Centralia (20 page)

Nichols wobbled on his feet like a bowling pin. His eyes were empty windows; his mouth hung slack. A hole the size of a dime near his hairline oozed bright-red blood.

Two things happened simultaneously then: Peter noticed two gunmen taking aim in the windows flanking the front door of the house, and before Nichols’s knees could buckle and carry his weight to the ground, Peter stepped forward, grabbed the gun with his right hand, spun the older man around, and fired two shots at the window to the left of the door. Both shots caught the shooter in the upper chest. He toppled out of the window, lifeless. The other gunman ducked back behind the wall, but without hesitation, Peter aimed and squeezed off three rounds, placing them in the exterior wall between the window and the doorframe. The
walls of the old home were thin, and the asbestos siding did nothing to stop a bullet traveling more than two thousand feet per second. The gunman dropped and landed in the doorway.

Peter let go of Nichols and, still clutching the gun, hurried up to the house and entered it. Inside, the air was still, and light was sparse. The doorway opened into what would have been the living room if the house were indeed a home where a family dwelled instead of a facade for a covert government agency. To the right was another, smaller room, and behind it, to the rear of the home, was the kitchen.

Sticking close to the wall, Peter searched and cleared each room. Occasionally he’d peer from one of the broken-out windows to make sure Habit wasn’t coming to gloat about his kill and then finish Peter off.

After checking the entire first floor, Peter headed up the stairs, every sense alert. He needed to make sure there weren’t more gunmen in the house waiting for an opportune moment to ambush him from behind.

The second story consisted of three bedrooms and a bathroom. In each bedroom was a closet. Peter checked them all, still keeping watch out the windows for Habit. But if Habit had stuck around after the shot, he wasn’t celebrating his victory over Nichols in the open. He was nowhere to be seen.

From the second story, Peter returned to the first floor and found the door to the cellar. The door opened on a wooden staircase, which descended into a dimly lit cavern. Gun out in front and held tight with both hands, Peter took the steps one at a time, pausing on each one to listen. If there was a secret passageway to some underground bunker, the cellar was where he’d find it. And if backup was coming, which no doubt it was, that was where they would emerge.

Midway down the steps, Peter got a look at the cellar. Hazy light filtered through four small windows in minimal amounts. Dust floated in the air, riding subtle currents that wafted from the open door to the first floor. The foundation walls were constructed of fieldstone; the concrete holding the stones together had long ago begun to crumble, leaving piles of dust on the dirt floor. The rafters supporting the first-story flooring held an intricate network of cobwebs tying them all together. The entire webbed labyrinth looked to be more intricate than anything a team of structural engineers could reproduce.

The area was clear of clutter. In the far corner was a utility sink and next to it, a thick wooden workbench. And in the center of the cellar sat a rotund coal furnace rising from floor to ceiling. From it reached eight round ducts like the arms of a manacled octopus imprisoned in this dungeon below the house.

Peter followed the north wall of the cellar to a door secured by two slide bolts and a hook-and-eye lock. Peter disengaged all three and opened the door. It creaked on hinges as dry as old bones. Behind it lay a root cellar under the front porch. The room was no more than eight by eight and housed a collection of old containers and boxes. It smelled of mildew and mold. Peter moved some of the boxes to the side and there found another door, but this one didn’t fit the surrounding motif. It was protected by a small biometric fingerprint lock concealed inside a gray box.

Hesitantly Peter placed his thumb on the scanner. He didn’t expect anything to happen, but a second later it blinked green and the door’s lock disengaged. He’d been there before, several times maybe. But how? He remembered none of it.

The door opened to another passageway descending farther into the ground beneath the house. Walls, ceiling, and floor were
all concrete, and the total height was just over six feet, barely tall enough for Peter to stand in. Exposed lightbulbs every fifty feet or so illuminated the corridor, which wound its way deeper and deeper into the earth. At the same intervals were one-foot-by-one-foot metal ceiling vents. Peter stayed close to the concrete walls, stepping carefully to avoid making any noise. There had to be some kind of alarm system that sounded an alert when the door was unlocked. Surely whoever was at the other end of the tunnel monitored such things.

But why hadn’t they sent anyone after him? Stuck in this tunnel, he was easy prey for a team of men with automatic weapons. There were only two explanations: this was a trap and an end consisting of automatic weapons was still in his future, or Habit had been telling the truth about them wanting to take him alive.

Either way, he’d keep going, keep moving ahead. Karen and Lilly were somewhere at the other end of the tunnel. He’d stay alert, remain quiet, and be ready to strike when needed.

