“They could be worse, sure.” I turned away from him and began to move forward, removing the jacket on the way. His hurried words caught up to me as I neared the alcove leading into the kitchen.
“Oh, Mr. Whales, I’m terribly sorry. With the police tape on the door…”
A smear of brown, as though someone had started painting the cabinet, determined the color unfit for the general atmosphere of the kitchen and changed his mind, was left on the gray counter and cabinet door. At the bottom of it, what had once been a small puddle, became maroon moss covering a tile and a half of snow-white marble floor.
“…we couldn’t send anyone up to clean. If it’s a good time for you…”
“It’s a perfect time, Jeff,” I raised my voice over a jagged swallow, moving away sideways and stumbling down a set of steps into the living room. The TV flashed on.
“…had passed the bill in a tremendous show of support…”
“Mute,” I said through my teeth.
“I understand. Someone is on their way.” He signed off with another apology as I walked fast through the living room to make the TV turn off. I stopped in the hallway on the other side, not knowing what to do. It was too early to sleep; I didn’t feel like eating. Showering while that spot was still in the kitchen seemed pointless.
I walked around my domain, finally settling on the balcony, the same spot where a bottle of pills had started it all five days earlier. I sat down there and zoned off for a bit, reflecting vaguely on recent events. It wasn’t the most comforting or calming endeavor, as evidenced by the fact that I almost had a heart attack when something began to hum under the chair. I cried out and jumped up, knocking the chair over. It was, of course, only the Auto-Vac.
A minute later, over the tam-tams of my heart I heard the front door open. They could be lightning-fast, these people, after someone else had removed that one puzzling obstacle. There was a woman’s gasp and unintelligible murmur, probably a quick prayer. I stepped out into the hallway, as much out of desire to change the scenery as out of politeness, and faced the maid across the living room. The cursed sucking contraption followed me like a basset, sniffing at my heels.
The woman jumped when she saw me, dropping the handle of her tall, industrial-strength floor cleaner. Something popped open and a cylinder-shaped clip clattered to the floor, rolling through the alcove into the kitchen. Not young. Not pretty. Her eyes, full of embarrassment and horror as though she walked in on me in the shower, shot to my feet and rose up my body in an instinctive, almost too quick to be noticed motion.
“I’m sorry, sir. They didn’t tell me nothing. They just said I need to clean up.”
I gave her an apologetic smile, turning involuntary desire to cover myself up into a gesture of encouragement and consent. With an understanding nod, she gathered the handle and pushed the machine forward. The Auto-Vac, having spotted a relation, gave chase, but could advance no farther than my boot, against which it bumped its mushroom head a couple of times, before I bent down and deactivated the damn thing. As the brief moment of unhumming ended, I went to the study and turned on the computer.
I had 232 messages. It said so on the screen. Normally, a voice would tell me the number of new items in the mail box, but evidently there was no script for two hundred and thirty two.
The overwhelming majority of e-mails were dated today: Monday, October 30th. The overwhelming majority of those had “Congratulations” typed in different holiday fonts in the subject line. I hadn’t gotten that many since I’d won that People’s Choice Award a couple of years back. “Congratulation, Mr. Whales, on account of not killing anyone.” Or maybe, “Congratulations! We are glad the police couldn’t prove…” “Luke, buddy. I just knew it in my heart you weren’t a murderer.”
I scrolled down, deleting them in chunks.
Soon I stumbled on an e-mail with no subject. It was from Jennifer Carlson.
“You know, I kept thinking over the weekend: I was this close to being killed by a psycho ex-husband. Why did he let me live? And today it’s all over the news that you are innocent. So now I am thinking: he did punch Bruce… How can they be suddenly so sure it was not him? Stay away from my house.”
I wondered if she was drunk when she wrote that. She never used to drink. But then, neither did I.
A few dozen deletions down. Subject: Don’t Do It. From: Unknown Sender. I opened it.
“Whales. Don’t try to save them. Even if you could (and you can’t), it would be a waste of time. D.”
