Bad Glass Part 24

"Rise and s.h.i.+ne," he said. "The world can't turn without you." He had a box of doughnuts in one hand and a thermos of coffee in the other.

"What the h.e.l.l happened?" he asked, smiling, bemused. He crouched down next to me and handed me the thermos. "Charlie's downstairs on the sofa, you and Floyd are up here having a sleepover, and no one else is home. Taylor's gone."

I ignored the question for a moment, instead focusing on the thermos. As soon as I got the cap off, my stomach started to growl, the smell of the coffee hitting me hard. When was the last time I ate? I wondered. Yesterday morning? I poured steaming coffee into the thermos lid, bolted it down, and then turned my attention to the doughnuts.

"What happened?" I finally said, echoing Danny's question as I fumbled with the box. I had a hard time forming the words. I was tired, and the muscles in my jaw were tense and cramped. "f.u.c.k if I know. The city happened. Weasel happened ... I happened."

Danny nodded and didn't press me for details. He'd been in the city long enough to understand; there was no point in explaining the unexplainable. He watched as I bolted down a couple of doughnuts.

"How's your hand?" he asked as soon as I started to slow down.

I paused, my eyes darting down to my bandaged palm. My hand! It had completely slipped my mind.

When was the last time I'd taken the antibiotics? I felt a rush of panic and immediately grabbed for my backpack. I found Mama Ca.s.s's pills and swallowed a double dose. Then I started to unwrap the dirty gauze. I took it slow, my fingers shaking. I was afraid of what I might find.

What I found, however, was a pleasant surprise. The infection was gone. Completely gone. Underneath the bandage, which was stained a disgusting phlegmy yellow, there was nothing but a hardened scab. The surrounding skin was pale white, without even a hint of red. And even the gamy, rotten smell was gone.

I held up the hand, and Danny nodded his approval.

"And how's he doing?" Danny asked, turning his attention to Floyd. I turned toward the bed, and, as if feeling the weight of our eyes, Floyd let out a pathetic groan and rolled toward the window. His hand crept up and covered his eyes. "Did our boy have a rough night?"

"Yeah. He overdid it on the oxycodone."

"f.u.c.king lightweight," Danny said with a smile. The smile didn't last long. He turned back toward me, and his expression collapsed into serious lines. "And what about Taylor?" he asked, his voice hushed, concerned. "She's usually here this early. I brought her some breakfast."

I shrugged, dejected. "I don't know. Yesterday ... she just ran away from me. We found Weasel-" I didn't want to describe it. I didn't want to tell Danny about the fingers in the floor. "It's just ... Weasel's gone, and she freaked out. She ran away. And I don't know where she went."

"Did you try her parents' house?"

"What?"

"Did you try her parents' house?" he repeated, more slowly this time, as if my incomprehension were the result of poor enunciation. "She goes there a lot. She visits them almost every morning."

"Her parents are here? In Spokane?" I was shocked. This information ... it seemed ridiculous to me, utterly strange and unlikely.

Danny nodded, his eyes suddenly going wide. "I guess she doesn't talk about them too much, but I a.s.sumed ..." He paused. "I'm just surprised she didn't tell you. She likes you, man. She likes you a lot."

What had she told me about her parents? I tried to remember.

She'd said that they had disappeared. She'd said that they were gone.

"Where do they live?" I asked. "How do I get there?"

Danny watched me for a second. He was wearing an expression of concern, and for a moment I didn't think he was going to talk. Why? Is it something he sees? I wondered. Something written across my face? Something that scares him?

Then Danny pulled out a small pad of paper and started drawing me a map.

It was gray out on the streets-still early morning, but you really couldn't tell. Under that low, gray ceiling, it could have been morning, noon, or almost night. The clouds could have been ready to spit out rain or snow or just break apart and let the sun s.h.i.+ne in.

It was waiting-room weather. Purgatory weather.

I left Danny behind with Floyd and my computer. Charlie had shown him how to transfer outgoing information onto his thumb drive, and he agreed to upload my latest post. He wasn't too happy about it, though. He had a couple of hours away from the courthouse and didn't want to spend them baby-sitting Floyd and mucking around with my computer. He wanted to go with me to find Taylor. He wanted to make sure she was okay.

