Well in Time

by SUZAN STILL

  Just let me die, she thought. Just let me die.

  How long it continued she did not know. All time had ceased and she existed in an eternal torment, a living hell. At last, however, she was brought to her senses by a shrill whine. A cold nose touched the exposed skin of her ankle. She might wish for death, but the creature behind her wanted to live.

  She pushed with her toes, digging in. She squirmed her hips, inching forward. Life returned through these peristaltic movements. The tube widened. A breath of clean air wafted through its confining length. Recalled to life, Calypso bored her way, head first, into the future, as lowly a creature as ever was born.

  §

  She knew she was near the end of the terrible passage when she smelled cigarette smoke. The first thing the beam of her headlamp picked up as she exited the tube was Lone-R, sitting in a pool of lantern light, smoking.

  “Lone-R!” she exclaimed, rejoiced to see another human.

  “Oh, shit!”

  He erupted upward, his arms coming defensively before his face, his legs crouching. He peered into the shadows where Calypso sat, blinded by her headlamp.

  “Shit, you scared me!”

  Calypso moved to the side, as Lobo’s snout emerged from the hole. Soon, all of the wolf was standing by her, shaking himself.

  “You’re smoking,” she said inanely.

  “Oh, yeah.” He stubbed the cigarette out guiltily. “Don’t tell nobody. We’re not supposed to.”

  Calypso nodded, too spent to respond.

  “Where’s El Lobo?”

  “He’s not coming.”

  “What do you mean, not coming? Where the fuck is he?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Oh, man. Don’t tell me this.”

  “It was an accident. He fell.”

  “You know what they’ll do, right?”

  “Kill me?”

  “No. Put you under the Devil’s Breath, again.”

  She nodded wearily. “Beats being killed.”

  She looked hopefully at the pack by his feet. “Do you have food?”

  Lone-R eyed her appraisingly. “Yeah. Sure.”

  He dug in his pack, came up with a sandwich in a Ziplock bag, and handed it to her. “Here. Peanut butter and honey.”

  He watched as Calypso ripped the bag open, tore the sandwich in half and gave one portion to the wolf. Both of them, he observed, ate like wolves. Calypso’s rumpled jeans hung on her. Overnight she had gone from slender to thin. Her face was crumpled with a degree of defeat he could only guess at.

  “Was it bad?”

  She looked at him with heavy, red-rimmed eyes, and nodded. “The worst.” The sandwich was gone and she looked hopefully again at his pack.

  Lone-R shook his head. “I ain’t got no more food.”

  He nodded toward the passage leading outside. “Let’s blow this place. It gives me the creeps.”

  §

  The late afternoon sun was sitting just above the rim of the canyon when they emerged from the cave. Calypso considered trying to escape but knew she was too physically and emotionally depleted. It was all she could do to navigate down through the boulder field toward the trail. As she trudged in front of Lone-R up the narrow game trail toward the grotto, she kept her head down, willing each step, while Lobo padded docilely behind her.

  Just below the grotto, they were accosted by a sentinel named Buddy, a tall, raw-boned man in camouflage, carrying a shotgun. He stood on the edge of the little plateau and watched them toil up the steep trail.

  “Where’s El Lobo?” he called.

  Lone-R looked up at him and shook his head.

  “It’s bad.”

  Buddy said no more, and took up the end of the line as they gained the flat. Lone-R went to the grotto, filled his canteen and offered it to Calypso, who drank greedily, while Lobo went to the pool and lapped as if he could never be filled. Buddy watched it all impassively, his shotgun cocked in the crook of his arm.

  When their thirst was satisfied, they began the ascent of the even steeper and narrower trail to the monastery. Calypso immediately began to have trouble with the climb. Her feet slipped on the loose gravel and twice she stumbled badly.

  On a particularly rough section, where the trail wove through a boulder field, she fell. She tried to get up, but her legs would not hold her. Lone-R, who was several feet above her on the steep slope, gestured for Buddy to stop as he was about to prod her with the barrel of the shotgun.

