Periphery, page 36
Little Billy was still bleary-eyed. He blinked muddy tears and beheld a panorama nearly as alien as the one he had witnessed when the rift opened. The city he had known all his life was disappearing, crumbling into a vast crater. The opposite rim was already a thousand yards away and retreating in a series of massive landslides that erased entire neighborhoods and filled the air with dust clouds. To the southwest, the bay was flooding in, brown cascades sweeping away or submerging the broken remains of trees and buildings and cars and streetlights. Little Billy saw an overturned hazmat truck, its lights still flashing, lying at the bottom of the sinkhole amid a litter of broken pavement and wondered how many had just lost their lives. How many more were about to die, tipped into their graves like rubbish from a dustpan?
“How could this happen?”
Katie leaned against him, her head on his shoulder.
“I think we did it.”
“No.”
“With all the blasting. Remember the other night? When we tried to blow up the coil? We ended up making a sinkhole.”
“But this?” He waved his hand before him. “This would take a nuclear blast.”
“Your girlfriend’s right.”
Little Billy turned to the firefighter who had helped rescue him. He recognized the face, one of the men from Andrew’s station he’d met during the night. Terrance Jackson.
“This all started when you set off that last blast. It took a few minutes to really get going, but once it did…” He shook his head in wonder.
“The drought?” Little Billy intended the question as a prompt into whether or not the recent drop in the water table might have contributed to the sinkhole, but Terrance did not interpret it that way.
“Over, I think.”
Little Billy struggled to his feet. He felt scooped out, hollow, an empty rind tossed over a shoulder.
“Is it?” There was no misinterpreting Katie’s question.
Little Billy was too tired to lie. “We’ll have to wait and see.” He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, the scent of approaching rain reminding him of a hundred other storms waited out under highway overpasses and bus shelters, overhangs and public restrooms.
The rain began all at once, a scouring deluge that soaked them in an instant. Little Billy opened his eyes. Nothing was visible beyond the lip of the sinkhole. The torrent had erased it all.
“Andy and his family? John?” Katie’s teeth chattered. He took off his sodden jacket and draped it over her shoulder. He didn’t bother reaching for his saturated phone. Cell towers poked from the sinkhole’s rising water like masts from a dozen shipwrecks.
“We’ll have to wait and see.”
Twenty-six
It took twelve hours for the sinkhole to fill. By then, news crews from as far away as Australia and China were rushing to the site and the local media—those who still had the capability to broadcast—were camped out around the rim, providing continuing, lurid coverage of “The Big Sink.” Officials from the U.S. Geological Survey were quick to provide cutaway graphics of Florida’s topography, explaining in grim and knowing voices how a layer of sandy topsoil overlaying a deposit of clay overlying a limestone base was a recipe for disaster. They pointed out the subterranean blue ribbon representing the Florida Aquifer and described its erosive effects on the surrounding rock as “voracious” and “unrelenting”. The prolonged drought and the resulting drop in the water table took most of the blame for the massive collapse, with overbuilding and poor water management thrown in for good measure.
Experts had a harder time explaining the collapse of the Sulfur Springs water tower. Despite the structure being several miles north of the sinkhole, the two incidents were assumed to be related. Eventually, a consensus was reached. Tremors from “The Big Sink” were felt as far south as Sarasota, as far north as Port Richie. The water tower had been old and apparently in an advanced state of decay. The shockwaves must have been enough to fracture the foundation and send the entire structure toppling into the Hillsborough River. Inspectors would later conclude the base of the tower had been undermined—“chewed through” more than one would write in his report—but those opinions were quickly dismissed and purged from all official documents.
The governor’s approval ratings plunged in the wake of the disaster and the mayor’s response was deemed “pathetic,” but it was not an election year and both would keep their jobs. The death toll, at first estimated to be as high as thirty-five thousand, quickly dwindled as more and more evacuees were accounted for. The total number of casualties eventually settled at fewer than a thousand, although the exact number would never be known. Most of the bodies of the missing were assumed buried in wreckage at the bottom of what would come to be known as Vetro Bay, a name whose popularity was enhanced by its mystifying origins.
Had it not been for the evacuation, disaster management analysts agreed, the loss of life would have been catastrophic, although no one involved in the decision could offer an explanation as to why so many firefighters had been redeployed to the area. At least no rational explanation. No official mention was made of Chief Rodriguez’s early-morning request for a military response to the crisis, an appeal that was met with what could charitably be called a high degree of skepticism.
A secret, bi-partisan commission was established to investigate events just prior to the collapse. Nearly every surviving witness was interviewed, and although their stories were consistent, no physical evidence was ever recovered to verify their outlandish claims and no definitive conclusions were ever reached.
As sightings of bizarre creatures persisted, however, Tampa’s reputation as a hotspot for paranormal activities grew to rival Roswell’s. The resulting boost in tourism helped finance the city’s recovery, and although it was not the sort of recognition local officials would have preferred, when revenues for conventions, tours, specialty shops and niche media outlets were tallied, most grudgingly concluded there were worst things for a city than to be labeled the monster capital of the world.
