Chromatophobia

by W D County

  The grays didn’t respond to his voice, although they could be positioned and prodded to move with mild pressure. He gave each man a cursory exam by checking pulse, blood pressure, and pupil response. All were normal. He withdrew the memerase and a syringe from the pocket of his scrubs. He injected each man with enough drug to erase ten days of memories, which was the maximum safe dose.

  Nothing happened. Not a flicker of awareness appeared in their eyes or posture.

  He returned to the infirmary with a light step. Now he could harvest their blood without feeling guilty. Once the medicinal properties of the gray goo were revealed to the world, it would prove, once and for all, that the taint had a biological origin.

  ***

  Laura sat beside her husband on the edge of her bed. He kept shifting as if unable to get comfortable, and a pensive, almost melancholy, expression covered his face. His mood surprised and worried her, given their mutual joy of being reunited. Perhaps he suffered from something akin to postpartum depression. “John, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” His smile wavered.

  “By which you mean something major. An emotional iceberg with nine-tenths hidden beneath the surface.” She punched him playfully. “We’ve known each other for thirty years. Open up.”

  He grimaced. “Do we really know each other, Laura?”

  “We do.” She tried to joke. “Hey, we’ve only been dead to each other for a year.”

  John didn’t smile. “That’s part of it.”

  “Barry brought you back from the dead. You can’t be sad about that.”

  “In my world, you are the one who died. This isn’t my world, Laura. I feel the pull of a different Earth, a gravity stretching across unseen dimensions to claim its own.”

  “You’ve said that before. Well, you can stop worrying. I’ve talked to Barry and he’s promised that you’ll stay here with me.”

  “Barry isn’t God.”

  “He performs miracles. He has divine powers.”

  John barked a harsh laugh. “It looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, right? Don’t you see how wrong that is? He’s using powers that aren’t innately his. The taint is a loaded gun and he’s a child playing with it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You know what he intends to unleash on this planet?”

  “Everyone who sees the broadcast of the taint will experience profound psychological imprinting, making it impossible for them to intentionally inflict harm on another human being. It will be wonderful! Barry’s giving humanity the chance to live the golden rule.”

  “That would change the very nature of humanity, reshaping us into an image he deems more appropriate.” A look of accusation filled his eyes. “You used to be a champion of free thought.”

  “He’s ending war. Ending bullying. It’s what humanity has yearned for since before recorded history.” Why is John being so stubborn?

  “It’s wrong. Just like...”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He stared at the floor.

  “I’m tired of your nothings. We’ve always been honest and open. Don’t stop now.”

  He lifted his head, and she saw only sadness as he spoke. “Us. That’s what’s wrong.”

  She felt a chill that had nothing to do with temperature.

  “I mourned you, Laura. Cried for you. Buried you. And eventually I regained a semblance of order in my life. You need to do that. You need to let me go.”

  She shook her head. “No. You don’t understand. We’re together now.”

  He took her hands in his. “I want to go home.”

  She felt as if she’d been slapped. Tears flowed, tears she couldn’t hold back although they threatened to drown her flailing hopes. “Don’t say that, John. Please don’t.”

  “People die. You died. I was so happy to see you when Barry opened that portal that I forgot the grief I went through.”

  “I know about grief,” she said with sudden anger. “I know about love. Are you saying you don’t love me anymore?”

  “I loved the woman I married. A woman who looked like you, spoke like you, acted like you—and who wasn’t you.”

  “I am her! And you’re John. We’re soul mates.”

  “Barry is the force holding me here. When he dies, I’ll be pulled back to my world.”

  “You’re wrong. Barry will be revealed as the son of God, and his blessing will keep you here with me.”

  He shook his head. “I’m trying to prepare you.”

  “I will not let you leave me.” She ran from the room. Barry would know what to do. Barry could fix this. Wise, loving Barry. Son of God or not, he was more than a man, and he cared about her. He could make John want to stay.

