Periphery, page 22
“I trust him,” Katie offered without prompt. “If that’s worth anything.”
“Not me,” Little Billy said. Langston turned and gave him a small smile. The smile appeared genuine to Andrew.
“Nothing personal, you could be on the up-and-up, but I’ve been on the street long enough to know that sooner or later trust will get you killed. Too many things are working against us and we don’t have time to figure out who’s playing for who. If we asked you to back off and leave this to us, what would you do?”
“Will,” Katie chided.
Langston shrugged. “Guess I’d back off and leave this to you. Seems to me, though, you can use all the help you can get. You don’t want another recruit?”
“How much do you know about what’s going on?” Andrew asked.
“Everything these two have told me, plus what I’ve heard through the grapevine.
"Look, we’ve had our issues in the past. Don’t expect me to apologize for any of it. But I don’t think you stole morphine. I’ve watched you from day one. You may be an alcoholic, but you’re not a junkie. Somebody wanted you out of the way. Now I’ve put you back into play. Don’t want my help, fine. But a lot of first responders know something’s up. That includes the TPD and the sheriff’s department. They’re scared and they’re ready to listen to anyone who knows what the fuck is going on.”
He gave the others a collective nod and turned away. After several paces, Langston turned back.
“One last thing: there’s a big meeting in two hours with all the crisis management coordinators. It’s supposed to be about the wildfire, but I think there might be more important things to discuss.”
He turned his back to them.
“But what do I know? I’m just the guy who put his condo up as collateral to bail you out.”
“I guess he’s going to walk home,” Katie said after a moment, her tone one of brittle neutrality.
“He came with you two?”
“Of course.”
“Your call, Andy.” Little Billy offered.
Andrew sighed. “Sid!” he called out. “You never told me where this meeting is going to be held!”
John finished his conversation with Andrew and handed the phone back to Emily.
“I hope this doesn’t become a habit. I’m getting tired of being your answering service.” When he said nothing she prompted, “So your son’s out of jail?”
Booker and Hector had ceased their restless pacing and were watching him from the foot of his bed.
“Somebody bailed him out,” he said finally. “A firefighter from his station.”
The vetro offalate were pick, pick, picking at his thoughts, poking, probing, trying to pry loose anything they could. It took a constant effort to keep them out. He was afraid to sleep or take any of the painkillers various doctors kept offering. The ache of his broken ribs kept him focused and clear-headed. Whenever John felt himself drifting toward sleep, he would press a hand against his side, just under his right armpit, and the bright jolt of agony would catapult him back to full wakefulness.
They were getting stronger with each passing hour. Louder. The confluence had begun. He sensed the two realities pressing and sliding across one another like tectonic plates. Was he the only one, or had others begun to realize the ground was tilting beneath their feet and it was only a matter of time before everything went tumbling over the edge?
“Water?” Emily asked.
John nodded.
She plucked the cup off the table and held the straw to his lips. He drained it and nodded his appreciation.
“Better be careful,” he said, “or I may start to suspect you’re a big softie under all that gruff.”
“It’s probably just a phase.”
Emily had arrived an hour after his admittance to Tampa General and hadn’t left his side since, spending the night in the room’s vacant bed. The first thing she’d done was remove the restraints securing his wrists to the side rails. When asked if she’d gotten official permission to do so, she told him to mind his own goddamn business. Once his arms were free, she pulled his chart, flipped through the pages, made a brief notation on the last and slammed it back in its slot.
“Anything you want to share?”
“They were going to put you to sleep later today. Now you’ll just be neutered, tagged and released back into the wild. You’re welcome.”
Later, she’d given him a thorough examination, conferring with a striking redhead she introduced as Dr. Janet Cantall, her “better half.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” John offered as Cantall’s hands roved his bandaged chest.
“Have you, now?” She gave Emily a lopsided grin.
“Yeah. She’s tired of you leaving the toilet seat up. Ow!”
“So sorry. Tender spot?”
Hector and Booker had shown up twenty minutes ago, driving to the hospital as soon as their shift ended. Wired and restless, they’d taken turns asking if there was anything they could do.
He understood their agitation, their need to counter a looming threat in some proactive way. Staying centered in the hours before an engagement was often a matter of simple kinetics. Keep moving. Keep pushing back. Keep doing something. Anything. Now, as Emily refilled his cup, the pair drifted to the head of his bed.
“I thought I heard you say something to your son about a device,” Hector said. “Something you’ve been working on as a last resort?”
The remark had taken John himself by surprise, prompted as it was by a sudden urge to comfort his son, to offer him the small relief of knowing the fate of humankind didn’t rest on his shoulders alone. It was an impulsive act of compassion, one he instantly regretted. But looking into the hungry, desperate faces of Hector and Booker a notion dawned so fully formed it must have been there all along, lurking just under his awareness, waiting for the right moment to emerge.
“You two up for a little recon mission?”
“What you have in mind?” Booker said.
John asked them to find a securable location a mile or two outside the circle of xalantracoils, something a few motivated protectors could defend.
