The Death of Wendell Mackey (32 page)

Connor Darby.

If Laughlin was an act and was in on it from the beginning, with his name on Wendell’s power of attorney, then Darby wasn’t the least surprising. The part-time grad student—all a ruse, it appeared—would have sold his mother into slavery for a job at the institution, a
lab coat job
, the three groundskeepers had called them. Connor had the drive to work there, and had the mind for it, and would spend his lunch hours schmoozing with the lab coats,
sucking up
Wendell had always thought. But now he knew that Connor was just reporting back to his peers about their soon-to-be patient. His typical jocular attitude and smile were an act too, as he now stared at Wendell with an unnerving austerity.

“So,” said Scotia, “how shall we proceed?”

No one moved for the next few seconds, and then Connor broke the stalemate, stepping through the open doorway into the apartment, followed by Scotia and one of the other men. The last two men, thick-shouldered and stern, stood just outside the doorway. Scotia’s and Connor’s clothing looked strange to Wendell, Scotia’s because anything deviating from his white coat—presently khaki slacks and blue blazer over open-necked white button shirt—made him oddly normal, and Connor’s because his clothes, similar to Scotia’s in all but a blue instead of a white shirt, aged him and bled him of anything that Wendell once knew. The three other men wore polo shirts, polo shirts like the men on the street the day before, and thin spring jackets. Wendell knew that, in such heat, the jackets served only one purpose: hiding their weapons.

“I won’t run,” Wendell said.

“Of course you won’t,” responded Scotia. “It wouldn’t do any good. Dr. Thane is in one of the vans downstairs, with more of our associates.” He nodded to the men in the spring jackets. “It’s best just to make this easy, Mr. Mackey.”

“I won’t run, but it’s not gonna be easy for you.”

Scotia looked at Darby, then back at Wendell, confused. But he smiled, masking the confusion. “I’m sure we can all come to a quick resolution.” He squinted at Wendell, now curious. “I do believe a lot has happened to you.”

“Near full transformation,” said Darby. “Look at his face. It won’t take much longer. And his hands look quite nice.”

Scotia and Darby stood and regarded Wendell, examined him from a distance, like they were the first astronauts to see an alien life form.

“What does it feel like?” Scotia asked. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, but I always forget to ask.”

They looked serious. Wendell didn’t know how to respond.

“Is it at all painful?” asked Darby. “It shouldn’t be painful. It’s not, is it?”

“You want to know…”

“Yes Mr. Mackey, how it feels. It’s not like we want to publish a paper on this, for obvious reasons. It’s mere curiosity.” Scotia’s weight shifted to his heels, and he had the look of an observer taking in a painting at a gallery. He wanted to see it all, feel immersed in it while still detached enough to appreciate it as something distinct. “It’s all quite striking, you have to admit.”

“It’s painful, all of it,” Wendell said.

“But a sort of birthing pain, I’d venture to guess,” responded Scotia, only half listening and making mental notes on Wendell’s presentation as he tapped his lip with his index finger. “It will pass. After all, all is being made new. Which is why we’re here.”

“What you want,” Wendell said, feeling his heart speed up in his chest, “you’re not gonna get.”

“Do you think you have options?” asked Darby, smiling incredulously. He nodded to the two men in the doorway who, as if on cue, pulled back their jackets to reveal tranq guns with their long black barrels pushing down through the openings at the bottoms of their holsters. “This isn’t a negotiation.”

“I know that,” Wendell said.

Wendell tapped his finger quicker into the table, hoping one of the armed men would be foolish enough to make the first move. His mind was already processing six moves ahead: one body lay torn open on the floor, as one claw separated a pistoled hand from its arm and the other reached out for someone’s throat. Wendell imagined himself launching his full frame into a man more perplexed than afraid, seeing the man’s thoughts of mortgages and vacations slip across his face like water off a roof as he tried to reconcile such workaday banalities with the horror chattering its fangs a mere inches from his face.

“So how does this all end in your mind?” asked Scotia.

The man to Darby’s right, conspicuously to his right and thus a step closer to Wendell, kept his eyes on Wendell’s hand, tapping into the table. His own hand was flexed and his thumb hooked into his pants pocket, close to his own holster.

I’ll split that guy open like a banana
, thought Wendell.

