Clarice could barely move. Her arms and legs were offline. She could move her head back and forth, but that was it. An invisible heavy weight pressed her chest, as if she was a witch on trial ordered to plead.
Above her, the young black woman looked down at her. The muzzle of her gun loomed over Clarice. The black woman's expression was curiously calm, as if this was all according to plan. Clarice couldn't feel her gun in her hand. For that matter, she couldn't feel her hand, or her arm for that matter. She closed her eyes and prepared to die.
The orderly came over to Clarice's side of the car. Alice Pierpont was with him, blinking druggedly. She observed the young black woman calmly. From the look on her face that Clarice could see, she appeared to recognize the girl.
"Teek," she said. "Teek, whatcha doing?"
"Finishing the job," the other woman replied.
Alice shook her head. "No, don't," she said slowly. "She was…she helped me. Let her live. Let's just…can we go now?"
The black girl's face twisted into consternation. She looked over at Alice, weighing something in her mind.
"Okay," she said. "Over there." She kicked at something near Clarice, and the sound of metal skirring across pavement entered Clarice's consciousness. Clarice's .45, veteran of so many fights, skittered under the car where Clarice could not get it. She was down and unarmed and helpless. It had been no more than one minute since the gunfight.
"Girl, you got to get moving," the black girl added. She frowned at Alice. "Like now."
Obediently, Alice Pierpont began to walk.
"Faster," the girl urged. For her own amusement, she spoke with an exaggerated Southern accent. "C'mon now, Miss Alice, you gits in de car and we's gonna drive you way. Ah's brings you anothah mint julep. Yous can drink it out on the verandah where it be a mite coolah." She crossed around the car and grabbed Alice's arm.
Clarice tried to turn her head and watch where they were going. She could only see the tires of her big Crown Victoria. Already, she could hear voices approaching from the hospital proper. She could hear doors open and then the metallic sliding sound of a sliding door.
A van, she thought dazedly. Her chest was beginning to hurt mightily now and she gasped. An engine roared to life and drove away.
How had all this happened? All Clarice had wanted to do was show a bit of empathy. She'd wanted to do a good thing. Now she'd been paid back for that by lying here in a parking lot, possibly dying. Maybe she was paralyzed. Maybe she would die.
It seemed like years before there were faces over her, staring down at her as if not understanding what was going on. Oh my, what happened? That's the FBI agent who took Alice Pierpont…where is she? Oh my God, we have an escape.
Clarice heard gunshots from far away and clamped her eyes shut. She'd be fired for this, if she lived. But hardly any of that seemed to matter. The voices over her were fading in and out. Then everything whirled away into a pool of black, taking Clarice Starling far away.
…
Alice worked her jaw in the back of the van. Her friend crouched over her. The guy drove. She was still pretty dopey from the Stelazine, but she understood better now what was happening. She smiled calmly. The idea of the gate guard occurred to her, but they had to have some way around that.
"Teek, what are you doing?" she asked drowsily.
Chatiqua Miller put her hands on Alice's shoulders and smiled calmly. The gate lay ahead.
"Getting you out of here," she said. "It's been a long time. You look pretty zonked, girl."
Alice smiled. "They doped me," she said.
"We're approaching the gate," the blocky man in scrubs behind the wheel said.
"You know your mark," Chatiqua reminded him. "Ready….aaaaaand….action!"
The van slewed to a stop at the guardhouse. A middle-aged man in a uniform sat desultorily behind a glass pane. Without missing a beat, the man behind the wheel lifted his pistol and fired once. The glass was not bulletproof, and the guard fell dead without a word. Chatiqua opened the sliding door of the van and reached into the shattered window. She smacked a button and the gate began to open. As she jumped back in the van and slammed the door, it began to move again.
"You killed the gate guard," Alice said, far too calmly.
"No. I just tickled him to death. Alice, girl, don't tell me you've gone soft."
"Poor gate guard," Alice said dolefully. "I'd heard of him. Bob the gate guard."
