Hive

He fumbled the lock open — never used to lock his door, but lately he’d gotten in the habit — and pulled the door in. Cutchen was standing out there in the corridor, a small gray-haired man with a matching beard and dark, probing eyes that always seemed to know something you didn’t.

“It’s Lind,” Cutchen said. “Sharkey said to bring you. Lind has really gone over the edge now. C’mon, we better go.”

Shit, shit, and shit.

Hayes climbed into his Kansas State joggers and sweatshirt, brushed his bushy hair back with the flat of his hand and then he was following Cutchen down the gray corridors to the other side of the building where the infirmary was.

Outside the door, in the hallway, St. Ours, Meiner, Rutkowski and a few of the other Glory Boys were gathered, whispering like little old ladies at a funeral, espousing dirty secrets.

“See, Jimmy?” Rutkowski said to Hayes. “I told you he’d do something like this. Crazy bastard.”

“What happened?” Hayes said, his head blown with fuzz from sleep.

“He slit his fucking wrists,” St. Ours said. “Got a knife in there and plans on using it.”

“He won’t let Doc get to him,” Cutchen explained. “He’s lost a lot of blood and if she can’t get to work on him right away, he’s going to be toast. She thought you could talk to him.”

Hayes sucked in a breath and went in there slowly, heavily, like he was dragging a ball and chain behind him. Before he saw the blood, he could smell it: sharp and metallic. It got right down into his guts. He scoped out the situation pretty quickly because the infirmary just wasn’t that big. Lind was sitting in the corner between two cabinets of drugs and instruments, kind of wedged in there like maybe he was stuck. His back was up against the wall and his knees were drawn up to his chin. There was a lot of blood . . . it was scarfed over his shirt and there was a smeared trail of it running across the tiles to his present position. His left arm looked like he’d stuck it in a barrel of red ink.

And, yeah, he had a knife in his hand. A scalpel.

Sharkey was standing next to an examination table, her usually capable and confident face looking pinched and rubbery like she’d been out in the cold. Her blue eyes were wide and helpless.

“Lind,” she said in a very soft voice. “Hayes is here. I want you to talk to him.”

Lind jerked like maybe he’d been asleep. He held the bloody scalpel out in warning towards Sharkey, droplets of blood dripping from his wrist. “I’m not talking to anyone . . . you’re all infected and I goddamn well know it. I know what’s going on here . . . I know what those things want, I know how they got to you.”

Hayes clenched his teeth, unclenched them, willed himself to go loose, to relax. It was not easy. Jesus, Lind looked like shit. And it wasn’t just the blood either. He looked like maybe he’d dropped twenty pounds, his once round face seemed to be sagging under his scraggly beard. Just hanging like the jowls of a hound, slack and sallow. His eyes were bulging from their sockets, discolored and shot through with tiny red veins. They gleamed like wet chrome.

Hayes squatted about four feet away from him. “Lind? Look at me. It’s me, it’s Jimmy. Your old bunkmate . . . just look at me, tell me about it. Tell me how they get to you.”

Lind jerked again, seemed to be doing so anytime somebody mentioned his name like he was hooked up to a battery. “Jimmy . . . oh, shit, Jimmy . . . they . . . them out in that fucking hut, you know what they do? You know what they want? They come in your dreams, Jimmy. Those mummies . . . the Old Ones . . . hee, hee . . . they come in your dreams, Jimmy, and they start sucking your mind dry because that’s all they want: our minds.”

“Lind, listen to me,” Hayes said. “Those ugly pricks have been dead millions of years - “

“They’re not dead, Jimmy! Maybe they can’t move their bodies no more, but their minds, Jimmy, their minds are not fucking dead! You know they’re not . . . they’ve been waiting down here in the ice for us, waiting for us all these millions of years to come and set them free! They knew we would because that’s how they planned it!” Lind was breathing real hard, gasping for breath or maybe gasping for something he just couldn’t find. “Jimmy . . . oh Jesus, Jimmy, I know you think I’m fucking crazy, you all think I’m fucking crazy, but you better listen to me before it’s too late.”

Hayes held his hands out. “Lind, you’re going to bleed to death. Let the Doc patch you up and then we’ll talk.”

“No.” Flat, immovable. “We talk now.”

“Okay, okay.”