Chapter 28 - A Dark Room
-February 2009
Peter woke to blinding sunlight creeping slowly toward him across white carpet, and the persistent tweet of a song bird plying its trade from somewhere nearby, outside the house.
A yawn stretched his mouth open, and he wiped the crumbs of sleep from his eyes. For several confused heartbeats, he wasn't sure where he was, or what was happening. He was seated in a recliner with brown leather. On the floor at his feet lay one of the assault rifles. Gazing down at the weapon, it all came rushing back.
The man Dale Mueller. A frantic drive through the countryside of Massachusetts in the middle of the night. Olivia was gone, and he was alone in an almost empty world.
He went to get up and gasped, falling back into the cushions, fingernails gouging into the soft leather. Pain bulged his eyes wide open. Of course, you got stabbed, you idiot. His entire body seemed to hurt in some way or another, encompassing a deep ache emanating from his lower left side to scrapes of fire blazing across his chest, his elbows and forearms. Even the soles of his feet seemed tender.
There were problems ahead, without a doubt.
Hissing through clenched teeth, Peter lifted his shirt and inspected the bandage covering his makeshift stitches. The gauze fabric was stained a dark maroon color, and crusted over, almost flaky to the touch. The bleeding had stopped, which was good news, no matter that the slightest amount of pressure sent flares of agony shooting across his chest. He pulled his shirt down and took in a deep breath.
How much time had passed? How long had he slept? Was it even the same day? It was an odd and unnerving feeling to be unsure.
Holding himself still, he stared up at the popcorn ceiling. However bad his problems were, they paled beside whatever nightmares Olivia was being subjected to. For a few minutes, he allowed himself to think of her, and to relive their moments together in an abandoned potato field beneath the starry night sky. For a few minutes only he allowed himself, and when his emotions threatened to unravel, he steeled himself, clamping his jaw, and shut that Peter away again. He served no purpose, not here, not now.
Gripping the arms of the recliner, he managed to lever himself into the upright position, and then struggled to his feet, swaying at a wave of lightheadedness. He swept his gaze around the living room, avoiding the mound of blankets on the floor in front of the cold fireplace, before making his way toward the rear of the house.
Painkillers were what he needed. Any, and all.
The medicine cabinet in the hall bathroom contained nothing useful but antiseptic mouthwash, which he took a swig of before heading to the master bedroom. In the master bath, he found the mother lode; a half-bottle of expired Vicodin and an unopened bottle of ibuprofen. Percocet would have been preferable, but he wasn't exactly in a position to complain, now was he? He swallowed three of the small, white pills, followed by two ibuprofens, and then shoved both bottles into the pocket of his coat.
He headed for the garage. Inside was the maroon suburban, safely out of sight where they had left it before heading north for their disastrous outing to Peterborough. Reaching up, he grabbed the manual pull cord yanked the garage door open. Outside, the black SUV sat off to one side, leaning on its front tire. Now that it was sporting a donut, its usefulness had come to an end.
Peter went about transferring their gear into the back of the suburban. Guns and ammo, spare clothes, the trusty crowbar he and Olivia had both once claimed ownership of. He set the broken nightvision goggles aside, then picked up Olivia's sword, running his gaze over the lacquered sheathe, the silk-wrapped hilt. His hand began to shake, and he quickly laid the weapon across the backseat beside his own and slammed the door shut.
Above all, he had to stay calm, in control. Focused on the tasks that lay ahead. Vengeance was a goal, but not at the expense of everything else. The constant rage simmering on the outskirts of his thoughts had to be contained, controlled. Along with the persistent slivers of fear that kept intruding, the images his subconscious mind continually served up to him, of Olivia, and the unknown horrors that might well be being visited upon her at that very moment. He had to ignore all such thoughts. They were distractions. They were weaknesses.
By the time he was finished loading the truck, the painkillers were beginning to take effect, dulling his aches and pains, or at least taking the sharp edges off. He returned to the kitchen and ate several tasteless granola bars dipped in peanut butter, chewing methodically, staring at the pale reflection of his face in the granite countertop. He washed it all down with a stale bottle of water and then got to work.
He had to think. He had to make plans. He had to save her.
He spread what little tools he had and the remains of Dale Mueller's broken nightvision goggles across the island countertop. He turned them over in his hands, examining the damage. Dried blood and hair were glued to the goggle's frame, marking the path of his sword. It was no wonder they no longer worked. The battery casing was almost sheared through completely, along with the power leads. He picked the blood and hair off, letting his mind wander as he went making the repairs.
As he began stripping the wire ends so he could splice them back together, two questions occurred to him. Did they know he'd killed their man? And would they be expecting him to attack?
The first had an easy answer, as the driver of the truck that had taken Olivia had obviously seen him emerge from the house, him, and not Dale Mueller. But second was more nebulous, more worrisome. Had someone found Dale's body? Would they suspect that he had broken in the end, that he'd been tortured? If they had found the body, sans its right hand, then perhaps. But if not?
Peter shook his head, pressing his lips together in annoyance. He should have done something more with the body. Hidden it, burned it, burned the house down around it. Anything. Something. But he'd been too dazed to think straight, too shocked by Olivia's abduction, too consumed with rage and fear. So he'd left it there, lying in the middle of the living room floor. He had to assume the worst then; that someone had found the body, devoid of its right hand, and had drawn the correct conclusion that Dale Mueller had been a spigot of information at the end. Well, not a spigot, exactly. More like a slight trickle.
They would be expecting him to attack, wouldn't they? After all, they had stolen his woman. That was the kind of men he was dealing with, the kind of men he'd dealt with before, in his old life. And they were right. He yearned to go in gun blazing, to kill each and every one of them. But that was the surest way to fail, to die himself. The surest way to fail Olivia. And there were the innocents to consider. People like Charlene Watson and her family. There had to be others. Surely not everyone inside their compound was part of it.
Perhaps a more brazen approach. What if he were to walk right up to their gate and ask for admittance? He doubted the driver of the truck could ID him, but surely Charlene Watson could and would. And there was the other possibility. What if the others were there? He would be putting them in danger also.
No. He could not walk right in. Not yet, or maybe ever. But neither was the guns blazing approach likely to succeed. There was too much randomness in a gun fight, too many chances for a stray bullet, a ricochet; too many variables to account for. Nor was he a crack shot — far from it. Which left only stealth. It was his best chance, his only option. The cover of darkness. Distraction. Feint, and misdirection. He just had to figure out what, and how. There had to be a way. There had to.
Peter twisted the last of the power leads together, and then turned the goggles on, holding them up for inspection. Green static erupted in the right lens, but the left remained stubbornly dark. He fiddled with the power leads for a moment, then set the goggles aside, unwilling to waste any more time on them. One lens would just have to suffice.
With nothing else to do but wait, he paced a slow circle around the island and listened to the deafening silence. His gaze fell on an empty box of saltines sitting on the counter beside the sink, where Olivia had left it two nights ago. It turned out she had a thing for peanut butter and crackers. He could still see the lingering excitement in her eyes as she'd devoured them by candlelight, a moment frozen in time. She'd met his gaze, and her wide lips had curled into a grin, the soft lines of her beautiful face highlighted in the flickering yellow flame. He could see her, as clear as the sunrise on a cloudless day.
A shuddering pang went through his chest. He covered his face, breathing into his palms, and then shifted his fingers back into his hair, pulling hard at the roots. A sudden cramp flared along his jaw, and then down his neck and shoulder. He pulled harder, until the pain became exquisite, white heat spreading across his scalp.
He turned away slowly, peering out the window above the kitchen sink. Outside, the sun had barely breached the horizon. The urge to act, to do something, anything, was more than he could bear. It was killing him, slowly. But the daylight was useless. What lay ahead required shadows, the blanket of night. Better to wait, to sleep if he could. Sleep was a weapon like any other — he'd read that somewhere, somewhen, some story from the old world, back in his old life. It didn't matter where it came from. The advice was good.
Returning to the living room, Peter eyed the mess of their blankets. Steeling himself, tightening his gut, he lay down among them in front of the fireplace, draping the quilts and pillow about him like a cocoon. He pulled Olivia's pillow against his chest and buried his nose in the cool fabric, breathing in, possibly catching a hint of her scent. For an instant, he let the other Peter come forward, the weak one, and let him feel, and let him take in the searing pain and swallow it hole. For an instant.
#
#
"No. Absolutely not."
Astrid blinked, and then stared down at the older man, focusing on the overhead light glinting off his bald pate. "Excuse me?" She couldn't believe what she was hearing. They weren't allowed to leave. "No? But why not? Are you saying we're prisoners here?"
