Instinct by Jason Hough (ebook reader web TXT) 📗

my brain, trying to piece everything together. Unbidden I suddenly recall what Mrs. Rogers said to me about her boy, Johnny. It was so out of character.

But how? When? Surely Doc and his gang couldn’t have grabbed him and injected Ang’s concoction because there was no gang, not then. It’s this new version that creates behavior like Rhod Mitchell’s. Johnny, Clara, Sally, myself, we were all given the previous version. But how?

It hits me, then.

The sleeping pill Clara gave me. I took it that night, before Rhod attacked me. And ever since then…

Yet Clara was fine, at least until the next evening? Surely she’d taken one, too. I think back to our conversation. I was dead tired, not thinking clearly. But I think she said something about her sister swearing by them, and that she herself hadn’t taken one yet.

But she must have that night, or the next. Because her behavior had changed, too. Hence the woman famously mistrustful of strangers went down into a dark abandoned missile silo with a bunch of teens she’s never met.

And where had those pills come from? Doctor Ryan, of course. The only game in town for prescription meds. He’d tried to push those sleeping pills on me, too, come to think of it.

I try to picture the Rogers’ house. The master bathroom. There’d been something there. No sleeping pills but something else. Alzheimer’s medication, was it? I’d googled it, thought nothing of it, but now I can see a new angle. The meds improve focus, memory, reactions. Everything a teenage gamer craves to get the upper hand. The sort of thing Johnny might try while his parents are away.

It wasn’t the cell tower or government nerve agents or satanic rituals. No, it was Doc Ryan’s pharmacy that caused all this.

As I hold the vertical blind aside to gaze out on the mountain, there’s those damned words on my hand, coming into focus once again.

YOU NEED HELP

I stopped asking for help after I took that pill. I stopped teaming up with anyone, stopped being a partner, at least seeking such things out. And that was my defining trait, or as Doc had put it, my strongest instinct. Turned on its head.

It’s not often that I kick myself for only being a B student, but standing here now I wish I’d paid more attention in Criminal Psych, and the various instincts the human animal is gifted with. There’s got to be a bunch, and the more I think about it, the more it explains all the weird behavior around town these last few days. The woman in the bar, making no effort to catch the pool cue chalk. Sally Jones caring for a stranger instead of her own toddlers. Careful Willy Jupitas stepping out in front of my car, as if not recognizing the threat it posed.

I’m willing to bet they all had recent prescriptions from Doc. Maybe not sleeping pills, but something.

“Diabolical,” I whisper. Because it’s perfect. With no pharmacy in town, Doc hands out everyone’s pills, laced with Ang’s prototypes. In our secluded town he can easily observe the results, for the simple reason that he’s Doc and the population is tiny. Almost comically easy to keep tabs on people. And he doesn’t even need to be secretive about it. Everyone trusts their doctor, and Silvertown only has the one. He could just ask. “How are those meds working out? Any interesting side effects?”

Activity in the yard interrupts my line of thought. Greg’s come out the back of the house, along with two of the others. The three confer for a moment, then spread out. Greg himself strolls to the side of the house, disappearing from my view for a moment before returning just seconds later pushing a wheelbarrow full of paving stones. He guides it about halfway to the distant wall, then stops. The other two people join him there.

For a long few seconds they all just stand around, staring at one another. Greg’s finger is pressed to his ear. Commands being given, I suppose. Once received, they all turn in unison and move to the wheelbarrow.

I watch, confused and a little morbidly fascinated, as the trio take the flat, square stones and carry them twelve paces—always twelve—out from the center point of the wheelbarrow, before placing them in the grass. A circle begins to form.

Silvertown must really be growing on me because my first thought is of Stonehenge, and fairy circles. That sort of thing. There’s something very pagan about making a big circle of stones on a lawn, even if those stones are only the size of pizza boxes.

I half expect the shape to become a pentagram, but the supply of stones has run out, and the three walk back to the house after putting the wheelbarrow away. At one point Greg looks up at my window, and it takes every ounce of self-control I can muster not to step away from the window guiltily. I’m not violating Doc’s rules, I remind myself. I’m one of them. The Broken Nose Gang.

Greg smiles and there is still that hint of apology in his expression. I smile back, giving him a little wave, trying to let him know I understand. After talking to Doc, it’s clear that however complicit Greg’s actions make him in all this, his mind is not on board.

The thought gives me a new and horrible perspective on what these people are going through. Their apologies—“I’m sorry, I can’t stop”—imply something so much darker. They’re aware of the loss of control. Prisoners in their own heads. Holy Christ, that has got to be a nightmare.

I’m hit suddenly by a wave of guilt over Rhod Mitchell, the biker—and the father of two—who I shot and killed. He hadn’t wanted to break into my house, but some low-level part of his brain had been flooded with the urge to do so. He could do nothing but watch the whole thing play out, right up until the moment I shot him.

I begin