by J. C. Nelson
Until the screaming started.
BRYNNER
At least Grace Roberts had the good sense to stay in the car. After her arbitrary field promotion back at headquarters, I’d worried she might decide that a pay upgrade meant a responsibility upgrade. If she got killed as part of my team, it would be my fault.
I went in through the doors and ducked behind the front bar. From across the dining room came shuffling footsteps. I peeked in the mirrored wall of the bar, using it to find out what we were dealing with. A flicker of movement caught my eye. I watched the form in the mirror. The graceless movements. The lurching lack of balance.
A shambler. The disjointed movements made it clear. When a Re-Animus was done with a corpse, it could choose to let it go. Remnants of the Re-Animus would keep it moving, but unintelligent. The result was a co-org, to use Grace Roberts’s term, without direction.
It would move aimlessly, until something caught its eye. Then it would attack. Sharpened fingernails, razor-sharp teeth, and inhuman strength made a shambler plenty dangerous.
Nothing I couldn’t handle, or didn’t handle a dozen times a year. I waited until it dragged past, then vaulted over the bar. My ribs sang out in pain, letting me know I hadn’t taken a vacation. Hadn’t rested.
Rest was for the dead.
My feet caught a glass as I leaped over, and it crashed to the floor in shards. The shambler jerked around, looking in my direction.
I held still. Without a Re-Animus driving it, the shambler would be attracted to movement and sound. Despite the name, fresh ones could almost run.
This one was fresh. A corpse less than a day old. Dark spots along the fingers where blood pooled, eyes that weren’t sunken in. Good and bad, in a way. Given time, the Re-Animus could strengthen a corpse. Give it insane power.
This one hadn’t been dead long enough for that. Whatever the Re-Animus did, it did, and let the corpse go. I held still, willing even my breathing to stop. It turned, a wheezing breath escaping it. Its core nervous system still tried to respond, even after Re-Animus exposure.
In the restaurant, someone sobbed.
The shambler veered away, shuffling down the line of tables. I followed, my blade drawn, freezing as it turned a corner and doing my best to remain silent as I closed in on it. All I needed was for it to stay focused on something else.
The sobbing continued, from under a wide, circular table covered with a red tablecloth. If there’d been a Re-Animus in control, the shambler would have pulled off the cloth and looked under it. Instead, it bumped into the table and shuffled in circles. Each time, it swung loose arms, and each time, came up empty.
When it came around to face me, it stopped. The malfunctioning brain couldn’t pick out what I was. Wouldn’t know me as a field operative of the BSI. But it could tell I wasn’t a piece of furniture. The empty eyes stared out at me, waiting for me to move. It raised a hand with raw fingertips toward me. Buried in a fine suit, this meat-skin would have fit in perfectly during dining hours, if it weren’t for the fact that it seemed to prefer its meal on the hoof—or the sneaker.
The meat-skin lunged for me.
I stepped to the side, swinging my knife at its outstretched arm. The amber coating on the blade flashed, black smoke pouring out where I’d scored a hit, and the shambler moaned in pain, almost as loudly as I did from the exertion.
The wounded shambler raged about, flailing arms, lurching back and forth. I backed up, letting the amber do its dirty work. Every second now, Re-Animus remnants spread thinner and thinner, until it could no longer control the corpse, and I’d have another dead body.
It stumbled and threw the table to the side, death throes giving it the strength of twenty men. I’d seen them break marble before. Seen them smash their own skulls in blind fury.
Where the table had been, a woman cowered, her arms wrapped like iron around a young girl. She shrieked and kicked her feet, jerking backward.
I ran head-on between them, swinging the knife up as the shambler’s gaze locked downward, an empty thought of killing its only driving force.
Arms outstretched, it fell forward, its hands twisted into rictus claws.
I drove my blade into its heart, ignoring the black smoke that poured out like water, ignoring the flailing that smashed me in the chest, tearing my stitches.
