Stranger Things

by Gwenda Bond

  She closed her eyes and sank into the alarms. What a purposeful sound. Hard to ignore, loud and blaring, perfect for the job they’d been designed to do.

  Alice appreciated the elegance.

  Which meant she noticed immediately when they stopped. How long had passed? She didn’t know, but Dr. Parks returned with a sense of flustered distraction about her. What if Terry needed more time?

  “I want to see Dr. Brenner,” Alice said, the Bs and Cs dancing in her head. “I have something to tell him.”

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.” Dr. Parks frowned over her shoulder at the door. The orderly let himself in.

  “Go get Dr. Brenner,” Alice told him. “I have something to do. I need the electricity.”

  She’d forgotten to look at the clock. Terry had to have as much time as she needed.

  Every object in the room with a dial or a display pulsed accusingly at Alice. “Get Brenner,” she demanded.

  “Fine,” Dr. Parks said.

  The orderly left.

  Alice gestured toward the machine that featured in her nightmares. She’d always believed that machines were good, orderly, but had learned here something she should have known. Anything people made they’d figure out a way to inflict pain with.

  “Hook it up,” she told Dr. Parks.

  The doctor’s lips pursed and she shook her head. She muttered to herself, “Asking for electroshock therapy is not normal.”

  Dr. Brenner entered, annoyance pinching his face. “What?”

  “Give me the electricity and I’ll describe the monsters to you. I think…they’re real.”

  Interest chased away the irritation on his face. Dr. Parks finished attaching the wires to Alice. There was sympathy in her eyes.

  No, Alice thought, don’t feel sorry for me. I’m running you guys today.

  She braced for the surge through her, a charge like a battery, and she narrated what she saw. The glimpse of a hazy wood she’d walked through with her cousins. Then, a pack of dogs on many paws. The half-wild, half-tame dogs she’d grown up with around the garage. Maybe there wouldn’t be any monsters…But then they weren’t dogs, just like dogs with four legs. Snarling, snapping monsters, rainbow lights playing in the air around them.

  Alice opened her eyes to see if Dr. Brenner was still paying attention.

  “She remains fascinating,” he said. He obviously didn’t think the monsters were real. And he could be right. She still didn’t know. “I have to get back to my subject. I’ll expect a full report on anything else of interest today.”

  The effort it had taken to stay focused exhausted Alice. As Dr. Parks removed her connection to the machine, she dozed—or hoped she dozed, because she had pinwheel flashes of the electricity running through Terry instead of her. Electrodes on Terry’s temples, and a blurry figure Alice realized was Dr. Brenner standing by as Terry screamed and screamed and screamed.

  6.

  Gloria had come prepared to sneak out of her room and attempt to find a substantial stash of the lab’s drugs. But when she touched the doorknob and turned it, she found it locked. Even as the fire alarm screeched in panicked abandon.

  It’s not a real fire, she told herself, and counted how long it took them to remember to come for her.

  Ten minutes.

  Ten minutes in which she sat in her exam room coiling tighter and tighter with unease. By the time the easily fooled Dr. Green arrived, she half expected them all to get marched into a line and…She didn’t know what.

  He’d only informed her there was no actual fire. She hadn’t bothered to question the locked door.

  And at least she hadn’t come out of the day entirely empty-handed. She’d already decided to keep her wits about her, and so she’d pocketed her dose of acid and faked the high. She felt paranoid enough as it was. Dr. Green had noticed nothing amiss and had put her through the recitation paces. He really thought he was making some grand progress in showing how interrogation under the influence of drugs could be effective.

  So she had one dose to show for her efforts.

  Of course, none of them could say anything on the drive. Conversation had to wait. But by silent agreement they lingered at their cars in the parking lot until the van drove off, then left them and reconvened under the thin glow of security lamps.

  “First off, can we all give the man of the hour some applause?” Terry asked, keeping her tone light.

