Backwoods

by sara12356

  “Gallatin,” Andrew whispered. The state hospital he’d seen in the photograph in Moore’s scrapbook.

  Moore nodded. “Yes, Gallatin State Hospital. They stopped calling it a lunatic asylum some years ago when it was no longer politically correct. Do you know what Alice’s treatment there consisted of? Regular bouts of electroconvulsive therapy—electroshock. She was forcibly administered electrical currents through her brain that triggered seizures and loss of consciousness, because the state of Massachusetts said this would make her better. And there was nothing I could do to stop them.”

  Jesus. Stricken, Andrew looked down at Alice. She remained oblivious to them, her gazed fixed somewhere across the room, her hand draped lightly against Lucy’s blood-dampened fur.

  “Last year, Prendick came to me on behalf of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,” Moore said. “He promised me that they could get Alice out of there. By that point, she’d been incarcerated for nearly three years. I would have done anything, traded my own life, to get her out of that place. I don’t expect you to believe me, much less care, but it’s true. I had been battling nonstop in court to have Alice released. Prendick promised me he could have her set free in a day. And all I had to do was agree to work for them.”

  “And you did,” Andrew said.

  “You’re damn right I did. And I’d do it again—a thousand times, whatever it takes, if it meant fixing Alice. I don’t give a flying fuck about anyone or anything in this entire compound except my daughter.” Shoving Andrew aside, he marched back toward Alice. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get her out of here before we end up carcasses strung up and eviscerated in a tree.”

  “But the roads,” Andrew said. “You can’t leave. Prendick said—”

  “Prendick’s the one behind this entire operation,” Moore said without even pausing in his stride. “It was in his best interest to keep everyone trapped here.” He spared Andrew a glance. “Or at least believing that they were.”

  “Wait.” Andrew watched him catch Alice by the hand and pull her unceremoniously to her feet. Like a puppet, she complied, her expression neutral. “What about Dani Santoro? We can’t just—”

  “She’s a soldier,” Moore said. “Given my past association to this point, I don’t have much sympathy for her.”

  “She’s a mother.”

  “Again, given my past association, I don’t have much sympathy.”

  “But I don’t know the way to your office,” Andrew said. “We can’t leave without her.”

  Moore uttered a sharp laugh. “There is no we, Mister Braddock, except for me and Alice. You do what you have to.”

  He tried to march Alice out of the playroom and furious now, something inside of Andrew snapped, just as it had that long-ago day in North Pole, Alaska, when his father had smiled at him in the front lobby of the Pagoda Chinese restaurant and told him he’d be marrying Lila Meyer. Fists balled, he went after Moore, grabbing him smartly by the sleeve and whirling him around.

  “Dani has two kids. Her son is Alice’s age. His name is Max,” said he said.

  With a frown, Moore tried to pull himself loose. “Shut up and get your hand off me.”

  “He makes straight A’s and this past year, he dressed up like a soldier for Halloween.”

  Moore’s brows furrowed. “I said shut up.”

  “That’s what she said he wants to be when he grows up, a soldier like his mother. Because just like Alice idolizes you, Dani’s boy worships the ground she walks on. Because just like you, Dani’s a good parent who’d do anything for her kids.”

  “Shut up!” Moore shoved Andrew away from him, sending him floundering backwards.

  “As much as you love Alice, Dani loves her kids, too,” Andrew said. “She doesn’t deserve to wind up like that.” He cut his eyes toward the mangled, mutilated remains of Lucy. “Please. If you won’t show me the way to your office, at least tell me how to get there. Please.”

  Something in Moore’s face faltered at this, that cold and unaffected exterior momentarily softening. “Alright,” he said at length, his voice strained and terse, as if it pained him to speak. “Follow the corridor beyond the storeroom to your right, then take the second hallway off it to your left. Take it until it forks to the left, then take that hall all of the way down to the next right. Four doors down, the left hand side of the hallway. Room number one twenty-seven.”

  “Thank you,” Andrew said.

