Coin-Operated Machines (14 page)

The man
shook his head.  "I have no idea.  They just keep appearing on things.  It's as strange to me as it is to you."

"
Look, my fiancé is missing.  She was probably taken by that guy with the axe.  Please help me. Anything you know about what's happening, tell me.  I'm not here to play games, or to do anything bad to anyone.  I swear."

The man seemed to grow
disinterested in Brock's predicament.  Even cold.  "Whatever I do won't help your fiancé.  The axe man takes them, and he changes them."

"
How does he change them?"

"
I can't tell you here.  It's not safe here."

"Then where?
  Where's safe?  I have to help her."

The man
seemed to lose his train of thought.  The man was shaken up, so Brock decided to keep things simple.  "I'm Brock Richards.  What's your name?"

"
James Matthews."

"So you're from Blue Hills
?"

"I've lived here for the past twenty-five years.  I'm retired. 
I used to run the cemetery up the way.  Owned and operated the business.  What does it matter who I am?  Everybody I cared about is gone.  My wife, she's gone too, just like the rest of them, and that's all I'm going to say about it to you."

Brock
asked a more involved question.  "Okay, okay fine.  Can anybody help us here?  I still don't get what's happening.  Why aren't the police doing something about this?"

"The police are dead, or they've been changed."

"Changed?"

"I won't explain
it out here.  It's not safe."

"
Jesus
.  Then where are we safe? I have to find Hannah."

"If you do
find this lady, she might not be the same."

James
was withholding details, and Brock was on the verge of shaking the man, maybe roughing him up. 
You scare him off, who else is around to help you?  I've only seen dead bodies so far.  He's it.  Be patient.  Do what he asks.  Find somewhere safe to hide.

He thought back to his sister.  "Where's the Piedmont Inn?"

"We're a mile from the place.  A mile from town too, actually.  It's just up the road."  He pointed west, back towards the main road.

"Why not hide
at the inn?  My sister contacted me, saying she was staying there.  I say we go there.  Then you tell me what you know, then I'm looking for Hannah."

James held a grim face. 
"Your sister might be the one finding you first."

Emanations
from underfoot began as soft whispers that soon gathered depth, rising up into the sky and spreading with enough treble and bass to shake Brock's core.  Thousands of voices spoke together, the collection ranging from sharp screams, cursing, or simple declarations.  Brock's body jerked as if every new word or shriek freshly startled him. 

"
Watch and face what you must face/its what we've always dreamed/the vision is real/now run/ scream/hide/you'll vanish and nobody will care/vanish like the rest of them will/just wait and see/we've waited forever and now it's time/stay because you must/because you will
all die
/
but first, let's have some fun
."

When
the strange voices stopped, the words seemed to cling onto Brock's skin like a hot mist.  James was about to flee the area. "We have to get out of here!  Run to the Piedmont Inn.  We'll talk there, but it won't do much good.  We can't fight them.  We can't do anything against them."

Brock was
tracking the man who was a streak of speed.  He struggled to match the full-out sprint James was able to kick out.  The man had knowledge of the situation in Blue Hills, and Brock was clueless.  When his lungs shrank and his sides ached from the exertion, Brock kept imagining Hannah and Angel.  He prayed they weren't victims to the man with the axe or the voices that spoke just moments ago. 

It wasn't long before they
escaped the woods and entered town.  They crossed a small bridge over a creek the length of two cars front to back.  Looking down the edge of the bridge, Brock noticed twenty bodies were sprawled out among the river stones, curled up like defiled fetuses, their heads dashed upon the rocks.  The finer details of the real damage were obscured by the veil of shallow waters.  Did they jump and die that way, or were they bashed to death by someone? 

