by L. T. Ryan
“For what? We just locking it up, right?”
“Why would I need you here if that was all?”
“I don’t know. Figured you might have some code or something I needed to memorize.”
Turk grinned. “Nothing that complex, man.” He reached out and flipped the cover off the security pad. Then, while entering the code, he used his body to block Marcus’s view.
“Seriously?” Marcus said, an edge to his tone.
“Yeah,” Turk said. “Seriously. I’m the only one who knows it.”
“What if you die?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan for that.”
“Yeah, well, we might all be finding that out sooner rather than later.”
Turk finished entering the code, returned the cover to the keypad and pushed the door open. He stopped and looked back at Marcus. “You threatening me?”
Marcus shrunk back an inch. It wasn’t much. Just enough to let Turk know that he still had control.
“Follow me,” Turk said.
He led Marcus through a carved out tunnel. Red emergency lights cast small pools of light over the space. A gap of five to six feet persisted between each where blackness took over. Five minutes later, they reached the outer security door. Turk felt along the wall for the hidden panel and pulled it open.
“Ain’t that already locked?” Marcus asked.
Turk nodded.
“Then why do we have to lock it up?”
“I’m going to disable it.”
Marcus exhaled loudly and crossed his arms over his chest. “And why’d you bring me down here? Do I need to know this code?”
Turk activated a monitor affixed to the wall next to the door. He used a controller next to the security pad to rotate through the outside cameras. Once he determined the area to be clear, he disengaged the door lock and pushed it open. Humid air scraped past them. Turk felt sweat bead up on his forehead. He looked at Marcus and extended his arm.
“What?” Marcus said.
“You’re the badass. Go on out there and secure the perimeter.”
Marcus squeezed past Turk. He stopped before making it all the way past. He turned halfway. “Give me a gun.”
Turk eyed his brother for a moment. Should he arm a sociopath? He reached behind his back and retrieved a pistol. He extended it toward Marcus, barrel in his hand. Marcus grabbed hold of the weapon and pulled it toward him. Turk didn’t let go.
“It returns to me the moment you walk through this door. Got it?”
Marcus nodded. Turk released his grip on the handgun. The two brothers faced off for a few more seconds. Finally, Marcus broke off the stare and looked down at the gun. He started to inspect, but Turk cut him off.
“It’s loaded.”
Marcus looked up, nodded, turned and moved toward the ladder. Turk watched as Marcus ascended the ladder to the hatch.
“Hold off on opening it,” Turk said.
“All right,” Marcus said.
Turk ducked back inside the tunnel and cycled through the cameras once more. The area looked clear.
“Okay, you’re good to go.”
He heard the hatch lift and the sound of his brother climbing out of the tunnel. Turk pulled the door shut but did not engage the lock. He watched Marcus move toward the wood’s edge. His brother ran crouched and low to the ground, dropping to his stomach once. Marcus remained prone for a minute, then rose and continued to the woods.
“It’s time,” Elena said from behind him.
Turk said nothing. He stared at the monitor. His wife’s hand fell upon his shoulder and squeezed gently.
“He’s a cancer,” she said. “You know it. I know it. Everyone inside knows it.”
“He’s my little brother.”
“And he’s going to end up killing someone. What if it’s me? Worse still, what if it’s Layla? What will you do if he hurts one of us? If he hurts anyone inside, for that matter?”
Turk lowered his head to the side until his cheek brushed Elana’s hand. She traced her fingers along his shaved head.
“All right,” Turk said. “Watch the monitor and let me know if he starts heading back.” He pulled the door open and climbed the ladder. At the top, he secured the hatch lock. This was one of two manual locks in the compound. On his way back down the ladder, Turk fought off tears. He imagined his mother looking down on him as he effectively shut off his little brother.
Turk sulked through the tunnel doorway. His wife pulled it closed behind him. She reached out to hug him, but he pulled away.
