Periphery, page 8
“You shouldn’t have to.”
Andrew sighed. A headache was coming on, the kind that would settle into the base of his skull and sink its roots deep into his jaw. If he didn’t take something soon he would spend his evening lying in bed, riding out the waves of pain and nausea and wishing for his friend Jimmy Beam to drop by and keep him company.
He scanned the litter once more. Was this how his father had spent the years after resigning his position at the college, traipsing through the moldy corners of Tampa looking for something that was trying hard not to be there?
“I don’t see it.”
“Tell me what you do see. Saying it out loud sometimes helps to highlight what you’re missing.”
Andrew extended his arm and, working from right to left, inventoried the debris. “I see a dresser. I see a mattress. TV. Bunch of rusted paint cans. What’s left of a bike. Couple of chairs. A couch. A broken mirror. Seven years’ bad luck for somebody. Wait.”
He cocked his head as if listening for the repetition of a low peal of thunder. Something had happened during his inventory. He had felt it, the same diversion of attention he’d experienced with the other coil. Only this time it had worked. He’d jumped right over something in the center of the clutter without pause.
What was it? Andrew concentrated harder and started over, speaking each item slowly. “Dresser. Television. Paint cans. Bicycle frame.” It was there, next to the bike. “The pot-bellied stove,” he grunted, cupping the base of his skull. “The coil looks like a stove.”
Little Billy gave him a thumbs-up, then frowned. “You okay?”
“Headache.”
“A side effect, maybe? Let’s sit over here in the shade.”
They edged their way under the canopy of a nearby Brazilian pepper and sank to the ground. Little Billy took a water bottle from his knapsack, handed it to Andrew, opened a side pocket and fished out a bottle of aspirin. “Living on the street, you learn to carry everything you need on your back.” He shook three tables into Andrew’s palm.
“Like a turtle.” Andrew gulped the water and leaned back against the trunk with his eyes closed.
“Something like that. So,” he clapped his hands together. “Answers.”
Andrew eased his head forward, took another long swallow of water and fumbled the cap back on. “What happened to me when I touched that thing? Was I really there, in that other world?”
“Part of you was. You’re consciousness. Part of your consciousness, I should say. Physically, you were still here.”
“And the place I saw, that was where they come from? The vetro offalate? The bilantu offalate? A world with a giant red sun and black mountains and monster gravity?”
“We think they’ve spread across many worlds, but that’s their home base. Not exactly a vacation spot.”
“How did going there help me? How am I better prepared to save my family? Save them from what, exactly?”
Little Billy plucked a blade of grass and split it down the middle with his thumbnail. “Once upon a time, the best way to protect your loved ones after you started seeing these things was to stay the hell away from them. That’s the way it is with the bilantu. After they know you can see them, they mark you. It’s part of the reason the squim honed in on you at the park.
"You were holding up pretty well, I’ll give you that, but they could sense something, your awareness edging toward them. And like I said before, they may have had another reason to target you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your father tell you why he was concerned for your safety yesterday?”
Andrew shook his head, the tendons at the base of his skull protesting even that minor motion. “We didn’t have much time to talk. They broke up our meeting right after the shit hit the fan in the visiting room.”
“The voices.”
“You’re hearing them, too?”
“Just whispers. You?”
“Just whispers. For now.”
He took a sip of water and listened as Little Billy told him about the skewered newspaper photo. Andrew waited for the implications to sink in and stir some emotional reaction, but all he could do was stare dully at the tips of his shoes.
“Andy?” Little Billy prompted after a moment.
“So, these things have me in their crosshairs?” How close had he come to getting Anna killed? “I thought you said they were mindless.”
“They have been. But with the vetro so close, things seem to be changing. They’re slaves to their masters’ will.”
“And the vetro want me dead?”
Little Billy raised his hands. “Or they want your father to know they can get to you. A warning, maybe? Fuck with us and your boy dies.”
