Morning Is Dead (2 page)

A Hospital at Night

Part Two

Another volley of tears shuddered through April. She bent forward. Mirabel rubbed her back.

“I just can’t believe he’s gone. You don’t think it’s awful… that I wasn’t there with him, do you? I just couldn’t see him like that.”

“It’s okay, honey. Did he have anyone else?”

“Do you mean was
he
married, too?”

Mirabel patted her on the good arm, took her hand and held it with her own.

“No. Thank god. Alvin started seeing things, Mir. He would talk about conversations that didn’t happen. A lot of times I
knew
because I was standing right there when he allegedly had them. He was a stranger. I didn’t know what to think. That’s what it’s like when you think you know somebody so well and then realize you never knew him at all. I was scared. So I started letting Brett stay over. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have stayed at his place but I thought… I thought if Alvin had the house to himself he wouldn’t last a week. This way I could kind of keep an eye on him.”

Two

Alvin placed the chair back on the porch and descended the steps to meet the approaching police officer. The officer didn’t look at all like a cop. His hair flowed down to the middle of his back, his shirt was untucked, he was very thin, and he wobbled when he walked. He held a cell phone up to his left ear.

“Well, I gotta go. I gotta make an arrest. Huh? Oh, I don’t know. Some asshole. Yeah, I got some stuff. Later. Bye.”

Alvin, less than two feet away, stared at the cop.

The cop flipped his phone shut and stuck it in his pants pocket. He looked at Alvin with heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes.

“I don’t think there will be any need to make an arrest, sir,” Alvin said.

“I didn’t just drive out here for nothing.”

“I think it’s just a misunderstanding. Someone broke into my house. That’s the person you should be arresting. My wife is in there sleeping.” Alvin pointed over his shoulder, hoping the strange man was staring out the window, hoping to catch his arrest.

“No one broke into your home. What are you doing outside?”

“Trying to get back in.”

“Sounds like you’re the one trying to break into a home.”

“It’s
my
home.”

“Are you the one who called?”

“No. I left my phone inside.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Look, Officer...” Alvin studied the man’s nametag. “Fuckpants?”

“Yeah, I’m Officer Fuckpants.” His lips twitched with suppressed laughter as he spoke.

“I locked myself outside and when I tried to get back in I saw a man in the kitchen.”

“Maybe because he’s the one who lives here.”

“No, he doesn’t. I live here.”

“Is it that guy?”

Fuckpants pointed to the house. Alvin saw the man in the glow of the kitchen, staring out.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. He’s staying here. I’m sorry but I’m gonna have to take you in. Don’t make this end up in a restraining order.”

“What? Why are you taking me in?”

“Breaking and entering. Disturbing the peace.” The cop leaned in and sniffed. “Public intoxication. You’re wiped out, man. Let me take you in and you can get a little rest. Get your head cleared.”

“Ludicrous.”

“Follow me.”

Alvin thought about protesting and saw his list of charges escalate: resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer.

“It’s okay to be upset. Nobody likes to get arrested.”

Was this guy even a cop?

“I need to see a badge,” Alvin said. “I’m not going anywhere until I see a badge.”

“Gimme a fuckin’ break.” Fuckpants reached into his back pocket and pulled out a beaded hemp wallet. He flipped it open and stuck the badge less than an inch in front of Alvin’s face. “There ya go. That badgy enough for ya?”

Alvin had no idea what a real badge looked like. It looked like it was made out of metal, not plastic. Was that good enough? He didn’t know. Probably didn’t have much of a choice.

“Come on.” Fuckpants began walking toward the squad car, pulled half up onto the curb like he had arrived during some great emergency. “You’ll have to get in on the passenger side. Backseat’s full.”

Alvin glanced into the backseat. A fat man in a white t-shirt lay sprawled across it, either deeply asleep or dead.

“I guess I should put these on you.” Fuckpants pulled out a pair of handcuffs. “Put your hands behind your back.”

“Honestly.”

“When I show up to the scene of a crime and some crazy fucker’s tryin’ to break out a window, I become concerned for my personal safety. I’m sorry if you don’t see that as an issue.”

Alvin turned around, pressing himself against the car, and held his arms behind him. “Aren’t you going to read me my rights or anything?”

“You don’t have any.”

The cold cuffs encircled his wrists.

“That’s too tight.”

The cop chuffed out a breath. “You’re lucky they ain’t cobras. That’s how they do it some places. Wrap a couple cobras around your wrists for cuffs. That’s some scary terrorist torture shit, you ask me.”

Fuckpants closed his hand around Alvin’s left arm and guided him to the passenger side of the car. He opened it and crammed Alvin in.

Alvin stared back at his house. There were people on the roof. About six of them. They wore black coveralls and gas masks. He squinted at the lettering on their backs. Acme Demolition. They dropped things that looked like thick wires off the roof: red and yellow and green.

The cop opened the driver’s side door and hopped in.

