Zippered Flesh 2: More Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad

by Bryan Hall

  “Sutures don’t hurt?”

  “Where’s Glenn?”

  “Glenn has been detained.”

  Michelle’s physical vibrance was not enough to keep her emotions in check. Hot, salty tears welled up in her eyes, and she started to tremble with frustrated rage. When she spoke, it was in a quavering voice through clenched teeth. “Where is Glenn?”

  “Glenn is being observed—”

  “You give me a straight answer or I’ll, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?”

  Michelle threw a stunted punch at Dr. Murtagh, who jumped back. He then smiled, like the neighborhood bully who teases a dog on the other side of a fence—or at the end of a short chain. Her fist was, of course, on the end of a very short chain. But that smile, that—to be frank, shit-eating grin—made her not care, and she was every bit the junkyard dog that the doctor was teasing. Chomping, slavering. But only on the inside. On the outside, she twisted the cuff with her wrist, until the blood started seeping. That made Murtagh’s smile fade a bit.

  “Please quiet down, Ms. Wambolt,” he said, trying to sound authoritative by using her last name. It came out more like a request. Like a substitute teacher.

  Michelle let her arm drop to her side. All the air had been let out of her lungs through some unseen valve. Her chest seemed to deflate, which she at least half attributed to the sag in her menopausal breasts. Her arms did look gray, though. That wasn’t menopause. The last time she saw that color was when she volunteered for that children’s art class. It was the exact color of modeling clay. The exact color of Glenn at the top of the stairs with the shark’s fin of glass sticking out of his gut. And she was starting to see blackish-green blotches, too.

  “What happened to Glenn?” she whispered. But she still felt fine, and a giggle nearly chittered out of her.

  “Glenn is showing no signs of slowing down.”

  Michelle heaved out a hoarse sigh, almost like a gritty belch, and she squinted her eyes like she couldn’t hear him.

  “Glenn is being observed. He is somewhere safe, where he can’t hurt himself or anyone else.”

  But he’s not Glenn anymore, thought Michelle. Like I won’t be Michelle anymore, very, very soon. But not soon enough for you, Dr. Murtagh.

  “I suppose it won’t hurt to tell you the truth now, not in the shape you’re in. The paramedics he infected with the nanobots had to be destroyed,” explained Dr. Murtagh, leaning in a little bit to make sure she could hear him. “Killed with fire, as my nephews might say. A video gamer phrase if there ever was one. The shame of it is, the little buggers really did kill your husband’s cancer.”

  The way he said “little buggers” made her think of the case of the crabs she had in college. But she showed no outward reaction. He didn’t really give her an opportunity.

  “But we designed them to be smart. Too smart, it turns out. They repaired, they replicated, and they became self-aware. Then they set up shop in your husband’s nervous system, killing him off from the inside with more alacrity than the cancer ever could. What they did was turn him into a human marionette. And when his blood was introduced to your system—and the paramedics’—you were all infected with the little things.”

  The little things, thought Michelle. That’s just about right. Better than little buggers. Just a little closer, now.

  Dr. Murtagh leaned over her, almost leering at what he’d created. “We’re going to try an electromagnetic pulse and see what that does to your husband. I wouldn’t get too hopeful, though. At best, it will just shut him down, him and the emergency workers the nanobots have infected. So it won’t bring him back, but it’s easier than reducing a human body to ash.” He sat on the edge of the bed, seemingly unaware of Michelle at all now. “We didn’t cure cancer, but think of the military applications. There goes the Hippocratic Corpus: First do no harm.”

  Indeed, thought Michelle. It was the last thing she ever thought.

  Her arm shot toward Dr. Murtagh so fiercely, it seemed like it was on a spring and the chain of the handcuffs might snap at its weakest link, but it did not. Infected with self-replicating nanobots or not, Michelle was still just one woman, but that didn’t stop her from repeatedly pulling on the handcuffs, rattling steel against brushed steel once, twice, and again a third time while Dr. Murtagh watched her with a bemused look on his face. He shifted on the bed and pursed his lips at her the way an adult might do toward a silly child.

