Vivisepulture
Page 15
The lights changed and the truck surged forward, turned sharply, cut across the line of oncoming traffic and took a right. Anders revved, crunched gears and went after him, ignoring the angry hoots of braking motorists.
Duthie was shaken. ‘What are you doing? What about the job?’
‘He’s coming from where we’re going. Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?’
‘He’s picking up speed. What do you reckon he’s got in there?’
‘Nothing he wants to get caught with, the rate he’s going.’
There were fewer vehicles on the street they were travelling along, so Anders put his foot down. Ahead, Grogan shot over a junction.
‘He just went through a red light!’ Duthie exclaimed. ‘Shouldn’t we call this in, Craig?’
‘In a minute. Let’s see where he’s going.’
Duthie thought Anders was going to run the light, just like Grogan did, and gripped the dashboard, knuckles whitening. But it flicked to amber a second before they got there and they sailed across.
Anders hit the siren button. The throbbing crimson and orange warning lights reflected on their bonnet.
‘Can we do that? We’re not the cops.’
‘If he’s got something he shouldn’t have in that load we’re justified, Bob.’
Grogan took an abrupt left without indicating. Anders managed to follow. The street they entered was run-down. Grimy terraced houses stood alongside deserted light industrial workshops and roofless warehouses. The truck put on a further burst of speed.
Then Grogan tried for another last minute turn, to the right this time. The turn was acute and the truck’s velocity was high. Its left-side wheels came off the ground. For a split second it looked as though it might just manage the bend. But the angle was too much. The lorry tilted and its load shifted. Control was lost. The truck hit the kerb and flipped onto its back with a tremendous crash. Its cargo of cylinders scattered in all directions.
Anders stamped on the brakes. The van skidded to a halt a block to the rear of the wreck.
Duthie cried ‘Jesus Christ!’ Ripping off his seat belt he got the door open and leapt out.
‘No!’ Anders yelled. ‘Stay here! It’s dangerous!’
The youth ignored him and dashed towards the truck.
Anders groped for his mask and slipped it on. Grabbing another for Duthie, he scrambled out of the van and headed for the wreck.
A stiff wind was blowing, churning litter and brown leafs.
Duthie was at the truck, crouching to stare into the upturned cab. A couple of the vehicle’s wheels were still spinning and smoke was rising from it. Afraid it was going to explode, Anders began to run, cursing himself for being so out of shape.
He saw Duthie back off from the wreckage, then turn and run away in the opposite direction. Baffled, and in shock, Anders shouted, frustrated that the mask muted the sound.
Breathing hard, he reached the scene. Bits of the broken windscreen crunched under his feet. Scores of canisters were strewn across the road and pavements. Many of them were fractured.
He knelt and gazed into the cab. Grogan was still strapped in, hanging limply like a puppet, covered in blood. He looked badly injured. Possibly dead.
There was a din of breaking glass from along the road. And again. He saw Duthie kicking in shop windows as he moved farther away. Anders resisted the urge to lift his mask and call to him. Reaching for his mobile, he swore when he realised he’d left it in the van. He decided to try getting Grogan out.
As he stooped again his eye was caught by fragments of a shattered cylinder. One piece had the letters NA on it, stencilled in white; presumably part of the name of the distillate it held. Or had held. Another read RCHY. He struggled to open the truck’s door. Its frame was twisted and he couldn’t budge it. He was considering whether to go back to the van for the phone and his tool kit when he heard more glass breaking. Not just from the way Duthie had gone but from several different directions.
He straightened and listened. Car horns were sounding. Shouts and screams were coming from all sides. He saw what looked like a crowd gathering outside a building way down the road, and although he couldn’t be sure he thought there were flames issuing from it.
Feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the weather he was again aware of the wind.
He trod on another jagged shard of canister. As he kicked it aside he noticed that it was marked with the letter A.
Anders heard distant sirens, and what could have been gunfire.
SNOT
by
ANDY REMIC
I
FRIDAY
It all began when he blew his nose and a good pint of thick orange snot spewed from his nostrils, filled his cupped handkerchief, overflowed his trembling fingers and pooled in a wide bright circle on the carpet.
