by Stevie Barry
"I'm too old for this shite," she muttered, though she shouldn't be -- she was only thirty-three, for Christ's sake. She had no excuse for being this out-of-shape.
Her friend, it seemed, didn't share her problem: he kept up with her easily, and might have outpaced her if he'd let himself. That was even more embarrassing, since he had to be at least twice her age.
Another streetlight blew, and another -- if there was a sniper, he had piss-poor aim. If nothing else, they had that in their favor, however pants-wettingly terrifying the situation might be.
-- up ahead, going up the hill --
-- pay for that --
Oh, no. No. Lorna's fists itched to hit someone, to sock at least one of the twats in the jaw, but the desire wasn't strong enough to make her want to actually have to confront any of them. She scanned the street as best she could through the deluge, but her eyes were still blurry and stinging from her unfortunate blood shower.
-- see them. Wish I could just shoot them both --
-- get a promotion for this --
Lorna snarled, white-hot rage crowding out her fear, singing in her veins like sweet music. This she could use; anger and her were old friends, and it kept her going, tamping down the paralysis of terror. Her grip on her companion's hand tightened until she felt the bones creak, but if he made any sound of pain or protest, she didn't hear it.
She felt them before she saw them -- two Men in Grey came pelting toward them from the right. They looked like drowned rats, but one of them was armed with what looked, to Lorna's blurry eyes, like a taser.
Once again, sheer instinct took over. She released her companion's hand and swung the guitar case in a wide, clumsy arc. It was completely graceless, but it worked -- the heavy end caught the man full in the face, knocking him back into the second.
Lorna hit him again, but this time the handle broke. The case went flying, but so did her attacker, dropping his taser. Unfortunately, it cracked into a dozen pieces when it hit the pavement. She'd get no use out of it.
The second man scrambled to his feet with a glower, but the guitar itself cracked him upside the head. Her friend must have pried the case open when she wasn't looking, and his second swing hit so hard the neck snapped in half.
In spite of everything, Lorna winced at the death of her poor instrument. Priorities, she told herself, fumbling through her coat pocket. Her fingers were chilled to the point of numbness, but they found her keys nonetheless. She yanked on her companion's sleeve, and shoved them into his hand.
"Green van," she said. "Stomp the gas or it won't start."
He pushed his sodden hair out of his eyes, staring at her. "What the hell are you gonna do?"
"You're faster than me. Go, will you? I'll catch up."
She struggled after him, bent nearly double against the wind. Even unencumbered by the guitar, her sodden clothes, all too big, might as well have been lead weights. Neither of the men behind her was in any condition to give chase, fortunately, and if there were others, Lorna couldn't sense them. While she was running on adrenaline, she'd crash soon enough, and she wanted to be well away before she did.
When she finally made it to the car park, she found her friend swearing at the bus. The engine coughed and shuddered as he pressed the gas, but it refused to turn over. He'd left the driver's-side door open, so of course half the interior was soaked.
"Shove over," she said, actually shoving him for emphasis. His clamber over the gearshift was far from graceful, and he swore like a sailor when his foot got stuck between the console and the dashboard.
"Welcome to the circus," Lorna muttered, wrenching the door shut. Now that she wasn't running, she was chilled through, her temper growing fouler by the second. "Come on, come on."
The engine coughed again, and roared to life when she floored the accelerator. Even yet she hadn't quite got the hang of American cars, or at least not of this monstrosity – from her perspective, everything was on the wrong side -- and she fumbled with the gearshift before she got it into reverse. The tires, nearly bald, squealed and slipped on the wet pavement, sending the entire bus lurching to the right.
"You actually drive this thing?" he asked, gripping the dashboard.
"More or less. Live in it, too." She winced as the undercarriage scraped the curb. "What are you doing?"
He was, in fact, rifling through the pockets of his huge overcoat. "Grabbed this off one of the goons," he replied, pulling out a handgun. "Not much, but it's loaded."
Lorna snorted in disbelief. "When did you manage that? And just what is it with you Americans and guns?"
