Scott Nicholson - Chronic fear

“No, Mark, that’s the Seethe talking-”

“Of course it’s the fucking Seethe talking! That’s what I am. That’s what I do. That’s what you’ve turned me into. You didn’t need a fucking Monkey House, all you needed was a monkey.”

His roar caused her to shrink away, and she considered opening the door and taking her chances on the grassy shoulder. But she was his only chance. She loved him so much, she could never abandon him when he needed her most.

Even if he didn’t know it.

When you loved somebody, you lifted anchor and rode the tsunami with them.

Mark drove with purpose, the route apparently still clear in his mind although she only dimly recognized the scenery. She wondered how many times he might have driven out here, seeking answers as the lesions in his brain pulled apart all the memories and experiences that had shaped his life and made him Mark Morgan.

Alexis risked a glance at his profile, the sheen of his moist forehead, his unkempt hair, his curled upper lip. How much of my husband is still left in there?

He fell silent after his eruption. His mood swings were getting more erratic by the minute. She’d miscalculated terribly. The Halcyon she’d been administering had not been helping him. Instead, it had only masked his deterioration and allowed her the placebo of helpfulness.

He turned off the highway onto a narrow, crumbling access road. Visible through the surrounding pine trees was a chain-link fence running parallel to the road. It was topped with barbed wire. Alexis strained to see beyond it, but the foliage was too thick.

Still, she knew they were approaching the Monkey House.

“I was telling the truth,” she said quietly, trying to sound reasonable.

“We’ll see about that.”

“If I was working for the government, do you think they’d let you kidnap me? Wouldn’t I be far too important to take the risk of your killing me? And would I have told you about the lab raid?”

Mark glanced in the rearview mirror. Then he shook his head. “Here’s the deal. They need you, but they need me, too. Right? You know how the brain processes it, the theory behind it, the molecular structure, but I am living and breathing the shit. I am Seethe.”

They came to a steel cable strung between two poles embedded in concrete. Beyond that was a gate set in the fence, tangled with honeysuckle and poison sumac. It hadn’t been used in a long time.

Not since the cleanup a year ago.

Mark stopped the car, collected the gun, and motioned her out. When they were both standing by the steel cable, Mark said, “In there’s where it all happened.”

“There’s nothing here, Mark.”

“Then you don’t need to worry, do you?” He knelt and rolled up the leg of his athletic pants, revealing a holster strapped inside his ankle. He slid the gun into it and smoothed his clothes.

Alexis followed him through the weed-choked entrance to the gate. Beyond it was a stand of scrub pines, and in a clearing was a blackened circle, a few piles of masonry rubble, and deep gouges in the red clay. A dented “No Trespassing” sign leaned to one side in the center of what had once been the Monkey House. She released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“That’s what happened to the people we used to be,” Mark said. “That’s where we died and didn’t know it.”

Butner was a small town about fifteen miles north of Durham. It had been known as Camp Butner during World War II, an army training facility that later became a home for injured veterans. The town of nearly six thousand people had maintained that institutional identity ever since, housing several prisons, a federal correctional facility, some state agency headquarters, and the largest mental hospital in North Carolina.

Forsyth had driven himself to Butner after leaving Burchfield in Winston-Salem. He could have used Abernethy and the limo, since Burchfield planned to spend the night at home, but Forsyth didn’t want anyone to know of his movements, especially the Secret Service.

He was just exiting I-85 when the cell phone rang and he had to fumble through several jacket pockets to find it. “Forsyth here.”

“Scagnelli.”

“Do you got anything?” Forsyth didn’t bother with correct grammar when he was away from the press.

“No. They headed out to the Research Triangle Park, and I figured they were working with somebody out there. Thought I’d get lucky and they’d lead me right to the secret lab.”

“You might as well expect a wild hog to grub up a truffle and drop it on your dinner plate,” Forsyth said. “You ought to know by now that ‘secret’ means everybody don’t know about it.”

“Well, the Secret Service has a Twitter account. That’s hardly a good way to keep secrets.”

Forsyth knew Twitter was some kind of Internet thing, and he was happy to stay away from it. As far as he could tell, all it did was get people in trouble when they said things they shouldn’t.

“You don’t have to worry about what the Secret Service does. You’d better be worrying about what Dominic Scagnelli does. Don’t forget who you work for.”

“You say that a lot.”

“Because you work for me. Where are the Morgans now?”

“They’re walking around an abandoned lot. I checked out the property on my laptop. It’s owned by CRO Pharmaceuticals but apparently it was shut down after a fatal industrial accident last year.”

“You don’t say.”

“Morgan worked for CRO. Real high up the ladder, a guy just doing his job. And he gave it all up to become a cop?”

“No, he gave it up for his wife. He just didn’t know it at the time.”

“Women. They sure know how to fuck up a good thing. The most selfish creatures on God’s green earth.”

Forsyth winced a little. He’d been married once. He’d lain his lovely Louisa to rest fifteen years back, and he’d never found her equal. He was content to finish up his time here and be reunited in heaven with his monogamy still intact.

Scagnelli sputtered on, the amphetamines fueling his tirade. “After the nuclear holocaust when all the dust settles, first will come the cockroaches, and then some cats will pussyfoot out of their holes. And then a few women will crawl out of the rubble. If ever you want to learn about self-preservation-”

“Did the Morgans see you?”

“Of course not.” Scagnelli sounded offended, which was exactly what Forsyth intended. “He looks a little jittery but otherwise they’re just hacking through the weeds like they’re looking for a way inside the fence.”

“Monitor them but don’t take no action.”

“What if they find something?”

“There ain’t nothing left to find.”

“Okay, I’ll just send you a text.”

“Why don’t you Twitter it?”

“Tweet.”

“Whatever. Or ram it up a carrier pigeon’s butt and have it sing ‘Dixie’ on the way over.”

Scagnelli laughed, taking Forsyth’s gruffness for folksy humor. Forsyth could tell Scagnelli was underestimating him. Just the way he liked it.

He clicked the cell phone dead and turned into the parking lot of Central Regional Hospital. It had once been named Umstead Hospital after one of the state’s endless series of mental-health reformers dating all the way back to Dorothea Dix, whose own namesake hospital was nearly dead.

Two and a half centuries of meddling in people’s heads and they still ain’t got things right.

The hospital was two stories at ground level, although it was set on a gentle slope that allowed for a lower floor at the back end of the building. The flat roof and glass facade suggested a 1990s-era design, back when architects didn’t realize how quickly their futuristic designs would look bulldozer-ready. The lot was relatively empty, since the hospital didn’t get a lot of visitors. Many of the patients were of the sort that no one wanted to acknowledge, much less spend time with.