All-Day Breakfast (48 page)

“It might be someday,” Penzler said.

Alice lifted her sister's head clear, the rods beneath it sparking, and brought it down with a crunch on her father's upturned face. Then she lifted it away. Penzler spat blood, one eye already swollen, and Alice smashed her dead sister down onto him again. That time Natalia's skull broke apart and a lot of stuff like mushroom soup sloshed out onto both of them.

“Gah!” Penzler yelled, his mouth full of shit.

As the wheelchair rolled backwards Alice jumped barefoot onto his lap. The chair tipped and she drove his head into the stone floor as they fell, then she leapt to her feet, fists ready like her dad might leap up with a switchblade. Her breath sounded like a screen door creaking.

Gravity pulled her father's knees toward his face until he did a backward somersault out across the floor. He lay face down in the contents of his head.

Alice wasn't angry, Penzler had said, just down in the dumps.

She lifted the
rotten pumpkin that was Natalia's head and lowered it back into its tank, threw the towel over it.

She said, “Why couldn't.” Then she just folded her arms.

“Get me down, please,” I whispered.

My tongue felt wobbly so I didn't want to overuse it.

She smoothed the towel down the sides of the tank, tugging either end until they were even, then ambled over with her hands in her pockets like I was her last choice for square-dance partner. Lifting a slot screwdriver from the table, she pried the belt back from my lowest band. It let go with a clang.

“Who's in the other room?” I whispered.

“Dad said he'd been batting for the other team, so I guess some gay guy.”

When the last band released I fell naked right on top of her. Got a smear of Penzler's blood on me as I wrapped my one arm around her neck.

Then something was different in the air, a smell or a vibration, and we both lay there blinking at each other.

Helicopter.

“Get the hell off,” she said into my good left shoulder.

I rolled naked onto the stone floor. She stood up her dad's wheelchair, set the brakes, then wrapped her arms around me like she was giving the Heimlich and dragged me up into the seat. It was still warm from Penzler's ass.

“I don't have a temper like,” she said.

She pushed me between the tables and apparatus. The incoming noise set the specimen dishes rattling.

“They know we're in here?” I asked.

We rolled under the garage door into a musty hallway with straw on the floor. Another metal door stood closed right in front of us—otherwise we could turn left into what must've been the dark stables. Alice punched numbers on a keypad on the wall. I felt a spark shoot through my left shoulder. The door clattered up, and I got a whiff of something vinegary like hot dog relish.

“Which way will they come in?” I asked.

“Through the stable.” She grabbed my handles.

Once we got past the forklift, we rolled into a lab exactly the same as the first—monitors, beakers, fish tanks, even a poor sucker strapped to the wall. His head hung forward, and at first glance I thought he had a severe birth defect, his features were sideways or something, but as we bumped over a wad of extension cords I realized the top of his head was missing. His gray brain presented itself like a jellied salad at a wedding reception. Whatever Penzler had intended, this guy was dead.

But then he lifted his head and peered down at us. Gary the ninja.

“You guys come to watch my dissipation,” he said.

“He's only been here three days.” Alice started snapping back his bands with her screwdriver. “Dad gave him too strong a dose, wanted to see how his brain would melt.”

“Yippee,” crooned Gary.

The sound of the helicopter was overwhelmed by a noise like a bulldozer on the other side of the wall—tanks or something.

“
You
can fight them, Giller,” said Gary. “You killed every person I ever met.”

My neck kept flexing like I was ready to head-butt the hell out of some people.

“You killed a lot of sixteen-year-olds outside Lincoln,” I said.

“That was maybe a mistake,” Gary murmured. “Those forensics were too much like Penzler Corporate Headquarters—made Jones bring me in for the talk, you know?”

Something yellow and bubbly ran out of the corner of his mouth, then down the bands to Alice's wrist and along her elbow as she pulled back the third belt from the top. He had a lot of white electrodes stapled to his chest, their wires trailing away to what looked like a chrome dishwasher. Now the tank outside was grinding its gears.

