"I know someone at DARPA," said Mike, "and I"m betting he knows a lot of people who"d fight to get this thing."
"So how do we move it?"
"I"ll take the heavy end."
Jamie looked down at the body. "You want me to touch it?"
"I wanted you to say "you"re hurt" again and then offer to take the heavy end."
She shoved her own wrench in her pocket and crouched to grab the ankles. "It feels like fish," she said.
"I thought it was more like snakeskin," said Mike. He tried to figure out a way to reach under the body"s crooked shoulders without smearing blood on his hands. After a moment, he grabbed two big handfuls of the cloak. "You ready?"
"I guess."
He heaved on the cloak and she pulled on the legs. The creature"s knees bent back and its shoulders rolled too far forward. The hood slumped back over its face. The body lifted a few inches off the floor. Jamie wrestled the ankles up higher, almost into her armpits. Mike set his end down and gathered up more of the cloak. Some of it was sticky with blood.
They shuffled past the rings to the back door. The cloak dragged and left streaks on the concrete. Jamie took short steps to avoid tripping on the fabric. She tried not to look at the swath of material with the face sewn into it.
Mike hit the release with his elbow and pushed the door with his back. The cuts in his stomach were burning. The bandages were wet.
They struggled with the corpse down the rear staircase. The cloak snagged on the corner of a step and almost yanked the body out of Mike"s hands. He teetered on the step for a moment.
"Set it down," said Jamie. "I need a break, anyway."
He nodded. It was going to be a pain to pick up the body again on the stairs, but his knuckles ached from holding the gathered-up cloak. He lowered his end of the body and tried to stretch out his fingers.
She shook out her own hands. "You"re bleeding again."
He glanced down. Red blobs spotted the gauze. "It"s not bad," he said. "It"ll hold until we get this thing locked away."
They wrestled the body back into the air between them. They lumbered to the bottom of the stairs and started across the park toward the trailers. Mike aimed them at the back of the double row, straight toward the empty one. The gravel crunched under their feet and made a whisking noise as the cloak dragged across it.
Jamie flinched and turned away from the body.
"What?"
She dipped her head down without looking in that direction. The tunic-cloak had slid halfway up the creature"s thighs. The creature"s legs were almost white in the sunlight. "I think it"s some kind of hermaphrodite or something, maybe. It"s going commando, whatever it is."
"Ahhh."
"I"m going to take a long shower after this."
Mike glanced at his trailer. "Me, too."
"Don"t get your hopes up," she said. "I"m not thinking s.e.xy shower."
"Neither was I."
"You have no idea, believe me." She glanced at the pale thighs and shuddered.
"Very, very uns.e.xy," Mike agreed.
"Later maybe. When this thing"s out of sight and all that s.h.i.t"s off you. And I"ve had three or four good, mind-erasing drinks."
"Just let me know."
They shuffled a few more feet closer to the end of the trailers. "Hang on." She shifted her arms. "It"s slipping."
Mike opened his mouth to suggest setting the body down again, but his hands weren"t aching as much. He had a better grip, or the cloak had settled into a better position to take the weight. He held his end and waited for her to adjust.
Jamie heaved up one ankle so she had it between the crook of her arm and her armpit. Something crunched and her eyes went wide. "Oh c.r.a.p," she said. "I think I just broke its foot."
He shook his head. "Probably just feels that way. Come on, we"re almost there."
They carried the body another few yards. Mike stepped onto the green Astroturf, and they worked their way around the corner. Mike glanced over his shoulder and saw the steps to the last trailer just a few feet away.
Jamie rolled her shoulder, then shook her head. "It"s broken. I can feel it."
"We can deal with it later." Mike looked between the doork.n.o.b and the body. The corpse was balanced so well right now, he almost thought he could gather the cloak in one hand and hold it while he opened the door.
"You got it?" asked Jamie.
"Yep." He didn"t move.
"Something wrong?"
"Is it just me," he asked, "or does this thing feel a lot lighter than when we picked it up?"
