Tears of Selene

by Bill Patterson

  Garth tapped his waistband, reassured by the weapon tucked inside his belt. He flexed his foot, feeling the drag of the holdout weapon there. A tensed buttock encountered a large knife, and an elbow pressed to his side met a shoulder holster. Four weapons, two victims, it was an acceptable ratio.

  No movement, no sound, so he slid to the next stand of vegetation, now two meters closer to the building. Garth was loathe to appear directly in front of the building. He would much rather approach it from the side, but should it be the left or the right?

  Most people are right-handed, which places the doorknob on the right as you face the front door, or left as you approach the back. So I should go to the left.

  Garth slipped to the left and listened. Now that he was getting closer to a confrontation, he was even more anxious to come to grips with his enemy. He warned himself to wait, be calm, and not to vary his routine.

  Idly, he wondered how Subby was making out.

  ###

  Subby breathed a little bit easier as he splashed past the seam where the old sewer tunnel spliced into the 'new' one from the kaserne. New, in this case, meant one hundred and forty years old instead of over two hundred. He was away from his enemies, with Lisa left in the dark with two bad, equally fatal choices. Subby was about three hundred meters from the lift station when he sucked on the regulator for a breath of air and nothing happened.

  He quickly found a flat spot to troubleshoot the problem. The air in the tunnels wasn’t immediately fatal, but he would black out from oxygen displacement in his lungs within ten minutes. The hydrogen sulfide was heavier than air. Once in your lungs, it tended to stay there, slowly becoming sulfuric acid as it dissolved into the lung fluids. Within ten minutes, your lungs were two-thirds full of H2S, and regular air stood no chance of getting in to the alveoli, and hence into your blood.

  The dial on the scuba tank read zero air pressure. But that was absurd. Subby pulled off the hose and turned the valve fully open. There was no hissing of life-giving air.

  But how? The tank felt heavy. He tapped it at the top where it rang hollow. He tapped his way down the tank; one quarter of the way to the bottom, a dull thunk spoke of a tank no longer hollow, but filled with something. Mud, water, anything—it didn't matter, because it wasn’t air.

  Subby was a dead man. He knew that he was too far from the end of the tunnel to make it there—he would die of suffocation long before he got there, even if he slid down this fecally lubricated slope. The tunnel door out of the lift station was locked on the outside. He knew this from earlier expeditions up this cloaca.

  There was time for one thing, though—to finger the man who killed him. Because kaserne security would eventually find him, he would leave a note, scraped into a wall encrusted with the dried excrement of soldiers long gone.

  I was killed by Garth Wakeman who gave me this faulty tank.

  Subraman Venderchangergee

  Director-General

  United Nations Space Operations Command

  That looks good. Dignified. Subraman saw a piece of metal protruding from the tunnel wall. He had no idea what it was for, but it would serve one final purpose. Working quickly, because his burning lungs were becoming frighteningly short of breath, he tied a carabiner to his backpack with a length of line and clipped the carabiner to the protruding metal. It would never do for him to make it all this way back, only to tumble down the shaft into the lift pump and be torn apart like a stuffed toy flushed away. Subraman sat with his back to the wall and waited for the end.

  ###

  “I'll be damned,” said McCrary, when he stopped in to check on the dewatering of the aft chamber. “I'd still be trying to figure out how to roll iron pipe.”

  Jeff chuckled. “I wouldn't have thought of it either, if someone hadn't whacked me on the shoulder with a big steel thermos they were carrying. Big sucker, too. I thought, why not make a whole lot of them, then throw them through some Flinger-like elements?”

  “It works, after a fashion.”

  “Yeah,” said Jeff. “It's going to take forever to empty the collection tank I've got down there, one thermos at a time.”

  McCrary cocked his head. “You could model this as a hose working on a pulsating pump.”

  “I am. Its flow rate is about the same as a two-centimeter line, running at one hundred forty kPa.”

