The Blonde

by Duane Swierczynski

  Vanessa didn’t want to hear the names. She didn’t want to think about the men attached to those names. She wanted to move the fingers of her left hand, over and over again.

  “But I don’t think you’re a slut, blondie. I knew what you were doing. You wanted to attract attention, didn’t you?”

  “Y-y-yessss,” she said. Her own voice. It was coming back.

  “Yessssssss you did, didn’t you?” the Operator mocked. “Aww, who’s a cute little man-killer? That’s right. My wittle Wanessa Essa.”

  “F-f-f-f-f ... uck ...”

  “You did quite enough of that, didn’t you?”

  The Operator reached out with his coat sleeve and wiped the drool from her lower lip. She pursed her lips. Then he grabbed her face and leaned in.

  “Is that how you infected them? Fucking them? Sucking their cocks? A kiss would have done it, you know. You didn’t have to go all the way. Especially since you never did some of that with me.”

  Was this what it was about? Back in Ireland: Matt Silver, the big bad Operator, gently guiding her head down to his crotch. Vanessa refusing. Halfheartedly kissing him on the neck, trying to placate him. Thinking that a few scented candles and an Enigma CD would make her swoon, convince her to blow him.

  “You’re a bit weak in the mouth now, aren’t you? Bet you wouldn’t put up too much of a fight. You want another shot at it?”

  The Operator squeezed her cheeks, then let go. He moved out of her field of vision. She tried to follow him with her eyes, but nothing. Turned her head slightly to the right, and the room began spinning.

  “Thing is, my little Irish slut,” the Operator said, “I wanted you to go out and see other people.”

  Oh, bollocks on that. Jealousy was the Operator’s fundamental emotion. Along with envy. It guided everything. In the boardroom and bedroom.

  “It’s true. Sure, there was a chance you’d wind up alone somewhere and—kablooie—no more Vanessa Reardon. But I knew you’d try to survive long enough to avenge yourself. And you’d come into contact with a lot of people. Course, I didn’t know you’d be fucking and sucking your way to San Diego and back.”

  She could move her left hand now. Pump it into a weak fist. Then release. Pump. Then release.

  “Remember how I said Proximity needed another human host to survive? To eat blood cells and other cellular waste? Um, yeah, well, I lied. They can survive in any fluid environment on Earth. They’re dormant until they reach another human being. Then they replicate like jackrabbits. Upload the DNA sequence to our satellite, which feeds it to our computer.”

  Vanessa stopped pumping. What was he talking about now? That was the built-in security feature of the Mary Kates. They needed a human host for power. Piss ’em out into the toilet, they’d die after a few seconds. That way, they couldn’t replicate unless they were in close prox—.

  Oh.

  Proximity.

  He’d designed it this way all along.

  The mad, mad bastard.

  “Thanks to your trip around the country, you’ve infected over fourteen thousand people. God bless you, Vanessa. You’ve done the hard part for me.”

  The Operator came back into view. Showed her the liquid crystal display of his PDA. A number ticked up, two, three digits at a time.

  “See what you started?”

  Jackson was amused. “He seems to

  know you.”

  The blonde smiled wryly. “A lot of

  people know me.”

  —DAY KEENE

  6:01—6:46 a.m.

  Fifteenth District Headquarters, Northeast Philadelphia

  An hour before shift change, Officer Jimmy MacAdams caught the call: disturbance on the Frankford El. Up until that point, it had been a slow night on the steady out squad. Most exciting call was an abandoned 1994 Dodge Daytona over on East Thompson Street in Bridesburg. Yet another cracked steering wheel column, ignition pulled out and hanging over the top, strip of white fabric tied around the works. He was sitting on it until Major Crimes had a chance to take possession, haul it in. In this neighborhood, probably somebody who was too lazy to call a cab. But you never knew until you dusted for prints. So there he sat.

  Then the call came in.

  “Transit police: We’ve got a howling blind man up on the El platform at Margaret-Orthodox.”

  Howling blind man.

  Oh yeah, MacAdams thought. He should have seen this one coming.

