The Vines

by Shelley Nolden

  As he passed the nearest room, his flashlight beam landed on a rusted examining table at its center. Vines nearly covered its articulated panels and wheel crank for raising the footrest.

  “Keep moving!” Cora shouted from the entrance. “You’re at risk!”

  He could almost see bacteria crawling on the corrugated tiles and virus particles suspended in the dank air. Her paranoia was getting to him.

  Her concern could mean that she intended to let him leave, Finn reasoned. Unless she simply wanted to maintain her leverage.

  Watching for debris that could send him flying, he made his way down the hall. Through an open doorway, he spotted what might have been a laboratory. Another led to a room with rusting metal drawers: the morgue.

  In the stairwell, he climbed without touching the handrail.

  As he neared the top, her footsteps below echoed upward through the chamber and clashed with the wind, howling through the open door to the roof.

  Switching off his light, he stepped outside and wrenched off the mask. A gust battered his face, and he breathed in its refreshingly cold fury.

  Holding back his hair, he stared at the Manhattan skyline, glittering like a gemstone collection behind glass. Down that river, near the Brooklyn Bridge’s eastern tower, Lily had to be a complete wreck.

  Whenever her anxiety spiked, Finn would remind her of the statistical improbability of something terrible happening to one of them. The approach had never worked. Tonight she might be proven right.

  “Do you see the chain and open cuff?” Cora asked from within the stairwell. “Fasten it to your ankle.”

  Tethered to a stake, he’d be no better off than a stray dog about to be put down.

  He turned on his flashlight to quickly survey the rooftop. To his left, a scattering of bricks and wild grass surrounded a hole. With one of those blocks, he could knock her out.

  “Throw the flashlight over. Now.”

  Since it should withstand the fall, he dropped it over the side of the building where he’d entered and planned to exit.

  She cleared her throat menacingly, so he picked his way over to the manacles and pretended to snap the open ring around his ankle.

  Lightning sliced the sky, illuminating the two smokestacks across the road from the morgue. The top of the taller flue resembled a crown of thorns. It must have been struck, with the energy surge having thrown the topmost bricks here. His stomach churned. This was a stupid place to be during a storm.

  The hinges of the door squeaked, and he wheeled toward the noise.

  Cora stood with her gloved hands on her hips. “I didn’t hear a . . .” She inhaled sharply and adjusted her respirator. “Idiot. Put your mask back on.”

  His skin crawling with imagined microbes, Finn shoved the shield onto his face.

  “Your father had better listening skills when he was four.” She locked the door and stuffed the key ring into her shoulder bag. “I bet Sylvia used some sort of new-age parenting philosophy on you.” The corners of her eyes crinkled. “Ulrich absolutely detested her.”

  The way she spoke about him was eerie, considering he’d died when she’d been just a child.

  Her eyes narrowed. “The click.” She pointed at his ankle. “I need to hear it.”

  He groaned but fastened the cuff. The chain was tethered to a metal eyehook embedded in the asphalt roof. To test its strength, he took a subtle step back. The bolt didn’t budge.

  She huffed. “I got those cuffs from an escaped Rikers convict; you think I couldn’t handle securing that pin?”

  Finn appraised her bare biceps. “I wasn’t underestimating you; I was overestimating myself.”

  She sniffed—a weak attempt to conceal a chuckle—and sat with her back to the wall, the gaping hole between them.

  The sky sizzled and a bolt snaked down the lightning rod atop the Empire State Building. Almost instantaneously, a sharp crack followed the billion-volt electrical surge.

  Nonchalantly, he kicked a rock into the crevice. “Did you know it’s a myth that lightning always strikes the highest point? We’re—you’re—not safe here.”

  “Really? Then how do you explain that?” She pointed at the smokestack.

  “If there’s a tall object within the small area at the end of a stepped leader’s trajectory, that’s where it’ll hit. But when the discharge is initiated, miles above, it’s ‘blind’ to whatever’s on the ground.”

