Immobility

by Brian Evenson

“No, nothing. It was true what I said before. Everything you had was burned. It was unimaginable that you yourself survived.”

  “So I wasn’t a fixer? A detective?”

  Rasmus shrugged. “Who knows? I suppose you might have been.”

  “And Horkai’s my real name?”

  “Horkai’s the only name I have for you.”

  “Why lie to me? Why tell me that I was ill?”

  Rasmus hesitated. “I already told you,” he finally said, “that’s what I heard from my father. If I had the facts wrong, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re still lying,” said Horkai.

  “Believe what you want,” Rasmus said.

  “What about the mules?”

  “What about them?”

  “They kept saying that one of them was first, but insisting that they weren’t brothers. What did they mean by that? Why are they mules?”

  Rasmus was silent for a time, staring down at his hands. “You’re not ready to hear the answer to that,” he finally said.

  “Who are you to tell me what I’m ready for?”

  “Let’s just say you’re not in the right mind-set.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  And when Rasmus shook his head, Horkai took out his pistol and aimed it at his head.

  “More proof that you’re not in the right mind-set,” said Rasmus, still calm.

  “Tell me or I’ll shoot,” said Horkai.

  “If you do that, then who will answer your questions?”

  And then Horkai was out of his chair and around the desk. He swung the butt of his pistol, knocked Rasmus and his chair over.

  “Tell me,” he said again.

  Rasmus lay there wincing, a gash on his cheek gushing blood, his eye already starting to swell shut. Even so, Horkai had to hit him again before he would speak.

  “Because, like you, they’re not really human,” he said.

  “Not human? How?”

  “You were made out there,” said Rasmus, gesturing. “Some weird mutation or transformation triggered by the events of the Kollaps. The mules we made here.”

  “What do you mean, made?”

  “In a laboratory.”

  “But they’re flesh and blood.”

  “They’re not human. They’re grown in a solution. Recycled genetic material, manipulated to provide certain characteristics. They’re not so much brothers as slight and deliberate variations of the same being. Sturdy bastards, mules, but not as stable as humans. They’re made too quickly. Even without exposure to the outside, they last a decade or two, then start to break down. They’re disposable. But we always keep a few new ones at the ready.”

  “They’re genetic experiments,” said Horkai.

  “They’re members of the community,” said Rasmus. “The hive. But in the same way a dog is a member of a human family. They know their place, they’ve been trained to stay in it.”

  It made him furious. He bent down and slapped Rasmus.

  “Told you that you weren’t ready,” said Rasmus. “You haven’t had to live through the aftermath—you slept through it. You haven’t had to face facts the way the rest of us have for the last thirty years.”

  “What’s to stop me from killing you?”

  “All you’re doing with talk like that is proving that you’re an animal, that you shouldn’t be let loose,” said Rasmus, and he smiled.

  Frustrated, Horkai put the gun away, returned to his seat. He leaned his elbows on the table, held his head in his hand. He heard the sound of Rasmus slowly getting up, breathing heavily, then setting his chair aright, sitting in it.

  “Feel better?” Rasmus asked, his voice thick with sarcasm.

  “I’m going now,” he said.

  “All right,” said Rasmus. “Have it your way.”

  * * *

  BUT WHEN HE OPENED THE DOOR, there were Olaf and Oleg, coming back. They shouldered their way past him.

  “Should be okay,” Olaf said. “Technician says that most won’t survive but a few will. Enough to get started.”

  “All right,” said Rasmus. “Have him preserve the rest as well. We’ll salvage what material we can.”

  “What happened to you?” asked Oleg.

  “I had a little fall,” said Rasmus.

  The twins both glanced at Horkai.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Rasmus said. “A minor disagreement.”

  “You’re going?” asked Olaf.

  “I’m going,” said Horkai. “I did what you asked.”

  “No hard feelings,” said Rasmus. He held out his hand. When Horkai didn’t reach out to take it, he said, “I’m not asking you to be friends. I’m just trying to thank you for what you’ve done.”

  Reluctantly, he stretched out his hand, took Rasmus’s own. Then he released it and turned and reached for the handle of the door.

  And that was the moment they chose to fall upon him.

  * * *

  HE FELT A HEAVY BLOW on the back of his head, stumbled, and fell into the door. He slid down, felt the door vibrate and crack as it was struck just above his head. He turned and saw Olaf trying to work a hammer out of the wood, with Oleg trying to get past his brother and at him as well. He kicked hard and heard the crack as Oleg’s leg gave, the cry as he went down. He looked up and there was the hammer coming down. He turned his head so it glanced off his neck to break or bruise his collarbone. He was fumbling in his pocket, trying to get the gun out, but it was stuck, he couldn’t get to it, and the hammer was coming down again. He swept his legs sideward and knocked Olaf’s feet out from under him, the hammer striking his arm and making it go numb, all Olaf’s weight landing on him. And then he was scrambling, pushing Olaf off, struggling up. He looked up just in time to have the back of a chair splintered over his face.

