Skin on My Skin Read Online Free PDF Page A

biohazard suit. The seals are worn and the armor chipped and faded, but the old suit still works well. I pack new filters and get ready for the drop, not that you could ever actually be ready for the drop.

    The penthouse is served by two elevators. There is the freight elevator at the back of the building, which I’d left intact and only operated under the noisy cover of thunderstorms. It was currently parked at the third floor and loaded with dirt and canned food I meant to haul up the next time a storm rolled through town. The primary elevator was private and, before I crashed it into the ground level, very ornate. I didn’t use it and I didn’t want anyone prowling around the bottom stories of my building getting any ideas about using it either. I’d also gone through great lengths to sabotage the stairwells leading up into the building, doing my best to make it look natural. New York was, after all, falling apart. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to find ruined flights of stairs and blown out chunks of walls. So far it had been more than enough to deter interest in the upper floors of my building and I hoped to keep it that way.  
    I’d designed my own ride for the primary elevator shaft. It was really just a big electric motor fixed to wheels around the primary cable. There was a small platform I stood on with a set of handlebars from an old bicycle to hold onto. The motor was more than enough to winch me from the first floor to the top along with the weight of my suit and some supplies. If I found anything bigger it would have to go in the freight elevator and wait for the first good thunderstorm. The little platform would take the better part of half an hour to crawl to the top floor. The trip down was much quicker.  
    Abandoned vehicles in New York were even more common than plasma televisions. And typically each vehicle had at least four sets of brake pads. I’d been through a hundred so far.  
    My suit ready, supplies loaded, rifle slung, I stepped out onto the platform, and as always, felt a little silly swaying a hundred floors above a crashed elevator in a dark shaft. I took a deep breath and gripped my brake handle. I unlocked the platform and began easing down the line.  
    Any number of things could go wrong with my ad hoc contraption. The brake pads could fail. The locking mechanism could catch, catapulting me from the little platform where I’d plummet a hundred floors to my death. And who would know, if that happened, that I had died? Maybe in a thousand years, some alien archeologist prowling around the ruins of New York would find my skeleton inside the smashed bio-suit and wonder how I’d met my end. No doubt they’d think it was human sacrifice. It was always human sacrifice, right? I laughed at the thought. The ancient Aztec gods atop the Landry Building, sending hapless sacrifices to their death a hundred floors below… it would make for a great documentary.  
    The platform eased down the dark shaft and I gradually let off the brakes a bit more, picking up speed. If I was going to go out, I might as well go out in a blaze of glory. I had no idea how much speed I picked up, but I’d painted the area around the twenty-fifth floor bright red to remind me to start putting on the brakes again. By the time I got to the fifth floor, I was back to going at a crawl. I stopped above the crashed remains of the elevator on the ground level and stepped off the platform. I had a remote for the rig on the wall hidden behind rubble and I used it to send the platform back up to the fifth floor. It would be waiting there for me when I got back to make the slow climb back to the penthouse. You just couldn’t be too careful.  
    The apartment building’s lobby looked just like I’d left it. Dust and years’ worth of garbage had blown in through the busted glass in the front doors covering the floor. I was content no one had stepped through the mess and carefully made my way around the edge.  
    And