Parasite (15 page)

The gut-wrenching reaction
that he’d expected to feel never came. Instead, Greg Griddle was beset with a sort of calm that defied the situation.

It was probably the fact that the horror, the devastation that he had prepared himself for, simply wasn’t there. In fact, if Kent hadn’t been buried beneath a sheet in the basement of some shithole hospital lying on a cold metal gurney, Greg might have thought him sleeping.

And then his mind pulled a fast one, forcing him to stand there and watch his boy’s chest, to wait for the rise and fall that accompanied every breath, even though in the back of his mind he knew it wasn’t coming.

He counted in his head.

One, two, three…

When he got to twelve, he forced himself to stop counting. With a trembling hand, he reached out to Kent and laid his palm on his unmoving chest.

Feeling the cold hardness of his skin, reality overcame Greg and he was struck with a deluge of emotions.

“No,” he croaked. “No. No. No. No. No.”

His strength drained from his limbs and he collapsed onto Kent’s body, his back hitching with each and every one of his sobs. He tried to force these movements back into his boy, to give him the rhythmic up-and-down movements of his own body—the natural, organic movements of every living, breathing thing.

But that wouldn’t work. His son was dead and gone, and that was the end of it.

It isn’t fair.

Still crying, but with reality injecting him with some semblance of control, Greg pushed himself back to his feet, and was surprised that Eliza was behind him now, offering him not only emotional support, but physical as well. Her hands that gripped his waist were strong, much stronger than he would have thought given her average stature.

“I’m sorry,” he blubbered, not sure if the apology was aimed at Eliza, himself, or Kent.

The young pathologist rubbed his back, but said nothing.

Greg wiped the tears away, clearing his vision. And then he stared at Kent.

The boy’s skin was pale and thin, and there was a smattering of burst vessels around his eyes. His cheeks were also a strange blue tone, and there was an indentation around his throat. But as far as he could tell, there were none of the impressions of the crackers, which had become almost expected in this place—in Askergan.

Greg pulled the sheet down a little more, down past the waist of his boy’s jeans and to his thighs. Only then did Eliza reach out and lay her hand on his, stopping him from moving it further. The boy’s arms were clear—pale, dead, but he still couldn’t see any crackers.

He hated the question, didn’t want to ask it, but he had to know.

“What happened to him?”

Eliza replied almost robotically.

“Kent was asphyxiated.”

At first, Greg didn’t think that he had heard her correctly. Surely she hadn’t said ‘asphyxiated’; surely she had meant some other technical term that meant killed by a parasite… a fucking cracker, whatever the hell that was.

“What?”

Eliza nodded.

“Asphyxiated.”

Greg turned to the doctor. For a brief moment, he thought that maybe her eyes were watering too.

“Asphyxiated?”

“Yes. Do you want a moment to say goodbye? I can’t—you can’t be in here. I’m sorry for your loss, but I can only give you a minute with your son.” She waved her hand over the dead bodies in the room. “I can’t even guess when his body will be released, so I suggest you say goodbye.”

Greg swallowed hard.

Asphyxiated? What the fuck is going on?

“But you said asphyxiated? Like someone choked him? Who?”

Eliza shook her head.

“I’m sorry. Even if I knew more, I wouldn’t be at liberty to say.”

But Greg’s thoughts had already turned to the girl in the basement with Kent when he had died. The girl with the artificial leg.

Corina Lawrence… did she…?

It was almost unthinkable, but who else? Who else could have killed… no, not
killed
, murdered… his son?

Rage began to usurp sadness and dismay.

Somehow, he managed to nod at Eliza, then he turned back to Kent, eyes blazing.

“I love you, son. I love you more than anything.”

He glanced quickly over to Eliza, who had taken a step backward and was averting her eyes; she was giving him as much privacy as she could manage in this room of dozens of ghosts. He leaned in close, and pressed a kiss on his son’s cold blue forehead.

“…and I’ll find out who did this to you, champ. I’ll find out and—”

And what?

Greg didn’t know. But he would find out, if it was the last thing he did.

“—and I’ll make them pay. I’ll make them fucking pay for what they did to you,” he whispered.

