Blood Soaked and Invaded - 02 (20 page)

Mister Iguana-Face walked through the door seconds later. Omura couldn’t have done a better job with our private conversation if he’d rehearsed it ahead of time.

“Your coffee.” He handed it off to Shoei and took his customary seat. “I asked Yolanda to make a new pot, and she was very interested in showing me how to do it.” A sour expression oozed over his face. “She said something in Spanish, and I am curious about it. Do any of you speak any Spanish?”

Charlie and I nodded at him and he repeated what he heard. I feel as though we did a fantastic job of not laughing our asses off, but Charlie beat me to the punch with the translation.

“Mister B. it was pretty rude. That’s all.”

“Ah.” He adjusted his ever-present black t-shirt and opened up his equally ubiquitous laptop. “I will add that to my list of interesting things that people have said to me. I also will add ‘Mister B.” to that list, but with more amusement. Thank you, Charlie.”

“You’re welcome. Is there anything you’d prefer being called?”

“Not especially; however, I might request that no one uses that particular bit of Spanish again.”

We all nodded politely. As for me, I completely identified with not wanting to be called a child-molesting hermaphrodite with an unusual taste for tropical fish.

Jayashri wandered into the room. “I must say, that was the quickest post-mortem I have ever participated in.” Her voice was soft, but it matched the set of her shoulders and the worn expression on her face.

“What did you discover?” Omura asked, over the top of his coffee cup.

“I have never seen anything like it in my life. The Major had not observed bodies in that condition in his career and needed to absent himself from the room.”

I have to say that she didn’t sound impressed by the Major’s lack of curiosity and verve. I reserved my opinion of the man because I wasn’t there pouring over the remains of unfortunate people that had lost their lives to an unknown weapon. Who knows what I might have felt?

“White and the four guards were turned into solid carbon. It was as though they had been dehydrated and burned in an instant,” she continued. It was always startling to me that her voice could be so melodic and then deliver unsettling information in a clinical monotone. “The remains degraded swiftly during examination, becoming more brittle by the minute. We were lucky to have the Major with us long enough for visual identification of the bodies, so at least we know which of his personnel were lost. Within three minutes after his… retreat, the bodies were dust.”

Following her report, we all shared a moment of silence, not for the memory of the dead but simply because we couldn’t form any reasonable comments. That may be my projection onto the mood of the moment, but I know that I couldn’t fathom a weapon that would do damage of that kind. Charlie ended up breaking the silence with a nearly sotto voce, “Shit.”

“Indeed.” Omura shook his head. “I have to report all this to the powers that be. They already have the data feed on the craft and the casualty report. I am going back to my place to report, and discuss whether or not I can get us more elbow room, now that the patch has been released.” He stood up, straightened his shirt, and strode out. Unsurprisingly, Buttons was on his heels.

Sitting in the wake of the day’s madness, my original plan resurfaced. “Honey? We’d planned on having a chat with these lovely people before the Close Encounter with Death Ray.”

“Funny how death and destruction can sideline other plans.” Charlie wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. “I think I can handle that, Frank. Do you want to tag along?”

“Could I beg off on it? I’m feeling overwhelmed.”

She stood up and gave me a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll take care of it and catch up with you soon. You two,” she crooked her finger at Baj and Jaya. “Let’s go somewhere and catch up on current events together.”

They started out of the room together, and I heard Jayashri ask, “Is this going to be a conversation over tea, or will it be another twist to our unusual lives?” The last thing I heard before the door shut was an amused chuckle that could only have come from Charlie.

Sitting in the room, alone in the quiet, I let myself deflate into the chair. Things had been so much easier during my sojourn in the Land of Brain Repair. No complex choices. No unfinished business with Scott and Mara’s undead baby. Unfortunately, life happens, and it is seldom simple.

I opened the imaginary map that lurked like a toad on the bottom of my mental pond and was surprised to discover all of Building One laid out for me. There were two floors, until you got to the warehouse/hangar/garage that took up half the structure. I could see where the labs were, the medical clinic, morgue, physical therapy room (?), a large scientific area that could only be Bajali’s space... and an isolation chamber.

My heartbeat was steady and regular, and I chalked that up to nanotechnology. By all rights I should have been quaking in my shoes with what I was contemplating. I had to see it again: the zombie toddler.

No, there wasn’t a grand plan of any kind at that point. I just needed to know whether or not repaying my debt to Scott and Mara was within my reach. If so, then a plan would need to be created; after assessing possible negative outcomes, of course. I just got up from the chair and started walking.

Stairs.

Hallway.

Doors.

Unarmored Health Trooper.

“You’re Frank, aren’t you?”

“Huh? Yeah.”

“It’s nice to see you again,” she said, bobbing her head up and down like a blond Velociraptor. “The last time I saw you, we were running all those tests.”

“Uh,” I tried to place her face, and figure out a smooth way to extricate myself from the conversation without seeming suspicious. “My memories of that morning are pretty fuzzy. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Oh, that’s perfectly all right! I’m Jenny Lucas–I was responsible for mucus samples–when Dr. Greevey sampled your blood, stool, and urine!”

Ew.

From that moment forward, thanks to her introduction, I would remember her as “Mucus Girl.” I refuse to take blame for labels like those when the person in question gives me too much information. All things considered, mucus aside, she was cute in a perky/nerdy kind of way.

I made a note to introduce her to Shoei.

“Ah! Thanks for the reminder. How are you?”

“Swell! Isn’t it great that you’re not contagious anymore?” Blink, blink, perky, perky.

Please, God? Don’t lock me in a closet with her. Put her in a room with Omura or Gina Halperin. Okay? Thank you for listening to me in this, my time of great need. Word.

