Backwoods (4 page)

She glanced up long enough for him to
recognize her, the doe-eyed child he’d met in the lobby the night
before. Then she looked down again, her pencil resuming its fervent
movement. “I’m calculating the square root of pi.”

He didn’t know which surprised him more—what
she was doing or that she’d actually spoken aloud to tell him about
it. She spoke clearly and articulately, nothing like the movie
characters who’d come to his mind.

“But. . . there is no square root of pi,” he
said after a moment. The tip of her pencil fell still, but she
didn’t look up. “It’s an irrational number,” Andrew said. “The
decimal value goes on and on forever without repeating.”

“I know that.” Her pencil began moving again.
“I just want to make sure.”

Had he known what pi was at her age? Had he
known more than how to add or subtract? Suzette had told him
Alice’s father was a molecular biologist and geneticist.
World-renowned,
she’d told him. Apparently the fruit hadn’t
fallen far from the tree in Alice’s case.

“Breakfast is ready,” Suzette called from the
kitchen.

****

“She’s fixated on numbers,” Suzette said at
the dining room table. “It’s typical for her condition, becoming
preoccupied with certain things. She’s off the charts in terms of
intelligence, but she sometimes lapses into her own little world.
She gets obsessed easily, like the thing with numbers.”

Alice had sat down wordlessly at the table
and started on her breakfast, a bowl of Cheerio’s. Andrew watched,
curious, as she carefully strained each spoonful of cereal of any
hint of milk before eating. Occasionally she’d pause, poke her
fingertip into her spoon and knock a Cheerio or two out, as if
she’d found them defective somehow.

“She only eats five pieces at a time,”
Suzette explained.

“Sometimes extras float into the spoon,”
Alice further clarified, flicking a wayward Cheerio back into her
bowl. Once she’d finished this bite, she’d apparently had enough.
Without another word, she pushed her chair back, scooped up her
notebook and walked away.

“She has daily rituals and routines, sort of
like an obsessive-compulsive would.” Suzette rose from her seat and
began gathering up the dishes, even though her own breakfast
remained relatively untouched. “She has a hard time showing her
feelings in appropriate ways, so please don’t take it personally if
she seems rude. She’s like that with everybody. It’s my
understanding she’s better now than she used to be. There was a
time, I guess, when she wouldn’t talk to anyone at all, much less
strangers. But she didn’t seem to mind talking to you.” Dropping
him a wink, she smiled. “She must like you.”

****

While Suzette tidied after breakfast, Andrew
stepped out onto the deck off the living room. The morning air was
crisp and cool against his bare arms, and his breath frosted in a
light haze, framing his face. Below, he could see the lingering
wisps of fog creeping in and among the trees, retreating from the
landscaped courtyard. In the distance, beyond the trees, he could
see the undulating silhouettes of the Appalachian foothills.

He’d clipped his iPhone to the waistband of
his sweatpants and pulled it out now, wondering if the reception
would be better on the deck than it had been in the lobby
downstairs. A couple of impotent attempts at dialing Ted McGillis’
number proved it was not, with that tedious
beep-beep-beep
signaling he remained out of network.

“Damn it,” he muttered.

“Hey!” The voice from behind him fell almost
as heavily as the hand against his arm, which clamped down hard and
spun him smartly about, catching him by surprise. He caught a blur
movement out of the corner of his eye, and then a sucker punch
caught him high on the cheek, snapping his head toward his opposite
shoulder, sending him staggering into the deck railing then
crashing to his knees. His phone tumbled from his fingers, falling
toward the boxwood shrubs and lava rock landscaping beds below.

“Edward!” Suzette cried out from inside the
apartment.

“Who are you?” the man who’d punched him
demanded, and Andrew gritted his teeth, biting back a cry as he
felt the man’s fingers coil in his hair, wrenching his head back.
He found himself blinking up at an older man, tall and somewhat
stocky, his brows knitted, his mouth twisted in a frown. “How the
hell did you get in my apartment?”

“Edward, stop it,” Suzette exclaimed, rushing
out onto the deck.

“Get Prendick up here now,” the man said at
her. “Go call for—”

Andrew sprang from his crouched posture,
plowing his knuckles into the older man’s gut.
Whoofing
for
breath, the man turned him loose and staggered backwards. Andrew
scrambled to his feet, fists still clenched, squaring off.

