Chronic Fear

by Nicholson, Scott

  These idiots have even less training than I do. Or maybe they’re killing for a reason, while the best killers need no reason at all.

  Killers like me.

  Mark waited while the man flipped the bipod legs of his gun, apparently planning to set up and spray the cabin, which Mark could only barely see through the thick leaves.

  Shooting a man in the back was cowardly.

  But bravery was an abstract moral concept, lumped in with the honor-duty-courage triumvirate that the powerful had always used to manipulate fools.

  Mark didn’t need a goddamned reason.

  From eighty feet away, he fired three times in rapid succession. If the man had been moving, Mark probably would have missed all three, but at least one of them hit the target. The man’s head flopped forward without a sound.

  The clap of a single shot issued from the cabin, the bullet whistling through leaves overhead.

  Roland, you crazy bastard. I’m here to help you.

  But Roland was likely just firing in the direction of the shots. In Roland’s position, Mark would attempt to keep the attackers away from the cabin, because if they all rushed it at once—depending upon how many there were—Roland wouldn’t be able to cover all the windows.

  The SUV couldn’t have held more than six passengers, and with two down, the odds were a little better. From the location of the shots, though, Mark believed there were only three attackers.

  So the job was nearly finished. If only Roland didn’t kill him before he had a chance to finish it.

  Mark didn’t bother checking his latest victim’s pockets. Instead, he worked his way to his right, through a section of old pines and maples where the creek cut through the rotted stumps and ancient black dirt.

  A stone bounced free behind him and he spun, Glock leveled, and if it wasn’t for the soft, feminine whimper, he would have cut loose with half a dozen rounds.

  She stood there between the scabbed trunks of two white pines, the AR-15 limp in her hands, dirt streaked across her face, blonde hair stringy with sweat. A long red weal, moist with blood, ran up her forearm where she’d been scratched, and her bare knees were muddy.

  “Lex. I told you to stay in the goddamned car.”

  “You’re Seething, Mark. Darrell Silver was working on Halcyon but—”

  “Keep your voice down. The woods are full of killers.”

  “Don’t you understand? You’re not yourself.”

  “When have I ever been myself?”

  Her eyes were heavy and sad and her tears sickened him. “I can help you.”

  “Yeah, you and Briggs and CRO. Let’s all just hold hands and follow the Yellow Brick Road.”

  “I…” She shucked her backpack from her shoulder while Mark glanced around the perimeter. “I have something.”

  “Where’s Forsyth?”

  She waved the barrel of the rifle vaguely behind her. “Back there.”

  Another burst of gunfire sounded from the ridge opposite them, and a couple of shots responded from the cabin. Mark glanced around, waving his wife into the protection of the pines.

  “Mark, you’re sick,” she said. “That wasn’t Halcyon in the vial. It was Seethe.”

  Her words hit him like a mag clip. “The fuck you talking about?”

  “Forsyth set us up.”

  She leaned her rifle against a tree trunk, knelt in the mud, and unzipped the backpack. She brought out a bottle of water.

  Mark laughed and waved the gun at the rushing creek. “I’m not thirsty.”

  “It’s Halcyon.”

  “No one has Halcyon.”

  “No one has Seethe, either. But how do you feel, Mark?”

  He felt pretty damned good. He had a warm Glock and a full clip and some people to kill. Life couldn’t be better.

  She moved closer. “Like in the Monkey House, right?”

  She was saying “Monkey House” like it was a bad thing. She didn’t understand.

  “I’ve been treating you with this,” his wife said.

  “Treating me?”

  “You’re losing it, Mark. You’ve been slowly falling apart since the Monkey House.”

  “Shut up about the Monkey House. I’m fine.”

  She thrust out the plastic bottle. “You need it.”

  “You never had Halcyon.”

  She looked away, but then stepped forward and gazed into his eyes, filling him up, leaving him no place to escape. “I lied. I had to do something to save you.”

