Infected

  Stop it now stop it

  now Now NOW!

  Perry winced at the pain from the mild mindscream. He had figured that would happen, but at least he’d gotten in a good lick first. You had to show women who was in charge, after all.

  “Bitch, if you ever pull a knife on me again I’ll carve your fat ass up.” The woman sobbed with pain, terror and frustration.

  Perry knelt next to her. “Do you understand me?”

  She said nothing, her face hidden in her arms, fat shaking like a Jell-O mold.

  Perry gently stroked her hair. She cringed at his touch. “I’ll only ask you one more time,” he said. “If you don’t answer, I’ll put my boot in your ribs, you fat fuck.”

  She looked up suddenly, tears streaming down her face. “Yes!” she screamed. “Yes, I understand you!”

  She was yelling. It was as if she wanted to piss him off, was trying to piss him off. Women. Give ’em an inch and they take a mile. Her tear-streaked face reminded him of a glazed doughnut. No room in life for tears, woman, no room at all.

  He continued to stroke her hair, but his voice took on an icy-cold quality. “One more thing. If you raise your voice above conversational levels again, you’re dead. And I mean there’s no question about it. Cross the line with me again and I’ll fuck you with that butcher knife of yours. Do you understand?”

  She just stared at him with a pathetic look of disbelief and utter helplessness. Perry held no sympathy for her. She was weak, after all, and in a violent world only the strong survive.

  Perry’s voice bubbled with anger. He talked slowly, each word clearly defined. “Do. You. Under. Stand.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I understand. Please don’t hit me again.”

  She looked so pitiful—blood trickling from her cheek, fear in her eyes, her face lined with tears. She looked like an abused woman.

  Like his mother looked, after his father had finished with a “lesson.”

  Perry shook his head hard. What the hell was happening to him? What was he becoming? That answer was simple—he was becoming what he had to become to live. Only the strong survive. He stared at the woman, fighting to push his guilt down somewhere deep, somewhere he didn’t have to deal with it. The Perry that had controlled his aggression for ten years…there was no more room for that person.

  He wiped the tears from her face with a gentle touch. “Now get your fat ass off the floor and make some food. Feed us, we’re hungry.”

  He felt excitement well up fresh and strong. The Triangles knew food was on the way; it made them happy. Very happy. The emotion was powerful, so powerful that Perry couldn’t help but feel a little of their happiness himself.

  66.

  OVERTIME

  Dew stared out the Buick’s window, watching the flurry of police activity outside, the big cellular phone pressed to his ear. By the looks of things, he’d arrived maybe ten minutes too late. So close. The missed opportunity made him boil inside.

  “It’s a really, really big SNAFU, Murray,” Dew said. “Fucking locals are everywhere, and more on the way.” He could almost see Murray’s face turning red.

  “Did the rapid-response teams go in?” Murray asked. “Why don’t they just take over?”

  “They didn’t go in at all,” Drew said. “They called me first and I waved them off. You think it’s a bad situation now, try bringing in eight P90-toting goons wearing biosuits and watch the press jizz all over themselves.”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” Murray said, his voice tired and ragged. “The press is already there?”

  “Yeah. The local cops were first on the scene. Press picked it up on a scanner, maybe. We didn’t have a chance at information control. The cops are keeping the media at a distance, but there’s no way we can go in without being seen by at least three network news teams.”

  The radio and TV stations had already been buzzing with news of Kiet Nguyen’s murder spree and subsequent suicide. News didn’t get any bigger than that, unless, of course, the cops mounted a manhunt for a former University of Michigan linebacker who’d left a mutilated corpse in his apartment. With those two murder stories flying, coverage of a gas explosion that had killed a mother and son had disappeared completely.

  “Remember, the Dawsey kid was a major celebrity in this town,” Dew said. “Bunch of fucking liberals here in the media, they’re giddy to see a football player live up to billing as a creature of violence. This isn’t D.C., Murray, this is Ann Arbor, Michigan. This is a long-haired, pot-smoking little college town. A fugitive killer football player is their story of the decade, and the guv-ment trying to cover it up is icing on their hippie cake.”

