Powerlines

by Kurt Newton

  She sat with her back against the unit and took a deep breath. The unit vibrated through her clothing into her damp skin. Her hand still gripped the kitchen knife. It frightened her to think that she might be forced to use it. Maybe she wouldn't have to. Maybe Ethan would find a way to get her out of there.

  As her eyes adjusted to the diffused light, and her heart rate slowed to where it was no longer in her throat, she turned to look toward the room's entrance to see if she had been followed. She felt the peach fuzz on her cheek stand on end. A sensation not unlike an electrical current needled her skin. She recoiled, startled by the vision of a person's face appearing through the mist. At first she thought it was her reflection, but the profile was wrong. She leaned closer. As she did she realized what she was leaning against was not a refrigeration unit but another animal enclosure. Only instead of rabbits or rats, inside the enclosure lay the naked body of a young woman. A young woman who looked a lot like the young woman Lindsey saw in the video on the computer.

  Lindsey began to tremble. She found it difficult to breath. She wanted to call out to Ethan, but knew she had no choice but to stay put. That lack of choice became all the more evident when she heard the Recreation Room's entrance door close, sealing shut with a permanence that made her heart momentarily skip, then sink like a stone in her chest.

  Ethan? Where are you?

  Pike circled the kitchen closing all the doors. He had left Ethan back in the Pit #3 hallway asleep on the cement. He would deal with him later. Right now he had other, more pressing matters to contend with. When he approached his bedroom-study, he smelled the acrid odor of burned plastic in the air. He stood in the doorway.

  "Dear, oh, dear. Ethan, my boy, what have you done?"

  Pike's computer terminal was now useless. Even the keyboard had been broken. Any chance of finding the girl by way of closed circuit was out of the question. Pike would just have to hunt for her the way he would any other subject.

  Or better yet...

  "Wolf!"

  Wolf loped into the bedroom and dutifully heeled at Pike's feet.

  "How would you like to earn a treat?"

  Wolf's ears perked up at the word "treat."

  "There's someone here I need you to find. A very bad someone. It will be like a game. A hide and seek game." Pike pulled Wolf's remote controller out of his pocket. "And you get to be your old self again. At least for a little while."

  Pike entered the kitchen. On the counter was a jar of bacon-flavored dog chews. He pulled two from the container. Wolf's grey eyes watched his every move. The animal's tail brushed back and forth against the floor. Pike walked over to the Recreation Room and punched in the code. The odds were stacked heavily in favor of this being the girl's hiding place. It was the largest room; the amount of equipment and tables increased the number of potential hiding places. Besides, there were faint scuff marks on the floor crossing the threshold indicating a person dragging their foot had entered.

  Pike disliked the fact that this intruder had invaded his space, particularly the very special area of the Recreation Room. He would need to eliminate this threat.

  "Wolf..."

  Pike held up the treats for Wolf see, before tossing them into the room. The treats landed ten feet away. Wolf held his ground until he heard the right command.

  "Get 'em!"

  As Wolf ran to the treats, Pike adjusted Wolf's remote, removing the overriding frequency that suppressed the animal's natural behavior. He then closed the door, sealing Wolf inside. He hated being blind to what was going to happen next. His only regret was that he couldn't record the process.

  He breathed deep. Turned. Then stopped.

  Schrödinger sat before the entrance to his bedroom. The cat preened itself, looked up. Green eyes — Anna's eyes — stared at him. The cat then walked slowly into the bedroom, its tail raised, caressing the doorjamb, before disappearing from sight. Perhaps he would have to assign the phantasm a more feminine name. Persephone perhaps.

  43

  C'mon, bro, it's time...

  Ethan lay at the bottom of a lightless pit. He had been here before, only this time the insulating darkness was less solid, the paralyzing numbness less encompassing. Faint needles prickled his skin like the feet of a thousand caterpillars.

  MOVE IT OR LOOSE IT, PRIVATE!