  MacAdams crossed Torresdale and raced up Margaret, cherries flashing, no sound. He was at the El station in sixty seconds. Guy looked ordinary enough, except for the face full of Mace. Transit cop said he’d been raving but that he’d calmed down in the meantime. Even better. MacAdams read him Miranda, put him in the back of the squad car. Apologized for the lack of air-conditioning. That and the laptop had been down since start of shift.

  “I don’t care about the air,” the guy said quietly. “Whatever you do, don’t leave me alone.”

  Looked like he’d had quite a night.

  “I’m just taking you in, okay? You won’t be alone.”

  He escorted the guy, who said he was a Mr. Jack Eisley, up to the Fifteenth District building at Harbison and Levick. Walked him up to Northeast Detectives HQ on the second floor, which was done in navy blue with gold bands.

  Then the guy started raving again, which surprised MacAdams. He’d been docile the whole ride up. Now he was screaming about not being left alone, needed to speak to someone right away, or else many people would die—all of the usual psycho crap. MacAdams was glad to step clear of that shit.

  “All you guys,” he said, and went back downstairs. Only a half hour before he clocked out.

  But something made him hang around. He put a few coins in the honor box, popped the lock, and took a Diet Coke from the squad fridge. Drank it and savored how cool the can felt against his hand. He’d been in a slow simmer all night. Listened to the usual banter in the squad room:

  “You’ve got a cold.”

  “Come over here, give me a hug.”

  “You always have a cold.”

  “And yet I love skiing.”

  Beat as he was, MacAdams admitted it: He was curious. So he finished his Diet Coke, tossed the can, and popped back upstairs to see what was going on. Through the one-way glass, he saw the guy talking to Detective Sarkissian.

  Howling Man was saying, “... tell you everything, but you have to promise one thing: You won’t leave me alone. I don’t care who you have in here with me. The chief of police, one of you guys, a secretary, anybody. Bring in a homeless guy.”

  “I’m right here,” Sarkissian told him.

  “I know this sounds crazy, but please believe me. You leave me alone in this room, you’ll come back and find me dead.”

  “I don’t want you to hurt yourself, Jack. I want you to tell me what happened.”

  “I want to, believe me. Maybe some of it will make sense to you. Maybe you’ll be able to help me figure it out. Because the way things are looking, a lot of people are going to die today.”

  “Hey. Come on, now.”

  “That is not a threat.”

  “Calm down.”

  “I’m perfectly calm.”

  Sarkissian waited him out.

  “Hey, could I have something for my eyes? A bottle of Visine or something? My contacts are shot to hell, but maybe I could see something if I wet them down.”

  “Tell me a little first, and I’ll get somebody to get you Visine.”

  “Okay. But ...”

  “Start from the beginning.”

  “I don’t even know ...”

  “You said this started nine hours ago? Try there.”

  “I was at a bar in the Philadelphia International Airport. That’s where I met the blonde. The first thing she said to me was ...”

  He told his story. Some really weird fucking shit. MacAdams didn’t follow all of it. Barely followed half of it, tell the truth. Apparently, the guy was afraid that if he was left alone,
some killer satellite would send a death beam to particles in his blood—yeah, weird fucking shit, right?—which would make him die in ten seconds.

  The detectives were split. Some of them wanted to let him sweat it out for twenty seconds, prove that he was batshit. Others thought that was asking for trouble. What if he got so afraid, he seized, died right there in the interrogation room? Then it’d be a world full of shit for everybody.

  But Sarkissian was good at this stuff. He chipped away at him from the side.

  “Mr. Eisley, you’ve got a wife and daughter. Were you thinking of them when you attacked that woman on the Frankford El?”

  “I didn’t attack her,” Howling Man replied. “I was trying to talk to her.”

  “Your wife and daughter know you’re talking to another woman?”

  “They wouldn’t mind. Not if they knew what had happened to me.”

  “And what’s that again?”

  “I’ve told you. I’m infected with a tracking device that will kill me if I’m alone.”

  “Why don’t you go home to your wife and daughter?”

