The noise penetrated my head. Vibrating in my teeth and bones. I heard voices in the thunder‒ mere rumbles of disjointed syllables that made no sense. There was a vague familiarity to the man’s voice and the lighter tones of a woman.
I felt a bee sting in an arm and a hand covered my nose and mouth. It tasted like plastic. I protested, the insides of my belly quivering with non-stop nausea.
There was a swooping sensation, sideways up and then down. Up and back. Almost as if we were lost and searching for the way home. I sensed a vast distance underneath me with no solidness to it. I was flying, I thought in amazement. With wings. Except my arms were tied somehow. I rolled slightly from side to side, the feeling of restraints on my sides, legs and head. Nothing moved.
Flashpoint. Bright lights in my face. Cold wind that tore at my clothes. Being lifted. Rolling down a long hallway under brighter lights flashing by overhead. Those odd rumbling noises all around me. Like growling thunder. I didn’t hear any words. Nothing that made any sense.
Buzzing noises around my head. A cold wet sensation as liquid dripped down the back of my neck and pooled in the hollow of my throat. I mumbled a complaint, but everything seemed so off, nothing made sense‒ hair fell onto my shoulders and bare skin as I lay on a cold, hard table. The moon, a huge white orb loomed over my head. I shivered. I was so cold.
Something patted my chest. Rubbery, not like a hand. Not warm and supple but slick. Called my name. Crrrisss. Crrrisss. I smelled something burning, like bones burning in the fire. A peculiar vibration in my skull as pressure built up like the soda in a bottle you dropped or shook.
A sudden sharp pain and the ecstasy of a release. I cried out and couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear or move. All my senses were overwhelmed in an instant. I knew nothing but blessed blackness.
*****
Dreams can be more real than life. Nightmares can be real enough to kill you in your sleep. Being unconscious can be both‒ You might feel as if you're awake, yet it feels like a dream. Or you can be totally and completely unaware that anything was going on in your head. Like a switch turned off in a pitch-black room.
For me, that was what it was like. One minute I was awake, sort of aware that I had hurt myself and the next‒ nothing. One minute there was nothing but darkness and the next‒ a tiny spot of light that hovered in front of me. Which was weird because I didn’t see it exactly, cuz my eyes weren’t even open. Still, it was there.
Sound came next. An insistent beep that was very regular. And annoying. Rustlings of material that was crinkly, like paper. People talking but the words weren’t clear enough for me to pick out anything.
Smells brought another layer of comprehension to my awareness. Heavy duty cleaners and alcohol. Disinfectant. Food. Soap and floor wax. Flowers and wool. Men’s aftershave and gun oil. The scent of women’s deodorant, perfume and shampoo. Old men.
My head hurt. My whole body felt really heavy. There was a terrible hollow in my belly and my throat was so dry that my tongue wouldn’t unstick. My lips were chapped and bleeding. The taste of blood made me gag. I was so thirsty that I could have sucked the nearest lake dry. I wanted to move, nothing worked. My head felt rigid, something was holding it stiff.
My heart pounded, I thought I was paralyzed. I must have made a sound because someone picked up my hand and squeezed it. They asked me something. Gradually, the words became clearer and I could understand.
“Cris, can you hear me? His eyes are moving, I think he’s coming up from the coma. Cris, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand.”
Feebly, I twitched my fingers in his cold grip. After that, I sank back down into the black without a fight. I was so tired.
The first thing that I was aware of was the smell of pee. Harsh, acrid and barely covered by a stinky floral spray. When I forced my eyes open, a figure in colorful scrubs was emptying pee into a container from a plastic bag. She was kneeling at the side of my‒ hospital bed? I couldn’t make out her face except to say that she had black hair and dark eyes. She looked up, her hand stilled.
“Well, hello there,” she said. “Hold on, I’ll get the nurse.”
“My head hurts,” I said. It came out in a whisper.
She nearly ran out of the room. Seconds later, she was back with another woman and a man in a white coat. He looked vaguely familiar.
“Cris? Can you squeeze my hand?” he asked as I frowned. He or someone like him had asked me that before.
“I could but why should I?” I groused.
“You remember what happened?” He came around where I could see him and looked at my eyes. Poked and prodded me, took my vitals and raised the bed up so he could stroke the bottom of my feet. It tickled.
I wrinkled my face. “Something about a trip in the woods. I fell, I think. Off a horse? Flew in a helicopter? New York city?” I looked around. “Where are Matt and Jake?”
“You fell down a steep hill off your horse. Hit your head and fractured some ribs. You injured your brain. You had a substantial subdural bleed in your right temporal lobe causing cranial pressure that was killing your brain. Without surgery, you were dying. We drilled several burr holes to release the pressure and suction the blood. That was a week ago.”
“A week?” I was dismayed. “I don’t remember. Where am I?”
“Grand Junction, Medical Center. Do you remember me? Dr. Cussler? Andy Cussler, Pepper’s brother.”
“You look familiar,” I said cautiously. Waves of fatigue were crushing me, and my head and neck hurt. My ribs didn’t feel so bad until I tried to move.
“I can see that this is too much for you,” Cussler said. “We’ll leave you to rest. When you wake up next, maybe you can try and eat something.” He nodded to all the others and they trooped out. My voice called them back.
“Matt. Jake. Where are they?”
“A hotel in town. They’re safe, the FBI have them guarded under assumed names and the Marshal service is also watching them.”
“Under arrest?” I asked fearfully.
“Protective custody. Pepper is with them, too. They’re okay, I give you my word. Your friends Jonas and Jane are with them.”
