Hush (40 page)

life. But I'm the only one around here that makes anything eternal. That's

right, Me. I cut you, you die forever and ever. Nothing, not even your goddamn

God can change that. I let you live, I give you life. I'm your God, not him in

heaven, but Me.
Chet's hips began to twitch, and the words that fevered his thoughts now passed

from his lips, still so close to Jack's ear that his breath registered with

every urgent word:
"Say I'm your God."
"What?"
Chet pressed the blade closer. Only the vein's thin membrane stood between life

and death.
"Say it, say I'm your God."
"You're my God."
"Mean it!"
"You're my God!" Jack cried out.
"Forever and ever."
"Forever and ever!"
"Amen."
"Amen!"
The razor moved, a brief, horrifying probe deep into his neck, a sharp stinging

sensation, and Jack heard Celia scream and knew from her terror and the burst of

warmth and wetness on his chest that his life had been taken.
The powerful arm let him go. He grabbed his neck as a booted foot pushed him

into the tank. He fell into the cold darkness, bleeding now deep in the water,

fighting for air even as he gripped his neck hard enough to choke himself,

trying desperately to stanch the wound, to cauterize it with his will; but his

heart beat on dumbly, pumping pumping pumping away every moment he might have

known.
He filled with the fear you can know only once. He reached for Celia, touched

her hand and held it. He prayed that he would never let her go.
But his life passed from him, and his body rolled over. As he turned limp, she

stiffened. Her legs and hands stopped moving, and she sank beneath the surface.

She struggled for air, and when she came back up she looked at her husband but

no movement betrayed his death, only the ripples that ruffled the water by his

head, the blood pulsing rhythmically from his neck.
She looked up at Boyce, still standing there, watching like a man at peace in

his domain as he calmly returned the razor to his shirt pocket.
She'd seen how he reveled in the kill, took his time, teased Jack, and then

murdered him. She thought of dying too, of sinking one final time and not

fighting back, of drowning herself rather than letting him take her life as he

surely would. But a hatred as deep and cold as the water poisoned her every

thought, and she knew she must live, if only to kill.
He swayed slightly, hand on his hips.
"You still want my help, or am I going to have to drag you out of there?"
"Yes," she sobbed softly, "please help me."
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Chet braced his left foot against the wooden housing, bent over, and offered his

hand. It took more will than Celia knew she had to reach up and grab it. She

tried not to shudder as his dry calluses pressed roughly into her soft shriveled

skin.
He attempted to pull her up, and she struggled to help, but her shoulder felt as

if it was coming out of its socket.
"No, stop," she shouted. "That hurts."
That hurts? He let go of her and watched her slip back into the tank. For a

second or two she disappeared. Then he saw one of her hands moving as she

resurfaced. Pretty deep, he thought.
When her head bobbed back up, he put the flashlight down and told her to give

him her other hand.
"I can't. It hurts."
"Serves you." The spitefulness slipped out like a mouse from a floorboard.
"Look, I'm really sorry."
Chet smiled, but his voice remained gruff. "Let's just get you out of there.

Here, like this." He locked his grip around her wrist. "You do the same to me,"

he ordered. Now they were linked tightly together.
"On three, okay?"
"Okay," she agreed.
"One, two, three."
He pulled and she pulled, and Celia came up out of the tank. Her shoulder hurt

as she caught the housing with one foot and then the other, but not so bad as

before; and the cold water had dulled the ache in her knee.
They were both breathing hard, and Celia was shivering too. He bent over and

picked up the flashlight that had been spending its beam on the ground. He held

it on her. She could tell he was staring at the dark spot where her gown clung

to her pubic hair, and at her rigid nipples.
"That's the containment tank." It was a slip of the tongue. She didn't catch it

and neither did he. Celia noticed a big bruise on his forehead.
"Who cares. Get moving! Back to the house." He kept the light on her. He wanted

