The Skunge

by Barr, Jeff

  The scream of the Skunge filled him. The sound of Sugar in the gas station, in the elevator. The sound of the devils, howling.

  This is the Skunge, dying. Die, you fucking curse. Die screaming, and go back to hell.

  And then his mind cracked, flipped, and shut down.

  Coming back to life was like fighting his way up through clouds of sticky smoke. It gummed his eyes, his mouth, his ears. When he opened his eyes, he saw nothing but filmy blackness. He heard voices, people calling him by names he had almost forgotten. He spoke back, in his mind. Yes. Yes! I'm here. I'm alive. His body would not respond. Nothing functioned. He walked through his nightmares, old and new. Emotions he had no name for wracked his mind. He saw colors he could not describe, and they danced and whirled around him like a carousel, spinning and spinning.

  Unconsciousness and wakefulness flipped and spun. He would wake up in his old bedroom, next to Nicole, terrified, from a nightmare he couldn't remember. Then he found himself back in the trailer in California, hearing the wail of a baby. He stalked through the trailer, unable to find the source. Finally he stopped in front of the door, that hateful door of memory, and his mind screamed at him not to open it. He did anyway, and found himself in the corridors of Juniper Ridge, chased by something inhuman. Every door snapped open and closed, like hungry mouths. Every room was filled with the torn bodies of men, women, children. One by one, they lurched upright to follow, their eyes flat, black, and hungry.

  They chased him through the guts of the building, nothing but winding gray hallways skinned with carpet, shining steel, black smoked glass and screens scrolling alien characters that slid across his consciousness like raw eggs across a plate. He saw the skinned woman, heard her insane laughter, and his heart thudded in his chest. Then she was there, right there in front of him. He could only watch as she came for him, her mouth like a gnashing red disaster of teeth. Her face became Nicole's, then Sugar's.

  Some part of him knew it was a dream; you couldn't spend as long as he did undercover and not develop the animal instinct about what is real and what is not. But the thought of waking up from this nightmare gave him no hope. He began to think he wouldn't be able to wake up. Maybe the treatment had gone wrong, and he would stay there, forever trapped in the dream world, sleeping through life, running through the endless corridors of night, pursued by ghosts from his past.

  Then the booming voice of a god woke him, and brought him back to the real world.

  CHAPTER SIXTY FOUR

  "Wake up, asshole." Arneson knew that voice. Who was it? Not Sugar. Not Brayle. Sonch? Maas? Someone he had taken down over the years, some backwater drug lord or vice king, back for revenge?

  Whack!

  His face stung. The momentary pain was nothing more than a single flake of the avalanche of sensation running up and down his body. His skin was too cold, too hot, too tight. His head throbbed. It was a few moments before he realized his eyes were open. A white ceiling, white walls, indirect muted lighting. The smell of clean sheets and the biting tang of rubbing alcohol. Juniper Ridge. The recovery room.

  "Wake up, you stupid bastard."

  Whack!

  The room shook. Someone had slapped him. He shifted his eyes right, then left and saw nothing but darkness. Realized his eyes had slipped closed, and opened them again.

  Hanging over him like a fat, angry moon, was Crantz. Flecks of food hung in his goatee, and his eyes were shot through with glaring red vessels. He looked sick.

  "Crantz." His voice was like a rusted gearbox. Tried again. "Crantz."

  "Hey, there he is! Big bad Arneson, back from the dead. It's good to see you, asshole."

  "Can't say…same about you. Brayle?"

  "He's around. Just thought I'd come and say hi while you're on the mend." Crantz's breath was like a sewer.

  Arneson closed his eyes again. "Great. Go 'way."

  "Not just yet. Wanted you to see something first."

  Arneson tried to roll away, and something was wrong. He puzzled over the sensation before adrenaline flooded his system, revving his heart-rate up. He couldn't move. His body refused direction; not a twitch or spasm of muscle to reward the increasingly frantic signals his brain sent down the inert wires of his body. It was like trying to lift a freezer-full of meat just by thinking hard at it. It wouldn't have mattered, at any rate; he was tied down, arms and legs strapped into padded leather manacles attached to the bed with steel eye-bolts. Crantz chuckled and thrust his phone in front of Arneson's face.

