Then they brought in an old man and my memory snatched his face from the crowd at the bar, moulding it to the frightened countenance that stood before me in this silent inquisition. It was the old man who had spoken fondly of the old days. I hesitated. I felt Larsen stiffen beside me. The old man was squinting in the direct beam of the lamp and I didn’t know if he could see my features, but I knew he could see my head, at least in outline; that he would know if I nodded.
Larsen sensed my hesitation; he tilted the lamp higher and the old man’s shadow sprang up the wall, crooked and distorted. The shadow seemed to have more substance than the man who cast it; there was a reality too dark to be illuminated in this room.
At last, I nodded.
The old man went rigid and Larsen’s head snapped around towards me. I nodded again. Larsen flicked a glance at the guards. They took the old man by the arms and led him out. He was protesting in a high-pitched whine. I felt truly treacherous now and Larsen must have known this, for he placed his hand on my shoulder reassuringly and, as if to certify the humanity behind the gesture, he took his spectacles off for a moment.
Then they brought the next man in.
* * * *
Twice more, I nodded.
I must have confronted forty or fifty men and only three of them had been in the bar. The bearded man had not been found, nor the long-haired fellow with the political views. The woman had not been brought in, nor had the bartender, but in those cases the identification was definite and they may have found them without bringing them before me in my stark chamber. They the steady stream of - what? Suspects? Victims? Carriers?...whatever, the stream of unfortunates brought there to stand before their tortured shadows began to taper off. In the first stormtrooper round-up Larsen’s men had gathered up the unsuspecting and the innocent, but those who had been involved had already gone into hiding with, from their point of view, good reason - a man had been killed, one old, unarmed man had been stabbed to death by a mob and they had no desire to stand trial on that count. They were terrified by the bizarre aspects of the thing and, even discounting the murder, they knew that Nurse Jeffries had, under somewhat similar circumstances, been forced to go to the mysterious compound. They were not inclined to listen to the reasoning of authority and, even if they had, the time element was against that approach. I couldn’t blame them for going into hiding. But while they hid, the disease was incubating.
* * * *
‘How long does it take?’ I asked.
Larsen and I were alone behind the table. The guard on the door had his back to us, hands clasped, looking down the corridor. No one had been brought in for the last ten minutes.
‘What?’
‘For the disease to take effect?’
‘That’s not. . .’ He paused, leaning towards me so that his face came into the light as if he now were being identified, waiting for my dreaded nod. ‘Oh, hell, it’s a bit late in the game to play classified information, isn’t it? I appreciate your help, Harland. The time ... it varies according to the subject’s weight and metabolism and, to a lesser degree, the body area where the...infection...was transferred. Say an average of...three hours.’
‘That soon?’
‘That soon,’ he said, playing with the lamp, manipulating the shadows, twisting the flexible neck from side to side in his strong hands. I felt the same need to do something with my own hands. I got my pipe out and began to fill it carefully. He twisted the lamp and I stuffed tobacco in the bowl and lit it. A great cloud of smoke billowed out and hung over us. I remembered how Larsen had spoken of the cloud of guilt that often enveloped him. The drifting smoke made filigreed shadows up the wall. The shadows moved; they were not as enduring as guilt.
He was fairly strangling the lamp.
‘It must be very virulent,’ I said.
‘Of course. Harland, it’s a disease such as the world has never known. A disease that never should have been known...and we created it here.’
‘What is it? Viral?’
‘Chemical.’
Chemicals that warp the fabric of the mind ... I said, ‘Chemical? But how can that be contagious?’
Larsen dropped his head, twisting his own neck just as he’d twisted the lamp. He said, ‘I don’t know. But it is.’ The light, reflecting from his taut face, seemed to come from within his skull. ‘It’s directly infectious, by contact. It’s not...well, it’s not the Black Death, say. It won’t sweep across the world and decimate the population. Thank God for that. And yet, in its way it’s far more horrible. It’s so—’ he sought the word ‘—so personal! Yes, that’s it, exactly. Personal.’ The word itself seemed anathema to this bureaucratic man. ‘It goes beyond disease, Harland; it reaches into the realm of superstition and snatches up the stuff of legend, the dark fears that evolved with man. Werewolves, Harland...and vampires...’ His face rose and fell as if under heavy blows. He looked sick. He said, ‘These men...the man who contract this thing...officially, in the reports, they are termed subjects of Chemically Modified Behaviour. Informally...’ he looked at me. ‘We call them ghouls.’
I winced.
He said, ‘An ugly word, and not just terminology. Yet when you’ve seen them ... it is a word that caught on quite easily, amongst the guards and attendants, at first...until even the doctors use it. I use it. You...’ He looked at me with a hint of a smile. ‘You, no doubt, will use it in your story...’
‘You know who I am, then?’
‘...if you ever get to write it.’
No threat was intended in his words - no threat from him. I puffed and smoke flowed laterally across the table, crossing the lamp like clouds shredding before the face of the moon.
