Heat Wave - Complete (The Metric Version)

This is a special alternate version of "Tales from the Road: Heat Wave" for the 95% of the world that does not use imperial units of measurement.

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Part One

The end of the road had been a long time coming.

What started as a half-assed plan to see the world with my dog and two best friends quickly devolved into a chaotic mess of near-death experiences and struggles against forces beyond human comprehension.

In the thick of the action, it was hard to detect any kind of order. Only after each event, in those quiet moments where the interstate droned endlessly onward, with Jerry in his usual spot behind the steering wheel, Rosa and Gaston snoring behind us on the queen sized mattress we rescued from an abandoned furniture store, and me in the passenger seat staring at the messy blur outside the window, only then could I reflect on our journey as a whole. From here, it was easy to see that the path behind us wasn’t random. There was a pattern, a shape–not physical, but temporal. The story repeated itself, the details rearranged, the outcomes foregone before we even arrived. Over and over again, we found ourselves tangled up in someone else’s mess. Sometimes we were able to offer help. More often, the best we could do was bear witness.

Shapeshifters in the sewers of Boston. The Skin Man of Pasadena. A devil down in Georgia. Worms in Washington that could strip a carcass to bone in under thirty seconds. A brain parasite in Utah that took the form of a sentient moustache. Secret oceans inside the Smoky Mountains. A gremlin convoy on Route 66. The cases kept coming, piling up and melting inside my memory. Along the way, we connected with others like ourselves–lost souls caught in the spiderweb of cosmic horrors. Most of them retired after one or two misadventures. Not all of them were so lucky. It was, despite all reason, the best two years of my entire life.

Is there something wrong with me? Yes, obviously. But I was happy. Even when things looked ridiculously hopeless, at least I wasn’t alone. The people you spend your darkest hours with make a huge difference in how you emerge on the other side… Are you lost? That’s okay. There’s a lot of backstory. But if I’m being perfectly honest, things probably still wouldn't make a whole lot of sense even if you knew all the details of how we ended up here.

We put over a hundred thousand kilometers on the van (and nearly as many bumper stickers). We replaced every piece of the engine at one point or other, but the vehicle–our home–refused to give up. Still, with each passing second, I felt our most precious resource slipping away like blood from an unstaunched arterial wound. No matter how many cities we visited, lives we saved, gods we vacuumed into our dog (yeah, Gaston eats gods now, it’s a whole thing), I knew that this was all temporary. We only had so much time left, and nothing I did would ever change that fact.

I could sense the end, feel its presence as we grew closer. It felt monumental, big enough to influence gravity. In a lot of ways, it was like death–uncompromising, unfeeling, unstoppable, cruel in the same way that nature and entropy are cruel. But I couldn’t know the specifics until it was too late. How was this all meant to fall apart? Would I be fortunate enough to go first, or would I be forced to go on without them? Would one of the countless monsters of the week get lucky and take us out? Would we end up in prison for any of the manifold crimes we may or may not have been party to? Would we die in a head-on collision with a drunk driver? Or would we all just get sick of one another and decide to go our separate ways? I wanted to know now so I could brace for the impact, but I couldn’t. There was only one way to properly prepare for the inevitable end: I had to enjoy the hell out of every day while I was still able.

“Hey, watcha workin’ on?” Jerry asked, pulling off the noise-cancelling earphones he used for overnight drives. He flicked on the blinker as an exit drew near. It was time for another pitstop, and not a minute too soon. If we’d waited much longer, I might have required the use of our emergency pee-jug again. Sometimes, especially on quiet nights like these, I get lost in my work and forget to come up for air. Jerry and Rosa were experts at detecting the signs and pulling me back to reality just in the nick of time.

“Research,” I lied, shutting the lid of my laptop.

Behind us, Rosa sat up and went into a full-bodied yawn and stretch like she was imitating a corpse rising from the grave. “Where are we?” she moaned, wiping the sleep from her eyes.

The sign by the road read, “Welcome to Broken Toe.”

Small town in the middle of nowhere, I thought to myself. This is how it usually starts.

Granted, not every small town in the middle of nowhere is a haven of supernatural shenanigans like the one we left two years prior. But I feel confident saying that almost every small town has dark secrets they don’t want exposed. The truth is usually right there, waiting just below the surface. All it takes is the right van full of meddling kids to come along…

Okay, fine. I can face facts. We weren’t “kids” anymore. Not in the literal sense, anyway. Hell, I blew up a gas station on the night of my ten-year high school reunion, and that was back before this road trip even started. Rosa was only a year behind me, and despite how he sometimes behaved, Jerry was older than either of us. Even Gaston was starting to go gray around the muzzle.

We pulled into an oil-stained parking lot of cracked asphalt and break-through weeds. The sign above the pumps had local branding (something called “Petey Pie’s Gas and Glug”), and even though we’d never been here before, everything about the building looked familiar. While Jerry thumbed through his stash of stolen credit cards–there was a method to his madness, spreading out the purchases on each in just the right order to go unnoticed for as long as possible–Rosa hopped out the back to let Gaston stretch his legs, and I went inside to relieve myself of this urinary burden.

It didn’t take long for the weird stuff to begin.

I’d finished up in the bathroom, picked out a few road-trip essentials, and carried them up to the register before I noticed anything was off. Actually, I stood there waiting for the cashier to acknowledge me for at least a minute before I noticed anything was off. In fact, I might have even started a conversation with the perfectly-still man before I noticed anything was off.

“Crazy weather, huh?”

He stood on his side of the counter, head hung low, arms outstretched with palms flat as if he were supporting his weight entirely with his upper half.

“I’m glad you guys have the water bottles with the squeezy lids. I know it costs a little extra, but they make sharing so much easier. And I know, water is water… Except Dasani, I guess. Not sure what the deal is there.”

The man didn’t respond.

“We’re all trying to stay hydrated. Gotta be responsible, ya know?”

Still nothing. I waited a bit longer. Then, it finally hit me.

“Oh, you’re frozen, aren’t you?”

No response.

“Are you… having a seizure? Sorry, forget I asked. If you were having a seizure, you wouldn’t be able to tell me you were having a seizure because, well, you’d be having a seizure, wouldn’t you?”

Nothing.

I looked through the glass door panes to see if this was a localized phenomenon. Jerry was motionless, back pressed up against the side of our van. On the other edge of the lot, Rosa stared at her phone while Gaston balanced on three legs, a solidified stream of dog pee connecting him to the ground. Yeah, it was like this for everyone.

Hang on, I thought. I’ve been here before. I raced through memories, trying to make the connection. Then, as the fluorescent lights overhead began to flicker, I found it.

There was a guy I met a handful of times on this journey. He could seemingly stop time at will. In theory, that ability would put him on the same playing field as most gods. The only thing I ever saw him use his power for, though, was getting my attention so he could warn me not to return to my hometown. Bit of an overkill, really. A simple text message would have sufficed.

“Hello again, Jack.” I turned to see the man(?) standing at the end of the snack aisle. He looked exactly how I remembered: Nondescript. Curly brown hair. Short beard. Checkered shirt. The kind of face that blends into a crowd. What did he say his name was?

“Amed,” I responded with a nod. “I see that you escaped from Skull World.”

He closed his eyes briefly and shuddered. Then, “Skull World was three or four encounters ago. And my name is Amadeus.”

“Don’t care.”

He approached slowly, his footsteps making no sound. “You surprise me. That’s something I can’t say about very many people. I shouldn’t be surprised. They all warned me about you. And yet, you still surprise me.” He was standing in front of me now. “I was expecting you to ignore my advice.”

“Why?”

“Most people ignore good advice when they hear it.”

“Most people suck.”

“Yes.” There was a solemnity to his voice now, something close to defeat. “Yes, they do. I’ve been at this for a long time. Disappointment is part of the job, and I’m quite used to the feeling. But this time is different.” He cocked his head to look out the window. “This time, I’m actually satisfied with the result.”

“Great!” I said. “Happy to help. Now, why don’t you go ahead and give me your vague ominous warning so I can get on with my night? I can really use the extra lingering anxiety.”

“You don’t understand anything,” he said, returning his gaze to me. I opened a bottle of water and took a sip as he continued. “I was supposed to destroy you. I’ve been given the ultimate authority to rewrite reality itself, to make your greatest fears come true. But in order to keep it fair, I had to offer you a chance to escape first. And, you actually did it.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” I responded. “According to my online therapy app, I’m afraid to let myself be happy. You could have had a field day with that. Anyway, I’m actually glad you stopped by.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, anytime I start seeing people who aren’t there, it reminds me to take my medicine.” I pulled out my phone to check the time and see if I’d missed my last dose, but when I tried to turn it on, the screen remained black. Right, time is frozen. That makes sense, I guess. I held the device up and asked, “Do you mind?”

“Jack,” he growled. “If you had any idea how many humans I’ve killed, you might treat me with more respect.”

Yeah? And if you had any idea how many gods I’d killed, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, I didn’t respond. Instead, I just smiled.

He sighed. “You’ve won.”

“I have? But I didn’t even do anything.”

“Exactly. And now, I’m leaving. On to the next world, the next victim, the next apocalypse. You’ll never see me again. Congratulations and goodbye.”

“Really?” I smelled a trick. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“This entire subplot just… never materialized?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“And you aren’t going to pop up again next week to sprinkle in some extra foreshadowing before the grand finale?”

“This isn’t one of your little stories. I’m leaving forever. It’s too bad, really. I had such wonderful plans for you, for this world.” Then, as if it were an afterthought, he muttered, “Such a waste.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll see.”

A crack of thunder sounded in my ears and the creature called Amadeus disappeared. I almost lost my balance as the world whiplashed back to its original state. Behind me, the clerk started ringing up my items. Outside, Jerry pumped gas as our dog did laps around the lot, burning up his zoomies before we got back to driving.

That was probably the dumbest climax I’ve ever been part of. Despite the residual pangs of skepticism, I saw no good reason to think Amadeus wasn’t telling the truth. I dodged a bullet by thousands of kilometers. That was cause enough to celebrate. And sure, the future was still unknown, and the end of the road was still waiting, but as long as the four of us stayed together, I knew we’d be just fine.

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Part Two

I woke up the way I usually do–confused, disoriented, uncertain of where I was or how I got there. But unlike most of my wake-ups, those feelings didn’t go away after I took in my surroundings.

Uh oh.

I was in a bed I didn’t recognize in a room I couldn’t remember. There were machines nearby beeping and booping, no windows, a few empty padded chairs, and another bed just like mine against the opposite wall. Most interesting of all, the room was sweltering hot.

I wiped the moisture off my face as another realization dawned on me: These were not my clothes. The thin, single-piece of fabric covering my body was drenched in what I hoped was sweat. A hospital gown, I assumed. The needle and tube sticking out of my right hand supported that theory. I was definitely in a recovery room of some sort.

“Whatcha in for?”

I finally registered the man sitting atop the covers of the other bed. He looked… odd. He wore a gown just like mine. His hair was wild, unbrushed, and mostly gray with a few curly streaks of black. He was short and lean, and his face was gaunt and clean-shaven. I couldn’t tell if he was thirteen or sixty or somewhere in between.

“What?” I asked.

“I said, ‘whatcha in for?’ You must have done something cool for them to put you in the nutter wing.”

The nutter wing? Okay, I guess that means I’m in the psychiatric ward. Great.

