She felt the area around her. The “bed” was just a couple of sofa cushions thrown on the floor. The blanket was rough and heavy. The floor itself was cold tile or stone, soiled with dirt and sand. Gritty. Waxy, even. Very strange.
With no idea how high the ceiling was, Linda rolled onto her knees and stood up, careful of her head. That proved to be a wise move. The ceiling was low and uneven, forcing her to crouch slightly. She ran her hand overhead. The ceiling was cold and rough to the touch. Carved rock, she guessed. She was underground.
Linda reached outward in all directions. Nothing. She started out in a straight line, taking one step at a time. After three steps she touched a wall. She ran her hands along the carved rock but found nothing. No pictures or hangings. No light switch. She took a step to the left, running her hand along the wall in front of her in large arcs, investigating high and low. The utter blackness was an assault on her senses, as though she were being waterboarded with buckets of night. Linda pushed on her eyelids, trying to force her eyes to see something, desperate to squeeze out the dark. Her hand found another wall. She turned to the left and followed it.
After a few steps her foot bumped up against something hard. She stopped. Squatting, she reached out to examine what had blocked her way. It was a box, smooth and cold and metallic, a couple of feet wide and maybe three feet tall. She stood, running her hand along the edge. The top was open. Slowly, she reached down to explore. Her hand found something round and leathery, pebbled like a basketball. It gave a little when she pushed against it. She ran her fingers down the side, then pulled back with a start. Jesus! An image of Spud flashed in her mind. It was an alien! She waited, holding her breath. No response. No movement. Nothing. Maybe it was dead.
Minutes passed like hours. Eventually she was ready to move again. Feeling her way with her foot she inched around the box, certain that at any moment long spindly fingers would reach out and grab her. But none did. She made it back to blank wall and kept on. Her hand found another corner that turned to the left. She followed the new wall. She appeared to be in a square cell maybe ten feet on a side and five feet high.
The next corner brought her to the final wall, assuming this was a square. If there was a door out of the cell, it had to be in this wall. Had to be. She moved forward slowly. The rock wall ended abruptly and her heart pounded. An opening! Slowly she moved to face it, feeling into the black openness. This could be it.
Her hand brushed against fabric, smooth and soft. She grabbed at it, her fingers knowing what she’d found before her mind caught up. She pulled back from the explosion of laughter, screamed as she tripped on the cushions on the floor. Her elbows cracked and slid on the cold stone floor. Her head struck the back wall with a thud.
“I love this part!” said a voice in the blackness. The room was suddenly filled with blinding light from glowing strips on the ceiling. There stood Rice, hunched over so as not to hit his head, a small black remote control in his hand. “You up for Chinese?” he asked.
11.4
Linda had launched herself at him, fit to burst with rage, but Rice had sidestepped and turned off the light with the remote, tripping her as she passed him, sending her sprawling on her face into the blackness beyond her cell. She could hear him step past her and walk away, down a hallway she could not see. Crawling, crying, gasping, cursing, she’d returned to her cushions and curled up in a ball, shivering in the cold. She’d lost her jacket in Legrand’s office.
After what seemed like an hour, Rice returned. The odors announced his arrival. He had, indeed, come with Chinese food. He switched on the light.
“Hungry?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
Linda stayed curled up on the cushions. She would give him nothing. She opened her eyes a crack. “Where’s Cole?” she asked, her voice a dark monotone.
“Six feet under by now, I imagine,” he said cheerily. “He was starting to stink.”
Linda took a long, heavy breath. “And my mother?”
“You do have trouble keeping track of people, don’t you?”
“I want you to die,” she said.
“Oh, don’t be silly,” Rice replied, sitting cross-legged on the floor by her bed and unpacking the white paper bag. He set the cartons and plates and plastic silverware in the space between them. “If I die then you just stay lost down here in the darkness until you rot. Egg roll?” He opened a carton.
“As long as we’re rotting together,” Linda said.
“Got up on the wrong side of the straw pallet this morning, did we?” Rice smiled and plopped an egg roll on her plate.
