Liquid Fear (8 page)

Roland turned up the bottle, craving the sweet relief, no matter what price he’d pay later.

He’d forced down three swallows before he realized the vodka didn’t burn. He pulled it away and smelled it.

Water.

The laughter hit him hard, and he leaned against the wall, air leaping from his lungs in painful grunts. He was such a fuck-up that he even fucked up getting fucked up. His sides hurt, then he punched the wall, and the pain brought him around.

Roland pulled the orange bottle from his pocket and glanced at the bloody letters on the cabinet door: “You’re late.”

The rage came over him almost instantly, and he had retrieved a butcher knife from the kitchen and was about to hack into that goddamned goat, with its glassy, accusing eyes.

Who are you to fucking judge me
?

Trembling, he dropped the knife and fled to the back bedroom, crawling onto the bare mattress and huddling into himself.

They were coming. They’d find out he’d drunk the vodka.

He thought of the farmer with the spiffy shoes and city hands.

The farmer’s words came back to him.
“You’ll be heading back to North Carolina soon?”

And another question, maybe one from David Underwood up in the peanut gallery:

Why did you kill Susan?

He hadn’t thought of the girl in years, and he didn’t even know he’d forgotten her, but her rounded face slid into his mind, eyes wide and mouth screaming and chubby cheeks bleeding.

Roland felt the world sliding away and the black walls of the room closing in. Then Susan blended with the dead woman in Cincinnati.

Every 4 hrs.

Or else.

Or else more of this. More memories, more corpses.

He pulled out the bottle and shoved one of the pills into his mouth, wishing he had the bogus vodka to wash it down.

The fear vanished in minutes, and he found he was exhausted from the tension.

Sleep.

Then Wendy.

“Let me see your pills,” Wendy said.

Anita turned from the window of Dr. Hannah Todd’s fifth-floor office. After hanging up on Wendy, she’d made an appointment and caught a cab to the NC Neurosciences Hospital, where she waited in an outpatient room. Anita had finally answered one of Wendy’s repeated calls, and Wendy had hurried down to make sure her friend was okay.

And part of her wanted to make sure Halcyon wasn’t back in Anita’s life, because Halcyon should have died along with Susan Sharpe.

“Do you believe me now?” Anita asked. She was dressed in street clothes, the bandage still on her head, though she’d changed for her appointment and wore a loose white blouse and pleated slacks.

“I don’t know what to believe.”

“I thought I was freaking out, having little fantasies. I know we’ve been friends for a long time, but I couldn’t remember when I met Roland.” After a pause, Anita lowered her voice and added, “Or Susan.”

“Don’t say that name.”

“You don’t remember, do you?”

“Show me your pills.”

Anita rummaged in her handbag and came out with the orange bottle. She read from the label. “A. Molkesky. Take one every four hours or else.”

She tossed the pill bottle to Wendy, who nearly dropped it, though they were only three feet apart. “These are just like mine,” Wendy said.

“These are just like the ones from ten years ago.”

Something tugged at Wendy’s memory, but she pushed it down. She recalled what Anita had said about “monsters in their holes.” Oh, she’d had holes, all right.

“Are you taking them on time?” Wendy asked.

“Now I am. After I figured out the ‘Or else’ part.”

“I thought you were going to turn these in.”

“I don’t think I better do that.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Yeah. And the pills help. Because when I don’t take them, it all comes sneaking back.”

“What does?” Wendy wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

“Dr. Briggs. Us. The Monkey House.”

“Us?”

“You, me, and Roland. You talked us into it, said it was a chance to make some extra cash. Plus we thought it was real anti-establishment stuff, brain research without a net.”

Wendy felt jittery, because she caught a vivid image of a smirking Dr. Briggs. Sebastian. He’d been a doctor here, hadn’t he?

Something else. She could see his face, smiling, leaning forward with his lips puckered. And from his voice came the words, “
Wendy, my sweet little Igor
.”

“No,” Wendy said, willing the image from her head.

“Yeah,” Anita said. “I don’t know where the others came in. David and Susan. They probably just wanted money, too. And Alexis, but she was tied in with Briggs.”

