by Zack Parsons
Dryson and his Marines assisted Rukundo and the crew of the Antonov in loading up the land rovers. Polly allowed the equipment to be carried in the UN vehicles and insisted the scientists ride in her security vans. Dr. Burns overcame her resistance to the idea in a show of magnanimity.
Polly attempted to familiarize herself with the UN team as quickly as possible. There was Dr. Burns, serving as the team leader, an Indian pathologist named Dr. Nandy, and a friendly, almost flirtatious, botanist named Dr. Madeleine Roux. Polly had little luck remembering the names of the others even though she’d read them from the briefing documents.
There were more than twenty scientists in all and half again as many technicians, drivers, and Rukundo, their internal security expert. He looked to be in his early thirties. Perhaps because of his great stature and calm demeanor the scientists and even Dr. Burns deferred to him. His placid demeanor amid the nagging scientists reminded Polly of a tree being fought over by squirrels.
When the lengthy introductions had been finished, one man remained unidentified. He was skulking in the background, near the land rovers, fiddling with long cases of yellow plastic.
“Who is that?” asked Polly.
“That is Mr. Sokov.”
Konstantin Sokov was a last-minute addition to the debriefing list. A “biological archivist,” Mr. Sokov was also a Soviet. Milo had not even included a photograph.
In the flesh, Sokov was perfectly Russian. He possessed a heavy brow and a high forehead exaggerated by his receding, oiled hairline. It was difficult to determine his age. Polly thought anywhere from thirty to fifty. He wore eyeglasses in heavy black frames. The prescription made his blue eyes enormous.
“Good to meet you, Polly Foster.” He spoke with a thick accent. “It is very beautiful to be here today. I look forward to good expedition.”
“Have you been to America before?” asked Polly.
Konstantin’s answer was an uneasy laugh and a shake of his head. He retreated to the aircraft to oversee the loading of his sample cases. The land rovers, five in all, emerged from the Antonov’s belly weighed down with equipment and personal baggage. The uniformed drivers were under Rukundo’s supervision. He marshaled the UN vehicles into an idling row, each land rover stuffed to the windows with duffels and equipment cases.
“Good?” he asked Polly.
“That will work fine.” She motioned for her vans to join the formation.
Rukundo insisted on riding in the security van with Dr. Burns. Polly wanted Konstantin Sokov in her van as well, and he ducked his head and clambered dutifully into the backseat. Captain Dryson offered her no choice and rode beside her, a carbine resting between his boots in the vehicle’s foot well. The other scientists were distributed, along with an uncomfortable mixture of Marines, among the remaining security vans.
The convoy of vans and UN vehicles departed LAX without further incident. Milo’s office had prepared a specific itinerary for the arrival, and the first stop was a check-in at the desolate UN offices in Redondo Beach. They were close enough to the cordon to hear the Army trucks and close enough to the edges of Creeptown to smell the refuse.
The haunted remainder of the local UN staff was in a rush to leave, saying their hellos and good-byes in the same sentence and fleeing in an assortment of overloaded vehicles. The borderline panic clearly unnerved the visiting UN scientists. Dr. Burns was given keys to the offices, only to discover that everything, even the fixtures, had been stripped out and looted by the fleeing staff.
“We can provide you with office space on-site,” said Polly.
Her reassurance did little to ease the growing tension among the scientists. There were mutterings of abandonment by the UN. Second thoughts were given voice. One man swept a spore detector of unfamiliar design around the office. The device trilled and flashed red, and he cried out in alarm, “Contamination! Twenty-five P-P-M!”
The scientists inside the office building spilled out into the parking lot and began throwing open the doors of their vehicles. In a panic, they opened emergency cases, spilling medical equipment into the parking lot as they grabbed for gas masks and hoods. Polly checked the small fob detector clipped to her belt. It wasn’t even showing yellow.
“Your equipment is too sensitive,” said Polly.
“All right, calm down.” Dr. Burns raised her voice to be heard over the commotion. “Everybody! We all knew some level of exposure was a guarantee. Unless some of you have traumatic, gaping injuries, you are well below the danger threshold of three hundred. Be smart, and you should be safe.”
