Snake Eyes

by Joseph D'lacey

  “Raise your arms.”

  “What for?”

  “Glands. Come on.”

  While she checked under his arms for swelling he looked at his own chest where he could see the tattoo. It seemed to have turned around. He was sure the head had been facing upwards before.

  “Why the tattoo? Is that your idea too? They call me Spider now, you know.”

  “Everyone gets something different depending on the job they’re doing and the area they’re doing it in. It isn’t always tattoos either. We give them piercings, scarrings, familiars, projections—whatever allows them to blend in to their surroundings and prevents them from being identified.”

  She ripped open the panel on the front of his leather striders and yanked them down a few inches before he could even protest. He imagined she must have done such things a thousand times to a thousand stunned officers. With practised fingers she prodded his inguinal area for swelling and abnormality.

  “Everything seems to be fine.”

  She smiled at him and then pulled down his underwear. Before he could cover himself up again she closed her velvet warm mouth around his penis. Johnson tensed, unsure of what to do.

  “Is that part of the examination?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Chapter 19

  When they’d finished, Johnson lay on his bed and watched Weaver dress; disguising her femininity and curves beneath flattening underwear and the angular lines of her suit. When she was done there was no trace of the woman he’d discovered, only the doctor, and in her eyes no recollection or acknowledgement of what they had done.

  “You’re a Soothsayer now, Spider. How does it feel?”

  “I’ll tell you when I notice something happening.”

  She laughed then, as if he’d made a joke.

  “Can’t you call me Johnson?”

  “No. No one can now. You’re in character. Who knows how long you may have to stay that way?”

  “Will you check on me again?”

  “I doubt it”

  She left then, without another word.

  He lay there thinking about her for what seemed like hours but when he checked his clock only a few minutes had passed since she’d walked out the door. Lying back, he luxuriated in the rumpled covers, surrounded by smells of cinnamon spice perfume mingled with their sexual fluids. Had she turned off the surveillance while they were doing it? Was it actually some kind of further psych test? And what about the Sooth, he wondered, when would it start to work?

  Did I get a bad batch? Did he rip me off?

  When he got up to go to the bathroom he noticed something that looked like a twisted wire protruding from the upper corner of his bedroom to the left of the bed. As he approached it to look closer, he saw another one directly below it where the walls met the floor. Surely, this clumsy workmanship wasn’t JHD approved. He got down on his knees and inspected the intrusion.

  The vine, if that was what it was, was a deep green; a lush green that hinted at plentiful rain in misty valleys. Along the three or four inches that were visible, tiny spearhead shaped leaves and spiraling tendrils reached out for purchase. Growing at an upward angle, as it was, towards the centre of the room, it had found no such support.

  The one growing downwards from the ceiling was similar but slightly longer. He shrugged and went to take a leak. The pest control manager in his block would be hearing from him.

  Around the apartment he found several shoots attempting to invade. He knew they were only weeds but they caused him to think about mould and dry rot and other organic proliferations. He wanted them gone; they signaled decay and disuse. Deciding he couldn’t wait until the pest control manager did his job; he walked around the flat and snapped off every shoot. By the end he had a handful. He imagined that they were squirming slightly in his grip and when he’d thrown them into the trash he washed his hands in disgust.

  Next, he checked his viewer and found that the disc had evaporated just as the dealer had said:

  “Don’t worry, man, it won’t leave dust on the scanner. They disappear clean. No trace.”

  When he checked the tube he found there were only eight Saturns remaining. He had no recollection of taking a second one. Either the dealer had stiffed him or Weaver had taken one with her for analysis.

  Johnson hid the tube under his mattress and got dressed. It had been a good day: he’d got laid and he had broken into his desired area of enforcement. It was time to celebrate.

  Chapter 20

  “You hear about the weed, Spider?” Fury was leaning in towards him.

