by Jude Hardin
“Did you hear me?” Davidson said. “The agents are dead, and The Factory will be clean before another set is sent in. I have a lot of time and money invested in this thing too, you know?” He paused. “If we have to start over, then we’ll start over. I still believe in this product, and I’m with you one hundred percent.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll go it alone this time. Having a partner just doesn’t seem to ever work out for me.”
Davidson looked at his watch. “I need to get back to the base,” he said. “I’ll call Vic in a little while, and the three of us can meet somewhere for a drink tonight and talk all this over. You want to do that?”
The door opened and the man who’d been driving the van walked in. Tumac. It was a ridiculous name, Davidson thought. Tumac walked in, noticeably favoring one leg, and a few seconds later three other guys followed. One of the other guys was carrying a roll of duct tape, and one of them was carrying a blowtorch.
“Sorry, Dave,” Lenny said.
“What’s going on?” Davidson said.
But in his heart—which was suddenly beating much faster than it had been a minute ago—he knew what was going on.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Colt opened his eyes and looked at his watch. 7:39. He’d slept for over four hours.
He and Diana had broken into The Grocery Store and had stolen as much food as they could carry, more than enough to last until tomorrow morning when the supply helicopter came. They’d each eaten a can of Dinty Moore beef stew for dinner, along with some crackers, and then they had locked themselves into an empty office and had gone to sleep on the floor. Diana was still curled up on the other side of the room, and Colt didn’t see any point in waking her.
He’d found the directory with the residents’ photographs in it before going to sleep. He picked it up now and tiptoed out of the room and gently closed the door.
The hallway reeked. The smell of three dead humans mingled with the tangy redolence of gasoline from the shattered Molotov cocktail. There was the guy in the radio room, the guy on the floor, and the woman downstairs. The bodies hadn’t actually started to decompose, but there was blood everywhere, and the deceased had lost control of their bodily functions when their hearts stopped beating. It was enough to make you puke, Colt thought.
Last night before he’d gone to sleep, Colt had found The Unsmiling Man on the very last page of the directory. His name was Barry Westinghouse, and he worked at The Factory. He wore a full beard and wire rim eyeglasses and the same sad expression Colt had noticed at the church. He hadn’t even smiled for the camera.
Colt put his shoes on and the ankle holster and walked into another office. This one had a window, and Colt opened it about an inch to let some fresh air in. He would have opened it all the way, but it was still blisteringly cold outside. He pulled his cell phone out and punched in Westinghouse’s number. A woman answered on the third ring.
“Is this Mrs. Westinghouse?” Colt said.
“Yes, this is Brenda Westinghouse. Can I help you?”
She had a pleasant enough voice, but it was sing-songish and overly cheerful, as though it were coming from a third-rate actress on a soap commercial. Typical townie, Colt thought.
“My name’s John Millington,” he said. “I’m new here, and I was wondering if I might have a word with your husband.”
“Oh, sure! Let me just see if he’s out of bed yet.”
Colt waited.
Half a minute later, a sleepy sounding man said, “Hello?”
Colt introduced himself, and then got right to the point. “I saw you at church the other night,” he said. “I know this is going to sound strange, but I noticed that you weren’t—how should I say—as gleeful as the other parishioners. It’s something that has been baffling me since I got here, why everyone seems so happy all the time. Everyone except you, that is.”
“You writing a book or something?” Westinghouse said. His tone—one of mild aggravation—was actually refreshing. Finally, a real person to talk to.
“Just curious,” Colt said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Is everyone here high on life, or is something else going on?”
“I really can’t say.”
“You really can’t say because you don’t know, or because your wife is standing there listening to you?” Colt said.
Westinghouse hesitated. “The latter,” he said.
Colt wasn’t quite sure about how to handle this. He wanted to talk to Barry Westinghouse in private, but if he left the building he would risk running into more sloffs. And he certainly couldn’t ask Westinghouse to come to Town Hall. Not with three dead bodies stinking up the place.
Colt walked to the window. The sun had risen behind a thin layer of clouds, and ghostly white plumes of steam rose from the storm drains along Main Street. A couple of cars passed by, and there were a few people milling around on the sidewalk. Everything seemed normal. No baseball bats or machetes or firebombs. Nobody was sucking any eyeballs out of any sockets. Maybe the sloffs only came out at night, he thought. Under a full moon. Like werewolves. It sounded ridiculous, but everything about this place was ridiculous.
Colt decided to take a chance.
“Could you meet me somewhere?” he said. “Maybe at The Diner for a cup of coffee?”
“I have to be at work at nine, but I guess I have time for a cup of coffee. I can meet you there at eight-thirty if you want.”
“That’ll be fine,” Colt said. “See you there.”
Colt closed the window and walked back to the office where he and Diana had slept. He opened the door and peeked in on her. She was still curled up on the floor. He didn’t want to wake her up, but he couldn’t remove the barricade from the front door and go out and leave her there alone. One of the sloffs might come in and start gnawing her face off or something.
