Blood Soaked and Invaded - 02

by James Crawford

  “You owe your life to both of us, Warren Francis Hightower.” There was enough ice in Jayashri’s voice to turn Hawaii into a glacier, and I was instantly aware of the wedge that I had driven into my relationship with both of them.

  “And you don’t owe yours to him?” Charlie asked in a tone that could have cut steel, and I felt her anger in the pit of my bladder. It was like standing in the middle of a typhoon that I had started.

  “I do not intend to dignify that question with an answer. As a medical doctor, I know that your hormonal balance as a pregnant woman is not compatible with rational thought.” I heard what Jaya said, and took two steps away from Charlie.

  Bajali raised both his hands in a bid for mercy or peace; it could have been either. Separated by the gulf of our emotions, we were united in one thing: the shit had hit the fan and things were about to become ugly. Had I believed that sinking to my knees and begging forgiveness for the looseness of my tongue, blackness of my heart, corruption of my family, naughty thoughts about women or anything could have stopped the inexorable movement toward Chaos, I would have done it.

  I would have done it, shaved bald, wearing a French Maid’s outfit with a live eel in my butt.

  Unfortunately, it was too late.

  “At least I can get pregnant.”

  There should have been a peal of thunder and crashing lightning at the instant that Charlie’s words faded in the still air of the PT room. That wouldn’t have been a surprise, knowing the Almighty’s flair for the dramatic, but what did happen made my bladder leak.

  Jayashri’s face fell into rigid perfection and lost all human expression as she walked across the floor to stand in front of the exam table. I believe that no un-enhanced human being would have been able to see her let fly with the slap that lifted Charlie off the table. I certainly didn’t see that the hand never stopped moving, because I was too stunned at my girlfriend becoming airborne; it just changed trajectory slightly and knocked me onto the floor beside her.

  It was during those wobbly moments on the floor that I realized two very important things about who and what we had become, thanks to the lube-free insertion of technology into our lives. We had no clue how strong we were, and we’d become more willing to use violence against each other. How did I know this? Simple, I’m pretty sure that Jayashri had not planned to break my cheekbone when she slapped me... add to that her sudden disregard for Hippocratic Oaths and Hindu faith.

  I had to wonder how much worse it was for Charlie, since she was on the front end of the bitch slap to end all bitch slaps. Unfortunately, the answer became speedily apparent.

  “Oo boke mah jaa. Oo bisth. Oo boke mah fuh-hin jaa.” I heard those wet words and flipped over to see Charlie sitting up, bloody faced, with three or four teeth cradled in her hand. “Ah cahn bee-vee oo boke mah jaa.”

  I was stunned, chagrinned and incapable of speaking. Baj looked pale and horrified; even his eyes were misty looking. Jayashri’s face defied my ability to classify or report what emotions it was reflecting. All I can say is that there were perfect pearl-tears rolling down her cheeks and that her mouth was set in the fiercest grimace that I had ever seen. I suppose it could have been horror, or something like it, but it could also have been rage in the wake of orgiastic violence. Fuck if I know.

  “My bad,” I said, trying to make some attempt at closing the rift over the throbbing ache under my eyeball. “All of this stuff is stressing me out and I took it out on you guys. I’m sorry.” I held up one hand, since the other one was cradling my face, in a gesture of supplication. “I’m really scared and I hate admitting it.” There would have been more to say if my brain hadn’t pinged an incoming call from Omura. “Got a call. Back in a second.”

  His voice appeared between my ears, as did his location, caricature and general emotional state. “Frank, before I even get to anything else, can you tell me what these awful colors are that are floating around your icons in the PT room? I want to say that they’re emotional states, but if they are… Jesus!”

  “That’s about the size of it, yes. It’s a little tense in here.”

  “Yeah, if you say so. How did you and Charlie end up with broken facial bones? Wait, don’t answer that question, I don’t want to know.” The little Omura in my brain’s heads-up display flashed through a pile of different colors before settling down into gray. “I need you and the Sharmas geared up and on the roof of the building in ten minutes. We have an away mission into the No Go. There’s a Blackhawk inbound to pick us up.”

