by K. M. Fawkes
“I hear something.” He listened a little longer. “Mechanical, maybe?”
Marie dropped to her knees and pressed her ear to the floor as well. “Mechanical,” she whispered in agreement.
“If there’s something below us, then there has to be a way to get to it.” Pete got up, put his socks back on, and padded around the cabin, looking for a trapdoor or some other way to get to a lower level. What was down there? And how had it gotten there?
This looked like a standard ranger station—and a deserted one at that. Who the hell had taken the time to build something underneath it? Why? And how?
Marie started opening the large pantry doors and checking to see if the backs moved, like this was something right out of a Nancy Drew detective novel. Pete wanted to laugh at her—but he’d known her long enough, now, to know that sometimes her out-of-the-box thinking reaped results.
“Nothing,” she muttered.
“Bedroom,” Pete said, and the two of them darted in there.
Marie went right to the wardrobe. “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a door to a different world inside?”
“Only if different means better,” Pete responded. “Wasn’t there a book like that where the magical world was ruled over by an evil ice queen?”
Marie grunted. “Not like it matters, since there’s nothing behind this wardrobe except the wall.”
Pete looked at the bed, which was centered on an area rug. Dropping to the floor, he looked under the bed, to find one of those under-bed plastic storage containers. He hooked the lid with his fingertips and pulled it toward him. When he had enough leverage, he slid the whole container out from under the bed so that Marie could take a look inside.
“What have we here?” she asked gleefully.
Pete lifted the edge of the rug, and then squinted. Could that actually be what he thought it was? He slipped his arm under the rug and felt around on the floor.
There was a seam there. This bed was hiding some sort of opening in the floor.
“This bin is full of hats, gloves, scarves, and thick socks,” Marie said, voice full of excitement. “We won’t have to wear the filthy blood-stained gloves anymore.”
“There’s a trapdoor under the bed,” Pete responded.
Chapter 7
“A trapdoor?” Marie stared at him in shock for a moment, and then dropped to a crouch to take a better look.
Meanwhile, Pete got up. Who knew how long she’d take down there. Marie was a journalist, so this was probably the equivalent of every wet dream she’d ever had, in the flesh.
“Help me move the bed,” he muttered.
He took one corner of the rug while Marie got to her feet, grumbling. A moment later she had the other and they were sliding the whole thing, bed and all, to the other side of the room. There were prominent scuffmarks etched into the floor underneath.
“This has done this more than once,” Marie said, running her fingers over the scuffing. “What could be down there? And why hide it?”
“I have no idea,” Pete said. “It makes as much sense to me as cutting open a deer to find a moose inside.” He examined the latch, which sat flush with the floor. “This looks like a locking mechanism. See how you have to twist it after you pop it up?”
“So if someone’s down there… they’re locked in?” Marie asked, her voice suddenly wary. “And if we go down there, there’s a chance that we could get…”
“Yeah.” Pete headed toward the kitchen, his entire body tense. Everything about this was really, really wrong. “I’m going to get the Glock.”
“It’s empty,” Marie whispered, glancing at the trapdoor.
“You and I know that, but if there’s someone down there, they don’t.”
“True.”
He grabbed the Glock from the kitchen table and returned to the bedroom. Mouth gone dry, he knelt once again by the trapdoor.
Every instinct he had was screaming that this was a very, very bad idea. There was a secret door into what appeared to be some sort of secret chamber below a cabin that should never, ever have had such a thing. They’d both heard sounds coming from that chamber—and they’d both felt the eeriness in the cabin itself. They’d both felt that there was something wrong with this place.
They were in the middle of nowhere, without any backup. And they were out of ammo for their one working weapon.
No sane person would open this door. No sane person would even consider going down there. Without ammo. With a wounded partner.
But he knew himself well enough to know that he was going to do it anyhow. There might be people down there. People who needed help. And he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t check it out and make sure there weren’t.
The sound of knocking came again, and this time it was clearly coming from below the trapdoor.
“Jesus,” Marie said under her breath. “We heard it that first night, and we didn’t do anything. What if it’s someone who needs help?”
“Ready?” Pete mouthed.
Marie nodded and he twisted the latch, got a good grip, and then lifted the door in one fluid motion. A wave of warm air caressed the skin of his face.
Directly below them, a man perched at the top of a sharply canted metal ladder.
“The hell took you so long?” he asked. The first question was rapidly followed by: “And what’s going on? I’ve been sitting here for two days with just a couple of battery-powered lanterns for company.” Taking hold of the next top rung of the ladder, he moved up, looking for all the world like he was planning to come up and join them in the bedroom.
Pete’s heart thumped with a fresh surge of adrenaline. He didn’t know who the hell this guy was or what he wanted—and he definitely wasn’t planning to let the guy into the cabin.
He leveled the Glock at the guy. “Stay right there.” What in the fresh hell is this? “Better yet, go back down.”
The guy looked like he might argue, but then he paused, taking in Pete’s expression, which was serious, and the gun pointed at his head. One rung at a time, he lowered himself to the bottom of the ladder. When he was firmly on the ground below, he put his hands in the air.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked in a conversational tone, as if they’d been introduced at someone’s house party or something.
