Abandoned: A Thriller (46 page)

Panic has turned into something more distant. There’s a wall of unreality and numbness between me and the sharper edges of my terror. What are the factors? List them.

“One,” I whisper. “He means what he says. Two: I can decide if it’s Leo or me. If I don’t decide, then it’s me.”

That’s it. There are no other factors.

What should I do, baby? Tell me, please. Help me.

Baby does not reply, and I can’t get either the meadow or the light to appear behind my eyes right now. I search for words from Barnaby Wallace, something to fit the situation, but all I can find is fear.

Leo’s face comes to me, an image that swims into bright clarity. I see him smiling, on the plane where we met years ago, a young man, an earring in one ear, fighting not to become the establishment he worked for, full of the life ahead of him. He found himself in our orbit, and he walked away wiser and darkened as a result. He was seasoned by what we revealed to him, perhaps for the better, probably for the worst.

He’s here because he knows me.

I am bad for the innocent and the young. Doves light on my finger and fall off dead. Matt and Alexa paid the price for loving me. Maybe Alan has too. Will I make Leo buy me life? Will he pay for my baby?

I’m shivered from these thoughts by a susurrus of soft steps coming through the door. Dali wears hiking boots but walks like a cat. Leo will be nude. His bare feet won’t ring on the concrete.

“Lie down on the table, number 36.”

Leo mumbles something and, I assume, complies. It makes me wonder about the drug that Dali is using. I’d always assumed he had to carry us in here.

Chain clinkings, more mumbles. A pause, then more soft sounds against the stone, coming near me. Dali removes my blindfold. I am staring at Leo. His eyes are half lidded, his mouth open. He drools.

“I’m going to move you over to him now. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

He undoes the shackles at my ankles. He removes the straps at my waist.

“I’ll undo your hands. You will come to a sitting position with me behind you. I have a stun gun in my hand. If you attempt to escape or make any motion I’m not comfortable with, I will stun you, reattach you to the table, and punish you for an hour. Do you understand, number 35?”

“Yes.”

I have no time for my usual rage at his indifference. I can’t take my eyes off Leo.

Dali releases my wrists. “Come to a sitting position.” I comply. It occurs to me that I’m almost oblivious to my nudity now.

He grabs the back of my neck with one hand. “Stand up.” I stand, swaying slightly. My head is light. “Walk forward.”

I walk until we come to the table where Leo lies insensate. “Wrists forward, and together.”

He cuffs my wrists and then uses a third set to attach me to an eye ring on the table.

“I’ll cuff your ankles now. Try to kick me and there will be a penalty. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Yes and yes. Yes, I understand that you control me, that you are a monster; yes, I understand that hope dies a long, slow death here.
He cuffs my ankles.

“Number 36 should come out of it soon. Perhaps twenty minutes. I’ll be watching. You’ll have your five minutes, and then I’ll return.”

He walks off, and I am left there, staring down at Leo. It hurts me to look at him. He’s so young, too young. Was I ever that young? Yes. I was almost his age when Alexa was born. It seems like a lifetime ago.

Time passes. Leo’s eyes open once, then close. They open again a few minutes later and he blinks to clear away the fog. I wish he could sleep forever, baby-faced and serene.

“I’m so sorry, Leo.” I start to cry.

“Hey,” he says. His eyes fill with concern. “Wh-what’s happening?” He’s here but still sluggish.

“I’m not sure. He’s given us five minutes together, but … but I don’t know why.”

The decision to lie comes from somewhere I can’t identify. I haven’t decided what I’ll decide, but I do know that I want to spare him the knowledge. This uncertainty.

A sly voice creeps around inside me, cozening and impure.
You haven’t decided? Are you sure about that?

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

“Shitty. I …” He pauses, swallows. “I talk to myself a lot. I think I’m going a little bit crazy.”

“Yeah.” My voice cracks.

“Jeez. Stop crying, Smoky. We only have five minutes; don’t waste it being all weepy.”

I laugh, tribute to the hollow humor. “Tell me about your girlfriend, Leo.”

“Christa?” He smiles. “She’s got long, soft brown hair and green eyes. Wicked combination. She laughs a lot. She thinks I’m sliced bread. She’s smart.” The smile fades. “I was going to ask her to marry me. I guess I’ll never see her again, though.” He sighs. “I was really looking forward to being married. I wanted to see what that’s like.” He glances up at me. “What is it like? Is it cool?”

I bite back more tears, aghast. A train of answers runs through my mind. What’s it like? It’s a collection of moments, constantly falling like the leaves of October, burnt-orange happiness, dark-red anger, brown for the normal. It’s sharing a bed, day in and out, through tears and sex, laughs and fights. That bed becomes an island, where nakedness is more literal than actual, the place where all the biggest decisions are made, where new life is made, where new you is made.

Above all things, marriage, when it works, is not being alone.

“Yes,” I say, unable to express all of these things to him. “Yes, it’s cool.”

He nods, cheek against the steel. “I thought so.” He looks at me again. “I need to ask you something, and then I need to tell you something.”

I glance at the camera in the corner. “We’re not alone.”

“It shouldn’t matter. The first thing: If you get out of here and I end up like Dana Hollister, I want you to promise that you’ll kill me. I won’t lie around like that. I won’t do that to my family, to Christa, or to myself.”

“Don’t ask me for this, Leo.”

“Who else am I supposed to ask?” The desperation in his voice matches the fear in his eyes.

“Okay,” I say, to soothe him. “I promise.”