  “What’s the ‘No Go’?”

  “That’s what we call the area around Nationals Stadium down into where the old Homeland Security building is. It got pretty nasty during active martial law and was cordoned off. Any activity down there is criminal, gang or zombie related, if not all three at the same time.” He paused a bit before dropping more information on me. “It sounds like our little visitor from earlier today crashed down there and the bigwigs want us to take a look since we’re not contagious anymore.”

  “Sounds interesting. I’ll rally the troops.” I signed off with him and addressed the Assembly of Righteous Angst out loud. “We have to put this steaming pile of madness aside for the time being. Omura wants the two of you,” I pointed at them with my free hand, “and me on the roof in 9 minutes. Our little aerial amigo from earlier seems to have taken a nose dive into a nasty corner of the Nation’s Capital and they want us to go have a look.”

  “Wa abah meh?”

  “Honey, I think you should just hang out until your jaw finishes knitting back together.” Do I have to mention that she didn’t look at all happy with that?

  “You face too!” She pointed at me and it was all I could do not to laugh myself sick at the gummy voice and child-like expression on her face. Then again, the bruising took the humor down a few notches. “I wanna go, too.”

  “I know, but Omura just asked for the three of us. Go rest up.” I stood up and gave her a hand to help her up from the floor. “I need to go back to our place and grab a few things before I have to be back here to catch our ride. Want to walk back to the store with me?”

  “Yeh,” she said, looking completely downtrodden and adorable in a freshly-assaulted kind of way. I really wanted to hug her, but I couldn’t imagine a way to do it without involving her face or my own. In lieu of the hug I gently tugged her behind me as I walked out of the room.

  About halfway to the elevator and the stairs, her voice appeared in my head. “I can’t believe I actually said that.”

  I answered aloud. “It was the heat of the moment, and I started it. Don’t blame yourself for following the lead of your boyfriend the jackass.” I gripped her hand a little tighter to emphasize the point. “I’m angrier about being a science experiment when I didn’t consent to it, regardless of the fact that I’m alive to be pissed off about it.”

  “Being in the family way changes a person’s perspective on a lot of things, too. You can’t be quite so self centered when there’s a child involved.” It was a little strange to be hearing her in my skull, but it made perfect sense to communicate that way until her jaw finished reassembling.

  “Ah, I don’t know how true that is. My parents were phenomenally self-absorbed despite having three kids. They just passed their shit down to us.” I pushed the down button on the elevator panel and shrugged.

  “Wait a minute. I thought it was just you and your brother?” She turned me around to face her, looking as serious as possible with a swollen and bruised complexion.

  “I guess I never mentioned her with all the shit going on. Miranda was the youngest of the three of us, and just as spoiled and self-absorbed as Mom.” I waved my free hand around, trying to dismiss the subject or at least diffuse it in the closed space of the elevator.

  “What happened to her?” Charlie asked, pulling me with her as she exited the elevator and headed for the front doors.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her in about 6 years. She left home when she was 18
and went… wherever.” Talking about my family was intensely uncomfortable on a number of fronts, not the least of which being I’d killed my two closest male relatives in self-defense. Worse, I suppose, is it could be argued that I didn’t kill my father to defend myself as much as I did it out of necessity and blind, primal rage. “I guess my folks knew where she was and what she was doing, if only because they never appeared terribly upset that she was gone. Stu never asked questions, and I was dealing with piles of my own angst at the time.”

  “Can I just say that your family life sucked?” she asked me out loud.

  “Jaw working?”

  “Yes. It’s a little stiff yet, but the pain is gone. I can feel things shifting around in my gums, too.”

