Mystery: Suspense: The Lazarus Phenomenon: : A Private Investigator Mystery Crime Thriller: (horror, thriller, science fiction, mystery, police, murder, ... (Marie Avalon Mystery Crime Series Book 1) (8 page)

“Nick!”

Marilyn dove forward like an All-Star baseball player coming for the Home run. Nick gurgled on his over-salivation and collapsed backward. He lay staring at the sky in a drugged haze, clueless to his dying all over again. 

“Nick! No! No, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’ve got you!”

Marilyn collapsed next to him and scooped him up. For the first time in his life, she cradled her child in her arms. 

“No, Nick. Not again, buddy…I’ve…I’ve got so much to tell you! Look at me!” Nick’s head began to roll toward the ground. Marilyn lifted his face, forced him to look up into her eyes. 

“I’m your Mom, Nicky. You’ve got to live, buddy. So that we can know each other and be family!” 

She was crying all of the sudden. For the life that she’d missed out on. For the things that had been done to her son. Maybe if she’d kept him none of it would have happened? She told herself that there was nothing she could have done, but it didn’t help with the pain of this moment. Of watching the light fading in his evergreen eyes.

“Mom?” He asked, smiling. He’d never gotten to say that before. 

“Hang on, buddy. I’m going to get you some help.”

“By God, Alex! I’’m done burying kids! You’re going to make it, son. Come on!”  

Renee pulled Alex up over her shoulder. He was thrashing, eyes rolling in his head like a crazy horse. He looked at her desperately confused. For most of us, death approaches like a fever slow and serene. For Alex, it had come with the force of the ocean savage in power. He was drowning in his own blood as his nostril vessels began to rupture and the roof of his mouth split with the seven times stronger rush of his blood on the six amplified hearts plus his natural one.

Renee drug Alex thrashing to where the Datsun still loomed like an island amidst the tear gas.

“What the hell is going on?! What’s wrong with him?!” Army shouted as Renee jerked the door open. 

She swung her fist across his face so hard he flew into the back window and cracked the glass. 

“You’ve lost the right to even ask that question when you put him in the line of fire!” Renee shouted above the din of voices. She swiped and grappled the front of his jacket. Hauling him upward as far as his chains would go, she forced him to look her in the tear-gas inflamed eyes. Army had faced whole battalions of Taliban fighters in his day and had never broken a sweat. He was trembling in front of her. 

“Just this once, you are going to be a good father to one of your many sons and hold him still. Press my belt between his teeth so he doesn’t bite off his tongue!” Renee ripped her belt off and twisted around to Alex. 

“Hey, buddy, look up here. Hi…” She smiled at him and pushed his sweat-drenched hair off his forehead. 

“Promise this won’t hurt.” She reached and pried his mouth open pushing the belt between his teeth not a minute too soon. He clamped his teeth down hard enough that the enamel cracking was audible. 

“Easy now, kiddo. Your dad’s here in the back. I’m going to pass you off to him, okay?” Renee carefully started to drag Alex toward the backseat. He thrashed, terrified at the thought of being face to face with his psycho-studies Dad. 

“Seriously, it’ll be okay. I’m not going to let him do any more mad science on you. He tries and I’ll kill him.” Renee finally laid Alex down. She snapped around in surprise just as she’d laid Alex’s twisting body directly in Army’s lap. 

“You’d kill my husband?!” It was Mrs. Prescott. She’d finally escaped Nick’s custody.  She’d soared in mind-altered devotion to the rescue of the man that had subjected her to her sadistic and ridiculous existence.

“If he tries to do any further damage to your son? Yeah.” Renee brought her fists up in a boxer’s stance.

Mrs. Prescott pulled a bowie knife she’d stolen from Nicky’s wood’s stash out of her bra. She smiled menacingly and tossed her head. Renee dug her feet into the dirt, but she was no match for Frankenstein’s bride. That’s not to say she didn’t try. The two women charged each other, Renee protecting her face with her fists. Prescott came slashing like a hell-cat, forcing the knife into her knuckles and twisting. 

Renee shrieked as the knife came down through the top of her hand and out the inside of her wrist. Prescott brought her knee up and cracked Renee’s chin making her fall backward bleeding and moaning on the ground. 

Prescott spun on her heel. 

“I’ve come to save you, Army. We can run away now! Be together always…We’ll take Alex and use Dr. Swift’s procedure on him. We’ll live forever the three of us…”

Army’s hair stood on end. He balled his fists up. 

