Xenofreak Nation, Book Two: Mad Eye

by Melissa Conway

  He deliberately set the battery down and scuffed his shoe against the tarmac. When the xenos turned to look, he waved casually. “Hey.”

  Bat Boy, who appeared to be their leader, asked belligerently, “What do you want? Can’t you see we’re busy?”

  Scott spread his legs in a challenging stance and held his arms out slightly from his body, elbows straight and claws extended.

  “I’m in a bit of a hurry,” he said, lifting one hand and gesturing them over with a coolly assertive twist of the wrist.

  Bat Boy laughed. “You wanna take us on?”

  The other two xenos exchanged uneasy looks, but abandoned their quarry to follow Bat Boy as he advanced on Scott. As they got closer, Scott assessed their potential skills. Of the three, Bat Boy was clearly the biggest threat, but his bulk was mostly fat. He stomped as he walked, shifting his weight from foot to foot in a near waddle. Scott doubted he was fast, and his arms were on the short side, so his reach would be limited. He struck Scott as the kind of bully whose fearsome appearance got him what he wanted without having to put much effort into it.

  The other two flanked him; his toadying wingmen. Both were the kind of skinny that could mean they were typical teens with abysmal eating habits, but in this neighborhood probably meant they were tweakers. They’d be more likely to fight dirty, if at all, while their leader would come at him like a tank.

  Sure enough, as soon as Bat Boy got close enough, he took a swing that Scott easily sidestepped. Scott didn’t wait for a second swing; just danced in close and jerked his knee up, connecting solidly with Bat Boy’s groin. The xeno doubled over with a groan and Scott shoved him to the ground. Before the other two could react, he stepped on Bat Boy’s throat and held his hand out to them, claws prominently displayed. “Next throat gets ripped out.”

  Bat Boy’s friends decided to run.

  Scott lifted his foot and stepped over the prone xeno, ignoring his choking gasps. To his surprise, the family hadn’t moved from where the xenos had cornered them. He pointed back down the alley to the fence that opened onto a field. “Head that way and you’ll run into some soldiers who can get you out.”

  The father shook his head. “Ve can’t.”

  Scott didn’t ask why, he just assumed they were illegals. “Well, head that way anyway. You’ll be safer from looters closer to the soldiers.”

  The woman said something sternly in Russian to her husband, gesturing emphatically to the two frightened children and then pointing in the direction Scott had advised them to go. After she finished bawling him out, she turned to Scott and said, “Thank you for helping us.”

  “My pleasure.” He picked up his battery and walked to the street end of the alley, glancing back in time to see the parents kick out at the fallen xeno in passing.

  The second group of xenofreaks he encountered were loosely gathered on the boardwalk not far from Bluto’s. They seemed disinterested in him until he tried to walk past them towards his goal - the building he and Boardman had broken into the previous night. Then a dark-skinned man with a big belly called out, “Ain’t nobody gonna loot dis here property, Mistah.”

  Scott changed course until he got close enough to see the man’s face. It was Phaco, the manager of Bluto’s, with his huge, protruding lower canine teeth, courtesy of his warthog donor. Last time Scott had seen him, they hadn’t exactly met on good terms, but Phaco was standing there like a walking, talking barrier that he would have to breach.

  “I’m not going to Bluto’s,” Scott said.

  “Is dat Cougar? Your face don’ look so pretty. Where you been?” Phaco eyed the battery under Scott’s arm.

  “Laying low.” Scott was conscious of the microphone under his clothes, conscious that Bryn’s time was short. He wished he’d been able to contact Shasta to verify that the UAAV had made it out of the area, but couldn’t while Maddy was listening. He didn’t see the vehicle anywhere, and fervently hoped it wasn’t because it was stranded and camouflaged again. Lo had been hit, but she’d had her vest on. The most likely scenario was that she’d recovered and driven the UAAV to safety.

