Black Mad Wheel. Josh Malerman

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СКАЧАТЬ from a nightmare, an image of Philip removing his skin, a costume, allowing it to fall in folds to the floor.

      I’m radioactive, he’d said. Touch me, he’d said.

      Now, in the light of the observation room overheads, Philip’s skin looks phonier than ever.

      “But life goes on,” Francine says. “For this one.”

      The soft click of the door opening and closing behind her lets Ellen know she’s alone in the station. Francine will administer Philip’s shot, then leave to tell Dr. Szands in the office.

      Ellen tries not to think about the mysteries here. The host of Science Fiction Theatre was Truman Bradley, a former war correspondent long before he started introducing the pseudoscientific episodes. He was an actor, too. A good-looking one, if Ellen remembers him right.

      Did Philip once look like Truman Bradley?

      Maybe it’s the way he looks at the ceiling, as though questioning something himself.

      Maybe it’s because he’s the first to answer her silent nonreligious prayers.

      Philip blinks.

      Ellen notes.

      As a girl, Ellen saw herself one day walking the streets of New York City, shopping with friends, meeting at ethnic restaurants with complicated names, eating lunch on the benches in the parks.

      But then, love … a brief, tragic motherhood … and here her life has led up to this moment …

      … nursing.

      It’s not lost on her that her profession could be seen as a way of atoning for the loss of her daughter, a need to heal, a need to ward off those black fingers in the halls of Macy Mercy, arriving herself at the doors before they do, perhaps this time with the right dosage of medicine, or a miracle joke to make.

      Even here, forty miles outside of Des Moines, Ellen has friends who act as armchair psychiatrists.

      You should get away from the hospital, some say. You should get away from sadness, others.

      Ellen thinks they’re right, of course, all of them. And yet she can’t bring herself to go. Can’t bring herself to walk away from men like Philip Tonka, who was most certainly left in a basket at death’s door, and now blinks in rhythm with a beating heart.

      As Francine gives him his shot, Ellen spins in the seat of the office chair and rolls to the small cooler kept in the corner. She takes a can of soda, wheels back.

      She likes her job. She does. She takes pride in the fact that she’s helping others, even if most of those others aren’t conscious of her help. She’d rather be here, marking the progress of a man who has life yet inside him, than spilling cocktails with friends in the big city.

      Yes? Isn’t this true?

      Ellen shouldn’t ask herself questions like these.

      She looks to the clock on the wall.

      She notes the time on the paper.

      When she looks up, Philip is looking back at her.

      Ellen, middrink, gasps, spills some of the grape soda onto the front of her white uniform.

      Philip is looking at her out of the corner of his eye.

      And he’s moving the tips of his fingers.

      “Oh my God,” Ellen says, standing up, then sitting down. She wipes the soda from her uniform, starts to make a note, writes messily, looks through the glass again. Francine has already left. “Oh my God, he’s moving.”

      She’s too excited to write. She gets up instead, turns to leave the station, then rushes back to the glass.

      Through it, their eyes meet, momentarily.

      The bent fingers of his right hand, all five, are moving. It may be slight, but it’s movement.

      From a man who broke almost every bone in his body.

      Ellen smiles. She can’t help but smile. But Philip only stares. And there is fear in his eyes. A fear Ellen doesn’t believe she’s ever felt herself.

      She rushes from the station with the news.

       8

      For his three hours to think, Ross heads home. Mom is home. And as far as Ross can remember, Mom knows best.

      He’s got the data, his copy of the papers, folded and stuffed into his coat pocket. It’s an important feeling, walking the streets of Detroit with a secret in his coat. On a different day, he might find it thrilling, like espionage on television. But right now his enthusiasm is tempered by the crystal memory of the sound he listened to in the control room.

      Ross brings a hand to his belly as he crosses the grass on Indiana Street and takes the steel stairs that lead to the back door of the duplex he shares with Mom.

      Mom.

      And how’s he going to ask Mom about this one?

      If there’s one person Ross knows who is unimpressed by the United States Army, it’s Mom. Hell, back during World War II, when the other Danes were getting praise and encouragement from home, Mom would send Ross letters beseeching him to go AWOL. War is embarrassing, Mom would say. And none of this fighting will mean anything in ten years.

      Of course she was both right and wrong about that. Twelve years removed from the war, it did feel a lot less important. And yet … the world had changed. In many ways for the better. And if Ross were given the chance to contribute like that again …

      … shouldn’t he?

      He finds his keys in his pants pocket and unlocks the back door.

      “Ross?”

      Right away. Ross doesn’t even get the chance to take a deep breath. It’s like Ruth Robinson can hear it when her son’s got a big decision to make.

       Can hear it. Like a sickening sound, eh, Ross?

      “Hey, Ma. Home.”

      “Why?”

      Mom doesn’t miss a beat. She may be fifty-eight years old and walk around the house in her pajamas all day, but Ruth is as sharp as she’s ever been. Ross knows this better than anybody else.

      “Session was canceled.”

      He reaches into his jacket pocket and fingers the document that he’s already read.

      “Why?”

      Ross looks up and sees Mom is already standing in the kitchen doorway. Glasses on a band around her neck. No hiding from her now, she’s already seen СКАЧАТЬ