The anger in his voice surprised even himself, and he took one last look at Kent before pulling the sheet over his face again.

Then he left the room without even looking back, without even so much as a thank you for the woman who had done him the courtesy of allowing a final moment with his dead son.

A single thought ran through his mind.

I’ll make them pay, champ. They will pay.

Greg was so caught
up in what the pathologist had told him—
asphyxiated
—that he nearly tripped as he exited the morgue. The woman who had granted him access was still at the desk, but when she spoke, he didn’t even hear her.

It wasn’t until she was nearly shouting at him that he took notice.

“Mister! Everything all right?”

Greg looked up at her with red eyes.

“Corina Lawrence,” he said, although he wasn’t sure why. It was the only thing that was burning through his mind now, the only thing that made sense.

“What? You okay? What happened in there?”

When Greg didn’t answer, she immediately turned to the phone behind her. She punched a few numbers, and then a second later started speaking.

“Hey, everything all right in there? What happened?”

Greg kept his head low and kept walking. Even when the nurse turned her attention back to him, he ignored her.

“Mr. Griddle? Mr. Griddle, come back here!”

Greg didn’t stop—he didn’t even look back.

Less than ten minutes later, he found himself in an absurd situation, driving toward the Askergan police station in a stolen SUV. This was not lost on Greg Griddle, only it didn’t seem to matter to him as much as it should have. The only thing that mattered now was finding out what had happened to Kent. And although he was sure that it had everything to do with Corina Lawrence and not the crackers, the best way to find her, he knew, was to confront the man that only hours ago he had stood side by side with and fired bullet after bullet into a frothing sea of crackers.

Greg wasn’t familiar with Askergan County, and the SUV that he had stolen didn’t come equipped with a GPS, but what he was good at was retracing his steps. He simply ripped down Highway 2, taking pretty much the same route that he had taken with Reggie when they had raced to rescue the sheriff and his deputy.

And this is how the sheriff repays me for standing with him—by lying to me, by keeping this from me.

He was driving too fast, way too fast, but he didn’t care.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered the fact that there were far fewer crackers on the road than the night—or was it two nights? Three?—prior, and that the firemen were still hosing down what was left of the gas station. As he turned onto Main Street, he also caught sight of several bikers, more than a dozen, parked at the side of the road. He passed several more of them on the road, and on several occasions he had to swerve to avoid them.

But none of this mattered.

A few minutes later, he pulled into the ACPD lot—or at least he tried to; the parking lot was jammed full of cars. In fact, there were so many cars in and around the police station that he had to park nearly a block away, and even then he did so in an area that was clearly marked as a tow-away zone.

Greg exited into the warm summer air, not bothering to lock the vehicle. Then he made his way quickly to the front of the station. The front window that had been blown inward by the crackers was covered with a patchwork of plywood, a tangible reminder of what he and the sheriff had been through together.

But what gave Greg pause was the people: they were packed outside the station, and he could see even more inside through the door that someone conveniently held open with their foot. Every walk of life was represented here in this crowd, from the elderly to the young, but they all had one thing in common: their eyes were red, their faces plastered in sadness. Some, like him, were obviously angry as well, but they were all somewhere on the spectrum of distraught to devastated.

For a second, Greg’s mind turned back to the bodies that he had seen in the morgue, and couldn’t help but think that if these people only knew what had happened to their loved ones, that they were, in all likelihood, dead, that most would lean toward the devastated end of the spectrum.

But unlike most of
them
, he knew—he knew what had happened to his loved one, to Kent, and that took precedence over all else.

Greg bullied his way through the crowd. At first he tried to be relatively gentle, to grumble ‘excuse me’, avoiding physical touch as he made his way past and through the elderly, but there were just so many people that this quickly stymied his progress. Eventually, he digressed to sheer determination.

He was almost at the door when he elbowed his way past a particularly large man in a cut-off t-shirt.

“Hey, get in line, buddy.”

Greg turned and looked at him, his eyes blazing. The man, catching this look, immediately clamped his jaw shut and stepped off to one side to allow him to pass. And pass he did. A few more strong elbows later, Greg was back inside the station, only this time, it was very, very different from what he remembered.

