Community

by Graham Masterton

  Lloyd dropped his jacket on the steps and reached out for Natasha Kerwin. As soon as Lloyd had taken her, Michael unbuttoned his overcoat, took it off and draped it over her shoulders. Then he picked up Lloyd’s jacket and put it on, pulling up the hood.

  ‘I’ll try to make it real quick,’ he said. ‘Just remember, though – as soon as I pull up, we need to lift her into the back and burn rubber. And you get into the back, too. Lie on the floor so that Henry doesn’t see you when we’re driving out.’

  ‘I gotcha,’ said Lloyd. He was trying to look serious, like a character in an action movie, but Michael could see that he was enjoying this. It was a whole lot more exciting than making sure that Mrs Kroker took her temazepam and cutting up meatloaf for her.

  Michael bounded down the steps and started to jog toward the clinic’s front gates. As he approached the security booth, he saw Henry looking up from his book and turning around. He ran faster, with his head down, so that Henry wouldn’t be able to see his face. As he passed the booth, he lifted his left arm in salute.

  Henry opened up the door of his booth and called out, ‘Lloyd! Hey, Lloyd!’

  Michael stopped, without turning around.

  ‘I forgot to tell you – we won forty-five bucks on that Redskins game!’

  ‘Great!’ said Michael, trying to sound as gruff as Lloyd.

  ‘I can give it to you now if you like!’

  ‘’S’okay. I’ll pick it up tomorrow!’

  ‘I got it right here!’

  ‘Gotta rush, Henry! Old Mrs K needs her meds!’

  ‘I got it right here in my hand!’

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ said Michael, giving Henry another salute and jogging off out of the gates.

  Once he was out of the clinic grounds, he ran back to Isobel’s Jeep as fast as he could. Twice he almost slipped over on the icy road. He pulled off Lloyd’s coat, and when he opened the Jeep’s doors and scrambled in, he tossed it over on to the back seat. He jabbed in the key and started the engine with a whoomph.

  He pulled away from the side of the road and sped back toward the clinic gates, his tires leaving a snake-like S shape in the snow. As he spun the steering wheel and turned into the entrance, he saw that Henry had only just returned to his booth, and was closing the door behind him. He sped toward the clinic’s front entrance and slewed the Jeep around 180 degrees in a parking-brake turn, trying to make sure that he stopped diagonally across Henry’s line of sight. As far as he could see, though, Henry had already picked up his phone, and had his back turned. That’s one good thing, he thought. If he’s calling for assistance, he probably doesn’t have a gun.

  He jumped down from the driver’s seat and ran up to help Lloyd, who had already started to carry Natasha Kerwin down the steps. Between them, they lifted her as gently as they could into the back seat, sliding her across the slippery gray vinyl. Then Lloyd heaved himself awkwardly in after her, wedging himself down behind the two front seats. Michael slammed the door, ran around the rear of the Jeep and climbed back behind the wheel. He stamped his foot down on the gas, and with shrieking tires they hurtled out through the clinic gates and into the roadway.

  Michael drove as far as the turn-off to Summit View, and then abruptly stopped so that Lloyd could get out.

  ‘Thanks, Lloyd,’ he said, twisting around in his seat and grasping Lloyd’s hand. ‘Couldn’t have done it without you.’

  Lloyd shook his hand and then opened the door and squeezed himself out. ‘You just get the hell out of here, Greg. And try to let me know how you get on, you and this sick young lady here. If you two can survive outside of Trinity, then I’ll come join you.’

  Michael gave him a thumb’s-up, and then turned the Jeep around and headed back toward the clinic entrance and the turn-off that was signposted to Route 97, and Weed, and Interstate 5. As he flashed past the clinic, he glimpsed cars coming out of the parking lot, and several people running this way and that. He accelerated hard, and soon he was driving into near-total darkness. On either side of the road, endless rows of snowy trees stood like some ghostly guard of honor.

  After a few minutes he turned his head quickly to check on Natasha Kerwin. She was lying on her side with her face toward him, and as far as he could see she was still breathing. Once he had reached Route 97 he would pull over and stop and make sure that she was comfortable. He had already turned up the Jeep’s air-conditioning to maximum heat.

