For Everything a Reason Page 3

  He took a deep breath, the stench in this windowless room almost overpowering. He moved towards the single cracked basin and drew water from the one remaining tap. Cold water snapped at his fingers with an icy bite. He cupped his hand and then ran the water over his forehead.

  “Almost time,” he said, taking another long breath, using the ice-cold water to help focus his thoughts.

  Raising his head, he caught his reflection in the dirty mirror, which hung crookedly before him. His heavy jowls had a peppering of brown and white whiskers, a symptom of not having shaved for the last three days, and his naturally curly hair looked grey and unruly. His eyes were red-rimmed and tired – and if they were to be considered the windows to his soul, then Thomas Carter was a haunted man. He looked ten years older than his actual forty-four, and his air of wild desperation made him seem anything but out of place among the bedraggled mob eating outside.

  He stepped away from the mirror and cracked open the door. The chaotic noise from the room beyond flooded in, a clamour of scraping bowls and unsatisfied stomachs. Carter scanned the crowd. Amid the hollowed-out and desperate faces, one stood out. Presley Perkins sat less than twelve feet away, his newly grown beard dripping with soup, his once manicured fingernails now blackened and chipped.

  Thomas Carter drew his weapon, a small Smith & Wesson snub nose revolver. He opened the cylindrical loader to count the brass shells. Without actually looking, he knew that five remained. He’d counted them many times over these last three months. He snapped the loader home, then flicked the safety off with his thumb. The gun felt familiar to him, even though it had been found abandoned only months earlier. Tonight there would be no peaceful arrest or reading of rights, just a brutal finale to Presley Perkins’s life. For tonight, Thomas Carter wasn’t here on police business. No, tonight he had come as a grieving father, here to avenge the death of his son: a rookie police cadet who’d been shot and left bleeding to death.

  Detective Thomas Carter pulled open the door and stepped back into the pandemonium of noise and clatter. Raising his arm, he took aim. Then, just as he was about to pull the trigger, all hell broke loose.

  Chapter Four

  Chairs scattered in all directions. The two tramps caught in the centre of this chaotic scene launched themselves towards each other, fists flying and teeth visible. This sudden and unexpected act of unrehearsed violence temporarily locked Carter’s finger in place. He found himself unable to apply the pressure required to fire his weapon.

  Rage burst from one of the tramp’s lips. The other homeless guy backed away. His act of theft now seemed foolhardy and reckless. Still, the mouldy old bread roll stayed clasped between his grime-coated fingers, clutched protectively against his chest.

  Carter maintained his position, his arm rigid, and the weapon’s target fixed firmly within its sights. He felt an all-consuming hatred boil to the surface of his being, rage and hatred twisting his face into a ghastly contortion. His arm began to tremble uncontrollably and the weapon in his hand felt too heavy. He wrapped his other hand around it, forcing the short barrel to steady, channelling all of his pain and grief into an unbreakable chain of concentration. A deep, bestial whine rose from his gut, which was both agonising to hear and awful.

  ***

  Presley Perkins sat just a few yards away, watching the bizarre confrontation before him, unaware of an even greater threat. Then, as one of the tramps moved forward, he spotted the detective. His blood turned cold. The worn-out face looked familiar, even though they had never met. It was a face that visited him every night, albeit younger, which haunted him from the darkest recesses of his mind.

  As Perkins jumped to his feet, his chair fell backwards with a clatter. What he now faced made the two tramps fighting over a crust of bread seem almost comical.

  Perkins’ once expensive Italian shoes, now scuffed and torn, tangled within the overturned legs of his chair. He landed in a pathetic heap, scrambled up, and lurched toward the exit. From behind he heard a cough – barely audible over the ruckus. Just above his shoulder, a crater appeared in a puff of exploding masonry. He ducked instinctively as a second bullet slammed into the doorframe, launching a hail of splinters.

  In the next instant he was outside. In contrast to the sombre interior of the soup kitchen the near-blinding brightness of the street was disorienting. Neon signs streaked the dark canvas of night in an ultraviolet splash of brilliant colours. Perkins heard the door behind him bang into place, and his brief paralysis broke. He tore down Southern Boulevard as if the hounds of hell themselves were snapping at his heels.

