Liquid Fear

by Nicholson, Scott

  “This was all for you, Wendy,” Briggs said. “We belong together. After CRO pays me off, we’ll go away. Bermuda, the Yucatan Peninsula, New Zealand. You name it.”

  “No,” she moaned, still resisting.

  “I can fix you,” he said, impatient now. “I have some Halcyon in my office.”

  “Let me go,” she said, her body tensing as she strained to break free of his grip. He wrapped more of her long hair around his fingers and put his other hand around her throat.

  “If you scream, I will hurt you very badly, and I don’t want to do that,” Briggs said. Yet.

  She started to scream anyway, and he knew he’d miscalculated. More fear would only accelerate the effects of the Seethe, and she’d already crossed the line.

  He squeezed her throat, choking off any sound but a faint, nasal wheezing. Through the night-vision goggles, her eyes appeared as bulging green orbs in her beautiful, heart-shaped face.

  “Come on,” Briggs said. “I’ve waited ten years for this. I know you’ve been waiting, too.”

  As he dragged her to his office, she grew limp, and he wasn’t sure she was still breathing. He let go of her hair and put one arm around her slim waist, letting his hand trail across those breasts he had fantasized about for so many years. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

  A hundred feet away, Alexis and Mark were calling to one another, feeling their way in the dark. An occasional piece of equipment clattered to the floor. Roland must have decided to play it safe and keep his mouth shut.

  Briggs had instructed Kleingarten to wait by the front door. Even though the lock wouldn’t release until Briggs had keyed the command from the security console, he didn’t want to take any chances. Plus the task would keep Kleingarten safely out of the way until Briggs was ready to assign him mop-up duty.

  And then Briggs would dispose of him along with the rest of the trash.

  He reached his office just as Alexis began shouting for Roland. “I need my pill!” she shrieked.

  He’d never known she was such a bitch. But then, he’d forgotten what she was like on Seethe. He hadn’t watched the video recently.

  He propped Wendy in his leather swivel chair by the computer and turned her to face the rows of video monitors. “Here, my sweet, let me make you more comfortable,” he said, loosening her top two buttons.

  Her breasts were as pert as he remembered. He dipped to have a sample, even though the night-vision goggles cast it in an unappealing shade of muted green. Her nipple puckered in the cool air; he told himself it was because of his skill.

  “I know you’re anxious, but there will be time for that later,” Briggs said, and she gave a distant moan in response.

  He withdrew a syringe from his top drawer. He’d wanted to save it for later, but he couldn’t control himself any longer. He realized he was as juiced up as any of his monkeys. Except his juice was natural.

  The Seethe serum was engineered for intramuscular use, so he could stick it virtually anywhere. He moved the point of the needle over her breasts, stroking. Then he inserted it just below her collarbone. She sighed as he flooded her system.

  He hit the electrical override breaker, which would prevent Kleingarten from switching on the lights if he chose to disobey Briggs’s orders. He connected the battery backups, which had just enough power to run the equipment in his office.

  On the top row of monitors, with the hallway camera switched to thermal imaging, he saw the orange-and-yellow outlines of Anita and Burchfield copulating on the floor, their bodies radiating heat. A smaller man, obviously David Underwood, was making a pathetic attempt to pull Burchfield from atop her, but the senator was pumping like a man possessed.

  If the electorate could see him now. But no surprise there. He’s been fucking Americans for years.

  The final captive, Wallace Forsyth, had not left his cell, and the isolation camera showed his form huddled in the corner, apparently on his hands and knees, hands clasped in front of his bowed head.

  Ah, prayer. The last refuge of the hopeless. That’s what happens when you come face to face with yourself. You become your own worst nightmare.

  He checked the wide-angle cameras attached to the factory ceiling, thirty feet above the floor. He zoomed in the one pointed at the rear of the building.

  “Ah, that explains it,” he said to Wendy. “Mark must have locked them in. Not exactly according to plan.”

