The Devil's Alphabet

meth. Or Oxycontin? Or cocaine? Tons of that stuff is crossing the border every day. You think you can meet those price points? It’s like trying to compete with Wal-Mart. All you’ve got is a few dribs and drabs of vintage.”

“But you’re selling it to outsiders!” Clete said. “Everybody knows you’re making a ton of money off the old men. Look at this place-you built this whole building, you’ve got that car, you run the whole town… Next you’re going to tell me that bullshit that you’re using it for research.”

“Oh, hon, that’s just what we tell the stupid people,” Rhonda said.

Pax stopped his wrapping. “What?”

“The just-plain-ignorant-that would be you, Clete-think I’m a Colombian drug lord or something, selling vintage all over Tennessee. All I have to do is be vague and people let their imagination run away with them. And the smart people-”

“Yeah, what do you tell them?” Clete asked.

“Hon, the smart people figure it out on their own,” Rhonda said, as if explaining it to a child. “That’s how you know they’re smart people.”

Pax noticed movement and looked up. Everett stood just outside the doorway, his white polo shirt covered in a rooster tail of bright red blood. And then he stepped back out of Paxton’s line of sight.

“You’re lying,” Clete said to Rhonda. A note of doubt had crept into his voice. “I know you’re lying.”

“Hon, you keep saying that, but I don’t have to lie to you, because I know how screwed you are. You were screwed from step one. You jumped into this without doing some very basic research.”

“You’re just making this up,” he said.

“Let me ask you, Clete. How many skips have you tried out the reverend’s vintage on?”

“I didn’t have the reverend’s vintage, so I couldn’t very well try it out, could I? Besides, I didn’t have to. I saw what it did to Paxton. One drop and the boy starts tripping like a hippie. He told me he’d never felt any drug like Harlan’s vintage. Ain’t that right, Paxton?”

Pax said nothing. He knelt on the floor beside Aunt Rhonda, the nearly empty spool of tape in his hands. He’d finished securing her to the chair. He hadn’t wrapped her too tightly, but he hoped it looked convincing.

“See, he’s still half-stoned. This morning I caught him talking to the wallpaper. Doreen said Harlan’s stuff sets off these mirror cells in your head-”

“Mirror neurons,” Rhonda said.

“Yeah, the empathy thing,” Clete said. “And the emotion stuff. Love Potion Number Nine.”

Rhonda shook her head. “Clete, you do know that Doreen’s not a real nurse? She’s barely a candy striper. She only knows what Dr. Fraelich tells her, and I doubt she understands a tenth of that. And even then, the doctor’s just guessing. The most data she’s ever gotten was when she sat around watching Paxton rant and rave for a few days. And even she got it wrong.”

“What wrong?” Clete said, frustrated.

“Hon, it’s not Harlan that’s different,” Rhonda said. “It’s Paxton.”

Out in the hallway, a slam that sounded like a gunshot. Clete spun toward the doorway, one arm up-and then Doreen charged into the room. She saw the gun aimed at her and yelped.

“Jesus, Doreen, I nearly shot you!” Clete said.

“The TV,” she said. “You got to see this.”

“Where’s Harlan?”

“I couldn’t get him up! You have to see it. Some city in South America-”

“Shut the fuck up!” Clete swung back to Rhonda. “Now what the fuck do you mean, Paxton’s different?”

“Just try Harlan’s vintage on another skip, and you’ll see it doesn’t have anywhere near the same effect.”

“Hey, who’s bleeding?” Doreen asked. She was looking at the floor by her feet, where Everett had been standing a minute earlier.

Clete turned to snarl at her, but then he paused, frowned. Pax could see the bad thought forming in his brain. Travis should have been back by now, but Rhonda had kept talking and talking.

Pax looked up at Rhonda. Her expression was strangely sad.

“Travis?” Clete called in a strangled voice. He bolted for the door. “Travis!” He shouldered Doreen aside and ran through the doorway-and vanished.

Pax had seen nothing but a blur moving in from the right, and then Clete was knocked out of the frame, gone as if he’d been snipped from a film.

Doreen screamed and ran out of the room. Pax followed.

Clete was on his back, Everett on top of him, one hand braced against Clete’s neck, the other clenched into a fist. He struck Clete once, twice. A white tooth shot out of the boy’s mouth like a spitball.

“Paxton!” someone shouted. Barron, tied to his chair twenty feet away, nodded fiercely at the floor. Clete’s pistol lay almost at the guard’s feet. Pax ran for it, moving awkwardly with his arms tied in front of him. He bent to scoop it up and then suddenly he was knocked sideways. He crashed into an end table, fell onto his side. His ribs, still sore from the beating weeks ago, erupted into fresh fire.

Doreen had tackled him. She grabbed the pistol, jumped up, and swung it toward him.

Pax scrambled to his feet. He seemed to hear the gunshot a moment after he ducked. He didn’t know where the bullet went, didn’t know if he was hit.

There was nowhere to hide. Nothing in the lobby but two chairs, a couch, a few potted plants.

Doreen fired again. Pax ran pell-mell for the double doors that led to the patient rooms, wild with the need to escape. The thirty feet to the doors seemed to stretch to the length of a football field. Finally he banged through the doors, and then he was falling against the second set of doors and onto the floor beyond. He hit with his forearms in front of him and pain shot through his elbows.

His father’s room was just ahead, the first door on the right. Pax tried to push himself to his feet, but his arms wouldn’t work. He got his knees under him, then stood and stumbled forward. He dropped his bound arms like a club onto the door’s handle and pushed it open with his shoulder.

His father was sitting up in bed, staring at the television.

Pax pushed the door closed and then leaned against it. “Dad.” His father glanced at him, frowning, and then looked back at the TV. A female announcer said something about a state of emergency.

“Dad. We have to block the door.”

Over the noise of the TV he thought he heard the sound of another gunshot, but from this distance, through so many doors, he couldn’t be sure.

“Dad! I need you to listen to me.”

His father slowly shook his head. “It’s happening again,” he said.

The handle rattled, and then the door opened a few inches and bumped against the back of the dresser drawer. “It’s okay Paxton,” Aunt Rhonda said, sounding exasperated. “It’s safe to come out now.”

It took him a minute to shove the furniture out of the way. Rhonda came into the room with a paper mask held over her nose. The cuff of her sleeve was stained with dark blood. Her hair was in disarray.

“We aren’t dead, in case you were wondering,” she said, her voice muffled.

“Are they?” Pax asked.

“They ought to be.”

“I think you should see what’s on the news,” he said.

He moved out of the way so Rhonda could see the screen. His father said, “It’s bigger this time. A whole city.”

“What’s bigger?” Rhonda asked.

“The Changes,” Pax said.

Chapter 15

A TRIO OF beta girls stood awkwardly on the sidewalk, pinned in place by cameras and lights and microphones. One of them answered a question while the other two looked on. They didn’t seem to want to speak to the reporters, but they didn’t move away either. They may have been blanks, but they were also teenage