Skin on My Skin

by John Burks

  “She wouldn’t let go of my arm. I remember that burning. I remember the boils and the instant rash. Dad was in a bio suit and he stood there, pleading with mom to let me go. When she wouldn’t, he shot her.”

  “I’m so sorry you had to see that, but he saved you. He saved you from dying.”

  “That’s what he said,” I told her and then opened the door.

  The years hadn’t been kind to the old house. The portion of the roof had caved in and the winds and rains had swept most of the plastic sheeting away. Small ragged scraps blew between the frames dad had built. The carpet was a moldy mess but there were still clear definitions of the partitions I’d spent so much of my youth in.

  “He built these containment walls. He meant for us to ride out the plague, waiting ‘till it burned out, in here together. We each had a section of the house. It wasn’t a bad design. It kept me alive for a long, long time.”

  “Where is the body?”

  “Just over there,” I said, pointing in a direction I could not look. “I shot him right there.”

  “Why?”

  “He’d gone crazy by that time. You know how many people did. Or maybe you don’t, being a Toucher and in Fortress. Out here people went out of their mind from loneliness. Sure, we survived the plague as best we could, but not everyone was equipped to not ever touch another person again. I think we need that, as humans. I think we have to touch each other to live. It’s something on a spiritual level.”

  “And your father?”

  “He was convinced we were done and there wasn’t any point to it anymore. He tried to kill me. I killed him first.”

  Jenna slipped around the corner and then came back just as quick. “You said his body was right there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There isn’t a body… and… Jack, there is something I have to tell you.”

  I went around the corner and looked. Sure enough, the spot where dad’s body had been when I left the house wearing his bio-suit was nothing but leaves blown in through the hole in the roof and ruined carpet.

  “What do you have to tell me?”

  “This is the place.”

  “What place?” I demanded. I didn’t want to admit to what I knew she was about tell me. I had to hear it from her.

  “This is where I found the man I told you about, the man I nursed back to health after I found him shot. I didn’t want to believe it, Jacky, but it was here. I’m… I’m so sorry. You father is the Preacher. I know he is because he’s the one that took me to Fortress. I didn’t know he was the Preacher, then. I didn’t know that until much later.”

  It was too much. I didn’t know what to say. It didn’t make sense and I had no real desire to accept what was right in front of my face. But it was the only right answer. Why else would he have been looking for me for all these years?

  “I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what that must feel like,” Jenna, the girl I’d forced to mutilate herself, told me with more compassion than I’d ever heard. “I can’t imagine what you must be going through right now.”

  I was more numb than anything else. My father was the Preacher. My father had murdered over ninety-nine percent of the world’s population. He was not only responsible for the demise of the human race; he was breeding monsters back in Fortress. He’d built a cult around himself. It wasn’t bad enough he’d destroyed the world. He was trying to do it all over again.

  “I… what do I do about it?” I asked. I felt like I needed to do something. I had to do something to make the whole thing right.

  “There isn’t anything you can do, Jacky. What your father was is not your fault. You are not your father. We have to get out of here. We have to meet the others and get as far away from that madman as humanly possible. Florida keeps sounding better and better. Maybe even further south than that, if we can find a boat.”

  I agreed with her. It was all I could do. The sudden guilt I felt overwhelmed any other emotion I might possibly have. I just couldn’t believe any of it, but there it was.

  “Okay guys,” a voice called from outside. “It’s been fun. You put on a good show. But now it’s time to come out and face the music.”

  There was no amplification nor distortion from suit speakers. And I knew that voice.

  I’d come home and my father had come right behind me.

  “What are we going to do now?” Jenna asked, echoing my own thoughts.

  I stood next to a busted window, staring out from long rotted curtains. My father was out there, his helmet off and under his arm. He was surrounded by the soldiers from Fortress. There were at least a couple dozen right there that I could see. There was no telling how many more were out there and I was sure the house was surrounded.

