Mad Skills

by Greatshell, Walter

  “Phew,” he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “I am never flying with you again.”

  From high up in the air there had seemed to be quite a bit of traffic, but at ground level it was clear that the cars were spaced very far apart. At the moment, the road was deserted. The night sky was clear, and there was a low crescent moon. Maddy had never really noticed the incredible depth of the sky before—it had been more or less a flat field with stars sprinkled across it like glitter on a kindergarten art project. Now she could clearly tell that the moon was in the foreground, and beyond that the planets Mars and Jupiter, then, receding into the deep distance, all the stars of the Milky Way, with the invisible web of their trajectories relative to the Earth. She could see Betelgeuse, the supermassive red giant.

  A pair of headlights winked over the horizon.

  “I see a car,” she said. “I’m gonna try flagging it down.”

  “You do that. If you don’t mind, I’ll just sit here.”

  Maddy went to the edge of the pavement and waited while the headlights dipped in and out of sight. When they started getting bright enough to cast a shadow, she raised her arms and waved as urgently as possible. The car made an electronic farting noise and pulled sharply over, blinding her with its headlights—it was a police car: BITTERROOT SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT.

  The female deputy got out, brandishing a flashlight, and demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “We need to be taken to a hospital! My friend is hurt!”

  “There was a report of a stolen aircraft going down somewhere around here.”

  “That was us; we had no choice. Can we talk about this later? He has internal injuries—he needs medical attention, or he’s gonna bleed out!”

  “How would you know that?”

  “Look at him! What else could it be?”

  “I have no idea. Both of you up against the car and don’t move—you’re under arrest.”

  “That’s fine as long as you take him to a doctor.”

  “Hey! You’re not the one calling the shots.”

  The officer frisked and handcuffed them, then loaded them in the backseat, taking special care with Ben, who was sinking fast.

  “Hey, buddy, you feeling okay?”

  “Need a doctor …”

  “Stay with me, okay? I’m Sheriff’s Deputy Tina Reinaldi. Are you in any pain?”

  “Yes … hurts …”

  “Your stomach hurts?”

  He nodded, his face yellow and clammy as congealed beef tallow. Becoming concerned, Deputy Reinaldi called in for emergency medical personnel to meet them and hurriedly got going.

  As they drove, she asked Maddy, “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Madeline Grant.”

  “And your boyfriend?”

  “He’s my stepbrother—well, almost. Benjamin Blevin.”

  “So what’s this all about?”

  “We need your help. We’re both victims of some kind of medical experiment conducted by the Braintree Institute. It’s mind control by means of direct cortical stimulation. You get this implant, and they can make you do anything they want you to. Ben and I got away, but there are a lot more people still there, being manipulated like puppets—a whole town!”

  Officer Reinaldi listened to her with the perfect passivity of someone who has heard it all. Maddy immediately realized she might have goofed.

  “Good one,” whispered Moses.

  “And what’s all this got to do with a downed aircraft?” asked the deputy.

  “We had to steal a helicopter to escape.”

  “Come on. You stole a helicopter? Which one of you is the hotshot helicopter thief?”

  “Me.”

  “You? Where’d you learn to fly it? Helicopter camp?”

  “I just knew.”

  “You just knew.”

  They drove very fast, passing a number of police cars and other emergency vehicles speeding in the opposite direction.

  “Shit,” muttered the officer under her breath. “It never rains but it pours.”

  “I’m sorry?” said Maddy.

  “I’m not talking to you. You’ve caught me in the middle of another call. I’m supposed to be responding to an armed robbery at an industrial park. Somebody shot up the place and stole a couple million dollars’ worth of precious metals. Instead, I’m playing nursemaid to you two whack jobs.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Presbyterian General. Stay awake back there! I don’t want anyone checking out in my patrol unit. I’m gonna have enough paperwork as it is. He still breathing?”

  “So far.”

  “Make sure he stays that way, at least until we get to the hospital.”

