Periphery, page 5
At the first hint of trouble, he would charge her.
And then what? Every possibility he could conceive of ended with him sprawled across the floor, dead, dying or incapacitated. He was certain of this much, however: if they were going to kill him, it would take all three to do it. As the good doctor probably already knew from patching up his would-be assassins, he wasn’t going down without a fight.
“You can wait in the hall, Mr. Brutrelli,” Dr. Cho said without looking up from the chart. She clicked a pen, flipped through several previous pages and began scribbling something on the last sheet.
“You know there’s got to be two of us here at all times.”
“Mr. Salvador and I can handle things if Mr. Tate gets feisty.” Although her voice retained the monotone of professional indifference, John thought he saw her glance flick from the chart for an instant.
“Sorry, doc. Last thing I need is another demerit. I’m on my second warning as is.” Brutrelli turned to John with contempt. “The fuck you looking at?”
“Let me ask you this, Mr. Brutrelli. Have you ever had hepatitis C?”
The correctional officer snorted. “Hell no.”
“Mr. Tate’s tests came back positive for the disease and I’m about to change one of his blood-soaked bandages. Now, if you want to stick around and risk infection, be my guest. I’ve noticed several healing nicks on your hands and one on your cheek.”
Brutrelli examined his fingers and ran a thumb over a scabbed knuckle.
“It’s not like I’m going to be touching his bandages,” he said after a moment.
“I’m sure as long as everything goes exactly as planned that’s true. Suit yourself.”
Brutrelli took a step back, still worrying the scab. “What about him?” he asked, nodding toward the other guard. “You don’t care if he catches hep?”
“Mr. Salvador had an acute bout of hepatitis C twelve years ago. There’s little risk of infection for him.”
“Go on, man,” Salvador said. “We got this. You’re going to be just outside the door. We’ll holler if we need you.”
Brutrelli appeared to hesitate, but John sensed his reluctance was nothing more than theatrics. He was waiting for a final nudge, and when Salvador pointed out that no one in the room was going to say shit about improper procedures, the other guard nearly bolted for the hallway.
John watched the pneumatic door ease shut with a mixture of relief and dread. He had never had hepatitis A, B, or C. The story was obviously a ruse to get the other man out of the room. This was it then, attempt number four. At least there were only two of them. Maybe he could dart off the table, throw the paper sheet over Cho, smash something against Salvador’s head while she was distracted. He scanned the room, but saw nothing heavy enough to do any real damage.
“Relax, John.” Dr. Cho waved her hand and Salvador retreated to the door, listened for a moment, returned.
“We’re good for now,” he reported. “But you need to make this fast. He’s not going to stay out there forever.”
Cho nodded. “Take those off him.”
Salvador removed John’s restrains and tossed them on a nearby counter.
“We’re not sure about Brutrelli,” she continued. “He could be under their influence. They seem to have more sway with… certain types.”
“Idiot types,” Salvador said.
“They?” John turned from the doctor to the correctional officer and back again, feigning confusion.
“No time for games.” Cho pulled a large bandage from the drawer and a roll of gauze. “I’m going to slowly change your dressing and while I do we’re going to discuss what’s been happening inside and outside the jail.”
“What would that be?” Looking down, John realized he had been gripping the sides of the table hard enough to rip two fistfuls of paper from the sheet beneath him. He forced his fingers open and the torn shreds spiraled slowly to the floor.
“Your son made the news yesterday.”
John’s throat tightened. “Andrew?”
“He’s an EMT for Tampa Fire Rescue, right? He was involved in a hostage standoff with a homeless man.”
“Jesus. Is he alright?”
“Your son? He’s fine. The woman the homeless guy took hostage is fine. The hostage-taker apparently committed suicide. Newspaper story said he claimed he was seeing monsters and that it was your fault.”
