Chapter 11: Hoodslam

Trevor took great pains to impress upon Chloe that yes, Max was a little banged up, but was otherwise fine, and that Chloe could take her home as soon as she got to the hospital. All that was needed on Chloe's end was a shirt from home, as the one Max had been wearing at the time of Lorraine's attack had been ruined.

As Chloe drove from the Sefton house to her own, her brain was screaming at itself, trying to get to where she was going as fast as she could, while still attempting to keep The Taxi at the limit, as getting pulled over would only make the trip longer.

She barely remembered parking behind Blackwell, and didn't even notice along the long power-walk from the parking lot to the house that the place seemed to be deserted. It was only one in the afternoon.

Chloe grabbed a couple of things off of the hangers in the closet at random, and marched back to The Taxi, during which her skin itched with both worry and rage. Chloe tried to conjure (in Technicolor, with Dolby Digital Surround Sound) the gruesome routine of invasive graphic violence that she would visit upon the person who did this to Max.

This mental floorshow continued as Chloe drove to the hospital, parked The Taxi in the adjacent parking garage, and made her way inside. She asked for directions from the receptionist and made her way to the second floor.

Standing outside Room 288 was Joyce, Trevor, Mayor Newman, and Principal Grant. They had been talking quietly and ardently to each other until they all happened to see Chloe at the same time, at which point they stopped and regarded her as though she was the one bringing the water back to a group of passengers crashed in the desert.

"What are you all doing out here?" Chloe asked.

"She wouldn't let us in," Joyce said. "She wanted to talk to you first."

Chloe nodded to all of them and entered the hospital room.

The moment she saw Max in the hospital bed, the rage and anger that had been careening back and forth inside Chloe stilled. Max was looking out the window, so lost in thought that she hadn't noticed Chloe enter the room. She was lying above the covers of the bed in a hospital gown, her slacks still on and her feet in just her socks. There was a raw strip of skin around her throat and her left arm was bandaged above the elbow.

Max finally saw Chloe and, without smiling, held her arms out.

Chloe went to her. She dropped the bag of clothes by the bed and gently put her arms around Max while letting herself get wrapped into Max's grip. Their lips met and their eyes closed.

But when that small moment of paradise ended, and they were face to face again, Chloe started shaking. Someone tried to kill Max, and she was the one who was nervous? This thought drowned out everything else in her head, and as she sat one leg on the bed next to Max, she checked all the drawers in her brain for something to say.

"I want to be the supportive girlfriend, here," Chloe said.

"You are the supportive girlfriend. You're doing fine."

Chloe nodded in a way that showed she didn't believe that. "Yeah, but the thing I like to do is listen when you have a problem. So I know what words to pick. I… kinda can't move until you do."

There was a giggle in Max's voice, even though her face refused to crack so much as a grin. "I hate to break it to you, Chloe, but I don't have anything to say."

Chloe tilted her head, as if to say C'mon, now. "I know you, Max. You used to keep a journal. Everything that happens to you, you have the words for. Which means you have a speech prepared."

Max turned back to the window and was quiet for a bit. Chloe waited.

Max finally said "I remember… It was Spring Break at Blackwell, and I wanted to go to Portland with Kate. I asked you if you wanted to go, but you said you had personal reasons…"

"Yeah," Chloe said, almost blushing. "I… kinda… can't get comfortable around Kate."

Max looked at Chloe as though she had just cussed her out in a foreign tongue. "What do you mean you can't get comfortable around Kate? She's Kate. She's the only person in the history of ever who's more adorable than the actual baby rabbit she used to own."

Chloe rubbed her forehead. "I swear. Like… a lot. I don't… I can't do that around Kate."

Max's eyebrows knitted together. "It's okay to swear around Kate. I do it. She won't break."

"Yeah, but just thinking about it feels weird, though."

