Tree of Truth (Book of Pilgrimage 1) (14 page)

The inner office was somewhat larger than the outer room, and though it seemed to have been used for medical treatment before, it now maintained a desk and cabinets and shelves, many shelves, upon which lay many books, none of which looked familiar to me. It was furnished much like any other office: there was a couch, upon which we laid Shelley, and several old but comfortable chairs. We sat and talked while Shelley rested. I told him a little of the story of our journey, and he laughed out loud when I described Shelley drunk off of poets’ wine. He seemed to have very little laughter in his life, and when he did, it almost engulfed him. But this was a mere distraction—he regained his composure quickly once Shelley sat upright.

“That’s not funny,” she said with a blush.

“There’s color in your cheeks again!” I got up and helped her to the seat next to mine.

“I’m fine. Really. What’s all the fuss about?”

“Have a seat, Shelley,” Meyers said gently. She sat. We talked. “I’ve never been to the villages, never even been outside the city. I’ve lived here all my life, most of it in this very building. When I was still quite young and intolerable, my doting cousins noticed a certain ‘aptitude’ in my studies and sent me to live among the science prodigies. I grew up in the dormitories downstairs. I’ve dedicated my life to science, and one day, I will cure this Disease.” His eyes watered and reddened. He stood and turned to his shelf, fondling the spines of his well-worn collection.

“I want to ask something of you, dear Shelley. Something not for me, but for all of us, all of mankind. I want to ask you questions. That’s all. Questions about these lights you’ve seen, these feelings you’ve had, even the dreams that plague you at night. I want to run a few harmless procedures, check your heart rate, your pH balance, your white blood cell count, your urine—all completely innocuous, but of course necessary.” He turned around. “Necessary for the survival of our very species. It will only take a few hours, and it will literally be painless.”

She did not hesitate. She saw her chance to make something of that futile journey of ours. “I’ll do it.”

Meyers slapped his desk with a blithe palm and flashed a wide grin. “That’s great!” He turned to me. “Now if you’ll just wait downstairs.”

“I can wait right here.”

“Sorry. Hospital policy. Is she your wife?”

“Sort of.”

“It’s okay, Marlowe. Why don’t you find that friend of yours? I’ll be fine.”

I reluctantly left her to be questioned, poked, and prodded, and went searching for this mysterious friend of H.F.’s:
Dr. Brown
.

Chapter XXIII

The locals were helpful—they directed me to Southgate, a neighborhood just on the other side of the hospital. It was a seedy neighborhood, nothing like the rebel village, but it was obvious you could get whatever you wanted here. I felt safe in the city. In the city, as everywhere, poverty begets crime, but the crimes there were of pleasure, not of pain. I saw a man in a suit talking to two beautiful girls—it seemed that they were bargaining over something. I saw people standing on corners calling to passersby.

“Hey, brother—new to Southgate? I got what you want.” I gripped the straps of my pack and sidled a few feet away to a safer distance. “Relax. I ain’t gonna hurt ya.” He turned to the man next to him and said, “He ain’t from around here.” I picked up my pace. They laughed at my trepidation, but soon forgot the strange face that for a moment intruded upon their rude lifestyles and then disappeared into some dark corner of Southgate.

Dr. Brown’s house was humble, but well-maintained. The windows were boarded, and the backyard was surrounded by a six-foot fence, quite old and patched over with pieces of corrugated metal, plywood, and random boards. There were tarps spread out across it so that much of the yard was hidden beneath them.

The front porch sat three steps above the ground, and bore no furniture except an old folding chair with a dirty ashtray sitting next to it. The front door was guarded by another barred door—it must have been a dangerous neighborhood in years past. I crept up the brick steps to take a closer look, but when my foot hit the third step, a loose brick went tumbling to the ground. In the corner of my eye I saw the curtain move. Someone was watching me.

I reached through the bars of the exterior door and rapped upon the inner door. It opened quickly, but narrowly—a chain held it in place as a man peered at me through the small opening. “What do you want? I don’t buy from strangers.”

“I’m not selling anything, mister.”

“It’s
doctor
. Now go away.” The door slammed shut. A few moments later the curtain moved again. I stood my ground hesitantly, not knowing how to deal with such a character, but determined to discover how or if he could help me. The curtain moved again, and soon the door cracked once more. “Go away, I said.”

“Dr. Brown?” My voice was shaking.

“Who are you?”

“H.F. sent me.” I slipped the piece of paper through the bars and through the crack. He snatched it out of my hand and shut the door. I stood there a moment, wondering if I should leave this place, wondering if I should trust this stranger. Then I thought I heard a whistling from the back. I dared not investigate. I was hoping Dr. Brown would open the door soon—my nerves were sorely wracked. Sure enough, as I was about to abandon that anxious endeavor, the door cracked again. Dr. Brown looked agitated.

