Table Of Contents - Book One.
Chapter 1 – I Want To Believe.
Chapter 2 – Winston Churchill.
Chapter 3 – Biology.
Chapter 4 – I Am Omega.
Chapter 5 – Requisitions Manager.
Chapter 6 – Stephen Harper.
Chapter 7 – Rat Number 9.
Chapter 8 – Max Frist, Dir. of Protocol Mgmnt.
Chapter 9 – Mike Taylor’s Pumping & Septic.
Chapter 10 – Gopher.
Chapter 11 – Nathan Felix, Assistant Director.
Chapter 12 – The Chair.
Chapter 13 – Maverick.
Chapter 14 – Country Road.
Chapter 15 – Einstein.
Chapter 16 – Lack of Water.
Chapter 17 – Crystal Blue Persuasion.
Chapter 18 – There is no Team in I-Work.
Chapter 19 – Alpha.
Chapter 20 – The Sixth Rat.
Chapter 21 – Relatively Uncertain Principles.
Chapter 22 – No Abnormalities? No Mutant Rats?
Chapter 23 – Phantom Holdings, LLC.
Chapter 24 – Voices in the Head.
Chapter 25 – Counting the Beans.
Chapter 26 – Hocus Focus.
Chapter 27 – A Steak Through the Heart.
Chapter 28 – Orangutans are skeptical of changes in their cages...
Chapter 29 – Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Chapter 30 – Omega (8(|)
Chapter 31 – After midnight, we’re gonna let it all hang out.
Chapter 32 – A Malevolent Spirit.
Chapter 33 – Web-surfing mutant goddamned rats.
Chapter 34 – He got a 32 gun in his pocket for fun...
Chapter 35 – No offense, Buddy.
Chapter 36 – Spilled Milk
Chapter 37 – I got your penal code right here.
Chapter 38 – Anything weird or peculiar?
Chapter 39 – A dead rat? Well thank god for that.
Chapter 40 – The final frontier.
Chapter 41 – She said, ‘Child are you a Christian? And I said, ‘Ma’am I am tonight.’
Chapter 42 – Dr. Hairy Bastard.
Chapter 43 – Trick or Treat.
Chapter 44 – Like a becalmed sailor in an asphalt sea.
Chapter 45 – Lt. Ruiz.
Chapter 46 – Alpha's version.
Chapter 47 - Slip Sliding Away.
Chapter 48 - Happiness is a warm gun.
Chapter 49 - The Chair.
Chapter 50 - The Raid on McDonald's.
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Chapter 1
I Want To Believe.
Accustomed to sleeping late on his one day off, Nathan Felix was surprised at the number of people he saw filing into a house of worship on his way to the facility. It was the first time he'd even thought about church in years. Like many people in the twenty-first century, he had eschewed religious belief for scientific fact. 'Not' he thought idly, 'that religion didn't have any artifacts, it was just that they never amounted to much proof.' That was one area where science had a definitive advantage over religion. Science bestowed certainty on nature. If you could measure it, document it, and reproduce the results, you had a solid theory. Theories were bolstered by facts. Facts are verifiable, they can be proven true or false. Of course, that was often easier said than done. How do you 'document' an intelligent animal? How do you prove that your adversary is smarter than you, and why would you want to?
He arrived at the facility at 7:05 a.m. Almost an hour earlier than he'd planned. Dr. Barbara Benson's car was already in the parking lot, along with Dr. Hatcher's BMW. Nathan's suspicions were already aroused as he got out of his car, locked it, and went over to Barbara's Porsche and placed his outstretched palm over the engine compartment. It was still warm. He glanced at Dr. Hatcher's BMW. One look told him it had been here all night. There was dew all over the hood, trunk and windshield.
He walked briskly to the building's entrance, counting the cars in the parking lot as he went. The night shift would still be here and the day shift would begin arriving in a couple of hours. He arrived at the front door and swiped his card through the automatic door lock. Nothing happened. Instinctively he reached for the door handle and pulled. There was no resistance; it was unlocked. The lobby was deserted as he approached the front desk. Normally, a security guard would be sitting here but the chair behind the desk was turned on its side. He focused his attention on the desk, computers, phone lines and keyboards. Although there was some disarray, it didn't look like a struggle had taken place, just the normal day-to-day workplace chaos. He stood there and scratched his head. The place was as quiet as a tomb. He moved behind the desk and grabbed the chair to set it upright. As he did, his hand came into contact with something wet and gooey. Startled, he instinctively let it go and looked at his hand. It was covered with sticky, coagulating blood. He let out a strangled half-curse and looked around for something to wipe his hand on. There were no towels or napkins on the desk, so he rushed to a nearby conference room, found a sink and vigorously washed his hands. He dried them with some paper towels as his brain tried to absorb the significance of the bloody chair. His mind raced with unpleasant possibilities. Where was security? Where were all the employees?
He returned to the front desk, picked up the phone and punched in the number for the security office. A breathless Grady Denham answered half-way through the second ring. "Hello?"
"Hey. This is Nathan Felix. I'm at the front desk and there's no one..."
"Oh thank God, Mr. Felix. Thank God you're here. I can't get an outside line, Davenport went to check on something two hours ago and hasn't come back, I can't reach him on his pager, the power went out, there are animals running loose on every floor, I can't..."
"Who is this?" Nathan asked.
"Grady. Grady Denham."
"Are you okay?"
