Brian D'Amato - The Sacrifice Game

No. This isn’t it. Oh, hell. Oh, hell. They’d replaced the stuff with, I guess, just rubbing alcohol. Rubbing alcohol. Mean. Meanies, I thought, regressing. There was an upwelling of bullied-on-the-playground emotion like a flavored burp from a thirty-year-old meal. Mean ’n’ cruel. Except I shouldn’t talk (EOE), I guess. I took my hand away. The Kleenex was heavy with blood and slid off. Not sticky. Definitely not clotting the way it should. Oh, Christ. I was normal, for crying out loud. Hell. THE FEAR was crawling all over my body and through my mouth and down into my lower intestine. I was normal. I licked my lips but you can’t really tell from the taste. I was normal -

Dr. Lisuarte, I thought.

She must have given me bad factor IX. I’d seen her only weeks ago, and she’d topped me up. Maybe she’d slipped me some-or what if it wasn’t her, what if it was just ES? Then they’d had to have been slipping me some oral anticoagulant? Enoxaparin, maybe? Except that would take a few doses, and it had a pretty strong chalky taste that you’d think I would have-and anyway, why? Had that been the first part of a plan to kill me and make it look like my death was caused by my own old medical problem? Or had they just wanted to get me into a hospital where it was easy to keep an eye on me? Or was the anticlotting stuff some exotic preparation that only they had the antidote for so that I’d be dependent on them-no, that’s ridiculous. Maybe Wait. Whatever they did, you don’t have time to think about it. At this rate I’ll bleed out in less than ten minutes. We had a professional-level situation here. I needed paramedics, at least, and really I needed an ER. Except then I’d be in Warren’s evil clutches and that would be it. Anyway, there’s hardly enough time for paramedics to deal with it even if they were right here. They don’t usually carry thrombogen with them anyway, they’d just pack the wounds and put shock inflators around my legs, and that might not be enough. And anyway, I can’t go to a hospital. Hospital = identification = police involvement. And police = Warren = torture.

Okay, go to Plan X. I hadn’t seen any matches and I hadn’t remembered packing any. So much for the survival jacket. Even Rambo’s knife handle has matches. You dimwit. This is it. No. Okay. Think.

The lighter.

I fumbled and found the regular twelve-volt outlet and I pressed the thingie down, but it didn’t stay down for a second and then pop out the way they’re supposed to, so I tried just pressing it against the gash in my forehead but it turned out there wasn’t any coil in it so it wouldn’t heat up. Damn. Defeated by the Health Stasi.

Probably. Okay.

Okay. Got to get out. Gotta get out get out get out getout getoutgetoutgetout.

“Five to one, baby, one in five,” the Lizard King was still moaning, with what seemed like Christine — ish aptness. Blood was still streaming out of my nose like it was out of a fog nozzle. I swallowed. Glulg. Spurt. Gurgr. Spurt. Getoutgetoutgetout. No, don’t panic. Chill, I thought. Just go to Plan Y. I wriggled into my jacket. Oof. Okay.

Huh.

PREEEP, PREEEP, PREEEP, PREEEP, PREEEP, PREEEP, PREEEP, PREEEP.

I couldn’t get a good angle on the window on my side, so I powered the seat all the way back-at least that worked-and braced myself against the seat back and blasted both legs up against the glass of the soi-disant moon roof. It just popped out of the rubber seal, without breaking-a nice minor blessing-and I stood on the seat, untangled myself from the we’re-strapping-you-down-whether-you-like-it-or-not shoulder belts, and wriggled up out of the moon roof. Whoa. Dizzy. Really dizzy, I’d stood up too suddenly without enough blood. Hang on. Okay. I got my legs out and sat on the roof for a second. The night had gotten cold. No. It wasn’t the air. I was losing juice. Finally I let myself slide down over the rear windshield and the waxy shell of the hood. I got my hands on the grapefruit tree that had stopped the car, let my feet down, and melted over the grille onto the centipede grass.

PREEEP, PREEEP, PREEEP, PREEEP. Cars roorshed by. A siren. I looked around. Nothing. Just wishful imagination magnifying the tinnitus in my cochlea. Okay. Stick to the factuals.