“Why aren’t you dead already?” Linda asked.
“Because nobody’s killed me yet.” Rice shrugged.
“I saw your body on the highway.”
Rice frowned. “Twernt me, Prez,” he said. “I was dogfighting that fucking helicopter. You sure your chauffeur didn’t run down a vagrant? That’s gonna put some points on his license.”
Linda ignored his joke. “You killed Cole.”
Rice scoffed. “Oh, please, Mrs. P. You hardly knew the guy.” He spooned some fried rice onto his plate and reached for another carton. Then he looked up at Linda and smiled, shaking his head. “You fell in love with him, didn’t you?” he said, chuckling.
Linda looked at the floor, attempting to give nothing away, failing miserably.
Rice threw his head back in laughter. “Damn, Prez! What’re you, a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl? Grow the fuck up.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, well, me and everybody else, apparently.” Rice scooped some cashew chicken out onto his plate, picking out hunks of green pepper and tossing them over Linda’s shoulder. He shoved a spoonful into his mouth and chewed. “Not bad,” he said. “For Canadians.”
“So we’re still in Canada?” Linda pushed up onto an elbow, ignoring the food put before her.
Rice pointed at her plate. “That’s gonna taste a lot better hot than cold,” he said. He ate another bite. “Look. Daddy’s eating.”
“I want you all to die,” said Linda. Her voice was dead already.
Rice sighed and put down his plate. “Look, Linda. It’s like this: there’re rules to this game and you need to learn them. We brought you in and you don’t like it. Fine. Most of you assholes don’t like it. Big fucking deal. Nixon cried like a baby for three days. Fine. Ford went on a drunk. Fine. Ike actually wet himself the first time he met Asimov. Fine, fine, fine. But like it or not, this is how the world works. Alien beings collude secretly with the government. Wah, wah, wah. Get used to it. Like all of those other bozos did. All except JFK. Because you really don’t have any choice in the matter, girlfriend. And if you keep fighting us, we’re gonna have to take you out just like we took Kennedy out. And I hate Dallas this time of year.” Rice smiled at his own joke and picked up his plate. He took a bite of his egg roll.
Linda simply stared at him. She knew it would unnerve him. That seemed worth doing, if nothing else did. But that game had its limits. She needed information as well, and Rice seemed to be her only source right now. After a long time she pointed at the metal box behind her. “What’s wrong with your friend?” she asked.
“Ya got me, Prez,” answered Rice. “Heartbreak of psoriasis, maybe? Hangnails? Gas? I thought maybe sharing a room would cheer her up, but she still looks rather sad.”
Linda turned to look. The box was open on the top and front. The alien sat inside, her knees pulled up to her chin and her arms wrapped around her shins. She looked lifeless. Fossilized. All but her open eyes. Though glassy now, and covered with dust, they gave off the impression of something not quite dead, as if a fire smoldered somewhere in the basement of her being. How Rice could tell it was a female was beyond Linda’s knowing.
Linda turned back to Rice. “It’s pretty quiet around here,” she pointed out.
“Would you stop with the whole I’m-gonna-figure-this-all-out shit? Let me save you the trouble. You’re in a cell at the end of a hallway that extend
s off the central workspace of an alien facility carved out of solid rock two hundred feet below the surface of Ottawa. Up until I arrived there were half-a-dozen humans working down here. I sent them all home. The Life, the aliens, left of their own accord two days ago. Nobody knows why, and the Life aren’t saying. Two or three dormant ones got left behind in each facility, like our friend here, who seems to have missed the bus. Otherwise, the place is empty. Well, there’s you and me and egg rolls make three. Anything else you want to know?”
Linda sat up. There was something about Rice’s arrogance that was exhilarating. She’d seen such confidence before. It could lead to mistakes. “How do I get out of here?” she asked.
“You cooperate with me.”
Linda shook her head. “No. I mean alone. How do I get out of here after I kill you?”
