Periphery, page 14
“So can I.” Although it had been twenty years, he’d recognized the writing instantly. It was the same script etched across the grave marker the votasin had been circling, the marker that was really a xalanthracoil. He hadn’t been able to read the markings then. Now he wished he still couldn’t.
“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Hector asked.
Emily raised her hand and John reluctantly translated. “It says, ‘We will all dissolve within the folds of their glory.’ Over and over again.”
Hector edged forward to examine the phone’s display. As he did, something bellowed in John’s head loud enough to curl him into a fetal ball on the table, hands clamped over his ears. Through watering eyes, he saw Emily do the same. It was only a single word, a phlegmy trio of syllables too jagged and dichotomous for human pronunciation, something between a gurgle and a snarl. But though it was a single word, its meaning was both vast and terribly specific. The vetro, John suddenly understood, had many words for killing. This one involved the insertion of heated metal into the…
“Bitch!” Hector fell to the floor, clutching his left bicep. John jumped to the floor himself and shimmied until his back was pressed against a filing cabinet. There was a hole in the door that hadn’t been there before. A second hole appeared below and to the left of the first, leaving a small volcanic pucker in the metal, while above his head, something hit one of the cabinet doors with a sharp ping.
Emily crab-walked up to him with her hands over her head and pointed toward a far corner, where a second door stood.
“Not without him.”
“I’ll get Hector,” she answered. “Get in the closet.”
The knob of the infirmary door rattled.
“I locked it after we came in,” Hector told them. He pulled his walkie-talkie from his belt and began shouting their situation into it: “10-74, 10-74, shots fired in the infirmary. Man down. Need assistance, goddamnit. Need assistance now!”
The handle shook again, then something slammed against the door hard enough to buckle the upper frame.
“Christ, that had to be more than just a man,” John said, sliding up to Hector and placing a hand on his shoulder.
“Deadbolt’s holding for now,” he said, attempting to wave John back. The radio crackled a garbled response and he repeated their situation. A second jolt separated one of the frame’s corner joints from its housing, the strip of metal unfurling amid a cascade of falling drywall.
“It’s going to take the door right off its hinges.” John grabbed Hector’s collar and tugged him into a sitting position. “Emily.”
She circled around to the officer’s other side and looped his injured arm over her shoulder. Hector’s lips pulled back in pain, but together John and the doctor managed to hoist him to his feet.
“That’s Brutrelli out there,” Hector protested. “Ain’t no way he’s gonna bust in.”
A third blow bowed the entire metal door inward.
“Who says it’s Brutrelli?”
“If any guard is working for those things, it would be him. Who else would be shooting at us?”
The three retreated across the room to the far corner. Emily opened the closet door, and together they stepped inside. It was a small space, barely enough room for them to squeeze into, but this door appeared far sturdier than the outer one, more like the entrance to a bank vault than an infirmary alcove.
“The narcotics are kept in here,” Emily said, interpreting his look. “This thing is built to withstand a lot of abuse.” She slammed the door behind them. “And I’m the only one with a key.”
“He’s not getting in,” Hector repeated. “There’s cameras everywhere. Right now thirty officers are headed this way.”
“If the cameras are working,” Emily said. “And if you were able to get through on your radio.”
Through the closed door, they heard the infirmary phone start to ring.
“I got through,” Hector said. “That’s them now.”
A tremendous crash seemed to shudder through the entire wing of the jail. There was a bouncing, scraping thud that ended in the crunch of splintering wood. The phone rang three more times before it was silenced with a clatter of shattering plastic.
“Down!” Emily hissed, grabbing the collar of John’s orange jumper and yanking him to the floor with her. There wasn’t enough space to take any further evasive steps. The room was less than eight feet wide, and all three walls were lined with shelves. Four shots dimpled the door in a tight cluster, but they did not break through.
“Brutrelli, is that you, you fuck?” Hector was easing himself gingerly to the floor, his gun now drawn and trained at the door.
For a moment there was silence, then John saw the shadow of feet block the light beneath the door. He thought he heard a series of faint taps, like the drumming of fingernails. The taps continued for several seconds, and with each passing moment, the impression of a slavering presence pressed against the other side of the door increased. The notion grew not with a steady swelling, but in distinct stages, as if the thing was somehow assembling itself piece by piece.
“You feel that?” he whispered to Emily. She said nothing, but in the gloom of the closet, he saw her nod. The sense of a consciousness, deliriously inhuman, just feet away had become nearly overwhelming. John realized he was taking deep gulps of air, as if he were something dredged from the sea floor and tossed, gasping and writhing, to shore.
“Brutrelli!” Hector’s voice was half-an-octave below panic. “I swear to god, I’ve got my gun pointed straight at your head. You try and step foot inside here, your fucking brains are going to paint the fucking wall.”
“WE APPROACH.”
In unison, the three shimmied back from the threshold to squeeze against the far shelves in a jumbled mass.
“Shit!” The gun in Hector’s hand began to shake wildly. “Was that the door? Did the door just talk to us?”
“WE ENGULF.”
The words were an insect buzz of vibrating metal as the door reverberated with the utterances.
