by R. J. Henry
“What?” Trudy swung around. “You’re nothing but bone. Eat!”
“I’m on my way out. I just wanted to see if you needed me to pick something up?” Her hands shook. She knew her mother would object to leaving town for any reason besides shopping.
“Where you off to, exactly?”
“Out of town. Maybe get some namebrand groceries for once,” Maddie said. Her mother stared heavily into her. She chuckled, showing all of her teeth in a giant smile. “Okay. But, remember, I only like organic foods. None of that processed crap,” Trudy said, waving her hand by her shoulder. She came back out of the kitchen, holding a piece of scribbled on white paper. “Take this. Do you need money?”
“No, I’m good.”
“Well, okay, because you weren’t going to get any. I raised you for damn neared twenty years. If anything, you owe me,” she said with a smile. Maddie knew she was being funny. However, not many people were able to catch on to her wild sense of humor.
Trudy lowered her eyes, darkened with sadness. She walked back into the kitchen, dragging the heels of her house slippers behind her. Maddie followed her.
She watched as Trudy trembled to pour herself a cup of coffee. The drips of cold coffee stuck to the brim of the glass. She knew it wasn’t her first cup. “What’s wrong?”
Trudy didn’t answer. She just checked her watch, grabbed a book, and headed out to her porch. Maddie sighed. She realized what time it was. Her mother always heads outside the time. She waits, almost every day, outside. No matter the weather, she was always outside.
“Mom, don’t do this anymore!”
She ignored Maddie’s pleas, slamming the screen door shut.
Maddie sat next to her. “Why must you torture yourself?” She waited for a reply. Trudy opened her book, the same book she has been reading for eighteen years after Emily left. “Mom?”
Maddie realized she wasn’t going to get anywhere with her. She got up, dusted the dirt off, and left back to her house. Before leaving Trudy’s yard, she hollered, “I love you.” At that moment, Trudy waved. That was as good as it gets when trying to break her trance.
She trekked up her driveway, watching as the neighbor’s dog ran up to her.
“Max!” a man’s voice said. “Leave the nice girl alone.”
Maddie looked up. Oh boy, it’s Steven Degras, she thought. Her old high school crush, wind blowing back his grey T-Shirt, approached her. She could feel her cheeks flush as he inched closer.
“Sorry about that, ma’am,” his mannerisms made her melt.
“It is okay, Steven. Cute doggie. What breed is she?”
“Terrier, poodle mix, or something,” he chuckled, “Max is my girlfriends’ dog. She is at work, so I have to dog-sit.”
Maddie looked at her feet. She quietly sighed, learning he is still taken. His girlfriend, Theresa, still dangles him along. Yet, anytime he tries to commit, she backs off him. But, not so far to make him appear available to anyone. It placed a fire under Maddie’s belly. But anytime she got up the nerve to do, or say anything, they were back together once again.
Steven squinted his eyes. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
She wiped back her bangs from her eyes. “Yeah, we graduated together. Don’t you remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Fatty Maddie! How are you? I almost didn’t recognize you.”
She frowned. “Yeah, no one calls me that anymore.”
“I can see,” he said, sizing up her new look. “You had to of lost, what? A hundred pounds or so.”
“One-fifty-six, to be exact,” she said, not so proud she ever weighed that much. She is happy it fell off, but her face would instantly tighten in embarrassment when she came across someone who remembered what she used to look like.
“Huh, it’s a shame, you know?” he said, hooking the dog back on its leash.
“What do you mean?”
“I liked how you looked. I mean, I could get used to this, but it’s not you.”
Maddie grinned. Wish you liked me enough to ever ask me out.
A pink car drove by. Theresa, she thought. The she-devil. It honked as she retracted her window. “Sweetie, I got off early. Come on.”
Steven waved. “Nice seeing you again.”
He jumped in the car. Maddie could hear her voice say, “Who was that?”