Grady said, "Am I..." He continued in a low voice. "Yeah. Yeah I'm okay. I guess--
for now."
Nathan stuttered. "Well, what, what's happened? What's going on?"
"What's going on?" Denham was incredulous. "The animals are loose, they're running loose all over the facility."
Nathan looked up at the corridor in front of him and turned around to look the other way. He couldn't see the entire ground floor but, other than the bloody chair, the place was quiet. He said to Denham, "I don't see any animals."
"Well aren't you fuckin' lucky," Denham hissed. "I wish I were standing where you are. I'd get my ass out of there pronto!" After a moment he said, "Wait. Don't leave. Don't leave me here Mr. Felix. Please don't leave me here."
"I'm not going to leave you, Grady. Pull yourself together." There was silence from the other end. "Where's Dr. Benson?"
"Who?"
"Doctor Benson, the red-haired woman. She works in Section C."
A pause and then, "Oh yeah. I don't know. I think she went to her lab."
"Are you sure?"
"No. No I'm not sure. I saw her heading that way. That's all. I don't know if she ever went in, or if she even made it." He was whispering now.
Nathan said, "What about you? Are you all right? What's your status?"
"What's my status? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Are you secure? Are you in a safe area?"
After a brief pause Grady said, "No I'm not secure. I'm in the security office." He went on. "There're no locks on the doors. Can you believe it? There are no locks on the security office doors. I closed them and barricaded them as good as I could but," his voice trailed off, "I—I don't know."
"What about Hatcher?" Nathan said.
"Hatcher? He never left. As far as I know he's been here all night. Never left Section C. Probably dead, I would assume." The young guard stifled half a sob, then remained quiet.
Nathan misunderstood. "Did you know Hatcher?"
"What? No. No I didn't know him! I doubt I ever will at this point." He paused for a second and then said, "You need to call the police Mr. Felix. You need to get the police here right away. The phone system can't get an outside line. My cell phone won't work either."
Nathan thought he heard a beeping sound from Denham's end of the line and then heard Denham curse. Then the line went dead.
Nathan laid the receiver back in its cradle. He had been leaning over the desk and now stood up straight and stared at the front doors.
The security office was on the third floor, not far from his own office. With unnatural calm he flipped open his cell phone and dialed 911. It seemed like a prudent step to take.
His phone beeped. A message on the screen said, ‘Service Unavailable.’ He snapped the phone shut, then stood there staring at the front doors, and through them to the parking lot, at a few trees in the distance. 'I don't owe anybody anything in this facility,' he thought. 'Except Denham.' He’d just told Denham he wouldn't leave him. Denham had also begged him to call the police. Nathan was torn between his two choices. Leave the facility and return with the police, or stay and do what? There was no sign of any animals anywhere. How much time would elapse before he returned with the police? And what would they do once they arrived? What options would he have then? His type A personality recoiled at the thought of surrendering control of the situation. Disregarding how it came to be, this was his facility now.
He walked to the corner of the two corridors and looked down the main hallway. No animals; no people either: Not a sound, in fact. 'Aren't escaping, rampaging animals supposed to be noisy?' He took one last, wistful look at the front door and then, before he had the time or the wisdom to change his mind, he bolted up the stairs toward his office on the third floor.
Chapter 2
Winston Churchill
He heard strange noises as he passed the second floor landing, but it didn’t sound like chaos. When he reached the third floor, he paused at the door and listened intently. It was eerily quiet. He slowly pushed the stairwell door open and peeked out. He could see his office door. Looking in the opposite direction he noticed a large chimp about 100 feet down the corridor, walking away from him on all fours. It didn’t stop or turn around.
With one hand on the door, Nathan reached down and slipped off his shoes. Holding them in his other hand, he pushed the door further, took one last look back at the chimp, then slipped out the door and tip-toed towards his office as quickly as he could. No more than a few yards down the hallway, the stairwell door closed with an audible thump. Glancing behind him he saw the chimp turn around. Nathan broke into a sprint and by the time he reached his office door, he nearly slid past it on the polished floor. He grabbed the door knob and was already turning it before he came to a stop.
He had just enough time to glance to his left as he yanked open the outer office door. The chimp was galloping toward him at full speed. He rushed to the inner office, grabbed the door handle and found that it was locked. He cursed his own stupidity as he frantically shoved his hand into his pocket to get his keys. He dropped his shoes to the floor and fumbled for the right key with both hands and jammed it into the lock. Behind him, he heard the outer office door being opened. Riding a wave of adrenaline, he turned the key and the handle, then opened the door and thrust himself through it as he removed the key. He slammed the door, threw his shoulder against it and spun the deadbolt closed.
He glimpsed his pursuer just before the door closed: A four-foot chimp, heavily scarred, with one milky blind eye.
Nathan took a step back from the door and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He bent over, gasping, resting his hands on his knees, and then looked up at the locked door. He expected the chimp to rattle the knob, bang on the door, or scream and chatter in frustration; but nothing happened. No sound came from the other side of the door; none at all. Nathan waited, still breathing heavily. Finally, he heard a thump: The sound of the outside door closing in his secretary’s office. It was such an obvious sound, Nathan thought, ‘You’re not fooling me, you, you…” He couldn’t think of an appropriate insult. He scanned the door. The hinges were on the inside. He took a few steps backward and looked for shadows underneath the door. He didn’t see any. He stepped closer to the door, put his ear against it and listened. He heard nothing.
