Robin Cook - Shock

Mumbling expletives, Joanna followed Deborah into the small autopsy room with the intent of demanding that Deborah come to her senses, but that goal was quickly forgotten. Deborah had the tray in the refrigerated compartment pulled out and was transfixed by what was on it. Joanna couldn't see what it was, but she could tell that Deborah was trembling by the way she held the light.

"What is it?" Joanna asked.

"Come and look!" Deborah said in a quavering voice.

"Maybe you should just tell me," Joanna said. "Remember, I'm not a biologist like you."

"You have to see this," Deborah said. "There's no way I could describe it."

Joanna swallowed nervously. She took a breath and walked over beside Deborah and made herself look down.

"Ugh!" Joanna muttered as her upper lip involuntarily pulled back in disgust. She was looking at five newborn infants with bloated umbilical vessels and extremely thick, dark lanugo. The faces were flat and broad and the eyes tiny. The noses were mere stubs with the nares oriented vertically. Their appendages ended in paddlelike extremities with minute digits. Their heads were crowned with a shock of black hair accentuated with minute but definite white forelocks.

"It's Paul Saunders clones again,' Joanna sneered.

"I'm afraid so," Deborah said. "But with a new twist. I think what he's doing down here for his stem-cell research is cloning his own cells into pig oocytes, and then gestating them in pigs."

Joanna reached out and took a hold of Deborah's arm. She needed momentary support. Deborah had been right about the Wingate Clinic. This new discovery indicated that Paul Saunders and his team were operating a quantum leap beyond the realm of reasonable or even anticipated ethics. The egotism and intellectual conceit required were simply beyond Joanna's comprehension.

Deborah slid the tray back into the refrigerated compartment and slammed the door. "Let's find a damn truck!"

With indignant anger helping to overcome the shock of their recent discovery, the women retraced their steps back into the barn proper. Emerging from the laboratory, their presence again caused a stirring among the animals. Previously it had been mainly the pigs close to the stairway door which had become aroused. Now it was more generalized with even the cows adding to the growing din.

The women went from door to door until they found a passageway leading to what they assumed would be a garage. But it turned out to be something more. With the light from two red exit signs, they could see it was a hangar. Bathed in the ruby glow was an Aerospatial turbojet helicopter.

"There's our answer, if we could only fly it,' Deborah said. She stood for a moment longingly admiring the craft.

"Come on,' Joanna urged. "I think there's a garage beyond this building."

Joanna turned out to be right, and when they went through the next door, they were rewarded to see a tractor and a dump truck. Both women headed for the truck.

"Keys be there!" Deborah prayed out loud as she mounted the truck's running board and got the door open. She swung herself up into the cab. Frantically her fingers searched for keys while Joanna held the light. Deborah checked along the steering column, then along the dash. She found the ignition key slot but no keys.

"Damn!" Deborah cursed and hit the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. "I suppose we could hotwire this thing if we only knew how." She glanced down at Joanna.

"Don't look at me," Joanna said. "I have no idea, not the slightest!"

"Let's go back to that office we saw in the barn," Deborah suggested. "Maybe the keys are there."

Deborah climbed out of the truck. The women retraced their steps back to the barn, giving the helicopter another longing look as they passed through the hangar.

As they came into the barn proper, the animals became even more agitated.

"They must think it's meal time," Deborah commented. The women reached the door to the office when they heard the unmistakable sound of a vehicle pulling up outside the barn. They'd also caught a glimpse of the headlights briefly coming through the windows of the door as the car turned before coming to a stop. "Oh no! We're going to have company!" Deborah rasped.

"Get back to the stairs!" Joanna cried.

The women bolted for the stairs, but they didn't make it. The barn door was rapidly keyed open and a figure burst within. The first thing he did was snap on the all the lights, catching the women more than twenty feet from their goal. All they could do was duck behind the cartons, hay bales, and feed sacks and hunker down while the man made his rounds among the stalls. They could hear him carrying on a continuous monologue with the animals, demanding among other things who was the culprit for getting everybody riled up.

"Do you think we should try to get to the stairs?" Deborah asked when it sounded as if the man was at a significant distance.

"Not unless you can see exactly where he is and whether or not he's adequately preoccupied."

Slowly Deborah raised herself until she had a view of the area of the stalls. She couldn't see the man although she could still hear him talking to one of the animals. Then suddenly he stood up, and Deborah ducked back down.

"He's not as far away as I thought," Deborah said.

"Then we'd better stay put," Joanna said.

"We could cover ourselves with some of this loose hay."

"I think we should just stay still and quiet,' Joanna said. "We should be okay unless he comes over here to get some of these supplies."

"If he comes over to go in the office, we might be in trouble."

"We'd just have to inch around the cartons," Joanna said. "That shouldn't be so hard, and once he was in there, we'd be able to get to the stairs."

Deborah nodded, but she wasn't so confident it would work. It was one of those things that sounded easy but would probably be difficult in reality.

Suddenly the women heard the sound of a second vehicle arriving outside. They exchanged a worried look. One person was enough of a problem, and two could be a disaster in the making.

The newcomer entered and the door banged behind him. The women cringed as they heard him yell out for Greg Lynch.

"Hey keep it down!" Greg called from one of the stalls. "The animals are restless as it is."

"Sorry" the newcomer said. "But we have an emergency underway."

"Oh?"

"We're looking for a couple of young women. They got in under aliases, hacked into the computer files, and broke into the egg room. Now they're somewhere out here on the premises."

"I haven't seen anyone," Greg said. 'And the barn's been locked."

"What are you doing down here at this time of night?"

"I've got a sow who's nearing term. Through the monitor I heard the animals getting restless; I thought maybe she was about to deliver, but she's okay."

"If you see the women when you're driving back to your place, let security know," the newcomer said. "They were over in the main building to start with, but we've been through it. They walked, but they haven't been back through the gate, so they're hiding someplace."

"Good luck."

"We'll get them. We've got the whole security team out searching, including all the dogs. And, by the way, the hard-wire phone system is off-line until they're apprehended. We don't want them calling out and causing us difficulties."

"No problem," Greg said. "I've got my cell phone."

After the men said their good-byes, the women heard the barn door open and then slam shut.

"This is going from bad to worse," Deborah whispered. "It sounds like they are combing the grounds."

"I don't like the idea of dogs after us," Joanna said.

"You and me both,' Deborah said. "It's a wonder they haven't thought of the tunnel."

"We don't know that they haven't."