by JA Huss
If I didn’t have that I’d be insane from the seductive secrets I keep. The whole thing would drive me mad.
But those coping mechanisms are there. Have been there for as long as I can remember. I could probably put my finger on the day that all those special coping strategies took root but why would I want to?
Why the hell would I want to remember anything about the day I stopped being me and just accepted my fate as a cold-blooded killer?
I don’t.
So I just keep walking towards the western edge of the island. There’s a footpath—lots of footpaths crisscrossing the island. I recall there being several entrances to the underground facilities, but I opt for the closest one, which is a cave. When I came here years ago there was already a door in place but it was ajar. No locks of any kind had been installed yet.
And when I find the steel door now, I find it the same way. Open.
I should go back. If anyone is left down here, they’re dead. There is no possible way that I will find anything good down in these man-made caverns.
But I don’t go back. Curiosity and all that good shit, right? Secrets are so fucking seductive. All those questions burning inside. All those mysteries waiting to be solved.
The answers are almost never the kind you want to know. It’s just the journey, I think. That inner detective inside me that needs to solve things.
That’s all I’ve been doing really. My whole life I’ve been trying to solve things. Like some fixer with all the right solutions. So many balls in the air. Every moment is just another opportunity to drop one, just another possibility that the whole act will come apart.
Just get on with it. Just forget what you’ve seen, and done, and will do in the future, and deal. Just fucking deal with the here and now.
I push the door open. There’s no creepy squeak of hinges. This is a class III vault door made of special concrete poured into a stainless-steel mold. It’s made with anti-friction bearings that perfectly balance the door so it will open smoothly with a touch of a finger.
I stop for a moment to wonder at that knowledge. Wonder if it’s normal for a guy like me to know things like that about vault doors. Decide it is. And then continue forward.
It’s pitch dark but my Kel-Tec is equipped with a flashlight and my finger finds the button to activate a super-bright circle of light as I make my way forward.
There’s no obvious smell. No rotting corpses down here, then. It wasn’t blown up. Just looks like a very hasty evacuation. Things scattered along the hallways. A few empty gurneys on this level. Some glass-walled rooms lining each side. I walk down the long hallway, illuminating walls and rooms with my single beam of light.
No one alive and nothing much to see, either. Some of the rooms have desks and file cabinets. I go in and check one, peering into the cabinet, find no trace of the files that might’ve lived there, do that one more time with a second room, just to pretend I’m being thorough, and again find nothing.
But as I make my way further down the hallway I smell chemicals. Bleach, I think. Like I’m in the gym downtown back home and I’m making my way towards the pool.
There’s no pool down here. Just residual clean-up.
I check all the rooms on the main level, then take the stairs down and start methodically checking lower levels, finding pretty much the same scenario. Bleach, empty, waste of time.
But I’m here and there’s no point in doing a second-rate investigation, so I keep going. At least when I leave I’ll be able to tick this island off the list of places to look once and for all.
They won’t be back.
This island will sit empty forever now. They will never sell it and they will never rebuild it. It will be erased. The end.
The last level is four stories below the surface. Deep enough that the coolness you normally find in a cave is missing and in its place is a stuffy kind of heat. The heat of the earth.
The lowest-level hallway is short, so I absently calculate I’ll be back on that boat heading back to Nassau to catch a jet in just under thirty minutes if I jog back to the dock.
But then I hear rustling.
“Hello?” I say. “Is anyone here?”
Nothing.
“Charlotte?” I call, then whisper, “Mom?”
It’s stupid. She is long gone. But that little kid inside me still hopes.
Or maybe I’m just insane.
No reply.
Rats, maybe. The door was open.
A clinking noise. Like chains.
Not rats.
I walk forward towards the noise, my single beam of light pointed at the end of the short hallway, landing on another, slightly open door.
“Hello?” I ask, stopping just outside the door.
Rustling and clinking drives me forward. I tap the door and it swings open, then pan the flashlight around the perimeter of the small, concrete room.
A girl.
“Charlotte?” I say, taking a few steps forward.
But it’s not Charlotte. Charlotte looks like a Charlotte. Long, blonde hair. Fair skin, blue eyes. And this girl, in this condition, doesn’t look anything like a Charlotte.
Which makes no sense, I realize. Not even Charlotte would look like a Charlotte in a place like this. But it doesn’t matter. She is most definitely not Charlotte.
That’s when I notice the smell. Not death. Filth. All the things that come to mind when one says filth.
“Jesus Christ,” I say, covering my nose with my hand.
Her head swings, eyes still closed. She’s not naked, but her clothes are tattered and dirty, stained with sweat and other bodily liquids, including blood.
“Fuck,” I say. Not referring to her condition so much, but that she’s here, alive, and I’ve found her.
Because that requires a decision be made.
Leave her? Save her?
I sigh, take a few steps closer and then bend down to lift up her chin. “Hello?”
She tries to shake her head but can’t quite manage it.
“Who are you?” I say. Not that it matters. She’s not Charlotte.