  “Lied?” Mark fought the wash of red that threatened to sweep over him like the water sluiced over the rocks. He didn’t want to kill her.

  But he had to. Seethe demanded it.

  Sometimes a guy just got in a killing mood. And now he even had a reason.

  “No, Mark,” she shouted, backpedaling and tripping on vines that grew in tangles along the creek bank. She dropped the bottle and it bounced off a stone, tumbling to Mark’s feet. He picked it up.

  “You did this for me?” he said.

  “Yes,” she hissed. “I love you, you bastard.”

  She’s a liar, but she’s the only one I can trust. Love is crazier than Seethe and Halcyon put together.

  And his choice was to trust her or kill her.

  He twisted the cap from the bottle and was about to put it to his lips when he heard a voice yell, “Don’t move or I’ll give you a third nostril.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Killers without and killers within.

  If Harding’s background digging had any merit, then the two people in the cabin with Gundersson were unstable and sociopathic. He had personal proof of Wendy’s traitorous nature, as her scent still clung to him and her whispered passion and sweet lies still swirled inside his head. But her response had seemed simultaneously robotic and disturbed, as if she were following a compulsion she didn’t quite embrace.

  And Roland had displayed his homicidal bent several times, snapping from dutiful and even dull husband to a ranting, destructive force. Harding’s research had revealed Roland’s troubles with alcohol, but Gundersson hadn’t seen so much as a drop in the cabin. No, this anger made its own sauce.

  Whatever had happened inside the Monkey House, three people had died there, and Roland and Wendy survived.

  Through whatever means.

  So he was afraid to turn his back on them, which made it difficult to keep from getting his ass shot off by the mysterious gunmen.

  But he couldn’t watch all the windows, and the bursts of automatic weapons had grown more desperate, spraying the cabin until the windows held only the most stubborn shards of glass.

  So his choices boiled down to making a deal with the devil, or just trusting the devil to help him out simply because he already owned Gundersson’s soul and didn’t much care one way or another.

  “Roland, where are the bullets for your revolver?” he shouted from the south window.

  The couple was huddled on the floor by the couch, Wendy clutching her rolled canvas to her chest as if it were a rare and precious artifact. Roland said, “I dumped them outside because I didn’t want to kill anybody.”

  Just my luck. I get the world’s first psychopathic killer with a conscience.

  Like many agents, Gundersson carried a backup weapon, a SIG-Sauer P232 that was a popular conceal-carry weapon. He fished it from the inner pocket of his vest, hammer-dropped the safety off, and held it behind him without breaking his surveillance of the window.

  “Seven shots, just pull the trigger,” he said.

  The forest had been quiet for a couple of minutes, and he wondered if Mark Morgan had taken out a couple of the black jumpsuits. Harding had told him about Morgan’s cop training, but it was hard to imagine a trainee tackling guys who were by all appearances professionals.

  If Morgan’s on Seethe, then maybe the rules don’t apply. No wonder so many people are willing to kill for this stuff.

  He felt the fingers on his wrist and the SIG pulled away. Wendy whispered, “Your gun
’s cold and short.”

  Bet you say that to every man except your husband.

  “Just go to that window across the room and fire a round every couple of minutes,” he said. “Try not to be too predictable or they’ll know you’re a decoy.”

  “I’ll do it,” Roland said, although he still sounded groggy.

  “Do you want to risk your wife banging you in the head again?”

  A staccato burst peppered the side of the cabin, a couple of rounds flying through the window above their heads. Wendy scrambled away on her hands and knees and Gundersson couldn’t help looking at her undulating rear.

  These people are going to get me dead, one way or another.

  “Roland, can you yell something to Mark?” Gundersson said. “Let him know you’re still alive in here?”

  “He won’t be able to yell back. It would give away his position.”

  “Have you considered the possibility that Mark is on their side?”

  “Yeah. And I’ve also considered the possibility you’d pull that trick to make me paranoid. You might be on their side, too.”