  In a few minutes, they were out of the country and hurtling past gas stations and shopping plazas, weaving around traffic and running red lights. Maddy noticed her teeth were chattering, her whole body vibrating. I’m in shock, she thought. But something inside her was resisting it, something that wouldn’t allow her to collapse.

  Turning onto a side road, they sped through tree-lined suburbs and abruptly swerved into a parking lot, then up a steep ramp to a hospital’s ambulance bay. There was a medical team with two gurneys waiting to meet them. Maddy’s and Ben’s handcuffs were removed, and they were quickly strapped down and rolled inside.

  “I’m okay,” Maddy insisted, “it’s him you have to check.” But they weren’t listening.

  Deputy Reinaldi followed the stretchers into the Emergency Ward, then stayed at the desk to sign whatever she had to sign while the two of them were wheeled into adjoining stalls, to be probed and prodded and poked with needles. After a little while, most of the attention shifted to Ben, leaving Maddy time to reflect on recent events.

  She had escaped. Her mind was her own again. She could feel it: She was free. The space in her head was a great crystalline dome, echoing only the clear sound of her own true thoughts. Commercial-free and without interruption. It was the most beautiful feeling in the world; she sobbed with relief and gratitude.

  They stabilized Ben and took him away to surgery—he was bleeding internally, just as she’d tried to tell them. But Maddy didn’t have the energy to sweat it, not with the narcotics trickling through her system. She was drifting off, gratefully sinking into the oh-so-soft pillow.

  She slept.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  1-2-3

  SOMETIME later, she awoke. Her head was still remarkably clear. The ward was quiet. There was a drowsy wee-hour stillness, with only the soft hum of medical equipment breaking the silence. Past the foot of her bed, Maddy could see the nurses’ area, but no one was in view. Ben’s bed was empty.

  She heard a squeaking from somewhere out of sight, and a moment later a group of people went by wheeling a gurney: three tall doctors in long gowns and surgical masks, followed by a short, brisk-looking woman in a white lab coat. The sheeted body on the stretcher was hooked up to oxygen, a heart monitor, and an IV drip. Instead of hair, its freshly shaved head sprouted a mass of colored wires.

  It was dark, and Maddy’s eyes were still bleary, but she could swear the woman was Dr. Stevens. There was no mistaking that silvery ’fro. But before she could sit up or properly focus, they were gone out the exit doors.

  She had to pee. Using the remote to raise her bed, she pressed the nurse call button. When no one came, she pressed it again. Come on, she thought. What did they expect her to do, pee in a bedpan? But there wasn’t a bedpan at hand; there wasn’t even a paper cup.

  And it wasn’t just about peeing—she wanted to know how Ben was doing and discuss this whole situation with someone in authority. Most of all, she wanted to talk to her parents. But first, she really, really had to pee.

  “Hello,” she called. “Could someone please let me up? I have to go to the bathroom.”

  Still nothing, and now she was getting angry. How could they just leave their trauma patients unatte
nded like this? Someone could drop dead! Maddy had half a mind to pull out her own IV and march to the hospital administrator’s office … right after she went to the restroom.

  Something peculiar caught her attention. There was a stethoscope in the middle of the floor. A bright, shiny stethoscope, just lying there by the nurses’ station as if some careless person had dropped it. It was impossible to miss; anyone passing by ought to have picked it up. But clearly there was no one around. All of the doctors, interns, nurses, and orderlies who had been on duty when she and Ben were brought in had left. And whoever was still on duty must be taking a long bathroom break themselves.

  Screw it. Maddy sat up and gingerly peeled the tape off her IV needle. It was stuck in the back of her hand, and it made her a little sick to look at it. Without giving herself time to think, she slipped the needle out and applied pressure with a wad of gauze, taping it back down firmly. It hurt for a second, but she didn’t lose a drop of blood. She unclipped the pulse monitor from her finger and switched off the alarm—there. Too early in the morning for all that noise.

