Free Endorphin Conspiracy, The by Fredric Stern Page B

of panic spread over him: Jessica was gone. He dropped the basket. No Jessica. How could it be? A moment ago she had been securely tucked under his right arm.
    He looked around frantically. The zoo was deserted.
    Geoff broke out in a cold sweat. She was missing. He cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled her name at the top of his lungs, but gusty wind drowned out the sound of his voice. Geoff spied a phone by the lamppost.
    The police, damn it, call the police!
    A sweet, little voice echoed downwind. “Dr. Davis, Dr. Davis. Where are you”?
    Geoff’s attention focused in the direction from which the voice seemed to come. He looked toward the Penguin House. No one. He looked all around. Deserted. “Jessica, I can’t see where you are. Call me again.”
    “I’m in here. With the penguins,” she cried. “There’s a man in here, too.”
    Geoff’s nerves were raw. He began to sweat profusely. A man. His dread worsened. Was she being molested? He ran towards the Penguin House. “I’m coming, Jessica. Hold on.”
    A figure suddenly appeared in the doorway. A large man wearing a Parks Department uniform, a bomb strapped to his body, stood clutching Jessica in his arms.
    Geoff stopped dead in his tracks. He looked at Jessica. She was smiling peacefully.
    “It’s okay, Dr. Davis. This nice man found me.”
    Geoff’s gaze shifted to the kidnapper’s face. It was a peculiar face, not like any he had ever seen. At first Geoff did not realize what was so strange about the man, then it suddenly became evident. His skull was as transparent as glass. Contained within, Geoff could see the psychedelic convolutions of the man’s brain, its vivid colors radiating through his transparent skull. His brain was like a living PET scan, the outer shell emitting a royal blue, the deeper zones emerald green and chartreuse, all mapping out the man’s endorphin receptors. At least his pattern appeared normal, Geoff thought with some relief. In his fascination, Geoff momentarily forgot about Jessica.
    Then Geoff saw something, and a state of total fear overwhelmed him. Deep at the base of the man’s temporal lobes, an area of searing vermilion the shape of a horseshoe pulsated brilliantly, like the core of an uncontrolled nuclear reactor about to go into meltdown. The man’s limbic area was saturated with endorphins. He was schizophrenic. There’d be no reasoning with him. Geoff looked at Jessica, who continued to smile, as if to reassure him everything would turn out all right.
    Trying not to make any sudden moves, Geoff approached.
    “Don’t come any closer, Doc, or we both go sky high.” The man’s left hand grabbed the detonator strapped to his waist.
    Doc. The accent. The way he said Doc.
    “Just relax and be cool about it. That’s my patient you’ve got there. Why don’t you just put her down, let her go.”   In a flash, the man’s face transformed and assumed definition. “Doc, you fucked up my brain once. You’re not gonna have a chance to do it again!”
    Geoff was confused. His gaze was again drawn to the man’s brain. The red hot horseshoe area was pulsating at a crescendo, its crimson glow spreading to adjacent areas of the brain like creeping molten lava.
    Movement over to the right of the doorway. Another person. A cop was sidling toward the man and Jessica, gun drawn. Dumbrowski.
    “Hold it right there, pal!” he commanded, his gun aimed at the man’s pulsating brain.
    The man turned abruptly, yanking Jessica as he did so. “You were too late last time, cop. You’re too late this time, too!”
    A feeling of helplessness engulfed Geoff. His gaze darted frantically from Dumbrowski to the man holding Jessica, back to the cop. “Take me instead of the little girl,” Geoff said. He continued advancing toward them.
    “It’s over, Doc. You put that horseshoe in my brain, and now you pay the price!”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “My brain, man. You poisoned my brain!” the man yelled