The corridor descended in a spiral fashion, some of it sloped concrete, some of it wide but shallow steps. Around every bend, Peter expected to find men waiting, prepared to light the place up and destroy him, but the tunnel was empty.

A humming began, quiet, almost unnoticeable, like the machinery of a distant factory. Coming from the walls. Or the ceiling, maybe. Peter put his hand on the wall; the concrete vibrated. He then put his hand to the ceiling vent. Cool air poured out. The air-conditioning had kicked on. But why? Underground it was cool; there was no need for air-conditioning.

Quickly Peter turned from the vent, covered his mouth, and drew in a deep breath. There was something in the air
 
—had to be. Whether it was the hallucinogen he’d experienced in the school or
a toxic element, he had no doubt that what came out of the vents was anything but innocent.

Picking up his pace, he continued down the tunnel, still staying close to the wall. He had no idea how long he could hold his breath but figured no more than two minutes. He had to get to the end of the tunnel before he needed to breathe.

If he encountered any resistance, he’d have to make quick work of them, which meant he’d have to take risks. Fortunately he found the end of the corridor before the oxygen in his lungs was spent. And there was another door.

This door had no lock, only a simple lever handle. Peter depressed it and slipped through the doorway, shutting the door behind him and filling his lungs with clean, filtered, recirculated air. To his right and left was an empty concrete hallway fifty feet in either direction. Solid plain doors lined each wall, four to a side. Holding the gun chest-high, Peter sidestepped to his right to the first door and tried the knob. It was locked. As were the second, the third, the fourth.

Finally he made it to the corner. There he stopped, frozen by another memory.

He’s in this hallway or one similar. Long corridor, concrete, fluorescent lighting, doors lining each wall.

One of the doors opens and two men dressed in black commando gear emerge. One holds a knife and thrusts it at him. He blocks it with his left arm while jabbing the aggressor in the neck with his right fist. The man crumples to the floor clutching his throat. The other man brandishes a gun and points it at Peter’s head. Peter grabs the gun with both hands and thrusts upward while delivering a paralyzing kick to the man’s groin. The gun comes loose, and Peter engages the slide action and points it at the two commandos on the floor.

A man emerges from another room. Peter can’t see the man’s face, but he can tell who it is. He just knows. The man says, “Well done, Sergeant. You’ve come a long way. You’re almost ready.”

Peter shook his head, confused. Distracted. The man in this memory was Nichols, but it wasn’t the man who met him outside. Before he could make sense of the disparity, he felt something hard and cold against the back of his head.

Then a voice: “I knew you’d come to us, Peter.” It was Nichols.

Something hard hit him on the back of the head, his legs turned to paper, and he fell to the floor. The hallway spun, then went dark.

The house again. Second floor. Peter found himself in a bedroom. He wasn’t sure which one it was, but it wasn’t the first. Nothing in here was like that one
 
—no bookshelf, no desk
 
—except one thing; one thing was the same. In the corner, just like in the other room, stood the floor lamp with the
C
on the shade from Audrey Lewis’s office. Besides the lamp, this room was sparsely furnished, just a worn overstuffed chair, a small wooden table, a two-drawer metal file cabinet, and an old television, the kind equipped with a dial to turn channels and a rabbit-ears antenna.

Peter went to the file cabinet and slid open the top drawer. It was stuffed with hanging folders. Each one was labeled differently.
High School. The Academy. The Force. Bills. Credit Cards.

He pulled the one for
The Academy
and opened it. An acceptance
letter to the police academy in Indianapolis and a graduation certificate. Officer Peter Ryan.

He closed the file and placed it on top of the cabinet, then took out the one labeled
The Force
. Inside was a letter announcing his employment with the Indianapolis Police Department. There was also a photocopy of his badge and a photo of him in his uniform. He had been a cop. The memory was there again: seated in the coffee shop, sipping coffee. Even as it struck Peter strange that he could recall his memories in a dream, another memory surfaced.

He busts down a door by kicking it alongside the knob. It’s in an apartment building of some sort. Hallway on either side, more doors, all closed. The door swings in and Peter follows it, gun raised. He rushes in, feeling other cops close behind him. They’re all hollering, shouting orders. A group of men drop to the floor, but one flees. Peter chases him, catches him in the kitchen, tackles him against the refrigerator.

The memory blurred, then faded as quickly as breath on a mirror.

Peter shut the folder and placed it with the other one on top of the cabinet. He fingered through the folders in the drawer again and found one labeled
Karen
.

Opening the file, he found only one sheet of paper, which seemed odd to him. It was facedown, but he could see the imprint of an official seal of some sort. He flipped it over, scanned it, and let it drop softly to the floor. With it, his heart dropped into the pit of his stomach.

