Centralia (25 page)

The woman stood in the open doorway, hands hanging at her sides.

Peter righted himself and pushed back so he was seated against the wall. He could tell by the woman’s figure that it wasn’t Karen. Too small and thin. She wore a pantsuit and lab coat, and her hair was pulled back off her face in a bun.

“How are you, Peter?”

He recognized the voice. Ambling. She was going to take him away and experiment on him now. Poke him, prod him, maybe torture him. He knew how it worked. They’d break him down to nothing, then rebuild him into the man they wanted him to be. Again. Into the soldier they wanted him to be. Again. After all that had transpired, they still weren’t done with him. How much could one mind handle before it suffered too much tampering and shattered like a crystal vase?

She opened the door wider, and Peter shielded his eyes from the light.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Like you need a shower, a shave, some clean clothes. How do you feel?”

“Like I need a shower and a shave. Definitely some clean clothes.”

“Would you like a hot meal too?”

“What are you serving?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Fast food? I could really go for a greasy burger and fries.”

Ambling turned to leave. When she spoke, he could hear the smile in her voice. “We can arrange that.”

She exited the room, and three men dressed in gray scrubs entered. Orderlies of some sort. They lifted Peter from the floor and escorted him into a hallway. It appeared they were back in the bunker under Centralia. Same concrete, same doors lining the walls.

The men took Peter to a bathroom, handed him a towel and change of clothes, and shut the door without saying a word. The bathroom was small but not cramped. It consisted of a toilet, sink, and shower stall with a frosted-glass door. Tile lined the floor and walls; the ceiling was concrete. Everything was white and clinical.

Peter undressed and stood before the mirror. He hadn’t lost as much weight as he thought he had, nor had he lost much muscle mass. After getting a few meals in him, he should regain his strength quickly.

The hot water energized him as it washed away the grime that coated his skin. The shower was already supplied with a bar of soap and a small travel-size bottle of shampoo. Peter lathered his hair and stuck his head under the nozzle, letting the water wash the bubbles over his shoulders and chest and down his back.

From outside the shower, a woman’s voice said his name.

Peter rinsed the soap from his face and wiped the water from his eyes. Through the steamy, frosted glass he could see the figure of a woman. He assumed it was Ambling again.

“What do you want with me?” Peter said.

The woman said nothing but stepped closer to the shower stall, and Peter instinctively stepped back and covered himself.

“What are you doing?” he said.

The woman did not respond but neither did she move.

Finally she said, “Why did you come here, Peter?”

Despite the hot water hitting him in the chest and abdomen, despite the clouds of steam billowing within the stall, Peter broke out in chills. It wasn’t Ambling at all. It was Karen. His wife. But how?

Karen put one hand, fingers splayed, on the frosted-glass door and said, “You did this. Don’t you remember?”

Frozen with his back against the wall, Peter opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He tried to form words, but his throat produced no sound. He tried to lift his hand, but he couldn’t.

Karen didn’t move, didn’t open the door. She remained motionless with her hand resting on the glass. “Only you can make this all right again,” she said. “You need to let them change you, this time for good. Then we can be together. You. Me. Lilly.”

It sounded like Karen, but it wasn’t her. It couldn’t be. Karen would never want him to change. She’d never go along with Nichols’s scrubbing and imprinting.

“No.”

“You must, Peter. For us.”

Anger took over him, flooded his blood and made it boil. They had no right to do this to him.

“I won’t. I can’t.” If he gave in to the process, he might forget Karen and Lilly for good. As far as he would be concerned, they would never have existed. He couldn’t allow that to happen. He couldn’t live without them, didn’t want to.

Peter forced himself to move. He lifted his arm and practically threw it at the door, slid it open.

But there was no Karen. She’d been a mirage. Or a hallucination.

They were gassing him again, like in the school gymnasium, causing him to see things that weren’t there, to hear voices that didn’t exist. They were toying with his mind, disassembling it memory by memory.

