Limbus, Inc., Book III

by Jonathan Maberry

  “So, what is this?” Chip asked. “You’re some kind of mad scientist?”

  “Ha ha! That is so funny, I think. Scientist yes, but mad only time to time. I am geneticist, and I do combine things to make difference, like these pets. Very good for security, and because ectotherms, like to cuddle for warmth. You like animals I hope.”

  “I’m not cuddling with a gigantic lizard,” Chip said.

  “It is not required,” said the scientist, though he seemed a little disappointed.

  “We need to take a step back,“ Chip said. “Who are you, and what am I doing here?”

  “I am Doctor Hacket Kohl, and I run Kohl Laboratories, an independent research facility. Our work is specialized, and we require the assistance of certain kinds of people. Limbus, for us, is good for finding them.”

  “Okay,” Chip said cautiously. “What sort of people do you mean?”

  “People who are free to live here, in facility. Work is not excessive—eight hour days plus one hour for lunch. Privacy, however, to us is of important upmostly, and so discretion is what we pay for. Come, let us sit.”

  Kohl ushered Chip into a clear living room, where Chip allowed himself to fall into a soft couch. Very comfortable, he noted. The massive television screen on one wall was also of great interest to him.

  A carafe of coffee and two cups were on a side table, and Kohl poured, adding three sugars and a great deal of cream to Chip’s. “Limbus informed me of your preference,” he said by way of answering Chip’s unasked question. That Limbus knew how Chip took his coffee was no longer surprising. It was one of those things he was going to have to take in stride.

  Kohl poured his own coffee and then sat. He held the cup under his nose and breathed in deeply, like he was some rich asshole on TV sampling wine. Then he sipped and let out a long sigh. “Work is taking care of animals,” said Kohl.

  “Those things?” Chip asked, gesturing toward the two Komodo dragons who were now lounging sleepily near the window, catching the early morning light.

  “You and those with whom you are sharing house must care for pets, but your job would be caring for lab animals. These are no difficulty, however. Lizards are bred to be very gentle with caregivers.” He tapped his leg and the creatures scuttled forward, nuzzling the scientist. One was trying to crawl into his lap and Kohl knocked him down.

  Kohl laughed as he patted one of the creatures. He then issued another command, and they hurried back over to the window. “You see. Only friendly. No killing. No bloody business. We make sure of it. Earlier breeds had problems.” He laughed, seeing Chip’s concern. “No, not problems of hurting. Shoe-chewing. Very bad. Habit could not be broken, so we spent many years studying problem. We did not give up until shoe-chewing behavior could be identified and removed from genetic code. It is good for you, yes?”

  “I don’t want my shoes all chewed up,” Chip offered hopefully.

  “No one does!” Kohl agreed, slapping his knee for emphasis. “So pets are easy. As for lab animals, you need not pet or be nice. Just feed, change water, clean cages. All very simple—but private. And pay is always good.”

  Chip was glad that things had moved beyond the issue of liking creatures, for which his response would be ambivalent at best. The issue of good pay, however, had his full attention. “How much are we talking about, exactly?”

  “As much as you need,” Kohl said with a great deal of indifference. “How much do you need?”

  What the hell sort of question was that? Chip had over two hundred thousand dollars in legal bills, and it wasn’t like he was going to get that for petting lizards. “I need $250,000.” Chip said, deadpan.

  “Okay,” the scientist said. “That’s good with me. I can do so.”

  “You’re going to pay me $250,000?” Chip asked.

  “I just said it.”

  “Over how long?”

  Kohl shrugged. “What is working for you? A year, I think. Yes? Then negotiate for next year. But, as I say, you must live here.”

  So, this nut was going to pay him a ton of money and Chip was going to be able to get away from his mother? This seemed too good to be true. “What’s the catch, exactly?”

  “No catch,” said Kohl, “but you will need to sign the non-disclosure agreement.”