“You listen to me, you crazy braud! Bringing you back from the dead was not my idea! The thought of necrophilia makes me want to shoot myself! You stay away from me!” Army was scaling the Datsun’s cab. From where she writhed on the ground, Renee realized he hadn’t been a willing participant in her resurrection. 

Mrs. Prescott tilted her head to the side. She was wan with horror and filled with sudden searing revulsion.

“Necrophilia? I returned from the dead to be with you and this how you talk to me?” 

She approached him so agonizingly slow. Renee watched in choiceless suspense. Prescott’s fury was not the thing of animals, monsters, or even movies. The look on her face was serenity. Not animosity but love. Love enticed into brutal pain. Pain that lead her to reach out and pull up Army’s chains. She broke them in her hands and forced them down his nostrils. 

Renee screamed and looked away. She heard Alex’s muffled cries of horror and knew that Army’s end had been more horrible than she’d ever be able to wrap her mind around. 

Prescott broke the chains out of the trunk and began to draw the body away. 

“You are going back to Hell with me you son of a-“ She never finished the words. Prescott had exerted her newly risen body far too much. Her eyes fluttered in instant vertigo and she collapsed. 

It took seconds for Renee to realize she was dead. She kicked Army to roll him over on his belly where she wouldn’t have to look at his face. 

“Oh my God!” Marilyn had approached the scene. She had clutched Nick under the arms and had dragged him up from the forest. Rabid foam trailed down his neck and his eyes fluttered. 

“Alex! What’s-what’s wrong with?!” He groaned around his gagging.

“You can’t say he didn’t have it coming, Marilyn. Sometimes life happens to wicked people and brings them to justice. As for the lady, she’s happier that way. Whatever they did to her hurt her in ways that could never be fixed.” Renee had forced herself to her feet.

Marilyn finally jarred herself into action. 

“It’s obvious both the boys need saving right? Looks like the medical services around these parts are totally corrupt? What do we do?” Marilyn attempted to think faster than possible. Her heart was beating in the tip of her tongue. She wasn’t throwing up only because she’d had nothing to eat for hours.

“We take them to the officers that are busting up the mobile labs. We might have a corrupted hospital staff here in Durango, but it’s the only one we’ve got. A few rifles really do come in handy when you need to force the Doctors of Death to perform emergency care!” Renee made a bee-line for the driver’s seat. She’d left the knife protruding through her wrist. Needed to keep it wedged together trapping as much of her blood inside the ribbons of flesh as possible. 

Marilyn pushed Nick in the back. She reached and lifted Alex up into his lap. Then she laid Nick against her chest and held both the boys. 

“Whoa! Your hand?! Maybe I should drive?”

“Necessity is the mother of invention, eh? I’ll drive with my teeth if I got to! Sit tight, shut up and hang onto those boys!” Renee kicked the gas.  

“On the ground jokers!” Officer Rogers aimed her Glock 22 for the sky and shot off a round. The research assistants flinched and hit their knees. 

Braxton was searching the mobile labs with white plastic gloves. 

“You’re not going to believe the like of illegal substances they’ve gotten their hands on! I think I’ve lost all faith in Capitol Hill.” He twirled some burning green powder on the tip of his finger. The Datsun crashed through the trees like a Mustang herd through wildfire and came to a wobbly stop in front of them. 

“We need permission to borrow the suspects!” Renee leaped from the driver’s seat and threw her hands into the air in a surrender gesture. 

“What makes you think we’re going to let you do that?” Rogers swayed on her feet with a smug smile. 

“Are there any other doctors in Durango that know how to reverse this stuff?” Renee tossed her head indicatively over her shoulder. Marilyn stumbled out of the car with one boy hanging off of either arm. Nicky was spitting up blood along with the foam now. Alex had passed out. 

“Oh my God!” Braxton covered his mouth. 

Rogers face transformed from brash rookie cop to empathizing parent moved by the sight of the dying kids. 

“Alright people, we’ve got to bust up this crime scene and make way for a backwoods surgery.” She started directing traffic with her hands. 

“Alright, Rodeo Clowns. Up off the ground! If you don’t want me to shoot you, then heed my every word. You’re going to fix whatever you broke in these kids.” Rogers shot at the suspects feet to get them to move. 

“We can’t help that one. The Doctor made the serum to cause rapid apoptosis. He’ll be dead in minutes.” One of the nurses was defiantly staring at Nick. 