Cho gently tugged the bandage from John’s calf and tossed it into the trash. The wound still gleamed with the prior application of antiseptic ointment. She unwrapped an iodine-infused towelette and began to methodically re-clean his leg.
“My fault? The article used my name?”
Cho nodded. “John Tate. They ran an entire sidebar on you. I wasn’t living here in the ‘90s, so I didn’t know anything about your history. Anyway, the story quoted an unnamed source claiming the hostage-taker had been looking for monsters because you paid him to.”
“I’d never do that.” John shot back defensively. “I’d never ask anybody to look for them. I might have asked a few people, a few homeless men, to report anything unusual they might see out there on the streets. But that’s it. Of course, I had to give them some guidance. Their first question is always, ‘what do you mean by unusual?’ Maybe I get a little carried away at times, say too much.”
John ran a trembling hand through his hair. “Jesus, he said he was seeing them? Actually seeing them?”
“He’s not the only one,” Salvador said. “I thought I was going nuts until this. I saw something last week that made my hair stand on end. Something out of a nightmare.”
“Did it see you looking at it?” John reached out and grabbed the guard’s arm, a move that should have earned him a baton to the gut. Salvador simply shook his head.
“Not that I know of. Believe me, I’m not going out of my way to look for them. Didn’t want to see that one. Don’t want to see any more.”
“Listen, both of you…”
Dr. Cho raised a finger to her lips and tilted her head toward the door. John took a long breath and began again in a lower voice. “Don’t ever let them catch you watching them. If they know you can see them, they’ll attack. We learned that the hard way.”
“You and William Phipps?” Salvador asked.
John raised an eyebrow. “That in the sidebar, too?”
The guard nodded.
“You seeing things, doctor?”
“Please, call me Emily. I think we’re all on a first-name basis at this point. Have I been seeing them? Not yet. But my friend mentioned seeing something in the bushes the other day. She tried to make a joke of it. Said it must be all the airplane glue she’s sniffing. But I could tell she was scared.” The doctor applied a thick layer of ointment to the pad of the bandage and pressed it against his calf. “And now the voices.”
“You’ve heard them?”
“Again, not me personally, but in the last few days I’ve had seven or eight people say they have; too many to dismiss. In fact, all the inmates that have attacked you later claimed they were compelled to do so by voices. Alien voices. Demon voices. Mr. Salvador here is the one who suggested we talk to you.” She began wrapping gauze around his calf, the bandage slowly disappearing under the thickening layers.
“Figured if anyone knew what the hell was going on.”
Cho nodded. “We discussed the current weirdness a few days ago and how you seem to be at the center of it. We were planning this meeting for later today, but considering what happened yesterday with your son and what Hector—Mr. Salvador here—found this morning in the yard, we decided not to wait that long.”
“What did you find?”
Cho raised her finger to her lips again and bobbed her head at Salvador. The guard went to a cabinet, opened a door and removed a medical tray covered with a hand towel.
“Apparently, we’re not the only ones who read the paper,” he said, removing the cloth. John stared for a long moment as the room’s temperature seemed to plunge. His calf throbbed dully under the new wrapping, an ache that radiated down to his ankle and up to his crotch. Finally, in a low, quivering voice he said, “I need to make a phone call.”
When Cho, without a word or moment’s hesitation reached for her cell phone, he nearly sobbed in gratitude.
“What is it?” Salvador prompted.
With shaking fingers, he began punching in numbers. On the tray was a copy of The Tampa Bay Time’s metro front, dominated by a grainy close-up of Andrew kneeling next to a young woman with her head in her hands. Piercing the newspaper through the exact center of his son’s image was a barbed stinger, six inches long and thick as a finger.
“What is it?” the guard repeated.
John put the phone to his ear as the called connected and Andrew’s cell began to ring.
“A message,” he said.
Four
They were surrounded. Andrew thought there were six, but the number changed every time he blinked. There might be six, or sixty or six hundred.
