The Scrubs

by Simon Janus

  “You seem to be more worried about losing reception than you are about Jeter’s health,” Cady said.

  O’Keefe fixed Cady with a chilling stare that made him swallow. “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” O’Keefe agreed.

  Cady stood fast. Not that he cared much for Jeter’s well-being considering the misery he’d brought to others, but he couldn’t intervene--yet. He wasn’t here to prevent events or steer them onto a new course. That was Saunders’ job back at the Home Office. He was here to bear witness. He was a recording device to be used at a hearing. Let O’Keefe hang himself and take a few others with him.

  “Now, Jeter.” O’Keefe opened his fist, releasing the feed tube, letting the liquid wormwood flow back into the inmate’s nose. Jeter settled back into his Throne. “You want to tell me what this is all about?” O’Keefe pointed at the Rift.

  Keeler was walking across the backs of the corpses toward the dead woman at the center of the pond. Everyone stood transfixed by the scene playing out in the Rift. Cady managed to tear his gaze away.

  “You know what would be great?” O’Keefe said. “Sound. I’d love to hear the conversation between Keeler and that lovely dead lady. Can you give us something to go with the great pictures?”

  Jeter released a guttural gurgle that sounded more animal than human.

  Cady couldn’t stand it any longer. He launched himself at the Throne and tore up its side. The guards in the gun nests bristled. Nervous fingers brushed against feather light triggers. Cady snatched a fistful of Jeter’s rancid prison issue shirt.

  “Do it. Don’t play games. Tell him what the hell is going on in there.”

  “Woohoo, Jeter, I think you’ve got a fan,” O’Keefe mocked.

  Jeter turned to Cady. Although Jeter was without eyes, Cady felt the killer’s sightless gaze peel away at his flesh and bone until his soul was left bare. In those briefest of moments, Jeter extracted everything about Cady--his fears and dreams, everything that made him the man he was, and that scared him. He realized Jeter was more powerful than these fools believed.

  Cady changed his mind. He didn’t want to know what was going on inside the Rift. Keeler wasn’t worth saving. He had taken his chances already and lost. Cady saw no point in sacrificing himself. He released his hold on Jeter and looked away in shame. A blind man had stared him down.

  Jeter chuckled.

  “Don’t feel so bad,” O’Keefe said. “He has that effect on everyone.”

  Cady tasted the sourness of vomit at the back of his throat.

  “Okay, Jeter,” O’Keefe said. “You want to keep what’s happening to yourself, that’s fine. I’m sure you’ll tell us when you’re good and ready, but just remember who’s giving you all the sweets from the sweet shop for free.”

  O’Keefe patted Jeter on the shoulder and climbed down. Cady followed the governor, all the while making sure he didn’t look at Jeter.

  “Someone want to tell me what’s happening?” O’Keefe asked.

  “Keeler is on the move again,” Bennett replied. “The Rift seems to be tracking him.”

  “Is there any way we can get sound?”

  “I don’t know,” Lyle, the technician who’d kitted up Keeler with the electronics, said.

  “Well, I suggest you try.”

  Lyle frowned and scurried back to his console.

  “I suggest everyone get back to their posts and do what they are supposed to do. Nothing can be learned if the only thing you people are doing is watching. Start earning your salaries.”

  The crowd dissipated, O’Keefe’s point ringing in their ears.

  “And what do I do?” Cady asked. “What’s my job?”

  “Not to be out of my sight.” O’Keefe cast an appreciating stare over Cady. “He got to you, didn’t he?”

  Cady tried to qualify his shame, but he couldn’t explain away the way Jeter had made him feel. The man had opened him like a surgeon with a scalpel. There was nothing to defend.

  “Doesn’t he get to you?” Cady remarked.

  “No more than any other caged animal. But over time, any animal can be controlled.”

  “You think you can tame Jeter?”

  O’Keefe smiled and directed a glance at Jeter. “Maybe not.”

  In the Rift, they watched Keeler proceeding to run uphill, across a field waist deep in some kind of natural barley or wild grass. The slope and the grass hampered Keeler’s strength and progress. He fell on several occasions but something was driving him to continue. The Rift tracked him while maintaining a healthy distance behind, slowing when he slowed and speeding up when he sped up.

