The Night Parade (5 page)

“You okay, pal?” David said, taking a step closer to the open door.

“I don't . . .” the man began, then stopped. David heard him clear his throat—a raw, guttural sound, wet with phlegm toward the end. “I don't think I'm . . . doing this right,” said the man.

“Doing what right?”

The man said nothing.

“What's your name?” David asked him.

“Uh,” said the man. “It's Gary. My name's Gary.”

“What are you doing out here, Gary?” He tried to put some jocularity in his voice, a bit of humor that might serve as the right amount of magic to dispel this whole uncomfortable scene. Yet his voice cracked, and David thought it had the opposite effect.

“Making the rounds,” said the man. “Isn't that right?” He added that last part with undeniable uncertainty, as if he was hoping David might be able to instruct him whether or not this was, in fact, what he was doing.

“Do you know where you are?” David asked.

The man said something that sounded like, “Pistachio.”

David licked his upper lip. “Why don't you come on down, come out here with us? If you're lost, we can help you.”

“I've got all this
work
to do,” said the man. David still could not see his face. “If I don't do it, who's going to . . . going to do all this work?”

“I don't understand,” David said. “What work?”

“All this . . . all this work,” the man said, and motioned with one hand toward the back of the truck, presumably to indicate all the ice cream and frozen pops back there.

“We'll figure it out,” David said.

“Mint chocolate chip,” said the man.

“Is he delusional?” David heard Deke whisper at his back. David shushed him, unable to pull his eyes from the ice cream man.

“Butter pecan,” the man said. “Strawberry cheesecake.”

“Come on,” David said, waving the man down from the truck. “Why don't you come on down. I'll give you a hand.”

“Blueberry Surprise,” said the man, a ball of phlegm clotting up the final syllable. Then he leaned forward so that the lower half of his face—the part not obscured by the shadow of the hat's brim—glowed white and garish in the moonlight.

Something dark was trickling from the man's left nostril. It appeared to lengthen, albeit almost imperceptibly, as David watched. For a moment, it almost looked like the man's face was splitting down the middle, a crack forming at the center of his skull.

He's had a stroke.
It was the first thought to come into David's mind. This put him somewhat at ease, since strokes, while awful, were
comprehensible.
It stripped some of the mystery, the lunacy, from this whole thing and made him feel somewhat more at ease.

“That's it,” David said, aware that he was talking to the man like he would to a child. “Come on down.”

The man didn't so much climb down from the cab as slide down in a disjointed and ungainly fashion. When his white shoes hit the pavement, David thought the man's legs would buckle and give out, so he rushed to the man's side and quickly gripped him about the shoulders for support. That was when David caught a whiff of him—the stench of fresh feces clinging to him like a shroud. It was enough to nearly make him gag, and he quickly recoiled from the man.

It was then that he heard a police siren coming up the street. Relief washed over him. He found his feet and took several steps away from the man. As if sensing David's apprehension, the man turned and faced him with his whole body—a disconcertingly robotic adjustment of shoulders, torso, head—and that was when David noticed the dark splotches running down the front of the man's white uniform toward the hem of the pin-striped apron. More blood.

“Sweet Jesus,” Deke muttered.

“It's important things get done!” the man roared, flecks of spittle launching from his lips. He balled up one hand and slammed it against the side of the truck, creating a resounding gonglike crash that caused David to jump. “None of you have any idea! You don't have any clue! Marybeth.”

David took another step back from the man. He wasn't sure if he'd heard the man correctly until the name was uttered again.

“Marybeth?” It came out as a query this time, the man's voice laced with a terrible combination of grief and fear. How quickly his demeanor had changed.

David saw the lights of the police cars against the houses at the far end of the street before he saw the actual vehicles. Someone—Deke again?—said, “It's the police,” and there was a grave finality to the voice.

The ice cream man whipped his head around and stared toward the opposite end of Columbus Court as two police cars appeared. The cars slowed down and came to a stop in front of the Fosters' house, their rack lights dousing the night in strobes of blue and red.

“Who's this?” the ice cream man muttered. The confusion was back in his voice. He turned and stared at David again, a crease forming between his eyebrows. The man's jowls quivered. He looked like a trapped animal. “Why would you do this to me?”

“Me?” David said. “I didn't do anything.”

“You need help, pal,” said Deke Carmody.

The man did not turn and look at Deke; his eyes remained locked on David. A hand came up and David flinched. “Marybeth, why would you do this to me?”

David shook his head.

