by sara12356
“He can’t get through,” Dani said, her voice breathless and shaking, on the verge of hysteria. She looked at Andrew, wild-eyed and trembling, her face and clothes blood-soaked and torn, and began to laugh. “He can’t get through! Oh, my God. We did it.”
He hooked his arm around her and they crumpled together. She shuddered in his embrace, clutching at him, laughing and sobbing all at the same time. Beyond her shoulder, he could see Alice staring, glassy-eyed and shell-shocked at the garage, watching it shake with each furious blow.
“Alice.” Easing away from Dani, he reached for her, crumpling to his knees so that when she stumbled hesitantly toward him, he could fold her into his arms. She didn’t weep, didn’t make a sound, but simply shivered against him, her fingers twining anxiously against the front of his shirt.
“It’s alright.” He kept saying that over and over, mantra-like, as he rocked her back and forth. “It’s alright now, Alice. I promise. Everything’s going to be okay.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“My daddy’s dead, isn’t he?”
Alice had found the keys to one of the compound’s Humvees, and the hulking truck jostled and bounced beneath them as Dani drove them down the mountain toward the highway. As she had on the night Andrew had first met her, she sat behind the wheel, clutching it in her hands with such force, her knuckles had turned white, and the dim light from the dashboard instruments cast her face in an eerie glow.
Andrew sat in the back with Alice curled beside him, her head resting on his shoulder. He’d found some blankets in the rear of the truck and wrapped them around her. Dani had the heater going full blast, belching hot air throughout the cab, but still Alice trembled like a dried leaf caught in a maelstrom at his side.
As she spoke, her voice was small and tremulous. Her hair was damp with grime. He could see the pale skin of her scalp in places where the locks had clumped and coiled together and the sutured edge of one of her most recent trepanation wounds.
“I’m sorry,” Andrew whispered.
Because that’s what people say when they find out someone’s dead, Dani had told him once, back when he’d still thought of her only as Specialist Santoro, before he’d come to understand that everything he’d felt for Lila Meyer had been a lie, a pale and distant shadow to what love would truly be when he stumbled across it.
Alice looked up at him, her large, dark eyes swimming with tears. Lost. That was how she looked. He recognized that disconnect and shock that had glazed over her eyes. He’d seen it in his mother’s, as well as his own, when Beth had succumbed to lupus.
Lost.
“Did you cry when your sister died?” she asked.
Andrew nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I cried a lot.”
“Oh, good.” She offered a crooked smile, her tears spilling. “Then I’m doing it right.”
****
The nearest hospital was in Pikeville, the eight-story regional medical center housed in a building of unexpectedly contemporary design, fronted on all sides with smoky glass windows, sharp angles and a cool, clinical façade. Dani pulled the Humvee beneath an overhang in the back outside of the emergency ward, the place where ambulances customarily docked to deliver patients.
“You can’t tell them anything about what happened,” she said, turning in her seat to look at Andrew. Alice had long-since fallen asleep during the nearly two-hour drive, and rested with her cheek against his heart. “Only that you got shot, okay? Just let me handle it.”
He started to ask why, righteously indignant, then remembered what Suzette had told him upon his arrival at the camp. Top secret. Hush hush.
“I’ll call my C. O. in New York,” Dani was saying, only now she seemed to be talking more to herself than to him. Like Andrew, she was in shock from both blood loss and pain, and rocked in the driver’s seat back and forth, like a little girl in need of the bathroom. “He’ll know what to do. There’s a base in Fort Knox. They can send someone to take care of things.”
A man in a rent-a-cop uniform tapped on the Humvee window, a hospital security guard. When Dani jumped in surprise, then opened the door, he stepped back a wary distance and studied her for a moment, taking into account her ghastly pallor and shell-shocked eyes, her wet, blood-stained clothes and battered, disheveled appearance.
“What seems to be the trouble, miss?” he asked, suspicious enough to drape his hand against the sidearm he wore holstered at his hip, to flip back the restraining strap with his thumb to allow himself ready access to the pistol if needed.
