Ted Kosmatka - Prophet of Bones

“Fucking watch your aim when you go,” Redbeard said. “Don’t be pissing all over the back of the van.”

Paul knelt and fumbled with his pants.

Lilli looked up at him. “Do you want me to…”

“What?”

“Hold the bottle?”

“Jesus, no. Just… I got it.”

The van took a curve in the road, and Paul swayed. After a moment of fumbling, he said, “Okay, yeah.”

It went easier than he expected. One hand on the side of the van for balance, the other on himself.

The distinct sound of urination filled the van. He heard laughter from up front.

“You watching your aim, right?” the driver called back.

“You’ll see my aim when I throw this on you.”

“Do that and I’ll shoot you. For real. I will pull this van over and shoot you.”

“If you could shoot me, you would have.”

“Then I’ll shoot her. Or let her ride in the other van.”

Paul was silent. He finished pissing and zipped up.

“It’s like dealing with fucking children,” the red-bearded man said to himself.

Paul buckled his belt. “What do you want me to do with it?”

There was more fumbling from the front seat. A moment later, the lid was tossed back. Paul screwed the top on and tossed the bottle to the far back of the van.

They drove for another hour. Finally, Lilli asked, “And what about me?”

“What about you?”

“I have to go.”

“Je-zus,” the driver said, and made no other comment.

Lilli laid her head on Paul’s shoulder and asked, “Where are they taking us?”

“I don’t know,” Paul said.

“We’re not getting out of this, are we?”

Paul didn’t answer.

He held her against his chest. He felt her trembling. After a while, the trembling stopped.

A few minutes later, they pulled to the side of the road. At first Paul thought they’d arrived at whatever destination they’d been traveling to, but then the men stepped out to urinate in the weeds. After a minute the van door slid open.

“Get out.”

Paul and Lilli exited. Blinking up at the bright sun. “Your turn,” the driver said to Lilli. She held up her shackled wrist.

The man turned to look at the second van, which had pulled to a stop just behind theirs. It sat idling a dozen yards back. In it, Paul figured, was Gavin’s body. Also, the creature. He wondered if they kept it caged or if it only sat in the back of the van. He wondered if it was watching them through the glass.

The driver pointed to the van. “If you run, we let it out again.”

“I won’t run.”

The man unlocked Lilli’s handcuff. She rubbed her wrist. She stepped forward and squatted in the shallow ditch along the road.

Even with the driver’s warning still in his ears, Paul considered their odds. His head was a bit better now. The effects of the concussion had faded over the hours. He counted the men. Two in the van. And two more in the van behind them—one of those, shot. But there was the thing, too, in the van. The thing he didn’t have a name for. They wouldn’t have a chance if they ran. Even without the men and the guns, they wouldn’t have a chance.

Lilli stood and straightened her tattered dress.

“Now back in the van,” the driver said.

They climbed in and the man slammed the door.

“Throw these back on,” he said and tossed the handcuffs back.

Paul handcuffed them together like before. Using opposite arms this time, though.

The driver from the other van walked up to the window and dropped a bag from Burger King into the front seat.

“Did you get no pickles?”

“Yeah, no pickles.”

“No tomato?”

“No pickles, no fucking tomatoes, just like you like. Eat.”

The man fished two wrappers out of the bag. He tossed them back to Paul, along with a two-liter of Coke. “For both of you.”

He started the engine and pulled away from the curb, heading back to the highway.

Paul lay back as the van picked up speed. Lilli lay on his chest. At some point, he slept.

Paul woke to the sound of tires on gravel. He didn’t sit up to look.

When he was a small child, his family had sometimes gone on short road trips into the city. They’d visit the university where his father gave talks. They’d visit zoos and parks, because that’s what normal, happy families did, and it was important to his parents that they seem, and be, normal and happy. Inevitably, after a day of sightseeing, Paul would fall asleep on the way home. The sound of gravel always woke him when they pulled into the drive. That sudden transition from pavement to the noisy crunching of the long, stony driveway of their first house. It was a distinct sound that he came to associate with home.

But now the gravel kept coming. Minute after minute, so that Paul realized this wasn’t a driveway entrance but a rural road.

“Where are we?” Paul asked.

The man in the passenger seat said nothing. Only looked back at him.

But the driver spoke—one word, slow and heavy with meaning: “Everglades.”

The man in the passenger seat flashed the driver a look of irritation.

“What?” the driver asked. “It’s not like he’s gonna tell anyone, now, is it.”

What the hell were they doing in Florida? They’d been driving south forever, it seemed, but he’d had no idea they’d traveled so far.

The gravel road got rougher.

Eventually, he felt Lilli stir. He envied her the last moments of her slumber. Asleep, she was free of this place. These men. This nightmare.

Her eyes opened, dark and confused. He watched the understanding coalesce in them—saw the exact moment when she realized where she was, when it all came back.

Paul looked away.

After an hour of gravel, the road smoothed out again. Paul sat up straighter, looking out through the front windshield. Around them was swamp—low and flat and overgrown.

The van took a right, leaving the main road and bumping its way down to a kind of access road. Mostly one lane, with occasional turnouts. A beaten mud track. The van slowed to twenty miles per hour.

Thirty minutes later, the van crossed through an open, swinging gate.

“Rise and shine,” Redbeard said. “We’re here.”

Lilli and Paul craned their necks for a better look. The view out the front windshield wasn’t particularly clear, but from what he could see, they’d arrived at some kind of military outpost. No, not military. Not quite. It had the wrong feel. A string of buildings spread out before them—low block buildings set at some distance from the road. Then the road curved and the whole of the complex suddenly loomed up into view, anchored by a huge gray building, as sprawling as an outlet mall. But set here in the middle of the Everglades, like a cult compound in the swamp.

The van came to a stop. The two men climbed out. A moment later the van door slid open. The sudden light was blinding. Heat and muggy air poured in.

“Get out.”

Paul stepped to the ground, shielding his eye.

Lilli followed.

As Paul’s eye adjusted, he saw an old man standing off to the side, surrounded by a phalanx of guards. He wore a white coat, but also a hat to keep the sun off his head. His face was buried in shadow.

The two men from the van stepped aside as the old man hobbled forward.

“Do you have the samples?” the old man asked. The question was pointed at Redbeard.

Redbeard pulled the baggie from the armrest of the van. The old man smiled and gestured to one of his guards. Redbeard handed the baggie to the man.

“See that Lee, in the cytology lab, gets that,” the old man said. The guard turned and headed into the building.

“Paul Carlsson,” the old man said, finally turning his attention to his new visitors. He extended a hand.