Dues of Mortality (15 page)

“
There's
gotta be a lot less dangerous ways for a guy like you to make some
extra cash.”

“
You
came along at the right time. The dean of sciences at Case Western
had me shit-listed because I spoke my mind on all their creepy
biotech mergers. It's been a nightmare ever since, so I'm
transferring out of state. Figured I leave them a little parting
gift.”

“
Pretty
fucking bold of you.”

Bruckner
pointed at Trineer. “Well now, he told me you weren't going to
hurt anybody, just screw with the records and stuff—you know,
make a statement. I'm no fan of the biotechs. I think what they do is
shitty: trying to legalize cloning, mandating genemods for the
military, force doctors to use cloned organs and all that. But I
wouldn't like, go out and commit violence against anybody.”

The
decision was made long ago to stick with the
innocent-but-morally-flexible-kid routine. It would make Ross less
suspicious of Bruckner since homegrown mad-bombers like
himself—although more prevalent than ever—didn't exactly
grown on trees. And Bruckner would, no doubt, be in over his head
pursuing the role as bioethical jihadist. The gamble was in
convincing Ross that the kid wasn't a potential squealer. To that
end, it was decided to cast Bruckner as a cybercriminal with plenty
to lose if he got caught.
Who
are you talking about, Ross?
Bruckner thought.
Say
it!

Ross
looked Bruckner square in the eye. “That's right, completely
harmless. The student and faculty records will be a rude awakening,
something to get the world-of-higher-education’s attention. In
the best case, a blatant, but simple security breach might spark an
investor’s exodus from BioCore. It would certainly delay any
ongoing business and create a flurry of contract renegotiations.
Students would transfer in droves. The school would be hemorrhaging
money.” Ross sucked at his teeth on the last sentence. For all
the apocalyptic extract he was able to toss into the batter, the end
result still left a damn bitter taste in his mouth. In fact, the part
about contract renegotiations would probably cost him a night's
sleep.
A small price to pay
,
he thought. He'd do anything for an inroad to BioCore, that
hulking
atrocity
.
It had cost him greatly and he vowed
never to rest until he'd planted his flag atop its smoldering rubble.
He nibbled on his nonexistent thumbnail and leered at Bruckner like a
horny sailor. First things first.

“
Did
you know my father fought in Desert Storm over thirty years ago?”
Ross asked rhetorically, out of nowhere.

Bruckner
sharpened, hoping whatever he was about to hear ended with a more
concise confession to MIT.

“
Saddam
Hussein was big on chemical warfare. Mustard gas, Anthrax,
Botulinin—he’d stockpiled tons of that shit...along with
a few other choice items. When our government decided they were going
to go to war and potentially get hundreds, if not thousands, of
Americans killed for oil, they engaged in a handful of classified
field tests of all kinds of counteractive agents. Many of them were
developed through private contracts to biotech companies. My father
hadn't been back less than a month before he started showing
symptoms—headaches, joint pain, loss of appetite. They were
symptoms 'easily explained through any myriad of conditions that may
or may not have had anything to do with his service,' as
they
put it. It wasn’t until he
started having the visions and hallucinations, kind of like H-ball,
but twice as strong, that we suspected he’d been exposed to
something. In fact, I heard H-ball’s base compound was made
from similar stuff. It must have been showing up in his blood tests
for weeks, but was listed as...
previously
undocumented
.
The Army said that it had been testing an antimicrobial near a
weapons’ stockpile discovered underneath a mosque in southern
Baghdad, but only
after
it had been secured and all
personnel separated from the site. You can only wonder why an Army
doctor kept telling him he was fine...only to have a county coroner
find enough converted toxins in his system to defoliate a forest. The
poison wasn’t listed as the cause of death, by the way. It was
the shotgun blast that scattered his head all over the kitchen. You
see, he felt really bad about killing my mother with that same rifle
after he’d mistaken her for an ax-wielding demon in the height
of one of his hallucinations. She was preparing dinner, chopping
peppers. When he realized what he’d done, he braced the gun
against the floor, stuck the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the
trigger.” Ross wrapped himself in his arms and sat up straight.
“It’s a wonderful country we live in, this U.S. of A.
Don’t you think?”