The man everyone simply referred to as Overbeek, looked up from the pad of a yellow notepaper on which he'd been jotting down a list of names and numbers with a stubby pencil that looked as if it had been sharpened with a knife. His angular face was naturally tan, with only a hint of wrinkles creasing his forehead. From the look of it, he was making a schedule of some sort.
"Prisoners? Nah..." Leaning back in his chair, he crooked a smile that never quite reached his eyes, which were gray to the point of being colorless, she noticed. "It's just our policy... Astrid, is it? Newcomers have to wait at least a month before we let them back outside. It's just safer that way. For us. We've had... let's just call them problems, in the past."
"You might have mentioned that when we first arrived," she said, doing little to hide her annoyance. "Nobody said anything about us not being allowed to leave once we were inside."
"Well I'm mentioning it now." His tan face grew taut, and his smile suddenly seemed utterly false, the toothy grin of a prowling wolf. "Is this gonna be a problem?"
Astrid's stomach did a somersault at the coldness emanating from his gray eyes. Swallowing, she crossed her arms, rubbing her elbows absently as a disquieting knot of queasiness settled in her gut. She thought back to the night they'd arrived, pulling up the long driveway, headlights encompassing the scores of undead attacking the fence, with even more on the ground in long mounds. A battle had just been finishing up, a battle fought with long poles, tipped with spikes, with makeshift spears, able to slip through the links in the fence. When it was over, the survivors inside the fence had stared out at them for a long while, until the gate had finally been unchained, and the man seated before had slipped out, unarmed. He'd waved her closer, and she'd rolled down her window for him like she was getting her car serviced at one of those quick-lube shops. Can I help you? he'd said, as if the scene of carnage was the most normal thing in the world. We saw your light. We need help. Overbeek had peered inside her window then, taking in their sorry states, including Walter's haggard face in the back seat, still asleep, breath bubbling audibly. Well come on in. We've got room for everybody. The man had seemed so pleasant then, friendly even, and she'd been sure she'd made the right decision. Now, however, with that same man staring up at her like he was a shark and she a baby seal, she was beginning to wonder.
"No... it's no problem, I just...," she started, unnerved by his sudden stillness. "It's just that we still have a few of our people out there. They were outside the city when the undead attacked our place. I was thinking they might have gone back to find us."
Overbeek's eyes dipped downward for a moment, lingering where her arms were crossed beneath her breasts, before rising again to meet her gaze. "Back to the city?" His eyebrows shot upward. "City ain't safe," he said, shaking his head. "Look, Miss Astrid, if your friends are still alive out there somewhere, they'll find their way here. Just like you all did. That's what the light's for."
Then where the hell were they? If that was the case, then Olivia and Peter would have shown up already. The steel had left Overbeek's voice, but it still lingered in his gaze. He wasn't going to give in. And as it was his men that exclusively guarded the gate day and night, it seemed she was stuck.
"You're probably right," she said, turning away from him. "They'll probably show up any day now. Thank you for your time." She started toward the door out of his tiny office, but his voice called her back.
"Oh. Astrid?"
She turned back, narrowing her eyes at his odd tone. "Yeah...?"
Overbeek hesitated, then shrugged. "There's no delicate way to put this," he said, scratching one cheek. "Some of my men, they're... lonely. Not many women here as you might have noticed. An arrangement might be made, an exception, perhaps, if you, or some of your friends were willing to..." He paused, meeting her gaze, eyes dead and emotionless as ever. "Do I need to elaborate?"
Astrid stiffened. Was he serious? The disquieting knot in her stomach became a red-hot ball of fury, turning her insides into a blast furnace. Heat bloomed in cheeks, climbed up the back of her neck. "No. There's no need to elaborate," she said coldly through clenched teeth. "Looks like I have a few more weeks to wait then."
Before he could reply, she spun out of his office, past the startled face of one of his stooges, a Midwesterner named Daniel who always reeked of cigarette smoke. The man caught one look at her face and stepped back, eyes widening in surprise. She brushed past him, refusing to acknowledge in the slightest the fellow's tip of his baseball cap.
Was he one of the lonely men? The nerve of the man. Did she have a for sale sign written across her forehead? Did he think she, or any of the other women, were going to pay their way with their bodies? If so, he was going to learn differently. They all were.
That son of a bitch. That fucking son of a bitch.
From the looks she received as she stalked through the corridors, her face must have been a storm cloud. At first, she wasn't sure where she was going, not exactly, but when she ended up outside the cafeteria doors, she supposed it was where she'd intended all along. Ever since Overbeek had made it clear they wouldn't be allowed to leave in search of Olivia and Peter, even before his disgusting proposition. For a moment, she stood before the double doors, seething, struggling to regain control of her emotions. A shudder went through her, and she took in a lungful of air.
"That fucking asshole," Astrid whispered in an exhale. "If he touches me, or any of us, I'll kill him."
She wasn't sure she had ever thought that about another human being before and actually meant it. But she did now. They were in a different world. It was a disconcerting feeling, to be so angry, to be so furious with another living person, especially now, when there were so few left. When was the last time she had been that way? Had she ever? She thought that maybe she had, once, back in her first year of high school, when the realities of overt racism had first become a part of her everyday life. They had been too busy surviving to do much in the way of quarreling, or infighting back at the lab. And as for Overbeek's proposition, none of the men from her group would have dared such a thing. Not in a million years. Suddenly she missed Olivia, more than ever before. Not that she couldn't take care of herself, but just knowing Agent Dunham had her back would have been a massive relief. Reaching for the door on the right, she supposed she would just have to settle for the next best thing, instead.
The doors let out a vicious squeal as she shoved through them, and the man and woman standing near the doorway into the kitchen jerked at the sudden noise. Agent Broyles twisted around, swiveling on his bad foot. His sharp eyes darted past her, then swung back, locking on her face as she stomped toward them.
Charlene Watson's dark eyes grew huge. "Astrid? Whatever is the matter, honey? I'll wager somebody's put a burr under your covers, or do you always walk around like that?"
Giving the older woman a thin smile, she turned to her former boss. "Sir... Phillip, can I talk to you?" she asked, tilting her head to one side.
Agent Broyles's brows lifted. "Give me a second, Charlene," he said, giving her a look. "I'll be right back to help with those potatoes." He led Astrid a short distance away, limping noticeably. "What's the problem Agent Farnsworth? From the look on your face, I assume it's serious. Charlene wasn't kidding."
"Did you know we aren't allowed to leave?" she asked bluntly.
"No... I did not know that," he replied, eyes slowly narrowing. "Where'd you hear that?"
"From that asshole, Overbeek," she growled.
"Asshole...?" Broyles's eyes shifted around the cafeteria once more before coming back to her. "Keep your voice down, Agent," he ordered softly. "Now tell me what happened."
Astrid described her encounter with the Doctor's right-hand man, and of his refusal to allow her and Sonia to leave so they could search for Peter and Olivia. When she came to the part where Overbeek had more or less propositioned her, and the other women also, Broyles's eyes turned to iron.
"He said that?" he said in deadly whisper.
"Yeah," she hissed. "Can you believe the nerve of that son of a bitch?" She pursed her lips, shaking her head. The worst part was that she wasn't even opposed to becoming romantically involved with someone, only if it was on her terms, of course. She had even met one woman who seemed more than interested, and there was also Charlene's son who she had also been hanging out with between shifts at the fence and helping out with repairs. But that was it. "Like I'd even give him the time of day," she added darkly under her breath.
Broyles was silent for a moment, lips pinched together in a thin line. "You got any weapons?" he asked suddenly. "Anything at all you were able to keep back when we arrived? Guns? Knives? Anything at all?"
Astrid hung her head. "No. Nothing. I gave up everything when we got here. I guess that was stupid of me. I should have known better."
"We had no choice in the matter. Not if we wanted to be allowed inside. There was no way we could know how thorough they'd be. You can't blame yourself, Astrid. I don't have anything either."
"I'm sorry," she said. "Maybe I shouldn't have brought us here. This is my fault."
Broyles shook his head. "It's no one's fault, Agent Farnsworth. Pull yourself together. Doctor Bishop needed help, and they gave it. So in that sense, coming here probably saved his life. And nothing has happened yet. But just to be sure, I want you ladies to stick together when you're not on duty at the fence, when you go to the bathroom, when you go to dinner. Whenever. You get the idea?"
Astrid nodded. "I understand. I'll let the others know."
A throat cleared behind them, and they turned to find Charlene standing not far away, concern etched plainly across her face. "I don't mean to pry into y'all's business," she said, "but from the looks on both your faces, is there anything I need to be concerned about?"
Astrid glanced at her boss, passing him the initiative. Broyles hesitated, running his fingertips over the crown of his bald head. "When you first arrived here, Charlene, did Kyle Overbeek tell you that you weren't allowed to leave for at least a month?"