  “You’re going to break your arm,” he said, waving his hand at her blank eyes. “If you can hear me in there. You’ll break it right off.” He scoffed once so loudly his breath clouded on the inside of his faceplate.

  But Dr. Murtagh didn’t understand the little things. Not until it was too late. Not until Michelle’s hand really did break completely off at the wrist, exposing the ulna and radius bone like a couple of stilettos, pink with pulsing blood. A flap of skin was still connecting her hand to her arm, but it peeled back like soft latex and stretched, with a thick undercoating of fat and muscle. Michelle drove what used to be her wrist into Dr. Murtagh’s gut, slicing through the hazard suit he wore to keep the nanobots out, the fabric separating as if made of meringue.

  He looked at her and groaned, knowing it was already too late as thousands of nanobots streamed into his brain.

  CLOCKWORK

  BY SHAUN JEFFREY

  I knew the black cat was dead. Even if I hadn’t just seen it struck by the car, I would still know it was dead. Finding my father lying on the floor two weeks ago, hands clutched to his chest as though trying to keep warm, made sure of that.

  One of the cat’s front paws protruded at an odd angle, its claws protracted as if in a failed attempt to scratch at the vehicle that had bowled it along the road.

  The driver of the car hadn’t stopped. Unlike dogs, you didn’t have to report it if you killed a cat.

  I gingerly reached out and touched the body. Its fur still felt warm and soft. My fingers brushed a red collar around its neck. The attached tag on the collar told me the cat was called Sooty.

  Although it was only a cat, I couldn’t stand the thought of the owner finding the dead feline in or at the side of the road, so I picked up the carcass and, with nowhere else to put it, I dropped it in with the shopping I had bought in town. I would bury it when I reached home.

  A car drove by, making me flinch. I wondered what it sounded like; wondered what lots of things sounded like. Deaf since birth, I lived in a world of unimaginable silence. The only time I had been glad of my deafness was when I saw mother screaming after I alerted her to father’s body.

  When I arrived home, I reached into the bag and touched the cat. Its body now cold, it had already started to go stiff. I stroked it once, and then opened the gate and deposited the corpse outside my den at the bottom of the garden before heading toward the house.

  “You took your time,” mother said as she took the shopping bags from me. She enunciated each word so I could lip-read.

  I shrugged and signed that I had lost track of time.

  Mother smiled, but she couldn’t disguise the haunted look of the bereaved. She started to say something else, but her lips stopped moving and she pulled out a tin of baked beans dotted with blood. She frowned. “What’s this?”

  Already one step ahead, I moved my fingers to say the steaks must have leaked.

  Mother nodded. It was a reasonable answer, as the cuts of meat often leaked.

  My sister Vicky sat in her highchair, playing with a rattle. I smiled at her and she smiled back. She opened and closed her mouth and I touched her cheek, feeling the vibrations of noise resonating through her skin. While mother put the shopping away, I made my way out to the den, a wooden structure five-foot high and four-foot square that I had built last summer.

  The cat lay on the grass outside. If it weren’t for the mangled paw and the specks of blood, it would look as though it were having a catnap.

  I picked it up, opened the door, and carried it into the den, stoopi
ng as I entered.

  It was warm inside the room, and I stood up straight. Sheets of plastic yellowed in the sun made the light that shone through the window appear golden, illuminating the clocks that covered every surface.

  There were mechanical clocks, pendulum clocks, mantel clocks, cuckoo clocks, and clocks that I had made. Within the den, I could feel the reverberating beat of the clocks like a huge heart, and feeling the familiar ticktock of the clocks through the ground and walls, I felt it was the closest I came to actually hearing.

