Chapter 11: Separated.
Gerald had already planned on letting Laura talk first since this was her boss after all and despite just meeting her he had respect for her. She had just learned what was once in books and movies was now real and that she had come across a human that had been mutated into, well, a goblin. He felt a little sorry for her. She had just been thrust into the world of the unknown and it was going to change her view. He had been there fourteen years ago.
He couldn't reflect on the gremlin attack at the bank but he remembered being taken to the nice institution and they had calmed him, help his nightmares, helped him get better and once he was released he still kept on talking with the doctors there even when he got his new and regular therapist and it wasn't just about the Christmas Eve of Terror either. Questions were asked. Why did he want to be tough? So he could make it in the world of the mid 1980's. Was that how the world worked? Did have to step on people to get there and what did he want most in life? He wanted Kate Berringer but she had fallen for Peltzer. He wanted to be successful and rich at no matter the cost and the only comparison he had at the time was Mrs. Ruby Deagle and she was dead and she was alone. All she cared about was money and making more and was that what Gerald Hopkins wanted to just be alone with money?
After a few sessions he realized that was not what he wanted. Oh he wanted money, but he wanted that to help his dreams. He wanted to visit other countries and learn to scuba dive and had a dream vacation of diving in the Bahamas. He realized others had dreams and some of those dreams was to not be sick or have their children not be sick. He learned to feel empathy and he began with a few donations to cancer research. He donated his blood and while he started from the bottom at Prescott Prestige rose fast and that was not just by being tough. It was because he had a great team and they met again at the bar after work and he got invited to baseball games, made new friends and went golfing with them and he was invited to and backyard barbecue's and he met the neighbor of one of his coworker's, the lovely Jennifer Danes.
He and Jennifer went on dates, fell in love and became husband and wife. She held him when he woke up screaming from one of his nightmares and was patient with his therapy. He became the happiest when she had announced she was pregnant with their first child, Lily and felt the joy again when they welcomed their second daughter, Maddie into the world. They worked hard and he still volunteered and taught his daughter's to help others. He even went on his dream vacation.
Then the marriage fell apart. Her nights at her office grew longer and she was away a lot on business trips. He would not begrudge her the changes to further in her career but he still wanted her home for their daughters and he also missed her. There was also the fact she no longer had the patience she once did with his occasional freak outs and there were other issues like taking care of the dishes, who paid what bills and it was those little things that also contributed to their divorce. They were still on good terms, friends even, but the love was no longer there.
"Where is he?" The man behind the desk in the security office asked. He was middle aged, hair that once was dark had both gone gray and receded. He had an angular nose, dark eyes and mouth set into frown mode. Behind him was a regular security panel with screens reflecting different areas of the mall.
"Busy talking with management," Laura explained. "We have a situation."
"Great," Stewart grumbled as he buried his face in his hands. "I'm going to have to tell my sister's friend that I fired her son." He inhaled and shook his head. "I don't want to but he has his head in the clouds too often and now the management is going to think I'm hiring people from the nut house."
"I kind of take offense to that," Gerald said. He never was confined to a padded room or had to wear a strait jacket but he did wear all white and received pills from a nurse. "I had a nervous breakdown once and we and they are not like those you see in movies."
"Who is this?" Stewart asked as pointed at him. "What's with the midget?" As soon as he had asked Laura had covered her face and groaned.
"I do not have dwarfism and if I did I would not appreciate being called a midget," Gerald felt his voice grow more gruff. "My name is Gerald Hopkins and I'd like to alert the authorities, my family and my associates from Prescott Prestige that I am alive and well and I would like to press charges against Doctor James Friedrich for kidnapping me, holding me hostage and for…" What kind of crime is genetic mutation on a victim? "Mutating me and I know that sounds crazy but that was what he did."
"You are not going to believe this, but Chuck was right," Laura said. "I'm still reeling from the news myself. You can use your computer and go online and check."
"This is ridiculous," Stewart said. "You might want to share in his Kool-aid but I refuse to sip from it."
