Cronix

by James Hider

  As Laura spoke, Glenn recalled the hands he had seen protruding from the sand. He shuddered at the memory, glad this particular memory was another man’s.

  But Lyle didn’t flinch, and didn’t go postal afterwards. He went on to serve in the Special Forces: assassinating a jihad leader in Mogadishu, abducting a drug lord from the Venezuelan jungle. Raids on mountain hideouts, stake-outs in Afghan slums, helicopter attacks on fishing villages full of pirate and smugglers.

  But eventually, it had proven too much. Struggling with his drinking, he returned home with severe PTSD and no way of coping with normal life. He found a job as a security guard at a chemical plant in Houston. Paranoid and increasingly abusing prescription meds, he carried his service pistol with him wherever he went. One day, on the drive to work, he got into a road rage argument with a driver who cut him up at a junction. Lyle finally lost it: he pulled out his Glock and shot the man.

  Staring at the body, bleeding out in main street America, not some broken foreign land, Lyle had turned his gun on himself.

  Perhaps he hesitated at that last minute, as the police sirens howled, wondering what he was doing. Or maybe he'd known this was how it would end, one way or another. He pulled the trigger. There was a shockwave like a meteor impact followed by silence, a silence which he mistook for eternity. Then a voice that had no place being there filtered through the shattered synapses of his brain. “Hey Bob, this one’s still breathing.”

  The bullet has passed directly between the two hemispheres of his brain, cauterizing the corpus callosum and exiting the back of his head. He was rushed to hospital and patched up. Months later, he emerged from the coma remembering nothing, not even his name. But the state of Texas tried him for murder anyway. The trial didn’t last long: Lyle was sentenced to execution by lethal injection.

  That was five years back. Laura tried fighting in the courts, called for a gubernatorial pardon, but it was an election year, and murder rates were high: someone would have to take the drop.

  Her colleague Fitch was already in an advanced stage of his research by the time Laura came to him with her proposition. As Lyle’s next of kin, she was able to sign papers on his behalf, and convince him to play ball with the team. They started making regular trips to Texas, mining the memories that were still there. He was an ideal candidate for the experiment, a stripped down shell of a man with nothing to lose. As it turned out, there were far more memories than they had suspected: it was only Lyle, sitting on death row, his once handsome face disfigured almost beyond recognition, who did not have access to them.

  Laura finished her story, looked at her watch.

  “Now you know,” she said. “I always wondered you might experience the final shooting. Probably just as well you didn't.

  Glenn felt the old animosity slip away. “It’s lucky for Lyle he’s got a sister like you …”

  She said nothing. The old coldness crept into her face. “I have to go. Plane to catch.” She walked out to the porch, where Fitch was already waiting.

  “What about me?” Glenn called. Fitch came back in and led him back into the living room.

  “You’ll be staying here until we return,” he said. “Should be about ten days. Once we are back and the operation is safely completed, there will be a debrief with the Colonel. Then you will be paid, and be free to go.”

  “Just like that?” Glenn said.

  “Just like that,” echoed Fitch.

  “And you guys ... you aren’t at all worried that I’d tell someone about this? I mean, I won’t, but it’s all so extraordinary, that it surely wouldn’t surprise you if I was tempted…”

  Fitch turned stared at him. “I wouldn't advise it, given the agreements you signed.”

  “But those only apply if I’m in the States, surely. What if I was back home in England?” Glenn had no idea why he was needling Fitch this way: perhaps it was the unceremonious way he was being dumped, on the verge of becoming a mere footnote in their experiment. He realized he must sound like he making a threat, something he had no intention of doing.

  Fitch raised a finger, not so much a warning, more like he had just remembered something.

  “First of all, if you think being abroad would protect you, you are very much mistaken. Lyle may be incapacitated, but he has plenty of former colleagues well versed in the art of extraordinary rendition. And secondly… actually, I did want to talk to you about your eventual going back to England.”