“You’re going to try or I will shoot you. Seeing as the Law has clearly failed in this situation by actually funding you dirtbags, I’m the only thing that stands between you and getting by with murder.” Rogers dumped her brass and reloaded. 

The Research assistants stared stupidly at the dying boys. 

“We don’t know how.” Several of them said it at the same time. 

Marilyn dropped to her knees in horror. This couldn’t be happening.

“My-My blood….Moving faster…More hearts to fail…” Alex had miraculously jarred awake and was talking out of his head. 

“What is it, son?” Marilyn turned to look at him. He was beating at his chest. 

“The Doc said something about two people…About the vest…It’s a performance enhancer, right? That it could make you like a god immune to anything…Even Poison? You could use IVs and hook me and Nicky to this machine…” His head bounced on his chest. 

“Oh! I think I know! What he’s suggesting is suicide but it might actually work!” The Nurses’ eyes glittered as she understood. 

“What are you gonna-?” Marilyn’s eyes crossed, although she felt like she might understand. 

“We’ve discussed this in some of our organ donor studies. The possibility of healing two test subjects by using our Electro-Organic Cardiac Unit (the machine he’s wearing) to pump their blood into one another. They would each be receiving the blood volume of two bodies instead of only one. It’s never been tested before and could go horribly wrong. However, with more blood to dissolve the poison and neurotransmission responding from both of them to each other’s cells…We might be able to use chemicals to reverse Nick’s poisoning and the extra blood volume to stop Alex’s cardiac arrest as we gradually unhook him from the machine.” The Nurse swallowed obviously terrified now. 

“If there’s even the slightest possibility that it can save them you’d better get to work!” Chief Riggs demanded suddenly coming on the scene. 

The woods around Lake Nighthorse had become an operation room. They all moved like gears in a clock as Time skillfully evaded them. Braxton made the scene sterile like he would do for CSI and the boys were laid in the center of plastic tarps. The mobile lab was broken into and all kinds of bizarre machinery were pulled from it. 

“These are what the Prescott Project calls neuro-transmit syndicators.” The Nurse began as she pulled out these metallic headbands that looked like something out of Star Trek. She fastened one around each of the boys’ heads and then hooked a series of electrodes like a CGI creator down their bodies. Lastly, she pulled out life support lines and needles and pierced them into Nick’s heart hooking him into the machine. 

 “Okay, class is now in session. Assuming that this actually does work and that they have the same blood type, the neuro-transmit syndicator will trigger each boy’s brain to send stimulants to each other’s neurons. The effect will be that they each receive “double” the commands from the brain for natural function. The natural process of blood coagulation will be signaled in “layers” for each boy causing their individual blood cells to coagulate with each other and form one new blood. The blood pressure will then regulate itself as both of their hearts will be naturally pumping their double-volumed single blood through their bodies. With Nick’s rapid unbalanced apoptosis (programmed cell death) there will be twice the neurological activity to have to work through and signal this cellular death. The influence of Alex’s unaffected blood will also “confuse” and slow down the spread of the serum. Which will buy time for the poison to expire in potency. With Alex’s hyper-tachycardia (extremely too fast heart rate) there will be twice the blood to pump through his heart and the rate will naturally be slowed to its more stable rate.” The Nurse rubbed her hands together eager and hopeful.

“Come on, baby!” Marilyn held her breath. This was life or death. Healing or disaster. Renee stood with a compress against her bleeding wrist.

“Come on, Alex!” 

The death angel hovered in the air for the third time this year. This time, he would go away empty handed. They all watched for a moment as the Mad Science Nurses monitored medical equipment of the future, watching an EKG that showed the activity of multiple hearts at a time, making a note of how the poison caused some of the electronically operating donated hearts to fail. These lines gradually went flat until the neurologically syndicated braided line alone remained. Alex and Nick’s hearts beat in time and their brains worked together, somehow saving each other. Nick stopped foaming at the mouth and the Nurse wiped the bloody spit away. Alex’s convulsions slowed until they finally ceased.

One good thing had chosen to come from the dark and twisted research in Durango. They witnessed a medical miracle that night as the two brothers blood flowed intravenously between one another and became one and whole. They began to inject chemicals in Nick that caused hydrolysis to the molecules from his poison. This also affected Alex and allowed for the excess potassium and adrenal fluids in his blood to dissolve until he was regulating under what was normal for their shared blood flow.