by JJ Lamb
She clenched her eyelids shut until her scalp was tingling.
Oh God, if you get me through this I promise to be a better person. I promise, I promise…
Buzzzzz.
The sound was loud. It sliced through her panic like a scalpel
What?
She jumped away from the boulder.
Buzzzz.
The noise was coming from the rock.
Her fingers roamed across the section she’d just pressed against. What she thought was a rock stabbing into her was really an oversize metal button-switch.
She lightly touched the button. Nothing happened … only the buzz.
She leaned hard on the button with the heel of her hand. A click, then a section of stone snapped out and away.
How about that?
She stepped into the continuing corridor, walking as if on broken glass. The silence was so profound; she jumped when the rock entrance suddenly clunked shut behind her.
The dimly-lit corridor finally ended at an unlit doorway. She stepped through and felt for a light switch, found one, and covered her eyes against the sudden blinding light.
The strong smell of formaldehyde was like a smack in the face. And there was something else, something metallic. She could almost taste it.
Blood!
As her eyes adjusted, she saw large glass containers sitting on shelves lining the entire room. Each container was filled with clear fluid … and floating specimens. She stepped closer, put her hand on one of the heavy glass jars and peered at the contents. It looked like …
“Oh, my God!” Her hand pulled back like it had a life of its own; her voice startled her. She glanced at the containers on the right and left.
“Human brains!”
The nearest cerebrum looked like firm jelly—almost within the norm. She moved slowly along the length of the shelf, looking at other dissected brain specimens. In many, the cortex was shriveled. and the ventricles had separated, leaving huge empty spaces in between.
Diseased brains.
Her neck started to tingle; her mouth turned so dry she could barely swallow.
Each and every fluid-filled container in the room held either a whole brain or some part of brain tissue.
And then she was shivering so hard her teeth were chattering.
They're staring back at me … watching me.
She’d seen practically every horrible procedure you could imagine. But looking at those floating brains was making her light-headed.
She turned away and studied the room. In the center was a large stainless steel table—it was set up as though it was in a morgue’s autopsy room.
Why is there a residue of blood encircling the drain and a burgundy splatter on the scale?
Close to the table were several trays of instruments, and an array of bloody medical saws. The only thing missing in the room was … a body.
Where is the body that blood came from? Was it Rhonda Jenkins in here with Ethan? It must have been her that I heard screaming.
As she turned to leave, she saw a small desk; the bottom drawer was cracked open. She had to pull the drawer open, look inside.
There was a notebook, laptop computer, and a loose flash drive. She yanked out the notebook and flipped through the pages. It was all about planned cerebral experiments.
Yuck!
She quickly tossed the notebook back in the drawer, and grabbed the flash drive, shoving the small storage device into her pocket. She left the drawer cracked open, just as she’d first found it.
A glance at her watch told her she had ten minutes left to her break. She had to get out of there now.
Buzzz.
Oh, shit!
Someone was coming in.
Her senses were firing at top speed—she could hear every sound, could smell her own terror-filled sweat, and could feel a cold draft on her legs.
The air was coming from under one of the shelves behind her. She bent down, saw a three-foot-high door under the lowest specimen shelf.
Was it a closet? Could she fit in there?
She dropped to her knees, pulled at the handle, crawled into the darkness, and reached behind her to shut herself in.
* * *
Ethan walked into the lab.
Why are the lights on? Did I leave them on last night? Must have.
He stared at the stainless steel table with the remaining tell-tale traces of blood.
God, what a mess! Rhonda Jenkins half awake, looking at me with those empty eyes.
When he’d told Pete and Rocky to lay her on the table, she’d screamed his name—Ethan! Ethan! Is that you? Help me! These men are going to kill me.
He told himself that she was only an AZ-1166 statistic. That was her real value. The drug should have turned her Alzheimer’s remission into a legitimate positive statistic, but because of her side effects, along with too many others like her, she was here at Comstock. They wouldn’t let people like her, and all the rest of them who had gone through Comstock, ruin everything for him … for Zelint.
He looked around the room at all his specimens. He was certain each one held a key, an answer. He just hadn’t found it yet.
Bottom line—he’d needed Rhonda’s brain. That’s all. It wasn’t personal. Her particular side effects to AZ-1166 had to be studied.
But this time it bothered him.
Ethan had given her the IV med to put her out, but she was still awake when he cut her scalp. Her screams were unbearable; they didn’t stop until he was ready with the cranial saw.
He walked to the desk, opened the bottom drawer, and started to pull out his laptop, then he changed his mind and kicked the drawer shut again.
He looked carefully around the lab one last time. Everything seemed in order, except that bloody mess.
Pete will have to clean it up.
He nodded, turned off the light, and left.
* * *
Gina saw the spill-over light from the cracks around the small door disappear. She was in total darkness, wedged into the opening. Her neck was crimped, her legs were cramped, and she wanted to scream. She forced herself to wait until she thought it had been five minutes, then she pushed at the door with her feet. It wouldn’t budge.
