Nocturnal: A Novel

  “You got it,” Verde said. “You know you can count on me.”

  “I know I can, Rich. I know.”

  She walked out of the weapons room. She took one more look at a collection of nightmares that had once hunted the people of San Francisco, then headed upstairs.

  Tard’s First Time

  Out of all Mommy’s children, Tard could hide the best. That was why Sly picked him to watch the monster. It wasn’t fair that Sly made Tard miss out on all the fun, but now Sly was making it better.

  If the amberlamps took the monster, Sly said, then Tard could be free to hunt — just keep it quiet so Firstborn didn’t find out. Hunting! Tard had never been hunting. Sly was a great friend.

  Tard could hide good because he could look like other things. Right now he looked a lot like part of a gnarled tree trunk. Golden Gate Park had lots of gnarled trees on the sides of the dirt walking paths, trees that twisted into corkscrew-trunk patches with little spaces inside. In those spaces, especially in the dark, no one could see Tard. There was no light in the park other than a half moon filtering through the tall pines that stretched high above.

  Tard looked an awful lot like wood, but that didn’t stop his heart from beating so hard, making it difficult for him to stay still. So this was what it was like to hunt. No wonder Sly always wanted to do it.

  Tard moved only his eyes, watching the prey move toward him along the dirt path. A teenage boy, a teenage girl. Holding hands. No one would want to hold Tard’s hands, and that wasn’t fair. Why should prey get to do that? He had always wanted to punish the people he saw, the people holding hands, the people kissing.

  The boy looked up, looked right into Tard’s little hidey-spot — then looked away. He hadn’t seen Tard. That was because Tard wasn’t Tard anymore, he really was Chameleon.

  The teenage couple walked closer. Chameleon’s heartbeat kicked up another notch. So exciting! Would the prey run before they reached his spot? Would they sense him?

  He had never killed before. Well, not since he’d been a little boy in the Groom’s Walk, but that had been so long ago. Fear of Firstborn and fear of Savior had always kept him in check, but maybe Firstborn wouldn’t be in charge that much longer, and the amberlamps had taken Savior away.

  This was it. Tard — no, Chameleon — was really going to do this.

  He held his breath as the couple moved within five steps.

  Then four.

  Then three.

  When they were only a few feet away, Tard reached out cat-quick, one rough gnarled hand wrapping around each mouth.

  He pulled them into his dark little fort.

  The RapScan Machine

  Pookie, wake up.”

  Robin pushed at Pookie’s shoulder. He was on her couch and might as well have been dead for all he moved. She poked him again. “Come on, sleepyhead. Rise and shine.”

  “Five more minutes, Mom,” he said. “I promise all my chores are done.”

  “You told me to wake you when the tests were almost finished.”

  That got his attention. Pookie pushed himself to a sitting position. He rubbed his face. “That coffee I smell?”

  “Of course,” Robin said. “Go to the table, I’ll get you a cup.”

  For the second night — or morning, depending on how you looked at it — her apartment had become their war room. Bryan was already sitting at the dining-room table, his hands around a mug, his eyes staring off into space. John’s chair was empty; he was at the hospital.

  Robin had turned her dining room into an impromptu sample prep area. The RapScan machine sat in the center of the table, processing the two samples Bryan and Pookie had brought a few hours earlier. She’d loaded the cartridges and set the karyotype test to running. Any moment now, and it would finish.

  She walked to the kitchen and came back with the coffee carafe and a mug for Pookie. She filled his mug and refilled Bryan’s. Both men looked absolutely exhausted. Pookie had given her the sample materials, then headed straight for her couch. Bryan hadn’t said a word since he’d arrived; he just sat in his chair, first drinking a beer, then a scotch, then moving on to caffeine. Robin thought it best just to leave him be, let him work through whatever it was that was on his mind. If he wanted her help, he could ask for it — she was done trying.

  “Sounds like you boys had quite the adventure,” Robin said. “I’m just glad no one got hurt. Other than Erickson, I mean.”

