Bad Glass Part 2

I reached out, and my fingers brushed against the fabric of the backpack-my backpack-now slung over Wendell's shoulder.

I threw myself forward just as he jigged to the right, his nimble form disappearing through an open doorway. Unable to stop my dive, I collided with the doorjamb, shoulder first, and the weight of my duffel bag slammed me hard into the wall, jolting all the breath from my lungs. The kids in the street let out a loud, sympathetic "Oh!" that quickly broke into disjointed laughter. I didn't even look their way, instead shaking my head and sucking in a burning lungful of air. My legs were weak from the impact, but I managed to stagger into the building. It was some type of hotel or apartment complex-a tenement, really. I could tell it had been an old, run-down wreck even before the evacuation. I entered in time to see Wendell swing around a wooden banister and up into an open stairwell. I followed, losing ground with every weak and trembling step.

I thought about ditching my duffel bag on the first-floor landing, just tossing it into a corner where I could pick it up later, but decided against it. Somebody might find it-one of the kids on the street, one of Wendell's friends-and I just couldn't take that chance. If I lost both of my bags within minutes of entering the city-well, maybe my father was right about me. No common sense.

The light in the stairwell was tinted a strange shade of red, as if it had been filtered through crimson cellophane. There was a boarded-over skylight at the top of the stairwell, six floors up, but the light wasn't coming from up there. It was trickling in from the landings. A low-grade hum filled the air around me: the sound of an engine grinding away in the distance, m.u.f.fled by plaster and drywall and sheets of plywood. A generator? Whatever it was, I couldn't pinpoint its location; I twisted my head from side to side, but the sound didn't get any louder, didn't change in the least. Is it in my head? I wondered. Is it the sound of blood draining from my brain? The tidal pull of a hard, weak-kneed faint? Did I crack my head against the door frame without realizing it?

I heard a door slam shut on the fourth-floor landing and continued up the stairwell. I wasn't running now; I could barely manage a fast stride.

I didn't know this building. I didn't know what might be waiting for me outside the stairwell. A gang with weapons? Wild animals? Wendell, hiding in the shadows with a two-by-four?

The baseball game out on the street had started back up, and the loud crack of ball against bat rang out like a gunshot, jolting my heart into a stutter. The hit was followed by a loud cheer and the sound of gla.s.s breaking in the distance.

I paused on the fourth-floor landing and tried to catch my breath. My chest was sore from the collision on the ground floor, and I couldn't stop panting. There were gray spots swimming at the edges of my vision. I pushed forward, opening the door and moving through in a low crouch, just in case Wendell was waiting for me on the other side.

The fourth-floor hallway was empty. Gray light seeped in through the open doorways along its length, illuminating drifts of crumbled plaster and refuse heaped against the walls. The whole place seemed damp. The carpet-a muddy, threadbare red-squished beneath my feet, and the smell of mold and rot made the air feel heavy and foul. I paused for a second, listening for Wendell. I could hear a rhythmic squeaking-the grind of machinery, maybe? pistons?-but no footsteps, no scrambling at windows or fire escapes.

Had he gone to ground? Was he hiding in one of these rooms?

I moved slowly from door to door, easing forward to peek into each room. The first half dozen were vacant. Nothing but stripped dirty mattresses, overturned nightstands, and shattered lamps. There were wrought-iron fire escapes outside each window, but all the sashes were closed, and I could see no signs of attempted escape.

The squeaking sound was coming from a room halfway down the corridor, and as I drew near, low animal growls and panting started to drown out the more mechanical noise. Bracing myself, I peered around the doorjamb and found a man and a woman having s.e.x on a dirty mattress. They were still dressed in their derelict tatters, and the woman-pinned to the ground-was wearing gloves, her shrouded fingers digging into the back of the man's jacket. The way they were going at it-it was something brutal and primal. All energy and friction, like dogs in heat.

Growling. Saliva flying.

They couldn't see me where I was standing in the doorway, but even if they could, I don't think they would have noticed. They were so consumed by their act, by their ... pa.s.sion? No, not pa.s.sion. Something less human, less emotional.

Not pa.s.sion. Drive.

I watched for nearly half a minute, lost in the spectacle, before finally noticing the kid in the closet. He must have been about eight years old. He wasn't hiding; the doors were wide open. Instead, he was just sitting there beneath the hems of abandoned clothing. His eyes were wide, his dirty face an expressionless mask. He was watching me with an intense curiosity.

