“No two people react the same to the drug.”
He forced the syringe from Snake Man’s hand. “Then I have a counterproposal for you. Let’s start our own little crew of road warriors made up entirely of street people. Once their newly acquired talents surface, I will decide how to best utilize them. We split the profits 50-50.”
“I could use the money to investigate how to make the drug more manageable.”
“At which point I will happily inject myself with it. One more point of note. Your ‘management’ scheme will select for master hunter predators that excel at tracking.”
“Giving people abilities they did not wish for does not bode well for how they use those abilities.”
“Exactly what I’m banking on.”
THIRTY
Manny sprinted down one of the interminable halls in his psych ward. He couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or not; it certainly felt like a nightmare.
He made the mistake of looking over his shoulder at the wrong moment, only to find himself being jabbed with a needle by someone in front of him. He punched Ronald, the needle man, and kept running.
Don’t panic. This could be good, Manny. Learning to think clearly from under a deluge of drugs might be just the ticket to surviving the Brave New World. The fascists love their drugs: TV, video-games, Prozac, the fear they feed through the nightly news. His ability to see reality for what it was hinged entirely on seeing through the drug-like haze of it all. So relax. Nothing new here.
He glanced down at his feet. At least they were no longer swollen. Maybe, despite the acrid environment, he’d grown a bigger heart to handle the extra pumping. Ha-ha. Keep running. Keep laughing.
Manny raced harder, deliberately provoking a sweaty fever. Maybe he could hasten the drug out of his system that way.
There. Inside the room. On the old man’s bed tray. He grabbed his oversized cup of water and ice chips. Downed it. Now he could add diluting the drug and pissing it out of his system to his arsenal of defensive maneuvers.
A sweater dangled on the old man’s bedpost. Manny threw it on. He returned to his running, figuring the jersey would help with the perspiration.
“Code blue! Code blue!” the intercom blared overhead. Bastards. As if they didn’t already have him surrounded.
He took a blind turn down the intersecting corridor. “In here,” a woman’s voice called out.
Manny ducked inside the room. All he had had to offset his trust issues was the tenor of her voice. But they were all bloody good actors around here, came with the territory of living inside a fascist state.
Maybe that was what drove the turnaround, the liberation from oppression. You got so good at pretending to be so many things to so many people that you could conceal your hidden agendas until they were implemented and it was too late to do anything about them.
As an accomplished actor, moreover, he could more convincingly assume the role of the hero who alone could slash his way past all the social constraints to forge a Brave New World.
“Here’s the key to the door. Go on, get out of here before it’s too late.”
It was Renee. “Why are you helping me?”
“They know I won’t stand by and condone murder. That means I’m next. So get to hell out of here so I can live.”
Manny ran that statement through his filters. She had turned passiveness into passive-aggressiveness. Outside her routine defense mechanisms, it was hard to get a read on her; she was as mindless as she was soulless. Manny decided finally, after all the mental processing, he might be able to trust her this far.
Then again… Yeah, that’s probably just what they want, to catch him with the keys on his way out the door. Then even the ones not out to get him would have to go along with strapping him down and further medicating him, where he’d be even more helpless against antagonistic interests. That logic appealed a lot more to him than did this woman, appearing suspiciously out of the blue.
“Go on, I said.” Renee wrapped his hand around the keys.
“You wouldn’t be setting me up, would you?”
“There are no good guys here. Just people pretending to be good from one moment to the next to keep you off balance. That way if you do last the weekend, they can all say it was part of the game. And who’d you be to say any different? You’d be so confused by then, you wouldn’t know yourself.”
God, he hated it when they mixed just enough logic with the madness to make it impossible to guess the next best move in his favor. Though the fact she was coming clean regarding her turncoat tendencies tweaked things in her favor.
“I need a little more insurance. A gun, a knife, something.” Yeah, sure, Manny, and if you do get caught, you’d have built an even better case for tying you down. Around here, brilliance could just as easily be interpreted as abject stupidity. Not knowing anything for sure was turning out to be the hallmark quality of Big Brother land. Before this game was through, he’d be ready to lecture on the subject. And him thinking he was an authority all along. Apparently the game had only evolved further in his absence, and now he was running two steps behind instead of running out ahead of the pack as he had when he was a youngster, squaring off with dear old dad, fascist extraordinaire.
“All I can offer you are some empty syringes,” Renee said, with just enough wariness to imply she was swimming upstream of her better senses.
“I’ll take them.” Good for shooting air into his attackers’ carotid arteries, killing them with air emboli. Problem was: Not terribly fast-acting. Alternatively, he could fill the syringes with a toxic chemical, assuming he could find one on his way out the door. Of course, homicidal ideation meant they’d zap him with an antipsychotic. They had a galaxy to choose from: Zyprexa, Risperdal, Abilify, Seroquel, Geodon. He was on a first name basis with all of them. What they seldom told you is that the delirium which caused homicidal ideation was often drug-induced. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. If this were a setup, in a few hours he’d be a complete zombie, and beyond caring. Small mercies.
