Earth Thirst

by Mark Teppo

  “I was there too,” I tell him. “On the Cetacean Liberty.”

  “Bullshit,” he says, but his disbelief doesn't reach his eyes.

  “That man's name was Gus,” I tell him, and I go on to describe the scars on Gus's hands and the tattoo he had on his right shoulder. Ralph eats it up, that hardened nugget of hope that he hadn't been able to let go of suddenly softening in his hands, threatening to become malleable again. Something that he could shape into that story he dreamed about.

  “Holy shit,” he whispers when I finish.

  “Now,” I say, putting my hands on the table. “let's talk about those two guys at the hospital right now. How many more of them are there? What's their routine?”

  “Why? What are you going to do?”

  “I'm going to ask them some questions.”

  “I… I don't think that's a very good idea,” he blanches.

  “Why, Ralph? Don't you want some answers? I know I do.”

  I can tell he is not a fan of the direct approach, and I concede there's some prudence there. He's not entirely sure why they are there at all if everyone has been moved somewhere else. I suspect it is because they're waiting for someone like me to show up. And I did, which means I have a short window of time before word gets back to wherever the Secutores command center is. The two guys I saw tonight didn't recognize me, but they had noticed me. Judging from the lack of any excitement around the hospital during the time I'd been in the café, I don't think they've called in their suspicions, which meant it will go in their nightly report. A line item to establish a baseline pattern. If they spot me again, Secutores will upgrade me to active threat status.

  I have to either not be seen again or be long gone by the time they find out that I'm still around. I can't take them in the hospital itself, even the parking garage is going to be tricky, but taking them after they leave the hospital opens me up to an entirely different set of risks though. Pros and cons. Every mission has them. The deciding factor, as always, comes down to which “things have gone to shit” scenario is the most recoverable. When things go awry—and they will—where do I have the best chance of survival.

  And Ralph too. Short of banging him over the head and dumping him in the trunk of his car, I'm not going to be able to get rid of him. That's the cost sometimes of hooking a source. They can be hard to get rid of.

  Visiting hours are going to be over in an hour or so, and I doubt the Secutores men are going to remain in the waiting area after that. Their job is to keep watch for strays like me who might come wandering in; they're not protecting any assets at the hospital. Not anymore. They're just watchers. Once there's nothing to watch, they'll call it and head back to wherever they spend the night.

  “Ralph, here's the deal,” I lay it out for him. “You can wait for me, and either I'll come back in a while or there will be a sudden surge in police activity around the hospital, which will be your one and only clue that I'm not coming back.”

  “Maybe I should come with you…” he tries.

  See? Hooked. Can't shake him off the line. I try to push him off a bit with a simple question. “Do you want to be a material witness?”

  He sits there, looking like he is actually thinking about my question.

  “Mull it over from your car,” I tell him as I stand up.

  “That… yes, that makes better sense,” he says.

  I leave Ralph and the café, and walk back to the hospital to scout the route the mercenaries will probably take. There's a new parking structure and it's got a floor plan for maximizing parking, which leaves little in the way of places to hide and blind spots, but there are enough.

  The pair exit P wing shortly after nine o'clock, heading for the parking garage. They're walking assuredly. Not excited. Not bored. They've got something on their minds, and they're looking forward to reporting in. In the last few hours, they've decided I'm worth making some noise about to their superiors.

  All the more reason to act now.

  I slip around the exterior of the garage and enter by one of the pedestrian access points near the back. There's a man sitting in a silver Mercedes along the back wall of the ground floor, his car pointing the opposite direction of every other vehicle. He's reading a newspaper, his window cracked slightly, and he glances up as I walk by. There's something about him that seems familiar, but I can't place it, and the setup looks like a bored town car driver waiting for his ride to finish whatever they're doing in the hospital. The guy doesn't seem interested in me, and I push him out of my mind as I stroll toward the low railing that separates the floors of the garage.

  General parking starts the floor above. I check to make sure no one is watching and leap up through the narrow gap between the floors. Cars are packed along every up and down ramp—these half-floors are separated by a combination of steel wire and heavy concrete blocks. There's just enough room between them for a body to slip through. It's the sort of architectural layout that parkour aficionados love.

  The mercenaries take the elevator, and I move up quickly enough to stay ahead of their ride. When the elevator opens on the third floor, I'm already there, crouched behind a hulking SUV.

  The two cross to a dark sedan parked close to the half-wall, and in that moment of time when all four doors are unlocked and they're getting in, I dash over and slip into the back seat on the passenger side.

  The driver has buckled his seat belt and is reaching for the ignition when I crack him in the side of the neck with my fist. The passenger goes for a weapon in the glove box. He gets it out, and I let him thumb off the safety before I take it from him and break his nose with the butt. The driver is still reeling from my punch, but he quiets down when he feels the barrel of the pistol press against his head. It's a familiar looking model. SIG Sauer P226 with a short magazine. In the car, the .40 S&W round will do quite well. I don't need a lot of bullets.

  “Hello, gentlemen,” I say. “I think it's time we had a chat.” The smell of Passenger's blood is making me tense, making the thirst knot my stomach, and I bleed off a lot of that tension in my voice.

