The doorway was barricaded. No, blocked. It seemed to have been filled with a malleable glossy white material which was translucent in the lights from the looming zapper tanks behind him. An almost phosph.o.r.escent white. Junk prodded it gingerly with the multiple muzzles of his Inferno-7 a.s.sault Engine. Soft but resilient. Paisley had left him the scan and he held it up for a reading. He had to work to coax a reading from the device while Raptores kept watch.

At last: "Christ-O-Mighty."

"What?"

Junk gaped at the softly luminous matter. "It's living flesh of some kind. And it goes back far."

"How far?"

An incredulous double-check of the scan. "It entirely fills the four-story building except for half of one room on the top story."

"Man!" Raptores hissed.

"Yeah," Junk agreed.

"So where are the rest of the wee little ghastlies?"

"Inside. In the flesh. Moving through it..."

"What..."

"And one other life form in that top floor room. It didn't show before. The reading's crazy..."

"Is it her?"

"I think so. But whatever it is...it's attached to all of this." And again he poked the wall of flesh before him.

They waited for Paisley and Jed. Several minutes later Junk got a call on his head-set. It was Paisley. They had easily sniped all three of the stray creatures with fast-acting and powerful corrosive gel bullets to insure a certain kill, not knowing what these things could take. Head shots so they couldn't cry out while their bodies melted. Jed was the crew's best shot.

"Get back here quick, and get your masks ready. We're going burrowing."

"Say what?"

Junk cut her off, waited.

When Jed and Paisley found them behind the building, Junk swallowed a glob of saliva that had seemed to be poised on the rim of his throat, punched the projectile setting on his weapon, turned and let loose a burst of gel bullets into the wall of flesh.

It burned well, and quickly, the yawing wound sizzling and bubbling at the edges. There wasn't much in the way of smoke but the smell was such that they all slapped their masks down. The smell was from the semi-fluid material which filled the immense sack of flesh, to their unpleasant surprise. It plopped out heavily at their feet in piles and folds rather than gushing out in a splash, but still Junk murmured, "We broke her water."

"Are we going in?" Raptores grunted.

"Might as well." And Junk waded into the slow wave of ooze, ducking his head. The others saw him push his way fully inside. They could still see him in the gelatinous depths, but blurred as through Vaseline. Raptores waded into the thick ma.s.s after him, also inclined to duck his head into his shoulders, a shiver pa.s.sing through him. If any of the seams or zippers in his jumpsuit were compromised, and this possibly poisonous, possibly diseased matter leaked through...

Junk saw only translucent dark depths before him, but when he turned to one side he could discern a wall through the sluggishly undulating sap, and he could read the graffiti sprayed there. He faced forwards again, moved as though gripped in a heavy gravity. He consulted his scan for stairs. This elevator coming up was obviously no good. He could make out its black opening, curiously glanced in to see if the sac extended fully into the lift cabin.

One of the offspring swam rapidly out at him, its bony arms pin-wheeling faster than the ooze should allow. The pouty cherub's lips were pulled back to show glistening needle-like teeth in combs of multiple rows.

The burst from his a.s.sault engine drove the thing back into the cabin, and by the time it hit the back wall it was already in separating pieces. Some sank, some floated lightly in the ooze. The ooze itself rocked and rolled at the disturbance, but soon settled. "Keep moving," Junk phoned back to the others. Just ahead were the stairs.

It took a lot for Junk to keep going. He thought of the fresh, lovely body he had entered into ten years before...

But someone had to look out for the undesirables of Warehouse Way. Someone had to care for the unwanted, the outcasts, the broken of spirit and body. They had to look out for their own.

On the second floor, no sooner had Junk hit the landing when a dozen of the offspring surged out at him from doors along the hall and from a crawls.p.a.ce panel in the ceiling.

Raptores pressed up beside him and they swept back most of the creatures in one hammering arc. Limbs somersaulted languidly through the gelatin. Ray bolts streaked red from Raptores' gun like bright fish, along with three other sorts of projectile. One of the things jumped piggy-back on Junk from behind; Paisley yanked it off by the arm, pressed it under her knee and blasted her pistol against its temple.

