Cry Havoc (12 page)

After retrieving the machete, he walked calmly toward Meathead. He stood over the blind, lipless freak and smacked the flat part of the blade against his palm as if it were a paddle.

“Nothing personal... ”

His voice was thick and raspy, partly from the smoke that snaked through the avenues and alleys, partly from exertion.

“...  but this is going to get ugly real fuckin' quick..”

He didn't have time to do all the things he
really
wanted. He had to be satisfied with hacking off the arms and legs...  but not quickly. Oh no, that would have been too good for the fallen giant. So he held back, not swinging the machete with as much force as he could, sinking the blade only a few inches into flesh and bone at a time. Not so much dismembering the body but rather hacking it to pieces, one carefully placed blow at a time. Now the once-mighty warrior looked more like some freak attraction from a traveling sideshow of the macabre: a bloody gaping maw where a mouth should have been, the corners extended almost back to the jawline from where the blade of the machete had been slowly drawn across what remained of Meathead's lips; no real limbs to speak of, just jagged stumps that – for a while – had caused the man-like creature to kind of rock back and forth, as if he were attempting to roll away.

But now Richard could feel a pressure growing around his eyes, like hundreds of tiny hands that had been dipped in molten glass forcing the skin to puff outward. They were slowly narrowing, becoming nothing more than mere slits, and if he didn't do something to relieve the pressure soon he knew they would eventually close up completely. And then he'd be left, stumbling through the streets like a sacrificial cow....

He'd considered using the machete, but was wary of that prospect. Despite the workout he'd given it, the blade was still extremely sharp. If he accidentally cut too deep, it could be very bad; and then he'd have no one to blame but himself when the unseen executioner came to finish him off. No, he needed something smaller, a razor blade perhaps. Wasn't that what they always used in the boxing movies Jane had hated with such a passion? Yeah, he was pretty sure it was.

Directly across the street from the inchworm that had once been Meathead was a brownstone. One of those apartments had to have a razor blade somewhere in a medicine cabinet. Or even a little paring knife. Something.
Anything.

He staggered across the street and necessity forced him to rely on his ears, rather than peripheral vision, to safeguard himself. He could hear people shouting, probably a couple blocks away, a woman's shrill scream crying out like the sound of a cougar in a concrete jungle; a slight breeze that had picked up litter which rattled across the street to his right. His own footsteps slapping against the pavement. His own heartbeat.

He started up the front steps of the brownstone, guiding himself with the smooth iron railings by his side. For a moment, he felt as if he'd stepped out of his life and been plopped down in the middle of a slasher film (which he'd always secretly enjoyed, despite what Jane considered to be a reprehensible lack of artistic merit.) It was almost like he was looking at the world through the oblong eye-holes of a mask with everything else surrounded by a perfect field of darkness. The raspy sound of his breath.  The wooden door looming closer and closer with each step. Real John Carpenter type of shit.

By the time he got to the top of the stairs, Richard had to physically tilt his head down just to see the doorknob. But something was off with his depth perception and it seemed like he had to reach much further than he should have before he was able to turn it and open the door.

The inside of the brownstone was dark and quiet; even under optimal conditions, it would have been hard to make out details in the gloom. But his eyes now felt as if the skin around them were pulsating in perfect synchronicity with his heart, each throb sending needles of pain through his cheeks and brow. So much darkness now that he could barely make out the door with the little gold numbers on it. 1A? 1B maybe? Not that it mattered. As long as there was a razor. And as long as he could still see to find it.

If it had been like looking through a mask before, now it was more like peering through the slightly raised slat of a venetian blind. He couldn't waste time checking to see whether or not the door was unlocked. Best to assume it wasn't. He angled his body toward the door and then ran with every ounce of strength he could summon. Part of him worried that with the depth perception problem he simply might slam into the immovable wall but, as it turned out, that wasn't an issue.

His shoulder hit the door like a battering ram. There was a sharp crack, a metallic ting as if something metal had broken off, and the door was flying open as he tripped over his own feet and fell onto the plush carpet of the apartment.

He could hear a child crying, very close. A woman screaming over and over
get out! Get out!

A smell like dirty socks from somewhere.

And then something like the crackle of a bug zapper. Or a mad scientist's lab in one of those old RKO films. Something electric.

I swear to God I'll shock your ass if you come any closer!

That crackle and zip sound again: he could perfectly envision the little blue sparks jumping back and forth between the posts as the woman pressed the button on her stun gun to illustrate her point.

He could picture the scene perfectly, but that was it.

His eyes had finally swollen completely shut.

Richard was blind.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

She had to find a weapon. And fast. Judging from the progression of the fires, the battle was slowly making its way toward this side of town. There'd been a massive explosion earlier and she'd watched as this giant fireball shot into the sky like a demon breaking free from the gates of Hell. It had almost seemed to hang in the air for a moment, the flames roiling and lashing out at the smoke and ashes in the sky. It was easy to imagine the blaze igniting the atmosphere, spreading across the heavens like a giant pool of gasoline set ablaze, blotting out the darkness above until it would seem as if the entire city were simply encased within a globe of fire. Instead, the column below it seemed to be sucked up into the mushroom and then, in the time it took to blink, the fiery apparition was gone.

The buildings of the city had begun to close in around her again, the sounds of the fighting growing louder with each step. For a while she hadn't even heard the gunfire. Or the screams. Or the screeching of tires and rumbling of engines. It had all been background noise, static on the radio dial of reality. Every now and then, however, it had come roaring back into sharp focus as if to remind her that she couldn't allow anything to become commonplace. She had to consider every aspect of her environment if she wanted to make it out of this alive. So Polly tried to concentrate on the sounds, to use them as her guide. If they seemed to mostly be coming from the North End, then she would head west. If the growl of a motorcycle was steadily growing louder and higher in pitch, she would duck into the shadows until it passed. And this method seemed to be working rather well for her. She'd navigated through several blocks without so much as seeing a soul. Or, more importantly, without a soul seeing
her.

