Trapped

by Jack Kilborn

  The wind died down, and the crickets stopped. Sara listened for the sounds of approaching footsteps. There was something in the distance, a branch snapping.

  Then, nothing.

  “So this Plincer cat,” Tyrone said, startling Sara. “He believed people could be born evil?”

  As a psychologist herself, Sara didn’t believe in evil. Morality was dictated by the majority in any given society. In Roman times, it wasn’t considered evil to throw Christians to the lions. The Nazis didn’t consider themselves evil, they were judged so by the victors. Human beings throughout history did terrible things to each other, but whether or not these things were evil remained subjective. To some, the death penalty was evil. To some, not going to church every Sunday was evil.

  Sara preferred to believe that human beings were inherently selfish, and when this selfishness infringed upon the well-being or lives of others, a psychological problem was usually at play. Evil had no place in psychology.

  “I don’t believe evil exists, Tyrone.”

  “You do know we hidin’ from some folks tryin’ to eat us, right?”

  “That could be because of many different psychological and physiological factors, including hunger.”

  “But Plincer thought people were evil because they had evil brains?”

  “Plincer thought people could be born with brain irregularities that made them evil. Irregularities that were so extreme, it was impossible to stop violent impulses.”

  “Was he right?” Tyrone asked.

  “Tough to say. Morality, free will, personality, impulse and action, even consciousness itself, still aren’t completely understood. The brain holds a lot of secrets science hasn’t figured out yet. But Plincer bragged he knew the exact parts of the brain that made people evil. He even said he could prove it, that he could make a person evil with drugs and surgery.”

  “Could he?”

  Sara closed her eyes. She couldn’t even remember her professor’s name from that class, let alone anything he specifically said about Plincer. The only reason she remembered Plincer at all was his 15 seconds of news coverage after his last trial.

  “I might be wrong, but I remember some newspaper printing something about an orangutan Plincer experimented on. He did something to his brain, and basically turned the orangutan into a psychopath. It killed six other research animals.”

  “So what happened to Plincer?” Cindy asked. She was whispering.

  “Some would call it karma. One of the criminals Plincer was called to defend…” What the hell was his name? “Parks. No, Paks. Lester Paks. He killed a woman by biting her to death. Doctor Plincer testified Lester wasn’t responsible for his actions, and he also said that if the court released Lester into his care, he would be able to cure him. The court allowed it.”

  “Did Plincer cure him?”

  Sara shrugged. “No. Lester almost killed him. Soon after, both Doctor Plincer and Lester disappeared. Neither have been seen in years.”

  “So you think Plincer came here?”

  “I don’t know, Tyrone.”

  Cindy spoke so softly that Sara had to strain to hear her. “Maybe he came here and kept doing his research. Only instead of monkeys, he did it on people.”

  “If so, Cindy, we’re in a lot more trouble than I thought.”

  Another branch broke, this one so close it made Sara flinch. She squinted into the dark, saw something move. Then something else.

  “We need to run,” she told the kids. “Right now.”

  When Archibald Mordecai Plincer was a child, he was picked on a lot. He didn’t understand why. He was thin, and a little small for his age, but otherwise relatively happy and well adjusted. But, for whatever reason, he was a magnet for bullies.

  The abuse got so bad that Plincer’s parents finally plucked him out of public school and enrolled him in a private academy. This new school also had bullies, and one of the worst was the headmaster, who seemed to delight in doling out punishment.

  Plincer eventually had a growth spurt, bringing him up to average height and making him a less desirable target for his peers. Since he did what he was supposed to, Plincer also managed to keep away from the headmaster for the most part. But he remained fascinated by schadenfreude—the act of taking joy in the misery of others. He decided to become a doctor and specialize in psychiatry, just to figure out what made sadistic personalities tick.