  Sugar, all of her blond hair gone, her delicate features buried in the Skunge; there was so little left of her under the Skunge that it could have been anyone. But it wasn't anyone, it was her. Arneson knew by the way she drew breath. She sat, unmoving, in a concrete cube of a cell, a room with a cement slab bed and a drain on the floor.

  "Rat f-f-fuck. Kill. I'll kill. You."

  Crantz giggled porkily, then slapped Arneson across the face with the phone. Whack! Then again, harder. He stared down at Arneson with something like lust. "You ain't killing shit. You and your Skunger girl are fucked." He leaned down close. "Fucked in the ass. You know that, right?" Whack! Another smack with the phone, this one hard enough to send reverberating bells through Arneson's head.

  "Fucking kill you, Crantz."

  Crantz waved his hand. "Yeah, yeah, right. By the way, you want to know where you recognize me from? From right here in Junction City. We went to high school together. Remember?"

  Arneson coughed. His throat was on fire. "You on the cheer-leading squad?"

  Crantz raised his hand again, and this time formed a fist. "Of course you don't remember me. None of you too-cool kids would ever remember Crantz, the fat little toad." He took a deep breath and composed himself, then smiled like a snake. "Once you're on the outside, I guess you're on the outside forever. I guess maybe I can't blame you. When you left school, I was still a little runt." He leaned in close. "Sometimes I still feel like that little kid, getting ignored by all the girls, and all the guys. But now I'm big. Let this be a lesson to you: the past repeats itself. Try not to forget that in the time you have left."

  Arneson stared into Crantz's face. He searched his memory for a flash of recollection. Nothing. "Fuck you. Get Brayle."

  Crantz's face broke out in his cruel, sunny grin. "Oh, he's around."

  "I'm here. If you're done tormenting him, you can go." Brayle stood in the doorway. He wore an ugly, strained smile, the corners of his mouth held up as if by hidden wires under his skin.

  "I'm not even close to through with him. But I've got stuff to do." Crantz straightened his uniform shirt with exaggerated slowness, pulling at his tie, staring Arneson in the eyes. "Be seeing you," he said, and walked out.

  "Can't wait," Arneson croaked. He closed his eyes again, and this time when he opened them, Brayle was there.

  "You should know that I don't want to do this. Nothing personal, as assholes like Crantz like to say."

  Arneson's throat burned, but he couldn't remember how to ask for a drink. He felt like his brain had been dipped in acid.

  "Seems pretty personal to me."

  Brayle took a deep breath, and Arneson heard the quaver in it. "My son killed himself last night. Smashed his MP3 player and slit his wrists with a piece of it. Swallowed the rest—just to make sure of the job, I guess. The kid never did pay much attention in biology class."

  "Jesus."

  Brayle examined the IV tube attached to Arneson. It was filled with clear liquid. He picked up a hanging cannula, and brought out a large hypodermic filled with milky fluid. His eyes ran with tears, but he was still smiling that ugly, forced grin. "The orders are in, and I'm afraid they don't look good. I'm going to inject this into your IV, and you're going to go to sleep, and you're not going to wake up. Once your girl finishes her transformation, she will be put down, too. Again, nothing personal." He pulled the cap off the syringe with his teeth and spat it into a waste basket.

  Brayle giggled, and Arneson realized that at
some point over the past few weeks, Brayle had lost his mind. The pressure had cracked him. His son, taken by a disease that threatened the human race. Brayle himself, locked away by his own government, tasked with the job of defeating a seemingly unbeatable enemy, and seeing that enemy take his son. The man's mind had cracked down the center like a rotten egg.

  "Brayle, if you do this, you're turning your back on humanity to save it."

  Brayle tapped the syringe, once, looking into Arneson's eyes. "I—"

  His phone warbled. He glanced at it, moved to put it back, and froze. He stared at the phone. The color drained out of his face.

  "Holy Christ." Brayle dropped the syringe on a tray. He looked at Arneson, the lenses of his glasses iced with the cold glare of the overhead fluorescents. He spun out of the room, his footsteps stuttering into a run.

  Arneson struggled again at his bonds, feeling like a fly struggling against a web, stuck deeper and deeper with every weakening motion. He had been in tighter spots, but not many. The big leather hospital straps may as well have been made of steel. The bed was government-heavy rubberized plastic over an iron skeleton. He could almost reach the buttons that controlled the up and down motion of the bed, but that wasn't going to help him. He had no allies at Juniper Ridge except for Sugar.

