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The stink that came from the tortured man was stomach-churning. He was like a corpse exhumed from a grave, his body a breeding ground of diseases known and unknown. One bicep showed bare bone poking through rotting hamburger. His abdomen had been hollowed out, his stomach and intestines gone, and in their place a black pit oozing pus and blood.
He did not know Shade was there. His face was still covered by the cushion that muffled his screams. Shade dreaded removing the cushion and seeing his face, but this was not about her delicate sensibilities. The man was writhing in hell.
She sliced through the duct tape and tossed the cushion away.
“Please God, please God, please God!” the man cried, his voice faint and ragged from too many such screams and cries.
“Listen to me,” Shade said. She squatted on the slanted top of the booth, and looked at the place where his eyes should be, but his eyes were gone, consumed by voracious bacteria and viruses that had eaten so far through his left eye that Shade saw pink brain tissue.
He should be dead. If there was any pity left in this new world, he would be dead.
Shade leaped clear of the booth and made it to a place out of sight behind a pillar and vomited. She was back before the tortured man could have noticed her absence. Then again, he hadn’t noticed her presence.
Shade slowed her voice till to her own ears it sounded like molasses. “I’m here to help you. Where is Vector?”
“Kill me, please, please, please have mercy!”
“I need you to answer me! Where is Vector?”
Shade felt exposed and vulnerable standing still for so long, but the man was in no state to be answering questions, and she had to take her time with him.
“Vector. Where is he?”
“He’s everywhere! He’s inside me! Oh, God, help me!”
Nothing was going to penetrate this brutalized mind. Nothing. With one possible exception.
Dekka did it when she had to.
Still, Shade hesitated. It was one thing to be in a fight, and to try to not take a life, but do so nevertheless. This wasn’t a fight.
No, but it is a war.
“Answer my questions and I’ll help you.”
“Kill me, please, please, God, oh please.” The words came so very slowly to Shade, and she could hear desperation in every single syllable. Utter despair.
“All right,” Shade said. “I’ll end it for you. But you have to tell me: Where is Vector?”
“I-I-I—don’t lie to me. You have to swear!”
“I swear.”
“Washington. I heard him say Washington. Now do it! Please, I’m begging . . .”
“How would Vector get to Washington?” Shade wondered, picturing a massive insect cloud flying south
.
“Train. Train in Jersey. Now! Do it now!”
“Do you want to pray or anything?” Those words coming out my mouth! “Before I . . . do it . . . would you like to say a prayer or something?”
“Prayer?” He lolled his horrifying face toward her. “Do you think I haven’t prayed? Do you think I haven’t begged God to let me die?” His voice was raw, savage, a voice rising up from the pit.
Shade tightened her grip on the knife, and with one swift sideways swipe, she cut through his throat till the blade scraped spine. Then she reversed direction, severing the spinal cord completely.
The man’s head fell, bounced down the slanted roof, hit the marble floor, and rolled once, heavily. It came to rest with its face blessedly pointed away.
