Holy Terror (49 page)

‘Well?' asked Evelyn Branch. ‘What's it to be?'

‘If I renounce my religion … if you let me go … who's to say that you aren't going to use somebody else as a guinea-pig?'

‘That's irrelevant, at least as far as you're concerned. This is your choice, nothing to do with anybody else. If you don't embrace the Global Message Movement, then you're going to die, and that's all there is to it.'

‘All right, ‘said Conor; and his mouth felt as if it were full of ashes. ‘I embrace it.'

Dennis Branch banged the window in glee. Evelyn Branch said, just to make sure, ‘You embrace the Global Message Movement and you turn your back on the Roman Catholic Church?'

Conor was breathing so deeply now that he was hyperventilating. ‘Yes,' he said, even though he knew in his heart that God would never forgive him for this.

Evelyn Branch didn't take the needle away. She remained tense: one hand clutched tight around Conor's upper arm. ‘Excellent test. Worked perfect, didn't it? You're a strong man, of very strong principles, I know that. But you're prepared to abandon your faith in order to stay alive, and I can't say that I blame you.

‘Dennis will be glad to know that devout Catholics are prepared to surrender their so-called beliefs so easily, in the face of death. Let's hope it works with Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims, too.'

Conor stared through the window and knew that he had renounced his faith in vain. Dennis Branch had taken off his blue sunglasses and was staring back at him with his pink eyes wide open and his face filled with triumph. The world will fall before me. The world will turn its back on false religion, and
follow me to God. And I shall lead you all to Heaven, every one.

‘I hope you go to Hell, both of you,' said Conor.

Evelyn Branch squeezed Conor's arm even tighter, and pushed the hypodermic needle up against his skin so that it was making an indentation.

Conor said, ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, forgive me for having renounced my faith in you. In my heart I never did. Forgive me for my cowardice, O Lord. Forgive me all of my sins and trespasses. I love you, God, regardless.'

It was then that an extraordinary thing happened. Evelyn Branch's hand began to shake, and then to shudder. She stared at Conor through her helmet and her eyes were bulging with strain.
God
, thought Conor,
she's having an epileptic seizure
. But she wasn't thrashing about or foaming at the mouth or choking. She was struggling with herself. She was trying to push the hypodermic plunger into Conor's vein but for some reason she simply couldn't.

‘
What
?' she shouted at Conor, her voice muffled by her bio-helmet.

There was nothing else that Conor could do. He jerked at his straps – but they were far too strong. He saw Evelyn Branch lift the hypodermic away from his arm, and twist in her electric wheelchair. He heard Dennis's tinny voice over the intercom, shouting, ‘Evelyn? Evelyn? What's the matter, Evelyn?'

Evelyn lifted her head and her mouth was stretched wide open – like a woman trying to battle with every demon that had ever scorned her or humiliated her. She raised her left hand, protected
in two layers of rubber gloves; and then she raised her right hand, with the hypodermic still in it, and pointed it toward the ball of her thumb.

‘Evelyn!' screamed Dennis, through the intercom. ‘Evelyn, listen to me! What the hell are you trying to do there, Evelyn? Drop the syringe! Hear what I say? Drop the syringe and get yourself out of there,
pronto
!'

Evelyn ignored him, or didn't even hear him. She sat tilted at an angle in her wheelchair. She looked as if she might have had a minor stroke – one eye closed, the tell-tale sign of apoplexy or a mental struggle so ferocious that it was threatening to drive her mad. Slowly, with quivering fingers, she moved the point of the hypodermic needle closer and closer to the ball of her thumb, until she was a millimeter away from pricking it.

‘You shouldn't do this,' said Conor. ‘If you so much as scratch yourself, that's it. That's the big tortilla. I don't know what's happening inside of your mind, but try to see what you're doing.'

Evelyn stared at him. ‘Jesus,' she said. ‘You're a saint, after all. If I were you, I would tell me to stick this needle right in my thumb and God damn you to hell.'

‘Think what you're doing,' said Conor.

‘I'm doing what I'm told. When you're told to do something, you have to do it, you know that. Unless you're God, of course, or Dennis.'

