by Nick Twist
And another.
Vesna Vulovic, number 1004, Ready
I don’t know any of them, but I keep hearing a sound in my head. The sound of crying babies.
“June? Found anything?”
“I think I did.” My heart is pounding against my chest. I feel like a fish out of water, unable to breathe. “I can’t believe this.”
“What is it?”
I can’t tell her. She will freak out. I think I’ve read over fifty names now. All women. Not a single man. I fall on my knees. Dear God, what is happening on this island? The baby’s cries aren’t all I hear in the back of my head. Now I hear Meredith taunting me: The horrible things they will do to you…
I bend over but don’t vomit yet. The weight of truth is pushing me down, closer to the dead. I crawl on all fours, hysterically picking up more wristbands and reading the names. It’s impossible.
“Answer me, June. You’re scaring me.”
I am as scared as her, if not more. More wristbands. Some unreadable from the fire. Thirst attacks me. I feel like I am dehydrating, out of fear, not lack of liquids. I fall flat on my face. Imaginary photos of every woman fly before my eyes. Why the hell is someone burning women on this island?
Then a dark, dark thought comes to me. I am staring at the wristbands, realizing why I’ve been collecting them. What if one of them is my daughter’s?
46
I can hardly breathe. My brain reels with possible explanations, but none of them are plausible enough. I don’t even have the slightest idea what to do next.
“June!” Ashlyn is panicking outside. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t come in here, Ashlyn,” I snap. “You don’t want to see any of this.”
“Believe me, I know.”
I force myself to stand. My back resists my wishes. I drop the wristbands on the ground. “I’ll be back in a second.”
“Good,” she says. “Because there’s something else I need to show you.”
“Okay. Okay.” I convince myself that I’m trying to calm her down, when in reality I am trying to calm myself down.
“No, really,” she says. “I mean, I don’t know what I smell inside, but I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“This?”
“Please come and see.”
“I said okay.” My voice is as stiff as old piano strings.
Her words are barely audible over a sudden gust from the ocean. I think she says, “It’s the walls…”
I can’t make out the rest. I don’t think I even want to. The breeze intensifies the awful smell. It’s sickening. I try my best to confirm whether this is the same awful smell as in my dreams. I can’t.
“June!”
I turn around. Maybe it’s best to leave.
“The walls!”
I walk over the mucky ground, with no intentions of looking down. Ashlyn stands by the wall looking sideways. I guess she means the cemetery’s wall, but from outside. She keeps pointing against the heavy rain.
A sudden beam of light slices through the darkness. An artificial beam of light, circling the Furnace from above. I should be scared, but instead I freeze again. I can see the piled-up corpses clearer now. I didn’t want to see this. It was much easier in the dark. I raise my hands in the air and surrender. For a moment I don’t care about the soldiers coming to capture me — or even kill me — as long as I get out of this dark, dark place.
I look away and force myself to walk a few more steps to the iron door.
Ashlyn pulls me down by my sleeves. We duck together behind the wall. She points at the source of light. A lighthouse in the distance. “It’s a watchtower,” she says.
The loud blare in my ears attacks me again. I am not sure if it’s real. I clamp my ears with my hands and shrink my posture against the pain.
“It’s so loud,” Ashlyn shouts. I am surprised she can hear it. “A warning siren. I hear it sometimes when I’m in Ward Four.”
“You can hear this?” I shout back, hoping she will say yes, that it’s not all in my head.
She nods. “It sounds like a car’s honk.”
“Yes!” I say. She is right. I couldn’t put my finger on it earlier. It does sound like an incredibly loud honk from some car. But how can it be?
“So this means they found out we left the ward?”
“Must have been Mindy!” Ashlyn says. “Or how would they have found out?”
I glare at her. We’ve both been so naive, thinking Hecker’s secret nurse lover wouldn’t give us away.
“But listen,” Ashlyn says. “Whatever happens to us, you have to see the writing on the wall—”
An amplified voice from a loudspeaker interrupts, “Please come out, Miss June.”
“You have to—” Ashlyn’s voice is fading to black in the back of my head.
I don’t care about the wall. I changed my mind. I don’t want to be caught. I want to find my daughter. “We have to find a way out,” I say.
“But the wall—”
“Forget the damn fucking wall,” I shake her violently again. “You have no idea what I’ve seen in the Furnace. Meredith was right. You have no idea what they will do to us.”
The horrible things they do to women.
“I think I can imagine it,” Ashlyn says. “If you just look at the sign on the wall.”
Though all I want is to escape now and to protect Ashlyn, I turn my head and follow her gaze. Her face twitches in the rain and her lower jaw shivers as she points at the wall. I squint, not sure what I am looking at. Yes, there are a few signs on the walls. Hand painted in red. Inverted crosses, I think?
Red inverted crosses like the small one on my gun?
Ashlyn demands my attention, as we wait for the light from the tower to shine onto the wall. It does, ever so briefly, but long enough for me to realize it’s not an inverted cross. It’s an even much more worse sign. My mind has only tricked me to see it as an inverted cross, so I wouldn’t panic. But now that I see it, this island scares the shit out of me.
