As he straightened, the pilot barked a command. “Foam him. And don’t forget his fucking hand.”
One of the figures in armor snatched the severed limb out of the hole in the top of the cubeto Ryan, the stump end looked as if it had been gnawed by ratsand unceremoniously threw it to the cannie, while another armored figure undipped a hose from its hip. One end of the hose terminated at the bottom of the tank on its back; the other in a nozzle. As the hoser advanced on the cannie, the other one moved the cube to the middle of the street. Everyone else backed away from the flesh eater. Ryan followed suit.
“What’re you gonna do to me?” Gore croaked, his eyes wide with fear.
“Ever hear of a carniphage?” the pilot asked.
The cannie swallowed hard and shook his head.
Ryan didn’t know what it was, either, but he didn’t like the sound of it.
The pilot tried another tack. “Well, do you know what bacteria are?” he asked.
Gore looked desperately at Ryan, whose face was a mask of stone.
“That’s too bad, because I don’t have time to explain it to you,” the pilot told him. “Won’t say this isn’t going to hurt, though, because that would be a lie.”
The one with the tank took another step forward, then creamy yellow stuff shot from the nozzle in its gloved hand. Three feet from the tip of the nozzle, the thin line of fluid seemed to balloon in all directions, expanding on contact with the air. Gore let out a banshee shriek as foam splattered his body, head to foot.
Whatever it was, it didn’t take long to work.
Ryan could see the clothes melting right off the man. The duster dissolved, then the holey gray T-shirt. As his epidermis dripped from the sides of his face, the cannie did a shivery, heel-drumming, horizontal dance in the gutter. The yellow foam continued to billow up, until it completely concealed him. Ryan heard choking sounds from beneath the bubbling mass.
Then the cannie’s good hand thrust up out of the foam, the ringers already stripped of flesh, red bones dissolving from the fingertips down, like icicles held to a flame. Beneath the mound of yellow fluff, brown fluid sizzled forth, pooling then slowly sinking into the asphalt sand.
Ryan whirled on the pilot. “What in rad-blazes are you?” he demanded.
“We’ll ask the questions for the time being.”
“I don’t talk to bugs. I’m not answering any questions until I see your ugly faces. Take off that fucking helmet and look me in the eye. Unless you’re afraid.”
“We’ve got nothing to be afraid of, friend. Problem is, these helmets don’t come off. Battlesuit isn’t designed that way. But we can do something about the tint.”
The top of the pilot’s helmet started to go transparent, black turning clear, down over the visor, to the neck opening. The head inside had close-cropped dark brown hair in a widow’s peak, and hard brown eyes.
“You’re a norm,” Ryan said.
As the one-eyed man turned, the other helmets went from black to clear. He saw that one of his captors was female. She had pale blond hair cut short, pale blue eyes and a thin, aquiline nose. The man standing next to her had a shaved head and wore a sandy-colored walrus mustache that drooped past the corners of his mouth. The third male was taller than the woman, but only just. He had shoulder-length, curly brown hair, some of it graying.
The last man was the one with the foam tank. He was as big as the guy with the walrus mustache, and sharp-featured. Under his helmet he wore a seamed, red skullcap with an embroidered logo across the crown that read Buy or Die! 759th AirCav. There was a different insignia on his armor’s breastplate the word FIVE in small silver letters. For the first time, Ryan noticed the same design on the breastplates of all the others.
“Hold the foam ready, Ockerman,” the pilot said. “If this one’s got Ice Nine, too, we’re going to need it.”
“No worries,” Ockerman replied. He looked thoroughly amused.