The chain-link fence was ten feet high and topped with razor sharp concertina wire. Behind it was everything she knew, loved,
and hated with all of her heart. She had seen men parking trucks at the School. Maybe they were all gone by now.
A white metal sign read: ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE. THIS IS A GOVERNMENT INSTALLATION. TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT.
She turned to Frannie and Kit. “We’re here.”
M
AX WAS STARING back at us, her bright green eyes wide with fear.
“They’re not kidding,” she said. “Trespassers have been shot, believe me. You can still go back. I think you should.”
“We won’t leave you,” Kit said.
Pip was barking and twirling in tight circles outside the fence. Suddenly two Dobermans came loping forward on the far side.
They bared their teeth, barked and growled.
Kit pulled me away from the fence as spit and fury flew from the mouths of the Dobermans.
I felt the hackles rise on the back of my neck. And it wasn’t just because of the dogs. Actually, the dogs didn’t bother me
so much.
Chain link and concertina wire and guard dogs in the middle of the woods were scary enough, but to see the words “U.S. Government”
attached to “Trespassers Will Be Shot” made me ill. Kit and I were close to being trespassers, and illegal trespassing was
definitely on our minds.
“Is this the School?” I asked, but Max wasn’t listening. She was busy with the Dobermans.
“Bandit, Gomer, it’s me!” she called out crisply to the dogs. “Stop it. Stop it
now!
Heel, you two!”
Amazingly, the growling and barking trailed off and then stopped completely. Suspicious sniffs followed. Then happy woofing
as the dogs seemed to recognize Max.
“Don’t worry,” she said to us. “They’re my friends. Their bark’s much worse than their bite,” she grinned.
“Can we get over this fence anywhere?” I asked Kit.
He started to answer when Max interrupted.
“Frannie!” she was pulling at my arm. “There’s something wrong with Bandit and Gomer. Something is really wrong with the dogs!
Please, come look at them.”
I moved closer but I didn’t need to examine Bandit and Gomer to see what had happened to them. Their black coats were dull.
Their rib cages were standing out sharply, the skin stretched taut over the bones.
“They’re pretty hungry,” I said to Max.
It was an understatement. The dogs were suffering from malnutrition. Some cruel bastard was starving them.
Kit returned from a trip down the fence. “I couldn’t find a break or access point in the wire,” he said. “Maybe around the
other way.”
“I think I can fly you both over,” Max said. It was such an unexpected statement, I nearly laughed.
“I know I can do it. I’m stronger than I look,” she insisted. She was dead serious.
“No way,” Kit told her. He was right. There was no way an eighty-pound little girl could lift an adult twice her weight against
the pull of gravity.
“Yes, I can.” Max was firm. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I know what I’m capable of.”
I listened to Max and reconsidered. I wasn’t figuring in the stress factor. Stress produces adrenaline. And also, who knew
what kind of strength Max actually did have?
“Let me try you first,” she said to me.
“I don’t think it’s a great idea, Max.”
She shrugged. “Fine. Then I’ll fly over by myself.”
I grabbed on to the chain link. I climbed a few feet and clung there. Then Max gripped me around my midsection with her strong
legs. She was definitely powerful. God, this was the strangest thing.
Holding me from behind, Max’s wings almost could have been mine. She flapped hard, then we took off. Suddenly we were suspended
in the air. Then we started upward.
I could feel a breeze rushing around me. It was cold up in these hills, and getting chillier by the minute. For a moment I
forgot everything, so focused was I on the sensation of being airborne in this unusual manner. For just the briefest instant
I could imagine that I had wings myself.
We lifted. We hovered for a second or two. And then we flew.
Not very far, but, dear God in heaven, I was definitely flying.
M
AX SET ME DOWN inside the fenced perimeter. I stared up at the grotesque and depressing rows of concertina wire. I gripped
the fence, clawed the wire with my fingers, and waited for my heart to slow. I glanced around and Max was gone.
She was already back on the other side of the fence. She was straining to lift Kit. Her legs just barely encircled him. Her
breathing was a stuttering
whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
It didn’t seem possible that she could get him airborne, but I hadn’t believed she could lift me either.
