The Romero Strain (40 page)

I knew Kol best. We were close friends. He had two wire-haired terriers, brother and sister, Elvis and Clover. We had exchanged apartment keys and looked after each other’s dogs when we were out of town. It was mainly Kol that went away. He was a photographer and went out of town on shoots several times a month. I was happy to take care of his dogs and so was Max, who loved playtime and walk-time with Elvis and Clover.

I was in. I stumbled to the bedroom and fell upon my bed. My fingers felt like someone had secured my hands in a vise grip and was trying to tear out my nails with searing hot needle-nose pliers. Abruptly my spine flared with pain. An excruciating sensation ripped through my head. My ears rang with an intensity I had never experienced before, like someone had jabbed an ice pick in each one. Everything went white.

VIII. Buddha, Me and Plastic Jesus

Luci came to me. I was one of them, a full-fledged transmute. We copulated again and again, tearing at one another’s flesh and biting each other repeatedly, screeching as we mated in a frenzied ritual.

I awoke; I did not know what day or time it was. But how could I? I was a transmute, the concept of time was no longer known to me. But how could I know this? I tried to sit up. My clothes remained on my body. They had not been shredded. I was still dressed in my army fatigues and body armor. Had I dreamt it all? It had been so vivid, and the pain had been so prolonged and wrenching. What changes had occurred?

My hands had burned with that too familiar pain. They had changed, specifically my fingers. My nail and nail beds had been covered with dense skin. My fingers appeared to be the same length they always had been, but the tips were covered with dark, soft and still moist scabs. It appeared the skin was decaying. I didn’t feel any pain.

I needed to get a better look at my hands. I stood up, approached the windows, and drew back the red curtains of the bedroom to reveal the setting sun through the heavy-duty slats of the window guards. Had it been only a few hours since I lost consciousness, or a few days? I opened the windows to air out the fowl, stale smell, which I didn’t notice upon my arrival. I knew what it was; the refrigerator. It needed to be cleaned. I shut the curtains. Darkness would soon replace the remaining daylight and it was time to prepare for night.

As a New Yorker I was prepared for just about any emergency situation. I always had plenty of bottled water and food supplies stocked up, enough for a month. I also had several portable solar generators and camping equipment in the hall closet: lanterns, a two-burner propane cooking unit, extra blankets, sleeping bags and other gear. I was also fully stocked with batteries, candles, matches, lighters, two solar powered flashlights, and most importantly, soap and toilet paper. Best of all, I lived on the third floor. This meant that water would still be running. The city’s vast underground network of delivery pipes are sloped at an angle from its upstate source which gives enough natural pressure to reach a fifth floor apartment without the need of added artificial pressure. As long as there was pressure from the street I could flush the toilet and wash dishes, though I would not cook with the current water supply.

I didn’t remember crashing into things when I stumbled into the apartment, but my home looked like it had been trashed. My Yamaha Arranger Workstation was overturned. Items from my long, low-end coffee table were on the floor and the table itself had been pushed away from the sofa at an odd angle. My Mac laptop was on the floor; if it was broken it didn’t matter much. There was no way of surfing the web or receiving emails. My Buddha incense burner was on the wrong side of the living room, with ash dust and stubs of incense spread across the cranberry colored carpet.

As I cleaned up the mess, I picked up a brochure from the floor that was for the Lightship 87, the Ambrose, which was on display at the South Street Seaport on Pier 17.

Though I did frequent the South Street Seaport on a semi-regular basis, I never toured any of the ships. I had acquired the brochure from a manger of the South Street Seaport Museum after Siyab and I had responded to a call; a man had collapsed on the pier suffering from dehydration. It had been a hot summer’s day and the fifty-three-year-old, who had been trying to see as much as possible, forgot to drink plenty of fluids. I was sure he’d never forget again, not only because of his trip to hospital, but for giving his wife such a fright. She appeared to be a woman who was going to remind him constantly.

The night came and went, then another. I ate, I crapped, I showered, and I waited for another change. Another day came and went, but no other major changes had come. The dead flesh on my fingertips sloughed off and revealed curved talons. They were cumbersome and were going to be an annoyance and hindrance until I learned to compensate, especially while trying to accomplish anything that needed superior manual dexterity. I took a pair of Max’s nail-clippers and trimmed them back.

There had been one other alteration I hadn’t noticed until I showered, and that was the skin on my back. Along my spine, from my upper cervix to my lower lumber region along the vertebrae, my skin had changed from its pinky white tone to the familiar grayish blue color of a transmute. It was barely wider than my spinal column, but I had a distinctive stripe of newly formed, protective flesh down my back; still, I was mostly human.

I didn’t know how many days I had been away from my friends, but I missed them. I missed my girl, I missed my dog, and I missed the outside world, or what was left of it.

I would rejoin them. I couldn’t bear not to. I packed some clothes and personal items into two large duffle bags, hoping the Humvee would be able to take me back to where I belonged the following day.

The Humvee was a total loss, at least to me. I’m sure the whiz kid could get it running, but he wasn’t here and I wasn’t mechanically adept. I had an idea, though. Jimmy had a bronze colored mini-van, an older model Ford Aerostar XL. It was in great shape and mechanically sound. It had to be. Not only did he use it for transportation to his part-time teaching job in Long Island, but it was also the band van.

I was lucky; it was parked on the street just a few buildings east. But if his car was there, did that mean Jimmy was home? The thought of breaking into Jimmy’s apartment and finding his decayed corpse was not appealing, but it had to be done. However, I couldn’t just kick in the door and grab the keys. Jimmy had been a close friend. I needed to pray for his spirit.