Moving on from the grizzly sight, the
main drag of Blue Hills was up ahead.  Brock could only register only one detail at a time.  At the center of the main drag of buildings was a large fountain that kept spewing water.  The fountain was a statue of four horses with colonists riding on their backs.  The beauty of it was ruined by the bodies floating on the surface ripe and bloated, their flesh eel colored.  He could smell them.  Brock was forced to hold back the immediate urge to retch.  Fording on, there was no corner unblemished by death.  A chapel at the point farthest north from him was three stories tall.  What used to be stained glass windows was a shattered square.  Bodies were stacked up on the tall concrete stairs just below the empty window inside.  They suffered broken heads, broken necks, and limbs twisted out of their natural points of flexion.  White flesh turned black and green in the fetid post-mortem color scheme.  Congealed blood stained the steps.  It was all evidence of a mass suicide.  

Store
fronts were smashed through.  Anything ranging from clothing stores to restaurants were left in chaos after a vicious riot.  There wasn't an inch of ground that wasn't covered in either glass, blood, or corpses.  Beyond the stores, there were houses in the distance, and he imagined each were in the same condition. 

James
was half a block ahead of him. The man failed to realize Brock had halted to take in the horror and had left him behind. 

"Come on!
" James shouted back at him, impatiently waving Brock on.  "And watch out, some of these bodies might be playing dead."

"
Playing dead?"

James
scowled at him.  "Not here.  Somewhere safe."

Brock
raced on, moving double the speed through the killing floor of bodies once he spotted the entrance to the Piedmont Inn.  The hotel was a single story building, a simple structure made of black stone built to look like the outside of an old English pub.  Every car in the parking lot had their windows smashed out and every other car was a burnt shell.  He thought back to the four robbers and how they torched Brock's rental car. 

James
sized up the hotel entrance. A barricade of tables and chairs from within had been undone.  The front metal doors were wide open.  Rain and leaves had blown into the fine red carpeting within the building.  James motioned to let Brock inside, the man saying without affectation, "Welcome to the Piedmont Inn.  After you, sir."

DAMN PHONE

The sight of Tally's body coming undone repeated itself in Willy's mind.  One moment, the man was standing there, and the next, Tally's torso shot out his arms, legs, and head as if launched from an air-pressure cannon.  It couldn't be real.  It wasn't humanely possible.  Willy heard the unlocking of bone, the breaking of flesh, the tearing of muscle tissue, and the single grunt Tally issued before his head shot off between his shoulders.  Willy didn't forget about the relatives inside who were sprawled about the floor as if they'd been butchered. 

Willy clutched the wheel of his Oldsmobile and didn't know where he was going.  It didn't matter as long as the road didn't circle back to where he'd come from
, he thought.  He eyed the rearview mirror, and nobody was coming after him.  Nobody to come after him, he realized.  Those who were involved in the estate of Tim Hawker were dead. 

Why am I not dead? 

Why wasn't I on the floor dead like the rest of them? 

The executor of the will had asked
Willy to walk out of the house for a private talk.  That was when the rest of his relatives must've been attacked.  If that happened, why did the executor go back inside to fall down dead like the others?  Willy remembered seeing the executor's body laying with the rest of them.  It made no logical sense.

Will
y had no answers.  One thing for certain was that he had to get into town and reach the police.  The front tires screeched, and he veered off to the shoulder of the road.  It finally occurred to him to call the police on his cell phone.  The boys in uniform could come to him instead.  Why didn't he think of it before?

You just saw somebody go to pieces.  You're freaking out.

Willy dug out his cell phone from his pocket with shaky hands.  When he tried to dial, he realized he couldn't gain access to the digits.  A steel covering in the shape of square blocked it from access.  There was an odd thin slit in the middle of the steel square.  Frustrated and his confusion turning into a growing pile of misfired thoughts, Willy tried to pick the thing off with his fingernail.  He used a screwdriver in his glove box to pry the covering off to no success.  Willy got out of the car and smashed the phone against the curb.  It only served to scratch the steel covering, though the back plastic had cracked and broken into bits. 

The cell phone was useless.

"Damn it." 

Willy paced
the area beside his car.  Then he realized his left hand was bleeding.  He'd scraped his palm and knuckles while slamming the phone against the road. 

"All right, all right, calm down.  You'll stop at the first house and use their phone.  A phone that works."