It was an intent to divorce, signed by Karen, stamped by the state.

He had been a cop, and he was divorced. Reality twisted in on itself, a snake coiling into a tight ball. He was divorced? Was that
why he’d awakened by himself yesterday morning? Was that why he couldn’t find Karen or Lilly? They no longer lived with him? He wondered how many mornings he’d awakened calling Karen’s name, looking for her, looking for Lilly. But then, why had other people been convinced they’d died in a car crash?

Peter shut the top drawer with his thigh and opened the bottom drawer. It contained one object, a book. The same Bible from the first room. He lifted it out and cracked it open to the same spot as before. The pages crinkled and smelled of dust and much use. John chapter 10.

As before, he read the words and was overcome with peace. Hope. A feeling of complete contentment, as if he hadn’t a care in the world and whatever care happened to come his way would be dealt with properly. But as before, the feelings were fleeting and vanished, leaving him with a rock in his gut.

Disregarding the open drawer, Peter crossed the room to the closet, something the first room had lacked. Something drew him toward it, urged him to open it. An uneasy excitement built inside him, like the feeling a child has right before Christmas morning, wondering if he’ll get everything he asked for, especially that one special thing. But when he placed his hand on the knob, he was suddenly in the hallway, standing before the fourth door, trying to turn the knob but once again finding it locked. He shook the door, banged on it. Took a step back, then forward and kicked at it. Nothing. It was locked tight and impenetrable.

And as always, that shadowed pacer tracked back and forth, steady, unwavering.

Then, as a mist lifts and reveals the light of day, bright light filtered in and overcame Peter’s vision.

He was in a solid concrete room. Bare except for the metal chair
on which he sat. His hands were cuffed behind him, his ankles shackled to the chair’s legs. Above, six fluorescent tubes glared at him. His mind swam in murky water, and for a moment he forgot where he was. But as his thoughts cleared, he remembered his journey down here: the corridor, the vent; he’d held his breath and made it to the main tunnels. There were rooms, locked doors. And then . . . then what? He awoke here. Helpless, chained down like an animal.

He also remembered the dream and the memories within the dream. So strange. He was a cop, wasn’t he? Or had been a cop. That certainly explained his ability to use a weapon, his instincts for survival, his familiarity with hand-to-hand combat. But those memories were distant as well, like the others. They seemed to not originate from within him at all but to have been fed to him by some outside source. Like seeing pictures of your childhood and not remembering a moment of the events in the photo but knowing they happened because the picture is there to prove it.

And then there were the snippets of military action. How did those fit in? The only memories that really seemed to be his were from his life as a research assistant, but he was even starting to wonder how much of that had actually happened to him, as if that too was part of a script written by someone else. And what of the divorce paper he’d found? Was that real? Had Karen left him and taken Lilly? He couldn’t remember any of it, and yet it felt distantly possible. Maybe that explained why he knew she wasn’t dead. She was just gone, gone from him, a stranger to him. In the swirl of memories, it felt like Karen and Lilly were the only solid ground he had. That and the strange, unshakable feeling that despite what his mind told him about God, his soul seemed to know better.

Peter shut his eyes hard and tried to sort it all out, but his mind was a blank screen, an empty box. He had memories of Karen and Lilly’s accident, of the funeral . . . that was it. But if they were false memories, then Karen and Lilly were alive and they were here, in Centralia. This was why Lilly had left him the note.

The door to the room opened, and an older man in a shirt and tie entered, followed by a guard of some sort.

“Welcome to Centralia,” the older man said. It was Nichols. Again. Only it wasn’t the same Nichols that Habit had shot outside the house.

This Nichols was shorter, heavier, older. He had full lips and a bulbous nose, thinning gray hair combed to one side. His shirt stretched tight over his belly, and his necktie was too short.

“Nichols,” Peter said.

Nichols stopped about eight feet from Peter and motioned to the guard. “Unshackle him, Corporal. He’s not an animal.”

The guard approached Peter and unlocked the cuffs around his wrists and ankles.

“There,” Nichols said. “Now, let’s have a talk, shall we?” He paused as if waiting for Peter to respond, but Peter said nothing. “You know, Peter, you used to call me Mr. Nichols. You used to respect me.”

He then turned to the guard again. “Please get me a chair, will you?”

The guard left the room.

“You have questions, I know,” Nichols said, pacing with his hands behind his back. “And I have all the answers you need.”

The guard returned with another metal chair and set it on the floor facing Peter. “Thank you, Corporal.” Nichols sat in the chair and sighed. “There. Now, let’s talk. I have nothing to hide, and I
think it’s time you know the truth. The full truth. No more secrets, no more mysterious memories.”