Max sighed and looked back at the window again. "Anyway. Kate and I went down to Portland, we went to a couple of tea shops, we went to Powell's, and we were just bumming around downtown. We… we passed by this pet store, right? And in the window was this little baby pug. And… and Kate squeed so hard that she started crying."

Chloe grinned at this.

"And because she started crying, I started crying. Just two teenage girls standing outside a pet store, crying at how cute the puppy in the window was."

Max looked at Chloe, and she was trying her hardest to smile at this. When she couldn't she looked back at the window again.

"I disfigured a girl today. Permanently. And that pet store… just seems really far away right now."

After a pause, Chloe asked "How?"

"Lorraine Foster, one of my students, tried to strangle me with an extension cord. I broke free. She came after me, and I broke a fresh pot of coffee across her face."

Chloe successfully combated the urge to tell Max how fucking hardcore that was.

"Max… She tried to kill you."

"I know that. I know that should matter more than it should, but it doesn't… And I know that when the two of you meet, and the two of you will meet, you will kill her for what she's done."

Max looked back at Chloe with challenge in her eyes. Chloe knew what it meant. It wasn't a judgment on Chloe's character per se, but more a preemptive grief for the woman Chloe was at that moment, soon to be replaced by the woman Chloe would become after she had amassed a body count. She knew that Max thought she would be justified in the long run, if push came to shove and this Lorraine Foster girl gave them no choice, but it had been said by many a man and woman in the course of human events that killing changes someone forever. Looking into Max's eyes, Chloe became frightened of who she'd be after she put Lorraine down. Almost as frightened about what would happen if she didn't.

It was at that moment that a nurse came in.

"Hi," the nurse said. "I'm just here to take your blood pressure."

"Okay," Max said. Chloe got off of the bed and made her way around the other side to stand sentry.

"What happened to you?" the nurse asked as she applied the blood pressure cuff to Max's arm.

"Someone tried to strangle me," Max said.

"I see," the nurse said. She pointed to the bandages on Max's other arm. "Those don't look like what you get when someone tries to strangle you."

"Well, Max said, "I smashed a pot of coffee across their face. Then I passed out, but when I did, I landed in some of the shards from the coffee pot."

"Jesus," Chloe said. "How bad is it?"

"I dunno," Max said. "By the time I came to, I was already bandaged up. It ruined my shirt, so…"

"Oh," Chloe said, and picked the plastic grocery bag of clothes off the floor. She handed them to Max as the nurse removed the blood pressure cuff.

"Wowser," Max said as she got the shirts out. "Blasts from the past get neither blastier nor pastier."

"Jesus, really?" Chloe asked.

"Painkillers. You shush."

Chloe looked at the shirts that she had absent-mindedly raided from the closet. She had gotten a gray hoodie and Max's old pink "Jane Doe" tank-top.

"It is the Max Caulfield special," Chloe said, trying to play it like she did it on purpose.

The nurse stopped what she was doing to look at Max. "Max Caulfield?"

Max looked at the nurse. "Yeah?"

"Your name is Max Caulfield?"

"Yes," Max said, and Chloe could tell she was gearing up to deal with a fan. Chloe herself wasn't so sure.

The nurse looked up and nodded, smiling in such a way that Chloe guessed it was just to herself.

"What is it?" Max asked.

The nurse came back to Earth. "What? Oh, uh… It's nothing."

"Enlighten us on this nothing," Chloe said.

"Oh, well… Y'know… Max Caulfield. Like in Grease 2."

One of the things Chloe loved about Max was how confusion could play out on her face. It was just fucking adorable.

"What do you mean 'like in Grease 2?'" Max asked.

"That's the name of the lead," the nurse said. "The one who's in love with Michelle Pfieffer."

"The lead male character in Grease 2 is named Max Caulfield?"

"No, not the character," the nurse said. "The actor."

Chloe could not easily describe the look on Max's face. It was like someone had come up to Max with the missing half of a medallion that proved they were long lost siblings, and that someone liked to pee in mailboxes. She looked at Chloe as though life had betrayed her.

