Waiting for Mister Cool Page 5

  “I really wouldn’t ask him to do that if I were you,” said Lee.

  “I get carried away,” Max replied, standing. He had no idea what had happened to his clothes. With his night vision shot from lightning and flares and the cottage light, he’d need a flashlight, or another flare, to find the bodies of Morris’s dead guards and check which of them was closest to his size. And as Lee had suggested, neither Cal nor Morris had any idea what it would take for Max to relieve his erection, and he was fairly certain they didn’t want to know.

  “I hate to bring this up,” Morris said, “and I really do have other concerns right now, but do you have an idea what happened to those girls of yours?”

  “Vaguely,” Max said.

  “Not my problem,” Morris said, dismissing the subject with a wave to Cal. “Come on, let’s find a radio and get back up. You guys stay here. Guard the door.”

  Lee glanced at the entrance, pushed. It remained closed. “Why?”

  “Because I’m paying you. Actually, Max, you’re relieved for the moment to get some clothes and gather weapons and ammo. Stay alert. The other side might send someone over to find out what happened to their army.”

  “What is the other side?” Max asked. “They’re not just pervs, as you call them.”

  “The enemy,” Morris answered, walking away.

  “Who else is fighting on our side?” Max called out. It was the Beast which couldn’t help looking to the sky.

  Neither Morris nor Cal answered as they headed for the fires consuming the vehicles.

  “Go ahead,” Max said to Lee. “Find the twins. Stay with them.”

  “What about the door?”

  “Do you care about the door?”

  Lee laughed, picked out shells for the shotgun from the ammo bags, as well as a Glock, and started out into the night, along the hedge wall, to make his way around to the camp on the other side of the complex.

  “What am I supposed to do with them once I find them?” he called back.

  “Don’t let them kill you.”

  “Right.” He faded away.

  Max almost called out for a light, but the Beast rattled inside him and he let it sift through all the scents in the air, though they were not so easy to track and identify in the pouring rain. The flashlight would have been quicker, but the hunt kept the Beast entertained. It found three of Morris’s guards nearby.

  Max went out to find them. The first was too small, but he did have a knife, as well as a Smith and Wesson 9mm pistol, an M16 that hadn’t been fired, and full clips for both. He also took the black pair of walking shoes, which surprisingly were a fit for his feet, and then let the Beast have its fun with knife and flesh. He pulled the Beast back when it wanted to get at the brain.

  Eager to find clothes and more weapons, Max found the second guard. The clothes would fit him, but the Beast was restless, and it had done well, so he let it have its way, smashing the man’s skull open with the butt of a Ruger 77. The Beast took its fill, and demanded the third.

  Max gave in, eviscerating the third dead man until there was nothing left but piles of flesh and organs, and the hollowed out trophy of human skin. His erection subsided.

  Then he let the cold storm wash over him, rubbing off clinging bits of gore the honest rain couldn’t dislodge with scraps of clothing, before getting dressed in a new pair of jeans and a plaid shirt, both soaked, too large, and stinking of its dead owner and bloody earth. He collected a few more combat weapons and ammunition, leaving the hunting guns behind, as well as flashlights, and headed back to the post Morris had asked him to guard.

  The Beast, rarely quiet, at last did not complain.

  Chapter 4

  On his way, Max came across one of the teen attackers stretched out on the ground in the dark. The Beast immediately sensed the life in the body, though injuries – broken bones, internal bleeding, ruptured organs – made the pickings lean. When Max took out a light and knelt to get a closer look, with a glance skyward as he thought of the thing from the sky, he saw that the youth had been gnawing on his own arm as if trying to separate it from shackles.

  Running his hand over skin, he discovered there was already scar tissue on the arm.

  As Max tried to make something of this information, the teen stirred. His eyes caught the faint reflection of the cars and trucks burning. His wide lips moved as if in prayer.

  Then the boy grabbed for Max’s throat, and his legs kicked up and out, looking to connect. Max broke the hold, then the wrists. A few well-placed blows to the hip area stilled his legs.

  Max held the teenager’s head in his lap, like he was his own son, mortally wounded on the field of battle. “Who are you?” he asked. The question felt important.

