Bioterror

by Tim Curran

  “None.”

  “What?”

  The Old Man studied his manicured nails. “At first, you were a security risk. But not so much now. The only problem, Mr. Niles, as I see it, is that I’m not entirely convinced that your tabloid career is not a cover.”

  “A cover?”

  “Yes. A cover. And that maybe Shawna Geddes is working for you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’m no Seymour Hersh. I have no interest in that shit anymore.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t. So why don’t you be reasonable and call off the heat on us already? We’re no threat.”

  “Have you ever heard of something called Section Five?” the Old Man asked him.

  “No.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Harry shifted in his seat. “All right, I have heard of it. Years ago. A shadow agency. Scientific in nature. My sources in Washington said Section Five was fooling around with weird things. Fringe science for military/intelligence applications. Genetic engineering. Nanotechnology. Psychokinesis. Brain-washing. Things like that. But that was years ago when I was still active. I leave that to the young guys now.”

  The Old Man did not look convinced. “Tell me about Project BioGenesis.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  That was true even if the Old Man did not want to believe it. Harry knew about Section Five or The Group as it was known, S5. He knew it had connections to CBT and a certain alley cat named Elizabeth Toma. He also knew that it was run by a nameless man who was considered very powerful and very dangerous. And that was the scary part because Harry knew he was sitting across from him now. The guy who had helmed teams that had developed devastating bioweapons and implanted computer chips in the brains of soldiers…if the buzz was true.

  “I don’t believe you,” the Old Man said. “But…no matter. It’s of no interest by this point. As you say, it’s out in the open now. What interests us most is where Shawna Geddes is.”

  “I don’t know that. I ran some interference for her. Your boys grabbed me. I hoped she got away.”

  The Old Man nodded. “She did. But not in the way you think.”

  He explained to Harry that one of his employees went rogue. He went into hiding, more or less. They had Shawna tracked to the mall and were moving in on her. This rogue intervened, killed two people and badly injured a third, and made off with Shawna. Why? He did not know. He suspected many things, though, ranging from simple subterfuge to domestic terrorism.

  Harry shook his head. “Shawna is hardly the militant-type.”

  “It’s not the girl that concerns me. It’s our rogue. You see, he had access to classified information. Information that could threaten the security of this nation. She’s a journalist.”

  Ah, the Old Man thought the rogue was going to spill state secrets. With all that was going on, all this guy could care about was his collection of lies and dirty little deals. Amazing.

  “So, what are you going to do about your rogue?”

  “Nothing. Not yet. Not until later tonight. We know where he is and it’s only a matter of collecting him.”

  “And Shawna?”

  The Old Man shrugged. “She’ll be collected, too.”

  And that was the exact word he used: collected. It had a chilling effect on Harry, but he refused to let the Old Man know it. “And what then?”

  “Then we’ll see,” was all he would say.

  NEW YORK CITY, EAST BRONX:

  PELHAM PARKWAY, 10:44 P.M.

  They were at the door now.

  They were beating at it.

  They wanted in.

  Virginia Astato had locked herself in the bathroom after they’d come through the front door and overwhelmed Joey. There had been seven or eight of them and although they looked like people, they took him down like animals. Joey had fought to the last, screaming for her to get away. She was squatted on the floor now, holding her rosary, one arm wrapped around the mound of her belly. The baby was kicking, shifting around in there, growing tense as its mother grew tense.

  Joey… oh dear God Joey…

  As terrified as she was, Virginia knew she had to think of the baby and plan for the baby and do everything possible to protect the baby. That’s what Joey had died fighting for—because he had to be dead—and she could not let any of that be in vain. But the sounds of them out there… God. They were scratching at the bathroom door, running their fingers over it, whispering and hissing and making slithery sort of sounds that human beings could not possibly make. And what was that smell? It was coming under the door. It was sweet and sickening like fruit rotted to pulp and running sap. It made her feverish and giddy.

