The dead boy, meanwhile, poked at McCreedy with one finger. “Or, I don’t know,” he said, “maybe their city is gone. The dispossessed. Doesn’t explain why they’re so out of it.”
“Please stop touching him.”
Turning toward Phister, “There have been collapses.” Up close, an odd timing to the boy’s words, a twist to his bloodless lips that should have slurred the sounds he made but did not, as if they could have been uttered even if the dead boy kept his mouth closed the whole while. And his cold green stare, levelled from just a few centimetres away, was much more eerie and unsettling than it had been from the hood of the car. “I did learn that much about the collapses before I was cut off. Seems that parts of the world are folding in on themselves. Reacting to the wound. Shutting down.”
“Wound? The world’s wounded? It’s
shutting down
?”
“Parts of it are, bud. That’s what I think. There was a place I heard about, Tianna, that was virtually crushed between two levels when the levels above and below sort of, well,
merged
.”
Tianna
. That name was familiar. Phister recalled a fleeting image of a red-haired girl. He knew what her lips had felt like against his own, and how they had tasted. And he recalled her low, rough laugh and knew the way her neck smelled faintly of cloves when he buried his face in the warmth there. Softly, he said, “Tianna . . .?”
“Tianna. Yeah. It was a city.”
“A city . . .”
The dead boy had become impatient. “What’s a damned city? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Uh . . .”
“What is the fucking matter with you? I’m supposed to be the dead one here.”
Phister shook his head in an attempt to clear it. “I came up from the basement. Apparently. I left there just a few days ago, so all this is, uh, new to me.”
“Are you from Public Works?”
Phister glanced over, frowning. “Yeah. I guess so. Because that’s what the car says, anyhow, when it’s plugged in. The Department of Public Works.”
“You don’t wear much of a uniform. You could pass for a guest. But no guest would ever go to the basement.”
“Why not?” Phister was patriotically offended.
“Because there’s nothing there. Just sewage that glows in the dark and pipes and flying rats.” The dead boy touched his esophagus with two fingertips, as if adjusting it. “You know, you really shouldn’t be afraid of me.” He leaned in closer, his pale face right next to Phister’s, and though there was no hint of breath from his mouth, his halitosis was enough to make Phister gag. “I’m your friend. We’re on the same side.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Phister said. “It’s just that I did something recently. Something terrible. Something I can’t quite remember and that I’m not really, well, not really capable of.”
“You did something you’re not capable of?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“How can anyone do anything they’re not capable of?”
“I was being threatened, see? There was a group of people. They were the ones that, well, they told me they weren’t going to let me go. So I got mad. I think I blacked out because I don’t really remember what happened next, just little flashes. When I came to, they were hurt. Bad. One was a girl. But I think she was really something else. So yeah, there was a fight, and I — ” Here came that monster, loping down the hall, slavering behind the car with claws out. Terrified, Phister could not continue his explanation; in the silence, the dead boy did not press the issue.
When he did speak again, his voice was soft, almost wistful. “Tianna,” he said, “was once a place where a lot of people lived. And now it’s gone. Just like that . . .”
“Are ceilings going to fall on our heads?”
“I don’t know.”
“Cynthia said — ” Mentioning the name brought another quick image of blood pooling on the floor, and of an arm, bent in too many places. She had been face down, inert . . . But she had wanted to interfere. He could not let her do that. “Plus, uh, plus I actually saw soldiers. Several of them. Being made. I saw them. In the warehouse.”
The dead boy rubbed at his cheek with one hand. Skin there moved like putty, and when he took his fingers away, the skin slowly resumed its place. “The warehouse, huh? You sure get around. You’ve seen stuff I only ever dreamed of. Literally.” He laughed. “Now I wanna try and explain something to you. About what’s going on. You know how a living body manufactures white blood cells when there’s an infection, right? Or when there’s a parasite?”
“No.”
“Shit. You don’t know that? Well it does. In self-defense. The world is reacting the same way. Because there was a breach, and something, or things, came in. So now it’s trying to defend itself. Yeah, sure there’s soldiers. They’re security. White blood cells. But you see, without the network, everything has gone nuts — the process is not working very smoothly, to say the least. I guess this had to happen, sooner or later. Everything has a lifespan. The world is no exception.” The boy continued to stare.
