Bad Glass Read online

  As soon as it came into view, Mac darted ahead and knelt down by the pile of clothing. He quickly sorted through the entire stack, carefully lifting and turning each neatly squared garment, as if he were expecting to find Amanda hidden inside some random fold. When he reached the bottom of the pile, he glanced up and stared fixedly at the mouth of the tunnel. There was a line of perfect footprints leading into the darkness.

  “No way,” Floyd said, taking a startled step back as soon as he saw the dark hole in the side of the hill. “There’s no way I’m going into that fucking hole!”

  “You don’t have to,” I said, my voice low, a damaged rumble. “You can stay out here if you like.”

  Sabine reached out and put a comforting hand on Floyd’s shoulder, at the same time flashing me a confused look, surprised at the vehemence of his reaction. Charlie stayed back near the copse of trees, a good dozen feet away.

  It was just the five of us.

  I’d searched the entire house before we left, but it looked like Taylor had performed another one of her early-morning vanishing acts; she must have left sometime before dawn, as I lay asleep in her bed. And what was that about? I wondered. Why was she constantly disappearing without word or explanation? Frankly, it was starting to piss me off. Maybe it was my fault; maybe I’d scared her away. But after our night with Danny—and I blushed briefly at that thought—it felt like she was toying with me, using me to slake her own inscrutable desires, then disappearing as soon as I needed her leadership and support.

  She would have been able to keep Mac in check, I told myself. She would have gotten to the bottom of this.

  Sabine lifted my video camera to her eye and started filming, focusing on Mac as he hovered over the pile of abandoned clothing. She’d grabbed the camera as we were heading out the front door; I wasn’t sure why. Did she consider this part of some elaborate art project? Or had she become infected with my compulsion, my need to document and probe the fraying edges of reality?

  “She must be freezing,” Sabine said, noting the obvious. “She’s naked. In the snow.”

  Mac let out a strangled sob. It was the sound of sudden dawning horror, as if the thought hadn’t yet occurred to him. He let Amanda’s jeans tumble from his fingers, then abruptly bolted toward the mouth of the tunnel.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, and started after him. I gestured for Sabine to follow. “C’mon. Before he gets away.”

  Mac didn’t even hesitate when he reached the dark hole, plunging headlong across its threshold. We followed twenty feet back.

  This time, I came prepared. I paused at the mouth of the tunnel and pulled my flashlight from my pocket. The beam illuminated a wide swath of muddy earth. Here at the entrance, the floor had been worked into a narrow trough, and I could see the imprint of fist-size paws all along its perimeter. The enclosed space reeked of wet, musty fur, a savage primal musk.

  Before the thought of those giant sharp-toothed wolves could root me to the spot, I ducked and started forward. Sabine followed at my heels. I could hear her boots squelching in the mud behind me.

  “Mac!” I called. My voice was shaky. I wanted to reach Mac as fast as possible, but that desire couldn’t override my fears. There were horrible things living in these tunnels—I knew that—and I could imagine countless eyes popping open at the sound of my voice. Amanda’s oddly jointed wolves. Floyd’s apparition. Other things—much, much worse.

  “Mac!” I called again. My voice didn’t echo in the dark.

  After a couple of seconds, the walls disappeared on both sides, and I pulled to an abrupt stop. Sabine collided with my back and let out a loud curse as the camcorder made hard contact with her face: “Motherfucker!”

  “Shhhhhh,” I whispered, then swung the flashlight left and right.

  The tunnel opened up into three different passageways here, and all three looked exactly the same; they were the same size, had the same rough walls, and displayed the same level of use on their muddy floors. Which one leads to Devon’s house? I wondered idly. I glanced around, but couldn’t see a single wire embedded in the walls.

  “What the fuck is this?” Sabine asked, a note of awe in her voice. “Out there, I thought it was just a cave, but … fuck!”

  “Shhhhhh,” I prompted again, cocking my ear toward each of the tunnels in turn. I thought I heard a scraping sound—a distant sandpaper scratch—down the middle passageway. I shone my light forward and moved ahead.

