Last Gasp (67 page)

“Have you found out what’s wrong with Cheryl yet?”

Nick rubbed his hand across the bald dome of his head, surrounded by curly gingerish hair. He glanced at his wife again and said awkwardly, “I guess I’d better tell you. Apparently—though we didn’t know this till recently—Cheryl’s been sick for several months. We didn’t find out till about two weeks ago and there was no doctor to carry out a proper examination.”

“There’s no doctor?”

“Not anymore. There was one, a guy called Middleton, but there was some trouble between him and Tom Brannigan over Brannigan’s son. Middleton accused Baz of stealing drugs from the dispensary and Brannigan wouldn’t have it, refused to believe it. There was an argument. Brannigan’s a mean-tempered bastard and he pulled a gun and shot Middleton and killed him. That was four months ago. After that, Brannigan really went haywire. We don’t know how true this is, but the story going around is that Brannigan’s been hooked on all kinds of stuff for ages and he was afraid that Middleton would find out that Baz was stealing the drugs for him, so he had to shut him up.”

“Which is why we don’t have a doctor anymore,” Jen added.

“Does that mean Cheryl hasn’t been treated at all?” Ruth said. She was struggling to keep her drooping eyelids open.

“The old man in charge of the dispensary gave her some medication,” Nick said. “And Jen and our daughter have been looking after her.”

“Who’s with her now?” Chase asked.

Nick told him that Jo was.

“Where’s Dan? Isn’t he with her?”

His words were like pebbles plopping into a placid pool, sending ripples of silence into the corners of the room. “Where is Dan?” Chase said, feeling so utterly weary that it needed a supreme effort to drag his brain into a semblance of coherent thought. “What’s happened to him?”

“Tom Brannigan had him locked up,” Nick said quietly. “Last July he attacked Jo while they were out riding together—”

“Don’t mince words,” Jen said coldly. “He raped her.”

Nick held up his hand. “Yes, all right, but he was stoned at the time. He was taking stuff that Baz had given him, LSD-twenty-five.”

“That doesn’t excuse him.”

“I never said it did.” Nick turned to Chase. “I’m sorry, Gav, but it’s true, it did really happen. Anyway, Brannigan’s had him locked up since then and ...” His voice trailed off.

Chase’s nostrils were white and flared in his taut face. “And?”

“They keep him drugged to the eyeballs and won’t let anyone near him.”

After the nightmare journey it seemed to Chase that he had entered the world of the insane. It was all a mad dream. His head felt tight and hot, as if it were about to burst.

He looked at Ruth lying stretched out in the chair, deeply asleep. She had removed the grubby strip of bandage and the wound on her forehead had congealed into an ugly, livid scar. It would be there for always, Chase knew. A permanent disfigurement.

Ruth carried out her examination at ten the next morning. As she sat at the bedside Chase was struck by the miraculous change that fifteen hours sleep had brought about. Though pale, her movements were calm and steady, her eyes alert below the fresh dressing that Jen had applied to her forehead.

As for Cheryl, he had prepared himself for the worst and was therefore relieved to find her conscious and able to recognize him. She had lost a lot of weight. Her cheeks were gray and sunken, her eyes dull and lethargic.

“We’re going to take care of you,” he said, smiling down at her. Emotion welled up within him as he took her frail hand and felt the gentle pressure of her fingers, responding to his own. Her lips moved as she tried to speak, but all that came out was a dry rasp, like dead leaves blowing in the gutter.

“It’s going to be fine. We’ve brought some special drugs to treat you, and Ruth has a lot of experience in dealing with this. You’re going to get well, I promise you.”

Cheryl’s lips formed a word—a name. She stared up at him beseechingly and her face suddenly convulsed. Her chest heaved and bile-colored fluid dribbled down her chin.

Chase wiped it away with absorbent cotton. “It’s all right. I know, Nick told me everything. We’ll get Dan out of there. Don’t worry about it.” He continued to smile reassuringly and hold her hand, but afterward in the living room, waiting with the others for the verdict, the smiling mask fell away.

