Cruel World (38 page)

He stood, his hands shaking as he searched the lower part of the wall, finding a knob mounted on a steel plate.

“Quinn?” There was an edge of worry in Alice’s voice, a tone of warning. But he could stop the movement of his hand no more than he could control the arc of the sun.

His fingers gripped the knob.

Spun it.

Light spread like a wave from the fixtures in the next room.

He stared at what waited in its center and tried not to scream.

Chapter 30

The Belly of the Beast

Alice stepped up beside him. As her eyes focused on what lay beyond, he clapped a hand to her mouth, stifling the cry that tried to break free.

It was clearly an operating room. There was a medical bed against the right wall, stripped and unused. A large light, hooded by reflective glass, hung from the ceiling by an articulating arm. The far end of the room held a counter and a bank of temperature controlled containers, all of them linked to one another, their doors marked with labels too small to read at a distance.

The rest of the area was occupied by mounds of bone.

It grew outward from the center of the space, great sheets of it climbing the walls and smothering anything beneath. The ceiling was completely gone, pieces of broken tile laying everywhere as if a bomb had detonated nearby. In its place the bone threaded between supports and cables, its white mass spliced with light fixtures and steel struts. But the middle of the room held their complete attention, the sight nearly beyond comprehension. Quinn stared at the spectacle, transfixed and trying to quell the mounting horror that grew like a tsunami inside him.

The bone piled to over five feet at the center of the operating space, and protruding from its top was a man’s upper body.

He was slumped toward them, his neck bent forward, chin on chest, his tangled hair askew. One arm was completely encased by the bone while the other remained free. Below his chest he seemed to be fused with the mass of calcification.

“Oh my God,” Alice whispered as she drew his hand away from her face.

“What is it?” Ty asked. Neither of them answered.

Quinn stepped through the open doorway, pausing for an eternity as he listened. Only the dripping of water met his ears. Slowly, he made his way across the room and approached the corpse, Alice and Ty’s footsteps following his. He stopped a pace away from the man and dropped into a crouch, tipping his head to one side to get a better view of the dead man’s face.

He had been in his late forties, and handsome. Even with the cold pallor of death, his features were lean and defined, his cheeks covered in sparse stubble as well as his strong jaw. He wore a blue, button-up shirt, the tie at the throat loosened and trailing down where it disappeared into the osseous fibers. Over the shirt was a white lab coat, the breast unmarked by a nametag or threaded embossing. Quinn studied the man for a time, examining how the bone melded with his clothing, and he assumed the flesh beneath.

“Who are you?” Quinn whispered.

The man’s arm whipped out, and a cold hand grasped his wrist.

Quinn couldn’t stifle the yell that leapt from his throat as he jerked away, breaking the icy hold. He stumbled back, bumping into Alice who grabbed his shoulders, steadying him.

The man’s arm hung in the air, suspended there as if it had always been. His body convulsed, and he stiffened, his head tipping back on his neck until he looked at them with hazy eyes.

“Holy shit, he’s alive,” Alice said. Quinn stepped forward and cautiously approached the partially cocooned man.

“Can you hear me?” Quinn asked. The man gazed around the room, eyes half-lidded, lips blue and parted. He began to shiver. Gradually the tremors ceased, and he swallowed, looking down at his free hand before bringing his gaze up to Quinn’s.

“You,” he said, voice like sandpaper on glass. The way he said the word turned a spigot of cold water on in Quinn’s bloodstream. “You’re here.”

The skin on Quinn’s neck prickled, scalp cinching tight. The man licked his dead lips and took a deep breath before offering a weak smile.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Quinn.”

The strength went out of Quinn’s legs, and he slumped to the floor in an area where there was no bone. Then Alice and Ty were beside him, their hands on his shaking arms. Denver whined and licked his ear.

“H-how do you know my name?” Quinn said, his voice hoarse and unfamiliar.