  “You guys had a secret escape tunnel or something, right.” Jenna insisted. I could hear the new fear in her voice. We’d come so close and yet here we were. “You dad was super villain. Super villains always have secret escape tunnels beneath their lairs. Or rocket ships, or something.” Tears streamed down her cheek as she desperately looked for an alternative to getting captured by the troops of Fortress.

  “No,” I told her sadly. “There’s nothing beneath the house but bugs and dirt. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  “It’s over, Jacky,” my father called from outside. “You’ve had your fun. I thought I’d let you do this the easy way, kid. I let you go out to recover your sister, and then join us. It was the only sensible thing you could do, right? You had to join us. What else where you going to do, spend your time out in the ruins? You came home to me and I gave you enough freedom to do it on your own.”

  “What is he talking about?” Jenna asked desperately. “The whole sister thing is…”

  “He’s fucking crazy. We aren’t related. This isn’t fucking Star Wars. You found him in the ruins after the plague. It isn’t even physically possible. He’s just crazy.” Dad was a long way out. I didn’t think I could make a shot that far out. But if he would just come a few steps closer…

  “I’ve looked for you for ten long years and you’re not going to screw this up too, kiddo. I need you back at the Nursery. You’ve already set the project back a long time by your actions. I can’t tell you how hard it’s going to be to replace the Touchers and the children that you set free. And I need Jenna too. Don’t worry. The two of you are going to be spending a lot of time together. We’re going to need a lot of new babies if we’re going to pull this off.”

  “I don’t want anything to do with your or Fortress,” I finally called back. “I’m just as done with you now as when I put those bullets into your chest.”

  He laughed. “Yes, and the irony of being shot by my own flesh and blood is not lost on me. The fact that you somehow found Jenna… in the ruins, is even the greater irony. She is the flame that lit my way through the darkness, Jacky. She saved me after your murderous attempt on my life. She showed me hope, not just for me, but for our entire species. And though I did not help in the creation of her, Jenna will always be my daughter. I still can’t believe you two found each other in the ruins. I can only attribute it to God’s hand. Your genes and hers are the only hope for mankind. But it doesn’t matter what you want, Jacky. I need your genetics. We tried it the easy way, but you now you no longer have a choice in the matter.”

  “What is he talking about, Jacky? Why would he need your genetics?”

  The last time I’d seen him… the needle… all that flashed through my mind. What had he given me?

  “I’ll give you my blood, dad. But then you let us go.”

  He laughed again. “You are so much like your mother, son. She was always spending more energy on trying to get out of the inevitable than it would take just to play along. I don’t need your blood, Jacky. I need you to make babies for us. Jenna was the one thing we were missing before. I knew there had to be people who were immune out there. I just hadn’t found them yet. And up until she found me, broken and bleeding, I’d just quite nearly convinced mys
elf that there were no such thing as the Touchers. I was nearly mad with the guilt. I never intended to kill off the human race. But as always, the Lord had a plan. The Lord guided my hands as I built the plague. He guided me as I made the cure, Jacky, and injected it within you. I knew your children would be the key. The shot I gave you would only effect future generations, Jacky, and even then required someone who was immune to the plague. I admit it was a gamble, but the Lord guides us. And he guided you into finding her. You and Jenna are the new Adam and Eve, Jacky. You will be the parents of a new race of humans.”

  Something was going on behind him and several of his soldiers went back to deal with it. I hoped it wasn’t the other Touchers. If nothing else came of this disaster of a night I hoped they escaped. Their freedom would be a bitter sweet consolation prize.

  “How about I just put a bullet in my head right now, dad? Isn’t that what you wanted to do back then?”