  “Dew, considering the situation, do you see any way we can bring Dawsey in alive?”

  “That’s your call, L.T.,” Dew said. “You have to appreciate just how many cops are looking for him. There’s a dead body in his apartment—they’re not just going to stop looking just because I tell them we’re on the case. They want Dawsey, and they want him bad. If he’s in any kind of advanced state of infection, the cops might see his growths. If they capture him, expect someone to get a camera on him and a boatload of reporters fighting to know why he killed a man. If he’s arrested, and we can’t get to him right away, the triangles might make national news before the night is out. If the reporters see triangles, that SARS bullshit won’t cut it. Cops take Dawsey alive it blows this whole thing wide open.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I recommend we take him out ASAP,” Dew said. “And we get the local cops in on the action. They’re just looking for an excuse to pull the trigger. Maybe we connect Dawsey to Nguyen. I’ll tell them Dawsey probably has an explosive vest, or a biowarfare agent, whatever. I’ll make sure there are clear orders to shoot Dawsey on sight, but to stay away from his body until our crews can remove him.”

  “Margaret needs a living victim.”

  “So we get the next one,” Dew said. “If you want to keep this secret, I told you what we need to do.”

  Dew waited through a long pause. L.T. had a hell of a decision to make.

  “No,” Murray said finally. “She needs that kid alive. It’s more important than secrecy. Whatever it takes, bring him in alive.”

  “That’s not going to be easy,” Dew said. “The locals are really on edge.”

  “Then we connect Dawsey to Nguyen. I’ll take care of it from our end. We’ll inform the local cops, you just validate the story.”

  “What story?”

  “That Dawsey has knowledge of a terrorist bomb, that he absolutely must be taken alive no matter what the cost. Bring him in alive, Top.”

  Murray hung up. Dew ground his teeth. Murray’s plan would work, and Dew knew it. The cops would do whatever it took to get Dawsey alive.

  Dew alternated his time between looking out the window at the army of police and looking at digital photos of Dawsey that Murray’s people had transferred to the big cell phone. One was Dawsey’s most recent driver’s-license photo. Another was a close-up from Nguyen’s painting of the human arch—where the other faces writhed in terror and agony, Perry’s scrunched in raw rage. Additional photos came from the kid’s college football days.

  Dew focused on one such picture, a typical preseason publicity shot from Dawsey’s sophomore year.

  “You are a big fucker, ain’t you, kid?”

  In the posed picture, late-summer sun blared down on his maize and blue uniform. Most times these shots showed a kid’s best smile, but this one was different. Dawsey smiled, sure, but there was something else, something around the eyes that bespoke a savage intensity. It was almost as if Dawsey’s very being vibrated aggression, as if he couldn’t handle putting on the pads and not hitting something.

  Maybe it was the pic, maybe it was the fact that he’d seen the kid play on TV. Dawsey had been a rare one, a veritable beast who dominated the game every time he set foot on the field. Kid played meaner than a bull with a cattle prod up his ass and a rat trap snapped
on his nuts. It was a damn shame, really, the knee injury that ended Dawsey’s career. Dew remembered seeing that on TV, too. Dew had watched men blown in half by land mines, men impaled with giant splinters from trees hit by artillery fire, men decapitated and twitching, rotten and bloated, yet there was something about watching the super-slow-mo replay of that kid’s knee bending ninety degrees the wrong way that had made Dew’s stomach almost rebel.

  He stared hard at the picture, memorizing every detail of Dawsey’s face. Big boy, sure, big and strong and mean and dangerous, sure, but that’s why man invented guns. Fuck Murray’s orders—being an All-American didn’t make you Superman, and a bullet in the head would bring “Scary” Perry Dawsey down just as it would anyone else.

  Someone had to pay for Malcolm’s death. Dawsey was as good a target as any.

  67.