  And it was getting stronger. It made her mouth water. Her hands shake. Sweat broke out on her face and her stomach rolled over. She was trying to think, to reason, to make sense of things, but her mind was spinning, tripping over itself as the room was flooded with that sweetness and she felt herself drowning in it, sinking into its sugary depths and there seemed to be no way out. Water was running from her eyes and the baby was not just kicking now, but jumping in her belly and the nausea… oh the fucking nausea…

  And outside the door, hissing, guttural cries. Virginia pressed her hands to her ears because one of them was Joey’s voice, she was certain it was Joey’s voice echoing out at her from sweet depths: “Open the door, Virge. Please open the door and then everything will be all right…”

  And she lost consciousness for a moment and when she opened her eyes—

  Oh dear God no, no, no…

  It couldn’t be.

  It couldn’t possibly be.

  The door was standing open and faces were peering down at her. Faces like shiny plastic with pink blubbery lips that drooled and dark hollow eyes that looked artificial, painted-on eyes like the eyes of blow-up fuck dolls and that was so appropriate because none of them were human anymore and they were reaching out for her and…

  Virginia screamed.

  Screamed because she knew.

  She knew who had opened that fucking door.

  You did, you little idiot. You’re the one to blame. They secreted that rich, feverish, almost creamy odor of sweetness and you lost your mind in its heat and when Joey told you to open the door, you did. And now they have you and they’ll have the baby, too.

  She screamed again and it was not for herself or what they might do to her because she was a mother and like any mother, she cared not for herself but for her children or child, in this case. They would defile it. They would dirty and violate the perfect life she carried within her, they would peel it from its pink cocoon of purity, and make it like them with their plastic faces and drooling mouths and mannequin eyes.

  “Virge,” Joey said. “Look at me…”

  So she did, God help her, but she did. She saw that he held a huge, undulant snake that was a bloodless, pale sort of color. Almost bleached-looking. Snakes terrified her. He knew that. Why did he torment her like this… but he told her it was no snake. It coiled in his hands as the others held her down, breathing their cloving hot breath in her face and then the worm made a mewling sound right before it slid between her lips, winding its way down her throat as she gagged and choked and then… then she felt her personality slowly subside. It was warm butter melting. And there was a peace in that. Contentment.

  Five minutes after the worm invaded her, Virginia Astato was no more.

  PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND:

  MARRIOTT HOTEL, CTHULICON 10:55 P.M.

  Although Chaz had to admit he was seriously digging the Prom-nomicon by candlelight this year—man, it beat the tits off the fluorescent lights and you couldn’t really see some of the shitty costumes, molded plastic furniture, and the armies of wanna-bees and posers—he had to admit from the bottom of his thumping black heart that it had been a real disappointment in so, so many ways. When the power hit the skids, there were candles, not much dancing because the juice was out, and the only music to be had was provided
by the strolling minstrel players of Eldritch Ed and the Yuggoth Three—they did a pretty damn funny song called “Unnameably” to the tune of The Beatles’ “Yesterday”: “Unnameably… there are tentacles growing out of me… my ass looks like Wilbur Whate-alee… oh I’ve become Unnamableee…”—who were a lot better than the shit-basket grunge of the Insects from Shaggai the night before… but still, it lacked a certain something.

  Bree, who had dressed-up like Clark Ashton Smith’s Tsathoggua (try saying that after a dozen Jager Bombs), summed it up pretty good when he said, “Man, this shit ain’t the dope. This shit ain’t freaking eldritch, unnamable, or even blasphemous… it sucks cyclopean dick.”

  Chaz had to agree on many points. The vibe of last year’s C-Con just wasn’t there. It had gotten more corporate than your average Comic Con fisting-fest. Maybe it was the shit going on in the country. And maybe it was the lack of power which meant the air-conditioning was out and he was sweating fucking balls in his Azathoth costume, and if that wasn’t bad enough the All-U-Can Eat Dagon Buffet (which was basically sushi) was starting to smell bad in the heat (downright fucking nameless, truth be told). Like the sweat on Cthulhu’s piles.

  Freaking twenty scant minutes into the Prom and he was already getting pissy.

