Shattered Sky (32 page)

Grabbing a can of shaving cream from the bathroom counter, Drew lathered up, as he had done every day for four days. He began with his face. His scant facial hair had come in fuller each day. Now he had straggly mutton chops that didn't quite stretch to his chin. He shaved them off, losing every last bit of sideburn, and higher still, until the razor began to clog with longer hair. Even though the throbbing of his arm made it hard to concentrate on even this simple task, he found the slow, smooth strokes of the razor soothed him, provided him a Zen-like focus. The shaving ritual had begun to take on a monastic flavor. He cut away his long locks with scissors, then lathered his scalp, picked up a fresh razor, and brought it back and forth in short strokes, clear-cutting inch by inch until his entire scalp was shaven and smooth. He was getting used to the shaving ritual, and that frightened him.

When he was done, he studied his shaven head in the mirror—a reflection as unfamiliar to him as the one he had first seen entering the room. The only thing that seemed the same were his eyes, glassy from his growing fever. He watched his reflection for a minute or two, until he could see his clean-shaven scalp begin to fill with fine peach fuzz. For an instant,
a wave of anger overcame him; a sudden surge of hatred. He closed his eyes, inundated by it.
It's just the pain,
he told himself.
It's just the fever.
He didn't go back to Winston until it subsided, but the undercurrent was still there.

Winston, still in his underclothes, had made no move to get dressed. Instead he studied a particularly nasty spot of mildew on the wall near his bed. “We need Tory here,” he said longingly. “She'd sanitize the place. Maybe even kill the mold, too, who knows. Her power added to mine. It was really something, you know?”

“Yeah, but she's not here,” said Drew, with hostility he didn't expect. “She'll never be here. She's fertilizing half of Texas by now, okay?”

Winston turned to look at him. “You're an asshole,” he said, and used it as an excuse to get back into bed.

“That's it, I'm outta here. You can lie there until you're eaten alive by athlete's foot for all I care.”

“Close the door behind you,” was all Winston said.

He would have left. He had every intention of it, but as he neared the door, he felt his legs go out. He landed on his knees, and gripped the doorknob, but only to keep himself from flopping to the ground. He could feel the fever in every joint. It had skyrocketed in the few minutes he had spent in Winston's presence.
Damn Winston. Damn him.

He tried to get to his feet and complete his exit, but found he was just too dizzy. When he turned, he saw that, wonder of wonders, Winston had actually gotten out of his bed, but he kept his distance.

“I had a life, you know?” Drew found himself ranting, grimacing through the chills and body aches. “I mean, yeah, friggin' high school track, not very important, but it was
my
life,
mine
, and I was happy keeping my head in the sand like
everyone else, pretending the world wasn't falling apart.”

Winston took a step closer. “Let me see your arm.”

“Just stay away. The closer you are, the worse it gets.”

Winston didn't listen, and Drew didn't have the strength to ward him off. As Winston came closer, the pain in Drew's arm exponentiated. He could feel the pull of the stitches, smell the sickly stench of infection. He felt it would explode. The room now spun faster, the floor and walls switched places. A trap door sprung in his mind, and he found himself slipping away from consciousness. He offered no resistance.

There was nothing to mark the passage of time. If he had dreams, they were lost. When he came to, he was on his bed, and the curtains were open. Winston was gazing out at the late afternoon sun, fully dressed. Their backpacks, that carried what little they had brought with them, were packed and resting on a chair.

“The front desk already called,” Winston said, “wondering why we haven't vacated the room.”

Drew's left arm felt curiously light and numb. He raised it to find the dressing around the wound was gone. So was the wound. No stitches, scar or discolored flesh, no hint that his arm had ever been wounded at all!

“Winston . . .” Drew continued to stare at his arm. He turned his wrist, as if perhaps the wound could have switched to the other side. Although he did still feel a bit weak, his fever had broken as well.

“Winston, how did you do this? You can't heal a wound, or fight an infection.”