“Around back.” He nodded his head twice to the left and shut the door again. I will never understand city folk. I went around back, and a small door in the fence opened for me. He led me through a sort of tunnel made of more tarps, and I could not see what he was hiding in that back yard. I had those same feelings I had in Southgate: I should not have been in such a place, and yet it felt safe.

The house slanted back on a slight declivity, so the rear steps were a little higher than the front. But we did not go inside the house; we went into the basement through a small door beneath the steps. A voice told me not to go in there—a stranger’s basement in the worst part of the city—but I heeded it not. It was a powerful voice, a voice much like my brother’s, but over the past couple of weeks I had learned to ignore it.

I crept through the small door to what was more of a crawl space than a basement, though there was quite a bit of room in the center. Dr. Brown had laid more tarps upon the dirt floor, and there were a few chairs arranged around a folding table. The table was bare save a tin ashtray cut from an old rusty can. Above the table a single light dangled precariously from the ceiling, its cord looped around a nail in the floor beams above.

The doctor slapped the back of a chair and bade me sit. He sat down across from me and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it with matches that were resting next to the ashtray. He dropped the match in the ashtray and puffed his exhaust upward. The smoke danced and swirled around the bulb like a ghost half-materialized. Dr. Brown leaned forward and examined my face. “You don’t look old enough for the manifestation. Early Onset?” He tapped the cigarette on the rough edge of the tin-can ashtray and then leaned back in his chair.

“It’s not me. It’s Shelley.”

“Who’s Shelley?”

“My girlfriend.”

“Your girlfriend? Where is she?” He shot upright in his chair.

“At the hospital with the doctors. They’re examining her.”

Dr. Brown bolted to his feet and crushed the half-burnt cigarette into the sides of the can. “We have to go. Now!” He yanked the string of the light, and the dark engulfed us as the waning glow of the bulb swung back and forth into oblivion.

Dr. Brown opened the basement door, and enough light flooded in that I could see my way to the opening. That did not stop me from banging my head. “Ow!”

The doctor was waiting impatiently at the door. “Hurry!” He slammed the door and threw the bolt shut. We scurried through the tarp-tunnels and out the small fence gate, which stuck halfway open. The doctor furiously kicked it until it closed, then smacked the padlock with the palm of his hand to lock it. Panting, he scanned the area one last time, then flew in the direction of the hospital. I followed on his heels.

“What is it, doctor?”

“They’re not who you think.”
              “Who?”

He stopped me. It was the first time I got a good look at his face. He was mid-twenties, a bit overweight, and he wore a goatee, which was showing a few gray hairs already.

“The poor man’s doctor runs that asylum!” He bolted again. I struggled to keep up.

“Were you a doctor at that hospital?”

“I’m not that kind of doctor.”

“Then what kind of doctor are you?”
              “PhD. But that’s irrelevant. Your girl’s in danger. We must save her.”

“Save her?”

“Too many people. Not enough time. We should be there already. Plagues! Pick up the clip!” His brisk pace afforded no questions, but I knew Shelley was in trouble, and that was enough to drive me on.

Chapter XXIV

When the hospital was in sight, the doctor veered around the back. He slowed his stride just enough to walk in right behind a hospital employee, who carelessly and unwittingly held the door for him. We slipped into the employee lounge. The doctor swiped two lab coats hanging in an unlocked closet and put one on. The other he handed to me.

“Put this on.” I put it on. He straightened it. “Now act like you know what you’re doing.” He walked for the door. “Follow me.” On the way out, I grabbed a third coat hanging on a chair and tucked it folded under my arm. “What’s that for?”

“Just in case.” I followed him through a maze of hallways and stairwells. We saw doctors, nurses, patients, all shuffling in their apathetic way through another insufferable day at the hospital. They took no notice of us, though we were not inconspicuous.

Dr. Brown came to a door he recognized. “It’s here.” He looked around carefully before he started on the lock. “You just have to jiggle it a little bit—” He struggled for a few seconds before the door clicked and slid open. “There. Follow me.” He looked around and down the hallway again before slipping into the room.

There was nothing, just a big, empty space. Cords of various sizes and colors lay scattered across the floor; several rusty gurneys sat piled in a corner; broken and busted machines were planted to the tile. But there was not a living soul in that room. The doctor looked dismayed.

“What the ail?” He thought to himself for a moment and then in a burst of revelation exclaimed, “Follow me! We haven’t a moment to spare!”

He darted down the hallway, I close behind, and we half ran, half leapt down three or four or maybe five flights of stairs—I don’t know and can’t remember anyway; blood flew through my veins, tears flooded my eyes, and in my mind’s eye lay Shelley strapped helpless and dying to one of those rusty gurneys.

