Grendel Unit

by Bernard Schaffer

The microphone was open on the other end and he could hear Dimmel asking someone to explain something one more time. There was muted discussion and the guard said, "They're here to do a count of how much product we got left. Say they're bringing us a new formulation next week that's going to make this stuff look like aspirin."

  This was new, Bender thought. He'd never had Unification show up at his facility before, although he knew they visited the planet monthly when they brought a new karjarra supply. They'd always met with someone higher up than him.

  "Did they run it past the district manager already?" he said cautiously.

  Another pause. The handheld clicked then and Dimmel said, "They want to talk to you directly. Apparently they got some concerns with the management lately."

  Bender closed his eyes and nodded several times. He could smell an opportunity when it knocked on his door. "Let them in," he said, and he got to his feet and shook out his arms and legs and brushed several loose strands of hair back over his face. As soon as the gate began to move, he heard the sound of someone shouting for everyone to move back. It was like holding off a stampede, and he saw Dimmel swing a rifle into someone's jawbone and drop them on the ground, saying, "Next one of you bastards so much as breathes on me, I'll kill every single one of you and piss on your diseased corpses, right?"

  Dimmel loomed over the skinny fiends like a giant, his massive back wider than two of them standing side-by-side. The fiends whined, and whimpered with empty eyes staring longingly inside the den, but they kept back.

  Two uniformed men came around the corner, inching back from the junkie horde, like they were afraid of breathing the same contaminated air as them. Probably not a bad idea, Bender reasoned. Some of these bastards are walking science experiments of different diseases and plagues.

  Bender looked the men up and down. The taller one was jacked, muscled-up in the shoulders and neck. He was enlisted, Bender could tell, from the lesser materials of his uniform and dull insignia and buttons. Not like the one standing next to him. He was an officer, with the white line around his collar and sleeves and the colorful pins on his jacket. The officer spoke first, "Are you the man in charge?"

  Bender nodded and grinned slightly, showing them the sharp points of his steel-plated fangs. They were just slide-ons. Someday, he'd get the real thing. "We're paid up for the month. I wasn't expecting you."

  "You're not supposed to," the muscled one said. "That's how we know the count is honest."

  "Ehhhhh," Bender said, laughing slightly. "You got a point." He switched his rifle to his other shoulder and rested it against his neck, looking down at the guns the men had slung over their shoulders. "Rangefinders? That's heavy weaponry for an inventory."

  "You like these?" the smaller one said, shifting his rifle around to give Bender a better view. "We can have a hundred of them delivered to this facility with the next shipment."

  Bender nodded approvingly and said, "That works. For the right price."

  The larger one turned and looked around the warehouse, taking measure of the men standing guard and the size of the facility. "If this place is operating the way it should, money shouldn't be an issue."

  Bender smiled again and said, "It operates just fine. We move a dozen junkies through here every fifteen minutes, twenty-four seven, all of them paying full price."

  Both Unification officers looked at one another and nodded, silently agreeing that sounded right. The officer turned to Bender, "Your man outside already told you we're getting ready to supply a stronger formulation of product. With this batch, you'll not only be able to double your customers-per-use, you'll be able to use each karjarra brick twice."

  "You don't say?"

  "It's that good."

  Bender nodded and said, "So what do I need to do?"

  "Well, first we'd like to see you do a run through. I'm sure you operate as efficiently as you say, but we'll need to document that we observed your crew in action. After that, Sgt. Buehl and I will make a count of the product you have on hand." The man thrust out his hand and said, "Sound good?"

  "You bet your ass," Bender said. He was shining it on now, giving the guy a wide smile filled with metal. "I'm always glad to make the acquaintance of a ranked officer in Unification. What's your name, Lieutenant?"

  "You don't have to call me Lieutenant," the man said, waving his hand. "You can just call me Frank."

  The handheld unit beeped in Dimmel's hand and he said, "All right, listen up, junkie scum. Strip off your scraps. Chuck 'em in the container, you know the routine. You can get 'em when you come out the back. Though God knows why any of you would want that filth back."

