The Canal (11 page)

Joe was staring up at one of the taller
buildings. A tottering ruin that had been abandoned to the pigeons,
which were squirming in the blank sockets of windows. There was no
signage of any kind that Alan could see, although he couldn't blame
anyone for not bothering. These places didn't deserve names.

Joe. When Alan thought about it, it was
alarming how little he actually knew about the man. Joe smoked by
the shovelful, ate whatever processed, hydrogenated, and
preservitated foodstuffs his tarantula hands landed on, and
generally made a mess of things. But that was about as far as
Alan's knowledge went. He knew Joe tended to the sickly side, but
that was no secret -- everyone saw Joe retch into the office
wastebasket at some point.

But if personal appearance was a reflection
of inner-spirit -- and it was -- then Joe's spirit, without
question, bespoke a resounding criminal act, something porno
related with a public indecency overtheme. Just look at the street
they were on -- Joe fit right in. He was practically one of them,
one of the savages. And someone like that in a place like this,
that could only lead to one thing: error. And Alan had spent all
last night scraping a dead body off the underside of a bridge -- he
knew firsthand what error could accomplish when it was allowed to
go unchecked.

Alan watched Joe make his way into the
building. An illegal entry, Alan noted. That was private
property.

For now, he decided to watch and wait. He
suspected Joe would be on the move again soon enough. And if that
were the case, Alan would radio Vincent to check this building out
-- let him brave that filth hole.

Alan fiddled with the A/C. God he was hungry.
He could just murder a celery right about now. He could still taste
the morning's leftovers, sour and regrettable in his throat. Did
Susan feed that stuff to Eugene? He began making a mental list:
Foods for Eugene. Nuts, berries, fiber. Flaxes. Brain foods. The
child's processes, they needed to run like a machine.

He looked out the window. This fucking
neighborhood. Call in the air strike.

Alan listened to the drone on the police
radio for a while. A smashup on the expressway, but that was about
it. Even on a relatively quiet day, people were still getting
squashed. That's why you couldn't let your guard down, not even for
a second. You couldn't get lazy, and you couldn't get sloppy.

Alan wouldn't. Every Joe, every homicide,
every bum, every crumb -- let them come. Let them keep piling on
the filth, because Alan would be there to pile it right off. Tit
for tat. And when the day came that Alan did pass from this mortal
realm (purely a hypothetical), well, he was confident his legacy
would continue...through his son and then his son's son, and
onward. Alan's mission would forever be sustained, from one
generation to the next, until the end was achieved. Until light
stayed the dark, life triumphed over death, and humanity mastered,
well, everything. Yes, in time, humanity -- humanity and Alan --
would defeat the very universe, the very heartless and very
arbitrary universe. The universe would be banished to the stockade,
to be spat on and taunted and disgraced. Humanness would rule with
totality. Total design. Total purpose. Total law. Total--

A sheet of pigeons suddenly scattered from
the roof of Joe's building. Alan rolled down his window…he could
hear something, like the throbbing of an airplane, but coming
through the building, microphoned through the bricks.

And then the door on the loading dock popped
open, slamming back flat against the wall. A man scurried out. Alan
saw the limp, the grimy sheen on the piecemeal clothes, the unkempt
hair. Although the man's cap, it shone white and new. Shoplifted,
unquestionably.

Error. That's what this was.

The man stumbled off of the loading dock,
crashing to the ground below. Alan was already out of the car. He
knew the way it worked. Error begat more error, so you had to act
fast, you couldn't let it grow. Besides, maybe Alan would get lucky
-- maybe this clown knew a thing or two about bodies and
bridges.

The guy was already shimmying through the
gate by the time Alan got close.

"Stop! Police!"

The man squinted, seeing Alan for the first
time.

And then came the flood. An entire, ragged
looking crew came charging out of the building. They looked like
escapees from some apocalyptic meltdown, blinking in the sun like
half blind trench-dwellers. Alan thought Joe might be among them,
but that didn't seem to be the case.

"Nobody move! Attention! Do you hear me!"

