The Vines

by Shelley Nolden

  Finn listened for her footsteps but detected nothing.

  From the floor above came rodent-like skittering and squeaking.

  If he died here, he suspected his bones would be picked clean before he could rot away.

  Midafternoon

  rotten stench filled Finn’s nostrils, and he gagged. Expecting to see the isolation room shrouded in a green vapor, he opened his eyes. The verdant forest beyond the grate taunted him with its proximity. Clutching the metal, he gulped the breeze through the broken windowpanes. The smell had been only in his head. Yet the risk that she would gas him remained real.

  Again, he considered screaming for help. Soon he might cave to the impulse. For now, however, he still had the presence of mind to know it would be pointless—the only person near enough to hear him would be her.

  His gaze raked over the bolts that pinned the fence to the wall. If he could rip the barricade free, he would attempt the three-story drop. No doubt she’d hunt him down. He’d rather take his chances, slim as they were, than stay here, completely at her mercy.

  Finn yanked on the fencing, and his muscle fibers fired like a semiautomatic weapon.

  The grate barely rattled.

  He crouched in front of the locked, rusty access panel to the windows. Its blood-like smell hung thickly in the air. He wrenched the chain, and it scraped across the fence with a screech. Cringing, he glanced at the nurses’ window.

  So far, his efforts to escape hadn’t elicited her return. Either she knew he wouldn’t succeed or there’d been a development with his phone. If Lily had texted that she’d asked Kristian to check on him, the woman could be lying in wait for his brother now. Or the woman might have answered a call from Lily. Finn knew his girlfriend wouldn’t take shit from this woman, which wouldn’t improve the situation.

  Fucked. That’s what he was.

  If Kristian did arrive, maybe his dry, intellectual commentary would disarm her. Then again, he could be somewhat of an elitist. More than once, Finn had seen him turn his nose away from the smell and outstretched hand of a beggar as Finn was opening his wallet. Similarly, Kristian might look down on this vagrant, despite her poise, and she would sense his disdain.

  Finn rubbed his forehead. For all he knew, they’d already formed their opinions of each other. In which case, her hatred of his family suggested that it hadn’t gone well.

  If Finn and Kristian both died here, Sylvia would have only Rollie to care for her. And Lily wouldn’t have Finn there to keep her safe the next time she had an epileptic seizure, a latent side effect of the radiation to her brain.

  God, he missed her already. When they’d started dating, he’d thought it was so cool that she had zero interest in marriage. Two months later, she’d disclosed that her treatments had stolen her fertility. It had taken another three years for her to admit that she would never be ready, despite his reassurance that he was okay with not having children. In a tearful voice, she’d explained that she feared the arrival of a third cancer that would leave him a widower.

  Lately, she always seemed to be planning his “Life After Lily,” or LAL. While they were at a restaurant or on the subway, he’d catch her staring at another woman. When he pulled her attention back to him, she would make an offhanded comment such as, “Her nose is lovely. I bet she’s down-to-earth. You need someone like that.” Or, “The way she just wiped the rim of her wineglass: you wouldn’t have to worry about toothpaste marks in the sink.”

  Just thinking about the potentiality of LAL now made him ache.

  Exhaustion tugged at the edges of his brain. To stay awake, he knocked the back of his head against the fence and pictured his girlfriend in bed beside him. He imagined running his fingertips over her smooth skin, interrupted by cotton shorts and a tank top. She would be twirling a lock of her unruly hair, as black as the Mariana Trench. Too soon, she would try to slip away. At the last second, he would catch her ankle and pull her to him.

  With his head resting against the fence, Finn conjured the aroma that came home with her from work—tree sap and soil. He breathed in, and the smell of decaying drywall obliterated her scent.

  If he made it back to Brooklyn Heights, he would tell her all about his suspicions and this woman. Several times over the past week, he’d tried broaching the topic but had lost his nerve. Despite Lily’s reservations about marriage, he viewed her as part of his family. As a result, he didn’t want her to despise his father. But, if he really thought of her as family, didn’t that mean she had the right to know what he’d found? Absolutely.

