by Schow, Ryan
“She’ll handle it,” Delgado said, nodding back to Abby in the backseat.
“You don’t even know if you can get her functioning. And you said she doesn’t have a soul.”
“Like I said, dude, if I can’t get her going, the doctor can. Just got to make sure he’s on the same page is all. Because you don’t bother him. And you absolutely do not screw with him less’n you want a one-touch lobotomy. Which I don’t.”
“So this Nightmare Hall, this is real, huh? Not another conspiracy?”
“While you were combining DNA from one human to another to make a more perfect species—which is an admirable feat—the ‘scientists’ on Level Six, Nightmare Hall, they’ve been crossbreeding humans and animals and…other species…for decades. Just imagine the implications of combining frog DNA with human DNA. Saw a boy they did that on. Bent my fuckin’ mind in two, bro. To be truthful, though, I’ve only been down there once. That’s where I saw the frog boy. And holy Jesus did that do a number on me!” Delgado said, stabbing the side of his head with a pointed finger and wild eyes. “Once you see that shit, you can’t unsee it—that’s what I’m saying. It haunts your memories, man.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” Holland said.
Delgado didn’t answer.
Within minutes, they were parking in a garage and hauling Abby’s body inside an elevator shaft that took nearly ten minutes to get down to Level Four.
“How far down does this place go?” Holland asked.
“Not your usual six story building built into a mountain, is it?” He had a smile on his face that looked plastic. Fixed in place. As in not real at all. Holland was thinking the man looked deranged, a bit psychotic. Or brain dead. Could his soul have been stripped out of him long ago?
Was he soul-scalped?
“Word is the Denver airport has underground facilities like this,” Holland said. “Is that true?”
“Don’t know nuthin ’bout that place. Heard the same thing, though.” Same stupid smile. Same plastic face. The man farted, then slowly, ever so slowly, he snuck a glance at Holland, the smile never going away. Holland’s skin broke into gooseflesh.
The man was taking bizarre to uncharted levels.
6
Deep in the bowels of Level Four, with Abby laid out on a gurney and under the same kind of lights they’d use during surgery, Delgado looked over the girl and said, “Where again was she shot?”
Holland pointed to the three locations and Delgado said, “Amazing. How is this possible?”
“Several decades ago, myself and two other doctors began developing a special serum that both accelerates healing and promotes complete rejuvenation and restoration of the damaged cells.”
Turning to Holland, his face twisted, he said, “Hard to imagine you, a human, could even make such a thing possible.”
“We are purveyors of the impossible, Dr. Delgado, are we not?”
This got the man to smile for real. It was a lot more human that that other ridiculous look he wore.
“Before I can help this girl,” he said, his face now serious, “I need to know everything you know about her. Her entire history if you can.”
Holland took a deep breath, then said, “I’m assuming you are referring to her medical history.”
“Whatever man. Just trying to get a lay of the land.”
“You’ll have whatever you need, Delgado. Just fix her already.”
So Holland told him everything he needed to know, then he was taken back to the airport where his private plane was waiting to take him home. The trip was short. But at least he had one less thing to worry about.
Savannah and the Social Terrorists
1
When Brayden and Netty arrived at Gerhard’s lab, the first thing the very tired looking Gerhard said to them was that he was dead. With bloodshot eyes and cracked lips, he said, “Dr. Wolfgang Gerhard is a ghost. Gone. As in flushed down the toilet of life. My new name is Dr. Enzo Holland, and if you ever call me anything other than that I swear to God I’ll gut you both and feed you to the pigs.”
Brayden smiled for a fraction of a second, long enough to realize he wasn’t kidding. This is Josef Mengele reincarnate, he reminded himself. The smile fell quickly from his face.
Brayden nodded and said, “Enzo Holland. Right. No problem.”
Holland turned the weight of his gaze on Netty who said, “If I never have to see you again, it won’t be too soon. In the mean time, if you don’t mind, I’ll just call you asshole.”
