Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest #9

by Apex Authors

  My favorite area was always the street carts in the Farmers Market where they offered grilled food of all sorts. Once I purchased a chicken kabob with a cream curry dip. Feeling closed in, I retreated to the alley behind the market to enjoy my meal in peace. A brick wall separated me from the food court. As I bit into my tasty charred chicken, an unfamiliar aroma distracted me.

  A nose can find a path as well as the eye can, and my nose led my eyes to a thin, sherbet-green stream snaking out of a drain in the brick wall. I couldn't tell exactly what it was so I leaned closer, exhaled, and took a deep breath. Within seconds, I was on my knees having vomited until I was dry-heaving. Once I was able to catch my breath, I had run away, leaving my meal behind.

  Now, here, that same smell blanketed our room. And it came from my roommate's bed tube. He wore the teeth in his sleep because I'd mentioned something about burning them up on reentry if I found them lying around.

  I stood next to him. At the sixty-degree resting angle, his face was positioned just right for access. I unfastened his resting belt, positioned his arms by his side and cinched the belt, effectively trapping his arms. I pried apart his lips, where those two sharp teeth gleamed a ‘hello'. The teeth didn't bother me. It was the filthy green bacteria I could see glowing in the dark that blackened my soul.

  Perri roused. He mumbled something.

  "I thought you washed them.” I grabbed the edges of the mouth guard and yanked.

  "Noommpph!"

  They popped free like a boot from mud. I fell to the ground. He fought the bed restraints but couldn't get himself loose.

  "It's mine!” Neon green spittle splattered his lips.

  "For your own good—” In my rage, I squeezed the monster teeth hard. The buck fangs sliced my palm. I could feel the bacteria ooze into my bloodstream, course through my veins.

  "Out! Get it out!” I was burning with fever—that fast. Too late, I dropped the teeth.

  "Nik, calm down. It's okay.” Perri looked afraid for me.

  "Just let me out. I can help you."

  I smelled it all over him. His teeth. That back alley with the putrid green rivulet. None of it would wash out. I bent over, picked the teeth up and walked over to him. I put the teeth where they belonged. And bit. And bit. ‘Til all of his green spilled out.

  Geoffrey Girard has penned dark fantasy and horror tales for such anthologies as Writers of the Future (he was a 2003 winner) and the recent Damned Nation. His first book, Tales of the Jersey Devil, a collection of thirteen stories based on the legendary monster, was published by Middle Atlantic Press in 2005 and Tales of the Atlantic Pirates—YES, they fight zombies!—set sail last summer. Two more Tales Of ... books will arrive in 2007. Geoffrey was born in Germany, shaped in New Jersey and is currently teaching high school students in Ohio about Ray Bradbury and Shakespeare. You can find out more online at www.GeoffreyGirard.com.

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  Cain XP11: The Voice of Thy Brother's Blood

  By Geoffrey Girard

  This boy was every boy.

  The standard-model boy. T-shirt, jeans. Straight bangs falling over a rounded face. Big brown eyes. The fixed playful grin of a pirate. Plato's Eternal-Form boy. Ten years old, legs too long, deep summer tan. Fidgeting in his chair. An iPod slung around his neck for later.

  He'd raped his first victim with a metal bar wrenched from the bed frame, then carefully positioned the body and the inserted bar for her family to find. Another dead woman, he'd bitten off both nipples before strangling her with a pair of stockings that'd been pulled so tightly around her neck, they'd cut down to the bone.

  He'd done all these things. This boy.

  Theodore.

  Done more, actually, according to his summary file.

  Or his DNA had.

  Becker had not yet made any distinction between the two. And, he wasn't so sure the two men standing behind him had either.

  "Phase One, where Applications still does most of its research, is only restricted therapeutic cloning,” Dr. Erdman, the division head, continued. “What you'd call ‘stem-cell research.'” His voice remained distant and flat, and Becker wondered if the man might still be in shock. Based on what he'd seen earlier in the Activity Center, it would have been understandable. “These subjects were part of Phase Two."

