Clive Barker - Age of Desire

Carnegie pinpointed the location of the attack and realized that it was within a few blocks of the laboratories. No accident, surely. The man was heading back to the scene of his crime.

Wounded, and undoubtedly on the verge of collapse — the lovers had described a man who looked more dead than alive — Jerome would probably by picked up before he reached home. But there was always the risk of his slipping though the net and getting to the laboratories. Johannson was working there, alone. The guard on the building was, in these straitened times, necessarily small.

Carnegie picked up the phone and dialed through to Johannson. The phone rang at the other end but nobody picked it up. The man’s gone home, Carnegie thought, happy to be relieved of his concern. It’s ten-fifty at night and he’s earned his rest. Just as he was about to put the receiver down, however, it was picked up at the other end.

“Johannson?”

Nobody replied.

“Johannson? This is Carnegie.” And still, no reply. “Answer me, damn it. Who is this?”

In the laboratories the receiver was forsaken. It was not replaced on the cradle but left to lie on the bench. Down the buzzing line, Carnegie could clearly hear the monkeys, their voices shrill.

“Johannson?” Carnegie demanded. “Are you there? Johannson?” But the apes screamed on.

Welles had built two bonfires of the Blind Boy material in the sinks and then set them alight. They flared up enthusiastically. Smoke, heat and ashes filled the large room, thickening the air. When the fires were fairly raging he threw all the tapes he could lay hands upon into the conflagration, and added all of Johannson’s notes for good measure. Several of the tapes had already gone from the files, he noted. But all they could show any thief was some teasing scenes of transformation. The heart of the secret remained his. With the procedures and formulae now destroyed, it only remained to wash the small amounts of remaining agent down the drain and kill and incinerate the animals.

He prepared a series of lethal hypodermics, going about the business with uncharacteristic orderliness. This systematic destruction gratified him. He felt no regret at the way things had turned out. From that first moment of panic, when he’d helplessly watched the Blind Boy serum work its awesome effects upon Jerome, to this final elimination of all that had gone before had been, he now saw, one steady process of wiping clean. With these fires he brought an end to the pretense of scientific inquiry. After this he was indisputably the Apostle of Desire, its John in the Wilderness. The thought blinded him to any other. Careless of the monkeys’ scratchings he hauled them one by one from their cages to deliver the killing dose. He had dispatched three, and was opening the cage of the fourth, when a figure appeared in the doorway of the laboratory. Through the smoky air it was impossible to see who. The surviving monkeys seemed to recognize him, however. They left off their couplings and set up a din of welcome.

Welles stood still and waited for the newcomer to make his move.

“I’m dying,” said Jerome.

Welles had not expected this. Of all the people he had anticipated here, Jerome was the last.

“Did you hear me?” the man wanted to know.

Welles nodded. “We’re all dying, Jerome. Life is a slow disease, no more nor less. But such a light, eh? in the going.”

“You knew this would happen,” Jerome said. “You knew the fire would eat me away.” “No,” came the sober reply. “No, I didn’t. Really.” Jerome walked out of the door frame and into the murky light. He was a wasted shambles, a patchwork man, blood on his body, fire in his eyes. But Welles knew better than to trust the apparent vulnerability of this scarecrow. The agent in his system had made him capable of superhuman acts. He had seen Dance torn open with a few nonchalant strokes. Tact was required. Though clearly close to death, Jerome was still formidable.

“I didn’t intend this, Jerome,” Welles said, attempting to tame the tremor in his voice. “I wish, in a way, I could claim that I had. But I wasn’t that farsighted. It’s taken me time and pain to see the future plainly.”

The burning man watched him, gaze intent.

“Such fires, Jerome, waiting to be lit.”

“I know…” Jerome replied. “Believe me…I know.” “You and I, we are the end of the world.” The wretched monster pondered this for a while, and then nodded slowly. Welles softly exhaled a sigh of relief. The deathbed diplomacy was working. But he had little time to waste with talk. If Jerome was here, could the authorities be far behind?

“I have urgent work to do, my friend,” he said calmly. “Would you think me uncivil if I continued with it?”

Without waiting for a reply he unlatched another cage and hauled the condemned monkey out, expertly turning its body around to facilitate the injection. The animal convulsed in his arms for a few moments, then died. Welles disengaged its wizened fingers from his shirt and tossed the corpse and the discharged hypodermic on to the bench, turning with an executioner’s economy to claim his next victim.

“Why?” Jerome asked, staring at the animal’s open eyes.

“Act of mercy,” Welles replied, picking up another primed hypodermic. “You can see how they’re suffering.” He reached to unlatch the next cage.

“Don’t,” Jerome said.

“No time for sentiment,” Welles replied. “I beg you, an end to that.” Sentiment, Jerome thought, muddily remembering the songs on the radio that had first rewoken the fire in him. Didn’t Welles understand that the processes of heart and head and groin were indivisible? That sentiment, however trite, might lead to undiscovered regions? He wanted to tell the doctor that, to explain all that he had seen and all that he had loved in these desperate hours. But somewhere between mind and tongue the explanations absconded. All he could say, to state the empathy he felt for all the suffering world, was: “Don’t,” as Welles unlocked the next cage. The doctor ignored him and reached into the wire-mesh cell. It contained three animals. He took hold of the nearest and drew it, protesting, from its companions’ embraces.

Without doubt it knew what fate awaited it; a flurry of screeches signaled its terror.

Jerome couldn’t stomach this casual disposal. He moved, the wound in his side a torment, to prevent the killing. Welles, distracted by Jerome’s advance, lost hold of the wriggling charge. The monkey scampered away across the bench-tops. As he went to recapture it the prisoners in the cage behind him took their chance and slipped out.

“Damn you,” Welles yelled at Jerome, “don’t you see we’ve no time? Don’t you understand?”

Jerome understood everything, and yet nothing. The fever he and the animals shared he understood; its purpose, to transform the world, he understood too. But why should it end like this — that joy, that vision — why should it all come down to a sordid room filled with smoke and pain, to frailty, to despair? That he did not comprehend. Nor, he now realized, did Welles, who had been the architect of these contradictions.

As the doctor made a snatch for one of the escaping monkeys, Jerome crossed swiftly to the remaining cages and unhatched them all. The animals leaped to their freedom. Welles had succeeded with his recapture, however, and had the protesting monkey in his grip, about to deliver the panacea. Jerome made toward him.

“Let it be,” he yelled.

Welles pressed the hypodermic into the monkey’s body, but before he could depress the plunger Jerome had pulled at his wrist. The hypodermic spat its poison into the air and then fell to the ground. The monkey, wresting itself free, followed.