Morning Is Dead (11 page)

“You’re not going to get anywhere,” Ben said. “We might as well go. We’re just wasting time.”

Alvin tried to spit at the workers but there wasn’t any saliva in his mouth, only blood, and he wretched violently. Ben pulled away and Alvin rolled up the window to try and keep the cold air away from him.

A Hospital at Night

Part Ten

The shadow tapped gently on the doorframe. Mirabel stood up and walked toward it.

“Are you Ms. Blue?”

Mirabel shook her head and motioned toward April, who was still seated. “I’ll just hop out for a sec,” she said and disappeared into the ocean of fluorescence.

“Ms. Blue. I’m Detective Wilson Fouquette. Wilson. Do you mind if I close this?”

“Go ahead.” April had a hard time making the words come out of her mouth. They wanted to get stuck in her scratchy throat.

The man shut the door. He wore a suit but she couldn’t tell if it was black or blue or brown.

“Do you mind if I turn a light on?”

“Go ahead.”

He turned the light on and it stung April’s eyes. He was tall and slender with short black hair and an angular face. He carried a bunch of flowers in his right hand. He sat them on the table beside Alvin’s bed.

He came to sit down next to her and April had the feeling she was locked in a room with a rapist or a vampire. Then she looked at Alvin and thought maybe he was the vampire.

Ten

Ben ran the car up onto the curb in front of the station. Alvin felt numb and distant. Two rades were in front of the door to the station.

“Get out,” Ben said.

Alvin stepped out of the car. It felt so cold. He felt like his skin was drawn too tightly around his muscles and bones. He wanted to find someplace warm and lie down. Ben crossed to the back of the cruiser and pulled the trunk open.

“Dammit,” Ben said. “I thought there would be some heavy equipment back here.”

Alvin wandered to the trunk of the car, keeping his arms wrapped tightly around himself. “What do you mean?”

“Guns. Tear gas. Weapons.”

“Ben, what are you doing?”

“Correcting crimes against humanity.”

Alvin wanted to say it didn’t make any sense. He wanted to say it wasn’t a good idea. But the more he thought about it, the more it
did
make sense. Everyone in the police station was crooked. Dayton had fallen into ruins. They had given complete control to the Point and now you had women having sex with people so they could get pregnant and sell the abortions, demolition crews blowing up houses, simulacra taking the place of real people, sociopaths like Archer running around, dangerous rades that were seen as something little more than sport. It was easy to see how Ben blamed them for everything. Besides, they had locked him up for doing nothing at all. In fact, he had escaped only a while ago. He shouldn’t even be here. Why did he let Ben take him here? It was hard to find a reason. It was hard to focus on what was even happening in front of him. He just knew he had to get to the Point. And then he thought, maybe, if that’s where they really take all the abortions, he could get a baby at the Point. Maybe some of them weren’t dead yet. Maybe the Point did the same thing with children as it did with some of their parents—snatch them up and replace them with another version.

Ben was quicker than Alvin thought he would be. He began walking toward the station, toward the rades. Alvin tried to cross to the driver’s side of the car. He was going to hop in and take it to the Point. But it was hard to move. His skeleton felt leaden. His muscles felt like wet paper towels.

“Alvin, I’ll need you to help.” Ben was now beside him, grabbing him by an arm and dragging him toward the rades. And again, Alvin felt that urge to just lie down and let them swarm him with their needle fingers.

Ben let go of Alvin about halfway to the station and continued moving toward the rades.

They moved to attack Ben and he became a blur of fists and legs, his dirty overcoat flapping around him. Maybe he had the weapon of stink. Alvin began moving toward them, toward the station. If he could at least get the doors open while Ben fought the rades... Ben had knocked one of them down the stairs and Alvin moved around it, feeling more like he was swimming. He reached the doors and grabbed the vertical industrial handle.

The remaining rade stabbed his sharp-fingered hand toward Ben. Ben threw out his left arm, absorbing the blow with a popping of skin, and took a wild swing with his right hand. The rade’s head disintegrated with a spray of green before it collapsed on the steps with the rest of them.

Alvin swung the door open. Ben ran inside and Alvin followed, pulling the door shut.

“Lock it,” Ben said.

Alvin did, slowly and clumsily.

The station was alive with vice.

To Alvin’s left, an officer was 69ing with a woman, his pants and belt down around his ankles. Alvin grabbed the gun from the holster before the officer had time to stop, before even he himself knew what he was doing. Ben, being more familiar with the station, disappeared into a room on the far side.

As more of the officers realized what was happening, they stopped their fornicating and turned toward Alvin. Some then pulled up their pants and some of them kicked them off completely.

“Stop right there,” an Officer Cuntbanger announced.

The girl who he had been servicing bent down in front of him and backed herself onto his penis. Alvin noticed the same thing happening all around the station. The officers stopping their sex acts and paying attention to him while the women, probably abortion whores, fastened themselves on and continued gyrating.

He also noticed a lot of weapons pointed at him.

Come on, Ben. Where the hell are you?

The office of the station exploded in a deafening roar. Alvin fell behind a desk, not knowing if that would do a lot of good, thinking he probably wouldn’t feel anything anyway and maybe what he would feel would be better than how he felt now. He put his back to the noise, drew his knees up to his chest, squeezed his eyes shut, and put his fingers in his ears. He sat there and shivered, all of his muscles drawn tight, his brain racing around in circles. The smell of cordite, blood, shit, and fear assaulted his nostrils. Less than a minute later, the horrible sound stopped.