  Cady turned to face Jeter. Earlier, he had thought the killer’s contorted features had indicated his rage at his predicament, but he’d been wrong. He now recognized the twists and folds in his flesh for what they truly were. A leer. He’d seen the leer before, on the face of people hiding a secret that was only moments away from being announced. Something was coming and Cady hoped there was enough firepower in this room to contain it.

  “Do you want to tell me why you brought me here tonight?” Cady asked O’Keefe. “If you knew I was working for Saunders, then keeping me in the dark made sense. If all I had were suspicions, the Home Office couldn’t work against you, so why let me in and show me this?” Cady flung an arm in the direction of the Rift, Jeter in his Throne, the bamboozled technicians and the armed guards. “I would have thought the last thing you’d want me to know is this.”

  “Two reasons, Cady. I have no doubt you’ll scurry off to blow your wad in front of Saunders and he’ll lap it up with glee. Knowing him, he’ll want to know more and authorize additional funds to keep this project going. If they know I’m getting results, they won’t give a shit how I do it. Who do you think authorized sending in Lefford and Allard?”

  Cady understood everything now. That bastard Saunders was screwing him. He hadn’t been sent to the Scrubs as a spy. His role in tonight’s proceedings was as an impartial observer. O’Keefe could feed the Home Office a line of bullshit that they would be forced to accept unless someone uninvolved corroborated the accounts. The Home Office wasn’t interested in shutting the project down. They wanted to make sure their money wasn’t being wasted. He had no doubt that his report back to Saunders, regardless of how damning, would funnel more cash O’Keefe’s way.

  “And the second reason?” Cady prompted.

  “I told you how much this project is potentially worth. I’m offering you a piece of the pie.”

  “You’re planning to make me a partner?”

  “Why not? Civil Service doesn’t come with too many perks. If the Rift comes off, you’ll be able to retire early to do whatever amuses you.” O’Keefe let his offer hang. “Besides, if you say yes and become part of the solution and not the problem, I know I don’t have to worry about you. I’ll know you’ll be on my side and anything that happens to me will happen to you.”

  “What if I say no?” Cady asked. He knew the answer already, but he wanted to see if O’Keefe would say it.

  “I don’t think that would be a smart idea.”

  O’Keefe didn’t have to elaborate. What happened in the North Wing stayed in the North Wing. Cady knew O’Keefe wouldn’t be crass and order his guards to shoot. No, he was smarter than that. Cady was sure a little accident would be waiting for him around the corner. There might be an investigation, but nothing would or could be proved. It looked like he was going along for the ride.

  “I’m in,” Cady said.

  “You’ve made the right choice,” O’Keefe said.

  Cady watched Keeler enter a forest, which melted away to be replaced by a bank. Keeler wasn’t alone in the bank. It was filled with customers and employees. A little boy charged Keeler waving a toy gun.

  Chapter Five

  The Boy

  When Keeler opened his eyes, he was alive, or so it seemed. He was on his back in the forest. Tim Mitchell and the bank were gone. The bullets from Tim’s toy gun hadn’t killed him.
Nothing remained of the experience except a migraine throbbing behind his eyes.

  He sat up and brushed off the leaf litter clinging to his head and back. Struggling to his feet, he spotted three bullet-sized holes in his prison shirt, each one scorched at the edges. Panic ripped through him and he tore open the shirt. Scarred and puckered flesh lined up with the holes. What the hell had happened? Had the bank raid replay been a dream, a hallucination or as Rebecca warned, Jeter playing with his mind? Who knew in this world?

  “Help me,” the child’s voice whimpered.

  Keeler hoped this wasn’t the onset of another of Jeter’s mind fucks. He knew it wasn’t Tim Mitchell crying this time. It had to be Jeter’s unfound victim. He looked about him but couldn’t see the source of the voice.

  “I can’t see you,” he shouted. “Where are you?”

  “Here,” the frail voice replied.

