Bad Glass Part 20

I was already feeling like s.h.i.+t. Last night's Jack Daniels was a rotten lump in my stomach and I wanted nothing more than another pull. On something, on anything, to keep it all down, to keep it all settled. When I asked, they both shook their heads and Trent repeated that giggling, hysterical laugh. He told me "Just wait, buddy. f.u.c.king wait. We've got something better." Then they pulled me into the building.

The place had been a high-end fas.h.i.+on store before the evacuation. I would have hated it, I'm sure-all gloss and empty s.p.a.ce.

Somebody had done a half-a.s.sed job boarding up the windows before they fled, and a lot of light still flooded in through the front, between crisscrossed planks of plywood. The gla.s.s in the door had been shattered, and the place had been looted. Or maybe not. Maybe that's how it was supposed to look. s.e.xy destruction, postapocalypse glamour. That type of s.h.i.+t.

Trent laughed and pointed back toward the rear of the store, where there was a short alcove lined with dressing rooms. His laugh faded into a manic giggle, and he started to clench and unclench his hands compulsively. He was f.u.c.ked up-quite obviously f.u.c.ked up on something hard-and there was a very bad energy coming from him.

I should have left right then. I should have run away. And there was a dim voice in my head telling me to do just that. But there was another voice in there, too, this one more insistent, telling me to continue on. (And maybe that was my true voice, trying to give me what I deserved. Doom. Destruction.)

There was a sound in the back of the room. A mewling. At first I thought there was a kitten back there, cowering in one of the dressing rooms. That's what it sounded like, a sick, tiny kitten. Mewling, chewing on the air.

f.u.c.k. A kitten. If only that had been it.

In the dressing room there was a kid. No, that's not right. It was a thing, not a kid. Really, I don't know what it was. The light was dim, but I could see that it was wearing ragged pants and nothing else. It was smaller than me, and it was cowering in the corner, s.h.i.+vering. Its skin was pasty white, almost glowing in the gloom. And that skin, it looked thin and brittle, like paper stretched over a Halloween skeleton.

Johnny pulled a syringe from his pocket, and Trent, still laughing like a f.u.c.king hyena, rushed the kid the thing and pushed it down to the ground holding his shoulders. Johnny's syringe was nasty. The needle was f.u.c.king bent. I didn't move, I couldn't f.u.c.king move. And Johnny squatted down and grabbed the thing's arm. And its mewling got worse. It was a keening, a squeal, like a pig in a slaughterhouse. It started to struggle and a stench filled the dressing room as it s.h.i.+t its pants.

"Help him," Johnny said. "Hold it down."

I moved, on autopilot, and grabbed its legs. They felt like tree branches wrapped in canvas. I held it down as it tried to kick. And Johnny

f.u.c.k, I can't write this. Tomorrow. I'll try again tomorrow.

I tried to visit Taylor last night, but I didn't make it past the sidewalk in front of the house. The front window was bright with light from a fire, and I could hear laughter from the living room. Mac's drone. Amanda's t.i.tter. Taylor's voice, clear and sharp as ever.

It was cold outside and I was, mostly, sober. The whole f.u.c.king world was riding shotgun on my nerves, and I could feel my eyeb.a.l.l.s straining to pop from my skull.

I'm really not doing well. It's that stuff. It's like a toxin in my blood, and it's pooling, growing in my brain. It's not right, nothing's right, and the voices in the house, the laughter, after a while it started to claw at my brain.

I wasn't welcome. I didn't want to be there.

Back to the dressing room. That thing.

It was like a dream. You're doing things and you can't explain why. You just know that that's the right thing to do. No, not right. There's no right or wrong about it. You just know that that's the way things happen, and you do them without thinking.

Johnny stuck the thing's arm and pulled back the plunger. The blood, or whatever it was, didn't draw smoothly. It was red, but not blood red, closer to red house paint, with a splash of white mixed in. And it was clumpy. The plunger would stick, and then a lump would shoot through into the barrel.