  ***

  Carter pushed his way through the doorway and then skidded to a halt. To the left and right of him, a sea of multiracial faces expressed shock at the sudden appearance of a homeless gun-wielding lunatic. A scream drew his attention to the right. A young couple had been knocked to the pavement. Carter caught a flash of movement beyond them, and pursued.

  ***

  The street took Presley Perkins in a wide arc, away from the busy sidewalk and towards the dark corridor of Tremont Avenue. The lights from a civilised world dwindled, and instead, Perkins found himself racing through a tight canopy of trees. Up ahead, two solid barriers blocked any further progress. In large letters, formed from moulded iron, were four words stencilled on a plaque, which sat at the top of the two gates.

  Bronx Zoo: Asia Gate.

  At this time of night the gates were sealed tight. A chain threaded itself through adjacent bars to keep out unwanted visitors. Perkins turned, his chest labouring under the exertion, and watched as a shadow not far behind him took shape. He whined hysterically. Then, belying his size and bulk, he began to climb the gates.

  Fear pushed Perkins over the top. He landed on the other side and soon regained his footing, then ran deeper into the attraction that was ‘Jungle World’. Sounds that belonged to another land, not the heart of Manhattan Island, met him as he raced through the tangle of trees.

  ***

  Carter hit the pavement. He scanned the way ahead in time to see Perkins disappear into the darkness farther up the trail. His hand tightened around the grip of his gun, he found comfort in its weight.

  The trail funnelled towards an ominous black hole. It took Carter another few seconds to realise he was peering into an overturned and hollowed-out tree. Some unaffected part of his mind was impressed by the authenticity of the attraction. He entered the mouth of the tunnel and hurried through. Glimmers of light ignited at the periphery of his vision – bioluminescence? The earthy smell of his next breath told him the giant tree was not a clever plastic fake, but the actual remains of an uprooted forest tree. A thick clogging stench of mould filled his nostrils, and the sparkles of light revealed themselves to be glow-in-the-dark mushrooms.

  Something else moved within the gloom, and the detective grimaced as a foot-long centipede marched along the curve of the inner wall, matching Carter step-for-step. He broke through the tunnel to find himself in the depths of a rain forest. Somewhere out of sight, the sounds of running water could be heard, possibly masking the sounds of other things that ran: feet. Carter stood still and strained against these strange noises. Up ahead came the slap of footfalls navigating a trail leading deeper into the thick undergrowth. The detective began to follow the path through the manmade jungle, home to an unknown number of possible nightmares.

  ***

  Perkins’ laboured breath reminded him of the wheeze of a rusty old steam pipe in one of his late father’s old slums. His shoes slipped continuously on the small stones shifting under his feet. Next, a face broke through the trees to his right. A pair of luminous eyes locked onto him. Perkins threw his arms up instinctively, expecting the whip-crack of pistol fire. Instead, the small black and white face rocked to one side, and the creature clapped its furry hands together. Perkins remained rooted to the spot for another second. The little bastard swung out of the branches and dropped to the ground in front of him. Were monkeys carnivorous? Probably not, but t
hat didn’t stop his imagination from flashing terrible pictures of the flesh being torn off his bones.

  He let out a nervous laugh and hurried along before the idea could be tested. The path opened out into a mock setting of a safari encampment. The bleat and hoot of recorded animal noises filled the night, and over that, a counterpoint of radios, speaking to each other in a hiss of metallic voices.

  Footsteps echoed towards him. They were heavy and coming fast, and definitely not those made by a monkey. Presley’s chest tightened, his beating heart aware once more of real danger. He ran over to a table littered with binoculars, water canteen, radio, and mercifully – with the screech of animals growing louder - a rifle. He grabbed hold of the stock, but the rifle refused to budge. The fucking thing was glued to the table. A desperate whine burst from Perkins’ lips. His attention turned instantly to the radio. That, too, was fixed firmly to the surface. The only movable parts were a large dial to change settings and a sliding volume control. Perkins fumbled with the latter, and the wild noises around him grew to a deafening pitch. Covering his ears, he spun on his heels and headed toward a nearby field tent, its entrance an open flap, like that of a hungry, gaping mouth.