"Yeah," she said. "I thought it was just me."
He lifted his arms. Lifted, not heaved. The corpse went up. It wasn"t as easy as lifting an empty box, but it wasn"t much harder, either.
"Set it down for a second," he said.
He lowered the double-handful of cloak. Jamie tried to release the legs and they made a rustling noise, like flipping through dry old books. Tiny scales flaked off them like dust and settled on her hands and arms and chest.
The left leg broke off at the knee with a sound of snapping twigs. Jamie shrieked. Bits of skin and bone scattered in the breeze. She dropped the calf and it hit the Astroturf with a dry sound, like a bag of leaves.
Mike crouched and pulled back the hood. The creature"s swollen eye was gone. A dry crater gaped in the head. The two small eyes had vanished, too, leaving bullet hole sockets in a sagging patch of flesh. The gray skin was tight around the nostril slits, and the lips were gone.
"It"s mummified," said Jamie.
The gums receded before their eyes, showing the roots of the needlelike teeth. More scales dropped away. The cheekbones pushed their way out of the skin. The fingers became claws that became knotted sticks.
She looked up. "Is it the sunlight?"
"It was wrapped in the cloak."
"The legs weren"t."
"The face was." He pointed at the skin-wrapped skull. "It"s just as far gone as the legs."
"Oh, s.h.i.t." Jamie wiped her hands on her jeans, then kneeled and rubbed them on the plastic gra.s.s.
"Nothing happened until it died," said Mike. "I think you"re okay."
Jamie looked over her shoulder, over at her trailer. "I need to go wash off," she said.
He nodded.
"I"m sorry," she yelled as she ran off. She unlocked her door and yanked it open. She ran inside and left it swinging. A minute later Mike heard running water and splashing.
He watched the body shrivel and fall apart, moving his head to get it from multiple angles. The cloak shifted as the body beneath it grew thinner and thinner. The ants carried out grade-school science films about decay and childhood images of raking dry leaves that crumbled between the tines of the rake.
By the time the water stopped running, there was nothing left but bones.
FORTY-FIVE.
Mike unwrapped the cloak and looked at the skeleton. Gloria Barker, the biology teacher, had a poster of the human skeleton up in her cla.s.sroom, complete with labels. Mike had seen it twice. More than enough to give him a basis of comparison.
The creature"s skeleton was more or less humanoid. An extra bone ran along the back, something flat and wide where the extra arm attached. The sternum was peaked along the front instead of flat. The ribs were asymmetrical, with fewer on the side with the extra arm. The knees and elbows were an odd arrangement, not quite hinges, not quite ball and sockets. It had an extra toe on the left foot, the one that had broken off.
He examined the skull. Forty-nine teeth, eleven of them broken. Twenty-four on top, twenty-five on bottom. The large eye had its own socket, but it looked like the two small eyes shared one. He couldn"t even guess how something like that evolved.
The ants carried out pictures of Bob, the wasteland Bob, and he wondered if the creature had developed naturally.
Mike looked at it all and had the ants file it. Dozens and dozens of images, all stored alongside frames of the creature alive. The contrast gave him a better sense of muscle structure, but not much.
He held up his hands. The blood from the cloak had dried and flaked away. There was almost no sign of it on his fingers, arms, or body.
The cloak was spread out. There was another broad patch with a nipple on it, but past that he couldn"t see anything to hint at the origins of the material. Maybe just those two patches were human skin. Maybe it all was.
How could there be recognizable humans in a world that had allowed this thing to develop?
He folded the cloak around the body as best he could. He made a point of hiding the face inside the layers. Then he gathered the whole thing and put it in the trailer. The bones barely weighed forty pounds. There was no meat left on it, but he twisted the air conditioner k.n.o.b to HIGH just in case.
Mike went to Jamie"s trailer. She sat on her bed in her underwear, eyes closed. She was still wet from the shower. He let her have her moment. He knew how important such moments could be.
