Crooked River

63

Pamela Gladstone sat in the gleaming white laboratory, bound to the wheelchair. Her lips tingled faintly from the tape the doctor had just pulled away. He’d done it carefully, to cause as little discomfort as possible. Odd how such a demon of a man could nevertheless act with a doctor’s habitual gentleness.

Somehow the gag had been the worst, worse even than the binding of her arms and legs. She opened her mouth wide, gulping in air, then willing herself to stop hyperventilating. The desperate need to cry out abated. The racing of her heart slowed... but only slightly.

Over the last several hours, Gladstone had felt herself veering between mounting terror and a detached disbelief. Everything had happened so fast — the sudden flight, that awful chase through the swamp, the spotlights and stutter of machine guns, Wallace’s horrible death, the helicopter ride... and now this.

She had always prided herself on her courage and independence. Back there she’d put on as brave a show as possible. But this injection... She hoped desperately it was some ruse to force them to talk. Despite the terror of the last few hours, one thought had kept her going: that somehow Pendergast would save them. She had sensed from the beginning that he was a man of rare competence. But now Pendergast had been taken away and only the doctor and his orderlies remained, watching her and waiting... waiting. And her wheelchair had been placed in the middle of the room... where the tiled floor sloped slightly down to a large, gleaming industrial drain.

A sudden wave of terror flooded through her. “Pendergast!” she cried, struggling with her bonds. “Pendergast!”

Silence for a moment. Then, the amplified voice of the general, coming over a speaker high in the wall: “Bring in the parang. Then follow standard procedures.”

She was hyperventilating again, and this time she had a more difficult time overcoming it.

She could do this. She’d overcome worse. It was absurd to think that she could be forced to amputate her own leg. She thought back to the time when her kayak had capsized off Sitka Sound. Or five years ago, skiing off-piste on the glaciers of La Grave, when one of their party had fallen in a crevasse and dislocated a shoulder, and she had roped up and gone in to bring her out. It was all about keeping her cool; keeping control.

Everything depended on keeping control.

A steel door in one side of the lab opened, and an orderly wheeled in a gurney. An object lay upon it, covered with a hospital sheet. She watched as the orderly placed the gurney five feet from her, locked its wheels, whisked off the sheet, and walked back toward the door. A large knife lay on the gurney: a sort of machete but heavier and longer, with a blade that took an odd bend about a quarter of the way down its length. The edge was sharpened to a silvery gleam, but the body and spine of the blade were a mottled grayish-black. Its shape reminded her of a giant slug. The end was encased in a derringer-shaped handle of wood, well worn...

She looked away, toward the doctor and two orderlies.

The doctor nodded at one, who came over behind her and began undoing the leather straps that bound her. She suddenly had a thought: as soon as she was free, she could seize the blade and use it to escape. As the orderly unbuckled her ankles, legs, and elbows, she began to plot out each movement in her mind. But then the other orderly came over and pinned her arms even as she was being freed, holding her immobile. She struggled, but he held her fast in what felt like a long-practiced maneuver.

“You bastards, let me go!” she cried, struggling again.

“Soon,” the doctor said in a high, penetrating voice. “Very soon.”

They stood her up, and one orderly whisked the wheelchair away while the other continued to hold her in an iron grip. He leaned in toward her ear. “I’m going to release you. Stop struggling.”

She went quiet and felt his grip ease. Then, after a brief fumbling, the orderly quickly stepped back. She hesitated, then took a step toward the weapon.

“Not yet,” said the other orderly sharply. He held a gun, pointing it at her.

She froze as the doctor and the two orderlies backed up toward the metal door, one keeping the gun trained on her. The other grasped a cabinet on wheels and moved it away. As they reached the steel door, the doctor glanced back at her. His hazel eyes had lost none of their brightness, and they regarded her with a brief, intense curiosity. Then he turned and followed the others through the door, which closed quietly behind him.

She turned away again, and as she did her eyes once more fell on the blade — what the general had called a parang. Its full import — why it was there, what it was intended for — fell on her like an iron cloak. She limped back to the far wall, all the time staring at the gurney and its blade. It was still a potential weapon of defense, of rescue. She wanted to touch it, to take it up and use it against those who had done this to her, to get out of this hellish place. But the logical part of her mind said to her, Don’t touch it.

“No,” she said aloud. “No, no, no...!”

