Deadly Messengers (30 page)

“I DON’T UNDERSTAND, BOSS17.”

You23 shrugged his shoulders. His gaze flicked everywhere except back at Doug. The boy couldn’t look him in the eye. Within seconds, the piece of paper he held in his hand had been screwed into several little, crumpled balls.

“The seed was perfect. Why are you switching out now? We’ve spent days on this one. Did I screw up?”

Doug McKinley shook his head. The boy was agitated. That wasn’t good.

“No, no, you did a good job, but we must be careful. Other factors are in play now. Time is a problem, and the drug—”

He stopped mid-sentence. You23 didn’t need to know about that. Doug noted the kid had started to look even more disheveled. His greasy hair stuck to his face as though glued, and fine red veins colored the yellow-tinged whites of his eyes. Even the skin on his arms looked scaly-dry. He’d started scratching at himself lately like a dog with fleas. Possibly all side effects of long-term use of the drugs Doug had administered to him.

You23 tilted his head and began mindlessly scraping at his forearms. Doug knew he was attempting to work through the new information. He’d noticed the boy did not handle change well. It didn’t matter. This was almost over.

The kid was a wind-up toy he pointed in the direction he needed him to go. A toy that enjoyed the chase and the product of his work—chaos—but had no true appreciation of the greater picture. He did what he was told for his own reasons. You23 also knew if it wasn’t for Doug, he’d still be on the streets or at that disgusting, filthy rat-infested halfway house where he’d found him a year ago.

When their mission concluded, he would no longer be able to supply the drugs keeping him productive. His supply of those was also running low. The boy would end up back on the streets at breakneck speed. He should feel guilty—he’d been a good kid—but Doug wouldn’t allow himself to feel guilt. Guilt was a luxury for those who couldn’t stay on the straight and true path. He could. And
he
would.

He’d already endured enough guilt in his life. Quite possibly, he’d run out of space to carry any more. There was plenty of guilt over Charlie’s death—him being the one who’d suggested his son get the job at Burger Boys to teach him the value of money
.
In the end, he was the one who’d learned the lesson. Money made the world go round and against that life had little value. Now it was his turn to serve the lessons.

Pure accident had him stumble upon his research’s beginnings, while investigating the side effects of Prozac. His doctor prescribed the anti-depressant for him to help with the melancholy after Charlie. When he came across the medical journal reports, the correlation between SSRIs and violence, it was curiosity that saw him follow the trail, begin to read more widely, and then head passionately in search of the truth. Research gave him a lifeline to pull himself back into meaningful life.

Once he understood the drugs’ dangers, he was incredulous. Years went by with nobody paying any attention to his warnings, until he found the most ingenious solution to make them listen. When he’d first discovered the drug—he thought of it now as a miracle substance—he couldn’t believe it actually existed.

Incredibly, a YouTube video delivered his prize. From then on, he became convinced Fate had tapped him on the shoulder. Something extraordinary could be accomplished. The minute he watched the video he understood the potential.

The minute he’d viewed the six-minute video, he immediately replayed it. Then again.

Could it be true?

He Googled it. As far-fetched as it sounded, this drug, if it were true, possessed amazing powers. Any person ingesting it could fall under the suggestive power of another, the effect, almost instant and easily delivered. You simply blew the powder into the victim’s face or dropped it into drink or food.

Seratolamine, a close relative of scopolamine, was nicknamed Zombie Breath by the Colombian locals of the only region in the world where it grew. The drug was odorless, tasteless and undetectable.
A miracle.
Derived from a flower grown on a tree found in a small area in the South American country, it was more dangerous than cocaine or heroin.

After watching a documentary on the drug, Doug suddenly felt more energized than he’d felt in years. He had an idea. In the film, a local man stated matter-of-factly, “I could give someone a gun, tell him or her to go kill a person of my choice, and they’ll have no choice. They
will
do it. They won’t remember it or me. They become the perfect zombie accomplice.”

