by Chris Lowry
“Put me under?”
The door opened and a woman stepped inside. She had brown hair, large eyes and a serious look on your face.
She marched across the room and took a chart off the end of the hospital bed.
“You had us worried,” she studied the chart. “We weren’t sure you were coming back this time.”
“This time? Who are you?”
She peered over the end of the clipboard and watched me, pen poised on the chart.
“You really don’t remember me?”
I shook my head.
She made a note on the paper.
“I’ve been your doctor for the last six months. You’re in a hospital.”
I tried to gesture to the white walls, but the sarcasm was lost on her.
“I can see. The giant must have done a number on me.”
“What giant?” she asked as she scribbled another note.
I looked from her to the orderly and back again.
“Your giant, the one the lady turned loose.”
“What lady?”
I screwed up my eyebrows.
She told me her name. I tried to recall it. Marge. Maggie.
“Mags,” I stuttered.
The doctor stared at Tony for a moment then back at me. She had a sad look in her eyes.
“There’s no one named Mags here.”
I struggled to sit up again, and Tony held be against the bed. It wasn’t difficult for him to do.
“Where are my kids?!”
“You need to relax, please,” said the doctor. “I don’t want to sedate you again.”
I fought for control and laid down. I didn’t want them to sedate me. I needed answers.
“I told him he’s been asking for his kids,” said the orderly.
“Do you know where you are?”
I shook my head.
“Some compound. Kentucky.”
It was her turn to shake her head.
“You are in Kentucky,” she spoke in a slow controlled manner. “But you’re not in a compound. This is a hospital. A psychiatric facility. You have had a break with reality and have been our guest for the past nine months.”
Break with reality? Nine months?
But all I could manage was, “Huh?”
“I’ve had you under constant monitoring. You just came off a seventy two hour suicide watch. I kept you sedated so you wouldn’t hurt yourself.”
The door opened and a thick necked black man leaned in.
“Doc, we need you. It’s an emergency.”
She hung the chart on the foot of the bed and patted my shin.
“I’ll come back and see you in a little while. I need you to relax. Stay calm and we’ll get you some answers.”
I watched her leave.
The black man smiled at me.
“I’m glad you’re coming around.”
“Do I know you?”
The smile fell.
“It’s Jeffrey, man. You’ve known me since you’ve been here.”
“I have?”
“Yeah, you and I are good friends. At least when you’re like this. The other way,” he shuddered and shared a glance with Tony.
“What other way?”
Tony waved him out of the room.
“We’re not going to get you excited. Just try to get some rest and I’ll be back after rounds.”
Tony ushered Jeffrey out of the room and left me alone strapped to the bed with nothing but my jumbled and confused thoughts.
Nine months?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Three days.
I was strapped to the bed for three days. I counted the passage of time as the sun slanted through the window and climbed across the wall.
Tony or Jeffrey would come and feed me, pudding or soup, but they wouldn’t loosen the straps and they wouldn’t talk.
They would come back later with a bedpan.
The doctor checked in twice a day, but she wouldn’t say anything either.
It’s like they were afraid to tell me anything.
Finally, Jeffrey said it was time to go for a walk.
He unstrapped my feet first.
Tony stood by the door while he unfastened my left wrist, then my right. Jeffrey stepped back fast and waited.
I struggled to sit up, but I was weak.
Soup, pudding and atrophy.
It took two tries to swing my legs off the bed, and three tries to stand up. I wobbled and held fast to the end of the bed.
“Short walks,” Tony said and stepped into the corridor.
I took a step after him, almost falling, but caught myself.
Then another, balance coming back.
The tile floor was cold under my bare feet.
Jeffery came up and put his hand on my elbow, guiding me, but not too hard, not too fast.
“Small steps,” he said.
We took small steps through the door and out into the hall. There were other rooms off of this one, doors closed and hiding occupants. The white walls were pristine, looking almost new. The tile was shining, and sunlight beamed through double doors at the end of the corridor.
Tony stood by an empty nurse’s station and watched Jeffrey lead me down the hall.
“To the bathroom and back,” he advised.
Jeffrey nodded and steered me toward a doorway.
My legs were shaking from lack of use. It was tough to catch my breath.We made the bathroom doorway and Jeffrey led us inside. Yellow square tiles covered the walls up to head height, two stalls and two sinks under a long mirror.
"I have to warn you," said Jeffrey. "You did some awful things to yourself while you were in a delusional state."
"What kinds of things."
He pointed to the mirror and I saw myself for the first time in weeks.
Maybe even months.
Long hair with gray streaks, stubble, dark sunken eyes in a hollowed-out face.
Pale.
Not the tan smiling face I was used to seeing from Florida.
And scars.
A long one that ran over the side of my head drawing a thick white line that was crudely stitched with white x scar tissue. More scars, tiny purple and red lines across the side of a face that looked older than I remembered, more worn.
And then I locked on my eyes.
I'm not sure if anyone has ever stared in a mirror and tried to see their own soul.
That type of look is usually reserved for lovers, because we live with so many lies that we tell ourselves we can't handle that level of truth.
The eyes didn't lie.
Brown pupils with flecks of gold, crinkled memories of laugh lines etched in the skin around them.
They stared back at me and I remembered.
I remembered being blown up by a grenade tossed in a tunnel, protecting a young boy who tried to build a kingdom.
Byron.
I remembered being nursed back to health more than once by a woman a decade or more my junior that I rescued from a cult. A woman who loved me, and who I may have been falling in love with back.
Anna.
And Brian.
My friend who wanted my counsel, who wanted to lead a group and keep them safe, who believed in society and rebuilding something better from the ground up.
Were they all figments of my creation?
My imagination?
Were my children safe in Arkansas and Florida, doing teenage things like texting and chatting, homework and crushing on boys, girls, and thinking how their parents didn't really know how the world worked?
Were they okay?
The Mississippi River. The flight. My son the pilot. The fighting. The gunshots. And what felt like a thousand zombies.
Did I fall into a coma or stupor and imagine it all?
"No," I said.
"It's true," said Jeff.
He put a gentle hand on my shoulder and steered me toward the door.
"The mind is an incredible and powerful thing. You have convinced
yourself of many things. And you have hurt people. That's why we sedated you."
I let him lead me back to the room. My brain was tumbling like a boulder down a mountain, an avalanche of emotion that threatened to crush me, drag me under and I felt like I was suffocating.
"How long?" I croaked and cleared my throat.
“Your chart says a couple of years. We’ve only seen you for nine months.”
The purple scar on my head could be that old.
And self-mutilation would be on my face, my hands, arms and legs where I could see.
Where I could reach.
But I couldn't feel his hand on my back.
Or part of his hand, really.
The other part was dead. Like I had a strip of skin that no longer felt anything but pressure.
I concentrated on his touch.
Fingers, yes.
Tips pressing against flesh. One. Two.
Almost three. Thumb. First finger.
Where were the rest?
Pressure, sure, but it felt different.
I needed to see.
I shifted and turned around.
"Where are you going?"
Did he sound worried? I saw his finger flick and one of the orderlies shift away from the nurse’s station.
I glanced down at my hand.
There was a burn scar on the back of it, healing but no longer red.
From a fire trap set for zombies.
I didn't answer him as I edged back into the bathroom and fumbled the ties of the hospital gown.
It slid off my neck and dropped on the floor in a puddle at my feet.
More scars on my chest, a pucker wound.
That didn't look self inflicted.
I shifted sideways. Whip scars, red, raised whelps and lines slowly healing. Purple mass of bruises turning green, blue and yellow.
And burn scars like tiger stripes.
I couldn't make them all out, they curled around out of my site. I twisted further just to see how far I could see.
Jeff stood in the door, the orderly at his back. He watched me twist, then smirked when I made eye contact.
"Be kind of hard to do those yourself, huh cowboy?"
He reached into the pocket of the white coat and pulled out a plastic tipped syringe. He used his thumb to flip the cap off. It clattered to the floor in front of them.
"Hold him."
Tony surged past him and took three steps forward.
In the spirit of my ancestors, the Scots have fought in kilts for centuries. That meant an army of free balling warriors running into battle.
Before that, the Picts who settled Ireland would fight in the nude.
It unnerved the enemy.
I called upon the ghosts of my warriors, let the orderly take one more step, then tried to kick him in the chin. By way of his groin.
It wasn't much of a fight.
It felt like squashing two small oranges in a sack.
It sounded like it too.
The man sucked in wind and collapsed. It couldn't even be called the fetal position because babies can't curl up that tight.
Guess he was free balling too under his white scrubs.
Jeffrey backed out of the bathroom, and tried to grab the door.
I hit it with my shoulder, slammed it out of his hand. He dropped the needle and pounded up the hallway.
I spent a half second deciding if I should pick it up, made a scoop for it and missed.
Then my feet slapped on the linoleum after him before he could reach another door and lock me in.
It was tough. I was weak. My muscles weren’t moving like I wanted them to, like I asked them to do.
My mind was in a fog, but it was burning away in a heat of rage that boiled up out of my gut.
Drugs, I thought. They drugged me.
The rage shot adrenaline through my system, and even though I was wobbly, like a foal in spring time, I felt better.
No, I felt mad.
Madder.
I lurched and shambled after Jeffrey.
If he got help, it was going to be a lot harder to get out of here.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I followed Jeffrey through the door and pulled up short.
Mags was waiting for me on the sidewalk, a half dozen Colonel’s at her back. They were armed, but so far nothing was pointed in my direction.
“Speak of the devil,” she drawled. “And look who shows up.”
Part of me wanted to cover up, but I’d left the hospital gown in the bathroom. I had no choice but to stand there flapping in the wind.
“They boy might have been running cause a naked man was chasing him,” Mags laughed. “But if you wanted to chase me some I might get caught.”
She winked.
There must have been some motion in it, something I didn’t see because the Colonel’s fanned out to either side of me.
Still no guns, but hands ready.
“You want to walk with me?”
“I don’t have a thing to wear.”
That made her laugh, but it was a mad sort of giggle, like Mags had lost her mind in the Kentucky bluegrass.
“Would you feel better in pants?”
“I’d feel dressed for bear with one of those rifles.”
She slapped a hand on her hip and giggled again.
“You must be trying out to be my next husband, because nothing is sexier than a naked man holding a gun, I swear.”
But she didn’t give me one.
Instead she nodded to one of the men on my right.
He took two steps in, pulled an emergency blanket out of his coveralls and tossed it to me.
I took my time unfolding the mylar blanket, and instead of draping it around my shoulders, wrapped it around my waist like a towel.
Or kilt.
A silver space age kilt.
Mags nodded in approval.
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
I fell in step with her, though there was distance between us. The Colonel’s packed in tight, this time rifles held ready in case I did something stupid I suppose.
I thought it was a bit of overkill, you know, drugged up guy wobbling along in a shining shimmery piece of plastic, but I guess they knew something about me.
“Where are my children?”
“They’re safe,” she said. “For now.”
Rage gurgled at the threat.
But I held it in check.
“I wonder what you were like before?” Mags pondered.
It seemed like a rhetorical question so I kept quiet.
“I was a Mom first, then I started my own business. I made wine in a vineyard a couple hundred miles from here. Can you believe that?”
I nodded.
I had no idea what a winemaker looked like, so her being one was as good as gold for me.
“Got any bottles left?”
“Sure,” she grinned and watched me from the corner of her eyes. “Got a whole basement full of them. After this is all over, you drop by for a bottle and I’ll give you your pick.”
“When what is all over?”
She led me from the courtyard between two wings of the building they called a hospital.
“This. The zombies.”
“You think it’s going to be over?”
“Sure I do. We all do. I’m on the Council here, and we’re waiting for the High Council to rescue us.”
I wasn’t sure what she was talking about.
I’d been from Florida to Arkansas and back, and hadn’t seen any sign of authority other than what little potentates were declaring themselves. I just assumed this compound was another one, and her wide eyes and temperament convinced me I wasn’t wrong.
Until now.
“I’ve been on my own for awhile,” I told her. “I haven’t been keeping up with the news.”
“No man is an island.”
That’s what she said.
Like she was reading it from a philosophy book or so
mething.
Her hazel eyes drilled into mine as she pretended to plumb my depths.
“We’re waiting here,” she said. “The Council has a role to keep our citizens safe until order can be restored.”
“That’s good,” I told her.
I wanted her on my side.
“But you’re a threat to our peace.”
“I’m not the one who kidnapped a little girl.”
“Rescued a teenager from a dangerous man.”
“I’m her father.”
“Genetics don’t make you any less dangerous,” she corrected me.
I bit my tongue. It was tough.
“You had her in some ill conceived plan to kill the walking dead and you set our forest on fire.”
Spittle flew off her lips as she pivoted and glared at me.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Killed a couple thousand Z. Moved a threat away from your precious camp. Left that same camp standing.
“I need to get into that facility.”
“Why?”
“It has information I need.”
“That facility is being cleared out by the Council now. Everything in it belongs to us. For the common good.”
“I just want some maps from the inside.”
“No.”
She said it with finality.
“No?”
“Did I stutter?”
Her eyes flashed and I could see the hint of insanity in them.
“Why did you drug me?”
“You’re a test.”
“A test?”
“A test.”
Was she going to tell me what kind of test?
“Are you testing my kids?”
The gurgle again, this time stronger. Something must have crossed my face because two of the Colonels lifted their rifles and aimed.
I held up my hands to show them it was cool.
“We don’t test children,” she said. “We rescue them.”
“They didn’t need saving.”
She sighed as if the weight of the world was on her meaty shoulders.
“You failed the test,” she said. “We’re turning you loose.”
Finally, some good news.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Mags led me to the amphitheater where we first met. The stands were empty now, except for a group of men who waited by the gate.
The gate led to the outside. I could see the forest beyond them as they pulled it open and stared at me.
