Xenofreak Nation, Book Two: Mad Eye

by Melissa Conway

  “I can take care of myself.”

  He laughed. “You got any makeup in that bag?”

  The bag Carla had packed was at her feet. She bent down, unzipped it and took out the smaller bag. Inside, she found a tube of sparkly pink lip gloss. She held it up.

  “That’s it?” he asked. “Even I wear more makeup than that.”

  She thought he was joking, but he leaned over, opened the glove compartment, and rummaged around inside it, all the while keeping his eyes on the road. He pulled his hand out, dropped a narrow pencil in her lap and said, “Here.”

  It was jet-black eyeliner, the twist-up kind. She almost asked, “What am I supposed to do with this?” but stopped herself. Instead, she flipped down the visor and peered into the small, corroded mirror mounted there. With delicate strokes, she attempted to line her eyes, but the shocks on the truck were so bad every bump in the road sent the liner tip off on a tangent. Even so, by the time they drove past the outlet mall, she thought her efforts would pass muster.

  “How’s this?” She batted her eyelashes at him.

  They were stopped at a light, so he gave her the once over. Without a word, he took the liner out of her hand and began drawing on her face. He was pressing so hard she thought he was going to poke her eye out, so she protested, “Ow!”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” he said, but he eased up on the pressure. He was so close she felt his breath on her chin. After a couple of minutes he said, “There. Now do the other eye like that.”

  As he started driving again, she looked at his handiwork in the little mirror.

  “I look like a...” Zombie hooker.

  “Tough xenofreak chick?” he asked. “Yeah, that’s the point.”

  “Do you really think it’s smart for me to advertise something I’m not selling?”

  “You’re with me, no one will touch you.”

  She didn’t doubt him. He’d already killed to protect her.

  She started drawing thick lines on her other eye to match the one he’d done. “You do know that makeup isn’t going to hide who I am, right?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Everyone knows you were kidnapped and forced to undergo that xenograft. They’ll assume you hate Fournier and the XBestia.”

  Bryn met her own eyes in the mirror. It wasn’t just the eyeliner that made them look hard as marbles.

  “They’ll assume right,” she said.

  Chapter Eleven

  Scott spent the rest of the day chasing down leads on Robert Cruise’s whereabouts. Cruise’s former boss suggested Scott check his favorite bar. The chatty bartender there said he hadn’t seen him in weeks and suggested Scott try Cruise’s girlfriend. He told Scott her name was Candy and she worked at a massage parlor. Scott arrived at the establishment in question, but found it had been recently shut down by local cops. He went to the precinct and asked to speak with the detectives on the case, but they were out on surveillance. Finally, after knocking on Cruise’s door again with no answer, he decided to do a bit of surveillance himself, getting back in his sedan and hunkering down in his seat.

  Early winter twilight had fallen over the city when his holophone rang. It was Shasta.

  “Where are you?”

  “Watching Cruise’s place.”

  “Come in. Now.”

  “What’s up?”

  “We’ll discuss it when you get here.”

  Scott knew better than to press her. He drove through town as quickly as rush-hour traffic would allow.

  At XIA headquarters, Shasta ushered him into her office and without preamble said, “Alton and Bryn are missing.”

  A wave of cold dread washed over him. “What do mean ‘missing’? Did they make it to the safe house?”

  Shasta collapsed into her chair, face ashen. “The FBI says yes. According to the Special Agent in Charge, they were there. One of their field agents hadn’t checked in all day, so they followed the transponder signal on his car and found it parked at the silo. There’d been some kind of fire-fight, and an explosion. I’d send you out there, but the FBI has jurisdiction over the crime scene, and they weren’t very happy about finding their agent and another man dead.”

  “Who was it?”

  Shasta glanced over at her holo screen. “An agent Bart Antonovich. They haven’t released the identity of the other body.”

  “But it’s not Bryn?”

  “No. It’s a male, dead for some time. Definitely not Alton.”

