'The rarest effects, Sir,' continued Boyle, blithely unaware that only O'Dell's will was holding back a bullet, 'Such as increased cognitive ability, or even the rather mild regenerative capabilities some subjects exhibit, have proven impossible to replicate reliably. Far too many variables, perhaps genetic, synaptic variations, mutations, even. But telepathic awakening, telekinesis, precognition, hyperawareness, increased perception...these things aren't just rare, Sir. They just don't happen. In one thousand plus test subjects, one showed a moderate increase in mental capacity, but coupled with a case of the crazies. Ah...Sir.'
'Boyle...please stop blathering. I take it these...side-effects...have become so rare as to be dismissed. That they are irrelevant, then?'
'Yes, Sir. Reanimation of any kind hasn't been replicated under controlled conditions at all, on living or dead subjects, not any of their samples. The only examples we have are from field footage.'
'Your conclusions?'
'The modified compound - we're calling it U+03BF - is damn near perfect at what it does. Other effects may be random, even so, but in affecting the actions of those exposed? Brilliant, Sir. The team has done a Stirling job.'
'U+O3BF, Boyle?'
'It's an organophosphorus compound, Sir. We have taken the original formula, based more heavily on a composition similar to LSD, but Novichok agent...'
'Boyle?'
'Sir?'
'U+03BF?'
Boyle smiled. 'Are you familiar with unicode, Mr. O'Dell?'
'Facets, certainly. This is unicode?'
'It is. It represents the Greek lower case letter, 'omicron'...Sir...I...'
Boyle wilted in O'Dell's glare.
'One of the team is a great fan of Futurama...'
'Mr. Boyle, you are aware I carry an automatic pistol.'
Boyle looked down.
'Should your team decide to saddle me with a name like U+03BF, which I will have to use in future conversations with my superior, are you in any doubt as to how this will make me feel?'
'Irritable?'
'Close enough, Boyle. Tell your team to restrain their cleverness to the task at hand. The same might well be applied to you.'
'Sir,' said Boyle, considerably less cheerful than he had been.
'Now, to the point - reliable effects?'
'From massive psychosis, hallucinations, paranoia. The mechanism is quite...'
'Have I not been clear? The point, Mr. Boyle.'
'Short term? Drop this on the enemy and they're fucked. Long term...well...it's basically an atomic bomb without the fallout. Sir.'
'That's your considered scientific opinion, is it?'
'Yes,' he said. Boyle wasn't scared, now. He was excited. His enthusiasm would have been contagious, had O'Dell any capacity for such things.
'And the effects are...uniform? Total?'
'In scientific terms? The science is mostly boring, I imagine,' said Boyle, quite rightly, 'But my team has increased efficacy to very near 99.8%.'
'Okay, Boyle. Perhaps I won't shoot you.'
Boyle seemed unsure, which was fine by O'Dell. He understood that many people did not understand when he was joking. He wasn't. Ever. His grin confused people, he figured.
He really had decided against shooting Boyle, though. Scientist were plentiful. Chemists with the flare Boyle exhibited were not.
'Anything else?' said O'Dell. Impatient as ever, he certainly hoped not. He was ready to move to the next thing.
Boyle's moment was far from done, though. O'Dell sighed and waved his hand for the man to get it over with.
'How long since you saw her, Sir?'
'The woman? Farnham?' O'Dell shrugged. Memory was around the only thing that made him uncomfortable. 'She's still going? Honestly...I expected she would have fallen to pieces by now.'
This was a lie, though. It was only now that Boyle brought Eleanor Farnham to his attention that O'Dell remembered his initial interest in her at all.
How in the fuck is that I forget these things?
He didn't know. It made him angry right then, but it wasn't Boyle's fault. By his side, his left hand began to jitter. He slid that hand into his jacket pocket. It tended to unnerve people, and he wanted Boyle to continue. He was curious.
Boyle nodded. 'Please,' said Boyle. 'Perhaps it's best seen. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.'
