The Canal (12 page)

"Ju-oh...Jerm..."

Joe closed his eyes. He pointed the gun and
fired. Bang.

The recoil sent him stumbling backward, where
he crashed into a pillar. He rolled around it, but soon he was
running into another one, and then another. He had to hurry. He had
to get away. That tongue... Like in his dream...

"Joe."

Trapped, it seemed, by these goddamn pillars,
blocking his escape. And then suddenly Joe's legs were being swept
above his head and he was hanging upside down, the hem of his
trench coat firmly in the grip of the chuckling monster.

Oh God. It brought its face next to his. He
saw the breeding lumps of skin there and watched the jowls ooze a
brown sauce. The heat was unbearable, a withering blast that
scraped your skin. Sweat continually rinsed the creature, splashing
on Joe, burning where it touched. The tongue hovered just inside
its whale's mouth, pacing behind rows of teeth like a caged lion.
Its distended heart loped insanely against the top of Joe's upside
down head, messing Joe's hair.

Oh God, no. And it's breath. It reeked
of...of rot and decay. But of something else too, something
stronger, something unmissable... Time. History. The history of the
canal. The inception, the burning inception, the layers, the creek,
the draw, the drain, the eons and on and on, the marsh the malaria
the feeders the breeders the sea, always the sea. The waters
pooling, the algae, the insects, the digging, the biggening, the
widening, the feeding, the dumping, the flowing, the filling, the
more the more the more, at last, all this, all rumbling from the
passage of the creatures tumorous throat, compressed into one
noxious whiff.

Joe's arms swung wildly, just above the
floor. The gun accidentally flashed in his hand. Bang.

The creature took hold of Joe's shoulder and
spun him right side up. It brought its strep-colored lips close to
his ear and whispered him a message. Concisely. Precisely. Just one
word.

And for Joe, things finally made sense. He
now knew what this monster was. He knew its secret. And it, it-- It
couldn't be. No. It just wasn't possible. It was... Because if it
was...

It had said...

Oh God.

Oh no. Please God, no.

Please, anything but that...

*

On the inside, the building was everything
you'd expect a bastion of disorder to be: a Beirut, a public pool,
a standing disaster overrun by vermin. As squalid as Alan's very
principles were pure. The place was obviously a quick cop out for a
high or a hand job.

But upstairs somewhere, that was the
epicenter. The grizzly's den, squatter HQ, error central. Alan felt
such a definite sense of righteousness in this place -- it was just
so utterly beneath him.

He found the elevator. There were no buttons,
just an unwieldy lever, something better suited to lowering
drawbridges or launching catapults. He shoved it with his elbow,
avoiding it with his hands. The capsule began shuddering skyward,
and Alan found himself blind, enveloped in jock-strap darkness.

Waiting in the gloom, staring tensely upward,
Alan knew that Joe and his ilk needed him. Chaos without order,
why, that was just untenable. In fact, without rules, disorder was
powerless, it had no form. It was nothing. It was never the other
way around, however. In fact, order was better off without chaos.
Complete order, that was how heaven was. Where everyone does what
you say, everything exists in its proper place, and there was no
uncertainty or doubt. Just rules and regulations. And it was all
just wonderful.

The elevator began squealing, childbirth type
noises that meant either imminent arrival or imminent malfunction.
A seam of light appeared near the car's ceiling. It widened,
bringing the top floor into view. Alan thought he detected
something familiar, something hated -- the loathed pill of the
canal.

He soared into the room, a sight to behold,
pulsing with gallon doses of adrenaline. He noted the gloss of
toilet water on the ground. He heard speaking, but the voice, it
sounded more like the gnawing of a trash compactor. Through the
pillars he caught glimpses of an upended bathtub and islands of
empty bedding. Good lord. All those people, they lived here in
24-hour filth, constantly dosing on gangrene and fleas.

Alan came to the ugly glade of the bathtub.
That's where he found Joe -- the coat gave him away, glistening
with reflective crusts. And there was someone else, they had Joe in
their arms and were cradling him, whispering.

It seemed to Alan, in all the haze and opaque
shadow, that the glimpsed outline of this person was impossible.
Giant. The back hunched over, swept up like an enormous wave.