  From behind the two-way mirror, Becker looked over the rest of the boys sitting in the room.

  Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.

  Sitting beside the first was another they'd tagged as Jerry. Fifteen years old, the file read. His former self enjoyed intercourse with dead girls and fastening the bodies with copper wires for electrical shock experiments, which he meticulously documented and photographed. He'd kept breasts as souvenir paperweights. His former self had been executed ten years ago.

  Another teen named Dean watched TV from the couch. Twenty-seven bodies were uncovered on “his” property back in ‘73. After authorities found the torture room.

  The last, Andrei, had committed fifty-three murders in the Ukraine, according to the sheet. Even Becker found the number unsettling. The Rostov Ripper. Preferred method was to cut away the eyes and then casually eat the uterus after his victim couldn't “see him” anymore. This boy was a recent addition, no more than eight.

  "Where do you get all the DNA?” Becker asked.

  The second doctor, a stout man built like a Tolkien dwarf and introduced as Mohlenbrock, actually chuckled. “Where don't you?” he said. “Archived evidence. Autopsy samples. We had Gacy's brain here on loan for months. Hair on old brushes and clothes bought from family members. Hell, some of these guys are still alive, and they just sign over the stuff."

  "We bought some of Gacy's on e-Bay,” Dr. Erdman added.

  "Is this legal?” Becker asked, his eyes still on the boys.

  "Is what legal, Captain?"

  There was just a touch of forewarning in the geneticist's voice, and Becker turned.

  "Cloning humans,” he said.

  "It is, actually,” Erdman replied. “For now. Though some states have recently prohibited the practice, the federal government, as yet, has not."

  "I just assumed."

  "Most do."

  "I also thought we were at least ten, maybe twenty years from ... from this."

  "So does Congress.” The doctor pulled off his glasses to wipe them with his tie. “For those in Washington who know better, the biotech lobby has become rather substantial in the last fifteen years."

  Becker studied the first boy again.

  Theodore/12, the file and photo read.

  A clone.

  The genetic carbon copy of another human being.

  And not just any human being, Becker reminded himself. Developed in some lab for the scientific goal of isolating, understanding and curing violent human behavior, this boy was the genetic offspring of a known killer. A name even Becker recognized, although he could never remember if it was the good-looking guy out west or the one who dressed like a clown.

  Ted Bundy.

  This kid's DNA had history. This DNA had celebrity status.

  This DNA had killed.

  Considering the boy's face, Becker decided, Bundy was the good-looking guy. Considering the file, he was a monster.

  Becker looked for something in the kid's eyes, anything that revealed the kind of person who'd slowly and rhythmically beat a young woman to death with a piece of plywood while masturbating with his free hand. He saw nothing but a ten-year-old boy and the partial ghost of his own reflection in the glass.

  "How do you keep them here?"

  "DSTI has a private school on premises. Their adoptive parents, employees of DSTI, naturally, have enrolled their sons here."

  Becker rescanned the file.

  BD: June 10, 1996 SCNT: January 1, 1996

  IMP: January 10, 1996 FH: N300

  "What's SCNT, Doctor?"

  "Somatic cell nuclear transfer. IMP is embryo implant. FH is the female host. Look, Captain.”
The doctor shuffled his feet behind him. “Perhaps this was a mistake. We thought it might be easier for you to understand the rest if—"

  "No,” Becker stopped him. “This was helpful, thank you.” He turned from the two-way mirror and resorted the folder. “And the six who escaped...” He reread the “parent gene” names, having only half-recognized two of them.

  Albert Fish. Jeffrey Dahmer. Henry Lee Lucas.

  Dennis Rader. Ted Bundy. David Berkowitz.

  "I thought the kid in there was Bundy."

  The doctor looked uneasy. “Theodore 12, Captain."

  Becker allowed himself an extra moment to process the implication before speaking. “How many are there exactly, Doctor?"

  "Most die during gestation. With respect, we'd prefer to focus on the six who are missing.” Erdman reset his glasses. “Major General Durbin assures us you were the best man for this."