  “I’m sorry about that, Jacky. I really am. We all make mistakes. I’d fallen off a cliff, at that point, and I’d lost faith. I didn’t want you to suffer the end, not like that. I was convinced I’d made a horrible mistake and I was trying to make it quick for you. But, you know what? I forgive you for what you did. I think the Lord was directing your hand, that day. I think it was the good Lord’s way of putting me back on the right track. I’m on that right track now, Jacky. Had you not attempted to kill me I would have never found that sweet, sweet girl you have with you. I miss you as well, Jenna. Don’t you miss our nights together?”

  Jenna cringed next to me. I hoped she’d never have to tell me of the things my father had done to her. I was tempted to do just what I’d threatened to. There would some grim satisfaction in those few seconds before the bullet turned my brains to mush in the look on my father’s face.

  “Don’t you remember that shot, Jacky? That day your mother died?”

  “She didn’t die,” I shouted back. “You murdered her.”

  “I saved you, son. But that shot… that was the only a bit of it, Jacky. I couldn’t make a vaccine. They would have found that. So I made something different. You, Jacky. You hold the cure to this in your genes. Combined with a Toucher, you’re genetics will help carry on the human race. The old will die with your generation, Jacky, but a new generation will be born. It will be a generation free of the sins of the old world. They will have a fresh start. It’s locked in your blood, Jacky.”

  I considered the implications for a moment and I didn’t know if I believed the man or not anyway. “So there was more to looking for me than just a father searching out his lost son?”

  My father sighed and it was a sound of disgruntled distaste I’d heard many times during our time locked in the containment unit. It always preceded him going full-blown bat shit crazy.

  “I need you to be reasonable, Jacky. I need you to grow up.”

  “I’m not coming with you. It’s not going to happen.”

  “The fate of the human race depends on you and that girl you have with you, son. Her and whatever other fertile Touchers we can find out there in the ruins. You will cooperate.”

  “You lost the right to order me around when you tried to kill me, dad,” I said and then, as rage filled me, I squeezed off a three round burst from the rifle. Jenna cringed, eyes wide, but then nodded. We hadn’t had much time together and what time we had spent with each other had been filled with spite and mistrust. But we didn’t have to speak to know what each other were thinking, at that point.

  Better to go out with a bang than live under my father’s twisted idea of a future.

  Jenna joined me at the window.

  “I see you’ve made your choice,” my father said, still just out of the range of my rifle. “So be it. You could have had it all. You could have been the prince of a new world and lived out your life in luxury. But I don’t need you willing. You won’t like the world you’re about to live in. Take them alive, gentlemen. We need them both.”

  Rifles erupted in sudden fire, and I ducked, expecting the house to be filled with flying lead. But the suddenly panicked soldiers weren’t shooting at us.

  “What’s that?” Jenna asked in a whisper, pointing past the soldiers.

  I could just barely make out the swarm of creatures scampering through the ruins, howling at the top of their lungs as they charged the soldiers. It only took a moment to realize who they were.

  “They’re you’re children, Jenna.”

  The sight of Jenna’s children tearing into the bio-suited soldiers was unlike anything I’d ever seen.

  There were several dozens of the creatures who’d escaped Jenna’s attempts to eradicate them. When I’d first seen the monsters they’d already looked like something out of a bad horror movie. Their entire bodies were covered in plague scars from birth and they were often hunchbacked. Many had suffered even more in the fire Jenna and I lit. Their scars were burnt, hair singed away. Some were missing limbs. Their cries were a mix of pained agony and outrage.

  They ran in a low gait, much like an ape or gorilla, using their hands to propel them along on all fours. The scared, mutated creatures were incredibly strong and I gasped as one shoved the old hulk of a car out of the way. A few of the soldiers didn’t hesitate, shooting right away. Others stood dumbstruck, watching in awe as the small horde of mutants over ran their positions.

  The one called Brian was easy to spot out of the crowd. He was larger than the others and much more powerful. He howled as he leapt over the rusted remains of an old delivery van, leaping high into the air and coming down on top of one of the hapless soldiers. The man’s cries were easily heard over his suit’s speakers and he squealed like a stuck pig as Brian, grasping each of the soldier’s arms in his hands, pulled them apart. Even at the distance we were I could still hear the sickly sound of metal parting, of bone and flesh ripping. Brian stood, a bloody suit clad arm in each hand, and wielded his morbid trophies like clubs.

