Blood Soaked and Invaded - 02

by James Crawford

  Not me, that’s for sure.

  My resistance to making physical contact with the wreckage gave way slowly. I’m just stubborn sometimes, but this particular occasion had more to do with fear than bullheadedness. I gave in.

  The hull shard seemed to start falling in on itself right before my finger touched it, and disintegrated even more swiftly under the pressure of my finger. Moments later, the abominable cramps retreated and I actually began to feel a little better about my life. It didn’t last.

  My right shoulder began to burn underneath the bandages covering the stump where my arm used to be. The pain was intense enough to rip right through the cozy wall of the drugs in my system. I couldn’t even breathe; I fell over onto my left side and concentrated on living through the experience.

  By the time the agony faded into a pulsing throb I’d reached a state of paralyzed Zen. Everything passed around me, through me, and I couldn’t hold on to any of it. Then a black spike sprouted through the center of the bandage on my stump. I shrieked like a little blond girl from a Lewis Carroll novel.

  Over the course of about half an hour an arm-shaped form grew outward from my shoulder. I was awake, and so were the new nerve endings. I would have killed for a shot of the experimental stuff they’d given me the day before. No such luck, though.

  The pain of nerves forming, attaching, and branching made the sensation of being burned alive ALMOST pale in comparison. I still don’t know why I wasn’t screaming my head off while this was going on. Maybe my freaky state of Zen agony gave me some sort of buffer against squealing.

  My arm was not replaced by factory standard equipment. The limb that took shape had the same surface qualities and texture of the UFO shell: shiny, black, and a combination of fibers and crystalline patterns spreading across the “skin”; if I could call it skin.

  I almost didn’t want to touch it. It was a foreign object at worst, and a dream at best.

  When it finished growing, I brought the new hand up to my eye. It looked like a mitten, not a five-fingered human hand. The single pad of the mitten seemed to melt, separating into five digits, just like I wished it could. Something told me I’d been given the Holy Grail of nanotechnology: conscious control of the machines themselves.

  I imagined altering the shape of my hand, and it responded by conforming to the picture I held in my head. “Hang Loose” sign. Fist. Spike. Tentacle. Blade.

  Swanky!

  What do you do when you have a blade in your hand? You locate an appropriate target and take a swing at it.

  Scanning the garage didn’t produce many choices. The theme of everything seemed to be Metal, from tools to work benches. I wasn’t entirely sure, in the foggy, “What the hell,” frame of mind I was in that I wanted to take on metal right away.

  “Fuck it,” I said to the empty room, and took a swing at the metal staircase I’d come down minutes before.

  “Oh. Oh. Shit,” was all I could get out of my mouth. I’d just cut through a one-inch diameter steel tube and felt no resistance at all.

  Fingers formed out of the blade and wiggled at me before it resumed a typical hand-shaped appendage. Caught up in the magic, I flexed my new arm, and drummed up the courage to touch it.

  It felt, and I hate using this word, silky. The temperature of the “skin” was the same as the rest of my body. I touched my left hand with the new right one, and I was amazed at the tactile sensitivity of my new fingers–it left my biological hand in the Stone Age; I could feel the wrinkles in my skin as if they were gouges in wood, not tiny lines in flesh.

  Five or six minutes passed while I explored my own skin–until I touched the right side of my face, the burned side, and summoned up the courage to slide my new fingers under the gauze pads.

  “Oh no,” I gasped.

  No reconstructive surgery known to man could rebuild what I felt underneath the bandages into something that could pass for a normal face.

  Compelled by black curiosity or in preparation for serious self-loathing, my new index finger moved upward and found the lid-less empty socket where my eye had been. It was packed with some kind of gooey gel. I was barely shocked when the chemical components of the gel came crawling up through the thoughts in my head.

  Waves of emotions welled up out of nowhere, and left me sitting with my side against the metal staircase, weeping out of my one good eye. I’d never considered myself handsome, but there is still some vanity attached to simply not being ugly. The image I held of myself evaporated, replaced by the portrait of a man with half a face, a single eye, and more skin grafts than he could count.