  As he turned to leave, Moore clapped a hand against his arm. “They’re inside the building,” he said, his voice grave and oddly gentle. “She’s already dead, son.”

  Andrew frowned. “I’m not your son,” he said, jerking free of Moore’s grasp. “And you’re wrong.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Dani!”

  Ten minutes later, hopelessly lost in the belly of the laboratory building, Andrew turned in a clumsy circle, screaming his damn fool head off.

  “Dani,” he cried again, his voice hoarse, bouncing off the white-washed walls, industrial-grade linoleum floors and ceiling tile panels. He’d tried to remember Moore’s directions, had muttered them over and over again to himself after he’d left the storeroom, but had lost track of just how many rights he took before hanging a left, or down which corridor he was supposed to turn when.

  One twenty-seven. He remembered the office number Moore had given him, but to that point, all of the doors he’d seen had looked alike and non-descript, and those that had been numbered all seemed to fall in the one hundred-eighty-something range.

  At some point along the way, the emergency lights had winked out, plunging the house of pain into abrupt and absolute darkness. Whether the back up generator had given out, or something more sinister had happened, Andrew didn’t know. But he’d frozen, eyes flown wide, gripped with an overwhelming, child-like fear of the blackened hallway, the unshakable certainty that something was out there, screamers hunkered down and lurking, watching him.

  Once he’d snapped out of that initial, terrified paralysis, he had inched his way forward. Now, still submerged in darkness, he swung the pistol back and forth in one hand, panning his aim nervously ahead of him. With the other, he fumbled along the nearest wall, using it to guide him.

  “Dani,” he shouted out again. His voice cut short when he felt his foot connect with something heavy, solid and semi-soft on the floor in front of him, almost like an oversized sand bag.

  What the fuck? He danced to the left, nearly falling over in panicked fright. His heel settled again onto something firm but yielding underfoot, lumpy enough to trip him.

  “Jesus,” he yelped as he crashed onto his ass, sitting down hard against the floor. The pistol jarred loose from his hand upon the impact, and he heard a loud clatter as it hit the floor, then skittered away, unseen.

  Shit! He groped blindly for it for a long, desperate moment before uttering a frustrated cry and slamming his fist against the floor. “Shit!”

  Only his fist didn’t hit the linoleum tiles. Instead, he hit that heavy, motionless lump beside him again, and this time he felt the coarse texture of heavy fabric, heard it rustle as he struck.

  Shit, he thought, realizing what he’d tripped over, what was sprawled on the floor beside him.

  A dead body.

  He scrambled back until his back hit the wall, and sat there, gasping for breath, teetering on the verge of panic-stricken hyperventilation. Not good, not good, oh, this is not good at all.

  Clapping his hands over his mouth to keep himself quiet, he strained to listen for any tell-tale snuffling or rustling sounds. Because if there’s a dead man on the floor, chances are, whatever killed him is still somewhere close by.

  Though he didn’t hear anything, he remained rooted in spot another moment or two, trying to make sure. Now without a gun, he wouldn’t stand a chance against one of the screamers even in the best of lighting conditions, let alone in the dark.

  I’ve got to find that pistol.

  Forci
ng himself to move, Andrew crept forward on his hands and knees, hands outstretched as patted down the length of the soldier’s body. Near his feet, he felt the cool press of metal, and felt a momentary thrill as he grabbed for it, thinking it was the nine-millimeter. Instead, it was some kind of cylindrical shaft, somewhat heavy despite its slim circumference. A flashlight, he realized. I’ll be damned. This guy had been carrying a flashlight.

  Hoping like hell that it hadn’t broken in the fall, Andrew fumbled along the shaft until he felt the on-off button. When he pushed it, a bright beam of golden light speared across the corridor and he uttered a happy little cry. It cut abruptly short when he saw what the flashlight’s beam had pinned in its stark and momentarily dazzling glare—more soldiers lying near the wall, sprawled together, one nearly atop the others, all of them dead and battered.

  “Oh, God,” he gasped, recognizing their faces—Maggitti, Reigler and Spaulding, three from Dani’s company.

