Whatever this place was, it was certainly not home. And he told himself that he should continue, driving stubbornly onwards, deeper into the turmoil, against the flow, that turning around and driving in the same direction as the fractured humanity would be paramount to admitting time wasted, or the near-futility of his own passage, and recent decisions he had made. He remained lost. All anyone really ever sought was peace, and yesterdays that could no longer exist.
Or they were running away from something.
Perhaps the real reason he wouldn’t turn the car around was that doing so would make him feel like he was heading back into a trap. Even though this level was a different one from where Cynthia’s treacherous lair had been. Oh, there had been a mad flight — which was how all these adventures ended, it seemed — and he had driven, at top speed, arms around McCreedy, for a long time before frantically taking another lift pod. Down? Or had it been up? At least they had left their pursuers far behind.
Closing his eyes for a second, a whirl of blackness rushed over Phister like a vacuum, and he shuddered. Back there, on the level where McCreedy had died, there existed a monster composed of discarded and very unpleasant memories. This horrible beast, now threatening to rouse itself, licking its chops, opening one bloodstained eye, would not be as easily thrown off the trail as flesh and blood. Was it getting ready to stalk the car? The monster could only remain vague as long as Phister continued driving and did
not
turn around.
Who could have expected these silent, wounded people? These bizarre animals? Obviously fleeing a tragedy of huge proportions, one that Young Phister was, for all his illogic and inability to confront his own demons, driving straight into. From one disaster to another, Reena would have said. From the frying pan into the fire. And McCreedy? What would he have said, if he were alive?
But he wasn’t. And Reena was so far away that he would never find her again.
Phister swerved the car gently past a dusty, vacant couple. The man had a headwound that should have stopped him in his tracks. The pair walked on.
No one tried to stop him. No one tried to warn him from going any farther. No one had even asked for his help. Could he run them down, if he was so inclined? Perhaps the refugees would not even try to step aside or meet his gaze as they disappeared, thudding under the tires or bouncing off the hood.
Wringing his sweaty hands on the steering wheel, Phister thought for another moment about McCreedy’s sudden death, and of the nightmare fugue that had followed. He looked over at the inert body, unable to truly believe that McCreedy would never again speak, never move, never insult him.
Fumbling in the pocket of his shorts, Young Phister touched the strange brown rod he had taken from Cynthia’s vest pocket.
The hunter
. Rubbing the textured surface with his thumb, he fervently hoped the ancient device might dispense advice or otherwise make him feel somewhat better; it did neither.
He had experienced no more visions — unless a blackout could be considered a vision — and he could not duplicate whatever it was that Cynthia had done to activate the device. There remained a tingling in his limbs, and he was fairly certain that the innocuouslooking tube was at least partially responsible for his current dizzied state of mind, and that it had lent him the superhuman abilities he had found inside himself to escape Cynthia’s grasp —
His breath came in a great, sudden rush. He pushed his foot down on the accelerator.
“Get out of the way!” he shouted, voice muffled by his shirt. “Get out of the way!”
No one listened; he continued swerving.
Phister had told Cynthia he was not interested in being a victim of the hunter’s power again, yet here he was desperate for answers that might possibly lay in that alternate place, or in that calm, resolute mind. He would put up with pain for just one more episode. At least in that other place and mind there might be escape from the knowledge of McCreedy’s death, escape from the disappearance of Crystal Max, escape from all that had happened after. From the growing reality that he would never reach home. From that bloody monster, trotting behind the car.
He shuddered again and stepped on the accelerator slightly more to gain a little distance. All he had left was his hope to one day revisit that pristine place, replace his thoughts by those in the mind he’d discovered there. He would leave crippled Young Phister behind. Leave these thoughts and doubts.
Taking his eyes off the hall to quickly study the cryptic engravings on the hunter, searching for assistance in the marks, or perhaps to learn how he had found that strength to get away from Cynthia’s gang, a loud shout, from
very
nearby, startled him and he instinctively braked, pulling hard on the steering wheel and swerving, looking up just in time to see what appeared to be a small, extremely white toddler, naked, standing just a few metres in front of the wheels and waving its arms frantically as it vanished beyond the hood’s line of sight.