With great effort she rallied her thoughts, pushing away the fear and despair in an effort to logically assess her situation. Everything depends on keeping control.

The serum had been administered to her — what? Forty-five minutes ago? The doctor said it took an hour to take effect.

Dear God, it was hard to think rationally...

Everyone in the room had left. She glanced up at the long mirrored window. On the other side, they were watching. Waiting...

Don’t. She had to put all irrelevant thoughts aside, confront the situation head-on, if she hoped to have any chance of beating this—

No. That was wrong. She would beat this. The idea that she would cut herself with that cruel-looking thing was crazy.

She looked around. The lab was fully equipped with IV racks and monitors and just about any other kind of equipment necessary to run an ER. There were cabinets along the wall that might contain pharmaceuticals and syringes. If she could arm herself with a scalpel, or better yet several, maybe she could hide them in her clothing, and when they came back in... Except for that damned one-way mirror. There was no place in the lab out of its view. They were all watching, watching her every movement. Still...

She walked to the wall with the cabinets. Why was it so difficult to move?

Then she realized: it was the limp. It had first manifested when she’d left the wheelchair: now, five minutes later, it was far more pronounced. It must have been from the tight bonds that held her in the chair, or maybe she’d hurt herself during the chase or in one of the struggles that followed.

She stopped in midstride and glanced down at her right leg. She could see nothing wrong with it. She raised it, swung it back and forth at the knee, like a pendulum. No pain, no restriction of movement. She returned it to the floor, ready to continue forward, and it was only as the sole of her foot touched the cold tile that she realized something was wrong. It was strange, leaden, and from a tingling line above the ankle it didn’t look or feel right.

It was not her foot. They had done something to it. They had grafted—

For a moment, she froze in terror. And then she realized: this thought was completely insane. Of course it was her foot. She forced the perverse idea from her head and continued to the cabinets. They were unlocked, but she found nothing inside them but gauze, gowns, surgical cloths, hairnets, and masks.

She kept looking. It occurred to her that if she couldn’t find a weapon, she might find a drug — a tranquilizer, or a strong narcotic, or even anesthesia: something that would put her out of commission until whatever strange feeling was creeping over her had passed.

Nothing. The cart that orderly had wheeled out probably contained anything that might be of use to her. To hurt someone — or even medicate herself.

Her eye stole back over to the parang, gleaming on the table. Now, that was a fearsome weapon. It would disembowel any of those bastards with a single swipe...

Don’t touch it.

With a stab of fear and frustration, she turned away, heading across the room toward the mirror. The limp was even more pronounced now. And then it became clear that limp wasn’t really the right term. She simply could not stand the sensation of that thing touching the ground.

That thing. That “thing” was her foot. Her own foot. Everything depends on keeping control...

She stared up at the mirror. She knew the general was staring back at her, and perhaps the doctor as well. She wanted to curse them, but Christ, she felt strange. She slumped down and heard a clattering beside her. It was the parang. Its long cruel blade, exquisitely sharp, lay beside her, edge glistening in the lights.

How did it get there?

She must have picked it up on her way past the gurney.

She edged away from it. “Pendergast!” she yelled at the mirror. “Are you there? Pendergast!”

With great effort, she mastered herself again. This did not need to happen. She was not like those victims who had cut off their own feet. She knew what the drug did. That knowledge was power.

But even as she told herself this, she found herself looking toward the foot at the end of her right leg. Strange how she’d never realized before. How could she have lived so many years without noticing the mistake? That foot wasn’t hers. It was hot and dull, as if infected. In fact, she could even feel the pathogens crawling up the blood vessels like tiny insects, attempting to make their way into her otherwise healthy body...

No, she told herself.

She tried to summon her thoughts, but she couldn’t focus. Try as she might, her old memories and her sense of control were being overwhelmed by that alien lump. She examined it closely, trying to detect exactly what was wrong, unable to look away. It was like driving past a car accident, where you didn’t really want to see, but you couldn’t help staring.

They had done something. Replaced her foot, grafted something on there. Something that felt — in an awful way she had no words to describe — too much. Her body didn’t need it. Her body didn’t want it. She...

“NO!” This time, she yelled aloud. She glanced up at the clock: more than an hour had passed.

They were watching, the sick bastards. She wasn’t going to give them the show they wanted. She tried to take deep breaths, empty her mind of the fear and revulsion.

Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.

