“Son of a bitch,” Riggs said, in appreciation. “You kill the cancer and heal the lung at the same time.”
“Yes. It’s simple stochastic differentiation: the stem cell develops into two differentiated daughter cells. In layman’s terms, the Com-cells, once their payload of mycotoxins is delivered, become simply lung tissue.”
"The inhalation was your third test?" Milner asked. "What were the results?"
"Thirty out of thirty were healed completely," she replied and even she couldn't help the smile that crept across her face.
4
Lieutenant Eng
Lieutenant Eng needed all of his training to maintain a calm exterior as he came to realize he had just been given the keys to the kingdom. He knew everything now, maybe more than any of them except for Dr. Lee. He certainly knew more than Riggs who had barely glanced over the results of his two tests.
Eng had studied them until he had memorized every line. Cancer was easily China’s biggest killer, accounting for over 1.6 million deaths a year—and that was just the official count. The real number was at least twice that high and with the pollution becoming thicker than fog in many cities, death from cancer would only continue to climb.
If he played his cards just right, it would be Lieutenant Eng of the People’s Liberation Army who would get credit for finding the cure. To make that happen, he would just have to figure out a way to sabotage the efforts of Dr. Lee and by extension the French.
The first order of business was to force from his mind the visions of the parades that would be thrown in his honor and the justly deserved promotions he’d receive and all the hot patriotic ladies that would fawn all over him. These would come to him in due time. For now he had to make sure his cover of harmless, geeky “Chinaman” wasn’t blown.
He sat there as Dr. Lee went back to her meeting’s agenda. After the funding report, she introduced the members of the staff: Dr. Milner—a fat, pompous, ass. He stood and named his research team: three pretty ladies and three men from India with incomprehensibly long and complicated sounding names. Then Dr. Riggs stood and muttered the names of his crew; he looked stunned.
When Eng’s single syllable name was mentioned he smiled through squinty eyes and bowed his head in every direction. He was playing it up to the hilt, and no one noticed. Not even the security man. Deckard barely gave Eng a glance. He was too busy eyeing the new people to the lab: two oncologists, a radiologist, a mycologist, and the physician who would be present during the trial.
Eng didn’t see Deckard so much as twitch until the mycologist was introduced. Then Deck leaned in toward Dr. Lee and Eng could read his lips: What’s a mycologist? He took out a notebook and jotted down Thuy’s explanation.
The last person to be introduced shocked everyone by what he had to say. “This is Mr. Blair,” Dr. Lee said. “He’s the trial recruiter.”
Blair didn’t hesitate giving his bad news: “I only have twelve subjects signed up. Sorry.”
Only Deckard didn’t seem to get worked up over the low number. Everyone else was floored. “That’s not enough,” Dr. Lee said. “From a pool of tens of thousands, you have twelve?”
The recruiter gestured to a stack of loose paper set out on the table in front of him. “Yes, only twelve, but the pool isn’t as big as you think. A lot of cancer patients don’t want to do any traveling on such short notice. Hell, most people on the West coast wouldn’t even think of making the trip. Of those that are near I have to subtract the people who are too far gone, you know, physically and all those who have given up entirely. Then there are the people on the other end of the spectrum who think they still have a chance with chemo and radiation, or prayer. These people want to try what quote, unquote works.”
“What about the ones who've tried chemo already?” Dr. Lee said.
“A lot of them don’t want to waste their remaining time as guinea pigs and there are more who are just plain clueless about these sorts of trials. People worry that they’ll get a placebo or a sugar pill or that the cure might make their cancer worse! I’m sorry, but it’s these out of the blue, last minute trials that are the hardest to place people in. Maybe if you had billed it as something else, like chemo without the vomiting I could have filled you up.”
“So what do we do?” Thuy stared around at the room. She looked as though someone had sucker-punched her.
No one had a good answer. Eng had a self-serving one: "Maybe we postpone trial one year. Give time to get new patients."
