I Will Rise (16 page)

“Are you going to be all right out here?” I ask.

“Don’t trip, I’ll find my way, steal another car, whatever.” With a broad sweep of his arm he points to the public restroom that sits in the center of the rest stop and starts backing toward it. “Hell, I just might get a little action after all.” He grins.

I force out an awkward smile, wave, shut my door and glance in the rearview mirror. Dim lights flicker through the dirty windows that line the top of the restroom and I think I can see shadows twisting and twining, perversely welcoming Logan’s arrival.

A dirty shiver scales my spine and I feel a little nauseated. I start the car and pull away, perplexed by decent people and their odd propensity for indecency.

* * *

The whole way into Vegas my eyes hunt desperately for minivans. No luck. Not even a few stomach-dropping could-have-beens.

Whatever happened to the minivan anyway?

Didn’t there used to be tons of them on the road?

Shouldn’t my eyes be bugging out of my head, filled to the optic brim with potential targets?

The ever-changing fad. Each one of us lives through these sick patterned bouts of alternating momentary contentment and vast unfulfillment. To think, mere hours ago I was excited. I was somewhat content and now I am lower than low. I am lost. I am futilely hunting a dead child. I am futilely tracking my friend.

I exit the freeway and get myself stuck in the bumper-to-bumper grindfest that is the Las Vegas Strip. There are people every which way, miles of creeping cars and sidewalk orgies of happy-headed consumers moving in huge shoulder-to-shoulder herds. I think cows. I think sheep. I think ants. I think this is one of the most disgusting displays of human ethos and need I have ever seen.

What are they doing?

And why do they want to be here crammed as tight as sardines?

My hand does an electric jig and the black rose eats the back of my brain. My vision tunnels and spins and I am no longer driving, I am in a pit, walls of flesh, eyes peering from hidden crevices, arms extending, flailing like cilia. I raise my hands high above my head and pray to nothing for an exit. The flesh walls rumble and shift and spit a small body at my feet. It’s Eddie. He is curled into the fetal position, head buried between his legs, covered in membranous slime and gooey death.

Dropping to my knees I hover over him. I want to touch him. I want to help him. Knowing better, I keep my hands at my sides and ball them into useless fists.

“Eddie?” I whisper.

Nothing.

“Eddie?” A little louder.

No movement.

“Eddie?” Louder.

Careful, I reach out, get my fingers around his small shoulder, and pull. His little body, light as a feather, rolls toward me. His little lips quiver and his eyelids flutter between fully open and completely closed. I pull my hand away lightning quick but it’s too late and a pillar of smoke pours from the hand-sized wound emblazoned into his shoulder. His mouth widens into a huge O, but no sound comes out. It doesn’t matter. The scream is more than evident, pounding and pulsing and heart bursting, within the confines of his glistening eyes. But it is only there for a second before those little genius eyeballs go yellow and shrivel. The cutest kid face in the world, even cuter than Gary Coleman’s at age five, follows suit, graying, then going raisin, then crumbling to chunky dust.

I scream. Out loud. Loudly.

In a flash of red I am back, wall of flesh to dream dust, and the insides of Logan’s Porsche, or whomever he stole it from, feels like a coffin. I gasp for air. The uber-traffic is at a complete standstill. Stuck. Buried. The seat, the steering wheel, the dashboard with expensive, glowing glitterati, entomb me, burn hell into my head and render the world an opaque mess. I pull on the too-chrome door latch, kick open the too-slick door and stumble out into the street. Immediately, an army of horns sound off—drunken catcalls, human idiocy.

“Fuck off!” I shout. “Fuck you, you motherfuckin’ motherfuckers!” (Thanks, Lump). Running full force, I put my hands out in front of me, splay my fingers wide and plunge like a demon into the bolstering sidewalk throng.

Chapter Eleven

Revolution

The surging sidewalk crowd regards me much the same way the standard “oh my, look, the poor freak is having a seizure” crowd: gawking, faux compassion and extreme distaste. There are variations of course. The deeper rungs of the throng barely notice, but the first wave, those moving along the curb, actually exhibit fright at my car-leaping charge. Their raised eyebrows and surprised mouths are kind of fun to watch. Here I am barreling at them full-speed and all they can do is recoil, draw into themselves and look absolutely horrified. This must be how a charging bull feels. It’s quite exhilarating.

