Shocker

by Randall Boyll

  “I got it,” Chadwick blurted, snapping his fingers. “We’ll just dump the bitch in a ditch. Hey, now I’m a poet. Bitch in ditch.” He chuckled miserably. “Anyhow, we’ll shitcan the lady and buzz back in time to take orders. Nobody will give a shit, and the doctor lady’s as good as dead. Maybe she already is after taking a blast like that. Take her pulse or something.”

  Jones shrugged and reached behind the seat, scrabbling around for a wrist or a neck to feel. His fingers found only warm vinyl.

  “Where’d she go?” he said, and turned around to look.

  She was there, alright. Only now she was slightly different. She was sitting up. Her hair stood out in wild tangles, hairy spokes that framed a face gone gray as ash. Her eyes were bulging. She grinned at Jones.

  “What’s up, Doc?” she said in a deep baritone voice.

  “What the shit?” Jones squeaked. As far as last words go, these seemed as good as any. She lunged with a terrifying shriek and clamped her hands around his head, wrenching it around. Jones grimaced in agony. There was a large wet snap, and he died as he had lived, not knowing what was going on.

  Chadwick shrank away, his eyes bright and wild. “What the hell are you doing?” he bellowed.

  The doctor looked at him with insane red eyes. “Just feel like a little head, sport!”

  She gave another twist and Jones’s head tore away. She tossed it to the floor. Blood gushed up in a crimson fountain, splashing on the roof, drenching the seats. Chadwick got a faceful of it. He scrubbed at his eyes as the doctor clambered over the seat. “Come here, good-looking,” she said sweetly. “Let’s try you on for size.”

  Chadwick screamed as she grabbed him. The car swerved all over the wet road, sliding almost sideways, the tires spouting steam. He felt her hands trying to dig into his eyes.

  “Noooooo!” he roared. Above the noise of his own scream he could distantly hear the blast of an air horn, which meant semi, which meant semi coming, which meant somebody was about to get flattened by a semi.

  He was right, but not totally. The semi was a tanker truck hauling lead-free gasoline, full to the brim, ready to explode at the slightest spark.

  Chadwick pumped the brakes in a frenzy. His hand groped for the door handle. It clicked open, and then there was wind in his face, rain in his eyes.

  When the green official-business car and the tanker collided, there were plenty of sparks. And as observers would later say, it looked and sounded like an atomic bomb.

  Chapter •

  Eight

  One of the observers was named Jonathan Parker. He and Don had been detained briefly by the warden, to sign witness papers as proof that they had been there. They engaged in chitchat with the warden, who agreed that this was the strangest execution he’d ever seen. But Pinker was dead, burned, gone. Don and the warden agreed on that. They shook hands and congratulated each other.

  Jonathan remained silent.

  As the two crossed to the prison gate, where Coach Cooper, Pac-Man, and Rhino stood waiting in the rain, Jonathan saw a huge orange fireball reaching toward the sky, sucking a black pall of smoke after it. A second later a wave of noise and concussion made his clothes flap against his skin, almost made him cover his ears. He and Don stopped, watching with amazement as the mushroom cloud blossomed like an ugly orange flower against the dim backdrop of sky.

  “Holy cow,” Don breathed, and sprinted back to the prison, shouting something about the fire department and a phone. Jonathan jogged over to the gate and waited for it to open.

  Pac-Man was gaping at the fire with his mouth hanging open. “What the hell happened? World War Three?”

  The coach shook his head. “Why would the Russians bomb Maryville? There’s nothing here but people.”

  Rhino shrugged. “Why did we bomb Dresden?”

  “It’s no bomb,” Jonathan said gravely. “I guarantee you that.”

  Don came back, looking ashen. “Fire department’s on the way. They’re contacting other stations for backup. From here this looks like the biggest disaster since the Chicago fire. Let’s check it out.” He rattled the gate. “Come on, dammit. Open up.”

  The electric latch sprang open. Don and Jonathan hurried through the gate while the other three ran for the coach’s big Dodge van. Motors came alive, and then they were racing toward the west, following the flaming beacon.

