by Garton, Ray
“There are no homes in those woods. There use to be an old mental hospital somewhere in there, but it’s been abandoned for a long time. I don’t even know if it’s still standing.”
“I wonder why they’re going into the woods.”
“I’m sure they have a reason.” Andy made a U-turn on Ogden Pass before reaching the road the SUVs had taken, then pulled over onto the shoulder. He turned off the engine and killed the lights. “Okay, we’re just going to sit here for a little while.”
“Why don’t we just keep driving?”
“Well, to be honest, I’m a little nervous about passing by that house again. Ram is going to be coming out of there, if he hasn’t already. I’m probably being too cautious and a little cowardly, but I’d rather wait here. For a little while, anyway. The storm is receding, and if we wait awhile, driving will be easier and safer. Okay, buddy?”
“Yeah, sure. Can I turn on the radio?”
“Yeah, let’s find some music.”
Donny found an upbeat song that he knew and sang along to. But Andy didn’t know it, and he didn’t feel like singing, anyway. He didn’t want Donny to know, but he was still feeling quite nervous. No, that wasn’t true. He was still afraid.
Ram couldn’t stop laughing as he crawled through the rubble with his flashlight guiding the way, because what else could he do when the night had gone so crazily wrong? It had started out with Ram trying to do a favor for an old friend, and somehow, it had collapsed into nightmarish slapstick comedy.
He found his gun on the floor. It was near the bloody body of the man named Marcus who had been killed by a shovel. He picked it up, shoved it in the holster, and moved on.
Somebody was hurt somewhere. It sounded like two people—an adult and a child. But he wasn’t interested in helping them, only in getting out of there. He wondered what had happened to Andy and Donny. Ram had promised to drive them home and he was a man of his word, so he intended to follow through.
With considerable struggle, after hefting aside pieces of the shattered house, Ram finally got out by climbing through what was left of the same window through which Latrice had exited. He stood up straight and got his bearings.
When he saw his car, he shouted, “Son of a bitch!”
One of the other vehicles obviously had gotten out by backing into his car and moving it. Most of the driver’s side of the car had been smashed in. It made Ram angry, but it was to be expected from the subhuman trash that lived here. He didn’t have time to worry about it now.
Standing in the rain and wind, he turned around, faced the house, and shouted, “Andy! Hey, Andy, are you in there? Donny? Andy?”
No answer. But he hadn’t really expected one. They’d probably been crushed inside the house.
He slopped through the mud to his car, went around to the passenger side and unlocked the door. He got inside and grabbed the radio microphone.
“This is one-oh-three, one-oh-three,” he said. He gave his location and said, “The Clancy house has been mostly flattened by a tree with people inside. I’m going to need an ambulance, and a ride out of here because my vehicle is out of commission.”
He listened for a moment and the reply came: “Copy, one-oh-three. We have a unit nearby on the way to Springmeier. One-oh-one has been injured at Springmeier and needs backup.”
“Springmeier? The hospital?”
“Ten-four. There’s trouble over there.”
“Well, have someone come by and pick me up and we’ll go over there.”
A moment later: “A unit should be there in minutes, as long as the way is clear.”
“Ten-four. I’ll be here.”
He replaced the mike and stared at the radio. What the hell was Kaufman doing at Springmeier? And what was going on over there?
He settled back in the seat and waited, searching the darkness for the oncoming headlights of his ride.
7
“You understand that if this turns out to be nothing, our relationship is over,” Jack Bembenek said. “No more appearances on the news to comment on weird stories.”
Ivan and Bembenek sat in the backseat of a KIEM news van being driven by Bembenek’s camera man, Leon. Ivan had told him everything on the phone, from the initial suspicions to getting Emilio into Springmeier, and everything they’d learned since about what Vendon Labs was doing in the old hospital.
Bembenek was in his late twenties, with thick black hair and a long face. He seemed unusually nervous.
“Yeah, I understand that,” Ivan said. “But it’s not nothing. You’ll see.”
“I’m not on great terms with my boss right now. I don’t need any trouble. I like this job. And this area. I’d like to stay here. If I get fired, I could end up anywhere. I don’t want to have to move to some town in Wyoming or Nebraska.”
Ivan laughed. “Jack, you’ve got nothing to worry about. This story is going to make you famous. But you’re not the only one coming.”
“What? You called someone else, too?”
“I had to. If it’s just you, me, and your cameraman, we may never be seen again. The more newspeople, the better. It’s protection.”
“Who else did you call?”
“An old friend of mine works at KGO in San Francisco. I talked him into sending someone. But it’s a four-hour drive from there, so I also called other local stations. KVIQ, KBVU, and KAEF in Arcata.”
“Jeez, that’s everybody.”
“But I don’t know who will show up.”
“You didn’t call the police?”
“Didn’t have to. Like I said, Sheriff Kaufman’s there and he’s pretty badly hurt from what Emilio said. They’ll have cops out there soon enough, if they don’t already.”
“I hope you’re right. We didn’t check the van out, we just got in and left. If this turns out to be nothing, some people are going to be pretty pissed about us going out after midnight in a hurricane.”
“The storm is passing.”