When before the place had been empty save him and a handful of others, fighting for their lives, the place was full now. Stepping on his toes, he caught sight of Deputy Williams’ smeared face as the man tried desperately to keep the mob away from the inner part of the station, applying equal efforts into holding them back and placating them.

It didn’t seem to be working.

But this didn’t matter to Greg; it wasn’t the deputy that he was seeking, but the sheriff.

Then he saw him, and he experienced an involuntary intake of breath.

Sheriff Paul White had his back to him, but it was clear that it was indeed the sheriff. It was his broad back that gave him away. That and his bald black head.

Corina Lawrence, Corina Lawrence, Corina Lawrence.

“Sheriff White!” he shouted.

But his voice was too quiet to be heard above the din of other shouts. Greg elbowed his way nearly to the very front of the crowd. Someone cried out when his elbow landed hard into soft tissue, but he ignored them.

“Sheriff White!” he yelled again. When this also failed to elicit a reaction, he raised his voice once more. “What the fuck happened to my son?”

And then it wasn’t just the sheriff that turned, but most of the crowd as well. Eyes still red, Greg glared at the man.

Their eyes met and for a moment everything seemed to stop.

And then recognition and sadness overcame Askergan’s sheriff.

Sheriff Paul White opened his mouth to say something, but movement distract both him and Greg before he got the words out.

Another man who had also been standing with his back to Greg, standing right next to the sheriff, also turned.

The anger fled Greg’s face.

“Reggie?”

Greg Griddle was ushered
and then pulled through the station before he had a chance to fully grasp what exactly was going on.

And then, before he knew it, he was back in Interrogation Room 1.

Full circle.

Only this time, Kent wasn’t with him. This time, Kent was dead.

Murdered.

When the door shut behind him, he realized that it was just him and Reggie in the room—the sheriff hadn’t joined them.

His burly friend stepped forward and surprised him with a strong embrace. Greg felt like this was the right time to cry again, but he was all out of tears.

He pushed Reggie away and stared up at his friend’s concerned face.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Reggie looked shocked.

“I could ask you the same question.”

Then Reggie went to embrace him again, but this time Greg pushed him back immediately.

“What are you doing here?” The words came out like an insult, and Reggie recoiled.

“I—I—they needed help, Greg. The sheriff asked me to stick around for a bit, to be an, ugh, impromptu deputy. Can you believe that?”

When Greg just stared, he quickly continued.

“I’m just glad you made it. The sheriff told me that they pulled you out of the fire. Man, that was…”

The words just dragged on, without Greg really hearing any of them.

When his friend had said the words, ‘deputy’, the man had had a hint of pride on his face. And this enraged Greg.

How dare he be proud at a time like this. How dare he feel that way when Kent is lying in a morgue, surrounded by the dead.

“How dare you,” he barely whispered.

Reggie immediately stopped talking and stared.

“How dare you stand there and speak to me as if everything is normal. My son is dead, Reggie. Kent’s fucking dead.”

It was all he could do to prevent from lashing out and striking the much bigger man.

“Where’s your son, huh? Where’s Baird?”

There was a pause as Reggie, his face pinched now, debated whether this was a rhetorical question. When it became apparent that Greg was waiting for an answer, he finally spoke up.

“He’s at home, Greg. Baird’s at home. And I’m so sorry about—”

That was it. Greg blew a fuse, and his right hand fired out with speed and accuracy he hadn’t known he possessed. His fist made contact with Reggie’s face, and the man’s head whipped to one side. A loud crack echoed throughout the small interrogation room.

As Greg watched, fists clenched at his sides, Reggie turned back to him, rubbing his cheek that had already turned a shade of pink.

He was crying, Greg saw, but this did nothing to temper his fury.

Kent’s dead; asphyxiated.

The door to the room suddenly flew open, and both men turned to see the sheriff lumber in.

The man’s eyes darted from Reggie to Greg, and finally to Greg’s fists. Greg didn’t know the man from Adam, he realized, but he could tell by his expression that he had guessed what had happened.

