The Darkness To Come

by Brandon Massey

  “No,” Thad said, and his voice, for the moment, had steel in it. Then he breathed heavily for several seconds, gathering his strength. “You . . . need to know. About . . . him.”

  “Dexter Bates?”

  “He killed . . . my partner. Stabbed me . . .”

  “Jesus.” Ice particles swam through Joshua’s blood. “I’m so sorry.”

  “No . . . I’m sorry . . . I . . . told him . . . Joy was in . . . Atlanta . . .”

  “Joy?”

  “Rachel’s her . . . middle . . . name . . .”

  “I never knew that,” Joshua said. “I’ve always known her as Rachel.”

  “Changed . . . her name . . . to . . . hide.”

  “She must’ve figured out that he would find her here, because she’s gone in hiding, for real this time,” Joshua said. “I have no idea where she’s gone. Do you?”

  “No . . . Joy . . . kept her secrets, even . . . from good . . . friends.”

  Thad had answered one of Joshua’s questions: the nature of his relationship to Rachel. But many more questions lingered.

  “Why did Bates come to you, Thad?”

  “Found out . . . I was sending money to Joy’s aunt Betty . . . on her behalf. He tracked . . . me down. Joy called me . . . warned me . . . but it . . . didn’t matter.” Thad choked back what sounded like a sob.

  Joshua had no idea Rachel’s first name was really Joy, and had no idea that she had an aunt to whom she’d been secretly sending money. It was as though Thad was telling him about someone else. He was drowning in questions.

  But there was only one that he absolutely needed to have the answer to.

  “Thad, please tell me. What was her relationship to Dexter?”

  “She was . . . his wife.”

  A decade ago, when Joshua was attending art school, he’d been in a car accident. It had been a rainy afternoon, with poor traffic conditions on the highway, and a pick-up truck on his left had slewed into his lane, smashing against his SUV. Joshua’s vehicle spun off the road and flipped over three times, and as the SUV tumbled over the earth, end over end, his life had quite literally flashed before his eyes. Fortunately, he’d survived and sustained only minor injuries.

  When Thad announced that Rachel was the wife of Dexter Bates, the life Joshua had created with her flashed before his eyes.

  Bumping into Rachel while perusing an art exhibit at a local museum. Going out on their first date, coffee at a local cafe. Holding her hand. Kissing her, for the first time. The incredible anticipation and eventual joy of making love to her. Declaring their love for each other. Purchasing the engagement ring. Proposing on bended knee. Getting married at his family church, and the hotel reception. Buying a house together, moving in, intermingling their lives, nurturing their love.

  But all of it had been built on ground seeded with lies.

  So, have you ever been married? he’d asked her on their first date.

  She’d dipped her gaze into her coffee for a beat, and then met his eyes. No. Have you?

  Deep down, he’d always known that Rachel had been hiding a secret such as this from him. But he hadn’t wanted to push her for it, hadn’t wanted to probe too deep and discover the painful truth. It had been easier to lead a superficial life of blissful denial.

  “She . . . never . . . told you?” Thad asked, his whispery voice reeling Joshua back into the present.

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry,” Thad said. “Maybe she never told you . . . ‘cause she . . . divorced him—”

  “She divorced him? When?”

  “Right after he . . . went to prison . . .”

  Joshua went to the kitchen table and snatched up the inmate record. Bates had been incarcerated over four years ago, which meant Rachel had been divorced from him for nearly as long.

  It was one bright spot in the whole mess. At least his marriage to Rachel was valid, and she hadn’t insulted him by marrying him while she was still legally wed to Bates.

  But why had she lied to him about her past? Why?

  “Gotta . . . go . . . now,” Thad said. “Tired. When you . . . find Joy . . . tell her . . . I tried . . .”

  “I will,” Joshua said. “Thank you so much for the information—you’ve helped a lot. I’m sure you’ll pull through this. I’ll pray for you, man. I mean that.”

  “Thanks . . . brother,” Thad said.

  And then he added a comment that Joshua would not understand until later.

