by James Grady
“Can you count 3,000 beats, then scream? Start everyone up here screaming?”
“Sure.”
As I raced toward the stairwell door, his count echoed behind me: “Three-thousand. Sixty four. Two thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine. Two thousand, nine hundred, ninety three. Forty seven…”
8
When I got back to the Third Floor, everybody had their GODS in the Day Room.
GODS: Get Out of Dodge Soonest. The gear you grab when you gotta go. I.D.s. Cash. Credit cards invisible to hunters’ computers. Clothes for cover, camouflage, and comfort. Protein pills and vitamins. Weapons are a hard call. You’re a spy, not a cop or a soldier. You must protect your cover and weapons get you noticed. Plus weapons wipe out wits. When you strap on a gun or slide a shiv in your sock, you think you’re twice as tough as you’ve ever been. You load your brains into the gun, so your first thought becomes: squeeze the trigger.
Took me three minutes to grab my GODS. Paranoia propels preparation. We kept all our gear ready to go in plain sight of the Keepers. If they realized we were maintaining Op alert status in the safety of our homeland insane asylum, that awareness became simply more proof that we were crazy and right where we belonged.
What I stuffed into my black nylon computer case bag:
One set of underwear and socks, a polypropelene skiing shirt.
One toiletries kit—soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant. Like airport security guards, our Keepers rationed our razors, fingernail clippers, or scissors.
One notebook and two of the permitted felt-tip pens.
One leather flight jacket that held my wallet with $84 and my expired California driver’s license.
One first edition of William Carlos Williams greatest hits that hid a snapshot of shy Derya on a roof, her cinnamon hair floating in the breeze of Kuala Lumpur.
One hand-sized souvenir of New York city that I didn’t get there.
What I didn’t stuff into my black nylon computer case bag:
Weapons we didn’t have.
A palm pilot or address book of people who cared and would help.
Maps of the zero safe places I could go.
Five of us, geared-up to go, met in the Day Room by Dr. F’s body.
Zane kicked two support planks out of the couch and Russell helped me lug Dr. F.
Hailey by-passed our Ward’s locks, stepped into the Third Floor hall.
“Clear!” Hailey dashed toward the two elevators and pushed the DOWN button, her brown eyes flicking from one end of the corridor to the other, from one closed door to the next. Russell and I lugged Dr. F’s body toward her and the elevator. Eric followed us, strapped to our GODS bags and swiped First Aid kits. Zane came last, carrying a metal folding chair and the two eight foot support slats he’d kicked off the couch.
Russell and I propped Dr. F face-out against the elevator cage’s back wall as the others scrambled on board.
An engine whined and cables clunked for the elevator next to us.
Hailey jabbed the FIRST FLOOR button.
The other elevator clunked to a stop one floor up. Its unseen doors jerked open.
“Push the button again!” said Zane.
The other elevator whined coming down. Towards us.
Hailey’s finger pecked our FIRST FLOOR button like a starving woodpecker.
“I can fake Dr. F’s voice,” said Russell. “Vic, hold him. I’ll say we’re going—”
“Nowhere,” I said. “This fucking elevator—”
Clunk. The elevator next door stopped. On our floor. Those doors whirred open.
As ours slid shut.
We dropped like a stone down the shaft through the heart of the Castle.
On the first floor, Hailey stepped off the elevator. Looked both ways.
Like we hoped, she saw an empty hall stretching towards the corridor crossroads.
The First Aid kits let us tape Dr. F’s eyes open, then bind him into the metal chair. We taped his head level on his shoulders. Strapped our GODS on his lap. Russell dropped to his hands and knees behind a similarly posed Zane. Hailey and Eric taped a plank on their spines.
Hailey balanced Dr. F’s throne on that plank while Eric and I scurried into position beside the other two kneeling guys. She taped the plank to us.
Four of us knelt strapped into a corpse-carrying caravan. Hailey crouched ahead of us. Fifty feet away from her dark eyes waited the corridor corner: around it was the door to freedom or the moment when we’d be caught.
