The Parasite War Read online

  She was sharp. "Yeah, I need some ammo," he admitted, "but now I don't have anything left to trade."

  "You gave me all your valuables, did you? I should be flattered." He liked the throaty way she said that. "Look, come with me, and I'll get you some bullets."

  "You'd do that?" He didn't have many rounds left.

  "Why not? I could use a partner."

  "Like a pimp, you mean?" Alex asked sourly.

  "No, a partner. I can do other things besides selling my body, you know."

  He felt like a jerk. "Sorry. I didn't mean to insult you."

  "Forget it." She sat up, pulled on a tattered jersey and stuffed a few items into a navy blue backpack. "You want to come?"

  He shrugged. "Why not?"

  As soon as they were both dressed, they ate half a can of beans and headed east. Jo took the lantern, since their route frequently led them through total darkness. Along the way they talked a little about the old days. Alex learned that Jo had been a social worker, and she seemed amused when he told her that he had worked in the city planner's office. Their destination, half an hour away through a series of interconnected passageways, was the Suburban Station Concourse underlying much of Philadelphia's Center City. Abandoned shops and restaurants lined the subterranean corridors, leading to the decaying commuter train station. The silent tunnels provided quick escape routes should colloids interrupt the bartering in this makeshift marketplace.

  Alex and Jo walked up the broken concrete steps of the subway and saw a few people, most of them hiding in the shadows of the wrecked shops. All of them were armed.

  "How's business, Jo?" a grizzled, gray-haired black man asked as they approached him. He sat with his back against the wall, resting his one arm on a stack of boxes. Alex had seen him before, but had never done business with him.

  "Not bad, Victor. Got a sucker right here." She smiled at the one-armed man.

  Alex looked carefully at her. Was she joking? Or was she so sure of herself that she dared to mock him?

  "That man don't look like no sucker to me," Victor said, pointing his stump at Alex. "That's Alex Ward . . . and he's bad."

  "He won't be bad for long, not unless you can sell me some bullets for that popgun he's got with him."

  "Ingram nine? We might be able to do business."

  It had never occurred to Alex that this guy would sell ammo. He was still learning, it seemed.

  "I don't mind selling bullets to heroes," said Victor, "but I got to eat, too."

  "You'll be able to get some food with this." Jo took out the picture and handed it to Victor.

  "Pretty," he said.

  "More than pretty," Jo replied. "That's real gold."

  "Yeah, but it ain't got the value it once had."

  "People still want it."

  "Not when they got colloids crawling up they ass, they don't."

  "Victor, don't give me that crap. You can get a lot of food with this, and a lot of ammo. You know that people want gold as much as they ever did."

  Victor smiled, a beautiful, friendly smile. "Can't bullshit you Society Hill mamas about gold, I guess."

  Jo stood with hands on hips, waiting to hear his offer. Alex tried to keep from laughing.

  "I can give you two boxes."

  "Two boxes! That won't last five minutes in a fire fight."

  "If you can get it someplace else . . . "

  Grudgingly, Jo shook her head and handed the photograph to Victor. They had all known that she would give in from the start. Nobody manufactured ammunition anymore, so its value went up steadily. It was, quite literally, as good as gold. Better, in fact.

  "I meet you back here in a couple hours with the ammo," Victor said.

  "Right now I need some kerosene," Jo said.

  "Got that right here," Victor replied, moving the boxes around until he found one containing six stoppered glass bottles. He handed a bottle to her, and she stuffed it into her backpack along with the lantern.

  "Are you gonna let him keep the picture without any collateral?" Alex said, feeling duty bound to comment on the apparent tenuousness of the deal.

  Victor raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

  "You can trust him," said Jo. "Don't worry."

  Victor stood up and stretched. "Be cool, hear?" He walked away, his footsteps echoing through the nearly empty Concourse.

  "Want to take a look up top?" Alex said a few minutes later. He had never been good at waiting patiently.

  "Now?" Jo looked a little nervous.

  "No time like the present." Some action would do him good, and he wanted to see how Jo would handle herself up on the street. She had selected him for a partner, but he didn't know for sure if she was good enough to work with him.

  She looked at him earnestly. "Okay,"

  They came up the stairs at Penn Center, across the street from City Hall. The giant clothespin statue lay broken on its side, part of it extending into the street. The colonnades of City Hall still stood, but the tower and the statue of William Penn had been destroyed by rocket fire during the war, in a vain attempt to wipe out the colloids before it was too late.

  "I used to work on the fourth floor over there," Alex said.

  "Oh, yeah?"

  "What happened to your husband, the architect?" Alex asked as they were crossing the street.

  "He woke up one morning with a growth on his chest," Jo said with controlled emotion. "He made an appointment with a dermatologist. They said they could squeeze him in next week. That was on Friday. He came home from his golf game early on Saturday. By midnight on Sunday, the colloid covered his chest. It ate him alive."

