Most men can't make it through even five words of what I'm about to tell you (7 page)

Franky, oblivious to his situation, did not follow these instructions. He started to say something about us not moving any

closer.

I lunged.

I threw my hands toward the little monster. I never made it. Franky did something to me that dropped me to my knees,

gasping for air. It was some kind of chop to the throat and man, it worked.

I looked up from my knees and for the second time tried to warn Franky and for the second time I was unable to. As I

watched, the bug thing crawled around to Franky's chest and then, in a blur, burrowed into his mouth.

The monster now had the cop's attention. He flung himself to the ground in front of me, his head thunking painful y against

the squad car's door on the way down. Franky clawed at his mouth with his hands, gasping, choking, spasming.

I backed away, crawling backward on my ass through the leaves. As I retreated John advanced, saying, "Franky! Franky!

Hey!"

Franky wasn't responsive. His arms were locked in front of him, fingers curled, like he was being electrocuted. John

turned to me and said, "We gotta get him to the hospital!"

I sat there on the ground, frozen, wishing I could just go back inside and crawl under the covers again.

Illustration b
y Nedroid

John threw open both back doors of the cop car. He dug his hands under Franky's shoulders.

"Dave! Help me!"

I got to my feet and took Franky's ankles. We got him into the back seat of the squad car, John backing out through the

opposite door. We closed him up and John took the wheel. I sat down beside him and watched as John hunted around

the console for a switch. He found it, flipped it. A siren pierced the night.

He threw it in gear and tore down the street, red and blue flashing off every window in the neighborhood as we raced past.

We blew through an intersection. I pulled on my seatbelt and braced my hands against the dash.

"That thing came in
my house
, John! It came into
my house!
"

"I know, I know."

"I woke up and that thing was biting me. In my bed, John!"

"Dude, I'm tryin' to drive."

We turned the corner, rounding a closed restaurant with "FOR SALE" painted on the windows in white shoe polish. We

passed the blackened shell of a hardware store that had burned down last year, we passed a trailer park and a used car

dealership and a 24-hour adult book store and a skanky motel that never had any vacancies because lots of poor people

lived there full-time.

"It was in my house, John! Do you get what I'm saying here? That thing ain't from this world, John. Franky can't even see

it. It was on his face and he couldn't see it. It ain't from this world but it was
in my house.
"

I felt my body push against the arm rest on the door and heard squealing tires. John was taking a corner car chase-style.

Two blocks up I could see the concrete parking garage for the hospital, the lit windows of the hospital itself looming up

behind it. I turned and looked through the wire screen separating us from Franky, who was laying motionless across the

back seat, eyes open. His chest was heaving so he wasn't dead.

"Almost there, man! Hold on, okay?"

I turned to John.

"It crawled in his mouth! Did you see it?"

"I saw it."

"Are they gonna be able to help him? You real y think the doctors can do somethin'?"

We squealed into the parking lot and followed a sign that said "EMERGENCY" and skidded to a stop in a covered drive-

up to the emergency room. We threw open the back door and started dragging Franky through a set of glass doors that

slid open for us automatically. Before we got five feet inside, a couple of guys, orderlies I guess, came and started barking

questions at us that we had no answers to. Somebody rolled up a gurney.

John started talking, telling the guys that the cop had some kind of a seizure, that he had something in his throat,

definitely to check his throat.

I saw a flicker of red and blue lights out of the corner of my eye. Outside the glass doors I saw a second cop car turning in

fast, across the parking lot. They probably saw me and John tearing ass through town and followed us here.

The orderlies were rolling away Franky and a third guy showed up, a doctor I guess, taking his vitals. I turned to John to

tell him about the second cop car but he had already spotted it. He stepped out through the double doors, onto the

sidewalk near Franky's parked patrol car. I fol owed him out.

"Think we should hang around?" He asked.

"I don't think so. I got that thing with those parking tickets."

"Dude, they're gonna come get us. They'll wanna know what happened."

"Nah, I don't think this thing's gonna be a big deal. Probably send us a nice card for getting Franky to the hospital. Come on."

We took off walking, since it didn't seem wise to go back home in the stolen cop car. We went around the edge of the lot

as the approaching police car zipped past us. We watched as it skidded to a stop next to Franky's vehicle and two cops

spilled out and went inside.

We silently cut across the lawn, crossed a street with a traffic light blinking yellow. We cut through the darkened parking

lot of a chinese restaurant cal ed Panda Buffet, which did not in fact serve panda meat as far as we knew.

John lit a cigarette and asked, "So what do you think that thing was?"

"How would I know?"

"You think it came from, you know. The other place?"

I didn't answer. I found myself scanning the dark plane of the parking lot, studying the shadows. Looking for movement. I

noticed my steps were carrying me unconsciously toward the pool of light under the next street lamp.

We passed into the parking lot of a tire place with a ten-foot tall tire mascot standing by the street. The thing was made of

real tires, with mufflers for arms and a chrome wheel for a head. Somebody had used white spray paint to draw a penis on

front of it. We were behind it but I knew the penis was there because I drove past it every day.

John said, "So that thing crawled into his mouth, what do you think it was doing?"

I didn't bother answering that. I wanted quiet, wanted to process this. Knowing what it meant but not wanting to admit it. I

wil ed John to stay quiet. Instead he asked the question I was straining not to.

"You think it's starting again?"

I stopped, and at that moment a blur of red and blue zipped by. Cop car, lights flashing. Thirty seconds later, another one.

We watched them go. John said, "Man, these guys real y gather around one of their own, don't they?"

