Infernal Revelation : Collected Episodes 1-4 (9781311980007) (7 page)

She watched him pick it up, step away, and
throw it again, this time clipping the car's side-mirror.

As he went to grab it again, she saw someone
in pale blue scrubs -- an orderly, possibly -- stop in the hospital
lobby to watch him.

He threw the rock again, and it bounced off
of the car's passenger-side window. This was it? This was his
distraction? His plan?

The orderly opened the hospital door and
shouted something at Gideon.

Gideon replied with both middle fingers,
before grabbing the rock again.

The orderly took a step out, and Gideon
hurled the rock towards the hospital. It smashed through the
windowed facade next to the orderly with considerable force.

The orderly ran back inside, disappearing
from view, presumably to get help.

Gideon bounced on his feet and took a glance
towards where Lily was hiding before looking around the parking
lot. He found another large rock, picking it up as a deputy
appeared in the doorway.

"Hey!" the deputy shouted.

The rock tumbled from Gideon's hand in a
half-toss as he spun away and made a run for it.

***

Gideon ran.

The deputies chased.

Jello Biafra was right.
It
was
an
unbeatable high.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lily didn't make her
move right away, crouching and watching the deputies chase after
Gideon. It was hard to process the absurd sight, but more
importantly she wanted to make sure that the three lawmen running
after him weren't going to be joined by a late fourth.

Did the deputies always
travel in pairs? She tried to remember, but honestly hadn't ever
paid much attention to the police. They were just
there
, a presence, she'd
been taught, to help good people, and keep the troublemakers at
bay.

Good people like her. Troublemakers like
Gideon.

And yet here she was, sneaking through
shattered glass into the hospital. And Gideon was rough around the
edges, but she'd never heard of him or his fellow stoners doing
anything worse than petty vandalism or shoplifting. But here he
was, smashing a window and running from the police, just to help
her. Risking his freedom and his future for a girl he hardly knew,
one who might be -- as far as she knew -- responsible for the death
of at least one of her friends.

She stopped herself. There wasn't any more
time for guilt. Not now. She would need her wits about herself to
find Ashley. There wouldn't be any answers in her injured friend's
hospital bed, but at least she could apologize. At least she could
say goodbye.

Like she never got to say goodbye to
Lauren.

Lily jogged past the reception desk. It was
vacant, the nurse probably having gone to help the orderly with the
broken glass. Lily pulled out the crumpled print-out that Delilah
had given her.

Ashley was in 237. Second floor. Laton
general was a large hospital for such a small town.

Lily jogged past the elevators to the
stairwell. Less chance of getting caught. That made sense, right?
Gideon would know. She didn't feel like being trapped in a small
box, anyway.

The second floor was much quieter than the
first. The soles of her sneakers squeaked loudly in her ears with
each step, sound like nails on a chalkboard. She stopped to take
them off, carrying them as she searched for her friend's room.

Lily reached an intersection at the end of
the hall. To the left, a plaque directed her, rooms 225 through
235. To her left, 241 to 250.

What the hell? Where was 237?

A soft chime from the elevator prompted Lily
to action, and she ducked around the corner to the left. She
stopped, back flat against the bricks, ears straining. In her fear
every sense felt heightened, every sound was magnified, down to the
ticking of a nearby clock and the pounding of her heartbeat.

Footfalls sounded as someone emerged from
the elevator and started down the hall. The hallway tiles' echo
confounded Lily, and she couldn't tell right away if the new
arrival was coming towards her or heading away. Her own heart beat
fiercely in her chest, and she felt suddenly trapped, sure that
anyone could hear it, sure that at any moment a deputy would round
the corner. She was certain that Gideon had been caught, had
confessed, had implicated her as not just an accomplice, but as a
ring-leader in this scheme. Why had she trusted him?

