He turned up the Pixies as loud as it would go. Shut up, monkeys!
He punched the Call button to summon the stewardess and make her look at the sonograms he'd had done in Thailand of Dr. Teeth and all his other pets, wriggling happily in their intestinal zoo. That would make him feel better. But the bitch stayed away, and one of his monkeys refused to shut up.
Why did you do it, Buggs?
A voice. Inside his head. Goddamit! That fucker Keogh had infected him. The one nonnegotiable term of their working relationship had been violated. Assuming, of course, that he wasn't hallucinating, right now.
He blinked his eyes furiously, but the purple fireworks only got worse, obscuring his vision like a really good nitrous oxide hit. He paused the music. Over the omnipresent hum of the plane and the murmur of people-noises, there was only the oceanic roaring he always heard when he was freaking out. He turned and looked at the Keoghs, but they sat blandly vegetative in their seats, expecting nothing, thinking even less.
The plane lacked the Internet jacks most business class sections had, but he had a wireless set-up that hacked into an Indonesian satellite, which could send untraceable code anywhere in the world instantly. He'd written the program a long while before, and with a single keystroke, could bring down the Radiant Dawn network and turn over its internal transmissions—stego encrypted video and text inside babbling video lectures—to the leadership of every member nation of the UN Security Council and Interpol; every columnist and media outlet listed on the Drudge Report; the producers of 60 Minutes, Nightline and Oprah; and the editors of Fortean Times, Wired, High Times and Fangoria. He'd make the motherfucker sorry.
But his fingers wouldn't touch the keys. His right hand curled instead into a quivering fist and punched him squarely in the face. His nose snapped and burst like a tomato. Blood showered his keyboard.
No, Buggs. You wish it was Him.
He watched his hand unclench and close the fuck-Keogh program, and skip forward in the mix.
"Quiet Village" by Martin Denny. Sinister jungle fauna howled and screeched. Liquid marimbas and vibes brought back the aroma of herbal taxidermy, of the desert—
Hiram liked this song, said the monkey. You remember Hiram, don't you, Buggs?
You don't take as many drugs or kill as many people as Baron Angulo had without hearing voices. Voices told him what to do, told him what other people thought of him, told him whom to trust and for how long, and who to become, so that others would trust him.
But never, ever, had there been a voice of recrimination. He had no guilt, nor even a belief in guilt, except as a lever in other people's heads. Yet this had to be a flashback, a new flavor of insanity to play with. He recognized the voice in his head at once, though he could not name it, because its presence inside him was even more of an outrageous impossibility than Keogh's would be.
The voice was Storch.
Bet you think this is pretty weird, huh? Well, the feeling is mutual, Baron. That's your real name, is it? Pretty stupid name, I'd change it, too, if I were you. Forgive me if I still call you Buggs, but that was the name I knew you by. I trusted you.
Angulo shivered. This couldn't be real. Keogh killed Storch, killed him and ate him and digested him. God, how he wished he could have been there to see it.
You want to see it now? See it then, motherfucker.
He showed him.
Half-life.
The disintegrating body clings to the energy pattern, the collective pancellular delusion, the naked, screaming soul of Zane Ezekiel Storch, far longer than it should.
The body is bathed in acids and relentless protein-denaturing enzymes, and is broken down into bite-sized chunks; stripped of nutrients while passing through hundreds of miles of intestine; leached of its water, ravaged by parasites, and reduced to a toxic soup of utterly worthless molecules. And all the while, Storch fights.
Wherever the seat of the soul is in a normal human being, in Storch it lives in every organic molecule that can still generate a bioelectrical impulse. Deprived of body and brain, he is an electrochemical ghost to which his cells cling with the grim fury that drove his post-human body to its untimely end, and brought him here. The ghost of Storch lingers in the cellular remains for several days before, one by one, like cold, dying stars in the asshole of the universe, they wink out and become inert matter.
