Immortal (13 page)

The body was that of a man. His skull appeared to be caved in and dried blood was caked over his forehead.

Still, Marty recognized him.

Arthur Hench.

Chapter 56

Josh Logan was shoved forward
into a large room where a group of people was seated around what looked like a small operating theater.

Lawrence Bowman stood at the center of the room. "Josh, so glad you could make it. I'd like you to meet the GPO. An organization dedicated to their children."

Josh glared at Bowman. "What are you talking about, Bowman? What happened to you?"

"What happened, Josh, is what happened to all these people seated before you and, as a matter of fact, what happened to you as well. We have all lost our most precious gifts. Our children."

Josh shook his head.

"Perhaps I should tell you the GPO stands for the Grieving Parents Organization. Does that make things clearer?"

"Are you saying you've frozen your children to bring them back later?"

"Frozen them? No. We didn't freeze them, Josh. That's just an illusion for the public's benefit. They were never dead. Not in the real sense. Their bodies were useless, but their brains survived. And through our research in cryonics and nanotechnology, we figured out how to grow new bodies for them. Once we became able to reanimate a corpse, we used that knowledge to reanimate the new body with the existing brains of our children. This is a very special day. As luck would have it, you have arrived on the very day we are going to demonstrate for the parents."

Bowman moved to the center of the room where a glass tank stood surrounded by a blue drape.

"Let me make this clearer to you, Josh."

Bowman moved the drape aside and stepped back. A gasp arose from the spectators seated around the room.

Josh's heart nearly came to a stop.

What he saw defied belief.

Chapter 57

Terrified, Marty branigan bolted from
the exam room she'd stumbled into and ran back the way she came. She was about to round a corner when her forward motion stopped dead with a jolt. Someone had a tight grip on her, bending her over and pushing her back toward the next hall.

"I think you have some explaining to do," the man had a thick, Russian accent. Marty craned her neck to see him. He was huge. At least three hundred pounds, she thought.

Now what?

Marty oded upward and sunk an elbow into his groin. He yelped, releasing his grip on her.

Now an alarm was going off in her head. Blood roared in her ears.

Get help now! Get out of this place!

Near the next exit was a weird set of doors. Marty rushed to them. She came to a screeching halt when she heard a voice inside followed by the sound of applause. She stood on her tiptoes and peered into the small glass window near the top of the door.

Then Marty Branigan could do nothing but gasp at what she saw.

Chapter 58

It wasn't quite a complete
body; more like a work in progress. A tadpole not fully developed. The thing floated upright in a glass tank filled with clear liquid.

Josh Logan stood motionless.

How many?
Medical experiments kept alive until medical science caught up with Bowman's sick idea.

The face of the young man was Bowman's son. That was unmistakable. Josh had seen the pictures on Lawrence Bowman's desk. The head was attached to a human trunk, but the limbs were only partially formed. It reminded Josh of the thalidomide babies of the 60's, when doctors prescribed the medicine for pregnant women, only to have them give birth to children with missing arms and legs. But this, this was something much worse. There were wires that connected from a massive console below the tank to the head. An EEG monitor tracked the brainwaves across a small gray screen next to the apparatus. The head didn't move. Three slender curved rods of polished steel arising from the tank seemed to hold it rigid. Bowman stood by staring intently at Josh.

* * *

Marty wanted to run, but couldn't. Her feet were lead. She wanted to scream; her throat was sand.

Then she saw Bowman ... and
Josh.

Bowman spoke. A bitter tone. "This is my son, Dr. Logan. Soon, all these people here will have their children back as well."

Marty heard Josh's voice.

"You're a madman, Bowman."

All coherent rational thought evaporated from Marty's mind. A sudden fury and outrage came over her and she burst through the door and into the horror show.

Bowman wheeled around and motioned for the guard who stood to the left of the room. Marty spotted a huge cable connecting the carcass in the tank to the electrical box. As the guard approached her, she snatched the cable from the floor and faced Bowman. The color had drained from his face and his eyes were wide with fear.

"Call your goon off, Bowman, or so help me God, I'll pull the plug on your little experiment."

Bowman motioned to the guard who stopped, glaring at Marty.

"Ms. Branigan, you have no idea what you're doing. I have this whole place wired to self-destruct if necessary.

"You won't do that. Then your work is for nothing."

"Before I let the outside world in here, I assure I will do it. Now please drop the cable."

"Not until you let us out of here."

"I'm afraid I can't do that."

"Then I'm afraid I'll have to do this ..."

Marty yanked hard on the cable and heard Bowman cry out, "
Noooo ..."

A high-pitched electrical buzz erupted, then everything went dark.

Chapter 59

Marty followed Josh at a
dead run through the empty halls, the beam of Josh's flashlight licking its way along the narrow corridor. Within minutes, they had reached the service elevator, their footsteps clattering on the white tile. Josh mashed the
up
button, and seconds later, the door glided open.

Josh hesitated as the doors reopened on the terrace level. He checked his watch,hen turned to Marty.

"
Run!"

Police cars were arriving in force at the front entrance now, sirens wailing, brakes screeching. Josh heard the whine of helicopter blades overhead.

A state trooper stepped from behind his cruiser. "Freeze!"

Josh and Marty ignored him and continued in a full sprint. "Get back!" Josh shouted back. "The place is gonna
blow "

At that instant, there was a terrific earthshaking roar, followed by a concussive blast that slammed Josh and Marty hard across the back, throwing them to the pavement.

Josh rolled onto his back, dazed, the wind temporarily knocked from his lungs. Marty lay nearby, rubbing her eyes and coughing. Chips of concrete pattered down around them like rain.

"Holy shit!"
It was Vince Brezina's voice, but the man himself was invisible in the sudden chaos.

