Blood Echo

by Rice, Christopher

  He smiles so broadly all of a sudden, Charley almost returns it on reflex. But it’s not that kind of smile, and she knows it.

  “I remember as they drove me, I spit out a tooth they’d knocked loose. Then they took me to a shed and . . . the rope. The rope was maybe the worst part because I could see the rope . . . on my wrists. They’d pressed me facedown on the floor, and my hands were out in front of me. The rest I could just hear and feel. But the rope I could see.” Again, he looks to Luke, to the bandaged evidence of his injuries, and it’s no longer any mystery to Charley why this memory’s come bubbling to the surface now. The platform, the limekiln, the woods. Brutal men who move like a single, hateful force. “It’s funny, how many porn stories there are on the internet about the type of thing that happened to me. But the thing they never get is that the people doing it to you are doing it because they’re sure it’s the worst possible thing they can do to another person. And you feel that in everything they do. When you scream, when you beg them to stop, they push harder. That’s the thing people don’t understand about rape. It’s the feeling of having hate, someone else’s hate, inside of you, and you try to gather every part of you into the space that’s left over, and the longer it goes on the space gets smaller and smaller.”

  After a long silence, Cole looks from Luke to her, and whatever expression’s on her face causes him to give her a sympathetic smile. As if he’s pitying her, when really it should be the other way around, she figures.

  “I realize at times I’ve made a deliberate effort for you to see me as less than human,” he says, “but believe me when I say I have my own reasons for wanting to see this drug do some good in the world. And you can also believe me when I say, I’m going to get everyone responsible for doing this to him. Everyone.”

  Before she can respond, he leaves the room.

  For a while, she and Marty just stare at each other, as if Cole Graydon’s humanity is a bitter pill neither one of them is ready to swallow.

  This time it’s a helicopter that wakes her.

  In the hallway, she moves to the window and sees a bright light appearing out of the night sky to the south, sweeping low over the black waters of Lake Patrick as it approaches the ranch. Cole’s helicopter; she’d recognize it anywhere. She took a fateful ride in the thing a few months before, and its details are emblazoned in her memory, from its retractable runners to its leather-padded passenger compartment.

  As she emerges onto the front porch, she finds Cole close to the front steps standing in a huddle with the younger security guy from last night and three black-clad men she doesn’t recognize. Cole has a new outfit on—a black T-shirt and jeans so similar to what his security guys are wearing she wouldn’t be surprised if they’re borrowed from one of them. Freshly showered, with no product in his hair, he looks startlingly boyish.

  When the group sees her, they fall silent. The new security team members retreat, headed in the direction of the helicopter, which is coming in for a landing just down the dirt road.

  Cole starts toward her. He doesn’t look as exhausted or dazed as he did earlier, but there’s an openness to his expression that startles her. As if he thinks they’ve shared something that makes them friends. And maybe they have.

  If the story’s true.

  “Are you leaving?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “And the less I know about where you’re going, the better.”

  “Probably. Is he still resting?” She nods. “Good. They’ll take good care of him. They’ll take good care of both of you.”

  Better care than you did, she thinks. He smiles as if he knows she’s thinking it and is grateful she didn’t say it out loud.

  “I’ll be back,” he says.

  When he turns for the helicopter, she calls out his name. He turns.

  “Why did you tell me? About what happened to you in Colorado. Did you want me to think we were the same?”

  “Oh, no. Not at all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re not the same. You’ve never been raped. You’ve never even been beaten or held down against your will. The one time someone broke into your house, you were able to knock him to the floor in ten seconds flat. And when you were abducted by Pemberton, it was by your own design, remember? You’ve had horrible things happen to you, no doubt. But they’re not the same as what happened to me. Or Luke. Or your mother. I mean, that’s Noah’s theory, isn’t it? That Zypraxon works in you because you haven’t undergone severe physical trauma. That the emotional shock of such trauma deformed the neural pathways in all our other test subjects, and that’s why they went lycan.”

  “It’s just a theory,” she says quietly.

  “We’ll see. The point is, I didn’t tell you what happened to me so that you’d think we were the same, because we’re not, Charlotte. We’re not the same at all. I told you so that you’d know I see you as something other than dollar signs. Or a subject. Or a project.”

  “And what do you see me as?”

  “Hope.” His smile strikes her as a little too cheery and forced. The raw and vulnerable person he’d been in Luke’s room a few hours before is being covered up again, piece by icy piece.

  “Did Noah know, back when he was Dylan?”

  The question startles the smile off his face. “He had his suspicions that there was some . . . trauma in my past, as he put it. He knew one of my front teeth isn’t real.”

  “And did he tell you that you could accept that what happened to you made you a better person without celebrating the people who’d done it to you?” Cole’s answer is in his shocked silence. “And is that how he got you to let down your guard and do things that maybe you shouldn’t have? Like swallow a strange new pill without stopping to Google it first? Or send four test subjects to die horrible deaths one after the other in some lab somewhere?”

  He doesn’t answer; she doesn’t need him to.

  “Then we’re the same,” she says.

  “Well, then,” he says quietly. “If it makes you hate me a little less . . .”

