by Tim Curran
So, put it back then.
But he couldn’t. Like a collector with a new, rare coin, he just wanted to look at it.
He set the container on the table.
It was a Lucite specimen jar with a pressurized lid. Even if the worm did wake up, it wasn’t going anywhere. The Old Man knew he was violating the protocol that he himself had drafted. But there was no one around. And, if there was, they wouldn’t question him.
The worm was coiled up like a snake in the jar, floating sluggishly in a brine of preservative. Bloated, white as cream, it didn’t look like much. Stretched end to end, it might’ve been four feet. Much smaller than some. Sexually mature. It was sectioned like a slice of onion, each section possessing a set of curled hooks that it clung to the intestinal walls of its host with.
Fascinating.
It was the only word that seemed to fit the things.
Fascinating.
The Old Man stood there, staring through the Plexiglas faceplate of his hood. He thought for a moment the thing had moved. But it had to be dead. It was stored at below freezing. The only reason it didn’t freeze solid was because of the alcohol-based solution in the jar. And there was no way it could survive that sort of toxic immersion.
Wait.
He’d seen it again. One of the segments had... shuddered. He supposed it was possible there was still some low-grade neurological activity in it. The idea seemed unlikely, but it was possible with a flatworm. They didn’t have brains as such, but collections of nerve cells that evolutionary biologists thought were the forerunners of brains.
It moved again.
Not just a segment this time, but the entire worm.
It turned in the fluid, uncoiled, its tail end brushing the glass. The Old Man could see its head now. Eyeless, colorless, like some ghastly flower bulb. It had two bisecting slits for a mouth.
It can’t possibly be alive.
The very idea was insane, of course. But he could almost feel the life in the thing—an appalling, primeval vitality that was unnamable, unbelievable, and maybe even unholy. He brought his face closer to the jar, staring, connecting with the thing like he was part of it, part of its life cycle. A warm, dull sensation settled into the back of his brain. It was not unpleasant. Calming, gentle…like soft stroking fingers. Something a baby might feel as it was held by its mother. He wondered what it would be like to feel the worm his hands, coiling in his palm, sliding through his fingers, caressing his cheek as it moved towards his mouth. The very idea gave him a weird, exotic, erotic sort of thrill. The worm…dear God, the worm in my hands…touching it, feeling it. It really wasn’t ugly when you got to know it. It was beautiful. Slender, smooth, almost poetic in its convolutions. Something that demanded to be touched, felt, handled. The tactile attraction was almost addictive in its pull.
I want to feel it…to slide my fingers along its pale obscene length—
“No, damn you,” the Old Man said suddenly, startling even himself. “It won’t be that easy, you sonofabitch.”
He put it back in the freezer. Put it back to sleep.
So, that was how it worked.
The thing had mutated beyond anything they could have imagined. It had developed some bastard form of mesmerism. Not unknown in the animal world, but unprecedented in the lower invertebrates. By God, was such a thing possible? He thought of those skinheads in Louisville. Gentle as lambs to a man and woman, the reports were saying. And was that it? Was that what mankind was to become? Host organisms devoid of free thought and independent action?
That’s what the worms had mutated into: puppet masters.
It put a new and deadly spin on everything.
They had to work faster now.
Dear Lord, what have I set loose upon the face of your creation?
DETROIT, SIX MILE ROAD:
WOODWARD AND CASS
6:40 P.M.
Her name was Dee Dee Rubelle.
That was not her real name, of course, but when you were firmly ensconced in the entertainment world as she was, you had to have a stage name. Dee Dee was pushing forty and getting that wizened, alley cat shuffle to her prostitutes often got after too many lean years in the dirty streets. Dee Dee had seen some good times, but not in the past ten years. She’d started hooking to support her junk habit and the more junk she did, the more hooking she had to do. The more you did, the more you had to do.
