by Unknown
“What’s that?” Gary approached with a tray balanced on his shoulder. “Did I hear my name?”
Tau snorted at Linh then said, “Just saying how cute you are.”
“Oh!” A dark blush bloomed on Gary’s face and crawled down his neck in shades of purple. He fumbled with their drinks, the wine carafe rattling dangerously before arriving on the table. “Well, thanks!” He darted a look at Tau, then scurried off.
Shit. She hadn’t counted on Gary being smitten, too.
“You can’t do this.”
Tau ditched his red straw and gulped down half his drink. “Do what?”
“This. Gary. Flirting. It can’t … go … anywhere.”
“Oh really? Thanks for reminding me. It’s not like this bite on my leg is driving me fucking insane or anything. I kinda forgot for a second.” His features were suddenly sharp, eyes hot.
Is he going to cross the table? Linh sipped her wine and resisted the urge to back away.
Tau chugged the rest of his drink. “God, sorry. Just ignore me, Linh.” Under the table he clamped his thighs around one of her knees and squeezed. “You know how I get when I’m hungry.”
Not like this.
Linh rubbed her foot against the back of his calf.
After Gary returned with their orders, she picked while Tau scarfed, shoveling in food so fast Linh was surprised he could breathe. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto his plate but he didn’t seem to notice. His lips, usually a deep, black-brown, were pale tan.
“Uh, all done there?”
Gary was back.
“I’ll just clear those dishes for you.” He stacked plates on the next table. “Um, anyway, I … well, um, here.” He handed Tau a neat square of paper. His cell number or email.
Tau clenched the note in his fingers like a prize, a brief flash of joy crossing his face as he looked up at Gary. Then he slumped. Vomited. On the floor. On Gary’s feet. Food, vodka, all that meat, spewed, spattering the waiter’s white runners.
Too late, Gary jumped back. “Uuuuh!” He shook his foot as though the liquid paste would fall off like dried mud.
Tau stood, stumbled, pushed past Gary for the washroom.
“I’ll clean this up,” Linh mumbled, mopping ineffectually at the puddle with her napkin, smearing it more than anything. After a useless moment she threw the thing down and went after her friend. Everyone stared.
The reek of urinal pucks and mint assaulted her. Tau had smashed the plastic display window on a wall-mounted vending machine and was drinking packets of mouthwash. His face and shirt dripped with water from splashing himself.
“God dammit!” A wrenching sound and then he couldn’t talk; he supported himself on the cold edge of the sink.
She went to him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and rested her head between his shoulder blades, where his unicorn was; she could feel the bumps against her cheek. She held him as he sobbed.
He spun to return her embrace and she was wrapped in hard muscle, his strength, as though he were comforting her and not the other way around. They stood, locked tight, hearts thrumming unnaturally fast, hers from the uppers, his from whatever was going on inside, until he pulled back, grasped her cheeks and slammed his mouth to hers; those pale lips, burning hot, a taste of mint and salt and bile.
They parted. She wiped her mouth; checked for blood, her blood. None.
“Come on,” she said. “We have to go.”
On their way out she tossed bills over her shoulder.
Someone yelled, “Hey, stop! What’s wrong with that guy? Is he—”
Tau turned and screamed, an enraged, rasping bellow that raised the blood vessels on his face into prominence against the bone beneath. He upended a table, knocking over chairs in a clattering heap. Linh grabbed his arm. He whirled, teeth bared.
“Tau! It’s me!”
Fury drained from his face and his lips curtained teeth now whiter, now sharper, than before.
Linh dragged him to the door. Together they half ran through the parking lot to the car and didn’t look back to see if anyone followed.
Four hours and thirteen precious minutes. The sun hung low on the dusty horizon, giving up its fight against the somber gloom of approaching night.
Tau wasn’t drinking anymore. Instead he stared out the window. Or at her. She could see him in her peripheral vision. Once, she tried staring back; saw that he wasn’t blinking and his irises had deepened to black soulless pits against his dusty brown-gray skin. And he didn’t seem to register her. She poked him and, after a moment, his eyes shifted back to the scenery. For a minute or two.