Wendy had kept in touch with Alexis over the years, though the casual meetings for coffee had become less frequent and more awkward, as if the only things they had to talk about were things they couldn’t talk about.

“Alexis,” Wendy said. “Is she still on staff?”

“She has a lab here in the basement, but her office is in the nursing school. I see her in the hall once in a while when I come for therapy.”

“Does she…say anything?”

Anita shook her head. “Not about Susan Sharpe. She’s got professional standing to worry about now.”

Wendy wanted to change the subject fast. “What’s the longest you’ve gone without the pills?”

Anita looked at the clock on the wall, which was pushing six o’clock. “Five hours is about as long as I can stand. Then it all starts crashing in and I remember what happened out there at the factory.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Anita sat on the sofa, unconsciously perching in a pose that might have passed for seductive. Wendy had drawn Anita many times, and even the most innocuous figure studies had turned out erotically charged. Wendy wasn’t sure whether it was something in Anita’s nature, the connection of the friendship, or some secret carnal impulse in Wendy that was always trying to escape.

She suspected her impulse might have broken loose a few times, and that frightened her more than Anita’s recollections.

“We did these drug trials,” Anita said, with the patience of an adult lecturing a child. “The drugs were supposed to help people dealing with trauma, so we pretended to attack one another to stimulate violence and trigger our fear responses so Briggs could monitor the results.”

Wendy had a vague memory of a high ceiling, dark clutter all around, stalking through corridors to find someone.

And not just the image but the
feeling
returned, the hunger of the predator, the rage that Susan was after Dr. Briggs, but Susan could never have him because Briggs belonged to Wendy.

The nerve of that fucking bitch.

“You haven’t told this to anyone?” Wendy asked. Now it was her turn to look out the window. A long way down.

“No.”

“I wouldn’t. It sounds totally crazy, and they’ll lock you away in a nice rubber room on the seventh floor.”

“I’m not telling anybody anything. They might take away my Halcyon.”

“Why do you call it Halcyon, anyway? There’s nothing on the label.”

Anita smiled. “You’re playing me, aren’t you?”

“Huh?”

“Pretending like you don’t remember. Halcyon was the drug Briggs was testing.”

Because the room was for voluntary outpatients, the window wasn’t barred like those on the top floor. She could open it and lure Anita over. Then no more talk of Susan and Briggs.

“I’m tired of remembering,” Anita said. “I’m taking my next dose. Give me my bottle back.”

Wendy realized she was still gripping the orange bottle. She crossed the room and gave it to her, then watched as Anita poured the remaining seven pills into her palm.

“That’s barely enough to get you to morning,” Wendy said. “Do you want some of mine?”

“Bad things might happen when we take each other’s pills.”

“Bad things happen anyway.”

Anita took a bottle of water from her purse and washed down a pill. “In a couple of minutes, it’ll dumb me down pretty good. But I want you to remember something very important for me.”

“Sure, Anita.”

Anita gripped her hands and gave her an imploring look. Then she pulled Wendy close, their breasts pressing together.

“I want you to need me,” Anita said.

“Nita? What are you doing?”

Anita moaned and she clutched the back of Wendy’s neck, whispering harshly in her ear: “This is what happens if I don’t take my pills.”

Wendy wrestled to break free, but Anita’s strength was almost demonic. She fell back onto the sofa and yanked Wendy on top of her. She brought her face to Wendy’s. “Love me, Wendy,” Anita said, and it was desperation, not lust, in her tone. “I need to matter.”

They’d never kissed, despite the occasional teasing. Wendy wasn’t horrified by her friend’s bisexual leanings, her pornographic past, or even her depraved and sudden assault, as if a sexual switch had been flipped and she’d lost all her control.

No, what really scared Wendy was the image of Briggs and his slightly parted lips that had superimposed over Anita’s face.

Do you want to play “doctor,” Doctor?

Their lips touched and the contact shocked Wendy to her senses. It was Briggs she’d been surrendering to, not Anita. She broke free and headed for the door, wiping her mouth. “Good luck with your appointment.”