The steps softened slightly, and she
realized with a sense of relief that they were headed in the other
direction, away from her intersection. She sagged against the wall,
exhaling a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

After the footsteps had almost faded, Lily
crept off down the hall, keeping an eye out for room 237. The
corridor turned, again and again, forming a rectangle as it came
back to itself at the intersection.

What the hell? Where was Ashley's room?

She slipped to the corner again and peered
down the hall past the elevators, but didn't see whomever had
gotten off the elevator. There, past the restroom and nurse's
station was what looked like another suite of rooms. Lily hadn't
been too aware of what was going on around her when she'd been
released after her coma, but she did had vague memories of being
wheeled down the hall to the elevator. If that's where she had been
kept, it sort of made sense that her friends would have been in the
rooms nearby, right?

She glanced at the empty nurse station as
she snuck past, wondering who was sharing the floor with her. A
nurse, preparing Ashley for transport? A janitor, cleaning
wastebaskets? A fourth deputy, patrolling the halls while his
coworkers chased after Gideon?

As Lily drew near the suites at the end of
the hall, she could see a plaque numbering them 235 to 240.
Jackpot.

She crept, carefully, towards the door to
room 237. Unlike the others it stood open. She slowed to a stop,
peering around the door carefully, ready to jerk back if she saw
the tan uniform of Laton's finest.

Ashley caught her eye first. Lily felt faint
when she saw her friend, obscured by tubes coming out of her nose
and throat, hooked up to some kind of medical machine that was
probably the only thing keeping her alive. She looked so small, so
pale, so broken, it was all Lily could do to keep from running to
her side.

What held her back was the figure standing
by the foot of the bed. A man, a boy, a teen her own age with
shockingly pale alabaster skin and ink-black hair. He wore a
heavy-looking black duster over torn mud-splattered clothes, and
seemed to tower over the bed, casting a pall over it, like a
shadow, like a vampire, like death itself.

Almost as soon as she noticed the figure,
electric-blue eyes set in the shadowed recesses of his face
flickering towards her.

Those eyes.

She remembered those eyes.

Memory came crashing down upon her. That
face. A shape suddenly in front of the car. Lauren screaming and
trying to swerve out of the way. Covering her eyes as they hit.
Spinning as the car struck the dark figure with luminescent eyes
like sparks, as the car pivoted, as it wrapped around him like he
was a cement pole. The images came like snapshot rapid-fire blows,
each crashing against the fragile grip on sanity she was trying to
hold on to.

"You can't be," she whispered.

He moved towards her, but she was already
running. And she was fast.

***

She flew through
nightmare, her mind recessed, nothing but prey-animal, acting and
reacting.

Hallway.

Stairwell.

Lobby.

Lily was a track star, and no one in the
county could touch her. Her flight was dreamlike, strong legs
moving instinctively, arms pumping, not even sure that her feet
were touching the ground.

The world flashed by, startled orderlies
flashed by as she flew through the empty frame where Gideon had
smashed out a pane.

She was lightning.

She could tell that he was faster.

***

Gideon was already
huffing and puffing when he got back to the hill overlooking the
hospital lot, and he gave an inward groan when he saw Lily rocket
out of the building's front. It'd taken him almost ten minutes to
lose the Deputies, and another ten to double back around to the
hospital without being seen again. If they'd spotted
Lily...

Well. He was in no shape to help her out,
now. Even well rested, there was no way he could catch up with her.
Hell, he'd only managed to ditch the deputies because he knew all
the shortcuts and hiding places.

Then he saw the figure darting out of the
hospital after her, a black-clad form with bone-white skin,
something so fast it looked like it was gliding. The way it moved
was inhuman, and it was definitely gaining on her.

His eyes flicked back to Lily. He quickly
judged her speed and where the twisting streets of Laton would most
likely take her.

