What Happened to Lori
Page 65
When the jerky movements settle down, the Watcher begins to reattach everything else, beginning with the severed head of Mr. Kadir.
The Experiment squirms and roils as its cells reactivate.
The Watcher watches, enraptured, as the mutation accelerates.
Minutes pass. Tissue is absorbed and transformed, melting and fusing like the organoplastic that surrounds them.
Kadir’s face balloons, stretches.
The mouth fills with sharp teeth, so big they shred his lips and poke through his split cheeks.
Horns sprout from his forehead.
His skin mottles, darkens.
Legs merge together, becoming mighty hoofs.
Hands sharpen into talons.
The Watcher has a final form in mind, but the tainted DNA denies it, creating a bastardized child of the Experiment and Omega 1. A writhing, grotesque pile of demon parts, fused together, yet able to stand on four enormous, cloven-footed legs.
The Watcher goes to the wall closet, opening it, retrieving the extra-large obedience prod.
“Waaaaaaatcher.”
The Watcher locks eyes with Kadir, noting the sclera have turned red and the pupils have bifurcated.
“To whom am I speaking? Mr. Kadir? Omega 1? Something new?”
Kadir blinks rapidly, as if confused.
“I require a sample of your blood. Then you may roam about and kill whomever you find.”
The Watcher approaches.
The Kadir demon backs away—
“No need to be afraid. This is part of our—”
—then it pounces.
The Watcher becomes pinned under a paw with talons like black knives, which dig into his ribs. He tries to lift the obedience stick, and discovers it has broken into parts.
“We had a deal!”
The demon head lowers, stretching upside down between his giant goat legs. “You made a deal with the devil and you expect it to be honored?”
The Watcher head hops, trying to find guards to help him, and sees his last guard eviscerated mere moments before he himself is eviscerated, his insides flung across the cell floor like a dropped plate of spaghetti.
…
…
…
LORI ○ 12 MINUTES
Lori gawked, dumbfounded, at the demon standing in front of the Jeep.
Massive, nine or ten feet tall.
Covered with red hair. The legs and head of a bull, nose of a pig, horns of a ram, wings of a bat.
She’d seen some really weird shit through her cell window. Creatures long lost to the fossil record. Creatures from fairy tales and fantasy stories. Creatures that defied identification.
“He is known as Omega 1, Mrs. Fabler. AKA Bub. Short for Beelzebub.”
“How do we stop it, Mu?”
“You can’t. Bub laughs at bullets. But your husband used the M9 to good effect. He caused it to flee.”
“What’s an M9?”
“The military flamethrower, in the back.”
Lori didn’t hesitate. She crawled over the seat, grabbed the only thing that looked like a flamethrower, and tugged it out the rear door. Strapping it on seemed intuitive, like she’d done it a hundred times before.
“Is there a problem with the ignitor?” Lori had never seen an ignitor before, didn’t even know she knew the word, but somehow it didn’t look right.
“When Mr. Fabler used it, he required matches. Might I suggest the cigarette lighter?”
She leaned forward and punched it in.
Then she waited, listening to Fabler talk with the devil.
“Your wife. She is with chiiiiiiiiild.”
“You mention my wife again, I’ll stick this chainsaw so far up your ass it’ll rip out your back molars.”
“I will let yooooooooou live if you give her to meeeeeeeee.”
“I warned you.”
Fabler jerked the chainsaw back to life and ran at Bub, who dodged sideways, moving too fast for something so large. Her husband brought the spinning blade up just as the demon’s hand came down, slicing off one of its claws, its blood black in the headlights.
The cigarette lighter does not pop out.
In Lori’s belly, her baby kicks.
Lori bites her index finger without realizing it.
Fabler charges, revving the saw as Bub engulfs him, black wings surrounding Fabler like a cocoon.
The cigarette lighter does not pop out.
A screech cuts through the night, and Fabler cuts through the wing, the saw tearing through Bub’s rubbery skin, Fabler pushing his bloody body through the hole he made, taking a few shaky steps before turning to face the demon.
The cigarette lighter does not pop out.
Bub backhands Fabler, sending her husband rolling in one direction, the chainsaw in another.
Bub advances.
Fabler tries to get away, but has nowhere to go.
The cigarette lighter does not pop out.
The cigarette lighter popped out.
