by A. R. Licht
Kate wanted to smile, wanted to kiss him, to tell him that she accepted, but the driver was watching her now in the rearview mirror as he sped along the dirt road, seeming to hit every pothole on purpose.
“What, no thank you?” Phil said weakly.
The driver looked away and Kate’s lower lip began to tremble. She pressed her lips together to try to make it stop. She leaned over and whispered to Phil, “I love you very much. I’m happy to be your girlfriend again, I’ve wanted nothing more in all the time we’ve been apart. But, right now, something is wrong with the driver. He’s creeping me out and I really need you.”
Phil opened his eyes a little, most likely taking in his surroundings for the first time. But he was weak, his eyes closed again as his head drooped into his chest. Kate pulled him toward her, directing his head onto her shoulder. She pulled his seatbelt around him and clicked it into place. Then she did the same for herself, watching the landscape streak by.
The car slowed and the man hung a right onto a paved road. Kate wasn’t sure where they were or if the guy was taking them toward Alkin at all, or somewhere else. It was much smoother now, and she could relax her leg, stretching it carefully under the seat in front of her.
Phil snored, and she tried to wake him up but he slept on. The tremble in her lower lip had spread to her hands now, the windshield wipers in front making a grating scrape when the rain let up and the driver didn’t turn it to a lower speed.
The car makes several turns, and Kate is lost. Nothing looks familiar, but, she reasons that the road they had been on that led back to Alkin earlier had been blocked by a tree. Maybe this person knows a way around it, if he even knows about the downed tree.
But, then, the man turns onto another dirt road.
“This isn’t right,” Kate said, “Why are we heading back into the mountains?”
The man makes no reply, she begins a slow panic. Had they managed to get into a car with a maniac? Is he going to cut them up into small pieces and feed them to his pet grizzlies?
“Please, stop the car,” she said with as much force as she could muster.
The man’s eyes flick back to her, then back to the road.
“Stop the car.”
She pulls at the door handle, fully expecting the door to come open but it doesn’t. She tugs at the door lock but it isn’t locked. Child locks. She can’t open the door.
He is watching her again as she slides across the seat, ignoring the immediate searing pain and tries Phil’s door.
She hits the switch to roll down the window, if she could get it open far enough she could reach through and open the door that way. The window doesn’t roll down. The man must have hit the lock on that too.
“STOP THE CAR!”
Phil jerks awake, his eyes wide open. Kate meets the driver’s eyes in the mirror, she gives herself away when her eyes flick to the front passenger door. She tries to rush it, climbing between the seats, but when she is halfway there, her hand almost to the door handle, a gun barrel appears in her face.
He presses it to her cheek, the coldness of it there freezing her in place.
“No.”
That is all he said, his voice void of inflection, cold. She raises her hands in surrender and he slowly raises the gun from her cheek.
She sits back, Phil’s head already drooping again. Motionless, she watches him as he hits the ruts and potholes without remorse.
It is a long time before the car slows and he takes an offshoot to the right. The road gets worse as it winds up a hill, then between two large boulders.
Clouds have begun to break apart, she can see the colors of dawn brightening the eastern skies.
The man pulls to a stop, a large chainlike fence appearing and disappearing in the mountain landscape, large yellow signs illuminated in the headlights. Danger, this fence is electrified! High Voltage! Risk of death! Two skulls with lightening bolts on either side of the warnings.
A man materializes from thin air, the driver rolls down his window. The man leans down, peers in at her, then waves them through.
The fence jiggles, then a gate slides open. The driver pulls through, rolling up the window again.
She watches the gate close as it fades back into the darkness.
“Where are you taking us?” Kate said, unable to hide the rising flood of terror she felt. “We need medical attention.”
She knew what she said didn’t matter to this man, that he might even think her stupid, but she had to try to reason with him.
“Look, I don’t know who you are or why you’re doing this, but I promise if you let us go, we’ll never tell anyone.”
The man’s shoulders rose and fell as though he’d found this funny.
A strange structure came into view, and she knew that whatever it was, she didn’t want to go there. She could already imagine them dragging her from the car, and like a horror movie, the doors would close behind her and she would never see the light of day again.
“Please,” she pleaded. “I’m a reporter. I know people, I could help you.”
She kept at it, using different tactics, but the man remained silent, the car coming to a stop under an overhang. Two steel doors opened in tandem, four men pouring out of the building.
Two men on either side of the car, waiting for something.
The driver turned in his seat, sliding a pair of sunglasses onto his face, and suddenly she knew where she’d seen him before.
“You’re the sniper!”
He smiled, revealing white teeth.
