by Sean Platt
The kid, maybe 20, looked like he had been slapped, then slunk off to wait behind a small podium where he probably killed most of his hours working for the same freaks who had brought harm to her daughter.
A single ring, then: “911, what’s your emergency?”
“I need an ambulance for my daughter!”
“What is your address?”
“I don’t know!” Mary looked around the front porch, panicked, hoping to see an address, or maybe a welcome mat. She looked over to the valet, but realized she had too much bile to say anything civil. “I’m at Marina Harmon’s estate, in Malibu! On PCH!”
A brief pause, then: “What is your emergency?”
“I don’t know … ” Mary felt deeply uncertain, unsure whether she should say anything about the machine or The Church or Marina. She had no interest in protecting them, but the whisper inside her said it was best to say nothing. “ … She just lost consciousness, and is completely catatonic.”
“We’re on the way. Please stay on the line. Tell me, Ma’am, is your daughter breathing?”
“Yeah, she’s breathing.”
“Do you know if she took any medication?”
“No!” Mary screamed, and was so annoyed with the questions, she hung up.
Mary wondered if she would be able to find Luca, or if Boricio would be able to find him. He had said that he sometimes thought he could feel “a part of the Boy Wonder thinking shit in his head.”
Mary tried to think a message to Luca, on the off chance he could hear her, too.
Are you out there, Luca? Can you hear me?
Rose ran out through the front door with Marina trailing behind.
Rose was crying, Marina seemed scared.
“Oh my God, are you okay?” Rose asked Mary through her crying.
“Does it look like I’m okay?” Mary couldn’t look at either of them, afraid she would scratch out an eyeball or four — six if the valet dared step toward them.
“I’m so sorry,” Marina said. “I have no idea what happened … I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Mary yelled, “Do you even know what your machine does — what it did to my daughter?”
“I’m so sorry,” she repeated, her face a hot shade of salmon. “We’ll do whatever we can to fix this, but you have to let us help you.”
Mary said, “You can help by staying away from me, from us.” Then, through gritted teeth, she added, “Please.”
Marina stepped behind Rose, and the three of them — five counting the valet and Paola — waited in silence for the ambulance to arrive.
In less than five minutes the ambulance screamed to the curb, and paramedics poured from the doors. Seconds later, Paola was lying on a stretcher, and the paramedics were asking Mary what was wrong. She said she didn’t know, while trying not to sob, still certain that speaking of the machine would do nothing to help Paola, and might even invite Marina and The Church to say, “Hey, we were trying to cure her. She aged 10 years!”
Marina’s gut told her to keep her mouth shut and keep Paola’s secret to herself as long as she could.
Mary stepped into the back of the ambulance behind her daughter, lying on the stretcher. Rose tried to climb in behind Mary. Mary wanted no company, but wouldn’t have stopped her. Fortunately, the paramedic did.
“Are you family?”
Rose shook her head. “No.”
“Then you can’t ride.”
She stepped back from the ambulance and looked up at Mary, helpless.
Mary, finding a calm spot in her voice, knowing it wasn’t Rose’s fault, and that she was a link in the chain that might save her baby girl, said, “Take the Volvo. Get Boricio and meet us at the hospital.”
Rose nodded as twin doors swung shut and the ambulance brayed, launching away from the wraparound drive and out onto Pacific Coast Highway.
Thirty-Seven
Boricio Wolfe
Boricio mashed a green nugget into the bowl with his thumb, flicked the lighter, and pulled in his breath.
For being in a state where weed was legal, if not downright ballyhooed with balloons and streamers, Boricio couldn’t believe the Fruity Pebbles, waste of time, barely-oregano he’d managed to score. Boricio had smoked bowls in the best half of the 50 states on the parts of the map that mattered most, and knew how to score without even trying, but he’d had to give it the old college effort to bag crap that would’ve been weak at Woodstock. Apparently, the good shit in the Golden state was going to the stoners with glaucoma.
