CUIDADO CON EL PERRO. BONDED PREMISES… ELEMENT DEPOSITORY… KEEP OUT, THAT MEANS YOU!
Then a reflective orange diamond, gem-bright: PAVEMENT ENDS.
Blanchard kept going, onto a dirt strip that rocked the car, traveled for another few minutes before making a short stop at a padlocked sheet-metal gate.
Crisp got out, letting in more gas stink. I heard fiddling, rattling, rasp, and creak. She got back in and said, “Okay.” The petrol smell lingered, as if it had saturated her clothing.
Blanchard drove through the gate. Crisp got out again, locked it, and returned. The car moved forward, across empty space, past several vehicles parked diagonally. VW bugs. I thought of Charlie Manson’s apocalyptic dream: Veedubs converted to armored dune buggies- heavy artillery for the race war Helter Skelter was going to foment.
Blanchard slowed and pulled up in front of a bank of concrete. I made out metal-railed stairs, a platform. A loading dock. Behind it the outlines of a blocky, flat-faced structure- fifty feet of bulk unrelieved by architectural detail.
Light from the left- a low-wattage bulb surface-scratching the darkness like crayon relief. Dribbling illumination down on the top half of a grated door. To the right, a bigger door, triple-garage width, corrugated steel.
The smaller door opened. Three figures came out. Shadow people.
Blanchard turned off the engine. Crisp bounced out like a kid going to a birthday party.
The scuff of footsteps. The right rear car door opened. Before I could see their faces, my ankles were gripped and I was pulled down, slid out of the car. As I emerged, hands took hold of my body at the belt, under my armpits. Fingers digging in.
Grunts of effort.
I went limp. Make the bastards work.
As they carried me away, I caught a glimpse of the car. Tan, I thought. But I couldn’t be sure in the darkness.
I was swung up and forward, sagging, butt scraping the ground.
Carried with all the care of a sack of spoiled meat.
Time to take out the garbage.
33
It took a while for them to get the small door open. I heard tumblers and clicks and machine whirrs- some kind of electronically driven combination lock. No one spoke. I was held fast by the limbs, trunk dangling, joints aching. Staring at trouser legs and shoes… Click.
Inside. Floor level. Cement floor. Cold, conditioned air- or maybe I was shivering for another reason.
I was carried by silent pallbearers through an aisle sided with high tan walls. Cardboard tan. Partitions. Plywood doors. A warehouse. Sectioned into cubbies. Unevenly lit. Patches of illuminated cement flooring followed by intervals of darkness that made me feel as if I’d disappeared.
Now into a larger area. My captors’ footsteps echoing. Other footsteps now, softer. Distant. I had a sense of vast open space. Cold space.
Hell was a warehouse…
Was this how lab animals felt, readied for air-freight?
Then other sounds: typewriter pecks. Computer bleeps. Scraping soles.
More cardboard. Boxes, stacks of them. I made out lettering. Black-stenciled. PRINTED MATERIAL. SPECIAL RATE. Lots of those. Then a few that said MACHINERY. FRAGILE.
A flash of yellow. I twisted to see what it was. A forklift. And another. Several smaller vehicles that looked like sit-down lawn mowers. But no gas stink here. Just the yeasty, respectable fragrance of fresh paper.
Lots of huffing and puffing from my bearers. My eyes raced past trouser legs. A few pairs of stockinged female calves. I began counting feet. Two, four, six, eight, ten… I craned upward, hurting my spine, wasn’t able to make out faces.
The aisle angled to the left. My journey as hunting trophy continued for another twenty paces before coming to a sudden stop. Heavy breathing, locker-room sweat. The hands holding me lifted and twisted. All at once I was upright, arms still fastened behind me.
Coming face to face with Them.
Blanchard. Trying to smile while huffing.
Others. Ten of them. Younger. Clean-cut.
I knew them without knowing them. Had seen them at a school. Attending a shooting. Enjoying a concert.
Bright-eyed, then. Dead-eyed tonight. Faces set in the mire of obedience. As if the internal light in each of them had been switched off. Conservation of personality.
The other times, they’d dressed for success. They were dressed for something else tonight: black turtlenecks over black jeans and sneakers. The proper attire for an all-night wait in a storage shed. Or a backyard killing.
I said, “Hello, boys and girls. Take me to your leader.”
It shook a couple of them out of their zombie reverie. They held on to me but retracted their heads, as if I’d just given off a bad smell.
Blanchard stepped forward and backhanded me hard across the face. My head twanged from the blow. I focused away from the pain- from the fear. Looked past all of them. Narrow passageway created by ten-foot-high stacks of PRINTED MATERIAL cartons. Directly in front of me was a black wooden door. Something painted on it. A red circle containing a spearhead.
Someone stepped out from behind one of the cartons. Someone wiggle-walked toward me.
Beth Bramble in a long-sleeved black dress. Her hair was drawn back tight. Chromium thunderbolt earrings dangled from her earlobes.
I struggled to clear my throat and said, “Mourning period over for the beloved leader?” It hurt to talk.
Blanchard hit me again. Bramble said, “Aw,” the laughter back in her voice.
She came closer, making kissy-poo movements with her lips. She’d eaten something with a lot of garlic in it. It folded into her perfume- floral pizza.
She chucked me under the chin. Pinched me by the cheek Blanchard had slapped. Pinched it again, harder, twisted, and smiled.
Through the agony I said, “Secret agent time, Beth? Nothing like getting an inside track on the opposition.”
She smiled, said, “Fuck you, darling,” pinched me again, let her fingers drop down my shirtfront, then my fly. She lingered there, gave me a playful honk. Someone snickered. Bramble winked at the young ones, turned, and disappeared behind the cartons.
Blanchard knocked on the black door.
A muffled reply came from the other side.
Blanchard opened it, put his head in, and said, “He’s here, D.F. Everything smooth as silk.”
Another muffled answer.
I was shoved in, and the door slammed behind me.
The room wasn’t much, maybe fifteen feet square, poorly lit. Maroon linoleum floor worn through to the concrete slab in several spots, block walls painted institutional white, warped acoustical ceiling browned by moisture, sheet-metal ceiling vent that dumped out stale, frigid air.
In the center was a seven-foot olive-drab desk that had to be army surplus. Two green metal chairs sat in front of it. Extra chairs stood folded in one corner. On top of the desk was a black multiline phone and a short stack of papers weighted down by a tarnished artillery shell. Running against the left wall was a brown couch that looked
