by Simon Janus
All guns were trained on Keeler. O’Keefe was sneering with his own gun pointed. He stood next to Jeter who was fighting to break his bonds. Cady was shaking his head in what looked like astonishment while two guards restrained him and another held a machine gun to his back. A lot has happened while I’ve been away, Keeler thought, and a lot more is going to.
“I bet you didn’t expect to see me again,” Keeler said.
“It wasn’t of much importance to us,” O’Keefe said, sounding bored with Keeler’s pathetic display. “You’re not part of the bigger picture.”
“And what is the bigger picture?” Keeler demanded.
“None of your business.”
“Oh, yeah?” Keeler aimed the machine gun at O’Keefe’s chest. “How about now?”
“You are pathetic, Keeler. You really think you’ll be allowed to squeeze off that popgun? Not a chance. Put the damn thing down and be sensible.”
“You would risk shooting the boy? I didn’t think you were that callous, Governor.”
“Try me.”
The boy buried his face in Keeler’s neck and hugged him with all his strength.
“You’re a piece of work, O’Keefe.”
“Thank you.”
“I don’t doubt you’d try your luck, but I doubt all of your guards are as committed to the cause as you. Not many of them would fancy being a child killer. Look at what it did for me.”
“So what’s the plan now?” O’Keefe asked. “Go back to general population looking the way you do? Or are you planning to just walk out of here and spill your guts to the first Fleet Street newshound you can find?”
“I don’t know. Explain this.” Keeler pointed at his new eyes. “And I’ll think about hanging around.”
O’Keefe snorted and shook his head.
“It’s a game, Keeler,” Cady shouted, “just the next best thing in virtual reality games.”
Cady didn’t get to finish his condemnation. O’Keefe backhanded him in the face, bloodying the younger man’s nose. The two guards restraining Cady prevented him from hitting the floor. Keeler’s hold tightened around the machine gun’s trigger. The gun was only a pound or two of pressure away from opening up.
O’Keefe turned to face Keeler. Murder boiled in the governor’s eyes. Keeler knew O’Keefe was about to have him cut down by the armed hit squad. Keeler wasn’t sure if it was his mutation that gave him the foresight or whether every person was granted a moment of clarity before they died. Well, he wasn’t going to stand idly by and let it happen.
“Davey, I need to put you down now,” he whispered to the boy. “Okay?”
The boy nodded.
“You get out of here.”
“Okay.”
Keeler lowered the boy to the ground. The boy hopped down from the opening and tottered towards one of the few female technicians in the North Wing. She broke ranks and knelt to receive him. The moment the boy made the move towards the woman, Keeler opened fire.
The machine gun barked, bucking in Keeler’s grasp. Everyone either hit the ground or took cover, but O’Keefe wasn’t quick enough. Keeler emptied his clip into the governor. The son of a bitch didn’t stand a chance and neither did Keeler. He knew shooting the governor left him open to be cut down by the hit squad, but he didn’t mind. He was comfortable with dying. It was the best thing for him under the circumstances. Death didn’t come though. Allard’s machine gun saved him.
Bullets didn’t come from Allard’s toy--wasps did. Yellow jackets cursed by Jeter’s Rift left the muzzle. The oversized and disfigured creatures swarmed on O’Keefe. He tried to dodge their attack, but they knew their intended target and followed his every move. Stingers impaled O’Keefe’s flesh, injecting a poison. Its intense corrosive strength dissolved fist-sized chunks of flesh. O’Keefe crumpled.
Everyone froze. The armed screws stalled on their triggers, not firing a round. The technicians watched in fascination as the wasps stung O’Keefe. This was way out of their league. No one knew what to do.
Keeler looked on in fear. O’Keefe’s agonizing death meant nothing. The ability of the creatures of the Rift to exist in the real world meant everything. Jeter chuckled through his dislodged muzzle.
“Cady, shoot Jeter!” Keeler screamed. “He can make the realities co-exist.”
Cady understood. He elbowed one of his restraining guards in the gut, snatching the automatic pistol from his grasp and pistol-whipped his other guard in one fluid motion. He raced towards Jeter.
