Skin on My Skin (16 page)

Join them? The thought had never even crossed my mind other than in fantasy. When he said it, though, it just made me want to run even faster.

“Back through the door, friend,” the boss said and I could imagine a sinister smile behind the painted visor. “And let me show you the wonders of the future.”

I followed the red bio-suit wearing, Preacher wannabe out of the mobile home and into the remains of Central Park. He walked with his hands behind his back, like a general on parade. Somehow the suit radiated power and influence. I sensed the apprehension the few unsuited workers we ran across had when they saw the man. I was just as nervous. We didn’t have any guards with us, but I could feel the sights of the guns in the distance.
 

“Do you know we are doing here, Jack?”

“Surviving,” I said, but didn’t add,
 
“Like everyone else.”

“No. Everyone else is just surviving. They are mere rats feasting on the corpse of the old world. We are thriving here, Jack. We are preparing for the future of the human race. We are the line in the sand. What we have built here will ensure the very survival of our species.”

“I don’t know if anyone has told you or not, chief,” I told started. The cockiness I was trying to put out was a poor cover for my own fear and nervousness. “But the human race is done. We’re extinct. You just refuse to believe it.” I stopped then, realizing how much like my father, in those last desperate days before he went full tilt retard, I sounded.
 

There was a dark laugh. Why do all the people in authority in Fortress laugh like evil villains from some cheesy old movie? “I knew a man who once talked like that. He was adamant that he’d destroyed the world and, you know what? He’d had a noble cause and that cause had escalated beyond his control. It drove him to the brink of insanity. He was right, though. He had destroyed the old world. You were, what, eight when the Preacher’s Plague struck? How much of that world do you actually remember?”

“I was eight,” I agreed. “I was watching cartoons and riding my bike.”

“Of course. The innocence of youth. But I remember that world. I remember the world that friend of mine wanted to destroy. It was rife with filth from one end of this stunningly beautiful planet to the other. The Lord gave us this world, Jack, and we trashed it. We allowed the homosexuals and the communists to run it over with their vile lies. We allowed them to take what the Lord gave us from us. The Preacher’s Plague fixed that. There are no more homosexuals in this realm. None. But the plague went further than that, Jack. It erased all of the evils, leaving only the strong to survive. That’s us. We are the strong. The meek will not inherit the earth, Jack. We will.”

I stayed quiet. I had learned, from my father in the end, that it was often times best just to let the crazy people be crazy.
 

“That man, the friend of mine, he began the Preacher’s Plague. He cultured it in a lab and set it free across the world in a single day. He was a genius. He wished nothing more to eradicate the filth, as he saw it, from the world. And he succeeded at that. He succeeded better than he could have ever hoped for, yet when the plague, at God’s direction, reached out further, taking more of the filth, it took babies from mothers, husbands from wives… it was the great culling. And though that culling was what the Lord intended when he guided the Preacher’s hands, the man fell to his knees and wept at what he’d wrought. He did not understand God’s plan, then. That man just very nearly died from the misery of it all. It was hard, then, to see what the end result would be. The Preacher, back then, didn’t have the clarity of vision to see how the world would be reborn under his plague. He very nearly died.”

The Preacher was dead. I knew that. He had to have been. I couldn’t believe that the man who’d started this hell on earth was still alive. It just wasn’t fair, in a cosmic sense. Not that any of it was. I didn’t know what crazy smack this guy was talking, but it didn’t matter. I just needed to get out of there and then I’d figure something else out. I could handle crazy. I’d handled it in containment with my father for years. This was nothing new to me.

“And behold what we, the Preacher’s People, the People of Fortress, have accomplished,” the man said with a sweeping motion of his arms. He apparently saw God’s new kingdom on earth. I saw a shit hole.
 

He led me further into the park to where they’d built a massive wooden bar out of scrap wood. The building was long and wide. There were guard towers at each of the four corners. Several guards patrolled the perimeter of it, making it the single most guarded place in Fortress. A large door separated the outside world from the inside, but, strangely enough, it wasn’t an air lock. I didn’t understand that.
 