The doors opened, two men pulled Phil from the car. She climbed out, two men on either side helping her to stand. Someone wheeled out a wheelchair and placed Phil in it, then wheeled Phil inside.
She didn’t want to be separated from him, didn’t want to let him out of her sight. She tried to run after him but the pain was so bad. The men each grabbed an arm, and helped her hobble inside.
They placed her in a room with a cement floor, walls, a metal table and chairs. They left her in one of the chairs, closing the door swiftly behind them.
“Wait!” She called after them, but no one heard her.
She tried to stand, regretted it, fell back into the chair.
Time passed, she didn’t know how long, but she had hummed their song three times in a row before she heard the door being unlocked.
Then it opened, and someone came in behind her. She turned in the chair to see who it was.
“Nathan.”
“Well, that’s technically my name but its not my real name.”
“Why am I here? Where’s Phil?”
“Calm down, I’ll give you answers in a few minutes. My name is Vance. Welcome to Victim’s, Inc.”
Chapter 32
Unknown Location, North Carolina - Dates Unknown
The world around her continued to move, but it moved without her. She sat in a slump, eyes unfocused, staring at the ground. There was a speck on the cement floor, a piece of neon green lint. It had come from somewhere but not from her. Which struck her odd, someone had been here before her. Someone wearing a neon green piece of clothing, and at some point that piece of lint had detached and fallen onto the floor and no one picked it up. No one cleaned.
It was like that one piece of lint had become a cry for humanity, for those who’d gone before her and it made her want to scream, cry, run. Run like she’s never run before. To feel the muscles in her calves and quads burn in a way she’d never pressed them.
Not to run away, because she knew that was not a possibility, but only to run for the sake of running.
At some point the urgent need to urinate came and when she got up, she took the piece of lint from its sacred place and held it in her hand, imagining that she could feel the life force of the one that had left it there.
She pocketed it, mixing it with her own blue jeans, the white lint of her pocket welcoming the neon green as family, just as it had the shell casing she'd found in the fake hospital.
The days
shifted by fluorescent light, there was time, so much of it to do nothing but think. To think of the days and nights, rushing cars with streaking taillights in the rain.
Phil was somewhere else. Somewhere other. They would not tell her, nor give her straight answers. She cried for hours until the tears became too painful themselves, puffy eyes, cheeks and lips. Each tear a painful streak of taillights, the red mark down to her jaw line where it dripped off into oblivion.
In some ways it was satisfying to know that in her tears were little strands of DNA that she could leave behind like that piece of neon green.
Victim’s, Inc.. That line echoed in her brain like a song on repeat.
In a fog, somewhere both long ago and ten minutes ago, she had said, “Excuse me?”
Vance had repeated it, “Victim’s, Inc.,” saying it like she was hard of hearing, emphasizing every syllable.
Then he’d been disappointed because she was near to passing out. It was like he’d planned that moment of meeting in his head multiple times and then there she was, Kate Miller, right in front of him. Only, she wasn’t reacting the way he’d hoped.
She said, “Where’s Phil?”
“Is that all you care about?” he’d shot back. “Not your own predicament or what happens to you?”
“He’s hurt,” she’d said through slurred speech, fading fast.
“Where’s Phil?” he’d responded with a snotty voice, “Where’s PhilwheresphilWHERESPHIL.”
She’d been scared beyond the feeling of being watched or feeling so alone and helpless as she was carted off to some facility in the mountains no one knew existed. Being told the truth, given real names, that meant death. But they didn’t let her die, they didn’t kill her. Instead, this man she knew as Nathan with a clipboard, but called himself Vance, was mad at her for not playing into his hand.
In disgust, he’d dismissed her, “Fine, you’re obviously tired. We’ll return to this once you’ve had rest.”
Then he’d turned nasty, in her face, trying to make her look at the horror in her thigh. But she didn’t want to because now there was light that made it visible, the stick, the thing that had impaled her there.
Someone brought in a wheel chair and moved her from the chair to it. She saw the brilliant swath of color left behind where she’d been sitting and she’d thought, is that blood?
A woman, a doctor, gave her an IV. Then she’d been gone.
Gone into the white snow storm with the white cow and the white house. Unable to find her way as she stumbled through the cold. Then there had been a distant cry, a voice she loved, “Kate!”
She’d awoken in this room. This room with the hum and buzz of fluorescent lighting, doors closing somewhere she couldn’t see.
Maybe it had been depression, or confusion, or fear, but she had remained in one place for a long time, in one position, staring at the piece of lint. Crying, thinking, feeling. Existing.
