Hazardous Materials (4 page)

FOUR

J
arrod jolted awake.

Knock-knock-knock.

He lay sprawled out on his bed, his neck one solid column of agony, screaming at him as he tried to roll over. He tugged at his shirt, and found it glued to his skin by a film of sweat. Harsh splinters of daylight edged through his drapes, shanking his eyes.
Dawn already?
he thought. He must have fallen asleep. He'd had a dream. It was—

Knock-knock-knock.

The door.
Who the hell is knocking this early?
It was the weekend. It was his day off.

Knock-knock-knock.

“Fuck! All right! Give me a minute.” Jarrod lurched for the door, easing off a leg that was more needles than pins. He gripped the knob, ready to put that whole turn-the-other-cheek thing to the test if he opened it to find a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses. He leaned in at the peephole, blinking away the light that skewered him straight in the optic nerve.

It was his friend Geoff, fisheyed by the glass. Jarrod inched the door open. Daylight washed over him like a wave. He staggered back, nausea wriggling up his throat.

“Dude? Just about to give up. Been knocking for like five minutes.”

“What are you doing here?” Jarrod managed with a small belch, barely able to peel his swollen tongue from the roof of his mouth.

“What are you talking about?” Geoff pushed his way inside. “Thought we were going out.”

“Right, right . . . I forgot.” The truth was, it wasn't that Jarrod had forgotten; it was that he didn't even
remember
.

Geoff was dressed in dark jeans, a striped Oxford shirt, and a velour jacket, his hair plastered back in a slightly fascist cut that was all the rage. Even through the fog, Jarrod had to admit that his friend seemed awfully
put together for such an early hour.

“What time is it?”

“Dude, it's like five o'clock.”

“Can't be. Sun's up.”

“You on the crank or something? Five o'clock . . . in the
p.m
.”

“Five
p.m
.?”

Geoff waved at the air as he walked past Jarrod. “Dude, you reek.”

“Can't be,” he repeated.

“Sorry, bud. You reek. Like
reek
reek.”

Jarrod fanned his shirt, catching a whiff of his own funk. Geoff was right. He didn't just reek.
He stank as if he'd bedded down in a sewer.
But five in the afternoon? That can't be right.
He dug a chunk of sand from one eye, then pulled his phone from his pocket.
4:50
p.m
.
Right there on the screen, along with a listing of four missed calls, three from Geoff and one from Ludwig.

“Whoa!” Geoff said, eyeing the Polybius. “Where did you get that thing? From that shitty job with the porno-stache guy?”

“Yes.”

The screen was black. Jarrod tried to remember when he'd stopped playing, when the game had ended and the dreams had begun. He dug deep but came back with nothing.

“Does it work?” Geoff was already rooting in his pocket for some change.

“No. No, it doesn't.”

Why did I say that?
Jarrod wondered.
Yes
was what he thought he'd said, but his ears heard the same
no
that Geoff's must have.

“Shame.” Geoff walked to the bathroom. Jarrod heard the shower tap twist open with a rusty squeak. A rush of water followed. “Dude, you better hop in that. No way we're pulling trim with you smelling like my uncle Alastair's colostomy bag.”

Jarrod wilted onto his bed, a ring tolling in his ears, bile rising in his throat. He couldn't even imagine submitting to that shower's punishing stream, no matter what he smelled like. And the last thing on his mind was chasing “trim.”

“Dude? You cool?”

“Nope,” Jarrod admitted. “I don't think I can go out tonight, Geoff. I'm broke as that camel . . . you know, the one with the straw and all that.”

“Come on, man. You know I got this.”

Jarrod did know. Geoff had a solid job as a programmer. Nine times out of ten, he'd pick up the tab before Jarrod could even reach for it. The tenth time, he'd pick it up after Jarrod made a halfhearted grab. “. . . I don't know.”

“Come on. Not like you're a charity case. I need a wingman; think of it as freelance work.”

That only made it worse. Was that what he was? A rent-a-friend? A freelance wingman?

“What's going on?”

“I had this nightmare,” Jarrod said, as much to the ceiling as to Geoff. “It was awful. This . . .” He reached into his mind, trying to grasp the images, but they slipped away like silk on satin. “Never mind.” He stood up, clutching his head. Fighting the urge to throw up, he crossed to the sink and poured himself a tumblerful of metallic tap water.

“Don't read too much into nightmares, bro. Nothing there but bad wiring.”

Jarrod drained the cup in a single long swallow and refilled it. And drained that one, too. “I know, but—”

“Ease up on the H-two-O, bro. Save some room in that bladder for beer.”

“Right,” Jarrod said. He dropped the cup into the sink and stumbled toward the bathroom. “Think you can entertain yourself while I clean up?”

“Sure. I'll just whack off thinking about you naked.”