  Padme had to know by now that Lupus had been taken by the XIA. She’d seen and heard enough this morning to figure out that Scott had double-crossed her, which would have been confirmed when Lupus didn’t return to their hideout. But there was an excellent chance that Phaco didn’t know anything. Padme would play dumb with Fournier, erasing any evidence of what had happened to Lupus so her part in it wouldn’t be discovered. And the XIA wouldn’t put Lupus in the system where just anyone could find out he’d been arrested - no, he’d be underground somewhere by now, guarded very carefully. Fournier would eventually come to the obvious conclusion that Lupus had been killed in the fighting.

  “Look,” Scott said to Phaco, holding his free hand out in a placating gesture. “Lupus sent me to get something out of the building behind Bluto’s. He had to ditch it when the Mad Eyes showed up last night.”

  Phaco’s tiny, pig-like eyes squinted in distrust until all Scott could see was flesh. “What is it?”

  According to Padme, Lupus had met with Phaco last night to ‘conduct business.’ Phaco, more than anyone, would know whatever Lupus had on him - especially if he’d given it to him. Scott’s only option in the face of Phaco’s suspicion was to bluff. “If he wanted you to know, he would have asked you to get it for him, wouldn’t he?”

  Phaco laughed. “No. I ain’t his gofer. ‘Sides, I already know what it is. Come on, we’ll see what we can find. Dere was looters in dere earlier. Lucky dey din’t burn da place down.”

  Scott didn’t want an escort, but there was nothing he could do. On the bright side, when they got there, he didn’t have to attempt to break in, because Phaco pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and opened the same lock Boardman had picked. Scott tried not to dwell on how long ago that had been, and how long it had been since he’d slept.

  It wasn’t pitch black anymore. Sunlight came from the front of the building, brightening the gloom so that even the back hallways were navigable. Probably, the looters had broken through the boarded up front windows. The car battery that had been wired to the alarm was no longer on the floor. For that matter, the alarm was no longer mounted on the wall. Even the wire was gone. The looters had definitely been here. He hefted the battery under his arm, glad he’d decided to bring it. He started to go to the right, where they’d encountered the first camera, but Phaco said, “Nah. Dis way.”

  “Yeah, hold on.” Scott jogged to the right anyway, rounding the corner and looking up. He’d expected the looters to take the battery, but they’d gone to the trouble of climbing up on something to get to the camera, too. Nausea struck, twisting his guts. He had only one chance left.

  He rejoined Phaco and they walked down the hall. When they reached that corner, Phaco frowned at the bullet holes in the wall and ceiling. “What happened here? Dis waddn’t no looters.”

  Scott pretended to be just as puzzled. “No bodies.”

  Phaco pointed at a dark stain on the carpet. “Dat look like blood to you?”

  It was blood. Boardman’s blood. Scott shrugged. “Maybe.” He leaned his head around the corner and looked. No battery. No camera. No way to contact Padme.

  For some reason, Carla’s words came back to haunt him. “How you gonna to fix this, hero?”

  Chapter Forty-one

  As a show of good faith, Maddy not only provided Mia with medical supplies, but she gave Bryn and Jason the opportunity to use the toilet and afterward, sent food and beer. This time, Bryn wasn’t at all hesitant about drinking the awful stuff - it quenched her thirst, and that’s all she cared about. The resulting buzz did nothing to alleviate her anxiety, however.

  She knew from what little Jason had told her that Scott was out trying to negotiate her release. The fact that his plan hinged on the cooperation of Padme did not reassure her. Padme herself had attempted to kill Bryn - why would she agree to save her now? Of course, Scott may not be planning to te
ll her that Bryn’s life was on the line. Either way, she couldn’t imagine what he could do or say that would get Padme to give up Fournier’s location.

  After they’d been escorted back from the bathroom, Mia requested that if Dillo insisted on handcuffing Jason again that he put the cuffs on his other wrist, which wasn’t bruised and scored from the metal.

  When the medical supplies arrived, she latched onto a box of surgical gloves like she’d discovered a long lost friend. Bryn noticed she painstakingly pulled two pairs onto each hand. Did she think she would catch something from Jason? Maybe she’d put two and two together and come to the wrong conclusion that Jason was the carrier Maddy had told her had been ‘dealt with.’

  Bryn was sitting cross-legged on the floor across from Jason when Mia began her examination. She cleaned the blood from his face and chest and put butterfly bandages on a cut on his cheek and another on his bottom lip. She gently palpated his nose, speaking quietly to herself as if she was taking notes, “There’s no deformity, but edema and epistaxis indicate possible nasal fracture.”