  She saw Zita in the hall but had no time or inclination for greetings. Laura rushed to Gordon’s office, rapped urgently on the door, and opened it without waiting for a reply. She stepped into a room of dark shadows save for a pale blue glow that surrounded a man in a lotus posture floating a few inches above the desk.

  “Barry, I need your—”

  He lifted a hand to silence her. “Laura, go to Doctor Harrison. Tell him Nathan is dying. He must be given the healing potion immediately.”

  “Lord, if speed is essential, shouldn’t you heal him? Or bring him back from the dead if need be? You see, John is—”

  “Don’t question me! Do as I command or I will not mend your rift with John.”

  She staggered back, suddenly afraid. The door closed, leaving her in the corridor not far from the three unfortunate explorers. At the far end of the corridor she saw Doc entering his office. She dashed after. “Doc! Nathan is dying!”

  Chapter 49

  Zita peeked out the door of Miles’s empty room. Ninety feet away stood the silent explorers, who hadn’t moved an inch from Nathan’s room. Beyond them, Doc was walking toward the far end of the corridor. Six rooms lay between her and the zombies. Miles had to be in one of them. It wouldn’t be the sixth, Gordon’s quarters. Therefore she had to check five at most. With luck and stealth, she’d find Miles before Nathan was discovered. She sidled to the next door and checked inside. Empty. Four to go.

  As she unlocked the next room, something probed at her mind. She gave free rein to her thoughts, loosing hundreds of disparate ideas moving too fast for the outsider to get a lock. Was it Nathan trying to slip into her head, searching for the trick to escape the cuffs? No, she’d put him down for the count, and besides, the mental groping lacked the smug, slimy feel of the magician. Barry? Maybe. Whoever or whatever the source, she could keep her mind free for a while. A short while. Only Miles had natural immunity. He had to be the one to stop Barry. Unfortunately, a soldier like him would take the most direct path to the goal, which meant shooting anyone who got in the way.

  The taint had to be stopped without killing anyone, including Barry. The belief wasn’t logical, but she knew it to be right. Convincing Miles of that might be impossible. If so, she would need to go it alone. He wouldn’t like that and neither would she, because she knew she would fail. She opened the door. Another empty.

  Three more to check. She hoped the hallway remained empty of non-zombie personnel. What if Miles wasn’t in any of these rooms? Well, he had to be somewhere. A door opened at the far side of the hall. Laura burst through and rushed directly toward Zita.

  What now? She put a smile on her face and prepared to improvise, but Laura stopped at Gordon’s office and knocked on the door. Barry had taken over that office. Not good. Laura had spotted her and would tell the wannabe messiah.

  Two rooms left and time to check only one. It made sense to keep Miles close to where he’d be needed, which was the conference room. Across from room 7.

  She hurried past the current door and unlocked lucky seven.

  Miles lay on the bed staring at the ceiling. He wore a khaki combat uniform, minus the boots. His gun, Taser, Mace, and knife were gone. His wrists and ankles were cuffed. He watched warily as she entered and shut the door
. A flicker of hope lit his face.

  “Zita. Thank God. You have a key for these?” He rattled the cuffs on his wrists.

  The mental probe intensified. Concentration became difficult while thinking at whirlwind speed and throwing up a chaff of decoy thoughts to conceal pertinent ones. Miles rattled the cuffs again and nodded toward her hand. “Damn. Okay. Go to the maintenance shop. Grab a hacksaw and come back.”

  A question popped into her head and out her mouth. “You ever have a girlfriend?”

  It wasn’t the question she needed to have answered, but it took the path most likely to get there. On the surface of her mind she began working on a two-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.

  “This isn’t the time, Zita.”

  Issues that matter reside in the heart, and she needed to know what issues filled his. Could he rise to be more than a killer? “There never was, never is, never will be. Answer the question.”

  He growled and yanked at the cuffs. “Get the damn hacksaw! I have to stop Choirboy.”

  “You have nicknames for everyone. Is that because you might need to kill us?”

  He went very still.

