Chapter 2 – City Slickers
“Get off that damn Tic-Tok and take out the trash!” yelled her dad from the living room between sips of beer.
“Mmmmhhm.” You should get off your sorry ass and do it yourself. Monique complies, mumbled loudly from her perch at the bottom of the stairs of their urban row home. Busily scrolling her phone screen with her left hand she shuffles over to the waste can, fighting with the plastic can liner with her right. Freed from the can, she drags the garbage bag across the linoleum in the kitchen, the cans rattling a tune along their journey. Scroll, scroll, scroll. The door creaks as she bumps the tattered screen open with her knee, tugging the tear in the screen larger just a bit more. Trash bag lurching along the floor as she drags it over the threshold; slumping down on to the brick stoop following her to the sidewalk.
From the chair in front of the television, “And don’t let the door…”
“SLAM! SLam, slam”…it bounces shut.
She lives in a suburb of Chicago, near the Des Plains River, on the edge of town where the block row homes meet the concrete riverbank that was once part of the canal. Across the river as local children referred to it - more like a drainage ditch that never quite dries up - is a Nature Preserve. Its pristine overgrowth is guarded by an eight-foot hurricane face topped with razor wire and plastered with wind-blown fast food wrappers and cups. Monique releases the bag at the curb, it slouches into place alongside the battered galvanized trash bin, already overflowing with pigeon picked bags. Eyes plastered to her phone she stumbles down the concrete embankment on her side of the river, steps across a few bits of garbage laying moist in the trickle of putrid summer runoff laying in the middle, then up the grass tufted rock embankment on the other side. Shrouded by the electric night of the city, she squats down, back leaning against the fence with the glare from her screen illuminating her dour face. Scrolling through various videos, occasionally her expression twitching with appreciation of her social media feed. Pressing play on a short video, scantily clad dancers jump into camera and begin gyrating on screen: it dims a bit, returning then again, stepping down darker to near unviewable. “Dang eye saving auto darkening setting”, but then it dims again to black, appearing dead. She sighs, swipes down to the brightness control setting intending to override the eye protection and bring up the brightness. The screen flickers on again to show the menu.
The slider is full bright? “Stupid piece of…”
“SMASH!” – she slams her phone onto an unsuspecting nearby rock. Springing to her feet, her foot rains down on its flickering screen; following up with a soccer goal punt scoring points for her team into a stagnant puddle of trash and algae. Satisfied with her destruction, she spins on her heels towards home. A prick of obscene greenish-pink color pulls her attention to the fence line. Where she was seated leaned up against the forlorn wire fence thick tendrils of plant stalk formed a silhouette of her. As she watches them, they seem to twist leisurely outward. Buds rapidly forming, then popping into peculiar graceful flowers in a calliope of colors she does not know a name for. Her head cocked to the left slightly, she watches as a dozen more buds explode into reality. Gliding slowly forward, raising her outstretched fingers toward the obscenely beautiful flowers. They are each the size of her head and seem to be… glowing? Illuminated flecks of pollen curl out from each, spiraling into the air and delivering a sweet scent to Monique’s nose and an exciting, dizzying feeling to her mind. She moves closer, worshiping on bended knee as a finger of her left hand brushes the petals of one of the flowers encircling the shrine to her previous location. She remembers the creamy softness of the touch - before waking up in her bed.
Monique flutters her eyes open, a slight headache creeps in from behind them. “Unnngh.” How did I get here? “What happened?” She mumbles, sitting up in her bed, noticing she somehow changed clothes to her night shirt. Rolling over to her window, squinting from the morning brightness blazing through open shades; she peers down to the river and across to the Nature Preserve. She can just make out her cell phone still laying in the muck and the place where she last remembers being. The wire fence line completely overgrown, no flowers.
“Monique!! Come get your breakfast now or you will be late for school!” Her father bellows up from the kitchen.
The fog in her head slowing her down a bit as she throws on ragged jeans and a sweatshirt depicting a glittery kitten working a mixing table, DJ style with over the ear headphones on. Hopping to put on one shoe than the other as she makes her way down the stairs nearly falling with each hop. She struggles to pull on her left shoe. My finger tip is green! Examining her hand, fingers outstretched, flipping it over and over, rotating around the axis of a single green fingertip. Flexing her hand a few times; it seems to move properly. The first finger on her left hand appears hazy green, as if it had been stained by juice mix - she immediately about-faces back up. After wrapping her fingertip with a bandage; satisfied it looks perfectly plain, she is back on her way downstairs to breakfast.
