the Devil's Workshop (1999) (9 page)

Dr. Lack finished his adjustments to the video equipment, then two M
. P. S
moved up and stood behind each camera. Dr. DeMille picked up the "Governor's phone" nearby.

"Can you see that okay, Admiral?" he said.

"Yes. Go ahead." Admiral James G. Zoll's rough voice came through the line from the communications room at Company A, First SATCOM Battalion Headquarters at Fort Detrick.

Now Troy Lee was on his feet, screaming silently at them through the soundproof glass. His too-white skin was turning red with the effort.

Dexter DeMille walked over to the two boxes affixed to brackets on the side of the gas chamber. He removed the canvas covers, revealing the newly hatched, swarming female mosquitoes.

Then he pulled up the air lock on each of the boxes, allowing the x-ray-sterilized and Prion-primed female mosquitoes to fly through a small one-way filter valve into the gas chamber. First one, then three, then fifty entered the enclosure. In a few moments, most of the deadly insects were in the gas chamber.

Quickly both Sylvester and Troy Lee had dozens of mosquitoes on them. They danced around in the gas chamber, trying to get them off, slapping at them with their hands, rubbing against the sides of the glass chamber, smearing specks of blood on the chamber walls.

Dexter waited until he was sure both Sylvester and Troy Lee had been thoroughly bitten, then he released an insect spray into the chamber. It flowed from newly installed valves in the ceiling, and quickly a fine toxic mist settled over Troy Lee and Sylvester, turning their shoulders wet and shiny.

One by one, the mosquitoes in the gas chamber died, falling off the two prisoners and off the walls where they clung. Hundreds landed dead in black clusters on the floor. Then one of the white
-
helmeted M
. P. S
turned on an overhead shower nozzle that drenched the chamber with water. The dead mosquitoes were washed from Troy Lee and Sylvester, rinsed off the glass walls and floor. Finally, they all disappeared down a drain, into a bio-container that was affixed under the scaffolding.

Dr. DeMille picked up the second intercom phone and dialed three digits. "Okay," he said softly.

The door opened downstairs and four M
. P. S
in full HEPA gear climbed the metal steps. The soldiers left their cameras, and everybody exited the tower for their own protection. The M
. P. S
in HEPA gear moved to the gas chamber door. They looked like visitors from the space program in their canvas suits and oxygen helmets.

They opened the air-locked door and dragged the confused prisoners out of the gas chamber.

Dexter DeMille went back to his quarters to begin what he assumed would be a three
-
to four-hour wait.

It began at 1156 A
. M
.

Suddenly, without warning, Troy Lee Williams got up off his bunk on the fifth tier and hurled himself at a passing guard, crashing headfirst against the steel bars of his prison cell, splitting his forehead open. The M
. P
. had passed too close to the cell, and Troy Lee managed to grab his hand, jerking it through the bars. In a homicidal rage, he clamped his mouth over the guard's hand, biting hard, snarling and tearing the soldier's flesh.

"Get the fuck off me!" the soldier screamed, as he snatched out his side arm and fired into the cell, hitting Troy Lee in the leg, throwing him back. Then the startled M
. P
. pulled his bleeding hand back through the bars and looked at the wound in horror. Troy Lee, with his own blood from the bullet flowing down his leg and the guard's blood running from his chin, stood in the center of the cell, screaming and drooling like a rabid animal.

Dr. DeMille ran up the stairs and onto the death row tier. Video cameras had also been set up in the cellblock, to record both Sylvester and Troy Lee. Dexter had been watching a monitor in his room and had seen the attack. Sylvester Swift was standing at his cell door, unchanged, but looking worried.

"Troy Lee, can you hear me?" Dexter asked the wild-looking murderer, who was in the center of his cell, blood and spit foaming at his mouth, his breath coming in gasps. "Tell me, tell me what you're feeling. What's it feel like? The rage you feel--is it uncontrollable?" He had a tape recorder out and pushed toward the bars.