Once they realize I am unarmed, probably just drunk and out of control, they relax and collectively fall into mental line with their entrenched peers. Keep moving, ignore, do all you can to avoid direct eye or bodily contact. Unfortunately, when dealing with a collective, some sort of direct contact is inevitable and as the happy-headed visitors of Las Vegas’ ever-crowded sidewalks try to shift and shuffle and allow a careening wild man like myself wide passage, many are touched and slammed and brushed. Eyes narrow, sneerers sneer, insults and barbs and a whole mess of
Watch-it’s
fill the seedy air. If only they could see the madness unfolding in my head. Their reactions would be a little more severe to say the least.

Each touch, each brush, each full-on slam, explodes waves of red in my mind’s eye. For a second I am out of body, out of mind, floating high above the Vegas strip. Here but not really here. The sidewalks flood, rivers of blood, and I can see myself plunging into the crowd. Each time my skin comes in contact with another’s, a little electric charge sparks. The spark then proceeds to jump from body to body. From my sky-bound vantage point the sparks are legion and the people-lined boulevards of Las Vegas, Nevada, are alight with the infected and dying. Each person I touch inadvertently, or purposefully, touches another person and that person touches yet another person and on and on. The tracing sparks light up the night sky and shine even brighter than the commercial glow of the Vegas pleasure domes. It’s a safe bet that by tomorrow at this time Vegas will be burning.

Back in the flesh, my brain a full-blooming black rose and my eyes whirling pools of nothing, I fall to the concrete and roll onto my back. The crowd keeps right on moving, unaware of their death sentences, disallowing themselves to be inconvenienced by the human writhing at their feet. A small group does stop, as they always do, and encircles me. They look down and whisper and shout things like “
Call 911!”
A few young men in their early twenties, too cool for school, snicker and laugh and purposefully spill beer from their 300 oz. ultra booze bomber promotional casino nightmare collector’s cup onto Eddie’s mom’s sweatpants. I squirm and they laugh even louder. My left hand twitches and the base of my skull hums like a vibrator.

Before I know it, my hand has wrapped itself around the ankle of one of the beer spillers and is beginning to burn through his athletic tube sock. He shouts and tries to kick free, but like with Lumpy the hand is locked. His friends join in, kicking me and shouting for me to let the fuck go, but I can’t and even if I could probably wouldn’t want to. Oh no, I am enjoying this far too much.

The crowd ruffles and murmurs and a few strong men jump into action. The hand has eaten away the sock fabric and has fused with the skin in a bubbling, seeping mess. The beer spiller goes rigid and starts a standing seizure. White light creeps out from between my closed fingers and my vice-locked palm. I am being beaten to a pulp at all angles, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not really here. My brain has opened like a cavernous sinkhole and I am falling. Always falling. But this time there are hundreds upon thousands falling with me.

Mr. Beer Spiller doubles over and his face goes gaunt. His eyeballs shrivel and blast forth twin arcs of mealy yellow fluid. Eddie’s mom’s sweatpants are doused for the second time this evening. With a little shudder and an audible death rattle, the man goes over and sprawls rigidly next to me. The beatings stop and I am let alone for a second as the crowd gathers around the dead man. I am catapulted out of my skull yet again and watch overhead as a wave of dead sparks erupt from the dead man and blanket the area for miles around.

Back inside, I picture the photos of the Walnut Creek crime scene and the five dead apart from Lumpy and Paunch. I think about Vegas alight with death. I think,
This is going to be huge
.

Sirens blare and lights flash and I jump to my feet. The crowd responds by gasping and struggling to keep away. I notice a huge number of sickly, sour expressions. About a third of them are doubled over in pain, waving off concerned loved ones. How long did it take the five at the Walnut Creek crime scene to die? Didn’t Annabelle say something like fifteen minutes? Didn’t Annabelle say something about Lumpy’s body storing death like a fatalistic battery, like a conduit of infection?