  The walk back to the store was quiet and uneventful, for which I was very grateful. Nothing fell from the sky or shot big balls of plasma snot at us, but the tension between the two of us was high. We were aware of the shit I’d stirred up and she had added her own secret ingredients to the mix, and if she was feeling anything like I was, it was incredibly awful. I was lost enough in my own thoughts to be almost incapable of considering what accessories would be appropriate to complete my Crash Examination couture.

  I allowed myself a slight smile as I watched her blue jeans-clad behind roll up the stairs toward our bedroom. Sex. Yeah. Something we ought to have once we figured out the reproductive mess. I missed… Using that word brought me up a little short and I stood stock still on the third step of the staircase. I was missing something that I’d never actually had: days and nights of intimacy with the woman I’d become intensely interested in. I’d fallen in love with. Deeply. Madly.

  We had shared days, just days, before I’d been wrapped up in weeks of recuperation. Now a few days more, after resuming my occupation of my own brainpan. That was barely enough time to miss anything, but it was more than enough time to generate desire, intense desire, for something that I wanted. I wanted her, and it was beginning to piss me off that life was interfering with what I’d rather be doing with my time. Yes, I thought to myself, I could be grouchy enough to need another daily walk to settle my head.

  By the time I’d reached the top of the stairs, Charlie was walking back across the floor with the Man Scythe, a 9mm, and a utility belt loaded with clips in her hands. She reached out and handed me the collection with a muted, “Is this all right? The clips are from your hollow point pile.”

  I stood there, soaking in her sadness. “Just what I wanted. Thank you.” She nodded at me and sat down at my desk. “My love, this will all work out. Believe me it will.”

  “Frankie Ray ‘o’ Sunshine, I really want to believe you, but I can’t see what you see right now. Just go do what you have to do, but please come home with your forehead in one piece. Okay?”

  “Believe me, I really am not planning on allowing another trip to head injury territory. Besides, all they want us to do is go look at wreckage. I bet I won’t even clear leather before we come back home.” We shared a small laugh over that. I loaded myself for bear, gave her a kiss and headed back over to the multi-purpose center to hitch a ride.

  I could hear the helicopter when I left the store, so I took off at a run. No point in being late, right?

  My legs got a little workout, and I decided to push the envelope of how far I could leap in a standing jump. Prior to the bullet in the brains, a standing leap of twelve feet was candy, so it stood to my oddball reasoning that I ought to be able to manage something like twenty-four with a little extra effort.

  Omura held his derisive laughter until I pulled myself up to the roof from the ignominious position of hanging on the edge by my fingers. I thanked him for being smooth and suave in the face of my inadvertent comedic episode with a manly grunt. I’m grateful that the arrival of the helicopter drowned out the sound of his snickering–I hate it when I show off and it ends up as slapstick comedy.

  Jayashri, Bajali and a loaded backpack boarded the helicopter before I even ducked down to approach the doorway. By the time I’d set foot on board they had already donned the headsets and taken seats close to the opposite side of the aircraft. I decided to take it as a hint to not get too close to them, and sat in the seat closest to my door, facing forward. Was I being childish? Yes, probably. I’d done enough damage, felt badly enough about it, and really had no idea how to start repairing the rift. An apology would have sufficed, or at least started things off on the right foot, but I still felt enough residual anger that an apology would come out with overtones of resentment rather than heartfelt regret.

  I’m comfortable lying to myself, but I didn’t want to do it to anyone else.

  Omura pulled himself into the `copter, slid the door shut, sat down and strapped himself into the seat facing me. I watched him put the headset on, and then look around at the tense social tableau in the cabin.

  His finger found the button on the headset with the ease of much familiarity and he issued a terse “Go” to the pilot. The rotors spun up all the way, and a moment later we were airborne. It felt like the Charge of the Awkward Brigade, not some sort of triumphant return to the land of travel outside the confines of our happy little stockade. There’s an old adage about beginning as you mean to continue, and if such a thing held true, then we were in for a nasty little “away mission.”

  My brain immediately started tossing “Star Trek” references at me, and they left me with two major questions. Number one was, “Which one of us is Captain Picard,” and number two was, “Which one of us is the Red Shirt?” Just who was running this away mission?

