Periphery, page 4
“He went lunging for the TV,” the officer on the right said. “Knocked it off the dresser.”
“I’ll get the backboard and a couple rolls of gauze,” Gary said, returning to the hall and giving Andrew a told-you-so grin as he passed.
“What’s this guy’s name? Anyone know?” Andrew asked, rubbing the indentation below his ear where his jaw hinged. The echo he’d been hearing since their arrival hadn’t faded. Instead, it had settled into some sort of self-sustaining reverberation, looping over and over like muffled, indecipherable chanting.
“His name’s Jeff. Jeffery Jackson.” For the first time, Andrew noticed a woman standing at the bedroom’s closet door, half in and half out of the threshold as if prepared to dart back and slam the door shut in an instant.
“Jeff,” Andrew said.
“He goes by J.J.” The woman offered.
“J.J. You need to calm down. We’re here to help you.”
“Yeah, we’ve been telling him that,” the cop on the left said. “Hasn’t helped.”
“You think you know me?” Jackson demanded.
“No sir, I don’t.” But Andrew did not think the man was addressing anyone in the room.
“You don’t know me! You don’t have a right to be here. Turn on the TV. Turn it up loud! Goddamn you. Goddamn you!”
Jackson’s struggles increased, his back arching and legs pinioning as he bucked. Sid fell on one leg, holding it to the floor while Clare did the same with the other.
Andrew placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to prepare a syringe of droperidol. I doubt tying him to the board is going to be enough.”
As his eyes swept across the bedroom, he noticed clothing stuffed into the air-conditioning vents along the ceiling. The mattress, Andrew realized, was positioned to block one window, while the bookcase, chair and dresser drawers were piled to block another. The room’s disorder was obviously an attempt to shut out the voices in Jackson’s head.
Hadn’t Comanche also said something about hearing voices in his head? Jabbering voices in a language he couldn’t understand yet, but soon would? What had he compared that inevitable understanding to? Catching a disease? Something he wouldn’t be able to keep from happening?
Andrew trotted back down the hall. The masters were coming. That’s what Comanche had said. The big bads. The nightmares behind the nightmares. The something-offalla. Andrew reached the end of the hall and froze. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, he wanted not just a sip of Crown Royal but the whole goddamn bottle. Because somewhere at the bottom of his mind something had whispered, only two words, a brief gurgle of syllables, but the sense of intrusion, of violation, was profound.
Vetro offalate.
Andrew suppressed a groan. The impression that shuddered through him was of a vast and alien presence poking its way into his awareness and slipping back out, leaving a hole behind, a bleeding gap he wanted to curl protectively around in a rocking ball.
“You okay?”
Gary was clutching two boxes of soft gauze, the backboard tucked under one arm.
“Going to snag the droperidol,” he managed, wiping his sweating upper lip with the back of a sleeve. “Pretty sure we’ll need to sedate him.”
He needed to tamp this down hard. Get a grip. Get a fucking grip! Andrew took several deep breaths, resisting the urge to slap himself across the face. By the time he returned to the bedroom, the worse of his queasiness had passed. So, apparently, had the worst of Jeffery Jackson’s agitation. He lay quietly on the backboard, allowing Gary and Sid to secure his arms, legs and head to the restraint with loops of gauze.
“What happened?” Andrew asked, although he already knew. The voices had stopped.
“He just suddenly went limp,” Clare said. She was kneeling at Jackson’s head, her fingers pressed against either temple. “We thought he might have passed out, but he was still conscious.”
“They shut up,” Jackson murmured. His eyes were closed, but beneath the lids, Andrew could see his gaze flitting about.
“Feeling better, Mr. Jackson?” Gary asked in the loud, mildly condescending voice Andrew recognized as the default tone of a professional pushed to the edge of anger. He was quickly wrapping one of the man’s wrists to the board.
