by A. R. Wise
“Of all the damn dirty tricks,” said Harrison. He’d started to scream, but then quieted as he looked over at us. “Sorry, sorry, I won’t yell at him. I won’t yell no more. I don’t want to get anyone chasing after you. I’ll save all my yelling for when I get to the gates. Then there won’t be no one to stop me from giving that shithead a piece of my mind.” He coughed and wavered where he stood before collapsing into a seated position on the cracked asphalt.
“Harry, come on,” I said as I walked over to him, my hand outstretched. “Let’s get you over to see your friends.”
“Nope,” said Harrison as he shook his head. “No way. I don’t want those kids to see me like this.” He pointed at the road between us and said, “Sit down for a second, both of you.” A tear fell across his dirty cheek and he didn’t bother wiping it away.
Annie and I complied. We sat beside him on that old, broken road, as the wind carried notes of spring and the mountains clung to their snow. With a blue sky above, marred by only a dusting of white clouds, and the warmth of a blazing sun, we sat and shared a final talk with the best friend I’d ever had.
“I want to talk with you two,” said Harrison as he continued to cry. “And I ain’t pulling no punches. All right? I’ve earned that much.”
“Sure,” said Annie with a smile and a tear of her own. “You’ve earned a hell of a lot more than that, Harrison.”
“Annie, you damn well better listen. I know how bullheaded you can be, but these are my fucking dying words, kid. All right? You’re obligated to listen to me.”
She nodded and laughed, although it was a laugh that was burdened with sorrow. “I’m listening.”
“You’ve got a guardian angel watching over you, kid. And he’s been watching over you ever since you were a toddler. Now, I’m not sure if it’s your daddy or not, but whoever the hell it is, that angel worked all sorts of magic to put this guy into your life.” Harrison pointed at me. “Somehow or another, that angel spun the world every which way it could to get you two together, and I just feel goddamned blessed to see it happen.”
“Harry,” said Annie, but the old man cut her off.
“I’m not done. Don’t go cutting off a man’s dying words. If there’s such a thing as bad karma, you’re swimming in it for that.”
“Sorry,” said Annie with a smile. “Go on.”
“Kid, you might have an angel watching over you, but that damn sure means you’ve got your fair share of demons too. They’re fighting for space up in that pretty little head of yours, and you need to kick them the fuck out. Okay?”
She nodded and said, “Sure.”
“One of those demons is named revenge, and he’s working you something fierce.” Harrison coughed and turned to spit. Blood struck the pavement and Harrison wiped his mouth in surprise. “Damn, this disease isn’t wasting any time.” He looked over at me and said, “Better get on to you, Benny.”
I smiled in the absence of any other response, and even that was hard to offer.
“My little Chinaman. The stranger that stuck by me when everyone else in the whole damn world had written me off as a crazy old coot. A drugged up thief with no one left to give a shit about him, and you still put up with me. You know why that is, Ben?”
“No,” I said.
“Because you need some friends!” He laughed with enough fervor to elicit laughter from both Annie and me. “You need some damn friends, Ben. If you didn’t learn nothing else from me, then learn that it fucking sucks to be lonely.”
“You’re right,” I said.
“I know I’m right. I’m right about a lot of stuff,” said Harrison. “You should’ve listened to me more. And you know what? There’s something else I’m right about. I’m right that you should take those files your dad left you and burn them up. Burn them, Ben. Life’s too short to spend it like you have. You’re sitting next to one of the best damn girls I’ve ever met, and you both need to wake the fuck up and get your priorities straight. You hear me?”
We both nodded.
“Good,” said Harrison. “Now, Annie, would you do me a favor and go get my Bible out of the back of the Jeep? It’s on the back seat.”
She did as he asked.
Harrison waited until she was gone to look at me and say, “Now I’ve got to ask you to do something for me, bud.”
“Anything,” I said, tears dripping from my chin.
“I don’t want to be a zombie, and this disease is ripping its way through me. I don’t know how long I’ve got.”
The realization of what he was asking struck me with physical force. I straightened my posture and said, “No, Harry. We can get you someplace…”
“No way, bud. No way. I’m fine right here, in the sunshine with my bible and my best friend. Okay? This works for me. This is good.”
“No, Harry, I can’t.”
“Yes you can, because I can’t do it. I can’t pull the trigger, kid. I need you to do it or I’m going to ask Annie to. Your choice.”
Annie returned with the Bible and handed it down to Harrison as she asked, “What’s going on?”
I stood up and turned away.
“Annie,” said Harrison. “I need you to do me a favor.”
I turned and shouted, “No. No, goddamn it.”
“This has to happen,” said Harrison. “We all know it.”
Annie looked at me and nodded in agreement with our suicidal friend.
“No, for fuck’s sake.” Tears continued to course down my cheeks and my nose was beginning to plug up from crying. “I can’t.”
“Annie,” said Harrison. “Would you do me the honor…”
“No,” I said again and stepped between the two of them. “Don’t make her…” I took a deep breath and said, “I’ll do it.”
Harrison smiled and said, “Thanks, brother. I’ll see you on the other side.”
