Blood Soaked and Invaded - 02

by James Crawford

  Following her report, we all shared a moment of silence, not for the memory of the dead but simply because we couldn’t form any reasonable comments. That may be my projection onto the mood of the moment, but I know that I couldn’t fathom a weapon that would do damage of that kind. Charlie ended up breaking the silence with a nearly sotto voce, “Shit.”

  “Indeed.” Omura shook his head. “I have to report all this to the powers that be. They already have the data feed on the craft and the casualty report. I am going back to my place to report, and discuss whether or not I can get us more elbow room, now that the patch has been released.” He stood up, straightened his shirt, and strode out. Unsurprisingly, Buttons was on his heels.

  Sitting in the wake of the day’s madness, my original plan resurfaced. “Honey? We’d planned on having a chat with these lovely people before the Close Encounter with Death Ray.”

  “Funny how death and destruction can sideline other plans.” Charlie wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. “I think I can handle that, Frank. Do you want to tag along?”

  “Could I beg off on it? I’m feeling overwhelmed.”

  She stood up and gave me a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll take care of it and catch up with you soon. You two,” she crooked her finger at Baj and Jaya. “Let’s go somewhere and catch up on current events together.”

  They started out of the room together, and I heard Jayashri ask, “Is this going to be a conversation over tea, or will it be another twist to our unusual lives?” The last thing I heard before the door shut was an amused chuckle that could only have come from Charlie.

  Sitting in the room, alone in the quiet, I let myself deflate into the chair. Things had been so much easier during my sojourn in the Land of Brain Repair. No complex choices. No unfinished business with Scott and Mara’s undead baby. Unfortunately, life happens, and it is seldom simple.

  I opened the imaginary map that lurked like a toad on the bottom of my mental pond and was surprised to discover all of Building One laid out for me. There were two floors, until you got to the warehouse/hangar/garage that took up half the structure. I could see where the labs were, the medical clinic, morgue, physical therapy room (?), a large scientific area that could only be Bajali’s space... and an isolation chamber.

  My heartbeat was steady and regular, and I chalked that up to nanotechnology. By all rights I should have been quaking in my shoes with what I was contemplating. I had to see it again: the zombie toddler.

  No, there wasn’t a grand plan of any kind at that point. I just needed to know whether or not repaying my debt to Scott and Mara was within my reach. If so, then a plan would need to be created; after assessing possible negative outcomes, of course. I just got up from the chair and started walking.

  Stairs.

  Hallway.

  Doors.

  Unarmored Health Trooper.

  “You’re Frank, aren’t you?”

  “Huh? Yeah.”

  “It’s nice to see you again,” she said, bobbing her head up and down like a blond Velociraptor. “The last time I saw you, we were running all those tests.”

  “Uh,” I tried to place her face, and figure out a smooth way to extricate myself from the conversation without seeming suspicious. “My memories of that morning are pretty fuzzy. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  “Oh, that’s perfectly all right! I’m Jenny Lucas–I was responsible for mucus samples–when Dr. Greevey sampled your blood, stool, and urine!”

  Ew.

  From that moment forward, thanks to her introduction, I would remember her as “Mucus Girl.” I refuse to take blame for labels like those when the person in question gives me too much information. All things considered, mucus aside, she was cute in a perky/nerdy kind of way.

  I made a note to introduce her to Shoei.

  “Ah! Thanks for the reminder. How are you?”

  “Swell! Isn’t it great that you’re not contagious anymore?” Blink, blink, perky, perky.

  Please, God? Don’t lock me in a closet with her. Put her in a room with Omura or Gina Halperin. Okay? Thank you for listening to me in this, my time of great need. Word.

  “Yeah. I was just doing a self-guided tour of the building. Don’t let me keep you from your duties.” I nodded, smiled, and realized that she was not about to let go of me.

  I’d managed to find the bane of every covert operation in the history of the human race. A cling-on. Damn it Jim, I’m a nanotechnology-enhanced, suburban zombie hunter, not a Doctor!