Charlene seemed taken aback by the question. "No, he didn't say anything like that," she said after a moment, sounding confused. "But then again, I never had a reason to ask. Why? Are y'all leaving? What's happened?"
"Nothing's happened," Astrid told her. "We just have people on the outside still, that's all. I was hoping to go out and look for them, but that guy Overbeek said I wasn't allowed outside yet." She thought about mentioning what else the bastard had said, but who knew how the other woman would react? Who knew with whom her loyalties lay? Certainly not with people she barely knew. There were hidden undercurrents woven throughout the different groups of survivors living at the Home, and she was still learning the best way to navigate those waters, they all were. And it was her word against his. If the old world was anything to go by, she already knew the outcome of that scenario.
"Just wait the month out, Astrid," Broyles said. "If Olivia and Peter haven't shown up by then, take Sonia and go."
Charlene's hand flew to her mouth, beneath widening eyes. "Wait a minute. Did you say Peter and Olivia...?" she squawked. "But I know them! They were a couple, right?"
Astrid froze, too stunned to respond. Charlene knew Peter and Olivia? How was that even possible? From the look on Broyles's face, he was just as surprised as she. "How... how can you know them?" she asked in bewilderment.
"We met them on the road — me, and Christopher and Gina. Nearly had a tussle, too. The woman, Olivia, she's tall and slender, with blonde hair and as cute as a button? And Peter? Boy, he was tall, too, and handsome, with those eyes and that smile of his. I've seen his type before. Trouble, don't you know it."
"Where did you see them, Charlene?" Broyles asked, having recovered from the shock of the revelation. "And how long ago was this?"
"Why it was the day we got here, not more than three weeks ago. And we met them right outside of town, no more than a mile or two from where we're standing. I asked them to come in with us, but they wouldn't hear of it. Said they had to get back to their people first. Back to y'all, I reckon. They never made it?"
"No, they didn't," Broyles replied, looking concerned.
"We don't know that, sir," Astrid countered quickly. "They might have tried to contact us, but I didn't answer. Maybe they went back to the city. Agent Dun... er, I mean, Olivia, she would have gone back straight away if she thought something was wrong. You know how she is. Nothing on earth would stop her. Certainly not Peter."
Agent Broyles nodded, stroking his chin. "You may be right, but it doesn't matter. There's nothing we can do about it right now." He turned to Charlene. "Did they know this place was here?"
"I don't see how they couldn't have. I remember the big light was on the night before, guiding us in. We saw it from miles and miles away. I don't see how they couldn't have, too, not unless they were asleep."
Astrid smiled inwardly. Or if they were too busy getting it on somewhere. She suspected the two of them had gone at it like rabbits once they'd gotten away from the lab and its lack of privacy. She sure would have in Olivia's place. And for god's sake she hoped one of them was coherent enough to use protection. On the heels of that thought, her mind went to Sonia, and her friend's curious behavior as of late. Something was going on there. Maybe Sonia shouldn't be the one to go outside. But then who? Walter? That idea seemed laughable, though he was no doubt eager to find Peter. Broyles then? One of the others? Maybe Claire, or Chris, if either of her new friends were willing.
Voices approaching from the corridor outside drew her attention back to the cafeteria. "We should get back to work," Broyles said, eyeing the double doors. "Those potatoes won't peel themselves, will they, Charlene?"
"They certainly will not, Phillip," Charlene replied with chuckle, already heading toward the kitchen. "I'll get started."
Broyles watched her departure for a moment, face blank of emotion, before turning back to Astrid. "Watch yourself, Agent Farnsworth," he said softly, and then limped away.
Now it was Astrid's turn to watch, following her boss's halting progress until he disappeared through the kitchen door after Charlene. She shook her head, and then made her exit, stopping first by the table where the buffet line would normally start. A tray full of random metal table knives and forks sat at one end.
She grabbed a dull knife and slid it into her pocket, already fishing about in her head for a means to sharpen it to a fine point.
#
#
When Peter opened his eyes again, the white carpet was tinted with an orange hue by the fading daylight.
Blinking with eyes that felt bloodshot and full of grit, he lay still for a moment, confused and disoriented, until the last dregs of sleep began to dissipate. He let out a wide yawn, then sat up with a groan. His body ached no less than it had when he'd laid down, the hole in his side the most vociferous of his injuries. He lifted his shirt, inspecting the bandage taped across his left side, touching the saturated fabric gently.
"Shit...," he muttered, letting the shirt drop, and then rising carefully to his feet. On his way to the kitchen he peered out into the backyard and found the sun floating a few inches above the trees to the west, with the pinks and oranges of dusk just starting to bleed through the veil of blue sky. Perfect. He couldn't have timed it better, even with an alarm.
His bandage needed changing, that was his first priority, but not exactly a task he was at all looking forward to. He searched through the medical bag and came up with only a single bandage large enough to cover the wound in his side. He was going to need more of them, possibly many more. But what the wound needed most, however, was for him to rest, to lie still. But he could do neither, unfortunately. He popped three more Vicodin, then got to work, opening all the blinds in the kitchen to let in as much sunlight as possible.
When he peeled the old and crusty bandage away, the skin surrounding his poor attempt at self-suturing was an angry pink, and burned like it was doused in acid at the slightest touch. A thin trickle of blood seeped from one corner, where another stitch would have been advised in hindsight. By all appearances, it was not doing well. Not good, Bishop, he told himself. Not good at all. He dabbed at the stitches with a cotton swab dipped in rubbing alcohol, and then began taping the new bandage in place. It probably wasn't good nursing practice, he surmised, but such was life in a world without doctors or real nurses, much less emergency rooms or urgent care stations. So he went about it, thoughts drifting to the tasks that lay ahead, and how best to proceed.
After he finished changing the dressing, he searched the house for a phone book and found a dusty yellow pages on the top shelf of the front entryway coat closet. He flipped rapidly through the pages, until he found what he'd been hoping to find; an ad for an army surplus store with a Worcester address. Ripping the page free, he stuffed it in his pocket and headed outside to the waiting suburban.
A wave of exhaustion went through him as he slid into the driver's seat, despite his having slept the day away. When he glanced in the rearview mirror, the face staring back at him was one he hardly recognized. When had his skin turned so pale? Like he was a dead man walking? The glassy eyes with exploded irises surely belonged to someone else, some other Peter Bishop. He swallowed down a hard lump in his throat. In his mind he saw another pair of eyes staring out of the mirror, eyes a pale jade flecked with speckles of gold, eyes that would sometimes change color depending on the light, or even her mood, seeming almost gray at times, or in the other direction, on the verge of hazel or brown.
How the hell had it come to this? He tried to pinpoint when everything had begun to go wrong, but there was no beginning. The train bad been wrecking, plowing a messy groove through the mud, flattening everything in its path, ever since a dead boy had sat up on the street outside the lab, so many months ago. If there was any beginning, it was there. Or had it begun even earlier? In the instant his gaze had first fallen upon an attractive blonde waiting for him at the foot of the hotel stairs back in Iraq? It didn't matter, the selfish part of him decided. He would change nothing.
Olivia's voice echoed in the silence of the truck's cabin. ...the last time I told a man I loved him, it was like a curse...
Nothing that is, except for the last twenty-four hours.
Clamping his teeth together, Peter turned the ignition and put the big suburban in reverse, backing it out of the garage. He glanced at the black government issued SUV parked to one side, leaning like a drunk on its front tire. Something told him he would never see it again, one way or another. He certainly didn't plan on returning, not without Olivia, at least. When he reached the bottom of the driveway, an infected lurched out of the woods, homing in on the truck like a magnet. He drove over it without slowing, wincing at the jostle of the body crunching beneath the tires.
He turned west toward Worcester and set out, hunched over the steering wheel, checking the road atlas on the empty seat beside him occasionally. The route he took was different than before, angling for the northern edge of the city. The brown countryside rolled past, but he saw none of it. Nor did the gaping buildings and businesses that flashed by make an impression, or the homes boarded up, the crashed vehicles choking off intersections, the herds of infected stirred up in his wake. In the space behind his eyes there was nothing, only a singular point of determination. All thoughts led inevitably to Olivia, and it was easier to not think at all than to let himself dwell on the unknown. If he let it, his imagination would play out in vivid detail untold horrors being visited upon her his every waking moment.
Upon reaching the address listed in the yellow pages ad, he pulled off to the side of the road and parked, staring doubtfully across at the wide plaza in which the army surplus store was located. Contrary to what the garish advertisement had claimed, the size of the smashed storefront did little inspire confidence that inside he would find the most expansive stock of military gear on the East Coast.