Peter shut off the shower and stood in the stall, his skin crawling, dripping water, his heart pounding. The chill had intensified, and now he shivered as if he were standing naked in the middle of Antarctica. He slid the shower door open the rest of the way and suddenly felt very dizzy. The shower’s tiled floor moved beneath him; the walls waved. His legs grew weak, wobbled; he was standing on stilts of rubber.

Peter reached for the towel and dropped to his hands and knees, half in the shower, half out. The floor spun faster and faster until he thought he’d faint.

The bathroom door opened. Peter’s mind was muddled, could barely make sense of what was happening. Men entered, grabbed his wrists and ankles. They loomed over him like demons, their eyes hollow sockets, their mouths gaping chasms. A strange hissing sound emanated from their mouths.

Peter was dragged along the floor, the room still turning circles around him. As he passed the sink, he saw Lilly there
 
—her old self, the way he remembered her
 
—standing in a white shirt and pink
jeans, her hair in pigtails. She held a teddy bear, the one Karen’s parents had given her for her sixth birthday.

“Daddy,” she said, her voice soft and urgent, “listen to them. Do what they tell you to do. For me and Mommy.”

Peter tried to speak, tried to tell her he loved her and that he’d rescue her, but his throat seized as if concrete had been poured down it.

The men continued to drag him as Lilly faded from his view and the room around him grew darker. He tried to fight it, to keep his wits about him, but resistance was futile, and soon everything went dark.

Peter felt as though he were floating on a cushion of air, and he would have believed it too if not for the annoying squeak of wheels in need of oil. The ceiling passed by slowly, concrete, lights, and air vents. His head still in a fog, his brain seemed stuck in one gear, and any attempt to comprehend the situation caused an awful grinding in his ears.

He attempted to lift his arms, to sit up, but his wrists were secured. His ankles too. He watched the bland wall slide by. How long was this corridor?

Peter tried to lift his head, but it weighed too much; he could only roll it from side to side.

He rolled his head to the left and this time saw Lilly standing there. She seemed to float alongside the gurney. Peter’s eyes
had difficulty focusing on her, but he could vaguely make out the downward turn of her mouth, the sadness in her eyes. Once more he tried to speak to her, to tell her he’d make it all right. He wanted to tell her that he trusted Jesus, that he’d listened to her and Mommy and surrendered and had faith that all would be okay, regardless of the outcome. But his tongue felt like it was three sizes too large for his mouth and he’d lost all control of it; he could only produce garbled words, incoherent jumbles of sounds and syllables.

Lilly put her finger to her mouth, silencing him, and said, “Do what they tell you to do, Daddy. You must go along with them.”

Peter shook his head. He wouldn’t. She didn’t understand, poor kid. They’d brainwashed her, and probably Karen too. He couldn’t let them steal everything from him. He shut his eyes to refocus, but when he opened them, Lilly was gone. Peter turned his head to the right, but she wasn’t there either.

He tried to say her name, to call to her, but all that came out was a mess of slurred letters. Peter strained against the straps, but it was futile.

The gurney turned right. A man’s voice spoke, but Peter couldn’t make out what he said. A few more feet and the gurney slowed. Above him a fluorescent bulb hummed. A door opened and the gurney was pushed through the open doorway and into a dimly lit room.

Peter shut his heavy eyes as the gurney was pushed across the room. When he opened them again, he noticed a large circular LED operating room light suspended above him. Somebody across the room spoke and the light flipped on, blinding him. He shut his eyes and again fought the restraints at his ankles and wrists. A warm hand rested on his forehead. Peter opened his eyes and found
Karen standing over him, smiling. But when she spoke, it was not with Karen’s voice but rather Dr. Ambling’s.

“Don’t struggle, Peter,” she said. “It’s okay. We’re going to give you something to relax you.”