Was that him philosophizing, psychoanalyzing, and strategizing war games all in the same moment? Two more points your favor, Hartman. How could he be so close to finding the keys to Heaven’s gate, only to end up in Hell instead?
Manny crowded Renee at the med cart as she reached in for a handful of empty syringes, as if only overeager to outfit himself in order to be out of here and stay one step ahead of his assailants. With his acting performance to distract her, he pocketed the salt and magnesium tablets from the cart. He knew what he wanted them for; he just didn’t want her to know he had grabbed them, and possibly guess at his purpose. While he was at it, he palmed a paperclip; one of many marking her notebook, it could have dropped off at any time.
With the keys from Renee and the empty syringes in hand, he made a mad dash for the exit. Forget whether she’s trying to help you or hurt you, Manny. It’s just the strategy of greatest opportunity right now that makes it the right move no matter what.
Renee barely waited for Manny to turn the counter before she let Julianne pump her for information. She had evidently made the mistake of being seen with Manny. The staff feared Julianne and getting on the wrong side of her, nearly as much as they feared Saverly, knowing full well how many she had wrapped around her finger, staff and patients alike. “He grabbed some of my syringes from me. You know what that means?” Renee said.
Julianne in turn couldn’t wait to rat Manny out to Jim and Dex, Dex being one of the big orderlies. He could intimidate patients and drive them into a sexual frenzy at the same time. The other giants on staff were mildly jealous. Julianne no doubt confided in them so come an unavoidable uprising, her champions would line up around her, sacrificing other staff as needed to protect their lifeline to her information and therefore to better averting the more avoidable kind of mutinous insurrections.
Great, Manny. Nothing like wrestling outside your weight class, he thought, eying the giant goons being brought up to speed. He set hi
s feet in motion.
The “Code blue! Code blue!” blaring overhead gave a ringing endorsement of his reasoning. Soon, they’d have every exit blocked, and there’d be no getting out. He’d be tied down for even more pedestrian reasons, for provoking this much staff at once. One of them would be sure to include a pissed-off charge nurse who was late getting home on account of him.
He turned the key on the lock only to realize he hadn’t bothered to ascertain which key to use. And there were enough on that ring to delay him until Hell declared a holiday. Damn it!
He just looked for the most worn key, and tried that. When that didn’t work, he looked for the newest looking key, and tried that, thinking maybe the most worn key had recently been replaced.
The lock turned.
He opened the door and pushed his way to freedom in time to get clobbered in back of the head.
The empty syringes spilled on the floor, rolling away from him and into the hands of the sadist Atterman, who looked like she might just use them on him.
Lights out.
***
Manny awoke strapped to a bed in an isolation room. Those were leather restraints on his ankles and feet, and stainless steel locks, all tried and tested by the best Houdinis of them all to come before him. Those were cameras on him, and the lights would never go out, except maybe inside his head.
The bump on back of his noggin was the size of a pigeon’s egg. Could have been a love tap from one of those guerillas, for all he knew, not intending to do anything but tackle him to the ground.
Atterman entered to force meds down his throat.
She ran her fingers through Manny’s mouth to make sure he hadn’t cheeked the meds. Satisfied after an overly thorough search that nearly had him swallowing his tongue, she released his mouth and turned her gloating stare at his shackles. She checked them one more time to ensure a snug fit, probably wetting her panties each time her finger failed to slip between the wrist and ankle restraint and his limbs. Then she left.
Silence. Then…
Footsteps in the hall—coming towards him. Louder now. Funny how much conscious intent you could stuff into the clickity-clack of heels and soles hitting linoleum.
The party entered the room. Fontanegro, the charge nurse, sported a needle that was already filled. Apparently, they felt extra precautions were necessary beyond the oral medication to help him contain his zeal.
One “wrong” injection now, and he wasn’t waking up. He did what any sane man would do. He screamed for dear life. It was a sick take on one of those Zen koans Saverly liked so much. “In a psych ward, can anyone really hear you scream? Or think much of it, if they do?”
THIRTY-ONE
“Spare a twenty?” Hoofa smiled warmly at the pedestrian. The man, not surprisingly, took a twenty out of his wallet and stuck his hand out. Hoofa lifted the cup on the sidewalk with his toes and brought his foot up to the level of the man’s hand for easy depositing. “Thank you, sir.” The man put a twenty in Banion’s cup, who was standing right beside him, before moving on. Sassiness didn’t hurt at this end of town. If he’d asked for a dime instead, he’d probably have gotten nothing.
Banion promptly stowed away the money so the cup remained empty. Nothing like a cup full of twenty dollar bills to deter donations. Though the sight of the handless Hoofa taking care of the blind, older Banion, often prompted passersby to stuff even more money into the cup, full or no. The nice guy routine was a welcome break from the mad cursings of fellow beggars and their physical threats when they didn’t get the money they asked for, which also worked in their favor.
Unable to hide the money any longer in their bulging pockets, they walked on.