  “I can’t do that. I wish I could.”

  Some key facts gathered with a few phone calls:

  Eisley flies here last night, even though he seems to have no business in Philadelphia. He’s a reporter at a weekly newspaper in Chicago.

  At about 1:57 A.M., a hotel resident hears fighting in his room. A male and a female. Hotel security officer Charles Lee Vincent investigates.

  As he approaches the room, he’s knocked out by an unknown assailant. He remembers there being a woman in the room, but that’s about it. Vincent later escorts Eisley down to the lobby.

  A little after 3:00 A.M., Eisley disappears.

  At the same time, outside the hotel, according to two tourists, Christin Dubay and Sarah French, some “flaming asshole” stole their cab.

  At approximately 5:16 A.M., Eisley attacks Angela Marchione, a waitress at Dominick’s Little Italy. She sprays him with Mace. He goes on a tear through the elevated car, passes through to an adjoining car, then exits at Margaret-Orthodox, where he is apprehended by SEPTA police.

  Eisley has no ID, no wallet. Claims he lost it at a nightclub on Spring Garden.

  Still, they have a photocopy of his forged driver’s license from the check-in desk at the Sheraton. They find his address and phone number on-line. Call his house. No answer.

  However this story was going to shake out, MacAdams thought, it was sure as shit going to be interesting.

  MacAdams watched them go back in the room and work with Eisley a little more, try to get him talking about his wife, his kid—what he’s doing in Philadelphia. But the guy was stubborn and more than a little crazy. Kept clamoring for the FBI or someone from Homeland Security, yet begged not to be left alone.

  Finally, Sarkissian made the call:

  Let’s give him a little privacy.

  6:48 a.m.

  Once you come to terms with the idea that you’re a monster, it’s easier to function. Your physical self is more forgiving of abuse, willing to strain against its own humanity. Because there is no humanity under all of that flesh, after all. Which was how Kowalski was able to drag himself up from the floor and try to piece himself back into some semblance of a man. It’s what monsters did.

  He’d looked around at the debris of forgotten childhood.

  The best operations, Kowalski’d reminded himself, supplied their own tools.

  First, he’d found a needle and thread from a Kenner mini sewing machine kit. The gashes on his body could be covered with bandages and clothes. But his face? His face needed work. Sanitary? Hardly. But what was that to a monster?

  The metal supports from the shelves? Leg brace, Road Warior- style. Sort the broken bones out later. Long as they would support his weight.

  A little water from the employee sink, he was even able to smooth down his clothes, get some of the shattered glass and dust and splinters and wrinkles out of them. Wash away the crusted blood from around the purple-and-pink-threaded sutures.

  By the time he left the abandoned toy warehouse forty-five minutes later, the monster was reasonably human. He checked his image in a plate-glass window of another store. Pale, but no visible blood. People saw blood, they got upset. Otherwise, they could deal with anything. Even his stitched-up face and rusty leg brace.

  A few questions of a passerby got him what he wanted: Yeah, strange guy, howling, taken away in cuffs.

  His boy Jack.

  Alive, at least up until the point he was arrested.

  Nearest police district was the Fifteenth; he caught a cab up there, flashed the Homeland Security badge, just about damn near dazzled Detective Hugh Sarkissian with his embossed foil with the holographic flying eagles, which distracted him from the purple stitches and rusty leg brace. Kowalski told him that Jack Eisley was part of an investigation he was running. No, he wasn’t a terrorist, just a freaked-out informant.

  “Who’s still alive, right?” Kowalski asked.

  “Yeah,” Sarkissian told him. “But we’re ready to let him sweat it out a little.”

  Kowalski took a chance. “He begged you not to leave him alone, didn’t he?”

  Sarkissian’s face went wide. “Yeah. What the fuck is that about, anyway?”

  Kowalski rolled his eyes in a “You don’t even want to know, buddy” kind of way, then gestured to the room. “You mind?”

  Which got him in the door of the interrogation room at precisely 6:48 A.M.

  Not a second too soon, from the look on Jack’s face.

  He was hurting.