  Pookie nodded and took a sip of coffee. “Yes, no one got hurt. Permanently, anyway. How much longer until that test is done?”

  She looked at the machine’s touch screen. “About five minutes, maybe less. Are you guys going to tell me who the second sample is from?” She knew the first sample was from Erickson, but they had avoided her questions about the second.

  “A perp from Erickson’s house,” Pookie said. “We didn’t catch him.”

  Once again, there was clearly more to the story than Pookie wanted to let on. Not surprising that he did the talking — he was a far better liar than Bryan.

  Bryan’s head came up. He blinked rapidly, as if he’d been cat-napping and was just becoming aware of his surroundings. “The ear,” he said.

  “What?”

  Pookie nodded. “I forgot about that.”

  “Me too,” Bryan said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a plastic evidence bag and held it up for Robin to see.

  “Bryan,” she said, “why do you have a human ear in a baggie?”

  “It’s from a stuffed person we found in Erickson’s basement. Can you run DNA on it?”

  She reached out and took the bag, looked at the contents. The skin looked dry and brittle, almost like leather. “When you say stuffed, you mean like a big-game animal? Stuffed for display?”

  “Yeah. Can you test it for the Zed chromosome?”

  “Not here,” she said. “The tanning process destroys most of the cellular DNA. I’d need a biology lab, something with the equipment needed to try and extract any remaining DNA and a PCR machine to amplify it. A university lab would work. Maybe SFSU, or I could try the hospitals. But that’s going to take a few days, and I wouldn’t hold your breath that it’ll work.”

  Bryan just looked at her. His eyes burned with both anger and anguish. He was a cauldron of emotions, so much so that Robin couldn’t really remember the old Bryan, the one with the cold, unfeeling stare.

  The machine beeped. Robin looked at the little screen.

  ERICKSON SAMPLE COMPLETE.

  She pressed the icon and read the results.

  “Zed-X,” she said. “Wow, Erickson is a Zed.”

  Bryan and Pookie didn’t look surprised in the least.

  “Related?” Bryan said. “Is Erickson related to the others?”

  Robin tapped the touch screen, scrolling through to the familial indicators. There it was — a match.

  “Bingo,” she said. “Jebediah Erickson, Rex Deprovdechuk, Blackbeard and Oscar Woody’s killer all have the same mother.”

  Bryan seemed to shrink into himself. He leaned back in his chair. His chin dropped to his chest.

  Pookie shook his head. “Wait a minute. We think Marie’s Children are these Zeds. If so, Erickson isn’t just killing his own kind, he’s killing his direct family? What is that all about?”

  Robin shrugged. “If Erickson is in custody, can’t you ask him?”

  “Might not be talkative,” Pookie said. “You know, considering he’s in the ICU after taking a knife to the belly.”

  Bryan looked up. “He’s a Zed. He’ll heal fast. We can go to the hospital and question Erickson directly — we just have to get around Zou.”

  Pookie thought this over, then sipped at his mug. “Robin, you’re a doctor — can you find out Erickson’s condition without anyone knowing that we’re asking?”

  She hadn’t been part of the hospital system for years, but many of her friends still worked there. “I probably can’t get detailed patient info, but I can find someone to tell me if he’s out
of the ICU.”

  The RapScan beeped.

  SAMPLE TWO COMPLETE.

  “Here we go,” she said. She clicked the icon and the results flashed up. She saw the marker for an X, then a Zed … and also a Y. “This one is trisomal. It’s X-Y-Zed, just like Rex. In fact” — she thumbed through the screens, looking for the familial indicator — “yes, once again, the same mother. All these guys are one big, happy family.”

  Pookie’s eyes widened.

  Bryan’s eyes burned with intensity, maybe even rage. “The same mother? You’re absolutely sure?”

  Robin nodded.

  He stood and held out his right hand to Pookie, palm-up. “Keys,” he said.

  Pookie looked worried. “Going somewhere, Bri-Bri?”

  “Keys.”

  “Maybe I should drive you,” Pookie said. “We could—”

  “Give me the fucking keys!”