These were the untenured, the floaters, the
drifters. The type who didn't earn, they stole. The type who didn't
live, they survived -- a careful distinction, living being grand
and ethereal, survival being base and reptilian. They were loners
who watched the glow of civilization from afar, from out in the
woods, with their sloth and their vices, with all the other beasts.
No matter what you called them: gypsies, drunks, beggars, tramps
(lazy, lazier, laziest, lazing) -- they defied all of Alan's ideals
and endeavors.

Alan was suddenly overwhelmed by this
stunning bouquet of loserdom. How to choose? Each bum was more
tantalizingly problematic than the last. He wanted to be
everywhere, he wanted to hunt them all. The mind reeled--

Alan stopped himself. He had to remain calm,
here. He had to maintain his focus and approach the situation one
problem at a time.

The first man, he was nearly across the
street, his baggy clothes flapping in the wind like a garbage flag.
Alan went after him. The guy wasn't fast, Alan easily narrowed the
distance. "Desist, fucker! Desist!"

Alan got the man from behind and shoved. The
guy hit the ground rolling. Alan was about to kick him when his
foot slipped. He fell awkwardly, face-forward, cracking his knee on
the asphalt.

He was close though, just behind the guy. He
grabbed the man's shoe, wrestling with the foot. Alan tried to get
standing, but gasped from the pain in his knee and sat back on the
ground. The guy was already up on one foot and half-crouched on the
other.

"Get off me, Charlie! This ain't no
game!"

Alan was climbing the guy's leg, one handful
at a time, almost bringing the man's pants down. The guy hopped
forward on his free leg. "Stay...still," grunted Alan.

The man looked at him. And then in a quick
motion, more an afterthought, he swiped at Alan's forearm. Alan
felt the flesh there snag and give way, saw the dull shine of metal
in the man's hand. A large parenthesis opened in his skin.

Alan recoiled, and the man was gone, loping
across the intersection. Alan immediately hunched over his arm. Oh
shit. He didn't think the cut was deep. The knife had only sheered
the surface, leaving a surprised flap of skin that was just now
starting to flush with the blood. But still. Oh shit. What about
that knife? Where had that knife been? Holy fuck, what filth had
that knife touched?

Alan's hands were trembling. The grand
organism had been breached. THE GRAND ORGANISM HAD BEEN BREACHED.
He unholstered Womack's revolver and aimed. One bullet, one wad of
metal the size of a fingernail, that's all it would take to churn
that man's head into sauerkraut. It was one mess that would
probably be worth it.

But... No. Alan wasn't shooting anyone, not
in the back. Not when he could pursue them and capture them and put
them in a cage instead. Not when he could force-feed them obedience
and court and discipline. Get them fat on the stuff, like those
foie gras ducks. Only, if you were to slice them open in a few
years, instead of a big buttery liver you'd find a big buttery
heart, absolutely engorged with the System.

That's what they'd get for fucking with him.
That's what they'd get for cutting Alan's goddamn arm with that
(shit oh shit) filthy goddamn knife.

He replaced the gun. He noted with mounting
dismay that blood had gotten on his shirt, leaving a thick smudge,
brilliant against the meticulous, white cotton, a stoplight glow.
The virginal expanse of his shirt: violated. And his pants, where
he'd fallen, were scraped, maybe torn. The neat uniformity:
compromised.

As he stood there taking this in, absorbing
the ramifications, the rest of the gang, the rest of those sorry
musketeers, they were scrambling in all available directions. All
those errors were escaping to their burrows, dens, and nests. Alan,
he'd have to find them later. And he would, eventually. All of
them. Just...he just had to get to his car first. There was a first
aid-kit there, for the cut (festering, festering, turning green, oh
shit). There was iodine. And God, bleach, he hoped. And then, then
he'd go and round up them up, those errors. Then he'd embark on one
massive, gleeful correction. Just...give him a minute.

The street was empty by the time he reached
his car. And the car, he discovered, trembling, was locked. In his
rush he had left the keys in the ignition. He peered helplessly
through the window. His radio was in there too. All the while he
was losing valuable time -- untold microscopic intruders surging
further and further into his body...

Then came the gunshot. Coming from Joe's
building, the upper floors.

