by Unknown
As Okami fought to fasten the window, a flaming bottle sailed past him and exploded on the metal floor, spraying liquid flames across the hold.
A soldier yanked one of the fire extinguishers from its bracket but fire roared up his leg and he dropped the cylinder. The truck jolted, gears grated. It slammed to a sudden stop and Remmy pitched forward. Another flaming cocktail burst against the back window. The fire spread, black, oily smoke pouring up the walls. The soldiers would be suffocated within moments.
The truck rocked. They’re going to tip us, Remmy realized. He wanted to hide, to curl into a little ball and tuck himself away. Even as the flames burned hotter, he was paralyzed with fear; beyond the flames were the locals and beyond them the deepening night.
Okami threw open the tailgate. The soldiers dove from the truck into a wall of people. The crowd boiled over them with tire irons, two-by-fours, axes. Okami, too close to the edge, was dragged under. Brief machine-gun fire colored the night sky but that only emboldened the crowd.
Remmy huddled at the front of the cargo hold, preferring to face the fire than the mob. The black smoke hid him. And while he didn’t need to breathe, the flames would soon cook him. He tried to peer through the smoke, hoping that Okami had escaped and taken control of the situation, because that had always been Okami’s job.
He’s dead. So are the soldiers. Only we’re left now, his inner voice said.
Even if he got past the mob, he had nowhere to go. He’d be lost in the dark. The dark. He had never been alone and never without his Handlers. He wondered if perhaps burning here was a better alternative.
You’re not going to die here. Run! Run!
Before he could reconsider, he ran and leapt from the tailgate, sailing twenty meters past the front ranks of faces bearing startled looks. Then he was running, fear pushing him faster than he had thought possible. Their surprise was temporary and they gave pursuit.
Remmy ran through petrified trees twisted upon themselves like broken skeletons. Flashlight beams bobbed around him. He didn’t know if the pounding in his ears was from fear or from his hunger. Even when he lost sight of them, he kept running despite wanting to hunker down in a crater and wait for the Handlers to find him. Remmy stumbled onto a roadway that was no more than two hardened ruts. His stomach contracted with such intensity that he collapsed. He beat his hands on the ground and screamed at the sky because he knew he wouldn’t survive the night.
A sound broke through the pounding in his head. A truck.
He stood, turned into the headlights of a pickup.
The front bumper folded around him, launched him flying and he landed with a crunch then tumbled along the hardpan. He managed to raise his head and stare into the lights. A door opened and Remmy realized that the humans had caught him.
Then nothing.
He wakened to the smell of chlorine-laced lavender — not a wholly unpleasant scent. He thought he was back in the compound because that’s where he woke every day. The Handlers liked to keep things predictable. And for a brief moment, he felt calm. Then memories hit him like a spike to the eye: the headlights, the crack of impact, flying through the air.
Military hospital? Impossible. The bedroom was decorated in soft purples and violets, an over-stuffed duvet and frilly pillows piled high. Candles burned on a wooden nightstand adorned with porcelain and ceramic trinkets. Not a hospital — a house.
Then he remembered screaming into the night, his body wracked with spasms as it tightened upon itself. Remmy inspected his hands. His nails were long and the skin a pasty white. Normal. Someone had given him an infusion.
He pulled back the covers and winced. Thick, white bandaging cocooned his midsection. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, his feet registering the cold of the worn floor boards. The floor vibrated, perhaps from a generator hidden somewhere in the house.
Remmy’s overalls had been replaced with tattered track pants. He inspected the faded pictures on the walls, and then quickly sorted through a dresser full of sweaters and pull-overs. He glanced out a greasy, double-hung window. He was on the second floor of a farm house overlooking wilted fields that a week ago would’ve held thick stalks of corn.
He heard someone humming downstairs and froze, weighing his options. He contemplated breaking the window and escaping into the cornfields, and he expected his internal voice to agree with that plan, but it was strangely quiet. Maybe because whoever was humming was probably the one who bandaged him. Maybe they weren’t going to hurt him.