I read it and shrugged. Wrong number? Who wasn’t I supposed to save? The whales? My wits? I read it again, pointer hovering above the “Delete” button. Whatever. You got it, friend D. Not saving anyone.
Further down there was a message from Paul Haugen. It read:
“Heard the news. Does this mean you won’t be calling me for another five years? Hehe, hey, no pressure, man. I was glad to hear from you anyway. Glad to hear you’re all right, too. Oh, wait, I didn’t hear if you were all right yet. Are you? Paul.”
Paul! I minimized the mailbox and opened the organizer.
“Call Paul. Today. Important,” I said. Satisfied, I deleted some more messages. There was one from Morgan Chase, titled “I could have made you a star.” Garbage.
Soon there were only two left. The first one was from the FBI.
An imposing, double-headed eagle with a seal appeared on the screen instead of a face.
“Mr. Luke Fredegar Whales,” the eagle said in a well-trained, melodic voice. “This is a call from the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Chicago Branch. The United States Government summons you for a formal witness statement regarding a case of extreme importance. Please appear at our headquarters at your earliest convenience. No appointment is necessary.” He proceeded to give me the address and the phone number. I gestured rudely.
Jimbo’s message was almost as interesting. Only it had his face. Red, cheerful, fake. After he’d gotten through the congratulatory part, he told me the network was willing to consider any vacation requests. That I could show up any time I wanted, but it was no rush.
I was drawn out of the study by noise in the hallway. The maid was pale, but she was done. I rushed towards her, ignoring the TV, and thrust a fifty-dollar bill in her grasp. The kitchen was clean. Sighing and shaking her head she stuffed the money under the apron as I ushered her out the door. Closing it, I leaned my forehead against its cool wood. The apartment was empty, peaceful, normal.
Now for the shower.
I realized two things under the massage of steaming hot water. First one was the fact that I had been real cold until then. Or tense. Or tense from being cold. I felt my body growing, relaxing, swelling with blood, especially the extremities — toes, fingers and so on. The other thing I realized was my stubborn repetition of a phrase “Don’t think of the dogs” in my mind. Although there was no way to be sure, I suspected I had repeated that phrase more than several times since beholding leftovers in the kitchen. So much for speedy recovery.
The good thing was, when I became conscious of my insisting on not thinking about dogs, I stopped insisting it and, eventually, stopped thinking about the dogs.
I went to the bedroom, disconnected the phone, fixed the closet door, which for some reason wouldn’t close, shut the blinds, and slithered under the sheets, intending to take a nap until indefinitely later. “I am back,” I said before closing my eyes.
Chapter Twenty
Brome hugged his little angel gently, wincing from having to bend.
“I missed you, daddy.”
Grace was smiling behind Anna’s back. Brome smiled in return.
“I missed you too. But now I’ll be home for a while.”
“Did you catch the bad guy, then?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Yay!”
“Maybe we’ll go somewhere warm. You want to go to Florida?”
“Disneyworld?”
“Sure, I think we can drop by there.”
&nbs
p; “Yay! Are we going today?”
“No, not today. Daddy still has to finish up at the office. Can you wait a couple more days?”
“Thursday?”
“Let’s say Friday, how’s that?”
“Fine.”
“Let’s ask mommy if she’s okay with that.”
“I’d love to,” said Grace.
“Then it’s settled.” Brome clapped his hands, grinning. Suddenly a worried expression came over Anna’s face.
“Daddy?”
“What is it, honey?”
“Are you okay?”
“Am I okay? Of course I’m okay! Why?” Brome glanced at Grace in time to notice a fleeting frown. His daughter was watching his eyes and turned to look at her mother, who was now smiling again. When she faced him again she seemed ready to cry.
“You look like Gumpy again.”
Grace squatted behind her, pulling her close. “Well, of course he does, honey. That’s why we bought Gumpy, remember? Because he looked so much like dad?”
Brome kneeled, taking the girl’s face in his hands. “I though you liked Gumpy, princess.”
She peered at him closely, the pre-crying pucker replaced with seriousness only a child is capable of.
