Husk (28 page)

I pulled at my restraints. “I'm not feeling. Your beneficence at the moment.”

“Well, your mere existence should be proof of that. Did you really think that someone in your state would actually be allowed out in public at all? How is it, do you think, that you've been allowed to roam relatively free all this time? My God, boy, you are death incarnate. You hold within you the power to utterly destroy all humankind with a single bite. Christ, are you
that
stupid you'd believe a few lawyers would be all it took to dissuade the
CDC
from declaring war on your person? No government in its right mind, not even the U.S. government, would simply stand by and let a monster so dangerous simply walk around, let alone become an object of fame.

“There is not one single reasonable explanation why you haven't been dissected and studied mercilessly.

“Except for me.”

A look of well-earned smugness creased his face. “It has cost me a pretty penny to keep you free, Sheldon. Almost not worth it. I called in every favor, I crossed the palms of every person of resource with silver enough to buy their nonintervention. You have cost me billions. And I am not a man who parts with money gladly. There are whole swaths of this country now functioning with total autonomy from my influence. I am not used to letting things go, but that's what I have given up to finally get you here.”

“Why would you do this? Why not have just. Taken me months ago?”

He made a face of indifference. “Call it curiosity. I wanted to see just how people would accept you. Would accept an undead being into the population. I see now that the world can be duped far more easily than even I previously believed. I wasn't honestly sure it could be done, but Miss O'Shea assured me of her capabilities to make you a sensation. She and I, we decided to take you public. And when it appeared to work, through the judicious use of complementary stories in the media, we made you a star.”

“Should I be flattered?”

“Most would. Most would get down on their knees and beg for the protection I've afforded you. Until this moment, you have legitimately been the most protected individual on the entire planet.” He pushed up at the armrests, tottering atop the footrests. Every vein in his skull began to throb as what remained of his heart battled to increase its flow. Simon propped him up with one massive hand. Dixon's voice weakened as he roiled, began to whistle. His ancient lungs strained. “I protected you for months. I,
I
let you continue to exist, no one else.
I
swept every murder you committed off the front pages — you didn't think I knew that, did you, you murderous cannibal! You owe me everything! You owe me reverence, you son of a bitch! You owe me some awe!” The shout discharged from his throat another globule of black jelly, a wad of his dilapidated insides rattling loose and sent soaring into open space to plop onto my restrained hand. He wavered, and his eyes rolled up white. Simon eased him tenderly down into his cocoon. I waited (I had a choice?) while Simon attended to a gobbet of dribble sliding down Dixon' chin, dabbing with a handkerchief at the polished gleam of Dixon's translucence until it gleamed wetly in the light.

“And now, I have you here before me,” Dixon said when he regained consciousness. “Trussed up like a Christmas goose.”

“I was hoping you'd. Get to that.”

“First things first. I need personal verification. You understand, I'm sure, that there is always going to be that slightest of belief that this has all been a big joke on somebody. You don't get to my age without earning a few hundred enemies. Rowan swears you're the real deal, oh hell, every doctor confirms it, but I just can't help myself. And I pride myself on always personally checking the authenticity of my acquisitions. Simon, if you would do the honors . . . ?” Dixon motioned to my shirt. Simon reached out and ripped the fabric of my costume open, sending buttons soaring out into the darkness and plinking against the concrete floor. My torso, so lovingly tended, was exposed to the air. Dixon drove his chair forward so that we sat astride one another and ran an excited gloved hand over Rhode's network of stitches and zippers.

“My, but that is impressive,” Dixon said, fingering one of the tabs.

“Thank you.”

“A shame to desecrate such a marvelous creation. That man of yours, Rhodes?” He tapped a finger against the side of his head; I imagined I heard the hollow echo of an overripe melon. “He did some repair work on me as well, once upon a time, but I have to say, I think I only got his B game. Just couldn't get the ears right, they never stopped drooping. No denying it, the Nazi is a maestro when he wants to be. But alas . . . Simon?”