“How do I protect my family?”
“Our minds, they’re kind of like guitar strings. They can be tuned up or down to an extent. The xalantracoils are like tuning forks. Every time you touch one your mind is brought a little more into their frequency. Now that you’ve had some exposure, you’ll be more aware of both the coils and the vetro, and not just when the bastards are hollering the way they were this morning. When they’re quiet, too, trying to lay low.”
“Why is that good? You just said ignorance is bliss when it comes to these things.”
“With the bilantu, yeah. We think our brains have evolved not to see them. Some kind of a defense mechanism. Keeps them from targeting us.” Little Billy raised a hand as if attempting to stop traffic. “Don’t ask why. We don’t have all the answers. But the vetro, they’re different. Ignorance won’t protect you from them. This is going to sound batshit crazy, but they were here before.”
He paused, seeming once again to search for the right word. “Eons. Eons ago. Their cities were everywhere. But they had to retreat. Must have been the asteroid. They knew it was coming and hauled ass back to that shithole you saw, and while they were gone the gap between their world and our, their universe and ours, it widened too much for them to get back. That’s what John and I figure.
"Now the gap’s shrinking again. Fast. And if they make it back here, they’ll digest every last one of us before we know we’ve been swallowed.”
Despite the headache, Andrew had been attempting to take notes as Little Billy spoke. Now his pen rose from the page. “Tell me that’s just a figure of speech.”
The man who had once gone by the name William Phipps stretched out his legs and turned his face to the sky. Andrew waited. The still afternoon was eerily quiet. No dog barked, no air-conditioner hummed. He heard neither bird nor insect. Even the traffic had vanished.
Slowly, Little Billy’s head sank as if the silence had lulled him to sleep. Andrew remembered the shadow stretching across the baked hardpan, the unfurling protrusions whipping and fluttering, spasmodic, eager, reaching for him, for the world he came from.
“How much time do we have?” he asked finally, no longer able to bare the answer to his previous question.
Little Billy shook his head. “Days, probably. When the gap is thin enough, they’ll punch through. That’s what those things are for.” He nodded toward the culvert. “The xalanthracoils. They can twist reality, manipulate… spacetime?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Spacetime. Einstein. Shit, I don’t know. They’re scalpels. When they all turn on, when they activate, they’ll open a breach large enough for the vetro offalate to come pouring through.”
Andrew leaned forward, his eyes on the pot-bellied stove that was not a stove. “It’s glowing. You see?” A faint orange light, no brighter than the ember of a lit cigarette, pulsed in veins across the surface. If the glow had corresponded to the dark recesses of the stove—the gaps between the door slats, the circle of the empty exhaust pipe coupling—it might have given the impression of a fire smoldered within. Instead, the light ran in jagged fractures from one end to the other, as if escaping through the cracks of something shattered and carelessly pieced back together.
Little Billy watched for a moment. “Humming, too.”
Even in the deep silence, the sound was nearly unperceivable, a low moaning both mechanical and organic, rising and falling in syncopation with the glow.
“Have they always done that?” Andrew whispered. The stillness had taken on substance, enclosing them in a cathedral of hushed expectation. A tremor passed through him and he turned to glance over his shoulder before he could catch himself. There was nothing, only the brown slope and the straw-like weeds and the motionless things they concealed or did not conceal.
“No.” Andrew took some comfort in that Little Billy was also whispering. “They’re starting to wake up.” He stood, shouldered his pack, dusted off the seat of his pants and pulled Andrew to his feet. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The two men made their silent way back to the parking lot. As they exited the alley Andrew felt a subtle easing of pressure. When he swallowed, his ears popped and the outside world with its droning traffic, its rumbling life, came rushing back in.
“I think that’s enough for today.” Little Billy squinted into the hazy sky as if seeking some confirmation there. “Definitely enough.” He turned back to Andrew. “Go home, rest.”