I knew we were in the basement only because there were no more stairs to descend. The doctor stopped at the stairwell door and stared through its glass. “It’s clear.” We carefully slipped through those doors and into an old underground parking garage. There were a few dilapidated cars, mostly parts and rust, still scattered about from the ancient times, but chiefly the garage was for storage and rubbish.

The doctor scanned the area. “Over there,” he whispered, and we glided through the maze of trash and waste around the far corner to the edge of a fresh-erected wall. It seemed to block nearly half the garage. At the other end of the wall was a set of double doors, wide enough for a gurney. “They must be in there.”

“Who?” I asked.

“There will be guards. Careful.” I followed him as he slid down the wall to the edge of the jamb. An opaque film covered the doors’ glass panels, blocking the view from the outside. The doors were of two types, appropriated from unused rooms in the hospital. The difference created a slight gap through which the doctor peered stealthily. “Two.” He thought for a moment. “I’ll be back. Hide behind that box and wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Not sure. Haven’t figured that part out yet. But your Shelley is in that room.”

My stomach dropped like a stone, and my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. Dr. Brown gave me a look of tacit reassurance. There was speech in his reticence—it gave me confidence. The doctor disappeared into the darkness as I took my place of hiding.

Presently, an alarm sounded, rousing the guards from inside. Two lumbering golems—one tall and stocky, and the other slightly shorter but quite thick and barrel-chested—came barging through the door and disappeared into the dark corners of the parking garage. The alarm was my battle cry, though I snuck in like a spy.

What I stumbled upon was an unimaginable horror. The room was cavernous, filled with row upon row of bodies, each hooked to a strange-looking machine. Like everything else in the hospital, the machines were odd constructions of random technologies, mostly ancient. Exposed pipes and wiring hung from various places, and metal parts lay discarded in corners and crevices and crannies.

I scanned the rows for Shelley—she was nowhere in sight. I took a quick glance at each body, lying there on the precipice between life and death. It was not the serene painted death that graced those unconscious faces, but a far more dreadful depiction. It was death brought to life. They almost resembled the cyborgs from the old science fiction novels (although none of those ancient authors described a future quite like this!)—tubes penetrated noses and mouths, needles punctured veins in arms and legs, wires and probes pierced skulls. The souls of man were gone, but lo! the machines lived on! forcing air in and out of lifeless lungs, driving blood around hopeless hearts, stimulating bygone brains with shocks and pulses.

I leaned in closely. It was a young man, about my age. He must have died from the Early Onset. I panicked. In face after face, though the vigor had escaped, the youth was still evident. I could think one thing—Shelley was hooked up to one of these contraptions!

I ran from bed to bed as quickly and quietly as I could. She was not among the living dead. When I got to the far side of the room, I saw a group of patients whose machines were not running, though they were still alive. I could see Shelley’s dark hair glistening under the harsh fluorescent lights. I ran over to her.

“Shelley!” I yelled in a whisper. She rolled over and looked in my eyes.

“Marlowe . . . Maaar–looowe.” She was sedated.

“No time, Shelley. We have to go.” I worked loose the straps from her arms and legs.

“Marlowe, Marlowe . . . did you know . . .” I sat her upright and wrapped the extra lab coat around her.

“We have to go.” I eased her to the floor.

“We have to go, Marlowe, Marlowe . . .”

“Yes, yes, we have to go.” Just then I heard the door slide open. I pulled Shelley down to the floor, where we crouched and waited. The two golems were talking.

“I told you it was a false alarm.” The shorter guard sat down at a small desk in the front while the other paced about. The tall one drew his baton and with a flick of the wrist slung it to its extended position. He swung it around as if engaged in an imaginary battle. “Nothing exciting ever happens around here. Nothing.”

Shelley was poking me, whispering, “Marlowe, Marlowe . . . did you know?”

“Sssshhh!”

“Did you know . . . I love . . .
yo
?” She giggled, and the guards went silent. The tall one stalked down the aisles of beds to find the source of the unexpected noise. The short one stood and loitered around his desk—he was in no hurry to do anything besides sit back down. He craned his neck as though his surveillance were of any use.

The tall one drew nearer—I could hear his feet fall one by one on the tile floor. My heart kept time as the footsteps rang out like the knell to my funeral—step, thump, step, thump, thump, step, thump, thump, thump—it was about to explode. And then, silence.

He sprang from behind the next bed with baton raised high. “You little
pathogen
!” I turned my body to protect Shelley, and just as the baton came down upon me, I could see the light of consciousness flash across her eyes.