Once upon a time she’d been an attractive young woman. Her Johns used to tell her she looked just like Pam Grier. They used to ask for her by name. But the years had passed and now she was looking less like Pam Grier and more like an emaciated Rosie Greer. Starting out, she’d told herself it was just for a time, that when her manager got her some good-paying singing gigs, the whoring was done.
But that time had never come.
Oh, her manager had once set her up with some record execs... but they were more interested in what they could put into her mouth rather than what came out of it. She guessed her manager—Joey Lips—was nothing but a pimp like everyone said.
But at least then she’d had a pimp.
Now even those shitballs wouldn’t touch her. She was on her own and had been for six years. Tonight, she was working a stretch of sidewalk with a few other independents. Sometimes, it was a good place.
Sometimes it wasn’t.
One by one the other girls had been picked up and now it was just Dee Dee.
She could’ve moved, maybe. But she knew better than that. The prime areas were worked by hookers who belonged to some pimp’s stable. If she were to try and muscle into any of those areas, she’d probably get beat-up. If not something worse.
But she had to do something soon; the pain was getting bad. She needed a taste. Her head was starting to ache something awful, like a vise was turning just behind her eyes, squeezing, squeezing. And the cramps... oh Christ... she could feel them starting to work at her insides, pulling, chewing, tearing. She wiped a dew of sweat from her face, flashing plenty of leg and ass at every car that passed.
Bastards would slow, but then move on.
They want the young stuff down there, Dee Dee told herself. All that luscious sweet and sassy pussy that hadn’t yet seen twenty. You work it, girls, you just work it. Give you ten years or fifteen, you’ll know the taste of pain and desperation once your looks are gone and the tracks are etched into your arms and you’ve been pumped so full of cream your brain ain’t much but sponge cake.
Shit.
She turned just as someone came walking up the sidewalk. It was Squabs. Squabs was her man. Only Squabs was kind of hunched-over, walking like some old man.
“Squabs?” Dee Dee said. “That you?”
“Yeah,” he grunted and fell against the building next to her. “How... how you doin’, baby? How... oh shit... motherfucker...”
“You don’t look so good, Squabs.”
“Feel like shit, girl.” He was clutching his belly, his black face contorted in a mask of agony. “Got a bug or somethin’... last couple days... my guts hurt... fuck...”
“You need some rest, baby,” Dee Dee told him, keeping her distance. There was something about him she just didn’t like. He smelled... funny. A strange sort of hot, yeasty smell was wafting off him in feverish waves. It was gagging. “You look like I feel.”
“I ain’t... got none, girl, if that’s what yer thinking.”
“Just a little... maybe a little?”
Squabs was doubled-over now, shaking his head. “Nothin’. Tripper, man, Tripper got busted. Gonna be dry for a while.”
Dee Dee hugged herself with trembling fingers. “Shit, baby, I need a taste. I’m feelin’ real bad, you know? I’m hurtin’ real bad...”
“You and me both... oh shit, shit,” Squabs groaned, going down on his knees. His body shook with dry heaves for a moment, then it abated, leaving him crouching there, his teeth chattering violently, saliva dangling from his lips. “Somethin’ goin’ around... somethin’... some bug... lots of motherfuckers go
t it... hope you don’t get it...”
Dee Dee helped him shakily to his feet. His flesh was hot and damp. She felt bad for him, real bad. The human part of her that wasn’t completely dead felt pity. But that part was minute, overshadowed by the need which was huge and glaring and sharp-tooth hungry.
“Better get yourself to bed, baby,” she told him. “You know anywhere I can get somethin’? A name, somewhere. I don’t care. I gotta have somethin’.”
But Squabs had found his feet and staggered off, his sickness in tow.
Oh, shit, oh fuck.
The pain was rising up now, burning fire-hot in her veins. It was like every cell in her body was crying out, needing, wanting. She had to get something, some way, somehow...
A black Chevy van rolled to a stop at the curb.
The window unrolled. Some bald white guy was staring at her. Dee Dee didn’t like him right away. Something just plain wrong about him. His eyes were black and empty. They gleamed like glass.
“Get in,” he said. No emotion. No attempt at it.