Behind the locked doors, with his breath finally returning to normal, Nathan mumbled a half-hearted ‘fuck you’ under his breath, then turned to face his inner office.
He approached his desk, threw his keys on it, picked up the phone and tried to get an outside line. ‘Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and…’ He slammed the phone back into its receiver. He looked up and found himself staring out his picture window. He could see the steel fire stairs just to the right of the window, and the rest of the sane world beyond. The hidden side door to his office was a mere 25 feet from the fire exit that led to those stairs. He could probably make it to the door, he thought, ‘before that fucking chimp knew what was happening.’ He saw movement to his left and his eyes spotted a trio of dogs sitting at one corner of the parking lot. They seemed alert, stationary, there was something about them that was troubling, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
He moved around the desk and sat down in his chair. He hit a button, turning on his computer. As he waited for the system to boot, he stood up and looked out the window. He scanned the area around the facility and saw more dogs. Two were pacing along outside the fence, like two sentinels on guard duty. The other four were grouped in pairs also. They looked like they were waiting for something, a signal, or orders, the way a soldier might wait for instructions.
His computer came to life, he entered his password and his home page came up. He mumbled the words ‘Thank you, God’ as he clicked on his email icon. The screen flickered again and then a box appeared. It looked vaguely familiar. ‘Network services are currently unavailable from this workstation. Please contact your Network Administrator for access to the Network.’
He shoved the keyboard away in disgust. It slid into a stack of folders and one of his in-trays. There was a thump as something hit the floor on the other side of the desk. Puzzled, he got up and circled the desk to see what it was. There on the floor was the tranquilizer gun that Dr. Barbara Benson had left here the night before. He bent over and picked it up, handling it as if it were made of some fragile, black crystal. He stood up straight, holding the gun, and thought of Barbara, God bless her, somewhere in the facility. She was the real reason he hadn't left the building and it wasn't just physical attraction. She knew things that he was still only guessing about. He needed her alive, and preferably in one piece. 'Shit, she was probably dead already.' The thought made him wince.
He stood there in the middle of his office, in his socks, with a dart gun in his hand, pondering what he should do, weighing his chances, preparing to roll the dice on his own fate. Part of his mind wondered idly if Winston Churchill, or other great historical figures, ever made decisions of life and death in their socks, or was he setting a precedent?
“This is nuts!” He said out loud. “No way am I going down to Section C for her lying ass. No way! I don’t even know her!” This wasn't exactly true. But he knew even less about guns. He looked at the one in his hand, pushed a button on the side and the barrel cracked open. There was one dart loaded in the breach.
“I don’t even know how to shoot this fucking thing!” He pulled the dart out of the barrel and snapped the gun closed. He raised it towards the wall and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. “See?” He said to the wall. “See? I don’t even know how to fire the fucking thing. Maybe the dart has to be in it for it to work. I don’t know.” He set the dart down on his desk. He looked at the gun and saw what looked like a place to hold and pull it. He clasped it with his thumb and forefinger and pulled. It made a distinctive ‘clack.’ He raised the gun toward the reticent wall and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked modestly, but made a satisfactory ‘thwap.’ It sounded right. He pulled the slide back again until the gun clacked, raised it toward the wall again and fired. Thwap. Yeah, it definitely worked. He was amazed at how easy it was. He pulled the slide again and re-cocked the weapon. Then he remembered that Barbara had put a CO2 cartridge in the gun. It was probably good for a certain number of shots before it ran out of pressure. He didn’t know how many shots it was good for, but he knew better than to fire it again, despite the fact that he had only one dart.
“One dart!” He said aloud to the empty room. “I’ve only got one lousy dart! What am I gonna do with one dart?” He looked at the gun and noticed a button near the trigger. A safety he guessed. It showed orange. He pushed the button in and pulled the trigger. The trigger would not budge. ‘That’s the safety,’ he thought. He popped open the barrel and slid the dart back into the breach and snapped it shut. He looked out the window at the fire escape.
Then he looked at his watch. It was only 7:54. It seemed like hours had passed since he’d entered the parking lot. He walked over to the phone and tried to call Grady Denham in security. No one answered the phone. He dialed Barbara Benson's number. No one answered there, either.
To get to Section C he had two options. He could go out the door, over to the nearby stairwell and down three floors and then to the far end of the corridor, or vice-versa, he could go out the door, traverse the length of the third floor corridor and then down the stairs at the end of the other corridor. He liked option two better; if he could just get past the chimp in his secretary’s office without alerting him, or her. He looked at his feet. He’d have no traction on the polished floors in his nylon socks, so he sat on the corner of his desk, mumbling to himself as he removed them. “This is a stupid idea. Stupid, stupid, stupid!” He walked to his office door on the thick carpet, put his ear up against it and remained motionless. All he could hear were distant, muffled sounds, and no sound from his secretary’s office.
He stole silently over to the secret door at the side of his office and put his ear to that one, too. Silence. All was quiet. He raised the pistol so the barrel pointed up. Just before opening the door, he remembered the safety was on. He cursed at himself under his breath, then depressed the little safety button and raised the gun again. He took a couple of deep breaths, and then, without thinking, held the last one as he slowly opened the door.
Chapter 3
Biology.
Just a few weeks ago:
The sun was just clearing the horizon when Dr. Barbara Benson pulled her Porsche into the parking lot. It wasn’t new, but it was clean, flashy, and fast.
She was an attractive 40 year old, with dark red hair that fell past her shoulders.