Elsewhere in the bowels of the island of Keogh, Storch's cells thrive and multiply. The filtration here is not digestive, but purely mechanical, and easily defeated. In twenty-four hours, Storch has formed an amorphous colony of undifferentiated diploid cells in the aqueous medium in which they awakened, in the drain of Buggs' shower. Just before the molecular memory of a man named Zane Ezekiel Storch flickers and fades away in these last remnant cells, a suitable host appears–
When it was done, Angulo came to in the seat, but found that his body had no interest in doing what he wanted it to, anymore. What he wanted to do was leap up screaming for Keogh to get this fucking mutant ghost out of his head; either that or tear the lid off his skull and paint the cabin with his own brains.
The sensation that he had a body at all was a fast-fading phantom. He couldn't feel his arms or legs, then he couldn't feel his heartbeat, then he couldn't blink or move his mouth. He felt like a fugitive impulse in his own brain, a rat trapped in a corner by a fever that, impossibly, was smarter than he.
I'm rewiring your nervous system, Buggs. I don't like the idea of taking your body any more than you do, but I need it, and I figure you owe me at least that much. You helped them take away my store, my home and my life, and I don't figure it meant jack-shit to you, but I liked it a lot. I guess what I'm asking is: what's your fucking problem, buddy? Why did you come fucking with me?
Angulo thought the words in a red, hateful smear he hoped blew out a bunch of his synapses. BECAUSE I COULD, DUMBSHIT! Because you were stupid and I was smart, and you thought you were fit to survive, but you didn't have half of what it really takes, you one-thumbed cracker cocksucker. It's brains, you stupid ant. You're stupid, and that's why He tricked you, that's why He killed you, and chewed you up and shat you out—
I'm here, ain't I? I'm smart enough, Buggs. Why Keogh? You think He's going to let you go on after He's everyone and everything? Just you and Him, forever and amen?
He's the only one smart enough to see the Real Enemy. The Mission are just pawns in the game, being used to keep Him in check until the endgame, but they're all over, now, and it's almost here. He's going to flush the real enemy out into the open.
What the fuck are you talking about?
The New World Order, asshole! It's real and it's bigger than anybody believes. They hide behind the Jews and the Trilateral Commission and the military-industrial complex, but they're really mutants from a breeding program going back two thousand years, among the Black Families of Europe, you know, the Rothschilds, the Merovingian Dynasty? They think they own Him, but they're in for a big fucking surprise. You were there in the war, you know what's down there, in that pit in Iraq—
Typical Buggs bullshit.
You think Keogh's bad, you should see what they're planning to do. America will be one big concentration camp, but it'll be Paradise compared to the rest of the world. But Keogh's going to fuck them but good, and then I'm going to fuck Him! He'll never win, dude, He thinks He's the shit, but I got 'em all in check. I can fuck them all at the right moment, but you've got to let me stay awake—
You kill people, Buggs.
Shit, you used to kill people for a living, boss—
I don't like it like you do.
What, those freaks in Colma? The School Of Night? I didn't even touch them! They were doping out and taking long naps, trying to commune with their hippie-dippie god, the Unbegotten Source. Dr. Angell said they were real close, His Brainless Majesty was nearing the cusp of some kind of holy wet dream or something and they were going deeper to try to awaken him. Man, you've got to believe me, I was just there to crack their compute
r system but they went out like a light all at the same time, all by themselves. Sure, I was pissed, because the computer locked me out and fried itself and I got fuck-all out of it, but I did what I did when they were already gone—
Angulo put his soul, his heart, into a winning warmth behind his pitch, even as he could feel synapses going dark by the millions as control over the forelobe of his brain, where he lived and loved and kept all his favorite stuff, slowly slipped away. The stupid GI ape had to go for it, because stupid people always did what he told them to, until they thought they were smarter than him, and they slipped up, and he got them. In the end he got them all, because he was the smartest—
I never said I was smarter than you, Buggs, said the last chattering monkey, just stronger. And then Baron Angulo's brain forgot him.