Marie chose that moment to get up and run from the bedroom. Pete gave that enough attention to hope she wasn’t about to do something that would escalate the situation, and then turned his focus back to the guy below him.
“Back away and keep your hands where I can see them,” Pete said clearly.
He worked furiously to put two and two together, to come up with an explanation for the situation.
The guy was balding, but had an unfortunate patch of hair left behind in an otherwise empty expanse of scalp, and several days of beard growth, which lined up with his earlier comment. His glasses looked expensive, but so what? It didn’t explain who he was or what he was doing down there. What he was doing here, in the middle of nowhere, in a deserted cabin that happened to have things like military rations and a freshly sharpened axe.
“Don’t shoot!” the guy said. “I’m unarmed.”
Marie returned with one of the larger kitchen knives and gave Pete a serious look. “Don’t believe him,” she said softly.
“I don’t,” he replied, just as quietly.
He wanted Marie to stay up here, where it was safe, but knew that she’d do whatever she wanted. He might as well spit into the wind. In her own way, she was as predictable as the convicts in Mueller—and just as inclined to be her own worst enemy.
That thought was followed, though, by the memory of what she’d done in the forest—and his own vow to allow her to help more often. His earlier realization that she was a better partner than he’d given her credit for.
He knew he had to go down there, to see what it was all about. He knew it was going to be dangerous. And he knew that he could use someone watching his back.
So he kept his mouth shut, turned, and started to go down the ladder facing forward. It was an awkward way to use a ladder, but the position allowed him to keep an eye on the stranger. With each rung, he felt certain he would pitch forward and fall on the floor at the guy’s feet.
When he’d made it all the way down, he was stunned to find himself standing in what looked like a state-of-the-art surgical suite.
There was a narrow black bed in the center of the room with two large lights above it. Of course, they were dark now. The only light in the room came from a couple of battery-operated lanterns. There was an anesthesia machine and another machine Pete thought might be for monitoring vitals. To his left, he saw a bank of white cabinets, topped with a surgical steel counter.
And it was toasty warm in the room, which explained the unexpected warmth they’d felt upstairs in the floor. He had no idea where the heat was coming from, but assumed that the room must have been well equipped with things that didn’t require energy. After all, the guy had battery-powered lanterns.
The guy. Pete turned to him and narrowed his eyes.
Whoever he was, his presence also explained the rather thin layer of dust in the cabin, and the fresh rations they’d found upstairs. Based on the state of this room, this guy had been here for some time.
Why? What exactly was he doing out here in the woods all by himself?
“Move it, Marshall,” Marie said from above. “I’m coming down.”
Pete caught his sigh before it could escape and took a few steps into the room. She’ll be here to watch your back in case something goes wrong, he reminded himself.
“Who are you?” he asked the stranger bluntly.
The stranger crossed his arms. “Who are you?”
There was a strangely merry light in the guy’s eyes, which might explain his daring while facing off with someone who was pointing a Glock at him.
Lunatic, Pete thought. First David Clyde, and now this guy. It was like an epidemic.
For a second Pete wondered if a solar flare could cause madness, but then he reminded himself that Clyde had been crazy long before the solar flare.
“I’m the guy who’ll kick your ass from here to Sunday if you don’t start talking,” Pete finally answered. He told himself to stay on high alert. For some reason, the silly tuft of hair on this guy’s head screamed “incompetence” to Pete, but the eyes… They said “anything goes.”
Marie, for once, had nothing to say, but busied herself with looking around at the various pieces of equipment. She went toward the cabinets and started poking around, and Pete didn’t say anything. If she discovered anything useful, it would save him some time. And it meant she was out of the way if this guy did have a gun and started shooting.
“I’m Dr. Harrington,” the guy finally said.
Pete opened his mouth to reply, but Marie beat him to it.
“And what exactly are you doing here, Dr. Harrington?” she asked, her voice menacing. In her hand, she held what looked like a bone saw.
She walked toward him, her face turning dangerous. “Out in the middle of nowhere with a fully equipped surgical suite, and all the tools, to boot? I doubt there’s much call for emergency surgery out here.” She stopped right in front of him and stared him down.
Pete shivered, despite himself. He hadn’t seen this side of her before. And he was pretty glad he wasn’t on the other side of this exchange.
Though he had to admit that he liked seeing it in her.
“You know, I’ve heard stories,” she said slowly, starting to circle around the doctor. “Stories about prisoners who’ve gone missing from Mueller. Prisoners who never came back. Prisoners whose friends never saw them again. Stories about a doctor out in the wilderness who was stealing organs and selling them on the black market.”
She came to a stop right in front of him and leaned in, her voice dropping. “You have no idea how badly they want to kill you.”
She looked over her shoulder at Pete. “He has all the tools for surgery, and that doesn’t make sense out here in the middle of nowhere. Not unless he’s the one who’s been doing it.”
Pete must have looked as confused as he felt. Stealing organs? Black market? What the hell?