This city block is about to become a graveyard.

Cops yell coptalk nonsense through squad car speakers and I take that as my cue to run. Out of fear, the crowd parts and lets me pass, but not without a few shouts of
stop him
and
he’s getting away
and the like. I even hear the coptalk nonsense shout in metallized speaker speak for me to stop, but fuck all that, I’m getting while the getting is good.

Weaving in and out of the teeming Vegas swarms I have no trouble escaping and blending. A few miles up the strip, in front of the Bellagio
,
I ask an old bald guy for the time. “Two a.m.” He looks up from his watch and frowns my way. “Time for you to be getting home and cleaned up.”

I’m about to touch the rude old fuck or at least tell him to screw off when I realize he’s right. In Eddie’s mom’s clothing, bloodstained and beer stained and eyeball stained and filthy and sweaty and beyond grimy, I do need to get cleaned up.

“Thanks,” I tell him sincerely. He waves me off and waddles away shaking his frail, hairless head.

Eddie will be dead in something like four hours. I can’t give up on him, but I don’t know what to do or where to go. The cops are surely looking for me. Sirens blare continually as the city tries to make sense of what happened a few miles back. As long as the overexposed dying keep dropping every fifteen minutes or so, I should have a little time, but it won’t be long before they bring in some fresh cops who have at least twenty-four hours.

I spend the next hour carefully walking the streets, scanning for a suitable car to jack. At the Excalibur (I had to stop and check it out on account of T.H. White’s
The Once and Future King
) I kill another hour cleaning up in the bathroom and then looking around. The vibe in the air is a strange one. Word of the chaos erupting down the strip has obviously spread, but lucky for me the intensity of the bedlam is so great that there is an inability to establish order or garner information or form any ideas about what is going on. Readying to leave the casino, I notice a lone overcoat, black and lined with silky material, draped over the back of a slot machine chair. I look about and without really thinking I quickly snatch it up. The hairs rise on the back of my neck in suspect expectation and I go flush. Nothing.

Traipsing around the parking lot I am pleased with my new coat. I like the way it flares out like a luxurious cape when I spin.

I picture Eddie smiling and telling me that spinning clears his overcrowded head. I extend my arms and close my eyes and give it a shot.

I spin and I spin and I spin and after a few revolutions I just let go. I let my head swirl. And fuck the sickness, fuck the rising nausea and the throat-constricting spin-quease, fuck the stares that I am surely drawing, fuck the balance that I am slowly losing. I am not going to stop for two hours. I’m going to spin in memoriam. I’m going to spin in reception. I’m going to spin until Eddie, wherever he may be, is at long last freed from his child shell, freed from the constraints of youth, freed from the constraints of the flesh.

After a few minutes I lose it and drop to the pavement. My body has stopped spinning but the world continues. In my vision, swimmy with motion and lights and blurry monolithic casinos, I think I see the fuzzy outline of a black minivan. I press my hand to my forehead and try to shake it off. Focus, focus. Shapes align and the gyroscope inside my head is beginning to slow. Squinting, I search and sure enough, beyond the Excalibur’s parking lot, at the stoplight adjacent to the MGM Grand, a black minivan idles, waiting.

Is it the same one that snatched Eddie?

I don’t know, but that doesn’t stop me from breaking into a run. By the time I hit the street the light changes. The traffic, including the black minivan, surges into motion. I run into the middle of the street and flail my arms. Cars honk and screech and swerve, clipping one another, causing a mega ruckus. Somehow everything falls into perfect place and the black minivan screams to halt mere feet in front of me. I walk around to the driver’s side and peer into the window. A woman in her midforties stares back. She has one of those mom haircuts, short and frosted or streaked or whatever. I try to pull open the door, but it’s locked.

“Open it!” I scream.

It would have been infinitely better for her if she didn’t listen to me, but fear and nervousness and backward logic compel her into action. The automatic door lock clicks resoundingly and I pull open the door.