  “No, man,” Lone-R shouted, leaping back down the trail to Calypso—but not before Lobo had turned on Buddy with his teeth bared and a deep growl rumbling in his chest. The wolf couched beside Calypso, his yellow eyes trained on Buddy like scopes, clearly prepared to rip the throat out of anyone who touched her unkindly.

  Lone-R assessed the situation and said, “She can’t do it. It’s too steep.” Calypso had rolled herself into a sitting position, leaning against a boulder, and was nursing her elbow.

  “Listen,” Lone-R said, squatting beside her, “you’re too tired to do this. I’m gonna carry you, okay?”

  She shook her head. “You can’t.”

  “Yeah. I can,” he said flatly, and sliding his arms under her knees, he lifted her. “Shit, I carry more than this on my dinner tray in the refectory every night.”

  He turned, and setting his foot firmly on the trail, took a step upward, and then another. Lobo fell in behind, turning often to watch Buddy, who brought up the rear at a respectful distance.

  Lone-R was, Calypso thought, like a tractor. The man’s massive muscles rolled over the terrain, indifferent to impediment. She leaned her head against his steely shoulder and closed her eyes, feeling safe for the first time in days.

  §

  It was evening, before they reached the monastery. The sun had set behind the cliffs. The sky darkened from blue to violet, and then red flamed up in the west, as if the cliff tops were afire, setting Calypso’s grief ablaze again.

  Her legs were numb by the time they entered the courtyard of the great stone building, where Lone-R set her down on a wooden bench. He stretched his arms over his head, and Calypso imagined that they must be numb too.

  “I’ll go get Father Keat,” he said, just as the massive door opened and their leader stepped out, forbidding in his black cassock.

  “What’s this?” he asked acerbically.

  Calypso, Lone-R, and Buddy began to speak all at once, and Father Keat held his hand up for silence.

  “You,” he said, pointing to Calypso. “You go.”

  She began to explain, but was overcome with a fit of weeping, as she got to the part where El Lobo was swept away.

  “She’s tired,” Lone-R said, “and she’s starving.”

  “Put her in the guest room and bring her some supper,” Father Keat commanded. He turned on his heel, his skirts flying, and ascended the stone stairs, pulled open the door, and was gone.

  Buddy followed him, leaving Lone-R, with almost courtly grace, to escort Calypso and Lobo, who would not leave her side, to a new room. This one was on the ground floor, had no bars on the windows, and was comfortably furnished with antique furniture.

  Lone-R bent to start a fire on the hearth, saying, “The stuff in here is original—the bed, the table, that trunk. All of it. It was just sittin’ here when Father Keat took over the place.”

  Calypso turned to take in her surroundings.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Even the paintings are original?” She stepped closer to look at a large, rather primitive oil painting of the canyon and the mission, framed in a gilt-laden Baroque frame.

  Lone-R rose from the fire and shrugged. “Yeah. I guess. You’d have to ask Father Keat.” He stepped toward the door. “I’ll go get you some food.”

  He went out and then stuck his head back through the door. “Oh—there’s a bathroom through that door,” he said, pointing to a heavy paneled door on the right wall. “If you want a bath.” Then he was gone.

  It was nearly
an hour before Lone-R returned with a tray laden with steaming food. In the interim, Calypso had bathed and washed her hair. When his knock came, she was sitting by the fire, wrapped in a bathrobe she’d found hanging on the bathroom door.

  Lone-R set the tray on a small table near the warmth of the fire, with a flourish. Lobo lay stretched on his side, near the flames.

  “You look better.”

  “I feel better.”

  She bent her face over the steaming food while Lone-R removed two bowls from the tray. One, full of sliced meat, he set beside the wolf. The other, Lobo’s water bowl, he took into the bathroom and filled with water, then put it on the hearth.

  Calypso attacked the food. Instead of the usual rice and beans, there were roast chicken, fresh squash, and roasted potatoes with plenty of butter.

  “This is delicious,” she said in surprise. “I thought you all lived on rice and beans.”