Remmy opened the door and winced when the hinges squeaked. He padded down the stairs, following the humming, fighting against his instincts that screamed run, run, run. He stood at the entrance to the kitchen.
A heavy set woman, grey hair tucked into a bun, waddled from oven, to counter, to toaster. The frying pan sizzled and she moved it to a back burner. She turned and smiled.
“You’re up. Good to see.” She glanced down at his midsection. “I did a nice job on the bandaging.” She looked old. Harmless.
“Are you going to kill me?” Remmy asked.
“I rescued you.”
“You hit me with your truck.”
“Sorry about that. But you didn’t look like you’d listen to reason and I didn’t have time to explain.”
“Explain what?”
“That I’m your friend. I know what those people are capable of.”
Remmy thought he saw a flash of anger cross her face, but then it was gone and she was smiling again.
“People are afraid of me,” Remmy said.
“Should I be scared?”
“No. Homo Sanguinus are incapable of harm.”
“That’s a clever name,” Molly said. “Do you know what it means?”
“No.” When it was apparent she wasn’t going to tell him more, he asked, “Where are we?”
“Twenty-file kilometers from the epicenter.”
Twenty-file kilometers? The danger zone for humans was triple that. “You’re not wearing a suit,” he said.
In response, she took a cigarette from a pack and slipped it between her lips and lit it with a match, inhaled deeply, then exhaled through her nose. “Guess I don’t need to worry about cancer then, do I?”
He calculated that she had two weeks to live. She’d be feeling the symptoms soon if she didn’t already: distorted vision, vertigo, nausea. The end would come with a sudden and massive bleed out.
“I never smoked, you know,” she said. “Ben did, but not me. Two packs a day which I guess means I was probably huffing a pack myself. Made it easy to start, being the end of the world and all.” The smoke created a haze around the naked light bulb dangling from the ceiling.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Remmy said. He had been involved with four emergency protocols in his lifetime. Each was horrific, but like this one, isolated.
“I wasn’t talking about the accident,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Remmy.”
“That’s a strange name. Mine’s Molly.” When he didn’t respond, “This is when you say ‘Nice to meet you, Molly’.”
“Okay,” he said. “Are you here by yourself?”
She smiled sadly, stepped too close to him, her breath stinking of cigarettes and coffee. Remmy preferred the chlorine. She put her palm on his cheek. The warmth of her skin was comforting against his cold flesh, her pulse beating beneath the tissue-paper skin. Thum, thum, thum. A beautiful sound like the first summer rain.
“God brought you to me. Ever since Ben…” Belief in a god was a tough concept for someone like Remmy. “I wish Ben were here to show you. He was involved with your project, you know, back in the beginning. It’s funny that they blamed him. Just like they always blame you, don’t they?”
“I don’t understand.”
Molly ignored the comment, tracing a line along the side of his skull. A scar with surgical straightness. The saw whined, bits of bone dust sprinkling the air and stinging his eyes. The doctors had cut a window into
his brain.
“Don’t,” he said, blinking away the memory, but she continued to trace the pink ridge.
Remmy snatched her hand and she startled. He was crushing her wrist, her bones crunching beneath his grip. Her expression never faltered but her face paled.
He released her, suddenly afraid, and confused over his reaction. What was that? Anger. Now she would turn him over to the mob, or worse, tell his Handlers.
She shouldn’t have touched us, that internal voice said, but it was faint, like an echo across a vast canyon.
Molly cradled her hand to her chest. “You see,” she whispered. “You’re still in there.”
“I need to contact my Handlers,” Remmy said. He had to leave. Now. He couldn’t trust her and worse, he couldn’t trust himself. “Do you have a short-wave radio or satellite phone?”
“You need to eat first,” she said.
“I don’t eat.”
She placed a tea cup before him with a shaking left hand. “That’s what kept you alive. That’s what keeps the hunger away.”
He smelled the pink liquid. “What is it?” His stomach clenched, not with pain but with desire.