The tiny outlet store was crammed between the ruins of an aquarium supply store — why anyone would bother looting such a place when the world was falling down around them, he didn't at all understand — and a candy shop with a rainbow lettered sign written across a field of mustard yellow. None of them had been prime real estate before the apocalypse, and now they were positively decrepit. He noticed a narrow sandwich shop a little further down that looked as if it had been the recipient of a full-scale SWAT assault, riddled with bullets, front facade disintegrated by a massive explosion. Debris littered the parking lot; glass and wood framing members, bits of clothing torn to shreds.
With a sigh, Peter slid out of the truck, side aching. Unwilling to risk a gunshot, he grabbed his sword from the back seat. The area appeared clear, though he had learned that appearances meant little. Infected were particularly adept at finding dark hiding spots and waiting patiently for the unwary, perhaps forever, if necessary. He crossed the parking lot, darting glances all about, then approached the entrance. Shadows filled the spaces between the missing panes of glass, between the warped and bent door frame. He recognized the efficient handiwork of a crowbar, not unlike his own. He pulled the door open, grinding bits of glass between the metal frame and the rough concrete, and then stepped back. Waiting, he raised the sword, squeezing the hilt until his knuckles ached.
A low hissing preceded the infected that stumbled through the open door. Tall and lanky, the undead man's eyes gleamed hunger and animal lust. The creature zeroed in on him at once and lunged forward, blackened teeth gaping.
Peter waited until it was almost on him, then whipped the sword down in a diagonal slice, sheering through flesh and bone with a gleeful kind of ease. The infected stumbled and the top quarter of its head came away, flopping down over its left ear like a hacked open coconut shell dangling by its rind for an instant, and then it fell forward onto its face, gushing a river of blood from the open maw of its skull.
Gasping, he lowered the sword. Stabs of pain flared all through his left side. The injury wasn't going away, not anytime soon, that much was certain. He waited a few more minutes, nostrils flaring as the pain slowly subsided to a low furor. When it was apparent that there were no stragglers remaining, he strode inside, absently pressing his hand against the bandage through his coat.
The interior of the army surplus store looked as if a bomb had gone off. Lines of disjointed product shelves leaned haphazardly, or were upended entirely, contents spilled across the floor among mounds of trash and windblown leaves. He pulled a flashlight from his pocket, dragging the beam over the detritus until he found the clothing section against the back wall. After grabbing a plastic tote from an oddly undisturbed stack sitting just inside the entrance, he kicked his way through the muck. With any luck, the items he was looking for had not been hot commodities in the surplus store's final hours.
At the back of the store he found camouflage pants and a jacket among a mountain of tattered clothing. Despite being used and a bit threadbare, they were near enough his own size. The fact that they were covered in mouse shit, and had possibly been used as a nest, didn't bother him in the slightest. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered but saving her. He shook them out as best he could, turning his face away at the tiny black pellets that flew in all directions.
With one item from his shopping list secured, he poked around among the rubble, searching for the rest. Where the first aid kids should have resided were nothing but empty shelves. He shined his light around the vicinity and cursed. Of course they were gone. Guns. Bullets. Food. Medicine — bandages included. Those were the new currency of the apocalypse. So much for a one-stop shopping trip. More than likely it would be difficult to locate them in any kind of retail setting. He would have to search houses, apartments. But it was a problem for later. He found more batteries compatible with the repaired nightvision gear, and a pair of long-handled bolt cutters that would be more than useful, capable of snipping through even the thickest gauge of chain-linked fencing like butter.
On his way out, his gaze fell across a random box among the debris, no larger than a shoebox. He snatched the up box, reading the description again under his light, just to make sure his eyes hadn't deceived him. They had not.
The words Military Grade Smoke Flares were printed across the side of the box in bold. Underneath, someone's excited scrawl slanted downward. Just like the real thing! Burns for at least 90 seconds! Guaranteed! He looked inside and found the box full of tan cylinders that looked eerily like sticks of dynamite. Each stick had a yellow label, For Maritime Use Only, running down its length.
Smoke flares. They weren't on his list, but he dug into them greedily anyway, counting at least ten in all. Scenarios in which a dense cloud of smoke might well be useful flashed through his mind. They would be more than useful. Plans began to form, hypothetical methods of distraction, and subsequent extraction. It was all speculation, however. In order to proceed, more data was required. More information.
Tossing the smoke flares in his shopping tote, he headed for the exit.
#
Back in the truck, Peter headed south into the heart of Worcester. On his right, the sun was dipping below the horizon, painting the sky in swaths of red and orange and pink. He made good time, as the streets were abnormally clear of obstructions, whether stopped vehicles or infected. Not that the dead weren't present, of course. They could be seen here and there, but nearly all were solitary, and not part of larger groups.
Was it the effect of the searchlight he was seeing? He wondered how long it would take to thin out the numbers in a city the size of Worcester. Was that even these people's goal? Try as he might, he could think of no reason why anyone with any semblance of intelligence would encourage the undead to attack the place where they lived and slept. It was like shitting where you ate — it just wasn't done — and it was just begging for the gods of chance to exert their will, to boot. A simple chain-linked fence wasn't strong enough, not by far. If a large enough horde came along — not unlike the horde that had swept over the lab — they were all doomed, fence or not. The thought lingered in the back of his mind as he watched several infected recede in the rearview mirror.
The sky crept steadily toward darkness, the titian hues of dusk giving way to the inevitable onslaught of blackness. When he reached Interstate 290, only a mere sliver of the sun's rubicund disk blazed through the trees to the west, its final gasp before the curtain of night descended. He located a clear bridge over the highway, and soon found himself in a little rundown neighborhood with a smattering of cars and trucks parked along the street.
Pulling over in front of a bungalow the color of a rotting lime, he consulted the road atlas, running a finger southward over the zoomed-in map of the city to an open space that seemed near the approximate location of the former insane asylum. An unlabeled wide patch of green covered the northern portion of the map, not far from where he was parked. The green meant it was a forest, or some kind of wooded area, he assumed, and perfect for what he had in mind. How far away was it? He tried to gauge the distance with two fingers over the scale. A mile? Maybe less.
His side ached throbbing like a heartbeat. The painkillers were wearing off despite it only being an hour or two since he'd taken them. What did that mean? Could it be infected already? He had tried to be careful, but he was no doctor, much less a nurse or a technician. Who knew were Dale Mueller's knife had been before it was inside of him?
With a grunting sigh, he pressed a palm against his wound and let his forehead fall to the steering wheel. You can do this, Bishop. You have to do it. She would do it for you. Olivia would do it for you.
A tapping sound interrupted his pleading thoughts.
He lifted his head and found the idling truck surrounded by at least a dozen sets of teeth gnashing open and closed below pairs of eyes of burnished gold. The infected were all rotted, skin peeling — all except one. The white-faced fresh was directly in front of him, scratching at the suburban's hood with bloodied fingernails. He heard the faint screak through the glass, raising the hair on his neck like fingernails scraping down a dry chalkboard. Even more disturbing than the fresh's furious gaze as it peered in at him was the wide gash across its throat, from ear to ear, and the bib of dull crimson painted across its bare chest.
Where the fuck is its clothes? Peter swallowed, glancing around. Whispers of unease tingled down his spine. Could there be other survivors around? Other than those at the asylum? Clearly, the fellow gnawing on the hood ornament had not died of natural causes, or even those unnatural. Other than the dead, however, the neighborhood appeared deserted, blanketed in layers of decaying leaves and windblown refuse. Dust covered the few cars and trucks parked nearby, collecting in a fine patina on the edges of the windows, filling in the gaps between body panels. From the deflated wilt of their tires, none of the vehicles had moved in months.
The naked fresh snarled as he put the truck in gear. Who had killed him? And why? The deed must have happened nearby for it to still be in the area. And recently. Not knowing the answer left him uneasy, but there was nothing to do but press forward, and adapt however was required.
Pressing hard on the gas, the fresh and those of its fellows foolish enough to stand in front of a motor vehicle vanished silently below the front end. He drove over them, with the faint bumps barely even registering as bodies were crushed beneath the tires. As he neared the next block, the crumpled bodies in the street began to stir. Some made feeble attempts to rise, while others lay still, and those still standing rushed after him as quickly as their stilted gaits would allow. A moment later he rounded a corner and they disappeared from sight and from his mind.
He wound his way through the neighborhood, past weatherbeaten homes, holding the atlas open against the steering wheel, all the while looking for some hint of a forest, or whatever it was the green spot on the map represented. Then he rounded another corner and saw it; a wall of tall trees at the far end of the next block. Leaning forward over the steering wheel, he peered ahead into the burgeoning dimness, searching for a likely place to hide the suburban.