Storch sat very, very still for a long time in the seat on the airplane. He was alive. He knew nothing more. He'd been able to pick out nothing useful from Buggs' cyclone of manic thoughts, and now that he was alone in the strange head, it busily rearranged itself chemically and structurally to become his own. From out of the tiny colony of Storch-cells that had entered Buggs through an open cut in his foot during a shower in the bunker, some energy that he could only describe as his soul had staged a coup and stormed the brain of the man who stole his life. He was, for want of a better definition, human again.
But what was he? He thought he was his career, until it was ended by the war. He thought he was the life he'd built in Thermopylae, until that, too, was taken away. He thought he was just a human being, then, but lost that, too. His body became alien to him, something dangerous and maddening to inhabit, but it was still him, the only one he had, and he had only just begun to come to terms with it. He had fought too hard and suffered too much to accept death when it came, but it had happened anyway, and now—
This. He looked at Buggs' pale, slender little hands, at the white scars in his palms where his nails gouged the flesh, at the soft shelf of belly lolling over the elastic waistband of his ugly plaid pajama pants.
He looked out the window, at cities of sun-gilded clouds scudding across the infinite blue of the Pacific. On the headphones, "Quiet Village" faded out, and another Denny tune, "Hypnotique", unfolded like the petals of a night-blooming orchid. Whatever it was, and however it happened, it was good to be alive, in this moment.
When he felt at home enough in his new body to move, he typed and sent an e-mail to Agent Cundieffe.
A hand touched his shoulder. He looked up into eyes of living stone.
"You appear to have damaged yourself," a gray-eyed Asian man said.
Storch tried to smile. The unfamiliar muscles strained and twanged, but the intended effect, the patented guileless crazy-ass grin that seemed a default setting on Buggs' face, would not come. He could only guess at what the face was really doing. A tic set his mouth to spasming, and a rope of drool came out. "I'm okay," he managed, startled at the sound of Buggs' voice mumbling his words.
The man's eyes narrowed and a dry smile creased his face. His hand tightened on Storch's shoulder. "You're more resilient than I believed possible, Zane."
Another hand came up with a syringe.
Storch's flat hand whipped out and shattered the Keogh's right-side collarbone. He recoiled as blinding agony erupted in his fist. Buggs' hand was not his hand, and he'd broken most of the bones in it.
Keogh's arm went limp and the syringe fell into the aisle. He gave an anguished groan and slumped across the seat, trying to grab Storch with his working hand. The other Keogh stood and assisted. Hands clutched his T-shirt and his hair, so that both tore away when he threw himself out into the aisle.
Storch's broken hand splayed out on the deck, bones grinding chips off each other and refusing his weight. He lay full-length in the aisle, only dimly aware that he was screaming and sobbing from the pain. This body was so weak, so soft, he thought he was lapsing into shock.
At the head of the cabin, a young Polynesian stewardess caught his eye and pursed her lips sourly, not at all displeased by what she saw. The wounded Keogh stepped around him and walked up the aisle with his dead arm hanging at his side, making conciliatory sounds, while the other one stooped over him and retrieved the syringe.
"He's perfectly tractable when he's had his medication, Miss, there's no need to notify the pilot."
The stewardess paged someone from an intercom, looking sideways at the scene in the aisle. The other passengers watched with guiltily excited looks on their sunburned faces. A few even cheered and clapped; Buggs really had been an asshole.
Keogh's voice in his ear was the sound of sleep, the whisper of blessed oblivion. "Zane, there's no point in making a scene. You don't want to get anyone killed—"
"Help, please God!" Storch screamed, "They're killing me!"
"Kill him now, so he'll shut up," someone shouted.
The stewardess warily approached, her hands out in front of her. "He shouldn't be on a plane like this."
Behind her, the Keogh apologized profusely and told her everything would be fine, if she'd help them give him his medication. Anxious to restore peace, she nodded and came closer.
Storch pushed. He flexed his whole body, writhing under Keogh so that he was turned facing him. Keogh hugged Storch's arms and knelt across his legs, which brought his face close in to Storch's.
"Don't do this," Keogh whispered, "or everyone here will die."
Behind his back, Storch felt Keogh's hand fumbling to get the cap off the syringe.