  Because the door had a regular lock in addition to the electronic lock, Briggs couldn’t open it again without doing it manually. And he wasn’t going to leave his office until this was over. It would be the only safe place when the subjects degraded to their most primitive selves.

  He slid the cage door into place and secured it with a hasp lock.

  Then he rolled Wendy in the chair over to the monitors and faced her toward the largest screen in the middle.

  “I have something I’d like you to see,” he said, taking her hand. “And something to remember.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Mark found Alexis in the dark, though he’d cut a gash in his cheek prowling through the clutter of the factory. The pain was sharp enough to cut a swath through the clamoring fog of murder, and he ran his tongue over his shattered, throbbing tooth.

  Pain is my ally.

  He chanted it to himself like a mantra, fighting off the madness that threatened to engulf him.

  Alexis was screeching Roland’s name, her voice echoing through the high metal rafters, and all he had to do was anticipate her direction, press back into an opening, and wait, focusing on the red streak of flaming agony in his face.

  When she passed, he jumped her, counting on his familiarity with her height to hit her in the right spot. He thought he was tackling her around the shoulders, but his skull thudded against something solid. He went blue-minded for a moment, and she tried to raise her arm, but he gripped hard, fighting for consciousness.

  “Lex, it’s me,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I have to hurt you now.”

  He moved his mouth to her upper arm and bit hard, causing her to scream and drop whatever she was carrying. He didn’t let up, but instead let his teeth dig until they stopped on bone and the coppery sweet blood painted his lips.

  “Owww, Mark, you’re hurting meeee,” she moaned, trying to fling him off, but her struggles subsided as the pain took hold.

  “Pain,” he said wetly, pulling his mouth away. “It clears the Seethe. But you have to keep it fresh.”

  Taking his own advice, he slapped the spot on his skull where the metal had struck, then dug a fingernail in for good measure.

  “Yeah,” Alexis wheezed, relaxing in his grip. “Like rock-paper-scissors. Pain covers fear.”

  “And lust cuts pain,” Mark said. He wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but even now the twin powers of Anita’s lingering touch and his wife’s warm body threatened to reduce him to a slavering satyr.

  “We need the Halcyon,” Alexis said. “We have to find Roland.”

  “What if Briggs screwed with the dose? What if it’s a placebo?”

  “No, he wants it like ten years ago.”

  “When Susan Sharpe died?” Mark weighed the impact of her sudden silence before adding, “I know what happened.”

  “Don’t say her name, Mark. Please, God, don’t say her name—”

  She trembled in his grip and he said, “Yeah, okay. Focus on the bite wound.”

  “Roland!” Alexis shouted to him in the dark. “We have to work together.”

  “If he’s as messed up as we are, he’ll be too paranoid. We’ll have to find him.”

  “Unless he took one of the pills. Then he’s okay for a little bit, though he won’t remember why we’re here.”

  “Then he’ll be scared as shit anyway,” Mark said, realizing he’d lost all orientation. “Have you seen Briggs?”

  “Not since the lights went out. Wendy’s gone, too.”

  “I locked the others back there. At least they’re safe for now, ass
uming they don’t rip each other’s throats out.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Me, too.” He punched her in the stomach and she grunted. Her arm flew out reflexively and caught his mouth, causing a fresh eruption of blood and torment.

  “Now let’s find Roland before we beat each other to death,” she said between gasps. “He’s got three doses of Halcyon.”

  They held hands as they hustled down the dark corridor as fast as they dared. Mark kept his free arm out in front of them, in case they ran into one of the obscured mountains of junk.

  “I see a glow over there,” Mark whispered. “Along the far wall.”

  “Probably where Briggs is.”

  “We go the other way, then.”

  They’d only traveled about a dozen feet when Roland spoke from somewhere below them, near the floor. “Hey, you guys.”

  “Where are you?” Alexis whispered.

  “Shh. Dr. Sunshine must have some cameras in this joint. Get down and crawl. You’re not going to kill me this time, are you?”