I studied the needle jutting from the back of my hand and tried to figure out how I ended up like this, but all my recent memories were buried under fog. “I don’t know. How long have I been here?”

“This is day three,” he answered. “First time you’ve been lucid though.”

Three days?!

I quickly checked beneath the damp garment, then sighed in relief to discover no catheter. Pulling this IV out of my hand vein was going to be bad enough as it was. And that was just step one. I still needed to find some clothes, get to a phone, figure out what happened to my friends…

“Hey, where am I, anyway?”

I looked back at my roommate’s bed, but it was empty now. Shit, am I hallucinating already? This would hardly be the first time I’d seen someone who wasn’t there. My latest medication adjustment had done wonders to keep that symptom at bay, but if I missed a dose, then all bets were off.

I almost swallowed my tongue in shock once he sprang back into view, crawling up onto the foot of my bed. With a big, crooked smile, he crossed his legs and sat right where my missing leg would have been.

“You’re in the sleepy town of Broken Toe, Arizona.” He shot out a hand and said, “I’m Skeeter.”

“Jack.” I took the offered hand and gave it a half-hearted shake. It was somehow both warm and clammy. “Skeeter? I had a friend with a dog named Skeeter.”

He frowned. It was only then, seeing that hurt in his eyes–such a pure emotion–that I concluded he must have been a child. The wild grays and lines around his eyes weren’t an effect of time. Something else was eating away at him, which made sense considering we were in a hospital.

“Sorry,” I said. “Was that offensive?”

“No, it’s fine,” he said, unconvincingly. “That’s the reaction most people have to my name.”

“If it helps,” I added. “Skeeter was a very good girl.”

I could tell from his reaction that no, it did not help. I decided to put some distance between us and my faux pas, “Hey, Skeeter, do you know what happened to my friends?”

“Dead,” he answered, matter-of-factly.

“I sincerely doubt that. They’re… how do I put this? Hard to kill.”

“Well, if they’re like the rest of the people in Broken Toe, the demons have already gotten them.”

“Ah. Gotcha.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“About the demons? To be honest, I try to keep an open mind about these things. But considering we’re in the ‘nutter wing,’ I’d like to collect a bit of evidence before jumping to any conclusions.”

“That’s fair,” Skeeter said. He seemed a little more relaxed than what I’d consider appropriate for someone who believed demons were killing his town.

“Hey, Skeeter?”

“Yeah?”

“Why is it so freakin’ hot?”

“Global warming. But be careful who you say that around or you’ll end up with a lot of nasty emails calling you ‘woke’ like it’s a bad thing.”

“Noted.”

“But also, demons have started taking over everything and everyone in town. They started replacing the hospital staff around the time they brought you in. My theory is that they’re used to the temperatures in Hell, and now that the Earth has finally heated up enough, they feel comfortable here, too.”

“Okay. But I meant, why is it so hot in this room?”

“The air conditioner stopped working a couple hours ago.”

“Seriously? You think we could open a window or something?” I looked around, then remembered that there weren’t any windows in this room. Psychiatric ward wouldn’t have anything made of glass.

“That would be a bad idea,” Skeeter explained. “As hot as it is in here, the temperature outside is worse. It’s been in the forties for days. Did you know, when it’s 37 degrees out, an ice cube would melt slower if you put it inside your mouth?”

“Makes sense.”

“And did you know, standard hot tub temperature is 39 degrees? That means, the air outside is literally hotter than jacuzzi water.”

A fragmented memory flashed into place. It was… confusing.

“What?” Skeeter asked.

“I remember leaving Broken Toe… I remember it was hot as hell before the sun even came up… and I remember…” I almost said this next part out loud. I remember Jerry, butt-ass naked, standing in the back of the van and threatening to shave Gaston. It was incredibly hot, and our vehicle broke down on the side of the road. No air conditioning. No shade. No cover. Just us, trying everything in our power to cool off while the sun turned our vehicle into a brass bull. But how did I end up here?

“Okay, assuming you’re telling the truth and demons are trying to burn us to death, what’s to stop us from just leaving?”

“Ah,” he said with a big, exaggerated nod. “This must be your first time in psyche. Yeah, it’s pretty much like prison. Doors are locked. Electrical outlets are glued in place. Medicine cabinets are deadbolted. No television at all!”

My mind was already hard at work, trying to figure out my next step, but I needed more information. I couldn’t outright ignore the possibility that Skeeter was actually right. I’d seen too much to discount the possibility that demons were taking over his town and trying to exterminate us. But I’d also seen enough to know that the truth is rarely served up on a silver platter like this.

Okay, first things first. “Do you know where my leg went?”

“You mean this thing?” He bent over the edge of the bed and retrieved my prosthetic limb. How considerate of these alleged demons to leave me with a way to run.

“You don’t see any clothes over there, do you?”

“Nope. They took all your other stuff and burned it when you got here.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Educated guess.”

I scooted over in the bed, trying to make enough room to put on my leg. That’s when I noticed the small, black, electronic device that had been tucked underneath my pillow.

“What’s this thing?” I asked.

“Looks like one of the walkie-talkies the orderlies use.”

Another memory clicked into place. They carried me into this room, kicking and screaming. They held me down and strapped me in. But they didn’t notice I’d swiped this radio off one of their belts.

I leaned forward to make sure I hadn’t just imagined that part. Sure enough, there were rows of fabric straps as thick as belts dangling from the edge of the bedframe. I had been trapped in this bed, tied in place while they sedated me. And then… what? They let me roam free after I calmed down? When did I calm down? Why had I ever calmed up in the first place?

I looked at Skeeter. He was my only lifeline, my only connection to this town. He may have had a few screws loose, but he was my best (and only) resource. If he was delusional, I’d just need to translate his delusions. And if he wasn’t, I’d need to know as soon as possible.

God, it’s so freakin’ hot!

“Did you know,” he asked, “That hot saké is served at 40 degrees? That means the air outside is hotter than hot saké.”

“I did not know that.” He smiled proudly. Then, I asked, “What about you? What are you in for?”

“I bit a cop.”

“Why?”

“Because he was actually a demon.”

“How did you know?”

He raised his hands like he was praying for rain and said, “It was obvious.”

With my leg secured in place, I took a careful step away from the bed. My IV had me tethered to a plastic bag on a stand with wheels. I rolled it alongside me as I shuffled around, investigating this prison. There was a closet-sized bathroom in the corner with running water in the sink but no mirror. No surprise there. The door to the hallway was locked, just as Skeeter had said. Nothing else in here gave me any clues as to what was going on. All in all, not the worst cage I’ve ever been trapped in.

I saw two options, neither of which felt particularly appealing:

One: I could start smashing things. If anyone out there was monitoring us, they’d come running. But that would only work if they cared about the cost of all this expensive looking machinery. If they really were murder-demons, a bit of property damage wouldn’t bother them. And if they weren’t demons, then it meant they were probably human, and they’d probably expect me to pay for whatever I broke.

Two: I could sit tight and wait until someone, or something, came through that door.

“How often do they check on us?” I asked.

“Check on us?” Skeeter asked back.

“Yeah. Isn’t there a nurse or somebody who does the rounds every hour?”

Skeeter was slow to answer. “There was. But nobody’s been here since yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“Yeah. We didn’t get dinner last night or breakfast this morning either.”

“So… Nobody’s out there?”

He shook his head. “They are. I could hear them talking and laughing and moving around all night. I tried banging on the door, but they don’t care. Why would they? We’re not supposed to eat. We’re just supposed to cook.”

I took a deep breath. I wasn’t desperate enough to do anything crazy. Not yet. But I was getting close.

Then, another flash:

We were dead in the water, stranded with no phone service. Rosa was starting to panic as the sun came up and the temperature began to climb.

101.

102.

103.

104.

How long could we last like this?

All the power of all the gods inside our dog were useless. We were out of water. We were desperate.

And then, “Do you guys hear that?”

Jerry opened the sliding side door of the van, causing a wave of air to rush over me, heat blasting into my eyes. It was so bright out, I could barely see. So hot I could barely think.

Rosa sounded delirious as she asked, “Is that what I think it is?!”

The sound grew louder, and closer. Jerry, now clad in a pair of boxer shorts (after Rosa threatened to stab him if he didn’t put something on), stepped out and waved at the approaching vehicle. It came to a stop right next to us and turned off the blaring carnival music. The driver rolled his window down and smiled. Every instinct in my brain screamed that this was sus–sus as hell–susser than a stranger at a kid’s birthday party–susser than the Willy Wonka boat ride–susser than a grown man who still uses the word sus–susser than… a fuck it. We were as good as dead if we didn’t get out of the heat soon.

It was an ice cream truck.

The driver stepped out of his vehicle and gave the four of us a once over.

“I’ll take fifty popsicles,” I said.

He laughed, showing all of his teeth.

Jerry, who for some strange reason seemed perfectly oblivious to the heat, did all the talking for us. I couldn’t remember everything that was said, but there was enough to set off alarm bells. No, we couldn’t borrow the man’s phone. Yes, they were happy to give us a ride into town. (‘They’?) Two other people stepped out of the back of the freezer truck–a couple of women. One middle-aged, one a little younger than us. Both of them were dressed in the same ice-cream man uniform as the driver. Steam emerged from the doorway as hot and cold air mixed. Steam continued to rise from all of their bodies well after they’d left their vehicle. Why were they even getting out in the first place? Both of the ice cream ladies were tougher-looking than I would have expected from people in their profession. The older one had a neck tattoo of flames that vanished beneath her collar, and for a split-second, I was convinced I saw it move.

Then, they dropped the bombshell.

“No, the dog can’t come with us.”

I would sooner have tried my luck starting a fist-fight and stealing their truck than leave Gaston behind to die. Neck-tattoo tried to argue that Gaston would be fine and dogs have a higher temperature tolerance and yadda yadda, but I knew bullshit when I heard it.

But, somehow, they got their way.

I left Gaston with the van.

Why would I do that?

It wasn’t just Gaston, I remembered. Jerry volunteered to stay with him. The ice cream folk loaded Jerry up with bottled waters and told him how to find us. Rosa and I went with the truck, leaving Jerry and Gaston to walk the whole way back to town.

We split the party.

What the hell were we thinking?

In my defense, I was way too hot to think rationally.

The sudden sound of the AC system kicking on gave me hope that things weren’t nearly as bad as Skeeter had implied, but that feeling only lasted for a few short seconds before reality caught up. I could feel the musty hospital air recirculating around me. I could smell the new air coming in from the vent over Skeeter’s bed, and it smelled wrong. It tasted like something was burnt in the next room over. I approached and held up my hand, reaching for confirmation.

Skeeter asked, “What are you doing?”

“The air,” I answered. “It’s back on.”

“Good.”

“No, it isn’t.” I pulled my hand back and started working on a new plan. “They’re blowing hot air. Somebody just turned on the heat!”

I wiped the fresh sweat off my face and raced back to my bed, stopping suddenly once the slack in my IV line ran out, yanking the needle free and casting a stream of deep-red blood all over the wall and ceiling. I collapsed from the pain, gave myself a few seconds to whimper, then jumped back into action.

“Whoa,” Skeeter said, eyes wide with horror. “That was cool! Do it again!”

“Maybe later,” I responded, grabbing the radio I’d stolen off the orderly. “First, we gotta get out of here.”