There were no garages in the area, but there were several covered car ports. The thought of leaving the truck out in the open, didn't sit well with him but he had no choice in the matter. He pulled into a driveway that lead up to a low ranch with white paint peeling from its siding, and parked beneath the green fiberglass roof of its car port. Eying the house, he grabbed the crowbar from the back seat, then jimmied open the front door.
The house was empty of both the dead and the living, despite there being an unpleasant smell in the air he failed to find the source of. The smell didn't matter. The house would be his home until he found Olivia, but he wouldn't be spending much time there — none at all if he could help it.
Seated at a low kitchen table, he swallowed two more of his rapidly depleting supply of Vicodin, chasing them down with another stale granola bar and a strawberry-kiwi Capri-Sun. By the time he was finished getting ready, stars were peeking out through their pinholes, twinkling incandescences flashing across the night sky. A brisk wind was blowing out of the west when he finally left the house, tumbling errant leaves in lazy fashion down the street outside.
It was time.
Peter checked his gear; his pistol, his backpack and its contents, the sword strapped over his right shoulder, and then cinched his belt tighter over the green and tan fatigues, which despite being his size, felt like he was swimming in them. When had he grown so thin? The fucking granola bars were to blame, he had no doubt, along with the end of the world and the subsequent lack of stocked grocery stores.
As he crossed the street, angling for the wall of trees, he thought about taking up hunting someday, and envisioned returning to a home somewhere with a fat deer carcass slung over his shoulders. Olivia would be waiting for him. No. Who was he kidding? He and Olivia would return together. When had she ever sat anything out? Had it ever happened? Maybe some of the others would be waiting for them instead. Ella and Rachel. Sonia and Broyles. Maybe a farm somewhere, far out in the back country, away from people, away from population centers. Maybe they could have a life, maybe even a family. Such thoughts had always felt alien to him, almost anathema, yet he found that they no longer did. There was something enticing about the idea. He found himself yearning for it. It was something to shoot for. A goal to strive for.
He forced such thoughts away from him. They were useless thoughts, without meaning. He had an entirely different goal to meet. For a brief moment, he had thought about leaving Olivia's black automatic behind before setting out, but then had thought better of it, and buckled on its holster. Not that he planned on killing anyone — not yet, at least — but he wasn't going to make that mistake again. Not ever. Who knew what lay ahead? Who knew what opportunities might open before him? Could he resist rushing in if he saw a glimpse of her? The truth was that he wasn't certain that he could stop himself, no matter the consequences. Someone was going to pay.
It struck him then that he was thinking about killing people, about assaults and battle tactics as if they were subjects he were intimately familiar with. But in truth, what did he know of such things? Beyond a single reading of The Art of War long ago, what did he actually know? Before Dale Mueller, he had never killed anyone. Not anyone alive, at least. And not in cold blood, and certainly not by his own hand. It should mean something. He should feel it, shouldn't he? But there was nothing inside, nothing but a distant kind of numbness and ever-present exhaustion.
Images flashed across the backs of his eyeballs. Memories of Baghdad, of black smoke suffocating the hot air, searing into his lungs. Licks of roiling flames reaching for the scorched sky. Tear-streaked faces cased in dust. Screaming. Cries of lamentation fading behind him as he raced through a choked alleyway. Perhaps he wasn't so innocent. He shook his head, pushing the images into the far recesses of his mind. Baghdad was the past, and part of another world, one that no longer existed. He couldn't change what had happened, no more than he could have predicted the insurgent's utter and complete overreaction to the rabbit hole he'd led them down. If there was blood on his hands, it was from another epoch.
He reached the wall of trees and forced his way into the chaparral, through evergreen branches with thick needles and branches sticky with wet sap. A moment later he found that tree line was indeed a wall, and not part of a forest at all, cordoning off a sprawling golf course from the common dregs of society. But, far across the sinuous greens and wild roughs, across curving cart tracks that glowed palely under the starlight and the rolling fairways with bunkers of white sand that gleamed faintly, was the forest he had seen on the map. And beyond, the silhouetted back drop of the asylum rose in the distance at the top of an incline.
And Olivia. In the silence of his head, her voice screamed. Untold agonies shredded her throat raw, buffeting his mind as he stepped out of the trees. The overgrown golf course spread out before him.
Peter started forward, jogging at a moderate gait, stabs of dull pain piercing his side. He pressed his forearm against the spot, applying steady pressure. Gasping, hunched to one side, he passed over a narrow fairway, then through a dividing line of prickly bramble and out onto another fairway. He crossed two more holes, and then plunged into a thick forest, not unlike the forest through which he had chased a laughing Olivia less than twenty-four hours ago.
Not unlike the forest in which he'd lain a curse upon her, veiled in the guise of love.
The voice whispering discontent in his ear belonged to the other Peter, the weak Peter, and with an effort, he shoved it back down into the far recesses, back into the dark hole where he refused to stay put. Such thoughts were useless. He didn't need that Peter, nor did he need his distracting pulings filling the inside of his head.
He raced a serpentine path through the trees, through weeds and vines reaching out to ensnare. The stretch of woods seemed fairly narrow, no more than a quarter of a mile, he guessed. The forest was alive with sound, chirps and squalls repeating without end. If there were infected nearby, he never saw them. Soon, he caught glimpses of light through the spaces between the rows of tree trunks. The lights grew brighter, until he could make out their shapes; narrow rectangles elevated off the ground at uneven intervals, and then the wide facades of bricks and tall, peaked roofs. Slowing, stepping carefully, he pushed through the interwoven branches doing their best to block his path until, abruptly, the trees came to an end. Approaching the forest's edge, he ducked beneath the low branches of a wide oak tree, crouching down in its shadow. Ahead, just beyond a narrow strip of overgrown grass and weeds, lay the gray strip of a narrow roadway, and then a tall, chain-linked fence with rows of barbed-wire slanted outward running across the top. The moon shone down, providing a dim haze of light.
On the other side of the fence was an open space large enough for a football field, and then the sprawling Kirkbride complex. It had been larger once, a massive triangle of interconnected buildings with the tall and picturesque clock tower at its center. But those days were gone. Buildings had been torn down over the years, entire wings gone missing. What was left was still impressive, however, a scatter of structures of varying shapes and heights, but all with a uniform architectural style that had a harsh, almost ominous aspect. He supposed it was that sense of menace that had prompted so many filmmakers to feature such places in countless horror and psychological thrillers.
Far to the left he recognized the building he and Olivia had first come upon before. From the lack of lights in any of its windows, it still wasn't in use, and perhaps never would be considering how close to the fence it lay. Nearer however, was another structure, one he'd missed on their prior visit. It was tall and round, with a pointed roof that reminded him of a wizard's tower out of fantasy. More importantly, it lay outside the fence, nestled back near the tree line. Why it had never been torn down along with the other outlying buildings, he didn't know, but from the top floor he would have a view of the entire rear of the complex. He would come back to it, later.
Peter headed to his right, following the edge of the forest and the fence and the narrow drive which curved between the two. Soon, a dark structure came into view, along with a small parking area just on the other side of the fence. He saw that there was gate in the fence there, secured by chains that looked thick enough to hold back any number of gorillas, and far more durable than the gate itself. The dark building was oddly shaped, with one half short and squat, and the other several stories tall with an angled roof line. Columns of gray smoke or steam rose up from the shorter, from a pair of tall chimneys or smoke stacks. He kept moving, until the unknown structure was directly opposite.
He crouched down, studying the lower half of the building and the smoke curling upward. They were obviously heating something in there, but what? And why? Were they running boilers? It seemed impossible that any of the utilities could possibly be working. Yet they had electricity. He recalled seeing power lines on their first visit, but surely the facility was no longer connected to the electrical grid, even if the power was on. Which it wasn't. What was left of the asylum had been scheduled for demolition, the site razed for a new medical facility. He had read that, hadn't he? Back in the old world. And yet the asylum grounds were utterly silent. If there was a generator on hand, it wasn't running. Just like at the farm with all the greenhouses, he realized. There was a mystery there, but he didn't have nearly enough clues to go about solving it.
Continuing westward, he followed the curve of the fence, staying just inside the forest. More structures came into view, each tall and monolithic, like they'd been carved from massive blocks of granite. Lit windows sprinkled the upper floors here and there, though far less than the other occupied buildings. In some of them, black silhouettes moved about.
He held still for a moment, shifting his gaze from window to window. There were people in them. Other survivors. Were any of them aware of what had transpired at a little farm outside Peterborough. Were they all part of it? Was one of them his father? Or little Ella, or Rachel? Or any of the others? Were they even alive? With a grimace, he resumed his surveillance, continuing around the perimeter. Such speculation was useless, and distracting. Until he had concrete information, wondering was a waste of time and energy.
