Ned threw his phone onto the train track and picked a loose brick from a ruined Red Reserve. Bill scampered across the rocks and rails to retrieve the phone and chomped on it twice to get a grip.
“Murray—!” Ned said.
Bill Murray looked eagerly at Ned, the phone clamped in his mouth. Ned shook his head and pointed down. The dog released it and sauntered back to his owner.
As they drove away, Ned heaved the brick on to the dashboard. His mind's eye was back with the phone. He imagined that the dog’s yellow humors would break the phone down, but thought better of it. Bill Murray was black, but that did not make him pure. They were both of them mutts, and it was their impurity that made them outcasts.
The yellow king’s flag pierced the horizon, declaring the Special Hospital his property. It featured a black snake circling a single black star. Like the corporate logo, the snake was swallowing its own tail.
Ned kicked the gas down and tore over the hill, past a guard tower and through a chain link fence. Bill barked in excitement, and the yells of guards sounded like the answer of a wolf pack. Sore from the collision, Ned strained to press the gas down with a brick. A guard smashed the door in and Ned braced for the jolt forward.
A pop gave way to a whine and the van lurched forward on its left and back wheels. Ned was flung into the broken glass of the door, his forehead catching the brunt of the collision as the doors burst open. The right wheel billowed smoke under the weight of the chassis, filling Ned's nostrils as he dangled from the door.
His grip slipped and the asphalt met him with surprising force. Ned lifted a stinging hand and his breathing steadied. Past it, a white streak came into focus.
He crashed in a handicapped zone.
Ned attempted to rise, but a yellow rubber boot shoved him back down.
"Don't even think about it, punk."
Three guards circled Ned. Two lifted him to his feet and one held a hunting dagger to his neck.
"Where is your device?!" the knife-wielder asked.
"He doesn't have it," another guard said. A phone peered from his hands through Ned's clothes.
"You're not gonna get my bile," Ned said. He hocked mucus and spat a wad in the knife-wielder's face. "But you can have my spit for free."
Another kick from behind. Ned wondered if the Yellow King was watching from a security camera or the astral plane. Neither theory made his back feel any better.
The guards dragged him into the building. Ned was too weak to lift his head, only seeing the legs of nurses and beds strolling by.
The PA system crackled to life. Ned winced. The princes of the airwaves were invisible, but their voices were drenched in pain. Carcosa broke into the Special Hospital like a hurricane of sound, pouring a galaxy of noise through the black star of the spirit-world.
The concussive force knocked the Yellow guards off-balance. Ned fell down, slipping into what his childhood friends called "Indian-style." It was one of a dozen forgotten arts given up in favor of martial arts.
Ned, yellow-bellied though he was, could finally see the masked faces around him. The silence of his mind was sterilizing, stirring him to desire absolute rest.
Only it wasn't quiet. And it wasn't clean. One woman was coughing and heaving, her bile sloshing in a transparent sack at her side. A nurse pushed a pick line carrying bile, its tube attached to an elderly man crying and laughing.
Ned shut his eyes and wished that everything would go away. He opened his eyes to find himself standing in a conference room. He could hear Bill Murray barking, but it was faint.
"Young man, can I help you?"
Ned ignored the voice. Murray's cries were coming from outside. He ran to the window.
"Young man!"
He was just barking at the hospital. Stupid dog.
"Red alert! Get the nearest Preserve on the phone!" a bespectacled man in a white coat said. He waved a manila envelope like a thug with a gun.
Ned sneered. "Are you the Yellow King? Or are you his golden retriever?"
"Am I--? Where do you think you are?" the man in white said.
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