Chapter 13
For a long moment Shane stayed frozen in place, kneeling beside the couch. He hadn’t even heard the elevator descend, though he supposed he’d been a bit distracted. In any case, White Shirt had called the elevator, had ridden it to the top floor. He was here.
He had called the elevator. He had ridden it to the top floor, following them. Did that mean he wasn’t as far gone as Shane had thought? Did that mean he still had a thinking mind in his head?
And what the fuck was he doing?
Shane’s last glimpse of the white-shirted worker had been of the man shuffling across the ground floor. Now he was kneeling on the elevator floor, his face pressed to the carpet. Shane watched, incredulous, as the white-shirted worker opened his mouth, and licked a dark patch on the carpet. And then Shane realized: White Shirt was lapping at Terrance’s blood.
Shane stood up slowly, careful not to make a sound. But White Shirt paused abruptly, lifted his head. He looked as if he were listening, or focusing with some other sense. He lurched to his feet, slow and stiff, and turned to look at Shane.
“Listen,” Shane said. “Can you hear me? Do you understand what I’m saying.”
White Shirt lifted his right arm, reached toward Shane, fingers eager. He opened his mouth, breathed out a moan. Was there a sense of emotion in the moan? Shane wondered. A sense of yearning, or despair?
“Can you understand me?” Shane asked, pronouncing each word carefully, as if he were trying to communicate with someone who didn’t speak his language. “Do. You. Understand?”
White Shirt came lurching out of the elevator, shuffling toward Shane. His hand reaching. He moaned again.
Shane glanced down at Terrance, who looked as still as a corpse. He looked back at White Shirt. White Shirt, who had called the elevator and ridden it up to their level.
“Do you want help?” Shane said, wondering what the man understood. Desperately hoping he understood something. Shane licked his lips nervously. “Do you want to hurt us?”
White Shirt kept shuffling forward. He had come within a single stride of the couch. His good arm reached toward Shane.
Shane reached out with his own hand cautiously, the yellow rubber glove bright even in the dim light. He reached out as if to shake.
And White Shirt gripped his hand.
But his eyes were dead. There was no sense of yearning, or sadness, or hunger—or even rage—in those eyes. There was nothing human there at all.
Shane felt White Shirt’s fingers clamping down on his hand. He felt his hand being pulled. He saw White Shirt’s lips drawing back, teeth bared, head bending toward Shane’s arm.
And Shane knew, in that instant, that sympathizing with one of these dead things was utter folly.
Shane had the rum bottle by the neck in his other hand. He swung the bottle into the side of White Shirt’s head with all of his might.
The bottle exploded into shards of glass and a spray of rum. The smell of the alcohol filled the air.
White Shirt’s head was knocked to his left, his neck and shoulders following, throwing his weight onto his bad leg. The leg folded sideways, and he toppled to the ground, almost pulling Shane down with him.
But Shane kept his feet, stumbling over White Shirt’s body. He stepped to White Shirt’s far side, trying to pull his hand free. When White Shirt’s grip didn’t loosen, Shane raised his boot and stomped down on the man’s face with his heel.
White Shirt still didn’t let go.
In a sudden desperation, Shane stomped on the man’s face again. And again. He kept stomping, driving his heel down onto the man’s face with mounting frenzy. He felt the man’s bones collapsing with each cruel blow—the nose flattening, the right cheek caving in, the eye socket’s rim crumpling, the teeth breaking loose.
But still the man wouldn’t let go of Shane’s hand.
Shane’s fear and desperation grew with each stomp. In just a few seconds he felt nearly unhinged from panic. He gave up on the stomping, started a series of vicious kicks, driving his steel-toe into the man’s temple. The side of the man’s head seemed to give way, to crumple inward, the eye on that side bulged and split like a grape.
And still the man wouldn’t let go.
In utter panic, Shane threw himself back from the white-shirt-wearing man. He planted his feet, driving with his legs, leaning his whole body away.
And finally, abruptly, his hand slipped loose from the rubber glove. The suddenness of the release sent Shane sprawling to the floor.
He scrambled back quickly, a painful rawness in his throat telling him he’d been screaming. His back hit the secretary’s desk, and he stopped his scrambling, sat with his head spinning and his lungs burning, his eyes fixed on the prone body of the white shirt man. A vivid surge of nausea flashed through him, and he pitched to his side, retching.
For a moment, everything was quiet, still. And then Shane heard a throaty gasp, a wet sucking-in of air.
A moment later, White Shirt let out a moan.
And then he rolled to his side, his ruined head hanging loosely, and started trying to stand.