Scott Nicholson - Liquid fear

“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’?”

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 see 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.