Escaping Midnight (What Goes On in the Walls at Night Book 3)

by Andrew Schrader

  “Hog?” Alfred asked. “What if the scanner’s right?” He looked up at his friend, feeling old, tired, and miserable. “What if he is a murderer?”

  “Then our work is validated. And that’s priceless, isn’t it?”

  Outside, it began to rain. Inside, the old friends drew up a quick plan.

  Shane was not consulted.

  Chapter Seven

  Two days later, Alfred wrapped his arms around his son’s shoulders and hustled him into the car. It was three in the morning. Their breath froze in tiny wisps.

  Alfred drove the four hours to Baltimore. He didn’t want to risk someone tracing his steps, so he had asked Hog to jot down directions by hand. Then he disabled his car’s geo-positioning.

  The deeper they penetrated the city, the poorer and more rundown it got. Tents and pseudo-buildings made of rotting lumber lined most of skid row, separated by a few shops that were still open at odd hours for reasons less than admirable. Refugee camps from war-torn countries had cheerier dispositions.

  He shouldn’t have driven his car, he realized as he maneuvered around the swarms of people in ragged T-shirts and torn shoes. It was much too nice. As if to prove his thought, someone threw a rock at the back windshield.

  The “someone” was a kid about fifteen years old. Alfred caught his eye. He wondered what was behind those eyes and beneath that skin, in those well-defined muscles. Pretty soon, he and all his friends would be scanned. Due to their location, economic status, and family legal history, children like these would be the first subjects of the nationwide protocol, and Alfred was glad.

  Thirty minutes later, they pulled up to a gated storefront on an empty side street. Alfred looked both ways down the block, but saw nothing except some trash blowing in the wind.

  He knocked on the sheet of metal covering the door at the address listed on his slip of paper. Above, something buzzed, and the door opened. He and Shane were greeted by a ragged woman with stringy white hair and skin crisscrossed by blue veins. One eye sat higher on her face than the other. A scar ran alongside her nose from her upper lip, the flesh fused together in a zig-zag pattern.

  She led them down the hall. Shane held on to his father’s arm. It was brighter in the back room. There were even a few potted plants. Upon closer examination, Alfred discovered them to be plastic. It felt vaguely like a doctor’s office in there, but only vaguely, which was appropriate.

  In came a lean man with a designer trench coat and heavy boots. He wore large, rectangular glasses. He introduced himself as Dr. Leclaire. After a few opening remarks, a couple “nice-to-get-to-know-yous,” they got to work.

  “Hog sent me the faciomaxillary details,” the good doctor said, sitting Shane down in a chair and making small marks on his face with a precision pen. “What we need to do is remove the muscle tissues under the eyes here and here.” He gripped the back of the boy’s neck and pointed near the cheekbone, and when the boy reflexively leaned away, he gripped harder. Dr. Leclaire spoke only to Alfred, who was clearly the decider in all of this.

  “We’ll need to cut this out too,” he said, drawing half-moons under the eyebrows, and parentheses under the cheeks, which accentuated the high cheekbones and curviness of his subject’s face. He removed something that looked like eyeliner from his desk drawer and began shading in various spots. “We should also remove the cartilage here, to preserve the proportions of his face. Don’t want it to be too off-kilter after the change.”

  By the end, the silent boy resembled a ragdoll scribbled on by insane children.

  Alfred reviewed Dr. Leclaire’s proposed edits to the face, one hand on his chin, fingers over the mouth. He said nothing about the manner in which the boy was being handled.

  His son had been stripped to the waist. He was shivering too, down there in the icy basement where the sun never reached. “Dad . . .” the boy croaked.

  “Not now,” Alfred said. He turned to Dr. Leclaire. “How much are you cutting out of him?”

  “Not cutting. Reshaping. Transforming, according to your specifications. But yes, we’ll need to remove the offending flesh.”

  “And what about the eyes?”

  “Dad—”

  “I said not now.”

  “There’s a small chance of blindness,” Dr. Leclaire said, “though we will do our best to avoid it.”