“I’m Specialist Daniela Santoro, with the U.S. Army National Guard.” Dani held up her hands, palms facing the guard. “There’s been an accident. I have civilians in my truck.” At this, the guard glanced past her into the Humvee, catching sight of Andrew and Alice, now roused somewhat and blinking in sleepy bewilderment. “Please,” Dani said, drawing the man’s gaze again. “We need help.”
****
“Andrew Braddock?” one of the nurses asked, a fresh-faced kid who looked for all the world like he’d just graduated from high school.
They had just finished transporting Andrew inside, having transferred him from a wheeled stretcher to a hospital bed in a brightly lit emergency room bay. They’d begun removing his clothes and connecting a variety of medical equipment and instruments to him, an automatic blood pressure cuff around his arm, a pulse and blood oxidation monitor to the tip of his index finger.
“Where’s Dani?” he’d asked repeatedly. “Where’s Alice? Please, are they alright? I want to see them.”
The hospital staff bustled and buzzed around him, a ceaseless blur of uniforms and faces, people talking to him, around him and about him. It was enough to make his head—dazed to begin with—spin all the more. He couldn’t imagine how terrifying and bewildering it would be for poor Alice.
They hadn’t let him see her, or Dani, either, but he’d been able to overhear them at least in part from one of the neighboring bays as they’d tended to Dani’s injuries. She was the worst off of the three of them, and he’d caught a glimpse of her on a fast-moving wheeled gurney, with a crowd of harried nurses around her as they’d wheeled her away from the ward for surgery.
“That’s your name, isn’t it?” a male nurse asked him. “Andrew Braddock?”
“Yes,” Andrew said. “How did you know?”
“I’ve seen your picture in the paper,” the nurse replied. “You’re the guy who went missing a few days ago, back in the hills, right?”
“They’ve been looking for you,” another nurse said, taping down a clear plastic I. V. port beneath the bridge of his knuckles, then began fiddling with the line, making sure there were no kinks or constricting loops.
“Who has?” Andrew jerked again at the doctor’s light but painfully persistent prodding.
“The sheriff’s office,” the nurse replied. “Couple of good-sized search parties, too. Your disappearance has been the most excitement we’ve seen in these parts for awhile.”
She seemed friendly enough, sympathetic, and when she moved to leave his bedside, he caught her by the wrist.
“Please. There was a little girl with me.”
“She’s fine,” the nurse soothed.
“You don’t understand. Her name is Alice Moore. She’s autistic. Just let me talk to her for a minute. I can—”
One of the doctors did something to his ankle at that moment, which though unseen, felt akin to peeling back the flesh with a pair of needlenose pliers, then prodding the molten tip of a fireplace poker into the raw, exposed meat beneath. Andrew cried out sharply, and the doctor gave a nod to the nurse.
“Give him two milligrams per minute, morphine sulfate by push,” he said, and within moments, the nurse was fiddling with the intravenous tube again, this time inserting a filled hypodermic syringe into another plastic port in the line.
“What is that?” Andrew asked, alarmed, because the last time someone had poked a needle into him, as it had turned out, they’d been identifying him
as a potential subject in a bioengineering experiment.
“It’s medicine,” the nurse said.
“It will help your pain, Mister Braddock,” the doctor told him.
“Everything’s going to be alright,” said the nurse and about that time, Andrew felt his eyelids drooping, his mind growing cloudy. The pain in his leg became something distant and vague, like a nightmare that upon waking, is nearly forgotten, with only the lingering unease it inspired remaining.
****
“Mister Braddock?”
Andrew felt his mind emerging from this subterranean bliss, a murky sea of clouded dreams. He was only dimly aware of something draped against his face, some kind of tendril-like tubing he could also feel against his arm in loose coils. When his eyelids fluttered open a dazed half-mast and a man came into view leaning over him, dressed in military fatigues, Andrew had a moment of stark and bewildered terror.
