Sara Reinke - Backwoods

“Gallatin,” Andrew whispered. The state hospital he’d seen in the photograph in Moore’s scrapbook.

Moore nodded. “Yes, Gallatin State Hospital. They stopped calling it a lunatic asylum some years ago when it was no longer politically correct. Do you know what Alice’s treatment there consisted of? Regular bouts of electroconvulsive therapy—electroshock. She was forcibly administered electrical currents through her brain that triggered seizures and loss of consciousness, because the state of Massachusetts said this would make her better. And there was nothing I could do to stop them.”

Jesus. Stricken, Andrew looked down at Alice. She remained oblivious to them, her gazed fixed somewhere across the room, her hand draped lightly against Lucy’s blood-dampened fur.

“Last year, Prendick came to me on behalf of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,” Moore said. “He promised me that they could get Alice out of there. By that point, she’d been incarcerated for nearly three years. I would have done anything, traded my own life, to get her out of that place. I don’t expect you to believe me, much less care, but it’s true. I had been battling nonstop in court to have Alice released. Prendick promised me he could have her set free in a day. And all I had to do was agree to work for them.”

“And you did,” Andrew said.

“You’re damn right I did. And I’d do it again—a thousand times, whatever it takes, if it meant fixing Alice. I don’t give a flying fuck about anyone or anything in this entire compound except my daughter.” Shoving Andrew aside, he marched back toward Alice. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get her out of here before we end up carcasses strung up and eviscerated in a tree.”

“But the roads,” Andrew said. “You can’t leave. Prendick said—”

“Prendick’s the one behind this entire operation,” Moore said without even pausing in his stride. “It was in his best interest to keep everyone trapped here.” He spared Andrew a glance. “Or at least believing that they were.”

“Wait.” Andrew watched him catch Alice by the hand and pull her unceremoniously to her feet. Like a puppet, she complied, her expression neutral. “What about Dani Santoro? We can’t just—”

“She’s a soldier,” Moore said. “Given my past association to this point, I don’t have much sympathy for her.”

“She’s a mother.”

“Again, given my past association , I don’t have much sympathy.”

“But I don’t know the way to your office,” Andrew said. “We can’t leave without her.”

Moore uttered a sharp laugh. “There is no we, Mister Braddock, except for me and Alice. You do what you have to.”

He tried to march Alice out of the playroom and furious now, something inside of Andrew snapped, just as it had that long-ago day in North Pole, Alaska, when his father had smiled at him in the front lobby of the Pagoda Chinese restaurant and told him he’d be marrying Lila Meyer. Fists balled, he went after Moore, grabbing him smartly by the sleeve and whirling him around.

“Dani has two kids. Her son is Alice’s age. His name is Max,” said he said.

With a frown, Moore tried to pull himself loose. “Shut up and get your hand off me.”

“He makes straight A’s and this past year, he dressed up like a soldier for Halloween.”

Moore’s brows furrowed. “I said shut up.”

“That’s what she said he wants to be when he grows up, a soldier like his mother. Because just like Alice idolizes you, Dani’s boy worships the ground she walks on. Because just like you, Dani’s a good parent who’d do anything for her kids.”

“Shut up!” Moore shoved Andrew away from him, sending him floundering backwards.

“As much as you love Alice, Dani loves her kids, too,” Andrew said. “She doesn’t deserve to wind up like that.” He cut his eyes toward the mangled, mutilated remains of Lucy. “Please. If you won’t show me the way to your office, at least tell me how to get there. Please.”

Something in Moore’s face faltered at this, that cold and unaffected exterior momentarily softening. “Alright,” he said at length, his voice strained and terse, as if it pained him to speak. “Follow the corridor beyond the storeroom to your right, then take the second hallway off it to your left. Take it until it forks to the left, then take that hall all of the way down to the next right. Four doors down, the left hand side of the hallway. Room number one twenty-seven.”

“Thank you,” Andrew said.

As he turned to leave, Moore clapped a hand against his arm. “They’re inside the building,” he said, his voice grave and oddly gentle. “She’s already dead, son.”

Andrew frowned. “I’m not your son,” he said, jerking free of Moore’s grasp. “And you’re wrong.”

“ Dani!”

Ten minutes later, hopelessly lost in the belly of the laboratory building, Andrew turned in a clumsy circle, screaming his damn fool head off.

“Dani,” he cried again, his voice hoarse, bouncing off the white-washed walls, industrial-grade linoleum floors and ceiling tile panels. He’d tried to remember Moore’s directions, had muttered them over and over again to himself after he’d left the storeroom, but had lost track of just how many rights he took before hanging a left, or down which corridor he was supposed to turn when.

One twenty-seven. He remembered the office number Moore had given him, but to that point, all of the doors he’d seen had looked alike and non-descript, and those that had been numbered all seemed to fall in the one hundred-eighty-something range.

At some point along the way, the emergency lights had winked out, plunging the house of pain into abrupt and absolute darkness. Whether the back up generator had given out, or something more sinister had happened, Andrew didn’t know. But he’d frozen, eyes flown wide, gripped with an overwhelming, child-like fear of the blackened hallway, the unshakable certainty that something was out there, screamers hunkered down and lurking, watching him.

Once he’d snapped out of that initial, terrified paralysis, he had inched his way forward. Now, still submerged in darkness, he swung the pistol back and forth in one hand, panning his aim nervously ahead of him. With the other, he fumbled along the nearest wall, using it to guide him.

“Dani,” he shouted out again. His voice cut short when he felt his foot connect with something heavy, solid and semi-soft on the floor in front of him, almost like an oversized sand bag.

What the fuck? He danced to the left, nearly falling over in panicked fright. His heel settled again onto something firm but yielding underfoot, lumpy enough to trip him.

“Jesus,” he yelped as he crashed onto his ass, sitting down hard against the floor. The pistol jarred loose from his hand upon the impact, and he heard a loud clatter as it hit the floor, then skittered away, unseen.

Shit! He groped blindly for it for a long, desperate moment before uttering a frustrated cry and slamming his fist against the floor. “Shit!”

Only his fist didn’t hit the linoleum tiles. Instead, he hit that heavy, motionless lump beside him again, and this time he felt the coarse texture of heavy fabric, heard it rustle as he struck.

Shit, he thought, realizing what he’d tripped over, what was sprawled on the floor beside him.

A dead body.

He scrambled back until his back hit the wall, and sat there, gasping for breath, teetering on the verge of panic-stricken hyperventilation. Not good, not good, oh, this is not good at all.

Clapping his hands over his mouth to keep himself quiet, he strained to listen for any tell-tale snuffling or rustling sounds. Because if there’s a dead man on the floor, chances are, whatever killed him is still somewhere close by.