  They both go still, waiting for me to make the next move. It's always nice to do business with professionals.

  “Hands on your heads,” I tell them, “interlace your fingers.” Driver seems to be the one who is going to test me, and so I thumb back the hammer on the gun. It's a double action pistol, and pulling back the hammer lets them know I mean business.

  Passenger starts breathing out of his mouth, and tiny strands of blood fly from his lips.

  “You don't want to do this,” Driver says.

  “Do what? I just want to ask a couple of questions. This doesn't have to get complicated.”

  I sit back, taking the pressure off Driver's head. This way I can keep the gun on both of them. Driver looks at me in the rearview mirror, and if I had a silencer on this pistol, I'd put a bullet through the mirror, but I settle for making sure he can see the pistol.

  “Who's paying for your services?” I ask.

  “Fuck and You,” Driver says.

  “They pay well?”

  The question isn't what he was expecting and he blinks heavily at me. Passenger starts to turn his head, and I kick the back of his seat to let him know that I don't think that is a good idea.

  “Where are the people from the boat?” I ask. I tap the barrel of the pistol against Driver's shoulder. “And Fuck and You's house isn't the right answer.”

  “You're not going to shoot us,” Driver sneers.

  “No?” I lower the pistol and press it against the back of his seat. The trigger action is good and clean, and I fire the gun twice. The leather seat is a decent noise-suppressor, and Driver jerks and coughs very dramatically, spitting blood on the dash and windshield. With a rattling groan that I know well, he slumps forward against the inside of his door.

  The barrel of the gun is hot and I press it against the back of Passenger's neck, shushing him because he's starting to make a bit of a high-pitched whining noise.<
br />
  “Where are they?” I ask when he calms down enough to hear me.

  “E… Eden Park,” he stutters.

  “See? Not very complicated at all.” I hit him hard enough to put him out, and toss the gun into the driver's side footwell. I get out and walk away.

  It would have been easy to kill the other one too, but that turns the car into a crime scene that Adelaide Police are going to be all over. With Passenger still alive, he's going to call it in to Secutores. They're going to scramble to do clean up, and I did Driver discretely enough that they'll probably get away with it. The job will tap their resources though, leaving less guys to be waiting for me at Eden Park.

  That's the first thing Passenger will do when he wakes up. Let his command know what he told me. If he lied, it means nothing; if he told me the truth—and I suspect he did—I've got a very small window of opportunity.

  Ralph is startled when I appear next to his Volvo. I tap on the glass and he unlocks the passenger side. “Eden Park,” I say as I climb in. “Drive and talk. We don't have a lot of time.”

  TWELVE

  His phone is more modern than my crap pay-as-you-go phone, and it offers us a route to a place far enough from the city center that the buildings get replaced by trees. His phone also has access to the Internet, and I can run a search on Eden Park while he drives. His phone's screen is small, and the search results are tiny, but I find enough to jog his memory.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I've heard of the place. I thought it was shut down though. It used to be a lunatic asylum when it was first opened, like, forty years ago. And that's why it closed, I think. The term fell out of favor, and other places that were more politically correct started springing up.” He laughs nervously. “A cottage industry, you know? The pharmaceutical companies want us taking more pills, right? They don't want us to get over our depression or our phobias. They want us to be taking some sort of medication for them. We can't make you normal, but we can make you look normal.”

  “Appearances are important,” I say, staring out the window.

  “What happened on the boat?” he asks suddenly, trying to catch me out.

  “Someone panicked,” I reply. “And then they tried to hide their mistakes.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “It's good to care about something, Ralph,” I say, turning my head toward him. “Don't you think?”

  He gets flustered and the car wiggles on the road a bit as he fusses with the steeling wheel.

  “What happened at the hospital?” he asks.

  “Nothing you want to put in any story you write,” I tell him.

  “If you did anything illegal for this information—”

  I cut him off with a laugh. “Do you think the people at Eden Park—if this is where they're all locked up—are there legally? Do you think Secutores is doing anything other than helping to establish a legal precedence for curtailing people's rights?”

  “That's not the point,” he sputters. “Where does it end if I don't—I mean, how does the system work if no one adheres to it?”

  “How old are you, Ralph?”

  “Forty—forty-six.”

  “Keep holding on to that childlike idealism as long as you can,” I say.

  * * *

  From the outside, Eden Park looks like a respectable private estate. Set back from the road and hidden by a wide screen of oak trees, the main grounds are nicely manicured and the three buildings try hard to pass for Nouveau Colonial. The only sign it is something other than it appears is the lack of shadows. Mounted floodlights keep the darkness at bay, and the grass shines unnaturally in the harsh light. There's no sign of external patrols, but I'm sure the persistent light is to ensure a clear picture on the many closed-circuit cameras.

  It's quiet in the trees around Eden Park. I haven't heard a single car pass since Ralph slowed down enough along the main road for me to hop out. No sound comes from the buildings either. This iteration of Eden Park is one of those kinder and gentler psychiatric facilities than its original incarnation, and the lack of B-movie shrieks certainly suggest the unfortunates are resting quietly.

