Strangers in the Night

by Flex, Raymond S

  “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Samantha held his gaze.

  “That’s why they brought you here, Mitts,” Samantha replied. “I thought it had been made clear that your mind is what they’re after. They’re not going to risk losing you—not going to risk any damage coming to you.”

  “Funny, I’m pretty convinced that a guy just shoved a gun in my face. Seems a strange place to want to shoot someone whose brain is so important, huh?”

  Samantha stared back at him. Stone-faced.

  Then she gave a smirk.

  She turned her attention back downward. To the clean-up job.

  “Glad you’ve still got your sense of humour,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Mitts said, staring out the window to the approaching night. “I guess I still have something.”

  * * *

  Their second dinner arrived. Mitts ate nothing.

  He pushed his rice and chicken about his plate with his plastic fork.

  This situation reminded him of those Sunday evenings in the Restricted Area. He would lose his appetite then, too. It was the knowledge that, later, Heinmein would put each of them through their check-up. That he would have to submit to the scientist’s will.

  There was no table in the room, so they ate their dinner perched on the edge of the bed.

  When Mitts glanced up, he saw Samantha had almost finished her dinner.

  She only had a few scraps of rice left.

  She had no reason not to have an appetite.

  This was just a normal day at the office for her.

  The Facility was her home now, after all.

  Samantha looked to him, then to his plate.

  With a slight smile twisting her lips, she rose up off the edge of the bed.

  She took his plate off him—still more than three-quarters full.

  She left the plates by the door.

  Then she returned to the bed.

  The two of them sat on the edge of the mattress.

  “So,” she said. “Want to hear the end of the story?”

  Mitts felt a resistance grow within him.

  More than anything else, he wanted to tell her no.

  He wanted to see the look on her face when he told her that he didn’t want to hear what had happened to her.

  How she had come to arrive at the Village.

  But then curiosity got the better of him.

  He told her to continue.

  And she did.

  She told him how they travelled through the night in the back of the truck.

  How movement had been more or less constant.

  Several of Samantha’s fellow passengers had suffered from travel sickness. No matter how hard they bashed their fists up against the cab, there was no reaction from either of the drivers.

  With a shake of her head, she told Mitts how they had arrived at the tiny village.

  At what would be their home for the foreseeable future.

  There were animals running free about the place.

  It seemed there had been a farm there once.

  They set about making the place their home.

  Bringing life to the Village.

  It was there that Samantha stopped.

  Mitts felt his whole body surging with adrenalin—hunger too?—wanting to hear what was coming next. “You didn’t tell me how you got the scars,” he said.

  Samantha met his eyes, unsmiling. “The other man—the one who travelled with Dag,” she said, her voice catching in her throat.

  For a long second, Mitts was certain Samantha would burst into tears.

  Mitts planned on being cold.

  If she wanted a shoulder to cry on she could go fetch one of those escorts.

  Samantha held herself back.

  Just like she always did.

  “His name was Jake, but everyone used to call him ‘Jay’,” she said, “and, well, as time went on, there was a thing between us.”

  “A ‘thing’?” Mitts repeated back at her, more struck by the descent into schoolyard language than the implied meaning.

  Samantha just nodded. “Yes, we got close.” She drew in a deep breath. Her chest puffed out. She gripped the edge of the mattress so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “He and Dag, they were the only ones—the only ones who knew where we were . . . they’d . . . they’d brought us to the Village.” She sniffed a laugh through her nose. “For some reason, at the beginning, I thought I’d get close to Jake. See if I couldn’t get some more information on our situation out of him. But he gave nothing away. He seemed to be wary of tricks. And I ended up loving him.”

  Mitts felt his gut turn in a knot.

  He tasted the little of the chicken and rice he had forced down.

  He felt obscenely hot for a moment, and then cold.

  Feeling a pounding sensation at his temples, he reached up.

  As if some invisible force was attempting to rap its knuckles against his skull.

  Samantha went on. “There were power games between Jake and Dag—there always were. It was inevitable that things would come to blows eventually.” She shook her head, apparently out of disbelief. “It was out there, at the water’s edge.” She gave a slight smile. “Strange how everything always seemed to happen out there . . . the two of them just started laying into one another; exchanging blows. Only when I got in the middle of them did I realise Dag had a knife.”

  She turned full on to Mitts.

  Drew so close that he could feel the warmth from her breath.

  Mitts stared at the red-raw, half-healed trio of scars.

  In the too-bright light of the room, the skin gave off a greyish reflection.

  He thought about reaching out to touch the scars.

  Was that what she wanted?

  On impulse, he twisted his neck around. To get a look at Samantha’s ears.

  Nothing.

  No earbud.

  When he turned his attention back onto Samantha’s blue, blue eyes, she was smiling again.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I like life’s mysteries—I don’t need to see your brain.”