“You’re going to need that if you’re heading out.”
She fixed herself a plate of bacon and eggs. She sat across from him but never ate. Instead, she smoked cigarettes.
Remmy tentatively placed the teacup to his lips, spilt most of the first sip. But the taste. Oh the taste! The liquid flooded his mouth, warmth spreading from his core to his fingers and toes. A shiver of pleasure energized his nervous system and his muscles quivered. He didn’t just want more, he needed more. His gaze flicked to Molly, his vision focused on the beautiful pulse along her neck.
More.
He clenched too tightly, the glass exploding in his hands, the remnants of the liquid dripping from his chin. His muscles twitched as the lust receded. He wanted to grab that feeling, to never let go, but the more he tried, the faster it faded.
“What … was that?” Remmy asked though he already knew.
“Milk. And lamb’s blood.”
“Blood?” The familiar pang of fear. Blood was forbidden. “This is wrong,” he said. “The Handlers told me—”
“They’ve been lying to you, Remmy.”
“I must…” He stood and his legs wobbled. “Wha—?” he said, words slurred. He grasped the edge of the table to steady himself. Molly took him by the arm.
“You’re frightened. I’m sorry. I really am. The muscle inhibitor isn’t permanent, I promise.”
Muscle inhibitor?
He wanted to break away from Molly but every step was more difficult than the last.
“I have to show you something, Remmy. I’m afraid this is the only way.” She led him to a door off the kitchen and when it swung open, the blackness pulled at him like the sucking maw of a vortex.
“No,” he grunted, but Molly was strong and he was weak. His fingers unable to find purchase on the door frame, she pushed him into the darkness. The void. Falling…
His shoulder hit the fourth step. The wood cracked, and then he bounced, crumpling. He came to rest in a heap on the concrete landing. He tried to cry out but only managed a pathetic clicking with his tongue. His consciousness receded until the whole world was Molly standing in the doorway.
“Just because we created you doesn’t mean we can control you,” she said. The door swung shut, a meager sliver of light at the bottom, then that too disappeared.
The dark.
It took him over, pressed upon him so he was unable to move and he wondered if this was what it felt like to suffocate. Tears slid from his eyes. The paralysis became so complete that he couldn’t move his tongue, swallow or blink. Remmy wondered if he was even awake.
He smelt the dampness in the basement, the punky wood and the mildew-soaked walls. Smelled the crap of the small scavengers surrounding him. Felt their tiny paws on his legs as they scurried over him, whiskers brushing his neck. Their teeth devoured tiny chunks of his flesh. Time poured over him like water — and the tighter he tried to grasp it, the more it drained away. Then, even the little animals left him. Gasping, he soon wished for their return. His memories overpowered him: scenes from the accident, of pulling bodies from wreckage. Of the purebreds throwing eggs at him, spitting at him, blaming him for their errors.
And there was that distant call again, like someone locked inside his skull, pounding to get out. But he couldn’t hear what that voice was saying.
Remmy realized he was sitting. Somehow, he had righted himself and was leaning against the wall. He wiggled his toes, moved his hands. Slowly, movement returned to his limbs. How long had he been down here? Hours? Days?
The light under the door returned. After several attempts, he finally managed to drag himself to the stairs, that sliver of light drawing him like a beacon. He took each step carefully as his gross motor skills returned slowly. He collapsed next to the door.
“Molly?” he said, hysteria fraying his sanity. “Please, Molly. Let me out.” He scratched at the old door, splinters tearing his nails and chewing away skin. Molly hummed on the other side, the clink of dishes in a sink. The louder he cried, the louder she hummed. He pressed his mouth against the crack of light. He huffed at that opening and Molly fell quiet.
Why was she doing this to him? Maybe she was locking him down here until the mob arrived. He gazed back into the dark; a shiver swept down his spine. Wait. If he concentrated hard enough, focused, rough images coalesced: the stairway, a railing, a cracked stone floor. Had light somehow filtered in or had his eyes adjusted?