  It didn’t strike her as odd that she understood the workings of every piece of machinery in the room. What was strange to her was how brutally archaic it all seemed, like something out of the Dark Ages. The needles and wires and dripping solutions, the scissors and stitches and sticky tape that were more reminiscent of a kiddie craft fair than a house of healing. All the blood and needless pain. She felt sure there were better ways. In fact, she could think of a few right off the top of her head—something with directed harmonics, exploiting ultrahigh-frequency quantum fluctuations to target specific molecules—but she couldn’t bother about that just then. Her bladder was about to burst.

  Making her way past the nurses’ station, she picked up the stethoscope and slammed it on the counter, then hurried to the restroom just beyond. She was worried it would be occupied, but the door opened on a vacant and spotless toilet stall.

  After availing herself of the facilities, Maddy emerged feeling much better. She expected to find that the grave-yard shift had returned, but the ward was just as empty as before. The few other patients were dead asleep, curtained off in their cubbies and snoring away unconcerned. For a second, Maddy considered simply returning to bed, but then she saw something that gave her pause.

  There was blood on the floor, a line of dime-size droplets that started at the emergency entrance and ran all the way down the hall. The blood was trampled in places; there were partial shoe prints of various kinds, in red patterns as sharply delineated as passport stamps. People running into the hospital? Everyone in such a hurry to get to surgery that the attending physician dropped his or her stethoscope? It made sense … or did it? Even in an emergency, how long would the other patients be left alone? Certainly, it would have to be something very serious.

  Or, it could just be a mistake, an oversight. Ordinary, gross incompetence.

  Whatever it was, she couldn’t go back to bed without knowing what was going on. And if it gave her an excuse to ask about Ben, all the better.

  Maddy found her clothes and shoes in a plastic bag under her gurney and got dressed. Then she ventured down the dim hallway, careful not to step in the blood.

  Following the signs, she found the Intensive Care Ward, and was shocked to see that there was no one on duty there either, the unconscious patients wheezing un-supervised inside their plastic oxygen tents. There was also no sign of Ben. She was really getting worried now. Where is everybody?

  Any minute, Maddy expected to run into someone, a security guard or grumpy nurse, and be yelled at for trespassing, but the whole staff seemed to have cleared out. She peeked into Radiology and Imaging, into various labs and offices, but all she could find were more signs of a hurried departure: clipboards on the floor, spilled papers.

  With trepidation, she glanced into the surgical suite, but it was just as empty. It stank of pine disinfectant. All that was left was the Neonatal Wing. If nothing else, there would surely be someone taking care of the newborn babies!

  The lights were off in that section, as they were in a lot of the hospital, the only illumination coming from the exit signs and the flashing red and blue lights of emergency vehicles outside the window.

  Pushing through the double doors, Maddy said, “Hello?”

  “Hello,” a man’s muffled voice replied, and a powerful hand clamped over her mouth, yanking her backward into the speaker’s chest. Pinning her arms and carrying her, he said, “Don’t make a sound, or they all die.” He kicked open another set of doors.

  Unable to scream, barely able to breathe, Maddy’s eyes widened at the sight before her.

  She had found all the missing hospital personnel. They were right there, doctors and nurses and orderlies and anyone else who was on duty—about forty people altogether—sitting on the floor of the Maternity Ward, tied up in pairs, back-to-back, amid cradles of newborn infants. Hostages. And standing above them all were four armed men in black clothes and ski masks. She could smell the men’s sweat, their fear, and suddenly Maddy realized that the lights and sirens outside were not ambulances but police cars. These men were cornered here, capable of anything.

  Pinning Maddy down, two of the men hogtied her with an Ace bandage, taped her mouth shut, and shoved her among the others.

  “Here’s what we’re doing,” one of them announced, holding up a cell phone. “In a few minutes we are going to walk out of here and drive to the airport. Each of us will be holding babies, as many as we can carry. Anything that happens to us will also happen to the babies. We will board a plane and fly to an undisclosed location, where we will then release the plane and the babies. We don’t want to hurt anyone. We will take good care of these babies as long as everything goes smoothly … but at the first sign of trouble, we will abort. Do you understand? We will abort.”

