Kill Switch

by Gordon Bonnet

  He, on the other hand, was a physical and emotional wreck. Exhausted, with a week’s growth of beard, still wearing the same clothes he’d had on when he’d fled Guildford after his house was destroyed, he must have looked like a refugee by now.

  He dozed off-and-on as they crossed through mile after mile of wheat fields, cattle ranches, and sagebrush-dotted scrubland, rousing only to change positions before sliding off again into a light sleep. Drolezki drove on, never once showing any sign of fatigue. The towns of Ritzville, Moses Lake, George, Vantage, and Kittitas all passed in a dimly-registered haze, each one marked only by exit signs and a temporary increase in the traffic.

  He opened his eyes and yawned, and looked at the dashboard clock. Just shy of eleven. The terrain had folded into gentle hills, still mostly occupied by farms, but there were stands of conifers here and there—lodgepole pine and white fir. The Cascades loomed ahead, their outlines hazy dim shapes in the distance.

  His heart gave a sudden uncomfortable gallop. The Cascades. Where it began. If they hadn’t found that cave thirty years ago, would they all still be alive, leading their individual lives, completely ignorant of the existence of these people who are above the government, and possibly behind it as well? Chris would be having a nice, quiet summer, just him and Baxter and two months of relaxation and warm weather before another school year and another crop of kids to teach. But now he was going to be erased, and the knowledge he’d discovered would die with him. The people back in Guildford would never find out anything other than that he disappeared, wandered off somewhere and died. That’s how they kept secrets. If you were not an initiate, and you found out about them, you were dead.

  They’d just passed the sign for Ellensburg when Drolezki’s cell rang. He reached into his pocket, pulled it out, and gave it a casual swipe with his finger.

  “Drolezki.” There was a pause. “Yes. I’ve got him. He’s secured. . . .I should be there by two at the latest. I texted J. D.… He didn’t tell you?” Another pause, and Drolezki chuckled. “No, that’s taken care of. They cleaned up the mess, right?”

  Chris frowned. A mess to clean up? The fucker. How could he talk about the bodies of Chase and Hargis, left on the ground at the turnaround in Wyoming, so casually?

  “No, no witnesses, unless you count the dog.” Drolezki snorted into the phone. “No, I didn’t take the dog, like I have time for that. What the hell? No, I didn’t off the dog. What, do you think the dog was gonna call the police? Wasn’t worth a bullet or the time it would’ve taken. I left him in the car.”

  The response to this must not have been what he expected, because Drolezki frowned, his forehead creasing in perplexity. “No.” His bantering tone was gone. “I’m sure. It was just Hargis and Ballengee. There wasn’t anyone else there. I didn’t have a lot of time to waste, and couldn’t risk being seen by someone… I don’t know… You checked the Wyoming State Police scanners?... Piss off, it wouldn’t be the first time you forgot something simple like that… Did you talk to whoever they sent out from Sheridan to take care of it?... Yeah, it was just Hargis and Ballengee. Ballengee was by the front passenger side of the car, face down. Hargis fell face down, too, but nearer to the shelter, maybe fifteen feet from the rear passenger side, give or take.” Then his voice rose in anger. “No, I didn’t, why the fuck would I do that?” Now there was a longer pause, and Drolezki turned his head toward Chris until their eyes met. Drolezki’s expression was hard, dangerous. “No, I can’t think of another explanation, either. Maybe it’s time I have another little conversation with our guest, here.” Silence, and then he made a scoffing noise. “Don’t give me that ‘it’s just a dog,’ crap. It’s a loose end. They fucking hate loose ends, and so I fucking hate loose ends. Would you want to walk in and get asked the question, and not have an answer?” He snorted again, and looked away from Chris, back toward the road. “I didn’t think so. I’ll be in touch when I get closer.”

  He hung up the phone, slid it back into his pocket, and frowned thoughtfully for a moment. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “You got any idea why your dog wouldn’t be in the car when our sanitation guys got there?”

  “Sanitation?” He hoped his tone conveyed the depth of his incredulity and disgust for these people.