Jed was tackled by two which leaped and sailed at him. Together, the three tumbled backwards down the stairwell, the teeth of the things locked on his arms. He screamed in the headsets of his friends. Paisley plunged down after him first, from the top step to the bottom in one bound. Her shots spun the creatures off Jed. She helped him up, and he nervously chuckled a curse.

"Let's just bomb the whole house, Boss," Raptores said.

"No," snapped Junk. "Move on."

On the third floor, another wave came rushing down the hall to intercept them, their mouths open but issuing no sounds. How had they been alerted? Telepathically, or by the invasive rippling vibrations through the slowly draining fluid?

All of them were cut to ribbons, blasted to chunks and melted to sizzling spinning globoids by the four invaders firing in unison. The team pushed on through the setting flotsam.

At last, fourth floor landing. Junk pointed. "She's in the last room down the hall, on the right."

As he stalked down the hall he thought of the room she had had on the top floor of a Forma Street tenement hive. Neon and laser through the window had painted her flesh, an ever-changing canvas...

He glanced down at the scan, clipped to the side of his a.s.sault engine. "Coming!"

They poured from the doors, dropped from the ceiling. At the end of the hall was a window giving out onto the fire escape, and there the skin of the sac was puckered. The pucker opened briefly enough for the two from the roof to swing into the hall, gibbon-like, then closed after them.

Jed opened up on this pair, blew them back out the puckered orifice and melted that into a spreading wound. The viscous fluid began to pour out onto the fire escape and drool in thick columns down to the sidewalk.

Junk shattered one that got in his way and plunged through its debris to get his hand on the k.n.o.b of the half-open last door. Beyond it he heard a m.u.f.fled cry. Then he was hauling the door fully open with all his strength against the resistance of the fluid.

She was there, huddled in a corner. The great sac was connected to her body ultimately by a ridiculously narrow membrane, and the far half of the room was free of the sac before it bulged radically. It was indeed Betty, and she was naked. And for all the horrors that had distorted her through the years-the scars, the waste from drugs, and now this-he still recognized that body.

He hesitated in firing, his gun pointed at her. And her dazed eyes lifted to meet his. Tears were flowing from them.

"You're killing my children!"

"I'm sorry," Junk groaned.

"You said I'd be safe here, Junk...you said I'd be safe..."

"Betty.."

"Outcasts have outcasts, Junk?" She gave a smile that quivered like a dying thing. "Is that it?"

"Betty..."

Raptores appeared in the threshold behind Junk. "Move, Boss, come on!"

"No!" Junk growled, letting his gun slowly tumble from his hands, whirling to catch the barrels of the other man's.

In jerking at the weapon, Junk caused one of the triggers to be struck by Raptores' finger. One muzzle flashed. One gel bullet burst against Junk Pharaoh's chest.

"Junk!" Raptores shouted, blasting the ears of his friends.

"Junk!" Betty moaned from her corner.

His eyes bulging in disbelief, Junk felt his upper body do a slow somersault forward and away from his lower. His arms spun weakly.

"Oh G.o.d!" Raptores howled.

"You trigger-happy piece of s.h.i.t!" Paisley shrieked.

Junk's eyes glazed as his head settled. It was all that was left of him by then, and it too sizzled and melted and was gone only seconds after that.

"You monstrous little mutant-spewing wh.o.r.e!" Raptores roared, and he let loose everything his gun possessed as he strode at Sweaty Betty. He burst through her sac, out of the skin into the open air of her corner. But the corner was so pounded, so devastated by his onslaught that this portion of the room-of the building-cracked and crumbled in one sudden avalanche, sliding away from the rest of the structure to crash and thunder four stories below into the alley. Raptores went screaming with the ruin, and was buried beneath it.

The fluid from the sac flowed in a dream-slow waterfall to further bury him and the fragments of Sweaty Betty.

Paisley and Jed stood dazed and staring out through the hole. They could see the zapper tanks of the waste treatment center, beyond their low barrier. Could hear their hum.