“It doesn’t end well,” Wendell said, dropping his claw one last time into the table. The tip stuck into it like a dropped knife. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

“We know. We’ve been watching you,” said Darby, “and we know what you’ve done.”

“Cutting yourself quite the path of destruction, aren’t you?” said Scotia with a smile.

“But any more,” said Darby, “and it will be impossible to deflect attention from what we’re trying to do.”

“So, it’s time for you to come home, Mr. Mackey.”

“Bad choice,” Wendell said.

“It’s the only choice.”

“Bad choice, you coming here.”

Wendell was ready to step forward and let it all begin, to not think but feel, to let it all snowball into something appalling but necessary, when they were all surprised by a noise in the hallway, a door opening.

If she does this then she’s gonna die
.

If she emerged slowly, Wendell thought, like a turtle peeking out from its shell, she might have a chance. She might see the men, see what she was up against, clutch her rosary in trembling hands, pull her head back into her shell and leave it all alone.
If she was only smart
, he thought,
if she only thought this through
. But the door opened and before Wendell’s eyes could register the bright lights of her apartment—brighter than the hallway, it seemed—the little nun was in the hallway, stepping across it with steps larger than her short legs should have allowed, and pushing past the two surprised men in Wendell’s doorway. She paused to survey the room, then walked past Scotia and Darby, stared at Wendell and stopped.

“Wendell, your face…”

“It’s too late Sister.”

“Wendell, what have they…what’s happening to your
face?
”

“Who is this?” asked Scotia, now frustrated.

Agatha turned to him. “Who are you?” she barked. “What do you want with him?”

“Ma’am, please, just—”

“So it’s true, what Wendell’s been telling me. It’s actually
true
. You’ve been following him. And you’re the ones who have done all of those things that—”

“What has Mr. Mackey told you?” asked Darby.

“All about you, about your building, your secrecy. I know what you’ve done.”

“What we have done?” Scotia laughed and looked at Darby, then at the three other men, all smiling. “What exactly have we done?”

“Just look at Wendell,” she said, out of breath, “and you tell me what you see.”

“I see a man—”

“A man?” Wendell blurted out, his words feeling heavy in his mouth, as if the air had thickened. “
Man?
Look at me. Look at what I am!” He held up his hands and stomped a shoed hoof into the floor. “
Look
at this! And this—” and he pointed to the hole in his right temple “—this
this
THIS!
I’m a monster, and I’ve got your fingerprints all over me. I even tried putting a bullet in my head, but I can’t even kill myself because of what you’ve done.”

Agatha’s hands went to her mouth. The two men at the door leaned in to see the wound in Wendell’s head.

“I don’t know what you were doing, but any bullet that you fired merely grazed your head,” Scotia said, “even I can see that. A nasty scratch, but a scratch nonetheless.”

“You tried to…” Agatha put a hand out towards Wendell, but retracted it.

“Ma’am, please, Mr. Mackey here is—”

“You’ve destroyed him,” she said.

“—insane.” Scotia shrugged, like he was disappointed in being the only one to grasp the obvious. “Paranoid delusions, schizophrenia, a completely diseased and broken psyche. Don’t tell me you actually
believe
him. Does he talk about Unit 200?”

She paused. “Yes.”

“It doesn’t exist. At least not anymore. It was a Japanese unit during World War II that tested bioweapons on the Chinese. He must have picked it up in a book somewhere, and added it to his delusion. It’s not unusual for this to happen.”

“But just
look
at him and tell me that’s insanity. Look at his skin, at his head. He’s falling apart, or—”

“Or he’s been doing it to himself. He just admitted to a suicide attempt. Under certain circumstances, mentally disturbed people will cut themselves, starve themselves, even mutilate their own bodies. He’s a sick man. We’re here to bring him back to the clinic and give him what he needs.”

“You’re not cops.”

“No we’re not,” said Scotia. “We just want him to come back. We just want to help him.”

“He’s always been delusional,” said Darby, “ever since he first came to us. Ever since he was a child, frankly. We actually talked with the psychiatrist he had as a child. This all has deep roots. In fact, what we’re talking about right now his mind is probably translating into something completely different.” He tilted his head down and looked at Wendell with the tops of his eyes, as one would address a child. “Do you know what we’re saying right now, Wendell?”