  She shrugs, and he laughs.

  He’s turned for the helicopter when she says, “Did you ever tell your father about what happened in Colorado?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he do?”

  There it is again, some flash of the authentic Cole, the one she met for the first time just a few hours before. She can’t tell if he’s studying her or coming to some sort of decision. Eventually, he looks to the dirt between them, then takes a few steps toward the porch.

  “I’m going to send you a package tomorrow,” he finally says quietly. “The contents will be familiar to you. And the instructions will be clear.”

  “Instructions or orders?” she asks.

  “Neither, really,” he says, smiling. “More like an invitation. For you and only you.”

  “An invitation where?”

  “I’m going to pay someone a visit,” he says, “and I’d like you to see how it goes.”

  TruGlass, she realizes. Apparently he’s planning to wear a pair, and he is going to give her a monitor and a code for it, just like the ones he sent her five months ago, before they’d ever met in person.

  When his helicopter rises into the air a few minutes later, the branches of the nearest trees dance in the downdraft, then the headlight swings south into the dark toward Altamira. Charley stays on the front porch, waiting until it’s out of sight completely so that she can pretend, just for a moment, that the ranch house behind her is a peaceful and ordinary one, and that the small town just to the south is once again only a tiny, forgotten little village in the middle of nowhere that waited patiently for her inevitable return.

  Then she goes back inside to be with the man she loves.

  41

  When Donald Clements hits the light switch in his dining room and sees Cole sitting at the head of his long hardwood table, he raises his Glock 17 in both hands. Cole smiles, holds up the fifteen rounds they removed from the
gun earlier that day while Donald was watering the lawn, and passes them to Scott Durham, who pockets them inside his jacket. Donald glances toward the front door, where he probably notices two more shadows blocking the nearest exist. Or maybe he’s looking to his alarm panel to wonder why it didn’t alert him to the presence of intruders.

  “Have a seat,” Cole says.

  It’s a peaceful, chilly night in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and there’s not so much as the sound of a car engine audible anywhere nearby. His breath making low growls in his throat, Donald starts for the other end of the table.

  Cole says, “No, no, closer,” and waves him forward.

  Donald releases the back of the chair and shuffles down the length of the table. His night clothes constitute a T-shirt with a design so laundry faded Cole can’t tell what it was in the first place and boxers that ride up his stout, hairy legs. Before he sits, he checks the chamber of his gun just to be sure Cole wasn’t bluffing. His worst fear confirmed, he sinks into the chair closest to Cole’s, sets the Glock on the table, and thrusts it across the wood as if it bit him. It thunks to the floor on the other side.

  Then, just as he’s been instructed, Scott sets an open beer bottle on the table in front of Cole. When Donald sees it, he laughs.

  “I guess we’re going to end up sharing a beer after all,” Cole says.

  “You could have called first.”

  “I did. Three days ago, remember?”

  “I meant before . . . this.”

  “I’m on a schedule. I needed to visit while I had time. I figured you’d understand.”

  “A schedule?”

  “I’ve got a lot of work to do. Your son’s made quite a mess.”

  Donald nods.

  “Where is he?” he asks. “I’ve been calling him for three days.”

  “You two speak a lot, do you?”

  “Where’s my son?”

  “I just want you to know, it’s possible I’m more sympathetic to your cause than you might realize.”

  “I don’t have a cause. Where’s my son?”

  “I don’t know if I believe that, Donald.”

  “I don’t know if I care.”

  “You were so protective of Jordy when I called you the other day.”

  “He’s my flesh and blood. What did you expect?”

  “Some business sense, perhaps. Some sense that even family has to be stopped before it endangers profit. Our contract, it’s heavily in my favor. I can stop the project and pay you only half of what you’re owed for the work you’ve already done. But for you, this tunnel isn’t about work. It not even about getting paid. It’s about something else, and whatever that is, your son’s so in the middle of it, there was no moving him, no matter what I wanted. So you can’t blame me for thinking his cause is also yours, Donald.”

  “And what cause would that be?”

  “Men like you. Men like Jordy. You’re being rendered irrelevant. It’s not your fault. You’re being automated out of existence. Today it’s drones replacing fighter pilots. Tomorrow it’ll be the soldiers, true American heroes like Jordy, who are replaced by . . . something. I don’t know what. Yet. But it’s coming. Look at the drilling machines you use now. The manpower and explosives they replace. These forces are unstoppable. We all know it, but only a few of us admit it. But what does this do to men like you? Men who made their living with their hands and found ways to master brute strength. Who relied on clear, fundamental beliefs. Men like you. Jordy. Mike Frasier. Manuel Lloya. Ralph Peters. Greg Burton. Bradley Kyle. Bertrand Davis. Tommy Grover.”

  With each name, a little more life seems to go out of Donald.

  “Milo Simms,” he adds, saving the worst for last. “Who did I miss, Donald? Did I miss anyone?”

  Cole’s never seen someone go quite as still as Donald Clements has gone in this moment. One arm’s resting on the table next to him, so it’s conceivable he might try to pick up the beer bottle and use it as a weapon if Cole doesn’t move it. But even when Donald’s not acting like a statue, the man seems to lack quick reflexes.

