Guinea Pig

by Curtis, Greg

  Of course what he saw without his eyes was more difficult to understand. It would take longer to learn to cope with. But at least he now knew that they were real. The delusions weren't delusions after all. And that brought him some peace.

  The wings were probably the hardest thing to understand. They weren't really arms, but they felt a bit like them. And they moved, sometimes by themselves, sometimes when he thought about moving them. It was a hard thing to understand having these extra limbs and controlling them. His brain was slowly being rewired so that he could move all the extra muscles, but his mind would take longer to truly accept having six limbs. Or feathers, for the Walkers claimed that the long white hairs that were growing out of his wings were the start of feathers. It was ironic really. This nightmare had begun for him when he'd lost his body hair and he'd instantly missed it. Now he had new body hair – for a while at least – and he wasn't sure he wanted it.

  Still, he knew he could adapt to what had happened. And that was important to him. To have had to have lived with all these changes and never have been able to adapt to them would have been intolerable. He even had hope that one day he might be able to get back some of what he'd lost. To learn to read again. And how to drive a car if he could ever find a way to fit in one while standing. Sitting was not likely to be something he would ever be able to do again. His back simply did not bend that far.

  Maybe what helped him most though were the Walkers. Though the word they used to identify themselves didn't really describe them at all. He wasn't sure anything did.

  He knew that because when the others looked at them they saw people. Normal everyday people with long white hair. Assuming they saw anyone at all. The Walkers would not be seen if they didn't want to be. Not by normal people. He though could see them a little even then, as long as he didn't use his eyes. That was why he'd kept seeing them when his eyes couldn't see anything at all. He couldn't see them as they truly were, not yet anyway. But he could see that they were more than what they appeared. That they had two distinct forms in the one body. Or maybe that was two very different images of one body. He couldn't really explain it. It was like looking at an optical illusion. You looked at it one way and you saw one thing. A few seconds later you saw something else. Yet nothing had changed about them. Only the way you understood what you were looking at.

  One form was the human looking one. The other glowed like the sun and had huge golden wings. It was as good a description of an angel as he could imagine. But both were the same being.

  “Hungry?”

  He turned around as Elia tossed him a pineapple and caught it easily, surprised at how easily he did. But that was nothing new. Daily, almost hourly he was discovering new things about himself that surprised him. Things he'd lost, things he'd gained. And yet the one thing that was finally bringing him some comfort was the fact that he was still him. Maybe he couldn't remember how to do things like read or use technology. And he suspected that speaking would soon be beyond him as well. Already it seemed like a strange and awkward thing to do. And maybe he did understand how other things worked in a strangely intuitive way. But he was still William Simons.

  “Thank you.”

  He bit into the fruit, enjoying the sweetness of the flesh and the tough dry bitterness of the wood like skin. They went together in a way that he would once never have been able to imagine. But then once he would never have been able to bite through it.

  “You need to keep your strength up.”

  “For the end, I know.”

  And he did, but it didn't scare him as much as it once had. Then again he suspected he had already endured most of the change anyway. All that was left were the wings, and they were a foot long now and growing at an incredible rate. An inch an hour. At most there were only a few days left to him before he had become whatever he was destined to become.

  “No. Not for the end. Just for the change. Your body is rebuilding itself cell by cell. Being broken down and rebuilt in a way it wasn't ready for. That takes strength. But once it's complete you'll lose that hunger. Or else turn into a giant doughnut!” She giggled a little at the idea. Almost like a little girl. A strange thing in a white haired woman of advancing years. Stranger still in an angel. But he'd come to accept it.

  That was something he had never expected of angels. That they would have a sense of humour. Laugh at the silliest things. Enjoy life in such a frivolous way. He'd always imagined them to be serious sorts, if he'd thought of them at all. Full of love he'd supposed, and the word of God, but not laughter. And yet that was who they were. Light hearted, almost care free beings who would love nothing more than a good joke and to picnic in the sun.

  “I may turn into a doughnut anyway. You don't know. That could be my final form.”

  “I doubt it. You're close to the end and everything about you so far says winged man.

  “But not angel.”

  And that was one of the things that bothered him. It wasn't that he particularly wanted to be an angel. But he wanted to be someone. To belong to a people. He wasn't human. Not any more. He didn't need to look in a mirror to know that. He could see it in the faces of the others as they stared at him. But he wasn’t an angel either. He didn't belong.

  “No, not an angel. And not a nephilim as that silly Bishop Benenson keeps saying. Not even a mixture. You are human, though not completely. But in time you will probably be able to walk among the others of your people again as we do. Whatever you are becoming it is something new. But it is still something human. And whatever form you eventually wear you are and always will be family. It was that that drew us to you in the first place. You may not be an angel but you are of our lineage. Raphael's lineage. A half-brother maybe. He'd like that.”