  “Be . . . careful . . . we didn’t see Dexter . . . until it was too late.”

  Chapter 40

  When Dexter awoke, the world was so black and fuzzy he thought he’d gone blind.

  Fear spiking his chest, he blinked, shook his head as if clearing away dust. His vision swam into focus, a development that he immediately regretted.

  The doctor from his fearsome visions was seated in front of him, gazing intently at him. He looked exactly as he had appeared in Dexter’s nightmares. Café au lait complexion. Curly brown hair. Wire-rim glasses framing hawkish eyes. He wore a black leather jacket, however, not the white lab coat he donned in Dexter’s feverish dreams.

  Dexter wondered if he was dreaming again—he felt as if he could be. He was woozy, and felt vaguely disconnected from his body. But they had shot him with a tranquilizer of some kind, and he might merely be reacting to the drugs.

  “You’re awake,” the doctor said. He had a mellifluous voice, and he enunciated each word as crisply as a radio announcer. “Excellent. I’ve been looking forward to speaking with you, Mr. Bates.”

  Dexter looked around, realized that he was in the back of the delivery van. The interior resembled a command center of some kind. The walls were alive with electronic instruments bristling with knobs and levers, ghost-pale monitors, and pulsing lights of various colors. An IV drip apparatus dangled from a hook, and stainless steel shelves bore syringes, a stethoscope, and other medical implements. There was other equipment, too, tools that defied Dexter’s knowledge.

  He and the doctor were the only people in the compartment; a smoked-glass partition separated them from the front. Dexter glimpsed a driver and a passenger, and heard the tires singing across the pavement. They were on the road, traveling to destinations unknown.

  He tried to move, but couldn’t. He was seated in a padded chair, wrists cuffed behind him. His ankles were shackled, too.

  He’d been stripped out of his clothing and wore only a thin, white patient’s gown. The cold air in the van pimpled his skin.

  “What the fuck is this all about?” Dexter asked. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Dr. Devereaux. We’ve been monitoring you, Mr. Bates. You are a subject in an important project that we’ve been conducting for some time.”

  “I’ve seen you before,” Dexter said. “Can’t remember where, or when. The details are vague . . .”

  “As they should be. We installed a memory block prior to your release from the penitentiary. You may recall snippets of images, but little else.”

  “You’re from IDS,” Dexter said. “I saw the vans following me, got the duffel bag.”

  “Indeed, I am. Infinity Delivery Services.” Devereaux smiled.

  “Don’t lie to me. That’s not what the acronym means.”

  “Of course, it doesn’t.” Devereaux laughed with self-deprecating humor. “I’m the research director for Infinity Defense Systems. We operate with the blessing—and let’s not forget, the generous funding—of our nation’s military.”

  “Doing what?”

  Devereaux paused. “You were trained as a lawyer, not a scientist, Mr. Bates. I fear an explanation of our work may only confuse you.”

  “Don’t patronize me, you mulatto motherfucker.”

  The doctor’s thin lips tightened. “Perhaps I should have left you to rot in prison.”

  “So it was you guys who bounced me out of the joint!” Dexter grinned. “I knew someone had pulled some strings to get me paroled so early. Thank you, kind sir.”<
br />
  “Don’t mention it,” Devereaux said, and muttered something about how he hadn’t planned to give him that information.

  “Let’s get back to the work you do for Uncle Sam,” Dexter said.

  “You’re not controlling this conversation!” Spittle showered from Devereaux’s lips, and he started to rise out of his seat, crimson blooming in his cheeks.

  “I apologize,” Dexter said. “I was out of line. Please, continue at whatever pace you wish.”

  “You aren’t sorry.” Devereaux sat, removed a handkerchief, and blotted perspiration from his forehead. He smiled grimly. “You’re only behaving according to your psychopathology.”

  “My what?”

  Devereaux leaned forward, smooth and in control again. He leveled his index finger at Dexter.

  “You are a pure psychopath, Mr. Bates. You lack a conscience. You have no empathy. Your only motive is self-interest. You are aware of the morality of right and wrong, and you brazenly ignore what is considered wrong if it doesn’t suit your purposes.”