Quite an imagination, the brain. Oh, the
tricks it plays.

"Drop him," ordered Alan. "Fucking now!"

The whispering stopped. Joe's attacker
snapped its head in his direction, causing Alan's blood to lurch.
What he was seeing -- face like a distended navel, skin that
exploded and sprayed in places -- it just wasn't feasible.

The attacker threw Joe to the floor and
darted backward into the dark. Alan pursued. There was a thudding,
sliding crash that rattled from a huge pipe in one of the windows.
And beneath this opening lay, undoubtedly and unquestionably, a
man.

Seeing this Alan felt...he felt relief. The
room was brighter now, and the guy who'd had a hold of Joe, he was
just some skinny punk, some hippie panhandler. And that was all he
was, with a face like any face you'd see. Well, not any face -- it
was the face of a nobody, the face of everyone who'd ever begged
for a dollar. But familiar at least. As the guy was making a run
for it, he must have slipped and knocked himself cold.

Alan left him for now. He hurried back to Joe
-- Joe lay in a pile, strangely limp, looking hollowed out. But no
sucking bullet holes to be found. No jets of blood. No
mortality.

"Joe! You okay?"

Joe slowly moved, crawling forward onto his
knees. There was something helplessly mechanical about his motions,
like a creature with no head, some headless crustacean. He still
had Alan's gun.

"What the hell happened here!"

The side of Joe's face looked like a volcano,
busted and red and seeping lava. Survivable, though. Mixed with the
blood was a layer of perspiration, a very measurable layer, in the
realm of quarters of an inch.

Alan was whirling -- heart going, muscles
cramped, his whole body turned full volume. Holy fuck, this place
was horrible. A fucking satanic gallbladder. He'd had a shock
there, at first. Fucking trick of the light, fucking optical
illusion.

"Dammit, Joe! What the fuck is going on? Who
the hell is that guy? Jesus-fucking-Christ, it's like the
intestines in here!"

An idea briefly flashed. The water on the
floor... Could the squatters have been trying to wash something
away? Something like blood? Joe was in a hurry to get here -- he
must have known something was in the works. Maybe these fuckers
liked skin. Rose, the guy with the knife, all those goons. A ritual
thing, ritual murder, the deranged byproduct of marginalized minds.
They'd do it for kicks, as a taunt, a disgusting raspberry from the
periphery.

"Joe, get a hold of yourself -- like fucking
right now. And you need to tell me, before this place gives me
rabies, what just fucking happened!"

Joe gurgled incoherently. Eherk...eherk. He
was crying.

No. Emphatically: no. Alan was owed answers.
You didn't walk into a hovel, a literal bedpan, like this out of
charity, just to let Joe eherk his way out of responsibility. Not
when there was so much hanging in the balance.

"Get up, Joe."

Joe just sat there.

And then something happened. Something Alan
couldn't explain. A force, or energy, it came to him, as if from
across plains of space and atmosphere and clouds. Something that
had been waiting for a long time, since before Alan was born,
maybe. Waiting for this moment. And now it was finally here, a
welcome electricity that jumped into Alan's arm and turned it
silver. He shivered, warm with power, and slapped Joe across the
mouth.

A spray of sweat splattered against a
pillar.

Alan was stunned. That had come out of
nowhere. What's more -- it had felt good. Invigorating, like a dip
in a frozen sea. And Alan badly wanted more. He needed more. But
this time with the fist, with the knuckles...

Alan drew his hand back, pulling it high over
his head, far as he could reach... But then the anger...he felt
embarrassed suddenly. It was so unlike him, to lash out like that,
without thinking...

Well, why shouldn't he get mad? Especially
when there were so many who were deserving of his fury. Like Joe's
attacker. Alan glared. At last, the man was up and moving, crawling
towards Alan. Animals were crawlers.

Alan went and kicked him. The guy was filthy,
enthusiastically so, bronzed with grime, a dirt tan. And his eyes,
juiced with a bad infection. The guy emptily blinked.

"Hey buddy, you fucking hearing me? Listen,
you're going to do exactly what I say. You're going to sit back
down, you're going to keep your hands where I can see them, and
then you're going to start talking. What did you do to Joe, that's
my first question. You better hope he's okay, asshole. Hello?"

