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by BA Tortuga
legs went all scarecrow stuffed with straw, and he kinda
plopped on the floor.
"You should be careful. Your knees aren't working." He
headed over to the freezer, staring down at the top. Ding
Dongs and juice boxes. Okay. "Are you hungry?"
"No?" Not that Neil sounded sure at all. "What's wrong,
Paddy?"
"I..." Well, really, nothing, because if something was
wrong he'd be wigged out and he wasn't, or if he was, he
couldn't tell, and if he couldn't tell, then he wasn't really
wigged, right? That sort of worked. "I had juice and then I
woke up."
"Oh. They must have drugged you again. Whatever they
gave me seems to have stopped the truly frightening
nausea." A warm weight landed against his legs and when he
looked down Neil was sort of. Well. Huddling against him. He
could crawl, at least.
"Are you okay? I was going to take the freezer apart."
That's right. He was going to find the uh ... long, pointy thing
before Neil's knees distracted him. He smoothed down Neil's
hair, just petting a little.
"I'm a bit off. So are you. You're ... flat. Barely making a
sound. It's disturbing." That accent made Neil sound so
matter-of-fact and normal.
"Uh-huh." He stared at his hand in Neil's hair. It didn't feel
like his hand. It felt like someone else's hand going through
someone else's hair. Of course, he didn't know what someone
else's hand felt like and the hair was someone else's. That
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sort of made him wonder if his hair felt like his own or
someone else's...
"There you are." Neil sounded like he was smiling. Oh, he
was. Yay. "So why are you taking apart the freezer?"
"Freon. Haloalkanes heated in a copper tubing become
phosgene. If they breathe it, they'll choke and gag." At least
he thought so. It shouldn't kill them, really. Unless he was
remembering wrong...
"Who are they? Did you manage to talk to them?" Neil sort
of rubbed on him like a cat.
"Boomer and another guy that I don't know. I don't think
he was in the program with us. I think I would have
remembered someone like that." Big. The not-Boomer guy
was really, really big. "They said they had to do something
with us."
"Paddy, my love. Who is Boomer?" Hadn't he told Neil who
Boomer was? Of course, Neil had been really sick. Like
making him worried Neil's intestines would come out sick.
Which, ew. And not just a little ew, but ew enough to sort of
poke through the fuzzy, happy shit.
"We were in the program together. In school. Not for long,
well, I mean, together, not in school. He's older."
"Ah. That intensive school you attended. Right. And they
need to do something with us. Well, I suppose it was just a
matter of time..."
"Well, yes, except no." Paddy was fairly sure the problem
was because Boomer knew him. It also explained why he
hadn't been shot, though, which wasn't a problem. "What was
a matter of time?"
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"So how do we get out of this basement, love?" Neil tried
to crawl up him, but ended up in a pile on the floor again.
"Well, bugger. Why on earth won't they work?"
"I don't know. They worked before. Let me look." God, he
hoped he didn't need that screwdriver. Neil's knees looked
fine. Not like the bones or joints had been taken out, which
he wouldn't put past Boomer. But there was no gooeyness.
So. It had to be something not fixable with a screwdriver.
Well, woo. "Maybe you should have a juice box."
His ma used to give those to all of them when they got hot
and dizzy and ... "We're in the desert."
"Are we? How extraordinary. Yes, I think I could have a
juice and a Ding Dong. Maybe the sugar will get my brain
working again." He'd have to get them, though. Neil couldn't
get up.
"Okay. You stay there. You have that knee thing."
Maybe he'd trip over the screwdriver on the way to the
freezer.
"All right, then." Neil sort of lolled, watching him, hands
moving restlessly over the floor.
He slid the snacks and the juice over, then dug in the
freezer for more Popsicles and ... Spinach. Ew. No. Blech. Oh,
maybe there'd be a big chicken. Oh. Oh. Chicken gun. He'd
always wanted to build one of those.
"Why a chicken?"
Oh, hey, Neil was like, getting back to normal.
"Airplanes. And because they're dead already." Neil sort of
gave him a look, so he kept on. "The government shoots
chickens at airplanes to make sure seagulls can't crash
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through and folks get all huffy if you kill birds just to shoot
them."
Besides, seagull gun sounded stupid.
"Oh, you mean a gun that shoots chickens. I thought you
meant..." He got a sudden image of a dressed roasting
chicken shooting little bombs out its cavity.
"No, the air pressure that would take would just be
insane." He stopped.
Frowned.
Huh.
That was weird. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]