My Best Friend Dying Is Just The Beginning

My Best Friend Didn't Commit Suicide
My Best Friend Was Infected With a Parasite
It took about fifteen minutes for the ambulance to arrive. Through some sort of miracle the old man was still alive after his nearly suicidal running jump down the entire length of the escalator. He didn't stop smiling the entire time the EMTs were stabilizing him and loading him up.
"Does this mean it's contagious?" I asked Megan.
She puffed on the cigarette she was holding as we watched the ambulance drive off with its lights blaring, "It already is."
I looked at her.
"Do you know what the national suicide rate is?" She puffed her cigarette and answered before I could even attempt to, "14 per 100,000 people."
"That doesn't actually sound that bad." I said.
"It's actually a pretty big increase from the past couple of years but that's not the point I'm trying to make. Do you know what the average suicide rate is in our city?"
"I'm guessing by the fact that you're even mentioning it that it's higher than normal." I was getting annoyed with her questions she knew I didn't have the answer to.
"21. Nearly fifty percent higher than the national average. And that increase is just in the past two years."
"If it's so bad why hasn't there been any news about it? Anti-suicide campaigns, **** like that?"
She chuckled, "They're saying it's a normal blip. Some years have a higher average than normal. Just a blip on the average that'll supposedly level out."
I looked over at the old woman sitting on the sidewalk. The wife of Herb was crying into a cell phone and trying to describe what happened to, hopefully, someone that was going to drive her to see her husband in the hospital.
"Wait a minute. Your brother died a year ago, right?"
She nodded.
"And you said the suicide rate went up two years ago?"
She nodded again.
"Does that mean..." I couldn't finish the thought, because what the hell was I going to say? A genetically modified parasite was released into the population that caused people to become suicidally confident?
She nodded again, "I looked up all of the suicides in the city in the last two years."
I looked at her, shocked at what she found fun to do in her downtime.
She shrugged in response, "It's been a long year of looking up names and visiting graveyards."
"You are a morbid son of a bitch."
"Like I said, it's been a long year. However I did find out something interesting about what happened to them after."
"After?" I asked.
"Their bodies. I found it weird when one of the them wasn't buried anywhere so I called the guy's wife to see what happened."
Even with the subject matter of our conversation this line of inquiry was getting too far into somewhere I didn't want to go, "What the **** are you doing Megan? Calling the wife of someone who commited suicide and just saying 'oh, hey, did your husband happen to act weird the last week he was alive and did he scream about how he was invincible when he did it?'"
She looked at me like I had accused her of murder, "Of course not. I just pretended to be from an insurance company and asked her about her husband's death. Even in the face of it people are more than willing to talk if they think they're going to get some money at the end of the conversation."
"That's ****ed up." I said.
She flicked the cigarette into the parking lot and turned to me, "Don't you want to know what happened to your friend? Why in the hell he went bugnuts ****ing crazy? Because I want to know what happened to my brother. And all of the other people this **** is happening to. And if someone's responsible I want them to pay the price for what they've done."
"And you think my father has something to do with this? Because he works at Mercury Labs?"
"I didn't say anything about your father. And I'm almost sure Mercury Labs has something to do with this because they took the bodies."
"...what?"
She actually had a look of anger on her face now, something that she hadn't shown on her face since the beginning of our conversation, "Her name was Mary, by the way. She told me about how her husband Tom was acting odd the last week before he stuck his forearm into the open blades of a running lawn mower in front of her. Unlike the ******* in there he bled out in less than a minute. She said that she never got to bury him because his body was donated to a lab."
I interrupted her, "Don't you have to sign a consent form or something to do that?"
"That's the thing. She never remembered him ever talking about it or ever seeing him sign anything. She was apparently quite surprised when the subject came up afterwards." She pulled the pack of cigarettes out of her front pocket and pulled another one out with her lips.
"And you don't think he ever signed anything?"
"It would make sense, wouldn't it? If something Mercury was working on accidentally got out into the population somehow. Maybe an unauthorized dumping, an improper seal on a medical disposal bag, it really doesn't matter. For whatever reason it got out. If you were that lab would you want to find any way to cover up your mistake and make sure no coroner accidentally finds your abomination of a parasite?"
It made sense, actually. If this was the plot of some novel, Mercury would've been doing secret testing on an unknowing population. In reality, it would probably be some ******* scientist who forgot to seal a plastic bag before throwing it in the trash that would cause the zombie apocalypse.
We both turned our head as we saw a newer looking Honda Civic pull up to the curb in front of the old woman. She was still sniffling as the driver of the car, a younger looking man with a striking resemblance to Herb, rushed around and grabbed her in a tight embrace. The old woman had seen the extent of the injuries just like we had so I could only assume that she was expecting to get to the hospital to find her husband dead.
"When does your dad get home?" She asked suddenly through a half-done cigarette.
I took out my phone and looked at the time, four forty-three "He usually gets home around six. So about an hour?"
Hard to believe it's been less than an hour since my world's been so badly tilted askew.
"You want answers about what happened?" She asked.
"Of course I do."

---

Megan and I were both sitting on the couch in the front room in silence staring at the cat clock on the opposite wall above the TV that showed two minutes after six.
"Is he usually late?" She asked.
"It's been two minutes. At least give him enough time to hit every red light on the way home before you start accusing him of somehow knowing he was going to be interrogated by a couple of teenagers when he got home and running for the hills."
She sighed, "I'm sorry. It's just that after a year I may finally have an answer as to what happened to my brother."
"And what happened to your brother?" A voice said from behind us.
Megan jumped in surprise while I turned my head, "Hey dad."
"Who's this young lady?" he said as he sat in the loveseat next to our couch and put his laptop case on the floor next to his feet.
"Dad, Megan. Megan, Dad." I waved my hand back and forth between them as an introduction.
"Nice to meet you Megan. I'm glad to see Tim has a friend to help him out during this tough time." He leaned forward and extended his hand to shake hers. When she didn't reciprocate the handshake he sat back in his chair with a slight scowl on his face.
For how much of a chatterbox Megan was earlier in the mall she sat in silence and stared at my father.
"Megan's brother killed himself last year. She thought she could help me understand and...process the whole situation." I said when she didn't say anything.
My father nodded and looked back at her, "And I'm glad you did. Tim's been having a really tough time and--"
"You killed my brother." She said suddenly.
I stared at her. Looks like there wasn't going to be anything approaching tact in this conversation so I just said the thing that had been on my mind, "Does your lab have Brian's body?"
The look of shock and surprise on his face told me the answer to that question.
"Why didn't you tell me what was going on dad? You heard the statement I made to the police about what Brian said and you just sat there silently and said nothing?" With each question I became angrier, "Why the **** didn't you say anything when you knew what was going on? Why did you lie to your son about what happened to his BEST FRIEND?"
With every question his head dipped and I could feel the embarrassment and sorrow inch farther on his face.
Good.
"My brother said the same things Brian did before that butcher knife went into his stoma--"
"It's too late." I saw a tear run down his face as he said this.
"What?" I said.
"It's already out in the world. Yes, we took Brian's body. But we're just trying to fix our mistake. But every body we bring in only shows us that there's nothing we can [do.](www.facebook.com/aslowewrites)"
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