He walked to the side of the road as he opened the bible that Annie had brought him. Harrison leafed through the pages as I stood behind him. The sun was sitting high above and cast only the slightest shadow of a gunman aiming at the back of his best friend’s head.
Harrison was reading to himself, finding comfort in the book he’d been carrying with him for as long as I’d known him; a time that seemed woefully short as my finger slipped over the trigger.
“I love you, Harry.”
The gunshot echoed, but nowhere near as long as my cries of anguish.
PART FOUR - Games
16 – Doctor’s Orders
Levon Kline
“What’s up, doc?” I asked as I lay in bed.
The stranger had come late, although I wasn’t asleep. I’d forced myself to stay awake, despite how weary I always became at this time. My head was filled with a hundred conspiracies about this place, and one of them had been that they were drugging me at night so that they could perform secret experiments. Like usual, my conspiracy theory proved true.
The doctor was anonymous in his plastic suit of armor, his breath coming in rhythmic, tinny gasps through the respirator that dominated the lower portion of his mask. He didn’t offer an answer as he focused on his work at the counter across the room from me.
It was odd for him to be here so late, although I wasn’t truly certain what time it was anyhow. The people running this facility had explained to me that they were influencing my biorhythms by adjusting the lights to mimic a day-to-night exchange, and the television on the wall in the room shut off each night when I was expected to go to bed. It was the most minor of rebellions to stay awake longer than they wanted, but a little revolution does a body good.
“What are you up to over there?” I asked as the doctor worked by the light of a desk lamp on the counter beside him. He ignored me, and I started to get annoyed. “Buddy, I asked you a question. Don’t be rude.”
He turned to me and placed a finger over the gasket at the front of his mask, shushing me without saying a word. Then he went back to work.
“Mother fucker,” I said a
s I tried to force myself up. The tubes that protruded from the ports in my side rattled as I moved, and the machines that surrounded me started to blip and chirp in reaction to the disturbance. “Don’t shush me. Who the hell are you?”
The stranger turned to reveal a four inch needle with a canister filled with a greenish solution, like some mad scientist plucked from a nightmare. But this was no dream.
He approached fast and grabbed my right arm with his latex-gloved left hand, pressing down hard to keep me where I was. Then he stabbed the needle into me, burying it down deep until the barrel pressed against the cloth at my side. He was injecting the fluid into my abdomen, not far from where these bastards had burrowed those ports into me. The shock of the attack was enough to stall my response until he’d nearly finished, but I lashed out at him with my left hand, attempting to grasp anything I could reach.
This wasn’t the first time the people here had stuck me with needles, or pumped me full of some mysterious concoction, but they’d never done it like this. It felt like I was being assaulted, and I responded accordingly.
I got ahold of the respirator on the front of his mask and jerked it down, pulling him forward as he continued to try and hold me down. Had he tried this a few months ago, I would’ve manhandled the weakling and pummeled him into a wet stain on the floor, but I was far from healthy now. Still though, I was determined to put up a good fight.
My fingertips got wedged behind the lip of his mouthpiece, and I held on tight. He tried to get away, but I wouldn’t let go as we continued to battle with one another.
“That’s right, bitch,” I said as I grabbed at him with my other hand as well. “I’m gonna beat your ass.”
He struck me hard in the side, beside the ports, and the ensuing pain stole my breath away. My grip on him slipped as my body quaked in agony and he was able to pull himself free.
The intruder stood a few feet away, confident that he was safe, and started to collect himself. He smoothed out his suit and adjusted his mask. I could hear his muffled curses as he turned his attention to the small refrigerator in the corner of the room where they kept samples of my blood.
I coughed up blood and looked over at the machines that were supposed to alert the doctors that I was in distress. All of the various alarms were flashing, but they didn’t emit any noise. My attacker had figured out a way to disconnect the alarms, and I knew that no one would come to save me.
That’s all right. I didn’t need saving, because I didn’t mind dying.
I forced myself to sit up, and the agony of my action caused my arms to tremble as they supported my weight. My joints wobbled, and I could feel bone scraping against bone. The pain shot through me as if electric shocks were being sent up from the bed and through my arms, causing me to grit my teeth. The man in the room with me was busy pilfering my blood samples, and didn’t see as I pulled my legs off the bed and let my bare feet settle on the cold floor.
It had been weeks since I’d sat up on my own, but I was determined to do so now. I couldn’t tell where my feet were placed without looking down, as if they weren’t my legs at all. Pins and needles danced up from my feet, tickling every nerve along the way as my body registered a smattering of real sensation. The chill of the floor swept through me, causing goose bumps to spread and the hair on my arms to stick up like bristles on a cactus. I took a shuffling step, and then another as the tubes at my side rattled their base above me. I kept my eyes on my target, ignoring the pain that thundered inside of me.
My attacker was pocketing vials and satchels of blood, examining each label as he went as if in search of something specific. I was nearly beside him when the tubes at my side impeded my advance. I’d stretched them to their limit, and when I took my last step I’d caused the apparatus that hung from the ceiling to rattle loud enough to alert the man I was trying to sneak up on.
