Gary Brandner - The Brain Eaters

“I’m sorry, sir,” Vollney said in a strained voice.

“What happened?”

“He went crazy. Killed Seth.”

“Eddie Gault killed a trained agent?”

“Yes, sir. He was like nothing human.”

Vollney’s legs sagged, and his eyes started to roll up. Zachry grasped him around the waist and supported him into the building and into his office. Inside, the agent recovered and refused a chair.

“Tell me about it,” Zachry said.

Vollney made an effort to get control of himself and in a voice purged of emotion related the events of the afternoon to Zachry. “Everything was going according to schedule. We intercepted the subject at the gate, transferred him to our car, and transported him to the location selected in advance for termination.”

“What condition was Gault in when you took him?” Zachry asked.

“He was obviously suffering some distress, but he was coherent and ambulatory.”

“All right, go on.”

“When we reached the designated location, we exited the car, and I instructed the subject to walk toward a growth of trees. He started to comply, then turned back. He began to … howl.”

“Howl?” Zachry repeated.

“Yes, sir. More like an animal than a man.”

Here Agent Vollney’s emotions welled up, and he dropped the awkward locutions of report language. “His face … the guy’s face … I’ve never seen anything like it. It looked like he’d walked into a hornet’s nest. There were bumps all over the skin, and right while we were watching, they broke open.” Vollney had to pause and swallow something that had come up in his throat. “They made little popping sounds and squirted gunk out of them. Jesus, it was ugly.”

Zachry gave the agent a minute to collect himself, then said, “What happened to Seth Quick?”

Vollney retreated back into the formalized, emotion-free jargon. “The subject became violent and charged Agent Quick and me. We both discharged our weapons. I observed several bullets strike the subject, but they seemed to have no effect. The subject seized Agent Quick by the throat and he — he killed him. When I tried to render assistance, the subject grasped my arm, knocking my weapon to the ground. I sustained an injury to my shoulder. I managed to reach the vehicle and returned here.”

“Gault escaped,” Zachry said, trying to keep his voice steady.

“Yes, sir. We — we just messed it up.”

“Nothing to do about it now,” Zachry said. “Go on back to the lab and get somebody to look at that arm.”

“Yes, sir.” Vollney lingered for a moment as though there were more he wanted to say but changed his mind and went out.

“Damn, damn, damn!” Zachry said to the empty office. Now he had a vengeful brain-eater victim thrashing through the woods out there. Fortunately, there was little chance he would get past the gate guards even if he did make it this far.

Where would he go? To the woman, of course! Circuits closed in the brain of Lou Zachry with an almost audible click. The woman, Roanne Tesla, had to be the anonymous caller. In the old days he would have punched up her name on the computer for a full report of the investigation they had done on her when Eddie had first come under suspicion. Now he had to pull out bits from his memory. Roanne Tesla: No Nukes; Greenpeace; Save the Whales . Your basic eco freak with leanings toward free-this and stop-that trendy radical causes.

Zachry thumped himself on the forehead. She was the one! Whether out of madness or twisted idealism or plain old villainy, this woman was behind the brain eaters. He was suddenly as thoroughly sure of her guilt as he was of his own name.

Zachry fairly leaped for the file cabinet and snatched out the folder labeled Edward Gault . He flapped it open on his desk, memorized the location of the house where Eddie lived with his girlfriend, and sprinted through the door.

As he dashed out of the building, a wisp of cool breeze ruffled his crew cut. Lightning forked to earth on the horizon, followed by the grumble of thunder. Lou Zachry shivered and ran toward his car.

All the lights blazed in the Biotron laboratory complex. The small employees’ lounge adjacent to the labs was bright with an ersatz high-tech cheeriness. It made the gray-black sky outside look even darker.

Corey Macklin sat at a formica table in the lounge with Dena Falkner. On the table before them were two Styrofoam coffee cups, which they toyed with while their attention was elsewhere. A cigarette smoldered, forgotten, in an ashtray at Dena’s side. Their free hands rested on the table, touching.

“You look tired,” Corey said.

“It’s been a long day,” Dena answered with a weary smile. “Going to be a long night, too. Dr. K doesn’t sleep, so he thinks the troops shouldn’t sleep.”

“You guys ought to have a union.”

“I’ll bring it up at our next meeting.”

They exchanged smiles that were clearly forced. The conversation sagged. Corey looked around for inspiration. Through the window he saw the dark trees at the forest line toss their branches and lean forward as though they wanted to advance on the buildings that had taken their space.

“Storm coming,” he said.

“Feels like it.” Dena took her hand away to rub the gooseflesh on her other arm. She conspicuously avoided the patch of bandage on her elbow.

A look of pain flashed across Corey’s face.

“Hey, I feel okay,” she said. “No worse than a bad cold. Anyway, at the worst I’ve got what — a week?”

“You’re the doctor,” he said in a husky voice.

“Yes. Well.” She glanced at the efficient wristwatch she wore and checked it with the big wall clock. “I’d better get back.”

“Sure.”

They stood up at the same time, leaving their cups sitting on the table with the cooling coffee untasted.

“I’ll check with you later,” Corey said.

“Good.”

Dena turned and took a couple of steps away from him, then stopped. She turned back. The uneasy smile she had kept in place through the coffee break was gone. Her eyes held a hint of desperation. She and Corey took a quick step toward each other, and she was in his arms, her face pressed against his chest.

“I’m scared, Corey,” she said, her voice small and muffled against his sweater.

He held her tightly, one hand patting her shoulder. “Hey, why wouldn’t you be? I’m scared, too.”

“I don’t want to die,” she said. “Not like this.”

Corey’s throat closed on him, and he could not speak for several seconds.

“It doesn’t have to happen,” he got out finally. “Like you said, if you had to get the damn things, you couldn’t be in a better place.”

Dena took one very deep breath, then stepped back away from him. Her smile was in place again, her eyes a little feverish but steady. “That sounds like a good-news, bad-news joke. Maybe later we can send it to Reader’s Digest .

“Right,” he said. “Later.”

She turned again and walked from the lounge through the swinging door into the laboratory. Her step was firm, and this time she did not turn back.

Corey looked down and saw that his fists were so tightly clenched the knuckles were white. He forced himself to relax and to give Dena time to reach her work station; then he followed her into the lab.

Dr. Kitzmiller was a touch less hostile when Corey approached him than he had been earlier in the day. For the forbidding biochemist, this was a huge concession to personal warmth. He even left the table where he was reading over notes made by the other members of the task force and took Corey back into his small, chilly office.