Limbus, Inc. Read online

  “Is there enough of that stuff here for us all to go back?” asked the Sticker.

  “There’s a drum of it.” Razz smiled. “We’re good.”

  The Sticker ran his hands through his shaggy hair and entwined his fingers at the back of his head. “Holy shit.”

  “Hold on though.” Timothy’s face took that ghostly look as he turned from them in the dark. “We can’t fool ourselves. Only one of the robots has a physical key to the membrane station door. If it was a code or a keycard, I could probably work it out, but it’s an old school iron key, as primitive as primitive comes. We don’t know which robot holds it either. They aren’t going to tell us, and if you hadn’t noticed, the robots all look identical. Believe me, I like your idea, but I’m just sayin’…”

  Razz glanced at the Sticker. “No worries. I’m not banking on my luck this time.”

  “No?”

  From his pocket, Razz pulled out what looked like a piece of black trash bag. It curled as he took it out, a living, moving thing.

  “You stole one?” Timothy asked.

  The Sticker tried to adjust his eyes in the dark. “Stole what?”

  The black material bent around Razz’s hand and formed like a glove. His hand grew four more fingers, turned into a ball with spikes, and then into a foot-long machete. After a moment, it dissolved down to a bar shape with a key at the end.

  “How did you steal one of the Fanjlion’s gloves?”

  “I didn’t,” explained Razz. “These robots aren’t much for discerning treasure from trash. But as you can see from my mess, I am.”

  After a moment, Timothy forced a smile. “I really hope this works. I don’t want to be right.”

  “Don’t trust your gut. You have that irritable bowel syndrome thing anyway.”

  The Sticker laughed.

  “Ha-ha-ha. Fuck you.” Timothy scowled. “So what do we do then?”

  “Take that bag of syringes there on that drum of DNRM-33 and fill them at the port on the side. We’ll need two each, so fill six. The stuff looks like water but it’s as thick as tar, probably will take some time.”

  “Piece of cake.” Timothy picked up the sealed bag of syringes.

  Razz looked to the Sticker. “Back me up while I get the Membrane station open. I need eyes in the main hall.”

  “Wait!” Timothy went stiff. “What about eyes out in this hall?”

  “Hide behind the compactor; believe me, they don’t look there.” Razz flashed a grin.

  *

  With the aid of the Fanjlion glove, the membrane station lock turned over so easily that Razz and the Sticker stood, gaping, for a couple minutes. Timothy arrived soon after and they helped each other take their doses of DNRM-33. Razz turned on the membranes and let them warm, then disconnected the terminal, just in case the thing had some strange origin plugged in, which hopefully wouldn’t alter the course of Harper’s theory.

  Or myth.

  “How much longer do they have to warm up?” asked Timothy.

  “Probably fifteen minutes.” The translucent flaps patterned unnatural light over Razz’s face and sloped down his nose.

  “I gotta go.”

  “You’re kidding me, right? This is no time for your irritable bowels.”

  “Membranes aren’t going anywhere. They’re just warming up. The lav is just across the hall.”

  “Good God, just go on, hurry up, damn.” Razz waved Timothy away.

  Timothy took off into the dark hallway, the sounds of his huffing breaths soon vanishing.

  The Sticker leaned against the wall and shut his eyes a moment. It was unreal. The past week he’d thought only about his impending death sentence. Now this. Escape. Even after all he’d been through, he didn’t feel he’d earned this. He was lucky to have been put on board with someone as clever as Razz.

  The Sticker picked up the Fanjlion glove and put it on. Razz had let him fool with it a little earlier, changing his hand into different shapes.

  “What’s on your mind?” asked his friend, who admired the membranes, head cocked curiously to one side.

  “Wondering what you’ll go back to. You were almost through with your contract.”

  “Well, there are more important things.”

  “Yeah, but… this is one hell of a job. You’ve earned your money. What if they say you’re in breach and don’t pay anything?”

  Razz shrugged. “We’re alive. That’s all that matters.”

