The Skunge (34 page)

"You should know that I don't
want
to do this. Nothing personal, as assholes like Crantz like to say."

Arneson's throat burned, but he couldn't remember how to ask for a drink. He felt like his brain had been dipped in acid.

"Seems pretty personal to me."

Brayle took a deep breath, and Arneson heard the quaver in it. "My son killed himself last night. Smashed his MP3 player and slit his wrists with a piece of it. Swallowed the rest—just to make sure of the job, I guess. The kid never did pay much attention in biology class."

"Jesus."

Brayle examined the IV tube attached to Arneson. It was filled with clear liquid. He picked up a hanging cannula, and brought out a large hypodermic filled with milky fluid. His eyes ran with tears, but he was still smiling that ugly, forced grin. "The orders are in, and I'm afraid they don't look good. I'm going to inject this into your IV, and you're going to go to sleep, and you're not going to wake up. Once your girl finishes her transformation, she will be put down, too. Again, nothing personal." He pulled the cap off the syringe with his teeth and spat it into a waste basket.

Brayle giggled, and Arneson realized that at some point over the past few weeks, Brayle had lost his mind. The pressure had cracked him. His son, taken by a disease that threatened the human race. Brayle himself, locked away by his own government, tasked with the job of defeating a seemingly unbeatable enemy, and seeing that enemy take his son. The man's mind had cracked down the center like a rotten egg.

"Brayle, if you do this, you're turning your back on humanity to save it."

Brayle tapped the syringe, once, looking into Arneson's eyes. "I—"

His phone warbled. He glanced at it, moved to put it back, and froze. He stared at the phone. The color drained out of his face.

"Holy Christ." Brayle dropped the syringe on a tray. He looked at Arneson, the lenses of his glasses iced with the cold glare of the overhead fluorescents. He spun out of the room, his footsteps stuttering into a run.

Arneson struggled again at his bonds, feeling like a fly struggling against a web, stuck deeper and deeper with every weakening motion. He had been in tighter spots, but not many. The big leather hospital straps may as well have been made of steel. The bed was government-heavy rubberized plastic over an iron skeleton. He could almost reach the buttons that controlled the up and down motion of the bed, but that wasn't going to help him. He had no allies at Juniper Ridge except for Sugar.

He fought to marshal his thoughts and concentrate. Everything jumbled together, like a room full of kicked-over furniture: Sugar, the Skunge, Brayle, Maas, Rubalcava, Sonch, Crantz. A crazed kaleidescope of fun house reflections, spinning around him like a carousel. Sugar's face kept coming around, again and again, her eyes burning, daring him to remember something. Something from their shared past. He ground his teeth and whipped his head back and forth. The beeping of medical equipment, clustered like conspirators at the side of his bed, ebbed and swelled with each twist of his head.

Sugar's eyes flashed. She was trying to tell him something. Something about the

signal

sound of the machines. The machines were important. And what was the function of these machines, these readouts and monitors? Why, to signal, of course. They were signaling him. Like Sugar had signaled Arneson beside the highway in the Modoc forest. And if she could do it, could he do the same? If it was only because of the Skunge, the answer would be no. He would have to believe he could.

He stopped moving. Forced himself to breathe. Fought his mind to a crawl, imagining his thoughts sinking into thick treacle, like an insect struggling against a liquid flow of sap.

One moment there was nothing, the next, something was growing inside him like a bright psychic flower. He could no more have explained it than a savant could explain how he memorizes a phone book or draws a city skyline from memory. It just was, like it had always been there.

He thought back to that night in the forest, the feeling of having lost her as he stood at the rim of the great black ocean of trees. He felt the air on his skin, the smell of the Northern Larch and Juniper, and he called out. Sweat beaded his forehead. His muscles straining and corded, he called out to her.

Somewhere beneath him, she awoke.

CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE

The sound echoed in her mind for a moment, and was gone. Her head came up like an animal scenting smoke in the wind. What was it?

