Chase Baker & the Humanzees from Hell (A Chase Baker Thriller Book 8) (11 page)

25.

I freeze in my tracks at the sight of my own .45 aimed at my chest. The chimps won’t move unless I do, so they hurl growls and shit at Helper 10 while remaining in position behind me. Gauging the distance between us, there’s no way I can get the drop on the pistol before Helper 10 can plant a hunk of lead into my heart.

“Not so smart now, are you?” Doctor X says over the speaker with a cackle. “Helper 10 has the brains of my creations. Note the fine motor skills in its hands, capable of working firearms and other machinery. It’s my greatest work to date.”

Despite his masturbatory glee, Doctor X is right. Helper 10 might be the ugliest of his sink clog creations, but it’s also his most human. Its hands resemble my own. So do the eyes. If they’re the windows to the soul, Helper 10 is the pope of hybrid super-soldiers.

I’m curious why Helper 10 wields the .45 instead of the AK. I know how much ammunition the .45 can hold with a full magazine, and it’s going to take some expert shooting to put us all down. The AK, on the other hand, could sweep this hallway clean of life in a few seconds.

Maybe it’s not as smart as Doctor X made it out to be?

The tension of watching Helper 10 debate what to do with the .45 nearly knocks me over. Literally. It’s getting harder to stand. My injuries need medical attention before I succumb to infection, not that I’m necessarily in any rush to get back to a hospital.

“What does it want?” Hillary says to me, motioning at Helper 10.

“To kill us, but it’s hesitating for some reason,” I say.

Itching for a chance at revenge, Hillary snaps her fingers in the air like she’s trying to attract a waiter’s attention. “Hello? Anyone home, ugly?”

Helper 10 looks through Hillary with what I’d call a thousand-mile stare. It sighs.

“Don’t be bashful, my beloved Helper,” Doctor X says through the speaker. “You can put a bullet in each of their heads before any of them can blink. We talked about this. Stop being so hard on yourself.”

They talked about it?

Indeed they did. Helper 10, bred for brainpower over horsepower, opens its mouth and speaks.

“I…no…to you…,” Helper 10 says in a gurgle that sounds like it’s talking through a throat full of raw hamburger.

“Shhh, my baby,” Doctor X says. “No words this time. Just kill them.”

Helper 10’s all-too-human eyes shift between the .45, Hillary, myself, the chimps and the speaker.

“…friends…all dead…,” Helper 10 says in a whimper.

I’m getting the picture now.

“Your friends are all dead?” I say.

Helper 10 nods its head. Because of the way its disfigured body mashes muscle and bone together, the motion rocks its entire upper half.

“…can’t…,” Helper 10 says, looking at the .45, then at the chimps.

Helper 10 is sad.

“Stop hesitating, you stupid oaf,” Doctor X says through the speaker. “Kill them. Now!”

Helper 10 doesn’t kill us. It stares with those sullen eyes, twisting the .45 over and over again in its hand.

The merger of humans and chimps went a little too well for Doctor X. He couldn’t breed out the parts of humans that make them human. Remorse. Reflection. Empathy. The more successful Doctor X’s experiments, the more this trap door revealed itself. There was never going to be a deployment of these hybrid super-soldiers, these humanzees, at least none capable of thinking for themselves. Deploy Helper 10s to the battlefield, and they’ll come back with all the psychological baggage of typical human soldiers, minus any way of treating them.

“…tired…of…killing…no friends left,” Helper 10 says, referring to Helper 8 and 9.

“Kill them. Kill them!” Doctor X says, sounding more desperate.

Oh, man and his follies. Same shit, different day. I’m looking at a biological Titanic ready to sink.

Helper 10 raises the .45 to its head. I swear I see a tear roll down its eye. The chimps behind me howl in delight, eager to witness the death of one of their cruel handlers.

Hillary, too, pines for blood. “Do it, you waste. Pull the trigger,” she says.

“Kill them, kill them, kill them,” Doctor X says in a fever pitch.

I think back once again to that conversation with the restaurant owner.

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

Remorse. Reflection. Empathy.

