Infected Page 64

Margaret nodded inside her Racal suit. She was getting used to Otto’s ability to ask the obvious question, make the simple connection that she and Amos sometimes didn’t see.

“Oh my G.o.d,” Margaret said. She pointed to one of the faces, high up on the arch. This one was upside down, connected to a white man’s body whose head and shoulders were on the canvas but whose feet extended beyond the frame.

“Is that Martin Brewbaker?”

At the sound of the name, Dew hurried over. He leaned close to the canvas.

“G.o.dd.a.m.n,” Dew said. “That is the little psycho. How the f.u.c.k did Nguyen know that guy?”

Margaret shook her head. “I don’t think he did, Dew.”

“Of course he did,” Dew spat. “I’m looking at Brewbaker’s face right there. The kid painted it, and that’s that.”

“Is that Gary Leeland?” Otto said, pointing again to the canvas.

Margaret and Dew both leaned close.

“Holy s.h.i.+t,” they said in stereo.

Margaret waved the photographer over. “I need shots of this, the whole thing, and get all the detail. Use a new disk, I’m taking it with me.”

She turned to leave, then stopped. Something about that dollarpyramid bothered her. She turned back and walked toward it, until she was only a foot from the painting. Something about the Latin phrase.

Nguyen had painted the phrase, E unum pluribus. But that wasn’t right. In Latin, “From many, one,” was E pluribus unum.

Switch the phrase around, to E unum pluribus, and what did you have?

From one, many.

45.

THE LIVING-ROOM FLOOR

He didn’t know who sang the song, but he knew the words.

“Somebody knockin’ at the duh-or, somebody ringin’ the bell. Somebody knockin’ at the duh-or, somebody ringin’ the bell.”

Perry found himself in a dark hallway, the lilting melody filling the air with not only sound, but also a warning. The place seemed alive, pulsating, throbbing with a shadowy warmth; it seemed more like a throat than a hallway. At the hall’s end stood a single door made of a spongy, rotten green wood covered with a vile, mucal slime. The door thumped in time with his own heartbeat. It was a living thing. Or maybe had been living once.

Or maybe...maybe it was waiting for its chance to live.

He knew it was a dream, but it still scared him s.h.i.+tless. In a life where waking hours are draped in the costume of horrid nightmare, where reality has suddenly become questionable, it’s easy to be scared by dreams.

Perry walked toward the door. Something unspeakable lay behind it, something wet, something hot, something waiting for a chance to rage, to murder, to dominate. He reached for the handle, and the handle reached for him; it was a long, thick, black tentacle, wrapping around his arm, pulling him into the spongy green wood. Perry fought, but for all his might he was yanked forward like a child by an angry father.

The door didn’t open—it sucked him in, joyous in a sudden meal of body and mind. The green wood engulfed him, the dank rot caressed him. Perry tried to scream, but the oozing tentacle forced its way into his mouth, cutting off all sound, cutting off his air. The door enveloped him, held him motionless. Mindless terror pulled at him, dragging his sanity under . . .

When he awoke , the fork remained stuck in his shoulder. The sweats.h.i.+rt had tried to pull back to its natural position, catching on the fork and pus.h.i.+ng it at an angle; the end of the utensil rested against his cheekbone. The wound didn’t hurt because it was completely numb. He didn’t know how long he’d been out.

He grimaced as he grabbed the fork with his right hand and gently

removed it from his trapezius — it made a wet, sucking sound as it came out. Thick trickles of blood coursed down his collarbone and curled under his armpit. The front of his sweats.h.i.+rt had changed from white to bright red with thin streaks of the dark purple. The stab wound alone wouldn’t have been that bad, but twisting the fork had ripped open a large chunk of flesh. He gently fingered the wound, trying to ascertain the damage without setting off the pain b.u.t.ton. His fingers also hit the corpse of the Triangle, which was no longer firm, but soft and pliable.

The hooks of this one were undoubtedly still stuck in his body, maybe wrapped around his collarbone, maybe wrapped around a rib or even his sternum. If that was the case, ripping it out might cause one of the hooks to puncture a lung, or even his heart. That wasn’t an option. But it was dead, over which he felt an indescribably sick satisfaction. The fact that he would have to carry a corpse around embedded in his shoulder, however, tugged at the back of his mind, tweaking at the last vestiges of normality clinging to his tortured soul.

He carefully stood up and hopped to the bathroom. His ruined leg didn’t hurt as much now, but it still throbbed complaint. Too bad he couldn’t ride this game out on the bench, let one of the second-stringers come in and fill in his position.

Play through the pain.

Rub some dirt on it and get back in there.

Sacrifice your body.

Lines of dried brown blood patterned the linoleum floor. Chunks of

orangish skin still floated in the tub, although the water level had dropped. He could tell the original depth by the tub ring left from tiny scab flecks.

Blood trickled from his shoulder. He grabbed the bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the cabinet behind the bathroom mirror. The bottle was almost empty, just enough left to clean the wound. Setting it down on the counter, he tried to pull off his sweats.h.i.+rt, but a shooting pain in his left shoulder stopped him. He slowly raised the arm — it was sore and painful, but it still worked, thank G.o.d.