  “Answer the goddamned question.”

  “No. I have no idea. Why would I have an idea? You made me leave my dog behind. I’ve been along on this joyride ever since.”

  Without warning, Drolezki slammed his foot on the brakes. Chris’s seatbelt snapped tight, and he jerked forward against it. The car screeched over onto the shoulder. As soon as it came to a complete stop, Drolezki swiveled around, and his left hand shot out and grabbed Chris’s throat. Chris’s head was pressed against the headrest, and his eyes were wide with equal measures of fear and defiance.

  “I asked you a fucking question.” Drolezki spoke nearly in a whisper, his face very close to Chris’s. “And I want the answer, not some smartass response. Now, I’m going to put this clearly to you. After we left, our sanitation guys got there, maybe a quarter of an hour later, to take care of Hargis and Ballengee. They were still where we left them. Both very dead. The car was still there, too. But no dog. So in the fifteen minutes between when we left and when our men arrived, someone stopped, took your dog out of Ballengee’s car, shut the door, and drove away. Which means that there is a great big fucking loose end out there. Maybe someone who knew where you were, because the dog was bugged, and they didn’t want us to find out that was how they were keeping track of you. Maybe the dog was important for some other reason. Or maybe it was some bleeding-heart PETA type who didn’t want the dog left in a car. But if it was that, it’s pretty funny that they didn’t care enough about the two dead bodies lying right there to report it to the police, isn’t it? Because there’s been no report to anyone. Nada. So, I think you’re being tailed, somehow, and whoever is tailing you thought it’d be clever to rescue your dog. Now, you wouldn’t happen to know who that might be, would you?”

  Chris didn’t answer. The pressure around his windpipe increased, ever so slightly. “Let me go, you stupid gorilla.”

  He grabbed Drolezki’s arm with his left hand, but his strength was no match for his captor’s. Drolezki tightened his grip a little more, and he gagged.

  “Tell me!”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his voice a thin wheeze. “I have no clue. I don’t have the slightest idea about any of this.”

  Drolezki looked into his eyes for a moment, and then with an exasperated grunt, let go. “If you’re lying to me, I’ll see to it that you do not have an easy exit.”

  Chris messaged his throat. “Why the hell is it so important to find out where my dog is?”

  The other man put the car in gear again and pressed the accelerator, pulling them back out onto the interstate. “It’s not the dog. I don’t give a shit about the dog. But there’s something going on here, and I don’t understand it. And I don’t like what I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t like it when you aren’t calling the shots.” He coughed, clearing his throat.

  “Fuckin’-A, I don’t.” One corner of his mouth twitched a little. “Doesn’t matter. Maybe it was some local who saw the dog and took him and didn’t want to get involved with a couple of dead bodies. In any case, if you’re lying to me, we’ll have it out of you eventually.”

  Chris hoped his voice sounded braver than he felt. “Torture won’t work.”

  “Oh, we have way better methods than torture.” His expression was relaxed again, as if his outburst of rage had never happened. “I’m going to remember the gorilla comment. You’ve got something coming for that one, before I let them finish you off. Think about that, smart guy.”

  —

  Up one slope, down a little, and up a steeper one, as the rolling hills broke into ragged waves of rock and the interstate climbed the foothills toward the grand peaks now clear against the western horizon. Chris saw the exit for Cle Elum and
Teanaway. It was the road, he knew, to the trailhead that would lead to Lake Ingalls and the rocky cliff faces where, somewhere, the mysterious cave had been located, and perhaps still was. The pines of the lower elevations were replaced by subalpine fir and alpine larch. The highway angled north, skirting the azure waters of Keechelus Lake, its still surface mirroring the cloudless sky.

  They crested the Snoqualmie Pass—Elevation 3,022 Feet, according to the sign—and almost as if they’d passed some kind of invisible boundary, the vegetation changed to Douglas firs and silver firs and the other familiar trees of the humid, misty western Cascades, and they passed underneath a pall of clouds and fog. Drizzle began to strike the windshield, and Drolezki turned on the wipers, swearing under his breath at the “Goddamned Seattle rain.”