The jealous tone in Theresa’s voice made her smile. She never thought, in a million years, Miss Perfect would ever be jealous over her.
“Wow,” she said to herself. “Now, that right there is an accomplishment.”
Chapter 4
“No, no, no. This s not happening!” Marcel paced his lab, racing his fingers through his small amount of hair. He mumbled under his breath, “How did this happen? I did everything I was supposed to.”
He gritted his teeth, grinding them. Calista gripped the iron bars of her imprisonment and wailed as she failed with her attempt at bending them to free herself. With a growl in her voice, she hissed, “You couldn’t have at least cleaned this monkey cage?”
He stumbled back on her request. “Can you blame me? I was in a hurry. Just pushing it in my lab raised enough questions from my colleagues. Especially your colleague.”
She gasped, “Emily?”
“Yes and a stubborn woman she is.” He sighed. “What is with women nowadays? They are all stubborn-err, determined, as you put it.”
Calista moaned, rubbing her neck. “Aargh! My throat!”
Marcel’s voice became monotonous; as he eyed the small cooler, he placed next to the sink and said, “You’re hungry.”
He treaded towards the container, dragging his heels across the tile floor. Shaking his head, he bowed to the sight of it. He placed his palm on the lid. His fingers trembled over the sliding latch. This is disgusting, he knew what it contained, but this was the only way to not be caught.
“What is it?”
Before he could answer, Emily barged inside his lab. “Where is Calista, and why did you need a giant cage from the biology department? And, one more thing…” her voice trailed off as she noticed Calista rocking in the corner of the cage.
The CBH experiment, from this Project Fledge… This is a virus.
Emily widened her eyes at the pale complexion of her best friend. “What the hell, Marcel?”
He shook his hands, defending himself. “It is not what it looks like. I can explain!”
“What did you do to her? She is covered in blood.”
Emily’s frantic escalation raised Marcel’s guard.
“Will you shut my door and shut up?” realizing the harshness of his words, he added, “Please.”
She pursed her lips, stopping herself from saying anything else until she finished closing the door behind her. She watched him maneuver around the piles of papers. He moved them briskly with his foot, bending down anytime he found one that he needed. He stacked them next to the cooler, trembling as he moved his sight back upon it.
Sensing Emily’s piercing gaze he asked, “What do you want? Why are you still in my lab?”
“I want answers.”
“I may be able to help. What is it?”
“Oh, no. I am the one asking the questions here.”
“Then, ask.”
“Does this have anything to do with that,” she tossed up air quotation marks with her fingers, “top secret experiment you’ve been working on?” she dropped her hands and folded her arms across her chest.
“Project Fledge.”
“Is it?” She began to feel impish with irritation. A simple question, which is all she wanted, answered. She felt like he was trying avoiding answering her. He seemed reluctant to.
He exasperated a sigh, hoping to end this conversation. He thought of ways to change the subject off him.
She began tapping her foot inconsistently. “Well?”
He glanced at her stance, noticing her enlarged mid-section that he had not discovered under the extra fluff her coat provided from the night before. “How’s the baby?�
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She flung her hands into the air, waving them by her ears. “You are the most irritating old man I have ever had the displeasure of meeting! Now answer me, please,” she said, heaving a grunt into the air.
“I’m a displeasure?” Not one memory served him to remember any moment in time to, that of, which she was recalling.
“Yes, don’t you remember Thanksgiving at your house?”
“Oh, that? That was nothing.” He remembered, now, what she was talking about. He chuckled with fondness. “Yeah, that was a good time.”
“You threw a dinner roll at me and told me to fatten up some more.”
He chuckled with lightheartedness as he examined her stomach, “Well, it looks like it worked.”
“Heh, now answer me.”
He sighed, impending a rage within himself. “What was supposed to perfect the human genome turned out to make her the perfect killing machine.”