“Ain’t never going to be better. Not after this.” His lips trembled. “They fucked me up. In the head. Goddamn bastards!” Tears began leaking down the side of his face. “They left a hole in me. I can feel it. They tore a hole in my head they can keep coming back through. Liselle! Liselle, why they do that?”
The woman fell to her knees at his side. “J.J. you just lie quiet now.” Her voice trembled on the verge of her own tears. “They’re going to take you to the hospital. You’re going to be okay, baby. You’re going to be just fine.”
“Ain’t no fine, woman. They’ll be back. I know they will.”
As they hoisted Jackson from the floor Andrew could feel Gary’s eyes on him from across the backboard, wanting, most likely, a silent acknowledgment of the absurdity of the moment, a tilt of the head, a subtle shrug conveying their mutual recognition of how crazy people could be. This time, however, Andrew couldn’t meet his partner’s eyes. He knew Jackson was right. Sooner or later the thing that had penetrated his mind would be back.
The vetro offalate were close. And they were getting closer.
Three
They tried to kill John Tate a week after he was booked into the Orient Road Jail. Lingering in the yard near the basketball courts, he waited until his would-be assassin was nearly upon him before tossing a handful of sand in his face and dropping to the ground. The inmate’s swing arched over his head and John kicked up hard between splayed legs. When the other man doubled over he kicked again, this time connecting in the center of his face. There was a satisfying crunch of cartilage and spurt of blood beneath his shoe. His assailant uttered a sort of honking snarl and swung again, striking John’s still-upraised leg mid-calf. The hot sting made him hiss as he rolled out of the path of a third blow.
The weapon was a blur, but from the method of attack, he assumed it was some sort of blade secured to a handle, most likely a razor-headed toothbrush, the sort of shiv routinely confiscated during cell searches. Not a stabbing weapon. Not something that would be effective in close quarters. This assault required enough room to sweep an arm across an exposed throat.
John managed to loop around his attacker, but instead of running he leaped onto the guy’s back and wrapped his arms around his neck in a sleeper hold. The inmate staggered forward, arms flailing. Something green fell from his hand and John shifted his weight higher, hoping to further unbalance him, maybe drive his broken face into the dirt. The maneuver only brought the assailant to his knees, but by then two or three guards were racing toward them across the yard. John leaned in close—a move that unexpectedly, preposterously, reminded him of the way he would sometimes approach Lindsay from behind to give the nape of her neck a playful nuzzle—and bit the top of the fucker’s ear off.
Two days later they tried to kill him in the cafeteria. An inmate lunged across the table with, of all things, a candy cane licked down at one end to a spike. John caught him under the chin with his lunch tray mid-lung and followed it with a faceful of hot coffee.
The third attempt was more straightforward. A fat man covered in gang tattoos simply tried to toss him over the third-floor railing. John had secreted a tube of toothpaste into his underwear that morning. When the gang member charged, he found his footing compromised by a layer of Colgate. John didn’t have the leverage or strength to turn the tables and upend his attacker over the rail, but a carefully placed kick to the seam of throat and collarbone ended the encounter with Mr. Tattoo gulping and gasping at his feet.
After that, they separated John Tate from the general jailhouse population. Now he spent most of his time in a top-floor cell, sometimes writing in a notebook purchased at the commissary, sometimes reading week-old newspapers, sometimes staring at the sky through the twin vertical slits that served as his cell windows.
Mostly, however, he listened. He did this not with his ears but with some keener, more fundamental sensor embedded deep in the center of his skull. Twenty, thirty times a day he would slip into a semi-trance, harkening for the knell of the vetro offalate. He no longer had to strain to hear them. Their thoughts had grown louder with each passing day, and what he discerned when they were being vociferous was usually a frenzied mental gnashing that reminded John of ravenous dogs straining against leashes to snap at a meal just out of reach.
Occasionally, however, their thoughts subsided to a low and strangely appealing rumble. It didn’t take long to decipher these murmurs as a siren call for new recruits, a bubbling promise that any mind willing to submit to them, worship them, carry out their commands, would not only be spared the coming harvest but would be rewarded. Richly so.