  *

  After Chip flipped through, and then signed, the 27 page document, Kohl offered to show him around. First he took Chip upstairs to the second floor, where there was a small bedroom with a desk and twin bed on a wooden frame. It looked like it had come out of an old movie or something, as did the adjoining bathroom, with an elevated claw-foot bathtub, a sink with rusted fixtures, and a toilet that flushed by means of a curious suspended chain. The lizards had scrambled up the stairs after them and while Kohl pointed out the obvious features of the room—this is window, this is desk—they crawled up onto the bed, curled up into interlocked semicircles, and fell instantly asleep.

  “They like you,” Kohl said. “You will feed them every day. Rabbits are kept in hutch in the back. I will show you later.”

  “You want me to feed them rabbits?”

  “There is no Komodo dragon chow. They need fresh food for the health. There is place for it, don’t worry, where cleanup is easy. Not in here. You won’t have blood on your things usually. But even if you do, there will be no embarrassment, for you cannot have guests here. You understand. That also means no whores.”

  “Yeah, I think I’ve got it.”

  After showing Chip the various rooms of the house where he’d be living with two other men—Chip would meet them later—Kohl suggested that Chip return home and collect whatever he needed before he saw where he would work.

  “I’ll get my stuff later,” Chip said.

  Kohl smiled with a great deal of indulgence. “There will be no later. You cannot leave grounds once employment begins. It is what you agreed.”

  “I never agreed to that.”

  “It is in document.”

  “I thought that was a disclosure whatever.”

  “And contract,” Kohl said with a shrug. “Cab is waiting for you outside. Helpers have arranged. You go, pack your things, and return, and I show you the rest.”

  Chip suddenly didn’t like how this was sounding. “I’m not sure I’m ready to be locked up for a year.”

  Kohl’s smiled without any humor. It was the smile of a dentist getting ready to drill. “I’m sure you find another employment. Thank you for stopping by. And please remember the document you signed prevents you from speaking of anything you saw here. I am sure you are not wanting to be sued.”

  Chip had certainly had enough of the court system. The last thing he wanted was another suit. He also didn’t want to go back to his mother’s house or walk away from a paycheck that could end his financial problems.

  He looked around the house, thinking it wasn’t such a bad place to spend a year. With nothing to do and nowhere to go, maybe he would even lose some weight. He could hide from the media and the haters, and emerge with his name all but forgotten, his debts paid, his body trim, and his life ready to begin again.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  “Not too much things,” Kohl said. “The room is small. And please remember that there are not to be guns on the premises.”

  *

  The cab driver, a different one, knew where to take him and waved his hand dismissively when Chip tried to provide an address. He parked outside Chip’s mother’s house and said he would wait, but requested that Chip not take forever.

  Inside, his mother was cooking eggs and bacon in a single pan, infusing them with the scent of the cigarette that dangled from her mouth. She looked up at Chip quizzically and then set down her spatula to cinch her bathrobe. She was sophisticated in that way.

  “Where have you been so early in the morning?”

  “Job interview,” Chip explained as he hurried to his room. While he looked for an old duffle bag in his closet, he heard his mother say that it w
as a fool’s errand and that no one was ever going to hire him. Admittedly, Chip still had some misgivings about accepting the job, but his mother pretty much pushed him over the edge. He was going to prove to her, prove to the world, that he could take care of himself and clean up his own messes. He still had no idea what Dr. Kohl expected of him, other than feeding live rabbits to gigantic lizards, but he was sure it was important, something only Chip could do. Why else would they be willing to pay him so much?

  Chip opened the metal box where he kept his Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm when he wasn’t maximumly concealing it. He was going to put it away, keep it in a safe place, like under his bed, since Kohl had said not to bring weapons. Chip wanted to get along with his new employer, but he didn’t like the idea of going into this situation unable to defend himself. That was always a bad idea, and even worse when there were giant lizards involved. Anyhow, Kohl didn’t get to overturn the Second Amendment just because he felt like it. They were trying to back Chip into a corner, to tell him he could have either a gun or a job. Chip didn’t like that, and he felt the gun could help him win the argument. It seemed to him that a good compromise was to bring the gun but not tell anyone. He slipped it into his jacket.