  “Not terrible,” said McCrary. “Of course, if we had two kilometers of pipe…”

  “Well, we don't. But we have the next best thing. A system that can be extended as long as we need. Fill a thermos at the tank, put on the lid, toss it into a hoop, and it will move up the cavern from flinger hoop to flinger hoop, then get stopped right outside the tank. We shake the water out of it, then toss it into the hoops that take it back down to the stern of the ship. Over and over. We'll get it emptied faster than we would by making two kilometers of pipe.”

  McCrary shook his head. “I'm sure you have the calculations for this.”

  Jeff just frowned at him.

  “Everyone is so testy these days.”

  “I want to go home, too, McCrary.”

  “So do I, Jeff,” McCrary said carefully. “So do I.”

  ###

  John watched on the small screen as the infrared image of Garth slowly made his way through the vegetation towards the building. He had gone around the left side, just as John predicted, and headed right into the killing field he had prepared.

  Celine had her own screen, and was placed hear a window so she could slip out and hit Garth on the flank, should the need arise. She looked over to John and smiled, her white teeth momentarily brilliant in the sunshine.

  Garth was taking his time, and John, long accustomed to waiting for processes to finish in Engineering, was quite at ease as he waited for their antagonist to trip one of the traps.

  He was careful not to come down any of the beaten trails through the scrub, but moving through unbroken brush carried its own consequences, namely noise. Garth pressed slowly through a bush, so that the rattling of the dead branches seemed like a random sound.

  He was travelling parallel to a path when something caught his eye directly in front of him. He stopped and waited for his brain to resolve the pattern.

  It was a regular piece of wood, sitting over a wooden trigger. If he had stepped on it, some kind of trap would be sprung. He laughed silently, and took a half step sideways, then stepped forward.

  He never saw the back plate that hit him, only the front plate with the wickedly sharpened rebar tied into it as it sped towards him. He tried to fling himself out of the way, only to discover that the back plate had grown sides that kept him just where he was. In the milliseconds before it hit, he had time for one more thought.

  I've been stupid.

  Then the pain consumed him.

  ###

  John looked at Garth, pinioned between the two pieces of plywood like a bug inside a Venus Flytrap.

  “Gotcha,” was all he said.

  John removed all the weapons that Garth was carrying, even searching his neck and back, in case he had a sword there.

  “My, my,” said John, as he cleared and safed each firearm. “Aren’t we the angry one?”

  Celine slipped up from behind Garth as John held his attention. The circle of cold steel against his temple was his first notice that she had arrived.

  “Hello, my dear,” Garth gasped through the pain. “So you've decided to jungle up.”

  “I've decided to stay with a real man,” she said. “Not a control freak who had to slap a woman around in order to feel important.”

  Garth shook his head as much as the trap would allow. “No, you've decided to go to the beasts. Good thing you've both been sterilized by your little space adventure. Who knows what mongrels you might have produced.”

  Celine pulled her arm back to pistol-whip him, but John put out his hand. “No. That's not how this is going to go. By the book, dear. By the book.”

  Celine's eyes were still wide with
fury, but John waited until his words penetrated. She let her arm drop and nodded. “By the book.”

  Garth gave a harsh but pain-filled laugh. “What is this book you talk about? Frankly, I’m surprised you can read.”

  John chuckled. “There is a book. From the old days. A hundred years ago or more.”

  Celine passed John and gave him a kiss. He put his arm around her, and her hand passed over his crotch and squeezed. “This is a promise for later,” she said.

  “Go get the bag.”

  “Way ahead of you,” she said, disappearing into the building.

  Garth took advantage of her absence to berate John with a torrent of abuse, comprised of every form of bigotry and hatred imaginable.

  “I see you've been with the skinheads in jail,” said John. “You even sound like them, now.” John moved to the back plate of the trap, grabbing one of Garth's hands and securing it with highly padded manacles. Garth tried to escape, but the trap was well constructed. John soon had Garth's arms manacled to the interior surface of the trap.