  It took only ten minutes. Don stopped a hundred yards away, but still the heat was a broiling furnace when they stepped out. Jonathan shielded his eyes, unable to look at the yellow heart of the fire. What he did see were the blackened, bubbling shapes of a car and a huge truck, and then he had to turn away.

  “Jesus,” Don muttered, also turning. “Talk about a wreck.”

  Another section of the tanker blew apart, rocketing flames toward the low, soggy sky. Bits of shrapnel whizzed past Jonathan, making him duck. A black and misshapen car door zinged overhead like a giant Frisbee, spinning crazily, and wrapped itself around a tree. Steam boiled off of it.

  “In the car,” Don said. “We’re getting the hell out of this inferno.” He tugged on Jonathan’s arm, opening the door.

  Jonathan jerked away. The smoking car door had something stenciled on its side, something now cooked and almost illegible. He walked toward it, straining to see, blinking away the rain in his eyes.

  He could make out a few words:

  TATE PRIS

  CIAL USINESS ONL

  A wave of fear washed through his veins like ice water. State prison car, that’s what this had been. And …

  “Don?” he shouted, turning back. More burning junk fell around him, clanging on the highway. A flaming tire fell out of nowhere and bounced across a field to the right, wobbling, belching smoke. It fell over and tiddly-winked a remarkably long time, trying to ignite the weeds and grass. The rain killed that idea. Jonathan looked away from it, imagining for a moment that this must be what a real war was like. It was not a good vision.

  He reached the car and Don threw him inside. Don hurried around the back and dived into the driver’s seat, sweating, cursing.

  “What did you think you were doing? Watching a circus?”

  Jonathan ignored the questions. “That was a prison car,” he said as Don started the car and slammed it into reverse. The rear tires hissed on the wet road, bouncing the car as it tried to get moving. “Prison car,” Jonathan said again. “Was the doctor in it?”

  Now Don ignored him. “Where the hell are those frigging fire trucks?”

  “Was the doctor lady in it? Was she?”

  Don backed to where the road was clear of debris, near Coach Cooper’s big van. He turned to Jonathan, his face tight with irritation. “Of course she was in there. I sent those two guards to take her to town.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Look, Jon, if you’ve got an asbestos ass, go look for yourself. Otherwise keep quiet.” He got a cigarette out of a pocket and lit it up. “Why are you so interested in the doctor, anyway? Pinker’s dead. So is she, and those two other bozos. Go home with the other guys—I have to stay here. Go get drunk or something. Forget about everything. Pinker’s dead as dog meat and that’s all that matters.”

  Jonathan tried to put on a smile, but managed only to grimace. “That’s just it,” he said softly. “I don’t think he is dead.”

  Don made some kind of noise of disbelief that sounded much like a loud fart. He shut the motor off, then turned back to Jonathan. “You’re getting close to being certifiable at the county funny farm, you know. What’s this all about?”

  Jonathan made useless motions in the air. “I … I didn’t feel anything from Pinker’s body when he fell out of that closet thing. It was just a dead husk. What I mean is, it was like it wasn’t Pinker anymore. Just a shell.”

  “Brilliant observation,” Don grunted. “It wasn’t Pinker, just fried meat. Good riddance. It’s just too bad he took so many with him.”

  Jonathan lapsed into silence, knowing it was
useless to try to explain. He didn’t fully understand it himself.

  “Go on home,” Don said a minute later. “Get some rest or something.”

  Jonathan got out, demoralized. Was he cracking up? Victim to some new kind of paranoia? He felt like thumping his head against the car’s roof for a while. At least a fractured skull would give him something solid to worry about.

  The deep basso blast of a fire truck’s horn made him stop with one foot in the car, the other on the pavement. Don jumped out as the truck roared past them and stopped incredibly close to the fire. Men came out and began pulling white hoses out of the bowels of the truck. Water shot skyward. An ambulance zoomed past the car, all lights flashing.

  You’re wasting your time, Jonathan thought. Whatever was in there is dead. To this he added two more words: I hope.