  “I’m not a psychopath. Don’t you ever say that to me again or I’ll stick my foot so far up your mulatto ass you’ll be tasting shoe polish.”

  “Ah, I see I’ve touched a nerve.” Devereaux tilted back in the chair, smiled smugly. “I’ve read all of your mental health evaluations. You possess every symptom on the psychopathy checklist, in abundance.”

  “Those prison counselors are full of shit.”

  “Are they? You’ve been tracking down your wife, murderously and single-mindedly, since your release two days ago. You’ve slain, at most recent count, four completely innocent individuals, in the service of your obsessive mission.”

  How did this guy know what he had been doing? These assholes must have been following him more closely than he’d thought. The revelation rocked Dexter, but he tried not to show it.

  “You can’t prove any of that,” Dexter said.

  Devereaux only smiled. “You misunderstand my intent, Mr. Bates. I am not here to charge you with a crime. In regard to the vicious murders you’ve committed—I don’t care.”

  Dexter blinked. This was becoming the weirdest conversation he’d ever had in his life. “You don’t care?”

  “We chose you because you are a psychopath. We chose you because you were determined to hunt down your wife. We chose you because you have no reservations about using violence to further your demented ends. In innumerable ways, Mr. Bates, you were a perfect subject for our research.”

  Dexter let the doctor’s words settle in his mind. He didn’t like any of it. This man was telling him that he’d been the equivalent of a guinea pig. To think that these motherfuckers had been using him . . . if he’d had the use of his hands, he would have knocked that arrogant, self-satisfied smile off Devereaux’s face.

  “We removed you from prison early Monday morning, gave you official parole papers, and the items contained in the duffel bag—yes, including the knife, your weapon of choice. We abandoned you in the car on the shoulder of the road, a couple hours’ drive from your hometown of Chicago. Then we waited, and watched, with great interest.”

  “That’s not all you did,” Dexter said. “You left out the most important part. I’ve been seeing a syringe . . . in my visions.”

  “Yes.” Devereaux clasped his hands across his stomach. “The centerpiece of our study: the introduction of Substance X.”

  “Substance X?”

  “The naming convention is quite appropriate. We had no idea how it might affect you.” Devereaux laughed, as if it were a joke.

  Dexter gritted his teeth. “You injected me with some shit and didn’t know what it might do to me?”

  “You seem shocked, Mr. Bates. How are we to learn the value of our research without human experimentation? In the medical and pharmaceutical communities, prisoners traditionally have been ideal subjects for Phase One trials. There is no true need to follow the guidelines of informed consent. As a convicted felon, you have no rights.”

  “I have rights,” Dexter said, lamely. He knew Devereaux was correct. When you were convicted of a felony, robbed of the right to vote, and forced to bear the equivalent of a scarlet letter for the rest of your life, you didn’t have rights—what you had were problems.

  “Would you like to know what Substance X is all about?” Devereaux asked. He chuckled, clearly enjoying having the upper hand in their encounter.

  “It doesn’t matter. I don’t give a damn.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Devereaux crossed his legs. “At IDS, we specialize in the emerging technology of molecular manufacturing.”

  Dexter only stared at him. He wouldn’t give this asshole the pleasure of asking him what he meant by such arcane language.

  “A more popular term is nanotechnology,” Devereaux said. “Essentially, the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, about the width of three or four atoms.”

  “I know all about nanobots,” Dexter said. “They’re itty-bitty machines, the size of atoms, like you say. Someday, they could be used to create medical devices that travel through the bloodstream to seek out and destroy cancer cells before they spread. Or a box the size of a sugar cube could contain the entire contents of the Library of Congress. Applications that sound more like science fiction than reality.”

  Devereaux frowned, dismayed that Dexter was not as ignorant as he would have wished.

  “When you’re on lockdown, you have a lot of time to read,” Dexter said. “Hell, I met brothers in the joint who know more about the law than I do.”