"Bob the gate guard wasn't gonna let us out," Chatiqua said dismissively. "Had to be done."
The van turned out of the driveway of the psychiatric hospital and onto the main road. For a few minutes it drove at a high rate of speed. There was little traffic. Then it pulled up behind an abandoned Ford Taurus. Chatiqua grabbed her friend and steered her into the back seat of the car. She did not seem concerned at all to abandon the van.
"C'mon," she said calmly. "Let's go." Again, the large guy took the wheel. It wasn't long until the car picked up the highway and began to accelerate away. Chatiqua grabbed a bag and handed it to Alice.
"There you go," she said. "Get out of that black getup, will you? You look like some goth chick about to talk about absinthe and listen to Peter Murphy." She cackled and pulled a bright red sweatshirt out for herself.
The bag contained jeans, a T-shirt, a running jacket and sneakers. Slowly, Alice shimmied out of her dress and changed into it. A baseball cap and sunglasses served to conceal her hair and eyes. Chatiqua frowned.
"Forgot about your funky hand there," she said. "Just keep your hand in your pocket for now."
Alice nodded. "It's…it's good to see you," she said warmly, and smiled.
"Yep, you too," Chatiqua replied. "Been what, ten years. When we was down in juvie." She spoke the last words with a ghetto accent. "When we was homegirls." She grinned and switched back to standard English without missing a beat.
"I want you to meet my friend Colin," she said, indicating the fellow behind the wheel. He raised a thick arm and saluted.
"Charmed," he said, smiled, and continued driving.
Alice grinned.
"So…so what happens now?" she asked.
"Oh," her friend said, "I have moved far beyond the lowly incarcerated girl I once was, Alice. And now that you're out…you can help me achieve my vision."
The drugs were beginning to wear off, and Alice tilted her head at her friend, her interest piqued.
"I've been making movies, dear Alice, dear Alice," Chatiqua said. "I moved out to California and got myself a job as cameraman. Camerawoman, I should say. Started off in porno. That was nasty, I can tell you, but it was a start. Occasionally I worked in music videos. That was fun and good money, but it wasn't regular work. After that I got a job working for a company that made direct-to-video horror movies. You've seen them; you know, the really bad no-budget horror movies. Now that was fun. But it taught me what I really, really want to do. Colin worked for the same company as an actor. You've seen him in Biker Chainsaw Babes, Don't Turn On the Light, Prom Date From Hell, and the like." She cackled.
Colin took his right hand off the wheel and made a stabbing motion with his right hand. He bared his teeth in mock threat. His chiseled features assumed a hostile mien.
"YIKE YIKE YIKE YIKE," he chanted, in order to provide appropriate sound effect.
Alice Pierpont, who actually had stabbed people to death before, glanced at him and smiled pleasantly.
"All good things must come to an end," Chatiqua continued. "And I'm afraid that cutbacks lost me my job. I was arrested for a bit…couldn't raise bail. But now I am out and I am ready to rock. I know exactly what I want to do, and you, dear Alice, are the perfect person to help me."
"I'm crazy, or so they say," Alice pointed out.
"Perhaps. And you are also a killer. You have experience. And I think you'll look good on camera. I want to be the vision behind the camera, that's what I like doing. Together…together we can do amazing things." Chatiqua's eyes glittered. Her voice was strong with zeal. This was her life's work. This was what she had been put here to do.
Alice preened a bit. Vanity was hardly unknown to her.
"What did you have in mind?" she asked.
"The three of us are going to do great things," Chatiqua said. "Something no one else has done before."
"Snuff films?" Alice asked. "There's no such thing, Teek."
"There will be," Chatiqua said. "Our equipment is in the trunk. These days, a good digital camcorder and a good fast laptop and that's all you need." Her dark brown eyes gleamed. "You, me, and Colin…we're going to create not just cheap, homemade snuff films. We are going to make…fully fledged homicidal productions."