Spliced

by Jon McGoran

  He frowned even more.

  “Why?” I asked. “How much does it cost?”

  “A lot more than that. Maybe a thousand. There’s a guy who owes me a favor, but . . . We’re still going to need some money.”

  I could feel the shiny, happy future fading away as quickly as it had come into being. “We can get the money from his dad,” I said with absolute confidence, hoping Rex would believe me, and hoping that would make it real.

  Rex screwed up his nose. “His father who hates chimeras? The one who did that to his arm?”

  “Yes,” I said. “If he hates chimeras so much, he’d do whatever it takes to make sure his only son doesn’t become one, right?”

  The logic sounded good. But Stan Grainger wasn’t a logical person. I had a hard time picturing him doing anything good for Del. But Del was his son, goddamn it—Stan had to step up. Besides, it was the only solution I could think of.

  Rex furrowed his brow. “Maybe,” he said. For someone who was usually hard to read, he was making it pretty plain he didn’t like the idea. “You wait here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to get the others squared away, and figure out how to get Del out of here and where to take him. Then we’ll think about how to get the money.”

  I stayed in the room with Del, keeping out of the way as the others packed up to go. It didn’t take them long. I got the impression they were used to relocating.

  Fifteen minutes later the sounds of activity inside the house had been replaced by hushed voices outside. I looked out to see everyone standing on the front lawn.

  I didn’t see Pell out there. When I turned away from the window, she was at the bedroom doorway, leaning against the frame. Her eyes were red.

  “Sorry,” she said. “About before.”

  “Me too,” I said. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not,” she said. “None of this is your fault. I know you had nothing to do with it. I’m just scared, you know? For Ruth.”

  I nodded.

  “Where’d you get that?” she said, pointing at my shirt.

  I looked down at the chimera pin. “Ruth gave it to me.”

  Pell smiled. “She must have liked you. Likes you, I mean. She likes you.” She sniffed and put a hand over her face.

  I got up and hugged her narrow shoulders. “She’ll be okay.” I could feel her trembling.

  “I know,” she said, pulling back and wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “I know she will.” She said it deliberately, as if she was trying to convince herself. “It’s just hard right now. I’ll see you soon, okay?” she said, reaching up and patting my cheek. Then she pointed at Del. “And he’ll be fine too. You’ll see.”

  “I know,” I said, trying to convince myself as well, suddenly choking back tears.

  Then she turned and left. I watched through the window as she joined the group out front, each of them carrying a duffel or a backpack. When they got to the street, Pell turned and looked back, waved up at me in the window. I waved back. Then they disappeared around the corner.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sitting there alone with Del, I could hear the house creaking and groaning around me. When I was little and heard noises at night, my dad would tell me it was just the house settling. But this house wasn’t settling. It was falling apart, along with everything else.

  I dripped a double dose of Tylenol into Del’s mouth, followed by a little water.

  He didn’t seem to get any worse after that, but he wasn’t getting better, either. As the hours went by, that was almost as bad.

  I couldn’t stop looking at his face. It was barely recognizable, but I couldn’t tell how much of the change was permanent and how much was swelling and bruising that might heal.

  After six hours I gave him another dose of Tylenol, feeling more and more anxious about how much time had passed since his splice. He tossed and turned the whole time, at one point throwing off his covers entirely. His body looked longer and more sinewy than before.

  I rearranged the covers over his body and sat there, willing Rex to return as soon as possible and watching a patch of sunlight from the window slide across the floor before disappearing entirely in the late afternoon.

  I was thinking about going to look for some food in the kitchen when the house creaked again, differently this time. It was the sound of floorboards. I sat there, silently listening. Soon I could make out one set of footsteps. Then two. Maybe more. I heard snickering.

  The steps creaked.

  Crap, I thought. They’re coming upstairs.