  All the conversation so far had been shouted over the thump of the music but Johnson’s concentration was slipping badly now. He tried to focus on the ring of faces sharing his table, particularly Fury. He had to learn to stay sharp even when he was bombed. Saying Sooth seemed to have done wonders for his social life in a matter of hours, but how did they know? Had the dealer told them, or was it just the fact that people had started to accept him anyway? The bartenders certainly seemed to know what he liked to drink—they placed it on the bar the moment they saw him walk in. With a contraction of his will, he managed to bring everyone back into sharp relief and get his mind on the matter at hand.

  “What weed?”

  “It’s a mutation or something. Growing in every part of Tier Two.”

  “Sure. I got some in my place. I snapped the little fuckers off and threw ‘em in the trash.”

  Fury looked shocked.

  “You didn’t get bit?”

  Johnson laughed.

  “Course not.”

  “Well you were lucky, man. This weed thing is carnivorous.”

  “Fuck you, Fury.”

  “Seriously. Guys, isn’t the weed carnivorous?”

  Everyone around the table nodded, suddenly serious.

  “See, Spider, no shit. I heard this old lady came home to find her poodle tangled up in the grip of this fucking vine. It was sucking the dog dry. She called the pest guys and they burned it. Took the root out and everything but it just keeps growing back. It’s everywhere. “

  “Guess I better get some weed killer.”

  “You can try, but they say it doesn’t do any good.”

  Johnson shrugged. He was too high to care about rogue plants. Fury and the rest of them, Ragman, Pincer and Dorff were either shitting him or too high to make any sense at all.

  He sympathised. Now was not the time for intellectual or taxing conversation.

  “Hey, guys.” He said. “Let’s do a Mist rota.”

  They all nodded.

  “Who wants to come back first?”

  Fury raised a hand.

  “I will.”

  So Johnson and Fury fought their way through the dancers, drinkers and hustlers into the cramped back corridor which led to the stinking restrooms. At the end of the corridor there was a small knot of regulars taking various kinds of drugs before rejoining the endless communal bender that was McLaughlin’s. Spider rolled a Mist cone and handed it to Fury to light. Fury inspected his handiwork.

  “Good job, Spider.”

  Johnson had been practising at home.

  Fury took a couple of tokes and closed his eyes. Johnson did the same and leaned back against the badly painted wall of the corridor. The pulse of the music still found its way down this artery—sclerosed though it was with human detritus—but it was muffled. Every few moments the door would open into the bar and someone would arrive or leave for the toilets or the drugs. The music would gain in strength and then soften again as the door closed. Johnson drifted on the smoke. His body vibrated with music and vapour until he felt insubstantial and had to open his eyes to make sure he hadn’t physically come apart. Any more Mist and he would be losing control.

  “I’ll send the next one out.” He said.

  Fury didn’t reply but Johnson saw his slight nod of the head. He wondered very briefly and with divine clarity, what the problem was with reality that so many people felt they had to alte
r their perception of it in order to be happy. The lucidity of the thought left just as quickly when no answer came.

  On the other side of the door, the throng of ecstatic revellers rippled as if it was a single organism. Pushing through it, the sense of isolation settled onto him once more. He did not know the mind of the organism; he was too trapped in his own.

  He changed direction and made for the bar where they placed a pint and a shot for him. He finished each in a single movement before squeezing back to the table.

  “Next.”

  Dorff struggled to his feet to continue the rota.

  Chapter 21

  Johnson woke two days later to the sound of his door buzzer. Whoever was outside the apartment sounded very keen to get in. As he rolled out of bed, still wearing the same clothes he’d had on in McLaughlin’s, he noticed the walls of his bedroom had been shattered as if by an earthquake. Cracks spread out from the corners in every direction.

  He rubbed his eyes, trying to wipe the hallucination from his vision, knowing it was some kind of perceptual mistake. Looking again he saw vines spreading across his bedroom walls like a system of veins. The shoots seemed to have given up on reaching towards the centre of the room and instead were gripping the walls like ivy; he could see where rows of cilia along the body of each tributary had bitten into the fibreboard walls. Fury and the guys in the bar must have been telling the truth, at least partially.

