It was awful when they woke up in the middle.
They got so confused.
It wasn’t just the whir of the processing machines, the hum of the medical refrigerators, the white-noise rush of the benchtop centrifuges, all of it amplified off the basement walls. Nor the smells, the sharp tang of rubbing alcohol, the nail-polish reek of iodine, the hospital-room whiff of PVC tubing and dried sweat. The sights weren’t what did it either — not the needles plunged into their flesh, the blood piping from their veins, their acquaintances laid out in neighboring beds, dead to the world. Not the scrape of the sanitized pillowcase at their nape. Not the taste, old pennies at the back of the tongue.
It was the vertiginous sense of dislocation.
They were no longer in the world as they knew it. No, this gave them a glimpse of The World As It Really Was.
Might is right. Eat or be eaten. Accrue resources or starve. Repeated again and again and again, because all ten thousand years of civilization had been built upon mankind’s desire to deny this fundamental truth.
René tried to protect them from reality. They were supposed to pass out full-bellied, drunk, and happy. Never know the difference. He was greedy, sure, but not inhumane.
No sense spooking the livestock on their way to the abattoir.
And yet now Joshua was certainly spooked.
He reared up from his gurney, tubes snaking around his bulging arms, IV poles crashing over.
René unhooked his own IV bag and dashed away, using Kendall’s gurney as a shield. He was too charged to feel fear, but a dark excitement gripped him. Tingling electrified his body — his gums, his arms, the skin of his lower back.
Joshua’s head pivoted, fixing on René. Even across the gurney, René registered the wounded rage and stripped-bare terror lurking behind the dilated pupils. It gave him a heady, almost sexual rush. He wondered if this is what his ancestors had felt charging through the fray, shrapnel grazing their cheeks.
Joshua lunged at René, sending the gurney skidding. Dead to the world, Kendall rolled to one side, smashed beneath Joshua’s weight. Scrambling toward them, Dr. Franklin tried to hit the kid with a syringe full of Versed, but with all the flailing he couldn’t get to the port. Joshua clawed across the unconscious girl, his churning legs propelling the gurney until René was backed to the wall, Joshua’s straining fingers inches from his face.
That was when Dex stepped in.
However big the boy was, he looked like a puppet in Dex’s hands. Dex lifted him in a choke hold. There was a crackling sound, and then Joshua poured limply from Dex’s arms onto the floor.
Silence reasserted itself in the basement.
Joshua lay still, one dead palm pressed to the concrete.
This was not a substantial problem. Come morning René would generate some excuse to cover for the boy’s absence. He’d peddled such excuses before. If the others showed bruising from the needles, he would instruct David to tell them that in their drunken state they’d played around with heroin one of the kitchen workers had brought. Not to worry — what happened at Chalet Savoir Faire stayed at Chalet Savoir Faire. And that’s what would happen. The best way to ensure silence was to bury the truth beneath shame.
From over by the door, David coughed out a note of disbelief, hugging himself around the waist, his arms trembling. Dr. Franklin leaned against a cabinet, flushed from the scare.
René, too, was breathing hard, though not from fear. He’d never felt more alive. He looked down at the IV bag compressed in his fist, now depleted. In all the excitement, he had rapid-bolused the final unit into his arm. All that fresh young blood bathing his stem cells, turning back the clock.
With a furrow of his shiny forehead, Dex looked past Joshua’s slumped body at René. He seemed unclear which mouth the present circumstances called for.
René pointed to Dex’s right hand.
Dex raised the smile, folded it across his mouth.
Yes, that looked appropriate.
It was, after all, a happy occasion.
23
Destroying Angel
When Manny and Nando came to get Evan for his walk, he took some extra time to layer his clothes, donning two shirts and two sweaters. They’d brought both breakfast and lunch on the room-service cart earlier, making Evan stand against the wall with his back turned until they exited. The new procedures were effective. They maintained their spread now as they guided him down the halls and stairs to the foyer, one shotgun aimed at his face, another at his kidneys.
Manny gestured at the front door, his gold caps sparkling. “You get your yard time now. Just like in the prison.”
Evan said, “Trade you two cartons of cigarettes for a shiv.”
Manny looked at him, puzzled, then jerked his gun. “You go.”
The doorknob felt cold enough to stick to Evan’s hand. When he stepped onto the porch, the cold flew straight through the layers of clothes and tightened his skin. He stomped his boots, blew a breath that clouded and faded away, a ghost that couldn’t be bothered.
Over by the barn, David corralled three of the partyers into one of the G-Wagons. The kid with the gauge earrings must have either left last night or was already in the vehicle behind the tinted windows. The three kids in view looked wan and weak, no doubt atrophied from first-rate hangovers. One of the girls in particular moved creakily, clinging to David, her legs barely strong enough to push her into the back of the Mercedes. Her face was gray, her lips bloodless. She coughed weakly into a sleeve-covered fist. David helped her gingerly into the rear seat, closed the door, then paused for a moment with his back to the van, his head tilted up at the sky, his lips trembling.
He seemed upset. Conflicted.
He lowered his gaze, noticed Evan noticing him. But he didn’t look away, not even as he blinked back tears. Finally he walked around to the driver’s seat and drove off.
From the porch Evan watched the vehicle head up the gravel road, and then it was just him and the cold. From here on out, the math was simple. He had to mark the position of every one of René’s hired men. Then kill them.
The skinny guard in the tower leaned on the railing, eyeing Evan. Evan waved. The guard did not wave back. Across the way, three narcos were gathered at their post by the barn. Evan envied their heavy black coats. The scorched pot hung over the fireplace, and their heads were bowed as they shoveled food from bone-china plates. The Dobermans idled beside the men, pointed at him, rumbling.
Evan gestured at the forest inquisitively, and one of the narcos waved his fork in response: Be our guest.
The guard muttered something to the others, and they laughed. As Evan hiked up to the trees, their amusement became clearer. Despite the sweaters and shirts he was wearing, the cold asserted itself in his joints. Already his feet felt numb in the hiking boots. He could hold out for an hour, maybe two, but without heavier clothes and a fire, hypothermia would set in. However, escaping wasn’t today’s plan.
From the edge of the woods, he looked back. Two magenta circles winked at him from the tower, the guard’s binoculars tracking his movement. The big chimney behind him sighed a tendril of black smoke.
Evan paused to search for that notch in the western rim of the mountains. The silhouette had looked promising last night, but now, seeing the sheer face leading up to it, he felt his hopefulness evaporate. The southern rise was higher but the ascent more gradual. A viable second option if the northern route proved unmanageable.
As Evan turned back, something caught his eye on the distant treetops. A large bird perched in the upper reaches of a pine tree, its white head as pronounced as a golf ball against the dark tones of the forest. He did a double take, focusing his gaze.