“Defend from what?” Hector asked.
“Think Brutrelli times ten.”
“You kidding me?”
“Ideally, something with a single way in or out, with thick walls and a view of the surrounding landscape.”
“So basically, a castle,” Booker said.
“Basically. With a moat. If possible.”
“No problem. Tell you what, we’ll scrounge up a couple dozen knights while we’re at it. A wizard, too.”
“What are you planning, John?” Emily gave him a puzzled yet hopeful look. She trusted him. They all did. Despite Booker’s quip, he knew the two men would take their assignment seriously.
“Less you know, the better.” He shielded his head in both hands, then raised a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture. The vetro were always listening.
Hector and Booker promised to get in touch the moment they found something. As the door eased shut behind them, Emily removed the lid from a dish on the overbed table tray.
“Hungry?” She made a face at the plate of green beans and gray meat. “I can get you something better than this. I’ll send Janet.”
“You don’t need to stand guard over me twenty-four seven. Nobody’s tried to kill me since I got here.”
“You need sleep. I’m on to your little trick, poking your sore spot to stay awake. That’s got to stop. I could put a sedative into your IV.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Put you so far under, those slimy bastard wouldn’t hear a thing inside your head, no matter how hard they strained. And when you woke, you’d feel a thousand times better.”
John shook his head. “We don’t know what they’re capable of. Maybe it would work, and maybe they’d just reach in and yank out my entire cerebral cortex, read it like a ticker tape.”
“A ticker tape?” Emily laughed. “What century are you living in?”
“You get my point.”
“And what are you afraid of anyway? What do you have rattling around in that head of yours that’s so important? The device Hector was asking about?”
John weighed the consequences of his next words for a long moment. He’d put so many in harm’s way already: William, the homeless men he’d enlisted to be his eyes and ears, Andrew, even his own granddaughter. He’d sent Hector and Booker out on a fool’s errand to bolster their belief they were doing something of consequence, something vital and urgent.
Their success was irrelevant. It was their belief he needed. If they believed, so would the vetro offalate once they pried their way into their thoughts. Was he willing to put this woman in danger as well, make her a lure to draw the vetro to the flame of her false hope? She would believe what he told her, maybe not as unquestioningly as Hector and Booker, but enough. And the more who believed, the more unshakeable their faith, the better the odds his charade would work.
He had to try. If Andrew managed to sound the alarm at this meeting of emergency officials, there’d be a spike of activity around the xalantracoils. The night would provide safety as the bilantu slumbered. At dawn, however, anyone near a coil would become a target. If he could draw at least a few of them off it might make a difference, give someone the extra minutes needed to finish setting a charge, connect a cord, press the big red button.
Perhaps it was idiotic to think anything he did would make a goddamn bit of difference, but they were paying attention. Oh yes: pick, pick, picking. Always. They might be ninety-eight percent certain he could do them no harm, but there was still a sliver of doubt. He could feel that, too. He and the vetro were becoming as intimate as lovers.
Belief and doubt. Hers. Ours. Theirs. In the end, it might all come down to who was better at fooling themselves.
“I have something I’ve been working on for the last fifteen years,” he said finally. “A device, yes, of last resort if everything else fails.”
“And this whatever can stop the invasion?”
“It might be able to collapse the passage from their world to ours. I won’t know until the time comes.”
Emily’s eyes roamed over his face. John held her gaze.
“And the place you sent Hector and Booker to find. That’s where you want to set it up?”
“Yes.”
Emily unholstered her phone.
“Who you texting?”
“Janet. She can buy you some clothes before she picks up dinner. There’s no way I’ll be able to sneak you out of here wearing nothing but a hospital gown.”
Seventeen
“What am I seeing?” Andrew asked in a hoarse whisper. Little Billy exchanged a glance with Katie and she offered him a small, strained grin. There were dark circles under her eyes; her hair hung limply around her sweat-sheened face; her lips were cracked; her skin blotchy. Their prolonged exposure to the xalantracoils was taking its toll. Little Billy could feel his vitality leeching away a little more each time they ventured too close, a creeping weariness that settled in his bones and lingered long after retreating to a safer distance.
“We think it’s little bits of their world emerging into ours.”
The coil appeared to quiver in the roiling air. Its pulsing was faster than before, brighter, a kiln door opening and closing. Opening and closing. Yet there was no heat. If anything, the temperature around the device was a few degrees cooler than anywhere else. Maybe it was absorbing heat the same way it was absorbing their strength, using it as an additional source of power.
From the coil’s tip, the bubble swelled. Its surface was semi-reflective, but there was no mistaking the scorched plain shimmering inside. Little Billy had woken from countless nightmares with that hellish landscape fading into the surrounding night.
The excretion elongated to nearly four feet before separating. As it floated up, Little Billy began to count. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. He reached seven Mississippi before it imploded with a low whoosh. Yesterday, none of the orbs had lasted longer than five seconds.
“They’re all doing this?” Andrew’s lip was seeping blood. He absentmindedly swiped the back of his hand across it, leaving a red smear to his jawline.
