The Variant Effect: PAINKILLER

The Variant Effect

PAINKILLER

G. Wells Taylor

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 by G. Wells Taylor

All Rights Reserved.

This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you
share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it,
or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return
to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for
respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover Design by G. Wells Taylor

Edited by Katherine Tomlinson

Website:
SkinEaters.com

More titles at
GWellsTaylor.com
and
Smashwords.com

****

CHAPTER 1

Borland cradled a glass as he sprawled on his
swaybacked sofa, a half-bottle of whiskey on the coffee table in
front of him. Too tired to do more than zip open his Variant Squad
jumper for a bit of relief. His belly bulged out and up toward the
cracked ceiling like someone was inflating it.

Coming out of retirement was thirsty
work
.

He had set himself up under a dim lamp he
kept on the cracked veneer side table in his living room. The
television sat across from him. He’d already turned it on, but only
got a bright blue screen. Since his reinstatement as a Variant
Squad Captain he’d found enough extra money to hook up the
broadband again. The fact that he’d ordered it four weeks ago and
the television was still a blue screen with nothing on it gave him
something to chew about at coffee break if anyone would listen, but
he didn’t really care.

Borland never watched much broadband anyway.
Getting drunk and arguing with a blue screen made as much sense as
yelling at the news. But hooking it up in the first place seemed
like something that a normal person with responsibilities would
do.

Stay focused. You rattled some
chains
.

He’d been on his feet all day talking to
recruits so he’d grabbed his bottle when he got in, stuffed a
couple pillows and an old winter coat against the arm of the couch
and propped himself in a drinking position. There was still time to
get a bit of a glow before bed—and he found he slept better with a
few solid slugs in him—at least for the first half of the night.
Also, the triple-meat sub sandwich he’d had for supper would start
to react with the whiskey if he was stupid enough to lie down too
soon. Borland was not a fan of heartburn, especially now that he
was on the road to recovery.

He’d never be healthy, and he’d never be
young again. But at least he could be watertight.

He had just finished reading a
Team
Omega
comic book that he took from Zombie’s locker at the
Stationhouse. Two days after quarantine ended, the other baggies
were cleaning out his personal effects when Borland happened by.
The young man’s involvement was weighing on him. Not so much from
guilt—he’d do it again in a minute, the sacrifice had been worth
it—but he was stricken with an intense curiosity about the young
man who picked the shield-name Zombie. Borland had walked past a
second time as the locker’s contents were being stuffed into a
box.

Zombie’s parents had been told what happened
to their heroic son, and would be anxious to get their hands on his
possessions: just toiletries and T-shirts, underwear and hairbrush.
But it was Zombie’s stuff, their little boy’s gear.

The third time Borland walked past the
lockers, the box was sitting there unattended so he reached in and
grabbed the comic.

He didn’t think mom and dad would miss it.
And if things continued with the new Variant hybrid the way Brass’
scientists were predicting; they’d soon have too much on their
minds to worry about their dead son’s possessions. Hell, they might
even come to envy the boy in time.

Beachboy had said Zombie read re-issues of
the actual
Team Omega
comics. The originals were published
decades before, but had been re-released with upgraded artwork and
re-purposed as graphic novels.

Borland couldn’t have cared less about the
history lesson and he told Beachboy as much, but he could
understand the novelty of a full-color paper version of something,
over the insubstantial virtual incarnations that were flickering on
e-readers and tablets everywhere.

He left the comic book on the coffee table
for weeks—forgot about it for a time when other things came up.

Distraction from hell
...

The comic was ragtag, the paper worn from
many readings. There was a picture of a kid eating radioactive
waste on the cover. But Borland had been pleased to find that the
issue included Zombie’s namesake,
Zombie
the superhero. He
turned out to be some dreamy character all in white and glowing
green that had these foot-long eyebrows. It turned out that his
powers came from insomnia. Not being able to sleep gave him the
ability to talk to the dead and communicate and fight through the
dreams of others.

Borland sneered at the stupid pack of made-up
geek talk, but he found the story and pictures interesting enough,
and easier to read than a wordy eBook. The story followed Team
Omega fighting the Robot Maker—a mad scientist who wanted to rule
the world with machines.

Borland had read through most of it the last
couple nights, but had just finished the final chapters and
epilogue.

He flipped it back to read the last page
again:

With the world safe from evil once more,
the team returns to Omega Island to unwind
...

One joker named Blackout wore a dark hood
with a single eyehole. He got his powers from boozing.

Borland liked him
.

Deciding he needed air, Blackout tucked the
bottle of whiskey under his arm and took the long stairs to the top
of a tower to relax and, Borland imagined, get stinking drunk.

That’s the spirit!

And that was when Blackout ran into the
prissy caped hero, this Zombie fellow, standing up there in the
dark, watching the full moon and thinking.

Blackout was at the top of the stairs, and
drinking up a storm. Then he noticed light coming from ahead.

Blackout said: “Oh, Zombie, can’t sleep
either, huh? Want a drink?”

“No my friend, drink will not help,” replied
the taller hero. The full moon was behind him. “I never sleep. That
is the source of my power. I could not speak to the dead
otherwise.”