  The buzzer sounded again and again as Johnson struggled to orientate himself.

  “Okay, okay.”

  By the front door he checked the monitor. Outside were Fury and a woman he didn’t recognise. He could see Fury putting the whole weight of his body behind each press of the buzzer. He didn’t look happy.

  “Fury. What can I do for you?”

  Fury stopped assaulting the buzzer and looked up at one of the four monitors.

  “Where you been, Spider?”

  “Asleep. What do you want?”

  There was a pause while Fury considered the question. In the couple of seconds it took for him to think of something, Johnson noticed the proliferation of vines around the doorway and on his ceiling. Some of the vines were trailing downward a little. Reaching out.

  “I want to know why two Sooth dealers have disappeared since you came around. I want to know who the fuck you really are, Spider.”

  “What dealers? What are talking about?”

  “Let us in, Spider. We just want to talk.”

  Johnson knew there was going to be a problem now. If he didn’t let them in it was going to be a much worse problem. He felt a vine brush his arm and he slapped it away.

  “Sure thing. Look out for the vines, though. I seem to have a weed problem.”

  He buzzed them into the security chamber and the view changed. The scanners showed they were heavily armed. If they came in with so much firepower and there was a difference of opinion, he’d be severely outgunned.

  “Would you mind depositing your weapons in the safe, guys? I don’t like armed discussions.”

  He watched as they removed all their projectile firing weapons.

  “Blades too, guys.”

  “Listen, Spider, how do we know you don’t have a fucking arsenal pointed at us the moment we walk through your door?”

  “What does it matter? We’re just talking, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Who’s that you got with you, by the way?”

  Fury’s accomplice looked at the monitor.

  “Name’s Elina. I’m Fury’s backup.”

  Johnson looked at her for a long time, feeling in that moment that he had known her for a very long time. Images of a city in a valley came to him, snapshots of a family and a feeling off loss, a sense of being adrift beyond the comfort of any shore. None of it made any sense but the woman fascinated him.

  Johnson wiped his eyes once again and shook his head. He had to straighten out quick. He hoped he had the presence of mind to fend off their questions and alleviate any suspicion but he knew that once a finger had been pointed it would be impossible to make any more progress. When they were gone he would call JHD to request evac and transfer.

  “You gonna make us stand out here all fucking night, Spider?”

  “Night? What time is it?”

  “Just open the door, will you?”

  He buzzed them the rest of the way in and stood back. Fury came in first followed by the woman. He didn’t wait for the offer of a drink or a seat. Instead he held out his hand and when they clasped in a shake he punched Johnson across the chin with his left fist, pulled him in close with his clasping right hand and brought his knee into Johnson’s solar plexus. Johnson was hurt but he been expecting the pain.

  As he recovered from the first two blows, he stayed doubled over and hung onto Fury’s handshake, feinting a lunge towards him. As Fury resisted the advance, he reversed his direction and hauled him backwards before letting go. Fury, totally off balance, careened across the room and slammed, half falling, into the wall between the two windows of the apartment’s main room.

  Johnson stood to face him, watching as Fury withdrew a polythene razor strip from the seam in his leather trousers. The strip was so thin it was almost transparent but in the hands of an expert it could open fatal cuts to the neck or blind its victim. Something about the woman made him ignore her presence to concentrate on Fury, but he’d gone against both instinct and training to do so.

  He was bewildered when he felt the plastic garrote bite into his neck and only managed to get the fingers of one hand between the sharp thread and the meat of his throat. Why had he trusted the woman? Meanwhile, Fury approached, lifting and dropping his razor strip, snapping it in the unhealthy air of the room. With each act of violence the vines surrounding them shuddered and contracted as if they too had been struck or seized.