CLANK! The baton caught a low-hanging pipe, and the tall guard was standing there dumbfounded, with his hands above his head. I will never forget what I saw, what I felt that day—his crotch called to me like the bull’s-eye calls the archer. No plan, no intention, not even a thought had manifest in the time between that guard’s errant blow and the one I delivered right between his legs. My foot came off the ground as if drawn up by the heavens, and my thrusting knee crushed his most precious paternal devices.

It was glorious. He fell to the ground, moaning and writhing. The other guard was coming, and quickly. I lifted Shelley to her feet. “We have to make a run for it!” She took a step, but her knees faltered beneath her.

“I can’t!” Those desperate eyes were pleading.

“Hold it right there.” The short guard was upon us. He was holding some sort of electric gun. “See this here? This here’s a taser. 50,000 volts of—” CLANK. The guard collapsed.

Dr. Brown was standing behind him holding a fire extinguisher. “I knew this thing would come in handy.” Then he spied the taser. “But
this
. . .” he said, putting down the extinguisher and carefully sliding the taser out of the guard’s hand. “
This
might save the day.” He pocketed the weapon. “Let’s go!”

“What about them?” Shelley said of the bodies on the beds. She was almost fully conscious. “We can’t just leave them here.”

“They’re dead, Shelley. They’ve already seen the Light. There is nothing we can do.”

“But these—
these
haven’t seen the Light. They’re still alive—like me!” There were four beds of patients, all in the same condition as Shelley. We worked furiously to unstrap them and rile them to consciousness. Dr. Brown used those same straps to tie up and gag the guards.

We made it to the last bed. In it rested a young man, like many of the other young men who had passed in that hospital, about my age. We got the straps off of him and tried to help him up. He came to quite suddenly. “It’s no use.”

“We can get you out of here” pleaded Shelley.

“It’s no use. The Light—it’s coming!” He leaned back in his bed. We sat frozen and speechless. Dr. Brown watched carefully, as though hypnotized by the event. “It’s coming, and it’s beautiful! It’s true! The stories are true!” The boy spread his arms as if welcoming an embrace. “The Light! The Light! It takes me to the heavens!” His eyes rolled upward as he trembled, and then his back arched and fell, and he was gone. Shelley gently placed her hand upon his face to close his gaping eyelids, when a sudden last burst of air was loosed from his collapsing lungs. She shrieked, and the machine the dying boy was connected to coldly mocked her with shrieks of its own.

“We have to get out of here!” There were three with us now, two girls of about fourteen or fifteen, and a boy of the same age. They were all quite groggy still, so the doctor helped the two girls while I assisted the boy. Shelley was just about conscious enough to move on her own, though what would soon ensue frightened the stupor right out of her.

There were no guards in the garage—the false alarm Dr. Brown triggered had long subsided. So we hid underneath the stairs to rest and rouse our three companions to consciousness. We could hear people above us returning from the streets after their evacuation. Dr. Brown whispered a plan: “When it settles down, we’ll slip out the back. If something happens, separate—it’ll confuse the guards. Once we get out of the hospital, we’ll be safe.”

We all nodded in agreement and listened as the din and clamor above began to wane. Presently, the stairwell door swung open—it was the short guard. “In here!” he yelled, as he whirled his baton at Dr. Brown’s head. The doctor moved just in time to dodge the brunt of the force, taking a mere glancing blow to the arm. The short guard raised his baton again.

“Run!” yelled Dr. Brown, and the five of us scampered up the single flight of stairs to the first floor. I paused in flight long enough to see the guard jolted mid-swing, convulsing violently. The doctor was holding the taser to the guard’s belly, squeezing the trigger jubilantly. “Go! I’ll catch up!” The guard fell to the ground, moaning and groaning. The taller guard appeared at the door, and Dr. Brown jammed the taser into his belly. “Ha! Take that, you scourge!” He held the taser tenaciously on the falling guard, conducting still more voltage into that fast withering body.

The throngs had yet fully returned, and there was a small crowd still funneling through the doors. I held Shelley’s hand tight, and we tried to stay together, but the others were separated from us in the confusion. It was a mob of doctors and patients, surgical scrubs and hospital gowns. Nobody noticed the five of us—we slipped away easily.

There was mass confusion in the streets. The morbidly curious locals had come out in hopes of seeing the hospital aflame. Even the market was empty. I left a few of my coins on the counter of a deserted clothing shop and took a pretty dress for Shelley to wear, and then we headed for Southgate, the closest city exit.

Shelley left her bag in the hospital. We lost half our supplies. And her Book—her Book was in that bag.

“It’s okay, Marlowe,” she said. “We still have a little money, right? We can get back to the village.”

“But your Book.”

She patted my pack. “It’s in here. I slipped it in just in case.”

“Just in case what?”

“Just in case.”

We left that city in a hurry. The sun would set soon, and we had little time to find a place to camp.