Husk (26 page)

I turned away, facing a group of attackers as I finished my snack. Six men, all clad in black, rifles and machine guns aimed at me, laser lights glinting off smoke and red mist. One stepped closer and lifted his arm, displaying a strange boxy handtool. I rushed toward him, knocking the instrument away with my left arm, my right fist raised. I recalled a long-forgotten piece of boxing knowledge from years of movie watching;
don't hit the target, hit six inches behind it.
My hand shot forward, pushing from the shoulder, fingers curled and tight, and I thrust my fist into the surprised face, shattering the visor and going in deeper, exploding the nose, into the sinus cavity and beyond, his face caving in around my wrist as I pushed through to the other side, his helmet hanging loosely at the end of my arm, the whole of his head now enveloping my forearm, his body twitching as I raised my arm higher to show my attackers what they were dealing with.

The five men stood there, arms slack, weapons pointed to the ground. “Jesus,” one whispered.

I inhaled, the carnage now a physical part of the atmosphere, tickling my lungs, and began to bellow, a sound to raise the dead from their slumber, to summon death gods and Valkyries and the hell hounds Cerberus and Garm and Syama from their depths and to my side, to start a battle that would make Ragnarök appear a slap-fight between first-graders — when I was cut off mid-screech, ending my primal rage with an embarrassing
ubpf!

The taser was state-of-the-art; Iris' was a peashooter in comparison. My limbs clenched and seized inward upon themselves as the wires embedded themselves in my chest and voltage coursed through me. My body buckled and fell, curling into a fetal comma. My lungs were deflated balloons, refusing my commands. A large rubber ball was knowledgably inserted into my mouth, keeping my jaw forced open to its maximum size, and a belt wrapped around my head to keep it in place. A leather satchel was fitted snugly over my skull, but not before I caught a glimpse of one of my assaulters talking to Doctor Rhodes. My arms were handcuffed behind me and linked to thick chains that surrounded my legs and feet. Finally, as my muscles started to uncramp themselves, I was rolled up in what felt like vinyl sheeting, and then the whole of me was slid into what felt like a body bag and zipped up tight. I tried to scream over the ballgag but could only manage a loud hum.

I was lifted, carried, and thrown into a container. Men climbed in after me, jostling me with their steel toes as they took their seats and the truck started up.

Somewhere in the dark, I could hear Sofa howling in anger.

Blackness.

Again with the blackness.

But not eternity blackness, not this time; just good old-fashioned North American boredom blackness from having a sack tied around your head and then being left alone and ignored for hours. My hands were cuffed to the arms of my chair, my ankles chained to the floor. Never had I been so happy to have lost the ability to itch.

Although itching would have alleviated the tedium.

After a lengthy wait — I kept myself focused by replaying the reel of the last day's events over and over; the last exhalations of Samantha, the shrieks of the faceless extras, the sight of Johnny's innermost contents, the sloppy chunks of Duane's personality exiting through the back of his head and caroming off the background props, my involuntary salivation at the sight — there was the familiar sound of a lock clicking open, and a door opened a mile or so behind me. Then, footsteps, faint, gradually getting louder, honing in on my location. And a heavy buzzing, something mechanical, speeding closer. I remained slumped in my seat until the footsteps arrived and stopped, presumably to give me the once-over.

“Can he hear me?” The voice gouged into the quiet. The words were guttural, falling to the ground like beetles shaken from a log and scuttling away. It was a voice of advanced years, but there was an undercurrent of stress beyond the normal ravages age inflicted on the voicebox. A vigorous voice, but riddled with torture.

“I'm not sure, sir. He hasn't moved in hours.” This speaker a woman, slightly unsure of herself, nervous but eager to impress the other voice's owner. Cowardice fringed her consonants.

Had I hackles to raise, they would have risen. I knew that voice. I would kill the owner of that voice. Puzzle pieces began to slide into place.

“He's so quiet, he doesn't even breathe.”

“You didn't kill him, did you?”

“Well, um, he
is
a zombie, sir.” A nervous laugh from the woman, forced out, flattened by the weight of tension floating about us. “I really don't think that's possible.”

“You don't think,” said the aged voice. “That's absolutely one hundred percent correct. You don't think. So let me do the thinking or you'll find yourself out and searching the gutters for loose change.”

“Yes, sir. My apologies.” So cowed. I grinned under my hood, enjoying her obsequiousness. I had always wondered what that would sound like.

“So, is he all right?” the older voice asked again.

“I thi— . . . I believe so, sir.”

“So wake him up then.”

“Me, sir?”

“This is your show, isn't it? Aren't you the expert here?”

“Well technically,
he
is.”

“Ja, dat's correct, zir, I zuppoze I am zee true egzpert in zeeze matterz.”

It figured.

“You suppose. Lord save us all. Do me a favor, son; grow a sack, fill it with something approaching balls, and let's get this over with.”

A foot cautiously nudged my leg, then again, harder. “Sheldon?”

I chose to snub the query.