Dee Dee looked up and down the street. “It’ll cost you.”
“Yes,” he said. “Get in.”
Knowing somehow she was making a big mistake, Dee Dee got into the back. There was another guy back there. Another dude with skin that was fish-belly white... pasty, dry as death.
The van rolled down the street, found an alley, turned in.
“What you boys like tonight? You want everything? You want...”
Her old spiel evaporated on her lips. The car smelled like Squabs had, only worse, a hundred times worse. It was like a burning, gaseous envelope in the car.
“I want you to put something in your mouth,” the guy next to her said.
His friend in the front seat just sat there quietly, motionless as a dime store dummy.
“Is that what you want, baby? You want something sucked?” Dee Dee managed, though her heart was not in it. But the money. If she got the money... maybe, somewhere, somehow she could get a taste. “I’ll suck you so good, baby, you’ll die and go to heaven. Show me that cock. Show me what I love.”
It was dark in the back of the van, Dee Dee couldn’t see a thing. Then again, she didn’t need to.
She reached for the man’s crotch, but he batted her hand away. Instead, he grabbed a handful of hair and led her down to it. And that was okay. Lots of guys liked it that way. Dee Dee had done it more times than maybe she’d ever breathed.
She could see something glistening.
His cock? Why was it so wet?
And that smell…that dirty, dank smell was gone, replaced by something sweet like the juicy pulp of peaches and fresh-running sap, a cloying odor that filled her mouth with water and made her ache inside with something like a cellular hunger.
Then her head was pressed down, and she felt something cold, wet, and rubbery pressed to her lips and then it was in her mouth, gagging her, sliding down her throat, too thick, too long...
She started to fight, to squirm, but hands held her in place. Her fingers found the guy’s balls. And that’s when she realized it wasn’t his cock suffocating her at all. What was in her mouth and feeding down her throat was coming out of a ragged hole in the guy’s belly.
But by then, she was no longer fighting.
She opened her mouth as wide as it would go, feeling the worm filling her with sinuous, flexing contractions that brought a shuddering erotic pleasure.
And then…and then, like being in a dream. Like finding a cloud and drifting on it, hitching a ride into distant candy cane fields, nothing but sweetness in her mouth and up her nose, oozing in through her pores, owning her and becoming her. One minute she was on those cold, barren streets hungering for the needle and the next, she was out of her skin. She shed it like a snake, left her bones behind and rose up higher and higher like petals on the wind, ascending into a stream of gushing pheromonal warmth where she was not only safe, but belonged.
And this was how, as her sanity, life, and self-respect dangled by a dirty thread, Dee Dee Rubelle finally realized her purpose on the planet
CHICAGO: THE LOOP
7:12 P.M.
Gabe Hebberman sat in his office in the Theater District, the wheels of his mind spinning in a dozen unpleasant directions. On his desk before him was a blank pad of paper, the top sheet nearly filled with doodling and scratchings. The name Shawna was written a dozen times. Underlined. Circled. Followed by countless question marks and exclamation points. He’d been at it for several days now and still, he was no closer.
No closer at all.
It was a busy day. Writer’s meetings. Meetings with the circulation manager, the foreign distribution manager, art directors, design people, the production director. It went on and on. The problem of Shawna Geddes had arrived at a most inopportune time: the weekly deadline.
After a drawn-out lunch with the controller and the accounting manager, Gabe told his secretary to cancel everything. A woman’s life was possibly at stake and there were other people who could do what needed to be done. It was what he paid them for.
He resumed his search for Shawna Geddes.
