Infected (17 page)

GOOD-BYE

“I’m sorry, Mister Phillips,” the doctor said. “He just slipped away. We thought we had him out of the woods, and then he was just gone.”

Dew stared at the doctor, who looked tired and bedraggled. It wasn’t the doctor’s fault; the man had done everything possible. Dew still couldn’t stop the wave of fury that swept over him, that had him wondering how easy it would be to snap the little doctor’s skinny neck.

“What killed him?”

“It wasn’t one particular thing. I think the whole incident was just too much for his body to handle. To be blunt, he should have died back on Monday, but he was strong enough to fight another sixty hours. Because of that, we thought we might be able to save him, but there was just too much damage. I’m very sorry. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go talk to his wife.”

“No,” Dew snapped. Then, quietly, “No, I’ll do it. I was his partner.”

“As you like, Mister Phillips,” the doctor said. “I’ll be nearby if you need me.”

The doctor strode away. Dew stared at the floor, gathering his courage. It wasn’t the first time he’d lost a partner, and it wasn’t the first time he’d had to break the news to a new widow. It never got easier. It was funny how you could get used to
killing
, but not to
death.

He wearily looked down the hall. Shamika stared at him, her son, Jerome, asleep in her lap. Her eyes filled with tears of denial. She knew. Dew still had to tell her, though; the words had to be said.

He walked toward her. Dew remembered another hospital, a day six years earlier, the day Jerome was born. He remembered sitting in the waiting room with Malcolm, who’d been so nervous he’d thrown up twice. He remembered talking to Shamika just hours after the delivery.

He kept walking toward her. She started shaking her head side to side, clutching Jerome tighter. She mumbled warbling words that couldn’t be understood, yet their meaning rang clear. Dew wished he were anywhere else, anywhere but facing this crying woman, the wife of his friend, his partner…the man he’d failed to protect.

He fought back tears of his own, an empty sorrow rolling in his chest alongside the burning hatred and rage. The only thing that kept him strong was the knowledge he’d find out who was responsible. And when he did, oh daddy, daddy-o, the fun he would have.

THE BATHROOM FLOOR—AGAIN

For a moment, Perry slipped back in time. He was seventeen. His mother crying, as usual, shaking him gently. Perry slowly opening his eyes, feeling the pain roaring through his brain, fingers touching the back of his head, coming away with blood. His dad sitting at the kitchen table, drinking steadily from the bottle of Wild Turkey that he’d used as a weapon against his only child.

The bottle wore a small streak of tacky blood, half on the label, half beaded up on the glass.

Jacob Dawsey stared at his son, his cold eyes fixed in their permanently angry stare. “How you feelin’, boy?”

Perry slowly sat up, his head throbbing so bad he could barely see.

“Someday, Daddy,” Perry mumbled, “someday I’m going to kill you.”

Jacob Dawsey took another swig, his eyes never leaving his son. He set the blood-streaked bottle on the table, then wiped his mouth with the back of his dirty hand. “You just remember that it’s a violent world, son, and only the strong survive. I’m preparing you is all—someday you’ll thank me. Someday, you’ll understand.”

Perry shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, and found himself lying on his own bathroom floor. It wasn’t nine years ago. He wasn’t in Cheboygan. Daddy was dead. That chapter of his life was over, but that didn’t make his head feel any better.

His face felt crusty and squishy on the linoleum. The scent of bile filled his nose. Didn’t take him long to figure out why. His rebellious stomach had apparently found something else to cough up while he was passed out.

A little shiver tickled his soul. It was a good thing he’d been lying facedown, or he could have choked on his own vomit, just like Bon Scott—the original lead singer from the band AC/DC. Bon had passed out in the back of a black Cadillac, so the story went, bombed out of his skull on whiskey and perhaps a few other controlled substances, so blasted he couldn’t wake up; he drowned in his own puke.

Perry wiped his hand across his face, scraping away vomit slime. He had some in his hair as well. His stomach felt tired but otherwise fine; the regurgitation festival was apparently over. Most of the awful smell emanated from the toilet bowl. Perry laboriously sat up and flushed.

How the hell had this happened? Vague, out-of-focus pieces flitted back and forth across his brain like moths circling a streetlight. His left leg ached with a cold-iron throbbing.

Using the counter to pull himself to his feet, he slowly stood. His whole body felt very weak, which made him wonder how long he’d been unconscious. In the bathroom with the door half shut, there was no way of telling time; sunlight could not reach down the hall.

Resting his weight against the sink, he looked at himself in the mirror. “Look like shit” couldn’t describe it. A green-yellow film of vomit caked the right side of his face, matting down his hair. A black-and-blue bump on his forehead stuck out like a unicorn’s starter kit. The dark circles under his eyes were so pronounced they were almost comical, as if he were wearing overdone movie makeup meant for an extra in
Night of the Living Dead
.

What really caught his eye wasn’t his face, but the dried-up crap all over his mirror. Rivulets of some odd liquid had dribbled down the glass, then dried in black streaks. Papery chunks of grayish matter clumped on the mirror like old paste, or perhaps a smashed insect.

Only it wasn’t an insect, and Perry knew that. Memories of the mess on the mirror jostled his fuzzed-out, pain-fogged brain. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew it was evil. The thing was death, something to be very afraid of. At least it had
been
something to be afraid of.

He needed some Tylenol and he needed to wash this filth from his body. Even reaching down to turn on the shower made his head pound. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hurt like this, or if he’d
ever
hurt like this.

“Doctor time,” he mumbled to himself. “Fucking doctor time.”

Perry headed to the kitchen for some Tylenol. He moved slowly and carefully, holding his head as if he might stop his hammering brain from falling onto the floor. He looked at the stove’s digital clock: 12:15.