  He kept going as fast as he dared, repeatedly glancing into his rear-view mirror to see if any headlights were following him. He didn’t know why, but this reminded him of something that had happened to him, something life-changing. It had been over twenty-four hours now since he had last taken the meds that Catherine had prescribed for him, and he was beginning to think that bits and pieces of memory were coming back to him, like a shattering mirror filmed in reverse.

  After more than twenty-five minutes of driving at sixty miles an hour, he started to feel uneasy. If you drove for twenty-five minutes at sixty miles an hour, that meant you would have covered twenty-five miles. So how far away was Route 97 from Trinity? He couldn’t have missed it, because he hadn’t passed a single intersection. All he had seen were those ghostly trees. And how far away from Trinity was Weed?

  He drove for more than an hour. For a while he sped faster and faster, until the needle was hovering just under eighty-five. But then a deer suddenly ran out into the road right in front of him, and jumped, and then froze, and it was only by braking hard and swerving violently to the left that he missed it.

  He sat behind the wheel, his heart beating hard against his ribcage. He had lost count now of how long he had been driving and how far he might have traveled. There was no satnav in the Jeep, and no maps. He looked again at Natasha Kerwin and she was still very pale. How was he going to get her to a hospital if he couldn’t even find a highway?

  He parked the Jeep by the side of the road and opened up the back door so that he could check her breathing and her pulse. Her breathing was very shallow, and with each inward breath she gave a little gasp. Her pulse was fluttery, too. What worried him most, though, was that a small dark spot of blood had appeared on the side of the bandages around her head.

  He closed the door as quietly as he could and stood looking at her through the window. He was torn by indecision. He had driven so far that he must reach Route 97 before too long. But how long was too long? He knew that if he turned around it would take over an hour to get back to Trinity, and what would happen to Natasha Kerwin there? They had intensive-care facilities at the clinic, but what difference would that make if they had already decided to pull the plug on her?

  He looked around. There was a bitter breeze blowing from the north-west, and he was surrounded by dark, snowy forest. Standing here, the trees looked less like a guard of honor and more like an army of ghosts, crowded silently all around him. The sky was clouded over because he could see no stars, but he could still dimly see the peaks of Mount Shasta, luminous in the darkness. He was beginning to hate that volcano, as if it would never let him go. He had heard some Japanese saying similar things about Mount Fuji, and that was a volcano, too. They revered it, but they could never get away from it. It was always there, day and night, year after year, watching them happy, watching them sad, watching them die.

  Don’t lose your nerve now, he told himself. Route 97 can’t be far ahead now. There is no road in America, no matter how insignificant, that doesn’t eventually meet up with another, more important road, and then with a highway, and then with an interstate. It’s like your circulation. Even the finest capillaries eventually join up with the arteries, and then the heart.

  He got back behind the wheel and pulled away from the side of the road. He checked his rear-view mirror again and there was still no sign of anybody coming after him. Maybe they had been glad to see him go. He switched on the Jeep’s radio but all he heard was hissing and crackling, on almost every station. On one station, he thought he could make out people talking,
but the reception was too poor for him to be able to catch more than a few words.

  ‘—can’t agree with that—’

  ‘—climb it once in a lifetime—’

  ‘—caught them together—’

  ‘—saying what?—’

  After a few minutes of straining to understand what they were talking about, Michael switched it off. The road continued to unravel in front of him, mile after mile. Darkness in front of him, darkness behind him, darkness all around. He had never felt so lonely in his life. He seriously began to think that he was the only person left on the entire planet.

  Maybe he was hallucinating, and he wasn’t driving through the darkness at all, but lying in bed next to Isobel, and the sound of Natasha Kerwin’s breathing was really the sound of Isobel breathing, and the sound of the Jeep’s tires on the blacktop was only the sound of the central heating boiler.

  On the other hand, maybe he was still in a coma, because he definitely felt that driving along a road and feeling anxious that somebody was following him were integral parts of his accident.