“Hey honey, how did you sleep?” Asks her father as she grabs for a few slices of peanut butter toast. He places a glass of orange juice in her hand with the bandaged finger.
“Yea dad, just great.”
“What happened to your finger?”
“Oh… I… Um… cut it… on my cell phone screen.” Maybe.
“You broke your phone!?!? A-gain?” He turns to face her, exposing the look of disappointment.
“I gotta go to school.”
She puts down her empty glass on the counter, puts the peanut butter toast in her mouth, and heads out the front door.
“And don’t let the door…”
“SLAM! SLam, slam”…it bounces shut.
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“What’s with your creepy finger? Creep!” Sneered an older boy as she passes by in the lunchroom. His cronies seated around him join in with background laughter. Not able to hide her hand while carrying her lunch tray, he noticed it while she was passing by his table. She had been pretending to be right handed all day, left hand living in her pocket. The green haze had grown down her finger and spread halfway across her hand covering her thumb and middle finger completely. She graces her antagonists with a sneer of discontent, continuing on to a seat by herself with her left hand towards the wall to hide it.
“I bet it’s hard to eat with the correct hand lefty!” The boys had made their way to her table, the lackies surround her; the red headed, pock faced leader sat directly across. Cornered.
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“Leave me alone.” She responds quietly, eyes down, hands on her lap.
Laughter.
The boy snorts through his nose, guggles up through his throat, standing up from his bench seat, leans over her tray letting the regurgitated snot slowly descend onto her tepid lunch. She feels the anger well up from the pit of her stomach, her face going red, her left hand begins throbbing with pain. She jumps to her feet sending her bench seat flying backwards to slam into the window to the cafeteria shattering it. Her feet become heavy as she slams her fists into the table and growls at the boy, face only inches from hers she can smell his rancid breath as he mockingly laughs harder at her.
“What are you going to do? Loooooser!”
She anchors her feet to the ground her muscles tense as she prepares for a fight. Her left hand whips up to jam an angry finger in his face. But all that is there is a polychromatic flower, colors pulsing with her enraged breathing.
“Nice magic trick, freak” the crowd that has gathered erupts into laughter, cell phones recording the exchange of infantile rhetoric.
A throbbing pain wells up through the sinuous muscles of her arm. The energy reaches her hand erupting out into a barrage of barbed vines spreading in a starburst of plant matter. Each vine impaling first the boys in her immediate proximity, then each member of the camera crew of students before recoiling back to wrap around her. Students dropping to the ground, their blood amassing around them, Monique becoming mummified as each vine is satisfied with its mark, binding her in place, finger still extended with the ridiculous, beautiful flower blooming from point of first contact.
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“Breaking news tonight… a West city middle school had a bizarre massacre by a topiary this afternoon.” The screen flashes from Diane’s polished, made-up stern expression to a pasted together copy of the various live streams that were being broadcast during the incident. Clips changing just before showing the owner being brutally impaled. The final image is of a plant in the shape of a girl, single arm outstretched and pointing at nothing in particular. Roots from her legs pressed passed a pile of bodies through the concrete floor, breaking it to the substrate and spreading along its surface to drink up the offered crimson liquids.
“Thanks Diane. The police have issued a statement securing the school until further notice telling people to stay away while investigations are underway.” Frank grins at the camera.
“Looks like a nice long weekend for the kiddos!” At home audiences can almost hear the “ding” off Frank’s teeth as his wide smile breaches the orange-tan of his face. The two announcers look directly at each other, she mirrors his expression.
“That’s right Frank, did you see the silly hat on top of the massive plant, it looks ridiculous!”
“Ha ha ha ha ha,” they laugh together.
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The few live stream videos went locally viral following the news report, hashtags enabled government to find and delete associated posts within the hour. Within an hour of the incident city police investigators called for federal intervention. The FBI arrived with a construction crew; they immediately erected a wall made of pre-fabricated, twelve foot high concrete sections around the building. The following day, Monique’s father was visited by two non-descript people in grey business suits, he was told she was a victim and given a sizeable check for his troubles; he stopped drinking beer turning to whiskey. Media sources immediately lost interest and turned to memes of cats and dance battle videos.