His teeth were chattering and his body was tensed.  He leaned against the hood of the car and collected himself. 
You can't drive to someone's house and bang on their door looking like a maniac.  They'll think you killed someone.  Your hand's are all bloody.

Willy
returned to his Oldsmobile and drove on, obeying the speed limit.  He kept going north, deeper into Blue Hills.  It wouldn't be long before he located buildings and people, and most of all, phones.

Ten minutes later,
Willy was a quarter of a mile from a short wooden bridge positioned over a rolling creek.  He studied the outlines of mountain ranges in the distances, tracing them with his eyes.  He would've kept on driving if it weren't for the woman who was crossing the bridge on foot walking right towards him. 

She seemed to recognize him, and Wi
lly seemed to think he remembered her too.   Willy pulled over and got out of the vehicle to meet her.  His excitement was squelched when the woman withdrew a Ruger pistol and aimed it right at him. 

THE PIEDMONT INN

Once inside The Piedmont Inn, James began re-piecing the barricade.  James placed a large table against the entrance doors.  The original lock on the double doors was missing, Brock noticed, as if it was unscrewed and completely removed.  Brock joined in on the effort, and together, they tossed chairs, benches, and finally, a fine leather couch onto the heap.  Stopping the effort once James seemed satisfied, the man rushed to the corner bar called "The Blue Note Bistro."  Reaching beneath the counter, he located a baseball bat with the words "Peacemaker" scrawled in magic marker across its stock. 

"This is just a prop,"
James said, "but it's real.  I knew the guy who ran this place.  He tried to shoot me for the ten bucks I had left in my wallet only days ago."

The last sentence threw Brock,
but he didn't ask for more details.  He instead thought about Angel.  "My sister said she was staying here, but I don't know in which room."

Brock
spotted the front desk and checked the computer.  The screen had been smashed.  Brock located the guestbook and read through the past week and a half.  He wondered if this strange situation had been going on for that long.  If so, why had Angel mailed him a letter to come visit her less than four days ago?  Why wasn't the letter a distress call?  Why weren't the police here?  Blue Hills was a graveyard, the survivors being men with axes, guns, and criminal intentions, that was except for James, who appeared to be another victim who hadn't given up on his life or the hope of seeing the end of the situation.

"Is she in t
he guest book?"  James asked, clutching the bat and eying the windows.  He kept pivoting in a slow circle to ensure the way was safe.  "Hurry up, I'm getting nervous.  I've lived this long by staying on the move.  It's the only way to survive."

Brock
kept scanning the guest book.  He was nervous as hell that he didn't have a weapon or any means to protect himself.  It also made him nervous James had a weapon. Brock couldn't completely trust the stranger. 

Brock
spotted Angel's name.  She was staying in room 114. 

"
She's in room 114."

"What if she's not there? Or she's..."

"Or she's what?  You've got a lot to explain.  Yes, you've helped me get to town, but you haven't been that much help other than that.  This whole town is either dead or, or I don't know what.  Why are the phones covered in steel squares?  Can you at least tell me that?"

"I'll tell you everything,
I promise.  But first, let's deal with your sister."

Br
ock followed the man down a hall of rooms: 101, 102, 103, and so on, until they stopped outside room 114. Brock took the initiative to knock first.  James was behind him waving the baseball bat as if to take a Babe Ruth death swing. 

"Open it,"
James whispered to him.  "She won't answer.  You'll see.  Nobody's there."

He held back to urge to snap,
How the fuck do you know?

Brock knock
ed again.  There wasn't a response.  "Angel, it's me, your brother, Brock.  Are you in there?"

"
If she is, she's not answering.  She's dead.  Or she's like the rest of them.  They'd slit your throat for a dollar."

As good as it's been finding you, you're
acting like a Goddamn prick. 
"Why do you say that? And don't tell me it has to wait."