  If he bumped into one more limp-wristed Twilight cutey-boy vampire, they were fucking going down, man. And that was another thing. Goddamn C-Con had been invaded by the paranormal romance fagadrones and homo-morphs. You couldn’t spit without hitting one of them. Half the author readings this year had been women with their lovey-dovey vampire romance queer-a-thons and wet-pussy gag-sagas. Half-way through the reading of some lesbo vampire hunter jizz-jerker, Chaz had cracked-off a deadly bean fart and the author—some fat Goth chick—had nearly cried her black eyeliner off. Chaz excused himself and took a healthy dump and lost himself in a good gut-ripper by Guy N. Smith.

  “We need to heat this place up,” he told Bree.

  “I’m up for it.”

  “Think I’m going to show them what sort of asshole the old Primal Chaos can be.”

  “I’m with you,” Bree said.

  Chaz looked around until he saw some pony-assed Edward Cullen look-alike chatting with female fans who were ready to masturbate with fucking icicles they were so horned-up. Chaz was going to stumble into that greasy wet pecker, maybe put him face-first into Dagon’s rotten sushi and slide a slimy tentacle up his well-buffed girly ass. Excuse me ladies, while I stake this sissy-boy. One Twilight/True Blood/Vampire Diaries made-to-order vampire puss-wad gobadroid in his crosshairs, Chaz went after him with considerable speed. He hit the soul-sucker like they were body bowling and hanging ten. Dracufag was launched into the rotten sushi and his makeup was ruined.

  The vacuous Goth girls with him pressed black-lacquered nails to their mouths in shock. One of them squealed like Eddie Cullen had slid all two inches of his pearly-white dick up her backdoor. The wet-panty brigade was not amused.

  Chaz just shrugged, peeling off his Azathoth costume while Dracufag’s attendant soul-suckers started laying into him. “Sorry,” he said.

  “That asshole again,” someone said and Chaz saw it was the lady who wrote the slick-finger female vamp-fag operas. He’d disrupted her breathless author reading earlier and she hadn’t forgotten. Chaz couldn’t remember what her vamp romance series was called… Diana Dike, Vampire Killer or was it Leslie Lickslit, Vampire Hunter? And did it matter? She was all dolled-up like one of the undead with her kinky black hair and white-face, bat choker at her fat throat. She looked like Countess Dracula… if Countess Dracula was corn-fed on hogslop with a body by Hostess.

  “Somebody should throw him out of here!” she said.

  Dracufag didn’t look so glam-rock pretty anymore with futomaki hanging from his smeary face. It angered him. He gave Chaz a shove and Chaz hit the floor, slipping on that gut-greasy sushi. Meanwhile, Bree had been captured by one of the staffers and a tall black dude who wrote outhouse poetry about the Elder Gods and was duded-up as the Black Messenger. Bree was cool and easy, but he didn’t like people grabbing him. He knocked the Black Messenger to his ass and gave the staffer’s left juglet the Chinese tweak… and she let go real fast.

  Dracufag was trying to menace Chaz, so Chaz (being pretty looped by that point), said, “Cock the hammer, it’s time for action!” Then he slammed into Little Prince Fondleroy and gave him a couple quick shots to face that put some real blood on his lips. Lesbot security was all over Chaz by that point and it would have ended up with either a jail cell or ejection from C-Con… but something happened.

  Something that not only stole the scene but owned it.

  A tall woman dressed like Queen Nitocris, showing a nice flat belly and plenty of cleavage, walked right up to Dracufag and took hold of him.

  Chaz just watched. This girl looked better than Gal Gadot dipped in Wesson oil. There was a weird sweet stink coming off her and it was making people woozy. A few of them dropped to their knees.

  But it wasn’t that that held everyone’s attention: it was the long white worm that came spiraling out of her mouth and forced its way between Dracufag’s lips. About then, people seemed to notice that she wasn’t the only worm-carrier.

  That’s when things really heated up.

  WASHINGTON, D.C:

  GEORGETOWN, 11:14 P.M.

