Chase Baker & the Humanzees from Hell (A Chase Baker Thriller Book 8) by Benjamin Sobieck Page A

few seconds.
    Maybe it’s not as smart as Doctor X made it out to be?
    The tension of watching Helper 10 debate what to do with the .45 nearly knocks me over. Literally. It’s getting harder to stand. My injuries need medical attention before I succumb to infection, not that I’m necessarily in any rush to get back to a hospital.
    “What does it want?” Hillary says to me, motioning at Helper 10.
    “To kill us, but it’s hesitating for some reason,” I say.
    Itching for a chance at revenge, Hillary snaps her fingers in the air like she’s trying to attract a waiter’s attention. “Hello? Anyone home, ugly?”
    Helper 10 looks through Hillary with what I’d call a thousand-mile stare. It sighs.
    “Don’t be bashful, my beloved Helper,” Doctor X says through the speaker. “You can put a bullet in each of their heads before any of them can blink. We talked about this. Stop being so hard on yourself.”
    They talked about it?
    Indeed they did. Helper 10, bred for brainpower over horsepower, opens its mouth and speaks.
    “I…no…to you…,” Helper 10 says in a gurgle that sounds like it’s talking through a throat full of raw hamburger.
    “Shhh, my baby,” Doctor X says. “No words this time. Just kill them.”
    Helper 10’s all-too-human eyes shift between the .45, Hillary, myself, the chimps and the speaker.
    “…friends…all dead…,” Helper 10 says in a whimper.
    I’m getting the picture now.
    “Your friends are all dead?” I say.
    Helper 10 nods its head. Because of the way its disfigured body mashes muscle and bone together, the motion rocks its entire upper half.
    “…can’t…,” Helper 10 says, looking at the .45, then at the chimps.
    Helper 10 is sad.
    “Stop hesitating, you stupid oaf,” Doctor X says through the speaker. “Kill them. Now!”
    Helper 10 doesn’t kill us. It stares with those sullen eyes, twisting the .45 over and over again in its hand.
    The merger of humans and chimps went a little too well for Doctor X. He couldn’t breed out the parts of humans that make them human. Remorse. Reflection. Empathy. The more successful Doctor X’s experiments, the more this trap door revealed itself. There was never going to be a deployment of these hybrid super-soldiers, these humanzees, at least none capable of thinking for themselves. Deploy Helper 10s to the battlefield, and they’ll come back with all the psychological baggage of typical human soldiers, minus any way of treating them.
    “…tired…of…killing…no friends left,” Helper 10 says, referring to Helper 8 and 9.
    “Kill them. Kill them!” Doctor X says, sounding more desperate.
    Oh, man and his follies. Same shit, different day. I’m looking at a biological Titanic ready to sink.
    Helper 10 raises the .45 to its head. I swear I see a tear roll down its eye. The chimps behind me howl in delight, eager to witness the death of one of their cruel handlers.
    Hillary, too, pines for blood. “Do it, you waste. Pull the trigger,” she says.
    “Kill them, kill them, kill them,” Doctor X says in a fever pitch.
    I think back once again to that conversation with the restaurant owner.
    “Can you think of a way to separate all animals from all humans?”
    Remorse. Reflection. Empathy.
    Empathy.
    I raise my hand, look directly into Helper 10’s eyes and say, “Stop. You don’t have to do this.”
    Helper 10 isn’t convinced. It shores up its grip on the .45.
    “Didn’t Doctor X say there are others like you?” I say.
    “…lies…all dead…,” Helper 10 says.
    Doctor X’s voice is suspiciously absent from the speaker above my head.
    “You’re still not alone,” I say. “Doctor X, he has something called a Minnesota Iceman. Do you know what I mean by that?”
    “…Iceman…yes…but fake,” Helper 10 says.
    Even the human-chimp hybrid thinks the Iceman is a fraud.
    Hillary snaps back into businesswoman mode. She says, “A fake? Not on your life. It’s either the real deal or my Museum of the