Jarrod shut the door on the image and on Geoff. Steam had fogged the mirror, so he didn't have to face his reflection. He brushed his teeth, twice, and it still tasted as if he'd taken a shit through his mouth. He couldn't shake the dream. The images came at him from odd corners, a piece here, a piece there. The mural. Ludwig. The fire. The demons. The gun. And the boy.

Enough!
he screamed at himself, the thought ricocheting inside his skull.
Just a dream. Get into the shower, and forget it.
He stripped off his sweat-drenched clothes and stepped into the stall. The steaming water felt like teeth, tiny teeth that gnawed at him as the heat sank into his bones.

His mind drifted again to the boy. There'd been a look in his eyes that Jarrod hadn't been able to place until now. It was the same look his brother had had ten years ago, when he'd first come back from Afghanistan. And then again the night during Jarrod's sophomore year of college when he was home on break. The night they all went out to the movies. All of them except Simon, who'd said he needed to stay home and “take care of something.”

His brother didn't leave a note. That might have been the worst part. Maybe he'd meant to end it in silence, but it had been an empty silence. A sucking void of silence. It left questions that were never going to be answered. Jarrod knew that now, even if his parents never would. No amount of conjecture or statistics about postwar suicides was ever going to fill that silence.

Jarrod stayed in the shower until the hot water ran out. And after that, he stayed until the cold numbed his skin to rubber. He put on fresh clothes and emerged from the bathroom a new man, or at the very least a clean
one.

He was still shaking the last of the water from one ear when he saw that the Polybius was on—the screen a hypnotic swirl of vector lines.

“Prepare to take aim,” came the stilted computer voice.

“Thought you said this thing doesn't work,” Geoff said, turning to face the game.

“It doesn't.”

“Looks like it works to me.” Geoff pulled a quarter from his pocket, and before Jarrod could stop him, it was already kissing the slot.

“Wait! Don't!”

Geoff wasn't listening. He
plinked
the coin in, and—

bleep

The screen blinked out.

“Ahh! Man! That sucks!”

“Told you it didn't work.” Jarrod yanked the power cord from the wall. Time to unplug that dinosaur before it ended up burning his lovely shithole to the ground.
Just like in the dream.
“Must've been a short or something. Putting the stupid thing up on eBay tomorrow.”
Before it can do any more damage.

“Let's at least open it up and get my quarter back out.”

“I
told
you not to put any money in it.” Jarrod dropped the cord to the ground. “I'm keeping your quarter.”

“You can keep . . . my nuts . . . in your mouth.” Geoff's eyes landed on the screen. “That's weird. Thought you unplugged it.”

“I did.”

The credit screen was still up.
Sinneschlöshen 1981
. Jarrod felt a twitch shudder through him, gripping him with a strong urge to stay and play the game, to shuffle Geoff off and lose himself in the Polybius's helix of vector lines.

“Must be that short you were talking about. Come on, ladies awaiting,” Geoff said, turning for the door.

Jarrod watched the screen credit collapse into the familiar flickering white dot. But before it did, he saw something else, or
thought
he saw something else, perhaps.

die demon die

Case 744-AZ “POLYBIUS” Division Internal Document 264-B Page 7 of 45

Subject:
Geoffrey Reese
Interrogator:
Agent Sophie Knight

KNIGHT – REESE

(CONT'D PREVIOUS PAGE)

motivations?

A
 Look, I only knew Jarrod for something like two years when all of that went down. OK? Not like we grew up together.

Q
 But you would have described your relationship at the time as close, correct?

A
 At the time? Yes.

Q
 But not after?

A
 Well, there really didn't get to be an after, did there? Not after what happened in Times Square. Not after—

Q
 Clarification for the record. After the initial incident?

A
 You mean the bridge?

Q
 Correct. What were your initial thoughts?

A
 Honestly, I don't remember what I thought at the time. Probably that it had something to do that job he had. That something he breathed in messed with his circuitry. I know that's what he thought.

Q
 This is what Mr. Foster told you?

A
 Not in so many words.

Q
 Please use Mr. Foster's exact words, to the

(CONT'D NEXT PAGE)

FIVE

N
othing he and Geoff did that night could take Jarrod's mind off the dream. Not the deep-fried bacon-wrapped hot dogs they ate. Not the cans of suds they washed them down with. Not the shots they put away in the hidden speakeasy on the other side of the hot dog joint's
Get Smart
phone booth—all of it on Geoff's dime.

Nothing. Not the girls Geoff dragged over to their table. Not the outfits those girls wore, the ones that were too small and too thin for November. Nothing—no amount of alcohol, fried food, or chances to get laid—could get him to forget the dream or his desire to be once more lost in the Polybius's web of red and green vector lines. It was a fever, and there was only one way that fever was going to break.

“You okay, dude?” Geoff said, leaning over the table, the girls who flanked him giggling from their leather banquette.