  The voice came from directly in front of him. Keeler saw nothing but an oak tree with a trunk at least five feet in diameter. It was the only oak as far as he could tell.

  “Where?” Keeler asked, but the rest of his request died in his throat when he glimpsed the blinking eyes buried in the tree’s trunk. “Oh, my God,” he murmured.

  Keeler raced over to the tree, clambering over the intestinal explosion of roots protruding from the soil. He scaled the bottom three feet of the trunk, finding a foothold in a gap in the bark. He’d found the boy.

  “What has he done to you?” he whispered.

  Keeler hadn’t seen the boy at first because he wasn’t simply enclosed by the oak; he was part of it. Somehow, he’d been merged or absorbed into the tree, pressed against the oak back first. His flesh had taken on the bark’s color and texture. His hair had become a solid mass bonded his head, forever trapped in a permanent bowl cut that he’d probably had the day Jeter had taken him. He was naked, but his flesh was the same color as the bark, preserving his modesty. He wasn’t totally integrated with the tree. His emerald eyes burned with an incandescence that Keeler found striking to the extreme and his mouth, although the color and texture of the oak’s bark, moved freely exposing clean, white teeth. The boy’s existence in the tree reminded Keeler of those reports where people believed they saw the face of Christ or the Madonna in a tree stump. Except this wasn’t some quirk of nature that offered some familiarity, this was real. Jeter had cursed this child to this entombment.

  “I’m going to get you out,” Keeler said but had no idea how. If the child’s skin was bark, were his flesh and bones made of wood? How did he breathe? How did he eat? Keeler assumed he received nourishment from the tree. If any and all of this was true, could he separate the boy from the tree? If their physiology was linked, then separating them could be like separating conjoined twins. Many of them died during the operation. He couldn’t have another child’s death on his hands. This boy couldn’t be his next Tim Mitchell. Keeler didn’t know if redemption existed for him, but if it did, it would come with the rescue of this boy.

  “You’re gonna be okay,” he cooed and stroked the knot of wood that constituted the boy’s head.

  The boy wept, but no tears came.

  “Hey, don’t cry, son. I’m here to help you get back home. What’s your name?”

  “Davey,” the boy managed between sobs.

  “Nice to meet you, Davey. I’m Michael, but my friends call me Keeler.”

  “Keeler,” the boy said, the sobs drying up.

  “Hey, you called me Keeler. You must be my new best friend, Davey.”

  The boy squeezed out a weak smile. Keeler smiled back. This prevented his own tears from spilling down his face. The abomination was beyond his understanding. What had possessed Jeter to do this to anyone, let alone a child? Keeler couldn’t imagine the boy’s pain.

  “I bet you want to go back home, yeah?”

  The boy nodded.

  “So you can be with your mummy and daddy?”

  The boy’s mouth creased and the crying began again.

  “Hey, hey, don’t cry. I’m going to get you out of here. You understand me?”

  “Yes,” the boy sniffed.

  “Good.” Keeler smiled. “Do you know how you ended up in the tree?”

  “No.”

  Not surprising, Keeler thought. How Jeter managed to place one of his victims inside his own head, let alone plant him inside a tree was beyond imagination. Keeler examined the seam where the boy and the oak joined. It was nonexistent. The boy was truly an extension of the tree. Simply cutting the tree away from the boy wasn’t an option, but what option did he have? He had to give it a try.

  He reached for his ankle and pulled out his prison-made knife from his sock. Six months ago, he’d been part of a work detail that had dismantled a rusted wrought iron fence. He’d bided his time and, when he wasn’t under a screw’s scrutiny, he’d sawn eight inches off from the spiked end of a fence post. Although tipped, the spiked end was dull and he’d sharpened it. It was good enough for self-defense purposes, but it didn’t possess the scalpel qualities necessary to remove the boy from the tree. He would have to do his best.

  As Keeler brought the shank up, the boy caught sight of the weapon and panicked. His eyes widened and blazed and his sniveling escalated into an earsplitting wail. Keeler stuffed the shank in his pocket and raised his empty hands to show the boy he meant no harm.

  “Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you,” Keeler shouted over the boy’s wail.