A second gunshot made Alan flinch. Instinct
quickly took over. Was Joe on the giving end of those bullets, or
the receiving? There was no question in Alan's mind what needed to
be done -- he was going inside. Forget the runners. Forget his car.
Forget even radioing for help. And forget his arm, his rotting
arm--

Focus. Alan straightened his shoulders.
Focus. Checked his gun. Focus. Then he forced himself to think
about how badly the world needed him. How he had never shied from
that need. How he'd strap the whole goddamn world to his back and
carry it to some better place, a brighter place, all on his goddamn
own, if that's what it took. Even if that world had Joe in it.
That's right, even Joe -- Alan wasn't leaving a single person
behind.

Alan turned around and began limping towards
the building. And the street, it was if it was anticipating him.
The narrow block, emboldened, seemingly reared up to meet his
challenge, readying to stomp, basking in its lush bankruptcy.

It wanted a fight, did it? Then Alan was more
than happy to give it one.

>> CHAPTER EIGHT <<

Joe watched, transfixed, as something darted
from the pipeline. It was too fast to see, latching onto one of the
nearest residents and pulling him swiftly toward the opening. The
guy slammed sideways across it. He must have been about Joe's age,
long haired, like a shabby yogi. He screamed as his body began to
crunch under the weight of whatever was climbing up the pipe,
pulling on him like a handle.

Joe spun sideways as someone lumbered past
him. There was a frantic, crippled exodus as the most ill and
malnourished of the top floor's residents mounted unsteady and long
ignored legs, relearning to balance. Some of them crawled -- so
atrophied they looked like scribblings rather than people, their
spines folded like a 7 or looped like an 8.

Wordlessly, the secretary hurried to join
them.

Joe grabbed him by the arm. "Where the hell
are you going?"

"This isn't my business, lawman." He was
trying to yank his arm loose.

People were yelling from the elevator. The
residents were cramming inside, everyone jostling for a spot
furthest in, away from the open door.

The guy at the pipeline screamed again as he
fell hard to the ground, laying motionless below its mouth. There
was a moment of quiet. Joe thought maybe it was over.

And then it appeared.

It unfolded itself through the opening --
something from the deep, a creature from down in the ooze,
breathing a brackish, fly blown smog. It was a vision to make men
mad, to melt the brain's circuitry. And of all its displayed
horrors, Joe was helplessly drawn to one in particular -- a growth,
a profane and pulsing sac that spasm'd on its chest like an insane
rooster goiter. Pounding out an unmistakable rhythm.

Thub thub... Klank klank... A heartbeat.

The Enterprise.

It roared -- the sound was Anno Domini,
dinosaurial, land before time. It brought silt snowing from the
ceiling and made the floor throb, a wash of noise enveloping Joe's
legs and fluttering up his pants. Water sloshed over the tub's
edges.

"Lombardi!" The harder the secretary pulled,
the more desperately Joe held on.

The secretary reached for the empty bucket
near his feet. His fingertips curled around the handle. Joe didn't
see the secretary's arm swinging, didn't see the bucket coming hard
and fast towards his face.

Pop. Crackle. Joe fell to his knees. The
secretary rushed to the elevator. Joe was aware of the people in
their looking at him, aware of their fear. But as the doors closed,
that fear began mingling with relief. Glad, obviously, to not be
Joseph Lombardi.

All the weight in Joe's head, it was shifting
to one side of his face. He was dizzy, disoriented. He expected
unconsciousness to take him. He wanted it to take him. Only, the
numbness never came.

What did come, creeping ever closer with
awful inevitability, was the creature. Taking tentative steps on
long, thin stalks that swelled to bony globes at the knees.

"Jowww..." it said.

That got Joe back on his feet. That got him
thinking about escape. That and the creature's horizon-wide mouth.
And the straining tongue, a massive, rippling muscle that snaked
out to sop at the air.

But there was nowhere to escape to. The
elevator was gone. There was only...there was... He dug into his
coat, taking out Alan's gun. The creature lurched toward the
bathtub and easily flipped it sideways. Gallons of canal water went
sliding across the floor, splashing against Joe's loafers.