  Mark felt his wife pull him to the floor and he eased forward on his hands and knees. He had a sense of a narrow, confined space, because he could hear the muffled sounds of their breathing.

  Then a small light came on, and he saw Roland’s hand cupped around a cell phone. They were in a large wooden crate, reinforced with metal bars and smelling of axle grease.

  “Shit,” Mark said. “Did you call somebody?”

  “No signal in here. But it’s a light.”

  “Good thinking,” Mark said. “That armed gorilla took mine.”

  “We need the pills,” Alexis said. “We can’t last much longer.”

  “I took one,” Roland said. “And I’m good for maybe fifteen minutes if our zookeeper was right.”

  “Where’s the bottle?” Alexis said.

  “Not so fast. Think about it. Only two pills left, so we better have a plan. And we still have to find those other people. Is my wife here?”

  “Yeah. Mark is Seething, too.”

  “Fuck. This your husband?”

  “Yeah. He’s with CRO.”

  “We met before,” Mark said, awkwardly extending his hand. “I was at your wedding.”

  “I ought to kill you,” Roland said, ignoring the offered shake. “Not sure why, but it sounds right.”

  “You’ll probably get your chance,” Mark said, running a finger over his broken tooth. “But Lex is the expert. Better listen to her.”

  Roland nodded and slid the phone into his pocket, where the light quickly died.

  “Our only chance is to buy more time,” Alexis said in the dark. “We can’t help the others. That means one of us is going to have to take the two remaining pills.”

  Mark scraped his hand along the rough side of the crate until several splinters drove into his skin. “I can hold out,” Mark said, though there was probably a threshold beyond which even pain wouldn’t fight off the demons. He could feel them lurking back there, waiting to claim him.

  “Two left,” Roland said. “And I might need both of them to save Wendy.”

  “But you don’t know enough,” Alexis said. “You’re already forgetting where we are.”

  “We’re in a goddamned crate.”

  “Keep it down or they’ll find us. We need every edge we can get. Oww.”

  Mark had clawed her shoulder, and was pleased to find his bite mark was still raw and wet. “Pain. It’s the only cure.”

  “You guys are hurting each other?” Roland said. “Doing Briggs’s job for him?”

  “Two pills will buy me at least half an hour,” Alexis said. “I can find where Briggs has taken Wendy.”

  “Wendy’s here?” Roland said, apparently forgetting he’d already asked that.

  “I know the layout, and I know better than anyone how Briggs’s mind works. I was his Igor, remember?”

  The way she said it irked Mark and made him want to hit her for real, but he couldn’t trust any of his feelings. Except the feeling of pain.

  “She’s making sense,” Mark said. “And don’t forget that goon with the gun is still around.”

  “Goon with a gun?” Roland said in the dark.

  “Lex, what if you become like him?” Mark said. “What if you take your dose and forget to take the next one?”

  “What choice do we have?” she said. “Give me the vial, Roland.”

  There was a sigh and then a rattle in the dark, and then Alexis’s mouth was near Mark’s good cheek. He was afraid she was going to bite, and he cringed but didn’t draw away. Instead, she kissed him. Gently.

  Mark found the tender residue worked almost as well as pain at clearing his head. But tenderness wasn’t something he could trust, either. Like pain, tenderness didn’t last.

  “I love you, honey,” she whispered, giving his hand a fleeting squeeze as she scrambled out of the crate.

  As her shuffling footsteps faded, Mark said, “So, Roland, have you heard of a cure called ‘pain’?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Doc’s turned all his monkeys loose.

  Kleingarten had seen the security system in Briggs’s office, and he knew some of the cameras were infrared and thermal imaging. It hadn’t taken long to put two and two together when Briggs had explained the “lights-out” trick.

  But damned if Kleingarten was going to wait by the door until it was over.

  It was a little dangerous moving around all that shop junk in the dark, but he was reluctant to use the penlight on his keychain. The entire factory could be viewed via the monitors, but Kleingarten had cased them enough to know that if he clung to the left side of the main corridor, Briggs couldn’t see him until he reached the end.