Prendick made his way out of the garage, oh, Christ, and found me!
With a gasp, he sat up, flailing his arms, trying to knock away what he thought were Prendick’s entrails that had reached out again to grab him. It took him a disoriented, frantic moment before he remembered where he was
the hospital in Pikeville
and that the tubes he’d mistaken for Prendick’s snake-like intestines were instead the IV lines delivering clear fluid and blood into twin ports in his hands. The soldier above him wasn’t Prendick, but a tall, lean black man, his hair shaved high and tight, his expression stern-faced and stoic beneath the rim of his hat.
“Mister Braddock?” he said. “I’m Captain Darnell Peterson with the Office of the Special Assistant Commanding General, U.S. Army Armor Center, Fort Knox.”
I’ll call my C. O. in New York, Dani had said when they’d arrived at the hospital. He’ll know what to do. There’s a base in Fort Knox. They can send someone to take care of things.
With a groan, Andrew glanced around, taking in his surroundings. A jumble of broken bits of memory flooded his mind all at once, from being wheeled into the emergency room to a series of radiography suites after that. He seemed to have fuzzy recollection of being asked for his signature on papers and forms, consent for surgery, a smiling nurse had told him. They needed to operate on his ankle.
“Where’s Dani?” he asked, his voice hoarse, little more than a croak. “Specialist Santoro. Is she alright?”
Peterson nodded. “She’s going to be just fine.”
“I want to see her.” Andrew grimaced, trying to sit up more in bed. His foot had been immobilized in some kind of soft, inflatable cast. It looked like a astronaut’s boot.
The Captain smiled at him, a practiced, polished and patently insincere sort. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, Mister Braddock,” he said.
Andrew frowned. “Why not?”
“She’s been transferred to the Keller Army Community Hospital in West Point, New York.”
“She’s gone?” Andrew asked, startled, and when Peterson nodded, he stammered, “But I…I didn’t say…” I didn’t get to say good-bye, he thought, stricken. I never told her that I love her.
“She was transported yesterday, shortly after Alice Moore left.”
“What do you mean?” Andrew asked. “Where did she—”
Peterson cut him off, cool and smooth. “She’s been remanded to the charge of the state of Massachusetts, a ward of the court.”
What?
“It’s my understanding that Edward Moore had sole parental custody of her, that her mother had signed away her rights in the last year. With no surviving family to take charge of her, until such time as Dr. Moore’s estate has been settled, guardianship reverts to the state.”
“But they’ll lock her up.” Andrew tried to swing his legs around, to get up and out of bed, but that damn inflatable boot was apparently hooked up to some kind of machine through a network of tubes, keeping it inflated, and thus hampered his efforts. “They’ll put her back in Gallatin, goddamn it! How could you let them take her?”
Peterson looked mildly insulted at this. “I didn’t let them do anything. I’m afraid the girl is well beyond the Army’s realm of responsibility, Mister Braddock.”
“What the hell is your realm of responsibility, then?” Andrew snapped. “What are you doing here? Get out of my room.”
“I’ve been authorized to debrief you on the events that occurred at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Appalachian Research Facility,” Peterson said.
“I don’t need debriefing. I was there. I know what happened.”
Despite the fact that Andrew was getting more pissed off by the moment, Peterson remained cool and collected. “You were injured in a motor vehicle collision. You were brought to the research facility for medical attention. While you were there, an incident occurred in which some National Guardsmen attempted to carry out an isolated act of domestic terrorism.”
“What?” Andrew shook his head. “That’s not how it happened.”
Just let me handle it, Dani had said. Was this what she’d meant?
Peterson continued, ignoring Andrew’s interruption. “Through the heroic efforts of others stationed at the compound, including base commander Major Mitchell Prendick, the attempt was thwarted. Unfortunately, several people, including Specialist Santoro, were injured and others lost their lives during the incident, including Major Prendick and Dr. Edward Moore, a civilian contractor working at the facility.”
