The Skunge (28 page)

"Never met the man. A long time ago, I helped out in a sticky spot. He was one of the brass." Sugar gave Arneson a coolly appraising glance, which he ignored.

"Impressive, but to be brutally honest, even with Staunton's blessing, I'm nervous about having…non-essential personnel here. We are doing—and I say this without a trace of hyperbole—the single most important research in human history."

"Well, just so long as you don't exaggerate," Sugar said.

Brayle smirked. "OK, kids, now pay attention, there may be a test later," Brayle said, unclipping something from his belt. It was a small, square device fashioned from some exotic black material. It featured an impressively glossy surface, and a rubberized coating on the back and sides. Brayle rolled his fingerprint across the face, swiped a pattern on the glass face, then began pecking at the screen. Arneson watched with interest.

"That's quite a phone," Sugar said. "Does it tell the future? Make highballs?"

"You might be surprised. Just one of the fabulous perks of never getting laid in high school." Brayle bent to scan one eye on the device, then offered his thumbprint to a small square on the backside of the thing. "Or college." The steel wall in front of them split in two, the halves sliding to either side with a whisper. Beyond lay a hanging sheet of rubber strips that waved gently in the negative air pushing from the hallway beyond. Around the door sat a bright LED strip that pulsed with blue light.

"Heavy," Arneson said. "Star Trek doors."

Brayle cocked an eyebrow. "Dammit Jim, I'm a scientist, not a doctor." He hit more keys on the surface of the device, and waited. After a moment, the glowing blue strip turned green. "Now, before we go into the
real
Juniper Ridge, I have to ask you one question."

Arneson said nothing, squeezing Sugar's hand gently.
How bad is it out there? How did you get infected? How long have you been infected
?
Are you a danger to us all
?

Brayle altered his voice into something that sounded vaguely like Christopher Walken with a head-cold. "What do you think of my impressions? Should I take my act on the road?"

"Don't give up your day job, Doc," Arneson said.

Brayle sighed mock-theatrically. "I knew it. Doomed to stay stuck in this compound for the rest of my days, fame and riches forever out of reach."

"Keep practicing and maybe one day you could open the post-lunch show at the Chuckle Hutch." Sugar smiled sweetly at his nonplussed look. The doors hissed open.

They stepped inside.

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE

The elevator was the size of a boxcar and smelled like antiseptic. There were no visible controls; Brayle appeared to be running everything with his phone.

"How far down does this go?" Arneson asked. He leaned against the shiny railing that ringed the elevator, his reflection a misshapen black shape against the far wall.

"Oh, all the way. All the way." Brayle was poking at his phone again.

"You're like an overgrown teenager with that thing."

"I can control almost anything in the facility with this thing. Lights, elevators, even the front gates. Pretty impressive, eh?" Brayle looked up, and Arneson saw, for the first time, how drawn and tired the older man's face looked. He rubbed at the bridge of his over-sized nose and sighed. "If I had half the energy of my teenager, I wouldn't be so goddamn tired all the time."

"You got kids? How are they dealing with…all this?"

"One kid. He is…not handling it so well. You know teenagers though, they love to dramatize. They act like the end of the world is the end of the world."

Arneson snorted.

"You'll run into him eventually, I'm sure. I moved him into the facility a couple of weeks ago. He's taken up full-time iPod listening and advanced father-ignoring in his copious free time."

"Can I ask you something, Doc?"

"Shoot."

"Why aren't you afraid of us?"

Sugar looked up from where she was leaning against Arneson. Her hair hung in greasy strands, interspersed with patches of the Skunge. She scratched at it morosely.

"Should I be?"

The elevator emitted a small, polite chime, and the doors at the other end of the car slid open to admit a group of people. Most were pasty, bookish men and women in basic business casual and lab coats.

After the nerds, two security guards entered, bracketing a shambling, hulking Skunger. Sugar clenched Arneson's arm hard enough to leave marks. His face was a writhing mass of tentacles around two sad, expressive eyes. The guards moved him forward with long poles tipped with plastic loops; the rings looped around the Skunger's throat. It was the kind of contraption a dogcatcher might use to contain a dangerous animal. Steel manacles held the Skunger's arms, with another set of shackles at the ankles.

Sugar watched the Skunger shuffle across the space. The guards maneuvered until the Skunger stood in the corner.

Arneson stood up straight and faced Brayle. "What the hell is this?"

"Just precautions. He's able to move around freely when he's not transitioning between phases."

"Phases?"

"The different areas of the facility. This is Phase One, the closest to the surface."

"How deep does this place go?"

"I'm sorry, but it's classified. So classified that even if I wanted to tell you, I'd need to submit it wrapped in so much bureaucratic tape it would look like a mummy took a shit in my office."

"Very evocative," Arneson said.

The Skunger on the other side of the car raised its head, swinging it back and forth like a dog scenting. Slowly, he turned his face toward them. Toward Sugar.

Sugar felt the air grow thick around her. Nausea turned her stomach. A wave of dizziness swept over her and her ears filled with a distant roar like the hollow rush of an empty seashell. Her vision shimmered, growing wavy and indistinct, and she staggered and almost fell.

Arneson caught her by one arm and kept her on her feet. "You OK?"

"Just a little light-headed," she said. The world tipped and spun in a slow, whirling arc, before settling down again. Her stomach trembled, and her mouth filled with the electric taste of sour spit. "All this running around is catching up to me." Arneson stared into her eyes, and as always, she felt that cool flutter of attraction at his confident, unwavering look. Here, she thought, was a man who had seen a lot, been surprised by very little of it, and feared none of it.