“Stop it,” Suzette cried, darting between
them, hands outstretched. “Both of you.”

“What the hell’s going on?” Andrew exclaimed
to her. “He hit me!”

“This is Edward Moore,” she told him,
wide-eyed, pleading, and why should that name have been familiar to
him, he wondered?
“Doctor
Moore,” she amended, and he
relaxed his fists, opening his hands.

Shit.

“This is his facility,” Suzette told him.
“His lab. His apartment.”

Moore glared at him, still choked and
flushed, his palm pressed to his gut. Alice had come to stand in
the doorway now, curious by the commotion, her dark eyes round and
darting between her father and Andrew.

Shit,
Andrew thought again.

****

“Let’s start at the beginning, Mister
Braddock,” Major Prendick said.

Although they hadn’t cuffed him, his soldiers
hadn’t exactly been gentle as they’d escorted Andrew from Moore’s
apartment. One of them, Corporal O’Malley, had caught him by the
wrist and wrenched his arm behind his back, pinning it at an
unnatural and painful angle. They were about equal in height, but
O’Malley outweighed Andrew by a good ten pounds at least of nothing
but muscle. Although not feeble by any stretch of the imagination,
Andrew had nonetheless gone along without protest, harboring no
illusions. O’Malley could have, if so inclined, kicked his ass. In
a big, hard, stomping, painful sort of way.

O’Malley had maintained his light yet painful
grip on Andrew’s arm until they’d reached a small office on the
building’s first floor. Here, Andrew had been made to sit in an
uncomfortable metal chair in the middle of the otherwise empty
room, left alone for at least twenty minutes behind what had turned
out to be a locked door.

O’Malley had returned to stand guard at the
threshold. To Andrew’s surprise, this time he was accompanied by
Specialist Santoro, the young woman who’d rescued Andrew the night
before. Slim and petite, she struck a peculiar, somewhat comical
contrast to the larger, brawnier O’Malley as they flanked the
doorway together at rigid, unwavering attention while Prendick,
upon his entrance, proceeded to trace a wide, slow circumference
around Andrew. Keeping his hands clasped against the small of his
back, his expression neutral, his voice friendly enough, Prendick
would glance up and meet Andrew’s gaze each time he’d pass.

“What are you doing out here?” the Major
said. “These lands are all federal property.”

Andrew sighed, irritated. “I told you last
night. She brought me here.” He nodded once to indicate Santoro. “I
work for Wells Environmental Management Consultants out of
Johnstown, Pennsylvania. We were hired to survey roughly
ten-thousand acres southeast of here. I was driving on Highway 460
during the storm, on my way back to meet up with my crew at our
hotel in Pikeville when something ran out in front of my
truck.”

Prendick raised a curious brow.
“Something?”

“I don’t know what it was. An animal, maybe,
or a man. It stood upright on two legs.” Andrew mimed, using his
forefingers in a scissor motion against his opposing palm. “Its
arms looked deformed. Its back, too, like it was hunched over.” He
sighed, shook his head. “It all happened really fast. I couldn’t
get a good look at it, but it didn’t have fur, I’m sure of it.”

“Specialist Santoro, did you see this thing
he described?” Prendick asked, turning to the young woman in the
corner.

Keeping her eyes pinned ahead, her shouldered
thrust back at rigid attention, Santoro barked in reply, “No,
sir.”

Prendick turned his stern gaze back to
Andrew. “Do you have any documentation to prove who you are?” he
asked. “Your work assignment? Any sort of company identification? A
driver’s license?”

“Of course I do,” Andrew shifted his weight,
raising his hips to reach for his back pocket, his wallet. Then he
bit back a groan as he remembered.
I always lock it inside the
glove compartment whenever I’m out in the field.

“It’s in my Jeep,” he told Prendick,
sheepish.

“Which is currently sitting top-down at the
bottom of a flooded gulley,” Prendick said. “How convenient.”

Andrew frowned. “Am I under arrest or
something?”

“That’s what I’m trying to determine,” the
Major replied.

“What the hell for?” Andrew demanded.

Prendick raised the corner of his mouth in
tandem with his brow, as if amused by the antics of a petulant
toddler. “For starters, violating Title Eighteen, Part One, Chapter
Sixty-seven, Subsection Thirteen-eighty-two of the United States
Penal Code, wherein the first paragraph stipulates that entry to
any restricted portion of a military base or facility for any
purposes prohibited by law will result criminal trespass charges
punishable by imprisonment of six months in jail and a fine of up
to five thousand dollars.”

What?
Andrew shook his head. He
glanced between the Major and Santoro, hoping she’s say
something—anything—to back up his story, to clear him.

“You’re kidding,” he said, more to her than
Prendick when she remained tight-lipped, eyes averted from him.
“You can’t keep me here if you don’t arrest me. I know my rights.
And you can’t arrest me because I didn’t do anything wrong, and you
know it.”

The corner of Prendick’s mouth flicked in a
quick smirk. “What I know, Mister Braddock, is that if it was up to
me, you would be out of here even as we speak. Dr. Moore is
conducting experiments of an extremely sensitive nature that are of
vital importance to national security. This facility contains
classified materials and information to which you or the general
tax-paying public may not, under any circumstances, be made
privy.”

“Then let me go,” Andrew said, exasperated.
“Put me in a truck and drive me to the nearest payphone so I can
call my guys to come pick me up.”

“Unfortunately, that’s no longer possible,”
Prendick said. “The storms last night triggered landslides up in
the hills. The roads coming and going are buried under at least
fifteen feet of mud and rocks, at least three hundred yards wide in
either direction. It’s going to take earth moving equipment to get
them cleared out.”

Beautiful,
Andrew thought, biting back
the urge to laugh.
That’s just fucking great.

“Give me a couple of canteens, let me hike
out of here on foot,” he said. “I can cut through the woods to get
back down to the highway, then follow it from there to—”

“Mister Braddock, it’s more than seventy
miles to the nearest town,” Prendick interjected. “That’s one way.
Even if you average walking a mile in twenty minutes, that would
make it an almost twenty-four hike. And that would be non-stop on a
flat surface, not cutting through the bush out here in the
backwoods.”

“I think I can manage,” Andrew replied, even
though this was a lofty statement made more out of hubris than any
real confidence. He was a proficient and experienced hiker, but it
required a significant amount of gear and supplies to make the sort
of trek he was proposing—none of which he had on hand, and none of
which he was willing to bet Prendick would loan him. At best, he
was looking at least at a three-day miserable hike through the
wilderness. At worst, he was looking at winding up hopelessly lost
and dying of starvation, thirst or overexposure.

Prendick met his gaze evenly. “I think I
would be remiss if I were to let you try.” Cutting a glance and a
crooked smile at Santoro and Corporal O’Malley, he added, “Besides,
I wouldn’t want you to run into any trouble out there. Say, like
this hairless, hunchbacked bear or something you say you saw.”

Santoro didn’t respond, but O’Malley uttered
a quick snort of laughter that left Andrew bristling.

“Later today, I’ll send a squad out with
shovels, the Bobcat front-end loader we have on site,” Prendick
continued. “We can probably clear a way through the road in a week
or two.”

“A week or two?” Andrew shook his head. “I
can’t stay here that long. My crew has no idea where I am, what’s
happened to me. I’ve got to get word to them.”

“Let me put it to you another way, Mister
Braddock.” Prendick motioned with his hand demonstratively,
indicating the cramped, empty office. “You can either remain in
here as a prisoner of the United States Army or you can join us as
a guest until such time as we can extricate you from this facility.
But either way, you’re not leaving.”

The two stared at each other, Prendick’s eyes
like glittering pieces of flint, brittle and hard-edged. Sighing,
Andrew threw up his hands in disgusted resignation. “Fine.
Whatever.”

Prendick nodded. “Good. You are to remain in
this building at all times during the course of your stay here, and
are free to make use of any and all of the public areas and
amenities provided. If you feel the need for a spot of air, you can
step out onto the parking lot or courtyard, but may go no further
than the paved perimeter of this compound. You may not under any
circumstances enter Dr. Moore’s apartment or laboratory. Failure to
comply with these instructions will result in your being arrested
and charged with felony trespass on government property as per our
discussion a few moments ago. Do you understand?”