Gary Braver - Elixir

"I don't believe you're doing this, Jen. I don't believe you'd betray us."

"It's you who's betraying me," she said in that weird singsongy voice.

Laura had never heard her sound so desperate. She had obsessed so much that she had pushed herself over the edge. "Jenny, listen to me, you haven't called them yet, have you?"

"No, but I will. So you better be here tomorrow with it. I'm not fooling."

"Please wait a moment, and don't hang up." Laura put her hand on the mouthpiece and glared at Roger. "We'll have to bring her some. She means it."

Roger nodded and threw his hands in the air to say "promise her anything."

"Okay, we'll be there," Laura said. "But, Jennifer, don't you dare call anybody, or we'll be arrested and you'll never get it. Do you understand?"

"Yes, but you better be here, or else I will." Then she gave her address. "It's a pink house with green shutters." And she hung up.

Laura dialed her number, but the power had been turned off. "What do we do? She sounds nuts."

"We don't have much of a choice."

All Roger could think was that Jenny would be the last person in the world to entrust with Brett.

Jenny lived five hundred miles from Minneapolis by Interstate. Under normal circumstances, the trip would take about ten hours.

But circumstances were anything but normal. Roger Glover alias Christopher Bacon was everybody's prime fugitive, which meant he'd have to take back roads and drive at night to play safe. The round trip would take days, and there was no way he would put that distance and time between him and Laura and Brett. They were in this as a family. They'd go together as a family.

The plan was to stay with Jenny for a night or two and give her a few ampules and a syringe.

Of course, they didn't know what a safe dosage was; nor would they know what to do should she have a toxic reaction. Too much could kill her; too little could cause her severe damage. And Jenny was damaged enough. Laura could not live with that. The only solution was to fake it.

So, before they left, she filled six ampules with saline solution. Jenny would never know, and when she caught on weeks later, they'd be working out their defense. Besides keeping her quiet for a few weeks, the visit would give Jenny the opportunity to meet Brett in the event their defense failed. They made no mention of this to Brett. It was too unthinkable.

After leaving Jenny's place, they would continue east and find the best lawyers they could buy.

"It's hard to believe anybody would take us on," Laura said when they were alone.

"Even Timothy McVeigh had a lawyer," Roger said. "Besides, we have a bargaining chip." He patted the emergency vial under his shirt.

"Going to try to bribe a judge like Wally?"

"Laura, I didn't bribe him, and you know it. He had the option not to go on it." Then he added, "Like you."

They explained to Brett that for a day or two they were going to visit Laura's sister Jenny who lived alone with her sixteen-year-old daughter. And that while they were being processed through the judicial system, he would stay with them. But that wouldn't be for a while. Maybe weeks.

They would take Laura's Subaru and another set of IDs-Peter, Ellen, and Larry Cohen.

"Dad, when it's all over, you going to go back to your old names again?"

"We've been Roger and Laura for so long, it might be kind of confusing. What do you think?"

"Yeah. I don't have to change to Adam, do I?"

"Of course not."

"No offense, but it sounds kind of dumb-you know, Adam and Eve. Running around naked and naming the animals. I'd rather stick with Brett."

"Besides, no one named Brett would be caught dead in a fig leaf, right?"

"I'm glad you see my point."

Laura wore a dark wig and tinted glasses, also tanning lotion which turned her a few shades darker. Meanwhile, Roger shaved off his beard and cut his hair to a whiffle. He looked eerily young. So much so that Brett commented, "You could be my older brother," and looked away unnerved.

Roger also carried cotton absorption wads-the kind dentists used-to be packed in his mouth to alter the shape of his face when they stopped for tolls and gas.

In the middle of the night they loaded the car undetected.

Amidst suitcases of clothes sat the cooler containing chopped ice and two hundred vials of frozen Elixir serum. The remaining supply and notebooks were miles from here, buried nearly a decade ago. And with them, one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in cash.

Before they left, Brett asked to see a sample, so Roger removed the emergency supply from around his neck. He snapped open the tube and extracted the long glass ampule.

Brett held it up to the kitchen light. He had heard about it all week, but this was the first time he had actually laid eyes on what all the world was howling about.

"Looks just like water," he said and handed it back to his father without further comment.

They left just before midnight.

Using secondary roads, Roger calculated the trip would take about seventeen hours. Jenny had insisted on their arrival tomorrow afternoon-as if she held them to some deadline.

As the lights of the condo disappeared in the mirror, the thought circled Roger's mind that there were hordes of people under that black sky who would do anything to lay hands on them. Anything.

To help Laura and Brett doze off, he put on a tape of "Swan Lake" and turned the volume low.

Laura was too anxious to sleep, although Brett spread out on the rear seat with his pillow and a blanket. In the mirror Roger had flashes of that night thirteen years ago when in another car and under different names they drove northward to Black Eagle Lake. Another night, another flight of fear.

By the time they reached Faribault, Laura was asleep against headrest. And Brett was a long lump under the blanket.

At this hour traffic was sparse. Even though U.S. 35 was indirect, it avoided Madison and any police checkpoints.

It was odd, but being on the run made Roger feel closer to Laura than he had in a while. They were doing something together, as a family, bizarre as it was. At one point, she woke up and took his hand. Nothing was actually said in words, though the gesture warmed him. He needed to believe in them still, and in her love. Yet, when he tried to imagine their future, it came up blank.

Someplace in the middle of Odette's transformation into a cygnet, Brett sat up.

"Dad, what would happen if I took Elixir?"

The question came out of the dark like an icepick. He was about to answer, when Laura cut him off. "Don't even think about it," she said, suddenly awake. She spun around to face him. "Everything we've ever warned you about the dangers of drugs-this is far worse. One shot and your body is instantly dependent. And if you go off it, you die a horrible death."

So startled by her reaction, Brett chuckled. "You're just saying that."

"Only because it's true. We told you about the animals."

"Can that happen to you, Dad?"

"Monkeys and humans have the same reaction."

"Has it ever happened to anyone?"

"Yes, but no one you know."

"Then why did you take it?"

"I told you it was a mistake."

"But you'll live forever, right?"

"Not forever. Just longer. But it was still a mistake."

"If you could go back, would you do it again?"

It was like Brett to hammer away. "No, I wouldn't."

"You're just saying that."

There was no reason for Roger to play up his regret or Brett would pursue that. "I'm not. It was wrong."

"How about when I'm older?"

"Brett, you've got a long life ahead of you. You don't need the stuff."

"But someday…"

They were caught between minimizing and maximizing the dangers. "We can't think that far ahead."

"But you're going to live a long time, why not both of us? You too, Mom."