He was about to call out her name when he remembered the back door. If he went out that way, he wouldn’t be able to get back in on his own, but he could call Diana’s cell and she could let him in. That would give her another hour of sleep, sleep that she desperately needed whether she wanted to admit it or not.
Diana’s phone was in her backpack. Colt made sure it was on, and that the ringer was on. He placed it near her head where she would hear it.
He grabbed his coat and his backpack, walked downstairs and pushed his way through the rear exit. The arctic air hit his face like a thousand needles. He couldn’t wait to leave this obscenely cold weather and get back to Florida where it was nice and warm.
There was an alley behind the Town Hall building. To Colt’s right, it dead-ended with a sign that said NO THRU TRAFFIC. To his left, it led out to Jasmine Street. He headed toward Jasmine, and when he got there he took another left toward Main. He took a right at Main Street and from there it was three more blocks to The Diner.
He passed a few people on the sidewalk, and they all smiled and waved and said good morning. Aggressively nice, Colt thought. It just wasn’t normal.
There were a couple of guys standing outside The Grocery Store, examining the door Colt had jimmied last night when he and Diane looted the place. The men smiled and said hello. If they were upset or concerned that someone had burglarized their establishment, they didn’t show it.
Colt walked into The Diner. There was a counter and a row of stools on one side, and an L-shaped series of booths on the other. Lots of chrome and glass and stainless steel. Lots of vinyl upholstery in a shade of turquoise that reminded Colt of the 1950s. Ernest Tubb was walking the floor over someone on the jukebox, and Barry Westinghouse wasn’t there yet.
Colt took a seat at the counter. A waitress walked over and set a heavy ceramic mug in front of him and filled it with coffee. Her nametag said Jennifer.
“What can I get for you?” she said.
Big smile. Absurdly cheerful.
“How did you know I wanted coffee?” Colt said.
“Doesn’t everybody?”
Colt took a sip. It was ver
y good and very hot.
“Nothing else right now,” he said. “I might order some breakfast in a little while.”
“Okie dokie. Just let me know.”
She sidestepped perkily to the other side of the counter to give someone a refill.
Barry Westinghouse walked in at 8:36. Colt recognized his face from the picture in the directory. He still had the beard and the wire-rimmed glasses. He still looked the same, but there had been nothing in the directory about his size. He was enormous. Six-five, probably, and every bit of three hundred pounds.
Colt stood and shook his hand.
“John Millington,” Colt said.
“Barry Westinghouse. You want to move to a booth?”
“Okay.”
Colt followed Westinghouse to the very last booth in the back of the restaurant, the one at the end of the L. It was next to the restrooms and the swinging door to the kitchen. There was a jaundiced overhead light fixture and no window. It was noisy from dishes clinking and fryers sizzling and cooks shouting orders to each other—and probably from the occasional toilet flushing. It was the worst table in the restaurant, and the next two booths in line, which happened to be vacant at the moment, didn’t seem to be much better.
Jennifer hustled back there with a cup of coffee for Westinghouse. She asked if he wanted anything else right now, and he declined.
When she left, Westinghouse said, “I don’t have much time, so I need to make this quick.”
“Fine with me,” Colt said.
“First of all, you need to tell me who you are.”
“John Millington. I already told you that. My wife and I were sent here to—”
“Cut the crap,” Westinghouse said. “People don’t call strangers on the phone first thing Monday morning and ask them why they weren’t smiling in church. Are you some kind of spy or something?”
“Like I said, just curious.”
“Then I’m afraid this conversation is over, Mr. Millington.”
Westinghouse started to get up.
“Wait,” Colt said. “Sit down. I’m going to tell you some things, but I can’t tell you everything. Fair enough?”
Westinghouse eased back into the booth. “I’m listening,” he said.
“We were sent here to investigate the Kyle Lofton incident.”
“Who’s we?”
“My wife and I.”
“I know that. I mean which agency. Y’all with the military, the FBI, or what?”
“That’s one of the things I can’t talk about,” Colt said.
Westinghouse tapped his fingers on the table. He seemed edgy, nervous. “I figured that deal with Kyle Lofton probably had something to do with why you were here,” he said. “So what have you found out so far?”
“Nothing, really.”
“You’re lying, but I guess it doesn’t matter, as long as Brenda and me get our paychecks in March. I sure am glad it’s almost over.”
Colt took a sip of coffee. “All right,” he said. “I told you why I’m here. Now it’s your turn. Why does everyone here seem like they’ve been sprinkled with super sparkly magically delicious happy dust?”
“You have to promise, no matter what happens, that my name doesn’t get mentioned.”
“I promise,” Colt said.
Westinghouse leaned forward. “It’s the vitamins, man. They’re putting something in the vitamins.”
“How do you know that?”
