“This is quite dangerous,” Op Nine said.
I ground my teeth and didn’t say anything, gripping the wheel hard with both hands.
“Alfred,” he said. “We must slow down.”
“I’m not slowing down,” I hissed between my grinding teeth.
With no points of reference, we hardly seemed to be moving at all. Of course, Op Nine was right. If I hit something going two hundred miles per hour, we’d be vaporized, but what choice did I have?
Mixed now with my fear was an expanding pocket of rage. What did they hope to accomplish with this? Did they want me to get the Vessel or not? My jaw was aching by this point and my fingers cramping from gripping the steering wheel so hard.
“Alfred, I really must insist—”
I lost it. “Look, buddy, you’re not in the position to insist on anything. I’ve been literally put through hell because of you people and I think I’m doing pretty well considering I’m completely cut off from any help whatsoever, plus the fact that I’m slowly being driven mad with cracks in my brain and weeping pustules and the knowledge that when it really comes down to brass tacks, there is no hope. That’s how they get you in the end, with hope, don’t you understand? They dangle it in front of you and yank it away again—until you can’t take it anymore.”
He stared at me for a second. “In the medieval renderings of hell, the souls of the damned writhe in eternal agony as demons prod them with flaming brands.”
“That’s right! You got it!” I was sweating by this point, and the salt in my sweat burned in the open sores covering my body. I wanted to leap out of my own skin. “Flaming freakin’ brands of fire!”
“Or the Greek story of Tantalus,” he went on, “who in Hades suffered of starvation while a bunch of grapes dangled just beyond his reach.”
“Damn straight!” I shouted. “Flaming brands up your ass, the itch you can’t scratch, the grapes you can’t reach!”
“Perhaps they torment you because it is already too late, Alfred. The day is lost and it delights them to torture you with hope.”
“I’m not dead yet,” I breathed. Then I shouted it at the top of my lungs. “I’M NOT DEAD YET, YOU HEAR ME? YOU GOT THAT? SO BRING IT ON! BRING! IT! ON!”
I shouldn’t have said that.
45
I looked at my hands gripping the wheel and noticed the sores there had crusted over and were pulsing to the rhythm of my heart. A huge one on my knuckle itched horribly, and I started to scratch it, out of defiance, I guess (I’ll show them I can scratch the itch!). My nail barely nicked the surface and the scab tore off. Clear liquid seeped from the wound and my heart quickened, not from the sight of the pus, but from the squirming gray-bodied, black-headed creature that rose from the little pool, twisting this way and that in the air, as if shaken from a sound sleep. I watched it in horror for a second, then took my hand off the wheel and held it under Op Nine’s nose.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A maggot, I believe.”
I could taste the corn dog on my tongue as I yanked the rearview mirror toward my face. Fighting the nearly overwhelming urge to throw up, I gently ran my fingertips over my cheek.
The scabs burst open and a stench crowded my nostrils, that same smell I had noticed in the hotel room, the smell of decay—I was rotting from the inside out.
I screamed and Op Nine shouted, “Alfred!” as I slammed on the brakes, sending the car into a spin, until our rear wheels hit the grass on the edge of the road, which slowed us down enough to keep the car from flipping.
As soon as the car stopped, I hit the button to raise the door. I fell out onto the moist grass, on my hands and knees, retching. The fog wrapped itself around me and the car looked ghostlike in the shroud of mist.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, pulling me back.
I leaned against Op Nine’s chest, crying and cursing. My hands flailed at my face until he grabbed my wrists and forced my arms down.
“Alfred,” he said into my ear. “Alfred, tell me what to do. Just tell me what to do.”
They will consume us, Op Nine had said in the briefing. They will consume us.
I looked into his face, the kindest, ugliest face I think I’ve ever seen. “Home,” I croaked. “Get me home.”
46
He helped me back to the car, but it was hard going because he was weak, I was big, and neither of us looked forward to hitting the road again. I sank into the passenger seat and he took the wheel, while I sat on my hands to keep myself from tearing open any more boils.
I glanced at the speedometer: forty-five mph.
“Faster,” I murmured. The rank smell rising from my pores was making me dizzy and it took every bit of willpower I had to keep from giving in again to the nausea.
I watched the needle creep up to sixty.
“Faster,” I said.
“Alfred, in these conditions . . .”
“We’re running out of time!” I shouted. “And time’s the only condition that matters now!” Then I shut up because the screaming hurt my throat. The needle hit eighty-five and kept inching higher. He squinted through the windshield, as if his squinting would somehow penetrate the white cloak around us.
My right arm twitched as I fought the urge to reach into my pocket, pull out the semiautomatic, and blow his hound-dog head off. It was like the feeling I had in the Taurus that night outside Mike’s house, but ten times stronger and I fought it in silence for a few miles.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said finally. “Something you should know.”
He nodded.
“I’ve been getting these urges to, um, hurt you. Kill you.
It’s almost more than I can stand.”
He glanced at me.
“It’s not me,” I went on. “At least, I’m pretty sure it’s not me. I didn’t have homicidal urges before they got into me—at least, not like these. I guess it crosses everybody’s mind and that doesn’t make it right, just normal.”
He nodded. “I have had similar thoughts.”
“About me?”
He nodded again. “Since I woke in the hotel room. I came close to leaving you back there by the roadside. The urge was almost overwhelming.”
“I can still tell which ones are their thoughts and which ones are mine. But the line is getting thinner between them. I’m scared that I’ll reach the point when I can’t tell the difference.”