The Skunge (32 page)

It was a small concrete cell. An anodized steel lamp, like something out of a college dorm room, stood in the corner. It cast a small but steady glow over a cot, a bookshelf, a TV attached to a jumble of video game consoles via various lines and wires. A room suitable for a teenager.

In the far corner sat a Skunger, sitting with his head on his knees. A dark sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, tight black jeans, black sneakers.

Brayle raised his phone as if it had suddenly gained weight. He clicked a microphone icon.

"Hey, buddy." The silence weighed heavy and oppressive. "How are you feeling?"

No reaction from the Skunger.

"They say your tests are looking good." Brayle leaned his head on the glass. "We're beating it. I told you we would, didn't I, buddy?"

Arneson turned away from the flat shine of tears in Brayle's eyes. There was a plastic placard affixed to the wall.

D. BRAYLE. NO ADMITTANCE.

After a long silence, the doctor spoke. "Delton. It's a family name."

"I like it."

"I do, too. He used to like it, when he was little. It was different—he thought it was neat to have a name no one else had. Then, when his mother died, he changed. Just…separated from anything that would remind him of her. Family, home, everything. He took off. Went south. Lived on the streets, turning tricks to make enough to eat. And to score. It takes a shockingly short length of time for a kid to turn into a junkie. One who will mug you on the street for your phone, or break into your house for a bottle of pills. And when he got into that trouble—serious trouble—he thought I would turn him away because he'd realized he was gay. Me! A guy who dressed up as a sweet transvestite from Transylvania every Halloween through seven years of grad school. Jesus, I've never cared who screwed who. I just wanted to do my research, and mourn my wife, and raise my son."

"He was in SoCal when it broke out." Arneson noted that the microphone icon on Brayle's phone was still lit. He hoped, for Brayle's sake, that the boy was listening.

"He was. Part of the first or second wave, I'm not sure which." Brayle let his fingers trail down the glass. "So now, I only want one thing. I want to save my son from this horrible fucking disease that eats people and spits out monsters. That's what I want, now."

CHAPTER SIXTY ONE

It started with a baseball game.

Arneson walked into one of the public lounges, a common area available to everyone at the facility. A group of security guards sat on the fuzzy orange sofas, boisterously cheering on a Mariners game. The game was recorded, as the MLB had gone on an indefinite hiatus.

The lounge smelled like beer and testosterone. A fat blond guard, still in his uniform, nudged his partner when Arneson entered.

Arneson felt their stares like a cold wind on his back. He could hear their muttered insults, even over the cheering and the cranked volume of the TV.

Arneson was poking through a drawer, looking for napkins. Funyuns always made his fingers greasy. When the heavy hand fell on his shoulder, he sighed at the inevitability.

"Hey, asshole. No Skungers allowed in here. This is for humans only." It was Crantz, balefully resplendent in a Mariners Zisk jersey, complete with chili-dog stains. He still wore his pistol, a big Nighthawk Custom in a black leather holster.

Arneson felt his stomach muscles tighten, but forced himself to relax. "Humans only, huh? Then what are you doing in here?"
Oh, good one.

"Your little pornstar girlfriend under the weather tonight?" Crantz's eyes were swimmy and dangerous with booze.

"She's pretty sick of getting the hairy eyeball from you and your rent-a-cop buddies," Arneson said. He turned and faced the bigger man. He knew he was exacerbating the situation, but fuck it, Crantz had a good ass-kicking coming to him anyway.

"Yeah?" Crantz licked his lower lip, tasting Arneson's anger in the air and liking it. He leaned in so that his belly brushed Arneson's crossed arms. "I'm sure a whore like her is used to being stared at."

The fat blond guard barked laughter from the sofa, and Arneson felt his face flush. His emotions tensed, as close to the surface as sinew and tendon and muscle. He felt the Skunge warp around his spine, tightening, felt it working in his brain.

He lunged forward, and slammed his forehead into Crantz's face. The bigger man's nose broke with a crunch, and a tide of security guards surged off the couches and swarmed toward Arneson. He met them eagerly, grin bared. He took down the first one, two, three, and then the tide broke over him. He felt boots slam into his sides, felt his ribs crack and then break under the onslaught. He grunted and growled as the blows rained down on him. Hating faces, teeth bared in rage, bobbed around him like sea-foam. He battered at them with his fists, with his feet, and felt savage joy when his own blows connected.

But the attack was too much. A boot stomped down on his healing right hand, and white fireworks went off in his head as the bones re-broke. Someone choked him for a few seconds, until he could break the hold by jabbing the pointed fingers of his other hand toward the choker's eyes. Someone connected with his balls, and he roared. All through his body, the Skunge contracted, tight and painful around his bones. His limbs grew stiff with the stuff as it grew inside. The balance inside him, the balance of human versus Skunge, began to tip to the side of the parasite. The pressure to let go and let the Skunge take control thrummed in his blood.

He felt the blows lessen, and cracked blood-soaked eyes to see Crantz pulling people off him.

"I am going to kill this fucker. I am going to kill him," Crantz was saying as he threw other guards off of Arneson. Finally, he had a clear line. He pulled the Nighthawk and leveled it at Arneson's face.

"Time to die, shitbird," Crantz said.

Time slowed, and Arneson felt a new perspective fill his eyes. The vision of the parasite that grew inside him. The Skunge whispered to him, filling his mind with its own truth, its undeniable attraction. He listened, and he let it go.

