Wolf Flow (11 page)

    Look at the way he'd fallen right into doing whatever that guy had asked him to do. He'd already been able to see the deep shit coming in like a tide-you didn't have to be a fuckin' genius to figure these things out-and
still
he'd gone and done it. He bit his lip, shaking his head over the bike's handlebars. How stupid could you get?

    He didn't know.
I suppose I got a good chance of finding out
. What he needed now was to get some sleep, maybe think about all this stuff in the morning. He could call up Anne and talk to her, tell her what was going on-she could keep a secret. He'd told her all kinds of things that nobody else knew. Maybe she'd be able to figure out what he should do now.

    Underneath the cold pinpricks of light, he rolled on the bike's accelerator, heading for home.

    

    

    Mike listened to the rasp of the kid's motorbike fading away-a million miles, then more, down the straight road that ran through the night. If there had been any other sound, it would have blotted out the tiny engine's sputter.

    He worked at his breathing, each pull into his lungs forced by his will. He'd tried opening his eyes-that had taken an effort as well-but he wasn't going to try again. The sensation of darkness spinning-of not even being able to
see
anything, yet sensing that the dark was twisting and blurring around him, as though he were falling down an endless, unlit mine shaft-had frightened him. A small calm voice in his head had announced, as though speaking of some stranger anesthetized on the table:
So this is what it feels like to die
. The fingers of his good hand had dug into the kid's arm as he'd been carried into the building.

    If he just kept quiet, just stayed submerged under the wash of the pain and the dizziness… if he could just make it to the morning, and then the bright hours after that… however long it took for Lindy to get here…

    If he could take another breath, and then one after that…

    
Easy
, he told himself.
It's the easiest thing in the world
. He didn't have a single other thing to do now. The whole world had shrunk down to this, a dark, empty, dust-smelling room in some shabby old building falling down around him.

    
I should've asked
-his thoughts wandered, his breathing going on by itself; that was a good sign, he knew.
I should've asked him where the fuck am I
. What this place was; some kind of hospital, he figured, if the things he'd seen upstairs were really there, and not just part of the dreaming. And that would be funny-he could feel the skin of his face tightening in a rictuslike smile. What he needed was to be in a hospital, and here he was in one, only it looked as though he were about a hundred years too late.

    
You missed your appointment, doctor
… A snippy little receptionist's voice.
Perhaps we can reschedule you
…
perhaps you can come back tomorrow
…

    A laugh scraped out of his throat. It died, and he had to roll onto his shoulder to spit out a sour wad of blood and phlegm. In the silence that flowed back over him, as he let his shoulders fall back onto the blankets, he heard something moving outside, nearly silent itself-a motion that touched the air, parted it like a weightless curtain, and left it in place, unchanged. The easing of weight onto powdery dust, the step of a tracking animal, leaving nothing but the marks of its passage.

    Mike's eyes opened, involuntarily. Adrenaline seeped around his spine, pointing his senses. He could hear the creature outside, the slow investigation of its muzzle around the building's walls. And the others, the rest of them-all that had come down out of the hills, toward the scent of blood.

    He could see the walls and ceiling in the faint blue light seeping inside; the adrenal rush had brought things into focus. He turned on his side and pulled himself toward the window. Levering himself up with his elbow on the sill, he peered through the largest crack between the boards.

    Outside, the red eyes prowled back and forth, pacing the limits of their night territory.

    He brought his gaze up, toward the crest of the hills. Another creature was there, gazing down at the building. Upright, a silhouette against the black of the sky, a hole where the stars were blotted out in the shape of a man.

    The figure in the distance stood unmoving, watching, the same as the others.

    Mike drew back from the window. He lay on the floor, wrapping the nest of blankets around himself. Already, the world out in the night was slipping away, another darkness welling up inside him. He closed his eyes and let go, feeling the floor yield beneath his weight, the earth beneath gaping open to receive him.

