“No, I don’t believe it did. You must be careful about that sort of thing, Gabriel. I’ve overheard conversations. You’re on your last leg. If you get one more strike, the administrator is prepared to reassign you to Level Five.”
Gabriel eyed his cigarette pack. It was empty. Next to it were both of the creepy skeleton dolls, each holding their even creepier little notes. Their beady black eyes stared into the deepest pits of his psyche. Gabriel blocked his view of them with a heavy book. That was one mystery he didn’t want to deal with yet. “Level Five. Tell me something, Victor. How the hell do you know all this?”
Victor gave a little shrug. “I have my connections.”
“Like who?” Gabriel scoffed. “The Mafia? The CIA? The Illuminati?”
Victor smiled knowingly and dusted off his tuxedo jacket. He looked sidelong out the window, and the air suddenly seemed colder. “Connections.”
“Who are you? Is Victor even your real name?”
“I’m a very powerful man. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?”
“Then why are you here?”
“I know everyone in this facility. I know everything about everyone in this facility. It’s my job. It might help you to understand if you realized that, unlike most of you, I’m here by choice.”
Gabriel eyed him suspiciously. “You must be private pay. Where is your room? Are you really on West Wing?”
Victor perched on the desk, casually propping his feet up on the chair. “You seem quite stressed, Gabriel.”
“My Alzheimer’s is getting significantly worse. I don’t even vaguely recall talking to the administrator. The last thing I remember is that incident in the corridor, and those were hardly the actions of a sane person. A small part of me wonders if maybe I should be in Level Five, all things considered.”
“Perhaps the stress isn’t a result of your decline. Instead, maybe your decline is a result of the stress.”
“Seems like a reasonable assumption. Ever since John Morris, I’ve been racing against my own biological clock. I don’t know how much longer I have until I become a vegetable. It could be months, weeks, or only days. And somehow, in that ridiculously uncertain time frame, I have to focus what few cognitive powers I have left on this Black Virus, this… this…”
“Pray tell, what information have you managed to decipher about this Black Virus so far?”
“It’s not a virus, I know that much.” Gabriel clenched his hands into fists. “It’s a living entity, the result of my vaccine. And even more ridiculously, someone or something has supposedly named this species the… ah, the Schistlings. Look, Victor, I know that I probably seem utterly demented, but—”
“Logic isn’t always practical.” Victor grinned. He acted almost as if he were the administrator of the nursing home, and Irving was only a figurehead.
Gabriel narrowed his eyes. “You say that you’re a powerful man. Tell me, what do you know?”
“I know that you must work harder. I know that you have to stay focused. I know that you have to keep a clear head and not let your rather recurrent character flaws get in your way, or you’ll never succeed at what you’re trying to do.”
Outside, the black sky was becoming bluer. The light slowly punched holes in the dark, piercing through its black velvet skin. Nighttime was dying a slow, painful death.
“That’s all very nice,” Gabriel said. “But it’s not what I meant. How much do you really know? And to start with, mystery man, how about telling me what you know about these goddamn Schistlings?”
“Where shall I begin? As I said, I know everything about everyone in this facility. But you want details? You want me to tell you everything I know about you, for instance? Perhaps you want me to talk about your childhood, that IQ test you took as a boy?”
“That’s public information. You could’ve read about that somewhere.”
“Well, how about your longstanding friendship with the priest, Father Gareth? What about the day you met your future wife on the beach? The bag of oranges she was carrying?”
Gabriel shivered. He reached for his cigarette pack again and rediscovered its emptiness. “My-my daughter. You must have met her. She must have told you. Or maybe, you and me, we must have… Listen, Victor. Do I know you? Have we met before?”
“Of course you know me. But not in the way that you might expect.”
“Goddamn it, Victor.” Gabriel gritted his teeth. “How do you know me?”
“I’ve always known you. I know your successes. I know how much your daughter means to you and how you and she shared those summers on the sailboat. And I know the struggles you’ve overcome in the past, your former alcoholism, your—”
“There is no former alcoholism. The desire never goes away.” Just at the mention of it, Gabriel could taste the metallic flavor of the cheap beer he’d never have again. “So I just keep the hell away from it.”
“Very perceptive! But here, before I annoy you too much with my grandiose mysteriousness, I wish to show you something. I find that demonstration is often more effective than exposition. Would you agree?”
“I don’t have time.” Gabriel shook his head. “I have to keep working.”
“I know. That’s why I want to show you. Because after these last few days, you need to get back on your feet, and I believe that to do so, you must come to a better understanding of this situation.”
Gabriel was ready to snap and show just how much he didn’t appreciate that grandiose mysteriousness, but seeing the genuineness in Victor’s eyes, he put on his detective ensemble and grabbed his cane. Victor led the way out into the corridor. In South Wing, Mickey Minkovsky had fallen out of bed, and his screams and cackles echoed down the hallway. Bob Baker shouted at him to shut up, or maybe he was shouting at the voices. Lew Gates was in the kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee.
“You’re very good at avoiding questions,” Gabriel said. “But can you at least tell me your last name?”
“Calaca. My name is Victor Calaca.”
They passed Edna Foster’s room. Despite the early hour, she was sitting up on the side of her bed. “Mommmmmy…” she called in that fragile voice. “Mommmmy, I’m gonna miss the bus.”
As they walked, Victor stopped at the rooms of those who were infected. They waited until the nurses were busy passing meds, and then the angular man stood guard as Gabriel peeked inside each room, witnessing the horror that his great cure had indirectly caused.
Victor was right. Demonstration was more effective than exposition. Sitting at his desk in his room, Gabriel could act as if the virus were an imaginary disease and attempting to find a cure a playful pastime. When he saw the ravages of it in person, the reality of it became all too vivid, and it was his fault.
While Gabriel had been in a cloudy haze for two days, the count had risen. Sixteen residents of Bright New Day stared out of charcoal-black eyes, their skin crawling with dark veins. The poor, screaming woman he had mistakenly embraced the other day was also among the infected.
Gabriel considered setting traps. There had to be a way to catch a live Schistling right after it was born. But he had no idea how to go about doing that or which patient would expire next. The Schistlings confused the body with any number of symptoms until the whole thing finally just sputtered out and died, so there was no pattern to follow, and that was the brilliance of it.
