Читать книгу The Immune - Doc Lucky Meisenheimer - Страница 17

John didn’t know how long he was unconscious. He awoke to a splitting headache and the sergeant holding pressure with a handkerchief to the side of his head. As John moaned and opened his eyes, the sergeant released pressure.

“It looks like you’ve stopped bleeding,” said the sergeant. He threw the saturated, makeshift bandage on the floor next to John and returned to his seat, “Doc, I didn’t know a small cut could bleed so much.”

“Yeah, scalps bleed a lot. There are quite a few blood vessels up there,” said John, hoping he could strike up a conversation with the sergeant, “Thanks for your help.”

The sergeant nodded. Two other marines were sitting with the sergeant, eyes fixed forward, not looking at John. He couldn’t see the captain. He had moved to the front passenger seat in the vehicle.

“How long was I out?” John asked the sergeant.

The sergeant looked toward the front to see if the captain was paying attention. Then he said, “Oh, not long, five minutes max.”

“What’s the processing unit?” asked John.

“I haven’t a clue,” said the sergeant with a shrug, “Some interrogation facility I guess. Never been there—”

“Sergeant Clark,” The captain’s angry voice interrupted from the front of the van, “Did I ask you to carry on a conversation with the prisoner?”

“No Sir,” replied Sergeant Clark, fixing his eyes forward, away from John.

John sat in silence for the next twenty minutes with the van speeding to its destination.

The van came to a sudden stop, and the sliding side doors opened. A gated chain link fence topped with coiled barbed wire blocked their passage. Beyond the gate, John could see one solitary windowless building looking similar to a warehouse. Behind the building, multiple wood fences gave it a stockyard-like feel. Additionally, a dark brown, three to four acre lake abutted the side of the building.

A peculiar stench filled the air; the odor of benzene mixed with an animal smell. He hadn’t smelled benzene since organic chemistry lab in college. The animal smell he couldn’t place, but it reminded him of the large animal housing at the zoo, only worse.

The marines with Captain Flinch escorted him to the gate. John’s wrists remained bound. The gate opened, and two large men, both wearing black hoods, appeared. Each grabbed one of John’s arms. They began roughly ushering John to the building. Sergeant Clark started to follow.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going, soldier?” said Captain Flinch, “Your mission is complete. You and your men return to Central immediately.”

“Yes, Sir,” Sergeant Clark gave a salute. John noticed the lower half of his neck flushed red.

“Let’s go!” said Captain Flinch as he caught up to the masked men.

The party of four entered the building through the only door John could see. John was woozy from the blows to his head and occasionally stumbled. The guards firmly held him upright. As the group walked in the dark hallway, the strong smell of benzene and an associated repugnant animal smell nearly overcame him.

John heard a multitude of inhuman screams coming from the direction they were heading. As they entered an arena-sized room, it became obvious; it was a swine farm. Rows and rows of swine lined up one against the other, each in their own metal-railed stalls. The screams John heard were squeals from hundreds of pigs compressed in the large warehouse.

They walked down the main aisle, passing pig after pig. All the pigs’ needs were addressed—food, water, and veterinary care. Continuous music played in the background to subdue and calm them. Handlers managed every aspect of the pigs’ lives, from feeding to cleaning the defecation. The handlers provided a perfect worry-free society for the pigs.

John had worries, though. The little group had reached the far end of the warehouse. Captain Flinch shoved on a heavy metal door, which opened into a long darkened corridor about eight feet wide. Even with multiple large vents in the ceiling sucking the odor from the passageway, the smell of benzene now overpowered the smell of the swine.

As they proceeded down the corridor, John noticed numerous animal skins covering the walls. What appeared to be benzene was dripping from porous pipes on the ceiling edges. The benzene trickled down the hides, collecting in long troughs at the base of the wall. The walkway of the corridor was slightly sloped left. Small channels three inches wide cut across the walkway every eight feet or so, draining the right trough into the left. The left trough ran the length of the corridor to an oval collection pool fenced with large, slightly separated, two foot square, white, marble blocks on the near and far sides.

The collection pool was three times the width of the corridor and was located in a rectangular vestibule. This opened into a large round room about fifty feet in diameter. The periphery of the room was lined with medical devices and computers recessed into the wall. The floor of the lab was white and clean like an operating room. Narrow three-foot walkways in the vestibule on either side of the black bottomed collection pool gave passage to the lab. UV lights lit the area and cast a purplish-blue haze over everything in the room.

In the room’s center hung a semiconscious naked man held vertical by chains shacked to his wrists. The chains attached to tracks in the ceiling. The shaking prisoner was standing in what looked like a small black children’s wading pool containing several electronic devices attached to the rim. The pool was split in half by a white plastic divider. The divider separated the prisoner ’s feet. Directly above him was a fixture, which appeared to be an oversized shower head.

As they entered the round room, John was shoved past the hanging man to one of two round black tables placed symmetrically in the room about six feet away and a forty-five degree angle from the “wading” pool.

“Lay down,” ordered one of the hooded men.

“Why?” said John belligerently.

Without any further discussion, the two hooded men forcefully lifted John and slapped him onto the table. He was then bound with cable ties to straps built into the table.

A man wearing a blood-stained white lab coat and a Plexiglas face shield stepped out from behind the hanging prisoner. He flipped the faceplate up. He had dark black oily hair with thin eyebrows which looked like they’d been plucked. A sutured laceration extended from his forehead to his cheek. Its placement made it look like a renommierschmiss, a German dueling scar, and didn’t make the pock-marked face any more appealing. He ignored John’s presence.

