"Jill needs her father," Monica said weakly.
"Her father's dead," Hyde whispered, fascinated by his ghoulish reflection.
"You're just upset," Monica cried, trying to rally, knowing there was nothing left. "You need time."
Hyde turned toward her, and clawed at the bandages on his face. His fingers and hands burned, his cheekbones prickled with pain. He surged toward the vinyl to show her-so she could see what the Biters left.
"You will go later," he screamed, his breath fogging the vinyl. "So go now!"
"HONK!" Headlights burned the air as a horn sounded!
Then an overpowering roar behind his wheelchair.
SQUAWK! Hydraulics firing.
Hyde was torn from the past as blinding halogen beams exploded in the stationhouse. The lights pinned him into place, exposed every scar on his body.
The first of two big transports roared at him. The rattle of the engines, the hiss and squeal of brakes caught at Hyde's throat.
Sudden momentum pushed his chair forward.
CHAPTER 32
Borland took a seat at the table well away from Dr. Cavalle, Tinfingers and the Old Man. They were trying to show Midhurst something on the glowing screen of an e-reader-probably how to make the text bigger. The group looked up as he entered and then went back to their instruction. Borland half-turned in his chair, slid his pint flask out and then took a quick jolt. He kept the bottle low, and dabbed the sweat from his upper lip with the bandages on his right hand. The whiskey warmed his chest, but it was no replacement for rest. All of it, everything, was starting to pile up on him. It felt like a cinderblock was sitting on his heart. Biding his time, he studied the group at the front of the lunchroom, and then upended the flask for another pull.
Brass entered and frowned.
"Oops." Borland shrugged, what was the point? They knew what they were dealing with. He gestured impotently with the flask before hiding it. "Busted."
Brass shook his head aggressively. "It wouldn't take a great detective." He smiled bitterly then softened. "You smell like peppermint liqueur."
"It's just to keep my hands steady." Borland shook his head. "I've been going too long."
"Are you ever sober?" Brass walked up to the table, kept his voice low.
"Only when it's absolutely necessary." Borland couldn't restrain himself. "Hasn't been necessary for a while."
Suddenly bright lights burned through the window in the door, set a harsh glow around the shuttered lunchroom window.
"That's T-1," Brass walked to the big window beside the lunchroom door and flipped the blinds. "God! They almost got Hyde." He chuckled. "I knew Aggie was a good choice."
Borland could barely see the machines from where he was sitting. It was all halogen flare. But in the light and glare he just caught Aggie rolling Hyde away from the machines. She turned him and started talking. It was all light and phosphorus. Pressure built behind Borland's eyes. He looked away and glowered.
"But is Borland?" Brass muttered to himself and turned to him. "T-1's Command and assault." He gestured as a second set of bright halogens backlit the first transport's mammoth silhouette. "T-2 is communications, supply and barrack."
"Jesus!" Borland squinted into the blaze. He shrugged, took a drink. What the hell, it was all out in the open.
"You need shuteyeÖ" Brass beat him to the excuse, held his hand out until Borland placed the flask in it. The big man opened it and took a drink, before handing it back. "You're too old to run on that mixture, Joe. But I know how you work." He nodded. "We'll talk after you're rested."
"I'm just tired." Borland slipped his flask away, took a heavy breath. He caught Cavalle watching him, and felt heat color his cheeks.
She knows how you work too.
"Standard procedure. Both transports have bunks for command officers." Brass peered through the blinds. "Captain Hyde would have posed a problem, so we've refit a Horton medium duty ambulance for him, painted it gas company colors."
"How are we sneaking those in?" Borland pointed at the transports and rose, felt his hernias tug and he almost groaned.
"You're not. You'll HQ out at the military base-lots of places to hide you. We've placed domestic vehicles on site for trips into Parkerville." Brass smiled or snarled. "You can sneak in those."
"Okay."
Brass turned a serious expression to him, pursed his lips. "Nobody wanted to touch you, Joe." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Your POO file reads like The Lost Weekend."