"Did… Did my parents know about this? This is just weird…"

This put Chloe at a crossroads.

Steering Max away from this would put her mind back on the fact that someone tried to kill her, and that she did something she wasn't cool with in the slightest to keep that from happening. But rubbing in the fact that Max shared a name with an actor that was in a movie that everyone hated and yet, paradoxically, only four people had seen to get her mind off of it just seemed petty and juvenile. Chloe wondered what constituted "Cheering Max Up" on a day this awful.

Chloe made her decision.

"It's not just weird," Chloe said before she put her hands out and wiggled them. "It's electrifyin'!"

The look of heightened betrayal on Max's face made Chloe laugh. Max plucked the fedora off of Chloe's head and put it on her own, summoning all the dignity and pomp of an elderly English dowager when she said…

"You shush!"

"There is no Lorraine Foster," Trevor said.

After the nurse had left and Max changed into her tank top and hoodie (Chloe had made a point to fake-yell "Boobs!" when Max took the hospital gown off, which made Max smile), she bade the gallery of concerned bystanders outside the hospital room to come in. Mayor Newman, Joyce, Principal Grant, and Trevor gathered in separate parts of the room.

"What do you mean there's no Lorraine Foster?" Joyce asked.

Trevor looked at Principal Grant like she was the guilty party in playground scuffle. She collected herself, and began.

"All the records and references pertaining to a Lorraine Foster are fake. The transcripts from the schools she went to, the phone numbers, all of it. I'd be surprised if Lorraine Foster was actually her real name."

The room fell into silence as all assembled tried to believe it.

"How does this happen?" Chloe asked. "None of the people at Blackwell spotted it when she was admitted?"

"I checked with the staff," Principal Grant said. "They say that the numbers provided during the admission process had people at the other end of them, but we tried them again this morning, and they were all disconnected. I don't know how she did this, but she didn't do it alone."

A horrible thought entered Chloe's brain, but Max, smart woman that she was, gave voice to it.

"She was smuggled into that school just to get to me," Max said. "She said that she'd waited for years to kill me, but she's eighteen years old, and I've spent most of her life in Seattle. I don't know what I could have done to piss her off so much."

Another silence fell on the room, this time broken by Mayor Newman.

"You do realize that this isn't going to stand," Mayor Newman said to Principal Grant. "I'll have your job for this."

Principal Grant just seemed to deflate on the spot. "You're too late," she said. "The Blackwell Board of Trustees called me an hour ago after an emergency meeting when the news of this broke, and asked for my resignation. Mister Michener will be taking over."

Chloe remembered Mister Michener from her own abbreviated time at Blackwell. History teacher. Very long-winded

"My last act as Principal of Blackwell Academy," Ex-Principal Grant said, "was to cancel all classes until this girl is caught."

Michelle Grant looked at Max. "I'm sorry, Miss Caulfield."

Chloe looked at Max, who seemed incapable of saying anything at all. Then she looked back at Michelle Grant, who nodded at all of them under an invisible hood of defeat, and bowed out of the room.

"Trevor?" Mayor Newman asked. Trevor looked back at him.

"I hope you don't plan on getting sleep any time soon. This is no longer your number one priority. This is your only priority."

And with that, Mayor Newman left as well. The four people still left in the room stared at the door he just went through.

"That man," Trevor said, "is a prick."

Chloe, Max, and Joyce looked at Trevor. "He doesn't seem so bad," Joyce said.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure his heart's in the right place," Trevor said, "but ever since all the dirty cops went bye-bye, he comes in every day and micromanages the shit out of the department. It's what we get for electing an insurance salesman to be our mayor."

"He used to sell insurance?" Chloe asked.

"Oh, he still does," Trevor said. "He does both. Being mayor pays dick, apparently."

"Well," Joyce said, "at least he didn't legislate himself a pay-raise like the Senators in Washington do."

"And that's a point in his favor," Trevor said, and his eyes found Chloe's.

