I Will Rise (23 page)

“You’re equally beautiful.” I really mean it.

Annabelle’s pale skin deepens a few shades, “Let’s go.”

In the rearview I re-notice the cab and sigh loudly. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.

“What?” Annabelle picks up on my frustration.

“I have a lot to tell you.”

“So tell me.”

“First off, there is a cab in front of your house, the driver of which is deceased and smeared across the front seats.”

“I thought you took the bus?”

“As I said, I have a lot to tell you. A lot went down since I’ve seen you.”

“I thought you took the bus and walked here and that’s that?”

“Well let’s see, I’ve learned that everything we know may or may not be a lie, I’ve learned that we are being watched, I’ve le—”

“What are you talking about, Charles?”

“I have to move the cab first.” It’s weird talking to Annabelle like this. She stares off sightlessly and I keep trying to catch her eyes.

“Is it blocking us?”

“No, I just don’t want anyone to tie the dead driver to this house and your dead parents and this car. The longer we can keep this car clean, the better.”

“True, but at this point I don’t think it matters.”

“How do you mean?”

“Epidemic, Charles. Ensuing pandemonium. The cops can’t get shit together because everything is falling apart. Filthy humans are dropping like flies and the world is moving into red alert. I wanted you to be cautious earlier because I was worried about you getting caught before the death had a chance to spread substantially. I think we are fairly safe now. Things are moving much faster than I expected. We just have to avoid any situations like back at that gas station.”

“That’s what I need to talk to you about.” I put the car into reverse, maneuver onto the street, hit the road to nowhere, and begin telling Annabelle all about Jim, my missing hand and the world of the dead.

Chapter Fifteen

Forever

“It’s all bullshit, Charles!” Annabelle pounds the bed with her fist, scrunches up her face and stares sightless daggers into space. “Fucking human germs. Don’t believe a word. Not a word.”

I figured as much, Annabelle’s reaction to Jim’s theories and all, and to be quite honest I’m still not sure what to believe, but if Annabelle says Jim is complete bullshit, I’m inclined to fool myself into believing her. Still, I can’t help playing devil’s advocate.

“But what about the dead rising? What about this?” I kneel down in front of her, hold up my stump and shake it before her unseeing eyes. “What about the shit that came from my stump?

“The dead haven’t risen and the shit from your stump is beautiful protection. The dreamer is taking care of you.”

“Maybe.” Maybe.

“Is there a television in here?”

“Yeah. It’s old and dusty.” The entire hotel room is old and dusty.

“Turn it on. Find a news channel. If the dead have risen, it will be all over the place.”

“They’re not supposed to rise yet. Jim said three days from the first death.”

“Let’s listen to the news anyway. And just so you know, even if the dead do rise in a couple days or whatever, I still say this Jim fellow is full of shit. If they can see the future and see you in their sleep, how come they didn’t know your arm would explode? How come they didn’t know their attempts to destroy you would fail? The human virus will do what it can to stop you. I’m not gonna let it happen.” She crosses her arms across her chest defiantly. She looks like she is forty-five going on thirteen.

I get up and turn on the TV.

It feels good to be shut away in a hotel room with Annabelle. I’m still surprised she agreed to the downtime, but I’ve been through a lot and I think she is sensitive to the fact that I am on edge. We had driven for about an hour, aimless, on the freeway out of Arizona, Annabelle telling me she was only another bout of dream time away from finding us some direction and getting some answers. When I pressed—answers from whom, answers from where—jealousy rioting in my brain like a hive of fire ants, she changed the subject and asked, “What did you want to tell me?”

Plenty. Plenty, and I had talked up a storm. Annabelle kept shaking her head no and making faces and refuting the cult of Jim by any means that bubbled in her head. Somewhere in the middle of my ramblings I had thrown out the hotel idea. You know, lie low for a few hours, rest, and thankfully, mercifully, she had accepted.

The hotel clerk was a greasy fuck with badly thinning hair. I didn’t want to waste him. I wanted to negotiate for a room, work something out, plead to the wealth of human decency and generosity that surely welled within, but alas there was something about his twisted sneer, something about his holier-than-thou attitude. He looked at me, respectable suit and all, as if I were the nearly crippled, seizure-prone misfit I used to be. Needless to say, I fixed him.

The world isn’t exactly falling apart. TV still looks the same, no red alerts or DEFCON Four Paranoia Emergency Broadcast Signals, just the standard early evening programming. I turn the dial and settle on a local news channel. A skull graphic with the caption
Epidemic?
floats in the right-hand corner of the screen. Maybe things are falling apart. The news anchor is a mess. His hair is frazzled and he has a jumpy look in his eye. Epidemic. I have begun a full-fledged epidemic. Thousands dead. A little over a day and a half and already thousands dead. I feel a little sick inside.

