Vox(85)

She laughs, but her hands are too busy for chatter as she palpates the soft tissue inside the chimp’s skull. It’s stomach turning and fascinating and miraculous, all at the same time. How the hell could people like Reverend Carl and Morgan LeBron want to take this woman and throw her away? How could anyone think that makes sense?

“Okay. Here we go.” Lorenzo draws two full syringes of clear liquid from a vial on the surgical table. It looks as harmless as water. He sets one down on the table between the gurneys and holds out the other to Lin.

I watch her calm hands as she inserts the fine point of the needle a few millimeters into the chimp’s cortical tissue and squeezes the plunger, glancing at the readouts. She nods, apparently satisfied she hasn’t killed her patient, and injects the remaining serum before replacing the round piece of skull—plug, Jean, it’s only a plug—and stitching up her work. The entire process has taken five minutes.

A good thing, really, since both the chimpanzee and Morgan have begun to stir.





SEVENTY-TWO




One close-up and personal encounter with an angry primate was enough for me. I don’t care to relive the experience.

“We need to get her out of here, Enzo. Now,” I say, watching with horror as the chimp’s chest begins to rise and fall more deeply. “Lin? How much time do we have before she comes out?”

Lin shakes her head back and forth, holds up four fingers, then two.

There’s no need for Lorenzo to translate.

“Six minutes?” I say hopefully.

She shakes her head again, holding up two fingers, thrusting them toward me.

I look around for something—anything—we can use as restraints, and find only suturing thread on the surgical table. Not good. “Okay. Okay.” No time to spare. “Lin—you make sure the cage is open. Enzo, you and I wheel this baby back where she belongs.” My own heartbeat marks every passing second as Lin races out of the makeshift operating room and follows the noise of the remaining hooting chimps toward the front of the lab.

Chimpanzee Number 413, eyes filled with puzzlement, reaches a long and hairy arm up to her head. Then she turns her face toward mine.

“Enzo? Push!” I yell. The gurney slams into a pair of lab stools, knocking them across the floor. Lorenzo catches one before it careers into two more, barely preventing a domino effect of rolling furniture that might block our path. Jackie and Isabel stand in the center of the lab, horrified and helpless.

“Don’t say anything, Jacko,” I plead. “Don’t say anything. Take Isabel somewhere else. Lock yourselves into a closet if you have to.” Every mental image I have is of the mauled woman, Charla Nash, missing everything on her face save the skin on her forehead.

“Petroski!” I yell into the empty white space of the lab as Lorenzo pushes the gurney past countertops of flying paper, eyeglasses, a fucking slide rule. “Petroski!”

Petroski comes running from his station. The chimp utters a low moan, not a hoot, not a screech, but a woeful, hollow moan.

Don’t look at her, Jean. Don’t you dare look at her.

But, of course, I do.

Fury shimmers in her soft brown eyes as we reach the open cage.

Petroski draws his service weapon. His hand shakes as he clicks something with a thumb. The safety, maybe. What the hell do I know?

“Don’t shoot her unless you have to,” I say. “All right, Enzo. On my count. One . . .”

The chimp’s paw leaves her head and reaches toward me.

“Two,” I pant.

Iodine from the wound fills my nostrils as she extends.

“Three!” With every ounce of strength, I heave the beast off the gurney with Lorenzo taking most of her weight. A claw brushes my lips as chimp Number 413 rolls into the cage. Lorenzo slams it shut and steps back to the centerline of the cage room, taking me with him. One furry paw shoots between the bars, clawed fingers splayed, then retracts. The chimp goes back to massaging one side of her head.

It almost looks as if she’s trying to remember something.

“Oh god, Enzo. Morgan. Where’s Morgan?”

Based on the tour, I know there’s only one way in and out of the lab, and Morgan hasn’t come through. Lorenzo is back across the room in four long strides, as I yell to him to get Jackie and Isabel out of the way. I don’t know if he hears me.

Lin signs something I can’t understand, points to me, then to the caged chimp.

“Close one,” I say, unsure of whether this is what she means.

She nods.

“Go see about Jackie and Isabel,” I say. “I’m going to help Lorenzo.”

Another nod.

I don’t know whether it hits me while I’m still in the primate room, or whether I think it as I walk through the lab with its tilted stools and scattered papers, but it hits all the same. It hits like a fucking grand piano dropped from a high floor. Morgan. A syringe. Lorenzo.

This isn’t water soluble. Or injectable into the bloodstream.

Try that, and you’ll fry half his brain.

My legs seem to move on their own.





SEVENTY-THREE




Morgan LeBron stands five foot six and might tip the scales at 150, after someone wet him down with a fire hose. Lorenzo can pick me up with one arm tied behind his back. It’s no match at all, unless the smaller of the two has an edge.