Wolf Flow (14 page)

    "I'm here, baby." She leaned over him, a bit of her blond hair trailing across his cheek. "You know I am."

    They were silent for a moment, his hand finding hers and tightening upon it.

    "Mike-" With her other hand, she wiped her eyes. "You're in bad shape, Mike."

    He smiled up at her. "Think I don't know that?" A quick laugh jerked in his chest. "I'm all fucked up. What we're looking at… I figure some kind of cerebral hematoma; epidural if I'm lucky." His hand let go of hers and touched the bandages at the side of his head. The cloth was soiled and darkened with blood. "I think the fracture's pretty much just linear… bleeding's mostly from where the scalp got torn. If it's subdural… the hematoma… that's not so good."

    She didn't know what he was talking about. All that medical stuff. But to hear him reciting it, in his dry, weakened voice-reciting it about himself, and not some body-on a table-that scared her even more than just seeing the bruises and the battered flesh.

    He went on, the words dragging under narcotic weight. "I think… some kind of spinal injury… I don't remember, I was already down on the floor… Brown-Sequard's syndrome… maybe… can't move that arm… they were kicking me, I think…" His voice had started to fade, then he pulled himself back. "Plus the usual… contusions, cracked ribs… shit like that. They did a good job on me. Maybe some renal trauma… I keep pissing blood…" The smile came back, rueful this time. "Those guys really worked me over…"

    "Aitch did this?"

    Mike nodded, slowly. "Him and Charlie… I guess… they didn't appreciate being cut out of their business…"

    She saw him falling again, away from her. "Mike… we gotta get you to a hospital."

    "No!" His eyes jerked open. "I know how he works… Aitch's friends; he's told them all about me… I know he has. The cops… they'd be on me before I got out of the emergency room. He's got friends… I don't." He shook his head, the same slight roll from side to side. "Don't worry… I can pull through. As long as you're here."

    He reached and took her hand, bringing it close to the side of his face. Squeezing it tight, with all the strength left in him.

    

    

    The fire crackled, sparks drifting upward with the smoke. Doot squatted by the shallow hole he'd scooped out of the rocks and dirt, and pushed a few more twigs into the flames. He hadn't built a big fire; they didn't need it. The evening air was only starting to cool, the ground beneath them still warm from soaking up the day's heat.

    He and Lindy-he knew her name now; the guy had said it-had carried Mike outside, his arms slung over both their shoulders. Now he knew that name, too; knew for sure that was it. He had hung back and listened, and watched, like somebody who was invisible, somebody who wasn't there at all. Until they needed him.

    They needed him to do all kinds of stuff. This Lindy hadn't even been able to figure how to work the little can opener he'd brought out before with the other stuff. So he'd opened up the cans of chili, and built the fire, and put together the stick and string contraption for holding the cans over the fire until the contents were hot enough to eat. The chili got a little burned black on the cans' bottoms, but that hadn't seemed to bother Mike; he'd wolfed the stuff down like he was starving. Well, he probably was. His girlfriend Lindy held the can, with a corner of one of the blankets wrapped around the hot metal, and spooned it up for him.

    His girlfriend-that's who she was. Anybody could see that. Doot didn't care one way or the other. He'd just wanted to know, and now he did. The flames licked at his fingertips, and he dropped the last half inch of the twig.

    They'd gone several yards away from the old clinic building, far enough to find a skeletal tree that Mike could prop his back up against. The other blanket was spread underneath him, as though he were out on a picnic. Lindy sat cross-legged next to him, tilting her head back to drink straight from the Pepsi bottle.

    "Hey, Doot."

    He looked up from the fire and over to Mike by the tree. The guy didn't look so bad now, but not by much. As if he'd been beat to hell, all right, but not like he was going to die, at least not this minute. Whatever had been in the needle-and Doot had a pretty good suspicion what kind of stuff it had been-had fixed him up to a degree. At least he was functioning.

    Doot stood up, stretching a crick out of his knee. "What?"