  He fought to marshal his thoughts and concentrate. Everything jumbled together, like a room full of kicked-over furniture: Sugar, the Skunge, Brayle, Maas, Rubalcava, Sonch, Crantz. A crazed kaleidescope of fun house reflections, spinning around him like a carousel. Sugar's face kept coming around, again and again, her eyes burning, daring him to remember something. Something from their shared past. He ground his teeth and whipped his head back and forth. The beeping of medical equipment, clustered like conspirators at the side of his bed, ebbed and swelled with each twist of his head.

  Sugar's eyes flashed. She was trying to tell him something. Something about the

  signal

  sound of the machines. The machines were important. And what was the function of these machines, these readouts and monitors? Why, to signal, of course. They were signaling him. Like Sugar had signaled Arneson beside the highway in the Modoc forest. And if she could do it, could he do the same? If it was only because of the Skunge, the answer would be no. He would have to believe he could.

  He stopped moving. Forced himself to breathe. Fought his mind to a crawl, imagining his thoughts sinking into thick treacle, like an insect struggling against a liquid flow of sap.

  One moment there was nothing, the next, something was growing inside him like a bright psychic flower. He could no more have explained it than a savant could explain how he memorizes a phone book or draws a city skyline from memory. It just was, like it had always been there.

  He thought back to that night in the forest, the feeling of having lost her as he stood at the rim of the great black ocean of trees. He felt the air on his skin, the smell of the Northern Larch and Juniper, and he called out. Sweat beaded his forehead. His muscles straining and corded, he called out to her.

  Somewhere beneath him, she awoke.

  CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE

  The sound echoed in her mind for a moment, and was gone. Her head came up like an animal scenting smoke in the wind. What was it?

  Sleep now. We/you/us will/must sleep.

  The voice of the Skunge roiled and bubbled in her mind. Or was it her voice speaking to the Skunge? Impulses tumbled into her mind, one after another, like uprooted seedpods borne on a capricious breeze. The Skunge wanted her to do something. It wanted her to

  evolve

  sleep, to go to ground and sink into unconsciousness like an animal curling into a cave for the winter. But there was just enough left of the essential Sugar, the human part, that knew to do so would mean the end. The end of her humanity, certainly, but also the end of Arneson. They had taken him, and until she found him again, she could not

  evolve

  sleep. Perchance to dream, perchance to die screaming as her mind was eaten from within by rustling loops of the Skunge.

  While the internal voices fought for control, she waited, watched, and listened. For what, she didn't know. The tendrils of her parasite twined around her, caressing her, soothing her, urging her to rest. But she couldn't rest. Not yet.

  The sound came again. A long, low-pitched note seeping through the concrete and steel, echoing through the halls of Juniper Ridge. The sound settled into the pit of her stomach like a stone. The Skunge stirred sluggishly, halfway awake, but soon built to a frenzy of whipping tentacles that snapped and grasped the air.

  Her evolution was not yet complete, but that she had some control of the Skunge. She concentrated, speaking to it, answering its purring, spiky questions. After a few moments, they came to an agreement. Slowly, painfully, she moved off the bed and into the corner. The Skunge began weave itself around her, wrapping her in its slimy cerements. Around and around, like a snake eating its tail.

  The time for chrysalis had arrived.

  CHAPTER SIXTY SIX

  Outside of Sugar's cell, Tork Wilhelms slurped from a can of soda and clicked on another gallery. This one showed a sweet-but-sexy blond with a perfect rack playing spin-the-dildo with a pair of brunette sluts. The world outside might be halfway to hell with the Skunger hordes, but the Internet at Juniper Ridge still worked just fine.

  He still couldn't believe that the hot little piece of porn-star ass—Sugar, star of such favorites as Cum Bunnies 1 & 2, Teen Cream Dreams and Cum-ception—was rotting, covered in alien parasites, and not ten feet away. He had jacked off to her so many times he felt like he knew her. He idled with his cock through his government-issue work pants, looking for a fresh picture gallery. There were tons of videos online, but he liked to keep it old school when checking out his favorites. Their perfect air-brushed good looks, buttered flesh laid out like the peaks and valleys of some exotic land you could only see in postcards.