Rice laughed. “Hmm. Well, let’s see … after you kill me, you make your way through the utter blackness, down the hallway and into the central chamber. Watch out for that pit in the floor! There are another dozen hallways off the central chamber. You choose the correct one, in the darkness because the lighting system is keyed to my prints, make your way to the elevators, and then … and then … then you sit down and fucking die because the elevators have all been deactivated.” He smiled at Linda. “Sorry. I thought I could help.”
“No. No. That was good. Thanks.”
Rice pushed at Linda’s plate. “You really should eat,” he said. “Keep your strength up and all that. I won’t be back until morning so this is your only chance.”
She was hungry, having eaten nothing since breakfast on the train. It must be evening now, given Rice’s last comment. And he was right. It would do her no good to starve. She reached out for the plate.
Rice finished his food and stood to leave. “I’ve got to get back to work,” he said, packing his plate in the paper bag. “Should I leave you the leftovers?”
Linda nodded.
“I’ve got some folks working on a little treat for you,” he offered.
Linda ignored him, continuing to eat.
“Anything else you need?”
Linda looked up. “A bathroom?”
“Directly across the hall. Human friendly. Everything you need.”
“Can you leave the light on?”
Rice looked for a moment like he might go for it, then wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think so, Mrs. President. I’d love to but … I don’t trust you.”
Linda nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Anything else?”
“I still want you to die.”
Rice laughed as he left, switching out the light. “Just like Kennedy,” he said.
Linda sat in the darkness and finished her egg roll.
11.5
Nausea forced Linda to wakefulness and she rolled over to vomit on the floor. Hot juices splattered onto her face and neck. When she went to wipe her mouth she noticed how badly her arms and hands hurt. The fingers of her right hand would hardly move, so swollen were they. She pressed them lightly against her thigh and almost passed out. The pain was excruciating.
She rolled onto her back and breathed deeply, wincing at the sharp sting in her left ankle. Her head was so heavy she couldn’t lift it. The food must have been drugged. Her eyes felt glued shut. She tried to open them but could not tell if she succeeded. It was too dark to know. The cold had soaked into her bones, but she was past caring. If Rice intended to kill her, let him go ahead and do it. She was ready.
The light came on and she raised an arm to shade her eyes. She waited and listened but heard nothing. After a while, when her vision had adjusted, she tilted her head to look toward the door. There sat Rice on a folding chair in the entranceway, reading a tablet computer.
He noticed her gaze and pointed at the tablet. “Says here in the Post that you’ve been kidnapped by terrorists, Mrs. President. Towel-heads, most likely. And look what they’ve done to you.” He motioned toward her with disgust, shaking his head in a tsk, tsk, tsk.
Linda raised her head slightly, her eyes following his gesture. She gasped. Fuck! She was dressed in a filthy old bathrobe, untied and partly open, naked underneath. Her left leg was covered with bruises. She had raised welts and cuts on her stomach and the undersides of her forearms, as if she’d fended off some weapon. The fingers of her right hand bent backwards in a way they should not. She wretched again.
Rice stood and walked over to her, looking down with sadness. “The real shame is your hair,” he spoke gently. “After all the time and energy you put into your makeover.”
Linda reached up. Her hair had been brutally chopped away, leaving bald spots and tufts and long strings and bleeding wounds in her scalp. She turned away, squeezing her eyes tight. “Just kill me,” she said, her tongue thick, her throat dry.
“They tried to, Mrs. President. They almost succeeded. But thanks to the diligence and hard work of police, FBI and military officers and agents, those too-often unsung heroes who put their lives on the line to find and rescue you, you’ve been delivered from the hands of those evildoers. Or something like that. I don’t write the news, I just make it.”
Linda started to weep, though she had no tears left to shed. Rolling to her left she pulled her knees toward her chest and shook uncontrollably, wheezing for breath. She could not stop.
Rice knelt beside her, reaching out to cover the nakedness that her rolling over had exposed. “At least I knocked you out first,” he said, his voice soft and sad. “At least I didn’t rape you.” He put a hand on her shoulder.
