Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [150]
“Is that a loudspeaker I hear in the background?”
“They’re practicing plan B for talking psychos down. Don’t worry. It’s not working.”
“What do you mean? What about my aunt and her friends?”
“Still upstairs.”
“Are they contaminated?”
“They are. I told them. They didn’t believe me.” At that moment, the overhead light in DiMaggio’s office went off. From the parking lot I could see the greenish glow on the faces in the window. Green radiated off the side of the bald man’s cheek. More green scattered through Clarice’s hair, on DiMaggio’s face. A troika of Halloween goblins.
“You still there?” Stephanie asked.
“Yeah.”
“What’s happening?”
“They just turned off the overhead light upstairs.”
“Anybody else been up there?”
“That was one of my conditions for coming out of the building. Nobody goes in, and your aunt and her friends stay up there.”
“You get some clothes yet?”
“Not exactly.”
“You’re still naked?”
“No.”
“What are you wearing?”
“Slippers and a cell phone.”
Clarice’s scream pierced the night like a siren. DiMaggio glared down at me. I’d never seen so much hatred focused in a single pair of eyes. I could almost see the churning gears as she strained to figure out exactly what had happened. I’d been in her vault. I must have, or I wouldn’t have had access to the D#56. What else was in the vault? Soap and water was the first part of the cure, but after that, it was the hypodermic.
She vanished from the window.
“What was that noise?” Stephanie asked.
“I think they finally figured it out.”
“What are they doing?”
“Clarice is standing in the window crying. The guy disappeared right away. Headed for the showers probably. DiMaggio’s gone now, too.”
“Bet she’s headed for the safe.”
“If you’re right, she should be back in about—there she is.”
Leaning so far out the window I thought she was going to lose her balance and fall, DiMaggio yelled to the nearest police officer, “Don’t shoot him. Whatever you do, don’t shoot him. He’s stolen a top secret chemical formula!”
This time when DiMaggio and Clarice disappeared from the window, I knew they were headed for the showers.
“The girls around?” I asked.
Allyson came on first, doing her standard imitation of a grown-up, the pose she adopted after her mother abandoned us. “Father. Are you coming back?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart.”
“Tomorrow’s the last day, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sweetie.”
“After tomorrow are you going to be like Grandpa?”
“I might be.”
“Stephanie said she gave you a shot.”
“Right in the behind.”
Allyson laughed nervously. “And it might make you better?”
“Just in case it doesn’t, I love you, sweetie. Always remember that. You’ve made my life a joy.”
“Daddy, you’re starting to make me cry. I love you, too. I want you here.”
“I want to be there, but I’m tied up. Can you put your sister on now?”
At the far end of the building an ambulance crew had been waiting for a signal from the police before going inside for Donovan. Now a medic unit pulled up behind the ambulance, and from the looks of things they were going to move in without my permission.
I caught the eye of the police officer with the megaphone. “There’s been a hazardous material spill inside the building. Shows up green under a black light. The patient upstairs is covered in the stuff. So are those other three. So am I. Highly contagious. They call it D number fifty-six. Lethal as hell.”
Brother, did that start a commotion.
65. NOW YOU BE A ZOMBIE
Certain theoreticians have conjectured that more than one universe coexists with ours, that there may be dozens of parallel universes coexisting at the same time.
I believe in it more now than I used to. I believe I may be living lives in separate universes at the same time. Trick would be to jump from one of the bad ones, where you’ve somehow ended up in prison or crippled or blind, where you’ve ended up stupid or ugly, to a different universe where you’re a rich kid from New Hampshire and have impeccable manners and a brown-eyed girlfriend.
In one universe you sprain your ankle stepping off a curb and go