Blackout drank.

“And because I never sleep. I can never
dream,” Zombie lamented, while Blackout kept swigging whiskey in
the foreground.

Zombie drooped into a sad pose overlooking
the moonlit sea and said: “And without dreams, life has no
meaning.”

That switched in the next frame to Blackout
sliding down the wall plastered drunk saying: “Sure sounds to me
like you need a drink.”

Borland knew that was supposed to be a funny
ending to the adventure.

He turned the comic over in his hands before
setting it down. The cover was frayed, and the pages tattered. It
was clear that the issue was important to the
Zombie
Borland
knew.

He had read it to pieces.

Dreams
.

The kid got something out of it. Maybe
something that made him decide to quit training for a mechanized
army unit to volunteer for the Variant Squad.

Maybe something he thought would give his
life meaning.

But it was something that got him killed.

Death can have meaning, too
.

Borland struggled to get comfortable on the
couch, but the action brought a riot of twinges, cramps and pains
from his rewired guts.

Felt better, but just a bit
.

He’d lost some weight too.

But just a bit
.

Brass had come through on his offer to get
Borland’s hernias fixed. That was five weeks ago, and the doctors
said they wouldn’t do it unless he lost a lot of weight, but Brass
just started pulling strings. The big man was good at that. And
like his bosses, he thought pulling strings didn’t leave
fingerprints.

Borland winced again as his muscles cramped
around the steel threads.

The sutures on all three hernias still
stung—a mess: umbilical, right and left inguinal—both sides of the
groin. There were disconcerting ridges of sewn muscle tangled in
twists of fat, and post-operative drainage left his scrotum looking
like a rotten avocado.

Not much of an improvement.

But even with the pain and discomfort, he
couldn’t miss some of his old confidence creeping back.

How can you have confidence after what
happened?

Because
you’re
a Captain and
they’re
the little people.

He was overcome by a wave of nausea as new
memories crowded. Ghosts freshly buried shimmered in his mind.

It didn’t go well
.

And right on the heels of the Parkerville
tunnels and the business with Hyde’s daughter—it was almost too
much for him.

And then...

The hernia operations were supposed to be
simple. Textbook. Easy.

A bore
.

Nothing to write home about.

Borland snarled, swung his legs off the couch
and poured himself a drink.

He rolled the cool glass over his lips and
remembered the clinic.

No.
That was bad. The worst
.

Things hadn’t gone well.

CHAPTER 2

The unmarked cruiser left Borland at the curb
with barely a nod or a minute to pull his bags out of the back seat
before the driver completed the circular loop of asphalt and tore
away. The car pulled out with a lurch that caused Borland’s door to
swing shut.

That after a long drive through Metro morning
rush hour traffic with Borland’s guts nagging the whole way. The
driver had said little as he navigated the crowded streets.

That would have been fine because Borland
didn’t want to talk, considering his destination; but it ended up
pissing him off because the driver had to know who he was. He had
to know something about Borland’s past, if not about the recent
events in Parkerville.

A week after his release from
decontamination, there had been a gathering in the Metro HQ
auditorium. Closed to the public, it included a long-winded and
rambling speech from Superintendent Midhurst. Brass chipped in with
an equally boring talk of lost heroes.

The higher ups had decided to link the squad
memorial with Borland, Hyde and Aggie’s official reinstatement to
active status. Someone up the chain had decided the reactivation of
retired captains would somehow seem hopeful against the background
of Stationhouse Nine’s first devastating win. Lots of people in
uniform died so words had to be said, but Parkerville was shut down
and the threat slowed if not stopped. The Variant presentations in
Metro seemed to be leveling off—for now.

The dead baggies had been cremated long
before the memorial, while the surviving squad was still in
quarantine.

Borland had felt cheated that they combined
the events, and worse that he and Aggie had to share the stage with
Hyde’s hooded, but scene-stealing mystery. The old cripple had
opted to ride his wheelchair to the event, even though Borland had
noticed the cuffs and leggings of a new skin-shell suit protruding
from his long black coat. He could have walked.

Playing the sympathy card
.

He’d seen him at the stationhouse, mostly
healed from his wounds, moving on his legs and canes like a
mechanical toy.

But he got back into the chair for the big
night.

Borland had trouble narrowing it down,
especially since he’d consumed the better part of a mickey before
the event, but there was something different about Hyde as he
rolled across the stage.

He wouldn’t say “confidence,” but there was
something in the way the freak held himself that spoke of willing
compromise. If Borland didn’t know better, he might have thought it
was pride.

Hyde didn’t save his daughter but he had
tried. Was that all it took?

Just trying?

I’ll have to try it some time
...

Memory of Hyde’s daughter caused a twinge of
guilt, caused Borland’s chest to cramp and draw him gasping back to
reality.

He’d done some terrible things.

And Brass knew most of it
.

But not all and the information they shared
created a checkmate.

Nobody could talk. Or everybody had to.

Borland realized he was still in place,
glaring down the driveway after the cruiser.

A thought had struck him:
The driver acts
like he knows
...