He did something that made the gun go click. "I'll give you the lecture later. Will this thing actually make it up this hill?"
"Oi, no insulting my ride." She leaned forward to wipe the condensation off the windshield, but all she did was smear it around. The ancient windshield wipers didn't do her any favors, either.
A stray thought hit her brain -- not words, but an image. Somebody was very nearby, and they were looking right at her bus.
-- there you are --
"Oh, shite." A fresh burst of adrenaline filled her veins as she stomped the gas again. The engine protested when she slammed it straight into fourth gear, peeling up the hill with another screech of tires. "Is that thing loaded? 'Cause I think we might need it in a minute."
"Well, fuck." The window squeaked as he rolled it down, and rain immediately blasted in. "Where?"
"Don't know. Close, somewhere ahead'v us on the left." Lorna's heart was in her throat again, anger joining the adrenaline in a red-hot wave.
"Head right at the stop sign. If we can reach the freeway, we're golden."
Yeah, if, she thought. The intersection was momentarily empty, and she prayed she wouldn't hit anyone who might be approaching.
The bus shuddered again when she turned hard right, and for a second she was afraid it would tip over. What was that bloody game her nephew played -- Grand Theft Auto? It was a lot less fun in reality.
There weren't any cars, but there was, at the next intersection, a police barricade. She had no space to pull a U-turn, even if she thought the bus could handle it. The thing looked unmanned, so she kept the accelerator floored.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
"Hang on."
"To what? My own ass?"
Lorna didn't answer, because there was no answer to be given. The wooden barrier splintered apart when she hit it -- whatever else might be said of her bus, it was sturdy as a tank -- and she gave a triumphant laugh. "Pog mo thoíne, jacknob. Shut the bloody window, will you? I think you can put the gun away."
"What does that mean?" he asked, struggling with the window. The icy blast of rain couldn't be helping his grip.
"'Kiss my ass'." It was amazing, really, what you could get away with saying in America; she'd yet to find a single person who spoke a word of Irish. More than once in her panhandling, she'd sung songs made up entirely of curses, and nobody knew the difference.
-- ran the damn barrier. Are they even worth it --
"Oh, come on," she growled. "They just don't quit, do they?"
She didn't get to finish the sentence. The front tires blew with a sound like an explosion, a deep, echoing boom far louder than it ought to be. The bus pitched forward, back tires actually lifting off the pavement, and Lorna's stomach lurched with it.
The steering wheel refused to respond -- the bus careened wildly, spinning what felt like a hundred and eighty degrees. Lorna barely had time to recognize the second crash, and less time to register pain, before she flew at the windshield and everything went black.
Chapter Two
Lorna's return to consciousness was a gradual, grudging thing, as though her body instinctively knew that she wouldn't like what she found when she woke up.
She felt boneless, and more than a little floaty. It took her a moment to realize she was cruising a wave of very strong painkillers, and several more to remember why she'd need them. Damn.
At
least she was warm now, and dry, lying on a somewhat uncomfortable bed. It smelled like a hospital, harsh disinfectant and floor wax, the air a little stale. How did she get here? Where was here?
Gingerly she opened her eyes, blinking as her vision swam. Above her were speckled ceiling tiles and an annoyingly harsh fluorescent light. Yep, hospital. Her mouth was cottony, her throat even more so, and she could feel a large patch of gauze on her forehead. A blood-pressure cuff banded snug around her left arm, and there was something plastic attached to the index finger of her right hand.
"You're either made of iron, very lucky, or both."
She blinked, and managed to turn her head. A tall woman in pale blue medical scrubs stood in the doorway -- she was maybe Lorna's age, her fair hair pulled back in a ponytail. "What?" Lorna asked, or tried to; all her dry throat could produce was a rasp.
The nurse filled a paper cup with water, and eased the bed up so she could actually drink it. "You went right through the windshield of your car. You were unconscious a full two days before you got here."
