CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR – “STUCK on YOU”

As it putters away into a wide arc behind Graceland to take Norlin from the rear, the patrolboat is heavier by one body. After tipping over, its empty companion had veered off towards the south, sideswiping the westernmost of the King's Corinthian pillars and continuing to plow forward until hopelessly wedged between columns, its engine keening madly, snapping off - finally dropping like the deadweight it had been, still churning up river debris all the way down.

Debris... and certain things living there; legions of sleepers who stir, groggy, and then, angering at the sudden termination of their hibernation, unfold tentacle-like wings and winglike tentacles. Fluttering towards the surface, they follow the screams of policemen being sundered into bite-sized morsels by the ravening horde of phibes. Blood streaming from legs and arms, Eric Ice paddles alongside Kruppe's boat, screaming for someone to lift him up as a pair of sturdy Trouble Factory shoes disappear, upside-down, into the stern... either the Blue Man or the Gray Man, colours rendered indistinct in the luminescent fog wafting off the river's expanse.

"Chet... Loo... for the love of Jates, pull me up! I'm dyin' out here... dyin'..." Norlin's fex collector wails, and something grasps his ankle and begins to tear at the flesh beneath the heavy boot. Eric kicks, hard, and the pressure relaxes... a phibe breaks the surface of the river, shaking its bloody head more in surprise and regret than pain, or anger. Ice has dislodged two, maybe three of the sharp, triangular fangs but there are plenty more in its extensile jaw; its yellow eyes, fairly steaming with hate (or, perhaps, appetite) narrow on the officer.

"Chet!"

"Can't do it," Germany Smith folds his arms over his chest. "No room on the boat, right Cap'n? Weight of that kebber would tip us over, too. Nix! Right, Cap'n?"

"He's r-right," stutters Sykes, although unconvincingly... Chester Aspid presumes that the two revolvers extended, like rattlesnakes, from Kruppe's crossed wrists have something to do with this...

"Hell, he's a brother officer, even if they buried him way down in C-Squad," Lieutenant Kruppe snaps and, replacing the prancer and the skimmer in his belt, grasps crippled Patrolman Frost, pulling him up... pale and shivering. "Sorry Al," he says, and with no little sincerity, at that, "you're not going to make it, and this is for the good of the team. For the Trouble Factory, right? Always!... the team..."

Frost's lips close in what might be whispered assent... "the team!"... or might, just, be a curse and, with a shrug and a nod, the Intelligence Chief reaches down to grasp the policeman by one ankle and a handful of tattered trouser above the bleeding stump of the other leg while Aspid hoists him up by the shoulders. They swing the flailing, still-bleeding body once, twice... three times, and over the side. Something has been sneaking up, meanwhile, behind Eric - he whirls, slapping a palm on the greasy surface of the water and two phibes back off. Then, Alton Frost plunges into the drink; Germany removes one of his two guns, the heater, and a timorous patrolman extends two beefy hands out over the side of the boat. It's Jackson... or Johnson... someone like that, Eric thinks, another loser; whole kebbin' voyage populated by losers, slow herd animals that couldn't get out of the way when Captain Modesty started tapping heads. Men not expected to come back. Nonetheless, the keb is strong… and Eric Ice fairly leaps out of the water, a flying fish, almost.

Farther out, nearer Graceland's columns, Dr. Skark screams for help.

"Not him!" shrieks the milkman, "...not him! He's nothing... I'm a doctor!"

Skark, apparently, cannot swim... he floats only because of the air bubbles trapped beneath his white coat, across which blood is, already, liberally splashed. It seems that two, maybe three of the fingers on one flailing, latex-gloved hand are already gone...

The teatray is undoubtedly gone, too… on its way down, or already resting on the bottom of the river - an object of curiosity to the Arsenal-spawned abominations still crawling out of the frigid, toxic mud.

Kruppe and Sergeant Aspid glance at one another, then out at Skark

Germany removes his pipe, expectorates a mouthful of phlegm into the Mississippi.

The doctor shrieks again... fresh plumes of bloody bubbles billowing out from under the white coat, and Skark begins to sink as the hungry phibes carry him down to their pantry.

From Graceland's window, Norlin watches as one of the creatures turns its head towards the men on the boat, lifting a small, bloody prize to taunt them... the Doctor's genitalia...

What were they, now?... there's a name for that sort of meat Norlin remembers, from before the k'ball... mountain oysters?

That's it!