  He paused, smiling slightly. “I wouldn’t, to put it bluntly. You see, when the Colonel was doing your background checks, it seems his people in London came up with something rather strange.”

  Glenn froze, willing him the older man to stop, but desperate at the same time to hear what he was going to say.

  “It seems after you quit your last known abode in London, the police found the body of a man, decomposing in his bed. A certain Richard Sparrow, an old classmate of yours? No apparent foul play: the coroner recorded a verdict of drugs overdose. But the circumstances are rather odd: an autopsy showed signs that the body had been frozen shortly after death, then thawed. And it seems he made a series of rather large cash withdrawals from a variety of banks after the date when the coroner said he was believed to have died. Odd story, no? Certainly Scotland Yard seems to think so. They’d like to have a word with you about the whole affair. Oh yes, and somehow the local press got a hold of it too. Seems they’ve rather unkindly given you a nickname. The Cuckoo.”

  Fitch’s dull eyes lit up with a rare twinkle of amusement. Glenn stammered something, but couldn't formulate any cohesive response. The tic under his eye spasmed wildly.

  Confused, crushed, he turned and hurried upstairs to his room. There, he threw himself on his bed and lay unmoving as outside car doors banged and engines purred into life, leaving him behind without a word of goodbye.

  ***

  A shepherd first spotted the disheveled figure in the pasture at Ludgate.

  The strange creature was standing in the grass in what had once been one of London’s busiest intersections. The shepherd, a boy called Farris, took it at first for a scarecrow, on account of its posture: head bowed, arms straight out from it shoulders, as though a broomstick had been inserted into its sleeves. But there were no crops in this grazing land, so why have a scarecrow here?

  As he approached, Farris saw the figure was in fact human, and naked. Long, matted hair obscured the face and its slack belly hung down over its genitals, making it difficult to tell whether it was male or female. Farris’ sheep shied away in fear.

  “Hello?” he called out. “You alright?”

  No movement. Farris circled round to see if it was being held up by something. Nothing. The wraith stood as though crucified, with no visible sign of support.

  A flock of starlings broke from the orchards behind Farris, making the boy jump. He swung around and saw another farm lad driving his Jerseys out to graze. The cowman had also seen the figure and ambled over to join Farris. His smile faded into a frown as he approached.

  “Who the hell's that, then?”

  “Dunno,” said Farris. “He was there when I got here.”

  The older herder, a chubby young man called Dibdee, went through the same routine of questioning the bedraggled creature. He too was met with silence.

  “I don’t like it. Looks like a witch or something.”

  “You think it’s a man or woman?”

  “Dunno. Looks like it’s got tits, doesn’t it? But could be his chest though. Can’t tell how old he is.”

  Dibdee had a wooden staff that he used for driving his cows. He walked up to the figure to give it a prod.

  The tip of the staff was an inch away from the creature’s sallow chest when Dibdee’s hand was severed at the wrist. The amputation was so sudden, so inexplicable, that the boys stared as both hand and stick dropped to the grass at the figure’s feet. The stunned silence was only broken when Dibdee started wailing in shock, then tumbled backwards into the grass. Farris flapp
ed around him, trying to hold him down and get a look at the wound. They both stopped shrieking and shouting for a moment when they saw that there was no blood coming from the stump, just a dark ooze.

  Dibdee was whiter than Farris’ sheep, and shaking violently.

  “What the fuck was that?” asked Farris.

  “I don’t fucking know,” howled Dibdee. “Something just cut my hand off.” He looked down and saw his hand in the grass, still clutching his stick. He threw up on his shirt.

  “But why ain’t it bleeding?” asked Farris.

  “I don’t know.” Dibdee’s voice was a faint whimper, his whole body was shaking. “Help me, Farris.” The boy grabbed him under the armpits and started him dragging away from the figure.

  The creature had not moved a muscle the whole time.

  “Come on Dibs, we can’t stay here, we gotta get you to a doctor quick. Stand up now, you can’t stop here.” He gave one last, fearful look back at the creature in the field and scrambled away, half-dragging his companion behind him.