His action galvanized the guards in the gun nests. Keeler saw them take aim at Cady, so he opened up with the machine gun again. It dry retched, but that didn’t matter. He just wanted to draw their attention away from Cady. The guards took the bait and fired at him.
Cady bounded onto the Throne, clinging on with one hand. He jammed the pistol up against Jeter’s temple and fired and fired and fired.
Bullets pulverized Keeler’s body. Every round ate through his flesh, but he didn’t feel a thing. His strength and abilities belonged to the more powerful Rift. The real world couldn’t hurt him. He reveled in his new power and O’Keefe’s misery.
Jeter’s head exploded. Chunks of eggshell-thin skull and brain chased after the exiting bullets. Green fluid, stinking of wormwood, spouted from what was left of his fragmented head. Jeter’s muzzle slipped down and he roared with laughter.
It was too much for Cady. He’d done all he could and it had to be enough. It was a relief when two bullets ripped into his back and he crumpled against the side of the Throne. As his strength flowed out of his wounds, he lost his grip on the Throne and slithered down the side.
For a soul-destroying moment, Keeler thought Jeter was unkillable. The greater part of the serial killer’s skull was gone. He was nothing more than a face that wouldn’t stop laughing. But like a clock spring that needed winding, Jeter finally ground to a halt.
The Rift rumbled. He realized what was happening. Without Jeter, it couldn’t exist. It fluttered under the pressure of the North Wall. The energy it normally produced dimmed. Stone blocks materialized from thin air, and mortar oozed out to fill the gaps between the blocks at a furious rate, as if applied by unseen masons.
Keeler watched the Rift collapse around him. He glanced back at the world beyond the Rift, its existence darkening by the second. He could return to that diminishing world if he wanted or stay in the real world to be viewed as a freakish god. Some choice, he thought and stood his ground.
Bullets ceased pummeling his body. He surveyed the joint nightmare created by O’Keefe and Jeter in the real world. The hit squad had stopped shooting. They’d taken out several of the technicians in the confusion. Both guards and technicians attended to the fallen. Some were still tearing the wasps off O’Keefe’s carcass, but Keeler got the idea that those yellow jackets wouldn’t leave O’Keefe alone until nothing was left. Jeter was still and Cady crawled across the floor, forgotten by everyone. It was a shambles, but it wouldn’t be his mess to clear up. He didn’t care for the North Wings’ problems. The female technician held the boy safe in her arms.
Keeler had saved the boy and ended O’Keefe’s atrocity before it had begun. At last, he’d done something worthwhile with his life. He hoped it made up for his mistakes. He called out Tim Mitchell’s name as the North Wall squashed the Rift, crushing him out of existence.
Cady winced as the wall squeezed Keeler from all sides squirting him out across the North Wing as a fine spray. What was left ran between the mortar joints.
You’re out of it, Cady thought. Go in peace.
The green-eyed boy turned his gaze on Cady. Cady marveled at the child Keeler had saved. How had Jeter cast the boy into his private hell?
The boy wrestled against the technician’s hold. She tried to placate him, but he slipped from her grasp and made a bolt towards Cady. He didn’t get far. The woman snatched an arm, halting his progress. The boy’s green-green eyes blazed with fury. As she went to gather the boy up, he pressed a hand against h
er stomach. A Rift spread out from his hand and expanded to four feet in diameter at the expense of the helpful woman. Through the Rift, Cady glimpsed a gateway to a different world than the one that had been projected on the North Wall. The Rift lasted only a few seconds and closed again before the woman struck the ground in two smoldering halves. The boy giggled.
“Jesus Christ,” Cady muttered.
Guards and other technicians who’d witnessed the boy’s lethal gift backed away, fear etched into their features.
The boy giggled again. Now that he had everyone’s attention, he started to show off. He dashed over to a console and pressed a hand to it. Again, a Rift blossomed from his touch and the console evaporated. The technician manning the console pitched forward into the Rift. The Rift closed after the technician disappeared inside.
