Long Chills

by Ronald Kelly

  “Fix me up, Doc,” croaked the General through bloody lips. “My body, it’s all screwed up. You gotta give me a new one. You hear me? You’ve got to… or else my men have orders to kill you and your pretty nurse right here and now.”

  “A head-to-torso graft is a very tricky procedure. I’m not sure I can pull it off successfully. Besides, due to your little show of authority last week, the body parts I have in stock are extremely limited as far as quality is concerned. I would have to make do with what I have handy.”

  “Damn the quality! Just do it… fast!”

  The General was carried into the operating room and laid upon the table. Nurse Taylor fired up the generator and Rourke began to gather his welding equipment.

  “Walker! Get over here!” shouted Payne. The colonel approached his leader’s side. “I want the defensive to go on as planned. Take the unit down to the southern limits and really kick some ass!”

  “But what about you?”

  “Don’t worry. Leave me Lackey over there, just to make sure things go straight with this body job the Doc’s going to give me. After the battle, come back for us. If there has been some foul play on the part of the good doctor here, then you have orders to terminate both him and his nurse. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir!” Walker saluted and ordered the men to return to the convoy. The only one who remained was Private Lackey, a swaggering youth with a garish neon green mohawk, an Uzi, and a chest covered with stolen medals, one of them a five-pointed star proclaiming WACO SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT.

  “No funny stuff now,” warned the soldier, snapping back the bolt of his submachine gun. “You fix up the General real nice and you’ll be just fine. Screw it up and I’ll grind you and Florence Nightingale into hamburger meat.”

  As Rourke proceeded to administer the anesthesia, Payne glared up at him threateningly. “Do it right!”

  “Don’t worry, General… I will.”

  After the patient had slipped into a state of drug-induced slumber, Rourke turned to the young private. “Would you mind accompanying Nurse Taylor to the freezer? She will need some help carrying the replacements to the thaw bath for final preparation.”

  Lackey shrugged. “Sure, I guess so.” He shouldered the Uzi and followed the nurse out of the operating room. Taylor pushed a gurney toward the deep-freeze and, after opening the heavy steel door, entered the dark interior. The soldier tagged along, his right hand resting on the butt of his holstered .45.

  “There they are,” said the nurse, pointing. “On the shelves at the back wall.”

  Lackey took a flashlight from his utility belt and walked to the rear of the freezer. Clouds of frosty breath billowed from his mouth and nostrils. When he reached the shelves, he studied the plastic-wrapped parcels in the pale beam of his light.

  He turned, his mouth open, his brow creased in genuine puzzlement. He didn’t see the half-moon blade of the scalpel rising in Nurse Taylor’s hand, chromed and deadly.

  Neither did he feel the flesh of his throat part cleanly or the rasp of honed steel against his neckbone. All he saw was the shocking amount of blood that splattered across his shiny medals – before darkness swiftly overtook him.

  “He’s coming to, Doctor.”

  Payne began to open his eyes, then screwed them shut against the blazing brilliance of the overhead fluorescence. He laid there for a moment, gradually growing aware of nagging pain and discomfort. He tried to lift his head, but the numbing effect of the anesthesia made that simple action impossible.

  “Lackey…” he whispered. His voice sounded slurred and muffled, as if his head was stuffed with thick wads of cotton. “Dammit, Lackey! Where are you?”

  He received no answer, but could definitely detect the presence of two people in the room. Painfully, he again opened his eyes and squinted against the white glow. Doctor Rourke and his nurse stood to either side of the recovery table. They looked exhausted, their canvas gowns heavily stained with blood. Satisfaction crept through Payne’s sluggish thoughts. The grueling session of surgery had certainly left its mark on them.

  “Well, Doc,” asked Payne, “was the operation a success?” He fought to break through the grogginess that weighed him down and slowly felt himself gaining ground.

  “We did what had to be done.”