"You have to believe me," Gerald said as he swiped off his glasses. "Lives are at stake and you need to call the cops right now." He barred his teeth and hissed. He heard a gasp from Laura and quickly turned to her. "Sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."
"Nice contacts and dentures," Stewart was still unfazed.
"This isn't a costume," Gerald hopped onto the chair and growled. "I have been turned into a fuzzy half human creature. I formed a cocoon around myself and now I look like this." He raised his ears, knocking off the cap. "Now either you look me up like the nice lady asked or believe her before I get angry and you won't like me when I'm angry." He swiped down onto the desk, leaving deep claw marks, marks that were too deep for a human to make in the wood. He snatched a Kleenex and rubbed it on his arm, removing some of the make-up and held it up. Revealing the foundation that had stuck to the tissue before he showed Stewart his green scales.
Stewart sat there, bug eyed and frozen. After a few seconds he blinked and reached for his phone.
"Who are you calling?" Laura asked.
"The police about a wild animal," Stewart answered. "They won't believe me if I tell them I'm being threatened by a monster."
"He's not a monster," Laura said as she placed a hand on Gerald's shoulder and had to remove it, most likely because those spiky growths were not comfortable. "The only monster here are those people who did this to him."
"Technically I am a monster," Gerald said. "But I can control myself. There are going to be dozens if not hundreds more monsters that are going to be smaller than me, uglier and more vicious and they don't have my humanity. Sure I got a little bit of a rush a few seconds ago, but I am stopping now. They won't."
"They mentioned an invasion and think we should close the mall."
"Oh no we are not," Stewart said. "I'm getting rid of this threat right before me." He reached for his phone right as it had rung. "Hello? What do you mean the power is out in the pharmacy and the clinic? It's the whole medical building? And people on the upper floors have a pest problem?"
"That isn't something you can fumigate like cockroaches," Gerald said.
"I think we should listen to him," Laura started but was cut off by Stewart raising his hand to silence her.
"Little green, brown and teal creatures?" Stewart asked and stared at Gerald. "Four foot tall goblin looking things? No more like two foot tall imps? I'll be right there." He hung up. "We will report this thing later." He pointed at Gerald as he reached into his pocket. "Laura, come with me." He grabbed Gerald's hand and slapped a metal cuff on it and attached the other cuff to the arm of the chair. "That should hold it."
"It?" Gerald snarled as he tugged on the cuff. He tried to slip through it but it was too tight.
"Those are the pair I use for juvenile punks."
"Can't just leave him here," Laura said as Stewart grabbed her by the arm and hauled her out. "He used to be human."
"Well he isn't now and you saw how he threatened me. We don't know how long until he actually does fall back on his instincts out and go on a rampage. Now move."
"Gerald, I'm sorry," Laura said as she looked over her shoulder as she was being dragged. "Call home."
"Go on a rampage?" Gerald repeated as he pulled against the cuffs. "That asshole thinks I'm going to go on a rampage?" He kept pulling and kept trying to shift his wrist around but he was still changed. He wasn't feeling beastly right now and at his worst was acting like a twelve year old. He only reacted the way he did because that pompous jerk wouldn't listen to him or Laura and ugh the words he was using earlier, nut house and midget. There has to be some higher up he could report the jerk to.
He felt awful for Laura and Chuck and every other mall cop that works at this place. He hoped Billy and Chuck were going to halve better luck with mall management.
He pulled one more time and thumped his other fist on the desk causing everything to rattle, including the phone—the phone! Laura told him to call home. He reached for it and couldn't quite reach. He struck the desk again with his fist and the vibration caused it to move a little bit closer to him. He struck again and this time the receiver fell of and he stretched and yes he could grab that. He pulled the phone closer until he could reach the buttons and he pressed 9-1-1.
Billy wanted to be more patient but with the growing problem posed by the gremlins he was going to half to wait. Being turned back to normal was also secondary and now he and Chuck had to wait to be seen by some lady named Ms. Baker.