  By the time Police Chief Harrell arrived, surrounded by deputies, a large crowd had gathered at a cautious distance from the motionless figure. Shepherds and farmers, mostly, but also a scattering of Eternals who had been overseeing the restoration of the dome at Saint Paul.

  “Can’t make head nor tail of it, sir,” the sergeant in charge told Harrell. “No idea what cut off the boy’s hand, and what’s more, his friend says that by the time he got back here with the first police detail, the thing was twice as tall as it had been this morning.”

  Harrell scowled. It was exceedingly tall, larger than a Ranger even. He walked slowly up to it. The cowherd’s severed hand was still there, blanched and clutching the staff. Harrell reached down and grabbed the end of the stick.

  The hand held on briefly, then fell away.

  Harrell stood holding the stick. He could sense the crowd behind him, staring. On an impulse, he threw the staff at the awful figure. Before it could make contact, it split in two, and the halves fell to the ground at the hag's feet. There was a gasp from the crowd. Harrell scoured the trees, the balloon-like dome of Saint Paul’s, for any sign of a sniper. He could see none, and walked back to where the policemen were huddled, looking as frightened now as the Sapien rubberneckers. Though he could not stand the man, Harrell felt he it was his duty to inform the mayor.

  As he finished talking to Lupo, cries rose from the crowd.

  The apparition was visibly growing now, expanding in size yet not changing its stance. As Harrell watched, the ragged thing rose to more than twenty feet tall, and kept on growing. It must have been thirty feet tall by the time the first of the panicked locals broke ranks and bolted for the trees, followed by several police officers. Harrell was about to order the men back to their positions, but stood dry mouthed, in awe.

  The hag was a good fifty feet tall when the sudden growth spurt ended. The naked figure seemed to hang over the city now, its grotesque skin sagging in folds, the hair like tangled weeds. Still it stood mute.

  Harrell ordered his men to seal off the whole area, keep people back. He had no idea what to do after that, and was relieved when Mayor Lupo finally showed up.

  “What on God’s green earth is that?” the mayor said. Everyone shook their heads and Lupo scanned the scene for some clue as to what he might be dealing with. But there was nothing: just the giant hag standing in the middle of a meadow.

  The onlookers were creeping back now. A camera crew had arrived and started filming.

  “Get them out of here,” said Lupo.

  The police officers were just starting to bark orders when the giant apparition slowly lifted its head. Again, gasps and shouts rose from the crowd. The thing’s pale face emerged from the thick clump of greasy hair, like an ancient shipwreck floating to the surface of a scum-ridden sea. One of its arms swung around from its cruciform position to point down at the people before. Its chapped lips moved.

  “The time has come.”

  The voice was surprisingly high-pitched, oddly metallic. “The time has come to separate the living from the dead. For I am the Carrion God, the deus ex-machina, Lord of the Cronix hosts, and my word is the will of the Almighty.”

  And with that, it vanished into thin air as the screaming crowds broke and ran pell-mell through the fields and orchards.

  Lupo stared, speechless, at the blue sky where the giant figure had stood until seconds before. Next to him, Harrell stood visibly shaking.

  “What the hell was that?” the policeman eventually managed to say.

  Lupo was still staring at the empty patch of sky where the thing had been. “I have no idea, Harrell. But whatever it was, it’s a shit load of trouble.”

  ***

  Hours after the cars left, Glenn finally stirred. His legs were numb, his lips crusted with dried spittle from the gurgles and growls he had been emitting in his state of collapse.

  He knew he could never go home. He was The Cuckoo – the fucking Cuckoo – in the eyes of the press, and no doubt to everyone who had ever known him in his previous life. His devious act was public, and his crime would be punished. The stolen money would no doubt be tracked down and frozen, probably already had been while he was out here on the plains. Thank god Fitch’s project was going to pay him well, otherwise he’d be broke all over again, and a fugitive to boot.

