Instinct by Jason Hough (ebook reader web TXT) 📗

This is far from proper behavior for a cop, but given the circumstances I figure no one is going to mind, especially since my boss is one of the bad guys. The thought of Greg Gorman, with his bandaged nose obscuring that kind and wizened face and that ridiculously bushy gray mustache, twists my stomach into a knot. I wonder how they got to him, and when. Must have been when he left for the airport, I decide. His nose wasn’t broken before that. And I can just see how they might go about it. Perhaps staging an accident on the mountain road, waiting for someone to stop to help, then abducting them and bringing them to Ang’s mansion for the “treatment” and the test.

Maybe that’s what was going on with Rhod Mitchell and his motorcycle, I think. Doc’s claim that no one was there, not even a bike, now seems an obvious lie. And the fact that Rhod later came to my house to try to drug me makes a weird kind of sense, too. A second try.

I shake this line of thinking away. It doesn’t really matter right now, I decide. Rhod was one of the gang. They got to Greg, too, and tried to get to me. The details don’t matter.

Stepping into Doc’s darkened living room I pause for several seconds, listening to the silence of the empty home. A tap somewhere drips rhythmically. Otherwise, silence.

There’s an end table by the couch, upon which sits an old-school landline telephone. I pick the beige handset up, but there’s nothing. No dial tone, no hiss. Nothing.

“Shit,” I whisper, setting the phone back on the cradle.

Silvertown is completely cut off.

They’ve cut the power, and they’ve cut the phone lines, too. The speed at which this was accomplished shouldn’t surprise me, but still I can’t help but marvel. You have to plan something like this, even if it probably only meant cutting two cables somewhere down by the bridge. And, of course, Kenny’s big mouth apparently took care of the cell tower for them. Considerate of him.

Get moving, I tell myself.

I take the first hall I come to. Hardwood creaks under my feet like a Nightingale floor in some old Japanese castle.

My goal is to find a bathroom, ideally one with a first aid kit under the sink. But the first door I open reveals a bedroom that’s been converted into a study. There’s a big L-shaped desk in the far corner, with a computer underneath and a big monitor dominating the surface. Piles of folders and pads of paper are scattered across the surface to either side of the keyboard, along with a few dirty drinking glasses and a bowl of some no-doubt-stale crackers.

Intrigued, I cross to the desk and flick on my borrowed flashlight. It’s a risk to use in here, the light no doubt visible should anyone pass by, but nevertheless I use it. The room seems to sway slightly as the beam plays across the surfaces. I focus on the desk. Beside the keyboard is a pad of legal paper, upon which two columns of text in neat handwriting run from top to bottom.

In the left column of the first page is a list of names. Forty or so, in alphabetical order. I thumb through a few more and quickly understand this is a list of Silvertown residents, including myself.

The column next to my name is empty, as is the case with most of the other entries. But some have writing in another column. I seek out Kyle Rollins next, finding his name alone on the lined page, too. His brother, Kenny, though, is one of those with words written in the second column:

Survival (individual), no longer seeking sustenance (food, drink), method of delivery: allergy medication

I remember how thin Kenny looked at the Gas-n-Go the other day, and his cracked lips.

Just up the page from that entry is another with a second-column entry. This one makes my gut twist into a painful knot.

Johnny Rogers—Survival (individual), eschewing safe shelter/indoors, method of delivery unknown (possible abuse, father scrip for Donepezil)

There is a red line through the boy’s entry that makes my blood boil. At the very end of his line, in red ink, is a single handwritten word: “Accidental.”

Just above his entry is his mom, Barbara, with a note that she is no longer displaying emotions, categorized as “social” instead of “survival.” Method of delivery? Blood pressure medication.

Heart thudding in my chest, I seek out Clara’s entry and swallow my rage when I see the comment next to her name. “Social—no longer mistrusting strangers.” Delivery by sleeping pill. I think back to her in that missile silo with the urban explorers, and shudder at the thought of what I could have found down there, were it someone else she’d fallen in with.

“Sleeping pill,” I whisper. That’s why they didn’t know I’d already been dosed with the old version. Doc hadn’t prescribed me anything.

I scan the rest of the entries, some of which I can guess even before reading them. Sally Jones, social, her instinct to prioritize her own children over needs of others turned on its head.

Ah, I think. So that’s why she didn’t abandon them entirely. The poor woman still cares, she just can’t differentiate between the twins’ needs and anyone else’s. I find only a tiny amount of solace in the fact that Ang’s and Doc’s little experiment only resulted in a few hours’ abandonment for those children, rather than death. There’s always tomorrow, though. I’ll need to address that, if I make it out of this. One thing at a time, Mary.

I read on.

“William Jupitas, defense, no longer recognizing mortal danger.” Hence stepping in front of my cruiser. Jesus.

I start to skim the rest.

In all, roughly two dozen of the town’s six-hundred-plus have Doc’s scrawled observations next to them. Some have question marks, others have lines through the observation but not