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belladonnaandulriched · 3 years

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amped and wired, part two | chapter fifteen: you’ll only make it worse

“I can't believe that pack of sliced wife meat is gone.”

Lars and I scrambled to get dressed and out the door given little snow flurries came down upon us. He seemed more fixated on that whole thing than the actual fact that Scott had gone missing. I put on my coat and tugged my hood over my head; I searched through my pockets for my gloves and my key.

“What're you looking for?” he asked me.

“Things for my hands and the thing to lock the door.”

“Just keep your hands in your pockets and we will be back soon enough.”

“And risk gettin' robbed? I don't think so. And by the way, don't mention it to Mrs. Hamilton, though, aight?”

“Mention what?”

“The chunky pastrami.”

“Sliced wife meat,” he corrected me.

“Whatever. Just don't mention it to her 'cause the last thing I want is to have her be on both our asses for losing a thing of meat—oh, here are my keys.”

I took the ring out of my coat pocket, and underneath that I felt a piece of paper, but that was least of my concern at that moment. I then led Lars out to the icy cold sidewalk. I locked the door and my hands immediately shook from the bitter lake effect snow. I stuffed the key back into my pocket and Lars and I walked down to Mrs. Hamilton's ride, which I could tell was Cindy's car once again.

“Shotfun,” Lars said aloud.

“Shotgun, you mean,” I replied.

“Right.”

I climbed into the back seat behind him and a concerned Mrs. Hamilton. Once Lars shut the door behind him, we rolled towards the street. I almost had no time to put on my seat belt, either.

“We just woke up earlier and Charlie noticed he was missing,” she said without hesitating. “Looked high and low for him and everything.”

“Where do you think he could have gone?” Lars asked her.

“No idea. Doubt he went back to that junkyard, too—too far of a walk and there's no reason to given the prototype is with us.”

“How's she doing by the way?” I said once I was buckled in.

“Maya?” Mrs. Hamilton peered up in the rear view mirror at me.

“Yeah.”

“She didn't really sleep all too well last night. Probably because she's so starved and emeciated—she was up a lot last night according to Danny.”

“Wow,” I muttered under my breath. I leaned back and put one arm upon the top of the seat.

“Is she at least eating anything?” Lars asked her.

“That's the other thing, too—she barely eats. I gave her a saltine cracker before we went to bed last night and she ate it slowly. I gave her two more this morning and she ate those, too. But she grimaces at the mention of eating any kind of meat and she sympathizes with all of you boys in that you're not very well known.” Mrs. Hamilton peered into the mirror at me.

“She wants to hear you sing again, Joey.”

“Oh yeah?” I flashed her a grin.

“Yeah. She described your voice as 'sweet' and 'simultaneously earth shaking.' She wants to hear you when you get a chance, Joey.”

I nodded my head and peered out the window at the flurries coming down. I never moved from my spot as we neared Black Orchid; Mrs. Hamilton parked outside of the front door and the three of us filed up the walkway. She held the door for Lars and me and we ducked inside to see Frankie, Charlie, Danny, Cindy, Gwen, and Louise all congregated around the strip chess table. All of them had looks of concern on their faces.

I tugged the hood down from my head and sighed through my nose. I could only wonder what had happened here while Lars and I were sleeping.

“Alright, let's get down to brass tacks,” he started, “who was the last to fall asleep last night?”

“Me,” Danny raised his hand. “And Scott was asleep once I did, too.”

“You don't think it has anything to do with that warehouse we found down in New York City, do you,” Frankie wondered aloud.

I thought about that particular pack of meat under the bed upstairs, and I wondered if it all had anything to do with that one Lars had in his coat all that time. It all just made sense to me, especially once I thought about everything he had said about his wife and why he did what he did, but then again, I told him to not mention it to Mrs. Hamilton so I couldn't mention it to them. But it also made sense: wherever we found Scott, we could uncover something more about Candace and Maya.

I was about to say something about that when Lars beat me to the punch.

“I have no doubt about it, but I also do.”

“Why?” asked Charlie; he then patted his chest.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah. I've had heartburn all night.”

Yeah, it definitely had to do with that damn container Lars had in his coat.

“Anyways, I wonder why it even would have anything to do with that warehouse. It was a place where things were put to pasture.”

It had everything to do with that warehouse: he was either covering his own neck or he missed something about his wife that he didn't catch before he choked her and then diced her up into literal lunch meat.

“By the way, there's one thing that keeps bothering me, Lars,” Frankie spoke up, “is how'd you know that warehouse was where clones were being made?”

I turned to look at Lars, whose mouth hung open but no sound came out. We got him then.