  I wrapped my arms around my middle and grieved. There isn’t another word for it.

  Chunhua found me that way, weeping against the staircase. She didn’t remark on the new arm, but sat down as close to me as she could and leaned into me so our bodies touched. We remained that way for minutes before she spoke.

  “People love more than what you look like.”

  “Please don’t do that, Chu.”

  “Do what? Remind you of people who love you?” She pulled me away from the metal poles, tugged my left arm away from my body and wrapped her right arm around it. “Should I tell you how people need you instead? Charlie needs you. Shawn needs you. I need you. Frank, it is a really long list.”

  “I can’t...”

  “Yes. You can. I know Biggie pulled a fast one and gave you what he gave me when I made that deal with him. Don’t look surprised. I can see the changes, and it isn’t only your new arm. I know more about what you can do now than you do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Conscious control. Your nanotechnology and mine is subject to our will. We are closer to what Biggie is than our loved ones are.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did he give this to us?”

  “That’s a good start,” I replied.

  “He gave us this because of how we love our friends and our extended family. We love them enough to put aside our humanity as we know it–and step over into his state of being–if it means we can save them.”

  “Do we get a choice?”

  “Yes,” she said, hugging my arm, “we always have a choice. We don’t have to take a single step closer to changing if we don’t want to. We can do our best without it.”

  She leaned over and touched my new hand, and I understood what she’d said about being aware that I was like her. It was as thought the “cells” in my skin recognized her, reached out and gave her cells a hearty handshake. It was freaky beyond words, and comforting beyond measure.

  “That’s worth losing one side of my face for,” I said, shocking myself.

  “Now you see. The machines in your body will do what you want them to. Rebuilding your arm was a necessary repair, so they did it without your conscious thought.” She sat up a little straighter. “I’m using the wrong words. They’re not a separate entity or some kind of tool we pick up and put down: they’re a part of us. They are us, in a very real way. Treat them as a natural extension of your will.”

  “I think I get what you’re saying. Stop being a pussy about it. Right?”

  She giggled and punched me in the shoulder.

  “Stop being a pussy about it. Grow your face back, you silly man.”

  “Oh. I can do that...” I thought about it for a second, and let it happen. The only obstacle between me and the thing I desired was... Well, me. Simple.

  People talk about feeling flesh crawling when they’re afraid. I can tell you that the feeling is infinitely more disturbing when the flesh is actually crawling on your face and a sizeable percentage of your entire body.

  “Oh. This is just icky.” I shivered against Chunhua.

  “Imagine that feeling all over your body and through your insides at the same time. That’s what it was like being rejuvenated.”

  “I hope you don’t mind, I don’t want to imagine it,” I said between gritted teeth. “I want to scratch or slap or beat myself with a 2 x 4–anything to make it
stop.”

  “Be patient and try to think about something else, and it will be over before you know it.”

  “I don’t know what else to think about. I’m going to start scooting across the concrete in a second.”

  Chunhua took it upon herself to redirect my thoughts.

  “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry about Omura. He seemed like a good man.”

  Am I so transparent that my friends see all my emotional weak spots? I hadn’t even begun to process his death, much less the fact he saved me, only to die in the process. He didn’t deserve that kind of end.

  Did Bravo Euro set the bomb or did Buttons? Were they all in it together? Did it matter? They cost us lives, loss, and, in Buttons’ case, he harmed my girlfriend. I didn’t even know how badly he’d hurt her.

  I needed to know.

  “What happened to Charlie? Don’t sugar-coat it.”

  “Let her tell you, please. She needs to tell you herself. It is her story.”

  “Chu, you are not helping by keeping this to yourself.”

  “Frank,” she reached up and turned my head so we were face to face, “she asked us not to tell you. What happened to her was bad enough that I wanted to go Buttons Hunting and bring back his skin... without him in it.”