And now, the cruiser's disappearing into Graceland's translucent fog, and Norlin turns, squinting, flailing to orient himself before a parting barrage of gunshots tattoos the window and ricochets between tell metal objects piled high against the far wall of the room... ammunition boxes, the Corporal wonders, or metal lockers, flung this way and that by the k'ball, the flood and by time. He barks his shin against something hard, underwater... a ricochet skims his cheek, bringing more blood, and another punches, harmlessly through the sodden, throbbing jacket, just above the pocket where the Veronica pulses, nestled in the effigy of Reason's cheap, spangled bag. Falling forward, Norlin crawls through the reeking slough on hands and knees as a line of bullets crease metal, setting off an unholy clamor. And then - the craft of pursuit is gone! He edges forward, towards the weak light streaming from a half-opened door or, rather, a slab of dark mold over what once might have been wooden... something floats up against his knee and he lifts it to the light: the skeleton of a pair of bongo drums. No skin, just pulpy wood... it crumples in his hand. Dead rosepetals also float and swirl among flaccid cylinders that probably came out of the nether end of a phibe... put these in your collection, Eric Ice! Before Norlin, the door to Graceland's attic sags open - what he's searching for probably isn't up there, but...

Around the corner, another door...

He massages his pocket, half-expecting the Veronica to communicate, warn him whether this is the way to go, or not, but, of course, there's nothing. Only a hallucination - and a long awakening into this sodden antechamber of perdition; he sees, now, something's arm protruding from the attic steps; flesh shriveled, mummified, might have come from a phibe, might be from a man. He coughs, sloshes around it, peeks through the sagging door and is afforded a clear vista of another rotted door that leads to the second-story outside deck of Graceland... beyond which hovers only more caustic, milky fog. But there is light - not only from the window, but from a weak lamp atop a chest of drawers next to what appears to once have been a bed... a good, Jatesist spherical bed that now, like the doors, is spread thick with dark, green mold and pallid water chrysanthemums, Arsenal-fed and, probably, carnivorous. The air here is even colder than that outside or in the locker room - an ancient air-conditioner hums, incongruously, under the window by the spoiled bed.

Looking left, beyond a horizon of debris, Norlin perceives another ruined door sagging open - one that can only lead to...

A bathroom!

Stepping gingerly through the doorframe, the Corporal reaches out with his left hand to slide it along some sort of bureau poking above the stagnant water, but the surface is so repulsive to the touch that the wounds in his shoulder and cheek tingle, he nearly gags with a new, unholy stink rising above the mephitic curtain pulsing from the walls, ceiling, the drowned floor...

It is a bathroom! Norlin reminds himself and, where there's a bathroom, there will be...

What was that?

Something has brushed his shoulder - surely only the ghost reflex of a bullet of congealed sunlight fired from Kruppe's skimmer or by someone on the patrol boat. Instinctively, he knows that it is not, but a lassitude is rippling through his body; he recoils, brushes a thing from aching shoulder... (he intuits that it is a thing from the pain as it is knocked away, but there is only a soft plop, a sigh and a puff of gas from the water, and he feels whole, again... for the moment).

And now: the bathroom door... and something sliding around it, away from view.

A lump has gathered in the Corporal's throat, he swallows its bitterness. Keep going! Finish the mission!…

Is that comforter of mushrooms and slime atop Lisa Marie's circular bed... writhing?

Keep going!

Norlin grasps the bathroom doorknob, and something else burns his fingers. Instinct tells him GO! but the same narcotic peace has begun radiating back again; lulling, soothing - an evil twin to the phibe saliva-balm that has enabled him to forget his wounds. So that, when he does stumble into the bathroom... beholding things, everywhere… there is no horror, no apprehension, only a tired acceptance of the inevitable, a release from duty. Norlin sighs...

And the things sigh with him...

His is a tired curiosity. They're not really red, the things... more a brownish, the color of blood, or old, dried seaweed. A welcoming colour, an old, familiar friend… like the pills in a medicine cabinet or bottles and potions from before the k'ball, before Jates. Neutral, mediocre. They repose on the ceiling by the dozens, hundreds, on the walls and covering every square inch of porcelain... perhaps the size of a fist, circular, but with long, protruding stingrays... the better to eat you with, my darling. Nonsense, they only want to help...

They are drawn to fresh water dripping from the showerhead like priests to the fairest fonts of joy... purity they cannot abide, and cannot refrain from seeking to corrupt...

Norlin feels so tired... even all the Trouble Factory voices rising in acrimony, nearing... even these are become mere irritants in the texture of a soft, pearly matrix, dissolving into an agreeable mush...

Until the bedroom behind him explodes in LIGHT, and HEAT and THUNDER...