  Mac was running, I thought. He was frantic. There’s no way we’ll catch him.

  I was just about to slow down, to reassess the situation, when Mac’s bright clothing resolved in the darkness ahead.

  Here the tunnel ended in a wall of dirt, a frozen cascade blocking the entire passageway. Mac was on his knees, digging like a dog; his hands were scrabbling at the cave-in, pulling fistfuls of dirt into the tunnel behind him. He had his ear pressed into the mud, and his eyes were closed.

  “Do you hear her?” he asked, his voice a tiny whisper. “Do you hear her singing?”

  Sabine and I both fell silent. I held my breath and listened for Amanda’s voice.

  There was nothing. The only sound I heard was the sound of Mac’s hands moving in the dirt.

  After a tense handful of seconds, Mac jumped to his feet and headed back into the darkness, pushing us out of the way. “There were branches,” he said, his voice filled with terrified urgency, “farther up the tunnel. I’ve got to get around. She needs me!” Then he sprinted back the way we had come.

  Sabine and I exchanged a worried look, then followed him into the darkness. He quickly escaped the reach of my flashlight beam. By the time we made it back to the junction, there was no way to figure out which direction he’d gone. On a whim, I chose the right-hand passageway, pulling Sabine along behind me.

  This tunnel ended about fifteen feet in. The first time my flashlight beam swept across the cave-in, I thought I saw Mac standing there, his hands pressed up against the dirt. But it was just a momentary illusion. I blinked, and there was nothing there, nothing but dirt and empty space. Sabine and I turned and retraced our steps back to the other tunnel. The left-hand tunnel went about thirty feet in before it, too, ended in a cave-in. Mac wasn’t there, either.

  “He must have gone out,” Sabine said, scanning the dirt with the camcorder. She sounded confused, uncertain. “Maybe he missed the junction in the dark and just kept on running.”

  I nodded and said “yeah, yeah, yeah,” but I already knew that wasn’t the case. I knew we wouldn’t find him.

  I’m not sure where this certainty came from. Maybe it was the flash I saw in the other tunnel, that momentary vision—seeing him standing there at the dead end, his hands up, trying to push his way through the cave-in—but I knew that he hadn’t missed the turn. I knew he hadn’t run outside.

  No. Mac had found a way in.

  Sabine and I walked the tunnels several times, but we found absolutely no sign of Mac. He was gone. Charlie and Floyd had been standing at the entrance the entire time, and they assured us that he hadn’t made it out.

  He was just gone. As far as I could tell, he’d followed Amanda down into the dark.

  I failed them. I let them go.

  In fact, I don’t think I could have handled the situation any worse. Amanda had come to me in the middle of the night—I remembered that now, putting her face to that faceless voice—shaking me, looking for my help, and I’d ignored her. I’d just rolled over and buried my head in the pillow. And now Mac had slipped right through my fingertips.

  I could have stopped them, I was sure. I could have saved them.

  But I didn’t.

  It was a horrible feeling, this impotence. It seemed like everything I touched turned to shit.

  I wanted to bury my hands deep in my pockets and never take them out. I wanted to run away. I wanted to do something to protect the world from my horrible, infectious failure.

  We abandoned the search without saying a word. I was so frustrated, I just tu
rned around and walked away.

  Sabine, Charlie, and Floyd followed.

  Photograph. October 21, 07:25 P.M. Spray-paint spiders:

  Two flashlight beams illuminate a weathered brick wall. The shutter speed is set a bit too slow, and there is blurring around the staggered bricks; sharp lines of mortar have been rendered dull. The bottom half of a window is visible at the top part of the frame, and there’s a glimpse of sidewalk down at the bottom. Otherwise, the picture is all faded red brick punctuated by lines of glossy black paint. And there is a hole in the center of the frame—a ragged crater, punched through the wall in some gesture of extreme violence.

  And crawling out of the hole: a swarm of spray-paint spiders.

  It is a vast army of simple shapes, sketched out in black lines—multijointed legs sprouting out from squat bodies. They are densest near the hole—where individual limbs reach out from the shattered crevice—and become sparser as they near the edges of the frame.