Run like hell, her instincts screamed.
But she couldn’t run. They were running together. She couldn’t just abandon the plan, her friend, even if he wasn’t quite himself anymore; even if she no longer trusted him. But she had to do something. The quiet had become predatory.
There were trees now. Clumps of verdant bush dotted the rolling landscape, hiding rusting pump-jacks, abandoned farm equipment, a deer. Linh watched the ditch alongside the road and, when it deepened, pulled to the shoulder. Thick weeds and tall grass brushed the underside of the car.
“Need to stretch my legs,” she said, puncturing deep silence. “Why don’t you stretch yours?”
Tau didn’t reply but obeyed in a robotic fashion, pulling the door handle, half falling down the slope. When Linh pulled the door shut behind him from the inside, he was too low to see in the window.
From beneath her seat she retrieved a flat box, what might be called a “rape kit” if she were a sexual predator or serial killer. She tucked the contents in her waistband and pockets — easily reachable places — and exited the car. Tau stood in the ditch listing like an unmanned boat.
“How’re you feeling?” Linh asked, tone light, hand at the ready behind her back.
“You’re my best friend, Linh. I … I love you. Just wanted to say it.”
The words pierced her heart as surely as a well-aimed arrow.
“Don’t do it. I can control it. I can. Just hide me. Please. I can do it. For you.”
Tau’s pleading eyes focused on her, really focused, for the first time in hours. The weight of their shared history, his plea, pressed on her lungs. Her hand fell to her side, empty. She could almost believe him. That he’d master the sickness in ways other hadn’t. Hide him in some crumbling barn and everything would be okay.
Movement across an open expanse of field snagged her attention. A vehicle, a van, vivid chartreuse, the color of warning, still discernible in the disappearing daylight, on a road parallel to their own. Just a glimpse, then her view was blocked by a tree stand.
Containment Squad.
Gary.
Gary, or someone, must’ve reported them.
Linh whirled back to Tau, still standing with a lost puppy look. She whipped her police-surplus taser from her waistband and zapped him. He dropped, thrashing and screaming. The front of his shorts darkened as his bladder emptied. From her pocket she withdrew a syringe and a vial containing dissolved sleeping pills. Her hands trembled as she struggled to fill the fragile thing and jam it into Tau’s massive, jerking thigh. At this new pain, this further betrayal, he lurched up and grabbed for her, but she jumped back and his fingers grasped only air. After what seemed like an hour but was only a few seconds, his chin dropped and he slumped to the side, rolling a bit more down the steep embankment. Linh scrambled after him while fishing hard plastic zip-ties from another pocket. She looped them around his wrists, linked in a figure eight or symbol of eternity behind his back, then tried to do the same with his ankles, but the ties weren’t long enough.
She hiked back up to the road and scanned the horizon for more brightly colored vehicles. Any vehicles. But the roads were empty. She wasn’t sure if they’d been spotted; it was hard to tell at a half kilometer distant. Thankfully she’d turned off the car so there weren’t any lights to attract unfriendly notice.
She popped the trunk and transferre
d the jerry-cans, blow torch, and axe to the floor in the back. Leaving the trunk open, she half-slid back down the hill to retrieve the barely conscious Tau. Unlike the hospital staff, she knew just how much it would take to sedate him. But it wouldn’t last long.
It took every ounce of her unimpressive strength to drag him from the ditch, inch by slow inch. Dirt and grass clung to his hair and his ankle scraped raw. The sight of pale pink flesh beneath his dark skin, his blood, red and flowing, nearly brought Linh to tears. His body still struggled to live.
No time for weakness.
She cursed to dislodge the lump in her throat then dug-in her heels, threw herself back, and hauled his dead weight the last bit of the way up onto the lukewarm asphalt, rivulets of salt-sweat blinding her.
She lugged his torso up onto the bumper then lifted under his legs and pushed him into the trunk, cringing as his head slammed into the floor, the blow softened only slightly by the comforter she’d placed there. She arranged his prone form into what she hoped was a comfortable position and brushed debris from his cheek.
