Brandon looked down at the table and shook his head. “No. I don’t want to do that.”
“As soon as you can see him, I’ll let you know. Okay?”
Brandon tried to smile. “Thank you.”
Dr. Karp patted him on the shoulder again then stood up. “Now, eat your breakfast. We don’t want you getting sick, too.”
3
That night would be burned forever in Ash’s mind. He knew there would be no escaping it. His wife, his daughter, his son — all dead. But as utterly painful as that realization was, it was actually the good memories that made him want to curl into a ball in the corner.
Wrestling with Brandon in the backyard.
Reading to Josie as she leaned against him, hanging on his every word.
Kissing Ellen. Holding Ellen. Loving Ellen.
There was a trip they had all taken once that started out badly, but it turned out to be the best vacation they’d ever had. He’d been stationed at Fort Irwin then, outside Barstow, California — ironically only about a hundred miles south of Barker Flats. They’d meant to go to the Grand Canyon but only made it as far as Needles, California, when the van they’d borrowed from a neighbor broke down. Repairs would take several days, which pretty much ruled out sticking to their plan.
The owner of the auto shop was a former Marine. When he found out Ash was in the service, he made a few calls and was soon driving the Ash family the forty or so miles to a vacation house on Lake Havasu his brother-in-law owned.
They spent the days swimming in the lake, the evenings barbecuing, and the nights playing games. Ash became the king of Chinese checkers that trip, while Josie was crowned Miss Monopoly.
One day they even rented a Jet Ski, and Ash took turns taking the kids out on the water. Ellen was a nervous wreck every time she watched them head away from shore, but by the end, even she was smiling and laughing. Ash never did get her on that Jet Ski, though. She’d claimed someone had to stay on shore in case something went wrong, but he knew that wasn’t the real reason. She had a fear of water, something she’d had since she was a kid.
He missed that about her.
He missed everything.
Over a week he had been in his cell, a week of talking with no one but the voice from the speaker, and not actually seeing anyone at all. When he woke each morning, he found a day’s worth of food sitting against the wall. He tried pretending to sleep a few times so he could catch whoever was bringing it in, but he could never keep his eyes open long enough. He suspected they were giving him some sort of sleeping drug, either through his food or, more likely, through the air.
The cell that was his world consisted of a cot, a toilet, a sink, and four thick cement walls. The only door was opposite the toilet, but there was no handle on the inside, just a smooth metal surface.
He figured he’d been put in the cell on the chance he’d been infected. It was probably the nearest isolation room available. After all, he’d held his daughter in his arms. Brandon had, too. He’d been healthy when Ash last saw him, but he’d apparently contracted whatever it was before they were taken from the house. So, logically, Ash should be next.
Only, despite the fact that everyone he loved was dead, here he was still breathing.
He felt despair and guilt and loss, but none was as strong as the hatred he felt toward whoever had done this to his family, his friends, his country. There was no way he would ever believe this was not a planned attack. Someone had targeted American soldiers and their families. Families, for God’s sake! Whoever it was needed to pay.
Perhaps they already had. But if that were the case, no one had told him. In fact, no one had told him much of anything.
Each day, the man on the speaker would ask him questions like: “How are you feeling?” “Do you have any pain?” “Headaches?” Or the voice would give him instructions such as: “Stand with your arms out, then raise them above your head,” or “Walk heel to toe across the room in a straight line.” He felt like a drunk.
But when Ash asked questions back, they were ignored, and the anger he felt toward the terrorist who’d perpetrated this disaster started to leak a little toward the voice in the ceiling. He just wanted to get out and bury his family. He wanted to sit by their graves and grieve. It was his right.
“Good morning, Captain,” the voice on the speaker said.
Ash opened his eyes. It was the beginning of his eighth day in the cell.
“Are you feeling anything unusual? Aches? Pains?” the voice asked.
Ash looked up at the speaker. To him it had become the face of the voice. He could almost see eyes now, and a nose. And, of course, the big round mouth.
The speaker had become his own version of Wilson the volleyball from that Tom Hanks movie, Cast Away. Only Wilson had been Hanks’s friend. Ash wasn’t so sure the speaker was his.
He gritted his teeth. “How much longer?”
“Please answer the question.”
“Answer mine first. How much longer until I can get out and deal with my family?”
For more than a minute the cell was silent.
“Are you feeling anything unusual? Aches? Pains?” the voice asked again.
“Go to hell.”
“Captain, you are not at liberty to choose whether you will answer the questions or not. It’s your duty.”
Ash rolled onto his side, as if turning away from the speaker would make it disappear.
As he lay there, he could smell eggs and bacon, and knew a tray with his breakfast was waiting for him by the door. It was the only hot meal he got each day. Lunch and dinner would be in boxes next to it. Sandwiches, most days.
“Are you feeling anything unusual? Aches? Pains?”
The captain let out a snorting you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me laugh. “Unusual? Yeah, I’m feeling something unusual.”
