Ned was quiet until Paige came to a complete stop at a traffic light. They were only a few blocks away from the East St. Louis Community College Center. The blood in his eyes was the color of rusty water, and his pupils were more like corroded black disks that were chipped around the edges.
“Ned, I didn’t mean to—”
“No! You listen to me, missy. I discovered those Squamatosapiens. I tracked them down. I figured out what they ate and how they hunted.” Reaching into one of the many pockets stitched into his cotton fishing vest, Ned removed a plastic eye dropper bottle that still had the Visine label stuck on it. “I took what those things gave us and made it into something we could all use. That’s what Skinners do. You want to see some real horror stories? Read the history about how our modern medical practices came to be. That’s some shit that will give you nightmares, but it was the best way those doctors knew how to test their medicines and surgical practices. The FDA doesn’t fund our research, so we gotta do it the old-fashioned way. I read your journal entries and I couldn’t be prouder about that whole ink idea of yours. It’s rough, but it’ll be great with a little more work. So you hurt yourself when you used it the first time? Well join the goddamn club. You know what makes it all worthwhile?”
“What?” Paige squeaked.
“When someone can take what you created and put it to use.” Ned grabbed her hand and slapped the little plastic bottle into it. “Here. If you don’t have the guts to risk getting hurt again, then you got no place as a Skinner.”
Those last words made Paige realize she’d been slumping behind the wheel. She closed her fist around the bottle and straightened up again. “Where do you think we should start looking?”
Without missing a beat, Ned replied, “How the hell should I know? I’m blind!”
The short drive to a parking spot along Railroad Avenue was a whole lot easier than the drive from the city. Paige and Ned shared a much needed laugh while she parked Daniels’s SUV within sight of a tall billboard and a long, two-story brick building. There wasn’t much to see in the immediate area apart from that building and a whole lot of drab road. The itch in her scars was stronger there than anywhere else along the way, so Paige got out and started walking. Ned fell into step beside her. As much as she wanted to take the old man’s arm and lead him, she knew that would be a real good way to get acquainted with his wooden cane.
At the next intersection, they spotted a taller building that looked like it could either be an old factory or an older hospital. A low fence surrounded a wide, flat lawn, giving the whole area the feel of a prison exercise yard. Traffic flowed along Railroad Avenue that was tame compared to St. Louis and barely a trickle compared to the motorized suicide parades in Chicago. Paige walked along the street for about five seconds before digging into her pocket.
“What now?” Ned asked.
“I’m calling Daniels. Maybe he can narrow it down for us a little more.”
“Wouldn’t he have told you as much before we left?”
“Probably,” she replied, “but we’re not getting anywhere by just wandering.”
Ned tapped his cane against the ground and said, “That’s right. And we don’t make phone calls when there’s hunting to do.”
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Aren’t you?” Too excited to wait for an answer, Ned said, “Put those drops in and we’ll find out all we need to know. Since we’re close enough to feel those bloodsuckers, we should be able to see where they’re congregating or which direction we need to go.”
“This stuff can tell us that much?”
“And more. Don’t be squeamish. Maddy tested some that was watered down and she said it worked like a charm. You remember Maddy, don’t you?”
“The crazy woman from Jersey? Yeah, I remember her.”
“Well she was able to track down a group of the slickest Nymar she’s ever seen thanks to my innovation.”
“It doesn’t take much to slip one past her,” Paige grumbled.
“That’s funny. She didn’t have much good to say about you either.”
Paige stood on the curb, knowing all too well that Ned was using one of the simplest baiting tricks around other than a triple dog dare. What grated on her nerves even more was how well it worked. “Fine,” she said as she opened the bottle.
“You don’t know how much this means to me,” Ned told her. “The fact that you trust me enough to—”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said as she opened the bottle and held it under her nose. The fluid inside didn’t smell bad, but it didn’t smell like rose petals either. It was the color of sea-water, complete with all the wonderful little particles that reminded you just how many animals lived, breathed, and excreted in there. When she swirled the fluid around, a lot of it clung to the side of the bottle and slid right down again.
“What did Maddy say about this stuff?” Paige asked.
“That it allowed her to see scents.”
“You sure she wasn’t sniffing something else?”
Ned clucked his tongue and stepped back as a row of cars sped down the street. “You know she wouldn’t do anything to endanger another Skinner.”
“Yeah, I know.” Steeling herself as best she could, Paige tipped her head back, opened her eyes wide and held the dropper over the left one. In the end she figured that was the one she’d prefer losing. “How much should I use?”
“Just enough for an even coat. The Squamatosapiens’ gland excreted—” Seeing the glare on her face, Ned skipped ahead to, “Two drops in each eye should do it.”
Before she could convince herself to do otherwise, Paige squirted a few drops onto her left eye. She’d never been good at giving herself eye drops, so a good portion of the stuff splattered on her eyelid and brow. Rather than use any more, she blinked and rolled her eye under the lid. When she reflexively tried to rub it in, she felt a strong hand on her forearm.
“Don’t,” Ned warned. “Just let it soak. How does it feel?”
“Warm. No…cold. It’s cold now, but it was warm a second ago.”
“Open your eyes.”
Paige opened her eyes and looked around. Almost immediately, panic set in. “Everything’s blurry. I think my vision is screwed up. The light’s glaring so much.”
“Just give it a second.”
A second didn’t help.
The next few seconds after that, however, allowed the glare around every light source or reflective surface to fade. “It’s still a little fuzzy.”
“That’s because you’re in direct sunlight. What else do you see?”
Feeling like she was going to lose her footing, Paige focused on the ugly factory or hospital in the distance. At least that gave her something to concentrate on other than the slick layer of goo clinging to her eyeball and the tingling chill slowly filling the entire socket. When she looked at the street again, she saw ghostly waves of different colors drifting on currents of wind like cartoon squiggles denoting a particularly stinky mess.
“I think I see what you were talking about,” she said. “But, it’s kind of hard to pin down. It’s coming and going.”
“That’s because you only put the drops in one eye. Do the other one.”
She took a breath, held up the bottle and reminded herself that she already had one foot in this particular pool. How bad could it be to step in and swim? Ignoring the weight of her arm hanging from her shoulder, which reminded her of her last bad swim, she treated her other eye.
The same mix of warm and cold flooded across the middle of her face, where it connected to the chill in her other eye. Staring out at a street that was now filled with a smeared jumble of moving blobs and colorful waves, Paige asked, “Right before you went blind, did it feel like your eyeballs had frozen into little round ice cubes?”
“I’m not completely blind,” Ned told her, “but yes.”