their hundreds.
It was a procession of human misery. The sick and the injured. The old and the young. All of them were frightened, tired and sad. Many of them were grieving. They were leaving their homes and their lives behind and with no idea of what awaited them.
Where they were going he didn't know. He suspected they didn't either. The radio was talking about refugee camps. The announcers were saying that if people could make it to the check points – the nearest of them was roughly thirty miles away – they would be transported the rest of the way. But even if they were carried away, what sort of refugee camp could handle millions or even tens of millions of people? And how long would it have to be there? There were refugee camps in the Middle East and Africa that had been there for years. Forced to remain because the people could not go home. Would that be the fate of the millions who had fled Los Angeles? To become permanent residents of a tent city? Will didn't know and he guessed no one else did either.
All day and all night for weeks it had been like that. And now the numbers of people leaving were falling away again, but not because people had lost their fear and decided to stay. It was simply because there just weren't that many people left in the city. He didn't have any neighbours any longer. No flatmates, no friends, no neighbours. The entire street was empty apart from him. Maybe that was a good thing. With the changes slowly working their way through him he didn't really want to be seen. To be stared at.
And he would be stared at. After his eyes had turned completely gold – now they actually sparkled in the sunshine – his skin had also completed its change. Now he was the colour of someone who had spent his entire life out in the sun gaining a tan, and then covered himself in gold dust. He almost glowed in the sunlight. It looked weird, and yet sometimes when he looked at himself in the mirror, he also thought
it looked normal. As if it was supposed to be like that. He didn't understand that unless it was simple insanity. Or maybe he was just getting used to how he looked. But he did understand that no one else would think the same.
As for his back it was a mess. The growth on it was continuing to grow. It was larger now than when the doctor had examined it. A lot larger. It resembled a huge V of raised flesh that ran from his tail bone to his shoulders. Hard flesh. What he could feel of it with his fingers suggested that there was bone in there as well as skin just as the army doctor had said. It was an inch tall at the moment, and while he could cover it up with bulky clothes he wouldn’t be able to hide it for much longer. He knew that sooner or later it would become too big to cover up. As he feared would the ridge of something that felt suspiciously like bone running down his sternum. It was only tiny now, but it would grow.
He needed Doctor Millen. Will knew that now more than ever. But he was also beginning to suspect that it was too late. In fact he was becoming certain of it. Whatever was happening to him was too far advanced. And it was all some sort of horrible side effect of what Doctor Millen had done to him. The army doctor was right about that because no one could think that what was happening to him was desirable. And now it seemed he had brain damage. Another point of no return on his descent into … hell?
Even if the doctor could repair what he'd done, maybe even reverse it, that wouldn't teach him how to read and write again. He would have to relearn it. And he feared that there would be many more things he would have to relearn as well. After all, he didn't know what else he might have forgotten. How could he? He didn't even know that he'd forgotten how to read and write until he'd had the pen in his hand.
In time his mind – all that he was – would be gone. William Simons would be dead even if the remnants of his flesh still walked.
It was over. As he stood there staring at the kettle and waiting for it to boil, Will suddenly knew that. There was nothing that could be done any more. It was time to face the facts. Whatever had been done to him was too much. There wasn't any point in trying to find the doctor now. Instead he needed to concentrate on what still mattered. And mainly that was explaining this to his family.
They wouldn't understand. How could they when he himself didn't understand? And they would be hurt. His mother would cry. He couldn't stand the thought of her crying. Not for him. His father would be angry. But there was no point in anger. And his little brother and sister would be hurt as well. But it had to be. Maybe if he could send them a letter, something that explained it all, maybe that would help them? And they would need help. It was just a matter of finding the right words.
He had a little time. A few more days at least he hoped. And he could work on those words. And when they were ready he could ride back over to the church and ask the pastor to write them down for him. It was embarrassing but it had to be. At least Pastor Franks would be happy to do that. He was a good man.
After that, then what? Will didn't know. Should he think about ending it? It was tempting when he thought about the alternatives. He didn't want to end up a vegetable. But he didn't like the idea of suicide. He never had. Not for others and not for himself. And what would the knowledge that he had given up and killed himself do to his family? That was supposed to be a terrible thing for a family to have to bear. Or should he just ride it out and pray that his death was merciful? Except that he guessed that it wouldn't be.
But there was one thing he knew he absolutely had to do. He had to make sure that Doctor Millen never had the chance to do this to anyone else. He could get through this, however it ended. He would have to. But no one else should have to.
It was time to make an official complaint to someone. But for obvious reasons he wasn't going to be doing it in writing.
Chapter Fifteen.