    

    

    Doot saw the lights spilling out from the house. Even before he switched off the motorbike's engine, he could hear the raucous laughter and the voices shouting. Somebody's boom-box added thudding bass notes to the mix.

    "Shit." He said it out loud, gazing in dismay at the house; his house, or really his dad's. Invaded by a party that was news to him. Sitting on the bike, out in the gravel driveway, he could hear a girl's shrieking, high-pitched laugh and an answering male guffaw. Then glass breaking; it sounded like an empty beer bottle hitting the concrete steps out in back.

    The front door was unlocked and open a couple of inches. He pushed it the rest of the way, and the noise and light washed over him. His heart sank.

    "Doot! Doot, my
man
!" Stevie Garza grabbed him around the shoulders, slopping beer onto his chest. The can dangled loose from Garza's other hand. The face looming into Doot's was all red and sweaty. "I told ya… didn't I tell ya… we'd see ya around." He poked his finger into Doot's breastbone; more beer fizzed onto his shirt. "We brought the party to
your
place!"

    He pushed Garza away, the drunk kid staggering back against his buddies. Doot shoved his way through the crowd-there were at least a couple dozen other teenagers packed into the tiny living room-and toward the kitchen. Some of the laughing faces he recognized from the high school, others he didn't. The cigarette smoke and smell of spilled beer, and the pounding metal from the box sitting on top of the TV, made the place seem even smaller.

    "Jesus
Christ
!" The narrow door to the kitchen's broom closet hung open; they'd found the cases of beer his dad kept stacked up in there. His dad got them cheap from a buddy of his that worked in the distributor's warehouse. Now the six cardboard cartons were spread out over the floor and on the sink counter and were empty except for crumpled-up cans.

    Doot grabbed the arm of one of the guys leaning up against the wall. The floor around his feet was littered with ground-out cigarette stubs. "How the fuck did you get in here?"

    He didn't have to wait for the guy's answer. He saw now the window broken by the back door, the sparkle of the glass shards across the linoleum. "Aww, shit…"

    He heard a couple of the assholes snickering at him.

    Somebody pushed a half-full beer can into his hand. "Hey, lighten up, man-"

    Another voice joined in. "Don't sweat it. Your old man's out of town."

    A couple was going at it over by the refrigerator, her back against it, the guy's hand roaming under her tank-top. A line of white elastic showed under the opened top button of her jeans.

    Doot took a hit off the beer and wandered with it to the other side of the house. Through the bathroom doorway, he saw somebody hugging the bowl and making outboard motor noises. The guy's spine arched as though he were trying to bring his kidneys up. The sour odor of beer puke floated out.

    Slumped against the hallway wall, Doot worked at what was left in the can. The music's pulse came through the plaster and into the back of his head.

    There were too fucking many of them to get rid of. And there was no way he was going to call the cops; they'd haul his ass off along with everybody else's, and his dad would hit the fucking roof if he had to come down to the station. Which would be days from now, anyway, before his dad came back from his run. All of these jerks would be prancing around on the streets, and he'd still be cooling his heels in the juvie slammer.

    He'd have to ride it out. In the morning, he could check out the damage. In the meantime… He crumpled the empty in his fist, dropped it, and went back to the kitchen to see if he could scout out another.

    

    

    The sun poured down on the green lawns and the people there, standing and talking or moving about in a langorous summer haze.

    Mike felt his arm being taken by the young woman, her hand pressing softly above his elbow. "Let's go inside. It's so hot out here." She smiled at him. The feathered wisps of her hair traced across her neck as she reached to place the badminton racquet on one of the canvas and wood folding chairs.

    She had eyes like Lindy's, or the way Lindy's were without the chemical glaze. But the smile was sweeter, more demure and secretive. She tilted her head to one side, still smiling at him, her other hand joining the first in its light grasp. He could feel each small finger, and the stiff lace at her wrists poking against his skin. The touch pulled at a wire that ran directly to his groin.