‘Who told you what to do?' Conor demanded.

Evelyn didn't answer, but turned toward the observation window. Dennis was staring at her in horror; but behind him stood Magda, with a thin-lipped,
satisfied smile.
Shit
, thought Conor.
She hypnotized her. She always said that she was unequaled at post-hypnotic suggestion, and that's what she must have done to Evelyn
.

‘Don't do it,' said Conor. But almost in defiance, Evelyn slid the needle through the double layer of gloves that protected her thumb, so that a bead of dark red blood sprang out. She squeezed the syringe and the virus disappeared into her bloodstream. She continued to stare at Conor for almost fifteen seconds, her eyes wandering. Then her head dropped forward, and she collapsed.

‘
Evelyn
!' wailed Dennis, beating his fists on the glass. The hypodermic dropped to the floor and rolled away. The three lab assistants hurriedly put on their helmets again and opened up the doors. They unstrapped Conor from the bed and one of them slapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Out! Quick as you can!' Conor heaved himself onto the floor and an assistant helped him to limp barefoot out of the quarantine room. Magda was waiting for him. ‘I have your clothes here,' she said. She laid her arms around his shoulders: after all, she was tall enough. She led him through to a small room at the back of the laboratory where his clothes had been tossed onto a chair.

He dressed, leaning against the wall to support himself. He felt weak and shivery, as if he had a pounding hangover. ‘It was you, wasn't it?' he whispered. ‘
You
made Evelyn prick herself.'

‘You think I could do a thing like that? Evelyn knows how dangerous that virus is. Maybe I could hypnotize somebody into eating a raw
potato, thinking it's an apple. But it isn't so easy to hypnotize somebody into killing themselves.'

‘So what are you trying to tell me? That you didn't stay here to save my life? That you came back here to work for Dennis Branch?'

‘No,' said Magda. ‘I stayed here because I didn't think you were ever coming back. If you disappeared, if you were dead, what was the point of my going back to Oslo? I didn't even stay for my revenge. Revenge is too much of a luxury. I stayed for my money, that's all.'

‘Did you know about Evelyn?'

She shook her head. ‘Not until now. Not until I came back here. They're a very strange pair.'

‘They're not just strange, they're maniacs. If I don't stop them, they're going to wipe out half the population of the world.'

‘You? How can you stop them? You're not a police detective any more, are you? I saw you today and you were just an ordinary man with no clothes on. Besides, do you want to get yourself killed?'

They were still hoarsely whispering when Dennis Branch appeared in the doorway. He was breathing deeply and harshly, and he fixed Conor with a look of absolute hatred.

‘That's my twin sister in there, Mr O'Neil! That's my twin sister! You're going to watch her get sick! You're going to watch her die! You're going to see what I'm going to do to the world, and then I'm going to kill you, too, with the same virus, and then you're going to know what it feels like!'

‘You told Toralf that you were looking for a sword,' said Conor. ‘A sword to cut down the
unbelievers! Well, just you remember that those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.'

Dennis said, ‘If you quote the Bible to me, Mr O'Neil, you'd better quote it right. Matthew chapter twenty-six verse fifty-two: “
All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword
” And remember what else Matthew said. “He saved others, himself he cannot save.”'

At first they thought that the virus might not have survived its eighty-year sleep in the snow. Evelyn lay on the bed in a black T-shirt and black drawstring pants, her globe-like head resting against the pillow, her eyes restless. She slept for two or three hours – a disturbed sleep, sweating and murmuring and waving her weakened arms in the air. Conor had been positioned in a hard plastic chair right in front of the window, his wrists tied together. He was so exhausted that he could hardly keep his eyes open, but Dennis kept viciously prodding him in the shoulder-blades and saying, ‘Watch! Watch, you bastard! That's me dying in there, too! And soon it's going to be you!'

After fifteen minutes, a bright streak of blood suddenly ran from Evelyn's nose. Within twenty minutes she was trembling wildly. Her face darkened until it was the color of raw calves' liver and her feet turned almost black. She coughed, and covered her T-shirt in a livid bib of blood.