Annabelle listens intently. Her eyes look as if they are focusing inward. The anchor sputters and wipes sweat from his brow and informs the world that despite the climbing death toll, a number of highly skilled agencies, government and otherwise, are fast at work getting to the bottom of this strange phenomenon.

“Suckers,” Annabelle snarls. “Yee-haw,” she hoots and hollers. “You’re making it happen, Charles. You’re saving the world!”

I guess I am. Annabelle smiles big and her eyes go squinty with glee and goddamn she is cute. The brimming excitement is infectious. That sick feeling inside curls up and dies and I find myself smiling. “We’re saving the world,” I giggle back.

“That we are. It feels good, doesn’t it?”

I sit on the bed, careful to keep a substantial gap between us. Annabelle looks a little alarmed what with my weight shifting the mattress. “Don’t worry, I’m way over here,” I reassure her.

“It’s okay. I trust you.”

“You do?”

“Completely.”

The news anchor rambles on mutely, a dull murmuring somewhere in the unheeded recesses of my eardrums. I want to continue talking, strike up a conversation, but Annabelle’s declaration of trust has rendered me speechless. No one has ever said that to me before. No one has ever even remotely implied such a thing. Buffoonish and clumsy and on the stupid side, I’ve always been a source of concern. No one has ever trusted me with anything. Suddenly, all doubt is erased and true purpose, not half-assed, easily swayed possibilities, but the truest of true purposes floods throughout me. I was put here to be trusted. What Annabelle says, is. She trusts me completely, no less, and I trust her with every fiber in my defective being.

“Charles?” Her voice is sweet and small and (joy of joys) trusting.

“Yeah?”

“Just checking—you went quiet on me all of a sudden.”

“I don’t believe in Jim. I don’t believe in God or the power of human compassion. I only believe in us, you and me. I put my undying faith in you and your beliefs.” I stare into her empty eyes solemnly. Though she can’t see me, I know she can feel my intensity.

Her mouth tightens and she blinks a few times and in an earnest, important voice she says, “Nothing can stop us now.”

Nothing can stop us now.

And for once in my pathetic, wasted life, I feel a pure, real connection to another human being. Our goals, objectives, wants, desires, whatever, encircle one another and fuse and become motherfucking unbreakable.

I wait for a few moments and everything inside remains solid. My powerful feelings are cemented firmly in place, inextricably meshed within my gooey internals. They are a part of me and I am happy and relieved to discover that this isn’t one of those flippant epiphanies I am prone to having. This isn’t going to unmake itself and unravel and fall around me like so much dead skin. This, like Annabelle and her dreamer and my duty to save the world from the human virus, is genuine. This is forever.

“Charles!” Annabelle pulls me from my internalizing, “Charles!” with a trio, “Charles!” of exuberant name checks.

“What?”

“Listen. Er, look.”

I do and there I am in grainy black-and-white, draining the life from the lady in the minivan. The news anchor talks over the footage: “…it is unclear how Mr. Baxter is tied to the recent rash of deaths, but this chilling, graphic surveillance footage from Las Vegas, Nevada, along with reports of a massacre in a Mesa, Arizona, grocery store, place Mr. Baxter atop a number of most wanted lists.”

The footage ends and a sketch artist’s on-target rendition fills the screen. A hotline phone number appears. “If you have any information leading to the whereabouts of Charles A. Baxter, please call 1-800-xxx-xxxx immediately. Do not approach Mr. Baxter yourself or attempt to restrain him in any way. He is reported to be extremely dangerous.”

“Holy shit, I’m on the news.” I can’t believe it.

“Way cool,” Annabelle giggles.

“No, no, now they’re gonna catch us for sure. Haven’t you ever seen, heard,
America’s Most Wanted
? That shit works.”

“Things are too far along. In a few more days they’ll be up to their elbows in corpses and catching you will fade from an afterthought to a nonissue. ”

The news anchor continues reporting on me (this is too bizarre). He goes on about my extreme dangerousness and then intros an on-location correspondent. A reporter, standing outside of the fancy seafood restaurant I used to work at, jabbers into a microphone. In defense of his jabbering, he is trying to build a case in my favor, calling me things like mild-mannered, quiet, and law abiding. The camera pans out and reveals Mr. Shithead, looking extra slick in a smooth suit and tie, standing next to the reporter.

My eyes bug out and my jaw drops and I lean in toward the television.

“Charles Baxter is a good person,” Mr. Shithead says in a silky, commanding voice. “He is an excellent employee and an all-around nice guy. He wouldn’t hurt a fly and we are all hoping he is okay.”

Mr. Shithead nods at the camera, the same way he used to stiffly nod at me in acknowledgement. The reporter continues on and interviews one of the servers, a woman named Sheila, whom I’ve passed by on my way to and from the kitchen, but have never talked to. I remember her as being a bit cold, never saying hello or good-bye or recognizing my presence. She proceeds to call me “sweet” and “harmless,” and I smile, mentally retracting my cold assessment. “He was kinda slow,” she adds. Perhaps I retracted my original assessment a little too soon. Annabelle chuckles as embarrassing warmth flushes my cheeks. Sheila adds insult to injury, concluding her interview by stating, “I always thought he was retarded.”