"You boys can come in," Baker called from her office. Her dark hair was cut in a pixie cut and she had dark eyeshadow and she wore too much perfume. "Sorry about the wait. I have a few things going on and well my own secretary has the flu and how are you?" She spoke as rapidly as Daniel Clamp and had a similar nasally voice as Marla. "I'm Ms Baker and you work for security don't you? Haven't really talked with you yet." She was standing, not sitting behind her oak grain desk that was covered in, papers that were in multiple neat stacks with brightly colored sticky notes poking out from them like tabs. She had a computer on one of the desk and a phone at the other and there was an empty and coffee stained mug next to one of the paper stacks
"Ms Baker I am Chuck and we have a situation." He removed his cap and held it in front of his chest.
"Uh oh," Baker's grin fell. "Did you and your little friend there find packages of a certain white powder?" She pointed a dark red claw at Billy. "If you did you would have told Stewart and he would have called me, but then again he could of sent you."
"He did," Chuck said as he raised a finger. "Send me, sent us because we are together on this and no we didn't come across any boxes of cocaine. You see it's the genetics lab on the top of the medical research center."
"Their rats got out," Billy interjected. They were going to report Friedrich later, but first he had to make sure to get the people out of the mall and he and Chuck came up with a more plausible explanation than gremlins. "They were testing them for certain diseases and the rats got out and we think they might have gotten out of that building and into the mall."
"Wait, diseased rats have escaped one of the labs?" Baker asked. Her face frozen into disgust as she curled her fingers. "Are you saying they can get people sick?"
"Yes," Billy said and glanced at Chuck who was also nodding. "Just one bite and they can transfer the disease to another person."
"Could start a whole epidemic," Chuck added.
"That I can't have, but I should call Stewart first." She picked up her phone and pressed a button. "Huh line is busy."
"He is already calling for help," Chuck answered as he folded his cap in half.
"You should also make some calls," Billy told her. Gerald and Laura are calling someone for help in some form. "But you have to close the mall, at least for the day."
"I don't know. I really would want to hear from Stewart first." She pursed her lips and twirled the pen in her hands.
"Should we risk it?" Chuck asked. "The longer we talk the longer those rats are out there and any second we will have patient zero. Do you want to risk some senior citizen who is resting on a bench to get bitten or maybe some toddler sees a rat and think's it's a cute animal it wants to pick up and pet."
"I personally work for Clamp," Billy sputtered. "I can call him and ask him what we should do and I think he will not to waste a single second."
"Okay how about this. You call Mr. Clamp and when you reach him have him talk to me."
If Kate was a smoker she would have moved on up to three packs a day, however she wasn't although she did buy a pack of the nicotine gum and was chewing on it along with drinking her fourth cup of coffee that day. She was at a café along with Lynn, Murray, Mr. Clamp and Forster while they were discussing their next step. The staff of the research center was interviewed along with several mall employees and nothing new was learned. They even talked to the man that matched the description, except he had short ginger hair although he could have been wearing a wig and fake goatee earlier and Forster said he was going to exam the footage later and compare it to the scrawny man.
Forster did find something interesting about the medical research building and had brought in several rolled up forms.
"I believe this may be of interest," Forster had said after her rolled off the blueprints of the building and the blueprints of something else. "Before it was upgraded it used to be a schoolhouse, but it had something else." He pointed to the area beneath the old schoolhouse. "The school closed down in the late seventies and by 1983 it was turned into a medical building, but four stories tall. Three years later it had two more floors added and by 1990 it was eight stories tall. When Mr. Clamp bout the land he kept the building and built the mall around it."
"I didn't know there was a giant basement," Clamp said as he held up one of the prints. "How old is that school?"
"Built in the forties to be a boarding school," Forster answered "In the early sixties this area was built under it. It was originally a fallout shelter." He shrugged. "It was the early sixties."