  Only one spray-paint spider has made it all the way up to the window frame. Its bottom half is sprayed across brick and wood, and its top half is gone, vanished through a crack in the dirty glass.

  The sun was blindingly bright after the dark tunnel. It struck diamond flares off the melting snow, dazzling my eyes. There was a smell of electricity in the air, and I could once again taste copper on my tongue; it was the same sensation that had greeted me on my way into the city.

  It felt like a different world out here, in the sun, and none of it seemed real. All around me this bright, still city: nothing but plastic and cellophane, a dime-store mask hiding the true face of the world. And it was a dark face, underneath it all, distorted with disease and rot, with eyes closed and mouth wide open, leaking pure midnight ichor.

  We walked back to the house in silence. Floyd spent the first couple of minutes shaking an empty pill bottle; then, as we crossed the bridge to North Spokane, he pulled his arm back and launched it out into the river. He moved with a slow, exaggerated grace. His eyes were unfocused, hidden beneath drooping lids.

  “What do we do, Dean?” Charlie asked as we rounded the corner to our block. “Amanda and Mac just disappeared … into thin air. So what do we do now?” His voice was a quavering whisper. He seemed far less confident—less substantial—without his computer in front of him.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “If you’ve got any bright ideas, feel free to chime in.” I couldn’t keep the annoyance out of my voice. This was just about the last thing I wanted to hear: people turning to me for answers.

  “Where’s Taylor?” Sabine asked. “She’ll know. She always knows.” And somehow, this seemed a million times worse than Charlie’s question.

  I shot Sabine a dirty look and headed straight for our front door.

  There was water dripping from the eaves when I mounted the porch. The day was getting warmer, and the snow was transforming into slush. Before long, the streets would once again be bare. No more snowball fights, I thought, remembering Amanda and Mac playing in the backyard. The memory drove a cold spike through the middle of my stomach.

  I continued up to the privacy of my room, shutting the door behind me.

  I sat down on the futon mattress and dropped my head into my hands. I felt awful. I’d woken up in a rush of adrenaline—Mac pulling me out of Taylor’s bed—and I’d spent the whole morning so far jumping from one long adrenaline spike to another. Now that that ride was over, however, and the chemical rush was gone, a massive wave of sickness came flooding in, and suddenly I felt nauseated, hungover. My head was throbbing. My injured hand was on fire.

  And Taylor wasn’t there for me, I remembered. The thought popped into my head unbidden, washed ashore on that wave of misery. She ran away in the middle of the night. She ran away … from me.

  I gritted my teeth and lashed out, kicking the back of the folding chair. It skidded into the sewing table on the other side of the room and collapsed in a loud clatter, falling flat like a deflated lung.

  I seethed for a full minute, gritting my teeth and clenching my hands. Then I got up and righted the chair.

  After I calmed down, I settled into the futon and got a couple of hours of sleep. It was a restless sleep, tainted by pain and nausea. I don’t remember my dreams, but I’m sure they were bad. Dark tunnels and singing voices. Expressive eyes peering out from plaster and wood. And Taylor, always Taylor, retreating from my touch.

  The light was still bright when I woke up, shining a midafternoon orange against my closed blinds. My head still ached, and my wounded hand felt hot and wet.

  I slowly unwrapped my bandages, wincing at the change in pressure against my flesh. The smell hit me even before I was done: a gamy vinegar tang that turned my stomach. I opened the blinds and raised my hand into the light. The whole hand was swollen. There were red tendrils snaking up my forearm, fleeing the gray withered holes—crucifixion holes—one in my palm and two in the back of my hand.

  My hand was infected. Badly infected—mutant wolf—infected. And I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

  I needed antibiotics.

  There were only two places I could think to go for help: the military, which would almost certainly get me kicked out of the city, if not arrested, or Mama Cass. And really, that wasn’t much of a choice. Still, I found myself conflicted. Taylor had made her dislike for Mama Cass perfectly clear.

  But she can’t be worse than the alternative, I told myself: military scrutiny, expulsion, imprisonment. Besides, if Weasel’s any indication, Taylor’s not exactly the best judge of character.