And it hit me-that boy's stare-like a punch to the solar plexus.

I stumbled away from the doorway, my stomach churning, suddenly very, very dizzy, my head just about ready to fall off my neck. I'm not right, I told myself. I cracked my skull. A concussion, internal bleeding, something serious and deadly.

I continued down the corridor, away from the room with the f.u.c.king couple.

Away from the child.

The hallway made a ninety-degree turn, and I found yet more rooms stretching the width of the building. Only one of these doors was closed, and, coming from inside this room, I heard something new. To my ears, it sounded like a seldom-used window rattling open-rain-swollen wood groaning inside its frame, the sound of physical exertion vibrating through gla.s.s.

Wendell, I thought, grateful for the distraction, for the chance to refocus my energies.

By the time I got to the door, though, the sound had stopped. Now there was only silence in the building. Even the sound of f.u.c.king, back along the corridor, had disappeared. Slowly, I eased the door open.

There were two people in the otherwise empty room. One-a young woman-was lying on her back in the middle of the floor. She was wearing a thin white dress; the material looked insubstantial, far too thin for the cold October air. Her face was pale, and her bright blue eyes stared up at the ceiling. Embedded up there-in the ceiling-was a naked man, his skin a sickly shade of black. The man's body was spread facedown, reclined back against the ceiling in a relaxed pose. Where his body contacted the wood and plaster, his flesh disappeared, like a mannequin half submerged in a pool of water.

But this was no mannequin. And the ceiling was not water. This was a human body, and a large percentage of it was stuck-physically stuck-inside that solid surface.

The man's right arm extended down, quivering slightly in the still air. His left arm was stuck inside the ceiling, his hand and half of his forearm stretching up through its surface, outside the room-or so I imagined. Perhaps those body parts were simply gone, his form just ... halting at the boundaries of the room, becoming nothingness on the other side. His back and b.u.t.tocks, too, disappeared into that solid surface. His left knee was steepled out in a V, forming an upside-down Greek delta with the ceiling. His left ankle and foot were gone, and his right leg disappeared midthigh. His uncirc.u.mcised p.e.n.i.s dangled down like a broken light fixture.

The man was alive. At least his body was alive; I couldn't say anything about his mind. I could see muscles twitching beneath his skin while his chest eased in and out, taking calm, shallow breaths. His eyes were wide, but they quivered wildly, rolling with the rhythm of short-circuiting nerves. There was no consciousness there, none that I could see. Just autonomous reaction: a body gone mad, without human control.

And the young woman in the white dress continued to watch, transfixed, lying on the floor beneath the body. She was just a girl, really, no older than seventeen. The man's extended right hand made it look like he was reaching down, like he was offering the girl a tender caress, or grasping for his own salvation.

My hand started to shake, and I let it fall from the doork.n.o.b. There was a smell in the room, a strong, powerfully human smell. Sweat. Sweat and the sharp copper scent of freshly spilled blood.

Standing in the doorway, I hunched double, trying to fight back a sudden wave of nausea and vertigo.

And when I glanced back up, I found the girl watching me. While I'd been looking down, she'd turned her head my way, and now those bright blue eyes slammed into me. Her hand fluttered up toward the body in the ceiling, and she started to speak, her lips quivering weakly. I focused on her fingers. I was afraid she was going to reach up and grasp the dead man's hand.

No ... that was not what I was afraid of. I was afraid the man would grasp her hand.

I backed out of the room before she could find a louder voice. I didn't want to hear what she had to say. I desperately didn't want to hear. I retreated back the way I'd come, making it ten feet before I had to hunch over and vomit against the wall.

After that, I dropped into a kind of autopilot, letting my legs carry me out of the building.

Wendell and my backpack were long gone. They weren't even memories in my sh.e.l.l-shocked mind.

I'm not sure how long I sat out on the curb.

The rain started to fall not long after I made it out of the building. The baseball game in the street fell apart, and the kids scattered under the cold drizzle. They barely noticed my ashen-faced stupor. Perhaps it was common here, that look, something they saw every day.

The rain wasn't heavy, just a light, damp kiss against my face.

"You shouldn't do that."