“Should be? You should have distributed masks at the airport.” The UN scientist who’d complained was a stout, pale man, and he spoke with an Irish brogue. His broad face and curly mop of hair disappeared beneath the black rubber of a hooded mask. He said something else, but it was too muffled by the canister filter to be heard.
A few of the others followed his example. The remainder, still holding masks and hoods, in the process of opening cases, looked to Dr. Burns indecisively. Dryson, Funkweed, and the other Marines watched the drama unfold and did not react. Their gas equipment remained stowed in the packs around their waists.
Dr. Burns took the detector from the man who originally discovered the contamination and waved it in the air like a dowsing wand. She followed the invisible trail of spores to a greasy smear on the walkway in front of the office building. The detector was trilling sharply.
“It reads over one hundred P-P-M here,” she said, and she leaned her face down near the smear. “It’s nothing. Some dropped food or a dead animal. I’m breathing it in, and nothing adverse is happening to me. We’re in no danger from these readings.”
Her demonstration seemed to calm the scientists. Even the Irishman grudgingly shucked off the gas hood. He started to return it to the case, but Dr. Burns stopped him.
“No, you were right, Liam. We should distribute the gas equipment to everyone now so that if we have a real emergency, we will be prepared.” She saluted the scientist. The foam-packed, commercial gas equipment was quickly distributed to the scientists and their drivers. Rukundo reminded those who needed help how to put on the gas mask and tighten its straps. Polly joined Dr. Burns near the greasy smear with the high readings.
“You handled that well. We can get them loaded, and I’ll show you to your hotel.”
“No, I want to get started now,” said Dr. Burns.
“Fine,” said Polly. “I will distribute copies of the itinerary prepared for this afternoon, and we can start on it now.”
Dr. Burns walked with Polly over to one of the open land rovers and popped open the lid of a medical kit. It was packed with sample tubes, gauze, forceps, sterilizing foams, and chlorine spray known to neutralize the spores if applied directly. Dr. Burns plucked a syringe from the shaped tray of the medical container.
“I researched you when I heard you were going to be our liaison. Most of you duplicates are slippery, hard to single out one from the other unless you want it that way, but you were recently involved in a spore-related incident.”
The frost of anxiety crept up Polly’s back and raised gooseflesh on her arms. Her heart thudded wildly. How could this woman know about what had happened in Bad Tower? Not even the news media had managed to uncover those events, and Milo had given her strict instructions—menacingly strict—to keep quiet about the events of that day.
“I’m, uh, not sure what you mean,” said Polly.
“Your medical records were submitted to the United Nations at my request. You were recently treated for spore contamination. I realize the spore is not lethal to your kind, that you produce antibodies we can hopefully isolate to develop a treatment, so you must have been exposed to massive amounts if you required hospitalization.”
“Yes,” said Polly. “I was caught in a spore storm. The streets went white.”
“Yes, I’ve seen footage of spore storm events. My hope is that since you survived such a massive dose, your body might be producing
very high levels of the antibody. I would actually like to begin our inspection with you, Miss Foster. A full medical exam would be nice once we are situated, but for now, a blood sample would be very helpful.”
Polly hesitated. Dr. Burns fixed her with an unwavering stare. Aware that the exchange was being watched by Captain Dryson, Polly rolled up her sleeve and offered her arm to Dr. Burns.
About a third of a hamburger. Nine French fries. A napkin smeared with congealed ketchup. And, what was that, a cockroach? No, a piece of fried crust from an unidentified pastry. Casper laid the garbage picnic out on the table of a cardboard box. Lenin, formerly Ringo, watched the ritual with apparent interest, cocking his shaggy head with each rearrangement of Swiftee Burger refuse.
“The only way I’m going to be able to choke this down,” said Casper, “is if you stop staring at me.”
He threw a French fry past Lenin’s head to distract the dog. Lenin whipped his muzzle to the side and caught the thrown nugget in his jaws, swallowing it without chewing.
