The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (16 page)

She expected to see coldness in their eyes, but only the driver of the halftrack was cold. The woman and the SS man were having fun. She watched them exchange glances and could tell they would go back to the camp and fuck as her skin lay in the tanning vat.
Then he went to work again, and all she could think of was the pain.
Slice by careful slice he removed her skin, until he reached her neck. She thought that it might finally be ending, that he might use his knife to cut her jugular vein, but instead he kept working upward, carefully peeling the two green mambas from her face. He held her by the hair as he worked, and carefully avoided hurting her eyes. They wanted her to see what had been done to her.
He stood up, holding something like a drapery. Her skin. It was dripping with her blood, and slightly translucent in the morning light. The velvet-dress woman nodded enthusiastically. He carefully folded the skin and put it in a plastic bag.
Caroline lay at his feet, mercilessly broken and still alive. The Nazis exchanged words. Then the halftrack driver took the bag from the SS man and passed him a folding field shovel. He traipsed off, searching the ground for something. She heard the spade dig in. She twitched in agony as she waited for him to return. He came back and dumped a load of earth on her body. She raised her head weakly to look at it. Her body was red and white, the color of raw meat.
It was an anthill. Caroline was able to move only enough to stir it around. The ants, big red ones, spilled out angrily.
They all laughed and Palmer got back in the halftrack. They watched her for a few minutes. Caroline twitched harder as the ants began to bite. They laughed again. Then Palmer the SS man said, in accented but clear English, "now you can run as far as you like, bitch." He and the woman found this hilariously funny. He tapped the driver and they drove off.
He had been very careful skinning her. It took several more hours for her to Die.

"After being skinned alive, the anthill was a bit of an anticlimax," she told Palmer, to everyone's great amusement. "Still, I'm impressed. You've outdone yourself."
"How did you like my lady friend?"
"You always were a sarcastic bastard, Palmer. Don't push it."
Fred shambled up to shake her hand and Palmer's. "I see someone finally found a use for all those tattoos. I'm glad my efforts are appreciated."
"I'm just sorry I couldn't keep the skin," Palmer said with a smile. He had asked Prime Intellect, but the skin had been a grown part of Caroline's body and it was up to her. She had wanted it back.
"Really, Palmer, we aren't
that
close."
There were several hundred people at the exhibition, and they all wanted to talk to her and Palmer, so it was over an hour before she noticed the older man. "Remember me?" he said when they had made eye contact.
"Aliens."
He nodded. "Did you ask Prime Intellect about them?"
Caroline admitted that she had forgotten.
"It's easy enough to ask. Don't take my word for it," he said.
"Hey, it's Crandall," Palmer said. He turned to Caroline. "Watch this guy, hon. He's crazy as a bedbug."
"You know him?"
"If you weren't so preoccupied getting yourself offed all the time, you might have met him at one of Raven's other parties. He's been preaching this gospel since the Year One. Prime Intellect wiped out the aliens."