It took me a moment to recognize the words, to pa.r.s.e them as human language and riddle out their meaning. A handful of seconds pa.s.sed before I glanced up and saw a young woman standing before me. She had a black hoodie pulled up over her dark hair, protecting her from the rain, and there was a hard look on her face-smooth, tempered steel cast into human form. A backpack dangled from her hand.

"Do what?" I finally managed. "What shouldn't I do?"

"Trust people." She lifted the backpack by its strap and swung it back and forth in front of my eyes. It took me a moment to recognize it as my backpack, and when I reached out to accept it, my hand was shaking.

The steel fell away from her face, revealing a crinkle of concern. When she resumed speaking, her voice was quieter. "I caught up with Weasel down the street, reclaimed your bag. That man's nothing if not predictable." She shook her head, a weary gesture of disappointment. "Don't get me wrong; he's a good person, but he's also an a.s.shole. Takes advantage of the newcomers, steals their s.h.i.t. I've tried to get him to stop, but he doesn't listen. He's got monkeys to feed." She tapped a gloved finger against the inside of her elbow.

I nodded.

"You should get out of the rain," she said, pointing to the hotel door behind us. Immediately, I stood up and started shaking my head.

"Not in there," I said, backing away. "No f.u.c.king way."

"Okay. Fine. We've got other options." She led the way to a small one-story building on the other side of the street. It was practically a shack, a run-down shanty, dwarfed by the buildings on either side.

As soon as we got through the door, I dropped my bags to the floor and leaned back against the wall. It was a huge effort to stay on my feet. The pull of gravity seemed absolutely immense.

"You look pale," the young woman said.

I nodded.

She pulled a bottle of Pepsi from the pocket of her sweatshirt and offered it to me. "Sugar should help. It'll keep you from pa.s.sing out." I took a deep swig. The liquid went down the wrong way, and I coughed up a thin drizzle of spit.

After I finished coughing, the young woman offered me a sly smile. "My name's Taylor. Taylor Stray-Gupta-Stray, actually. And you," she said, pointing a finger at me, "you're new here."

"What ..." I began, but I couldn't finish the question. I didn't even know what I wanted to ask. I stopped talking and closed my eyes. "My name's Dean Walker," I finally said, keeping my eyes shut.

"And you're a photographer?" she asked. I opened my eyes in time to catch a shallow shrug. "I looked in your bag. After I took it from Weasel."

"Yeah. I take pictures."

"That's good. There's a lot to see here. I don't know what pictures and stories have made it out to the real world, but we've certainly got a lot to photograph." She made an idle clucking sound at the back of her throat. "Not quite sure it's smart to seek it out, but it's certainly there."

I pushed myself off the wall and peered out the shack's front window. The hotel loomed across the street-just a building, really, but suddenly malignant, hard to look at. "What is that place?" I asked. I ran my hand across the back of my skull but couldn't find any wounds. No b.u.mps or gashes. No concussion. Nothing to explain the things I had seen.

"The hotel?" Taylor asked. She shrugged. "Just a hotel. Nothing special."

I picked up my backpack and fished out the camera. As soon as it was in my hands, I started to feel stronger. My fingers were still shaking as I took off the lens cap, but that wasn't just fear and shock, not anymore. I was starting to get excited. I had seen something inexplicable. It had been overwhelming and terrifying, yes, but that was what I'd come here to find. That was why I ditched out on my final semester and broke a government quarantine. To capture those images, to capture Spokane.

And now I'd become a part of it-whatever was happening here, inside this city. I'd become experienced.

I took some pictures of the hotel's face, moving from the windows to the doorway, trying to catch some of the foreboding I felt. But the foreboding wasn't there. It was nothing visual, just a wound inside my head.

"Feeling better?" Taylor asked. "If you're ready, I can show you around, help you find a place for the night." I turned with the camera still raised to my face, viewing the room through its lens.

And that was when I noticed her eyes. They were beautiful. She was beautiful.

Outside, the rain was starting to let up, and the setting sun put in a final, last-minute appearance. A beam shot through a hole in the shack's ceiling, highlighting Taylor's face. And in that light, those strong, clear eyes practically shone. She was holding out my backpack, trying to get me moving. I took a couple of photographs, hoping to catch the intense look on her face.

"Just take the f.u.c.king bag," she growled, finally tossing it at my feet.

"Jesus Christ!" I said. "Watch the f.u.c.king gla.s.s!"

"Yeah." A wide smile spread across her face. "You're feeling better."