Simon leaned in and grabbed at the edging of one of my flaps. I started to say,
Hey, there's a zipper, you can just slide it open
, but Simon was determined to make sure I knew the parameters of my new position. I was an object, an appliance, a conversation starter functioning solely for their amusement and, if they so wished, disposal.

Simon pulled at the tissue until it started to tear, getting one finger underneath, then two, then all ten. Putting a foot against the chair between my legs for leverage, he jerked and wrenched my skin-flaps away from their moorings, peeling me like a flesh banana. Rather than stop at that, Simon keep pulling, the teeth of the zippers clacking free. Giving one more mighty tug, Simon ripped free the entirety of my trunk and offhandedly threw the whole floppy muck behind him. I sat there, more exposed than any being in existence. The visible man.

Dixon gasped as the irregular placement of my innards popped forth like toy snakes in a prank can of peanuts, leaving behind a hollow torso lined with spongy polyurethane spray-foam insulation. My intestines slithered across the floor as they disentangled themselves and lapped up against the front wheels of Dixon's chair. He nervously twitched at his controls, and the chair jerked forward, rolling over my entrails and spinning its wheels in my ooze, the membrane bursting under the weight. He backed away and a spoke snagged a loose strand of tissue, pulling my guts forward and rapidly spooling them around the axel.

“Jesus Christmas,” Dixon sputtered, banging at his joystick, reversing the chair's direction but tangling further into the mess. I smiled as the two of them worked at the controls, Simon's feet sliding in my offal. He lost his balance, grabbing instinctively at the ropes of my insides for support and pulling the muck of me out completely. There was a muted sensation of being tugged at from within the inner wall of my hips — peculiarly satisfying, like picking at a scab or working a tooth loose from its moorings — and then the fleshy tube plucked itself free from its connective tissues and the anus end of my colon flopped out and scooted toward the duo, each fluttering in panic as the wheel spun faster and my entrails enmeshed themselves in the mechanics of the chair. My colon was squeezed like a tube of toothpaste until it burst, splashing liquid gore and undigested soldier brain over Dixon's carefully tailored suit.

Simon got down on his knees into the guck and began hammering at the electric motor underneath the seat with his fists and then the butt of his gun, cursing a blue streak until a panel dislodged. He shoved his hand inside and pulled out every wire he could feel. The engine whined in annoyance and the wheels seized, flinging Dixon backward onto the floor as the chair flipped over by the force of the jolt. He landed full-on in my gore, writhing, yelling for Simon to
do something, goddammit
. The engine kicked back to life and the wheels spun, furling my guts into the axel, cranking through my large intestines and making quick work of the small until what was left of my digestive system stretched tautly across the empty space between us. I felt another steady tug, this one up under my uvula, and my stomach shoved my lungs aside and popped out into the air for a look, a water balloon held aloft by strings, jerking at my esophagus and threatening to pull whatever remained of me out the bottom of my throat. The wheelchair gave another mighty pull, tipped over, and started reeling itself in, making its way relentlessly toward me.

I closed my eyes, not wanting to witness the unusual sight of an electric wheelchair work its way through my body and out the top of my head. My throat pulled tighter as it stretched, then closed altogether.

With a gooey
snap!
the pressure loosened. I opened my eyes to the sight of Simon standing unsteadily before me, almost close enough to taste. In his right hand he held his knife; the other held the last few feet that remained of my intestines, the duodenum if I wasn't mistaken. The wheelchair, freed of its tether, grumbled about in the soup for a few moments. There was an impressive roar
and its engine exploded in a shower of sparks and slivers. The chair shivered its death, then went inert.

“Goddamn bitch chair!” Dixon had righted himself on his elbows, his body bathed in discharge, and was pointing his gun at the machine, the muzzle fuming. “Always hated that thing. Never worked right. Never buy American.” Hissing another curse, he fired two more bullets into the device and then motioned for Simon to help him up. Simon released my entrails, and my stomach flopped back into place as my alimentary canal relaxed, the open end of my leftover intestines limp between my knees.