“No, I can't,” Winston said calmly.

There was a pillowcase in the corner, overstuffed and tied closed with a shoelace. “What's that?”

“Towels, mostly,” Winston answered.

“Mostly?”

Drew got up to inspect it more closely. As he neared the overstuffed pillowcase, he could see there were some stains on it. Blood stains.

Winston can't fight an infection
, thought Drew,
his art is growth, and regeneration. The regeneration of flesh. And bone.
Drew reached for the shoelace to open the mouth of the bag, but Winston grabbed his arm, before he could.

“I'm asking you not to look inside,” Winston said. “I'm asking you not to question what I did. Not unless you really want to hear the answer.”

Drew looked at the back of his left hand—his perfect left hand. It was a bit pale—substantially less tanned than his right hand. Drew felt a brief instant of nausea, but chased it away. “Trick or treat,” he said. This was a little bit of both, perhaps.

“I think I saw that bedbug you were talking about,” Winston said, grabbing the pillowcase with one hand, and his backpack with the other. “If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not hang much longer.”

They left the key in the room, the bloody pillowcase in a Dumpster, and drove out into the melee of All Hallow's Eve.

T
HE STRANGENESS OF THE
times only fueled Halloween. Usurped from the children, the holiday had fallen even further into the hands of adults. This year, the parties began early, for people were, now more than ever, eager to lose themselves in masquerade and alcohol. For those not satisfied with partying, the streets offered other recreation. It was amazing the things that would burn.

Winston saw eerily costumed commuters in the cars around them as he and Drew attempted to leave downtown Dallas. He supposed the fetid state in which they left their
hotel room qualified as a particularly macabre Halloween prank. With nowhere else to go, and most roads clogged with partygoers and traffic accidents, Winston drove them to Cowboys Stadium, where the Packers played the Cowboys in an under-attended game. Winston was not surprised by the lack of attendance. Since random acts of violence were no longer isolated incidents but a veritable plague, attending any large public gathering was taking one's life into one's hands. The most die-hard sports fans were leaving their season tickets in the drawer. “All part of the big picture,” Dillon would say—as if the hammer on every gun was just a cog in some cosmic Rube Goldberg machine.

Winston and Drew didn't watch the game. Instead they stood on the abandoned top concession circle, looking out over the parking lot and suburban Dallas beyond, counting the plumes of smoke.

“Hell night,” Winston explained. The fires had begun even before the sun had set, and now, as the last light of dusk slipped from the sky, the night was aglow with distant pockets of flame.

Drew shook his head. “They don't do this in Southern California.”

“They will this year.”

Winston glanced at the space around them. The entire concession level was closed, and lit only by the stadium lights spilling through the access tunnels that led to the stands. Most everything else on the level was cast in shadows. It was as good a place as any to privately bring Drew up to speed. Winston told Drew everything that he had kept from him. All that he knew, or at least all he
thought
he knew.

Rather than being distressed by the news of the three intruders, Drew appeared relieved. Perhaps knowing the face of doom was better for him than waiting for it in the dark.

“And these three . . . phantoms you're talking about—you think they're looking for you?”

“No,” answered Winston. “They're
not
looking for me. That's the problem.”

“Three ghouls out there, and they're not looking for you. Maybe I'm a moron, but I don't exactly see that as a problem.”

Winston sighed. “It means that whatever they're up to, I no longer figure into their equation. They've completely dismissed me.”

“So, you think there was a point when you
did
mean something to them?”

“I know there was.”

“You were a threat to them?”

“Not just me,” Winston said. “Dillon, Lourdes—Tory and Michael as well. Maybe even Deanna.”

“Fear of the dead?” asked Drew.

“Fear of their recovery,” Winston answered.

“But you're not a threat anymore?”

Winston shook his head. “We're nothing to them now. I can sense it.” Winston gave Drew a few moments, watching him piece it all together.