  “Interesting. I haven’t—hadn’t—learned anything new in years.”

  His pulse quickened. Maybe he could talk his way free.

  “You said you’re an architect?” she asked. “Not a doctor?”

  He shifted his feet, and the cuff jerked his ankle. “That’s right.”

  “Ulrich didn’t give your dad a choice, but I know Rollie would have picked medicine anyway. He loves to heal. I have to give him credit for that. The fact that you didn’t follow family tradition is surprising though. Unsettling, actually.”

  “How so?”

  “Every Gettler has a role to fill.”

  One of his father’s pet phrases, from her tongue, made him shiver. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Never mind.”

  By her clamped shut lips, he knew not to press her. To regain the casual tone their conversation had lost, he sat down. “I’ve always been fascinated by light waves and electrical currents.”

  Cora straightened. “Right,” she said to herself. “Ulrich would have approved of that.”

  “Hardly: I’m an exterior lighting designer.”

  “A what?” she asked, her brow furrowed.

  “Essentially, billionaires hire me to light their estates.”

  “Rollie’s okay with that?”

  “He thinks it’s a waste of my talent, but I fell into the opportunity through a friend. It pays better than civil work.”

  By the arching of her eyebrows, he knew she was intrigued.

  “This place could look amazing. Wherever I go, my brain automatically thinks about placement, voltage, lumens. I’ve already outlined a rough plan for this island in my head. Completely within the interior so that nothing would be visible to the patrols. And the lamps would be concealed. Once I’m back in my office, I can whip up a design in CAD.”

  He let the idea of his release linger.

  “There’s no power source.” She coughed softly. “It wouldn’t work.”

  He could tell by the yearning in her tone that she’d envisioned the effect.

  “They could be solar powered.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, her brow furrowed in frustration. She really had been living under a rock. Or, rather, on a rock. “We could wire photovoltaic cells—”

  She scrunched her nose. “Forget it. Your father’s on his way, and what I need from him is far more important than some pretty lights in the trees.”

  Pretending to feel slighted, Finn cast his eyes down.

  “That was mean. I’m sorry.”

  “You’ll let me go—unharmed—once my dad tells you about the tunnel?”

  “If he tells me. In this case, that subordinating conjunction is quite conditional.” She twisted to face a hole in the wall. “No sign of him yet.”

  “About that lightning: you shouldn’t be up here. It’s not safe.”

  “It won’t kill me.”

  “Statistically speaking, that’s true. But it could.”

  “No. It won’t.” She shifted to look at him. “Usually, during electrical storms, I climb the taller smokestack. You can’t see it, but I built a platform within its crown.”

  His eyes widened. “That’s ridiculous. No offense.”

  Cora sighed. “I can’t believe I have to explain this to a Gettler.” She drummed her fingers against her frayed khakis. “The lightning won’t kill me. Neither will any
other act of nature. Through all these years, the island’s kept me alive for a reason. Whatever greater force is at work here, it has a purpose for me. It’s given me a gift that someday will save countless others. If I die, the gift dies with me.”

  “Where I come from, that’s called a ‘Jesus complex.’”

  “Actually,” she said, clutching her necklace, “to the contrary, I know that I’m just another one of God’s children. I have to believe that He’ll reward my devotion by cleansing me. After the right virologists figure out how to use my blood to cure others.”

  Despite the madness of her claims, Finn had a sinking feeling that she was connected to his family’s research.

  If he gave any indication that he was aware of their mission, his chances of getting off this roof alive would plummet. He pointed at the jagged top of the flue. “Were you up there when it was struck?”

  She shook her head. “That day, it was your . . . But someday, once the right man—not a Gettler—has figured out how to harvest and replicate my antibodies, it will be me that lightning strikes.” She looked up. “Then I’ll see Maeve and my mother again, and meet my father.”

  “You think God will let you stroll through his pearly gates if you kill me?”