The water hit her tongue like a blessing, cool and soothing all the way down to her stomach. Something about that statement didn't make sense, but her fuzzy brain couldn't immediately work out what. She'd been running from the Men in Grey, she'd wrecked her van--
"Shit," she whispered. "There was a man with me, in the wreck. Is he okay?"
The nurse's face went blank for a moment, and Lorna could actually see her trying to line up all those syllables into coherent speech. "He's here, too," she said, after a moment. "He was in pretty bad shape, but he'll recover."
"Where is here?" The surroundings screamed 'hospital', but the nurse's mind said 'Institute'. Where had the two days between the accident and now gone? Why hadn't she been in hospital the whole time?
"You're somewhere safe."
Well, that was a non-answer if she'd ever heard one. It didn't help that the woman's thoughts didn't match her words -- her mouth said safety, but her mind didn't agree. She was deeply uneasy, and again there was that word, 'Institute'. There was nothing at all happy about it.
"Can I use the toilet?" Lorna asked, having no idea what else to say.
"Of course." The nurse sounded almost relieved. "Let me get you unhooked."
Lorna's vision wavered when she sat up, and she had to shut her eyes while she was disentangled from what seemed like far too much plastic tubing. Balance was even harder to find; for a moment she had to lean against the bed, the tile floor cold beneath her bare feet. For the first time, she registered what she was wearing - soft grey trousers like pajama pants, far too long for her, and a grey T-shirt that was equally huge. It felt unsettlingly like a prison uniform.
Her stumbling walk to the bathroom would have been embarrassing if she hadn't been too drugged to care. It was like hospital bathrooms everywhere, dull and impersonal and smelling even more harshly of disinfectant. She fetched up against the counter, leaning on it heavily while her equilibrium fought to restore itself again.
Unsurprisingly, the reflection she confronted was horrible. There was in fact a large white square of gauze stuck to her forehead, and it had a number of scrapes and bruises to keep it company, and she’d chipped her left eye tooth. Her normally olive complexion was ashy, her upper lip split and swollen, her hair a wild tangle of black and grey. She looked…well, like she'd gone flying through a windshield. She was probably lucky she hadn't broken her neck.
Her business was more or less easily taken care of, and after she'd washed her hands, she sucked down several more cups of water. It cleared some of the glue from her mouth, if not her mind. This whole situation was a lot more fucked than it appeared on the surface, but her brain was still riding too steep on morphine for her to work out why.
The nurse rapped on the door. "You okay in there?"
Lorna cleared her throat. "Yeah. Out in a second." A bit steadier on her feet, she actually managed to walk a straight line on her way out.
"I brought you a hairbrush," the nurse said, surprisingly kindly. "Let's get that taken care of, and then do you think you could handle eating in the cafeteria?"
Lorna didn't need to be able to read her mind to know she thought that was a terrible idea. Someone else was making her ask the question, which wasn't comforting. The thought of food was vaguely nauseating, but if she could get out of this room, she might be able to figure out just where the hell she actually was.
"Sure," she said, hauling herself back up onto the bed. "Can I see my friend, too?" She was ashamed, now, that she didn't know his name.
The nurse frowned. "Maybe later. He's asleep now, anyway."
Somehow, that did not fill Lorna with confidence. Something else she needed to investigate, if she could. Great.
Her fingers were still too stiff and clumsy to undo her long braid herself -- the nurse had to help her, as if she were a child. At least she could handle the brush on her own, and she did, using the action to mask her attempts to actively read the nurse's mind. It was, of course, worse than useless -- she'd never been able to control her telepathy at the best of times, and her drug-addled brain really wasn't in any condition to even try.
-- too soon, she shouldn't be up yet --
A jumble of images were all that accompanied the thought: bland hallways, flat, featureless scrubland, and uniformed men who looked suspiciously like prison guards. Well, hell. She definitely had to get out of this room, and figure out just what in blue hell she was really dealing with. Maybe breaking her neck would have been preferable.
