by Pike, JJ
Thermal underwear, wool overshirt, heavy coat. He was headed to a frigid locale.
Siberia?
Antarctica?
Greenland?
Alaska?
The second he cleared the exit, a guard stepped to and marched him across the square. The sun was high, no clouds in sight, the temperature in the low-seventies. If the nurse had been telling the truth and he’d only been a prisoner for a matter of days it was still January which meant, with temperatures as high as those, they’d gone south. Way south. The manicured herbaceous borders and shaved lawn gave nothing away. No bougainvillea or magnolia to say they were in Louisiana, or hibiscus or crepe myrtle for the Carolinas, in fact nothing more distinctive than daffodils and columbine, which were ubiquitous.
Michael reeled through the southern Army bases for clues as to where he might be: Ft. Campbell, Kentucky? Fort Polk, Louisiana? No, it wasn’t close to being humid enough. Ft. McClellan? Ft. Detrick? Warm, all of them, but he needed to cross-reference those with nuclear power stations. If MELT had been on the move, they might have needed to go west. Ft. Irwin, California? That far west?
The guard did his foot-stamping, hard salute to the side of the head, and pointed Rayton toward the horse and buggy that was idling by the side of the road. A soldier up front tended the horses, cooing at them and stroking their long noses. It looked like something out of the last century. They’d taken the forward-facing seats out and made them into benches that ran along the sides of the roofless carriage.
The woman inside looked familiar but the shaved head and shaved brows gave him pause. “Alice?”
“Need a hand up?” she said. “Keep smiling. Keep playing their game.”
Michael didn’t take the proffered hand. He slung his bag into the foot of the buggy and climbed in beside her. “Tell me everything you know.”
“Same as you.” She watched the back of the dress hut, waiting. “They say we’re immune, but I don’t know how they can know that in such a short time, and now they’re claiming we’re not carriers. Junk science. Rubbish.”
“Not carriers?”
Alice shrugged. “So they say.”
She wouldn’t be drawn out. Alice Everlee was fixed on her target, the door to the hut. She clenched and unclenched her hands. Whether she was getting ready to punch the guard when he returned or release tension he couldn’t say.
Michael occupied his brain by overlaying a mental map of all known military bases in the continental United States with every nuclear power station and infectious-diseases laboratory. Not a pretty sight. The east was littered with nuclear reactors from New York to Miami, then west through Georgia and Kansas, branching all the way to Texas. Heading north there was a decided drop in the number of reactors through the corn and coal belt but once he hit the rust belt, there was so much going on they might as well light a match and set the entire Great Lakes area on fire. There was a nice swathe of land in New Mexico where they’d be safe from nuclear accidents, but Sandi and Los Alamos Laboratories put that state out of the running. If he wasn’t mistaken, the only place where they’d have the geographic distance to let their guard down was the border between Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada.
It was too hot for Oregon or Idaho, but Nevada? He slid down his mental map of the state, searching for hazards. Looking good. There were a couple of Naval Airbases, but they weren’t large enough for this operation. Which left Hawthorne. Nicely done, whoever is coordinating this. No one would think to look for a couple of disgraced executives from the world’s most hated company out here.
The door to the dressing hut opened. A woman waved. No, she wasn’t waving. She was fighting off the men who dragged her and her bag to the transport.
“Bring General Hoyt or I’m not going.” Baxter flailed and kicked and thrashed. The soldiers either side of her ignored her. “I’m serious. I’m not working under these conditions. He’s my husband….” She was bustled into the old-fashioned cab. When she threw herself off the back for the third time they strapped her to the bench.
The three of them sat, wrung out and highly-strung, vibrating at the same frequency, stress overload.
A small army of men made a chain and passed unmarked boxes to the transport and packed them around the prisoners’ feet. When the last box was loaded, some nameless, faceless toady opened a box and handed out three glass bottles. “Isotonic beverages with added vitamins to tide you over until dinner time,” he said.