to watch her march all the way, see the little boy's rump move around. His

crotch began tightening again.
"It's for fighting fires. With the drought we try to keep it pretty full. You

never know." She started to weep. "It's horrible down there."
"Shut up!" Sound travels, though to what he couldn't imagine. Just get her back

to the house, close the door, plug up her goddamn mouth and she can make all the

fucking noise she wants. He knew she'd try. Goddamn, they all tried, mostly

begging—"Stop, stop, stop" (amph, amph, amph, with the mouth plug)— even the

ones doing it to themselves. But it was their decision—"Do it, or I'll do it for

you"— and goddamn if they didn't too, just take that fucking razor and cut

themselves right up. They liked it too. But he always had to finish the job.

They never liked it that much.
"Let's go!"
"It's full of rats!" she cried.
"Rats?"
"It's crawling with them!"
He pointed the flashlight into the tank. He hated rats, hated them. The worst

goddamn things in all creation. Just seeing them made him sick, made him want to

puke. He stared at the tank. "I don't see any." And he didn't want to see any

either. Only thing he saw was that goddamn cat and her goddamn husband. They're

aren't any goddamn rats in there. "Let's get mov—"
"It's full of them," she repeated.
"Full?" He took another look at the dark pool as Celia started to scream.
What the hell...He turned around in alarm and saw her eyes— huge, like the

others' eyes when he was finishing them off. Big eyes popping right out of her

head; and then he saw some kind of dark thing in her hand. He felt it too— the

claws, the goddamn claws. Jesus ...
Celia was shoving a dead rat right into his face. She saw his surprise, his

fear, and this drove her on. He tried to fend her off and dropped the

flashlight. She pressed the rat against his nose and mouth and ground its claws

harder and harder into his skin. He reeled and swung wildly at her, but she

gripped the rat tightly and kept it in his face; and that's when she felt it

too, not just the spongy slimy fur, but the hard bony body itself, and the tail

jammed against her forearm until he fell backward into the tank.
He made a loud splash. She dropped the fat soggy beast and wiped her hands on

her gown. Chet surfaced, and Celia got a good look at his wet features. In a

rage, she picked the rat back up and hurled it at him. It struck his head, and

the dark rodent clung to him like mud to a wall. He grabbed at the creature to

pull it off— and he succeeded— but not before she saw the tail hanging over his

face and shaking, as if the rat were feeding in the nest of his hair.
He pushed it away and fought for air as he churned water violently in his heavy

boots. Boyce didn't look like a man who would die easily. Already he was moving

toward the intake line where he'd found her. She had seen insanity in his eyes.

She'd seen it before— in him, in others— and now she felt it in the air between

them, as tangible as that tank, as real as those rats. His body jerked crazily,

and he kept pushing at something underwater. He looked back at her.
"I'm going to kill you." Then he turned away and struggled over to the intake

line. When he caught hold of it he shook his head, as if he felt sorry for her.
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Celia's first impulse was to slam down the tank cover, but it didn't have a lock

and she was sure he was strong enough to crawl out from underneath it.
He's going to get out.
Those words echoed in her thoughts for several seconds before she considered

running. Try it, maybe you can. But the moment she started to bend her knee even

a little, the sharp pain returned.
As Chet shimmied up the intake line the rat on the brace squeaked in his face.

He never hesitated before smashing it against the wall with his fist. The rat

plopped into the water, dead. Chet hauled himself up another foot and paused,

perhaps to catch his breath, possibly to catch her eye. His were large and as

dark as ever.
"I mean it. I'm going to kill you." He had the strength for this, for one more

threat. He hugged the intake line tightly with his left arm as he reached for

his breast pocket. He unsnapped a pearl button and pulled out the razor. "You're

dead." He put it between his teeth as he had done when he was outside her

bedroom window, and started inching back up the line.
She spotted the knife that Jack had taken from the kitchen. It was lying on the

