The Scrubs (13 page)

The Rift rumbled.
 
He realized what was happening.
 
Without Jeter, it couldn’t exist.
 
It fluttered under the pressure of the North Wall.
 
The energy it normally produced dimmed.
 
Stone blocks materialized from thin air, and mortar oozed out to fill the gaps between the blocks at a furious rate, as if applied by unseen masons.

Keeler watched the Rift collapse around him.
 
He glanced back at the world beyond the Rift, its existence darkening by the second.
 
He could return to that diminishing world if he wanted or stay in the real world to be viewed as a freakish god.
 
Some choice
, he thought and stood his ground.
 

Bullets ceased pummeling his body.
 
He surveyed the joint nightmare created by O’Keefe and Jeter in the real world.
 
The hit squad had stopped shooting.
 
They’d taken out several of the technicians in the confusion.
 
Both guards and technicians attended to the fallen.
 
Some were still tearing the wasps off O’Keefe’s carcass, but Keeler got the idea that those yellow jackets wouldn’t leave O’Keefe alone until nothing was left.
 
Jeter was still and Cady crawled across the floor, forgotten by everyone.
 
It was a shambles, but it wouldn’t be his mess to clear up.
 
He didn’t care for the North Wings’ problems.
 
The female technician held the boy safe in her arms.
 

Keeler had saved the boy and ended O’Keefe’s atrocity before it had begun.
 
At last, he’d done something worthwhile with his life.
 
He hoped it made up for his mistakes.
 
He called out Tim Mitchell’s name as the North Wall squashed the Rift, crushing him out of existence.
 

Cady winced as the wall squeezed Keeler from all sides squirting him out across the North Wing as a fine spray.
 
What was left ran between the mortar joints.
 

You’re out of it
, Cady thought.
 
Go in peace
.
 

The green-eyed boy turned his gaze on Cady.
 
Cady marveled at the child Keeler had saved.
 
How had Jeter cast the boy into his private hell?
 

The boy wrestled against the technician’s hold.
 
She tried to placate him, but he slipped from her grasp and made a bolt towards Cady.
 
He didn’t get far.
 
The woman snatched an arm, halting his progress.
 
The boy’s green-green eyes blazed with fury.
 
As she went to gather the boy up, he pressed a hand against her stomach.
 
A Rift spread out from his hand and expanded to four feet in diameter at the expense of the helpful woman.
 
Through the Rift, Cady glimpsed a gateway to a different world than the one that had been projected on the North Wall.
 
The Rift lasted only a few seconds and closed again before the woman struck the ground in two smoldering halves.
 
The boy giggled.

“Jesus Christ,” Cady muttered.
   

Guards and other technicians who’d witnessed the boy’s lethal gift backed away, fear etched into their features.
 

The boy giggled again.
 
Now that he had everyone’s attention, he started to show off.
 
He dashed over to a console and pressed a hand to it.
 
Again, a Rift blossomed from his touch and the console evaporated.
 
The technician manning the console pitched forward into the Rift.
 
The Rift closed after the technician disappeared inside.

A guard with a broken visor opened fire on the boy.
 
The boy responded by opening a Rift in front of him to protect himself.
 
The bullets disappeared into its depths.
 
The guard threw down his gun and ran.
 
A stampede ensued.
 
People on the ground bolted for the exits.
 
Guards up in their gun nests clambered down the cat ladders.
 

Cady was glad to see good sense finally present itself in the North Wing.
 
Not that he thought running was going to do them any good.
 
It was too late.
 
The milk had been spilled and there wasn’t a mop big enough to clear up the mess.

Cady remained.
 
He’d never make it to the doors now.
 
He couldn’t feel his legs anymore.
 

The boy stabbed the air like he was playing cops and robbers with fingers guns.
 
Except his finger guns had the power to kill.
 
Rifts opened up everywhere the boy pointed.
 
One Rift developed out of thin air partially behind the guard who’d shot at the boy, swallowing him from the waist down.
 
His upper torso struck the ground, trailing his intestines into the Rift.
 
Others suffered similar fates.

The boy turned away from his carnage.
 
He wasn’t needed anymore.
 
Rifts opened spontaneously.
 
Some blossomed in the walls and ceilings, some from thin air.
 
The boy wandered over to Cady and stood over his crippled form.

“Who are you?” Cady asked.

“I’m Davey.”

“Who are you really?”

The boy giggled menacingly.
 
Cady recognized it.
 
Fear swelled, creating a vacuum in his chest.
 
He could barely bring himself to utter the truth.
 
He’d feared the North Wing Project would breed more monsters like Jeter, but not this.
 
How had O’Keefe been so blind?
 
The bastard shouldn’t have died without knowing the truth.
 

“You’re Jeter, aren’t you?”

“Yes, James David Jeter, but my mum called me Davey.
 
You helped me be reborn.”

“No,” Cady wailed and lunged for the new Jeter.
 
The boy stepped back to miss the sloppy attempt with ease.

“Goodbye,” the boy said and turned away.

Cady felt the ground shift.
 
He turned to look.
 