  He went down, groaning, and immediately someone was on him, holding his face down against the ground, immobilizing one of his arms. He tried to roll over with the other arm, but then there were other people on him as well, holding him down, keeping him down, a dozen or more of them. He groaned again.

  “Josef,” he heard Rasmus’s voice hiss in his ear. “So you’ve decided to stay with us after all.”

  And then they were tearing his shirt up close to the collar, ripping it open, and someone was pulling the gun out of his pocket, stripping the rifle away, pulling his boots off as well.

  “Get the hypodermic,” said Rasmus.

  “Look what I found in his boot,” one of the twins said somewhere above him, either Olaf or Oleg, he couldn’t tell which.

  “Throw it over with the other weapons,” said Rasmus. “And for God’s sake, get the hypodermic.” And suddenly Horkai’s head was free. He jerked it up, trying to look around, struggling and failing to break free. He roared with frustration. And then others’ hands were on his head again, holding it down, grinding it into the floor.

  He felt a sharp pricking in his neck, and jerked.

  “Hold the bastard still!” yelled Rasmus. “Hold him!”

  He felt the pricking again, then briefly an intense coldness followed by a burning and an itching all over his body, and then an intense wave of pain.

  He heard someone above him laughing.

  He cried out and tried to throw them off, but already his limbs felt thick and distant. He felt the hands leave his head. He tried to lift it and still could, but when he tried to move his hands, they refused to obey him.

  And then Rasmus was there in front of him, holding his head off the ground by the hair, still breathing heavily. He bent down so his head was almost touching the ground, so he could look Horkai straight in the eye.

  “There,” said Rasmus. “As peaceful as a baby.” And then struck him in the face, over and over again, until he passed out.

  PART FIVE

  A SENSATION, AGAIN, OF COMING BACK to life, only not quite that: half life maybe. Still utter darkness, though perhaps a faint hint of light on the horizon. A swirl of memory and imagination, a bloody swath depicting the past, r
eal or imaginary, smeared across the inside of his skull. Bodies everywhere. A light that shone through his skin to reveal his bones. A dead child, a dead wife, and then that, too, blown away in a fine drift of ash. The whole world cut up and churned under and him lying there for days, half-dead, half-alive, waiting for someone to come.

  Or no, that wasn’t right. A man crawling up an abandoned and devastated freeway, alone. No food, no water, knees and hands bloody, slow and then slower still, and then lying there in a heap, exhausted, waiting to die.

  Something fluttered, something scraped, told him—because slowly there was starting to be such a thing as a him—no, that wasn’t right either. A man, in the dark, feeling around him for the body of another man he planned to kill. A man, stumbling, striking walls while other men tried to bring him down.

  Or a man, frozen, stuffed into a cylinder, unable to move, unable to draw breath, waiting to come back to life again.

  Only it wasn’t that either, at least he didn’t think so.

  But he was beginning to have the feeling that when he opened his eyes and saw who was standing over him, he would realize it would be much worse than any of these possibilities.

  30

  “HE’S COMING AROUND,” he heard a voice say. He felt someone slapping his cheeks softly; then his eye was parted and a light shone in and then moved away. He managed, with great effort, to open the eye again, then the other eye as well, saw nothing at first but a blur. It all seemed familiar somehow, as if it had happened before.

  Oh, Christ, he thought, without knowing exactly why. It’s starting all over again.

  His head ached. The blur of the sun smeared further and then slowly became clearer and clearer, becoming a light in a concrete ceiling and there, before him, two faces. One was a technician that he vaguely recognized. The other was Rasmus.

  “Where am I?” he asked, his voice hardly louder than a whisper. “Did I just come out of storage?”

  “No,” said Rasmus. “You’re just about to go into it.”

  And then it came rushing back, inexorably. He tried to get up, found he couldn’t move more than his head and neck. Rasmus smiled. “You’re paralyzed,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”

  “You did this to me,” he said.

  “Of course I did,” said Rasmus.

  “But why?”

  “Mr. Horkai, you’re far too valuable a commodity for us to lose. Every community needs a guardian angel. That’s what you are for us. You’re our guardian angel, albeit a somewhat reluctant one.” His hand moved forward, stroked the side of Horkai’s cheek softly. “We don’t travel well. You go places we can’t. We’ll store you until we need you again.”

  “I won’t help you,” said Horkai. “Not a second time.”

  “Not the next time, you mean,” he said. “That’s the same thing you said before this time. And the same thing you said the time before that. And before that. And yet, given time, a scrambling of the head, and a certain befuddlement, you always come around.”

  “But you said I was in storage for thirty years.”

  “You should know by now I don’t always tell the truth,” said Rasmus. “But yes, in a manner of speaking, you were in storage for thirty years. We just happened to wake you up a few times along the way. But this next time, it may well be thirty years. You’ve done very well for us this time,” he said. “I’m willing to bet it’ll be a while before we require your services again.”

  “I’ll never help you,” he said. “Next time I wake up, I’ll kill you.”

