Filaria - Brent Hayward [85]
“A funeral! That’s a good one!” Chuckling, the dead boy reached up to take hold of the windshield’s frame. As he tried to scale the sloped plastic, his feet found no purchase; they left twin, damp trails through the thick dust gathered there.
Again, Phister did not want to touch the boy’s hand, at least not until it was waved right under his nose and the dead boy asked explicitly several times for help. So when Phister did grab the tiny extremity, to help hoist the boy up, he felt cold and undeniable proof that the dead boy had told the truth about his status. Phister pulled (half expecting to remove the arm from its socket), and the child managed to scramble up and over, leaping clumsily from the frame to land heavily next to Phister, nearly falling into McCreedy’s lap. The dead boy had seemed much heavier than any toddler should ever be, and his stench was like the cleanser that periodically washed over the floors back home, seeping from tiny holes in the base of the walls.
Settling between McCreedy and Young Phister, the dead boy said, “Yeah, so, thanks for picking me up and finally getting the jist of what I was talking about. For a minute there, I was beginning to think you were a total idiot.”
“No. But I’m kind of . . . I’m going through a lot right now.”
“Who isn’t? Seriously, you could have the doctor install a sense of humour in you.”
Phister drove. Another person, up ahead. At least the smoke seemed to be thinning. After a moment, Phister said, “Really, though, who do you think these people are?”
“My guess? Probably escapees from a lab.”
Which also made no sense to Phister.
They drove past this most recent addition to the macabre parade — a middle-aged woman this time. Phister saw a nasty cut over one of her eyes. Half her face was crusted with dried blood. She walked past as if the car did not exist —
The dead boy, meanwhile, poked at McCreedy with one finger. “Or, I don’t know,” he said, “maybe their city is gone. The dispossessed. Doesn’t explain why they’re so out of it.”
“Please stop touching him.”
Turning toward Phister, “There have been collapses.” Up close, an odd timing to the boy’s words, a twist to his bloodless lips that should have slurred the sounds he made but did not, as if they could have been uttered even if the dead boy kept his mouth closed the whole while. And his cold green stare, levelled from just a few centimetres away, was much more eerie and unsettling than it had been from the hood of the car. “I did learn that much about the collapses before I was cut off. Seems that parts of the world are folding in on themselves. Reacting to the wound. Shutting down.”
“Wound? The world’s wounded? It’s shutting down?”
“Parts of it are, bud. That’s what I think. There was a place I heard about, Tianna, that was virtually crushed between two levels when the levels above and below sort of, well, merged.”
Tianna. That name was familiar. Phister recalled a fleeting image of a red-haired girl. He knew what her lips had felt like against his own, and how they had tasted. And he recalled her low, rough laugh and knew the way her neck smelled faintly of cloves when he buried his face in the warmth there. Softly, he said, “Tianna . . .?”
“Tianna. Yeah. It was a city.”
“A city . . .”
The dead boy had become impatient. “What’s a damned city? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Uh . . .”
“What is the fucking matter with you? I’m supposed to be the dead one here.”
Phister shook his head in an attempt to clear it. “I came up from the basement. Apparently. I left there just a few days ago, so all this is, uh, new to me.”
“Are you from Public Works?”
Phister glanced over, frowning. “Yeah. I guess so. Because that’s what the car says, anyhow, when it’s plugged in. The Department of Public Works.”
“You don’t wear much of a uniform. You could pass for a guest. But no guest would ever go to the basement.”
“Why not?” Phister was patriotically offended.
“Because there’s nothing there. Just sewage that glows in the dark and pipes and flying rats.” The dead boy touched his