  Finn wiped at the sweat on his brow. The heat dragged down his eyelids like lead weights, and he blinked to keep them open. A short nap would make him more alert later. He set the timer on his watch for thirty minutes and stretched out on his side, facing the door.

  Finn swatted his Timex to silence its chirping and sat upright.

  Across the room, a metal cafeteria tray winked in the sunlight.

  While he’d been sleeping, that door had opened. He’d missed his chance. Finn smacked the wall.

  He moved to study the tray’s contents—a plate of weeds, a tin cup with a brownish liquid, and—he clasped his hands—his moleskin sketchbook, marred by the puncture from her scalpel. The elastic loop still held his pencil.

  If she’d simply wanted him to mark the tunnel, she could have torn out the map on the first set of pages. Quite possibly she wanted to see what else he might draw.

  Finn set aside the book to examine the dark liquid. Assuming it was potable, she’d either brought with her clean water or had a desalination kit. If Rollie had somehow compelled her to stay here as he tested the impact of different chemical reagents on her immune system, access to clean water might be one of his manipulation tools. Finn raised the cup and frowned. Its herbal smell could be masking a poison.

  There were a million more satisfying ways she could snuff him out, Finn concluded, then took a sip. A bitter taste overwhelmed his mouth, so he quickly chugged the rest.

  Turning to the salad, Finn noticed chunks of meat perfectly cooked. It had been forty-four years since New York City had disconnected North Brother from its power grid. And the smoke from a campfire would have alerted the Harbor Unit to her presence. Maybe she had a portable generator or sun oven. He poked a piece of meat that looked like chicken but likely wasn’t.

  His stomach soured at the thought, but he needed the calories. He grabbed a strip and tore off a chunk with his teeth. It tasted surprisingly flavorful. He might as well try to savor this meal, considering it might be his last.

  The insides of Finn’s cheeks felt brittle. The fuzziness in his brain had returned an hour ago, along with a headache.

  Through the fence, he searched for a rustling treetop or burst of herons taking flight. Anything that might reveal her location.

  A few broken rooftops poked through the leafy canopy, like mountain peaks among the clouds. Lily would love to paint this scene. That’s how they’d met: at a studio while he’d been on a date with a fellow grad student more interested in her wine than her canvas. Before he’d even noticed Lily, standing before her oil painting, he’d fallen in love with her talent.

  He pictured her alone, pacing in their apartment, the mounting stress making her susceptible to a seizure.

  “It’s stunning, isn’t it?”

  His pulse quickened. Without turning, he knew the woman was standing beyond the observation window.

  “It’s crazy this is in the middle of the city,” he answered. “So much… green.”

  “I was referring to the Manhattan skyline.”

  “Really?” Finn was always planning Lily’s and his next escape from that jumble of strangers, concrete, and foul-smelling garbage. Yet, from this caged view, he had to admit it did look stunning. “At sunset, when the steel glows orange, sure, but it doesn’t compare to this place.”

  He shifted
his gaze from the buildings jutting from the forest to the ivy-draped structures near the docks. In the shallows off the southwestern shore: that’s where his great-grandmother and great-aunt had drowned.

  Each time he’d passed through those waters, he’d felt their presence. In his parents’ Long Island home hung opalotype portraits of Rolene and little Ingrid in a pinafore dress. As a child, Finn had been fascinated by their ghastly deaths.

  He made a mental note to add a cross to the shoreline on his map.

  Then he should sketch one of the distant high-rises for this woman. “Which is your favorite?” he asked loudly.

  “The nurses’ residence,” she said in a wistful tone, free of its earlier hostility.

  With renewed hope, he touched his compass. “I’d meant in the city.”

  “Oh, then the Astor Hotel.” She closed her eyes, and Finn guessed she was picturing it at the heart of Times Square.

