Darkness at Noon
Chapter Four: Comprachicos
He glowered out of the darkness at the CB radio. At least with the lights off and the shades drawn there was no brightness inflicting immense pain directly into his corneas. The red light indicating the 'on' status of the radio was irritating enough on its own and he was quite sure that his vision was blurring around the edges.
Not a good sign by any means. It was quite likely that the ecto-induced virus was spreading quickly and attacking the most basic means of his survival. His feet were swelling, not that anyone else knew that, but it was a hint that his body was failing.
Already he was running the figures over and over in the back of his mind. Exponential growth of the disease versus his exponential production of leukocytes. He calculated, recalculated, and recalculated again. He had roughly ten hours left before his facilities were entirely beyond him, not to speak of those infected who might not have been even as healthy as he was.
He should have stayed in better shape.
Instead he was sitting here, staring helplessly at a glowing red light in the darkness of his home, hoping that Janine and three neophytes came back in one piece. At least if it became imminent that he would pass from one world into another he need not worry about where he was going. He would stay right here, as he always had, bound spiritually in order to guard their greatest achievement and their greatest bane.
The radio crackled and startled him out of his reverie.
"Hey, I got a question...Uh...These things aren't going to cause cancer or nothin' right?" Eduardo asked.
Egon pondered for a moment. "There isn't any evidence that the use will support, nor negate, the growth of cancerous cells."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Eduardo sounded a little panicked.
"It means..." Janine paused, possibly considering how she phrased the end of her response. "Probably not."
A misleading answer, certainly, but no need to give Eduardo a nervous tic if he didn't really need one.
His stomach growled again, the third time in an hour that he was voraciously starving. The periods between the need to eat were getting shorter and shorter, which he took as another negative indication.
"Okay, we're getting stronger readings, so we're stopping here." Janine said, and the car engine shut off.
"Be careful," he managed. He glanced up at Slimer and made a vague gesture towards the kitchen. The ghost obediently fetched him something from the refrigerator, carefully holding a plate by the edges so he didn't drip ectoplasm onto a sandwich. Janine's doing, no doubt.
And so he sat, devouring his prize in tense silence. A rock had formed in the pit of his stomach and stayed there when they had left with two questionably functioning traps and three proton packs between them. Granted that much could get the job done, but he did not trust the equipment as far as he could currently throw it at this point.
Nearly everything needing repaired or replaced had been like running into a brick wall. Companies which had manufactured their harder to machine parts no longer produced what was needed, if the companies even still existed at all. Most of his contacts phone numbers came up as out of service or led to someone else entirely. His hands shook too much to hold a soldering iron, and while Roland was adept he was not able to machine the precise parts they needed.
Egon frowned at the empty plate. If only Ray was here. More than once over the years of solitude he had mused over how much he depended on the engineer to make his ideas into a reality. He could do the minor repairs, the soldering, the wiring, but Ray worked the mechanical magic.
Damnation, damnation, and further damnation.
The radio gave an impromptu squeal, breaking the silence, then just as quickly filling it was more.
"-left the trap in the damn car!" Janine's voice, faint. Someone was shuffling things around near the microphone.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Roland was apologising over and over close by. Somewhere in the distance Eduardo's screams mingled with an unearthly howl.
The shuffling stopped and all he could hear was shouting. Mostly Janine over all the noise. "Throw the trap!...Great!...Stomp on the pedal!...No, don't cut your stream, keep holding it!"
Then there was blessed quiet and Egon felt as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. The boils began to fade, the green scaling of his skin receding slowly, leaving only some minor scaring.
Then there was a soft "shit" coming from Janine.
Followed by the muted 'whump' of an explosion, the sound of glass breaking, and static.
Egon grabbed the mic. "Someone please respond!" The weight had returned, the scaling creeping back down his hand. The creature was free, but that didn't matter to him at that exact moment.
Nothing but static. Slimer made a soft keening sound that was rapidly growing in pitch and volume.
He stared at the radio and for a bare second every thought fled his mind beyond the white noise. The equipment. It had to have been the equipment. Over his head Slimer was letting out a full fledged hair raising wail.
He had as good as killed them.
He tried to calculate their potential survival rate, but without knowing their proximity to whichever device had exploded - he assumed it was an explosion as an implosion would have been more catastrophic and he might have felt the effect by now - it was impossible. The margins were despairingly low; low enough for his heart to turn to lead in his chest.
He realized he had been tapping the transmit button repeatedly and futilely.
He also realized he could not be safe and secure in the knowledge his spirit would not leave the firehouse should his body cease functions; what the hell had he been thinking? There was a ghost out there killing hundreds as he sat here, unable to remove himself from the situation long enough to care about more than four tragedies.
He rubbed his eyes. There were more pressing concerns, and while it shook him to the core he could not let these tragedies go without answer.
He stood and made his way to the lab, calling roughly for Slimer to join him. The ghost followed, still keening like a wounded animal. Egon wished he could join him in the sentiment, but now was not the time.
The time for mourning was later...The time for action was now.
The virus was a feeder, sapping his resources. He needed to work ahead of it, give it something to feed on aside from his body. That, or poison it until it weakened. Which meant poisoning himself. He closed his eyes for a moment, sinking into his chair. He could poison it for the time being while he worked out how to negate or minimize the effects.
