I yelled, “Let him go!” as I ran into him.
To my surprise, the impact didn’t jar him from his purpose. He barely even moved. I bounced off him and fell hard against the worktable holding the computer. The sharp corner of the monitor dug into my ribs and the wind rushed out of me as I tumbled to the floor.
My vision swimming, I managed to twist around on my back, and I saw that Lawrence had lifted Tim off the ground by the neck. The student’s face was turning an unhealthy shade of purplish-blue. The veins on his forehead bulged, and a vessel in one eye popped, turning the white sclera red.
As I gasped to get my wind back, I grabbed the broken monitor and swung it like a club at Lawrence’s back.
The corner of it struck him in the kidney region, and he yowled at the sudden pain. My attack had the desired effect; he let go of Tim and the student fell to the floor in a heap.
Lawrence turned toward me, eyes wild with insane rage.
“Lawrence!” I yelled at him. “Stop what you’re doing. I can help you.”
If he heard me, it didn’t register, and I could understand why.
The festering area of his arm had spread, and the entire surface between his wrist and elbow had begun to crack and bleed.
Whatever formula my father had concocted had the opposite effect than what had showed on the computer simulations and on the bacterial cultures. It was consuming Lawrence’s flesh, rather than regenerating it.
He was coming at me like a juggernaut, and there was no help from Tim or my father. I’d never taken any self-defense classes—I never thought I’d need them—and the only thing I could think of to do at that point was to run in the hall and pull the fire alarm. The problem was, Lawrence stood between me and the door.
I flipped over and tried to get my legs under me, but the moment I pushed myself to my feet, Lawrence grabbed me by the neck. It felt as if I were caught in a bear trap.
Instinctively, I kicked him, and I must have caught him in a vital area, because he let go.
I tried to bolt away, but something heavy—the computer tower, I guessed—hit the middle of my back. The force of it sent me flying forward, and I landed on all fours. The pain in my wrists from the impact was blinding, but it was nothing compared to the agony when my knee hit the ceramic tiles with a loud, snapping sound. I didn’t pass out, but for a moment, all rational thought fled from me. I rolled onto my side and then lay there, holding my knee, trying to quell the nausea.
Lawrence turned to the only other person in the room he hadn’t attacked yet.
My father.
With a purposeful stride and an animal growl, he knelt down over my father and grabbed the front of his lab coat, pulling him up into a sitting position.
“It’s tearing me apart,” he said in a wretched, slurred voice. “It’s not working. What did you do wrong?”
I was slow to react. Though I tried to get on my stomach to crawl to my father—as pitiful and useless as that gesture was—I couldn’t get more than a few inches before I could no longer handle the pain in my leg.
An eerie silence crept into the lab, and I forced myself to stay conscious.
Looking over at Lawrence and my father, for a moment, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The pain must have caused some kind of chemical imbalance in my brain. I wasn’t correctly interpreting the images I was looking at.
Lawrence’s entire right arm from his hand to his shoulder was engulfed by blackened flesh, streaked with lines of blood, and the side of his neck had begun to darken and flake. He wasn’t screaming anymore, however.
As if the charred skin was an entity of its own, the darkness grew out from his hand, slowly spreading across my father’s chest.
I could see the physical changes happening to my father right before my eyes. His skin went from a jaundiced yellow to an ashen gray. Many years ago, his hair had gone a distinguished shade of silver, but now the strands slowly turned white. He’d never had much time for any fitness regimen, and his fondness for rich foods had shown in the thickness of his neck and cheeks. Almost as if the fat were being sucked out of him, his face became gaunt.
At the same time, the darkened skin on Lawrence’s hand lightened, the bleeding stopped, and hints of healthy pink flesh began to show.
Whatever it was he was doing to my father, very soon his hand, wrist, and forearm had begun to heal.
I reached out and grabbed the video camera, still attached to the tripod, and hurled it at Lawrence. The camera hit him in the side of the head, and he howled in pain.
Unceremoniously, he let go of his victim.
I was too late. I watched, helpless, as my father’s body crumpled into a pile of lifeless limbs.
“No!” I shouted.
Lawrence pivoted and stared at me with mad, hungry eyes.
“More!” he growled, and took a step toward me. “I need more.”
He thought he could heal himself by killing me… How? It wasn’t possible.
Though my knee still hurt like nothing I’d ever felt before, I tried to get into a kneeling position, putting all my weight on the leg that didn’t hurt. I grabbed the computer Lawrence had used to knock me to the ground, and with a desperate yell, I heaved it at him.
He batted it away as he would an annoying fly, and took another step toward me.
The computer tower landed on the worktables, knocked over several beakers of chemicals and smashed the Bunsen burner my father had been using to mix the compound.
Like wildfire, the chemicals ignited, and the liquid spread across the table and onto the floor between Lawrence and me.
Screaming like a frightened animal, Lawrence backed away, as if the fire reminded him of his own accident.
