by T. H. Moore
By now, Charles was ankle-deep in mud. The brush clawed at his body as he ran. One of the cars pursued him, its dancing headlights making it difficult to see. He heard doors slam and angry dogs barking. He stopped and rolled in the mud in the hopes of camouflaging his skin and scent before moving deeper into the forest.
Behind him, the men had flashlights. The bright beams flashed and zagged over the ground around Charles. He heard the frenzy in the dogs’ calls as they crashed through brush. The thought of being shredded alive in the powerful beasts’ jaws propelled his legs forward.
“I see him!” one of the men yelled. “Go get him, boy!”
The tracker freed the dogs, who rushed at Charles, devouring his head start in seconds. Charles pulled out the semiautomatic handgun he had just swiped from the soldier and readied himself. The flashlights bounced closer, the hounds a mere twenty-five feet away, close enough that Charles could see their tongues flapping in the air as if they could already taste his salted flesh and hot blood.
One of the dogs leapt and arced through the air, teeth bared and fur standing on end. Charles dropped to one knee and lined up the single dot on the nozzle of the handgun at the middle mass of the dog. He held his breath and stilled his body. A double tap of the trigger killed the canine midflight.
The dead dog’s momentum sent it toppling into Charles, throwing him off his aim just long enough for the second dog to take hold of his arm. Charles absorbed the bite and weight of the dog as he rolled onto his back. While the beast tore at his flesh, Charles planted the barrel of the gun into the dog’s ribs.
At the sound of the gunshots, the two men stopped their pursuit. Charles rolled the dead animal off and jumped back onto his feet. His body was alive with savage fury. He locked eyes with the two trackers. They looked at each other, and then back to where Charles had been standing, but he had slipped into the dark night.
“That son of a bitch shot our dogs!” the fatter of the two trackers shrieked.
“How in the hell did he get a weapon?” the other tracker wondered aloud.
Charles took advantage of the stymied trackers and ducked behind a tree.
He heard a sharp chirping noise uncommon to any forest breaking through the night. “Isaac! I’m hit! That dog killing bastard shot me!” The fat tracker yelled out. Charles peered from around the tree and saw the man’s neck snap violently to the side. A red mist sprayed into the air, and his body fell onto the dead dogs. Charles looked around for the source of the shooter.
Chirp! Chirp!
Two shots found their mark in the chest of the remaining tracker. Charles crouched lower against the tree. The sounds of crunching brush were getting louder, but he could see nothing. A red, pulsating beam of light illuminated the woods just enough that Charles could make out a large, Greer-shaped figure holding a rifle equipped with a silencer.
When Greer reached the dead men, he knelt to inspect their bodies and examine the ground before looking in Charles’s direction.
Startled by the man’s acumen, Charles retreated deeper into the woods, careful to swerve through trees to prevent Greer from getting a clear shot. He paused to listen but heard no sounds of pursuit. He looked down to see a beam of light dancing across his chest. Charles dove to the ground, but he was too late. A bullet cut through the foliage and grazed his thigh.
Pain exploded from his leg. Charles reached for his gun with his right hand and clutched his newest wound with his left. At every crackle, he shifted his gun but saw nothing. He felt desperate, hunted.
The next chirp, a close-range shot, launched Charles’s gun from his hand and shattered it.
Greer appeared from behind a tree and pulled off his night vision goggles. He pointed the sniper rifle at Charles’s face. Then he grinned and said, “The last man I hunted was much better game than you.”
Chapter 5
“STAND CLEAR OF THE GATE!” a prison guard yelled from the end of the cellblock. “Close number four!”
The steel bars slid shut, locking Charles in a room surrounded by cement walls and outfitted with nothing more than a cot, a stained sink, and a stainless-steel toilet backed up with yellow water, feces, and a bloated, floating rodent.
“I’m guessing there’s no turndown service,” Charles said before sitting on the unmade bed.
A flurry of water bugs and roaches scurried out from beneath the thin, brown cover. Charles pulled the sheet from the bed to find dead roaches scattered on top of the bare mattress.
He closed his eyes and conjured up a memory of his last bedroom escapade, snorting cocaine from the smooth-skinned backs of four fourteen-year-olds and later, their soft bodies floating around him in the infinity pool like moths.
He opened his eyes at the sound of a deep voice.
“Are the accommodations not to your satisfaction, inmate?” said a well-groomed man in a tailored three-piece suit. Next to him, a prisoner with the word Trustee printed on the front of his uniform pushed a wooden cart bearing a single food tray and a bottle of water.
“You must be the warden,” Charles said.
“Perceptive of you,” the warden said.
“And that’s for me?” Charles asked, eyeing the tray.
“Correct again. But before you dine, we need to discuss a few things. I know you haven’t eaten since your capture yesterday, so I’ll be as brief as possible. This officer”—he tilted his head toward the guard that stood beside him—“will be posted outside of your cell until he is relieved by another. They’re here to make sure you don’t harm yourself. If there is anything you require, notify the officer. He will attend to your request.”
The trustee lifted the cover from the tray to reveal Salisbury steak, mixed vegetables, and mashed potatoes and gravy. Charles stared at the food and salivated.
