“And cutting holes in your head fixes that?”
“No. But the medicine he puts in the holes does. It goes into my cerebral sinuses. They’re sort of like big blood vessels surrounding your brain. He goes through the fontanels. The bone is newer there, thinner.”
Tilting her head slightly, she pulled back her hair, revealing the stitches he’d noticed earlier near her temple. He must have looked disgusted, horrified, because she reached out, catching his hand.
“I’m better now.”
“But Alice,” he said, helplessly. “Your dad didn’t do that by cutting holes in your head.”
“Yes, he did. The medicine makes new nerves grow. It fills in the missing places in my brain. It makes the electrical signals get to the right places. Daddy said that one day, it will all be fixed. I’ll be just like you are.” She looked at him earnestly, nearly pleading. “I’ll be just like everyone else.”
Back inside the compound, Andrew stopped at the infirmary to see if Dani was there and had any news on O’Malley’s condition. He also decided he needed to make her aware of Moore’s increasingly erratic and violent behavior, and poor Alice’s delusions that his abuse was somehow helping to cure her autism.
Maybe Dani can talk to her, he thought. She’s got kids. She can relate better. Maybe she can make Alice understand.
His footsteps faltered as he approached the infirmary doorway and Major Prendick walked out, flanked on either side by a pair of armed soldiers. All three wore bright yellow hooded jumpsuits over their uniforms, with plastic shields covering their faces and blue latex gloves over heir hands.
“Mister Braddock,” Prendick called out. “I’m going to have to ask you to stop where you are.”
“What?” Bewildered, Andrew raised his hands hesitantly, a reflexive gesture even though no one had demanded it of him. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
“I need you to come with these men,” Prendick replied. The two armed soldiers forked out, each keeping wary distances from Andrew as they moved to either side of them.
“Where? What’s going on?” Andrew asked again.
“You’ve been exposed to a highly virulent strain of contagion. By military protocol, I’m to confine you to your quarters until I’m able to determine whether or not you’ve been infected.”
“What protocol? You mean like quarantine?” Andrew asked. “You’re placing me in quarantine? You can’t do that. Suzette said all I had to do was take a shower. Hey!” When one of the soldiers reached for him, he jerked away, brows furrowed. “Where’s Dani? Where’s Specialist Santoro?”
“She’s been restricted to her personal quarters until further notice, as well,” Prendick said.
“I want to talk to her. I want to see her right now.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Mister Braddock. It’s for her own good and yours. We need to make sure no one else gets sick.”
The soldiers stepped forward, grabbing him roughly, with enough force to prevent him from breaking free.
“Hey,” Andrew exclaimed, struggling. “Get your hands off me!”
“I’d prefer that you do this voluntarily, Mister Braddock,” Prendick said. “But I’m authorized to confine you by force, if needed.”
“I said get your fucking hands off me,” Andrew yelled as the soldiers began to haul him down the corridor.
CHAPTER TWENTY
As he was shoved unceremoniously into his room, Andrew stumbled and crashed to the floor, barking his knees. “Hey,” he began, frowning, his fists bared as he scrambled up again, but it was too late. The soldiers slammed the door in his face and he heard the tell-tale beep-beep-beep-beep as they locked it.
It was a moot point and he knew it, but he tried punching in his own pass code anyway. He wasn’t the least bit surprised when it didn’t work. There was no way they’d have been that stupid,
With an angry, frustrated cry, he struck the door. “Damn it!”
Spinning around, he shoved his back against the door, then folded his legs, sliding his spine down until his ass met the floor. Shoving his fingers through his hair, he closed his eyes, tilted his head back.
Great, he thought. This is just great. Now what the hell am I going to do? I can’t just sit here, twiddling my thumbs, waiting to see if I’m going to get sick. I can’t leave Alice alone in that closet or Dani locked in her room downstairs. There’s got to be a way out of this mess.
He’d felt something in his pocket poking him in the hip when he’d sat down, and shifted his weight now as that uncomfortable pressure continued digging into his skin. With a frown, he raised his hips, cramming his hand down his pocket, meaning to take out whatever was in there and hurl it across the room. Instead, when he pulled out Dani’s key ring—with her Gerber multi-tool attached to the chain—he paused, cradling it against his palm.
Less than three inches long, the Clutch had a little heft to it nonetheless and curious, he slipped his fingertip into the little grooves and notches, unfolding each of the miniature blades and implements in turn: needlenose pliers, a small knife, emery board, tweezers, flat head and Phillips head screwdrivers.
“I love you, Dani Santoro,” he murmured even though she wasn’t around to hear. Standing, he walked across the room to his window, shoving back the drapes to either side. The top three-quarters were unblemished glass, a picture pane designed more for aesthetics than any sort of practicality. But at the bottom, side by side, was a pair of casement windows. Like pop-out quarter windows in older model cars, these were designed to open only as far as the hinge would extend when fully unfolded, roughly six inches. It was a security feature Andrew had seen in both his college dormitory and hotel rooms, designed to prevent people from falling out.
Frowning thoughtfully, he went to the bed and yanked back the bedspread, heaping it in heavy folds on the floor. Working quickly, he stripped the bed sheet and bed spread from the mattress, then returned to the window and glanced down.
What is that, a fifteen foot drop? Sixteen? he wondered, studying the parking lot, the landscaped perimeter between it and the building below. If he estimated the distance from the vertex of his thumb to that of his elbow as one foot, he figured he could measure out the bed linens and cut them into strips to make a crude rope of about the right length to climb from his room to the ground.
If I can get those casement windows open a little more, he thought. Which, thanks to Dani, I just might be able to swing.
He knelt in front of the window. Working quickly, shooting nervous glances over his shoulder toward the door all the while, he used the multi-tool’s screwdriver implements to disassemble the hinge mechanism on one of the casement windows. Once he was able to dislodge it fully from the sill, he could push the panel out wider, giving him another six or seven inches, little more than a foot through which to try and escape.
I can fit, he thought, frowning again as he grabbed hold of the metal window frame and leaned out experimentally, shrugging his shoulders to squeeze through. Barely. This would be a hell of a lot easier if I was Dani’s size. Or Alice’s.
Ducking back inside, he set to work measuring out, then cutting thick strips from the sheet and bedspread, fettering them together in quick but secure double figure-eight, fisherman-style knots until he had a fairly sturdy rope assembled. Next, he shoved the bed, mattress, box springs and all, against the far wall. He secured his makeshift rope to the metal frame with a clove hitch knot. Rather than anchoring it on one of the legs, instead, Andrew tied it around one of the thicker, weight-bearing transverse beams.