  The rail-thin men and women around him started to peel off their garments and toss them into the large metal bin alongside the entrance. Their arms and legs were covered in grime. Vic Cojo was cleaner than they were, and he'd just left prison. Luckily, his skin was still pale and sunken and there were patches of hair missing on his head, letting him blend in perfectly with the ghouls surrounding him.

  These were people who lived in the shadowy space between life and death. Not alive, their bodies were filled with decaying organs and poisonous chemicals that were cooking them from within. It bubbled up through the pores in their skin and escaped in noxious fumes every time they opened their mouths. Whatever life was, in whatever form it took, this was not it. And yet, they had not yet found that peaceful release of death.

  Vic had known junkies his entire working life. They were part of his everyday tools, an easy way to locate drug traffickers. Invariably, those traffickers were always being supplied or armed by criminals who could provide intel on Sapienists. It was simply a matter of following the trail long enough until it lead back to them.

  Conducting wars is expensive.

  For a large government like Unification, it was simply a budgeting issue. They just needed to dedicate some portion of their massive resources to the military, and then the military had to figure out how best to utilize the money. But for a terrorist organization with no legitimate means of raising finance, the funds for war had to be coming in from illegal means.

  Or at least, that is what Vic had spent his entire career believing.

  He could never understand why certain targets were always being called off. Why he'd have some ruthless bastard of a war lord in his gun sights, just to receive an order from Command to stand down. He'd been redirected from important assignments, waved off from capturing high-value targets, and straight up ordered not to kill someone the universe would be infinitely better off without.

  He'd learned in prison. He'd made good use of his time, interrogating other prisoners, gathering intel about everything criminal in the four quadrants, and the things he learned stripped him to his core. They stole all his beliefs, all the comfortable lies he'd grown so used to, but they'd left him with one thing. He now knew that Unification, or at least some very high-ranking members of the government, was tangled up in all of it.

  When he'd joined Grendel Unit, he'd sworn an oath to stamp out evil wherever he found it. Vic's fingers clenched into fists, momentarily popping the veins out along the thick muscles of his forearms, as he said to himself, "Don't blame me because I took it seriously."

  "What you say to me, junkie scum?" Dimmel snarled at him.

  Their eyes met for a moment and the rest of the fiends stopped moving. The guard was taller than Vic by a head, his muscles chemically andro-freaked and twitching nervously. Dimmel leered at Vic and smiled widely, showing off his set of metal fangs that were sharp enough to tear metal cans in half. "You got a nice looking face, boy. I'm hungry. Want me to eat it off for you?"

  Vic lowered his head and shook it side to side, twitching with his entire body and muttering a long string of nonsensical pleas to get high. Dimmel stayed fixed on him, scowling at how out of place Vic now looked among the others. Naked, the muscles in Vic's arms and chest were on display, wide and full from the hours he'd spent training while trapped in his cell. He'd managed to maintain his we
ight in prison on a diet of nothing but prison gruel. Other prisoners starved to the point that they could not walk, but Vic had closed his eyes and swallowed ever drop of the yellow slime. Telling himself it was nothing but fuel, and he was nothing but a machine.

  Dimmel still hadn't moved.

  Vic slumped forward and staggered back and forth, crumpling himself to look shorter and smaller. He let his jaw hang open and released a long, silvery web of spittle from his lower lip, watching it swing in the wind as he moaned.

  "All right, scum. Let's go!" Dimmel finally said. "Raise your hands over your head and turn completely around so we can get a good look at them wobbly bits."

  One after another the men and women in the group stepped forward and turned around as they were instructed, exposing their naked bodies for the guard's inspection. Dimmel raised his handheld and aimed it at each person, scanning them briefly before nodding that they could go inside. Vic did the same, turning all the way around and facing forward before he heard the guard's comm beep and he said, "Go ahead."