I had no idea what she could tolerate, even for a few seconds. Her wings were displacing air, but she couldn’t seem to budge
Kit up and over.
“Max, please stop. He’s too heavy for you,” I called to her. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
“No, he isn’t too heavy. I’m superstrong. You have no idea how strong I am, Frannie. I was made that way.”
On my side of the fence, the two dogs were edging up to me. Actually, they were a little too close for comfort. The female
was cutting half circles in the dust, wheeling and dancing her anxiety. The male had small, runny eyes and was rooted to the
ground about three feet away from me.
A warning rattled in his throat. His lips were peeled away from his gums, showing a pristine rack of teeth.
“Oh stop,” I told him. “Get a life.” Dogs that showed their teeth and growled, I could handle.
My eyes darted back to Max and Kit, where they were still balanced on the perimeter fence. She finally pulled away, leaving
him holding on to the wire, clinging there, trying to climb over. Finally he safely dropped back down to the ground.
“Nice try, sweetie,” I called to Max. But I could see she was upset. She didn’t like to fail. Had “they” made her that way,
too?
She immediately flew back over the fence and joined me. She said “stay” and “good doggies” to the Dobermans. She was friendly
but firm with them, and I wondered if that had anything to do with her recent escape.
Then Max was moving north away from the fence, picking up speed, heading somewhere.
I was almost jogging to keep up with her. The woods began to close around the narrow road. As each thick clump of trees was
put behind us, another came and blocked my view.
A wall of firs opened onto a copse of birch that gave way to a grove of aspens shimmering like a curtain of glass beads. My
heart was pounding, and it sounded louder to my ears than our footsteps. Without warning, the winding road opened into a sunlit
clearing.
Before us sprawled a turn-of-the-century hunting lodge, or maybe a spa resort. There were countless windows cut into the stone
face. White columns stood at the entrance. Thick vines covered the building and spilled onto the aged roof.
I looked at Max. Her pupils were the tiniest pinpoints. The irises were translucent gray disks fixed in a stare. I remembered
that birds will often contract their pupils under duress.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s the Central Colorado Induced Mutant Lab,” she said. “The School of Genetic Research. I live here.”
T
HERE WAS NO SOUND coming from the strange, eerie lodge, the place where Max had been kept, and God knows what else had happened
to her.
There were no security guards, no parked cars or trucks. No immediate threat to us. Nothing that I could see, anyway.
“It’s too quiet. Way too quiet,” Max said in a whisper. “There should be guards somewhere. We should have been able to see
them from the woods.”
“What does it mean, Max?”
“I don’t know. It’s never been like this before.”
Max and I skulked along the fringes of the clearing. We crossed quickly to one side of the building, then edged along the
stone wall to an oak door halfway down the eastern side. There wasn’t any shifting of shapes or shadows behind the many windows.
No one seemed to be around.
My confidence was growing a little bit. I took a breath, then I reached forward and groped the metal knob in my hand. The
door opened easily. We entered the strange building and the heavy door swung shut behind us.
A dank, powerful smell of decay hit me. I knew what it was and I was repulsed.
“Something’s dead,” Max said.
She was right. Something was dead for sure. Something was decomposing inside the building and the odor was acrid and strong.
We covered our noses and mouths with our hands. We continued to walk away from the front door.
Max said, “The fan must not be working.” She didn’t seem overly upset by the smell—by death.
I scanned the room for security cameras. I was certain they were there, somewhere, but I couldn’t find them. Was somebody
watching us now?
I suspected that the small room we were standing in was used for decontamination. Bright yellow scrubs were piled in a large
trash can near the door. Lab coats were hung from hooks. People worked here, didn’t they? Scientists, if they could call themselves
that. Doctors. Researchers. They were conducting illegal experiments of some kind.
There was an open metal closet filled with clean scrubs, and shelves lined with rubber-soled shoes stood next to a bank of
lockers. The lockers were empty, cleaned out.
Jesus God, what had we come to? What kind of place was this?