“They must be using the metal as a resonator,” John whispered. “There’s something in contact with the other side of the door, and it isn’t Brutrelli.”
“Or it’s not just Brutrelli,” Emily said.
“WE DIGEST.”
They groaned in unison as the buzz wormed its way into the hollows of their skulls. For a moment, an unsettling stillness settled over the room. The shadow beneath the door did not move. The door did not speak. Even Hector’s gun was motionless, as if the guard was caught between one terrified heartbeat and the next.
And then the door began to melt.
Little Billy groaned and would have slumped to the floor had Katie not steadied him.
“What’s wrong?”
The vetro’s howl faded and the world began to reemerge from a gray fog.
“Something just shouted in my head. You didn’t hear it?”
Katie shook her head. “No. I mean, I thought I sensed something, like a whisper. Kind of made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, but nothing like a shout.”
“Lucky you.” Little Billy pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his face. “That was the loudest yet.” Glancing around, he noticed an ashen-faced woman standing motionless next to her cart, a packet of light bulbs clutched in one hand.
“What?” Katie asked, following his glance to the other shopper.
“I’m not the only one who heard it.”
After a moment, the woman appeared to regain her bearings with a slight shudder and a deep breath. She dropped the light bulbs into the cart and began moving off in a slow shuffle, glassy eyes fixed straight ahead.
Despite his misgivings, Little Billy had agreed to meet with Katie that afternoon, although his choice of meeting places had been greeted with a moment of confused silence.
“You want to meet me at a Home Depot?” she had repeated. “That’s what you said, right? Home Depot?” Hearing the unease in her tone, Little Billy imagined her considering the possibility that Andrew had saved her from one lunatic only to pawn her off on another.
“I have an errand there that can’t wait.”
Now, as he and Katie worked their way toward the gardening section, he wanted to say something that would put the young woman at ease. She’d been through a lot in the last forty-eight hours, shit that would leave most people reeling. Although she appeared shaken and desperate, her grip when they shook hands outside the store had been firm, her eyes unwavering as she searched his face for something he suddenly hoped was there.
“This errand I have to do, it’s part of a plan to fight these things.”
“You’re going to kill them, right? Wipe them out?”
Little Billy stepped through the sliding glass doors into the outdoor garden section, the heat smacking him like a breathy kiss. The smell of the wildfire was sharper.
“Nothing short of sterilizing the planet would do that. But we might be able to stop something even worse from punching its way into our world.”
“The vetro offalate?”
Little Billy nodded as he approached a long shelf holding various gardening tools. When he turned, there was no one at his side. Katie was several feet behind, her bewildered eyes scanning the space between them.
He backtracked to her. “Katie?”
“How did I know that? How did I know what they’re called?”
He touched her elbow and gently guided her into the shade of a nearby overhang.
“The closer they get, the more our minds sense theirs. And vice-versa.”
“Is that what you heard a few minutes ago? Their minds?”
“Eventually, I think, everybody will.”
“Then you have to stop them. You have to. Even those two words are too much. I can feel them burrowing in my head. Trying to take root.” She reached out and grasped his shirtsleeve. “I want to help. Whatever it is you’re planning, I want to be a part of it. My mother’s in the hospital losing her mind because of these things. My father is worried sick about her and trying to make funeral…”
The muscles of her face tightened. Little Billy struggled to find words of comfort, but before he could offer some awkward and insincere assurance that things were going to be okay, she stopped him with an upraised hand. Katie sniffed angrily, blinked back tears and appeared to swallow her anguish in a single gulp. “What did you come here to get?” she asked after a moment.
Little Billy pointed to a nearby shelf. “An auger.”
She looked from him to the row of tools and back again. “You’re going to stop these things with a garden drill?”
“It’s a little more involved than that.” He began inspecting the tools to keep from having to face Katie’s disbelieving look. He needed something big enough to drill down at least twenty feet, but small enough to carry on the bus. And of course, there was the cost. He had sixty dollars left of the five hundred John had wired him last month. That eliminated all but the hand augers, which was probably for the best considering the noise of a gas-powered tool.
“How much more involved?” Katie ran her hand over a box holding a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar model boasting a forty-three cc engine and a drill rpm that seemed ridiculously fast.
“I’m not even sure we’ll be able to come up with the other… component. Without it, the plan’s worthless. I’m an optimist, though.”
“So you’re going to dig a hole?”
“The deeper the better.”
Katie turned her back to the shelf, crossed her arms and planted herself in the line of Little Billy’s progress. “Rent a backhoe,” she said when his eyes met hers.
He laughed before he could catch himself and lowered his glance, afraid she would think he was mocking her. Instead, she joined him.
“I’m serious. If this is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”
“Two things. One, this job is going to require a good deal of stealth, and a backhoe isn’t going to be easy to sneak in and out of a cemetery.”
“Cemetery?”
“Secondly, I couldn’t afford to rent bowling shoes, let alone a piece of industrial equipment.”
“Cemetery?” Her deadpan tone was inflectionless, but a smile, genuine if asymmetrical, continued to broaden as he sheepishly nodded. She leaned in close and whispered, “Are we going to dig up a grave, Will?”