  Payne felt his new limbs gradually begin to regain sensation. Throbs of dull agony flared at the joints where Rourke’s unique procedure had fused limbs to torso and torso to head. “Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

  “I don’t believe you’ve grasped my full meaning,” Rourke told him

  Payne stared at the two. Both merely stood there, looking at him peculiarly. A strange feeling hit him then, one he was more accustomed to dishing out than experiencing himself. A feeling of dark, gut-sinking dread. “I don’t follow you, Doc.”

  Rourke regarded him for a long moment, his face emotionless. “We are both very powerful men, General Payne. You possess the qualities of leadership and military might, while I have the knowledge of science and medicine. Both are good things, precious things, when used within reason. But the abuse of either can destroy their practicality and lead to chaos. That is what has happened around us. That is why the great nations of this world have ground to a halt and the earth lies in ruin and decay.

  “In the face of such a devastating situation, we were both given rare opportunities. Both of us were allowed to survive, whether by divine providence or sheer dumb luck, I have no idea. What it all boils down to is that civilization hit rock bottom and we were two out of a handful who had the abilities to make a significant difference. I have tried my best to do my part, to ease the suffering of the people of Ruin Town and offer them a semblance of hope for the future. You, on the other hand, have brought them only pain and despair. We have been caught up in a vicious cycle, you and I. I put them together, you take them apart… the process is unending. And your crimes have not merely been physical in nature. Your burning hatred for those not of your race has become infamous. You and your men have stripped those poor people of any lingering trace of ethnic pride and replaced it with fear and doubt. You have gravely abused and misused them, turning them into targets for your bigotry and unwilling instruments for your own selfish gains. And I’m certain that you would have continued your vicious reign without the knowledge of how they suffered, without the opportunity of experiencing what they have endured – if that improvised explosive device had not twisted the course of events and brought you here to me today.”

  “What are you trying to say?” growled Payne. His new heart pounded within his alien chest as he struggled to lift himself. His alarm was compounded when he felt the weakness and instability of his new limbs.

  “What he is saying, General,” replied Nurse Taylor, “is that abuse begets abuse. That atrocity, by the willingness of its commitment, demands an equal share.” She turned to the physician. “Doctor, I believe we have some packing to do.”

  The nurse could hear the distant staccato of artillery fire and knew that it would not last forever. After the battle had been fought, the victors would be arriving in search of their illustrious General. It would be best for her and her employer if they took their leave before the General was discovered.

  Rourke nodded solemnly. “I have learned to live with your abuse for a very long time, General. Now you must learn to live with mine.”

  As the two left the recovery room, confusion gripped the commanding officer. Frantically, he lifted himself on trembling arms, intent on demanding that Rourke explain himself. But the sight that suddenly confronted him brought stark reality crashing down upon him. He felt an uncontrollable surge of wild revulsion grip him, but this time it was not directed toward those at whom he had made a career of loathing. No, this time the powerful hatred was directed at his own, newly-constructed body.

  For instead of the sturdy limbs of an adult male, the slender brown arms of a Mexican child supported him. The girlish nails were bitten to the quick and painted a brilliant pink.
A choke of mounting terror rose in his throat as he examined the rest of his patchwork physique. The upper torso was undeniably male and muscular, yet it was the ebony hue of its black-skinned donor. Finally, as the crowning coupe de grace, the good doctor had supplied him with the lower torso and legs of a female, the reddish-bronze skin identifying it as that of an American Indian.

  His screams of horror echoed throughout the cavernous warehouse, bouncing off steel and concrete walls, amplifying his emotion a hundredfold. They lingered briefly in the presence of the healers, then resumed alone as the heavy steel door rolled slowly closed.

  Tyrophex-14

  Jasper Horne knew something was wrong when he heard the cows screaming.

  He was halfway through his breakfast of bacon, eggs, and scorched toast, when he heard their agonized bellows coming from the north pasture. At first he couldn’t figure out what had happened. He had done his milking around five o’clock that morning and herded them into the open field at six. It was now only half past seven and his twelve Jersey heifers sounded as if they were simultaneously being skinned alive.