I felt, rather than heard, a deep rumbling underneath me. For a moment, I thought a semi-truck was passing near the campus. Then the rumbling grew louder, sounding like a freight train heading our way. The walls began to shake, ceiling tiles cracked and fell, and every piece of equipment in the lab vibrated.
Lawrence, still roaring, arms raised to his sides as if he were lifting a heavy weight, seemed to revel in the destruction.
A shelf unit under the worktable beside him had several containers filled with more chemicals which were flammable either by themselves, or when mixed. The earthquake—I couldn’t believe that was what it was, but I had no other explanation—caused the containers to spill off the shelves. A few of them burst open at Lawrence’s feet.
The liquid splashed everywhere, and the fire roared to life.
With an incoherent cry of rage at me, Lawrence turned and ran toward the one large window in the lab. Holding his arms up in front of his face like a shield, he launched himself through the glass. The window shattered, the shards falling around him as he landed on the grass outside. A second later, he took off running, and disappeared into the night.
Immediately, the thundering earthquake ceased, and the only after effect was a beaker that had been perching on the edge of a table finally tipped over and hit the floor with a resounding crash.
The fire, however, continued to burn. I realized that the inferno was soon going to grow out of control, and I wasn’t even capable of getting to my feet.
The fire extinguisher was too far away for me to go after, so, on two hands and one knee, I crawled to Tim and my father.
I grabbed Tim’s unconscious body by the arm and dragged him a few feet toward the door. Then I reached for my father. Though I hoped he was somehow, miraculously, still alive, I knew in my heart he was dead.
My eyes must have been playing tricks on me. It looked as if small pink worms were crawling over his face and neck. I shook my head, hoping to dispel the image.
I felt myself weakening. I was going to lose consciousness soon, but I couldn’t leave my father there to be consumed by flames. I pulled him forward as far as I could until he was near Tim.
Then, taking turns with each of them, I crawled toward the door, dragging them after me.
By the time I
reached the door, I was exhausted. The lab was mostly on fire, and the smoke was filling the room.
The alarm snapped on with an ear-piercing scream, and the overhead sprinklers showered water down.
Moments after I got both my father and Tim out into the hall and closed the door behind us, I passed out.
Chapter Five
When I came to, I was in a hospital room. A diagnostic machine beside the head of my bed beeped as it read and recorded my vitals. Feeling a pinch in my arm, I discovered someone had hooked me up to an intravenous drip.
When I tried to swallow, I grimaced. It felt like I’d swallowed a sheet of sandpaper. Trying to push myself up into a sitting position, even using the pillow to prop myself against, proved difficult as my head swam, and my muscles rebelled. I sank back down and groaned.
My entire body ached, but my knee felt like someone had dropped a car on it.
A shadow darkened the ceiling for a moment, and I looked over to see a nurse approaching. Businesslike, she went straight to the IV and checked it.
“And how are we?” she asked.
Her question provoked a moment of disorientation in me. The night’s events came back to me in a rush, and I must have paled, because the nurse bent closer to me, concerned.
“Mr. Chase?” she asked.
“Sorry,” I said, willing myself to calm down. “I’m fine.” I tried to sit up again.
The nurse gave me a worried look.
Confused, I stared at her. “What’s wrong?”
Instead of answering me, she looked up as someone else came into the room.
I turned to see an older man in a cheap suit and worn overcoat enter. He was fat, and walked with an uneasy gait. It looked as if his face hadn’t felt the edge of a razor in several days. He was nearly bald, save for a streak of white and gray hair on the sides and back of his head.
He didn’t take his eyes off me. With a humorless smile that looked plastered on, he approached the foot of my bed.
Another man followed two steps behind. He was the complete opposite in appearance and bearing. Young, with an athletic build, and wearing a tailored business suit, he had a full head of blond hair. He looked everywhere but at me, and kept his expression professionally blank.
“I’ll take it from here,” the older man said to the nurse without looking in her direction.
The nurse hesitated for a second or two, then scurried out.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Who are you?”
The man reached into an inner pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew a leather fold. He flashed a badge at me. “I’m Detective Frank Hollingsworth from the Chicago Bureau of Investigative Services. This is my partner, Detective Gary Vanderburgh.”
“You’re cops?”
He nodded. “I just came from Tim Bellows’ room. He’s pretty banged up, and he’s having a hard time speaking, but he should be fine.”
The relief that Tim had survived was fleeting.
The older detective said, “It seems someone tried to choke the life out of him.” He looked pointedly at my hands.
“Phil Bellows, his father, is beside himself,” he added.
I had a sickening feeling deep in my stomach as my last memories surged back.
“My father…?” I knew the answer, but there was a part of me that held out hope.
The predatory smile on the detective’s face wavered. “I’m sorry, Mr. Chase. He was dead when emergency services showed up at the university. But that’s what I’d like to talk to you about.”
I just stared at him.
“The medical examiner said he couldn’t even guess at the cause of death. They’re going to do an autopsy, but that could take a while. I’d like to find out what happened before then.”
My father was dead. Anger surged in me. “He was murdered.”