“I do,” she said. “But I like you more.”
Grace went to drop off Anna at the daycare, whispering to him on the way to the door that he should take it easy. The gentle smile, which Brome held on to until the door closed behind his girls, dropped from his face. Suddenly compelled, he hurried to Anna’s room and found the doll clown. Gumpy grinned at him. Gumpy always grinned. Lifting the doll up, Brome went to the mirror. Gumpy had a square face, and so did he, but aside from that Brome failed to detect any resemblance. We’re nothing alike, he thought. I can’t see.
He passed his hand over a sensor to open the drawer and stuffed the clown inside. He looked at himself in the mirror again. “It was you,” he said to his reflection. “It was you who almost got stuffed in the drawer the other night.” Then my baby wouldn’t have the option of choosing between me and Gumpy. But I got the bad guy. Did I get the bad guy? My gun put three bullets in his chest, so I must have, right?
He reached in the pocket of his red pants.
They had disconnected his IV while he was still asleep. Now, almost eight hours later, the medicine was wearing off. Brome knew it was time for the next dose. He wanted nothing more than to take the next dose.
To take it and become normal again. Become Special Agent Gumpy. Like everyone else, only better. Because he would be a regular fed. Or even an exceptional fed. The guy who catches bad guys fast. Like Brighton. He could be better than Brighton even, if he really put an effort. Sky was the limit, if that.
Anna would get used to it soon enough. She was only a four-year-old. It had only been one week. By the time she’s fifteen, she won’t remember a thing of it, he told himself.
And then, when she’s twenty, when she’s halfway through some half-good college, when she gets engaged, or married, or pregnant, she’ll get her own prescription.
He stared in the mirror. “And why the hell not? The world is a fucked up place. We’ll keep it that way for our kids just like our parents kept it for us. It was not our fault, and it won’t be theirs. We couldn’t fix it, but at least, unlike our parents, we invented a pill that will help our children get by. And they will get by. We’re getting by, right? Doing well for ourselves.”
With that he made a round gesture to show his reflection his daughter’s automated room, an adjustable “one size fits all” bed with a neat stack of pink pillows, toys of all shapes and sizes begging to be touched, windows with the weather-sensitive tint, the wallpaper with six different themes available at the push of a button.
The reflection seemed less than impressed. In fact, the guy in the mirror looked pretty sour. “Stop preaching,” he said suddenly. “You want to take it — just take it and feel better.”
Discovering his fingers locked around the small bottle inside the pocket of his favorite pants, which Grace had brought him together with a crisp white t-shirt and matching red jacket to put on at the hospital that morning, Brome pulled his hand out slowly and studied the label. A non-descript sixteen-digit number. A unique, confidential number that wouldn’t mean anything to anybody else. His number.
He pressed the button, releasing the vacuum seal. The bottle hissed open. A small, round pill rolled out into the crease of his palm. With a nod that almost broke his neck, Brome threw the pill into his mouth and ground it into bitter dust. His stomach turned, but he would not go for water. He remained in front of the mirror, chewing and competing in hateful, challenging stares with the guy on the other side.
Chapter Twenty-One
Millard Fillmore, Director of Operations at the Freedom Corp. facility in Long Grove, Illinois, hurried to the helicopter pad on the roof of the seamless obsidian building, dubbed, lovingly, “Freedom’s Tombstone” by the employees, to meet the visitor. It was the 31st of October, a holiday.
There was no sign of a helicopter, which he had expected, uneasily as always, but there was no sign of the visitor either, which lobbed his uneasiness into anxiety half of the field. The north wind blew in jerks and fits, scattering rare clouds this way and that. On the right Millard Fillmore could see the check point: a breach in a twenty-foot-tall black wall, around the top of which a current of electricity lay in ambush like a python, snatching an occasional bird. Useless, he thought, both the wall and the check point. Put a sign “No trespassing. Military Installation.” Stick it on a pole at the branching of the road and no one would approach within a mile. The guards, knowing as much, were probably playing poker in the guardhouse. Or sleeping.
