Cooper put the phone in his pocket. “See anyone wearing an AC/DC T-shirt? A black one?”
The bald man nodded. “Oh, sure! That guy’s here. He’s resting.”
Cooper’s heart raced. He could get his friend and get the hell out of there, leave this two-cards-shy-of-a-full-deck Wisconsinite behind.
Cooper forced a smile. “Can you show me? I’d appreciate it.”
“Sure,” the bald man said. “We’re all friends now, right?”
“All friends,” Cooper echoed. “Total BFFs.”
“Huh? Bee-eff-eff?”
“We’re friends, I mean,” Cooper said. “Show me?”
The man walked deeper into the poorly lit basement, past the gray boilers. Cooper hesitated. This was a mistake. He was going to follow a strange, whacked-out man into Freddy Krueger’s home turf?
You fucking owe me, Jeff. I hope you’re okay, so I can kill you myself.
Cooper followed the bald man in the blood-speckled white shirt.
As he walked, he scanned left and right again… and he saw shapes. Shapes back in the shadows, where the floor met the wall, around and even underneath the boilers. The shapes were… people? Sleeping people covered in dark blankets, maybe?
There were two more smaller boilers beyond the first pair. After the last boiler, the white-shirted man stopped and turned. He smiled that something-is-wrong-with-me smile, then gestured toward a bulky shape, covered in a blanket, resting at the base of the cinder-block wall.
It took Cooper a moment to see something in that shape, to see a person’s face.
Jeff’s face.
His best friend in all the world, his business partner, his brother, and yet the sight of him suddenly repulsed Cooper. Jeff’s face looked… bigger. Swollen, sweaty, with big threads from that blanket clinging to his jaw, his cheeks. And the body beneath that blanket… bloated, misshapen… too large.
Something deep inside of Cooper told him to stay the fuck away from Jeff. No, not just stay away, more like turn and haul ass out of there.
No. He would not leave. That was his friend. Jeff was sick. Really sick, obviously, something way beyond drinking himself halfway into a coma and finding a quiet place to pass out.
Cooper took a step closer, leaving the strange man facing his back.
Those threads on Jeff’s face… they weren’t threads.
Because it wasn’t a blanket.
Jeff was encrusted in some kind of dark-brown clay, or maybe a stiff foam. His eyes were closed, his mouth was open. The material curved up over his left cheek, split into tendrils that threaded up into his hair: a twisted delta of that strange mud cupped Jeff’s head like a mother cradling a child.
Then, Cooper saw something that took his mind a moment to register. Half covered by that material, there were two left hands. No… three of them. There were two people in there with Jeff, two small people. Cooper saw a shoeless, skinless foot sticking out, a foot with black, shriveled skin… almost like the foot of a mummy.
Cooper’s chest tightened and tingled. Was Jeff dead?
No, his lips were moving, just slightly — he was still breathing.
“Jeff,” Cooper said. “Bro, can you hear me?”
“Of course he can’t,” said the bald man. His words faded away into the boiler room’s shadows.
The situation hit Cooper with a sudden, gripping clarity — a city going crazy and he was in a dark basement, a strange man with a psycho grin standing right behind him. Had this man put Jeff here? Had he covered Jeff and those other people with this brown goop?
Cooper turned, looked at the chipped-tooth smile. He pointed down at Jeff.
“What is that stuff all over him?”
The man shrugged. “I dunno. That’s how it’s done, I guess. I’m just supposed to watch and make sure they’re safe.”
“Safe from what?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. He sniffed again. Twice, like a dog checking something out. “Safe from people who are not our friends.”
Friends. Out of the bald man’s mouth, the word sounded heavy, important. It sounded… religious.
Cooper squatted in front of Jeff, forced himself to reach for his friend — then he pulled his hand back. What if that brown shit was some kind of disease? What if it was contagious? Could it be part of what Blackmon had been babbling about on TV? He had to call an ambulance. But if he did, would one come? The world outside had melted down. Cooper couldn’t count on help from anyone; Jeff needed him, and needed him right now.
Cooper reached out with his index finger, pointed it, poked the tip into the brown material. It felt like a crunchy sponge.
“Hey,” said the man behind him. “You’re not supposed to touch that. Never supposed to touch that!”
Cooper stood and turned. “You said you didn’t know what this crap is.”
The man’s smile faded. “Maybe I was wrong.”
The hair stood up on Cooper’s neck. To his left, the bulky, hot boiler. To his right, heavy shadows that hid the rest of the basement. This crazy fuck blocked his path to the door.
“Uh, wrong about what?”
“About you being my friend.”
The man’s hands shot out, reaching for Cooper’s neck. Cooper flinched away — his heels hit Jeff. Cooper fell backward against the cinder-block wall, slid down it until his ass landed on the pile of bodies. He tried to scramble up, but the bald man’s hands slammed into his throat, wrapped around his neck.
Strong thumbs pushed hard into Cooper’s windpipe. He couldn’t breathe. The man leaned in hard, his weight keeping Cooper pressed down on Jeff, the other bodies and the crunchy material that covered them.
“Just give us a smooch,” the man said. “It’ll be okay.”
He opened his mouth and bent closer.
The overhead lights cast the man’s face in shadow, but not so much that Cooper couldn’t see the wide eyes, pupils so big they looked like dimes, the strand of spit stringing from the upper lip to the lower, and the man’s tongue — pink, dotted with tiny, blue triangles.
What the fuck oh God oh God!
Cooper’s hands shot up and grabbed the man’s face. Thumb tips drove deep into the man’s eyes with a pop and a squelch and a burst of hot wetness.
The man released Cooper’s throat, flailed at Cooper’s hands. Cooper shoved him away. The man fell back into the aisle, his ass landing on concrete, his hands covering ruined eyes that spilled blood onto his white shirt. The sound he made… it was like an obese cat crying for food.
Cooper coughed, drew in air, pushed himself to his feet. His wet thumbs were already cooling in the basement air. He quickly wiped them off against his pants legs, horrified at what was on his skin.
He had to get out of there.
Cooper turned to face his friend. Jeff hadn’t moved a muscle. Neither had the other two people hidden beneath the brown material.
“Jeff! Dude, wake the fuck up!”
Cooper went to grab Jeff’s shirt to shake him, actually touched the brown stuff before his hands retreated on their own as if they’d touched a man-size spider.
Gloves, he needed gloves, something to cover his hands. No, too late for that — he already had flecks and chunks of the brown stuff on his fingers, and he could feel pieces of it on his neck and face.