Borland shrugged, looked sideways through the window as the recruits broke ranks and walked over to the transports. The drivers had appeared and were shaking hands. He could see the hesitation and excitement as the youngsters looked to Hyde and Aggie.
"But I know you've still got what it takes." Brass nodded. "I know half of what you've done to yourself is punishment for what you did to Hyde and the squads. You want to make amends."
Borland frowned and then smiled ironically.
"The other half is a stupid reaction to boredom." Brass laughed and turned to him. "But it's a mixture that we need for this." He pointed his chin at the recruits. "Those kids only know stories. They've seen 3-D histories and downloads based on the day. They've grown up with their rhymes and bogeymen, but it's always been a distant thing couched in peacetime. It's been a game. They don't know the hell they might be getting into." He turned back to Borland. "They've got to go where only a ghost could lead them."
Borland face fell, his chest constricting. His smile was like a grimace.
CHAPTER 33
Borland growled as he walked past Hyde. The old freak had muttered something that made Aggie smile. He didn't know if it was an in-joke, and he didn't care. He didn't want Hyde spoiling the feeling of nostalgia that warmed his chest as he approached the towering transports. Both vehicles were the same. The numeral designation was just for radio yap and logistics.
Variant Squad transports were oversized monsters with tracks 10 feet wide, and a wheelbase close to 30. The two-storied mastodons cramped the stationhouse with their prehistoric heavy armor. They crowded any stretch of road they traveled.
From outside, the machines looked like mutant armored delivery vans. Halogen lamps were tucked into ports all over their tough skin and could be flicked to life if a squad was in trouble, and needed a beacon to run to, or if a hunting pack was close on them. Biters hated bright light-a side effect of owning lidless eyes.
T-1's driver wore squad coveralls and was talking to a couple other recruits. Her jumper nametag said: "Mudroom." Flaming red hair was tied back in a tight bun. She had bright green eyes, and a spray of freckles over her cheeks and nose.
T-2 was the communications, supply and barrack transport. A 20 year-old body builder named Hazard would drive it. T-2 would also be used for squad extraction if anything happened to T-1. It carried a state-of-the-art communications center run by Wizard, a strong-featured Hindu woman with jet-black hair. Borland spotted the bagged-tech talking to Tinfingers.
Dr. Cavalle would ride with T-2, and liaison with Metro HQ once the Sneak Squad kicked the hornet's nest.
Borland ignored Mudroom's salute and strode around to the back of T-1.
The rear door folded down to form a sturdy ramp. He paused at the top. Just inside to the left was a cramped 'hotbox' where a bagged-boy could relieve him or herself. Opposite that was a mini-galley: a set of tight shelves, microwave and icebox, that served as a food and relief station and was generally used for re-hydrating more than anything else. The bag-suits stewed a man in his own sweat-especially if he was on the run. There was antiseptic in the air, but Borland caught an ancient locker room smell.
Past this was the main squad compartment. The bay was a big space, and spoke to the transport's boxy appearance, but the 20 bagged-boys it could hold needed lots of room to negotiate with weapons and equipment. Especially while wrapped in thick vinyl.
Borland rubbed at a place on the doorframe where some bagged-boy from back in the day had melted
his initials into the hi-impact plastic. They'd been painted over so he couldn't make out the autograph. There were also several puckered scars where cigarettes had been stubbed out on the armrests between the squad couches that ran the length of the compartment.
Weapon and equipment lockers lined the walls behind them. The same was true overhead, but those held medical kits, hood-lamp replacements and various tech. All the lockers could be buggers to open when the crash harnesses were not in use. These hung over the storage units from cleats.
The forward wall was sealed by a thick steel door that was kept locked up tight any time a transport was on the move. It isolated the driver-socket from the squad compartment. That was protocol learned the hard way back in the day.
Before the socket safety door, a Stationhouse Three driver yanked his squad out of hazard and accidentally brought in the leading edge of a Biter pack. It was common for a squad to fight its way onto a transport if things went ape. And leaving a scene until more bags arrived was the smarter form of valor.