  Considering that the landmark had been razed in the late 1960s, it was an odd choice. He pointed at the roof of the nurses’ home. “I can see why—”

  “No, he can’t. He can’t possibly.”

  Startled by her forcefulness, and that she’d referred to him in the third person, Finn spun to see if someone had joined her.

  Her attention fixed outward, she appeared to have been addressing the island itself.

  In the waning light, her sharp features looked softer. In her cerulean eyes, Finn detected sadness.

  Convinced that she hadn’t meant to reveal that emotion, he averted his gaze to her braided hair, tied off with a piece of vine. “I want to help you, but I can’t if you won’t tell me what’s going on here.”

  “You? Help me? Yeah right.” She backed away from the window and bumped into a counter, her head almost hitting the bottom of an empty hanging cupboard. It was the first clumsy move he’d seen her make. Her first sign of weakness.

  “My dad’s using you in his research, isn’t he?”

  Her eyes widened. “Your dad? You do look like him. But he’s never mentioned you. Why would he do that?” she asked herself, or the island. “Because he felt guilty,” she answered.

  Unsure how to interpret that, Finn wrinkled his nose. “He didn’t tell me about you, either.”

  “Your family always has loved secrets.” She coughed.

  His stomach twisted, but he had to know: “I found an old note that my mom had written to my dad. She wanted him to leave a woman alone, who’d suffered.” He stepped toward her. “If you’re that woman, and he’s still hurting you, I’ll make him stop, I swear.”

  She arched her eyebrows. “How noble.”

  “Not at all. Anyone faced with this same set of facts would do the same. My mom would have made sure he’d followed through if she could.”

  Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she lowered her head. “How is Sylvia?”

  Does she know about the Lyme? Finn wondered. “Hanging in there.”

  “Your father called,” she said, her expression hardening.

  Finn groaned at his bad luck. Rollie rarely called him during the workweek.

  “He was surprised, to say the least, when I answered. Naturally, he threatened me. So, I chuckled sinisterly.” She groaned. “That was an adverb. I really try not to use those. Great, I just used another. Anyway, I told him to be here at exactly two o’clock tonight. Your family always has been obsessed with punctuality.”

  Finn pictured Rollie methodically preparing for the trip, his worry, as well as his anger that Finn had defied him, completely bridled. “My dad claims he hasn’t set foot here since 2001. That’s not true, is it?”

  “His most recent visit was”—she looked upward—“two nights after I caught you peeping.”

  Furious, Finn balled his fists.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, smiling, “I didn’t mention you.”

  “Did he give you those scars?”

  “No.”

  “Has he harmed you in any way?” She rubbed her breastbone. “Yes.”

  The veins in Finn’s temples throbbed. “Let me go, and I’ll make sure he leaves you alone.”

  She laughed. “You really are clueless. I love that word, by the way, especially in this usage.”

  “That may have been the case, but I’m catching on pretty quickly, and I’m not going to let him hurt you again,” Finn said, trying to hide his anger. “There are shelters that can help you. I’ll find a good one.”

  “I can’t leave here, okay?”

  “I don’t see any chains.”

  “They call it VZ. The day it was injected was the worst of my life.” She looked past him. “It’s a weaponized pathogen. My own personal—what do you call it? Electric fence. It’ll kill me if I clear the shallows.”

  Speechless, Finn couldn’t believe Rollie had duped her with such a twisted subterfuge. Yet a part of him did. To keep Finn in his room at night when he was little, Rollie had told him the monster lived in the hall closet—not his bedroom’s. To compel Finn to get his chemistry grade up, Rollie had dangled a formula for a compound that would boost the muscle shakes Finn drank each night after baseball practice. Rollie always had been good at mind games.

  “So anyway,” she said as if they’d been discussing the weather, “I’ve got something for you.” She ducked out of sight, and Finn’s heart pounded.

