Tom looked appalled. “You think it’ll come to that?”
Ledger rubbed at the blond-gray stubble on his chin. “It usually does.”
The line moved forward and in forty minutes it was their turn to step up to the table. It was immediately clear that two of the lab-coated people were assisting the third, a woman of about forty, with long auburn hair and a lovely face. Her hands moved with professional competence, accepting syringes, swabbing with pieces of cloth soaked in alcohol, jabbing with practiced deftness, handing the used needle off, taking a new one. Over and over again. Doing it fast and doing it well.
Ledger looked at the doctor, trying to catch her eye and read her. She was disheveled, her clothes were dirty and stained, and her hair hung in lank threads. If all he had was a quick glance he might have put it down to an earnest desperation to get as much done as possible, to fill every minute of every hour of every day with the good work she was doing. Pushing herself to the edge of exhaustion because what was personal comfort when measured against saving the actual fucking world?
That’s what a quick glance would have told him. Ledger, however, was not in the habit of making quick or hasty judgments. Reliable intelligence required attention and consideration.
He glanced at the guards standing just a few feet behind Dr Pisani. There were five of them. Four were generic brutes with hard faces, dead eyes and callused hands resting on the automatic rifles slung over their heavy shoulders. The fifth was a different kind of man, and Ledger met his eyes only briefly and when he did he projected absolutely nothing because this was a far more dangerous man than the guards who stood with him. This man was tall, lean, wiry, hawk-faced, with cat green eyes and a slash of a mouth. One corner of that mouth was hooked upward in a permanent, knowing, mocking smile. It was clear to Ledger, as he was sure it was to Tom, that this man was in charge. Not just of this post, but of everything. He wore a black leather jacket but beneath was a military blouse with two stars pinned neatly in place. A major general. He stood with a faux slouch that Ledger had seen a lot of good fighters affect. His long-fingered hands hung loose at his sides, and he wore the kind of loose-fitting clothes that allowed for quick, unhampered movement.
Danger, Will Robinson, mused Ledger. He shifted his gaze away before the man could fix on him. There was something very familiar about the man, but Ledger could not quite place it.
So, instead he focused on Dr Pisani, trying to catch her eyes. It took a moment, but as the doctor prepared to inject the woman in line in front of Ledger, Pisani glanced at him and their eyes met. Locked. Held. He wanted to make contact with her, to make sure she saw him as he saw her. That’s when Ledger knew that everything that was going on here was as wrong as his instincts had warned.
There was a look in the doctor’s eyes. Not exhaustion. Not the weary triumph of having succeeded in something great. Not even the fatalistic sadness of someone who wished she could have succeeded in her great achievement sooner.
No. None of that was in Pisani’s eyes.
Instead, what Ledger saw in those lovely, intelligent brown eyes was a total, overwhelming joy. A joy that was too much, too big, too wild.
It was the kind of limitless joy of a mind that had broken loose of its moorings.
The doctor who desperate people traveled hundreds of miles to find was absolutely insane.
—16—
Top and Bunny
It didn’t take long before the workers switched from hauling bodies to herding groups of people. As the troop carriers filled with dead pulled out, they were replaced within five minutes by troop carriers carrying the living — all wearing red, white, and blue wristbands. This time, the reds were immediately put in with Top and Bunny, until their red holding pen was full. And then the next and the next. The whites and blues were split, some being taken off further into the reaches of the cavern and whatever lay beyond their line of sight, while others were ushered into the appropriately marked holding pens for blue and white.
“Wait. Where are they going? Why are we being put in here?” one woman demanded, looking longingly off after the other blues.
“We can only process so many at a time, okay?” the guard replied, smiling warmly as if to reassure her. “You’re next, I promise. Look, there’s nice chairs here, Blu-ray players, books.”
He was right. Unlike the pens for the reds, the whites and blues had been given couches, chairs, tables with games, flatscreen TVs with Blu-ray players, bookshelves of books and magazines. All stuff to make them comfortable and help them relax while they waited, which meant either the guards didn’t care about the reds relaxing or the reds, for some reason, wouldn’t be waiting as long.
Bunny elbowed Top and tipped his head toward the other pens. “What’s wrong with this picture?”
“Everything,” Top agreed, whispering.
“How come they get to sit and we have to stand here?” a red-banded old man said. “My legs are tired and I have a bad back!” He scowled, his voice dripping irritation.
The guard just turned and shoved him further back into the red tagged cell. “Shut up and do what you’re told, old man. Make room for the rest.”
“Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?” the old man demanded, but before he could say anything further, the guard backhanded him across the face, knocking him to his knees. Two more guards rushed in, grabbed him, and dragged him out the door.
“You just got yourself a speed pass, old man,” the sneering first guard said, watching as the others dragged him, feet trailing behind, off into the cavern where the groups of blues and whites had gone.
“Jesus,” Bunny said, exchanging a look with Top.
The first guard noticed a line of men who’d stopped to stare. “Get in there! Go!”
They started moving again as he turned back to his duties. Bunny searched every face for anyone familiar. No one. He shook his head. “I don’t know why but I keep looking for someone we know.”
“Don’t stop,” Top said as his eyes continued scanning faces. “So am I.”
As more and more people filed in, the first trucks having been replaced by three more, the overwhelming smell of gunpowder and chemicals now mixed with the smells of sweat, body odor, colognes and perfumes — of people.
Then Bunny did a double take as his eyes scanned a line of whites climbing off a nearby GMC. Son of bitch, that almost looks like… it can’t be.
“Fuck, Top,” he mumbled. “My eyes are getting so tired, I’m seeing things.”
“What?”
“That guy over there looks almost like Captain Ledger. I mean, I wish it was, but—”
“Where?” Top’s eyes snapped over to where Bunny indicated. “Son of a bitch. Doesn’t that kid beside him look almost like Sam Imura?”
“Yeah,” Bunny agreed. “Weird. But it can’t be. They’re both dead.”
Top grunted. “Technically we didn’t see them die, but after nineteen years, yeah, I think you’re right.” He went back to searching another line as the two men moved off out of view, further into the cavern, urged by guards.
“We gotta come up with a plan, son,” Top said then, leaning closer to Bunny’s ear. “A way to distract the guards, get ourselves out of here.”
“Hooah,” Bunny replied. “You know, there’s a lot of us here. If people got excited for some reason…”
“The door’s locked,” Top said.
“So we find a way to make them unlock it.”