  “I guess.” He stopped playing and let his hand resolve back into four fingers and a thumb.

  “So what are you going to do? With all that shit waiting for you back home?”

  The Sticker had forgotten he’d told Razz about Annette and Trevor and how he’d left his last job. It was just as well, but still embarrassing to be worrying over those things in the face of all they’d seen. “I haven’t got it sorted out. Maybe Limbus will find me another job. Forgive and forget?”

  Razz shook his head. “I don’t know. I cannot predict that company’s motivations. I will say this: I always have a contingency plan, and nobody gets to know about it but me.”

  “Pretty slick dude, you.”

  “Like buttered Vaseline, baby.”

  They laughed and then waited in silence for ten minutes. Razz started pacing over to the door to search outside for Timothy.

  After another five minutes, his voice edged with panic. “What the hell is he doing taking so long? This isn’t some casual trip we’re taking. Shit!”

  “I’m going to go get him.” The Sticker started off and Razz took his arm. “The membranes are warmed up. We can go. Maybe you shouldn’t risk it.”

  “With all you guys did for me, I couldn’t do that.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” Razz nodded. “I’ll wait until you get here, though I’m not looking forward to seeing any of you guys butt naked.”

  “The feeling’s mutual. And don’t worry, Tim’s probably fine. We would have heard something if he wasn’t.”

  “Probably fell in, the dummy.”

  The Sticker took off into the hall, darkness immediately folding around him. The lavatory was only a dozen yards or so from the Membrane Station, around a corner. It was surprising that Timothy even had problems with his bowels. The food delivery gleaned from their jumpsuits did cause their bodies to produce stool, but it was runny and thin and only a couple ounces every other day. It took less than a minute to be done with your business, so it was concerning that so much time had passed. He got to the lav door and pushed it open.

  The door shut behind him and the blackness was absolute.

  “Tim, are you okay? We’re waiting.”

  The Sticker took a few steps and strained his ears. If only he had a flashlight—

  He let out of shout of pain. Something had pierced through his neck and a terrible sensation flooded down his chest and into his heart. The Sticker stumbled back through the door, knocking it open. Timothy came rushing out like a bald wraith.

  The Sticker tried to speak but his lips were numb, his throat passage thickened. Every inch of his skin warmed and then froze.

  “I’m sorry,” said Timothy into his ear. “That fool thing Harper said won’t work. They’ll come for us anyway. They’ll find us. She’ll eat everybody here. I have to do the right thing.”

  The Sticker tried to get the man off his chest, but his muscles had turned to water.

  “You won’t feel it. I could have done it in the bathroom. Just cut out your throat. I didn’t. I could have let you suffer. I didn’t. You don’t deserve that. You’re a good man. We’re all good men.” Timothy picked up his knife spear. “We just have a really bad fucking job.”

  With the only energy he still possessed, the Sticker brought up his hand, Fanjlion glove turning it to a blade.

  The point came out the top of Timothy’s skull. The man’s eyes went hazy. His lips tried a few words, but they came out gummy nonsense. He fell off the Sticker, blood rushing from his mouth like a river at last
free from a lifetime obstacle.

  The Sticker got up to his knees, looking around dizzily.

  The lights in the hall blinked on.

  All the commotion had signaled the Princess. Hundreds of padded feet fell in the hall, coming from all directions.

  He crawled around the corner. Razz stood in the threshold of the membrane station. Another river of red, this one, an army of like-minded slaves came blasting down the hall from both sides. Razz spotted the Sticker and emerged. The robots were almost upon him.

  “Come on!”

  The Sticker shook his head. “Go!” he hollered over the noise. “Go!”

  Razz fell back inside the room, terror in his face. The door to the membrane station shut.

  Good, thought the Sticker. That’s good.

  And then he stopped thinking; his presence of mind ripped away and shoved itself into a colorless place.

  *

  He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep but the Sticker awoke gagging. The death smell around him was palpable. In his early twenties, working a stockyard in northern California, he’d been assigned the atrocious duty of cleaning out a dumpster that held spoiled beef livers. That was vile.

