SICKENED (Book One) (The Filthy Apocalypse Series) (3 page)

Nana’s a big lump under the covers. I walk over to her and pat her shoulder. I can’t see anything but her crazy bird’s nest of gray hair. “Hey, you okay?”

Nothing. She doesn’t stir.

“Nana.” I pat her shoulder again.

The lump doesn’t stir. For the first time, I get a strange sensation in my belly.

Fear.

She can’t be…dead. Can she? Did she actually have a head injury and I missed it? Did I do the wrong thing? My mind races.

If she’s dead, who gets the house? Where will I live?

And then she moans and turns her head. One yellow eye blinks open and stares up at me like a dying fish. “Danny,” she rasps.

“You don’t sound so good, Nana.”

“Mmmmmm….” Her lips part and a thick, brown looking tongue slides over them slowly, like an aging Jabba The Hut.

Now I’m worried. “Maybe we should go to the Emergency Room.”

“No.”

“I’m kind of nervous about you. Can I see that finger?”

“I’m fine,” she says, and her voice sounds more like herself momentarily. She blinks and now her eye doesn’t look as insanely yellow either. Maybe I’m just freaking out.

The rash on my balls has clouded my thinking.

“You sure you’re okay?” I ask.

“Yes. Just want to sleep a bit more.”

“Let me get you another glass of water.”

“I’m fine, Danny. Be a good boy and leave Nana alone now.”

“Okay.” I lean in and kiss her withered cheek and it smells of putrid stinking rotten meat. But I figure that’s just because she’s old and in her old sheets and covers, none of which has probably been washed in years.

I snag the ointment and leave the room, confident that I at least tried to do the right thing. She’s still of sound mind, if she doesn’t want to go to the hospital then I can’t force her to do it.

In the bathroom, I take off my pants, spread my legs wide and smear the cream all over my lower abdomen, balls, penis. It looks greasy and glistening and the flesh is read and blistery. Despite my best intentions, I can’t help popping more of the pustules.

There are so many of them.

Before long I’ve exploded dozens of them and my belly and nuts are on fire with stinging pain. I reapply more Neosporin because the wounds are all raw and open.

I know I probably need to go to a walk-in clinic and get tested. Should I call that bitch from last night and ask her what she gave me? I don’t have her number though. I remember where she lives. Maybe Teddy Foreskin will go with me after work.

***

Work is slow tonight. Like slower than any of us has ever seen it.

Teddy and me are playing Go Fish while our boss reads one of his Chopper magazines. He’s really into souped up motorcycles and stuff. His name is Bud and it’s a perfect name for a douche bag like him.

“Do you have any sevens?” I ask.

“Go Fish,” Teddy says. His unshaven face is flabby but somehow youthful, maybe because of his stupidity.

“Don’t lie. I know you have a damn seven, man.”

He shakes his head. I want to smash his teeth in. I grab another card and it’s a King. Now I have three Kings.

“Do you have any fours?”

I hand him my one four.

He grins smugly. “Do you have any Kings?”

I grit my teeth and slowly hand them to him. As he takes them greedily from me, he reveals some of his cards and I catch a glimpse of a seven from the corner of my eye.

“You sleazy fuck!”

“What?”

I slap the cards out of his hand.

Bud turns from his magazine. “Hey! Keep it down, bozos, or no more cards for the rest of the night. I’ll have you picking up trash on every floor of the garage.”

“You had a seven, shithead,” I whisper, mindlessly itching at my crotch.

“Did not.”

“I saw it.”

He picks up his cards with a smirk. “You’re just a sore loser, Danny. You can’t always win man.”

“I don’t care about a game of fucking Go Fish, you dumbass. It’s the cheating I can’t stand.”

He stares at me with no expression. “You seem upset. Is it about the disease you caught from that skank?”

Bud glances at me and shakes his head.

“No, I don’t have anything. It’s all cleared up.” I resist the strong urge to violently itch my balls and stomach. Last I checked everything was worse. Redder, angrier, and more pustules.

Suddenly a car’s tires squeal at the entrance of the garage and a black BMW

speeds past us without even stopping to get a ticket or anything. The three of us stand up and watch it fly by.

“What the hell was that?” Bud jumps on his Segway and chases up after it. He disappears around the corner, his body a stiff exclamation point as he rides the Segway like a black stallion.