I turned the knob on the device. Nothing happened. I pressed a few buttons, but it was clear that the thing’s batteries were dead. I turned it over, pried off the back, pulled out the two AA’s, switched their positions, and tried again. Still nothing. (I didn’t really expect that trick to work, but hey, worth a shot, right?)

“Do you have any batteries on you?” I asked.

“Why would I have batteries on me?” he asked back.

“I don’t know your life, Skeeter!”

“No, I ain’t got no batteries!”

I scanned the room, but there weren’t any electronics other than the ones plugged into the walls. If Jerry were here, he could MacGyver this thing, no problem. Of course, if he were here, I probably wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. Where was he? And where was Rosa?!

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

Tap, tap, tap, tap… the drip of blood from my wrist onto the tile floor was like a rhythmic metronome behind the steady whoosh of heated air pumping through the vent–both clear reminders that I was running out of time.

I opened my eyes and looked up at the ceiling as a crazy plan began to form. I had done something similar to this years before, and it almost worked that time. (Of course, it almost got me killed, too. But that’s literally a different story.) I needed to find the fire sprinklers. Smack one of those bad boys with enough force and boom, the whole place will fill up with water in no time!

The thing most people don’t know about psyche wards is just how thoroughly they prepare for patients like me. Patients who might try anything. I’m sure you could probably find the news article if you looked hard enough, about the man or woman who already tried that idea, the one who inspired an engineer to create a tamper-proof sprinkler system that remained inside a recessed metal enclosure until it detected a real fire. Whoever you are, brave pioneer, I salute you for getting there first. But thanks to you, I couldn’t make it rain like I wanted.

Luckily, I was able to pivot to an even worse plan. The sprinklers may have been locked away, but you know what wasn’t? The combination smoke alarm/carbon monoxide detector mounted in the center of the ceiling.

I dragged my bed to the middle of the room and climbed on top of it. With my hands outstretched, I was barely able to reach and pry the round plastic device free. There was a cable on the back that I had to break, probably the one feeding it power. But if I was lucky, it may have had a battery backup. And if I was really lucky, those batteries were AA’s, just like the radio.

Turns out, I was medium-lucky. There were batteries! But they were AAA’s–just a tad smaller than what I needed.

I closed my eyes again and tried to think, what would Jerry do?

Jerry’s voice answered right away. Somewhere deep in my mind, I could hear him scoff and say, “Battery’s are like mouths–they come in different shapes and sizes, but they can all get the same job done if you’re not a prude about it. Now quit overthinking and start breaking shit until the problem fixes itself!”

With that bizarre mental pep talk, I went to work. First, I smashed up one of the random medical appliances by my bed until it gave me a couple pieces of metal bits I could wedge into place, connecting the smaller batteries to the radio terminals. Then, I held my breath and turned the switch. Immediately, the LED light on top turned green and a sound of static came through. It worked! 

Thank you, Jerry!

“Okay,” Skeeter said from over my shoulder. “You got the radio to turn on. Now what?”

“Now, the hard part,” I explained. “I send a message to one of those people or demons or whatever it is out there, and I pretend I’m one of them. I give them an instruction to come to this room and check on us. Then, we hide and wait and when they come through that door, we ambush them!”

“We’re supposed to fight one of those things?!”

“I know it sounds like suicide, but trust me. All we need is the element of surprise.”

At that exact moment, with me crouched over the radio and wedged between the broken machine and displaced bed, the door behind us swung outward. (Fun fact: most doors in the psyche wing don’t put hinges on the inside. I wonder why?) We turned around just in time to see an enormous, burly man with a twirly moustache and pink scrubs walk into the room. He looked at the damage, then at the blood, then at me. Then, he growled.

“What are you doing out of bed?!”

I stood up straight, turned, and yelled, “SURPRISE!” as I flung the walkie talkie as hard as I could. A second arc of hand blood painted a line across the room, and the radio connected with the man’s face and shattered. He fell backwards, and when he hit the ground, he hit hard.

“Holy crapoli!” Skeeter exclaimed.

I rushed for the open door, yelling behind me for Skeeter to “Come on!”

I looked both ways down the hall, but I didn’t see anyone else. The coast was clear. So, I picked the direction with the exit arrow and started to run. A few seconds later, I skidded to a stop. Then, I turned around and ran back to the room.

“Skeet!” I yelled. “Let’s go!” 

He shook his head, no. 

“What?!” I shouted. “You’re the one who said demons are taking over the town! You know the stakes better than anyone! Don’t get cold feet now!”

“I can’t!”

“Why not?!”

He stared at the ground as his lips began to quiver. Tears welled up in his eyes. “It’s… too scary.”

The man in the pink scrubs grabbed my ankle (the flesh one, not the prosthetic). I jerked it free and made an executive decision. “I’ll go get help. I promise!”

Then, I ran.

And ran.

And ran.

And then, I stopped to wonder if that empty nurse’s station looked familiar. Then I ran some more.

Then I stopped again and realized that I was completely lost and none of the directional signs in this hospital made any sense at all. Then I ran again. Then I looked down and realized that I’d left a trail of blood and crimson footprints everywhere I’d been, and that pretty much confirmed that I was going in circles. Then I ran, but a little less enthusiastically. Then, I heard frantic voices around the corner up ahead. Took them long enough.

Borrowing a page from The Shining, I backtracked, stepping backwards into my own bloody footprints until I was close enough to duck inside a random room and hide. This turned out to be a really good decision, because this room actually had clothes that fit me in the closet! Probably because this room was currently occupied by another patient.

An unconscious older man was in this room’s only bed. He looked like he was on death’s doorstep already. And despite the insane heat, he was covered in blankets. It occurred to me that this man might have already known what was coming for him. Here he was, all dressed up and ready for his epilogue. Asleep. Unlikely to ever wake. It wasn’t the worst way to go, by far.

Another voice suddenly came to me, speaking from somewhere deep inside my mind. It was Rosa. “How many other people are there in this building who still have plenty of years left? How many more experiences will they be robbed of if they don’t escape? What about them? What about Skeeter? How many more cops could he bite if he were only given the chance?”

She made her case, and there was no way I could argue against it. Instead, I put on the clothes from the closet–jeans, black shirt, and even the brown hat with a short rim around the top. I tied the laces of my stolen shoes and wrapped my wound in gauze. And I prepared myself for what I had to do next.

Rosa was right. I couldn’t just run away. I’d never find help in time. If it was even remotely possible, I had to try and save everyone.

---

Part Three

Saving everyone, I kept thinking to myself, sure would be a lot easier if Jerry, Rosa, and the god-dog were actually here to help and not just voices in my head.

Where were they, anyway?

I kept digging at my unconscious mind, kept trying to bring another memory into focus, to find another clue, but the well had gone dry.

Focus! Brain is melting, hospital is hotter than a pizza oven, gotta keep moving, just keep swimming, just keep swimming. Damn, how much blood did I lose? Also, when was the last time I took my medicine?

The grim reality was becoming clear. If I’d been here for three days without my meds, that would land me right inside the golden-hour of withdrawal symptoms. And mine were the kind of prescriptions that don’t take too kindly to cold-turkey. There was an emergency supply in the van, but three days baking in the hot Arizona sun during a heat wave like this was probably enough to melt the seats. No telling what it could do to medicine.

One thing at a time.

The air was thick, almost suffocating, and I was forced to take the stairs. My room, it turned out, was located somewhere on the second floor. I just needed to go three flights down to reach the basement. Why the basement, you might ask, and not the ground floor? Simple: According to the fire escape plans posted at each landing, the boiler room was in the basement, and somebody needed to turn off the heat.

When I reached the final landing, I had to stop and catch my breath. Doing cardio in this kind of temperature was like climbing Mount Everest without an oxygen tank (or so I would assume). I was pushing the limits of my body while other factors pushed the limits of my mind. It was not a great place to be making life-or-death decisions, but there wasn’t anybody else here to make them for me. Not even Skeeter wanted to come along for the ride. I was completely and utterly alone.

The laughter bouncing off the metal walls started softly and intensified rapidly. Once again, I was wrong. I wasn’t completely and utterly alone. There was something else down here.

The door in front of me, the one labeled “Boiler Room,” was cracked open. I couldn’t remember if it was already open when I got here. It had to have been. Right? The laugh from the other side came as a distorted, high pitched, staccato… It sounded like Goofy after huffing a bunch of helium.

Fuuuck.

If Gaston were here, I could conjure up one of the friendlier deities inside his doggy-brain and have it watch my six. I wondered, not for the first time, what was going to happen to all those trapped entities when the day finally came… the day when our beloved pet crosses the great big rainbow-bridge in the sky…

No time to think. No time to second-guess. Just go. Time is running out.

I pushed through the door, hoping to see a giant metal machine with a clearly labeled on/off switch on a nearby pedestal. Instead, I found a labyrinth of dimly-lit hallways, dozens of pipes lining the walls this way and that, pressure gauges and spinning wheels all over the place. This is what I imagined the inside of a Soviet-era submarine to look like, down to the dripping ceiling and spontaneous HISS of steam that burst forth from random joints every few seconds like a built-in automatic jump-scare. If I thought the upstairs was hot, it was practically frigid compared to here.

I followed the pipes, trying to get a sense of the geography. It didn’t take long to discover that most of the walls were just cement pillars, support structures for the building above. The room wasn’t so much a maze as a grid of perpendicular rows. Easy enough to navigate. But plenty of places to hide. Somewhere down here was the boiler. And so, too, was the source of that inhuman laughter.

I found the metal heart of the machine affixed to a wall. It looked like a refrigerator, only twice as big and speckled with rust. A tiny glass pane near the bottom glowed blue, the flame inside whooshing loud like a waterfall, loud enough to feel the vibrations from the metal, through the air, against my body. The heat from this machine was different. It was pure. Undiluted. This was a heat so powerful it bypassed skin and went straight to bone. It seemed to be taunting me, as if it wanted to say, You really think you can hurt me, bitch? I am FIRE. I am ETERNAL. I will purge you, as I do to all life in the end.

I traced the veins of the machine until I found labels.

GAS INPUT. Okay, makes sense.

LINE OUT. Well, that could mean anything.

AUX IO. No clue.

EMERGENCY SHUTOFF. Hey, that’s probably it!

I turned the knob by that last label counter-clockwise as far as it could go, then waited for something to happen. In a matter of seconds, the blue flame began to sputter, the sound of combustion turned into a death rattle, and every single pressure gauge started to climb. Wait, that last one seems like a bad thing. I tried undoing what I’d done, turning the emergency shutoff valve in the opposite direction, but the flame didn’t turn back on. The needles kept tilting right, going into the red, then maxing out. Pipes started rattling. The occasional POP and HISS of steam became more frequent and more forceful.

Shit, shit, shit, I missed something!

I went back to the boiler, searched the tubes and pipes on the walls, then I saw the control panel. There had to be some kind of brain to it. Everything was controlled by computers these days. Was there time for me to figure out the operating system? Could I hack it on the fly? 

No. I’m not that smart.

But I could definitely unplug it! Which is exactly what I did. I grabbed the cable leading to the power outlet and yanked it free.

I hadn’t even noticed the sound of the motor running until it finally stopped. With a dying squeal, it faded into nothing. I checked the valves, one after another, and breathed a sigh of relief. The pressure was back to the white zone, which I could only assume was a good thing. 