  A laminated sign hung on the wall, affixed with a thumbtack. The sign said:

  OBSERVE/REPORT SUBJECT EVERY FIVE MINUTES. VERIFY ALL WARNINGS FROM VITALS/TELEMETRY.

  Tork checked every two hours or so—basically whenever he got up to piss or to fetch a soda or a snack from the vending machine (the vending machine didn't take money; government work had its perks). The past few weeks had seen a noticeable decline in standards at Juniper Ridge. People showed up late, or not all, and everyone seemed under-slept, overfed, and depressed. For now, Wilhelms was content to just ride the downward slope, all the way to hell if that's where it ended up.

  He had tried talking to Sugar a couple of times. A couple dozen times, really. He wanted to ask her about all the chicks she had worked with, her favorite cock, stuff like that. She never responded. Had never, in fact, acknowledged him. He was used to that; even the cunts back in high school had been indifferent to him, and they were nothing like the prime piece of ass that Sugar was—or had been before the Skunge. So, while he could understand being ignored, that didn't mean he had to like it. He had the power here. He would show her who held the reins here at Juniper Ridge. Someday. Oh, boy.

  "Stuck up little slut," he said. He clicked link after link, his eyes drinking in the flesh and oil and lube and wet pinkness, and his urgency grew, boiling in his lower belly.

  Here I am, he thought, in total control of this piece of meat, this fucktoy, and what am I doing about it? Sitting here jerking off to pictures of her. I could have her. I could have her right now. I own her. I have the power of life and death in my hands, because I know her true name, I know her down to her DNA. I—

  He burped explosively and reached for his soda. Empty. He sighed. Might as well check on her while he was fetching another one. Not that it really mattered: the bitch never did anything but sit there, melting into the bed and growing more Skunge.

  Gerald Perkins walked in, groaning and buckling his belt. "Christ, don't go in the head for thirty-five, forty minutes. I just gave birth, and the baby is Chinese."

  "That's disgustin
g, Perk." Tork pointed out a gallery featuring an Asian girl carrying her enormous breasts in a wheelbarrow. "Look at the tits on her." In the pictures, she was strutting her way toward a sweaty group of men dressed like construction workers. Cheap sleeveless t-shirts, jeans spattered with black paint to look grease-stained.

  "Hoo-boy, now that's the kind of Chinese take-out I could dig into." Perk eased himself into the chair, his love-handles pressing against the arms of the chair. He sported a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, and carried the faint tang of stale booze and old fried food. "Even better than that cooze rotting away in R-Thirteen."

  Room Thirteen was their room. Their private kingdom. The guards were assigned rooms in accordance with seniority and ability. Wilhelms and Perk had been around since the early days, and were afforded the easier cases. Earlier, Brayle himself had ambled past to check on her, complimenting them on their handling of the case.

  The case. What a laugh. If Skungers had a case, it would be 'hopeless'. They got infected, then they grew threads, then vines, then tentacles, and then they went berserk and died. Full stop.

  "Hey," Perk said, his eyes lighting up in that muddy-crazy way that both fascinated and repelled Tork. "I'm bored. You want to go mess with her?"

  Tork's pulse-rate notched upward, with an answering coiling of tension in his lower belly. "What do you mean?"

  Perk leaned forward, enveloping Tork in his special blend of Eau de Perkins. His voice was thick. "I say we do this little skank. Tonight. You and me."

  "Ha ha, very funny. One time, in the army, I went to a German whorehouse and got a case of crabs big enough to serve at a lobster restaurant; that was bad enough. I bet even triple wrapping it isn't enough to keep the Skunge off your—"

  "Not that kind of do, you moron. I mean, you know…finish her off." At Wilhelms' nonplussed expression, he reached into his bag and pulled something out. "Check out what came in the mail for Uncle Perkie. I've been dreaming about using one of these on a bitch for years. And this one," he tilted his head toward R-Thirteen, "is mostly dead anyhow. And she's a porno star—or used to be one at least." He whipped his wrist, and two feet of telescoping black matte steel sprung out from his fist. At the end, a sharp spike. He pressed a button, and it arced with a bolt of electricity.