Skin on My Skin

by John Burks

  The man giggled, laughing. “Oh fuck, boy. I’m dying here and you want to know that? Well fuck you. You killed me, you little fuck. I beat the Preacher’s Plague this long and some punk fucking kid gets me with a random fucking grenade. I’m not telling you shit.”

  “I can make it quick for you,” I offered, poking him in the head with the barrel of the rifle.

  “What the fuck do I care? I’m dying anyway. Quick, slow… it don’t make no fucking difference. But I’m telling you something, kid, I ain’t the last one coming. You remember that drone? Well that drone recorded it all. They’ll come for you, asshole. They’ll come and they will fucking…”

  The sound of the bullet roaring from the barrel and turning his forehead into so much red mush scared me despite the fact I’d pulled the trigger. He was right, of course. I’d forgotten about the drone. I rushed down the stairs and out into the street. The damn thing was nowhere to be seen.

  I looked down at Loco Two. Despite the damage to his faceplate, his suit wasn’t in too bad a shape. Loco One’s was passable as well. A plan started forming in my mind and the entire thing would hinge on just one thing.

  I had to hope Jenna wouldn’t kill me when I got back to my own place.

  Sorry About Your Hand

  I made it back across town to my penthouse in record time despite the load I was hauling. I left the bundle in the freight elevator. A little comforted that Jenna hadn’t escaped and hadn’t figured out how to use it. My little transport platform, in the other shaft, was just where I’d left it. The tiny ribbons I’d stretched around told me no one had been there. The stairwell was inaccessible, so unless she’d jumped, she was still upstairs. She hadn’t escaped.

  I don’t know that I was happy about that. I half wanted her to be gone so that I didn’t have to face her. If she was gone then I wouldn’t have to worry about anything.

  I thought about it hard the whole time I traveled up the platform. I’d wronged the girl multiple times. What reason would she have to possibly trust me, at this point? I could tell her about my experience with her friends and how they desperately wanted her to get away, but why would she believe me? I’d been wrong in everything I’d done to Jenna and, if she was somehow waiting at the top of the elevator shaft with a shotgun, I deserved every ounce of buckshot she put through my chest.

  She wasn’t waiting at the top, as I found an hour later. I began the methodical check of the rest of the penthouse, making sure someone hadn’t found another way up and was hiding, waiting to take me out. I saved the bedroom for last. I wish I hadn’t.

  Actually, I wish I hadn’t gone in there at all. Jenna wasn’t there.

  But a lot of her blood was.

  The bed was a bloody mess. It was more blood than I imagined her body containing. There was so much blood everywhere that, for a moment, I thought she might have chewed off her own hand. I followed the blood trail out into the kitchen, and kicked myself for not having noticed it before. She’d gone into the kitchen, lit the gas burner and then cauterized her wounds. The burner was still on and I silently turned it off.

  “Jenna?” I asked quietly, thinking I might have missed her in my rushed check of the penthouse.

  I did the check again, more methodically and slower. The blood trail ended at the stove, which was a good thing, I guess. At least she wasn’t under a pile of MRE cartons bleeding to death. It took another half hour, but I was sure she wasn’t anywhere in the house. I paused at my own gun rack trying to remember if anything was gone.

  “Jenna?” I asked once more. “If you’re in here… I’m so sorry. I’m not here to hurt you.”

  I heard the wind rustle through the patio door and suddenly realized it was the one place I hadn’t looked. She hadn’t shut the door all the way, either. I was sure I had.

  I stripped out of my armor, leaving it stacked neatly on the floor. I left the gun piled on it and then opened the door.

  “Fuck you,” Jenna spat and I ducked just as she pulled the trigger on the assault rifle she’d taken from the rack. She kept the trigger depressed until the rifle clicked on empty. I stood on shaky legs, but didn’t move forward.

  “Jenna…”

  “Fuck you,” she growled again. “Just get it fucking over with. Take me back to that fucking place, if that’s what your sorry ass is going to do.”