The thing was squealing. I looked into its eyes and it was terrified. Its mouth was trembling but it couldn't speak. I don't think it knew how. Like it was a baby, and all it could do was squeal. Its eyes were wide and terrified as Johnny drew out its blood.

When he pulled out the needle the thing stopped struggling and collapsed, limp, to the floor. Its squeal petered out. Trent and I let him go and he closed his eyes and pressed himself tight against the wall (it, f.u.c.king it, I mean). Its fingers clawed weakly against the floor.

Then I turned toward Johnny and found him smiling down at the filled syringe. Trent skittered across the tiny room on his hands and knees and held his arm out toward Johnny. He was laughing, f.u.c.king laughing, and there were tears in his eyes as he pulled back his sleeve and clamped his big hand around his bicep, right beneath his armpit, making the vein in the crook of his elbow stand out.

Johnny nodded and put the needle in. He didn't sterilize, didn't do anything. It went straight from that thing's vein, directly into Trent. And Trent groaned. It was a truly p.o.r.nographic sound. Then he lowered himself against the wall and leaned his head back. There was a smile of pure rapture on his face and he let out a contented sigh. Looking at him, he could have been lying in a summer field, just relaxing, basking in a bright ray of sunlight. It was like he was on a f.u.c.king picnic.

The syringe was still three-quarters full, and Johnny came toward me after Trent collapsed back out of the way.

"You'll like this, Wendell," he said. Johnny never calls me Wendell. He calls me Weasel, like everyone else.

I started to inch back, but stopped. It was that voice again, or maybe just my body freezing up.

But I didn't stop him. He p.r.i.c.ked my skin and tilted the needle up, and I watched as the clumpy red liquid swirled inside the syringe. Then Johnny hit the plunger and I was gone.

It was incredible. It was perfect. There was warmth inside my veins and I could feel it, I could fell it moving inside me. It was like I was mainlining comfort, like stuffing a down blanket into my arm. When it hit my brain ... I don't know, it was indescribable. Not an explosive energy and confidence, like meth, or a mellow, numbing euphoria, like H. It was something else. It was like nothing I'd ever done before.

I fell back on my a.s.s and braced myself up with my hands. In my palms, pressed against the ground, I could feel the city beneath me. It was like this ... again, it was like comfort. Really, words fail me, and that's all I can say. It was comfort. Comfort and happiness, the warmth of the womb, radiating up through my body. It sounds stupid to say I felt at one with the world, but I did feel part of something larger. The city, maybe. I was not alone.

And Taylor didn't matter, the way she looked at me-hope or disappointment-the understanding and sympathy I never saw anywhere else. At that moment, I didn't miss her, I didn't feel ashamed that I'd forced her away. I was part of something bigger, and I couldn't see those small things anymore. No matter how large they might look back in the real world, back down in that place where I was nothing but a tiny, weak failure, a loser sporting big thoughts and small resolve. Here, all of that was nothing.

Trent giggled again, somewhere in the dressing room. I couldn't see where he was and I didn't want to move my head to look around. I felt my own laughter bubbling up inside my chest and I understood him, I totally understood his braying, moronic glee. A hand grabbed my arm and pushed me down to the floor. It might have been Johnny. Or it could have been that kid, that skeletal, s.h.i.+vering kid with gold in his veins. I couldn't see and I didn't really care.

The dressing room was empty when I regained my senses. Johnny and Trent and the thing with the golden veins were all gone, and the room was dark. The sun had almost fully set.

I still felt high, and I staggered out of the store. I made my way back to the Homestead. I've been living here for several days now, but I'm always surprised when they let me back in. They shouldn't. They have no reason. And, really, I don't think anybody wants me here, just Johnny. I'm a f.u.c.king disaster. I don't know why Terry agreed.

Johnny seemed confused when I asked him about the stuff we took. I wanted more, but he just shook his head and stared at me like I'd lost my mind. He offered me some H, but the thought of heroin made me feel queasy, like I was going to throw up right there.