Now she'd reached the corner of Bentley and Jefferson. Wasn't that where that asshole Richard had gone that morning? To get the box of supplies? It had to be. She could just make out what looked to be yellow tape stretching into the distance along Jefferson. Two horizontal bands, spaced just far enough apart for a person to be able to stand comfortably between the two.

Fuckin' yellow lines, man. If I never see another yellow line in my life, it'll be too soon.

A sound in the alley to her right caught her attention and her head snapped to the side as her hands formed into tight fists. She didn't bother calling out “is someone there?” like those ditsy bimbos in movies and books. Of course someone was there. The sound had quite obviously been the scuffling of feet.

From the shadows of the alley a woman emerged. She was wearing a tattered dress smeared with the same soot that darkened her cheeks and forehead. Her hair was a tangled mess, as if she had went to bed with wet hair, woke up, and went about her business without bothering to pass a comb through it. In her hands she carried a small bundle: what looked to be a fuzzy pink blanket with some sort of cartoon characters patterned on it; it was cradled in her arms at an upward angle and, through a gap in the blanket, Polly could just make out a round little forehead and tiny nose. Miraculously, it was sleeping through all of this. Which was probably a blessing, actually. The last thing this woman needed was a crying baby on her hands when she was trying to hide.

As the woman stepped closer, Polly could see streaks in the soot on her face. As if she'd been crying and the tears had cleared swaths of clean skin through the grime and grit.

“They turned you away too, didn't they? Wouldn't let you leave?”

Polly nodded her head but remained silent, allowing this stranger to do all the talking.

“I have a baby. A
baby
for crying out loud. I asked...  I asked if I could lay her on the yellow line and walk away. If they could wait 'til I left and take her somewhere safe.”

The woman had a slumped and defeated look which deepened with every step, every word...  almost as if the story was the only real substance she had left and the telling of it was slowly deflating her.

“They wouldn't do it. Why
wouldn't
they do it? Why wouldn't they take my baby?”

Funny. This entire time Polly hadn't even considered the children. Where were they in all this madness? Where they huddled into basements and closets, hiding from the monsters which rampaged just outside their walls? Were their bodies piled among the faceless dead? Or, God forbid, were they joining in on the mayhem, taking out one another just like their adult role models were doing?

“Why wouldn't they save my baby?”

Now Jane, she probably would've thought of the children first thing. That's just the way she was. And that's probably what she'd meant when she kept muttering
those poor, poor people
as they watched the news. God that seemed like such a long time ago....   It was hard to believe it had only been a matter of hours. That things could deteriorate so quickly once set into motion.

“Will you take my baby?”

Polly finally spoke.

“I don't want your baby, lady. You should get back in that alley and hide. You don't want to be out here.”

The woman looked around her, as if taking in the street for the first time before turning back to face Polly, who was now only six or seven feet away.

“Why won't you take my baby?”

“Look, I've got enough to worry about on my own without.... ”

The woman dropped the baby as if it were nothing more than a sack of potatoes and broke into a run. The lost and confused look had disappeared from her face, replaced with a contorted mask of rage.

“I want your fucking shoes, you blond haired bitch!”

There was something shiny in the woman's left hand, the one that had been hidden under the baby. Something that looked sharp.

The woman thrust the blade at Polly but she, somehow, was ready for it. She'd never really trusted this lady from the start. Something about how she'd kept saying
my baby
but never actually mentioning the child by name.

Polly pivoted gracefully on her heel, spinning her body out of the path of the knife as easily as if it were something she did on a daily basis. At the same time, she latched onto the woman's arm and twisted it backward and down in one steady movement. The blade sank into the woman's stomach and she gasped as her mouth and eyes formed perfect circles. Her fingers loosened from the hilt just enough for Polly to gain control and yank it free.

With her other hand, Polly pushed the woman's back hard enough that she stumbled and fell several feet away.

“I swear to God if you're not on your feet and out of here within the next five seconds, I'm gonna cut a bitch to shreds.”

Not a threat. Just a simple, flat statement.

The woman staggered to her feet and scrambled away, hunched over and gripping her stomach as if she could somehow keep the blood from spilling out of her body.

Shit. The damn baby....

As it turned out, Polly didn't have much to worry about in that regard. What she hadn't been able to see in the semi-darkness was that the baby's face and lips were a subtle shade of blue. What looked to be the terrycloth belt of a bathrobe had been tied so tightly around the infant's little neck that it had practically burrowed into the skin. 
The poor thing
.

She couldn't just leave it laying in the middle of the street like some piece of rubbish tossed from a passing car. It was true that she knew there was no place for compassion in her heart, not now at least. But she was still human, damn it. And it was the type of animal who did
this
that didn't deserve her mercy; the kind who would murder the perfectly innocent and then use its body as nothing more than a prop in some fucked up ruse.

She could just make out the outline of a carriage in the shadows of the alley. The least she could do, then, was to place the baby back into the pram. It wasn't a proper burial but in this city it was probably the closest anybody was going to get. So she laid the child's stiff body down gently, next to a diaper bag overflowing with bottles and rattles and....  cigarettes?

She could see the shiny foil reflecting in the bottom of the bag, the red and white logo on the crumpled pack, the perfectly round and white tips of the filters. Like a starving woman who'd just found a candy bar, she snatched them from the bag. And where there's smokes, there's fire right? Yes! Just underneath a stack of diapers was a little orange lighter. God, she could really use a smoke right now.

She shook one of the cigarettes loose from the pack and placed the filter between her lips, relishing the firmness of the filter between her pursed lips.