“Yeah. I was just doing a self-guided tour of the building. Don’t let me keep you from your duties.” I nodded, smiled, and realized that she was not about to let go of me.

I’d managed to find the bane of every covert operation in the history of the human race. A cling-on. Damn it Jim, I’m a nanotechnology-enhanced, suburban zombie hunter, not a Doctor!

“Let me show you around!” Perky. Perky. Bouncy. Bouncy.

I didn’t expect her to grab my hand and pull me along, but I found myself following nonetheless. Once I realized she was leading me where I was already headed I gave up bitching. In point of fact, someone this bouncy might provide excellent cover for my nefarious reconnoiter. Score one for serendipity.

Jenny, my energetic guide, opened the door to the chamber of scientific horrors and led us into a room with a grating on the floor and white jumpsuits lining the walls. I was directed to put one on over my clothes before we moved through into the main lab, and I made wordless affirmative noises before complying.

“There’s going to be a little blast of air,” she said, right before she flipped the switch that caused a momentary whirlwind to spring up from the vents in the floor.

“Yow!”

“Yeah. It’s pretty cool!”

Was there anything in the world that could shake this kid up?

“I think it dried my eyeballs out.” I rubbed them, hoping to generate a little moisture.

“It does that to some people.” She grabbed my hand when it was free, and led us into the next room.

For a moment, I wished that science had been my thing, because I might have understood all the computers, machines and widgets that were arrayed in neat rows across the floor. It looked like a dragon’s hoard of blinking lights, beakers and machines that periodically went “bing!” My guide didn’t allow me to linger, observing the riches, for very long before she dragged me over to the near wall.

It looked like most of the wall surface was a bank of light boxes, the kind you use to look at x-rays with... confirmed by the series of x-ray films that were clipped to the surfaces. She flicked a switch and ghostly cross-sections of people parts lit up. Some of the images were a little odd.

One of the images that appeared to have a prominent place in the collection displayed the inside of my head. Creepy.

“See this one?” Of course, that’s the one she pointed to. “This is the inside of your head! Isn’t it amazing?”

I nodded, biting the inside of my lip to keep from grimacing.

“Now this one,” she moved her finger over a few images, “is your... left femur. See how the inside of the bone is brighter than the bone or the shadows of your muscle tissue?”

“Yeah.”

“The bright parts are colonies of nanomachines. We think they’ve taken over about 50% of the spaces that bone marrow would normally occupy. If you look at this image,” she said, moving us to the right, “you can see the same bright areas laced around your spinal column and almost coating the major nerves that branch off from your spinal cord.”

“Oh... good.”

“It is absolutely amazing! Did you know that you can now live without air for over three hours? You don’t even need to breathe! Dr. Bottsford and Dr. Sharma believe that the nanotech would start to rebuild your body for an aquatic environment if you were submerged for any length of time!”

“Exciting.”

“We have so many tests to do on you and your neighbors! It will be so nice to be able to interact with you in a more personal way, now that the contagious nature of the tech has been corrected.” She was smiling so hard I worried that her face might freeze in that position.

“Yes. That would be much friendlier.” I tried to speak in something other than the gentle tones of a waiter faced with a belligerent diner, but I couldn’t manage it. “Would you say that my modifications are pretty standard?”

“No. Only you and Ms. Yan have progressed this far. Everyone else is developing at a slower pace. Combatants progress 25% faster than non-combatants.”

It satisfied some of my curiosity, and added a number of things to my “worry about it at leisure” list. I decided to move my tour along to what I’d come for.

“Say, Dr. Lucas. You guys have a pretty freaky specimen of zombie, don’t you?”

“Oh yes! That’s ‘Subject F-31’. Want to see it?”

Score. “I think that would be very interesting. I didn’t know they could be kept alive without allowing them to hunt. Let’s go!”

We walked deeper into the room, and she explained as we went.

“We give it daily feedings of virus-bearing material, usually plasma we’ve seeded with viral cultures. The strange thing is how it also needs standard nutrients from food.” Jenny turned to me with an intense expression. “It can’t survive on one or the other, but we think it can last longer in situations where there is more actual food than infected tissue, without losing vital functions.”

“I imagine that it doesn’t need as much to keep going as a full-adult zombie would.”

“Absolutely correct.”

I saw the corner of the big transparent box over the top of a low cart, and my mouth went dry. Dr. Lucas babbled on at me as we got closer. I don’t think she heard it sniffing the air, but I did. A moment later, just a step or two later, and we were standing in front of it.

It, the toddler zombie, was pressed up against the polycarbonate wall, as close to us as possible. The thing was lanky, gray, and reminded me of every horrible photo of children suffering from malnutrition that I’d ever seen. That’s where the resemblance ended though. Little kids in third world countries didn’t look this scary, or have tiny chests that worked like bellows.

I don’t think they made the same noise, either.

“Ueeeeh. Ueeeeh.” Those damned loose eyes rolled around until they focused on me. “Ueeeh. Ueeeh. Ueeeh.”

“Wow! Did you hear how its vocalizations shortened?” Apparently, the good Doctor Lucas was not as urethra-pulsing terrified as I was. “That’s never happened before. What’s up with you F-31?” The crazy bitch actually rapped on the wall of the container!

“Ueeh.”

“Wow! That one was even shorter!”

In all honesty, I think that this nut would have done a little jig in the name of scientific discovery if I hadn’t been there. I couldn’t keep myself focused, because the whole experience was bending my brain back and forth.

“Uehf.”

“Oh! I need to find a microphone and record this. I’ve never heard anything like that before!” She took off, leaving me standing alone.

“Fh,” it said. One eye stopped looking at me, and independently moved to track Dr. Lucas.