    "Is there somebody else around here?" Mike used his chin to point to the building and the shadowed landscape around it. "I mean… somebody that hangs out here?"

    Some of the lethargy that had flowed over him had dissipated. His words came faster.

    Doot shrugged. "There's some old guy, least I think he's still around. Named… Nelder; something like that. He's kinda like the caretaker or something. He's got like a shack up in the hills. But you don't have to worry about him." Doot glanced at the uneven line that marked off the stars, then back to Mike. "He's just some old fart. If he's not dead by now."

    Mike turned his head, scanning across the building's silhouette. "Who owns this place, anyway?"

    Another shrug. "I dunno. My dad always told me it was some folks back East."

    Leaning back against the tree, Mike nodded. He lapsed into silence for a moment, then looked over at Lindy. "You know," he said slowly. "I could use another…"

    She knew what he meant. Doot watched as she got up and went into the building, squeezing past the boards over the front door. When she came back, she had the needle and another one of the glass vials in her hand.

    Doot looked away as she knelt down beside Mike, picking up his arm and turning its pale underside toward her.

    

    

    The lobby was filled with light. Not just from the sun pouring through the crystalline windows, the curtains stirred by a caressing breeze. Everything glowed, lit from within. Mike stood in the center of the room, hands outstretched, bathed in opiate bliss.

    Everything made new again, the past revoked, as though it were the dream and not this. The wood polished to mirrors, the marble top of the reception desk unbroken; pieces of brass, the rings of the curtains and the bits on the switchboard, all burning bright as fire.

    He walked across the space, the Indian rugs yielding beneath his feet. At the edge of the grand staircase, he looked up into the sunlight flooding down from the landing window. He grasped the banister and ascended.

    The doctor was waiting for him. He saw the white-coated figure, back turned to him, standing by the counter, sorting through his instruments.

    The gaunt face turned and looked over his shoulder at Mike. And smiled. He gestured for Mike to step closer.

    "I'm glad you made it," whispered the doctor. "We've got an awful lot to do…" His rubber-gloved hand extended something toward Mike.

    He felt his own fingers close on cold metal. He looked at his hand and saw a scalpel, its edge glistening as though made of silver fire.

    "Here we are." The doctor stood by the examining table. A white sheet covered the figure lying on it.

    Mike looked down at the table as the doctor reached over and swung the examining lamp into place. Its light caught a spill of blond hair tumbling from beneath the sheet's edge.

    The doctor drew the sheet away from the body, exposing the feet and legs first, then the naked groin.

    A corpse, already dissected. The skin had been split and peeled back, exposing the shafts of bone and striated muscle tissue. The female organs lay nestled in the pelvic basin, like unborn things that had never taken human shape.

    "You see?" The doctor's whisper again. He drew the sheet farther back, to reveal the coiled viscera, the knotted spine running underneath, a snake in a soft, moist garden. The woman's breasts lay against the slender biceps muscles, as though giving suckle to the red tissue, the clotted blood speckling the nipples. The cage of her ribs guarded the spongy lungs and the fist shape between them.

    The sheet was bunched around the figure's neck, her face still covered. Mike leaned over her with the scalpel. He didn't know where to begin, what he was to do. The flesh, naked beyond what the skin had ever shown, glistened with wet jewels.

    A rubber-gloved hand moved at the edge of his vision. The doctor pulled the sheet away, off the table and the figure's head. The golden hair trailed across the padded surface beneath.

    Lindy's face, eyes closed, mouth parted as though stilled with its last breath-the throat beneath her chin had been opened, showing the windpipe and the tendons running next to it, but the face hadn't been touched. The skin there was still perfect and unmarked.

    He brought his face close to hers, marveling at her beauty, his own lips parted for a kiss.

    Her eyes snapped open. Her gaze, perfect black at its center, locked into his.

    Her mouth widened, smiling.

    The scalpel clattered on the floor as he fell backward. His hand hit the examining lamp, its beam arcing across his face.