“So, Captain Flinch,” said the man, “we meet again. I hear your final indoctrination was completed yesterday and I see you’ve already begun fulfilling your role nicely. Let me officially welcome you to the ranks of ASC, and I hope you have no ill will over my initial objections to the circumstances of your allegiance test.”

As he was talking he removed the faceplate and held it up to the light. Identifying blood streaks on the Plexiglas shield, he wiped them off with the sleeve of his lab coat.

“I still feel your own hand should’ve done the task even though you were technically the cause,” he spit on a resistant streak and wiped again, then he continued, “But I would have to say you proved your mettle to me with our little foray the other day.” He motioned to the wounds on Flinch. “I’m sure you’ll advance to second tier rapidly, as long as I know I can rely on you.”

He pulled off his bloody rubber gloves and reached under the lab coat, pulling out a black handkerchief from his left back pocket. As he walked to an oversized briefcase leaning against the wall, he dabbed beads of perspiration from his brow. Opening the briefcase, he removed a quart-size jar appearing to be made of green depression glass and handed it to Captain Flinch. Flinch opened the jar and poured out what looked like dried green lima beans into his hand.

“Captain Flinch, you must take one of these every morning,” said the man.

“Thank you, Captain Stewart, I’m greatly indebted to you,” said Captain Flinch slavishly.

Captain Stewart gave Flinch a small bow, “I understand this next extraction is for Senator Snivaling as well? She already requested the Ube extraction.”

He reached into his lab coat pocket and handed Flinch what appeared to be a small aerosol can with a blue cap. On the side of the cap in marker was UW. He went on to say, “I don’t know why she needs more than one; it’s not like she’ll ever get within a mile of an airwar.”

“I don’t know, sir,” said Flinch, “I’m just following orders. She wants me to wait and bring this extraction, too.”

“Oh, so you’re watching?” Stewart said, somewhat patronizingly. “Most can’t stomach it.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” said Stewart, giving Flinch a devilish grin, “then, if you don’t mind, I’ll complete this extraction.” He turned to the hanging man.

“Excuse me, sir,” John raised his head from the table he was strapped to, “My name is Dr. John Long, and I’m a physician. I believe there’s been a terrible misunderstanding,” John twisted his head so he could get a better look at Captain Stewart, “I’m more than happy to provide you any information you desire without resorting to torture. Senator Snivaling incorrectly believes I’m part of a terrorist organization called Immune. I assure you, I’m not a member.”

Captain Stewart turned, looked at him for the first time, and said, “Oh, I recognize you. You’re the fellow who killed the airwar with your bare hands—impressive. Now I see why the senator wants your extraction. Ironically for you, doctor, I’m a lawyer.”

Before John could respond, Stewart turned and walked away from John to the hanging man in the center of the room. Stewart reached into his pocket, took out a metal probe, and touched it to the now unconscious prisoner ’s right testicle. An electrical arc flashed from the probe to the man’s skin. The prisoner jerked violently and screamed, then a shower of benzene discharged over him. After a minute, Stewart looked at a meter on the side of the collecting pool and said to Flinch, “Well, that’s it. We should be down to less than ten percent remaining. The rest we’ll do in residual extraction.”

What followed was horrifying. Stewart picked up some odd-looking stainless steel surgical instruments from a nearby table. He then proceeded to remove the skin from the prisoner as calmly as if he were removing skin from a holiday turkey. The poor soul screamed, jerked, and gyrated, but Stewart was skilled at the process. John then realized the skins he’d seen on the corridor wall were human, not animal. There wasn’t going to be any torture to extract information; they were extracting something from the man’s skin.

When only the skin from the man’s head, hands, and feet remained, Stewart stopped his dissection, but the man continued his wild screaming. Captain Flinch was off to the side, vomiting. Apparently, he wasn’t fine with watching.

“It’s not a job you acquire a taste for,” Stewart said, laughing at Flinch, “You enjoy it the first time or you never do. I’ll place you in the didn’t enjoy it category.” He laughed again, “That’s more job security for me, I guess.”

Stewart walked to the wall and pushed a button. Doors behind the screaming man opened, and chains on the ceiling lifted him from the pool and moved along a track to the opening. Beyond the opening, a pit ten feet deep by thirty in diameter came to view. It was filled with a dozen large pigs.

The chains carried the writhing man over the pit, then the shackles suddenly released, dropping him into the midst of the swine. The reaction was immediate and more terrifying than seeing Stewart working with his skinning knives. The swine tore into the man, ripping him to shreds and eating him alive. His limbs tore easily from his body by the five hundred pound beasts. Stewart laughed at Flinch, who resumed his vomiting.

“Want to bet on the time?” Stewart said to Flinch.

Flinch’s face was pale and he looked near passing out.

“The record is two minutes, thirty-five seconds, but I guess this group isn’t hungry enough to get the record.” Stewart grinned. After a few moments, Stewart announced, “Three minutes and eighteen seconds. Not bad.”

He pushed another button. A side door in the pit opened and the swine ran through it. Other than a few bloodstains on the floor, there were no signs the prisoner ever existed. Stewart looked at John and said, “I’ll get hungry ones for you, Doctor. Maybe you’ll get the record.”

Both hooded men began moving toward John.