The Skunge (35 page)

Tork scrolled through menus, looking for errors. No errors, no nothing.

Perkins stalked around the cocoon. He knelt down to inspect the lump of Skunge. "Something about this looks weird. What the hell?" He prodded at the cocoon with the toe of his boot, grimacing. "Partner, this is something funky. Come take a look."

"I've seen a hundred of those goddamn things," Tork said. He was starting to fret. "I got to contact Brayle. How the fuck did she spin that without setting off her vitals monitor?" He ran his hands through his brush-cut. "Shit, Brayle is going to skin us."

"Brayle can gobble my crank. She fooled Brayle and his machines, so fuck
him
, and fuck that noise. And
fuck
this little bitch." Tork heard the metallic ring of the truncheon snapping out to full length, and turned in time to see Perk standing over the cocoon, one meaty arm raised, ready to drop a killing blow.

"Wait, Perk. Shit! Brayle could be here any minute—"

"Fuck it." Perk raised the truncheon and brought it down with a grunt of effort. The resulting splash of fluid and gunk sent up a thick splatter of red and green pus-like fluid. "Jesus H, that's
awful
," Perkins wiped his nose with the back of his wrist, leaving a smear of gore.

Once, when he was ten, Tork's father had taken him hunting, and the old man, half-crocked on cheap beer, had missed an easy kill-shot and gutshot a deer. Tork and his dad had chased the unfortunate creature two miles while as it bled out, leaving a dappled red trail of blood. It staggered into a shaded copse of trees, and they had hung back, watching. Finally, it stumbled and dropped with a snorting, dying sound. Tork had watched, feeling a mix of curiosity and pity as his father grabbed the beast by the antlers, pulled back, and used his knife to open a spurting red gash in the tufted white fur of its throat. Blood steamed into the winter-bright air. His father wiped the knife on the deer's fur, then took the blade to the thing's torso. When he cut into its belly, what gushed out was green, brown, and smelled like a mixture of sewage and spoiled raw meat. The biting stink struck Tork's nose, and he turned and vomited into the bushes. The smell of Sugar's effluvium was the same.

Under Perk's labors, rents and tears opened in the cocoon, sending green slime splashing on the cement floor. Perkins continued to hammer away, gasping for breath, a sick smile pasted on his thick chops. Tork was afraid to get any closer, staying well clear of the whistling, glittering arc of the truncheon as Perkins let fly.

Neither of them looked up. If they had, they would have seen Sugar hanging above them, suspended by ropes of the Skunge. The sound of Perk's grunting, gasping attack on the cocoon concealed the sound of her descent.

She swept over them like a wave.

CHAPTER SIXTY SEVEN

Brayle hurried back to the recovery room, his mind burning with questions.

What he had just seen on the outside cameras confirmed his fears. Things outside had spun out of control. What little order that had remained when they locked themselves into Juniper Ridge was gone. It had been three days since they'd had communication with the Mountain, the government's enormous underground base operation in the desert. And if they couldn't contact the Mountain, then things were very bad indeed.

And the Skungers had come. Their queen was here; therefore, they had come. What did they want from her?

He had done it.
Part exorcism, part surgery, part grit-jawed bloody-mindedness, up in his elbows in the stuff, ripping out every single strand, pulling it out of Arneson's body like drawing a fishing line out of a stream full of Piranha. He almost giggled. He was going to save the facility. He was going to save his son. Hell, he was going to save the world.

It would be hard to dissect Arneson; but he would do it all the same. Frank had given the orders shortly before the procedure, and while he had acknowledge them with the proper
gravitas
, inside he was jubilant. He had every reason to believe the procedure was going to work; and now he would be prove it.
He could cure Delton
. He whispered a silent prayer to his dead wife, and today, he could almost believe she had heard it.

His phone beeped with a low-grade security alert key. He almost allowed himself the luxury of ignoring it, but long practice forced him to check.

R-Thirteen and its observations area reported no movement for fifteen minutes. He had configured alarms for any unusual patterns occurring within the facility. Unusual being a relative, of course; lots of teams took breaks together, even though the rules precluded it. Discipline was one thing, but when you saw your country falling down around your ears, well then, it came a little easier to take extra-long smoke breaks, or go down to the cafeteria and spend twenty minutes gossiping over coffee.

He flipped over to cam view of R-Thirteen and almost tripped over himself. The observation areas were empty, as he had expected, but there on the floor of the room itself: a chrysalis, the largest one yet. It clumped in the corner, like the world's biggest dog had dropped by to take a dump. He grimaced.

He sprinted toward R-Thirteen. Lax rules or not, Wilhelms and Perkins had been given the strictest of orders; let him know
at once
if the subject in R-Thirteen began to pupate. Wherever they were, he would have their balls. They would be wearing them like earrings by the time he got done.

He slammed into the room and dropped to his knees next to the chrysalis. He regarded it like a fallen idol. He ran his hands over it, ignoring the greasy slime that coated his fingers. It had been formed recently, and was still wet and pliable. He began to pry a hole with his finger, digging it in, twisting and turning to try and break through the surface. It was like trying to poke a hole in a wet plastic tarp.

"Sorry for the intrusion, but orders are orders," he whispered. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small metal tube. "I've known you would be the one since you arrived." He pressed a button and a tiny LED blazed. "I'm sorry to have to do this, my dear, but the brass insisted on insurance. If I guess correctly, you're going to absorb the chrysalis completely in order to change. If you do—
when
you do—you're going to be too big and too strong for us to control. We're going to have to kill you. There is to be nothing left of this disease. To kill the snake, you have to cut off the head." He pushed the metal tube it into the cocoon, forcing it through with a wet pop. "It's a clean micro-nuke. It burns as hot as the sun for a fraction of a second, and melts everything around it. Overkill, right? I tried to tell them. Not that I tried too hard, of course; to be honest, I never much cared for you...as a person." His face brightened. "Here's a bit of good news. We cured it. Unfortunately, we won't be using the cure on
you
, but your boyfriend is alive and well. For now, anyway. So, no hard feelings, right?"