  In his funk, he had forgotten even to ask if Fitch could help him out. After all, the Colonel would probably be able to procure a fake passport, some new identity. It could hardly be in their interest to have him suddenly exposed to the glare of the media, knowing what he knew. Much easier just to help him vanish. He would broach the subject when they got back. All he could imagine now was Fitch and Laura and Stiney sitting in a car, or at an airport lounge, laughing at the look on his face.

  In the meantime, he had no idea what he was supposed to do with himself while he waited. He got up and moped around the quiet house. He had been left with the monosyllabic Kevin, who spent most of his time either honing his outsize muscles in the basement gym, or buried in front of his laptop, watching porn and pirate downloads. As the day dragged on, Glenn realized he missed the routine of meals, of Stiney’s constant ribbing, the hallucinatory ideas that peppered Fitch’s lectures and Laura’s slowly warming attitude toward him, or at least towards the fresh memories of her brother that he carried in his head.

  But most of all he missed the visits to those memories. And now he would never be in Lyle's head again.

  By late afternoon, he was bored and fretting: about where he would go next, how he would build a new life as a fugitive. How he had been cast off, like a lab chimp thrown back to the jungle.

  He scarcely slept that night and by the lunchtime the next day, he was worn down with worry. Instead of eating, he fixed a large gin and tonic, sat at the kitchen table and brooded.

  The drink calmed him, for a while at least. He poured another, and another after that. It was only during his fourth that the crisp alcoholic buzz began to feel soggy. He started pacing again, opening cupboards and draws as though he might find the answer to his problems there. He had no idea what he was looking for until he found it, quite unexpectedly, there in the cutlery drawer, underneath the sink.

  It was the same drawer where Laura had once stowed her pistol. The gun was gone now, replaced with something much more intriguing: Stiney’s key ring.

  Glenn remembered him fretting about them just before his departure. As soon as he laid eyes on them, an idea popped into Glenn’s gin-addled brain.

  Stiney’s swipe card was also attacked to the key ring, despite Rex’s constant imprecations to him to keep the two separate. That meant Glenn could, in principle, access the Temple. And if he could access the Temple, he could get something much stronger than a G&T to assuage this debilitating angst: he could access Lyle.

  He opened the door under the stairs, crept down to the door of the basement gym. The clank of weights drifted up, though no music: Kevin always worked ou
t with his iPod-mini strapped to one of his huge biceps. The path was clear for a quick dash to the barn. It was stupid and impulsive, he knew, but perhaps more of Lyle had seeped into him than the scientists had suspected.

  ***

  They could hear the howls of tormented souls even before they reached the high redbrick walls of the substation. Police Chief Harrell knew he didn't really need to accompany Judge Goodyear and his euthanasia party. But he wanted to show willing to the mayor, who for some inexplicable reason seemed to have taken against him. Besides, he hadn't visited the holding pens of the Brixton substation since he returned to Earth, and the thought of seeing so many Cronix, up close, gave him a boyish thrill.

  They were ushered through the steel gate by armed guards, through the winding stone corridors of what had been a prison before the Exodus, and into the control room. Banks of monitors showed the holding pens, which were packed with muscular, beautiful humans, snarling and pushing each other. In one, Harrell saw what appeared to be a knot of Cronix engaged in a full-on orgy, a heap of thrashing limbs and pulsating torsos.

  One of the guards caught him looking and grinned. “That's what we call a rat fuck,” said the man, whose name tag identified him only as Larry, He was small and had the finely lined skin of someone who has spent too long under artificial lighting. “It's the hormones, when they've just downloaded.”

  Judge Goodyear blew out his cheeks, raised his eyebrows. “Gentlemen, shall we get to work? I've never seen so many of these things together before. The sooner we cull this lot the better I'll sleep.”

  “We'll start with the Rangers, if that's alright with you, Judge?” the guard called Larry said. Goodyear nodded and the party – Harrell, the judge, two doctors and three men armed with dart guns – made their way through whitewashed stone corridors, through security gates and into the wing where the failed Ranger downloads were kept.