“This is a sad and risky plan,” said Russell.
“Crawl in time.” Zane pictured the team-building/body bustin’ drills in Special Warfare school where he and his squad jogged with a telephone pole on their shoulders.
“Wait!” said Russell. “Did anybody grab our meds?”
“Oh-oh,” said Eric. “Oh-oh.”
Meds at the Castle are locked up in a guarded pharmacy. The medicine cart for the five of us carried a vast rainbow of pills dispensed four times a day.
“Guess we just said ‘no,’” whispered Zane.
“We gotta go!” I said. “Need to go now! On zero!”
“We can’t hear Malcolm counting!” argued Zane.
“Not Malcolm! On me! When I say! Three, two, one—”
Crawl. By the third ‘slide,’ we were crawling together. Sweat dripped off my forehead. Tapped on the ammonia mopped green floor tiles between my sliding hands.
“Aaaahhh!”
Like a scream ripped through the Castle, but this wail was a cacophony of voices.
Malcolm.
Our caravan scrambled around the corner—
Where the budget cuts saved us and no guard stood behind the hall counter.
A blue stripe painted on the green tiles from the counter to the wall marked the Castle’s secured border. As our sedan chair moved Dr. F’s face across that blue stripe, motion sensors activated an electronic hum. A blue band of light flowed over Dr. F’s lifeless face. Found his taped open eyes. Matched his irises to stored data.
The metal cover over the EXIT door latch whirred and clicked, then slid up to reveal a touch screen beside the door release handle. The touch screen glowed to life.
We shuffled our burden as close to the door as we could. Hailey pressed Dr. F’s dead left hand to the glowing screen.
The door lock buzzed.
And we were out.
9
A blue bus idled in the night mist of a Maine parking lot. From the bowels of the Castle beyond the parking lot came a wail. The bus driver’s posture behind the steering wheel claimed he didn’t hear that. But he heard the Bam-clang! Bam-clang! on the bus’s folding door. The driver popped open the doors.
Standing out there in the night was a woman wearing a trenchcoat darker than her cocoa skin. She said: “Are you ready to go?”
An albino Jesus charged into the bus, dropped a grip of steel on the driver’s shoulder, said: “Do you know the way out?”
“Ah, just past the gate guards, down the road 10 minutes an—Who are…”
“Do your job,” commanded white-maned Zane. Eric obeyed Hailey and got on the bus. Russell and I staggered towards the steps, our burden draped between us.
“Doing your job,” Zane told the bus driver. “Isn’t that what life’s about?”
“That guy those two are carry– Hey, you supposed to bring him on here?”
“We all gotta go sometime,” said Russell.
He and I dumped Dr. F in the seat RIGHT BEHIND the driver’s chair.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked the driver.
“Bad luck.” Russell slid into the seat behind that slumped-over passenger.
Zane said: “How’s your luck?”
“G-g-good.” The bus driver’s voice said he knew he was in trouble.
> Curled on the floor by the Dr. F’s shoes, I said: “Do you know who you are?”
“The… The bus driver?”
“’Xactly!” Zane plucked the 24-inch black steel Mag flashlight from its dashboard clamp. He flipped that black metal flashlight end over end, then chopped it through the night air as if to smack somebody in the head. “And we are so on the bus.
“Drive.” Zane flicked a flashlight beam toward the grimy metal floor of the front seat across the aisle from the driver’s perch. “I’ll be right there.”
The blue bus rumbled out of the lot, down the long and winding road, through the trees to the Security Gate where the two guards packed 9mm Glocks. Looking at the bus windows, the guards saw one passenger slumped behind the driver: the visiting shrink.
A guard held up his hand and stepped into the glow of the bus headlights.
From the bus floor, I told the driver: “Slide open your window.”
Footsteps crunched gravel outside in the night. The guard’s words flowed into the bus: “Going back early.”
The driver said: “Just doing what they tell me.”
