by Julian Gough
‘Huh,’ he says.
Moving carefully – no sudden movements – she shows him her hands. Rotates them. Nothing taped to the back.
‘Turn around,’ he says.
The windowless corridor is quiet, empty. She slowly turns around, and she can hear his breathing change. She stifles a laugh. Turn the other cheek . . .
‘Run your fingers through your hair,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Prove there’s nothing in your hair.’
She splays her fingers and combs her hair with them, up, down, sideways. Lifts her hair to show her neck.
‘See? No weapons,’ she says. Careful, careful. Hide the anger.
‘OK . . .’ says Donnie. ‘Come here. Slowly.’
Naomi fights an urge to turn and run, as she walks slowly towards him, her hands in the air. She tries to make eye contact, human contact, to make him less likely to kill her, but his eyes are too busy flicking between her genitals and her breasts, up and down, up and down.
That is the evil eye, she thinks.
She can tell he’s not really thinking any more, he’s feeling. Stimulus/response. The hook is in.
‘Huh,’ he says again, all out of words.
This feels so strange, like an uneasy dream.
But also so strangely familiar.
She remembers all the darkrooms. All the times she’s pushed herself, she’s made men push her, to an edge a lot like this one. But that was for a kind of pleasure; this is the absolute opposite . . . It’s hard to keep her fury invisible.
In a standard dominant–submissive relationship, the submissive has the safe word. Can stop the game. It is the submissive who has control.
This time, it’s real. If she wants control, she’ll have to take it. And if she fails . . . She doesn’t want to finish the thought.
He takes a step closer, gun in his right hand, and she can smell beer on his breath, and what is that, chocolate? Peanut butter?
‘Terrorist . . . bitch,’ he murmurs.
She knows her best strategy is to shut up and not trigger his anger and fear, but she can’t help herself, she says, ‘What?’
‘C’mon, I know. I know. You and your fucking lunatic son. There’s explosions going off all over Vegas.’
And there’s a pause, a weird pause. Her senses are so finely tuned by adrenalin and cortisol that his face looks the size of a planet, and she is alert to every shifting emotion animating it. It still takes her a couple more seconds to realize; he doesn’t know what to do next. Too many visits to Pahrump, too many years of professional sex workers running the show, while pretending to let him run the show . . . now he’s in charge, for real, with a gun . . . and he doesn’t know what to do.
Oh fuck you, Donnie, this is who you always were, you fucking creep . . .
And she is suddenly terrified that, if he glances at her face, he will see what she’s really thinking, how she really feels; worse, see what she is about to do, and so she looks down, and lowers herself to her knees – not too quickly, don’t startle him – to move her face out of his eyeline.
Kneeling brings her closer to him; touching distance. The smooth wood is surprisingly cool against her skin. He pulls the gun back and up, out of her range, so she can’t grab it, and points it down at her again. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Good,’ sounding confident again. ‘Let’s start with that.’
She reaches for his zipper, half-hidden under the sag of his beer belly, and he groans in anticipation, before she’s even touched the metal. She pulls the zipper down.
Oh Jesus Christ, I’m going to have to touch him . . .
He’s locked down the building. No one else will save you. Do it.
Follow the plan.
Wash your hands after.
She shuffles his khakis down his legs, leaves the trousers pooled around his ankles, over his boots. Good, he can’t run, if this goes wrong, if she needs to run.
For the plan to work, she needs access: there is no getting around this. She lowers his old-fashioned boxers, and his penis catches on the elastic waistband, and springs free. It’s floppy, semi-hard, a drunk’s erection. It’s OK, he’s an experiment, an experimental animal, don’t get emotional . . . She reaches for it; it jerks in her hand, like a startled fish scooped from a pond, and she is reminded of all the experimental animals she has killed over the years. Snapping the necks of the mice, injecting the larger mammals. She sees again the last dying dog that trusted her, that licked her hand, and the memory of its rough, loving tongue on the back of her hand is so vivid her eyes moisten.
I killed the wrong animals.
