Quantum Night

37

What the hell? Where am I? How did I get here?

I looked at the window, and—

Blue sky?

Sunshine?

Trees covered with leaves?

But… but it’s January! How in the hell did I…?

My head hurt—but not from a hangover. I reached up to touch it, and—ouch! I’d banged it against something.

I rolled the other way, and there was Professor Warkentin, looking like someone had just kicked the living crap out of him.

I stared at him—really stared at him, locking my gaze on his fat face. Fucking guy was an asshole, pure and simple. An impediment. You could see it. Guy like that never should have been born. Waste of oxygen molecules. I wasn’t exactly sure why, but—

—but it didn’t matter. It was time to do something about it.

Seeing Jim stirring, Menno grabbed the hockey pucks and got up, but the student, still on the ground, shot his arms out and yanked hard again on Menno’s ankles. Menno lost his balance, falling backward, crashing to the floor. One of the hockey pucks went flying although he managed to keep hold of the other one.

Jim got up, dusted himself off, and scanned around the room. He spotted the baseball bat and picked it up from where it had landed, looking at it quizzically, as if he’d never seen it before. But then he turned and, gripping it with both hands, started coming toward Menno, who was still lying face-up. Menno rolled on his side, another jolt of pain going through him as he did so. The loose hockey puck was about four feet away. He started moving toward it.

Jim swung again with the club but managed to hit the floor instead of the rapidly beetling Menno, and the bat broke in half. Jim briefly held its stem up in front of him, the splintered end like frozen torch flame, then tossed it aside; it banged against a whiteboard-covered wall and clattered to the floor.

Menno scooped up the second puck, rolled over 180 degrees so that he was facing Jim again, and, with a sudden access of adrenaline, got to his feet and charged toward Jim, propelling him backward against the whiteboard, the dry-erase markers that had been stored on an aluminum shelf clattering to the floor. Menno slammed the pucks against Jim’s temples again, but—

Fuck!

He’d forgotten he’d turned them off. He quickly found the switch on the one in his right hand and thumbed it forward, but the other one had to be rotated single-handedly while he tried to reach its slider.

Jim spun himself and Menno around and drove a punch into Menno’s solar plexus, propelling him backward, his spine slamming against the whiteboard. The younger man pressed an open left palm against the center of Menno’s chest, pinning him, and he brought his right hand up to the edge of Menno’s jaw.

Menno was still trying to find the switch on the other puck. Jim’s thumb moved up, pressing hard into the lower part of Menno’s cheek, then he inched the digit farther upward, passing the side of Menno’s nose, then, repositioning it once more, and—

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

—digging it into Menno’s eye.

Menno brought his knee up into Jim’s groin. Jim grunted but continued to press in with his thumb and its hard, sharp nail. The pain from the marker ledge biting into Menno’s spine had seemed like agony—until he had this to compare it to, as—

Jesus Fucking God.

—as Jim’s thumb pierced his left eyeball.

Menno gasped. In a lightning-fast move, Jim switched hands, pushing Menno against the wall with his right one now and lifting his left.

Fighting nausea but still fumbling with the puck, Menno at last found its on switch. The pain was unbelievable, as—

God damn it!

—as Jim’s thumb burst through his other eyeball.

Menno groped to get the pucks over the student’s temporal lobes and—

Yes!

Judging by the sound, Jim must have collapsed at once like a sack of potatoes, but Menno couldn’t see that—he couldn’t see anything. He stumbled forward and tripped over what he guessed was one of Jim’s legs, splayed out across the tiles. Menno managed to regain his balance, made his way to the door, fumbled in a gray nothingness for the knob, and staggered out into the corridor.

Kayla Huron walked down the empty corridor. It was a warm, sunny day, and she was wearing cutoff jeans and a white blouse tied off above her navel. Since she’d broken up with Jim, she was back on the market and didn’t mind advertising—and all that time at the gym had been paying off.

Kayla had a summer job working in the physics department, which was perfect: the money she’d make would just about cover her third-year tuition.

U of M’s Fort Garry campus wasn’t that big; she’d caught sight of Jim a couple of times as he was coming out of the Tier Building—and had promptly hidden herself. She had zero interest in having contact with her many exes, and if she never saw James Marchuk again, it’d be too damn soon.