But in that case, the transport made it onto the highway at the same time as the Alpha got the driver. The transport smashed into a fuel truck and exploded, burning a quarter mile of highway and incinerating 40 civilians on a bus.
So the socket-door was locked whenever the wheels were turning. The squad compartment communicated with the driver and the outside world with a clutch of radio and video equipment bolted to the doorframe.
The second floor was a half-story with a mini-galley, head with toilet-shower and recessed sleeping couches for two command officers. Borland winced, thinking of the steel foot and handholds he'd have to navigate to access it.
Both transports were equipped with foldaway medical tables that could be ziplocked with tough vinyl sheeting and oxygen masks if the worst happened and a bagged-boy presented.
SsskinÖ
Borland turned to see Aggie and Brass with Cavalle and Hyde at the open rear door.
"Why we only got 19 recruits?" Aggie asked, looking up from the roster on her e-reader. "Makes us one short a full squad."
"You'll pick up your extra man at the Parkerville roadblock," Brass said, stepping up, face flat. "We had to pull a few strings to get him." He gave Aggie his reassuring look.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Hyde hissed from under his hood.
"It's Robert Spiko," Brass said, his voice dropping.
"SpikoÖ" Hyde trailed off. He picked at his scarred palm to jog his memory
"He's in the clinkÖ" Borland remembered Spiko from back in the day. They'd shared a special connection when they first hooked up, but something went sour. A career soldier, Spiko jumped into the squad-work with gusto. But he was reassigned before the mix with Borland became toxic.
"He's been given special liberty. We need his skills," Brass said and then continued over Aggie's protests. "I don't have to repeat how important this mission is. You remember the day." He glared. "If we find the Variant Effect, it cannot get out of Parkerville."
"Already did, Brass," Aggie reminded.
"Spiko?" Borland growled.
"He took part in a POOs conditioning program for Variant veterans," Cavalle interjected. "Spiko felt as bad as anyone for what happened."
"Bad?" Hyde blurted. "Didn't he kill his own squad?"
"The Manfield Building Outbreak is still classifiedÖ" Brass began.
Hyde's eyes flashed angrily under his hood.
"It happened near the end of the day. I can tell you that his squad encountered a highly infectious form of Variant dermatophagia," Brass explained. "Everyone bitten turnedÖ"
"His whole squad was bittenÖ" Hyde grumbled. "How could he know?"
"There's more to the story." Brass sighed. "He acted. You remember the day. Hesitate and lose the world."
"He responded well to our treatment," Cavalle explained.
"He won't respond well to mine," Borland threatened, buoyed by nostalgia, "if he goes ape."
"Checks and balances." Brass regarded his captains. "His inclusion in this mission underlines how important it is that you succeed."
CHAPTER 34
"SsskinÖ"
Borland's eyes snapped open. It was dark. He wondered where he was.
It took a minute.
"SsskinÖ"
He was in T-1's upper berth. Almost fell asleep in the lunchroom. Borland had felt his senses dimming; even his taste for drink left him.
He'd squeezed past recruits packing the transport, mumbled something and started climbing the recessed handholds in the wall. There was a moment when his exhausted, boozed-out condition almost dropped him back on them but someone had pushed him up for the final heave.
Back in the day, transports were primarily sent from the stationhouses for specific short-term Variant-related missions, but once in a while they'd have to dig inÖespecially if there was a large Variant presentation that had to be locked down, or for Sneak Squads-so the half-deck over the squad compartment was handy. Bagged-boys took shifts sleeping in hammocks down below.
The floor opened on the squad compartment but could be closed up if the Captains needed privacy. And it was common back in the day to reward bagged-boys with berth privileges for sleeping or screwing or shooting up.
Pumping music into the squad compartment below covered the wild stuff.
Borland barely made it onto the portside sleeping couch before passing out.
The engine rumbled. His bulk heaved and swayed. They were moving.
He identified a couple voices down below-he had an ear for that. It helped back in the day when everyone was cranked or terrified on the radio screaming through vinyl hoods.