Peter shook his head, tried to tell them he didn’t want anything, didn’t need anything, but his tongue didn’t work and his lips felt swollen and clumsy.

Ambling disappeared, replaced by a man wearing a surgical mask and scrubs. His eyes smiled at Peter. “You’ll just feel a pinch.”

Again Peter shook his head.

The prick came, and suddenly Lilly was there in the room with him, by his side. Only it was the new Lilly, the girl from the bunker. She lifted her little hand and rested it on his arm. Her touch was so soft and warm. “Trust him, Daddy. Do you trust him?”

Her eyes were urgent, and the tightness around her lips and jaw changed the shape of her face.

“Daddy, do you trust him?”

Peter knew whom the girl spoke of, and it wasn’t Nichols or the man in scrubs. He nodded.

She smiled. “Good. Then trust him. You’ll need to . . .”

But before she could finish, the light above him faded and the room grew dark. A severe weight pushed down on Peter until he thought he’d suffocate. Finally light was overcome with darkness and everything faded away.

Peter awoke with his eyes still closed. At first he didn’t know where he was and imagined himself back in his home in his bed, the light of the sun filtering through the blinds to awaken him. But
the bed on which he lay was hard and cold, not at all like his bed at home.

He tried to focus and remember where he was, but his mind swam in a murky soup, images coming and going, ebbing and flowing. Lilly was there, smiling at him, her hands extended as if she were begging him to come to her, to rescue her. Karen was there too, her eyes pleading with him. She mouthed words, but there was no sound. Then Amy appeared, urging him to come to her. Her face showed panic, fright. Gunshots rang out, sharp and distinct, a staccato of them, accompanied by flashes of light and explosions. Outside of this convoluted collage of images, he heard the soft, indistinct warble of two men’s voices in conversation and behind them a gentle clinking, like the sound of small screws being dropped into a metal pan.

It came to him then. He was in some kind of operating room buried deep in the bunker beneath Centralia. As his mind cleared, Peter remembered more of what had taken place. The dark room, the shower, the hallucinogen. They had strapped him to the gurney and wheeled him beneath a bright light. He’d seen Karen and Lilly, but they were false images, like a Pepper’s ghost on a flimsy glass pane.

He brought his mind back around to the room, the gurney, the light overhead, and the clinking of metal. Were they planning surgery?

One of the men in the room said something and the other laughed. Peter knew he had only one chance at this. Apparently they thought he was still unconscious, still under the effects of whatever sedative they had given him.

Seconds passed and with each tick of the clock, Peter’s mind cleared more. He rolled his right arm palm up, then palm down,
and did not feel the restraints around his wrist. They’d unsecured him, perhaps to transfer him to an operating table, then not bothered to reapply the restraints, thinking he was no threat while he was safely unconscious.

Soft footsteps approached and Peter held still. He could hear breathing so close it seemed to be only inches away.

Peter had to act now. He opened his eyes while simultaneously sitting up. The man, a twentysomething dressed in a lab coat, stepped back and dropped the instrument he had in his hand. He couldn’t have appeared more surprised if Peter had been dead and suddenly sprang to life.

Peter swung his right foot around and caught the guy in the side of the head, shoving him sideways. He grunted and stumbled into a metal cart, dumping tools and instruments, then fell to the floor. There was one other technician in the room, heavyset, middle-aged. He made a move for the door, but Peter was off the table and across the room before he could reach it. Peter’s movements were clumsy, his limbs heavy. The anesthesia was still in his blood. Grabbing the guy by the lab coat, Peter yanked him back and pushed him hard into the adjacent wall, nearly falling on top of him. The guy reached for a pair of forceps, but Peter awkwardly slapped his hand away.

Behind Peter, the other technician was on his feet. He exhaled loudly and made a charge at Peter, some sort of stainless-steel instrument in his right hand.

Still gripping the taller technician’s coat with both hands, Peter swung him around and drove him into his colleague. The men’s heads collided, sending them both to the floor in a conglomeration of arms and legs.