  The boy’s sobs subsided.

  “I have to get you out of the tree. Understand?”

  The boy mumbled that he did.

  “I want to try something. Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good.” Keeler smiled. “Now I want to cut you out of the tree.”

  The boy started gibbering.

  “Shh, now. I’ve got to try. You don’t want to spend forever trapped in there, do you?”

  “No,” the boy replied after a long moment.

  “If you feel any pain, let me know.”

  Keeler retrieved his shank and prayed he was doing the right thing. He pressed the shank against an area of the tree about a foot away from the boy’s shoulder and dragged the makeshift knife down to score the surface.

  The boy screamed the moment the shank cut into the tree flesh. Blood poured out from the six-inch gash. Keeler tossed his weapon away and tried to staunch the wound by slapping his hand over the cut. It was a feeble bandage and blood continued to pulse between his fingers.

  “Oh, Christ,” Keeler stammered. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  Keeler turned out his pockets to pull out a handkerchief and stuffed it into the slash. It turned crimson immediately. He couldn’t imagine the tree bleeding to death, but the boy’s scream sure made it seem that way.

  “Relax,” Keeler said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “You’re going to be okay. Trust me.”

  Keeler ripped off his denim shirt and tore at a sleeve. The tough material put up good resistance. He wished he hadn’t thrown his shank away now, but he couldn’t stop to search for it. Eventually a worn seam broke and the sleeve came away. He yanked out the sodden handkerchief and jammed in the makeshift bandage. The denim absorbed the blood flow well. He had to repack the wound twice with a fresh piece of the sleeve, but after several minutes, the bleeding stopped.

  Keeler released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and his thumping heart slowed in time with the boy’s crying. Sweat dripped into his eyes and he swept it away.

  “I’m sorry, Davey. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  The boy just whimpered.

  Keeler didn’t know what to do for the boy. There seemed to be no way to extract him from the tree without killing him, but he wasn’t about to leave him inside this world. Keeler stroked a hand over the boy’s gnarled head to soothe him.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of there. I’ll think of something.”

  Too preoccupi
ed with the boy, Keeler didn’t hear the grunting at first. When he did, a chill raced through him. He sensed danger and his fight or flight instinct kicked in, but flight wasn’t an option without the boy.

  “Michael Keeler, as I live and breathe,” a familiar voice announced.

  Keeler turned, careful not to make any sudden moves. His mission was over. He’d found Lefford and Allard.

  Chapter Six

  Lefford and Allard

  Lefford and Allard were only recognizable by the nametags on their clothes. Jeter’s cancerous world had infected them, which sent a ripple of dread through Keeler. Their fate was his fate. Lefford grunted, but that was all he could do. He was on all fours, no longer able to stand. His spine was incapable of supporting a biped and his arms and legs had adapted to his four-legged needs. His change hadn’t stopped there. His head was boar-like. He possessed a fearsome under bite courtesy of an elongated snout. Tusks protruded from his upper and lower jaws. The lower pair had been self-mutilating. Fearsome and enlarged, the tusks had curled back into his face and stabbed out his own eyes. Lefford snarled again and smacked his jaws together a couple of times. Each time, the tusks found a comforting home in his bloody eye sockets. Lefford snorted, sensing Keeler’s presence.

  By comparison, Allard was relatively unharmed by Jeter’s manipulations. He was upright and human except for one small defect. A pair of snakes lived where his eyeballs had been. They weren’t occupying the space left behind by his eyes. They were his eyes, part of him, melted into his skull. The snakes opened their mouths. Fangs held his eyeballs in place and forked tongues flicked and cleaned Allard’s lenses.

  Keeler wondered if these creatures were the real Lefford and Allard or just versions of them conjured up by Jeter. Either way, it didn’t much matter, the stubby machine gun with the banana shaped magazine nestled in the crook of Allard’s arm looked real enough.

  “Looks like we’ve found each other,” Keeler said.

  “I would say we found you.” Allard laughed. He sounded like there was dirt in his throat. His snake eyes glanced over at Lefford. The hog that was Lefford grunted in agreement.