Alistair McIntyre - Shallow Creek

He followed any exposed hoses and pipes to the places they disappeared into the concrete walls, looking for more valves to shut off. There were none.

Now his head started to hurt. Brendan staggered back to the stairs and climbed up right beneath the trapdoor. He pushed up on the door, and it had a little bit of play, but now he noticed the rubber gasket all the way around the edges. No fresh air could get in while the seal remained intact. Brendan produced his trusty knife and went to work. He sliced and poked at the rubber while the smell intensified.

Realizing his efforts had little impact on his situation, Brendan gave up on destroying the seal. Maybe there was something in the basement that he could use to pry the door open. His first expedition through the stainless steel nightmare hadn’t revealed anything, but he had to try again.

He jumped off the steps, landing in the puddle at the bottom. Both feet slid out from under him and the beam from his flashlight darted chaotically across the vented ceiling. His fall stopped abruptly when something cracked the back of his head with the force of a pissed-off mule. Stars filled the darkness as his eyes flittered open and closed, his body refusing to cooperate with his brain’s demands.

Did natural gas sink or rise in regular air? He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t care to move right now. He was just so damn sleepy.

The defeat didn’t even worry him. Suddenly all the stuff with Michelle and Kim and Grant floated away into a totally irrelevant place, some place that didn’t affect him at all. He wondered what would happen in the morning when Grant’s friends found him dead on the floor, but by that point, what was the worst they could do to him?

He allowed his eyes to close fully and embraced the thick blanket enveloping him.

Chapter 33

Brendan gulped huge bursts of air and tried to get up, but something heavy lay on his chest. He tried in vain to struggle against it, but he had no strength to resist.

“Okay, he’s awake,” said a strange voice. “Move him.”

His eyes refused to focus consistently as a dark view of shadowy figures blurred above him. Where the hell was he anyway?

Then he remembered the basement, the kitchen where his skull had lost a battle with a concrete step. That could only mean Grant’s buddies had found him. He lashed out with what little force he could muster, but strong hands easily grappled him into compliance.

A drum pounded furiously inside his skull, but he knew he had bigger problems now. What was his excuse going to be for why he was unconscious in a damn meth lab?

“Get the restraints on there,” said the same strange voice. He was pretty sure it wasn’t either of the guys who’d inadvertently locked him in the kitchen.

Straps wrapped across his chest and legs, locking all his appendages and rendering him totally useless. Escape wasn’t happening. Suddenly a bizarre combination of nausea and fatigue hit him all at once and he let his eyes sink shut.

The next thing he knew, he was floating across the ground, staring up at the ceiling of the dark barn. There was something stuck to his face, covering his mouth, but he couldn’t shake it off no matter how hard he tried. Then a beautiful night sky distracted him, framing silhouettes of random faces as they whisked him along.

They were taking him somewhere, probably thinking they’d captured an enemy combatant. Well, in fairness, they were partially right, even if Grant didn’t know the full magnitude of Brendan’s betrayal yet. This would be a really, really bad time for Michelle to confess her sins to her husband.

He closed his eyes and lost the night sky, but when he opened them again, all he could see was a white ceiling. The straps still pinned him in place, but now he bounced all over the place, and things rattled all around him. His head was secured, forcing his face upwards, but he could roll his eyes, which caught glimpses of a few people hovering around him, reaching around and grabbing things out of little cabinets.

A big red cross on the door to one cabinet suddenly clarified the scene. Why the hell would Grant’s men call an ambulance for him? His brain wrestled for an answer, but everything in his head was too murky to process.

A guy’s face loomed into view from his left side. He didn’t look happy.

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

And then Brendan blacked out again.

Chapter 34

The handcuffs were the first thing Brendan noticed when he woke up. Groggy and disoriented, he still quickly realized the cuffs fastened his wrists to each rail of a hospital bed. With that epiphany, he next wondered if he was being held prisoner in the Shallow Creek Med Center or not. It was the closest hospital to the farm, but he’d been out of it ever since they’d rescued him.

He tugged up on one cuff, rattling it against the thick plastic railing. Maybe rescued wasn’t the right word.

At the noise of the cuffs shifting, a nurse approached him carefully, like he was some kind of man-eating possum, and checked his vitals. When appropriately satisfied, she nodded to the cop standing by the door.

“Alright, son,” he said, moving his hand over his gun holster. “I’m going to uncuff you and let you get dressed. Don’t give me any trouble. My partner’s right outside the door and won’t hesitate to put a slug in you if you get crazy on me.”

The nurse removed Brendan’s IV and then left the room as the officer unlocked the cuffs both from the bed and from Brendan’s wrists. The restraints hadn’t been particularly tight, and he’d stayed pretty immobile the whole time, so he didn’t even have any redness or soreness as souvenirs. He stood up and immediately fell forward, catching himself against the wall. The nice officer hadn’t budged an inch to help him.

“Easy there, fella,” was all he got out of the cop.

Brendan removed the hospital gown and noted the staff had left his boxers on. Nine years spent in the Marines had revealed his junk to many people, so some folks would probably figure there was no harm in one more dude seeing his package, but civilian life was different. It wasn’t any kind of weird homophobic thing; it was just the way it was. Privacy was suddenly an achievable goal.

As soon as he’d got his pants on and pulled on his long-sleeved shirt, the cop ordered him to face the wall and put his hands behind his back. Brendan complied and the man slapped a pair of cuffs on him. He had to assume this was the hospital in Shallow Creek, so hopefully Kim wasn’t working the desk on this shift. Although, if she was, she already knew all about the customer in this room being held under police guard.

“Alright, big fella,” the cop said, urging Brendan into the hallway with moderate force. “You’re going to stand between me and my partner here, and you’re not going to give us any trouble. Am I right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. That’s what I like to hear.”

They marched solemnly down the hallway. The cops nodded to every patient and staff member they encountered. Brendan focused on staring straight ahead. Moving around so much promoted his headache to full-on marching band as he allowed his escorts to lead him through the small medical facility. At the front doors he checked the receptionist desk and saw three women manning computer terminals, none of them Kim, thankfully.

One cop stepped through the door and held it open for Brendan as he trudged through with the second cop in tow. The one holding the door had his free hand hovering over his pistol the entire time. Brendan considered his chances of escape as somewhere between nil and none. No amount of combat and evasion training would get him out of this predicament, especially in his current maligned condition, but circumstances were always in flux. Just because he was down now, that didn’t mean he was out yet.