The Object: Book One (Object Series) (13 page)

Quit stalling, stupid.

Lillia was sitting on the steps now, arms wrapped around her legs,
face
buried between her
locked
knees.
  He didn't like leaving her out in the open by herself, but this had to be done.  If her siblings had been murdered by a psychopath or eaten by an alien, it was best if she didn't see the remains.  Or leftovers.

Hayden pulled the door open and stepped inside.
 
He saw the trail of blood immediately.

The library was dark.  A few lamps illuminated the aisles between book shelves way in the back, and soft blue light from a street lamp crept across the carpet near the side entrance.  Hayden followed the blood trail to the staircase and up into total darkness.  At the landing he continued to track the blood to a lounge area with padded chairs and two sofas.

Here he stepped in a puddle, so thick he heard the splash.  He went on to the end table and turned on the lamp, spilling dim light across the blood-soaked floor.
  So much blood there should have been a body.  So much blood it could easily have come from both children.

He stood staring at the red pool, dreading the impending moment when he would have to tell Lillia what he'd seen.  She was going to lose it, and being the bearer of such heartbreak and agony, she might
balk from him and run away.  Then he'd likely never see her again.  The floating girl whom he knew nothing of and wanted to know everything.  What the hell was he going to say to her? 
So much blood, you wouldn't believe it.  I mean pints and pints of blood.  Those kids are waaay dead.

He heard a noise and it drew him out of his thoughts.  A cough?  A wheeze?  It had come from the other end of the room, near the balcony, where his long shadow dissolved into blackness.

Hayden stepped out of the way of the light and studied that corner of the room closely.  Sure enough, someone was crouched there, hiding in the dark.

"
Sherman
?"

Immediately, the man said, "Who are you?"  He was crying.

"I'm Hayden.  I met Lillia at the hospital.  What happened to the kids?"

No response.  Hayden took a few steps forward and as he drew closer he could hear stifled sobbing and the word "sorry" being mumbled over and over.
  He came even closer, just six feet from the man, and saw he was holding a gun.

"Did you shoot them?"

The man's head shot up and began to shake.  "No, no, no, son, I would never," he said.  "Some folks came in, had guns, ragin' mad.  They shot the boy.  I took 'em outta here, was gonna get him to the hospital.  But we come across Ted.  Ted's sup
posed to be dead, but he ain't.  Far from it.  You wouldn't believe what we saw."

"
Wait a second," Hayden said.  "
Ted?  The Ted that Lillia told me about?
  She said he burned alive in the house."

"I thought so too, son.  But he's alive.  Burnt to a crisp and walkin' around like he ain't a corpse.  Him and the cat, they were movin' things with their minds.  Slingin' cars around like toys.  He's a monster.  And the cat.  What the hell is happening?"

"I don't know," Hayden said.  "But you haven't told me what happened to those kids.  Where are they?"

"A thing--an alien, I don't know what it was.  It come down off a building and sucked them both up inside itself.  It ate 'em with its tentacles.  Burst 'em like water balloons and sucked 'em up."

Hayden's instinct was to confirm this man as psychotic and leave him slobbering in the corner, but
the image he just portrayed gave Hayden chills.  H
is thoughts returned to Lillia
, how she would take all this.  And then what
the doctor
had said about her.  Then t
he aliens.  The object.  Where was the line between insane and, well, likely?
  Lillia trusted this man, and apart from the gun, he didn't look like he'd be too hard to handle if he did do something stupid.  No matter what happened to the children,
Sherman
wasn't responsible.

"We should get out of here," Hayden said.  "I'm going to take Lillia somewhere safe.  This town's getting crazier by the minute."

Sherman
was shaking his head.  He looked Hayden straight in the eyes.  "I can't face that little girl.  I told her I'd protect them kids.  I can't do it.  Just tell her I wasn't here."

"I can't tell her what happened without telling her you're here.  You should go with us.  She told me she trusts you.  She's not going to blame you for this."