“Daddy, hold this for me,” Anna said, passing him a sodden paper airplane. “It needs to dry out.”
“I don’t think it’s going to fly again, honey,” he said, but she was already racing back to the center of the water jets, on for the first time in more than a week due to increasingly severe water restrictions. Anna retrieved her plastic bucket from another little girl and together they took turns soaking one of the stone lions bordering the fountain.
She appeared unaware of the bulbous-headed creatures clinging to the trunks of several nearby trees like tumorous growths. Andrew kept his eyes on the fountain, but it was nearly impossible to ignore the monstrosities around him, especially the one mewing softly from the live oak a dozen yards to his right.
These weren’t like the thing by the dumpster, the quintaloch. They were smaller, rounder, more compact. In his periphery, he caught some sudden motion, the spasmodic twitch of an appendage, the swelling and contraction of an air sack or bladder, and his gaze tugged in their direction.
His father had warned him repeatedly over the years that the slightest suggestion of awareness was enough to provoke an attack. So far, he had managed to stop himself from turning. But it was hard. Christ, it was hard. Like an intense itch, it required a monumental effort to resist. Would a quick peek be so bad, just a glance to determine what he was up against?
In the duffel bag at his feet was a change of clothes for Anna, a towel, a bottle of SPF 50 sunscreen. Every twenty minutes he was supposed to call her over for a reapplication. It was important to keep her scar tissue moisturized to prevent the skin from tightening and impairing dexterity, or so claimed her physical therapist.
At the bottom of the bag was a tea bottle filled with single malt Scotch. Andrew had been startled to find it as he was packing that morning, a forgotten relic lying like a landmine at the bottom of the bag. He should have tossed it in the sink, but something had stilled his hand as he reached for it. He told himself it was fear, a superstitious reluctance to touch such a toxic reminder of past mistakes, but he couldn’t fool himself for long. The real reason he’d kept it was the reassurance it provided, the secret knowledge that if things got truly bad (and what did that mean, exactly?) he could re-center himself with a quick swig.
Not that he would, of course, but knowing he could provided a festering sort of comfort.
Now he wished he’d thrown the damn thing in the trash. Because a drink would help him keep his mind off the things around them. Because a drink would settle his nerves. Because a drink would make things just a little bit better.
And so much worse.
“Andrew Tate.”
Andrew flinched and squinted guilty up into the face of a tall, lanky, bearded man dressed in baggy khakis, a threadbare shirt, and ancient sneakers, one of which was held together by duct tape. A green canvas knapsack hung from a shoulder, its free strap dangling nearly to the ground.
Andrew’s eyes darted to Anna and back. “I don’t have any change.”
The man smiled, reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. “That’s cool, I do. How much you need?”
Andrew said nothing. His first thought was of Grace, that in her suspicion she had hired a homeless man to keep an eye on him, make sure he was toeing the line. It was ridiculous, of course, paranoid shit, but he was already scrambling for some sort of defense. It’s not what you think. It’s just tea. Herbal tea.
“You holding up okay?” the man asked finally. “Hard to keep the old peepers off them.”
Andrew shaded his eyes with one hand and scrutinized the man’s face more closely. There was something familiar about him, something in the sharp nose and high cheekbones that made him wonder if he’d seen those features before. In a picture, maybe, or on TV. With a belated start, Andrew realized the man had called him by name.
“Do I know you?”
“Na.” The vagrant took a seat next to him on the bench. Andrew tensed, expecting to be overwhelmed by a stench like the one that had been steaming off Comanche, but the only thing he smelled was a faint whiff of sweat no stronger than his own. The man nodded toward the group of children in the fountain. “Which one’s yours?”
Andrew hesitated. What was going on here? He felt like he had somehow missed a crucial exchange that explained who this person was and how they knew each other. What had this guy said about keeping your eyes off them? Off the creatures?
“The girl with… The girl in the purple bathing suit,” Andrew finished. He had been a breath away from saying, “the girl with the skin grafts.”