That could have ended a lot worse. I might have accidentally blown up another building. Instead, I bought everyone inside a little bit more time…

Why do I feel like I’m forgetting something?

The laugh started again. In the newly silenced room, it came through much more menacing than before: a big, loud, shrill guffaw.

It was right behind me.

I turned to see the thing blocking the exit.

Skeeter was right. Sometimes, it’s really obvious that the thing you’re looking at is a demon.

“AhUck, AhUck, aHYUCK!” it laughed.

I’ve made the mistake of thinking that demons were “easy” problems. And it’s true, in our travels, we’ve encountered a few things that fell under the umbrella category of “demon.” Despite everything we’ve seen, I still can’t say for sure what demons are, or where they come from, or if there even is a hell to send them back to. But we discovered that most of these entities could be expelled pretty easily with the right incantation, ceremony, or blunt-force trauma. Even after taking a physical form, there’s usually some kind of easily-exploited weakness. Rosa’s ordained priestesshood from an accredited online institution gave her certain banishing powers that barely made sense to me. A smartphone app that played the top thirty exorcisms in Latin proved effective more than once. And when all else failed, Gaston’s void wasn’t all that picky about what supranatural beings it would swallow… But none of that was much help right now. 

I could tell right away that this wasn’t like any monster or entity we’d ever faced before. The creature, demon, possessee, or whatever the frick it was, looked like a man, but his body was as distorted as his voice. He stood close to seven feet tall and had thin, gangly limbs–all but his right arm, which was swollen with enormous muscles and thick veins. Wild tufts of greasy black hair stuck out from the top of his head, narrowly missing the valves on the ceiling pipes, and fell this way and that across his round face. His eyes were bloodshot and bulging. His smile was wide and full of broken teeth. He wore brown trousers, black boots, and a tattered vest that showed off his sweaty torso and washboard abs. His skin had the texture of a cat-hoarder’s leather sofa–dirty and covered in a patchwork of burns and scars. In his hand (the one at the end of the Popeye arm), he held a metal tool that resembled a wrench, only it was half as long as I was tall and probably weighed thirty pounds.

As he stepped forward, his movements were eerily slow, as if he was stuck in a time vortex where things moved at three-quarters speed. But even at this rate, he would be across the room, within wrench-swinging range, in a matter of seconds.

Oh! Shit! Shit shit shit!

As he laughed at me, his head bobbed from side to side. “Ahyuck! Ahyuck!”

“Wait!” I said, trying to stay calm long enough to form a coherent plan. “Don’t come any closer. I don’t want to hurt you!”

To my surprise, he stopped walking. With his jacked arm, he pushed the wrench forward like a spear, pointing it at the boiler behind me. “YOOOUUU MAKE… FIRE STOP?”

At least, I think it was a question. His voice was hard to listen to. It was like a trumpet blasting off-key and directly into my ear.

I considered, for a brief second, lying to him. For some reason, that was my first instinct. But it’s not like that would do me any good. He could plainly see what I’d done. And I really didn’t want to make him angry, so I told the truth, “Yeah. I turned it off. It’s hot as balls upstairs.”

He still got angry.

The fact that he’d been moving and speaking in uncanny slow motion made what happened next all the more terrifying. In an instant, his smile blinked into a grimace. His eyes bulged even further. His muscle arm yanked the wrench backwards, and he began screaming like a banshee–a wild, high-pitched, inhuman wail. And then, he charged.

I ducked (or, more accurately, I fell out of the way of) his wrench as he swung it at my head. It CLANGed loudly against a row of pipes as I crab-crawled like I’d never crab-crawled before. And if you’ve ever wondered how hard it is to crab-crawl with a prosthetic limb, let me tell you from experience that it ain’t easy, but adrenaline and survival instinct are ingredients that can make you do the damned-near impossible. I crab-crawled for my life until I’d made it around the nearest column. That’s when I spotted the weapon hanging from the wall just a few paces away. I couldn’t believe it. The perfect weapon, right there for the taking.

It was a fire-extinguisher.

Another old, useless memory clicked into place. I’d once used a fire-extinguisher very similar to this one to bash in an old lady’s skull. That particular fight ended in what I would generously call a draw… Again, that’s a whole other story. Old memories kept flooding my mind, but for some reason I couldn’t put together the last seventy-two hours. GOD, IT’S TOO HOT TO THINK!

“WHAAA!” the thing screamed, spinning around the corner. I jumped for the fire extinguisher, ripped the pin, and aimed it at the creature just as it began another charge.

A blast of foam ejected from the cone-shaped nozzle, the bulk of it slamming directly into the wrench-wielding monster’s bare chest. Its cries turned deeper and (somehow) louder as it spun around and reversed course. The weapon clanged onto the floor as the demon fell onto all fours and galloped out of sight like a gazelle fleeing a predator. The scream bounced around the room, devolving into a desperate whimper before finally ending in silence. There was no way to know where he was hiding. He could be anywhere, perched and waiting to counterattack, but I couldn’t stay still.

I went back to the control panel. Whatever force had started this was smart enough to turn off the air and turn on the heat. They’d probably just keep sending minions down here until one of them got lucky enough to kill me, and then they’d start the whole process over again. I had to make sure that didn’t happen. I lifted the fire extinguisher. Still plenty of juice left in the tank. Still heavy enough to get the job done.

Smash. Smash. Smash.

That ought to do it, I hoped. Even if they plugged it back in, the control panel was shattered into pieces. The brain of the machine was dead.

Everything outside is dead, too.

Another fragmented memory.

We were stuck in the van. The sun was rising. Jerry broke the news that our engine was dead. Rosa looked outside, at the wasteland. I don’t think she meant to say it out loud, but she let it slip anyway. “Everything outside is dead, too.”

Then, we were in the back of the ice cream truck. She was talking to the two women about it. All the dead animals trapped out there. Our world had never seen a heat wave like this before. Nature had but one answer to it.

Extinction.

“Not everything is meant to survive,” the older woman said with a subtle grin. “Shelters will take in strays. Plants will grow back. The smarter animals burrow underground. But you shouldn’t worry so much about their safety.”

I felt the shift in the air before Rosa even asked, “Why not?”

“Because…” I spotted the needle in the younger woman’s hand right before the older one grabbed hold of me and said, “you should be a lot more worried about yourselves.”

I didn’t go looking for Big-Arm (which, I decided, was going to be his name from now on). If he wanted to hide somewhere and lick his wounds, that was fine by me. I still needed to get to a phone and find my friends. That memory didn’t make much sense, but it told me enough. It told me that Rosa was probably in just as much trouble as I was.

I managed to race from the stairwell to an empty patient’s room without being noticed, which was nothing short of a miracle considering how many people were on the ground floor. Everybody seemed to be in a hurry. A lot of people were shouting. I noticed several men running a notch above a jogger’s pace toward the stairs while I slipped inside the first room with an open door. I closed it behind me and turned the lock just as the sound of footsteps came to a stop right outside. I held my breath and listened.

Someone was there, breathing loudly. I almost jumped when the radio on their belt crackled to life. Amazingly, it was Skeeter’s voice that came through.

“Jack!” it said. “I stole a walkie-talkie just like you! I don’t know if you can hear me, but something crazy’s going on. It just hit 49 degrees outside! Did you know, that’s the highest setting on a hot water heater? Anything over 49 is considered scalding, and that’s the temperature of the air outside right now!”

The doorknob rattled. The person on the other side knocked loudly, then muttered something about getting keys. I listened as the footsteps resumed, moving down the hall and away from this room. Then, I let myself breath again and ran for the window.

Outside, everything was dead. The light from the sun was blinding. I could already feel the solar radiation against my skin, like God was a sadistic kid sitting somewhere up in outer space with a magnifying glass and I was an unlucky ant beneath the focused ray… Wait, that simile doesn’t actually work, does it? Because this heat actually IS the sun… And when you think about it, God really IS focusing it on me from outer space… Shit, how long has it been since I drank anything? It’s so damned hot! I knew I was running out of time. There wasn’t any opportunity to second-guess my plan. I raised the fire extinguisher and smashed out the window.

The alarm siren blared.

OH SHIT! They have an emergency alarm hooked up to the windows?! What kind of hospital is this, anyway?

It was an industrial, unnatural sound, loud enough to fill the sky. It reminded me of the man in the boiler room’s laughter, only more mechanical, and much, much, louder. The noise stopped and repeated a few times in a pattern–a pattern that I recognized. Then, a robotic voice took its place, his proclamation loud enough to stretch for kilometers across all of Broken Toe. 

“ATTENTION. THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED A SEVERE WEATHER ALERT. TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. ATTENTION. THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED A SEVERE WEATHER ALERT. TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.”

Oh. Not an alarm. Or, at least, not that kind of alarm.

From the sound of it, the speakers had to be somewhere on top of the hospital. It made sense. This was probably a centrally-located spot with reliable power and backup generators to keep any broadcasts running, no matter how bad things got. It was curious that the demons would let the warning sirens continue if their main goal was getting rid of all the humans. Unless they wanted us inside for some reason. No, I’m definitely overthinking it.

As the voice commanded for the third time that I ‘seek shelter immediately,’ I crawled through the window and into the hellish nightmarescape that was the outside.

If I thought the boiler room was uncomfortable, it was practically cozy compared to this. Skeeter said 49, but numbers don’t do reality justice. With every breath, I pulled in more heat, but I kept moving. I knew if I didn’t find shade or shelter soon, I was screwed, but an even bigger motivator to keep going was the very real concern that if I didn’t, the bottoms of my shoes would likely melt against the pavement.

The brim of my hat shielded my eyes from above, but the sunlight was everywhere, reflecting off the asphalt like a giant tanning mirror. I had to squint hard just to see where I was, although that didn’t actually tell me very much. I saw an empty road. I saw buildings on the other side. I saw a walking path leading to an abandoned park. I saw a shadow. 

I ran for the shadow… Or, tried to run. My body was not cooperating. The air burned my skin raw, and I sensed the uncomfortably familiar feeling of life draining away. My vision became a narrowing tunnel. I was going to pass out soon. And if I did that out here, I was as good as dead.

The sound of my steps turned into crunches against dead grass as I left the asphalt and found the shadow–a long, rectangular shape about as wide as a school bus and longer than I could see. What’s even casting this thing? I looked up and saw a structure hovering in the air, way higher than I could reach. I blinked, and nearly lost my balance, but I managed to stay upright. Spaceship, I decided. It’s a small, really low to the ground, rectangular spaceship.

No, that didn’t make any sense. Of course, none of this made any sense. No part of my life made sense. Demons in the hospital especially didn’t make sense. I was missing something. Something painfully obvious. And I was running out of time. I could barely stand the heat, barely move my neck, barely follow the shadow to where it intersected another building…

Parking garage!

Aha! I was standing in the shadow of the pedestrian skybridge connecting the second story of the hospital to the parking garage, which meant I probably didn’t even need to leave the building at all. Oh well. What’s done is done. Now, time to run.

The surprise pain that struck me once I touched the sunbaked metal door lever felt like I’d grabbed hold of a hornet’s nest. I jerked my hand back, but the pain persisted. I quickly double-wrapped my wound in the belly slack of my shirt and tried again, opening the door and rushing inside before I did any more damage. The relief of falling into the shady, covered building was short-lived, though. On my knees, I looked at the dark red blisters on my palm and-

BLAAAURGH!