He started down the other side of the hill.
He wouldn't be able to catch up with her, but he knew all the
shortcuts.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lily's muscles burned
with lactic acid. Her breath, while regular, strained a ragged
edge. She was used to pushing herself, pushing her body to excel,
but never this hard. She always held back from what her coach
called the red line, from the point where her body would injure
itself. Winning races wasn't worth crippling yourself.

Getting away from the thing chasing her
was.

Her vision blurred with tears, she almost
missed Gideon ahead, by the bridge, beckoning to her.

She altered her course slightly, curving her
path towards him. She could see his eyes widen at whatever was
behind her, but didn't turn her head to look.

She knew what was coming.

Knew enough about it, anyway.

Gideon stepped back into the mouth of a
cement drainage pipe barely tall enough to stand in. She followed,
almost slipping on the slick bank.

He stopped just within the entrance,
allowing her to pass by.

"Don't stop!" She gulped in breath as her
body tried to recover its equilibrium. "It'll follow!"

"I don't think it can," Gideon said.

A great darkness swept past the entrance at
incredible speeds, too fast to see, and too fast to stop. More
shadow trailed it, billowing almost like a cloak, debris swept up
in its wake.

"What the fuck!" Gideon said.

"Keep moving."

Gideon nodded and squeezed past her, deeper
into the tunnel, pulling a small flashlight out of his pocket.

He shone it on the tunnel floor ahead of
him, highlighting debris that had probably washed in during Laton's
infrequent but torrential rains. "Watch your step."

After a few yards Gideon looked back over
his shoulder towards the entrance and she followed his gaze, but
the distant circle of sunlight was bright and clear.

Ahead was blackness, and as they drew closer
Lily saw that a dark cloth had stretched across the width of the
pipe. When Gideon moved it, daylight flashed from ahead.

"Me and Juan strung this up to make people
think the pipe was blocked," he said. "So nobody else really uses
this shortcut."

"Why?" Lily asked.

"Reasons. But what the fuck was that thing?
Why was it after you?"

"It was in Ashley's room. Standing over
her."

"Oh, shit."

"Yeah."

"What the fuck is it?"

"I didn't really take a great look. He's
tall. Pale. Wearing black."

"That was a guy?"

"What did it look like?"

"Just... darkness. Like you were being
chased by a shadow. A flock of shadows."

Another few yards and the cramped pipe
opened out into the late afternoon street. The air had a quiet,
surreal quality to it. Lily didn't hear any cars, couldn't hear any
birds. The world seemed an indrawn breath, waiting in anticipation
for an explosive exhalation.

When Gideon broke the silence, it seemed
almost a profane thing. "Delilah's house isn't too far away."

Lily hugged herself. "I just want to go
home."

"Let's wait there a bit in case that thing
is still looking for us."

For me
, Lily thought. It wasn't after Gideon. Or at least, it
hadn't been. If he was in danger, it was because he was helping
her.

***

Delilah's house was a
split level, built on a slope, the basement at the base of a steep
grade. Gideon tried the door and found it wasn't locked. Doors in
Laton seldom were.

"What about her parents?" Lily
whispered.

"They both work all day," Gideon said. "She
pretty much has the basement to herself anyway."

The basement was the cleanest that Lily had
ever seen. Its furnishings were sparse, consisting of a black vinyl
couch, a large flat-screen television, and a broad oak desk. The
floor, walls, and ceiling were spotless stucco devoid of even
dust.

Gideon fell back onto the couch with a grunt
and leaned back with his hands over his face. "Now what?"

"I don't know," Lily pulled the chair out
from behind the desk and sat in it sideways. "Wait for Delilah.
Tell her what we saw, then try heading home."

"Tell her what we saw. She'll think we're
nuts."

"We might be nuts. How do you know her,
anyway?"

"She was in my little brother's class for
awhile, and she'd come over while her parents were out. They she
got skipped ahead, and they stopped hanging out, but she wasn't
making any new friends at the high school, so I sat with her at
lunch last year."

Lily nodded. "You're a good person,
Gideon."