Marcel reached inside the cooler and picked up a rat. “Watch,” he demanded as he tossed Calista the rodent. Emily winced at the view of her devouring the thing whole.
“Killing? So she has killed. Like, a person, or just those?”
“I believe she killed four people.”
“You’re not sure?” She continued on her rant, “what did you do wrong, Marcel?”
His eyes brightened as he frowned. “Nothing. I followed my given instructions and did it exactly how I was told to do it. Maybe I need to try again. It’s possible I may have misread the secret services’ instructions. I don’t know.”
Emily breathed, “No.”
“No?”
“You need to reverse its effects, and now.”
“I can’t. I wasn’t given a reversible formula. Not even a vaccine in case things go wrong.”
“Well, I’d say things went wrong.”
“Not necessarily. It’s just her that is affected.”
“Well, you need to make one.”
“A cure?”
“Both.”
“I may be able to create a vaccine, but for what purpose? Who is to say people can contract this? Or if it would even work?”
“Where are the bodies she attacked? Did you run tests or analysis on them?”
“I left them where I found them.”
“How many were there?”
“Four. Three in the street, and one in an apartment on Ridgefield Drive. But, the three bodies disappeared when I brought her back to my lab.”
“The apartment? What floor?”
“Third. Why?”
“I know someone there. I have to leave, now,” she said, grabbing her keys from her pocket.
“I’m coming with you,” he announced as he swung his coat over his shoulders.
“You don’t need to. I can take care of it myself,” her ways were dead set, but Marcel refused to allow any harm to be done to her.
“I’m coming, rather you want me to or not.” The look in his eyes screamed crazy. The one thing she didn’t want to do was poke the beast.
“Well, I don’t want you to.”
“Too bad, my coat is already on,” he said, lifting his chin.
She couldn’t help but stop him. “What about Calista?”
He watched as she sat in the cage, burrowed deep into a corner. “Eh, she’ll be fine.”
Emily shook her head, locking his door. “Well, until then, no one will have access in here but us. No need for people to overreact as to why we have a person trapped in a cage.”
He laughed. “No kidding. As a scientist, we already have a bad enough rap from those liberal, hippies, brats. They constantly accuse us of testing products on living beings.”
She paused, squinting her face. “But, don’t we?”
He threw his hand down into the air, as if he were karate chopping a board. “Yes, but that is not the point.”
She sighed a small, stifled, laugh as she followed him to his car. The smell of stale fries incubated under the beaming sun. Under her feet were half-eaten burgers, and several dozen empty coffee containers. She grimaced, looking in the back seat. Old clothes, that smelled with a rotting stench of body odor laid out across the entire back seat. “Ugh. Do you live in your car?”
He shrugged. “Don’t like it, get out.”
Her seatbelt was already fastened across her chest. “I’m good. Just crack a window, will you?”
He was unique, to her. Almost fatherlike. Even through all of the bickering, she still looked up to him in a way a daughter should look up to her father. She lacked one in her life, making it hard for her to determine how she should act around him. She didn’t want him to feel awkward around her. But, somehow, sometimes, she felt he knew it too. She honestly thinks that is why he trusts her enough to only inform her on things that are of a need to know basis.
His hair, grey with age, wisped in the wind as the car moved steadfast. His face, creased with age, matched his aging hands. Emily saw the wisdom in his eyes, from living a long life, but she could sense a darkness about them. A regret of some sort.
Unable to decipher his emotionless gaze, she focused on her one mission: to remove any traces of evidence Calista may have left behind.
They grew up together, and the last thing Emily wanted to see was her best friend to sit in a jail cell. It’s bad enough she has to be in that damn cage, she thought. She knew it was probably for the best, but denied it should be deemed as such.
Calista, by nature, was a sweet girl growing up. Even God knew she lacked the nurture from her neurotic workaholic parents. Even then, she was still able to show, and feel, a sense of lovingness to those who didn’t even deserve it.