After a long night spent ridding the world of bodies that weren’t supposed to be a part of his to-dos, Boricio was a cannibal in a mosh pit: hungry as fuck. But he didn’t have a car — Rose didn’t want to rent one seeing as how they could grab a cab or get a ride wherever they were going, and wouldn’t be in L.A. all that long — the only places he could find around the motel were crap shacks where you rolled down your window to grab a bag of food. Weed — even weak-ass crap — made Boricio willing to shove shit in his body he never would’ve been willing to otherwise swallow, but he was especially sensitive after a purging, sought or not, and would rather gobble cunt from a herpes-pocked whore than order a value meal, with flavors made in a lab.
Boricio didn’t want no Walter White wizards waving chemical wands anywhere near his food — snacks or otherwise — and laughed out loud when passing McCrap shacks from Arby’s to Zippy’s: the biggest drug dealers on the piss-covered planet. Ronald Fucking McDonald may as well have been Rapey Raccoon — made up by marketing parasites to draw kids into their cummy webs from the time the tiny shits could say “Buy me a motherfucking toy,” hoping the crack kept itself in their brains, blood, and hankers until after they were old enough to grow out of stupid. Not that they ever did; most assholes’ heads were too packed with short and curlies to know any better, partly because their tastes were crude. They could discern sweet and salty, sour and bitter, maybe even astringent, but focused on scent most, which could bend how a fucker tasted. Chewing sent gasses up your smell holes, so shit foods were filled with fake scents and trash that didn’t belong, which was why the number one ingredient in a chicken nugget wasn’t chicken, but corn.
Right now, Boricio was smoking the weed equivalent of a McNugget, and while he wouldn’t settle for inferior food — he would rather eat a banana and wait for something worth chewing — he’d settle for inferior weed since even the feeble shit made Boricio’s world a bit better.
Weed slowed his brain enough to think. He usually suffered from juggling too many thoughts at once, but weed gave Boricio the ability to pull one to the front of his mind. It slowed his patterns and calmed his disposition, made it so he could intercept and interpret individual thoughts, then turn them like cubes in a Rubik. Everything was better when weed came first: purging, exercise, cooking, eating, and — no doubt about it — fucking. Rose agreed with that one.
Even sleeping was better, and after the beer-battered bullshit of Boricio’s fucked up night, disposing of three bodies when purging hadn’t been a line on the day’s menu, was exactly what he intended to do. Unfortunately, Boricio made the mistake of turning on the news, which woke his ass up right quick.
The story about the school shootings were barely fresh news when some new bullshit went down — a cop in Chicago went full-on postal, walking into a mall and opening fire with an assault rifle, going from store to store, shooting people until he was finally killed by some dude with a gun. The cop had killed 89 people in less than five minutes.
Boricio knew immediately that it was because of the alien. He was infecting people. While the media hadn’t said dick about it, probably covering shit up like they always did, Boricio could feel it in some small part of him that still felt connected to Luca, wherever Boy Wonder was. Though he hadn’t heard any of Luca’s thoughts in at least half a year, Boricio could feel him out there, feel his concern blooming as shit went down.
Boricio had tried talking to Luca in his head, like Luca had been able
to talk to him in the other world, but he’d failed to manage a two-way palaver.
The fan was whirring, waiting for shit to hit it. As Boricio watched the news, he felt an overwhelming responsibility for the women in his life, Rose, Mary, and Paola. He didn’t know where they were going, but he wasn’t gonna let any of them out of his sight until shit had dimmed.
It looked like the Brady Bunch would be getting back together for a very special episode, and Boricio would be looking for Little Man Luca — just as he promised Mother Mary — in no time at all.
But first, he needed some sleep.
Boricio pointed the remote at the TV, flipped it to black, then dropped the remote to the carpet and closed his eyes.
