Free Guinea Pig by Greg Curtis Page A

consensual. Even if he'd lied to get that consensus.
     
    He'd also told him repeatedly that it wasn't reversible. He'd supposedly been speaking about the gene therapy drug that the others had been given, but Will had a horrible feeling he'd also been speaking about whatever he'd been planning on giving him. Even if he found him Will knew there might be nothing he could do.
     
    But what choice did he have?
     
     

Chapter Eight.
     
     
    The church was empty when Will walked in, something that surprised him. In the midst of this crisis he would have expected a lot of people to be there praying. But maybe it didn't have a large congregation. After all he'd never heard of the church before. Not that that necessarily meant a lot. He hadn't been to a church since he'd arrived in America nearly seven years before. He felt uncomfortable in the strange houses of worship they had over here.
     
    It was an odd place of worship he thought, for America. At least for Los Angeles. From what little he knew their churches were big flashy places with lots of star power. Especially in the cities. This church was more a traditional country church for a small community. In fact it reminded him very much of the churches he'd attended as a child in England. It had white wooden weather boards and a dark slate roof. It was a simple box like shape with a modest cross on the apex of the roof and half a dozen stained glass windows. And it was sited right in the middle of a small half acre of grass.
     
    Inside it had a nicely polished wooden floor, a dozen simple wooden pews that would at most have sat forty, a lectern up the front where the vicar could stand and give his sermon, and a simple altar table covered with a cloth. And save for the electric organ and the lights there didn't seem to be a single concession to the twentieth century let alone the twenty first. Even the board where the hymn numbers for the service were displayed was just a plain wooden board on which the numbers would be slotted in place.
     
    It seemed completely out of place in the city. Too humble for Los Angeles. In fact all it needed was a small graveyard outside with lots of small stone headstones slowly decaying in a field of long grass and he would have been back in his childhood.
     
    His immediate reaction was that he liked it. It was for him what a church should be. A place of quiet reflection and prayer. A place where the harsh realities of the outside world had not intruded. And where a message could be spoken without it being packaged into sound bites, massaged for the media, commercialised and sold.
     
    He was happy that it seemed to have survived the ice storm more or less unscathed. This part of town seemed to have been hit more lightly than elsewhere, so maybe it was that rather than the hand of God that had saved it. But either way he was glad it had survived.
     
    He wasn't so happy that it was empty though. Three days after the ice storm when people were finally beginning to come out of hiding, he would have expected it to be full. There should be people seeking counsel and maybe solace. There should be people organising aid for the parishioners in need. It shouldn't be empty.
     
    Still, there was nothing to do but see if he could find someone to talk to. Maybe after he'd said a prayer.
     
    And he was beginning to suspect that the only hope he had was in prayer. Even if he found the doctor. So he walked down the aisle between the pews, found himself a seat in the front row and bent his head as he hadn't done in far too many years.
     
    It felt good to pray. To clear his thoughts as best he could and simply let the moment wash over him. And it was important to remember that for all his worries and fears he was actually lucky compared to so many. No one he knew was dead or gravely injured, and the radio was reporting that the death toll from the ice storm was expected to cross three thousand by the end of the day. He wasn't injured either, and those