“
Shit
!”
Moving sideways through the grit — McCreedy’s body lurching forward in the seat — the car came to a stop.
“Not again,” Phister muttered. “Not again . . .”
There had been no thump this time. Thankfully. No scream, no sickening sound of bones splintering under the wheels.
Young Phister, hands trembling, wondered if what he had seen was human, or even real.
“Hello?” Half rising from the driver’s seat, he called out. The word, through the fabric of his shirt, was muted but echoed down the length of the dusty corridor. Ahead, from under a rolling tongue of thin smoke that was licking at the ceiling, materialized another dusty phantom. A man, this time. And then another. Marching, stoic, expressionless.
“Hello?” Phister’s voice broke. “Hell — ”
Clambering slowly up over the lip of the hood — real, but too pale,
too pale
— appeared first the small white hands, the domed head, the small torso of a young boy. Phister could only watch in horror as the naked child finally managed to pull his chubby legs up and, puffing, stood on the hood of the car. But when the toddler lifted his face to grin at Phister through the windshield, Young Phister’s blood went cold: there were huge gashes on the child’s neck, in three places. Flesh hung limp and grey.
“Hi yourself,” the boy said. “We meet at last.”
“Do I, do I know you?”
“Not really.” When the boy grinned again, he showed tiny, sharp teeth. “But first let’s talk about your inability to drive this thing. You should watch out, you know. You could have killed me.” Those eyes were cold and green and now they turned towards McCreedy, slumped in the passenger seat. “What’s up with your friend?”
Phister was dry-mouthed. He could not look away from the boy though he felt strong and growing repulsion. He said quietly, “That’s McCreedy. He’s dead.”
“Funny.” The boy’s eyes flicked back towards Phister. “Me too.”
There was a long pause. Fearful of what the answer might be, Phister asked, “Am I also dead?” For the idea that he was in a world of the deceased had never gone away, bursting to fruition again with the boy’s sudden appearance and comments.
“Dead? You? What kind of dumbass question is that?” The gashes on the toddler’s neck exposed raw gristle and dull bands of slack, lifeless muscle.
“I’m not? Then what about these people? Who are they? Are
they
dead?”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“These others.” With one arm Phister indicated the men, who were at that moment walking past the car. “Why are you the only one who can understand me?”
“Think I’m associated with these people? Is that what you’re getting at?” The boy seemed offended. “I don’t know who they are. Maybe they speak another language. How should I know?” He motioned. “What is that thing you’re holding?”
Phister looked at the hunter. He had forgotten he was fondling it. He held it up.
“Can I see it?”
The boy came forward to lean against the windshield. On tiptoes he reached across to take the rod, which he turned over a few times before finally
harrumphing
. “It’s empty,” he said. “Who was in there?” Patches of the boy’s skin were discolored, giving him a mottled look. His green eyes appeared without moisture and he did not blink nor waver his gaze.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Inside that thing. Who was inside?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a sheath from the archives. It once contained a DNA pattern. No? A human’s code was in there.” The boy handed the hunter back to Phister. “Someone pretty important, too, by the looks of it. With an army of nanites, ready to roll. They were in there pretty recently, too . . . Sure you don’t know who was in it?”
“Uh, no.”
“Where did you get it?”
“I found it.”
The boy stared for a while, not blinking. “Found it?” He tried to size Phister up. “So this dead guy, in the car. Did you bring him here so he could see a doctor? To get him fixed?”
“No. I came here by, well, by accident. I’m trying to get home. To bring him home, I guess. But I can’t find my way back. What . . .
Who
are you?”
“An old friend of mine used to call me dead boy. You could call me that too.”
“Dead boy?”
“Do you always repeat everything people say? It’s pretty annoying. But yeah. Dead boy. ’Cause to tell the truth, I don’t know what my name was when I was alive. Now I’m part of the world around you. You can call me what you want.”
