“Roommate!” Bernard cried.
“Hey, Detective?” She ran over and dropped to her knees beside Gabriel. She placed her hand on his bare back. “Detective? Gabe… I mean, Gabriel, Gabriel. Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.”
Gabriel shuddered, but he remained silent. It’d been a long time since he’d felt a woman’s hand on his naked skin; her touch brought back memories. Good memories. Painful memories. Skin on skin. It reminded him that, for better or worse, he still had a libido. He still felt things. He was still human. Even if he was crazy. Even if he was locked into the same building forever. Even if his demented condition meant it was probably illegal for anyone to have sex with him ever again. He was still human.
Her face was inches from his, her eyes still widened in alarm. He stared at her blankly, too exhausted to respond. Her eyelids were painted maroon. Her perfume smelled of fresh peaches.
“Smile, Gabriel,” she demanded.
“Fingernails grow… one nanometer… every second,” he replied. “Can you imagine that? Every second.”
Gabriel’s head was swimming. Bright New Day. He was at Bright New Day. His name was Gabriel Schist. He was trying to cure the Black Virus. There were… slugs. The virus. Slugs. Victor, Victor See. No, not See. It was C, Victor C, the letter C.
Dana reached for the call button. “Gabriel, smile, dammit. Smile.”
Oh, right. Dana was trying to see if he was stroking out. When someone had a stroke, his smile was uneven. Fortunately, he wasn’t having one. His last stroke had already caused enough problems. Another one could leave him unable to speak or walk or think.
Gabriel cleared the dirty cobwebs out of his head. Okay, Gabriel, focus your damn mind. He smiled for her, a big, winning smile, packed full of teeth. “I’m fine,” he murmured.
Dana sat back on her bony haunches, sighed, and wiped the sweat from her forehead. The veins on her pale, too-thin hands were popping out.
Still smelling her peach-scented perfume, Gabriel tried to remember how her hand had felt on his naked back. It reminded him of how Yvonne’s hands had felt, long ago. Cool. Textured. Tiny fingertips. “I’m fine,” he repeated.
“Thank God.” She laughed. “Crap! You had me worried as hell, ya bastard.”
Gabriel shrugged. He wanted to smile again, to show her that he appreciated the fact that she cared, but something internal blocked him from expressing himself.
Dana stood up and dusted off the backs of her legs. “Okay. Well, I’ll be right back to get your vitals. So just wait there. Don’t try to stand up. We’ll get you up with the Hoyer, just to be safe.”
“Sure.” He had no intention of waiting around for them to hoist him up with that ridiculous patient-lifting apparatus, but arguing the point was a waste of breath. Legally, they were supposed to use it every time a resident fell.
“Good. Wait here.” She walked out of the room.
As soon as she was out of sight, Gabriel grabbed the side of the bed. He stood up slowly, painfully, just to make sure he was still capable of standing. His legs were shaky and gelatinous but fine. He was just dehydrated. His blood sugar was probably high, too.
He pulled the waistband of the sweatpants up over his navel and tied them a little tighter. He was cold and needed a shirt. He walked over and opened the closet door. Apparently, all of his shirts were in the laundry. “Hey, Bernard?”
“Yep,” Bernard replied.
“This is Gabriel, your roommate. I was wondering if I could perhaps borrow one of your shirts today?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Sure, buddy. I’ve got too many.”
Gabriel went over to Bernard’s closet, which was insanely overstuffed with hundreds of those identical white V-necks. He pulled one out and saw the old trucker’s initials, BUH 4, written on the inside of the collar in black permanent marker. Gabriel smiled and stretched the shirt over his head.
Suddenly, something changed. Almost imperceptibly, the air trembled. Gabriel felt it even before it happened. His lungs deflated. His stomach leapt into his ribs and collapsed.
Boom!
Something big and heavy violently crashed out in the hallway. The noise was followed by more crashes, softer ones, though no less violent. The walls shuddered.
Bang! Bang!
“Hurrrrtssss!” a man screeched, his voice echoing down the corridor. “Hurtssss!”
Bang! Bang!
Gabriel shivered. Bernard, who had been shakily lifting a cup of fruit punch to his mouth, dropped the cup and splattered red juice all over his shirt. Someone had collapsed in the hallway, and he was banging the floor, or maybe the wall. Falls weren’t uncommon in the nursing home, but whatever had happened out there seemed unusual. The entire floor felt as if it were still rattling. Gabriel stepped toward the door and peeked around the corner. No one was in sight.
“Hurrrrrtssss! Gahhhh!” That was John Morris. It had to be.
Gabriel grabbed his cane and hobbled out into the hallway, wincing from his sore tailbone. He had to see what was going on. The scream sounded again, so high-pitched and dreadful that it made Gabriel’s intestines want to tie themselves in knots and strangle his stomach. As Gabriel made his way down North Wing, many of the other residents worriedly peeked out of their doorways. At the other end of the hall, Dana seemed to be in a panic.
John Morris wasn’t bedbound anymore. He was in the hallway, crawling on his hands and knees, the tubing still connected to his stomach like a long, plastic leech. He was screaming, coughing, and whimpering. His inhalations were so rough that it sounded as though his lungs were about to burst. In addition to the black wormlike veins and charcoal eyes, his skin was albino-white with ugly yellow sores spread all over him in a polka-dot pattern. A sickening puddle of perspiration trailed behind him. He was almost unrecognizable. He looked like an alien.
Morris’s charcoal-black eyes focused on Gabriel. “P-pl-please, Detective. You… help me.”
Chapter 20:
Evolution
Morris wasn’t interested in the nurses racing in his direction, stopping only to put on protective gloves, gowns, and masks. He stared steadily at Gabriel. “Help… me… plleee… pleeeassse. Hurts…” He crawled toward Gabriel. His breathing became harsher.
Gabriel looked over his shoulder, hoping that someone else was there, that Morris was calling for a nurse behind him. No. There was no one else.
“Gaahhhhh!” Morris gripped his stomach.
Gabriel took a deep breath and hobbled forward on his cane.
