M55 (3 page)

The squeal of an office chair,
swiveling. I glanced to my left – Jen was still seated there,
motionless, staring off into space. I turned very slowly toward the
dark corner containing Peter’s workstation. A figure slumped in the
shadows. Lumpy and bald.

“
Peter?” I said.

“
Haaaaa…” It was part a laugh and
part a frustrated groan. “That is me. Peter. And you? And
you?”

“
I-it’s me, Peter. Do you know where
you are?”

“
No,” the figure shook its head
slowly at first, then more and more violently, like it was trying
to dislodge water from its ear. “Yes. Sort of. I know, but I forget
what it is to me. This place, what is it to me?”

“
What are you, drunk
again?”

“
What?!” The figure fired out of the
shadows, grabbed a fistful of my sweater, and threw me from my
chair. I hit the cupboards in the kitchenette and lost my breath. I
slid to the cool tile, and tried to calm the ebbing tides of color
that threatened to overwhelm my vision.

“
You think you know meeeuuugh-“
Peter vomited suddenly. A torrent of chunky crimson.

“
Ah Jesus, Jesus god,” Peter moaned,
and he collapsed in my chair, beside Jen. She still hadn’t reacted.
Might not have even blinked.

My vision cleared, and I found
myself fixated on the puddle of vomit. It looked like Peter had
been eating raw hamburger. There was something whole in there. He
hadn’t even chewed it. Just horked it down his neck in one large
gulp, like a duck. It was waxy and had delicate little swirls like
a…

I looked at Peter, sitting in the
light now. His shirt was torn and covered in blood. He was
barefoot. His fingers were twisted into arthritic-looking,
inflexible claws.

“
Peter?” I said. His head swiveled
vaguely toward me, but his eyes were unfocused. Bloodshot red, so
wet he was practically crying. “Did you just puke up a human
ear?”

“
Should I not have done that?” He
laughed deep in his belly, “too much. Couldn’t keep it down. Too
much.”

“
Jen, get away from him,” I said,
trying to keep the urgency out of my voice. I don’t know why, but
instinct told me that it wasn’t my words, but any hint of panic in
my tone that would set Peter off again.

“
Why?” She said, not pulling her
gaze from the nothingness she was focused on. “It’s just
Peter.”

“
Did you not just hear what he said?
He…he ate somebody. He’s not-”

“
I’m here,” Peter said, and his eyes
focused on me for the first time. They were awful. They were so…
human. It looked like he’d been sobbing hysterically all night. I
could sense a plea in those eyes, something that couldn’t make it
past his lips.

“
I know you are, Peter,” I
said.

“
I’m here,” he said again. “I’m
here. I’m here. I’m here.”

I started moving toward Jen slowly.
Peter’s eyes locked on mine all the while, though his body remained
otherwise rigid. I took a step toward them.

“
I’m here.”

Another step. Not far
now.

“
I’m here.”

I reached out and grabbed Jen’s arm.
I guided her up from her seat and past Peter. She followed me
listlessly, like she was sleepwalking.

“
I’mhereI’mhereI’mhere.”

I took a step toward the door, Jen
in tow, never taking my eyes off Peter.

“
Imhereimheimhimhimimim,” Peter’s
syllables flowed together. His eyes were still locked on mine. Dull
blue shot with flecks of green. Tears. Pleading. Human. And
then…not. “IMHE. IMHE. IMHE HERAM HOA HANUK.”

I had only a split second between
the moment that I realized this was not Peter anymore — not in any
form I would recognize him — and the moment he lunged at
us.

God, so fast.

I was on the floor. A sound like
feedback in my ear, one eye not working. Something was scrabbling
at my leg like an animal, but my sensory information was coming in
starts and stops. My brain was muddy. If I could just get this damn
sound to stop for one second so I could concentrate…

When I finally did shake the cotton
from my brain, Jen was straddling Peter, who lay prone on the
floor. His legs were shaking. Jen was doing something to him, but I
couldn’t see what. Her back was turned to me. I got to my knees and
shuffled toward the pair of them.

“
Jen?” She didn’t respond. Still
grabbing at something. Maybe wrestling with Peter? Trying to subdue
him? I should help. I need to save her, so she can see what kind of
man I really am. Or at least, what kind I want to be.

“
Jen, I got him,” I said, just as I
came around her shoulder, and saw what she’d been doing.
Peter was dead. Beyond dead. His neck had been torn open, laid bare
by Jen’s fingernails, which were still inside his throat, poking,
probing and ripping. She was yanking at something hard in there,
over and over again, but it wouldn’t come free. His spine. She was
trying to take his spine.

“
Jen?” I said. “I think you can stop
now. I think he’s dead.”

Jen’s head snapped toward me, eyes
like a two day hangover, tears streaming down her cheeks, gaze
thick with a plea she couldn’t seem to speak.

…

The secret is bleach.

That’s all. Just bleach, a bit of
time, and a lot of fresh towels. That’s how you clean up a very
large amount of blood. The big pools are no problem. It’s the
little spots that will trip you up. There were little spots of
crimson in the keyboards of our terminals; drips of red in between
the stapler’s lever and handle; blood mixed in with the coffee at
the bottom of Peter’s mug. I got all of it. Every bit. I had plenty
of time. Only the Big Ear volunteers come down to the focus room
anyway, and I was the only one of those left. The hardest part was
dragging the bodies. It seems so much easier in movies. But it’s
not like dragging a heavy couch or something. Bodies are limp flesh
— they catch on things. They slip through your hands. They bend
strangely. It took hours to get Peter and Jen into the woods behind
the array. It took hours more to dig the holes.

Really, cleaning was the easy part.
It’s silly how big a deal everybody makes of it.

“
Blood never comes out.”

Nonsense. Unless they’re speaking
metaphorically…

As a scientist, I cannot
definitively state that the signal is what caused Peter and Jen’s
violent outbursts. My sample size is too small. There were only
three of us. I can only say that it is
 
my
hypothesis
 
that something in that signal causes human beings to slowly
lose all semblance of humanity and become something violent and
animalistic. It remains only a hypothesis, until such time as I can
test it and prove the results. I burned all of the printouts, but
the tape recording of the original signal is sitting beside me on
this greyhound bus, in the bottom of my backpack, wrapped in a
clean towel. I left a note on the focus room door. Some bullshit
about worker’s rights and the true agenda of science. We were all
walking out en masse, I wrote. Going to join a new lab that would
pay us a fair wage for meaningful work. The university would pull
three more lucky volunteers from the astronomy department, and work
would continue without missing a beat.
 
Their
 
work. My own work is only just beginning, and there’s so much
of it ahead. I will document the true effects of this signal. I
will prove my hypothesis. For Jen and, to a much lesser extent, for
Peter. I will employ only the most rigorous testing methods, going
forward. And I will need a much, much larger sample
size.