by Ted Kosmatka
“Gavin,” Paul said, unsure why he was saying it. The word just spilled out. And then he lost time again, and they were passing through the pavilion. Paul slumped to the pavement, cool concrete on his face.
Lilli’s face looked down at him. She was kneeling, trying to help him up. “You have a concussion.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” Paul said.
Somewhere, a man laughed. “Not like he can have double vision, now, is it?”
* * *
Paul pulled himself upright and kept walking but stumbled again as they approached the vans. The two men yanked him back to his feet this time. The world swam.
“Where is the sample?” one of them asked.
“Sample?” Lilli asked.
“Don’t play dumb,” the man said. “We don’t have the time.”
“Just check her purse,” one of them snapped.
“She’s not carrying a purse.”
They pushed Paul against the front of the first van, his legs spread, hands held in a firm grip behind his back like they were cops. He felt the windshield on his left ear.
“The car.” The red-bearded man sighed with irritation. “Check their fucking car.”
The man did as he was told. A moment later he shouted, “Found it.” He dumped the contents of Lilli’s purse on the hood of Gavin’s rental. Gavin’s rental. It seemed ludicrous that Gavin was dead. Impossible. He had a rental car to return. “Got it,” the man called out, holding up a plastic baggie wrapped in tape.
The other men brought Paul around to the side of the van. That was when Paul saw the man Gavin had shot. The wounded man was lying in the back of the van. His eyes were gummy. His shirt bloody. The bullet had taken him high on the shoulder.
“He doesn’t look good,” Paul offered.
“You’re no fashion model yourself,” a man said from behind him. “Get in.”
Paul allowed himself to be pushed toward the open van doors until he saw Lilli being pulled in another direction. The man holding Lilli’s arm tugged her toward the second van. Paul jerked his shoulder back.
“I’m riding with her,” he said.
“You’re going separate,” the bearded man snapped.
“The fuck I am.” Paul pushed back with his 235 pounds. Another man stepped into position to help manhandle him.
Lilli starting screaming. Paul looked over, and she’d dropped to the ground, kicking at the man trying to get her in the vehicle.
The man grabbed her arm and twisted. Lilli screamed in pain. “Let go of me!”
Paul braced his leg against the side of the van and pushed off. The two men behind him grunted as they tried to force him inside. “Get. In. The fucking. Van.”
“No! I ride with her.”
“Motherfucker, I will shoot you.”
“Then do it, because that’s the only way she and I don’t end up in the same van.”
The creature moved into view, coming slowly out of the woods, observing the scuffle from a distance. It crouched low to the ground as it moved, tension building in its haunches. That same barely controlled anger on its face.
The red-bearded man saw it too.
“All right, all right, for fuck’s sake,” he said, letting go of Paul’s arm. “Jesus. Get in the fucking same van, the both of you, or you’ll both be fucking dead, and I’ll have to explain. Jesus.”
The men behind Paul relaxed their grip, and Paul stood straighter. He adjusted his shirt, which had twisted around his body, and he walked to the second van and helped Lilli climb inside.
“Your face,” she said, and touched him.
A moment later, the door slid shut.
The darkness like a gift.
Outside the van, voices argued, getting farther away. Paul crept toward the front of the van and looked out the windshield. He could see one of the men standing a few yards away, keeping an eye on the vehicle. His gun was in its holster at his side. Paul slunk back to where Lilli was sitting. He held her hand. Neither of them spoke. A few minutes later, the voices returned.
There was unintelligible conversation. The other van door slid open. There was a thud. More time went by, and Paul knew they were loading the bodies. Gavin. The creature. The van door slid shut.
There was more talking outside the vans. Voices pitched low so Paul couldn’t hear.
Suddenly the driver’s door opened, and one of the men climbed behind the wheel. He started the engine. A moment later, the red-bearded man opened the front passenger door and climbed in.
He turned to apprise them. “You’ve no idea how fucking close.” He held his hand up, thumb and forefinger positioned a centimeter apart. “This close, and things would have gotten out of control, and I’d have some explaining to do about how our target got his arms ripped off. It might have been worth it.”
He tossed two pairs of handcuffs back to them. “Now lock yourselves. Hands in front of you. Both of you.”
Paul picked up one of the handcuffs. He clicked his left wrist. Instead of handcuffing his right, he clicked Lilli’s right. He stared into Redbeard’s face the whole time.
The man just shook his head. “Oh, the old man is gonna love you.”
The van pulled away.
* * *
They drove throughout the night. Paul slept with his back wedged against the hard metal side of the van. In the morning he woke and could barely move, and his eye was nearly swollen shut. This was not good. If the swelling got any worse, he’d be blind.
“I’ve got to piss,” he said.
There was a shuffle of movement from the front seat, and an empty two-liter cola bottle was tossed back to him.
“Fucking watch your aim when you go,” Redbeard said. “Don’t be pissing all over the back of the van.”
Paul knelt and fumbled with his pants.
Lilli looked up at him. “Do you want me to…”
“What?”