"And let how many people die in the mean time?" Thuy demanded. "No, give me something else."
“We bribe them,” Riggs answered. “Free flight, free cottage accommodations for loved ones. A big stack of Benjamins. Whatever it takes."
Thuy was ready to jump on any plausible idea. “Would that work?” She had asked Blair but it was one of the oncologists who answered.
“Yes,” Dr. Samuel Wilson stated. “Many of my patients are hurting financially. If the bribe is big enough, I'm sure they'll come on board even if they have no hope of being cured."
Thuy smiled uneasily. "Let's not use the word bribe. I think incentive is a better alternative."
5
Chuck Singleton
In the middle of March he stood fourteen thousand feet above sea level at the top of Pike’s Peak looking out at the world. It was majestic, beautiful and surprisingly, fantastically cold and he coughed nonstop until he fled. A few days later he rolled his jeans up and waded into the Pacific off Pismo Beach—it was also cold and he shivered the gunk from the insides of his lung and he spat up ugly matter. On the twentieth he was in South Florida, riding his first rollercoaster and not really enjoying it. On the twenty-second he was near out of money and the pain in his chest was a constant reminder that it didn’t really matter.
It hurt to take a deep breath; it felt as though there were sharp edged diamonds between his ribs that gouged at his innards every time he sucked in air. Coughing made him wince and he couldn’t remember the last time he was hungry.
“Guess I’m just ‘bout done,” he said. “Now it’s just a question ‘bout how I’m gonna go.” The people around him on the observation deck pretended they didn’t hear the lean and leathery man talking to himself. He was in New York City. Even at the top of the Empire State Building there were crazies.
From fifteen hundred feet up he watched the sun go down over New Jersey. It was one of the damned prettiest sights he’d ever seen. That evening he spent watching the people of New York live their lives. It was a bit overwhelming for a man from Norman, Oklahoma and his head spun at the sheer number of humans going this way and that.
The city brought out the best and the worst in people. They laughed over nothing and screeched in anger over less. They were suspicious of strangers but the love they showed their friends came off them in waves. New Yorkers were so different from him that he felt like an alien being and yet, at the same time, he could see there were many people just like him: people alone and in pain, on the outside of life looking in.
The next day he woke up in a Jersey City motel room with his lungs full of crap, and pain that radiated from his chest and up into his shoulder. “Well, shit,” he whispered and then spat out a knob of ugly phlegm. He dry swallowed six Advil and when that didn’t do anything he took six more. It barely helped.
“And that’s why,” he said, thinking about his upcoming suicide. Chuck had plenty of life left in him, but nothing to look forward to. He could expect every morning from here on in to be just as bad if not worse.
“A gun’ll be messy. I don’t wanna leave a mess for some poor shlub. That would be straight-up rude. And I don’t like heights…” It was one thing to enjoy the view from the top of one of them skyscrapers, it was another thing altogether to intentionally take a step off of one into nothing. Using a car to gas himself to death seemed as fine a way to go as any, but seeing as he didn’t have a car or a garage, that choice was out.
Chuck settled on pills as his one-way tick
et to heaven or hell or whatever it was waiting for him. “And not some crappy Advils.” He wanted to go out in style, maybe even with a smile on his face.
At ten that morning he stood in the High Point Oncology Wellness Center, reflecting on the dichotomy between the bright and shiny offices and the grey and listless patients waiting to be told what they already knew: that their remission had been canceled, their funeral date had been moved up, and that their chemo-fueled agony had been a waste of time.
“I don’t have an appointment ma’am,” he said to the brassy woman behind the desk. He tried not to stare, but east coast women were so strikingly over-worked in the looks department that he couldn’t help wonder where the makeup ended and the girl beneath it all began. “I just need some pills. Ma-doc is Jeffery Montgomery outta Norman, Oklahoma. He’ll vouch for me.”
