Part 20 (1/2)

I was already feeling like s.h.i.+t. Last night's Jack Daniels was a rotten lump in my stomach and I wanted nothing more than another pull. On something, on anything, to keep it all down, to keep it all settled. When I asked, they both shook their heads and Trent repeated that giggling, hysterical laugh. He told me ”Just wait, buddy. f.u.c.king wait. We've got something better.” Then they pulled me into the building.

The place had been a high-end fas.h.i.+on store before the evacuation. I would have hated it, I'm sure-all gloss and empty s.p.a.ce.

Somebody had done a half-a.s.sed job boarding up the windows before they fled, and a lot of light still flooded in through the front, between crisscrossed planks of plywood. The gla.s.s in the door had been shattered, and the place had been looted. Or maybe not. Maybe that's how it was supposed to look. s.e.xy destruction, postapocalypse glamour. That type of s.h.i.+t.

Trent laughed and pointed back toward the rear of the store, where there was a short alcove lined with dressing rooms. His laugh faded into a manic giggle, and he started to clench and unclench his hands compulsively. He was f.u.c.ked up-quite obviously f.u.c.ked up on something hard-and there was a very bad energy coming from him.

I should have left right then. I should have run away. And there was a dim voice in my head telling me to do just that. But there was another voice in there, too, this one more insistent, telling me to continue on. (And maybe that was my true voice, trying to give me what I deserved. Doom. Destruction.)

There was a sound in the back of the room. A mewling. At first I thought there was a kitten back there, cowering in one of the dressing rooms. That's what it sounded like, a sick, tiny kitten. Mewling, chewing on the air.

f.u.c.k. A kitten. If only that had been it.

In the dressing room there was a kid. No, that's not right. It was a thing, not a kid. Really, I don't know what it was. The light was dim, but I could see that it was wearing ragged pants and nothing else. It was smaller than me, and it was cowering in the corner, s.h.i.+vering. Its skin was pasty white, almost glowing in the gloom. And that skin, it looked thin and brittle, like paper stretched over a Halloween skeleton.

Johnny pulled a syringe from his pocket, and Trent, still laughing like a f.u.c.king hyena, rushed the kid the thing and pushed it down to the ground holding his shoulders. Johnny's syringe was nasty. The needle was f.u.c.king bent. I didn't move, I couldn't f.u.c.king move. And Johnny squatted down and grabbed the thing's arm. And its mewling got worse. It was a keening, a squeal, like a pig in a slaughterhouse. It started to struggle and a stench filled the dressing room as it s.h.i.+t its pants.

”Help him,” Johnny said. ”Hold it down.”

I moved, on autopilot, and grabbed its legs. They felt like tree branches wrapped in canvas. I held it down as it tried to kick. And Johnny

f.u.c.k, I can't write this. Tomorrow. I'll try again tomorrow.

I tried to visit Taylor last night, but I didn't make it past the sidewalk in front of the house. The front window was bright with light from a fire, and I could hear laughter from the living room. Mac's drone. Amanda's t.i.tter. Taylor's voice, clear and sharp as ever.

It was cold outside and I was, mostly, sober. The whole f.u.c.king world was riding shotgun on my nerves, and I could feel my eyeb.a.l.l.s straining to pop from my skull.

I'm really not doing well. It's that stuff. It's like a toxin in my blood, and it's pooling, growing in my brain. It's not right, nothing's right, and the voices in the house, the laughter, after a while it started to claw at my brain.

I wasn't welcome. I didn't want to be there.

Back to the dressing room. That thing.

It was like a dream. You're doing things and you can't explain why. You just know that that's the right thing to do. No, not right. There's no right or wrong about it. You just know that that's the way things happen, and you do them without thinking.