  In other words, Becker thought, none of your fucking business, soldier. Not a unique circumstance considering he'd been Combat Applications, i.e. Special Forces, for nine years now. If there was one thing he'd learned in the 1st SFOD-Delta, it was when to shut up. For now, he'd allow his question to remain unanswered. He held up the briefing they'd pulled together. “I'll need complete files for each of the escapees. Everything you have."

  "Certainly,” Erdman said. “They're being gathered for you as we speak. Psychiatric and medical reports, the—"

  "And the three hostages,” Becker interrupted. “Everything you have on Dr. Jacobson and the two nurses. Santos and...” he checked his notes. “Kelso."

  "Of course. Human Resources will assist you in any way possible. Do you really think such information can help?"

  "Do you really think I'd be asking if it didn't?” Becker noticed the shocked look cross Mohlenbrock's face and checked his next words. “It might help,” he amended instead. “That's sometimes reason enough. Perhaps find something to point us to where they might have gone."

  Erdman nodded in agreement. “Any chance our people are still alive?"

  "Based on what I saw in the other room—” Becker handed Mohlenbrock back the file “—I'm not sure which answer you really want to hear right now."

  Erdman stared back at him, appraising him again, Becker realized, like another one of his specimens.

  "I'd like to head back to the Activity Center now,” Becker said, freeing the doctor from the pressure of having to speak first again.

  "Of course.” Erdman lifted an arm to shepherd him from the room.

  "Their meeting was scheduled?"

  "First Monday of every month for this group. Our psychiatric head, Angela Corwin, and Dr. Jacobson always run the session together. Though, I didn't even think he'd make this one today."

  "Why is that, Doctor?"

  "Been out all last week,” Erdman said. “The flu. Was working from home. Came in just today."

  "How's that for luck?” Mohlenbrock asked.

  Becker didn't respond.

  Within the double doors, the room's walls were painted a striking light blue color that immediately reminded Becker of the Aral Sea, so the fresh dark sprays and splatters of blood were even more conspicuous than usual. Becker pretended it was coral.

  Two men in light hazard suits and masks moved about the room still, gathering more evidence, snapping more pictures.

  Becker followed the two doctors directly through the center and slowed to study the body splayed across the foosball table. The sheet they'd covered it with was already soaked through and Becker could perfectly make out the person beneath. A modern Shroud of Turin, still dripping over the plastic players to the field below.

  "Which one is this?” he asked.

  "Dylan."

  Becker waited.

  "Kleybold. Columbine."

  "Right,” Becker forced himself simply to accept this information as nothing more than standard intel. “And you've confirmed that's the other kid?"

  The other body had been bound with network cables to the railing, which led to the second floor. Becker eyed the dark shape half hidden beneath the sheet, embossed in blood like the charcoal rubbing of an old tombstone. Standing with its arms still held outstretched like some Halloween prankster.

  "Dr. Bauer,” Erdman waved over one of the men in hazard suites and claimed his clipboard. Mohlenbrock excused himself and scurried through the opposite set of double doors as Erdman flipped through a few pages. “Eric Harris, yes. Eric 6. Blood and PCR tests match up."

  "Have they found the skin yet?” he asked.

  "No, Captain."

  Becker looked down again at Kleybold and furled back the sheet. The body beneath had been flayed. Completely and immaculately. The skin cut away at every turn so that the boy, except for a few gouges out of his arm and between his toes, now looked like something out of a Michelangelo sketch book. The report suggested the other one looked exactly the same. “Why did they hate these two so much?” Becker asked.

  "Is it that obvious?"

  "This boy was alive when they skinned him.” He looked into its lidless dark eyes. “I ... I've seen this before."

  "Where was that, Captain?"

  Becker ignored the question and replaced the sheet. “It's in the hands.” He moved towards the Harris body. “The arms. Instantaneous rigor. Just like a drowning victim's last cadaveric spasm. These two drowned choking on their own blood."

  "The others never...” The doctor followed Becker deeper into the room. “It was a mistake to have those two here. Naturally, spree killers were never the same as the others."