No!
This was her worst nightmare—she was buried alive.
She took a deep breath, made a fist, and reached back, driving it into the door.
It still wouldn’t open.
Chapter 23
Harry couldn’t remember ever being this agitated on a job. The uncertainty of Rhonda Jenkins’s fate left him feeling puzzled and off-balance. He was accustomed to arriving at a new job loaded with confidence, backed up with a healthy inventory of know-how. But this place was not like any other facility he’d ever worked at—it was totally understaffed and patient care was more custodial than anything else. For some reason, human storage kept popping into his head. It wasn’t an image he liked.
His nurses’ agency usually provided better pickings.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Rhonda. Her sudden disappearance tapped into his insecurities.
Was she really the one Gina heard screaming in the basement?
He and Pete had just now finished handing out lunch trays when the orderly, hands on his hips, mouth spread into a wide smile, said, “So what made you become a girly nurse?”
Some kind of electricity spiked through Harry. Without a word, he reached out and grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked the jerk’s head back, exposing his neck; his other hand was poised to chop into his throat. The sleazy smile melted.
Harry couldn’t explain why he attacked the guy. Throughout his career he’d been thrown every possible kind of sly, mean-spirited remark about being a male registered nurse. After he decided he couldn’t afford medical school and took up nursing, even his parents gave him a bad time about it. Most of the insults seemed like senseless slams against not only him, but against an honorable profession.
He usually let it slide, but this morning P
ete had pressed the wrong button.
Harry gave the idiot a long, hard look. It took tremendous self-control to let go of his grip on Pete and back away.
“I’m going to lunch, but before I do, I’ll tell you this: one more insult out of you and you’ll be flat on your ass … for days.”
Pete ran his hands through his hair, looked Harry square in the eye and said, “Fuck you.”
* * *
Harry knew he had to get out of this place. He was feeling what Gina complained about when she was scared, like her world was suffocating her. No, he wasn’t scared. But he was uneasy and suspicious.
When he was out the front door, he walked to their rental Jeep, still parked where they’d left it, along side the building. He took a lap around it, studying the tires, the canvas top; everything looked fine.
He was finally calming down, but now he was angry for losing his temper with such a fool like Pete. He didn’t like the guy, or his buddy Rocky. Their being here didn’t make sense. Why would Ethan hire two obviously untrained losers to work with sick people?
He walked around to the back of the facility and gave the out-of-place gray boulders a once-over. He didn’t see anything suspicious. A little farther on, there was a rift between the rocks. He ambled toward it, found a pathway, and kept walking. After a short time, the foot path ended and he was staring at an eight-foot-high door.
It was definitely an old mining era door, with elaborate tendrils of curled, rusted iron decoration affixed to a solid wooden frame that was held in place by modern heavy metal hinges. A no-nonsense hasp was secured with a large, new padlock.
Harry stepped back. Someone had recently sealed this entrance to a mine.
He pulled at the padlock, hoping it would somehow spring open, but it was firmly clamped shut.
Probably the only way to keep out unwanted visitors … like me.
Harry turned and pushed on into the open desert, past hump after hump of mine tailings, more evidence of mine activity. Looking up when he should have been looking down, he tumbled over a half-buried door. He kneeled down, touched the lacey, rusted-out metal. The door had been ripped off its hinges and was covered with ragged holes. Finding this second door convinced him there was a mine somewhere beneath his feet. He started making wider and wider perimeters around the area of the two doors, but found nothing else.
He noticed that the sun was getting lower and lower; soon it would be hidden behind the boulders. A sudden chill hit him. Someone was walking across his grave. He couldn’t explain why that kind of kid’s talk popped into his head. For a moment he did feel weird. He scanned the area. Nothing but desert, mine tailings, and the strange boulders.
He threw his head back and laughed.
What’s so unusual about any of this? These mines helped the North finance the Civil War … provided most of the funds to build San Francisco. Nothing weird here.
I need to get my ass back to the unit.
Still, he wasn’t looking forward to spending the rest of the day with Pete after their little encounter.
It took him longer to return than he’d anticipated. He’d wandered out farther than he intended.
Back at the unit, he walked up to Pete the first thing.
“Hey, man, you kind of pushed my buttons earlier. I apologize for taking off on you like that.”
Pete hard-stared him and said, “You have no idea just how sorry you’re gonna be.”
Chapter 24
Gina tried to catch her breath, but she sounded like a dying animal.
“Why won’t you open?” she screamed.
She couldn’t feel her legs anymore, and although there was cold air coming from whatever there was in the space in front of her, sweat trickled down between her breasts.
She tried to punch at the door again, but couldn’t really do much with an underhanded back swing, and her legs felt dead and caught in something. She was growing weaker and weaker, could barely hear the thump of her fist as it hit the door. Tears filled her eyes; her sobs surrounded her.
