Skullcrack City (26 page)

“Sure, Dr. Tikoshi. First, I want to say that we’re sorry, but…”

Buddy interrupted. “I’ve been seeing the robot field, again. Mostly when I lay on my side, but sometimes when I brush my teeth. We’ve got to fix that. I slipped through time earlier, to a dead dimension, but I’m back now. But I don’t know how to whistle anymore. And the rash around my input jack is worse. And I’m out of ointment.”

Dr. Tikoshi closed his eyes and took a deep breath. I imagined he was visualizing the stacks of money he received from Buddy as a way to justify the stress of interacting with a man who spoke in non sequiturs. “I can help you with all of those issues. Please continue, Mr. Boudreaux.”

“Anyway, yeah, we’re sorry and it won’t happen again. These two are the winners of an online fan club competition that Buddy and I barely knew about until the network sent them his way. You know Buddy—he was already mixing dot-cons and merlot when they landed in our lap, and he demanded we give them this extra special tour, so long as the camera crew stayed behind. Buddy was hoping, maybe, that you’d be willing to answer a few of their questions while he has his tune-up.”

There was a weary undercurrent I could hear in Dr. Tikoshi and Boudreaux’s conversation. It was the sound of two men tethered to ridiculousness by cash, resentment vibrating against greed, a tone I recognized from my days at the bank. I’d always guessed that this feeling would dissipate with each zero added to the end of the paycheck, but it was clear from their voices I’d been wrong. Still, I liked Boudreaux’s spin on our scheme.

Buddy decided to ramp things up. “They’re my biggest fans. I had sex with both of them on my couch. They wanted chocolate fondue enemas, but I’m a lover, not a user. I know my fame is intoxicating—even consent doesn’t feel like consent anymore. It’s hard. This is the least I can do for them.”

“Okay. I’ll allow it this once, but never again.”

Buddy drummed his hands on his brain box. “Never again. Thank you!”

“I’ll need to focus during your procedures, though, so I’d suggest we handle the Q & A right now. Let me put my project in storage and I’ll be right with you.”

Dr. Tikoshi picked up a large tray from the top of his surgical station and transferred it over to a rack in his freezer. Then he removed his bloody latex gloves and deposited them in a silver basin where they landed with a wet smack. He raised one small hand and waved us over.

I’d felt safer with the space of the room between us, and did my best to play shy as we approached, avoiding eye contact and tilting my face away from Dr. Tikoshi’s gaze.

We stopped a few feet short of the doctor and the smell of chemical cleansers was replaced by the cloying odor of something dead.

“Buddy, would you like to introduce me to your biggest fans?”

“Oh, yeah. Where are my manners?” Buddy knocked on his brain box. “Hello. Manners?” Dr. Tikoshi and Boudreaux gave forced toothy smiles for what I imagined was the thousandth time. “The stern looking one is called The Octopus, and the skinny guy goes by the name Dick Trunky.”

Close enough
.

Dr. Tikoshi reached out and shook our hands in turn, coupled with a slight bow of the head. I wasn’t sure if I should return the bow or not so I shook his hand with all the cowboy vigor I’d learned at the bank.

“Easy, Mr. Trunky—these hands are how I make my way in the world.” Tikoshi laughed, but I caught the very real anger below the surface. I dodged eye contact and waited for him to continue. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet both of you, and I’m so glad you appreciate the work I’ve done with Buddy over the years. I’ll tell you in advance that I can’t go into too much detail, but I’ll do my best to answer your questions. So, what would you like to know?”

The litany of questions unfurled in my mind:
What have you been doing for Delta MedWorks? What was Hungarian Minor doing for you, and why did he end up dead? Are you working with the Vakhtang? Did you create some kind of giant creatures with gray/black blood and an appetite for brains? If so, why are those things killing bankers, Vakhtang members, and innocent people? Why did the thing that tried to kill me speak with four different voices? And why are they stealing antipsychotics in their spare time? What the hell are you doing for international music superstar Robbie Dawn? How can one man be responsible for so many terrible things? And where the fuck is my mom?

And that’s when I realized that what had seemed like a plan at the time was actually a ruse which left us neutered. We needed this man strapped to one of his tables with a gun against his temple or a scalpel hovering over his face.

Dara must have seen me tense up, because she jumped in before I could flip out. “Mr. Tikoshi…”

“Doctor, please.”

