Gary Brandner - The Brain Eaters

Rape?

The ugly word to describe the ugly act was always in the back of a woman’s mind when she heard strange night sounds. Some drunken fool on his way home from a road-house?

Ridiculous, she told herself. But her throat constricted at the thought of her body being invaded.

Scrape .

She started to reach again for the lamp but held back. No, a light in there would just signal her presence to whoever was creeping into her house. She had no weapon, of course. Wouldn’t know how to use a gun if she had one. Didn’t believe in them. For a terrible moment, though, she wished for the reassuring feel of a pistol butt in her hand.

Scrape. Thump .

The window was all the way open now.

The metallic clatter of a spoon as it fell from the drainboard into the sink. He was coming in. He was in.

She would not be found lying there helpless, Dena decided. By the faint glow of the stars outside, she slipped noiselessly from the bed. From memory she found her robe where she had folded it over the back of her dressing-table chair. She pulled it on and knotted the satin belt at her waist.

A floorboard creaked.

He was coming for her.

Her hand fumbled along the top of the dressing table, searching instinctively for something, anything, that might be used for defense.

Hairbrush. Deodorant. Aspirin bottle. Electric toothbrush.

The floor creaked again.

Dena’s mind teetered on the edge of hysteria. She fought down the image of herself confronting the rapist with an electric toothbrush.

A soft scratching on the panel of the bedroom door.

Fingernails.

Dena froze, her back pressed against the wall. She did not breathe.

Her eyes were now more accustomed to the near-total darkness. She stared with painful intensity at the dim gray rectangle of the door. A strip of black appeared at the edge. It widened to an inch. Two inches.

Dena drew in her breath and opened her mouth to scream. It was purely instinctive. There was no one near enough to hear.

“Dena?”

The hoarse whisper coming from the cracked doorway jolted her like an electric shock.

“Dena, are you there? It’s Lloyd. Lloyd Bratz.”

The breath whistled out of her, and Dena felt for a moment as though her bones had dissolved.

“Jesus H. Christ, Lloyd, what the hell are you trying to do?”

“I’m sorry. Listen, I’m really sorry, but they’re following me.”

Dena found the small lamp on the table beside her bed. She snapped it on. Lloyd Bratz darted to the window and snatched the curtain across it. He turned and gave her a worried grin. He scrubbed fingers through his bristly hair.

“What’s going on, Lloyd? Who’s following you? What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I went to my place first, but somebody was already there watching it.”

“Then you weren’t transferred out West.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I went to see Helen. She said you’d been transferred. She left with someone while I was there.”

“Left with who?”

“I don’t know. Some man, looked very official.”

Bratz ground his teeth. “Son of a bitch, if they’ve harmed her — ”

“I need a cigarette.” Dena went to the closet and reached up on the high shelf for the carton of Carltons she had put there so they would be hard to reach. She tore open a fresh pack, shook one out, and lit it. She drew in the smoke gratefully and blew it out in a long streamer. “Now then,” she said, “I’m ready to listen. Where did you come from?”

Lloyd glanced around quickly. “They were holding me in the infirmary. I coldcocked a guard tonight, stole a car, and got away, but they’re not far behind me.”

“Slow down,” Dena said. “Holding you in the infirmary for what? Are you sick? And what’s this ‘guard’ business? Start at the beginning.”

“I may not have much time, so I’ll talk fast. A week ago last Friday Stu and I were flying over the old county road at the edge of the company’s land to do a dispersal test. Spraying purple dye to see what the pattern is from a particular altitude with known wind conditions.”

“Is Stu involved in this?” Dena broke in. “Do you know where he is?”

“I know,” Lloyd said. “Let me get to it.”

Dena sat on the edge of the bed and dragged on her cigarette.

“As soon as we opened the canister, we could see something was wrong. The stuff was clear, not purple. We went back and reported it and got hustled into Dr. Kitzmiller’s office. He chewed us out, which I guess we had coming, but then he called in a couple of security goons, and they marched us off to the infirmary. Nobody would tell us a damn thing.

“They put us in a room by ourselves and treated us like we had the plague or something. As far as I could see, there was nothing wrong with us, except Stu got a little infection in a razor nick on his chin. He was running a little fever, too; said he felt achy, like the flu or something. I thought, Oh, shit, maybe we are sick. He seemed to get better after a couple of days, but then the headache started.”

Dena barely caught a long ash that fell from the end of her cigarette. She spilled it into an ashtray and stared at the chunky pilot. He walked over to peek past the edge of the curtain, then came back.

“When was this?” she asked. “The headaches?”

“On Thursday. Stu didn’t say anything at first but got kind of quiet and distracted-like. Finally, he asked for some aspirin. All of a sudden he’s got the whole medical staff around him. Me, I felt fine. I think that kind of disappointed them.

“Finally, Stu got fed up. He told them he felt okay, and they left him alone. He didn’t feel okay, though. That headache was really starting to get to him. During the night I heard him swallowing aspirins like peanuts. When I tried to talk to him, he brushed me off. He got kind of mean. Not like Stu at all.”

“Is he still there?” Dena said.

“I’m getting to it,” Lloyd said. “You were pretty close to him, weren’t you?”

“We liked each other. Just tell it, Lloyd.”

“Friday was bad. Stu hardly said a word. People kept coming and going, examining him, giving him tests, and all the time this headache of his was getting worse. You could see it on his face. They pretty much forgot about me.

“Then, about the time they came in with our dinner, he flipped completely.”

“What do you mean flipped?”

“Are you sure you want to hear the details? It’s not pretty.”

“Goddam it, Bratz, who do you think you’re talking to, some grade-school virgin? Just tell me what happened.”

“Okay. Like I said, Stu was getting pretty bad. Holding his head, groaning. Wouldn’t talk except to cuss me out. I left him alone. Then, when the two guys came in with our dinners, he let out a howl and went for them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he went after those guys, punching, kicking, clawing, biting. He was trying to kill them. I was so stunned it took me a minute to get up and start toward him. Before I got there, three more security goons rushed in, and they all grabbed Stu and fought him down to the floor. It took all of them to do it.” Lloyd Bratz hesitated, chewing his lower lip as he remembered.

“What happened next is worse than anything I’ve seen in my life. I was in Nam, and I’ve seen some bad things.”

Dena reached out and touched his hand. He looked at her gratefully.

“Stu never quit fighting them,” he said. “He heaved and twisted and humped his body, throwing those five guys around the room like they was stuffed with straw. All the time he was screeching in this terrible unearthly voice. The skin on his face and his arms got all blotchy red and started to break open like blisters. I heard something crack like a rifle shot. It took me a minute to realize that Stu just broke his own leg. The five guys tried harder to hold him still, but the more they tried, the more Stu thrashed around. I could hear his bones cracking and snapping, and he never quit. He gave one last heave, and blood and gunk came pouring out of his mouth. That was the end of it. Stu was dead. He literally tore himself apart.”