Andi and George shared a look before Andi started talking again. “I understand, Tyler. Okay, here’s what you’re going to do. You find your dad. I assume he’s with you?”
“Yes. He’s in his studio.”
“You go find your dad right now and you stay with him. Ask him to make you a hot chocolate, give you some cookies. Things that help distract you. Are the news vans still at your house?”
“Most of them are gone. Only two left, and they have gone down the road after Mother threatened them.” The sound of rustling clothes and tentative steps came through the speaker.
“Good. You don’t want to give them a show. Are you at the studio yet?”
“No, I have to go through the kitchen—no, Izzy, Andi says to go to my dad. Don’t—why are you doing this? Stop, Izzy. Muriel, stop!” The panic in Tyler’s voice was rising, and his harsh breathing came over the phone, invaded the inside of the Escalade, made all of George’s hair stand on end. The boy was in trouble, and there was nothing they could do. Only he was already looking for the next exit to turn the car around and drive to Tyler’s home, the chief and her hatred be damned. The boy needed help.
“What are they doing, Tyler?” Andi, still calm, though he held his cell with an iron grip, his knuckles white.
“They won’t let me through. They’re blocking the kitchen door. I can’t get through.”
“Are they saying why?”
“Danger, the end. All comes to an end.” Tyler’s voice had now the same eerie quality George knew from Andi when he got in too deep with his tiny informants. It didn’t bode well. George tapped the button on his steering wheel that connected him to his cell and called Luke. Whatever was going on, they needed help.
“Tyler, if they don’t want you to go outside, don’t do it. Calm down. Take a deep breath. Don’t focus on how they look or what they’re saying. Focus on the intent. Let go and let them have control. See what they see.”
George shuddered. Andi’s world, boiled down to a few words, so simple yet holding inside them so much pain and suffering, an entire world, no, worlds, completely different from what other people perceived, and he was asking a boy of fourteen years to trust in that otherness and give himself to it. Only somebody who lived the same paralyzing reality could ask this of a child in such a calm tone.
For what seemed like eternity but was only two rings on Gelman’s phone, who still hadn’t picked up, there was silence. Then, “There’s somebody in the house. Dad is on the floor, he’s not moving. I need to run.”
A clattering sound, no doubt Tyler letting go of the cell, the only connection they had to him. Footsteps, quickly fading, the bang of a door closing. Nothing.
“George? What is it?”
20. Crawlers and Ghosts
“GEORGE?” LUKE’Svoice was tinny in the deafening silence surrounding them. Andi hadn’t ended his call with Tyler, still hoping the boy would perhaps come back and pick it up, though the chances were slim to nonexistent. George cleared his throat.
“Luke, tell the chief something is going on at her house. Tyler called us, said somebody had broken in. Also inform Forard to get his team ready. We might need them. We’re on the way to the chief’s house, ETA fifteen minutes.”
“We’re coming.” Luke ended the call.
George was all determination, his lips pressed into a thin line, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard, Andi feared it would break. While George drove as if the hounds of hell were on their heels, Andi checked his weapon, knowing he would probably need it. He could feel them in the air, Tyler’s words, no, the ghosts’ words:things are coming to an end. Arthropods had no concept of things like endings and beginnings, just of being and not being, a great difference Andi wholly understood but couldn’t explain. It was something you had to experience, and if you weren’t an arthropod or didn’t have ageschenk, you would never know. Arthropods also had a sense for pressure, a pressure Andi was feeling now, a pressure that never meant anything good.Theydidn’t know what it meant; it was just there, a change not interesting to them, while for Andi it carried a world of meaning. The anticipation of something bad, things he couldn’t prevent, only react to. He hated it.
George briefly placed his hand on Andi’s thigh, which had been bouncing on the seat. He couldn’t do more, not with the speed he was driving at, but they were at a long stretch of road, close to the chief’s house.
“We’re going to save him. We will.” It was a declaration, an affirmation they both knew could be as true as it could be untrue. Until they found Tyler, there was no way of telling what would happen.
They passed the two news vans on their way to the house, and Andi lowered the windows to get a better feel for what was going on, opening himself to the arthropods of the area.
Blood and pain and despair, he could feel it all, not so bad, tasty, panic, the small blob running, the huge blob following, wreathed in that damn smoke, making it so hard for Andi to know who it was, though he did know, it was the bad blob, the killer, the one they were looking for, chaos, the air sharp with panic, the small blob hiding, not good enough, the big blob coming, sonic, loud and shrill, disturbing everything; was this happening now, or had it come to pass, too close to the present to be a memory, not for them, memories were for blobs, they stored information, had imprints on their minds of things that left an impact, more sonic, the rhythmic kind Andi had learned to associate with motorized vehicles, damn, so it was the past, recent enough to still be fresh, no, fading already, ten minutes were an eternity for some of them, so much time, or so little, it was the context that made it significant, they were running out of it, definitely, how had the smokey blob found Tyler anyway, oh yes, the media, what was the media, no concept, no way to translate, it was bad enough from their world to his, but vice versa was a nightmare, impossible. Tyler was gone, the small blob, they needed to find him, there was another blob, Tyler’s dad, unconscious, the electric field said he was hale, just not present, his heart steady,whump,whump, no place to lay the eggs, the car came to a halt, he needed to get out, needed to be ready—
Andi felt George’s hand on his wrist, steadying him, bringing him back enough to be present without losing the connection. He led the way around the house to the studio where they found Aloys Norris unconscious on the ground with a huge lump on the back of his head, the hair matted by blood, but not too much; head wounds tended to bleed, he was fine, though he would have a terrible headache when he woke, the weapon lay next to him, a baseball bat; it was always a baseball bat; they were so handy, easy to carry, with so much destructive potential, Aloys Norris could attest to that. George was already on the phone calling an ambulance, trying to shake Tyler’s father awake. He wouldn’t wake up, not any time soon; his body needed time to heal. Andi felt it in the way the cells fired, the chemicals brewing, he was slipping, dragged intotheirworld, he could feel it.
Another vehicle, Luke and the chief storming into the house, the chief screaming her husband’s name, holstering her weapon as she went down on her knees next to him, George telling her the ambulance was on the way.
“Where’s Tyler?” The question hung in the air. Gelman was staring at him, wanting to know. He needed to talk, complete sentences, only it was so hard, he was receiving fully again, knowing time was of the essence, they needed to follow the vehicle, outside, through the swamp, it was unusual enough he could find it, echoes of the path the killer was taking flooding Andi.
“ATV. Killer on ATV with Tyler. Need to follow.”
Luke turned toward the chief. “Do you have an ATV?”
Norris shook her head, her face a mask of worry. She didn’t look like a threat anymore, how funny was that, not at all, her son was missing.