The man blinked, swaying in his encasement of bone.

“You were the only thing your father ever talked about.”

“How did you know my father?” Quinn said, raising his voice.

“Quiet,” the man whispered, “You’ll wake him.”

“Wake who?”

“Rodney. He’s sleeping, but he’ll be awake soon.”

Quinn glanced around the operating room looking for a figure concealed in the thin shadows or beneath a table in the adjoining lab. He flinched as the man’s fingers grazed his face, and he pulled away from the frigid touch.

“I’m sorry, but after all this time, seeing you in person…” The man’s voice faded, and he coughed, a low wheezing sound with almost no force to it. It was like listening to wind hiss through the leaves of a tree.

“Who are you?” Quinn repeated. He tried to compose himself, to steady his bearings, all the while seeing that the man’s eyes were nearly colorless, the iris a sickly shade of gray matching the sky outside.

“My name is Alex Gregory, and I was a friend of your father’s.”

“What did he have to do with this?”

“We were best friends in college,” Gregory said, his voice gaining some strength, but still he spoke in hushed tones. “He called me two years ago and offered to set up a lab to advance my work. The amount of money he was offering, I couldn’t say no.”

Quinn looked around the room, a burning lump filling his throat.

“So this was just another investment of his, another place to make a profit?”

“No, you misunderstand, Quinn.”

“I think I understand very well. I’m guessing he caught wind of some government program through his connections and saw dollar signs. He commissioned you to undertake the genetics side of it, and somewhere along the line, it went horribly wrong. Am I close?” He’d slowly gained his feet during the tirade, the anger and adrenaline cocktail pumping through his veins like a drug, heightening the indignity, the outrage. Everyone dead, only suffering for those who were left, and why?

“No, you’re not,” Gregory said, beginning to tremble again. “This was not a government project. Genset was privately funded solely by your father.”

“Why would he try to make monsters out of people?” Quinn said. “What purpose would it serve?”

“The abominations that were created in the aftermath were not the goal; they were an outcome of a mistake.” Gregory sagged, his neck slackening so that he stared at the floor, breathing hard.

“If they weren’t what you were trying to create, then what were you doing here?”

Gregory managed to raise his head high enough to look him in the eye.

“Your father was trying to cure you.”

Quinn felt like he’d been kicked by a horse. The air buzzed, and he lost vestibular sense. The ground was the sky and then it reversed, sending him into a dizzying tailspin.

“What?” was all he managed, all he could get himself to say.

“When all of the surgeries for you were ruled out, he came to me. He knew I was trying new gene therapy strategies, —that I was on the forefront of discovery—and asked if there was any way to help with your condition. He wanted a normal life for you so much, Quinn; it was his sole ambition. He built this place, gave us tens of millions for a budget, all for you.”

Quinn lowered himself to the floor as the world continued to whirl around him.

“I don’t understand…why?” he breathed.

“Because he loved you. More than anything or anyone. He was driven beyond any man I’ve ever met.” Gregory paused, glancing around the operating theatre as if he’d heard something. They all listened too, but there was nothing but the hum of the lights and the rain. “We began work on mice, then moved on to primates, slowly verifying what route we needed to take to get to the end goal. It became clear early on that a virus would be necessary for the delivery of the genetic program.”

“A chimeric virus,” Quinn said, recalling the information Holtz had told him.

“Yes. An adenovirus holding a common flu virus gene. We mutated the gene responsible for transmission so it could never become communicable.” Gregory swallowed and shook again as if fighting off another coughing episode. “But something went wrong with our first test in a human.”

“You said you were working with primates. How did you ever get clearance to go ahead with human testing?” Alice asked.

Gregory seemed to focus on her for a moment before sliding his gaze back to Quinn.

“We didn’t. Your father pushed the tests forward. I told him we needed another two years of clinical trials after gaining licenses, but he couldn’t be dissuaded.”

