Periphery, p.1
Periphery, page 1
Periphery
by Michael Winter
© 2019 by Michael Winter
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Cover Design: SelfPubBookCovers.com/JayF
For my wife Kathy and daughter Tess
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part 1: Revealed
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Part 2: Detonation
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Part 3: Breach
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
After
About the Author
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Part 1: Revealed
One
The negotiation team leader gripped Andrew Tate’s shoulder hard and yanked against a strap, synching the Kevlar vest tight against the EMT’s chest.
“Don’t get any closer than you have to,” Officer Brice told Andrew. “Reach out, hand him the water and back away. Don’t engage him more than is absolutely necessary. Assess the woman’s condition, come back. That’s it.”
Andrew nodded. He could feel the eyes of the other Tampa Fire Rescue responders on him, as well as those of the negotiation team members milling a few feet away, silent and skeptical. The blank-faced crowd-control officers were inscrutable behind their dark glasses. There was an uncomfortably childlike submission in being forced to stand here, arms outstretched, while Brice dressed him in protective gear, and he searched for something to say that would put them on a more equal footing.
“We know who the vehicle is registered to yet?” he asked.
“Tag check came back with a Gloria Fife,” a team member offered. Brice shot the other officer a look and the cop stepped back, his eyes on the ground.
“Don’t worry about that. Your job is to deliver water. That’s it.”
“And if he wants to talk?” Andrew inserted the radio’s earbud, reached under the vest and began fumbling with the transmitter. “If he threatens to harm the woman if I don’t stay and listen to what he has to say?”
Brice removed his sunglasses, his eyes two slivers beneath furrowed brows. “Look, I’m this close to pulling the plug here. You may be a first responder, but as far as I’m concerned you’re just a half-step up from some random civilian plucked out of the crowd. Don’t go over there thinking ‘what ifs’. That’s my job.”
Brice reached under the vest and flipped on the transmitter. A loud crackle of static made Andrew wince and the officer dialed back the volume.
“It’s just we have a history of sorts,” Andrew continued. “Comanche’s a regular. Homeless, alcoholic, diabetic. Twice I’ve pulled him out of comas with a glucose drip.” He nodded toward his partner, Gary Wyatt. “A couple of other EMTs have done the same. It’s amazing he’s still alive.”
“Comanche?”
“That’s what they call him on the street. I don’t know his real name. Point is, he obviously recognized me.”
Brice bowed his head for a moment, long enough for Andrew to study the swirl of close-cropped gray hair spiraling out from the small bald spot at his crown.
“All right, if he’s hell-bent on engaging you, say whatever it takes to keep him calm. Reinforce the idea that he’s in charge, that he’s controlling the situation. Don’t contradict anything I’ve told him and don’t agree to new demands. Just tell him you’ll pass any requests on to the right people. Then get the hell back here.”
And try not to get anyone killed, Andrew thought. Gary passed him the two condensation-slicked water bottles. They were still blessedly cold and Andrew gave them a hard squeeze, the plastic crunching in his palms. He wanted to press one against the back of his neck, let the shock of its icy touch slap away the blood-soaked scenarios that had been looping through his mind since Comanche had pointed his chin toward Andrew and shouted, “Him. No one else but him.”
The knife at the woman’s throat flared with reflected sunlight every time Comanche twisted his wrist. Dipping under the crime scene tape, Andrew tried to avoid the glare, but the flashes were relentless, bursting like flashbulbs again and again, cluttering his vision with fading purple afterimages.
“Hold them up,” Comanche yelled. “Over your head. I want to see them.”
Andrew lifted his arms. The immense afternoon heat burned through the light overcast and radiated off the asphalt with a blistering intensity. When the blade flashed again he turned his head to avoid the glare and caught a glimpse of Gary standing cross-armed next to the idling ambulance from Station Three. Engines from four additional stations encircled the intersection, as well as a dozen patrol cars, a paddy wagon, a mobile crisis center and a pair of tow trucks, all but the crisis center pulsing colored lights into the torpid air. A fleet of television vans filled the parking lot of a nearby CVS, their raised antennas poking like masts above the idling traffic stretching unbroken in every direction.
“Now walk forward,” Comanche said. “Slowly.”
Brice’s voice was in his right ear: “Just like we went over it. Slow and steady.”
Andrew nodded. He heard a small sound from the woman, a stifled sob or a gasp as Comanche clutched her tighter. They were positioned near the rear bumper of the SUV, a balding man, deeply tanned, with a rutted face and a muscular, ropy build, and a disheveled young woman with mascara-streaked cheeks and sweat-matted hair. Andrew noticed her feet were bare, yanked out of her sandals, he presumed, when she had been pulled from the car. It must have happened quickly, a trap laid, a snare sprung, and yet for it to have gotten this far seemed more fate than plan. She must have been distracted, maybe fiddling with her phone as she waited for the light to change, ignoring the panhandler pacing the median with his cardboard sign and concealed butcher’s knife.