  “How big of a chance?”

  “Five to ten percent.”

  “Hmm. He’ll need his eyes. Can’t expect me to take care of him forever.”

  “Yes. Understood.”

  “Now,” Alfred said, “about the missing flesh.” He lifted his son by the armpits and stood him at attention. “Don’t cry,” he ordered.

  “Damn, I’ll have to redo the marks.” Dr. Leclaire threw his hands up, exasperated. In his crying, the boy had smeared the doctor’s ink all over his own face. Dr. Leclaire sloppily wiped the tears away with a dirty rag, which he tossed in the corner, and drew fresh marks, this time with a heavier hand and stroke. Then, turning to Alfred: “We’ll take cartilage from somewhere else and use it for his face.”

  “What about his thigh?” Alfred asked.

  “Hmm, that could work. Either there or from the back. Lots of flesh there as well, and it won’t inhibit his walking. If you’re concerned about mobility.”

  “Good point. No child should depend on others to get around.”

  “Agreed.” Dr. Leclaire nodded. “On second thought, the boy is a little skinny. The back may not be good after all. He’s all bones!”

  “Didn’t eat much growing up. Picky that way. Remember, Shane? You only ate chicken nuggets for your first ten years. Your mother tried—God rest her soul—to get you to eat anything else. Remember that?”

  The boy said nothing.

  “The backs of his arms.” Dr. Leclaire declared, absorbed in his work, pacing behind the boy. “That’s the spot.”

  “Good,” Alfred said. “Oh, and right here.” He pointed at a meaty spot on his calf. Dr. Leclaire marked it. And another spot. And—

  The boy suddenly leapt up, feral, shook the hands from his body, and screamed incoherently. He backed himself against the wall, snarling. Alfred Texeira and Dr. Leclaire watched calmly as he yelled something about not wanting any of this, no matter what might happen to him.

  Alfred took the opportunity to remind his son that they wouldn’t be in this position if he wasn’t a criminal. That they were doing what was necessary to protect him and his father’s reputation. How dare he be so selfish.

  Dr. Leclaire frowned. In the flurry of activity, the boy had smeared his face. “Damn,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ll have to redo the marks again.”

  Chapter Eight

  Dr. Leclaire performed the surgery that afternoon. There was no need to wait, and no time for it. He was paid up front with 20,000 OneCoin tokens.

  Alfred waited in a makeshift bedroom. He’d brought no reading material. He clicked on the light and tossed his bag on the floor. The room was dark, gray, and without windows. There was only a bedside table, a small cot, and a door to an unsightly bathroom that reeked of bleach.

  Hours later, after the surgery, they woke Shane up. Dr. Leclaire’s assistant, the woman who let them into the building, flicked a switch on the gurney, and the top half rose, lifting Shane’s upper body.

  Huge swaths of gauze were wrapped around his head like a squid.

  The assistant stood behind Shane as he unwrapped his bandages. She watched Alfred and Dr. Leclaire, who stood across the room, facing Shane, arms crossed, looking anxious and curious.

  She was the first to see the minor scalping that had taken place on the back of the boy’s head. In her experience, it was best to watch the parents during the reveal.

  Their horrified expressions were almost always more satisfying than the patient’s.

  At least, she enjoyed them more these days.

  Chapter Nine

  Goddamnit.

  Two days after the surgery, Hog raced down the ha
ll of the research facility, passing the alarmed technicians who were helping to prep the public unveiling of the scanner in just a few minutes. He burst into Alfred’s office to what sounded like a squealing pig.

  Shane cowered in the corner. On his knees, gripping his face with crooked claws, his throat too raw to handle the guttural sounds. Gauze still covered most of his head.

  Alfred was bent over, shaking him by the shoulders. “Be grateful, goddamn it! I saved your life! I saved us. Would you rather be in jail, huh?” He turned to his partner. “He doesn’t want to go out there. He won’t stop crying.”

  Hog kneeled next to the boy. “We told the press you were in an accident, kid. Everyone expects you to be a little beat-up. It’s going to be fine.”