  “Oh, it’s broken,” Jason said. “I heard it go.”

  She shined a pen light into his eyes and said, “Periorbital hematoma on both eyes with no hyphema. Pupils are fine. Any loss of consciousness?”

  “I don’t remember. I was unconscious at the time.”

  “Any double vision?”

  “Which one of you would like to know?”

  “Headache?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Confusion?”

  “I’m sorry, who are you again?”

  Mia let out a heavy sigh and said, “Possible concussion, definite smartassery.”

  She took his chin in her hand and said, “Open.”

  He obliged and she looked inside his mouth. “Do any of your teeth feel loose?”

  He laughed a little. “I think there are one or two that aren’t loose.”

  Bryn saw Mia’s lips thin a little as if Jason’s flippant remarks were getting on her nerves. Bryn was frankly astonished at how different he seemed, almost as if he was...flirting.

  Mia knelt down and concentrated next on his torso, impersonally touching around his ribs. “Multiple contusions,” she muttered. “Does this hurt?”

  He flinched away and she said, “Rib may be fractured. You need an x-ray. Relax your abdominal muscles, please.”

  Jason’s defined eight-pack pooched out slightly. Mia poked and prodded for a minute and asked, “Can you relax more than that?”

  “No.”

  She said, “Hm,” and then, “Will you get up and unbutton your jeans for me, please?”

  He straightened up onto his knees but rattled his cuffs to remind her he only had one hand.

  She said, “Right,” and unbuttoned them herself. “I’m just going to pull them down past your hips to get a better look at this bruise, okay?”

  He glanced over at Bryn, brows knitted in chagrin. Maybe it was the effects of the beer that made her smile back and deliberately not look away. She hadn’t enjoyed much in the last few days, but Jason’s discomfort was coming close.

  Mia pulled down the zipper and let his pants sag to the floor.

  “I’m not taking off my drawers,” he said.

  Mia seemed to be concentrating on a bruise that extended down under the waistband of his ‘drawers,’ a pair of navy blue boxer briefs.

  “Okay,” she said. “If you won’t let me examine you, can you at least tell me if the beating extended,” she shrugged slightly, “below the belt?”

  Jason’s face went stony. “Would you be able to do anything for me if it had?”

  Mia appeared taken aback for a moment, but admitted, “Not here.”

  “You know they’re just going to start in on me again once you’re done, right?” he asked.

  “Why are they doing this?”

  “I pissed ‘em off.”

  “Are you the carrier?”

  “If I were, you’d be infected by now, wouldn’t you?”

  “It’s typhoid. It’s not air-borne.” Something in her tone made it sound to Bryn like she was trying to convince herself.

  Jason pulled his pants up and yanked on the zipper with his one free hand. “Well, either way, it’s your lucky day. It wasn’t me.”

  She blinked and looked away. Bryn knew relief when she saw it. Possibly to cover her reaction, Mia said, “Turn around, please.”

  With his left arm handcuffed to the rail he could only turn so far, so Mia got up and walked around him. She was short; even on his knees his head came up almost to her chest. Bryn knew the moment she caught sight of his xenograft because even in profile, her face froze in what Bryn could only describe as horror.

  “Is that a - a-?”

  “Gila monster?” Jason asked. “Yeah.”

  “Aren’t they poisonous?”

  “Their bite is, not their skin - but don’t touch it.”

  From the look on her face, Bryn figured the last thing Mia wanted to do was touch it, rubber gloves or not.

  “These wounds on your back - when did you get them?” she asked.

  “Couple days ago.”

  She sighed. “This one needed stitches, but it’s too late now. Looks infected. Who treated you?”

  Bryn raised her hand. Mia gave her a sidelong look and said, “I assume you have no medical training?”

  “I’m eighteen.”

  “So? I graduated college at eighteen.”

  Bryn couldn’t help it, she burst out with, “Brag much?”

  Mia’s cheeks colored. “It’s just a fact.”

  The door to the dungeon opened with an ominous squeal and Maddy and Dillo entered. Maddy addressed Mia, “All done then?”