  Johnson felt the garrote cutting through the skin of his fingers. With Fury almost in striking distance he made to pull away from Elina and then used her moment of resistance to push her backwards towards the wall. She fell for the move just as Fury had and couldn’t fight the motion. The impact against the wall was strong, knocking the wind from her lungs as if she’d fallen a similar distance. Her grip loosened and Johnson, with his back still to her, used his elbows to hammer into her ribs and abdomen. Elina went down.

  A second later he felt the sting of Fury’s razor strip across his bare left shoulder. The attack had missed his face but the cut parted his skin as if it were silk, slicing half an inch deep. As Fury raised the strip for the next cut, Johnson noticed the vines reaching away from the walls towards him. He felt a touch on his back and thought at first it was Elina. Glancing back, he saw a thick finger of creeper trying to gain a purchase on him.

  Cupping his right hand under the wound in his shoulder, he sidestepped around the walls, just out of reach of the waving vines and with his eye on Fury. As soon as he had enough blood in his hand he threw it in Fury’s face. Fury blinked and tried to wipe the gore from his eyes.

  “You crazy fucker. You trying to give me a disease or something?”

  Johnson didn’t answer. Instead he lunged for Fury. The secret of defending against the razor strip was to stay so close the wielder couldn’t whip it at you. Johnson couldn’t reach his gun but he had a small bodkin hidden in the back of the boots he’d slept in. As he clung to his assailant’s midriff, he withdrew the spike and plunged it into the man’s thigh.

  Fury screamed and tried to disengage but Johnson held him, withdrawing and stabbing again into the other leg below the knee. Fury was frantic to withdraw now, almost running backwards and carrying Johnson along. Johnson’s next thrust buried the tip of the bodkin deeply beside Fury’s hipbone. The movement of the next step Fury took snapped the needle-like blade off inside the capsule of the joint. Fury screamed again, blood now flowing liberally from his wounds.

  Johnson stood back and watched his attacker fall against the wall near Elina. He tried to pull the broken end of the spike from his hip,
cursing and moaning each time his hand slipped off the smooth shaft of steel. Johnson didn’t move in to finish it; he could see the way the creepers were detaching from the wall and reaching towards Fury. They snaked under his arms and around his chest before the man could stagger away from them.

  Beating and pulling at the tightening tendrils, Fury tried to haul himself from the wall but the vines held him and more were stretching his way. They curled around his knees and ankles, pulsing with vital muscularity. Within seconds they had him pinned against the wall and only his fingers and head could still move. He tried to reach a vine near his shoulder with his teeth and managed to bite through it. A milky green fluid leaked from the torn binding but another two tendrils took its place.

  As Johnson watched, he saw the tips of three tiny shoots disappear into each of the puncture wounds he’d made on his attacker’s legs. Fury stiffened, his eyes widening and his whimpers of defeat became screams of protest. He began to beg Johnson to help him, said they’d never set out to hurt him, it had all been a stupid mistake. Serpent shoots coiled around his head. They soon found their way into his cranial openings. Green probes wormed into his ears and up each nostril. A fat green tentacle pushed between Fury’s lips, forced his teeth apart. His screaming and begging ceased, though his body shook against its invaders for a very long time.

  Johnson saw that Elina was trying to stand up in an attempt to evade the vines. They were attracted to her but less so because she wasn’t bleeding. Her movements were weak though and he wondered if he had broken some of her ribs.

  Johnson thought it would be safe to leave her for a moment. His shoulder wound was bleeding and many tendrils of vine were waving in his direction.

  In the bathroom he washed and bandaged the cut on his shoulder before returning to deal with Elina. She was up now, an arm wrapped protectively around her middle. She had the door to the security chamber open and was trying to retrieve a pistol from the safe. The problem was that the safe wouldn’t open until the door into the flat was shut tight. There was so much vine around the frame that the door wouldn’t close.