"Well, yes, of course they are. Our experts agree with you." Reginald flicked an imagined speck from one sleeve. "Could your son perform that miracle on a person?"
"A what?" Margaret spat before Tim realized what the question was. "No, absolutely not." Under the table, Tim gripped her leg. She smacked his hand away. "I said, no."
"There, of course, would be a substantial monetary reward… If, he can do it." Reginald clasped his hands together, started to place his elbows on the table then visibly reconsidered.
Tim toyed with the business card. "How long has the person been dead?"
"He is not dead, yet," Reginald said. "But, we have an appropriate test subject lined up."
Margaret gasped. "You are going to kill someone?"
Reginald chuckled, once, without opening his mouth. "What a ridiculous notion. We have access to several deceased persons whose relatives generously offered us the use of their corpses."
"You mean you paid them." Margaret flicked her ashes in the way she did when she caught him eyeing another woman.
"Yes, there was substantial monetary compensation. We told them nothing of what we planned… Just in case your son proved inadequate to the task."
"Our son is capable of anything. The answer is still no." Margaret crossed her arms across her breasts.
"I am confident that once you see the compensation my employer is offering, you will agree." Reginald reached inside his suit coat and pulled out a folded check. He placed it, still folded, on the table between himself and Tim, who snatched it before the paper assumed a stationary position.
"Holy shit." Tim showed the check to Margaret. She refused to look. "So," Tim said, leaning back in his chair, "for this my son does what?"
"For that, you allowed me into your home and listened to my request. There will be another of equal amount if, when the time comes, your son resurrects my employer." Careful to lift it slightly, Reginald slid his chair back and stood. "I'll leave you alone to discuss it." He bowed slightly to Margaret. "I can see myself out. I will be in touch."
The front door clicked, signaling that they were alone.
"We have to do it," Tim said.
"A dead person, are you serious? We can't expose Josh to that."
Tim waved the check under his wife's nose. "This is a million dollars. Aaaaand we get another million if Josh can resurrect a dead guy." He stopped brandishing the check. "For Christ's sake, this is the answer to all our dreams."
Hands shaking so badly, the lighter flame looked as if gale force winds fought to snuff its tiny spark, Margaret lit a cigarette. "By using our son."
"Using me?" Josh stood in the open doorway. Jake sat beside him, panting, tongue lolling out of his mouth.
"Nothing, honey."
"Come here, buddy."
Josh stepped to his father. "Yeah, Dad?"
Tim took his son by his shoulders. "We got a chance to make a lot of money."
"Tim, no." Margaret's warning had no emotion backing it.
"Think you can do what you did to Jake and the groundhog to a person?"
"Sure, Dad."
****
The morgue was white and cheerless, just like in every TV show and movie he'd ever seen. The chemical smell of cleaning products added to the feeling of sterility. Tim's wife and son stood beside him. It was the corpse in front of them though that had Tim's attention. It was a woman, maybe in her early twenties, which meant she was only a few years younger than himself. Her head was hairless, down to her missing eyebrows. She was so emaciated, her cheekbones showed like knife blades beneath her skin. "Who was she?" Tim's eyes roved over the sheet, hesitating over the subtle bumps marking her breasts. He'd never seen a dead woman before. Margaret elbowed him.
"Part of our agreement with the families involves anonymity." Reginald said from the far side of the table. The lawyer picked at something only he could see on his dark gray suit. "Unless… Your son needs to know her name?"
"Can you do it, buddy?" Tim tried to pry the boy away from his mother.
"Stop it," Margaret said, refusing to release their son from her clutches. "Can't you see he's terrified?" She stroked Josh's hair. "It's okay, honey. If you don't want to do it, we will leave."
"That is, of course, your prerogative." Reginald raised an eyebrow.
Tim leaned in close to his wife and hissed in her ear. "We need the…" Two men filled the extra-wide doorway behind them. Their matching black business suits bulged with steroid-fed muscles begging for something to smash. One smiled, exposing a gold tooth to the stark white fluorescent light. It blazed in response.