Little Billy waited in the hallway, relishing the cool wash of air-conditioning from the overhead vent. St. Joseph’s was one of the few places in the city where the power was still on, the emergency generators kept running by a National-Guard-escorted convoy of diesel tankers continually resupplying all surviving hospitals, fire stations, police stations, emergency shelters and government buildings.
He was clean-shaven for the first time in nearly thirty years, and the air blowing across his face lapped his cheeks and upper lip, breathy and intimate. He wasn’t sure he could get used to the lack of facial hair. He felt exposed. Maybe not vulnerable—he’d lived on the streets too long to feel that way about anything so pedestrian—but certainly susceptible.
Susceptible to what, though? John was gone. They’d pulled his body from the rubble, along with four other men. His passing was a dull ache in his throat, an occasional clicking when he swallowed, but he’d faced death before. He liked to think he’d been inoculated against the more severe manifestations of grief.
Was it the loss of purpose, then, the threat of an aimless existence now that the vetro offalate had been thwarted? He tried to reach back across The Great Divide to remember what he had hoped to accomplish before Laura’s family had been slaughtered and his long walk began. Professional recognition? Fame? His name mentioned in the same breath as Darwin, Mendel, Amundsen?
It all seemed as fanciful as a desire to ride unicorns through Oz. He would never publish a paper on the bilantu. Even without their masters whipping them into a frenzy, it would be a disservice to humanity to broadcast their existent to the world. Besides, who the hell would believe him? Most of those who’d learned the truth were dead, and those who remained would quickly learn to keep their mouths shut.
Little Billy took a slow sidestep to the left, his back pressed against the wall. Through the open door across the hall, he could see Katie still sitting at her mother’s bedside, their hands interlocked, their heads nearly touching. Her father stood on the other side of the bed, a red-faced man in his mid-fifties. Every so often he would shoot Little Billy a coldly impatient look, obviously annoyed some lanky stranger was still lurking in the hall.
This was a mistake. He shouldn’t have come. Earlier, as he and Katie lay sprawled on sweat-soaked sheets, she had run a finger down his newly-shaved cheek and asked if he wanted to meet her parents. He had said yes because she had obviously wanted him to, but across her bedroom walls he was already watching the future play out, a dark moment when someone would inevitably stare too long at something they shouldn’t, and the loved ones around them would pay in blood for the transgression.
Lying naked and erect under her light strokes, he imagined an arterial spray of blood painting her bedroom wall and began to deflate.
“It’s not you,” he assured her. “I’m just old.”
“You weren’t old last night. Or this morning. Or twenty minutes ago.”
“We all have our limits.”
“We’ll see.”
Now, in the hospital hallway, Little Billy took another slow step toward the elevator doors. He knew what he was susceptible to. He felt its pull, its false promise. Hope was a disease, and sooner or later it would kill everyone you cared about.
He took another step. One more and he would no longer be able to see Katie, her mother, her disapproving father. Then it would be easy to slink off to the elevator. He closed his eyes and rolled his head back and forth against the wall.
“No.”
Katie leaned against him, pinning his shoulders.
“You know I have to.”
“I know you think you do, ever since this morning. Men are all the same. Your cocks never lie.”
Little Billy glanced across the hall. Mr. Fife had taken a chair next to his wife. He was holding a straw to her lips. If he’d heard his daughter, he was doing a fine job pretending he hadn’t.
“Me being around will only put them at risk,” he said in a low voice.
“How convenient it must be, to always have an excuse to disappear. What about me? I can see the bilantu. How much risk am I putting my mom and dad in?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Your ability to ignore the obvious.”
Katie pushed off him and looked about as if seeing the hospital hallway for the first time.
“You have me there, Will. I’ll never be as good at ignoring what’s right under my nose as you are.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I have a life…” She glanced toward the nurse’s station and tugged him around the corner. “I have a life separate from my parents,” she resumed in a tone reserved for mothers scolding children just of out earshot from other adults. “I’m not going to sever every connection I have with them just because someday I might slip up and look somewhere I’m not supposed to. I’m not going to live like you. I’m not going to run.”
Through the window behind Katie, Little Billy could see the parking garage, the hospital’s empty helipad. The sky was a ragged and sodden hem dragged from the Gulf as another line of afternoon thunderheads approached. Four inches of rain in the last three days. At least the wildfire was nearly out. If he left now, he could probably shelter in one of the garage stairwells until the storm was over. No one was going to chase him off. And then where? His instinct was to head north, but maybe this time he’d turn east toward Orlando. Wasn’t it traditional to go to Disney World after a big victory?
Hands on his cheeks, gently guiding his face back to hers.
“Will.” Little more than a whisper now. “I’m sorry. I know how much you’ve been through. What you’ve lost. I shouldn’t have said that. You did what you thought was right, but you don’t have to leave this time. You don’t have to leave me. Whatever’s going to happen, whatever my fate, I brought it on myself. Willingly. I’m not your responsibility.”
“You can take care of yourself.” It sounded like a sad admission, even to him.