“It’s anoxia at a fairly advanced stage,” Ruth told them bluntly. “The alveoli in the lungs, where the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide takes place, are impaired, and consequently other cells in the body are not being replenished with oxygen. This leads to a gradual debilitation of the system and eventually to death. I’ve treated patients at this stage of anoxia before and some of them have recovered, but it depends on them being in a sealed respiratory enclosure—in other words a pressurized oxygen tent—and on an intensive program of medication.”

“What about the drugs we brought with us?”

“They’ll relieve the symptoms, the nausea and so on, but only for a few days. A week at the outside.”

“Can we risk moving her?”

“We can’t risk not moving her,” Ruth said. “We must get her back to Desert Range and I’ll have your technical people rig up an oxygen enclosure. With that and the proper medication and nursing attention, she stands a fair chance. Here she doesn’t stand a chance at all.” Ruth thought for a moment and said, “It might be worth considering moving her to the Pryce-Darc Clinic, which is a unit specializing in anoxia and pollution cases. I sent some of my patients there from New York and they claim to have achieved a high success rate.”

“Where is this clinic?” Chase asked.

“At one time in Maryland, but they’ve had to move the location to Iowa. I’m not sure where exactly, but I can find out.”

Chase nodded slowly. “All right, we’ll think about that later. After we get Cheryl out of here and back to Desert Range.” He said to Nick, “Of course you and your family will come with us. There’s nothing to stay here for.”

“That’s if we can get out,” Nick said.

“We’ll get out. All of us.”

“What about Dan?” Ruth asked, watching him.

“Dan as well,” Chase said. “Either with Brannigan’s consent or over his dead body.”

The lagoon was a pool of warm black ink, and gliding along on its surface like a smiling yellow coin the perfect simulacrum of the moon moved ahead of the launch, fleeing from the advancing swell of the bow wave and somehow always managing to stay beyond it, round and smiling and unfragmented.

Four
A.M.
No better hour for an emergency, Skrote reckoned.

They would come hotfoot at the first shrill siren, befuddled with sleep, stumbling into their shoes, faces still creased. He hadn’t formulated yet exactly how it was to happen, but he knew enough about the security system to know how to penetrate it and cause the most confusion, wreak the greatest havoc.

He watched the moon sliding over the still black water
(Natassya!)
and didn’t care that he might never see it again, brilliant and beautiful as it was. Madness came with the full moon, though Skrote knew quite lucidly that he was far from mad. He was too sharply, too coldly, too brutally sane. Saner than he’d ever been in his entire life.

The white concrete cubes were like a child’s neatly stacked building blocks under the pale anemic light. Skrote passed through the double perimeter fence showing the ID he had lifted from the locker room and went directly to the control room. Such was the increase in the number of inmates that Section M had expanded fourfold from its original capacity. The breeding experiments had added considerably to the total: There was now a fifty-cot ward of the little monsters, nurtured under stringently controlled conditions. Some were actually breathing a mixture of methane and nitrogen, with only minimal oxygen content. This new breed was known as “Meeks”—one of Dr. Rolsom’s little jokes—for he liked to say that the meek shall inherit the earth.

The good doctor would get his too, Skrote vowed. Oh, yes indeed. The meek would inherit the earth with a vengeance.

Only one duty technician in the control room. His name was Hyman. Skrote knew and liked him; they had swapped books, shared the same taste in classical music, discussed cosmology, but that didn’t stop Skrote severing his jugular vein with a clean swift slice of the knife. The spouting blood spattered the bank of monitor screens, showing like black raindrops against the bright flickering images.

Hyman expired with a gurgle and a sigh, his left hand jerking in spasm like a clockwork toy winding down, until he lay totally still, quietly seeping life.

Skrote allowed himself several seconds calm reflection. On the screens the grotesqueries twitched and writhed in their padded booths. Limbless torsos. Eyeless faces. Ribless chest cavities. Grafted gills.

On a larger screen the docile ranks of Meeks slept beneath their plastic shrouds breathing their own special atmosphere. Primordial babes. Protozoic prototypes of the brave new world.

Skrote hadn’t thought of it before, but he knew now what he must do. Rolsom’s pride and joy! The Meeks were the key. But what about Madden? He must have Madden. He wanted them both. Yes, Madden would come too if the Meeks were threatened.