  “Like I give a crap if Alton is dead or alive. He let her get kidnapped...again. This is his fault.”

  “You’re upset, Agent Harding.” Shasta’s voice was firm. “But we don’t have all the facts.”

  “Sounds like we don’t have any facts!”

  “I’ve got a call in to Deputy Director Unger, but he’s been testifying at a congressional subcommittee all day. He’ll get us access to the safe house and we’ll see for ourselves what happened.”

  Scott stood there shaking his head in tiny, frustrated movements.

  “Go home, Scott. Get some rest. I’ll call you as soon as we know anything.”

  Scott wanted nothing more than to plant himself outside of Shasta’s office until the promised information came in, but even if she’d let him, he was exhausted from a nearly sleepless night and really did need the rest.

  He trudged down to the parking garage and started his motorcycle, but when he drove out of the structure, he found himself taking a right instead of his usual left. He wanted to drive fast and far to clear his head, but a thin, low fog limited visibility, and frozen condensation made the roads slick, so he kept to the speed limit.

  As he drove with no clear destination in mind, all he could think was: who took her?

  The XIA had finally placed Bryn in protective custody in response to Padme’s attack, but Shasta herself had speculated that Padme had only done it to get Scott’s attention. If Padme really had been trying to contact him, she sure hadn’t done it to warn him that Bryn was in danger, since she’d already tried once to kill her.

  Still, he didn’t think she was behind Bryn’s disappearance. Padme was Fournier’s programmer and hacker - she couldn’t have overpowered Alton on her own, and didn’t have the authority to order someone else to do it.

  Scott would be inclined to suspect Fournier himself, but it didn’t make sense that he would kidnap her a second time, since the only reason he’d done so in the first place was to help Bryn’s father turn her into a martyr of sorts - the anti-xenofreak poster child. It had been a convoluted plan to bring public censure down on the practice of xenoaugmentation, all in an effort to pave the way for his, and Bryn’s father’s, true agenda: the legalization of human cloning.

  While Fournier would certainly be angry with Bryn for her part in destroying his facility, Scott didn’t think he was out for revenge, especially since he could have easily gotten to her at Carla’s place any time in the last four months. But if revenge was the motive for her disappearance, one person did come to mind.

  Dundee.

  The psychopathic xenofreak had been blinded by Bryn’s quills when she’d fought him off of her. Scott had no idea whether his sight had been permanently damaged, because Dundee had escaped with the rest of Fournier’s crew. Just the thought of what that crazy xenofreak might do to Bryn if he got his filthy hands on her made Scott sick.

  He revved his engine all the way down the street before noticing where he was: within a half mile of the blood donation center. Had that unconsciously been his destination all along? He didn’t pause to think about it but simply headed straight there.

  He parked his motorcycle illegally between two cars and stalked to the front of the blood donation center building. Across the road, The Holo House Cafe was bustling with the dinner crowd, but there was no one on his side of the street. He took off his helmet and stood there under the glow of a street light, in full view of the security camera he’d noticed earlier that day. There was no fog in this part of town, so if she was on the other end of tha
t camera, she’d see him.

  He lifted his hands palm up and spread his arms wide, slowly mouthing the words, “Where are you?”

  Then he sat in the middle of the sidewalk and waited.

  Chapter Twelve

  They’d been driving south for the last couple of hours in the general direction of the Atlantic Ocean, but had taken a detour to pick up some fast food after Bryn mentioned she hadn’t eaten anything all day. She gave her undivided attention to the cheeseburger Jason bought for her, shoving it in her mouth with gusto until he asked her to open a ketchup packet for him. When she squeezed the red sauce out onto a wrapper, it reminded her of congealed blood and that reminded her of the dead men in the silo. Her appetite fled and she stuffed the rest of her burger into the bag.

