She pulled away. That are-you-nuts? expression glowed on her face like green fire. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, but she did it slowly, like she was remembering something, too. Then she turned and ran. Her final words echoed in the toxic dust:
“You’re fucking crazy!”
I didn’t disagree, but I had more crazy shit to do. Jenkins and Turgeon were still circling, skirting each other. Each one was afraid to get too close, or to back off. I picked my left leg up. The foot hung in place. As I brought it down, I found I could bounce on it long enough to bring my right foot forward. I limped past the plastic sheet.
Turgeon saw me first. And Jenkins . . . well, for all his physique, he wasn’t much of a fighter. Probably just pumped iron in a gym. When Turgeon looked at me, Jenkins could’ve used the distraction to swat the clippers again. Instead, he looked at me, too.
Turgeon turned back first, and stabbed forward. The clippers didn’t get Jenkins just then, but they made him stumble. He moved his left foot backward so it skimmed the cheek of one of the heads. If he’d had both arms, or even if he’d been used to having one, he might’ve stayed standing. As it was, he twisted the wrong way, looking surprised as he went down.
The dry stub of his shoulder hit the floor first. He was pushing himself up on his remaining arm when Turgeon got the blades around his neck and snapped them shut.
I heard that sound again, like plasterboard buckling, only thicker, deeper, longer. But I was too damaged and too far away to do a damn thing about it.
31
They say the brain protects itself from unpleasant memories by forgetting them. This was a sound that wouldn’t leave easily, no matter how bad your memory.
It was already crawling around between my ears, looking for a spot to lay eggs. I’d forget the texture of Lenore’s skin, the sound of her voice, her eyes, her name, hell, my own name, long before I forgot that sound.
The heads reacted in unison, like a bottle of electric syrup hit them all at once. Did all of them remember the sound? They’d heard it before. In unison, they spoke a single, dry-whispered word:
Odell Jenkins’s body plopped back down like a piece of luggage dropped by an invisible hand. Turgeon went to his knees, not from exhaustion or horror. He was thrilled, giddy, and eager to grab his prize. He lifted the head by its sandy curls and gave it a great big smile.
Its eyes twirled, then moved in a jerky pattern, right, left, up, down. Finally, they fixed on the decapitated body. No matter what angle Turgeon held the head as he admired it, its eyes remained on the body, as if it realized they used to belong together. The mouth moved, tried to scream, but unlike the others, it hadn’t yet learned how to make any sounds. It just stretched its jaw, going through the motions, acting, in Jonesey’s words,
There were only ten feet between us, tops. The clippers were still clamped shut. But you know those dreams where you can’t move even though you absolutely have to? This was one. If my ankle hadn’t been broken, I’m sure I could’ve reached him before Turgeon picked up the choppers and got them open again, but every time I took a step, it felt like my foot would tear off completely.
I always felt bad for those chakz who looked like they were in a grade-B movie, but here I was, dragging my leg, lurching just like a Romero wannabe. Instead of attacking, I limped off, heading for the nearest pillar, praying I’d blend in with the darkness behind the plastic.
Turgeon heard me, but didn’t see me yet. His head was up, scanning. His voice called out above the hissing heads: “Mann?”
He put his new trophy down and snarled at the others, “Quiet! Quiet! Can’t you see I have to find him!” When they didn’t obey, he kicked at them. He even raised the blade like he was going to stab his favorite. “Don’t make me hurt you, Daddy! Quiet them down, now!”
While he tried to get his eggs in a row, I shambled deeper into shadow. It was slow going, but I still had my one last trick. If I could come up behind him, I could still use the vial. All I’d have to do would be to pull it out, clamp down, and spray it into his liveblood face. It’d be all over, except for the running from the bomb.
As I winced and crept along, “Daddy” neared his boy. The head looked up at the killer with an expression I thought might be hatred, then clicked its tongue a few times and made a high-pitched whistling noise that seemed to come from his nose, like a steam kettle. At once, the others settled down.
Turgeon picked up the blade, then turned off the vacuums. Suddenly, dead or not, it was too quiet for me to move without being heard.
Fortunately, it was also quiet enough for Turgeon to hear the beeping timer. Eyes wide, he cursed under his breath and made for the dolly, moving away from me. As he pushed aside the plastic, he realized the ticking bomb wasn’t his only problem. Nell Parker was missing. He hadn’t seen her run.
He popped up like a jack-in-the-box, his funky blue eyes drilling every corner of the long funhouse maze of plastic sheets, work-light reflections, and stagnant shadows.
I knelt, with less trouble than I expected, and grabbed a small chunk of plasterboard. I threw it hard. It skittered along the ground about five feet in front of where I was hiding. Turgeon turned to it, following the sound as the plaster rolled into a different darkness.
I’d expected him to turn the timer off before coming after me, but he didn’t. He just stepped back in my direction. Either he figured there was plenty of time left before the big
Rather than try to move it again, I shoved my index finger in my mouth. It was too thick to dig under my jaw, but I did manage, with a wild blast of hurting, to push my tongue into the hollow. From there, it scooped the vial out. I held it gently between my back molars, shivering as the ache rushed through me in waves. I was ready for Turgeon.
But he was gone.
While I’d been fussing with my bruised tongue, he’d slipped off. I looked at the heads, hoping they’d give me a clue, but they were helter-skelter, as if whatever intelligence they possessed had fled. Even Daddy lay listlessly on his side, staring up at the work light as if it were the sun and he was tanning at the beach.
I found another piece of plaster and threw it. But when it landed and rolled, Baby-Egghead called out, “Stupid, Mann. Really stupid!”
I scanned the filthy sheen of the plastic, eyed the grays and blacks, looked for odd shadows near the light. Nothing moved. All I heard was the beeping. Where was he?
A skittering on the floor caught my attention. I turned my head in time to see a piece of rolling plaster. It stopped in a pool of light on the opposite side of the pillar I was near.
“I can play, too!” he said.
If he came at me with those blades from behind I was a goner. I pushed my back into the concrete. Even if he came at me head-on, at least I had a chance to poison the son of a bitch. Not that it would do much for me, long-term. If I remembered my VX correctly, with a full dose it’d take two minutes for him to pass out, another twenty for brain death. That was more than enough time to lop a head off. Much as I wanted to watch him die, I didn’t particularly want a floor view.
A shadow grew along the floor on my left, distorting against the broken plasterboard Jenkins would never be cleaning. I saw the distended shape of the egghead, the shoulders, the length of the clippers. He was right there, just on the other side of the pillar, about to see me.
I inched away from the column, turned to face the shadow, and hobbled backward, timing my steps with the beeps, hoping there wasn’t anything on the floor behind me to trip me up.
The shadow stopped moving. It lay there on the ground, neither advancing or retreating. The shadow lips