She sucks in a deep breath and I point my flashlight on her face. This makes her squint her eyes even though they remain closed.
Her lips are cracked and dry. Like she hasn’t taken a sip of water in days.
I stand back up and look around.
So they knew. The Way knew the minute I decided to go hunt down Charlotte.
Something to think about, for sure.
“Help me,” she murmurs. “Please.”
I turn back to the girl.
I will help her. I’m just not sure she’s gonna like my solution.
I can’t take her with me, for fuck’s sake. That’s not going to happen. And I’m not carrying her ass back up to the surface so she can fend for herself.
That leaves just one other option left.
I raise the Kel-Tec and point it at her head. Take a deep breath. Convince myself this is for the best. She has no future waiting for her outside this bunker. Even if she’s somebody out there, she’s nobody anymore.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
And then she opens her eyes. Wide open. Looking straight into the glare of my flashlight. Blue-green. Beautiful. Trusting because she can’t see the gun I’m pointing at her head through the brightness of the light.
“Please, help me,” she croaks.
“I can’t,” I say. And even I know that’s a lie.
I could. I could do a lot, actually. I’m not in charge by any means. I’m not powerful in the strictest sense of the word.
But I do have power.
“Please,” she sobs.
Great. She’s crying. No tears because she’s so dehydrated her body isn’t making them anymore. But still. She’s just making it harder for me to turn myself off and forget and for some reason, I resent her for that.
“It’s not worth it,” I growl. “Just… give up. It’s not worth fighting for. Fuck this life.”
She draws in a deep breath, making a hiccup sound as she does it. “Please,” she sobs again. “I’m not…done.”
“Not done with what?” I ask.
I don’t know why I ask. It doesn’t matter. And she’s so fucked up right now, I know damn well she won’t be able to explain anything, even if she wanted to.
“Living,” she whispers.
Aw, hell.
I lower the gun and turn around, rubbing the back of my gun hand against the side of my jaw. I’m so fucking tired of this shit. I’m so fucking tired of making these decisions. I’m so fucking sick of this whole fucking world.
But I picture all the women who have probably been kept down here.
My mother, maybe?
Charlotte?
If this girl were Charlotte I would save her. I’d pick her up and carry her all the way back to my boat.
Why?
I laugh.
“Please,” she mumbles.
Because I need Charlotte. I can use Charlotte.
And this girl? I turn back to her, pointing the flashlight at her face again. This girl is nothing to me.
Nothing.
She can give me nothing. There are no answers hidden inside her. No revelations to be learned. No secrets to be mined for future use.
I walk over to the wall of the room, lean up against it, and slide down, flashlight and gun both still pointing at her face.
“Well, I am,” I say. “I’m fucking done here. I don’t wanna fucking live anymore. Maybe I should kill us both. Murder-suicide. That’s got a romantic ring to it, right?”
She stares into the blinding beam of light and mumbles, “Coward.”
“What the hell do you know about it?” I ask, suddenly hot and angry. “You don’t know shit. You’re just some… some dumb, worthless fucking bitch who probably didn’t do her job.”
Why else would she be down here?
I point the flashlight around the room so I don’t have to look at her anymore. Fuck this girl and her judgment. Has she been running money for a secret global crime syndicate for five years all by herself?
No, that was me.
“Coward. Fine. Fuck it. I’m a coward.” I get back to my feet, walk over to her, point my gun, and shoot.
Her body recoils from the sound, but the chain holding the metal cuff around her right wrist shatters.
She covers her face with her newly freed hand when bits of metal fly off.
A sharp sting on my cheek lets me know I should’ve done the same.
I point again, shoot the chain holding her other wrist, and then pan the flashlight to see if she’s got shackles on.
She doesn’t.
“There,” I say. “I did my part.”
And then I walk out and go back the way I came.
CHAPTER TWO - MEGAN
There are only two kinds of people in the world.
Those willing to see the truth and those who refuse to see it.
I don’t need to know this guy to really know this guy.
I would be able to call it no matter what.
He has no problem seeing the truth.
I am just some dumb, worthless fucking bitch who probably didn’t do her job.
Fine. I can accept that. It’s probably more accurate than it isn’t.
You don’t get dragged out of your home in the middle of the night because you are doing your job, right? But they didn’t tell me anything. Didn’t give a single reason why a gag was stuffed in my mouth, a hood was yanked over my head, and my wrists were zip-tied so tight, they were numb within minutes.
But they don’t need to give me a reason.
When they come for you like this the reason should be self-evident. And I guess that falls under the umbrella of “not doing my job”.
I just went along. Did everything my father taught me growing up. I said nothing. I didn’t try to escape. I didn’t even resist.
When you’re born into an organization like the Way, you have very few options.
So fuck this guy. He doesn’t know me. He has no right to judge me.
A tickle on my neck draws me back to the present. I wipe my finger across my throat and see blood. Probably from the metal shards that flew up and hit me when my asshat rescuer decided to shoot the chains off the wall. There’s probably bits of concrete embedded in my skin too.