"No,"
Sherman
said, suddenly with a deep authority in his voice.  He stood.  "I'm a fool and I ain't no good to anybody.
  Ain't my place to be with you young people.  I'm gone."

He stepped around Hayden and started down the stairs.  Hayden followed him to the bottom, where he stopped and stared at the front door.

He was staring at Lillia, small and scared and hugging her legs in the frame of the broken window.  "I'm sorry, honey," he said.

Hayden stepped around to face him.  "
Sherman
."

"Yeah."

"If you don't come with us, and I don't tell her you were here, I have to lie to her about the kids.  I have to say I don't know what happened to them."

Sherman
nodded, sniffled.  "Ain't no hurt in delayin' pain.  Let her think they're still out there somewhere, lost in the city.  Maybe I'm still with them.  Maybe everything's gonna be okay.  Don't you wish that was true?"

He began to walk away, towa
rd
the side entrance, and suddenly
developed
a bounce
to
his step, a sway
in his hips
.  When he spoke, he sounded
like
he hadn't been crying, as though today were just a normal day
and his only problem was waiting for a police car to round the corner so he could take another swig of his whiskey
.  "
You take care of that girl
now, son, you hear?" he said
, nearing the side door
.  "
Ain't many people that friendly to a stankin' ol' bum like me.  Hell, she even talked me into givin' up cigarettes.  My momma couldn't even do that, God bless her."

Sherman
laughed a strange laugh, one filled wi
th nostalgia and anguish but
so perfectly executed as to seem genuine.  Then he pushed his way out the door and was gone.

Is That You, Sprinkles?

This was pointless.  Why didn't he just go back to the van and drive around to look for the cat? 
He
was easily a mile from where he'd parked
with no clue how to get back.
  He'd made so many turns, ducking through alleyways and the back yards of
dilapidated houses and duplexes, chasing shadows and investigating sounds that might have been meows.

Where was he now? 
Fifteen
Street? 
Sixteenth
?  Even with two handguns stuffed into his pants and a shotgun resting on his shoulder, he didn't feel safe.

The alien that had eaten those children was gone for now.  He'd watched it swim back up to the bowels of the mother ship.  But the thing Sprinkles had fought, that slow-roasted zombie with superpowers,
he
could be anywhere. 
Crouched on a rooftop, peeking through a dark window, h
iding up in the tree where R
oger now stopped to take a leak, right in front of a tiny blue house.

At least some light was returning.  An upside-down dawn, the orange sun falling below the object's horizon and sinking fast to the rim of the Earth.  Then real night would fall, and Roger didn't want to be in an unfamiliar neighborhood.

He didn't want to be in this city at all.  The military had blocked off all the roads, but there were still plenty of ways to escape.  He could swim across the Ohio River into
Indiana
.  Or maybe head west.  Follow
Muhammad Ali Boulevard
all the way out to
Shawnee
park and then follow the riverbank all the way down to where it bumped up against
Dixie Highway
.
  He could bypass any military barricade,
m
aybe stop off at one of the strip clubs
in the area
, then head down to Highway 44 and follow it back to
Mount Washington
.
  It would only be about a fifty mile walk.  Why not?

He didn't want to
call out to Sprinkles, as much trouble as that
had caused him
earlier.  This time
Sprinkles might not be around to blast the area with his supersonic meow.

Maybe with Sprinkles, he could just stroll right through the barricades.  Maybe Sprinkles could sweep tanks off the interstate like a leaf blower clearing a sidewalk.

Of course, he had to find the cat first.

Every instinct he possessed told him to turn around a
nd bolt for the van, but he
kept walking
deeper into the bad part of town
, farther and farther from safety, if safety were more than a fairytale told to keep children from wetting the bed at night.

Maybe that's what kept him searching.  Under the object, no place proffered
any greater
comfort than another.  The only thing that kept his blood pressure down and his fear in check was that damned cat, who couldn't sit still if all the mice in the world were his reward.