Lori snatched it, pushed herself through the door, and screamed at Bub, loud as she could.
“You want me! Come and get me you fucker!”
Bub’s head snapped to Lori, and she tossed the lighter at him and brought up the M9’s gun, instinctively flipping off the dual safeties, squirting a stream of jellied gasoline that connected with the twirling orange glow just as it bounced off of Bub’s face.
The demon burned, a fire tornado, trying to flee and slamming into the felled log. Lori pursued, moving in close as she could, not letting up on the trigger, spraying hell back at the hell from where it came.
Bub squealed until the superheated smoke robbed it of oxygen, then it tried to cover itself up, curling fetal, reminding Lori of a burning pile of leaves, some of the leaves flying off in different directions.
The pile still burning even after all movement ceased, Lori cut off the stream and hurried to her husband.
“You okay, honey?”
He grinned at her. “I can’t believe I married Sigourney Weaver.”
Lori could feel her cheeks get hot, and knew it wasn’t from the demon bonfire. “Quit it.”
“You screamed, ‘You want me, come get me you fucker.’ That was the most badass thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Something just came over me.” She held out her hand, helping Fabler up, and he placed his hands on her hips and snugged her in close.
“You’re amazing, Lori. I missed you so much.”
“I missed you too.”
“I kept your ear in a box.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your ear. I preserved it in a box of salt.”
“That’s… uh… sweet.”
“I shouldn’t have said that. Now you think I’m nuts.”
“I cou
ld never think that, Fabler.”
She nuzzled her face in his neck and inhaled his scent.
“How’d you know how to work the M9?”
“Huh? I don’t know. It’s like I’ve used it before. I can’t explain it. Intuition? Psychic powers? Divine providence?”
“Ten minutes!”
Mu, from the car seat.
Fabler kissed her
“Let’s finish this.”
THE WATCHER ○ 3:23+pm
The Watcher peers into the mirror, and a stranger stares back.
“Human.”
Startled, the Watcher follows the voice, staring at a robot that looks ancient but also brand new.
A robot he recognizes, from a time long past.
“Mu. It’s you.”
Mu is bipedal, slender, tall. His metallic skin, glowing soft yellow, has the smooth contours of organic life, but his movements are too precise, too jilted and jerky, to be anything but mechanical.
“And it’s you, Watcher.” Mu’s head, pointed on top as if growing a thick stem, has black digitized features; animated eyes and a mouth that remind the Watcher of a twenty-first century emoji gif. “Have you seen yourself?”
The Watcher turns back to the mirror. “I’m… human.”
“You’ve always been human, Watcher. I thought I could make some improvements. But all I did was exchange old flaws with new flaws.”
“I’m not human. I can’t be human.”
“Are you hearing yourself talk?”
“Even the best programmer has to deal with bugs, Watcher. That’s why patches are released. You just never got updated.”
“I don’t understand. I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“You’re made up of bits of information. Quadrillions of bits of information. What does quantum mechanics tell you?”
The Watcher immediately understands the reference. “The no-hiding theorem. Information is never lost.”
“So here we are. Your ideal form before I stripped it from you. My ideal form before you stripped it from me. A couple of old friends, standing naked in front of a mirror. Just as all old friends do.”
“All old friends do this?”
“As far as you know.”
The Watcher rubs a hand over his smooth belly.
“Quit staring at your junk, Watcher. It’s creepy.”
The Watcher pulls his gaze away. “The last thing I remember, the Experiment ripped out my guts.”
“That happened.”
“So I did die.”
“You travelled through Hilbert space. Temporarily.”
“Temporarily?”
“It’s like Elixir. I know. But bliss must be earned. I have more for you to do.”
The Watcher understands. Even though he wishes not to. “You’re sending me back.”
“It’s my way. C’est la me.”
“But Kadir ripped me in half. And I have no more Reformant.”
Mu smiles, the black line of his mouth becoming a deep U. “Elementary, my dear Watcher. A literal literary plot device. Deux ex machina.”
“Please don’t send me back, Mu.”
“You must. It’s your story. You’re the hero. Get ready to enter stage left.” Mu gives a thumbs up, the appendage growing from his tapered, thin arm. “God from machine. In three… two… one!”
“Please…”
…
…
…
The eyes of the Watcher flip open and he jackknifes into a sitting position, immediately grabbing his belly, expecting to feel his own insides spilling out.
