The Body Scout: A Novel Read online

  “What are you doing here, deadbeat? We own this place now. You’re here. That means we own you.”

  “Yeah, we own you.”

  Wanda dropped me. I steadied myself on my remaining hand. My stomach clutched up. I vomited a trickle of yellow bile.

  “Don’t puke your pig guts on my shoes.”

  “Ha ha. He almost got you, Wanda.”

  Brenda’s laugh was cut short.

  Coppelius came around the corner. Walked up and ruffled my hair. “You have quite the fan base, Kobo.”

  “Who the hell is this dude?”

  “How the fuck would I know, Brenda? You got a bodyguard now?”

  “Some bodyguard you got, Kobo. He’s not very good at guarding it.” She waved my severed arm in front of my face. The hand flopped back and forth pathetically.

  I felt like I was going to puke again. I reached over and felt the sticky blood on my right side. Trembled. Dry heaved. I curled myself into a ball, forehead to the tiles.

  Coppelius grabbed my hair and pulled my head back up. “I’m afraid Kobo here is under official government protection. At least until I extract the information I need from him. I will be sure to compensate you for your lost time at your normal hourly rate.”

  “Fuck that,” Wanda said. “We own this jalopy and this whole apartment. You’re on Sunny Day property.”

  “What’s with his face, Wanda?”

  “He’s a Neanderthal,” I spat.

  “That’s not a nice thing to say. Whatever he is, he’s got ten seconds to leave before Brenda bashes his weird mutant face.”

  My stomach seemed to realize there wasn’t anything left inside to heave up. I was empty of everything, mind and body. I closed my eyes.

  “I see from your attire that you work for a medical-loan company,” Coppelius stepped in front of me. His wide back hid the Sassafras sisters from my view. “Loans are not a pertinent issue at this juncture. I’m sure your employer and mine can make an arrangement.”

  “The fuck is pertinent, Wanda?”

  “It means he thinks we’re dumb, Brenda.”

  “That’s not a nice thing to think.”

  I started to crawl backward. It wasn’t an easy thing to do with one arm. Your brain gets used to having a whole body to move around. I was naked, my skin chafing on the rug. A trail of blood and synth fluid followed me.

  Coppelius stared at them, unmoving.

  “Now?”

  “Yes, Brenda, now.”

  The sisters came at Coppelius from either side, moving in slowly. Coppelius stood still. He was content to wait and watch. When Wanda threw a fist into his side, he brought his elbow down on her back. The hollow thunk echoed through the apartment.

  She collapsed on the floor with a grunt.

  I crawled on my hand and knees slowly toward my closet. The three invaders moved around my living room. Slowly, trying to size each other up.

  I could see myself in the dark shine of the closet door. Naked, trembling. One arm gone, ripped out right to the socket. A mixture of dark fluids, some organic, most not, was drying on my side.

  Over my shoulder, I saw Coppelius stagger back into my counter. Wanda coming at him with a baseball bat she’d found in the pile of rubble in the corner. My bat with Zunz’s signature from his first year in the league. One of my few valuable possessions I hadn’t pawned. I could see his scribble on the barrel. She swung it into Coppelius’s leg.

  The closet door slid open. I started rummaging through with my one awkward arm.

  Behind me, the sounds got louder. No intelligible words, no snappy comebacks. Just grunts, thuds, huffs.

  I got to the bottom of the closet and popped the hidden safe. It slid up, untouched. I grabbed the gun. Pulled on a pair of pants. I had to lean against the wall to get them on with one arm and an injured ankle.

  With the gun in my hand, I felt calmer. I was still dizzy, accidentally put too much weight on my twisted ankle and fell into the door, shoulder against the frame. It reopened the wound. Blood spilled out like a burst dam. I didn’t know how long it would take before I passed out.

  I hobbled back to the living room, leaning into the wall for balance. Held the gun with my one hand. But I didn’t know who to shoot. The three of them were a blur of swinging limbs. They moved together, half hugging and half hitting. They looked like one organism merged together in an experiment gone awry.

  Blood covered their clothes, but it was hard to tell who was stained with whom.