I sat on the floor with my Buddha incense burner smoldering in front of me. I chanted, “I find respite in the Buddha. I find respite in the Dharma. I find respite in the Sangha.” I raised my
tingsha
and chimed them, so Jimmy’s spirit would take note. I gave prayer, and then finished with, “May you find solace in the arms of your god. Aum.”

I didn’t find Jimmy’s corpse on the other side of the doorway, and I didn’t go searching. What I needed—a pair of silver keys on a small ring––was just inside his door inside a glass bowl, which sat atop a small antique wood dresser. There were also several single loose keys, one of which was an emergency key to my apartment.

A battery from an Army Humvee was larger, and more powerful, than a standard car battery; it had to be. I wasn’t going to be able to replace the one in Jimmy’s car with the one from the Humvee, it would burn out the Aerostar’s electric system, but I planned to jump start it using the Humvee battery. I just hoped Jimmy had a set of jumper cables in his trunk.

* * *

Traveling to the armory I wondered,
how would I be greeted?

I had once given a shoot to kill order if I became a threat, and perhaps I was a threat, but the only way to know for sure was for the doctor to run more tests.

I had loaded Jimmy’s car up with items I’d probably never use: my laptop, my Nikon digital camera, CDs, DVDs, and other objects that were sentimental in nature. I also had a surprise for Max: a four-gallon Mr. Pickle container full of dry dog food, which had been given to me by Roman. The rats hadn’t chewed their way through the package as they had done with many others. Luckily, I had placed toilet paper, cereals, and other dry foods in containers, too.

I sang the “Plastic Jesus” song as I drove, inspired by the plastic Jesus that was glued to Jimmy’s dashboard.

As I turned left onto 23
rd
Street I was greeted by several half-mutes that seemed to be heading my direction. I stepped heavily on the gas pedal and sang the refrain, a slightly altered version that referenced using Jesus’ halo as a sight to make them scatter or splatter near and far.

I took a quick right onto Lexington. I barely made it to 25
th
Street when machine gun fire peppered the windshield. The armory was under siege. I hit the brakes hard and ducked as I put the car in park. As I exited I found myself caught up in a squeeze play. There were half-mutes coming from behind and an unknown number of assailants ahead trying to take me out.

Gunfire erupted from the armory’s roof in the direction of the 26
th
Street gate, which was open. I could see David and Julie stopping a group from entering. The group in front of me was trying to enter too. There were two of them at the gate, one with bolt cutters and the other with a machine gun. He was firing in David and Julie’s direction.

I grabbed my machine gun out of the Aerostar and eliminated the two charging half-mutes first, and then turned my attention to the men and rattled off a mag in their direction, hitting the man with the bolt cutters. More shots came my way, taking out the driver’s side window. Several ripped through the door next to me as I was crouched down. They came from the armory’s rooftop. My friends must have thought I was part of the attack force. I called over my radio.

“Kermit, David, anyone? The guy in the bronze van is me… J.D.! Stop shooting at me! Copy?”

No response came. I realized that I hadn’t turned off the radio when I fled Astor Place. The battery was dead.

The enemy at the northern gate had infiltrated the compound. A succession of bangs came from the roof, followed by several quick explosions on the street. David was using the Milkor, launching grenades at them, trying to repel the hostile force. For a moment the enemy retreated to the safety of cover, but five unknown assailants at my end were still trying to break through.

I reloaded and aimed at them, squeezing off a shot at a time, conserving bullets, but my aim was off. It was possible that the scope was off, but highly improbable. The M4 carbine was equipped with a Trijicon
ACOG (Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight). The scopes, Sam told us, were equipped with BAC (Bindon Aiming Concept), which allows use of a both-eyes-open aiming method along with scope magnification sighting for rapid target acquisition in any light. Besides my eyesight was beyond any human, and I didn’t even need a scope. I had frequently practiced shooting the rifle at the GCC in the armory’s basement range, and I was always able to hit a paper target in the kill zone. I was extremely good at it. It wasn’t really my aim that was preventing me from proper target acquisition; it was that I was closing my eyes. Shooting a paper target was easy, shooting a man wasn’t. I had only killed someone once, and it was for mercy’s sake. I had never
killed
anyone before, no human at least, not even during the encounter at Astor Place. It had been David who had taken the two out. But the men were attacking my friends, attacking my home.

No one hurts my family.

* * *

Blowing the door off the armored command train car was not an option, mainly because we didn’t know what was on the other side of the door and our only explosives consisted of a few hand grenades, but that didn’t stop Sam and Joe from developing a plan. They had devised a way to duct tape two grenades together, secure them to the door, then string a wire, using the proper tensile strength, to pull the pins out simultaneously from a safe distance. It was kind of like a war film booby-trap using a grenade and a trip wire.

They decided the door should be breeched at the end of the car that was not connected to the caboose.

“No disrespect to Army
and
Marine Corps engineering, but you two are nits! It needs to be torched off for safety.”

“It’s a great plan,” Sam defended.

“Yeah,” Joe concurred, interjecting.

“Cutting the door off,” Sam continued, “would take too long—could be several hours.”

“Do you two have any idea what’s behind those doors? No. You don’t. It’s reckless and stupid.”

They both looked at me like I was an over-reacting civilian.

“Don’t even look at me like that,” I told them, shaking my head in disbelief to their ridiculous and dangerous plan. “Should I have Kermit explain to you why it’s wrong?”

“It’s not wrong; it’ll work,” Sam informed me once again.

When I told Kermit their plan, his response took on a military tone. David and I backed away slightly from the conversation to give Kermit room to express himself.

“That plan is ill conceived, dangerous, and will not be carried out. Do you understand, Corporal?”

“Yes, Master Sergeant,” he said, snapping to attention, then followed up with, “Permission to speak freely, Master Sergeant.”