The Trace Trilogy (Book 1): The Wretched

by R. James Faulkner

  “Where did you live?”

  “Little Rock.”

  His head nodded as he wrote on the paper. He said, “Little Rock, I see. And why did you not go to the camp there?”

  Frank tilted his head, looking at the doctor, watching the hand move along the paper. He knew of depositions, the picking, and the dissecting. It was now a game, his game, and he knew all the clever rules.

  “Well, I’m guessing because Little Rock burned to the goddamned ground.”

  “Ah. Yes, well.” The doctor paused his writing to adjust his glasses. “I had a colleague that was stationed there. We lost contact with them some months ago, sad news.”

  Frank smiled, the doctor’s intentions were to hunt for information of the outside world. He would give him only a taste then he would negotiate.

  “And what were you doing?” the doctor said. He ran a hand over his black hair. “Before the outbreak?”

  “Dying.”

  Doctor Wilson looked at him, eager eyes gleaming at the promise of answers. He said, “From a disease? Cancer?”

  “No. Debt.”

  The guards behind him both snickered. The doctor was not amused. He placed the papers on the table and stood. His hand dragged along the table as he stepped away. He pulled his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. His hand disappeared inside his coat pocket. There were sounds of him sucking on the earpiece of the glasses.

  “Do you think this?” He lifted his hand toward the ceiling. “All of this, is a joke, that this is not serious work? I am trying to fight this disease.”

  The doctor slapped the table. His face reddened with frustration. He nodded to the men standing behind Frank. They did not hesitate. Each one pulled Frank’s arm to the armrests and strapped him down. He tried to fight back against it, but they had leverage over him.

  “Now, just relax. I want to help you.” Doctor Wilson removed a syringe from his pocket. “This…will help you.”

  “What the hell? Let me go.”

  The black-haired man leaned over and pressed the needle to Frank’s restrained arm. The clear liquid flowed, administered with a methodic push of the stem.

  “This, my friend, will help you.” His flashed a fake smile, lips pulled back from yellowed teeth. “I am here to help you. Together we can cure this, make the world right once more.”

  Frank felt the burn enter his vein. The straps hugged his arms and chest in tight embraces of leather. They slammed his head back against the headrest and placed another strap to secure his sweating brow.

  He looked at the grinning skull in front of him. He tried to spit, but his mouth was already bone dry. The lights of the room grew brighter. A fluorescent flicker in strobe patterns made the shadows dance. His eyes burned with a stinging fire as he tried to blink it away.

  “You are sick.” The commanding voice echoed in his eardrums. “But, I can help you. I know a way. Do you want to be cured?”

  “There is nothing left to cure.” Frank grit his teeth, the room felt like it was tipping over backward.

  The doctor’s face was before him, a look of concern on his furrowed brow. He placed the end of a pen in his teeth, tapping against the yellow discoloration. He exhaled a sigh as he wiped his mouth with his palm.

  “Why do you say this?”

  “Because, you’re either infected, or you’re immune,” Frank said. He shouted, not that he wanted to, the injection made him feel strange.

  “Immune? Who told you such a thing?” The doctor stood and paced the floor, shaking his head in frustration. “This disease has no vaccine, we tried. All of us tried.”

  Frank strained his chest upward. The heat of a raging fire was in his spine. The doctor seemed to notice it as if waiting for it to happen. He motioned for the men to leave the room. The thud of the door slamming shut was the sound of cannons to Frank’s ears. The potent scent of chemicals and disinfectant burned his nostrils. Air was ice on his flesh. Frank screamed out, his voice reflecting from the bare walls. He was having visions of smoke swirling overhead.

  “What the fuck did you give me?”

  “Let’s talk about your theory of the immunity…”

  The doctor’s eyes, cold and black, stared at him, unblinking. The sound of his breath was a fevered harsh panting. He inched closer to Frank, slithering toward him like a snake. Frank could not look away, all he could see were the dark eyes and yellow teeth.