  It was a strange thought actually. To have an angel as a brother. But then there were so many strange thoughts running through what passed for his mind these days. And questions too. But one above all else.

  “I don't suppose you can tell me what's coming next? What happens when the transformation is complete?”

  He worried about that. He knew that something happened. Something important. Because the Fallen had been desperate to stop the transformation before it reached the end, and at the same time the Walkers were determined to make sure it ran its course. He would have liked to have stopped it himself, though not by dying. Not any longer. There had been a time when death had looked comforting, but somewhere along the way he had turned a corner and now he wanted to live.

  “You know I can't.”

  “You mean you won't.”

  “Won't then. You know that. What will happen will happen. But anything I tell you could influence you. Make you do what I think is the right thing or the wrong thing, and I can't allow that. When the time comes whatever you do you must do completely of your own free will. If it was guided in any way it would be meaningless. Everything you have gone through would have been for nothing.”

  “It was without purpose anyway. The doctor was insane.”

  And now he was guilt ridden because of what he'd done. Sometimes, though he would never have thought it possible, William felt sorry for Doctor Millen. He was so miserable.

  “Maybe.” She sounded uncertain, which was a surprise. She hadn't sounded that way before. Not about the doctor's actions anyway. And he had to ask.

  “What? Now you think he wasn't mad? That he was guided after all?”

  “I don't think that. But I don't know enough to say that it didn't happen either. There are so many coincidences. So many unlikely events that had to come together in order for him to do what he did. And I begin to wonder. Maybe it was both. Madness and design.”

  “Great.”

  But it wasn't really. If she was right then he either had two lots of people to blame for what had been done to him – the doctor and whoever had guided him – or he had no one. Neither option seemed that good to him.

  “Enough talk young one! It's time to work. Come here and stand on the log as before.”


  Will suppressed a groan when she said that – barely. He knew what she intended and he didn't like it. But still he went to her, stood on the fallen log and then extended his wings as far as he could when she asked him to. They were larger now. Extending at least a foot out to each side and running all the way from his tail bone where they were just a raised lump of skin to his shoulder blades where they were as thick as his arms and powerfully muscled.

  Two more white haired people arrived perfectly on time – they were good at that – and reached out to catch his wings as he leaned forward. After that it was a matter of exercise as she made him push against their outstretched hands with his wings. And as always she made him lean forwards further and further until it was as though he was doing push ups. Actually he was doing push ups, just not with his arms.

  “Lower.” Unexpectedly the two walkers went down on their knees and he was suddenly left hanging there almost horizontal, but with no chance of sagging in the middle as he normally would. The stiffness of his back wouldn't let him bend. He guessed that that was intentional – part of his design. He was stiff for a reason. It was necessary for flying.

  “And continue.”

  Obediently, though he didn't really want to, he carried on, lifting almost his entire body weight with his wings, pumping them up and down, somewhat surprised that he could. He had never been the most athletic of people. But his wings at least were strong, perhaps even stronger than his legs, and somehow he found himself doing as he was commanded. Flapping them down and pushing himself up again and again, even finding a rhythm while she kept urging him on.

  It was hard work, and Elia as always made it harder. She made him extend his wings as far forward of his head as he could and then push down and back until he was almost swimming through the air in a strange version of butterfly. Then he had to do them with his wings lowered until they were almost at his waist.

  Elia pushed him all the way. She made him carry on until his hearts were racing and sweat was pouring down his face. Until the blood was pumping through his body as never before and his wing muscles burnt. It was hard. Impossibly hard. But that wasn't what bothered him about the exercise. It was why she was making him do it. She was getting him ready to fly. And he was in two minds about that. Part of him wanted to. More than anything else in his life he wanted to be able to fly. It was the one redeeming feature in this entire nightmare. But at the same time he was scared of it. He didn't like heights and he absolutely didn't like falling. Maybe he wasn't the best choice for a winged man.

  And then there were the dreams. The waking nightmares as he tried to climb and couldn't. They had gone, mostly. But the memory remained. And he was scared that he would end up in that exact situation. Flying, trying to rise to be with the Choir and failing.

  But apparently he didn't have a choice in that either.

  Still, as he worked and sweated, there was one thing more that worried him. Perhaps the most dangerous thing of all. At some stage this would be over. The transformation would be complete. And then something would happen. He would have to do something. He didn't know what. He suspected the Walkers didn't know what either. And the little they did know they wouldn't share with him. But something big was coming. Maybe the same something big that was in his dreams.

  And the one thing he was certain of was that he didn't want it.

