Santoro left Andrew to lean heavily against the wall while she opened one of a pair of glass doors. A sign beside the doors read: DARPA Appalachian Research Facility.
She led him inside into a lobby. Lightning through tall windows lit against decorated gold-framed landscapes on the walls, artful displays of silk flowers, exposed hardwood floors and leather-upholstered furniture, accoutrements more suited to a haute hotel rather than any Army station Andrew had ever seen.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“Stay here.” Santoro ignored his inquiry, delivering Andrew to a chair and letting him crumple unceremoniously into the seat. “Don’t move.”
Striding briskly out the nearest doorway, she left him alone in the dark. For a long time, there was nothing but the steady cadence of rainfall against the pavement outside, the low timbre of thunder, the fluttering glow of lightning. He leaned his aching head back against the closest wall, feeling his wet hair press coolly against the back of his neck.
I need to try and raise McGillis or Allcott. He knew it would be futile, but reached for his radio anyway, reaching beneath the poncho and his soaked shirt to unclip it from his belt.
“McGillis, do you copy me?” he asked, keeping his eyes closed as he drew the radio to his mouth. He let up on the mic button and listened to sputtering static. After a moment, he tried again. “Allcott, are you out there? Over.”
Still nothing. With a groan, Andrew opened his eyes, meaning to chuck the worthless radio across the room. He stopped short when he saw a little girl less than three feet away, staring at him, her dark hair messily askew as if she’d just roused from bed.
“Uh.” Startled, he managed a clumsy smile. “Hey, there. Hi.”
The girl didn’t smile back and continued studying him with a sort of cool scrutiny, as if examining a particularly large preying mantis or other exotic insect specimen. “You’re wet,” she said at length.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, wincing as he straightened more fully in the seat. “It’s raining outside.”
The girl didn’t say anything, just looked at him.
“I’m Andrew.” He tried to smile again. “What’s your…”
The girl turned around and walked away, disappearing into the shadows beyond the doorway.
“…name?” Andrew finished, alone again. Sighing, he forked his fingers through his hair, shoving it in a wet, heavy flap back from his face. Well, that went well, he thought.
Santoro returned shortly after that, armed with a flashlight and accompanied by a another woman, older and blonde.
“…the infirmary’s locked up and with the power out, the key pad won’t work,” she was saying.
“I’ve got the key,” the blonde replied. Then, as Santoro shined the high-intensity beam directly into Andrew’s face, blinding him, she whistled. “Boy. You weren’t kidding.”
“About what?” Andrew grimaced, drawing his hand toward his face, trying to shield his eyes from the glare from the other woman, Santoro’s flashlight.
The blonde laughed. “About you bleeding like a stuck pig.”
It was the smell that had done it, that distinctive, unmistakable smell of medical asepsis. The moment the blonde woman had dug a set a keys from the pocket of her slacks and unlocked a pair of double doors, that odor had wafted out in a sterile huff, taking Andrew back in time eight years and to an Intensive Care ward in Anchorage, Alaska, where his older sister, Beth, had lay dying.
Hey, Germ.
He imagined Beth’s voice, saw her face in his mind, weary and weak, her dark eyes ringed by shadows. She’d tried to smile for him the last time he’d seen her alive, her body draped and tangled in a mess of life support tubes and wires. ‘Germ’ had been her pet name for him, an affectionate little dub she’d come up with when he’d been no more than a toddler.
“Are you alright?”
Andrew blinked, snapping out of his distant thoughts to find Santoro turned to face him, her brow raised inquisitively. “Fine,” he said, and because his voice sounded strained, he coughed once and tried again. “I’m fine.”
The clinic looked like a comprehensive hospital ward, with a clerical station in the center, and individual patient rooms framing it in a broad circumference. All appeared empty, dark beyond the thresholds. “Bring him in here,” the blonde called to Santoro as she ducked inside one.
She introduced herself as Dr. Suzette Montgomery. “That’s the M.D. variety, not Ph.D.,” she assured him. This didn’t eased his anxiety much as she wielded a needle with what turned out to be surgical precision to stitch up his scalp wound, primarily because he thought he smelled the distinct, pungent odor of liquor on her breath.
“All done,” she said with a smile and a final snip of the suturing thread.
Andrew brushed his fingertips curiously, cautiously against the neat little column of stitches. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. What say we get you something dry to change into?” Suzette glanced toward Santoro, also still damp and dripping. “You think you could find some extra clothes for Mister… ah…” She glanced at Andrew.
“Braddock,” he supplied. “Andrew Braddock.”
Santoro remained rooted in spot for a long moment, a silhouette behind the beam of her flashlight. “Oh, come on,” Suzette said. “It’s not going to take you five minutes. I promise not to let him out of my sight.”
At last, Santoro offered the lamp, butt-first, to Suzette. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “Keep him here.”
As she left, thunder rumbled from overhead and outside, low and thrumming through the infirmary walls. Suzette directed the light back into Andrew’s face again and he turned his head away, flinching.
“Sorry.” The beam moved again as she crossed to a small cabinet against the far wall. “I’m going to draw a couple of blood samples real quick. Do you mind?”
Andrew shook his head, then held the flashlight, aiming it under her direction, and watched the doctor wrap a slim strap of rubber around his upper arm, just beneath his bicep muscle. Using her fingertips, Suzette tapped and prodded at the inner crook of Andrew’s elbow until a knot of blue veins bulged beneath the surface.
“So what brings you to these parts, Mister Braddock?” she asked.
“Andrew,” he said, and she glanced up and smiled. “I’ve been out working in the woods. I’m a forester.”
Her smile remained affixed, playful and coquettish. “You mean like Smokey the Bear?”
“No.” For the first time since his arrival, he relaxed enough to laugh. As he had with Santoro, he explained his survey work to Suzette. And, like Santoro, she’d looked at him rather doubtfully.
“You’re counting trees,” she said. “In the middle of a forest.”
He laughed again. “Not all of them. Just the hardwood species.”
“Oh.” With another coy smile, she dragged this syllable out, letting it hang in the air between them.
“And it’s more of an estimate, not an actual count.”
“Oh,” she said again, then dropped him a wink. “Better you than me.”
With an ease so expert, Andrew hardly even felt the pin prick, she inserted the hypodermic syringe and began to fill one of the tubes with a sudden, steady flow of blood.
“There,” she said once she’d finished. “I’ll get you some acetaminophen. You’re banged up pretty good. You’re going to be sore.”
Going to be? Andrew was already becoming steadily aware of aches and stiffness in his neck and shoulders, a strained and uncomfortable tension down the length of his spine. It felt like a dwarf with a mallet and Chinese gong was beating out Beethoven’s fifth symphony behind his temples.