Emily was unable to wrap her mind around Calista as a killer.
“How sure are you that this person is dead?” She was convinced he was wrong. There was no doubt that his age could have affected his ability to tell the living from the dying.
“He didn’t have a pulse when I left. I don’t know for sure. But I do know he was unresponsive.”
“Hmmm.”
Her accusation became clear to him. In his experience with her, he understood when she disbelieved him. He knew she would never say it aloud. The piercing look she shot at him said it louder than any set of words she could string together.
“Look, I know for a fact, that a person is dead when their heart stops beating. Plain and simple. No heart equals no life,” he paused, quieting his tone as he continued, “at least, not a life I would enjoy living.”
“What? You haven’t enjoyed the long life you were given so far?” She was presumptuous, but needed to know how living a rich life could be consequential.
In school, she would always borrow Calista’s good clothes. They were made professionally and not by the hand of an old maid. It’s not that she was poor, but the fact that the cost of living outweighed the money spent by her mother on venues, depleted her chance at ever wearing anything name brand.
He sighed, hesitant. “Not lately…” He seemed to of dazed off in a trance. His eyes were lost in deep thought. She knew this, and kept her mouth shut for the remainder of the drive up from Wyllys Avenue, headed North West towards Ridgefield Drive.
•••
Jack rested his chin on the heel of his palm, pushing aside yet another stack of papers. He sipped the last drop of his coffee as his eyes began to weigh down. He jumped as Brinks rose from her chair. Her eyes were bright, and without a single dose of caffeine, she was still able to appear well kept and wide-awake. He didn’t know how she did it. Must not have any kids. He chuckled at his own thought.
“I have to make a quick phone call. Don’t move, and keep working.”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, which is it? Don’t move, or keep working?”
She glared at him with wide eyes.
“Okay,” he breathed, waiting for her to leave, “Obviously not a single funny bone resides in that woman.”
He tapped the end of blue ink pen on the wooden surface of her desk. Whistling a tune, he examined her office.
Plaques, awards, and a few sports trophies covered the entire back wall behind her desk. Impressive, he thought, continuing with his gaze towards the wall next to him.
Above his head was a diploma from one of the Country’s most prestigious colleges. “Okay, now she’s just showing off.” A four-digit year, from when she supposedly graduated, however, caught him off guard. Where it should have read: 1988, it read 1898. He shook his head. “For a high-end, sophisticated school, they sure don’t know how to proofread.”
Getting bored with her two other bare walls; he decided to focus on the items upon her desk. Not much to look at. Just the average pencil sharpener, calendar, and penholder. But, something new appeared. Left in plain sight. It seemed to have been accidently forgotten by Brinks.
Her keys, he thought.
He sidled up around her desk, careful to watch the door behind him. He ran his fingers along the edge of the desk, and in a sly motion, he swept up the keys.
A tiny brass key, significantly different from the rest, found place between two of his fingers. He slid it into the keyhole on the locked drawer. He turned it, and to his amazement, it unlocked. She wouldn’t normally leave such accessible items just lying around, but his curiosity punched through his integrity when the drawer slid a half-inch open on its own. “I’m taking that as a sign,” he said with a smile.
He pulled it open, revealing an empty space. Recalling from a previous experience, he popped the fake bottom out. Under the thinned, wooden, slab was a manila envelope. Standard size for an office-related work file. However, typically, they are stamped and addressed. This envelope had only two words scribbled across the center: PROJECT FLEDGE, in neat, legible, print.
He opened it, noticing it wasn’t sealed. A small stack of papers was stapled together. He read them, and after a few minutes, the office door opened. He didn’t waiver in movement as Brinks walked through the door with such an elegant manner.
She folded her arms across her chest. She tapped her foot, and realized he wasn’t planning to speak first.
“Haven’t you ever heard the phrase, ‘curiosity killed the cat’?”
He narrowed his eyes on her. “What the hell is this?”