“You will respond when the warden addresses you, prisoner!” the guard shouted, breaking Charles’s trance.
“Did you understand my instructions, prisoner?” the warden repeated.
“Yes, Warden,” Charles responded. “I understood everything.” He smiled.
The warden motioned for the trustee to serve the food to Charles. He slid the tray through a waist-high opening in the barred door. Charles grabbed the spoon and began shoveling meat into his mouth before the tray had fully slid through.
“Savor this meal,” the guard said. “You’ll never see another like it in Katingal.”
The warden continued his speech. “An in-house physician will assess your health and mental wellbeing for your prison file. But don’t get any ideas that we care about you. Your medical information helps forecast the average life expectancy of exiled inmates.
“She also will place a computer chip the size of a postage stamp into the base of your skull. This chip serves as an alert mechanism when scanned by United Nations border control security devices stationed at all major border crossings, airports, and train and bus stations. If you try to escape, the chip will transmit your location and other subsequent data to WICC. Officially we call this the Katigal pre-entrance procedure, or KPP, for exiled prisoners, but I find it a formality. No one has escaped Katingal. Should you try, we’ll know where you are and authorize local authorities to execute you on sight. Should you have a moment of clarity and surrender, we will thank you for making it easy for us, and then you’ll be executed on sight.”
“You enjoy this, Warden,” Charles said. “Talking to people as if they are guinea pigs. But you’re no different from me, are you?”
“We are nothing alike,” the warden snapped back. “I mourn the children, the disappeared, and those so mentally mutilated that their parents no longer recognize them. In the early days of this program, we tried to rehabilitate human garbage like you. We tried to maintain peace and fairness in the spirit of those who founded the Garden of Eden. But you are beyond humanity, beyond repair, slobbering over child pornography when you were bare
ly out of childhood yourself. That was your first mistake.”
Charles started to respond, but the warden lifted his hand.
“Your routine for the next few weeks will be as follows. At seven a.m. you’ll have five minutes to shower. Food will be brought to your cell three times a day. At midday, you will be released for one hour in a segregated yard space for exercise. Then you will return to your cell and remain there until the next morning. Do you understand?”
Charles shrugged, and the warden continued.
“In a moment, a detail of correctional officers will escort you to have your KPP administered.”
Charles scraped his plate clean and downed the contents of his water bottle. “No one’s putting a chip in me.” Charles said before losing his balance and slumping back onto the bed.
The warden laughed. “We’ve been performing this procedure for over a decade now. You think this fine meal was for your enjoyment? I’ve been talking only to allow enough time for the sedative in your food and water to take effect.”
Chapter 6
THE CREAKY WHEEL OF THE metal gurney woke Charles from his forced slumber. He blinked, trying to focus until he was able to make out the hazy figure of a tall, thin woman walking beside him, reading a medical chart. Dressed in medical scrubs, she appeared to be a doctor. Charles raised his heavy head enough to see a sign that read Surgical #1 above a double-door.
At first the room was full of doctors and orderlies in scrubs and surgical masks. Some were wheeling in devices, monitors, and shiny surgical tools. He bristled, his body recalling the pain of his interrogation in the cottage basement.
When two large men in white, sterile clothing approached the gurney, everyone else left the room. One removed a key from the pocket of his gown.
“We’re correctional officers,” the burly man explained. “When we unlock you, you will step down from the gurney and we’ll lay you face down on the surgical table and fit your face into the open space at the head of the table. Once you’ve done that, we will again place restraints on you that will prevent you from moving off the table. Do you understand my instructions?”
“Yes, I understand,” Charles slurred.
“Be warned. If you attempt to resist, we’re authorized to execute you on the spot.”
Charles paused for a moment to weigh his options.
“I’ll ask you again, inmate,” the correctional officer said. “Charles Gravo, do you understand my instructions?”
“Yes, I understand,” Charles answered, his innate will to survive winning out over his more natural impulse to attempt flight.
The two men unlocked him and moved efficiently to position him before placing heavy restraints across the upper, middle, and lower parts of his body.
Moments later, Charles heard the doctors and nurses return to the room. He stared at the white squares of tile and watched as a mix of footwear moved in and out of his line of sight. He lay quiet, still groggy from the sedative.
Then a new set of feet draped in blue, sterile, protective footwear came into his view. She spoke with a calm, no-nonsense voice.
“Hello, Charles. I’m your surgeon, Dr. Peña. The nurse will give you a sedative to calm you before the full anesthesia.”
“No,” Charles protested. “No more sedatives.”
“Gravo, this is your first and final warning,” the correctional officer said from his right. “If you refuse again, you will be executed.”
“Gentlemen,” the doctor said. “there’s no need to turn my operating room into an execution chamber.”
As she went on to explain the anesthesia and surgery, Charles decided he liked her. She sounded like a kind person—someone who hadn’t experienced loss or pain. She was still innocent.
“Mr. Gravo,” she said, “I can understand your apprehension, but there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be monitoring your vitals the entire time to make sure everything goes fine during the procedure. When we’re about to begin, the nurse will place a mask over your face and have you count backward from one hundred. When you wake up, the procedure will have been completed.”