  “Let me show you around!” Perky. Perky. Bouncy. Bouncy.

  I didn’t expect her to grab my hand and pull me along, but I found myself following nonetheless. Once I realized she was leading me where I was already headed I gave up bitching. In point of fact, someone this bouncy might provide excellent cover for my nefarious reconnoiter. Score one for serendipity.

  Jenny, my energetic guide, opened the door to the chamber of scientific horrors and led us into a room with a grating on the floor and white jumpsuits lining the walls. I was directed to put one on over my clothes before we moved through into the main lab, and I made wordless affirmative noises before complying.

  “There’s going to be a little blast of air,” she said, right before she flipped the switch that caused a momentary whirlwind to spring up from the vents in the floor.

  “Yow!”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty cool!”

  Was there anything in the world that could shake this kid up?

  “I think it dried my eyeballs out.” I rubbed them, hoping to generate a little moisture.

  “It does that to some people.” She grabbed my hand when it was free, and led us into the next room.

  For a moment, I wished that science had been my thing, because I might have understood all the computers, machines and widgets that were arrayed in neat rows across the floor. It looked like a dragon’s hoard of blinking lights, beakers and machines that periodically went “bing!” My guide didn’t allow me to linger, observing the riches, for very long before she dragged me over to the near wall.

  It looked like most of the wall surface was a bank of light boxes, the kind you use to look at x-rays with... confirmed by the series of x-ray films that were clipped to the surfaces. She flicked a switch and ghostly cross-sections of people parts lit up. Some of the images were a little odd.

  One of the images that appeared to have a prominent place in the collection displayed the inside of my head. Creepy.

  “See this one?” Of course, that’s the one she pointed to. “This is the inside of your head! Isn’t it amazing?”

  I nodded, biting the inside of my lip to keep from grimacing.

  “Now this one,” she moved her finger over a few images, “is your... left femur. See how the inside of the bone is brighter than the bone or the shadows of your muscle tissue?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The bright parts are colonies of nanomachines. We think they’ve taken over about 50% of the spaces that bone marrow would normally occupy. If you look at this image,” she said, moving us to the right, “you can see the same bright areas laced around your spinal column and almost coating the major nerves that branch off from your spinal cord.”

  “Oh... good.”

  “It is absolutely amazing! Did you know that you can now live without air for over three hours? You don’t even need to breathe! Dr. Bottsford and Dr. Sharma believe that the nanotech would start to rebuild your body for an aquatic environment if you were submerged for any length of time!”

  “Exciting.”

  “We have so many tests to do on you and your neighbors! It will be so nice to be able to interact with you in a more personal way, now that the contagious nature of the tech has been corrected.” She was smiling so hard I worried that her face might freeze in that position.

  “Yes. That would be much friendlier.” I tried to speak in something other than the gentle tones of a waiter faced with a belligerent diner, but I couldn’t manage it. “Would you say tha
t my modifications are pretty standard?”

  “No. Only you and Ms. Yan have progressed this far. Everyone else is developing at a slower pace. Combatants progress 25% faster than non-combatants.”

  It satisfied some of my curiosity, and added a number of things to my “worry about it at leisure” list. I decided to move my tour along to what I’d come for.

  “Say, Dr. Lucas. You guys have a pretty freaky specimen of zombie, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes! That’s ‘Subject F-31’. Want to see it?”

  Score. “I think that would be very interesting. I didn’t know they could be kept alive without allowing them to hunt. Let’s go!”

  We walked deeper into the room, and she explained as we went.

  “We give it daily feedings of virus-bearing material, usually plasma we’ve seeded with viral cultures. The strange thing is how it also needs standard nutrients from food.” Jenny turned to me with an intense expression. “It can’t survive on one or the other, but we think it can last longer in situations where there is more actual food than infected tissue, without losing vital functions.”