  He held her gaze. Their lips were only centimetres apart. “What do they want from me?”

  “Just your cooperation,” Samantha said, leaning in closer still.

  “My ‘cooperation’?”

  Her mouth moved onto his.

  Mitts felt as though his blood had caught fire.

  His heart beat harder and harder.

  They kissed.

  When Samantha drew back, her eyes still on his, she said, “Is that too much to ask?”

  The red-haired scientist—CARLA—holds her hand to the creature’s chest.

  Her pale, white fingers fan out.

  She waits for a pulse.

  Any sign of life.

  But the eyes remain black.

  No sign of consciousness.

  Not yet.

  But the scientist remains unperturbed. Her hand remains on the chest. Insistent that she shall get what she wishes for. That much is certain.

  When she leans back again—takes in the creature once more—a tiny, little light appears within those black eyes.

  The scientist takes a couple of steps back.

  Smiles.

  ANOTHER LIFE, ANOTHER START

  Mitts sat on a carved stone seat in the garden which stood at the front of the Facility.

  He listened to the gargle of the water through guttering.

  One of the escorts had just been by to water the plants. And the gutters were carrying the excess away.

  When Mitts breathed in, all he could smell was soil.

  A rich, full taste.

  It reminded him of the Village.

  He could never quite get over the scents of nature.

  He could never quite forget those seven long years of sensory deprivation down in the Restricted Area. And what had happened after . . .

  Life was good at the Facility. Or as good as it ever had been.

  They
took good care of him.

  He had given them his full cooperation.

  The Facility had assigned him a therapist:

  A woman in her fifties called Lilly.

  At first Mitts was extremely wary about telling Lilly anything. He had to admit he feared the therapy sessions were some sort of elaborate device—a device for the Facility administration to check just how honest he was being.

  But the truth was, Mitts had no energy left to resist.

  He had nowhere to go.

  The warm sunshine beamed down upon him. He thought about all that had happened since he had ‘cooperated’. Those in charge had explained things to him. They had informed him that the ‘Village’ had always been intended as a sort of proving ground. A means for the Facility to release its stock of creatures upon a human population.

  And examine the results.

  Dag and Jake had been lower-level employees.

  Charged with the task of recruiting as many desperate—fleeing—human beings as they could.

  To begin with, the Facility had merely observed the creatures’ reaction to humans.

  But, as Carla—the red-haired scientist—had confided in him, it had become clear that the more interesting branch of the experiment had turned out to be the humans’ reaction to the creatures.

  Carla informed Mitts that, most nights, they would release their stock of creatures upon the Village. Then sit back and watch the results.

  When the rains had first started to fall, the creatures had appeared.

  Roaming all over the planet. Morbidly obese. Human-sized slugs.

  At least that was how Carla had described them . . .

  Indeed, their colloquial name around the Facility was ‘Slugs’.

  In more polite company, their name shifted to ‘Strangers’.

  The Facility had got hold of a specimen early on. And they had cloned the creature.

  Carla told Mitts all the observations they’d made of the Strangers.

  How they appeared to have an aversion to dry land.

  And a love of water.

  It was believed, Carla told him, that the creatures were directly linked to the apocalypse.

  They had materialised with the falling rain.

  With the surging floods.

  The water which’d consumed the larger part of the world.

  Although there was no evidence, it was supposed that the creatures had brought these waters along with them. From wherever they had come from:

  Another dimension?

  It was a lot of information for Mitts to absorb.

  Mitts grew to despair Carla’s smirks.

  As if she revelled in his confusion.

  In him getting to grips with such basics.

  The Facility had contact with several other research centres scattered about the globe.

  They were few and far between.

  Transport—at present—was impossible.

  There was just no way to span the great distances.

  They relied on satellite communication.

  Matching up data; comparing information.

  Drawing conclusions.

  But, as far as Mitts could tell from his time at the Facility, there were—really—no definite conclusions to draw.

  Finally, when he plucked up the courage, he asked after his family.

  If the Facility had known about Doctor Heinmein.

  Carla had to clear permission to share such details. She got the go-ahead from her superior.

  She informed Mitts that his family had been delivered to the Compound under the orders of the Facility.

  Theirs, though, had been a different programme.

  One which had been set for a ten-year observation period.

  They never got past Year Seven.

  Mitts had made sure of that.

  Carla even showed Mitts graphs.

  Charts drawn up as a result of the studies.

  From the data Heinmein had fed back to the Facility.

  “When you grew ill,” Carla told him, one day, in one of the top-floor laboratories, “we had Heinmein give you a dose of serum—untested. It was taken from the Strangers. We’ve found, in our experience, that their blood has certain healing properties in humans.”

  “Heinmein told me I would die in a week.”

