Guinea Pig (6 page)

Chapter Seven.

The cedar door beckoned him with its promise. But Will knew it was almost certainly a false promise. Just as the last dozen had been before it. And the next dozen probably would be as well. Still, Will got off his bike, laid it against the picket fence and walked up the garden path to it. Automatically he rang the doorbell. Then when that failed, he knocked. For some reason he kept forgetting that doorbells needed power to run.

Whether anyone would answer it he didn't know. Only six of the houses he'd visited that morning had had someone home. One in two. But then the damage from the ice storm was often extensive and it was everywhere. In all his travels on the bike he didn't think he'd seen a single house that wasn't damaged. Some had been completely destroyed. Many in fact. Some of them were now piles of rubble that here and there had fallen across the road. The owners of the ruined houses were probably with friends or family or had left the city, he hoped. Though some of them could be buried inside their remains.

It would have been so much easier and faster if he could have phoned them. But the phones were down. Both the land lines and the cellular networks. Not only had the stations and towers taken hits, the lines were gone as well, and there was no word of when or even if they would be repaired. The radio said the damage was extensive, but the truth was it was far worse than that. They were being diplomatic. The same was true of electricity with the substations and lines in ruins. Most of the city was living in a complete blackout. Los Angeles had never been so dark at night, nor so quiet by day.

Anyone who could was leaving the city, but not many could. As well as killing thousands of people and destroying houses without number, the ice storm had also taken out cars in their hundreds of thousands and damaged the roads as well. Many were so badly damaged that even a four wheel drive couldn't cross the gaping craters that were supposedly potholes according to the radio. Effectively it had trapped millions in their broken homes. That though had been his only piece of luck in his search, and it had come with its own problems. The main one was that it had also meant that he couldn't drive anywhere either. Not that he had a working car left.

In fact Richard had the only working car they had and he was busy. For two days he'd been driving in and out of the city, buying supplies, finding friends and running errands. It was proving a long, slow and difficult process as he had to find the least damaged roads, crawl around the pile ups and piles of fallen rubble, and then compete with the pedestrians who were everywhere. But he was doing it and as a bonus he was also contacting people through email for them. The car let him escape the destruction and find an email café outside of the city. Through him Will's family now knew he was alive, and they knew not to come and try to bring him home.

He was sure they wanted to, and each day that went by he worried that he would see his father standing at the front door with a serious look on his face. But he couldn't leave – he had a thesis to finish as he told them. And they seemed to accept his excuse. They could never have accepted the real reason. That he had to stay behind to find the bungling doctor who had stuffed up his drug trial and left him hairless and subject to some intense and seemingly never ending nightmares.

Still, he had hope. The lack of working cars and the broken roads meant that houses, even wrecked houses, still had people living in them. They were trapped there. And hopefully Doctor Millen was stuck in the city as well. That was all Will had to work with as he hunted him down – and it wasn't a lot. More worrying was that he knew that even if Doctor Millen was stuck in the city he wouldn't be for long. No one would be if they had any sense. And he surely had enough money to buy his way out.

The army was already arranging a mass evacuation. Their trucks were cruising the streets with loud hailers informing everyone about it while their bulldozers were clearing the roads. It wasn't forced, people could choose to stay or go, but many who no longer had a habitable house were packing up and leaving. Which was why he'd grabbed his ten speed and some pages from the phone book, and started on his hunt first thing that morning. He knew he should have started at least a couple of days before. But there had been so much to do. There still was. So many repairs to make just to make the flat habitable. And then there was the fear. The almost crippling dread of being caught out in the open if the ice should start falling again. He hadn't wanted to wander too far away from the shelter of home. He was far from alone in that. And what was a little hairlessness and a few bad dreams against being pulped by a falling ice bomb so he'd asked himself?

But suddenly he had no time. The evacuation would be beginning in less than a day. He had to find the bungling doctor now or never. So taking his courage in both hands he'd jumped on his bike and started riding.

This particular house looked to be in reasonable condition. From the front at least. There were a few broken windows, a good sized crater in the driveway, but the walls looked more or less intact. On the other hand he had no idea what the back was like. Its neighbours on both sides had not been particularly fortunate, and one of them was now no more than a pile of broken timbers and scattered bricks. It had probably been a nice home once. They both had been.

This was an exclusive gated suburb – or what remained of one. Gates and walls to keep the riff raff out. Big houses and large sections. Expensive cars in driveways and here and there tennis courts and big swimming pools. No one was swimming in them though. The tennis courts were empty. And what remained of the gates wasn't going to stop anyone, even if there had been someone left to guard them. He'd thought when he began his search for Doctor Millen that he should begin in the more upmarket areas of the city. Doctors after all earned good money. They could afford good houses. And he was a senior doctor. But even that hadn't narrowed down the search enough. He had another twenty to go before the end of the day. Even considering that it was an unusual name there were still a lot of Millens in the phone book.

He soon heard the sound of footsteps inside and knew that at least someone was home. That was good. Though it probably wasn't the doctor at least he'd be able to cross this house off his list and scramble for the next one.

“Yes?”