The stars were out fully now, puncturing the blackness of night with glittering pinpricks. Thin strands of clouds that looked like cotton candy all angled southward, as if drawn and stretched by some kind of intense gravity well somewhere below the horizon. From this different perspective, he could see the entire compound, spread out before him. The wide field was even deeper than he'd thought, and the odd-shaped building with its pair of smokestacks was rather isolated, set far away from all the others.
He was pushing a low tree limb out of his way, when a series of deep, hacking coughs shattered the silence.
Peter jerked at the sound, heart leaping up his throat. He recovered quickly, however, and ducked down into undergrowth, hissing through gritted teeth at the surge of pain such rapid movement ignited in his side. Reaching out, he parted the tall grasses, peering out into the dimness beyond the fence.
Where the hell were they? There was nothing, no movement anywhere. He leaned forward, craning his neck and sweeping his gaze from side to side, looking for shapes in the shadows. Where were they?
At the weight of his backpack shifting about, it occurred to him then that he'd been a fool. He slid the bag down off his shoulders and removed the nightvision goggles, fitting them over his head. He turned them on, blinking at the gaze of green static that filled his right eye as he turned the focusing knob this way and that. The image sharpened into an ancient brick building; doors, windows, peaked roof with missing shingle, all tinted varying shades of green. Over in the other buildings, individual white suns blazed forth from those rooms which were occupied. He swung the view lower, back to the sequestered building — which as it turned out, was actually two separate buildings, albeit set extremely close to each other — and found a pair of men standing before the entrance to each.
Men armed with automatic rifles.
"And what have we here?" he whispered, dropping his hand to the pistol on his belt.
His blood began to surge, filling his ears with static. Studying the two men, he fought against the urge to claw his way through the fence. Even with the zoom on the goggles, the men were too far away for him to make out their faces, but he could tell they were talking, could see them gesticulating as if they were old friends. Were they guards? Why would they be guarding a building inside the compound? And against what?
Before he could contemplate this oddity any further, a shadow crossed in front of the goggle's view screen, seemingly on top of him, close enough to touch.
Recoiling out of pure reflex, he lost his balance slowly tipped backward, crashing through twigs and sticks alike. The goggles slipped off his head, falling into the brush. Pain shot across his abdomen, and something dug into his back, bulging his eyes open.
"Who's there?" The woman's voice sounded as if she were standing right beside him. "Somebody out there? Come on out, you dead fuckers! I got your medicine right here!"
Through the cloud of pain radiating from his side, he tried to identify the voice, but he knew no one left alive with a South Jersey accent. A brilliant flashlight flicked on, sweeping over the area to his left, moving slowly over the trees and the layers of brush. Peter lay still, holding his breath. Then he noticed a green light glowing faintly on the edge of his vision, off to his right. Shit! He cursed in the confines of his head. The fucking goggles! A surge of panic muted the pain to a dull roar.
Doing his best to remain silent, he lifted his arm and carefully turned the goggles over, pressing the lenses into the dirt just as the flashlight beam swept over his location. He held perfectly still, holding his breath, and peering out through slitted eyelids at the black shadow behind the blinding light.
"You got something there?" a man's voice called out. The voice wasn't close, but neither was it far. Footsteps approached, swishing through tall grass. One of the armed guards.
The silhouetted woman kept her light on him. She seemed frozen in place. "Thought I heard something out there," she said. "Just inside those trees."
"You want me to call it in?" the guard asked, his voice drawing closer.
The flashlight hovered over Peter for several more heartbeats, and then winked out. "Nah. I guess it was nothing," the woman replied shortly, her voice quieting as she turned away. "If it was one of them, they'd be biting at the fence already. Coulda been a deer, I guess. Claire told me she's seen some up close to the fence on her watch."
"Could be," the male voice muttered, clearly losing interest. "Hey uh, Jules? What are you doing tonight after your shift? You uh... you got any big plans?"
The woman named Jules's voice sounded different when she replied, touched with wariness. "Big plans...?" she repeated, then let out a grunt. "Um... I dunno. One of them new girls was playing spades tonight. Needed another person, and I was thinking about joining them. Why?" she asked in a tone laced with caution.
The voices receded, footsteps dwindling across the gravel drive. Peter exhaled a long breath, continuing to listen as the woman attempted to fend off the fellow's advances without trying to sound like she was doing so. She had a tough road ahead of her, he suspected. When he could no longer hear them, he sat up, stifling a groan. He snaked a hand inside coat and felt hot wetness through his shirt. The metallic tang of blood drifted up to his nose.
"Fuck me," he murmured, climbing carefully to his feet.
Raising the goggles once more, he spotted the woman striding away from him through the green haze, staying on her path around the fence. Her hair was cut short and tinted green, though it could have been any number of colors under normal light. On her shoulder, she carried some kind of tall spear or possibly a medieval polearm. Hurrying back to the entrance of the taller building was a man with a rifle tucked beneath one arm.
It seemed like a good time to leave the area, so he fitted the goggles back in place, readjusting the straps until he was satisfied they would support themselves. Continuing his surveillance, he crept along the forest's edge, slipping from tree to tree toward the front of the compound and the cluster of occupied buildings where shadows were still moving inside, cutting through the blazing window like moons eclipsing the sun. The searchlight came into view, with its massive canister pointing straight upward. It sat on a wide trailer in front the asylum's main entrance, where more people were walking the fence, all carrying weapons for stabbing through chain-links. There was another gate, manned by more men armed with rifles.
A moment later he ran out of forest, though the narrow roadway continued until it eventually emptied out into a large parking lot — the same parking lot he had seen on his prior visit. Pulling branches aside, he ran his gaze over the cars and trucks and found the Watson's blue Dodge Ram parked where he'd seen it last. Beside it was a light-colored Mercedes SUV. Had it been there before? Olivia would have known in an instant, but he wasn't sure. The brown four-by-four they had followed out of Marlborough was gone however, just as there was no sign of the truck that had taken Olivia.
It didn't necessarily mean anything, but the possibility that Dale Mueller had lied crossed his mind, wreaking havoc before he managed to calm himself. It didn't seem likely that he had lied. There had been real terror in the man's eyes at the end. The fear of un-being, of becoming something other. He had wanted to die cleanly, as himself, and enough to bargain for it.
She has to be here. Because if she wasn't here, he was lost, utterly. She has to.
Before turning back, he stared up at the center Kirkbride building, with its enormous clock tower stretching up into the night sky. Up close, it was even more unnerving to look at, as if it gave off a peculiar kind of taint, but at the same time seemed almost familiar, as if he should know it from somewhere. It was not the kind of place he would have chosen to live, not willingly, at least. So why had these people? It made even less sense when there was a plethora of more modern structures all over, including a modern hospital perhaps a mile or two away. Why had they chosen here? What was so special about a rotting insane asylum left over from the nineteenth century?
Peter started back, retracing his route through the underbrush. Making his way through the green-tinted night, his thoughts returned to the guarded buildings. Why guard a building inside a fenced compound? Were they keeping other survivors away? Or were they guarding against what was inside? Or both?
The pair of isolated buildings came back into view, blurry smudges in the distance. He moved closer, pausing only when a man in a Red Sox hat walking the fence passed by, until he was staring at their backsides. Was the fence under watch all night? More than likely it was — it was what he would do if he were in charge. How many at once and how often were there shift changes? With the temperature dropping again, probably fairly often. He watched the wisping plumes of the guard's exhales vanish. It was cold out. He rubbed his palms together and shivered, noticing the chill for the first time since he'd begun his surveillance.
The guard moved on, unware he'd been under watch, and Peter hunkered down in the cold, peering out through the goggles. He zoomed in, looking the isolated buildings over carefully. They were newer constructions, he realized, with bricks that were more uniform in size and shape than the other buildings — but new was only a relative term. He doubted either of them were under a century old.
Other details he'd missed on his first pass stood out to him. The taller building's windows were covered by thick metal grates, the sort he'd seen before in old jails and prisons, and generally anyplace that required containment of undesirables. St. Claire's had had similar grates, he clearly recalled seeing such when he and Olivia had sprung his father. Had this been the high security wing of the asylum? That might explain its isolation. If Olivia was anywhere, surely it was in there. She had to be. Why else have guards? He needed to find a way inside.
The taller structure had no doors on its backside, which left only the front entrance, and the shorter had a tall overhead door wide enough for a truck to pass through. The horizontal slats were caked with corrosion, and he guessed they had last been opened decades ago. In addition to housing boilers or furnaces of some sort, the building had probably served as a maintenance shed as well, long ago. Frustratingly, there seemed no easy way into either of the buildings, not without making enough noise to bring the entire compound down on him. He eyed the narrow gap between them, just wide enough for a person to shimmy through. Could they be connected somehow? Underground? In modern construction, medical facilities frequently had connecting tunnels, but was it the same here? He didn't know, and he would have to be inside the compound to find out.