  “Yeah, like I’d fake playing a firing-range dummy? Or give a loaded pistol to Wendy? We’re beyond that, Roland. We’re just going to have to trust each other.”

  Roland sat rubbing his head. Across the room, Wendy had reached the window and crouched beneath the ledge. She said, “Should I shoot now?”

  “Yeah,” Gundersson said. “Just squeeze the trigger once.”

  Wendy fired and the interior of the cabin thundered. Sheet rock dust snowed from the ceiling.

  “Uh…I think he meant for you to point it outside,” Roland said.

  “Call Mark now,” Gundersson said. “Tell him Wendy’s shot and you’re alone.”

  Gundersson stood and peered around the edge of the window. A shadow darted between the trees, but he didn’t fire. He couldn’t risk hitting Mark or any other innocent bystander.

  Though at this point, he didn’t think anybody was truly innocent.

  Gundersson glanced at Roland, who had unrolled Wendy’s painting. He recognized the basic form of the figure she’d been working on the day before, but it was shot through with connected lines and letters. The new graffiti was smeared a little, as if the acrylic paint hadn’t completely dried before the canvas was rolled.

  The images clicked into place, pulling him back to high school chemistry, the periodic chart, and Mrs. Stallworth’s chalkboard.

  A chemical compound.

  The one people were dying over.

  Hidden right in front of his eyes.

  This was the secret she’d whispered of, the reason she’d seduced him in exchange for his help.

  He glanced at Wendy, and saw that she knew he’d put it together. A cold smile crossed her face, a ghost of the expression she’d worn the night before. It was a reptilian face, shaped by survival and the Monkey House experiments.

  “It’s like a living thing,” Wendy said. “An organism. Seethe wants to survive, and it will do whatever it needs to do. Kill whoever it needs to kill.”

  Gundersson had never gone in for Good versus Evil debates. He’d accepted his work for the government as Good, because the United States had a moral role as leader of the free world. And his work helped the country remain free.

  At least, that’s what he’d always told himself. Or it could have been the Captain America comic books he’d read as a kid, the wearing of the red, white, and blue as a badge of honor.

  But was saving Seethe really in the country’s best interests? Was his idealism blinding him to the terrible damage the substance was already inflicting?

  And what if it fell into terrorist hands? What if it crept across the globe, and the madness and mayhem proliferated a billionfold?

  “Shut up, Wendy,” Roland said, reaching the window beside her.

  “Once it’s in you, it never gets out,” Wendy said.

  “Shut up,” Roland repeated.

  “You can water it down with Halcyon, but—”

  Roland covered her mouth with his palm, and she struggled to break free. “I told you to shut the hell up!”

  Gundersson was so fixated on the sick drama before him that the nearby burst of automatic weaponry seemed a normal part of the mad tapestry, the perfect syncopated soundtrack for the end of sanity. The reverberation deafened him, bullets spraying across the interior of the cabin as the walls erupted in pocks and scars. A framed painting above the mantel fell from its perch, and an oil lantern shattered.

  Then the shooter filled the frame of the window, sweeping machine-gun fire and stitching the walls, but he’d sprayed too high. Gundersson reacted, lifting his Glock and squeezing off five rounds. The face disappeared in a gout of blood and the corpse flopped backward.

  The man must have rushed the window while Gundersson wasn’t watching, perhaps growing desperate when he realized his comrades were being picked off from behind.

  Which meant this wasn’t a mission designed to capture.

  It was all or nothing.

  He’d told Harding most of what he knew. And if his own government was willing to kill all involved to suppress Seethe, then Gundersson’s idealism was shot to shit.

  Freedom, like Seethe, would destroy you in a heartbeat and never mourn your loss.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  My wife’s fault. If not for her, I’d have heard Scagnelli sneak up on us.

  Scagnelli lowered the binoculars after the last round of gunshots.

  “I believe that was the last one,” he said. “Right, Mark?”

