“She didn’t make it,” she said softly.
Sun had been the one who opened her up the second time. The woman had come in and asked for Sun by name. Had trusted her to help.
“You lost your job,” Andy said.
“The review committee was unanimous. Any first year intern could have done that suture. I screwed up. The Maryland Medical Board revoked my license. The Board had been taking some bad hits in the media, and they made an example out of me. I had over a hundred thousand dollars in student loans, and loss of my license meant I’d never pay them back. So I filed bankruptcy.
“I became a vet by studying at home. Not too big a leap, really. Animals and humans share a lot of the same medical problems. Then I met Steven, we got married, and he died, leaving me with another load of bills. I couldn’t file bankruptcy again; you had to wait seven years. So I applied for a grant under a false name to study lions in Africa. Mainly to hide from my creditors.”
Andy said, “Why did you leave Africa?”
“They found out I wasn’t who I said I was and pulled my funding. I applied for citizenship in South Africa but was denied. When I was deported back to the US I had about ten different groups trying to sue me. That’s when the President stepped in. I think he found me through the US Embassy in South Africa. I made the headlines a few times while I was there, fighting for citizenship. He offered me a deal; Samhain for ten years or until the project ended, whichever came first. All of my debts would disappear if I agreed. Of course, I took it.”
“And here you are.”
“And here I am.”
Andy put his hand on her cheek.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.
She looked up at him, saw the warmth, and hugged him.
“Thanks for fixing up my foot.”
Sun snorted. “Good thing you didn’t need stitches.”
“We all make mistakes, Sun. The hard part is forgiving ourselves.”
Sun pursed her lips. “Her name was Madeline. She had a husband. A son. She was only 60. I went to the funeral.”
“That took guts.”
“Her son spat in my face. It made me feel a little better.”
Andy said, “I could spit on you now, if you want.”
“Maybe later. Let’s go feed the demon.”
They left Sun’s room and headed for the Octopus. Race was there, hunched over a computer. He looked up when he noticed Sun and Andy.
“How is the speech lesson coming?”
“Great,” Andy answered. “Like teaching kindergarten, except snack time is messier.”
“So he’ll be ready to talk tomorrow morning?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Race beamed. “Excellent,” he said.
The General turned back to his monitor. Race always wore his good ole boy attitude like cowboys wore hats, but Sun hadn’t seen him so genuinely pleased before. The man looked ten years younger.
Sun and Andy took the Orange Arm to Orange 12. Andy was more help in procuring a sheep this time. He held the cereal, assisted in putting on the harness, and Sun taught him that the most effective way to startle sheep wasn’t yelling “Boo!” It was clapping your hands.
“I can’t get enough of this earthy smell,” Andy said. “We should bottle it and sell it to urbanites.”
“Where there’s a wool, there’s a way.”
Andy made a show of rolling his eyes.
“You never told me,” Sun said, “about that problem you were having with the hieroglyphics on the capsule.”
“I’m still stuck on it. You ready for a mini lecture?”
Sun nodded. She was happy to be talking about something other than her broken past.
“Okay. You see, it’s known that glyphs are based on spoken language, but for a long time Hieroglyphic Maya was thought to be logographic. Each picture was a word. But the current view is that it was a phonetic system; glyphs stand for sounds, like our own alphabet. So scholars have had to reevaluate everything. To make it even harder, current Maya language is filled with bits of Spanish, so to understand the ancient language, the language of the glyphs, you can’t really use modern Maya.”
“So how do you decipher it?” Sun asked.
“Lots of ways. I have a few computer programs, I check the work of other scholars, I find similar references in previously translated passages. A lot of it is basic logic. Once you understand the sentence structure of a language, it’s like a cryptogram in a crossword puzzle book. You just look for the context clues.”
Sun led the sheep over to the scale pen. “So what has the great translator perplexed?”
“There are several references to a tuunich k’iinal. The hot rock. I don’t know what that means.”
“Volcano?”
Andy shook his head. “That’s a different word.”
“Coals? For cooking?”