  He realized what had happened to the lights. They’d been shot out, the bulbs splintered by stray bullets. The wall was riddled with automatic gunfire, pock-marked in wildly erratic patterns, as if several armed men had spun in manic circles, shooting all the while.

  He’d seen something else near the dead soldiers—their assault rifles. Crawling forward, tucking the flashlight beneath his arm to direct its beam ahead of him, he reached for one of the fallen M16s. When he went to push a leg aside to grab the nearest stock, he realized it was severed from its corresponding torso. He’d been expecting resistance from the deadweight of a corpse. Instead, the leg slid with surprising ease away from him. It made a squishy sort of sound as it moved, like a mop that hadn’t been wrung out well being slopped across the floor, and he jerked his hand back, feeling his stomach roil.

  This is crazy, he thought. God, what am I doing? I’m supposed to be in a motel room in Pikeville right now, watching pay-for-view porn and plugging tree counts into my laptop to email back to the office.

  Nevertheless, he uttered a triumphant little cry as he wrestled the rifle loose from beneath the tangled heap of dead soldiers. Once he had it free, he scrambled back to the wall. Shrugging the gun strap over his arm, he shouldered it long enough to sweep the flashlight along the corridor in either direction, surveying his surroundings. He saw another one of Dani’s squad mates dead on the floor nearby, Barron, the young man from Anchorage who’d bet Andrew ten bucks the Seawolves would win out in that year’s college hockey face-off against Fairbanks. It had been Barron’s body that Andrew had first tripped over, Barron’s flashlight that he now held in hand. And it was beside Barron’s outstretched and motionless hand that Andrew’s pistol had come to rest when he’d dropped it.

  “I’m sorry,” Andrew whispered as he leaned down, retrieving the nine millimeter, shoving it beneath the waistband of his pants. He spoke not just to Barron, but to all of them, because although they hadn’t been close enough for him to consider them friends, per se, they’d been more than mere acquaintances, and they’d made him feel welcome among them, a part of their group.

  He tried not to look at them again as he started down the hallway again, carrying both the rifle and flashlight at the same time so he could keep the beam of bright illumination trained ahead of him. He focused his attention on each closed door as he passed, each stainless steel knob glittering coldly in the flashlight’s glow.

  One forty-two, one forty, the numbered placards outside the nearest read. Because these were the lowest numerals he’d found so far, he felt a momentary, fledgling hope that it meant he was finally heading in the right direction.

  One thirty-eight, one thirty-six, he saw to his right, while on the left, one thirty-seven, one thirty-five.

  As he passed by door number one thirty-four, he heard faint but distinct noise seeping through the wood and froze. It sounded like someone crying from inside the room.

  A woman crying, he realized, and he whirled, training the flashlight beam directly at the door. Dani!

  Moore had told him his office number was one twenty-seven, or so Andrew had thought. Maybe I misheard, he thought. Or maybe I remembered it wrong. Or maybe that son of a bitch just lied to me so I’d wind up lost.

  Whatever the case, it didn’t matter. She’s in there. She’s alive.

  He tried the knob, but it was locked.

  “Shit,” Andrew muttered, because he’d started to punch the pass code in before realizing the power was out; the key pad didn’t work. Turning the knob futilely in his hand, he pressed his ear against the door. “Dani,” he called out. “Open the door.”

  After a long moment in which there was nothing but silence, he closed his eyes, chanting over and over in his mind like a mantra, Answer me, Dani. Come on, be alive. Be alright. Answer me.

  Then, through the door, he heard, “Andrew?”

  He laughed, slapping his hand against the door. “Dani,” he cried. “It’s me. Let me in. I can’t open the door from this side. The power’s out and the key pad doesn’t work. We have to get out of here.”

  From the other side, he heard a series of shuffling footsteps, some fervent sniffling, then loud, overlapping crashes and bangs, like someone had stumbled into something in the dark, toppling a pencil cup or cutlery set across the floor.

