Infected (36 page)

There was an ultrabrief burst of high-pitch as the Triangles accessed
Dynamic Duo,
then nothing.

He felt something inside him change, as suddenly and definitely as the switch thrown on an electric chair. The power structure had just traded hands—he knew it, and the Triangles knew it. He wasn’t afraid of them anymore.

It’s my house,
Perry thought. A confident smile parted his bleeding, cracked lips.
It’s my house, and you’re all going to live by my rules.

Bill’s arms grew
heavy, weak, yet he couldn’t relax, couldn’t let them drop and pull against the blades stuck through his palms. Only by keeping his hands very, very still could he maintain the pain at just below a screaming level. The tension of facing that agony and the fear he felt anticipating Perry’s next move had his muscles taut with stress, tiring them quickly.

Perry started blinking rapidly. He shook his head, violently, like a dog shaking off after a swim. Then he looked right at Bill, his bloodshot eyes suddenly wide with terror.

“Bill, help me,” Perry said. The affected accent was gone. It was his friend again, not the creature that was torturing him to death.

“Perry…” Bill fought for the words. He had to act now. “Perry, you have to…call…”

He wasn’t sure how long he had before his strength gave out and his hands fell, the weight pulling down against the knives in grinding torture. For some odd reason, that thought rang worse than the concept of a knife through the eye—how much longer till his arms would give out? He already felt the burn, his deltoids and biceps simmering with fatigue. He didn’t have much time, not much time…hard to believe he was going to die like this.

“Call…the police.”

The word seemed
to rebound inside Perry’s head. He’d been free, free of their control, for just a few seconds. He could have kept them at bay, too, would have, but Bill had to go and prove them right.

Call the police,
Bill had said. The mothafuckin’ po-lice.

We told you.

Could they sound smug? They sounded smug. Without conscious thought, Perry let go of his friendship for Bill Miller.

Enough fucking around. He had to get the info and get it now.

“When are they coming for me, Billy?”

Bill said nothing. Perry grabbed a handful of shirt and roughly shook Bill to emphasize his words. “When are they coming to get me?”

Bill’s eyes showed clear and fearful for only a moment, then went glassy again for the last time. His head nodded down limply. He didn’t move.

Perry hit him until his own palms bled. It didn’t make any difference—Bill wasn’t coming out of it this time. Perry felt at Bill’s neck, not knowing how to check for a pulse. Perry checked his own neck, found the jugular, which beat strong and true. He probed the same spot on Bill’s neck and felt nothing.

Kill him,

you have got to kill him,

please do it now.

“You got your wish. He’s dead.”

The informant’s eyes remained open, fixed in a perpetual, empty, half-lidded stare. Perry stood on his good leg and looked at the corpse.

Bill was dead. A traitor’s death, and well deserved—he’d been one of them.

No bout-a-doubt it.

THE CALL

Al Turner fumed. Not only was that damn freak-of-nature kid raising holy hell again, but Al’s hemorrhoids were worse than ever. He’d used what seemed like a gallon of Preparation H, but he might as well have been smearing mayonnaise on his asshole for all the good it did.

“My name is Al Turner,” he said into the phone. “I already called once. I’m in apartment B-303. He lives right downstairs, and he’s been screaming his head off for days. I’ve had it.”

“Sir, a car is on the way. You’re willing to file a formal complaint?”

“Absolutely. I’ve been down there and asked him to shut up and I’m not dealing with it. He’s nuts. I think you better tell your people to be careful, though—he’s a huge guy. I mean pro-wrestling huge.”

“Thank you, sir. The officers will be there as soon as possible. Please stay away from the apartment. The officers will handle it.”

“No problem. I’m not going down there. That guy is a freaking fruitcake.”

STEPPIN’ OUT

We want to see.

Perry stood quietly.

“So whose eyes are working now?”

All of us can see.

He’d be damned if he’d let his balls see anything. That was just too fucking
much.
He slid his T-shirt sleeve up past his elbow, giving the Triangle on his forearm a full view of Bill Miller’s corpse.

Yes, he’s dead,

you are right.

Perry pulled down the shirt and turned to stare vacantly at his former friend. The situation hit home, coming to rest in his mind with a heavy, cold-iron weight. Bill’s blank eyes stared at the floor. The trickle of blood easing out of his nose had slowed to a stop. Blood covered the couch and carpet as if Bill had just come out of the shower, fully dressed with his clothes soaking wet, and sat down to watch
CSI.
Except he hadn’t just sat down. Perry had put him there. Bill’s hands had steak knives jammed through the palms, nailing them to the wall. Blood streaked the wallpaper, sticky, gooey and red.

Oh Jesus, what the hell is happening to me?

He’d killed Bill. Tricked him, stabbed him, dragged him into the apartment like a trapdoor spider snatching a hapless insect back into a lightless, hopeless den, nailed him to the wall and tortured him before letting him bleed to death. Bleed to death while Perry shouted questions in his face. It was a shitty way to go.

He’d just murdered his best friend. He should have been swamped with guilt, overwhelmed with it, yet surprisingly he felt nothing but a cold, icy satisfaction. Only the strong survive, and that little informant hadn’t been strong enough to cut the mustard.

“We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

The high-pitch searching sound echoed in his head.

We need to go to Wahjamega.

It was a strange comment, but nothing the Triangles did seemed to surprise him anymore.

“What the hell is a Wahjamega?” Perry asked quietly.

Not a what, a where.

Wahjamega.

In a place called Michigan.

Do you know where it is?