“Well, enough chit chat, gang,” Mrs. Hamilton scoffed as she breezed past the two of us. “We have to find Scott before something bad happens. Or before we're stuck here because it's snowing outside. We're a big group and yet I can only do so much on my end.” She hesitated behind the bar and set her hands on top of that polished wood. I crammed my hands into my coat pockets. I felt my keys and that one piece of paper there at the bottom. I fondled around with two fingers and got hold of it.

And then I remembered what it was.

“There is—someone we can call up,” I pointed out as I took the piece of paper out of my pocket.

“Who?” Mrs. Hamilton asked me.

“Where's the phone in here?”

“Right here behind the bar.” I ambled towards her and rounded the bar: I spotted that phone underneath her hips. She stepped out of the way for me, and yet she stood next to me as I picked the receiver. I dialed that number and brought the earpiece to the side of my head. It rang just once—

“Hello?”

“Angeline, hi. It's Joey.”

“Oh, hi—” She cleared her throat.

“I was wondering about you boys, like—when one of you would hit me up,” she said; her voice sounded congested, like she had a cold. “Things have been—ungodly slow lately. What's going on?”

“Scott—kinda sorta went missing.”

“Kinda sorta?” I could hear her chuckle at that.

“I mean, yes. Yeah. Scott went missing.”

There was a click on her end. “Hang on a second, Joey—”

Her side went silent. I looked up at all of them in the room before me, all of them still and completely silent. I kept the phone up to my ear for a second. I listened to complete silence for a second before I set the receiver back down. I kept my hand over the handle part of the phone and nibbled on my bottom lip.

The phone rang and I picked it back up to my ear.

“You know,” Angeline said with another clearing of her throat, “it's funny you mention that because—I got a lead just now telling me John Bush's gone missing, too.”

“No way,” I said with a glance up at Frankie, Charlie, Danny, and Lars.

“Yes way. They said that Bush and Ian were probably taken by the same person—at least I hope that's what it is. My hope is they're not in the heart of New York City. And when I say 'heart', I mean that quite literally.”

I swallowed because I flashed back on the other night when we found that one clone in the empty lot.

She coughed twice and cleared her throat again.

“Are you alright? You sound sick.”

“Literal 'heart' of New York City—it's having an effect on my head and my lungs a bit.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah. So when you all come down that way, bring your masks because—because it's utterly ghastly.”

“Well, there's a bunch of us—y'know, it's me and Lars, and then Frankie, Charlie, and Danny, and then the girls at Black Orchid.”

“Well, I'm headed up in your direction, though,” she assured me, “up to Syracuse anyway. I have to start somewhere.”

“Want me to tell them 'bout it?” I asked her.

“Please do. You know you guys were more than helpful before.”

“By the way, Angeline, I should tell you—before he vanished into thin air, Scott found the prototype.”

“The prototype?”

“The original Maya. He found her in a junkyard.”

“Oh, my God. Is she—” She cleared her throat again. “—is she alright?”

“I hope so. When we found her, she was so weak, Scott and I both could pick her up and sling her over our shoulders. She ate some crackers so that's—that was sump'n, y'know?”

“Okay. Let's meet up in Syracuse. The same coffee shop where we met before. I'm on my way.”

“Okay—” She and I hung up at the same time, and I turned to Mrs. Hamilton.

“Angeline wants to meet up at the coffee shop we had breakfast the other day,” I told her.

“Did she say where she is right now?”

“No, but I doubt she'll get there before us since she works in the City.”

“Okay.” Mrs. Hamilton turned to Cindy and Gwen. “Someone's gotta stay here because she could die. Granted, she's probably going to die anyways—but someone has to stay here and watch over her.”

“My car also can't fit that many people in it, either,” Cindy pointed out.

“And my car is toast, too,” Mrs. Hamilton added, and then she turned to Gwen. “Your truck can fit a bunch of people in it.”

“The five of us plus you?” I asked her.

“It won't be very comfortable, though,” said Gwen. “One of you guys have to your beautiful crotches hit by the stick shift.”

“I ain't sittin' sideways, either,” I grumbled.

“Flip a coin?” Frankie offered.

Lars looked back at me with his eyes wide.

“I will have my balls crushed,” he offered.

“We're all gonna have our balls crushed, though, now that I think 'bout it,” I told him. “Before we go, I wanna—” I gestured to the hallway on the other side of the room, right behind them.

“Go see her,” Mrs. Hamilton coaxed me with a pat of my upper back. She slid her hand down towards my hips for a second, and then I stepped away from her. I passed the table and entered the dim hallway. I ascended the stairs and I had a weird feeling overcome me. That feeling that I was about to walk right into the void.

