As they approached Fort Providence, Mitch watched the rain falling, the roads flooding, and he couldn’t seem to remember what it was like to be dry or warm. How long had this been going on and how much longer could it possibly last? This was life in the Asian monsoon season and it would drive people mad. He was sure of it. You couldn’t sit there day after day and watch the water rising and feel it against your face and down your back without your mind coming unhinged.
Something had to give.
It just had to. Mitch was not honestly sure how he was feeling now. Too many emotions, too much guilt and horror and frustration over all this. Lily was gone and he knew it beyond a doubt. Something else was out there, maybe, living in her skin. But the Lily he’d known was dead. The pain he was feeling over that was immense, but he’d forced himself to lock it away. He would grieve later.
And Chrissy?
Mitch did not know.
Wanda could only tell him that she was alive. She was too worn out and beaten now to do any more of her “conjuring”, as she called it. She had told Tommy and he that, yes, Chrissy was alive and that, no, Harry Teal was no danger to anyone except maybe himself. Mitch badly wanted to push her about Chrissy, but she was just done in. She had come to life and made a fine farm breakfast for all concerned, but she was old and tired now. Very much feeling her age. About all she could say was that “there are others who don’t like me nosing into their business, others whose minds are very strong and very terrible.”
Which didn’t tell him much.
He’d had the feeling that going into that mannequin factory was important. But, looking back, he couldn’t see the importance of any of it. For what had come of it? They’d found Harry Teal and that had been about it. Was that what he’d been feeling? The need to find Harry that might somehow bring him to Chrissy? Christ, it seemed absurd…
Deke Ericksen was also at Wanda’s now, had come there during the night. He’d been looking high and low for Chrissy. And like Mitch himself, nothing would dissuade him that she was alive and that they would find her.
Tommy kept driving.
They were well out of Witcham now, staying off the main highway and taking the back roads towards the Army base. He seemed refreshed after his sleep. They’d all closed their eyes at dawn and had not woken until nearly 12:30 in the afternoon. Not good, in Mitch’s eyes. They’d needed the sleep, but he’d hated to waste the daylight…or what there was of it.
Tommy knew the Black River Valley about as well as a man could. Having hunted and fished the valley all his life, he knew just about every county bypass and gravel road there was. He took them on a very circuitous route, trying to stay to the high roads because all the low-lying areas were simple impassable. Mitch was glad he was driving, because it all seemed like a monotonous run of trees and fields and farmhouses to him. Not roads running through them, but rivers and creeks and streams interconnecting and forming great mires and pools. Water, water, everywhere.
Harry was smoking a cigarette, watching the windshield wipers arc back and forth. “So you boys think you’ll find answers at that base.”
“Yes,” Mitch told him. “In fact, we’re sure of it.”
Harry nodded, looked thoughtful as he pulled off his coffin nail. “Place is high security, least that’s what they said at Slayhoke.”
“It is,” Mitch said.
“And you think you can just walk right in there?”
“We’re gonna try.”
Harry just sat there, smoking. His hair was dark and bristly, a mustache of the same color reaching down to his jawline. But neither of which were as dark as his eyes at that moment. “We been hearing stories about the base. Funny sorts of stories.”
Mitch looked at him.
“Sure, crazy shit. But after you told me that business about the yellow rains and all that, figure you might want to hear this…even though it’s probably bullshit.”
“Tell us,” Tommy said, the truck splashing through a dip. “We’re like toadstools: we thrive on bullshit.”
Harry shook his head. “The cons and some of the guards, they been saying how the Army is shipping back corpses from Iraq. Doing things with ‘em. Nobody knows what exactly. Just experiments or something. Crazy, eh?”
“Yeah,” Mitch said, his throat very dry suddenly. “Crazy.”
13
The road leading to Fort Providence Military Reservation, as it was known, was long and winding and set with lots of signs that did their best to warn you away from what it was. Things like: U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY NO TRESPASSING and NO UNATHORIZED VEHICLES BEYOND THIS POINT. There were no less than three checkpoints with barriers to keep you out. But, interestingly enough, all those barriers were wide open and all those checkpoints unmanned. There was a good two feet of water, if not more, flooding the road, but Mitch was thinking that it would have taken a lot more than deep water to get those guards out of their shacks. Something had happened here. Something bad. Something possibly catastrophic and ugly. Maybe he did not know that to be fact, but he felt it in his guts and that was enough.
This is insane, he thought, us driving right into a high security joint like this. A week ago, two weeks ago, they’d have forced us off the road and put us in irons. But today we’re driving right in.
After they passed the third checkpoint, the road veered sharply to the left and the heavily wooded countryside suddenly opened up. There were red STOP signs and more guard shacks. Mitch was just betting there were tire traps on the road, metal spikes that would spring up with the touch of a button to snare an unwanted vehicle. Of course, you couldn’t tell under all the water. Tommy kept the truck moving very slowly, expecting just about anything.
“I don’t want to burst your bubble,” Harry said, “but this is a felony, you know. I knew a guy who broke into a Navy supply depot in Chicago. He didn’t even get a chance to steal anything. And now he’s doing fifteen years in Leavenworth. Just thought I’d mention that.”
“You know lots of good people,” Tommy said. “I suppose we could turn around, call it quits right now. What do you think, Mitch?”
“Drive.”
Tommy did.
Mitch knew he was nervous. Who wouldn’t be? Maybe Mitch himself was prone to some funny feelings from time to time, but you didn’t need to be psychic to feel the vibes rolling off this place. The atmosphere was blighted and grim and forbidding. Back in Witcham it was bad, of course. Like an open grave or casket filled with seething, spoiled meat. That sense lessened the farther you got away from the city limits. But here, it was different. There was not just a feeling of death and degeneration, but something worse. Something violated and spiritually depraved scratching around inside your skull. You could almost smell the misery and horror and utter madness of this place.
Mitch put a cigarette between his lips and his fingers were shaking so badly he nearly dropped it.
A sign came into view. It was white with black lettering. FORT PROVIDENCE MILITARY RESERVATION, it said, and beneath that, UNITED STATES ARMY MEDICAL COMMAND. And, beneath that, ABSOLUTELY NO
ADMITTANCE! USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED!
“Shit,” Tommy said.