Holland laughed and it was not a bad thing. For a second it was the most normal thing the man had ever done. Then Brayden had flashbacks of Holland trying to choke Netty to death and suddenly he had a fresh appreciation for Netty. The similarities between her and Abby truly were uncanny. In the right light, if he looked past the psycho she became waiting to see if Abby was still alive, he could see himself hooking up with her.
He watched her mouth, studied her lips, thought about kissing them.
“Asshole will be acceptable,” Holland said with a grin. For the moment he wasn’t the sadistic beast of this latest transformation. He was just a man. Simply a doctor in a lab who hadn’t become a horrible blister on the seat of humanity.
“Where’s Abby?” Netty asked.
“Asleep,” Holland replied. “I’ll go and wake her.”
When she came out, Abby had the worst case of bed head. Brayden wanted to know where she was sleeping, but he didn’t want to ask her any questions, not while in the company of the Nazi douche knuckle.
“I was thinking you could take her with you,” Holland said. Netty just stared at him like she couldn’t believe it. Earlier, she and Brayden had speculated as to whether or not he would let her go.
“That sounds good,” Netty said.
Abby looked back at Holland, almost like she didn’t want that. Holland gave her the subtlest of nods, one that said, go.
“When’s the last time you had a shower?” Netty said. Abby shrugged her shoulders then asked what day it was. Netty said, “Saturday.”
She looked at Holland who said, “It’s been a few days.”
“Basically you look homeless and hungry, Abs,” Brayden said.
“Speaking of hungry,” Netty said, “I’ve been dying for a sandwich at Ike’s Place. It’s been forever.”
“Do I like Ike’s Place?” Abby asked, trying to smooth out her hair.
“Absolutely you do,” she said. “You order the Fat Bastard every time, and every time you tell me we need to go back, like pronto.”
“What’s a Fat Bastard?” Abby asked. At this point, even Holland looked curious.
“It’s basically a pig sandwich, extra dirty,” Brayden said. “And she’s right, it’s your favorite. You used to tell me about it all the time at Astor when you’d get tired of eating what you’d call your motherfreaking vegetables.”
“Extra dirty?” Holland said.
“Yeah,” Netty replied. “Basically the owner, Ike Shehadeh, has what he calls ‘Ike’s Dirty Secret Sauce’ which is slathered on the bread and baked into it. The sauce is legendary, and on the Fat Bastard, there’s more of it than usual. The bread is so freaking good, it’s waterfall good.”
“Waterfall good?” Holland said.
Netty rolled her eyes and said, “Jesus man, you’re so early 1940’s. Waterfall equals the female orgasm. Women have them, too, doctor.”
Brayden couldn’t help but cringe at Netty’s reference to Holland being old as hell, and he could not believe she said the 1940’s, i.e. the height of the Third Reich. When he told Netty who he was, that Gerhard/Holland was a Nazi from the 1940’s, he didn’t think she’d throw it in the man’s face.
“I get it,” Holland said. Even the blind could see he was ready for them to leave. The blue bags hanging under his eyes said he wasn’t sleeping very well. Even though he was fresh out of the tank, it seemed impossible for him to look so tired.
“Fine,” Abby said. “Ike’s it is. But firs
t I need to shower and shave, my shit’s getting burly.” She gave a suggestive nod to her privates, not in the most shameful way possible, but not outright either.
Brayden looked at Netty, and the look they shared said, this isn’t how Abby talks. He cocked an eyebrow and Netty sort of shrugged her shoulders back as if to say, whatever, let’s go with it.
So they did.
2
They took Abby home to Netty’s place in the city, let her shower and borrow some of Netty’s clothes, then they all piled back into the Audi and headed to Ike’s. Netty drove because Abby was too scared—“I’ve never driven something like this”—and Brayden didn’t say anything about how goddamn scary it was to have Netty drive, even though he was dying to. They arrived at Ike’s on 16th Street where they waited outside on the sidewalk with a dozen other people to get inside and order. True to Netty’s word, Abby loved Ike’s and she loved the Fat Bastard. It’s when they were halfway through their sandwiches that Brayden suggested they go clubbing later that night.