She glanced up at the facility as she locked her car door. Three stories high and constructed of red brick, narrow windows that seemed more decorative than functional, it was an imposing edifice that clashed with the country setting.
She stopped at the front door and punched her security code into a keypad near the entrance. Corrosion had peeled the finish off in flakes near the edges of the pad. Ignoring these signs of neglect, she entered the building through the main lobby. Ordinarily she would smile and chat with the security guard at the front desk as he checked her I.D, but today, she barely noticed him. Her shoes echoed in the empty corridor as she headed toward her laboratory. The walls were pale green, the hallway devoid of aesthetic frills. Considering the time, their were few people about either.
She punched in her code to gain entrance to Section C, the Advanced Biomedical Research wing, and the door creaked in protest as she pushed it open.
As she approached the lab, she reviewed the decisions she’d made that led to her current predicament. She had to smile. Originally, it seemed like a good idea.
The looming freedom she anticipated following her recent divorce had dissolved into a suffocating network of superficial friends and amorous acquaintances. It left her feeling hemmed in, forced into a state of near hibernation: A situation that didn’t suit her at all. With her credentials, she could have secured a position almost anywhere in the civilized world; so she refreshed her resume, put out feelers, and in no time at all had secured a job a thousand miles distant. She packed up her belongings, rented a U-haul, loaded it up and drove south until she could roll the windows down without freezing. She stayed in a motel until she found an apartment, and took two days to unload all of her possessions. When she finally stopped to look around, she found herself here. Spinning her wheels at this antiquated, second-rate research facility, situated in the middle of nowhere. Or, as the locals called it, Palatka, Florida. A quiet and peaceful little town, nestled in obscurity.
What a mistake.
All of these trees, cowboys and open spaces seemed, to her sensibilities—dreary. Dr. Barbara Benson was hopelessly cosmopolitan, born and raised in New York City. She attended medical school in Miami, then followed a career path that took her to such places as Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. She liked civilization, with its’ art, culture and nightlife-Palatka showed few signs of life in the daytime, its nightlife would make a funeral seem lively.
She chided herself mentally; the truth was, her employment options were far more limited than she wanted to admit. While many similar research facilities were engaged in genetic testing, research with living animal test subjects was the perfect environment for someone with her expertise in bio-chemistry and pharmacology.
Alliance Research & Associates was a facility devoted almost entirely to Toxicology, a field of research that explored and measured various aspects of toxicity-the most important of which, is dosage, or the amount of exposure needed before a subject is adversely affected. It is a given then, that toxicology is inherently invasive, often painful, and sometimes even lethal to the test subjects.
Despite this unpleasant fact, Dr. Barbara Benson didn’t have a cruel bone in her pretty body. She had a reputation and documented work history of bending the rules to ameliorate the suffering of her test subjects. It was in her nature to be kind, and it had earned her a fair degree of respect from her colleagues in the past.
In this facility however, her kindness was treated as a mild form of retardation; a sentimental weakness for creatures that were, in every sense, nothing more than the property of the facility.
Which reminded her of her predicament. The fact that her boss, and head researcher, was a man named Dr. Robert Hatcher. Well-known and widely published, she soon learned that his reputation for self-promotion was well-deserved, and his management style was rigidly authoritarian. Their clash of personalities was instantaneous and painfully apparent.
To put it plainly, Dr. Benson considered Dr. Hatcher to be a pompous ass. This, she could live with, but it went so much further than that. His actions and behavior fostered an atmosphere of callous disregard for the animals to such a degree that he seemed to take a perverse pleasure in the suffering he inflicted on the creatures in their care. His constant pursuit of recognition, as well as grants and research dollars, pushed his procedures and protocols to levels that were unusually cruel, and wholly unnecessary.
Immediately upon her arrival, Dr. Benson began to implement more humane procedures into the test protocols, but was repeatedly over-ruled by Dr. Hatcher. Realizing the futility of going toe to toe with Dr. Hatcher, Dr. Barbara Benson began to make changes behind his back, coaxing interns and assistants to follow her protocols when conducting research under her guidance. When Dr. Hatcher got wind of her tactics, he issued blanket orders to disregard her protocols under any circumstances.
After a few months of this treatment, Dr. Benson went over Dr. Hatcher’s head and appealed to the facility’s Assistant Director: A man by the name of Nathan Felix. She outlined her grievances in two long and detailed internal e-mails, and for her trouble, received a single terse and enigmatic response. The Assistant Director appeared to know very little about animal research, and was much more concerned with profits and shareholder dividends.
All of this was going through her mind as she approached the lab in Section C. She swiped her card through the scanner and punched in her code. The security system refused to open the door. Puzzled, she was about to make her way to the Security Office when Dr. Hatcher opened the door from the inside.
"I had to have the codes changed again," Hatcher said. "Another access card turned up missing." He handed her a new card, and ushered her into the lab.
Chapter 4
I Am Omega.
He was a full-grown Orangutan, tipping the scales at 250 pounds, curious and intelligent by nature, but here, he cowered in his cage, petrified. He never knew when they would come for him, or what they would do.
He scanned his immediate surroundings. The tables, equipment and cages were hard and shiny: chrome, aluminum, Stainless steel. There were forceps, glass canisters, and straps; and tubes that siphoned off your blood, your urine, or your guts. Scalpels lay in trays, arranged in deadly rows; their honed edges glinting in the bright fluorescent lights.
