Backwoods (9 page)

Rocky Mountain spotted fever?
Andrew
thought in surprise.
That’s the big secret about what happened
to Lieutenant Carter, the guy who had my room before me?
Everyone else had, to that point, seemed so tight-lipped about
Carter and his whereabouts, that he found himself nearly
disappointed with the banality of the truth. The forests all around
them were teeming with deer ticks. Rocky Mountain spotted fever,
Lyme disease and other ailments transmitted through their bites
should have been considered both a common enough concern and
unextraordinary risk.

“Hey, man.” Turner walked around the table
toward Andrew, slipping an iPhone off a carrying clip on his
waistband. “You ever here of a camel spider?”

“Oh, yeah, show him,” LaFollette said,
grinning.

“Camel spider?” Andrew shook his head.

“They’re all over the place in Iraq,” Turner
said.

“Nasty fuckers,” LaFollette added. “Bigger
than your hand. Seriously. And they can run up to like thirty miles
an hour. When they bite you, it can rot the skin and shit, clear
down to the bone.”

“Jesus,” Andrew remarked, brows raised.

“Here, look. I’ve got a video saved of one.”
Turner pivoted so Andrew could see his iPhone screen. “Langley sent
it to me back when the internet was working. Said he’d shot it over
in Baghdad, about six weeks before he left. That’s him right
there.”

In the video, a young man stood in extreme
close-up, grinning broadly as he addressed the camera. His hair was
shorn in the close-cropped style of an active-duty soldier, and he
wore desert-grade military fatigues.

“I’m sending a little care package home,” he
said. He had heavy brows that hung low over his eyes, lending them
a slitted, nearly predatory appearance. “Check it out.”

The camera panned down as he flapped his hand
in directive, showing a large box on a table top. Wrapped in brown
paper, it looked indeed like something that might be shipped.
Except for the enormous, wriggling creature pinned beneath the
intersecting lines of tautly bound packing rope wrapped around the
box.

“Holy shit,” Andrew whispered, leaning
closer.

“It’s something else, huh?” Turner
grinned.

“What
is
it?” Andrew asked.

“We told you, man, it’s a camel spider,”
LaFollette said with a laugh.

The thing sort of looked like a spider. But
it appeared to have five pairs of legs, not four, all of which
flapped and flailed as it struggled to escape the ropes. It took
Andrew a moment to realize these weren’t an extra set of legs, but
the creature’s
palpi,
which were sort of like antennae or
mandibles in other similar arachnid species.

“They say these fuckers can scream like a
bitch,” Langley said, off-camera. “Well, boys and girls, we’re
going to find out if that’s true.”

“Here it comes.” LaFollette sounded giddy
with excitement as he jabbed his elbow into Andrew’s arm. “Watch,
man. This is the best part.”

Although he remained out of view, his hand
came on-screen, his fingers curled around the hilt of a large
knife. “You going to scream for us?” he asked the thrashing animal
in a taunting, sing-song sort of voice. “Huh, you little fucker?
You going to scream for me?”

The spider didn’t scream as Langley used the
knife to cut off its legs one by one, then its large mandibles,
then pieces of its abdomen segment by segment. It struggled beneath
the ropes, until at last falling still, and then the camera panned
back up to show Langley’s face, his mouth still stretched into a
broad grin.

“I guess that answers that, huh?” he asked
the camera. Drawing the knife blade to his mouth, he licked it,
then smacked his lips together. “Mmmm.”

“So what do you think?” Turner asked Andrew
as the video stopped.

“That’s some sick shit,” Andrew replied.

Turner and LaFollette laughed.

“You showed him that stupid video, didn’t
you?” Santoro said as she re-entered the rec room. When she saw
Turner putting his iPhone away, she scowled.

“Come on, Santoro.” Turner rolled his eyes.
“We’re just having a little fun.”

“Some fun.” She snatched her cue stick in
hand and scowled at them. “Come on, Turner. It’s your turn.”

When the game was over, Santoro having sank
the eight in the side pocket to secure the win, she beamed brightly
and offered her fist to Andrew, just as O’Malley had earlier to
her. “Good job, partner.”

Stunned by this warm turn in her reception,
he knocked his knuckles against hers, as he’d seen O’Malley do.
“Not bad for a civilian, huh?”

She laughed. Turning to LaFollette and
Turner, she held out her hand expectantly. “Alright, Privates,” she
said. “Ante up.”

“Ante? You mean we were playing for money?”
Andrew asked, glad now that he hadn’t known this from the start,
considering all of his available cash remained water-logged and
probably mildewing on his bed upstairs.

“Not really,” Santoro said, as LaFollette and
Turner dug around in their pockets, fishing out loose change. “For
Cokes out of the machine.”

The PFCs continued playing pool while Santoro
and Andrew sat together on a couch across the room, each of them
holding an ice-cold plastic bottle of Coca-Cola.

“Cheers.” Santoro tapped her bottle into his
in a toast, then took a sip.

“Cheers,” Andrew replied, doing likewise. She
was being nice to him now and he found he didn’t mind. There was
something to be said for having earned his way onto Dani Santoro’s
good side.

After a moment in which she took a long drink
from her Coke, she glanced at him. “Sorry for earlier. The camel
spider thing. LaFollette and Turner were just messing with
you.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.”

“All that stuff’s bullshit and they know it.
Hell, Turner’s never even
been
to Iraq. His tour was in
Afghanistan. Camel spiders are harmless. I mean, they’ll bite you,
sure, but they’re not poisonous. And that’s why they tell you to
shake out your boots in the morning, your sleeping bags every night
when you’re over there.” She shook her head, took another sip, then
glanced at him. “So did they tell you I was jealous of Langley? Mad
because Prendick put him in charge of some so-called elite training
squad?”

“Well, I…” Andrew cut his eyes toward the
pool table, then down at the bottle in his hands.

“I
was
pissed about that. Grant
Langley’s a sadistic creep. He likes to pick fights with people he
thought were weak.”

Andrew wondered if that had included Santoro,
if only because she was a woman.

“He didn’t deserve to get seniority over that
squad, not when there are at least a dozen other non-comms in this
unit more qualified and capable than he is any day of the week. But
apparently, Major Prendick didn’t agree.”

Andrew studied her for a moment, then said
carefully, “Doesn’t sound like you care much for him, either.”

She shrugged. “I don’t really know him much
to say.” Taking a quick swig of soda, she added, “I’m not too
impressed with him so far, if that’s what you mean.”

“I kind of figured that, yeah,” he said,
drawing her gaze, making her laugh again.

****

The PFCs returned to their quarters in the
barracks annex shortly after that, and Santoro had followed,
switching off the lights in the rec room as she and Andrew made
their ways to their respective rooms. The building was dark and
quiet as they crossed the foyer together. Beyond the glass doors
near the back courtyard, security lights outside cut swaths of pale
glow across the floor in irregular puddles. By this dim glow, he
could just make out the stark outline of the laboratory building
near the trees.
The house of pain,
he thought.

“What exactly is Dr. Moore up to out here
anyway?” he asked Santoro. “What kind of research is he doing?”

She paused alongside him at the glass doors
and looked outside. “I don’t know,” she replied. When he glanced at
her in surprise, she said, “Nobody’s told us, except that it’s top
secret.”

“Aren’t you kind of worried?” he asked, brow
raised. “I mean, he could be out there making anthrax or
something.”

“Of course I am,” she said. “But what am I
supposed to do? I’m under orders. It’s not like I can just walk out
of here. Believe me, I’d much rather be back in New York.”

“Is that where you’re from?” he asked and she
nodded.

“The Bronx, yeah.” She glanced over her
shoulder almost as if uneasy, or if she feared being overheard.
“Between you and me, this is the strangest assignment I’ve ever
had.”

“Why?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Because we’re all
reservists here—National Guard, not full time Army. I’m usually
deployed with a maintenance battalion. This set up is a hodge-podge
of different units, different companies, different regiments. I
didn’t know any of these guys up until we got here. And there’s
only twenty-four of us here. Well, sixteen now that they sent
Lieutenant Carter and all of Alpha squad home.”

“Is that unusual?” Andrew asked.

“When I was in Iraq, I was part of a
five-hundred man battalion,” she said. “My platoon had more
manpower than this operation. Yeah, I’d say it’s very unusual.”

She clapped him affably on the shoulder, then
turned to walk away.

“Hey, Santoro,” he said, and she paused,
glancing at him, her expression curious. “I’m sorry about earlier,
what I said when you came by my room. I just…It was a long time
ago, but it was really hard on my family, what happened to Beth. I
really don’t like to talk about it.”

Santoro nodded once. “Fair enough. I
shouldn’t have tried to joke with you about it. I’m sorry,
too.”

They both stood there, the silence growing
prolonged and pronounced, as if they waited for something. “Well,”
she said at length. “Guess I’ll see you around sometime.”

“Yeah.” He watched her leave, thinking again
that it wasn’t so bad, being on her good side. “See you.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Andrew stood alone by the back doors as the
sounds of Santoro’s footsteps had faded down the corridor. Just as
he moved to head for the stairwell, a blur of sudden movement out
of the corner of his gaze drew his attention to the doors, the
courtyard beyond.

What the…?

He could see a small figure crossing the lawn
outside, marking a slow but steady bisecting line across the
courtyard. He caught a glimpse of long, dark, disheveled hair and
bare feet beneath the long hem of a nightgown. Alice Moore.

What’s she doing?
For an uncertain
moment, he glanced over his shoulder toward the hall behind him, at
the end of which were the stairs leading up to Dr. Moore’s
apartment. Suzette had told him Alice wasn’t allowed to go anywhere
on her own, but he saw no sign of Suzette, Moore or anyone else out
in the yard with the girl.

“Shit,” he muttered. Shoving the door open
with both hands, Andrew ran out onto the sidewalk. “Alice!”

If she heard him calling to her, she didn’t
stop, didn’t turn around or even pause. Maintaining her bee-line
across the yard, she walked ahead of him, and she had enough of a
lead that he had to sprint to catch up. As he approached, he could
have sworn he heard her counting, whispering with each step.

“Hey.” He caught her by the shoulder, winded.
“Hold up. What are you doing?”

She looked up at him. “I’m walking.”

Still trying to catch his breath, Andrew
laughed. “Yeah. I can see that.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“I meant what are you doing outside by
yourself?”

“Then why didn’t you ask
that?”

He shook his head, wishing all at once that
he’d chosen the lady over the tiger and had gone upstairs to get
Suzette.

Alice turned around, started walking
again.

“Wait.” He hurried after her. “Where are you
going?”

Her path led them to her father’s laboratory
building, its featureless white stone façade bathed in the stark,
pale glow of security lights. Fearless, she went straight to the
main entrance, an entry alcove in which a polarized glass and steel
door had been recessed. Without a pause, she reached up, typed a
quick series of numbers into the key pad.

“What are you doing?” he asked in wide-eyed
alarm as she opened the door. O’Malley had called this place the
house of pain,
and all at once, he didn’t really want to
find out why. As she walked inside, he reached for her, fumbled
with her sleeve, then missed. The door started to swing shut behind
her with a hiss of pneumatics. He hadn’t taken note of the pass
code and realized if it shut between them, he’d be locked
outside.

“Shit.” Catching the door with his hand
within inches of it closing fully, he drew it open again and ducked
inside after Alice.

“What are you doing?” he whispered again.
“Alice, wait. Stop. You’re not supposed to be in here.”

She was already on the move ahead of him.
“Neither are you,” she replied without sparing him a glance.

He opened his mouth, then shut it again. She
had him there.

As Andrew trailed the girl along the brightly
lit corridors, their footsteps marked a whispered cadence against
the glossy tiled floors. Everything looked white-washed, stark and
sterile. The air felt sharp and cold, smelling distinctly of
antiseptics and bleach. He looked all around, wide-eyed as they
passed by closed doors, all barred with individual key pad locks,
all bearing a variety of brightly colored alert labels in prominent
view.

CAUTION: BIOHAZARD,
some read,
additionally emblazoned with three interlocking circles forming a
triangular shape against a neon orange background. Perhaps more
ominous were the ones that read
CANCER HAZARD
and
BIOSAFETY LEVEL 2
.