  He left the front plate alone, with the sharpened rebar stapling the man in place like a bug in a collection. He secured Garth's boots to the bottom of the plywood.

  “What's this? Aren't you going to get me out of here?” said Garth. John stuffed a soft red rubber ball into Garth's mouth.

  “I weary of your voice,” said John as Celine returned carrying a medical corpsman's bag. “And soon, I won't ever have to hear it again.”

  Celine passed straps through the bloodied spikes and around parts of Garth's body, thoroughly fixing him to the board.

  John looked at the damaged man with a practiced eye, and selected a wound where the rebar merely gouged a trench in the arm and didn't break the bone or even cause abnormal bleeding. John undid the bolt at the back of the front board and removed the rebar, exposing the wound more fully.

  “Line, please,” he said to Celine, and she handed him an intravenous needle and length of tubing. John slipped it into the man's damaged arm, directly into an exposed but unopened blood vessel. He rigged a small bag of saline solution.

  “Remind me to tell you about how McCrary and Lisa tried to save Ted Reinhart,” John said to Celine.

  “The ship I flew down from the Chaffee was called the Reinhart.”

  “Named after the guy. Sad story. Good ending, we're here and alive and able to love each other.” John looked into Garth's eyes. “I think we'll go skiing in the Alps after this. Ski during the day, have a great steak dinner. Later on, slip off your clothes by the fire. Watch the firelight dance off your skin. Mmmmm.”

  “John, we've still got a job to do,” Celine said.

  “Right. Pest control measures. Make the planet more livable.”

  John looked for the vials in the bag, removed three, and zipped the bag closed. He held the three by their caps, and held them just close enough for Garth to read the labels.

  “Propofol, Pancuronium Bromide, and Potassium Cloride. Do you know what these three do?”

  Garth shook his head, glaring.

  “Propofol puts the prisoner into a deep but very temporary coma. Pancuronium bromide paralyzes the prisoner. Potassium Chloride stops the heart. These are the drugs used to perform executions, and that's what we're going to do here.”

  John took three syringes and filled them full of the contents of the vial. He chatted while he did it.

  “You see, executions have been banned for a long time. No doubt, you ran into some folks in prison that were better off dead. Ever since the UN asserted its authority, there have been no executions in the former United States. So, it's actually fairly easy to get these medications. Veterinarians use them to painlessly put a dog down. That's just what we're going to do here.

  “Celine gave you a lot of chances. Restraining orders had no effect. Finally, she had to flee up to space to escape you. Then, after she just barely survived a brush with death, you assault her in her hospital room. We finally get released, and we head off for parts unknown. But you still hunt her down. I didn’t forget that whack with the shovel you gave me, asshole,” said John, wiggling a steel bar that bisected Garth's leg. “But I can understand why you think you had to do it.”

  Muffled noises came from around the ball. John chuckled.

  “No, I’m not going to remove it. We've heard enough from you, and any last words you might have, we aren’t interested in them.

  “I have to say, it was very satisfying when I shot your hip apart and you fell into that split. I understand you're far less the man since they had to remove your balls. At least there was no chance for you to sire any hellspawn.

  “Then you broke out of prison and headed over here. That was the last straw, as far as Celine and I were concerned. Right, honey?”

  Celine walked over and stared at the man who was once her husband. “I used to love you. Then you betrayed that love with your jealousy and rage. Finally, I had to get out before you killed me. From city to town, state after state, you pursued me until I fled to space. When I came back, you still hadn’t learned your lesson.

  “Like a mad dog, you never stopped assaulting me, never stopped trying to sink your teeth into me and hold on forever. Mankind has been putting down mad dogs for centuries. Go ahead, John, I'm completely through with him. Say hi to the devil, Garth. You're going where you belong.” Celine turned and walked away.

  “I'm going back to my regular quarters, John, to get cleaned up. I'll be waiting for you in bed.”

  “Well, I better be about it, then, shouldn't I?” said John. He watched Celine as she exited WarLand. “Payback is such a bitch,” he murmured.

