Guinea Pig (18 page)

Chapter Twenty.

William was asleep in the back yard when the men came for him. He slept a lot these days. Mostly after he'd just eaten something. And he'd gorged himself on a whole pumpkin from a garden a few doors down the street only an hour before. He needed a nap after a meal like that.

“
William?” Will looked up to see Pastor Franks standing there in front of him. But he could see more than just the man. He could see the guilt and shame and sorrow coiled around his soul. And the horror too as he stared upon him and saw the changes that were still being wrought upon his flesh.

Will didn't need to look around to see the reason why the pastor was feeling those things though. The pastor had come with soldiers. Even though they were hiding behind buildings, creeping up behind him, he could see them. He could see their nervousness as they feared what might be coming. As they feared him. He could see their horror as they gazed upon his twisted body. And he knew they had come with a purpose. One he wouldn't like.

But they had no reason to fear him at least. No matter why they had come. He intended them no harm. He wished no one any harm. Not even the doctor. There was no point in it. Besides, he wasn't even sure that he could harm them. His body was so confused that he didn't even know if he could throw a punch. He didn't know if he even knew how to. So many simple things were becoming hard lately. His thoughts were becoming a fog. And a lot of the time he couldn't even be sure that what he was seeing was real.

“It's all right Pastor. You brought soldiers with you. I know that. I don't care.”

His words must have been a sign as immediately he spoke the soldiers started coming out from hiding. And there were a lot of them. Thirty men at arms at least. All of them had their weapons drawn, automatic rifles that he guessed would make a mess of him if they fired. They approached him in formation wherever they could, hunched over their weapons as they advanced on him, just like in the movies. Except he wasn't an enemy as far as he knew. But maybe he was. He didn't really know. All he knew was that he wasn't really human any longer. And anyone not human might well be considered an enemy.

“Lie down on the ground and put your hands behind your back.” A soldier yelled it at him from all of ten feet away. As if he was deaf. “Now!”

Will could have refused he supposed. He could have resisted. But he simply couldn't see the point. He wasn't afraid of these people. There was nothing they could do to him that was any worse than what was already being done. And he wasn't angry with them either. The time for anger had long since passed. So, slowly – it was difficult getting down on the ground when you couldn't bend in the middle as he used to be able to do – he rolled off the bench and did as he was ordered.

Instantly two or three men jumped on him and grabbed his arms. They forced them up behind his back as hard as they could and then snapped cuffs on his wrists. Two sets of heavy steel handcuffs. Apparently one wasn't good enough for him. And then they applied more cuffs to his ankles, binding his feet together with ties of steel. Two sets of cuffs again.

It should have hurt, and it did a little. But pain was something he was becoming used to lately, and somehow it didn't really bother him. He just forgot about it. As for anger and humiliation, he didn't seem to have those feelings any more either. Maybe it was simply that he had no more pride left. Whatever they did to him simply didn't offend him.

“Get up!” The soldier screamed it at him like a panicking mad man and Will briefly wondered if he had truly taken leave of his senses. Bound as he was he simply couldn't get up. Anyone would have understood that. But then a couple of the soldiers leapt to his side, grabbed his shoulders and simply hoisted him to his feet like a sack of potatoes.

Then, apparently unhappy with his chains, two of them forced his hands away from his back and a steel rod was pushed between his arms and his back. A steel collar was clipped around his neck and chains between the rod and the collar connected up and tightened, preventing him from even bending his head forward. Still more chains were connected up to his wrists and his neck and soon he was leashed like a dog. Soldiers on the ends of those chains would stop him running away assuming the cuffs around his ankles failed. It seemed excessive. Even serial killers were not so well bound.

“Pastor?”

“I'm sorry William. Truly I am. But this had to be done.”

And Will knew he was. He could see the regret in him.

“Why?”

“Because what's been done to you is also responsible for all the disasters that have been destroying the city. And the state. It's all linked to you.”

He was telling the truth. Will could see that, even though he could see the small flickers of doubt in the pastor. Pastor Franks believed it, mostly. And Will had suspected it too. For the longest time Will had been convinced that the disasters had something to do with him. He didn't know how or why and it made no sense. But he had been sure of it.

“How?”

“You are unnatural. Neither man nor angel. Neither of Earth nor heaven. Reginald tried to make you into an angel but he failed. He created instead a nephilim. Once before the whole world was washed away in a flood to get rid of the nephilim. To prevent their wickedness from destroying the world. From opening the gates of hell.”

Nephilim. Will knew that word. He'd seen the movies. But he was no monster. He had no intention of causing anyone harm. Opening the gates of hell though, that suddenly made sense to him. His nightmares, the people below, crying out for his help. He finally understood them. They were the Fallen. That at least made sense. The people above calling to him – they had to be the Choir. And if he helped the Fallen? If he released them? Would he really be opening the gates of hell? Was there such a place? He didn't know. But he did know that he might be. And that that he could not do. But one thing he did understand. The world was trying to kill him. To cleanse itself of him. That made sense.