“How did you die?”
“I’m not sure. Gardening accident, maybe. Possibly murder.”
“
Murder
?”
The leer on the boy’s face was horrific. He had turned his head so that the gashes opened wide. Phister swallowed hard.
Murder
. Did the boy know what Young Phister had done to Cynthia and her cohorts? Had he been sent to make Phister answer for what had happened? But the true question was: what had really happened? Did Phister even know what he had done? Was there any way that carnage could have been real?
“Kidding,” the dead boy said, and he chuckled. “Boy, you look like you could use a doctor yourself . . . I think the supervisor who reanimated me knew what had happened to the kid who owned this body, and maybe even what his name had been, but it never let me access that data.”
“Reanimated?”
“Didn’t I tell you that I was dead? Are you deaf? A supervisor made me into what I am today. How else do you think dead people get up and walk around? Nanites again, just like in your little tube. We might not be the same as we once were, and we might have different agendas — ” that grin again “ — but we can reach out and touch someone.”
Phister recoiled from the pudgy hand.
“Of course, the main problem is we have to go for regular treatments to stop these damn corpses from falling apart. So now that the supervisor who sponsored me has stopped responding . . .” Seeing the expression on Phister’s face, the dead boy said, “Look. I’ll give you a crash course in reanimation. As an ex-person, I play host to an army of tiny machines that keep this body moving and working and stop it decaying too much. These tiny little machines do the bidding of, well, of the world. They’re emissaries, you might say. So basically I work for the network. Understand?”
“No.”
“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: if he’s being run by a million nanites, then why don’t they do something about those big ugly cuts?”
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
“My supervisor used to call them
affectations
. And I guess they are. You see, I do have a
little
bit of free will. I like these gashes.” With one hand he slapped at the flaps of skin. “What can I say? I like the effect they have on people. Anyhow, all those little guys inside me are starting to lose the battle now that Sam has powered down. So you see why I’m here.”
“Uh . . . No. I don’t.”
“For goodness sake! You’re on the medical level; I need a lift. It’s perfect. And when we do find a doctor, we can get it to look at him too — your friend. If you want. Maybe even at you. Although it seems that now might not be the best time to become reliant upon the infrastructure, if you know what I mean.” A knowing wink.
Everyone spoke in riddles. Phister was utterly baffled. “McCreedy doesn’t need a doctor,” he explained. “He needs a funeral.”
“A funeral! That’s a good one!” Chuckling, the dead boy reached up to take hold of the windshield’s frame. As he tried to scale the sloped plastic, his feet found no purchase; they left twin, damp trails through the thick dust gathered there.
Again, Phister did not want to touch the boy’s hand, at least not until it was waved right under his nose and the dead boy asked explicitly several times for help. So when Phister did grab the tiny extremity, to help hoist the boy up, he felt cold and undeniable proof that the dead boy had told the truth about his status. Phister pulled (half expecting to remove the arm from its socket), and the child managed to scramble up and over, leaping clumsily from the frame to land heavily next to Phister, nearly falling into McCreedy’s lap. The dead boy had seemed much heavier than any toddler should ever be, and his stench was like the cleanser that periodically washed over the floors back home, seeping from tiny holes in the base of the walls.
Settling between McCreedy and Young Phister, the dead boy said, “Yeah, so, thanks for picking me up and finally getting the jist of what I was talking about. For a minute there, I was beginning to think you were a total idiot.”
“No. But I’m kind of . . . I’m going through a lot right now.”
“Who isn’t? Seriously, you could have the doctor install a sense of humour in you.”
Phister drove. Another person, up ahead. At least the smoke seemed to be thinning. After a moment, Phister said, “Really, though, who do you think these people are?”
“My guess? Probably escapees from a lab.”
Which also made no sense to Phister.
They drove past this most recent addition to the macabre parade — a middle-aged woman this time. Phister saw a nasty cut over one of her eyes. Half her face was crusted with dried blood. She walked past as if the car did not exist —