Forgive me, Jesus, for what I’ve done. For what I’m about to . . .
No. No. Stop trying to pretend you’re perfect. You’re not Saint Francis. You’ve taken the lives of innocents, for science; for a pay cheque. If you can kill those beautiful creatures . . . you can kill this piece of shit.
She grasps his penis more firmly, moves her hand back and forth, just a little, and he groans and leans back against the wall, groaning again with every movement of her hand.
Good, that will cover any noise . . . Oh crap, I should have started this left-handed.
It’s too late to free her right hand now, he’ll realize she’s up to something. Shit shit shit. OK.
She speeds up her right hand a little. He groans louder, shuffles his feet a little wider, but they’re still caught in his khakis, so he braces himself with his arms against the wall behind him. So he’s now holding the pistol flat to the wall. Good . . .
She glances up at his face, works out the eyelines. There is no way he can see what she is doing with her other hand; his head’s too far back and his beer gut is in the way, pushing out his shirt like an awning.
She reaches down with her free left hand, and coaxes out the end of the red thread. Pulls it, carefully. Bears down. Finally the syringe slides out, and, suddenly, irrationally afraid it’s going to pop like a champagne cork, she goes, ‘Ohhhhh . . .’ to hide any noise, but of course there is none. And now it’s dangling from the thread in her fingers.
She knows he can’t see it over his gut, his shirt hem, but she’s still trembling with tension, afraid he’ll move. He seems to think her ‘Ohhhhh . . .’ and her trembling indicate arousal, because he groans a reply, and she feels a white-hot surge of pure hatred; my God, he actually thinks he’s entitled to my pleasure, that I’m enjoying this.
She can’t help herself, she jerks hard, to hurt him, and he says, ‘Hey, slower.’
‘OK,’ she says. Calm down, calm down.
‘Put it in your mouth,’ he says.
‘I just want to see how big I can get it first,’ she says in a soothing voice. Boost the idiot’s ego, that’s right. ‘Oh, that’s good, yes . . .’ Her words distract him, cover up any sounds, as she tries to get the red plastic cap off the fucking needle with her left hand, Jesus Christ don’t drop it.
‘You have achieved your cardio target for the day,’ says a sudden, incongruously happy voice near her ear. ‘Congratulations!’ It starts to play a cheerful little tune.
Donnie grunts in surprise, or annoyance.
Oh, the fitness monitor, on his left wrist. Naomi snorts a laugh, turns it into a cough. Don’t laugh. So, his heart is beating fast. Good. That’ll help.
He reaches across to silence the fitness monitor, but he can’t turn off the tune while his right hand still holds the gun. He hesitates; slips the pistol back into the holster high under his left arm. Now, she thinks, while he’s distracted . . .
She grips the slippery syringe in her left hand. As three fingers clamp it hard to her palm, her thumb and forefinger slip, slip again, on the red plastic cap, trying to get a grip, unscrew it. But her fingertips are too oily, and she can’t get traction. Oh God, why did I screw it on so tight?
She surreptitiously rubs her thumb and forefinger clean of oil against her thigh. Now they have enough grip to turn the plastic cap: one, two, three turns, and it’s loose, it’s off.
OK, this is it. I need to be able to see what I’m doing.
The cheerful tune cuts off abruptly above her. She moves in closer.
‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘oh yeah.’
She studies his penis with clinical detachment. Perfect target – the plump, spongy, blood-filled corpora cavernosa and the veins that drain them. Impossible to miss . . .
But now, with the pistol in its holster, both his hands are free. He reaches for her. Don’t let him grab your hair . . . She pulls her head back out of reach.
‘Just put it in your mouth,’ he says, and he reaches for her head again.
‘Wait, let me get you ready,’ she says. ‘It’ll be worth it, trust me.’ She ducks even lower to get a better view of her target; twists her hand a little on his shaft to distract him. He throws his head back and groans.