“I understand,” Charles replied. He felt a slight stinging at his IV entry point.
“You should feel the calming effects of the sedative right about now.” The doctor placed a heart monitor on his index finger. Charles’s heart rate steadied and a warm, euphoric feeling overcame him.
The doctor checked his pulse. “Looks good. We’ll begin now.”
The nurse approached Charles with a gas mask and placed it over his mouth. “You may begin your count.”
Charles counted backward. “One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six, ninety-five, ninety-f-fouuuur, ninety-threeeee …” His speech grew slow and slurred, and then he was out.
When he came to, he was aware of his surroundings but felt a bit off-kilter. He wondered if this was from the anesthesia in his system or the foreign device they had placed in his head.
Charles smiled as his doctor approached, but it sounded like she was talking in slow motion.
“Why are you talking like that?” he asked. “Did something go wrong? Did you screw it up?” His heart rate increased, making him feel hot.
She assured him that the surgery was a success.
Charles started to reach for the incision site, but his right hand was still shackled to the protective bar of the hospital gurney. He lifted his free left hand and waved it in front of his face. It seemed to move in slow motion, though he believed he had moved it at a normal speed.
The doctor pulled out her stethoscope, placed it against his chest, and listened for a few seconds before repositioning herself behind him. “Take four deep breaths for me, please,” she said as she listened to his lungs. The speed of her last sentence had increased, but it still wasn’t normal.
“Your heart and lungs sound fine,” she said. “You may feel a bit strange until the anesthesia wears off.”
“How long do I have before I’m sent back to my cell?” Charles asked.
“One week,” she said.
The surgeon left and closed the drapes around his bed. Charles looked at the clock on the wall. He could hear her scribble something onto his chart before hanging it on his bed. That small action seemed to take half an hour, but when he looked at the clock again, only a few minutes had passed.
Once he heard the door close, Charles crawled the length of his bed and stretched his free arm to retrieve his medical chart. He took one more glance at the door before flipping through the pages. There were meticulous details of the endless lacerations, chemical burns, and dog bites. The bullet wound in his leg was noted, as well as the intricate KPP procedure.
He scanned through each page in a matter of seconds before pausing to consider how quickly he had absorbed the information. It felt different somehow. He felt different, and he was beginning to think that it went beyond the aftereffects of the anesthesia.
He flipped the medical chart face down on his lap and closed his eyes. In an instant, everything he had just read appeared in his mind as if he were looking at a photograph of each page.
He flipped the chart back over and looked through the pages once more to verify that what he was recalling was precisely correct. Every number, every line, and even how the loops of the doctor’s signature flattened out at the end of her name were exactly as he had pictured in his mind.
He pinched himself, testing to see if this was a drug-induced dream, but it wasn’t. He hooked the chart onto the foot of his bed, crawled back under the covers, and closed his eyes.
Once again, the exact image of the doctor’s hieroglyphic scribbling appeared in his mind as clear as if the pages had been scanned into his memory. When he shut his eyes tighter, random images popped up like a film. First, he saw the more recent, like being chased through the woods and his capture. Then, deeper, darker memories o
f his youth began to surface, from boarding school through the first child he abducted, raped, and killed.
Upon remembering this girl, he began to grow erect. Then a sharp and terrible pain snapped from the incision point of the KPP procedure, followed by an instant headache.
He blinked and shook his head, hoping to scatter the old images and alleviate the intense pain that accompanied them.
Chapter 7
THE SOUND OF HARD-SOLED SHOES echoed through the nearly empty Ethiopian prison. Without lifting his eyes from the book in front of him, Charles noted that, based on the strike of the shoes against the concrete, it was a group of two men and one woman approaching him.
He saw through his peripheral vision the warden and his prison surgeon being escorted by a correctional officer down the two-tiered, cascading cell block. A thick manila file was tucked under the arm of the warden while the doctor carried a medical chart. Shouts from the few remaining inmates from his cell block followed the two until they arrived at Charles’s cell.
When Dr. Peña and the warden approached, Charles sat on the edge of his cot, surrounded by the stacks of books he had read the night before.
“Good morning,” he said casually as he flipped to a new page in his book. He flipped again and again, scanning each page for only a second or two before moving on to the next. “Decided to show off your guinea pig, Doctor?”
“You said this was an urgent matter,” the warden said to the doctor. “So please make haste with the purpose of this meeting.”
Charles looked up from his scanning and gestured in a casual way. “Dr. Peña, I expect someone as learned as you should know that those with Type-A personalities such as the warden are rigid, organized, impatient, and obsessed with time management. They’re also often high-achieving workaholics who multitask, push themselves with impossible deadlines, and hate delays and ambivalence equally. Under Psychodynamic theory, derived from Freudian Psychology, Type-A personality is related to anal retentiveness. In short, Doctor, the warden needs to be well-informed and in control of the everyday happenings of his prison.” Charles grinned as he turned his gaze to the warden. “Because he’s terrified that if he doesn’t know everything, he’ll lose all control. Isn’t that right, Warden?”