Bruckner
said nothing. He figured Ross had told that story before and,
fictitious or not, it was probably best to let the lunatic indulge in
his illusion of having achieved the high ground.

“
Damn,
man,” Trineer said. “You sure know how to bring down a
room.”

“
I’ve
got to piss,” Bruckner announced and waited for Ross to give
the okay. After Ross nodded in the direction of the bathroom,
Bruckner sauntered over to it and closed the door behind him.

A
mild steam from the tubful of hot water that Ross apparently forgot
to drain clung in the air. Bruckner thought the bathwater appeared
more freshly drawn than recently used as he pondered his evolving
picture of Ross. He was not unlike other bioethicals; he had a thing
for naturally grown food and took baths instead of showers, probably
to simulate the feeling of being in a lake or pond. These were small
things to be sure, but stuff Ross probably wouldn’t give two
shits about if he wasn’t trying to play the role of fanatic.

“
Peel
away the layers and Ross is as common as they come,” is the way
McCutcheon had put it. “Medical ethics, human dignity and
biological right of choice are nothing more than politico phrases and
pseudonyms given to Ross's pyromania—his sadism. If he had
gotten a bad haircut when he was five, he’d be bombing
barbershops today.”

There
was a rap of knuckles on the bathroom door.

“
Hey,
Buttrick,” Ross called from outside.

“
Yeah,”
Bruckner answered.

“
Did
I leave my ring in there?”

Bruckner
glanced down at the sink. A ring commemorating the Michigan State
University class of 2012 lay next to the cold water valve.

“
Yeah,
it’s here.”

“
Could
you hand it to me if you’re still decent?”

Bruckner
picked up the ring, snapped a mental photograph of it then opened the
door.

Ross
rushed the room like a one-man swat team. Brandishing the lamp that
he’d unbolted from the nightstand, he pushed Bruckner into the
full tub with a splash that soaked the floor. He then thrust the
lamp’s plug into a small wall outlet by the fogged mirror,
threw down the toilet's lid and hopped onto it, feet on the seat. He
pitched the lamp into the tub. He watched as Bruckner's eyes popped
from their sockets and blood ran from his mouth where he’d bit
into his tongue. Every light around them flickered like indoor
lightning flashes and the room smoked with a foul vapor.

Trineer
stood outside the door, and shouted through gritted teeth.
“
Fuck,
man! Oh, fuck!” He was panicked, but didn’t want to draw
attention to the room. “What the
fuck
did you do that for?”

Ross
pulled the plug from the outlet and dismounted the toilet. It wasn’t
likely this Buttrick had any type of implant. Ross's sweeps would’ve
detected it and Ross would’ve killed him where he stood. It
probably wasn’t on his clothing either, because, again, Ross
would’ve found it before Buttrick stripped. If he did miss it,
it was fried now.

“
I
don’t get it!” Trineer said barely breathing.

Ross
grimaced like he had a brain freeze.
Of
course you don’t, you dumb shit!
“
Take
a breath for God’s sake,” he said snippy.

“
Why
the fuck did you do that, man?”

“
He
was a Fed! I knew it the minute I plugged in the slip.” Ross
went to the desk and spun the fliptop so Trineer could see the
flashing red indicator. Beaumont's purloined software had stopped,
cold, the slipdisk from inserting its tracking beacon and spyware
onto Ross's drive. “I couldn’t let him leave.”

Trineer
stood silent, for a moment then eventually threw up his hands in
surrender of Ross's resourcefulness. What could he say? Ross wanted a
hacker, so he got him a hacker. It wasn't
his
fault Buttrick was a fed. Trineer wandered over to the magnetic
locker.
Fair enough
,
he thought. Ross wasn't getting what
he
paid for so...He opened the locker, reached inside and tossed
Buttrick's—or whoever he was's—clothes aside and grabbed
his own. No way he was sticking around to help clean up. Dead bodies
weighed a ton and there was still the chance somebody had heard
something.

Ross
watched Trineer put on his pants, letting him get one leg in. He
shook his head, ashamed of himself. Then he pulled the gun from the
desk drawer.

Cleveland, Ohio, August 26,
7:08 p.m.