Just before she closed the door, Anita called her name. Not angry, just frustrated.

“Yeah?” Wendy asked.

“Take your pills. Don’t become like me.”

By the time she got to her car, Wendy was starting to remember things. Chase Hanson. Dr. Briggs. Susan.

Those things never happened if you keep forgetting them.

She took a pill by the light of the dashboard before driving home. She would take as many as she needed to keep the past away.

And to keep her from her true self.

The black limousine turned off the street in front of the hotel and glided through the narrow underground tunnel to the service entrance Mark waited in front of.

Mark Morgan peered at the tinted, bulletproof glass, wondering what they thought as they sized him up. As the limousine came to a stop, Mark caught his own reflection in the window, a pale smudge painted by the unhealthy yellow of the security lights.

The car stopped, its engine so quiet that Mark thought the ignition was off, though the exhaust quickly made him lightheaded. The driver’s door opened and a man in a dark suit emerged, nodding and bending to take Mark’s suitcase. His face was cold, lean, and wolfish.

“I can do that,” Mark said.

The glass on the rear window slid down. “Now, Mark, let Winston feel useful. He hates to be stereotyped.”

“Good morning, Senator.”

“I hope we’re not running too far behind.”

“No, my plane doesn’t leave for another hour.”

“Fine. Get in.”

The door opened as the driver carried Mark’s bag to the trunk and loaded it. Mark settled into the spacious rear compartment. Senator Daniel Burchfield, the Republican from North Carolina, moved into the middle of the brown leather seat.

“You know Wallace Forsyth, don’t you?” the senator said.

“Yes,” Mark said, reaching across the senator’s abdomen to shake Forsyth’s hand. “It’s been a while.”

“That wife of yours is some kind of hell-raiser, Morgan,” Forsyth said. “And I mean that with all due respect.”

“She keeps my hands full,” Mark said.

Forsyth’s skin was cadaverous and cool, as if he’d been dipped in a thin layer of wax, and his cologne was overpowering. “Well, you need to rein her in a little,” Forsyth drawled in his rough, Kentucky-inflected voice. “She’s got the bioethics council chasing its tail. You ever seen what happens when a dog chases its tail?”

“Afraid not, sir.”

“Well, it either catches it, or it drops over dead. I don’t know which one will come first with this bunch. The president put too many liberals on the council, for one thing.”

“Now, now,” Burchfield said. “You really mean he put too many atheists on it.”

Forsyth
harrumphed
as if he saw no difference in the two. “A good scientist can work God into anything. Especially if it makes better people.”

“Save it for the council, Wallace,” Burchfield said. “We’re all on the same page here. Right, Mark?”

“Right.”

A pane of soundproof glass separated the driver’s compartment from the rear. Winston settled behind the wheel and negotiated a turn between the hotel shuttle vans.

Mark had planned to take a taxi. Alexis had left the previous evening, and Mark had an extra stop on his itinerary. He didn’t feel he could trouble a U.S. senator to make a pit stop, however. He decided to get to business.

“We can give the FDA—”

Forsyth held up a chapped palm. “Is the car clean?” he asked Burchfield.

Mark didn’t comprehend the remark. The interior still had that acrid chemical scent of new upholstery.

Burchfield nodded. “Secret Service swept it.”

“You trust the Service?”

“You know me better than that. I had my own people go over it after that, in case the NSA wants a piece. Defense has been sniffing around, too.”

Mark finally understood they were talking about bugs. He’d never considered that a senator’s car might be bugged, especially by the very federal agencies whose budgets passed through one of Burchfield’s other committees.

“Okay,” Forsyth said with a crooked grin. “Now that Mr. Morgan knows we’re not playing matchstick poker here.”

“The subcommittee on health care is meeting Thursday,” Burchfield said.

“They moved it up a week?” Mark asked. Congress usually moved at glacial speed on legislative matters.

“I had to call in some favors. There’s a certain blowhard Democrat who is scheduled to be in Afghanistan this week, and I wouldn’t mind if he misses a few votes. One thing you can count on in the current political environment—no politician dares cancel a photo op in Afghanistan.”