I heaved myself up. Okay. I waddled over the bent-down wire-and-lathe fence and wobbled onto the gravel shoulder. Okay. Bye, bye, Barracuda. Step, step. My feet felt asphalt.

Where? What?

What now? Get out in front of a car and wave and make it stop? No, not likely to work. People are too paranoid. As well they should be. They’ll just keep the doors locked and run me over and then tell me they’ve called Officer Friendly and that he’ll be here any hour. Got to hoof it. Huh. I’d passed a Walgreens four minutes ago but that was way too far. Okay, Plan Yuzz. Have to do fast food.

I started lurching toward the exit ramp. Down to the McDonald’s. It was farther away than I’d thought. An eighth of a mile, maybe? About three hundred steps. And if you figure you’ll bleed out in fifteen minutes, that’s-no, don’t figure. Just do it. Step. Step. Ow. Ankles ache. Feeling woozy. In a few minutes I’ll be thinking so unclearly that I’ll forget why I was doing this, and I’ll sit down for a second to rest and that’ll be about it. Oh, God, oh, God. My fingertips were numbing. Numbening? Oh, fuck, I was fucked, I was fucked. As I got under the first of the tall sodium lamps of the sort of rest-stop area I noticed my right foot was leaving a bloody footprint. A literal one, for once. Brrrdrrrrdrrrr. Cold. I’ve had it. Dun 4. I’ve had it. It’s over, it’s all No. Press onward, Lemmiwinks. You might make it. Stranger things have happened. Frogs have lived a hundred years cast in cement. And not just Michigan J. Frog. Ninety-year-old ladies have survived shit that’d kill a wild yak. I kept lurching toward the big M solar-path glyph, dragging my osmium feet through the clotting air. Step. Step. Come on.

Step.

Step. I found the little Ziploc of green OxyContin 80mg tablets in my watch pocket, popped eight of them into my mouth, and chewed them up. Ick.

Step. Step.

Better take a few Adderalls, too, I thought. I did. Four. I chewed them up and gooked the paste under my tongue. Okay.

Step.

Cold. Step. I can’t make it, I thought. No effing way. Anyway, why bother? It’s only another seven weeks. That’s nothing. You might as well just pack it in now. Except you don’t want to give them the satisfaction. You just want to be the last one out the door so you can turn off the lights yourself. And how dumb is that? Step. I washed down the Oxy ’n’ speed dust with a swig of blood. Step. Step. O Christ Jesus on the Cross, just let me get through this, O Jesus Resurrected, O Lord of the Flail, Lord of the Spear, O Baby Jesus, O studly thirtysomething Jesus, just give me a break, O Black Jesus, O female Jesus, O phosphorescent polystyrene Jesus of the Dashboard, O any Jesus…

Step.

Step.

Step.

It took forever to get to the McDonald’s, and then I remembered that what I really wanted was Burger King. I looked up. There. It was a little farther away-too far away-on the other side of the big rest-area lot. Still, it was worth the extra effort. McDonald’s fries their hamburgers, but Burger King flame-broils.

The glass door opened itself, welcoming me into the cheerful golds and reds of the “restaurant”’s sit-down area. It was as bright and frigid as high noon at the South Pole. I counted ten patrons sitting in four groups, although since one of the groups had five people and nobody was sitting alone, there must have been something wrong with my math. I decided not to let it bother me. They were of varying ages but all of them were paste-white, overweight, and dressed up for Halloween as-among other things-Warcraft orcs, Dormammu from the Doctor Strange movie, Little Fat Mermaids, Seven Death from the Neo-Teo game, and hydrocephalic vampires. At least it was the best possible night of the year to be a fugitive. Most of them looked up, stared, and then went back to chewing their cuds. The Force is with me, I thought. On my way to the counter I tried to disguise my limp and nearly stepped on a discarded plastic fork. Watch yer step, I thought. Fork in the road. The sort of boy behind the counter looked just like Kaspar Hauser, Animal Boy of Nuremberg. He had slow sloe eyes, a pretty big spatter of acne, and a tag in his ear with a barely visible microphone wire curling out of it toward his mouth. There was a black chunky woman in the back, by the drive-by window, who didn’t even look up.