  John picked up the first syringe. “Propofol. Easy to tell by the milky texture.” John squirted the contents of the syringe into a reclosable plastic bag. “But we don't need that. You're going to be awake for the whole thing. Eighth Amendment don't mean shit to me when it comes to you. I'm putting down a mad dog.”

  John picked up a second syringe. “This is a bit of an art. Give you too much, and you stop breathing. We can't have that. Give you too little, and you wiggle around too much. So, we're going to go a little at a time. He put the needle into the IV port and pushed one cc into the flow of saline.

  Garth had been wiggling before, but now he was fairly thrashing, heedless of the pain and damage the stakes pinning him down were doing. Only the restraining belts kept him in one place. His struggles slowed down, but continued.

  “Maybe a little more,” said John, giving a second push.

  It took four ccs for Garth to lie still, eyes staring furiously, but the rest of his body limp.

  John held up the final syringe. “I bet you're wondering how we're going to get away with this. A simple toxicology screen would show that someone filled your veins with death. But you have to have a body to do a tox-screen, don't you? You see, when I finish here, I’m going to drag your body down into the Nazi tunnels and stash it somewhere. Maybe weld it into a locker. Or leave it for the rats. Anyway, nobody goes in the tunnels. So you're going to be here for a long time. Bones don't say anything about lethal injections.

  “This here is potassium chloride. Oh, we could use anything, really, to stop your heart, even plain old air. I rather like this one. See, every once in a while, prison wardens used to botch the process, and when the executioner shot this into their veins, the prisoners would scream like little girls. They said they were burning up. I'm going to take my time getting you up to lethal dose. You terrorized Celine for years. Now you're going to pay.” John slipped the needle into the injection port on the IV and gave the smallest push he could.

  Immediately, sweat broke out on Garth's face. He couldn't say anything under the influence of the paralyzing drug, but he radiated agony. John nodded and gave another push while he kept up a steady description of Garth's sins upon Celine.

  “She will sleep soundly now. Safe. Secure. I will protect her, cherish her, love her in ways you never could. Your greatest fear was losing your love to another m
an. You are unworthy of her. I will take over and protect her. Goodbye, Garth. I am glad it is ending this way, you rabid mutt.”

  John pushed the remainder of the drug into the IV line and watched Garth's face grimace as his heart seized in a final spasm then stopped. John removed all the medical gear and put it in a paper bag. He took the vials and put them in the same bag. The corpsman's bag, he brushed off carefully and brought it back into the building. Behind him, Garth's body relaxed into death. His sphincters relaxed and Garth fouled himself.

  ###

  Lisa was not in any danger yet, but she remained still as she thought.

  Now, I know that we lost track of Garth when he came over the wall into this chamber from the sewer. Maybe if I went over the wall into the sewer, I'd show on the monitors.

  She reached out her hands and slowly slid one foot in front of the other until she felt a brick wall in front of her. She felt the wall out until she found the rungs of a metal ladder in the wall's face. She climbed slowly, carefully, putting her hand up to feel for the ceiling.

  Better my hand and not my head.

  She was a few steps up when she thought of something.

  The empty tank. It would make a great hammer.

  She started her climb again, this time weighed down by the empty tank. The top of the chamber was somewhat smooth, and the passage to the sewers was not the simple wall that one could straddle. Instead, it was a meter long passage.

  No wonder the stench didn't penetrate the assembly hall.

  She was ready for the dropoff at the end of the passage, and immediately began feeling for rungs, finding two sets—one for the wall, and a second set on the immediately adjacent wall.

  “For the manhole,” she said. She left the tank in the passage at the top of the wall and climbed the two steps required to touch the manhole cover. She still couldn't see anything. There was literally nothing that gave off light. No phosphorescent algae living in the sewage. No flashlights, no chemlights. No light filtered through the manhole covers. She wondered about that, then remembered John Hodges asking to waterproof the lids, since the Germans at the bottom of the hill were complaining about all the stormwater that was making its way down the tunnel.