  “Dani?” Concerned, he leaned against the door again. When it opened unexpectedly, swinging inward, he stumbled forward, falling against the woman on the other side.

  “Oh, God, Andrew,” she gulped, and all he caught was a glimpse of blonde hair and a pungent whiff of alcohol before she staggered into him, clapping her arms around his neck in a fervent embrace.

  “Suzette?”

  She’d buried her face against the side of his neck and when she looked up, he saw her make-up streaked down her face, crooked lines of smeared mascara ringing her eyes, bisecting her cheeks. She hiccupped moistly for breath as she choked back tears.

  “Suzette,” he said again. “What are you—”

  “Shhhh!” Spraying his face with spittle, she shoved her hand over his mouth, muffling him. Her eyes were round and wild, rolling in their sockets as her gaze darted frantically past him, up and down the corridor. “Don’t let them hear you.”

  She staggered back into the room, dragging him with her, slamming the door shut behind him. He panned the light around and saw they were in a small office. She’d shoved the desk against the wall and piled blankets in a tangled heap in the chair nook beneath, making a rudimentary nest for herself. Beside this, he saw a cardboard box heaped with cartons of crackers, canned vegetables, some Spaghetti-O’s, but these were far outnumbered by the dozen or so bottles of gin, tequila, red wine and vodka, the latter of which she’d already been hitting pretty heavily, judging by her condition and the nearly empty bottle that listed on its side, cap removed, well within view.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Suzette slurred, shambling toward him again, offering a crooked smile. Her hair was wildly askew, her clothes rumpled and blood-stained. Her eyes remained haunted, gleaming in the reflected flashlight’s glow with a manic sort of glaze. As he watched, she dragged her hands across her cheeks, trying to wipe her ruined make up away, then fought to smooth her hair down behind her ears. “I brought some things. Do you see? Everything I could carry. It should be enough to last us a week, maybe more, a little less.”

  “What are you talking about?” Andrew asked, then she snuggled into him again, twining her arms around his waist, burrowing her nose into his chest.

  “God, I’m so glad you’re here,” she crooned, muffled against his shirt.

  “Suzette, look at me.” Shrugging the gun over his shoulder and setting aside the flashlight, he tried to tilt her face up. “What are you doing here? How did you get inside the lab?”

  “Through the front doors,” she replied, then she snorted laughter. Holding out one unsteady index finger, she mimed punching in a pin code. “I just pushed the buttons.” Her smile faltered, then withered. “I’m scared,” she whispered. “I’m so scared
, Andrew, and I heard gunshots outside, people screaming. It was horrible. I didn’t think there was anybody left, no one but me, and that they’d find me somehow. They’d break down the door and kill me.”

  “It’s alright,” he said, and she crumpled into him again. He embraced her clumsily, awkwardly. “It’s going to be okay, Suzette.”

  “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “Do you know where Dr. Moore’s office is?” he asked. “Do you know how to get there from here?” When she nodded, still tucked against his chest, he said, “You have to show me. Right now. Come on, let’s go.”

  Stepping toward the door, he pulled away from her, leading her by the hand. Her eyes flew wide with renewed alarm and she shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “No, no, oh, no, we can’t go. Are you crazy? They’re out there.”

  The way she said this, the emphasis she placed on the word they’re made him frown. “Do you know what’s going on?” he asked, cocking his head, meeting her bleary gaze. “Suzette, do you know what they are?”

  Because by all rights, she shouldn’t.

  She cut her eyes away, burying her face again into his shirt. “Stay with me,” she mumbled. “Please, Andrew. It will be okay. You’ll see.”

  “You do, don’t you?” he asked. “You know what the screamers are. You know what Moore did to the soldiers from Alpha squad.”

  “It’ll be okay,” she said again, shaking her head, clinging to him. “Another week, maybe two and we won’t have to worry.”

  “Why not? Why won’t we have to worry?” Grasping her by the arms, he hauled her forcibly back from his chest. He gave her a sharp shake, rocking her head on her neck, making her cry out miserably. “Tell me, goddamn it. What are you talking about?”