  ‘—inconsiderate schmuck—’

  Another ten minutes went by, and he covered yet another eight miles. The feeling that he was being followed grew stronger and stronger, and he checked his rear-view mirror again and again, even though there were still no lights behind him.

  ‘—dumb ass has been following me for miles with his lights full on—’

  Another ten minutes. He was driving more slowly now, constantly glancing up at his mirror. Another six-and-a-half miles.

  It was then that, at last, he saw a sprinkling of lights up ahead of him. Hallelujah, he thought. This wasn’t a nightmare, after all, or some kind of delusion. He had reached civilization at last. It looked like a small township, and he guessed it was probably Weed.

  ‘We made it, Natasha!’ he said, out loud. ‘Now we’re going to find you a doctor!’

  He stopped looking in his mirror and put his foot down, speeding up to sixty again, and the lights quickly came closer and closer. He passed what looked like a public park, and then a traffic sign saying 20, so he slowed right down. Soon he was driving down a road with houses on either side, and street lights. All he had to do now was find a medical center, or a hospital, if they had a hospital in Weed.

  He drove for about three quarters of a mile, but there were still no signs for the town center, or a hospital. At last, however, the road curved around to the right, with two signs side by side: one saying Stop For Pedestrians, and the other giving the name of the road.

  Michael slowed to a crawl to read it. It said Summit View.

  He stopped the Jeep, right in the middle of the road. He looked around and recognized where he was now. He had approached it from a different direction before, when he was walking – when he had been following the ambulance in which Jack had been taken away from the clinic, to the house where the Sue lookalike lived.

  He had been driving for over two hours in a circle of more than fifty miles, and he had arrived back in Trinity.

  SEVENTEEN

  He turned around and looked at Natasha Kerwin, lying on the back seat. Her breathing was still shallow and irregular, and she was twitching as if she were dreaming or just about to have a fit. The bloodstain on her bandage had spread even wider.

  He knew that he had no alternative. He shifted the Jeep back into gear and steered it around the curve to the clinic gates, and drove in. As he did so, he saw Henry in his security booth pick up his phone.

  By the time he had stopped outside the front entrance, six or seven people were already coming down the steps, led by Kingsley Vane. Close behind him came Doctor Hamid, Catherine Connor and another doctor whom Michael didn’t recognize. There were two orderlies, too, one of them carrying a folded wheelchair, and a nurse, and one of the two white-faced security men.

  Kingsley Vane was wearing a very long black overcoat and a gray cashmere scarf. His face was gray and drawn and unshaven and his gray hair looked as if he had combed it in a hurry. Catherine was wearing a red overcoat which fleetingly reminded Michael of some movie he had seen, or thought he had seen.

  Michael climbed out of the driver’s seat and opened the back door. Immediately the two orderlies reached inside and carefully lifted Natasha Kerwin out. They opened up the wheelchair and sat her in it, and then carried her up the steps and in through the front doors.

  Kingsley Vane came up to Michael, with Catherine and Doctor Hamid on either side of him. His eyes looked even more hooded and predatory than ever.

  ‘Are you all right, Gregory?’ he asked him, in a grit-dry voice.

  ‘I didn’t take a wrong turn, did I?’ Michael challenged him. ‘That road doesn’t go to Route Ninety-Seven, or Weed, or the interstate, does it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how the fuck do you get out of this place?’

  Kingsley Vane took a deep breath, as if he were trying his best to be very patient. ‘That road is for your own protection. We put up the signpost to reassure our patients that one day they will be well enough to leave Trinity for the outside world. You’re not a prisoner, after all. But you’re not ready yet, Gregory. You still have a long way to go, physically, and your amnesia is still almost total. It would be highly irresponsible of TSC to let you go off unsupervised.’

  Catherine was smiling at him as if he were a small boy who had tried to run away from home but had then found that twenty-three cents and a toffee wouldn’t get him very far. Doctor Hamid was standing with his arms folded and he, too, had a benign look on his face.