"But still, though," Trevor said. "I guess you can't fight city hall."

"Is this really necessary?" Max asked as Chloe wheeled Max to the elevator in a wheelchair.

"Doctor's orders," Chloe said. "You get the wheelchair treatment until we get to the front door."

"Is there, like, a little corral for the wheelchairs outside?" Max asked. "Like for shopping carts at the supermarket?"

"I don't know," Chloe said. "I didn't look."

Chloe pressed the button for the elevator, and the door immediately opened. She wheeled Max inside.

"I just wish someone told me," Max said as the elevator doors closed.

"About Lorraine?"

"No," Max said. "About Grease 2."

Chloe smiled. "Is that still bugging you?"

"It's just kind of weird that it took me twenty-three years to find this out. I mean, if I knew a kid who had the same name as the guy who played in Grease 2, I would have made that kid's life a living hell. I mean I wouldn't have, but… you know what I mean. No one even made fun of me in school about that."

"Exactly," Chloe said. "Because no one's seen Grease 2."

"The nurse did," Max said.

"That just means she lost."

"Lost what?"

"Lost life, Max. She saw Grease 2 and lost at life."

The elevator doors opened, and Chloe heard a monstrous, high-pitched racket coming from outside.

"What the hell is that?" Max asked.

Max got out of the wheelchair and accompanied Chloe to the automatic doors that led out to the hospital parking lot. Through those doors, they could see a doctor and a patient staring up, slack-jawed, at the sky. Once they got outside, Max and Chloe saw what they were staring at.

Birds.

Seemingly every bird in Arcadia Bay was flying in a clockwise spiral above the town, screeching and squawking at such a high pitch that Chloe and Max couldn't hear themselves think. So massive and dense was this spiral of birds that it was doing a very good job at blotting out the sun. Max put her hands up to her ears. And then…

Nothing.

All of the birds in the sky fell silent instantaneously. The only assurance that Chloe hadn't simply gone deaf was that she could hear her boots shift on the pavement. And in this silence, one thought announced itself in Chloe's brain with neon lights and blaring sirens.

This is the second plague.

THUMP!

A robin fell a few feet away from them, its wings splayed out, feathers rising a few inches into the air from the impact with the pavement. Chloe put two and two together.

"EVERYONE GET INSIDE, NOW!"

The doctor, the patient, and the one woman who was gawping in the parking lot didn't need to be told twice. They booked it through the automatic doors shortly after Chloe and Max did, as a rainbow of dead birds started falling from the sky, denting cars and shattering windows.

Chloe could see an old man who had been between the parking garage and the hospital trying to hobble his way toward the doors. He tripped on the curb and fell from the concrete awning that was protecting him to the unprotected parking lot. He tried to get up, but a blue jay connected with his back, flattening him to the pavement. A falling owl took him in his bald head, and he stopped moving altogether.

Chloe moved toward the automatic doors, but Max's hand on her shoulder stopped her.

"Chloe, no."

Chloe got her hand ready. "Chloe, yes."

Booommm…

The shimmer. The counter-clockwise spiral burning out. The birds rising from the air. The old man getting up and reverse-hobbling back toward the parking garage.

Chloe let go and booked it outside before Max could stop her.

She made it a point to stay under the concrete awning as she made it to the old man. She took him by the arm.

"It's alright," Chloe said. "Just stay under here, and you'll be fine. I'll help you."

Chloe and the old man slowly made their way down the sidewalk as the birds kept falling with sickening thumps feet away. They entered the automatic doors, and the assembled small audience of bystanders took a small moment of time away from being terrified to help the old man further into the hospital. Chloe leaned on the brick wall and nursed the headache that was forming in her skull.

"Chloe?"

Chloe looked up and saw Max with fear in her eyes as the sound of falling birds from outside abated.

"What?" Chloe asked.

"Your nose."

Chloe used her index finger to wipe her upper lip. It came away with a glaze of blood.