A guard with a broken visor opened fire on the boy. The boy responded by opening a Rift in front of him to protect himself. The bullets disappeared into its depths. The guard threw down his gun and ran. A stampede ensued. People on the ground bolted for the exits. Guards up in their gun nests clambered down the cat ladders.
Cady was glad to see good sense finally present itself in the North Wing. Not that he thought running was going to do them any good. It was too late. The milk had been spilled and there wasn’t a mop big enough to clear up the mess.
Cady remained. He’d never make it to the doors now. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore.
The boy stabbed the air like he was playing cops and robbers with fingers guns. Except his finger guns had the power to kill. Rifts opened up everywhere the boy pointed. One Rift developed out of thin air partially behind the guard who’d shot at the boy, swallowing him from the waist down. His upper torso struck the ground, trailing his intestines into the Rift. Others suffered similar fates.
The boy turned away from his carnage. He wasn’t needed anymore. Rifts opened spontaneously. Some blossomed in the walls and ceilings, some from thin air. The boy wandered over to Cady and stood over his crippled form.
“Who are you?” Cady asked.
“I’m Davey.”
“Who are you really?”
The boy giggled menacingly. Cady recognized it. Fear swelled, creating a vacuum in his chest. He could barely bring himself to utter the truth. He’d feared the North Wing Project would breed more monsters like Jeter, but not this. How had O’Keefe been so blind? The bastard shouldn’t have died without knowing the truth.
“You’re Jeter, aren’t you?”
“Yes, James David Jeter, but my mum called me Davey. You helped me be reborn.”
“No,” Cady wailed and lunged for the new Jeter. The boy stepped back to miss the sloppy attempt with ease.
“Goodbye,” the boy said and turned away.
Cady felt the ground shift. He turned to look. The concrete floor was dissolving where Jeter’s wormwood poisoned brain had spilled. The floor under Jeter’s Throne opened up and it toppled into the expanding hole, taking its king with it. Cady peered into the abyss. A massive tangle of wormwood grew, spiraling out of control. Nourished and fueled by insanity, it burst through the opening, knocking him aside and ripping a bigger hole in the floor.
The boy headed over to the North Wall.
“Come back,” Cady bellowed.
The boy glanced over his shoulder, grinned and kept on walking.
A pistol lay twenty feet from Cady. He hauled himself along on his elbows. As he reached out to claim the weapon, a Rift opened up, blocking his path. He went to go around it. Another Rift burst into life next to him, then another, and another, until he was totally boxed in. The boy giggled.
“Come back, please,” Cady pleaded, tears streaking his face.
The naked boy touched the North Wall and a hole opened. He stepped into the moonlit London streets. The approaching emergency vehicles didn’t see him disappear into the night.
The End
ROAD RASH
The following is from the book, Road Rash, available from Amazon Kindle.
Road Rash
The unmistakable sounds of buckling metal and shattering glass cut across the field from the road.
Everyone’s having car troubles today, Straley thought.
He broke into a jog. His own transportation threw a rod five miles back. He’d managed to coax the Ford to a vacant lot and then left it there to die. Not that all his problems today were vehicle related. His crew lay dead. To be honest, he and his crew had screwed themselves. Bank robberies were never easy, silent fucking alarms. But hey, he’d gotten away with the haul.
Straley’s jog quickly slacked off to a walking pace. The weight of close to four hundred grand in mixed bills stuffed into a duffel and slung over his back demanded that.
How can paper weigh this much?
He reached the shoulder and the carnage left him stunned. The head on took no prisoners. It was a battle between Detroit steel, old and new. A seventies Chevy Caprice took the honors from a late model Dodge Caravan. The Caravan was toast. Upside-down, it bled oil and antifreeze-tainted water. Steam wafted skyward from the engine and blown tires rotated lazily, still clinging to buckled rims. When the minivan landed on its roof, the impact blew out the front windshield, along with two of the side windows. On the other hand, the Caprice sported a buckled fender, busted headlight and a twisted bumper. Its engine ticked over unevenly, which seemed a product of poor maintenance rather than a direct result the accident. A spider web of cracks from the bloody impact of the driver’s head crazed the windshield.