  “I’m not taking you back.”

  “Yeah, right. You went through all this just to not go through with it? You made me do this?”

  She thrust her left hand out at me. Her thumb hung the wrong direction from her palm. The skin around it was shredded and crusty. I could smell the cooked meat and infection, see the pus oozing. She’d broken her thumb to get out of the handcuffs and, if she lived, would probably never use that hand again. Not like she had before. My heart sank at the sight and then collapsed completely with her next words. “You did this to me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” There is no way to describe the guilt I felt at that moment. There wasn’t anything else I could say besides I was sorry.

  “I’m not going back there,” she said, standing shakily, a little too close to the railing. “I’d rather die than go back there. I’ve only been waiting around so I could kill you first.” The defiance was still in her voice, yet I sensed the utter exhaustion she was overcome with.

  She took the railing with one hand and, weakly, tried to get a leg over it. I didn’t blame her. I’d probably jump if I was going to be a prisoner at Fortress as well. I eased to her as she was looking down at the rubble strewn street below.

  “You don’t know the things they did to me, there. You don’t know what I went through.”

  “I do know,” I whispered. I wanted to touch her, to comfort her, but I also wanted to join her and make the leap for her. I was that guilty. I’d done just as wrong to her as the crazy people back in Fortress had. “I saw what they made you do.”

  Jenna was just barely conscious. She’d lost a lot of blood and her eyes looked like they might slam shut at any moment. Tears flowed down her face.

  “There isn’t anything I can do, big boy,” she said sarcastically, pulling her leg back and collapsing into the chair. “You can fuck me, you can take me to Fortress… I don’t really care. I… I’m done.”

  She passed into slumber easily and, for a moment, I thought she’d died. I had to check. The closeness to her still evoked those unbridled feelings of passion, but there was more to it now. I wanted to help her and I didn’t want anything from that help. I didn’t want to trade. I wanted to make up for what I’d done. Content that she was still breathing, I picked her up and took her back into the house.

  I changed the sheets on the bed and cleaned up as best I could. I dressed her broken and burnt hand as she slept and, surprisingly, she didn’t wake up through it. I covered her up and hoped for the best. Cuts and scrapes I was used to, but I wasn’t a doctor. I couldn’t treat that sort of infection. I could try to stuff fifteen year old antibiotics down her throat, but I didn’t know if they’d work. Worse, she might choke on them. I had to hope for the best, but I was already making plans to carry her out, if she didn’t wake soon. The Preacher’s men knew the area I was in. They would be getting closer.

  I made a trip down to the ground level, carefully looked around outside to see that if I’d been followed, and then retrieved the two extra bio-suits. It was even slower going back to the top, because of their added weight, and I was afraid Jenna would go off the deep end again. But I found just as I’d left her, sleeping fitfully.

  I had a little time. It would take the red suited man’s goons awhile to find me. I was going to give her as much as I could. But in the meantime, I began gathering up traveling gear. I’d spent the last ten years in the penthouse but, as I sorted through what I needed to pack, I found that none of it really meant all that much to me. The things that weren’t pictures and mementos of a time past, they were rations and extra ammunition. The old world was dead and even the solitary life I’d built for my
self in the penthouse was nearing an end. One way or another, I was leaving, and I didn’t need plasma televisions and stacks of computer games to get me there.

  I needed her.

  I’d come to that conclusion even before I’d decided to trade her away. I’d just been ignoring it. But the tiniest amount of time we’d spent together had meant more to me than anything I could remember. It could have been any girl, I realized, but there was something special about Jenna. There was an untapped fire in her that drove me. I wasn’t the only one who’d seen it. The other Touchers, back at Fortress, were willing to lay down their lives in order to get the girl out of the city. There wasn’t much more you could say about a person than that.

