Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 3

Sitting in silence, Mariella managed to force down a few spoonfuls of cereal and drink half her juice before Troy stopped by to talk to her. He seemed as friendly and cheerful as before, and that, for a fleeting moment, had Mariella thinking that maybe she was overreacting...

"Good to see you're doing okay", said the now unemployed security man. "Bert still wants to take you to the nearest hospital, get you checked out - you okay with that?"

"Sure", she replied. "I could do with some answers."

When she was ready, Mariella went with Troy down a familiar passage, past Bert's now deserted "office", and round to the hotel's "backstage" area, where all manners of housekeeping was normally would have been carried out. The Olympus Springs had been several weeks from opening, and so the only staff present were volunteers from Bert's group of the lost and abandoned, washing bed sheets, cooking up mid-day meals, or hurrying around trying to keep what facilities they had in working order, and a chill ran through Mariella as she realised, with horror, that sooner or later, someone would expect her to do the same...

After a seemingly endless excursion through the "behind the scenes" labyrinth, Mariella and Troy came to one of the rear delivery bays, where the still-hooded figure of Bert stood waiting, the sunlight spilling in making him seem even more eerie than the night before. "We sneaking out through the back?", asked Mariella. "What, we doin' something'... illegal?"

"No, but it's better that we avoid getting caught up in any of the trouble out there", Bert replied, "and it might be about to get worse. Troy told me that the military are about to clamp down on things. There's a major Air Force Base on the south-east edge of town, and the order has come in to ensure that all such facilities are kept secure, even if that means locking down the whole of Las Vegas. We either go now, or we don't go at all, and that could endanger your health. We still have no idea what happened before Troy found you - you may have a medical condition that requires intensive treatment..."

"I feel fine", Mariella assured him. "I checked myself over in the bath, in the mirror - I don't have any scars, no aches and pains - although my tattoo is gone."

"Tattoo?", queried Bert.

Mariella raised her left arm, showing him the inside of her forearm. "A dove with a bleeding heart", she explained. "About the size of a quarter - we all have them."

Bert came closer, and bent his hooded head down over Mariella's arm as she examined it. His hands felt like those of an artist; gentle, careful, but they had seen some of the outdoor life...

The girl tensed. She'd seen Bert's right hand, which seemed to have unusually smooth skin, and no fingernails.

"I didn't hurt you, did I?", asked Bert, looking up. Briefly, Mariella caught a glimpse of the lower half of his face, for the first time. He seemed to have a patchy beard, and she was reminded of a man who'd lived down her road, back in Miami - an old man who scared the local kids because of the burns he'd sustained in some war or other.

"No", she mumbled, and chose not to pursue the matter for now. Despite what she'd heard earlier, Bert still seemed to be concerned about her, and more than willing to help. She wasn't going to slap his hand away just because he'd been in an accident, or something...

"I don't see any trace of a tattoo", Bert reported. "Even with the best laser treatment, there should be some sign, especially on Hispanic skin..."

"Sounds like you know what you're talking about", observed Troy. "Maybe you were a doctor before... before your accident. You sure sound like one. You gotta voice people trust."

"As good a theory as any", remarked Bert, "but... but it doesn't feel right. I've been dealing with all kinds of injuries, talking to doctors, and none of that feels familiar..."

"Maybe you're a surgeon", offered Mariella. "I think ya got the hands for it - but d'you know what they remind me of most?"

"Please, enlighten me", asked Bert.

Mariella tapped her upturned forearm with her right index finger. "A tattoo artist."

Troy laughed, the kind of big, hearty laugh that could brighten up anyone's mood, and it certainly worked for Mariella. Even Bert quivered with unspoken mirth, and shrugged. "You betta get movin', if you wanna get back before Nellis sends the boys in", advised the security guard. "I'd go with ya, but suddenly, there're a lot of places needing guarded these days, and half the workforce!"

"Don't worry about us - we'll be fine", Bert told him. "I had a word with Rick Bailey. He'll drive us there, and he knows where these... things seem to be gathering."

"Rick Bailey?", said Troy, thoughtfully. "The gun-nut? Ran into him back in my days on the force -squirrelly kinda guy, card-carrying NRA, but not a serious offender. Bar brawls, mainly."

Bert spoke up quite vigorously in Bailey's defence - he helped get supplies to the people at Olympus Springs, and he'd gone out of his way to get them portable generators, and a high-output water filtration unit, but Mariella still felt uneasy. She nearly jumped out of her skin when a car-horn sounded three times outside...