  Pieces of clocks cluttered the table against the back wall. There were springs, cogs, levers, weights, and a whole host of other parts. I swept some of the bits aside and deposited the cat on the table while I searched for a bag to put it in. Deciding on an old plastic one, I turned back and grabbed the cat. Straight away, I felt the familiar pulse of the clocks through my fingers. For a moment, I imagined the cat was still alive, that I had made a mistake, that it wasn’t dead.

  A coiled spring unwound against the cat’s leg. I stared at the clock components. If there was one thing I was good at, it was making broken things work again. And that’s when the idea came to mind. What if I could mend the cat? I wasn’t thinking I could bring it back to life, but perhaps I could give it a semblance of life, could give it movement.

  I thought about it for a long while before I set to work.

  There was a penknife on the table. I picked it up and unfastened the blade, feeling it click open. A thin sheen of sweat painted my brow as I gingerly held the small penknife against the cat’s soft underbelly. This was stupid. I couldn’t do it, and my stomach recoiled at the thought.

  With a shake of my head, I dropped the knife and stared at the corpse. It looked pitiful, and fresh tears stung my eyes. After a slight hesitation, I picked the knife up again and sliced the blade into the cat before I had time to change my mind. It wasn’t so bad when I started. There wasn’t much blood as no heart pumped, and despite the cold, slimy feel, removing the cat’s innards was no worse than taking the giblets out of the turkey at Christmas, something I had done last year.

  Once I had gutted the cat, I started to construct a mechanism to provide movement. It wouldn’t be the most technical of accomplishments, but I knew when it was inside the cat, no one would see it, so I wasn’t too concerned. I used a small drill to make holes in the cat’s bones, to which I attached Meccano strips, supplementing its own skeleton with one of my own onto which I attached the clockwork device I had made.

  I had to make a couple of journeys to the house, but mother seemed to either not notice me or ignore me as she fed Vicky.

  Because I found the body, I think she blames me for father’s death.

  It took the best part of the remainder of the day, but eventually I finished.

  I stood the cat on the table, inserted a key into a small hole in its underside, and turned it. Through my fingers on the cat’s back I could feel the cogs turning, the multiple springs being tensioned.

  Ten turns later, I released the key and stepped back. The cat’s eyes stared back at me, but nothing happened.

  Wondering if I had done something wrong, I stepped toward the cat when it suddenly blinked, stopping me in my tracks. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Its eyes weren’t supposed to blink—couldn’t blink because nothing powered them. I had considered how to make its eyes move, but decided making it walk would be enough.

  The cat’s head moved a fraction, just a twitch at first, almost imperceptible, and then it swiveled from side to side as though testing the movement. It took a tentative step, its movements jerky, mechanical. The limbs hardly bent at the joints, which was disappointing after I’d spent so long fashioning the Meccano and bone links.

  I could feel my heart beating in time with the clocks that pulsed through the room. The cat staggered toward me, its limbs moving with the stiffness of a soldier on parade. I took a step back; could feel the blood throbbing at my temples, could feel the sweat on my back.

  What had I done?

  The cat opened its mouth. That shouldn’t have happened either. It wasn’t wired to work.

  I wondered whether it made a sound.

  Unable to look at it any longer, I ran out of the den, back to the house and into the kitchen, where I stood shaking.

  “Alex, are you okay?” mother asked as she looked up from feeding Vicky.

  I couldn’t tell her what I’d done, didn’t fully understand it enough to explain, but that dead cat was more than a reanimated clockwork pussy. It had a life of its own, and it terrified me. I’d only wanted to make it move, to make it not seem so dead.

  “You’re pale as a sheet. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  I signed that I was fine, and then I offered to carry on feeding Vicky while mother had a break. Mother smiled and nodded.

  “You’re a good boy, Alex.”

  While I spoon-fed Vicky, something purporting to be pasta in sauce, I thought about the cat. I couldn’t leave it in the den. But what could I do with it?

