D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

Chris started the car and accelerated out of the parking lot across the busy street. Several cars’ horns blared as he cut them off. He focused on Albert, who was about a hundred yards in front of him. The Suburban’s size made it easy to follow in the moderate traffic. After half an hour of tailing him, Chris relaxed. Albert obviously had lied about his destination.

Heading north with the ocean on his left seemed inherently wrong and threw off his normally excellent sense of direction but the scenery more than made up for it. The highway wound between towering hills on his right, covered with magnificent stilt legged houses, and swaths of white sand beaches speckled with early sun worshippers to his left. He’d hate to live in one of those houses when the big one hits. He envisioned them tumbling down the hillside, spewing debris before shattering into a million pieces. How could people live with that constant threat hanging over them? As a born and bred Yankee, he couldn’t do it. Throw a few feet of snow his way in a blizzard, or one hundred ten percent humidity in the middle of a scorching summer heat wave, no problem. But earthquakes? No thanks.

Seeing and following Albert was the biggest break he’d gotten all day and as he tailed him, his mind wandered back to Karen. They had always talked about flying out to LA for a vacation, renting a sports car, and driving up coastal Route 1 to Seattle.

“That one’s never going to happen,” he said to the wind. His arm rested on the door, and the warm air flowed over it, soothing him. But each time his thoughts turned to Karen his blood pressure skyrocketed. Would he ever be able to give someone that much of himself again? He’d always coveted his trust – not giving it out freely. If you don’t earn it, you don’t get it – it was that simple.

“He was just babbling,” Carl said to the doctor and his intern. “He doesn’t know what’s going on.”

“Do we have to put any containment protocols in place?” The doctor asked.

“No, definitely not,” Carl replied. The doctor glared silently back at Carl.

“I need to notify our administrator. I’m not comfortable with this.”

“There’s nothing to be uncomfortable about,” Carl said. “He’s just an agent that went bad and shot a cop. That’s it.”

“But what about what he said? He was definitely talking about a virus.”

“He’s wounded, almost died, drugged, you can’t take what he said as fact.”

“In my experience, patients in his state never lie. They may lose their inhibitions but they don’t lie. I’m bringing in my management now,” the doctor said. “I know what I heard and we have specific protocols that we have to follow in situations like this. It’s simple. We—”

Carl’s face reddened with every word from the doctor’s mouth. “I don’t care what you heard. I’m telling you your protocols don’t apply here.”

“I’m afraid that’s not your call.”

Carl exchanged a quick glance with Irving then said, “Fine, if I tell you what’s really happening will you work with us to bring him out of it so we can interrogate him.”

Pell’s heart pounded as he rounded the last turn. He was in the lead, but someone was closing fast. His lungs burned as he tried to suck in enough air to keep him going. An unusually large crowd lined the track for the meet at Braintree High School. He was running the 800 meter – his specialty – and he could see the finish line up ahead. He wanted to peek behind him but to save precious milliseconds, didn’t. The quickening drumbeat of footsteps of the runner closing the gap behind him were getting louder with each second.

The crowd cheered. Pell, Pell, Pell. He leaned forward and pushed himself to the limit. The finish line neared. The runner behind him no longer gained. He was going to win. He could feel it. These Regionals would be his biggest victory ever – next stop, the state championship.

Twenty yards to go. Fifteen. Ten. Nothing could stop him now. As he closed in on the finish line he glanced at the crowd on the side of the track. His friends and family cheered him on, screaming, jumping up and down, and chanting his name over and over. Out of nowhere, two men in blue overcoats and suits stood quietly in the middle of the frenzied crowd. They were motionless and emotionless as they glared at him.

He knew them and didn’t know them at the same time. They weren’t from here – this time at least. His focus was gone, but fortunately his momentum wasn’t as he sailed across the finish line, still looking at the out-of-place men.

He won. The crowd engulfed him. It was almost a new record – a couple of hundredths off. As he celebrated, he forgot about the somber men until a firm, cold hand clenched onto his shoulder.

Pell turned to find one of the men standing directly beside him. “We’ve got to talk,” he said.

He looked back at the revelers, but they had moved on without him, carrying his victory on to the celebration.

“We’ve got to talk,” the man echoed.

Pell awoke and looked around the unfamiliar room in complete confusion. The two men from his dream were there outside the door looking at him through the window and talking to each other. But where was he? At first, he thought that maybe he had been on a bender and blacked out, but slowly it came back to him – the trip to New Hampshire, showing up at Chris’ house, and finally being left in the car outside the hospital. A hospital in Boston.

He looked at the men again. Carl Moscovitz. He’s probably got a hard-on over what they’re going to do to me.

As he stared at the equipment around him, a middle-aged strawberry blond nurse walked into the room. Their eyes met, and she gave him the nicest of smiles. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a prettier face as she walked over to his bedside.

“You’re awake,” she said softly. “You’re in the Intensive Care Unit at Mass General, Mr. Pelletier.”

His throat was extremely dry, but he managed to crackle, “How long have I been here?”

“Just over twelve hours. They found you outside in your car last night.”

“Could I have some water?”

The nurse filled a cup, and poured it into his parched mouth, before checking the dials and equipment around the bed.

“Are you comfortable?”

He felt stoned and in little pain. They were pumping him with some powerful narcotics. He nodded in reply.

“There are two men outside from the FBI that want to talk to you Mr. Pelletier. One of them was here all night,” the nurse explained as she motioned with her head to Carl and Irving standing eagerly outside the room. “Do you feel up to it?”

“I suppose so,” said Pell.

“Our Head of Critical Care agreed to let them have five minutes with you. Do you understand?” She said with a bright smile.

Pell said he did and she waved the men in before saying, “I’ll be back in five minutes.”

Carl didn’t wait long before starting in. “So what happened in New Hampshire yesterday, Pell? You shot a cop. Do you remember that?”

Pell winced and asked, “Did he make it?”

“He –,” Irving said.

“No,” Carl said. “He died this morning. So that’s two fellow law-enforcement professionals that you’ve killed. That’s got to be some kind of a record.”

“It was an accident,” he said in a raspy, weak voice.

“Wasn’t that what you said about Allen Jenkins? I just can’t believe you did it again. Take some responsibility, man.”

Pell grimaced. He truly wished that he had died yesterday.

“He was going to arrest me. Why were they after me anyway?”

“You were interfering with a federal investigation, going against my direct orders. You forced my hand.”