Beyond the wall, brown and yellow hills rolled south, towards the distant spires of the city.
Could have just come down to the office, Millard Fillmore thought bitterly, turning his back to the wind.
“Can’t beat the view here, though,” a woman’s voice said. The Director of Operations turned around slowly, deliberately. The woman looked Asian and wore a red summer dress with spaghetti straps; the skirt flowed in the wind, revealing slightly tanned thighs. Her hair was raven black, short. She would be very much his type — and they knew that — if only she had been human. He shivered, instinctively checking the roof for a helicopter. The woman grinned. Stupid instincts.
“Yes… we have to literally chase away the artists who want to paint the landscape from here. This is like Mecca for them,” he offered. Her grin never wavered. Humor never extended beyond the greeting. They were like those postcards, with one stupid phrase printed and the rest blank for handwriting. Switching to business, he asked, “Change of plans?”
“Change of plans.” The woman walked around him slowly, failing to notice a sudden gust of freezing wind that almost tore the tiny dress off her body. Following her with his eyes as she turned her back to him and stood, staring thoughtfully at the check point below, Fillmore glimpsed a pair of red lace panties. The image of the dress, convulsing like a junkie as it plummeted down into the courtyard appeared in his mind but only for a split second. He didn’t even reach the image of her, standing there in red panties and probably a matching red bra, something he would find very appealing under more human circumstances. He knew the dress couldn’t be torn off her body, because it was her body, or its body.
Immediately, another shiver shook his limbs. No one ever touched a Sobak. In fact, thinking about touching one was also dangerous. Especially after what happened recently. Word got out pretty fast among humans. Most of the medium-level brass had already heard the hushed whisper about the Dog that got blown away in Chicago the other night. Really killed dead. God only knew what that could mean. God! Right…
Now they send a Sobak dressed like a hot thing to tell him they changed their minds again about Whales. And she’s all deliberate about it. She looks almost sad. It’s a trap, he told himself. Better not slip up. Don’t go running your stupid mouth.
“We were going to act upon a guilty and dead subject.” The woman turned around finally, just when Fillmore, cautiously silent, began to shuffle his schedule in his mind to find a spot for a doctor’s appointment on account of frostbite of his left ear. Slowly, hips swaying, she began to walk towards him. He held his ground, trying to prevent his teeth from chattering. “Now he’s innocent and alive. Therefore, change of plans.”
She was real close now, her thin, delicate nose almost touching his chin. Fillmore labored to keep the balls of steam coming out of his mouth steady and even.
“Are you cold?” she asked in a whisper.
“I await instructions,” he managed to say.
“I trust the structure is in place?”
He nodded quickly, eagerly. “Of course. We’ve been ready for months.”
“Good. Your people will have their first solved case. And it will be a big one.”
Fillmore was beginning to understand.
“I see,” he said. And then, stupidly, added. “Has the replacement been found for Whales?”
She looked up and raised her hand. No steam came out from between those flaming red lips.
“No one is irreplaceable,” she said and touched his cheek. Fillmore felt panic rising from somewhere below the back of his neck, rising and melting his facial muscles. The touch was soft and cold, like a jellyfish, but dry like an insect. It took all of his being to fight the desire to simply run away screaming. “But as you can see, even when you are replaced,” the woman continued, retracting her hand. “We may still find use for you.”
Finally, she took a step back. Fillmore stared, without realizing it, straight down at her breasts. Small. No matching bra. Her nipples poked through satin. Then he heard the sound of her shoes on the roof, evoked, seemingly, for his benefit. With a start, he followed the visitor through the door into the elevator.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When I woke up, I was certain my dream had been unpleasant. I didn’t really know what it was about, but somehow I felt really good that it was over. Still, when I, squinting from a horizontal sunbeam my blinds had neglected to quarantine, looked down over the orange steppe of my blanket, I spotted a characteristic, newly erected mound on the horizon. Since a Scythian tribe passing through my bedroom seemed like a farfetched idea even for my last couple of days, I had to conclude that I had a hard-on.
Project Antichrist Page 14