Part 16 (1/2)

The man who saved my life punches me in the right eye, sending me back against the wall again. ”You don't get a lawyer, Harrison.”

”I have a right to a lawyer,” I mumble, staying on the floor.

”Listen to him,” one of them says, like I've said something funny.

He steps forward and kicks me viciously in the stomach. I gasp for breath, curled up in a ball at his feet, and they all laugh. ”There's your lawyer,” the b.a.s.t.a.r.d says, laughing. He kicks me again. They laugh some more.

I'm barely conscious as they drag me outside and toss me into the back of a car. One hands me a rag, because I'm apparently bleeding from somewhere. I see the blood but have no idea where its coming from --- so many different places hurt. They get in and start the engine, and the others get in their other cars and start them up, and we all drive out to the freeway and accelerate to about 190 miles per hour. Despite the speed, it's a very long ride.

9. FOUR WALLS.

There's an endless stretch of farmland, and the road trails up and around smooth rounded hills. I close my eyes and see negative images of the hills, all black with white shadows, and the white details of the black parts of the car. I have enough of a headache for two heads compressed into one. For a while it gets so bad I wish one of the thugs would turn around and shoot me in the forehead. Just get it over with.

The long ride and the headache, however, are part of the torture. Maybe they figure that by the time we reach our destination I'll be willing to tell them anything in exchange for a Tylenol.

Our destination is a large gray building set in the hills, a big ugly place surrounded by barbed wire and electrified fences. There are lots of men with rifles, and large dogs with three inch fangs. I gaze out the car window at this place and feel like I'm going to throw up.

One of the men is looking back at me though the heavy gage screen that separates the front of the car from the back. He's smiling.

”Welcome home, Harrison,” he says.

”Just shoot me and get it over with.”

”I'm going to enjoy interrogating you.” He calls me a f.u.c.king traitor. Such language. He sounds like an actor portraying a stereotypical Southern racist KKK-card-toting deputy sheriff. He's even chewing gum, and smacking it at that.

Guards with machine guns let us through the gates, and we pull up in front of a set of large iron doors. The FBI agents --- if that's really what they are --- pile out and surround the car. The door is opened and I'm pulled stumbling from inside. Then there's this moment where I'm standing in the midst of them, no one holding me, and all of them watching and clutching their guns. It's like they want me to run so that they can open fire. I look around to see nothing but barbed wire and rabid dogs. Where exactly do they expect me to run? If anything, I'd leap back into the car.

I stand and stare back at them. I make eye contact with one, and he screams out ”f.u.c.k you!” and spits at me. Another one makes like he's going to swing at me, and the others around him put on a big show of grabbing his arms and holding him back. The whole thing is clumsy and stupid, obviously staged.

They open the big iron doors with a loud clunk and a shriek of rusty hinges. As I'm pulled into the building they do their best to make me stumble, constantly pulling and shoving to keep me off balance.

Everyone is talking and shouting back and forth. My head throbs.

There's a long concrete hallway that's so gray and dingy it could be straight out of a medieval castle. At the end is a cage door, which opens with an angry buzz, and then another cage door, and then another.

All three shut behind me, and it gives me a hopeless feeling: I'm never going to see the outside world again. I'm pushed down another corridor and into a bare concrete room. There's nothing in it but a light embedded in the ceiling and a rusty iron drain in the middle of the floor.

”Take your clothes off!” says one of the uniformed men. He's got a weird, square nose and a chin that juts out a good inch and a half in front of his lips.

I back away from them, up against the far wall. ”I'm not taking my clothes off.”

”You take 'em off or I'm going to rip them off!”

I shake my head. No way. I have a horrible feeling that I'm about to be sodomized, and I've decided to fight them first. I don't care if they kill me. The square-nosed big-chinned b.a.s.t.a.r.d reaches out for my s.h.i.+rt and I ball up my right fist and plunge it between his eyes. My fist hits with a loud smack, sending his head back and his arms wavering around. His comrades catch him and they move forward in a ma.s.s. I shout a desperate animal howl and dive at them, fists swinging. My arms are caught and wrenched back behind me, and I'm lifted off the ground. I feel my feet dangling as I'm held helpless and fists bash my ribs and stomach. There's surprisingly little pain. The adrenaline in my blood holds it back.

My clothes are torn away and I'm thrown head first into the cement wall. This hurts more than their blows, and I lie on the ground holding my head while a last few vicious kicks are laid into my side and back.

Then they withdraw and I'm left on the cold cement with my pain, and nothing else.

There's two doors to the cell. The inner door is a cage door. The outer door is a solid iron door with a peep hole. Both of them slam shut and the angry voices recede. I push myself to a sitting position and shake my head. Blood droplets spatter across the cold cement floor. I stare at them with a kind of morbid fascination.