“Thank you Pastor.” At last something made sense and he was grateful for it. The dreams had bothered him for so long.

“Please don't thank me.” Pastor Franks looked away, apparently unable to face him, and Will could see the shame and guilt in his heart. He didn't like that. He would have taken it away from him if he could.

“You've nothing to feel bad about. You did what you had to. I understand that – truly. And I wouldn't have you do anything else.”

“But this?” The pastor stared at him, seeing the chains and the soldiers.

“It doesn't matter.” And just then it truly didn't. Will wasn't completely sure why. “There's nothing anyone can do to me that's worse than what's already happening.”

The strange thing was that even as uncomfortably bound as he was and as frightened as he should be, William was more tired than anything else. He'd been so tired for so long. He really just wanted to go back to sleep.

Chapter Twenty One.

The hospital was not really a hospital any more. Not even the remains of one. It was a military compound. But then that was why it had been chosen Elijah guessed.

Once it had been a normal hospital with front and back entrances and open access from all sides. But that was before the storms. Between the ice missiles and the lava bombs it had been devastated, and the lightning had done it no favours. Both side wings had been flattened and were now little more than three story tall piles of rubble. The back of the building was the same. All of which meant that what remained of it was only the front part of the main building. And that worked for the military. It meant that there was only one way in or out of it, and so they could concentrate their forces in front of it, knowing that no one was coming or going without their knowledge.

They could stop anyone from attempting to do so as well. There were soldiers everywhere, forming a huge semicircle in front of the building and keeping a large open area which had once been the car park, as a free fire range. Elijah would have said that that seemed like overkill, especially when there were at least a dozen bunkers set up along the perimeter, with huge mounted machine guns in place.

But overkill was just the beginning of what they had created. Tanks and armoured vehicles surrounded them – all of them ready to send shells into the hospital and bring the last part of it crashing down. Helicopter gunships were constantly circling overhead, all of them equipped with missiles, ready to torch the entire complex and turn the open parking lot into a fire storm should anything go wrong. And he had been told the hospital itself had been wired with charges just in case.

And all of it was for only one man. One patient. William Simons. Or was that one prisoner?

Whatever the bishops and the other church leaders of the various faiths had said to the government it had convinced them of one thing. William Simons was dangerous. And while Elijah understood the reasoning behind that view, it didn't fit at all well with the man himself. He was anything but dangerous. He was a victim. But the soldiers didn't understand that. They didn't care about it either.

As Elijah watched William was all but dragged out of the truck by the soldiers, still chained as no prisoner ever had been before, and made to stand in the concrete car park while the doctors examined him. They poked and prodded him, took endless photos of him and more or less treated him like a research animal. Any thought of him being a human being with the rights of any other man was forgotten. For his part William Simons just stood there calmly, letting them perform their indignities upon him without protest. He didn't even seem to notice when they tore his jacket and shirt off him to let the doctors see more.

“
Oh sweet Lord!” Elijah was unable to contain his shock when he saw what had happened to Mr. Simons just in the last week. The terrible changes that had continued to be wrought in his flesh by Reginald's mad experiment. He'd never expected to witness such a thing. He would never have wanted to.

It was probably a miracle of some sort. But not a good one. Not one of God's. This was a dark miracle. The sort of miracle that only human beings possessed by the thirst for knowledge and held in the grip of false pride could create.

As the soldiers stripped him completely, something that didn't take long at all, he could see all the changes that had been made and he had to utter a quick prayer for him. These weren't good changes. They were perversions. Twists in his flesh. Crimes against his body and soul. Crimes against God. And yet, trapped within that shell of mutilated flesh was an innocent man. A soul filled with fear and confusion. And a soul he suspected who yearned for the comforting release of death. That was why William hadn't struggled when the soldiers had come for him. Why he'd accepted the chains without protest. Why he willingly suffered the indignities they foisted upon him. He was hoping that they'd kill him. He couldn't kill himself. He couldn't bring himself to do such a thing.

But they could.

And maybe they would in time. In the end Mr. Simon's death was the one thing that might end this nightmare. If the bishop was right – and apparently all the cardinals of the Catholic faith and the various scholars and priests of all the others supported his view – then when Will Simons died the gates of hell would be firmly shut once more. Elijah imagined that the soldiers believed that too. Elijah wasn't sure what exactly they'd been told, but he could see the jumpiness in them that he knew to be fear.

Had the bishop been right to spread the word of this dark crime to his brothers in the communion? And from them to his other brothers in the other faiths? And then the government? Elijah didn't know. But he feared that even if he had been right, his decision was quickly becoming the wrong one.

There were soldiers surrounding William as he stood there quietly accepting the indignities being heaped upon him, in the car park. All of them with their weapons drawn and pointed at Will Simons as if he was some sort of enemy. And all of them had their fingers on their triggers. A single sound would be all it took for one of them and then the rest to start shooting.