He turned to see what had made the noise and saw me looming over him. He fell backward, out of his crouching stance and to his butt, and I swung down at him, stretching the tubes at my side to their limit. The man cursed as he fell back and he pressed his fist to the floor to steady himself. He’d been holding a vial of my blood, and the fragile container cracked in his grip.
The man shook his hand as my blood dripped from his glove. He scooted away from me, along the wall, but he was more frightened of his wound than he was of me now. He glanced up at me, and then back at his hand.
“Uh oh,” I said with mocking glee. “Did you get cut?”
He cursed and then looked at the sink that was beside the fridge, near where I stood. I knew he wanted to clean himself off to check and see if the broken glass had cut through his glove, but he didn’t want to risk coming close to me again. I beckoned him over. “Better wash up.”
Blood trickled from his fingertips as he turned to leave. I pleaded with him to stay, but he pressed his badge against the sensor near the door so that he could leave. The circular entry spun open with a hiss and I waved as he left. “Good luck, asshole,” I said with a wide grin.
The exit spun shut, and I was left alone, out of bed and in tremendous pain. The tubes at my side were pulling at their ports, and I gripped them in an attempt to ease the pain. I felt the metal ring at the end of one of the tubes and ran my finger along the smooth edge until I felt the indentation of the lock. The doctors and nurses here had a small metal key that slipped into the tear-shaped hole that allowed the tubes to be detached. Without that key, I would forever be imprisoned by this contraption, like the victim of a squid, stuck to its arms and waiting to be devoured.
Blood wet my gown from where the man had plunged the needle in. I pressed against the wound and was surprised by the thumb-sized blood print that emerged on my white shirt. I winced as I felt the lump left behind there. It had swollen quickly, and I wondered what he’d injected into me. Have they been doing this every night when I slept?
The small fridge beside the sink was still open, and there was blood smeared on the floor and wall from the broken vial. What was he planning on doing with my blood? Wasn’t it contaminated? The other doctors had taken great care to keep my disease isolated before.
My legs started to lose the feeble amount of strength I’d managed to force out of them and I staggered back over to my bed. I fell onto it, exhausted and racked with pain. It was a struggle to pull myself back onto the bed, and sweat beaded on my forehead from the attempt. I finally got myself up and then fell back with a gasp and a groan of pain.
Now that the alarms had been shut off, I would have to wait until morning for the nurses to find me. It was going to be a long night.
* * *
I didn’t have any idea what time it was now. There was a light on, so it had to be daytime. Right?
Something was scratching at the walls. It sounded like an animal pawing at a door, with a thousand tiny claws scraping, scraping, scraping. And then the sound of water splashing. I looked to the side, my vision spinning as I struggled to keep my eyelids from closing.
A man was on his hands and knees, scrubbing the floor where my blood had been spilled. He glanced over at me when he heard me moving, and paused like an animal caught in the headlights of an approaching semi. I could see his eyes behind his visor, bloodshot and wide, and the streaks of sweat that fell down from his soaked hair. When he was certain I wasn’t getting up, he continued with his work.
The only light on in here was from a flashlight that he’d brought, and was resting on the floor, the beam shining out at the blood he’d spilled. He was furiously scrubbing, and then using the light to search for another stain.
I couldn’t fight my weariness any longer, and my eyelids won the battle, shutting out the meager light from the doctor’s flashlight.
* * *
By the time I woke, even the lights above me were on instead of just a flashlight on the floor. I looked to the right, and saw a figure standing there, staring down at a clipboard. The tile at the person’s feet was spotless, with no trace of the event I’d been
sure had happened. Was it a fever dream?
I started to speak, but my words turned to garbled blurts of noise as my lips refused to coincide with my intention. Saliva dripped down my cheek as I tried, and failed, to turn my head. My stomach churned, and the sickening lurch threatened to cause me to vomit. With just the mere thought of puking, I felt liquid begin to surge up my throat.
I didn’t have the strength to turn my head, and I opened my mouth as wide as I could when the fluid burst forth. It came in waves, first as just a spattering of thin liquid, and then as a gush that forced its way through my nose as well.
“Oh gosh,” said the nurse in the room. She was wearing a protective suit, but it was different than the one my attacker had worn. I recognized her blue eyes behind the thin plastic shield that protected her face as she leaned over me. She cleaned me with a rag before walking over to the sink to rinse it off and return. She pinched my nose and apologized as she cleaned me off. The cool water on my parched lips felt heavenly.
“Is he up?” asked a familiar voice. Beatrice was coming in, and her concern rang false to me.
“He’s up,” said the nurse. “But I don’t think he’s…”
“Give us a minute alone,” said Beatrice.
“I can’t…”
“Jerald gave me the okay. Now give us a minute.”
The nurse agreed, and left the room. Beatrice waited for the door to spin closed before she approached. She stood beside my bed and stared down at me. “Levon?” She snapped her fingers in my line of sight. “Levon, can you hear me?”
“Yes, I can fucking hear you.” My words slurred, but the point got across just fine.
She grimaced and then drew a long breath before speaking. “You sure can get yourself into trouble, can’t you? Even when you’re supposed to be sick in bed, unable to walk.”
“One of your…” I choked and had to start over. “One of the fuckers stabbed me with something.”