Teddy looks at me, his eyes panicked. “Now what?”

“Beats me.”

The two of us sit where we are, on folding chairs on the ground level, waiting for one of our walkie-talkies to come to life. A minute passes. Then two minutes.

Teddy begins whistling eerily.

“Shut up,” I say.

He stops whistling and starts rocking his chair so that the front legs come off the ground.

I check my phone nervously. “Maybe we should go up and have a looksee.”

From outside the garage comes a building wail of sirens. And then voices, panicked, yelling in the near distance. I can’t make out what any of them is saying. All I know is that people sound fearful.

For some reason I instantly think of the Twin Towers.

Even Teddy Foreskin is frightened. He looks at me with quivering cheeks and round eyes. “Shit, man. Something bad is going down.”

Now there are screams coming from one of the upper levels of the garage. Teddy and I both stare up at the ceiling as the awful screams of pain echo down to us.

“Oh, man. You think that’s Bud yelling like that?” Teddy squeaks.

“Fucked if I know.” I stand up and grab the walkie-talkie and click on it. “Bud, come in. You there?”

Static.

“Bud. Copy. Bud!”

The screams abruptly stop as if cut off like a line going dead.

“Maybe he’s trying to bust our balls,” Teddy says. “He’ll come back down laughing his ass off.”

“I don’t think so. Call 911.”

“You—you think?”

“Yeah, I fucking do think. Now call.”

Teddy’s fumbling his phone. He drops it on the concrete. “Shit.” Picks it up, his hands shaking.

I’m still on the walkie-talkie. “Bud! Answer me, Bud!” I have an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don’t want to go up and see what happened to Bud. I don’t want any part of it.

Outside, more shouts. More screams. Sirens are louder. Now car horns are honking in rapid fire.

Ted is hyperventilating. “Yeah, I need a cop here right away. At the Durham Street Garage. 2015 Durham Street…I don’t know what happened. Someone’s screaming. A guy, our boss—we think he’s screaming in the garage. And then he stopped.”

I should have called myself. Ted is making no sense. He’s hyperventilating, his face is shaking like Jell-O. “Ted, just tell them someone’s been assaulted at the garage,”

I say. “They don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“But—“

“Just say it!”

“Someone’s been assaulted up here!” Ted shouts. “Gang violence! Gang fucking violence!” Then he hangs up. “Let’s get the fuck out of this place,” he whispers.

I try the walkie-talkie once more. “Bud. Bud, you there?”

“Fuck Bud! He’s an asshole. I’m not dying for that dickweed!” Ted runs to my car and gets inside. I look around. No movement or sound from the upper levels.

Outside of the entrance, a few cars race by at high speed.

Ted’s got a point, I decide. We called the cops, they can figure out what happened to Bud. But if there’s been some kind of terrorist attack, then this job isn’t worth it. Trying to be a hero isn’t worth it either. I just want to get the hell out of Dodge.

I run to the car and hop in. Teddy Foreskin is waiting for me, his face sweaty and trembling. “Jesus, I feel like I’m going to shit my pants, Danny.”

“Calm down,” I tell him. I start the car and roll down the windows. For a moment, I don’t hear any noise at all. And even the noise from the street doesn’t sound different than normal. “Maybe we’re freaking out over nothing,” I say. “Maybe this is just one big misunderstanding—“

And then a bizarre sound comes from one of the upper levels. I don’t know what it is. A big animal vomiting. Or growling. Something vile and bodily and disgusting. It makes my own insides weak and shivery.

“What the shit is that?” Teddy shrieks. “Did you hear that Danny? Did you?”

“Of course I heard it.” I pull the car out of the garage with the smell of burning rubber in my nostrils.

The street is temporarily empty. I look around because I heard so much noise out here just a few minutes ago and now—nothing. All I see is two turned over trashcans on the corner and what looks like a pair of jeans in the middle of the street. And a sneaker.

I take a left, planning to hit the turnpike.

“Did you see that?” Teddy shouts.

“See what? See what?”

“The foot in the road! The fucking foot!”

“It wasn’t a foot, man. It was a sneaker.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “It wasn’t just a sneaker. There was a foot in the sneaker, and it was cut off just above the ankle. With tendons and shit sprouting out of it.” He leans out the window and pukes everywhere.