The limousine merged into afternoon traffic, took an exit, and was soon on the freeway headed for Dulles International. Mark looked out at passengers in nearby cars, who stared back at the dark glass and no doubt tried to guess what type of important person was shielded from their view.

He’d noticed the same phenomenon in Los Angeles, where stargazers imagined Tom Cruise or Sandra Bullock behind every tinted windshield.

Only in New York did people not give a damn one way or another, as long as you weren’t cutting them off in traffic. In that case, it wouldn’t matter whether you were a pope or a polar bear, you’d be in for a horn blast and a middle finger.

“Where are we on Halcyon?” Burchfield asked.

“We’ve got our best people on it,” Mark said.

“How long have the trials been going on? FDA doesn’t like to fast-track. It’s been bitten on the ass too many times. Look at the Vioxx mess.”

“Well, there’s a minor problem with that, sir.” Mark resorted to the salutation because it might soften the bad news. Burchfield didn’t buy it.

“Problem? Hell, Morgan, I thought the problem was getting this through the red tape and putting Halcyon on those blocks of sticky pads in your friendly neighborhood doctor’s office. Don’t tell me we’re shaky on the approach?”

“We’ve had some trials and rigorous testing. We’re doing a double-blind study right now.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Ain’t it obvious?” Forsyth said. “The boy’s walking on mule eggs. He has no idea what Halcyon can do.”

“I have a real good idea, Mr. Forsyth.” Mark looked past Burchfield to the wispy-haired fundamentalist. “Trouble is, I’m not sure we want the whole story out there.”

“Now, now,” Burchfield said. “Either you can deliver the damn drug or you can’t.”

“We’ve had the trials. Years of trials. Our lead researcher has been on it for a decade. But not all of it’s documented.”

“What do you mean, ‘not documented’?”

“There are gaps in the record. The FDA likes a timeline, the introduction, the animal testing, the check for cross-reactions, all that. But we kind of skipped a step.”

“It’s a little late for surprises.” Burchfield had the politician’s knack of changing moods quickly, at least when not in front of the camera or on the Senate floor. His cheeks blotched with anger. “Fill me in.”

“Well, it’s an offshoot of a drug we had in trials a decade ago, before I joined CRO. The original testing was a little…” Mark shopped around for the right word.

“Squirrel-eyed,” Forsyth finished. “You got some bad results and you chucked them off the back porch.”

“The results were mostly positive,” Mark said. “But the testing started with human trials.”

“Goddamn it,” Burchfield said, unapologetic for cussing in front of his Christian ally. “Can the FDA trace that to Halcyon?”

“Not likely. The only link is Sebastian Briggs, the doctor who—”

“I know Briggs. He gave a briefing to the subcommittee years ago on the ethics of mood-enhancing drugs. Before he went in the shitter.”

“That was before the creation of the bioethics council,” Forsyth said. “The Senate would let any nutcase present evidence.”

“You were in the House at the time,” Burchfield said. “And I didn’t hear you raise any objections.”

“Briggs is a heathen,” Forsyth said. “Can’t keep his fingers out of God’s pie.”

“Save it for the pulpit,” Burchfield said. “Or your next campaign, if you ever have one.” To Mark, he said, “So, is that the worst of it? Clinical trials without FDA approval?”

“As if that ain’t bad enough,” Forsyth said.

The limousine weaved in traffic and Mark glanced at the driver, who appeared to be checking his rearview and side mirrors. They were on the Beltway, making decent time for late afternoon, maybe half an hour from the airport. Mark was eager to get out of the car. The air seemed stifling, and Forsyth’s cologne was giving him a headache.

“Well, Briggs had a few offshoots in the works,” Mark said. “As you know, researchers often don’t look for just one single thing. A lot of times, it’s a case of seeing what pops up.”

“I don’t care about that end of it,” Burchfield said. “I just want to know if any of this can come back on me.”

“Briggs was studying serum levels in Gulf War veterans with PTSD. He found elevated levels of certain neuroactive steroids correlating with a high rate of suicides and—”

“Get to the point. Don’t play Michael Crichton with me.”