“No. A cooking pit is a piib. Different glyphs. There’s also reference to Kukulcán. He’s a flying warrior god who came from ‘over the water’. Sort of the Mayan version of the Aztec Quetzalcoatl.”
“Could that be Bub?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. Quetzalcoatl means feathered serpent. Bub doesn’t have feathers, but he does fly, and he could qualify as a serpent. The thought that ancient people were offering our Bub human sacrifices is a little unnerving. More than 100,000 were killed to satisfy Kukulcán’s lust for blood.”
“I should have paid more attention in history class,” Sun said.
Sun finished jotting down the sheep’s specs on the chart and they led it out of Orange 12 and down the hallway. Race was no longer in the Octopus.
“What’s your impression of our General Race?” Andy asked, holding open the Red Arm door.
“He’s good at manipulating people. I wonder why he’s here, though. The Army only has so many Generals, why stick one underground for forty years?”
“Something to do with his wife?” Andy suggested. “Dr. Belgium told me about her disease.”
“I don’t think so. She didn’t become symptomatic until a few years ago.”
“Maybe we should ask him. He seems honest. Well, as honest as the military can get. What’s Dr. Harker’s problem?”
“You noticed it too?”
“Yeah. The lady seems to have a large assortment of bugs up her ass.”
Sun punched in the code for the first gate. “She has problems relating to people, I think.”
“And Dr. Belgium… don’t get me wrong. I like the guy. But he seems to be one slice short of a sandwich himself.”
“Yeah,” Sun agreed. “And the holies. Odd ducks, both of them. Father Thrist’s little outburst didn’t wear well with the Roman collar.”
Andy said, “Maybe we’re not all here because we’re perfect for the job.”
“Okay. Then why?”
“Well, you didn’t have a choice. I really didn’t either. The President saw fit to mention a little problem that I would have with the IRS if I didn’t cooperate. Maybe everyone here is stuck as well. Think about it. Not just everyone would give up their life, families, friends, possessions, to live down here, even though Bub is an interesting subject. Only those people with nothing to lose.”
Sun punched in the code for the second gate and thought it over.
“It’s so American,” she said.
“How so?”
“Here is the most top secret, and possibly the most important, project the world has ever known. And who’s running it? Screw-ups and criminals.”
Andy smiled, closing the gate behind them. “Well, it’s been a hundred years, and no problems yet.”
“Does that mean we should be encouraged?” Sun asked, “Or be worried that the problems are overdue?”
“What’s the worst that can happen?”
“Bub kills us all, escapes, and destroys the world.”
“That takes some of the pressure off,” Andy said.
He opened the door to Red 14. Dr. Belgium was fiddling wit
h the DVD, trying to shove a disc in.
“It helps if you turn it on,” Sun suggested.
“Suuuuun,” Bub said. “Aaaaaandy.”
Sun almost backed up. It still freaked her out a little that something so big and ugly could talk.
Andy said, “Hello, Bub. How was your nap?”
“Huuuuungry. Need sheeeeep.”
“Are sheep what you’d normally eat?” Sun asked. “Before you were able to talk, I could only guess.”
“Sheeeeeep are goooood.”
Sun had opened the small door and pushed the sheep through. Bub snatched it up in his claw and quickly snapped its neck.
“Bub, sometimes when you eat the sheep, you kill it and bring it back to life,” Sun said. “How do you do this?”
Bub continued to twist the sheep’s head until it came off like a bottle cap. He sucked on the neck stump, tilting the body up as if it were a giant beer.
“Seeeeeeeecret,” Bub said, gurgling from the liquid in his mouth. Some of the blood ran out of the corner and matted his chest hair.
“Can you do it now?” Sun asked.
“Yesssss.”
Bub held the sheep’s headless carcass tightly to his chest. A minute passed, and then the animal’s legs began to twitch and buck. Bub dropped it to the ground, and the sheep took off in a sprint and rammed full speed into the Plexiglas barrier. It hit with a large crash, smearing the glass with blood.
The sheep righted itself, shook, then ran again, this time barreling into one of the artificial trees.