  He didn’t understand the answer.

  “What happened to you?”

  Lips moving much more quickly. The boy wept.

  Rain drowned the tears flowing across his cheeks. Water overflowed the channels of his pain. The Beast watched, as it sometimes did, fascinated by suffering not of its own creation.

  Calcutta.

  The name came, unbidden, to Max’s mind. Suddenly, he felt cold. Small. He hunched his shoulders slightly at the thought of something hanging in the clouds, ready to smack him. Voices yelled at him. Words spoken by giants boomed in the air and made him feel smaller. Faces flashed in his vision like fireworks, burning brightly for a moment before dissolving into the blank slate of night sky that was his usual state of mind.

  A fruit seller who’d whipped him for stealing. A soldier who’d kicked him because he didn’t think to get out of the way. A man – his father? – weeping, his tears turning into a river that almost drowned him before someone else picked him up.

  Max drew back from the teenager, shaken by his own childhood memories, and what had to be a fantasy. When was the last time he’d even thought about having a father, or a mother? How could he remember a man crying over him before being thrown in the water, when he’d been told he’d been newborn when found in a river?

  The Beast, enraged by the past’s intrusion, screamed for the teenager’s death. The twins, and what they would have said, lay entwined and nestled next to the Beast, forming a beautiful orchid with the power to transform perceptions, emotions, actions.

  Max listened to what he thought the twins would say, and broke the teenager’s neck. The Beast, already gorged on death, fussed and complained about mercy, but that was all.

  When Morris returned to the cottage, the rain was letting up. Max stood with his back to the door, knife tucked between skin and belt, after leaning the guns against the door to dry.

  “Find any survivors?” Max asked.

  “Nobody except us. The rest of the boys are on their way. Not too happy about it, since they were just settling in and now they have to get wet and muddy. Cal’s waiting for them by the road. Nobody ever said this job was going to be easy.”

  “I never thought it was going to be.”

  “Right. Yes. Well, Max, I’d like to ask you something.”

  “Yes?”

  “I wasn’t planning to do this. You were just supposed to be hired help, but you showed us all something out there tonight.”

  The Beast strained for Morris’s throat. Max grasped for truths just beyond his reach.

  “I got a message,” Morris said, tapping a finger against his temple and giving Max a wink. “Would you like to meet the big boss?”

  He wasn’t sure if Morris was playing with him. “You’re not in charge?”

  “Just the straw boss. A supervising manager. Field expert. Wait until you meet Mr. Santos. You’re going to love this crazy Mexican. By the way, where’s your partner?”

  “With the girls.”

  “Great idea. Though now none of them’s going to get a chance to meet the boss.”

  Max looked to the fires in the vehicles, estimating the road’s location, and looking in the direction from which oncoming headlights might come from. “I can hardly wait.”

&n
bsp; “Then let’s do it.” Morris brushed past Max, surprising him, and tapped on the door in a sequence at particular points. The door opened inward, the awful light hitting Max full in the face. He wanted to vomit. The Beast burrowed deeper into Max, puzzled by an enemy it couldn’t grasp or rend, wanting to run. It was too sickened to protest Max’s need to scout this new territory.

  The interior was bare, except for a hole in the ceiling leading to the floor above. The thick plaster was chipped, cracked and peeling, even the floor, though to Max what was beneath his new boots felt more like concrete. There were no stairs, furniture, fixtures, though marks outlined where previous construction had placed them. The light emanated from the structure itself, as if the building had been irradiated with a form of energy that had ignited secret fires in the molecular structures of its materials. There seemed to be no escaping the sickening glow, no turning it off. Even when he closed his eyes, sealed them shut behind his palms, the pale yellow light seeped into his consciousness. He tried looking out the windows, but both the night and the fires from the burning cars were cast in the otherworldly illumination.

  “Mr. Santos?” Morris said, paused, jaw clenching as if he was willing himself through torture. “This is Max. The gentleman you were interested in.”

  Pieces of the puzzle Max had been trying to put together flew into his face. Another layer of truth revealed, leading to a slip deeper into mystery.