Peter couldn’t help his eyes twitching ever so slightly.

“Yes, I know about your memories,” Nichols said. “I don’t know the exact images you’ve been recalling, but you have been having memories, haven’t you? Strange ones. Memories with no source, no roots, floating out there like a ship in a dark sea with no compass.”

“Who am I, really?” Peter asked.

“You’re Peter Ryan. You were born in Indiana. Loogootee, Indiana. It’s near the Hoosier National Forest. Beautiful area.”

Peter remembered none of it. He had only fleeting memories of childhood, but none that included details and none involving a forest.

“Who is Jed Patrick?”

Nichols shifted in the chair and crossed his hands over his belly, narrowed his eyes. “Peter, it’s time you hear the whole truth. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Peter nodded. But how did he know he could trust Nichols’s version of the truth?

“Good,” Nichols said. “I’m tired of this secrecy. I’m getting too old for it.”

“I want to know where my wife and daughter are,” Peter said.

Nichols smiled. “We’ll get to that, but first we have to lay some groundwork. You joined the Army right out of high school, asked the recruiter what the most demanding thing to do in the Army was. He told you it was to become an Army Ranger. You signed up, and that’s just what you did. In fact, you became the best Ranger. Top of your class. And in the field you showed . . . skills. Valuable skills.”

“What kind of skills?”

“Well, for one, you were a dead shot. Every time. I don’t mean you were a good marksman. No, they come a dime a dozen in the military. Lots of farm boys out there good with guns. You were special. You simply didn’t miss. Regardless of distance or circumstances. Regardless of distractions. Hit the mark every time.”

Now it was Peter’s turn to shift in the chair. Nichols’s tale held no familiarity, but it certainly explained Peter’s comfort with a firearm.

“As you can imagine, skills like that are very valuable to the Army,” Nichols said, his smile turning smug. “You were a great asset. We trained you as a sniper and sent you to Afghanistan.”

Peter’s memories of combat surfaced again. Habit was his spotter.

“You remember, don’t you?”

Peter looked at Nichols. “Habit.”

“Yes, Lawrence Habit was your spotter. You and he trained together. You were quite the team.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, you were perfect. So much so that we wanted to broaden your skill set. And thus began the Centralia Project. We trained you to become the perfect soldier. The perfect weapon. You could do it all. Your natural instincts, your athleticism, your abilities
 
—we enhanced them, perfected them, gave you everything you needed to be a pure killing machine. We poured a lot of resources into you, Peter, spent a lot of taxpayer money making you the model for our future work in Centralia. Imagine if every soldier we trained was a super soldier like you. Imagine what that would mean to our military dominance. We’d be leaner, meaner, more agile, stealthier. Fewer lives lost, more wars won.”

None of this made sense. “So what happened?”

“Simply? You failed. We didn’t know where the training went wrong. We pored over our techniques, the results, your performance. Everything was perfect, spot-on. But still you failed.”

The memory. The man by the pool. “I didn’t take the shot.”

Nichols nodded slowly. “You didn’t take it. Couldn’t.”

“His wife was there. And his daughter, the little girl.”

“He was enemy number one, Peter. A ruthless killer, a mastermind terrorist. That was the only look we’ve ever had at him. We had one chance and you couldn’t take the shot.”

Peter drilled Nichols. “His wife and daughter were there.”

“He’d killed hundreds of other men’s daughters. Thousands.”

“Why did Habit call me Patrick?”

“Jed Patrick was your code name. Jedi. You were that good.
Were
that good.”

“And I disappointed you, didn’t I?”

Nichols laughed, but it was anything but humorous. “You were so much more than a disappointment. You were the poster boy for the one glaring flaw in the Centralia Project.”

“And what was that?”

“Training soldiers. By the time we get them, they’re what? Eighteen, nineteen, sometimes older? Too old. Too much past. Too much baggage. Too much conscience.”

Peter stood and stepped behind the chair, gripped it with both hands. He wanted to throw it at Nichols, attack the man, break his neck. Nichols seemed to sense that too, the anger, the hurt, the frustration, the desire to inflict harm, but he remained calm, as if what he was telling Peter were no more important than revealing who won the last game between the Steelers and Ravens. But it would do no good to kill Nichols. Peter was locked in a concrete
room located in the middle of a subterranean bunker. Where would he go? Besides, he’d killed enough.

“So why am I having memories of being a cop? And how did I become a lab researcher? And how did Amy Cantori know anything about this?”

Nichols stood and walked to the door. “Peter, take some time to let this digest. Get your emotions under control. I’ll be back later and we can talk some more.”

The door opened and he slipped through. And Peter was once again alone.