The public was never made aware of the biohazard containment unit erected behind the wall. The wall’s outer surface was donated to the local outreach program where it was used to display the work local street artists. As the art display rapidly grew, nobody took notice of Ahmeed and his coworkers accessing the shadowed door on the North side of the complex. The simple looking rusty door with its thumb latch handle, mechanically powered to make the swing effortless actuated by the print reader hidden on the latch. It is backed with layers of ballistic steel opening inward, a book printed on thick steel instead of paper. It’s frame, over fourteen inches thick accommodating multiple pages. It’s action is as if dominoes fell over to the left allowing access, then set themselves back to make contact with the frame again, with a soft hiss followed by a gentle sucking pop.
Past the vault door, Ahmeed births himself through the iris of the plastic barrier door sucking along his body, entering the first clean room. He drops off his wallet, keys, cell phone and all other personal items in the RFID secure locker assigned to him. Turning, he presses though the next plastic iris barrier wall. This chamber is filled with biohazard protection suits, complete with air recirculating umbilicus and waste disposal connections. Groaning at the thought of the invasive garments, he struggles his on anyway. The suits are mounted in the wall, he steps through the oval back of the suit into the legs, then ducks under the top of the oval head first so he may align the facilities located below the waist and then close the back. Free from lavatory concerns, Ahmeed opens the suit supply and return valves located across the chest of his suit and steps away from the wall into the observation chamber. Dragging the umbilicus behind him, he gingerly steps around the previously high school students to the workbench airlock to retrieve the sterile sampling tools. He waves to Kate on the other side of the glass. They have no voice communications. The previous scientists found out the hard way that the organism is reactive to electronics. Kate and Ahmeed have never met in person nor have the spoken, all information is passed via secure digital networks on approved devices prior to arrival at the facility. The volatile nature of this organism has made it necessary that all procedures are memorized precisely before personnel are instructed to access the facility.
Ready to get to work, Ahmeed gives Kate the thumbs up and turns with a large step over a motionless clean suit filled with One of his dead predecessors who attempted to take photographs of the organism with an infra-red camera. She was the last scientist to die from electronics use. The theory was not quite clear as to how sensitive the organism was yet. Ahmeed passed the first scientist to die, laying face up to Ahmeed’s left. This scientist had a cellular phone in his pocket, a huge breach of protocol for Top Secret space access. Shortly after his death, the RFID storage lockers showed up. The third to go was who Ahmeed directly replaced; his body was up ahead, still slumped over the organism’s main body, suspended by what they have labeled as the “stalk” which protrudes from the center body like an arm holding a single flower. The bodies have been able to be removed, concerns of contamination have been paramount; punctured clean suits are no longer clean.
Ahmeed has been tasked with collecting samples of what appears to be an iridescent purple-teal mushroom sprouting from the top of the central body. Kate will then isolate the specimen into multiple sample plates made of laminated sheets of Lexan, much like riot proof glass. She must do all of this in clean chambers accessed by permanently mounted gloves. Kate has yet to receive a sample; not a single field scientist has been able to acquire one. Ahmeed has successfully navigated the carnage, he is within reach of the organism. His collection scalpel and receptacle in his hands hovering inches from the mushroom; body frozen in space, he looks back to Kate over his right arm. From the other side of the glass, she gives him two thumbs up and an encouraging smile. From the inside of his foggy face mask he breaths even harder, eyes bulging with fear he forces a crooked, nervous smile turning back to his task. He flinches slightly as the tip of his scalpel makes contact with the mushroom; expecting to die. Nothing. He draws the blade through the surface with the gentle tug of human skin, deeper into a Crème Chantilly interior. A second cut to complete the “V” releases the gooey section to fall firmly into the waiting collection receptacle. Inside of the mushroom appears electric blue veins pulsing sequentially within a dark green substratum, the cut away sample appears to hold the same characteristics despite being disconnected. Ahmeed finally exhales, he must have been holding his breath forever. Navigating his way to the sample drawer to pass the precious goods to Kate, he feels his body relax after an eternity of tension since he was assigned the final walk within this death house he has managed to escape.