  “Would you care for something to eat?”

  Max couldn’t tell where the voice came from at first. It had a dry, sarcastic tone, without a trace of the accent he’d been expecting. The Beast roused itself, found nothing. Max crouched, wincing as he studied the floor. He found the man, a sack of bones covered by hairless, sagging flesh the color of the light, curled and twisted into a corner, genitalia covered by a loin cloth, head turned to look over a bony shoulder at Max. He seemed to be a part of the wall, perfectly camouflaged down to his eyes, even his pupils. More than merely blending in with his surroundings, the creature’s body seemed to concentrate the light, like a lens, and Max couldn’t look at him for long. Turning away, he remembered to answer, “No.”

  Though he couldn’t pin down its meaning or nature, Max thought he’d found another source for the troubling scent he’d picked up at Cal’s roadblock.

  “It’s the light,” Mr. Santos said, more gently. “Most people find it a little sickening. The government discovered the source during their time here experimenting. The material doesn’t come from here, as you can imagine. They lined the insides of these cottages with it, and a few other things. Had soldiers and volunteers sleep in the cottages to discover effects on the human body. Another experiment. Like making soldiers stand downrange from a nuclear detonation. You know, Tuskeegee kind of stuff. The project never went far, though. Like gas or germ warfare, you never know whose side the weaponized version of the material is going to wind up really hurting. And they never perfected the equivalent of a gas mask – a good pair of sunglasses.”

  “It’s not the light,” Max said. “I’m just not hungry. I already ate.”

  The sound of Santos’s breathing was the same as a saw slowly cutting through wood. More puzzle pieces fell through Max’s awareness, but he’d stopped caring about what was going on. He just wanted to survive, and to feast.

  Morris frowned as he said, “Careful, Max. Mr. Santos never meets the hired help, so it’s a real privilege to get to see him –”

  “Yes, I saw,” Santos said, smiling at Max. His teeth were cracked and broken, and also yellow. He raised an arm, pointed a finger. “Through the window.”

  “I never caught you looking.”

  “You can barely see me now.”

  “What happened to you?” Max fought the urge to close the distance between them and put his hand on the man’s skin, to see if it burned hot or if it was icy cold. Now that he knew where to focus, other senses sharpened and he could smell faint traces of sewage, as if a septic tank was leaking by the next cottage. He also picked up a nearly subsonic drone, like a generator running underground. His vision magnified the creases and wrinkles in the man’s skin, until he could have tracked the lice and fleas and tiny worms crawling over him, if he’d wanted to.

  Santos peeled off a flake of plaster and put it in his mouth. The wall beneath the flake was yellow. So was the pool of piss spreading from around Santos’s hips, and the trail of shit smeared against the wall and floor. Max checked to see it he was standing in any old excrement.

  “You are what you eat,” Santos said, and laughed. He broke into a hacking cough, his whole body convulsing, and his eyes, which had been narrow and slitted, suddenly ballooned into round, yellow golf balls packed into a too-small skull.

  Morris didn’t move in to offer help or comfort. The flake Santos had taken had already grown back, like a thick leaf.

  The Beast, still cowed by the light, stirred at the possibility of meat, even if it was tainted. The Beast almost always had room for more.

  The coughing subsided, and Max waited for the answer to his question. He ignored the nausea creeping up his throat, fought against the sensation of the room spinning. If he oriented himself to the nearest window, catching the distant, yellow-tinted fire from the wrecked cars, the approaching headlights, the beams from hand lanterns as Morris men gathered, Max could maintain his balance and keep his legs from buckling. He felt it was important not to show weakness in front of Santos. The Beast concurred.

  “Well, I see you’re not feeling all that great tonight,” Morris said to Santos, “so me and Max’ll leave–”

  “My father served here during the war,” Santos continued, as if he was sharing a joke. He shifted his body, which seemed to bend in unnatural ways, though making exact distinctions in the monotonous light was hard. “An exchange officer. If you can imagine the great and powerful government of this country deigning to deal with a Mexican, instead of good, Teutonic scientists, in their hour of need. But my father had been schooled in the desert as a child, and had trafficked with monks and priests and the descendants of Mayan god-kings, before joining the Army for the simple pleasure of a regular meal. He’d risen through its ranks, and proved useful in some of your country’s South American adventures, befriending generals and presidents.