“Not yet.” Andrew wiped his face with the back of a sleeve. “You just told me some sort of apocalypse is coming. What am I supposed to do now? Pack up my family and run?”
“Running won’t help. You’ll never be able to get far enough away. No one will.”
Andrew tore the pages he’d scribbled from the notebook and tossed them at Little Billy. They struck his chest and scattered at his feet. “Then what the hell good are you? What the hell good was any of this? You’re telling me the world as we know it is coming to an end and there’s nothing we can do about it?”
Little Billy scooped up the pages and took the notebook from Andrew’s shaking hands. “That’s not what I said. There is something we can do. May be a long shot, but your father thinks it could work.”
“What?” The parking lot was listing slowly to the right. Andrew shifted his balance to remain upright.
“We were almost ready to try it when he got arrested. Now that you’re on board, you’ll be able to take over for him.”
Andrew watched his arm float out to hand the pen back to Little Billy. “What do you think I’m going to do for you?”
“Help me blow one of the coils to kingdom fucking come.”
Andrew canted forward. Little Billy braced him with a palm against his chest.
“Go home and rest, Andy. Before you fall over. We’ll talk again soon.”
“Rest.” The word felt fat in his mouth, something that had to be spit out in a wad.
“Rest. Do you have to work tomorrow?”
Did he? Andrew thought for a moment. The answer rose slowly, a cognitive bubble in mental syrup. “Yes. B shift.”
He was retreating from the world once again, sinking beneath waters tinged pink with pain. His head throbbed. The back of his thighs throbbed. He planted his legs and fought the sway rocking him from side to side.
Little Billy had asked him a question. He blinked hard. “What?”
“Where do you live?”
Andrew mumbled the name of the motel, the room number, maybe a street name. He couldn’t be sure. The words dribbled down his chin and dripped to the pavement.
An arm was around him. No, wait. Andrew’s arm was around a shoulder. He couldn’t remember when that had happened. He was in front of his car, and he couldn’t remember that either, how he had gotten there. Were there keys in his hand?
There were.
He dropped them and stared into a white, featureless sky. There was another sky somewhere, one with an infected, blood blister sun, hot and swollen. The world brightened, dimmed, brightened, dimmed, and as he spiraled downward, he heard a faint moaning, both mechanical and organic, whispering from a hole at the bottom of his mind, a hole a little larger than it had been just a few hours before.
Six
Little Billy swung awkwardly through the motel door with Andrew Tate dangling at his side. John Tate’s son had regained consciousness twice during the drive, each time glancing around groggily to mutter a few syllables before drifting off again. Little Billy had a deepening suspicion the man was suffering the effects of squim toxin. Andrew hadn’t told him he’d been injured, but his rapid slide into delirium, the twitching in his arms and legs, the purple rash blooming across his neck, all matched Little Billy’s own symptoms after being slashed.
If he was right, Andrew was in for a long, ball-twisting night. The timing was right, assuming he had been wounded at the park. Squim venom took effect slowly but relentlessly, cranking up and up and up. Thankfully, it dissipated quickly after reaching peak toxicity. If Andrew’s experience was like his own, he would be back on his feet in twelve hours with little more than a lingering headache and low-grade nausea. If this was squim venom. And if everyone reacted the same.
Big ifs.
Little Billy kicked the door shut behind them and together he and Andrew shambled across the room to the unmade bed. He lowered the other man face-down onto the tousled sheets and eased a pillow under his head.
First thing first. If this was a toxic reaction, he probably got swiped across the back of the leg, where his own, long-healed scar ran in a puckered diagonal from the nook of his left knee to a few inches above the ankle. Had he warned Andrew about the squims’ fondness for targeting the tendons of the hamstrings? He was pretty sure he had, but in the panic of flight, warnings were seldom enough.