"We're on our way downstairs, you can rest up there. Hmm. Rest up down there." Brayle cocked an eyebrow at Sugar. "Does that sound weird to you?"

"Lay down upstairs?" Arneson suggested.

"Lay down a lay-up on lay-away," Brayle countered, and then he and Arneson were both laughing.

Sugar looked between the two. "Do you two share a brain or something? Because I don't think I've ever heard two grown—"

They were interrupted by a loud hissing. It grew louder, like a valve trying to vent rising pressure. The nerds looked up from their phones, looking around the elevator. The guards looked up at the roof, down at the floor, then at each other.

Arneson was staring at Sugar. She, in turn, had her eyes locked on the Skunger.

"Boys, you might want to—" Arneson began, but the Skunger was already moving. The hissing exploded into a peal of screaming that sent one of the nerds, an Asian girl no more than twenty, down to her knees clutching at her head. The sound grew until it seemed to exist everywhere at once, invading the meat of Arneson's brain, filling every molecule of air in the elevator.

The Skunger leaped at Sugar. She tried to dodge, but the grasping swat of its hand caught her shoulder and sent her spinning to the floor. The tentacles on the thing's face split open like rotten fruit, disgorging long tensile tongues that arrowed straight for her. One caught her under her collarbone, another wrapped around her thigh then bit into the meat, boring through her jeans and into her flesh like rotten silk. Blood welled out and stained the denim black, and more tongues sought the blood, moving like eager snakes to prey.

Then Arneson was there, slamming into the Skunger and sending it flying into the steel wall of the elevator. A guard screamed into his radio while another maneuvered to get a clear shot with a futuristic-looking taser. The Skunger tossed Arneson aside like a man swatting a fly. He flew across the elevator, leather jacket squealing across the floor. He was up again before the Skunger had more than half-turned toward Sugar. The other guard shouted orders that no one could hear while someone in the crowd of nerds sobbed and moaned.

Brayle, his face calm, turned his phone to the side, and raised it above his head. He did something with his fingers and everything stopped.

A bolt of searing pain blasted up Arneson's spine. He lost control of his limbs and crashed into the hot bulk of the Skunger. He heard Sugar cry out, and reached toward her voice. His eyes refused to focus, and the elevator floor felt like it was tipping. He fell in a heap. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he crawled toward Sugar.

The doors of the elevators chimed, and a babble of voices fluttered around his head like bats. He was still reaching for Sugar when a boot came down on his hand, mashing his broken fingers. The boot felt like at least a size fourteen; it covered his entire hand. Arneson grunted with pain. A squad of men dragged the enormous Skunger out of the elevator.

"Oh sorry, Skunger, did I step on you?" A large silhouette loomed over Arneson, and with it, the smell of stale sweat thick enough to taste.

"That you, Crantz?"

"Who else?"

"It's hard to tell, there's an asshole in the way."

Crantz motioned to a couple of orderlies who bustled forward. "Good stuff. You'll wow 'em down in sickbay."

Arneson shook off the orderlies and gained his feet, pulling himself along with the railing. Sugar lay in a crumpled heap surrounded by medics. One of them reached down to take her pulse, then reared back hissing in pain and clutching at his arm. The Skunge had lashed out at him, leaving a bright swatch of blood.

He shouldered his way through them, and when Arneson touched her, for a moment his head throbbed again. Then it was gone, she moaned and turned her head to the side. "What was that?"

Arneson turned to Brayle. "Good question. Is that your Skunge deterrent?"

He had the good sense to try and hide his smug look. "It will work until something better comes along. Effective, wouldn't you say?"

"My head says it is."

"My apologies. It's a frequency that seems to only be audible to people afflicted with the disease."

"The Skunge," Sugar said.

"Right, right. We try not to call it by its street name in Juniper Ridge. At any rate, after months of research, and work, and sacrifice: that's what we've got. A dog whistle. Effective in small areas on small groups, but overall…not terribly helpful."

"But what about the treatment with the—" one of the nerds began, but went silent at a pointed look from Brayle.

"What treatment?" Sugar said, struggling to her feet.

"Vapor and megrim right now, I'm afraid. We have some ideas, but nothing I'd put money on. Other than that, we have this," he waggled the phone, "and prayer." The nerds uttered a practiced chuckle. "Of the two, I know which one I'd rather have." He clapped his hands and made shooing gestures at the younger scientists. "Run along now kids, the grownups have some talking to do."

Arneson turned to Sugar, to ask if she was OK, but the question died on his lips.

Like at the gas station on Modoc forest, Sugar's eyes had turned colorless and devoid of humanity. She again belonged to the Skunge.

CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR

Brayle trained a light on Sugar's bullet wound, examining the stitches Arneson had given her. "Decent work. Probably better than I could do. No signs of infection…well, other than the obvious. I think you're going to make it." He stripped off his rubber gloves, using one to wrap the other without touching the surface, and tossed them.

Brayle had requisitioned them a small set of rooms (
not quite the Hilton, but it's safe, and private
, Brayle had told them), with a kitchenette, a queen size bed, even a two-person shower. "People here aren't going to be used to seeing infected wandering the facility, so I would try and keep roaming to a minimum. The geeks will stay out of your hair, but the security guards can be pretty…well, you know." He cleared his throat. "Despite all the phony-baloney stuff you hear about government black sites, we do have certain appearances to meet. We hire local resources, when we can, to keep the local Jaycees happy. We send out project managers to sit in on Chamber of Commerce, and sponsor the local tree lighting at Christmas. Security guard is basically a paid license to loaf and feel important, so that beef-squad you met is made of local football heroes and whatnot. Let me tell you, sometimes it pays to import talent."