Kurt O'Dell wasn't a man who enjoyed being surprised in the slightest, but no sense in spoiling it - O'Dell thoroughly expected Boyle to be dead within the year at the latest anyway.
No sense in upsetting a dead man.
They rode an elevator to the holding cells. Boyle was bursting to tell O'Dell his little secret. O'Dell remained studiously silent. He would much rather, he found, see this for himself.
A short walk down one of the many identical corridors within the facility, and he understood Boyle's excitement completely.
Eleanor Farnham was quite...marvellous.
O'Dell was surprised, and very little surprised a man with such an affinity with the future.
'You were correct, Mr. Boyle. This is quite remarkable.'
A researcher made notes and observations on a PDA. She looked up as O'Dell and Boyle entered.
'Out,' said O'Dell. She didn't argue.
'Go ahead, Boyle. We all deserve a day in the sun.'
'It's not just animation, Sir. It's regeneration.'
O'Dell peered through the thick glass at the woman.
'How interesting. Does she feel any pain?'
'Oh yes,' said Boyle. 'She's heavily sedated now. She becomes agitated, and the constant pain medication makes her...grouchy.'
'Dangerous?'
Boyle shrugged, noncommittal. 'Very marginal, Sir...with the right tools. Give her a gun and she'd probably pose some kind of threat. As she is? A kid could fight her off.'
'Contagious? Infectious?'
'Well...no. Even when she came in, she tested negative for exposure. She must have assimilated the compound at a remarkable rate. Perhaps on some cellular level she was always a fast healer, or...honestly, Sir. We haven't got a clue as to the how or why. We're still taking samples. Blood and tissue every day, but she's showing no signs of degradation. She's healing at a faster rate that you or I could, and that was when she was dead.'
'Boyle? Was dead?'
Boyle couldn't contain himself any longer. He laughed, now, grinning like a lunatic, like a comedian who'd hit a punch line with God-like timing.
'Field footage puts the longest reanimation at three minutes and eleven seconds. But she was never like those cases. She arrived with a bullet to the head, no cognition, effectively blind and deaf. No sign of cardiac activity. But after three days, she wanted to eat.'
'What?'
'Yes, Sir. She was hungry. At first, we thought it no more than some idiot, base impulse. Chewing motions. Bringing her hand to her mouth. Almost like rudimentary sign language. Like an ape.'
'So you fed her?'
Boyle nodded. 'A living human needs fuel to replace lost cells, repair damage...something similar seems to be happening with her. We know she digests the food because she defecates. But that's not the limit - lung function, brain function, a gradual return of her dexterity. A heart beat.'
'Excuse me?'
'Yes, Sir.'
'Well, Mr. Boyle, you were true to your word. You really are full of surprise.'
O'Dell pointed to Mrs. Farnham. 'I think I would like to meet our guest,' said O'Dell. 'Open the door.'
*
Boyle's excitement felt like a tingle on O'Dell's skin and it was a distraction he didn't need. He closed the door behind him so he and Eleanor Farnham could be alone.
She was clean, but that was the best that could be said of her appearance. As a woman, a human, she was repulsive to the eye. The flesh around the exit wound was shaven and the flesh angry and her brain, exposed, pallid and damp. One eye was white, probably dead and useless, but her other eye roved wildly. He imagined anything that she did see woul
d only translate to her mind as a confused ramble of pictures. The ragged stumps where two fingers had been amputated were open wounds, but neither injury bleeding or scabbed.
Samples of skin, muscle, brain had been excised.
Dead people don't breath, but he could clearly hear the soft whistle of air as she inhaled and exhaled.
'Wannwn...fashe...fush...'
O'Dell took a step away from the woman, confused, rather than afraid. He was unaccustomed to either feeling.
'She talks? '
'Same thing so far,' said Boyle from the adjacent observation room. His voice sounded sharper than usual through the tiny speakers set high within the walls. 'But she only speaks to male attendants, Sir. We think she's asking if we want to fuck.'
O'Dell nodded, to show he understood.
But it was Eleanor that held his interest.
Eleanor? Is anything going on in there, Mrs. Farnham? Eleanor? Would you like to talk? A cup of tea, perhaps?