  I packed Jenna’s backpack as lightly as possible. I probably packed too much in mine, but I had no idea what I’d need outside of the city or, for that matter, what I’d be able to scavenge. The pack was a lot heavier than I’d have liked, though, and it was going to be slow going sloughing through the ruins with Jenna at my side. It didn’t matter, though. I just needed her to come with me.

  When I was done packing, and then repacking, I went and sat by Jenna’s side. I’m not sure how long I was there before I dozed off, but I woke to the sound of her shuffling on the bed. She looked at me sadly, her eyes full of fear and confusion.

  “This isn’t Fortress.”

  “No.”

  “So you didn’t want to carry me back passed out? Need me to walk there on my own?”

  “No,” I repeated. How did I tell her what I’d seen there? How did I explain I was sorry for forcing her to gnaw to bust her hand up like that? There was no explaining the guilt I felt and all I could hope for was that she would let me help her escape the city.

  “Do you have something for pain?” she asked meekly. I went and found something, opening the old medications were still good. “Bring a beer back with it,” she said and I did that as well.

  “You’re not taking me back to Fortress?” she finally said after sipping on the beer for a long while.

  “No.” I wish I could think of something else to say besides no. I sounded like a broken record.

  “Then you decided steady pussy was better than no pussy, right?”

  “It’s not that, Jenna. I’m so sorry for what I did to you. I’m so sorry for putting you through this.”

  “So I can leave then? You’ll help me down to the ground floor and let me go?”

  “Yes,” I answered unequivocally. I wouldn’t like it, but if that’s what she wanted I would live with it.

  “But… there’s always a ‘but’, right? What is it?”

  “Fortress sent two escorts with me to get you. I killed them at Big Woody’s place. The drones are still out and they are going to be looking for me. They know you are alive, now, and will be looking for you even more. I’m happy to let you go and that’s the very least you deserve, but I wish that you’d let me help you get out of the city.”

  I could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t believe me. I wasn’t surprised.

  “Why would they send guards out with you?”

  “They’ve been looking for me, for some reason,” I admitted. I then showed her the crumpled up wanted poster with the ten-year-old picture of me on it.

  “This is you? I mean… sure, I can see a resemblance, but the most wanted person in Fortress is you?” Something shaded her face… a look of apprehension. Maybe guilt. I didn’t know but her making the connection had changed something in her demeanor.

  I shrugged. “Do you know why they wanted me?”

  “I’m just a Toucher. They don’t tell me anything. But this poster is all over Fortress. They’ve been looking for you for years.” I’m sure it was a lie. But who was I to call her on her lie after all I’d done to her?

  She was quiet for a few moments, taking in the implications.

  “You saw the others? At the Hotel?” Change of subject time.

  “Yes,” I said sadly. I didn’t want to tell her about my evening with Jane. It didn’t seem the right thing to do, at the moment and I was embarrassed about the experience anyway.

  “And? How are they?”

  “They were fine when I left. Frank gave me a gun, though, to help me get away. He thought that might get him in trouble.” I didn’t tell her about the look in the man’s eyes. I didn’t tell her I thought he was probably dead by now.

  “Jane? What about Jane?”

  I cringed. “She’s fine. She’s one of the ones who told me to get you out of the city. You don’t have to believe me, and I understand why you wouldn’t, but I’d already decided that on my own. The minute I talked to the guy in the red suit.”

  “The Preacher,” she said, interrupting. “You actually talked to the Preacher?”

  “The Preacher is dead. I know that guy is evil, but he isn’t the Preacher.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “I used to listen to him on the radio,” I told her. “He hasn’t broadcast in years.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s dead, does it? You didn’t see him die. You don’t even know who he was. It could be the man in the red suit, couldn’t it? Just like he says he is. Just like he always told me he was?”

  “Yeah, I guess…” I agreed. She was right. I didn’t know he was dead. I didn’t even know if the man who I used to listen to on the radio actually was the Preacher. “But it doesn’t matter who he is. The moment I talked to him, I knew I couldn’t go through with what I was planning. I’m sorry. I was scared of life without a working bio-suit. You’re a Toucher. You’ll never know the fear the rest of us live with.”