  “Naw. That’s just Father Keat’s way of gettin’ your attention.”

  “It seems so odd to me,” Calypso said, “to have a guest room in a place where you normally execute your visitors.”

  “It’s for the FNGs.”

  “FNGs?”

  “Yeah, the Fuckin’ New Guys. When they come to sign on, they get the royal treatment. I got to stay here myself.”

  “What if they decide they don’t want to stay?”

  Lone-R looked at her meaningfully. “Father Keat can be very persuasive.”

  “So do you recruit? I mean, how does anyone ever learn about this place so they can join?”

  “Yeah. We gots a recruiter. Someone will know someone else who’s on the lam, or dead broke, or hurt, or ready to retire. Our guy goes lookin’ for him. But we’re at maximum capacity now. Someone’ll have to die before we recruit again.”

  “Someone just did.”

  “Yeah. Well, I guess you’re gettin’ the royal treatment ‘cuz you kind of helped get rid of a problem.”

  “El Lobo?”

  “Uh-huh. Nobody trusted him. I mean, we’re all spooks here but he was spookier than most. A nut job.”

  “Sociopathic?”

  Lone-R shrugged. “I guess. Whatever that means.”

  “It means he didn’t care about anybody but himself,” she said between bites. “That he was a pathological liar, a really skilled manipulator. That he was charismatic and people wanted to follow him…”

  “Yeah! That’s the problem. He convinced a few of the guys he should be the leader, not Father Keat. He was always underminin’ Father Keat’s authority. It was startin’ to be a problem, you know what I mean?”

  Calypso nodded. “Yes, I do. A sociopath causes trouble wherever he goes. They rile things up, start people fighting among themselves.”

  “Yep. That was El Lobo.”

  “Did he abuse Lobo?” she asked, laying a hand on the wolf’s head.

  “He was startin’ to. Guys would see him kick Lobo or hit him. But if they confronted him, he’d deny it. He’d accuse them of workin’ for Father Keat, to make him look bad.”

  Calypso nodded. “Yes. That’s how a sociopath works. They do no wrong—it’s everybody else who’s doing wrong to them.”

  She took a sip of water, gazing into the fire.

  “So you think Father Keat is actually relieved that El Lobo’s gone?”

  “That’s my take on it.”

  Calypso was starting to nod. The hot food and warm fire were calming the anxiety that had driven her in the last days. Lone-R reached for her tray.

  “You better go to bed. You’re gonna have a big day, tomorrow.”

  When he was gone, she staggered to the bed, pulled back the covers and fell in. She was asleep, almost as her head touched the pillow.

  §

  After breakfast in the morning, Father Keat came for her. He stood by the fire, refusing her offer of a chair, his face grim.

  “You realize that there are men here who think you killed El Lobo?”

  “Yes, I expected that.”

  “You’ll have to undergo interrogation again. Under scopolamine.”

  “I expected that, too.”

  “It’s a complicated situation here,” he said. “Every one of us has blood on his hands. Lots of it. In a sense, I guess you could say that every one of us is a sociopath.”

  He hesitated.

  “But most of us have found a way to live with what we’ve done. Maybe we can’t always feel remorse like most people do, but we want to stop killing. Maybe it’s for selfish reasons. Most of us are tired and just want to live quietly now.” He looked at Calypso, to see if she was following him.

  “I understand,” she said.

  “Some of us got into killing from having a bad start in life, like Lone-R or Icepick. I guess me, too. I was just a poor, barefooted kid on the Mexican border. I had to be tough or die.

  “It’s like that with most of the men here. But there are a few—just a handful, really—who get off on killing. Who are using this place as a hideout until they can figure out how to get on with their kicks. And El Lobo was at their center. Now do you see how complicated this has gotten?”

  “Do they want me dead?”

  “Oh, yeah! And they want to be the ones to do it.”

  Calypso shuddered. “What will you do?”

  Father Keat walked to the window and stood looking out, his hands behind his back.

