Morning Is Dead (5 page)

Finally, Lars’s screams stopped. The station was mostly empty now. Officer Assclown sat at the desk toward the front of the office.

“Time is weird here,” Alvin said. Looking out at the station was like watching, by turns, elapsed time and slow motion. Now the station appeared nearly full again.

“Yes, it most definitely is.”

“So what do you do all day?”

“Night, you mean?”

“Whatever.”

“Mostly just lie here. Sometimes I beat off.”

“Ah, that can’t help the smell very much.”

“No. It makes me sweat and then I usually just come in my pants or all over the bed. So there’s that, also.”

“No sense in really putting up a front, huh?”

“Not really. Everyone is here for some reason or the other. We are ‘nonproductive’ members of society.”

“I think Fuckpants mentioned something about that.”

“They usually don’t go into too much detail.”

“You know, I used to work at the Point.”

“Everybody has, at some time or the other. For them or one of their affiliates.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Where did you work?”

“I had my own business. I was a mortician. Everyone who died was either a worker at the Point, a former worker at the Point, or a spouse or child of someone who worked at the Point so I guess you could still stay I worked for the Point.”

“I understand that I may have ceased being a productive member of society when I lost my job, but how does a mortician become nonproductive?”

“People stopped dying.”

“I thought you might say something like that.”

“I think maybe they came here. To the night. Or maybe, because life is such a commodity, somebody decided not to wait around until people died.”

“I don’t see how they could get away with something like that.”

“When you have your tentacles into everything, you can get away with anything.”

Alvin liked that description. Or, he didn’t like it. It horrified him. He liked it because it horrified him. Ben had described it just right. The Point ceased being a plant where people went to work and became some Lovecraftian creature, stretched out into every aspect of the city, into every home, squeezing the souls and pockets and brains and balls of every resident.

“I think they’re harvesting tissue. But then there’s the incinerator… I think that’s what they do with the dead… if they don’t get to them in time…”

A tremble ran through Ben. He swiped his hands out in front of himself like he was batting a spider web.

“That’s okay,” Alvin said. “Don’t think about it. I’m not sure I want to know anyway. I just want to get back home. They’ve rigged it up.”

“Rigged it up?”

“For detonation.”

“Oh God… It’s true then. I’d heard about that.” Another tremor ran through Ben, this one so fierce his bed shook and squeaked. He put his hand over his eyes and opened his mouth. A low, almost subsonic, squeal came out.

“Forget I said it.” Alvin tapped a knuckle on the bar. “Don’t worry about it.”

Ben stopped squealing, put his arms back to his sides, and they lay there in silence for a bit. Alvin tried to think of questions to ask Ben. But he didn’t want to ask him anything having to do with the Point or death or the night or, apparently, the detonations. Ben had been here a long time. He might know the answers. In fact, he had led Alvin to believe that he had a number of theories. Alvin consoled himself by thinking he probably didn’t want to know the answers or theories anyway. There didn’t seem to be a lot of promise contained in this grim night world.

“I think you should come with me,” Alvin said.

“Huh?”

“When I try to make my break... I think you should come with me.”

“I couldn’t possibly do that.”

“Sure you can. You’re just lonely. You need to get out of here.”

“The sex is worth staying in for.”

“When you were a mortician, did you ever have sex with a corpse?”

“All the time.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“They’re dead, right? What does it matter?”

Alvin had his own opinions about that but didn’t think Ben would really want to hear them. Especially not if he was trying to cajole him into coming along with him.

“Besides,” Ben said, “there’s nothing for me out there.”

“But don’t you have a home? Isn’t there anything for you there?”

“I lost everything. I had a wife. A daughter and a son. A
very
nice house. And then… nothing.”

“But you could start all over again. You’re not that old. Think about it. You could buy your own prostitutes. You could have some control over your life. Is your house still standing? Maybe you could make amends with your wife. Surely your children would like to see you.”

“This is easier.”

“Maddening.”