  Jasper left his meal and, grabbing a twelve-gauge shotgun from behind the kitchen door, left the house. He checked the double-aught loads, then ran across the barnyard and climbed over the barbwire fence. It was a chilly October morning and a light fog clung low to the ground. Through the mist he could see the two-toned forms of the Jerseys next to the Clearwater stream that ran east-to-west on the Horne property. As he made his way across the brown grass and approached the creek bed, Jasper could see that only a few cows were still standing. Most were on their sides, howling like hoarse banshees, while others staggered about drunkenly.

  Good God Almighty! thought Jasper. What’s happening here?

  A moment later, he reached the pasture stream. He watched in terror as his livestock stumbled around in a blind panic. Their eyes were wild with pain and their throats emitted thunderous cries, the likes of which Jasper Horne had never heard during sixty years of Tennessee farming.

  The tableau that he witnessed that morning was hideous. One cow after another dropped to the ground and was caught in the grip of a terrible seizure. Their tortured screams ended abruptly with an ugly sizzling noise and they lay upon the withered autumn grass, twitching and shuddering in a palsy of intense agony. Then the sizzling became widespread and the inner structures of the Jerseys seemed to collapse, as if their internal organs and skeletal systems were dissolving. A strange, yellowish vapor drifted from the bodily orifices of the milk cows, quickly mingling with the crisp morning air. Then the black and white skins of the heifers slowly folded inward with a hissing sigh, leaving flattened bags of cowhide lying limply along the shallow banks of the rural stream.

  Numbly, Jasper approached the creek. He walked up to one of the dead cows and almost prodded it with the toe of his work boot, but thought better of it. He couldn’t understand what had happened to his prime milking herd. They had been at the peak of health an hour and a half ago, but now they were all gone, having suffered some horrible mass death. Jasper thought of the stream and crouched next to the trickling current. He nearly had his fingertips in the water when he noticed the nasty yellow tint of it. And it had a peculiar smell to it too, like a combination of urine and formaldehyde.

  The farmer withdrew his hand quickly, afraid to explore the stream any further. He stood up and puzzled over the dozen cow-shaped silhouettes that lay around the pasture spring. Then he headed back to the house to make a couple of phone calls.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Jasper,” said Bud Fulton. “I can’t make heads or tails of what happened here.” The Bedloe County veterinarian knelt beside one of the dead animals and poked it with a branch from a nearby sour gum tree. The deflated hide unleashed a noxious fart, then settled even further until the loose skin – now entirely black and gummy in texture – was scarcely an inch in thickness.

  “Whatever did it wasn’t natural, that’s for sure,” said Jasper glumly.

  The local sheriff, Sam Biggs, lifted his hat and scratched his balding head. “That goes without saying,” he said, frowning at the closest victim, which resembled a cow-shaped pool of wet road tar more than anything else. “Do you think it could have been some kind of odd disease or something like that, Doc?”

  “I don’t believe so,” said Bud. “The state agricultural bureau would have contacted me about something as deadly as this. No, I agree with Jasper. I think it must have been something in the stream. The cows must have ingested some sort of chemical that literally dissolved them from the inside out.”

  “Looks like it rotted away everything – muscle, tissue, and bone,” said Jasper. “What could do something like that?”

  “Some type of corrosive acid maybe,” replied the vet. He squatted next to the stream and studied the yellowish color of the water for a moment. Then he stuck the tip of the sour gum branch into the creek. A wisp of bright yellow smoke drifted off the surface of the water and, when Bud withdrew the stick, the first four inches of it were gone.

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” said Sheriff Biggs. “That water just gobbled it right up, didn’t it?” He took a wary step back from the stream.

  Bud nodded absently and tossed the entire stick into the creek. They watched as it dissolved completely and the ashy dregs washed further downstream. “I’m going to take a sample of this with me,” said the vet.