“Please explain.” There was a note of concern in the voice.
Ash just shook his head. If the voice couldn’t figure out there was something unusual about his situation, he wasn’t going to enlighten him.
“What are you feeling?” the voice asked.
No response.
“Captain, please answer the question.”
Ash sat up, suddenly having the urge to eat. He retrieved the tray then returned to his bunk. In addition to the bacon and eggs, there was also a container of orange juice and a cup of coffee. He opened the OJ and downed the contents.
“Captain, if there’s a change in your condition, you need to tell us.”
Ash lifted the plastic top that covered his plate and picked up his fork. He was just about to scoop up some egg when he noticed a small, folded piece of paper tucked under the bacon. He hesitated for a moment, then placed the lid back down as if he’d decided he wasn’t ready to eat yet, and turned his attention to the coffee.
“Captain, are you going to cooperate?”
Ash took a sip of the coffee and made no indication he had even heard the question.
“Captain?”
It was another five minutes before the voice finally fell silent. Still, Ash waited, knowing that after a while their interest in him would wane, and those watching him through the surveillance cameras would no longer be paying as close attention as they had been.
Finally, he lifted the lid off the plate again. This time he grabbed both the piece of paper and a strip of cold bacon. He tucked the paper against his palm, then raised the bacon to his mouth and took a bite. While he chewed, he casually slipped the paper under the blanket.
He ate everything on the plate, even though the eggs had gone rubbery and the bacon had lost much of its flavor. When he was done, he set the tray by the door as he always did, and commenced his daily exercise program.
This consisted of push-ups, sit-ups and running in place, the perfect exercises for the confined man. Outwardly, he maintained an aura of blank detachment, but on the inside he could think of little else but the scrap of paper waiting for him in his bed.
After sixty minut
es, he’d worked up quite a sweat. He removed his clothes, then used the cup the coffee had come in to give himself a sink bath. Still sticking to his routine, he toweled off with his shirt and pulled the flimsy cloth pants they’d given him back on.
For the next twenty minutes, he paced the room. This was his cool down, also part of his new daily habit.
As he walked back and forth he began to wonder if he was making a big deal out of nothing. Maybe the paper was just trash, something accidentally dropped there when his food had been prepared. If so, he was getting himself worked up over nothing.
Once his palm touched the concrete wall at the end of his last lap, he returned to his cot and lay down. After a few minutes he closed his eyes, then twisted around so his back was to the vent where he assumed the camera was. As he turned, he slipped his hand under the blanket and grabbed the paper.
Though he kept telling himself that it was nothing, he could feel his heart race as he silently unfolded it. Keeping it close to his chest, he held it out at an angle, lowered his head and opened his eyes.
In the center of the paper, written in pencil, was a single word:
TONIGHT
4
The man running the show in Dr. Karp’s absence was Major Frank Littlefield.
The major had left his previous posting three years earlier for a special assignment. After a year in which a whole new world had been opened up to him, the assignment became permanent. It was on that day that the Army — and the U.S. Government, for that matter — ceased to be his true employer. He was a member of the project now, and as such, that’s where his loyalties lay.
Major Littlefield was sitting in his office sipping a cup of coffee. Via the monitor on his wall, he had access to all the same feeds as the observation room two doors down, but was limited to watching only one at a time. That wasn’t such a big deal anymore since there was just one cell still occupied.
Cell number 57. Captain Daniel Ash.
The captain was taking what had become his usual post-workout morning nap. But this morning there was definitely a change in him, a defiance that had only been a spark in the previous couple of days.
As the major stared at the screen, his phone rang. He pressed the speakerphone button and said, “Major Littlefield.”
“I just read your report.” It was Dr. Karp. The major had been expecting the call, waiting for it, actually. “Has there been any change in attitude?”
“No, sir.”
“What about physically? Still no reaction?”
“None whatsoever, sir.”
The doctor was silent for a moment. “I had hoped to give it a few more days, but I think it’s safe to assume the results won’t change. Where are we with the current dosing cycle?”
“It’s scheduled to complete at two a.m.”
“All right, we might as well let it run. Once it’s complete, pull the plug, Major.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want the autopsy performed immediately. Once you have obtained all the required samples, and the body has been eliminated, you and your team are to report to Bluebird.”
“Understood.”
“Good,” the doctor said, then hung up.
As Major Littlefield replaced the receiver in the cradle, his gaze returned to the napping form of Captain Ash.
“Enjoy it,” the major said to the TV. “It’ll be your last one.”
5
Tonight.
It could mean so many different things.
Was it a warning? Was tonight the night they changed the sleeping gas to something stronger? Or was the sender going to try to contact him? Or was it just a joke and didn’t really mean anything at all?
Ash wasn’t sure if he should be looking forward to finding out or dreading it. But there was one thing he couldn’t do — stop it from coming.
He kept to his schedule. Eating lunch when he usually ate, exercising again in the afternoon, then pacing until his stomach began to growl, signaling it was time for dinner. Twice the voice had asked how he was feeling, and twice he had ignored it.