Nothing.
Eleanor. Poke your eye out. GOUGE it out. Go on.
There were very few people able to say no to the man with fire in his eyes, when that fire rose. But from Eleanor Farnham there was nothing at all.
Like O'Dell himself, her mind was just dead space.
He stared into the woman's crazily roving eye for a moment longer, then nodded to Boyle once more.
'I've seen enough,' he said. 'Boyle, open the door.'
O'Dell stepped outside and headed away from the cell, his phone already out and ready in his hand. Right then, neither hand shook and his eyes were bright with purpose.
*
The only man in the world above O'Dell answered at the first ring.
'O'Dell. I assume you have something useful to say?'
'Yes. We have a breakthrough. A single case only, Sir. But we have a test subject exhibiting remarkable regenerative capabilities.'
'Mr. O'Dell?'
'Sir?'
'How does the expression go? I don't give a monkeys? Or is a rat's arse?'
'But, Sir...'
'O'Dell. It's time. Are you ready? Because I need you on form, not fucking around with side projects. Miracles are not our business, are they?'
'No. No, Sir.'
'Good. Let's leave that shit to the Catholics. They'll be happy as pigs in shit soon enough. Now, I repeat...are we ready?'
O'Dell thought about the woman. He thought, too, about the boy he had freed for reasons he knew he'd probably never recall.
But if the boy was alive...together, he and his mother might hold the key to something that might even pale his interest in fire. Some new genetic...miracle.
'Sir...I have interesting parties in the field.'
'Interested?'
'Interesting.'
'Are they important?'
Kurt considered the question. The boy might be dead. Probably was.
'Possibly. Short term.'
There was no sense in lying. The boss didn't want the boy, or his mother. It wasn't like he didn't know most of what O'Dell reported far in advance.
The boy, though. That niggled at O'Dell.
Why in the hell did I let him go? O'Dell could not answer that question
'Long term is the only thing that matters. Hear me?'
'I do.'
The man on the other end of the phone hung up. O'Dell made a second call to a man with a very dangerous finger.
'Go ahead,' he said. 'All clear.'
'Code?' replied the man.
O'Dell gave it to him, relayed from memory. That, at least, he could remember. But so much else pushed aside, too, he thought. That made him angry, as it sometimes did.
'Understood, Sir. Awaiting verification.' A pause, while the man checked counter codes and fail safes on a simple screen before him. 'Verification received.'
Some people needed a push. Some just like to watch things burn.
Like O'Dell.
His eyes brightened and his vision darkened. Fire in London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg. That's how it would start.
'Sir?'
'Execute,' said O'Dell.
'Understood. Scheduled 0800.'
'Good day,' said O'Dell.
*
VIII.
Charnel
Francis woke to terrible pain. Pain like dying, surely. Agony crashed in waves along the torn flesh of her back from being dragged across a rough (road? I was in a car?). Her feet burned inside the bones. She wasn't bound, but her back rested against a wooden post and for some reason she couldn't move.
I was driving. There was a passenger.
She closed her eyes, one of which was swollen perhaps as far as her cheek. She tried to remember how she'd been hurt so badly (why am I not in a hospital?). The pain pushed back, though. Thought was difficult when the pain ebbed, impossible when it crashed back again. She ducked her head and puked on her own clothes, with no bucket and movement denied her, it was the only place for it to go.
I can see, though. Barely.
But better than blind.
Night time, she figured. She wasn't inside, like in a house.
I'm not in hospital because of the quarantine...there are no ambulances. I'm still inside...
Edgar, she remembered. She'd come to get the man named Edgar.
She couldn't see him, but she couldn't see much of anything. Wherever she was, it was night and doors were closed. But not a house. The feel of the air was different, the way the quiet felt...like it was larger. And something else, too...a deep stink. Animal smells.
A barn.
The animals were all gone, but their smell lingered, in the hay.
If Edgar (older man, she remembered, her mind rousing despite the pain) had been in the car, then maybe he'd died. She couldn't hear anyone else, there in the dark. Just herself, for a moment, her breath and the slight rustle of her clothes.