“Cute kid. Looks like you.”
“Thanks.” Andrew caught himself reaching for the tea bottle and froze, his fist clutching the bag. Jesus Christ, what the hell was the matter with him? He retrieved the towel instead and mopped his face. Off to the right, something began inching down the oak, gripping the trunk with enormous, finger-like digits.
“Okay, Andrew Tate, quick introduction. I’m Will. Most people call me Little Billy. I’m a friend of your dad, and this is what we’re going to do to get out of here alive.”
The final minutes in the park were a jumble. Once they were up and moving, everything became a slideshow of frozen moments: Anna’s puzzled but happy face looking up into his, Little Billy’s bony shoulders as he walked in front of them, a boy with a water pistol at the top of the slide, a basketball on a picnic table, all glimpses of an unremarkable world no different from the one he had known most of his life.
Except for the mewing, flailing things dropping from the trees like massive globs of Spanish moss, paralleling them on either side, keeping pace as they narrowed the gap. Tightening the noose, Andrew thought. They must hunt in packs.
And still, incredibly, no one paid the slightest attention. At one point, he thought he glimpsed one of the creatures pass directly in front of a woman on a bench while two more scuttled behind. Her phone conversation never wavered, and in the last few moments before their real flight began, Andrew experienced a pang of envy at her ignorance so strong his throat closed.
When they reached the place where the path forked, Little Billy abruptly turned and pointed. “I see you,” he sneered. “I see you and you and you. So, let’s just cut to the chase.” And with that, he took off down the right path. Although they had discussed the simple plan before calling Anna back from her play, Andrew was still taken by surprise. He bent, caught his daughter up in his arms and raced down the opposite walkway, toward the parking lot and the presumed safety of the car.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?” Anna asked. Her grip around his neck was a stranglehold.
“Nothing, honey. I’m a dragon. I just scooped up the princess to take her to my mountain lair.”
“What’s a lair?”
“Where I live.” Within seconds his breath was coming in ragged heaves. He was carrying too much and moving too erratically, already on the verge of toppling. “They’ll go for your hamstrings if they get the chance,” Little Billy had warned. “Try not to run in a straight line.”
Andrew spun to the right. His daughter was laughing, her arms held out, her head flung back so that her center of gravity shifted away from him. He lurched in the opposite direction and pulled Anna closer. For an instant, the impression of something within close proximity, within striking distance, raised goose flesh across his arms and neck. The next instant he was crashing into a wall of snapping branches, tumbling through a hedge bordering the parking lot.
“Daddy!” Anna exhaled into his ear.
He managed to twist as he went down, turning his back and shoulders toward the boxwood, enclosing his daughter in his arms, plowing through the brush, emerging on the other side and hitting the ground hard enough to bounce his head off the asphalt.
For several moments, all he could do was stare into a swimming blue haze of sky. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t hear. The ringing in his ears was a fire alarm overwhelming everything else. They were down. They were vulnerable. If the creatures attacked now it would be over quickly and all he could do was flounder and gasp. Anna was squirming off his chest. He tried to pull her back to him, drape his body over hers, but she squirted away as he struggled to roll over.
His breath returned in a series of small hitches, each a little deeper than the previous, and as the ringing began to diminish, he swept his arm out and around, hoping to hook Anna.
“What happened, Daddy?”
Andrew sat up. His daughter was next to him once more, unharmed. He swallowed and tasted blood. He had bitten his tongue.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” he asked.
“I’m okay. It was like we were flying. Did you fall? Did I get away?”
“Get away?” From around the demolished hedge, a face appeared, the woman from the bench he had seen talking on her phone. She came running with her hand to her mouth.
“From the dragon,” Anna said. The woman knelt next to him. “Did I escape?”
“My god, my god. Are you all right? Please tell me you and your little girl are all right. I saw the whole thing. You went right through.”