The guy wasn't comprehending. He must still
be dizzy from his fall. "Pay attention, fucker. Tell me about your
buddies -- I want to know exactly what you and your little tribe
were doing up here in this goddamn vomitorium."

The bum flopped onto his stomach and tried
executing a slow dog paddle across the floor. Alan flexed his
fingers. It was coming, he could feel it... From across the
firmament, the gathering roar...

"Are you hearing me, asshole?"

The guy looked up at him and mumbled
something. It sounded like, "Gingerbread."

Alan's fist abruptly exploded against the
man's jaw. There was an incredibly gratifying, if not downright
amazing, report. One befitting a small firearm, metallic, vibrating
the floor and air. Alan stared in awe at his own clenched hand.

But it wasn't right, that noise. There it
went again. It lasted longer this time, a jarring moan. The sound
of a machine under torture.

It was the elevator.

Joe... Joe? With a start, Alan realized that
Joe was gone. Wasn't there. All that remained was a ring of sweat
on the floor. But...but Alan could still feel the contours of Joe's
recent face, the energy was still zinging in his fingertips.

Alan dashed to the elevator. He barked Joe's
name. The car was already disappearing into the floor. Joe's back
was turned.

Alan balanced on the brink of the elevator
shaft, watching the car's roof fall further and further away. It
seemed to be taking all the explanations and answers with it. But
Alan could still catch him, especially at the pace Joe traveled.
The only problem was, there was no way to get the elevator back
upstairs.

The other guy would know a way out. These
types, they always had their secret exits and escape hatches,
entire warrens of tunnels right underground for conducting guerilla
mischief. Alan had been a bit physical with the man, maybe a little
on the side of lasting damage. But no matter. If the punk was out
cold, Alan could just slap him awake.

Alan went back to the tub, but discovered
that one very crucial element was lacking. One vagrant. Alan
retraced his steps and tried again.

In the ensuing search, digging through the
odor, the grime, the lice, Alan began to sense a growing unbalance.
A slight tinge of hysteria. God, it was hot in here. God it was
nauseous. If there was a hell, this was it. Who knew, all this
time, hell: it was right in town. The huge pipe in the wall, it
dropped five stories straight into the fucking river. This was
ridiculous -- there had to be another way out. Of course there was.
Otherwise... Otherwise Alan might not want to think about that.
Man, these walls, it seemed smaller in here, smaller every second.
It was tiny almost. So small every surface in the place was
practically rubbing on him.

He had to give ol' pandemonium some credit.
Joe and a whole pack of degenerate murderers (and even if they
hadn't murdered, well, people like that were always guilty of
something) were probably right now having a big laugh at his
expense. All those mistakes, all those errors, fleeing out into the
world. Apparently these creeps could now transport themselves
through space and time, fancy that. And apparently, unless he
jumped down the elevator shaft, or dove into the canal, Alan was
trapped. Even worse, he was ineffective. On the most important day
of the most important case of his career. Nay, his life.

Not that he didn't have this under control,
it was very much under control, don't be crazy, he'd figure this
out. It was fine. It was all fine.

Alan returned to the elevator shaft. He
leaned forward and howled into the depths.

>> CHAPTER NINE <<

"Hey, Alan." Pause. "You look like shit."
That was Womack, who had stopped mid-hallway to stare, with almost
pornographic curiosity, as Alan came rushing past.

"Get the first aid kit," gulped Alan, out of
breath, as he ran to the bathroom.

Alan knew how he looked. It was worse than
the arm, the shirt, and the knee. Now it was also the fire escape.
Yes, the fire escape had come to his eventual rescue, albeit
grudgingly. But first he'd had to find it. And finding it meant
maintaining his composure long enough to sort through the
footprints he had discovered, showing on the drier parts of floor,
a huge tangle of them, like the aftermath of some caterpillar
misadventure, until he finally divined a lone, pigeon-toed pair --
belonging to his vanished panhandler, no doubt -- wandering off
opposite the elevator. Straight to a window boarded up with
plywood. Only that plywood, one easy push and it glid open on the
smoothest hinges known to man.