Ben rolled over onto his side, facing away from Alvin, and farted, washing Alvin in the stink of death. Alvin coughed. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. He stood up and moved closer to the bars. He had that sensation of worlds overlapping again. Could an entire day have passed already? No, that was impossible. Besides, Ben said it didn’t have anything to do with real time anyway.
 

There were only three cops in the station. Only Officer Assclown appeared to be conscious. The place smelled of liquor, smoke, and puke. Alvin looked at Ben lying there on his bed and thought about himself, growing old in that cell. Or worse, ending up like Lars.

“I’m going to do it now,” Alvin said.

Ben rolled over onto his back and nodded.

Alvin grabbed the bars and rammed his head into them.

Assclown looked toward him and shook his head. Alvin rammed his head again and again. He felt blood running down into his eyes. His skull throbbed. He rammed his head until he was just on the brink of consciousness and then slipped down onto the floor. He heard footsteps approach the cell, keys jangling and then hesitating.

“You’d better check him out,” Ben said. “I think he’s hurt pretty bad.”

“Shut the fuck up, Stink.”

Lying on the disgusting floor of the cell, his cheek and forehead raw meat, in a growing pool of his own blood, Alvin felt a moment of joy as he heard the keys enter the cell door. As the door slid open he strained to hear if Ben coughed or not. Not hearing anything, Alvin leapt up and took off running for the doors. He felt something hit him in the back, probably the keys, and then he was outside, running for one of the cars parked on the curb.

He tripped over something and went sprawling.

He glanced quickly over his shoulder as he stood back up and saw a cop sprawled face down in a puddle of vomit, an empty bottle of tequila just out of arm’s reach.

Assclown stood just outside the doors of the station, struggling to unholster his weapon, shouting, “Jailbreak! Jailbreak!”

Alvin charged a few more strides. He quickly surveyed the line of recklessly parked cars in front of the station and leapt into the first one he came to, hoping for the best.

He heard shots. They didn’t even hit the car.

He checked the steering column. Keys dangled from it. A bottle opener emblazoned with a beer logo hung down from the key chain. Alvin looked back at the station to see another officer putting his arm around Assclown. It looked like he was trying to talk him into going back into the station and just forgetting about everything. Alvin twisted the key in the ignition and, realizing it was already running, pounded the accelerator and roared out into the night.

A Hospital at Night

Part Six

April looked at the monitor. It was odd that the beeping had stopped. She had never heard this happen. Usually it went from beeping to a flatline. This time there was no sound. She didn’t think that could be good. She stood up from the chair and looked at the monitor. There wasn’t a spiky line. There wasn’t a flat line. There wasn’t any line. The box with the “call nurse” button on it dangled off the bed. She could press the button. She was a nurse but she didn’t know what to do. Would Mirabel know what to do? Would the doctor on duty know what to do? Did she want Alvin to be revived if his heart had stopped beating?

April’s heart pounded. She reached down to manually take his pulse at the wrist but it was covered in bandages. Everything was covered in bandages except for his closed eyes. She thought about pressing the side of his neck, where the pulse was usually strong.

She didn’t.

She looked down at him. Looking at him hurt something inside of her. He could be anyone. He was a mummy with tubes, like some monster from an old sci-fi movie.

She imagined him wandering through the hospital, stiff like a mummy, wrapped in all that gauze, tubes snaking out from him like tentacles, waiting to latch on to someone else and suck the life from them.

She shuddered.

The monitor started up again.

It startled her and she jumped and then she cried out and sat down and put her hands over her mouth to stifle a laugh.

Mirabel’s hand was on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah… I’m… No, I’m not okay. I don’t think so, Mir.” She took a deep shaky breath. “The monitor stopped. It was the strangest thing.”

“Did he go flat?”

“No. It just stopped. There wasn’t anything there at all.”

April stood up. “Would you have a cigarette?”

“In my purse. It’s at the station. You know which one it is?”

April nodded. “I just need to step out for a minute.”

“I’ll stay here. I’ll watch him.”

April left the hospital room.

Six

He checked the rearview mirror to make sure none of the cops decided to pursue him. There wasn’t anything there. He turned around just in time to slam on the brakes.

