Liquid fear

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Sebastian Briggs was annoyed at the unwanted complication, and he was beginning to resent the hefty henchman CRO had hired for him. Kleingarten had been innovative in dosing and then inducing emotional trauma in the four subjects. But now Kleingarten had outlived his usefulness. The murder of the intruder had been the turning point.

Kleingarten stood outside over the intruder’s body as if it were a bag of garbage waiting for disposal. “What do you want me to do with it?”

“The creek,” Briggs said. “There’s a concrete drain on the far end of the property. Stuff him in there and make some crows and raccoons happy.”

“He might be a Fed. And somebody’s going to notice when he doesn’t check in.”

“That’s not your concern, Mr. Drummond,” Briggs said, maintaining the pretense of the false identity.

“Sure, it is. Your bosses hired me to protect their interests, and that’s what I’m doing.”

“My guests will be arriving soon, and we can’t afford any unwanted attention.”

Kleingarten nudged the corpse with his foot. “That’s why I’m taking care of business.”

Briggs gave an absent nod. He might as well have been talking to the brick wall of the Monkey House. He surveyed the forest that surrounded the facility. The pines had grown taller and thicker since the original trials, and tangles of vines gave the property a wild, unkempt appearance.

And just as the vegetation had run its natural course, Seethe had slowly infiltrated his subjects, twisting and growing.

Of course, the human brain was a complicated organ, and he hadn’t been as skilled and experienced ten years ago when he’d planted the chemical time bombs. Each subject could present a unique set of symptoms. But that was part of the fun, too.

Even experimental failure added to the canon of knowledge, so failure was a different type of success. Not that he expected either CRO or Senator Burchfield to be happy with that explanation, nor the increasing cast of characters that were sniffing around at the rumors.

“Okay,” Briggs said. “Once you dispose of the body, we’re done for a while.”

“I don’t know. You can manage the two women, probably, but this Roland guy seems a little unhinged.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll have your final payment, and CRO will send your bonus once Halcyon is approved.”

“You’re forgetting something.”

Briggs was growing impatient. “What’s that?”

“I know where this place is,” Kleingarten said, eyes narrowing. “I’m not sure what’s going on in there, except you’re fucking with some people’s heads, and I don’t really care. But I don’t think the major players are just going to let me walk away.”

“Ah, so you need some sort of insurance policy.”

“Yeah.”

Briggs pondered the possibility of keeping Kleingarten around. It was a little after four in the afternoon, and if he’d calculated correctly, then Roland, Wendy, and Alexis should be able to find the Monkey House by dusk, about the same time they would deplete their Halcyon.

He preferred to work alone, but David Underwood had already gone wild once, and the one reliable clinical outcome of Seethe was that it achieved unexpected results. Anything might happen.

“How about this, Mr. Drummond? I have a nice payoff coming from my employers. You stay on as my personal bodyguard and I will pay you double.”

“On top of the CRO money?”

“You want insurance. I have the Halcyon formula. And as long as I have Halcyon, I’m safe. But I’m only safe as long as everyone involved knows that. So I need you to tell our bosses.”

Kleingarten nodded, eyes shifting as if he were processing that information. “I get it, Doc. You want me to give a report on you, tell CRO you have the formula in your head, something like that? So word gets around?”

Briggs looked down at the dead man, who was beginning to exhibit some morbidity. “I’d hate to jog down the wrong path.”

“Yeah. I can see that.” Kleingarten grinned, his lips greasy and cracked. “Don’t worry, I got your back.”

That’s what I’m worried about. But I have another bonus waiting for you, Martin Kleingarten, a.k.a. Mr. Drummond.

“Let’s make the place presentable, because company is on the way,” Briggs said, heading toward the steel door. By the time he entered the Monkey House, Kleingarten was dragging the body away with a scuffing of dead leaves.

Briggs navigated the corridors between the rusted, hulking rows of machinery. In the original trials, he’d let the subjects run free, because they had been willing subjects with no reason to run away. This time, they would be wary. At least for a while.

Once the Seethe set in, though, they’d be too busy turning on each other to worry about freedom.

He walked the eighty yards to the back of the building where he’d had the cells constructed, employing Mexicans without visas who were only too happy to work for cash and who were unlikely to talk to authorities about the place. The surveillance system had been a little trickier, but CRO had called in some favors with allied companies and built it to Briggs’s specifications.

The electricity and water connections had even been moved to the perimeter of the property, just beyond the fence, so that meter readers would have no reason to explore the grounds.

From David Underwood’s cell came the plaintive strains of his theme song, “Home on the Range.” Every broken lunatic needed a theme song. But his condition wasn’t really David’s fault. He’d been Seething for two full years, and though Briggs had finally refined the Halcyon formula through persistent trial and error, David would go into the books as an experimental failure. Just like Susan Sharpe.

Briggs could have monitored the cells from his office, but soon the Monkey House would be crowded, and he wanted to enjoy one last peaceful moment with his veteran subject.

He tapped out the code on the electronic lock and eased the metal door open. The thousands of eyes glared at him from the walls.

David was huddled on his cot, but his head lifted at the noise. “Mom?”

“No,” Briggs said. “It’s Susan.”

David pushed himself back hard enough to knock his skull against the wall. “You’re dead,” he said.

“No, David. That’s the Seethe talking. That drug Dr. Briggs gave us. Remember?”

The way David violently shook his head suggested that he did not, in fact, remember. “We killed you. Go away.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, David. I thought you liked me.”

David balled his fists and jammed them hard against his eye sockets. “Go away, go away, go away!”

“Okay, David. But our friends are coming. Roland and Alexis. And Wendy. Do you remember them?”

“They’re dead, too-ooo,” David wailed.

The poor man. If he’d had a stronger constitution, he might have resisted the Seethe. But the chemical worked on the primitive brain, and in that neurotoxic swamp of fear, there were few defenses. The world would find that out soon enough. It was time they all met the enemy within.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, David. Now get some rest, and if you’re a good boy, I’ll bring you some Halcyon soon and you can forget all about it.”

David nodded and whimpered.

Briggs closed the door. It was time to visit Anita.

She wasn’t Wendy, but she would have to do for now.