“You see, the Preacher was sure that he’d, as you said, caused the extinction of mankind. He himself had a child and this was not what he’d envisioned. When the plague jumped genders, he knew he had to do something. He went into hiding and prayed. He asked for direction.”

“And then you guys figured out there were Touchers,” I said for him.
 

“Exactly right, Jack. We discovered that not everyone was subject to the Preacher’s Plague. Some said they were angels, sent to us by the Lord, to continue the human race. A Toucher actually found him, Jack, on the verge of death and she nursed him back to health. She was just a child, then. But she showed the Preacher the way. She told him there had to be a hope and he, a scientist in the old world, had to figure that out. That became the Preacher’s mission, Jack. He had to figure out how to have children. This,” he said as we finally neared the door to the barn, “is the result of that vision. I must warn you. Our mission is not finished. But we are so close to victory. You could help us with that, Jack. We need more men like you.”

We stepped through the door and I was at once taken by the absolute and overwhelming smell of feces and urine in the big room. The man in red, the fake Preacher, didn’t seem to notice and I missed my bio-suit and its filters once more. The building was open, like an aircraft hangar, but divided with rows of cubicles. Each of the glass cages was about ten foot by teen foot, each with an airlock doorway. Each also had a light and, as the fake Preacher guided me further into the otherwise dimly lit building, I saw each also had a person inside.
 

“Welcome to the Nursery,” the man told me. “Welcome to the future of mankind.”

The first vessel we walked up to contained a young girl. Her skin was twisted like she’d been ravaged to the point of death by the Preacher’s Plague. A naked man held her to the ground, taking her roughly from behind. The girl screamed, but it wasn’t pain. She was angry, like a feral animal, and tried clawing at the naked man.
 

“It can be a bit much to take in, at first,” the red suited man began. “The children of the Touchers are… they are unique. The virus does something to their basic DNA, changing them. I suspect God is shaping them to be more in his image. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve seen. It’s evolution from one generation to the next.”

The man looked up and smiled darkly. This wasn’t about science. This was rape, plain and simple. The girl couldn’t have been more than ten years old.
 

“She doesn’t look like an angel,” I quipped. Just as it had been with Big Woody back in Club Flesh, when he’d killed the woman through sex, it was hard to take my eyes away from the scene before me.
 

“No, she doesn’t, does she? Her generation is transitional. We are still searching out the right genetics to…” the man paused, searching for the right words, “make the transition a bit more smoother. The plague had corrupted so much of our DNA, at this point. Only God’s chosen will survive this. It is the way it is meant to be.”

I numbly walked down the aisle, stopping at the next vessel. All of them had to be children. Even if the Preacher had managed to kick-start his program right after the start of the Plague, the oldest kid in the Nursery couldn’t have been any more than fifteen. But looking at the monstrosities in the cages, you wouldn’t think that. The thing I was staring at looked like a smaller version of Big Woody. His heavily muscled body was covered with Plague scares. His hair was wild and, when the kid turned to look at me, snarling. He was feral, no more than the bear I’d killed days before. That’s what they were doing. They were raising monsters. He rushed to the glass as if to attack me, only stopped by the transparent barricade dividing us.
 

“It’s hard to look at, at first,” the red suited man said softly, armored hand on my shoulder. “But we are making great progress. Our stock of Touchers is, obviously, quite limited. Only something like one in a thousand were immune to the Preacher’s Plague. Sadly, fewer still of them are women, and even fewer of those are women of childbearing age. We need every one of those angels that can give us children to continue doing so. It is the Lord’s plan.”

I was speechless and could not take my eyes from the kid. He was like a wild animal in that cage. My guide stepped to the cage and tapped the window.
 

“Hello, Brian. I’ve brought someone to see you. Meet Jacky,” the man said, using a nickname that chilled me to the bone. “He knows where your mother is, Brian. Aren’t you excited?”