The banging at the front door annoyed Will as he lay in the back yard eating. He was always eating these days; he just couldn't seem to ever get full. Not for more than an hour or two. He suspected that it was something to do with the transformation. His body was crying out for food because it needed the energy to break down and rebuild itself into whatever sort of mutant he was becoming. And though he didn't want the process to continue, starving wasn't an option. Not only would it drive him crazy he knew it wouldn't stop the change. It would only make it more difficult. Whatever was happening wasn't stopping. In fact he thought it was speeding up. That was why he was so hungry.
He ignored the banging simply because he didn't want to see anyone. Or more correctly he didn't want anyone to see him. The changes were obvious now – the golden tan was unmissable, and he felt like a freak show. The fortunate thing was that he no longer had any nearby neighbours so there was no one to see him and stare. There was also no one who visited him either – until now that was. When he wandered out though, people did stare. The soldiers on patrol, the few people he encountered in the neighbourhood or at what remained of the shops. And at his new internet café, a good fifteen miles away they'd kept wanting to touch him for some reason. He'd told them it was jaundice and that had quickly had them keeping their distance.
As for his family they didn't know about his mutations. But still they were frantic. They wanted him to come home before something else happened, and he didn't know how to tell them that he couldn't. He was never coming home. His father was threatening to come over and abduct him. Not that he could when the entire city and most of the surrounding suburbs were effectively a quarantine area. People left but they didn't enter. So he kept lying to them, telling them he was fine, and that he felt safe. And that he only had a few more months work on his thesis left. Of course since he'd lost the ability to read and write or even sit down he had to tell them that by paying someone when he got there to write his emails for him. Paying them with whatever he could trade. Watches others had left behind, things he had looted from the remains of empty houses. The theft was a crime, and giving so much to others for a few minutes work was another. It was extortion but it was what he had to do.
Why couldn't he just tell them the truth? He didn't know, but he hated himself for his failure. For his weakness. He wanted to. He'd resolved a hundred times or more to just tell them. To get it over with. And yet each time he'd taken the coward's way out and said nothing. He told himself that he had time. But he didn’t. Not much anyway. He told himself he still had hope – that the doctor would come and save him. But there was no hope. Not really.
The banging stopped and Will breathed a small sigh of relief. Whoever it was would go away now, leaving him in peace and that was all he could ask for.
But he was wrong. He knew that a few seconds later when he heard footsteps on the footpath leading around the side of the flat and realised that whoever it was, was determined to bother him. He turned to look to see who it was.
A moment later his visitor came around the corner and Will was shocked.
“You!” It was him! Long overdue and far too late, but it was Doctor Millen.
“Good Lord!”
The doctor saw him and immediately smiled and in that moment Will knew he was screwed. Even more so than he'd guessed. Apparently it hadn’t been a mistake after all. It wasn't a side effect. The doctor had intended for this to happen. Will's hopes suddenly crashed. After all the weeks of hoping almost against hope that he would arrive and fix the problem he suddenly knew it wasn't to be.
“Crap!” What else was there to say? So Will repeated it a few more times as the doctor approached and started examining him. Or tried to. Will was in no mood for that. Not when he knew that this was the man who had done this to him. Who had turned him into a monster. Intentionally.
“Stop that!” Will pushed the doctor' s hands away angrily. “I don't want you to examine me. I want you to fix me. Whatever you put in me I want it gone.”
“I can't do that. I told you that at the time. But you don't need to be fixed. You're not ill.”
And there it was Will thought as he heard the doctor's terrible words;
proof of everything he'd feared. He was screwed. But that just made him angry.
“Look at me you bloody idiot! I'm turning into some sort of mutant!”
Will was angry. But more than that he was scared. Not scared that the changes were irreversible after all. He'd already understood that. Scared that they were going to just keep getting worse. That sooner or later he wouldn't be even vaguely human. Vaguely intelligent. It was easier to be angry than scared.
“You're not a mutant.”
“Look at me!” Will screamed it at him again, almost too angry to think. “Look at what you've done! Of course I'm a mutant! I'm a freak! A bloody side show attraction! And you did this to me! On purpose!”
“You're not a mutant. You're not any of those things. You're perfect. Now calm down and let me explain.”
“Calm down?!”
It was the very worst thing he could have said to him. In fact Will almost couldn't believe he'd heard the doctor come out with it. That he had used that tone of voice. That he was trying to pacify him as though he was a frightened patient. He was talking soothingly to Will just as if he was no more than an upset child. As if he wasn't the one responsible for his condition. “You've ruined my life and you want me to calm down?! What the hell sort of monster are you?!”