  “His peculiar insights into non-traditional modes of perception brought him to the attention of the officers in charge of this installation. He brought his seeds, mushrooms, his trunk full of codices and artifacts saved from missionary fires and passed on through generations. He brought his wife and children, as well.

  “The experiments consumed his wife. One of my brothers went mad and jumped from the top of that Ferris wheel. My sister drowned in the pool on the old fairgrounds. My other brother, he was sane, as far as any of us could tell. He vanished into the sky, and never screamed. Finally my father wasted away, along with many soldiers and officers, and everyone went away. I ran off into the woods, came back when they were all gone. I survived. Learned what I could by listening to the light. Studied what my father had buried nearby, the treasures passed down from ancient kings and spirits.

  “And do you know what wisdom I gained?”

  “Please, Mr. Santos –” Morris began.

  “Not all forms of nature are compatible,” Santos concluded. “And some are quite antagonistic to ours.” Santos laughed, a low growl.

  The Beast shifted, sensing a challenge.

  Santos coughed, struggled to catch his breath. The rumbling of his breaths grew deeper, as if he had to reach deeper into himself for the strength to keep on living. “But the wisdom cost me. And maybe I’d become a little mad, too, like my brother who killed himself. Or I’ve turned into something else, like the one who went up into the sky. Maybe I’m waiting to be consumed, like my mother and sister. Who’s to say? Certainly not Morris, here. And not you, either, Max. But the fact remains I have stayed right here all these years, nurtured by the ghosts of this place, the shadows of old sins and endless rivers of pain. And he
re our friend found me as he tracked his own way through the world, far from known paths, searching for his own brand of wisdom. He asked me questions of a surprisingly technical nature, leading me to believe this place has been watched for a very long time. I answered with what I knew, told him where to look for some of the old machinery, how to use it, and when. Now he thinks he can adapt to natures foreign to him. Or bend those natures to fit our own.

  “Youth. We had it once, Max, didn’t we? We all thought we could change the world.”

  Or kill it, Max wanted to say, and if the Beast had been itself, he would have.

  “I’m just here to do a job,” Max said, instead, feeling that it was important that he not lie to the old man, that he was being tested, somehow. Examined. Perhaps the light was a kind of X-ray that would leave an impression of who and what truly he was on an ancient scroll of paper, perhaps woven in some other place than the world in which they all lived, and when the image resolved itself, Morris, Cal, Lee, the twins, and even this creature would see exactly what Max was, would gain a clear impression of the Beast within the mortal shell, and maybe, at last, even the twins, even this odd, broken thing in a corner, would be frightened.

  He could live with that. He didn’t want a lie to cloud the image of what he was.

  “And you’re doing fine work,” Santos said, his body sagging into deeper depths of itself. “I have to say, I don’t know who I’m more impressed with. Morris, for finding someone like you, or you. I didn’t think he had it in him. I didn’t think anyone like you existed. My father would have loved to talk to you. Examine you. His partners here would have put you in their experiments. No, no, don’t be angry. You might have enjoyed them.”

  “I don’t want to wind up like you,” Max said.

  “Hey,” Morris said, raising a hand fast enough to catch Max’s attention. “Mr. Santos is the key to this whole operation. His name’s the one that keeps popping up in the stories about this place. As soon as I clear the place out, we’re going to finish what his father and those other old-timers started over here. I’ve got a bead on some weird Zelenograd tech, and some surplus back-alley ops equipment, plus a few forced retirees from Camp Hero I liberated from their Arctic retreat, just to open up a few new directions to go in. There’s Chinese, Indian, hell, even NSA money backing us up – not everyone wanted to close this place down. It’s all serious money, with long-term commitment. I didn’t line up those assholes outside with coupons and hot air. But Mr. Santos is the key. He’s the head man. Knows the score, what’s going on, how to make it happen. So no messing with the guy’s head because he’s different. I’ve got to protect my investment, hell, everyone’s investment.”