Julie nods and looks at the floor, lost in thought. “So today’s . . . July 26th?”
“If I’ve been counting meals right, yeah,” Nora says. “Why?”
To my surprise, Julie laughs. She laughs the way you laugh at a joke you know you shouldn’t find funny. “It’s my birthday.”
There’s a pause, then Nora bursts into a bitter cackle. “Well happy birthday, stump sister! Wishes and kisses!”
“Why didn’t you get me a present, R? What kind of boyfriend are you?”
“Just think, you’re almost old enough to buy beer!”
I listen to the two women collapse into fits, exchanging birthday clichés and savoring the fresh irony that coats each one, but I can’t make myself join in. Even the blackest edges of my humor are numbed by this. It’s an arbitrary line, of course, subjective and ultimately meaningless, but this is not how I imagined Julie graduating from her teens. In every meaningful way, she’s been an adult for many years, certainly longer than I have, but some old-fashioned part of me still wanted to celebrate this official step into maturity. I wanted to get up early and put daisies on her pillow. I wanted to play her favorite records all day. Maybe I’d try to bake a birthday cake.
But instead, this is the party I threw for her. Sitting in a jail cell waiting for our next round of torture. Surprise!
I listen to the two friends riff off each other, and then I wonder if their laughter might have triggered some kind of anti-joy alarm, because as if on cue, a door bangs open and heavy boots pound down the hall.
The laughter stops. Julie backs away from the door until she bumps into me, and I wrap my arms around her, absorbing the icy tremble that’s shaking her tiny frame.
“R,” she whimpers as a shadow falls across the window, and the cold, terrifying reptile in my brain starts sorting through objects in the room. The mirrors. A shard of glass . . .
The door opens, and Perry Kelvin steps through.
Julie’s knees collapse. She sags against me. I stumble back and fall into a sitting position, holding her under her armpits.
“Time to go,” Perry says, reaching out to help me up. “Now.”
I hear a distant commotion through the walls. Furious shouts, fists pounding a door. Perry’s face is indistinct in the shadows, but the thick eyebrows, the brittle voice and its subtle drawl . . . I don’t know what he is or how he’s here or if I can trust him, but I can imagine no scenario worse than the one I was just contemplating. I grab his hand and stand up, pulling Julie with me.
She keeps her eyes locked on his, unable to speak, but her legs firm up under her and she follows.
“Hey!” Nora shouts and I see her knuckles gripping the window bars. “Let them go, you piece of shit, they can’t help you! I’m the Nurse of the Living Dead, they call me Queen Greene! If anyone can control them, it’s me!”
“Is she your friend?” Perry asks Julie.
“Who are you?” Julie whispers, still staring into his eyes. “Who are you?”
“Yes,” I tell him. “She’s our friend.”
Perry unlocks Nora’s cell. Nora emerges, sees his face, and freezes. “Holy shit, you look—”
The distant clang of a hammer striking a door latch.
“Introductions later,” Perry says. “Follow me.”
He runs down the hall but the women are stunned, immobile.
“Who is that?” Julie asks me with fear in her voice.
“Don’t know. Doesn’t matter.” I grab her hand. “We’re getting out of here.”
She glances at Nora, then at me, then at the ghost waiting for us at the end of the hall. We run.
WITH EVERY DOOR we burst through, I expect to be greeted by daylight, but each time it’s another hall, another chamber, another door. The professionally poured concrete of the inner wall gives way to the rushed corner-cutting of post-apocalyptic construction: moldy drywall, rusty sheet metal, and the ever-present plywood. I don’t remember any building this large in Citi Stadium. I begin to suspect we are elsewhere.
The lighting in these outer chambers is more reliable, and I catch glimpses of Perry’s face as we chase him through this badly built labyrinth. He’s not Perry, of course. How could he be Perry? I personally consumed that man’s brain and watched my brethren take his body home in several choice cuts. And then he stowed away in the back of my head, filling in for my absent conscience, and we worked together to repair our souls. I cheered him on into “whatever’s next.” Perry Kelvin and I made peace and parted ways—this man is not him. He is older, thicker, his jaw more pronounced, his skin more weathered. I think Julie and Nora see this too, but the resemblance still shocks them into uncharacteristic silence.
A door with a glowing window appears. I nearly salivate at the thought of daylight. After three days in this chilly hole of pain and darkness, my skin will drink in the sun like sweet tea. The man who is not Perry holds the door for us and we emerge into—not daylight. A pale streetlamp lighting a dark corner. Overhead: a suffocating sky of water-stained concrete.