Very calmly he stepped over the body and peered at the dim green gauges. He opened the computer safety lock and switched it to manual override. A blinking red light came on. Next he turned to the control console and spun a calibrated dial. The level on the gauge marked
METHANE
rose. He spun another dial
(Natassya!)
and the
OXYGEN
level crept toward zero. The panel lit up, became a fairyland of multicolored lights. Competing buzzes sounded. Distantly a siren howled, splitting the peaceful tropical night with its clamor. The alarm would register in the main complex across the lagoon and Rolsom would be tumbling out in pajamas and bare feet.

There was only the one door to the control room, which Skrote now locked. He had eight rounds in his service automatic and a spare clip besides. He would now wait patiently for Madden and Rolsom to cross the lagoon. Wait for them to get inside Zone 4. Wait for the trap to snap shut.

He returned to the control console and sat down in Hyman’s vacant chair. Every nook and cranny in the building had its surveillance camera. The entire complex was riddled with them. Every door was electronically controlled from this room. Skrote giggled. The image of a spider sitting patiently at the center of its web had just popped into his head. From here he would feel the slightest tug on his web, be able to watch his prey’s every movement, know precisely when and where to ensnare them.

His hand hovered, decided, and touched numbered square white buttons. The screens flickered and changed vantage points: here a corridor, there a stairway, an emergency exit, inner compound, perimeter gate. There were two security guards looking lost and panic-stricken. One of them ran to the main gate, his shadow splaying in all directions from the battery of arc lights, and gestured to the guard emerging from his glass cubicle. Agitated talk, fierce gesticulation. Arguing, the two guards went into the guardpost. A moment later a blue light winked on in the center of the panel and a buzzer rasped urgently.

Skrote picked up the handset from its recessed cradle and brought it slowly to his ear.

“Hyman ... Hyman! Are you there?”

Skrote grunted.

“This is Fonkle at the main gate. What in hell is happening in Section M? Every fucking goddamn alarm in the place is sounding off!”

“Life-support failure,” growled Skrote.

“Holy Mother—where?”

“Meeks.”

There was a fearful stunned silence. “But how? I don’t get it. Why didn’t the computer fail-safe come on-line?”

“It failed.”

“The
fail-safe failed?”
This was becoming too much for Fonkle. “Have you told the director?”

“Yes,” Skrote lied. “He’s on his way.” Another light on the panel caught his attention. Talk of the devil. That would be Rolsom screaming blue murder. Skrote said, “When the director arrives take him immediately to Section M. I’ll do what I can from here.”

“Hyman, I think you’d—”

Skrote canceled him out but didn’t replace the handset. He watched the light on the panel winking futilely. After thirty seconds it ceased. They were on their way. Get in that launch and get over here. The web is woven and the spider is waiting.

On one of the screens he saw Fonkle emerge from the guardpost and look anxiously toward the landing jetty. Under the arc lights his tan was the color of bad meat. On the larger screen the Meeks slept on, probably forever. The needle on the
OXYGEN
gauge stood dead still at zero. They were breathing pure methane.

Skrote flexed his right hand, circled the numbered buttons, hesitated, then like a cobra striking punched up a view of the maternity ward. It looked peaceful. A shaded light burned in the night nurse’s station. The two rows of beds on either side of the ward contained seventeen women, one of them Natassya, but he didn’t want to know which one. She was not his anymore. She was an incubatory receptacle for an experiment in genetics. An experiment he had helped create. She would give birth to his monster-child. Their love would bring forth horror. He had worked for five years in order to destroy the only human being who had meant anything to him in his adult life.

The screens blurred into prismatic fragments and Skrote realized that he was weeping. A momentous revelation made him stop and blink the tears away. He had regained his sanity. After five years of madness. So real and painful that it was like someone twisting a knife in his belly ... and he came to recognize the long gradual decline that had brought him to accept these obscene experiments as if they were the most natural, logical thing in the world.

How could it have happened? He had never wished ill or harm to another living soul and yet he had obeyed, acquiesced, played his part in a scheme so monstrous it froze the blood. Where had he, Cyrus Ingram Skrote, been all those years? Not here—not him. An imposter had been walking around wearing his face, dressed in his clothes, walking in his shoes. It had to be—because the real Cy Skrote, the one from Portland, Maine, would never in a million years have participated in such loathsome depravities.