  Rasmus smiled. “You’re nothing if not consistent,” he said. “Always the same threat every time.” He motioned the technician forward, and the man approached wearing rubber gloves, a wet cotton ball in his hand. He carefully moistened one temple and then the other and then turned away again.

  “Traditionally they used to put a cloth in the mouth as well,” said Rasmus. “So that the patient wouldn’t bite off his tongue. But you have the advantage of being able to grow a new tongue if you bite yours off.”

  Then the technician was back, holding two metal paddles with insulated handles. He handed them to Rasmus, who took them, pressed them to either side of Horkai’s head.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Horkai.

  “What does it look like we’re doing? We’re taking steps to help you forget.”

  “Why?” asked Horkai. “Why do this to me?”

  “I’ve already told you,” said Rasmus. “You’re a valuable commodity. We own you. Why would we give you up?” He turned to the technician. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Let it build up,” said the technician. “Another dozen seconds or so.”

  Rasmus nodded. “I have to admit, there’s something else,” he said. He leaned closer and for the first time showed Horkai his genuine face, stripped of all trappings, his eyes sharp with hatred. “My father didn’t die because he went out to get you. I lied when I said that. My father died because he sat beside you for days nursing you back to health. You’re immune to the poison, your body even feeds on it. But you’re also a carrier. Any time you go outside, you get a little bit poisonous. When you come back in, you bring it back in with you. Why do you think we have your storage facility so far away from the rest of the community?”

  He moved back, his mask in place again, his true face hidden. “And one last thing,” he said. “About your legs. You were, of course, right. There’s nothing wrong with them. We made all that happen. But of course, by the time you wake up again, you’ll have forgotten all about that, too.”

  He nodded. Horkai suddenly felt his neck and jaw tense, his skull trying to push its way out of his head. He heard a hissing sound, but it took him a moment to realize it was the sound of him breathing through his own clenched teeth. Then as quickly as it had begun it stopped, and he felt the blood pounding in his ears.

  “Again,” he heard Rasmus say, and felt his neck and jaw tense and roll, saw the flailing of his arm though he couldn’t feel it. He tried to keep his mind focused, tried not to forget what had happened to him, what had brought him there, but he felt his thoughts rapidly receding, being replaced by a wincing, screaming pain.

  And when it was finished, there was Rasmus, standing over him, paddles in hand, smiling.

  “Again,” he chanted. “Again. Again. Again.”

  * * *

  UNTIL FINALLY HE FOUND HIMSELF being loaded into a tank, being prepared for storage, for perhaps ten years, for perhaps thirty, for perhaps more. As they prepared him, he was trying to remember everything that had happened, trying not to lose track of what were more and more disconnected images, slowly escaping him, fleeing him. He tried to remember, tried to keep track of where he’d gone wrong so that next time they woke him, it’d be different, and was surprised to find that he still had large parts of it in his head. Maybe next time, he told himself, it actually will be different.

  They closed the lid. Stay focused, he told himself. Remember. Remember.

  And then suddenly the lid was open again, revealing Rasmus’s swollen face.

  “Almost forgot,” he said, and injected something into his neck. “One more thing to help you forget,” he said.

  He felt quickly dizzy, then nauseated, then vaguely confused. “I’ll kill you,” said Horkai, his voice already sluggish from whatever the drug was.

  Rasmus smiled. “Doesn’t matter what you say,” he said. “You won’t kill me, time will. By the time we wake you up again, I’ll be an old man or dead.”

  Then he straightened up. “Now listen very carefully,” he said. “Your name is Josef Horkai. You are a member of my community. You love your community dearly and would do anything to serve it and to serve me. My name is Rasmus. I am your leader and your friend.”

  And then the lid closed. Fuck him, thought Horkai. And then thought, Who?

  * * *

  WHERE WAS HE? Why did he feel so drowsy? Last thing he remembered was … Something terrible happening, what was it again? Fire and ash and houses, co
rpses everywhere, the screams of the dead. Yes, he remembered that, more or less, but was that really the last thing? Wasn’t there something else?

  What’s wrong with me?

  * * *

  HE LOOKED UP, saw a blurred shape that, by squinting, he was able to make into a lid or cover. He looked down, saw before his chest a convex surface. Tank, he thought. Then came the hissing of an air pump.

  Ah, he thought, just before the sudden inrush of extreme cold. I’ve been in storage. They must just be waking me up.

  TOR BOOKS BY BRIAN EVENSON

  Dead Space: Martyr

  Immobility

  About the Author

  BRIAN EVENSON has written several works of fiction, including The Wavering Knife, for which he was awarded the IHG Award for Best Story Collection, and The Open Curtain. His most recent novel, Last Days, won the ALA Award for Best Horror Novel of 2009 and was on Time Out New York’s list of top books of 2009. Evenson is the director of Brown University’s Literary Arts Program and is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize and an NEA fellowship. He’s also written Dead Space novels under the name B. K. Evenson.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  IMMOBILITY

  Copyright © 2012 by Brian Evenson

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  e-ISBN 9781429992886

  First Edition: April 2012