But all of that time would now meld with what the man before her had in store.
He had appeared sometime in her vision, she didn’t know when, his words coming through thick layers of water and soot. He got in her face, and she felt anger replace the dullness. She wanted to hit him, hard.
He saw this reaction in the making and stepped back, laughing at her.
They moved her without her consent, taking her through the hallways where the ceilings were old and ugly. Full of pipes and vents, unfinished and bland. No one ever looks up, do they?
Back in that room with the walls and the floor, the tables and chairs. Someone had cleaned her body fluids up from the last time. She gasped as pain from the stitches flared as they moved her from the wheel chair to the unforgiving metal chair.
Then she was alone again. Always alone to think and ruminate, to miss things, to imagine all of the life she is missing out on. To ponder over how much time had passed since she had arrived and to go crazy over the not knowing.
Torture is something all journalism students are made to think about. Being caught as a spy in some foreign land, or even here at home. Being tormented to give up sources, or made to tell the truth about something that should be kept secret.
But talk does nothing to dispel the real pain or feelings of helplessness. The inadequacies that crop up when a person is left with nothing but themselves. The doubt that creeps in with age as the hours and minutes tick by in a life that feels so fleeting.
A door opened behind her, the familiar deja vu stirring in her memory banks. Vance comes into view, stares at her a moment in silence. Finally sits before her.
“Are you ready to talk?”
She raises her head, glaring at him. “Let’s talk.”
Approval. Flash of a smile. He leans back, “I like this version of you. But you aren’t as pretty as you were on TV. Have you seen yourself lately?”
He pulls a cosmetic mirror from his front pocket, opens it, examines himself, straightens his eyebrows with a finger. He looks at her, “Would you like to see?”
She nodded, he sets it on the table and with one hand slides it across to her. With a shaky hand she lifts it, raises it to eye level and peers into it.
Her hair is a greasy mess, her skin pale and thin. There are cuts and bruises from the car accident and the hurricane. Her lip has a cut in it and is slightly swollen on one side and she thinks of it as her stroke face.
He is right, she is ugly. Reduced to survival from having had the best of the best to keep her looking and feeling her greatest. No perfectly coiffed hair, no makeup to cover over the flaws and imperfections as they healed, no tight fitting clothes to accentuate her curves in just the right way.
Her riches stripped from her, she is laid bare just as she had wanted to do to them.
Somewhere inside, there is voice that speaks with authority. It is a voice that is old because it has been there all along, narrating her thoughts. It said, “Kate, it doesn’t matter what you look like because no one that matters is watching. What does matter is how you react.”
That voice is right. It is reason and logic, and all the things her heart doesn’t pay attention to. She digs deep, overriding that fear of seeing herself at her worst, and sets the compact down with dignity, holding her head high.
Vance’s smile fades, he leans forward onto the table on his elbows. “So, do you want to know how Phil is doing?”
“No.”
“No?”
She doesn’t make a move to explain herself. She has had time to think this through. Vance will use her love for Phil against her, keep her on edge, manipulate her so she will do anything to gain any morsel of information about Phil that she can get. This would reduce her to a crying mess and nothing would be accomplished. She is certain that their talks matter. It will determine the tone that is set for future talks.
“Well, fine,” Vance said, “I wasn’t going to tell you anyway.”
Kate kept her face expressionless, waiting for him to make the next move.
“Do you have any questions for me?”
“Yes. What is Victim’s, Inc.?”
Vance gave her a smile, “I’m glad you asked. We are a group dedicated to the training process of the public and the emergency services that will respond to a mass casualty incident.”
“Group... You mean a business.”
“Sure, there is a business aspect to it. There is the exchange of money for services provided. But, there is so much more to it.”
“You accept donations that people give out of a response of love and human interest to help those in a tragedy when they cannot physically be present,” Kate said.
“The key word there is donation. No one has actually been hurt or killed and so there is no harm done. If someone wishes out of the kindness of their hearts to donate, then yes, who is to stop them?”
“It is fraud.”
Vance laughed, “I suppose you think of it in the terms of donation fraud where someone claims someone in their family is sick and that they need help to pay for medical bills.
Am I correct in this assessment?”
“Yes, but on a grander scale. Could you imagine how upset and hurt people would be to discover that they had given to something that didn’t even happen?” Kate said.
“But, there is where you are wrong. You see, we ask for a donation to help bury the dead, and we bury them with that money. We ask to help support the families who have suffered loss, and we pay those monies to our employees who have enacted that loss. We have followed through with what we gave the guidelines for. How is there fraud?”
“Because there are no bodies! No real families!”