A man shuffled across the street. He looked old and homeless and didn’t move very quickly. A rade stalked along behind him. Alvin thought about running over it but he seemed frozen, unable to do anything. He sat in the idling car. The rade fell upon the man. The man screamed and slapped his thin arms out against the rade. Alvin was suddenly conscious of the blood running down his face, masking it. The rade’s victim looked right at the police car, into the police car, into Alvin. The man would never be able to identify Alvin. Was that why he just sat here and watched? He wanted to leave the scene. He wanted to drive past it and clip the rade, make him stop. The rade pinned the man’s arms on the ground over his head. The man gradually stopped struggling. The rade seemed to grow even brighter. It looked like the rade was naked but it didn’t have any sex to it. He remembered what Fuckpants had said about their needlelike fingertips. But Fuckpants had been mostly full of shit. Didn’t Ben mention the rades, too? Alvin was sure he did. He said they were some kind of refuse from the Point. Or had Fuckpants said that?

Soon, the rade’s victim stopped struggling altogether.

The rade stood up with dripping fingertips and wandered off into the night as if he was too full to move quickly.

Alvin finally pulled the car forward. He looked at the man on the ground. Pinpricks of green glowed where the rade’s needles had penetrated him. As Alvin watched, the green began to spread. The man’s clothes were sizzling, smoke or steam rising up from the body. Alvin gunned the car. He couldn’t think of anything worse than watching this man who had been alive only moments before become something else, something that wasn’t even human.

The fat officer still slept in the back seat. Alvin must have appropriated Fuckpants’s car, if the officers were even assigned cars. They probably just took what they wanted. The fat man didn’t stir as Alvin tore through downtown, taking turns on two wheels and not bothering to stop for lights or stop signs. He had to get home. He had to get home and find a way to get in the house. He didn’t know who had moved in in his place but he knew it couldn’t be good. It either meant April was cheating on him or she was in serious danger. She could even be dead by this point. He didn’t really know how long he was in the prison. In retrospect, it seemed like only a few hours, but it could have been days. The more he thought about it the longer it seemed.

Looking around at all the darkened houses of the sleeping suburbs, he saw more rades than he thought he would. They would have been impossible to spot had it not been for their glowing skin. Most of them seemed to be deep in the alleyways. He wondered what it was they really did. If they mostly tried to hide out because they were such abominations, they weren’t doing a very good job of it. And the rade he had seen feasting on that man seemed like such an easy target. Only Alvin didn’t do anything about it. Maybe they had some strange kind of hypnotic power. Maybe that was why their skin glowed. To soothe the eyes and then reach in and lull some part of the soul.

Alvin pulled the car up to the curb in front of his house. In keeping with police protocol, he didn’t bother shutting it off or even closing the door. The men were still up on the roof working. Wires covered nearly the entire house. It was starting to look like the inside of some old electronic device. A stereo, maybe.

“Hey!” he called up to them.

No one answered him.

“This is my house! Can you tell me what you’re doing up there? Nobody asked you to do this.”

A man walked to the end of the roof and stared down at him through his ominous gas mask. He reached into his black coveralls and pulled out a rolled up piece of paper. He let it drop off the roof and it landed in front of Alvin’s feet. He picked it up and unrolled it. The only word he could identify was “Contract”. The rest of it seemed to be in some kind of gibberish. It seemed like it would make sense if he thought really hard about it but he seemed incapable of thinking hard about anything. He didn’t want to appear stupid so he just rolled the piece of paper back up and then dropped it where it had landed before.

He walked up to the front door and began pounding on it.

There was no answer for a long time.

He continued to pound.

Someone had to be in there. What if that strange man
had
done something to April? What if she
was
dead?

He knocked harder, the door shaking in its frame.

Then it opened.

That weird man who looked kind of like him stood in the doorway. Alvin tried to push his way through. The man put his hands on Alvin’s chest and pushed him back out onto the front porch.

“This is
my
house,” Alvin said.

“No,” the man said. He was calm. His voice was empty of any emotion and, staring at him, his eyes were just as void. “This is not your house.”

“Who are
you
? What the fuck do you want with my house? With my
wife
?”

