Filaria - Brent Hayward [28]
In different circumstances, the fight might actually have been amusing.
Philip wailed, “What’s the matter with you?”
“Tell me where you’ve taken us! Tell me where we are, you fucker!”
Where they were was not a room. An area this vast must be called something else. Larger than Phister had imagined any possible place, except in dreams. The nearest wall appeared to be over a hundred metres away, running behind rows and rows of crates bigger themselves than most rooms he had known. There were no halls at all, none visible from where the car had stopped — no corridors, either, of any sort — and the floor, what he could see of it, was bone-dry and comprised of small, uniform, grey tiles.
Far above, hazy, darker patches of a ceiling, glimpsed through layers of what looked to be dense vapour. Ceilings Phister knew were touchable. By some means or another. Maybe you needed to jump, or step on something, or maybe pipes got in the way, but there had never been a ceiling he couldn’t touch. Ever. His entire life.
Until this one.
In several locations, boxes, crates, and barrels were stacked so high they faded, ghostly, near invisible from this distance, beyond the mist. Suffused light permeated down, casting its yellowed hue over the car, the boxes, the tiled floor, the entire massive space.
The panorama gave him vertigo. Under the distant ceiling, despite his expanding mind, Young Phister was miniature, and he felt more insignificant than usual.
But they had gone up!
Crazy stories from Boy Harbour and the like were true: the world was divided into two tiers. Stacked one on top of the other. Phister knew this now, first hand, because he and McCreedy and Philip and the car had driven inside an elevating device. And they had gone up —
Philip was wedged in the front seat now and McCreedy had managed to free a hand long enough to punch him, hard, in the chops, once, twice, knocking his wool hat off. Only when a boot hit Phister in the side of the head did he grab McCreedy’s arm with both of his own.
“Okay, that’s enough! Stop fighting!”
Philip, bleeding from the nose, rose, flopping heavily over the windshield, onto the hood of the car, with McCreedy still held rigid at arm’s length.
“Unprovoked,” Philip grunted. “Of all the — ” His body shook with efforts to keep the driver at bay. “I’ve never — ”
But that black glove darted out again, grabbing Philip by the throat this time. The words issued from McCreedy were guttural, expelled in staccato bursts from that mucus-hardened tube of gristle the driver called a throat: “One last — time — tell me — what the fuck — this place is!”
“Enough!” Phister had nearly been pushed out of the car; he managed to force his scrawny body back between those of the larger men. His ear, where the boot had landed, was aflame. Every physical resource he possessed channelled down into his wiry limbs, holding his body locked tight until the men finally separated, collapsing, panting, staring each other down.
Phister said, “Come on, McCreedy. Why you wanna attack this guy? You didn’t have to hit him.”
The old man slowly turned. His breathing rasped and there was blood at the corners of his mouth. His eyes were wild. “Who’s side you on?”
“Side? There’s no sides. Why do you think we have to take sides? All I’m saying is you can’t beat the shit out of anyone you want, whenever you want.”
“This is my life, you little fuck. What you can’t do is tell people how to act. And yes, sometimes you do have to beat the crap out of people. Like now. You think we should embrace this guy? Look around you. Where the fuck has he taken us?”
Philip managed to struggle up onto one elbow. Blood smeared the hood in two thin streaks beneath him. “Phister, what I propose, young man, is that we tie this lunatic up. In some fashion.” His face was already puffy, his lips split, one eye closing. And his teeth were red with blood, hair in total disarray. “He’s clearly a threat to both of us. Himself, too. He’s insane . . .”
Phister rubbed at his sore ribs