  Alex felt a constriction in his throat. "That's pretty much what happened to my wife and kid."

  They walked silently through the abandoned plaza, watching for movement. The sun was warm, Indian summer weather. A breeze moved dust lazily across the cracked pavement of 15th Street.

  "Been in City Hall lately?" Alex asked.

  Jo seemed a little annoyed at his bravado. "Not in the past three years," she said, referring to the time since the colloids had taken over. "I like it better in the sewer."

  "Some people said that before the war."

  "I would have thought we'd see a colloid or two by now," Jo said.

  "Why? There's not much food for them around here, not above ground. This neighborhood's been deserted for a long time."

  They entered through an arch and moved cautiously into the passageway at the south entrance to City Hall, opposite Broad Street. Limestone boulders stood embedded in detritus, the remains of the fallen tower. They climbed over these to reach the open square at the building's heart. On the east side, Alex noticed a metal door that had always been locked before; he had failed to force it open on more than one occasion.

  Nevertheless, it was ajar now.

  "Somebody's been in there," he said softly. "Looks like they bent the door when they smashed the lock, and now they can't get it completely shut."

  They approached the door, finding that it opened easily. When they saw what was in the dark storeroom beyond, they wished that they had left it alone.

  A man lay on the floor, gasping and shuddering. A colloid sucked at him, clinging to his torso from crotch to throat. A pseudopod stretched across the right side of his face, and through the clear, pulsing gel, the corroding muscles of his jaw worked visibly.

  The colloid, sensing their presence, oozed off the dying man in a pink gout, slurping toward a rusted vent.

  "Burn it!" the dying man cried.

  "Jo, the kerosene!" Alex fired a burst in front of the colloid to slow it down, as Jo yanked the jar out of her backpack and tossed it to him. Cradling the Ingram in the crook of his left arm, Alex unstopped the bottle and splashed it onto the colloid. The colloid heaved and flattened against the wall.

  Alex reached inside his shirt and withdrew a tiny box. He smiled as he felt its dryness. Opening it and pulling out a match, he snapped his thumbnail against the matchhead. The light of t
he match flared in the dim light, revealing tools and cable spools. The acrid smell of sulphur stung his nostrils.

  While it still burned, Alex tossed the match at the colloid. A shrill, unearthly scream filled the cramped space as the crawling thing went up in flames, writhing and blackening, shivering and shrinking into a charred, black heap. Its scream faded as it was consumed, until it was silent. An almost intolerable stench filled the storeroom. Black snowflakes fell around Jo and Alex as they tried to comfort the dying man.

  "Didn't think they'd be downtown anymore," the man said, his words distorted through mutilated lips. It was hard to look at him, despite all the colloid hosts Alex had seen. "Thought they were gone."

  "So did we, man," Alex said. "There's always one around, though, God damn it."

  Jo stroked the man's head, where it had not been eaten away by the colloid.

  "Fire," the dying man said. "The only way to deal with them."

  Alex nodded as the dying man sighed. His ribs showed through translucent flesh. Veins and arteries pulsed sluggishly. His liver was clearly visible.

  "Kill me," he said.

  Alex did not hesitate. "Jo, you don't have to watch. Go on outside."

  She looked straight at him. A tear glistened in the corner of one eye. "We're partners," she said. "I'll stay."

  He nodded, gently pulling her away from the dying man. He stood over the shuddering, prostrate form and said, "I'm sorry."

  "Me, too," said the dying man.

  Alex shot him in the heart.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It didn't take long to get back to Suburban Station, and Victor was waiting as he had promised.

  "Everything cool?" he asked, seeing in their faces that something had happened.

  "We ran into a colloid having lunch," Alex said.

  Victor nodded. "How far gone?"

  "Half way. It died of indigestion, though."

  Smiling, Victor said, "Heartburn?"

  "Right. Your kerosene came in handy."

  "Too bad it's in short supply." Victor withdrew two boxes of ammunition from a sack. "But not as short as these."

  It was better than nothing, Alex thought grimly as he accepted the bullets. He would have to scour the underground for more ammunition . . . after he secured something to buy it with. Life could be a bitch.

  "Tell you the truth, man," Victor said. "It's the best I could do."

  "Sure, Victor," Jo said. "You aren't hoarding anything, are you?"

  "Babe, would I hold out on you?" Victor smiled broadly.

  Jo grinned, too. "Someday I'll find out where your stash is. You'll go there to get a few goodies and find yourself cleaned out."

  "Shee-it." Victor leaned back against the wall and wiped his brow with a red handkerchief. "The way things are going, it probably don't much matter."

  Concerned, Jo reached out and placed her palm on his forehead. "You've got a temperature, Vic. Better find some place to lie down."