He endured immense pain at the hands of his keepers. Strapped to tables where anesthetics were often denied, while they cut, punctured and even poisoned him. Deprived of food and water for days at a time, he lived in a dull, paralyzing haze of ignorance and fear.
Cries of pain and terror were common in this place, the sounds of suffering varied. Agonized screams would erupt from a distant room, or he would hear the constant whimper from some caged creature just a few yards away. Size mattered little. Every creature, large or small, suffered in greater or lesser degrees.
To him, time was infinite. Life had no meaning.
One particular morning, he woke with a heightened sense of perception. He cocked his head, as though listening to a voice. Over the next few weeks, his fractured psyche began to emerge from its’ frightened veil of ignorance, glimpsing the world with growing awareness. His curious nature re-awakened, and began to pose questions and formulate theories. Gradually, he came to forget his fear as he began to examine his surroundings and those who held him captive. He wondered why they did it. What gave them the right to rain their horrific tests on him? Why was he in the cage and not them?
Today they chose to ignore him, preoccupied as they were, with the task of forcing small monkeys into plastic canisters. He was incapable of feeling pity, but he watched the process intensely, glaring at the backs of the researchers. He had both hands through the bars, one hand holding the lock, cradling it, clicking the numbered wheels round and round. Only his smoldering eyes betrayed the hatred he felt.
I Want To Believe.
Accustomed to sleeping late on his one day off, Nathan Felix was surprised at the number of people he saw filing into a house of worship on his way to the facility. It was the first time he'd even thought about church in years. Like many people in the twenty-first century, he had eschewed religious belief for scientific fact. 'Not' he thought idly, 'that religion didn't have any artifacts, it was just that they never amounted to much proof.' That was one area where science had a definitive advantage over religion. Science bestowed certainty on nature. If you could measure it, document it, and reproduce the results, you had a solid theory. Theories were bolstered by facts. Facts are verifiable, they can be proven true or false. Of course, that was often easier said than done. How do you 'document' an intelligent animal? How do you prove that your adversary is smarter than you, and why would you want to?
He arrived at the facility at 7:05 a.m. Almost an hour earlier than he'd planned. Dr. Barbara Benson's car was already in the parking lot, along with Dr. Hatcher's BMW. Nathan's suspicions were already aroused as he got out of his car, locked it, and went over to Barbara's Porsche and placed his outstretched palm over the engine compartment. It was still warm. He glanced at Dr. Hatcher's BMW. One look told him it had been here all night. There was dew all over the hood, trunk and windshield.
He walked briskly to the building's entrance, counting the cars in the parking lot as he went. The night shift would still be here and the day shift would begin arriving in a couple of hours. He arrived at the front door and swiped his card through the automatic door lock. Nothing happened. Instinctively he reached for the door handle and pulled. There was no resistance; it was unlocked. The lobby was deserted as he approached the front desk. Normally, a security guard would be sitting here but the chair behind the desk was turned on its side. He focused his attention on the desk, computers, phone lines and keyboards. Although there was some disarray, it didn't look like a struggle had taken place, just the normal day-to-day workplace chaos. He stood there and scratched his head. The place was as quiet as a tomb. He moved behind the desk and grabbed the chair to set it upright. As he did, his hand came into contact with something wet and gooey. Startled, he instinctively let it go and looked at his hand. It was covered with sticky, coagulating blood. He let out a strangled half-curse and looked around for something to wipe his hand on. There were no towels or napkins on the desk, so he rushed to a nearby conference room, found a sink and vigorously washed his hands. He dried them with some paper towels as his brain tried to absorb the significance of the bloody chair. His mind raced with unpleasant possibilities. Where was security? Where were all the employees?
He returned to the front desk, picked up the phone and punched in the number for the security office. A breathless Grady Denham answered half-way through the second ring. "Hello?"
"Hey. This is Nathan Felix. I'm at the front desk and there's no one..."
"Oh thank God, Mr. Felix. Thank God you're here. I can't get an outside line, Davenport went to check on something two hours ago and hasn't come back, I can't reach him on his pager, the power went out, there are animals running loose on every floor, I can't..."
"Who is this?" Nathan asked.
"Grady. Grady Denham."
"Are you okay?"
Grady said, "Am I..." He continued in a low voice. "Yeah. Yeah I'm okay. I guess--
for now."
Nathan stuttered. "Well, what, what's happened? What's going on?"
"What's going on?" Denham was incredulous. "The animals are loose, they're running loose all over the facility."
Nathan looked up at the corridor in front of him and turned around to look the other way. He couldn't see the entire ground floor but, other than the bloody chair, the place was quiet. He said to Denham, "I don't see any animals."
"Well aren't you fuckin' lucky," Denham hissed. "I wish I were standing where you are. I'd get my ass out of there pronto!" After a moment he said, "Wait. Don't leave. Don't leave me here Mr. Felix. Please don't leave me here."
"I'm not going to leave you, Grady. Pull yourself together." There was silence from the other end. "Where's Dr. Benson?"
"Who?"
"Doctor Benson, the red-haired woman. She works in Section C."
A pause and then, "Oh yeah. I don't know. I think she went to her lab."
"Are you sure?"
"No. No I'm not sure. I saw her heading that way. That's all. I don't know if she ever went in, or if she even made it." He was whispering now.
Nathan said, "What about you? Are you all right? What's your status?"
"What's my status? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Are you secure? Are you in a safe area?"