  ***

  The fine hairs at the nape of Carter’s neck bristled. He froze at the sound of a ferocious roar. The guttural noise came again - close enough this time to hold him rigid on the spot. By the next repetition, he recognised the hollow, metallic quality to the roar – it was a recording, not one of nature’s fiercest predators stalking him through the fake jungle.

  The pathway gave way to an encampment. The only visible and hungry beast was the open maw of a tent.

  “Perkins, you son of a bitch!” Carter yelled into the darkness, levelling his weapon towards the flap. Marshalling his resolve, he crossed the distance and stepped inside.

  The tent was surprisingly bright thanks to a pair of lights at the rear, each casting a shine of electric blue. The entrance itself sat steeped in shadow. As Carter inched deeper inside, his feet crunched over glass. He chanced a glance down to see a pattern of sharp diamonds and white powder. More broken glass lay several feet away, directly beneath the remains of a light bulb still fixed within its socket.

  “You in here?” he called.

  A few bare tables and chairs loomed on the inside of the tent; this part of the attraction possibly out of bounds to the public. Carter banged his thigh against the side of a table. Metal legs screeched out a warning. He halted his advance.

  “Show yourself, you coward!”

  Still no response came. Carter resumed his press forward. Then the sound of a laboured breath reached beyond the cadence of his racing heart. He faced its source and fired. The bullet tore through one of the tables, splitting it in two halves. As the table collapsed, the source of the noise revealed itself: four stumpy legs ending in a short snout.

  “Christ,” Carter huffed.

  The spotted pig tottered over to the detective and eagerly sniffed at his shoes. In the broken light, he saw that the animal’s coat looked almost two sizes too big, the folds of brown and white flesh hanging off its body giving it the appearance of a walking concertina. The pig waddled to the rear of the tent, where it disappeared through a tear in the canvas. Carter followed it through.

  He almost lost his footing as he emerged from the tent. The ground on the other side sloped away abruptly as it ran towards the edge of a concrete wall. Below him was an open enclosure, filled in places with a dark body of glistening water. The rest of the area was dotted with islands. On this side of the tent the air felt easily ten degrees cooler, as though winter had been bottled up in this one specific place.

  Sprawled out on the ground in front of him in a foot or so of water, with arms and legs akimbo and surrounded by a flock of agitated penguins, was the object of Carter’s search. Perkins took a backwards swipe at one of the short-winged birds; the penguin hopped effortlessly out of the way. Another stepped forward, its white chest puffed out in a show of angry defiance. Perkins scrambled to his feet before kicking at the little birds and scattering them to the edge of the pool.

  Carter took aim and yelled, “Perkins!”

  Perkins turned his attention from the penguins to his pursuer, and slowly raised his arms in surrender.

  Fresh anger surged through Carter’s blood. “You killed my son!”

  Perkins shifted from one leg to the other, as if they threatened to give out on him at any moment. “It was an accident,” he said. Even to his own ears, the response sounded pathetic, pointless.

  “Accident?” Carter parroted.

  “Wait…” Perkins begged. “You don’t understand.”

  “Understand what,” Carter closed on his prey. “That you cold-bloodedly killed my son?”

  “It was an accident. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  Carter opened his mouth, intending to speak, but no words emerged. He heard the hammer of the gun click in that terrible, mute moment.

  Now faced with the real possibility of death, Perkins began to ramble. “The Russians. They were going to make me pay. You don’t understand. They’re animals! I had to get them their money – or they’d have killed me.”

  Carter found his voice and asked, “And I’m supposed to care?”

  “If I could take it back…”

  “It’s too late.” Hand shaking, Carter readied to fire.

  Perkins looked around desperately for any hope of rescue. To his surprise, salvation came in the form of an almost recognisable dark blue uniform.