The door opened and a woman appeared in the doorway, and he instantly knew she wasn't his missing doctor. She probably wasn't related to him at all. She might be standing in a darkened hallway but he could see enough. In her thirties she was too young to be his wife and too old to be his daughter. And even though he hadn't expected it to be the doctor's home, he was still disappointed for a second.

“I'm sorry to disturb you. I was looking for Doctor Millen the genetic medicine researcher. I don't suppose you know him?” It was a question he'd asked at every other house. There was after always a chance that they could be related.

“Doctor Millen? This is his house but he's not here. He doesn't live here any more. He just lets us rent it.”

In a split second Will's heart started pounding furiously in his chest and hope surged as he realised he'd found his target. Or at least a lead.

“Oh thank God! Do you know where I can find him?” Despite the fact that he was trying to remain calm he couldn't keep the excitement out of his voice.

“Actually no. I would have said the clinic but for obvious reasons that's not possible any more.” A man had appeared at the door to stand behind her – the husband perhaps – and he looked strangely familiar. “Anyway Doctor Millen hasn't been here in months. He just collects some mail from time to time and has a phone line here for tax reasons.”

“I know you, don't I?” The husband asked the question out of the blue, and confirmed Will's thoughts. The man did know him. And Will knew him in turn. But he still couldn't place him. He didn't know either his voice or his face. But he still knew him from somewhere.

“I'm not sure, but you look familiar. Do you remember me from somewhere?”

The man stared at him, hunting for something that would place him. But obviously he couldn't find it. “I’m not sure. What's your name?”

“Will Simons.” That provoked a response. He could see it in the man's eyes as they widened in surprise.

“From the trials! I remember.”

“You do?” Will still couldn't place him as he stood in the darkened doorway. But in the end that didn't matter. He still needed to find the doctor and these people could hopefully help him do that. After all, they knew about the trials as well as the doctor.

“Yes. I'm Brad. I ran the lab.”

In that moment Will finally placed him. The technician. He was standing in a dark hallway behind his wife, but still he could see the way his hair was pulled back in front, and he knew it would be tied into a pony tail at the back. It was the technician. The only thing he'd seen of him during the trial was his back, while the technician in turn hadn't been looking at him either. He'd been staring at his computer screen. But thinking about it maybe the doctor had introduced him – while he'd been planning how to spend his ten thousand dollars.

“Thank God! Then you know why I'm here.”

“I do?” Of course he didn't Will suddenly realised. All the other trials had gone perfectly. He was just lucky patient number seven.

“Sorry, my mistake, you probably don't. But I need to find out what's gone wrong with the trial.”

“There's something wrong?”

The technician sounded surprised and he probably had reason to be. From everything Doctor Millen had said there should have been no chance of a side effect. “There shouldn't be. We've done it before and it worked perfectly every time. I'm sure the doctor told you that.”

“Repeatedly. But did any of those others lose all their body hair? And I do mean all!” And though it probably meant nothing to them since they'd never seen his skin close up Will showed them his hairless forearm. Brad and his wife stared at him for a bit, their mouths open. But then they'd probably never expected to hear something like that. Ever. It probably wasn't the sort of thing that strangers arriving on their doorstep said.

“No,” Brad eventually answered him. “No one's ever had any side effects at all. Not one of the other six. And I do the follow ups with them all. The protocol either worked or it didn't, but no one had any sort of problem. And that's a weird one. Not one we'd ever be looking for. The genes that were being inserted have nothing to do with follicular growth. They're not even on the same chromosomes.”

“Honey did you say 'the other six'?”

Before Will could even think what to say Brad's wife jumped in, and it sounded as though she knew something too. Maybe she was somehow also connected with the research programme.

“Yes, William here is the seventh subject of the trial.”

“He can't be. There weren't supposed to be seven. The trial was approved for six and only six. Everything was set up for six. Clinic time, staffing, hospital stays and drugs. In fact the last subject was put through it two months ago and there should only be follow ups left.” She stared at her husband almost as if challenging him in some way. Telling him he was wrong. But he wasn't wrong. Will knew that. Brad knew it too.

“Lisa I was there. I helped set up the clinic for the procedure, and then monitored it, exactly as I did for all the others. I watched Doctor Millen administer the dose. This is Patient Seven.”

“But there wasn't even a seventh dose to administer.” His wife sounded confused, as if she didn't understand what her husband was talking about. And that sent shivers running down Will's spine. No seventh dose? Then what had he been given? Suddenly he felt very ill.

“There must have been. I watched him administer it.”

“There wasn't. I know. I did the paperwork for them. Each dose cost us fifty thousand dollars, and then had to be transported across state lines. There were endless forms about bio-security, dangerous goods and maintaining the cold chain to fill out even after the bills were paid. I didn't fill out a seventh set of forms. And anyway the entire drug budget was used up on those six doses. Three hundred thousand dollars. That's it.”

No seventh dose and yet he was the seventh patient? That didn't sound good. And when he put it together with the fact that his body hair had fallen out, that he was having side effects where none of the others had, that could mean only one thing. He'd been given something else. Something not so safe. Will suddenly felt weak at the knees. But somehow he kept from falling down.