  Coppelius got his arms around one of the sisters’ heads and rammed it into the corner of my counter. Wanda. She dropped quick and hard. Brenda was on his back and he pulled her off, tossed her toward her sister, and stepped back a few paces. Lifted the palms of his hands, gesturing for peace.

  “Ladies,” he said, huffing. “This isn’t productive.”

  “Fuck you,” Wanda said.

  Brenda spat a dark red wad on the floor. Her bionics crackled with electricity.

  No one seemed to be looking at me. I’d become an extra in my own movie. I started to stumble, confused, toward the door.

  As I put my hand on the knob, I heard two loud screams follow in quick succession. One was unintelligible. The other was “No!”

  I turned. Coppelius was standing, smiling, with Brenda’s head in his hands. He let go and I saw the head was on wrong. The neck was snapped over, blood starting to gurgle from where a chunk of white bone peeked out of the skin like a child playing hide-and-seek. The rest of Brenda was standing upright, unaware.

  For a second, everything was quiet, calm, and still. No one moved. No one spoke.

  Brenda fell to her knees. She started to moan. Somehow, her cybernetics were keeping her somewhat alive.

  “I don’t feel right, Wanda.” Her voice was faint, robotic. She plopped sideways on the floor.

  Wanda let out a quiet scream.

  Coppelius stood back, arms folded, surveying the scene.

  “Now can we talk?”

  Wanda picked up her sister’s head and turned to me, not seeming to see me, but looking into the space where I was standing in disbelief. Brenda’s eyes were still moving. They didn’t seem to be believing either.

  “No,” Wanda said, quietly and slowly.

  She walked over to the body, collapsed next to it.

  “Sing me your favorite song.”

  “Wanda. It hurts.”

  “The song, Brenda.”

  Wanda held her hand against the neck, trying to hold back the blood.

  Coppelius walked back down the hall toward an arm lying on the ground. My arm. He picked it up. Looked it over as a big game hunter might inspect the horns of his latest kill.

  “The leg bone’s connected to the… hip bone… the arm bone’s connected to the…” Brenda sang. Her words decreased in volume. She trailed off. Her signal was dying.

  She was still.

  Wanda stayed bent over Brenda. Brenda made gurgling noises, then went silent.

  “Now, now,” Coppelius said, waving my arm around like a baseball bat. He pretended to hit a home run, watched the fake ball fly. My arm snapped at the elbow when he swung. “That was fun, but I think it is time for you to take your sister away. Perhaps they can fix her before the flesh dies. Modern medicine is a magical thing.”

  Wanda was hunched over her sister, repeating the same lie over and over. “You’ll be okay, you’ll be okay.” Her breath was coming short and fast. She placed her sister gently back on the floor.

  She let out a low, guttural roar, and spun. She was swinging her arm toward Coppelius, except her bionic hand was open and her fingernails topped with shiny points. At the apex of her swing, the hand detached, flinging through the air. Coppelius was in mid-swing himself, using my arm as the bat.

  Her fingers lodged into Coppelius’s throat. My arm’s shoulder smacked into Wanda’s skull. The first sounded like a knife slicing through a melon. The second like a gigantic egg being cracked on the edge of a pan.

  A microsecond of
silence.

  My arm fell on the floor.

  Wanda toppled over, the bionic half of her head shooting out a tiny, sad spark. She lay flat on the ground. Didn’t even twitch.

  Coppelius was still standing. The detached silver hand was buried into his neck up to the knuckles. Ribbons of bright blood ran down his chest. He took a step to the right, then another step forward.

  Coppelius suddenly seemed to remember me, to notice me. His eyes widened. His head fell to one side. He gurgled something. A bubble of blood on his throat.

  Coppelius fell onto a chair, slumped off onto the floor.

  The room was quiet. I was half dressed, hand on the knob.

  After a second, I went back inside. I made my way to the kitchen sink and ran the water. Cleaned myself off as best as I could while still looking over at the three bodies in the center of the room. They didn’t move.

  My arm was lying on the floor, curled up like a dog on the side of the highway. I couldn’t believe how heavy it was on its own. I placed it in a black bag, put it next to the door.

