[Original Novel] Pressure 3: Beautiful Corpse, Part 21
Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
Two more appeared in the stairwell. Olivia grimaced, wiped the gore from the saw blade on her dress and advanced on them. These two were quicker on the uptake. One lunged at her. She positioned the saw to behead him as he fell onto her, then rolled the still-flailing body to one side and severed the umbilical. The other’s jaw hung open. The notion of fabricant in-fighting was new on him.
He groped around for a weapon, finding only a sledgehammer. Olivia felt nimble with the saw and was careless approaching him. He swung at her legs and tripped her up. The moment she was on the ground he raised the hammer. She rolled out of the way, sparing her head, but the hammer connected with her forearm and exploded it into shredded gore.
Olivia wailed in agony. The pain was blinding. She thrashed around with the saw, nicking off bits of her attacker as he ducked and weaved trying to avoid it, finally taking off his arm at the shoulder and the hammer with it. Her whole body throbbed with pain beyond description. She dared not look at the remains of her arm while he was still moving.
She opted not to give him time to think and instead head butted him, elbowed his face and while he was stunned, sawed into his head. He began to violently spasm. This was her cue to neatly saw through his umbilical, after which he collapsed in a pile of rapidly decomposing sections.
No more appeared to replace him for the time being. She now permitted herself to examine the damage. Her arm from the middle of the forearm down now dangled from a bundle of veins and nerves, bone fragments jutting out and glistening with blood. It could be salvaged by someone more skilled at mending, with time to do it properly.
She had neither the skill nor the time. Sawing through the thread connecting the two bits, she let her hand and part of her forearm thud to the floor and collect a pool of blood beneath it. In a fit of desperation, she tried something she knew was a long shot. Positioning the butt and grip of the reciprocating saw where the bones from what remained of her arm stuck out, she grabbed the rest of it from the floor and mended that material around the rear half of the tool.
Halfway through, she pulled what she recognized as the muscle which normally bent her wrist out from the stump and fused it to the tool’s trigger, then resumed enveloping it with the residual flesh until the tool appeared fully integrated with her body. A new appendage with a singular purpose. She tried flexing her wrist and to her delight, the saw buzzed to life. Necessity really is the mother of invention.
“Pretty little fabricant. Corrupt and vile to the core. Pretty fabricant, turning on the master who breathes life into her body, forsaking their bond for the pleasures of this world.” The deranged verse issued forth from the next fabricant to ascend the stairs. She was stocky, muscular, Slavic looking and her eyes burned with a mixture of excitement and rabid anger.
It shrieked and came out swinging. Olivia raised her new arm, flexed and brought the vibrating saw down just between the neck and shoulder, the woman’s body dancing madly like electrified frog’s legs as Olivia sawed through it. The blade exited between the legs and the two halves fell away from each other. She began screaming. Olivia sliced through the umbilical and before long nothing remained but a heap of rotting debris.
Her breathing was quick and labored. Running her hand through her hair she discovered she was covered in blood, both red and black. She caught sight of her reflection in a window. Under different circumstances she might’ve laughed, as she looked for all the world like a depraved, murderous psychopath. Further reflection led her to wonder whether that might be true.
They just kept coming, affording her little time to think, to breathe or to do anything but rend desecrated flesh from bone and struggle to keep their blood out of her eyes, nose and mouth. Three of them this time. They boggled at her modified limb. Integrating machinery by mending was evidently heretical. She flexed, raised the saw and went about her work. The pain was now gone, as was the dread. Replaced by maniacal delight.
She ripped them to pieces in twos, threes and fours. She beheaded some, cut others open at the waist and laughed as they tripped on their own entrails. Muscle memory guided her blade to their umbilical each time, finalizing the transaction. A growing mound of the greasy brown remains left over following umbilical disconnection began to accumulate around her ankles. She climbed atop it, saw buzzing hungrily, eyes wide and belly full of fire.
“SEND THEM ALL!” she roared. “FEED ME YOUR CHILDREN, UNTIL NONE REMAIN!” It was like she’d stepped on a beehive. A stream of them poured forth from the stairwell. Shrieking, clawing at her, each dismembered in turn by the relentless saw blade as she brought it to bear on them. Heads rolled. Arms fell limp to the ground. Viscous black blood caked every surface and every inch of her body.
At last, the torrent ceased. She stood atop a small mountain of putrid sludge, rivulets of black blood trickling down her face. Cheering could be faintly heard above her, followed by cautious footsteps from the stairwell. “Olivia? We restored light to the lower levels. How’d you manage in h-”
The doctor peered around the corner. For a time he remained silent, soaking in the spectacle. “Mary, mother of God.” Olivia wiped the black grime from her face and neck, then turned slowly to face him. “Don’t run. If you do, you know what comes next. If the others find out I’ll have to take care of them as well.”
He trembled as he spoke. “Helen didn’t trip, did she.” Olivia sighed. To be looked upon this way, by someone as naive and pure as she’d been before the Tartarus, was excruciating. There were very few ways to look at the situation in which she wasn’t a monster, no less foul than the ones she’d just dispatched.
“I’m not like them. You must know that. Why would I help you? Why would I kill my own kind like this?” She searched for things which set her apart from the other fabricants but came back empty handed. It was a cold, stark feeling here at the end of her long road of moral compromise. There was nothing left to say in her own defense. She’d crossed every line, defiled herself and others in the worst of all ways.
“I just want to get away from it. You don’t understand. You haven’t seen it yet. There’s something down there that sent all of these things after us. Beyond your comprehension. Contrary to nature, contrary to life. I thought if I could save one other person from it, it would mean something. That what I’ve become wouldn’t matter. Self-sacrifice for a higher purpose. But there is no redemption, I see that now. I can save her, but there’s no saving myself from what I’ve done.”
Tears washed away some trivial amount of the dried black residue from her cheeks. The doctor ran a hand through his hair and stammered. “I, uh. Shit. I don’t understand any of that. I don’t think you’re one of them or you’d have killed us. But fuck me, I’ve never seen anything like this. Your arm? How?”
“It wouldn’t make sense to you. Still doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t think I need this anymore, though. It’d just frighten the others.” Olivia concentrated and placed her hand on the spot where flesh transitioned to metal. Mending it away until the grip was in view, she tugged it free of her arm entirely and sealed the rest of it into a stump. She knelt, tore off a strip of her dress, dipped it in the pool of blood left by her arm before and wrapped it around the stump to create the appearance of a wound.
“What the fuck is all of this? You must know. You’re not with them but you’re not human either. How did this happen? I can keep it to myself but I have to know.” Olivia approached him. He flinched. It hurt that he was afraid of her but she could think of no reason to blame him. “Get me out of this. Get us all out of this and I’ll tell you everything.”
He was quiet and pensive on the way back up to the top level. Olivia wondered whether he’d really keep his mouth shut. The moment they reached the landing they were set upon by the others, badgering them for details about what happened, and where Olivia’s arm went. “One of them...ah...tore it clean off. I...did my best to bandage it with what was available.” He cast sidelong glances at Olivia as he spoke.
The awe on the rest of their faces somewhat made up for the fear on the doctor’s. “Psychiatrist my ass. Got to be special ops or some shit.” Olivia smiled. “It’s a hell of a story. But let’s save that for when we’re on the surface waiting for the Navy to pick us up.” That met with no objections.
Stay Tuned for Part 22!