"Maybe there's something else going on. Bank being robbed."

"No, look. They're turning off down at the hospital. Emergency entrance."

We walked on, hesitant, a sick feeling in my gut.

Two more cop cars flew by. One had different markings, state cop I guess.

"John?"

"I don't know, man."

"Let's get home, we'll see if they got anything about it on TV."

He turned, squinted in that direction.

"Can't see much. We'l get a better view if we just walk back down there."

"We'd just be in the-"

I stopped at the sound of what I thought was a distant scream. From the direction of the hospital? Maybe not a scream, a

bird screeching or something. Sure.

John said, "You hear that?"

"No."

Another cop car zipped past. How many of those did we have in this town?

"Come on, Dave."

John took off walking back the way we came, toward the hospital, toward the crisis we had just worked so hard to pry

ourselves away from. I stood my ground. I didn't want to go back there, but - and I'm not ashamed to admit this - I also

didn't want to walk back to my place alone, in the dark. Not in this town. I'm not stupid.

I raised a hand to touch the spot on my eye where I had been bitten, raw flesh under a Band-Aid. I winced as the pain in

my shoulder stopped me before I could get my hand up there. The chunk taken out of my skin there was getting sorer by

the minute.

I was about to tell John he could go fuck himself when-

*Pop! Pop-Pop!*

-The sound of distant gunshots, like firecrackers.

What the hel ?!?

John started jogging back across the tire store parking lot, toward the hospital. I let out a breath, then fol owed.

We arrived to see that al hel had broken loose at the local hospital. Six cop cars were parked haphazardly around the

emergency room entrance, lighting up the parking lot like a dance floor.

Wait - seven cop cars now. And there was an ambulance, its rear doors open. The sliding doors at the entrance had

apparently been locked open because they didn't move as people came running out, most of them with their heads down

like they were running the trenches in a war zone. One lady came out in aqua blue scrubs, her blonde hair matted down

with blood on the entire left side of her head.

People were standing everywhere. There was a clump of people on the far side of the lawn that included three or four

wheelchairs, maybe 50 yards from the building. It looked like they were gathering patients there, getting them away from

the hospital. One cop was talking to them and gesturing with his hand, karate chopping the air with each barked

command. His other hand held a pistol pointed at the sky.

There were other people on the lawn, milling around, some of them probably people from the neighborhood who heard

the commotion, others looked to be hospital staff.

*POP! POP! POP!POP!POP!*

Around us, a hundred heads ducked simultaneously at the sound of the gunshots, even muffled by the walls of the

building. A woman screamed. Half a dozen more shots from inside.

John, possessing a genetic defect that makes him walk toward danger, strode down toward where it looked like some

cops were trying to set up a perimeter around the chaos. Somewhere, Charles Darwin nodded and smiled a knowing

smile.

We came upon two cops blocking the sidewalk, a fat black cop with glasses and an older guy whose face was al

mustache. John stepped off the sidewalk as if to walk right past them on the grass. Black Cop put out an hand and told us

to stop in words that were polite and in a tone that suggested if we didn't stop he would beat us so hard we would travel

backward in time.

We backed off, stepping aside as paramedics hustled the bleeding head lady past us. She was crying, holding her head,

saying over and over again, "HE WOULDN'T DIE! HE JUST WOULDN'T DIE! THEY SHOT HIM OVER AND OVER

AGAIN AND HE-"

She broke down into sobs.

John tapped my shoulder and pointed. A boxy truck was pul ing up, blue with white letters on the side. I thought it was

some kind of paddy wagon but when the doors opened, a SWAT team spilled out.

Holy shit.

They al went inside the building, except for two guys. One ran toward the parking garage with a long rifle on his back, the

other disappeared around the side of the building.

John moved off to the left, off the sidewalk and up onto the lawn area in front of the building. There were some benches

there, and a 10 foot-tal bronze statue of a lady in old-timey nurses' garb. Florence Nightingale? I fol owed John and we

joined a smal crowd of onlookers. That raised spot gave a good vantage point of the emergency entrance where all the

action was going down, and people were congregating there.

Gunshots. Rapid shots, dozens of them. Gasps from the audience. I could barely see down there but I could make out

people running out of the building, frantic. One lady fel down and got kicked hard in the face. Then, a man came out

supported on the shoulders of two hospital staff, his right leg missing from the knee down. Or at least that's what it looked

like, keep in mind we were stil far enough away that the door looked about the size of a postage stamp. That's why I can't

be totally sure about what happened next.

First, a man in a black SWAT outfit came running out of the building, screaming something. I couldn't hear him from where

we were standing but to this day John insists the man was screaming, "Run away!"

Then, shots. Loud, sharp, close. Next came the screams. Screams from every single human being close enough to the

lobby to see what was going on. Three cops near the entrance ducked behind the parked patrol cars and trained guns on

the sliding doors.

A man lumbered out and every gun barrel followed him.

It was officer Franky Burgess.

He was wearing his cop uniform pants and a red shirt... no, that's not right. It was a white undershirt, stained with blood

over 80% of its area. I was a long way away, like I said, but there was a pink blob on his head and I'm pretty sure he had

been shot there.

People crowded around, blocking my view. John craned his neck and said, "It's Franky. Everybody's got their guns on

him, like he's dangerous. Did he shoot all those people? Hey, move, buddy. I can't see."

Frustrated, John went to the nurse statue and, to my horror, started climbing on it. He got up to where both hands were on

her shoulders, his shoes planted on her forearms. Florence's face was planted in John's crotch.

I waved at him. "John! Get down from there!"