  Carla nodded. “That happened in all the other cases.” She smiled gently. “But the batch administered to you seemed to get the balance just right.”

  Mitts kept his thoughts to himself.

  About how he had snuck through the air vents.

  Come into contact with one of the Strangers.

  How he believed that had been the factor which’d led to his healing.

  In fact, he hoped that would be the case.

  He didn’t want to feel thankful to the Facility for anything.

  He didn’t want to feel thankful to Heinmein for anything.

  Often, when Mitts glanced at Carla, he observed a faraway look in her eyes. He believed it to be a signal to whoever was watching them.

  That they should be ready.

  On standby.

  Weapon drawn.

  He also asked Carla why the Facility hadn’t stepped in to save his parents.

  Carla looked away then.

  As if ashamed.

  She mumbled something about Heinmein having lost his mind.

  An ‘unanticipated’ variable.

  Mitts had held himself back.

  But only just.

  Because he knew the truth.

  Even if Carla wouldn’t spoon feed him that particular morsel.

  In the Facility, someone—somewhere—had surely taken the executive decision that it would make an interesting ‘experiment’ to observe Mitts’s attempts to integrate with the Village.

  They had known beforehand—somehow—that Mitts possessed the same ‘Gift’ as Luca.

  Carla claimed this phenomenon was present in one in a thousand.

  Or so said their data.

  They had wanted to observe how those who possessed the Gift reacted in group situations.

  How they functioned with a community surrounding them.

  At the end of their conversations, he asked Carla if what Samantha had told him had been a lie.

  If it had indeed been Dag who had placed the explosives.

  But Carla only pressed her lips together. Shook her head. “No, he really did hate us—all of you. He wanted to burn down everything. Finish it off.”

  Mitts shook his head, almost unable to absorb the idea.

  But, he supposed, it might not be the truth.

  Why should they tell him the truth when he would take a lie just as easily?

  Mitts pressed his back up against the stone seat in the garden.

  He could hear the hum of an engine closing on him.

  The crunch of gravel passing beneath the heavy weight of approaching tyres.

  He bent his head back. Stared long and hard at the soaring blue sky.

  The neat, bright blur which was the sun.

  Some days he thought about running away.

  Some days he thought about finishing it all.

  He looked to the truck as it pulled up.

  Its tyres locked.

  They slid along the loose gravel.

  A series of escorts, all dressed in navy-blue uniforms, stepped out.

  An elderly man emerged between them.

  He was stick thin.

  Dressed in a pin-striped suit.

  He wore a cravat with a silver pin.

  One of the escorts helped support his weight.

  The man looked frail. So frail.

  It was hard to believe this was him.

  The man who would peer into his mind.

  * * *

  Mitts lay down on the examination table.

  He heard the paper sheet beneath him crumple.

  The air smelled strongly of disinfectant.

  Mitts hadn’t had a sense of this level of clinical cleanliness since he had b
een a young boy.

  He’d fallen over. Scraped his knee . . . only it wasn’t a normal scrape.

  The blood had just kept on flowing.

  He’d required stitches.

  His parents had taken him down to the local doctor’s surgery.

  A GP had swabbed his cut.

  That swab smelled like the air here.

  There was something about disinfectant which made the hairs stand up at the back of his neck.

  A substance specifically existing to neutralise something invisible to the naked eye.

  Something which might not even be there.

  Mitts glanced about.

  His feet stuck up at the end of the table.

  The floor beneath him was all laminate tiling.

  It reminded him of the flooring back at the Compound.

  He looked to the elderly man. The scientist who’d arrived from the other end of the country . . . what had been the country.

  A special visitor.

  The elderly man had a poor bedside manner.

  With the help of a deferent escort, he shrugged a lab coat on over his shoulders.

  Next, he tapped away at a touchscreen.

  The gateway to a large bank of hard discs; computers.

  Whatever it was.

  The escort remained standing in the doorway.

  Mitts tried to get a look at the touchscreen display. He could make nothing of the constantly moving charts. The numbers which flickered up and down the screen.

  The elderly man jabbered in a low, gnarled-up voice to an assistant—a much younger man who had arrived with him.

  The assistant, also in a lab coat, had frosty blond hair and a beer gut.

  He worked quickly, smiling pleasantly at Mitts as he adjusted the wires and suckers arranged about his forehead and scalp.

  Mitts didn’t feel like a patient.

  He felt more like an audience member.

  A passenger.

  Soon enough, the equipment was in place.

  The elderly man stood over the bank of computers. His fingers flipped over the touchscreen.

  Precision which belay his otherwise frail demeanour.

  He occasionally muttered to his assistant, but, mostly, he muttered to himself.

  Mitts sensed the growing unease in the room as he observed the scientists at work.

  As he lay there, on the examination table, he was dimly aware of another presence.