  I left my hand unwrapped, careful with the sensitive flesh as I shrugged into my jacket and tucked it away in my pocket. Then I slung my backpack over my shoulder and fled the room, quickly making my way down the stairs and out the front door.

  Sabine called after me from the kitchen: “Dean! Where are you going?” There was surprise and concern in her voice, but it was cut short as I slammed the door shut behind me.

  It was about four o’clock when I reached the restaurant, and the sun was almost gone. There were a half dozen people crowded around the entrance and another twenty inside, seated at the mismatched tables. I didn’t recognize any of the customers, but some of them must have recognized me … and remembered my camera. As soon as I entered, a ripple of whispers spread throughout the crowd, and a large number turned my way, fixing me with wary, suspicious eyes. One woman got up from her seat and started edging back toward a side entrance. Her movements—nervous, with shifty-short glances back and forth—made her look like a tiny bird ready to take flight. I nodded in her direction, and that set her off. She flashed me a startled grimace and ducked out through the door.

  I stopped a waiter carrying a pair of ham sandwiches. He was bearded and burly, and his hair was tied back in a greasy ponytail. There was dirt smeared across his forehead, and a splatter of mustard dotted his flannel shirt. The impression as a whole was rather unsanitary. As soon as I got his attention, I asked after Mama Cass.

  “What do you want her for?” he asked, gruff and impatient. His eyes roamed about the room as we talked, checking on each table in turn.

  “Just tell her there’s something I need.”

  The waiter let out a sly, knowing smile. Apparently, this was a familiar conversation. “Yeah, yeah. I got it, I know … there’s always stuff we need.” He delivered his sandwiches, then disappeared into the back room.

  Mama Cass stepped through the door a couple of minutes later. She glanced around the room, spotted me, and summoned me back with a wave of her hand.

  A burst of steam hit me in the face as soon as I opened the kitchen door, greeting me with the spicy scent of pepper and simmering tomato sauce. It was a good-size kitchen, but it was mostly deserted. The central work space was lit up bright with gas lanterns, but the periphery of the room remained dark and empty. A breeze flowed in through open windows along the back wall, cutting through the steam and spice with a damp, earthy chill.

  There were bins of fresh ve
getables stacked three deep in front of an unplugged industrial-size refrigerator, and a coffin-size footlocker blocked the rear entrance. The locker stood open, and I could see snow and ice packed around containers of store-bought meat. Mixed in with the ground beef and cuts of chicken and steak, I could see at least a dozen prepackaged Hormel hams. Hand-smoked, my ass, I thought. There were three people working back here: the burly waiter, assembling sandwiches at a side table; a heavily tattooed girl, stirring pasta sauce on a camp stove; and a rail-thin old man, sweating over a generator-powered griddle.

  Mama Cass—Sharon, I corrected myself, remembering her real name—flashed me a bright smile and ushered me into her office. In stark contrast to her employees, she looked clean and sophisticated. The consummate professional, I thought. A perfectly composed, unflappable businesswoman, ready to step from the pits of hell straight into the nearest Fortune 500 boardroom.

  Her office was a small room branching off the kitchen. I imagined it had once been a pantry before she’d taken over, now stripped of shelving and filled with office furniture.

  “Well, this is a pleasant surprise,” she said, gesturing toward a chair. She sat on the edge of her desk, a couple of feet away. “It’s Dean, right? Sabine’s friend, the photographer? I was wondering if I’d see you again.”

  “Yeah, well, things happen, I guess,” I said lamely. “I was hoping I could get your help with something. I’ve got money. I can pay you.” I reached for my backpack to show her the color of my money, but she dismissed the gesture with a flip of her hand.

  “Don’t worry about that now, Dean. Just tell me what you need. We can work out payment later. Okay?” She smiled. It was a warm smile, and if it was part of a mask—a calculated gesture meant to instill confidence and trust—it was a good mask, one she wore well.

  “I need some drugs,” I said. “I’ve got an infected wound, and I need something to keep my arm from falling off.”