“With an auger? No. We aren’t going to do anything. Tonight, I’m going to dig a hole with this,” he plucked up the nearest hand auger without bothering to check the price tag, “drill down as far as I can. Then I’m going to cover the hole with some brush, hope no one notices my handiwork and pray like hell it wasn’t a waste of time.”
“Wow,” Katie said with feigned admiration. “You’ve really thought this through. So let me see if I can grasp the intricacies of this plan of yours. You’re going to take that drill—which, by the way, looks like it’s made for digging fence post holes—sneak into a cemetery, drill down, let’s see,” she framed the top and bottom of the auger shaft with her hands, “about four feet,” and call it a night. Is that about it?”
“Well, when you put it like that.”
“And how are you getting to the cemetery?”
Little Billy ran his palm over the auger’s metal handle. “Bus.”
Katie’s laugh chimed across the gardening department, prompting a woman at a nearby seed rack to turn and smile.
“I’m sorry, Will. I’m not trying to be mean, but that is so incredibly pathetic. I can just picture you trying to get on a bus with that thing. ‘Don’t mind me, ma’am. Just going to squeeze in next to you with my giant augur. Can you let me know when we reach the cemetery?’”
“It’s not that big.”
“No driver in his right mind is going to let you get on a bus with that thing. I’ll drive you. And I’ll pay for something that will dig a real damn hole. Aup,” Katie raised a finger between them. “No arguments. I’m doing this and that’s, that. And I’m going with you tonight. You’re going to need someone to keep an eye out while you punch holes in sacred ground.”
Little Billy knew what he should do next: remind this young woman of the risks in offering a man she had just met a ride to an undisclosed cemetery so he could perform an act of vandalism. The absurdity of the situation was, well, laughable, and he was on the verge of asking if her mother hadn’t warned her about offering lifts to strangers with garden tools, when he remembered where Katie’s mother was. And why she was there.
“Don’t you have better things to do than chauffeur me around town?” he asked.
“No,” she said, all levity drained from her tone. “I don’t think there’s anything more import than this.”
Little Billy couldn’t argue.
Ten
Andrew clutched the baseball bat and watched through a sliver of open door as his father stuffed clothes into garbage bags as fast as he could. When one bag was full, he shook open another and continued. Socks, underwear, tee-shirts, jeans, sneakers. Andrew stood in his parent’s closet, surrounded by his father’s ties and dress shirts. When John Tate came for those, Andrew would swing as soon as the door opened.
He didn’t think he would kill his father. He might not even knock him to the floor. But he was going to make damn sure he didn’t miss. And when the bat connected, he knew what he was going to say: “Go then, you piece of shit. Get the fuck out. Mom and I don’t need you.” Because even though he was twelve, he was the man of the house now and that’s what men did, they told their good-for-nothing, family-abandoning, crazy-ass fathers exactly what they were. And exactly what they weren’t.
“You’re not my dad,” he would finish, hopefully as John Tate squirmed on the carpet clutching his stomach or a shin or a limp arm.
His mother stood at the foot of the bed, and although he couldn’t see her, he could picture her clutching the collar of her blouse the way she did whenever something bad was about to happen on television: a murder, a gross-out discovery, a plane crash.
“Isn’t there any other way?” she asked. Andrew was mad at her, too, but in a different way. Why wasn’t she pissed? Why wasn’t she screaming and throwing things? Why wasn’t she tossing his crap out the window? You want help packing? Here! She could start with the guitar case he’d taken—no, stolen—from Andrew’s room. He had no idea what was in it. Not his guitar. The instrument had been left on Andrew’s bed. He’d seen it from the hallway as he’d crept into his parent’s room. Once he was done smashing his father, maybe he’d take the bat to whatever the son-of-a-bitch had inside the case.
“You want the same thing to happen here? Jesus, Lindsey, it was like something out of a horror movie. Every second I stay I’m putting you and Andy at risk.”
“John,” his mother moved into view, placed a hand on his father’s shoulder. For a moment, he continued stuffing clothes into the trash bag. Then his hands fell still.
“John,” she repeated. “Can’t you tell me anything else? What if we take precautions? What if we’re careful?”
How could she believe any of this? From the very start, Andrew had known something was wrong. From that first day when his father had come home after an afternoon of what he called field research, flushed and excited and talking about some major discovery that would change the world, Andrew had stood apart, watching from the doorway as his father paced the kitchen and his mother tried to get answers from him. New species? Undiscovered ecosystem? Perceptual disparities? It wasn’t what his father said that had made Andrew uneasy. He understood none of it. It was the wild-eyed heat coming off him, the glee so weird in a man that had always been cool and a little distant. Over the summer, that father had evaporated, and now all that was left was this nutcase running from things even a twelve-year-old knew didn’t exist.
“I can’t not see them, Lindsey. Not anymore. Everything up here,” his father pointed to his head, “has changed. They’re everywhere. Sooner or later, they’ll catch me looking, or worse, you’ll catch me looking and you’ll look, too. And what if you see? No,” his father resumed stuffing clothes into the bag. “This is the only way.”