Worry — for people other than himself — was new for Boricio. Boricio had spent nearly all of his life concerned about Boricio, and on Christmas and other such charitable days, a bit more Boricio. After Luca got to “fixing” him, he realized life was more than Boricio squared, and that there was something primal in knowing there was more than your lonesome — a reassurance in being touched, in feeling the brush of someone wanting to touch you, and not just on their way to your yogurt.
That’s what had happened with Boricio and Rose: He knew it the second he saw her, not too long after crossing back into this world from the other, seeing her smile and somehow knowing they were destined, even though Boricio didn’t believe in shit like that.
Rose was the flower in his garden, worthy of all the shade and sun and food he could find, deserving of shelter from every instinct Boricio would squash to give her succor.
Though the shit wasn’t as Shakespearean, it was also how Boricio felt about Mary and Paola, as if they were connected, and his responsibility, maybe a cosmic duty, to keep them from harm. He saw it when he opened the hotel room door to Mother Mary smiling, saw it when a too-young-for-titties looking Paola stood awkward behind her mama, and knew it like he knew the swing of his own sack while standing beside Mary in the garage, sniffing danger around them.
It was odd enough, giving a shingle of shit about one person, let alone three, and now added to that Boricio felt a sudden and indefinable worry for the entire goddamned planet. He shouldn’t have: Boricio was a hunter, not prey. If the world circled the shitter, he’d survive, same as always.
When the meek got fucked, the wolves did fine.
Boricio was top of the food chain, and loved his crown, but it was a lot harder to stay at the peak when worried for others — what they were doing and what you had to do to keep them breathing.
FUCK!
Sleep was impossible: too much on his mind. Boricio swung his legs from the bed, planted his feet on the floor, then launched himself to standing, and started pacing the room.
He wanted to tell himself it wasn’t time to worry, but predator’s guess said it sure as fuck was. He wanted to turn the problem like a puzzle in his hand. He had to do something, figure shit out, couldn’t allow himself to stay clueless. Too much depended on him making the right move, though Boricio didn’t know what the right move was beyond some vague notion of first finding Luca.
Beyond that, he didn’t know what they should do, where they should go, whether they should sit back and stay quiet, wait out the evil, or strap bombs to their chests and get the ticking to going.
Boricio reloaded his pipe, lit the bowl, and inhaled the skunky cloud into his lungs. He held it long enough to hurt, then blew the plume against the glass, losing himself to a laugh as he realized he was smoking in front of the window for all the world to see.
Fuck them, they can probably smell it out in the parking lot, too. I got glaucoma, bitches!
Boricio opened his window, took another puff, blew it out into the Malibu air, then collapsed on the bed, wondering if there was anything he could do about the dread he wasn’t used to feeling in his brain, like rats nesting in an attic. He lay in bed, breathing slowly in and out, circling idiot worries that would do him no good until his eyes finally grew heavy and he heard himself snore.
Boricio smiled, glad that sleep was finally coming.
He would rest, gather his strength, then after waking recovered, Boricio would start looking for Luca.
Behind black lids, Boricio’s world went suddenly white.
He blinked for minutes, searching for focus until his eyes were clear enough to see that there was nothing but sand all around him. High, white dunes and nothing else: no cacti, no water, no oasis in the desert, just endless miles of tiny grit, which for some reason made Boricio think of the countless stars peppering infinity and space.
Like the universe, Boricio could see but a wink of the desert, and knew it went on forever. And even though he knew he was dreaming, Boricio also knew he’d never be able to cross, or track his way through the expanse. Like the universe, the desert was endless, an infinite number of grains, each a bottomless pit of possibility, with limitless ways to die.
In the distance, Boricio saw a dot. He followed, chasing the dot until it grew larger after what felt like an hour of trudging; still tiny, but maybe twice its size. The sun grew hotter and dunes climbed higher as the dot ahead seemed to mock him by growing only farther in distance. Only after Boricio had been chasing the dot for too much of forever did he finally realize what it was:
Luca.