As she made her way across campus, listening to NSYNC on her Walkman, she’d kicked back a full bottle of Snapple. Thanks to it, a pit stop was in order, and so she nipped into the nearest building, taking the wide stairs up to the main floor two at time. To her left, down at the end, was a man, but the women’s room was to her right, and so she began to head that way, but—

But there had been something odd about the man. She turned around, and, yes, he was staggering, arms out in front as if groping along, and—

And, by God, it was Professor Warkentin. Even at this distance, she was sure that’s who it was. “Professor?” she called out. “Are you okay?”

He turned. “Help me,” he said weakly—or, at least, that’s what she thought she heard echoing down the corridor. She quickly jogged down to him, but found herself stopping short, her hand going to her mouth, when she saw blood streaming from his eyes…

No, no. Not from his eyes; from his eye sockets.

“My God, Professor, what happened? I—um. Where’s a pay phone? I can call 911.”

“No! No.”

“But sir!”

“Please.” The syllable was a gasp; he was clearly in agony. “Just get me to my friend’s office.”

“You need to see a doctor!”

“Just do it. Do what I ask. Please.”

“But—”

“Please!”

“Okay, okay. Which room?”

“Along this corridor. Two or three from the end. On the left. Dominic Adler’s office.”

Kayla’s grandfather had been blind; she knew how to lead someone by cupping their elbow, and she instinctively did just that.

“Who are you?” Warkentin said.

“A student,” Kayla said. “You taught me last year.” She quickly found the room he wanted. The door was closed. Kayla let go of Warkentin’s elbow and opened it, and—

“Oh, God!”

“What?”

She crouched down next to the fallen man, checking for a pulse—but the coolness of his skin told her she wasn’t going to find one. “There’s—there’s a dead man here.”

“Oh, shit!” said Warkentin. He started fumbling toward the doorway, and Kayla got up to let him get in. Once he was, he snapped, “Close the door!”

She did so. Warkentin was breathing in loud, raspy gasps. “Okay,” she said, “we have to call the police.”

“No,” the professor replied sharply. “No. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“But he’s dead.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Thin, black hair. Sir, I think his neck is broken.”

“Is he wearing a calculator watch?”

“Um—yeah.”

“Damn it. That’s Dom. Jesus. Jesus.”

“There’s a phone here,” said Kayla. “Do I have to dial nine to get an outside line?”

“Don’t call 911,” said Warkentin. “Don’t call anyone.”

“Why not?”

“Help me find a chair.”

Kayla wheeled the one out from behind the desk and placed it between the wall and the body lying on the floor; she then guided Warkentin toward it, and he lowered his bulk into it. His chest was visibly heaving, he was slick with sweat, and his skin had turned a yellow gray.

“Okay,” he said, once seated. “Listen to me. This”—he gestured at his own face—“can’t be reported. Nor can that.” He waved vaguely in the direction of the body.

“But—”

“Listen to me! There’s classified research going on here. It—um, it got out of hand, but—”

“Classified?” Kayla repeated, astonished.

“Yes. For the US military. So we can’t go to the Canadian authorities.”

That all seemed rather improbable to Kayla, but it was also weirdly fascinating. “Are you sure you don’t need to see a doctor?” she said.

“For God’s sake, of course I do!” He didn’t seem to be actively bleeding anymore, but he winced frequently—which looked odd and creepy with his eye sockets the way they were. He fumbled for his wallet and proffered it. She noted it was rather fat with bills, including a couple of brown ones, a denomination she rarely saw.

“My cousin is a doctor, a surgeon. He’ll help. There’s a little slip of paper in there with phone numbers on it, see? Jacob Reimer, that’s my cousin. Call him.”

“I will,” said Kayla, moving over to the phone, “but—”

Warkentin was breathing rapidly, great shuddering inhalations, and he was hunched over now, clearly in agony. “Oh, God,” he said. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“—but, sir, what are we going to do about the body?”

“We’ve—God, fuck, damn, shit—we’ve… we’ve got to get rid of it.”

“What?” said Kayla.

“We’ve got to dispose of it. No one can ever know.”

Kayla felt the old excitement welling inside her. Carving up neighborhood cats and dogs had been glorious, but this—this would be so much better! Such a release, such a wondrous release!

“I’m in,” she said.