Elvis tore his jacket free, and dragged himself upright. Marie still clung to his ankle, and hauled herself across the floor, her smile opening. He kicked at her teeth, trying to prevent her from fastening a poisoned mouth on him. Her hair was still perfect. Her make-up was unsmudged. It was as if her cosmetics were part of her skin.
She was babbling about the Will of the Lord and the Path of Joseph, and Elvis realized just what it was about the Josephites that stroked Krokodil's fur the wrong way.
The bastards weren't freaking human.
Donny came at him, kicking. Elvis felt agony explode in his pelvic girdle.
Marie's mouth gaped. The inside was as red as a firehouse.
And Krokodil exploded through the counter, screaming. Donny half-turned into her first slash with the cleaver, and it lodged in his neck. She should have taken his head clean off, but she simply sank the blade deep as if into a hardwood tree, and was unable to pull it out. Donny's pipe snapped, and Krokodil heart-punched him with what Elvis recognized as a killing karate stroke. The Josephite bumped back against the wall, bringing down a paint-on-velvet print of Whistler's Mother. He lurched forwards, and Krokodil shoved Marie's lost skewer into his stomach. The steel length bent as it went in, but Krokodil pushed hard, and Elvis heard the metal sinking into the wall. Pinned like a butterfly, Donny struggled but was held fast. He still wasn't bleeding, but Elvis couldn't see metal flashing in his wounds. If he was a cyborg, he was some odd new variety the Op wasn't familiar with.
Marie let him go, and slithered backwards like a crab, her starched petticoats flaring like a lizard's ruff. She was hissing like an animal.
Suddenly, the woman pushed against the floor and swung upright like a stepped-on rake. It was a neat, impossible trick.
Elvis pulled his Colt Python and shot Marie a couple of times in the chest. It didn't even slow her down. Her blouse erupted where his slugs went in, and blackened.
"It's no use," Krokodil said. "Bullets don't hurt them."
Marie's smile closed, and she spoke in an even, bright, reasonable tone. "Have you noticed how even with the new blue whiteness in your wash, you still can't get rid of understains, static cling, waxy yellow build-up, unpleasant household odours…"
Krokodil stepped in front of Elvis, and bowed to Marie, a martial arts formality that struck the Op as incredibly inappropriate.
"And is your kitchen floor sparkling fresh, lemony-honeyed, economy-sized, family-friendly, cottage-loaved, kissing sweet, babyskin-soft…"
Krokodil kicked Marie in the face, leaving a dusty footprint.
"Pain, tension, headache? You need fast relief…"
Marie's hands were around Krokodil's throat.
"Honey," said Donny, gargling around the steel in his throat, "I'm home." The lights went out inside his eyes, and he sagged dead against the wall.
An adorable dog ran into the room with a rolled-newspaper and a pair of slippers in its jaws. Elvis shot it, and it rolled away in a mewling ball.
Marie's fingers were sinking into Krokodil's flesh. His employer didn't show pain, but Elvis knew she could be hurt.
He punched Marie in the kidneys to no effect, mashing his knuckles. The woman must wear solid steel foundation garments.
He was flagging. His body could take it, but inside his mind voices reminded him of his age. When he had first had the Zarathustra treatments, there had been a lot of barracks scuttlebutt about the so-called Dorian Grey Effect. Apparently, some of the first volunteers had done fine for a while but then had the years catch up with them in fast-forward, like the last reel of a horror movie.
With a gasp, Krokodil broke the grip, and landed a right cross on Marie's chin.
"A Godly Home is a Happy Home…"
Yellow fluid was leaking from Marie's eye, like yolk from a cracked egg. She tossed her hair, trying to make herself perfect again.
The Waltons were like refugees from the 1950s. The thought chilled Elvis, as he remembered the decade of the music. They weren't the only leftovers from the years of canasta, Joe McCarthy, sputnik. Sergeant Bilko and Rock Around the Clock. Sometimes, Elvis felt a peculiar sense of responsibility about his longevity, as if he were the last survivor of the Battle of Waterloo or the audience at the Gettysburg Address, and it was all down to him to pass on the memory to an uncaring posterity.
Locked together, Marie and Krokodil crashed against the picture window, which exploded outwards. They rolled together onto the jetty, broke apart, and came up fighting.
Elvis left through the door, looking around for something to use as a weapon.
The porch-sitting old-timer had beat it out of there. Something else was missing, but Elvis didn't have time to think about it
Marie pulled up a board from the pier, and the Op saw polished nails sparkling in it. Krokodil put up an arm, and the board splintered against it.
Elvis found Donny's pistol under his feet. He picked it up, and rammed home the clip. Bullets might not hurt the Josephites, but they couldn't do them much good.
Marie stood on the pier, not even breathing heavily. He would show her that he was a mighty, mighty man.
Elvis aimed at the general direction of her head and chest, and emptied the clip in one concentrated burst. Marie shook and shuddered as scraps of her dress and skin flaked away. She lost her footing, and splashed into the swamp.
His hands felt as if they had been through a wringer. Moulinex claimed that this model was recoilless. He ought to report them to the Armaments Ombudsman.
Surfacing, she shouted "my hair is a mess" and struck for the jetty. But something—quicksand?—grabbed her ankles, and pulled her down. Her smiling face disappeared under the greenish mud, and there were only bubbles left behind.
"What the hell…" Elvis said.
Krokodil had her breath back. "It's like a progressive mutation. I've seen these things before. Not all Josephites are like that, but a lot of them are. I don't know, but I think they might be clones or something."
"Creepy."
"Yeah. And people call me Frankenstein's Daughter…"
Krokodil pulled her jacket over her bruises, and wiped her hair out or her eye.
"They don't have any body hair. They also don't have belly buttons, nipples or private parts. Some of them have their toes fused together like dummies."
"And they come from Salt Lake City?"
"Yeah, God's paradise on Earth. Don't be fooled by all that grace-saying and thanks-giving. These people wouldn't know Jesus Christ if he asked them for change on the street."
The pain in Elvis's ankle flared up again, and he looked down. An arm, still in a sportscoat sleeve, was fixed to him by a gripping fist. It held fast like a beartrap.
Krokodil bent down and prised the fingers loose, snapping them back. The thing still lashed. She tossed it into the swamp, where it floated a while, fingers flopping, and sank.
"Krokodil?" he asked.
"Uh-huh."
"Where's the car?"
VI
He was able now to view what was happening to him with some detachment. He was even gaining some degree of control over his tail. It was odd having a new appendage, but he found it easily manipulable. With the changes overtaking him, the tail was like an anchor, holding him steady.
His body was finding its own reptile-human equilibrium. He felt hungry all the time, and had to chew his way through the raw carcasses they threw into the cage every few hours, even though the human brain wrapped inside the alligator tissue knew they were using the meat to administer knock-out drugs. After feeding, he would fall asleep and dream of operating tables and agony and Dr Blaikley, and then awake, changed even more, in the cage.
He knew he had been moved permanently into the experimental block, which Dr Blaikley insisted on calling "The House of Pain" for some reason, and that he was no longer an administrator. He was a subject. And he was not alone. There were other cages. He found old friends. Reuben was in one, his black-green skin crinkling as he progressed. And there were those whose changes were almost complete, who could no longer speak properly.