  Shane whimpered something about what they did to him and how was he going to live with this and—

  Hog stood, sighed. “Well, I tried.”

  Alfred grabbed Hog by the arm and led him to the other side of the room. The boy was shelled up in the corner like an armadillo. Red seeped from the bandages on his arms and face. “We can’t force him to go out there,” Alfred whispered. “He’ll break down in front of everyone. And if we don’t get him on that stage, it could ruin everything.”

  Hog agreed. “He looks wrecked. We could give him something for that.”

  “Like what?”

  “I was thinking a benzodiazepine, maybe a tranquilizer on top of it. A heavy dose—but not too heavy. We need him docile, but lucid.”

  “Dad?” Shane asked quietly.

  Alfred ignored him. He checked his watch. Damn. Twenty minutes until showtime. All the press were waiting. The scanner’s first test would be broadcast live to hundreds of millions of people. He picked at his tie. “Okay. But we need to do it now. It needs time to kick in.”

  “Perfect. He goes out there, passes the test, and then we get his face fixed. He only needs to be tested once.”

  “Dad?” Shane tried again.

  Alfred whipped around. “What!”

  “Wh-why can’t I see anything?”

  “It’s nothing. It’s just temporary. You’ll be fine soon.”

  He looked at Hog, who raised an eyebrow. “Good call,” Hog whispered. “Best not to tell him the truth until after the test.”

  Chapter Ten

  The press conference was held in the largest auditorium at the Defense Department. Twelve dozen rows of fold-up chairs were erected for bureaucrats, reporters, and lobbyists. The machine sat center-stage, with a state-approved doctor to administer the test and avoid potential conflicts of interest.

  Alfred and Hog stood backstage in a special cordoned-off section, behind the wheelchair-bound Shane. They’d given him a blanket to calm him down, which he’d clutched in his lap until the tranquilizers had kicked in. Now the blanket lay loosely across his legs.

  When it was time, a technician wheeled him onto the stage and set him behind the machine. Two other technicians worked at the front of the machine. A camera, strategically placed, would broadcast him to the world.

  The technician unwrapped the gauze.

  The audience gasped. No one wanted to look.

  The left eye had been moved higher. The right one had slipped down, due to the cracking of the eye socket. Heavy bruising smeared his face from his eye cavities to below his nose.

  At least, where his old nose had been. His new one was still swollen from the procedure, much too big now for the rest of his face. Bent, broken, and reassembled.

  Dr. Leclaire had flayed the skin and cartilage right off the cheekbone. Although some flesh had been grafted on from his thighs, the procedure had shrunk the cheeks in all the wrong places, leaving him looking more like a ninety-year-old smoker than a young man.

  The technicians secured the eyepiece with plastic adhesives.

  It was time. The scanner whirred to life.

  The awkward half-smile dropped from Hog’s face when he realized what was about to happen. He gripped Alfred’s shoulder in sudden alarm. When Alfred turned to him, Hog tried to formulate the words, but all he could get out was an “Uh” and a shaking hand that pointed toward Shane.

  It was too late.

  “The word ‘GUILTY’ had already formed on the giant screen that was being broadcasted to the world. The room filled with shocked gasps and the clicks of cameras.

  Alfred turned to Hog. “How—?”

  “The tranquilizers.” Hog was distant and distracted as he reminded Alfred that part of their protocol had included scanning the eyes for illicit drug use, including unauthorized prescriptions. The machine would then calculate the odds of drug-seeking behavior, and add it to the probability of committing more serious, violent crimes.

  Perhaps it had also sensed, in the deepest muscles beneath his skin, Shane’s guilt over the stealing that had gotten him suspended. Who knew, really?

  Presently three different tranquilizers were flooding the boy’s bloodstream. He hardly noticed the men gripping him under his armpits and rushing him offstage. He was officially arrested for one of the largest future illegal drug buys in the last fifty years. There was also a high chance of a triple homicide, the protocol said, most likely in a deal gone wrong.