But I didn't want that. I didn't want him coming along.

And I couldn't even give him a valid reason why. I just told him no. Sorry-really, I'm sorry-but no.

Danny's map took me east on Mission, then south toward I-90. I stayed off the main road as I rounded the university, instead crossing to the residential street one block to the east. I probably didn't need to bother. There wasn't a soul around. The only sound in the still air was the rasp of my breath and the sharp echoes of my footsteps.

I took pictures of the abandoned houses as I walked. Most still looked pretty good-it hadn't been that long, after all-but they all showed signs of neglect and abuse. In the first month after the evacuation, the yards had sprouted out of control, crowding sidewalks and invading lawns, and then they'd died. The streets and sidewalks were plastered with wet leaves, and there were broken windows up and down the street. A couple of the front doors hung wide open.

I approached one of the houses and took a picture of its shattered door; there was a splintered dent to the left of the k.n.o.b where a boot had staved it in. Looters, scavenging for food or money, or maybe just looking for a warm place to stay. Since that act of violence-maybe a month ago, maybe more-the world had slowly started to make its way into the house. I crouched just outside the door and took pictures of the entryway. Dead leaves and dirt littered a nice Persian rug. Lumps of wet, shapeless paper-once-glossy magazines, a stamped handwritten letter-adhered to the tiled floor. There was a whiff of mold in the air and hard-water stains on the dingy beige walls.

I took a half dozen photos before I noticed the line of muddy paw prints stretching from the front door to the rear of the house. The prints were large, and as soon as I noticed them, I thought I caught a hint of animal musk in the air. It was the barest tickle at the back of my nose-probably just my imagination, really, nothing more-but it was enough to transport me back to the tunnel in the park. And once again I was there, following Mac down into the dark, searching for him as he faded away, as he found entry into Amanda's world. A world of dogs and wolves. A world of savage eyes and teeth and blood and flesh.

I recoiled from the entryway and retreated back to the middle of the road.

After that, I didn't linger. I stopped taking pictures and instead just concentrated on covering ground.

There was graffiti on a building near the 290 bridge, clearly visible from the middle of its span: overlapping green and black lines scrawled across white stucco.

It was the Poet's work. I recognized the writing.

Just one sentence, but it left me feeling perplexed and just a little dizzy: I THOUGHT WE WERE FALLING, NOT FLYING.

I took a couple of pictures and moved on.

Danny's map was surprisingly precise. It ended in a neat series of squares sketched out along Second Avenue, filling the s.p.a.ce between Pittsburg and Magnolia Streets. There was a circle around the middle square and an arrow pointing to a phrase at the edge of the piece of paper: "blue tarp on roof."

I rounded the corner and immediately spotted the house with the tarp. It wasn't a very nice neighborhood, sitting right there at the edge of I-90, but the blue-topped house looked well cared for. It was boxy and small: two stories tall, but the second floor couldn't have been much more than a single slant-ceilinged room. None of the windows were broken, and the hedges at the yard's perimeter looked as if they'd been trimmed recently. The tarp on the roof looked fairly new as well, bright blue and still perfectly placed, despite the weeks of wind and rain and snow. There was absolutely no way it predated the evacuation.

I paused and turned a full circle before approaching the house. The street was still and silent. There were no people, no animals. The nearby stretch of I-90 was deserted as well, the western roadblock miles away, the military occupied elsewhere.

I was alone here, near the center of the city, and it was all very ... calming.

This was a feeling I'd been having for a while now, something I'd been circling around, narrowing in on, as I walked the empty streets and thought about the empty city. Away from the eyes of people, I could do anything and it really wouldn't matter. It wouldn't change the world. It wouldn't change a single mind.

And that was very liberating. For so long, I'd been trying to impress others. I'd been trying to impress my father, my peers, the girls in my life, the professors at school. And then there was the whole photography thing, nothing but a desperate attempt to impress the whole world.