That one line three years ago was enough to find Doug McKinley on a plane to Columbia. After another four days of searching for the right people to access the drug, he struck gold. During his travels, he heard incredible and frightening stories of the drug’s power. Bank accounts emptied by their owners and handed willingly over to thieves; a woman who’d helped men ransack her own apartment; a young man who’d aided robbers in carrying his own belongings from his apartment, assuring his doorman he was happy for the thieves to take his property.

Later, victims claimed complete ignorance of their complicity. In cases where they did remember, they spoke of being aware of their actions, but said it had felt right to them, even though they were acting completely out of character.

Days of nervous enquiries finally brought him to Carlo, whose brother knew someone who dealt in the drug. The drug dealer—nothing like he’d imagined—was a friendly twenty-something young man, who looked more like a surf bum. He was friendly and enthusiastic, even taking Doug into a small forest area to show him one of the trees from which the seratolamine was derived.

The devil trumpet tree, with its beautiful pink trumpet-shaped flowers hanging upside down, bloom to the ground, was stunning. The flowers so tempting and delicate, exotic in appearance, belied its danger. The seeds and leaves were so rich in this most powerful hallucinatory drug, local legend warned if you should fall asleep beneath the tree, you might never wake up.

The rare drug was expensive and dangerous, but the reward far outweighed the risk. Doug had a plan. First, he would test Fate’s willingness to partner with him. It was a game. He told himself if he was stopped at the border then he would take it as a sign this was wrong. If he made it through customs with the powder hidden only inside his toiletry case, this then would be his green light.

Fate acquiesced. He wasn’t stopped.

He’d seen You23 on a current affairs program. The segment headline,
The Genius Homeless
. The show highlighted musical geniuses, poetry masters, an elderly man with the deepest, richest voice, equal to any national announcer. All were destitute, living on the streets.

Twenty-two-year-old Andy Waites, born to a troubled family was a mathematical and program coding prodigy until the teenage onset of schizophrenia robbed him of his future. A year after winning a scholarship to a prestigious university, he was eating at soup kitchens, living by dumpsters, one of the lost.

Fate smiled again, nodding her further approval. Andy Waites possessed the skill-set he needed to move forward. He even lived in Doug’s own city.
What were the odds?
Doug set about volunteering at the same soup kitchen where Andy was interviewed.

Andy could run the spreadsheets and write programs he needed. He had no connections anymore—his family abandoning him when he became ill—nobody with whom he could share Doug’s activities or plans. Even if Andy did open his mouth, nobody would believe a schizophrenic claiming to work on a project to change the world, with names of those involved You23 and Boss17, sounding like something out of science fiction.

Doug had spent years researching drugs. So he’d also learned of other pharmaceuticals, expensive and experimental, which could possibly stabilize and even reverse some of the damage schizophrenia caused in the brain. With enough money, you could get your hands on these. They took a big chunk of his savings. He needed Andy stable, so the cost was worthwhile.

The names You23 and Boss17 were part of the game. Andy invented them, after Doug told him a tale of important secret government work and how vital they were to the future of the world. Doug conjured a story of aliens hidden among them, these aliens needing to be activated. Only aliens knew where their fellow aliens hid. It was like a videogame to Andy. He wasn’t an accessory to the killing of human beings, but saving the world from invasion. The two of them were unsung heroes.

Ironically, it was almost true. These SSRI drugs
were
invaders of sanity and thieves of lives.

Irony is a snake, twisting through good fortune. And bad. In Fate’s final endorsement, she delivered Doug’s exact needs. Suddenly in life’s chessboard, his opponent’s King was in check. His Queen had come into play, Kendall Jennings the final move.

Doug patted Andy’s shoulder—he’d come to think of him as his flawed version of Charlie, as his own son. He’d fought the guilt for a while now, of leaving the boy to fend on his own, but he couldn’t ignore Andy’s contribution. As he neared the end of his plan, he’d thought long and hard what would happen to Andy after this was done.

The kindest gift would be to spare him a return to his previous life. He’d saved enough Zombie’s Breath to take care of the boy, the powder so concentrated that a gram was enough to kill fifteen people. He’d saved a fifth of a gram to be certain. Andy wouldn’t know. Doug would place it in his Cola. The kid drank the stuff like water.