  26

  Angela opened her eyes, the soft glow of yellow light made the room comfortable. The bandages on her wrists were clean and white. She felt soothing effects of pain medicine in her body. Angela noticed across from her, the girl from the van was sleeping on a bed against the wall. Her calls to the girl went unheard. The door swung open and Doctor Wilson entered with a swift step. Two solemn looking guards followed him and pushed the bed with the young woman on it out into the hallway. They did not return as the doctor examined Angela.

  “Let’s have a look here,” he said. “Have you been in any pain?”

  “No.”

  He lifted the edges of the bandages from her wrist and observed the condition of her wounds.

  “Good. They appear to be healing just fine.” He patted her arm. “Now, you said you were from Memphis?”

  “Yes, lived there for thirteen years.”

  She spoke as he pulled out a needle and a small vial. He held them in his hands and filled the syringe with the clear liquid. Angela watched as he gave her the injection. She raised her forearm to keep the cotton ball held in the small of her elbow.

  “And you say the CDC camp was destroyed?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, you traveled here with your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded his head, giving her a soft smile. He said, “There will be a few more injections during the course of the therapy. When you complete them, there will be no more fear of the disease.”

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  “You rest.”

  He patted her arm again, and left the room the same manner he entered. She lifted her hands and watched her fingers bend. She could not make a fist. The best she could manage was to touch her index and ring finger to her thumb on both hands. It was painful and slow to move them, but she was glad to have some use. The small achievement made her proud. Her head was better, the swelling was less, and the constant pain had faded.

  Earlier in the week, when she asked to see Frank, the doctor told her he was going through surgery for the gunshot wound. She hoped Frank would understand when they asked him about his wife. It was a white lie, but for good reasons, she did not trust them. Something in the way the doctor acted, his smile, made her uneasy. The way the guards, soldiers who could no longer play war, looked at her body made her feel uncomfortable. They sickened her with their fascination as the doctor cleaned the wounds of her breasts.

  They didn’t even try to hide what they were doing.

  Her thoughts turned to the other empty bed in the corner. Where was the mother, the woman Frank stomped into the highway? She had not seen her since they left the truck. What happened to the youngest girl? The doctor avoided her asking about where they were.

  Angela lay back on the bed and rested. Her body felt weak, exhausted, and heavy. She assumed her strength would have returned within a few days. To the best she could recollect, it had been almost a full week. She wanted to see Frank, to make sure he was all right.

  She recalled the look in his eyes just before the soldiers pulled them apart. Perhaps he was right, maybe they should have just kept heading south. They would leave soon, she thought, as soon as she got her strength back.

  She closed her eyes and tried to rest, sleep took her mind to places she did not want to see. That face, those staring eyes, her voice in the tangle of bodies. Angela sat up on the bed, she knew they were dreams, lingering nightmares. Nevertheless, they felt too real, as though she was there again, nailed to that wall like a sacrifice. Left with the vision of the flayed and dissected body of poor, sweet, fo
olish Mike stuck in her mind. She felt heaviness in her chest, he loved her, and she knew that. He also accepted the fact she did not love him in return.

  There were sounds of distant voices, she stood and went to the window. Below, in the concrete surrounding of a one-time courtyard, she could see two of the guards dragging a body toward a set of metal doors. The body was hard to make out. Whoever it was, the men pulled them along face down. She could see they were not protesting the condition, as they had no arms with which to defend themselves. A long bloody trail traced the path behind the person they dragged. The doors swung shut, leaving her to speculate.

  She had seen crazier things. Maybe the person had died from a heart attack. There was no reason to believe the guards would treat a dead body with any form of respect. They had shown themselves to be ill-mannered pigs.

  Better to go with the most likely option, she decided, and went to lie back down. The short amount of time she stood at the window had taken too much out of her. Feeling drained, her body was heavy and sluggish. She slipped into sleep before being aware of it.