After a brief pause Grady said, "No I'm not secure. I'm in the security office." He went on. "There're no locks on the doors. Can you believe it? There are no locks on the security office doors. I closed them and barricaded them as good as I could but," his voice trailed off, "I—I don't know."
"What about Hatcher?" Nathan said.
"Hatcher? He never left. As far as I know he's been here all night. Never left Section C. Probably dead, I would assume." The young guard stifled half a sob, then remained quiet.
Nathan misunderstood. "Did you know Hatcher?"
"What? No. No I didn't know him! I doubt I ever will at this point." He paused for a second and then said, "You need to call the police Mr. Felix. You need to get the police here right away. The phone system can't get an outside line. My cell phone won't work either."
Nathan thought he heard a beeping sound from Denham's end of the line and then heard Denham curse. Then the line went dead.
Nathan laid the receiver back in its cradle. He had been leaning over the desk and now stood up straight and stared at the front doors.
The security office was on the third floor, not far from his own office. With unnatural calm he flipped open his cell phone and dialed 911. It seemed like a prudent step to take.
His phone beeped. A message on the screen said, ‘Service Unavailable.’ He snapped the phone shut, then stood there staring at the front doors, and through them to the parking lot, at a few trees in the distance. 'I don't owe anybody anything in this facility,' he thought. 'Except Denham.' He’d just told Denham he wouldn't leave him. Denham had also begged him to call the police. Nathan was torn between his two choices. Leave the facility and return with the police, or stay and do what? There was no sign of any animals anywhere. How much time would elapse before he returned with the police? And what would they do once they arrived? What options would he have then? His type A personality recoiled at the thought of surrendering control of the situation. Disregarding how it came to be, this was his facility now.
He walked to the corner of the two corridors and looked down the main hallway. No animals; no people either: Not a sound, in fact. 'Aren't escaping, rampaging animals supposed to be noisy?' He took one last, wistful look at the front door and then, before he had the time or the wisdom to change his mind, he bolted up the stairs toward his office on the third floor.
Chapter 2
Winston Churchill
He heard strange noises as he passed the second floor landing, but it didn’t sound like chaos. When he reached the third floor, he paused at the door and listened intently. It was eerily quiet. He slowly pushed the stairwell door open and peeked out. He could see his office door. Looking in the opposite direction he noticed a large chimp about 100 feet down the corridor, walking away from him on all fours. It didn’t stop or turn around.
With one hand on the door, Nathan reached down and slipped off his shoes. Holding them in his other hand, he pushed the door further, took one last look back at the chimp, then slipped out the door and tip-toed towards his office as quickly as he could. No more than a few yards down the hallway, the stairwell door closed with an audible thump. Glancing behind him he saw the chimp turn around. Nathan broke into a sprint and by the time he reached his office door, he nearly slid past it on the polished floor. He grabbed the door knob and was already turning it before he came to a stop.
He had just enough time to glance to his left as he yanked open the outer office door. The chimp was galloping toward him at full speed. He rushed to the inner office, grabbed the door handle and found that it was locked. He cursed his own stupidity as he frantically shoved his hand into his pocket to get his keys. He dropped his shoes to the floor and fumbled for the right key with both hands and jammed it into the lock. Behind him, he heard the outer office door being opened. Riding a wave of adrenaline, he turned the key and the handle, then opened the door and thrust himself through it as he removed the key. He slammed the door, threw his shoulder against it and spun the deadbolt closed.
He glimpsed his pursuer just before the door closed: A four-foot chimp, heavily scarred, with one milky blind eye.
Nathan took a step back from the door and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He bent over, gasping, resting his hands on his knees, and then looked up at the locked door. He expected the chimp to rattle the knob, bang on the door, or scream and chatter in frustration; but nothing happened. No sound came from the other side of the door; none at all. Nathan waited, still breathing heavily. Finally, he heard a thump: The sound of the outside door closing in his secretary’s office. It was such an obvious sound, Nathan thought, ‘You’re not fooling me, you, you…” He couldn’t think of an appropriate insult. He scanned the door. The hinges were on the inside. He took a few steps backward and looked for shadows underneath the door. He didn’t see any. He stepped closer to the door, put his ear against it and listened. He heard nothing.
Behind the locked doors, with his breath finally returning to normal, Nathan mumbled a half-hearted ‘fuck you’ under his breath, then turned to face his inner office.
He approached his desk, threw his keys on it, picked up the phone and tried to get an outside line. ‘Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and…’ He slammed the phone back into its receiver. He looked up and found himself staring out his picture window. He could see the steel fire stairs just to the right of the window, and the rest of the sane world beyond. The hidden side door to his office was a mere 25 feet from the fire exit that led to those stairs. He could probably make it to the door, he thought, ‘before that fucking chimp knew what was happening.’ He saw movement to his left and his eyes spotted a trio of dogs sitting at one corner of the parking lot. They seemed alert, stationary, there was something about them that was troubling, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
He moved around the desk and sat down in his chair. He hit a button, turning on his computer. As he waited for the system to boot, he stood up and looked out the window. He scanned the area around the facility and saw more dogs. Two were pacing along outside the fence, like two sentinels on guard duty. The other four were grouped in pairs also. They looked like they were waiting for something, a signal, or orders, the way a soldier might wait for instructions.
His computer came to life, he entered his password and his home page came up. He mumbled the words ‘Thank you, God’ as he clicked on his email icon. The screen flickered again and then a box appeared. It looked vaguely familiar. ‘Network services are currently unavailable from this workstation. Please contact your Network Administrator for access to the Network.’
