Liquid fear

CHAPTER FORTY

Roland was sick of these fuckers.

He didn’t know how many bullets the gun held, but he figured there were plenty enough for all.

He remembered everything now. Especially how that bitch Alexis had made him take the pills. Telling him forgetting was a good thing.

No, he’d rather feel alive, even if the truth hurt.

“Do it!” he yelled at Briggs. “I’m not like your other monkeys. I don’t jump every time you slip them the banana.”

“Easy, Roland,” Briggs said, and Roland was pleased the doctor sounded a little scared. The smug bastard’s cool was only an inch deep, about as far as his shriveled little pecker could penetrate.

Roland’s finger tightened around the trigger as Wendy moaned, oblivious to everything. The sight of her sweat-slick skin confused him, and he didn’t like confusion. No, he was a fucking monkey with a hard-on for revenge.

Roland fired, and Briggs’s computer exploded.

“My data!” Briggs yelled.

“Open!” Roland roared as the report echoed off the concrete walls.

“Okay,” Briggs said, unconsciously pulling his shirt closed as if that would offer protection from a bullet. He fished in his pocket and pulled out a key ring, digging a key into the hasp lock.

Roland swiveled the gun at the Morgans, but they were staying put, raking at each other’s wounds, bleeding and crazed in the faint light.

The lock popped free and Briggs swung the door open. “Now the lights,” Roland said.

He felt great, better than he had in years. Seethe was like booze and sex and cocaine rolled into one. Why the fuck was that bitch Alexis trying to keep it from them? Probably wanted it all to herself.

Probably wanted to fuck Briggs, too.

Hell, everybody else was.

Wendy.

“Turn on the lights,” Roland said, not even bothering to raise his voice. As Briggs worked the switches on the security system, Roland entered the creepy cage and knelt beside Wendy’s chair.

“I know what happens when you lose control,” Roland said to the beautiful woman. “Hell, that’s the story of my life.”

Her eyelids fluttered. “Roland?”

“Yeah, babe. We’re getting out of here.”

“Don’t do it, Roland,” Alexis said. “We need Halcyon or we’re going to do terrible things, and remember all of this. And what we did to Susan.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“You’re going to lose it. You might Seethe forever.”

“I’ve been Seething since before I was born. This is just how God made me, and that’s goddamned good enough for me.”

The lights began blinking on, stinging Roland’s eyes. All their faces were pale. He picked up Wendy’s clothes and dropped them on her lap.

“Get dressed,” he said.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Make Briggs give us the Halcyon,” Alexis said, standing outside the cage and holding her husband with fierce desperation. “You can go crazy if you want, but we still have to deal with this.”

Roland felt the rage flood him, and he saw Susan’s bruised and blood-spattered body, and then he imagined Alexis with a bright red hole in the middle of her forehead.

But you can’t bury the past. Halcyon just helps you lie to yourself, and I already know how to do that.

But he could tell he was getting angry, so he kicked the base of Wendy’s chair. He grunted in pain. He might have broken his big toe, but it felt good.

That was the trick behind it all. God invented suffering because the world had no meaning without it. And without pain, you had no need for God, because you didn’t need relief. Pain served a higher purpose, maybe the only purpose.

And pain felt kind of good when you got used it.

At least it was always there when you needed it.

“All right, Briggs, give them their monkey juice, before I get tired of playing Mr. Nice Guy,” he said, his jaws tight.

Briggs moved to an old industrial locker beneath his computer and fumbled with the key. He opened it and brought out a plastic bottle about the size of a quart jar.

“That other stuff, too,” Roland said, loving his pain. “The Seethe.”

Briggs brought out a pint of clear liquid in a glass jar.

“That’s all?” Alexis said.

“He’s got to have more,” Mark said. “He promised Burchfield enough Seethe to dose an army.”

“You think this is easy?” Briggs said. “You, better than anybody, Alexis, should know you don’t just cook up this stuff in a bathtub like a meth redneck.” He lifted his hand to indicate the equipment in his office. “Look what I’ve had to work with. And now my data’s destroyed. I’ll have to reconstruct it from memory.”

“I think you’re holding out,” Roland said. “And I don’t give a shit who ends up with it, as long as it isn’t you, and as long as you never put any more of it into Wendy.”

“He’s got more,” Mark said.

“CRO can shove it up their asses,” Roland said, forcing himself to focus on Wendy, who was struggling to slide one slim leg into her pants. “Now, give me the key to the front door and open the gate, and if I have to come back here, I’m going to be a little unhappy.”

His heart felt like a bottomless black hole. But that was okay. It was deep enough to swallow anything.

He took the key from Briggs and put his free arm around Wendy. “Come on, babe.”

They limped a few steps in the direction of the main entrance, Roland walking backwards. He debated locking the three people in Briggs’s cage, and his money would be on Alexis to be the last one standing. That was one cunning bitch.

“Look out!” Alexis yelled, and he dodged on instinct.

Briggs was a blur of movement, and the glass jar hit Roland’s shoulder and bounced to the floor, shattering, its liquid seeping out and soaking into the concrete. Roland pulled the trigger twice before he even thought about it.

Briggs gave a grin, winked at Wendy, and then he collapsed. The shirt hadn’t stopped bullets after all.

The plastic bottle busted open as Briggs dropped it, and dozens of green pills rolled across the floor. One crunched under Roland’s foot as he escorted Wendy past the rusting equipment.

He thought about collecting a few pills, but decided he’d rather take his chances with madness rather than the sick brain candy of Dr. Sebastian Briggs.

“Did you kill somebody?” Wendy murmured.

“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t remember.”

One thing he did remember. He sure as hell wasn’t David Underwood.