    Lindy sat up on the table, smiling as her breasts slid across her ribs and dangled on straps of skin against her viscera. Smiling at him.

    Her red hand reached for him, the fingers curling, wanting to draw him into her kiss. Her embrace.

    The lamp swung again on its arm. Its glare burst and blinded him as he fell.

    

    

    He woke with a flashlight shining in his eyes. From across the room-the beam was small enough to blot out with his upraised hand.

    For a moment, he thought it was the kid, come back again. Doot had gone puttering off on his motorbike, heading home. He'd told Doot that he and Lindy wanted a little privacy.

    Lindy… Next to him, she pushed herself upright, holding one of the blankets across her breast. Her eyes scanned confusedly across his face.

    "Mike-" The remains of her own sleep, and whatever she'd helped herself to from the case, still tangled about her. "Mike, what is it?"

    The flashlight beam swept across her. She shrank back from it, the edge of the blanket pulled to her chin.

    It wasn't the kid. With the flashlight turned away from him, Mike could see the taller, thinner figure behind it.

    The beam pointed to the floor, making a bright oval there. Enough light scattered to the sides to show the outlines of the lobby, the ragged curtains over the windows.

    The dim light also showed the gaunt face that Mike had seen in the dreaming. Skeletal, flesh carved down to the angles of the bone beneath. But without the gold-rimmed spectacles. The face had dark sunglasses on-the round black lenses looked like bored-out holes into the man's skull.

    There was no white doctor's coat, either. Mike could see that the bony man had on old denim work pants, the legs bagging loosely on his frame. And a shabby-looking plaid flannel shirt, buttoned up to his Adam's apple. The cords of his neck were stretched taut beneath the frayed edges of the collar.

    
It's the caretaker
-he realized that now. Just some old fart with a flashlight, prowling around. The one that the kid had told him about.

    The man smiled, a crease lengthening in the narrow face.

    "Don't worry, folks." Dry voice, paper and dust. "I just came around to see how my guests were."

    Lindy had scooted over close to him. He felt the bare skin of her arm touching his. He kept his eyes on the old man.

    The caretaker stepped closer, the puddle of light floating ahead of him. "How you folks doing?"

    Mike watched the man as he stopped a couple of yards away. "We're okay," he said after a moment.

    The black lenses regarded him. "You didn't look so okay the other night." The voice even drier, as if it couldn't even be bothered to laugh. "When I fixed you up."

    Mike glanced down at the bandages wrapped around his ribs, then back to the man.

    He nodded. "Thanks."

    "You're in a bad way, son." The flashlight's beam moved across the floor, then slid partway up a wall, the man's hidden gaze following it, then turning back to Mike. "You should be in a hospital. There's only so much you can do with some bandages."

    "I'll be all right."

    "Suit yourself."

    The caretaker turned away and walked toward the lobby's door. Mike watched him, until he was gone. He didn't have to push the boards far to get outside.

    "It's okay." He looked over at Lindy. "I don't think we have to worry about him."

    They lay back down, the side of her face resting against his shoulder. But he didn't sleep.

    

    

    "This was quite a place at one time." The caretaker stopped and looked back over his shoulder. "People used to call it The Mayo Clinic of the West.' " His thin lips formed their mirthless smile. "It was really something. Or so I've been told."

    The old man was giving them the grand tour. Nelder-Mike had remembered the name the kid had told him. That was it. Old Nelder, with his grey William-Burroughs-plays-Mister-Death face, had come sliding back into the building's lobby, with a skillet of bacon and bread fried in the grease. He must have been outside as soon as dawn had come over the hills, building the little fire and squatting down beside it. At least in the morning, with the bright daylight scraping in, the dark glasses on the skinny face didn't look so strange.

    "Used to be the biggest train stop between here and Lincoln, Nebraska." Nelder kept walking, turning his head toward his shoulder when he spoke. "Folks came from all over to take the cure."