  Del was helpless, lying on the floor, making me even more vulnerable than I would have been on my own. The bedroom closet was open, and there was a metal clothing rod leaning in the corner. It was the closest thing to a weapon I had. I crept into the closet, grabbed the rod, and pulled the door partway closed.

  As the footsteps moved closer in the hallway, Del stirred and let out a soft groan, the first sound he had made in hours.

  Good timing, Del, I thought.

  When the door to the room opened, I shrank back, watching through the gap.

  There were three of them. I was relieved at first to see they were my age. Then I saw their faces. They looked mean.

  “Holy crap,” the biggest one said, snickering. He wore a two-tone jock jacket with the name DIETRICH across the back. “Look at this freak.”

  They stood over Del’s unconscious body.

  “Is it even alive?” one of the others said.

  Dietrich put his foot against Del’s ribs and gave a push. “What’s it even mixed with?” he asked, his face screwed up in disgust as he kicked a little harder. Del groaned again.

  The other two exchanged uncertain glances.

  Dietrich kicked Del again, even harder. He turned to the other two. “Come on, don’t let me have all the fun.”

  I didn’t know what to do.

  The other two stood there for a moment. Then one of them stepped forward and raised a foot behind him, tensing like he was about to deliver a brutal kick.

  “Stop!” I yelled, stepping out from the closet. I held the rod behind my leg.

  They jumped, startled, then Dietrich’s mouth spread into an unpleasant grin. The other two looked even more nervous than before.

  “Would you look at that? It’s a goddamned mixie-lover,” Dietrich said, coming at me with his fist cocked.

  I didn’t hesitate. I swung the rod as hard as I could. It connected with the side of his head, ringing like a bell. But the angle wasn’t great and the rod kind of ricocheted off his skull. He staggered back but didn’t go down.

  His friends stared at him, their eyes round, like they were afraid of what he would do next.

  “That. Hurt,” he said through gritted teeth. If his face looked mean before, now it was downright evil. A trickle of blood rolled down his cheek.

  “Good,” I said, with more bravado than I felt. My hands started to shake, a tremor that threatened to spread throughout my body. But I widened my stance and braced my legs.

  “Dietrich, man, let’s just go,” said one of his friends.

  “Screw that,” Dietrich said, and he lunged at me.

  I swung the bar again, with everything I had. This time it connected squarely against his jaw. He stumbled back against the opposite wall, the bottom half of his face strangely misshapen. Blood spurted from his mouth and nose. He cupped one hand around his chin. It moved like a wet bag full of gravel. Then his eyes rolled up and he passed out, sliding down the wall to the floor. If I hadn’t been so scared, I might have thrown up.

  “Holy crap!” one of his friends yelled. They backpedaled toward the door. One of them said to me, “Now you’re going to get it.” They ran down the steps and out the door, and then it was just me and Del and jackass crumpled on the floor.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Five minutes later I heard the front door bang open and heavy footsteps thundering up the stairs. I tightened my grip on
the closet rod, bracing myself to fight off whoever those guys had gotten to come back and avenge their asshole friend.

  But it wasn’t one of them. It was Rex.

  He skidded to a stop when he entered the room. His eyes went from Del to Dietrich on the floor, then to me.

  He looked stricken. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  He reached up to touch my face. I flinched, but I let him. He wiped my cheek and his hand came away wet with tears and blood. “Did he hurt you?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not my blood.”

  He looked down at the guy on the floor. “You did that?”

  I nodded. “With the closet rod. There were two others. They ran away. Do you think they were the poachers?”

  He shook his head. “Probably just some lunkheads. But maybe dangerous lunkheads.” He took his eyes off Dietrich to meet mine. “Chimeras have to deal with that type all the time. And this whole GHA thing is only going to make it worse.”

  “They said they were coming back.”

  He nodded. “I bet.” He checked Del’s pulse again, looked in his eyes. Then he checked Dietrich.

  “He’s breathing okay,” I said. “But I think I broke his jaw. He . . . wouldn’t stay back.”