"He didn't want her killed," Paisley said. "We could have cut that thing off her and got her out of the Way to a doctor!"

"She was a monster, Paisley," Jed told her in a trembling voice. "And her kids...you know? We couldn't have them running around in the neighborhood. Those things didn't belong here..."

Paisley faced Jed, tears flowing from her primary eyes while the two smaller, gla.s.sy blind eyes above those only stared at him dully. As a child, she had worn hats tugged low and combed her hair in bangs to hide them. "I'm a monster, too, Jed...y'know?"

"Hey," he snapped, "we got our jobs! We got our community to protect! We got to look out for our own!" He whirled away from her, stepped back into the deflating sac to work his way downstairs. After a moment Paisley blinked the tears off her lashes and followed.

"She was our own," she muttered to herself.

PURPLE WINGS.

"On purple wings you take me high Soaring free across the sky But with your Cupid's bow You shoot me down and bring me low I love you, I hate you I love you, I hate you You're an angel and a witch You beautiful f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h."

- 5Guyz They were at the Blue Panda, sitting at their usual two tables b.u.t.ted together; Karlos and his girlfriend Aundrea, Sissy, rex, Keith and Josh. They all worked together at the Paxton branch of PetZone. More specifically, Karlos had worked there once but had been fired after an ugly dispute with his boss. He now worked the drive-through booth at BurgerZone. He hadn't been fired yet but he had been reprimanded for throwing a shake into the hovercar of an insulting customer. BurgerZone prided itself on not using automated drive-through booths, he'd been lectured, but this was not what the company meant when they advertised their human touch.

The lights were low and the alcohol content high in their sugary drinks. rex sucked anodyne gas from a little metal globe via a hose with a tiny valve. Sissy teased him by grabbing the gas away and jetting a little of it into his eyes. He yelped in his Outback Colony accent, "Hey, cootie, what makes you think you're such a cutie?" It was a quote from a song by Shawn O'Nasty. Or a misquote, as Aundrea laughingly pointed out.

She leaned across the table (nearly upending her single-person scorpion bowl) and yelled loudly over the karaoke music (a wretched country song sung by a drunken Tikkihotto, his ocular tendrils tangling), "Dolt, your rhymes are lacking, you should close up shop and get to packing." That was a mocking lyric by Mister Maestro E, from a song in which he challenged the song-writing skills of singer P. Laureate. Aundrea then went on to correct rex's ga.s.sed-up mangling of O'Nasty's words: "What makes you think you're such a cutie; you ain't nothing but another crawling cootie."

rex waved away her words, squirted some more gas while the others laughed too.

Their waitress returned and asked if they needed another round. Josh pointed to his nearly empty bottle of Zub. He did not verbally ask for one. Sissy, likewise, mutely tapped her finger on the rim of her beer bottle. Karlos shook his head. He was still nursing his soda. He was the only one of them who didn't drink alcohol or do any drugs; it was a point of intense pride with him. It bothered him now that Aundrea was sucking away at that huge scorpion bowl (he would hate to see the two-person version) after already downing a Zub before that. He was biting his tongue tonight, though; they'd fought about her drinking many times before, and she wouldn't stop these Friday night Blue Panda excursions no matter how pa.s.sionately he opposed her. It was hard for him to argue his side of the issue, when more song lyrics celebrated partying than criticized it.

Josh hunkered over his fresh Zub, watching Aundrea as she perused the table monitor's list of karaoke offerings, punching into the DJ's queue the numbers of a song she wanted to perform, while Karlos voiced his disapproval of her overtly s.e.xual selection by quoting Shale Sleet: "Girl, the words outta your mouth make you sound like a s.l.u.t; I'd rather listen to a prosty gurgling with her throat cut."

Karlos was too domineering, Josh thought, too negative, too critical. He was more like Aundrea's father than a boyfriend, in his opinion. And he knew she was chafing under Karlos's constant browbeating. He knew because Aundrea had been confiding in him about it. When not chatting at break, or in stolen vidphone conversations, they pa.s.sed each other little notes at work.