He started with the Hall of Records, the local hospitals, and the Social Security Administration. Nothing. He moved on to the DMV, his contacts at the IRS and the IDES. Still nothing. He called Columbia University, talked with their alumni director. There was no record of a Shawna Geddes. He double-checked that on their web site. More nothing. Finally, he called the Chicago Tribune. He gave the personnel director a line about hiring a Shawna Geddes, a former employee of theirs. There was no record of her. And that was funny, the director said, because she knew Shawna. Odd. Gabe’s parting shot was to call the Metro Police. He had a contact there. A good one. There were no outstanding warrants on a Shawna Geddes. Gabe even had his contact search the police database at a state, municipal, and even federal level. No good. Beginning to feel more than a little paranoid himself, Gabe inquired into Shawna’s landlady. Yes, the woman had been murdered. An investigation had begun. And Harry Niles? Anything on him? Yes, he was wanted for eluding police on a standard traffic stop. No assault involved.
So Harry still existed, but not Harry’s friend.
On a hunch, Gabe called a friend at the FBI. He searched their database. Nope, nada on old Shawny. That girl just did not exist. Not anywhere. Non-person from the word go.
It was scary.
Unless she was using an alias or was just plain bullshitting him about who and what she was, they had a real problem here. Whoever was after her was goddamn thorough. So thorough it was scary.
Gabe mulled it over in his mind for the thousandth time.
Harry was right about it not being any organized crime family or upper echelon drug gang. Even they couldn’t pull off something like this. This took real power, complete and omnipotent power. The people behind this had resources that were positively staggering.
Unless, of course, this was all a load of shit.
But Gabe didn’t believe that. Not for a minute.
Unless Shawna Geddes was the greatest actress since Meryl Streep and Harry was in on it, too, then this was a major conspiracy. Something so black and ugly it literally defied the imagination.
But who had such power?
The clue, as Harry had indicated, were the men in the protective suits. They had to be feds or military. Shawna had seen something so secretive they were willing to kill to keep it that way.
But what?
What was happening here?
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA:
CBT CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS
7:17 P.M.
What bothered Elizabeth was that there were things going on that she could not adequately fathom. She did not like not knowing. Good intelligence had served her well for many years and without it, she felt blind. It was like being in a pitch black room, fumbling about for the light switch or the door that would lead out. It made her nervous. It made her angry. It made her want to lash out and mainly because she was afraid.
On the desk before her was a classified intelligence briefing from 3Eye, or Third Eye technically, which was the security arm of CBT. They spent the majority of their time and resources spying on those who spied on CBT—everyone from the FBI to the CIA to the DoD—and conducting multi-leveled corporate espionage, particularly against other biotech companies, here and abroad.
The document was brief, simply a detailed log of the movements of Gordon Parks of the NSA. He was in bed with The Collective, too. As far as Elizabeth knew, he was the only one beside herself (and The Collective) that knew that the BioGenesis outbreak in the U.S. had been carefully planned. Forget DCI Pershing and the rest of the conspirators, they were being played by expert hands, reaching for some Machiavellian dream of power that would be snatched from them in the eleventh hour.
They had no idea of the bigger picture.
Elizabeth herself knew about the BioGenesis end of things and Pershing’s upcoming coup, but not what happened beyond that. What bothered her was the fear that she was out in the cold, no longer a player but another hand puppet being carefully worked.
What if Gordon Parks knew? What if The Collective had brought him in? What if he knew the big picture?
That would mean I’m not to be trusted. That would mean that I will be cast aside or disposed with completely once I’ve served my purpose.
In the intelligence world, she knew, very few ever knew what was REALLY going on. The majority of agents, operatives, bureaucrats, and players were in the dark. Things were compartmentalized. Everyone had a piece of the pie. They knew a little about what was going on, but only enough so that they could do their jobs properly. Only the elite received full disclosure and saw the big picture.
For a long time now, Elizabeth had been one of them. Many years before, she had been a biophysicist at CBT who had ruthlessly clawed her way to the upper echelon of the synthetics division. Her ambition was legendary. As a scientist, she was competent; as a player, a major contender with godlike ambitions. She had risen to the top of the division via subterfuge and blackmail, by taking credit for work that wasn’t her own and hacking her way into the computers of more brilliant biologists and stealing their work. And when that didn’t work, she seduced them, both male and female, using her looks when all else failed. But certainly never above such a thing.