Even as she repeated this to herself, she realized she was still staring at the foot.

DON’T DO IT. DON’T DO IT. DON’T DO IT...

Without her knowing it, the parang was now back in her hand. She gave a shriek and scrambled back, but somehow it remained in a grip she was unable to loosen. But when that right foot hit the ground, the soft revulsive sensation overwhelmed her with nausea.

It’s just the drug, she told herself. That’s your real foot. It’s normal, not some infected piece of meat.

She had to move her focus away from it. With an immense force of will, she went back to a game she had played in her childhood. She’d been tall for her age in grade school, and gangly, and people made fun of her. But she could escape the humiliation by tuning that out and retreating into a private garden of her imagination: a Technicolor glade where the grass was a bright green, the foliage lush and particolored, and in which she herself was a white horse with a flowing mane, running free and wild.

It had worked when she was young, and as she concentrated it worked again now — she was able to slow the breath that escaped in gasps, open her hand, and drop the weapon. It fell to the tile floor with a loud ringing sound. Taking a step back, she closed her eyes tight against the brightness, the maddeningly regular rows of tile. She was able to control her breathing. She opened her eyes again and looked up at that mirrored window behind which the general watched as if she were a mouse in a cage. “Fuck you,” she said out loud. “It’s not working.”

No answer, no reaction. Well, no matter. She could resist this. She was going to win. She’d sit down in a corner of the lab, the parang in hand, wait there until someone came back, and then she’d overpower them and escape. She’d use the parang on them instead of herself.

The parang was at hand — she picked it up, stood, and walked toward the corner. But this fresh effort at walking was pure horror, every step like squeezing a bag of poison into her body. She staggered and, unable to balance, abruptly sat down on the tile floor.

DON’T DO IT. DON’T DO IT. DON’T DO IT. DON’T DO IT...

She was gasping again, sweat beading her brow, slicking her palms as she slowly, deliberately, held up the blade and turned it in the light. Another wave of nausea swept over her, and she choked and doubled over in pain. There was poison in that foot and it was going to kill her — it was killing her.

DON’T. DON’T. DON’T...

With a supreme effort of will, she tried to recall the white horse again, the enchanted garden of her childhood. But all that came was a white and green fog of confusion, into which a rotting horse staggered, oozing fluids from its eyes. Her entire consciousness, every particle of energy, was fixated on that disgusting thing attached to her. She drew it up toward her thigh, horrified at the thought that others might see it. Oh God, if only she were free of it...

Free.

She looked at it, breathing even faster now. She could see where the parasitic thing had attached itself. She could see the very spot: just an inch or so above her ankle.

Free yourself. Free yourself. Free yourself...

It was incredible that she could have missed it. She could actually see, feel, like an invisible line across her skin, the precise area where the pores and freckles became no longer hers. Abhorrence rose in her like a tidal wave. It was unbearable.

She heard, in her mind, the rotting horse pause, issue a scream of fear.

FREE YOURSELF. FREE YOURSELF. FREE YOURSELF...

A terrible anger rose in her as she looked at the foot. The parang was in her hand, the long, sharp edge glittering in the light, a thing of beauty. It wasn’t a weapon. It was an instrument — an instrument of freedom.

FREE YOURSELF. FREE YOURSELF. FREE YOURSELF...

She brought it over, laid its blade on the skin of her calf. It felt cool. It felt empowering. Now she lifted it and slid it gently along the spot where the alien foot had attached itself to her body. She repeated the motion, drawing the edge across with just a little more pressure. A thin line of red appeared, and she felt a flood of relief. It hadn’t hurt at all. The sense of freedom was enormous, overwhelming. This was the solution, she now realized. Having the leg drawn up like this made things easier. Best to excise the parasite quickly. She steeled herself. She knew she could do it. In times of crisis, she’d always acted decisively.

She took a deep breath, then raised the parang above her head. She felt the muscles of her hand tighten around the handle. She could save herself from this. It was all a matter of self-determination and control. Everything depends on keeping control...

She took in another long, shuddering breath. And then, as she brought the blade down with all her strength, an image flickered briefly across her mind’s eye: a beautiful white horse, restored to health and vigor once again, running through a verdant garden, proud and free — and then, abruptly, stumbling as its fragile front legs cracked like brittle sticks, the animal screaming in pain as it fell into a cloud of dark, miasmic dust.