Hysteria Read online

  “Now do I get to date your sister?” Mylo shouts.

  McKenzie feels tears well up, “You can marry her,” he hears himself shout.

  “Just as soon as you get our bail money,” Mylo shouts.

  “What?” McKenzie says as his legs smash down onto the roof of a parked up cop car.

  “I don’t believe it,” a woman cop shouts and points down the street.

  “I can explain, officer,” McKenzie says. “Wasn’t our fault.”

  “The stripes say sergeant, kid,” she says and ignores Mylo’s silk chute spilling over them. “Rodriguez.”

  McKenzie looks down at his smashed and mangled legs and up at where the cop points.

  The boy jumper is running, jumping off moving car roofs. Leaping between the traffic. Incredible distances and with super human agility.

  “Kid should be mincemeat,” Rodriguez says looking at her half eaten hamburger and throwing it in the nearest trash bin. “Stay here.”

  “McCarthy, hold back the gawkers,” she shouts to a cop and gets on her squad car two-way. “Sergeant Rodriguez on Thirty Fourth and Fifth. We have a possible ten sixty six.”

  She hands the radio to her partner and runs down the street. “Stay here,” she shouts at McKenzie.

  McKenzie laughs. “Like I’m going anywhere?”

  The boy jumper leaps, twists, somersaults over speeding cars. The rush hour traffic slows. Drivers wind down their windows, get themselves rear-ended. Shunt each other through red lights and find themselves broadsided.

  People lean out of office windows to gawp at the wonder kid jumper defying death.

  Only McKenzie sees the gasoline tanker thundering along towards the boy jumper.

  “He’ll never make it,” McKenzie says.

  “Twenty says he makes it,” Mylo says.

  The kid jumps a yellow cab and stops at the intersection. Smiles as he looks up at the sky.

  “Why doesn’t he jump out the way?” Mylo shouts.

  McKenzie gets the awful feeling he knows why. “He’s done it all,” McKenzie says. “What else is left for him? He made the golden jump. His life is over.”

  McKenzie swears the boy jumper is looking directly at him as the gasoline truck hits its brakes and slams into the boy.

  The screams are deafening.

  “I need to see,” McKenzie shouts and tries to run. His legs collapse under him. Already McKenzie can feel the adrenalin level in his body begin to ease down. Soon the pain of his smashed legs will overtake his mind. If he’s ever going to find out why all this is happening, why his life is ruined, he needs to act now.

  The cops run towards the tanker. The boy jumper lays flat against the tanker’s cab as it rolls over a car and jack knifes.

  The tanker flips onto its side and skids across the intersection, grinding up tarmac. Metal screeching so hard it makes McKenzie’s ears feel as if they are bleeding. The tanker takes out a post box, phone box, corner hot dog stand, newspaper stand, second hand bookseller, and a fire hydrant until it buries itself into a shop front. A water jet bursts out of the hydrant and gasoline gushes out of the tank.

  McKenzie crawls into the cab of the cop car. The engine is running. He turns the wheel. Leaving the door open for his legs to stick out, McKenzie rolls the car along the two hundred yards to the intersection. Nudges the gathering crowd aside with the fender of the cop car. Thumbs the siren on-switch and forces the gawkers and suicide junkies to part.

  He rolls up before the tanker.

  “Weirdest thing I ever saw,” the sergeant says, staring down at the body of the jumper.

  “Who do we call, Sarge?” the cop’s partner asks. “Mayor’s Office? FBI?”

  McKenzie crawls across the tarmac, through the lake of gasoline. He can’t explain to himself why he needs to see, but if it’s the last thing he ever does, he must know why.

  Mylo comes hopping into view, one leg clearly broken.

  “I got a feeling whoever we should be telling will want this kept quiet,” the cop, a woman sergeant says. “I’ll guard the evidence. You get everyone away from here.”

  “McKenzie?” Mylo says.

  The two cops turn around. “Get out of here, kid,” the sergeant says.

  McKenzie stops crawling along the street and stares between the cops legs at the boy jumper. The boy’s body spasms, electrical charges sparking off his limbs, thousands of tiny lightning bolts zipping off him.