“What are those people doing on top of the house?” Alvin asked.

The cop looked back at the house. “Looks like they’re wirin’ it up.”

“Wiring it up? Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s scheduled.”

“Scheduled?”

“For detonation. They’ve been doin’ it to a lot of the houses in the area. Looks like they’re just gettin’ started. Probably has three days, tops.” Fuckpants fired up the ignition. Led Zeppelin blasted out of the speakers. The cop pulled away from the curb and proceeded to sing along with the song, mimicking Robert Plant’s high-pitched voice. Alvin leaned over and placed his forehead against the cool glass as they pulled out onto Payne and made a right, going toward downtown.

A Hospital at Night

Part Three

Beep. Beep. Beep.

April couldn’t figure out if the sound was comforting or something like a death knell.

“Sometimes he would just get mad at everyone and rant for what felt like hours. He said everyone was asleep. No one could do anything right. Sometimes, in public, he would point to someone, and say that person was asleep. He said he wished the sleepers wouldn’t feel the need to walk around and act awake. He said he wished they would just stay asleep. Everything was some kind of conspiracy. He said they were really supposed to be sleeping and were only awakened so they could consume things. He said if you just stripped away everything from these people—television and movies and malls and restaurants and cars and everything it is that it seems like most people work for—that they would just curl up and go back to sleep and sleep forever. He wondered if they dreamed. He said they were dead inside.”

Three

They cruised down Payne Avenue. The Point, the place where Alvin used to work, loomed on the hill just beyond the city, surrounded by a noxious looking greenish brown luminescence. Jets of orange fire shot up from the gloom. This far away, you couldn’t hear it. But, Alvin knew, the closer you got, the louder it was. Inside was a constant, deafening roar that bludgeoned its way through your skin and got into your viscera and bones and ricocheted around until you could feel your brain rattling against your skull.

It was like the Point sucked all the energy out of the city. It gave people a place to work and it paid them decently but it also told them they were little more than pieces of a machine. Not just the actual machinery of the Point but the machinery of society as well. The workers at the Point made money and took out mortgages and car payments and consumed everything they could get their hands on until they were overweight, abusive, alcoholic basket cases. This was normal. This was normal. This was normal.

Alvin wondered about that. He didn’t think there was anything normal about it.

The city was rife with sores and blights and rot. Alvin noticed several of the houses and buildings that must have been detonated. He could have asked Fuckpants about it but the music was way too loud. Sandwiched in between two perfectly fine houses with lights in at least one of the windows would be a blackened husk. Or a pile of rubble.

The cars parked on the sides of the road were rusted, multicolor hulks. The people walking along the sidewalks were skeletal, all their clothes stained a dingy, uniform color very much like the grainy darkness around them.

Alvin hadn’t noticed any of this before.

Fuckpants pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it. He sucked in deeply and Alvin realized the cop was smoking marijuana. He held it down as long as he could, grunting with the effort. He exhaled a plume of smoke and unleashed a volley of coughs. He proffered the joint to Alvin who shook his head.

“You’re a straight, huh?” Fuckpants asked him.

“It’s illegal. I don’t want to be in any more trouble than I already am.” He had to talk loud over the music. He hated classic rock. He’d heard all the songs a million times when he was in high school and didn’t have a particular desire to listen to them again.

“Shit,” Fuckpants said. “There’s worse things than a little weed.”

“I can’t believe you’re really a cop.”

“Well, I’m more of a night cop. We’re a different breed. See that fellow sleepin’ back there? He’s a daytime cop. He’s been out for quite a while. I ain’t seen the sun in... Jesus, I don’t know how long it’s been.”

How long had it been since
Alvin
had seen daylight? He couldn’t remember. There was the period when he pretended to go to work but… things got hazy after that. Maybe he slept all day. He was tired a lot. The last time he was awake during the day he remembered thinking the brightness of it was harsh and oppressive. He had just wanted to be inside somewhere, anywhere, draw the blinds, and wait for night to come. Maybe that was what he needed. A night shift job. Maybe he could get hired back on at the Point for third shift work.

The cop took another toke off the joint. He slung his head around and sang along with the music.Alvin wondered exactly how high the cop was. A light in front of them turned red and Fuckpants stopped the car about twenty feet in front of it. He took another drag off the joint.

This can’t be real, Alvin thought. He needed to get back to April. This cop was just playing games. He hadn’t done anything illegal. And April could be in serious trouble. Who was that man in there with her? He kind of looked like Alvin but Alvin didn’t think April would believe it was him. He could be a rapist. He could be a murderer. And the cop had seen him but now Alvin was the one going to jail. It didn’t make any sense. And what about those people wiring up the house? What if they detonated it while she was still in there?

The light turned green and Fuckpants stepped slowly onto the accelerator. Alvin began thrashing in the passenger seat, throwing his shoulder against the door.

Fuckpants looked over at him. “Whoa,” he said. “Whoa now. Take it easy.”