I return my frozen gaze back to Ashlyn. Images of the women burned in the cemetery flood my vision. The sign on the wall explains, in a vague way, what happened here. At least it’s proportionate with the atrocity of the crime.
Ashlyn nods, horror dripping from her face. “Swastikas.”
“I saw,” I say with a dropped jaw. “But how is that possible?”
“It explains the grey uniform,” she says.
God in heaven, what is this place? The soldiers‘ grey outfits remind me now of the Nazis SS uniforms, except they have stripped them of additional stripes and insignias. This makes no sense at all.
I don’t have time to ponder that. I’m too late to even find a way out of this situation. Silhouettes of soldiers loom out of the forest. Heavy squelches of their boots sound in the mud, as they come for us.
My whole being is chained to the insurmountable horror in Ashlyn’s eyes. The horrible things they will do to you. I scream at her, summing up all my confusion into one word. It’s an order. Precise and short, “Run!”
47
Ashlyn doesn’t think twice about it. She takes off, running aimlessly in the dark. This is when I realize it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have told her to run. The moment she does, soldiers start shooting at her.
“No!” I scream.
The shooting continues. My God. What have I done?
I stand up and dart after her, but she’s already gone. The forest ahead is dark. The cemetery behind me is as dark. I can’t find her. Which direction did she go? I’m worried that if I summon her, they’ll know where she is exactly when she replies. But I have to find her. I am so fucking confused. How can I save her?
I wave my hands in the air. “No. You want me, not her!”
The shooting doesn’t stop.
I tell myself I’d hear her moan or make a sound if she gets shot, but I’m not sure this will be the case.
I keep waving my hands at the sky. Then I hop in eve
ry direction, not sure where the soldiers are. “Take me! I’m here. You’re looking for me.”
The strobe of light shifts left and right in consecutive movements.
“Here!” I wave at the lighthouse.
The light stops, focusing on me. I’m at the center of the stage now. Never have I thought that light would scare me more than darkness. I swallow hard. My arms are still in the air. I resist the urge to close my eyes and say a prayer I don’t remember. Nothing should stop them from shooting me now.
At least, I saved Ashlyn’s life.
“I’ll turn myself in,” I shield one hand against the light. “Just don’t shoot her.”
The shooting stops. Heavy footsteps trudge in the mud all around me. The horrible things they will do to you. I wish they would just kill me, and not burn me like the women in the cemetery.
The footsteps get louder the closer they get. A shadow forms out of the light from the strobe. A soldier with a machine gun. It’s Hecker.
I shiver when I see him. He is gritting his teeth. Veins are visibly pulsing in his neck. “I knew you were not who you told us you were from the beginning,” his tall frame shadows me, up close and personal. “I hate it when I’m right.”
“I know, I know,” I lower my gaze. “Just don’t shoot her. Take me.”
“Is this another game of yours?” Hecker breathes his anger into my face.
“I’m not playing games,” I insist. “Take me. Let her live, and I beg you, tell me where my daughter is.”
Hecker roars with laughter, addressing the soldiers surrounding me. “Did you hear that, boys?”
The soldiers laugh back with harassing comments about how they wasted time finding me when they had important work to do.
“Come again?” he asks me.
“I’m begging you to let Ashlyn live.”
“Who is Ashlyn?” He takes a step closer, his gun touching my thighs. I’m not sure if it’s intentional.
“The nurse.” I pull my leg away from his machine gun.
“What nurse?”
“The goddamn nurse who you were shooting at,” I stomp a foot while my shoulders tense.
“Ah,” Hecker says and takes a step back. “I guess we were shooting at her.”
I grimace, still not looking up to him.
“We’re not here for her, anyways,” he says. “We’re here for you, Miss June,” he snickers. “You shouldn’t have escaped Ward Four.”
“Yeah? And let you kill me?”
“We weren’t going to kill you,” he says. “Not if you’d obeyed the rules. Don’t leave the ward. Don’t look west. Wait for the storm to subside. Why was that so hard? Now you’ve seen too much. Things got complicated. I personally think you’re not who you say you are.”
“I’m sorry. Just promise me Ash will be okay.”
“Ash?”
“The goddamn nurse.”
“Ah, her name is Ash,” he says. “Don’t worry about her. Now are you coming with us willingly or are you going to resist me?”
“Do I look like I have a choice?” I raise my gaze to meet his eyes.
“Good. You will stay in Ward Four until the weather gets better, and then we’ll send you back home, wherever the fuck that is.”
“Do I have your word?” I raise my eyes to meet his.
“You’re infiltrating a top secret military base, Miss June. We’ve been generously patient with you, and we don’t accommodate women ever. So don’t offend and ask me to give you my fucking word.”
I want to comment that they don’t accommodate women because they burn them in the Furnace, but I don’t. What if they’re not sure what I’ve seen? He said I’ve seen too much but didn’t mention the dead women in the cemetery. The soldiers caught me and Ashlyn on the outside wall, so I have to count on the possibility that they think we’ve not seen inside. Also, the rain has washed the muck from her face, as I can’t feel any from lying flat on the floor inside the furnace. Otherwise, I doubt he’d ever let me leave like he promised.