Hoofa sensed the thugs before they were on them, sensed their intent even earlier. It was a rough end of town; if anything they were behind schedule.
Banion hung back with that hugely loving if mildly condescending smile he’d perfected perhaps before he was out of the womb. Blind from birth, he’d nonetheless have little trouble keeping an eye on what was going on.
Hoofa, without his hands—missing since after defusing less-than-ably a bomb in Afghanistan for the U.S. military—expected to have no trouble containing the foursome that had set upon him. Of course, he’d been with Banion over a year; Banion seldom needed more than six months for his training to take hold. He specialized in enabling the handicapped like himself. Though perhaps his real specialty was the pimping out of his posse as beggars to fleece the unsuspecting blind; unsuspecting that they could fend for themselves better than normals with all their senses and appendages in place.
Hoofa leaped into the air, stretching his legs into a perfect split, to foot-punch the two adversaries to the face. His second leap allowed him to mow down the other two in the fashion of a rotating helicopter-blade with a twist of his body in midair. While they were still doubled over, he fleeced them of their wallets, using his dexterous toes, and tossed the wallets to Banion, who caught them in midair just by tracking the sounds they made soaring against wind resistance.
When the four assailants rose from their doubled over positions, they looked more determined than ever. “Why don’t you go pick on the blind man?” Hoofa said, smart-assed. Banion showed them just what a martial-arts adept could do with a walking cane. They didn’t exactly make his job hard, telescoping their intent with every angry sound they made prior to lunging.
Hoofa laughed as the last of them fell. We gotta stop setting up bad guys like this; it’s getting too easy.
“Two steps ahead of you. I thought it was high time we take our game up a notch.”
“Like what?”
“Like breaking and entering for starters; better things to fleece than wallets. Estate homes, banks…”
As they fell into stride with one another, walking off, Hoofa said, “We’ll need a crew for that.”
“Got that part figured out, too.”
“I’m frightened to ask.”
***
“This is madness.” Lance wiped the sweat from his brow as he flung the eyeball he’d just separated from the nerves in the eye socket into the stainless steel bowl—usually used for stirring eggs. “I can’t believe I’ve sunk to this,” he mumbled, as he dug out the second eye, his patient restrained, but not entirely unconscious.
“Don’t let it mess with your head, doc,” Banion said. “They’ll make ten times the money missing a piece here and there than they could working at one hundred percent. Besides, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil is just what you’d expect from people missing their eyes, their ears, and their tongues. One day soon my nationwide network will be more than just rich beggars, and top notch informants, going places unobserved that normals couldn’t get too. They’ll be topnotch thieves as well. That’s three income streams right there to replace the one they had when they lost their jobs. And that’s not even mentioning the income from selling the body parts—which should more than cover your surgical expenses today.”
“You’re up, Gratto,” Hoofa said, as the head bandaged Waffle, now missing his eyes, slid off the table.
Waffle jumped on the table. “I want to be just like my protégé. Lose the arms, doc.”
Lance sighed mightily, took another swig from his Jack Daniels bottle. When that wasn’t enough for the needed resolve, eying the over-eager Gratto, he took another swig. “Complete madness, I tell you.”
“There are too many beggars, doc. We’re like lawyers; don’t stand a chance in the marketplace if we don’t specialize.”
Finished tying down Gratto, and then sawing off the arm at the shoulder joint, he held out the arm. “How the hell is this boy supposed to do more not less missing his hands?”
“Show him, Hoofa.”
Hoofa demonstrated by using Banion as a workout dummy. Banion just smiled the whole time. Finally, when he’d had enough, he held out his hand and suspended Hoofa in mid-air, in what amount to a tractor beam, only this one’s source was Banion’s telekinesis.
“Yo
u’d be surprised what the mind can do when you eliminate the distractions, doc,” Banion said.
Lance gulped and returned to the job at hand, sawing off the second limb, as he threw a glance periodically at the mobile of Hoofa’s body, twirling in mid-air.
Huffing and puffing from the exertion, he picked up the final severed arm and set it down. He was getting more unnerved by Banion’s telekinesis than the bizarre act of butchery he was performing, which he supposed was the whole idea. “Fine, you’ve made your point, now set him down before I start shaking so much from the heebie-jeebies I can’t cut straight. Who’s next?” He waited until Banion set Hoofa down, then turned his attention to the row of seats against the wall. Apparently there was no shortage of willing candidates. Good thing he was a frustrated surgeon and not a frustrated psychologist, or this scene would play even worse in his head.
THIRTY-TWO
If Manny wasn’t sweating before, he was sweating now. Whatever drug they’d slipped him only added to the dreamlike quality of everything going on around him. He had no idea what was real and what was made up. More cover for the bad guys come Monday, if he survived.
He fought to see past the perspiration on his brow trickling into his eyes, adding to whatever blurred vision he could blame on the psychotropics injected into him. Yes, the bottle definitely said potassium. He strained against the leather restraints to get a better bead on the vial all the same, as if another angle on the situation would affect his fate any.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 60
