Blood Soaked and Invaded - 02 (30 page)

Riley didn’t look at all happy about the invitation, but it didn’t stop us from popping a squat with them. Charlie, for some reason known only to God, actually sat down beside Riley on the far side of the table from me. Jeff chuckled under his breath, and strode off to the buffet.

He brought back an entire tray of empanadas.

“I’ll say one thing for fucking sure,” he said, putting the tray down in front of us, “the food here is better than anywhere I’ve been in at least a year.”

That comment got a round of affirmative noises, even from the stone-faced Siobhan Riley.

As for me, I tucked into some food. After this little get-together, I wanted to take a nap... one that would last until the following day, for preference.

One of the assembled UK volunteers sat back in his chair, I believe his name was Andrew, and spoke up.

“D’you mind if I ask you and Frank something, Charlie?”

“No, Andrew. Go right ahead.”

“Thank you.” He smiled and blushed a little. I made a mental note to take 10 years off my estimate of his age. “What’s it like havin’ all these things runnin’ ‘round inside you?”

“Good question. Most of the time, you don’t really notice anything out of the ordinary.” Charlie looked thoughtful for a moment before continuing. “Let me change that. There are some alterations and abilities you notice within hours, but you adapt to them so quickly that you almost forget them.”

“Like what?”

That question came from two seats down on my side of the table: Rebecca Howard-Spence, the only other woman in that group. Something about her screamed “Red Shirt” to me and I hoped I was wrong about it.

“Well, the first thing to develop was an internal clock and a form of local area sensor package with surprisingly detailed information.”

“Now that sounds worth the trouble,” Andrew said, grinning from ear to ear. “What kind of info d’you get?”

“You get body temperature, location, and a sense of whether or not you’ve met them before.” Charlie seemed to be in her element, answering questions like this. “Now, if the target is someone you know, you even get a sense of their mood.”

I decided to put my two cents in.

“Not long after that,” I chimed in, “you get a local map in your head that shows the location of people you know. A day or two later, you end up with brain-to-brain cellular phone service.”

“Damn!” Rebecca shook her head in disbelief. “It sounds like a rogue Google product!”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, but she had a point.

“Google doesn’t dissolve bullets and heal you up afterward,” I remarked.

The comment gained me quite a few affirmative noises and nods. I leaned back in the chair and the Man Scythe scabbard bit into my back. I realized I’d been wearing it and the same clothes for quite a while. This appeared to be Universe telling me that I need to attend to personal hygiene before I dropped into a late afternoon coma.

I wasn’t willing to bet that a pleasant side effect of nanotechnology was no body odor.

Creaking and groaning, I stood up from the chair and detached the straps that hold the plastic scabbard across my back. I sat it in the chair and stretched, listening to the juicy pop of my vertebrae, before I picked it back up and sat down again. Everyone was looking at me like I’d ripped an astoundingly foul fart.

The quietest of Jeff Andrews’ cadre of orphaned Special Ops, Peter Lewis, rubbed his eyes and commented on my spinal symphony.

“It was as if a million voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”

“Har, har. I just realized I’ve been wearing this for nearly two whole days,” I said, standing up again. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to collapse for a few hours. Charlie, if you want me, you know where to find me.”

“I certainly do!”

I wonder if anyone else at the table caught the naughty leer that she gave me then. Probably not, but it warmed my heart quite a bit and put a tiny spring in my weary stride. As soon as the doors of B2 shut behind me, the weariness caught up with me. Even the Man Scythe felt like it weighed a ton.

By the time I made it back to my humble abode, I was actually staggering. My brain felt sluggish, and I started to wonder if anyone had a guide to post-abduction nutrition. Was I not getting enough water after levitating?

The cashier counter was the nearest flat surface that wasn’t the concrete floor and it looked incredibly inviting. With some effort, I wobbled my way over, leaned my Baby against the pressboard and flopped onto the counter.

“I’m home,” I thought to myself, “I don’t have to worry about where I nap.”

Strangely satisfied, draping my arms and legs over the edges of the countertop, I closed my eyes and let them stay that way for a while. Somewhere in that dark pit of sleep, community messages passed back and forth, but I didn’t hold on to them long enough to wake up. None of them addressed me by name, so they couldn’t be that important... easy to sleep through.

A familiar noise somewhere near my right leg woke me up. I pivoted around on the counter and looked over the edge to see what made the noise. The Man Scythe was out of the scabbard–the blade was open and locked into position.

The sound when the lock bar engages the slot in the blade is quite distinctive. I like to think of it as the cutlery equivalent to chambering a shell in a shotgun. Once you hear it, you don’t forget it. Ever.

About that time, my muzzy brain registered some very important points. Blades do not open without assistance. Large weapons do not, as a rule, self-deploy from thermoplastic scabbards. Cogito ergo WTF, someone had decided to toy with my Baby. In the happy little world I live in, messing with the Man Scythe without permission ranks right up there with taking an axe to my ofuro: something that simply is not done.

I looked up, and a pair of wobbly eyes in a bloody face were looking back at me.

“Fhank,” she said with a smile.

As for me, I shot up off the counter and landed on the floor outside of the cash wrap area. Standing in front of me, looking taller and more mature than the last time we’d met, was Subject F-31. She was covered in blood and bits of more solid things.

Someone must have died before she decided to visit me.

“Leah,” I said, addressing F-31 with the name only I knew.

“Ueh,” she smiled, showing off bloody teeth. I saw her look down at the Man Scythe, and then point at it. “Daddy?”

Must. Keep. Calm.

“Yes, your Daddy made that for me.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding gently. “Yes, ‘member that... ‘member lots.”

“It looks like you’re growing up now.” I didn’t know what else to do but keep her talking until I could kill her properly, and put my debt to rest.