I surrender to the soldiers approaching. They look like alien beings in the light. Two of them hold me by the arms, ready to show me to the Jeep.
“Good girl,” Hecker grins and spits his gum out. “We’ll take you to Major Red first. He wants a word with you. Let’s go.”
“Wait,” I say. “Where is Ashlyn? I’m not going anywhere without her.”
“About that,” Hecker cracks his neck left and right. He says nothing, looking at the forest.
Words refuse to form in my mouth.
“I have to tell you something, Miss June.” He follows.
Now thoughts refuse to form in my head.
“My soldiers aren’t the brightest dudes, sometimes.”
I make an effort to stand still. I make an effort to open my mouth. My jaw hurts so much, “What do you mean? Where the hell is Ash?”
“It was an accident,” Hecker says. “Ash is nothing but ash. I guess her name preceded her fate. She’s gone.”
Part II
Middle
48
Mercy Medical Center, New York
FBI agent James Madison Floyd stared at the window but couldn’t see beyond the rain outside. He lifted one hand and wiped the foggy glass from his side. The rain was lighter now, but not for long. New York’s weather had always surprised him. It defied forecasts and expectations year after year. But this nonstop pouring in the middle of June was a tad unusual.
He bent his bulky frame forward to watch the rain trickling on the glass but saw his reflection instead. Damn, he’d gotten older. A little paler for a black man, too. He ignored his reflection and looked past it at the rain again. He enjoyed it. At least it made him feel like he had a friend in this hospital. The raindrops reminded him of the tears he was suppressing behind his eyes.
At fifty-five, he was in great shape. His coworkers had always feared him. He was too brash, they’d said. A man who feared nothing. Not that it was entirely true, but his impressive résumé played a role in their perception of him.
In the past, he had played essential roles in saving lives all over the world. He’d never shed a tear in a battle—the same way he refused to cry now. Great men died in Floyd’s presence, serving their country and trying to save others’ lives. He’d never flinched. His only focus was on getting the job done.
In the bureau, they called him the Rock. But right now, Floyd didn’t feel like a rock. He doubted he would have the grit to keep his tears inside any longer.
He turned and glanced at the woman lying speechless on the bed. Comatose, eyes closed, and breathing shallowly. The minimum breaths to stay alive, he supposed.
She was about his age. She wore a lime-green hospital gown. She ate and drank from a tube. And never said a word.
In fact, she hadn’t moved for three years, stretched out on this coffin the doctors called a hospital bed. She was the dearest person to his heart. Her name was August.
Since her accident, Floyd had spent most of his time next to her. He’d have spent every minute of the rest of his life next to her, but he couldn’t. Not with the loneliness he suffered watching her being neither dead nor alive.
Doctors had advised him to stay positive. When he’d asked about her chances to wake up from her coma, they always looked away without a definitive answer. Later, he’d learned the answer was almost never.
“I’m here, August,” Floyd whispered. “In case you can hear me.”
August just lay there, breathing monotonously. He could never fathom the difference between a coma and death. Patients had no means to interact with their loved ones either way. Death wasn’t just about leaving the world but leaving loved ones in this world.
Floyd usually pretended she answered him, so the conversation didn’t die. “I want you to know that I’m always here.”
Some doctors claimed that she could hear him. At least feel his presence. If he’d learned anything in this hospital, then it was that doctors didn’t know jack-shit.
&n
bsp; If August could hear him, why hadn’t she made a sign? A cough. An infrequent breath. Blinking eyes or a wiggling finger. None of that ever happened. She only lay there, trapped inside her head, inside a world he didn’t know anything about. Sometimes when he talked to her long enough, telling her about his day, he had to watch the rise and fall of her chest to make sure she hadn’t died…yet.
“I love you, baby,” he said, then sat at the edge of the bed and gently rubbed her left arm. She used to like that when she was conscious, but told him he had rough hands and that his touch was too strong. They laughed. Good old times.
Floyd let out a short sigh then stretched his arms behind his back. He still wasn’t used to prolonged sessions doing nothing. Being on call was bliss, or he would have gone crazy.
Sometimes he wasn’t sure why he was here beside her. What was the point? What was the use? She wasn’t healing, and he truly doubted she felt his presence.
One of the younger doctors had asked him to pull the plug on her. Floyd had given it some thought. Keeping August alive had nothing to do with beliefs or morals. He just couldn’t imagine living without her. At least her body was still intact, and he could still look at her on a daily basis, as selfish as it sounded.
Floyd’s cell phone rang. He recognized the caller. It was Karl Dixon from NTSB, the National Transportation Safety Board of America. He picked up immediately. Back to work.
“Dixon?” Floyd said. “Tell me you have good news.”
“I have, sir,” Dixon said. “We’ve found the plane.”
49
I am taking a shower in my bathroom in Ward Four. Not that I need to, but mingling my tears with the water helps me calm down. As for the blood on my hands, I doubt it will ever wash away.
The women’s blood in the cemetery, Ashlyn’s blood, and hopefully not my daughter’s—I try my best not to think about the last part.
Right now, I wear my guilt over Ashlyn on my skin like tight latex, suffocating me.