  Mark and Alexis sat side by side on a sunlit boulder, a little away from the creek and perched on a ledge so the cabin was visible in the valley below. Scagnelli had taken their weapons, and Mark’s restlessness caused him to twitch. Memories of the Monkey House danced in his head like primitives around a bonfire. He wanted to leap from the boulder and run screaming through the trees, raging at the intense awareness of sunlight and breath and the rushing water and the crisp, naked rocks.

  But that final shred of self, the vestige of his ego, hung like a spark in the darkness, the lone, distant star in a rapidly dimming universe.

  Alexis.

  He forced his hands to quit shaking, gripping the slack fabric of his pants.

  “Only three,” Mark said, the words feeling strange on his tongue, as if language were a lost thing. “There were only three gunmen.”

  “He needs the Halcyon,” Alexis said to Scagnelli. “Please.”

  Scagnelli pointed the AR-15 at her. “Did your husband really expect you to use this? Looks to me like Seethe turns you into a goddamned idiot. But that’s good news for me. People pay dearly to turn themselves into idiots.”

  “You have both the Seethe and the Halcyon now,” Alexis pleaded. “Just give him a few sips of the Halcyon, and then go.”

  “Yes, I have both. I’m not sure what the hell I have, except two tickets to paradise. Or hell. But why should I help your husband?”

  Mark wanted to tell her to shut up, but language was lost in the Seething storm of his skull.

  “Because,” she said. “Seethe and Halcyon are useless without us. We’re the test subjects. We’re what happens.”

  “Plenty more where you come from.”

  “Sure, if you want to wait a decade. A lot of people want those drugs. Powerful people. If you stay with Daniel Burchfield, you’re going to lose a lot of money.”

  Scagnelli chuckled, turned for a quick squint through the binoculars, and said, “Who says I’m working for Burchfield?”

  “He’s had a taste. He’s motivated. And he’s infected enough to crave the power it will give him.”

  “So, what’s the problem? Burchfield’s going to be president. I’d say being on his team is a good thing.”

  Mark gauged the distance between him and Scagnelli. Twenty feet. Semiautomatic rifle. He’d get hit, for sure, probably four times.

  He raked his knuckles across the rough skin of the boulder. The pain felt go
od, an echo of the Monkey House where it had saved his life.

  Pain is your friend.

  And, in the deepest truth of existence, pain was the dominant story. It was the core truth, maybe even the entire point, of life.

  Suffering.

  When people invented God, they invented suffering. And God was the relief from suffering.

  Death was deliverance.

  But on this Earth, God was pain.

  Or pain was God.

  Scagnelli’s bullets wouldn’t hurt him. They would just be part of what already was, the story of Mark Morgan’s pain.

  His wife’s words came to him as if through a fog on a hidden lake full of slithering leviathans.

  “You can do better,” she said, and Mark wasn’t sure if the words were meant for him.

  “I’ve considered it,” Scagnelli said. “But the way I look at it, six people know what this stuff is. Two of you are here, Wendy and Roland will probably be coming out of the cabin any minute now, and Darrell Silver is probably on the run to New York or San Francisco or wherever else the drug culture will give him a home.”

  “You forgot Wallace Forsyth,” Alexis said.

  Scagnelli took the vial from a pocket of his cargo pants and held it to the light. He gave it a little shake, and the rattle reverberated in Mark’s head like a stone bounced down an elevator shaft. Mark ground his fist against the boulder, drawing blood until the sound went away.

  “Your fundamentalist friend took the express elevator,” Scagnelli said. “Guess he couldn’t wait to get his wings and harp. But I’ll bet God has a special floor for former politicians, don’t you?”

  “That vial was nearly full,” Alexis said.

  “Yeah, and I can’t waste another pill. And I can’t waste one drop of Halcyon. So your dear, sweet husband will just have to ride it out.”

  Scagnelli was talking as if there would be a future, and Alexis was playing along. No way could Scagnelli let them live.

  No way Burchfield would let them live.