Machine gun fire, he thought, although he wasn’t sure. Other than movies, he didn’t think he’d ever heard machine gun fire. The movies were nowhere near as loud and terrible as what he had just heard, even through whatever gauzy cocoon he was in.

“Alvin!” Ben called.

Slowly, Alvin stood up from behind the desk and fought the dizzying desire to collapse again. The office was awash with carnage. Several of the girls were still in the process of scrambling for the front door, adjusting their clothes as they went. Eyes widening, Alvin surveyed the violence of the room—officers’ heads pulped, limbs severed and twitching on the floor, a couple of bodies completely cut in half—until his eyes came to rest on Ben, standing at the far side of the office, smoking assault rifles in either hand.

“Ben?” Alvin couldn’t even hear himself over the ringing in his ears.

“I knew where they kept the heavy artillery. It made things a lot easier.”

“Did you have to kill them all?”

“I don’t think they were doing anyone any favors. I’m just righting some wrongs. I still need to find the Processor.”

Ben turned to walk down the long hall in front of the prison cells. They were empty at the moment. Alvin followed, stepping through the congealing blood on the floor. He looked down at the service revolver in his hand and wondered if he would even need it. Probably not with Ben around.

Ben reached the Processor’s door before Alvin. He tugged at the knob.

“It’s locked,” he said.

“What?” Alvin still had trouble hearing.

“It’s locked! Stay back!”

Alvin stopped where he was. Ben took a step back from it, leveled the assault rifle and fired off a couple rounds. The wood around the handle shredded, the door swinging inward. Ben motioned for Alvin to follow him.

Alvin entered the mostly empty room and stood next to Ben.

“She’s gone,” Alvin said.

“She didn’t leave by the front door. There aren’t many places she could go. I have to take care of something first.”

Ben crouched and placed the assault rifles on the floor. He pulled up his sleeve to reveal four large green knots.

“Is that where...?”

“The rade got me? Yeah. You have to drain them before the toxin can get through your body.”

He squeezed the first of the knots. It grew tight against the skin, the flesh surrounding it a bright red, before bursting. Ben turned his arm over to let the poison drip to the floor.

“Anything I can do to help?” Alvin looked at the spilled fluid and licked his sandpaper lips. He had the sudden urge to drop onto his knees and lap it up.

“Just be patient. I have to make sure these are drained as best as possible or I might end up losing the arm.”

“Damn. I’m sorry, Ben. I should have been there helping you.”

“Nothing you could have done. At least you’re alive.”

“There is that.” Alvin walked around the room. In the corner was a stack of large envelopes, the plastic kind. Alvin picked up the top one. It felt padded and heavier than it looked.

The address said:

THE POINT

RE: LARS KRALL

DAYTON OH 45402

The return address said simply:

STATION 652

“Ben? You know what these are?”

Ben glanced over. All the wounds were now open, dribbling their battery acid stink all over the floor. “Those are Lars.”

“Why would Lars get this much mail?”

“No. They
are
Lars. Those envelopes are filled with his flesh, waiting to be transported to the Point.”

“Like the abortions.”

“Exactly. To make more simulacra.”

Alvin licked his lips. He looked at the envelopes. He looked at the pool of toxin on the floor. He thought about the Point. He tried not to feel nauseous. If he threw up he was afraid his insides would come out and consume the outside of his body.

Ben pulled a gross-looking handkerchief from his coat pocket and pressed it to his wounds before tying it around his arm. “Okay, ready to go.”

Ben walked toward the back of the room, under the surveillance camera mounted on the wall. The wall swung inward, opening into blackness.

“Bitch cut the lights,” Ben said. “Shut the door behind you. We’re going to be going down some stairs and then opening another door. She’ll probably try and use the element of surprise to get by us. Grab her if you can. Don’t let her get by or she’s gone. Got it?”

“I don’t think I can stop anything, Ben.”

“Do you think you can throw yourself in front of her?”

“I guess.”

“Good enough.”

Ben stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Alvin nearly ran into him.

“Like I said,” Ben whispered. “She’ll probably be waiting by the door. I’ll open it a crack and you run through it. Knock her back if you can. I’ll come in right behind you and guard the door. Ready?”

Alvin wasn’t but, then again, he never would be. “Sure,” he said.

“On three.

“One.

“Two.

“Three!”

The door opened a crack. Light burst through but Alvin had already committed. He stumbled and fell forward, blinded by all the light but keeping his hand planted on his gun.

The door slammed shut behind him.

A lock was turned.

He heard the Processor say, “Good work.”

Anger and confusion clouded the rest of his immediate thoughts.

With his gun in his right hand, he shielded the light with his left. Slowly, things came into focus. At first, it was hard for him to believe what he saw but then he cursed himself for being so stupid. Of course he had trusted Ben. After helping him escape, he would have believed anything Ben said. But that was exactly what Ben wanted, wasn’t it? And he didn’t really help him escape anything. Just led him back to the beginning. Not funny.

“Ben?”

“I’m sorry, Alvin.”

“No you’re not. This is exactly what you wanted.”