Dennis stood rigidly behind Conor's chair and stared, scarcely blinking, at every grotesque minute
of his twin sister's dying. Magda had left the laboratory. She said she couldn't bear to watch. But three lab assistants stayed behind to monitor Evelyn's vital signs. The door to the quarantine room remained sealed; except at 2:48 a.m. when a fully suited assistant took Evelyn a plastic bottle of water and a shot of morphine to ease her pain.

Her end came at 3:11 a.m., with horrifying suddenness, in the same way that the victims of the Spanish influenza had died in 1918. She began to choke and clutch at her throat. One of the assistants came up to Dennis and said, ‘She's going, sir. I'm sorry. There's nothing else we can do.'

Dennis jabbed Conor in the shoulders again. ‘Watch this, Mr O'Neil, because this is the way that you're going to go.'

Then he raised both arms, and said, ‘
Now hear this, all you who forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver. He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me; and to him who orders his way aright, I shall show the salvation of God
.'

Evelyn coughed one more cough. Then – over the intercom – like a locust struggling to escape from a glass jar – they heard her death-rattle.

Dennis lowered his arms and wrapped them tight around his chest. He let out a howl of anguish that was barely human. Then he sank to his knees and pressed his forehead against the floor, sobbing. One of the assistants laid a hand on his shoulder and tried to help him onto his feet, but he twisted himself away.

‘Come on,' said another assistant. ‘We'd better get the body bagged up.'

Conor tried to stand up but the assistant warned him, ‘Stay where you are. I don't think that Mr Branch has finished with you yet.' Another assistant went to stand in front of the door, just in case Conor got any ideas about trying to escape. Conor looked around him. There was nothing in reach that he could see to cut the cords around his wrists, only flasks and test-tubes and bottles of chemicals. He could break one, he supposed, but it would take him far too long to saw through the cord.

Two of the assistants put on helmets and went into the quarantine room, carrying a body bag with them. Dennis Branch stayed on the floor, still weeping, but much more quietly now, with occasional rib-racking gasps for breath.

‘“
O God in the greatness of thy loving kindness deliver me from the mire and do not let me sink. May the flood of water not overwhelm me and may the pit not shut its mouth on me
.”'

The two assistants lifted Evelyn's bagged-up body onto a stretcher and one of them opened the inner door. He was having trouble opening the outer door, however, so the third assistant came to help him.

But Conor had been reading the labels on the chemicals close by. He suddenly heaved himself out of his chair and snatched a triangular flask of concentrated sulfuric acid from the laboratory bench beside him. Dennis Branch said, ‘What—?' and looked up to see what was happening. As he did so, Conor swung his arms over his head so that the bottle of acid was directly in front of his face. With both thumbs, Conor pried off the stopper, which dropped to the floor and smashed.

‘Up!' Conor demanded. ‘Up on your feet or you get a faceful!'

Dennis stayed where he was, his eyes rimmed with red, his cheeks streaked with tears.

‘
Up
!' Conor repeated; and to make his point he jerked his hands up and splashed a few drops of the acid on Dennis's chin.

‘Jesus Christ!' shouted Dennis. ‘Jesus Christ, are you crazy?' There was a strong smell of scorched flesh and wisps of smoke curled around his chin.

‘Just get up and you won't have to find out
how
crazy.'

‘Christ that hurts,' said Dennis. ‘No – don't do it again. I'll get up. God, you don't know how much that hurts.'

The laboratory assistants stood uncertainly in the doorway of the quarantine room, still holding Evelyn's body. Conor said, ‘All of you – get back inside.'

‘But I don't have my helmet,' protested the third assistant.

‘Get back inside, unless you want to be personally responsible for Mr Branch losing his face.'

The assistants shuffled back into the quarantine room. Conor nudged Dennis in front of him until they reached the door. ‘Lock it,' he ordered. Dennis, reluctantly, locked it. ‘Right, now you lead the way.'

Together they edged their way out of the laboratory and along the corridor toward the reception area. The sulfuric acid wallowed from side to side in its bottle and Dennis said, ‘Don't spill it, O'Neil. If you spill it, then I swear that God will wreak His vengeance on you for all eternity.'