-immediately threw up.

As I spat the lingering taste of stomach acid onto the floor, I couldn’t help but notice how strange it was that there was even that much stuff inside of me to throw up. Skeeter had told me that this was the first day I was lucid. Did that mean I was awake this whole time? Eating, sleeping, moving freely about in a room with another patient? Something just… didn’t add up.

Maybe, another voice needled, coming from somewhere deep inside and adding more chaos to the noise, none of this is real. Maybe everything you think you know is all simply happening inside your head.

I shook the voice away, but just like the burn on my hand, it lingered.

Cars. Go. Find phone. Steal car, maybe?

The parking garage was about halfway full, give or take. I didn’t see any cameras, but that didn’t mean much. I was about to commit some breaking and entering whether anyone was watching or not. The first few doors I checked were locked. I lost track of how many. I couldn’t keep it together well enough to see how far I’d gone. My brain was cooking, and not in the good way. I was about to resort to smashing windows with the fire extinguisher when the door of a pickup truck popped open as soon as I pulled the handle.

I crawled across the driver seat and dug around inside the cupholder and center console, looking for keys or maybe a cell phone, but there was nothing there. I went for the glovebox next, but all I found was a stupid pistol. I took it and stuffed it inside my waistband, knowing very well that it would almost certainly end up causing more problems than it fixed. I pulled down the visors next, hope quickly disappearing as I ran out of places to search. I’d seen Jerry hotwire cars on how many occasions? And yet I never thought to pay enough attention or learn how to do it myself. God, I’m stupid.

I rolled out of the truck, slammed the door shut, and took off across the lane towards the next car… but I didn’t make it. The ground came up and smacked me in the chest and face. My body was revolting against my mind’s commands. It was too hot, I was dehydrated and sick, and I’d been pushing way too hard for way too long. All I wanted to do was close my eyes and stop. And rest, maybe. Just for a little while. A little rest to regain some strength. Then, maybe, I could get back up and keep going…

---

Part Four

“Jack!”

A pair of small hands attached to a pair of skinny arms grabbed and shook me.

“What?” I asked, flatly.

“What are you doing?!”

“Resting.”

“HERE?!”

“Where else?”

“Anywhere else! It’s 50 degrees outside!”

Wow, I thought. That must be some kind of record. The shaking continued, as did the words and numbers. “A wet bulb reading of thirty-five degrees is the upper limit of human survivability.”

Where I grew up, we had two very different definitions of the phrase “soup weather.” The first was the one most people think of, while the second meant: it feels like you’re standing at the bottom of a pot of soup. The humidity wasn’t just uncomfortable, it short-circuited the body’s only defense against the heat. It made sweat stay where it was, on the skin, in the clothes, down your backside. That was almost what this felt like. My body was still trying to fight nature, but nature was fighting dirty.

“JAAACK!” he said again, with just a hint of urgency. “Come on! Get up! You’re going to die if you don’t.”

You’ll die either way, said another voice, coming from somewhere deep inside. It was a pretty shitty argument to try and make. Whoever it was, his defeatist attitude pissed me off enough to make me open my eyes and return to the struggle. I tensed my muscles, demanded they obey, and slowly, with all the effort of passing a monster-sized kidney stone, I succeeded in regaining control. My hands pushed the ground away, my knees tucked into place, and I stood, wobbling and dizzy.

You know the feeling you get when your leg falls asleep, and then you have to wait for it to come back online? That tingly, uncomfortable, unpleasant feeling of blood rushing back–not exactly pain, but pain adjacent? That’s what I felt all over my entire body. Pain would almost have been better. At least I was used to pain.

“I thought you were dead.”

I looked over and realized that the person who’d shaken me up and given me the spark of motivation I needed was none other than my old roommate, Skeeter. At some point, he’d changed into a set of blue scrubs. He’d also, evidently, found a digital thermometer, which he now held in his left hand. I could get the rest of his story later, but if he was telling the truth and it was really 50 freakin’ degrees, then we had to keep moving.

“Oh,” he said, staring at the device in his hand. “Now it’s 51. Did you know, at 49 they shut down bridges because the expansion of metal makes them unsafe to drive on? At 51, the standard paint they use for streetsigns starts to melt. At 52, lithium ion batteries stop working and start exploding.”

That meant, even if I did find a cell phone, it probably wouldn’t be much use anyway. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“I memorize weird things.” He shrugged. “And, I like reading worst-case scenario guides.”

“Well, in that case, I’ve got great news. This is officially a worst-case scenario. I saw one of your demons back at the hospital.”

“Aw man! I was super-duper hoping to be wrong about that.”

“Sorry. Hey, here’s another quick question, at what temperature hot do brain permanent damage?”

“105.”

“Crap.”

“Where are we going?”

I suddenly became aware that we were walking. We’d moved quite some distance downhill from where he first found me on the ground, but I didn’t have an answer to his question. “I don’t know” was as true of an answer as they came, but this kid was looking up to me, expecting me to be the adult. If life hadn’t already crushed his optimism, I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to do it.

“I’m working on a plan. But first, we need to get a lay of the land.”

We reached the ground floor. Up ahead, I spotted the main entrance and exit to the garage. I approached carefully, keeping to the shadow as I peeked out and searched for anything that might help.

The road was four lanes wide. A row of buildings on the other side formed a miniature shopping haven that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a postcard. Matching brick storefronts. Plenty of space for foot traffic. There was even an old-fashioned payphone, like Broken Toe was a town that time forgot. And every ten feet or so, another dead tree sticking out of the ground. Under different circumstances, this would be a lovely place to visit.

Something about it really bothered me.

“Do you ever get the feeling,” I asked Skeeter, “that you’re missing something really obvious?”

“Erm… Jack?”

I looked at him. He had that deer-in-headlights look on his face. I followed his gaze to see the man standing at the base of the concrete steps a few feet away.

Shit.

He wasn’t as big as the thing in the boiler room. He didn’t have a giant wrench or broken teeth or a monster arm. Still, Skeeter’s demon axiom proved true yet again. I knew right away that this was no ordinary man, mostly because his pupils were glowing red, but also because he was decked out from head to toe in bulky winter clothing. A thick, heavy camouflage coat hugged his midsection, black gloves covered his hands, and his head was hidden beneath a furry hood and black ski-mask–all except those eyes, blazing away like angry twin flames.

Skeeter tugged at my arm. All I said was one word. “Run.” And that’s what he did.

But the man in the coat didn’t pay the boy any mind. His attention was all for me. I couldn’t do anything but watch as he moved his hands to his face, that same slow-motion movement I saw from the basement demon. He pushed back his hood, wrapped his fingers around the ski mask, and slowly peeled it off. Underneath, the demon’s face looked human enough to pass for the real thing. He had a bristly copper beard, long hair at the back of a very receded hairline, and an enormous brown wart on the side of his nose that he probably needed to ask a doctor about. And steam rising from his skin.

Time continued forward in that slower than real way. He held my gaze with those burning embers as he pulled a cigar from one pocket, placed it into his mouth, pulled a lighter from another pocket, lit the cigar, and puffed. Through a cloud of dense smoke, he finally said, “Too fucking cold for my liking.”

It was a gruff voice. Not distorted like Big-Arm’s. It was eerily human. Skeeter did say that these things were taking over people. Maybe there was a person still in there, watching me, wondering why I didn’t run away from the demon controlling his body.

“Yeah.” My response was meaningless, but it was all I could think to say.

When he took the cigar out of his mouth and finally broke eye contact, it felt like I’d been released from a spell. But I still couldn’t move, couldn’t run, couldn’t look away. The steam demon’s movements weren’t hurried. He simply set the cigar on the ground, removed his outermost coat, folded it, and placed it down next to the cigar. Then, he punched a gloved fist into the opposite hand. FWOCK! The sound from the impact was sudden. The motion was fast. Too fast. I flinched, and he grinned.

“I’m gonna enjoy killin’ you.” It wasn’t an emotional proclamation. He said it plainly. It was an offhand comment. I’m going to see that movie. I’m going to wash my hair. I’m going into town; do you want anything? I’m going to enjoy killing you. So casual, I couldn’t believe he’d really said what I heard.

“Pardon?”

He started walking. His movements weren’t in slow motion anymore.

“I said I’m gonna kill you, and I’m lookin’ forward to it.”

I tried walking backwards, but my legs wouldn’t cooperate.

“Why? Why are you doing this?!”

“Because this world is ours. We were here a long time before you, and it’s high time we take it back. Your kind is an infestation, and you deserve to be exterminated.”

“Yeah, preaching to the choir, bud. We suck, but that doesn’t mean you have to kill us. Just give us a few more years and we’ll probably kill ourselves.”

“Not soon enough.” He was almost in front of me now. I was running out of time. I had to do something, anything, even if it was stupid.

“I don’t think violence is the answer,” I said, reaching behind my back. Then, as I grabbed the stolen gun and pointed it at him, I added, “But I’m willing to give it a shot!”

He let out a laugh. Nothing big. Just enough to let me know he wasn’t impressed, only amused.

“You really think that’ll hurt me? Go ahead. Pull the trigger. I dare you.”

I would say this moment had gotten away from me, but I never had it to begin with. I didn’t want to shoot the demon. I just wanted to scare him. But after a moment to reflect, I saw just how flawed that logic was. It was almost as stupid as doubling down on a threat we both knew was completely nonthreatening… which is exactly what I did next. I pulled back the slide, loading a fresh round into the chamber, then aimed for his face, “I’m warning you! I know how to use this thing!”

He reached out and grabbed the gun, his movements suddenly lightning fast, but he didn’t take it away. He just held the barrel in place, stepped forward, and put it to the center of his forehead. My hand was still on the grip. My finger was still on the trigger.

“Do it, ya pussy! Show me what kind of man you are.”

You know you’ve really done fucked up when a demon flexes on you this hard.

“Okay!” I said, nervously. “I will. But not because you told me to!”

“Whaterya waitin’ for?”

I pulled the trigger.

Click.

Oh shit.

Nothing happened.

Well, not “nothing.” The hammer landed, but there was no kaboom. Either the gun was empty, or it jammed at the worst possible moment. He didn’t even give me the chance to ask for a do-over. He just yanked the weapon out of my grip. The next thing I knew, I was running uphill. All this adrenaline coursing through my system and lactic acid building up in my muscles were starting to take a toll on my response time. I was moving at the pace of a wounded turtle, changing directions felt like steering a cruise ship around a corner. I kept waiting for the demon to catch up to me and hit me from behind. Every second that passed without a burning fist punching a hole through my back felt like a minor miracle. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that he was toying with me. Sure, he could strike me down any time he wants, but where’s the fun in that? He knew I didn’t have any weapon that could hurt him.

Wait, how did I get past the last demon?

Well, that was different. I had the-

Plonk!

My only ankle slammed into something hard that, in my hyper-focused escape, I hadn’t seen. Evidently, some asshole left a tripping hazard right here in the middle of the path. Luckily, I managed to let my hands soak up most of the impact of my fall. My face barely hit the concrete at all. I quickly rolled over to see exactly what I’d hit.

It was the fire extinguisher, right where I forgot it.

“Yes, yes, just like I planned!” I said out loud for no good reason. Scanning the area, I couldn’t see any sign of the demon. He hadn’t chased me up to the second level of the garage. But why not? I stared at the edge of the lane, waiting for him to turn the corner.