Another push, longer. “Sheldon? Time to get up.”

I ignored him.

“Nothing, zir.”

“Nothing.” The woman's voice was soaked in contempt. “Fat load you are. Take his hood off.”

Rhodes coughed nervously. “Ach. I . . . vell, I'm not . . .”

“Oh, for Christ's sake! Just rip it off him!”

A pause, then fingers at my neck, hastily fumbling at the knots. I gave it a few seconds, judged the distance in my mind, and snapped my jaws forward through the cloth, sinking my teeth deep into his fingermeat. He screamed, but it was a yelp of panic, not pain, and it soon stopped, even while I continued to crush his knuckles tight between my teeth.

“Are you all right?” the man asked.

“He iz biting me, zir! Sheldon, let go!”

“Hm. A zombie playing dead. Very clever.”

I bit down deeper, grinding, straining to taste blood. My teeth severed the canvas threads of the hood and my tongue snaked out and tasted his skin. A metal mesh was my reward, pressing back against my tastebuds. Disgusted, I spat the steel out and struggled against my bindings, growling and thrashing and generally making an ass of myself. Getting nowhere, I relaxed and patiently waited while the bag was slipped off my head. All was still hazy; my contacts had not been moistened in ages and had dried directly to my lenses. I blinked wildly until they both popped out into my lap. Not much better; the light now flashed against the pockmarks on my corneas. Beyond the scratches I could discern three blurred figures, one tall and close, the other two at the edges of the light, lurking in the dim. “Could I have my goggles, please?” I croaked to the nearer blur with the bag in its hand.

“You have his goggles, Doctor?” the female blur asked the tallest haze.

“No, zey vere broken in zee attack . . .”

“Oh, damn it to . . . here, just put these on him.”

A pair of sunglasses were slipped over my eyes, bringing my surroundings into slightly better focus. “Thank you, Doctor,” I said as the fog solidified into forms.

“You're velcome.” All pretense of the doctor's former composure was absent. His eyes were manic, darting everywhere, refusing to focus. A flop of hair hung loosely over his forehead, damp with fear.

“You're to thank for all this?”

“I . . .”

“Save it. Not interested. You're fucking dead if I. Ever get loose. I need you to know that.” I yelled past him into the great wide dark. “You are all. Fucking! Dead!”

Rhodes wiped at his eyes. “I am zorry, Sheldon, truly I am. Zey made me do ziz.” Random words tap-danced on his tongue, trying vainly to find a rhythm, a syntax. He clapped a hand over his mouth as if to stem the tide of nonsense. “Zey know zings, you zee. Zings I haff done.” He whispered the last, and then, inaudible to everyone, just a silent plea for me alone, his lips moved.
Forgive me.
He dropped to his knees and placed his head on my foot, barking out a sob.

“That's not my job, Doc. You dug your own grave on this one.”

“This is all very touching,” the sour voice of the elder remarked. “Igör, get up now, you're embarrassing us both.” Rhodes slid down further, pressing his face into the floor, still clasping my foot, beginning a mangled Anglo-Czech version of the Lord's prayer, bawling throughout. “Christ. Simon, would you?” A fourth figure moved into the light, a looming musk-ox of a man, leviathan, neck as wide as my chest, arms the consistency of oak, hair buzzed to a flattop of exacting specifications. So level you could calibrate instruments by it. He hoisted Rhodes to his feet with the nonchalance of a man picking up a napkin.

I took in the room. “Rowan,” I said into the darkness.

“In the flesh,” Rowan said. She stepped forward into the light, calm and in control. She had put aside her fear of the old man and was back into her persona of slicked composure. “Surprised?”

“Not really. You
are
an agent.” The old voice laughed at that. Rowan blushed and played with her gloves. Shiny gloves.

“Chain mail?” I asked.

“Very good,” said the older man, still blurred beyond the border of the light. “We felt that some precautions were in order given your . . . unique qualities. Hence the gloves. Simon, do show him.” The giant released his hold on Rhodes (who fell prostrate to the floor, still blubbering) and put his hand up to my eyes. His gargantuan fingers twinkled daintily as he wiggled them, lit in the overhead beam, the only illumination in the room. “Divers wear such gloves in case of shark attack,” the man continued. “They can withstand enormous pressure. We felt they would do the trick in your case.”

“Handy.”

“Make no mistake, however; despite the protocols we have initiated, we
will
gag you if you don't behave. The choice is yours.”

I squinted, but the man remained an anonymous shape in the shadows. “Look, could I ask you to. Move closer? I'm getting tired of the whole. Evil supervillain vibe.”

“Of course. Where are my manners?” He moved his right hand slightly. A whirring noise started up and the man trundled into sight, nudging Rowan to the side (“Move it, woman, goddammit,” he said as she spat a complaint), the gears of his motorized wheelchair whining as they spun. He expertly guided the chair up close, centering himself directly in front of me, our knees almost touching. “How's that, Mr. Funk? Better?”