“Lock it up, Baby,” she said.
Turk engaged the lock and cut off the monitor. He looked over his shoulder at his wife, who nodded in return. He took a step back. Taking a deep breath, he reattached the panel to the wall. Elana grabbed his hand and pulled him away from the door.
“When I was seventeen,” he said, “I took Marcus to the lake. Mom forced me to do it. Football practice was starting up the following week. I was going into my senior year. I wouldn’t be around much after that. I already knew I that I was going to enlist in the Navy and planned to leave for boot camp the day after I graduated. She knew this was the last chance for me and my little brother to bond. I brought along some girl, don’t even remember her name now. We only dated a week or two. Anyway, I spent the entire time talking to her, ignoring Marcus. He went out into the lake, probably further than he should have. I look over and saw him out there swimming, then turned back and kissed the girl. Next thing I know, I hear Marcus screaming bloody murder. By the time I stood up and swung my head around, he was gone.”
“You’ve never told me this before,” Elena said. “Why not?”
Turk shrugged. “Anyway, I sprinted to the edge of the lake, ran into the water, and as soon as I was knee deep, I dove in. Even back then, I was a strong swimmer. The water was pretty clear, but I couldn’t see him, so I kept on swimming. Finally, about twenty yards out, I see him floating, struggling about eight feet under the surface.”
“What happened?”
“He’d felt something brush his leg and thought it was a gator or a copperhead or something. He panicked, began twisting around and flapping to get back to shore. He’d come across an old net, anchored to the lake bed. All that kicking and thrashing got him twisted up. The more he fought, the further he dragged himself down.”
“Jesus,” she said. “Obviously he got out. How?”
“I had a six-inch blade clipped onto my shorts.”
“That was lucky.”
“Yeah, it was. I always had it when I went fishing, though, and we planned on doing a little bit of that at the lake that day. So I grab a breath and dive down about ten feet and begin to cut the net. Marcus was still kicking and somehow he managed to catch me in the face. It didn’t hurt or anything, but it surprised me and I dropped the knife. I kept going by hand, but couldn’t finish, so I swam back up, grabbed another breath and dove down. The lake was around twenty-five feet deep there, I guess. I had no idea how I’d find the knife. Luckily, there was enough light that the blade, I don’t know, kind of winked at me. I grabbed it and swam back up. Marcus was motionless by this point. I worked fast and freed him. I remember my lungs burning and my vision going black, but I refused to stop. As soon as we hit the surface I started mouth-to-mouth. I’d swim, stop, give him a breath, and repeat it. The girl, Elizabeth was her name. That just came to me. Anyway, she had grabbed the car and was waiting for us by the beach.”
They stopped at the bunker entrance. Elana leaned against the door and gestured for him to continue.
“We got him to the hospital, but it took too long. He ended up being in a coma for a month. Doctors said he might not make it, and if he did, he’d probably have brain damage. We didn’t know what to expect. The guilt killed me. I refused to leave his side. Missed football practice, all the two-a-days and whatnot. Coach was so pissed at me, he benched me until the ninth game of the season. It ruined it for me. No scholarships, nothing. Mom couldn’t afford college, s
o I enlisted.”
“Wait a minute,” Elana said. “You just said, and you’ve always said, that going into that year, you planned on joining the Navy. You wanted to be a SEAL.”
Turk nodded. “I apologize for that. Thinking otherwise always reminded me of what happened that day. You see, Marcus wasn’t a bad kid until after that event. He seemed so normal when he woke up from his coma. But he wasn’t. We just didn’t know it yet. Over time we saw, though. He wasn’t born a sociopath, Elana. I turned him into one.”
She reached out and touched his face, tracing his jawline. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is.” He pulled away from her, opened the door and stepped through. She followed him back to the control room. And as he overrode the system in order to seal them in for thirty days, he said, “I’ll always live with the fact that I turned him into a killer. And I’ll always have to live with the fact that I just sentenced him to death.”