"Do you think I'm fucking around?  I've been here since th
is shit started.  It's been two weeks of hell.  I have no idea why it's happening or what it is.  Look, I'm in a bad place too.  My wife drowned in burning hot oil that came up from the ground that was full of corpse bones.  Does that make sense to you?  Is that logical to you?  And don't apologize to me, because it doesn't change a thing.  My wife's gone forever.  I'm helping you, and I'm trusting you not to stab me in the back or rob me and leave me for dead like everyone else has tried.  Why I'm trusting you, I don't know."

"Why would I rob you?"

"Because you'd..."  He trailed off, resting his head against the wall and expelling a long, weary breath.  He watched Brock carefully and made a realization.  "You really haven't been here that long, have you?"

"Two days, but most of that was spent in a house hiding."

"You were wise to do that."  James's piercing eyes made Brock shiver.  "You open that door, see if you find your sister, and I'll tell you everything.  But we must be safe when I tell you this.  It's a long explanation.  And you won't like it."

Nervousness
and a driving need for the truth compelled Brock to turn the doorknob.  The door opened a crack, then it stopped against a barricade.  "Damn, it's blocked from the other side."

James
rammed his shoulder against it to little change, so he motioned for Brock to press his hands up against the door and combine their strength to defeat the barricade.  "Some shelves," James grunted, "and maybe a chair wedged underneath the doorknob.  We'll get through it.  Help me.  Keep pushing."

"Angel, are you in there?"  Brock asked, grunting as he push
ed both hands against the door and hoping it would pop open.  "It's your brother.  I'm not going to hurt you.  I'm not those other people."

"She's not buying it if she's in
there."  James now spoke through gritted teeth.  "If she shoots at us, I'm getting out of here.  It's been nice meeting someone who doesn't want to rob and kill me and all, but I'm not dying for you.  No offense."

"None taken." 
Brock pushed harder, both old men working their arms and shoulders to their full potential until the door began to widen and widen, the sound of bending and creaking wood increasing as their vigor paid dividends.  "We're doing it!  Keep pushing!"

After the sound of a chair leg snapping, they were able to shove through
the door.  Brock followed James inside, and then James went about reapplying the barricade.  He pushed the bookshelf they'd shoved back flush against the door.  The man was about to locate another wedge when both of their gazes fell upon Angel. 

Brock
looked at his sister on the hotel bed.  Angel was downy white.  White as daffodil petals.  Lips blue as ice over a frozen river.  Her body was locked in a side fetal position, and her hands were positioned at her chest.  Angel's black hair was askew and pasted on her forehead.  She looked to be recently dead. 

He was afraid to pose the question to himself never mind out loud,
but Brock asked it anyway, "If she's dead, why doesn't she...smell?"

James
moved to the bed with practiced speed and confidence.  He touched his fingers beneath her neck and spoke clinically, "She's warm and still has a pulse.  She recently went to sleep.  If you stay like that for too long, you begin to rot.  It requires more to bring you back to life in that case.  It happened to my wife days before the oil swallowed her up."

Brock tried hi
s best to sound patient.  "What exactly happened to your wife?"

"It started with the voices
you heard earlier carrying in the air.  Then the smell arrived.  Deathly smells, not just rotting, Brock, but varying forms of death.  Open wounds.  Burnt flesh.  Singed hair.  Gangrene infected flesh.  Coffin rot.  Spilled blood.  Blood turned to smoke.  Sulfur.  It was all a form of putrescence that corrupted the air.  I'm familiar with it, because I embalmed bodies for funerals.  I did everything at that cemetery.  

"And then anybody who tried to leave town
suddenly couldn't leave.  If they tried, the roads, the ground, whatever was below their feet, would open up.  The death smell would come up through the ground as would that infernal black oil.  Have you seen the black oil?"  He wasn't asking Brock, only posing a rhetorical question.  "If you have, you've seen the bones floating in the boiling mess.  The oil is as hot as magma beneath the earth's crust.  If you ran from it, you'd be sucked down, then vaporized.  You'd ultimately vanish.  That insistent chattering would play on the air, those voices over voices over voices.  I swear they're all speaking to different ends.  Some are laughing, others are warning you danger's here, while others are instructing.  God knows what their intentions are.  I don't.  So what do you do when you can't leave town?  You call the police, right?"  He eyed Brock, making sure his listener hadn't dismissed him as mad.  "What happens when the phone doesn't work anymore?"