With my camera giving me strength, I took Taylor across the street to the hotel.

There was nothing there. The copulating couple, the child in the closet, the girl in the white dress with that abomination looming overhead-they were all gone.

There was a vaguely human-shaped stain on the ceiling of that one room, but it might have just been a trace of leaking water, a souvenir from a burst pipe sometime in the hotel's past.

And that was it. Nothing more.

And when Taylor asked me what I was expecting to find, why I insisted on scouring the hotel room by empty, abandoned room, I just shook my head. I honestly couldn't say.

But I kept my camera ready.

Photograph. October 17, 08:15 P.M. Dinner by candlelight:

The shot is off center, canted a few degrees to the right: a group of young men and women gathered around a long dining-room table. All of them are dirty. Bundled in thick clothing. Ragged and disheveled. There are bowls of food set before each seat, but n.o.body seems to be paying much attention to their meal. They're lost in conversation-broad smiles all around as a man in a backward baseball cap holds up his hands, ill.u.s.trating some grand point.

Another man is looking directly at the camera, a dazed, contented smile on his dirty face.

There's a cl.u.s.ter of candles burning in the middle of the table-all different heights, sporting blurred fingers of flame. The picture was taken without a flash, and the whole frame is bathed in this orange candlelight, all other colors washed away. In this respect, it is not a full-color shot, but not black and white, either. Instead, black and orange.

The photograph is blurred, the scene too dark for any reasonable shutter speed. Filled with trails of movement and bright, unsteady auras. But still, the warmth of the scene comes through. The cozy happiness.

A dinner by candlelight.

It was twilight by the time we made it back out onto the street. Purple-tinted clouds were barely visible in the darkening sky, and there was thunder rumbling to the east. The thought of hunting out a place to stay, looking for a hidey-hole in the encroaching dark, was seriously daunting, and I was grateful when Taylor invited me to stay at her house. If I had to trust anyone in this place, I figured, she seemed like a safe bet. Safer than someone like Wendell, at least.

She pulled a flashlight from her pocket and led the way north, back across the river. Once on the other side, she began cutting back and forth through upscale residential neighborhoods. It was extremely dark out here on the streets. Without electricity, the street lamps stood like dead trees on the side of the road. There were a few candlelit windows, but they were rare, and the weak light seemed somehow ominous, like hooded, distrustful eyes blinking in the night.

Back in California, I'd wandered through neighborhoods like this during rolling blackouts, deep in the heart of energy-crunch summers. The feeling here was similar, only deeper, more intense. During the rolling blackouts, there had been people all around, out walking the dark streets of the neighborhoods, lounging on their front porches-or, if not visible, there had at least been the sense of people around, the knowledge that they were out there, safely holed up behind their windows. And there had been the conviction that the lights were just about to return, the belief that this silence-so eerily complete-occupied that brief moment just before the click and hum of air conditioners powering back up, just before the epileptic stutter of streetlights flickering back on. Here, there was none of that.

Just darkness and silence. An extended promise.

Taylor pointed out Gonzaga University, waving her finger into the void. She might as well have been pointing toward China in the distance. I couldn't see a thing.

With a loud crack of thunder, the clouds opened up and sheets of water came crashing down on our heads. My jacket was soaked through in a matter of seconds. Taylor grabbed my hand and started sprinting through the downpour, leading me the last block to her house. During the rush to get inside, I didn't get a good look at the house's exterior, but it seemed big-a multistory Victorian, painted yellow. There was a red and blue pinwheel in the flower bed at the base of the porch; it was spinning wildly, caught in a stream of water falling from the roof.

Taylor pushed through the front door, into a brightly lit entryway. "Wipe your feet," she said, nodding toward the doormat. She shrugged out of her wet hoodie and hung it on a mirror-backed coatrack. Underneath, she was wearing a bloodred turtleneck.

This was the first time I'd seen her without the hood. There was a propane lantern burning on a nearby table, but its brilliant white light couldn't touch her pitch-black hair; it was so dark, it sucked in light like a black hole, refusing to give back even the slightest glimmer. Strands hung in wet rivulets around her face, dripping water onto her shirt. She glanced into the mirror and pushed the stray hair back behind her head, smoothing it into an elegant wave.

Again, I was struck by her beauty. Her features were angular and sharp; her beauty was strong and intimidating.