The monitors all displayed a scene from outside. Marcus appeared from the woods. He moved from monitor to monitor as he headed toward the hidden hatch. They watched as the man stopped, bent over and tried to pull the door open. It didn’t budge. Marcus rose and looked around. He spotted a camera and walked up to it. Though the sound was off, Turk had no trouble reading his brother’s lips.
“Turk, stop fucking around and let me in.”
Elana left shortly afterward.
Turk sat and watched his brother come to grips with the fact that he’d been exiled from the compound.
Twenty-One
The ground felt damp and cold. The few remaining bugs crawled across Kathy’s exposed skin. She didn’t care. Not about the cold, the wet, or the bugs. She felt disassociated from herself. Her jumbled thoughts told her she should be dead. After all, she slept shirtless through a near-freezing night.
What had happened to her shirt?
She struggled to recall. Words were difficult to form in her mind, so she resorted to images. She’d taken off after something, an animal for food perhaps. The creature led her into the woods. A collision with low hanging branches resulted in her shirt being torn off her body.
Had that been yesterday, or the day before?
She couldn’t tell. The last few ran together.
She no longer felt sick. The coughing had stopped. The fever had gone away. New sensations replaced the old. She felt a hunger, a craving, for flesh. She needed to eat. It didn’t matter that there was a pantry full of food. That did nothing for her when she scarfed it down. The desire for warm, raw meat had taken over. She had also become acutely aware of everything around her over the past few days. It was in stark contrast to the way she felt about the shell she inhabited. She could brush her fingers across the bark of a tree and it might as well have been a silk sheet. It didn’t register. But when a rabbit moved fifty yards away, she honed in on it.
Few human thoughts remained with her. The ones that did were powerful. She thought of the man she called her husband, and the girl she called her daughter. Those words meant little to her anymore, but she still felt a strong connection with the memories of the two of them. Scenes of her life with them would fire off in her mind at odd intervals. She never noticed a scene that played twice, and she could no longer recall an event after she saw it. She knew they were there, somewhere, but she could not access them again, no matter how hard she tried.
The house that she hung around held some significance to her as well. She knew enough to go inside to find food, but aside from that, she wasn’t sure what it was for. Yet, she did not want to leave it. In the shadow of the house, she felt something. Normalcy, perhaps. That’s the word that came to her, at least.
Kathy licked her dirt-caked lips and lifted her head. She glanced up at the gray sky and wondered if it were about to rain.
Would she care? Would she even know what rain was by the time she felt it again?
This is how it played out in her mind. One minute more human than monster. The next, more monster than human.
She pushed herself off the ground, sliding her feet underneath her so she could remain crouched. The tall grasses in the field provided her with cover. She heard a rumbling in the distance. It reminded her of the truck driven by the man she knew was her husband. With her head exposed enough that she could see around her, she scanned the area in front of the house. A squirrel darted across the lawn. That was it. She shuffled her feet and turned in a circle. She was all alone.
Kathy rose and started toward the house. She didn’t know why. She felt pulled toward it.
The rumbling sound grew louder. At the edge of the field, Kathy stopped and once again took in her surroundings. Trees lined the edge of the property except for a small stretch to accommodate the driveway. Even then, the driveway snaked toward the house, ensuring that it could not be spotted from the road. Kathy wondered how she knew that. It did not dawn on her that she had traveled along the path daily for the past eight years.
Unable to spot the source of the sound, she continued toward the house, moving quickly between the field and the structure. She stared at the things in front of it. Cars, she recalled, although she had no idea what to do with one. They could be driven, but what was that?
Kathy kept one fingertip on the house as she walked toward the back. The kitchen door was still open, granting her access to the inside of the home. Once in the kitchen, she stood motionless, staring at the things on the wall. Pictures of the man and the girl stared back at her. There was a third person, another woman, in some of them. Her gaze shifted to the right, coming to a stop at a spot directly in front of her. The same woman stared back at Kathy. As she leaned forward, so did the lady. When she turned her head, the person opposite her did so as well. Kathy lunged forward and struck the face that taunted her. After three quick blows, the woman was gone.
