Infected Page 67

neither ar e we

“Not hurting me? I can barely walk, my shoulder is f.u.c.ked up and my house is covered with blood. My blood!”

our blood too y ou did

it to yourself

“f.u.c.k you, you little c.o.c.ksuckers! I didn’t do it to myself! I have to get you guys out of me before you eat me up from the inside! I may look like the amazing walking incubator to you, but it’s not going to happen!”

calm do wn r elax calm do wn relax

“Relax? Sure, I’ll relax, when the rest of you f.u.c.ks are dead!” Somewhere in his weary mind, he realized that his rage had boiled over, slipped beyond his control. He wanted to hit something, anything, hit something and break it into a million pieces. “If I have to cut myself into chunks to get every last one of you, I’ll do it and I’ll laugh — you hear me? I’ll laugh my a.s.s off the whole time!”

calm do wn so meone

co ming calm down

“No one’s coming, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!” He shook with unbridled, primitive fury. He made little hops to keep his balance.

so meone is here calmdown calm down

Three knocks on the door ended the debate.

46.

HOWDY, NEIGHBOR (PART TWO )

Perry stared at the door, not sure he’d actually heard it, hoping he hadn’t.

Then came three more knocks.

columbo Columbo columbo columbo

“Shut up!” Perry hissed through clenched teeth, the stress wiring his jaws tight. “It’s not Columbo.”

“Hey in there!” the voice called in. A male voice. He recognized the distinctively deep baritone of Al Turner, who lived in the apartment directly above Perry’s. “Would you stop your screaming? You’re driving me nuts.”

Al Turner was Mr. Blue Collar. One of those guys who, despite having pa.s.sed the thirty-year mark, still measured his manhood by how much alcohol he could consume on a night out with the boys. A car mechanic, or something like that.

“Don’t bother ignoring me, I know you’re there!” Three more knocks. He was p.i.s.sed. Perry heard the anger in his voice. “Are you okay? What’s going on in there?”

“Nothing,” Perry called back through the closed, locked and chained door. “I’m sorry, I was having an argument on the phone.” Perry felt relief with that top-of-the-head lie. That would work. That made sense. That was logical.

Al yelled back through the door, “Yeah? I’ve heard nothing but yelling from down here, and it’s starting to get on my nerves, you know?”

Perry had been screaming his head off for one reason or another in his battles against the Triangles and

kill him

he’d never thought about how much noise he was making. Al was

kill him

probably at wits’ end from all the commotion.

“Sorry Al,” Perry said. “I’ll keep it down, I promise. Woman problems, you know?”

“You can open the door, man. I don’t have a gun or anything.” Al’s voice sounded calmer.

“I’m buck naked, Al, just got out of the shower. Thanks for stopping by, I’ll keep

kill him

it down.”

Perry heard footsteps shuffle down the hallway. That had been as rude as can be, Perry knew, but he wasn’t about to open the door and let Al see the Blood-O-Rama inside the apartment.

kill him

They’d said “kill him” again and again. Perry hadn’t heard them the first few times . . . or maybe he hadn’t wanted to hear them.

Perry whispered, “Why the h.e.l.l would I kill him?”

he kno ws,

he ’ s a thr eat,

kill him kill him

“He is not a threat!” Perry heard his voice rise again before he caught himself in midsentence, making “threat” come out several decibels lower than the rest of his words. “He’s my neighbor, he lives upstairs.”

High-pitch.

Fuzzy noise.

Perry a.s.sumed they were accessing the term upstairs, or perhaps the building’s layout. He was growing adept at knowing what they searched for; their retrieval process seemed to make images flash into his mind as well, bits and pieces of what they wanted.

he liv es righ t abo v e us f.u.c.ker he kno ws kill him he kno ws kill him —

“Shut up,” Perry said calmly, quietly, but with as much authority as he could muster. He might be as good as dead, but he wasn’t going to take Al with him. “You can just f.u.c.k off, how’s that? I’m not going to kill him. Forget it and stop asking. It’s not going to happen. The only one I’m thinking of killing is myself and you four along with me. So shut up.”

The lumpy sound came again, low and long. Perry laughed inwardly. It was like they were lovers; the Triangles searched for the right words to avoid an argument.

don ’ t kill us or kill y ourself f.u.c.ker don ’ t w e ’ r e tr ying to stop Columbo

Trying to stop Columbo.

Trying to stop the Soldiers.

Had the right people at Triangle Mobile Home Sales gotten the message? Maybe he should have called 911 a long time ago — maybe they could have gotten the things out when it still mattered, because it was too late now.

Perry felt tired and drained. It really was like an argument with a lover. Whenever he had a knock-down, drag-out fight with a girlfriend, anger and other emotions flew around his head like dead leaves in an October storm. Such arguments exhausted him. He didn’t need to sleep after s.e.x — he needed to sleep after fighting. This felt exactly the same. It was only about 6:30 P.M., but it was time to turn in.