“Not bad. Try this one.”
Casper threw the fry much higher and with greater force. The shape of the potato was ill-suited to a breaking fastball, so he put a lot of muscle into the throw to overcome the aerodynamics. It was gone before he even knew which way it was going. Lenin dropped to the dusty ground and licked his chops.
“You should go out for the Yankees, kid.”
Mentioning a baseball team was an unpleasant reminder of all the years he’d spent living as a brain-scrambled stiff down in the bowels of the Pit. Did the Yankees still play ball? Who won the World Series in ’51? Hell, who won it in ’91?
He threw Lenin a last fry and shoveled the remainder into his own mouth. They were cold and greasy. He swallowed them in one unpleasant gulp and hoped to keep them down. The dog was a natural catcher; maybe he could start a sideshow act at a circus, if those still existed. He stuffed the burger down his gullet—even worse than the fries—and wiped somebody’s old dish towel across his lips.
Casper was aimless. He’d spent time in his past lives as a drifter, hopping trains and looking for work in faraway towns. That was different. There was nowhere to go in this world. His purpose, felt so keenly up until the gaping hole in his memory, was gone. He sprawled listlessly on cardboard in the empty lot, down behind the barbed-wire brambles of a few dead bushes, and he listened to the city beginning to move around him.
There was still traffic and commerce, even though it felt like the whole place was about to be bombed. The distant warble of a siren now and then added to that atmosphere. The Army trucks and the occasional tank made him think the bombing might have already begun.
Casper tried to reconnect. He sought out his old house in Hawthorne but the neighborhood was replaced with garish retail outlets long since taken over by the military to use as staging areas. The LAPD headquarters he used to work in was unrecognizably modernized and fortified. He tried to find out more of what became of Lynn, but the newspapers and county archives were no longer operating. Just as well. He feared the details might drive him to further despair.
Even Ciro’s was gone, replaced with a plaza and a statue of men standing atop a tank commemorating THE BATTLE OF THE RÍO TLALNEPANTLA. FEBRUARY 19, 1978. He read the inscription. The 9th US Armored Division and 4th California Volunteer Infantry Division battled pro-communist forces for control of the bridges over the Rio Tlalnepantla. Six hundred and fourteen brave Americans gave their lives that day to protect Democracy and crush the last strongholds of the illegitimate Mexican dictator Valentín Campa Salazar and his revolutionary movement.
The more he learned about this world, the less he liked it. Each day he ended up right back where he started: alone, homeless, sprawled on a piece of cardboard, waiting to draw flies.
The sky, colorless and bright, was a blank sheet in the typewriter for him to bang out his last note to the world. Suicide being a futile pursuit, he discussed it openly and often with his canine companion.
“Maybe I ought to jump in front of a bus,” he said to Lenin, who remained sitting by his side. “They’re bigger now. Did you see those things? Bet those big wheels would turn me into paste.”
He wanted a drink. A real belt in the guts. Something better than the dregs of beers he found in the same Dumpster as the hamburger.
“Nah, if they swerve, maybe they’d just hit my legs, crush ’em up. Don’t think I could stand that. I’ll just go up to one of those Army pukes who put hands on the policewoman. Tell him he shits sideways, and see if he’ll plug me full of holes.”
Casper scratched the dog’s head and looked into its red eyes flecked with black.
“No, you’re right. I’m not the sort of guy who offs himself. Not unless it’ll save him a plane ticket.” He felt around in his pockets for the chapbook that was in the emergency kit Polly Foster had given him. It was creased in the middle from the way he’d been bending it the night before while trying to use a discarded tire as a toilet.
“ ‘Chapter three.’ ” He read aloud, picking up where he’d left off. “ ‘Social Changes.’ I hope this one is better than the map chapter. Whatever happened to ‘walk softly and carry a big stick,’ right? Now we just club everyone over the head with it.”
Lenin curled up and tucked his muzzle against his tail. His position allowed him to continue to stare at Casper.
“ ‘The United States of America has undergone many changes since your incarceration began, fundamental alterations to the fabric of our society. All races, without exception, are viewed as equal and permitted to intermarry with whites.’ Well that’s different, right?”