  That’s assuming he ain’t busy eating Chinese.

  If the Slant was the only reason for the horror show, Kleingarten could have saved Briggs the trouble. He could have picked her up right after the car crashed into the coffee shop, whisked her away while she was confused, and delivered her right to Briggs’s little torture chamber. Or even nabbed her before all the noise.

  But something bigger was going on than just a Looney Tunes genius playing games, and Kleingarten wanted a piece of it. Once he figured out what it was, he’d turn the tables on Briggs, gallop in like the cavalry, and rescue the senator.

  Sure, he’d have to explain why he’d pretended to side with Briggs, but there was enough clusterfucking monkey business going on to keep everybody confused for the rest of their lives.

  He came to the end of the corridor—he’d counted the steps ahead of time, right after Briggs had told him the plan—and debated whether he should sneak or just make a run for it. About twenty-seven steps to the right would put him on the fourth and final row, and Briggs’s office was about thirty more steps. He squinted between the arms of some sort of metal drill press and observed a faint greenish glow.

  So Briggs is watching him some TV.

  Something heavy, what sounded like a stack of harrow disks, collapsed and fell in the middle of the factory, slamming to the floor. A man shouted in pain.

  Sounds like Roland Doyle. After what he did to that woman in Cincinnati, he deserves a little punishment.

  Wait. Wasn’t that David Underwood who did the killing?

  Aw, fuck it, Briggs must be scrambling my skull, too. Except I’m too smart for that.

  Kleingarten took advantage of the distraction, knowing Briggs would check the commotion on the monitors. He crouched and hustled, his Glock in his hand. Though he believed he was the only one armed, the night had already been full of surprises, so he was ready for anything.

  He hadn’t had this much fun since he’d murdered the porn star’s shrink.

  Briggs’s cage was ahead, and in the glow he made out the two forms. He didn’t have to worry about Briggs seeing him on the monitors now, because the doc was busy pulling the pants off the woman in the chair.

  Kleingarten wasn’t one for peep shows, and he definitely didn’t want to s
ee the doctor’s naked ass when he got down to business, but Kleingarten needed to see where the cameras were focused. The cage door was closed and a thick lock held it in place, and the security system controls were inside. Nobody was getting in or out of the Monkey House unless Briggs said so.

  The Slant was staring ahead, eyes like marbles, though her fingernails dug into the arms of the leather chair. In the radiance of the monitors, she was blue-green instead of brown mustard.

  She was already naked from the waist up, and her breasts looked like they had tiny bite marks on them, though it was hard to see in the bad light. Briggs was breathing heavily, and Kleingarten noticed some sort of harness on his head, reared back so the lenses were pointed up.

  Night vision. Why the hell didn’t I think of that? Must be slipping in my old age. Yep, definitely time to retire.

  As he edged closer, the doc flung the woman’s pants to the side and stroked the insides of her thighs. “Just like old times,” Briggs said, his voice husky.

  And that’s when Kleingarten saw what was playing on the main monitor.

  The scene was of the same factory, but it wasn’t dark. He recognized Roland, Alexis, and Wendy, though they were clearly younger, leaner, and wearing filthy clothes. They were closing in on a naked woman he didn’t recognize. She looked eighteen, chubby but short, maybe a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet.

  And she was plenty wet. Even in black and white, Kleingarten could tell it was blood.

  The chubby teen turned and tried to climb up an empty tool tree that resembled a pegboard, but her own blood caused her to slip. Roland was the first to grab her, but Wendy was right there. The camera zoomed out, and Anita stood to the side, naked and also damp with blood, her hand stroking between her legs as she watched. Wendy yanked the girl by the hair until she turned to face her attackers.

  “This is why I’ve always loved you,” Briggs murmured as he licked Wendy’s legs. “A woman who can do something like that, she deserves a little scientific observation.”