This imperious motherfucker.

“Sorry. Oh my gosh. So embarrassing. Sorry.
Dr.
Tikoshi, is it true you used to work with SaladMan before he disappeared in South America?”

“You’ve done your homework, dear. SaladMan was one of my earliest patients with relation to
The League
. He was a true original. So dedicated. Those were the early days of anti-rejection serums, but he was committed and I’d wager his efforts, and the research we performed, have saved hundreds if not thousands of transplant patients’ lives.”

Buddy interjected. “He didn’t disappear. He’s still down there, near Brazil, running some kind of cult that worships vegetable consciousness. He has an ice machine business, and one of my assistants ships him used clothes that his ‘tribe’ sells to support themselves. I’ve got to tell you, though, he’s a few cards short of a deck these days.” And even though it was Buddy who’d said it, rendering the information instantly suspect, it felt true. Were there any of Dr. Tikoshi’s patients who hadn’t sacrificed themselves, in some way, to his experiments?

Dara was still trying to come at this sideways. I trusted her, but I also felt a boiling blood shimmer through my whole body that said, “Pull your pistol and break this guy’s nose right now. We can’t keep fucking around.” It was an alien sensation, but one I was oddly proud to have felt.

She persisted. “That’s so brilliant, Dr. Tikoshi. I feel like these guys get all the glory on the frontlines, but they really couldn’t do what they do without your work.” Dr. Tikoshi stood a little straighter, lifting his head, giving a slight nod of agreement. It was clear Dara had taken some psychology lessons from Ms. A. “Is there any way you can tell me what kind of things you’re working on now?”

No. Too fast. Too soon. Damn it.

Dara was operating in the same sleep dep fantasy land I’d been living in for months. She’d jumped the gun. Dr. Tikoshi took the slightest step back, as if pushed. He shifted his magnified surgical glasses down over his eyes and squinted at his new fans.

“Hmmm.” He lifted his left hand and slowly moved it back and forth in the air. We followed the motion. Dara’s head moved to track the image. Mine didn’t.

Dr. Tikoshi nodded to himself, having confirmed something. He took two steps backward toward his surgical station while he spoke to us. “I just remembered I need to activate the dialysis machine for Buddy’s fluid transfer, so if you’ll permit me one moment…”

And he was much faster than I’d have guessed given his age—I barely saw his hands moving as he seized his gun from its taped holster beneath the operating table. Then he had the gun raised, and I recognized the strange yellow plastic of the barrel and knew that one shot at this range might split either Dara or me in half.

Dr. Tikoshi was furious. “Hands in the air, then drop to your knees.”

The four of us raised our hands, Buddy holding his brain box aloft as he’d done so many nights for an audience of millions. I tried to read Dr. Tikoshi’s face, to see what kind of calculations he was making, but then I saw him straighten the arm holding the gun, and I knew he had made the call: Killing all of us, right now, was the only sure way to contain this problem.

I don’t know if it was because Buddy had snorted all that powdered rhino horn right before we came in, or if he’d segued into a reality where we really were his two biggest fans, or maybe both, but he certainly rose to the moment.

Buddy yelled, “NO, DOC!” and then brought his arms down as hard and fast as he could, throwing his brain box straight into Dr. T.’s face.

There was a satisfying thunk/crunch as Dr. Tikoshi’s nose splintered under the impact. Dr. T.’s gun fell to the floor, and then inertia caught up with Buddy and he whipped forward, pulled down by the force of the box dropping to the ground next to Dr. T.’s flailing body.

A cracking sound rang out, and I wasn’t sure if it came from Buddy’s skull or the brain box as they both crashed to the concrete, and for a split second I thought, “Wait a minute—what’s inside Buddy’s head?” but the question disappeared when I saw Dr. T. scrambling to regain his weapon. I reached back to draw my gun but Dara was one step ahead of me, her arm already arcing down, gun in hand, to pistol whip Dr. T. The second blow to his head laid him out flat. Dara yelled to me to grab Dr. T.’s gun. I scanned the room for Boudreaux and found him squatting over Buddy, checking his eyes for signs of consciousness.

Boudreaux sounded panicked. “His box is leaking, you guys. Do not kill Dr. T. Do not kill him. We need him to help Buddy.”