  Chapter Five

  Joseph opened his eyes. The right eye peeled open, tearing a thick crust of sleep apart. The left eye was a tight slit, little more than a cut in the centre of a swollen mass of tissue. His entire left side looked blackened and sore, and a drop of blood had dried into a red jewel along his cheek.

  The hospital room was dark now. All day he’d slipped in and out of awareness, occasionally hearing a snippet of conversation, either from an anxious sounding Marianna or the snap and snarl of his coach, or the hushed, measured tones of hospital staff. At first he thought they were speaking in an alien language. Perhaps his sudden illness had rendered him stupid, he thought worriedly, but then even the most brilliant of minds would have struggled with some of what he’d heard.

  Cerebral infraction, ischaemic stroke, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, and a confusing monologue of fantastic sounding words had momentarily forced Joseph to believe he’d either awoken in a foreign land, surrounded by imposturous doppelgangers, or that he’d lost his mind. Only when Marianna returned to his side to tell him she loved him did he realise that they had just been speaking words that were simply beyond his understanding.

  Now, at this late hour, Joseph found himself alone. His thoughts turned to the previous night: the night that should have seen him retire, financially comfortable, a long career behind him, ready to spend all his time with his family, and also in good health. Yeah, right.

  Without actually having been told, Joseph knew that he must have either suffered an almost fatal blow – maybe The Warrior from Queens had finally found his range – or he’d had a stroke. It really didn’t matter; either scenario had led to him laying here, immobilised and fearful.

  He forced his head to one side, the muscles on his right side offering little help, and focused on the window on that side. Darkness pressed against the glass.

  Where were Marianna and his son? Were they elsewhere in the hospital or back at home, huddled in bed together in an attempt to keep both the cold winter’s night and darkest despair at bay? A teardrop slipped down Joseph’s cheek. He should be at home with them, their protector.

  A slight noise pulled him away from his own bleak thoughts, to the second bed in the room. The top sheet had fallen down to reveal a single bony white leg. The leg twitched spasmodically, which caused the sheet to slip even more. Another leg appeared, as white as ivory, and this one too did a short tap-dance, before going slack. Now the sheet had practically worked
its way onto the floor, and the patient’s hospital gown had gathered around his waist, exposing the shrivelled stump of his penis.

  Joseph turned away, embarrassed by the man’s nakedness. A wheeze from constricted lungs drew his gaze back. The privacy curtain that separated them stood partway open, but a short section hung in place, blocking the upper-half of the other bed. Joseph tried to lift his head in an attempt to get a better look. The muscles in his neck screamed out in protest and his head sagged into the soft embrace of his pillow.

  Joseph licked at his dry lips. He spoke, but the word he’d formed in his head sounded nothing like the one that escaped from cracked lips. He tried again; what emerged was guttural, alien. He traced the outline of his face, only to recoil as a jolt of pain arced across his left cheek. Delicately now, he lightly brushed his fingers over the swollen contours of his face. His heartbeat quickened as they walked over to the numb right side. Nothing. He prodded harder. His right arm fared no better; it was just an impotent lump of flesh and bone, incapable of feeling movement.

  “Shit,” he moaned, only what came out was more the hiss of a snake than the curse of a man.

  His arm slumped to his side, the examination over, for now. The man in the other bed wheezed again, and a macabre picture formed unwanted in Joseph’s mind. He imagined that the stick-thin legs and shrivelled penis gave way not to the torso of a human being but to the scaly body of a huge fish. And, instead of a deeply lined, wizened old face, the head of a trout would lay on that pillow, its gills gulping for air.

  Joseph forced these bizarre images out of his mind. They were replaced instead with a burst of annoyance. Where the hell were the old man’s caregivers? And more to the point, where the hell were Joseph’s? What if he needed to use the bathroom? Infuriated now, both by the indignity of the old man’s exposure and by the lack of any compassion towards himself, Joseph scanned for either a call button or other means of drawing attention. Apart from the two beds, there was little else in the room. A couple of straight-backed chairs sat empty by each bed. A simple nightstand each – Joseph’s with a vase of flowers on top and the old man’s bare – stood on either side of their beds. The window on Joseph’s side was the only indication of an outside world and adjacent to that, a single doorway, tightly shut.