“Basically, Briggs wasn’t satisfied with his test pool. After all, you can’t very well wait around for the next war for a decent supply of near-death accident survivors. So he found ways to elevate normal serum levels. In effect, he created a drug that caused fear.”

“You’re telling me he had to create the disease so he could find a cure?”

“Fear is not exactly a disease,” Mark said. “It’s simply a condition, a state of awareness, a feeling. Some would argue it’s a valuable survival mechanism.”

“If you’re scared, you run like hell,” Forsyth said. “We had this debate on the council. The consensus was that human emotions were natural, a gift of God.”

Because of his wife’s membership, Mark was well aware the bioethics council wasn’t designed to reach a consensus, merely to serve as an advisory board that addressed potential concerns.

And although God had a rightful place in the council’s deliberations, the government God was a theoretical, all-encompassing, and even generic deity, not the punitive, white-bearded denizen of the Old Testament. Not that Forsyth appreciated the subtle distinctions.

“So Briggs was messing with some fear stimulants,” Burchfield said. “Nothing much new there. The DOD has been working on that since the LSD and mescaline experiments. The trouble is they’ve never found a drug that has the same effect on every person. If you dose your enemy, you’re just as likely to create a savage, bloodthirsty war machine as you are a man-mouse. Same with your own people.”

“Well, maybe Briggs succeeded,” Mark said. “I’m still not clear on that.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t have a handle on him.” Burchfield, the son of a tobacco farmer, had been studying for his chosen career since being elected class president in grammar school, and he was used to moving human chess pieces.

But in Mark’s world, control was limited to laboratory tests and board rooms and didn’t extend as readily to the scientists who concocted the substances. Science required rigid discipline, but a revolutionary creativity was essential for breakthroughs. Briggs was revolutionary in more ways than Mark cared to admit.

“I’ll have it all by the time we go to the trials,” Mark said. “I have to dig through some records at UNC, where the original testing took place. Don’t worry, we’ll put on a good show for the FDA. He’s running two test groups, apparently. And we can always retroactively adjust the data.”

“I can push on this, but the FDA is still going to want at least six months of solid numbers,” Burchfield said. “A flawless six months.”

“Some of the elements are patented, so we’ll have to do some shuffling,” Mark said. “CRO doesn’t want anyone coming in claiming intellectual theft right before Halcyon hits the shelves.”

“Sounds like Halcyon’s got more holes than a rusty milk bucket,” Forsyth said. To Burchfield, he added, “I’d tread mighty careful, Daniel. One slip and no Oval Office in two years.”

“I’ll want a full report on what Briggs is up to,” Burchfield said to Mark. “This ‘fear drug’ might even wind up being more valuable than Halcyon. I don’t like question marks, and I don’t like our security agencies getting to it before I know what’s what. Understood?”

Mark frowned. CRO had invested heavily in Burchfield, even more than it had invested in Briggs. “I’ll handle it personally, sir.”

Burchfield pressed the button to summon the driver. “Next exit.”

Winston nodded, and the limo glided up a ramp. The senator said, “You’d better take another route to the airport. It’s probably best if we’re not all seen together.”

“I’ll miss my flight,” Mark protested, still shaken but eager to get out of that mad city.

“We’ve taken care of everything.”

The limo pulled into a gas station. A taxi waited by the kerosene pump, a dark-skinned man in a turban at the wheel. Winston stopped beside the taxi, hopped out, opened Mark’s door, and unlocked the trunk. By the time Mark stood blinking on the crumbled tarmac, Winston was putting the suitcase handle in his hand.

“Is it safe?” Mark asked, meaning the cab, but he figured the question applied equally to the entire situation.

“Just don’t go steppin’ in nothing unless you got your hip waders on,” Forsyth said.

“Get your data in line,” Burchfield said. “Just make damned sure it all looks good on paper. And keep a tight rein on Briggs.”

“And your wife,” Forsyth added.

Winston got in and drove away, and Mark looked around before slowly approaching the cab.

“Airport?” the driver said.