  Ethan jumped, his heart revving to an almost painful acceleration. Light flooded in as he opened his eyes. Cold cement pressed against his cheek.

  "James?"

  "I thought that would get your attention." James was crouched beside him dressed in full combat fatigues.

  Ethan sat up. He was at the end of the Pit #3 hallway. The light was minimal but his brother's face glowed with an ethereal light. "I thought you were gone," Ethan said.

  "Gone? I'll always be with you, bro. But right now your girl's in trouble."

  "Lindsey?"

  "No, Jane. Of course, Lindsey. Now, c'mon, let's move it. There's no time."

  Ethan got to his feet. It was difficult. It felt like he was wearing a suit made of caterpillars so thick, if he allowed it to, it would carry him back down to the bottom of the lightless pit. He had to struggle to stay focused.

  "First you need to open that bulkhead," James said.

  Ethan stared at the bulkhead, then at James. James nodded. Ethan turned and punched in the numbers corresponding to the letter M. The bulkhead locking mechanism disengaged. He climbed the first two steps and pushed the doors open wide. Warm air wafted in. A spatter of rain. The night sky lit up with a lightning flash, etching the cloud cover with purple and white filigree.

  "I knew you had it in you." James let his arm sweep in the direction of the kitchen. "After you."

  Ethan turned. He couldn't shake the caterpillars off. But his feet began moving just the same. He also couldn't shake the feeling that none of this was real.

  Wolf ate the bacon chews his master had given him. It was as if his senses had been washed clean, leaving both taste and smell sharp and raw. As he swallowed the last pieces and sniffed for any remaining crumbs, he smelled something else, something primal, something that raised his hackles and made his mouth drip with hunger: the overpowering scent of flesh and blood...and fear.

  Lindsey had heard the door to the Recreation Room open and then close again. She peered round the edge of the plexiglass sarcophagus. Through the gauze of the curtain she saw the figure of Wolf at the end of the center aisle. The canine stood in the soft white glow of the animal enclosures, head bent to the ground. He appeared to be eating something. She didn't understand why the animal would be placed in the room with her. From what she had witnessed, Wolf was as tame as the family dog. She thought about calling to it but remembered it was wearing a special collar. A collar like the one Ethan wore. Perhaps that was what was responsible for Ethan's strange behavior. It was as if he had been brainwashed.

  She watched Wolf to see what he would do. When he finished with what he was eating, he raised his muzzle to the air, first nosing in one direction, then the other, as if searching. He then froze, his muzzle aimed in the direction of where she hid.

  Lindsey ducked down. She gripped the knife and held it to her chest. As she turned, the weight of her body leaned against the side of the plexiglass enclosure. The enclosure shifted on its base with an audible scrape. Cursing, she peered again to see if Wolf had heard her, but the canine was gone.

  Panicked, Lindsey looked for movements, but the curtain blended everything into a haze of light and shadow. She suddenly felt naked, virtually hiding in plain sight. She had to do something; she couldn't just stay there.

  She looked down at the naked body lying still inside the enclosure, protected, safe. She hated the thought of what she was about to do next, but it seemed like the only option available.

  She quickly undressed, removing everything. The plexiglass enclosure was not as heavy as she had thought. Tipping the enclosure up off its base, she grabbed hold of the dead girl's wrist and pulled. Though she looked to b
e sleeping, the girl's flesh was cold to the touch. The antiseptic-smelling body hit the floor with a heavy thud. Lindsey had time enough to slip her shorts on over the dead girl's legs and get one of the girl's arms through her shirt before she heard a low growl rising above the joint hum of the room and the special enclosure.

  As Wolf approached, head down, haunches raised, teeth bared, Lindsey crawled onto the airflow magnetic base and pulled the enclosure over her. But not before reaching down to grab the kitchen knife. The sarcophagus settled back into its grooves.

  Wolf didn't hesitate and lunged at the body on the floor, tearing through cloth into flesh with an almost maniacal frenzy.