Sissy was now sitting on Keith's lap, alternately whispering in and licking his ear, since her boyfriend and his wife were not present. Josh didn't know if they were s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g or not, but if they were it wasn't fair; why should anyone have two lovers when he didn't even have one? The last partner he'd had was Melanie (recently split from her boyfriend, she lived in the same condo complex he and his parents did), but she had broken it off, citing their age difference (she being ten years older than his nineteen). Lately he'd been writing flirty notes to Rain, another PetZone coworker, only five years older and in an unhappy marriage...that had looked like it might go somewhere. But since he and Aundrea had been growing closer, he had dropped his efforts with Rain. Aundrea was only three years older. And she was discontented with her current relationship. And in her last note to him, she had confessed that she found Josh "adorable" and that she fantasized about what it would be like to make love with him.

He sat toward the end of the two long tables, with all their friends between Aundrea and himself. Sat watching her, like a carrion bird, watching for that convulsing relationship to kick its last and die. He heard Karlos cry, "Close your hole, you sow, and stop your whine! I've put up with your dung for the very last time!" It was from a turgid, hyper-dramatic and hyper-misogynistic song from Enigman.

"You can't mold me with your cruel commands," Aundrea retorted, trampling Karlos's attempt to throw another quote at her. Hers was from a pulsing dance track by club-queen Chandra Shankar. "I'm not the clay in your heartless hands..."

The DJ called Sissy up to do her song, and she nearly fell to the floor slipping off of Keith's lap. Squealing with delight, she took her place on the micro-stage and began singing along energetically to a locomotive erotic song by the very same Chandra Shankar, who belly-danced in her vid for it. Sissy always liked to put on a show, and did her best to imitate the singer's gyrations, looking both ridiculous and s.e.xy. Tonight she was wearing a pair of fake miniature angel wings and a shirt that showed off her midriff, just like Chandra Shankar, except that in her vid Chandra wore white angel wings and Sissy's were red and sequined so that they looked like crimson feathers coated in rubies. Or, Josh thought, they looked soaked in blood and the sequins glittered like wet droplets, as if the little faux wings had been hacked off a cherub so she could wear them on her back. Her wings flapped quickly (though their speed could be alternated from vulture-slow to hummingbird-rapid), seemingly to the beat of the song.

Josh looked back to Aundrea, who wore dark purple wings, sparkling with dark purple sequins and glitter. Hers did not have that mechanized feature like Sissy's had. The fad had begun with the popular vid for the song On Purple Wings from the band 5Guyz, in which the beautiful model featured in the vid wore a pair of wings much like those Aundrea had on. Though of course, the fad had really caught on when Chandra Shankar wore her white wings-and little else-in her vid for Naughty Angel, which Sissy wailed to emotionally now.

Aundrea was short, curvy and pale, her long hair dyed the same dark purple of her wings. Her white face glowed in its curtains of hair, shone above her black T-shirt, floated against the smoky air of the restaurant's bar. And in that white face, the eyes turned darkly and fleetingly in Josh's direction. She hadn't said a word to him all night. But he saw the subtlest of smiles-as if only a few cells shifted to accomplish it-flicker on her face. His heart stumbled, more drunk than his brain. He wanted more than anything to be inside her pale body. He tipped his beer back and gulped at the cold invading sensation. He must wait. He must write her another note. He would tell her he fantasized about making love to her, too.

Karlos pointed at Aundrea's scorpion bowl as she madly applauded and whooped upon Sissy's completion of her song. He yelled over the noise, "Must I watch you self-destruct? Must you burn like Icarus? I can't be there to save your soul!" This, from a sobbing ballad by Pepe Cruz.

Aundrea whirled to face him. "You don't understand-I'm the rib of no man!" Jeanny Jonestown.

"This isn't about me owning you," Karlos fairly bellowed, "I'm not trying to put you in chains! But all I ask is that we join hands and put an end to both our pain!" 4Boyz.