  “Did you ever have a girlfriend?” she asked again. She solved the mental jigsaw and moved on to Boggle, putting sixteen lettered cubes in a four-by-four matrix, and rotating and repositioning each cube until she succeeded in displaying four-letter words horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. She sensed frustration from the mental probe. Good.

  “Girls don’t want defective merchandise,” Miles said.

  The answer bothered her. Equating color-blindness with defectiveness was clear enough, but when did it start? And why? She hoped the source wasn’t too buried or too convoluted for her to uncover without professional expertise, which wasn’t available since Laura now played on the opposing team. “You’re not defective, Miles.”

  He snorted. “Doesn’t matter. Time’s running out.” His volume and pitch rose. “I have to stop the taint before the color gets out of control.”

  “What is it with you and color? I want to know. I have a right to know. We aren’t going anywhere until I do.”

  “Zita, come on. I need to go. Need to stop the taint. I need to save...” He looked at her, swallowed, and then said, “Everyone.”

  She cared about him, too, but couldn’t afford to let it show. He had to stew in his own juices like the frog that sat in a pot of ever-hotter water. She finished with Boggle and moved on to killer Sudoku.

  Minutes passed. She heard commotion in the hall and felt tendrils of despair take root. But the pot reached boiling because the frog said, “I’ve always had problems with color.”

  His voice was soft and seemed far away. “The first time was in kindergarten when the teacher held up my coloring book and all the kids laughed. What did she expect when all the crayons look the same? It never got easier. Try finding borders on a four-color map. Try reciting Christ’s words from a red-letter edition of the Bible. Try dating when you can’t tell the color of a girl’s eyes or hair or dress. Try being romantic when you can’t describe a sunset.”

  His face turned dark. His fists clenched. She held her breath and kept her face neutral. Opening your heart to someone took a special kind of bravery. The wrong word, gesture, or expression would scare him away.

  “I couldn’t be smart and soft so I got hard and mean. I worked out. Picked fights. Built a rep. Got suspended a few times.” Anger drained from his voice, leaving the words sounding hollow. “Funny thing is, some girls are attracted to bad boys. Lucy—”

  His voice caught on the girl’s name. He looked away. She sensed his protective shell start to reform. In a slow, gentle voice she said, “Tell me about her.”

  He shook his head.

  She held up the key to the cuffs. “Tell me and I’ll let you go.”

  His face became all too readable. His was the face of anguish; the look of a man betrayed, tortured, exposed, and helpless to the unexpected cruelty of a supposed friend. His words tore loose from reluctant lips. “She was sixteen, a junior. I was a senior. We dated a few times, mostly for sex, although I think she really liked me. I’ll never know for sure, because one day I took her for a ride on my motorcycle. A thunderstorm hit us unawares. I lost traction for a second, the bike started to spin, then the wheels caught, but crossways, and we both went flying through the air. She died.” His anger flared, adding heat to the cold words. “There, okay. Are we done?”

  “Tell me the rest, Miles.”

  She waited for his anger to cool. Hopefully before their time ran out. The pleading look in his eyes stabbed like daggers into her soul, but she dared not relent.

  “I hurt like hell but nothing seemed to be broken.” His voice took on a subtle trembling. “Lucy lay in the ditch, face down, out cold. I turned her over and dragged her up to the road. I didn’t see any injuries, but she wouldn’t wake up. Mud soaked her blouse. Lots of mud.

  “I yelled for help. Nobody stopped. Maybe they couldn’t see us in the rain. Maybe they didn’t want to get involved. The rain was cold. I propped Lucy on my lap and covered her with my jacket. So much mud. Thin. Almost watery. Oddly warm. Finally a driver stopped, called 9-1-1 on his cell and waited with us for the ambulance.”

  His hands clenched and unclenched. His Adam’s apple bobbed as if words had lodged his throat. Suddenly they tumbled out, jagged with pain. His eyes drowned. Her own tears flowed, denying the neutrality of her face.