Roger zipped his pants and stepped down to the sidewalk.
  Whatever road he was one stretched as far as he could see in either direction, lined with houses on both sides.  Not much tree coverage.  There were quite a few cars parked on the curbs, which meant a lot of people hadn't fled the city in this area.

He heard a cough across the street and noticed someone was sitting in a small porch enclosure in the house opposite where he'd just peed.  A red ember from a cigarette flitted in the dark like a lightning bug.

"You lookin' for somethin', buddy?"  The voice of an old black man.

"My cat," Roger said.

"What you got in your hand there?"

"A shotgun."

"Prob'ly need one 'round here," the old man said.  "You don't need nothin'?  I got anything you're lookin' for."

"No thanks," Roger said.  In truth, the offer was enticing.  Roger had quite a history with cocaine.  That's why he didn't have a wife to go home to.
  He could even go for a joint right now, but
alien invasions and paranoia don't mix well.  He came across the street, closer to the old man.  "You haven't seen a white cat around here, have you?"

"No suh," the old man said.  "Seen a raccoon little bit ago.  Knocked over that trashcan there behind you.  I seen somethin' else, too."

"What was it?"

The old man laughed.  "Ain't confident I can describe it.  It was pink, I think.  Looked kinda like a jellyfish, floatin' through the air, 'cept it changed shapes.  You know like a jelly fish does, fans its body out to push itself along.  Looked like a jellyfish one minute, then it looked like a blanket, then it rolled itself up and looked like a bolt of lightning, just sittin' there.  It come as close as where you're standin'."

Roger looked about himself, up at the sky, all around the neighborhood.  Then he turned back to the old man.  "What did it do?"

"Oh not a thang,
son
"
he said.  "I'd venture it was friendly enough a spirit.  I said hello.  Then it went on about its way."

"A spirit?"

"Yes suh, couldn't be nothin' else.  You could see right through it.  Looked like it wasn't made of nothin' but light.  Now you tell me if somethin' like that ain't a spirit."

Roger wanted to leave, not because of the old man but because he could hear people shouting in the distance.  Maybe they'd encountered the pink jellyfish spirit, and maybe it turned out not to be so friendly.

"Can you tell me what street this is?"

"
Hale
Avenue
.  I've lived here 47 years."

"How would I go about getting to
Muhammad Ali Boulevard
?"

"Well now," the old man said, standing up slowly.  He came down off the porch putting his hand in his pocket and producing a soft pack of cigarettes.  He lit one and pointed to the right.  "You wanna go all the way down to the end.  That's
15th Street
.  You wanna go left and go--oh, I don't know how far.  It'll take you to Muhammad.  You ain't from around here?"

"
Mount Washington
."

"Country boy," the old man said.  "I hear you
Bullitt
County
folk don't like black people."

Roger smiled nervously, embarrassed.  "Hey, we're not all the same," he said.

The old man chuckled.

Then the gunshots started.

~ ~ ~ ~

Sprinkles watched the shootout from under a hedge bush.  Ten humans shooting at two other humans.  Police.  Staci had watched police on the television every night, though they had just been moving shapes to Sprinkles then.  Now Sprinkles und
erstood things better.  He understoo
d humans
when they spoke
.

He understood that he was dying, and there wasn't much time.

One of the police fell down and was bleeding. 
He wanted to help
them
like he'd
helped
the man
Roger
.  His intention had only been to hiss, but something else had happened.  A great wind had come out of his mouth to knock the humans over.
  Then he'd found the other man.  Ted, whom he needed to kill.  He didn't know why.  He only knew Ted was bad, and his need to kill Ted allowed him to move big things with his thoughts.

But doing so had made him
sick.  His body wasn't strong enough for what now lived inside him.  He had to find her.  The girl.  He could see her in the back of his mind.
  He could feel her.  She would know what to do.

Sprinkles crawled out from under the bush and ran up the street. 
As much as he wanted to, h
e couldn't help the police.  It might kill him.

And h
e had to find her.

