Silent PreySilent Prey by Unknown

Silent PreySilent Prey by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-11-06T01:13:57+00:00


CHAPTER

12

Thirty hits of speed, two days; Bekker hadn’t slept forever. He was carried along on the chemicals like a leaf in a river, the flow of time and thought rolling about him. And he was avoiding the woman with the eyes, the woman watching him. She terrified him: but the chemicals had defeated her after two days, and she was losing her grip.

But other things were happening.

Late in the afternoon of the second day, the bugs came. He could feel them, lines of them, inching through his veins. All of his veins, but in particular, a vein on the forearm; he could feel them, little bumps, rattling along, doing their filthy work. Eating him.

Eating the blood cells. He could remember, as a child, kicking open ant nests and seeing the ants running for cover, their mealy white eggs in their jaws. And this was the image that came to him: ants running, but with blood cells caught in their pincers. Thousands of them, running through his veins. If he could let them out …

A voice in his head: No no no, hallucination, no no no …

He stood up, his knees and feet aching. He’d walked for miles in the basement, back and forth, back and forth. How far? A few errant brain cells wandered away and did the calculation … say five thousand round trips, twenty feet each way … thirty-seven point eight seven eight miles. Thirty-seven point eight seven eight seven eight seven eight seven eight seven …

He was snared in the eight-seven loop, captivated by the sheer infinity of it, a loop that would last longer than the sun, would last longer than the universe, would go on for … what?

He shook himself out of the loop, felt the bugs raging through his veins, took his forearm to the bathroom, turned on the light, looked for bumps, where the bugs scuttled along … .

A voice: formication …

He pushed it away. Had to let them out, squeeze them out somehow. He walked into the operating theater, went to the instruments pan, found a scalpel, let them out … .

He began to walk, the bugs draining away, began to pace again—what was that smell? So clean and coppery, like the sea. Blood?

He looked down at himself. Blood was running from his arm. Not heavily, now slowing, but his hand and forearm looked as though they had been flayed. Where he’d been pacing, blood splattered the floor, an oval line marking his pattern, as though someone had been swinging a decapitated chicken.

The voice: stereotypy.

What? He stared at the arm and a bug zipped down the vein. Like Charlie Victor on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, like Charlie Victor at the Hotel Oscar, Charlie Hotel India Mike November Lima Tango Romeo …

Another loop—where had that come from? ’Nam? He shook himself out. The bugs were waiting, in all their ranks.

Medication. He went to his medicine table, found a half-dozen pills. That was all. He popped one, then another. And a third.

He picked up the phone, struggled with himself, put it back down.



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