Blood Soaked and Invaded - 02 (13 page)

“pbt?”

“Right. Shotgun weddings are alive and well where we came from, and my Bro is a bit of a…” She waved her hands around in the air, as if trying to conjure the proper description from nothing more than nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and carbon dioxide molecules. “…Traditionalist.”

“Oh.”

She grinned at me, and it was one of the good kind. Sure, it probably had a lot to do with my clear and present discomfort at the thought of adding Husband and Daddy to my list of personal descriptions, but it was a smile. If you’ve got a smile to work with, then things can’t be all bad. That being said, the idea of having her brother shoehorn us into something like that didn’t leave me feeling springtime fresh.

“So, how about giving Baj a shout and see what they’re up to?” Charlie continued to give me a perky smile that was so big and lovely that if there was anything hidden under it I didn’t clue into it at all. “I know he wants to get the upgrade out, and I’ll be that Jaya is right beside him, helping him out.”

I nodded, and gave my inner workings a little wake-up call. The map in my head was clearer than before, and vastly more detailed. It seemed like I could get more data on any given neighbor’s surroundings and activity than before, too. I didn’t linger long, pouring over the new stuff, and reached out to the Bajali “spark” on the map. Data appeared.

His spark and Jayashri’s spark were not located in Building 1. They were in their home. They were... “Oh.” I pulled back from the data and a strange notion that much more information was available to me if I chose to access it.

“What?” She looked at me with one eyebrow cocked into the air.

“I think we should wait about 10 more minutes before we call,” I replied.

“Why is that?”

“Because I know exactly what they’re doing and I’d be really annoyed if I got a call… during… They’re busy.” I couldn’t say more, but I suspect the look on my face carried the rest of the information because Charlie blushed and chuckled to herself.

“Do you get more information than you did before you got shot?” I was grateful that she asked a question that didn’t require a closer inspection of the data feed.

“Yes. I think that if I gave my little friends a push, I could probably have uncomfortable amounts of information about our neighbors. It felt like I could have looked through Baj’s eyes or felt everything that he… Uh. Yeah.” This time, I was the one blushing.

She exploded into gales of laughter, and I couldn’t help but go there with her. It felt good and cleansing, but it didn’t touch the thoughts assembling in my head.

Before I met Charlie Cooper, even mentioning the concept of biologically produced offspring in relationship to my swarm of single-minded swimmers would have produced a fight or flight reaction in me.

The idea, even the reality, of her bearing my child didn’t do anything more outlandish than give me a really warm feeling between my ventricles. Where was the fear? Did my head injury change me so much that the possibility that I would be a father cease to inspire dread in the corners of my heart?

How much had been changed in me?

What would our child look like?

The question slapped my frontal lobes so hard that tears appeared in the corners of my eyes. Then I realized why her dream was so terrible. We had no idea what the critters would do with a developing fetus. On top of that, if the baby were born even remotely human, the government would snatch him away from us… Actually, his or her humanity had nothing to do with it. Whatever came out of Charlie’s womb would be studied, tested, and treated like some kind of experiment, not loved like a child should be.

I sat there beside her with my insides clenching. We couldn’t prevent the Government from taking our baby away, and we couldn’t escape without becoming the latest iteration of Public Enemy Number One. They would find us. Hell, they’d find HER. They don’t need me.

They could kill me but keep her alive long enough to give birth. After that, they wouldn’t need a mother, and she could be disposed of for the sake of convenience. While that would get us out of the way, it didn’t do a thing for the rest of the community. If “our people” knew about any of it, they would probably rise up and start a serious fight.

I couldn’t keep track of all the permutations on the theme of having my child stolen in the names of Progress and Science, but I didn’t want to give them credence or power by voicing them. Regardless of all the ideas slamming around in my skull, one thing was absolutely true. There were two people we needed on our side: Bajali and Jayashri. No plan or strategy could be implemented without them.

I was completely rattled by all of the thoughts and images that were slithering back and forth over one another like eels in a barrel. Just sitting there with the thoughts was going to drive me mad.

Luckily for me, I heard automatic gunfire, and my train of thought was completely derailed.

Man Scythe in hand and hot country gal behind me, I jumped down the stairs and made it outside in record time. That’s when it became clear that the bullets were coming from outside our walled city-state, made doubly clear by the small swarm of zombies who were attempting to rappel down the wall on our side.

“I guess the remains of my father’s group have reorganized enough to retaliate.” I looked at Charlie over my shoulder, and she was smiling in a very feral fashion. Maybe it was the way she had her hands on her hips and matching short swords in her belt, I don’t know... Girl was smokin’.

In fact, I was so entranced by her charms, the Smokin’ Girl had to break me out of my reverie.

“Frank, you might want to pay attention. That one is comin’ right for ya.”

Sure enough, one of our intruders was hauling ass in my direction, and there were a few more behind him. They were yelling unintelligible things that added up to, “We have arrived and wish to commit violent acts upon your persons in retribution for damages done to us,” but sounded more like, “Yeargh!”

The zombie in front raised his weapon, and I moved. No sense in being there when the bullet arrives. Right?

I felt a small pang of disappointment when his head and upper torso were reduced to a wet, red cone following the trajectory of an unseen bullet. Our local guards had arrived, and the noise outside our wall rapidly disappeared.

The zombie who cannoned into me was one I hadn’t seen or been aware of. He was just not there, then there, and then we were both airborne. When we landed, on me, the Man Scythe was between us, flat against me, and I was pinned well enough that I couldn’t easily move any major body parts. His claws found my throat and I had a flashback to my father’s hitman ripping my larynx out after I’d been shot in the head. I didn’t particularly enjoy it the first time, and didn’t look forward to a second helping.

