The Immune. Doc Lucky Meisenheimer
beans into his hand.
“Captain Flinch, you must take one of these every morning,” said the man.
“Thank you, Captain Stewart, I’m greatly indebted to you,” said Captain Flinch slavishly.
Captain Stewart gave Flinch a small bow, “I understand this next extraction is for Senator Snivaling as well? She already requested the Ube extraction.”
He reached into his lab coat pocket and handed Flinch what appeared to be a small aerosol can with a blue cap. On the side of the cap in marker was UW. He went on to say, “I don’t know why she needs more than one; it’s not like she’ll ever get within a mile of an airwar.”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Flinch, “I’m just following orders. She wants me to wait and bring this extraction, too.”
“Oh, so you’re watching?” Stewart said, somewhat patronizingly. “Most can’t stomach it.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” said Stewart, giving Flinch a devilish grin, “then, if you don’t mind, I’ll complete this extraction.” He turned to the hanging man.
“Excuse me, sir,” John raised his head from the table he was strapped to, “My name is Dr. John Long, and I’m a physician. I believe there’s been a terrible misunderstanding,” John twisted his head so he could get a better look at Captain Stewart, “I’m more than happy to provide you any information you desire without resorting to torture. Senator Snivaling incorrectly believes I’m part of a terrorist organization called Immune. I assure you, I’m not a member.”
Captain Stewart turned, looked at him for the first time, and said, “Oh, I recognize you. You’re the fellow who killed the airwar with your bare hands—impressive. Now I see why the senator wants your extraction. Ironically for you, doctor, I’m a lawyer.”
Before John could respond, Stewart turned and walked away from John to the hanging man in the center of the room. Stewart reached into his pocket, took out a metal probe, and touched it to the now unconscious prisoner ’s right testicle. An electrical arc flashed from the probe to the man’s skin. The prisoner jerked violently and screamed, then a shower of benzene discharged over him. After a minute, Stewart looked at a meter on the side of the collecting pool and said to Flinch, “Well, that’s it. We should be down to less than ten percent remaining. The rest we’ll do in residual extraction.”
What followed was horrifying. Stewart picked up some odd-looking stainless steel surgical instruments from a nearby table. He then proceeded to remove the skin from the prisoner as calmly as if he were removing skin from a holiday turkey. The poor soul screamed, jerked, and gyrated, but Stewart was skilled at the process. John then realized the skins he’d seen on the corridor wall were human, not animal. There wasn’t going to be any torture to extract information; they were extracting something from the man’s skin.
When only the skin from the man’s head, hands, and feet remained, Stewart stopped his dissection, but the man continued his wild screaming. Captain Flinch was off to the side, vomiting. Apparently, he wasn’t fine with watching.
“It’s not a job you acquire a taste for,” Stewart said, laughing at Flinch, “You enjoy it the first time or you never do. I’ll place you in the didn’t enjoy it category.” He laughed again, “That’s more job security for me, I guess.”
Stewart walked to the wall and pushed a button. Doors behind the screaming man opened, and chains on the ceiling lifted him from the pool and moved along a track to the opening. Beyond the opening, a pit ten feet deep by thirty in diameter came to view. It was filled with a dozen large pigs.
The chains carried the writhing man over the pit, then the shackles suddenly released, dropping him into the midst of the swine. The reaction was immediate and more terrifying than seeing Stewart working with his skinning knives. The swine tore into the man, ripping him to shreds and eating him alive. His limbs tore easily from his body by the five hundred pound beasts. Stewart laughed at Flinch, who resumed his vomiting.
“Want to bet on the time?” Stewart said to Flinch.
Flinch’s face was pale and he looked near passing out.
“The record is two minutes, thirty-five seconds, but I guess this group isn’t hungry enough to get the record.” Stewart grinned. After a few moments, Stewart announced, “Three minutes and eighteen seconds. Not bad.”
He pushed another button. A side door in the pit opened and the swine ran through it. Other than a few bloodstains on the floor, there were no signs the prisoner ever existed. Stewart looked at John and said, “I’ll get hungry ones for you, Doctor. Maybe you’ll get the record.”
Both hooded men began moving toward John.
CHAPTER 12
EXTRACTION
John attempted a valiant escape as his bindings were cut. Unfortunately, his captors were experienced in transporting the unwilling. John quickly found himself in shackles; arms pulled above his head by chains. His feet were in the blue pool and, looking down, he could see several measuring probes and coils in the base. Upon lifting his head, he met the smiling features of Captain Stewart. Stewart stuck his face three inches from John’s nose.
“Doctor, I have to cause extreme pain so your sebaceous glands will release the needed protein,” said Stewart, “Benzene will solubilize and wash it into the collecting basin. I’ll then extract the protein from the benzene. I hope you’ll be cooperative.” Stewart laughed.
“I can’t believe Senator Snivaling knows what you’re doing,” said John.
“Not only does she know, she placed a special order just for you,” Stewart said and poked John in the chest.
“Impossible,” said John, “There’s no way a United States senator and ASC official could be aware of what goes on here.”
“Now that’s a laugh,” said Stewart, “Not only is she aware, but she personally developed the residual extraction process. You didn’t know it, but before she replaced her deceased husband in the senate, she was a biochemist. Before Snivaling, we were tossing bodies to pigs after we extracted only ninety percent of the protein.”
Stewart picked up an apparatus off the dissection instrument table. It looked like a hot glue gun with three tips. He pulled the trigger, and the tips glowed orange. He smiled.
“The last ten percent we couldn’t recover by the live stimulation wash technique,” Stewart continued, “She postulated a slow benzene drip over several days might capture another seven to eight percent, and she was right. When we tried using the drip on skins without a previous live stimulation, we recovered less overall than the combination.”
“Why on earth kill people?” said John. “You could harvest more protein later.”
“Good try, Doctor, but we already attempted that,” said Stewart. “After the benzene wash, whatever was making those glands produce the protein stopped working. So we extract what we can get and discard the offal. So sorry.” Then he laughed and said, “Not really,” and laughed again.
“For God’s sake, what protein do you want from my skin?” John shouted.
“Doctor, my question and answer time is over,” Stewart turned, “You may direct further questions to our porcine friends shortly.” He then started laughing loudly.
Captain Stewart motioned to one of the hooded men and commanded, “Prep him and strip him.”
The “prep” was a bucket of ice water tossed on John. The hooded man grabbed John’s pale blue surf shorts and stripped them down. As the shorts caught on his feet, they turned inside out, revealing the red inner lining. The man bent farther to get a better grip, and John wrapped his legs around the man’s neck and squeezed.
John thought, in a movie, the henchman would pass out. He would free himself,