Moisture from the bottles dripped down Andrew’s arms, mingling with his sweat. If it would only rain. Rain would wash all this craziness away. But there hadn’t been a drop since March, and now the heat and the drought were baking peoples’ minds, melting their sanity. All of Tampa was roiling at a low boil.
When Andrew approached, Comanche’s expression changed from strained scrutiny to satisfaction.
“It is you.”
He was close enough to smell the man’s sour clothes and unwashed body, a reek so strong it clenched his stomach.
“How we doing here?” Andrew asked, directing his question not toward the hostage-taker but to the woman. “Mrs. Fife, is it? Gloria Fife?”
She still held the roll of electrical tape that bound her and Comanche together with a dozen or more gray loops. How in god’s name had he managed that? It had to have been a collaborative effort, but Andrew couldn’t imagine the woman cooperating, even with a blade at her throat.
Although her head remained motionless, the woman’s eyes slid toward Comanche as if seeking permission to speak. Comanche, however, was still focused on Andrew and now, Andrew noticed uneasily, he had begun to nod.
“My mother,” the woman sighed after a moment, perhaps interpreting her captor’s behavior as consent. The top buttons of her blouse were gone, the garment yanked up and back to expose a freckled shoulder and the sliver of a white bra strap, and this, more than anything else, epitomized her vulnerability, the unbearable precariousness of her situation.
“Your mother?” Andrew prompted.
“Gloria is my mother. I’m Katie.”
“Hi, Katie. I’m Andrew.”
“Open one of those bottles and hand it to her,” Comanche ordered. “Slowly.”
The blade pressed against Katie’s throat creased her flesh. “CUTCO” was stamped into the metal near the handle. Andrew lowered his arms, set one bottle on the ground and twisted the cap off the other.
“Take it,” Comanche said. When Katie did nothing he repeated the command, giving her a shake. She reached out, fingers splayed wide, the desperate flail of someone cast overboard in a storm. Pull me out of this, her eyes pleaded, grab hold and yank me back to reality. Instead, Andrew placed the sweating bottle into her palm and the fingers closed hard, sending a small fountain of water gushing from the open top.
“Just be cool,” Comanche told her. “Take a drink.”
Paranoid bastard. Worried we’ve drugged the water. If only they had. Twenty-five-hundred milligrams of Valium dissolved in each would have been enough to end the standoff. Why hadn’t it occurred to him while he was waiting behind the line? Then again, even the most powerful oral sedative took time to work. Comanche would have felt the effects before being incapacitated, giving him enough time to inflict significant harm to his hostage before losing consciousness. Of course, Andrew could have lunged for the knife, but then…
“I know you,” Comanche said.
Andrew nodded. “I’ve taken you to the hospital a cou ple of times.” He wiped his slick forehead with the back of a hand. His sodden shirt clung to his chest beneath the tightly-cinched vest.
“You didn’t do me no favors, man, bringing me back to this.” Comanche jerked his head, a gesture intended to indicate what? The city? The weather? The cosmos? “And that’s not what I meant. I know who you are. You’re John’s son.”
Andrew inhaled slowly and deeply, his head tilting skyward as if following the trajectory of an incoming grenade. “My father’s name is John,” he said carefully. “It’s a common name.”
“John Tate. The Professor. The Mad Scientist. You’re his son, right? He said he had a son who was a paramedic. You look just like him.” The hand around Katie’s waist darted up and snatched the bottle from her. For an instant, Andrew thought this sudden motion would trigger a sniper to take his shot. There’d be a pop, a backward jerk of the head, the rear door frame sprayed with atomized gore, the woman’s screams. But nothing happened. Comanche poured half the bottle over his head and gulped the rest.
“You know about them, don’t you?” He tossed the container away. “Probably been telling you monster stories since you were a kid.”
Although Andrew said nothing, Comanche bobbed his head after a brief pause. “ ’Course he has. I can tell by the look on your face. You worried people will think you’re nuts, too? Shouldn’t be. I used to think your old man was a whack job. Crazy fucker, handing out five-spots to homeless guys, asking them to keep an eye out for his creepy-crawlies. Shit man, he wants to throw his money away I’ll take it like anyone else. Beats the hell out of standing in the hot sun with a cardboard sign. Only you know what?” Comanche leaned forward until the tape girdling his waist crackled, and in a fierce, conspirator’s whisper said, “Turns out he’s right. There really are monsters out there. And they’re everywhere.”
“Is that what’s going on here? You want to tell people about the things you think you’re seeing?”
“Let’s wrap this up,” Brice whispered in his ear.
“I don’t think anything. These ain’t hallucinations. They’re as real as you. As her. As real as this fucking knife.” Comanche twisted the blade; the white light stabbed out again.
“Okay.” Andrew patted the air. “You’re right; my father’s talked about them. Started when I was twelve and hasn’t stopped since. You want to discuss his monsters? Let Katie go and you and I can talk about it for as long as you want.”
He could have heard Brice’s “damn it” even without the radio.
“How long before you started seeing them?”