  Blood as thick as molasses dripped down Coppelius’s neck. His blue eyes were wide open. Pale lips stuck in a snarl. His teeth were straight and white.

  After I was sure he wouldn’t move, I searched him. He didn’t have any money on him. Nothing identifying. Nothing to show he existed at all.

  But he did have one thing I could use. His eye.

  I propped his head up on the couch. Pulled open his eyelid. The skin was still warm and slick with sweat. His eye was larger than a golf ball. Bigger than a human’s. The color was uncanny, a dark blue with silver lines woven through.

  My face was an inch away from his. I scanned his stone-age eye with my bionic one. Duplicated it in my drive.

  Something whimpered behind me.

  Wanda was on her back, looking at me. The right side of her face, the cybernetic side, was smashed inward. A dark and bloody dent for a temple.

  “You?” she whispered.

  I didn’t say anything. One of her hands was moving. Reaching out and patting the floor.

  I walked carefully over. Pushed Brenda’s dead hand toward Wanda’s searching one. She grabbed onto the cold fingers.

  “Brenda.” Her voice was the size of a ball bearing. She looked at the ceiling. “Is she…”

  I still had the gun in my hand. I felt delirious. Half alive. I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  Wanda got to her knees, slowly, and crawled over. She looked back at me. One of her eyes was swollen shut. The other, mechanical one, glared with a mixture of pleading and hatred. She lifted her sister’s body up, knees shaking.

  I nodded toward the still-open door.

  Neither of us said anything. Wanda just dragged her sister out of the apartment while I watched, leaning into a wall, barely conscious. The door closed. Then I fell.

  40

  THE AMBER FLUID

  The human body has over two hundred bones, around eighty organs, and at least twenty-two square feet of surface area. I was missing some of that, but every bit that remained was in pain. As if a thousand tiny hammers were smacking each part of me. I felt worse than I’d ever felt before. At least when I could feel.

  I’d wake up, ache, pass out.

  I don’t know how long I was in this state. Each minute felt like a day, each hour a lifetime.

  A vat of amber fluid. Black tubes inserted into different parts of my torso. When I tried to swim, the fluid was so thick I could barely move. I’d tire. Close my eyes again.

  While I blinked in and out, life went on somewhere. America was tuning in to the biggest sporting event in decades. The Monsanto Mets versus the Pyramid Pharmaceuticals Sphinxes had everything from late-game heroics to revolutionary science. I learned later President Newman declared each game a national holiday. “It’s time for Americans to come together, pick a side, and hope the other guy gets his ass kicked.”

  With Zunz back, the Mets were revived. Lex Dash opened with a home run over right field, which got snatched out of the air by an umpire drone before it could concuss a fan on the fourth level. The Sphinxes cleanup man, “Regular” Gregor McGregor, answered with a line drive through the middle in the second. Two runs batted in. It went back and forth, the Sphinxes and Mets trading runs, balls flying around the stadium like fat, angry hornets.

  The Mets stabilized when Olivia Doro took over the mound. Her sinkers pinned down the Sphinxes lineup, and a timely double from R-Rod put the Mets in the lead. In the postgame interview, Doro held up her glove, which was crusted with blood. “I cut my hand this morning, but played through. If Zunz can bleed for this team, so can I.”

  The Mets were up three games to two, the whole World Series in their sights.

  But the Sphinxes came to the Meadows two nights later for game six looking determined. They’d stopped being rattled by the return of Zunz. From the game six replays I later watched, dreary and half drugged, it seemed the whole team had been juiced up with ampers. They were practically blurs on the field. The Mets batted well, even with Zunz still on the injured list. He hadn’t played in game five either. The Mouth promised he’d be back in time for game seven, if the Mets couldn’t close out in six. They didn’t. The Sphinxes took advantage of an exhausted Mets bullpen and lit up the scoreboard in the seventh and eighth, with home runs from Malone, Yoon, and McGregor.

  Three games apiece. Everything on the line for game seven.