“Any weapons here?” I whispered.

Alice shook her head.

“Diesel fuel?”

“Drums in the corner,” she said.

“Matches?”

“In those drawers.”

“Blasting caps.”

“Blasting caps by the tractor. The shelf with the—”

“Run get them, please. Oh, and fertilizer.”

“That's Nebraska talking. I'm taking you guys and getting out of here, that's it.”

“But if these guys—”

“And there isn't any cure,” she said. “Sorry.”

She gave a heave on the belt under Gary's chin and the whole band snapped, clanging back against the wall, but instead of catching the guy she turned to stare at me with her hair stuck to her shoulders by Gary's vomit. Meantime his knees buckled under him and he slid down the wall until he was sitting on his heels. He had a purple crust around his head where Penzler had cut his skull away. Me, my gums were tingling like mad. Not good.

“Tell the goons you're Alice Penzler and see what happens.”

“They'll incapacitate me, that's standing orders. But I've got a getaway car.”

“They won't let us
drive
anywhere!”

“Okay, shit. The roof, the roof, the roof.”

Bent low like there were snipers in the rafters, she loped out the door. Gary crouched against the wall, his bare scrotum brushing the floor. He swallowed hard—the sawdust smell coming off him was strong as varnish.

“First Carver told me he wanted that
hq
blown up. I did that.” He shifted his square toes. “Then I had to collect a subject. Jones brought you in. ‘Awesome,' I said. I got greedy, I know that, working for two bosses. But I'm getting old, man. I only have a checking account.”

He leaned his chin on his bony knee. A shudder went through my left shoulder, then sparks ran up my ribs into that armpit—my one arm was coming off and no fleet of getaway cars could change that. My tongue turned to a square of masking tape.

“What,” I asked slowly, “are you saving up for?”

“Aw, nothing. No kids. That was
your
house in Hoover, right, on Hawthorne South? I liked that place. Was it a Coronado, that old furnace?”

I fingered the cauterized absence of my right shoulder, expecting cigar ash to float away. I couldn't picture my house in Hoover, much less its basement.

“You might as well go with her,” he said. “I'm not going anywhere.” He glared at his chrome dishwasher as it churned away beside him—the goddamn thing had a little
a
/
c
adapter where it plugged into the wall. “Penzler said this'd keep me alive. Guess he filled me full of more shit than usual so he could see, really
see
.”

He reached up to run an index finger across the gray coil of his brain. I retched up a mouthful of coffee. He squished the finger in up to the second knuckle.

“Shit,” he said. “Now I feel hot all over.”

The helicopter
whupping
sounded farther away. The apes were probably digging bunkers around the stables and laying in artillery because Gary and I were famous for doing backflips and ripping heads off.

I lurched up out of the wheelchair, still stiff as rebar, did a half-spin and flopped down next to him. He had his eyes closed, his right hand still clutched protectively around that
a
/
c
cord. He shifted over to bump his left shoulder against my armless right one, then shifted away again, eyes still closed.

“What's your name besides Gary?”

“It's Chinese,” he said. “Cheuk Ho. Means ‘Honored One.' ”

“But who calls you Cheuk Ho?”

“Huh. No. Nobody does.”

He looked at me sideways. His teeth looked so pointy.

“Guess you know what to do,” he said. “You got those kids to think about.”

“What?”

“Use that,” he said.

He looked at the big slot screwdriver lying between our feet.

“Okay,” I said, though I couldn't have said what I was agreeing to.

So I stared at my beautiful right toe. Why hadn't I killed him yet? I knew what he'd done at Penzler
hq
and
pbf
. My hands weren't exactly clean either, but I could argue that I'd only put my hand up someone's nose when they had me against a wall. Maybe ol' Cheuk Ho had thought his back had been against a wall too.

“That stuff gives me the runs,” he said.

A bag of fertilizer sat in front of us.

“Me too. Let me ask one thing—tell me what you'd do differently, okay? Like in your whole life.”

“Easy. Screwed more girls. Gravy on everything.” He nodded solemnly. “Wait with me another second. I'll make it worth your while. Okay.”

