Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

"But what if she freaks out?" Now he was catching on.

Tegg remained silent. "Oh, I get it," said Maybeck. He smiled.

Those teeth were anybody's nightmare. "Yes, I think you do, Donald," Tegg encouraged. "I think you're finally catching on."

Michael Washington was lost. He had followed the old railroad grade for most of Saturday, had slept near a marsh that wasn't on the topo-map, and now was stuck in a thickly wooded, second generation forest. A moment before, having climbed high into a treetop, he had spotted a small cabin and Quonset hut poised in a remote and secluded clearing. He consulted the map once again, hoping this old homestead, a few of which appeared as small black squares on the map, might serve as a landmark and help him to determine his location. Nothing doing. He couldn't find anything like it on the map.

The problem was not the map, he thought, but him. For the better part of the morning he had been consumed with trying to debug a software subroutine, all in his head, while hiking the old railroad grade. He worked as a programmer for Microsoft in a division developing a database program that remained a closely guarded company secret. Weekends, he backpacked alone, exploring new territory-this part of the country was sure a hell of a lot different from Cleveland! — working out problems in his head, de-stressing. It left him mentally refreshed and physically satisfied by Monday morning when his twelve-hour, work-a-day world began again. Not infrequently, these sojourns left him briefly off-trail-lost.

This was not his first venture into this region. Through trial and error he had explored quite a piece of the South Fork of the Tolt and areas south toward Snoqualmie Falls. Even the old railroad grade was no stranger to him-it provided sure footing and a slightly elevated trail to follow. Each weekend, he expanded his knowledge of the area as he mentally ticked down imagined lines of source code in his head, searching for solutions to various problems inherent in the program. He was something of a superstar in a company of superstars. He didn't think of himself this way, but he knew that others did. Probably because he was Afro-American. If you had any brains at all, if you made it up even one rung of the ladder, coworkers and supervisors took notice. You were the exception not the rule. If you solved all the problems that stumped the Golden Wizards, they considered you a genius. Unwittingly, Michael found himself in this strange, even burdensome position. Now he was expected to solve the more difficult problems.

His immediate problem was to find his way to his car. By his calculations he was still a good two or three miles from where he had parked it, and none of this looked like familiar territory, especially the cabin and Quonset he had momentarily glimpsed. About all he could do now was to ask directions or try to connect with a dirt road that might eventually lead him to an identifiable landmark. It would be dark in another three or four hours; he couldn't afford too much more "exploring."

Despite the numerous NO TRESPASSING signs he encountered, Michael Washington walked in the direction of the buildings. He respected other people's right to privacy as much as the next guy, but lost was lost. Although it wasn't exactly an emergency, these people would have to be sympathetic to a person being lost.

Surrounded by thick forest, his only indication that he was nearing the small farm were these posted threats which occurred with an increasing frequency. When eventually he met with a sign that read PASS AT YOUR OWN RISK, he began to wonder what kind of people these were. He was no stranger to the occasional news story of the survivalists, racial extremists, and psychotic killers who hermited the woods of the Northwest. The warnings were quite explicit; perhaps it was a better idea to just move on and avoid the place. Obey the signs. But Michael Washington was too practical, too logical to pass up a chance to establish his location. He wasn't after a ride. He didn't need help. All he needed was the slightest indication on the map of where the hell he was. He stood in front of this final warning for only as long as it took the light rain to start up again. That did it! He was going to find his way out of here if it was the last thing he ever did.

It was.

The structure was thirty feet long and about as wide. At the far end, rain leaked in across the poured-cement floor. The canopy of corrugated metal that arched overhead reminded the woman of an airplane hangar. Rain beat down on it like hailstones. Her ears rang from it. She had awakened in a cage-a dog pen, she now realized by looking around. Constructed of chain-link wire mesh and galvanized pipe, the cage appeared to be about eight feet long by four feet wide, and too low to stand up in. There were dogs in nearly all the cages. She was naked, lying on a brown burlap sack. She had no idea what time it was, who she was 'where she was, or what had happened to her. Some kind of nightmare. The reality of her situation slowly seeped in. She remembered the two men in her house. She remembered the needle in her arm. She tried to sit up. Pain screamed from her side; her arm tangled in an I.V. tube. She recalled a devastatingly bright light and another warm surge of drugs. Again, she tried to sit UP, the pain even more intense. Her hand fell to her side, and she felt the bandage there. Panic overcame her. Dogs. A cage! Naked. There was a bucket behind her, a roll of toilet paper alongside of it. Against the wall, an automatic waterer. The IN. bag was clamped to the overhead wire of the cage. Drip, drip, drip: She could see it feeding her. She rolled to get a better look at the bandage. It was several inches long, redness seeping into the skin around its edges. She felt overtaken by a sudden burst of nausea, rolled to her side, and vomited.

Had she awakened before this? She couldn't remember. She felt completely disoriented. There was nothing here that fit into her reality. it was almost as if this were happening to someone else. She really had believed it to be some kind of intense nightmare at first, one of those in which everything is too real, tactile, painful, and emotionally all-encompassing. But there was no question as to the reality of her situation. If she had awakened prior to this, her situation had not taken hold. Only now, as the dogs began stirring in their cages, as the pain in her side reached an excruciating level, did she begin to grasp her circumstances.

She began to collect herself. There were eight adjacent cages against each of the Quonset hut's two long walls, a cement aisle separating them. The building's only door was to her right. Her cage was sandwiched between two others that were empty. At the far end of the building, to her left, a cage was stacked high with sacks of dog food. Across the aisle to her left a gas heater suspended from the high ceiling emitted a warm wind which blew directly onto her. Perhaps, she thought, that heater explained her placement in this particular cage.

She counted twelve dogs. Some of them carried partially healed scars. She felt dizzy at the sight of those scars. A kennel? She sat up, slowly, overcoming the pain, driven by the need to get out of here. There was a weight on her neck. She grabbed for it, tugged, but it was thick and heavy. A collar of some sort. Only now did she realize all the dogs were also wearing such collars. Big collars, with a heavy black lump attached. She knew what that lump was-a battery; she understood the purpose of these collars. She pulled at it again; her fingers touched a small padlock-it was locked around her neck! She panicked. She crawled on hands and knees over to the chain-link door and grabbed hold. Her collar sounded a brief electronic alarm. It failed to register on her mind as a warning, instead, invoking further panic. She shook the cage door violently.