Lippe Simone - Blank

Ray waited at the double swinging doors back into the now pitch-black hall of rubber rooms. The doctor exited the office in his gunfighter stance and moved with the slow confidence of a hunter who believes that he has all the time he needs to track a single wounded target. Ray disappeared into the hall where he hoped his loyal bodyguard was still waiting.

The emergency lighting was completely gone now and the hall could have been filled with Leonards for all Ray could see. He moved to the next doors and waited until he saw the doctor follow him into the darkness.

Outside the doors there was just enough ambient light to show no sign of Leonard. Doubtless he was with his new friends. Ray stepped into the first treatment room and stood in the shadows and waited. He heard Doctor Spivic leave the dark hall and walk in what seemed like a direct line to Ray’s hiding place. Ray took a deep breath and held it in an effort to slow down his heart to roughly the rate of some furniture. The steps continued to approach and Ray could see the edge of a shadow outside the door.

At that moment a grunt of contentment issued from the common area. It was the happy sound of a tribe of hungry amnesiacs who’ve discovered a cafeteria full of food and it was just enough to attract Dr. Spivic, who moved away from Ray’s door and down the hall. Ray allowed himself a single breath. As the steps faded to silence he returned to breathing almost normally but still didn’t move, preferring to give Leonard whatever time he needed to deal with the enemy.

Minutes passed with no sound and Ray relaxed just enough to take a small step onto broken glass. Ray was in the same room in which he’d discovered consciousness and he’d stepped on the shards with a crackle that sounded in Ray’s state like a crystal decanter thrown against a marble wall. The steps started coming back.

But there was more than one set of steps. Leonard had killed or possibly befriended Dr. Spivic and they were coming back to offer him some of the bounty from the cafeteria. And sure enough Ray’s massive silhouette appeared at the door.

“Leonard” Ray whispered, but only because he was hoarse from holding his breath. Leonard looked at him but didn’t see him because where his eyes had been were the hubs of two massive hypodermic needles. Leonard reached out for Ray or for comfort or support but found none before crashing to the floor at Ray’s feet. Behind him was Dr. Spivic, re-armed and smiling that evasive, unreadable smile. He stepped over Leonard and into the darkness.

Ray covered his face in time to sacrifice his forearm for his eyes as two needles plunged into him. He pulled his arm away before the needles could be removed for reuse and felt them break off under his skin. He put the other arm up but this time the needles sank into his stomach, were pulled out again and stabbed into his thighs. Ray thrashed like a blind man fighting off a swarm of bees.

When his left hand found the sink Ray held out his right arm as bait and it was quickly accepted. Needles sunk into his arm and he found the doctor’s neck with his hand. Thus guided in the darkness Ray positioned the needle he’d pulled from Leonard’s hand on Dr. Spivic’s neck and pushed, changed direction enough to pin the trachea to the esophagus, and threaded the needle through so that it came out into his hand.

The assault stopped immediately. Ray held the hypodermic in place, anchored in his own hand, and waited while the doctor drowned. It took a nauseatingly long time.

The room was indeed a clinical laboratory. There Ray found disinfectants and bandages and tiny pliers that seemed disturbingly well-suited to the task of removing hypodermic needles broken off under the skin. He cleaned off as much blood as would come off and changed into hospital scrubs and a laboratory coat and began investigating his new working environment.

The room was lit by exterior windows and the fading evening sun. There were storage cabinets built onto the walls above a neatly organized countertop of beakers and boxes and medical instruments. The remaining wall at the far end had only an open and empty safe built into it. In the middle of the room was a working surface with sinks and nothing else but a single sheet of paper with a note written in the same clean academic hand in which Ray had learned of his criminal past.

I am Doctor Thomas Spivic, head of neuropsychology at this hospital. It’s likely that I’ve isolated a vaccine to the solar flare radiation that’s wiping the memories of entire populations.

I’ve only been able to prepare a very small amount and I’m going to have to administer it to myself. I regret what appears to be an act of wholesale ego but if there’s going to be a broader vaccine then I’m the only one who can produce it. I don’t know what my mental state will be so I’ve prepared a limited number of doses with written instructions on their application. To prevent their use by anyone but myself I’ve locked them in the safe in this laboratory and written the combination on my arm.

At first there was nothing but road and only time and space for the road rushing forward like a slamming door. And then in the same instant there were cars and trucks and lamp posts and people and noise and no more space for road in the dense obstacle course and the realization that she was part of the chaos with her foot flat on the accelerator and hand on the steering wheel and less than no time at all to react.

She geared straight from fourth to first and swerved onto the sidewalk around a growing wall of wreckage pulling cars to it like a magnet. Then she was back on the road and accelerating through the impossibly thin slice of space and time between an oncoming tour bus and the wreckage before threading through out-of-control cars in the wrong lane.

Then her feet were on the clutch and the brakes and she was turning hard into a tight spin and abrupt stop neatly tucked into the jackknife of an articulated semi-trailer. And then all was silence and settling dust and bewilderment. She had been newly born behind the wheel of a fast car at the center of an enormous traffic accident and she didn’t know who she was or how she got there or how she’d survived.

Her harbor of refuge in the angle of the transport trailers was entirely surrounded by a doomscape skyline of wrecked cars piled two and three high with spinning tires and knocking engines. The little red sports car to whom she owed her life, and vice-versa, was entombed. She turned off the ignition and looked for clues to any of the countless mysteries.

On the passenger seat was a lacquered wicker hand bag and in it she found a phone. She dialed 911 to hear a recording telling her that she needed to wait and that her emergency was very important and would be dealt with shortly. She didn’t believe that so she hung up and scrolled through the contacts, recognizing no one until she found “Dad” to whom, she reasoned, she was related. But Dad wasn’t available and she felt unqualified to leave a message. There was a wallet in the purse with a California driver’s license. She was Honor Lee, she was 28 years old and pretty with black hair and sharp oriental eyes, she lived in Beverly Hills, and she was legally entitled to drive a car.

Doubtless someone else will have called emergency services and there’d be sirens soon and when the more dire physical injuries and death had been addressed she could ask someone to take her to a hospital. Then she’d have to convince a doctor that her amnesia was unrelated to the traffic accident, that she was aware of everything seconds before it happened and nothing else at all, everything else was a complete blank. Honor left the security of the car.