  “Something’s inside him,” McKenzie says pointing at the boy’s skin.

  “I don’t know whether to bust you or shake your hand for surviving that fall,” the sergeant says to McKenzie.

  “Is he alive?” McKenzie says.

  “I hope not,” the sergeant says.

  “Just tell me what it is,” McKenzie says.

  “Ain’t our problem,” the cop says.

  McKenzie looks s up at the cop. “You really think that?”

  “Don’t matter already,” the sergeant says. “Hospital and jail for you.”

  “It’s going to blow,” another cop says and pushing Mylo back towards the crowd blows a whistle at the gathering onlookers. “Get back.”

  The cops push back the crowd.

  The boy jumper’s body jerks and spasms. Dead but somehow alive. Blood oozes out of a gash across the boy’s chest and McKenzie stares at the boy’s beating heart. The boy jumper’s eyes open. That spiraling galaxy of stars turns towards McKenzie. His arm dripping in blood lifts up and a hand grabs McKenzie by the throat.

  McKenzie struggles against the incredible strength of the boy’s arm, lifting McKenzie towards him.

  “Don’t let them take it,” the boy says.

  “Take what, man?”

  “Can’t trust them,” the boy says and pulls McKenzie to within an inch of his face. “Protect source code engine.”

  The Boy hold’s McKenzie’s head in place.

  Impossible to pull free, McKenzie feels his face tickle as if something is crawling, marching over his skin.

  From the boy’s heart in the gushing blood, a glowing blue slime crawls out. Pouring from the boy’s nose, ears, eyes and mouth the slime slithers towards McKenzie’s face.

  “What the hell is that?” McKenzie shouts and struggles to free himself, punching at the kid’s arms.

  The jumper’s grip grows stronger.

  It’s no use.

  The blue slime slithers over McKenzie’s face, into his mouth and down his throat. McKenzie feels the gag reflex try to force up the slime. But the slime seems to circumnavigate his body’s natural defense mechanism. As if, it has an intelligence of its own, allowing it to complete its journey. And its mission.

  And McKenzie knows he’s going to drown.

  Chapter Three: Source Code

  McKenzie’s ears begin to tickle as if his head is glued to a spurting power shower. The pressure feels ready to burst his eardrum. The blue slime enters every orifice on McKenzie’s body. His sinus clogs and his itching eyes begin to sting as he catches his reflection in the spiral galaxy of the boy jumper’s eyes.

  He can’t look away or close his eyes. His mouth moves, his lips make the shapes for speech but not a sound comes out. He can’t scream for help or move his arms or legs to free himself. His chest fills with the sensation of an army marching through his body.

  He realizes his airways are blocked with this blue slime and he can no longer breathe. For a second as the slime passes behind his cornea he tells himself he sees inside the blue slime. Tiny creatures, spider like, metallic and shiny.

  Underneath his skin, marching down his face and neck. Down his arms and into his fingers. Down his chest, causing his skin to ripple outwards. A high velocity meteor impact setting off a Tsunami in his blood stream. He imagines every blood cell ensnared in the fangs of these spiders, attaching themselves for a free ride through his body to his major organs. His kidneys, liver, heart, brain. Even his... He looks down between his legs.

  His stomach bloats and Mackenzie realizes the march
of spiders is heading downwards between his legs.

  He tries to tell himself he’s still alive. That there’s no reason to believe these millions of tiny spiders intend to cannibalize his private parts. It’s no use. He feels himself panic and tries to push the rippling folds of skin away from his private parts.

  McKenzie feels his body begin to spasm. The shock is too much. He knows he’s going to black out and choke to death on this blue hell while New York’s finest push back the crowd to safety. Oblivious to his fate.

  It feels like a giant hand moving inside his body reaching out and flipping McKenzie over onto his back. His heart thunders in his ears. A screaming whistle blasts his eardrums, as blood seems to pass through his heart and around his body at the speed of light.

  He watches as an army of these creatures marches under his skin, down his chest and stomach towards his private parts. If he didn’t know the meaning of panic before this moment, he does now.