“We don’t work that way,” the receptionist said with a fake smile. Chuck figured that she never wore a real one. Her lips sported two different shades of gloss or liner or what all. They also seemed unnaturally puffy as if she was smiling up at him from around a mouthful of ass fat or silicone.
A few minutes later, Chuck found himself lying his way through a stack of paperwork. Phone number: first ten digits that sprang to mind. Address: 1428 Elm St, the original house in the movie A Nightmare on Elm Street. Mother’s maiden name: Chiapet. Secondary Diagnosis: EPS—Enormous Penis Syndrome.
It was absolutely juvenile but he didn’t care, he needed the laugh. All around him in the waiting room were people waiting to die and whenever he glanced at them he wondered if they would end up in the ground or if they would find themselves in something resembling a brass spittoon on someone’s mantle.
When he was done bullshitting his way through the paperwork, Chuck stretched out his long legs, shut down his green eyes and tried to nap, but found that he couldn’t because there was a cougher in the room. She would cough which would give him the urge to shoot one right back. What was worse she had that same loose-phlegm hack that he did. They traded cough for cough until he opened his eyes and saw the source: a very pretty girl—or rather she would’ve been pretty if she weren’t in the process of dying.
She was tall and pale. Her skin was like white marble; it made the blue of her eyes stand out. On her head was a little acorn cap of soft wool that was girlishly pink. A very short tuft of pale blond hair stuck out beneath. They locked eyes and each fought off the urge to cough. It became a contest—again, so juvenile that Chuck marveled at himself.
The girl went pink in the cheeks, started blinking rapidly and then coughed. Chuck grinned and coughed into the back of his hand. “Squamous or small cell?” he asked.
“Small cell,” she admitted. He nodded to suggest that he had the same diagnosis. She glanced at the mass of brown hair on his head. “Still have your hair, does that mean you got lucky and they caught it early?”
“Nope. I’m into late innings and I figgered why go through all that crap? Ma-name’s Chuck, nice to meet you.” He stuck out his hand. They shook and he was slow to give up the grip. Her hand was as satiny soft as his was rough and leathery.
She didn’t seem to mind. “I’m Stephanie. And you didn’t miss anything. Chemo is as bad as they make it out to be. It’s why I’ve drawn the line.”
Their handshaking had reached an awkward point and reluctantly he pulled his hand back. “You throwin’ in the towel?”
“I like the way you talk,” she remarked instead of answering the question. “Are you from Texas?”
Chuck’s eyes blazed in mock fury. “Texas? Do I look like a big hunk of bull crap to you? Next I reckon you’ll be asking me iffin ma-family is from France.”
“Is it?” She laughed and then coughed. He did the same.
“Naw. I’m from Oklahoma. I’m out here seein’ what all there is to see before I get settled in for ma-long dirt nap.”
“I should have done that,” Steph said, “instead of that awful chemo. Of course my mom wouldn’t have let me either way. Here I am a grown woman and she treats me like…well she treats me like her baby daughter. I know I’m lucky to have her around except she doesn’t know the meaning of the word quit. Right now she’s in there with Doctor Wilson conspiring to send me away to a top secret facility where they have some sort of experiments planned.”
“Experiments?” Chuck snorted. “Sounds like they got some newbie doctors who need practice with an anal probe. No thanks. They’ll just have to wait until I’ve reached cadaver status.”
“It’s worse than that,” Stephanie said. She lowered her voice to a whisper and added: “They want to inject a fungus into you. Is that crazy or what?” When he started to laugh, she put her hand on his arm and said, “I’m not kidding…oh shit, my mom.”
Winnie Glowitz, looking small next to the tall doctor, stood in the waiting room doorway staring at Chuck with a great deal of suspicion. Dr. Wilson had a different look. “Could you wait out here for a few minutes, Mrs. Glowitz? I need to talk to this gentleman briefly. Charles Singleton?”
“You’re in trouble with the principal,” Steph whispered to him as he got up. Chuck flashed her a smile and followed after the doctor.