Brock broke in, "You panic, that's what you do.
"  He imagined his cell phone and how it had changed without any indication.  "My cell phone was covered in a steel plate, as was the phone in that house we hid in last night.  It was like someone was trying to deny us the privilege."

James
nodded.  "Yes, everybody's phones and communication devices were suddenly covered in steel with that thin little slot in the middle.  It literally happened overnight.  One moment everything was normal, and the next, it was fucking crazy."

"
Why are things covered in steel like that?  I still don't understand the significance."

James
pointed at Angel.  "Do me a favor and touch her."

Offended, "Excuse me."

"Before I explain more, I want you to understand something.  Check for yourself.  She's warm.  She's alive.  Right?"

For the sake of receiving more of the exp
lanation, Brock moved to the bed.  He extended his hand and touched Angel's neck and was startled to feel the warmth.  Her pulse was faint, as if on hibernation mode. 

"She's alive, yes.  Now what's your point?"

"I heard a rattling in your pocket.  I pray it's what I'm thinking it is."

Brock dug it out.  He
was shocked at how James's face lit up, as if he was an alcoholic and Brock had removed a fifth of bourbon from his pocket instead of the thirty-five cents.  "It's pocket change.  So what?"

Relief
played on the man's features.  He pointed at Angel, afraid to come any closer to Brock's quarter and a dime.  An expression of dread played upon his eyes, one of pure loathing.  "Okay, just do as I say."  He was out-of-breath, sweating profusely, and aiming his finger at Angel's arm.  "Just place the coins on her arm."

"
What?"

"Place them on her arm.  A
nd make sure they don't fall off."

Brock
was dumb to what he was being asked.  "Now why would I need to do that?"

A vein tensed in
James's neck.  His face was turning plum red.  James seemed to restrain himself from reaching out and throttling Brock's neck.  Instead, the distraught man shouted, "
Fucking place the coins on her arm, or I'll leave you right now to figure it all out for yourself!
"

Brock's hands
were shaking.  He feared further provocation with James, or being left alone in this awful town, so Brock carefully placed the quarter and dime on Angel's forearm.  He took a step back and looked at the coins that didn't move.  Brock wanted to shout, 'Now what?' but thought against it.  Instead, they stood together watching his sister's body on the bed and the two coins. 

"Any moment." 
James's words were hushed.  He kept pointing urgently at the coins.  "It happens fast.  I don't want you to miss it, Brock.  Keep your eyes open.  Trust me.  Keep waiting."

Biting his lip, tucking his hands behind his back and leaning
towards Angel, Brock strained his eyes and patience waiting for the miraculous to happen.

And
it did.   

The coins were gone. 

They vanished. 

Brock replayed what happened in his mind so many times, he couldn't deny it.  The coins were
sucked down into the threads of skin that opened up, pulling the coinage down.  The flesh healed back up as if nothing had ever happened.  Like it was natural. 

Terrified by
the occurrence, James began to speak, coaching Brock so he wouldn't lose his calm. "It's happening to all of us, Brock.  Even me.  Without money, coins, rings, gold, jewelry, anything that has monetary worth, we can't live.  We fall asleep like your poor sister.  And you don't want to fall asleep.  If someone doesn't come along and put money in you, you begin to rot.  You don't get to wake up."

Brock watche
d his sister.

"Wait for it."

Grabbing James's arm and forcing him up against the wall, he shouted, "Why should I wait?  Maybe I'm under a fucking spell, but there's got to be a logical reasoning as to why my sister's arm just sucked down those coins.  I mean where did they go?"

James
didn't retaliate against Brock accosting him.  "Just wait, Brock.  You have to see this before I tell you anything.  I can't convince you it's real until you see it."

Without realizing it,
James urged him to once again study Angel.  "I can't explain much more unless you believe what I'm telling you.  I'm sorry it has to be like this.  There's no other way."