Scott Nicholson - Liquid fear

Briggs was shouting and cursing, searching through the maze of abandoned equipment. Kleingarten followed, glad the old building was relatively isolated, especially for the Research Triangle Park. If Briggs had let loose a crazy monkey, it might need a round or two from Kleingarten’s Glock, and he hadn’t packed a silencer.

One bullet, maybe charge them five thousand bucks. Sounded like a fair deal, especially if the monkey attacked Briggs again.

Kleingarten was out of breath by the time he caught up with Briggs, who was also panting. The doc stood with his hands on his knees, peering under a metal work table whose top was pitted and scarred. The form was huddled beneath it, mostly in shadows, and emitting a low murmur that bordered on a growl.

“Need help grabbing your monkey?” Kleingarten asked, trying to hide his exerted breath.

“Shh,” Briggs said. “Keep your voice calm.”

“You’re the one who was yelling,” Kleingarten observed.

Briggs took a hypodermic needle from his pocket, removed the cap, and squinted at the tip as he pushed the plunger. A dewdrop of fluid oozed from the tip. It looked like the same kind of rig Kleingarten had passed to the jock to stick in Alexis Morgan.

“This is a special part of the experiment,” Briggs said. “Can I trust you?”

“Sure.” Kleingarten didn’t deal with people who expected trust. People like that deserved being lied to. “Don’t the bosses know about this?”

“Of course,” Briggs said, leaning low and approaching the huddled form. “But they don’t know that they know.”

Kleingarten braced for the monkey to come bursting out of the cranny and slam into the doc again. He didn’t think much of a man who couldn’t control his monkeys, no matter how well he paid.

The doc knelt, talking in soothing tones. “Come on, David, it’s going to be all right.”

David. That wasn’t a good name for a monkey. You named your monkey George, or Roscoe, something silly like that. You didn’t give it a regular name because monkeys were too much like people and both of you might get the wrong idea.

But Briggs seemed to have some practice with this game. Maybe David the Monkey had escaped before and the doc knew just how to get the job done. When Briggs reached in with the syringe, the creature scuttled away to the far end of the table. Kleingarten went around it, figuring to scare the monkey back toward Briggs.

With a screech, the animal burst from the shadows, all claws and waving arms, a liquid hiss coming from those too-wide lips. The monkey was on Kleingarten before he could react, and though he’d trained in boxing and self-defense, he found himself falling backward onto the cold concrete.

Kleingarten managed to twist and avoid cracking his skull as moist, rancid breath spritzed his neck, and he wondered if Briggs’s monkey had rabies. Despite the small, wiry frame, the monkey was strong, and Kleingarten didn’t want those claws digging into his skin. He’d seen monkeys in the zoo throwing shit, which meant those nails were nasty.

He spun and flexed, jabbing his thumbs toward the creature’s eyes, but stopped when he realized they weren’t primate eyes.

A man. Sweet Mary in a manger, it’s a man.

The naked man clambered away, passing up the chance to rip at Kleingarten’s skin.

“Get him,” Briggs yelled, rushing around the table.

Kleingarten blinked alert and grabbed at the man’s leg, encircling one thin ankle. He tugged and the man fell flat, his bony chest slapping against the floor. The man immediately curled into a fetal position, quivering beneath Kleingarten’s grip.

“Easy, David,” Briggs said, moving in and sliding the needle into the man’s arm. “You’re safe now. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

Nobody besides whoever did this to him.

Wallace Forsyth took a sip of Glenlivet single-malt scotch. He liked to think of it as his solitary moral weakness. But a forgivable one. After all, Jesus drank wine and gave it to others.

It was a ritual in which he often indulged while visiting Senator Burchfield. However, the senator was a teetotaler and had none of the common failings of the flesh. No, Burchfield’s addiction was power and influence, and even though he’d achieved success in the business world, he cared little for money. All money did was help him control those who didn’t share his views, a means to an end.

But as a rising star on the Foreign Relations Committee, the Health, Education, Labor amp; Pensions Committee, and the Armed Services Committee, Burchfield was uniquely situated to change people’s minds.

Many of them.

Burchfield’s library was elegant, with polished maple shelves, marble busts of Aristotle and Thomas Jefferson, and a dark leather sofa that sucked Forsyth into its depths. A fire crackled cheerily in the fireplace, though the room’s air was carefully controlled to protect the vast collection of books.

Burchfield was proudly pointing out some of his prized editions, such as an early printing of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and a copy of Lyndon B. Johnson’s biography signed by the late president.

“Top of your head, Wallace, who was the most intellectual of our nineteenth-century presidents?” Burchfield said.

Wallace went for the easy pick, mostly because he could only name half of those presidents. “Lincoln.”

Burchfield pulled a hard plastic sleeve from the shelves and held it aloft. The clear sleeve contained a ragged, salmon-colored paper. “Wrong. Millard Fillmore. He had a personal collection of more than five thousand volumes, and he established the White House library. He presided over the slavery compromise of 1850, which was the last time a senator drew a pistol on the Senate floor.”

“Now you threaten one another with so much greater subtlety and charm,” Wallace said, letting his Kentucky accent stretch the words a little.

Burchfield waved the document in the air. “He’s generally regarded as a footnote, the kind of trivia question that stumps a history major on finals. But Fillmore was the first president who didn’t come from a background of wealth and privilege.”

“Is that the reason you summoned me to the castle? A little history lesson? I’m too old and forgetful to squirrel away any more useless information.”

Burchfield laughed. “We’re more alike than you imagine. Play a little bit dumb so that people underestimate you. You get your best work done when attention is diverted to louder, shinier people.”

“You’re hardly a shrinking violet, sir. Or are those presidential ambitions just more smoke to veil a different agenda?”

“You know my agenda. That’s why you’re on the team.”

As Burchfield replaced the Fillmore manuscript, Wallace took another sip of the scotch. It was sweet and cold as it flowed through the ice cubes. Worth tempting the eternal flames of hell. “I don’t always agree with Dr. Morgan, but I’d hate to see her crucified for this.”

“That’s one of the risks,” Burchfield said. “You knew going in that there would be collateral damage.”

“I knew going in that the atheists, Communists, and radical liberals were winning the war against God.”

Burchfield gave his confident bellow of a laugh. “Don’t confuse the Democratic Party with the Illuminati. It’s all about timing. You just happened to come up for reelection when people were in a mood to dump a few incumbents. But, like all of us at the trough, once you know the way there, it’s not so hard to get back.”

“I’m serving a higher power here.” Forsyth drank more liquor. Scotch tasted better and better with each sip.

Burchfield nodded, suddenly somber. “And sacrifice is the hallmark of all good Christians. So we sacrifice a little now in order to save more people later. Christ took the nails so others might live eternally, right?”