  With each game, the public fervor grew. The country was divided, half rooting for the underdog Mets and their revived player, half backing the Sphinxes and whispering conspiracies about how quickly Zunz had come back. There were rumors that Zunz wasn’t Zunz. That he was an android replica or else another player who’d received extensive surgery to look just like him. Sports shows brought on cosmetic surgeons and gene sculptors who debated every motion and muscle in slow-motion replays. But the Mets did a live DNA test before game five and it was a perfect match.

  Zunz himself didn’t say anything. The Mets wouldn’t let reporters near him. Still, most of the public was astounded with his resolve.

  “I had the skin fever last year, Skip, along with twenty percent of the country. I was out for three months,” a Mets sportscaster said. “I couldn’t even sit my butt in this chair and talk into a microphone. And here Zunz comes back from the dead and is looking like a potential MVP?”

  “It’s remarkable. The kid is a pro, but you have to hand it to the Mets and their absolutely stacked lab team.”

  “If you’re listening, Mr. Mouth, can I have what Zunz is having? Ha ha ha.”

  As game seven loomed, Mets and Sphinxes products were flying off the kiosks. Both biopharms were setting fourth-quarter records. Game seven was projected to be the most watched game in sports history since the Subterranean Super Bowl.

  Meanwhile, I didn’t know any of this. Didn’t know anything. Just floated in the blackness of my aching body. Until they woke me up.

  41

  THE COLD SHOWER

  Well, look who’s finished his catnap.”

  I was slouched on a cold, hard floor. The gummy liquid around me was draining away. I was shivering. I opened my eyes as the last few inches of amber fluid disappeared between my legs. I couldn’t tell where I was. The glass walls were smudged with residue. The air smelled antiseptic. I eventually got myself upright, leaning against the back of the tank.

  A blurry figure moved toward me, slowly coming into focus. I tried to speak. Spat up a mouthful of gelatinous fluid. Tried again.

  “Hi, Lila.”

  “Hi, you jerk,” Lila said. She yelled over her shoulder. “He’s up.”

  Another blurry figure approached the tank. Dolores, wearing a black jumpsuit and a half smile. She walked up and spread her palm on the tank glass.

  “You look like shit, Kobo.”

  “Feel like it too,” I said.

  “You’re about to feel worse. Brace yourself,” Lila said.

  A man in a dirty white smock, apparentl
y the doctor, twisted a nozzle on the side of the tank. Freezing water poured down on me. Pushed me to the floor. Rinsed me clean.

  “This hospital is freezing,” I said.

  The man in the smock unlatched a hole in the side of the tank and reached in with a gloved hand. Shot a stimulant into my arm. It raced through my veins. I stood up, still leaning into the wall. My heart was beating like it wanted to crack through my ribs.

  A large metal claw descended from the ceiling with flexible talons that looped around my waist. I was lifted and deposited on the concrete floor.

  “I’m always telling you to stop running away from your problems, Kobo. You just run into other ones.” Dolores wrapped me in a large white robe. Rubbed me up and down on both sides. It felt rough on my skin, despite the tenderness of her movements. She smiled. Her eyes were hidden under white goggles. “I’ve been telling you that for years.”

  The doctor poked me here and there. Ran the blood through an analyzer. Tallied up my vitals. Gave me the go-ahead to keep staying alive.

  “Your heart should settle down in a couple minutes. You’ll need to hydrate and receive a booster injection in either the upper arm or the posterior every six hours.”

  Dolores took the syringes from the doctor and slid them in her pocket.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Did you forget telling us that my dad was a clone?” Lila said. “And then not answering any of our calls? We came over to your apartment to yell at you for being an asshole. You were half naked and sleeping on the floor. Blood everywhere. It was gross.”

  I laughed, hacked up another globule of amber goo. “I got in a bit of a scuffle.”

  “Your super took us up,” Dolores said. “I guess he likes you. He helped us carry you out before the cops came.”

  “Stan is a good guy.”

  “I’m afraid the police sealed off your apartment. We can’t go back.”

  “Yeah, well, it was mostly garbage left in there anyway.”

  I felt a great hunger squirming inside me. As if I hadn’t eaten in a thousand years. “Is there anything to eat?”