“Yes. Eated. Eated lots.” Those freaky eyes rolled over to stare at me and she held up her left hand. She counted down as she explained, “Eated Nus Esen. Eated Docker Humpies. Eated Nus Soto. Growin’ up!”

Must. Keep. Calm.

“I see. So, you ate them and came to see me.”

“Yes!” She bobbed her head so hard, I was both hopeful and worried it might pop off and roll onto the cement. It would have saved me the trouble.

“Why did you come to see me?” As if I wouldn’t ask.

“Daddy die.”

“Yes. Your daddy died.”

“Mommy die.”

“Yes, she did.”

Those loose eyes got very stern in her juvenile face, and Subject F-31 started to channel the facial expressions of Gollum enduring electro-convulsive therapy. A growl started from somewhere on the other end of her gastro-intestinal tract, and I knew my mantra was about to be tested.

“You make Mommy die.”

I swung my fist the moment I saw her twitch. My thought was that I could knock her out and then dispatch my debt. It didn’t work out that way. She caught my hand like I’d tossed her an apple, and bit through my first two knuckles. I howled... no, truth be told, I screamed like a little girl... because the pain was so intense. Getting shot doesn’t hurt as badly as this did.

The look in her eyes was enough to make me lose my shit. I’ve seen a lot of nasty people and things give me the evil eye, but Leah’s intensity was on an entirely different level. She didn’t want to eat me. She wasn’t immediately interested in killing me. No. She wanted painful revenge on me, as horrible as her little brain could arrange.

From my position, her method of tormenting me was effective. I grabbed the Man Scythe with my free hand, with her hanging on my right knuckles with her teeth, and ran right out the front door of my place, screaming. When I panic, I don’t do it in a controlled, rocking in the corner, kind of way. I strip my gears and flip my shit. In that particular instance, I not only flipped my shit, I pimped it with neon and glitter, and put it on the dance floor.

Outside it was dark, people were milling around, and spotlights shone down from the wall surrounding the neighborhood. My frantic movements turned the tableau into a kaleidoscopic fright-fest, sprinkled heavily with my blood.

The first person to notice me was Dr. Bottsford. He exclaimed, pointed, and directed everyone nearby to catch it, meaning F-31. No one really moved, probably because I was running around in a random pattern at high speed.

“Catch it? Catch it? Fucking kill it! Kill it,” I screamed.

I ran around, yelling, and waving my arms. The little undead bitch wouldn’t let go, and my brains were too overloaded to process the large, bladed weapon in my other hand.

“Frank! Fuckin’ stand still,” Shawn yelled from somewhere nearby. “I can’t shoot it until you stand still for a goddamned second!”

I heard someone sneeze, and so did my knuckle-muncher. The pair of awful eyes opened and the pupils flashed open, just like a cat scenting a mouse. In the rational part of my brain I understood it instantly: someone around here has contracted the zombie virus, and my assailant is processing whether to let go of me so she can “eated” somebody else.

She launched off my arm like it was blood-spurting diving board. That tiny body made some gorgeous acrobatic movements–any gymnast would have been green with envy–before landing on Dr. Bottsford’s head. An instant later, she was wrapped around his neck, chewing her way toward the nearest artery.

To his credit, he tried to pull her off. Did it work? Not so much.

Bullets flew around Bottsford as he squealed and danced around, yanking on Leah, who was entirely busy chewing into his neck. I’d calmed down long enough to realize that I had the best chance of getting close enough to do something useful. Keeping my healing right hand against my belly, I scooted closer.

“Stop shooting!” Shawn yelled at everyone when he saw me closing the distance.

I heard him ask me what I was up to on the quiet, inside my head.

“I’m going to get close enough to lop the thing’s head off,” I answered him.

“Great, but the Doc is still moving around like a fool. How are you going to handle that?”

I didn’t bother answering Shawn, I showed him instead. I gave Dr. Bottsford a gentle kick in the nuts, which brought him to a stunned, bleeding, terrified standstill.

“Goodbye you horrible little bitch,” I said, striking at her neck with the Man Scythe.

The horrible little bitch moved before I could change the angle of my attack. Instead of cutting her into two useless pieces I lopped off part of Dr. Bottsford’s left ear and cut through his collarbone before I stopped my downward motion.

He screamed like the Damned. I didn’t blame him, and made a mental note to be immensely embarrassed and apologetic, with a box of chocolates, at a later date.

Shawn gave a broadband shout for medical assistance, and I felt Jayashri reply without words. I lost my quarry in the confusion, and I had to do something about that right away.

“Anybody see where it went?”

“Frank,” I heard Charlie shout from somewhere near, “the critter is on your back!”

“WHAT?!”

Leah bit into the back of my neck, and I didn’t need independent confirmation anymore. She was laughing, I could feel her little body moving rhythmically while she chewed on my cervical vertebrae. Not only did it hurt, it was humiliating beyond tolerance.

“Stop moving, man! I’ll pull her off!”

Shawn’s voice was the only warning I got before I was lifted off my feet by the baby mutant death witch’s teeth in my neck. He actually shook her, which shook me, trying to force her to open her mouth. Her teeth didn’t give way, the flesh on the back of my neck did.

I felt a nauseating tearing sensation, and my ass hit the ground. There wasn’t any time to waste contemplating the cold air on my revealed neck bones. I sprung up and around on my partially rebuilt right fist to see how Shawn was managing with her.

Honestly, he was doing a damned fine job. She was clawing and biting like a wild animal, but he had a vise grip on her midsection. He was far too strong for her to get away, and I’m pretty sure he could have torn her in two, had he considered it for half a second. He might be huge, strong, and handy with machines, but my neighbor was not as vicious or practical as me.

I swung the Man Scythe and finally paid my debt.