“Oh, man. You better not have just puked down the side of my car.”

He heaves again. This time I’m pretty sure I hear splatter against the door.

There’re a few cop cars up ahead. Their lights suddenly come on and both of them pull a U-turn and fly by us.

I keep going, my heart pounding now. I’m certain that Teddy hallucinated that foot situation. All I saw was a sneaker lying in the street.

Teddy lies back in his seat, mouth hanging open, a smear of brown vomit down his chin. He wipes it off with the back of his hand and looks at me with glazed eyes.

“That was sick. So fucking sick.”

“We’re going to be on the turnpike in a minute.”

“Taking it to my place?” he asks.

I glance at him. “I’ve got to check on Nana first.”

“Nana? I think Nana is going to be just fine. Let’s go to my apartment. It’s closer.”

“She wasn’t doing so well earlier, I need to check on her.”

He sighs and shakes his head. “Fine.”

I reach out and turn on the car radio, scanning through the stations. Music, sports, talk radio. No breaking news. “Hey, Teddy, search on your phone for any news. See if anyone knows what the fuck’s going on.”

He pulls out his cell and starts tapping away at it.

We get on The Pike and pretty soon I’m doing well over eighty. “Anything in the news?”

Teddy shakes his head. Then his mouth makes a little round O. “Actually—

here’s something. Boston.com has an article that says there were a series of robberies and assaults tonight outside of the bars on Lansdowne Street.”

“That’s not close enough to our garage.”

“Yeah, but it’s something. Maybe the robbers headed up our way after they left Lansdowne Street.”

“Maybe so.” I think about my Nana getting mugged earlier at the store. Pretty bizarre coincidence that she was assaulted today. I’m sweaty and my rash is itching again at full power. I stuff my hand down my pants and start scratching.

Teddy makes a face. “Gross, dude.”

“Keep your opinions to yourself.”

When we get to my house a few minutes later, the neighborhood is quiet. It feels nice to be back, but I’m still jumpy and nervous. I want to make sure Nana is okay. As I hop out of the car, Teddy just sits in the passenger seat.

“I’ll wait here,” he says. He turns up the radio and pumps the new Kanye West song.

“Have it your way.” I get out and head inside. The house is dark, which is how I left it. Somehow it feels a little creepy after everything that’s gone on tonight.

But what’s actually gone on? I ask myself. Nothing. We heard some noises.

Maybe there was a robbery on Lansdowne Street, some sirens and stuff. Nothing more.

And the severed foot?

There was no severed foot. That was Teddy having a hallucination. Teddy once tried to convince me that he met Matt Damon and beat him in a one-on-one basketball game.

What about how Bud just disappeared, and the screams from the upper level?

It was either a joke or a misunderstanding, I tell myself. Pretty soon my cell will be ringing and Bud will be on the line chewing my ass out.

You don’t really believe that.

I shake off the competing voices in my head and come back to the present.

“Nana?” I call out.

She’s asleep of course. I turn on the lights as I make my way through the living room and hallway and then knock on her bedroom door. “Nana?”

Again no answer. She needs the rest, I tell myself. But my hands are shaking.

I knock again. I slowly open the door and turn the light on. Nana’s bed is empty, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

For a second I actually thought she was going to be dead. I had an image of her lying with her eyes wide open and mouth gaping like that dead fish she seemed to resemble a few hours ago.

She must be in the bathroom.

Only, as I’m turning to go knock on the bathroom door, there’s movement from the closet, rustling. And then she’s coming towards me with her arms out and a crazy look in her eyes.

“Nana, what the fuck are you doing?” I call out as she comes at me.

She doesn’t answer. Her old hands grip my shirt and pull me towards her.

Nana’s mouth opens wide and then clamps down on my shoulder with brutal force. I shout in pain and fear and surprise and try to shove her off me, but she’s much stronger than I gave her credit for.

Her mouth presses harder against me. “Nana, for Christ sake! Get a hold of yourself!”

She makes a sound from deep in her throat. She sounds like a dog trying to eat a thick piece of steak. And she’s so damn strong that I’m getting afraid of what she might do to me if I can’t get away soon.

But I don’t want to hurt her.

I remove one of her claw like hands from my shirt and she forces it back against me. We wrestle around until both of us fall and smash into her armoire. A few porcelain dolls fall to the floor.