I stepped into that room to find her laying on the bed closest to the door. They had covered her body with blankets: in the gray morning light, I could see the sheer gauntness of her face and her neck. Deep creases coated her eyelids and the corners of her mouth. She looked like how I felt when I received that phone call from Charlie.

“Maya?” I said to her. She opened her eyes to look at me with those yellowed eyes.

“Come closer to me,” her voice was light and airy but I could tell she didn't have a lot of time with her. I took one step forward and then another, and I loomed over her. I didn't like the feeling over me. It sucked. The whole thing sucked. I felt like I was standing over something awful rather than a girl who was dying.

“Joey?” she whispered to me; she brought a hand out from underneath the covers and gestured for me to come closer to her. I swallowed.

“Yes?” I bowed closer to her face: I made out the sight of seam lines all over her skin, like a patchwork of sorts. There was even a stripe across her nose that was a slightly different tone compared to the other parts of her face.

“I would rather die than let any more clones be made,” she confessed to me.

“I ain't killin' you,” I told her.

“No, no—that isn't what I want.”

I gazed on at her pale skin and those sickly eyes. Amazed she even made it through the night.

“I need your voice,” she whispered.

“You want me to sing to you?”

“Please. Sing me to sleep.”

I thought about what I could sing to her right then. The one song that had hung with me for years following when I first heard it in high school. I nibbled on my bottom lip and closed my eyes. It was something I had wanted to sing with Anthrax whenever we got the chance.

“Once I rose above the noise and confusion... just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion, I was soaring ever higher, but I flew too high. Though my eyes could see, I still was a blind man, though my mind could think, I still was a mad man. I hear the voices when I'm dreaming...”

Her eyes closed again and I loomed in closer to her.

“I can hear them say, carry on, my wayward son. There'll be peace when you are done...”

She didn't move as I brought my voice to a whisper. “...lay your weary head to rest, don't you cry no more.”

She drifted off to sleep and that was my cue to return back downstairs. I doubled back out to the stairs and to the hallway, and the front room, where I was met with Mrs. Hamilton telling something to Cindy and Gwen.

“Is she asleep?” she asked me as she handed me a black protective mask for myself.

“Yep, went right to sleep,” I duly replied.

“She's not dead, is she?” Lars chimed in from behind them.

“Oh, no. No. Just went right to sleep.”

“Alright, let's get going,” Charlie declared as he patted his chest again. I took one last glimpse to Cindy, who blew me a kiss.

“Stay safe,” she said to me in a low voice.

“You, too,” I said back to her with a wink.

The bunch of us returned outside, where the snow had stopped which meant even more was coming. As we made our way to Gwen's truck parked around the corner, I looked down the block at the sight of something glimmering against the gray. It wasn't water or snow or anything like that. I recognized her hair and even from a distance I made the shape of a caduceus on her blouse. She vanished about as quickly as she emerged from thin air.

I didn't have time to ruminate on why Mrs. Snow appeared right then, especially given the fact I had to climb into the front passenger seat last before we went anywhere. Indeed, Lars was crammed right in between me and Mrs. Hamilton, but the stick shift came about an inch from the crotch of his jeans. My crotch felt sore just looking at it, though.

“Knee deep in blood and cum, let me tell you,” he muttered to me at one point. The snows came in right as we came within the outskirts of Syracuse. That blue neon lined the skyline and I blinked once, then twice, and neither time was it a sign of me missing it vanishing for a second before reappearing. I didn't understand that, as much as I figured out any of it.

Mrs. Hamilton took the next exit to that cafe we had had breakfast before, and I recognized Angeline outside the front door wrapped in a heavy winter coat.

When we climbed out, I was quick to put on my mask because she looked like death herself had rolled her over. Her face was washed out and the bags under her eyes were as dark blue as Frankie's jeans.

“Oh my God, Angeline, what the hell happened?” Mrs. Hamilton asked her, appalled.

“I'm really sick,” she said in a hoarse voice, “it's—whatever is overcoming New York right now.”

I turned to Lars, who gaped at me. I raised an eyebrow at him, to which he knitted his at me. I nodded at him, to which he shook his head.

“What are you doing?” he finally asked me.

“Don't mention the container,” I warned him in a low voice. “At least—not yet. Not when we're gettin' sump'n to eat.”

“Joey, the container has nothing to do with any of it—just going to tell you that right now.”

“Why'd Scott go missin' then?”

“No idea. But I know for a fact the container had nothing to do with it.”

***************

lyrics to carry on wayward son by kansas, which anthrax themselves covered in 2016!

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