He turned quietly and stared behind him. Now he saw that the front door of the shack was smashed inward, hanging by the upper hinge. Cautiously, he crept over, bent under the window and straightened up to look inside.
An Orderly was there! He was sitting on the bed, his back to Skyler. Even from behind, his thick neck and hunched back gave him a thuggish appearance. He sat there motionless, apparently waiting for someone—for me, Skyler realized.
He looked quickly around. Kuta was not there or at least not in sight. And everything seemed in place, except for the door and a rug that was crumpled in a corner.
He backed away quietly, then turned and ran. When he reached the woods, he kept running. So they've come. Someone did see me here earlier — Tyrone. But what did they do with Kuta? Did they hurt him? He feared the answer to the question. These people, whom he had known his whole life, whom he had trusted and even loved — they were monsters. They were capable of anything. But why? What are they after? And why would they kill Julia — what was it that she had discovered in the computer?
Self-preservation told him one thing — to flee. He heeded it, racing steadily along the path, like a hunted animal. He retraced his steps and came again to the lights of the barracks and then to the meadow, stopping on the edge to spy for signs of movement. His eyes crisscrossed the waving field, studying all the dark spots in the grass until he was satisfied it was empty. Then he examined the night shadows in the border of the woods on the other side, peering with his head slightly cocked to improve his vision. It looked safe and he took a stride forward.
Again, he felt a sudden rush of vulnerability once he was in the open, only this time it combined with a palpable fear and the sense that danger was close. He stopped for a moment to stare around and saw nothing and continued, rebuking himself for not skirting the meadow through the woods. His heart quickened and the alarm within sounded more urgently, so much so that he dropped to the ground and then slowly raised his head and looked in all directions. Still nothing — only the soft whispering of the long grass. The straw dug into his arms and stomach. The bats were gone, and the stars winked against black velvet.
He stood up and resumed his trek, now staring straight ahead and relying upon his ears to cover the rear. The fear rose again instantly and it turned to panic, and he found himself quickening his pace and then running flat out, though it was difficult to find footing through the clumps of earth. The more he ran, the more frightened he felt and the more he tried to shut out everything around him and concentrate upon a narrow tunnel straight ahead.
Then suddenly something rose on his right side, a shadow coming out of the grass. A flash of movement and then a sound, a low growling. He turned as he was running, just in time to see a furry body thrusting at him, teeth bared and glistening in the moonlight. It was a dog, swiveling in fury as it twisted in the air, coming at his throat. Instinctively, he turned his shoulder to it, hearing the growl turn deep and feeling a rip across his upper arm. He raised his hand, without thinking. From a distance, he watched as the hand moved up, bearing the knife, and the blade sank deeply into the fur. It went in right at the neck. The power of the animal's lunge carried it onward as the blade sliced the jugular, so that the dog continued to fly through the air and to bleed and lose life as it flew. When it landed in a heap in the grass, it was a dead weight. Its back legs twitched, its lungs heaved, and it gave out a thin groan. Blood gushed upon the grass.
Skyler stood back and stared in shock. He felt his shoulder — his shirt was ripped and his upper arm bleeding, but it looked like a scratch. He had been unbelievably lucky. He looked around, then turned again and ran as fast as he could, out of the meadow and into the woods.
He ran and ran until his lungs ached. He had recognized the dog, having seen the pack of them behind a chain-link fence in a kennel near the Orderlies' compound. It had been so quiet in its approach, it must have been stalking him. He wondered if there were others out there looking for him. If so, he had made their job easy; he had left his scent in a clear trail. He found a path and headed north, toward the forest, and slowed to a walk.
After fifteen minutes he came to another open field, this one long and narrow with the grass cut short. There was a large metal shed at the far end. He recognized it instantly — the air strip. But how had he come here? He must have been going the wrong way. Now he was totally confused, and he was too exhausted to figure out the right direction and make good his mistake by putting distance between him and his pursuers. He approached the shed. There was a small door in one side. He turned the handle, and was surprised when it opened.
Inside it was dark, but he felt a light switch and flicked it on. The long, sleek machine, the airplane, looked powerful and ready for flight, even at rest, its wheels lodged against wooden blocks and its nose pointing upward. The propellers were strapped to one side. He opened the metal door in the side of the craft, went back to turn off the light, and in the darkness felt his way. He climbed inside, closed the door behind him and felt a metal enclosure at the rear that had two small bags in it. He crawled inside and found a tarpaulin, which he pulled over himself like a blanket.
There, he collapsed, listening to his heavy breathing in the darkness. From time to time he felt sleepy, but he couldn't drift off — he would stiffen and raise his head with a snap because he thought he heard the sound of hounds baying. But he couldn't be sure. Was the baying real and, if so, was it getting closer or farther away? Or perhaps his fatigue was playing tricks on him and his mind was echoing the sound that had pursued him earlier in the day.
Chapter 8
"So where were we?" asked Tizzie, balancing the glass of chardonnay by the stem and peering into Jude's eyes.
"Well, let's see," said Jude, sipping a scotch and trying to sound business-like. "You were telling me about the Minnesota studies. After our meeting yesterday, I went to the library and read up on some of them."
"And?"
"And I see what you mean. They're addictive. I see why you scientists are attracted to them."
"Not just scientists — writers and poets, too. Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, for openers."
"I understand why. The stories are gripping — they're like tales from the Arabian nights. The one about the two separated Japanese brothers who both got tuberculosis and developed a stammer—"
"Kazuo and Takua."
"That's it. And one becomes a Christian minister and the other becomes a thief and goes to prison."
"And yet despite that, underneath they're both the same. Both were vacillating, weak-willed men who needed to submit to something that could impose discipline. They both gave themselves over to institutions that took over their lives."
"And Tony and Roger, the two who found each other after twenty-four years and moved in together and began dressing the same and acting the same, so that they practically merged into a single person."
"Talk about being weak. Neither felt complete without the other, and each of them tried to become the other."
This time, Jude was not using the tape recorder, only the notebook. He had wanted a more informal atmosphere — better for this kind of interview — and had suggested a drink after work. She had agreed. And so they found themselves sitting at an outdoor table at Lumi, a café restaurant on Lexington Avenue, on a balmy June evening. A breeze rustled the leaves of a maidenhair tree, which grew from a sidewalk plot of earth covered in posies and protected by iron wickets. A dachshund, tethered to a man wearing a blue suit and a red bow tie, sniffed it.