I reached blindly for the wall behind me, doubled over and somehow managed to choke back the vomit gurgling at the base of my throat. I staggered back, steadied myself against the wall, and looked at her.
She was still kneeling next to the boy, but no longer holding him.
The insects were gone. Her eyes, now unnaturally wide, began to bleed.
“What… what’s happening to me?” I asked.
She lunged for me with inhuman speed and clamped her hands onto my forearm. Her grip was painful and possessed greater strength than she appeared to have, and the moment her flesh made contact with mine, I felt a surge of energy explode through me like an electrical shock. My body jerked to rigid attention, and as my head fell back I heard the sound of my nightstick bouncing along the concrete floor.
Horrible flashes of unspeakable carnage flickered through my mind like an old 16mm film. Faces, such hideous, boil-covered, bloody grinning faces; growls and guttural laughter; fire; the screams of nameless beings engulfed in plumes of brilliant orange flame and blood. Teeth—fangs—ripping at slabs of human meat, what had once been people hanging upside down and gutted like cattle. Depravity—depravity like I had never seen—and all of it gushing through me in a single violent stream, disintegrating into a shimmer and a wisp of fog, trailing away from my vision like a spiral of cigarette smoke snaking toward a ceiling.
But there was no ceiling, only dark sky and thick fog.
I was outside again, standing in the middle of the street between the factory and the car dealership. My nightstick was on the ground at my feet, but the flashlight was on and clutched firmly in my left hand. Heart racing, I crouched down, retrieved my baton and bolted for the dealership.
Consumed by the fog, I struggled to maintain my bearings, running as hard and as fast as I could despite the burning in my lungs and the ache in my legs. And although I could not see it, I knew the evil was still there, still with me. There, in the fog, chasing, circling me, calling to me in low, tortured growls.
CHAPTER 8
Three days. Three days of confusion and disbelief, of vague memory and flashes of terror. Three days of lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if it was night or day beyond shades pulled shut, of drug-induced sleep, of groggy submission even when I was somewhere near consciousness. Three days of trying to convince myself I had not gone utterly insane.
The owner of the dealership had gone to work that morning to find me gone without explanation, the door unlocked and the desk where I’d been stationed littered with a pile of spent beer bottles. Nino had tried several times to contact me via the two-way but I hadn’t responded. I’d left the dealership and driven back to Potter’s Cove, parked out in front of Rick’s apartment building and waited for him to come home from the club.
At about four o’clock he pulled in and I met him on the street. Concerned, he invited me in but I declined, and asked him instead about the young black woman and her son who lived in the first-floor apartment when you first walked in.
That apartment was empty, Rick told me. Had been for months since the last tenant, a single middle-aged man had moved out. Then she was a squatter and had broken in and was staying there without anyone’s knowledge, I’d insisted, because I’d seen her the other day. She’d spoken to me the other day. Her son had spoken to me the other day.
Near total emotional collapse, I explained what had happened, and it was then that Rick insisted I let him drive me home. I agreed, but only after he promised he’d find out what was going on in that apartment.
I vaguely remember Toni thanking Rick before putting me to bed, then laying there, exhausted and spent, straining to hear their voices in the kitchen until I’d drifted off into something similar to sleep. At some later point she appeared with a prescription from her boss, pills that would relax me and help me sleep, she promised. Trust her, she’d said, and I did.
Now, three blurred days later, I found myself parked across the street from Battalia Security’s home office, a small storefront space on Acushnet Avenue, one of the main drags in New Bedford. I sat in the car and watched the place until I felt ready to wade into what I knew would be an unpleasant situation at best.
A pair of tiny bells over the door signaled my entrance. I moved to the front desk where Marge, the receptionist, secretary and occasional dispatcher sat, headset in place, long acrylic fingernails tapping a keyboard. She saw me and offered a tentative smile. “Hey, Al.”
“Hey.”
“How you doin’, hon?” she asked quietly. “You OK?”
I nodded. “Nino in?”
She cocked her head toward his office at the end of a small hallway behind her, the door closed. “He’s waiting for you, go ahead in.”
Nino, stressed out of his mind as usual, glanced up from an enormous pile of paperwork as I entered his office. He tendered a gas-lock smile and motioned to a chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”
I closed the door behind me, stepped over to his desk but stayed on my feet. “Nino, listen, I’m sorry about all this, I—”
Nino held his hands up, tossed a pen onto his desk and sat back in his leather swivel a bit. “I know you are, Al, I know you are.” Again, he motioned to the chair. “Sit.”
I moved to the chair and lowered myself into it, feeling like a child summoned to the principal’s office. “Nino, there’s no excuse for what happened, and I’m sorry, sincerely I am. I give you my word nothing like that will ever happen again. Ever.”
His eyes darted about, looking anywhere but directly at me. He leaned back further in his chair and nervously stroked his mustache with stubby fingers. “You been with us a long time,” he finally said. “You’re the best employee we got. The best we ever had.”
“I got fifteen years in here, Nino,” I reminded him.
“I know you do. You’re senior guy by like ten years, for Christ’s sake.” He again smiled briefly through obvious discomfort. “And besides all that, you—well, shit, you become a friend, you know what I’m saying?”
“I just—I’m having some problems at the moment, but—”
“Yeah, I hear ya.” He straightened the chair, pushed away from the desk and stood up. A squat and bulbous man with a penchant for flashy jewelry, ill-fitting slacks and imitation silk shirts, on this day he had worn a sweat suit and tennis shoes, signaling he didn’t plan to stay at the office long once our meeting was concluded. “Here’s the thing, though. I talked to Petey last night, and I did what I could, but my brother’s the boss, Al, you know how it is. I got say, but he’s got final say.”
“Look—”
“He thinks the world of you too, man, you know that.” Nino waddled over to a water cooler in the corner, found the cup dispenser empty and grabbed a nearby coffee mug instead. “But shit, Al, you walked on a job.”
“I know. I fucked up bad.”
Nino sniffed the coffee-stained mug, then slid it under the nozzle and filled it with water. Watching the bubbles rise in the plastic bottle, he said, “Thing is, we lost the account.”