Chase Baker & the Humanzees from Hell (A Chase Baker Thriller Book 8) (10 page)

22.

Helper 9 may look capable of ripping me in half without breaking a frothy sweat, but that doesn’t mean it’s particularly fast. There’s plenty of time – relatively speaking, since it’s only an extra fraction of a second – for me to dodge the disfigured hand swinging toward my face. The hand connects with Helper 8 standing behind me instead. Being blind and not too bright, Helper 8 reacts to the pound of gnarled face flesh Helper 9 scooped onto the floor with a strike of its own. Its fist lands on Helper 9’s face with an audible
crack
, although I can’t tell whether the sound comes from a jaw or a knuckle.

I exploit this brief moment of confusion by crouching down and plunging the push dagger into Helper 9’s inner thigh near its groin. I hope there’s enough human left in this hybrid for my basic sense of anatomy to come in handy. In
homo sapiens
, severing the femoral artery is a good way to bleed to death. That’s why, when I have it, I don’t sharpen my ESEE-5 knife inside the “triangle of death,” an area starting at the groin and running down both inner thighs. It’s like the Bermuda Triangle for knife safety. One stray cut and you’re dead.

The stab with the dagger refocuses Helper 9’s attention onto me, and I feel myself being lifted up by the head. The hands on this thing are as wide as pie plates. With its other hand, Helper 9 squeezes the throat of an increasingly calm Helper 8.

“Finish them, Helper 9,” Doctor X’s voice says over the speaker with a burst of rotten enthusiasm.

Helper 9 wrenches away at Helper 8’s throat, gripping it so tightly the fingers damn near meet from inside pockets of flesh. With a wet
thud
, Helper 9 tosses Helper 8’s corpse into the pile of chimp shit. It winds back its arm like a pitcher, ready to bust my head open against the wall.

My brain might be under the pressure of Helper 9’s grip, but that doesn’t mean I forget how vulnerable the underside of wrists can be. That goes for humans and apes alike, and Helper 9 offers a prime opportunity at this bloody sweet spot. I jab the push dagger across the soft tissues beneath its wrist, digging and slicing with the blade like my life depends on it because, well, it does.

Brain trumps brawn every time.

The effect is immediate. Helper 9’s hand goes limp. Rivulets of gooey blood hurry down my head, and I’m dropped to the floor. I scramble to get up, leveraging myself against the greasy wall, but I’m too covered in filth. I fall back down, gasping for breath and waving the push dagger in pathetic swipes to keep my adversary at bay.

Despite its injuries, Helper 9 isn’t out of the fight yet. Blood gushes from the wounds on its wrist and thigh. It looks straight at me and bellows from deep within its meaty hide. The primal howl hits me harder than a punch. Something about it speaks to my animalistic core and shuts down my defenses. My hand with the push dagger falls by my side. I can’t explain why, but I feel ready to die.

“Finish him. Finish him!” Doctor X says through the speaker like the doped up maniac he is.

Helper 9 raises its uninjured leg above my head. Were my mental and physical faculties more coherent, I would’ve driven the push dagger into the bottom of its foot. I’m in no condition to react, though, and the calluses look too thick to penetrate anyway. I swallow and accept my fate.

That fortune cookie wasn’t a typo after all. I really will die in a mad scientist’s lab next to a pile of chimp shit.

But just as Helper 9 is about to bring its foot down, help arrives in an unexpected way.

23.

In a scene that reminds me of the haunted forest attack in
The Wizard of Oz
, a stream of irate chimpanzees pours through the hole in the wall. They must be coming from the repository on the other side, where Helper 10’s attempts to control the situation apparently failed. The chimps look like worn props from a movie. Their hair is matted. Their skin is too pale to be healthy. Their eyes, the remaining ones, look cloudy. The stench wafting off their crusty, pockmarked bodies is almost unbearable.