  Chapter Thirty Five.

  Gamut lay in the long grass with his rifle trained on the cabin, waiting for his prey to appear in his sight. He was a little annoyed that he should have to.

  His original plan had been to simply walk into the hospital with a pistol and shoot William Simons in the head. But he had been held up. First there had been endless reports to fill out about what had happened to the hospital. And then with his normal operational commander dead, there had been delays in getting the resources he needed. Mostly that was a new rank so he could walk into a military base and not be arrested, and then transport into the affected zone which was restricted. And then by the time he had made it back to the ruined hospital they had escaped, leaving him with a whole new problem – finding them.

  But he had found them. It had been difficult; their escape had been well orchestrated and the fog that had conveniently covered their escape had stopped anyone from seeing which way they'd gone. To add to that Los Angeles was a complete mess. Finding someone in it was next to impossible and tracking their journey through it more so. But he had been lucky. They'd taken an ambulance. And every ambulance, even an old one that should no longer be in service, had a GPS tracker in it.

  So it was simply a matter of finding which particular ambulance they'd taken, getting its tracker number and then using the satellite tracking system to find it. Police could do it, and one of his past identities had been as a police officer. His ID was still valid even years later. He kept all of them operational, just in case.

  The hardest part had actually been going back to the hospital to find out what ambulance they'd stolen. Finding the missing ambulance was easy; there were only five and when four of them were sitting there in the underground car park in pieces, that left only one. But facing the soldiers still stationed there was hard. Many of them knew his face, and some knew what he'd done. Those who did weren't happy about it and he had seen the disgust in their faces. When he returned however, he had a new name, a new ID and most important of all a new rank. No one messed with a colonel. They jumped to attention and did whatever he asked, whatever they thought of him.

  What was hard was listening to them as they constantly spoke about the escape. About the white haired woman who had appeared in front of them, and who had somehow stopped bullets, rockets and shells with an invisible wall. Just before the fog had come. That was madness. These were trained soldiers. They knew better than to give into delusion. They had all the gas masks they needed in case of some sort of gas attack. And that was the only explanation he had for what had happened. Some sort of hallucinatory gas had been unleashed on them. They should have recognised immediately that it was a chemical attack and put on their masks. They shouldn't have been able to be overcome. And yet they had been. They had been deceived completely. All of them. All at once. And they still believed it had happened. They still pointed to the curved wall of spent munitions on the ground as if it was proof of something.

  It was a disgrace. He would have had them all up on charges if he'd actually been a real colonel and their commanding officer. Especially those who had run away afterwards. Apparently a considerable number had simply thrown down their weapons and headed back to their homes and families. That was nothing less than desertion. But when it was over fifty men that had fled and they had possibly been under the effects of whatever chemical agent the woman had used, it would have been hard to prove. In any case he had a job to do. He couldn't allow himself to be distracted.

  William Simons had to die. Whatever had happened to him, whatever he was, he had to be killed. He was in the end responsible for the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. And if he wasn't killed soon many more would die. Large chunks of the country itself might be destroyed. And that could not happen. It didn't matter that Simons was probably a victim. It didn't matter that he probably wasn't doing it deliberately. It only mattered that this attack upon his country end. That was his duty. The duty he'd failed to carry out before.

  Finding William Simons so he could end that threat though was going to be a problem. Even now that he'd found the group. Because his target was nowhere in sight. Gamut could see the others. The pathetic Doctor Millen who had somehow created this nightmare. The annoying priest who objected to everything. The insipid technician who just sat at his computer all day and said nothing. The bishop who seemed to think so much of himself. Even the nurses. They were all out in the open, sitting on the porch drinking cups of coffee and by the looks of things enjoying the sunshine. He could have killed them all. He probably should have for what they'd done. And one among them, Doctor Millen absolutely deserved to die. He had c
reated this disaster after all. Despite his obvious remorse he deserved to die. But Gamut's target was nowhere in sight.

  The chances were that he was inside the cabin in a bed somewhere, still recovering. Maybe he was too crippled to recover, and was just lying there helplessly as he begged for death. And though Gamut would grant him his prayer, it was going to be tricky if he couldn't come outside. In the end he would have to go in, and that would get messy. More would have to die if they got in his way. Many more.

  Still, that was simply the price that had to be paid to do his duty. And his duty was to the country, not to these traitors.

  Gamut stayed there for a while though, watching the cabin door and windows in case of movement. It was always possible that he could move a little. Or that maybe the others would carry him out into the sun. That would be for the best. One shot, one kill, and he could leave, his duty done. And time was on his side. He had all afternoon. If he went in it would be after dark when his night vision equipment would give him an unassailable advantage.