  “Not my fault,” she said defensively. The pain medication had obviously taken hold. She was much more like the Jenna I’d met as opposed to the wounded one. There was a fire building in her voice.

  “I’m not saying it is. I’m saying I didn’t know what I was doing. I acted out of fear. I don’t expect you to forgive me for that,” I said, pointing to her wrapped hand. “I just want to make it right. I’ll get you anywhere in the world you want to go. And then you can be rid of me. At the very least, let me get you out of this city.”

  “He took you to see the Nursery, didn’t he?”

  I shivered, recalling the monsters there. I tried to ignore the fact that a lot of them were probably her children. “Yes.”

  She nodded, knowingly. No human in their right mind could see that place and then still, somehow, support the man she called the Preacher.

  “At least ten of them are mine. I… I’ve lost track of how many they’ve made me have. I know that sounds insane. How can a mother forget her children? But I lived in a haze. I was always pregnant. Lots of them didn’t make it. They are immune, but you’ve seen what happens to them. They’re monsters. My babies are monsters. That’s the Preacher’s vision of the future. He wants a world filled with monsters.”

  “I’m sorry they did that to you. I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to you. Let me help you get out of here and then, when you tell me, I’ll leave you alone.”

  “I still don’t believe you,” she said softly.

  “It would have been easier for me to get you back to Fortress, if I was, with you being out like a light, right? I could have already done it.”

  “Yes,” she said, agreeing after some contemplation. “You’re right. But that doesn’t mean I have to trust you. I don’t. I can’t afford that luxury right now. But if you want me to trust you, then we’re going to do something first. You’re going to help me. I think you owe me that much.”

  I wanted more than anything for her to trust me.

  She’d never love me if she didn’t.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  She told me and I balked. I wanted that love, but she was asking so much.

  “It’s that or nothing,” she said after she presented her plan. “You want me to go with you, out of the city, then you help me do this thing. You have to.”

  I didn’t tell her that I’d do anything
for her. I was well past that point. I would absolutely do anything she wanted me to. Her plan was sheer madness, but it had a certain style to it. It had a flair that appealed to that ten-year-old kid in me who was still a smart ass to his father. It didn’t matter if it was suicide, though. If I was going to die, I was going to die with her.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll help you spring the other Touchers, but we’re going to have to do it smart and we’re going to have to do it my way.”

  I was pretty sure, at that point, that I’d made another horrible decision, one of many in recent days. This idea was as bad as it got, but at least this one would give me half a chance to put a bullet in the head of the guy claiming to be the Preacher.

  Some people in the world just needed to die.

  Jailbreak

  “This is never going to work,” I told her. “Not in a million years.”

  “No one has ever attacked Fortress,” she replied, working at setting up the box of grenades with cases of ammunition inside. “It’s going to work. It’s the one thing they won’t expect.”

  I was still shocked with the fire by which Jenna worked. Less than forty-eight hours before she’d mangled her hand and now here she was, planning the most ridiculous assault I’ve ever heard of. This was movie quality stuff, if there was still such a thing. Jenna popped pain pills like they were going out of style and kept working. If the butchered hand bothered her, she wasn’t showing it.

  We’d spent another day in my penthouse, letting her rest while I listened for any sound of encroaching forces from Fortress. While there was much more activity in the ruins than I’d ever remembered, none were close to my place. The drones were flying constant reconnaissance around the city and we’d had to lug all this stuff out in the dead of night. We’d set similar boxes like the one Jenna worked on throughout the ruins around Fortress. They were tied together by two radios I’d painstakingly tested the day before. The idea was to create enough commotion outside that, once we were inside Fortress, they would be worried about who was attacking and not us. I still didn’t like the whole part about us being inside the walled community of psychopaths. It ran against not only what I wanted to do, but what the other Touchers, Jenna’s people, wanted her to do.