Alice cracked hers and downed it without comment.
Baxter refused hers and was eventually forced to drink it. The operation included three men, much profanity, a great deal of unnecessary muscle, and most of the beverage down her front.
Michael decided not to get involved even though it would be easier for all of them if she’d quit fighting and start planning. When her force-feeding ended he put a hand on her shoulder. She jerked violently. “Sorry,” he said. “They didn’t need to do that…”
He could feel Alice plotting beside him but plotting what? She’d kept herself apart so successfully since they’d left Wolfjaw Ridge that the connection between them had been severed. They needed a plan. They’d been swept up, carried away, medically invaded, flushed with meds, and were no closer to knowing where they were or who their newest overlords were going to be.
The red-headed doctor, Michael didn’t recall if he’d ever been introduced, climbed into the front of the cab next to the driver. He gave the nod and the horses set off.
“Where are we?” Michael raised his voice over the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves.
“Doesn’t matter where we are,” said the doctor. “What matters is where we’re going.”
What was it with all these people telling him what not to say? It was all too scripted. Alice was right. They were being handled for a reason. Michael swore under his breath. He knew better than to let his ire leak out. The message he had on tap was always the same: Play the game, look for your chance. Get in with the powers that be, then work your way out.
The gingernut twisted in his seat so he was staring at Michael and Baxter. Alice, being on the opposite bench, was out of his line of sight. “Welcome to Project Amethyst. My name is Captain Pennrith. I’ll be your commanding officer for the duration of the project.”
Alice shot a look at Michael. Whatever Pennrith was selling she wasn’t buying.
“Once we reach the transport I’ll disperse briefing books.” Pennrith smiled and turned away.
“What’s Project Amethyst?”
“All in good time.”
“Where are we going?” Alice was on the right track. Play the game. Learn their rules and play it their way.
Christine burst in. “No way in hell I’m going anywhere without Hoyt. Tell them, Alice. I only have months with him at best. Tell them I can’t go.”
Pennrith ignored Christine’s protestations. “Enjoy the sunshine. We’re not going to see it for months.” He hugged his briefcase to his chest. “Maybe years.”
That meant they were headed to the South Pole or Alaska or under Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs; some place where they had limited light. Michael tucked the data away along with all the other useless scraps of data lodged in his brain. He had always wanted to go to Antarctica. There was no need to coerce him. He was on board. Senior operatives—way up in the rafters of the food chain—had been pulling strings and orchestrating events which freed him up to play the part of the scientist rather than that of double agent, spy, or traitor.
He was headed back to the land of facts. He was headed home.
His mood lightened. A laugh burbled up from a place he barely knew still existed. He couldn’t control what came next. It was like being in church and watching the kid in the pew in front of you scratching his ass while his mother wasn’t looking. There was no way not to laugh; even if you knew your mom would clip you around the top of your head with her ring hand so all that hardware was part of the smacking you deserved.
Alice joined in.
Oh, not right.
The two of them were snickering like schoolkids.
Baxter didn’t even crack a smile but she hadn’t ingested as much of the isotonic drink as they had.
Michael split his consciousness up the middle so he could watch himself and evaluate. Slight elevation of heart rate, increased alertness, mental disinhibition. They’d laced the drinks. He and Alice were high. Not super-trippy. No hallucinations. No communing with God. Just a floaty sensation that allowed him to feel good about being abducted and made into a medical lab rat.
That’s what Alice thought: That they were the subjects rather than the scientist.
They laughed all the way across the tarmac and up the steps into the plane. The second one of them stopped giggling the other would start and the whole cycle would start up again.
The plane was large and spacious and they were in Business. Woo-hoo! They weren’t permitted to do anything other than stumble to their chairs and allow themselves to be strapped in while Baxter chided them and Dr. Gingerbeard marched around like a toy soldier telling people where to put what and how to secure the merch. Michael had trouble hearing the words as words; they flowed over him like a sound blanket, leaving him cozy and sleepy.
