Morning Is Dead (8 page)

Alvin flipped on lights as he passed through the lower floor of the house. They all seemed too bright even though they didn’t seem to work very well. A lot of them flickered as though they were in the middle of a massive thunderstorm and the power was getting ready to go out or like they hadn’t been screwed in all the way. Maybe the wiring was just old. Bright and flickering, worming their way behind his eyes and swimming around in his brain. He felt nauseous. He realized he had been holding May’s hand since she had grabbed it in front of his house. He pulled his hand away, feeling her sweat on his palm.

“Fine,” she said. “I didn’t want to hold your hand anyway.”

“I gotta…” The floor swam beneath Alvin like the house was rocking back and forth on the sea. “I gotta look through this place.”

“You’ll want to hurry up. The crew isn’t going to spend forever wiring up your house. And you still have to fuck me. I bet it takes you a long time to come. You look like someone who has to fuck forever before anything happens. You look like the kind of person who doesn’t even enjoy it. Like you’d be a million miles away when what most men want is wrapped right there around you.”

She put her hands on his shoulders.

He shrugged them off.

“We could do it right here if you want to.”

“Not… Not if there are any sleepers here.”

Alvin began looking through the house, flipping on more lights as he went. There weren’t any bedrooms on the first floor. Alvin began climbing the steps to the second floor. May stayed downstairs.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“No. I’m gonna stay down here. Those things give me the creeps.”

“What things? People?”

“When they’re asleep like that... Knowing they’re always like that. It makes me think they’re dead.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Unless you’re going to take me up there and fuck my brains out. Then I’ll come with you.”

Alvin didn’t say anything. He continued climbing.

He reached the top of the stairs and opened the first door on his right. There was a lump beneath the covers on the bed. Alvin crossed the room. A man’s fat and balding head stuck out from the top of the covers. Alvin sat down on the edge of the bed. He nudged the strange sleeping man. He could see why they gave May the creeps. He shook him but the man didn’t wake up. He buried his first two fingers in the folds of the man’s neck until he found a pulse. It was strong and steady. He definitely wasn’t dead.

Alvin inspected his fingers. The tips of his first two fingers were discolored. It looked like dried blood. He smelled them. They smelled coppery. Dried blood or rust. Maybe it was from his tongue. He could still taste the blood in his mouth. Maybe one of his head wounds had reopened. He touched the small hole in his left arm. His fingers came away wet. It was still bleeding. But it didn’t hurt very badly. He wiped his fingers on the front of his shirt.

“Wake up.” Alvin shook the body harder. Hard enough to make the man’s fat lips jiggle against his gums.

“Come on, you fat fuck. Wake up!”

Still nothing. Maybe the sleepers were more than just asleep. Maybe they were in some type of coma. Alvin climbed up on the bed, straddling the man. He began jumping up and down, chanting, “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” He kept bouncing long after the point any normal human would have been awake. He studied the sleeping man’s face the entire time.

Disheartened, he stopped jumping and got off the bed. The lights flickered and Alvin planted his hands on the bed to steady himself. He coughed. The taste of blood was stronger. He rummaged around in the nightstands. Amongst many objects he did not like to imagine this man owning, Alvin found a black cigarette lighter. He threw back the covers on the bed. He went to the foot of the bed, flicked the lighter, and held the flame to the bottom of the man’s grossly calloused foot.

The man’s foot twitched. Alvin looked at his face. The man opened his eyes. The lighter went out. The man’s eyes were closed again. Alvin did it again. The same thing happened, only this time he felt something. It was similar to what he had felt back at the police station. Some connection to another world. The old world?
His
old world? Like the room he was sitting on went all swimmy. He thought again of the image of the house rocking on a strange sea. He looked at the bottom of the man’s foot. There was now a blister there, burned slightly black from the lighter. Alvin held the lighter to his other foot, careful to pay close attention this time. He flicked the lighter. The man’s foot twitched again. And, this time, when his eyes opened, Alvin felt nothing. Or, rather, he felt some sense of… yearning. He imagined an alarm clock going off in the distance. Birds chirping. The scents of coffee brewing and bacon frying. The squeal of school bus brakes.

He reeled with desire.

