Friendly Face, page 17
Jessica grinned. “That’s a great idea!” She squinted at the screen and started typing.
Jessica worked on Rosie’s code for three more hours. It was after midnight when she typed in the last of the code and sat back.
“Okay,” she said, “if we did this right, these commands should have been downloading into Rosie as we created them. All we need to do now is disconnect her, unplug her from the wall, and activate her.”
Unplugging her computer, Jessica looked at Rosie’s control panel. “She’s fully charged. I think if we activate her now, she’ll be good to go in the morning. Then she can grab Cindy and Mindy when they get here for their early workshop time.”
“We have to be sure we get here on time so we can see that,” Brittany said. She looked at her gold watch. “We won’t have much time for beauty sleep.”
“We don’t need much beauty sleep,” Jessica said.
They laughed. In perfectly synchronized motion, they both got out their lip gloss and freshened up their lips, then stood up from the table.
“Go ahead and activate her,” Jessica said to Brittany.
Brittany grinned and reached behind Rosie’s neck. She flipped a switch. As soon as she did, the cover to Rosie’s control panel closed.
With a click and a whir, Rosie blinked her eyes. Her head swiveled this way and that.
Her gaze landed on Jessica. She blinked again and turned to look at Brittany.
Another click sounded from inside Rosie, and she rose up off the cart. Once she was off the cart, she stood still, looking at Brittany.
“What’s she doing?” Brittany asked.
Jessica shook her head. “Maybe she’s just getting ready.” She shoved her laptop back into her backpack and started to zip up the pack.
Before Jessica could close her backpack, Rosie reached out and grabbed Brittany by the shoulders.
Brittany screamed. “Ow! What’s she doing?”
Jessica turned toward Rosie and her friend, and she stared in disbelief. Rosie’s pink hands were full-on clamped down on Brittany’s right bicep.
Brittany tried to wrench herself free of Rosie’s grasp, but that just resulted in Rosie’s metal fingers, padded only slightly by her pink felt, digging in deeper. They cut through Brittany’s bare skin, drawing blood.
Jessica watched in horror as the blood trickled down to Brittany’s elbow and dripped onto her shirt. Brittany cried out, “Jessica, do something!”
Brittany tried to reach with her free arm to deactivate Rosie, but before she could, Rosie’s hydraulic-driven strength yanked Brittany off her feet and twirled her upside down. Rosie’s belly access door dropped open with a hiss, and Rosie lifted Brittany out and away from her belly so Brittany was hovering in the air, parallel to the floor. While Jessica was trying to figure out why Rosie was performing what looked like an acrobatic move—she hadn’t programmed that—Rosie began shoving Brittany through the access door and into Rosie’s belly.
“Stop it!” Jessica screamed at Rosie. She grabbed Brittany around the waist and tried to pull her out of the animatronic pig’s grasp.
What had gone wrong? Why was Rosie putting Brittany inside her stomach cavity?
Jessica had just seconds to think of these questions before Brittany screamed again. Putting aside her confusion and disbelief, Jessica yanked harder. Brittany’s screams became shriller, but otherwise Jessica’s efforts had no effect.
Rosie was relentlessly stuffing Brittany into her stomach. Jessica couldn’t stop it.
Brittany went into the belly cavity feetfirst, and she didn’t go quietly or easily. Kicking her legs madly, Brittany shrieked at the top of her lungs as she was stuffed into Rosie’s open stomach. Between shrill screams, Brittany yelled, “Turn her off! Turn her off!”
Jessica let go of Brittany’s waist and tried grabbing Brittany’s shoulders, but obviously Brittany wasn’t thinking clearly, and she squirmed wildly. Jessica finally managed to get a grip on Brittany’s upper arms, but she was no match for Rosie’s strength.
So, Jessica tried to do what Brittany was now chanting: “Turn her off! Turn her off! Turn her off!”
Jessica couldn’t reach Rosie’s control panel. Brittany’s struggling torso and Rosie’s relentless grasp blocked the way.
Jessica ran around behind Rosie so she could get to the switch from the other side of the pig.
Brittany kept screaming and fighting.