Troy Lee's mind was somewhere else; he was homicidally insane. He charged Dexter DeMille and smashed against the metal bars, grabbing for Dexter's hand holding the tape recorder. Blood from the deep cuts on his forehead splattered out into the corridor. The microbiologist had been ready, and jumped back, avoiding the lunge.

"Get this soldier to sick bay," Dexter ordered.

They took the M
. P
. with the bleeding hand away. For almost twenty minutes more, Troy Lee raged in his cell.

It was worse than anything Dexter had ever seen among the Fore Aboriginal tribe in New Guinea in '73. They also had rages in the early stages of the disintegrating brain disease they called "Kuru," but it was nothing like this. He and Carleton Gajdusek had tried to save them, but one by one, the Aborigines first went mad, then died. It took the microbiologist a year of doing autopsies in grass huts to isolate and identify the likely cause as a rogue protein that was eating away the mood control center in their midbrains.

After he returned from New Guinea, Dexter had not been able to find funding to continue his Prion research. While he was teaching microbiology at Sam Houston University he was approached one evening by the head of the department and offered a research sabbatical at Fort Detrick, Maryland. It was there that he met the frightening Admiral Zoll, who surprised him with a thorough knowledge of his work in New Guinea. He was introduced to Zoll's bio
-
weapons program at the Devil's Workshop. There he began experimenting with mixing Kuru and mad cow disease, a similar protein-based illness that had recently surfaced in English cattle, making them crazy by also attacking the mood center in their brains.

The initial problem with his concoctions was that the total destruction of the midbrain took over two years--way too long for a bio-weapon. To accelerate the devastation, DeMille had finally mixed in a strain of human Epstein-Barr virus. E
. B
. virus proved a perfect accelerant. He continued to tinker and adjust, finding other ways to speed the result. His tests on primates were extensive, and finally he had a strain of Prion that ran its course in hours. He named his discovery the "Pale Horse Prion," PHpr, and it now had several unique characteristics that made it an excellent choice as a bio-weapon. One was stealth ... the Prion appeared to be just another "normal" protein. It was undetectable by ordinary lab tests, and it was impervious to sterilization. PHpr was a "Dr. Jekyll" protein that transformed into a vicious "Mr. Hyde" Prion when activated.

He watched now in fascination as Troy Lee's hands clawed insanely at his own throat. His eyes were red-rimmed and resembled no eyes Dexter DeMille had ever seen.

Then, as with Kuru and mad cow, the rages started to subside and Troy Lee began to lose his balance, each time falling on his right side. During the next hour came the onset of tremors and dementia.

"The patient has gone into the severe ataxic stage," Dr. DeMille said into his tape recorder.

Twenty minutes later, Troy Lee was on his back, gurgling fluids out of his mouth as occasional grand-mal seizures ravaged his trembling body.

"It is four thirty-five," Dexter said softly into his tape recorder. "The subject now has badly impaired swallowing and has gone into status epilepticus."

At five-fifteen, Troy Lee Williams was pronounced dead. He was put into a bio-containment bag and removed to the hospital for autopsy.

The entire course of the disease, from infection to death, was less than six hours.

Despite over twenty mosquito bites, Sylvester Swift was unchanged. His good health proved that Dexter DeMille had done something that had never been achieved before... he had successfully targeted a bio-weapon to a specific genetic group by hitting Troy Lee and not affecting Sylvester at all.

Admiral Zoll called Dexter DeMille and congratulated him. "I'm very pleased," the sandpaper voice said. They both knew the weapon would devastate the enemy, first with the terrifying homicidal rages, then with the horrible death cycle.

"Thank you," Dexter replied.

Then the Admiral asked to speak to Dr. Lack. Dexter handed the phone reluctantly to his assistant, who asked softly, "What do we do with Sylvester Swift?"

"He has to be collateralized," Zoll replied.

Five minutes later a gunshot sounded in the empty corridor of the fifth tier of center block.

Dexter DeMille didn't hear it. He had already returned to his quarters.