  She folded her hands. “There’ll be plenty of time to atone for that sin.” In the dim light from the city, her blue eyes looked like ice blocks.

  Reflexively, he pulled his knees to his chest, and the chain jangled. “If my dad didn’t give you those scars, then who did?”

  “The other men in your family.” She ran her finger across one of the displaced bricks. “By far, Rollie’s always been the kindest. But he, too, has used me. And treated me like I’m their property.” She rapped the brick against another, then tossed it aside. “I’m their human guinea pig. Did you know George Bernard Shaw coined that phrase?”

  “No, though it doesn’t surprise me. My mom’s a big fan.”

  “He’s one of my favorite writers,” Cora continued, “and not just because he was a vivisectionist.” Thunder crackled almost directly overhead, yet she didn’t flinch. “Unfortunately, that movement didn’t benefit me. For the past hundred and five years, four generations of your family have been experimenting on me.”

  Laughter erupted from his closed lips. The release felt good, so he let it flow until he had to catch his breath. “That’s impossible.”

  “I wish that were the case.”

  “There’s no way you’re that old.”

  “Thus, your family’s obsession.” She checked the spy hole behind her, then tilted her head from side to side, as if carrying on an internal debate.

  Fearful that whatever Rollie and Kristian had done to her had driven her mad, Finn waited for her attention to return to him.

  With a heavy sigh, she stood up.

  “I supposed it’s nothing he hasn’t already seen,” she said aloud but to herself—or the island.

  Her gloved hands shaking, she removed her scalpel pouch and messenger bag and set them beside her.

  “Please, don’t,” he begged.

  Facing away from him, she unbuttoned her pants and let them fall to her ankles.

  He ducked his chin, but his reaction hadn’t been fast enough: he’d already glimpsed pale, sinewy thighs below her tank-top hem. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You wanted proof,” she said, her voice muffled by her shirt as it passed over her head.

  This felt wrong, even more so than when he’d come upon her showering. Yet the awareness of this naked woman before him made his groin throb. He sensed that she wouldn’t redress until he’d looked, so he raised his gaze.

  She’d removed her tank top.

  Her torso resembled the scarred earth of a battlefield.

  Looking him square in the eyes, she touched her midsection. “Dr. Otto Gettler, pancreatic tissue removal, 1907.” Her hand moved upward. “Dr. Ulrich Gettler, lung tissue transplantation, 1950.” She fingered the base of her throat. “This one, too, Dr. Ulrich Gettler, thyroid tissue sample, 1982.”

  She ran her finger along a horizontal scar below her belly button. Trembling, she bit her knuckle and looked to the sky.

  If she started to cry, he didn’t know what he would do.

  Her attention snapped back to him, and she pointed to her lower lumbar. “Dr. Kristian Gettler, spinal tap, 2000.”

  Finn gasped.

  “Your father’s not aware of that one,” she said, arching her eyebrows. “Kristian bought my silence.”

  Blackness swallowed her; he thought he must have passed out. Then everything flashed white. Rumbling filled his ears, and he shook his head to clear his vision. She was pointing at a series of scars on her thigh. “Dr. Ulrich Gettler, bacterial battery, 1936.”

  His esophagus heaved, and he clamped his hand over the N-95. This had to be a sick nightmare. Maybe he was still asleep in the cell. No, he couldn’t have dreamed this up.

  “Put your clothes back on, please.”

  “Why? You can’t handle what your family’s done to me?”

  It can’t possibly be true. Yet the memory of one of Sylvia’s old poems suggested otherwise. As a teenager, he’d found it in her desk drawer. So disturbing, the verses had stayed with him. He’d asked her why she’d written about men hurting a scarred woman. Sylvia had answered that it was a metaphor relating to the women’s rights movement.

  Now Finn wished he could dismiss those stanzas as coincidence. The history she was describing didn’t jibe with an effort to generate and harvest “super” antibodies. Either she was lying about the source of those scars, or he knew far less about the true nature of his family’s work than he’d thought.

