Ch. 14 / Pt. 4 : When They Wear the Mask

Leading with barrel and flashlight, Booker stepped over shards and splintered boards of wood and entered the dark squat. A memory squirmed in the back of his mind. (Pistol in hand he ascended a staircase.) (every ascent) He entered a small mudroom that opened into a nameless space. A living room? Maybe once. But neither furniture nor appliances remained to explain its long-ago purpose. All it was now was four walls, a partially collapsed ceiling, and busted-open plaster where scavengers had rooted around for wire and scrap.

Castellanos followed.

He took deep breaths against a weight growing on his sternum. Fear hung from his neck like a pendant. The night felt heavy with meaning. Signs and portents. Omens. (He followed a water-drip corridor toward the sound of wrestling.) He scanned the room and moved for a doorless threshold. Pipes and wiring and tool-scrapes against every surface suggested the next room had served as a kitchen, before. Breathing deeply against a growing weight, Booker checked corners and searched for entry/exit points.

(a whimper)

The ceiling of another room had collapsed entirely. A waist-high barricade of broken chairs, stools, and shelving blockaded the plywood front entrance. To their left, a candlelit room, tiled and wired like a once-when kitchen, awaited entry. Also on their left, but closer, a rotten, mouldering staircase led up to the second floor. Booker hesitated. His heart pounded despite his slow pace and deep, even breathing. It thrummed in his head like a snarling eight-cylinder engine.

“Kitchen,” Castellanos decided, moving ahead.

Booker shifted stance to follow, but heard something—

(slap/whimper)

—upstairs.

“Al,” he whisper-shouted. But she’d already turned the corner.

Someone sobbed on the second floor.

Booker scowled, wanting to follow Castellanos but starting up the creaking, half-rotten stairs instead. He kept his flashlight and barrel low, not wanting to give away his position. He eased his way along, slow and easy, holding his breath when an errant groan stretched along a floorboard ahead of him. He ascended. The second floor landing opened into a wide hallway.

Sweat trickled down his neck. It crept through his hair. His glasses remained mostly clear, making him realize he’d lost his mask.

When?

It didn’t matter.

He turned right and hugged the wall. A toothy hole in the floor gapped a span of a couple feet; Booker leapt over it and landed loudly. His dull, initial impact resounded back in muffled echoes. The hardwood moaned under his feet. He paused, lifting his barrel and flashlight to check his surroundings.

Four doors, two pairs mirroring each other across the scraped and dusty corridor, yawned for entry. Another jagged pit barred one threshold; the other three remained traversable. With a long, shaking breath, Booker crept forward.

Another sob jerked out of the first door on his right. Booker paused outside, barrel and flashlight pointed down, and waited for another sign of life. A moment passed. Someone sniffled. A hoarse and reedy voice whispered something. Another voice replied, equally inaudible.

Booker turned the corner.

An old bathroom. Chipped ceramic. Two boys, late teens or early twenties, one white, one—Hispanic, maybe?—held onto each other in the bathtub. Both slender in a way that concerned Booker, they each wore defensive wounds on their forearms, bruises on their faces. When Booker entered, flashlight and pistol drawn, they recoiled from him, sliced hands lifted up, tear-lines glistening.

“Please don’t!”

Booker stepped into the room. “Where is he?”

It took them a moment to understand that they were safe. From him, at least.

“Oh my god,” one of them said. “He’s—”

Booker didn’t know which one spoke, which one unfolded his skinny legs from the tub, because he’d already figured it out. He spun, elbow-first, leading with a strike. Too slow. A spasm of heat lightning screamed through his back. His whole body hitched and twisted around the blade. He dropped the flashlight, grimacing. The kids—boys?—wailed. Everything blurred.

A hand grabbed the front of his shirt. Robert Robertson ripped the knife loose from his body.

Booker’s knife-resistant vest hadn’t done anything.

Shouts filled the air. Booker tried to twist toward his attacker, tried to get his barrel to point the right way. Bob-Bob’s-son hauled him backward. Booker lost footing. He fired a bullet through the hardwood floor and tripped with the force of Bob’s pull. As he stumbled, Bob yanked harder, dragging him out of the derelict bathroom.

The knife came in again. It pierced the vest and slipped through Booker’s skin with a sickening pop. Fire-ice and shiver-burn spiked along the lengths of his muscle fibers, twisted tight around his bones. He shouted, trying to expel the freefall numb-pain-shock through his throat. Another bullet blew through floorboards.

For a moment, Booker thought the Mask (capitalized?) came into focus before him. As it stared at him with sunken void sockets, Booker thought he heard a cold, dark god call his name. remember me? It asked, Its language an arrangement of signs and portents and omens.

because I remember you.

“John!” Castellanos shouted.

Robert Robertson let go of Booker’s shirt and whirled around.

Gunfire roared. Ancient plaster and rotten wood pulped and exploded. Booker fired one more time, missing, and fell to his knees. Robert Robertson jumped through the hole in the floor as Castellanos let loose another volley. Booker gasped for breath, wheezing. The kids in the bathroom screamed and cried. Booker fell to his side, one arm bracing him up, the other clutching his chest.

Castellanos jumped the gap in the floor with ease. She threw her sidearm aside as she reached Booker, kneeling to scoop him up. “Back-up’s almost here. There’s an ambulance on its way.”

“We gotta—we have to catch him…”

(a slap and a whimper)

“I’m staying right here.” Castellanos pressed her hand against the wound on his back.

(in the darkness, a mask)

(“I’m right here with you,” he told the child, afterward, his face flecked in blood. “Okay? I’m right here.”)

“Keep your eyes open, Book,” Castellanos barked. “You hear me? Stay with me.”

“I’m right here,” he tried to tell her. But the darkness reached down and Booker felt so tired. His eyes ached. His head hurt. He’d seen too much and couldn’t forget it. He didn’t want to remember anymore. Castellanos muttered something in Spanish and Booker knew enough to wheeze a chuckle at it even though none of it filtered through to his conscious mind. His eyelids fluttered. The darkness reached down.

“John!” someone screamed. “John!”

YOUR DUTY IS TO—

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