  “He’ll be fine until his friends come back. We need to get out of here, though.”

  He wrapped Del up in his blanket and hoisted him, cradling him like a small child in one arm.

  Del stirred. His eyes flickered open, just for a second, and his arm flopped out from under the cover.

  I gasped at the sight of it.

  “What is it?”

  “His arm. It’s almost healed.” The wound was almost gone, just a few scabs and some faint streaks of pink against the greenish skin.

  Rex grabbed the closet rod and ducked through the doorway. “Guess the injury wasn’t as bad as we thought.”

  “I guess not,” I said, but I knew it had been. I wondered if the healing had something to do with the splice.

  I followed Rex down through the darkened first floor and out the front door. Daylight was fading fast.

  I hadn’t really thought about how we would transport Del. But somehow I hadn’t been expecting an old Volkswagen Beetle. When Rex opened the door, I saw the driver’s seat had been torn from its mountings and wedged against the backseat.

  “Is this yours?” I asked.

  “A friend lets me use it. We’re the same size. Well, almost the same size.”

  He tossed the closet rod over his head in a casual hook shot. It spun lazily through the air, then plunged into the swimming pool next door with barely a ripple. He laid Del on the backseat and folded himself through the door, filling the space behind the steering wheel. When he had squeezed inside, he pulled the door closed and started the motor.

  He looked out the window and said, “Let’s go.”

  I started to tell Rex where Del’s house was, but he seemed to know where he was going. He was a surprisingly decent driver, effortlessly navigating the chewed-up zurb streets. As dire as the situation was, I was struck by the comical sight, this huge dog chimera hunched over the wheel. I looked at him and smiled, wondering if he was fighting the urge to stick his head out the window and let his tongue flap in the wind.

  He turned and saw me looking at him.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” I figured I should keep that thought to myself.

  I focused instead on Stan Grainger, wondering how I was possibly going to hit him up for money. It was my plan. I’d put it out there. And it still made sense, but the optimism I’d summoned when I first suggested it was long gone.

  As we approached the Avenue, the lights of the city seemed garishly bright after the darkness of the zurbs. Tyson’s Point had felt like some faraway place, but by car, it was just ten minutes from the city.

  My unease grew as we turned onto the Avenue, and even more, minutes later, when we arrived on my block.

  Rex pulled over in front of my darkened house, and I felt a wave of sadness. I’d be back there in a couple weeks—if I didn’t end up in jail or a boarding school somewhere—but at that moment it felt like I no longer lived there. Worse, it looked like no one else did, either, like the house I grew up in was as abandoned as the crumbling wrecks in the forgotten zurbs outside the city.

  And even if I did end up back there, safe and sound, it would be different. Deep down, I knew it. Del wouldn’t be there. He couldn’t be. Even if he got out of this unscathed and unspliced, even if he didn’t go to jail for stealing from his dad or assaulting that cop, he couldn’t just move back in with crazy, mean, abusive Stan. That part of his life—that part of my life—was over.

  “You okay?” Rex asked, staring at me.

  I nodded and wiped my eyes. We got out of the car and stood there for a moment, looking at Del’s house, then at mine.

  “That’s your house,” Rex said. “And that’s Del’s, right?”

  I nodded, vaguely wondering if his splice gave him some kind of homing powers.

  We both looked back at Del, still unconscious, his face gray and swollen, crusty and bleeding. But still alive. As Rex hauled him out of the car and up onto his feet, his eyelids fluttered and he groaned. I licked the sleeve of my shirt and dabbed his face, cleaning it up a little. As I pulled his arm over my shoulder, his head lolled back. He seemed to be trying to help us, trying to stand, but he was mostly limp.

  Rex grabbed his other arm and ducked down to put it over his shoulder.

  “You can’t come with us,” I said. “Del’s dad hates chimeras.”

  Rex let out an angry sigh. “Yeah, well, the feeling is mutual.” He slid his shoulder out from under Del’s arm and stepped back. I took a few shuffling steps, almost toppling over twice as Del’s weight shifted.