“I could’ve waited a few more minutes,” Chuck said as they entered an exam room. “Twern’t no need to call on me so quick like.”
“You thought that was quick?” Dr. Wilson asked. “You were in that room for over an hour.”
Chuck shrugged. “Some hours are better than others, I guess.”
“With the right company, I would say you’re correct. Now, my nurse tells me you’re here for pills. Sorry, but we don’t work that way. We follow protocols that are designed to…”
“I don’t means to be rude, Doc, but I don’t need protocols or chemo or any of that hogwash. I have some pain I need to deal with so, iffin you’ll just write me a script, I’ll be on ma-way.”
“On your way, where?” Chuck shrugged in answer and Dr. Wilson saw right through it. “That’s what I thought. I’ve been in the cancer business for over twenty years and I know when a man is done. You guys get that devil-may-care look in your eyes, and I’m alright with that. Who am I to say when life is no longer worth living? But, what about that young woman out in the waiting room?”
“Stephanie? What about her?”
“She’s not ready yet,” Dr. Wilson answered. “I see it. She may talk a good game but she’s not ready to die just yet. She wants to try to live and I want you to help her.”
Chuck gave a little laugh that turned into one of his longer coughing fits. Red in the face and gasping, he asked, “Help her, how? That fungus business? Are you serious? Look, I don’t even know her.”
“Yet, you two have a connection,” Dr. Wilson said, entwining his long, dark fingers together. “It was obvious to me and it was most certainly obvious to her mom. You both are end-stage cancer patients. You both are looking death right in the mouth. And you’re both young and pretty. You’ll never meet a girl in a bar with connections that deep.”
This brought out a laugh from Chuck. “I’m not that young." His smile dipped at the corners. He was all sorts of ready to die, but he knew the same couldn't be said for Stephanie. There was too much hope left in her. "So…is it this fungus business? Iffin so it sounds crazy.”
“I’ll make you a deal, Mr. Singleton. Let me explain the clinical trial to you and, if you still want to walk away from this chance, I’ll get you your pills and you can go.”
Twenty minutes later Wilson finished and Chuck left with his pills. He paused in the waiting room doorway. “Stephanie? You wanna come take a step around the block with me? I have a question for you.”
6
John Burke
Izard County, Arkansas
The pistol, a snub-nosed .38 with a worn handle, sat under his socks in the top dresser drawer. John Burke had checked in on it once an hour for the last two days as if it were a cat ready to drop a litter under the stairs. He sighed with each visit. He sighed and he coughed.
Would she understand? Would Jesus? This was a big concern with John. Suicide was one of those things that didn’t sit in a grey area. There wasn’t going to be no asterisk next to his name when he was standing at the pearly gates waiting to be let in. I got me some fuck-all extenuating circumstances there, Mr. Saint Pete. That wasn’t going to fly.
John shut the drawer. The time wasn’t right. He was still waiting on answers from people who, it seemed, were hell bent on ignoring him. That he wasn’t hearing from friends who’d stop returning his calls months before, wasn’t surprising, but to be treated like a dog by family, well that just stung.
Downstairs, the kitchen door creaked open.
“Jaimee?” he called, suddenly nervous. Although Jaimee was a tiny thing, she was never this quiet, unless…
“Yessum, Daidy. It’s me.”
“Somethin' wrong?” he asked hurrying down to the kitchen. There most certainly was something wrong. Jaimee was white and there were tears on her face.
“Aunt Kathy came to see me at school,” the little girl said. “They took me outta class.”
It felt like a stone had done sunk deep down in his belly, but he tried to play it cool. “Oh yeah?”
“Aunt Kathy told me to tell you that I cain’t come and live with her and that you have to stop callin’ at all hours. Why am I supposed to go live with her? Is it your cough? Are you gonna be like mommy?”
The Apocalypse Crusade (Book 1): War of the Undead Day One Page 7