And she marvels that he trusts her, that he really thinks she will do this, that he’s watched so much porn, paid so many women to service him, that he thinks this is OK, normal, something she would do. He’s not even scared, that she’ll change her mind, try to hurt him. He’s not even scared. He doesn’t think a woman can hurt him. Wow.
Just keep his fucking brain switched off.
Above her, he’s trying to talk his cock into staying erect, muttering, ‘I’m going to fuck you so hard, I’m going to come in you, you dumb Chinese whore . . .’
It’s almost a relief, to see him like this; to know. So tiring, to wonder for years, am I over-reacting, am I crazy, trying to avoid being alone in a room with him . . . But yes, I was right to think this was in you all the time.
His penis pulses, alive, in her right hand, as the needle approaches from underneath, and the enormity of what she is about to do hits her.
‘Are you sure you want to do this,’ she says, and she’s not even sure who she’s talking to; herself, Donnie, God . . .
‘Just put my fucking cock in your mouth, bitch,’ says Donnie.
‘Oh, Donnie,’ she says sadly. ‘Oh, Donnie,’ and she slides the needle, so sharp it’s almost painless, into the underside of his penis, right at the base.
Nothing but blood vessels, you can’t miss.
Awkwardly, left-handed, she pushes the plunger. For a terrible instant it doesn’t move; and then it does, fast, in a satisfying surge, and all the liquid vanishes inside him and he’s finally registering that something has happened, ‘What the hell . . .’
‘Sorry, my nails . . .’
‘Jesus, trim those fucking talons.’
For a brief moment his erection hardens, from the increased pressure of the injected liquid. ‘Yeah, that’s it . . .’ he says uncertainly.
My God, he still doesn’t know . . .
But his body is already panicking, withdrawing the blood and solution from his penis, to prepare for fight or flight, and as his erection collapses, all the dissolved, lethal, salt is pushed straight up, towards his pounding heart.
Perfect.
He sways, looks puzzled, looks down on her, and she smiles.
‘I promised you something special,’ she says, and gently pulls out the needle.
He reaches woozily towards his holster, for the gun, but it’s too late; blood moves at walking pace through human veins; it took just a couple of beats to push that liquid up to his heart, and he’s already going into cardiac arrest.
As he topples to his knees, she stands; it’s like a dance, they pass each other, swap postures.
His head is below her now, and he is looking up at her face, finally making eye contact; astonished at this reversal.
She feels a wave of relief so strong it’s almost nausea.
Three times the lethal dose for a woman of my weight, she thinks. And it’s not a linear scale, so probably double the lethal dose for Donnie.
She can see the process in her head, as clearly as if she were observing it through an electron microscope. With his bloodstream so full of the dissolved salt, potassium ions can no longer pass through his cell walls; can’t send their crucial messages. One by one, the muscle fibres of his heart fail to reset, for the next contraction.
The experiment is working.
‘How do you like it, Donnie?’
‘Oh Jesus . . .’
He stares down, but the needle was so sharp, and the pressure drop as he lost his erection so swift, closing the tiny wound, that there isn’t even any blood; he can’t work out what’s happened.
‘Being penetrated, against your will? You like that?’ She holds up the syringe by the red thread. ‘Me, spurting inside you? Sex is dangerous, Donnie.’
On his knees, he places one hand flat to his chest, over his spasming heart, so that he looks, for an incongruous instant, as though he is about to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He gropes blindly downward with his other hand till it cups his shrivelled cock and balls. He’s trying to speak – to breathe – but he can’t. He topples forward, onto his face.
She takes a step; carefully places her bare right foot in the small of his back, and holds him to the floor as he spasms, his trousers still bunched around his ankles.
The spasms weaken. Grow further apart. The heart dies slowly. It takes a while. It’s hard to kill a man.
Finally, there’s no heartbeat. No breathing. No nothing.
She relaxes a little, lets go the thread, and the empty syringe falls to the wooden floor. She waits another minute, just in case. Then she crouches, and rolls him over onto his back. He’s heavy. Dead weight . . . She takes the orange data cubes from his pockets. One, two, three, four, five . . . Studies them. So small, to hold all those years of her life. Everything she’s learned about the brain, and body. About replacing what’s been lost. Fixing what’s broken.