  Chris shivered. The Northwest was welcoming him back, it seemed, in mourning.

  “That’s our sign that it’s time for lights out.”

  He looked up. “What’s that mean?”

  “You’re gonna take a little nap. The powers-that-be don’t want you being brought in awake. You can’t know where you are.”

  “Not much faith in your ability to kill me when you’re done with me, I guess? What’s the likelihood I’ll ever get a chance to report my whereabouts?”

  But Drolezki wouldn’t be baited again. “I don’t make these decisions. There’s not much chance you’re gonna get away, no, so you’re right not to let this get your hopes up. But ‘not much’ isn’t ‘zero,’ and they don’t want to risk it.” He gestured with his right hand. “Open up the glove box. Inside you’ll find a pill bottle.”

  Chris pulled the latch, and the compartment opened. Along with the usual things—the owner’s manual, a tire pressure gauge, a package of chewing gum—there was a yellow prescription bottle with no label. At the bottom were two innocuous-looking white tablets.

  “You got some water left?”

  Chris nodded.

  “Take ’em both. Then take a nice, long snooze. It’ll be your last chance to sleep for a while, may as well enjoy it.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  The agent shrugged. “I pull over, and put a bullet in your head. Your call. It’ll be a shame, really, that you somehow got free of the handcuff and attacked me while I was driving. Didn’t have a choice, you know.”

  “What about questioning me for my valuable information?”

  “Unavoidable loss, which I will regret greatly. Now take the pills, and cuddle up and relax. We’ll be at grandma’s house before you know it.”

  Chris opened up the bottle and shook the tablets out into his hand. They looked like aspirin.

  “Good boy. Nighty-night.” The car descended a long slope, the first of many that would carry them down out of the mountains and into the lowlands of Puget Sound. Drolezki shook his head as an eighteen-wheeler passed him, splattering his windshield with muddy spray. “I don’t know why you people like living here. The climate has permanent post-nasal drip.”

  “It’s sunny sometimes.”

  “Yeah. Every other Tuesday in July. Otherwise it rains. I’m surprised you don’t mildew. Now take the fucking pills.”

  This is where it came down to it. This was where he would start fighting back. Drolezki had said his orders changed, that he was wanted now, alive. Maybe the agent would kill him, but he was banking on the fact that he wouldn’t. In either case, he’d be damned if was going to peacefully drink the fucking KoolAid.

  Chris pushed the window button down, and before Drolezki could react, thrown the pills out into the slipstream. The cool rain splattered his hand, and he felt strangely like laughing.

  “Ball’s in your court, Drolezki.” He winked. “You ugly gorilla.”

  The other man’s face flushed dark red, and he heeled over the steering wheel again, braking to a stop on the shoulder of the interstate. “You stupid sonofabitch.”

  He drew his gun out of its holster and aimed the barrel at Chris’s forehead.

  Chris remained calm. “I told you. I’m not going to do anything you say voluntarily. You may have ways to compel me, but I’m going to go down fighting, to the last breath. Now, go ahead and follow through on your threat. Put a bullet in my brain. I wonder what your superiors will have to say about that? A middle-aged schoolteacher got so violent that you couldn’t subdue him any other way than shooting him, even though you’d been ordered to bring him in alive? I don’t think they’ll be happy with you.”

  Drolezki’s eyes narrowed, and he swore under his breath. Then, in a single motion, he turned the gun around in his hand, and brought the weight of it down on Chris’s head. The world exploded into fireworks, then everything went dark.

  Chapter 18

  The first thing Chris noticed was that he was incredibly comfortable. After many days of unremitting anxiety, sometimes spiking upwards into genuine terror, he felt relaxed, warm, safe, despite a throbbing ache on the left side of his head. Even that pain, though, didn’t register much. It was simply a curiosity, something to be noted, shrugged at, and forgotten. He considered his predicament, the likelihood of his impending execution, the plight of Elisa, the deaths of Chase and his college friends, and found, to his perplexity, that he couldn’t work up any real distress over any of it.