The ice cream man removed his hat, revealing a mat of close-cropped dark hair that looked spongy with perspiration. His cheeks continued to quiver, and when he next spoke, he did so through clenched teeth with a voice drenched in fury.

“Hey, now,” David said, holding up both his hands.

The police approached. There were two of them, young-faced and distrustful. One of them looked at the ice cream truck in utter disbelief before turning his attention to the man in the apron.

“Sir,” said the officer. “Hello?”

“He's bleeding from his nose,” David said, pointing. “I think he's hurt. And he doesn't seem to know where he—”

The man lunged at David, so quick that David didn't have time to react. He was driven backward and lost his balance, falling to the pavement. The ice cream man came down on top of him, the force of a meteor crashing to earth, and David felt the wind punched out of him.

The man made a hissing sound and David felt wetness speckle his face. He wanted to shriek but thought better of opening his mouth for fear that whatever—

—was dripping off the man might spill into his own throat.

David bucked his hips, then reached out to clutch the man's head, seeking leverage to shove him off. But before he could, the man was yanked from him by the police officers. Deke and Tom Walker appeared beside David, each gripping him under an armpit and hoisting him to his feet.

The cops had the ice cream man pressed against the side of his truck while they cuffed his hands behind his back. But it seemed that the fight had left the man now, the anger and rage fleeing just as quickly as it had come. There was a perceptible slump to his shoulders, and his feet, clad in those ridiculous white patent-leather shoes, were positioned at odd angles.

“He said his name's Gary,” David offered, smearing the splotches of blood along his undershirt in an effort to rid himself of them.

“Did someone hit him?” asked one of the officers.

“No,” said David. “He came out of the truck like that.”

“He came out of the truck like that!” Deke echoed, jabbing a finger in the ice cream man's direction.

The officer cocked an eyebrow at David. “How come he attacked you?”

“Beats me,” David said.

“Gary,” the cop said, pulling the cuffed man off the side of the truck. “That your name?”

The ice cream man craned his neck so that he could look at the officer. His eyes blazed with some lunatic fever.

“Do you need to go to the hospital?” the other cop asked.

“Mocha almond pecan,” said the ice cream man.

T
he clock on the motel nightstand read 8:49
A.M.
and there was a frame of silver light around the drapes. David rolled over, wincing at the stiffness of his body but careful not to make a sound. He couldn't remember his dreams, but he found both his pillow and the stuffed elephant damp and his eyelids puffy. Ellie was still asleep beside him, her back to him, her legs tucked up beneath her so that the heels of her feet nearly rested against her buttocks. She still hugged the shoe box against her. David wondered what dreams were currently shuttling through his daughter's head.

In the bathroom he hid the stuffed elephant back inside the duffel bag, washed his face and hands, changed into a pair of jeans, then carefully tucked the Glock into his rear waistband. His Pearl Jam T-shirt was long enough to cover the handgun, but he still felt conspicuous. If someone happened to see the bulge, it might draw unwelcome attention. It was safer to leave the gun behind, so he stowed it back inside the duffel bag. Lastly, he removed the wad of cash from the bag and stashed it in his pocket.

Before leaving, he wrote Ellie a note on the back of an old receipt he found in his wallet and stuck it to the door with a gob of chewing gum; she would see it if she went for the door. Then he slipped out into the harsh daylight, wincing.

In the car, he drove not in the direction of the highway, but down a narrow whip of unnamed blacktop that wound behind the motel and ultimately ran through a rural downtown area. Most of the shops here were closed—permanently, it seemed, given their state of disrepair, the blackened shop windows, the fans of unruly blond weeds bursting from cracks in the sidewalks—and even the scant few cars flanking the curb looked like they had been deserted a long time ago. The only living soul was a homeless man in tattered clothing huddled in the doorway of an abandoned building. There was a sandwich board propped up beside him, the words on it printed in accusatory black capitals—
THIS TERRIBLE FATE IS YOURS ALONE
.

Just when he considered turning around and heading back to the motel, David discovered a convenience store on the corner of an otherwise empty intersection. There were lights on inside, and the door was propped halfway open with a brick.

As he negotiated the Olds into one of several empty parking spaces along the curb, a lone dog, ruinous with mange, trotted across the intersection. It paused in the middle of the street as David climbed out of the car, perhaps alerted to the movement, and stared at him, its tongue unfurled from its mouth, its wolfish ears twitching. The thing did not have a tail, so David couldn't tell if it was simply curious or meant him harm. Judging by the look of the thing, it didn't seem like it would have very much to wag about.

