They inched their way back to the car, the world spinning around them. The hard-hats met them on the way out of the Vesta Lunch and their eyes went to Alan’s bloodied face. They looked away. Alan felt his kinship with the woken world around him slip away and knew he’d never be truly a part of it.
He wouldn’t let Kurt walk him up the steps and put him to bed, so instead Kurt watched from the curb until Alan went inside, then gunned the engine and pulled away. It was still morning rush hour, and the Market-dwellers were clacking toward work on hard leather shoes or piling their offspring into minivans.
Alan washed the blood off his scalp and face and took a gingerly shower. When he turned off the water, he heard muffled sounds coming through the open windows. A wailing electric guitar. He went to the window and stuck his head out and saw Krishna sitting on an unmade bed in the unsoundproofed bedroom, in a grimy housecoat, guitar on his lap, eyes closed, concentrating on the screams he was wringing from the instrument’s long neck.
Alan wanted to sleep, but the noise and the throb of his head—going in counterpoint—and the sight of Davey, flicking from climber to bush to hillside, scuttling so quickly Alan was scarce sure he’d seen him, it all conspired to keep him awake.
He bought coffees at the Donut Time on College—the Greek’s wouldn’t be open for hours—and brought it over to Kurt’s storefront, but the lights were out, so he wandered slowly home, sucking back the coffee.
Benny had another seizure halfway up the mountain, stiffening up and falling down before they could catch him.
As Billy lay supine in the dirt, Alan heard a distant howl, not like a wolf, but like a thing that a wolf had caught and is savaging with its jaws. The sound made his neck prickle and when he looked at the little ones, he saw that their eyes were rolling crazily.
“Got to get him home,” Alan said, lifting Benny up with a grunt. The little ones tried to help, but they just got tangled up in Benny’s long loose limbs and so Alan shooed them off, telling them to keep a lookout behind him, look for Davey lurking on an outcropping or in a branch, rock held at the ready.