  But where others in the psychiatric field gravitated toward drug therapy and talking sessions and their effect on the conscious and subconscious, Plincer was fascinated by the physical nature of the brain itself. If the heart was malfunctioning, you didn’t use a couch trip to cure it; you went in with a scalpel. Why should the brain be any different?

  His early research was done on animals. Plincer used psychosurgery and implanted electrodes to perform what he termed reverse lobotomies. While his predecessors used frontal lobotomies to neutralize aggressive behavior—like what happened to Jack Nicholson at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—Plincer was able to stimulate parts of the brain to make the subject more aggressive.

  Unfortunately, there proved to be little research money available for doctors interested in making meaner animals. Because Plincer was more curious about the brain’s physiology than psychology, and there were laws against tampering with people’s gray matter, human experiments were impossible. So he drifted into criminal psychology with the intent to study anti-social behavior.

  He met with criminals in prison, got them to donate their bodies to his research after they died, but they weren’t dying fast enough or in large enough numbers for Plincer to conclusively prove the link between brain deformity and evil. So he began to testify in criminal trials, pushing for the courts to entrust a psychopathic criminal into his care.

  Lester Paks was that criminal. By that time, Plincer was sure he knew which parts of the mind controlled violent behavior, and if he could cure Lester it would usher in a whole new era of psychiatry.

  But he wasn’t as careful with Lester as he should have been. Lester managed to escape his room.

  What happened next still gave Plincer nightmares.

  Though he survived Lester’s attack, it effectively ended Plincer’s career. No one would give a job to a doctor proven so dramatically wrong. They turned their back on him, and his research. He became an outcast, unable to publish in the journals, unable to work at even a community college.

  Luckily, Plincer’s family had some money. Old money, earned in blood, going back to the Civil War and his great-great grandfather. Plincer secretly set up shop on Rock Island, and he brought Lester with him, committed to revealing the true physical nature of evil.

  But Plincer did more than reveal it. He discovered he could enhance the part of the brain to make people even more evil.

  The scientific community might not care, but Plincer found out that others did. He wound up in bed with some powerful people who found this result intriguing. Since then, Plincer was supplied with money and prisoners to experiment on, along with a guarantee that his island would be left alone.

  Unfortunately, Plincer couldn’t repeat the results he had with Lester. He managed to come close with Subject 33. But Subject 33 proved impossible to control. The procedure drove the other subjects insane, making them regress to the point that they were more animal than human. The ferals.

  Plincer kept working, kept revising his procedure. He has one more success, and many more failures. But only a few weeks ago he had overcome the final hurdle and perfected his enhancement technique. It was not only 100% effective, but it was repeatable.

  They’d laughed at his theories.

  Soon, no one would be laughing.

  If the world wouldn’t give him the recognition he deserved, it would make him disgustingly rich instead.

  That it also might bring about the end of civilization didn’t bother Plincer in the least.

  Dr. Plincer sat behind his desk, applied more putty to his chin, and frowned at the l
etter once more. Plincer didn’t get much mail, but he maintained a PO Box in Traverse City, and his delivery man checked it once a month and brought it along with the rest of his supplies.

  The doctor read it again, as if the words were going to say something different from the other thirty times he’d read it.

  The letter was from his accountant, and described several recent events in the news which Plincer knew nothing about because he didn’t follow the news—there was no phone, cable television, newspaper delivery, or Internet service to the island. The letter went on to say the market had taken a beating, the economy was in ruins, and Plincer was very close to broke.

  Plincer wondered, not for the first time, if his accountant was crooked and stealing funds. The doctor could easily send Lester to his house and get the truth out of him. But if the country really was at war in the Middle East, and the Dow Jones had really crashed, torturing the man wouldn’t provide anything more than the empty thrill of vengeance.

  Still, an hour with Lester might teach that idiot the importance of diversification in a portfolio.

  It was all water under the bridge. Plincer’s only chance at funding now hinged on how his meeting tomorrow would go. He checked another letter from the pile on his desk, and rechecked the arrival time. The helicopter would be arriving at nine a.m. Plincer had instructed them to land on the east side of the prison, where there was a clearing.