  Ken took a half bow, folding at the waist, and they applauded but no one’s heart was in it. Gloria thought that they all wanted to know if it had been worth the risk.

  “Well?” Alice rocked back and forth from her toes to her heels, vibrating with nerves. Gloria sympathized. “Did you find anything?”

  “I did,” Terry said. “But I still don’t know what it means.”

  “What was it?” Alice pressed.

  “I think they’re working with children. More than just Kali. But I can’t tell what kind of experiments.”

  Whatever they’d expected, it wasn’t that. Gloria’s hand went to her stomach, which felt sick. She remembered being locked in that room. She didn’t trust anyone there with children. “What did you find?”

  “Folders, like you said. For several kids in some experiment called Indigo. I didn’t have time to see if there were detailed notes in them. Just a few progress notations.” Terry stated this with grim determination. “I saw Kali again, too, but I wasn’t able to talk to her. She looked healthy. But…it seems clear there is something going on.”

  “We’ll find out what it is,” Alice said, her voice vibrating with the emotion in her promise.

  Terry asked Gloria, “How’d you do?”

  Gloria focused on Alice. “Can you teach me how to pick a lock?”

  Alice nodded, frowning. “Of course. The kind at the lab?”

  Gloria felt something relax at that. “They had me locked in when Ken’s alarm went off.”

  “Wow,” Ken said.

  “It wasn’t the best thing to discover,” Gloria said. “So I wasn’t able to get a jackpot, but I palmed my dose. I’ll try again next week.”

  “So we are going back?” Terry asked.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Gloria said. “Nothing’s changed.”

  “But at least we know where to look for evidence,” Terry said, putting a spin on it. “Alice’s code worked. I’m not giving up.”

  “None of us are,” Gloria said.

  “Shit,” Ken said as a swipe of headlights glanced over them.

  A van was making a circle. In the dark, Gloria couldn’t be sure. Was it the Hawkins van coming back?

  “We’d better go. Be safe, everyone,” Terry said.

  Alice hesitated. “Are you all right?” she asked Terry.

  “Just fine, don’t worry about me.”

  Alice nodded in a way that made Gloria curious about why she’d asked.

  7.

  Dr. Brenner entered the surveillance suite at eight thirty that night. The rows of listening stations were filled with busy staffers. The employee who’d called his office to summon him—as directed—got up and waved for Brenner to take his seat.

  “They’ve been talking for about five minutes,” the man said.

  He slid his headphones over Dr. Brenner’s ears, something Brenner could have done himself.

  He heard a woman’s voice he didn’t know asking questions he wasn’t interested in, but he’d wait. Eight had been in a tremendous sulk when he’d visited her room after the others left. A disconcerting day, in which he’d been sent this way and that way. He didn’t understand it all yet, but his gut told him something was off.

  His own subject Terry Ives had been found wandering the halls far from where he’d left her. She’d followed someone into a secu
re wing, far too close to Kali for comfort. The man Ken had reportedly experienced a seizure, but with no evident effects afterward to indicate he had. Brenner had gotten used to the startling mind of the mechanic townie, but today even she had made demands. The only non-problematic subject was the biologist, and the quiet delivery of information described during her session unsettled him too.

  He’d put in a request to monitor closely the phone lines at Ives’ dorm and the boyfriend’s house this evening. There’d been something about her innocent act when she returned to him he didn’t quite buy. Now he’d been summoned to hear a conversation with her sister in Larrabee.

  “Terry, you’ve hardly said a word, and you called me. What’s wrong? Is it Andrew? When does he find out?”

  “Tomorrow,” Terry said.

  “I wish he’d thought it through.”

  A slight crackle on the line.

  “He did. It mattered to him to take a stand.”

  “I don’t see why—he should keep his nose clean and be glad he’s here. He’s not going to end the war by wearing a mask into the cafeteria.”