Empathy.

I raise my hand, look directly into Helper 10’s eyes and say, “Stop. You don’t have to do this.”

Helper 10 isn’t convinced. It shores up its grip on the .45.

“Didn’t Doctor X say there are others like you?” I say.

“…lies…all dead…,” Helper 10 says.

Doctor X’s voice is suspiciously absent from the speaker above my head.

“You’re still not alone,” I say. “Doctor X, he has something called a Minnesota Iceman. Do you know what I mean by that?”

“…Iceman…yes…but fake,” Helper 10 says.

Even the human-chimp hybrid thinks the Iceman is a fraud.

Hillary snaps back into businesswoman mode. She says, “A fake? Not on your life. It’s either the real deal or my Museum of the Bizarre was robbed and destroyed for nothing.”

Hadn’t thought of it that way.

Helper 10 lowers the .45. It’s still unsure what to do next, so I push it to see things my way.

“Help us. Show us where Doctor X keeps the Iceman, and I promise you’ll see you’re not alone,” I say.

“…help us?” Helper 10 says. “You…are Helper Us?”

The poor thing’s logic is so simple, I forgot to check my vocabulary. It thinks I’m one of them, the Helpers.

“Yes. Yes, of course. Helper Us,” I say. “And Helper Us needs Helper 10 to find that Iceman.”

Helper 10 drops the .45 to the ground and kicks the gun toward me. It gives the ESEE-5 a light toss. I pick both up, happy to be reunited.

“But first, show Helper Us where that prick Doctor X is,” Hillary says. “We need to have a quick word with him.”

Helper 10 slips the AK across its chest and racks the gun’s charging handle. “Will…show…come with,” it says.

With that, our motley crew of a shit-stained adventurer, an unfortunate entrepreneur, a troop of irate chimpanzees and a human-ape hybrid super-soldier with a machine gun head back into the main cave to pop a mad scientist jacked up on an invincibility serum in order to prevent World War III.

Just another day at the office.

26.

The Jeep, flat tire and all, thankfully still rests at an awkward angle inside the main cave. Missing, however, is Doctor X, which is curious since I’m looking at nothing but rock walls.

Did he take off on foot down the two-track road that leads into the cave?

Helper 10 offers another option. It walks over to the long table full of computers and lab equipment. Slinging the AK over its shoulder, Helper 10 turns on a computer and types something on the keyboard. A panel of wall, perfectly disguised within the rock, slides open to reveal another hidden passage. This one looks more like an office hallway than a dungeon.

I need to
stop
calling Helper 10 an “it.” This thing is more advanced than most people, but I don’t know what other term to use.

“Come,” Helper 10 says and points to the passage.

Our bizarre corps heads down the hallway, weapons at the ready. I give Hillary the ESEE knife, figuring the .45 is too quick to satisfy her feelings toward Doctor X. I let Helper 10 lead the way, expecting a surprise from Doctor X to jump out and take us down at the knees. Nothing materializes. We walk down the hallway as if we own the place.

The hallway curves to the right. Helper 10 raises a hand for us to stop while it sneaks up for a preview of what’s ahead. It gives us the all-clear, and we continue on into what I’d call a control room. Wall-to-wall monitors and computer screens illuminate heaps of spare medical gear in blue-tinged outlines. Perched in the middle of it all like mold on a blueberry is Doctor X. He raises the SKS rifle as we approach.

The chimps go nuts at the sight of Doctor X, but they keep their distance. Despite their newly found freedom, they’re still fearful of the person responsible for so much agony, even if they could easily overpower a 150-year-old man holding an outdated gun.

“Oh, my dear Helper 10. You’ve come to kill me have you?” Doctor X says as if Hillary and I don’t exist. “I suppose you know that I could live forever provided I receive my daily injections, but that not even an invincibility serum can help an old man lying on the ground in 100 pieces.”

Helper 10 keeps the AK on Doctor X. Its eyes betray its inner turmoil. It’s confused again.

“Make that 200 pieces,” Hillary says, her hand squeezing the handle of the ESEE knife.