The concrete floor was dissolving where Jeter’s wormwood poisoned brain had spilled.
 
The floor under Jeter’s Throne opened up and it toppled into the expanding hole, taking its king with it.
 
Cady peered into the abyss.
 
A massive tangle of wormwood grew, spiraling out of control.
 
Nourished and fueled by insanity, it burst through the opening, knocking him aside and ripping a bigger hole in the floor.

The boy headed over to the North Wall.

“Come back,” Cady bellowed.

The boy glanced over his shoulder, grinned and kept on walking.

A pistol lay twenty feet from Cady.
 
He hauled himself along on his elbows.
 
As he reached out to claim the weapon, a Rift opened up, blocking his path.
 
He went to go around it.
 
Another Rift burst into life next to him, then another, and another, until he was totally boxed in.
 
The boy giggled.

“Come back, please,” Cady pleaded, tears streaking his face.

The naked boy touched the North Wall and a hole opened.
 
He stepped into the moonlit London streets.
 
The approaching emergency vehicles didn’t see him disappear into the night.

The End

ROAD RASH

The following is from the book,
Road Rash
, available from Amazon Kindle.

Road Rash

The unmistakable sounds of buckling metal and shattering glass cut across the field from the road.
 

Everyone’s having car troubles today
, Straley thought.

He broke into a jog.
 
His own transportation threw a rod five miles back.
 
He’d managed to coax the Ford to a vacant lot and then left it there to die.
 
Not that all his problems today were vehicle related.
 
His crew lay dead.
 
To be honest, he and his crew had screwed themselves.
 
Bank robberies were never easy, silent fucking alarms.
 
But hey, he’d gotten away with the haul.

Straley’s jog quickly slacked off to a walking pace.
 
The weight of close to four hundred grand in mixed bills stuffed into a duffel and slung over his back demanded that.

How can paper weigh this much?

He reached the shoulder and the carnage left him stunned.
 
The head on took no prisoners.
 
It was a battle between Detroit steel, old and new.
 
A seventies Chevy Caprice took the honors from a late model Dodge Caravan.
 
The Caravan was toast.
 
Upside-down, it bled oil and antifreeze-tainted water.
 
Steam wafted skyward from the engine and blown tires rotated lazily, still clinging to buckled rims.
 
When the minivan landed on its roof, the impact blew out the front windshield, along with two of the side windows.
 
On the other hand, the Caprice sported a buckled fender, busted headlight and a twisted bumper.
 
Its engine ticked over unevenly, which seemed a product of poor maintenance rather than a direct result the accident.
 
A spider web of cracks from the bloody impact of the driver’s head crazed the windshield.
 

It was one of those accidents that never should have happened on a straight road with no distractions or blind spots.
 
However, these things happened all the time.
 
The only witness to the crash was a busty young model trying to sell lite beer on a billboard at the side of the road.
 
She looked on, still smiling her lascivious smile.

Straley shrugged off the duffel and felt a hundred pounds lighter.
 
So much so, he staggered for a moment before he got his legs under control and ran over to the inverted Caravan.
 
He peered in to find the driver sagged against the seatbelt, her hands lying against the roof’s lining.
 
Blood streaked her blonde hair and puddled against the headliner.
 
Straley didn’t have to ask if she was okay or check her vital signs.
 
The vacant stare on this soccer mom’s face told him all he needed to know.
 
He couldn’t tell what caused her death.
 
The seatbelt still restrained her and the air bag had done its
job, but there wasn’t much that could prevent severe, blunt trauma.
 
This situation offered him nothing.

He scurried over to the Caprice and struggled to see inside the car.
 
Months of road dirt coated the outside and blood smeared the interior. Through the filthy windows, he saw a figure slumped across the front seats.
 
It was impossible to tell the driver’s condition.
 
Straley jerked on the driver’s door handle but the door remained jammed solid.
 
It took both his hands and much of his strength to wrench it open.
   

What he found inside took his breath away.
 
The man behind the wheel was old, but how old, Straley couldn’t tell under the carnage.
 
The driver was wearing his seatbelt, which had done little to protect him.
 
It only prevented the man from pouring out onto the road.
 
The Caprice Man looked raw.
 
The impact must have somehow peeled the man’s skin back, because it hung in palm-sized sheets from his face and bare arms.
 

“Jesus Christ,” Straley murmured.
 

For the Caprice Man to be in this condition he had to have rolled the car a dozen times without the seatbelt fastened, but it was clear that hadn’t happened.
 
The Caprice was in way too good a shape, even if the Caprice Man wasn’t.

He studied the bloody corpse belted into its steel coffin.
 
The man wasn’t just raw; he was melting.
 
His flesh looked to have dissolved off his body.
 
It was as if this guy was coming unglued one cell at a time.
 
A glob of something ruby red ran down his cheek like a teardrop.
 

A jolt of fear pulled Straley up short.
 
There was something seriously wrong with this guy.
 
He bet the son of a bitch had been on the way to a hospital when he passed out at the wheel and slammed into the minivan.
 
Straley hoped this shit wasn’t contagious.