“You lied to me,” Greg hissed. “You lied to me about Kent.”

The sheriff looked confused.

“You lied to me… said that the crackers got him, that he fell victim to whatever the hell the things are that attacked this shithole of a town. But he didn’t. He was strangled to death.
Murdered
.”

Both the sheriff and his “deputy” gaped.

“Murdered?” the sheriff gasped. “What? By who?”

There was genuine surprise on the man’s face, but this wasn’t enough to stop Greg.

“Why was he even here? Why was Kent back in Askergan?”

“Murdered? Greg—”

“Don’t you fucking ‘Greg’ me!” he shouted. “One of your fucking men picked him up and brought him back here. Why, Sheriff? Why?”

Reggie and the sheriff exchanged looks, and Greg took an aggressive step toward the sheriff.

Reggie moved to step in front of him.

“Oh, now you’re protecting him? After all we’ve been through and you’re protecting
him
?”

When Paul spoke again, his voice had lost some of the confused quality and had regained a modicum of authority.

“Calm down, Greg. I didn’t know about what happened to Kent.”

“Calm down? Calm down?! Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down! You killed my son! You killed Kent!”

Reggie had to physically get between the two men now as Greg was inches from throwing another punch. But this punch, he knew, wouldn’t have been shrugged off like the one he had delivered to Reggie moments ago. This one would land him in jail.

Greg backed down; being thrown in jail would mean he might never get to the bottom of this.

“Corina Lawrence,” he mumbled, his eyes remaining trained on the sheriff.

Something passed over his face, and Greg instantly knew that he was onto something.

“Where is she?”

The sheriff opened his mouth, then quickly closed it again.

“Where is Corina Lawrence?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

The sheriff looked away when he said the words.

“Well then tell me what the fuck happened to my son!”

Greg became distinctly aware that he was no longer the only one shouting. The mob at the front of the station must have been fueled by their argument, as their voices had started to escalate as well. Sheriff White glanced toward the closed door, concern on his face. After all Askergan had been through, after all it had survived—barely, by the skin of the county’s proverbial teeth—it was all about to come crumbling down.

“I can’t tell you where she is, Greg. I’m sorry. But I’ll find out what happened to your son. I promise.”

“Fuck your promises!” Greg screamed.

The tension in the room had reached a breaking point, and was at a juncture.

When Greg made up his mind and stepped forward, the sheriff didn’t back down. Greg didn’t blame him; despite what was going through his mind, and undoubtedly how badly the man before him felt for what he had gone through, for what Kent had gone through, he still had a county to preside over, to protect.

Strong hands suddenly grabbed Greg by the shoulders, and before he could reach the sheriff, he was quickly guided to one side. He tried to shrug his friend off, but Reggie was too strong. The much bigger man exerted his will, and before he knew it, Greg was being forcefully shoved back into the hallway. He tried to turn, to confront the sheriff again, but Reggie’s grip tightened and he was unable to stop his forward progress.

No, no, no. I need to find out what happened!

But he couldn’t turn, couldn’t do anything but continue back toward the mob of citizens. With a strong shove, Greg found himself being propelled into the crowd. When he was finally released, the people filled in his path, and he found himself unable to make his way back, even if he’d wanted to.

He turned and caught his friend’s sad face.

Reggie was crying again.

But despite his tears, he managed to mouth the words, “the church—they went to the church”.

For a moment, Greg did nothing; he simply stood still amidst the chaos even as his once best friend turned and tended to other Askergan citizens.

The church
.

It felt like a curse word to him.

The church
.

On some fucked-up level, it kind of made sense; after what Corina had done, after what she had done to
Kent
, she—anyone—would seek some sort of salvation.

Greg Griddle’s needs were on the opposite end of the spectrum, but their basis in human nature was equally as primal.

Revenge
.

He was seeking revenge for what had happened to his son, despite his promise all those years ago, despite trying with every fiber of his being to not treat his son or anyone else in the so utterly inhumane way that his father had treated him.

In a way, he too was seeking salvation, but his redemption would not come from God.

Gregory Griddle swallowed hard and then turned and left the Askergan County Police Station for the final time.