  ‘I’m just hoping that Ms Kerwin’s recovery hasn’t been compromised,’ said Kingsley Vane. ‘I’m not at all sure why you took her away. She has a very serious brain trauma, and needs highly specialist care which only TSC is equipped to give her.’

  Michael was tempted to tell him that he had been hiding in Natasha Kerwin’s closet and had overheard Doctor Hamid saying that he was going to pull the plug on her. He could also have told him that he was convinced that he knew her – not just as an acquaintance, but intimately. It was even possible that – once – they had loved each other. But he decided to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t exactly know why, but he thought it would be safer, both for him and Natasha Kerwin.

  Most of all, he was thinking of Jack, in his wheelchair. Maybe Jack had suffered a relapse, because of the injuries that he had sustained in his truck accident. On the other hand, he had appeared to be perfectly fit before he had been found outside Natasha Kerwin’s room. Maybe Doctor Hamid or Doctor Connor had tried to make him tell them what he was doing there, but he had refused, and who knows how they might have persuaded him to talk? Doctor Hamid was an expert in the finer points of physical pain, and Doctor Connor could untie people’s most complicated inner thoughts as easily as if they were so many granny knots.

  Kingsley Vane said, ‘What I suggest you do, Gregory, is take Mrs Weston’s Jeep back home, and go back to bed, and pray that she hasn’t noticed that you’ve been AWOL for the past two hours. I think you can imagine how distressed she would be if she knew that you had tried to leave her.’

  ‘And – please – come in to the clinic early tomorrow for a physical check-up,’ put in Doctor Hamid. ‘I just want to make sure that your little adventure hasn’t caused you any spinal torsion, in particular.’

  Catherine simply kept on smiling and said, ‘See you tomorrow, then? Usual time? So long as you’re not too tired.’

  Michael hadn’t taken his eyes off Kingsley Vane, and Kingsley Vane was staring back at him unblinkingly from under those hooded lids.

  ‘That’s why you didn’t send anybody after me, isn’t it?’ Michael demanded. ‘You must have been laughing your butts off, knowing that all I was doing was a round trip to no place at all.’

  ‘Like I said, Gregory,’ said Kingsley Vane, and here his voice grew even harsher, as if he had real grains of grit between his teeth, ‘that road is for your own protection.’

  ‘So – where is the way
out? You said that I wasn’t a prisoner. Supposing I just wanted to drive out of here and never come back? You can’t legally keep me here against my will.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can,’ said Kingsley Vane. ‘Don’t you remember signing a durable power of attorney, in my favor? I am your attorney-in-fact, and that responsibility includes your health care.’

  ‘What? What the hell are you talking about? I never signed any power of attorney!’

  ‘You want me to show it to you?’

  ‘Yes, believe it or not, I want you to show it to me.’

  ‘Very well, come into my office when you have your appointment with Doctor Connor tomorrow, and I will gladly oblige.’

  ‘No. You show it to me now. And I mean right fucking now!’

  ‘I regret that I wouldn’t be able to find it at this time of night, not without my PA. But I will show it to you tomorrow, I promise. And I assure you, Gregory, that it is in your very best interest. Your post-traumatic amnesia is extremely serious – more serious than Doctor Connor has admitted to you – and lately it’s been deteriorating, instead of getting better. Why do you think you tried to abduct Ms Kerwin tonight? You thought that she was an old school friend of yours. You were sure that you knew her. But I’m afraid you couldn’t have done.’

  ‘Why? Why couldn’t I?’

  ‘Obviously I am not at liberty to tell you where she originally comes from, but geographically there was no chance that you two ever could have met before.’

  ‘Geographically?’ Michael repeated. At the same time, he saw another quick flash of light, and heard a blurting voice saying ‘—you shouldn’t—’ and smelled again that elusive flowery perfume.

  Kingsley Vane nodded gravely. ‘You were born and raised more than a thousand miles apart from each other. I’m sorry, Gregory. I know this is all very difficult for you. But you must trust us to help you recover. Meanwhile …’ He lifted his left wrist and looked at his Rolex. ‘Meanwhile I must check on Ms Kerwin, and then go home and try to get some sleep.’