It was getting colder and colder.
Gina had to face it—she was jammed into a hole in the ground. She couldn’t go back the way she’d come; and there was nothing but dirt and darkness in front of her.
One part of her brain wanted her to go to sleep, escape all the terror she was feeling. The other part told her that if she didn’t do something soon, she wouldn’t be able to move or breathe; the blackness would swallow her.
Her mind spun, spitting out little green dots that bounced all around her.
“Let me out!”
Nothing in response.
She screamed it again, “Let me out!”
You’re such a wimp, sis.
“What?”
You heard me.
“Vinnie? What are you doing here?”
Wimp!
“Vinnie, don’t talk to me like that, you little brat.”
Whadda you gonna do about it?
“I’m gonna beat the shit out of you … like always.”
Yeah, sure! You ain’t goin’ nowhere, big sister. And you sure as hell ain’t gonna beat on me.
“Sez who?”
Gina tried to bring her fists in front of her but her arms lay lifeless at her sides, they wouldn’t move.
Sez me, said a different voice, deep and hard. She cringed. It was her ex-husband.
“Get out of here, Dominick!” she shouted. “Leave me alone!”
Her heart was racing. He’d kill her this time … said he would when he got out of jail.
“If you touch me, you’ll go back to prison. You’ll rot there. That’s what the judge told you would happen if you touched me again.”
Ain’t no judge gonna find you in this hole, Gina girl. No one will find you, you bitch!”
Dominick was coming; his voice was there in the tunnel in front of her. She could feel his cold breath on her face.
“No!” she screamed. She slammed back into the door with both fists; did it over and over and over until there was nothing to hit. The door was gone.
She moved an inch at a time as she backed through the wall. When her knees landed on the lab floor she collapsed.
Chapter 25
Gina lay prostrate on the lab floor. It was a long, long time before she could muster the strength to stand, and make her way out of the lab. Every fiber in her body ached. She didn’t dare take the elevator and risk exposing herself. But as she walked up the stairs, she had to cling to the banister to keep from slipping back down. When she finally arrived at the unit, it took all of her will power not to drop her head onto the desk and weep.
Sensing a kill, Rocky had given her nothing but lip for coming back a half hour late. She didn’t take the bait even though he was relentless in hounding her with every possible dig. She was too empty inside to respond. She was cold and stiff, her mind constantly drawing a blank. She did what had to be done, working only on auto-pilot.
All she could think about was being trapped in that hole in the ground and never coming out … no one would ever find her.
And Harry? He probably would never know what happened to me.
Her heart sped up, tears trickled down her cheek. Would he think she’d just run away? Would he really think that?
Everything was wrong in this place, had been from the very start.
They’d barely arrived at Comstock, her very first traveling nurse assignment, and instead of the big adventure she expected, the administrator and staff were disgusting. And now, she’d almost died!
* * *
Harry plopped down on the sofa beside her.
“Harry! Don’t do that!”
“Do what?”
“Sneak up on me like that! I almost went through the ceiling.”
“Sorry, doll, I just sort of collapsed.”
Gina looked into his eyes, saw her own misery reflected there. “What is it, Harry? What’s wrong?”
“I almost killed Pete today … I mean really kill him.”
/> She reached for his hand. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “He wasn’t anymore asinine than usual. I think Rhonda’s sudden disappearance got to me. The fool opened his mouth and said one wrong thing too many. I snapped.”
“Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry.”
“I saw a side of me that I don’t ever want to see again.” He kissed her on the forehead, looked into her eyes. “Hey, doll, you look totally washed out. What a jerk, laying all this on you.”
“It seems we’ve both had a horrible day.” Before she could say anything else, a sob tore out of her. And then she couldn’t stop.
“Hey, hey!” He pulled her into his arms. “Tell me about it.”
“It was so horrible, Harry. Blackness closing in all around me. I couldn’t move … my arms, my legs were paralyzed.”
“Whoa! Back up, Gina. What blackness? Where?”
“I went to the basement again on my lunch break … found an underground laboratory.”
“No!” Harry held her at arms length. “You said you wouldn’t go there again. You promised.”
“It was because of Rhonda. I had to know…” She was shaking so hard, Harry grabbed a comforter from the back of the sofa and wrapped them both in it and squeezed them together until she stopped shivering.
“The lab. It was so grotesque … walls covered with jars of floating brains.”
“Probably part of the Alzheimer’s study. Ethan must be analyzing the brains of the patients who died here at Comstock.”
“I tried to tell myself that, too, Harry. I mean, at the time it seemed not only logical, but essential for the study.”
“The only way to see what damage AZ-1166 might have caused; how it worked on the brain.”
“I could understand that, and even go along with it. But it was something else that got to me. I mean, being in a lab or even an autopsy area is no big thing for me. Been there, done that. But that place, not only smelled of formaldehyde, it smelled of fear.”