  Her body floated in a dark ocean, a calm featureless expanse of water. From the depths came visions of her past. Flashes of faces and the distorted sound of music, all swirling within a jumbled mix, it frightened her. She could not stop the movement, stuck in a whirlpool of cloudy memories, darkness descended over her. The feeling of the wall at her back, arms bound to it, the empty sound of the room. That room, in that house. She tried to wake up, to pull herself from that place. Fear grew, rushing from the back of her mind. She felt she was already awake, unable to move from the wall.

  Something moved, working at her, pressed in amongst her legs. A dark shaped monster exhaled hot and foul breath on the tender inside of her thighs. She could not move from it, her body was lifeless as it violated her. She tried to scream, her voice refused, gripped and silent. Shadows fell from the seeing of her eyes and blackness pulled her back in. Engulfing and soundless, she drifted into an airless falling. She cried out for Mike but he did not answer. Angela tried to push at the beast but her arms would not respond. Before she slipped into the dark water of her nightmare, she heard the monster whisper her name.

  27

  He could smell the thick odor of death. The foul stench was everywhere and everything. The soles of his feet touched the coldness of a slime-coated floor. He tried to use his toes to find purchase, to pull his body forward. His arms had no feeling left, they pressed the side of his head, covering his ears. Ben pushed his head forward to get past them, and the sound of his breathing increased with tremendous volume to his exposed ears. He was in a small room, a darkened one.

  He tried to free his bound arms. His fingers were numb, paralyzed, refusing the command of his brain to move. He did not know how long this had been his reality. His mind faded into and out of consciousness. Thirst clawed at his throat, he tried to wheedle saliva from his cheeks. Ben felt like he was made of lead, weighty and thick.

  Tears wanted to form in his blind eyes, but his body lacked the moisture. He tried again to speak, his voice but a whisper.

  “Help.”

  He could try no more. Energy was fleeted from him. His mind drifted away again, slipping into a jumble of half-thoughts and fragments.

  When was it that it happened, when? When did I come here?

  He could not recall. Daylight and blacktop, constantly forward, running or stumbling. Mile after hard-earned mile, forever passing under his tired feet, he traveled along the paved road with somber devotion. He wanted to get there, here, desperately. The overwhelming feeling when he saw them, the gates of iron and wood. He fell to his knees rapt and weeping.

  Salvation.

  He cried out to the vision of salvation.

  Help me.

  He begged to be received into the glory of its sanctuary, and they came to him, for him, the saviors of his wretched soul. But he found that God’s grace did not replace the wretched one’s despair. The angels that came to lift him up wore no wings and only brought the blunt end of a gunstock to forge his halo. They gave him darkness when he sought light, a bitter end for a long journey.

  There was nothing more than cloudy memories of the men that brought him into the gates. They pushed him to the floor of a small room and sprayed him with a fire hose. He screamed and they laughed. A man with an evil face stood over him and spoke. Ben could not understand what he said and it angered the man. He felt a sharp pain in his arm and everything became a blur. An image of a doorway that emitted white light was the last thing he could recall.

  Ben did not want to die in the place he found himself. He did not want to die in the place that was a shattered dream, one that his parents died for without good cause. The thought it was all for nothing tormented him. He had nothing else to believe in. It was all supposed to end when he made it to Jackson. He would be safe if he made it. That was the promise.

  He sobbed for a long while before he decided crying would not help him. Ben took a deep breath and tried to lift his foot up from the floor. It took great effort to hold it in front of him. His toes touched a firm surface, not a wall, but something with resistance. He pushed with his foot and it moved. Ben felt a slight relief until it bumped back against his foot. It was an object suspended the same as he was.

  He knew, deep to the core, that he was not alone in the room. The only question that was the most important, could he get them to help. He kicked at the appendage several times to wake them. When it did not work, he used his foot to feel and make out if they were still alive. He tried to bring his foot up to feel for warmth, but he did not have the strength left. His body trembled from lack of energy. He had to rest.