He shoved the keyboard away in disgust. It slid into a stack of folders and one of his in-trays. There was a thump as something hit the floor on the other side of the desk. Puzzled, he got up and circled the desk to see what it was. There on the floor was the tranquilizer gun that Dr. Barbara Benson had left here the night before. He bent over and picked it up, handling it as if it were made of some fragile, black crystal. He stood up straight, holding the gun, and thought of Barbara, God bless her, somewhere in the facility. She was the real reason he hadn't left the building and it wasn't just physical attraction. She knew things that he was still only guessing about. He needed her alive, and preferably in one piece. 'Shit, she was probably dead already.' The thought made him wince.
He stood there in the middle of his office, in his socks, with a dart gun in his hand, pondering what he should do, weighing his chances, preparing to roll the dice on his own fate. Part of his mind wondered idly if Winston Churchill, or other great historical figures, ever made decisions of life and death in their socks, or was he setting a precedent?
“This is nuts!” He said out loud. “No way am I going down to Section C for her lying ass. No way! I don’t even know her!” This wasn't exactly true. But he knew even less about guns. He looked at the one in his hand, pushed a button on the side and the barrel cracked open. There was one dart loaded in the breach.
“I don’t even know how to shoot this fucking thing!” He pulled the dart out of the barrel and snapped the gun closed. He raised it towards the wall and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. “See?” He said to the wall. “See? I don’t even know how to fire the fucking thing. Maybe the dart has to be in it for it to work. I don’t know.” He set the dart down on his desk. He looked at the gun and saw what looked like a place to hold and pull it. He clasped it with his thumb and forefinger and pulled. It made a distinctive ‘clack.’ He raised the gun toward the reticent wall and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked modestly, but made a satisfactory ‘thwap.’ It sounded right. He pulled the slide back again until the gun clacked, raised it toward the wall again and fired. Thwap. Yeah, it definitely worked. He was amazed at how easy it was. He pulled the slide again and re-cocked the weapon. Then he remembered that Barbara had put a CO2 cartridge in the gun. It was probably good for a certain number of shots before it ran out of pressure. He didn’t know how many shots it was good for, but he knew better than to fire it again, despite the fact that he had only one dart.
“One dart!” He said aloud to the empty room. “I’ve only got one lousy dart! What am I gonna do with one dart?” He looked at the gun and noticed a button near the trigger. A safety he guessed. It showed orange. He pushed the button in and pulled the trigger. The trigger would not budge. ‘That’s the safety,’ he thought. He popped open the barrel and slid the dart back into the breach and snapped it shut. He looked out the window at the fire escape.
Then he looked at his watch. It was only 7:54. It seemed like hours had passed since he’d entered the parking lot. He walked over to the phone and tried to call Grady Denham in security. No one answered the phone. He dialed Barbara Benson's number. No one answered there, either.
To get to Section C he had two options. He could go out the door, over to the nearby stairwell and down three floors and then to the far end of the corridor, or vice-versa, he could go out the door, traverse the length of the third floor corridor and then down the stairs at the end of the other corridor. He liked option two better; if he could just get past the chimp in his secretary’s office without alerting him, or her. He looked at his feet. He’d have no traction on the polished floors in his nylon socks, so he sat on the corner of his desk, mumbling to himself as he removed them. “This is a stupid idea. Stupid, stupid, stupid!” He walked to his office door on the thick carpet, put his ear up against it and remained motionless. All he could hear were distant, muffled sounds, and no sound from his secretary’s office.
He stole silently over to the secret door at the side of his office and put his ear to that one, too. Silence. All was quiet. He raised the pistol so the barrel pointed up. Just before opening the door, he remembered the safety was on. He cursed at himself under his breath, then depressed the little safety button and raised the gun again. He took a couple of deep breaths, and then, without thinking, held the last one as he slowly opened the door.
Chapter 3
Biology.
Just a few weeks ago:
The sun was just clearing the horizon when Dr. Barbara Benson pulled her Porsche into the parking lot. It wasn’t new, but it was clean, flashy, and fast.
She was an attractive 40 year old, with dark red hair that fell past her shoulders.
She glanced up at the facility as she locked her car door. Three stories high and constructed of red brick, narrow windows that seemed more decorative than functional, it was an imposing edifice that clashed with the country setting.
She stopped at the front door and punched her security code into a keypad near the entrance. Corrosion had peeled the finish off in flakes near the edges of the pad. Ignoring these signs of neglect, she entered the building through the main lobby. Ordinarily she would smile and chat with the security guard at the front desk as he checked her I.D, but today, she barely noticed him. Her shoes echoed in the empty corridor as she headed toward her laboratory. The walls were pale green, the hallway devoid of aesthetic frills. Considering the time, their were few people about either.
She punched in her code to gain entrance to Section C, the Advanced Biomedical Research wing, and the door creaked in protest as she pushed it open.
As she approached the lab, she reviewed the decisions she’d made that led to her current predicament. She had to smile. Originally, it seemed like a good idea.
The looming freedom she anticipated following her recent divorce had dissolved into a suffocating network of superficial friends and amorous acquaintances. It left her feeling hemmed in, forced into a state of near hibernation: A situation that didn’t suit her at all. With her credentials, she could have secured a position almost anywhere in the civilized world; so she refreshed her resume, put out feelers, and in no time at all had secured a job a thousand miles distant. She packed up her belongings, rented a U-haul, loaded it up and drove south until she could roll the windows down without freezing. She stayed in a motel until she found an apartment, and took two days to unload all of her possessions. When she finally stopped to look around, she found herself here. Spinning her wheels at this antiquated, second-rate research facility, situated in the middle of nowhere. Or, as the locals called it, Palatka, Florida. A quiet and peaceful little town, nestled in obscurity.