I collapsed to the ground on top of it, then pushed my way up. The woman still wouldn’t look at me, squirming her way backward, dragging the little girl underneath another booth table.
I gasped, forcing myself to breathe through the pain. “It’s all right. I killed it.”
My words broke through to her, and her glassy eyes fixed on me. For one moment, she focused. She screamed again. Looking past me.
I took a breath of fire through cracked ribs and looked over my shoulder. Two more shamblers were emerging from the kitchen, faces and hands bloody. They paused for a moment, dead eyes scanning the restaurant. Then locked onto the booth, the woman wailing like a banshee underneath it.
They came for us all.
Six
GRACE
The constant chatter of the scanner disappeared, drowned by the crowd’s roar. They crushed each other in a mad attempt to flee. The screaming inside continued, audible even inside the car, along with the sounds of breaking glass and shattering dishes.
“You going to help or not?” Lou’s face looked the way I felt. Absolute terror, pure white fear.
I glanced down at the Deliverator, but couldn’t keep my hands from trembling just thinking about it. I’d passed the mandatory firearms training course when I joined the BSI. Knew the gun wouldn’t bite. Knew it could kill. “Call for help. Get another field team down here.”
He shook his head, patting the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. “Jesus, lady, there’s co-orgs showing up everywhere. There’s not going to be another team.”
I offered him the Deliverator. “I could do more harm than good in there. You do it. I’m a translator.”
“That badge says different.” He looked at my BSI badge, almost accusing me.
Field pay. Field operative. Didn’t the director tell me this would be safe? I didn’t sign up for killing co-orgs. I didn’t sign up for killing spiders. One look at Lou said he might be the only person in the situation more terrified than I was.
From the safety of my office, taking on the dead seemed so much easier. For one split second, I wished I believed the way the other field operatives did. Wished I had a bag of religious symbols and the confidence someone wanted me to win. But as far as I could tell, we made our own decisions.
I took my Deliverator and stepped out onto the pier. I wasn’t even dressed for a fight. Sure, I wore the same shade of dark gray all BSI personnel did, long sleeves and pants, but that was the end of my similarity to Brynner. My suit wasn’t even one of the normal tailored ones. I bought it on the clearance rack at a thrift store. Not that the police could tell. They backed away, giving me space. Thinking I was somehow ready, or trained. Or fit.
I couldn’t ignore the screams of terror inside. With a shaky hand, I pulled open the restaurant door. My heart pounded in my chest like it was trying to make a break for the safety of the car. In that moment, I stepped out of my safe, normal assignment and into a building with a real co-org.
I couldn’t see the source of the screaming. Like most of the pier restaurants, the dining room ran parallel to the water, and wide windows from floor to roof showed sparkling waters beyond. The co-orgs stood out, silhouetted by sunlight across the water. I’d seen them in labs before. Stripped of clothing, tattooed with measurement marks so our scientists could detail changes in the body structure. These still wore the clothes they were buried in.
Behind me, the door clicked closed, and one of the co-orgs turned toward me. Once an overweight man, most of its belly was gone, a raw expanse of intestines all that remained. What was the phrase Brynner used for it? Meat-skin? It fit. The thing in front of me sagged on its bones, jaws hanging loose, eyes
vacant.
Just behind it, Brynner wrestled with another one, while another corpse lay on the floor.
I set my feet, raising the Deliverator in both hands to keep steady. The .22 I’d used in training barely kicked at all. When I squeezed the trigger on the Deliverator, it just about tore my arm off.
A hole the size of a teacup blossomed in the co-org facing me. It lurched backward, slammed into a table, and staggered forward. I waited this time, putting a bullet directly into its sternum. And still it lumbered toward me.
“Hold your fire, damn it!” Brynner screamed as he fell backward.
Recognition bloomed, making me sick. The bullets had passed right through the co-org in front of me and buried themselves in the co-org he fought. Two inches over and they would have punched a hole right through him.