As usual, accustomed to these scenes, none of the others took sides or intervened. It would play out, and they'd make up sooner or later. And then it would all start up again next Friday. Aundrea drinking too much, Karlos yelling too much. And Josh silently sitting there at the end, chatting with Keith a little, once in a while performing a karaoke song himself. And waiting in the wings. Waiting in the purple wings, he thought soddenly. Tonight, he expected nothing more than that. But he couldn't wait for the next work week to begin. He'd write his note over the weekend. He might even write a poem for her, as he used to do for neighbor Melanie. It was easier for him to think and articulate himself if what he wrote was in rhyme.

At PetZone, Aundrea wore her purple glittery wings along with her white PetZone uniform. She and Sissy were groomers. Today Sissy was doing her best to groom a small, nervous and many-legged Tikkihotto animal she had never even heard of before; rex had tried to help by printing out some information on it from the computer system. It was slow this morning so Aundrea was currently feeding the fish. It was dark in this corner of the vast, high-ceilinged store and the aquariums glowed intimately, burbled soothingly. Aundrea felt her own guts burble as she saw Josh coming toward her, grinning.

He said, "I was walking down the street when I saw this hot, hot wh.o.r.e; knew I had to drill her 'til she couldn't take no more!" He liked to tease her with such over-the-top flirtation. It was easier than being sincerely romantic.

But he pa.s.sed her the note he'd written. It was the fifth version of it; he'd worked on it all weekend. Still grinning, he turned and started away.

"Hey s.e.xy b.i.t.c.h," Aundrea called after him, quoting Maurice M. D., "don't walk away so fast!" She liked to tease him in turn by quoting raunchy songs sung by men. But he didn't stop, disappeared behind shelves heavy with dog food stacked like sand bags. She looked down at the note she unfolded in her hands and read it by the soft aquarium glow.

Josh was hanging up some new dog leashes and collars (the dark purple ones reminded him of Aundrea's hair) when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and there she was; it felt like his heart was on a choke chain and had been given a harsh tug. Aundrea was smiling very subtly and took his hand, drawing him around behind the display. Then, when they were partially shielded from view, she put her arms around his neck and drew him down to her kiss.

His note to her had concluded with a poem which had read in part: "I won't rest till your in my arms, I want to hold you 4ever without a care, Aundrea is the person that I live for, I want to lie down with her bare, I would kiss you till the end of time, Theirs no way to say my love in this rhyme."

And he had finished off his own poem with the lines from 5Guyz, "On purple wings you take me high; soaring free across the sky."

Twenty-two years old and working in BurgerZone, thought Karlos, standing at the window in his little drive-through cell. He motioned impatiently for the helicar outside to drop down lower so he could hand over its order. He found it difficult to speak exclusively in quoted song lyrics in his line of work, but he tried to keep the bland, dead, emotionless exchange of unlyrical words to a bare minimum. After all, Karlos himself was a writer, and words were his domain. He was currently working on his first novel, which would follow the adventures of a syndy hitman-Jimmy Dante-with a tortured conscience. The novel, Dante's h.e.l.l, would be entirely in rhyme. He intended to do a screenplay of it as well but wasn't decided as yet whether to make all the dialogue rhyme for that version. Would it be a tougher or easier sell if the movie version followed the trend of lyrical expression?

While he worked, Karlos listened to the blasting anger of the group Mystery Worm. He sang to the music aloud, but his voice was a low mutter. "Death cloud, death cloud...Cthulhu shall rain his pain upon you..."

Inside his closely shorn head, a chip implant (a Christmas present from his parents) could receive either "stream"-free public transmissions paid for with advertising-or music from his own collection, programmed into his home entertainment system and remote-broadcasted to him. Some chip-wearers used a control bracelet but Karlos's parents had let him get his controls tattooed onto his left forearm. The music went directly to Karlos's brain as a translated signal, bypa.s.sing the actual process of "hearing."

"Death cloud," he chanted the chorus again in the German accent of the lead singer, "death cloud...Cthulhu shall rain his pain upon youuu..."

He knew that Aundrea liked Josh.