    One of the blue-caped nurses pushed a wheelchair past them, with a gray-haired woman fluttering a paper fan. The girl tugged and led him up the curving path toward the clinic building, its windows glinting pieces of the sun.

    He halted at the first step and looked across the lawns to the rolling, brilliant sky. Behind the sunlight, as though it were a backdrop painted on thin silk, he could see the night, the stars' points of ice glittering in darkness.

    "Come on," said the girl in the antique dress, with the lace up to her throat. She had already mounted the first couple of steps to the building's verandah; she smiled and pulled playfully on his arm. "No shilly-shallying now."

    "It's all right," he murmured. He looked up at her. "There's plenty of time. This is all just dreaming." Behind him, he felt the strolling forms on the lawn waver and shift, as though a breeze had fluttered the backdrop.

    He brought his gaze around from her, and out to the hills. There were none of the animals with the red, watching eyes; they were back in that other world, where it was still night. But the figure he had seen in silhouette, up on the crest of the nearest hill… The man was there, standing in the exact same place, revealed in daylight. In a doctor's white coat, his arms folded across his chest. Mike could just make out the man's face, at this distance. The same face he'd dreamed before, the flesh pared down over the skull; the doctor who'd raised the scalpel up to the examining room's light.

    The bright sun glittered off the face's wire-rimmed spectacles. Mike felt the doctor's gaze upon him, the eyes penetrating to the back of his own skull, inventorying everything inside him.

    He hadn't seen it before, but now he did: a black, doglike creature, with a grinning muzzle and sharp-pointed teeth. Bigger than a dog, leaner and harder. It sat on its haunches beside the doctor, its red gaze tracking on the same line.

    "No, you're wrong." The girl pulled him up beside her on the steps. "There's never any time to waste. You should've learned that by now."

    The angle of the verandah's roof blocked any view of the white-coated figure on the hill. He turned toward the girl. "But I'm dreaming. I know I am."

    She shook her head, the smile holding a secret. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the brow. "No," she whispered, bringing her cheek down beside his. "You've finally woken up."

    He let her lead him across the lobby. He'd almost expected to see himself curled up in the blankets on the floor, but there were only the wooden planks, waxed and buffed to a glassy sheen, and the massive shapes of rugs with Indian designs, jagged lightning bolts and slit-eyed
kachina
faces. The clerk behind the marble-topped counter looked over his shoulder at Mike and the girl, then turned discreetly back to sorting the guests' mail.

    "In here," she said. Her smile parted to show her white, perfect teeth. "They won't find us here."

    She had taken him upstairs, to the corridor of numbered doors. To the door without a number that said Examining Room instead. She laid her fingers on the pebbled glass, and the door swung open as though weightless.

    The room's smell, of disinfectant and sterile gauze, mingled with the girl's flower scent. Light sparked oft' the chrome and glass surfaces, the tray of sharp instruments, and the bottles in the cupboards, arrayed in the constellations of the night sky beneath. In that other world.

    She pulled him down on top of her, on the examining table. "It's all right…" Her fingers twined in the damp hair at the back of his neck, drawing him closer.

    "Here…" She let go of him for a moment, her fingers moving at her throat. The lace parted, and her breasts, white as the lace, rose as she arched her back and drew in her breath through the points of her teeth.

    He cupped her in his hand, the familiar weight, the birdlike trembling, warming the skin of his palm.

    "They won't find us…" She murmured the words, eyes closed.

    "Who?" He had his mouth close to her ear, breathing her in. "Who won't?" It seemed urgent that he knew.

    "My mother… and my father…" She turned her head, and he felt the motion of her lips against the curve of his jaw. The tip of her tongue against the flesh. "They brought me here… oh, I was so ill, I was so weak… they told me he'd cure me…"

    He opened his mouth, tasting her. "He cured you…" He knew who she meant. The doctor that he'd seen standing up on the crest of the hill. His other hand had found its way under the folds of the long skirt; his fingertips grazed satin over an angle of bone and skin.