“Yes, but I don’t want to do it alone. I know things will have to change between me and my parents. I won’t be able to be as close to them as I was. My dad’s already noticed. I see how he watches me, like I’m one more thing about to go wrong. They’ll be hurt. Especially Mom. She’ll say I’m colder. He’ll say I’m distant. They’ll blame ‘the incident,’ and Bobby’s death and the sinkhole and god knows what else. Ebola.”
Little Billy smiled and she curled her fingers through his. “It’s going to be hard. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hovering around the fringe of everybody else’s lives, alone. Always alone. And neither do you, William Phipps.” She stroked his bare cheek. “Otherwise why would you have shaved off your beard?”
“I thought it would make me look younger.”
“It wasn’t because you wanted a new start?” Her eyes dropped. She turned his hand palm-up and traced her index finger down his lifeline. “Is it her?” Her voice was a sheet being pulled from a bed, leaves rustling over cracked pavement, a teakettle whistling in a neighbor’s kitchen. “The memory of Laura? Are you so eager to leave because you know you could never love anyone else?”
He covered her hand with his free one. “No.”
“Then stay. Be with me. And someday, maybe…”
She fell silent, and in that candid pause he found himself back at The Great Divide he had crossed so many years ago. Behind him stretched an endless finger of blacktop shimmering in the heat haze and bridged by a distant overpass.
He knew the place. It was I-10 passing above U.S. 90 just north of Live Oak, Florida. He’d spent a long night there once, shivering through the aftereffects of a squim attack. During the height of his hallucinations, Laura and her family had come for a visit. At the time, he’d assumed their presence was an accusation, a rebuke, but now he saw he had been wrong. They had come to forgive him. He’d been absolved years ago, but guilt is a funny thing. Hold it close long enough and you may end up falling in love with it. Clinging to his precious worthlessness had kept him from accepting their gift. Maybe it was time to cling to something else.
The man who had once thought of himself as Little Billy held Katie’s hand as she led him back across The Great Divide. In a third-floor hallway of St. Joseph’s Hospital, William Phipps turned the corner.
Andrew had his father cremated. The urn sat on a chair next to him during the funeral. He could see it in his periphery, a squat shape that didn’t move, didn’t shift, didn’t threaten him with its coiled potential to lash out and kill. He could stare at it as long as he wanted and nothing would happen. Nothing at all.
Although the afternoon heat was mitigated somewhat by the blue tent and the steady breeze, he still had to mop his face every minute to keep the sweat from his eyes. July was not a forgiving month for a funera. Not in Florida. He tried to focus on the pastor’s words, tried to keep his head up and his back pressed against the chair, but he was sliding down a sweat-slicked chute and it was only a matter of time before it funneled him to the ground. He only hoped he wouldn’t scatter his father’s ashes all over hell and back on his way down.
“Drink,” Grace whispered in his ear. She placed a bottle in his hand and he gulped half, the water running down his chin to soak the collar of his shirt. The pastor slowed the last few lines of his prayers—giving Andrew a chance to mop his face a final time—then nodded. It was the signal for him to stand and carry the remains to the urn vault excavated next to his mother’s grave. Andrew rose with Grace at his side. Her hand was under his elbow, propping him up, and so fortified he managed to place the urn on the platform.
“Your dad drew them away from us,” William had assured Andrew two days earlier as they waited for the body to be found amid the tower’s rubble. “Gave us enough time to finish setting that last charge. It made all the difference.”
If any words had been asked of him, Andrew might have passed that fact on to the few gathered mourners. No words were demanded, however, and Andrew stood at silent attention as a sweating funeral attendant lowered the urn into the ground. Then it was over, his parents reunited. The only thing remaining was to fill in the small pit entombing everything left of John Tate and move on.
Andrew moved on, letting his legs take him where they would. Eventually, he found himself under one of the cemetery’s massive live oaks, speaking a few words of gratitude to the firefighters who had attended the funeral while William, Katie and Dr. Cho stood slightly aside, waiting their turn.
“Took a hell of a lot of guts to do what your old man did,” Sid rumbled, apparently on the verge of tears. Andrew found his display disconcerting, not because he suspected it was insincere but because it was so out-of-character for the lieutenant. Then again, this was the same man who had stunned him the previous day with the announcement that he was transferring from pumper to ambulance. “Figured you could use a new partner,” he confided sheepishly (another first for Sid Langston). “If you’re interested.”
The offer would have been moot forty-eight hours earlier, but Hamilton called the day after The Big Sink to inform him all charges were being dropped, his record wiped clean. When asked why, his station captain clicked his tongue.
“Seems the lot numbers on those Tubex vials showed they were manufactured twenty years ago. Who knows how long they’ve been hidden away in that alcove. Since you’ve only been at the station eight weeks, it’s pretty obvious you didn’t put them there. It was all a big misunderstanding.”
“Amazing they could check the lot numbers so quickly under these circumstances.”
“Amazing indeed.”
Clare Humbert and Terrance Jackson offered their condolences and Max took Andrew’s offered hand, pulled him close and gave him a back-slapping hug. “I expect you to keep your promise about getting together for a beer.”
“Let’s make it a couple of iced teas. Next week for sure.”
Max dipped his head and made for the parking lot, giving Grace a brief hug and a whispered word before departing.