  6:49 a.m.

  I thought I was going to die just then.” “You’re fine. Name’s Mike Kowalski, Department of Homeland Security, making America safer for domestic fucks to rape the citizenry instead of the foreign fucks, blah blah blah,” he said. ”But does it really matter? After the night you had, Jack?”

  “Who are you?”

  Jack studied the guy, who looked strangely familiar, despite the purple-and-pink sutures in his face—what, had they run out of adult stitches at the hospital?

  Wait.

  The guy.

  The hotel room.

  The guy who strangled the security guard. “Oh no.”

  Kowalski limped over to the table and slid into a chair. He reached out and took Jack’s hand in his. Kowalski was wearing white gloves, stretched to the point of bursting. And Jack looked at them fast, granted, but he would swear one of them had the McDonald’s logo—the Golden Arches—right on the wrist.

  Jack felt Kowalski grasp his middle finger. “This will hurt.”

  And then Kowalski twisted his finger in a way he didn’t think was physically possible. Jack screamed, writhed in his seat. The pain seemed to rocket up his very bones.

  Outside the two-way glass, Sarkissian was saying to MacAdams, “Don’t you wish?”

  “Oh, fucking tell me about it.”

  “Bet he doesn’t even leave a mark.”

  “I was trailing your girlfriend, Kelly White,” Kowalski said. “She infected you with something. I want you to describe it to me.”

  “Fuck! Ow, Christ, leggo of my—Ah!”

  “No detail is too small. Tell me how it works. Why can’t you be alone?”

  Kowalski pulled Jack closer to him, causing his metal chair to scrape against linoleum, and at the same time, he eased up on the finger. “Whisper it in my ear,” he said.

  Now that Jack was up close and personal, he saw that one of Kowalski’s stitches didn’t quite do the trick. Dark blood pooled around a pink strand, started to bead up.

  On the side of Kowalski’s nose, there was a thin sliver of glass, wedged beneath a few layers of skin.

  Maybe the guy is with Homeland Security, Jack thought.

  And if not, they should hire him. Because he didn’t seem to give one fuck about personal discomfort.

  What was Jack going to do? Talk back to him?

  So Jack talked.

  Started
telling him all about how he’d met Kelly, but Kowalski didn’t want to hear any of that. Sped him along to later in the night, in the hotel room. Jack tried to remember as much as he could about the Mary Kates, what their creator called “Proximity.” Tracking devices in your blood, linked up to a satellite. Only Kelly’s had a fatal error. Kowalski nodded. Probed for more detail. Asked about nanoassemblies. Is that what she’d said? Nanoassemblies? My God, it was like he believed him. Maybe he already knew about these things.

  “Something else, too,” Jack said. “She gave me a toxin. No ... a luminous toxin.”

  “Luminous toxin, huh.”

  “Yes! That’s it! She told me I’d be dead in ...” He looked at his watch. “Oh fuck. About ninety minutes from now.”

  “Sounds serious. But I’m sure we’ll be able to get that taken care of.”

  Kowalski released his hold on Jack’s finger, then used this same hand to scratch his chin. Somehow, the tip of his finger avoided the two long gashes there. “Hmm ... let me try a little something.” Kowalski stood up and picked up the gym bag he’d brought into the room. He placed the bag on Jack’s lap. “Hold this for a minute.”

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Kowalski stood up and limped over to the door. The metal brace on his leg squeaked as he moved. He knocked twice.

  “Wait—where are you going? Didn’t you hear me? If I’m left alone, I could—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Humor me. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t let go of that bag.”

  “This doesn’t smell right.”

  The door slammed shut behind Kowalski.

  6:55 a.m.

  One, two, buckle my shoe.

  Three, four, shut the door.

  Five, six, pick up sticks.

  Seven, eight, lay them straight.

  Nine, ten ...

  A big fat hen.

  Kowalski gave it another few seconds, just to be sure.

  He opened the door and found Jack white and sweating and writhing in his seat, but alive. The gym bag still lay in his lap. “What did you do?” he gasped. “How am I still alive?”