Charlie Cooper, two-fisted Swordswoman of Arlington, saved me from an uncomfortable early afternoon by making decapitated zombie head kabob. I didn’t have to wipe the arterial blood out of my eyes to know there was another interloper coming from behind her. I decided to return the favor and experiment at the same time.

The thesis of my science experiment sounded a little like this: When propelled with sufficient force, will the Man Scythe fly? Further, what trajectory will it follow if it flies?

Answer: yes. A linear trajectory with a slight trend toward parabolic, except when impeded by an object in that path. The aforementioned object will not maintain structural integrity due to the impact. The Man Scythe itself will require a good cleaning at the end of an experiment of this nature.

Even flat on my back, I felt a surge of pride. “Good girl,” I whispered to it. “Good, good girl!”

My pleasant reverie was interrupted by the arrival of friends. More truncated screams of the twice-departed ripped back and forth in our little valley of carnage. The display in my head registered the Sharmas, Shawn, and blips that carried no identity at all. I reasoned that the blips were guards with deactivated camouflage, and got my gold star on the multiple-choice quiz when I wiped the mess off my face.

The fight was going so well and so clearly in our favor that I very nearly didn’t get up. I could have quietly relaxed on the asphalt, watching the troops repel the revenge-fueled invaders, and my participation would not have been missed. Yet, I mused, I would miss my participation.

I got to my feet, Man Scythe in hand, and looked for the nearest free opponent. Twenty or so yards away, Bajali, resplendent in his nightshirt, was locked into an unusual hand-to-hand contest with a one-armed zombie. Baj was beating the shit out of him with the wet end of his missing arm. Good show! Good show!

What Baj didn’t see in the middle of his frenzy was the tight pack of undead coming around the corner of Building One. I saw them, and decided to take the opportunity I’d been given.

“Cooee! Oh, cooee, my little invaders! Cooeee,” I squealed like a little Australian bush pig and rushed to meet them. Looking back on it, my glee probably unsettled them. People you’re trying to kill shouldn’t be happy to see you or run to greet you, even if they have a weapon in their hand.

It’s okay. They made their feelings known with bullets. One took out my right eye, bounced off the inside of the socket and flew off into space. I can’t remember what it felt like when I was shot in the head, so I can’t compare losing an eye to that experience, but I will say that it was gut-wrenching agony. Although, the shot that took out my left knee ranked right up there next to the eye. Fortunately, they were within range of a leap, even in my damaged condition.

The tight little pod of Eaters went to the ground with me on top and the scythe ripping through flesh and fabric. It was a gory mess of arms, legs, detached fingers and screams of pain. Most of the shots fired underneath me went into the ground or one of the other zombies.

My eye repaired in the middle of the fracas, and I got to see their horrified faces in marvelous binocular vision. They were the very portrait of panic, pain and sure realization that they’d picked the wrong activity to plan their day around. It was nasty, and delightful. I hadn’t sustained enough damage for my tech to kick my brain into primal territory, and that gave me the opportunity to enjoy what I was doing.

I enjoyed it. It was a fierce, burning kind of joy.

Then I noticed one of my opponents crawling out from under the bloody pile, doing his best to move with a stump for a left arm and no fingers on his right hand. I smiled.

“Not acceptable to leave before I’m done,” I yelled at him and cackled like the evil result of spliced gargoyle and howler monkey DNA.

With a twist, my scythe arm was free and moving. The blade took my escapee in the ass, and through the pelvic opening, I think. It was easy to pull him back and finish what I’d started. He screamed a lot before I was done, and I screamed a lot after I was done.

Nicely symmetrical.

Before my head injury, every time I’d been this brutal the nano-buddies had isolated me from the experience by ejecting my conscious mind. This time was different. I was right there, feeling all the dark joys of killing my enemy, unhindered by any shred of morality or compassion. I’d reveled in it.

As soon as the realization hit me, I lost my cool. I curled into the fetal position in a pile of blood, offal, and body parts, and froze there. What in the Hell was I becoming that killing was entertaining and satisfying?

I don’t know how long I was on my side in the remains of my opponents, but the mess was coagulating and getting cold... to say nothing of the smell of sliced-open bowels. There were periodic noises suggesting violence around and about where I was glued to the ground by noxious goop, but I couldn’t even raise my face to find out where the noises came from. My brain spun around and around, propelled by unanswered questions and abject horror.

The person I thought I was–a guy who does what he has to do when the chips are down–had been replaced by someone I didn’t know and it made me terribly afraid.

“Frank.” Bajali’s voice came from behind me after a period of no screams, gunshots, epithets or scrambling feet. “Would you like me to help you get up?”

“What have you done to us?” I asked him that because they were the only words I had.

“I made us able to survive a world like this one.”

“Did you think about what it would cost us?”

“No, my friend, I only thought to keep everyone alive. I had no time to debate morality.”

I could see him on the “screen” in my head, standing behind a blood and gore coated body that I knew to be my own. Just a tiny nudge, and I knew the color and shape of his feelings, if not the crippling weight of his thoughts. I learned that self-loathing has a color, a smell, and an awful gravity. He had some idea that his actions had created ripples, tsunamis, beyond making us able to survive, and it ate at him like cancer.

My eyes opened and I saw the anatomical landscape I’d created. I couldn’t even manage throwing up, but I did lever myself off the remains of my excesses with a sound like tearing silk and suction cups. The Man Scythe was still in my hand, adhered to my flesh.

“Do you see her, Baj?” I asked him, holding my arm out so he could see the implement of destruction, but not turning to look him in the eyes.

“I see it.”

“It wasn’t meant to look like this.”