  He feels a stirring sensation in his private parts. He can feel it stretching out and growing. Of all the times to get an impromptu stiffy this is officially, the most mortifying moment in McKenzie’s entire fifteen years of life.

  As if it is coming alive. Like the spiders are detaching it from his body, preparing it to slither away down Fifth Avenue. He grits his teeth and tries to shut his eyes. Only thing worse than knowing his manhood is being served up as main course for dinner is watching the gorging feast. No matter how hard he tries to close his eyes they remain fixed open. Unblinking.

  He imagines the spider army stretching out his manhood along a banquet dining table in readiness for their feast. However these bizarre creatures communicated with each other he knew they were shouting instructions between themselves. Forward march, one, two, three, four or however many legs these creatures had. Crunch, crunch, stop for a snack, munch, munch.

  And yet... there is no pain down there. In fact, he’s never felt more alive than at this moment. He realizes the spiders are not eating his manhood and his chest convulses with explosions of laughter. Shuddering with relief that perhaps he will not, after all, die a virgin.

  The last of the blue slime disappears up McKenzie’s nose and the boy jumper relaxes his grip on McKenzie’s throat...

  “What the hell did you do to me?” McKenzie shouts and pushes himself free.

  The boy jumper sighs and his eyes cloud over.

  At last, McKenzie can breathe.

  The smell of gasoline punches his nostrils like a tsunami. His eyes begin to tear. Every smell about him seems magnified by a thousand. His stomach back flips. The smell that terrifies him most. The smell of smoke. He looks across to the cab. Smoke billows out of the engine.

  Like a beetle flipped onto his back, his legs pathetically kick out into the air. He can’t seem to control them. If only he can roll himself over. Crawl out of this gasoline lake.

  Rolling his body side to side, he feels his face submerge into the gasoline. His eyes scream out from the petroleum burn. He opens his mouth and chokes gasoline up his nose and into his lungs. His arms shoot out and snatch at everything. Anything his fingers can find.

  Knowing his legs are mangled and useless, he concentrates on his fingertips. Every fiber of will to survive screams out. His fingernails feel as if they are splintering. He ignores the pain of his nails ripping off his fingers.

  The softening tarmac under his nails seems to give traction as he drags himself an entire inch towards safety. Another inch. And another. Faster now. Until he can feel his entire body glide through the gasoline lake.

  He begins to crawl through the lake of gasoline away from the smoking cab of the tanker. He fights his reflex action to stand. Tells himself he got no time to fall back down and injury himself more than he already is.

  He looks back over his shoulder.

  The tanker cabin is catching fire.

  Instinct drags McKenzie to his feet. Expecting to fall flat on his face, he takes a sudden step forward. And another. Until he realizes he is running.

  “How am I doing this?” he screams as the gasoline tanker explodes.

  Feeling himself flung through the air like a rag doll, McKenzie throws up his arms across his face and braces himself for the inevitable impact of colliding with a cop car’s windshield.

  McKenzie collides with the cop car and all turns dark.

  Chapter Four: Interception

  A smart phone buzzes like a hornet.

  Del Amitri sits in his dark Cadillac, adjusting the air conditioning in this hot, sticky early fall rush hour and waits patiently at the lights on Fifth Avenue. He glances at his insistent phone.

  A picture message opens automatically. A girl. Middle to late teens. Wearing a Dinosaur Games Tee. The screen zooms in on her head and shoulders.

  Seems to Del Amitri she’s fighting back tears. Trying to act brave with a gun held to her head.

  Del Amitri’s stomach churns. Ties itself into knots. Squeezes out his resolve, wrings out his nightmarish fears and chokes up tears. His fists pummel the steering wheel.

  “What the hell do you want from me?” he shouts.

  A video clip plays across the screen of a teen plunging off the Empire State.

  One word flashes at him. Containment.

  Del Amitri’s stomach back flips. Containment means only one thing. Someone’s going to die. He cracks the knuckle of his trigger finger.

  A flurry of crisp gold and crimson leaves shimmer across his windshield.