  From past experience, she knew she was in for months of these kinds of random memory associations. She still got uneasy whenever she smelled something that reminded her of the peculiar odor of the Warehouse, and rodents of any kind made her flash on the gruesome sight of Carla’s xenograft after it had been cut from her chest.

  She looked out the window, catching sight of the ocean glinting through grey winter scrub brush and bare trees along the side of the road. It wasn’t until she spotted a sign for the Rockaway Freeway that she realized exactly where they were going.

  “Edgemere?” she asked, turning to Jason with lifted eyebrows.

  “Yep.”

  She’d grown up hearing frightening urban legends about the place. A century ago, the beachfront property had been developed as a getaway for townies, an idyllic seaside retreat where whole families stayed in tents or bungalows and strolled along the boardwalk. Like Coney Island, the area eventually attracted a less wholesome crowd, and over the course of time was largely deserted.

  Attempts were made to repopulate Edgemere, but all failed. Persistent stories of aggressive packs of wild dogs and homeless camps kept people out. Eventually, the land was purchased by a developer with plans to build a resort, but not long after breaking ground, Hurricane Poppy devastated the east coast - especially Coney Island and the Rockaway Peninsula to the east, where Edgemere was located. Widespread damage to the developer’s other properties forced him out of business, and the partially constructed main building was abandoned.

  To make matters worse, Poppy uncovered a mass grave near the site, later attributed to a serial killer who’d never been caught. It gave rise to legends that the place was cursed or haunted. Now whenever someone in the city disappeared, it was said they’d been swallowed by Edgemere.

  “I heard only the damned were welcome here,” Bryn said as they bounced down a road that was peppered with potholes. The tarmac had been partially reclaimed by sand dunes.

  “No one’s welcome here. It’s not a friendly place.”

  “That’s not very reassuring.”

  “You want me to lie?”

  The lowering sun disappeared behind a fog bank rolling in from the water. Jason switched on the headlights and turned right onto another eerily empty street. Ahead, dozens of rusted steel girders thrust unevenly into the sky, like the bloody bones of a beached whale.

  This must be the abandoned resort. She remembered reading that the developer hadn’t wanted to ruin the skyline, so his plan had been to build an enormous underground shopping mall with only two floors above ground for the hotel, plus several blocks of old-fashioned bungalows.

  There were no walls to what was left of the rectangular structure, just mottled grey concrete spanning several acres of ground. Thousands of rebar poles taller than a man were planted in the cement, and strung between them at all angles were sheets of dark fabric. Interspersed at regular intervals in two lines down the center of the slab were dozens of mushroom-shaped aluminum exhaust vents. Smoke or steam rose into the air from the vents. There was only one structure that a person could potentially live in: a crude tent set up on the nearest corner.

  As they got closer, a dog of an indeterminate breed came out of nowhere and ran into the pool of the truck’s headlights, barking and snarling. It was soon joined by four others and Jason was forced to slow to a crawl. All the dogs were medium-to-large sized, but underfed, if the deep shadows under their ribs were any indication.

  A man appeared at the opening of the tent. He stepped out onto the sandy dirt, his long, open black coat swirling behind him like a cape. He yelled at the dogs and they retreated. Jason pulled off the road and shifted into park before cutting off the ignition. In the silence that followed, Bryn nervously watched the man approach. He held something in both hands, and as he got closer, she made out a sawed-off shotgun.

  “What’s your business here, stranger?” the man shouted. He’d taken care to skirt the headlight beams, but it wasn’t quite dark yet, and Bryn saw that despite the cold, he wasn’t wearing a shirt under his coat. His skin was very dark and his shoulders so broad it looked as if he was wearing football shoulder pads.

  Jason rolled down his window. “Dillo! It’s me, Dragila.”

  She’d never heard Jason’s xeno name before. He pronounced it ‘Dra-heela,’ and she decided it was a combination of Dragon and Gila monster, after his tattoo and xenograft. But it was the man he called Dillo that had her full attention. He came closer, let out a guttural laugh, and kicked the fender of the truck.

