Chapter Two
UNEXPLAINED FIRE IN IDAHO SPRINGS CLAIMS RIVER GUIDE, SIX SONS: Gasoline cans found on scene and “the front door was nailed shut” [The Coloradoan (Fort Collins), 3/17/05]
Bannerman Clark, Captain Bannerman Clark of the Colorado Army National Guard to be precise, placed his cloth napkin neatly on his thigh and lined up his steak knife next to his silver fork. Once a month he treated himself to a twenty-dollar cut of beef at the Brown Palace, Denver’s finest hotel and restaurant, and he had a standard checklist of tasks to complete in the proper enjoyment of the meal.
First: a sip of a good if moderately priced French wine. Next he took a pinch of sea salt from the cellar on the table and crumbled it liberally over the bloody red meat. Finally he blew out the table’s candle so the light wouldn’t dazzle his eyes and distract him.
He was that kind of person. The fact that he was aware of his nature and took steps to keep his behavior from becoming too extreme kept him from being mocked too openly in the barracks. Bannerman Clark had begun his adult life in the Army Corps of Engineers, serving an undistinguished but flawless term of service in numerous overseas theaters before choosing the closest thing to semi-retirement open to a man of his temperament: a lateral move into a post where he could do some good without having to deploy so often. He hated traveling.
He loved a perfect slab of rare steak, even though at the age of sixty-one his personal physician frowned on his ritual. When his cellular phone began to vibrate in his pocket he was tempted to ignore it long enough to take at least one bite.
Not really an option, though. He replaced the fork on the table and drew out the phone. He glanced up and saw the elegant white-clothed tables, the massive dangling brass chandeliers that suggested the shape of wagon wheels, the elaborate brass and marble work left over from when the Brown Palace had been the finest bordello in the Wild West. He saw the other diners, all of whom were paying extravagant prices to eat in the midst of such opulence. A woman in a red dress stared daggers at the phone. No need for her disdain, though. The phone was set to receive only text messages, not voice. The message Bannerman Clark received made him sigh deeply.
GOVCO + AGCOARNG RQST YR PRES INST RE ADX-FLRNC RIOT
In other words the Governor and the Adjutant General both wanted him immediately to respond to an emerging threat: a riot at the “Supermax” prison in Florence, just south of Colorado Springs. He would go at once, of course. That was his role: Rapid Assessment and Initial Detection Officer in Charge: the OIC, RAID-COARNG according to his business cards. It was his job to be the first man on the scene in order to get an overview of an emerging crisis and establish what level, if any, of response was required or recommended.
He rose immediately and took his cover from the empty chair next to him. A red-vested waiter rushed up, a distinct look of concern on his face but Bannerman Clark shook his head in reassurance. His steak would have to be sent back, he feared. The Brown Palace could probably provide a to-go bag but Bannerman Clark didn’t request it. He would be onboard a UH-60 Blackhawk within the hour and it just wouldn’t be the same without his little rituals. Besides, where he was headed it was best to arrive with an empty stomach.
MYSTERY CORPSE FOUND ON MAIN STREET IN WOODS LANDING, WYOMING: Coroner Claims Dead at Least Three Months [AP Wire Service, 3/17/05]
Lilies: the scent of.
ch-ch-ch-chuhhh/Shwhuhhhh
Her ears vibrated with the soft moaning sound. Her nose felt painfully dry.
ch-ch-ch-chuhhh/Shwhuhhhhh
She opened her eyes. The lower limit of her vision was obscured by clear plastic: something on her face. The world was turned sideways because her head was lying on a piece of wood.
ch-ch-ch-chuhhh/Shwhuhhhh
Her head was killing her. Everything smelled like lilies. Plastic on her face. She lifted an arm—far too heavy—and swatted at her nose but it didn’t work. She tried touching the thing on her face and found that her fingers didn’t work right. The fingertips felt numb, almost completely without sensation. She couldn’t grab the thing on her face, couldn’t get her fingers around it. Panicking a little she scrabbled at it with both hands until it fell away, hissing like a snake. She put her hands down on the wood of a bar and pushed until she was sitting up. Sitting up on a bar stool.
ch-ch-ch-ch
A mask—a kind of oxygen mask it looked like but it was decorated with a sticker of a day-glo flower. Tubing ran back to a metallic white tank bolted to the surface of the bar. There were other tanks, other masks: chromium red, cobalt blue, toxic green. She looked up, glanced around (killing her head as it whipped back and forth) and nearly fell backwards off her bar stool. Bar stool bar stool so she was in a bar. But. Not a regular bar. An oxygen bar, obviously. Why would she…?
ch-ch-ch-ch
She reached down and switched off the oxygen mask. The stench of lilies began to dissipate. It must have been mixed in with the compressed gas.
She put a bare foot down on the floor. And screamed. Or at least tried to. The sound that came out of her throat sounded more like a retch. She tried to lift up her foot to take a closer look at what she had just stepped in but found she couldn’t raise it past her waist. Of course she couldn’t! Normal people couldn’t do that. She was a normal person, she was pretty sure. She looked down. Her foot was covered in brownish-purple blood.
So was the floor of the oxygen bar. Blood everywhere, some of it still liquid and dark red. A slaughterhouse, she thought, you wouldn’t see something like that outside of a slaughterhouse. It had splattered in a broad oval pool centered on her bar stool, maybe ten feet wide, staining the orange shag carpet, matting down the fibers. Oh God.
She wanted to throw up, wanted to throw up everything she’d ever eaten but she couldn’t feel her stomach at all, it was just an icy void below her breasts and, and, she was trying very, very hard not to admit it to herself, but—
That was her blood.
She screamed and this time it worked. Blood covered her, dyeing her white clothes, sticking to her skin. It had poured down from a punctured vein in her shoulder, poured down in great gouts and she had run, she remembered now, she had run into the bar, she had run up to the bar but no one was around, the place was deserted and she was already having trouble breathing, her body unable to oxygenate itself because she’d already lost so much blood and the oxygen mask had been right there and.
And.
The memory ended as abruptly as it had begun. She studied it, tried to find details but details were there none. Just that she had been bleeding and she had run here and had trouble breathing. She tried to step down gingerly from the stool, knowing she was going to have to walk through the blood.
Her leg slid out from beneath her, unable to accept her commands, and she clattered down to the floor, her bones bouncing off the bar, the stools, the carpet and she screamed again even though it didn’t really hurt, not that much, but she screamed because it seemed like if you were ever going to have a chance to scream that was it, when you were lying collapsed in a pool of your own blood and your hair had fallen down over your eyes. She screamed until there was no more air in her lungs.
The door of the bar swung open and she stopped screaming. She turned wild eyes to the light off the street and saw two kids there, black kids in basketball jerseys. One was taller than the other, maybe older. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t call out for help. The older kid disappeared but the younger one just stood there, staring at her, his facial features lost in silhouette.
Help me, she thought, please, help me, but he just stood there and stared.