  Once he had filled his suitcase with clean clothes that fit him, he went back out to the kitchen where he mother was sitting at the table, smoking a fresh cigarette and letting her breakfast cool while she leafed through the paper.

  “You running away from home?” she asked, not bothering to look up.

  “Got a job,” he said. “Have to go live there.”

  Now she was interested. “Who’d want to hire you?”

  “People who respect me,” Chip told her.

  She snorted.

  Outside, the taxi driver honked his horn.

  She slid her breakfast onto her plate and stared at him while she blew smoke. No hug or kiss. Not talk of her miracle baby. It was like she was waiting for him to leave.

  “I got to go, mom,” he said, and he kissed her on the cheek, less because he felt sentimental about her than because it seemed like something a person does in that sort of situation.

  *

  Back at Kohl’s house, Chip threw his suitcase on his bed and followed the scientist to the kitchen to what looked like a basement door. At least, that’s what basement doors looked like on television. He’d lived in Florida his whole life, so Chip had never seen a real basement, though he imagined they did not generally have keycard readers.

  Kohl handed Chip a keycard and directed him to swipe it. It took him a few tries—he had a hard time figuring out where the magnetic strip went, but he got it eventually. Then the door hissed open, revealing not a staircase, but a gently sloping walkway.

  “Why do you have all of this in your house?” Chip asked.

  “It is not my house. I do not own this. It is where labs are located. Our work has many detractors, and we cannot do this sort of research where the haters—it is what they are called, yes? —where the haters can complain. So there are facilities of this nature, scattered here and there, where we can blend in.”

  “I’m not sure I’m the right guy for blending in,” Chip said.

  Kohl smiled at him. “House is for blending. You are for not complaining.”

  *

  The houses, Kohl explained, were built on a slight elevation, not very noticeable, but it allowed for a warren of interconnected laboratories to exist under the block without anyone being the wiser. “These exist everywhere,” Kohl explained, “and not only for our industry. Oh, no. For bio-weapons research, experimental nuclear or quantum physics, advanced vivisection, cloning, personality digitization, penis elongation. So many of the areas for science where people like to say ‘No, no. Do not do this!’ Scientists find ways to do this.”

  At the end of the corridor, Kohl had Chip swipe his key card once more, and the door hissed open into a bustling laboratory. Men and women in white coats clustered in groups near work stations or computers, while haggard-looking orderlies wove around them looking beleaguered.

  “Here is very important lab,” Kohl said. “This is the hybrid facility. Only most, let us say, specialized, people are okay for working here. It is why we wanted for having you.”

  “I don’t have any experience with science and stuff.”

  “Specialize in being quiet.” Kohl pressed his index finger to his lips to help Chip understand. He then waved over one of the assistants who nodded at him and quickly handed one of the scientists some folders before hurrying over to the two of them. She was in her mid-thirties, perhaps, not un-pretty, but there was something very sharp and unappealing about her high cheekbones and blade of a nose. There was also something strangely familiar about her. Chip couldn’t place it, but he knew he’d seen her before, and she had that way of carrying herself that said she didn’t want to be noticed. It was something he knew all too well—the way she’d glanced at him and then turned away, as if to conceal her face. He’d been in the habit of doing that for too long now not to recognize it in someone else.

  “This is Janice,” Kohl said. “She will show you to your duties.”

  Kohl walked away before completing his introductions, so Chip held out his hand and told Janice his name.

  She shook his hand limply, but did not meet his eye. “I know who you are,” she said. “You killed that black kid.”

  “I shot someone who attacked me,” Chip corrected her, using his most gentle and unintimidating voice, “who happened to be a minority.”

  “Whatever,” said Janice. “It doesn’t matter anyhow. Though there are black people who work in the labs, so you can’t go around shooting them.”