  Terry’s annoyance came through in her reply. “Maybe not, but it’s better than doing nothing.”

  “That’s where we disagree.” The sister sighed. “You can’t afford to be selfish, either of you.”

  He’d heard all he needed to. He removed the headphones and handed them back as he stood. “Thank you. Keep listening to her.” He paused. “What’s the boyfriend’s name?”

  “Andrew Rich.”

  “Sir? I think we finally found it.” A new staffer had come in to hail him.

  The room adjoining the phone monitoring station housed the building’s video security feeds. Going through every hour of footage of Eight’s room since their arrival and logging all visitors had proved time-consuming, even with three men on it.

  He stopped in front of a paused monitor, which showed him another piece that went with the conversation he’d just heard. Theresa Ives sitting at a table with Eight. She wore a gown, so she’d managed to slip away.

  “When?” he asked.

  “Two weeks ago.”

  He’d underestimated her. He needed to get her back under control.

  The best way to do that was to distract her, give her bigger problems. He knew everything she cared about most, because she’d told him. The solution was obvious.

  “Good work, men,” he said and went back upstairs to his own office. Once there, he called his contact in D.C. The man who could make things happen. Dr. Brenner liked men who could make things happen.

  “I have a favor to ask. It’s about a young man named Andrew Rich.”

  8.

  Terry sat on the sofa waiting for Andrew. Dave waited with her. She’d rushed straight over after her last class, on edge about what the verdict would be.

  “It’ll be all right,” Dave said, for the third time. “They just gave me a slap on the wrist.”

  Dave’s parents had gotten an attorney friend of the family to contact the university on the boys’ behalf. They’d managed to talk away the criminal charges and—everyone hoped—any serious ones from the school. “An engaged student body that undertakes acts of civil disobedience should be encouraged in this day and age,” the argument had gone.

  Terry imagined that Dave’s parents had probably also written a big check to the school. Andrew’s family hadn’t been thrilled to find him in trouble again. They did not support civil disobedience, though they adored Andrew enough to forgive him anything. They had money but not the kind of money Dave had been born into. The third friend, Michael, had also gotten a pass.

  So Terry didn’t know why she was this nervous. Andrew would be fine. That made the most sense. Why didn’t her roiling stomach believe it? Maybe it was the argument she’d had with Becky the night before.

  Andrew opened the front door and came in. He went over to the kitchen to grab a beer. He returned and sat, then reclined so his head was on Terry’s lap. He looked up at her.

  “Hi,” he said. “This is a good view.”

  She almost smiled. “Thank you. But you’re killing us. What happened?”

  A blink. Andrew sat up and popped the top on the beer, took a sip. “I’m out.”

  Terry felt numb. “Wait, what? Out?”

  “They kicked you out?” Dave was shaking his head, shocked.

  “Please tell me you’re joking.” Her hands were shaking and she made an effort to still them.

  “I wish I was.” Andrew shrugged. “I knew this could happen. I’ll accept the consequences.”

  The consequences…

  “The draft lottery is coming up. Next week!” Terry knew she wasn’t helping by saying this, but the words were out before she could stop them. She saw Andrew in a soldier’s uniform. This couldn’t be happening.

  “I know,” Andrew said. “We’ll just have to hope this is my bad luck for now. I’m eligible to reapply in six months. I just have to hang on.”

  Dave had gone quieter than Terry had ever seen him. Six months was an eternity for a healthy person to stay home with a draft coming up.

  “You could go to Canada,” she said.

  “No,” Andrew said. “My family is here. My roots are here. I knew what I was doing. These are the consequences. I won’t be a traitor to my country.”

  Dave shook his head again. “It’s not fair, man. Maybe our lawyer could make some more calls…This is my fault.”

  “No,” Andrew said, “I made my own call.”

  A burst of pride filled Terry. The same pride she’d felt in the cafeteria when they’d run in to protest. But this was more. Andrew might have been spoiled. He might have had an easier time of it than her. But he had grown past that.