  “Spare me the details of your jailhouse education.” Devereaux waved his hand dismissively. “At IDS, molecular manufacturing is no longer science fiction. We’re developing usable, powerful military applications.”

  “Such as?”

  “Imagine a nanotech-built antipersonnel weapon capable of seeking and injecting toxin into a target population. The human lethal dose of botulism is about a hundred nanograms. As many as fifty billion toxin-carrying devices, enough to kill every human being on the planet, could be packed into an ordinary suitcase.”

  “Gives new meaning to the term, ‘baggage check,’ huh?”

  Devereaux made a scornful sound in his throat. “Imagine far more powerful firearms, self-guiding bullets—”

  “I’ve always preferred self-guided fists.”

  In spite of Dexter’s derisive commentary, Devereaux continued: “Lighter and higher performance aerospace equipment, built without even metal and impossible to track on radar systems. Embedded computers to enable remote activation of any weapon—”

  “What does any of this brave new world bullshit have to do with Substance X, Dr. Frankenstein?”

  “You’re a fool.” Devereaux shook his head, lips arched with disgust. “I’m an important man in my field—a great man. You sit there, a convicted felon, a murderer obsessively pursuing a young woman who wants nothing to do with you, yet you have the temerity to mock my life’s work. I ought to have you dumped at the bottom of the Chattahoochie River like the human slime that you are.”

  “You should, but you won’t. I’m your prize subject, aren’t I?”

  Muttering, Devereaux removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “I’m getting hungry,” Dexter said. “Can you have one of your goons swing by McDonald’s and grab me something? I could eat about a dozen Big Macs.”

  “You’ll eat when I allow you to eat,” Devereaux said, like a stern parent addressing a child.

  “Whatever, man.” Dexter shrugged.

  “As I was saying, at IDS, we are making miraculous strides in cutting edge, military weaponry. Substance X is a product of our research in creating the perfect human assassin.”

  “Finally, we get around to how your life’s great work is relevant to me,” Dexter said.

  Devereaux ignored him. “Substance X was conceived to act upon the mind, to stimulate the dramatic and rapid develo
pment of new neural pathways, more powerful synapses. Imagine an army of billions of nanobots, every one of them geared solely toward improving the functions of that pea-sized organ between your ears that I’m disinclined to regard as a brain.”

  “Fuck you,” Dexter said.

  Devereaux only laughed. “We had no idea what the result might be—results in mice and our simian relatives have been mixed. We’ve also tried injecting a handful of other human subjects—violent prisoners we freed, like yourself—but they apparently didn’t possess your innate aptitude for quite literally getting away with murder, and the experiments were unfortunately short-lived. They were summarily executed by police or their peers.”

  “So?”

  “So you, Mr. Bates, with your varied background and high level of intelligence, have nimbly evaded capture, and in so doing, appear to have developed a most fascinating talent. The ability to harness your body’s energy to create a force field that refracts light waves.”

  “Invisibility,” Dexter said. He sighed. “And I thought no one knew about it.”

  “We’ve lost sight of you on our cameras many times. One moment, you are in view—the next, poof! It’s quite remarkable. We might have lost you altogether if I hadn’t had the foresight to implant a tracking microchip.”

  “You implanted something in me, to follow me?” Dexter glanced at the computer monitors, wondering which of the displays had charted his movements.

  “Of course we did. We couldn’t allow our insolent little guinea pig to get away from us, could we? How then could we be witness to your spectacularly depraved acts of violence and madness?”

  Dexter spat in Devereaux’s face. The wad of saliva landed on the doctor’s cheek, like a fat tear.

  “You sick fuck,” Dexter said. “I’ve been wondering why you’ve been telling me all of this shit. I finally figured it out: you’re a psychopath. You’re getting off on manipulating me like I’m your goddamn puppet, showing off your knowledge, and you probably cum in your lab coat every time you find out I’ve killed someone else.”

  Smiling a death’s head grin, Devereaux wiped his face clean with his handkerchief. “As useful as you’ve been to us, Mr. Bates, I will not regret when your lunatic mission results in your death. I only hope that your demise is a painful one.”