I said, ‘How soon must the antidote be administered?’
Larsen looked as if he didn’t understand the question. His thin lips drew back from his teeth and he snapped the light off. From the sudden shadows, he said, ‘Not my field ... I only know we have to have them before the damned thing takes effect. And...’ he looked at his watch. ‘I don’t guess we’re going to do it.’
He stood up and moved around the end of the table.
‘I have things to arrange,’ he told me. ‘Will you wait here? They may bring a few more in before it’s too late.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
He nodded and walked out. The guard saluted. I heard his footsteps drum hollow down the corridor and I didn’t envy him his task...the arrangements he must make.
* * * *
My pipe had gone out.
I struck a match and relit it and, as if that flare had been a signal, the guard on the door turned and stepped into the room. I had supposed he was there to make sure I didn’t leave but, with proper deference, he said, ‘What’s going to happen next, sir?’
I gaped at him and he blushed. He was quite young.
‘Oh, I realise I’m not cleared for classified information, sir, but...you know how it is ... a man can’t work in a place like this without getting a pretty good idea of what’s going on. And my wife will be worried, I haven’t been able to call her ... I just wanted some idea of how long we’d be quarantined...’
I realised that Larsen and I had come in with such a flurry of haste that he had not explained the situation to the guard - or perhaps disdained informing a subordinate of anything. The young man obviously thought I was one of them. It was a natural enough mistake. Larsen and I had been collaborating as equals and he had even deferred to me on deciding which of the men brought in had been infected. The guard probably thought me an expert in detecting symptoms of the disease before they became apparent to others. It was too good a chance to pass up.
I said, ‘I can’t tell you that,’ trying to sound just curt enough to be authoritative without discouraging him.
‘I’m sorry sir.’
He started to turn away.
‘A bad business,’ I said.
‘Yes, sir. Very bad.’
‘I just arrived...from the other laboratory...’ I said. He showed
no signs of disbelief. ‘I’ve been in such a rush, I haven’t had time to get the details. How did the first...subject...escape, do you know? The one who broke through the fence?’ I held my breath. He didn’t doubt me at all.
‘Oh, Jefferson,’ he said. ‘Why, he broke the restraining straps. He’d been taken to the laboratory for an examination or something and someone slipped up; didn’t use the reinforced straps, I guess.’
‘Damned inefficiency.’
He blinked at me; said, ‘Worse than inefficiency, if you’ll pardon my saying so, sir. I guess maybe you don’t know about Duncan?’ I shook my head. ‘Johnny Duncan. Friend of mind. Hell of a nice guy, Duncan. He was on the door, tried to stop the ghoul. Jefferson, I mean, sir. Only it’s hard to call one of them by their name ... by the name they had when they were human, you know? Makes it seem worse, somehow. Anyway, Duncan tried to stop him and the...and Jefferson tore his arm damn near off. It was just hanging there by a few ropes of tendon. Right arm, it was. Poor Duncan, he was right-handed; had to use his left hand when he shot himself. . .’
‘Shot himself?’
‘Lefthanded.’
He seemed to think this sinistral suicide more deplorable than had it been dextral; thus had morality been compromised and mutated in this place.
‘Funny, you know ... I was there by that time; I felt as if I ought to stop him from shooting himself, but he just looked at me and I couldn’t do a thing. Even if it meant I got in trouble over it...couldn’t do a thing. He put the gun to his head. He was in terrible pain, what with his arm torn off like that, but it wasn’t the pain ... it was knowing he was gonna turn ghoul. Hell of a guy. He said goodbye to me; made me feel awful. Then he blew his brains out. Wasn’t married, Duncan; that’s one thing.’
‘But... the antidote...’
‘Oh, you don’t have to tell me that, sir.’ He looked shy...maybe sly. He said, ‘I know there’s no antidote.’
I looked down at my glowing pipe and pretended that the alarm passing over my face was due to a congested stem. Slowly, I said, ‘These subjects...the ones I was able to identify, and the nurse...how are they being...treated?’
‘Oh, it’s painless, sir. No need to worry about that. One of the docs gives ‘em an injection, it’s over in a few seconds.’ He smiled at me. He was really quite young, his cheeks fuzzy, an innocent young man assuring me that murder was done efficiently and painlessly.
He said, ‘That’s what you meant when you said, antidote, huh? Funny how you scientists always use words that mean less than they ought. Meaning no offence, sir. Euphemism, is it? Well, anyhow, I guess that Duncan figured a bullet was just as painless as a shot in the arm, and a whole lot quicker. Or maybe he was afraid they wouldn’t give him the shot, come to think of it; that they’d let him turn ghoul and study him in place of Jefferson...’