~ ~ ~ ~

The phone rang while Barry was in the shower.  It rang again when he came out in nothing but a towel.  He knew it was his brother before he even answered.  Barry had invited him over for drinks, and Derek was the type of person to call ten times before arriving.  For the sake of preparedness, for the sake of pissing Barry off.

He picked it up and said, "Damn it, Derek, what?"

"Just thought I'd let you know there's a warrant out for Hayden," Derek said.

"For what?"

"Assault.  He beat the shit out of Louis."

"Louis who?"

"Wesley.  The doctor.  Remember?  You played golf with him last month."

Barry sighed and pulled the towel off his waist to dry his bald head.  "Tell me something, Derek, do I give a shit about anything you're saying?"

"Just thought I'd let you know," Derek said.  "I'm on my--"

Barry hung up and went to the bedroom to get dressed.
  He had his pants on when the doorbell rang.  The girls he'd ordered from the escort service, unless Derek had called from the parking lot.  He came out and answered the door.  A tall blonde and a shorter brunette, both in tight white mini dresses.

"You're Barry?" the brunette asked.

Barry smiled and nodded.  He put his hand on the door frame and leaned forward, studying both their bodies.  "Either of you girls know how to cook?"

The brunette curled her brow, but the blonde kept smiling and nodded emphatically.

"Good," Barry said.  "I'll be right back."

He closed the door on them, relishing the confused and angry expression on the brunette's face as he jogged to the kitchen.

He reached down, hooked his hands under his dead wife's arms, and dragged her stiffening body into the bedroom, where he deposited her in the walk-in closet and closed the door.  Then he returned to the living room, opened the door, and invited the girls in.

"That was rude," the brunette said.

"Apologies, ladies, I'm a little scattered today," Barry said.  "What are your names?"

"Sheila," the blonde quickly responded.  "This is Hailey."

"You look lovely, both of you," Barry said.  He clapped his hands together.  "Okay, first order of business.  I've got four t-bone steaks in the fridge.  I like mine rare and so does my brother."

"Your brother's coming?" Sheila asked.

"Yes, and I'll warn you right now, he's an asshole."

"Must run in the family," Hailey said.  She stepped past him to the kitchen.  Barry watched her walk
, her dress clinging tight to her thighs, so high up a shorter person could probably see her ass.

He turned back to Sheila and said, "Gotta grab my shirt."

When he went to the bedroom, she followed him.

"Sorry about that," she whispered.  "Hailey's been
in a bad mood all day
.  I think she's having boyfriend troubles."

"In your line of work, I imagine so."

"Huh?"

"Nothing."  He put his shirt on and when he started buttoning it Sheila stepped up and took over.

"You can report her if you want," Sheila said.  "They'll send another girl."

"Not necessary,"
Barry said.  "I like a girl with an attitude."

Sheila frowned deli
berately.  "I can be mean, too."

He smiled.  "I'm sure you can."

"No, really.  I can be way more mean than Hailey."

With the shirt buttoned, Barry headed out of the room and Sheila trailed him so close he could feel her behind him.

"I can be whatever you want," she said.

He was getting annoyed.  "I like you just the way you are," he said, half distracted. 
"There's nothing wrong with being nice."

"You should try it sometime, then," Hailey said
.  She had emerged from the kitchen carrying a glass of bourbon on the rocks.

When she put it to her lips, Barry said, "Is that for me?"

She stopped, lowered the glass, and then thrust it out at him.  He stepped up to her, smiling.

"You're feisty, aren't you?"

"Only when I'm around rude assholes who think I'm a cook," she said.

"Is a cook a step down from a hooker?"

"I'm not a damn hooker."

"What?" Sheila said.  "Yes you are!"

"Well so are you," Hailey said.

"I know!"

Barry laughed for a moment but when the girls started raising their voices he said, "Hey, hey, shut up, both of you.  Are those steaks done yet?  What the hell am I paying you for?"

"Not to cook," Hailey said.

"Well then make yourself a drink, sit down, and shut up.  Sheila, get to cooking."

"No problem, I'm on it," Sheila said, giving Hailey a mean face as she passed by.