Simon righted the chair and spent a few moments tearing intestinal tissue from its wheels. Simon gave the seat a wipe-down with the arm of his jacket and lifted Dixon from the floor. He seated him and vainly tried to neaten his appearance, blotting away the gore with his shirt cuffs. Dixon waved him away.

“Well, I think that definitely proves your claim,” he said. A lump of me clung to his earlobe and shuddered like a glob of loose jelly as he spoke. Simon flicked the matter away as Dixon continued. “My goodness boy, but aren't you all kinds of surprises. What do they say, takes a licking and keeps on ticking? What was that?”

“Timex, sir,” Simon said. He had removed his coat and was sponging himself off with the lining.

“That's the one. Remarkable. I apologize, Sheldon, but I simply had to see for myself, you understand.”

“No worries here.”

“And you aren't in any pain? None of this actually hurt you?”

“Only when I laugh.”

“And it still has a sense of humor.” Lambertus tapped Simon on the leg. “You could take a lesson from this one, Simon. Above all else, a sense of humor keeps you sane.”

“If you say so, sir.”

I took a look. Aside from my lungs and the few scant remains of my digestive system, I was entirely hollow. The force of the uncoiling had dislodged most of the contents of my lower abdominal cavity. Mustard curtains of pericardial fat shrouded the opening. The grayish remains of my liver lay at the base of my chair, lobes ruptured, leisurely leaking into the morass of innermost Sheldon in which my chair was now an island. A desiccated snot-green sac, my gall bladder, clung tenaciously to its roost, unaware that its purpose, always nebulous to me, was at an end. Loose threads of tributaries and veins dotted the interior wall, secreting fluid that dribbled down and pooled around my still-intact bladder. My pancreas and one kidney were lumpy stones at the bottom of a pelvic well, playing in the mud. I couldn't find my appendix, scanning the floor sludge for any sign, absurdly sad that I had held onto the useless organ for so long only to lose it like this, an innocent bystander, victim of the goriest Three Stooges sketch ever made.

“. . . wondering about our purpose here?” Dixon was still yammering on, daintily dabbing away the spewage on his face and neck with a handkerchief.

“Hm?”

“I said, we should get to the meat of the matter, so to speak.”

“Ha.”

“Sheldon, you, to put it simply, you will be the vanguard of a whole new evolution in humanity.”

I took that in, and then turned my good ear in his direction. “Come again?”

“You are death made flesh, Sheldon. An emissary from beyond, possible proof of God's dominion over life
and
death. Billions of people have waited the whole of their lives for just this possibility. You are the resurrection.”

“I thought we were off the messiah kick.”

“You must let me finish. You are the resurrection, yes, but not in the way most would have it.

“You are not for them. You are for
me
. You are
my
resurrection. I have sought my whole life for someone like you. I kept myself alive all these years, searching, directing the course of human events, all to have a chance for this exact moment to occur.

“You are the Second Coming, a triumph over death. You're a miracle. You are
my
miracle. I'm going to see what the hell is making you tick. I've got some of the most deranged medical thinkers of the century outside this room just drooling to get their probes into you.”

He clapped his hands together excitedly. “Enough preamble! This isn't going to be easy, and I dare say it will not be pleasant for you, so sooner started, sooner completed. It's already been a very long day for me, so I'm going to leave Simon and you alone for a while. Simon was
CIA
up until a short while ago. An ace interrogator at Gitmo, weren't you, my boy?” Simon allowed a miasma of pride to cross his face. “They actually let him go, if you can believe it, for being
too efficient
. That's code for ruthlessness, by the way.”

“I gathered.”

“More terrorists cracked under him than any three other agents combined.”

“I hold the record,” Simon added, “for the quickest successful interrogation. Seventeen seconds. Three fingernails, one pinky, and an ear.”

“Ouch,” I said. “How many actual plots did you uncover?” Simon's face blackened, and his knife returned for an encore dance.

“If you're going to waterboard me,” I said, “I can hold my breath. For a very long time.”