  Pookie leaned away. Robin held her breath. She’d never heard Bryan raise his voice before, not ever, not even during their worst fights.

  Pookie dug his hand into his pocket and handed Bryan his car keys. Bryan took them and walked out of the dining room. Emma followed, tail wagging. The apartment door opened and shut. Emma came wandering slowly back into the dining room, looking for someone else to pay attention to her.

  Why had Bryan stormed out like that?

  “Pookie, what the hell just happened?”

  Pookie leaned forward, rested his head in his hands. “I think Bryan needs to go see his dad. Fuck this. I’m going back to sleep.”

  He stood up and and pulled out his phone. He walked into the living room, his fingers texting out a message as he went. Without breaking stride, he finished the text, put the phone back in his pocket, then collapsed onto the couch, his back facing out into the living room. Emma shot in like a black-and-white streak, jumped up after him and settled into the crook of his legs.

  Robin stared at Pookie. He was wiped out. Something big was happening between him and Bryan, and she didn’t know what it was.

  Why wouldn’t they trust her?

  She wasn’t tired, not at all. She found her phone and started scrolling through her contacts, looking for people that still worked at SFGH.

  Aggie Gets a Roommate

  Aggie James didn’t want to wake up, but a part of his mind pulled at him, tried to drag him out of a dream where a little girl’s lips pecked feather-light on his cheek, and her arms wrapped around his neck.

  He didn’t want to wake, but wake he did.

  He sniffed. He rubbed at his face. The real bitch about getting sober? You start to remember things.

  Aggie James hadn’t always been a strung-out, homeless bum. Once upon a time, in fact, he’d owned a little counterculture Internet café. He’d attracted a certain antiestablishment clientele. All kinds of people wandered in, but after seeing the giant FUCK STARBUCKS mural painted on the wall behind the coffee counter, the visitors either smiled and stayed or frowned and left.

  He’d run the place with his wife and his teenage daughter, right up until the robbery.

  The robbers shot Aggie first. Shot him twice, in fact, once in the leg and once in the chest. He remembered dropping to his ass, back propped up by the counter. His blood ran everywhere. He couldn’t move, couldn’t lift a finger, but he stayed conscious long enough to see them put a bullet in his wife’s head. He stayed conscious long enough to see his daughter run for the door, to see her shot in the back before she could reach it. He stayed conscious long enough to see her crawling across the floor, bloody hands reaching for him, begging for her daddy to help her, to please help her, please!

  Aggie James even stayed conscious long enough to see the gun pointed at his daughter’s face, and just long enough to hear her last scream stop abruptly when the gunman pulled the trigger. Only then had he passed out.

  The cops told him the robbers probably thought he was dead, and that passing out had probably saved his life.

  His life.

  What a joke.

  Fucking memories. He couldn’t shake them, not until he’d done heroin for about a month straight. That made you forget everything. Almost.

  He’d lost all that mattered to him. Nothing would fill that inescapable dullness in his heart. Not that he’d tried very hard to fill it, of course. With no reason to go on — and not enough guts to kill himself — he’d chosen a slow route to the grave. A painful route. It’s what he had coming, after all … if a man can’t protect his family, does he deserve to live? Aggie had thought not.

  That was before the white dungeon.

  This horrific place reminded Aggie that life — no matter how crappy it might be — was far better than the alternative. A day and a half ago, as near as he could tell, Hillary had given him hope. If there was even a chance to get out of this, to live, Aggie would do anything she asked.

  He finally blinked away the sleep to see that a new man had been chained to the wall on his left, where the Mexican woman had once been. Not a man — a boy, really, but a goddamn big boy. The kid’s face looked like swollen hamburger: split lip, broken teeth, blood all over his mouth and a seriously fucked-up nose. He was spitting up blood and making low moaning noises, noises that had the cadence of speech but were not words.

  The boy opened his mouth to moan louder, and Aggie saw why the sounds had no meaning — someone had cut out his tongue.