  “I won’t shoot anyone, unless they threaten me. Then I’ll shoot the shit out of them, and being a minority won’t save them.” Chip explained this in a very matter of fact way, so that he wouldn’t come across as some kind of militant. With him, it was about self-defense. Nothing more. “I’m not going to be bullied into giving up my constitutional rights,” he elaborated.

  “You’re an American hero,” Janice said flatly. “Let me show you the room where they torture the animals.”

  *

  Janice was clearly a sarcastic person, which Chip did not admire. Sarcastic people tended to think they were smarter than everyone else, and Chip hated a superior attitude. Plus, he knew this woman from somewhere, but he didn’t want to ask her, because every question he threw at her—Are there regular breaks? Where’s the cafeteria? Is there cable TV anywhere?—made her glance at him with utter contempt.

  “The room where they torture the animals” turned out to be just a big lab with lots of cages. Most of these were filled with fairly small monkeys, no larger than cats, that hopped about happily enough, even though there wasn’t much for them to do in their space. Several of the larger cages held big monkeys or even chimps, which Chip was careful to call apes so that Janice would understand he was an educated person and had seen TV shows that explained the difference between these animals. She made it clear she wasn’t impressed.

  Janice continued to walk Chip through selected rooms in the facility. It was going to be Chip’s job to feed, water, and clean out the cages of the various animals in the facility. It was, Janice said, where everyone started. In each room there was a clipboard that included specific instructions on what to do, including how to avoid getting hurt by whatever creatures he was looking after.

  They were in the room with the rabbits when Janice pointed this out to him. “It’s very important,” she said. “Don’t take things for granted. If you get hurt doing something stupid, they’re going to be mad at you.”

  “I’m not really worried about getting mauled by a rabbit.” Chip said.

  Janice picked up a carrot from a bucket near the sink and tossed it into one of the cages. Six rabbits suddenly turned and opened their mouths, revealing needle sharp teeth. They pounced on the carrot like a school of piranha on a lamed ox.

  “You don’t know anything about these animals,”
Janice said. “Normal ideas about behavior or disposition are off the table, so you’re safer assuming everything will kill you if it gets the chance. I’m telling you this because if you get hurt too early on, they’ll think I didn’t train you properly.”

  They headed out of the rabbit lab, and Chip stopped, forcing Janice to stop as well.

  “What is the deal with this place?” he asked.

  “It’s a lab,” she said. “They do experiments.”

  “But they’re weird experiments,” Chip said. “These guys are like evil or something.”

  “What do you care?” Janice asked, hands on her hips.

  “I don’t know. I mean, I guess I kind of want to know what sort of work I’m doing.”

  “The only kind you can get,” she said, “or else you wouldn’t be here. Just like the rest of us.”

  *

  After Janice showed him the ropes, he spent the next several hours going from lab to lab, feeding and cleaning the cages of various animals, some fairly normal in appearance, some utterly strange—birds with prehensile wings and rats with distended snaking necks. Each species had a check sheet of safety protocols, explaining how to interact with the creatures without being bitten, scratched, stung, mauled, or infused with flesh-eating larvae. The work was boring and not a little demeaning, but for the first time in years he felt like he was accomplishing something. He might have been hosing down cages and sweeping feces laden filth down drains, but it was work.

  When his shift ended, Chip went to the break room that Janice had shown him and punched out with an old fashioned card and time-stamp machine. He’d hoped she would be there. He wanted to ask her more questions, but he also wanted to look at her again. He wanted to figure out why it was she looked so familiar, sure, but there was more to it. With her lean face and sharp features, Janice was no one’s idea of pretty, but she had a thing about her. She was, he decided, sexy, and so he was willing to overlook the fact that her appeal seemed somehow separated from more ordinary notions of attractiveness. She was the sort of woman he might have hesitated to get involved with in the past, fearing his friends would make fun of him for dating someone so hatchet-faced, but he had moved past such immature positions. Besides, he didn’t have any friends now, and no one would see him while he remained in Kohl’s facility. He decided he would definitely get something going with Janice.