  While the doctor rather enjoyed the isolation the island provided, he did wish he could confirm this meeting again by phone or email. So much was riding on this venture. If they were a no-show, it would take weeks to contact them again to find out why. By that time, he’d be broke, and perhaps forced to scrounge for food alongside the unfortunate cannibals he’d inadvertently created.

  Doctor Plincer closed his eyes. There was still much to do before the meeting. He’d given that black girl to Subject 33 on the understanding that there would be other volunteers to use in his demonstration tomorrow. And while performing the procedure on that Georgia person was an unprecedented opportunity, the doctor wondered if he hadn’t been too eager, too hasty. But the prospect of another success was impossible to pass up.

  Unfortunately, that currently left Plincer with a deficit of victims.

  According to his intel, there were still five likely candidates on the island. Though the ferals had surprised the doctor by proving themselves able to work together, he doubted they would be able to grab all of the new arrivals. Some would survive.

  Plincer glanced at the clock. He had less than eight hours to get his hands on them. It would make for a much more effective presentation if he were able to grab all five. But all he needed was a single volunteer.

  It was time to send Lester back out to find one.

  Martin stared below him, through the leaves of the bough he perched upon. His swollen hands had resisted his efforts to climb the tree, and his ruined cheek resting against the rough bark of the oak’s branch made his injury light up every time he swallowed. But he felt lucky to have gotten up in time.

  A few moments earlier, in a semi-frantic search for Sara, he’d come upon a group of feral people. He fled before they saw him. Or so he thought. Within ten minutes, the ferals were on his trail, closing fast. Martin ran as hard as he could, not daring to use the flashlight, fearing he’d give his position away. Only moments into the chase, something surprising happened; he bumped into another group.

  After his third right turn, Martin’s gut burned with realization. They had him trapped. These insane, witless cannibals had somehow managed to surround him.

  With no choices left, he shifted Jack’s sling from his chest to his back, picked a large tree, and hoped for the best. The ferals closed the circle and converged, twelve of them total, right beneath his perch. More than expected, too many to be able to handle, less than ten feet beneath him.

  The largest man in the group, the one with the ax, grunted orders at the others, pointing in various directions. Then he leaned up against the tree and reached into the sack he had hanging over his shoulder.

  Martin couldn’t make out any details, but the axman pulled out a dark round object the size of a football. He brought it to his face and took a bite. The scent of cooked pork wafted up to Martin. But Martin knew whatever this guy was eating, it wasn’t pork.

  The axman sat down. He began to really gnaw on the thing, shaking his hairy head from side to side like a dog worrying a bone. Martin’s leg began to fall asleep. The pins and needles sensation grew from a minor discomfort to a spreading numbness. He shifted slightly, anxious to stay quiet, twisting his pelvis so the blood flow could return.

  Then Jack shifted on Martin’s back, throwing off his precarious balance. Martin’s adrenaline spiked, flushing his body with heat, causing every muscle to contract as Martin lost his grip and began to fall.

  Cindy knew she was hurting Tyrone—clenching his left hand so tight—but she was too frightened to let go. They ran as fast as safety allowed, heads down to keep from getting lashed in the face by wayward twigs and branches, arms swinging like walking sticks for the blind, so no one head-butted a tree. Cindy had no clue how many pursuers there were, or how close they’d gotten, and she was ready to circle the island ten times before she slowed down to find out.

  But her lungs and legs and stamina were casualties of meth, and though she’d been off the drug for a while her body still hadn’t fully recovered. After only a few minutes of running, Tyrone practically had to drag her, and Cindy’s panting was becoming increasingly labored and loud.

  When Sara finally stopped, Cindy fell to her knees, pressing a hand hard against the stitch in her side and gasping for air.

  Sara came over, and whispered, “Shh.”