When the lights flicked off then back on, he knew the wait was almost over. In ten minutes they would go off and stay that way until morning. Again, he did what he always did, brushing his teeth using only his finger and water from the sink, then relieving himself in the toilet. The only change was the ripped-up note he slipped into the bowl just before he flushed.
As he lay on the cot, he felt tense, suddenly sure the message had been a warning. He tried to stay awake, fearful that if he closed his eyes, he might never open them again. It wasn’t that he was scared of death, or that the thought of being with his family again didn’t appeal to him. But it was because of his family that he needed to live. He had to find who had done this to them. He had to make sure whoever it was had been properly dealt with, and if they hadn’t, he had to do it himself. After that, he didn’t care.
But then the gas must have come, because his eyelids grew heavy, and then the next thing he knew someone was shaking his shoulder.
“Wake up, Captain.”
The male voice seemed distant, as if it were coming from another room.
“Give him a second,” a second voice said, also male and muffled. “The shot takes a moment to kick in.”
Shot?
Ash peeled open his eyes, but could see nothing in the darkness. His hand slipped as he tried to push himself up and he fell back onto the bed.
“Easy there, Captain,” the first voice said.
Ash turned toward it. “What’s going on?”
“Later. Right now we have to get you out of here.”
“Out of here? I’m…what?” He knew he wasn’t making sense, but they weren’t making sense to him, either.
“We can talk later. Right now you need to do exactly what we say and keep quiet.”
“I don’t under…?”
What was this guy talking about? All Ash wanted to do was put his head back on his pillow and shut his eyes. But gloved hands were under his arms now, lifting him to his feet. As he staggered, someone grabbed him and kept him from falling.
“We’d love to give you a few seconds to wake up, but we don’t have time,” the second voice said.
Ash looked to his right and could barely make out a dark shadow of an oddly shaped person. Suddenly, he felt an arm wrap around his back.
“Just hold on,” the man said, his voice still sounding farther away than it should have been.
They exited the cell into a dark hallway. That seemed odd to Ash. Surely, there should have been some lights on.
“Clear,” the first voice called out from the distance.
“We’re going to move fast, Captain,” the man at his side said. “So keep a hold of me.”
As Ash grabbed the man’s back, the material of the guy’s shirt confused him. It was thick and kind of rubbery. But Ash barely had time to register this before the man began half-pulling, half-dragging him down the corridor. It was all Ash could do to keep from slipping to the floor.
After what he guessed was probably thirty seconds, they mercifully stopped. He heard a knob twist, then a door open, but he still couldn’t see anything.
“Straight ahead a couple feet, then we go to the left,” his human crutch said.
As they eased forward, Ash asked, “Why are all the lights off?”
“Quiet.”
Once they’d made the turn, they picked up speed again, moving quickly down the new corridor and through another door.
“Can you stand on your own?” the man whispered to Ash.
“What? Uh, yeah. I think so.”
“Okay. Stay here.” The man let go of Ash and stepped away.
“Wait. Where are you going?” the captain asked.
“Don’t move, and you’ll be fine.”
“I don’t understand. Why are you—”
A torrent of thick liquid engulfed him from every side, the flow so strong he could hardly breathe. There was also an overwhelming dis
infectant smell, which didn’t help. He coughed several times and tried to step away.
“Don’t,” the first voice ordered. “You’re covered with the bug. It’s either this way or we will be forced to terminate you.”
Terminate? Ash stayed where he was.
Soon the spray stopped.
“Remove your clothes and throw them behind you.”
Ash hesitated for only a second, then stripped.
Once more the flow commenced, followed by a strong stream of odorless water.
As soon as it shut off, the first voice said, “There’s a wall three feet to your left. Follow that toward my voice about ten feet. There you’ll find a towel and some clean clothes. Please hurry.”
Ash did as instructed. As he was toweling off, he heard the sprays come on again. Judging by the sound, though, it wasn’t flowing over flesh.
Decontamination suits, he realized. Like the ones the people who’d come into his house — so long ago, it seemed — wore. That’s why the guy’s shirt had felt so strange.
The clothes waiting for him were not the flimsy garments he’d been given while in his cell. There was a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a pullover sweater, socks, and a pair of sturdy but flexible ankle-high boots.
“Ready?” the first voice asked a minute later, no longer muffled by what must have been the hood and mask of the suit.
“Yes,” Ash said. He finished tying his last shoelace and stood up. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?”
“Not until we get out of here,” the other voice said.
A door opened, but the lack of light remained unchanged.
The two men led Ash away from the room, one always keeping a hand on the captain’s arm.
They’d been fast-walking for nearly three minutes when the guy in the lead let out a very low “shhhh.”
They stopped in the middle of the hall.
“Over here,” the lead guy whispered.
Ash was ushered through a doorway, into a space that was barely big enough for the three of them. The door then clicked shut.
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