  This was worse.

  His eyelids sagged as he fought to open them. The half-moon shaped room took on the ominous look of a mechanical dragon—thin metal plates on floor, ceiling and walls. Several dozen robots scrubbed blood off the eastern wall, and a few scattered throughout the room worked the floors. More huddled behind him, blocking the exit.

  The Sticker stood, against all warnings from his body to do otherwise. He faced a large platform that took up most of the room. On it sat, generators, supercomputers, machines tumbling drums of the digestive enzyme, steel cables flexing from dark locations; seeing it all took his eyes for a dizzy ride that landed on the most horrible part of all. Above the mass of unified machinery, an immense head stretched forth, connected to the cables by sinew and taut reams of leathery red muscle. The head had a canine shape, though there was no fur or even skin to speak of, just muscle and bone with two eyes like globes of jet.

  The Princess shook from side to side and let forth a spiteful choking sound.

  A robot approached the Sticker and said in a bland female voice. “Sit down.”

  He looked back at the snarling head, which was large enough to snap him up whole in its jaws. “I’d love to,” he said, and did as asked, his lower back at once exploding with its normal achiness. Exhaustion rolled throughout him and he jerked his head back to keep awake.

  The Princess clicked a large bloody tongue against her pink fangs, long as fence posts.

  “Your friend escaped through the transport,” the robot translated. “Are you happy?”

  “Yes,” the Sticker replied.

  The robot clucked and snickered in the Princess’s language.

  “That is fine. One friend did not get away.”

  A steel caged cart pushed through the gathering of robots at the door, two other robots laboring at its weight. Pieces of Timothy were piled inside. His face looked up at the ceiling, mouth open, chin painted in brown blood.

  The Sticker looked on, numbly, thankful for the surrealistic lens imparted on him by the sedative. It took him a moment to remember what had happened. A man who he thought was his friend, so desperate he’d made the wrong choice. The Sticker thought he should be more repulsed by the sight, even under the influence. Maybe it was all the death he’d seen. Maybe because he would never see Annette again. Or maybe he’d always envisioned an awful end to his life and this confirmation held him in morbid awe.

  When the robots started tossing Timothy into the Princess’s mouth though, it was gratifying to the Sticker to feel his gorge rise a little. He hadn’t lost his humanity through all this.

  As the Princess’s teeth slammed together and ground up Timothy, drums of enzymes twisted and twirled, lights on the computer displays dazzled like a toxic Christmas display, holograms of the food source molecular breakdowns pulsed in the air. Blood sprayed down from the Princess’s jaws and pooled on the floor near the stage. Toward the end of the meal, she made a sickening yummy sound that turned into one of her infant hunger screams.

  “More,” said the robot. “Fresh,” it added.

  A steel collar clicked around the Sticker’s neck and a force pitched him forward. He twisted his face back and saw several robots handling a large boom connected to his collar. They drove his body across the slippery floor until he slammed into the stage. He thrashed around to break their grip, but his muscles seized at their rock steady resistance. They pulled and he hitched back on his rear.

  The Sticker threw an arm behind his neck to see if he could reach the boom. He grasped air, nothing more. As he brought his arm back something tremendous dropped over his bicep. In silent terror he watched as the Princess severed his arm just under the shoulder, ripped it away from his body and greedily chewed it up in the left side of her mouth.

  The pain felt like a distant horror waiting to visit upon him. He could smell the meaty odor of the Princess’s breath. Her glassy black eyes rolled back in ecstasy as she ate.

  Robots seized him by the legs and lifted the Sticker in the air for presentation.

  “Too good,” an unseen robot translated. “More,” another said. “My destiny.”

  The Sticker kicked to get free; the Princess caught that leg in her mouth and took it off at the kneecap. Heart racing, blood pumping free of his leg and shoulder, the Sticker closed his eyes and tried to think of Annette, the good times, only the good times. It was difficult to concentrate though, listening to his body parts being sloppily consumed. Another roar of hunger filled the room and shock overtook him.