  "Naturally,” Becker hid his damning grin. “So, how do you know it's not Eric 3 or 4?"

  He made sure to make it sound like a genuine question and not a challenge. The pissing contest seemed worse than usual with this lot. A bunch of Betas in ties and lab coats with delusions of Alpha-ness. God, how I hate the twentieth century.

  Twenty-first. Jesus.

  "Doctor?” he prompted.

  "There are ways. If there's one thing we know around here ... Besides, the other Erics all terminated during gestation."

  Becker looked at the doctor. Terminated, he mused. These pricks speak just like we do. “The transmitters,” he said.

  Bloody metallic pellets the size of a small pill. They'd been left on the pool table in the shape of a smiley face. The body of the psychotherapist remained sprawled just beside them, she, too, covered with a sheet.

  "All subjects implanted at birth for their own safety."

  Becker squatted down for a better look. “Of course."

  "It appears they each cut them out right here. Over the table. We'd thought they'd carved up Eric and Dylan looking for them, but—"

  "No,” Becker said, “I think that bit was mostly for, what, fun? They seem to have found and cut these transmitters easily enough without that. Question for you, how'd they even know to look for them?"

  Erdman just shrugged.

  Becker looked about the rest of the room and took in the other signs of recent history sprinkled throughout.

  The security guard brained against the steps. The torn and bloody nurses’ uniforms. Crimson scrawling on the walls. Several small bodies swaddled in sheets on the floor, those students not invited, for whatever reason, to come along on the field trip. The glossy arterial spray painted in streaks across the television and X-box.

  More coral.

  What had happened here, the who and the how and the when, would take time. The tapes from the security cameras were missing. Becker turned to Erdman. “Where's Jacobson's room?"

  "Right through here."

  Jacobson's office proved spacious and expensive. It had also been completely destroyed. The chairs and coffee tables splintered into pieces. Cabinets emptied. Built-in shelves split and bare, the books in uneven piles on the floor. Someone had clearly tried starting a fire with some of the paperwork. Mirrors and framed pictures had been shattered into snarling shards of glass, and several computers and monitors were smashed into a hundred pieces s
o that the whole room now glittered beneath the harsh unnatural lighting recessed above. The large desk was covered in blood that pooled along the edges of the missing doctor's laptop.

  "This the teacher's blood? The one from the stairwell."

  "Mrs. Gallagher,” Erdman confirmed. “Right. Damned woman would have been sixty-five next month."

  "Dangerous job.” Becker looked around, pointed to the swaddled cloth in the sink. “And that's the..."

  "Yes."

  Becker nodded, made to look about the room casually, while his mind absorbed the information. Mrs. Gallagher's entrails and uterus not ten feet away. This is worse than Towraghondi, he thought suddenly. Jesus Christ, I didn't think that was even possible.

  To clear his mind, he tried focusing on the only two things in the room not completely destroyed. The fish tank, which, though tinged slightly pink with blood, was still intact with a dozen saltwater beauties floating about.

  And the framed needlepoint behind the desk. Old English lettering:

  And our LORD set a mark upon Cain,

  And he dwelt in the land of Nod,

  on the east of Eden.

  "He nicknamed it the ‘Cain gene’ early,” Erdman said behind him.

  Becker looked back. “Cain gene?"

  "Cain and Abel."

  "Got that part. You might wanna help me with the genetics."

  "In essence, it's an anomaly on the XP11 strand of DNA that scientifically indicates, and potentially influences, a genetic predisposition to various degrees of aggression, rage, and violence, whose chromosomal allele travels only on the X gene.” Erdman sighed. “Meaning men, who have only one X, are hereditarily predisposed to the affliction."

  "The kind of men who would do something like this."

  "Precisely, Captain. This. And precisely why we're trying to help such men in the future."

  "Sure. What was in the fish tank?"

  Dr. Erdman paused too long, deciding how to play it, and Becker let his annoyance show. Did they really think he was that stupid?

  "A key,” Erdman said. “But we have no idea what it goes to."