  “I love you,” she said, blurting it.

  Andrew smiled. A real smile. “I love you too, babe. See? This day’s not all bad.”

  But it was. Small victories barely mattered in such big wars.

  It was a very bad day.

  1.

  From a booth, clocked out, Terry watched through the window for the first hint of Alice’s muscle car. The second it appeared, Terry shot to her feet and waved goodbye to her coworkers. “See you guys tomorrow.”

  “Good luck to you and your old man!” the cook called back, a chorus echoed by the people in the dining room.

  “Thanks,” Terry said, soaking in every well-wish because it couldn’t hurt. She ran out to meet Alice and hopped in as soon as the car stopped.

  “Am I late?” Alice asked.

  “Right on time, as usual.” Terry had to smile.

  Alice had volunteered to pick up Terry after they both got off work. They were headed to Dave and Andrew’s to watch the televised lottery, which would determine the order that men would be drafted going forward. This wasn’t a true party, just a small gathering of friends. The occasion was too tense for celebration.

  “Gloria couldn’t come,” Alice said. “Her church is watching together.”

  “Did you ask Ken?”

  “No, but if he’s psychic he doesn’t need to watch, does he? Besides, he has a student deferment.” Alice guided the car back out to the highway. “How was work?”

  The two of them were making small talk. Of all the things. She’d never heard Alice make small talk before, which probably meant she’d only bother with people she truly liked or was comfortable with. Terry smiled again. “Busy. You?”

  Alice scrubbed a hand over a cheek that still had a touch of grease on it. “We had a tricky repair come in this morning and I fought with it all day. But it finally submitted to my charms.”

  Terry would never get used to the way Alice’s mind worked. “It learned what’s good for it.”

  “Yes, it did.” Alice turned off onto an un
familiar road—to Terry anyway. “A shortcut,” she explained. “It starts at eight?”

  “That’s what everyone’s saying.” Terry had been so worried all day, she might as well be having an out-of-body experience.

  “If it doesn’t go well,” Alice said, “I have family in Canada. Cousins I’m close with. Not that I’m saying Andrew’s a draft dodger or anything like that.”

  Terry snorted. “I wish he was. It was my first suggestion, but I think he’ll see it through, whatever the verdict.”

  “I suppose so.” Alice shook her head. “Men. Even the good ones make life difficult.”

  She said it with such conviction, Terry wanted to know everything about her sample size. But they were turning onto the apartment complex’s street already. That was a conversation for a different day.

  Alice parked and they got out. She pulled up her jacket sleeve and said, “Still five minutes.”

  They hurried on in silence anyway. When they reached the door, Alice went to knock at the same time Terry spun the knob. “We’re coming in!” Alice called.

  “Babe!” Andrew trotted over to drop a kiss on Terry’s cheek. He extended his hand to high-five Alice. Her palm met his with a smack. “Hey, kid sister! You two made it just in time.”

  He was putting on a good front. He had been since the verdict kicking him out of school. Job applications had gone out the next day, and he already had an interview for a night manager position at a local motel. But she could see the tightness around his lips, the hint of dark circles from waking at 3:00 a.m. and staring at the ceiling.

  “Men of armed services eligible age get couch seats. It’s a law,” Dave said.

  Stacey stopped fiddling with the TV to swipe a hand up at Terry and Alice.

  “So do their girlfriends,” Andrew informed Dave, and they sank into the couch. Alice took the seat beside Terry.

  “I think it’s coming on,” Andrew said. There was no hiding his nerves anymore. Terry put her hand over his.

  Stacey reached over to turn up the volume as CBS News cut in with an announcement saying Mayberry R.F.D. was being preempted by a report from anchor Roger Mudd, live at the Selective Service offices in D.C. An array of officials at desks and a large board were behind him. He announced that the first draft lottery to be held in twenty-seven years was beginning.