Laying the condescension on like syrup was common with the institution’s doctors. Yet it felt different now, dangerous, a taunt tossed at something vicious against which the doctors had little defense.

“All of this,” Wendell said to Darby, “I’m gonna—”

eat you

“—make you regret all of this. Lying to me, torturing me, hunting me down. All of it.” His voice was half an octave lower with a metallic ring in it, which Darby heard, distinctly, as his eyebrows peaked. Yet for some odd reason, aside from Darby, everyone else in the apartment didn’t notice, keeping to their own conversation.

“But where are the police?” demanded Agatha. “If you really are psychiatrists, then you need legal warrant to take him. So where are they?” She stepped towards Darby and Scotia, who remained motionless.

“They’re in the stairwell, waiting for us. We’re hoping this won’t need to escalate.”

“Then I want to see them.”

“He signed papers with us. He is legally to be under our observation.”

And with that Scotia nodded to the three armed men, all of whom took a collective step towards Wendell. Wendell stepped back, less a shrink and more of a defensive posture.

“Mr. Mackey, please.”

“It’s not gonna happen,” Wendell said.

Electricity in the air. But not the breath of God, not this time. Something lower, darker.

“You are ours,” said Scotia slowly.

“Then take me.”

Whatever was said next faded into the buzzing in Wendell’s ears. Scotia was talking about healing, about reshaping humanity, about being a new light in the world. He was speaking but not moving, like a ventriloquist dummy. And no one but Scotia was listening. None of it mattered.

The three armed men stepped towards Wendell.

Drake, and the guy in the alley
, he thought. They were now just piles of bones and skin in body bags at the medical examiner. Lonely little men, who pushed something they didn’t understand too far. Like the men in front of him. Stupid men. Men who should have known better. He felt his heartbeat in his face and hands and his breathing quickened. Everything began to turn red, and for the first time, Wendell felt comfortable with his new self.

The first man reached out for Wendell’s left hand, grabbing with no hesitation.

“No, no you can’t—” Agatha yelled, bursting forward and being caught by one of the other men’s forearms. He barred her at the chest, and then as she struggled against his arm, he moved it up to her throat. The man put his other hand to the side of her head and shoved her to the floor. Quickly she stood up, gasping for air, and stepped towards the man who, with the full force of his frame, rammed her backwards, releasing her and letting her own weight carry her into the wall, where she fell in a heap.

“Not like this!” yelled Scotia, as if finally discovering emotion. “This will ruin everything!”

Wendell, feeling the man’s fingers around his wrist, looked up at him.

“It’ll make for a better world,” Wendell said, “with all of you gone.”

One motion, so quick it seemed fake. Wendell’s free hand arced up and then down, his sharp fingers slicing through the man’s forearm like an axe through Styrofoam. In the time that it took for the arm to fall and the man to fill his lungs to scream, Wendell saw Agatha, crumpled up next to the wall, a red ribbon of blood seeping out of a purpling oval on her forehead.

The man screamed, his stump coughing blood.

“Please listen,” Wendell said quietly.

Scotia, Darby, and the two other armed men watched their companion crumple to the floor and pick up his severed limb with his good arm. His blood was quickly pooling around his knees.

“
Please!
Listen.”

That electricity, filling the air in the apartment.

All eyes shot back towards Wendell.

“Mr. Mackey,” said Scotia, “you’ve just escalated.”

The two other armed men had something new in their eyes, cruel and uncompromising. And now Wendell knew that they were armed with more than just tranq guns.

Wendell took off his trench coat and let it drop to the floor. “Let me show you something.”

“What are you doing?” said Darby.

In that stifling apartment, Wendell actually felt cool. That electricity, which he knew wasn’t divine, wasn’t what he had felt those years ago at the church healing ceremony but instead originated from within himself, cut a circle from out of the stubborn, swampish air around him. It was temporary, he knew, but powerful, and it felt tremendous. The armed men looked up at Wendell, finally swallowing the fact that their employer was involved in far more than medical experimentation, knowing that their former ignorance was indeed bliss. On his chest, Wendell’s new skin peeked out from beneath the old in patches worn into holes in a random, shrapnel wound pattern. Where the skin wasn’t peeling, on his shoulders and near his waist, the old had begun morphing into the new, with the once pink flesh color mixing with a dark metallic gray like different dyes swirling and smoking together.