Gently, Little Billy lifted the cuff of Andrew’s right pant leg, exposing a bandaged calf. The wound had been covered with an antiseptic pad held in place by tightly wrapped medical gauze. The dressing looked professional, something a paramedic would do. He lifted the left cuff and found an identical bandage. An inch or two higher, and the bastards would have succeeded in bringing him down.
Although the flesh around the wounds was obviously inflamed, Little Billy saw nothing seeping from the bandages, no blood, no puss. He touched the skin with the back of his fingers. The flesh was warm, but not hot. Of course, infection wasn’t the main danger.
“Andy. Andy, can you hear me?”
Andrew’s eyes fluttered open briefly.
“Andy, you’ve having a reaction. From the cuts along the back of your legs. Squim toxin.”
Andrew’s head rocked against the pillow. Little Billy wasn’t sure if it was an indication he had heard and understood, or simply a shudder of pain.
“I’ve gone through the same thing myself. Not going to lie to you, you’re in for a hell of a night. But if your experience is anything like mine, you’ll come out on the other side with no permanent damage.” William ran his hand slowly down the back of his leg. “ 'Cept for the scars, of course. I think maybe this toxin is intended to incapacitate rather than kill. Could be their prey is usually much bigger than themselves.”
Little Billy blew out a long breath of exasperation and raked his fingers through his hair. He was beginning to slip back into his old way of thinking, back before The Great Divide. When was the last time he used the word “incapacitate”? On the street, you didn’t incapacitate shit. You kept pounding until the fucker stopped coming at you. Or stopped moving altogether.
Stepping into the bathroom, Little Billy found a dank washcloth draped over the towel rack. He soaked it with cool water from the tap, wrung it out and pressed it against the back of Andrew’s neck.
At least the professor’s son wouldn’t have to face this alone, as Little Billy had, moaning and groveling in the litter-strewn embankment beneath a highway overpass as the fever took hold and the dead came drifting out of the night to stand in silent accusation around him, first Bobby with his missing left arm and his unspooled intestines dragging in the dirt, then, Mr. and Mrs. Felton, their throats opened to their sternums, their faces a ragged mass of dangling flesh, and then…
“Christ.”
Little Billy returned to the sink and splashed water onto his face until his beard dripped and the runoff soaked his neck and chest. He knew the memories of that gore-strewn backyard couldn’t be washed away, but they could be submerged, push beneath the dark mud of thoughts sloshing thickly against the inside of his skull. At least for a little while. He wiped his face with a towel that smelled faintly of booze and returned to the bedroom.
“I’m going to stick around for the rest of the night. Try and keep you as comfortable as possible.”
If Andrew heard, he gave no indication. His breathing was shallow and rapid, and beneath purple lids, his eyes darted, following whatever dark visions the toxin had conjured from his past.
“Good news is, you only have to go through this once. You should be immune to their venom after this.” Little Billy dragged a chair from the kitchen and placed it next to the bed. He eased into it with a grunt and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Bad news is, it’s going to cost you. Quite a lot. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise.” Glancing around the dismal rooms, his eyes fell to the kitchenette’s small trashcan heaped with empties. “I got a feeling you already know everything comes at a price.”
The man who had once thought of himself as William Phipps still remembered his life before The Great Divide, but he was finding it more and more difficult to convince himself those memories were real. He was fairly certain he’d had a normal childhood growing up in Temple Terrace with Mirabelle, his younger sister, and an older brother, Oscar, named after a beloved great-uncle on his mother’s side. He remembered attending St. Lawrence for eight years, Tampa Catholic for four more. As a child, he’d had a passion for soccer and baseball, lettering in the latter during high school, although he hadn’t been quite good enough to attend college on an athletic scholarship—the scouts agreed his fielding was great, thanks in part to his six-foot-six height and ninety-two-inch reach—but his batting average was middling at best.
He remembered taking his parents’ advice and staying in town for college, attending the University of Tampa on a partial academic scholarship where he majored in zoology and minored in psychology.