Sleep now. We/you/us will/must sleep.

The voice of the Skunge roiled and bubbled in her mind. Or was it her voice speaking to the Skunge? Impulses tumbled into her mind, one after another, like uprooted seedpods borne on a capricious breeze. The Skunge wanted her to do something. It wanted her to

evolve

sleep, to go to ground and sink into unconsciousness like an animal curling into a cave for the winter. But there was just enough left of the essential Sugar, the human part, that knew to do so would mean the end. The end of her humanity, certainly, but also the end of Arneson. They had taken him, and until she found him again, she could not

evolve

sleep. Perchance to dream, perchance to die screaming as her mind was eaten from within by rustling loops of the Skunge.

While the internal voices fought for control, she waited, watched, and listened. For what, she didn't know. The tendrils of her parasite twined around her, caressing her, soothing her, urging her to rest. But she couldn't rest. Not yet.

The sound came again. A long, low-pitched note seeping through the concrete and steel, echoing through the halls of Juniper Ridge. The sound settled into the pit of her stomach like a stone. The Skunge stirred sluggishly, halfway awake, but soon built to a frenzy of whipping tentacles that snapped and grasped the air.

Her evolution was not yet complete, but that she had some control of the Skunge. She concentrated, speaking to it, answering its purring, spiky questions. After a few moments, they came to an agreement. Slowly, painfully, she moved off the bed and into the corner. The Skunge began weave itself around her, wrapping her in its slimy cerements. Around and around, like a snake eating its tail.

The time for chrysalis had arrived.

CHAPTER SIXTY SIX

Outside of Sugar's cell, Tork Wilhelms slurped from a can of soda and clicked on another gallery. This one showed a sweet-but-sexy blond with a perfect rack playing spin-the-dildo with a pair of brunette sluts. The world outside might be halfway to hell with the Skunger hordes, but the Internet at Juniper Ridge still worked just fine.

He still couldn't believe that the hot little piece of porn-star ass—Sugar, star of such favorites as
Cum Bunnies 1 & 2
,
Teen Cream Dreams
and
Cum-ception
—was rotting, covered in alien parasites, and not ten feet away. He had jacked off to her so many times he felt like he knew her. He idled with his cock through his government-issue work pants, looking for a fresh picture gallery. There were tons of videos online, but he liked to keep it old school when checking out his favorites. Their perfect air-brushed good looks, buttered flesh laid out like the peaks and valleys of some exotic land you could only see in postcards.

A laminated sign hung on the wall, affixed with a thumbtack. The sign said:

OBSERVE/REPORT SUBJECT EVERY FIVE MINUTES. VERIFY ALL WARNINGS FROM VITALS/TELEMETRY.

Tork checked every two hours or so—basically whenever he got up to piss or to fetch a soda or a snack from the vending machine (the vending machine didn't take money; government work had its perks). The past few weeks had seen a noticeable decline in standards at Juniper Ridge. People showed up late, or not all, and everyone seemed under-slept, overfed, and depressed. For now, Wilhelms was content to just ride the downward slope, all the way to hell if that's where it ended up.

He had tried talking to Sugar a couple of times. A couple dozen times, really. He wanted to ask her about all the chicks she had worked with, her favorite cock, stuff like that. She never responded. Had never, in fact, acknowledged him. He was used to that; even the cunts back in high school had been indifferent to him, and they were nothing like the prime piece of ass that Sugar was—or had been before the Skunge. So, while he could understand being ignored, that didn't mean he had to like it. He had the power here. He would show her who held the reins here at Juniper Ridge. Someday. Oh, boy.

"Stuck up little slut," he said. He clicked link after link, his eyes drinking in the flesh and oil and lube and wet pinkness, and his urgency grew, boiling in his lower belly.

