Mad Skills (22 page)

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Authors: Walter Greatshell

BOOK: Mad Skills
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“It’s just like riding a bike.”
“Uh … I really doubt it.”
Maddy rose above the pall of smoke and banked down the valley, following the contours of the landscape. Up there in the moonlight, the visibility was not bad, but she didn’t want to get too low for fear of hidden power lines and transmission towers. Icy-cold wind whistled through the shrapnel holes in the canopy.
“Where are we going?” Ben asked.
“Home.”
“Do you know how to get there from here?”
“No. Be quiet.”
Maddy was straining to listen, to
feel
. Something was wrong. A vibration—something in the gear train was out of whack and getting worse, some kind of dent in the radial plane. Something out of sync. If it broke loose altogether, the gears could just suddenly seize up, the rotor blades could fly off, and they could plummet to their idiotic doom. Stupid raccoon!
As though reading her thoughts, Moses said, “You should probably find a place to set down.”
“Ya think?”
“What’s that?” said Ben.
“I said we should probably find a place to land.”
“So soon?”
“The engine’s giving out.”
“How do you know that?”
“How don’t you know? Can’t you feel it?”
“No.”
“You don’t hear that noise?”
“You mean the wind?”
“Ben, let me ask you something. You and I have both had the same operation, right?”
“I guess so. Similar, anyway.”
“So how come you seem so … normal?”
“Normal?”
“Do you mean to tell me you couldn’t fly this helicopter if you had to?”
“No.”
“Why is that?”
“I never learned how.”
“Neither did I. It’s not necessary. The mechanism’s so simple, I could practically build one of these from scratch.”
“Maddy, I don’t understand what you’re saying, but maybe it would be best if we did land this thing.”
He thought she was crazy.
Maybe I am special,
Maddy thought.
What did they do to me?
“Look!” Ben said. “There’s a road.”
Across the piebald landscape was a string of intermittent twinkling lights, red one way and white the other. A two-lane highway that skirted the forbidden valley, separated from it by a range of bluffs; the happy motorists oblivious in their antlike procession, focused only on the distance to the next rest stop; GAS, FOOD, LODGING shining in their headlights like a Pavlovian promise, and perhaps BRAINTREE INSTITUTE, NEXT RIGHT. Yes, this had to be the road they took to bring her here … which meant it also led back home.
Things were getting really sketchy, so bad that even Ben began to notice. Trying to stay calm, Maddy feathered the aircraft down over an empty stretch of road, seeking any flat, open field. Every clear space was polka-dotted with pine saplings as though it was a Christmas-tree farm.
All at once the tail rotor gave out, and they began to spin, twirling downward like a leaf. Ben shouted, but Maddy held steady, absorbed in all the swiftly changing adjustments that were required to keep them alive, improvising like a maniacal jazz savant. Slowed by autorotation, the copter touched down reasonably gently, its tail crumpling like a toothpaste tube, but the fuselage mostly intact, canted upright.
Coming to their senses, Maddy and Ben unbuckled and crawled out of the wreck.
“Jeez,” Maddy said, “are you okay?”
“Not really,” said Ben, collapsing in the tall weeds.
“Oh, Ben, I’m sorry.”
“I think I hurt something during the crash, or maybe before. I can’t tell. I feel like my stomach’s all bloated.”
“Oh no.” She checked him. From what she knew about anatomy, it looked like he was hemorrhaging internally. “We better get you to a doctor. Can you walk at all? I need to get you away from the helicopter in case it catches fire.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”
“The road’s right over there. Come on, I’ll help.”
“I think I can do it.”
They made their way down the slope of the hill, Ben using the pine saplings as support, staggering from tree to tree. Maddy stayed close in case he needed a hand. When they reached the bottom, he leaned on the highway guard-rail and retched.
“Phew,” he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “I am never flying with you again.”
From high up in the air there had seemed to be quite a bit of traffic, but at ground level it was clear that the cars were spaced very far apart. At the moment, the road was deserted. The night sky was clear, and there was a low crescent moon. Maddy had never really noticed the incredible depth of the sky before—it had been more or less a flat field with stars sprinkled across it like glitter on a kindergarten art project. Now she could clearly tell that the moon was in the foreground, and beyond that the planets Mars and Jupiter, then, receding into the deep distance, all the stars of the Milky Way, with the invisible web of their trajectories relative to the Earth. She could see Betelgeuse, the supermassive red giant.
A pair of headlights winked over the horizon.
“I see a car,” she said. “I’m gonna try flagging it down.”
“You do that. If you don’t mind, I’ll just sit here.”
Maddy went to the edge of the pavement and waited while the headlights dipped in and out of sight. When they started getting bright enough to cast a shadow, she raised her arms and waved as urgently as possible. The car made an electronic farting noise and pulled sharply over, blinding her with its headlights—it was a police car: BITTERROOT SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT.
The female deputy got out, brandishing a flashlight, and demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“We need to be taken to a hospital! My friend is hurt!”
“There was a report of a stolen aircraft going down somewhere around here.”
“That was us; we had no choice. Can we talk about this later? He has internal injuries—he needs medical attention, or he’s gonna bleed out!”
“How would you know that?”
“Look at him! What else could it be?”
“I have no idea. Both of you up against the car and don’t move—you’re under arrest.”
“That’s fine as long as you take him to a doctor.”
“Hey! You’re not the one calling the shots.”
The officer frisked and handcuffed them, then loaded them in the backseat, taking special care with Ben, who was sinking fast.
“Hey, buddy, you feeling okay?”
“Need a doctor …”
“Stay with me, okay? I’m Sheriff’s Deputy Tina Reinaldi. Are you in any pain?”
“Yes … hurts …”
“Your stomach hurts?”
He nodded, his face yellow and clammy as congealed beef tallow. Becoming concerned, Deputy Reinaldi called in for emergency medical personnel to meet them and hurriedly got going.
As they drove, she asked Maddy, “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“What’s your name?”
“Madeline Grant.”
“And your boyfriend?”
“He’s my stepbrother—well, almost. Benjamin Blevin.”
“So what’s this all about?”
“We need your help. We’re both victims of some kind of medical experiment conducted by the Braintree Institute. It’s mind control by means of direct cortical stimulation. You get this implant, and they can make you do anything they want you to. Ben and I got away, but there are a lot more people still there, being manipulated like puppets—a whole town!”
Officer Reinaldi listened to her with the perfect passivity of someone who has heard it all. Maddy immediately realized she might have goofed.
“Good one,” whispered Moses.
“And what’s all this got to do with a downed aircraft?” asked the deputy.
“We had to steal a helicopter to escape.”
“Come on. You stole a helicopter? Which one of you is the hotshot helicopter thief?”
“Me.”
“You? Where’d you learn to fly it? Helicopter camp?”
“I just knew.”
“You just knew.”
They drove very fast, passing a number of police cars and other emergency vehicles speeding in the opposite direction.
“Shit,” muttered the officer under her breath. “It never rains but it pours.”
“I’m sorry?” said Maddy.
“I’m not talking to you. You’ve caught me in the middle of another call. I’m supposed to be responding to an armed robbery at an industrial park. Somebody shot up the place and stole a couple million dollars’ worth of precious metals. Instead, I’m playing nursemaid to you two whack jobs.”
“Where are we going?”
“Presbyterian General. Stay awake back there! I don’t want anyone checking out in my patrol unit. I’m gonna have enough paperwork as it is. He still breathing?”
“So far.”
“Make sure he stays that way, at least until we get to the hospital.”
In a few minutes, they were out of the country and hurtling past gas stations and shopping plazas, weaving around traffic and running red lights. Maddy noticed her teeth were chattering, her whole body vibrating.
I’m in shock,
she thought. But something inside her was resisting it, something that wouldn’t allow her to collapse.
Turning onto a side road, they sped through tree-lined suburbs and abruptly swerved into a parking lot, then up a steep ramp to a hospital’s ambulance bay. There was a medical team with two gurneys waiting to meet them. Maddy’s and Ben’s handcuffs were removed, and they were quickly strapped down and rolled inside.
“I’m okay,” Maddy insisted, “it’s him you have to check.” But they weren’t listening.
Deputy Reinaldi followed the stretchers into the Emergency Ward, then stayed at the desk to sign whatever she had to sign while the two of them were wheeled into adjoining stalls, to be probed and prodded and poked with needles. After a little while, most of the attention shifted to Ben, leaving Maddy time to reflect on recent events.
She had escaped. Her mind was her own again. She could
feel
it: She was free. The space in her head was a great crystalline dome, echoing only the clear sound of her own true thoughts. Commercial-free and without interruption. It was the most beautiful feeling in the world; she sobbed with relief and gratitude.
They stabilized Ben and took him away to surgery—he was bleeding internally, just as she’d tried to tell them. But Maddy didn’t have the energy to sweat it, not with the narcotics trickling through her system. She was drifting off, gratefully sinking into the oh-so-soft pillow.
She slept.
TWENTY-FIVE
 
1-2-3
 
SOMETIME later, she awoke. Her head was still remarkably clear. The ward was quiet. There was a drowsy wee-hour stillness, with only the soft hum of medical equipment breaking the silence. Past the foot of her bed, Maddy could see the nurses’ area, but no one was in view. Ben’s bed was empty.
She heard a squeaking from somewhere out of sight, and a moment later a group of people went by wheeling a gurney: three tall doctors in long gowns and surgical masks, followed by a short, brisk-looking woman in a white lab coat. The sheeted body on the stretcher was hooked up to oxygen, a heart monitor, and an IV drip. Instead of hair, its freshly shaved head sprouted a mass of colored wires.
It was dark, and Maddy’s eyes were still bleary, but she could swear the woman was Dr. Stevens. There was no mistaking that silvery ’fro. But before she could sit up or properly focus, they were gone out the exit doors.
She had to pee. Using the remote to raise her bed, she pressed the nurse call button. When no one came, she pressed it again.
Come on,
she thought. What did they expect her to do, pee in a bedpan? But there wasn’t a bedpan at hand; there wasn’t even a paper cup.
And it wasn’t just about peeing—she wanted to know how Ben was doing and discuss this whole situation with someone in authority. Most of all, she wanted to talk to her parents. But first, she really, really had to pee.
“Hello,” she called. “Could someone please let me up? I have to go to the bathroom.”
Still nothing, and now she was getting angry. How could they just leave their trauma patients unattended like this? Someone could drop dead! Maddy had half a mind to pull out her own IV and march to the hospital administrator’s office … right after she went to the restroom.
Something peculiar caught her attention. There was a stethoscope in the middle of the floor. A bright, shiny stethoscope, just lying there by the nurses’ station as if some careless person had dropped it. It was impossible to miss; anyone passing by ought to have picked it up. But clearly there was no one around. All of the doctors, interns, nurses, and orderlies who had been on duty when she and Ben were brought in had left. And whoever was still on duty must be taking a long bathroom break themselves.

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