Linda recoiled, knocking his hand away with her arm. The pain from doing so evoked a scream but she cut it off. She breathed deeply, over and over, finding, in her ability to focus her breath, what peace she could.
After a while Rice departed.
He left the light on.
11.6
“I need you to look at this,” Rice said. At least a day had passed since he’d last been there.
Linda sat in the corner farthest from the doorway, in a little nest she’d made between the alien resting-box and the walls. She’d formed a small fort with the cushions and sat curled inside it, her feet pulled up underneath, everything but her face covered with the bathrobe. She did not look up when Rice entered.
Rice raised an eyebrow at Linda’s fort, then sat on the floor in the middle of the room and booted his iPadX. He looked up at the President, huddling in her corner. “We don’t get out of here until we work this out, Prez. I don’t know about you but I’m not having a fun time. Come look at this.”
“Fuck you,” said Linda hoarsely.
“Yeah, yeah. Fuck me, fuck you, fuck everybody. Ma Kettle’s mad. Boo-fucking-hoo-hoo-hoo. I’m all hurt. Now get your ass over here.”
Linda ducked down so that Rice couldn’t see her face. After a moment she untucked her legs and started to move. Slowly, her pain obvious and debilitating, she crawled out into the room on her knees and left hand, cradling her broken right hand to her breast. She got to within a couple of feet of Rice and sat back on her thigh, keeping the pressure off her tender, weakened ankle. She looked up at Rice. Her eyes were cold.
Rice smiled. “Got some options for you here, Mrs. P,” he said. He touched the screen and a video started playing. Linda watched.
It was an ACN news bulletin. Stendahl Banks, jubilant but somber, was reporting on the daring rescue of the American president. In the background, video of her, Linda Travis, her body beaten, her hair cut to shreds, being wheeled out of some godforsaken Middle Eastern hut and into an ambulance. Stendahl Banks worked up a single tear for his president as he assured the American people that she would recover. He let the teardrop slide dramatically down his cheek. Linda gawked at the screen. It looked just like her!
“That’s option one,” said Rice. He switched pages with a touch and hit play again. “Here’s option two.”
Another video. Stendahl Banks again, but this time grim, reporting on a disc that had just been received by the State Department, with
a video depicting the brutal murder of the President of the United States. This scenario came in two versions, the first with Banks in front of a waving American flag, the second with actual footage from the video in question. Linda was shown naked on her knees in a room full of dark and evil looking men, one with a sword in his hand. She was beaten and broken, her hair chopped away. The man with the sword raised his arm and the video cut away.
Rice hit pause, forgoing the last bit of Banks’ report. “We haven’t decided whether to go with the video in that one or not. Not sure the public will buy your murder unless they see it.”
“How did you—?”
Rice cut her off with a wave of his hand. “One more,” he said, touching the tablet.
The third video was another ACN report, again with Stendahl Banks, this time with file footage of Ellen Warren, Linda’s mother. Banks reported how, after collapsing just days earlier, the news of the President’s execution was too much for her already-weakened heart. Ellen Warren was dead. A nation mourned.
Rice cleared the tablet’s screen and faced the President. He rubbed at the fatigue in his eyes. “So how much do I need to explain to you, Linda?” he asked. “We’ve got more coming, you know. There’s a team tracking down your old school chum, for instance. Vinegar, is it? She should be easy enough to find. Good for another story. ‘Despondent old friend of the President commits suicide by cop,’ or some such nonsense. We’ve got good writers.”
Linda looked at the floor. “You found the note.”
Rice rolled his eyes. “It was in your fucking duffel bag, Linda.”
The President looked Rice in the eye. “How can you do this?” she asked.
Rice shrugged. “You know. A room full of nerds and all the storage space they need. We’ve got the graphic capabilities at this point to create an exact facsimile of you if we wanted to. We could kill you off right now and as far as the public was concerned you’d still be alive, because they’d see you on TV.” Rice sighed wistfully. “Maybe one day…”
All of the Above Page 25