This is how they’d made time bend and fold. They’d been drugged from the minute the metal men took them from their camp. There was a sensible Michael tucked away under the layers of exhaustion who wanted to find filters and screen their food and keep himself and Alice (and Baxter if she ever came back down from her hissy fit) alert.
Sleep crushed him beneath her blackened boot taking him to the Land of Nod where he was nobody, nothing had happened, and the reasons for his anxiety were null and void.
He woke with an unslakable thirst.
Alice was still out and Baxter had been moved to the far end of the cabin where she was deep in conversation with the Captain.
Michael heaved himself out of his chair and ambled down the aisle. There was a food cart affixed to the wall. He poured three glasses of water and watched to see if Pennrith took a sip.
“As you will have surmised….” Pennrith handed Michael a thick folder. “We took a hardline approach to the launch. We needed you out while senior personnel came onboard.”
Was he saying what Michael thought he was saying? He waited, hand on his glass. He wasn’t going to drink until his captor did.
“There are people associated with the mission whose names need to remain classified.”
Michael had never heard anything so ridiculous. “We’ve signed the official secrets act. We understand confidential.”
“This has nothing to do with national security.” Pennrith didn’t elaborate.
Okay. So, not related to national security, but requiring secrecy. “You have a private investor?”
Pennrith flushed a deep red. Michael was pleased to have hit the mark so soon.
“Does his name begin with Elon and end with…”
“No.” Pennrith shuffled his papers without actually moving them about.
“Warren?”
“No.”
“Jeff?”
“Stop.” The Captain threw a look toward first class. He was under scrutiny.
Michael needed to know. “Bill…”
“No.”
“Mark…”
The Captain stood, gulped down his water, and left.
That answered the water question but he was no closer to understanding who was so paranoid they couldn’t allow anyone to see them board the plane. What were they going to do in Antarctica? Live underground?
“Did you see anything, Professor?” Michael helped himself to more water.
“They brought a non-descript man on board with much fanfare.”
So like her. If it had been a molecule that had snuck on board she’d have named it, typed it, drilled down into its structure…but a human? They were all “average” and “non-descript.”
“Had you seen him before? Online or on TV for example?” It was a long shot. Baxter didn’t consume popular culture. She could have collided with Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates and been none the wiser.
Baxter joined him at the food cart. “I want to find Hoyt. I want our old life back. I want to go home.”
Don’t we all, thought Michael, but there is no home, now. Home has been obliterated or subsumed or very soon will be. There might be a few people who lived in some remote corner of a jungle or desert or far-flung island who hadn’t lost everything or weren’t in fear of doing so very soon, but they were in the minority.
There was only one reason to take them out of the States or to an underground bunker. America was a lost cause. Maybe Western Europe, too. They’d been airlifted far from the reach of this pestilence as a Hail Mary pass. This was it. Their last stand. Michael had been chosen to arrest the spread of a compound he’d championed and heralded; even had a hand in weaponizing. And now all his infected-infectious chickens had come home to roost. It was him against the spread of the enzyme-turned-mega-virulent-whatever. Him, Baxter, and Alice. He’d been so sure for so long that he had the goods, would deliver, could get himself out of any jam, but a wave of doubt rose up and shook him in the place where his self-assurance usually lived.
Michael Rayton wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure they were going to win.
He returned to his seat, opened the folder Pennrith had left him, and began to dig for answers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MARCH 2022
Jacinta came round to a million tiny eyes staring at her from above. The voices came at her in waves, some pitched high, some low. She forced herself to listen and try to pick out a thread, but she could only grasp one sentence in three. The rest squidged together and came at her as polluted white noise; closer to ash than the bleach-white walls of the infirmary.
Okay, good. Orienting. White walls. A hospital cot. In a tiny cave off sick bay.