“Look at it out there!”
“It’s not as bad as it was.”
Bembenek nodded toward the driver. “Well, if it weren’t for the fact that Leon, here, owes me a lot of favors, I probably wouldn’t have managed this.”
Leon was a rotund man with long brown hair in a ponytail under his baseball cap. “I didn’t come because I owe him favors,” Leon said in a deadpan voice, glancing over his shoulder at Ivan. “I’m a rebel.”
“I don’t think you guys have to worry about getting in trouble for this,” Ivan said. “You’ll probably win an award for it.” After a moment, he added, “If we live through it.”
It occurred to Fara as she sat at her desk, listening to the sound of occasional gunfire in other parts of the building and watching Emilio doze in his chair with his feet on the desk that she had agreed to go on a date with him when this was all over. She didn’t date often because she found it to be an odious ritual. Simply calling it a date gave rise to a host of expectations and worries. She liked Emilio and probably would enjoy going out with him, but after their experience at Springmeier, she wasn’t sure she would ever be entirely comfortable with him.
She wanted to put this whole experience behind her. It was the only way she would be able to live with herself. That would be impossible, of course, once Emilio’s recording and the details of what they were doing the night of the hurricane—hunting and killing kidnapped homeless people they’d deliberately infected with a deadly virus—were made public. She was afraid that Emilio would be a vivid reminder of all of it, that every time she looked at him, her mind would flood with horrible memories and strangling guilt. She was fairly sure that Emilio would not hold it against her—that was one of the reasons she liked him so much—but she would. Forgiving herself felt like an impossibility.
Of course, if Ollie was right—and in the part of her mind where she kept the things she did not directly admit to herself, she knew he was—Vendon Labs was sending a team of thugs to kill them all, making the details of her social lif
e quite irrelevant.
She heard a loud crashing sound somewhere in the building. It wasn’t the first. She’d been hearing sounds like it for a while, and they seemed to be coming from the front of the hospital. Had another tree fallen on the building? Maybe the initial crash they’d heard in front—the one that sounded more like an explosion and then went on for a while—was the cause of it. The oak tree in front of the hospital was an enormous old thing with fat branches that reached out in all directions. And the building, of course, was old. Well over a hundred years.
The door opened and Ollie stomped in. He carelessly slammed the door behind him and Emilio jerked awake and dropped his feet from the desk. Ollie approached the desk, looking at the sheriff as he passed the couch.
“How’s he doing?”
“We’re still waiting for Corcoran to come back with a painkiller,” Fara said. “For all I know, he’s left the building.”
“He’s not coming back. He’s dead.”
Fara leaned forward in her chair. “Corcoran?”
Ollie nodded. “One of the test subjects got him. Probably more than one, I’m guessing. Really tore him up. A great loss to humanity. Is the sheriff going to be okay?”
“I think he might be asleep. I hope. He could probably use a couple stitches.”
“By our count, there are three of them left,” Ollie said. “And one of them’s got a goddamned Uzi.”
“What?” Emilio said, standing.
Ollie went on talking, but Fara didn’t hear him. She thought about Corcoran. Done in by his own lab rats. She agreed with Ollie’s sarcastic remarks. A great loss to humanity, indeed. He was a sadistic bastard, a narcissistic drug addict. It was a well-deserved death.
But for the past year and a half, Fara had been standing by his side, working with him. Helping him. Being like him. With a deep chill in her bones, she thought she deserved to be next.
“We need to start thinking about getting the hell out of here,” Ollie said. “The storm’s not as intense as it was, I think it might be subsiding. I’ve got vans outside the fence. Now that the gate’s open, I’ll have them brought to the back. My men will be getting into them. I strongly suggest you join us.”
“You’re going to leave those test subjects here?” Emilio asked.
“Don’t worry, they’ll be taken care of. Probably soon. We need to get out of here so we aren’t taken care of, too. Get everything you need together and be ready to leave.”
“I have a car here,” Emilio said.
“So do I,” Fara said.
“Then what the hell are you doing here? Get in your cars and go. Before you wish you had but can’t.”
After Ollie left the office again, Emilio said, “I think he’s serious. You ready to go?”
“Are you kidding? I’ve been ready to go for the last eight hours.” She gestured toward the door. “I’m just not sure I want to risk going out there to get to my car.”
Latrice was unaware of how fast she was driving. She was too lost in her own thoughts, too busy telling herself what she was going to do when she got home. She hardly decreased her speed at all as she drove around branches and splashed through large puddles.
“Gonna be some fuckin’ changes, I can tell you that right now. No more of this shit, drivin’ all over the goddamned country because that fuckin’ little shit’s got some tingling, like I got nothing better to do with my time and money, money I earned, money I worked for, money—”
She interrupted herself to start pounding her fist on the steering wheel. She hadn’t noticed yet how swollen it had become, couldn’t feel how much it hurt. Her whole body ached, but she’d lost track of that, too. The vibrating rage inside her head overwhelmed everything else.
Latrice would not have noticed the police car going in the opposite direction if it had not turned on its roof lights just as they passed each other. That got her attention.