“They had to make certain one piece of the whole was destroyed forever,” Drew concluded. “So they sent Briscoe to destroy Michael's remains, but he failed, so he went after Tory instead!”

“And the moment Tory's ashes were scattered to the sky,” added Winston, “it was safe for the three to enter this world.”

Drew pursed his lips, shaking his head. “There's still something that I don't get. You're not a threat to them, yet your powers increased the moment they arrived. Why?”

“I don't know. It's as if their intrusion triggered something. Like an alarm.”

“Or an immune system,” offered Drew. It was an offhand comment that almost slipped by. It took a moment for both of them to really latch onto it. Drew turned to face Winston, and Winston caught an intensity in his eyes. Excitement, fear, both beginning to blossom together.
“Like an immune system,”
Drew said again, slowly, like a spell. Winston could feel the spell open a door, and the scope of what was beyond it gave Winston vertigo.

A shadow moved in the dim service lights of the closed concession deck. They turned to see a figure approaching, something terribly wrong with the face. Only as the figure got closer, did they realize that he was wearing a latex mask over his head. The mask, a Halloween staple, featured a bloody, lopsided face, cleaved down the middle by a rubber hatchet. He smelled the part—a stench of organic decay as if he hadn't washed for weeks.

“You boys looking to score some dope?” said a muffled voice behind the mask. “I got something for whatever ails you. Only the good stuff, guaranteed.”

“Get lost,” said Drew.

“C'mon, I got your number,” said the drug dealer. He turned to Winston. “You boys are looking to shoot up. Let me inoculate you against your pain.”

“Get the hell out of here before I put a real hatchet in your head,” Winston said.

The dealer put up a pair of dirty hands, and backed off. “Suit yourself. If you change your mind, I'll be around.” Then he strolled off looking for fresh customers.

Sign of the times
, thought Winston. When the dust finally settled, the only ones left would be the cockroaches and the drug dealers. Winston looked out over Dallas. There were more fires on the horizon now. The distant echo of fire engines blended
with the sounds of the stadium behind them. A handful of firefighters, battling to break a fever raging out of control.

“Do you know how an immune system works, Drew?”

Drew shrugged. “The marrow and spleen kick out white blood cells. The white cells surround the foreign body, and kill it. Hey, man, didn't you ever see
Fantastic Voyage
?”

“There are also antibodies,” Winston reminded him. “Different kinds, each with their own specific properties. Their own special charm. They lie dormant until triggered by either a disease, or a vaccination.”

Let me inoculate you against your pain.

Winston glanced around for the split-faced drug dealer, but he was nowhere. He shivered, holding the thought in abeyance. “The thing is, it takes more than one antibody to do the job. To fight the most dangerous threats to the body, it takes specific types, in specific quantities working together.”

Drew considered it, and nodded a deeper understanding. “A quantity of six, maybe?”

“Maybe.” A roar from the crowd signaled that one of the two teams had scored, but neither Winston nor Drew ventured onto the field to find out which one. Winston scanned the deserted space around them, until spotting the nearest ramp leading down. “I do believe we have to find ourselves a drug dealer.”

T
HE HATCHET-FACED DEALER HAD
left the upper concession level, and they did not spot him on the lower levels either. He could have taken off his mask and vanished into the crowd, but somehow Winston doubted that.

“The guy was dog crap on bad news,” Drew reminded him. “Why are we looking for him?”

Winston chose not to answer that. Instead he asked, “Are you familiar with fractal theory?”

“No, but I'm sure you are.”

“Only what I've read.” Of course, they both knew the library locked in Winston's head had grown rather extensive. “The theory says that the smallest particle of something is just a smaller version of the whole.”

“You lost me.”

“A boulder on a mountain will, on some very basic level, contain the pattern of the entire mountain inside it. The way an acorn holds the pattern of the oak. The way every living cell contains the pattern of the whole organism.”

“DNA.”

“Right. But what if it doesn't stop there? What if the organism is the blueprint for the species? And what if the species is the blueprint for the cosmos?”