  *

  The Sticker passed out hearing the tremendous, insatiable wailings of the Princess, and this horrific, soul-rattling sound was the same thing that woke him.

  But he was in a different place now. He’d been here once before to get bandaged up by robots, after he took that beating on the last job. The medical bay…

  Why was he here now?

  The Sticker glanced down at the frayed veins and bone protruding down from his shoulder. A thin blue coating of some medicinal chemical sealed everything off, almost like plastic wrap around a chicken drumstick. He couldn’t see his leg stump from this prone position, but it had the same tight feeling down there.

  Oddly, but not so oddly, his good leg rested in a rectangular pan of brine, and his good arm soaked in another concoction that smelled of vinegar and spices.

  Variety, he thought with a sickening inward twinge.

  He tried to move but found his body strapped to the exam table like Frankenstein’s monster. Only they aren’t giving me body parts; they’re taking them.

  The Princess’s screams heightened to eardrum piercing levels. He’d never heard her so worked up. The maddening repetition of screeches and tantrum sobs worked at the Sticker’s shredded mind. He wanted to scream with her. He almost began to sympathize with her pain. He almost wanted to end it as much as he figured she did.

  But he wanted to live, too.

  Live? What life do you have now? You’re going back with less than you came with. Hell… you’ll be like one of those sad, sorry fucks begging near the freeway. LOST JOB, LEG AND ARM. GOT A DOLLAR?

  “Shit,” he laughed.

  A calm robot voice came over the ship intercom. “Additional hands required to assist with enzyme blending and conveyance. Immediate need. Code 78-9 directive.”

  That didn’t sound good. The announcement wasn’t exactly the same as others the Sticker had heard in previous months, but usually more enzymes meant more eating. Just how long had she planned on marinating him here? And why? She’d never done such a thing with her other meals. Certainly not Harper or Timothy.

  She likes your taste.

  Invisible knives sunk into the core of both his stumps and the Sticker shouted out, blinded by white hot pain. Whatever that blue plastic seal stuff was, it didn’t have an
ything to take the edge off. The sedative Timothy had pumped into him wore off sometime during his blackout. This next go round with the Princess would be au natural. Would she leave him alive again? Slowly take him apart piece by piece? Or would this next time be the end to all of this?

  “Critical need. Code 98-9 directive,” the overhead droned.

  Good, maybe I upset her stomach. Maybe she’ll die.

  The Princess answered this by suddenly going quiet. The screaming stopped.

  The Sticker lay there, staring at the dim canned lights in the ceiling of the med bay. New thoughts raced through his head. If she did die, what would the robots do? Let him rot here, more than likely.

  After twenty minutes had passed, those sorted fantasies faded. The Princess began to groan and call again, more fervently than ever.

  From down the hall, padded robot feet sounded in parade. The Sticker twisted once in his bindings, just to reassure himself there wasn’t a weakness he hadn’t exploited. The bindings held firmly.

  The med bay door opened and the red gelatin bodies of the ship’s robots quickly filled the room, seeming eager to complete their tasks.

  Losing no time, they stuck a boom into the side of the collar still snug around his throat. They untied the two straps around his body and pushed him into a sitting position. The Sticker yelped as barbed strings of agony pulled through his chest and groin. The robots disengaged the wheel locks on the exam table, and pushed him out of the med bay. He wanted to grab one of them or grab the boom, but that would mean letting go of the table, and thereby choking himself.

  The calls from the Princess intensified as they neared the audience chamber. At the urgency of her tone, the robots pushed the exam table faster.

  Here we go.

  As they turned the corner and he caught sight of the room, the Sticker straightened and cold resolve shot through his gut out to his extremities, real and ghost alike.

  Fuck this.

  He swung his leg hard and smashed a robot in the face with his heel. The gummy substance of its face was nothing like the candy, however. Bones bruised and fractured in his foot on impact. He would have yelled out but the air was taken from his lungs as his weight pitched the table sideways.