His fingers touched something odd. One tiny corner of something too regular to be produced by nature—even the perverted nature that produced the Skunge. He flicked it with a finger. It was smooth, stiff, somehow familiar. Shoe rubber. The kind of thick rubber soles on the boots favored by the guards. He took out a multi-tool, and pulled at the rubber with pliers. More emerged. A seam; industrial yellow stitching on acid-proof rubber. He yanked at it, with both hands, and a foot emerged. Then a leg clad in gray polyester-blend slacks. A guard uniform. There was a guard inside the chrysalis.

He reached for his phone with nerveless fingers. His fingers scrabbled at the smooth plastic surface. He twitched at a sudden movement from inside the cocoon. He leaned over, staring at the mound of tissue.

The chrysalis erupted in a gout of blood, green fluid, and Skunge. The bodies of Wilhelms and Perkins flew like broken mannequins. From the wreckage, Sugar emerged like some dark, bloodthirsty goddess: Kali, emerged whole and terrible from the pages of some fantastic history book.

A hot runnel of urine spilled down his leg. The Skunge bloomed from her like a deadly tropical plant, touching him, exploring, wrapping inexorably around him. His nerveless fingers finally succeeded in freeing the phone from his belt, but she slapped it to the floor. Grasping, prehensile tentacles snatched it up.

He gasped for the words. "Stop. I'll let him loose. I'll let you both go. I promise."

She leaned over him, her face like a living painting made of thorn and blood and Skunge. Tentacles dug into the discarded shell of the chrysalis and pulled out the smooth metal cylinder Brayle had placed inside.

"I
promise
!" His screams splintered as she pushed the object into his mouth and down his throat.

CHAPTER SIXTY EIGHT

Arneson was finished. He had nothing left. Soaked in sweat, alternately baking with fever-heat and shaking with chills. The call to Sugar had been his last hope. He recognized it now for what it was: not an attempt to reach her, but a lament that he would never see her again. This pain was worse than anything he had ever—

For a moment, he thought he had heard something. A sign that she had heard and returned the call. But now, nothing. In the distance, a siren howled. He hoped the place was burning down. He laid his head back and stared at the ceiling, waiting for the end.

His eyes snapped open at a sound in the hallway. A sound, and a smell.

"Sugar?"

Nothing. He had a moment to wonder if he had been dreaming. Or if he had ever woken up.

She swarmed into the room like a cyclone of Skunge. His blood cooled. With no Skunge in his body, his skin crawled just from looking at her. At the same time, a sense of overriding awe flowed through his mind. Watching her was like watching some exotic animal. One that could, and would kill, not only out of necessity, but also just because she could.

"It worked. It's not in me, anymore."

She didn't answer. Was it reproach he read in that gaze? Forgiveness, that he had been the one to be cured? Love? Hate? Or, worst of all, indifference.

"I won't fail you. I failed Nicole. I've done wrong so many times in my life, but not this time." Any further words caught in his throat.

Nothing but the insectile buzz of the overhead lights and the Skunge whispering to itself.

She moved forward, and snapped his bonds, one by one. Her new flesh brushed his arm, and he couldn't prevent his own from shrinking away. If he needed proof that he was human again, that was it.

She regarded him a long moment with her alien green eyes. Then she left.

CHAPTER SIXTY NINE

Sugar left a phone on the bed. His way out. A passkey out of this chamber of horrors. She had given up; she wanted him to leave her here. And he would, but he would come back for her. Or at least that's what he told himself.

Her face, the memory of it, smiled at him from his mind's eye.

He limped down corridors, trying to recall the layout. His addled brain tried to tell him he was running in circles, that he was headed backwards, that he should just lay down and sleep. He reached into his pocket and brought out the phone. The people who had created the thing had almost certainly intended it for commercial use; the user interface was too elegant to have been bankrolled by the Black Ops people. They paid, but only for things they couldn't take by force—even then, they never paid enough. After a few moments, he pulled up a map of Juniper Ridge, with a helpful purple dot denoting his location.

He moved down corridors he had never before seen empty. Maybe Brayle had already put the place on lockdown.

Pain came in waves, and now and again it swelled to a crescendo that made him want to retch. His body was already at the wall. He pushed on, drawing strength from nothing. Better to just die in agony rather than pass out on the hallway carpet and wind up chained to another bed.

He limped toward the loading areas. He could take a truck, bust through the gates, and after that—who knew? He was sure the situation had deteriorated past the point of tenability: there would be no help for him outside. He had Brayle's phone, of course: with that he should be able to connect with someone higher up and tell them about this place. But the people who had built Juniper Ridge—they would be higher up too. And they would be listening; they always were.

Even over the panting of his own breath, he heard the thunder of boots ahead. He rounded a corner and saw a contingent of Crantz's men double-timing across a perpendicular corridor. They were headed toward the center of the facility, to the security center. He waited for them to pass, and resumed his painful movement.

Interminable minutes later, he reached the entrance to the cargo bay area. Crantz had probably discovered that Sugar was free by now, and from there they would probably look for him next. He kept using the thing to open doors, and kept expecting it to stop working. It would stop working just before a muscled regiment of Crantz's soldiers showed up to turn him into hamburger.

He'd have to risk it; the only way out was through. He clicked an icon on the phone. They obediently rumbled open.