He grabbed jeans and a shirt from his trailer, then walked back up to the main building. The first aid kit by Anne"s printer wasn"t as well stocked as the big one. It had more gauze pads and tape, but no actual bandages. He glanced at the hall, toward the door that led out onto the main floor. Tape and pads would have to do.
He pa.s.sed the kitchen and saw Anne sitting at the small table. She had a cup of coffee in her hands with no steam coming off it. Three packets of Advil sat near her wrist.
"Hey," he said. "You okay?"
She stared past him with wide pupils. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I"m fine. I just...I"m fine."
A squad of ants ran by with memories of Villette and his conversation with Reggie held up for view. "It looked like it hit you pretty good."
"I"m fine. Just a few bruises." Then she blinked twice, focused, and saw him shirtless and b.l.o.o.d.y. She looked at the bandages on his stomach. "Are you? Okay?"
"I think so. I just need to wash up and change these."
She opened her lips to say something else, but changed her mind. Her gaze drifted back to the wall, in the direction of the main floor.
There was a fresh box of pastries on the counter. He wondered when they"d been brought in. He pushed the box aside without opening it. It felt heavy and he realized he"d been riding an adrenaline high for almost half an hour. There was a crash in his very near future.
He headed into the bathroom.
Mike washed his hands, wiped them with a couple of alcohol swabs, and unwrapped himself. The gauze was all red under the bandage. Red blood seemed rea.s.suring. Almost cheerful. He tugged at the tape, and his stretching skin reminded him there wasn"t anything cheerful about it. Threads of gauze clung to the wounds, and he winced as they popped loose one by one.
He looked at his gut in the mirror. The skin around the gashes was shiny from all the ointment Jamie had slathered on. The cuts were wet, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped again. If there had been any of the creature"s blood near his wounds, it had vanished with the rest.
Just a few more millimeters and the talon-like nails would"ve left three big rents in his skin. His intestines would"ve pushed out, forced the wounds even wider. If the creature had stretched its toes, his guts would"ve spilled onto the floor.
The room lost focus for a moment. The walls tilted. He"d reached the crash. He braced his hands on the sink and forced himself to take a few slow breaths. He counted to ten, then opened the first aid kit. Fresh gauze was taped into place. This roll of tape was thinner, and it took half a dozen pieces to make each pad feel secure.
He glanced at the bathroom door, then unbuckled his belt. The hem of his jeans was still sticky with blood. So was the front of the crotch and a few spots on the legs. He pried his sneakers off, pushed the jeans down, and kicked them off. There were a few spots along his boxers, too. The creature wouldn"t be the only thing going commando today.
Mike caught sight of himself in the mirror. The gauze across his stomach was brilliant in the bathroom"s light. His hair was a mess. Shock and a bit of blood loss made his skin pale. With the tired rings under his eyes, the transformation was complete. A very skinny Severus Snape stared back at him from the mirror.
He shook his head and chuckled.
He pulled on the clean clothes, wiped down the belt, and threaded it through the loops. The sneakers were too tight to slip back on, so he untied and retied them. He sealed the first aid kit back up and tossed the b.l.o.o.d.y clothes in the trash.
Anne hadn"t moved from her chair in the kitchen. She still held the cold coffee. Her eyes flitted to Mike as he entered, and she managed a weak smile. "Much better."
"Thanks. I feel a lot better."
He dropped the first aid kit on the counter and tore open the pastry box. The room wobbled, just for a moment, from the effort. He tossed a sc.r.a.p of paper tape in the trash and a green roach skittered away from the plastic barrel.
The box was packed full of donuts, m.u.f.fins, and other pastries. Mike saw two of all the usuals. He picked up one of the chocolate croissants, and then eyed the second one, wondering if he could eat two without making himself sick.
"Do you want anything?" he asked Anne. "Might help settle your nerves."
"I"m good."
He tapped the box lid. "Looks like someone screwed up the order. Double everything if you change your mind."
"It wasn"t me," said Anne. She managed another weak smile.