It was clear Boudreaux was far from a threat at the moment, crippled by his concern for Buddy, so instead of covering him I grabbed the yellow plastic gun from the floor and pointed it at Dr. Tikoshi. Dara stood a few feet back from the doctor’s sprawled body, and seemed to be looking around the room for something to restrain his too-fast hands.

Dr. Tikoshi was looking right at me, his busted nose burbling out fresh, dark blood. He smiled, his teeth dyed red. “You came to me. After all this time, you came to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’ve been looking for so long. Nozomi and Akatsuki were starting to give up hope. None of your old co-workers knew exactly where you were, and they only added to the problem with the voices. Akatsuki left for Delta headquarters days ago, thinking they might have a private line on your location. All that effort, and then we found you this morning on our gridtracking tap. Nozomi left right away, thinking we couldn’t be the only interested party who’d spotted you bumbling around in the footage. You looked so sad, checking that phone over and over again.
Pick up, mom. Please pick up.”

Dara pointed her gun as Dr. T.’s face. “You shut your fucking mouth.”

“But mom didn’t pick up, did she? And now you’re here. It’s beautiful.”

Just then, we heard a thumping sound coming from the staircase, boards straining under weight.

“I’m sure Nozomi was disappointed you weren’t at your friend’s house today. But he’ll be so surprised to see you now.”

I pivoted toward the entrance to the laboratory, but I was too late. The shadow of the thing crept over my vision within seconds, and then I was flying across the room and thudding to the floor.

I didn’t know where the yellow gun was. I reached for the pistol packed with boiler rounds in my waistband, but it was gone too. I was missing a shoe. I felt the tingle of awareness draining from my head but pushed to stay conscious. A shot rang out from Dara’s direction and shattered concrete at the foot of the beast. It ran toward her and I realized she was trying to take aim while keeping Dr. T. covered, and I scanned the floor for either of my guns and saw that Boudreaux had left Buddy’s side. He ran across the room to the yellow gun, where it had slid to a stop in the corner.

Dara fired at the thing again, but between the speed of the creature and her divided focus, she only managed to graze the shoulder above its missing arm. The thing spun from the shot and spotted Boudreaux, nearly to the yellow gun.

Boudreaux dove for the gun, arms outstretched like he was sliding into home base, but the thing was too fast. It took three loping steps and then leapt in the air and landed on Boudreaux’s back, snapping his spine. The thing reached down and grabbed both of Boudreaux’s wrists in its massive remaining hand and pulled straight back toward itself, inverting the bodyguard’s arms like it was pulling for a slot machine jackpot. Boudreaux screamed, a high pitch I doubt he knew he was capable of, but then the sound was cut short as the creature drove his knee into the back of Boudreaux’s head, flattening the man’s face back to his ears.

I’d made it to my feet, and was running back toward the entrance, looking for my gun. I saw Dara aim for the thing, but then Dr. Tikoshi’s hands (so fast) whipped out and grabbed her legs and pulled them from beneath her. The creature turned toward us, drool sluicing from its massive mouth, and I guessed that it was angry it had to abandon the meal it could have made from Boudreaux’s crushed skull.

I looked to the left and saw Dara struggling with Dr. Tikoshi, Buddy prone and barely breathing just north of them, and a few feet ahead of me, tucked against the base of an upright medicine cabinet, my gun.

I crouched to pick up the weapon and saw the shadow of the creature rushing toward me. Gun in hand, I dropped onto my back and pointed up and fired, and the thing was so close that every shot tore through its torso, and I hoped the boiler rounds would work on something that wasn’t all human and smoke would pour from the thing’s too-close eyes.

Instead I felt a huge hand flipping me on to my belly, and gray/black blood pouring from the thing’s chest wounds onto my back. The creature’s throat gurgled and then it coughed, splattering me with warmth.

It held me down, and its hot breath was on my neck, and it whispered through wet, heaving inhalations.

“
I won’t go alone
.
You’ll die again inside of me.
”

I heard its jaw popping as it unlocked and stretched out to fit my head in its maw and I tried to move but its teeth were holding me in place. Then there was a cracking sound and a pressure so immense I wondered if I’d fallen again into that terrible realm (
Please. No.
), and in some distant place I heard my name, and the sound of a gun firing, but it didn’t matter because my vision ran red with the blood coursing from the back of my head and I felt the thing’s tongue slide over my neck before it plunged into the soft pink meat of my mind, and that was my last memory as a whole human being.