David entered the convenience store, dodging between curling strips of flypaper that hummed audibly. His arrival triggered an electronic chime that sounded like a doorbell. The place was empty, without even a clerk behind the counter. Despite the chill in the air, large black flies thumped lazily against the light fixtures. The aisles looked like they hadn't been restocked in a decade, and indeed, there was the distinct aroma of spoiled meat hanging thickly in the air. He wondered if the place had been abandoned.

It was less like a 7-Eleven and more like one of those sundry gift shops that populated the boardwalks of beach towns, with novelty T-shirts, souvenirs, and stuffed animals hanging from wire carousels. There was a food aisle, comprised mostly of canned goods, bags of chips, and dry, packaged noodles; a clothing aisle, with gaudy summer clothes and silly hats on display; a hardware section; and a rack of magazines—mostly pornographic—against one wall.

David crossed up and down the aisles, grabbing items at random. When he came upon a Cinderella toothbrush, he pried it from the wall peg. Yet a moment later he wondered if perhaps Ellie would think it silly, childish, and if he should opt for a simple adult toothbrush for the girl instead.
These are the decisions that plague my mind now?
He nearly laughed aloud at the thought. And in the end, he decided to buy both the adult toothbrush
and
the Cinderella one. Just in case.

He went to the magazine rack, too. Aside from the porno rags, there were celebrity tabloids, teen magazines, automotive catalogues, and even a booklet with a marijuana leaf on the cover. No newspapers, though, which was what he really wanted. It occurred to him that he had no idea if his daughter read any of this stuff—the teen mags, the tabloids, comic books. She wasn't that type of girl. He didn't think so, anyway. In the end, he decided to bypass the magazine rack altogether.

It could have been a shopping trip just like any he'd made in his lifetime . . . until he paused beside a hat rack, a plan forming in his head. He selected a nondescript blue baseball cap from the rack—emblem-free and just about as unmemorable as a hat could get—and realized that he would have to explain much of this to Ellie upon his return back to the motel. If he was going to do this, to put this plan into action, then she would have questions. He couldn't lie to her forever.

He decided to buy the hat.

By the time he took everything to the front of the store, there was a sullen-looking man grazing behind the counter. His comb-over was thin and greasy and his eyes were denim blue. He wore a paper carpenter's mask over his nose and mouth, a trend that had gained popularity after the CDC suggested Wanderer's Folly might be airborne. At one time, David had tried to purchase some of the N95 masks that were initially recommended by the World Health Organization, but that was before it became known that the masks were virtually useless in protecting against the virus. (One WHO spokesperson suggested it was the equivalent of taping up your doors and windows during a nuclear fallout.) The virus was in the blood—not in a sneeze, not in a cough—but many theorized that it was transmitted when the airborne virus gained access to the body by osmosis through the flesh. Those who still wore the masks did so out of fear or a false sense of security.

David's gaze lingered on the man just long enough for the man to draw his eyebrows together in consternation. Without a word, he proceeded to ring up David's items.

“You have any books?”

“Books?” the man said, his voice muffled through the mask.

“Like, YA books.”

“What's that?”

“Books for young adults. Like, for preteens.”

“Ain't a library.”

“That thing really work?” David asked him, nodding at the mask.

“Couldn't hurt,” the man said.

“Do you have any more?”

The man pointed to a wall of mismatched items—plungers, automotive air filters, toilet paper, picture frames. There were several paper masks hanging from a peg. David retrieved two of them and added them to his purchase. It had nothing to do with protection against the Folly; he thought the masks might help hide their faces, if it came to that.

“I need a charger for an iPhone, too. I didn't see any on the shelves.”

The man reached beneath the counter and set one beside David's other purchases. “Kids tend to steal 'em,” the man said.

“There are still kids around here?”

The man eyeballed him but said nothing.

“And a few packs of Marlboros,” David said.

“We're all out.”

“What other brands do you have?”

“None.”

“None?
No cigarettes?”

The man's milky eyes narrowed. “No cigarettes,” he repeated.

“How about a place to eat around here? A diner or something?”

The man shook his head as he bagged David's items. He moved with a zombie's lethargy. “Not 'round here.”

“What about off the highway?”

The man hoisted a disinterested shoulder. “Wouldn't know.”

“Where
is
everybody?”

“You with the Census Bureau?”

David laughed—a forced whip-crack of a sound that sounded false to his own ears.

“That'll be forty-nine ninety-five,” said the man.

David handed him fifty bucks, considered telling him to keep the change, but decided to hang around for it in the end. From here on out, every penny would count.

Back outside, the homeless man with the sandwich board was gone. So was the dog.