The man looked at him. He straightened the front of his expensive suit. “I am you,” he said. “My name is Alvin Blue. This is my house. April Blue is my wife. I… mate with her.”

“No!” Alvin said. “You’re not me. You do
not
mate with my wife!”

“Goodbye.” The man tried to shut the door but Alvin managed to stop it.

The man continued forcing the door closed. He was very strong. Alvin continued to push against it. Then the man let go of the door and Alvin went flying into him. He put his arms around Alvin and dragged him out to the porch.

“HELP!” Alvin shouted. There had to be someone to hear him. Everyone couldn’t sleep that soundly. Everyone couldn’t be asleep at the same time. Why didn’t one of the workers on the roof come down to help him? At least to break them up.

The man was larger than Alvin and he felt more solid. He carried Alvin down the porch stairs and pushed him onto the front lawn. Alvin went sprawling onto his back.

“Stay away,” the man said.

Alvin kicked at him. The man casually walked over, raised his foot, and brought it down on Alvin’s stomach. The pain was sharp and spread through his entire torso.

“Next time I will stomp the throat of you.”

Who the fuck
was
this? Alvin thought.

“I’m coming back,” Alvin said.

“Unlikely,” the man said, already back on the porch.

“I’ll find out what the hell’s going on and I’ll stop you.”

The man made something like a laugh. Then he looked at Alvin and drew his finger across his throat like he had when Alvin first found himself locked out. He walked inside and shut the door. Alvin heard the locks click shut.

He stood up as straight as possible. His stomach hurt incredibly and he had to double over. He wondered if something had ruptured. He had no idea what to do now. He guessed he could try and find some store that would have weaponry. Then he could come back armed. If he could get the man to come to the door again, he would not hesitate to hurt him. If the police wouldn’t help him then he would have to help himself. He tried to straighten himself and began walking back to the car. He stopped once he rounded the corner of the house. The car was covered in rades.

Sensing him, they turned en masse and began walking toward him. He took off in the opposite direction, east down Thistle, toward the alley. He heard them behind him. He wondered what it would feel like when they finally got their needles into his neck, pumping him full of radiation while drawing his life out. He rounded the corner into the alley and tried the first garage door he came to. Locked. He ran further down and tried another one. Locked. Damn.

The rades turned into the alleyway. There weren’t any streetlights back here and that was to Alvin’s advantage. He could see the rades much better than they could see him. He charged through the nearest backyard, up toward the house. They had a wooden back porch just like his. He quickly checked the bottom of it to make sure it also contained puny lattice and not a solid foundation like brick or concrete. Moving slower now, he pulled back the lattice and slid under the porch. It was gross. It was damp. It smelled like cat piss and shit. God only knew what else was under there. But if it kept the rades from finding him, that was all he could hope for. He watched as their horde marched down the alley.

But one stayed behind. He saw its head turn toward him. It began walking through the yard. As it drew closer, Alvin’s heart once again sped up. He had backed himself into a corner. He seriously doubted he would be able to fight his way out of it. The thing looked like the drawings he had seen of aliens except it didn’t seem to have any mouth whatsoever and its nails were so razor sharp and needlelike that he didn’t even notice them until it was standing less than two feet away. It leaned down and Alvin knew he was done for.

And then it just kept leaning until it came down on the grass head first.

This was his chance to make a break for it. He bolted out from under the porch and stopped when he heard a voice say, “It’s okay, friend. It can’t hurt you now.”

It was a voice he kind of recognized. When he turned around, the first thing he noticed was an arrow sticking out the back of the rade’s head. To the right stood the archer.

“This one’s dead,” the archer said. “But I don’t think we should linger. The others will be coming back soon enough.”

“What are we going to do about...?”

“Leave it. Someone’ll come along and pick it up.”

The archer tugged his arrow from the back of the rade’s skull and gave it a wipedown in the grass.

“Thanks,” Alvin said. “I thought I was dead there for a second.”

“You would have been. Well, not dead, but one of them.”

They walked side by side through the yard and back out into the alley where they turned left, away from the horde of rades.