  He nods at everything around him dying. It’s part of the natural cycle of things, he tries to tell himself. And he is simply adding a helping hand, speeding up the cycle. The bile in his stomach rises to his throat.

  He takes a deep breath. Imagines a gentle kind breeze sweeping the leaves over his face and body. A final act of forgiveness and peace. Feels his cold clammy fists unfurl. He opens his eyes and smiles at a young mother scraping a baby pram across his fender.

  She smiles back as she passes.

  He rests his hands around a cup of coffee. Takes one final sip. Winds down the window and throws it onto the sidewalk.

  He slams into gear and guns his Cadillac through the red light.

  Horns blare out like barrage of anti-aircraft rocket fire and a yellow taxicab seems to refuse to give way.

  Del Amitri aims his car directly at the yellow cab.

  The cab driver seems to stare with a look of terror as Del Amitri measures the angle for optimum ricochet and swerves. He clips the cab’s tail, sends the cab into a spin. He smiles to himself as the taxi driver bounces around the inside of his cab.

  Del Amitri mounts the sidewalk sending a crowd fleeing.

  He pulls back onto Fifth Avenue and clips a cyclist. In his rear view mirror, the cyclist sprawled across the road gives him the bird.

  Del Amitri laughs.

  The intersection at Thirty Fourth is chaos. A fireball explodes up into the sky. Everyone is running from an exploding tanker and the body of a burning boy.

  Containment? He shakes his head and checks his Glock. He can tell by the weight it is fully loaded.

  He parks under a burst hydrant as his phone buzzes again. The water thunders down and tears the leaves off his windshield. The video clip shows two other jumpers. The screen flashes: Identify, appraise and eliminate.

  Walking up Thirty Fourth towards the Empire State, he flips out his badge and tucks it over the outside of his suit pocket for every cop to see he is FBI Special Agent Del Amitri. This will, he hopes, precede, back up, and forewarn others of the look in his eyes. A man on an unstoppable mission. A crusade. The consequences of defying him. Death.

  Chapter Five: Body Count

  Del Amitri stoops next to the smoldering body of the teen jumper. Fresh Gasoline pools collect from a steam flooding out of the gutter to form around the body.

  Del Amitri lets the gasoline lap at his shoes.

  The only part of the jumper not charred is the glowing blue gloop dripping from its nostrils. With a pen, he scoops up the glo
op. Lifts the pen to his nose. Sniffs. Smells like peaches and cream and vanilla. He touches it. An electric shock passes through his hand. He throws pen and gloop into an evidence bag.

  “Who are you?” Del Amitri says to the body.

  The jumper’s hand seems to clutch a note. Possibly the only thing not charred.

  Del Amitri pries the fingers back. Struggling against the incredible grip and snapping the fingers to release the note.

  On a twenty-dollar bill, written by the same hurrying hand using the same red ink or blood the words, Bullet for Oscar.

  “You got some sick humor, kid,” Del Amitri says as he glances over the body once more. His eyes fix on a silver chain. “Or you trying to tell me something important?”

  A silver chain hangs around the neck of the jumper.

  Del Amitri unhooks the chain from the jumper’s neck. Tugs at it. Seems attached to something But it won’t give.

  He tugs harder. Knows he needs to slide his fingers inside the kid’s Tee fused to the charred rib cage.

  Del Amitri peals away the Tee to reveal a silver bullet embedded between two ribs. He separates the two ribs and releases the bullet. He examines the silver bullet shape pendant dangling from the chain. Unscrews the bullet, separates the casing from the base and holds up the thumb drive to the light. Written along the drive by what seems a hurrying hand using red ink or blood are the words, Oscar Del Amitri.

  “How do you know me?” Del Amitri says. “Do you know Madison?”

  “Get away from there,” a woman police sergeant shouts, running towards him.

  Del Amitri stands and slips the evidence bag into his inside pocket as he admires the woman’s figure and her smooth sculptured features. He points at the jumper’s body.

  “Bag it, tag it and send it over to the Bureau,” he says.

  “I don’t see how you get jurisdiction,” the Sergeant says.

  “It’s on the end of my boot up your as, officer,” Del Amitri says and makes a mental note of her badge name and number.