  At the word abort, several people on the floor went crazy, making desperate sounds of pleading through their gags. Their eyes were bugging out in terror, their faces red and streaked with tears—perhaps they were new parents.

  Oddly enough, at the sound of the man’s voice, Maddy began to feel calmer. At first she had been so surprised and overpowered that she had given in to the assumption that she had no choice but to surrender—it was a habit born of a lifetime of submitting to adult authority, especially masculine authority. You did not resist power, boys were stronger, end of story. Against the male will, your only defense lay in the hands of others: parents, teachers, school counselors, police. And if none of them were around (or worse, they were the ones doing the dirt), God help you. And God was a man.

  But as Maddy looked at these men, she couldn’t help but feel an unaccustomed sense of contempt. Especially in the hospital setting, she was inordinately aware of their inner plumbing, the rickety scaffold of bones, sinews, and pulpy muscle that held them together. Humans were so complicated and frail; there were literally a million things that could go wrong, drop them in their tracks.

  Ever since the surgery, Maddy had been having anxieties about her own frailty, worrying she was becoming a hypochondriac. Too much knowledge was a dangerous thing. Fortunately, her mind had a way of steering itself away from such pointless fears before they paralyzed her completely. But there was nothing to stop her from projecting these thoughts onto others. By turning them outward, she suddenly realized she could transmute helpless fear into empowering scorn. Scorn for all this shambling, loathsome humanity.

  The man nearest her, for example. She was looking at the back of his knee, which though sheathed in black trousers was naked to her in its flimsy mechanical structure. Right there at the joint, everything was exposed: the bone and cartilage, the popliteal, the effectors and motor neurons, the sensitive muscle spindle that triggered the poly-synaptic reflex. It might as well have been a house of cards.

  A wet nose touched her ear, whiskers tickling, and the raccoon’s voice hissed, “Now or never, sweetheart—once these guys are on the move and carrying babies, it’ll be
much harder to intervene.”

  Taking a deep breath, Maddy swiveled her shoulders, slackening the tight bandage just enough to slide her bound wrists under her butt and get her arms in front of her. It was not a particularly amazing feat, merely the normal dexterity of a teenage girl, but she was surprised and pleased with herself. It was one thing to know something was possible as an abstraction, another actually to make it happen.

  Focus, focus—stay on track … go! She rocked backward and drove her bound feet as hard as she could into the crook of the man’s supporting leg. As she expected, his flexor sprang like a mousetrap, causing his leg to fold under him like a bent cardboard tube.

  Caught completely off guard, the man fell backward, flailing for support, and found only the hard pedestal of Maddy’s heel in the base of his skull—crack! The force of her second kick, combined with the man’s own mass and velocity of descent, caused a severe rupture of his C-1 vertebrae at the point where it joined the skull. He fell into her lap, unconscious, perhaps paralyzed, and she took the toylike 9mm pistol from his twitching hand and fired three shots, each of the remaining three men collapsing in turn like a synchronized building demolition, falling where they stood, and three neat arcs of blood trailing them down—1-2-3.

  Her man was still twitching, and Maddy pulled off his ski mask to see if he was breathing. No—he was dead. But she was alarmed to see that there was a fresh scar on the back of his bald head—a familiar, crescent-shaped surgical incision. Oh shit, Maddy thought.

  The man had an implant—he was one of them.

  TWENTY-SIX

  HOPSCOTCH

  ALL of a sudden, she understood everything: The body on the gurney had been Ben’s. Dr. Stevens had come to take him back to Braintree, using the hostage thing as a diversion, and if Maddy had not gone to the bathroom when she did, they would have taken her next. Stupid!

  Tossing the gun aside, Maddy undid her cloth bindings and peeled the tape off her mouth, then said sorry to the other hostages and ran from the room. There was no time for an explanation—not if she wanted to save Ben.