“I see. Can you tell me how that happened?”
There was something in the way he asked it that set off warning bells.
“Do you think I had anything to do with it? How could you think I would have anything to do with my father’s death?”
I couldn’t believe he suspected I was a killer, that I had murdered my own father.
“Why don’t you tell everything that happened, and let me decide?”
Maybe I was just being paranoid. Taking a deep breath, I said, “It was Lawrence.”
The detective opened a notebook and wrote. “Lawrence? Last name?”
“I don’t know. He went nuts and tried to strangle Tim. He killed my father.”
“And where can we find this Lawrence character?”
“I don’t know. He took off.”
“And what was his relation to you? Do you have an address where we can find him?”
“I just met him. I’m sure my father has some record of him.” I remembered looking for the files, but not finding them.
“If he did, where would he keep these records?”
“You could try his office.” I said it without any enthusiasm. There was a small part of me that suspected there wasn’t any record of the subject, and it was confirmed when the detective gave me that patronizing smile again.
“Our team already combed through his office. There’s no mention of anyone named Lawrence in any of his files.”
I tried to remember if there was reference to him in the paper work I had in my office. There wasn’t, I realized. In fact, my father had only informed me about the experiment in the afternoon, when he’d invited me to witness the effects of his compound.
“I’ve only been on the project for two days,” I said, hearing how weak my excuse sounded. I was certain he would take my plea of ignorance as an attempt to deflect guilt. Cops thought everyone lied.
Looking unimpressed by my statement, Detective Hollingsworth said, “Why don’t you start at the beginning? More specifically, I’d like you to talk about this illegal experiment you were performing.”
“Illegal experiment?” How did he know?
“Yes.” The detective put on that maddening smile again. “Tim’s father said he was being quite mysterious when he left home last night. He said he was going to help Professor Chase in the lab but wouldn’t go into details. Now, why would he be evasive with his father?”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, and just sat there with my mouth hanging open. Phil Bellows was obviously trying to cover up his own involvement. He knew about the experiment, having facilitated the paperwork to allow my father to continue running his project until he received funding.
“So tell me the truth, Mr. Chase. What were you all doing in that lab last night?”
“It was a legitimate experiment…” I said, though I knew it wasn’t.
“Do you want to know what I think?” the detective asked.
I didn’t want to know what he thought.
“We’ve accessed your father’s financial records. He was on the verge of bankruptcy. I think he brought you to the university to help him set up a drug lab.”
For the first time, Detective Vanderburgh spoke. “What were you cooking? LSD? Meth?”
“What?”
“Is that what happened here, Mr. Chase? The three of you were setting up a meth lab. You sampled the product and lost control of your faculties? Maybe you mixed the wrong chemicals and then there was some kind of explosion?”
Hollingsworth, his face twisting in a grimace, added before I could say anything, “It wouldn’t be the first time you were guilty of criminal negligence under the influence of drugs, now, would it?”
When he said it, I lost my ability to breathe. The screams of the dying man echoed in my memory.
And that’s when the last person in the world I wanted to see walked into the room.
“Kyle, what’s going on?” Andrea, my soon-to-be ex-wife, asked.
Anger rose up in me, and I had to choke back the words I wanted to throw at her. Emotionally, the wound was still raw, but logically, I knew the end of our relationship was not Andrea’s fault.
Somehow, I kept my calm, though I was aware of Hollingsworth and Vanderburgh scrutinizing how I was reacting.
Andrea, very successful as a commercial realtor, was always dressed impeccably whenever she was out in public. Even now, in the middle of the night when she must have been rousted out of bed, she looked like she’d just come from a lively business meeting.
Slim and fit, she wore heels and a white dress that fell below her knees. A light black jacket around her shoulders protected her from the autumn chill. Her long blonde hair flowed loose. She had one of the most generous smiles of any person I’d ever met, but her face was drawn with concern now.
After I lost my license to practice medicine, and when no one would hire me because of my criminal record, I’d spiraled into an angry, depressive state. I couldn’t live with myself; how could I expect her to live with me? I had burned through my savings with legal fees, and it was only a matter of time before I took her down with me. There came a point when she had to protect herself.
I understood that now, but when she handed me the separation agreement two months ago, and told me she wanted a divorce, I’d been floored. My entire life had been unraveling one thread at a time, and the fact that she was ending us seemed like the final nail in the coffin. That was the last time I’d seen her face-to-face.
“Andrea?” I asked in reply. “What are you doing here?”
“The hospital called me. They said you’d been in an accident.”
I remembered: she was still listed as my emergency contact.
“I’m fine,” I said. “My father’s dead.” When I said it, I realized how harsh it came out, almost as if it were an accusation directed at her, even though she had no culpability in the events that had transpired.
She put a hand to her mouth and gasped, her eyes drawn in sudden grief and horror.
“What happened?”
Hollingsworth interjected himself into the conversation. “That’s what I’m trying to get at, Mrs…?”
The Complete Book Of Fallen Angels Page 43
