Maggie said, “You seem nice.”
Amy said, “What are you?”
Maggie shrugged.
“I know you’re not a little girl. What are you really?”
“What are you? Really?”
“Or, maybe I should ask, what are you going to be, once you grow up?”
“I don’t think I’m going to grow up.”
Amy tried to read the expression on the little girl’s face, but couldn’t. Finally, she said, “What you are, what you really are, can’t live here.”
Maggie met her eyes. “When they brought me in, just now, they took off my clothes and scrubbed me. That man over there, in the lab coat? He watched, and he liked it. But he lies about it. About liking it. It’s like that everywhere. Mommy thinks I’m weird but she won’t say anything. When they said they were taking me away, she was mad but I could see that she was happy, too, way down inside. Like she wouldn’t have to be scared anymore. But she will hide it. Everybody is hiding what they really are, way down inside.”
“That is not the same thing. What you are, you’re going to hurt us. If we don’t do something.”
“I said you seem nice. But you’re going to kill me. Because of what you are inside.”
Amy heard the agent rapidly walking their way.
“I’m not really talking to you. You can’t even talk. You’re not a little girl, you don’t even have a mouth. This is all … it’s all something you’re doing to my brain.”
“If a spider walks onto your bed, you squish it. If a butterfly lands on your bed, you take a picture. Is the butterfly ‘doing something to your brain’? If I didn’t make myself look like this, I would already be dead. You kill everything that doesn’t have pretty wings.”
“So you’re not dangerous? You’re not going to grow up and declare war on us?”
“Are you at war with the cows who give you milk?”
“We’re not going to be your cows, Maggie. If that’s what you’re getting at. We can’t let that happen.”
Maggie shrugged. “It’s already happened.”
Me
Tasker’s shoes clicked up the concrete and I sensed she was about to tell us to stop interacting with the specimen. Before she could say anything, I put a hand on Amy’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”
I pulled her away from the glass, which was now smeared with the ooze that had trickled off the enormous maggot that was sucking on it, its mandibles clicking off the surface like it badly wanted to bite its way through. Amy had been talking with the thing and it bothered me that I couldn’t hear both ends of the conversation. The effect of the Sauce was fading, but it was still next to impossible to hear “Maggie” unless I devoted every ounce of concentration to it.
As we walked away, one of the NON “doctors” escorted the half-eaten Loretta up to Maggie’s cell. Loretta put her hands up to the glass, asking the creature if it was okay, if it was feeling all right, reassuring it that they’d be going home soon.
I put my hand on Amy’s back and walked a little faster.
To Tasker I said, “Mikey’s here? Or is he loose on the town, destroying everything we know and love?”
Tasker said, “He’s here. Came along without incident.”
John said, “Hmm. Just like Maggie. Didn’t put up a fight, didn’t blow the cover.”
I said, “Okay, so can we trust you to actually kill these things? You’re not going to change your mind and decide you want to keep them as biological weapons or something?”
Agent Tasker said, “Follow me.”
“No, we don’t need to see you do it. There’s no reason to give Amy nightmares for the next twenty years.”
Amy said, “I want to be there.”
“Why?”
Tasker said, “There’s actually another reason. Come.”
She led us down the hall and then over to what turned out to be another cell block—how many were there?—which was uninhabited save for a single cell occupied by a pulsing larva that I had to be told was Mikey. I made myself focus and found I could sort of see the disguise. But what I saw was clumsy. Monstrous. A mannequin made by incompetent hands in the dark. Ridiculous to think that it had ever fooled me.
Tasker said, “As we alluded to on the conference call earlier, our past experience has found that one substance seems to be fatal to the—”
“Is it sulfur?” said John.
Taken aback, Tasker said, “That’s a key component, yes. Burning sulfur. It’s embedded in a thermite compound, formed into pellets that will ignite in midair. They should continue burning once they’ve penetrated the hide of the larva, releasing the sulfur internally.”
John said, “And if you combined that substance with a piece of silicone in the shape of a human ass?”
Tasker just stared.
I said, “So it’s that simple? After all of this talk of interdimensional energies and entities and all that, we’re just burning holes in them? So what are we waiting for?”
“It’s actually not that simple. Sulfur doesn’t work for its chemical properties. It works because it has, let’s just say, symbolic power. There is an invisible mechanism at play.”
“Sure, it’s a vampire holy water situation. I get it.”
“I don’t think you do. From previous incidents with similar organisms, the effectiveness of the weapon has varied wildly according to who is wielding it, and their state of mind at the moment the fatal blow is struck.”
I said, “Okay.”
“We are requesting that you do it. At least for this specimen.”
Agent Gibson shuffled over, holding a modified shotgun. “Don’t get cute and shoot this at me, dirtbag.”
Amy glanced at the gun and muttered, “Wellness center.”
John lit a cigarette.
Tasker said, “There’s no smoking in here.”
“If he gets to shoot a gun indoors, I’m thinking I can smoke a cigarette.”
Amy said, “We’re obviously not going through with this. Even I can see this trap coming.” She nodded toward me and said, “They stick you in the cell, Mikey eats you. Since they didn’t do it directly, they think they escape the supposed curse that’s protecting us.”
I said, “You two are staying outside the cell, right? I’m the only one that goes in, you guys stay out here and watch for shenanigans. I mean, we were just in the room with this thing earlier today, I don’t think this is among the top ten scariest creatures that have tried to eat me. I’ve got to say, I’m fine with it.”
Amy made an exasperated noise and said, “Why are you fine with it?”
“Because we were hired by Chastity to do a job and this is it. Didn’t you just tell me I needed to see things through? Well, here’s Mikey. It’s not what we expected, but so what? For better or worse, this is the final resolution to the Payton case.”
I took the shotgun from Agent Gibson. I pulled back the slide enough to confirm there were in fact shells in it, and that they weren’t going to stick me in the cell with an empty gun. I sniffed it—the shells smelled like farts, all right.
I asked Tasker, “So how does this, uh, process work?”
“You’ll go into the adjacent cell, here—the walls between cells slide open, that is done remotely, from the guard room. Exterior door closes, wall opens, there’ll be nothing between you and the specimen. Fire at will.”
Amy said, “David, this is stupid.”
“That has literally never stopped us before, even once.” I asked Tasker, “Loretta and Maggie aren’t going to be concerned by the sound of gunfire?”
“We’ll close the door between cell blocks, they’re utterly soundproof. It’ll be no louder to them than someone softly knocking on the wall.”
I looked toward John and he shrugged. “I mean, if we’re not here to do this, why are we here?”