My heart pounded. My head throbbed. My breaths were short and fierce, and I could hear a strange wheeze every time I inhaled. I tried to focus my senses, but even if my brain weren’t cooking in my skull, I probably wouldn’t have heard him sneaking up behind me like that.

Suddenly, I was being yanked up by the scruff of my shirt and tossed into the back of a parked van. The sudden surprise was enough to counteract any pain I may have felt, even though my head left a spiderweb of cracked safety glass where it hit the rear window. The demon was somehow already here. He’d beaten me to the second floor, and was about to beat me to a pulp. I pulled the fire extinguisher in front of my face a microsecond before his punch landed. Twin sounds came from the impact: a low, muffled dong from the metal, and a crisp crunch of bones breaking inside his fist. He hugged his hand and released a pathetic wail of pain. Bullets don’t hurt, but this does? Is this a holy fire extinguisher? It didn’t matter. I couldn’t let an opportunity like this pass. While he was still reeling, I aimed the nozzle and blasted a cloud of freezing powder at his face.

A second later, he was gone. He might have vanished into thin air or went running for the hills, I couldn’t tell. I was losing the battle to stay upright. The only reason I didn’t empty the entire contents of the extinguisher on the guy was because I couldn’t work my fingers anymore, and the canister slipped out of my grip. I knelt down and struggled to pick it back up. It took a few tries, but eventually, I got it. Then, I looked around for Skeeter.

He was standing by the stairs.

Oh! Stairs! Right! That must have been how the demon got up here first. Man, I’m really missing a lot of obvious stuff, ain’t I?

I dragged myself over to Skeeter, who simply said, “It’s 52.2 degrees. The internal cooking temperature of a rare steak is 48 to 51. We are officially medium rare. The power grid will start having major power issues before we hit 52.8.”

“What good for brain at temperature?” I stammered.

“No,” he said. “Not really.”

“‘Kay.”

Together, we descended the stairs. I saw something out there the last time I looked, but it didn’t register as useful until now. There was that brick building across the street, some kind of little shop or restaurant or whatever. It didn’t really matter. What did matter was what I saw in front of it. Cell phones weren’t safe to use in this heat. There might not even be any electricity to power a normal phone. But payphones… Those things draw power straight from the line, right? I could swear I heard that somewhere before.

Skeeter saw me staring at the payphone way over there, the one basking in the brutally hot sun. The black receiver was probably hot enough to peel the skin from my hand if I grabbed it unprotected.

“Whatcha thinkin’?” he asked.

“Something really dumb.”

I turned and went back to where I first saw the cigar-smoking demon. It truly was a really dumb idea. A really, really dumb idea. I found his stuff right where he left it. Cigar (still burning), coat (still folded), but no gun anywhere. That was fine. I came for the coat. Skeeter seemed surprised to see me throw the oversized garment over my shoulders and stick my arms through the sleeves.

“How do I look?” I asked, flipping the final piece into place–the furry hood. The inside of this thing smelled like cologne and body odor.

“Suicidal,” Skeeter said.

“I’m going to run over there and make a quick call.”

He glanced at the thermometer in his hand. “We just hit fifty-two point eight. In direct sunlight, you’ll be dead in less than thirty seconds.”

“That’s why I’m going to get you to blast me first.”

He gave me a quizzical look. Then, “What?”

I held out the fire extinguisher. “This stuff is apparently pretty cold. Just hit me with it all over the outside of this jacket.”

He turned his quizzical look to the weapon, then raised an eyebrow. “I’m not touching that, it’s a liquid carbon dioxide tank. When fully pressurized, those things explode at 49 degrees.”

“Really? Damn. I guess I’m super lucky I blasted Big-Arm before I came out here.”

“Liquid CO2 is negative 73 degrees.”

“So it should balance out with the ambient heat and bring me to a nice, cool, seventy-five degree internal body temperature.”

“No. And no. And no. None of that is right.”

“Look, dude, I’m already bundled up in this thing. Hit me before I lose my edge!”

“I can’t.”

“FINE. I’LL DO IT MYSELF!”

I think I might have heard him yelling something about why I shouldn’t do that, but it got drowned out by the eruption of white, freezing cold foam that went spraying all over everything. My tensile dexterity still wasn’t where I needed it to be, so my fingers struggled with aiming. That, combined with the fact that you cannot breathe inside a giant cloud of evaporating carbon dioxide really muddled the line between what actually happened and what my brain tried to tell me happened. Take that however you want, but I distinctly remember the fog clearing and me looking down to see that I had somehow managed to cover every square inch–front and back–of the coat without wasting a single drop.

Clang. The extinguisher fell to the ground next to me.

Skeeter crossed his arms, gave an impressed nod, and asked, “How do you feel?”

I felt BAD. The cold seemed to have gone straight to my soul and awakened nerve endings I never knew existed. I felt like I’d just run a marathon through boiling water. I felt like my blood was acid. I felt like my brain popped. I was a Russian Nesting Doll of extreme temperatures. Hot Cold Hot Cold. Nothing cancelled out. Everything just hurt all at once in creative and unique ways. I tried to convey all of this, but the only words to leave my mouth were, “My balls are inside of me.”

I took a step, half-expecting the foam to instantly fall off in one giant clump. But it stayed attached to the coat, and I dared to think, This plan might actually work! I looked back out at the dead landscape, the sizzling hot road, the black receiver on the pay phone, and hoped with every bit of hope I could hope that this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I was STILL missing something obvious was wrong.

“Skeeter,” I extended an arm outside the garage, away from the building’s shadow. Steam danced off the white foam clinging to the fabric. “If this doesn’t work, I’m all out of ideas. No matter what happens, I’m glad I got to have met you. Thanks for leaving the room. I know it was scary.”

“Yeah well,” he sniffled. “It’s not like I had that much to lose anyway.”

I pulled my arm back into the shade. “What do you mean?”

“It’s this whole thing. I’ve got a rare medical condition. Messed up brain. They don’t expect me to last much longer. I think that’s why they brought me here, you know. To die.”

I looked back at the scrawny kid with the messy gray hair and mournful eyes and said, “I thought you said you bit a cop.”

“That too.” He nodded toward the road. “You better go while you can.”

The walk was, honestly, nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. Actually, by the time I made it across the road, I was cruising. I could feel my joints and muscles loosening up. The feeling returned in my fingers. Things were going pretty well. It was, in a word, suspicious.

Before I picked up the phone, I took a quick moment to study my surroundings. There were several businesses lined up on this block–coffee shop, book store, corner store, diner… the kinds of places that thrived on hospital traffic. All of them had “CLOSED” signs posted on the doors. But I noticed a face peeking out of one of the windows. Whoever it was, they darted away the moment I saw them.

Okay, moment of truth. Using two layers of socks as an oven mitt, I pulled the receiver off the hook and let it hover an inch from my ear. I could have cried for joy then and there at the sound of the dial tone, but I didn’t have the moisture to spare. The phone worked. Now… Oh. Shit. Now what? I tried to remember the rest of the plan. Horror filled the space that hope left behind as the realization dawned on me. I didn’t think this far ahead! What do I do? Who do I call? The National Guard? Emergency Services? JG Freakin’ Wentworth?!

I licked the tip of my finger and tapped out a phone number from memory as fast as I could. Thankfully, the number pad had been underneath the receiver and didn’t seem to be boiling lava hot like everything else.

An annoying robotic voice instructed me that if I’d like to make a call, I needed to first insert coins. This was a “pay” phone after all, not a “charity” phone.

I cursed, then went through every collect call agency I could think of until one of them actually passed me through to a menu list.

“Please say your name after the tone,” the robotic voice instructed.

“Caspar Van Dien,” I answered. (In case you skipped the earlier stuff, that’s a code phrase my friends and I use to warn each other if something really, really bad is about to happen.)

“One moment please.”

I waited for exactly one moment. Then, the sound of ringing came through the speaker.

Please, please, please pick up.

“Hello?”

YES! Rosa answered my call. I immediately started speaking, but the sound of a prerecorded message interrupted me.

“Would you like to accept a collect call from… Caspar Van Dien.”

“OH MY GOD JACK WHERE ARE YOU?! YES! Yes, I will accept the collect call!”

Exactly one more moment passed before I heard the next prerecorded message.

“We’re sorry. Your phone plan does not support collect calls. Goodbye.”

And the line went dead.

I hung up and waited for her to call back. To pass the time, I started reading the messages on the stickers on the phone. It didn’t take long for me to notice the message printed near the top in large, easy-to-notice font. 

“This phone does not receive incoming calls.”

FUUUCK!

Another moment later, the phone rang again. Rosa picked up right away.

“Would you like to accept a collect call from… Where are you?”

“I’m at the hospital! Where are you?”

“We’re sorry. Your phone plan does not support collect calls. Goodbye.”

Then:

“Would you like to accept a collect call from… Get out of there now!”

“Wait. Are you outside? Are you insane? Get indoors immed-”

“We’re sorry. Your phone plan does not support collect calls. Goodbye.”

And then:

“Would you like to accept a collect call from… Let’s meet up. Where?”

“Are you the reason the air in here got messed up?!”

“We’re sorry. Your phone plan does not support collect calls. Goodbye.”

This was taking forever.

“Would you like to accept a collect call from… Yes and no. Had to stop demons.”

“What kind of demons? Just tell me where you-”

“We’re sorry. Your phone plan does not support collect calls. Goodbye.”

“Would you like to accept a collect call from… Burning up. So hot.”

“Yeah, you just wasted this call.”

“We’re sorry. Your phone plan does not support collect calls. Goodbye.”

“Would you like to accept a collect call from… Meet me in the morgue!”

“The morgue is perfect because I’m GOING TO KILL Y-”

“We’re sorry. Your phone plan does not support collect calls. Goodbye.”

This was a ridiculously tedious way of communicating, but at least now I knew Rosa was safe. That alone was a huge relief. And the morgue should, at least in theory, be the safest place of all right now. Even if the air conditioning was shot, those things had to have emergency backup refrigerant. The next call was going to be to Jerry. If I heard his voice, it would go a long way in boosting morale. Too bad the pay phone picked that exact moment to explode.

I didn’t even notice hitting the ground this time. The sky was blindingly bright. I blinked, sat up, touched my face and pulled back fingers covered in blood. What was left of the receiver dangled back and forth on the cable. The rest of the pay phone looked like it had been hit with a bullet…

Which, I was beginning to understand, was exactly what happened. I looked back to where I’d come from and saw the demon emerging from the parking garage, cigar clenched between his teeth, gun in his outstretched hand, aiming in my direction.

Demon with a gun?

DEMON WITH A GUN!

The prophecy has come true!

Another shot rang out. The bullet hit the wall behind me. Brick dust sprinkled the top of my ice coat as I sprang into action, racing down the sidewalk. The demon continued to shoot, and I continued to run.

I turned the block and saw another row of shops along the intersecting street. Nobody was outside. Of course they weren’t. You’d have to be an idiot to expose yourself to the elements on a day like this. I kept going, though, even as exhaustion ripped my lungs into painful ribbons. I pushed and pushed until the next corner. I darted left, kept going until two police squad cars came screeching to a stop at the other end of the block. Their lights were flashing, alarms blaring. Doors popped open and officers spilled out…

They were all wearing thick, puffy coats.