She looks down at the body. All the words and emotions she’s ever swallowed in this building come back up. ‘You . . . fucking . . . asshole . . .’ She kicks him hard, into the side of his gut. It’s like kicking a waterbed. The gut sloshes, and his whole body rocks. ‘You made me do this.’ She kicks him again, and again, till her bare feet hurt.
She turns away from his body, and walks towards her office.
There is a panicky electronic whoop from behind her, and she spins around.
The cardiac alarm rings through the corridor.
Damn damn damn, forgot that . . . Donnie’s fitness monitor. Got to cancel the call to emergency services . . .
She runs back, drops the five data cubes in a bouncing scatter across the floor, and grabs the old scuffed monitor pulsing red on his limp wrist. Grabs his other hand, pulls it around, hits ‘False Alarm’ with his dead finger, to cancel the ambulance call.
It’s still warm, it’s still his fingerprint, it still works.
With his dead hand in her trembling hand, she switches off his monitor.
She stands up. Bows her head a moment, but no more words come. There are no prayers for this.
He deserved it. He got it. It’s done.
He can’t hurt Colt now. He can’t hurt anyone.
She picks up the cubes, and goes to get her clothes. In her office, she pulls up her underwear, but then remembers his body, out of sight in the corridor. His gun, still in its holster. Her limbs shiver with a primal, irrational fear that he could come to life again, if left unobserved . . . She brings the rest of her clothes back out to the corridor, and looks at him while she dresses.
Once she’s finished dressing, she double-checks his pockets, to make sure she has all her data cubes. She takes his gun from its holster, checks the safety catch, slips it in her jacket pocket. Walks along the corridor, picks up her empty pistol, the box of useless bullets, from the floor. As an afterthought – thinking vaguely, guiltily, of fingerprints and murder weapons – she goes back for the empty syringe too, and shoves it into the cardboard box with the bullets.
She turns around, and studies him. The muscles relaxing. The tension gone. He no longer frowns.
The spirit has left the body.
The breakdown has begun, cell by cell. And damage done
now will never be repaired.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
One less asshole.
That was crazy. That was crazy.
I did it.
*
She returns to Lab 2. Gets the accelerant from the fridge; a fat, one-shot capsule of StemStim B7.
Unplugs a fresh server for Colt.
Takes the server out to the car.
Another.
Another.
Takes some more cables to be sure.
When she’s done, she stands by her car in the hot, empty parking lot. She looks back at the building. The silk of her mother’s jacket is tight over her shoulders from the weight of the two guns, the bullets, the syringe, the data cubes. Death; her life’s work.
Who am I, she thinks, amazed.
She looks inside herself for the guilt she should feel, but there is none. Just a kind of hot, hard, unfamiliar joy.
I had to kill Donnie, to save Colt. To save myself. And I am glad he’s dead. Would Jesus prefer Colt dead? Me, dead? Why would he prefer that? No, sorry, Mama. Sorry, Jesus. I tried to be good, and it wasn’t enough.
I brought life into the world. And now I have brought death into the world.
Who am I, now?
She gets into the car, and slams the door.
I’ll find out.
116
Naomi is a mile away from the facility when she sees the flash in the BMW’s rear-view mirror.
She is still looking in the mirror when the second missile hits the burning shell of her lab. The small building vanishes completely, in rippling waves of black smoke and orange fire.
Some part of her mind thinks there’s been a glitch; that it’s the rear-view screen in her old car, somehow switched over to news; she half-reaches for the mirror in reflex, to switch it back to rear view.
Then she recognizes the broken, burning skeleton of her building, emerging from the smoke.
Thank God, I got my research out . . .
But of course, she’s only taken the data. The mice, the caterpillars, the tissue samples, are still back there . . . Naomi closes her eyes and sees confused images; the striped caterpillars turn black, then blaze orange in the heat; bright tiger stripes rippling . . .