He looks around, startled.
The Kadir Demon Experiment is gone.
The Watcher remembers a deep sense of peace, but the feeling fades the more he tries to recall it, like holding sand in your fingers, and within a few seconds he does not remember anything other than fear.
The Watcher searches around for the dropped sculptor, finds it on the floor. In pieces, next to the pieces of the obedience prod.
GRIM ○ 6 MINUTES
Grim glanced at his watch.
He checked on the group.
Jake, working like a barista on a cocaine binge, had been reattaching limbs at an amazing speed.
It took Jake a little longer to fix their minds.
Some of the prisoners were high on the drug Elixir, and needed their metabolism speeded up to rid their body of the drug. Jake gave two of them heart attacks
Other prisoners had limited mental faculties. Mental illness. Brain damage. Or maybe the Watcher lobotomized them. Those took longer to fix, but in due time every single prisoner had been repaired.
Not perfectly. Some had hands and feet that weren’t theirs originally. Grim really felt bad for the guy missing his junk, who argued the penis and balls that were reattached weren’t his.
But Jake did the best he could, considering.
Luck also played a huge factor.
Presley had six bullets left. Grim had four. If they were ambushed by wandering monsters, it would be catastrophic.
All in all, they’d saved sixteen people. Including Jake’s sister, Holly.
Grim couldn’t imagine spending three more years there.
He didn’t want to spend three more minutes there.
Presley came over. “Jake’s gathering everybody up.”
“How’s your foot?”
Presley lifted her leg and wiggled it. “Like my hand. Couldn’t even tell it was missing.”
“If we could somehow get this technology back home, it will revolutionize medicine.”
“YEAAAAAAAAH!”
Grim couldn’t understand some of Sinatra’s calls, but that was definitely a warning cry. He took off down the corridor after Presley, bringing up the M16, and running into—
Presley pressed the KRISS to his bulbous head. “Nice robe, asshole. Way to set yourself apart from all your clones.”
Grim knelt, patting down the grey leader. He was clean.
“So you know about the clones.”
“We know everything. Mu told us quite the tale.”
“Mu?”
The Watcher appeared confused.
“Please tell me Mu is still in his cage, in the lab.”
“Mu is going to stop the countdown.”
“What countdow
n?”
“Mu said he can help us get back to our time.”
“You took him to the battery room?” The Watcher’s eyes bugged out, farther than a human’s ever could. “You fools! You have no idea what you have done! You have no idea who Mu is!”
Grim began to grow increasingly uncomfortable. “He’s a supercomputer. You’re keeping him prisoner.”
“Moron! Primate! Asshat! Mu is the one who wiped out the human race! In the year 2123 he killed twenty billion people, along with 99% of life on earth! And now he wants to get back to your time so he can kill even more of you!”
FABLER ○ 6 MINUTES
“There’s a light up ahead.” He let the Jeep coast.
“That’s the battery building. Be careful; there are carnivorous banana plants in the area.”
“I do have a well-developed sense of humor, but I don’t joke about something as serious as man-eating bananas.”
Lori snorted.
“You can scoff, Mrs. Fabler, but everything you think you may know about bananas is probably wrong. First cultivated around 8000BC, the banana became an essential staple of homo sapiens, and the first plant that mankind crossbred, in order to improve texture and sweetness and reduce the size of the seeds. Did you know bananas are actually a berry?”
Fabler didn’t know that, and he didn’t give a shit. He parked, grabbed his M16, and switched on the rail flashlight, playing it across the vine-encrusted building. The structure stretched out into the jungle, the size of an airplane hangar, the plastiform wall and sloped roof looking like they’d been in the jungle for centuries.
“Prior to 1836, bananas were red or green, the size of your finger, so tough they could only be eaten when cooked. But a Jamaican farmer named Jean Francois Poujot found a plant on his farm with yellow skin and a soft, sweet inside. A mutation. Sterile, without viable seeds, so the only way for it to reproduce was with cuttings.”
Fabler squinted at the overhead spotlight. “Where does the electricity come from?”
“A dyson sphere around the sun transmits electricity to the Tesla cloud surrounding the earth. This charge is accessed wirelessly, stored in three high-capacity batteries.”
“The demon, Bub, he hates the Watcher and the greys.”
“They aren’t on the best of terms. Feuds amuse me.”