Annabelle’s chuckles turn to outright laughter and my embarrassment turns to hurt. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I grunt as stomp out of the room.

Fuck that Sheila bitch. Retarded? Well, she’ll get hers. Who’s retarded now? A pathetic, soon-to-be-dead waitress, or the destroyer, the bringer of death, the end personified? My blood sizzles and my left wrist buzzes. I take a few deep breaths and try to get a hold of my anger. I need to take a shower, cool off, clean away the death sweat and grime.

Starting up the shower I think about Mr. Shithead’s decent comments. I love him, I hate him. The father I never had. The father I always seem to look for in every one of my many employers. The father I am searching for in this great dreamer. The father I sought for in God. Mr. Shithead is okay. I was too hard on him, what with my vandalism scheme. He only wanted what was best for me. They all did. Even my real, indifferent, unfeeling, ashamed dad. Even the ones that fired my incompetent ass. My incompetence. But now, things have changed. Now, I’ll show ’em. I’ll show them all.

I am about to get undressed when without warning or provocation the tendrils stream from my stump and encircle my head. They stroke my face tenderly and comfort me with loving caress. More tendrils worm from my wrist. They work their way into my shirt, sliding in between buttons, hugging my torso. They badger their way through the waistband of my slacks and wrap themselves around my legs. A few strands work at my belt and zipper. They get my pants and underwear down around my ankles.

My entire body feels super relaxed, muscles gone to butter. The tendrils wrap themselves around my penis. I close my eyes and gasp with unknown pleasure.

What the fuck is going on?

Behind my eyelids: explicit fantasy, warm fantasy, sexual fantasy. I grow erect and bite my lower lip. I try for the old trick, the skin trick, the organ trick, but repulsion is nowhere to be found. Instead Annabelle, the dream form, dances in my mind. She slowly strips away her trademark baby-tee and slinkily slides out of her bondage pants and gyrates suggestively, topless, lacy black panties, mouth pouty and dreamy and hungry. My erection, the first in years upon years, reaches the breaking point. The tendrils work around it and explosions of physical bliss dance from my lower abdomen. I feel as though I am climbing, ratcheting skyward. My mouth goes dry, my legs locked, my muscles turn from butter to stone.

“Charles!” Annabelle screams from the other side of the door.

In an instant the tendrils disappear, the blissful feelings disappear, and I am left cold, naked from the waist down, sporting an unsightly, disgusting hard-on. Visions of skin plopping to the floor in wet steaming hunks fill my head. Organs explode. Annabelle’s dream form is obliterated by mountains of blood, bile and shit.

“Charles!” Louder.

I pull up my pants (I’m getting pretty good at doing things with one hand) and then turn off the shower. The offensive erection has softened to a slightly uncomfortable lump in my pants. I adjust it and rush to Annabelle.

“What?”

“That’s him. The voice. The television. That’s him, number three.”

I look at the TV. Allen Michael strides across his stage, slicked-back hair, expensive suit, gesturing with his hyper hands, trying to turn bits of useless information into pipelines to dead loved ones.

“Allen Michael?” I say, still not quite understanding.

“Yes, the voice. It’s him.”

“Allen Michael, the television psychic?”

“Yes. He’s the one.”

I go green and sick. Allen Michael? The man with two first names? The man who plays upon the sorrows of hapless millions? The man who claims he can talk to his dead wife? The man whose dead wife died on my birthday thirty-three years ago? The man who I am to hate for all eternity?

All I can say is, “What?”

“This man is the man we are to meet.”

All I can say is, “Allen Michael?”

“That’s his name? Allen?”

“If he’s the one, why don’t you know his name?”

“It never came up.”

“It’s not him, Annabelle.” It can’t be. Not Mr. Slick. Not Mr. Showbiz.

“I am positive about this. It’s him.”

“Just listen to this shit. He represents everything that is wrong with humanity.”

Annabelle adjusts and pushes herself onto the bed. It’s strange seeing her like this, old and heavy, especially after that weird, sexy crap in the bathroom.

“Turn off the TV,” she commands. I comply and sit at the foot of the bed. “I’m not supposed to talk to you about him, but when I heard his voice, I couldn’t help it. I had to say something. I had to show you that we are right, that the dreamer exists.”

“This doesn’t help. If that guy is number three, we’re in trouble.”

“The wordless voices in my head—you know the ones I told you about, the dreamer’s voice, I suppose—it tells me not to talk about number three. It warns me about your feelings and this love thing and the potential for something heated like jealousy to mess things up. I think we are far enough along for me to override that. We have a relationship and an understanding. Trust and faith. I think you can handle the truth; besides, there is nothing inflammatory to tell, just facts that will make it easier for you and me to communicate and to reach our common goal.