But not isolation. She wasn’t that badly injured. Hooray. What then? What and why and where and…
She was surrounded by the children of Wolfjaw Down, all of whom talked at once.
She tried to open her mouth to tell them to hold up a second, but no words were forthcoming. She was mired in glue so thick no muscles responded to her request that she sit up and talk sense. One step at a time. See if you can understand what they’re saying, Jacinta.
“You fell down.” (Serious face.)
“Miss Erlichman is getting surgery.” (More serious looks. No smiling.)
“She got a bullet.” (Scared kid, clinging to his teddy bear. Was that Abbie’s youngest? No, they were older now. No, not right. She had just had a baby. Baby’s not here. Good. Good. Keep looking. Keep listening. Keep waking up. CONCENTRATE, JACINTA!)
“In her guts. POW! SPLAT! EW! AAAAAAARGH!” (Coping by laughing. Carl? He was writhing on the floor, clutching his side. It hurt to turn her neck. She fell back on her pillow, eyes fixed on the ceiling.)
“You shouldn’t say that, Patrick, it’s not nice.” (Carl’s sister. Damn, what was her name?)
“Be quiet. Let me tell her.” (Tamsen. Rule follower. Teacher’s pet. Recognize that voice anywhere.)
“You already said too much. I’m talking.” (A voice from the back, muddied by the wall of children between her and the speaker. Where had all these kids come from and why were they hovering over her?)
“Triple-H said he wants to marry her now. Like, right now. Like, while she’s being cut open and everything.” (Tamsen was on fire with the news.)
“Are we going to open the door?” (Theo Prosser. Very serious. So like his mother. Not a word wasted. He didn’t miss a trick. She turned to find him holding eye contact. It was just a look but he might as well have doused her in ice water. Her alert levels shot up from a three to a seven.)
“Your hand was all like this…” (Carl. Off the floor and beside her bed now. Doing an impersonation of her wrist being at a right angle but bent the wrong way. The darkness rose with the memory, threatening to blot her ou
t again.)
She clung to consciousness, blinking hard in an attempt to clear her vision. Her hand had been splinted, the bandage wound about the board in a crazy paving design. That was not the work of Nurse Patrice. Oh, hell. Patrice. The nurse. She’d had a gun. There’d been an injury. Blood. Lots of blood. Blood on the men and the floor and walls and Charis. It was all coming back. Was Patrice performing surgery on Charis? Did she know how? It was one of the great failings of Wolfjaw that they’d never attracted a trauma surgeon…
She had to get up. Help. Be useful. Not lie around like some big baby, surrounded by babies, while the adults took care of business.
She had the mother of all headaches. Her eyes had been ground down with ultra-coarse sandpaper and her mouth was a cavern filled in with spitty little goober strings made of salt and bile. “Water.”
“You’re not allowed water.” Theo had taken control, hovering over her side table and guarding the meds and access to the drip. “Not until Nurse Patrice comes back. You could have ice chips, but Triple-H has locked the doors and we’re not allowed to leave you, not even to go into the sick bay, until he gives us the all clear. There are no ice chips in here.”
Jacinta struggled to sit up. The pain knocked her back.
Theo tapped her shoulder. “You didn’t answer.”
“Was I supposed to? I thought you guys were reporting on Miss Erlichman’s upcoming marriage…” She ran her tongue over her teeth several times. She had no saliva to speak of. She was going to need to lick the walls if someone didn’t get her some liquid soon. The walls. Right. The leak. Get up. Get on top of this. She kicked the sheets back with her feet and grabbed hold of the IV stand which wobbled and would have fallen if it hadn’t been for Theo holding it steady.
“You’re not supposed to get up.” Tamsen had her hand on her hip. She’d been born an adult. At twelve-years old there wasn’t a shred of child left in her. Jacinta had to remind herself to be kind. No one was born that way. She’d grown up too fast for a reason.