The guard said: “Ay-yuh. How you doing in there, Sir?”
I grabbed Dr. F’s elbow, raised his limp arm above the window sill… waved his hand in a floppy salute.
“Good for you. See you later.”
The chain link gate clanked open.
I let the dead man’s hand plop in an encouraging tap on the driver’s shoulder.
The blue bus chugged forward and the chain link gate slid shut behind it.
We bounced through the night in that blue bus. Trees danced alongside us like Mardi Gras ghosts. Exhaust, oiled metal, and something sour perfumed our every inhale.
Ten minutes later, the bus drove alongside the brick building with the RAVENS plaque. Two dozen cars napped in behind the building in its parking lot’s shadows.
“Shut it down,” I told the driver.
The blue bus engine died.
“Clear!” whispered Zane.
We took the driver’s wallet with its $41. Taped his mouth shut and his hands to the bus’s steering wheel.
“Here,” Hailey told him, “this will keep you warm.”
A wool blanket from the winter survival kit parachuted over the driver like a tent.
All he saw was scratchy darkness. He heard the accordion door pop open. Felt the blast of night air. Something dragged over the bus’s metal floor. Clumped down the stairs. Shoes crunched on the gritty parking lot.
Then the door closed, and he couldn’t see anything, hear anything, scream anything in that Maine night parking lot, in a blue bus, under a blanket.
10
Standing beside the blue bus, I pointed Dr. F’s keys at the herd of empty cars, thumbed a black plastic button.
Bweep-boop!
Headlights flashed on a four door silver Ford.
“Wild!” said Russell.
“Saw that in a TV commercial,” I confessed.
Vision hit me. An epiphany so pure and clear I was breathless.
Dr. F stuck to Zane like a drunk sophomore being held up by his Prom date.
“They know,” said Zane. “By now, for sure, the Keepers know.”
“How much?” said Hailey.
“That we’re missing,” I said. “They might still think we’re hiding or trapped on the grounds. That’s logical. That’s where they’re looking.”
“But not for long,” she said.
“And Dr. F is getting heavy,” said Zane. “But if the Keepers don’t know proof certain that he’s dead, they’ll have to deal with more contingencies.”
“Dibs on driving!” said Russell.
“That’s mine!” Zane’s outburst shook the corpse he held. “It’s been 30 years!”
Their argument brought panic to Eric’s face.
Hailey held out a calming hand: “It’s OK, Eric. Don’t worry. I’m driving.”
She glared at Zane.
Who frowned at her, flicked his eyes to Russell.
Who watched them both with the intensity of a base stealer dancing on second.
Zane blinked.
Hailey ran towards the silver Ford, her dark trenchcoat flapping.
Russell blasted off after her, his black leather coat billowing like a cape.
Zane swung Dr. F’s body towards Eric: “Hold him!”
Eric caught our therapist on his right shoulder like a linebacker slamming into a pass receiver. Eric stumbled with the crash of the corpse on his shoulder, staggered, stood straight so he hefted Dr. F like a rolled rug.
Zane chased Russell and Hailey, his white Jesus hair flowing in the night.
The parked silver car seemed to zoom towards their charging mob. Russell and Hailey ran neck and neck, with Zane only three, now two lunging strides behind their flapping coats. Their hands clawed for a handle in the night air.
Bweep-boop!
Headlights flashed on the silver Ford and the racers heard door locks thunk.
Walking to the silver Ford, I jiggled the keys. Ignored their glares, just as they ignored Eric as he staggered behind me with a corpse thrown over his shoulder.
“Besides,” I said, “I know who killed Dr. Friedman.”
11
The nurse.
Who wore her hair pinned in a bun.
Pinned. As in “pin.” No medical staffer—even one on temporary rotation—no one in her right mind would take a sharp object into an insane asylum. Dr. F didn’t even wear a tie for a freak to grab. That was smart and policy.
So if she wore a hairpin into Crazyville, she did so for a reason.
Unfold the right kind of hairpin and you’ve got a nifty toy for playing Puncture The Brain Pan.