The kid growled like a lion, and the other caged children close enough to see us became agitated, barking and snarling at me and the red suited man. It spread, thought the complex, and the kids in the other cages began to hoot like wild gorillas. The little monster squatted like a Vietnamese man eating from a rice bowl, defecating without missing a beat, never taking those dark, hateful eyes from mine.

“As I said, our supply of actual Touchers is small. There are not nearly enough to tend to these beautiful, beautiful children one on one. It’s more than they can do to keep our next generation fed and somewhat clean.”

“How many of them are there?”
 

“Fifty-two, right now. There will be more, of course. We are constantly searching for more fertile female Touchers. We will be that much better off when you return Jenna to us. She has been our best mother to date and she still has years of child bearing in front of her. Her children have been… the most human. She is mother to ten of these children, including Brian here. We have not yet quite gotten the process right, as you can see, but we are so very close. It’s simply a matter of mixing the correct genetics.”

I looked at the kid and I didn’t see human. I saw a plague ravaged monster who should have never been born. But I also saw someone that I suspected Jenna loved, if she knew the boy at all. As horrible as the beast was to look at, I was sure this is what I’d left behind. Though I’d had no idea when I’d formulated the plan, this was what I’d come here to trade her for.
 

Madness.
 

“But he is immune. That child will never contract the Preacher’s Plague. He was born with it. There are just other… issues, as you can see. We need her back, Jack. Humanity needs her back.”

“I understand, sir. I’ll bring her to you,” I lied. I’d do no such thing. I had to figure out a way to, at the very least, make the girl understand how sorry I was. At worse, I’d help her flee the city and never see her again. I owed her that much.
 

“Is she currently safe?”

“Yes sir,” I said. I’d left her chained to the bed like an animal, but she was safe. I wasn’t much better than the people of Fortress.
 

“Good. Then you can spend the evening with us and you can see just how well we treat our Touchers. Maybe, just maybe, you are even equipped with the right genetics to help us further our cause. Perhaps you can be a part of this community.”

The man slapped me on the shoulder the way a doting father might his son and it drove me bonkers. I didn’t want to spend the night. I just wanted to flee. But I also didn’t want to give them cause to detain me further. I wanted to leave on good terms if for no other reason than I didn’t want them following me through the city.
 

“Okay,” I said, meekly, still stunned by the so-called nursery. I had no idea what other horrors to expect from this place, and I didn’t want to find out.

The wannabe Preacher in red armor led me from the Nursery and we went across a large courtyard with a much larger garden than I’d seen before. He took me to another set of trailers, without containment systems, and knocked on the door. An old man opened it, eyeing me suspiciously.
 

“Preacher be with you, sir. How may I help you this evening?”

“This young man is Jack Wyatt. He is our guest, for the evening. In the morning, he will retrieve Jenna and bring her home for us.”

He raised one eyebrow.
 
“Oh will he now?”

“Indeed. He has even brought proof of life. I want you to give him the best treatment possible, yes Duncan? The full ride.”

“Whatever you say, sir. It will be done.”

The man turned to me once more. “I want you to enjoy your evening here. You are safe. This is not the ruins. We have law and we have order. And I want you to take this opportunity to get to know us. Consider my offer. We always have a place for a resourceful young man such as yourself, even if your genes do not further our cause. Thank you.”

I stood watching the man leave.
 

“You can’t run, kid.”

“What?”

“That’s what you’re thinking, right? He showed you that damned horror show in the Nursery and you want to run. I’m with you. I want to run too. But you just can’t do it. Since Jenna ran away they’ve tripled up the guards on us. There’s at least five in them trees watching us now. Running away would just get you shot.”

“I wasn’t thinking of running,” I lied.
 

“It was what you were thinking. I can see it in your face. We all think it, everyday, son. Now come in before one of those guards gets an itchy finger.”

I hesitated and the man saw that as well. “Come on boy. We are all Touchers here in the Pit. You won’t explode from dining with us.”