Two of the people were not people. He touched them just to make sure, but they definitely weren’t.
Then there was the father, and he was not alive. If a “Rose for Emily” scenario was in play here, Jasper would’ve preferred the rabbit woman to have given him a heads-up, but maybe she didn’t know. Or maybe something worse had gone on. She hadn’t told him a lot about Hazel, but the things she did say were easy to sympathize with: her husband was terrorizing her. Her father hadn’t been mentioned much, aside from the fact that Hazel lived with him, and he was allegedly grouchy. She hadn’t killed him, had she? Jasper wanted this to be a clean rescue in terms of justice. Any vibes complicating the good-deed aspect of the mission, such as patricide, were pretty unwelcome.
Then Jasper saw the blue tinge to her lips, noted the discarded pill bottle at her feet. The man’s corpse looked healthier than Hazel did in terms of color. “She’s dead,” Jasper said.
Disappointment flooded through him, then anger. Now what? Did his kick start to a life of atonement have to perish alongside her? What was the right thing for him to do if she was already gone? One idea was to take the dolls with him and move her body to the living room couch so her deathbed would have less of an incestuous group-sex feel to it when the paramedics arrived. That would probably count as a good deed.
Then Hazel made a gurgling noise. A small cluster of bubbly foam came out of her mouth. “Yes!” Jasper exclaimed. “Yes! Hazel, help is here!” He began running through the rooms of the house trying to find a Gogol phone or computer to search what the best steps were for an overdose. He could give her the chip-deactivation injection and call the paramedics, but then Byron would get to her in the hospital; he’d be the first person they called once she was identified. The rabbit woman had stressed that if anything went wrong, hospitals were a last resort. It would be no good to save Hazel’s life only to have her wake up in Byron’s private care and find she wanted to commit suicide even more than before. But probably couldn’t, due to round-the-clock surveillance.
A pool of froth was collecting on Hazel’s chin. It looked fancy in a way, nearly culinary, like whisked foam. “Warm,” he said aloud, only because in movies doctors were always reporting things aloud even if no one was there. If he could only call Voda, or the rabbit woman. “Hazel?” he yelled. “Can you hear me?”
There was a medical action he should be performing. An urgent one. Jasper knew this much. But what it might be he wasn’t sure. To buy time, he decided to go ahead and administer the injection, which he’d need to give her whether or not he called an ambulance. He opened the cooler and removed the long syringe, took the protective casing off the needle.
The shot was gigantic, like something used to impregnate a cow. “Better you than me,” Jasper mumbled.
Then he heard the click of the rifle.
THE GUN’S BARREL PRESSED INTO THE CENTER OF JASPER’S FOREHEAD. He’d raised his arms up in a stance of surrender and knew it was the best practice to never look directly at an assailant, but something was up with the guy’s chest. It seemed like his ribs were opening. The man wasn’t wearing a shirt, but he was wearing something. A vest. But it was also made of skin. Whose skin?
Jasper, he told himself, you do not want to know whose skin it is.
He swallowed. “Gogol sent you, huh.” His lifted arms were trembling. Part of him wanted to just make a go of it, just leap forward and inject her, but he figured his arm would get shot off before he could push the plunger down.
The man spat something brown onto the carpet, which made Jasper cringe. He’d really prefer to die on a clean carpet. “I am not a Gogol user,” the man said.
“You’re not here to kill me?” There was more brown spit, which Jasper willed himself not to acknowledge.
“I might be. Depends on what you’re doing.”
If he told the man the truth and the man was from Gogol, he’d kill him. If he lied and the man was from Gogol, he’d kill him. But if he told the truth and the man wasn’t from Gogol, he might have a chance. Jasper pointed his syringe hand at his non-syringe hand. “It will sound pretty wild when I explain it out loud, but I came to give her this.” Jasper watched the man’s eyes move to the injection needle.
“What is it? I’m not afraid to party.”
“Well, this woman, she has a chip in her brain,” he began, then paused to gauge whether the man seemed incredulous.
“She mentioned something about that,” he responded. “She and I, we’ve been cavorting.”
Jasper’s mouth dropped open a little. This he would not have guessed.
“Is she alive?” the man continued. Jasper found himself on the barrel end of the gun once more. “Or are you planning to kill her for that chip?”
“No!” Jasper screamed. When the man had walked into the room and Jasper was sure he was going to die, that was one thing, and then when the man didn’t seem to be an assassin and Jasper felt certain he’d live, that was another, but he couldn’t deal with going back and forth between them. “I’m here to deactivate it for her so she can escape from her husband. Please, lower the weapon. I got here maybe five minutes ago and found them all on the bed just like this. Her dad’s dead and it looks like she overdosed on pills.”
“Oh, overdose.” The man stepped forward and shoved several fingers down Hazel’s throat until more foam came out, then kept at it. Finally half-digested pills began to appear. “She’ll live,” he said. “You need to find a vein on her for that?”
“No. It’s just like . . . you know, the way they’d do a shot at the doctor’s. My name’s Jasper, by the way.”
The man grabbed the syringe from Jasper’s hand and sank it into Hazel’s arm. “Call me Liver,” he said. “You a fed?”
“Me? No, I’m—” Jasper stopped. What was he? “I’m just trying to make up for a lot of bad things.”
More foamy puke came out of Hazel’s mouth, followed by a belching cough. “Ahoy!” Liver yelled, helping her sit up. “Atta gal. Let’s get you upright here.” Jasper noticed Liver wasn’t overly concerned about disturbing the father’s corpse; as he bent over to grab Hazel, his knee was pinning the expired body down by the throat. “Do you have tales from beyond? Did you get to whiff the air in hell? A buddy of mine was in a coma and swears he saw the eternal lake of fire. Said it smells like cinnamon.”
“You’re alive,” Hazel said. Her speech was slowed. It took nearly a minute for her to get both of the words out.
“Yeah. They had it in for me. Blew my shack to bits then torched the thing. I’d seen them coming, though. Snuck out in the meantime. Didn’t want you to worry, but I thought it was best to lay low for a few days.”