Thanks, jerk.
Thanks for freeing me and then leaving me to die a billion levels below ground. Sure do appreciate that.
I can appreciate the irony of it, at least.
I get it. You want something done, you gotta do it yourself.
Fine.
I will.
I’m dying of thirst, I haven’t eaten in years, and I’ve been chained to this wall so long my muscles have probably atrophied, but OK. Sure. No problem. I’ll just walk right on out of here.
Fuck him.
I will. Watch me, dick. Cocksucking coward.
I think I pass out after that. Because my head jerks to the side and my eyes fly open in a startled shake.
It hasn’t really been years since I ate. Couple days? Surely no longer than a week?
I’m totally fine. This is all gonna be fine.
There’s an old tray of food in the corner rotting away. My last guard was in the middle of eating it when he was sent away and never came back. No rats have come to claim it, so I have every intention of inhaling it before I walk out of here like the goddamned survivor I am.
Except I can’t get up.
I can barely move my legs. I try to crawl over to the table in the corner and collapse onto the hard, damp concrete.
Not enough water to drink, of course. Just enough to tease me with the idea of water. Gotta keep that ironic theme going. Can’t stop now.
But there’s a sink over there too. And a toilet.
I’m going to crawl over to the sink and then I’m gonna press that button on the faucet and suck that water down like it’s straight from some artisan well in Fiji.
The toilet’s not an option.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m dying of thirst. So it would be, but it hasn’t been flushed. I can’t really smell the stench in this room anymore, but what I can smell comes from that toilet.
It’s OK though. I have the sink. The water might taste like an old rubber hose but it will stop the decay happening inside my body right now and give me just enough strength to make it back up to the top.
The decaying sound of boots on steps down the hallway snaps my attention back to reality.
That bastard actually left me here.
“Fuck!”
I wish that was a scream of frustration, but it wasn’t. It was a whisper of defeat.
I’m never getting out. I’m going to die here. I’m going to die of thirst in the next few hours, I can feel it.
No Megan. You will not die here today.
My Prince Charming might’ve walked out on me, but I’m still alive and at least I’m not chained to the wall anymore.
I’m free. And I will crawl over there, and make it to that sink, drink every drop I can fit in my body, eat that old food, and then… I don’t know.
I’ll figure it out.
But here’s my problem. As close as that sink is, it’s still very far away.
Six feet. Which feels like an impossible distance right now. Because I cannot even muster up the strength to crawl.
I can’t even open my eyes. It took every ounce of remaining energy to stare into that asshole’s flashlight and I only did it because I figured he’d at least carry me over to that metal table, sit me on the metal chair, and offer me a tin cup filled with rubber-hose-tasting water.
Once again, I was a dumbass.
He came here to save someone all right. It just wasn’t me.
Oh, how I love, love, loooooove you, irony. Such good timing you have. Such big ears, such big eyes, such big teeth you have, old friend, irony.
I can always count on you.
Can’t count on anyone else, but you? You
’re there for me. Always and forever.
Stop it, Megan. Stop throwing pity parties for people who don’t appreciate them.
Meaning me. Because I’m the only one here.
I giggle a little. It’s mostly incoherent because my mouth is too dry to really giggle right now. But I’m going insane and it’s funny.
Get up. Crawl to the sink. Drink the water, eat the food, sit in the chair. Rest.
Then you can giggle your way to insanity satiated.
Oh, that’s funny. That’s the best joke ever.
I’m so tired though. So freaking tired. Maybe it was a lie? Telling my would-be rescuer-slash-killer that I wanted to live was definitely the wrong answer. He’s done.
With life. With the struggle. With me.
We’re not on the same page here. Like at all.
But maybe he was right? Maybe I should be done too.
Just give up and die already. Stop fighting it. Why bother? None of us are getting out of here alive. It’s such a joke.
And not even a funny one!
I try to giggle again. Can’t.
Done.
I think I sleep after that. At the very least I black out for a few minutes. Needed the rest, I guess. All that work falling forward on my face. All that effort really zapped my energy.
I take a deep breath and force myself up on my hands. My arms quiver with the strain of holding my body upright. But I manage it.
I force myself up to my knees next. Crawling, inch by inch, across the floor like some kind of mutant, legless reptile slug-thing. With arms.
God, when did I get so funny? Maybe near-death experiences do this to people?
Oh, no, I remember now. I’m just insane!
“Ha,” I croak out.
Then I hang my head and slide my knees forward again. Then again. I might pass out a few times. Maybe a hundred. But eventually I’m on the ground looking up at that sink.
I try to swallow. Can’t do that either. Feels like there’s a sandstorm’s worth of gravel in my throat.
Come on, Megan. Did you really come this far just to die looking up at that sink? A mere two and a half feet away from salvation? Did you really do all this to just give up?
I take a breath, reach up, grip the edge of the sink, force myself up on my knees. Grab the sink with my other hand—arms not quivering now. Shaking. Shaking like mad. Like the muscles are dying bags of meat with no purpose.