Blood Soaked and Contagious (51 page)

Warren Hightower, my father, tapped him on the shoulder. Ronnie turned around and looked into eyeballs that had grown to the size of floodlights, and then followed the pointing finger to the floor.

The animal that remained after the bullet washed me away was crouched there, staring at them both. The ruined larynx and esophagus twitched and writhed underneath the horrible expression on my face. With something like pissing-terror, they heard my lungs inhale through the shredded meat that dangled and squirmed above the top of the bulletproof vest.

With an intact windpipe the noise that erupted from the Frank-Animal’s chest and caused the tattered flesh to swell would have been enough to terrify any creature into submission. Instead, Ronnie and my father were covered in spraying blood, accompanied by a sound like teatime at the slaughterhouse.

My rage-filled animal self lunged, dropping Ronnie like a bag of lawn clippings and, in the same motion, breaking Warren Hightower’s left knee with a single twitch of a foot. Mister Hightower, my dear old dad, collapsed onto the bloody industrial carpet, which put him face to face with the last moments of his employee’s life. He wasn’t even able to retreat or shrink back when the top of Ronnie’s skull landed in front of his nose.

All he could do was lay there, transfixed by something. It might have been the eyes of his own son that never left his face, even while the son ate the warm brain of the man he had just killed, or it might have been abject horror that left him crumpled there on the floor. In retrospect, I am fairly sure it wasn’t guilt.

In the back of his head I know he was screaming and fighting to move his limbs so that he might avoid being next. It didn’t do him any good.

He watched the creature that had taken over my body start to heal. My skull was closing, and my ruined throat had become whole enough to swallow gobbets of Ronnie’s brain. Whatever I was, he knew I was not his son. More than that, he knew he was next.

The thing that had been me grabbed him by the throat and slowly pounded his head against the poorly cushioned concrete floor. My father didn’t want to die without saying something, but then again, he didn’t want to die at all, I’m sure. This was supposed to be the next step in human evolution, managed, planned, and directed by Warren Hightower who would live forever, enshrined, hallowed, and worshipped.

It was his ego that fought back and forced a scream of defiance out of his mouth, I think. His pride surged and issued an undeniable command to fight back, which he tried to do. The claws on the ends of his fingers tore into my Kevlar vest and snagged in the fibers.

Instead of fighting back he made it even more impossible to flee. His son, or at least the animated body of his son, the one rhythmically slamming his head against the floor, made a noise. It was a single bark of condescending laughter, and the last thing he ever heard.

From the moment I rebounded off of Charlie’s leg, probably from the instant the bullet entered my head, I ceased being human. I pieced together memories of those few minutes from the vivid images and emotions that were left behind, as well as from what Bajali and Charlie saw. I suppose it should surprise me that their memories are crystal clear about those events. Especially Bajali’s recollections, I would think, because he encountered something he hadn’t planned on.

The moment he was given access to the lab, he took the work he’d started years before, made a few alterations about how the nanotechnology would propagate between hosts, and tweaked the integration and host repair systems. The original nano-critter was incapable of being spread and nowhere near as efficient at keeping people alive.

As soon as it was functional and the few computer models he ran it on said it would fulfill the criteria of “keep the host alive in urban combat conditions” and give that person a leg up on healing damage, Baj started looking for a way to get it from the lab to us. Whether it was the grace of God or good luck, he didn’t have to wait long at all.

It seems as though my father’s bright idea to motivate Baj by using Mister Yan as his pet scientist’s caretaker backfired. According to our friend, Hightower, Senior, had been told that one of the “flock” had been a resident of our neighborhood and, believing that any “reborn” was loyal to him, offered our old neighbor a job. Mister Yan was not stupid and accepted.

That bit of poor judgment on my parent’s part is what allowed Bajali to set his plan in motion. He thought we’d thank our lucky stars, take the gift we’d been given, and escape. Mister Yan tried to explain it was more likely that we would turn and fight so that we could “make family whole again,” but Baj was not listening.

He believed, or wanted to believe, that we would leave him to his karma and save ourselves, because he would likely be killed for failing to produce what my father demanded. It had become very clear during those four days that the nanotechnology would not have assisted the spread of the virus at all.

Bajali spent hours explaining things like particle size versus viral size, transmission rates, natural immunity, allergic reactions, and payload delivery. If the nanomachines were the virus, he told my father, then we could pick and choose who is infected and who is not. To have that sort of control with a biological infection, they would have to compromise the immune system of our entire species first, and then allow the machines to make the decision over who is infected and who is not.

“What happens after that, Mister Hightower? Simple. Mass fatalities begin over simple things like a sinus infection or pricking oneself with a rose thorn,” he told my father. “There is no way to turn the immune system back on, on a global scale, at the same instant, everywhere. I cannot even predict how many people, or your cattle, would die before some sort of reset could be introduced into the environment.”

Frustrated, my father sent him upstairs to have his attitude adjusted by my mother and her executive motivation team. It was the first of many such appointments over the space of a few days. Baj’s attitude didn’t change, but they decided to keep him alive while they pursued other methods that would allow the Great Plan to be set into motion.

First, they decided our little local resistance would have to be dealt with and then they could properly plan how to use Bajali Sharma for their own benefit. Ultimately, that decision set everything else in motion, culminating in using him as a distraction so that my dear Pops would have a clear shot at my head.

Things turned out a wee bit differently than planned.

They told me Flower showed up just as I was throttling my father to death. I didn’t crack open his skull and eat his brain. I tore his head clean off and stomped on it until it was an unrecognizable mess.