Obviously, some had accepted the offer. But the vetro offalate had made the mistake of micromanaging their new foot soldiers. None of his attackers struck without first being ordered to, and so listening had kept him alive, alerting him in advance to each new attempt on his life. But such diligence was exhausting. And he was tired. Sick and tired.
John Tate eased off the cot and made his way gingerly to the cell door. The back of his calf ached, a warm throb indicative of a low-grade infection despite the antibiotics and twice-daily change of dressings. He doubted the wound would kill him outright, but it was a worrisome injury. The next time someone tried to take him out he’d be slower, less agile. More vulnerable.
Still, their proxy attacks suggested the vetro considered him a threat, and that, in turn, suggested his plan to prevent their return might have some merit after all. He could do little while in jail, however. He needed outside help and that meant putting others at risk, including the son he had spend two decades trying to protect.
Pressing his cheek against the bars, John listened for nearly ten minutes. In the common area below, the low echo of human voices created a simmering hum not unlike the roar of distant water cascading over a precipice. An occasional shout rose above the din, bounced off the concrete walls and fell back. He became aware of the buzz of cell doors opening and closing, toilets flushing, what might have been the polished narration of a television news anchor reduced to a faint, irregular murmur. As hard as he strained, however, he heard not a whisper from the vetro. For now.
It was only a matter of time before a guard simply walked up and shot him through the bars of his cell. Why hadn’t they used a correctional officer as their assassin? It would have been more efficient. But then maybe the guards’ minds weren’t as pliant as the minds of the men who had attacked him. There were so many things he didn’t understand. It was frustrating, considering how much he and Will had learned over the years about the vetro’s lesser kin. Of course, the bilantu offalate were still here, literally underfoot, while their masters had vanished long ago.
John limped back to the cot, mentally ticking through the short list of things he was fairly certain of. The vetro offalate’s reign on Earth predated the Yucatan asteroid strike. Probably not by much, maybe as little as ten or twenty thousand years. If not for the threat of global annihilation they might still be here. But they had retreated before the impact, scuttled back to the place they had come from and slammed the door behind them, leaving the bilantu offalate stranded. The bilantu, those that survived, had been here ever since, which meant they predated humans by sixty-five million years, give or take a million.
Grumbling in pain, John stepped up on his cot and peered through the nearest vertical slit. During the previous four days, he’d become familiar with this ribbon of view, the brown courtyard, the gray walls topped with black threads of barbed fencing and the pale blue sky above. No different than yesterday. Or the day before. As usual, the unaltered view disappointed him, but he was never quite certain what he kept expecting to see. The heavens turning red and poisonous? The ground breaking apart as black sludge oozed through the cracks?
John sat back down. What else had he learned over the years? Since their retreat, nearly all evidence of the vetro’s cities had been erased. Only the stone-like outcroppings he called xalanthracoils remained. They were devices, relics of some unfathomable technology that had lain dormant for eons, awaiting the signal to awaken once more and tear a hole between the worlds. He was convinced they were alive in a way he could not quite comprehend. Not sentient. Certainly not mobile. Not even reactive in the way plants or microorganisms respond to environmental factors. But alive nevertheless. And inhumanly patient.
Other than the bilantu—God help him, he still got a shiver of exhilaration every time he recalled seeing his first quintaloch—the coils were his most fortuitous discovery. If he hadn’t been tracking the votasin as it floated through the cemetery gates he never would have made his way to the overgrown corner where others of its kind were already amassed around an obelisk-shaped grave marker. In all his years of study, John had never witnessed such a gathering. His first impression was of a mating swarm, a supposition that gained credence when he realized the creatures weren’t just mulling about. They were circling the marker and bobbing with the graceful synchronicity of merry-go-round horses.