Max pointed to an interior door leading from the room and beckoned to me to follow her. I had the thought that this building
was like a Nazi extermination camp. They put people to sleep here. They experimented on human beings.
We followed a wide main corridor. Max’s ballet slippers were quiet, but my shoes squeaked. A long fluorescent tube flickered
above us in the ceiling. The beige-and-blue linoleum corridor unfurled in front of us and was crossed with transversing hallways.
We arrived in an open space, about fifty feet square. It was some kind of workplace. Where were we now?
“Max? What’s this?”
“It’s just offices. For business stuff. No big deal. Pretty boring.”
“What kind of business?”
She shrugged. “The boring kind. You know,
business.
”
Whatever old fixtures had once been in this part of the building were long gone. There was no wood paneling, no fireplace,
no dentil moldings, just a warren of free-standing office-style cubes. Computers squatted on desktops of dull gray steel.
A coffee pot on a file cabinet caught my eye. The pot was cracked, and a thick black gum coated the bottom.
I picked up a mug from a desk.
O.B.’s Coffee,
I read. The floating blue circle of mold told me the cup had been here at least a couple of days. Where is O.B.? Who is O.B.?
And what was dead and putrefying in the building? What had happened at this so-called School? What kind of business was conducted
in this awful place?
I glanced at Max, but she was moving again. She was home sweet home. She obviously accepted all this horror and madness as
normal. It was so quiet that even my normal breathing sounded loud. I held my breath and listened for a moment. I had a four-color
expectation that as soon as my back was turned, someone would jump out of a closed room. But no one did.
Max pushed open another door. There was a soft, clicking sound. Were they photographing us? My heart was still pounding. I
felt tired. Things were getting a little blurry. Where was Kit? Was he okay?
“This is where I work,” Max announced. “It’s usually full of doctors.”
W
E ENTERED a cavernous room that must have been sixty feet long and about half as wide. My eyes swept the workroom, quickly
took everything in. It was a standard-issue laboratory, but a good one, with top-of-the-line, very expensive equipment. Who
had funded this? Who was subsidizing this business?
There were a dozen fancy workstations. Slides were scattered everywhere on table and counter surfaces. Expensive microscopes
were stacked on shelves.
I noted a scale/beam balance and several hydrometers. There were laser spectrographs, cell culture hoods, high-speed centrifuges.
Obviously, no expense had been spared on the equipment.
A little pride crept into Max’s voice. “This is my station, Frannie. Come look. I was taught to make myself useful. So I did.
I was a good worker.”
“I’ll bet you were, sweetie.”
Max climbed up and sat proudly on a tall metal stool. Her workstation. She switched on an overhead fluorescent light. There
was a small sign on the desk: TINKERBELL LIVES.
She showed me how she had used a glass pipette to transfer droplets of DNA cocktail from a tray of small wells onto plates
of growing medium. “We run out the chromosomes by cooking them in here,” she explained.
I didn’t recognize the chrome-plated unit she pointed to, but it was a brand-new model. Before I could question her further,
Max slid down from the stool.
“Let’s go,” she said. “There’s a lot more to see.”
I followed her. “I’m right behind you.”
“I know you are. I have a really good sense of hearing.”
“So I’ve noticed. Who’s Tinkerbell?”
Max turned to me. She looked upset. “Nobody, really. She’s dead.”
Tinkerbell,
I was thinking. Was that what they called Max here at the School? I suspected it was, and that she didn’t like it. Tinkerbell
was her lab name, wasn’t it?
We passed through a smaller room filled with shiny steel cryogenic tanks. What in hell had they been freezing in there? Another,
even smaller room, contained half a dozen blood diagnostic machines.
No worn-out university equipment for these folks. They were extremely well funded. By whom? To do what?
“Mice,” said Max, pointing toward an enclosed room. “This is the Mickey Mouse room. It’s gross. Hold your nose, Frannie. I’m
not kidding. You were warned.”
The smell of death seemed to be concentrated in here. I tried to catch my breath; I
did
hold my breath, but even that didn’t help much. I thought I was going to be sick. I held back a dry heave.