I am made aware of the time by the far, faint sounds of Dali coming this way. Leo hears it too. “Lean forward,” he says, his voice urgent. “I don’t want him to hear this. Hurry!”

I lean forward so that my ear is next to his mouth.

“It was Hollister,” he whispers. “Hollister has to have tipped Dali off. Check out the servers Hollister worked with. Get”—his voice cracks—“get someone really good to look at them. I think you’ll find something there.”

“Stand up, number 35,” Dali orders, coming into the room.

I kiss Leo’s cheek and turn my lips to his ear. “I’m sorry, Leo. I’m so sorry.”

Sorry for what?
the sly voice asks.

Sorry for what?

They’re not the last words I ever say to Leo, but almost.

“Comes a time, baby. That’s what Neil Young said. A time to live, a time to die. A time to go fucking insane.”

Baby is silent. There’s no light in this meadow anymore. The sun is eclipsed by the moon, shooting out light from its circular edges, bathing the world in hush-lit shadow. The trees have been stripped of leaves, and their branches twist and creak in the harsh and ever-present wind. The flowers are gone, and a dust cloud, a thousand feet high, sits on the horizon, rushing toward us in slow motion. Baby remains fuzzy and faceless, and half lit like everything else.

Leo was destroyed one week ago. I chose myself over him, though I tell myself that if I wasn’t pregnant I would have taken his place. I don’t know if it’s true, but it keeps me from chewing through my wrists to get to the veins.

“Decide,” Dali had said, then nothing else.

I had stalled with my silence. I knew what I was going to say but didn’t want to say it.

“Decide in ten seconds or it’s you,” he urged. “Don’t make me do this,” I whispered. “Five seconds.”

Then four and then three and then I spoke.

“Leo! Take him, you fuck.” I started to cry, continued as he un-cuffed my wrists and then pushed me into the darkness of my cell. What was now my home.

The guilt crushed me into oblivion and has continued to obliterate me every day since. Dali never came back to tell me that it was done, but I have no doubt of it. Dali may play games, but not those kinds of games. He does what he promises where destruction is concerned.

I have dreams about Leo. I don’t dream about Tommy or Bonnie or Alan or anyone else. I dream about Leo. I dream of his smile, and then I watch as it falls into slackness, as drool begins to drip from his chin, as his eyes fill with a blowing wind of nothing. I fall asleep on my back. I wake up curled into a fetal ball.

Nothing has changed about my environment. I breathe darkness. The rectangle of light appears three times a day. I eat. I expel. I exercise. I talk to my baby under the eclipse and the daytime stars, and I dream of Leo losing knowledge of himself as a person. Christa, his girlfriend, appears in these dreams sometimes. She points at me with an accusatory finger and laughs like a hyena, then she gathers Leo into her arms like a baby and lopes off into a forest of dead trees. I search for my small victories, the dictate of Barnaby Wallace, but victory these days is bitter.

“When are you going to start showing, baby? And what happens when you do?”

I didn’t really start looking pregnant with Alexa until I was into my fourth month. What will Dali do with a pregnant prisoner? Has he dealt with it before? I am certain that I don’t want to know the answers. Dali’s God is pragmatism. He’ll do whatever is most cost-effective.

“Perhaps he’ll let me keep you.” I shiver at the thought of Dali being gone while I go into labor. Giving birth in darkness, fumbling for my child in blindness, bringing him to my breast without ever having seen his face.

“Is that why you’re fuzzy, baby? Maybe I can’t give you form because I’m not sure you’ll ever have one.”

Baby stays silent. I moan in my dream, and my eyes fly open. I wake up to the black, and then I force myself to fall back asleep.

Unreality is a better world than here.

One more day passes before he appears again. The lights blind me, and he stuns and drugs me. I fall into nothing and wake up facing Dali. The table, it seems, can be upended to a vertical position. Dali regards me, wearing his ski mask and jacket and hiking boots.

“It seems you were right, after all. They keep hunting me, number 35. They’re very tenacious.”

I don’t say anything. I’m too afraid.

“You’re becoming a liability to my operation. I’m going to need to get rid of you.”

“No, please,” I croak. My throat has almost closed in terror.

“I’m not going to perform the procedure on you, number 35.”

The relief I feel is so deep, so physical, that I almost lose control of my bladder. I’d rather die than have my baby in that state, I realize. Leo was right.

“You’re going to kill me?” I ask.

“No. I’m going to release you.”

Confusion. As with Heather Hollister, this is a deviation. I’m grateful for it, but it makes no sense. “Why?”

“I’m going to take one thing to remember you by, number 35,” he continues, ignoring my question. “It won’t prevent you from doing what you do, but it will serve as a last example to you and others: Hunt me, and I punish.”

He’d had his hands behind his back. He brings them into view now. They are gloved, and the right one holds a knife. He says nothing else. He moves to the side and cuts off the little finger of my right hand, below the first knuckle, in a single motion.

I scream instantly and do not stop. I begin to faint, no help necessary this time, and I see it again, that physical feature I had noted days ago but was unable to articulate. I realize what it is just before unconsciousness claims me again, a welcome brother.

“Someone call 911.”

“What happened to her?”

“God, did you see her face?”

“Forget her face—what happened to her finger?”

The voices rise and fall, as the drugs inside me rise and fall, as the
pain in my finger rises and falls, as the ocean pounds the shore on that Hawaiian beach somewhere, rise and fall, rise and fall. The permanencies of this world carry on regardless of what happens to humanity. The sun shines, the moon glows, the world turns.