But it’s their teeth that capture most of my attention. They lodge in the neck of Helper 9, releasing pent up frustration tooth-by-tooth, bite-by-bite. It takes only a moment for Helper 9’s form to be replaced by a writhing haystack of bloody hair. The humanzee’s life drains down the backs of the chimps it helped imprison.

I imagine the chimps will turn to me next. As unassuming as I can, I limp through the gash in the door, taking a deep breath once I hit the hallway. It’s much better out here in the fresh air, if you could call it that. This is still a cave, after all.

I hear a shout from behind one of the doors. It cuts through the miserable moaning coming from the others.

“Chase, Chase. I’m in here,” the voice says.

Hillary.

I sprint as best I can to the door. It only locks from the outside with a spinning wheel, so I should be able to open it with a few quick twists.

“Are you OK in there?” I say and work the wheel.

“I can assure you she’s not,” Doctor X’s voice says through a speaker above my head. “While Helper 10 gets the chimpanzee specimens back under control, I’ll tend to Ms. Carter with my machines.”

“Hurry, Chase,” Hillary says from the other side of the door.

“I’m coming,” I say and spin the wheel faster. I give the door a tug. It still won’t open.

“The lock is disabled, Mr. Baker,” Doctor X’s voice says. “The machines will take care of her now.”

I hear the sound of gears grinding from inside Hillary’s room followed by a shriek.

There must be a way inside.

Before I can give the wheel another try, I feel a weight press down on my back. I collapse to the ground and feel the hot snort of a chimp plug my ear with snot. My arms try to grab ahold of the animal and rip it from my back, but its perch between my shoulder blades is as cleverly positioned as any wrestling move. Two rough paws grab my head and slam it into the floor, cutting a deep gash across my forehead. Fortunately, the grease from my environs prevents the injury from being too serious, but I’m not so sure about the next blow. The chimp picks my head up by the hair and slams it into the floor again. I start to lose consciousness, but the pain keeps me from going dark.

I need to get this monkey off my back, and for the first time I don’t mean that figuratively.

Before the chimp can go for a third bashing of my head, I kick with my legs until my boots get a grip. My weary arms manage a shaky push-up, and I rocket to my feet.

You’re a confused animal as tired of being in this lab as I am. Sorry I have to do this, but it’s you or me, and only one of us knows what’s on the line.

The chimp screams in frustration as I fall backward with as much force as I can muster. The weight of my fall stuns the chimp long enough for me to roll off, stand and put a boot over its throat. It claws at my leg, ripping my pants to pieces, but I manage to stay put. With steady pressure, the chimp expires under my boot, its windpipe crushed.

Sorry. Really.

A rush of energy turns my attention back to Hillary’s room, but I’m interrupted once again by a chimp. Scratch that. There isn’t one this time. I count a troop of five staring at me from a few feet away looking every bit as pissed off as I’d expect.

“Chase, the machines, they’re starting. Hurry before they…,” Hillary says from inside her room. The sound of mechanical grinding cuts her off.

“Helper 10 will be around soon to sweep up what’s left of you when the chimps finish tearing you apart. Enjoy your last few minutes of life, Mr. Baker,” Doctor X says through the speaker.

I look down at the push dagger still secure against my knuckle. I can barely make out the blade’s shape beneath a haunch of impaled gristle. I probably don’t look any different. There isn’t an inch of me that isn’t covered in gore. It’ll take a bath in maggots to clean everything off, assuming I make it through this. It’s not looking likely.

One of the chimps howls, and the troop takes a slow step forward.

“Hey, Doctor X,” I say with a croak toward the speaker above my head. “You’re a real piece of shit, you know that?”

“I’m familiar with that expression, yes,” Doctor X says. “But right now, you look more like a piece of shit than I do. That’ll go for double once the chimpanzees finish digesting your body.”

“Speak for yourself. They’ll come for you, too,” I say and lean against the wall.

“Of course I speak for myself. Who else would speak for me? You Americans and your phrases don’t make any sense.”