It took his thudding head a minute to get the picture, and he actually asked himself how the sun could be out at a quarter past midnight, then realized his stupidity with a small sigh. It was 12:15
P.M
.—a quarter past noon. He’d slept through work. There was no way he could go in, at least not until his head felt better. He told himself he’d call in and try to explain things, but only after a shower.

The Tylenol bottle sat on the microwave, right next to the wooden cutlery block that held the knives. His eyes rested on the chicken scissors. Only their brown plastic handles showed, but hidden inside the block of wood were the scissors’ thick, stubby blades that could easily cut through raw meat as if it were paper and chicken bone as if it were a dry twig. They held his fascination for a moment, then he reached for the Tylenol bottle.

He tossed four pills into his mouth, made a bowl out of his hands and gulped tap water to swallow them down.

That done, he shambled back toward the bathroom, stripping off clothes as he went. He stepped into the steaming shower and basked in the spray, tilting his head to let the water wash the slime from his hair and face. The stinging-hot water revived his flaccid muscles. The fog in his brain lifted a touch. He hoped the Tylenol would kick in soon—his head hurt so bad he could barely see.

MOTIVATION

Dew refused to cry. Just wasn’t going to happen. It wanted to come out, and he had trouble fighting it back, but no way in hell. He wasn’t in this business to make friends. It hurt, sure it did, but Malcolm Johnson wasn’t his first friend to die in the line of duty.

How much of this did he have to deal with? How much could he take? How many more people did he have to see die?

How many more people…did he have to kill?

He sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He needed to reconnect.

Dew picked up his small cell phone, the normal one, and dialed. It rang three times before she answered.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Cynthia, it’s Dew.”

“Oh, hi, how are you?” Her words carried history, decades of back story, if you will. Dew and Cynthia had hated each other once, hated each other with a passion that went even beyond what he felt for the enemy during a battle. That hatred was born out of love, deep, all-encompassing love for the same person.

That person was Sharon, Dew’s only child.

“To tell you the truth, I’ve been a lot better, a lot of times,” Dew said. “But don’t tell Sharon that, okay?”

“Sure thing. You want me to put her on?”

“Please.”

“Hold on one sec.”

They would never, ever be friends, he and Cynthia, but at least they had respect for each other. They had to, because Sharon loved them both, and when Dew and Cynthia fought, it tore Sharon apart.

It had been hard to hear that his little girl thought she was a lesbian. But that was nothing compared to the pain and anger he felt seven years later when he heard Sharon and Cynthia were more than “partners”—they had performed some union ceremony or what have you, and they were basically married. Wife and wife. He’d raged, screamed at them both, called them names he wished he hadn’t. Cynthia, of course, had screamed back. She wanted to protect Sharon, Dew understood that now. Cynthia also happened to despise men in general, especially gruff, bossy, unemotional military men—which happened to sum up Dew Phillips in a nutshell. But Cynthia’s constant attacks on Dew, both when he was there and when he wasn’t, took their toll on Sharon. Dew hated. Cynthia hated. Sharon just wasn’t wired that way. Sharon loved, pure and simple.

It took another two years after the “union” bullshit, but Dew finally understood that this was the real deal for his daughter. This wasn’t a passing fancy—she was going to be with Cynthia for the rest of her life. Once he came to that realization, he did what any good soldier would do—he sucked it up and he got the job done. He’d met Cynthia at what they both called the SDMZ, or the “Starbucks Demilitarized Zone,” and they agreed on an uneasy détente. They could hate each other all they wanted, and nothing could change that, but they agreed to be civil and to treat each other with respect. And over the years, in the process of being civil, he came to understand that Cynthia was a good kid—as far as bull dykes go, that is.

“Hi, Daddy!” Sharon’s voice, unchanged from the time she was five. Well, that was bullshit, and Dew knew it, but that’s exactly what his ears heard every time she talked.

“Hi, sugar. How are you?”

“I’m doing great. I’m so glad you called. How are you?”

“Tip-top. Couldn’t be better. Work is going well.”

“You’re still doing the desk job?” He heard the worry in her voice.

“They’re not making you go out in the field anymore, right?”

“Of course not, at my age? That would be crazy.”

“It most certainly would.”

“Listen, sugar, I only have a minute. I just wanted to call and hear your voice.”

“Well here it is. When are you coming to Boston again? I want to see you. We can go out, just you and me.”

Dew swallowed. If a gutted Malcolm Johnson wasn’t going to make him cry, he sure as shit wouldn’t let the waterworks go over a phone call with his daughter.

“Come on, sugar, you know I’m okay with Cynthia now. We’ll all go out, spend some time together.”

Dew almost laughed when he heard Sharon sniffle. Whereas he could hold back tears seemingly forever, she cried if the wind blew funny. “Yeah, I know, Daddy. And you have no idea what that means to me. What it means to us.”

“Stop with the crying already. I got to go. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye now.”

“Bye-bye, Daddy. And be careful. You might get a splinter from that desk.”

Dew hung up. He took one deep breath, and then the emotions faded away, pushed back to their normal hiding place. That was what he’d needed, to reconnect with the
why
of what he did. It was for her. It was for a country in which his daughter could live as she pleased, even if that meant living with another woman, even if her father hated it, and hated her mate, with all his heart. There were many places in the world where Sharon would have been killed—or worse—for doing what came naturally to her.

Was that cliché? To keep on fighting, and killing when need be, because America was the greatest nation on earth? Probably, but Dew didn’t care if the reasons were good, logical or even cliché. They were his reasons.

And that was enough.

MR. CONGENIALITY

Margaret, Amos and Clarence Otto stood as Murray Longworth entered the commandeered office. Murray shook everyone’s hands, then all three sat. Murray, of course, sat behind the big desk.