He had watched in fascination for minutes, mesmerized by the dance, not even attempting to hide his presence. Granted, votasin weren’t as aggressive as other species of bilantu, but they could still fire those six-inch quills with deadly accuracy. If they had attacked, he doubted he would have made it out of the cemetery alive. But they hadn’t, and after some indeterminate span, they simply dispersed, drifting away in opposite directions, living pincushions taken up by the breeze.
Not a mating swarm after all, not unless their method of reproduction required no physical contact, and John doubted that. What then? Had they been attracted to the marker itself for some reason? Examining the obelisk proved exasperating, not unlike trying to see a star too dim to perceive directly, visible only as a vague speck of light in his periphery. Its shape kept changing, flickering back and forth between a granite spike covered in a strange, angular script (Sanskrit?), and a darkly marbled outcropping curving tusk-like from the ground.
Despite a growing desire to turn away, he edged closer, pushing through a sudden bout of nausea and dizziness until the illusion of the grave marker faded completely and only the sweep of marbled tusk remained.
And then he had touched it.
John limped to the polished metal rectangle bolted above the sink that served as his mirror. A lean, weathered and deeply lined face framed in long, unkempt gray hair stared back.
“Do I know you?”
The man staring back snarled. Or was that an attempt at a smile? Twenty years ago, he had been the dean of biology at the University of Tampa, published, respected by colleagues. He had Lindsey, lovely Lindsey, his muse, his inspiration.
And he had Andrew, the boy who loved model rockets and mutant turtles and looking through his father’s microscope at drops of stagnate water, green and teeming with life. As a preschooler, Andy had delighted in speculating over wonderfully incongruous scenarios. Would a dinosaur enjoy listening to rock music? Could Superman beat himself up? If you were in a car traveling at the speed of light and you turned on your headlights, would anything happen? His boy wonder.
John had a question of his own: Would the man he once was, the father, husband, provider, recognize this hollowed-out relic in the mirror, someone capable of biting off another man’s ear in a jail yard skirmish?
“Doubtful.”
The click and buzz of the lock drew John from his reflection. Two guards he didn’t recognize stood at the cell door, one with his arms crossed, the other with a hand on the grip of his holstered baton. He had time to wonder if this was it, if the vetro had discovered his eavesdropping and found a way to cloak their broadcasts from him. How many hits would it take to crack his skull or break his neck? Not many, not if the guards knew how to swing their cudgels. At least it would be over quickly.
“Can I do for you, gentlemen?” he said, holding out his hands for the plastic restrains the first guard had already removed from his belt.
“Doc’s waiting to see you in the infirmary.”
“So soon?” His bandages had been changed only an hour earlier. His second changing was usually after dinner, just prior to lights out.
“Yeah, I know,” the second guard said as the first—Salvador his nametag read—approached. “You keep a busy schedule up here. Must be a huge inconvenience, cutting into your nine a.m. ball scratching. Tell you what, next time we’ll call ahead.”
John said nothing as the smart shit gave him a quick pat down in the hall, but during the procedure, he saw Salvador glance first to the left, out over the atrium, then to the right, into John’s cell. Although both turns were deliberate rather than startled, there was something in the way the guard’s eyes darted about that suggested an element of disquiet, a hint of uncertainty, as if he were searching for something he hoped not to find.
The smart shit—Brutrelli—declared John clean and with a man at either elbow the three proceeded down the hall. Descending the stairs, a new scenario occurred to John, one in which he thrashed against an examining table’s restraints as the infirmary physician approached with a pentobarbital-filled syringe. He’d have to be alert, ready for anything.
He liked the jail’s A-rotation doctor, a wryly unsentimental woman in her mid-forties who gave the impression of having seen it all during her twenty-year career. He and Dr. Cho had had two mildly engaging conversations, one about the relative intelligence of various dog breeds (border collies-sharp as tacks, afghans-dumb as posts), and one about the merits of multivitamins in preventing illnesses (not much). John got the impression she found him a refreshing change from the patients she usually dealt with. Under different circumstances, they might have been friends.