They were either safe or all in one place for my enemies to strike at once. In any case, there wasn’t much I could do. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, it was no longer daytime but night‒
I could see the moon shining in my window and a myriad of stars that one never saw in the city. All against the backdrop of the San Juan Mountains. I pushed the bed controls for UP until I was almost sitting. Moving was almost as bad as trying to lift a car with my teeth. After much struggling, I was able to sit high enough that I could swing my legs over the edge of the bed using the side rail to hold me upright. With my free hand, I explored my head. From my neck to my eyebrows I was covered in gauze and when my fingers contacted the right side of my skull, I encountered pain and a thicker padding. In three separate places. There was a drain hanging out from under the gauze, fluid leaking onto a soft roll of material that was tucked into the collar on my neck.
I wore a thick collar around it, supporting and preventing me from turning my neck to more than a fraction of an inch. It was really hard to get up without using every part of my body, even my neck. Standing proved to be the most I could do when I clearly needed to walk to escape. That required disconnecting my IV, catheter and cardiac leads, any of which doing would bring the nurses in pronto. While I was pondering that, a wheelchair rolled into the room pushed by a short, fireplug of a man in dark blue scrubs that looked worn. Faded and soft. He must have had them for a long time. His hair was cut short, almost military style. Around his neck was his hospital ID. I couldn’t read it; his stethoscope obscured the name and photo.
“Cris. What are you doing out of bed?” he scolded. “I’m Larry. I’m here to take you up for a CAT scan.”
He helped me into the chair, transferred my IV, catheter bag and unclipped the EKG leads as he turned off the machine. He left my oxygen line on the bed.
“Ready?” He clipped my seat-belt around me and cinched it tight. I complained about my ribs and he shrugged as he said ‘sorry.’ Resetting the footrest, he wheeled me out of the room, out of ICU and down the hallway past the elevators until we came to a wider than usual lift near the kitchens.
We went down. I hesitated. I swore he had said we were going to CAT scan which I knew was on the higher floors. He had pushed the button for the lowest level, and we were in a freight elevator. Not the patient ones.
“Who are you?” I demanded. “Where are you taking me? Tomography is on the eighth floor.”
His answer was to pull out a stun gun and jab it into my shoulder. The thin material of the gown was no deterrent to the charge incapacitating me. I would have screamed if I could have found my voice or the breath to speak. I could see his face. The look on it was gleeful, especially as he triggered it a second time. After that, I didn’t remember anything.
I woke up in a car. Flat on my back with my hands and feet zip-tied together. It was a big SUV like an Expedition, Denali or Escalade with blacked out windows. I was in the rear cargo space strapped to a backboard which was tied in to the sides of the wheel wells so that it and I could not move. Mostly, all that I could see were the roof, my legs and feet. I couldn’t see anything beyond my head, but I could hear the voices of several men. I must have made a sound because a face leaned over the back of the seat and stared at me.
“He’s awake,” he announced. I had never seen him before but if you went to central casting looking for an evil villain’s henchman, his face would be the first one you’d see. He was the walking cliché of one. Big, muscled, tattooed and ugly with a shaved head and Russian accent. Cruel smile and dead eyes.
“Is he bleeding?” That voice was American, New York accent with broad vowels and nasal tones. Clipped and authoritative. The tat dude touched my head with a hand the size of a steam shovel, large enough to tear me limb from limb. Yet, his touch was surprisingly gentle as he turned my head towards his face. He was looking at the bandages.
“Old blood. Nothing new,” he reported. “Gone through the entire bag of lactated Ringers, antibiotics and steroids. You’ll have to stop so I can hook up another.”
“Next ten miles there’s a pull-off. Give him a sedative, now,” said the New York voice.
“I know you,” I said suddenly. “You’re that State Trooper I saw in Unadilla.”
There was a sudden silence when another voice cut in. That one made the hairs on my neck stand up in primal fear. “Aren’t you going to say hello to your daddy and grandfather, Cris?”
The face that leaned on the back seat was horribly burned, the hair that was still left gray and stringy. His skin was yellow, and he looked so old‒ older than the man that was my grandfather, older than anyone I had ever seen. It was Tempe. Alive but scarred and weakened from the fire he had started in the mansion.
“You’re dead!” I shrieked, and he cackled.
“You weren’t the only one to survive a death blow to the chest, kid,” he snickered. “You got your rights and lefts mixed up, like you always done. You stabbed me in the lung, not the heart.”
“You don’t have a heart!” I snapped. “You’re a psychopath that likes to rape and murder little boys!”
He snarled at me, telling me to shut up if I knew what was good for me. From the heavy stillness inside the SUV, I guessed that the others did not like hearing what I had said about him. Whether it would help or hurt me, I didn’t know.
Less than ten minutes later, whoever was driving pulled off the road, I heard the doors open. The rear cargo doors swung wide, allowing me to see out to a part of the road.
Pine trees, reddish clay and gray rocks that looked like slate. We weren’t in Colorado, not by the looks of the stones I could see exposed on the sides of the highway.
Two lanes with a median in the middle which was covered by trees. Mostly firs with hardly any leafy species. Not eastern, then, the pines were too common to pinpoint the area by such trees alone. Such as Sequoias would tell me that we were in California or Sitka pine in Oregon. I could be in Maine, Georgia or the Dakotas. Even in the cypress swamps of Texarkana.
I slid out of the SUV on the backboard even as I protested. The most that I could do was curse them, my arms, legs and body could not move. Mr. Tat stuck something in my IV and all their faces became dark, shapeless blobs. I barely felt him change out the bags of fluids, the catheter bag emptied and him sliding me back inside. The cold air had a sharp bite to it. It all faded into nothing.