Stop it, she scolded herself. Yes, her situation probably sucked more than she was yet aware of, but she was never going to get out of here with that attitude. First chance she got, she was escaping, no matter how banged-up she was.
The hair-tie snapped when she tried to use it, so she left the new braid to unravel on its own. Whatever. It had to be the least of her worries.
Her balance was steadier when she stood again, and she fought to clear her head. Though her stomach roiled again, she firmly tamped down her nausea -- orders or not, the nurse wasn't likely to let her out if she sicked up before she even reached the door.
Two men waited outside it: big, burly, expressionless men. Though they too wore hospital scrubs, their entire bearing shouted 'prison guard'. Well, damn. Sometimes, Lorna really hated being right.
The nurse frowned. "Is this really necessary?"
"Yes," the guard on the right said flatly. Someone must have told him the circumstances of her capture. That wasn't going to make her life any easier.
" 'S all right," she said, trying to enunciate, and probably failing. "Not like I could do much right now anyway." Which was very true; right now she was every bit as innocuous as she looked.
Both guards looked at her so suspiciously that she almost laughed, but they said nothing. She noted that they consciously matched her slow gait, their posture tense as they watched her like a pair of hawks, and she fought a grimace. Most definitely guards.
The hallway was as bland and nondescript as the recovery room: flat white walls, pale, speckled tile floor, and fluorescent ceiling lights that buzzed erratically. Whatever this place was, it looked like a hospital, and she was obscurely worried by that.
Her head spun a little, but she refused to let it slow her down -- her own stint in prison had taught her never to show weakness to guards or fellow inmates, no matter how awful she felt. So she stayed grimly silent, letting her captors' thoughts flow through her mind in frustratingly incomplete waves.
Yet again there was that word, 'Institute'. To the nurse it had been unsettling; the man on the right was indifferent, but the one on the left attached an almost sadistic glee to it. The glee was tempered, however, by the fact that he was unable to physically harm the -- inmates? Well, that was an even worse sign. His mind only made Lorna feel more ill.
When they reached a window, she paused. It was covered in metal grillwork, and it looked out on a landscape as desolate as the one she'd seen in the nurse'
s head: flat scrubland, tinted red by the light of a bloody sunset. There were no trees, or even other buildings -- just a fence, chain-link topped with razor wire, and woven through with heavy cables she suspected were electrified.
The guard on the right nudged her. "Move it, lady," he said, his tone obviously bored.
"Fuck off," Lorna said automatically, approaching the window. Where were they? It didn't look like any pictures of the American desert that she'd ever seen. Was she even in the States anymore? The nurse and guards all had American accents, but that didn't necessarily mean anything.
"I said move." He made the very grave mistake of grabbing her shoulder, trying to drag her away.
If Lorna had been sober, she might not have done it -- or at least, not done it so drastically. She drove her elbow into his ribcage as hard as she could -- hard enough to actually drive him backward, his breath exhaling in a surprised whoosh. She rounded on him before he could recover, socking him in the jaw with all the force she could muster. His lip split where it mashed against his teeth, turning his pained grimace bloody.
He bellowed, trying to grab her hair even as the other guard caught her arm. That one took a foot to the groin, and ouch, that was a mistake -- Lorna wasn't nearly flexible enough to be trying to kick that high, and even through the painkillers she felt something strain at the back of her thigh. Oops.
Guard number two fell to his knees, but to give him credit, he didn't drop entirely. He grabbed her ankle, but she used his grip as leverage to kick his face with her other foot. Barefoot, she didn't do nearly as much damage as she could have otherwise, but it was enough to break his nose with an audible snap.
Guard number one, swearing like a sailor, managed to get her into a choke-hold -- tight, but not strangling. He wore too much smelly aftershave, and the stink of it assailed Lorna's sinuses like a solid force. It made her scowl as she gripped his arm, planted her feet on his thighs, and threw herself forward. It was sloppy, and she knew she'd hurt like a bastard later, but it worked -- he fell with her, crashing headlong into the wall and losing his grip on her in the process.