“Just hang on!” Jessica shouted. “I’ll turn her off.”
Jessica reached for the pig’s activation switch, but Rosie was significantly taller than the petite teen. Even on tiptoes, Jessica couldn’t reach Rosie’s neck.
Leaping to try to reach the switch, Jessica failed again. She tried twice more, and finally she stopped leaping and instead grabbed a chair.
As she dragged the chair over to position it behind Rosie’s back, Jessica realized that Rosie had let go of Brittany’s arms. She saw Brittany twist to try to pull herself out through the open access door. But not only did her body impede her reach—as soon as Rosie let go of Brittany’s shoulders, Rosie got a grip on Brittany’s head. Shoving her fingers through Brittany’s tidy slicked-back hair, Rosie clamped down on Brittany’s skull.
Brittany’s eyes goggled. They swiveled this way and that, looking for escape. Seeing Jessica, she gave her friend a beseeching look. Brittany’s face was covered in sweat. In cheerleading practice, they always joked about how cheerleaders never perspired. They glowed. Well, Brittany’s face wasn’t glowing. It was wet with desperate sweat.
Before Jessica could say anything to Brittany to try to reassure her, Rosie shoved Brittany’s head inside the stomach cavity. Brittany tried to turn and reach for the doorway, but before she could, it slammed shut with a sucking sshhh.
It was sealed.
Jessica stared, her mouth hanging open. She then clamped a hand over her mouth. Her friend was trapped inside Rosie Porkchop.
“Brittany! Brit? Can you hear me?” Jessica shouted.
For just an instant, the room was silent. Jessica realized her heart was pounding so hard that it felt like the rapid-fire beats were thrumming in her ears. Then, past the pounding beat in her head, she heard Brittany’s muffled wail.
“Get me out of here!”
“I’m trying!” Jessica yelled. “Just hold on.”
Jessica finished positioning the chair and climbed up onto it.
Brittany kept crying out and yelling. Most of what she shouted was incomprehensible, but Jessica didn’t need to understand her friend’s words to get her meaning. Brittany was terrified, and she wanted out of the pig. Even a moron could figure that out, and Jessica wasn’t a moron.
She wished Brittany would shut up so she could concentrate, but she understood why Brittany kept yelling. Jessica would have been yelling, too, if she was stuck inside that thing.
“I’m working on deactivating Rosie,” Jessica shouted. “It would help if you could just be quiet for a few seconds. I know you’re scared, but your screaming is, like, freaking me out.”
A couple seconds of silence passed. Then Brittany shrieked, “Being inside here is freaking me out!”
Jessica, in spite of the situation, couldn’t help but smile. Leave it to Brittany to be funny in a situation like this.
“You’ll be out in a few seconds,” Jessica shouted to Brittany.
Jessica concentrated on reaching Rosie’s controls. Even on the chair, the control box was hard to reach, but Jessica was finally able to flip the cover open. After she got it open, though, she could tell that the buttons and levers were at an angle that hid them from her view. She would have to go by feel. Reaching, she sought the controls she knew were there.
From inside Rosie, Brittany shouted, “How much longer?” Her voice was even higher than ever. And it had a catch in it. Jessica was sure Brittany was crying.
“That’s enough of that,” Jessica told Rosie.
Jessica fumbled around, seeking the right button. Instead of a button, though, her fingers activated a toggle switch.
Rosie Porkchop jolted so violently that she backed into Jessica’s chair and tipped it over. Jessica tumbled to the ground, turning her ankle and whacking her head on the edge of a nearby table.
“Crap!” she snapped, rubbing her head.
Then she turned to look at Rosie.
She blinked in confusion.
Rosie was convulsing.
And from inside Rosie, Brittany let out a sound that Jessica had never heard before and never wanted to hear again. It sounded like a cross between a howl and a screech. It was loud—it didn’t sound muffled at all—and it quite clearly was the sound of excruciating pain. The only other time Jessica had heard a sound like that was when her neighbor’s cat had been run over by a lawn mower.
Before Jessica could even react to her friend’s cries, they stopped.
Rosie was perfectly still.