  “Then why not tell me?”

  “Charlie knows you. You would have crawled over broken glass, with unhealed burns and no right arm, to get to her. She doesn’t want you dead. She needs you alive, whole, and able to help her heal.”

  I heard the sense in what Charlie wanted, but I was still angry about being kept in the dark–angry enough I didn’t notice when my skin stopped crawling for about three minutes. When I finally processed the new information, I reached up and peeled the bandages off my face and head.

  “Well, anything out of place?”

  “Nope. You look at lot like yourself. The only strange thing is your right eye; it looks like your arm.”

  “What? Black?”

  “Yes.”

  I stood up, stretched, and let my feelings be known: “I’ll cope with that later.”

  “Good. Now you sound like your old self! Go to Charlie. She needs you.”

  Like a blink behind my eyes, the heads-up display I’d come to know and love reappeared. I knew precisely where to find the love of my life: upstairs in the third bedroom in Bajali’s house.

  “Something isn’t right.” I said it more for myself than for Chunhua. “Her data is different. Something isn’t right.”

  “Stop talking to me and get your ass over there,” she snarled at me.

  I went.

  There are times in your life when you don’t remember what happened between leaving one place and arriving at your destination. The night I left Scott’s house ablaze was one of those occasions; after he died and his zombie baby escaped I didn’t remember the drive from Fairfax back to Arlington.

  I don’t remember leaving the garage or what route I took between there and Bajali’s front door. The only think I knew for sure was the time I arrived: 3:56:16am, and I couldn’t decide if I ought to knock on the door or just let myself in.

  The door opened all by itself, or so it seemed, until Bajali peeked around the corner.

  “I see you are feeling well enough to move.” He looked at my face, and his sleepy eyes shot wide open. “Oh. Crikey.”

  I lifted my new hand so he could see it and tapped him on the end of his nose.

  “Yes. They match. Now let me in so I can see Charlie. Please.”

  He moved aside and I lit up the stairs like a gaggle of aliens wanted my ass.

  Standing before the bedroom door, I gave my sensors a feather-light touch. Shawn was right beside her, and they were both asleep. Her sleep was fitful; the emotions pouring off her were enough to choke me. Charlie’s feelings weren’t the only thing I could read. Her body told me the rest of the story.

  My new eye can cry, and my capacity for instantaneous rage works just fine.

  I forced myself to breathe normally, and shut my anger away. There would be time for rage later–I planned to make sure there would be–but I couldn’t open the door and have it be the part of me running the show.

  Uneasily, I turned the knob and stepped into the room. Two weapons were pointed at me, one in Charlie’s hand and the other in Shawn’s. I raised my hands to show they were empty.

  “Frank? Is that you?” Charlie’s voice was strained and hoarse.

  There were lines on her face I’d never seen before. They weren’t wrinkles: they were fresh scars.

  “Yes.” I didn’t take a single step forward. They were both far too tense for me to get closer without an invitation. The guns in their hands were the “standard issue” sidearm for our neighborhood. “I came as soon as I could.”

  “Bro,” Shawn said, “your vital signs are fucked up, and the last time I saw you, you didn’t have a right arm. Are you really you?”

  “Yes. The new nanotech had some interesting things to say about my injuries, so I went to the garage and ate a side of UFO hull. All I got was indigestion and this freaky black arm.” I smiled at him.

  “He sounds like himself, Knocker,” Charlie whispered.

  Chunhua opened a channel to the three of us, and confirmed my identity. She also requested Shawn let Charlie and me have a little time alone before signing off.

  “Is that okay with you, sis?”

  “Yes,” her voice cracked, “I want my Frank!”

  She wasn’t the only one crying.

  I went to her and took her in my arms. Dear God, she cried. I let her get it out, at least as much as she could right then, and kept my mouth shut. I had no idea what to say anyway.

  Shawn touched my shoulder and left the two of us alone.