“What?”

“I said, you okay?”

All three of them were staring at him as if he'd grown an extra limb. “Not sure.” He excused himself and headed to the bathroom. He stared into the mirror. So what if he wanted to go back and play? Would it really matter that much? He'd had a bad dream. So what?

He left and didn't turn back.

Less than an hour and he was back at his apartment. He was back in the arms of the Polybius. He dropped in his quarter. The voice came: “Prepare to take aim.” He twisted the knob, slapped at the button, blasting the spider creatures as they climbed the cylinder. With each kill, a wash of light filled the room, bathing him in glory. And before he knew it, he was spinning away, back into the dream that wasn't quite a dream.

LUDWIG WAS ON
fire again. The whole rink was on fire, but now it burned with a heat that could not touch him. Not him and not the boy.

Again, they gazed at the mural. “You see them now,” the boy said. It wasn't a question.

Jarrod nodded. What he'd thought were shadows now moved with the confidence of solid things. “They can change,” he said, knowing. “They can be what we want.”

“They can only make us think that,” the boy corrected. “Underneath, they are still the same. Underneath, they are still demons.”

die demon die

Look deeper. Look up. Look in the trees.”

Jarrod obeyed. Among the branches and leaves, he saw movement—scales, slitted eyes, and forked tongues.

“You have to help us,” the boy whispered, tugging Jarrod close. His breath was soft, warm, and familiar.

“What can
I
do? I'm nobody special.”

“You
see
,” the boy insisted. “You see now, and that's enough. You see, and that
makes
you special.”

“Special,” Jarrod echoed. The flames had grown, eating everything except them, the mural, and the arcade. “Who are you?”

“You
need
to see. You need to prepare.”

“Prepare for what?”

“Prepare to take aim.”

Jarrod looked down at his hand, and there, again, was the gun.

“Come.” The boy took Jarrod's hand. Suddenly, the rink was gone, and they were high above the clouds. A twinkling skyscape spread out beneath them. Jarrod recognized it. Manhattan. Home.

“This is what you have to save,” the boy said.

“Home.”

“The demons are coming to take your home. To take all of our homes. To make us slaves. To make us food.”

Jarrod gazed at the city, and with eyes that only a dream could gift him with, he saw everything. He saw the demons walking among us. He saw them wearing human faces, drinking human blood. He saw them using our own lust to enslave us, using what we most desire to lure us to our doom.

He turned to face the boy, and he saw that look again, the look that had haunted him for ten years. “Simon?”

The boy did not answer.

Jarrod knew what he had to do. He raised his gun—

“FREEZE! DON'T MOVE
a muscle, asshole!”

A light as bright as the sun pinned Jarrod, drilling into his mind. He shook it off, twisting away from it.

“I said . . . don't . . . fucking . . .
move
!”

Jarrod stumbled forward. His foot hit nothing. Beneath him was only empty air and a sliver of river far, far below. “What? Where?”

“I said, freeze!” The voice belonged to a policeman. His tactical flashlight was trained on Jarrod's face. So were the five others behind him. So were their guns. “Down! Now! Hands behind your head!”

Jarrod obeyed, lying down on the cold stone slab. He could see Manhattan's illuminated skyline as they cuffed him. It hit him that he was on top of the Brooklyn Bridge's west tower. He was being
arrested
on the top of the bridge's west tower, to be exact. The East River churned beneath him, and Jarrod fought with every ounce of nerve to keep from throwing up. He failed, emptying the contents of his stomach onto the shoes of the nearest cop.

“Ahh! Thanks a fucking lot, pal. Should just roll you off the side.”

Jarrod almost wished they had then, and he wished so even more as they inched him down the steep curve of the bridge's main support cable, pistols pointed at his head the whole way down.
Just wait till the folks find out about this
, he thought.
“Couldn't come home for Thanksgiving,” one of them might say.
“Too busy trying to throw yourself off a bridge? Too busy ‘taking care of something' like your brother?”
He could hear the recrimination. He could see the tears. And he knew that if he died on that bridge, it would be the only way—in their eyes, at least—that he'd ever be like his brother.

The cops bundled him into the back of a police van, and he caught one last glimpse of the bridge. The crisscross pattern of its cables, lit up by floodlights, looked strangely familiar. Comforting and familiar, like the vector lines of the Polybius.

HE SAT CUFFED
to an old steel desk at the Seventh Precinct, as a caffeine-hopped detective screamed at him. “You want me to toss your ass down in the Tombs? Give you some time to think about what the hell you were trying to pull with that stunt? That what you want?”

“It wasn't a stunt, officer,” Jarrod pleaded. “I think . . . I think I might have been trying to kill myself.”
But why?
he wondered, even as he said it.
Because of a dream? Because of a freaking video game?