ground near the flashlight. She picked it up, and though she'd used it hundreds

of times before, it now felt foreign to her. She gripped it as a weapon and

thought of stabbing Boyce as he tried to climb out. She even saw the way his

hands would grab on to the housing, and how she could drive the long blade right

down through his flesh and pin him to the wood.
But she halted before she ever got started. No, even that wouldn't stop him, for

she could also see how he'd yank the blade away and turn it on her. No, she

couldn't do that.
She stood unmoving, her stomach muscles knotted, her arms tense, her legs as

unsteady as her breath.
Do something. Do something.
Her eyes raced around the small wooden shelter until she spied the fire hose

that she and Jack had stacked two weeks ago. She forced herself into action. She

pulled out the heavy copper nozzle and reached for the rope that started the

motor. It had a small black rubber grip like a lawn mower's, and she yanked on

it. But the engine didn't turn over.
The choke, she thought, the choke. She picked up the flashlight and searched

wildly until she found the yellow knob. She turned it and pulled the rope again.

Nothing.
Shit.
Chet grunted, and Celia looked up. One of his hands clutched the top of the

housing.
Jesus God. She yanked on the rope again. Nothing. Come on, come on, she urged.
Maybe...it's...not...going...to...start. She heard her mother's icy inflection

and thought it might be true. When was the last time we ran this thing?
She saw him rising like a reptile and tried again. Nothing. Her arms ached. Her

body kept shaking. Her hands felt weak. Again: putt. It sounded once and then no

more. Again, crying: putt. Again: putt-putt. Each time the rope recoiled as

though rebuking her.
She screamed in frustration and fear, pulled, and heard the engine start up.

Thank God.
Abruptly, it stopped.
She thought he said something. Or was he grunting? She couldn't be sure. He was

staring back at her, and his lips were moving. He was still biting down on that

razor, it glinted between his gums in the moonlight. He was definitely saying

something but she could not hear him. She did see that he had both hands on the

housing and was starting to hoist himself up.
"Dead meat." Chet kept repeating those words to himself—"dead meat, dead meat"—

because that's what she was. Every time he said the word "meat" he could feel

his lips touching the razor between them. That felt good, like he was already

kissing her good-bye with the blade.
He had an elbow out of the tank and was trying to lift a knee onto the housing.

She was seized by panic; it seeped through every pore and made her whole body

slippery with terror.
"Jesus, Jesus." She wrapped the rope around her wrist, felt it pressed as

tightly against her skin as his calloused hand had been minutes before, and

pulled once more. The engine offered its anemic putt-putt, and roared to life.
She grabbed the nozzle and remembered the choke. She reached down and turned it

off as two hundred feet of fire hose started pulsing with pressurized water. She

stepped toward the tank and waited...and waited...and waited...for the water.
He just about had that knee up on the housing when the hose came fully to life.

It flailed like a snake tossed onto a fire, and when the water burst from the

nozzle it was all Celia could do to hang on. But she did.
She aimed the powerful stream at his back and flattened him against the side of

the tank. The water hit him like a prizefighter's fist that never lets up. His

leg surrendered first, banging against the side of the tank until it fell into

the water again. Celia went to work on the elbow up on the housing, and in

seconds forced it back down as well. He held on, though, like a man hanging from

a bridge.
She worried that he might hang on forever. She thought of the little red gas

can, and remembered that when they'd worked on the tank they hadn't checked it.

She had been about to pick it up to see if it was full when Jack discovered the

rats.
I could run out.
While gripping the hose tightly, she reached for the can, picked it up, and felt

its dreadful lightness. I will run out.
That realization scared her almost senseless.
In seconds, she figured out what she had to do. She kept the stream on him and

started to drag the heavy hose carefully around the perimeter. Too carefully.
Hurry up.
When she was standing right over him, she pointed the nozzle at the top of his

head and lowered herself down until the tip of it was only a foot or so from her

target. Water exploded off his pale scalp, and the spray almost blinded her. But