He yanked Marie out of Harrington’s reach. All he needed was for Harrington to take the saw from her and use her as a hostage.
She gave him an annoyed look, but she continued talking. “I heard things when I was at Mueller. One of the guards as good as confirmed it. But I never found a surgical suite with the proper equipment, so I figured they must have been rumors. And believe me, I looked.”
Pete believed her. He could easily imagine her sneaking around the prison, poking her nose into things that were none of her business—and would have been incredibly dangerous.
Given Warden Andersen’s security system, it was a wonder Andersen himself hadn’t killed her before Pete and his unit arrived. Of course, Andersen had probably been too busy keeping track of his own nefarious activities to worry about Marie’s.
Nefarious activities that made it all too easy to believe that he’d added black market organs to the list.
“Is this true?” Pete asked sharply.
“Yes, it is.” Harrington looked proud of it, too. “Not just any hack can remove an organ, you know. There’s blood supply to consider. It takes finesse.”
“Did you do it to my brother?” Marie bellowed from beside Pete. “Is that what really happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” Harrington said. “Who was your brother?”
Pete squeezed Marie’s shoulder, already afraid of the answer she was going to get. Knowing that she might not like the answer—and that she might regret knowing it. But also knowing that he couldn’t stop her from asking the question.
“Dillon Simons.”
Harrington put on a contemplative expression that was both fake and exaggerated, and then shrugged. “I didn’t really get to know their names. They came to me as numbers. Prisoner 1435, and such.”
Marie looked like she was going to blow a gasket, and Harrington looked like he was enjoying goading her on. Why couldn’t Marie see it?
Pete tried to interject, but he’d barely opened his mouth when Marie looked him in the eye and said, “We should kill him right now.”
We? Did she mean he should kill Harrington?
Really, he agreed with her; if Harrington had been harvesting organs—as insane as that was to say—then he deserved to die.
But they also needed to get the hell out of here alive. And find some better shelter. He was thinking that was a lot more important than sending this guy to his fate.
“I see you have blood seeping down your leg, young lady,” Harrington suddenly said to Marie.
Pete wanted to roll his eyes. Young lady. Dude wasn’t much older than they were.
“You should let me repair that for you,” the doctor continued. “I’m a highly competent surgeon. If it’s properly cared for, you’ll barely have a scar.”
“Not on your piece-of-shit life.” Marie jerked her arm from Pete’s grasp. “I can do it myself.” She stomped over to the cabinets and went rifling through the drawers, slamming the supplies onto the counter as she found the items she was looking for.
Pete sighed. Ever since his unit had been ordered to escort America’s most notorious terrorist, David Clyde, to Mueller Maximum Security Prison, he’d felt like he’d been trapped in an episode of that old TV show The Twilight Zone.
That feeling only intensified now as he stood there in a secret underground surgical suite with a pissed-off woman and—he suspected—a sociopathic surgeon. Wouldn’t it be great if it were all a dream? Except the pain and exhaustion of their journey from the prison to the ranger station had been too intense for dreamland. Only reality could beat a person up so thoroughly.
“Why is it warm down here?” he asked suddenly. If Marie was going to start fiddling with the tools, then he would spend the time getting some information about what the hell this
place was, and whether they should be worried about anyone else joining them. Or whether they were going to get out of this particular scrape alive.
“Geothermal climate control,” Harrington said. “There’s also a refrigerator back there.”
Heating and cooling. Pete shook his head. The magnitude of the expense was mind-boggling. If Andersen and his cronies were really involved in the illegal organ trade, they must have been doing it some time to have made enough to outfit this place like that. How had they worked it? How did he account for the missing prisoners? How did he decide who was going to go?
Did they at least give them anesthesia first?
Pete shook his head, wishing he hadn’t thought of that last question, and turned quickly to something else.
Organ donation had never kept up with demand, he knew, and he supposed the rich would pay any amount to save themselves, just like they’d pay to drink real coffee, or have wood-burning fireplaces despite the ban that had made them illegal. Andersen and his crew might not have been doing it legally, but they must have been making a killing. Literally and figuratively.
Heating and cooling. God, this place was really set up to help a person survive.
And just like that, his plans started to change. In the long run, it made more sense to return to Anchorage where, with the resources of a bigger city, recovery from the EMP would happen faster. But getting to Anchorage was going to be a huge undertaking, and doing it in winter could very well be a death sentence.
What if they left it until spring? What if they stayed here, rode out the winter months in the ranger station? They. Of course, when he thought they, he meant him and Marie.
So what were they going to do about Harrington? It would take precious energy to keep an eye on the man, to say nothing of the extra food and water they’d use keeping him alive. They’d never be able to trust the guy, that was for certain.
Pete would just as soon see the last of him, but was he prepared to kill him? No judge, no jury; just Pete Marshall, the executioner?
Marie placed the supplies she’d collected on a table and, with a glare aimed first at Pete and then at Harrington, wheeled it over to the surgical bed. She pulled her pants off, hopped up onto the bed, and removed the dressing she’d put on the wound earlier.