He poured a strong drink of Scotch and sat on the edge of his bed. His hands shook, while his mind wandered. He had started studying Prions in New Guinea, trying to save lives, but after that there was almost no practical application. Nobody seemed to care about his discovery, except for Admiral Zoll. Somehow his once humanistic science had led him to Fort Detrick, and then to this gruesome new discovery.

"Dear God, what am I doing?" he finally whispered to himself. Then he got off his bunk, walked into his bathroom, and threw up.

Chapter
7

Hollywood Mike glowered. "My old man. What a prick!

Know what the worst day of that asshole's life was?"

"Whaaa?" Lucky slurred.

"The day Heidi Fleiss got busted."

Lucky took another pull on the half-empty bottle of Gallo Red Label.

It was seven A
. M
. Sunday morning. They were both drunk, sprawled against the wooden slats of an empty boxcar coupled in the middle of a manifest freight--a train with many different types of cars--that was making a slow climb up the face of the Black Hills of East Texas. The train creaked and groaned as the scenery drifted lazily past the open door, strobing fingers of pale sunlight into the boxcar and across both of them.

Somebody had recently done a job on Lucky. One of his front teeth had been knocked out; his lip was split and maybe needed stitches. He also had some open sun sores on his lips, caused by passing out in the park on a ninety-degree day. Most of the discoloration and swelling from the beating was hidden under his tangled blond beard. He was thirty-seven, but seemed ageless. Greasy, shoulder-length hair hung limp; his blue eyes were rimmed in red and remained unfocused as he rocked with the motion of the car.

Lucky didn't know who had beaten him up, because he'd been passed out in a hobo encampment, known as a jungle, when it happened. He woke up just in time to be knocked unconscious again. He'd lost five dollars that he'd earned in Waco, Texas, chopping wood, but more important, he'd lost his torn Nikes to the vicious unseen jungle buzzard who'd attacked him. Now his feet were wrapped and tied in black plastic garbage bags that he'd stolen from containers behind the Salvation Army mission, known as a "sally." The mission director had thrown both him and Hollywood Mike out after a two-day visit, two days being the limit you could stay in one of those preachy "ear-bangs."

They had gone to the switching yard in Waco and had "caught out" on this manifest train.

Hollywood Mike, at twenty-two, was fifteen years younger than Lucky, and he still had his shoes, but aside from these two advantages, there was little difference between them. He was just as scruffy, and almost as drunk. His curly hair was plastered on his head with just as much road muck. His one wardrobe statement, which was responsible for his nickname, he wore under torn coveralls. It was a movie premiere T-shirt that read:

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER

IS

HOMEWRECKER

JULY 3, 1999

"Heidi Fleiss, man, Heidi fuckin' Fleiss," Lucky said, in mindless reflection. Then he straightened up and took another hit from the bottle, being careful to pour the wine down the right side of his throat to avoid the open cut and festering sun blisters.

"Gimme a hit off that," Mike demanded.

Lucky leaned to pass the bottle and the two of them, drunk as they were, almost fumbled the prize. Both lunged to catch it. Finally Mike wiped the neck with his dirty palm, a concession to proper oral hygiene, then took a deep swallow. "Yeah, everything in that prick's fucked-up life is only about him. I might as wella been dead."

"Selfish motherfucker," Lucky commiserated dully.

"I only stayed with the prick one summer, but that was enough. Know what his drug bill is in one day? Just one lousy day?"

"One fuckin' day?" Lucky repeated, his dull eyes locked on the bottle of Red Label.

"Thirty-two thousand dollars."

"Thirty-two..." Lucky stopped and looked up at his friend. "Huh?"

"I'm not sayin' like every day he spent that." Mike took another hit from the bottle. "I'm sayin' I found this one bill like in the pool house, or some fuckin' place. I can't remember now where it was. Bill from a Malibu pharmacy, March tenth, thirty-two large. This shallow cocksucker is stickin' it up his nose, or in his arm, and then he has the balls to piss on me about one little misdemeanor pot bust. Fuck him." Mike took another swallow.