So I chose the better part of valor, running down the row of tables, throwing chairs down behind me. This one truly seemed mindless, stumbling, falling, and then getting up and sprinting. I outran it, circling the dining room all the way back to where Brynner wrestled.
The co-org lay on top of Brynner, with one arm wrapped around him. With the other arm, it attempted to strangle him. By attempt, I mean, “did a good job.” I ran at it, doing my best soccer kick right into its ribs.
I might as well have kicked a boulder. The Deliverator slipped from my hand, and I went flying over both of them, tripping and crashing into a chair. My leg went numb everywhere it wasn’t sending bolts of pain through my spine.
Brynner bellowed, “What are you doing here?” He seized a broken chair leg, shoving it into the co-org’s mouth. In the same movement, he rolled out of the way of the one chasing me and swiped at its ankle, tripping it.
It fell at my feet, its head crashing into a table corner on the way down.
Brynner whipped out a set of daggers and stabbed both of them into the co-org he’d been fighting with, releasing a cloud of black smoke.
I stared. My first time ever seeing a co-org die. The patterns in the smoke weren’t random. They were almost like gnats in flight, or a swarm of bees. The smoke—the smoke might be the Re-Animus. The idea left me amazed. Stunned.
The co-org at my feet latched on to my ankle. With a grip like stone, it crawled its way along me, using the foot I’d smashed as leverage. I rammed an overturned chair at it, kicked with my other leg, and used both hands to intercept the claw it forced toward my throat. All I could think of was my daughter, her eyes closed while she slept in bliss. I’d never see her again.
A shot rang out.
The co-org on me stiffened, his claws nicking the skin on my neck.
Black smoke poured from a bullet hole on its side.
Brynner shoved it with his foot, rolling it off me. “First two out of every three rounds are stoppers. We use them in the legs to keep the meat-skin from going after someone else.” He put the gun carefully to the co-org’s chest and pulled the trigger three more times. “Every third one is pine, silver, holy water, and iron ore.”
I knew that. Somewhere, I remember hearing it repeated during firearms training, when I shot at monster-shaped paper targets with red paint bullets. That’s what the driver had tried to tell me as well.
The co-org stopped writhing and fell limp.
Brynner looked at the gun with disgust, and then back to me. “You almost killed me. Always look downrange of your target.” He removed the magazine from the Deliverator and hurled it at my feet. “You had no business coming in here. There’s a reason we say, ‘Don’t get dead.’”
“I was trying to help you.” My voice sounded distant, scratchy and high through the haze of adrenaline and fear.
“Do I look like I need your help?” Brynner sat down on a booth seat. Every breath he drew came with labored effort. Blood soaked through the front of his shirt, and his skin turned pale blue as he sagged over.
I snapped open my cell phone, calling BSI emergency services.
“State the nature of your emergency,” said the operator.
“This is Grace Roberts, employee ID 44902. We have a field operative down.”
I floated on a cloud of pain killers through the night, and a haze of guilt and anger the next day. At noon, the doctors released me, content I had no concussion. They let me go with a handful of aspirin and a wrap on my foot that made squeezing into my comfortable tennis shoes near impossible.
I had nowhere to go.
Home was a two-hour drive, and my car was back at BSI headquarters. So when I limped out the door of the hospital and saw Dr. Thomas waiting, I could only feel relief. He didn’t ask questions. Just opened the door, let me get in, and drove me back to BSI headquarters.
In the parking garage, he cut the engine and looked over at me. “You could have been killed.”
“I know. I almost shot Brynner by accident.”
“I doubt you were trained for those situations, Grace. You have a powerful mind, and determination, but those are only part of dealing with field operations. I’m sure next time you’ll be less likely to shoot him. Right now, the director would like to speak with you.” He opened his door, and we got out. “Just remember that field teams always stick together.”
I rode the elevator to the director’s office on my own, limped to her receptionist, who to my dismay, opened the door for me without delay.