Vaguely, Josh could hear shouting from behind the state police cars. He pulled himself to a sitting position, choking and coughing, and felt a hand on his shoulder. Marty's voice penetrated the ringing in his ears.

"Josh, you okay?"

"I think so."

Brezina hurried over and helped Marty and Josh to their feet. "Is there anyone else in there?" he asked.

Josh nodded. "They were having a meeting. I don't know how many. Twenty, maybe? All on the lower level."

Brezina looked at him in horror.
"My God ... the governor."

Vince Brezina held his breath and prepared himself.

Then he ducked inside.

Chapter 60

Once inside, Lieutenant Brezina paused.
The soot-laden air clung to his clothes and filled his lungs with a stinging mist of chemicals. Behind him, several uniformed police followed him into the building.

"Where to, Lieutenant?" one of them asked.

Brezina moved forward without answering, waving away the swirling tendrils of lingering smoke. As he approached the elevator doors in the center lobby, he paused and looked down. A huge hulking crater lay before him and he could see to the bottom of the shaft. The elevator car sat at the bottom, crumpled like a mashed soda can.
Shit.

He moved to his left down an adjoining hall. As the mist cleared, he could see bodies on the floor moving feebly. The tiles were slick with blood. Brezina felt a sudden rush of bile in his throat.

The uniformed officer approached Brezina. "What the hell happened here, sir?"

"There's no time to explain. We need to get to the lower level. The Governor is in there somewhere."

Brezina slipped a flashlight from his pocket and followed the hall until he found an emergency exit. Inside the door was the stairwell to the upper and lower levels. He vaulted a pile of debris and ran down four flights of steps. Near the bottom, two bodies lay in a heap, faces bleeding, clothes hanging in strips. After assuring neither man was the governor, Brezina stepped over them and moved forward out of the stairwell. A metal sign hung at an odd angle from a glass door directly in front of him. The pane was shattered but still intact.

Brezina pushed it open and stepped inside.

It was a horrifying scene of carnage--the dead were sprawled across the marble floor in grotesque, unnatural positions ... twisted by the explosion. The floor was littered with shards of laboratory glass and metal. Brezina shone the light across the room and slowly traced it along a line of large glass containers, apparently undamaged by the blast.

The beam finally came to rest on a figure half hidden in a far alcove. This was a glass container, but different than the others, with cables and wires running from it at all angles. He looked at the figure again. Although it looked like a man, there was something not right about it.

Brezina squeezed his es shut, thinking he was hallucinating from the chemical soup he'd been breathing since entering the building. But when he reopened them,
it
was still there.

Brezina felt a chill of horror settle over him.

* * *

Lawrence Bowman slowly came to and heard a commotion behind him. He raised himself up and fingered the .357 Magnum at his side.

Someone in a jacket and tie was approaching Danny. Bowman stood up, gripping a nearby lab counter for support.

"Get away from him," Bowman shouted.

* * *

Vincent Brezina took a step back from the
thing
he was looking at and brought his weapon up, pointing it at Lawrence Bowman.

"It's over, Dr. Bowman. Put the gun down. Whatever it is you created here, it's dying. There no need for anyone else to."

* * *

Bowman looked at his son. The cables that had been his lifeline were now severed and the head appeared cyanotic and there was a huge gash above his eyes. Tears filled his eyes and he called out.
"Danny, please don't die again, not again."
But Bowman knew David was already gone. All hope was lost. The last ten years had been a brew of suffering from which Lawrence Bowman drank deeply. Now, he could suffer no more.

Bowman raised the .357 Magnum to his temple ...

* * *

Vince Brezina's mouth was still open trying to shout the word
stop
when the gun went off. He saw the side of Bowman's head blow off in a thick red mist and his body collapse under the weight of itself.

He holstered his own weapon and the young uniformed cop behind him stood for a few seconds with his mouth agape. Finally, he spoke.

"We found the governor, sir. He's dead."

There was no reply from Brezina. He stayed a few moments longer, and then left the room.

Chapter 61

The story ran in every
paper in the country the next week and Marty had no shortage of offers of every kind. Oprah was calling, Ellen was calling; everyone wanted to know about the Frankenstein lab she had discovered along with Dr. Josh Logan. The New York Times ran the bold headline:

HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO FOR YOUR CHILD?

In fact, some people were sympathetic with Bowman saying he was only guilty of what every parent is: willing to go to the end of the earth for their child. In the end though, the general consensus was that Lawrence Bowman had gone mad from the grief of losing his son.

Marty sat in her living room, her head resting on Josh Logan's lap.

"You know what I really need, Josh? No talk shows, no interviews, nothing. Just a vacation. Somewhere quiet."

"I might be a little rusty in the romance department, Marty."

Marty turned herself over and straddled Josh's legs. "I think I can help you with that," she said.

As Josh pulled Marty close to him, he felt years of loneliness fading away.

The grief is gone.

Marty slid her fingers under his belt as Josh heard her whisper
. "You're doing fine, Josh Logan, you're doing fine."

Epilogue

They say when death comes,
the mind does a life review. Victor Stone had no such review. Stone, the only survivor of the melee at Aurora lay on the bed of the Intensive Care Unit of Ford Medical Institute. He listened to the ebb of the cardiac monitor as it played out the final beats of his heart until the tone changed to a constant cry from the alarm, inding a flat-line. There would be no immortality for Victor Stone. Only the permanent darkness of death itself.

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MEDICINE CUP

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Medicine Cup

Prologue

April 12, 1933

D
awn came to the Amazon rain forest

As the small barge drifted downstream, Arthur Baxter watched the pale sun burn away the chilly, damp mist of the jungle. Enormous trees with trunks the diameter of a truck rose two hundred feet overhead where their thick foliage blotted out the sky from anyone on the forest floor.