“Why you telling me this?”
“Oh come on. For your own interest, I guess.” He smiled and, thankfully, faced front.
“What’s going to happen now, dead boy?”
“I can’t tell the future. Can you? I just want to be around long enough to see another morning. Maybe another one after that, if I’m lucky.” Now the cold hand reached up to fall upon Phister’s elbow, at the wheel. “We don’t have too much time left. Personally, I’m starting to rot. I’m literally losing my mind.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Erupting directly between Phister’s eyes came a sharp, throbbing pain. He groaned and shook free from the child’s weak grip; the pain diminished.
“Now then,” the boy said, “if we find a doctor, will you have your assistant reanimated?”
Phister managed to catch his breath. He was about to say that McCreedy was not his
assistant
but when he opened his mouth to speak he instead found himself mumbling, “Yes.” Waning pain continued to twist and churn inside his head.
The dead boy chuckled. “That’s good. Turn left here.”
They turned. The hall narrowed and was much cleaner here; Phister lowered the wet dirty shirt from his mouth and breathed his aching lungs full. He picked dust from his clogged nostrils with a bitten thumbnail. Because there was less grit on the floor he realized how much rumbling sound the tires made previously, in the main corridor.
Several closed doors, either side. Red crosses on each.
The dead boy gave a few more directions. The car turned left, right, reversed once, turned some more corners. The hall continued to narrow, until it was hardly wider than the car itself. They encountered no more people. The smoke had gone, also, though the air still smelled of fire. Eventually the nose of the car came up against a barrier blocking further travel and Phister looked at the boy expectantly; there was no way to continue other than to back up and take another route. Phister suspected that the trap had been sprung, that the monster would catch up now, that the final resolution to his ills would kick in. The ride was over.
But the dead boy appeared genuinely baffled. “That’s odd. I don’t think this wall should be here. I consulted the online map just last night. That wall
really
should not be there.”
“It looks new,” Phister observed, feeling knowledge not his own creep into his mind and hide surreptitiously there. He turned to the dead boy and saw that the boy was staring at him again, but for the first time since meeting him, the boy appeared to be the frightened child he must once have been. So Phister said, “Everything will be all right, kid. I’m sure of it. Don’t worry.”
“We don’t have time for this. Why don’t we just come clean with each other? Just tell me why this damn wall grew here. Tell me!”
“I don’t know,” Phister said, and for the next moment he looked about the cul-de-sac, unable to understand where he was, or why, or how he had got there. When he at last dimly recalled his situation, he forgot who the people were with him in the vehicle, and why, of all things, they were both dead. Staring sidelong at the pair — comprised of a tiny, ambulatory toddler’s corpse and the body of a very grey, puffy old man in cap and gloves — he dismounted slowly.
There was barely room to stand. As his feet touched the floor, power surged through his body and he knew he could have picked the car up and tossed it like a toy, if there had been room. Stepping forward, he laid his hands on the pristine wall of the dead end. Voices whispered, making him shudder, and briefly he closed his eyes so that the ghosts would leave him alone.
Cynthia had said she was going to kill him. Stop him. But he had so much work to do. He’d been asleep for a long time. The two little guys rushed him first while Cynthia watched, arms folded —
Some plans are bigger than lives. His arms came up of their own accord, powerful. A windpipe collapsed easily in each fist.
Seconds later, he sprinted after the fleeing girl, who seemed about to lift off —
He opened his eyes. There was a tiny panel, set within the pristine wall: creases delineated its presence. Touching the cool surface with his fingers — led to it by something other than his own will — he told the dead boy, “This wall is a safety feature. To deal with the fire.”
Flicking open the tiny panel exposed a numbered keypad. Touch buttons, from one to sixteen. These he regarded for a moment before rapidly pressing out a combination. The wall rose up into the ceiling with a soft hiss.
Beyond lay exposed a large chamber, lit by a ruddy hue, which the smooth floor inside reflected. He blinked and, rubbing at the bridge of his nose — without another comment — got back into the car.
“I know how you did that,” the dead boy whispered.