"Yeah I remember," Murray said while he stared into his cup. The different kinds of coffee confused him and all he wanted was a simple cup of coffee black. He had also complained about the price. "I started digging beneath the shed in the back and Sheila was canning food like crazy."
"What are they using it for now?" Kate asked. "Unless they don't know."
"Frank, I want you to have that place investigated," Clamp said as ringing was heard from his pocket. "We are to leave no stone unturned." He pulled out the glossy black Nokia 5110 and brought the phone to his ear. "This is Clamp." His eyes widened. "Bill? Is that you, is that really you?" A large grin spread across his face while everyone stood up.
"Billy?" Kate asked and nearly snatched the phone from Clamp and would of if Lynn hadn't beaten her too it.
"Billy?" Lynn asked. "Billy it's me, your mother." Tears formed in her eyes. "Oh thank god I'm so glad you are all right. Where are you? You're in the mall office and you want to speak with Mr. Clamp? Billy you have been missing for several days. What happened? Oh there is an infestation? Oh…that kind of infestation." She handed the phone back to Clamp. "That's my Billy, putting others before himself."
"What, what is going on?" Kate asked as she stared at Lynn and then back at Clamp.
"Of course let me speak with Ms. Baker." Clamp said as he continued to talk.
"Billy?" Gizmo's voice came from inside Kate's purse. She had brought him along and she had made sure there was his little multi-tool that he used sometimes along with a few office supplies he could use to make weapons out of. While they were talking he had been munching on a cookie she bought him.
"He sounds healthy, just a little raspy," Lynn explained. "I don't know if he wore his voice out or he is starting to get a cold, but he is alive." She held onto Kate. "He is alive. He is just trying to ask Mr. Clamp to order the mall to close because he says there are gremlins inside."
"Christ, again?" Murray said and shook his head.
"How would they have gotten there?" Forster asked and pointed at Kate's purse. "You have been careful with the little pet of yours."
"Of course he hasn't been wet in a long time," Kate said. She tried to hide how insulted she had felt but he had asked and important question. How did gremlins get to the mall?
"Yes I am ordering you to close down the mall and get the people out. We can't have diseased rats running loose with people around now can we. Now can I speak with Bi—wait you are hanging up?" He blinked. "She hung up."
"Never mind her," Murray said as he grabbed his cap. "We have to get to the mall."
"We'll meet back there," Clamp instructed as his phone rang. "Bill glad you called…you're not Bill? Gerald Hopkins? I don't know how you got-oh the police gave it to you. Yeah I'm glad to hear you are also alive and well…what do you mean not exactly well. I know about the gremlins and are on our way." He paused. "You were kidnapped by a doctor Friedrich and he works in the genetic department? You both were kept underground in a secret lab?" He looked up at Forster and pointed at the prints. "We just discovered the lab's old blueprints. You were experimented on with mogwai DNA?"
"What?" Kate wasn't sure she was hearing right. "Mogwai dna?"
"Says he and Bill got turned into half human half mogwai creatures."
"Is that possible?" Kate remembered when she and Marla about to be killed by a giant spider legged gremlin and she later was informed by Billy and some of the scientists that all the gremlins had to do to mutate was just drink the flasks containing the genetic codes for the animals and plants. Gremlin dna could be easily changed and that was the same for mogwais she had assumed but she had no idea if it could change other animals including humans.
"They tricked you into eating after midnights and you are part gremlin now and Bill? Oh don't worry we will get you fixed up and try to figure it out. I need to call the authorities and we are headed out to the mall right now." He blinked again. "Oh you already did, now listen Jer-" He pulled the phone away. "Line went dead."
"My Billy's different?" Lynn asked she had a folded up napkin in her hands and she was twisting it.
"Should we take precautions with them?" Forster asked and earned sour looks from every one. "We don't know how they changed mentally."
"Billy wouldn't hurt us," Kate said. She wasn't sure how she was going to cope with what he had become, if what Gerald said was true, but she knew that no matter what she would love him and now they had to go and help with both his transformation and the new invasion.