  The doctor opened his medical bag and took out a small glass jar that he used for collecting urine and sperm samples from the area livestock. He lowered the mouth of the container to the surface of the stream, but dropped it the moment the glass began to smolder and liquefy. “What the hell have we got here?” he wondered aloud as the vial melted and mingled with the jaundiced currents, becoming as free and flowing as the water itself.

  The three exchanged uneasy glances. Jasper Horne reached into the side pocket of his overalls and withdrew a small engraved tin that he kept his smokeless tobacco in. He opened it, shook the snuff out of it, and handed it to the veterinarian. “Here, try this.”

  Bud Fulton stuck the edge of the circular container into the creek and, finding that the chemical had no effect on the metal, dipped a quantity of the tainted water out and closed the lid. He then took a roll of medical tape, wrapped it securely around the sides of the tobacco tin, and carefully placed it in his bag. “I’ll need another water sample,” he told Jasper. “From your well.”

  Jasper’s eyes widened behind his spectacles. “Lordy Mercy! You mean to say that confounded stuff might’ve gotten into my water supply?” He paled at the thought of taking an innocent drink from the kitchen tap and ending up like one of his unfortunate heifers.

  “Could be, if this chemical has seeped into an underground stream,” said Bud. “I’m going to make a special trip to Nashville today and see what the boys at the state lab can come up with. If I were you, Jasper, I wouldn’t use a drop of water from that well until I get the test results.”

  “I’ll run into town later on and buy me some bottled water,” agreed Jasper. “But where could this stuff have come from?” The elderly farmer wracked his brain for a moment, then looked toward the east with sudden suspicion in his eyes. “Sheriff, you don’t think – ?”

  Sam Biggs had already come to the same conclusion. “The county landfill. This stream runs right by it.”

  “Dammit!” cussed Jasper. “I knew that it would come to something like this when they voted to put that confounded dump near my place! Always feared that this creek would get polluted and poison my animals, and now it’s done gone and happened!”

  “Now, just calm down, Jasper,” said the sheriff. “If you want, we can drive over to the landfill and talk to the fellow in charge. Maybe we can find out something. But you’ve got to promise to behave yourself and not go flying off the handle.”

  “I won’t give you cause to worry,” said Jasper, although anger still flared in his rheumy eyes. “Are you coming with us, Doc?”

  “No, I thi
nk I’ll go on and take these water samples to Nashville,” said Bud. “I’m kind of anxious to find out what those state chemists have to say. I’m afraid there might be more at stake here than a few cows. The contamination could be more widespread than we know.”

  “What are you saying, Mr. Horne?” asked Alan Becket, the caretaker of the Bedloe County landfill. “That I deliberately let somebody dump chemical waste in this place?”

  Jasper Horne jutted his jaw defiantly. “Well, did you? I’ve heard that some folks look the other way for a few bucks. Maybe you’ve got some customers from Nashville who grease your palm for dumping God-knows-what in one of those big ditches over yonder.”

  Sheriff Biggs laid a hand on the farmer’s shoulder. “Now, you can’t go making accusations before all the facts are known, Jasper. Alan has lived here in Bedloe County all his life. We’ve known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. That’s why we gave him the job in the first place, because he can be trusted to do the right thing.”

  “But what about that stuff in my stream?” asked the old man. “If it didn’t come from here, then where the hell did it come from?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Sam Biggs. He turned to the caretaker. “Can you think of anything out of the ordinary that might’ve been dumped here, Alan? Maybe some drums with strange markings, or no markings at all?”

  “No, sir,” declared Becket. “I’m careful about what I let folks dump in here. I check everything when it comes through the gate. And if someone had come around wanting to get rid of some chemicals on the sly, I’d have called you on the spot, Sheriff.”

  Biggs nodded. “I figured as much, Alan, and I’m sorry I doubted you.” The lawman stared off across the dusty hundred acre landfill. A couple of bulldozers could be seen in the distance, shoveling mounds of garbage into deep furrows. “You don’t mind if we take a look around, do you? Just to satisfy our curiosity?”