  “My waist and legs were sticky. I got curious, yeah, and worried, and lifted my jacket for a look. The good Samaritan said, ‘Dear God!’ and knelt beside me. He found a hole in her blouse and the gash beneath it that drained her life away.”

  He looked into her face as if asking for forgiveness. It wasn’t hers to give.

  Maybe he realized that. An emotionless mask covered his face and hollowness returned to his voice. “If I could have seen red, I could have stopped the blood. I could have saved her. It was my fault, mine, and I wanted to die. Mom put me in therapy, where the shrink tried to convince me it wasn’t my fault. ‘Accidents happen,’ he said. Eventually I convinced myself that it wasn’t my fault—the blame was on color itself. It’s my nemesis, pursuing me, trying to hurt me and hurt those I care about. I survive because I don’t let myself care about anyone. I blank my feelings when I need to, and I avoid situations where color might trap me.” He lifted his cuffed wrists a few inches and let them fall back to the bed. “Until now,” he said bitterly.

  She had wondered what lurked under his emotional shell, worried that he was nothing more than a killing machine. Now she knew what conflicting emotions bound his heart, emotions pressed and repressed into a hard shell that let him kill without hesitation or remorse. Miles wasn’t malicious; his choices and behavior arose from a twisted sense of guilt and fear.

  She felt sure he could act without gratuitous killing but worried that by peeking inside his heart she had cracked the armor he so desperately needed. Had she clouded the clarity of his black-and-white view of the world and his place in it? People were puzzles with pieces every bit as shifting as the taint, and every rearrangement changed their behavior in some way.

  She sat on the bed beside him, inserted the key into the cuffs, and let them fall from his wrists. She wished she could free his heart as easily. She kissed his lips and poured her love into him, hoping it would be enough.

  Chapter 50

  Zita brought me up to speed. “They’ve moved Barry into Gordon’s office, but soon they’ll be going into the conference room. They’re planning a televised news conference, culminating with a big event.”

  “Which is?”

  “They want you to kill Barry.”

  “Glad to oblige.”

  “I think that’s a mistake, Miles.”

  “He has to be stopped. Him and the goddamn taint.”

  “Agreed, but—”

  “Check outside,” I snapped. The girl has a soft heart. When she isn’t ripping mine to shreds. I donned my boots and dark gl
asses, but my weapons were gone.

  Zita peeked into the hall. “Doc, Sonja, and Laura are trying to get into Nathan’s room. But I locked it with the master key.” I approved of her gloating tone.

  “Oh, no. Sonja just did something to the lock. They’re going inside.” She turned around. “The hall’s clear. For now.”

  We stepped into the corridor, wary of the zombies, but they remained as motionless as store mannequins. I turned left. “We have to get to the security room.”

  Halfway to our goal, the security room door opened. Gordon stepped out, holding a .45 with both hands. “Stop right there, soldier boy.”

  Zita whispered in my ear. “They need you alive.”

  I nodded. “About-face.” We spun and ran. I hoped Gordon would follow, expecting us to head for the vault and kill Barry, while I actually intended to cut across to the west corridor and make my way back to the security room.

  Fate dictated otherwise. Door 5 swung open and Nathan emerged, looking unhurt but seething with murderous intent. “Grab him,” he ordered. “Kill the girl.” His zombies sprang into action.

  With armed opponents approaching from the front and the rear, I chose the only remaining course, the mess hall. We dashed inside just as the lights went out. I tripped over a table and cursed.

  Zita knelt beside me. “Barry may be on the move. Gordon wants the lights out so the taint doesn’t spread too quickly. He’s worried about timing for the big event.”

  I pocketed my sunglasses and found that the exit sign provided sufficient light for me to navigate. “Wait here.” I slipped into the galley and found a large carving knife. The galley had a door to the pantry which in turn had a door that opened to the hallway only fifteen feet from the security office. I could be there before anyone could stop him.

  But Slick had ordered his men to kill Zita. I couldn’t let that happen. Nor could I let Choirboy destroy the world. Fuck. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I scurried back to the mess hall and joined Zita huddling in the dark beneath a table.