Sliding the lighter into his pocket, he went back to the head of the bed. He bent down and pulled the man’s eyelids open. He stared in fascination. The man’s eyes had rusted. Flakes of rust were caught up in the eyelashes and created deposits at the corners of the man’s eyes. Alvin pulled his fingers away and looked at the tips. They looked the same as they had before only now he was sure it was rust. He put his fingers back into the fat of the man’s neck. He couldn’t find a pulse this time. But he could feel the rust like dried sweat. He struggled to roll the man over, yanking off the covers. His shirt and pajama bottoms had been partially eaten away. In the holes, where flesh should have been, was more rust. Much of it had flaked off into the bed. The lights flickered and the room rocked around him. He turned and left the bedroom without flipping the lights off. This man had gone to sleep. He had closed his eyes a long time ago and then he had turned to rust. Alvin wondered how something like that could happen. He wondered what something like that could possibly mean, if anything. He had seen the man open his eyes only moments before and, while he couldn’t recall the color, he knew they had not been made of rust. Perhaps Alvin had done this to the man. Perhaps his presence had made the man turn to rust. That was ridiculous, of course, he told himself. He went down the stairs as quickly as possible. He wanted to be as far away from the sleeping man as possible. He coughed and sucked blood down his throat. He fought the urge to shiver. If he shivered just once, he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop.

May sat on a couch in the family room, leafing through a magazine. She sat with her legs parted, her white underwear plainly visible.

“I saw you look,” she said. “You want some? We could do it right here on the couch.”

Alvin was distracted. He threw one last look at the stairway, as though the rusted man might have gotten up from the bed and come lumbering after him.

“So? Whaddya say?” May pointed between her legs.

“You know, when you just
give
it away, it’s much less appealing.”

“Whatever. Guys don’t care.” She crossed her legs. “There. Now do you want to?”

He shook his head in disbelief.

“So, did you find out what it was you wanted to find out?”

“I… don’t know. He was
rusting
.”

“I told you the sleepers were creepy fucking bastards. Now you’ll believe me. See, I’m not new at this. I know what I’m doing. And I
will
be able to help you.”

“Come on,” he said. “We need to get going.”

“To my apartment?”

“Is your apartment downtown?”

“It just so happens that it is.”

“Okay then. We can go there.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“You said.”

“I didn’t promise anything. I’m sure we’ll pass someone along the way. You can drag them in an alley and have your way with them or whatever. I’ll even wait for you.”

“Geez, that makes me feel pretty special.”

“When did you give up?”

She stood up from the couch, tossed the magazine back in her place.

“What do you mean?”

“When did you stop trying?”

“When I realized everything was useless.”

“But, if you’ve never really tried, how can you be so sure?”

“Have you tried to go back home?”

“Yes. I told you that.”

“And what happened?”

“The first time I was arrested. And then my simulacrum beat me up. I almost got attacked by a rade. Another time the door was locked.”

“And you didn’t break in?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t want to get arrested again.”

“See. So you’ve really given up too.”

“No, I haven’t. I’m trying to find another way.”

“Really? Because, let me tell you, those guys up there on your roof? They’re not just fucking around. Your house is going to be detonated and then everything you know, everything that’s been slipping away from you? Gone. Just like that. And while you should be fucking me so I can tell you how you might be able to stop that, you’re just dicking around. Wasting time. Know why? Because you know it’s useless. You know there isn’t going to be any going back to your house, no getting your wife back.”

“Then why should I do what you want so you can tell me how to do that? Why do that if it’s useless?”

“Hope. I can tell you how and then you can have hope. Uselessness is one thing. Hopelessness is another. When you’ve lost all hope… then you’ll be just like me. There are always exceptions. Maybe you’ll be the exception. You can tell yourself that, can’t you?”

Alvin raised his hands, turned so his palms faced him. They were both covered in the rust residue. “I think I have to. Come on.”

She stood up from the couch. He opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. He heard a loud sound to his left and snapped his head in that direction. An arrow had pierced the doorframe, stuck into the wood at least an inch. The arrow pierced a note.

“What is it?” May asked, leaning over his shoulder, snaking a hand around to the front of his pants.

“A note.”

“Duh. I can see that. What’s it say?”

“‘The hunt is on.’”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means we’re in a lot of trouble.”

“Someone after you?”

“Yeah. Archer.”

“We could stick to the alleys all the way downtown if you want to.”

“No. I think he’s pretty familiar with the alleys. We’ll just go down Payne until we get downtown. Keep an eye out. If you see any movement at all, we’ll have to hide.”

“Roger.”

Cautiously, they crept down the walk of the house until they reached the sidewalk and turned back downtown. They crossed a narrow side street and heard a sound to their right. Alvin looked into the alley and saw a glowing rade. It was crouched down over a body. The rade turned its head in their direction and Alvin saw the milky glow of its eyes.

“Let’s walk faster,” he said.

They reached downtown in what felt like ten minutes. It was all downhill so the walking was relatively easy. May pointed out her apartment. It was a loft that had been converted from an old warehouse at the very end of Payne. Across the street from her apartment was a building. Besides the police station, it was possibly one of the only places he had seen that had more than one or two lights on. There was a line of cars backed out onto Main Street and continuing toward the city center. Not everyone was in a car. Some people just stood there in line. They were all girls and women, various ages.