The trouble was that now he would have to wait. And like Frederich Kitzmiller, Anton Kuryakin was keenly aware that for every minute that slipped by, more people would die.
Chapter 29
The pain came and went in waves for Eddie Gault as he trundled the old van along the road toward Biotron. He had to keep slowing down as the fierce headache hammered at him and dimmed his vision. He kept up a constant muttered monologue in an attempt to focus his mind away from the pain.
No matter what image he tried to conjure up, Eddie’s thoughts kept returning to Roanne Tesla. From the beginning he had questioned why anyone so beautiful and so much smarter than he would love him. It was a doubt he had kept tucked back out of sight while he enjoyed her attentions, but it never quite died. Now, in the moments when he was lucid, Eddie grew convinced he had been used. The thought made him angry, and the anger helped him stand the pain.
All of Roanne’s talk about the purity of the natural environment and the greed of the big companies had been easy enough for him to accept. Eddie had not possessed any strong opinions of his own, and he was happy to adopt Roanne’s in exchange for the sensual pleasures she delivered. Now he wished he had spent more time asking her about her motives and less time with his cock in her mouth.
As he neared the Biotron gate, Eddie ground his teeth in an effort to maintain control against the devils that wanted to come screaming out of him. He had things to tell Dr. Kitzmiller, and he had to hold on that long.
He saw the black limousine parked on the other side of the road, but he could not be bothered thinking about it. Faces were visible behind the smoked glass, but they were no more than white blobs to Eddie. He passed the limousine and turned in at the gate.
Two men in civilian clothes came out from the guard shack to meet him. Others in uniform watched warily.
“Eddie Gault?” one of the men said. He was taller than his companion and wore a neat moustache. Both men were about thirty and looked to be in good physical shape.
Eddie nodded, relieved that he would not have to make the effort of identifying himself. Dimly, he wondered how they came to be expecting him, but the thought did not take hold.
“Come with us, please,” the man said in a voice of quiet authority.
He got out of the van, grunting with pain from the small jolt when his feet hit the asphalt.
“Over here, please.” The second man, the clean-shaven one, took Eddie’s arm and led him to a beige Plymouth that was parked next to the guard shack.
“Dr. Kitzmiller,” Eddie got out with an effort. “I got to see Dr. Kitzmiller.”
“We’re going to take you to him,” said the first man. “Get in the car, please.”
Eddie got into the back seat of the Plymouth with the clean-shaven man. The one with the moustache got behind the wheel. They drove away, keeping the windows rolled up despite the fact that the car had no air conditioning. Eddie was sweating heavily before they had gone a quarter of a mile.
“Where … where we going?” Eddie said with difficulty. Each word he got out felt as if it pulled a little bit of his brain with it.
“We’re taking you to see Dr. Kitzmiller,” the driver said, not looking at him.
“He’s … back at the plant,” Eddie managed. “I saw him on TV.”
The driver glanced back at the man sitting next to Eddie, who said, “He had to leave the plant for a little while. We’re taking you to him.”
The Plymouth turned off onto a dirt road that twisted off into one of the dense patches of forest. The sway of the car made Eddie’s head hurt like an open nerve.
“Stop,” he said. “I don’t want to go in here.”
“It’s just a little farther,” said the man sitting next to him.
“No. You’re lying.”
The man in the seat next to Eddie tensed. He leaned forward and whispered something to the driver.
“Lemme out,” Eddie said. “No Kitzmiller here. My head hurts.”
The Plymouth pulled to a stop where there was a small clearing on one side of the road.
“This is it,” the driver said.
“Here we are, Eddie,” said the man with him in the back seat. “You want to get out?”
Eddie wiped his eyes, trying to clear his pain-streaked vision. Outside was nothing but the dirt road, the small clearing, and the thick growth of trees — white ash, birch, and bigtooth aspen. No buildings, no trail, no people.
“There’s nothing here,” Eddie protested.
The man with the moustache had already got out of the car. He pulled open the door on Eddie’s side.
“Get out, please.”
Even in his pain and his doubt the lifetime habit of following orders made Eddie lever himself out of the car. His head was about to burst. Something was crawling under the skin of his face.
“Walk over there, please.” The man with the moustache pointed toward the far edge of the clearing, where the encroaching trees formed a thick barrier.
“Why?”
The two men stood side by side, facing him grimly.
“Walk,” said one of them. Eddie could not be sure which one spoke.
Eddie turned, shuffling his feet on the leaf-covered ground. He took a lumbering step toward the trees. Another. Then he stopped.
“Keep walking.”
Eddie’s body stiffened. The inside of his head churned and bubbled like molten lead. His face felt like one of those balloons with eyes, nose, and mouth painted on it. He turned back toward the men.
“Oh, shit, look at his face!” one of them said.
Then they had guns in their hands.
Eddie heard a voice howling in his ear and only dimly recognized it as his own. He charged at the two men. His movements were no longer clumsy and slow. The pain had become so terrible that he had somehow transcended it. His sensory system had taken all it could stand; then it blew out like an overloaded circuit.
The boom of the guns blended with a distant roll of thunder. The impact of the bullets was no more than a small tug at his flesh. Eddie’s hands reached out and seized the nearest of the two men — the one who had sat beside him in the car. He found the man’s throat and closed his fingers like metal claws around the bobbing Adam’s apple and the windpipe. The man’s scream was lost in a sudden rustle of wind through the leaves as Eddie ripped out his trachea.
The man with the moustache fired his pistol wildly. His mouth gaped; his eyes bulged in terror.
Eddie stepped over the body of the man with no throat. He could feel the freshly risen boils on his face begin to burst. He reached for the man with the gun and caught his arm. He yanked on it, and the gun thumped to the ground. Eddie heard the man’s shoulder separate with a crackling sound.
The injured man cried out and pulled free. The pistol lay forgotten among the dead leaves. With one arm flopping uselessly, he dragged himself into the car. Eddie started after him. The engine ground to life, and the driver frantically wheeled around and headed back toward the highway, scraping the side of the Plymouth on a tree as he fought for control with his one working arm.
Eddie took a couple of steps after the fleeing car and stopped. The pain came in short terrible bursts. He felt the warm fluids oozing down his face where the pustules had broken. His mind veered along the edges of insanity. He was dying, and he knew it.
But before he surrendered to death, there was something he had to do. Someone he had to see. There was a debt to be paid, and Eddie Gault willed himself to stay alive long enough to pay it.
Thunder rumbled again, and Eddie started back along the dirt road.
The gloom of the lowering skies outside his window suited the mood of Lou Zachry. He sat slouched in the chair behind his desk in the Biotron plant, wondering if somewhere along the line he could have made a different decision and everything would have turned out right.