  “...so sorry,” I heard her say between the sobs.

  “I love you.” I just told her the one thing in the universe I knew to be true.

  “We thought you were gonna die. I was scared you’d leave me all by myself,” she rasped. “I’m sorry I didn’t do better. I’m so sorry.”

  “I love you, Charlotte Marie Cooper. You did everything you could have.”

  “I’m not pregnant anymore. You don’t have to stay with me,” she said before the dam truly broke.

  I could run my memories backward and know for certain how long I held her, rocking her, while she let it out. I don’t want to do that. It was hard enough to go through that once without reliving it over minutiae.

  “I love you, honey. You’re mine, Charlie. Do you hear me,” I asked her, lifting her chin so she could see it in my... eye.

  “You’ve got a black eye,” she said through the tears.

  “The right eye is my formal eye. I wear it to all the important events... same as the arm.”

  She nodded, but I could tell she wasn’t tracking the conversation.

  “I love you. You still love me, too?”

  “Yes. I’m yours,” I told her, wiping a tear off the tip of her nose.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him,” she whispered, ducking her head down against my chest.

  I’d wiped her tears with my right hand. Just like when I stuck my finger in my eye socket, I got a breakdown of the chemical components of her tears, and a little “hand shake” from familiar tech. Somehow she had Biggie’s special formula critters running around in her system. Strange.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” I knew it was risky to ask, but I did it anyway.

  “Buttons broke my neck and laughed while I healed up. Then the EMP went off. He cut me up. He cut my,” a shudder went through her whole body, “womb out.”

  I kept holding her, and my tears leaked down on the crown of her head. I swallowed every emotion I could and held it all down. There would be time later.

  “Frank?”

  “Yes, my love,” I whispered.

  “I’m not pregnant no more. You don’t gotta stay.” Her voice was tiny and strange–unlike anything I’d ever heard from her–and I understood that the damage w
as more than physical.

  Must. Keep. Calm.

  “I’m staying with you Charlie. I love you.”

  “I can’t move real good neither. Dr. Jaya says I’m still healin’ up and its gonna take a while `fore I’m right.” She looked up at me, and my heart dropped.

  I’d seen the look in her eyes before, just on other people. Specifically, on people who didn’t have a really tight toehold on reality. She wasn’t looking at me: she was looking through me.

  It made complete sense that no one told me what had happened to her. They were right. I would have lurched out of bed, and probably killed myself between trying to help her and needing to hunt the sick fucker down.

  Still, I had a whole set of feelings about these circumstances I couldn’t reasonably address. I packed them away with the rage. Just like horny little rodents, I suspected they’d breed in captivity.

  “Charlotte, do you know who set off the bomb?”

  “Yes,” she said in a stronger voice. “Buttons did it. He cut a deal with the Progeny. He hates us all.”

  “Thank you for telling me, my love.”

  “You’re welcome, Frank. What happened to your arm and your eye?”

  “I was hurt in the explosion, and lost them. They just grew back an hour ago.”

  “Oh. That’s good. You were hurt really bad, then.” Her voice started to break again, and she started to rock back and forth slowly. “You were hurt real bad and that’s why you didn’t come save me. I was worried ’cause you didn’t come when I called you. Maybe you didn’t love me no more. Maybe you only stayed with me ’cause of the baby.”

  As soon as I heard those words come out of her mouth, my heart lurched in my chest. I couldn’t speak with a 24-mule team of gigantic emotions clogging my gullet. My brain still worked, but it was stuck on the following mantra: “Must. Keep. Calm. Kill. Buttons. Soon. Just not right now.”

  Charlie shifted in my embrace and brought me right into the moment.

  The love of my life was rocking to and fro in my arms, and her mental state was moving the same way her body was. I couldn’t begin to imagine living through something that horrible, and I worried that she might decide to do something… I won’t lie to myself… I hoped she wouldn’t make the sort of choice I nearly did a time or two. I wanted her to live.