"Our ride is here", said Bert, placing what he hoped would be a calming hand on Mariella's shoulder. "Don't be afraid."

Mariella didn't reply. Nothing anyone could say could stop her being afraid until she knew there was nothing to fear about herself.

Rick Bailey immediately reminded Mariella of a wrestler - shaved head, short beard, narrow eyes - muscles like a gorilla. She expected him to be capable of little more than grunts, but from the moment the black 4x4 pulled away from the hotel, Mister Bailey had plenty to say.

"Streets're quieter now", he reported, with a rather feral-sounding Texan accent. "These damn zombie-things seem to be gathered together most of the time, wherever they can find computers and phone lines..."

"The casinos?", ventured Bert.

"Got it in one", snorted Bailey. "Would be the same as always, but us real people gotta keep off the streets, and most of 'em do just that."

"Apart from you", dared Mariella.

"Someone gotta look after our city", rumbled Bailey, "and it ain't the cops. They're still freaking out about how half the force just stood up, walked out and joined... them"

"You seem particularly well-informed", remarked Bert. "The phones still working?"

"Phones?", growled Rick. "Good old-fashioned word of mouth, boy! Don't trust anything like phones right now - just cold steel and hot lead!"

Mariella shuddered at the sound of Rick's ominous words, and looked out the window of the vehicle. She'd tried not to do that the whole journey, not wanting to see the world falling apart around her, and she immediately regretted her lack of willpower, as she bore witness to the startling scene of a Chinese shop-keeper and his wife using brooms to try and drive off one of the "zombies", a businesswoman with eyes that were bottomless pools of oily, faintly luminous green.

She tried to look away, but Rick suddenly swerved down a side-street, and as the car made the turn, Mariella was, quite by chance, treated to another tableau of civilisation in chaos - a frantic-faced woman driving back and forth over the twitching form of another "zombie", green fluid spurting from its empty eye-sockets while two policemen tried to calm the driver down...

"Score one for humanity, sister!", Rick bellowed out of the driver-side window as the insane scene receded in his rear-view mirror.

"So, what's the general opinion?", enquired Bert, trying to do some claming-down of his own. "What do you and your contacts think is causing all this?"

"Scientologists", spat Rick. "You hear what they really believe? I'd like to take that Tom Cruise and 'audit' his ass with my Size Twelve, 'Top Gun' or not! Lotsa people blame them for that terrorist attack in Central Park - that was about when all this started..."

Mariella couldn't wait to get out of the car. Waking up in an empty bus station, with no idea how she got there... "zombies"... now terrorism - it was all getting to be too much...

There wasn't much farther to go; Rick pulled over a couple of minutes later, opposite the hospital to let Mariella and Bert out. "I won't hang around", Rick told them. "I'll come back in two hours, pick you up if you're right here. You're not here, I'll swing back round in another two hours. You don't show then, you're on your own."

"We understand", said Bert. "Thanks for your help."

"Anything for my fellow humans", said the bald man, with a grin. "Keep it real, 'kay?"

Mariella caught a glimpse of the corner of Bert's mouth as Bailey drove away, and she was sure her saviour was trying to smile. "There goes all the proof you'll ever need of the indomitability of the human spirit", he said, then looked across the road. "Now, let's attend to matters of the body, shall we?"

The interior of the St Clair Community Hospital reminded Mariella of one of those hospitals in a faraway war-zone; undermanned, under-equipped, but at least there wasn't blood and dirt everywhere, every corridor lined with gurneys bearing the wounded, the dying.

There was, however, still an air of grim desperation hanging over the whole place, and as she walked through the corridors with Bert, Mariella felt incredibly selfish, imposing herself on these hard-pressed medics, and more than once she came close to grabbing Bert by the arm to drag him outside again. In time, she had to submit, knowing that Bert had gone to great lengths to help her, and she quietly, obediently, feel in step behind her rescuer.

Anne Calloway was a young doctor. probably a student young enough to be Mariella's sister but promoted by lack of personnel to a more senior post, yet there was something in Dr Calloway's eyes that suggested she was older in spirit, perhaps aged prematurely by the stress of recent days. The young woman seemed relieved to see a familiar "face" that did not require treatment, giving Bert a tentative hug, but when she came to Mariella, the best the doctor could offer was a polite handshake - Anne was clearly aware that a patient had arrived.