As the hours passed, his sight improved until there were no shadows and no darkness.
There is no dark, not for us.
He had worn his fingers to the bone trying to get through the door. The gnawing in his gut felt like the teeth of the vermin — and as he remembered the sweet taste of Molly’s drink, the pain intensified. He had to find his Handlers before the pangs of starvation overwhelmed him.
Perhaps there was another way out. Maybe basements had windows.
He padded down the stairs, hearing the rats scurrying at his approach. They gazed at him with dark eyes, then turned tail and dashed into their holes.
The basement was a maze of tiny rooms and hallways. He found no exit, only endless spaces filled with oily machines and abandoned lab equipment. He spent hours picking through the junk, hoping to find something to aid his escape.
The hunger hit with a sudden burst of pain and he stumbled. He gasped for breath, not because he needed oxygen but because of a human response hard-coded into his genes. Except you’re not human, that voice said. The hunger didn’t relent and it overpowered his rational mind. He clawed at the walls, shrieked at the ceiling, smashed equipment, and raged through the basement. The pain rippled, his skin tightening around his bones, making it crinkle as if crusty and burnt.
The beating hearts of the rats drew him to his hands and knees to sniff along the walls. That sound of blood surging in their tiny veins made him mad with desire. Remmy reached into holes in the walls, frantically trying to grasp their scaly tails to draw them out so that he could crack open their chests and suck out their life.
Madness! That voice, becoming braver. Taunting him. Is this what we have become?
“What would you have me do?” Remmy asked.
Live.
“I don’t know how.”
He blinked and in that microsecond between reality and darkness, he became lost.
A halo of lights shines in my eyes but I can’t close them. A saw motor hums followed by the sound of metal teeth biting into bone. My skull — they’re cutting into my skull. The doctors wear white environmental suits with positive-flow masks and breathing tubes hooked to oxygen tanks.
I hate them. I want to break my bonds but my body is inert. Useless. Frustration so powerful a tear rolls down my cheek. The saw screams as it cuts my skull and though I rage, I cannot yell. I want to twist their limbs and pull them from th
eir sockets. Their hearts beat so loudly: Thum, thum, thum.
The sound of the saw fades and the doctor holds a set of surgical snips. They consult amongst themselves while I imagine ripping out their throats and tasting a splash of blood on my tongue like the first snowflakes.
They begin the procedure while I lie helpless.
Snip. The anger disappears, disconnected.
Snip. The frustration, suddenly disengages.
Snip. Desire, gone.
More snips and they cut away my emotional self like trimming back an overgrown bush. They leave one emotional connection: fear.
I shiver because I am afraid…
The door unlatched and a sound drifted though his fever-hunger. He savored the last vestiges of the memory — the hatred, the frustration. But the more he tried to focus on those alien feelings, the more they became vapor drifting through his fingers.
“Molly?”
He heard a grunt, and then a body tumbled down the stairs. Remmy pulled himself from his knees and shuffled to the landing. The door closed and was re-latched.
The body lay crumpled at the bottom, smelling of sweat, rubber, chlorine, and blood. The man wore a gasmask with the eye holes shattered. Remmy heard the rats in the walls, but his presence kept them away.
The man groaned, shifted.
Remmy moved closer, observing, his skin tingling like he had touched a live copper wire. He breathed deeply of the scent and his vision brightened, a white halo forming around the bleeding man as he focused on the soft spots — the wrists, the thighs, the throat.
Just a taste.
Remmy took a step back, no longer trusting himself or his instincts. The Handlers had taught him that he would be punished for taking a life; his insides would boil and fester.
Lies.
The man startled awake and gasped for breath. He glanced around wildly, scrambled backwards like a crab until he hit a wall. He tore off his gasmask.
“Who’s there?” he stuttered.
Remmy sat on his haunches, watching as the man fumbled about in the dark, cried at the door just as Remmy had earlier. Occasionally, the man turned, gazing into the black before renewing his efforts at the door.