There was nothing left.
The decontamination unit was like a big, empty mobile home with cameras in the ceiling and a door at one end. The walls were padded with white vinyl panels. The floor was made up of white tiles.
Sweat beaded up on Borland's forehead. What am I doing? He fidgeted.
Time for a drink.
"Never get used to the decontamination." He shrugged, felt a pressure in his chest. His broken wrist was wrapped in fiberglass and plaster. It throbbed. "Club soda enemas and light-activated gamma globulin shots." He watched Aggie. Her eyes were slits, staring at the floor between her sandals.
"I remember a guy back in the day," Borland said. "Got an overdose, and his balls glowed for a week." He noticed his belly was starting to push past his tunic, so he pulled at the cloth until it ripped again. The hernias were a tangle of competing pressures, all painful. Brass said they'd fix him up. "Cheap goddamn pajamas. Same type we used back in..."
"Shut up, Joe! I'm sick of you," Aggie hissed.
Borland looked at her hard, his face twisting into a difficult smile. "She's alive!"
"I said shut up!" She turned her eyes to him. They were dark, apocalyptic. "It's just another day in paradise for you."
"I don't know about paradise," Borland said and shrugged. "But it's another day."
Aggie shook her head, and blurted: "It's paradise to you!" Then her hands came up and she throttled the air in front of her. "I know I didn't lose the whole squad, but I lost enough." She pointed a hard finger at Borland to keep him from speaking. "And that makes me enough like you to turn my stomach, but also enough to keep me from judging."
Borland clenched his teeth.
"I'm terrified to think I'd ever get past it as quick as you!" Aggie snapped. "Or feed on it."
"I'm not past it..." Borland started to speak, but she silenced him with a gesture.
"Don't think I haven't seen it, Joe." She looked away. "You were a worthless drunk, dying in retirement until Brass called you up. All this death and destruction, I've watched it bring you back to life." Aggie lifted her hands and looked at them. "But I killed members of my squad with these." Tears welled up in her eyes. "And I'm afraid I might get past it."
Borland got to his feet, shaking his head. Memories of faces he killed flickered through his mind. Countless strangers from the day and now: Jill Hyde-and Zombie...kid didn't see it coming. More spooks in the halls.
He lifted his face to the ceiling. A tear trailed down his right cheek as his features contorted with rage and hatred.
"There's more to me..." he whispered and turned.
"What?" Aggie looked up at him.
Borland punched her in the face, and her head thumped against the padded wall. The pain came up his broken wrist in waves, but he relished it and smiled.
"Borland!" She glared up at him, pressing her cheek.
"It's your protocol!" Borland bellowed and hit her again. His features shone with anger, his eyes filled with tears. He cocked his fist for another punch. There was blood on his cast.
"Enough!" Aggie snarled, spitting red. She was up before Borland could react.
There was a bang; the room went dark and the ultraviolet lights turned on. The whites of their sterile pajamas, eyes and teeth blazed to life. Aggie's skin flared a deep merlot; Borland's turned a toxic purple.
Borland could use his bulk in the tight confines, while the slippery wall padding and single piece of furniture seriously hampered Aggie's more gymnastic fight style. And she was injured, hurt as hell. Put toe to toe, Borland's weight firmly planted, turned him into a formidable weapons platform.
Damn you!
So he fired a couple fists at her.
Kill me!
But Aggie's speed and the strange lighting worked in her favor. Sure, Borland fired a solid right and left, but the glare of ultraviolet white contrasted with Aggie's dark skin-dazzled his eyes and gave her the edge. More than once he swung a fist only to have it strike the padded wall a second before Aggie's solid knee swept in from the side leaving his kidneys and back throbbing. He fell to his knees.
Come on! Kill me! Get me past it!
Aggie moved in for the kill but he caught her solidly on the temple, and it would have taken her down if she hadn't managed to twist out to the end of his reach to dilute the fist's power. It still caught her hard, and she winced, shaking her head as she rolled along the wall away from him.
Borland's breath was already going as he heaved himself upright, sucking in air like a drowning man.
But Aggie heard the ragged intake and built a combination around it. She faked a left and then stabbed the solid fingers on her right hand into his windpipe. Pain shrieked up behind Borland's eyes as he tried to get an arm up. Too late. She pounded his nose: blood gushed, then she caught his jaw with a bone-numbing elbow before giving him a left-right-left knee and fist combination that sent him gagging and reeling to collapse against the wall.
She continued firing at him, stepping in close and closing his left eye with a right before landing three solid punches that sent dark blood spraying as Aggie pulverized what was left of his nose.
Defeated, he rolled away from the wall and across the floor. A half-hearted kick to his belly brought his breath back in one agonizing gasp.
Aggie walked over, fists black and shiny with blood. Her hygienic pyjamas were blood-spattered, in pieces. Her left breast was completely exposed. She caught Borland's glance and tied her tunic shut. Blood stained her white teeth with memories of violence.
She held an open hand out but Borland slapped it away.
"No," he mumbled, lips tight with swelling.
She smiled down at him and nodded.
"I think I re-broke it," she said studying the fingers she flexed on her right hand. They were sticking out of a shattered cast. "Feels good."
Borland turned his head and spat blood on the tiles.
Aggie stared down at him. Her expressions went through a complex series: anger, pleasure, pride, anger.