Xavier
wandered around the historic warehouse district in an undetermined
direction. His head pounded as he tried to recall how he had gotten
there. He thought he remembered someone having pity enough to put him
on a bus after he explained he had no fare and said he didn’t
remember where the house was. Guess he slurred his sentences, like he
always did when his tongue was backstroking in gin, and it sounded
like “warehouse”. Xavier supposed there were worse places
to be stuck. He sometimes enjoyed strolling around the historic
Victorian buildings, many built before the Civil War. He could
imagine them as massive time machines that, if he entered, would
transport him back to a realm where he had the advantage of no one
knowing who he was or from where he'd come.
What
a coward
, he thought. It was always about escaping with
him. He beat his fist against the jagged brick of one of the
buildings until pain registered. Then his forehead fell against the
wall and he ground it into the spot.

Why
should he even give a shit where he was?

Why
should he care at all...
about
anything?
He screamed through his clenched teeth. Why did
that chamber have to be empty?
Why
?
Why didn't he let that bastard in the alley just do the job for him?
Suicide by asshole; it would've been perfect. Why? Damn it! Why?!

Xavier
turned away from the lines of mortar and peeked out at the western
sun kissing the lip of the horizon.

And
he knew.

That’s
why
, he thought. That's why he didn’t just pull the
trigger a second time, then and there. Because three days ago he'd
smiled at a woman light years out of his league—though not as
beautiful as the one from the alley—and sat for two hours in a
playground where the eight-year-old boy, ever alive in his broken
soul, yearned to dangle from the jungle gym. Because apple fritters
and chocolate milk still tasted good together. Because grandpa Willie
never got mad. Because, just like that big yellow ball in the sky
that effortlessly imposed its routine on the rest of us, Momma never
gave up!

Gave up?

Xavier's
thoughts froze. He squeezed his pocket only to be reminded the gun
was gone.

“
You're
dead,” he whispered to himself. “You're dead.”
Fuck
you! Fuck you!

Xavier's
legs suddenly chugged forward, all on their own. A group of passersby
had to dodge him as he barreled past, like a car with four flat
tires.
Get out of here! Get
out of here
was
all he could think, but he couldn’t run fast enough. He rounded
a corner and came to fall against a bus shelter just as the Superior
Avenue crosstown was squealing to a halt. He dug into his pockets and
came up empty. He scooted in behind the last passenger boarding the
bus and overwhelmed the driver, begging for a ride. Maybe it was
generosity or just the one-two punch of gin and the dog shit on
Xavier's boot, but the driver acquiesced and directed Xavier to
“please” take a seat as far to the rear as possible.
Xavier then sloshed to a row of empty seats at the back of the bus
and morphed into a fetal position under a window.

Hope.

Fuck you, you hear me? Fuck
you!

The word “safehouse”
was nothing of the kind, Glenda thought, as she teetered on the cliff
of the futon, her feet drumming against the floor like pistons. One
would think that after spending an entire day in the emergency room,
any place would feel like the presidential suite. But being exiled to
some out-of-the-way motel, way on the other side of town, Glenda felt
just as much a prisoner as a protected person. Being under guard at
the hospital had felt different; her sense of vulnerability was at
its highest, but
here
...well,
who was she kidding, she still felt vulnerable. Only now there was
the added dynamic of claustrophobia and conspicuousness
she just wasn't used to.
She clutched a cup of hot green
tea—decaf, for all the difference it made—and the surface
of the liquid rippled in her grasp.
Where
was Roberts?
she thought. Just how long would she have to
stay here? She took a swallow of tea and glanced around the room. It
was a comfortable updated suite with a Microsoft webscreen, a
double-bed and free-standing microwave. It was spacious, for a motel,
and safe, she supposed, although the bar for the latter term had been
lowered surpassingly since yesterday afternoon. Glenda was grateful
to have been allowed to, at least, gather some clothes and personal
effects before checking in. She'd changed to a black fitted blouse, a
pair of jeans and black canvas tennis shoes. She'd been permitted to
pick up her Civic from the shop, but not to drive it herself to the
location. She’d also been allowed a brief phone call to her
parents. They couldn't stand not being with her. The entire ordeal
left Louise Jameson shoveling in antacids and Jeremiah shifting from
attempts at acute alcohol poisoning to the construction of several
unneeded bookshelves in the basement. It was either that, he figured,
or load up the van with hunting gear that hadn’t been used in
fifteen years and start trolling for assholes—best
de
fense
and all that.