Dr. F, sitting in the soft light of the Day Room. Waiting for us to come back. The nurse who rotated in on temporary duty with him hands him files. Stands behind him. While he’s reading a file, she unpins her hair. Maybe other nurses had done that. He was an OK looking guy, smart. If he realized anything, maybe it was a sensation that told him: ‘She’s letting down her hair/we’re all alone/I’m going to get lucky!’ She clapped her left hand over his left ear, put her hairpin in his right ear—shoved it straight up hard, fast and far and he jerked rigid, brain burst. She’d feel that. Pull out her pin. Fix her bun. Then leave him sitting there for us to find and be found.
We should have realized something was dangerously wrong during Tuesday Morning Group while Russell lied about garroting the Serb Colonel and the nurse came in pushing the metal medicine cart, her hair pinned in a bun.
Dr. Friedman had been right. We’d been in the Castle too long. We’d gotten too sane to recognize what we were seeing.
Now we were out. Seeing the night highway illuminated by our headlights as the road rushed towards the windshield of our stolen car. I drove, Zane beside me in the passenger seat, navigating from a rental car map, from memories of what Dr. F had told us. The rear view mirror showed me Russell in the back seat by one door. Hailey sat on his lap, not Eric’s—Eric knew enough about torture. Dr. F rode in the middle of the back seat. He was the only one wearing a seat belt.
Zane said: “Any second now. Should be… There!”
A clapboard roadside motel with a red neon sign flowed towards us. The full moon glistened on the tall chain link fence surrounding the motel’s empty swimming pool. Our silver machine skidded to a stop on the motel’s asphalt parking lot. Car doors flew open. Zane, Russell and I fanned out in a skirmish line marching towards the only cabin where lights glowed. This was the town’s lone motel, the place Castle short-time staffers like Dr. F called their home away from home. Hailey ran to the bungalow where a sign read OFFICE. Eric and Dr. F stayed with our vehicle.
“Take it smart!” said Zane as Russell surged ahead of us. “Smooth!”
&
nbsp; Russell kicked in the motel room door.
She wore a white bra and panties. Looked lovely and lost. Stood in the doorway of the bathroom, backlit by its flickering light. Brown hair hung past her pale shoulders.
Russell was three steps from grabbing her when he froze.
Crowding in the motel room after him, Zane and I saw Russell freeze. Stare at her, through her, past her. Our advantage of surprise vaporized. She blinked—dove past Russell to grab her purse off the bed, rolled behind the bed out of sight.
She popped up on the far side of the bed and blasted a bullet from a black pistol.
Zane slammed to the floor.
I leapt for the open bathroom—knocked Russell out of the way.
The gun roared. Splinters exploded off the bathroom door jam beside me.
Zane pulled the bed over on top of her. Crashed beside her bare heels as she struggled under the crushing bed. Zane caught her ankles—and pulled.
Nurse Death slid from under the rubble of her bed, bare arms trailing behind her like a joy rider reaching for the sky on a rushing roller coaster. The bed scraped the white bra off her breasts. Zane sprawled flat on his back, clinging to her ankles by his ears, her white-pantied hips pressing on his loins as her hands cleared the bedding heap. She jackknifed to a sitting position and stabbed the pistol at the man beneath her.
I dove towards them from the bathroom.
Saw Zane’s head rise off the floor between her ankles he trapped in his fists.
Saw the black automatic pistol stab towards Zane’s white maned face.
Saw her finger curl as Zane kicked her forearm/knocked her hand back. The pistol muzzle clunked her forehead as the gun roared and an explosion of blood splattered the tossed bed mountain.
My dive crashed me face down on the two of them.
“Wow!” Russell’s voice floated as I stared at the cheap carpet. “That was so weird! I’ve never done that before.”
“Damn it!” said Zane. “Now we can’t get any answers from her!”
“Hey, I’m a door kicker, rock ’n’ roll guy,” said Russell. “But this… Now…”