  Mia glowered at her. “Are you going to continue to torture this man?”

  “Not if he tells me what I want to know.”

  Bryn let out a silent sigh of relief. Maddy didn’t know Jason was XIA.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Scott was so overwhelmed and exhausted he felt like he was going to vomit. He hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, hadn’t even had anything to drink for - how long? He put a hand to his head, trying to think clearly. All he knew was that Bryn was still in Maddy’s dungeon - and Mia, too, probably. It was unlikely Maddy had just let her go. The only thing that had kept him going was his determination to save them.

  He had no Plan C.

  “You don’ look so good.” Phaco said. “What happen to your eye?”

  “Lupus.” In a round-about way it was true.

  “No s’prise. So where he say dis item was s’posed ta be?”

  Scott couldn’t very well walk away now. He could try, but doubted he’d get far in his condition. Woodenly, he set the useless battery down, went to the closet and opened it. It was empty - the looters had taken the janitorial supplies that had been in there last time Scott had come through the tunnel. He tried to recall which corner of the back wall would open the secret door. Carla had banged on the top left corner from the other side, so he made a fist and hit the top right. The back of the closet swung silently open. He turned to Phaco, who nodded and said, “Now I believe you. Ain’t nobody know ‘bout da tunnel.”

  Scott went first, descending the ladder. Halfway down, Phaco closed the back of the closet, enveloping them in darkness. His voice was irritated, “You brought a big-ass car bat-ry but no flashlight?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t want anyone to steal my truck.”

  Scott heard the little ‘boop’ sound a holophone makes when it’s activated, and a circle of blue light appeared above him. Phaco made grunting sounds with each step down the ladder and was winded by the time he got to the bottom. He swept the area with the light from the phone. “Where is it?”

  Scott sighed. The jig was up. The fictional item he was supposed to retrieve wasn’t about to manifest itself. There was nothing left to do but summon the energy to knock Phaco unconscious-

  “Oh, dere it is,” Ph
aco said.

  To Scott’s astonishment, a green pleather, zippered bank bag sat in the middle of the low-ceilinged tunnel ahead of them. Lupus really had left something behind. He ducked down and went forward to pick it up, but when he stood, he forgot about the low roof and cracked his already aching head. He leaned his shoulder against the wall and felt himself sliding down until his knee hit the ground.

  “I tink Lupus did a number on you.” Phaco held his hand out. “Come on. Let’s git you sometin’ to eat and drink. Mebbe dat fix you up.”

  Scott mumbled, “Thanks,” and took his hand.

  Fifteen minutes later, he sat on the couch in Phaco’s back office. When he wasn’t gulping down hot coffee, he was shoveling heaping forkfuls of scrambled eggs and hash into his mouth. When he’d finished, he belched and said, “Damn, you’re a good cook.”

  Phaco ran a finger up and down one of his tusks. “Dat what dey tell me.”

  A crash sounded somewhere out in the restaurant. Phaco must have assumed some looters had gotten past the xenos outside, because he said, “Oh, no dey don’t,” and went out the door.

  Scott wanted nothing more than to lie down on the couch and take a much-deserved nap, but that wouldn’t help Bryn. He looked around the room, remembering when he’d been here before, after he and Padme had ‘escaped’ federal custody, and then again with Bryn, the day she’d decided to become a xenofreak.

  That day, she’d shown him for the first time how strong she really was. She’d lost everything, but still had the capacity to trust. But, as recent events showed, she’d made the wrong choice in who to trust. Scott had never really earned it; had never been fully honest with her. If he had turned her away that day in this office, would she be lying unconscious in Maddy Singh’s dungeon right now? Of course, by now she would have come to, would know that Scott had abandoned her to her fate - again. Were they even now torturing her to get Alton to talk?

  He stood and paced to the desk. The computer was on, but was password protected. He sat in the chair and tried to log on anyway. Padme had used this computer. Maybe if he could get into it there might be a file somewhere, some clue as to how to find her. Even as he typed, he knew it was a desperate gambit that had no chance of working. He should be thinking about how to coax information out of Phaco - even if he had to use force.