He had to find a way inside. He had to. Olivia's life depended on it. She was counting on him to save her, just as she had saved his worthless life so many times before. His debt to her was miles wide, fathoms deep.
Another fence guard passed by, another man, with a thick triangular beard jutting down from his chin. How many fucking guards were there? They seemed endless. Was their movement random? Or was there a pattern to it? They were questions that needed answers before he could formulate any kind of plan.
Misdirection was the key that would unlock the doors of opportunity. It was always the key, in any play worth making. Once upon a time, he had been a master of it; of the long game, of distraction, of sleight of hand, of forcing a mark into a box of their own making, and of convincing his prey the idea was theirs all along — as with the insurgents, whose retribution had been far swifter and more brutal than he could have ever anticipated. Such skills were not the precise ones that would avail him now, but they were in the same ballpark, part of the same set.
No, what he needed was a simple diversion. A manipulation of interest. And, now that he'd thought about it, the answer was intuitively obvious, and more importantly, it couldn't help but work. Indeed, most of the groundwork was already laid out, and all without him even lifting a finger.
All he had to do, was wait.
What better time to make his assault then when the entire compound was consumed by a distraction of their own making? When the big light was on, when the men and women were defending their home. If there were any time the guards would be lax, or even pulled from their posts if the danger was great enough, it was then. And then he would strike.
He pulled off the goggles and shoved them into his backpack, jaw tightening into a sardonic grin. Perhaps he could make sure the danger was great enough. It would be as easy as turning on a light. Had they not used a similar tactic themselves? Fair was fair, after all.
But what about the innocents in there? an irritating voice chimed in, the voice of his weaker self. Olivia thought they couldn't all be bad. And what if the others are here? Rachel and Ella? Astrid? Sonia? Even Walter. Will you kill them all to save her? You think she would thank you? Get real, Bishop.
He grimaced, unable to deny such logic, although Walter could rot for all he cared. But the others? He would have to be careful. Very careful. Just a little nudge to get their hearts racing, to get their blood pumping, but not quite enough to overwhelm. Enough to make the man in charge sweat, just a little bit. The margins for error were exceedingly narrow, but he managed such before, hadn't he? The disaster in Baghdad had been his only misstep and he could never have planned for, could have never predicted such irrationality and blind rage. The situation here was entirely different.
Oh, is it now? Is it really?
Peter suppressed the nagging voice of doubt, and then settled back into the undergrowth. He waited for another guard to pass by, and then began to count.
#
#
The screaming continued
Rising and falling, it was a scream of desperation, raw with pain. Pain beyond all limits, all endurance. Neverending, not even for an intake of breath, the shrieks continued unabated. Pain beyond pain, beyond the threshold of sanity.
Clouded mists of confusion began to dissipate in infinitesimal increments. Dull stabs of pain became something less than dull, somehow more real, more personal. And with the recognition of pain, awareness began to return, the melding of senses and self coming together to form a greater whole. With awareness came a series of blooming realizations; that the pain was part of a self, like a hand or a foot; that it emanated from a spot on the back of a head; that it pulsed in tight bands about wrists and ankles, about a waist; from a dry throat covered in grit like sandpaper. That it belonged.
The wails of agony continued, rising and falling. They were lead lines, drawing consciousness forth from a dark, dream-filled haze where the arrow of time manifested in singular moments of blurred paralyzation, by distant throbs and muted terror, by harmonic voices whispering words unintelligible in the depths of bemusement. The voices were gone, however, replaced by the unending din of torture.
Who could scream so? Was it even a person? What pair of lungs could contain such capacity? With that thought floating in her mind, Olivia opened her eyes.
A single, bare light bulb flickered dimly overhead, buzzing faintly.
Frozen, afraid to move or even to blink, she focused on the light. It moved in tiny hypnotic intervals, pendulum-like, swinging silently to and fro from a black cord that stretched across an arched ceiling of gray bricks rounded on the corners by age and time, dark gaps between where mortar had once resided but had long since eroded into dust.
Olivia's breath caught in her throat. Where am I?
The bed beneath her felt made of iron. Was it even a bed? She went to sit up and gasped, falling back, and full awareness of her own body returned. She couldn't get up. She couldn't move. Something was holding her down. Struggling to control a rising panic, she lifted her head again, straining to see.
Her clothes were missing, down to the skin, replaced by a blue patient gown blotched with dark stains and clearly not new, or sterile. Strapped across her chest was a wide belt, cinched tight against the underside of her breast. Her wrists were bound also, and her ankles, each wrapped in thick straps of brown leather, with buckles of tarnished bronze. The straps were tightly secured to metal bars running down either side of what appeared to be an ancient gurney. On her left forearm was an IV cannula, held in place by a strip of white medical tape. Heart thundering, her bulging eyes followed the clear tubing from her wrist to an IV pole over her left shoulder, where a bag of some clear liquid dangled. The bag was nearly empty, with no label of any kind. For several hollow heartbeats, she was mesmerized by the anonymous liquid's steady drip before finally tearing her gaze away.
Thoughts stampeded through her head. What's happening? Why am I here? What are they doing to me? Oh god, where's Peter? She jerked against her bonds, pulling, kicking, in a full-blown panic now, muscles straining. The leather belts creaked under the pressure, but held fast. She fell back, gasping, and pain bloomed on the back of her head, blotting out thought like spilled wine.
When she could think again, pain doubled her vision. It wasn't just her head that hurt — she hurt all over, particularly her face, which felt as if she'd gone ten rounds in the sparring ring, with bare fists and no headgear. Even her lips hurt. She moved her tongue over them and felt lumps and swollen lacerations. Had she been in a fight? A car accident? Something was on the back of her head, something heavy stuck in her hair. Tape? No. A bandage. She'd suffered some kind of head injury. A concussion? It might explain her confusion.
She thought back to the last thing she could remember before opening her eyes. They had gone north into New Hampshire. They'd seen the farm Charlene Watson had told them about, outside of Peterborough. They'd seen the greenhouses, seen them in use by perpetrators unknown. And then I was in the forest with Peter. We were running, racing in the dark, he was chasing me. She'd been laughing, and happy for the first time since the vanishing of her family. Something else had happened, before that. Something unexpected, something that had filled her simultaneously with both joy and fear. He told me he loved me. Peter, where are you? Are you okay? Are you even alive? You have to be alive.
Pressure built in her chest, and she thought her heart might burst apart. He had to be alive. She could remember being pleased with herself for winning their little race, and waiting for him on the little farmhouse's front porch. She could remember feeling more than a little horny, could even remember being hungry, and needing to go pee, and then... and then nothing. Something had happened. There was a blank spot, a gaping, black hole in her memory.
Her eyes shifted around her cell. Like the arched ceiling above her, the windowless walls seemed from another age, bricks crumbling, pitted with cracks and divots. Visible between her feet was a squat door of black metal, a door out of nightmares, a door with a tiny window filled with vertical iron bars. Pale light filtered in from outside. The air reeked of mold and dust and blood, of urine and shit, both of which appeared to be wafting from herself, much to her dismay. The air was cool, and reminded her of a time she'd been caving in her youth, the chill slightly too cold for comfort. Was she underground? It seemed incredible, and at the same time spread a sick feeling through her gut. Images of dungeons and possible tortures to come filled her mind.
Heart starting to pound again, she wondered how long she'd been here, wherever here was. Days? Weeks? How much time had passed? When had she eaten last? Or had anything to drink? Her throat was parched, and in the place of her stomach was an angry knot of hunger. Panic began creeping back in, blanking her mind of thought. Panting, each intake of breath rasping in her ears, she screwed her eyes shut and was suddenly aware that the constant screaming in the background had fallen silent. Left in its place was an ominous silence, until a faint tapping started up somewhere outside her cell.
I have to get out of here, now. She had to escape, before whoever was holding her returned and found her awake. There had to be a way.
Olivia lifted her head, trying to get a better view of the belts securing her hands. She pulled upward on the straps, pulled with all her might, but it was useless. The thick leather gave not an inch, not a millimeter, no matter how hard she pulled, and the metal buckles were well out of reach of her fingertips — even if she were capable of bending them backwards and around in a circle.
Her captors were no fools. There would be no escape. Not as she was now, weak with hunger and injury. The dull ache behind her eyes began to take on form, coming alive, pulsing with promises of further pain to come. Other injuries were becoming apparent, particularly a sharp sting deep in her right side. Breathing made the pain worse, and she suspected it was a rib injury, bruised or broken, it mattered not. A broken rib was the least of her worries.