Beachboy and Zombie were passing the time with a bit of chinwag. The others down there were listening, napping or tuned in to some kind of download on their palm-coms.
His mind started drifting back to dreams of darkness and gnashing teeth, and then this:
"No," Beachboy insisted, "Mr. A made the decision himself."
Zombie corrected, "It came from Bad Idea Man. It always comes from him. 'Have a martini,' he said."
"No way. No way!" Beachboy argued. "If Mr. A's super power is to become Blackout Man, they would have given him safeguards against simple suggestion."
"If that's the case," Zombie continued, "then how about the issue, DEATH'S DOOR? When Blackout appears after news reaches Omega Island that his old nemesis, Sergeant Sepsis, has returned."
"That's a decision not a suggestion," Beachboy asserted. "Mr. A decided he had to do something to stop Sepsis. So he reached for the bottle."
"What's this?" Borland shouted from above, voice groggy as he hovered on the edge of sleep. He was also drawn to the banter and camaraderie-nostalgia?
The men fell quiet.
"Sorry Captain," Beachboy said, "We're talking about Blackout. He's a character in Team Omega comic books, a blackout drunk that the military uses for sensitive and difficult missions where a high degree of deniability is required."
"Or where the action is too 'evil' for America to claim responsibility or justly order a free man to do it," Zombie added hesitantly. "He can't remember what he does, sir. His alter ego is Mr. A. He's a straitlaced churchgoer."
"That's just made up crap. People do what they want." Borland glared into the darkness overhead. "Even bad stuff feels good." He went quiet wondering what he was getting at and then he hollered, "So pipe down about it!"
"Actually Captain Borland," the bagged-girl Lilith interjected, her voice a clean insinuation from below. "Fictional heroes of the type the boys are discussing represent archetypal characters dealing with human dilemmas that day-to-day life does not give us opportunity to reflect upon." She paused. "It is a safe place to work things like that out. The fictional characters deal with the penalties without harm to the reader, and likewise the reader can enjoy the vicarious successesÖ"
"Jesus, all them syllables!" Borland laughed harshly, pushing a manic smile at the ceiling. "You'd think an educated girl would know what PIPE DOWN mean
s!"
Someone hooted; Lilith growled or groaned.
Borland's giggles filled the sleeping berth, until he buried his face in the pillow to stifle them. The release did something, allowed the booze and painkillers to suddenly reconstitute in his veins. It brought a soothing space that calmed his aching nerves. He followed it off to sleep.
"SsskinÖ"
The word chased Borland out of his sweat-soaked dreams. The air was close about him and reeked of booze and toxins. Need a showerÖ Then he imagined using the shower-toilet. Won't be pretty.
The transport had stopped, the engine idling.
He felt around the wall, slid a steel shutter back, and peered out through a bulletproof window. They were stopped just past a roadblock. Soldiers were grouped around Cavalle beside T-2 about 30 feet behind T-1. A haze of hazard lights showed big armored vehicles farther back to either side of the road-tanks too. Lots of canvas was stretched out, enough to feed and house-a thousand?
Cavalle glanced over an e-reader, her face lit by the dim blue view screen before she authorized something with a thumbprint and handed it back. A pair of soldiers with assault rifles walked over to a dark van parked by armored trucks. A third opened the rear door and reached in to help someone out.
The figure was average height but compactly built. Borland recognized the set of the wide shoulders and solid military stance. Robert Spiko held out his thick wrists. The headlights glimmered on a pair of handcuffs as the third soldier removed them. Spiko was wearing a squad jumper. His long hair was kept away from his face by a headband.
Cavalle led Spiko over to T-2 where they disappeared behind its armored flank.
Borland fell back on his bunk. T-1's engine suddenly rumbled and hydraulics squawked. They lurched into motion.
He did not believe in redemption. Say what you like, guilt and shame were just more moves in a shell game. Spiko being brought on a sneak said loud and clear that he was not cured. He was still Spiko. Cavalle said he'd taken part in a POOs conditioning program. Borland wondered what they'd conditioned him for.
The Variant Effect Page 10