  He looked at my parent’s house and I felt those eyes boring into me, as if he could see past the wood and the rotting curtains. That creature seemed to know his mother was near.

  A soldier stepped in front of it and leveled the rifle at the thing’s chest. The bullets stitched a line from its left hip up across its chest, to its right shoulder. I expected the beast to go down, but instead it turned from the house, its face a mask of rage. The soldier, seeing the absolute ineffectiveness of his bullets turned and tried to run. Brian hurled one of the bloody arms he had at it, nailing the fleeing man in the back, and then driving him to the ground. He leapt the fifteen feet separating them in a single bound, coming down on the man’s back. I heard the crunch of bone and cringed. Brian tossed the other arm away and then, with both hands, pulled the man’s armored head from his body. He then crushed the head between his hands, showering himself with blood and bone.

  He hooted again and there was no mistaking the joy in his tone.

  The scene was much the same all around my old home.

  Soldiers were falling in droves to the small, ferocious children. Their gunfire, while able to pierce their scar-riddled skin, did little to slow the beasts. They were driven by fury, unstoppable. I looked around for my father but didn’t see him. I didn’t know if he’d run away or if he’d been taken by the things.

  “They’re just children,” Jenna said, tears forming. “My babies.”

  It hadn’t dawned on me, at that point, that they were, in fact, children. The oldest was no more than about ten. I wondered, for half a second, how strong they’d be when they reached full adulthood.

  “We have to go,” I whispered, pulling away from the scene of carnage outside. “We have to run while we have the chance.”

  “My babies,” Jenna said softly. “They came for me. They came to kill me. They want me dead for…”

  “Stop it,” I ordered. We weren’t going to get out of this alive with Jenna acting crazy. Crazier, I guess. I pulled her by the hand and led her through the ruins of my father’s homemade containment
unit and out the back door. Outside I could hear the soldier’s screams more clearly and, even distorted as they were by the suit speakers, it chilled me. The monsters were leaving none alive.

  We hadn’t made it a block away when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the figures leaping through the buildings around us. The creatures jumped from telephone pole to telephone pole like a squirrel might between tree branches. Their strength was uncanny. The one called Brian sprang from a nearby rooftop, shattering it in a cloud of shingle and wood as he leapt, landing right in front of us.

  I came to a sliding stop and brought the rifle up to my shoulder, aiming for the thing’s head.

  “No,” Jenna whispered, physically pushing the rifle barrel down. “He’s my son.”

  “Mommy,” the creature said sadly. Its voice was primal and untrained. I could tell the word felt uncomfortable on the things tongue.

  Another beast came down beside it and leapt at Jenna as if to rend her limb from limb. Brian caught it by the ankle and spun it out into the ruins. It landed like a bomb in the house next to us. My hands trembled on the rifle and despite Jenna stopping me I still wanted to shoot the thing in the face.

  “My sweet Brian,” Jenna said, stepping up to the beast child, rubbing his cheek. “Mommy is so, so sorry.”

  The creature’s already twisted face was a mix of emotion and rage. I had no idea how the thing knew we’d been the ones to set the fire, but by the look spread across its face, I knew that it did.

  “Mommy?” the thing said again, as if its entire vocabulary consisted of just that one, single word, charged with emotion and tone to mean different things.

  “I didn’t want you to suffer at his hands,” she said. “Grandfather is not a kind man and…”

  “Mommy!” the thing blared, angrily.

  Its cohorts began to arrive, surrounding both their apparent leader and Jenna and I. The other’s anger was not nearly as complex and confused as Brian’s. I knew that the monster leader, a child really, was the only thing keeping them from ripping us apart just as they had the soldiers.