Bub croaked with baritone laughter. The sheep’s head, still in his claw, opened and closed its mouth in silent protest, its eyes darting back and forth.
“Baa-aaa,” Bub said, imitating the sheep’s sound. He held the head in front of him like a hand puppet. “Baa-aaa.”
Sun had to steel herself and hoped she hadn’t lost composure. A glance at Dr. Belgium found him ashen, and Andy had a look on his face that predicted vomiting.
“Thank you, Bub,” Sun said in metered tones. “That’s enough.”
Bub tossed the sheep’s head into his mouth like a piece of popcorn. It continued to squirm while being munched on. His other claw shot out and grazed the runaway sheep body. It’s belly unzipped, intestines winding out like a firehouse. The demon grabbed a handful and shoveled them in.
“Goooood,” Bub said.
“I’ve got to stop coming here during mealtime,” Andy said, clutching his stomach.
The demon cocked his head to the side, appearing confused.
“Are you sick, Aaaaaandy?”
“No, Bub. It’s just that your eating habits are a little… distressing.”
“You wanted to seeeeee.”
Andy was looking greener and greener, so Sun answered. “We want to learn from you, Bub, but we have a culture gap. Some things that you do aren’t done in our culture, so we don’t know how to react to them.”
Bub jumped up to the Plexiglas, holding the sheep. Sun hadn’t seen him jump before. The leap was over fifteen feet, and Bub landed hard enough to make the ground rumble. He yanked off one of the sheep’s hind legs and held it to his chest. It began to twitch and then bend at the knee back and forth.
“Eeeeeach part is aliiiiive,” Bub said.
“The little parts are called cells.”
“Cells,” Bub repeated. “When the body dieeeeees, the cells still live for some tiiiiiime. I can maaaaake them think the body is still aliiiiiiive.”
“How?” Sun asked.
Bub held the twitching leg up for Sun to see. It was no longer bleeding—in fact, it looked as if it had healed.
“God,” Bub said. “I have pooooowers from God.”
Sun asked, “Can we have that leg so we can study it?”
Bub cocked his head to the side and appeared to think it over.
“Yessssssss.” Bub walked over to the sheep door and squatted, waiting. Sun took a breath and forced herself to move. She unlatched the door and Bub thrust the leg through it, stump first. Sun held it with both hands. It was heavy, and she felt the muscle fibers in the thigh contract and expand, exactly as if the sheep were alive.
“Ressurrrrrrrrrrection,” Bub said.
After he said it, the sheep’s leg contracted and the hoof missed her head by inches. On reflex she dropped it, and it flopped around on the floor like a landed fish.
Bub laughed.
Sun fought the surrealism of the scene and bent over, this time grabbing the leg by the hoof. She walked it over to Dr. Belgium, who was watching the whole episode slack-jawed.
“Can you take some blood samples? Tissue and marrow too?”
Belgium seemed reluctant to touch the leg, but consented and held it by the hoof as Sun had. The leg jerked wildly, and Belgium dropped it. He and Sun bent down for it, and Belgium got a firmer, two handed grip.
“I’ll be in Red 5,” Belgium said, indicating the lab. He walked off, holding the leg at arm’s length of his body.
“Do you want moooore? I could maaake the organs moooove.”
Andy’s hand clamped over his face and he went from green to white.
“Thank you, Bub,” Sun said. “There’s no need for any more right now.”
Bub nodded, then went back to eating. “You okay?” Sun asked, rubbing Andy’s back.
“I’m becoming a vegetarian,” he replied.
Bub’s munching sounds in the background made Andy gag again.
“Do we have any children’s videos on table manners?” Sun asked.
Andy gave her a weak grin.
Behind the Plexiglas barrier, Bub grinned as well.
“I need more Internet tiiiiiiiiiime,” Bub told Dr. Belgium when he returned from Red 5. Sun and Andy had left.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Belgium answered. His Adam’s apple wobbled up and down in his throat.
“I muuuuuust learn moooore.”
Belgium laughed, high pitched and near hysterical. “You’re joking! You went through the entire website of the Encyclopedia Britannica in an hour and a half. You can process information faster than it loads.”