I’m about to get my last words in when the troop moves toward me a final time, closing the distance in a single, unified leap. I close my eyes and feel the heat of their bodies surround my own.

Please tell me this is a bad dream. I’m ready to wake up.

24.

Once again, a chimp relieves my seemingly impossible situation.

Instead of attacking me, the troop pauses while one of the more haggard chimps “talks” to the others. Opening my eyes, I see that it’s a combination of rudimentary sign language and babble.

Maybe the chimps developed a form of language to communicate with each during captivity? Stranger things have happened.

Far be it for me to tell what they’re talking about, but it seems pretty important. The chimps screech and howl, but they don’t attack me. In fact, they back off completely, looking at me expectantly as if I’m supposed to issue an order. It’s like they’re saying, “We’re free. Now what?”

I look over at the chimp I unfortunately had to kill.

Is that the chimp that would’ve led the troop? By killing it, did I become their leader?

Seeing the troop in front of me, I don’t need to be a humanzee to know the answer. Even in captivity, separated by cages and restraints, the chimps maintained a social structure. Doctor X couldn’t break their will. It’s downright human.

Why bother with hybrids? We already share 99 percent of the same DNA.

It reminds me of a Buddhist I met in Florence, Italy, where I have an apartment. She owned a vegan restaurant I stumbled into by accident, having had a little too much
vino
. After wondering aloud why the menu lacked everything but “rabbit food,” she asked me a question in return.

“Can you think of a way to separate all animals from all humans?” she said.

I answered with a quick, sarcastic, “humans aren’t animals,” but to this day it’s a question that sticks to the back of my mind every time I cut into a juicy steak or rip apart a chicken leg between my teeth. Sure, there are plenty of things humans can do that animals can’t. Animals didn’t set foot on the moon. Humans did. But if that’s the litmus, are the humans who didn’t go to the moon on the same level as animals? If the human species as a whole should get credit for walking on the moon, should every animalistic overlap be hoisted upon humanity, too?

I eventually came back to religion and spiritually. Humans have souls, while animals do not. Then again, I consider myself a god-fearing atheist. If I’m not sold on religion, how am I any different from an animal?

“Animals and humans, we are all the same. You wouldn’t eat another human, would you?” the restaurant owner said.

She didn’t win any converts at the time, and I doubt I’m ever giving up my position at the top of the food chain, but I see her point now. How am I any different from those chimps? Stuck in this shithole, I didn’t lose my sense of being, either. And now we’re bridging the gap between our species without Doctor X’s hideous methods. We’re becoming a hybrid in a different way.

I’m their alpha now. I killed to get here, and it’s no different from a military coup. The law of the jungle goes for everyone.

I point at the door to Hillary’s room. It’s thick and made of metal, but the chimps go ballistic. Even I’m surprised by the raw strength and creativity they display at ripping the door from its hinges.

I slip into the room ahead of the chimps to find Hillary strapped to a table in what I’ll call a mating position. There’s no need for further detail on that point. The chimps trash Doctor X’s machines while I help Hillary collect herself. She’s more pissed off than frightened.

“I call first dibs on the asshole who put me in here,” Hillary says. She looks me up and down. “I’d kiss you, but I’d probably contract a disease. You look like washed up whale shit.”

“I don’t blame you,” I say, feeling the proverbial wind against my back. Hillary and I are free from our rooms, Helpers 8 and 9 are dead, a troop of chimps elected me their leader and my gonads are still where I left them. Now we need to get to Doctor X, stop his plans for good and recover that Iceman.

Turning back into the hallway, we’re greeted by yet another hurdle between now and then. Helper 10, a hybrid somehow even more gnarled and hideous than its two predecessors, stands between us and the exit into the main cave. In its hands it holds my .45 and my ESEE knife, and I don’t think it’s here to return them to me. Slung over its shoulder is that icon of Soviet firepower, an AK-47.

“Ms. Carter. Mr. Baker. Meet Helper 10,” Doctor X says over the speaker.