“The change started a few months ago. I noticed it right away. See, I never took those vitamins in the first place. Six years ago, when the experiment started, they said it was mandatory to take one every day, but I always managed to hide mine and flush it down the toilet. I never did like the idea of taking any sort of pills from the government, you know? All those experiments they did back in the sixties, with LSD and whatnot. No telling what they were putting in those things. Anyway, for five and a half years the vitamins didn’t seem to do anything to anybody. They were just regular old vitamins, I guess, some sort of special formula NASA came up with for space travel, just like they told us. But then a few months ago everyone in town started acting real happy all the time. And it wasn’t like they were high or drunk or anything, just genuinely content and cheerful and easy to get along with. Everyone except me. So it has to be the vitamins. You see what I’m saying?”
“I do,” Colt said. And it struck him immediately that whatever had been added to the vitamins to cause the extreme happiness must be the same thing causing the extreme violence.
Westinghouse looked at his watch. “I’ve just been going with the flow,” he said. “Riding it out till payday, which is coming up soon. I didn’t want to rock the boat and risk losing the money after all this time. Until you came along, nobody in town even noticed that I wasn’t part of the glee club. They’re all off in their own little wonderful worlds. It’s like I don’t even know my own wife anymore. She’s not the same woman I married, that’s for sure. But I’m hoping she’ll go back to normal once the experiment is over and she gets off those pills. Do you think she will?”
“I would think so,” Colt said. “The directory says you work in The Factory. Would it be possible for someone to come in and tamper with the vitamins?”
“I don’t think so. I’m just a capper, so I don’t have access to the lab where they fill the capsules, but I don’t think so. It’s all regulated pretty tightly, with supervisors and video cameras and everything. If the formula was being messed with here, a whole bunch of people would have to be in on it.”
“Then what do you think is happening?”
“The base product, the powder that they fill the capsules with, gets delivered in sealed plastic canisters,” Westinghouse said. “So that would be the place to look, I think. Wherever those canisters are coming from. All I know is that someone, somewhere, has taken an ordinary multivitamin and changed it into some kind of powerful stimulant.”
“Thanks for talking with me,” Colt said. “I appreciate your help.”
Westinghouse checked the time again. “Yeah. I have to get to work now. I’m late already. Good luck with your investigation, Mr. Millington.”
“Thanks.”
“And remember, none of this came from me.”
Westinghouse got up and walked to the front of the restaurant, pushed the door open and disappeared.
The next time Colt saw him, he was in several different pieces in the alleyway behind Town Hall.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Diana woke to the obnoxious trill that her mobile phone had left the factory with, an endorsement for the vibrate mode if there ever was one. She sat up, disoriented for a few seconds, and then reached over and answered the call.
“I need you to come downstairs and open the back door for me,” Colt said.
He sounded frantic.
“Where did you go?” Diana said.
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Let me in before the sloffs come back around.”
“I’m on my way.”
As always, Diana had kept her pistol within reach while she slept. She hurriedly strapped it to her ankle and put her shoes on and left the office and walked downstairs and opened the door.
Safely inside, Colt said, “This place doesn’t smell any better than it did when I left. I swear, I’m going to fire the maid if this keeps up.”
“It’s pretty bad,” Diana said. “What we need to do is move all three of the bodies into one of the offices in the basement, open the office window and shut them in there. The outside air is cold enough to keep them from rotting.”
“There’s a fourth body right outside,” Colt said. “Which kind of blows my werewolf theory all to—”
“What are you talking about?”
“I went and had a chat with Barry Westinghouse, the guy I looked up in the directory last night. We talked for a while, and then he left The Diner to go to work. I stayed and ate some breakfast. When I came up through the alley just now, I saw one of Westinghouse’s legs lying on
the pavement. Then I saw his head. What was left of it.”
“But you didn’t see any sloffs while you were out?”
“No. But they’re obviously around, and they’re obviously not particular about what time of day they attack. I’m thinking it’s just a matter of time until the whole town goes into a panic, happy pills or not.”
“Happy pills?”
“I was right,” Colt said. “There’s something wrong with the vitamins.”
He told Diana what Barry Westinghouse had told him.
“If it’s the vitamins, then why didn’t these symptoms start showing up a long time ago?” Diana said. “That’s what doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Someone has changed the formula in the last few months. Changed it, or added something to it. And since we know how tightly regulated these things are, it had to have been someone at the top.”
Diana nodded. “Maybe. At any rate, there’s nothing we can do about it right now. Once we get back to civilization and explain all this to The Director, I’m sure he’ll pass it on to the appropriate agency. A full scale investigation will be launched, and the responsible parties will be held accountable. Until then, all we can do is wait.”
“Score one for the good guys,” Colt said.
“I’m glad it worked out, but what you did this morning was dangerous. And kind of stupid, to tell you the truth. You could have waited until Barry Westinghouse had a chance to talk to you over the phone. I don’t want you leaving this building again, okay?”
