shrine.
Her father’s voice echoed through her mind again…
How could she understand someone who was not only dangerous, but obviously insane? How could she ever hope to beat someone who would be as relentless and focused as a rotter on the trail of the living?
Ocean realized that she would never be able to simply avoid him. He would stalk her like a predator, would always be lurking in the shadows or just around the corner, waiting for just the right moment to pounce again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
So I could feel consciousness slippin’ away from me, right? Now that’s an odd feeling. It’s almost like you haven’t slept for days and keep nodding off in the middle of a movie that you’re watchin’, only you’re playing the leading role in the film and you’re tryin’ to come to grips with how they can just write you outta the scene like that. Sure, you feel the panic eatin’ away at ya, and somewhere deep down inside, all these regrets and misgivings come bubblin’ up. All these things you woulda liked to have done or seen. All those missed opportunities. At the same time, you’re kinda detached from it all, like maybe the last time your head was pounded on the pavement, it jarred your soul loose and set it adrift in your mind.
This part of me watched everything through a hazy veil. Clarice fuckin’ Hudson was waverin’ in and out of focus, but I could still see the change that came over her. The snarl just kinda melted away from her face and her mouth hung open like a trapdoor. That weird energy that seemed to sizzle in her eyes, man? Gone. She raised her hands up in front of her face and just sat there on my chest, blinking at them like she couldn’t understand what they were doing attached to her wrists.
Her eyes flickered down to me and I’m sure I was moaning or something, and I was definitely trying to wriggle out from under her while pressing my hand into the wet, bloody tangles of my hair. I wasn’t so much tryin’ to stop the bleedin’ as I was protecting the wound. Even teetering on the brink of unconsciousness, see, I knew that if just a drop of her sweat or spit fell into that gash I was as dead as if she woulda continued bashing my brains out.
So, anyhow, Clarice fuckin’ Hudson kinda scrambles backward until she’s sittin’ on the little curb where the parking garage meets the entrance to the mall. At some point she’d managed to get some of my blood on her hands and she kinda absentmindedly wipes the sweat from her face and leaves this big ‘ole smear across her forehead and eye. She looks like she’s about ready to turn on the waterworks again. I’m staggerin’ to my feet, right, ‘cause at this point, I just want to get as far away from that mall as humanly possible. Shit, I woulda set up base camp on Pluto if I coulda. At the same time, I don’t really wanna turn my back on this bitch, ‘cause she might snap back into infectious mode at any second, ya know?
About this time, a security guard kinda steps outta the shadows, right? I don’t know how fuckin’ long he’d been there, but I got to assume that he just showed up on the scene. Otherwise, he woulda pulled her off of me before she turned my head into Hamburger Helper. I’m still a little woozy, but I’m tryin’ to focus on this dude because I feel like I need something to anchor me to the here and now. Something concrete, that I know is real.
That’s when I notice that it’s the same guard who was starin’ me down on the day that I first started this whole Clarice Hudson chapter of my life. He’s got the sleeves of his blue shirt pushed up and on his forearm I can see this scar, right? Not like from a knife wound or anything. More like tribal branding, if ya get my drift. The ridge of pink flesh is in the shape of a figure eight, and that’s mainly what I’m focused on, because somehow that seems like the most real thing in the world. It was like his scarification was the only thing keeping me up on my feet. Like I said earlier, it’s weird what the mind will seize on when given half a chance.
By this time, Clarice is bawlin’ her eyes out and she’s kinda looking from her bloody hands, to me, and then back to her hands again. And the entire time, she’s just whisperin’ so softly that you can barely hear her over the rush of traffic down on the boulevard. “Why? Why? Why?”
Me, I know the score right away. She’s trying to come to terms with what’s happening to her, right? I figure she was, on some level, aware of everything that had been going down. She saw herself chasing me, saw her frenzied attack… but couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. Kinda like she was a passenger in her own brain.
That guard, though? All he knows is that there’s this woman sitting on the curb of his mall with blood streaked across her face and lookin’ like she might be in shock or some shit. And, even though she’s questioning her inability to control her own actions, he interprets it entirely differently, man.
His hand drops to the pepper spray on that shiny belt of his and you didn’t have to be dimensionally unstable to see what was going to happen next. In his mind, he just stumbled across an attempted rape or mugging, and I’m the scumbag responsible for this crying, disheveled woman.
“You!” he hollers. “Don’t move!”
His voice echoed through the parking garage like it was God himself barking out the command. But do you think I’m about to stand there and try to explain all this shit away? You think he’d believe it was Clarice Hudson who fuckin’ attacked
So what did I do? I take off like the devil himself was after my soul, man. I’m headin’ for that spiral down ramp because I know if I go for my car this dude will have my license plate number, right? And I can hear him callin’ out behind me.
“Stop! Stop right there!”
I glance back over my shoulder, just to see if he’s givin’ chase, but he’s back there speaking into his radio. The way I see it, this little party is about to get a lot more guests. By the time I make it to ground level, I’m positive there’ll be a shit load of other guards waiting to nab my ass. The cops will probably be along shortly as well, right?
I’m running down the ramp and thinking about how royally fucked I am, all because I couldn’t keep my ass at home and lay low like Steel told me. At the same time, I’m thinkin’ that there has to be some way outta this shit, ya know, because if I get picked up then there ain’t nobody out there looking out for Ocean. For mankind as a whole, even. So I do the first thing that comes to mind without really puttin’ too much thought into it. Just acting on impulse, ya know?
See, what happened is that I vaulted over the side of that ramp like I was an Olympic gymnast on the pommel horse, man. My legs and torso swing over the side and, next thing I know, I’m fallin’ through the air. Of course, this coulda turned out really bad. I mean, I wasn’t that high up, but all it woulda taken was for me to land the wrong way and my ankle woulda snapped as easily as a Dollar Bonanza pencil.
As fate would have it, I ended up in a dumpster piled almost to overflowing with crushed cardboard boxes, packing peanuts, and books with their covers ripped off.
You can imagine, I didn’t take a lot of time pondering how lucky I’d been to have such a cushy landing, fuck no. I scramble outta that dumpster with these little bits of Styrofoam clingin’ to my hair and beard, and hit the ground running.
By this time, I can hear police sirens in the distance, right, and I can tell by the Doppler effect that they’re gettin’ closer every second. There’s no doubt in my mind that a description of me is being broadcast to every flatfoot and prowler in the city. APB, BOLO—whatever the hell you guys are calling it these days—I’m positive that if I stay on the streets, I’ll be in cuffs within the hour.
I duck back in this alley, right? I just wanna catch my breath for a sec and try to figure this shit out, but that siren I mentioned earlier has been joined by another and I can still see the mall from where I’m at, ya know? Hangin’ around that place would be stupid on a stick, so I keep moving, kinda peekin’ around corners before dashin’ across streets and slipping into the next alleyway.
The back of my head is throbbing, I wince every time my feet slap against the pavement, and I’m feeling kinda sick to my stomach now. But I gotta keep right on running. No other choice.
By the time I’d gone six or seven blocks though, I’m spending more time crouched down behind dumpsters and pressing into shadows than I am actually makin’ tracks. Seems like there’s a cop car on just about every street and they’re cruisin’, nice and slow like. Checkin’ out passersby, that kind of shit.