  Cindy’s face pinched as she tried to get her breathing under control. Sara crawled ahead, up to a bush, and stuck her head inside. It was still dark, but Cindy could see pretty well. She moved her head to the side, so Sara’s shadow didn’t block her vision.

  Wait… shadow?

  On all fours, Cindy crept closer to Sara. All at once she understood where the light was coming from, and the importance of being quiet.

  Somehow, they’d gotten back to their campsite.

  Their fire was smaller, the few logs left burning slow and steady. The last time Cindy was here there were two cannibals, eating their fallen friend. Only one remained. The one with the knife and fork and salt shaker. His head was resting on the chest of the dead one, using it like a gory pillow.

  Cindy turned her head away before viewing any details.

  “He asleep?” Tyrone whispered.

  “Can’t tell.” Sara withdrew her head from the bush. “But he’s right next to the tent. That’s where the radio is.”

  “I’ll go,” Tyrone said. “I’ll be real careful, won’t wake him up.”

  Sara shook her head. “No. I’ll go. You both stay here.”

  “You be better off watchin’ my back. If I’m in that tent, lookin’ for the radio, I won’t know if this crazy dude wakes up. But you know that judo shit, can stop him better than I can.”

  Sara shook her head. “You stay here, guard Cindy.”

  “How’m I supposed to guard Cindy when I can’t even make a fist?”

  Cindy touched Tyrone’s shoulder. “The best way to do this is to crawl. You can’t crawl with your burns.” She looked deep inside herself, and was surprised by what she found there. “But I can.”

  “Hells no.”

  “No way, Cindy.”

  Cindy’s mind was made up. She looked at Sara. “Tyrone is right. If that man gets up, you’re the only one who can stop him.”

  Sara looked away. “I…I don’t think I could do that again.”

  “Yes you can. You’re strong enough.”

  And so am I.

  Before she lost her nerve, Cindy scrambled through the bush and into the clearing. She rested her belly on the ground and craned her neck. The cannibal was to her right, five yards away, lying down in front of th
e tent. His chest rose and fell slowly, rhythmically.

  You can do this. You can prove you’re more than just some selfish meth addict.

  Cindy crept forward, slow and easy and quiet as a mouse wearing slippers. That was what her father used to say when he took her hunting. The image would make her laugh, which of course wasn’t quiet at all.

  God, she missed him. Missed him and Mom so bad. They hadn’t visited her at the Center, and she couldn’t blame them—Cindy had stolen everything of value in the house, pawning it to get more meth. But now more than ever she wanted to see them again, to tell them how sorry she was, to promise she’d pay back every cent. She would too, if she lived through this.

  Cindy kept low, eyes darting back and forth between the tent entrance and the sleeping killer. She was so focused on her destination that she didn’t see whatever it was she rested her extended palm on.

  But Cindy didn’t have to see it. She knew without looking. It was warm, and wet, and squishy, and she’d helped Mom prepare it enough times that the smell normally evoked pleasant, homey feelings.

  This time it didn’t.

  Her stomach clenched, and she felt ready to hurl. In fact, she was eighty percent there, mouth already open, the gagging sound working her way up her throat, glancing anxiously at the cannibal to see if he could hear her.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and repressed it, forced the reflex down. Vomiting was noisy, noise would draw attention, and that could kill her.

  The moment passed. Cindy breathed through her mouth, slow and deep, relaxing her abdomen. Then she carefully lifted her hand off and wiped it on the dirt. Gravel and ash stuck to the moisture on her palm, and she vowed that she would never, under any circumstances, eat liver again.

  She adjusted her direction to avoid encountering anything else, and continued forward. But it didn’t matter. The cannibals had been messy eaters, and Cindy’s fingers kept brushing against various bits and parts strewn all over the ground. The knees of her jeans soaked through, and her hands glistened in the flickering campfire. She pressed forward, getting to within ten feet of the tent.