Casper cleared his throat.
“ ‘Segregated facilities have been abolished since the Social Justice Act of 1981. Duplicates have enjoyed the right to publically marry with non-duplicates since the Affirmation of Rights Act of 1985. As of 1997, clade typing—delineations of duplicates based on behavioral and other factors—is featured on the drivers’ licenses of fifty-three of the states and the Oaxaca and Yucatan Territories.’ ”
He lowered the book from his face, intending to say something to Lenin. Instead, he spotted a very attractive type three walking on the nearby sidewalk. She was physically different from Veronica or from the cop woman, Polly Foster. She had more bounce to her step, lighter hair, ridiculously big breasts, and a face reshaped by surgery or some other means, yet she was still the same woman. The same legs, he realized. She reminded him of a cartoon version of Annie.
Casper whistled appreciatively. The woman, seeing him as a leering derelict lying on cardboard, cinched her purse a little tighter under her arm and hurried away. Casper sighed and let the book fall into his lap.
“Looks like I’ve lost my charm,” Casper said melodramatically. “Nothing to do now but curl up and die. Maybe I could find some rat poison to chew on.”
He drew the blanket from St. Philomena’s over his head in hopeless jest. The sounds of the city grew very quiet. More quiet than they should have.
“Casper Cord.”
The voice was distant, its intonation flat. It was the hiss of wind-stirred leaves echoing in a dead canyon.
“Casper Cord.” Louder, the shape of the words assumed an improbable complexity. A multitude of tiny brushes painting the words upon a canvas. “Casper Cord. Prepare yourself. It is almost upon you.”
Casper tore the blanket from his face. He intended to confront the ominous speaker but was not sure what he would find waiting for him.
Horns on the nearby streets as traffic continued to move. A car weighed down with luggage and too many passengers motored past the lot, its engine chugging under protest and its undercarriage scraping the street. A helicopter sounded in the sky. There were no pedestrians. No one within earshot.
No one there at all.
Except the dog.
The Pool had given birth to a giant. It lay facedown with its long arms at its sides, still draped in the clotted membrane of its birth envelope. It was something like a man but
three times as large, flesh soft and purpling as if in an advanced state of decay, shoulders, back, and limbs bulging with muscles.
The length of its arms and the proportions of its body reminded Wesley Bishop of a gorilla, but its bald head was comparatively tiny. It was as small as a normal man’s head, a pallid egg of flesh traced with livid capillaries that showed through the remains of its birth cowl.
“Have you ever pulled up a freak as big as this?” asked Bishop.
The man he asked was an unusual type one with graying hair and an unkempt beard that fitted his greasy workman’s coverall. The name GRINCH was embroidered over his breast.
“Not alive. It took two of the cranes to haul it up,” said the bearded man. “It was still thrashing around a little bit. Trying to breathe. Lucky it wasn’t more alive, I guess. Looks like it could have done some damage.”
“Why did they bring you in?”
“They wanted somebody from Anomalies to take a look and tell them what to do. I was going to contact the Gardeners—”
“No. You did the right thing calling me first.” Bishop covered his nose and mouth with the perfumed handkerchief to keep out the stench of the decaying giant. “So what do we do?”
The type one in the coveralls shrugged his bony shoulders.
“Very helpful,” said Bishop. “Have them turn it over. I want to see its face.”
Grinch called up to the crane operators to rotate the giant onto its back. Men from the maintenance crew took hold of the dangling hook blocks and dragged the lines over to the prostrate giant. They secured lifting slings around and beneath the tree-trunk width of one of the giant’s arms and one of its legs.
At a signal from the floor the winching commenced, and motors in the cranes began to whine. The giant’s arm rose awkwardly backward, and the giant began to turn. Its other arm slid beneath the massive torso. The movement stopped, and the crane winches grew louder as they fought to overcome the resistance. It seemed the cranes were outmatched until a muffled boom of dislocating bone echoed through the vault, and the arm slid beneath the turning corpse.