Scott Nicholson - Liquid fear

“Symptoms? I thought you were trying to fix these people.” Kleingarten was bored with the man’s babble. It reminded him of his high school chemistry class and the time he’d had to set the asshole teacher’s lab on fire.

“Sorry. I meant ‘effects.’ My terminology is a little rusty.”

“Yeah, a long vacation will do that.”

Kleingarten always checked on the background of the people he worked with, for, or against. Research was just as important in his line of work as in this headshrinker shit.

Sebastian Briggs had been bounced from the UNC faculty after that stupid incident with the trials, but the university had tied it up in a nice little bow so that it looked like Briggs had resigned “to pursue other opportunities in private industry.” The Sharpe family had threatened a lawsuit but they got their hush money and everybody lived happily ever after. Except the Sharpe kid, of course.

“My reputation isn’t your concern,” Briggs said. “Your concern is following instructions to the letter.”

“There wasn’t no letter. You said stick the lady and I stuck the lady. You said run the car into the coffee shop and I put the pedal to the metal. You said kill the hooker and plant her with Doyle after I dosed him. You said mess with them and I messed with them plenty.”

Kleingarten omitted mentioning the murder of the football star. But it wasn’t really murder, to his way of thinking. It was suicide. Whether the guy died fast or died slow, what difference did it make?

And the Looker’s shrink. But that was a mercy kill, too. Saved her from a life of having to hear other people’s bullshit problems.

A metallic banging emanated from the bowels of the basement, as if someone were tapping on a large pipe with a cloth-covered baseball bat.

“Sounds like a toilet’s backed up,” Kleingarten said.

“A building this old, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Briggs said, now fidgeting in his top desk drawer.

Kleingarten heard a faint drumming on the high, flat roof and wondered if it had started raining. The day had been over-cast but not really threatening. He didn’t want to get his new shoes wet.

He glanced at the monitors, anxious to get his money and his next assignment. Pictures from a dozen security cameras filled the video screens. It was a nice system, a Sentinel brand with a mix of wireless cameras and motion sensors so nobody could knock it out by snipping a couple of wires, with a main monitor that was currently blank.

But few of the cameras monitored the outside of the building or its entryways. Most were pointing down the long canyons of abandoned lockers, stainless-steel tables, machine presses, and conveyor belts, as well as tangles of old plows, balers, cattle trailers, mower machines, and fat-threaded tires.

If the factory were in business today, Kleingarten could see where you’d need all those secret eyes on the floor to keep the workers from slacking off or nabbing the merchandise. But now the cameras just pointed at lots of stained concrete and rust.

“So, do you want to me to follow up on that Molkesky woman?” Kleingarten asked.

“No, that situation will resolve itself.”

“You don’t seem none too happy about it.”

“People are predictable, Mr. Drummond. That’s why I knew Roland Doyle would stop over in West Virginia at his brother’s cabin and would need that extra booster to keep him moving. That’s why I knew the two ladies would be in the waffle house. Our subjects will all be gathering soon, because they’re going to remember what happened ten years ago.”

“Christ, Doc, you got me driving to Cincinnati and then West Virginia when you knew they’d all end up here anyway? I had to buy a straw hat and overalls. I got expenses.”

Briggs held out a plain brown envelope. “Fifty thousand. The next installment.”

“Well, tell your people I might be billing for overtime,” Kleingarten said.

“Not necessarily. Roland Doyle will be in town this afternoon.”

“What did you do? Hotwire these people’s brains?”

“It’s a drug I call Seethe, and I was poised to introduce it to the world ten years ago. But I had to go underground and refine it a little after…well, after we had a little setback. Now it’s time our subjects came together again, so I can observe the long-term effects. A decade is a long incubation period, don’t you agree?”

The doc said it like he didn’t expect Kleingarten to know what “incubation” meant, but his family had raised chickens. He’d dosed Roland twice, assuming Roland hit the vodka bottle like Briggs had predicted, and the Slant and the Looker also took liquid doses, but he’d had to inject the Morgan woman this morning because she was behind schedule.

“Yeah, I can see where you’d be getting impatient,” Kleingarten said. “I understand giving them the juice. But I don’t get why you want to play games with them.”

Briggs gave him a smug look, like every schoolteacher whose face he’d ever wanted to bust, and launched into egghead talk. “My drug chemically alters pathways in the brain until the subject reverts to the dominant core impulse, filtering out reasoning and mitigating stimuli until the subject is obsessed and consumed by that basic impulse. You might say they become more like themselves, the people they would be without all the socialization, inhibitions, and morals that our so-called ‘evolved’ intelligence has imprisoned us with. Each of the subjects has a specific trigger that amplifies the effects of Seethe. That’s why your contribution is so important. You’re the trigger man.”

Kleingarten squeezed a little common sense out of the mumbo jumbo. “Like that guy in the comic book who gets mad and turns into the Incredible Hulk, right? And then starts smashing shit.”

“Yes, but anger is just one of the possible impulses. Each subject will have a reaction unique to their personality, which is why I need to observe their behavior and verify my thesis. The doctor, she’s proud and ambitious and aggressive. Roland is an alcoholic, so he’s his own evil twin just waiting for permission to mess up, but he’s also our problem child who needs additional exposure. Anita Molkesky is insecure and craves attention. Wendy…”

Briggs glanced at the framed nude drawing on the wall, confirming Kleingarten’s suspicions.

So you got the hots for the Slant, huh, Doc? And you don’t want to say what her weakness is. But I got a pretty good guess. Yes, sir, indeed.

The drumming was louder now and Kleingarten squinted up at the high sheets of gray windows that girded the uppermost five feet of each side of the cavernous facility. The glass was so smoky and dirty that he couldn’t tell how much of the gray came from rain clouds.

Then the drumming increased and Kleingarten saw movement in one of the cameras. It was gone before he could focus, but his impression had been of a hunched, pale form, as if maybe the monkey cages held one of those albino chimps they showed on Animal Planet. “There he is!” Briggs said, rushing from his office.

Kleingarten looked at the monitors and saw Briggs appear in one of the screens, gracelessly jogging between two rows of corrugated metal storage containers, leaning and peering anytime he came to a crevice. Briggs was near the end of the aisle, beneath a baler chute that had metal packing straps dangling from its opening.

The pale blur exploded from the darkness, slamming into Briggs.

“Easy!” Briggs’s shout echoed through the cavernous structure as Kleingarten ran toward the commotion. He wasn’t on the clock at the moment, but he was curious.

Curious Fucking George, that’s me.

The pale form scuttled over the machinery and Kleingarten wondered if he should draw his firearm. Maybe the doc had been testing monkeys on the side. He seemed like the kind of guy who could never get enough data.