  Lindsey closed her eyes but it didn't prevent her from hearing the sounds of wet rupture and the crack of bones and joints released from their sockets. She covered her ears as tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes and tracked down the sides of her cheeks. She wanted to scream, to allow her body to spasm and join the insanity surrounding her, but she held onto herself, wrapping her arms around chest and head as tightly as one would hold a grenade with the pin pulled.

  44

  The old Revolutionary War trail was nearly non-existent in the dark. But acting as Park Ranger for the last twenty years, Knox had a memory for landmarks; a memory that stretched back to his days with Bronson Securities. The trail began halfway up Backbone Ridge and entered the woods where a large boulder sat like the back of a giant turtle. Once beyond this point, the trail followed the natural seams and swales of the ridge, snaking around the eastern point in a more gradual rise to the top.

  Rain hit the brim of Knox's hat with an intermittent patter. His flashlight cast a wide beam, illuminating glistening shrubs. The trail was soft with moisture. He hadn't hiked in years and his legs were letting him know it. Getting old could be cruel at times, he thought. His body had been reminding him of that recently. It began with his skin — a series of lines and creases he saw in the mirror every day, transforming his once boyish looks into that of a tired, weathered outdoorsman (a look Marlene happened to love). The reminder worked right down into his bones — the early morning aches and pains that made getting out of bed a chore, when something as simple as bending over to pick up a piece of paper improperly could strain a tendon or tear a muscle. It was hell, at times, to have been so full of energy and purpose and to witness it erode the way the boulder sitting below Backbone Ridge had eroded to an ill-defined shadow of its former self.

  But tonight, Knox decided, there would be no limits. All those reminders — reminders of his physical failings, and more importantly his failure as a human being — were there for a reason: to kick him in the ass when the time finally came for him to do something about it. "Nothing worthwhile was ever accomplished with ease." He had read that somewhere and it had stuck with him, if only to taunt him. He sure hoped Marlene was already packed, reservations made. He could almost taste the lime in the Mexican beer he was going to have aboard his sailboat as it sluiced effortlessly across the clear blue water of the Sea of Cortez.

  The sky lit up momentarily. Ahead, Knox saw the outline of the power line stanchions looming like bridge supports holding up the iron-colored clouds. What he thought was lightning at first became an artificial light, illuminating the summit. The light disappeared seconds later, and the darkness fell back in.

  Motion sensors, thought Knox. But he wasn't the one who had triggered them. He was still too far down the slope.

  Was someone up there waiting for him?

  Was there an infrared scope aimed at his head at this very moment?

  It would seem an appropriate payback.

  But if Knox had learned anything over the years, it was that there were no checks and balances. Bad people continued to do bad things without retribution, and good people suffered without comfort.

  Another thing he had learned was how blindly people believed their own justifications for the things they did. It was my job. It was necessary.

  He never did learn the identity of the kid who had climbed that tree to spy on the facility that day back in '85. All he knew was when he had pulled that trigger he had become one of those bad people.

  Another thing he had learned, as he climbed up out of the woods onto the stone escarpment beneath the power lines and saw the bulkhead doors sitting open like two arms waiting to embrace him, was there was always the possibility for redemption, even if that redemption was nothing more than a hollow victory.

  He stuffed the flashlight into his pocket as an overhead spotlight clicked on. He slung the rifle off his back, cocked a bullet into its chamber, and walked slowly toward the bulkhead.

  He owed the kid that much.

  He owed it to himself.

  When Pike entered his bedroom, the cat was still there. It sat atop the damaged computer, its stark white form a beautiful centerpiece among the broken glass and cracked plastic. Pike tried to ignore it.

  He put the rifle down, opened a desk drawer, and retrieved a cell phone connected to a long thin cable. He brought it over to the converter box mounted on the wall and plugged the cable into the box, and began texting.