"My employer's associates," Reginald said. "Normally, I would not agree with such heavy-handed tactics, but given the circumstances, I can understand his anxiety."
Margaret's gasp got Tim's attention. From the corner of his eye, he spotted his son's hand slide under the white sheet. Tim grabbed his wife's arm before she could do something stupid.
"Please don't die." Josh's voice was little more than a whispered croak.
With a heave, the woman filled her lungs. Reginald took a step back, moments before Margaret, who accentuated her retreat with a squeal. The two men at the door reached inside their suit jackets. Tim hoped the sheet would slip off her chest.
"Where…am… I?" The woman struggled to force words through a throat that must have had a moisture level slightly below that of a salt cave.
"You are in the morgue. This child just brought you back to life." Reginald's eyes never left the boy.
Raising her head, the woman followed the lawyer's gaze.
Margaret pulled their son to her.
Josh offered a shy smile. "Hi."
Realization dawned in the woman's eyes. Focusing on Reginald, she asked, "The cancer?"
"Impossible to say until our physicians run the appropriate tests, which will begin momentarily. Gentlemen," Reginald addressed the two thugs at the door, "one of you show the Chamberlains to the next patient. Mister and Missus Chamberlain," he bowed slightly to Margaret, "Joshua." Reginald's expression was something Tim never expected to see on the pretentious bastard's face, awe.
Margaret herded past the two men.
Tim stopped. "How many are there?"
"Nine others," Reginald said. "Now, if you please."
****
Three days later, Tim stood in the bedroom of a penthouse on the Las Vegas strip with his wife and son. Behind them, on either side of the bedroom door, were the same two black-suited thugs from the morgue. Appropriate, Tim thought, because the room smelled of the same sterilizer.
A hospital bed dominated the center of the room. In it lay a man so close to Death, Tim figured they had pet names for each other, like D and Dead Guy. Medical machines loomed over the dying man, not-so-silent observers whose flashing lights and screens displayed a constant stream of information concerning their patient.
Beside the computerized caregivers, Reginald stood beside another well-dressed man. Reginald motioned for the Chamberlains to come closer. "This is the boy."
"Joshua," Margaret said.
"Joshua," Reginald agreed, after a brief pause. "This is Doctor Fiske." He indicated the man to his left. "This," he bowed his head toward the man on the bed, "is my employer, Mister Bosco."
"The Mister Bosco. The guy who owns half Vegas?" It took Tim several heartbeats to realize he'd spoken aloud.
"The very same." Though he looked as if he might have already died and was only here because Saint Peter owed him money, the bed-ridden Mister Bosco spoke in a strong baritone.
"Please, sir, if you'll allow me…" Reginald waited for his employer's nod before speaking to the boy's parents. "You remember the young woman from the morgue, of course. The physicians confirmed that not only has the cancer that killed her completely vanished, but apparently her cells show no signs of aging."
"Holy shit," Tim said.
Mister Bosco spat a blackish glob into a plastic container. Tim watched the slimy tar slither down the side of the clear
tub, expecting it to sprout legs at any moment and climb out. "So I will never grow any older. Wish I'd found you when I was twenty-one, kid. Let's do this."
"Wait, you aren't going too…" Margaret trailed off.
Reginald nodded. "If you would prefer to wait outside," he motioned to one of the men by the door, "Vic will show you where."
"This way please." Vic's surprisingly high-pitched voice elicited a giggle from Josh.
"Joshua!" Margaret's admonishment ended any further merriment at Vic's expense.
They waited in a room that was larger than their house. Tim lounged on a couch. "Hey, Vic. Is this real leather?"
Vic remained silent, looking as if he would rather shoot than speak again. Tim shrugged and put his feet on furniture that cost more that he'd made in his life.
Margaret sat down next to him on the couch. She kept Josh close to her, continually asking him if he was all right.
Five minutes later, Reginald opened the bedroom door.
"He's dead?" Tim tried to keep the excitement from his voice.
Reginald nodded. "Yes."
Inside the room, Tim halted a few feet from the bed, beside Doctor Fiske. Margaret led their son to the dead man. She refused to meet Tim's eye.