“But what did he hope to achieve with all this? You said so yourself that the surgeries were out of the question. How was this virus supposed to help me?” Quinn asked.

“The chimeric virus—” Gregory said, pointing his free arm at a coolant cell at the furthest end of the row, “—held a protein for dissolving healthy bone tissue and another, that was purely experimental, for rebuilding it, along with a dose of human growth hormone to promote the generation of cells. We were going to concentrate the virus in your facial bones and then make an organic cast replicated from your father’s bone structure. The cast would have been implanted on your skull and the secondary protein would have rebuilt the bones according to the cast.”

Quinn swayed before the man. The rain was calling him. He could walk into it and let it soak his clothing, wash away the swirling shock that cloaked him. He could forget.

“You could’ve stopped him,” Quinn said, tears blurring his vision. “You could’ve prevented all this.”

“You’re right. I could have. But my own aspirations were too great. We went ahead with testing on our first human candidate. His name was Rodney Fairbanks. He was an Iraq War veteran. He’d been involved in drug trials for years, especially concerning post-traumatic stress disorder. We offered him more money than he’d ever received before.

“The initial tests were very promising. Your father was ecstatic when he left that day.”

For a moment, Quinn was lost in the memory of his father dancing with Teresa in their living room, Frank Sinatra’s voice surrounding him completely.

“But something went wrong,” Quinn said.

“Yes,” Gregory replied. “The gene that encodes the contagion protein must have reverted after interacting with Rodney’s cells. It became an actively replicating virus once more. Every person that came into contact with him that day carried it from this building out into the world.”

“My father flew home that day on a public flight,” Quinn said. “He gave it to everyone. He helped spread it across the nation.”

Gregory shuddered and nodded. “It killed nearly everyone it came in contact with. The virus caused an enormously high fever that we were able to control in this laboratory, but worldwide they had no idea what they were dealing with. The abominations were a genetic anomaly I only partially understand. A genetic factor allowed a significant portion of the population to weather the fever, but they lost their humanity in the process. The abnormal growth of the bone, skin, and musculature, was caused by the experimental protein combined with the HGH. It was something we never anticipated.”

Some of his father’s last words floated back to him.
Sorry, I’m so sorry. My fault.

Now he understood what he’d meant.

“Goddamn you. Goddamn you both,” Quinn said.

“I’m sure that He has,” Gregory said, looking up. His eyes darted around and his jaw clenched, the muscles of his face bulging beneath the pallor. “He’ll be awake soon, and they’ll return before long. You don’t have much time.”

“Who will? Who will be awake soon?” Alice asked.

“Rodney. He sleeps deeply part of the day, but he feeds the rest of it. I was trying to save him when he began to change and I…I couldn’t escape.” Gregory lowered his voice further. “I’ve tried not to eat what they bring, but he hurts me. He’s tied into my nervous system, and oh God, he hurts me.” Gregory gestured weakly around them, and a prickling sensation crawled up Quinn’s back like a many-legged insect. He let his eyes slide over the growth of bone flowing everywhere in the building, its reaching points crawling down the hallways, seeking ever outward.

Quinn began backing away.

“Please, you have to kill me, please,” Gregory begged.

“Who is he controlling?” Quinn asked.

“Them. All of the abominations that can smell the pheromones he produces. They communicate with the others through scent and tell them his wishes.”

“What does he tell them?” Quinn said, fear running him through like a lance.

“Come to me, come to me, come to me,” Gregory whispered. “They hunt and bring him food, and I have to eat it—you don’t know what I’ve had to eat.” The doctor began to sob and he suddenly convulsed as if hooked to ten thousand volts. His head snapped back, eyes rolling up in his skull while his mouth gaped open and a creaking moan slipped from him. It was a sound of distilled pain, the cry of the damned.

“Quinn, we have to go,” Alice said, grabbing his arm. She was looking down now, down at the tracks on the floor that led to the center of the room. So many tracks.