  Rex watched for a moment, then came over and picked Del up and carried him to the Graingers’ front walk. I ran after him.

  “Thanks,” I whispered. “Now go wait in the car.”

  I paused to watch him go—and to gather my strength. When Rex was back in the car, I shuffled up to the front door with Del.

  I felt vulnerable, exposed, and increasingly frightened. I rang the bell as soon as I got to the front door, afraid that if I paused I wouldn’t do it at all.

  The door opened and there was Stan, holding a can of beer, silhouetted in the light coming from inside.

  He looked at me and grunted. “What do you want?” I don’t think he recognized Del at first. Then he leaned forward and squinted. “Jesus Christ, what the hell is that?”

  “It’s Del, Mr. Grainger. He needs your help.”

  “My help? I don’t think so.”

  “He made a mistake, Mr. Grainger, but it’s not too late to fix it.”

  “A mistake?” He started laughing, a wobbly bark that sounded like it was going to fall apart at any second. “He knew what he was doing. It was an affront to God and an affront to me. He wanted to be forsaken. Now he’s forsaken.”

  “He needs a thousand dollars to undo the splice and change back. To get him back to you, just like he was before.”

  “Just like he was, huh? You mean a thieving, blaspheming, would-be cop-killer?”

  Del was getting heavier by the second, and I worried I was going to drop him. I took a deep breath and looked into Stan’s eyes, searching for something to grab on to, something to make him feel, to make him human. “Del’s mother—” I began, but he cut me off.

  “His mother . . .” he repeated. He started to laugh again; then his eyes looked distant for a second, distracted, like the clouds had momentarily parted or he thought he’d seen something far away. Then it was gone. His eyes focused, looking right at me. His bottom lip quivered. It was wet and so were his eyes. “She didn’t bring him into this world so he could defile himself. Defile the only thing left of her.”

  “She wouldn’t abandon him now. You know she wouldn’t.”

  He looked thoughtful for a moment. Then his eyes turned cold and
hard, like they’d been flash frozen. “She already abandoned him. Abandoned us both.”

  “If you don’t help him, he’s going to die!”

  Stan’s eyes glowed in his face, like they were lit from inside. “My son’s already dead. As for this ‘thing,’ if this was my jurisdiction, I’d arrest him myself. As it is, I’m calling it in as soon as I close this door. You might want to be gone before they show up.”

  “He’s your son, Mr. Grainger! He—”

  “No!” he snapped. “I don’t know what that thing is, but it’s not my son. I got no son. Now get off my property.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  As soon as Stan slammed the door, Rex was out of the car and hurrying over to help me. What little strength Del might have had was gone now. He was completely limp.

  “That looked like it went pretty well,” Rex said, carrying Del back to the car. “What did he say?”

  I could feel the rage boiling inside me. “He’s calling the police.”

  Rex grunted at that. “Well, we need to get going then.”

  We laid Del out in the backseat. His mouth was bleeding again.

  “Where?” I asked.

  Rex didn’t answer; we just got into the car and drove.

  “That man is a monster,” I said. “I think he’s truly evil.”

  Rex’s jaw was grinding, the muscles in the side of his head working up and down. “He’s running out of time,” he said, looking over his shoulder at Del. “Forty-eight hours is an absolute maximum for a fix, not a given time frame. Especially with a splice that’s gone wrong, twenty-four is ideal. We’re closing on thirty-six.”

  I’d been so angry at Stan for saying no, the reality of what it actually meant was only now sinking in. The window for saving Del was closing. “What are we going to do?”

  Rex didn’t answer right away, but after a few seconds, the car lurched forward as he pushed down on the accelerator. Five minutes later, we pulled up next to Genaro’s Deli. The parking lot was half-empty, but Rex parked on the street, just around the corner.

  “Wait here,” he said. He left the motor running.