  Vic kept his eyes low as he fell in with the rest of the junkies, herding in with them, pressing his skin against theirs the same way they did to one another's. The smell alone was intolerable, but feeling his bare flesh against theirs, covered in open, weeping sores, was enough to make his stomach turn. He focused on the old man in front of him, staring at the small white lice crawling along the surface of the man's scalp. The loose skin on his back sagged and was dotted with hairy black moles.

  Vic's throat tightened as he looked away, his eyes glancing briefly at Bob Buehl and Frank. Both of them were staring at him in disbelief, eyes wide in surprise that even he would go so far.

  Vic looked back down at the man in front of him and gathered his resolve, thinking that he could, in fact, go that far. And he would, in fact, go even farther, if that's what it took.

  From across the room, he heard Bender snicker and say, "What's the matter? You Unification boys never seen a junkie party before? Don't worry, they don't mind. Pretty soon, they'll all be in chemical heaven. You'd better step back a little. It's about to get cloudy in here."

  Bender punched a code into the cage door behind them and reached inside to pull out a fresh karjarra brick. He dropped it into a slot on the wall and raised the handle to switch it on.

  Through the eager whimpering of the people around him, Vic heard a soft hissing noise coming from the vents above as they kicked on. Faint orange smoke began streaming out of the ceiling, winding and curling its way down toward them. The rest of the junkies raised their heads expectantly and inhaled as deeply as they could, desperate to get that first blast of karjarra directly into their systems.

  Vic steeled himself as he raised his head and closed his eyes. He could already smell the foul, spicy odor of the narcotic wafting down toward him. He held his breath as long as he could, but then it was too much and he breathed it in deep.

  There were already junkies gathering outside the facility for the next round. Dimmel counted their heads and called out, "Room for two more. Anybody else shows up, they either gotta fight it out with this lot for a place, or wait. No lettin' 'em fight before Freddie can get down here to place his wager, though. That bastard cleaned me out last night. Who knew that old bugger had the energy to dig someone's eye out? Did you?"

  The other guard shook his head, and Dimmel said, "Me effing either. Lucky bastard. Must be all them fumes he's inhalin' up on the roof. I can't believe he ain't deaf already. Hell, I don't know how he can bear to hear himself think up there." The fans on the metal roof above them clanged and whined, working at full speed to drive the karjarra smoke down into the Get High Zone. They did a good job of it, they were just loud as hell.

  He felt his handheld vibrate and grimaced in frustration. His body was twitching even more now, and he raised the comm and saw that it was Freddie calling him. "Your ears burnin' up there? I was just sayin' you owe me some money from last night. We get a fight down here, you better make a wager."

  "…movement…not sure. Big…this way," the voice on the other end said.

  Dimmel tapped the screen a few times, trying to get it to work. It had full signal. He stepped back and looked up at the roof, trying to catch sight of the sniper. There was nothing but night sky. Dimmel shook his head as he pocketed his handheld and tapped the guard on the shoulder, "I gotta go up on the roof for a minute. Don't let these junkies in 'til I get back, and remember, make 'em wait to fight."

  One of the fiends squawked in protest at being made to wait, and Dimmel pivoted and punched the fiend square in the throat. He felt the windpipe give way against the force of his enhanced speed and power and the man collapsed, clutching his throat. Dimmel pointed at the tiny trickles of blood coming out of the man's nose and mouth, and said, "Oy, look. I reckon we'll have room for one more soon."

  The ladder to the roof was rusted and came loose from the wall in spots. Dimmel weighed twice as anyone else on the crew, and had to take his time going up. His massive arms did not bend more than ninety degrees, blocked by thick layers of muscle, and his heart was beating too rapidly.

  Rank sweat covered him by the time he reached the top. He was twitchy and light-headed. He bent forward and sucked wind as he scanned the roof for Freddie. There were large, stacked vents blocking is view, and they were rattling furiously. Dimmel cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "I'm here, you idiot! Where the hell are you?"

  He walked forward, looking up and down the alley ways formed by the vents that pumped the karjarra down, and the ones that sucked it back up. His jaw was flinching and he couldn't stop blinking. It was time to dose, soon, and he'd left his gear down in the warehouse. "Come on, man. I don't have time for games," he said angrily. "I'll throw you off this damn roof if you try and spook me."