“The guys in Vegas told me about this club called Vessel,” he said. “It’s supposed to be legit.”
“It’s in the Union Square District,” Netty said, “and it isn’t overrated.” She didn’t look like she hated the idea, but she didn’t look like she was loving it either.
“Sounds good,” Abby said. “I’m in.”
The way she was talking while eating, Brayden was like, “Hey Abs, I’ve seen enough unsavory shit to last a lifetime, which is why I’m going to ask you to please, please, please chew with your mouth closed. I’m tired of looking at all that gooey slop inside your face.” He said this with his sunglasses on so casually it made him hard to read. He could be serious; he could be joking. He could be both. Still, when Abby looked at him, he smiled. And Netty? She just stopped chewing. Like she couldn’t believe he would say such a thing to her once dead BFF. Abby flashed that closed-mouth embarrassment smile, then turned red.
“Just like the old days,” Netty said, reaching out to wipe a triangle of crumbs from her beautiful face.
“You can dress ‘em up, but you can’t take ‘em out,” Brayden chided.
“Speaking of going out,” Netty said, “I’m officially warm to Brayden’s suggestion. And Vessel? It’s so in these days.”
When they got back home, Netty went into the other room for some “girl time” with Abby, and Brayden decided it was time to call Christian Swann and tell him his daughter was dead and back again. Just like Jesus Christ on the first official Easter ever. Instead of a cave, it was a glass canister in a lab. He used Abby’s phone to make the call. It rang three times before he picked up.
“Hey sweetheart,” Christian said.
“Hey, dad,” Brayden replied. He probably should have been more formal, but that just wasn’t him. At his core, he was still a complete smart ass.
“Who is this?” Christian asked.
“Brayden.”
“Oh,” he said, “hi.”
“I have some…interesting news for you, Mr. Swann. I must first preface this conversation by saying, please don’t shoot the messenger.”
“If you’re calling to tell me my daughter is pregnant or engaged—”
“In some ways it’s better, in some ways it’s worse. This is a story with sort of a happy ending, though. Or maybe not. I guess it just depends on whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist.”
“I’m an optimist.” Christian’s voice was nothing if not impatient.
“Where are you, sir? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“New York. My time is precious, Brayden, and my patience is already thin.”
“Abby was sort of…in an accident, I mean she wasn’t, but she was…well it’s a long story that starts with—”
“Good God, Brayden, just spit it out!”
“Abby was dead,” he said, “but now she’s not. Bad news, then good news. See? Happy ending, sort of.”
The man’s breath practically fell into the phone. Brayden heard every last nuance of it, but he couldn’t be sure of the deeper meaning. He prayed the man was indeed an optimist. By the sound of things, Brayden thought he heard him start walking. A door opened; a door shut. He was positive he heard the sounds of traffic. Not up-close traffic. More in-the-distance traffic.
“How is she not dead? Is she alright?”
Brayden started to sweat. His heart was not only racing, it broke the freaking sound barrier. “Your daughter has this thing about her, it’s something Gerhard did. She can’t…well, she can, but she can’t die. Or stay dead.”
“Is she with you now?” Christian asked.
“In the other room, yes. Sir, I know this is hard to understand—”
“It isn’t.” His lungs sounded like they were collapsing and those last two words were the last things to survive. It was amazing to think he could feel everything about the man’s resignation in a single breath. Then: “He made my daughter unkillable.”
Brayden stopped pacing the room. He stopped rubbing the scratchy-fresh stubble on his head. He stopped looking around as much as he started looking inside himself for ways to tell Christian about Gerhard, who was now Dr. Holland. “Um, how much do you know about Dr. Gerhard, sir?”
“Enough,” the man said with hints of disgust in his voice. “More than enough.”
“So you know,” Brayden said, dragging out the word ‘know.’
“Yes, I know.”