  The back of the ambulance flew open and two men in white suits charged out. For reasons Jonathan could not understand, they began scouting the weedy ditches that lined the road. He assumed it was some kind of formality; since the occupants of both vehicles were obviously toasting, why not check the roadside for bodies? Theoretically it was possible that someone had been ejected during the crash, so instead of burning with his buddies this someone had to be satisfied with drowning to death in a ditch. Why not? You can’t always punch your own ticket on that grim march toward eternity.

  One of the ambulance people shouted, but Jonathan didn’t catch it. He saw one of the men in white race to the ambulance with its big red cross on the side, and haul a stretcher out. The collapsible legs dropped open with a bang. The man scurried back to where the other was standing. They hauled something, some dark thing, out of the mucky water and eased it onto the stretcher.

  Someone shouted at Jonathan. He turned back, frowning at this sudden change in the plot of the no-survivors routine. What the hell had they put on that stretcher, and why were they racing toward the open ambulance with it?

  The shouter was Pac-Man, leaning out of a window in the coach’s van. “Get over here!” he was bellowing. “There’s nothing we can do!”

  Jonathan turned back as if he hadn’t heard. Who could have survived this catastrophe? The lady doctor? And if someone survived, couldn’t they have …

  … have what? Scooped up Pinker’s ghost? Become some kind of Pinker-Zombie? Take a reality break and get your ass home …

  Well, someone could have been thrown out. Right?

  Jonathan nodded. Too much weird shit had been happening for too long. Just one little task, and then back to normal life.

  He jogged to the ambulance. Don was there, leaning over that dark thing on the stretcher. He saw Jonathan and turned abruptly. “I told you to go home!” He mashed a hand to Jonathan’s chest. “Beat it!”

  “Who is that?” Jonathan asked, none too calmly.

  “One of the prison guards. Nothing more. Go away.”

  Jonathan shook his head in a blur. “Ask him what happened to the lady doctor—go on, ask him! He knows something. I can feel it.”

  The stretcher’s legs refolded noisily as the stretcher was shoved into the guts of the ambulance. The guard was moaning and twisting his head back and forth. Light winked off his battered nametag: CHADWICK.

  Jonathan tried to climb in, shoving Don and the ambulance man aside. He had to look, had to see, had to know if this man had the answers to questions that were too bizarre to ask. Seen Pinker around? Did the doc wake up with red eyes? Are you by chance possessed by a demon? No problem, just asking. Have a nice time at the hospital.

  Don Parker reached up and caught Jonathan by the back of his shirt. His shoes squeaked on the wet chrome of the bumper, and then he was falling back. He nearly went down hard on his butt. Feet slapped wet asphalt around him, and there were Rhino and Pac-Man and the coach, looking at him as if he had come unwired and blown a fuse.

  “Get him out of here,” Don said, breathing hard. “Put his ass in bed and keep it there.”

  They hoisted him up. Jonathan struggled to get his arms free. No use. “I need to look in his eyes!” he shouted, realizing somewhere deep inside that he was becoming a maniac and desperately needed sedation. “Just one look,” he pleaded. “One in the eyes.”

  “Take him,” Don said, and they did, dragging him as gently as possible while he kicked and screamed, Jonathan knowing in that same inner place that he had lost it, given in to paranoia and lunacy, and was, as Don had said, quite certifiable.

  His friends opened the van and shoved him inside, making apologies but doing it anyway. The skies opened and rain fell in a solid sheet, rattling on the roof and making headlights sparkle on the street.

  They took him home to the aching emptiness that was his apartment.

  He sat on his Barcalounger, vibrating while his back was massaged up and down, unaware of the time, knowing only that on his television some boring program was showing, some nameless late-night show, its shifting images dancing on the walls like blue fluorescence. His hands were laced behind his head and he was frowning, as if he were deep in thought. The opposite was true: he had emptied his mind of everything. He was, as they used to say in the old hippie days, spacing out. No drugs in his veins, though: fatigue and the relentless onset of insanity had drained him. All he wanted to do now was fall asleep and never ever wake up.

