Parking Garage
“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 122 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 ninety-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 122 freakin’ degrees, then we had to keep moving.
“Oh,” he said, staring at the device in his hand. “Now it’s 123. Did you know, at 120 they shut down bridges because the expansion of metal makes them unsafe to drive on? At 123, the standard paint they use for streetsigns starts to melt. At 125, 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 126 degrees. The internal cooking temperature of a rare steak is 120 to 125. We are officially medium rare. The power grid will start having major power issues before we hit 127.”
“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 127. 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 120 degrees.”
“Really? Damn. I guess I’m super lucky I blasted Big-Arm before I came out here.”
“Liquid CO2 is negative 100 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? 911? 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.
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