The Devil_s Workshop

Chapter 45

Dexter was scared shitless. He stood in the basement lab of the Devil's Workshop, in his white coat and gloves, looking into the deranged gray eyes of Fannon Kincaid.

"Okay, get goin'. Do yer magic," the crazed Messiah ordered.

Dexter had already taken the two metal vials of Pale Horse Prion they had retrieved from the bottom of Vanishing Lake over to the rack of acids and bases and set them down next to the pH meter that read the DNA markers. He had just finished setting up when suddenly Fannon moved over to him and stood very close. The voice in his ear was a hollow whisper, like a sour wind blowing into a dry well.

"Back in Vietnam, when we caught us a zip officer and we was debriefing him, we always had us a problemHow d'ya know if the scummy dink bastard is lyin' or not? It was a big problem, 'cause I hadda send men into battle based on intelligence gleaned from them zipperheads. I developed my own pain interrogation technique that was more accurate than a fuckin' lie detector. Did you know, Mr. DeMille, that on a dolorimeter pain threshold scale of one to ten, a normal man can only stand a level eight for less than twenty seconds before passing out? Women can generally go for almost a minuteGo figure that one." Fannon's tobacco breath was rancid and dank. "When a man comes out of it, he's in a state of mild shock and psychosis, which is not unlike hypnosis. He's conscious, but it's kinda like a dream state. Only lasts about four minutes. Then the man wakes all the way up, and he's so fucked he'll start screamin' an pukin'. Strange thing I discovered was, in this state of agony and semi-consciousness, even the bravest men don't lie. And the few who try, I can look in their eyes and know when they're shittin' me. Are y'with me here, bub?"

"Please… please, I've done everything you want…"

"Yeah I know, but our problem is, I think you're still just a lyin' piece a'shit, and I don't trust you any more than I trusted them zips back in 'Nam. So, how do I know if you're givin' me honest-to-God, good-to-go shit here, or if you're just foolin' around mixin' up a batcha Kool-Aid?"

"I promise," Dexter said, his voice shaking with fear.

"Yeah, I know. I know you promise. Lotta dink motherfuckers gave me their word, and when I acted on it, I lost good, ail-American White GIs because the fucks lied. Once I figured out that extreme, unendurable pain acts as a truth serum, I never lost a man on info I got from one a' them captured rice-burners."

"Don't hurt me… please. I can't stand pain."

"Okay, Dexter. Then make me a believer. Prove to me that what you're cookin' up here is more than just the measles. Otherwise, I'm gonna sit you in a chair and run my little 'truth machine' up your dick and start cookin' your prostate with wall current."

From out of his pocket he pulled a small rheostat box with a cord and plug. At the other end of the electric cord was a long, slender needlelike object that looked like a metal catheter. Fannon held it up in front of the terrified scientist. "There she is. Two dollars' worth of over-the-counter hardware that works better than a forty-thousand-dollar polygraph. I stick this puppy right down the hole in yer snake, then crank it to level eight and hold it there until either yer balls explode or ya start singin' 'The Star-Spangled Banner' through yer asshole."

"I promise I won't lie to you, Reverend Kincaid. I thought I was Zophar. I thought I was a member of the Choir."

"You ain't. We don't take heathen shitheads. But I'll tell you what… if you go fast here, and do this quickly, with no stalling and dallying, then I'll hold the Truth Applicator to a six when we debrief. I won't crank this baby up and we won't have t'smell yer pecker burning."

"Oh, God… oh, God…"

"That's a good start. So, why don't y'get goin' and we'll see how I feel about the work when yer all finished."

Dexter had originally planned to just fiddle for a while in the lab, then maybe pick the right moment to open a beaker of ammonium sulfur, which would set off the contamination alarm and bring in the Delta Force Rangers. But now, as he looked at the homemade electric rheostat and imagined the wire going up his penis to his prostate, he lost all resolve. If Fannon used that on him, he would scream the truth in seconds. He had no choice but to do as Fannon instructed. He no longer cared about the forty-five percent of the Detroit population that was African-American, and whom he was now targeting, along with New York's huge Jewish community. All he was worried about now was saving himself.

Dexter DeMille went to work arming the Pale Horse Prion. In the name of life-saving science he had once helped isolate this protein's ancestor in the mountains of New Guinea with Carleton Gajdusek. Now, like Adolf Hitler, he was about to use it to commit genocide. He couldn't fathom how he had traveled from one place to the other.

He pulled down the books on ethnic and racial DNA groupings and opened them to the appropriate acidosis graphs. He reached for the beakers that would alter the pH of the Prions. Then he went to work creating the second monstrous act of twentieth-century genocide.

Cris and Stacy waited for the supply train, and in the darkness, they easily boarded it. The car they rode on creaked and rumbled into the Fort. They dismounted only a hundred yards beyond the place where Fannon and his assault force had jumped off two hours earlier.

Now they stood in the gully and watched the train full of foodstuffs moving off, across the field. As they watched it go, it led their gaze to another, much more ominous train.

"There it is," Cris said, pointing at the White Train parked out in the field. "I heard about this in the Marines. Some guys knew a sergeant who worked the guard detail, and he said they would ride up on the roof with automatic weapons, but I wasn't sure if it was real or bullshit."

He moved along the gully getting closer, trying to see what was going on. When he was about three hundred yards away, he crouched down and studied the train through the tall grass. Stacy followed, then lay on the ground beside him.

"Looks like they're pumping something out," he said, observing the huge rubber hoses that were attached to the top of the hopper cars and snaked down to coupling joints on the concrete pads in the ground. They could hear a distant electric pump-motor humming.

"We gotta go find Dexter DeMille's lab," Stacy said. "If Fannon and the Choir are here, that's where they're going to be. I remember it's in Building 1666. That's where Max said they developed the super-secret stuff. He was never allowed down there, but he told me it was where Dexter worked."

"You know where it is?"

"I was in a primate lab in that building a few days ago. I think I can find it."

"Lead the way."

Stacy moved in a low crouch along the gully, heading in the direction that Fannon and the Choir had gone. She and Cris moved into the treeline and shortly found the same natural path through the woods. Soon they got to the clearing where Fannon had waited for Randall and the Texas Madman to return. Cris looked down and saw something on the ground, then picked it up.

"What is it?" she said, unable to see what he had found.

"Cigarette butt." He looked at it carefully; it was hand-rolled. "They were here," he said.

"How can you tell?"

"Two reasons. No moisture on this butt yet. No night dew. This thing was thrown down a short time ago. Also, most hobos roll their own. Packaged cigarettes, called hardrolls, are too expensive. An F. T. R. A. dropped this. They were right here on this spot less than an hour ago," he said softly.