Meanwhile William was chained like an animal. Manacled at the wrists and ankles so that he couldn't move. Couldn't defend himself. Couldn't run. Soon Elijah knew, those soldiers acting on the orders of the doctors in their white cloaks, would order him taken inside, dragged in all likelihood, and then they would strap him down to the giant steel mortuary table they'd prepared for him, and begin their own experiments. And everything Reginald Millen had done would be made a thousand times worse.

The doctor for his part was standing beside the pastor, a horrified look on his face. And Elijah knew that horror was genuine. He had not foreseen this. For all his knowledge of genetics and medicine he just hadn't considered that it would go so badly wrong. He had seen the dream. The angel being reborn and perhaps ascending to the heavens. Not the deformed, twisted, pitiful wreck in front of them that was neither angel nor man.

Reginald had been with the soldiers and the interrogators for two full days. Going through everything he had done. How he had found and extracted the DNA. How he'd tried to grow it and failed, and then put it into a virus before finally injecting it into his unsuspecting patient. There probably wasn't a single thing he knew that he hadn't told them a dozen times over. That every one of those white coated doctors surrounding the victim didn't already know as well. Save perhaps one small fact – that Dr. Millen had never intended this. But then Victor Frankenstein had never intended to create a monster either.

There were terrible parallels between the two. Both scientists, even if one was real and the other imagined. Both driven by dreams of creation. Dreams too great perhaps for men to hold to as they sought to fix what they considered God's errors. And both had ultimately been undone by the reality of their creations. By their lack of understanding of what they were actually doing.

Both learning the same lesson. God's handiwork wasn't so easily improved upon.

“Pastor?” Reginald looked at him, lost and seeking guidance. But there was little that Elijah could give him except the truth.

“What has been done cannot be undone. You will live with this forever. But for now the only thing anyone can do is give comfort to Will Simons. And one more thing doctor. Make sure that none of your colleagues are ever so stupid as to try this again. Every scrap of tissue, every cell with any DNA in it must be destroyed when this is over.”

That was the church's instruction. That was every church's instruction. It was what they'd said to the government. What they'd demanded in return for their cooperation. It was the only demand they'd made.

At the same time every holy artefact known throughout the world, every one that could possibly have any angelic DNA on it, was being destroyed. It was a crime. A terrible failure of the church's responsibility. They had been entrusted with these relics, to keep them safe for all mankind.
But this could never be allowed to happen again. And they knew that some would want to try again. No matter how terrible the consequences, some would try. They would believe that they knew better than God. The world could not be placed in such peril again.

“I will.”

That Elijah believed. He still didn't understand why the doctor had done what he'd done. Reginald refused to speak about his true motivation. He was hiding something still. But he could see the horror and shame in Reginald's eyes as he stared at his victim and knew he was committed to making sure this never happened again. That was why he was here. The church had insisted, not because in the doctor they had someone who actually understood what had happened to William – they weren't sure anyone really understood that – but because in him they had someone they knew would go to any length to avoid this happening again.

The same couldn't be said of the other doctors. As some of the white lab coated figures continued taking pictures of him and another played a hose over him, Elijah could see them all staring at him with unadulterated curiosity. And he knew that what they saw in front of them wasn't a victim. He wasn't a man at all. He was a walking science experiment. The government had agreed to have Doctor Millen and a few others with Mr. Simons in the room. They had agreed that no samples would be taken out of the room. But they were still determined to study him.

So the churches would provide the medical staff to care for William, the necessary doctors and nurses. And they would provide Doctor Millen to oversee biological security. But there would be others there too. Mostly scientists who would be there to study him intently. And the equipment had already been set up for them.

The surgical suite that had been set up for them had a side room where there was a full genetics lab and a scanning electron microscope. Copies of every scan from the MRI and the CT scanner just down the hall would be sent in real time to other labs across the country. And of course there would be twenty four seven monitoring of him as his condition progressed.

Overseeing the team was Doctor Adams – though Elijah was certain that wasn't his name. There was something deceptive about him, and he doubted every word that came out of his mouth. He was a youngish man who struck him as far too fit to be a scientist. He looked like someone who worked out every day. His manner was brusque and confident, as if he already knew everything and was ready for action. And perhaps most telling of all, when he'd asked Reginald a few questions about the process he'd used to extract the angelic DNA, the doctor had done a couple of double takes. And that was because Doctor Adams was asking him questions that didn't make a lot of sense. Whatever he was, Elijah was convinced he wasn't a scientist so much as some sort of government overseer. A military overseer.

The man troubled him too, though he couldn't have said quite why. Maybe it was just his doubts playing havoc with his mind, but there was something about Doctor Adams that made his skin crawl.

“Bring him!”

Doctor Adams gave the order with a curt wave of his fingers and immediately the soldiers started pulling on the chains and dragged William toward the huge double doors that led into the bowels of the hospital. That led to death.

And though he didn't want to, Elijah followed.