‘There’s a base in Fort Knox. They can send someone to take care of things. ’ That’s what she told me. That’s what this is, what this guy, Peterson, is telling me. They’re taking care of things—by sweeping it all under the rug.
He managed a humorless laugh. “You son of a bitch,” he said to Captain Peterson.
“That is all you are authorized to disclose about this incident, Mister Braddock,” Peterson said. “Any deviation from this account will result in your immediate arrest and prosecution for trespass on federal property.”
“Yeah, I know. Title Eighteen, Chapter Sixty-seven, Subsection Thirteen-eighty-something, am I right? Punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of five grand. I’ve already had that run down.”
“Good.” Peterson nodded once, that smarmy smile at last withering from his face. His mouth drew in a thin line and his brows narrowed slightly. “Then you understand how this works.”
Andrew locked gazes with him. “Perfectly.”
Peterson turned on his heel and walked briskly to the door.
“Captain,” Andrew said, making him pause and glance back over his shoulder, one brow arched. “What’s going to happen to the facility?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your concern.”
“I mean, are you going to send more troops there?” To claim the bodies, he wanted to add, but couldn’t muster the words, not with visions of Dani’s squad mates, Maggitti, Reigler and Spaulding, all dead in the corridor of the house of pain, or Suzette’s body mangled and sprawled in the corner of a vacant office.
And then something Peterson had mentioned earlier came to mind: With no surviving family to take charge of her, until such time as Dr. Moore’s estate has been settled, guardianship reverts to the state.
How could he be sure Moore was dead?
He licked his lips because his mouth suddenly felt tacky and dry. “You’ve already sent troops there, haven’t you?” he asked with a sudden, sinking feeling.
The corner of Peterson’s mouth hooked wryly, as if he found Andrew’s visible apprehension amusing, pathetic or both. “It’s a fifty-one million dollar research facility, Mister Braddock. Fifty-one million. A containment crew was dispatched from the moment we learned of Specialist Santoro’s survival. Once they’ve secured the facility and assessed the situation, I’ll forward their report along to the appropriate agency personnel for further consideration and action. It’s fairly standard protocol.”
“Did they open the garage?”
Peterson looked puzzled. “Their ord
ers are to sweep and secure all of the compound buildings and—”
“Did they open the garage?” Andrew shouted, balling his hands into fists, making the little LED monitor near his bedside that had been monitoring his heart rate suddenly begin firing off a rapid series of beep-beep-BEEPs.
At this, Peterson’s lips puckered, as if he’d tasted something sour, and his brows narrowed. “I would assume so, yes.”
Then they’re already dead, Andrew thought, leaning back against the pillows. “You son of a bitch.” Again, he laughed, a hoarse, dismayed sound. It was either that or burst into tears. “You’ve killed them all.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“They have horses, Andrew!”
One month later, Andrew sat on the couch in his apartment, feet propped on the coffee table, a freshly opened bottle of Harp in one hand, his replacement iPhone in the other, and listened as Alice chattered excitedly in his ear.
“They have stables and a barn and a riding ring and they said I could take lessons every day. They even gave my own horse! Not to keep or anything, not forever at any rate, but they said I could ride her whenever I feel like it, as much as I want. Her name is Sunshine and they let me feed her carrots. She eats them right out of my hand!”
“Gross. Horse slobber,” Andrew said, making her laugh, a high-pitched, happy sound. “I’m just kidding. I’m glad you like it there.”
“I love it!” she gushed.
As it had turned out, when Moore had sued the state of Massachusetts to have Alice released from Gallatin, in the process, he’d made sure that no one would ever be able to institutionalize her there again. He’d left specific instructions in his will, along with a sizable trust in Alice’s name, that placed her in the custody and care of Cochrane Academy, a facility in western Massachusetts specializing in the long-term treatment and care of autistic children.
“Two of the girls in my therapy group told me there are dance lessons in the fall, too. Ballet and tap. I want to take them both.”