Hours pa.s.s. The chill of the floor creeps up into my body, and I begin s.h.i.+vering. The walls are cold, so I stay away from them, sitting with my knees up, leaning forward, hugging myself. More hours pa.s.s.

I find my skin is discoloring in patches where I've been hit, big ugly bruises starting to form. The cold makes the pain worse, and I'm so stiff that I can hardly make it to my feet. I walk around the room under the heatless light, hugging myself, fighting hypothermia. The pain is so encompa.s.sing that I find myself starting to enjoy it, and I rub the sore spots and feel the pain and rub them some more.

The only warning I get is two seconds of m.u.f.fled voices, and then there's a sharp metallic sound as a latch is wrenched open and the outer door swings on its hinges. I stop in mid-stride and look at the leering faces under the blue hats. One of them is holding an immense nozzle which drips water, and I realize it's a fire hose just a split second before he turns it on.

The water is icy cold and very hard. The stream hits me like a kick and sends me against the far wall, curled around my stomach with my hands protecting my b.a.l.l.s. The water smashes me against the cement, hitting harder than their fists, shoving me this way and that. It blasts my feet out from under me and I fall on my back, desperately trying to keep my face turned away and still holding my most tender parts. The spray hits the wall near my head and explodes, the splash-back so hard it feels like gla.s.s shards. Water streams up my nose and down my throat and I choke on it, gagging. My body spins, and I jump, dodging, moving like a wrestler, hacking and coughing as my mindless reflexes take over and search in vain for an escape from the water. I end up in a corner, my back to it. It pins me there, paralyzing me, then after a minute or so it stops.

I hear laughter, and water gurgling down the drain. I'm cold and s.h.i.+vering, and feel ultimately humiliated. I'm afraid to turn around and even look at them. I stand there, breathing against the cement wall, thinking that some defiant act is called for but --- at the same time --- I don't want to give them an excuse to turn the water on me again.

I'm more than s.h.i.+vering. I'm shaking uncontrollably and my body feels numb. I'm violently cold. I hear the fire hose hiss and the water bludgeons me again, smas.h.i.+ng my head into the cement, pressing it there with the full force of someone standing on it. They move the hammering stream down my back, up and down, but I stay where I am and endure it. I hear shouting above the water, but the words are indistinct. The water stops, abruptly, and keys rattle as the inner door is unlocked. I hear wet footsteps across the floor of the cell.

I turn and see a man with a large forehead dressed in a gray suit walking toward me. ”Are you all right?” he asks.

I stare at him, s.h.i.+vering, unwilling to trust.

He looks me up and down, his brows furrowed. Then, turning, he shouts, ”G.o.dd.a.m.n it! Get this man a towel --- and some clothes!”

There's some muttered curses at the door, but the men with the fire hose withdraw while one armed guard stands in the doorway, watching. The man in the gray suit turns back to me. ”I'm Charles Cooper, Mr.

Harrison. I'm with the department of Military Applications, Federal Bureau of Science.”

I nod at him, s.h.i.+vering. I'll talk when the promised towels arrive, not before.

”My department is Internal Affairs,” he continues. ”The security of scientific military experimentation falls into my jurisdiction.

Unfortunately, the FBI and the various State Police do all the leg work for this department, which is how you ended up in your, ah, unfortunate situation.”

I nod once again, hugging myself. s.h.i.+vering.

”I can help you, Mr. Harrison.” He looks me in the eyes, giving me a long, searching stare. I nod once again, thinking that the whole purpose of my mistreatment is so that this man would become my savior.

”If you cooperate with me, I can keep these men off your back.” He waits for me to answer, but when I say nothing he clears his throat and looks away. ”If you don't,” he says, ”then there's nothing I can do for you.”

”None of this was necessary at all,” I tell him, my voice shaking.

”I'll tell you anything you want to know.”

”That's good----”

”No, it's not. You're not going to believe me.”

”I'll believe anything if it's the truth.”

I doubt it, but I say nothing. Towels and jail house fatigues are carried into the room by one of the sullen guards. I grab the towel and begin vigorously drying myself off while the two men stand waiting. I'm shaking so bad that I nearly fall over, my equilibrium totally shot. My head still pounds, but the cold and the aches all across my body drown it out. When I climb into the over-sized, stiff, rough fatigues it does nothing to stop the cold. Once dressed, Cooper and two of the armed guards escort me out of the wet cell and down a corridor. On my left are a whole line of cells much like the one I just got out of, all equipped with the inner and outer doors. A few have the outer doors open, the prisoner within visible through the bars. I catch glimpses of matted, pathetic men, unshaven and unkempt, their arms and legs thin. Too thin.