"Slimer, get the scotch out of the bottom cabinet in the kitchen." He sighed. As much as he despised alcohol, he found himself for once grateful that Peter had forgotten one item from his formidable stash. Half a fifth of scotch, wonderful.
Slimer delivered, wringing his hands nervously as he set it on the table within Egon's reach.
No glass. Oh well. He unscrewed the cap and grimaced at the smell before taking a swig.
He stared at his hand for a moment, categorizing the effects on ingesting what was essentially a recreational toxin on the entity he was playing host to. "Slimer, turn on the hall light please." The ghost warbled and did as he asked. Slimer was very helpful when he had enough of a mind to be.
The boils stopped throbbing at least, his headache was no better, but at the very least he didn't feel as off balance. He also did not feel hunger pangs. So far, so good. He took another drink before setting the bottle aside and moving to his drafting board.
His tolerance, while lower than Peter's obviously, was still such that he was able to obtain his objectives while keeping in a lightly inebriated form. His throat and stomach felt pleasantly warm even though he knew it was causing an exothermic reaction.
The phone rang downstairs, but there was no phone readily available in his immediate vicinity and he dreaded the news. He ignored it and placed his fists against his temples, thinking hard.
The virus was a feeder. Ergo, it required something to feed upon. That much he had covered. Feeding it his body was out of the question. Drowning himself in alcohol was also out of the question despite his current usage. He would either be useless or expire from over-consumption, and neither of those options would save anything.
As nothing had saved her.
He put the thought out of mind again, burying it where emotions should be buried in favor of function and reason. But God if it wasn't hard to do. He tapped his pen on the table, staring at his notes. He was no biochemist and while he could have called his uncle he doubted it would do him any good. His skin itched. He turned, grasped the fifth of scotch, and imbibed more of the foul smelling concoction. At least it was numbing him, little by little.
A splat of ecto landed by his hand. Slimer was comforting himself with half a chocolate bar. He glared up at his companion. The ghost was really nothing but a stomach, unable to resist even the smallest of impulses...
A stomach.
He slapped a hand to his forehead, narrowly missing his glasses. Of course, the answer was obvious. He reached into a desk drawer, pulled out a fresh slide, and waved it at Slimer.
"Slimer. Treat."
Of course, his hand was engulfed with the slide, but that didn't matter as much. He pulled his hand gently from the pulsating gullet the spook packed everything away in and slid his chair over to the desk his microscope lay waiting on. Slimer made a disappointed noise.
He flicked his slimed hand impatiently, took another gulp of the scotch, and promptly regretted turning the lamps-sans-dimmer on. He winced away, black spots swimming all over the room. The phone rang again, and he again ignored it.
He turned back to the microscope after a moment, turning the dimmer until it was nearly shutting out all the light and placing the slide into its proper place on the stage. He pushed his glasses back and cautiously peered down into it. He was familiar with Slimer's functions, yes, but review was good. Especially since he had not viewed the cellular behavior in the spud recently.
Not much had changed, which was good because it gave him firmer standing. Now he just needed to figure out how to slow or reverse the digestive process. Which was extremely complex in humans, much less in the paranormal world.
He sighed. He had nothing to lose by trying a human means. "Slimer, get the red bottle of cough syrup out of the bathroom cabinet."
About a month ago he had suffered from acute bronchitis bordering on pneumonia, and as luck would have it that came with a prescription for cough syrup containing codeine. It also came with an obscene bill, but that was neither here nor there. Codeine was an opiate, which would slow metabolic rates in humans.
He fingered his midsection ruefully. Ectomorphic my widening posterior.
Once the bottle was in hand he knew he could not ingest it. While it had not gone past its expiration date and become dangerous he had been consuming alcohol, which would not bode well in the mixing. Instead he pulled out an eyedropper and added a small amount to the slide, observing the progress through the scope. The phone started its irritating ringing once more. He was likely down to 8 hours by now.
His head felt fuzzy and he mumbled out the first thing that came to mind. "Telescopic Tesla coils."
It was the best he had at the moment. Apparently the cough syrup was working just as an opiate should be expected to work. How unexpected. The digestive motion was slowing where the sticky mess had been introduced.
He glanced down at his arm, where the boils were pulsing once more. He took another drink of the scotch and pulled some more of his magical opiates into the eyedropper, then dabbled it on his arm.
The pulsing of the boils slowed just enough for him to perceive it. That was one problem halfway solved, or at least mitigated for the time being. Now for the equipment...Why was it becoming so difficult to visualize what to do for them?
Footsteps stomped into the room behind him, accompanied by the unmistakable scent of ozone and smoke. "Would it kill you to answer your damn phone?"
He froze, fist clenching reflexively and drenching his arm in cherry flavored syrup.
Janine. Oh God, that was Janine. His stomach did a flip and he felt a sudden wave of nausea that was not entirely to do with his current predicament.
He turned in his chair and gave her a watery smile. "Oh good, you're alive."
The room tilted sideways momentarily. Why was everything suddenly blurry? His glasses were on.
Then he promptly vomited into his trash bin.
Comprachicos is a song by Pendulum.