  My sister opened and closed her mouth, as greedy as a baby bird. Her hair was like spun gold, her eyes as blue as the sky. She still had a lot of baby fat, which made her look like those old paintings of cherubs. I smiled at her, and she smiled back. I envied her the innocence that didn’t yet feel the pain of loss.

  After I’d fed and changed her, I rocked her to sleep, put her in the cot, and then walked back out to the den.

  I stood outside the structure, my hand on the door, feeling the beat of the clocks through the wood.

  Bracing myself, I took a deep breath, then flung the door open and stepped back. When the cat didn’t appear, I took a cautious step toward the den and peered inside to find the cat had torn its way through the plastic window.

  Distressed, I ran around the side of the den and looked in the hedgerows to see if I could spot the cat, but it was nowhere to be seen.

  How far would it get with ten winds of the key?

  Surely not that far.

  I remembered the way it had blinked and opened its mouth, actions it wasn’t supposed to be able to do. Perhaps it would go further than I imagined. Perhaps the clockwork components weren’t powering it at all; perhaps it hadn’t really been dead. A shiver ran up my spine. I felt like screaming, but didn’t know if it was through fear or uncertainty.

  Although I continued searching, there was no sign of the cat. After a while, I even wondered whether it had really happened, but when I returned to the den, I noticed the cat’s innards in the plastic bag. They had started to smell, so I buried them in the garden and then ran back inside the house, where I shut and bolted the door.

  During the next few days, I stayed indoors more than normal, which didn’t go unnoticed by mother. I think she preferred it when I was out. She questioned me a couple of times, and I could tell she thought there was something wrong. But I couldn’t tell her what I had done as it didn’t seem right. Besides, I didn’t think she’d believe me.

  That first night in bed, I had felt sure the cat was going to creep up on me, and there I’d be, unable to hear it. So I lay on the mattress in a way that I could touch the floor, trying to feel for the ticktock of my feline creation, but when it never came, I eventually fell asleep.

  It wasn’t until three days later that I found the bird’s carcass in the hedgerow.

  I stared at it, wondering how it had died. Eventually, I crouched and picked up the bird, recognized it as a starling. When I looked closer, I noticed a hole in its neck. Parting the plumage around the hole, I could just make out the shuttlecock ridges of an air-rifle pellet.

  Bird in hand, I walked down to the den. Being a small creature made it a tricky process, but I made a small incision on the underside of its chest. Into this, I placed a small frame, to which I attached the motor, fashioned from watches. Its legs were too small to animate, so I didn’t consider doing anything other than making its wings move. I hoped it would be enough.

  I had rigged the windup mechanism into its chest,
and I gave the key ten turns and then set the bird on the table.

  It took a while, but then it blinked and its beak opened and closed. It flexed its wings, the movement still mechanical. Moments later, the bird gave a nod of its head and launched itself into the air. It made an ungainly test flight, struggling to keep itself airborne. I wondered whether the watch components were too heavy.

  It finally came to rest on the windowsill where it fluttered its wings a couple of times before flying away through the open door.

  I ran outside and watched it struggle into the sky, circling higher and higher until I lost sight of it. When I eventually lowered my gaze, I saw mother standing at the back door, gazing out. She looked happy. Vicky babbled in her arms.

  When I found Vicky sprawled on the floor by her highchair a couple of days later, it seemed like an ironic case of déjà vu. I stared at her for a moment, then checked her neck for a pulse. The feel of her cold skin made me flinch. I sat back and chewed a fingernail, wondering whether she had cried out when she fell. Not that it would have mattered, as I wouldn’t have heard.

  Having left Vicky in my care while she visited my father’s grave, mother would undoubtedly hold me responsible. This time she would be right.

  My sister felt heavier than she was as I lifted her from the floor and carried her out to the den. The partially gutted badger that I had been working on eyed me from the bench as I set my sister down. My skill at reanimating the clockwork menagerie had grown immeasurably.

  I picked up the knife.

  Hopefully, mother would never notice.

  LUSCIOUS

  BY JEZZY WOLFE