Borland realized his own tunic was torn open. He started gathering it together over his blood-smeared belly, and then gave up.
There was a bang and the glare of white fluorescent replaced the ultraviolet light. Borland growled and slapped a hand over his face. There was a boom and the door opened.
Someone said: "Jesus Christ, what happened in here?"
Aggie smirked at the door and then her dark eyes shifted down to Borland.
"Just so I don't get used to killing friends." She wiped her hands on her tunic, left strange patterns there in his blood.
Borland nodded quietly, snorted in a clot of blood and snot-almost vomited when he coughed.
"Me too," he growled, voice breaking with either madness or sorrow. His eyes filled with tears as Aggie continued to wipe her hands. She stepped over him and walked toward the door with shoulders squared.
Borland opened his right eye a crack and peered at the overhead lights. He ached all over. His vision swam and then...
CHAPTER 74
"Still making friends I see," a voice rasped. "Aggie said I'd find you here."
Borland opened his right eye-the other was swollen shut-and saw that the wheels on Hyde's chair arched up and away on either side of his head like horns. The old cripple leaned out, head angled to slow the saliva that was dripping from his incisors. He hung over Borland like a rain cloud, dark in his long hooded coat.
His face was a shadow.
Borland shut his eye while a complicated pang of emotion squeezed his chest. He and Aggie had recognized Hyde's body by the leg-braces, string of hood-lamps around his neck and biofeedback hook-ups stuck to his scarred scalp. The current in the cistern pond was tumbling him, alternately raising and sinking him. They were deciding whether it would be safe to take his body out for a squad burial when the churning floodwater pushed him up, his skeletal jaws opened and he gasped. They raised their guns, aimed at his face.
And hesitated.
There had been s
omething about the look in his eyes that made them pause. When he started ranting about his daughter, they knew he hadn't presented.
Hyde snarled and sat back in his wheelchair. There was a clatter, and Borland watched the skinned captain struggle with his various tubes and I.V. bags.
The bullet that hit him missed all the vital organs. He was in I.C.U. for two days, while they flushed his system. No Variant Effect-no presentation. Just luck. Abrasions and cuts, and they'd already run two rounds of decontamination on him. He expected a third.
So did Borland.
"You burned my daughter's house," Hyde growled. "Beachboy said it was because you found the baggie, Mofo, had presented there," he grumbled. "You couldn't secure the site for the neighborhood so you burned it. Unfortunate but necessary."
"That's it," Borland mumbled between bloody lips. "I didn't know it was her place. And there was no one else there."
"When I saw my daughter in the tunnels the Biters had not harmed her. They almost seemed to be protecting her," Hyde said, voice trailing off. "Why do you think that was?"
"Maybe they were keeping her for a midnight snack," Borland drawled carelessly.
"But, the Biters needed Ritual." Hyde shook his head. "I could tell."
"Like you say," Borland rumbled, anxious nausea arriving with Hyde's line of questioning: "History. We never saw Biters in the early part of the day. We don't know what they were like."
Hyde was silent, considering Borland's point and then he said: "That sounds like too convenient an answer. But it will do-for now." Hyde looked away, his naked eyes glimmering with moisture. "They did not find her body. Many could not be identified. There was no time."
Borland shrugged.
"Perhaps she got away," Hyde said hopefully. "There were many holes in that hotlink. They were not all covered at that point."
His face hung over Borland until a strand of spittle started to fall. Hyde caught it on the back of his hand. The old cripple's eyes hardened, scanning over him.
"If you're finished making a spectacle of yourself...get dressed." Hyde sneered and started to turn his wheelchair. One of the tires thumped against Borland's temple, scraped over his ear. "Brass wants to meet with us in 30 minutes. He's bringing the old stationhouses back online and we are to consult." Hyde fell quiet a second and then... "More presentations in Metro. Those car thieves had busy social lives."
Borland wheezed and nodded. He coughed and tasted blood.
"Unless you're finally dying." Hyde's voice trailed off as he wheeled away.
Borland watched the overhead light, listened to the tramp of boots on the tile in the hall. More recruits coming in. Somewhere, a transport engine rumbled.
He smiled up at the ceiling and growled, "You say that like it's a bad thing."
****
* * *
Titles by G. Wells Taylor
The Apocalypse Trilogy
WHEN GRAVEYARDS YAWN - A Wildclown Novel
THE FORSAKEN
THE FIFTH HORSEMAN
Wildclown Mysteries
WHEN GRAVEYARDS YAWN
WILDCLOWN HARD-BOILED
WILDCLOWN HIJACKED
MENAGERIE
THE CORPSE: HARBINGER
Gene Spiral Stories
6 - PORTRAIT OF A 21ST CENTURY SNUFF FIGHTER
1 - HISTORY OF THE MOONCALF
Horror Fiction
BENT STEEPLE
THE VARIANT EFFECT
MEMORY LANE
MOTHER'S BOY
THE LAST CAMPING TRIP
Check GWellsTaylor.com for more.
All G. Wells Taylor eBook titles are available in multi-format for $3.99 or less at GWellsTaylor.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Kobobooks.com, iBookstore and Smashwords.com. Order G. Wells Taylor paperbacks at GWellsTaylor.com.
Email Questions or comments to: [email protected] or [email protected].
* * *
* * *
A free ebook from http://manybooks.net/
The Variant Effect Page 27