  It's certainly not the same as Bedlam in its heyday.

  I skulk around the perimeter, a ghost among the trees. If there are motion detectors, no one is paying any attention to them, and the only activity I see is a pair of gray rabbits who I flush out of a squat bush as I pass along the northern verge of the property.

  The staff parking lot is in the back, and it's where shadows are allowed to gather. I slither across the damp grass and hug the tailgate of a pickup truck. I count cars, and making a guess purely based on the make and model of the cars in the lot, I surmise most of the staff on-hand tonight are only a notch or two above hourly wage.

  The trio of identical black sedans parked in a row gets my attention. Same make and model as the car the mercenaries were driving in the garage. Rentals, I realize.

  I'm considering the brazen approach when a door opens on the rear of the closest building. A pair of suits exits. One is fumbling in her purse for keys and the other has his ear glued to his cell phone. Their outfits match, though the man's jacket is ill-fitted in comparison to the woman's tailored top. Her haircut is more precise than his as well, and I'm a bit surprised when she finds her keys, clicks off the alarm to one of the three sedans, and holds open the back door for the guy. He ducks into the car without missing a word in his conversation, and she shuts the door. She opens the driver-side door, climbs in, starts the car, and then gets back out. Leaning against the car, she lights a cigarette, and stares at the building which they had just vacated. She's waiting for him to finish his call, and judging from her expression, this isn't the first time he's made her wait.

  I wonder who he is talking to.

  She finishes her cigarette—a Gauloises Blonde from the smell—and crushes it out beneath the smart heel of her black oxford pump. She looks around, as if she senses me watching, and I can tell from the slackness of her face that it's been a long day. She's not really looking, even though the lizard part of her brain just reached up and yanked on her consciousness.

  I consider taking both of them. Certainly easier than any sort of assault I had considered in the parking garage. Drop her first; yank open the back door of the car; lean in and pop the guy on the phone. It would take me ten seconds, max; but then I would have to decide what to do with them later. And the first few suggestions that float to mind aren't really options, as much as I'd like to fantasize otherwise.

  Invisibility is better, and so I stay put as she gets back into the car. It backs out of its space, pivots, and drives around toward the front of the facility and the long driveway to the main road. After it is gone, the silence returns.

  Two rentals left. Somewhere between four and eight passengers. It's after ten o'clock. If there is a shift change coming anytime soon, it'll be midnight. I have two hours.

  The scent of the Gauloises hangs in the air, a tantalizing hint of an idea.

  The smoker's corner is under the overhanging eaves on the northern back corner of the main building. There are two plastic chairs and a tall cylindrical ashtray. A single video camera points directly down on the spot, the baleful eye of Eden Park's administration offering not-so-subtle distain for the lung-burners.

  Having seen the unedited toxicological reports from the 1960s, I can't say I blame them.

  Fortunately for me, any serious smoker is going to need a couple smoke breaks during an eight-hour shift. I shouldn't have to wait too long.

  * * *

  He's a three-pack-a-day man and although he washes his hands obsessively, there's still a nicotine stain on the inside of his right middle finger. He breathes heavily from the mouth when he's afraid, and I gag at the rot coming out of his lungs. His circulation is bad enough that it doesn't take much pressure on his neck to make his pass out. I lay him out on the ground, swipe his ID badge and his wallet, and after a moment's hesitation, I dig through his pockets for his pack of cigarette
s and shred them.

  The video camera hangs crookedly on its post, its eye no longer watchful.

  I swipe the ID card on the nearby door and slip into the main building.

  Inside, it's all puce walls and off-white trim. Prints of very restful landscapes are arranged neatly along the walls. Someone left the mood music on—Chopin, from the sounds of it—though it's so quiet most wouldn't know they were actually humming along with it. Got to keep the natives placid.

  I'm behind the scenes at the psychiatric hospital, and there aren't any cameras watching the watchers. The first floor is most likely administration, with the upper floors and basement given over to the rooms for the residents and rooms filled with therapeutic opportunities, respectively. A pair of orderlies is hanging out in a break room not far from the staff kitchen, and as they're staring tiredly at a video feed from a sports channel, it's not too hard to slip past them. I ponder putting the pair of slightly less bored guards in the security cage to sleep, but I suspect the current administration at Eden Park isn't keen on putting real names on the room roster.

  I'm going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.

  THIRTEEN

  Mere is in a corner room on the second floor. She's asleep when I peek in, but she's thrown her sheet off and even though she's curled up and her head is turned away from the observation peephole in the door, I recognize her shape.

  There are a lot of things I can't forget. Sometimes I wish I could. Though, times like this, I relish having the memories I do. Too many are gone—good and bad.

  The lock on the door is solid, and I could probably rip the door off its hinges, but that'll be noisy. I go looking for someone with keys instead—like the two guards in the security cage on the first floor.

  When I get back downstairs, one is not there. When he returns a few minutes later, he gawks at his unconscious buddy for a second before joining him. While I've been waiting, I've had time to collect the set of master keys and read over the resident roster. It's all first names and last initial only, and I find “Mere V” as well as “Thaddeus M.”