Ben Sherikov sat for a long time, silent, unmoving, staring at the brown office carpet and thick gelatinous pool which glinted spookily under white flickering strip-light.
That didn’t happen, he told himself with a shudder.
That just didn’t fucking happen.
But it had - and the evidence stared back at him: solid, real, accusing, and orange.
Slowly, he reached for the tissues on his broad teak desk and wiped the sticky mess from his fingers. Carefully, he wrapped his ruined handkerchief in tissue and dropped it tenderly into the bin. Then, glancing around at the office internal window to make sure nobody was observing from the sanctuary beyond mottled cream blinds, he got down on his knees and began to scoop up the mess.
It took him a full fifteen minutes, and five large boxes of Helix Tissues. He got the... the stuff on his trousers, his shirt, and his tie. There was a faint metallic smell in the air. The stuff burned his skin.
The - hell, he thought, just say the word! - the snot was dense and coagulated in the manner of honey or glue, and left a circle of ruined bare carpet in its wake.
Ben stood with hands on hips for long, long minutes, staring down at the oval patch of grey. "Shit," he said at last, and reaching behind to his drinks tray, poured a small glass of Bausch & Lamb Peach Schnapps. He downed the liquor in one, and hearing the office door open, shuffled almost instinctively to stand over the grey patch of guilt and accusation before turning with a weak smile and raised eyebrows. “Yeah?”
"Ben, man, we’re going into town for pizza. You fancy it?"
Ben stared hard at Sylvester’s face - wide and smiling and good-natured, with its crop of curly blonde hair and shining eyes. Does he know? screamed Ben’s mind suddenly. He must know! How could he fail to see it? To fucking smell it? To taste it through the ventilation slits?
There was a long and uncomfortable pause. Finally, Ben shuddered. "No," he managed, voice barely more than a croak. He coughed, aware that grey accusations, an unfurled petal of snot-destruction, squatted under his boots. "Strangely, I’m not feeling very hungry," he said.
"Come on, Ben man, it’s Friday! Weekend’s here! Time to party! Eat pizza! Pick up chicks! Drink beer! Come on, man, don’t be a fucking dreg!"
Ben slumped into his executive chair and swivelled presenting the broad denial of his back. "Just go," he whispered, and listened as the door clicked shut and the outside office noises - the tap of techboards, chatter, the occasional hum of the coffee machine – faded, and Ben was left alone with his thoughts. Alone with his thoughts – and his snot.
What is it? Just what the hell is it?
Reaching over, he grabbed a few papers from his desk and screwed them up, then dropped them tactfully over the orange mess in his little basket bin – now full to the brim with tissues and hardened orange snot.
Scratching his chin, his stubble, he edged his chair closer to the desk and switched on his HELIX PC!!!. He watched the flicker of alien letters as the machine booted, but his brain would not operate, would not engage - all he could picture was a stream of orange disgorging violently from his own body, from his own damn face... and relived that strange,
breathless, weightless feeling as his nose spat its unsightly contents onto the waiting carpet.
“Shit.”
He sat for long minutes, then reaching up tenderly touched his nose with shaking fingers. There was no pain, no swelling, no indication of anything whatsoever amiss. Ben took several exaggerated deep breaths. He had no tightness in his chest. No shortness of breath. And he suffered from no illness to the best of his knowledge...
"Shit!" he said again, angry now, and pushing away his chair he left his office and hurried across the wide carpeted aisles, past rows of techboard operators and towards the restroom and the mocking, watching, capering homunculus symbol on the door. Was it a gents or a fucking circus?
He burst in, strode across glittering tiles, stood before the mirror examining his face with painful, strained intensity. It stared back.
No deformity.
No swelling.
His nose looked just - fine. Fine?
Ben lifted his head, looked up his nostrils, but could spy nothing amiss. A few hairs that needed trimming, perhaps. But no blood, no pain, no bucket of orange mucus... no snot!