  Drolezki must have drugged him after he was knocked out. Chris felt like he was not only hit with a sedative, but an anti-anxiety med as well. He knew he should feel upset right now, but he couldn’t. He was aware that he would be afraid later. Right now, though, all he could feel was content.

  He opened his eyes. He was lying flat on his back on a surprisingly soft cot, underneath a completely ordinary-looking blanket. He stifled a drowsy chuckle at the thought that he was half expecting his captors to have high-tech space blankets. The lights were on, but dim, and he could see a sparsely-furnished room, with a chair, a small table, and two doors, both closed.

  There were no windows.

  He lay there for a few more minutes, then found he wasn’t sleepy any more. He sat up, and the throbbing in his head increased for a moment, then subsided. He reached up and touched the spot. His hair was crusted with dried blood. He was still dressed in his travel-worn shirt and jeans, but his wallet was gone. Even that fact couldn’t disturb his feeling of well-being, or stay in his conscious mind for long.

  He swung his legs out of bed. Only then did he notice he was barefoot, but his shoes were found in short order, sitting next to the foot of the cot, with his socks draped on top. He stood, staggered a little, and then regained his balance after a moment when he held onto the frame of the cot, not sure if his knees would support his weight. Finding that he was stable and capable of walking, he crossed the floor to one of the doors and tried the knob.

  Locked.

  The other one, though, led to a bathroom. He went to the sink, splashed some water on his face, which made him feel more awake if not substantially more alert, and took care of his other bodily needs. Then he exited back into the room with the cot and sat down on it.

  What now? Should he pound on the door and let them know he was awake? Or wait for them to figure it out? He was in no rush to be killed, but he was getting pretty sick of suspense these days.

  In the end, he decided to stay put. He lay back down, and cupped his hands behind his head. Fuck ‘em. Let Them come for him in their own time.

  It was perhaps twenty minutes later that he heard the clicking of a lock mechanism, and the door opened to let Drolezki in. There was something indefinably different about his captor’s manner. Before, in the car, he’d been in charge, beholden to no one. Here, there was a subtle caution in the way he moved. “Get up.”

  Chris yawned, and sat up. “I knew you wouldn’t kill me.”

  Drolezki scowled. “Don’t get cocky. It’s only delaying the inevitable.”

  “You drugged me after you socked me in the head with your gun, didn’t you? If you’d slipped some of that stuff into my drink three weeks ago, I probably wouldn’t have given you all of this tr
ouble.”

  “We didn’t think you were very important back then. Put your shoes on.”

  He thought for a moment about refusing, but decided that not complying would probably get him hit over the head again. He pulled on a sock, then his shoe, and laced it up. “Time to meet the hangman?” He still couldn’t work up any real fear about this. It was the drug, of course. Better living through chemistry. He found himself hoping that if he was going to die, that this feeling stayed with him until the end. Death wouldn’t be so bad without the fear.

  “Something like that.”

  “How is it, being the hangman’s flunky? Bet you get off watching the innocent folks walking calmly to their deaths.”

  Drolezki’s cheeks flushed, but he said nothing.

  “I’ll assume that means yes.” Chris stood up. “Take me to your leader, Koko.”

  The agent’s eyes flashed angrily. He grabbed Chris’s upper arm with his left hand, and propelled him toward the door. His right hand rested on his gun, still in its holster. They exited the room into a long corridor, unadorned, with a tile floor and off-white walls. It had the sterile look of a hospital or a scientific research facility, but no signs, nothing but a maze of hallways and unmarked doors and occasionally a small alcove with a bench or a chair or a water fountain.

  “Big place.”

  Drolezki didn’t respond.

  They entered an elevator. There were no floor numbers, but there was a keypad. Drolezki punched in a six- or seven-digit code, and the elevator started upwards. After a moment, it stopped, and opened onto yet another empty hallway, which they proceeded down, just as they had the first one.

  They passed no one, heard no sounds. No windows, no signs, nothing that could mark a path, give him an idea of the way out if he somehow were to escape.