Andrew sucked in his lower lip and bit down hard, wishing this miserable afternoon had come with a pause button. He wanted to mull his options, consider the repercussions of each possible response. But Comanche wouldn’t wait. His raised-brow look of expectation was already sliding into impatience and suspicion.
“I never did.”
Comanche reared back as if Andrew had swung at him, forcing Katie to stand on tiptoe to keep the knife from drawing blood. “Not directly,” Andrew quickly added. With her head canted up, he saw her carotid artery pulsing, a rapid flutter that was now matched by his own racing heart.
“But you’ve seen something?”
“Sometimes I’ll catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye. Just shapes.”
“What kind of shapes?”
Andrew’s partner was close enough to catch bits of the conversation. Brice as well. How could he stand here and admit the truth, confess just how far things had slipped over the previous year? How could he tell this knife-wielding vagrant about the patches of bark that appeared to shift? The motion on telephone poles like something coiling upward? Or coiling downward. The glimpses of things hopping through the grass in highway medians, springing away in an instant? It was always in his periphery, always just out of sight. When he bent to retrieve the second water bottle Andrew noticed a sticker on the SUV’s rear bumper: “COEXIST” spelled out in a series of religious symbols.
“They’re hard to describe,” he said, twisting off the cap. “Shapes like something out of a deep-sea documentary. Twitching angles. Curves that ripple and heave. Dark spots opening and closing.”
“That’s how it starts.” Comanche leaned forward, allowing Katie to sink back off the balls of her feet. “Subtle shit. Just a shadow. Just a swirl of leaves. Stuff you’ve seen all your life. And you have seen them all your life. Everyone has. That’s what’s so fucking hilarious. They’ve been here the whole time. Hiding in the open. Hiding in the light.”
Andrew knew those phrases well. His father had repeated them dozens of times over the years, always with a warning to look away if he felt his gaze drawn toward something moving in the bushes, something too confounding to comprehend. He held out the second bottle and Comanche snatched it.
“Now break contact,” Brice said through the earpiece. Andrew took a single step back.
“What does your old man call them?” Comanche drank without taking his eyes off him. “The something-ofalla? Should have listened better. Said they were refugees, castaways from a time when their masters ruled the world.” He gave the knife a theatrical flourish, the tip spiraling skyward. “Oh yeah. I used to think your pop was one crazy son-of-a-bitch. But no more. No, no, no. Now I know he’s a goddamn prophet.”
“My brother,” Katie said as if to herself, the words a barely audible sigh.
“Your brother,” Comanche said after a moment, and although his tone was incongruously gentle, she pressed her eyes shut and turned her face away as if he had licked her ear. “What about your brother?” The blade touched her throat once more.
“Tate.” Brice’s voice cracked like a warning shot. “Break off contact. Make your way to the curb.” Andrew took a second step back.
“He’s been drawing things for weeks,” Katie said in a rush. “Creatures. Weird things with too many legs or not enough. Floating balls with spikes. Something that looks like a cross between a centipede and an armadillo.” She took a deep breath. Comanche whispered something Andrew couldn’t catch and she shook her head. “He’s autistic. Severely autistic. He doesn’t talk. But he can draw.” Incredibly, a small smile touched her lips. “He draws so well. But he doesn’t want to go outside anymore. He spends all his time in his room. Drawing. Drawing monsters.”
“You see,” Comanche demanded. “You see. I’ve seen those things. Not just shit out of the corner of my eye, waving branches or shadows that point the wrong way. The whole thing. Something clicked up here.” He raised the knife to his temple. “Something changed. And now I can’t not see them. I can’t go back to the way things were. I’ve tried. Getting high, getting drunk. It only makes things worse. What?”
Andrew shook his head. “I didn’t say anything.”
“No, but for a second you looked like someone gave your nuts a good yank. People need to know what’s happening. Someone has to do something. Bad shit is headed our way. The masters are coming. I can feel them getting closer, feel their minds, hear their words. Terrible words like maggots in my head. Squirming, burrowing, maggots. I don’t understand the language yet, but I will soon. Won’t be able to help it. Like catching a disease.” His eyes darted about as if following the erratic flight of some unseen insect.
Slowly, pausing between each word and enunciating with the precision of someone trying to convey a simple direction to a small child, Brice said: “Get. Your. Ass. Back. Here. Now.”
Andrew removed the earpiece. “A disease can be cured,” he said.
Comanche’s head drooped and his chin touched Katie’s shoulder. Her body tensed; her breath caught.
“Why don’t we talk to my father? That’s why you wanted me to bring the water, isn’t it? So you could get in touch with him?”
For a moment, Comanche appeared to consider the proposal. His gaze drifted past Andrew and out over the street before lifting toward the flat, pale lid of the sky.
“Come on, man,” Andrew pleaded. “This has gone on long enough. Toss the knife away and I swear I’ll do everything I can to help you.”
When their eyes met again Andrew saw in them a willingness to be persuaded, a dawning realization, both appalled and ashamed, of just how far and how wrong things had gone. But a second later Comanche’s glance darted to something over Andrew’s right shoulder.
