Backwoods (21 page)

Frowning thoughtfully, he went to the bed and
yanked back the bedspread, heaping it in heavy folds on the floor.
Working quickly, he stripped the bed sheet and bed spread from the
mattress, then returned to the window and glanced down.

What is that, a fifteen foot drop?
Sixteen?
he wondered, studying the parking lot, the landscaped
perimeter between it and the building below. If he estimated the
distance from the vertex of his thumb to that of his elbow as one
foot, he figured he could measure out the bed linens and cut them
into strips to make a crude rope of about the right length to climb
from his room to the ground.

If I can get those casement windows open a
little more,
he thought.
Which, thanks to Dani, I just might
be able to swing.

He knelt in front of the window. Working
quickly, shooting nervous glances over his shoulder toward the door
all the while, he used the multi-tool’s screwdriver implements to
disassemble the hinge mechanism on one of the casement windows.
Once he was able to dislodge it fully from the sill, he could push
the panel out wider, giving him another six or seven inches, little
more than a foot through which to try and escape.

I can fit,
he thought, frowning again
as he grabbed hold of the metal window frame and leaned out
experimentally, shrugging his shoulders to squeeze through.
Barely. This would be a hell of a lot easier if I was Dani’s
size. Or Alice’s.

Ducking back inside, he set to work measuring
out, then cutting thick strips from the sheet and bedspread,
fettering them together in quick but secure double figure-eight,
fisherman-style knots until he had a fairly sturdy rope assembled.
Next, he shoved the bed, mattress, box springs and all, against the
far wall. He secured his makeshift rope to the metal frame with a
clove hitch knot. Rather than anchoring it on one of the legs,
instead, Andrew tied it around one of the thicker, weight-bearing
transverse beams.

Once finished, he stood up and stepped back,
admiring his handiwork.

There’s no way in hell this is going to
work.

But since the prospect of waiting around to
burst into a virulent rash, along with grotesque nodules, was even
less appealing than this, he muttered, “Fuck it,” then chucked the
free end of the rope out the window, letting it droop almost fully
to the ground.

Turning around with his back to the glass, he
knelt on all fours, then backed up to the open casement. Slowly,
carefully, he lowered himself past the sill, dropping his feet down
the exterior wall. Once he’d gone out far enough to be off-balance,
he caught the sheet rope in his hands, grimacing at the sound of
cheap thread counts snapping with his sudden weight.

Back in his college years, he’d rappelled
pretty frequently, one of many outdoor activities he’d enjoyed.
While by no means an expert, and of late, fairly rusty at the art,
he still felt fairly confident that he could get down from the
window.
If the line holds,
he thought, not possessing this
same faith in his rope-making ability.

As he slowly lowered himself down, he tried
to balance his weight between his arms, which quickly began to feel
the brunt of the strain, and his feet, which he planted against the
wall so he could walk, of a sort, down the outside façade. The
parking lot below was quiet and still, draped in alternating
patches of stark glow and shadows from security lights, and Andrew
felt very exposed and vulnerable as he dangled in perfectly plain
sight of anyone who might happen to pass by. Once he reached the
ground, he managed a shaky, astonished laugh.

Holy shit, I made it!

Then he realized there was no way to hide,
disguise or remove the rope from the side of the building. The
bright white cotton sheets looked damn near aglow in the proscenium
of nearby lights, like a neon sign, a big fat arrow pointing down,
declaring,
HE WENT THAT-A-WAY.

Shit.

But there was nothing to be done about it,
unless he wanted to climb back up the way he’d gone down and
somehow try to re-rig a line that would be both secure enough to
get him to the ground, but loose enough to come undone once he got
there.

Not going to happen.

Sticking to the shadows, he crept to the
entrance of the compound building and ducked beneath the concrete
overhang. He glanced across the parking lot to the garage,
wondering briefly if he should go and get Alice.

No.
He shook his head.
She’s locked
in that closet. No one can get in, so she’s safe for the time
being. It’s Dani I need to worry about.

Hunched over the entry key pad, he punched in
his pass code, then frowned when the light remained red, the front
doors locked.

“Shit,” he said. They’d locked him out of
everything. After a moment’s consideration, he laughed.
I know
Moore’s code.

Feeling triumphantly smug, he punched in
one-zero, one-zero
.

Nothing happened.

“What the hell?” he said, typing in the
numbers again, moving slowly, making sure he pressed each key on
the pad firmly inward.

Still no luck. Either Moore had figured out
that Andrew was clued in on his personal code, or he’d changed it
after discovering that Alice knew it, too. With a groan, he stepped
back, shoved his hand through his hair.

Now what?
He weighed his options.
Alice could crack the door code. She’d figured out her father’s
easily enough.
But if I get her, then she’s vulnerable again. If
she’s with me, she could get caught.

He frowned, studying the key pad.

Daddy always chooses binary numbers, using
only zeroes or ones,
Alice had told him.
He says they’re
easier to remember.

She’d said that meant Moore had only eight
possible four-digit code combinations to choose from. He’d already
found out that the one she’d been using—
one-zero,
one-zero
—no longer worked.
Which means there are only seven
choices left,
Andrew realized.

Standing at the key pad again, he frowned.
I can do this,
he thought.
I’ve got a Master’s degree,
for Christ’s sake. I can guess seven goddamn numbers.

His finger hovered uncertainly over the zero,
then he began to type.
Okay,
he told himself.
The decimal
system is a base-ten, meaning there are ten possible digits that
can be combined, zero through nine. Binary’s a base-two system,
meaning every single number can be expressed only with the numerals
one or zero. When counting with decimals, when you get to nine, you
move up to the next place value and start all over again at zero.
In binary, you do the same, except it happens when you get to
one.

How long ago had he learned this shit? Five
years ago? Seven? Ten? He had no idea and struggled to recall.
When you get to one, you add a place value in. So zero in
decimal is zero in binary. One in decimal is one in binary. Two in
decimal is one-zero in binary. Three in decimal is one-one in
binary. Four is one-one-zero. Which means…

Which meant there weren’t any four-digit
binary numbers until you counted to eight, which in base-two was
one-zero, zero-zero.

Andrew punched this into the key pad. The
light remained red.

Okay. No problem. Let’s try nine. Which
would be…
He paused, frowning, trying to remember.
One-zero,
zero-one.

He typed this in. The light stayed red. The
door stayed locked.

“Shit,” he muttered.
This is taking too
long. Any minute now, someone’s going to walk through the foyer and
see me.

Binary ten had been Moore’s previous
code—
one-zero, one-zero—
so Andrew skipped it now and moved
on to eleven:
one-zero, one-one.

Still no luck.

“Shit!” It was cold outside and he was
wearing nothing but a T-shirt and sweat pants. Goosebumps had
raised all along his arms and he shivered, his breath huffing out
in a thin, moist haze around his head.

Twelve, then,
he thought.
Let’s try
twelve. If eleven is one-oh, one-one, that means you move up a
value, so it’s…

He struggled to think, then jammed his finger
into the key pad.
One-one, zero-zero.

So convinced that this sequence, too,
wouldn’t work, he didn’t even realize at first that it had, that
the light had turned green and the
snact!
he heard was
actually the door unlocking. After a moment of bewildered surprise,
it sank in and with an incredulous laugh, he grabbed the door
handle, swinging it open wide.

He didn’t get more than three steps past the
threshold, however, before an alarm claxon began to sound. Shrill
and pulsating, it ripped through the interior of the barracks and
sent Andrew scrambling for cover, hands clapped to his ears.
“Shit!”

He could hear the heavy patter of footsteps,
combat boots rushing toward him and down the stairs from the second
floor.
Shit!

He thought of ducking back outside, then
decided against it, running instead down the nearest corridor. The
footsteps behind him drew closer now, and panicked, he skidded to a
stop at the first door he happened upon. It was locked and he
tugged frantically, futilely on the handle for a moment before
remembering he’d cracked Moore’s access code.

Managing a bark of humorless laughter at his
own stupidity, he hurriedly punched the four digits into the key
pad, jerked the door open wide and darted inside. There was a small
rectangular window near the top of the door, level with his view,
and when a group of soldiers suddenly rushed past, responding to
the alarm, Andrew shrank back. He hit something behind him,
something heavy, solid and apparently on wheels, because he slapped
it with his hand then felt it roll away, sending him staggering
backwards, off-balance.

“Shit,” he yelped, then fell to the floor.
With a loud
thunk,
the thing he’d stumbled into—which he now
realized was some kind of wheeled storage cart—hit a nearby
counter, coming to a listing, inching halt.

“You have activated the Head Start Heart
Smart,” a tinny female voice suddenly chirped.

What the hell?
Andrew’s gaze darted
back to the window, his heart jackhammering. Scrambling to his
feet, he rushed to the cart and found a machine, some kind of
unfamiliar computer with a small display screen now aglow and
alight.

“Please follow the voice prompts provided for
correct application and use of this electronic device,” the machine
said.

“Shit,” Andrew hissed. There weren’t many
buttons to choose from, and he began pushing them all quickly,
frantically, shooting alarmed looks over his shoulder toward the
door, sure at any moment, a soldier would pop into view, alerted by
the clamor.

“If you are near a telephone or have access
to a cellular device, please call for emergency service now,” the
mechanized woman’s voice said.

“Shut up.” Andrew smacked it, grabbing at
some wires dangling from the side, hoping one might be a power cord
he could unplug and disable. At the unattached end of each was a
small, square-shaped pad, one with a bright red trim, the other
bright yellow.

“You have removed the Head Start Heart Smart
cartridges. Please review the on-screen diagram for appropriate
placement and press the
start
button to begin the automatic
assessment.”

“Shit, shit, shit.” Andrew picked the machine
up, turned it this way and that, trying to find the on-off switch.
As he looked behind him again, he froze in bright, frightened panic
to see a shadow in the doorway, the outline of a head peering up
into the window.

Shit!

He scrambled around the side of cart and sat
on the floor, holding the machine in his lap. Now the voice was
muffled against his stomach, but still audible.

“You have disengaged the automatic assessment
function. Please select the joule level you would like to
administer,” it mumbled into his shirt.

“Shut up,” Andrew whispered, thumbing
buttons, turning the solitary knob, trying anything. On a small LED
screen on top of the console, he watched numbers correspondingly
fly up and down, from 25 to 10, then back to 50, then 110, then
200. “Shut the fuck up.”

A wild look toward to door revealed a soldier
peering through the window, and Andrew could hear the door rattling
as he tried vainly to open it. Miraculously, the machine fell
silent and stayed that way, the vocal prompts muted. Hugging it
against his chest again, just to be sure, Andrew risked another
glance at the window. The soldier was gone.

Sitting back, closing his eyes, daring to
hope, Andrew waited.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three
Mississippi

At thirty-Mississippi, he knew the soldier
had gone and heaved a sigh of relief. Opening his eyes, he glowered
down at the console in his lap. No longer panic-stricken, he
realized what it was—a cardiac defibrillator. The irony that he’d
damn near suffered a heart attack trying to get it to shut up
wasn’t lost upon him.

“Piece of shit,” he muttered, shoving it away
from him, sending it sliding across the room, the red and yellow
paddles trailing behind like the tails of a kite.

Andrew limped to his feet and looked around,
trying to get his bearings. The overhead lights were off, but thin
fluorescent tubes mounted beneath periodically positioned overhead
cabinets cast dim puddles of pale glow on countertops and the
floor. He saw a suite of small examination rooms on one side, rows
of supply shelves and medicine cabinets on another

The infirmary
.

Though he’d seen Prendick and the haz-mat
clad soldiers leaving the infirmary shortly before being locked in
his room, and Suzette had said she would bring O’Malley there on
the wheeled stretcher, the area was strangely empty and quiet.