“You
think
you might have been trying to kill yourself,” the detective scoffed. “You
think
? That's not how it works. You try to kill yourself or you don't.”

“I know how suicide works.”

But the detective rolled on, unheeding. “You don't
think
that you might have been trying. You fucking
try
it. And I've never seen anybody try it from the top of the bridge. Do the job just as well from the deck. You wanna do it, that is. Nah, this was a stunt.”

“Honest, officer—”

“Shut it! This was a stunt, admit it. You wanted to feel special. You wanted to show off. Tell you what, why don't I just give you a night down in the Tombs to get friendly with some of the hard-asses down there? Get yourself a new boyfriend? Bet he'll make you feel
real
special.”

Jarrod shook his head. Nothing he said was going to change this guy's mind, and he knew it. “Could I have some water, please?”

“Water? You want water?” The detective turned before Jarrod could even nod and filled a paper cone from the cooler a few steps away. He thrust the water half an inch away from Jarrod's face. “You want a drink?” He crushed the cone in his hand. The water spilled down his fist, and Jarrod could have cried. “Then give me some answers.”

“I wish I could.” And Jarrod did, more than anything. “Believe me. I really do. But I can't.” He shook his head. Nothing about this made one single bit of sense. One minute, he was playing a video game, and the next, he was getting ready to swan dive off the Brooklyn Bridge.

No . . . that wasn't true. In between those minutes, there had been the dream. In between those minutes, he'd been shown something. But just as before, when he reached for the images, they slithered deep into the murk of his mind. Slithered away like—

“You think this is some kind of game?” The detective pounded on the desk, rattling his stapler and coffee mug. “What is it with you hipsters, anyway? You got any idea how much these little stunts cost taxpayers? No, you don't. Because you're probably not
paying
any frickin' taxes. Living off Mommy and Daddy's trust fund. You make me sick!”

“I wasn't pulling any stunt. Honest. I was asleep, I think. Sleepwalking, maybe.”

“Sleepwalking?” The detective rolled his eyes. “First you
think
you're suicidal. Then you
think
you're sleepwalking. Sleepwalking! To the top of the Brooklyn Bridge!”

“I know, I know. Honest, I know how crazy it sounds. But I don't . . . Look, I don't have a trust fund, okay? I don't have anything.” And while that was closer to the truth than Jarrod would have liked, it wasn't
exactly
the truth. He did have something. He had the Polybius. He had the dreams. He had the visions. He had . . . he had . . .

He had to prepare.

Jarrod balled both fists. He had to get a grip. That's what he had to do. Time enough to figure out what was going on inside his head once he'd gotten out of these handcuffs. “Honest, officer. No trust fund. I live in a closet, and I work in hazmat removal. I don't know, maybe I breathed in something. Something bad. Chemicals, maybe.”

The detective rubbed his shadowed chin. “Hazmat removal? Like asbestos and stuff?”

“Among other things, yeah,” Jarrod admitted, wishing that he hadn't mentioned what he'd been breathing in. Wishing, past that, that he had a cigarette. If ever there was a time for a cigarette, it was now.

“Asbestos,” the detective repeated, his tone softer. “That sounds pretty rough.”

“It's a living.”
Sort of.
“Could I please have some water now?”

“Yeah, fine.” The detective filled another paper cone and handed it to Jarrod. He drank greedily, but it barely slaked his sandpaper throat.

“You want some aspirin or anything?”

“You wouldn't have . . .” Jarrod started, already hating himself for the words about to escape his lips. “You wouldn't happen to have a cigarette, would you?”

“Nah, gave it up years ago. Stevie might, want me to—”

“No,” Jarrod blurted. “Stupid of me to ask. I quit, too. Just . . . you know.”

“Oh, trust me, I know,” the detective said. “You do your best to keep them out of your mouth, okay? And no more sleepwalking. Tie yourself to the bed frame if you have to.” He bent down and clicked open Jarrod's cuffs. Then he wrote something on a slip of paper and shoved it toward him. “Jail's overcrowded. Here's your arraignment date. Don't make us come looking for you. And you might want to think about taking some time off.”

“Thank you, detective,” Jarrod said, sweeping up the note. “I will, I promise. Thank you.”

“No job's worth your life, son,” he said, with a pensive neck scratch that made Jarrod wonder if it was Jarrod's job he meant by that comment or his own. And before he knew it, his mind went again to Simon. It was the job that had really killed his brother, no matter what the coroner's report said.

“Now, go on. Call for someone to pick you up before I change my mind.” The detective fished a quarter from his slacks and dropped it onto the desk. “Pay phone's down the hall. Probably the last one in the city that still works.”

Jarrod picked up the quarter. As he felt the metal, cool against his skin, the last thing he wanted to do was use it to call for a ride. He wanted to drop it into the Polybius. He wanted to play. Even after all that had happened . . . he wanted to play.