“Hold the bottle?”
“Jesus, no. Just … I got it.”
The van took a curve in the road, and Paul swayed. After a moment of fumbling, he said, “Okay, yeah.”
It went easier than he expected. One hand on the side of the van for balance, the other on himself.
The distinct sound of urination filled the van. He heard laughter from up front.
“You watching your aim, right?” the driver called back.
“You’ll see my aim when I throw this on you.”
“Do that and I’ll shoot you. For real. I will pull this van over and shoot you.”
“If you could shoot me, you would have.”
“Then I’ll shoot her. Or let her ride in the other van.”
Paul was silent. He finished pissing and zipped up.
“It’s like dealing with fucking children,” the red-bearded man said to himself.
Paul buckled his belt. “What do you want me to do with it?”
There was more fumbling from the front seat. A moment later, the lid was tossed back. Paul screwed the top on and tossed the bottle to the far back of the van.
They drove for another hour. Finally, Lilli asked, “And what about me?”
“What about you?”
“I have to go.”
“Je-zus,” the driver said, and made no other comment.
Lilli laid her head on Paul’s shoulder and asked, “Where are they taking us?”
“I don’t know,” Paul said.
“We’re not getting out of this, are we?”
Paul didn’t answer.
He held her against his chest. He felt her trembling. After a while, the trembling stopped.
A few minutes later, they pulled to the side of the road. At first Paul thought they’d arrived at whatever destination they’d been traveling to, but then the men stepped out to urinate in the weeds. After a minute the van door slid open.
“Get out.”
Paul and Lilli exited. Blinking up at the bright sun. “Your turn,” the driver said t
o Lilli. She held up her shackled wrist.
The man turned to look at the second van, which had pulled to a stop just behind theirs. It sat idling a dozen yards back. In it, Paul figured, was Gavin’s body. Also, the creature. He wondered if they kept it caged or if it only sat in the back of the van. He wondered if it was watching them through the glass.
The driver pointed to the van. “If you run, we let it out again.”
“I won’t run.”
The man unlocked Lilli’s handcuff. She rubbed her wrist. She stepped forward and squatted in the shallow ditch along the road.
Even with the driver’s warning still in his ears, Paul considered their odds. His head was a bit better now. The effects of the concussion had faded over the hours. He counted the men. Two in the van. And two more in the van behind them—one of those, shot. But there was the thing, too, in the van. The thing he didn’t have a name for. They wouldn’t have a chance if they ran. Even without the men and the guns, they wouldn’t have a chance.
Lilli stood and straightened her tattered dress.
“Now back in the van,” the driver said.
They climbed in and the man slammed the door.
“Throw these back on,” he said and tossed the handcuffs back.
Paul handcuffed them together like before. Using opposite arms this time, though.
The driver from the other van walked up to the window and dropped a bag from Burger King into the front seat.
“Did you get no pickles?”
“Yeah, no pickles.”
“No tomato?”
“No pickles, no fucking tomatoes, just like you like. Eat.”
The man fished two wrappers out of the bag. He tossed them back to Paul, along with a two-liter of Coke. “For both of you.”
He started the engine and pulled away from the curb, heading back to the highway.
Paul lay back as the van picked up speed. Lilli lay on his chest. At some point, he slept.
40
Paul woke to the sound of tires on gravel. He didn’t sit up to look.
When he was a small child, his family had sometimes gone on short road trips into the city. They’d visit the university where his father gave talks. They’d visit zoos and parks, because that’s what normal, happy families did, and it was important to his parents that they seem, and be, normal and happy. Inevitably, after a day of sightseeing, Paul would fall asleep on the way home. The sound of gravel always woke him when they pulled into the drive. That sudden transition from pavement to the noisy crunching of the long, stony driveway of their first house. It was a distinct sound that he came to associate with home.
But now the gravel kept coming. Minute after minute, so that Paul realized this wasn’t a driveway entrance but a rural road.
“Where are we?” Paul asked.
The man in the passenger seat said nothing. Only looked back at him.
But the driver spoke—one word, slow and heavy with meaning: “Everglades.”
The man in the passenger seat flashed the driver a look of irritation.
“What?” the driver asked. “It’s not like he’s gonna tell anyone, now, is it.”
What the hell were they doing in Florida? They’d been driving south forever, it seemed, but he’d had no idea they’d traveled so far.
The gravel road got rougher.
Eventually, he felt Lilli stir. He envied her the last moments of her slumber. Asleep, she was free of this place. These men. This nightmare.
Her eyes opened, dark and confused. He watched the understanding coalesce in them—saw the exact moment when she realized where she was, when it all came back.
Paul looked away.
After an hour of gravel, the road smoothed out again. Paul sat up straighter, looking out through the front windshield. Around them was swamp—low and flat and overgrown.
The van took a right, leaving the main road and bumping its way down to a kind of access road. Mostly one lane, with occasional turnouts. A beaten mud track. The van slowed to twenty miles per hour.