He waited patiently for Doug to explain why he’d changed their target. Andy’s right eye twitched as it did when he needed a booster of
his medicine
.

Doug kept his voice gentle. “Remember that girl who visited a few weeks ago? She’s a defecting alien wanting to help. She’s against her fellow aliens invading Earth. This is better, you’ll see.”

Andy’s eyes glassed over, thinking. Then he smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

“The pretty one?”

“Yes, the one I checked personally for you and you commented she was so pretty you couldn’t believe she was human. I used your program while you slept. You’d been working so hard, I didn’t want to bother you.”

Andy’s program was amazingly quick and accurate, but Doug didn’t need it for this. He already knew enough about Kendall Jennings. Still he used Andy’s program to hunt back through Kendall’s accounts to their origin.

Nothing disappeared from the Internet. Closing an account only removed the owner’s access. The account remained beneath the Internet, searchable with the right program. How easy it was to track people using their social media posts. If they weren’t
checking in
their exact location on Facebook or other sites, they uploaded photos unaware of the detailed metadata contained within the pixels.

Nobody realizes each digital photo includes EXIF data an acronym for Exchangeable Image File. Information freely available about someone and their activities was all stored there: shutter speed, exposure compensation, even if a flash was used, myriad of information. A snapshot of digital wonder, it also carried something else invaluable, the date and time the image was taken and the GPS coordinates.

Since people were creatures of habit, Andy could easily match the times and places visited by the candidate. Delivering the drug was merely a matter of waiting outside a restaurant, club, or anywhere and seeking fake directions.

When Andy held out the drug-impregnated map to the unsuspecting candidate innocently requesting directions, it took only a flick of the paper to deliver the Zombie’s Breath.

The compliancy of their candidates was astonishing. They became docile, disciplined children.

Follow me. Walk this way. Get into the van. Sit here. Tell me what makes you angry? What is unfair? What will make the unfairness better? Will you kill them? Yes, you’ll kill them. Then we can change the world. Fulfill your destiny. Right a wrong.

The first candidate, Toby Benson, initially presented a challenge. He didn’t seem to hold a grudge against anyone. Then Benson mentioned a café where he’d suffered food poisoning that put him in hospital for two days. He’d missed an important meeting, subsequently an account was lost, and a promotion stalled. He’d never returned to Café Amaretto until
Doug McKinley
sent him back.

Doug only needed to plant the seed in his mind: those in the kitchen needed to be stopped before ruining more lives. They needed to die. The other two, Benito Tavell and Kate Wilker were variations on this. Benito, with his low pay and late night shifts they wouldn’t allow him to change, felt used. Kate Wilker lived in a troubled and unhappy marriage. Always, something.

Now, here they were, set for the final battle. He couldn’t lose this one. It had to work. One dose left for the next candidate. One dose for Andy. Soon, very soon, he’d be with Charlie again. He hoped Charlie would be proud.

Andy’s mouth dropped open as he ruminated on Doug’s words. Doug the preacher and Andy his faithful flock member. The boy still seemed lost.

“I’ll tell you why this girl fits better. She’s a journalist. What happens when one of the police is killed in the line of duty? They go all out to catch the killer.”

Andy nodded, enthusiastically.

“Same for Journalists. Something happens to one of them, it’s like attacking their home ground. They’ll swarm, investigate, and discover the invasion. The world will suddenly know and join our fight against the aliens. You’ll be famous, too, when word gets out. Society should have taken better care of you—of all special people like you. The world needs to know the things you’ve done. This one is the last one, You23. This one will save the world.”

Andy’s head bounced vigorously. The boy would die never knowing his real achievement. He’d deceived a trusting soul. Doug fought against the sadness in his heart, consoling himself the story carried some truth—SSRIs
did
turn people into a type of alien.

“You’re good to me, Boss17. You care about me and protecting the world. You care about the journalist, even though she’s an alien, don’t you?”