‘Yes,’ I said. I felt a band of sickness tighten across my diaphragm. I had just condemned, with a nod, three men to death. And yet, if I hadn’t ... it was mercy killing, benevolent condemnation, I could justify it...and yet—
The guard was saying, ‘Maybe they would of, too, far as that goes. Of course, that was before all these other guys got infected. Got more ghouls than they know what to do with, now; can’t study all of them. I don’t know about the other lab...the one you come from...fact is, I didn’t even know there was another one. But we only got three cells here strong enough to hold ‘em and you can’t put ‘em in together or they’ll eat each other. Guess they never reckoned on having more than three at once. So the only humane thing to do...but you know about that, sir.’
On abrupt impulse, I stood up. Yes, I knew about that...now; the knowledge was stalking around like a footpad in my soul.
‘It seems to me that you know a good deal more than you’re cleared for,’ I said, jaws tight.
The guard looked frightened.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, blanching.
I pointed at him with my pipestem, paused, then sighed.
‘Where is Elston now?’ I asked.
‘He’s in his lab, sir. It’s just down the hall, third door on the right,’ he said quickly, hoping that other matters would intervene between us. I gave him a crisp nod and brushed past. He saluted. I walked down the corridor with my heels drumming just like Larsen’s.
* * * *
XV
Elston was in his laboratory, but he was not working; he was seated on a high stool, all sunk up in himself. I had the impression of a dunce at a blackboard. I closed the door and he looked up. ‘You,’ he said, without surprise. He was beyond surprise. I walked over to him and knocked my pipe out against the edge of a shelf. Test tubes rattled in a rack and arcane fluids sloshed about in beakers.
‘You should have contacted me sooner,’ I said.
‘I wish to God I had.’
‘Will you tell me about this...thing?’
‘It’s too late.’
‘It could prevent a recurrence elsewhere.’
‘I doubt...’ he said, and paused, as if his doubt were a categorical statement. His eyes turned about, looking for some object deserving of that doubt. ‘I doubt that even the government would attempt such a thing again. I am not a brave man, Harland...but there does not exist a torture that would ever again induce me to cooperate.’
‘But you never intended this.’
‘My God, no! I...never...’ His voice trailed off. He lifted a murky beaker and looked into it, as if he expected to find resolution there, or courage; reading the runes of science. He moved the beaker and the fluid sloshed about; peering at it, he seemed to be contemplating a rare vintage, a distillate of evil. I felt that the fluid should be roiling and giving off vapours; had he suddenly drained it on a compulsive whim, I would not have been surprised.
Abruptly he began to speak, driven to explain and exonerate himself.
‘In my research into chemical lobotomy, I discovered a process by which to make men mindless. I had not sought this result, it was a side-effect, accidental. These...subjects...were totally obedient and docile, but they were immensely powerful, for they no longer had inhibitions of any sort. They no longer knew the limitations of self preservation; were no longer confined by human instinct. They could, upon command, perform tasks that amazed me...’
‘The man who broke his arm lifting against an unliftable weight?’
‘You know of that? Yes, that is an example. No normal man could exert enough pressure to break his own skeleton. But, feeling no pain and totally uninhibited, a man treated by this process became a superman.’
‘But to what purpose?’
‘To my purpose, to my intentions, it was merely a side-effect. I sought to make the incurable manageable, that was all. The purpose put to this by the agency, however...the dark vision of those fiends...they foresaw an army of living robots...’
‘Of course. Men without fear, unable to feel pain, totally obedient.. .’
‘That was the idea. An army that would walk through enemy fire, keep on walking even though they had been shot several times, had limbs blown off...even crawling, legless, to carry out the attack...only an absolutely mortal wound could stop them; even dead they could move for a few moments. It is shock that stops a wounded man, but only death itself could stop these poor creatures. But there was a flaw. Nearly mindless, they could make no decisions, could not discriminate between friend and foe; nor were they belligerent. They were unstoppable but they were useless. I believed that we had come to a dead end, and I was glad. But the devious minds that controlled me...those minds must be as warped as those of my creations, their thoughts twisted through hideous configurations which bleed out humanity and distil pure evil...’ He looked directly at me. ‘The next stage ... I balked at this, they threatened...well, no matter; I am a coward; I did as they wished.’
Elston shook his head from side to side.
‘Harland, I took the obedience out. I made these creatures savage and bestial, instilling bloodlust and ferocity...the very factors tha
t my original research had been designed to quell. It was not a difficult thing, merely a matter of finding the proper chemical balance. And again we seemed to have reached a dead end. Again I was glad. In taking the obedience from them, I made them unmanageable.’
‘Then you were back where you started...’
‘Not quite. In one day, these men that controlled me, in one day those minds had realised a use for this...monstrosity.’
‘I can see none.’
‘Nor did I. But we are not like them. By this time, other scientists, scientists who thought like them, were working with me. They had access to all my material. It was one of those men who discovered that this state of mindless bloodlust could be transmitted from man to man, from host to victim. The chemicals that transfigured the mind ran rampant through the body. They infected the blood, the saliva...and could be transmitted, like any disease...like leprosy, like plague...but far, far more terrible. It was communicable madness.’
Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 72