“Oh my God!” Jessica shouted, struggling to her feet. “Brittany! Can you hear me?”
Jessica started to pant in total panic. What had happened to Brittany?
Rosie went still.
Jessica repositioned the chair so she could get a better look at Rosie’s control panel. What switch had she flipped?
Jessica peered at the controls. Oh. She’d flipped the MODE switch from SUIT to ANIMATRONIC.
“Sorry,” she muttered. She quickly flipped the switch back to SUIT.
As soon as the switch was moved, Rosie’s belly access door popped open.
“Yes!” Jessica punched the air.
She rushed around to help her friend out of the animatronic pig.
When she stepped to the belly side of the pig, the first thing Jessica noticed was that the interior of the access door wasn’t the silver gray it had been when she’d last seen it. It also wasn’t dry. It was—
Is that blood?
As Jessica watched, a thick red drop detached from the edge of the door and plopped onto the gray rubber flooring. She gaped at it. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
Her brain was suddenly sluggish. She was having trouble processing what the blood meant. The blood and the fact that Brittany wasn’t clambering to get out of the pig was telling her something. Something she didn’t want to know.
Jessica blinked, then leaned toward the door, ready to help Brittany get out. “Brittany?”
Jessica tried to see inside Rosie, but she couldn’t. She could, however, see a scrap of denim stuck on a gear near the door cover. A bloody scrap.
Jessica cried out and stood, shoving back the chair as she did.
In the minutes that followed, she’d have a few cogent seconds in which she wondered if her sudden movement was what reactivated Rosie. Would Rosie have remained dormant if Jessica had just sat there silently until help came? Would Rosie have stayed frozen if Jessica had slunk off the chair and retreated slowly, stealthily, out of the classroom?
She’d never know. Because that’s not what she did. She made a loud noise, and she moved suddenly.
Rosie’s reaction was instantaneous. She reached out, and she grabbed Jessica by the shoulders.
In an identical move to the one she used on Brittany, Rosie flipped Jessica upside down and then lifted her into a position parallel to the floor.
Jessica screamed and started flailing around. She pounded on the pig’s hands. “Let me go!” Jessica shrieked. Then she just started crying out for help. “Help me!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, even though she knew she was alone.
When she realized how futile that was, she bellowed at Rosie, “Stop it!” This was just as ineffective.
As Jessica fought against Rosie, part of her mind—the part that was still capable of logical thought—tried to figure out what she had done to make the pig grab Brittany and now her. How had she gotten the programming so wrong?
As soon as she asked the question, the answer arrived on a fleeting second of lucidity. She’d been typing in the name codes when they’d seen the robotic rat. Right in the middle of that process, Jessica had left what she was doing. When she’d gotten back to the computer, she must have flipped the codes. She’d gotten the commands reversed. Whatever she’d programmed Rosie to do to Cindy and Mindy, Rosie would do to Jessica and Brittany. And Jessica and Brittany would be forced to serve Cindy and Mindy.
Why hadn’t she double-checked her work? Brittany had suggested proofreading, but Jessica hadn’t listened to her. Jessica had been lazy, and given that scrap of bloody denim and the complete lack of sound from Brittany, she was pretty sure her laziness had gotten her friend killed.
Was the same thing going to happen to Jessica?
She resumed fighting the pig for all she was worth. And still, she wasn’t strong enough to break out of Rosie’s grasp.
But she had to keep trying.
Jessica started screaming, shrieking, wailing, howling, kicking, and punching. Whatever remnants of poise and grace Jessica used to have unraveled with every caterwaul and every primal motion she made. Jessica’s presence was a thing of the past.
But none of that mattered. In spite of all her resistance, Jessica could feel her body slipping inside Rosie’s. The rough edges of the belly access door scraped her hips and then her chest before rasping against her writhing shoulders.
This could not be happening.
As Jessica was crammed into Rosie’s belly, she tried to grab onto Rosie’s interior, hoping it would stop her forward progress. When she did, though, her hand slipped off slimy wetness. Jessica gagged and scrabbled for something to grasp, something that would help her disengage from Rosie’s determined clench. But her hands couldn’t find anything to help her. They just found more squishy warmth, all that now remained of her friend.