She leaned into her phone. “Grace Roberts is out of the hospital.” She looked back at me with a look of pity. “The director will see you immediately.”
I dragged my foot on the way into Director Bismuth’s office, making each step slow and careful.
She sat behind her desk, reading a report. She didn’t look up to meet me. “You weren’t walking like that when you exited the elevator.” With one hand, she pointed to a bank of camera monitors. “Tell me again what it is you do for the BSI?”
I faced her head-on. “I’m a first-rank translator for ideoglyphic languages. Minor in Egyptian culture.”
“Did your courses include training in heavy arms?” “No.”
“What is the outfit you are wearing?” The director stopped to rake her gaze over my bloody clothes.
I stuttered, starting to name brands.
She cut me off, her jaw set, her eyes narrow. “Is it laced with Kevlar? Fitted to your body? Designed to withstand two hundred pounds per square inch? Because if it is not, I have to ask what you were thinking.”
“The driver said—”
“Our drivers have a license, a GED, and get paid minimum wage.” The director stood. “Answer the question.”
I grasped at Dr. Thomas’s suggestion like a lifeline. “Field teams back each other up. Always.”
Without answer, she walked past me, slamming the office door shut. Director Bismuth began to pace around the room, watching me the whole time. After several laps she stopped. “Ms. Roberts, how did you wind up at the restaurant?”
I recounted the story, and how Brynner charged in. How I felt like I had to do something. “He was part of my field team.”
She nodded, then punched numbers on her desk phone. “Put me through to room 223. This is Margret Bismuth. You’ll find me listed under ‘Family.’”
The phone clicked, and after a moment, Brynner answered. “Carson speaking.”
Director Bismuth’s eyes bulged from her head, and she snarled at the phone. “How could you do that? What were you thinking? You were supposed to be on a plane to New Mexico. You foolishly led an analyst into a situation with multiple co-orgs.”
“Good to hear from you, too, Aunt Maggie.” Brynner coughed. “Did Grace tell you she almost shot me? I’m fine, in case you are wondering.”
She glowered at the phone like her gaze could melt it. “You are not. Medical didn’t clear you to take active assignments. I didn’t clear you for this operation. And you should know that I have Grace Roberts in my office right now.”
I think the noise from the other end was the sound of Brynner choking.
“You are the closest thing I have to family,
Brynner Carson, but you will never be your father. Heinrich Carson put other people’s safety first.”
She spun in her chair, her back to me. “You will escort Ms. Roberts to your aunt and uncle’s home and ensure she obtains access to your father’s journals. Your only assignment will be to rest and heal. I’ve read our psychiatrist’s report. He wrote enough about you to cover an entire field team.”
Only silence answered.
“Your priority is to determine the location of this heart. It is your only priority. If I find that you have led Ms. Roberts into contact with another co-org, I will terminate your association with the BSI. I love you like a son, Brynner, but I can’t allow you to endanger others. Now, get ready. You’ll leave on the three o’clock flight.”
She didn’t wait for his answer.
The afternoon sun sparkled on distant ferries moving in and out of the port, and the office building murmured with noonday work. I was lost in my own head, rewinding the conversation to play it over in my head again and again.
“You’re his aunt?”
When the director turned back to me, the edges of her lips curled up ever so slightly. “Not in the strictest sense, but some family you don’t get to choose. Lara and Heinrich were my best friends. I meant what I said when I dispatched you. You are to translate Heinrich’s journals, file the reports, and come home.”
“Brynner didn’t ask me to go into the restaurant.”
“No, but I ordered him to catch a flight, and he ignored me. He should have known you would follow him. Field teams do in fact stick together.”
I nodded. “Next time I’ll leave the co-orgs to him.”
“I meant what I said to you about this being a safe, quiet assignment. There isn’t to be a next time. If Brynner does attempt to drag you into another encounter, you are to call me immediately.”
She walked around the desk, pressing a business card into my hand. “Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I rose, sensing a dismissal.