"Troy Barrows found Mariella at the Greyhound, alone, wearing what looked like a hospital gown", explained Bert as Dr Calloway helped Mariella up onto an examination table. "She seems physically fine, bright and alert, no immediate signs of any illness - no coughs and sneezes that I've been made aware of."

Mariella shook her head. "Nothing - I feel great. Although I am short one tattoo."

"That's strange", said Dr Calloway, switching her attention to Mariella's arm for a moment. "I don't see any sign of anything..."

"It was there", insisted the girl. "A real tattoo - needles, ink, blood, everything!"

"To erase something like that so completely, you'd need a skin-graft, and there would be signs of that having been done", continued the doctor. "There's just nothing..."

Mariella was accustomed to accusations that she was lying, but this was something quite unlike any of those times. "I'm not making it up", she growled. "We all got them done. Stacey did the design - it was beautiful... the only thing in my life I thought would be forever..."

Calloway backed off, and changed tack. "Well, nothing outwardly seems to be out of order", she said, leading Mariella over to a digital weighing machine, "although you seem to be a little underweight for your height and age - consistent with a stay in hospital - and your heart rate seems a bit low. Given all you've been through, I'd have expected that and your blood pressure to be elevated..."

Dr Galloway sat Mariella back down, and shone a pen-torch in her eyes. "Is there any history of glaucoma, or cataracts in your family?", the medic asked, thoughtfully.

"No, I don't - no, wait, my grampa", answered Mariella. "He had an operation on his eyes when I was little. Dunno what for, though."

Dr Calloway switched off the torch, returned it to the top pocket of her white coat, and continued examining Mariella's mouth, and ears. "No, there's nothing that's giving me any cause for concern", she declared eventually, straightening up, "except, of course, for this memory lapse - some ten months, you say?"

Mariella glanced over at a calendar on the desk. "Ten months, eight days", she replied.

"I see no sign of head trauma recently, or in the past", Anne told her, "but that doesn't mean there isn't something we need to look at as soon as possible. We could do some tests, maybe a scan..."

"Ohmigod", gasped Mariella. "I... I got a brain tumour?"

"Not necessarily - it could be purely psychological", Anne tried to assure her. "We have the equipment upstairs, and I'm sure we can get this looked at right away."

Dr Calloway excused herself, and went to talk to her superiors, leaving Bert to try and calm an increasingly anxious Mariella. "Oh, great", the girl whimpered to herself. "I'm either crazy, or I got a lump in my head..."

"No-one said you were crazy". corrected Bert. “You could just have had a traumatic experience, something your subconscious felt was better forgotten. From my experience, memory loss isn't exactly a precise process - I lost everything up to a few weeks ago; surely the whole of the last ten months can't have been that bad..."

"...but what happened t'you was enough to make you hide your face", Mariella intervened.

"Would you trust me more if I showed you", asked Bert, "or would it freak you out more?"

"I... I don't know", mumbled Mariella. "At least you'd show you trusted me, and that surely wouldn't hurt."

Bert nodded, seemingly relieved. "I get the impression that, whatever your life was like before all this, you probably weren't credited with anything like the intelligence I've seen. You're a smart girl..."

"...Mariella da Silva?"

An interruption arrived in the form of a more senior doctor, a man with dark hair thinning at the temples, with an anxious-looking Dr Calloway in tow. "Yeah, that's me", said Mariella. "Y'got good news for me? I... I get a test...?"

"Well, that all depends", said the man. "I'm Doctor Halsted, I'm head of neuro-medicine here at St Clair, and I am the member of staff who'll be supervising any investigation and treatment - but before we get to any of that, there is something of a hurdle to be overcome. Ms. da Silva, can you explain to me just why your medical records list you as deceased?"

Until that moment, Mariella had quite forgotten Troy and Bert's half-overheard conversation, the mysterious police information passed between them - and all her trust in anyone evaporated in an instant.

She couldn't remember what happened next. The senior doctor approached her, there was a flash - she started running...

Alien technology detected. Continent 2, south-western sector, sub-sector 14-7-19. Resolving precise location...

Location confirmed - local reference "Las Vegas"; target structure local reference "St Clair Community Hospital". Redirecting contingent 17814 for investigation and threat analysis. Tactical upgrade available, and standing by.

Advisory ends.

...to be continued...

Posted at 15:31 on 21.10.2009


~ o O o ~


Previously...
Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 8 - 02.11.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 7 - 30.10.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 6 - 28.10.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 5 - 25.10.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 4 - 23.10.2009