His eyes rolled away from me, and he tried to wipe yellow crud from his chin onto his shoulder. He still protected that cord in his right hand, though I couldn't imagine who was going to hop in and unplug it.

“Oops,” he said. “That doesn't look correct.”

My right knee had been up against my chest, but it'd flopped on the floor like a capital G, soft as an uncooked bratwurst.

“Dudn't,” I said, though I meant
Doesn't
.

I didn't feel as calm about the end then as I had in the front yard. Because Alice and I had
nearly
made it out—it's easier to relax when you're confident every option has been exhausted.

“You still get to have legs,” I murmured.

“Nah. I'm done.”

When my wife had been dying I'd sat beside the bed and stared at her face—there hadn't been much left of her but at least the stuff they were putting in her arm relaxed her so she quit rolling her eyes back into her head. Night after night I watched where the shadows under each of her cheekbones came across to meet the wings of her nose in a perfect curve, and how the etched bag under each eye mirrored those curves, like nature had sculpted her in utero knowing how perfect her face would look when those last nights finally came. How perfect death could seem.

I lifted my hand to my cheekbone.

“You know what to do,” said Gary.

He nudged the screwdriver with his foot. I took a deep breath while my lungs were still on my side.

“Dif I was you,” I said, “hangin' from ceilings, I'd keep sayin' ‘Honored One' all the dime.”

Gary gazed at the far wall without blinking.

“Funny you say that.” The corner of his mouth attempted a smile. “Because.”

His head fell forward between his knees, then his whole body slumped against mine, like Keister used to do as he fell asleep.

He'd pulled his
a
/
c
adapter out of the wall.

Dust drifted down from the rafters and computers swayed on their tables. The wall behind us shook,
Thud
. Then
Thud
again—Penzler's apes were making their own entrance, too scared of
shuriken
to use the regular doors.

No sign of Alice.

I looked down at the wet hemispheres of Gary's brain against my right shoulder. His bright orange medulla oblongata was hidden below them, and according to that fucker Penzler it was full of A-1 Zombie Preservative, though I'd never been a zombie, right? There's one thing zombies do that I'd never done.

I reached across and picked up the screwdriver, my whole arm shaking like hell. Another minute and my nameless kids would never see me again unless it was as a head in a jar in a sideshow their sweethearts had dragged them to, spoiling their evening quicker than diarrhea.

Thud
, said the wall. Gary's empty steel bands swung out a foot.

I shut his eyes with the palm of my hand. Then I slid the sharp head of the screwdriver down into the fatty white stuff between his brain and the back of his skull, then dragged the screwdriver all the way around the perimeter like I was going to lift a cake out of its pan.

The screwdriver came out again, slick with purple goo, and as I looked at it my arm started to bend back on itself like Plasticine. Stick with the job at hand. I'd have to lever those top halves out but didn't want to spoil the medulla oblongata in the process—I figured it'd be near the back so I slid the screwdriver in just behind his right eye and jogged the handle until the suction around his brain let go, hissing like a soda bottle. I pushed the handle down flat and that right hemisphere lifted up as neat as a hatchback, but I realized I didn't have another hand to pull it out.

So I shuffled away and let Gary flop onto his side, then one more tilt of the screwdriver and that hemisphere toppled out. It was still connected to him with half-a-dozen gristly bits but the screwdriver tore those away, forever depriving Gary of his artistic nature.

Then I could see the medulla oblongata at the bottom of his head, a bright orange thumb hitching a ride. I reached down and tugged at it but the thing was too wet and wired in, so I stabbed at either end with the screwdriver then reached in again and Gary's warm medulla oblongata slipped into my hand like it'd been waiting to walk me down the aisle.

I bit it in half with my incisors—had the texture of a baked potato. I chewed fast, willing my jawbone to stay attached and do its work well, and found that Gary's medulla oblongata tasted like a rubber balloon filled with French's yellow mustard. Funny how the brain tastes, no doubt about it.