  “I imagine that it doesn’t need as much to keep going as a full-adult zombie would.”

  “Absolutely correct.”

  I saw the corner of the big transparent box over the top of a low cart, and my mouth went dry. Dr. Lucas babbled on at me as we got closer. I don’t think she heard it sniffing the air, but I did. A moment later, just a step or two later, and we were standing in front of it.

  It, the toddler zombie, was pressed up against the polycarbonate wall, as close to us as possible. The thing was lanky, gray, and reminded me of every horrible photo of children suffering from malnutrition that I’d ever seen. That’s where the resemblance ended though. Little kids in third world countries didn’t look this scary, or have tiny chests that worked like bellows.

  I don’t think they made the same noise, either.

  “Ueeeeh. Ueeeeh.” Those damned loose eyes rolled around until they focused on me. “Ueeeh. Ueeeh. Ueeeh.”

  “Wow! Did you hear how its vocalizations shortened?” Apparently, the good Doctor Lucas was not as urethra-pulsing terrified as I was. “That’s never happened before. What’s up with you F-31?” The crazy bitch actually rapped on the wall of the container!

  “Ueeh.”

  “Wow! That one was even shorter!”

  In all honesty, I think that this nut would have done a little jig in the name of scientific discovery if I hadn’t been there. I couldn’t keep myself focused, because the whole experience was bending my brain back and forth.

  “Uehf.”

  “Oh! I need to find a microphone and record this. I’ve never heard anything like that before!” She took off, leaving me standing alone.

  “Fh,” it said. One eye stopped looking at me, and independently moved to track Dr. Lucas.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Fhank,” it said, and my blood ran completely cold. F-31 was Scott and Mara’s child, and somehow it remembered me.

  I needed to kill it, and soon.

  “Hey, Dr. Lucas?”

  “Just call me Jenny, Frank!” She was still rummaging around for a microphone.

  “I’ve got to go talk with Dr. Sharma. Thanks for the tour!” I didn’t bother waiting for a reply, but crossed the room as fast as my upgraded self would go.

  I did leave the white jumpsuit behind, but it was a near thing.

  Chapter 15

  Building One didn’t bother being anything other than completely industrial. No one hung art in the hallways, and there certainly wasn’t any music playing. It felt something like a gulag looks. Cold and oppressive. The effect wasn’t improved by my recent experience with my unpaid debt made flesh.

  I decided to activate my internal heads-up display so I could pinpoint my targets with a little more accuracy than wandering around would give me. Almost instantly I knew that they were hanging out in the physical therapy room around the corner from the lab.

  Easy. I scooted over at top speed.

  “Hi, love,” I pinged Charlie as I got closer. “Have you told them yet?”

  “Oh, yes. I can see that you’re almost here,” she paused for a moment, “and that you’re a whole pile of interesting emotions and colors when I look at your icon in my head.” I could hear her make a “Hmm” noise inside my head. “Is this part of the upgrade special?”

  “Yes. Strange, isn’t it?”

  “Uh huh. I don’t really see what it has to do with keeping us alive or optimizing us for combat, but it certainly comes in handy for taking someone’s emotional temperature.”

  “So, before I open the door, how did they react to the news?”

  “I’d call it a stew of very mixed emotions. Jayashri made me pee on a stick to be sure. They’re currently debating the science and medical ramifications of a child who would have the upgrades from the start. I had to stop listening because it was starting to upset me.”

  I closed the internal connection with her, and opened the door to the PT room. Bajali and his wife were seated at a table towards the near side of the space and were gesturing with more than a little animation, but saying nothing out loud. I assumed they were using their cerebral cell phones to hold the conversation, since the only other option was they were yelling at one another in some kind of sign language. Simple politeness would have been enough reason to not interrupt them, but I was more motivated to get my arms around my girl than I was to say hello. I fucking needed some comfort.