Thirty minutes later, the van crossed through an open, swinging gate.
“Rise and shine,” Redbeard said. “We’re here.”
Lilli and Paul craned their necks for a better look. The view out the front windshield wasn’t particularly clear, but from what he could see, they’d arrived at some kind of military outpost. No, not military. Not quite. It had the wrong feel. A string of buildings spread out before them—low block buildings set at some distance from the road. Then the road curved and the whole of the complex suddenly loomed up into view, anchored by a huge gray building, as sprawling as an outlet mall. But set here in the middle of the Everglades, like a cult compound in the swamp.
The van came to a stop. The two men climbed out. A moment later the van door slid open. The sudden light was blinding. Heat and muggy air poured in.
“Get out.”
Paul stepped to the ground, shielding his eye.
Lilli followed.
As Paul’s eye adjusted, he saw an old man standing off to the side, surrounded by a phalanx of guards. He wore a white coat, but also a hat to keep the sun off his head. His face was buried in shadow.
The two men from the van stepped aside as the old man hobbled forward.
“Do you have the samples?” the old man asked. The question was pointed at Redbeard.
Redbeard pulled the baggie from the armrest of the van. The old man smiled and gestured to one of his guards. Redbeard handed the baggie to the man.
“See that Lee, in the cytology lab, gets that,” the old man said. The guard turned and headed into the building.
“Paul Carlsson,” the old man said, finally turning his attention to his new visitors. He extended a hand.
Paul didn’t shake it.
“I haven’t seen you since you were a baby.”
Paul blinked. He had no response to that. Lilli looked at him, confusion showing in her eyes.
“I’m assuming our friend Gavin has informed you of the peculiar situation we now find ourselves in?”
“Friend? You have an interesting way of dealing with friends.”
“Oh, but he was a friend,” the old man said. “Though that must seem strange to you now. But he made his own choices. I understand he used a gun to exercise his choice. I don’t see how there was ever another option for us. I also understand he fired first?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Our friend didn’t flip the table over and draw his gun? Because that’s how it was described to me. Are my men lying to me?”
Paul was silent.
“No? And then there was Margaret. I assume Gavin had some hand in that as well. Now, you never answered my question. Did our mutual friend inform you of the facts regarding the current situation? In short, do you know who I am?”
“Yeah, he told me about you.”
“Good,” the old man said. “Then this will go faster.”
The old man turned to the guards. “Put him in the guest quarters.”
“And her?” Redbeard said, gesturing to Lilli.
The old man waved his hand absently. “Same,” he said. And with that, he turned and walked away. But before he’d gotten very far, he glanced at Paul from over his shoulder. “We’ll talk later tonight.”
* * *
The guest quarters had bars on the windows.
Lilli sat on the bed while Paul moved through the room, opening every drawer in the dresser and both nightstands. The room was small and appointed very much like a hotel room, right down to the sturdy furniture.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for a weapon of opportunity.”
“What kind of weapon do you expect to find here?”
“That’s why it’s called ‘of opportunity.’ You know it when you see it.”
He opened the bottom drawer of the little desk that sat near the wall. He slammed it shut again. His gaze cast about the room. He bent low and looked under the bed.
Event
ually, he sat next to Lilli on the bed.
“Nothing,” he said.
She touched his hand.
“You didn’t think they’d be dumb enough to leave anything dangerous in here, did you?”
“I had to check.”
Her hand slipped into his, and she squeezed.
* * *
Later, just as the light was leaving the window, a knock came on the door. A moment later, the door opened, and a guard stepped in.
“Paul, Mr. Johansson would like to see you.”
The guard was six-four, all shoulders—a linebacker in a suit.
“I’m not leaving without her,” Paul said.
“She’s staying here,” the linebacker responded.
“No.”
Another guard appeared in the doorway, even bigger, if possible, than the first one. Paul assumed the choice of guards was intentional. A way of saying something without saying it. A way of discouraging an independent opinion about whether he’d be leaving the room or not. Paul made the decision not to give in.
“If I’m leaving this room, she’s coming with me.”
“You’re making this more difficult than it has to be, Mr. Carlsson,” the second guard said. He spoke over the shoulder of the man in front of him. His tone exuded reasonableness.
Paul shook his head. “I’m not leaving her.”
The first guard’s tone wasn’t as patient as the second’s. “You are leaving her,” he snapped. He obviously wasn’t used to this kind of open defiance. “Now.”
Lilli touched Paul’s arm. “Paul, go.”
“Lilli—”
The reasonable guard broke in: “He says he wants to see you, and that means we’re going to bring you. The condition you arrive in is the only matter up for debate here.”
“I’ll be fine,” Lilli soothed. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
Reluctantly, Paul allowed himself to be convinced. He followed the men out of the room, and the first guard locked the door behind him.
They made their way down a long hall, then climbed a winding stair to another level. The stairs, Paul noticed, were designed to look like a DNA double helix.
“After you,” the guard said when they came to an enormous door at the end of the hall.