  His mind drifted to his parents and his father’s great hope. How he presented that bitter blade called hope, the one that all optimists wave in the air, the same one that slices into the soul when things fall apart.

  The day they left their home for the road south, he was hopeful as well. Now, after all the suffering he endured, he was alone. The place his father said would be safe, the only place he said they could be safe, was a lie. The day his mother died, it was devastating and painful to see her fall covered in blood. He screamed, and his father stood frozen with disbelief. His brother, Charlie, was the only one who reacted. Charlie was the one who avenged her. He found a piece of rusted pipe on the sidewalk, raised it high over his head, and yelled out as he ran toward the smiling orphan. The sounds his mother made, those horrible gurgling noises from her opened mouth haunted him.

  He tried to hold her blood in, but his hands could not stop it. When he felt her last heartbeat under his fingertips, watched her eyes glass over, he could only scream. He remembered with vivid detail what he saw next. The look on Charlie’s face as he brought the pipe down on that small head of blonde hair, the chunk of his mother’s throat hanging from her little blood-soaked mouth. The wide spray of her bright colored blood, the way it gushed from between those tiny pigtails, and the shape it made when it landed on that cold, dirty street in Tupelo.

  That is when it all shook from him, his mind collapsed on itself, and he tried to run forever from the truth of it. He remembered the rage, the hurt, the utter and exquisite despair. Like the devil played the song he danced to, one of heartbreak and revenge. The way his father’s face felt beneath his knuckles haunted him since then, how his flesh and bone moved under his might. He saw Charlie run away screaming at the sky, cursing God, and all his creation.

  There was an inaudible snap of the strained fibers that held Ben’s psychosis bound together. It slipped away from the mental prison with the effortless glide of a dandelion seed floating on a gentle breeze. He became something more than another casualty of the new world. He became a living testament to the callous and cold nature it cultivated. Ben lost his humanity on that street in Tupelo and his parents lost their child to the irreversible slip into madness, along with their lives.

  That goddamned little orphan girl, she took away more than she’d ever know. She rippe
d it all away with that one bite at my mama’s throat.

  28

  They tossed him onto the bunk’s hard mattress, leaving him to piss himself again. The convulsions came and went. His eyes burned as if acid was inside them. It hurt to blink, it hurt to leave them open. He tried to straighten his body out, but his legs would not bend.

  “It will pass…” The voice from the shadows assured him.

  Frank convulsed again. The mattress felt as though every inch of the surface was covered with broken light bulb shards that dug into the flesh of his back. His arms were drawn close to his chest, twisted into his ribcage, and his fingernails drew blood from his palms. The sensation of lightning flashes worked across his brain, the streaks were white hot and sizzling within his skull. He opened his mouth to let the chamber reverberate his agony. Dozens of other voices joined his rendition. When his mind could suffer no more, he slept.

  Hushed whispers and shuffling feet, he could hear them coming with the cart. His head rang worse than any hangover, all of his muscles burned. He did not try to sit up, choosing to lay and rest instead.

  “They will come again.”

  Frank moved his eyes toward the man’s voice.

  “When?” Frank said.

  “Soon, they will come soon.” An injured hand gripped the support column with only two fingers remaining. “Tell him what he wants to know and it will stop.”

  “What does he want to know?”

  A chuckle came from the shadows and the hand slid away. The voice said, “That’s what you’ll have to figure out.”

  An indeterminable amount of time passed. He was not even sure he was awake. Frank felt the pull of their hands on his arms and the floor slide beneath his feet as they hauled him back down the long hallway to the last door. The same one with the little black sign fastened to the wood and behind it, the big metal chair. He found himself in it again, straps tightened, and the whole device tilted backward. A large circular light blinded him, making the shadows appear darker.