Before closing the trunk, she paused.
She could do it now. While he wasn’t awake, couldn’t look at her accusingly, was unable to beg. It would be so quick; so humane. But … no. She wouldn’t take these, his last hours, from him.
She slammed the lid, enclosing him in darkness for a moment. She flipped down the back seat behind the passenger side to open the trunk pass-through, now separated from the car’s interior with hastily welded basement window bars. He’d still be able to breathe freely and see out. Talk to her, if he wanted; if he could.
Linh jammed the car into gear and they were on the move. No music played. She needed to be able to hear.
An hour passed, every second marked by the blinking dash clock.
A groan and then, “Linh? Linh. Linnnnnnh!” An anguished wail.
Any relief at the sound of her friend’s voice was short-lived. A loud thump-thump-thump as he used his unrestrained legs to kick violently against the trunk hood. Linh swerved to throw him off-balance.
“Tau! You have to stop doing that! It’ll … be okay.”
He didn’t answer but complied at least. Linh adjusted her rear-view mirror to see the back seat. Tau’s livid face pressed against the bars, eyes bulging, lips pulled back in a snarl.
Linh stifled a scream.
“Tau, please. I’m just doing what you asked! What we agreed! You don’t want to end up in one of those labs. Or loose, infecting and … feeding on people. Or shit-kicked by thugs! Think of your Aunt—”
She risked another glance. He’d retreated.
But it wasn’t long before Linh wished she’d given him more drugs. Or just finished things. He alternated between kicking — forcing her to swerve ever more wildly, tricky on the now-pitch black roads — and wailing, a high-pitched sound straight out of hell. Linh wasn’t sure if he was in pain or just wanted to torture her with the only means available.
Distant headlights — three sets — appeared in her side mirror.
“Oh fuck.”
Tau wailed again.
“Shut up! Just shut up!”
Linh wrenched the wheel back and forth wildly to send Tau tumbling around the trunk compartment.
She waited until they rounded a corner then killed the lights and slowed. After a couple of painfully long minutes her eyes adjusted and she scanned for side roads under the glow of a half moon.
Please God.
On the next straightaway she saw lights again in her mirror, closer, but still a ways off. They wouldn’t be able to see her anymore but that wouldn’t stop them from following. If anything they’d come faster now that their prey had gone dark.
The road continued with no sign of an intersection, gravel offshoot, or even a deer track.
“Dammit!” she whispered.
Then she saw something, veered onto a barely visible ATV path, so narrow that sharp branches screeched against the car as they claimed paint. They flew along the trail for a few minutes before Linh wrenched right into a field, jerking and bumping over heavy ruts. They crested a hill and came to a sucking stop in thick mud. She stomped the gas but the wheels just spun. She turned off the engine.
For a minute they sat, Linh with her forehead on the steering wheel, Tau eerily quiet in the blackness of the trunk.
Then a weird whining. She stilled, listened.
Tau sang. Or hummed. She couldn’t tell. She didn’t recognize the song, if it was even a song.
She breathed but couldn’t pull air deep. It just swirled shallowly at the top of her lungs and seeped back out. She had to do it now.
The axe felt heavier than it did last night, more unwieldy. She hefted it over her shoulder and pushed the trunk button on her remote, prepared for Tau to spring out.
He didn’t.
He remained sprawled in the twisted knot of comforter humming idly to himself, snatches of a tune, like a radio station with poor reception. She couldn’t see him well but dark, wet spots glistened on his forehead and chin; injuries from his wild ride with no hands to brace himself.
Linh tensed, axe ready, but was unable to move. She couldn’t just… A sob escaped her throat and she blinked furiously to clear tears.
“Don’t cry. It’ll be okay,” he said, mimicking her words.
Or, maybe not. Maybe a lucid moment. It was just like him to try to soothe her.
His humming resumed, then, “I know the plan, Linh. It’s okay. But … come here first. Last time.” His voice purred, soft and deep. Just like Tau of old. More.