While they were dazed and struggling to reacclimate themselves, Peter found a roll of surgical tape and quickly bound both
men by their wrists and ankles. He also shoved a roll of gauze in each man’s mouth and taped it in place.

With both technicians bound and gagged, Peter collapsed to the floor, fatigue overwhelming him. He needed to rest, to replenish his energy. He felt he needed to sleep for days but knew he had mere minutes, maybe seconds, before his escape was discovered. He had to keep moving. Willing his limbs to function, he pushed himself to stand and leaned on a counter. His stomach roiled and churned with boiling bile, and he felt like he might vomit.

A can of soda sat on the counter. Peter glanced at the two technicians bound on the floor and grabbed the can. Taking huge gulps, he downed more than half of it in two swigs. The sugar would do him good, give him a burst of energy. He drained the rest of the can.

Glancing around the room, checking all four corners, he saw no cameras. Odd, given the seeming omniscience they’d shown in other situations. Maybe the agency didn’t want any recorded evidence of what happened in this lab
 
—something so unethical, so egregious, the agency took precautions against whistle-blowers.

At the door, Peter paused and turned toward the technicians. They blinked and glanced at each other. He hesitated, then reached for a pair of surgical scissors on the counter and walked toward the men. Their eyes widened. If there was even a slight chance that Karen and Lilly had been returned to the bunker for more experiments, Peter had to know, and these two were the only sources he had.

Peter squatted in front of the men and held up the scissors. “Guys, there’s a couple ways we can do this and one of them will be awfully painful for you. I want to know where my wife and daughter are. Karen and Lilly Ryan.”

The men glanced at each other again but made no show of wanting to talk.

Peter shrugged. He had to work quickly. He grabbed the younger technician by the belt and yanked him forward. He then grabbed the man’s bound hands and pried open his fist. Extending the man’s little finger, Peter opened the scissors and placed them around the quivering digit. “I wonder how well these scissors cut through bone. I’m guessing not so well.”

The man’s eyes widened and he moaned, tried to pull his hand away. The other technician hollered as well and squirmed, trying to get himself into position to resist Peter. Peter punched the man in the face with the side of his fist, then replaced the scissors around the shorter man’s finger.

Finally the man opened both hands and his eyes pleaded for Peter to stop.

Peter cut the tape holding the gauze and removed the roll from the tech’s mouth. “Tell me,” he said, “or I won’t hesitate to remove your fingers one by one.”

The man swallowed, then said, “I need some water.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Peter said, grabbing the man’s hand again and lifting the scissors.

“No, no, no. Wait. I’ll tell you.” Tears spilled from the young man’s eyes now. “They don’t pay me enough for this.”

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know, man.”

Peter slapped the man in the mouth.

“It’s not our job to know.”

Peter hit him again. “Where are they?”

As if he’d just been told that not only had his position with the agency been terminated but he’d been selected to be discontinued,
the man tilted his head back and moaned. He glanced at his partner, who widened his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t care anymore, man. It’s not worth losing my fingers. I don’t know where they are
 
—”

Peter put some pressure on the scissors, starting to dig into the man’s little finger.

“But I know the room where you can find what you’re looking for. It’s in B corridor.”

“Where is that?”

“Two corridors away. This is D.”

“Which way?”

The man said nothing. He licked at a trickle of blood that had seeped from a cut on his lip and tried to wipe at it.

Peter hit him, even more fiercely. “Which way?”

The other technician grunted and shook his head.

“Please, man, stop. I’m just a tech. I’m nobody around here. Make a right out of here and go to the end of the corridor, then go left. Two more intersections, then the first room after you turn right. That’s what you’re looking for.”

Peter replaced the gauze in the man’s mouth, stood, and crossed the room to the door. He paused before opening it and said a quick prayer.

“Do you trust him?”

Yes, I trust.