The Skunge took over his body, and the feeling was like something inside him had super-nova'ed. Every part of his brain lit up all at once. His synapses rang with pleasure unlike anything he could have imagined. All at once he knew; the reason people infected themselves, why people followed and adored and worshiped this horrible disease that had found him through the woman he loved. The Skunge was better than any drug; it was pure, it was organic, it resonated with every cell in his body, It was the food of the gods—or it was God itself. Every moment of pleasure and pain that had come before washed away in a searing blitz of the power of this new God. He was at one with the universe. He
was
the universe.

His eyes snapped open, and every other person in the room was there, on their knees. They waited for him to bless them. They wanted the gift, the ultimate curse of Godhood. The gift that he could provide. More and more vines slithered out from him, moving with insectile speed, wrapping themselves around throats, around wrists.

He began to hover. The Skunge attached itself to the ceiling, pulling him up like a puppet. He had the power to wipe out every other creature in this room, to lay waste to the pitiful, insignificant beings that regarded him with such worshipful terror.

Terror? Arneson paused. Why would they be afraid? They should have been exultant. Couldn't they see the power of this gift?

Then he knew. The power wasn't human. The power that it gave you washed away the property that made you. Your humanity. And humans, if they had any one defining characteristic, it was this: humans survive. They fight. They reject and refuse the poison, even if the poison makes them more than human.
Especially
when it makes them more than human.

"P-p-please. Let me go." The blond guard again. His nametag read WILHELMS. All at once, Arneson felt sick. The blush of power faded, replaced by a rising tide of nausea. The knowledge that he held this disease inside his flesh made his gorge rise. The tentacles of Skunge snapped back into his body with a sound like the lazy crack of a bullwhip. Wilhelms dropped to the ground, gasping for breath.

No one moved to follow when Arneson left the room.

Crantz rose from the floor, pale except for two fire-spots of anger riding high on his cheekbones. He panted for breath, and turned to the other guards.

"I am going to kill that motherfucker." Crantz's massive chest rose and fell, and he rubbed at his shoulder where he had crashed to the ground. "You can either help me, or watch your friends, your families, your kids, turns into
that
." He looked around the room, his eyes daring the rest to look away. No one did. "Is that what you want?"

"Hell no, Crantz." Wilhelms said.

"This has to stop here."

"I hear that, brother," another man said, gaining his feet. "I was just waiting to jump him, soon as you gave the word—"

"Me too!" Another guard stood, gesturing. "I wasn't scared of that goddamn mutated prick!"

A tide of voices washed through the room, vying to outshout the others.

"If you mean that, then you'll join me," Crantz said. He sounded out of breath and his eyes were like two raisins pushed into bread dough. "
Let's fucking get them.
"

CHAPTER SIXTY TWO

By Arneson's reckoning, he had been dead drunk by six P.M. His bleary eyes focused on his watch. Eleven-thirty P.M now. Of his sobriety, nothing remained save a tiny ember, banked and glowing, deep in his consciousness.

"Shit-
fire
, but I am drunk," Arneson muttered. He poured himself another finger of Bruichladdich, managing to get most of it in the glass.

Brayle placed a smoke in his mouth, moving with the glacial care of the very inebriated. He tried, for an interminable length of time, to find the tip of his cigarette with the flame, and came very close to succeeding. Arneson finally had to grab his arm to steady the lighter, and Brayle celebrated by dropping the lit smoke into his lap. He yelped and scrabbled at it, managing more by luck than skill to avoid picking it up by the lit end.

"Mother-of-
fuck
." Brayle glared at the cigarette in his hand. "Brother, it's been a long while since I've been so deep in the devil's guts." Brayle blinked owlishly at Arneson. "Brother, are you even drunk? You don't look drunk. Hey! Have another drink, come on." He waved in the general direction of the clock "it's early yet. It's early, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Or however that goes." His chin sunk to his chest, then snapped back up. "Pressure!" He said. He raised a hand, appeared to be surprised at the cigarette smoldering there, and puffed on it. "Not just a great song by Billy Joel, but also a most potent motivator. I'm under an enormous amount of pressure from them."

"Them who?" Arneson had been waiting for this moment. Bringing up the topic of who actually ran Juniper Ridge would have put Brayle on his guard; he had to wait until Brayle brought it up himself. Arneson was impressed; he had expected Brayle to crack at least two hours ago.

"The…fuckers who write my paychecks. Sign my paychecks." Brayle considered this. "Maybe they write them as well. They have fingers in everything, and the moving finger, having writ, moves on."

"You're just full of half-ass literary references tonight."

"It's an introspective night, and I have been given a lot to think about." Brayle knocked back his drink and gestured for another, belched into his fist, and ran his hands through his hair. "A lot of, uh, decisions to make and mysteries to ponder."

"Oh yeah? Like what?"

"This and that. The future of the human race. My immortal soul. What Bill Murray whispered into the girl's ear at the end of that movie. Heavy shit man, heavy shit."

"Did you try asking them what you should do?"

"I did, man. I did. But they don't really deal with questions like this. It's like talking to one of the old supercomputers; you plug in your question, and it thinks on it a bit, and then it spits out a card.
Clitter-clitter-clitter
. Not much room for human empathy in between the ones and zeroes, my man."

Got to tread carefully here
, Arneson thought
.
"Seems to me that empathy may not be what's required in a situation like this." Arneson began pouring another drink, and paused as he noticed Brayle staring at him. The doctor's eyes were strange for a moment—like they were looking not only
at
Arneson, but
through
him.

"No, you're probably right. Empathy is the least of our worries when it comes to fighting the great virus from outer space."

"So, you guys think it's ET then?"

Brayle shrugged. "Might be. Might not be. Could have crash-landed in a meteor or could have seeped up through the cracks in the bottom of the ocean."

"Let me guess: R'lyeh is somehow involved."