“You’ll know in a minute.”
With Murphy cautiously leading the way, they moved down an aisle stacked ten feet high with boxes and crates until they rounded a corner and Darryl saw a long wooden crate marked MIXED CONDIMENTS: HEINZ and, above it, inexplicably hanging from a thick pipe, a bloody handcuff.
“Shit,” Murphy muttered. “Shit, shit, shit.”
What the hell were they looking for, Darryl wondered? What had they been expecting to find? For a second, he wondered if Danzig had returned. Hadn’t the speargun through the chest sent him safely to the bottom of the sea?
“Ackerley,” Murphy said, in a slightly raised voice. “You in here?”
Ackerley? That was who they were looking for? In there, of all places? If so, what the hell were they so afraid of? The man was as harmless as one of his cabbages.
There was a scratching sound, like a pen on paper, and they crept toward the next aisle. It, too, was empty, but the scratching sound grew louder. Murphy, the gun out in front, moved to the next aisle, and there they saw Ackerley—or a close facsimile of him. He was gaunter than ever, his ponytail loose and hanging down like a dead squirrel on the back of his neck. Draped around his shoulders, he wore a shredded plastic garbage bag. He was sitting on a crate of Coca-Cola, and all around his feet there were empty soda cans and various papers—printed invoices, ripped from the boxes—that he had been scrawling on. With a clipboard on his lap, he was scribbling on the back of another one even then, working with the concentration of a physicist straightening out an especially complex equation.
“Ackerley,” Murphy said, and Ackerley, his little round spectacles creeping down his nose, said, “Not now,” without looking up.
Murphy and Michael exchanged a look, as if to say What next? while Darryl simply looked on, aghast. What had happened to Ackerley? His throat, partially revealed under the plastic bag, looked ravaged, and the wrist of his left hand, which limply supported the clipboard, appeared broken and bruised. Flakes of blood crusted the skin.
“What are you doing?” Michael asked, in a deliberately innocent voice.
“Making notes.”
“About what?”
Ackerley kept writing.
“What are you writing about?” Murphy repeated.
“About dying.”
“You don’t look dead to me,” Darryl said, though it wasn’t entirely true.
Ackerley finished a sentence, then slowly raised his eyes. They were red-rimmed, and even the whites were tinged a pale pink.
“Oh, I am,” he said. “It just hasn’t taken yet.” His voice carried a low, gurgling sound. He took a swig from an open can, then just let it drop from his hand.
Murphy had allowed the barrel of the gun to drift toward the floor, and Ackerley gestured at it.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Murphy quickly raised it again, and Ackerley let the last paper waft to the floor to join all the others.
“I’ve numbered them,” he said, “so you’ll be able to follow along.”
“Follow what?” Michael said.
“What happens,” Ackerley replied, “afterwards.”
There was silence, and then Ackerley dragged the plastic bag away from his throat; the skin was so mangled that Darryl was surprised that he had been able to speak at all. The vocal cords could be seen pulsating.
“Now,” Ackerley said, nodding at the gun, “you’d better use that.”
“What are you talking about?” Murphy said. “I’m not gonna shoot you now. We’ll figure something out.”
“That’s right,” Michael interjected. “We’ll talk to Dr. Barnes. There must be a way to help you.”
“Use it,” Ackerley said, in a ghastly rasping voice, “and afterwards, just to be on the safe side, cremate my remains.” Slowly rising to his feet, he took a faltering step in their direction. “Otherwise, you might wind up like me.” All three fell back. “It apparently passes from one host to another quite easily.”
“What does?” Darryl said, bumping up against a shelf of pots and pans that clanged in their boxes.
“The infection. Either through blood or saliva. Like HIV, it seems to be present, to some degree, in all the bodily fluids.” Staggering closer and focusing on the gun, he muttered, “Do it, or I will kill you. I’m not sure I have much choice in the matter.” His eyes, behind his glasses, blinked slowly. His foot knocked one of the empty cans toward them, and it spun in a lazy circle on the concrete.
Michael tried to prod him back with the tip of the speargun, but Ackerley brushed it aside.
“Use the handgun,” he said. “Do it right.”
He kept on coming, and there was less and less room to retreat. Darryl stepped back, past the kitchen equipment aisle, but at close range he could see the demented, though utterly determined, look in Ackerley’s eye. He meant what he said.