“True, I can’t take you all with me when I die,” Doctor X says. “But I can take one of you. Helper 10, your betrayal will not go unnoticed. I brought you into this world. I can bring you out of it, too.”

I’m ready to pull the trigger on the .45 and put an end to Doctor X’s grandiose monologues, but Helper 10 does something shocking. In one fell swoop, Helper 10 knocks the .45 from my hand with the butt of the AK and rolls to Doctor X’s side.

A couple of the chimps feign pursuit, backing off when they get too close to Doctor X. I find myself looking at the business end of Helper 10’s AK.

Doctor X laughs and says, “I told you Helper 10 was the smartest of my creations. It found your weakness, Mr. Baker, and exploited it for all its worth. You think too much. You feel too much. This is why my humanzees will be such a success. They possess all the benefits of the animal that is a human minus the touchy-feely bullshit.”

What I saw in Helper 10 couldn’t be an act, could it? It genuinely seemed conflicted by its situation. Is what I’m seeing now also an act?

My bullshit detector needs a tune-up.

It’s too late to ask questions. Before I can blink, Doctor X and Helper 10 unload their firearms in our direction.

27.

I’m no primatologist, but I do know this much. When you’re part of a troop of chimps that has your back, that troop of chimps has your back. It’s like the animals can sense the bullets are about to fly.

In the moment before Doctor X and Helper 10 open fire, the chimps rush in front of Hillary and I. Their bodies don’t block the 7.62mm ammunition outright, although a couple takes lead on the nose, but they do throw enough confusion into the mix for Hillary and I to split unscathed.

I wheel to the right and drag a palm on the ground to pick up the .45 while Hillary takes the left. In the corner of my eye, I see a chimp leap onto Doctor X’s chest and claw at his face.

Helper 10 sweeps the AK across the room in an attempt to hit Hillary. Blinded by a face full of chimp, it damn near cuts Doctor X in half instead. That’s the thing about fully automatic guns like the AK-47. Sure, they put a lot of lead into the air, but they’re harder than hell to control when holding the trigger down.

Super-soldier, my ass.

Hillary takes cover behind a steel cabinet while the remains of Doctor X crumple to the floor. The chimp on his chest, miraculously uninjured by Helper 10’s errant shots, resumes tearing him to shreds. The other chimps join in. They take turns ripping and pulling the meat from his body like slow-cooked Texas barbecue.

Helper 10 strips the chimp from its face and turns toward me. The AK already needs a fresh magazine, which buys me the time I need to unload the .45 into Helper 10’s head. On any other day, seven rounds from a .45 would put a person down for good. But Helper 10 isn’t a normal person. The bullets might be lodged in its skull, but Helper 10 keeps on going. It holds the AK by the barrel like a club and charges at me.

Can’t say I was expecting that.

I tip over desks and chairs to put as many obstacles between myself and it as I can, but Helper 10 plows through them out of sheer brutality.

The chimps turn their attention from dismembering what’s left of Doctor X to Helper 10. They rush up from behind, but Helper 10 turns just in time to club each one through the head with the AK in a single swing, shattering the gun in the process.

There goes the troop.

The brief distraction buys me enough time to reload the .45. Correction.
If I still had any spare magazines
I could reload the .45. I’m out of ammo and floor space, my back literally up against the wall. Helper 10 turns to me once more, holding the mangled remains of the AK in its hand, and takes a final step forward. It looks at me through the rags of tissue hanging from its face.

“Hate you,” Helper 10 says.

“Trust me, the feeling is mutual,” I say. I muster an uppercut to Helper 10’s chin, the bone-on-bone connection rattling up my arm.

Aside from my knuckles hurting like hell, it’s like the strike never happened. Helper 10 grabs me by the throat with its free hand and pins me against the wall. I tear at its hand with my fingernails, but its grip is too strong. I’m seeing stars. I’m also seeing Helper 10 raise the remnants of the AK, ready to wipe out everything above my shoulders like my head is on top of a tee ball stand.

“Hate you,” Helper 10 says again and takes a swing.