Suddenly, Ben realised a suit was pissing in a urinal further down the chamber; coughing in embarrassment at his nasal inspection, Ben turned on the taps and washed his hands, then smiled and nodded in greeting as the suit left the toilet and afforded Ben some precious privacy.
Back to the mirror. He examined his face, contorting, stretching and gurning. Still nothing presented itself and Ben decided to take the ultimate test, the ultimate fear-filled challenge -
Reaching out, he tugged free a paper towel and braced himself, legs apart, paper towel held in cupped hands, face targeted above a gleaming, sparkling sink. Tense. Ready. Frightened!
He blew his nose...
Nothing ... nothing came out! Ben’s eyes searched the rugged paper landscape with two powerful emotions fighting for precedence in his spinning mind. One, he was so glad, so thankful that his nose hadn’t flooded the sink that he almost wept with joy. But in contrast, a feeling of strangeness and detachment overcame him, and he looked up into his reflected orbs, into his own bright blue eyes as if searching for answers, for explanations, for... hell, for anything.
Was he imagining it?
No... He shook his head.
But was he?
He scuttled back to his office, and closing the door with quiet care he pulled back his chair and fell to his knees before the circular grey patch on the carpet.
It sat there like a turd on a rug. Large as life. Real as sin. Dirty as a motherfucker.
Ben ran his fingers over the grey surface and found the whole patch of ruined carpet hard, brittle almost. There was a smell, lingering but non-specific. The carpet fibres had been blitzed by his nasal napalm. Mutilated by disgorged detritus.
Ben spent the afternoon in a daze, and his HELIX PC!!! sat uncomplaining on his desk with Space Tits happily flapping their way towards a dark and depressing infinity ...
"Something’s wrong," he muttered.
He was damn right.
Mongrel stood outside the towering BlueX Corporation buildings under pouring rain, twitching. The Mongrel usually twitched - on account of a wound he’d received during the Third Stone War whilst stealing a HTank. Now, rain ran in rivulets from his short, tufted brown hair and he waited with the patience of Fate.
There came a distant click. Or so he imagined.
Glancing up, Mongrel saw the office light go out and smiled, a grim smile, the sort of smile which can only decorate the face of a man who’s had two fingers blown off by a grenade. Bending his head against the elemental onslaught, Mongrel pounded across the car park and dived into his parked Volvo.
Dripping, he slumped in his seat and placed his Nikon II on the mottled dash. He sat motionless, waiting, a grey and static gargoyle behind the steering wheel until the windows steamed up. Cursing, Mongrel rubbed a circular three-fingered patch in the steam and watched a man hurry from the building clutching an umbrella and briefcase, to get into his own groundcar cursing the downpour.
The car sped off, tail lights flickering briefly as he stopped at the Gatehouse for clearance; then he disappeared in a cloud of evil tox fumes.
Mongrel turned his own key and the Volvo stuttered, back-fired, then coughed into life. "Baby," gurgled Mongrel, and followed the targeted car down the dark evening streets and away from BlueX in a violent Series Z7 cloud of exhaust poison.
Ben Sherikov drove home in a dazed daze. He wasn’t thinking about the incident with his nose. He wasn’t thinking about anything.
Rain splattered his windscreen and the rhythmical whump of wipers cleared his vision for a few moments with monotonous regularity. Just like my life, he thought. Monotonous. The motorway was busy, especially around junctions 7 and 8, but the hum of the lirridium engine soothed Ben, soothed his tired, overworked mind, soothed his fully firing morbid imagination...
It was nothing!
NOTHING! A bit of catarrh, was all.
A sudden blaring horn brought Ben wide-eyed back to life, and he heaved the wheel right as his car swerved squealing and he fought to regain his own lane; a driver waved his fist and sped off, cutting in front of Ben and disappearing down the busy carriageway.
"Suck it," muttered Ben, and decided he wasn’t feeling very well. He allowed his speed to drop. Down to 60. To 50. He eased into the ant-like slow lane and switched on the radio and opened the window to let in cool, rain-tickled air.