  Cora rotated ninety degrees, and he gaped at the silhouette of her body.

  “Dr. Ulrich Gettler,” she clawed at the patch of thick whip-mark scars on her back, “pain tolerance testing, 1959.”

  Feeling suffocated, he tore off the mask.

  She jerked up her pants, grabbed her top, and sprinted to the far wall. “The air I’ve breathed: it’s not safe for you.”

  Willing to do anything to appease her, he covered his face again.

  She began to put on her tank top, so he stared at the shackle around his ankle. He had to convince her that he was on her side, which would require playing along with her wild claims. “Why haven’t you flagged down one of the patrols?”

  She settled onto the ground. “The police would never believe my story. They’d haul me away, and as soon as we reached deeper water, I’d be dead. Shortly after that, so would they.”

  “Right. Because of VZ.”

  “And my seven other pests.”

  “Pests? Like rats?”

  “As in pestilences. I have to stay here because of them.” She wrapped her arms around her middle. “For whatever reason, they only turn on me when I leave this island. There’s a force here that keeps them dormant. I think it’s God, though it could be another spirit, an element in the air, magnetism in the rock, or something buried deep within the schist. Whatever the source, it’s real.”

  “I believe you,” he said, not sure that he did.

  “I used to love swimming, before the Slocum.” Cora briefly covered her eyes. “Those waves, crashing on the beach.” She motioned for him to listen. “They’re like prison bars that never stop clang—”

  She tensed, and he could tell she’d detected a foreign sound. Wondering if it was Rollie, he listened.

  Cora army-crawled to the wall and looked through a chink. “They’re here.”

  “They?”

  “I specifically told Rollie not to bring Kristian,” she said, scowling. “Let them see you.”

  Finn scrambled to his feet. “I’m up here!” He lunged toward the wall, and the chain jerked him back. Leaning forward, he caught sight of two figures in front of the physical plant, dressed in
black . . . bio hazmat gear.

  Holy shit.

  This was a hot zone. Crushing the respirator mask against his face, he backed as far away from Cora as the chain allowed.

  “Now you believe me,” she said with a sneer.

  His forehead burned, and the low, Queens skyline wavered.

  “Let him go!” Rollie yelled.

  Cora rose slightly from her crouched position. “Not a chance. He’s a Gettler.”

  “What do you want?” bellowed Kristian.

  “Where’s the tunnel?”

  “Slightly southeast of ‘Fuck you,’” Kristian replied.

  Shocked, Finn grunted with disgust. He’d never heard Kristian speak that way to anyone before, aside from when he and Finn were ribbing each other. “Dad, just do what she says.”

  “The mutt takes orders; she doesn’t give them,” Kristian said, and Rollie raised his hand to silence him.

  Appalled by this new side of Kristian, Finn strained to see his brother’s face behind his visor.

  “We think her antibodies can help your mom!” Rollie yelled.

  Had they succeeded in isolating the chemical reagent from the ruins? But then why would they need Cora’s antibodies if they could directly give Sylvia the immune system-boosting compound?

  Raindrops landed on Finn’s forehead. He wiped them away and looked at Cora questioningly.

  She grabbed a brick and tested its heft. “They’ve never been able to replicate this island’s effect on anyone else. So they want to use me. To find a cure for her Lyme.”

  A ringing sounded in Finn’s ears, and vertigo seized him. His mother lived with these same sensations. He spread his arms to steady himself. Could this woman hold the key to curing his mom? he wondered.

  Suddenly Cora seemed a lot less crazy and a hell of a lot more vulnerable.

  If she did possess special immunities, there might be some truth in her other claims as well. The fact that Rollie had kept her existence hidden from Finn certainly supported that possibility. A surge of pain shot from the pinched nerve in his neck. He shuffled closer to the wall. The whole thing was bizarre, and as even the slightest detail became plausible, Finn was feeling spooked. “What have you been doing to her?”