  If the synthetic buildup on his eyeballs hadn’t been so severe, he would have glimpsed his father staring at the floor, doing nothing to help him as he was dragged off. As it turned out, he couldn’t see a thing, which was probably for the best. When they slapped the aural blockers over his ears, he couldn’t hear a thing either.

  Alfred, meanwhile, was congratulated on his latest invention, which was sure to go national now. No one questioned its authenticity. He might have thought more about Shane, but the opium of success, once begun, is hard to kick. He couldn’t change what had happened. There was little use in crying over it. He’d done what he could, and felt absolved. At least there was a silver lining to it all.

  Chapter Eleven

  Alfred sends his son a box of candy once a year, and a new toothbrush on his birthday. He doesn’t want to send him too many packages though, which could lead Shane to depend on him too much. He doesn’t want to get the little guy’s hopes up. He still has forty more years on the inside, after all.

  There’s something wrong with that younger generation, all right. The only good kids are those who helped us win the fight against Martian unionization.

  The arrest was twenty-seven years ago. I see Alfred sometimes, walking into work, hunchbacked now, refusing to use a cane, with giant raccooning bags under his eyes, probably due to lack of sleep. I know he is plagued by horrible dreams. Hard worker, too, that one.

  Years ago, he convinced himself that it had to be done. The scanner, I mean. No man can live unconvinced of the necessity of his actions for very long. It’s enough to drive him crazy.

  And when I think about the millions of parents who willingly turn their children in for scanning, and the ninety percent conviction rate that sends most of them straight to the penitentiary, and when I think of the profits generated, and how the scanner has allowed the older generations to stay in power for almost thirty years longer than they should have—

  Well, I’m sure they’ve convinced themselves too.

  There’s a Garden Up My Nose

  Guy Hazlewood woke, as always these days, before his alarm. He stared, as always, not merely at the ceiling—but through it. And, as always, the left side of his king-size bed remained untouched.

  The alarm had been set on the other side of the room. This was done intentionally, to force him out of bed in the morning. It grew louder in pregnant, five-second intervals. He regarded it as one might a fly in the jungle, which is to say he hardly noticed it anymore, and when it clanged this morning he waited a full minute before setting his creaky, arthritis-ridden feet to the floor.

  After the trek to the clock, he plopped onto the couch. This was also customary. Not only because today was his fifty-seventh birthday, and he was “feeling his age,” and not merely because he had a laundry list of items
to attend to before heading to work, but also because his wife had died exactly one year ago today, and still he stared blankly at aging walls.

  In this state, nothing was good and nothing was bad. There was only a feeling of emptiness. Winning the One-State lottery and being mugged riding the hoverbus to work sounded equally appealing.

  He’d tried therapy and processing groups. After a period of depression that left him bedridden for four months—his two brothers had pulled him from bed and carried him to the car for the memorial—there were another four months of belligerent anger. But the last four had been empty.

  Had he been religious, he might have cursed God. Instead, he cursed Life itself. How could it be like this? He had, after all, asked for love since he was a little boy watching cartoons.

  He remembered one show in particular, where a puppet sang a duet about leaving his friend for the moon, and how lonely it must be up there, and how much they’d miss each other. That was how he’d felt about love. That once he found it, it would be taken from him.

  Many failed attempts in his youth had only confirmed this suspicion. It was like a curse he couldn’t shake. There were the teenage crushes, the young adult flings. But never “the one.” At least, not for the first fifty years of his life.

  Presently he hoisted himself off the couch, threw on his clothes, grabbed his hospital bag, and rushed off to catch the morning hoverbus downtown. He struggled through the hordes of passengers who felt it necessary to push and shove their way to the front. Fortunately, he found a seat in the hard plastic thing the city called a chair, stared out the window, and shut out the commuters around him.

  He’d met Lori after a physicians’ conference in New Philadelphia. He was there representing the children’s hospital of another city where he had worked, and still did, for almost thirty years. She asked him a question while his head was buried in a pamphlet, and when he pushed his glasses up and raised his eyes to see the woman with the smooth, pleasant voice, his mouth hung open like an unzipped tent flap.