D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

Arthur took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Where’s your wife now?”

“At home, as far as I know.”

“You,” Arthur said as he pointed to Steve Strange. “Take the doctor and go find his wife. Bring her to the office. If you can find out if she talked, then get whoever she talked to and bring them in as well.”

“I’m an American citizen,” the doctor said. His verbal polish gone, face flushed, eyes wide. “You can’t do this.”

Arthur grabbed the doctor by the shirt and pulled him so that their faces were an inch apart. Dr. Epstein struggled, but it was pointless. Arthur was in tremendous shape for a man his age. He could easily bench press the apparently chatty doctor.

“Listen to me, Doc. I’m only going to say this once. You’re either going to work with me or against me and, you can trust me when I say, you don’t want to be on my bad side in a situation like this. Do you understand?”

The doctor nodded violently. Arthur let him go and watched as he and Agent Strange ran from the room.

“Be fast about it,” Arthur yelled at them as the door shut. “Now, what about you?” He said as he turned to Lasu.

Sunlight filtered around the edges of a shade and provided the only light in the room. Chris sat up slowly, trying to piece together where he was and how he had gotten here. Last night came back to him slowly. Jesus Christ. Two car accidents, Miguel and his boys – he was lucky to be alive. Unbelievable. He could vaguely remember walking for miles, then hearing the music and stumbling up onto the porch. After that, it was all blank.

Bloody gauze wrapped his forearm. He touched the bulge where the unset bone pressed against the medical dressing and flashed back to the disturbing sensation of touching the jagged bone last night. He could still feel the sharpness of the bone on his fingertips. Bending his elbow sent an intense pain up his arm that rippled across his chest and up his neck. He clenched his teeth, holding in the agonizing scream.

He tried to stand but was too weak and dropped back down onto the bed. After a minute or two, he tried again, and this time got to his feet. He walked over to the door and turned the knob. Locked – from the other side.

“What the…” he muttered as he walked over to the window and lifted the shade.

A large tractor-trailer sat in the driveway below the window and several people stood next to it talking. Chris watched them for a few minutes until a man with bandages wrapped around his head noticed him and pointed. The others looked up. Chris instantly recognized one of them – Albert from Camilla Haywood’s house.

Son of a bitch! He lowered the shade and stepped back from the window. What were the odds that he had managed to stumble on Albert? Was this the McGuire place? Footsteps pounded up the stairs to his room. He stepped back as a latch snapped and the door swung open. The bandaged man stormed in, followed immediately by a woman. She slammed the door behind her.

“Why don’t you sit down, Chris?” The chiseled man said.

Chris dropped onto the corner of the bed.

Both of them stared at him as if he were some sort of strange curiosity – like he was the Yak-boy at the carnival Freak Show.

The man moved as if in pain – his features frozen in a permanent sneer. The woman was oddly familiar. As he stared at her, it came to him – she had put on some years since her picture and had blossomed into a much more beautiful woman than she had been back then.

“Sarah Burns,” he said before even fully realizing it himself.

She stared back coolly.

“You do exist,” Chris said, trying to get her to respond. He wanted to hear her voice.

“I do,” she replied finally.

The man leapt into the conversation, “How the hell did you find us?”

“Who are you?” Chris asked.

The man’s foot kicked out and slammed into his arm. The blast of pain nearly knocked him off the bed as he screamed. He clutched his arm but there was no dulling the searing pain.

“You’re not asking questions here, buddy. I am and if you get cute, I’m going to do the same thing again. Got it?”

Chris didn’t respond. The pain in his arm was unbearable and he flinched as the man pulled his foot back to kick him again.

“Do you get it?” He said again as he stood on one foot with the other cocked.

Chris nodded. “Yes,” he squeaked through gritted teeth.

“Now I’m going to ask again. How did you find us?”

Chris looked first at the man and then at Sarah, expecting to see compassion on her face. Instead all he saw was nothing – an emotionless mask. Her widely set grey eyes above her high, defined cheekbones fixed on him unwaveringly – clinically, as if he were an experiment in a petri dish. Compassion was definitely not in her vocabulary.

He quickly evaluated his options, but unfortunately he couldn’t think of any that were truly viable, other than telling them what they wanted to hear.

“I followed Albert,” he said. “I was at Camilla Haywood’s house in Malibu, and I talked to him. He told me he was moving stuff back to her other house. When I saw him heading north on the highway, I followed him.”

“How did you end up at Camilla’s house?” Sarah asked.

“Pell told me about her,” Chris replied.

“Who’s Pell?” She asked.

“He’s with the FBI – Agent Paul Pelletier.”

Sarah pulled up a chair and sat down.

“Is the FBI with you?” The man asked.

Chris shook his head. He didn’t want to tell them that he was alone, but he didn’t want them to panic either. If they were to pack up and abandon this place, his body would probably be one of the few things that they left behind.

“I did it on my own,” Chris said. “Pell’s back in Boston. He’s got his own troubles with the FBI. When he couldn’t come out here to chase down the only real lead we had, I came.”

The man and Camilla exchanged glances before the man said, “Albert told us you said you were with the FBI and that—”

Chris shook his head, “No, I’m not. I just said that to try to get him to talk to me.”

“Are you sure,” the man said, cocking his foot again.

“Absolutely, I’m just a guy caught up in all this bullshit. That’s it.”

“You’ve been a thorn in our side since that night up at the Wild Bear,” the man said.

Chris glared at him. So he was the one sent to the Wild Bear to kill him. Probably the same guy that blew the place up as well. Actually, he looked a lot like one of the men he had seen crossing the parking lot at the FBI office in Bangor – not good.

“David Rose brought me into this whole mess,” Chris said. “I was just fishing at my camp, taking a little R and R, and the next thing I know, I’m being chased by you people. You forced me to go to the Feds.”

Sarah sat down in a ladder back chair, crossed her long, denim-clad legs and folded her hands in her lap. “Everyone has been in the wrong place at the wrong time at one point in their lives, Chris. That day when David’s plane went down was just your time.”

“Maybe so,” Chris replied. “You tried to kill me. For someone who wants to save the world, you’re pretty violent.”

“Don’t tell us our business,” the agitated man said as his foot lashed out again and connected with Chris’ tender arm, causing him to scream out as he fell to the floor. The room spun. The overwhelming pain made it hard to breathe, to think. He teetered on the brink of consciousness.

They let him writhe on the floor in agony for several minutes before the man pulled him back up onto the bed. He drew a pistol from behind his back, placed the steel barrel against Chris’ temple, and cocked the hammer.