They were all pointing guns.

Without any other warning than that, they started shooting at me.

I grabbed a garbage bin, hefted it off the ground, and chucked it through the pane glass storefront window next to me and jumped inside. It was a clothing store boutique or something, I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention. All I know is that I slammed over several mannequins before vaulting a checkout counter and pushing through a door to a backroom. I ran down a hall, out a back door, and into an alleyway where I climbed a dumpster and flung myself over a chain fence, then picked myself back up off the ground and kept going.

The alley opened up into a side street. I raced across and found myself almost right back where I started. I was in the park, the one I saw earlier outside the hospital. There was a walking path cutting through the field, running over a picturesque footbridge spanning a small lake. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine this in nicer times. There were probably ducks who lived there. Children who fed them. Bikers and joggers and other people who looked forward to coming here as part of their daily routine… Would they know… That someone died here? Would it bother them to learn how I lost the fight and collapsed here? Would they care? Would I maybe get the chance to come back as a ghost and haunt this park?

“JACK, GET UP!”

The jolt of horror that came with hearing his voice, right there in my ear, was enough to power one last movement. I sat up and saw Skeeter, crouched next to me. But he wasn’t protected. His skin was covered in bubbling red blisters. I tried to rip off the coat so I could throw it over him, but it wasn’t coming off.

“What are you doing?!” I cried.

“It’s 133.” His arms went limp. “It’s a new record.” His eyes lost focus, and he fell. I reached for him, but I knew it was too late.

No, nobody’s going to care who died here, the voice inside my head said. The world won’t be here long enough to care.

The sickening image of the boy’s body turning darker, his skin splitting into open sores, even though I knew he wasn’t there anymore, it was too much to witness. I turned my head and saw red filling the sky. A halo of flames glowing into the atmosphere. The world was on fire.

No, not the world.

The hospital.

The hospital was on fire!

“ROSA!” I screamed, as if it would do any good. My screams turned to sobs. It was over. It was all over… That’s when I saw the others. Just a couple at first, then a few more, and soon I realized I was surrounded.

Demons.

They looked like people. They probably were people, once. Not much changed, except that they were all decked out in winter apparel–scarves and jackets, fluffy coats and wool hats, like tourists crawling up from hell for a nice, relaxing vacation. The biggest and closest one was coming straight towards me, the expression on his bearded face somewhere between curiosity and pity. He knew I was no threat. I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t stop any of them.

But I knew someone who could.

I squeezed my eyes shut, took a deep breath, and screamed his name. “AMADEUS!!!”

A few precious seconds slipped away, a tiny pocket universe in which anything was possible, where hope could grow and thrive and nothing bad happened. I channeled every last iota of mental energy I had left into that fleeting moment, mining it for all it was worth, absorbing and digesting the sacred potential of that innocent point in time before I had to open my eyes again, because I knew as soon as I looked it would be too late to go back. The quantum superposition collapses the moment the outcome is observed, and for those breaths before I knew for certain if this final, desperate gambit actually worked, I could believe whatever I wanted and it would be just as good as the truth.

So I believed that everything would be okay. I believed I would open my eyes and see Rosa and Jerry, and they would laugh as I told them all about my crazy dream. I was drooling in my sleep, Gaston curled up next to me on the mattress in the back of the van. We’d talk about what we wanted to do now. Where would we go next? We’d look up a good place to eat and complain about how we’ve had Chinese food already this week and no more pizza please because it gives the dog horrible gas and then we’d laugh again… But that’s the thing about hope. For all the good it does, for all the lives it saves, for all the comfort it offers, the greatest sin of hope is how it lies… But hey, I’ve been working really hard. I can let myself believe the lie. Just a little bit. As a treat. After all, I’m a real sucker for a good lie.

When I opened my eyes again, the world was perfectly still. Not a creature was stirring… except, of course, for him. Amadeus stood there looking down at me disappointedly.

“Go ahead and gloat,” I said, utterly defeated.

---

Part Five

“In all my life, I’ve never encountered a more stupid or stubborn soul than you. You, who escaped? You, who knows exactly what I am capable of?! After everything I told you, you call upon me of your own volition?!”

I couldn’t feel the air anymore. Couldn’t tell if I was hot or cold. Maybe neither of those things were possible in this universe between moments, but that couldn’t be. I knew, better than most, nothing was impossible.

I pushed myself up. I stood, and faced him.

If this was surrender, why did it feel so much like a fight?

“I just need a little more time.”

“Time?!” he barked. “All of us, even I, have to abide by that rule. No one lives forever. This is a good death. Better than most. Why would you choose to give that up? Do you really want to live that much?! Because I’ve never once made a bargain that didn’t end with my victim begging, begging, BEGGING for me to let them die.” Somewhere in there, his voice became a scream.

“Can you help me or not?”

He laughed, a derisive snort of a laugh that said, neither of us thinks this is funny, but I’m laughing anyway. Then, he calmly stated, “There will be a price, of course.”

“Name it.”

“One favor.” He held up a finger. “You must grant me one favor. When the time comes, you will complete your end of the deal. You will have no choice other than the one you make now, no chance for you to renege, your free will cannot have any influence. No returns. No refunds. No exchanges. If you agree, it will be as if you’ve already done what I ask.”

That didn’t sound so bad, but I knew it had to be.

“You can’t make me do anything to hurt Rosa, Jerry, or Gaston. Okay?”

His response exploded out of him. “You would dare to negotiate with me?!!!”

I matched his energy. “Oh give me a fucking break!!! Like you didn’t already know this was going to happen! Our last conversation practically spelled it out. The only way to make it fair is by warning me? C’mon! You said goodbye, but you never left because you knew I’d end up in this exact position. DIDN’T YOU?!!!”

He frowned. For a second, I thought he might actually look away. But he didn’t. With a nearly imperceptible nod, he answered, “I suspected.”

“Well,” I said back, “your so-called ‘warning’ could have been a lot clearer.”

“Your opinion has been noted.”

“Do we have a deal?”

He didn’t answer right away. I held out my hand for him to shake, but he didn’t take it. I was surprised when he did finally break eye contact, turning his gaze to look behind me… but not nearly as surprised as I was about to be. “What do you think?” he asked.

I turned to see who he was talking to.

“I think it’s a good deal,” he answered.

The fuck?!

“Skeeter?”

The boy looked at me with sad, mournful eyes. The rest of him looked… better. No burns or blisters. He was the same as when I first met him all those minutes ago… (Jesus, this whole thing only took a matter of minutes, huh?)

“I’m sorry, Jack. They made me do it.”

“Who made you do what?”

He shrugged. I was confused. I was furious. I was confurious. I looked back at Amadeus and screamed, “WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE?!”

Amadeus held out both hands, palms facing out–the old slow down there gesture. “Don’t blame me. I had nothing to do with it.”

“SHUT UP!” I screamed. “Enough of the cryptic bullshit! Either tell me what’s going on or stop talking altogether!” I groaned into the sky, then yelled, “Are you going to help or not?!”

He looked like he was genuinely uncertain. I couldn’t decide what answer, yes or no, should scare me more. But eventually, he went with neither. Instead, all I got from him was, “I’ll think about it.”

And that was that.

A sudden, incredible sound like a CRACK of thunder exploded in my ears so loudly it almost knocked me over. The world was back to the way it was before I summoned him. The sun was roasting me to a crisp. The park was full of those things. They were slowly approaching, surrounding me. The biggest one was almost on top of me. While most of these demons seemed to have raided the human wardrobes of whatever victims they were possessing, this one was different. He didn’t even try to blend in. He looked like a six foot tall Papa Smurf, complete with the red hat and pants.

“Hey there young fella,” he said. Hey, at least the demons still think I’m ‘young.’ “You look lost out here. Why don’t you let me-” I ducked away as his white-gloved hand reached for for my arm. I tried to run, but something held me in place. Then, I heard him yell out, “Got ‘im!”

He had me by the coat. I quickly shimmied out of the garment and left it dangling in his grip as I raced through the blazing sun towards the footbridge. In my periphery, I saw police cars jump the curb and go off road, speeding through the park to intercept me. But they were too far away to make it in time. I reached the bridge first, ran halfway across, and stopped dead in my tracks.

There were more of them on the other side of the bridge. Watching me, waiting to see what I would do, holding out cell phones and… filming? Okay, that’s pretty weird. But no time to stop and think. I turned around, but Papa Smurf was already there, blocking the other side. Behind him, police pointed guns and screamed orders. 

I only had one option left.

I looked over the railing, at the pond beneath. It looked so serene. So still. I couldn’t see the bottom. There was no way to know how deep it was. How hot does water get on a day like this? Was I about to throw myself into boiling water? No, I thought. It’s a pond. It’s water. It’s probably going to be really, really refreshing.

I climbed up onto the railing, flipped off all the demons, and let myself drop.

There was no splash.

Six feet down, I hit a solid surface. The force of the impact knocked all of the air out of me, in addition to quite a bit of blood. I tried to push myself up off the ground, but that simply didn’t work. I tried to crawl away, but that didn’t work either. I tried to figure out how in the hell I managed to miss the water from this close, but that didn’t work either either. Nothing worked. Nothing made sense.

Two of the demons grabbed me–one for each arm–lifted me up, and dragged me off the frozen pond to where a group of police were waiting with tasers at the ready. The demons held me still as the first cop touched his weapon to my neck and filled me with a gajillion volts of holy fucking shit what the holy fuck?!

I woke up the same way I usually do–confused, disoriented, uncertain of where I was or how I got here. I tried to wipe the sleep from my eyes, but my right hand caught metal at the wrist. I was back in the hospital. And this time, I was handcuffed to the bedrail.

“Okay, let’s try this again.”

I looked at the man standing over the side of my bed. He was a pale guy with beady eyes, pointy ears, and a gap between his front two teeth. He wore a three-piece suit that was clearly cobbled together from three different suits, none of which matched or fit. Overall, there was an uncanny vibe to him, like the first time you see a child actor all grown up.

“Try what again?” I asked.

“Are you actually awake this time?” His voice was high pitched and accelerated. Every word sounded almost like a quiet scream.

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking that?”

He harumphed, stepped over to the table at the head of my bed, and picked up one of the four coffee mugs that were sitting there. He took a quick, loud slurp before continuing: 

“I’m your lawyer.”

“Did Amadeus send you?”

“I don’t know who that is, but if you’d like to sue him, let me know and I’ll get the paperwork started. NOW: Let’s get to what actually matters, you’re in a shit ton of trouble–assault, battery, multiple resisting arrests, and fleeing the scenes of a lot of crimes. They’re even flirting with some domestic terrorism charges, but I think we’ve got a really strong insanity plea, which you are NOT going to take, okay? Because that’s a trick! You ain’t gonna say shit–preferably ever again. Understand?”

“No.”

“Good.”

There was an edge to this guy, and I suspected that something stronger than caffeine was at play. He had both the appearance and the confidence of a man who doesn’t understand why he should pay someone else to cut his hair when he has a perfectly good hand mirror and pair of scissors at home.

“Dagger CobraHeart, esquire, at your service.”

“Is that your name? You sound like the founder of a house at a remedial wizarding school.”

“If you weren’t my client, I’d sue you for defamation.”