Jessica stopped using her hands to find a way to get free. Instead, she tried to look out through the opening in Rosie’s belly. All she could see, because she was faceup, was Rosie’s arms and the fiberglass squares of the classroom’s ceiling. The bright fluorescent lights shined in her eyes, and she closed them. She opened her mouth and screamed again.
Maybe a custodian was still around, working late. Not likely. But possible. If there was a chance anyone was close by, Jessica had to keep screaming.
So she did.
No one came to help.
Just as Rosie had done with Brittany, she now clamped her hand onto the crown of Jessica’s head. She steadily shoved Jessica’s head inside the open belly.
Jessica noticed that the brightness against her eyelids was disappearing. She opened her eyes just in time to see that her head was passing through the opening of Rosie’s belly. Just a couple more inches, and her head would be entirely inside.
Jessica gulped in air and shrieked louder than she ever had in her life. It didn’t do any good.
Rosie gave Jessica one final shove, and Jessica felt the top of her head rubbing on the access door opening. She turned her head to try to see out through the opening, and that’s when she saw—
Jessica shrieked again and retched. She closed her eyes tight, trying not to let her brain replay what she’d seen.
Brittany wasn’t even remotely Brittany anymore. She was … just a churned-up mass of skin, locks of blonde hair, bits of bone, nauseatingly gleaming white tissue, and chunks of minced organs. It looked like Brittany had been pulverized and smeared all over the inside of Rosie’s belly. What was left of Brittany was entangled in Rosie’s mechanisms—the gears and prongs and rods—that were now drawn back against the walls of Rosie’s stomach.
Jessica forced herself to open her eyes, and as soon as she did, she thought she could see jagged shards that her brain told her were pieces of Brittany’s bones. She refused to listen to her brain. She couldn’t. If she let herself actually acknowledge that she was being crammed into a lethal chamber that had already chewed up her friend, she would lose what was left of her mind. She had to stay focused if she was going to figure out a way to get free.
Jessica swallowed down bile, gritted her teeth, and started feeling around the interior of Rosie’s belly. There had to be some mechanism that would free her.
No matter how much she searched, though, Jessica’s groping fingers found little besides gross, stomach-churning wet sponginess. At one point, she closed her fist around what she knew, instantaneously, was a piece of Brittany’s intestines. As soon as the pulpy mass collapsed in her fingers, Rosie’s interior was filled with an abominable smell—worse than any nastiness some skank might’ve left in a public toilet. Jessica’s stomach flipped over in a dry heave. She opened her hand, shifted it, and tried again. This time, she got ahold of one of the sharp rods that were part of Rosie’s hydraulic system. She felt blood trickle from her knuckle and wind its way down the back of her hand.
Was that her own blood? Was it Brittany’s? Did it matter?
Thinking she might find something if she shifted her body, Jessica rotated to her left. Immediately, her continued shrieks crescendoed into high-decibel, glass-breaking frequencies.
Plastered to the other side of the animatronic’s stomach was Brittany’s face, looking like it had been peeled from her head and hung on one of the prongs that was now retracted against the inner wall. Still retaining its form, and with its bright blue eyes still in their sockets, Brittany’s face was a grisly mask.
The mask was bloody at the edges, but otherwise, it looked unscathed by the destruction Rosie’s systems had wreaked on Brittany’s body. Brittany’s irises were where they should’ve been. Her nose held its proper shape. And her new lip gloss, bizarrely, was still in place.
Jessica gaped at the face, unable to look away … until the belly access door slammed shut with a very final, very loud WHOOSH and reverberating CLANK. Then all she could see was darkness.
Jessica’s shriek caught in her throat, and she started to choke. Or was that something else in her throat?
Oh God, it was. Something had dripped off Rosie’s mechanisms and fallen down inside Jessica’s mouth. It tasted like …
Jessica threw her head back and forth and spit as hard as she could. She’d tasted something coppery and salty. Jessica spit some more and tried to move her hand up to wipe out her mouth. At first, her hand got stuck between her chest and a gear. But she got it loose and wiped her palm on her tongue. She felt her stomach roil.