  “Where’d you get this piece of junk?”

  It wasn’t what he said that made Bryn’s mouth drop open. His coat hung partially off one shoulder - which was grafted with the armored plating of an armadillo. He leaned down and peered into the cab of the truck, reaching in past Jason’s head and switching on the overhead light in the cab. His black hair was divided into tight cornrows in an intricate pattern. He had widely spaced brown eyes, a broad, flat nose and a thick-lipped mouth tilted up at the corners like he smiled a lot.

  Conscious of Jason’s advice to look tough, she pulled her chin in and looked up through her quills, sneering ever-so-slightly.

  “Hel-lo,” Dillo drawled. “Who have we here?”

  “I picked up a stray,” Jason said.

  Bryn decided her best bet was to keep quiet unless someone asked her something directly.

  Dillo eyed her quills. “Is that who I think it is? XBestia handiwork?”

  “She’s not affiliated with them.”

  Dillo put on an exaggerated look of surprise. “I suppose not.” After a moment, he nodded to her. “What’s your name again?”

  “Porky,” she said.

  He laughed, revealing crooked and cracked yellow teeth. “For porcupine? You’re too skinny to be called Porky.”

  “We brought supplies,” Jason said. “In the back. But I gotta hide this truck.”

  “Oh, right. I heard you got busted. They let you go?”

  “Nah.” Jason didn’t explain and Dillo didn’t ask him to.

  Jason switched off the overhead light as Dillo grabbed the edge of the driver’s side door and jumped onto the running board. He pointed his shotgun toward a copse of stunted evergreen trees, saying, “Park ʼer in there.”

  Jason started the truck and drove, heading for an opening in the underbrush. Before he reached the trees, Dillo raised his voice over the engine and said, “Stop here and let Porky out. Those are holly trees.”

  Bryn grabbed her bag and got out, and then helped Dillo remove the five boxes from the bed of the truck and set them on the ground. She stood next to him while the truck disappeared into the thick growth. He should have frightened her, but he didn’t. She’d met some rough characters in the last several months, but under their xenografts, they were still people. Besides, it was a thoughtful thing for him to have done; pointing out that the bushes were holly trees. Bryn didn’t envy Jason having to wade through them on the way back out. She wanted to thank Dillo, but felt it would be out of character.

  “How long you been with Dragila?” he asked.

  She inhaled the cold sea air, trying not to panic. Jason hadn’t discussed their supposed history. If she said the wrong thing, it could
blow his cover.

  “Not long,” she finally said.

  “You had to really think about that.”

  She let out a breath, halfway between a laugh and a protest. “I’m just not sure of anything at the moment.”

  Dillo’s head and linebacker shoulders were silhouetted against the darkening sky. “Well, you’ll figure it out. People tend to get their priorities straight around here; survival will do that to a person.”

  “Assuming I do survive.”

  He laughed. “You got that right, but the company you’re keeping should up the odds.”

  Jason batted his way out of the bushes with his bags, swearing profusely.

  “Ah, quit your bitchin’,” Dillo said loudly. “You’re lucky it’s dark, or you’d know the real reason no one goes in those trees.” He leaned down to Bryn and whispered, “Big-ass spiders.”

  “I hope he rolled up the windows,” she replied, deadpan.

  Dillo raised his voice again so Jason could hear. “Alright, we better present your guest to the queen. I’m sure she can’t wait to see you again.” He strode off back the way they came.

  Bryn wondered what he meant by that. She hesitated by one of the boxes, but Jason said, “Someone will get that. Come on.”

  She picked up her bag and they went after Dillo, who veered to the left after he reached the vast slab of concrete. He led them along the perimeter and continued around the corner. The ground sloped downward, and they walked away from the slab. Midway, at least forty feet out, they came upon a circular opening cut into the hill. A faint glow seemed to emanate from within, and as they got closer, she heard what sounded very much like the faint echoes of a crowd of people; voices, music, laughter.