But here I'd found something different, something new. I'd found comfort in not making an impression, jumping into the ocean and not making a splash, not leaving a single ripple.

I can't imagine that this was a very healthy thought-it was the height of solipsism, after all-but it was calming. And there was still Taylor. I still wanted to make an impression with her. With her, I wanted to make a big-a.s.s splash.

I stayed to the side of the house as I approached, rounding a chest-high hedge and ducking beneath the nearest window. I raised my head and looked in through the slats of a venetian blind. The front living room was empty. There was a sofa and an armchair arrayed around an unlit fireplace, and an end table supported a stack of magazines at its side. I continued toward the back of the house, stopping in front of a kitchen window. Someone left the room just as I raised my head to look in. I only caught a brief moment of dark-clad back as he or she turned the corner into a hallway on its far side. The person was nothing more than a blur of motion in the doorway; I couldn't tell if it was Taylor or one of her parents.

I continued on. There was a screen door at the rear of the house, hidden inside a tiny garden. The garden was well maintained but not very lush. Slumbering for the winter. I carefully picked my way through the garden and glanced in through the back door window.

There was a narrow hallway on the other side of the door, leading all the way to the front of the house. Taylor was standing in its center, facing away from me. There was a blanket strung across the corridor at about breast height-a makes.h.i.+ft clothesline barrier, part.i.tioning the hallway into a number of smaller s.p.a.ces-and she was peering over its edge, down toward the floor on the far side. She was talking to somebody, somebody hidden out of sight, and gesturing with both hands. I couldn't make out most of what she was saying. Only a couple of her words, raised loud, made it through the doorway: "not staying," "not safe," and a single, pleading "please."

There was an answering voice from the person on the other side of the blanket, but it was low and calm, and I couldn't make out a single word.

It was strange, this scene, and I couldn't tell what was going on. Who was she talking to? One of her parents? And why here, in the middle of the hallway? And what was up with the part.i.tion?

I held my breath and tried to concentrate on the m.u.f.fled sound of Taylor's voice, trying to pick meaning out of that muted cadence. But there was nothing there, just the dull rumble of argumentative voices, or, rather, the rumble of one argumentative voice set against the rea.s.suring calm of a patient and soothing one. This didn't go on for too long. After a couple of minutes, the conversation ceased, and Taylor was left standing there, vibrating with mute energy. Then, in a gesture of complete frustration, she pulled the blanket aside and stormed toward the front of the house.

As she made her way to the front door, pus.h.i.+ng aside a second barrier, the blanket closest to me slipped from its clothesline and fell to the floor, spilling with a quick, fluid motion. And what it revealed ... well, I actually jumped at the sight, and my hands, pressed flat against the screen door, bounced wildly off the metal barrier.

It was a man, merged with the hardwood floor. The top half of his body looked perfectly normal: a Middle Eastern man dressed in a white b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt. But the s.h.i.+rt stopped midbelly, at the floor, and the bottom half of his body was gone. His hands moved against the floor and walls, slow, languid, and completely insensate. His head lolled, and a line of spittle spilled from his lower lip. I couldn't see his eyes-his head was moving, and he was over a dozen feet away-but I could imagine them rolled back inside his skull.

There was a woman seated next to the man's stunted body, a white woman in her fifties, propped up in a comfortable nest of pillows. Taylor's mother? She jumped at the sound of my hands bouncing off the screen door, and a startled cry escaped her throat. Her eyes widened when she saw me standing at the window, looking in. With one hand, she reached out and grabbed the man's shoulder comfortingly; the other started scrambling toward the blanket on the floor, trying to rea.s.semble her makes.h.i.+ft blind.

"Taylor!" she cried. "Taylor!" Now the woman's voice was loud enough for me to hear, frantic and shrill and filled with a primal, instinctual fear. "What is this? What's going on?"

I looked up and saw Taylor towering over her parents. Her eyes were locked on me, narrowed and filled with a cold, biting anger. She wasn't moving. My presence here had frozen her solid.