“Huh? Did what? Open that? It was a lucky guess.”
The dead boy said, “Look. I know what’s going on here. It’s no accident that we met. Let me help you. Your friend’s out of commission for a while.”
Phister declined to comment and drove forward into the great chamber. Their reflections shimmered under them as if they were on a boat, crossing a river. On placid waters. The dead boy, who was not nearly as mesmerized by the wondrous sights as Phister — more intent was he upon Phister himself — shook Phister by the sleeve. “Listen. Are you listening to me? We’ve got more in common than you think. Do you realize that now? I know what’s going on. I figured it out. Do you know who you are?”
This question he could not answer. Because he was busy dreaming. He shook his head.
No. I don’t know. Who am I
? Was that the question? Well, Young Phister, that’s all. Wasn’t that right? Who else could he possibly be? Just Young Phister, lost in the world, trying to get home. Young Phister, who had recently fought a pair of identical dwarfs, tossing them aside as if they were dolls, and then fought a woman who was not a woman, so beautiful that he nearly wept at the elusive memory of hurling her aside as if she weighed nothing.
Just Young Phister, within whose head a layout of all these rooms, corridors, and chambers was currently being mapped.
He muttered, “They wanted to stop me . . .”
Stretching along one entire wall of the chamber, as they drove adjacent to it — as far as he could see — was a series of bodies, each trapped inside its own coffin-like cabinet. Men and women both, naked, twined with tubes and wires, each resting inert under a translucent cover.
There were hundreds of them.
The car cruised silently past.
Immersed in a milky fluid, the bodies appeared to be sleeping. Next to each cabinet, a panel of dimly lit numerals pulsed. He caught a quick glimpse of a woman — slim, with great, floating red hair — so familiar that he nearly stopped the car, nearly called out to her, but her name did not come to his tongue.
Voices whispered. Were
these
people whispering to him? Moans blew like wind through his body, through his veins.
He knew these people
. He said, “You are my flesh . . .”
And the dead boy said, “I don’t know about that, pal, but here comes the doc.”
At first, when Phister looked to his right, across the open floor (more cabinets of bodies out there, against the far wall), he expected to see a man riding in the very strange car that was quickly approaching, but as the vehicle neared he could see no passenger within, nor even a place for one, and he came to understand that the speeding car was not a car at all — at least not like the one he was driving — but yet another sort of machine, one with numerous limbs and tools bristling out every which way. The oncoming car was, in fact, the doctor.
Frantic appendages flapped, clattering like a chime, and wheels slid on the tiled floor. The doctor blared in a tinny voice, “You can’t be in here! Stop! Stop!”
Phister said, “My two friends here need to see you. They’re both dead. It’s quite urgent.”
“Urgent? There are contaminants in the air! There is smoke, and a fire. How did you get in?” The doctor had slowed and was pacing them, wheels almost touching. Its motor pinged loudly and the numerous thin arms and spindly growths — the low-slung body had thirty or forty emaciated elbows poking up all over its back — moved and rang together almost hypnotically.
“You must present me with identification. We have been vandalized recently and — ”
“Listen to me!” The dead boy stood up, holding onto the windshield’s frame to steady himself. “Listen. What’s left of the network has been fried. Understand? There was a breach in the sky. Do you understand me, doc? My supervisor and manager — SAM Fourteen — of Plantation Level, has gone offline. Like your boss probably has. I’ve been trying to tell this guy here but he’s got problems of his own. He says he’s from Public Works but he’s in transition now. You have to help us.”
“I’ll need a work order.”
“I’m giving you one!” The dead boy’s shout was raspy and echoed down the length and breadth of the vast chamber. “Didn’t you sign an oath or something? We need your help! The world needs your help! I just told you the supervisors have gone offline. And you’re looking at your new boss anyhow. This guy right here! He’s going to save all of us!”
Phister raised one eyebrow and glanced across at the doctor — who was still driving alongside — before turning his attention back to the faces trapped behind the curved covers. He was listening to their hissed and quiet tales of loves lost. Tales of children being born, of personal triumphs, of tragedies. He said, “These people are my ancestors. My descendants. They’re my team.”