“Open the dooooor,” Bub said. “Let meeeee oooooout.”
“I don’t think…”
“I’ll tell Raaaaace,” Bub interrupted.
“What? Are you blackmailing me?”
“Fraaaaaank,” Bub said softly, the trace of a purr in his voice. “I need more tiiiiiime to seeeeequence my geeeeenome.”
Belgium said nothing.
“Don’t you want to leeeeave heeeere, Fraaaaank?”
Belgium pictured himself, in a boat on a lake, a rod in his hand, the sun in his eyes. He hadn’t fished since he was in grade school, but right now it seemed like the most appealing thing in the world.
He hit the code to Bub’s door. It rose pneumatically and the demon folded his wings and left his habitat for the second time that day. He squatted next to Dr. Belgium and gave him a pat on the head, which Frank recoiled from.
“Gooooood, Fraaaaaank.”
Frank ducked down, away from the hand. The claws grazed his scalp. It was like a hairbrush made of needles.
“You maaaay goooooo,” Bub said, lumbering over to the Cray computer.
Belgium squatted and stayed put, watching as Bub hunched over his workstation. The keyboard was like a pocket calculator to Bub, the monitor must have been like looking at a digital watch. Belgium laughed. It reminded him of an old cartoon, where an elephant moved into a mouse’s house, dwarfing everything to comic proportions.
Using the tip of his pinky claw, Bub accessed the ISP and began to surf the World Wide Web. Samhain’s Internet connection was fiber-optic. The load times were instantaneous. Bub’s hand became a blur, as did the monitor. It seemed impossible that Bub could be absorbing all of that information that fast, but Belgium knew that he was.
He tried to think of all the reasons this was bad. Why shouldn’t Bub be allowed to learn about the world he was in? Think of the things he could teach us,
the bridges he could gap, the mysteries he could solve. Bub could be the key to solving all of the world’s problems; disease, hunger, war, death. Bub could create a utopia.
Or he could destroy everything.
But what would be the point in that? Bub had shown himself to be cooperative, and interested in humans. There would be no point in his using the world’s knowledge for bad things.
Belgium laughed again, at the memory of the cartoon elephant drinking out of the mouse’s tiny tea cup.
“This is all insane,” he said to himself.
Then he closed his eyes and imagined sitting on that boat, the sun warm on his face.
The alarm went off at 7:00 AM, but Race was already up. He hadn’t slept much; it seemed that every time he got comfortable his mind woke him up, offering images of combat and war games.
Soon. Very soon.
He hopped out of bed and did a quick round of calisthenics, working his muscles, feeling the sweat and increased respiration, enjoying it more than usual. Healthy body, healthy mind. He finished and hit the shower.
He was tempted to wake everyone up, get this show on the road, but restraint was as important a leadership quality as action. Race dressed in some chinos and a green crew neck and left his room for the Mess Hall. He made a large bowl of pancake batter and added two cans of blueberries to it while a pat of butter melted on the skillet. Helen had taught him how to make pancakes, years ago. He’d always hoped one day she would teach him other dishes. That was becoming more of a possibility with every passing day.
He made six cakes for himself and ate them with honey. Then he made twenty more with the rest of the batter for whoever wanted them. The thought amused him; a Brigadier General making blueberry pancakes for his troops. Even more amusing; the Secretary of Defense making blueberry pancakes.
Race chuckled to himself. He put two more pancakes on his plate and put the rest in the refrigerator. He then poured a glass of milk, and took that and the plate out of the Mess Hall, through the Octopus, and into Yellow 1.
“Who are you?” his wife asked. “What am I doing here? Why am I tied to this bed? Are you a doctor?”
“I’m your husband, dear.”
He set the plate and glass on the nightstand and changed her diaper while fielding her usual questions. She had some diaper rash, and he applied ointment as she protested between sobs. Then he untethered her hands and helped her sit up.
J.A. Konrath / Jack Kilborn Trilogy - Three Scary Thriller Novels (Origin, The List, Haunted House) Page 12