Tears welled in her eyes. "Fuck...," she whispered, laying her head back gently and letting her eyes fall closed once more. She was well and truly caught. The tears made tracks down her cheeks, down into the clefts of her ears.
All of a sudden a horrible screech carried in from outside of her cell, the sound of a door opening, unoiled hinges whining in protest. Footsteps reverberated, drawing closer. Someone was coming! She yanked at the straps again, kicking and pulling. Her eyes darted for succor but there was none to be found. A metallic clang rang out, followed by a low, heavy thud. Silence followed, and then a sudden, a horrible shout.
"NO!"
Olivia gasped. Currents of fear shot down her spine. Tendrils of cold ice wrapped around her insides, squeezing, constricting. The shout had come from somewhere nearby, not close, exactly, but neither had it been far. From another cell. Another prisoner. It had been a man's voice. Was it Peter?
"Get away from me!" the voice shouted again. "I won't let you! Not again! Gah... it hurts! I can't take it! Stop! Please! NO! Wait! Wait! I'll do it. I'll do it! No... no... no... NOOOO! Gahhhh! Gahhhh!"
The shriek went on and on, standing her hair on end, turning high-pitched with raw desperation. It was the same as before, when she'd first awoken, but clearly from a different set of lungs. And neither belonged to Peter, of that she was certain. But then who? And what horrors were being visited upon them? Was she next? Her mind conjured images of sharp pincers, of flesh being peeled back, strip by strip, of clamps and screws and razors and blood and faceless men with cold gray eyes, like dead things, implacable, without feeling.
She took in ragged, saw-tooth breaths, eyes rolling toward the window in the door between her bare feet. The room shrank around her, walls drawing in, compressing like she was on a bad acid trip. The bulb dangling overhead began to buzz, louder than before, growing brighter and brighter, like a star about to burst.
Without warning, it exploded with a dull pop, showering down in a multitude of sharp fragments. She yanked her head to the side, squeezing her eyes closed as the shards of hot glass fell across her face and into her hair. At the same instant, the screaming turned off like a switch, cutting off mid-shriek.
Olivia nearly cried out in the stillness that came after, an utter lack of sound, surely not unlike the vacuum of space. Inside her head, the rampant beats of her hears thudded over top the silence. Beads of sweat slid down into her eyes, the salt burning at the edge of her corneas.
Whatever had happened, someone had just died. Someone had just been tortured until they were dead. She was sure of it. Had their heart given out? Or was it something else, something even worse?
The thunk of a door slamming shut rang out, followed by the echo of boots striding over a stone floor. They were getting louder. Choking fear rose up her throat like vomit. Her mouth worked and she tried to draw in breaths. She was at the bottom of an abyss, with an ocean of weight crushing down. She was next. She didn't know how she knew, but she did. They were coming for her. Soon, the terrible screams reverberating through the corridors would be her own.
The footsteps grew louder and louder, until they were almost right outside her cell door. Under a haze of dread, she let her head loll to one side, closing her eyes, holding herself still and supple. A possum playing dead. It was her only option. Her only defense. To be asleep. Would they wake her? Maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they were waiting for her to wake up on her own. A torrent of thoughts raced through her mind. What if they had already woken her? What if she had already undergone whatever had happened to the other prisoner and she'd merely forgotten? Somehow she thought not, but how would she truly know? How? Enough drugs could blot out anything, any memory? Who knew what had been done to her already?
She heard a hiss of breath outside her cell and then a muttered curse. Suddenly the footsteps were moving rapidly away from her cell, the strides determined. She opened her eyes and saw the faint shape of the exploded light bulb hanging above her in a ray of dim light from the cell door window.
Was that it? Maybe they aren't coming back, she thought, inhaling a huge breath of relief. Maybe they were just checking on me. Checking to see if I was awake.
But a few minutes later she was proved wrong by the clack of returning footsteps. Feigning sleep again, she willed her body to stillness, praying they would pass by her door. They did not. When the footsteps reached her cell, she recognized the scrape of a bolt being drawn back.
The door swung open with a squeal. Footsteps crossed the room, coming to a stop at her side. She sensed movement above her, in the currents of air shifting against her skin. Floating in the blackness behind her eyelids, she heard a low grunt, and then a series of faint, metallic squeaks. And then light blared in front of her face, turning the blackness red. She made her chest rise and fall at slow, regular intervals.
Her unknown captor moved around the gurney, stopping near her left shoulder. She heard the crinkle of plastic, and a slosh that sounded like liquid in a container. Her IV bag was being replaced, but that was better than the alternative, wasn't it? She prayed to any god that would listen that that was all that would happen, that her captor would leave her in peace, that he — and it was definitely a man, from the grunt she had heard — would leave her alone and come back later, or never at all if she had her way.
It took several minutes for him to change the bag out, and he finished by tossing the old one on the floor somewhere to her left. For a heartbeat, she heard only breathing above her, and then he moved again, brushing up against her left side, near where her arm was strapped down.
A warm hand fell across her forehead. Olivia bit down on the tip of her tongue. She summoned every ounce of her will to remain utterly still as fingers began pulling and plucking at her hairline. What the hell is he doing? she wondered, suddenly more angry than afraid, and growing more so by the second. The answer came to her a moment later when the fingers moved down to her gown, plucking at the fabric. It was the broken light bulb. He's removing the shards of glass. But why? Why bother if he's just going to kill me? And why did the light bulb explode anyway?
The move was oddly generous for someone holding another person against their will, and who, just a few minutes prior had just been torturing another person, perhaps even unto death. The plucking went on for a few more minutes before stopping. She thought he would leave then, but he didn't. Instead, he stood over her, breathing in and out. She could almost feel the heat of him radiating through the thin threading of her gown.
Her mind summoned images of a man with no face staring down at her, colorless eyes moving greedily over her skin. The fear began to return then, as the silence stretched out, as goosebumps and prickles popped up all over her bare skin. She was at his mercy. Whatever he had planned for her, there was not a thing she could do to stop it. Supposedly Walter had given her these abilities, but the reality of actually using them seemed utterly absurd. What was she going to do? Wish him to death? It had never worked when she'd thought about it, never when she'd consciously wanted it to.
The hand returned to her face, fingertips lightly touching, almost caressing. A pool of icy dread formed in her gut as the fingers traced a slow path down her cheek, down into the hollow of her shoulder. Then the fingers moved southward, over the fabric of her gown. No. Please don't, Olivia shouted inside her head. Her mind began to buckle, fraying strand by strand. Comingling waves of terror and disgust filled her as the roving fingers closed about the mound of her right breast, squeezing, cupping possessively. Please don't please don't please don't please don't... Screaming on the inside, she somehow managed to maintain her limp placidity, even when she felt the air of someone's breath on her lips. Something warm and wet landed on her cheek. Bile rose up her throat. It was a tongue. He was licking her. The tongue scraped roughly across her flesh, leaving a wet track of saliva behind that turned cold against her skin in the dungeon air.
"I've wanted to do that for a long time," a whispering voice admitted, lips feathering against her ear. The voice had no accent, no defining characteristics. "I've always wondered what you'd taste like, ever since I first saw you. You were on TV." There was a pause, and the man let out a satisfied grunt. "I wish we had more time, but the doctor will be here soon." The hand gripping her breast suddenly released her, and footsteps led away from the gurney.
He was leaving! A relieved sob rose up Olivia's throat, but she crushed it down ruthlessly. Fury ignited in her chest, so hot it scoured away the fear, the terror and disgust. She cracked her eyes open and saw the blurry silhouette of a man through her eyelashes, highlighted in the open doorway. He was of middling height, and either bald or with hair cut close to the scalp. In the raging inferno of her mind's eye, she saw him dead on the floor. He was dead. If a god existed anywhere, in any universe, he would die, and by her hand. The man turned, glancing back before leaving the cell, and for a split second, she caught a clear glimpse of his profile.
Her mind recoiled at the face, fury transforming into shock and then into confusion. The man was already dead. He'd been murdered. His body had been stuffed into a cabinet. And then he had died again beneath a mob of infected, according to Charlie and Sonia. She had seen his bloated corpse, smelled the stink of his decay.
The door swung shut, and the man, the thing, that was wearing Agent Rodriguez's face was gone.
She waited until the sound of his footsteps receded, diminishing into silence, and then turned her head and vomited on the floor. The spew was gritty, little more than stomach bile, like spitting up chalkdust mixed with wet sand. When she was finished, everything she'd been holding at bay came out at once; all the fear, the pain and confusion, the horror of violation. It all came rushing forward, traveling up her throat in a massive sob that left her gasping. Another sob followed, and then another.
In the quiet of her cell, Olivia began to cry.