Brayden sighed with relief. If he had to explain Gerhard being an immortal Nazi war criminal, that would have been so much more difficult. At the gigantic picture window in Netty’s living room overlooking the city, Brayden opened the drapes.
Outside, the big city by the bay went on for forever.
“Well he is yet another version of himself,” Brayden said. “Fresh out of the goop and handsome as can be. Still has the teeth though.”
“Those things give me the heebie-jeebies,” Christian said.
“His teeth give everyone the heebie-jeebies.”
“So what’s he calling himself now?” Christian asked. In the background, Brayden heard more traffic. Had he gone to a balcony? Was he street side? Brayden had never been to New York and he wanted to go. He couldn’t help the flush of envy, which was a stupid thing to feel at a time like this. Still, he could lose himself in New York, and for some reason, that felt important.
“Dr. Enzo Holland,” Brayden said. “Although the way he’s been, God, he could go back to Josef Mengele and it would totally fit. The guy’s a Fukushima reactor. Totally unstable.”
“Really?”
“That calm, cool and collected thing he had going for himself? It’s all gone. I think something happened in his transformation. A screw up in the DNA or something. Everything about him screams bi-polar. And violent.”
“Not to be rude, but I don’t want to hear about that…thing…anymore. Can you put Abby on the phone please?”
“I think she’s in the shower or something,” he lied. He didn’t want the girls knowing he called Abby’s dad until the conversation was over.
On Christian’s end of the line, a car horn honked. Christian sighed. It was the most tired sigh ever.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what takes you to New York?”
“None of your business,” Christian said, his temper flaring.
Brayden shrunk from the phone, pulled it away and looked at it as if he couldn’t believe the way Christian was treating him. He didn’t sound like the Christian Swann who called him “playa” back at the new Palo Alto house. Or the Christian Swann who was smoking dope on the couch with his cheater ex-wife, the super sexy Margaret Van Duyn. No, this version sounded dog-tired.
“They say patience is a virtue, sir, but I find good manners to be equally important.”
“You took my daughter from me for three days with no phone call, and when you got her back home, your only explanation was that her cell phone battery died. Don’t lecture me on manners, son.”
Okay, he had a po
int.
“I already apologized for that,” Brayden said.
A door opened; a door shut. The sound of traffic died away. “How is she?” Christian asked. “I mean, really…how is she?”
“She looks great. Not a scratch left on her after what happened. But inside, she’s not herself. Her memory loss is steep. We’re talking short term and potentially long term, too. She says Abigail Swann isn’t her name. That she doesn’t remember looking the way she does. I guess some of her long term memory survived. Fragments anyway. I don’t know. I’m not specialist on this sort of thing.”
“So she only remembers herself as Savannah?”
“I suppose. I don’t know. Gerhard, rather Holland, isn’t sure if the memory loss is permanent or temporary, so we’ve been telling her about her life. It doesn’t seem to be helping, but at least she seems normal. What I mean is, for being dead for days, her cognitive functioning seems fine.”
“You mean she’s totally normal, aside from her amnesia?”
“Yeah, I think. Her personality seems…disjointed to say the very least. I hate to say this, but she doesn’t sound as smart or as refined as she used to. It’s like she’s, I don’t know…she sounds—”
“Goddammit, Brayden, quit sugarcoating everything!”
“She sounds trashy, sir. I mean, she sort of talks like white trash.”
He doesn’t say anything as much as he just makes a cynical laughing sound. Like he accepted what he was hearing, but didn’t like it enough to comment. Finally, he said, “I’m taking the next flight out of here.”
“That sounds like a good idea, sir.”
“First of all, I don’t give a shit how it sounds to you, and stop calling me sir.”
“Okay,” he said. Then quickly, he added, “Bro.”
There was pure silence for a moment, and then the slightest little chuckle. “Look man,” he said, “I’m sorry for giving you grief. It’s just, I have a lot of irons in the fire right now, and this is becoming a regular thing for Abby. Getting into trouble.”
“I find myself telling her that more often than you know.”