“All the ones we’ve seen.”
“For how long?”
“Two days. But not at night. They shut down after sunset.”
“Why aren’t people screaming about this on the news?”
“You don’t feel it?” Katie asked. She had edged up to Little Billy as he spoke. Now she rested her head on his shoulder, and at her touch a small surge of energy thrummed in his chest. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, ignoring the quick lift of Andrew’s brow.
“That repulser vibe they give off is stronger," she continued. "We never see people around them anymore, no matter where they are. Never. Traffic will actually swerve from the ones next to a street. Ever see what pepper flakes in a bowl of water do when you dip in a bar of soap? It’s like that.”
“How much time do we have left?”
“I think maybe all the smoke haze has slowed them," Little Billy offered. "Light seems to be their main source of energy and the light’s been a little less intense lately.”
“That’s just wishful thinking,” Katie chided. “They’re getting stronger by the minute. The bubbles are forming quicker and lasting longer once they birth. I think we have until dawn. At most.”
Another bubble began forming. There was something revolting in the way it grew, twisting and swaying and eager somehow. It reminded Little Billy of an enormous worm emerging from a dog’s anus. It broke free and condensed into a misshapen sphere.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…
When Little Billy reached eight the orb shrank to the size of a baseball, quivered on the verge of implosion, then appeared to stabilize. He watched, mesmerized, as it drifted toward a nearby telephone pole. When he was certain a collision was inevitable, he exhaled. Thank god. But they wouldn’t be able to count on…
“Oh.” Katie pressed her face against his chest. “It hurts my head to watch.”
The disturbance did not implode upon contact with the pole. Instead, the pole distorted around the sphere, bulging outward at the point of contact like rising dough. The rising became an inflation, the inflation a rupture and then, impossibly, the top of the pole was floating unsupported as the bubble passed through.
“Tell me when it’s over,” Katie pleaded. She was shielding her eyes with both hands.
Little Billy wanted to turn away himself. Not just turn away, run away, take Katie by the hand and make a mad dash to safety, wherever that might be. What hope did they have against creatures capable of this? Inhale, he told himself. Exhale. That’s it. In. Out. In. A tendril materialized from the top half of the pole and reached out for another rising from the bottom. A moment later they merged and thickened, clumped with a third strand. A fourth.
“It’s through.”
She lifted her head cautiously. “You could go mad watching that. Why is the pole still standing? Why wasn’t it cut in half?”
“Oil and water,” Andrew answered.
“What?”
“That’s what it looked like to me. A glob of oil in a lava lamp, with our reality being the water. The pole just flowed around it.”
“For now.” Little Billy took a step forward.
“Will, don’t,” Katie warned, but he had already pressed his hand over the place where the disturbance had passed through. The wood was cold, but otherwise unaltered.
“I don’t know what you’re planning, Andy, but whatever it is, it better be damn big.” He glanced at the xalantracoil over his shoulder, already birthing a new glob. “And it better be fast.”
Andrew’s key no longer opened the front door. He knew it wouldn’t before he tried. The new lock was a flat, brushed-steel gray and the old one had been polished brass. But Andrew tried to shove and shimmy his house key into the slot, willing it to fit. The metal grew slick in his fingers and finally slipped from his grip. It landed on the concrete stoop with a faint clink.
“What’s the problem?” Sid asked.
“She changed the locks.” Andrew snatched up the fallen key.
“Ouch.”
He rang the doorbell, waited, rang it again then knocked loudly. The blinds were mostly down. He shielded his eyes and peered through anyway, seeing little more than a sliver of living room floor.
“Maybe no one’s home.” Sid glanced at his watch. The department-heads meeting was in less than forty-five minutes and he obviously had no intention of being late.
They should have taken separate cars and met at Station One where the conference was taking place, but Sid had insisted they rendezvous early and go together. Andrew suspected the move was partly so Langston could act as his bodyguard should anyone try to kill him again, and partly to lessen the chances of Andrew getting snookered in the meantime. Before agreeing to the arrangement, however, Andrew had made Sid promise to stop at the house so he could check up on Grace and Anna.
“She’s home. Her car’s still in the driveway.”
Andrew knocked again, trying to tamp down the panic. Maybe this morning’s vision had been too much for her. Maybe she was lying on the bedroom floor, bleeding from her eyes and ears and nose. Maybe Anna was cowering in some upstairs closet, rocking and wondering what to do. Or worse, maybe the bilantu had come pouring through an open window, an unlocked door.
“Grace!” Andrew hollered up to the bedroom window. “Grace, it’s me! It’s Andy! Grace? Anna?”
“Neighbors,” Sid muttered under his breath.
Andrew ignored him and pounded the door again. “Grace!”
This time he heard a faint thud and a single word: “shit.” Even though the afternoon was still bright, the porch light flicked on. A moment later the door opened.
“Did you fall?” Andrew stepped inside without waiting to be invited.
Grace blinked up at him in groggy confusion. “What?”