  A moment later, a magazine protruded from the slot in his cell’s door. Grabbing it, he caught a whiff of antiseptic. He hadn’t imagined that smell earlier. The worn cover depicted a cowboy shooting a Native American. Embellished letters stated that this was number 1,004 in the Dime Library: “Buffalo Bill’s Death-Deal.”

  “I’ve got the full series,” she said, reappearing at the nurses’ window. “Each one cost me dearly.”

  “I can’t keep this.” Nor did he want to, given its glorification of the genocide of America’s indigenous peoples, though he sensed now was not the time to raise that issue.

  “It’s only to borrow, until Rollie arrives, when you’ll either die or scurry home.” She tossed her braid over her shoulder and turned toward the exit.

  “Wait.” He racked his brain for a way to keep their conversation going. “How’d you pull off that trick with the birds?”

  “I suppose there’s no harm in it,” she said, clearly not to him, and took a sip from her canteen bottle. “The raccoons love anything shiny. I knotted the foil wrapper from the Toblerone around the end of a rope. Then I strung the rope over a branch and tied its other end to a log.”

  As she described the rest of the mechanics, Finn thought his own death might occur in a similarly complex fashion. “Apparently physics is another of your strong suits.”

  “I do have a Rube Goldberg cartoon collection.”

  “I’d love to see it sometime.” It had sounded like a lame pickup line, whereas he simply wanted to give her another reason to keep him alive. “How do you move so fast in the treetops?”

  “Basically, I use a network of boards and branches.” She smiled shyly. “I stick to the treetops to stay clear of any vandals that make it ashore. Obviously, I dismantle the boards before each winter because if I didn’t, the park workers would notice them. Those months, I hunker down to stay warm. Each spring, I rebuild. Mostly I move around at night.”

  “Yet you shower after daybreak,” he blurted out. Embarrassed, his cheeks flushed.

  “That was reckless.” She bit her lip. “I used the fact that it was summer as an excuse to let down my guard. The only visitors during the nesting season shouldn’t be here and thus won’t report me. I have had a few run-ins. In most cases I was able to convince them I wasn’t alone.”

  Finn bit the inside of his cheek. He didn’t want to know what had happened to the others. Only through winning her trust would he stand a chance of getting home, he reminded himself. “Let me help you prep for the storm.”


  She rolled her head as if considering the offer.

  “Come to think of it, Kristian never mentioned you, either,” she said, glancing toward the window.

  “So, you do know my brother.”

  “Yes,” she said, staring into her right palm, “though I wish I didn’t.”

  The muscles in his chest tightened. Once free, Finn would confront Kristian. “He can be a little socially awkward, but he’s all right.”

  “What was he like,” she asked, clearing her throat, “when he was little?”

  “I wasn’t around then.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry.”

  “I know he was a curious kid, who loved taking things apart to see how they worked. His old toys came to me in bins full of pieces, which was fine by me. I liked putting them back together.”

  She hugged her middle. “Kristian’s a good man, to have helped those 9/11 survivors the way he did.”

  Finn cocked his head. He knew his brother had been working at the hospital that day, but he hadn’t mentioned treating any of the victims. If he had, he would have been too proud of that fact not to have shared it. “What do you mean?”

  “He told me what happened to those poor, trapped people after the aliens crashed their spaceships into the top floors. It’s terrible. I hope they never return.”

  Incredulous, he wagged his jaw. Although Kristian could be a smart-ass, disrespecting the 9/11 victims didn’t sound like him. Even more disconcerting: she hadn’t seen through his con, which meant she actually might have been living here since at least 2001.

  Quite possibly, Finn thought, balling his hands into fists, their discontinuation of the project had been nothing more than a brief pause. They could have used both Sylvia’s illness and SARS, which had killed almost eight hundred people during 2002 and 2003, as justification for furtively resuming their work. No longer could he believe anything they’d told him about this island and their research.

  “Yeah, those poor, trapped people.” He waved his hand at the dead-bolted door.