Alvin clenched his teeth, rocked vigorously forward and back, banging into the seat with all of his weight. “Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!”

Fuckpants slammed on the brakes and the car went sliding sideways. He angrily roached his joint in the ashtray, sparks flickering lazily to the floor. “Now listen here,” he said, his bloodshot eyes gone wild and crazy. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere. You’re goin’ to the station with me. You were implicated in a very serious crime and we can’t let that go unpunished. Besides, you need to be processed.”

“Processed! What the fuck do you mean?! You’re a fucking lunatic! This whole thing is madness! Turn! Down! The! Fucking! Radio!” Alvin rammed his knee against what he thought was the radio. There were so many electronic gadgets in the dash, he didn’t know what was what.

Fuckpants angrily poked at a bunch of buttons until the radio fell silent. Then he brought back his right hand and punched Alvin in the face. Blood trickled from his nose. He licked it away from his upper lip and spat at the cop. “My wife is in my home with a complete stranger who is posing as me. I was only trying to get back into my house. I’m sure you have some sort of database you can look in to see that it
is
my home. You can see my driver’s license to verify that.”

Fuckpants just shook his head. “It ain’t nearly that easy. You’ve entered into a whole fuck lot of red tape. You probably won’t be back home for weeks, at least. I think it’s time you faced reality and admit to yourself your little wife’s found a new fuck buddy.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Be that as it may, I’m also an officer of the law. And you have broken the law. And you will be punished.”

He backed the car up and hit the accelerator. The car went shooting down the avenue once again. Now they were going downhill, only a few minutes away from downtown. At the next light, a man was crossing the street. It looked like he was glowing. It looked like he was green. Alvin felt his foot pressing an imaginary brake on the floorboard. But Fuckpants seemed unconcerned. Alvin’s heart rate slowed a little when it looked like the glowing man was going to make it to the next lane without being hit. Then Fuckpants swerved over to hit him head on. The car smashed into him with a meaty impact and just kept going. Alvin turned to look at the man splattered and twisted on the road. Turning back to stare at the windshield, he saw a glowing neon green substance slathered all over it. Fuckpants turned on the windshield washer and wipers until it was mostly gone.

Before Alvin could say anything, Fuckpants said, “Don’t worry about it, it was just a raid.”

“A raid?”

“Rade. R-A-D-E. It’s short for radiation victim. No one really knows what they are but most people think they come from the Point.”

“I worked there and I’ve never seen anything like that. I don’t even think the Point deals in radiation.”

“Oh, the Point wouldn’t acknowledge that they had anything to do with it. The bigwigs there have everybody convinced the rades are public nuisance number one.”

“I’ve never even heard of them.”

“You wouldn’t unless you come out at night a lot.”

“I can’t remember the last time I was out during the
day
.”

“The night has a lot more levels than the day. You’ll find out after you’ve been processed.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? I don’t need to get processed. I need to get home.”

“You can forget about that. I’m going to take you back to the station and you’re going to be processed. Processed deeper into the night.”

Alvin didn’t know if Fuckpants was serious or just trying to scare him. “You’re a fucking halfwit.”

“Keep it up with that smart mouth. Your list of crimes just keeps gettin’ longer and longer. Wanna know why the rades are considered a nuisance?”

“Why not.”

“Let me ask you this, first of all, what did you do at the Point?”

“I worked in human resources, data entry kind of stuff mostly.”

“Oh, so you worked in an
office
?”

“Mostly, but I started out in the foundry just like everybody else.”

“So I guess you think that makes you better than the rest of ‘em? ‘Cause you was able to work your way up?”

“No, not at all. I’m just… I just wasn’t cut out for the foundry. What does this have to do with anything?”

“Well, I was just wonderin’ how come you never heard about the rades and now I know; it’s ‘cause you weren’t down there with everybody else. Now, this’s been a recent phenomenon. They say one of the workers was exposed to so much toxic shit he started to turn green and shit and then, get this, he started to develop
needles
growin’ outta his fingertips. Lost all his hair. Couldn’t wear clothes ‘cause they’d just burn up when they touched that skin. Then his dick fell off. The fucker wasn’t even human no more. Then he started stickin’ those needles into other folks and they started turnin’ into things just like him. Now it ain’t illegal to kill ‘em or nothin’. Fact, it’s encouraged. ‘Cause once you turn into a rade, there ain’t no turnin’ back.”

Alvin just shook his head. If his hands were not cuffed behind him, he would have closed them over his ears so he didn’t have to listen to Fuckpants anymore.

“Fine. Don’t believe me.” He reached into the ashtray and fished out his joint. He lit it up again, flaming sparks drifting down to his shirt, and took a deep breath. “Once you get deeper into the night you’re gonna see a whole bunch of shit.”

Alvin leaned forward and put his head on the dashboard. “Fucking kill me now.”

“No time soon!” Fuckpants shouted and hit the stereo button again. This time it was Rush. Alvin fought the urge to throw up.