  As for who might be wearing the red shirt: it might be any of us, or all of us.

  The train of thought led me to a question worth asking, so I flipped on the microphone. “Omura, where’s Commander Data?”

  Baj and Jaya turned to look at me as though I’d sprouted a third eyeball, but Shoei just squinted at me and replied, “Fucking Tasha Yar?”

  “I meant Buttons.”

  “Uh. He’s not fucking Tasha Yar.” He smiled and crossed his arms. “The Major is a little under the weather at the moment. Something with the upgrade patch is messing with his ability to process emotions.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Baj asked, evincing serious concern.

  “I am not going to say that he has no self control,” Omura responded, “but more that he’s vastly out of practice. My theory is the patch is interacting with whatever system the original tech created for managing his random emotions and impulses. I didn’t consider him fit for duty, and told him to take some deep breaths and have a nap. The four of us can handle a simple event evaluation and investigation mission like this one.”

  “Would it be appropriate for my husband and me to evaluate him when we return? There might be something to be done for him. Medications, now that we have access to them?”

  “Thank you Dr. Sharma. I think it is an excellent idea.”

  “Can you tell us any more about this than you did before?” Bajali appeared to be full of questions, which didn’t bother me at all. I wasn’t feeling very much like talking.

  “Well, you’ll get to see it in about ten minutes, but I’ll give you the rundown. Local surveillance on the Capital reported a small explosion and smoke from the South East waterfront area, otherwise known as the No-Go. A drone was dispatched from Bolling Air Force Base to check it out, and the images they got looked a lot like what we reported from earlier today. The info went up the chain of command, and we ordered the immediate area locked down for study and recovery.”

  Baj’s face lit up like a little boy on Christmas morning. “You think there is wreckage?”

  “There is definitely wreckage. From the shots I’ve seen, it looks like a black and gray egg that cracked into pieces after destroying some brick walls along the way.”

  “I cannot wait to get my hands on it!” The rest of the morning was forgotten, or so it seemed. Bajali Sharma had the only thing in the world that would make him put aside whatever concerns might be livin
g in his head: technology to pull apart. “Do they know if it was manned or if it was a drone of some kind?”

  “No one has given me a clear answer on that. I guess we’ll see when we get there.”

  “You must tell me why you wanted Jayashri with us. If the craft had no pilot, then there is no reason for a doctor of medicine to be on the team. We would heal ourselves.”

  Against my own will, I was starting to catch some of his perkiness and excitement. The smile on his face looked as Machiavellian as the Grinch, and as frenetic as a high school bimbo on speed or a beagle that needs to pee. “Clearly, there must be a body or… I have no idea, but it is VERY exciting!”

  Omura looked back at me, smirked, and said, “He’s excited.”

  “Yes, I can tell.” Baj had made an excellent point about Jayashri’s presence on the team, which made me wonder about myself. “Why did you ask for me on this little away mission? I’m not the token Red Shirt, am I?”

  He shook his head. “Not at all. You’re Mister Whorf. If I need something killed I’m counting on you to go whack it and then bring the bits back for Dr. Crusher over there,” he cocked his thumb at our resident MD, “to autopsy. Work for you?”

  “Grunt.”

  “That was expressive of you, Mr. Whorf.”

  “Today is a good day to kill things. Grunt.”

  My comment scored a tight smile, and I was content with that for the moment. I would have preferred if there were a low likelihood of needing to kill things, but on the other hand, fighting for my life would probably bleed off stress. I’d always fancied myself to be a pacifist, regardless of the “sports” I’d participated in before leaving home, and it was a little more than unsettling that fighting for my life had become a form of stress management, to say nothing of creating a certain amount of moral difficulty.

  The pilot interrupted my internal juggling. “Sir, we’re coming around on the site. There’s a heliport to east, but it is outside of the secure area. I’m going to put us down in the park south of the site. Call it a hundred yard walk.”