Her mother continued to struggle with the blanket, trying desperately to throw it up and over the clothesline. She worked one-handed, refusing to release her grip on her husband. "Help," she said, turning to look back at Taylor. "Please, Taylor, for the love of G.o.d, help!" Her words came out frantic and disjointed. There were tears running down her cheeks.

Finally, Taylor stepped forward and put the blanket back in place, carefully draping it over the clothesline. Once it was back up-and her parents hidden from view-Taylor pointed at me and gestured me away from the window. It was an angry, dismissive shooing gesture. And at that moment, I swear, there was genuine hate in her eyes. At that moment, I think she couldn't f.u.c.king stand me.

I backed away, horrified.

What had I done?

I sat down in the dirt and waited for Taylor to appear. There was a frigid wind blowing down from the north, and the clouds were getting darker overhead, a dense slate-gray weight perched above the city. It felt like snow.

I didn't know what was going to happen with Taylor. I'd looked in on something private here, a secret, and didn't know how she was going to react.

Her parents. Her father, melted into the floor, consumed by the city.

I thought it was unheard of-this phenomenon-I thought it was something that I alone had been carrying around. I thought it was mine. But Taylor had seen Weasel; she'd seen his fingers. She was a part of it now. I'd infected her.

Maybe it would be for the best if she pushed me away. Maybe I was a cancer that needed to be excised from her life.

"What the f.u.c.k are you doing here?" she asked, rounding the corner of the house. She stopped on the other side of the yard, crossing her arms and leaning back against the wall. "Did you follow me? Did you f.u.c.king follow me?"

"Danny told me about the house, your parents' house. I was worried about you. You ran away ... after Weasel. I wanted to make sure you were okay."

"And how the f.u.c.k did Danny know? I didn't tell him. Has he been following me?" These words brought a sour look to her face, a look of wounded betrayal. "Are there no f.u.c.king secrets around here? No privacy?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, but I didn't mean-" I struggled for a moment, trying to figure out what I did mean, what I'd been hoping-or expecting-to find on the other side of her parents' window. Finally, I managed: "I didn't mean to scare your mom. I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm sorry." Taylor's face remained impa.s.sive, set in stone. "And I'm sorry about your father."

There was a hint of emotion then, a slight twisting at the corner of her lips. Taylor remained still for a while. Then she pushed herself away from the wall and let out a loud sigh, her anger transitioning into a desolate sadness.

"She won't leave him," she said. "My mother. She thinks he's still in there. The sounds he makes; she thinks he's communicating, thinks he's saying her name. Miriam, f.u.c.king Miriam. But he's not. It's just stupid, senseless noise." She clenched her arms tighter across her chest, like maybe she was just now starting to feel the cold October air. "She's set up camp right there, next to him, and she won't leave ... Yet she won't let me stay in the house! She wants me out of the city. She wants me gone."

"She loves you. She wants you to be safe."

Taylor clenched her body even tighter. I could see her s.h.i.+vering now. "I don't see why," she said quietly, a bitter hint of self-loathing in her voice. "She should hate me. I ruin everything I touch."

"That's not true," I said, shaking my head. "That's just not true. I don't know ... maybe it's me. You remember what Danny said? There were no reports of anything like this before I showed up. Nothing. Nowhere. It's just around me-people falling through walls, losing cohesion. It's something I brought into the city, something the city brought out of me. You just got too close ... And I'm sorry for that. I'm just so, so sorry."

"No, Dean," she said, her voice calm, suddenly devoid of energy. She was stating fact now; there was no room for emotion. "It's not you; it's not even the city. It's me. I'm doing this. Everything around me." Then, more quietly: "It's what I do. People get close to me and they fall apart."

"That's just not true."

"This happened a month ago, Dean," she said, gesturing frantically toward the house, toward her father trapped inside. "Before you got here. We were fighting. I was yelling at him-f.u.c.king yelling-and he stepped through the f.u.c.king floor. He put his foot down, and it just didn't stop going. And it's not just him, Dean. I see this a lot. It's happening all around me ... You saw Weasel!"