The warm fluid running down Kathy’s arm barely registered. She looked down and smeared the red substance with her other hand. She lifted her hand to her mouth and licked it. Her tongue tingled, and her stomach became riddled with hunger pains. Her desire for fresh flesh increased.
She needed to eat soon.
Kathy left the kitchen. She headed toward the front of the house. The rumbling engine she’d heard earlier sounded even closer. Her body felt energized by the sound.
Kathy’s mind shifted toward the human side, something that happened less frequently. Her hand hurt, but she ignored the pain long enough to retrieve a pistol from the gun cabinet. She wasn’t sure what to do with it.
She looked out the window. A large truck was parked in the middle of the driveway. She didn’t recognize the vehicle. The doors were wide open. The glare of the sun prevented her from seeing inside the cab, so she had no idea how many were there.
A denim-clad leg hit the ground, followed by another. A heavy-set man appeared from behind the door. He shut it, took a step back, and opened the rear door. A second man stepped out. He was about half the size of the first. From the other side of the truck, two more men appeared. They were all armed with rifles and were walking toward the house. One stopped and inspected the vehicles in front of it. He grabbed the motorcycle by the handlebar and wheeled it behind their truck.
“Bastards,” she muttered, thinking for a second that she should kick the door down and shoot each man where they stood.
The balance of control over Kathy’s mind started to shift the other way. Instead of firing a bullet at them, she now wanted to lunge and attack and tear them apart with her hands. Knowing that she might not have much time left as herself, Kathy verified that the front door was locked, ran to the kitchen, shut and locked the back door, and then went upstairs. From her bedroom, she watched the men fan out around the front of the house. The window was slightly cracked. A stiff breeze blew through. She could smell the diesel fumes from the truck outside.
The large man moved to the middle of the yard. He rested his rifle at his side and cupped his hands to his mouth.
“Come on out,” he yelled. “We know you’re in
there, and we can tell you’ve got a bunch of supplies and some kind of power system set up. I repeat, come on out. We want to talk to you.”
Kathy studied the man, trying to place him. She couldn’t, though. How did he know what they had? Did they know him? She knew her memory was fading, so it might have been possible that she’d simply forgotten the guy.
“Last chance,” the guy yelled. “If you don’t come out, we’re gonna start shooting.”
Anger scratched through Kathy. Who were they to come and shoot up her house?
She dropped to the floor and crawled out of the room. Once in the hall, she stood and moved quickly down the stairs, taking them two at a time. She went back to the front windows, parted the curtains with her index and middle finger, and spotted the men out front. They’d lined up in front of the house. All four had their rifles extended in her direction.
“This is it. No more warnings. On the count of three, we’re firing.”
The pain in Kathy’s hand dulled. Her surroundings started to become unfamiliar to her. She rubbed at her face with her cut hand, smearing blood on her cheeks. The fluid got into her eye and stung.
“One.”
She glanced down. In her left hand, she held a pistol. She could shoot, but how many of them could she hit with her off-hand?
“Two.”
She shifted the gun to her right hand, but found it impossible to grip the weapon. It fell to the floor. She didn’t care. At that moment, she wanted to run through the front door and attack the heavy man. Instead, she took a few steps back and turned away from the window.
“Three. Open the door or we’re coming for you.”
Kathy sprinted toward the kitchen, rounding the corner as the first shots splintered the front door and shattered the windows. Her leg ached. She looked down and saw a long sliver of wood jutting out from her calf. Reaching back, she grasped it with her left hand and yanked it out. An arterial spray of blood splattered the wall. She crawled to the oven and pulled down a hand towel. She tied it around her calf.