Here I am
, he thought,
in total control of this piece of meat, this fucktoy, and what am I doing about it? Sitting here jerking off to pictures of her. I could have her. I could have her right now. I own her. I have the power of life and death in my hands, because I know her true name, I know her down to her DNA. I—

He burped explosively and reached for his soda. Empty. He sighed. Might as well check on her while he was fetching another one. Not that it really mattered: the bitch never did anything but sit there, melting into the bed and growing more Skunge.

Gerald Perkins walked in, groaning and buckling his belt. "Christ, don't go in the head for thirty-five, forty minutes. I just gave birth, and the baby is Chinese."

"That's disgusting, Perk." Tork pointed out a gallery featuring an Asian girl carrying her enormous breasts in a wheelbarrow. "Look at the tits on her." In the pictures, she was strutting her way toward a sweaty group of men dressed like construction workers. Cheap sleeveless t-shirts, jeans spattered with black paint to look grease-stained.

"Hoo-boy, now
that's
the kind of Chinese take-out I could dig into." Perk eased himself into the chair, his love-handles pressing against the arms of the chair. He sported a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, and carried the faint tang of stale booze and old fried food. "Even better than that cooze rotting away in R-Thirteen."

Room Thirteen was their room. Their private kingdom. The guards were assigned rooms in accordance with seniority and ability. Wilhelms and Perk had been around since the early days, and were afforded the easier cases. Earlier, Brayle himself had ambled past to check on her, complimenting them on their handling of the case.

The
case
. What a laugh. If Skungers had a case, it would be 'hopeless'. They got infected, then they grew threads, then vines, then tentacles, and then they went berserk and died. Full stop.

"Hey," Perk said, his eyes lighting up in that muddy-crazy way that both fascinated and repelled Tork. "I'm bored. You want to go mess with her?"

Tork's pulse-rate notched upward, with an answering coiling of tension in his lower belly. "What do you mean?"

Perk leaned forward, enveloping Tork in his special blend of
Eau de Perkins
. His voice was thick. "I say we do this little skank. Tonight. You and me."

"Ha ha, very funny. One time, in the army, I went to a German whorehouse and got a case of crabs big enough to serve at a lobster restaurant; that was bad enough. I bet even triple wrapping it isn't enough to keep the Skunge off your—"

"Not that kind of
do
, you moron. I mean, you know…finish her off." At Wilhelms' nonplussed expression, he reached into his bag and pulled something out. "Check out what came in the mail for Uncle Perkie. I've been dreaming about using one of these on a bitch for years. And this one," he tilted his head toward R-Thirteen, "is mostly dead anyhow.
And
she's a porno star—or used to be one at least." He whipped his wrist, and two feet of telescoping black matte steel sprung out from his fist. At the end, a sharp spike. He pressed a button, and it arced with a bolt of electricity.

"You're nuts," Tork said, and swallowed hard around a lump in his throat. "You're out of your fuckin' mind." There was something about Perk that attracted and repelled Tork, both at once. Juicy but gross, like biting into a undercooked porkchop and feeling something squirm between your teeth. But he was crazy enough to be
really
fun.

"You got to admit—chances like this don't come up but once in a lifetime. Am I right, or am I right?"

Tork eyed the steel rod, and felt his
own
rod spring to attention. He gulped again, and felt some inner damn break. "Let's do it."

Tork happened to glance at a monitor, and froze. "Fuck! She's gone cocoon!"

They rushed into R-Thirteen. The heat and the smell struck Tork like a padded fist. There, in the corner, sat Sugar's chrysalis. Tork groaned. Brayle was going to have a kitten.

"Mother
fuck
!" Perk said. He raced to the nearest terminal and pounded on the side "The vitals monitors didn't go off at all? Nothing?"

"No, goddamn it, nothing," Tork said. He recalled the conversation he'd had with Brayle earlier today.
The very second you see the alarms going off, you ping me. Got it?
Tork didn't know why that was so important to the scientist, but he did
not
want to get on Brayle's bad side. He had heard stories, and none of them sounded like anything he wanted to know more about.