Sara Reinke - Backwoods

“Get out of here,” she said with a smile. “You smell like puke.”

Andrew found Alice exactly as he’d left her, curled up and sound asleep on his bed. Moving quietly around the room so he wouldn’t disturb her, he’d pulled the last of the clean clothing provisions from a bureau drawer, then stripped off his soggy jeans and shirt for disposal. Then he stood under the heavy shower spray and scrubbed his skin, Suzette’s words of admonition still ringing in his ears.

The strain of streptococcus that can lead to rheumatic fever is contagious.

Just the thought of possibly contracting the same bacteria that had caused such debilitating and disfiguring illness in O’Malley left him damn near wearing a groove into the bar of soap as he rubbed it between his hands, lathering up again and again.

He got out of the shower stall and mopped at his head with a towel. I can’t believe I said that. With the smell of vomit off of him, his mind had wandered to other concerns besides potentially biohazardous contamination. Most specifically, he thought about Dani and his unintentional slip of the tongue.

She smiled at me, though, he thought, wrapping the towel around his waist, tucking the corner in to secure it loosely in place. She didn’t kick me in the balls or anything and she could have. She should have. So she couldn’t have been too pissed off about me saying it. Right?

Raking his fingers through his wet hair to comb it back from his face, he opened the bathroom door. At almost the exact same moment, he heard a quiet series of beeps from his doorway. It occurred to him dimly that someone was typing in a pass code and then the door burst open as Edward Moore shoved his way inside, Major Prendick less than a full step behind him.

“Where is she?” Moore demanded, his face twisted with barely tamped fury, his fists clenched as he charged forward.

Andrew backpedaled in surprise and alarm, but the ironic realization that this was the second time in as many days that Moore had barged into his room uninvited and caught him in nothing but a bath towel was short-lived. Moore’s hand shot out, clamping beneath the shelf of his chin, slamming him into the bathroom doorframe, cutting his startled yelp breathlessly short.

“Where is my daughter, you son of a bitch?” Moore shouted, his face inches away from Andrew’s own, peppering Andrew with spittle. “What have you done with her? Tell me right goddamn now!”

Andrew pawed at his hand, trying to wedge his fingers beneath Moore’s, to loosen that furious, powerful hold that had crushed his windpipe, leaving him straining futilely for any hint of air. “Let… go…!” he gasped.

“Dr. Moore.” Prendick clapped his hand on Moore’s shoulder, but made no immediate move to haul the other man away. “Let him go.”

“Please,” Andrew choked, pawing at Moore’s hand, staring desperately at Prendick. Help me, he wanted to cry, even though all he could manage to croak out was a feeble, “Help.” Get this crazy son of a bitch off of me!

“Moore.” Prendick’s voice sharpened. “Let him go.”

After a long moment, Moore at last drew his hand away. Andrew stumbled backwards, whooping for breath.

“You…” he gasped, staring at Moore. “You’re crazy.”

Moore paid him no attention, instead turning and stomping into Andrew’s bedroom. “Alice!” he shouted. “Alice, answer me. It’s Daddy.”

What the hell is he yelling for? Andrew thought, breathless and bewildered. She’s not deaf, for God’s sake.

Then he looked beyond the doorway into the bedroom and realized Alice was no longer lying on the bed. “What the…?” he whispered.

“Something wrong, Mister Braddock?” Prendick asked as Andrew brushed past him and limped into the bedroom, following Moore.

Where’d she go? he wondered in rising alarm, watching as Moore dropped onto his knees and flipped back the bedspread, looking underneath the bed.

“I said…” Prendick’s hand fell heavily against Andrew’s shoulder from behind. “Is something wrong?”

Andrew frowned, shrugging Prendick away. “Yeah, I’d say something’s wrong. Moore just about killed me. And you just about stood there and let him. What the hell’s your problem?”

“Dr. Moore’s daughter is missing,” Prendick said, seeming unfazed by Andrew’s hostile retort. “We were hoping maybe you had some idea of her whereabouts.”

“No. Why would I?”

“He’s lying,” Moore snapped.

“Like hell,” Andrew snapped back, balling his hands into fists.

“He’s done something to Alice. I know it.” Moore whirled to face Andrew. “Tell me where she is. She’s a very sick little girl and she needs medicine to—”

“Yeah, I know all about your medicine,” Andrew cut in. “The holes you drill in her head. Did he tell you about this?” He glared at Prendick. “He cuts holes into her skull to put this so-called ‘medicine’ into her.” Squaring off against Moore, he said, “You’re not a doctor. You’re a monster. A sick, fucking sadist who carves up his own kid, for Christ’s—”

Moore bellowed, an inarticulate, furious roar, and charged again like a pissed off rhinoceros or a linebacker with some kind of murderous vendetta. Shoulders hunched, head tucked, he plowed straight for Andrew, and when Andrew danced back, out of his path, he stumbled over a chair, knocked over a lamp and crashed with them to the floor in heap. After a long moment in which there were no sounds in the room except for the thick, sodden sounds of Moore’s labored breathing, he sat up.

“Dr. Moore,” Prendick said, speaking in a patronizingly patient tone of voice, as if addressing one of a pair of malcontent children. “She’s not here. I’ll put together a patrol and we’ll start combing the woods.”

Moore shambled to his feet, limping in a semi-circle to face Andrew, his hair wildly askew now, a thin trickle of blood seeping from his nose. Shoving one wavering forefinger at Andrew, he said hoarsely, “The only monster here is you. And if anything happens to Alice, I will hold you personally responsible. I will personally make you answer for it.”

“Jesus.” After Moore and Prendick had left the room, slamming the door behind them, Andrew lowered himself to the floor, sitting against the wall, and allowed himself a shaky, breathless laugh.

What the fuck just happened? he thought, massaging his neck with his hand, the area where Moore had pinned him still sore.

“You shouldn’t have said anything about my medicine,” he heard Alice say, and he jerked in surprise when she poked her head out from underneath the bed. “Daddy said it’s supposed to be a secret. That’s why he does it up in the apartment, not in the lab.”

“Where…?” Bewildered, Andrew watched her crawl out on her hands and knees, then stand up and dust off her hands. “Your dad checked under the bed.”

“I was in the box spring frame. I tore a hole in the liner, crawled up inside and lay across the wooden slats.”

Andrew blinked at her.

She blinked back. “Why are you wearing a towel?”

He glanced down, realized the way he was sitting, with his knees drawn up, gave her an unrestricted view past the hem of the towel all the way up to his balls and immediately clamped his knees together. “Uh. I had to take a shower. Someone puked on me.”

Her nose wrinkled. If memory served, it was the first time he’d ever seen her show any outward sign of emotion. “Ewww,” she said.

“Tell me about it,” he agreed.

He managed to smuggle her out to the garage, leading her across the darkened work bay to the back corner near Dani’s desk, to the bathroom. As he fished the key ring from his pocket, then fumbled to fit the right key in the lock in the shadows, Alice studied the pictures and drawings around Dani’s computer.