Josh laid a finger on one of Mister Bosco's blue veins. "Please don't die."
Mister Bosco inhaled sharply. Startled, Doctor Fiske jumped. Mister Bosco tried, simultaneously, to sit up and pull tubes from orifices not meant to have tubes in them in the first place.
The doctor rushed to his side. "Patience, Mister Bosco. I'll get them all out, but you have to be patient."
"Hurry the hell up." Mister Bosco relinquished his catheter tube. "Reginald."
"Yes, sir." The lawyer stepped closer to the bed.
"Pay these fine people, and give them a bonus. Can't have my savior living in squalor."
"Yes, sir." Reginald turned. "Follow me, please."
He led them from the bedroom to a study, where he pulled a check from a desk drawer and handed it to Tim. "It's is a bit more substantial that promised."
"Holy shit. It's ten million dollars."
****
Tim waited just around the corner, listening to their butler, Oliver, answer the front door. In the two years since Bosco, Joshua had resurrected hundreds of people richer and more powerful than the man stepping into their foyer. None, however, came close to Ed Racer's A-list celebrity status. He was also the only person other than Bosco, who'd come to them while still alive. Tim peeked around the corner. Makeup and camera trickery were amazing; Ed Racer barely resembled the man he'd seen in "I Come From Mars With a Gun" less than a year ago. Squinting, Tim tried to see why Margaret turned into a teenage girl at the mention of Ed Racer's name. All he saw was a man who was beginning to show his age. No wonder the gossip shows were saying his time as Hollywood's highest paid actor were just about over.
"This way, sir." Oliver's English accent had gotten him the job, despite his lack of credentials. Once Tim heard it, he knew he'd found their butler. It also hadn't hurt that he came highly recommended by Bosco.
"Nobody will know of this?" Ed Racer, surveilled the room, eyes not resting on anything for longer than a moment.
A young blonde entered the foyer behind Ed. Tim forgot about the A-list actor. Angela Anderson, the latest in a series of young starlets attached to the action star, hoping to ride him to the top, physically and metaphorically.
"My son has seen over a thousand people." Tim entered the foyer, addressing Ed while allowing his eyes to roam over Angela. "What did you think the switching cars and the look-alike were for? Trust me…" Tim winked at Ed, "we know what we are doing. Now, if you don't mind, my son has other appointments today."
Ed jerked a manicured thumb toward the front of the house. "What about all those people out front?"
"They worship my son. They think he's the second coming of Christ or something. If he stepped out there and told them all to kill themselves, you would drive past corpses on your way out." Tim laughed. "Trust me, they ain't saying nothing."
He led them to the death room. Margaret didn't like the name, but Margaret didn't like much of anything anymore. All she did was complain about how they were treating Josh like the goose that laid the golden egg. She wanted them to stop resurrecting people and take Josh away. Weren't they supposed to provide for their child, and wasn't that all he was trying to do? Things would never go back to the way they were, no matter how much she wanted them to. Eventually, she'd come around or he'd find a solution. Divorce was out of the question; he would not chance losing custody of the boy. In the meantime, Tim would continue to live in his wing of their sixty-thousand square foot mansion, and she could stay in hers.
Inside the room, Margaret stood behind their son, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders. Tim leered at Angela Anderson's ass. Blistering anger heated Margaret's cheeks to a fiery red.
"How," Ed stopped to clear his throat, "do we do this?"
Margaret went from psycho glare to enraptured groupie mode faster than Tim got wood imagining the rounded mounds beneath Angela's miniskirt. "If you would lie down," Margaret motioned toward a hospital bed, which joined a nightstand as the only two pieces of furniture in the room, "we will give you some pills."
"And those are going to…" Ed Racer trailed off, apparently unable to bring himself to say, "Kill me."
"Yeah, those kill ya. Don't worry though. They are prescribed by a doctor the boy resurrected." Tim placed a hand on Ed Racer's shoulder. "Guaranteed to do the job pain free."
"And I'll never get older?"
"You will always be the same age you are now." Margaret twirled a strand of her long red hair.
"You already talked to our lawyer and signed all the forms. They explained everything," Tim said.