  He stopped in mid-step, fingers wrapped firmly around his rifle now. It wasn't that he'd seen or heard anything. He smelled it. Something he hadn't smelled since he was a kid, but it was unmistakable. He smelled fur.

  Dimmel turned around slowly, looking back toward the ladder, and realized he was staring straight into the shaggy muscled mass of something's chest. It was looking down at him, green eyes flashing in the night. Dimmel smiled as he looked up at it and said, "Ain't you a big one? You escape from the zoo?"

  The creature knocked the rifle out of his hands with one thrust and slashed through the air at his face, but Dimmel was too quick. His enhanced musculature let him twist out of the way with blurring speed. He torqued right and sent a crushing blow in the creature's midsection, smiling with satisfaction when it gasped for air. "You like that, do you?" Dimmel sneered. He delivered his next shot from down below his knees, cutting under the beast's protruding jaw with a sharp punch, twisting his arm and shoulder at the last second to corkscrew the impact home. The furry bastard staggered backward a few steps, wobbling unsteadily as its claws scraped he metal roof. Dimmel wiped sweat from his chin and said, "I'm glad you showed up. I need a new rug."

  Its eyes lowered to Dimmel's hand as he reached behind his back and unsheathed a long silver dagger. He leveled it at the creature's green eyes and said, "I'm going to skin you. Might even eat you. Ain't had proper meat in a while."

  He raised the dagger over his head and raced forward, the blade singing through the air as he thrust it toward the soft spot between the creature's glistening green eyes. He shouted victoriously as he delivered the killing strike, only to see the beast's left paw come up just inches from its face and catch the dagger by the blade.

  Dimmer stared in disbelief at the thing's shaggy fingers clutching the razor-sharp steel, holding it firmly as Dimmel grabbed the handle with both hands and tried to twist.

  "Forgive me," the creature said calmly. "I'm out of practice. You should have been dead a long time ago."

  Dimmel groaned with effort, trying to wrench the blade free, and from the corner of his eye he saw the creature's fist come sailing in a wide arc toward the side of his head. The blow cracked the bones of his
skull at his temple, making his knees buckle and filling him the urge to vomit, but he clung to the knife. It was his only chance.

  The creature hit him again in the same place, caving in the side of Dimmel's face by an inch. His left eye went dark and he felt tiny fragments of bone rattling inside his mouth and realized they were his teeth.

  Dimmel let go of the knife then and wobbled back and forth, trying to stay on his feet. The night sky was spinning and it was all he could do to say, "Don't…don't hit me again."

  The creature tossed the knife aside and lowered its hands, looking at him piteously. "Lie down and attempt to survive," it said. "When this is finished, I will find you medical attention."

  Dimmel hawked a mouthful of blackened blood at the creature's face and said, "I know what you are, sludgesucker. One a' them mantipors, ain't ya? I knew it. Been to your homeworld a few times."

  The glimmer of dark recognition in the creature's eyes made Dimmel smile. "It was risky business, yeah. But, you wouldn't believe what the skins of your little ones are worth, mate. I just like the way they squeal when you cut 'em open."

  Monster's voice began as a low rumble, building in his throat until it erupted in a deafening roar.

  Inside the facility, Bender clutched his rifle and shot his head up toward the ceiling. "What the hell was that?"

  Frank raised an eyebrow and said, "What was what?"

  "That roar," Bender said. "Did you hear that?"

  "A roar?" Frank laughed quietly. "How would a…a roar? That's crazy. Out here?"

  "You must be breathing too much of this gas in," Buehl added.

  "That could be it," Frank said.

  "I heard something on the roof!" Bender shouted.

  Frank shrugged, "So did I. It's called the deafening series of exhaust fans that operate this˗"

  His voice was drowned out by the sharp crash of metal plating being hammered with a blunt object echoing throughout the facility. It was followed by the wet, slurping sound of meat being fed into the high-capacity cyclone of fan blades.