Dead of Night

will avoid areas that have been doused with cat urine; however, rats infected with toxoplasma actually seek out the cat-urine-marked areas again and again. This is the deliberate work of the parasite. In humans, scientists have noticed a definite link between toxoplasma and humans with schizophrenia. This potential for schizophrenia will cross the placental barriers and present in newborns.”

“Why include that in what you gave to Gibbon?” asked Trout.

“Schizophrenia heightens fear and increased psychological distress.”

“Jesus God.”

“The toxoplasma is only one of several parasites introduced into the mix. We have re-engineered the DNA of flukes Dicrocoelium dendriticum and Euhaplorchis californiensis to work in harmony with toxoplasma. Each of these flukes affords a measure of predictable control over the behavior of the host body. The key player, however, is the green jewel wasp, which normally targets cockroaches. It injects a venom that blocks the neurotransmitter octopamine, which is associated with alertness and movement. This subjugates the actions of the host body. We greatly accelerated the life cycle of the wasp. Where it normally takes weeks for its larvae to mature, now it happens in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately the total lifespan is accordingly diminished. In order for the parasite to stay active and in control, it needs a constant source of protein. It therefore feeds on the host body … and that, too, is a desired goal. Lucifer 113 has transformed Homer Gibbon from a man to a parasitic factory whose sole output is suffering. Gibbon was supposed to be not only awake and aware in his coffin, it was my intention that he feel himself being consumed!”

Trout and Goat stared in absolute horror at the doctor.

Trout abruptly stood up and walked back and forth across the living room. He felt like he wanted a bath so hot that it would boil even the memory of this conversation off his skin. His skin itched and he stared at the backs of his wrists as if expecting to see parasites moving beneath the skin. Finally he wheeled on Volker, forcing control and a faux calm into his voice.

“Doc, I can appreciate you wanting revenge on bastards like Gibbon and the man who killed your sister and her kids. That’s normal. If you told me you took a gun and shot him, I’d be ‘hey, no harm, no foul.’ If you told me you went all Dexter on him and carved him up into deli meat, I’m good with that, too. But this … this is fucking crazy. This is actual mad scientist stuff here. This is…”

He fished for the word, but Volker supplied it, “Sinful?”

Trout nodded as he ran his fingers through his thick blond hair. “Homer Gibbon wasn’t fucking buried in a numbered grave. He’s in a mortuary in Stebbins County. Now you have to tell me how bad this is. Can those parasites get out? Do we need to call someone?”

Volker’s face was unreadable. “It’s already too late for that, Mr. Trout. I called the Centers for Disease Control before you arrived. They did not believe me. I called the warden, and I called my CIA handler. He did believe me, and it is up to him to get the government machinery working to contain this situation.”

“Wait … so the authorities already know about this?”

“Yes. But, there is one more … wrinkle.”

Volker’s eyes were jumpy. Trout thought the man was half wacko when they arrived, but now he was sure Volker was a short twitch away from going totally batshit.

“Then tell me,” demanded Trout.

“Minutes before you arrived I placed another call,” Volker said, his voice slow and dry. “To Selma Conroy.”

“Why? To warn her?”

“To have her warn everyone. Gibbon was supposed to take the parasites with him into the ground. Into a sealed coffin. With their reduced life cycle they would consume all of the host matter in a few weeks and then die. End of Gibbon and the end of them. Clean and tidy. These parasites were never intended to be allowed to enter the general biosphere. Even when we were working on them in East Berlin we knew that Project Lucifer was likely to produce a bioweapon that was too unstable to use, even when deployed in remote spots.”

“Did Selma call anyone? Is she out there raising the alarm?”

A drop of drool dripped from the corner of Volker’s mouth and ran down his chin. He did nothing to wipe it away.

“No,” he said, and in a voice that was almost too soft for Trout to hear, he added, “No … after I told her some of what I told you, Mrs. Conroy cursed me and damned me … and then she put Homer Gibbon on the phone.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

HART COTTAGE

Lee Hartnup stood in the middle of the living room, his body swaying with mindless indecision as the immediate need leeched away to be replaced by a deeper and inexplicable need. The front door was open and the wet fingers of the storm reached in to touch everything. The walls, the furniture, the curtains, the bodies.

The smell of blood was even stronger than the wet-earth smell of the rain. Even floating formless within his stolen body, Hartnup could smell it. And it drove him to madness that the smell made him feel hungry. Or, rather … it made him completely aware of the hungers that drove this thing, this shell.

Worse than the hunger, though, was the grief. It was so vast a thing that it should have split this infected husk apart and sent his soul screaming into the wind.

April.

Tommy.

Gail.

Oh God … please let me die.

His stolen eyes were not looking in that direction, so for the moment Hartnup was spared the horrors of seeing what had become of his sister and her children. Even so, the last image of them hung burning in front of him, there in the vast inner darkness. April in a sprawl, dying as she tried to run with a savaged throat. Her blood painted in broad arterial splashes onto wall and ceiling. And the two smaller bodies who lay under her, still wrapped in her limp arms as if she could protect them in death more effectively than she did in life.

Tommy and Gail. Small bodies. So little of them left. So much of them in him, in his own stomach.

Please let me die and not see this … let me not know this …

There was a wet sound behind him and his body turned, a clumsy, lumbering act, triggered by an awareness of movement. He saw the policeman. Was this the second policeman he had killed, or the third? Gunther, Hartnup thought, his name is Ken Gunther.

The policeman rose slowly from the cooling body that was bent backward over the arm of the couch. Hartnup stared at the sprawled corpse, wishing he could weep for her. For all of them. But he did not own even as small a thing as his own tear ducts, and so no tears fell for officer Dana Howard. Her eyes and mouth were open. So was her stomach. Steam rose from the red drama of that gaping hole.

As Gunther moved sluggishly toward the door, his shoulder collided with Hartnup’s and the impact staggered them both. There was no reaction other than for each to right himself. No growls, no exchange of words. Like insects, Hartnup thought.

On the couch, Dana Howard suddenly sat up, and the motion forced air out through the torn tissue of her throat. A hollow sound for a hollow person. She slowly clambered to her feet, indifferent to the intestines that sloshed out of the ragged hole in her stomach and slapped onto the carpet. Dana tottered two crooked steps forward, her head slowly turning left and right but her expression remaining vacant. Absent.

Hartnup wondered if the real Dana was still in there. As he was in here, a hijacked soul in a hollow body. He wanted to step close, to look into her eyes, to see if there was still some sign, however small, that the soul or personality of Dana Howard still remained.

And if it did, what then? What would it change? Would it make him feel less alone, knowing that he was part of some larger, shared catastrophe? Or would it build another layer of impotent sadness and grief atop what he already felt? Which was better? Which hell burned less intensely?