  His superiors were not going to like his request for replacement equipment. A moth wended its way onto the computer's circuit board and caused an electrical short. Stranger things have happened. What he couldn't tell them was the truth. And the truth was things were slowly spiraling out of his control. First that damn cat. Then the kid who had made it all the way to the park entrance like some kind of cross-country track star. Now this.

  As he texted his emergency message, Pike wondered how long before his superiors deemed his tenancy a liability? How long before they send a replacement to terminate his contract...the way he had terminated the contract of the tenant before him?

  Pike refused to believe he was expendable. After all, his studies had yielded much information — valuable, important, albeit illegal, information. But what were laws anyway but guidelines for the common man? His work was anything but common. The lives of future generations were at stake. And when lives were at stake, laws became mutable — a bend here, a break there — it was all in the name of science. All in the name of the Greater Good.

  Pike checked his watch. It was time to see if Wolf had completed his hide and seek game.

  He picked up the rifle and left the bedroom, closing the door behind him, making a mental note to reserve time to clean up the mess before retiring to bed later that evening. He returned to the Recreation Room, rifle held at his side, his other hand holding an equally potent weapon: Wolf's remote. He tuned the remote's frequency to that which would once again reduce the vicious canine to a manageable pet.

  The Recreation Room's slightly sonorous hum held a pleasant familiarity. Pike donned his customary lab coat. He couldn't help but feel a self-congratulatory pat on the back as he walked past the series of enclosures sitting in the subdued light: a life's work compressed into a handful of years, a testament to what could be accomplished if given the time, resources and the will to do what was necessary. There were no regrets. Except one. He would trade it all to be in the presence, if only for a single day, of his beloved Anna.

  Anna...so vibrant, so electric...she was the embodiment of life, a force so infectious it drew a shy man out of his inner world into the world of possibilities: the possibility of a normal life. Raising children, growing old together — everything and more. Until her health began to deteriorate and she was diagnosed with lymphoma, given only months to enjoy the life she had given so freely. And that man she had opened up, the one who was at last ready to cast his past aside and adopt a future full of love and hope, was forced to watch the life drain from his beloved in daily doses, as if God were performing his own particular experiment in pain and grief, and he grew bitter. Withdrawn. More intent on rallying against the God who had treated him so badly throughout his life. He would show the world who the real God was...

  An intermittent whimpering interrupted Pike's thoughts. He made his way to the back of the room, pa
rting the curtain near the sarcophagus. Wolf sat beside a mutilated body. The canine's muzzle was wet with blood and bits of flesh.

  Pike tsked. "Look at the mess you've made. Ethan is not going to be happy." He patted Wolf's head and scratched the canine's ear. "Okay, game over. Now go."

  Wolf slunk away, pushing through the curtain toward the exit.

  Pike set the gun aside and knelt beside the body, making sure his shoes didn't touch the apron of blood surrounding it.

  "It didn't have to be this way," he said.

  The half-naked body was torn beyond recognition. The face had been ripped into: eye punctured, nose and cheek peeled from bone. The throat was a cavity of black blood in which floated the knobbed pearls of the trachea. One breast had been completely excised, removed it would seem right through a tear in a shirt pocket. And the stomach and abdomen had been gutted. After being held in reserve for so long, Wolf had definitely exhibited his instincts to a degree of reckless abandon Pike didn't think possible. The poor canine must have a sick tummy, he thought. He then spoke to the corpse.

  "You could have been special." He turned and caressed the plexiglass. "But not as special as my special dear here." The mist rolled inside the sarcophagus, obscuring the body lying within. "She will be like Eve rising from the dead to create a new Garden of Eden." A scintilla of electricity nibbled at his fingertips.

  Pike heard the shuffle of a footstep and was about to reprimand Wolf for returning to the kill, when he saw Ethan standing no more than ten feet away, the ruined body lying between them like a decimated island.

  "Lindsey? Oh my God." Ethan stared at the remains, his mouth unable to form another word, his eyes flooding with tears. He knelt beside her, lifting one of her limp hands. He held it to his cheek. He then looked up at Pike. "What did you do to her?"