It was one of those accidents that never should have happened on a straight road with no distractions or blind spots. However, these things happened all the time. The only witness to the crash was a busty young model trying to sell lite beer on a billboard at the side of the road. She looked on, still smiling her lascivious smile.
Straley shrugged off the duffel and felt a hundred pounds lighter. So much so, he staggered for a moment before he got his legs under control and ran over to the inverted Caravan. He peered in to find the driver sagged against the seatbelt, her hands lying against the roof’s lining. Blood streaked her blonde hair and puddled against the headliner. Straley didn’t have to ask if she was okay or check her vital signs. The vacant stare on this soccer mom’s face told him all he needed to know. He couldn’t tell what caused her death. The seatbelt still restrained her and the air bag had done its job, but there wasn’t much that could prevent severe, blunt trauma. This situation offered him nothing.
He scurried over to the Caprice and struggled to see inside the car. Months of road dirt coated the outside and blood smeared the interior. Through the filthy windows, he saw a figure slumped across the front seats. It was impossible to tell the driver’s condition. Straley jerked on the driver’s door handle but the door remained jammed solid. It took both his hands and much of his strength to wrench it open.
What he found inside took his breath away. The man behind the wheel was old, but how old, Straley couldn’t tell under the carnage. The driver was wearing his seatbelt, which had done little to protect him. It only prevented the man from pouring out onto the road. The Caprice Man looked raw. The impact must have somehow peeled the man’s skin back, because it hung in palm-sized sheets from his face and bare arms.
“Jesus Christ,” Straley murmured.
For the Caprice Man to be in this condition he had to have rolled the car a dozen times without the seatbelt fastened, but it was clear that hadn’t happened. The Caprice was in way too good a shape, even if the Caprice Man wasn’t.
He studied the bloody corpse belted into its steel coffin. The man wasn’t just raw; he was melting. His flesh looked to have dissolved off his body. It was as if this guy was coming unglued one cell at a time. A glob of something ruby red ran down his cheek like a teardrop.
A jolt of fear pulled Straley up short. There was something seriously wrong with this guy. He bet the son of a bitch had been on the way to a hospital when he passed out at the wheel and slammed into the minivan. St
raley hoped this shit wasn’t contagious.
He knew he should walk away and leave this mess for someone else to find, but he desperately needed a ride. By now, the cops would be all over the freeways with an APB that matched his description. He couldn’t turn down the opportunity. He had to take this car if he wanted to stay out of jail.
So what if this guy had something bad? The motherfucker was dead now. And who was to say it was contagious anyway? If he’d had the super monkey pox or other such shit, he wouldn’t be allowed to walk the streets. The government would have him under glass in some lab. As long as Straley didn’t touch this rabid freak’s mangled flesh, he’d be cool. He was as sure as Hell keeping the windows down for the next hundred miles or so.
Straley eyed the road in both directions. He saw no vehicles, nor did he expect any. This was why he’d chosen to keep to county roads. No one would be combing the backwaters for him, at least not yet. He hoped to catch a ride from some yokel who'd take pity on a lonely hitchhiker and then he’d jack the ride from his Good Samaritan. He wouldn’t have to do that now. Even though the Caprice was a piece of shit, it was running.
He eyed the road in both directions again. Still nothing. He reached across the man and unbuckled the seatbelt. It whizzed back with pieces of the man’s flesh embedded in the material.
Straley went to move the guy and hesitated. He didn’t relish grabbing hold of an inside-out body. He swallowed hard. “Come on, James,” he murmured to himself. “You can do this. It’s either this or federal prison.”
He filled his mind with the four hundred large, the chance to get away as planned and the opportunity not to have to walk any farther. With no more hesitation, he grabbed the Caprice Man by the tee shirt, avoiding his flesh, and yanked. The man’s wasted frame came away easily. He weighed less than Straley expected. The single tug hoisted the man from behind the wheel, out the door and onto the blacktop. With momentum on Straley’s side, he dragged the man over to the drainage ditch at the side of the road and rolled the body in.