“Michigan? Sure. You’re in it. I’ll have to look up Wahjamega. Let me MapQuest it.”

Perry turned toward where his Mac used to sit before he remembered he’d smashed it to bits.

“Uh, I think I have a regular map.”

We need to go there.

There are people who can help us.

He felt their excitement, pure and unbridled. Images flashed in his head: a dirt road he’d never seen before, black movement in a dense forest, a pair of sprawling oaks, tree limbs vibrating in tune to the throbbing forest floor—and a brief flash of the green door from his dreams. Another image: a pattern, a set of lines that looked like a Japanese kanji character. The symbol was nothing from his memory, it was
theirs,
and it held power.

Can we see? Show us.

He hopped to the junk drawer. In the back was a much-abused Michigan road map. Most of the Upper Peninsula was obscured by a huge ink stain in the rough shape of a kidney bean, but it didn’t mar the map’s southern area. He found Wahjamega in the “thumb” area that was Michigan’s hand shape. He folded the map a few times, leaving Wahjamega visible, then found a pen (one that didn’t leak) and circled the town. Perry scrawled,
This is the place
. The phrase, and the circled town, seemed to call to him, and he wondered why he had written the words.

He turned his arm so that the Triangle could see the map.

There was a pause, then a brief flicker of the searching sound, and then overflow emotion exploded in his body.

Yes that’s it!

That’s it!

We must go to Wahjamega!

Their joy felt exquisite, all-encompassing, a drug that instantly roared through his veins and pulsated in his brain. The strange symbol again filled his world.

A pattern of lines and angles. The image seemed to swell before his eyes, glow with power like some mystical talisman. Everything else faded away, the world turned to black, leaving only the symbol floating before him, powerful and undeniable. This was Triangle overflow, he knew, but he couldn’t stop it. He didn’t
want
it to stop. The symbol was their purpose, their meaning for existence. They wanted it more than they wanted food or even survival.

They have to build this, and I have to help them, help them build…it’s so beautiful…

Perry shook his head, fought his way out of the narcotic trance. His breath came in short gasps. The fear again, but different this time, different because he’d actually
wanted
to
help
them. They’d been in his thoughts before, but never so bad as that.

He realized he was holding a knife in his left hand. The map lay on the counter, drops of blood blocking towns like the craters of some nuclear bomb run. He saw that the knife tip was bloody before he felt the pain. Like a ventriloquist’s dummy, he slowly turned his head to examine the underside of his right forearm.

In that short trance, he’d carved the symbol into his skin. Three inches long, it shimmered in wet red lines. The deep scratches oozed a little blood that trickled down in thin rivulets, rolling past either side of his thick biceps. He hadn’t felt a thing. He stared at his handiwork:

The Triangles wanted to go to Wahjamega,
needed
to go the way a junkie needs another fix. Wanted to go to Wahjamega and build something this symbol represented, whatever the hell that was. If they wanted something that badly, it couldn’t be good for him. But he didn’t have anywhere else to go. The Soldiers were coming, and at this point one direction seemed as good as the next. The important thing was to get the flying fuck out of the apartment.

Putting his exhaustion up on a mental shelf, he hopped to the bedroom. That strange smell hit him again. A nasty smell, a rotting smell. This time it didn’t waft away on some invisible air current, but lingered. He ignored it—he had more important things to worry about.

He hauled a duffel bag out of the bedroom closet, then thought better of it and grabbed his backpack. Nothing big, just the nylon one he’d used to haul books around campus a million years ago. He imagined that hopping with a weighted duffel bag hanging from one arm might prove difficult.

As he put the backpack on his bed, he saw that it glistened with spots of wet blood. It took him a few seconds to register that the sticky red smear had come from his hands.

He was still covered in blood, both Bill’s and his own.

Time was a factor; he knew that far too well. After all, there was a man crucified to his living-room wall. A dead guy with friends and coworkers who wore snappy little uniforms and who would love nothing more than to put several bullets into Perry’s diseased body, but he couldn’t go outside covered in blood and gore.

He quickly hopped to the bathroom and stripped his clothes. They were soiled with blood, both wet and flaky-dry. Perry felt the burst of overflow excitement as the Triangles in his back, his arm and in…in…in
other places
…looked upon the world together for the first time.

There wasn’t time for a full-out shower; a naked sink-washing would have to suffice. Besides, he didn’t even want to look in the tub and see the floating remnants of the scabs that heralded the start of this waking nightmare.

The last clean washcloth quickly turned pink as he scrubbed the blood from his body. Flakes of dry blood fell into the running water. He turned off the sink, let the washcloth fall to the floor, grabbed a towel and started drying off.

It was at that moment he noticed his shoulder.

Or rather he noticed the mold.

The mold was under the Band-Aids, green gossamer tufts peeking out past plastic edges. The fine little hairs looked like the last downy strands growing on an old man’s head before baldness finally takes hold.

That’s where the strange smell had been coming from: his shoulder. The musty, rotten scent filled the bathroom. The Band-Aids remained firmly affixed to his wound, but under the strip he saw something else, something black and wet and horrible.

The Band-Aids had to come off. He had to see what was in there. Perry used his fingernails to pull a small corner of Band-Aid off his skin, enough for him to get a good thumb-and-forefinger grip, then slowly tore it off.

The flap of skin peeled back; a gummy ribbon of stagnant black goo ran down his chest, hot at first, and ice cold by the time it had reached his stomach. The smell that had only hinted at its power during the past day was now released, a satanic genie billowing out of a bottle; it filled the bathroom like a cloud of death.