  "Yeah. Felt a little misery this morning, but I thought it would go away."

  "Do you think it might be a colloid?" Alex asked.

  "Please don't say that," Jo said.

  "It's all right," Victor told her. "That's a question has to be asked when anybody gets sick." He looked at Alex. "Truth is, man, I don't know. Might just be a regular virus. Might be one of them slimy muffugs. I can't tell."

  "Better get moving," Alex said. "You'll be easy prey if you get too weak."

  "I got a ways to go to my crib." Victor's eyes were very red. He was clearly feeling worse every minute.

  "Maybe we better take you back to my place," said Jo. "Keep an eye on you."

  "You don't mind?"

  "Come on, man." Alex gave him a hand, grasping Victor's one arm.

  "You know," Victor said as they went underground. "We be lucky to live here. Some cities got no tunnels underneath. No place to hide from them creepy-crawlies."

  "That's right," said Alex, wondering if delirium was setting in.

  "Way I figure it, most everybody's dead in those places. Maybe we're like rats living in the sewers, but at least we're living."

  "Yes, at least we're living," Jo repeated.

  They made their way along the rusted tracks until Jo pointed to the shaft above, which was practically invisible even in the lantern light. They climbed up, Victor having some difficulty, and crept through to the sewer on the other side. The entire city, on both sides of the Schuylkill River, had been built over a system of passageways, steam vents, gas lines, and tunnels, something of a subterranean city in itself. Most of those who had lived aboveground knew little about this dark labyrinth before the colloids came, but the less fortunate street people had been well acquainted with Philadelphia's underworld. Maybe that was why so many of them were still alive.

  "Man, it's getting worse," Victor said, gasping. "I don't like to whine, but I'm really feeling sick. I don't know if I can make it much longer."

  "We'll be there soon," Jo said.

  "All right."

  Five minutes later, they were helping Victor up into her—their—nest. Victor lay back, breathing heavily, sweat droplets like pearls on his forehead.

  "Hanging in there, man?" Alex asked.

  "Still alive," Victor said, but his voice was weak and tremulous.

  Alex sensed that a bad end was coming for Jo's friend. He could not be certain, but it looked as if Victor might be infected by a colloid.

  Closing his eyes, Victor tried to sleep. After only a few minutes, however, he lurched toward the vent opening. He hung his head over the edge and vomited into the slowly moving water below.

  "Don't worry," he said, gasping and falling back on the piled rags. "It's biodegradable."

  Alex and Jo tried to smile, understanding just what a brave man he was. The odds were that he was being eaten from the inside out by an alien organism, and here he was making jokes at his own expense.

  "Know how I lost this?" Victor asked, raising the stump of his right arm. "One of them bastards infected me two years ago. I cut that muffug off myself, man."

  Jo was weeping now, softly.

  "Always knew they was gonna get me again, sooner or later."

  "You can't be sure," Jo said, sniffing and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

  "I'm sure." Victor looked right at her. "This time it's deep inside me, though. In my guts. No way to cut it out."

  "Jesus," said Alex.

  "I want you to do something for me."

  "Name it."

  "Kill me."

  Shit, Alex thought. Two in one fucking day. And though he hardly knew this man, it pained him to have to do it. This wretched world needed more men with Victor's balls. "It'll be clean," said Alex.

  "Thanks."

  Alex nodded, and Victor closed his eyes. When it became apparent that he had lost consciousness, Jo said, "How can we be certain? There's so much disease in the world, and no medicine to stop the contagion. It could be anything."

  "Jo, he didn't get this from eating green apples. He's got a colloid inside him. Do you think he would say what he did if he wasn't positive?"

  "He's delirious. He said himself that he lost his arm to a colloid. Maybe he's just got a fever and thinks he's infected."

  Alex had to admit that it was possible. "We'll wait a little while longer, then. But you know how quick it can be past the initial stage. We'll have to keep a vigil."

  "Don't worry. I'll stay with him."

  "We both will, Jo. Like you said, we're in it together."

  She managed a wan smile. Shaking a few drops of clean water from a canteen onto a rag, she gently wiped Victor's face.

  "He's so hot."

  Alex said nothing. Leaning against the wall, he waited for the inevitable. The Ingram was in his lap.

  * * *

  Alex heard people talking, a man and a woman. They seemed to be far away, at the bottom of a well. He was in the psycho ward, sure as shit stinks. Thirteen Thompson, as it was so esoterically called. The th
irteenth floor of the Thompson Wing of Jefferson University Hospital. The nut house. He couldn't get into the veterans' hospital because this wasn't service related. That was why he was here. But no, he wasn't in any hospital. He must have been dozing, heard the nurses out in the hall, or something. A man and a woman. No, there was water dripping.