Right then, the door opened, and everything instantly seemed better. Not all the way better. I was still confused, chained to a bed, and in a lot of pain. But much much better than before, because the person walking into the room was-

“ROSA!” I practically screamed her name.

I didn’t see who shut it, but the door closed behind her as she came up to my bed and flicked me on my recently-bandaged head wound.

“Ow!”

“I cannot wait until you get discharged so I can murder you.”

Dagger CobraHeart, esquire gave me a satisfied grin and said, “You’re under lock and key until they deem you fit to transfer to County. You’re not supposed to have any visitors, but I pulled some strings and got Rosa here an exception under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act as guaranteed by your First Amendment rights, so if anyone asks, she’s a priestess and this is a religious ceremony.”

“‘A’ for effort,” I said, sitting up. “But my lawyers usually end up dead, and I don’t think I can afford you.”

He took a big swig of coffee, smacked his lips, then asked, “You think I do this job for the money?”

I didn’t know how to answer, so I didn’t bother.

“Jack,” Rosa began, her voice a little softer now. “Do you know where you are?”

I looked at the ceiling just to be sure that this was still the same room (and hospital, and state, and dimension) as before. There, I spotted an empty indentation and dangling wire where the smoke detector used to be. Everything looked exactly the same… except there wasn’t another bed in here anymore. And it wasn’t hot in here anymore, either. In fact, it was actually pretty chilly. Despite this, I could feel a bead of sweat running down the side of my temple.

“In a psychiatric wing of a hospital in Broken Toe, Arizona.”

The two of them shared a look that told me this was not the correct answer.

“What?” I asked. “Oh, God… What happened?”

Of all the people to deliver bad news, I think Rosa was probably the best suited. She was always really careful about how she worded things. She understood better than anyone what I’d been through. But before she got the chance, Dagger blurted it all out.

I waited and listened, in growing horror, as they explained just how wrong I was.

I’ll spare you the finer details, but according to my newest lawyer, my rampage started with, of all things, a broken toe.

My memories weren’t doing much to fill in the gaps, but that was to be expected, all things considered. At some point over the last few days, I caught my foot on the rung of a ladder. Considering the countless injuries I’ve sustained over my life, this one seemed so minor that it barely even registered as noteworthy. But evidently, individuals with a history of blood poisoning have a much higher risk of reinfection later in life. One thing led to another, and I ended up with a really high and really sudden fever.

How high? Well, I was already hallucinating before the van broke down on the side of the road in Cobweb Creek, Colorado… which was exactly where we were. We hadn’t been to Arizona in months. We were dead in the water, stranded with no phone service. Rosa was starting to panic as my fever began to climb.

101.

102.

103.

104.

How long could we last like this?

All the power of all the gods inside our dog were useless. We were out of water. We were desperate. And so, Jerry turned on the emergency beacon in the GPS device we bought way back at the start of this trip just in case of a scenario exactly like this one.

And then, “Do you guys hear that?”

Jerry opened the sliding side door of the van, causing a wave of air to rush over me, the cold blasting into my eyes. It was so bright out, I could barely see. I was so hot I could barely think.

Rosa sounded delirious as she asked, “Is that what I think it is?!”

The sound grew louder, and closer. Jerry, now clad in a pair of boxer shorts (after Rosa threatened to stab him if he didn’t put something on), stepped out and waved at the approaching vehicle. It came to a stop right next to us and turned off the blaring siren. The driver rolled his window down and smiled.

It was an ambulance.

“I’ll take fifty popsicles,” I said to the ambulance driver before the two EMT’s helped me into the back of the vehicle.

“Wait,” I interrupted. “But why was Jerry naked? I distinctly remember him stripping down and threatening to shave the dog.”

“Yeah,” Rosa said. “Because we were trying to get you to take off your clothes so we could get your body temperature down to something not life-threatening. You resisted. Jerry said we should all get naked out of solidarity.”

“Did you?” the lawyer interjected. Rosa shot him a look. He turned away and sipped his coffee.

“Hang on,” I continued, running through all the broken memories. “You were talking about the heatwave with the ice cream ladies before they attacked me.”

Rosa explained, “The EMTs, Cass and Bella, had to hold you down to start an IV because you were delirious. And we weren’t talking about a heat wave. We were talking about the dry flash freeze from the polar vortex disruption. It’s literally minus twelve degrees outside, you big dummy!”

“What?!”

My lawyer snickered and added, “I guess that finally puts an end to the whole ‘global warming’ hoax.”

“But that doesn’t explain how I ended up seeing demons everywhere!”

“Actually,” Dagger said, picking up a bunch of papers from a stack next to the coffee mugs. “I got this part figured out. See, all those antibiotics they pumped you full of (without your consent) have a known interaction with liver enzymes that stop you from processing your anti-psychosis medications. Add to that the fact that they injected you with enough tranquilizers to take out Ozzy Osbourne (God rest his soul) and you were basically a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.”

“I told them the sedatives were a bad idea!” Rosa exclaimed. “But nooo! They told me it was impossible for you to wake up. I left you alone in here for five minutes so I could go to the cafeteria and eat a sandwich, and when I got back you were already gone! They used that word. ‘Impossible.’”

The lawyer nodded along with Rosa and added, “It’s kinda like the word ‘unsinkable.’ Careless. Absolutely careless.”

“How do you know about my medications? Isn’t that supposed to be, like, HIPAA protected?”

“Supposed to be,” he answered with an exaggerated shrug. “But they just left your chart right here in the open. Don’t worry, I’m a lawyer, and this information is the basis of your defense, so it’s all good.”

“But I was burning up-”

The lawyer rattled on, “You had a brain-damaging fever duking it out with the drugs and the other drugs, plus the symptoms and side effects of chills and heat flashes, plus hypothermia causing paradoxical undressing, add to all of that the copious amount of lost blood-”

“That’s not how you use the word copious.”

He ignored me, “And, according to the parking garage footage, you actually shot yourself with a fire extinguisher?”

“Is that bad?”

“YES!” they both exclaimed in unison.

“Wait, I actually fought a demon in the basement. Big-Arm. He had a wrench!”

“You mean Earl?” Dagger asked. “Yeah, he’s probably gonna press charges.”

“No, not ‘Earl.’ The actual demon in the boiler room. He was seven feet tall.”

“Yeah, that would be Earl.”

“He just kept screaming at me! And he didn’t have a shirt! His voice was like something out of a nightmare!”

“Yeah. That’s why he works in the basement, Jack. Gotta say, your description of this guy is starting to sound a little problematic.”

“But, what about the other demons? The guy in the parking garage?!”

Dagger was quick to answer every single one of my questions. “Uh huh. Sorry to say he’s also probably pressing charges. You broke his hand and gave him frostbite of the face.”

“He tried to kill me!”

“CCTV backs up his claim that you broke into his truck and stole his gun. Looks like he saw you do it, then set you up so he could have an excuse to fight you and call it ‘self defense.’ It’s not the first time he’s done something like this.”

“But… I remember him saying, ‘This world is ours,’ and ‘Your kind is an infestation,’ and ‘You deserve to be exterminated.’”

“Yep,” my lawyer said, still nodding. “That guy’s racist.”

“What?! But… I’m white!”

“That guy’s really racist.”

“But the people in the park-”

“Bunch of folk came out of sheltering in place when they heard all the commotion and gunfire.”

“But the guy dressed like Papa Smurf-”

“Professional Santa.”

“But the pond I jumped into-”

“Frozen over.”

“But I saw the hospital on fire!”

“Your brain was mush, man! You probably just saw the sun setting and filled in the details. Frankly, the fact that you were even able to get as far as you did is absolutely bonkers.”

“So… You’re saying there’s a perfectly rational answer for everything?”

“Yep,” he nodded.

I tugged at the handcuff. It was very snug.

Rosa put her hand onto my arm and said, “It’s okay. I explained everything to Jerry. He’s working on a plan to get you out of this.”

“Jerry?! Where’s he been this whole time?”

“Walking, mostly,” she answered.

“He’s been walking for three days?!”

Rosa shook her head.

“No, Jack. The ambulance picked us up this morning. They checked you into the hospital twelve hours ago.”

Twelve?! Hours?!

She leaned in and asked, “Who told you it had been three days?”

I looked over to where Skeeter’s bed had been. There was nothing there. Of course there wasn’t. I was in a locked room of a psychiatric wing. They took every precaution. They assumed I was a danger to myself and others. There were no windows. No mirrors. Why the hell would I have a roommate?

I knew I was missing something. The whole time, there was the feeling that something didn’t add up. But really, it was a ton of little things that didn’t add up. Was it all fake? Did any of it really happen? Most importantly, did I actually give something away to Amadeus?

He warned me. He said that he had the authority to rewrite reality itself…

Dagger clapped his hands to get my attention. “Okay, here’s the plan: You’re going to write a statement and give it to me. Then, I want you to agree that you won’t post ANY of this on your blog until after I figure out a way to get these charges dropped.”

“How long will that take?” I asked.

“Maybe a year or so. In the interim, you probably won’t be getting bail, so you’ll have plenty of time to read and write and whatever else it is you do for fun.”

“You’re saying I’ll be locked up for a whole year?!”

“That’s if you’re lucky. Could be a lot longer.”

I closed my eyes and sighed, knowing that I’d probably used up all my luck just to survive…

But then the door slammed open, and we all turned to see Jerry walk into the room wearing a pair of sunglasses and a puffy blue jacket with the word “GLAM” written in silver glitter across the front. More interesting than the jacket, though, was the giant set of bolt-cutters in his right hand.

“Waddup!” he said, removing the sunglasses. He smiled at Rosa and asked, “Is he better?”

“He’s good enough to come with us.”

Jerry motioned at Dagger, asking, “This the lawyer?”

Rosa nodded.

Jerry walked up to us, looked him in the eyes, and asked, “Yo Dag, what happens to snitches?”

Without missing a beat, the lawyer answered, “They get left in ditches.”

“Darn tootin’,” Jerry said. And the two of them fist-bumped.

Then, he used the bolt-cutters to snap the handcuffs, and we gathered up my stuff.

“Wait,” CobraHeart said before we left. He handed me a business card, which was the moment I finally realized I’d totally misheard his name. It was actually “Daggit Kobart.” (Crazy how my brain plays tricks on me sometimes.) “I’m serious,” he warned. “Don’t post anything on your blog until I get all of this sorted out.”

We found Gaston in the hallway, a friendly deity named Schospere at the wheel. He was a useful minor god, but I really hated the way he made Gaston stand on two legs whenever he was in charge.

A deep, loud voice resonated from the animal’s throat. “IS IT DONE?”

“Yeah,” Jerry said, walking past. “You can release them now.”

That’s when I noticed the two officers laying flat against the ceiling. They suddenly fell to the ground.

“YOU WILL TELL NO ONE,” Schospere commanded.

I whispered, “Inanisomnum,” as I passed, sending the god back to the void with the rest of them. Gaston dropped to all fours and quickly fell into step behind us as we made our way to the exit.

“‘Darn tootin’?” Rosa asked.

“Yeah,” Jerry answered. “I’m trying it out. What do you think?”

“I don’t like it.”

Outside, the night air was frigid and mean. As the first snowflakes began to fall, I shivered. Even now, I felt it. Even now, there was a lingering, undeniable presence in the back of my head… A voice continued to whisper to me. Something’s not quite right... I’m missing something important... I’m overlooking something really, really big.