The pain was constant, made worse, she thought, because she couldn't see it. Now, though, her eyes adjusted to the dark. She saw, and found seeing was worse.
My feet...oh. My God.
The barn floor was wood, not dirt, and someone (kssh...ksash...she remembered it all now and wished she didn't know anything at all) had driven thick nails through her feet and pinned her to the boards. The sight of it, disgust at such a thing and fear, too...all those things snapped at her. Panic rose. She could only think of dying and nothing else. She shook, cried, ground her teeth against the pain.
Finally, she stilled. Fatigue dragged at her. Maybe blood loss, too. But it was fear that sapped her strength and it was pain that took her will. She might have slipped into sleep, or unconsciousness, one more if not for a groan somewhere in the dark.
The sudden sound pulled her attention from her feet. Wide-eyed in the dark, she flicked her eyes. It wasn't the 'kssh, ksash', man. Edgar was in the barn with her. He hung upside down, his feet tied in thick rope. A hook had been pushed through the tear in his shoulder and someone had hung a sack of something heavy on the other end of the hook.
Like butchery, she thought. Edgar, being bled.
Kssh ksash. His teeth were sharp.
Edgar was going to die.
But even through her fear and pain, that cold part of Francis' mind still worked for her. It calculated. She was a woman who had ice inside her. She'd shot and killed a policeman named Ben, hadn't she?
If I hear kssh ksash from the man with no lips I'll scream 'til I burst.
But that was her panic talking.
The cold mind that made Francis want to live, no matter the cost, looked back to Edgar. The hook hadn't torn free because it was caught on his collarbone. It'd take more than a sack of potatoes to tear through bone.
Dead men don't bleed, do they?
Maybe a trickle, she thought. Like a draining cow or a pig - hung to get the blood out so you could eat it.
Eat it. Kssh...
'Fuck you,' she said.
The man with no lips had long white teeth. Blood had stained his teeth. Suddenly, she understood
what happened to Kssh Ksash man's lips. He cut them free with a shard of glass or mirror, placing the wet flesh into his mouth and chewed.
She didn't doubt it was true. She didn't have to be George to understand that.
Edgar grunted.
'Edgar,' she whispered. She strained, eyes closed, listening for footsteps or (kssh...kassh... eat your facshe). Nothing. Yet.
Francis jammed her teeth together so she couldn't scream and stood.
The bones in her feet grated against the nails.
Edgar's eyes rolled toward her, fluttered and then drifted shut again. And in the distance, outside the barn, she heard a door slam.
'Jesus...no...'
She let herself scream, then - let her fear and pain strengthen her. Never give in...never. She wanted to live. She always did.
With all the strength she had left, Francis she tore her right foot free, the head of the heavy nail surely breaking bone, or severing some tendons. She fell and didn't need to worry about the nail in her other foot. Her weight freed her. Spots drifted around, bright stars like fireflies in the distance, dancing in evening-light, and pain stole her breath.
But none of that change the slap, slap of heavy boots on summer dry dirt, or the obscene sound of the Kssh Ksash Man chattering to himself in low, happy tones.
Slap. Slap.
'Ksnnng. Shnnn. Ksash...kash. Kash ksash...'
Edgar grunted, like he, too, registered death's approach. Francis dragged herself to him.
Got to stand, she thought, but even fear of death wouldn't give her the courage to use her ruined feet. She couldn't do it.
I can.
If I can make it this far, I can take some pain. If I have to - to live.
I have to save us because no one else can.
She tried. She really tried. Agony floored her again.
A metallic sound, then - as though the man were taking a lock from a hasp. Something else, too - quiet metal thunder. Metal sheets in high wind, like the sidings on a warehouse might make.
The door slid away on runners in the dirt.
'Kss? Mm-nn?'
His face was in shadow from light behind him - a house, fifty yards distant.
Backlit, Francis could tell what he held in his hand. A two-man saw, like lumberjacks used.
The Dead Boy Page 10