knocked back a whole bottle of wine; a buzz rolled thickly through his head. It wasn’t a Wild Turkey buzz, but he’d chugged the entire bottle, so the real kick was probably still brewing in his gut.
Three left: his back, his left forearm, and his balls.
For what he was about to try, he wanted to be very, very drunk.
There was no clever way to remove the Triangles, and the risk seemed greater than ever. The Triangle on his forearm might be close to the artery. The one on his back was right over his backbone-its barbed tail could be wrapped around his vertebrae. Pulling that one out might injure or even sever his spinal cord. The one on his nuts, the one he’d managed to not think about for days…well, he’d just have to get a lot drunker first.
He wasn’t certain he could pull any of them out, but he could kill them where they grew. They’d rot, sure, but if his plan worked, he would dial 911 and head straight for an emergency room. Let the doctors figure it out. The Soldiers wanted to whack him and stop the Triangles from hatching; maybe if there were no more Triangles, the Soldiers wouldn’t kill him. Maybe maybe maybe. They might kill him anyway, but they might keep him alive so they could interrogate him. Even if they took him prisoner so they could probe his mind with their secret machines and TVs that could read thoughts, he’d still be alive.
And, most important of all, he would have killed those motherfucking Triangles. Then, even if the Soldiers brought him down, no one could ever doubt that he died like a Dawsey.
He wasn’t going out as a human incubator. He wouldn’t let them win. A painful fever seemed to grip his muscles. His joints ached with the dull kick of a bass drum. The rot. The rot from his shoulder, his ass, spreading to other parts. He could fight the Triangles, maybe, but how could he fight black bile rot flowing through his blood?
The gig was up. Time to shit or get off the pot.
The sleeping hatchlings filled the apartment with clicks and pops. A Garth Brooks song filtered faintly through the floor from the apartment below. In his own mind, all was quiet, not a peep from his own Triangles.
Perry stuffed the lighter into his front pocket, grabbed the liquor bottles and his butcher’s block that held his knives and his Chicken Scissors. He hopped clumsily for the bathroom.
Burn, burn, yes ya gonna burn.
74.
Dew knelt, staring at the spot in the snow. He thought he’d imagined it at first, the frenzied creation of a tired mind and tired eyes. As he stooped down to look closer, he knew it was real.
A tiny, dark pink streak on the pavement’s thin snow. It was small, only about a half inch long and less than an eighth of an inch wide. Wisps of fine powder almost covered the mark.
Dawsey had fallen, right here. Dew looked back to Dawsey’s car; if you drew a straight line from the rusty Ford through the blood spot, that line pointed directly to the door of Building G.
Dew stood and moved toward the door, pulse racing, adrenaline pumping. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground, looking for another blood spot, just to be sure.
His sleepiness vanished, possibly from the thrill of the hunt, or more likely from a well-honed instinct for self-preservation.
It was party time.
The first real action since Martin Brewbaker, the infected psycho who’d killed his partner. Brewbaker hadn’t been a big man, nor had he been an athlete, but he’d proved something Dew had known since he’d been eighteen- being a killer isn’t about being strong or fast or well trained, it’s about being the first to pull the trigger, it’s about attacking before the other guy is ready, it’s about the willingness to go for the throat right off the bat. The growths had made Martin Brewbaker that kind of man. Dawsey had those same growths, but Dawsey was a big man, he was an athlete, and he was violent and vicious even before he was ever infected.
Dew felt a flash of deja vu, the sense that he was again entering Martin Brewbaker’s house, walking down the hall just before the crazy fuck lit the place on fire and buried a hatchet in Malcolm’s guts. The old Sinatra tune rang in his head.
I’ve got you…under my skin.
75.
Perry shut the bathroom door behind him and spread his goodies out on the sink counter.
Bottle of Jack Daniel’s: check.
Two bottles of Bacardi 151: check.
Butcher’s block with knives and Chicken Scissors: check.
Lighter: check.
Towels: check.
Fatigue clutched at his body. He started the tub and flipped the lever on the stopper, allowing the basin to fill up with cold water.
He stripped down, taking off everything but his socks and his underwear. He grabbed the longest towel he could find, twisted it into a rope, then poured some Bacardi on it. It soaked into the terry cloth, filling the small bathroom with the strong smell of rum. He flipped the long towel over his back, feeling the cold, wet, rum-soaked spot send chills up his spine. He positioned that cold spot right over the Triangle. One end of the towel went over his left shoulder, the other under his right arm. He tied the ends together, making the towel hang like a bandito’s bullet strap.
Si, senor. El Scary Perry is a baaad man.
He soaked the end of a smaller hand towel with Bacardi, then laid it on the toilet. With the preparation finished, he took four long, uninterrupted swallows of Jack Daniel’s.
Perry sat on the tub, the cold porcelain sending another wave of chills through his body. He held the knife and the lighter with his left hand. In his right he held the rum-soaked towel.
It was time.
Burn, burn, yes ya gonna burn.
Perry flicked the lighter. He watched the tiny orange flame shift and turn.
Yes, ya gonna burn.
76.
Dew stood just inside the front door to Building G. He shivered slightly, but not from the winter’s cold. Like every other building in the sprawling complex, Building G had twelve apartments, four each on three floors.
Perry Dawsey, the one-legged killer, was in one of those apartments.
Dew pulled his notebook from a jacket pocket. He quietly flipped through the pages, eyes looking down at the book one second, flicking back to look up the stairs and down the hall the next. He half expected to see the hulking nutcase tearing down the hall or the stairs, hopping madly, ready to do an encore presentation of the Bill Miller Crucifixion.
Dew reviewed the notes he’d collected from the cops. Building G had been checked by a pair of state