What a mistake.
All of these trees, cowboys and open spaces seemed, to her sensibilities—dreary. Dr. Barbara Benson was hopelessly cosmopolitan, born and raised in New York City. She attended medical school in Miami, then followed a career path that took her to such places as Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. She liked civilization, with its’ art, culture and nightlife-Palatka showed few signs of life in the daytime, its nightlife would make a funeral seem lively.
She chided herself mentally; the truth was, her employment options were far more limited than she wanted to admit. While many similar research facilities were engaged in genetic testing, research with living animal test subjects was the perfect environment for someone with her expertise in bio-chemistry and pharmacology.
Alliance Research & Associates was a facility devoted almost entirely to Toxicology, a field of research that explored and measured various aspects of toxicity-the most important of which, is dosage, or the amount of exposure needed before a subject is adversely affected. It is a given then, that toxicology is inherently invasive, often painful, and sometimes even lethal to the test subjects.
Despite this unpleasant fact, Dr. Barbara Benson didn’t have a cruel bone in her pretty body. She had a reputation and documented work history of bending the rules to ameliorate the suffering of her test subjects. It was in her nature to be kind, and it had earned her a fair degree of respect from her colleagues in the past.
In this facility however, her kindness was treated as a mild form of retardation; a sentimental weakness for creatures that were, in every sense, nothing more than the property of the facility.
Which reminded her of her predicament. The fact that her boss, and head researcher, was a man named Dr. Robert Hatcher. Well-known and widely published, she soon learned that his reputation for self-promotion was well-deserved, and his management style was rigidly authoritarian. Their clash of personalities was instantaneous and painfully apparent.
To put it plainly, Dr. Benson considered Dr. Hatcher to be a pompous ass. This, she could live with, but it went so much further than that. His actions and behavior fostered an atmosphere of callous disregard for the animals to such a degree that he seemed to take a perverse pleasure in the suffering he inflicted on the creatures in their care. His constant pursuit of recognition, as well as grants and research dollars, pushed his procedures and protocols to levels that were unusually cruel, and wholly unnecessary.
Immediately upon her arrival, Dr. Benson began to implement more humane procedures into the test protocols, but was repeatedly over-ruled by Dr. Hatcher. Realizing the futility of going toe to toe with Dr. Hatcher, Dr. Barbara Benson began to make changes behind his back, coaxing interns and assistants to follow her protocols when conducting research under her guidance. When Dr. Hatcher got wind of her tactics, he issued blanket orders to disregard her protocols under any circumstances.
After a few months of this treatment, Dr. Benson went over Dr. Hatcher’s head and appealed to the facility’s Assistant Director: A man by the name of Nathan Felix. She outlined her grievances in two long and detailed internal e-mails, and for her trouble, received a single terse and enigmatic response. The Assistant Director appeared to know very little about animal research, and was much more concerned with profits and shareholder dividends.
All of this was going through her mind as she approached the lab in Section C. She swiped her card through the scanner and punched in her code. The security system refused to open the door. Puzzled, she was about to make her way to the Security Office when Dr. Hatcher opened the door from the inside.
"I had to have the codes changed again," Hatcher said. "Another access card turned up missing." He handed her a new card, and ushered her into the lab.
Chapter 4
I Am Omega.
He was a full-grown Orangutan, tipping the scales at 250 pounds, curious and intelligent by nature, but here, he cowered in his cage, petrified. He never knew when they would come for him, or what they would do.
He scanned his immediate surroundings. The tables, equipment and cages were hard and shiny: chrome, aluminum, Stainless steel. There were forceps, glass canisters, and straps; and tubes that siphoned off your blood, your urine, or your guts. Scalpels lay in trays, arranged in deadly rows; their honed edges glinting in the bright fluorescent lights.
He endured immense pain at the hands of his keepers. Strapped to tables where anesthetics were often denied, while they cut, punctured and even poisoned him. Deprived of food and water for days at a time, he lived in a dull, paralyzing haze of ignorance and fear.
Cries of pain and terror were common in this place, the sounds of suffering varied. Agonized screams would erupt from a distant room, or he would hear the constant whimper from some caged creature just a few yards away. Size mattered little. Every creature, large or small, suffered in greater or lesser degrees.
To him, time was infinite. Life had no meaning.
One particular morning, he woke with a heightened sense of perception. He cocked his head, as though listening to a voice. Over the next few weeks, his fractured psyche began to emerge from its’ frightened veil of ignorance, glimpsing the world with growing awareness. His curious nature re-awakened, and began to pose questions and formulate theories. Gradually, he came to forget his fear as he began to examine his surroundings and those who held him captive. He wondered why they did it. What gave them the right to rain their horrific tests on him? Why was he in the cage and not them?
Today they chose to ignore him, preoccupied as they were, with the task of forcing small monkeys into plastic canisters. He was incapable of feeling pity, but he watched the process intensely, glaring at the backs of the researchers. He had both hands through the bars, one hand holding the lock, cradling it, clicking the numbered wheels round and round. Only his smoldering eyes betrayed the hatred he felt.