“Don’t hurt me,” ran together like
donthurtme
, all whimpery and scared. I ignore her and poke my head into the van. Empty. The lady begins sobbing and her lower lip quivers like a bowlful of jelly. I pull my head out of the van and am about to walk away when I think: just because Eddie’s not in there doesn’t mean he hasn’t been in there and just because this stupid bitch is crying doesn’t mean she didn’t kidnap and kill Eddie. Chances are she didn’t, but there is always the possibility.

My neck goes wobbly and the death flower blooms in my brain. I raise my left hand and lock it onto the sobbing woman’s forehead. Her body goes stiff and foamy shit begins to creep from the corners of her mouth. I feel my soul receding, preparing for the fall, but I don’t want to get caught in that deathly neverspace, I don’t want to waste time death-tripping, so I push my brain and will my palm to release. After a few seconds it complies and I am glad to learn that with the right pressure, with the right reason, the palm will relent and relinquish control.

The woman falls out of her seat into the street and flops about on the ground like a gasping fish. Her forehead glistens smooth and white, all features and lines burned away, a mirror image of my killing palm, and her eyes blink empty, nearly drained, absolved of awareness by the ultimate cure of my touch.

I hop in the minivan, shut the door and speed away.

The lights of Vegas disappear behind me like a dimming bulb and my thoughts run crazy, spun this way and that way like a heaping pile of disemboweled intestines. My brain is a pit, deep and black and all-encompassing. I drive on autopilot, taking a second to note the gas tank is full and allotting a minimal amount of cerebral activity to handle two necessary menial tasks: pointing the minivan in the direction of Arizona and stepping on the gas. The rest of my attention dances with the dead, with the thousands upon thousands of staring eyeballs, with dreams turned to dust. And this dwelling, this constant internalizing, is a weird thing, because when I really think about it, I don’t think I should feel like a murderer.

I don’t think of myself as a man who has crossed the line and taken a life.

The ever-rising body count is simply an indirect consequence of an indirect, natural action. It’s not really my fault. All I do is touch people. I don’t break them to fucking pieces or chop them up with an axe. I touch them. That’s it. No big deal. So then, fuck it, I shouldn’t care. According to Annabelle I am designed not to. But something weird has welled up inside and I do care, I care more than anything and the eyes, the fucking eyes are everywhere, staring, accusing, questioning, clogging my inner vision like glistening mulch.

I have only killed six people directly—that’s twelve eyes, three pairs of human ones and one pair of canine peepers—and I suppose if I have to live with their glaring presence, their haunting reminder, I can. And if killing means being haunted, then so be it—shit, I deserve it for Lumpy and Paunch and Eddie and the religious lady at the gas station and Mr. Beer Spiller and the Minivan Lady. I intimately drained them away and a little guilt is warranted. But thousands? But every person inadvertently infected? No way. I don’t deserve that. No way, but here they are, a wall of sad, angry, evil, shame-on-you eyes, and here they persist, raising the hairs on the back of my neck and filling my head with dreadful menace.
Murderer
, they blink,
Murderer, Murderer, Murderer
and I shout at the top of my lungs for them to shut the fuck up. Surprisingly they do, and with a little more heated suppression they scatter and slowly fade, sinking into the cavernous folds of my brain. But for how long? They will be back and as the dead grow, their numbers and power increasing, I fear they will eventually be strong enough to drive me out of my own head.

Not that it would be a bad thing. I could use a little nothingness, driving and driving and trying to think about anything but death. And for a short while I succeed as red-tinged thoughts of my Annabelle (where are you?) creep in. For a short while I am able to smile. For a short while warmth spreads throughout my insides filling in all of the cold, dead-trained spaces. For a short while it’s just me, the tranquil road, the beautiful rising sun, and lovely, lovely fantasy. For a short while, as the land radiates gold and awakens, I am able to let it go. Then I happen to notice the LCD clock beset into the dashboard of the minivan. It reads 6:37 a.m.

Eddie Lee Wiggins, rest in peace.

Whatever Eddie’s fate, death has surely caught up with him by now. It would be easy to blame his abductor(s) and factor myself right out of the equation, but he is dead because of me. I killed him and again, as with the guilt-milking wall of eyes, I shouldn’t take it so personally. He was dead whether I touched him or not. You’re all dead whether I touch you or not because eventually somebody is going touch you.