  To his right, Aggie heard other noises he didn’t understand, but that was only because he didn’t speak Chinese. The Chinaman was on his knees, tear-streaked eyes shut tight, body rocking back and forth as he prayed to someone or something.

  Aggie James couldn’t help the Chinaman, and he couldn’t help the tongueless boy. He could only help himself, and only if Hillary gave him a chance.

  He lay back down and closed his eyes. Maybe he would dream of his daughter again.

  Fathers and Sons

  Bryan pulled up to Mike Clauser’s house to find his dad sitting on the front steps, Bud Light in hand. Five more bottles sat in a sixer at his feet. He was shirtless, wearing beat-up jeans and black socks with no shoes.

  He was waiting. That meant Pookie had called ahead. Fucking Pookie.

  Bryan shut off the Buick’s engine. His hands squeezed the steering wheel.

  If Erickson was sixty years old or more, and he was Bryan’s half-brother, then Bryan’s real mother would have to be seventy-five or probably even older. Mike Clauser and Starla Hutchon had gone to high school together. Bryan had seen their yearbooks, their class pictures, other pictures of them from their childhoods and their grade-school days. They had been born the same year — Mike had turned fifty-eight a few months back.

  Mike, who the genetic test said was not Bryan’s father.

  And Starla, who was younger than Jebediah Erickson — which meant that the woman Bryan had always known as his mother was anything but.

  All his life, Bryan had been lied to. He felt that rage swelling up, the same rage he’d felt when Zou had threatened him with jail.

  He stepped out of the Buick. Mike stood and reached for the front door, to open it as if to invite Bryan in.

  “Don’t bother,” Bryan said.

  His father stopped and turned. “Pookie texted that you had something important to talk about. Come in, we’ll talk.”

  “I don’t want to go inside,” Bryan said. “What I want is to know who my real parents are.”

  Mike Clauser stared for a moment. He slowly lowered himself to the front step and sat. He stared at the ground. “You’re my son.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Mike looked up, his expression caught between the anger that solved most of his problems and a gut-wrenching pain from hurting his boy. “I don’t care about biology. I wiped your ass and changed your diapers. I cleaned up your puke. When you got a fever, I felt like someone was chopping up my heart with a goddamn cleaver. You’d just cough and the sound scared me worse than any fight I’ve ever been in.”

  To think Bryan had loved th
is man, this liar. “Are you finished?”

  “I took you to school,” Mike said. “I hauled you to soccer practice. I watched every wrestling match you ever had, and when someone put you on your back, I had to grab the damn bleachers because it was all I could do not to come out on the mat and kick the other kid in the head. I’m the one who taught you right from wrong.”

  Quite a show of concern. But then again, Mike had a lifetime of practice — Bryan’s lifetime. “And in all those years, it never crossed your mind to tell me the goddamn truth?”

  “The truth is that you are my boy.” Mike’s lower lip quivered, just for a moment, then he seemed to force his emotions under control. “You will always be my son.”

  Bryan shook his head slowly. “I’m not. I’m just a kid that you lied to.”

  Mike pulled an unopened bottle out of the Bud Light sixer. He held it between his palms, slowly rolling it back and forth. “I don’t know how you found out, but you can forget the guilt trips because I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  What had Bryan been hoping for? Maybe a little remorse? Maybe a gosh, I’m so sorry? Mike wasn’t apologizing. At least his character was consistent in that regard.

  “Who are my parents? You owe me that, so start talking.”

  Mike set the bottle on the step next to his feet. He looked … weak. The expression on his face, the sagging posture, Bryan had seen those things only once before — when his mother had died.

  “There was this homeless guy in our neighborhood,” Mike said. “Eric. Never knew his last name. He was a combat vet. Marines. The neighborhood kind of watched out for him. We’d give him food, clothes. One day, Eric just wasn’t there. When he showed up a week later, he had a baby with him.”

  Bryan’s hands flexed into fists, relaxed, flexed into fists. “Are you telling me that Eric the Homeless Vet is my father?”

  Mike shook his head. “He wasn’t your father. Your mother didn’t think so, anyway.”