Andrew Neiderman - Deficiency

"Every great stride in history, in progress came at some cost," Garret said. "I regret what he's done of course, and that's why I'm pleading with you to help me find him so we can stop it."

"You just don't want anyone to know what you've created and what responsibility you bear," she told him, her eyes narrow and steely.

"All right. Let's say that's my motive. The result will be the same, won't it? He'll be brought to an end before he does any more damage. For Christ sakes, woman, you're a doctor. You're supposed to care about people." She turned away from him.

"I don't know that much. I'm not holding back," she said after a moment. "I told you exactly what Kristin Martin was unable to say. The bartender at the Hasbrouck Tavern was able to give the police a more detailed description. That's all I know," she practically spit at him.

"Putting that picture in the paper was a big mistake. It will drive him off. He might be gone already and I won't know where to go until he takes another victim."

"How do you find out so quickly?" she asked.

He looked at her.

"That's not important. We've got to go see this bartender. I told you. The police won't know what else to ask her, what to look for," he said.

"If you try to speak with her, she will think you're him, it, whatever," Terri pointed out.

"That's right." He smiled. "That's why I need your help. And don't ask me something stupid like why don't I just go to the police. You know the reason why I can't do that. Will you help me or won't you?"

Terri looked at her watch.

"I'm already seriously late for my office visits thanks to you."

"You'll find a way to explain it. Look, surely you realize this is more important than treating some flu and arthritis problems."

She sat thinking a moment.

"When are you going to let that policeman out of the trunk?" she asked.

"We'll go back, get your car, and let him wake up in his uniform," he promised.

"Get me back to my car," she said. "I need to use my phone." He studied her face.

"If you betray me, I'll disappear and believe me, no one will believe a word you say and no one will be able to track me down or my work. All you do is permit him to take more lives. You'll attend more funerals."

"All right," she said. "I said I would help you. I'll help you. Drive." He started the engine and turned the car around.

"Someone who has decided to devote her life to medicine, to helping people, shouldn't be so unsympathetic," he muttered.

"Oh, I'm sure you have only altruistic motives for your research, Dr. Stanley," she replied dryly.

"If in the end the result is we benefit mankind, what difference will that make?" he fired back. "Yes, I have to compromise to get the necessary funding and protection, and I have to promise great profits to these people, but it would be naive to think that hasn't been the story since the first cave man corporation invested in a new and better wheel.

"You more than anyone know how opportunistic and profit-driven our best pharmaceutical companies are, and last I heard, doctors don't take jars of peaches for their services any longer."

"Whatever," she said. "The time for philosophical debating is long over apparently."

"Precisely," he said.

Hyman got on the phone himself when she called in from her car. While she spoke, Garret Stanley went behind the building to free the patrolman. When he returned, the policeman was dozing in the front seat and back in his uniform. Garret was back in his own clothes as well.

"I'm sorry, Hyman," she told him, "but it's not something I can prevent."

"What are you doing, Terri?"

"I don't have time to explain it all, Hyman, and frankly, I don't know if I can. I'll call you as soon as I am able to do so," she said. "I promise and I'm sorry, really. You'll just have to trust me."

"All right. I'll cover for you here, but please, please be careful." Garret Stanley brought his vehicle next to hers. When she hesitated, he turned his hands palms up and nodded at the police car.

She got out and into his car.

"Do people at this tavern know who you are?" he asked.

"They might."

"I thought so. That will help enormously," he said and she drove out of the hospital parking lot, looking back once in a rearview mirror toward Curt's floor, imagining to herself just how wild he would become if he had even an inkling of what she was doing.

He was able to remember a time when anticipation was a sweet thing. It was almost as if a bell went off inside him then and a clock began ticking. As vague as time was, he realized that it wasn't very long ago when it was always that way. There was a signal to go hunting, but without the intensified urgency he now experienced. Or should he say, suffered, because he didn't enjoy it, not at all. He felt like an addict in withdrawal, writhing in agony, ready to claw up the walls in fact.

Something within him was clawing up his walls now. In his imagination, he saw an ugly, rodent with sharp talons stripping away his flesh, leaping from side to side and crying with a piercing shrill metallic sound that reverberated through his bones and into his head. He actually put his hands over his ears and pressed as hard as he could to stop it. That didn't work. Only one thing would work. Every living thing enjoyed some pleasure when it fed as long as it wasn't in the midst of starvation where gorging of food and nutrition took place. Once, he had participated in a sweet sexual fine dining. Now, he was like a ravaging beast who would eat away its own body.

He blamed it all on the amount of energy he had expended killing the ugly motel owner. The intensity of that struggle drained him of more than he had imagined. That realization added anger to lust and he returned to the corpse to deliver a revengeful kick at the dead man's jaw. It looked as if it cracked. Of course, that wasn't enough to satisfy him. He had to go elsewhere for what he really needed.

He went back out front and gazed at the motel units. The plain-looking woman and her mother had not emerged from their room yet. They were still resting before dinner. Well that was a pleasure he couldn't have. He couldn't rest before his dinner. He envied them for their calmness, their toleration. To be able to sleep and put off feeding was a wonderful thing. His envy quickly turned into resentment. Why should they have this power, for that was what it really was: a power?

The most skillful and effective hunters were the ones that had the strength to restrain themselves, to take their time, to study and wait and pounce when it was most advantageous to do so. Look how tigers and lions, even household cats, quietly stalked their prey, every part of them poised and strung, their bodies loaded and ready to fire, but their power to restrain keeping them from pulling their own triggers.

It frightened him to realize he was losing that. For the first time since he had escaped, he was afraid, and not of something out there, something hunting him. No, he was afraid of himself, of betraying himself, of making serious mistakes. He wanted to take time to think and plan and do this with intelligence, but that damn beast inside him wouldn't give him a moment of quiet.

He nearly ripped the motel office door off its hinges when he opened it and stepped out. Fall evenings fell faster. They were into daylight saving time. Stars had already appeared to put periods on every sentence of daylight left. Nocturnal creatures were stirring. Birds stopped their aerial gymnastics and went wherever birds went when the sun dipped below the horizon. The lights of the motel, on a sensor, began to flicker and go on. He could feel all living things turning, some on their backs, some on their stomachs. The prey of night predators scurried for cover. Little hearts pounded. Fear, like some thick syrup, began to flow in alongside the shadows that crept over the highway, under trees, and around the motel structure itself.