The radio droned a miserable drone of clashing guitars and banging drums, but the cold air smelling fresh with rain and what remained of the countryside surrounding the motorway brought Ben back to life... his cold sweat subsided and he managed to relax.
But it was there, lurking at the back of his mind, a silent intruder stalking his dreams...
A pint of snot.
From his own nose.
What was it? What did it mean? Was he seriously ill? Dying, perhaps?
"I’ll go see the doctor tomorrow," he said out loud, trying to keep the tremor from his voice. But then he remembered that the following day was a Saturday - so amended his declaration. Monday. Yeah. Monday was good... unless it happened again. Then he’d go to A&E.
Yes, he thought. Monday. Monday’s a good day. Not too much work on. I can survive a few hours off. BlueX allow you off on a Monday without kicking up too much of a stink. They’re not such bad employers, are they? As all-powerful toxic corporations go.
The DJ laughed and chuckled Ben home, and he finally pulled onto his drive, killed the lights and switched off the engine. Rain filled his vision. The engine began to clickity click. The windows steamed up. But still Ben sat until, with a deep breath, he gathered his briefcase and overcoat and umbrella, and stepping onto his drive, hurrying for the sanctuary of the porch and marriage and normality and tedious Elysium beyond.
Inside, the house was warm. Something baked in the oven and it smelled real good. "Nice day at work?" came Mary’s smiling face from the kitchen, and she kissed his cheek and took his coat.
"Not bad," he muttered. "Something smells fine!"
"Eel lasagne. And fresh bread."
"Excellent! I’ll just go and have a shower." Ben stepped over the purring Persian tom which dominated the hall rug like a king on a throne, and disappeared up the stairs.
"Justin phoned before, said he wants you to call him back," but Ben was already out of sight and sound and Mary smiled to herself. "He said it’s important!" she shouted up at the disappearing legs. "About your new business ideas in the software market!"
Still, no answer.
Okay, thought Mary. Have it your way. She stooped, patted Ralph the Persian, and returned to the kitchen to check on the lasagne, listening as water began its long dark gurgling descent down the drain. I’ve never known anybody so obsessed by cleanliness, she thought. But then: I’d rather have a clean husband than a dirty mongrel - any day.
Mongrel pulled up in his battered Volvo and drummed fingers on the s
teering wheel. Or rather, drummed his two remaining fingers and thumb on the steering wheel, the shadow flickering like an amputee spider .
What now? he thought.
Was the Information correct?
It usually was.
Reaching into his glove compartment, he pulled out a Browning and ejected the mag; he checked the 13 rounds with an expert eye, then slid the magazine home with a click.
Straining through the gloom, he made out the house number and smiled to himself. Yes, he thought. It will wait.
He accelerated gently away, the Volvo coughing and stuttering and leaving a dog - caught busy in the act of urinating against the Volvo’s rear tyre - in a cloud of dangerously poisonous fumes.
The dog was ill for several days, wishing it had never set eyes on the battered Volvo in the first place.
Ben stared at the mirror but did not see his own reflection. Rather, he was seeing through his own eyes and his head was light, his tongue dry, his mouth a crisp tunnel.
He undressed, and leaving his clothes piled in an untidy heap he stepped under the hot stream of water and revelled in the heat and play of liquid across his lightly tanned shoulders. He allowed water into his mouth and found himself swallowing, gulping the water and he forced himself to stop. Why was he so damned thirsty?
"Have I been poisoned? Am I diseased?" But only the hiss of the water answered his gentle questions and for a while everything - his life, his marriage, his house - everything, felt unreal.
Only when he stepped from the cubicle and into the steam-filled bathroom to towel himself down did some semblance of normality return; his thirst left him and his head cleared. Clarity of perception returned and he felt suddenly good... suddenly fit. He took deep breaths and towelled his hair. Maybe things weren’t so bad after all? Maybe he was getting better? Maybe things were looking up?
Mary looked down at her sleeping husband. The strain had eased from his face leaving him young, fresh, attractive. But he smelt funny and she wrinkled her nose.