  “Where’s my son?” Donald Clements whispers.

  Cole reaches for the beer bottle, takes a slug, then sets it down a few inches closer to Donald than it was before.

  “This might not make much sense to you, Donald, but I’ve learned something recently. Something important.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Incredible things happen when a predictable monster stumbles into the middle of something he doesn’t understand.”

  “My son is not a monster,” Donald said quietly. “And neither am I.”

  “What are you, then?”

  “Faithful,” he whispers, but it’s the kind of whisper that sounds like the person’s just preserving their breath so they can spit in your face once they’re done.

  “I see. Who else shares in your particular faith?”

  “You think I don’t know how this ends? Why should I tell you anything?”

  “It’s what comes after this ends that you should worry about. Believe it or not, you do have a choice.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that? The choice between a Glock or a Luger?”

  “No, the choice between dying peacefully in your home of what will appear to be natural causes or being exposed to the world as the mastermind of a domestic terrorist network that planned persistent small-scale bomb attacks targeting places of value in communities they despised. In the first choice, you leave the world as a respected, but divorced, business and family man, distraught and perhaps stressed to the point of cardiac arrest by the car accident that killed your younger son.

  “In the second, the minute the story breaks that you were a terrorist mastermind, the press finds a way to worm its way into your mother’s assisted-living facility in Nashville and get the first garbled, incoherent statement they can out of her, which they will then edit into the sound bite they want for the story they’ve already written. And your other son, well, he’ll probably have to move his family out of Minneapolis, because it’s a big city and the exposure will be too much. He’ll also have to leave the insurance firm where he works. Maybe go into a business where he doesn’t constantly come into contact with people who recognize his last name. He’ll tell his wife that they’re just pulling the kids out of school for a little while. But a while will probably turn into a few months, then a year. Then homeschooling, if his wife can manage the stress of it. If she can manage the stress of being married to him at all after a year. Maybe less. This is all provided, of course, that no other members of your family were part of your insane plot. But don’t worry. I’ll find out for sure.”

  “Who are you?” Donald whispers.

  “You really should have asked that question before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before you brought this shit to my doorstep.”

  “Yeah, I can see that now.”

  “Your son and his friends did terrible things to people who are incredibly valuable to me.”

  “Who? Lacey? What are you, her billionaire faggot brother?”

  “You’ll never know, Donald.”

  The man’s sneer fades.

  “You want more names, is that it?” he asks.

  Cole nods.

  “They only made contact with four men. Their goal was twelve. But they had sit-downs with four. They met ’em through chat rooms. But they didn’t even have their targets yet. They were just testing them to see if they could be trusted. It was early. All of it, it was real early. So I don’t have their damn names because they never gave ’em to me. You can torture me all night long, I still won’t have ’em. As for all the guys you mentioned, sounds like you got the lot. Milo brought some of them to the table, Jordy brought the others. All the names you just said, I recognized.”

  For a while, Donald stares at the table.

  Cole glances at Scott to see if he believes the man’s statement; Scott’s curt nod says he does.

  “Well, Donald, it goes without saying th
at if that turns out not to be the case, no matter how things end tonight, the scenario I laid out for you a moment ago can still come to pass.”

  “If it goes without saying, then don’t fucking say it.”

  “A story, then.”

  “A story?”

  “Yes, it might answer the question you just asked me.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one about who I am.”

  Despite his furrowed brow and wild eyes, there’s no real strength to Donald’s glare. It’s a mask worn by a man who’s collapsing on the inside. His lower lip’s even started to tremble a little.

  “When I was thirteen, my father sent me to this wilderness camp in Colorado. He was trying to toughen me up. Make me less of a spoiled brat, I guess. Anyway, on the last day this counselor and I got in a fight. The details are not important. The point is, he was sick of my mouth, and I was sick of being made to do stuff that scared the shit out of me. So I took off running and believe it or not, nobody caught up with me. My plan was to walk back to the nearest town, call my dad, and get him to come take me home.

  “Then this beat-up old pickup truck came down the road next to me, and I think I stared a little too long at the boy in the passenger seat. He was real pretty, you see. So they pulled over suddenly, got out, and asked me if I needed help, and when I said no, they all came at me at once. The next thing I knew, they’d tied me up and thrown me in their truck. They took me to this shed in the middle of nowhere, and they raped me one after the other. Real rape, not movie rape. Not desire boiling over and not being able to hear the word no. The kind of rape where someone uses sex to inflict as much pain and humiliation as they can. I’d stared too long at that boy as they drove by, you see. That was my mistake. When they were done with me, they let me go. That was theirs.

  “I guess in their little world, they thought the shame of it would keep me silent. But when I finally got back to town I found a phone and I called my father and told him everything that happened. He got there as fast as he could. He even brought a doctor with him so I wouldn’t have to go to the hospital. They treated me in a hotel, took my blood so they could test for everything. And then, about the third day, I realized there’d been no police. I mean, I was being taken excellent care of. My father was there. Doctors were there. And I was fine to travel. We could leave, but we weren’t leaving, and yet no one had called the police.”