  THE COUCH DANCE

  Perry sat on a pale yellow couch that looked brand-new, sinking back into the apartment’s welcome shadows. He always found it strange to be in another Windywood apartment. With an identical floor plan but different furniture and decorations, it was as if his apartment had been taken over and redecorated with watercolor seascapes, matching curtains, lace doilies and enough country-art knickknacks to gag a camel.

  He munched on a chicken sandwich, cautiously peeking between the slats of the venetian blinds. He’d lucked out with Fatty Patty’s apartment; from her window he could see the flurry of activity in front of his building. Seven cop cars—five local and two from the state police—threw a visual cacophony of red and blue lights against the pitch-black night.

  Observing the scene, he saw the reasons for his narrow escape. Fatty Patty had been watching out this window, and from this third-story perch she had seen the police cruiser a long way off. Her Triangles warned Perry, got him out of harm’s way. It only made sense, really; they were protecting their own. Keeping Perry alive was vital—he was a walking incubator, after all, and if he died the Three Stooges probably died with him.

  The cop cars’ flashing lights created a disco effect on the falling snow. It was well past midnight and there wasn’t a star in the sky. If he was going to move, it would have to be later that night when the starless darkness covered everything and the soft snow swallowed every little sound with an insatiable hunger.

  But he wasn’t going anywhere until he saw Fatty Patty pop. He had to know how it happened. She sat on a yellow chair that matched the yellow couch, nibbling on a sandwich of her own. She cried silently, fat jiggling in time with the tiny sobs. She held a thrice-folded paper towel to a fresh cut on her forehead. Perry had told her not to cry out loud. She hadn’t listened. He’d cut her; the noise had stopped. Like Daddy always said, sometimes you just had to show women who was in charge.

  He noticed she’d used masking tape to hang a Michigan road map on the back of the front door. She’d scrawled a red line on U.S. 23 moving north away from Ann Arbor. The line turned west at 83, then followed a series of small roads until it hit the town of Wahjamega. Around the town she’d drawn several red circles and written the words This is the place.

  Near Wahjamega, in neat ruler lines, she had drawn a symbol in red ink:

  Perry looked at the design he’d cut into his right arm. The scabs were still fresh. Sure, his was a bit messy, but then again it’s a tad harder to make straight lines with a kitchen knife, right? What did that symbol mean to the Triangles? Did the meaning even matter? No, it didn’t—nothing really mattered anymore.

  “They told you to go to Wahjamega, too, eh?” Perry asked. She nodded quietly. “Do you have a car?” She nodded again, and he smiled. It would be easy; all he had to do was wait for the cops to clear out, then he and Fatty Patty could drive to Wahjamega. As for what waited there, he really didn’t want to know, but he was going anyway.

  This was his second chicken sandwich (with Miracle Whip, mind you, and with a side of Fritos, it really hit the spot). He’d already polished off lasagna leftovers, some chocolate cake, a can of Hormel chili, and a pair of Twinkies. His hunger was long gone, but the Triangles constantly urged him to eat. And eat he did.

  Munching away on the sandwich, he felt surprisingly content. He wasn’t sure how much of that enjoyment was his and how much was overflow from the Triangles; the things beamed with near-orgasmic pleasure at the steady flow of nutrients. The line between what they felt and what he felt was beginning to get a little fuzzy, like the way he now truly wanted to go to Wahjamega.

  Have to watch out for that, Perry old boy. Can’t fall into their little trap. Got to keep your own thoughts or you’re as good as dead.

  He decided to kill another Triangle as soon as he finished the sandwich. That would redefine their relationship. Nothing like a little self-mutilating demarcation to set things straight.

  In front of his building, the Columbos scrambled around like little ants. Perry reveled in his third-floor view. The drama below unfolded like a soundless, long-distance version of Cops.

  The police had knocked on Fatty Patty’s door. She’d given an award-winning performance. No, she hadn’t heard anything. No, she hadn’t seen a huge man wandering around the building. She was afraid of Perry, but thanks to her Triangles she was scared shitless of the cops. So she chose the lesser of two extreme evils.