Storch tilted his head back and drove it as hard as he could into Keogh's, the thickest region of bone in his forehead slamming into the juncture of bone between the Keogh's eyes once, twice, too many times to count.
His vision was wiped away in red fog, but Keogh let go of his arms as he fell back, throwing them up in front of his bloody, battered face.
Storch tried to get up, but the deck spun and dumped him across the laps of a hysterical group of Mormon missionaries, who shoved him back into the arms of the wounded Keogh, who had regained the use of his broken arm.
Storch vomited convulsively, kicking out at shadows crowding around him. The stewardess was screaming, and the Keoghs had his arms and legs, and they were going to sedate him, and it was going to work, and he was never going to wake up because, for the moment, at least, he was only human.
Someone shouted, "Freeze! Lie down on the deck!" and someone else shouted, "Federal agents, stay in your seats!" and the Keoghs paused for a moment. Storch tore his legs free and kicked one Keogh in the gut. He crumpled under the weight of the one holding his arms, pulled him off-balance and hurled him into the back wall of the cabin.
He stood and looked around, seeing dueling doubles of men in Hawaiian shirts with small-caliber pistols leveled. One of them held out a gold shield alongside his pistol, the other stood behind him in a rigid Weaver stance, ready to empty an eight-round magazine into Storch in an eye-blink. They were shouting things, but he couldn't hear them.
"It's cool," Storch mumbled, "everything's cool, just get me a seat away from these assholes—"
He felt as if he'd weathered a few cycles in a washing machine. The aisle rippled and buckled under his unsteady feet.
One of the Keoghs grabbed him from behind. He clasped Storch in a full-nelson. He had a head-and-a-half height advantage over Storch, who could only go limp. He pulled the Keogh forwards and threw him over his back into the aisle. He stood just as the locked and loaded federal agent shot him in the chest.
Storch grunted and slumped back into an empty seat, then dove across the window seats of a petrified family from Arkansas. He drove his unbroken fist into the window, two layers of half-inch thick tempered safety glass, but for one who just doesn't give a shit what it does to his hand, it was no big deal. Icy wind flushed the cabin. Alarms flashed. Sirens blared. Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling, and obliging passengers, each and every one fighting blind animal panic, slipped one on, and immediately lapsed into a stupor.
/> Storch dove back across the aisle. His chest felt as if one of his lungs had collapsed and was filling with blood. His hands were swelled up like hot water bottles, and the pain seemed to get worse by the minute. Good. That meant they were healing.
A federal agent came back up the aisle gun-first, still shouting. One of the Keoghs got in the way, and the agent shoved him back. The Keogh caught his gun-hand and twisted it. The agent screamed and dropped the gun, but the Keogh kept twisting. He gave the hand back broken and drove a fist into the agent's screaming mouth. The agent flew back up the aisle into his partner, who emptied his gun into the Keogh before he went down.
Storch crawled over the center row of seats, over catatonic Samoans and a family from New Zealand and a Maori NFL linebacker. He spilled into the opposite aisle and crawled on his belly to the emergency exit. The federal agent had reloaded, and was still using his gun in a vain attempt to pacify the situation. He shot at both Keoghs, then leapt up onto a seat and drew a bead on Storch.
He was so weak, just trying to hold it together. "Leave me alone," he begged, blood bubbling out the corners of his mouth. "let me alone, I just want to get off—"
He followed the arrows to the emergency exit hatch. The seat beside it was empty. The agent shot him twice in the back, once in the left kidney, and once in the lower spine. His legs dragged behind him like dead snakes. He hauled himself up onto the seat. He could see only gray spots like molten lead pouring over his eyes, and he could barely feel his hands, but he touched the lever and death-gripped it. He started to pull when his arm just went dead. It wouldn't pull.
The agent reloaded yet again, but Keogh slammed him to the deck and stomped on him.
"Zane, there's nowhere left to go," the other Keogh said. He crossed to the starboard aisle and grabbed Storch's dead legs, yanked him back from the emergency hatch.
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