“Frank!” Charlie called to me from down the hall, and enough of me remained that I lifted my head and looked at her. I don’t know that I knew who she was, but I had some clue that she wasn’t a threat. “Come with me, all right? Omura says we’ve got two minutes. Come with me!”

She waved me over and I went to her, following her directions like some kind of overgrown mutant terrier.

There was a vague sense that I knew these other upright animals, so it didn’t bother me that we clumped into a group and hauled ass down quite a few sets of stairs. A short time later, we opened a door to the outside and were greeted by another animal I knew. He was caked with blood and baring his teeth in a pleased sort of way.

“Frank, you look like Hell. Did you do everything you came to do?” I just stared at the smiling creature. It was Omura, of course, but I didn’t have a name for him or any context beyond recognition that he wasn’t a threat or a challenger.

“Omura, Frank took a bullet to the front of his head. He’s not himself,” Charlie explained, and then his smile vanished as though it were never there.

“All right. We’ll deal with that if we live. Let’s get over into that condo development. We’ve got... Fuck, just run!”

Everyone ran and I ran too; it seemed like the reasonable thing to do at the time, even if I didn’t know why we were running. I stopped when they stopped and let Charlie pull me behind a wall and into cover.

The noise of the muffled explosions was nothing in comparison to the wall of overwhelming sound that heralded the office building collapsing into rubble, floor by floor. I think I would have run if Charlie hadn’t held onto me so tightly. Instead, I weathered the cacophony with her.

In minutes, we were coated in brick dust and God only knows what else. When our huddled pack of humans separated, the only areas that weren’t covered in powdered detritus were the places where our bodies touched. Everyone looked around and laughed at themselves; I didn’t understand and remained silent.

Charlie looked at me and saw I wasn’t catching anything about what was going on. The gray dust around her eyes became darker and she swallowed very hard. “Frank, I want you to take my hand. We’re going to meet the rest of our people and then go home. Okay?”

She held out her hand and I took it. I didn’t understand a word she was saying, but my instincts told me she was someone worth listening to and following. I suppose I decided she was my person, like some breeds of dogs pick one individual in the family to be the one they always listen to or defend.

The pack wanted to run more, so I ran with them, keeping pace with my person and never letting her hand go.

No one could tell me what “home” was, and I couldn’t ask. Language was well out of my reach, wherever I was or whatever was left of me. What I did know is that my person was going somewhere and if she were there with me, then “home” would be fine.

I recall meeting two other people in a place where there were objects still burning, and an uneventful ride to another place where there were more people who were excited about something. Charlie moved me away from the hubbub as quickly as she could manage without being impolite. Omura followed us into a dark building that had lots of objects stacked on things that kept them organized.

“Charlie, I need to talk to you,” Omura said when he caught up to us.

“I’m a little busy right now. Can we do it later?” Her voice was cracking and her hand was trembling, which set me on edge.

“No, it can’t, and Frank needs to hear it.”

She turned on him, almost wrenching my arm out of the socket. “Hear it? Omura, he can’t understand a fucking word any of us are saying! Frank... oh God... He’s not in there anymore.” Tears were streaming down her face, and I was concerned because something was bothering my person.

Logic dictated that the smaller animal was upsetting my person, so I started to take a more aggressive stance. It was simple: he would go away and my person would be fine. I knew I could make him go away, but Charlie knew what was happening and squeezed my hand.

“Relax, he’s one of us. It’s okay.” She said it loudly enough that I could hear it, and with enough authenticity, despite her tears, that I took her meaning.

“Charlie, you’re wrong. He does need to hear it, because he’s going to remember it. He’s going to remember everything.” Omura’s tone of voice was absolutely serious, as was the expression on his face.

“He got shot in the brain. That shit doesn’t heal, Omura!”

“In his case, it might. That goes for all of us who got Sharma’s tech. I’ll tell you why.” He kept his hands at his sides as he spoke, as if he understood that large movements would trigger me. “Buttons is not in charge of our group. I am. Have you heard about CIA agents having a ‘handler’?”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with this?”

“I’m Buttons’ handler. The reason I’m his handler is because he suffered traumatic brain injuries in the Second Gulf War and was recruited for experimental treatment by the medical side of DARPA.” He sighed deeply and continued, “Without going into painful detail, Buttons received injections of nanotechnology that are ten generations more primitive than what we’ve been given. Between that, and a solid year of retraining, he became functional enough to resume most of his former duties.”

Charlie was squeezing my hand very tightly, but I couldn’t read her emotional state beyond how intensely she was listening to the noises that Omura was making. Barring any other direction, I held my place and endured the discomfort of my hand being squashed.

“There were problems with his behavior and changes to his skill strengths and weaknesses,” Omura went on. “Think of him as a high-functioning autistic with Attention Deficit Disorder. His control of emotions is weak, but he can hold a huge number of cognitive balls in the air at once and can process varieties of data that normal humans cannot. Really, honestly
cannot
process. My job is to keep him doing his job, without losing his focus or composure.”

“Are you telling me that Frank is going to heal?”

“If Buttons can come back to what he is now from losing function in most of his right hemisphere on antiquated technology... I’d have to say Frank will do much better than that, but,” Omura held up a cautioning finger, “he’s going to come back different and he will need a handler until we know more.”

“Don’t worry. I’d take that job even if he didn’t pick me.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t worried about that for some reason,” Omura smiled, and it looked to be a very genuine one. “Once things calm down a little more, I have to talk to everyone about what all of these things mean for your community and for me, since I got Sharma’s critters along with the rest of you. Life is going to change dramatically.”