I stood up and started toward her, wanting to give her some type of comfort, but she held up her hands and took a step back, shaking her head violently. "Jesus Christ, Dean. No! Just stay back." Her voice hitched, and tears started to pool in her eyes.

"What must she think?" she whispered forlornly, staring back toward the house, toward her mother. "She knows, right? She's got to know. But what must she think ... of me?"

I tried to give her a warm, rea.s.suring smile. "You've got it wrong, Taylor. It isn't you. I'm not sure what it is, but it isn't you. Your mother understands that. It's the city ... it's just the city."

"But how can you know that? You can't know that. No one knows that!"

"I do," I said. "I just do." I paused, remembering the man dangling from the ceiling back on my first day in the city. "I saw something like that-" I gestured toward her father. "-when you weren't around, when Weasel stole my backpack. So it can't be you ... h.e.l.l, I thought it was me."

Taylor stayed silent for a handful of seconds, staring at me like she was trying to figure me out. "You're lying," she finally said. "You're a lying bag of s.h.i.+t, and you're just telling me what I want to hear."

"I may be a bag of s.h.i.+t," I said. "But I'm not lying." I took a single step forward, and this time she didn't retreat. "I'm close to you, right? We've slept in the same bed. You've been happy with me, you've been mad at me. Well, I'm still here, aren't I? I'm fine. And Danny's fine. And Floyd and Charlie and Sabine-they're f.u.c.ked up, but they're still fine. They're not falling apart." I shook my head once again. "It's something else, Taylor, some other process. It's got to be. And whatever you think you know, you don't. You really don't."

Taylor watched me for a moment, her face impa.s.sive, absorbing my words. Then she shook her head, refusing to believe.

"You aren't saying anything here, Dean. Your mouth is open, but there's nothing coming out."

She turned abruptly and started back around the side of the house, heading toward Second Avenue. "Now get the f.u.c.k out of my mom's yard, before she finds her shotgun sh.e.l.ls."

I followed Taylor through the city streets. She stayed about ten feet ahead of me. Each time I tried to catch up, she put on a burst of speed, leaving me behind. She was p.i.s.sed off. I couldn't reach her.

Her father had fallen through the floor over a month ago. She'd been living with that, bearing that responsibility. How could I prove that it wasn't her fault?

I can't, I realized. Unless I somehow managed to figure out this whole thing, there was absolutely nothing I could do to convince her otherwise.

And then- There was a great tearing sound in the sky just as we reached the middle of the 290 bridge. It was loud and violent, and it shook me so deeply that I nearly fell over. At first, I thought it was an earthquake, but the ground wasn't moving. It was just a sound, so loud that it confused my senses, a physical pounding in my eardrums.

I covered my ears with my hands and turned toward Taylor. She was doing the same thing; her hands were pressed against the sides of her head, and there was a pained, confused grimace on her face. She was looking up at the sky.

The clouds above our heads were coming apart, like eddies of water spilling downhill. It couldn't have been a wind in the upper atmosphere; it was moving too fast, fleeing a point in the sky somewhere over the middle of the city. Ma.s.sive dark gray thunderclouds gathering, clumping, and spilling away, all in a matter of seconds. And the sky they left behind- I felt my breath hitching in my throat. For a dozen seconds, I couldn't remember how to breathe. I couldn't remember anything but that sky. My G.o.d, that sky!

The sky was red. Varying shades of red-a vast field of s.h.i.+fting density-from neon pink all the way to dark oxblood crimson. It was an unnatural paint box of color.

The clouds were gone in a matter of seconds, leaving behind nothing but that depthless red plane. The earth-shattering sound disappeared with the clouds. It was the sound of a ma.s.sive vacuum cleaner, I thought absurdly as I stared up into the crimson void. The sound of the clouds being sucked away, like a bucket of spilled sand.

"What's going on?" Taylor yelled, partially deafened.

I shook my head.

A corner of the sky lit with an electric spark of light, followed by a loud momentary crack. The sound of artillery fire or a dead tree snapping in two. It was nowhere near as loud as the original rending noise that had shaken me to my very core. This was followed by another burst of light and another crack, lighting up a different portion of the sky.