I took in the whole of him and winced. Having been kidnapped and now treated with the forced over-geniality of a James Bondian evildoer, I felt civility wasn't necessary. “Worse. Coming from the living dead. I hope that means something.”

If his feelings were hurt, he didn't show it.

The man's entire head was a mass of aged tissue.
Burn victim
, I thought at first, but that wasn't quite right. I would have smelled the char. The skin looked as fragile as crêpe paper. What I was seeing was advanced age of a sort not seen since Methuselah up and croaked after nine centuries of lingering around the desert. The figure I could make out beneath the immaculate suit was emaciated. His skeleton was hunched from several lifetimes of weakening bone structure. His neck looked to be sliding into his chest, the top of his balding head only inches above the apex of his hunch. His pants draped loosely over the scrawniness of his legs, the creases fitting smartly over his thighbones. He was barely more than a collection of bones with delusions of flesh.

But who was I to judge?

The wheelchair was a mobile life-support system, cocooning him in an electronic cradle. He was contained within a score of medical devices silently keeping track of heart rate and blood flow. Intravenous tubing snaked down his thigh and calf and back up underneath the fabric of his pants. Settled snug within the contraption, the man looked like a wizened fetus, something that should not be, something aborted that refused to perish.

His voice, however, was improbably strong, and his eyes were hard and alert. “I am well aware of the monstrousness of my visage, Mr. Funk. You would not be near the first to recoil in disgust.”

“I could be the last, you give me a chance,” I said.

A smack on the back of my head, hard. “You do not talk to Mr. Dixon that way, Sheldon,” Rowan hissed in my ear. She grabbed my head and held it steady. “This man deserves your respect, and you will give it to him.” I waited for the standard
or else
, but none was forthcoming, only a squeezing of my skull presumably meant to imply a promise of pain. I wasn't worried; she hadn't nearly the upper body strength necessary for such a threat to be taken seriously.

“There is no call for that,” the man snapped. “This man is our
guest
, here at our bequest, and you will treat him as such.”

Her hands relaxed. “But sir, he's—”

He shushed her with a wave of his hand. “This is a stressful time, and I think calmer heads must prevail. Miss O'Shea, why don't you wait outside for me? I won't be a moment.”

“But—”

“Simon will see you out. Simon, please? Take that Nazi crybaby with you. And bring back the package?” Simon scooped the doc off the floor, flopped the still-weeping heap over his shoulder, and escorted my agent out, one massive hand covering the whole of her elbow and quite a bit of her upper arm. Her protests quickly receded as they left, their footsteps echoing though the dim.

“And turn the goddamned lights on!” the old wheeled man yelled out after them. “I'm tired of squinting!”

The man and I sat quietly as Rowan continued insisting Simon let go of her arm, she was an agent to the stars, she'd have his goddamned
head
for a
keepsake
, until at last there was the
click
of a lock, hinges squealing under the weight of a heavy door, and then a thick metallic
slam
that cut short her objections. Then switches clicked, fluorescent bulbs flickered into consciousness, and the room lit up. We were dead center in a chamber the size of several football fields, the ceiling an easy hundred feet above. Surrounding us was a sundry of military automotives in varied states of disrepair: jeeps without engines, tanks lacking treads and cannons, something that looked to be a deflated hovercraft; even a helicopter, its rotors gone missing but a menacing set of machine guns still attached and aimed directly at the two of us. Heavy footsteps reverberated off the metal as Simon thudded his way back.

“Much thanks, Simon,” Wheels croaked when Simon arrived.

“Don't mention it, sir.” Simon held a large object in one hand, a plastic pet carrier. Sofa's enormous marble eyes stared out at me accusingly.

Somehow, this is your fault.

“You see, Sheldon? We're not so bad. We brought you your little pet.” The man pushed the carrier forward with his chair. “Consider it a gesture of good faith. A sign that, despite all evidence to the contrary, I am not wholly without consideration for your feelings.”

“Gosh, thanks. You've thought of everything.”

Dixon waved Simon forward, and the giant coaxed the fifteen pounds of feline from her cage and plopped her into my lap. I stroked her ears with my fingertips, all I could do with my arms bound. “Hey, babe,” I whispered. “They treating you okay?” She shrugged her entire back in a stretch, and then jumped down to explore the new territory, leading Simon on a chase among the abandoned wrecks. He nabbed her before she could squirm her way into some loose jet fuselage and plopped her back in her cage over her immensely unhappy objections.

“Can I let you in on a secret, Sheldon?” The geriatric leaned forward and theatrically cupped the edge of his mouth with his hand. “Between you, me, and Simon here, I can't stand that Rowan cunt. To me, she's nothing more than a slack-jawed hausfrau who just won't shut the fuck up. But she does have her uses.” He spread his arms out toward me. “She brought me
you
, you see. Once word got out, I reached out through channels to make sure she'd follow my specific instructions concerning your movements. She kept you in line, never letting you off your leash. And I always reward success. She'll be quite happy, don't you worry about it.”