Bad Glass (14 page)

“This is what I was looking at when you bowled me over,” she said.

I looked around, finally calm enough to take in my surroundings. We’d passed through the stand of trees and were now standing in front of an open cave mouth, an oval swatch of darkness punched into the face of a fairly steep hill. The opening was only about four feet high, and its edges were ragged, as if it had been chewed into the earth. The grass in front of the entrance was muddy, imprinted with the shape of a hundred large, hand-size paws.

I lifted my camera and took a couple of shots. At first, I tried to use my injured left hand, but a sharp jab of fire made me drop the camera back against my chest. Finally, I managed to prop it up on the palm of my right hand and gingerly stab at the shutter release with my left thumb.

“This is where they come from,” Amanda whispered, a hint of awe in her voice. “This is where they live!”

Before I could stop her, Amanda took a step forward, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted “Hello!” I listened as that word echoed again and again—
hello, hello, hello
—getting fainter as it passed deeper underground.

Judging by that sound, those reverberations, it wasn’t a cave we were facing—a shallow little grotto—but rather a tunnel, leading down into the earth.

Amanda began toward the opening, and I jolted forward, reaching out to stop her. As soon as I touched her arm, a low growl erupted from the dark tunnel—a sustained, multivoiced
rumble, like rocks grinding in the heart of the earth. “We’re not going in there, Amanda. No fucking way!”

She turned toward me, a blank look on her face. I raised my hand, showing her my bloodstained bandage. After a couple of seconds, she nodded, finally relenting.

“Maybe later,” she said, a dreamy quality to her voice. “When you’re better. When we’re better prepared.”

Using my good hand, I pulled her away from the dark entrance. It was hard on her, I could tell, leaving it behind. As long as the hole was in view, she kept glancing back over her shoulder, a wistful look on her face.

I remained tense as we skirted the nearby patch of trees and set off for home.

By the time we got back to the house, the shock of my injury had faded and my hand had started to throb. The bones felt sore, bruised and out of place inside my flesh.

We found Mac, Floyd, and Sabine in the kitchen.

“Amanda!” As soon as we entered, Mac swept across the room and lifted her into his arms. “I woke up and you were gone. I thought … I thought …” He paused, taking a moment to compose himself. “Tell me,
what happened
?”

“Nothing,” she said, pushing out of his embrace. “We both woke up early, so I thought I’d show Dean around the neighborhood.”

All eyes turned toward me, and Amanda shot me a meaningful look. I got the message loud and clear: nothing about the dogs, nothing about the tunnel.

There was silence for a moment, then Sabine shouted
“Fuck,”
finally noticing my hand. The bandage had soaked all the way through, and I was dripping blood onto the floor. “What the fuck happened to Dean?”

“Jesus,”
Floyd added. He stood up and backed away from his place at the kitchen table, blanching at the sight of my bloody hand. Sabine grabbed me by the shoulder and led me over to
Floyd’s abandoned seat. I dropped my backpack to the ground and let her push me down into the chair.

Sabine unwrapped my blood-soaked bandage and held my hand open on the tabletop. She examined my wounds for a second, then raised her dark, kohl-rimmed eyes to my face. Her question was still there:
What the fuck happened?

I glanced up at Amanda, and she lowered her eyes to the ground. Mac was watching her closely; he was so focused on his girlfriend, he hadn’t given me or my bloody hand a second glance.

“I tried to pet a dog,” I said. “A stray. He must have been hungry.”

“Yeah. Fucking
brilliant
,” Sabine huffed sarcastically. “Petting stray dogs? You’re a fucking Rhodes scholar, now, aren’tcha?”

Sabine cleaned the puncture wounds with water and a clean cloth. The worst of the holes was as big around as a dime; Sabine moved the skin, and I could see lengths of tendon through the opening: bunches of purple-red cord quivering in the open air. It was a nauseating sight. Floyd brought a first aid kit from the bathroom, then averted his eyes as Sabine flushed the wounds with antiseptic and bound them with gauze.

Once she was done, Sabine shook her head. “Those are some pretty nasty holes you’ve got there,” she said. “I cleaned them out as best I could, but you’re going to have to watch out for infection. That could fuck you up but good.” She made a clicking sound with her tongue. “And I’m not even going to mention rabies.”

I nodded. That was something I didn’t want to think about. Spokane was cut off from the world. Where would I go for real medical attention? The military?
Or I could always just leave
, I thought. But the thought of fleeing the city, just when I was starting to get some good photographs, filled me with dread.

“Look on the bright side,” she added with a sly smile. “You’re going to be rocking some pretty cool scars after this. And if you want, you’re only a couple millimeters away from a real bitching hand piercing.”

Floyd laughed—a loud hyena snort—and I found myself smiling despite my worry and pain.

I heard the front door swing open, and the kitchen fell silent. Everyone turned toward the entrance just as Taylor walked in. She was clutching a stocking cap in one hand, using the other to brush strands of long black hair from her sweaty forehead. She had a bright smile on her lips, but it turned a bit quizzical as she glanced around the room, trying to figure out what was going on.