  When he got off the phone with the President, Gus Costello needed two things: time to think and time to drink. He took two fingers of Oban’s Scotch and followed that with two more fingers. The impulse to get good and stinking drunk was almost irresistible.

  But he couldn’t do that.

  There were other considerations.

  As he finished his drink, he told himself that there could have been many reasons why the Vice President was assassinated. The FBI and the Justice Department were all over the crime scene and maybe they’d turn up something. A man like the Vice President would have many enemies, both foreign and domestic.

  But he kept thinking of the recording made of Robert Pershing and Admiral Paulus. It was particularly damning. The President agreed but advised caution. He would need to speak with the Attorney General in-depth before they went any farther with this and that wouldn’t be until tomorrow morning as the AG was overseas.

  Costello thought about the state the country was in.

  Was Pershing so ambitious and unscrupulous that he would take advantage of something like that? Costello did not want to believe it but he was beginning to grow very suspicious.

  It was about that time that he also grew very suspicious of the taste of his scotch. It always had such a warm, mellow, smoky flavor to it… now there was a bitter aftertaste.

  Costello gripped his throat and went to his knees, gagging out white foam.

  As he hit the floor, he realized he had been poisoned.

  PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND:

  MARRIOTT HOTEL, CTHULICON 11:21 P.M.

  Of course, it had to happen on Donny Pilan’s watch because fate had long ago decided that he was a born pooper-scooper who lived to clean up whatever mess was dumped on the floor. Nothing he hated worse than working these damn conventions with all the freakos and comic book nerds. Donny found it real hard to be nice to these types. He was often seized by the urge to shove them around like he had in high school.

  Down in Banquet Room C, all hell was breaking loose.

  Jesus, why not?

  Now he had to go down there and break up the shit. He had no idea what it was about, but given the crowd, a couple of mama’s boys probably got into it over how pointy Mr. Spock’s ears were or the color of Aquaman’s fucking tights. And most of them were grown men (and women). That was the real sad thing about it. That’s the thing that got right under Donny’s skin like mites.

  Power was out, of course, and probably would be for hours. Donny was sweating and the air was stuffy and stale and the goddamn elevators were down. That meant the stairs and by the time he got down there he’d be pissing sweat and in one real moth
er of a foul mood. First little X-Men jack-off boy that looked at him the wrong way was getting his asshole cored with his own Star Wars fanzine.

  “Christ almighty, what a night,” he sighed.

  What was making him even pissier was that Bob was supposed to be helping him tonight. But God only knew where he was. Probably taking a nap up on six or out back catching a cigarette. I’d fire that old sonofabitch. I’m so sick of his old fucking bullshit stories I could pass a couple stones. No matter. Donny went down the stairs, flight after flight, until he got to the ground floor. The EXIT lights were about as bright as dirty penlight bulbs. He turned on his flashlight and stormed over to Banquet Room C. The corridor was full of nerds tripping over each other in their costumes. What a fucking crew. Pansy Central.

  “Get out of the way,” Donny told them. “Get the hell out of my way.”

  He elbowed a couple of nerds clear and got into the thick of it. Most of the candles were gone, knocked over probably—fucking fire hazard, oh yes—and people were on the floor, some with flashlights, beams bobbing around. People were screaming and crying out and Donny bumped into a bunch of them and almost tripped over a few more on the floor. An emergency light was putting out a couple pale beams, but it wasn’t worth a shit.

  Donny played his light around. He saw people with what looked like white hoses coming out of their mouths. Some kinda sex thing or what? They seemed to be all around him and that bunch over there had a big python, probably rubber… except it was moving.

  What kind of clusterfuck was this?

  They all started bumping into him and some woman was sobbing and some guy was calling out for help. There were funny wet sounds like somebody was sucking noodles out of bowl and that smell… sweet like cider. Strong enough to ream out your nostrils at fifty paces.

  “HELL IS THIS ALL ABOUT?” Donny shouted out to those forms circling around him and crawling past his legs. “WHAT’RE YOU PEOPLE DOING?”

  So they showed him.

  CHICAGO, RIVER NORTH: