I’m still weeping with relief when Doctor Bragg shouts for Squint.
I am so relieved, I can’t concentrate. I hardly notice when the Doctor is standing in front of me again, giving orders to Squint. “Get her back to her room and feed her, please. I’ll be using the other one to acquire the specimens tomorrow.”
Although he’s planning to do to Eric what he did with that woman, I’m too relieved to think about it. I’m shaking and weeping when Squint shoves me back in my cage. For a long time, I can’t think of anything. I lay there for a long time, shuddering, trying to forget the sound of the woman groaning as the Doctor reached inside her body. I keep hearing it again and again until, somehow, I fall asleep.
83
I wake up to a metallic clatter. Squint has tossed a steel plate of food on the floor in front of me, beans and corn, it looks like. As I grab the food, I notice Squint is still looking at me, angrily somehow, as if I’ve misbehaved. As he backs away and shuts the iron bars, I ignore him and scuttle across the floor to put my back to the cement wall, next to Eric. Squint stares at me for a second, glares I should say, and then he rests on the bars and wipes his forehead, and I hear him mutter something there’s no need to repeat. Ignoring him as best I can, I eat the beans and corn with my fingers as the bastard couldn’t be bothered to bring me a spoon. Finally Squint pushes himself away from the bars and walks away, strangely unsteady on his feet. I have the feeling he’s drunk.
Eric is sitting in the corner with his legs stretch out and his arms lying placid in front of him. I realize the silence suddenly. The rain has stopped while I slept, and freed from the torture of his desire, Eric has slumped into the corner. As I study him, happy that he’s more relaxed, I imagine him on an operating table. I imagine Doctor Bragg standing near with a scalpel in his hand. When he makes the cut, Eric just goes, “Unh.” The whole scenario shoots through my consciousness like a flaming arrow before I can stop it. I shiver in revulsion and shake the evil image out of my head.
I look down at my food. I’m not finished, but I’ve completely lost my appetite. I put the plate down and hug my knees to my chest. Think, Birdie. Think. If you don’t figure a way out of this cage, that insane bastard is going to mutilate your Dad! Think!
“Hey!” I cry out suddenly. “Hey! Get me some water!”
Maybe it’s not a good idea to poke the drunken bear, but it’s all I got.
“Hey! Squint!” I shout. I get to my feet and grab the bars. Shouting is making me feel a little better. “Get me some water!” A moment passes in silence. Eric sits in ignorant bliss on the concrete floor. “Squint!” I shout from the bottom of my lungs. I take a deep breath to yell again when I hear a door flung violently open. Squint comes striding toward me, thunderously angry. He’s carrying an iron bar. I leap away from the door just in time. Squint hits the door with the iron bar, making hideously loud sound and causing sparks to leap away. For an instant, in the light of the sparks, I see Squint’s face contorted in rage.
“What’d you call me?” he hisses. He presses his face between the bars of the door. “What did you call me, you little bitch!” he cries. Now that I see him up close, I notice that he’s sweating, and his eyes are bloodshot. He’s not drunk, I realize. He’s got the Worm.
“I want some water,” I say in a small voice, keeping my back to the concrete.
“What?” he asks. He blinks. His face is still pressed between the iron bars, making his eyes strangely slitted.
“Water,” I say timidly. “So I can feed Eric.”
“Eric?” Squint asks, confused. He pulls his face free of the bars. “Who’s Eric?”
I point down next to me.
“Oh,” he says. He blinks stupidly, looking first at Eric and then over to me. His milky eye seems to roam all around the cell. I see tiny tracks of pinkish tears running from his eyes. My heart races.
“Why don’t you rest?” I suggest to him in a kind voice. “You look tired. You must work hard.”
“I do work hard,” he agrees. He’s uncertain on his feet. “If it wasn’t for me. . .” He lifts his hand like he’s going to continue, but instead he drops the iron bar. It clatters loudly on the concrete. He sways like a tree in the wind.
“Just rest,” I tell him. “Just rest for a little while.” I creep out of the shadows toward the door. “You deserve it,” I say to him soothingly. “You do all the work.”
He swivels his head toward me and looks angry again. “I do,” he insists. He closes his eyes and then one hand comes out and holds onto the bar. He bends over and his knees shake. “I just,” he says. Then he stumbles back a few steps before he falls to his knees, opens his mouth and vomits a black mess on the floor. Then he collapses face first into it, smearing the vomit across the floor as he stretches away. I stand very still, listening to see if there’s anyone coming, but it’s all silent.
My heart races. This is my chance.
There won’t be another.
84
I reach my hand out between the bars, but I can’t reach Squint’s body. The son of a bitch collapsed just outside of my reach. No matter how hard I stretch, I can’t reach him. I even try with my legs, hoping I can hook a leg around him and drag him closer, but I can’t get to him. Squint’s breathing is ragged and I can feel the heat coming off his body. The Worm is shooting through him fast. In just the few minutes that I’ve been trying to get to him, his eyes have already started to bleed more. For some people, it hits this fast. He’ll either be dead in a few hours, or Doctor Bragg will have a new specimen to work with. I reach out of the bars and groan with the effort, but I can’t get to him. If I just had another couple inches of reach, I could grab him. Just a few inches!
I look over to Eric. I peer with envy at his long, strong arms. But Eric isn’t a puppet. I rack my brain, but I can’t think of a way to get Eric to help me. After the first hour I get desperate, and I pull Eric up from his sitting position and lead him to the barred door. I point toward Squint and say, “Water! Look Eric, get some water!”
I don’t know why I think that might work, but it doesn’t. Eric just stands at the barred door. Eventually he pushes one side of his face into a bar, and says, “Unh.” I look at his bandaged eyes for a second then sigh.
“Yeah, okay, Eric,” I say. I lead him back to the wall and lean him against it. He stands there, drooling a black puddle on the cement floor. “It’s not your fault,” I tell him.
I turn back to Squint’s body and think desperately. At some point, someone is going to come and find him. They will drag him away and my only chance to escape with Eric will be lost. The both of us will end up in the Doctor’s experiments. I remember the wriggling maggots filling up in the plastic tube. In desperation, I get down on the floor and reach out with my arm as far as I can. I push my shoulder against the bars so hard, I’m afraid something might break, but it’s no use. I finally give up and sit down in the corner of the room, rubbing my shoulder.
Time passes. Any moment I expect one of the others to come in and put an end to all my hope. But no one comes. I stare at Squint, listen to his haggard breathing which has gone shallow and rapid. I study the blood dripping from his eyes, watch it grow darker until, after an hour so, the corners of his eyes are almost black, even the milky, dead one. Squint’s body just lays there, taunting me. I can almost feel the little brass key that opens the padlock to my door in the front pocket of his shirt. I can feel it pressing into the cement floor. Or at least I imagine I can. It’s so tantalizingly near.
In the time that passes, I imagine what I would do if I had the key. How I would get Eric out of the warehouse. How I would sneak out to the forest. How I would push and prod and drag Eric into the forest, find some hole or cave to crawl into, and hide for days. I groan in frustration.
“Unh,” Eric says on the floor.
“I’m trying,” I tell him.
“Mergh.”
“Quiet,” I say. “I’m thinking.”
“Mergh.”
Suddenly I realize the sound isn’t coming from Eric. I creep forward.
Squint is getting up, rising from a puddle of vomit and mucus. I watch as he picks himself up, strands of black mucus stretching from his face. He stands, his jaw grinding back and forth, his eyes dripping black blood.
“Mergh,” he says.
85
“Come on,” I say to him. “Come on, Squint, you ugly bastard, come here.”
Squint just stands there, his back hunched. He’s looking at the back wall behind me, or seems to be. He doesn’t move.
I wave my arms at him and jump up and down. I pull Eric to his feet and wave his arms up and down, hoping Squint will come to his own kind, I guess. I kick at the door, making it rattle. I even sing him a song. Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s doors, I sing. Knock knock knockin’ on heaven’s doors. But Squint doesn’t move. He doesn’t do anything.
Only sometimes he goes, “Mergh.” And that’s it. He stands there steadily, hunched forward like a gorilla, dark drool running from the corners of his mouth. The Worms have started to come out of the corner of his eyes too. I can see them waving there.
To make matters more frustrating, I can now see the key to my cage. One end is hooked on his front pocket. I can see the outline of the rest in his plaid, puke-covered shirt.
I’ve tried everything and I can’t get Squint to make that one, that one little step toward me. That’s all I need. One lousy little step! I could pull him toward the bars, get the key, open up the door and Eric and I would be gone. Gone! But the only thing that gets the attention of these things is water, and I don’t have a single drop of it. I’m so dry that I can even muster up any spit. I pace the cell, knowing that at any second, someone else could come, and that would be the end of us. Think, Birdie. Think!
I stop suddenly. I rush over to Eric and turn him so he’s facing the wall. Then I rip two long strips of cloth from his drooly towel and carefully stuff his ears with them. Finally, I take off Eric’s shirt and wrap it around his head, hoping he can’t hear a thing.
Ready at last, I go to the back of the cell and pull down my pants. I squat in the shadows of the corner and concentrate. “Come on, come on,” I mutter. Just when I think I won’t be able to, I begin to pee.
It makes the wet, splashing sound on the cement that I hoped for.
Immediately, Squint picks up his head. “Mergh!” he says through his clenched jaw.
I really let it fly. It sounds like there’s a waterfall in here. Excitedly, I watch Squint step one, two, three times until he comes to a stop right against the bars! “Mergh! Mergh!” he groans, his arms reaching inside toward me.
“Gross,” I answer, and then, done peeing, I pull up my pants and run toward Squint. I duck under his grasping arm and then reach into his front pocket.
The key!
“Unh,” says Eric at the back of the cell.
“Let’s not ever talk about what just happened,” I say to him, and then I shove Squint back roughly and fumble for the padlock. Squint just stands there like nothing happened. The key fits and the door opens forward! I race to the back of the cell and unfurl Eric’s shirt from his head, pulling it on him as quick as I can, trying to ignore the disgusting black stains in his t-shirt underneath. The feeling of grabbing Eric and leading him through the cell door is so gratifying that I laugh out loud and notice that I’m crying too, silent tears. I wipe my eyes and sniff and then I carefully lead Squint into the cage before I shut the door behind him.
“Have fun with the Doctor,” I say before I drop the key to the floor.
But we’re not free yet.
86
I’m about to leave with Eric when I remember the little girl and the woman. I stand there, indecisive. I breathe and think. Down the hall, I see the solid metal doors, and behind some of them, I imagine, are prisoners, all risking the same fate that I so narrowly avoided. Every moment I stand there, I know I’m risking being caught. I think about Doctor Bragg and his experiments. Can I leave them to be infected and then slit open and studied while they’re still alive? I look up at Eric and wish he could tell me what to do. He stands there senselessly, his jaw open. Suddenly, I know what Eric would do.
“Stay here,” I say to Eric needlessly.
I move down to the other doors. Unlike my door, they are not locked, only latched from the outside. I begin to open them up one by one, without seeing if there’s anyone in them. I don’t know why, but I don’t want to see their faces. I just want to give them this chance. That’s what I can give them. That’s what I can offer. It’s not much, but I can’t do more. I hear some rustling in a couple of the cells, but I don’t stay to see. I rush back down the hall and grab Eric. I thought I would feel good about opening the doors, but I don’t. I feel as if there is more that I can do, if I was just brave enough. I can’t think about it right now. I can’t.
There are only two doors out of this area: one leads back through the labyrinth of hallways and doors in the warehouse. I remember that area but only vaguely. The thought of wandering through all those hallways while at any moment someone could come around a corner feels hopeless to me. Even if we did move through that maze, the door opens up to a main street that runs through the town. I remember all those filthy, scarred faces jeering at us when we arrived. We can’t go that way. The other option is not much better. When I was strapped down in Dr. Bragg’s chair, I noticed another door, the door in the corner. It might lead outside. It’s a big gamble, but I feel it’s the only choice I have.
I turn away from the hallway and lead Eric back, pass our prison cell. I notice for a moment that Squint is standing where I left him facing the wall, his right arm held out and dangling strangely from the elbow. He looks like a scarecrow. I turn away and nudge Eric toward the first door. Without the pounding rain, everything seems quiet now, still and dangerous. I move through the little hallway, listening to Eric shuffle loudly. Before I’m ready for it, I’m standing in front of the door to Doctor Bragg’s laboratory, breathing as hard as I had last time I was here. I can’t believe that I’m going to go back in there. By choice. I clench my hand to keep from shaking. It’s my best choice, I tell myself. It’s our best chance of getting out of this hell alive. I turn Eric’s to the wall, knowing he can’t sneak or be quiet. I have to go myself to make sure the way is clear. Then I’ll come back for him.
I reach out and push the handle slowly.
The door opens and a draft blows in the foulness of corpses and Worms.
I tremble and then crouch down. My heart thunders and my vision blurs.
Leaving Eric at the door, I crawl inside.
87
The laboratory is dark this time, lit only by a single lamp on a bench at the far end of the room. It’s soundless and there’s a suffocating stench of chemicals in the room that is so strong, I’m surprised it can’t be seen like a smog.
I crawl forward, quiet as a cat on the prowl. When I was bound in the metal chair, I couldn’t see behind me. Now I see there’s two rows of stainless steel shelves here, filled with jars and cans and all kinds of implements that I’m not going to think about. For a second, I wonder if I could burn the place down. I’d love to see it go up in flames, turning all this insanity and perversity to ashes, but I’m not sure if I could get out with Eric safely. It seems suicidal. Still the thought of seeing this place caught in a fiery blaze is a powerful temptation.
I inch low across the floor toward the door at the opposite end, listening carefully. I’m relieved to find that I’m alone. I stand up carefully into a crouch and creep forward, searching for the outlines of the door ahead of me. As I approach the end of the shelves, in the wall ahead of me, I see what I’ve been looking for: the door. The sight makes my heart skip, and I step carefully forward. I put my hand on the handle and push, opening the door, but only the barest sliver. Immediately I smell fresh air. I peer out through the crack of the door with one eye.
The moon is bright and large. I see in front of me doz
ens of rusted automobiles and trucks, like a junkyard. A path runs to the front of the warehouse. My heart thumping in me, I open the door and stick my head out, looking behind the warehouse. I see a large, rusting tank with a wood furnace underneath it. Gray smoke pours out a long tin stovepipe. I don’t know how it works, but that must be where the good Doctor gets the power for his laboratory.
Then I hear the river. The roaring sound comes up from past the steam engine tank, down a banking. I guess there’s a river down there. It’s what we need. A way to escape. I duck back inside and make my way back to Eric. I just have to get him through the laboratory, down the bank, and we can cross the river and get away. It will be easy leading him toward water. Eric’s standing with his face against the wall. When I grab him, he pivots and then walks directly into the open door, causing an echoing crash to pulse through the hallways.
“Unh!” he grunts.
I wait, counting heartbeats. No sounds. “Damn it, Eric,” I hiss. “Be careful!”
I maneuver him more carefully through the door and then down the hallway of shelves. He’s walking strangely again. He keeps shooting out his right arm. I have to keep pushing it down as he walks forward, in case he hits one of those horrible glass jars and brings it crashing to the floor. Then he takes a few steps and shoots it out again. I’m thinking to myself why now?! as we make our way down the long hallway toward the door when I hear a clattering. I push my knees behind Eric’s knees and drag him to the ground as the door opens loudly behind us.
I put my hand over his mouth and press firmly, hoping he doesn’t react by biting me.
He doesn’t. I lay beneath him, holding his mouth, as I listen to footsteps on the concrete. I look through the shelves and see shoes. Not boots, but shoes, leather shoes, polished, hardly dirty. Then the shoes walk away from me.
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