  He stared out the window, careful to stay in the shadows, and wondered if they knew he was watching. But that didn’t make sense: if they knew where he was, they’d come after him.

  Unless they were already watching him.

  Perry’s eyes narrowed. He flicked his gaze about the apartment. Could there be a secret camera in here somewhere? A bug? Were they listening to him? They’d been watching him in his apartment, of that he had no bout-a-doubt-it, so maybe they were set up to monitor Fatty Patty as well. If that was the case, his great escape was nothing more than jumping out of the fire and back into the frying pan.

  And, come to think of it, how did he know for sure that she even had the Triangles at all? Maybe she didn’t have any. Maybe this was a setup. Maybe she had some machine that told his Triangles that this was a safe haven. Maybe she was just there to keep an eye on him. Maybe they were combing through his apartment “gathering data” while they knew damn fucking well that he sat up here with Fatty Patty, chewing away on a chicken sandwich and Fritos.

  Perry’s gaze nailed her to the yellow chair. She had that expression gazelles wear after being brought down by a lion, before the bite to the jugular, before the final coup de grâce. He set his plate down on the coffee table.

  “Where are they?” Perry asked quietly.

  “Wha…what?” New tears filled her eyes and rolled down her fat cheeks. Did she still think this was a game? He picked up his butcher knife and patted the flat of the ten-inch blade against his palm—each time the blade slapped lightly against his skin, she winced as if hit by a tiny electric shock.

  “Don’t fuck with me,” Perry whispered, smiling all the while, not because he liked this or because he was trying to scare her, but because he was in control. “Where are they? Show me.”

  Her chubby face changed as the words fell into place like the clicking tumblers of a lock.

  “You mean my Triangles, right?” She rushed the words out with an incredibly servile tone. He felt a powerful stab of homesickness—the eagerness to placate, the desperate desire to avoid a beating; it reminded him of his mother.

  His mother talking to his father.

  “You know damn well that’s what I’m talking about.”

  “I’m not playing games, I swear.” She was terrified, he could see that as plain as day. Despite her tangible fear, she kept her voice low and controlled. That was good.

  She stood up and pulled off her huge nightshirt. She did it quickly and without noise, but the expression on her reddening face revealed humiliation. Her tits hung pendulously—huge, round mountains with massive aureoles and nipples the size of a dime. She was still fat, yet her stretch-marked skin seemed far too big for her body. Perry revised
his earlier estimate of 225 pounds—before the Triangles, Fatty Patty must have weighed 260 if she’d weighed an ounce.

  She had the Triangles, all right, three on her stomach. Tears streamed down her face and leaped from her quivering chin to fall in bright sparkles on her tits. She turned to the left without being asked. He saw the Triangle on her left hip, its black eyes staring coldly back at him, blinking every few seconds.

  It was a much deeper shade of blue than his. Something black and solid like thin rope stretched out from under each of the Triangle’s sides, snaking under her flesh with one spreading farther around her hip.

  Her skin didn’t look healthy at all. Pus-oozing blisters marked the Triangles’ edges. Above the Triangles’ body, her skin showed signs of stretching, as if the creature had grown too large for the pliable tissue to contain. When he looked at his own Triangles, their eyes held a glassy, unfocused stare. The one on her hip was different. It stared back at him malevolently, the triple-blinking eyes conveying the universal emotion of hatred as clearly as the beam of a high-powered flashlight through a snowy winter night.

  “Fork you, buddy,” Perry said quietly. When he made his move on Fatty Patty, he’d kill that one first.

  “Lose the pants and spin,” Perry said. She didn’t hesitate; she dropped the pajama bottoms and stepped out of them. She wasn’t wearing panties. She spun slowly, revealing a Triangle on each ass cheek and one on the back of her right thigh. They all stared at him with an unmistakable hatred. He wondered what they were saying about him, what messages they were sending into her head.

  It struck him as odd how healthy all her Triangles looked. The pus-oozing sores were her own, of course. It had never occurred to him that someone might not fight, that someone might just let it happen. The concept was pathetic, but apparently she’d done just that.