  Charlie was sitting on the end of an examination table to the right of the Sharmas, and her face was strained. I walked over and threw my arms around her because she looked like she needed it and I certainly did. There’s nothing quite like a win-win situation in the middle of more strange shit, even if unusual feces is our order of business on any given day. She once told me to treasure the moments of Normal, and I have never forgotten that.

  The moment I touched her she exhaled like she was clearing the stale air from the beds of her toenails, and I knew that I had done the right thing. In the little cocoon of Normal that I’d created we relaxed into one another’s touch and I kissed her shoulder as I curled my head into the crook of her neck. I made a second mental note about seducing her into the bathtub, or any other semi-private location that I could wrangle in the very near future.

  “Frank?”

  “Yes, sweetie?” I pulled my head up and looked into her eyes.

  “Do you think we could find some private time to,” those gorgeous eyes twinkled at me, “cuddle like crazy when we’ve finished talking about this stuff?”

  How much more in love with her could I possibly be? “Darling, I was just about to suggest that we do that at our immediate convenience! You are so perfect!”

  The twinkling eyes gave birth to a bouncing baby grin and we both chuckled like co-conspirators. We were, in a way.

  “Talk like that got the two of you into this situation in the first place.”

  “Maybe. There is more to him than an insane willingness to snuggle.”

  “Are you telling me that Francis has charms that he has never revealed to the rest of us?” I could her the smile in Jayashri’s voice and was grateful that there was no condescension or criticism behind her words.

  “You betcha! It is so cute when he runs around the store in the buff when he thinks no one is watching!”

  Jaya raised her right eyebrow and a tiny smile fought to quirk her lips. On anyone else I would have called it a lecherous look, but there was no way she would sink to that. I blushed despite reassuring myself that she was above such things, and she broke out into a peal of musical laughter. I caught it and so did Charlie. Baj? He looked a little lost.

  “I am going to guess that the laughing has nothing to do with the reason that Charlotte wanted to talk with us.” He looked around at each of us before he continued, “Would I be correct?”

  “You’re right, mostly.” I tried to answer his question, even if it was probab
ly rhetorical, but ended up at a loss. “Then again, broadly… eh.” I just shrugged in surrender.

  “I wish that I had good answers or even good speculations for the two of you.” Baj looked like he was trying to contain himself, or his emotions. “We are in an unprecedented situation, and it is incredibly frustrating not to know more or have some sort of control over the way events are unfolding.”

  He had our attention. Jayashri looked at her husband with trepidation and compassion. Charlie echoed those sentiments, if I’m any judge of her facial expressions. As for me, I was feeling something a little different. I think the stress flipped my switch.

  “Yeah. It is incredibly frustrating to have my life go bat-shit crazy. First we got people coming back from the dead and I had to fight for my life. A little bit later I started fighting for the lives of people I care about. Then you gave me a present: untested high-tech nano shit. Well, that threw my equilibrium for a loop, let me tell you!” My voice got louder and harsher as I spoke. “I got to kill my brother and my dad. Woot! On top of that, some fucker put a bullet in my head and I spent a good bit of time getting my noggin rebuilt in ways we don’t understand. So, excuse me if I don’t feel incredibly compassionate.”

  “Frank, I am sorry if you are upset with me for doing what I had to do in order to help the people I care about stay alive. It is horrible karma that you found yourself in the role of executioner, but…”

  I cut him off.

  “You sanctimonious, intellectual, high and mighty… ARGH!” I closed my mouth and finished the rest of what I had to say in the privacy of our brains. “It’s bad enough that you laid this shit on us. The ‘karma’ Mister Sharma is that you visited the sin on MY UNBORN CHILD. I’m not the only person who gets to suffer–Charlie gets to suffer, and our baby gets to suffer. Is this thanks to my father being a megalomaniacal asshole or is it because you wanted to play God?”

  In that moment I knew what it looked like to tear someone’s heart out.

  The ladies stared at us, but heard nothing that I screamed at him, brain to brain. Well, that’s what I thought; I was wrong. I had broadcast it at all of us.