Boricio trudged harder, ignoring the pain in his legs and back, blinding himself to the torment in his shoulders as he pushed through the desert, lurching his body in pursuit of the boy.
“Wait!” he called. “You didn’t fix shit! You owe me a proper healing!”
But the dot kept going, Boricio moving behind it.
He followed for more of forever, until he felt someone or something behind him, quickly gaining, faster than he was gaining on the dot, which was closer now, enough for Boricio to see him clearly.
The boy wore a backpack, and a determined look, face shifting as if things were crawling beneath his skin, reordering muscles as he went from a small boy of maybe 8, to an old man near dying. His shirt was the constant: a husky, snout turned to the moon in a probably howl, though it was hard to see from behind its mask: Darth Vader, but white instead of black.
Boricio felt the something behind him closing in, but he could not turn around to see what it was. Not out of fear, but he just wasn’t able to turn. He didn’t know what it was, but knew with certainty that if it caught him, it would end him.
Boricio ran, losing his balance and spilling his body to the sand. He scrambled back to his feet and found himself back in his hotel room, which was now the size of a planet. He was still dreaming, running away from the bed and toward the door a thousand miles away.
The thing behind him came closer, its shadow draping Boricio, sending a cold chill through him as it grew larger. Boricio knew he could flee it if he could only wake up, open his eyes long enough to grab hold of the real world.
His phone suddenly rang, a shrill screech like screaming from the sky, loud but far enough to mock him.
He couldn’t wake up, or answer the phone.
That meant he couldn’t escape.
And if Boricio couldn’t escape — he knew because the scream inside him swore it was so — then he would surely die.
Then the world would follow: meek and wolves, no difference between them.
Thirty-Eight
Brent Foster
Brent returned the gun to the back of his waistband, pulled his shirt over it, and waited for the elevator to ding.
He’d spent the entire run from Stan’s place to his old one trying to come up with a pitch that Gina might buy. It was 3:35 p.m., so Brent figured he had a while until Jack came home to open the door that used to be his. Brent prayed that Gina was, in fact, in the apartment, and not out somewhere.
If Gina was gone, Brent wasn’t sure what he would do. It wasn’t like he could hang around and wait for her to come home. There was no telling how long it would be before Black Island would send reinforcements to finish what the first Guardsmen failed to complete;
he was certain they were living on borrowed time.
The elevator parted, and Brent stepped through the doors into the hallway, approaching the lock his key no longer fit. He was now a tourist instead of a citizen, forced to knock like a stranger.
He rapped his knuckles on the wood, waiting for Gina, hoping she was there.
Moments later, he heard Ben on the other side. “Who is it?”
“It’s Daddy, Ben.”
Seconds later, Brent heard Gina. “I told you not to answer the door, Ben. Go watch TV.”
“It’s Daddy,” Ben said.
Brent couldn’t hear Gina’s response. He hoped she wasn’t telling him to go hide from Scary Daddy, or worse, calling 9-1-1.
“What do you want?” Gina asked, peephole going dark as she stared through it.
Brent hoped he didn’t look like someone running from the government, as his worst fears suggested. He tried to seem calm, but doubted he was coming anywhere close with his awkwardly plastered smile.
“I need to talk to you, can you please open the door?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Gina said. “I can hear you fine; say what you need to say.”
Brent shook his head. This wasn’t boding well for the remainder of their conversation. He had to see Gina face-to-face — it was impossible to convey the importance of his message through a closed door with a barely willing listener on the other side.
“Please, Gina,” Brent said. “I’m not going to cause any trouble. I just want to talk to you. It’s important.”
“Are you drunk again?”
“No,” he said, trying to hide his annoyance at her accusation.
Gina paused, as if deliberating — or maybe calling the police. Brent was screwed if arrested. Black Island would find out, send someone to spring him, then take him somewhere private to pull the trigger.
“Just say whatever you have to say,” Gina said, not opening the door, clearly growing impatient.