“What happened?” she asked, nodding toward my bandaged hand. Now that it was wrapped in clean, white gauze, the sight was far less nauseating than it had been.

“Dean got—” Sabine began, but I cut her off.

“I just hurt my hand a bit,” I said. “Not a big deal.” I pointed to the bandage and shrugged dismissively. “Just a precaution.”

I know it sounds stupid, but I really didn’t want Taylor to know the extent of my injuries. I liked her, and I wanted her to think I was all macho and strong, not some walking disaster area.

Sabine, Floyd, and Amanda gave me perplexed looks, but they didn’t argue. And Mac, for his part, remained completely impassive.

“Well, if you’re up for it, I think we can still make the hospital raid.” Taylor tapped at the face of her watch. “If we hurry.”

“Grappling hooks this time?” Floyd said, a wicked smile spreading across his lips. “I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

I nodded my consent, and Taylor smiled approvingly. She seemed to be in a good mood, and the light in her eyes made me forget all about the holes in my hand.

Our vantage point was cold. Extremely cold.

We lay perched atop a building about a block away from the hospital, completely exposed to the frigid wind blowing out of the north. Taylor had brought a couple of blankets, and the six of us lay huddled close together—elbow to elbow, with our arms
braced up beneath our chins—staring across the street at the commotion a block away.

Charlie and Devon were the only ones missing. When we checked their rooms before leaving, we’d found Devon gone, and Charlie … well, Charlie had refused to budge, muttering a single dispirited sentence through his locked door.

I had my camera cradled in my uninjured hand, the lens cranked to its longest telephoto setting. Sabine had my camcorder, and I could hear her cooing as she played with the buttons, checking out its various features.

“They think it might be the epicenter of what’s happening,” Taylor said. She lay to my right, her palms cupped around her eyes in order to block out the sun. “They’ve tried four—” “Five!” Floyd interjected. “—
five
times before. But the people they send in keep getting lost and confused, and they stumble out hours—or days—later. And none of them can say what happens.”

“And some of them don’t come out at all,” Floyd added.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Taylor said, adding a dismissive cluck.

“They couldn’t get through on the ground floor,” Floyd said, continuing Taylor’s explanation, “so they’re trying farther up this time.”

“Shhhh!” Sabine hissed. “They’re going in!”

I panned my lens down to the base of the hospital building. There was a cluster of military vehicles parked on the sidewalk: a single open-backed transport and three Jeeps. A tent had been erected in the parking lot thirty feet away, and a massive computer console was visible through its open door. The computer was surrounded by three officers, one of them pacing nervously in and out of view.

At the sound of a loud, hollow
thump
, I panned to a group of soldiers on the sidewalk. A thin trickle of smoke spun up into the sky above their heads, following the graceful arc of a flying rope. A grappling hook hit the hospital’s roof ten floors up, and I
watched as a soldier pulled the rope tight, testing its strength. He strained against the rope for a couple of seconds, then handed it over to a helmeted comrade, giving him a reassuring pat on the back.

The helmeted soldier was wearing a military-green backpack; I could see a brick-shaped radio strapped to one side and a rifle strapped to the other. The cylindrical body of a camera was mounted to the top of his helmet.

After giving the rope a tug of his own, the soldier stepped up to the building and began climbing its side. He moved slowly, hunting for footholds with cautious deliberation. When he got up to the third floor, he stepped onto a window ledge, turned his shoulder against a tall pane of glass, and quickly smashed it in with his elbow.

Then, after a moment’s hesitation, the soldier disappeared inside, trailing behind a length of electric-yellow rope.

For nearly ten minutes, we watched this yellow tether spool through the window frame, moving in fits and starts. It was extremely tedious. As I lay on the rooftop, I could feel my injured left hand stiffening into a useless claw—bruised muscle pulling tight beneath damaged skin—and the camera in my right seemed to get heavier with each passing second. Then the rope stopped moving, and for a handful of minutes there was nothing, nothing at all. Just boredom.

I could hear Floyd fidgeting two berths to my left. “How long—” he started to say, but motion down in the parking lot stopped him short. The three officers had stormed out of their command tent, their eyes turned up toward the building.

I panned back in time to see the soldier fly out of the window.

Not fall.
Fly
.

Propelled out into empty space. Thrown, perhaps. Or maybe he dived, throwing himself out the window at full sprint.

For a split second, the soldier fell through the air, his body perfectly limp, spinning toward the sky. Then he hit the sidewalk with a loud
crack
. For a moment, his comrades on the ground
stood frozen in place, unsure how to react. In fact, the whole scene stood frozen in time: that motionless body lying still on the ground, those paralyzed clumps of soldiers and officers.

Then the fallen soldier heaved himself up off the ground.

Shedding first his helmet, then his backpack, the soldier—injured and broken—stumbled away from the building, moving in a crazed, drunken gait.

Photograph. October 19, 09:23
P.M.
The red guitar: