The Company of the Dead (21 page)

The next few days were as indistinct as the desert horizon. I made daily rounds to see the patient, and as he became more coherent his armed escort grew.

Perhaps they thought he might give away state secrets while I was examining him. I mean, the guy couldn’t scratch his ass, he couldn’t string more than three words together in a sentence. He was improving though, and certainly, in the fullness of time, would regain most of his faculties. But by the time he would be capable of telling me who killed John F Kennedy, I would hopefully be long gone.

Having only one patient to care for left me with too much free time, and the devil loves idle hands. I exercised. I read. I swam in the pool. Jenkins maintained a significant presence. I wondered what he used to do for kicks before I came along.

Gershon’s company provided a thankful distraction. His library, dogeared and sun-bleached, was composed of crime novels. He told he used to read sci-fi novels, until they had become irrelevant. I understand now what he meant.

We’d smoke, watch videos, play cards and shoot the shit. I let him do most of the talking and I never asked him any questions about the base. Toward the end of my stay, however, when he and I were sitting in his quarters, overlooking the sand and rocks, he volunteered the following.

“The locals call this place the Ranch or the Box. I’m talking about the boys up at the Skunk Works, the flyboys down here on assignment from Nellis. Others call it Dreamland. You know the types—plane-spotters, UFO buffs nuts for their first close encounter. They sit out on Freedom Ridge with their deckchairs and JC Penny telescopes, staring up into the desert skies...”

He looked over at me from where he lay sprawled on the unmade bed. “I’ve been here for longer than I care to remember, and I’ve got a better name for the place.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Waste Land,” he said. “I call it the Waste Land.”

I nodded. It seemed appropriate.

But he looked a little disappointed. “Like the poem.
Where the sun beats
,” he began to recite, “
and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water.
”

Sitting in his room, desiccating slowly in the fetid air-conditioning, I had to agree with him.

It was early March and I was due to go home. My bags were packed. Money had been wired to my new account. I could scarcely believe it. I’d almost gotten used to the little shit-hole. I say little but I’ve no idea how large the damn installation was. I’d been confined to the medical wing. In all my time at the facility I never saw a fence or signpost. I guess once you get as far into the place as I did, there really was no way out.

There was a knock on my door. I opened it thinking it was Gershon, here for my farewell. It was Burns. He didn’t look too happy. “You’re needed right away,” he told me. “Medical emergency.”

I had images of the patient re-bleeding. But it was way too late for a secondary hemorrhage.

Burns must have read my confusion. “This is a new patient,” he told me. “In our other facility.”

Other facility? That set off alarms in my head.

The fact that he was wearing a side arm didn’t help any.

They were going to kill me. I knew jack shit, but they were going to kill me anyway.

He whisked me into a dusty black jeep and we passed the brief journey in silence. In five minutes we’d crossed a small tundra of dark sand and scrub to reach an arched entrance. It stood alone, embedded within a three-sided structure that was all curves. There were no angles, no sharp edges. Beyond, an isolated crag of red rock kept watch. Burns said nothing as I clambered out of the jeep. He gave me a long look.

“I thought you were going to shoot me.”

“No such luck, Doctor Wells.”

He put the jeep into gear and disappeared into the dusk.

A shadow detached itself from the shadow of the arch. It formed into a man wearing a single-piece black jumpsuit. He had no insignia or rank displayed on his uniform. My mind was racing but my body froze. He took a step toward me. He grasped my arm and drew me forwards.

There were two men in similar garb on the other side of the arch. The shallow depression of a doorway slid open at my approach. I was shown into the narrow capsule of an elevator and launched into the depths of the desert.

I wish I’d taken the time to catch one last glimpse of the sand and stars. Granted Burns’s reprieve, it never occurred to me that they would be the last familiar sight I’d ever encounter.

When the lift stopped, I swallowed my stomach and groggily stepped into another world.

June 7, 1911

I’m sick. I’m taking time out.

Last night, after dark, I wandered the streets. I looked up at the lit windows of shabby houses and watched the couples on their porches observing my shaky path. A dog, hollow-chested and ragged, followed me down the road. I stopped to pet it, calling to it, but each time it settled on its haunches and growled a low, miserable lament.

I haven’t been able to keep any food down. I’ve been unable to take any steps from my bed that didn’t lead to the toilet. I’d like to think it’s a virus.

I’ve been here almost three months and my memories appear to have stabilized. This was to be my archive. Now I don’t know what it is, but if I’m to have any success in exorcising this ill feeling I have to finish what I started. And I’ve got things to do. But not today.

June 8, 1911

I was in a bunker beneath the desert, as exhausted as I’d ever been. Gershon was there, wearing scrubs. He was unshaven, his theatre hat askew. The expression on his face, usually so frank and open, was unreadable. There was misery there but its source was beyond me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

“What have you done?” I asked. There was no blood on his gown or shoes. He hadn’t been operating.

“I called you down here,” he replied.

I looked from him to the three black-suited men. One of them shook his head slowly in Gershon’s direction. He put a hand to an earpiece and said, “You can take him through.”

It was Gershon’s turn to lead me, and he brought me into the heart of the Waste Land.

We entered a chamber that was huge and white and brightly lit. Rows of fluorescent lights lined a ceiling that stood at least two storeys high. Two figures stood by the entrance. They wore white environment suits with narrow white globular helmets that concealed their features behind a distorted reflection of my own.

A nurse stood beside a gurney. Upon it lay a man in a similar environment suit that had been sliced open to the waist. He emitted a series of low moans and while his arms writhed, fingers grasping at nothing, his face twisted in pain. His trunk and legs were dead things on the trolley.

Jenkins stepped forwards. His arms were held before him, fingers steepled. He wore a look of deep displeasure on his face. Behind him was the machine. Glimpsing it, I felt a lurch of dizziness that I attributed to fatigue. I had to look away. I caught Jenkins eyeing me with curious intent, gauging my response to the thing. I’d become a peripheral yet valid part of his experiment.

The machine... Christ. It was a black and silver orb supported by twelve thick, stubby legs. It had a baroque quality to it. Ornate engraved paneling bisected it horizontally. It could have been reproduced from one of Da Vinci’s nightmares; the spawn of a vulgar, ostentatious genius. There was a small aperture in its underbelly. Coiled tubing, wide as tree trunks, connected it to roof and floor. It shimmered, as though vibrating at a very high frequency, like a drawn sword, but made no sound. There was an icy coldness emanating from its core and the tart stench of ozone in the air.

I wanted to vomit.

Behind the machine was a similar object, identical in shape and size. Its surface was scorched black in places. One third of it was missing, as if sheared off by a single stroke. It squatted, partially suspended by heavy chains that hung taut from the ceiling.

Two more uniformed men stood between the objects. Machine-guns, stark and black, hung from thick shoulder straps.

I turned back to the patient.

I knew what the machine was in the same way that I knew the sun was the sun or that water was wet. It was a form of preconscious knowledge that I’d acquired in some dark recess of my mind. The insanity of its existing at all fueled my attempts at denial.

“What happened here?” The words were dead leaves in my mouth.

“Spinal cord compression,” Gershon told me. “L 3. He’s got ascending paralysis and he’s too unstable to be moved to the main hospital.” He looked at me pleadingly.

“How did it happen? Another acceleration injury?”

“Not this time,” Jenkins replied.

“You’re a dangerous man to work for,” I murmured.

“I have my finer points. I’m just here to help. Can you do anything for him?”

“I need more information.”

Gershon glared at me, Jenkins shrugged, and I, seemingly bent on suicide, persisted.

“I can’t operate if I don’t know what’s happening.”

Gershon’s face seethed with quiet desperation.

For some reason, that was when it dawned on me. Jenkins manufactured that cold, thin-lipped excuse of a smile and I realized that I’d sold my soul. I may have had no choice at the start of all this, but I’d been offered money and security and an alimony-free life and I had accepted it all with both hands.

I’d said I’d never operate on a spine again. I’d made a promise to God that I was going to break for the devil. How’s that for damnation? I didn’t trust my hands and I didn’t trust my nerve and I sure as hell didn’t trust Jenkins.

A small alcove opened halfway along the room’s wall. I followed Gershon as he pushed the trolley toward it, the squeak of its wheels echoing loudly. Numbly, I followed him inside.

There were two nurses setting up the necessary equipment. I gave the tools a cursory inspection. They passed muster. My side of the table offered a partial view of the machine. I found myself peering at it while the anesthetist went to work putting lines into the patient.

“For fuck’s sake,” Gershon muttered under his breath at my side. “Will you stop looking at it?”

The room had been designed for first aid rather than surgery. A tight squeeze for a mobile ventilator and the five of us. They intubated the patient while he was on the gurney. Gershon had located two thick foam rests and placed them on the operating table. We carefully rolled the patient onto his stomach and placed him on the supports.

A CT scan was pinned up to a lightbox. The blood clot was a pulpy opacity over and interlacing the second and third lumbar vertebrae. The spine itself had an unusual translucency that I put down to artefact. I wasn’t thinking clearly.

Jenkins was standing just beyond the doorframe. Gershon led me to the cramped basin and began washing his hands. The sister next to us had finished her scrub and was now gowning up.

“Want to tell me what’s going on?” I asked.

Gershon kept washing his hands.

“You’ve seen the guy’s back. He’s had previous spinal surgery, but I don’t see any sign of fusion on the scan.”

Gershon looked up at me. “It’s still not too late for you, Jon. Just wash your hands and let’s do this and get you home. Wouldn’t you like to go home?”

I nodded dumbly.

“Don’t look at the machine. Don’t ask any questions.”

Home sounded sweet but nothing about this night was part of the bargain. I placed my hands under the stream of water. I moved in the sluggish wash of a trance. Gershon nudged me toward the waiting nurse who handed me my gown.

After the patient was prepped and draped, reduced to a portion of exposed anatomy for us to work on, I made a linear incision across the previous scar. The wound practically slipped open. It was recent work. I couldn’t see any trace of suture material. I wondered how this wound had been closed. I was looking at the para-spinal muscles. They should have been scarred—knotted and fibrous and bound together by thick non-absorbable sutures—but they were pristine.

Gershon’s theatre cap was soaked with perspiration. Jenkins was watching us as close as ever.

The para-spinals slid easily away from the lumbar pedicles and so far there were no large clots or bone fragments, no telltale signs of any injury. Blood, bone and meat reminded me how much I despised the gross carpentry of spinal work. We spent a few more moments ligating some small bleeders that were quietly seeping into the wound. When I next glanced up, Jenkins was gone, the doorway empty. He was probably having a cigarette or starting World War Three.

“I’ve done a bad thing,” Gershon said quietly. He put a hand over mine in the wound, pressing a large sponge over the vertebrae I’d been trying to expose.

“Your opening could have been neater.”

“I’ve done a real bad thing.” He tightened his grip on me.

“How bad?”

“Sometimes in this place...” Gershon’s frown creased his mask. “I wasn’t thinking it through. I’ll take it from here,” he offered weakly. “Go. Unscrub.”

“You’d be lost.”

I shifted his hand and saw what he’d been trying to conceal. I looked back at him, incredulous.

“Having problems, Doctor Wells?” Suddenly Jenkins was standing by my side. He peered into the wound. “Interesting. Much more advanced than we anticipated.” The look he gave me now was sly, conspiratorial.

The exposed vertebrae were translucent. I could see the layers of muscle beneath them clearly. My first thought, as I tried to rationalize my vision, was that the bone had been treated with something. But nothing made bone see-through. My mind fought for clarity.

This was some form of prosthesis. It had been fashioned around the entire spinal cord, as if somehow grown. No wonder the scan appeared so strange. Fine wiring laced between the artificial bones. There were no signs of tissue reaction.

No one, anywhere, had a product like this.

I leaned closer. Each vertebra was imprinted with a number. A thick wad of blood sat between the middle vertebrae and the spinal cord. I looked at the cord itself. A string of numbers and letters ran its length. The spinal cord was prosthetic. An outright impossibility.