"Come on, baby. I got things I wanna do." Angela nudged Ed toward the bed.
Ed nodded. "Yeah, okay. How long does this take?"
"Ten minutes for the pills to work. Josh," Margaret laid a hand on their son's head, "happens instantly." She stepped to the side of the bed. Taking the remote control, she raised the head, bringing Ed into a sitting position. Her smile revealed her dimples. Tim wondered how he'd ever thought they were cute. "Relax." Margaret offered their customer a bottle of water from the small refrigerator beside the bed. Ed nodded, watching her shake out two green capsules from a bottle she placed back in the same refrigerator. He chased them with a swig of the water. Seconds later, he was unconscious.
Tim turned to Angela. "It's gonna take him about ten minutes to die. You want a drink… or something?"
"You got vodka?"
"Sure, c'mon." Tim escorted Angela from the room. Before he pulled the door completely shut, he heard Margaret responding to something Josh must have said.
"Don't worry, honey, your father and I will work it out."
Tim closed the door, cutting off Josh's response. "Call Oliver," he said to the house computer.
"Yes, sir." Hearing the butler's accent over the speaker system always made Tim chuckle.
"In ten minutes, bring Miss Anderson and me each a vodka in the theater."
Seconds later, in the back row of the home theater room, what was beneath Angela Anderson's miniskirt made his fantasy beg for forgiveness as it fell woefully short of reality. Tim lost track of time. Thankfully, Oliver, being Oliver, had the good sense to knock.
"Five more minutes," Angela yelled over her shoulder.
Two minutes later, Tim held his glass of vodka and waited for Oliver to open the door to the death room for them.
"Don't touch her!" Josh screamed.
Oliver didn't hesitate, pulling a gun from a hidden shoulder holster, he surged into the room.
Ed Racer stood in front of Margaret, hands less than an inch from her breasts. Slowly, he raised his hands, gaping at them as if someone had replaced them with big foam fingers. "What the hell just happened? I didn't want to stop." He looked at Josh. "You do that, kid?"
Eyes wide
, Josh edged away from the actor. "You were hurting my mom."
"She wanted it." Ed Racer's snort said he gave Margaret as much thought as he did anything that wasn't Ed Racer. He advanced on Josh. "Let's see if you can do that again." Margaret slammed into him. Ed Racer swung around. Veins protruded on his forearms and his lips twitched with the strain of trying to lash out at her.
Margaret smacked him hard enough to leave red welts across his cheek. "Don't touch my son, you lying piece of trash."
Ed spun back around, catching Josh by the wrist just as the boy turned to run.
"Let go." Josh watched the actor's hand fall from his wrist.
Ed pointed a finger at Tim. "Nothing in the deal said anything about the kid being able to order me around."
"Tell him to stand still, buddy," Tim said.
"Hell no…" Ed Racer managed two steps toward Tim before Josh spoke.
"Stand still. And don't talk," Josh added with a smirk.
"Buddy, tell him that he will never tell anyone about what happened in this room today."
"What are you doing, Tim?" Margaret moved to their son.
"Saving us. Now shut up."
"Wait. What the hell are you doing?" Angela's already shrill voice rose another notch.
Tim opened the refrigerator. "Margaret, if this gets out, we are dead."
After a visible internal struggle, Margaret knelt in front of the boy. "Your father is right, honey."
Josh nodded. "Never tell anyone about what happened in this room today."
"Hell with this." Angela turned to leave. Oliver stood in her path.
Tim grabbed her from behind. "Don't worry we're only going to kill you." He forced two capsules through her puffy lips. He and Oliver forced the hundred-pound woman to swallow them, though not without a fight.
"Thanks. You can expect a huge Christmas bonus." Tim said to the butler.
"Your thoughtfulness is appreciated, sir."
Tim nodded to Margaret. "Thanks… dear."
"I didn't do it for you. I did it for our family," she said, not turning from their son. "Honey, you're doing great. You are so brave. Now, we just need you to tell Miss Anderson the same things after you wake her up."
Fight the MonSter: Find a Cure for MS Page 16