  “First, I’m going to hear you interrogated by one of our specialists in interrogation.” He held up a hand, without turning from the window. “You won’t be harmed, I promise you.”

  He hesitated again.

  “And then…?”

  “And then, if you’re telling the truth about El Lobo dying by accident, then…” He sighed. “I haven’t got a fucking clue what I’m going to do.”

  “I assure you, I’m innocent.”

  Father Keat turned from the window with a sardonic smile.

  “No one in the twenty-first century is innocent, Miss Searcy. People just have varying degrees of awareness of their guilt.”

  §

  They took her to a room without windows, one she was sure from its grim and comfortless look must have been a torture chamber during the Inquisition. Father Keat was there with Icepick and a few other of the older men. They allowed Lobo to follow her and he came to lie at her feet. Lone-R stood guard by the door.

  One man came forward, wielding a syringe. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with the look of an aging bull. His eyes were hard in a handsome face, beneath a fully shaven head, and they seemed to penetrate into the depths of her own.

  “Do you remember me, Miss Searcy?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “That’s because the last time we met, you were already under the influence of the drug I’m about to administer. My name is Cat, and I am a former interrogator for the CIA. I am about to inject scopolamine, also known as Tree Datura, Brugmansia, Toé, and Devil’s Breath.

  “This time, the dosage will not cause you to overdose or hallucinate, but it will cause you to speak the truth. When you come out from under its influence, you won’t remember anything that has passed here. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are sociopaths who can lie and still pass a lie detector test, but no one can outwit scopolamine. Are you ready?”

  She was too paralyzed with fear to speak. She squared her shoulders and nodded her head. The man came forward, took her icy hand in his, and plunged the needle into her arm.

  §

  When she first became aware of herself again, she was sitting in the armchair by the guest room fire. Lone-R stood by the door holding a shotgun. She glanced dizzily around the room and saw that the shutters were closed and locked from the inside. She was slightly nauseated and she had a cracking headache.

  Lone-R caught her eye. “You back?”

  She nodded, frowning. “How long?”

  “About six hours.”

  “My vision is blurred.”

 
“Your pupils are still dilated.”

  “What did they think?”

  Lone-R shrugged. “Who knows? They don’t share that stuff with me.”

  Lobo got up and came to stand by her chair, poking her in the arm with his nose. She wafted an insubstantial hand toward him and laid it on top of his head.

  “What happens now?”

  “We wait. You hungry?”

  Calypso thought about it. “Maybe. I feel kind of sick to my stomach.”

  “Food might help. There’re some sandwiches there, on the tray.”

  Calypso bent to take one and then turned to Lobo. “You hungry?”

  Lobo’s feathery tail gave an answering swish.

  “Okay. We’ll share.” She tore the sandwich of bologna and cheese in half and dropped the wolf’s half into the bowl on the hearth.

  “Did I say anything that surprised you?” she asked Lone-R, around a bite of sandwich.

  “Ha, yeah!” he said with an ironic laugh. “We. . .none of us had any idea what you went through. Everyone was shocked.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, hell yeah. El Lobo drowning. Falling down the cliff. Your house burned down. Your husband probably dead. Finding Lobo.” He waved his arm expressively. “Shit! You’re one tough cookie, lady.”

  “You think he believed me? Father Keat?”

  Lone-R shrugged. “If he didn’t, he missed a good chance.”

  “Why are you guarding me then? Did I say I’m going to try to escape?”

  “Nah. It’s not that. It’s El Lobo’s crew. This one cat, Jimmy the Butcher. He heard your testimony but he still thinks you’re lyin’. He’s threatenin’ to kill you.”

  “So you’re here to protect me?”

  “Yes, m’am.”

  Calypso reached dreamily for the second sandwich, split it with Lobo and took a bite, her eyes still gazing, slightly unfocused, at Lone-R.

  “Nothing like this has ever happened here before?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “It’s hard, you know? Not remembering. And humiliating. Like I could have made a fool of myself and I’d never know.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Tell me, will you? Tell me every single thing so I can remember it now. Give me back my memory. Please?”