  He clicked the chair off, forcing his eyes to close. It didn’t work. As soon as he began to drift away his eyes snapped open, as if jerked that way by pesky inner springs. He dived onto the bed and mashed his face into the pillow, keeping his eyes shut, demanding that his empty brain shut off for the night. He did not think of Pinker and he did not think of Alison and he did not think of the botched execution he had seen today. He only thought of sleep.

  And it began to come, gradually. The springs that ran his eyelids shut down for the night; the tautness in his shoulders began to relax. He entered that mysterious zone between waking and sleeping, aware still of the television and its sound, aware also that he was entering a dream in which shadows bobbed and whirled, sometimes taking shape and then dissolving, making no sense but beckoning to him just the same.

  Water started dripping somewhere …

  … tap tap tap …

  … drawing him slowly out of this alluring dream where violence did not exist and no seven-year-old boys were beaten and abandoned by a hideous father with a bullet hole in his knee …

  … tap tap tap …

  … and where shadows spoke only gibberish but beckoned all the same.

  He lifted his head off of the pillow, frowning again. The dream slammed shut on him like a noisy metal door. Frigging water faucet. Tap tap tap. Son of a bitch.

  He swung himself off of the bed, muttering, and padded barefoot to the bathroom. He flipped the light on and walked across the cool ceramic tiles to the sink. He cranked the faucet handles hard, thinking of washers and plumbers and when the landlord would get around to fixing the cracks in the ceiling. And by the way, how come you haven’t gotten around to cleaning the carpet like you promised last year?

  He turned, ready to head back to bed and the shadows that danced there all night. Problem was …

  … tap tap tap …

  … some goddam faucet was dripping somewhere. Sounded like the tub now. Tap tap tap. Yeah, you bet. The landlord would be hearing some taps in the morning, and they would be on his door.

  He threw the shower curtain aside …

  … tap tap tap …

  … and had to jam his jaws together tight to keep from screaming.

  Blood was raining out of the walls. Rain like outside, red here inside. The ceiling was wet with it, blood drops were falling from the ceiling into the tub, which was brimming full and splashing on the floor. The walls dripped and ran with it. The showerhead was leaking blood. It bubbled and frothed, oozing out of the cracks between the chrome soap holder and the bleeding wall, running into the tub in streams.

  The water jostled, stirred from within. Jonathan gaped at it with his eyes wide and bulging,
a scream of horror gathering strength in his throat. Alison was rising to the surface, naked, her skin red as barn paint from the blood, her eyes wide and dead, peeking through the scum of bloody water as she bobbed to the top and began laboriously to try to clamber out of the bathtub.

  Jonathan stumbled backward and thudded into a wall. Alison was standing in the blood now, trying to lift a foot. Rivers of blood were streaming out of her hair, dripping off her breasts, falling off her marble white skin that was nearly blue from loss of blood. The golden heart he had bought for her birthday dangled at her throat, smeared with red. Her mouth was a shrunken rind, her hands wrinkled and loose from too much time in the water …

  … grave? …

  … the blood in the tub. She opened her mouth, but what came out was a great congealed bulb of blood that had gone almost brown with age. It plopped into the bathtub with a splash. She stared at Jonathan with eyes gone white and bloated.

  “Jonathan … he stabbed me and drowned meeeee … he drowned me slow …”

  She lifted a bone white leg out of the tub, lurching, almost falling. Her feet squeaked on the tiles as she came fully out. Blood sloshed across the floor, surfing over Jonathan’s bare feet. At this rate, Jonathan thought with a sudden burst of wild insanity, the blood’s gonna leak out to the rug and I’ll have to pay the landlord to have it cleaned.

  “You have to stop him,” Alison gurgled.

  Jonathan, wavering on the tightrope between the chasm that separates the sane from the insane, ventured to take another step and speak to this pitiful, blood-soaked impossibility. “I took care of him,” he managed to say. “He’s dead.”

  She cranked her head slowly back and forth, her face full of sorrow and blood. “You have to stop him, Jonathaaaaannnn …”

  “I did!”

  “Have to stop him now, now. He’s learning how to move … no one can catch him but you … it will be a slaughter if you can’t …”

  Jonathan nearly fell to his knees. “Alison, please! He’s gone! He’s history!”