The axe head thudded to the ground and the handle came to rest against the bumper. Longing flooded her; a needful throbbing. There was something wrong; something alien in her attraction to him, but she ignored it, heard herself moan, but was still aware enough to feel embarrassed. Didn’t care. Climbed onto the bumper, one knee inside the car, one out, hands on Tau’s chest, his hard pectoral muscles straining against the bonds behind his back. She pressed her face to his.
He met her insistent desire with tenderness, seduction; nothing like the intense moment in the pub bathroom. Their lips melted together and the soft motions of his tongue tickled out more tears, this time of bliss. She’d wanted this so for long.
He bit. Pain seared through Linh’s lower lip. She tasted iron, felt him drawing on her, sucking deeply. Numbness. She started to sag.
Tau’s lips had been warm. These were icy cold. Tau’s gone.
“No!” The word came out half-formed, her bottom lip still his.
She punched his temple and ripped free.
She grabbed the axe. One swing and the blade sunk deep into his collarbone. He screamed. She rocked the blade to loosen it then swung again, a sickening crack as head separated from body. Not stopping, she doused the trunk, the body, and the seats with gas, emptying the cans, then ignited the blowtorch and tossed it in. Wild flames exploded.
“I’m sorry.” Nothing else to say. No one to hear.
The bonfire burned, fuelled by gas, plastic, and her friend. Aunt Lesedi would have no ashes to mourn.
Orange flames reached ever higher into the black sky, a beacon for searching eyes. She swallowed the blood pooling beneath her tongue, knowing she should throw herself on the flames, too. No one would cut off her head. She stepped closer and heat seared her skin. She couldn’t. Only one choice then.
Run like hell.
* * * * *
Erika Holt writes and edits speculative fiction and has stories upcoming in Shelter of Daylight and Tesseracts Fifteen: A Case of Quite Curious Tales. Recently she co-edited Rigor Amortis, a flash fiction anthology of zombie erotica, and her current anthology project, Broken Time Blues: Fantastic Tales in the Roaring ‘20s, is now out. She also interns for award-winning anthologist Jennifer Brozek, reads slush for Scape, and contributes to the Inkpunks blog. Born and raised in Calgary, Erika has included a few local landmarks in “The Deal.” This story was inspired by two songs from the quintessentially Canadian band
The Tragically Hip, namely, “At the Hundredth Meridian” and “Locked in the Trunk of a Car.”
Homo Sanguinus
By Ryan T. McFadden
The walls of the army cargo truck vibrated under the impact of thrown bottles and rocks. The mob hurled insults in a language Remmy didn’t recognize, maybe a Balkan language, and he closed his eyes, wishing that he could just wake up back in the compound. He didn’t like encountering the survivors. These accidents brought out the worst in Homo sapiens — looting, raping, and murder. And yet they feared him and his kind.
It will be dark soon, his internal voice taunted him.
The human soldiers in the truck fidgeted with their automatic rifles, faces hidden behind gasmasks. Remmy wasn’t sure if their nervousness was from the angry mob or from sitting so close to him — a Homo Sanguinus.
Remmy’s Handler, a man named Okami, checked his timepiece, then startled as a particularly large projectile dented the metal wall near his head.
“It’s going to be dark soon, isn’t it?” Remmy asked.
“I’ll take care of it.” Okami’s voice filtered through his gasmask. He stumbled along the hanging hand straps to the back and glanced out the reinforced tailgate window into the wake of locals, most not wearing environmental suits.
“We’ve run out of time, Corporal,” Okami said, voice muffled from the mask. “Fire a warning shot above their heads.”
“Sir?”
“We’re late. Does that mean anything to you?”
The soldier glanced back at Remmy, then nodded.
Remmy’s stomach coiled painfully but not because he wasn’t wearing a gas mask to filter the heavy concentration of chlorine or phosgenes. His last infusion had been two days ago and already his hands was so tight that his fingers curled into claws.
Okami unlatched the window and the soldier took his position. He fired a quick burst along the horizon. The crowd fell back, momentarily.
“Jesus,” Okami muttered. “I said over their heads.”
“Sir—”