She looked in the rearview mirror and saw the white car make a slow U-turn, then speed up as it pursued her. Its siren began to wail.
Latrice pressed harder on the gas pedal.
8
“Did you see that?” Ivan said as Leon turned off of Ogden Pass onto the new gravel road that led through the woods to the old mental hospital. “There was a guy with a little kid in that SUV parked back there.”
“Yeah?” Jack said. “What about it?”
“Well . . . I don’t know, maybe they broke down, or something. I don’t like the idea of a kid being here. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“What are we supposed to do, stop and tell them to go away?”
“No, but—oh, wow,” Ivan said, leaning forward in the backseat to peer through the windshield.
As Leon drove slowly around the body in the road, Ivan looked ahead at the gate. A sheriff’s department car was parked by the guardhouse, and the bent, mangled gate was standing open. It didn’t look like the storm had done that damage, it looked like someone had driven through the gate in a hurry without bothering to open it first. Leon stopped the van just outside the gate and put it in park.
Leon steered around the police car and the headlight beams shone through the open gate, revealing bodies sprawled all over the gravel parking lot.
“Shit,” Jack said. “I don’t suppose you brought a gun.”
“I was about to ask you the same question,” Ivan said.
“We may not want to go in there unarmed.”
“Hey, to be honest, I don’t want to go in there at all. But . . . we have to.”
“Don’t worry,” Leon said. He leaned over, opened the glove box, removed a snub-nose revolver and held it up so Ivan and Jack could see it clearly. “We’re covered.”
“Do you have a permit for that?” Jack asked. He didn’t appear too happy to see that Leon had a concealed weapon in one of the station’s news vans.
“No.”
“Then what the hell are you doing with it?”
Leon stared at him a moment, then said, “There’s dead people on the ground and that’s the thanks I get for being the only one with a gun?”
“That’s not the point. You could lose your job. I probably could, too, just for being in the van with you.”
“I bet those dead guys on the ground out there would say it’s the point. I’ve also got ammo. You gonna be pissed about that, too?”
“I, for one, Leon, am glad you have the gun,” Ivan said.
“Like I said. I’m a rebel.”
“You gonna drive in there,” Ivan said, “or do we have to walk the rest of the way?”
Leon put the gun back in the glove box, closed it, and put the van in gear.
As they passed the guardhouse and went through the gate, Ivan saw two black Mercedes-Benz S-Class SUVs parked end to end behind the cars parked at the rear of the hospital, blocking them.
“I don’t like the looks of that,” Ivan said.
“Looks like somebody doesn’t want anyone to drive away,” Jack said.
“I’m thinking Vendon Labs beat us here,” Ivan said, taking his phone from his pocket.
When Ollie came into the office again, he was accompanied by two of his masked men.
“The vans are being brought to the back,” he said. “These men will escort you to your cars as soon as you’re ready.”
Another rattling, rumbling crash came from somewhere in the front half of the building. Ollie’s head turned in the direction of the sound.
Emilio’s phone chirped. He took it from his pocket and answered quietly.
Fara stood at her desk with her purse and a large canvas bag on the desk in front of her. “Who’s going to take Sheriff Kaufman?”
“He’ll go in one of our vans and we’ll take him to the hospital, if we can get there. I imagine half the town is flooded. If we wait for his deputies to get here, we could be here until Tuesday. If we can’t get to the hospital, we’ll—”
“Listen up, guys,” Emilio said. He placed his phone on Fara’s desk. “Go ahead, Ivan.”
“I’m in a news van at the gate behind the hospital,” Ivan said over the phone. “There are two big black SUVs parked perpendicularly behind the cars parked out here. They’ve intentionally blocked them. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in the SUVs, which makes me think they’ve gone inside. I think you’ve got company in there.”
“Shit,” Emilio said. He turned to Ollie. “You better let your men know.”
“I’ve got two men at the entrance!” Ollie said, taking Fara’s phone from his pocket. “They should know and stop them!”
Fara’s legs became weak and she lowered herself into her chair. She felt like she was in an elevator that was falling from the very top of the world’s tallest skyscraper. Suddenly, her lungs felt tiny and her heart felt huge.
“Hey, hey,” Emilio said, hunkering down beside the chair. “You okay? You’re not gonna pass out on me, are you?”
“They’re here,” she said, merely breathing the words. “They’re here and we’re still here. We should have left earlier. We should have risked the storm and left hours ago.”
“Whoa, no, we don’t know that yet.”
She looked all around her office. She was cornered in that room. There was no way out but the door.
“Son of a bitch, they’re not answering,” Ollie said, raising the phone to his ear on his third call.
“I have to get out of here now,” Fara said, standing. She slung her purse strap over her right shoulder and the strap of the canvas bag over her left shoulder, her flashlight in her left hand, and hurried around the desk.
“Wait a second, hold it,” Emilio said, quickly stepping in front of her and putting his hands on her shoulders. He nodded toward Ollie.
He was talking on the phone. “When did they get here? . . . How many? . . . Jesus Christ, why didn’t you call me?”
Fara felt muscles tightening all over her body. She could not hold still. She stepped around Emilio and went to the door.
He came after her, whispering, “Hey, hey, hey.”